▶ 0:19:13recess at any time pursuant to committee rule 2, House rule 11, clause 2, the chairman may postpone further proceedings today on the question of approving any measure or matter or adopting an amendment for which a recorded vote is ordered. Now recognize the gentle lady from Wyoming to lead us in the pledge. To the flag of the United States of America and to the republic for which it stands, one nation under God, indivisible, with liberty and justice for all.
▶ 0:19:45Thank the gentle lady for that. Um, pursuant to notice, I call up uh HJ res 139 for purpose of markup and move that the committee report it favorably to the house. The clerk will report the bill. HJ res.
▶ 0:19:58Without objection, the bill will be considered as read and open for amendment at any point. The chair now recognizes the gentleman from Arizona, Mr. Biggs, for an opening statement.
▶ 0:20:07Thank you, Mr. Chairman. Today, our national debt is more than $ 38 trillion and counting. For generations, Congress has chosen to max out our national credit card and leave the bill to the next generation rather than have hard conversations about spending. Families across our nation have these hard conversations and balance their budgets. States do. And there's no reason that their federal leaders should not as well. Americans know that debt comes with strings attached.
▶ 0:20:34Every dollar we spend beyond our means today is a dollar and change we must repay tomorrow. It's no different for government. The more America borrows, the more expensive every next borrowed dollar becomes. Indeed, annual federal spending on interest is now one of the largest line items we have. We spend more on interest than we do on our national defense.
▶ 0:20:53We spend more on interest than we do on Republicans and Democrats may have different policy ideas and priorities, but surely we all can agree that a budget hamstrung by huge interest payments benefits nobody. Our fiscal trajectory is alarming and Higher than expected interest rates or other challenges could trigger a debt spiral. It's happened to other countries throughout history. It could happen to us. And without changes, the day of reckoning will come and it will be ugly.
▶ 0:21:23Under the balanced budget amendment, spending cuts can be targeted and phased in over a longer period. In a crisis, they will be drastic and immediate. The balanced budget amendment will not merely beat back a future fiscal crisis. It will also reduce the cost of living here and now. The enormous federal debt is currently driving up borrowing costs for all Americans.
▶ 0:21:42Mortgages, car payments, and student loans are all more expensive because of Congress's We saw the disastrous disastrous effects of budget busting deficit spending during the cata catastrophic four years of Biden Harris rule. With the eager support of Democrats in Congress and some Republicans, the Biden Harris administration approved $4.7 trillion in new deficit spending, ultimately racking up $ 8.5 trillion in new national debt.
▶ 0:22:12And what did it get us? The worst inflation rate in 40 years. When Biden and Harris took over in January 2021, inflation was at just 1.4% per year. By the middle of their term, it was more than 9%. Inflation is a tax on everyone. But we all know who it hurts the most. The poor, the working class, seniors on fixed incomes, and American families who saw their expenses explode with no similar increase in their salaries.
▶ 0:22:40This balanced budget amendment will limit Washington's ability to overspend and accelerate inflation by ensuring that future federal spending is funded by actual revenue, not debt and money printing. Many of our friends will object, saying the balanced budget amendment will hurt national security, exacerbate financial crisis, or prolong national disaster recovery by taking away Congress ability to respond when tragedy strikes. This is untrue and it is different than where it's been in past.
▶ 0:23:10In in uh 2016 in the 100, excuse me, in the 116th Congress, John Tester, senator from Montana, and uh Ben McAdams, representative from Utah, each introduced balanced budgets amendments. We have seen in 1997, for instance, a bipartisan effort on a balanced budget bill.
▶ 0:23:36People who signed it included Tom Davis, Republican, Virginia, and Sheila Jackson Lee, Democrat from Texas. Vice President Al Gore was there supported that. Frank Lottenberg, Democrat, New Jersey, Charles Wrangle, Democrat, New York, all joined. Steny Hoyer of Democrat from Maryland all joined in signing and supporting that uh balanced budget bill on August 5th, 1997.
▶ 0:24:01In a true emergency, like funding for major natural disasters, Congress will be allowed to addition uh issue additional expenditures with a two-thirds vote. A two-thirds vote in both chambers is a reasonable threshold for these emergency expenditures because it is the same threshold required by the constitution for other extraordinary legislative acts by Congress. For instance, overriding a veto or the ratification of treaties. If Congress declares a war, that threshold is lowered to a simple majority.
▶ 0:24:32This balanced budget amendment will force Congress to kick the habit of spending money we don't have once and for all while still giving it the tools to respond nimly to individual crisis. But these ex exceptions will not matter if the rule is not clear. The amendment does not allow Congress to fudge the numbers and rely on forecasts or other gimmicks which create loopholes that give Congress more leeway to spend recklessly. We can spend only what we take in or in a true emergency only specific additional amounts. The amendment does this in two ways.
▶ 0:25:02First, by clearly defining the criteria for calculating the receipt side of the balanced budget equation. And second, by making it more difficult to further burden Americans with more taxes. First, the amendment would require Congress to calculate the previous three years receipts adjusted for population and inflation. This forces Congress to deal with the facts, not fiscal fantasies. Second, the amendment constrains Congress's outofc control spending by requiring a twothirds vote to raise to raise taxes.
▶ 0:25:31This limit forces Congress to address runaway government spending by actually limiting spending, not by levying expensive and excessive taxes. Liberty and economic prosperity flourish when the federal government is limited. Finally, the amendment will take effect 5 years after ratification, giving Congress enough runway to make adjustments without shocking the 49 out of 50 states have balanced budget requirements. It's time the federal government joins them.
▶ 0:26:01I hope my colleagues on the other side of this aisle will join me in calling for a balanced budget amendment to get our fiscal house in order. Believe it or not, as I've said, there is a long history of Democrats supporting balanced budget amendments. I hope that's still the case today. We'll find out. Let's have a good and honest debate about this proposed amendment. I encourage everyone to support it. Mr. Chairman, I have a few UC's if I can.
▶ 0:26:26Gentleman can state his request.
▶ 0:26:27Yeah. A balanced budget amendment is in Democrats interest.
▶ 0:26:30Without objection.
▶ 0:26:31Uh the American people want a balanced
▶ 0:26:34Without objection.
▶ 0:26:35And moderate House Dems back balanced budget amendment
▶ 0:26:38without objection.
▶ 0:26:39Thank you. And as I close, before I yield back, I'll point out that just a few years ago, the uh blue dog co-chair for communications said it's clearer than ever that the only way Congress will be able to produce a balanced budget is if it is required to do so by law. Washington needs to have a serious bipartisan discussion about our nation's fiscal state. That's from my friend from Southern California. And Mr. Chairman, I yield back. Gentleman yields back.
▶ 0:27:09The chair now recognizes the ranking members for asking for an opening statement.
▶ 0:27:12Mr. Chairman, thank you very much and thanks for providing some muchneeded comic relief from all of the tragedy and pain surrounding us in America today by bringing forward surely the funniest legislative initiative of the Congress. A Republican constitutional amendment to address a problem that Republicans created and that Republicans have systematically failed to address even though they've got all of the necessary legislative tools at their disposal.
▶ 0:27:37I refer, of course, to gigantic, runaway federal budget deficits that result from outofc control Republican spending and stupendously reckless Republican tax cuts for billionaires and giant corporations. But there's no need to take my word for it. As a died in the world Democrat, our colleague, Mr. Roy, at the House Rules Committee meeting, preceding the vote on the so-called one big beautiful bill, described it as garbage and pointed out the obvious. If we're going to do tax policy, at least do spending policy.
▶ 0:28:08Have the courage and fortitude to do what you campaign on when you're talking about balancing our dang budget. That's right. Republicans control the House. Republicans control the Senate. Republicans control the White House. Republicans effectively control the Supreme Court. And yet, they have not once balanced the federal budget or even try to present a balanced budget for legislative consideration in this Congress.
▶ 0:28:29So to cover up for their pathetic capitulation of Donald Trump, who has six chapter 11 bankruptcies to his name, by the way, more bankruptcies and impeachments, although fewer bankruptcies, it's true, than criminal convictions. And to cover up for their unceasing giveaways to the Jeffrey Epstein and Elon Musk class of financial and sexual predators, they now want to start fingerpainting all over the US Constitution. That's right.
▶ 0:28:53They want us to use our constitution to make them do what they claim they want to do at a time when they already possess the complete power in government to do it. Oh, and in the process, they'll put our entire government for all time in a fiscal straight jacket. So truly responsible leaders like Franklin D. Roosevelt, for example, won't have the flexibility to deal with real economic crises created by Republicans like Herbert Hoover, Calvin Culage, and Donald Trump.
▶ 0:29:24The simple truth is that we don't need a constitutional amendment to balance the budget or have responsible fiscal policies. With one party control of the government and non-stop blather about the importance of balancing budgets, Republicans could simply do it right now if they wanted to. But billionaire ripoff artists like Elon Musk or Peter Teal or Donald Trump, they don't get rich off of balanced budgets.
▶ 0:29:47They get rich when the gangster state opens the spiggots of taxpayer money in federal contracts and giveaways for billionaires in the high-flying rent-seeking corporate class. Republicans have run up historic corrupt deficits this Congress and have never once submitted a single balance budget.
▶ 0:30:08they may as well be introducing a constitutional amendment saying that federal agents shouldn't shoot American citizens in the face for exercising their first amendment rights or a constitutional amendment saying that federal agents shouldn't strip firearms from people lawfully carrying them under state law in the second amendment and then shoot them 10 times for simply for disagreeing with Steven Miller and the president. We don't need a constitutional amendment to force the majority to do the right thing. That's hopeless. We need a new majority.
▶ 0:30:38You don't need a constitutional amendment to comply with the law or to do the right thing. You just do it. History proves we don't need a constitutional amendment to budget responsibly. In the 1990s, President Bill Clinton, a Democrat, worked with a Republican controlled Congress to eliminate the deficit completely. And the federal government ran a huge surplus for several years running without the aid of a contrived balanced budget constitutional amendment cooked up by some political consultant.
▶ 0:31:06Clinton bequeathed to his successor George W. Bush a $236 billion federal surplus. But history shows that nearly every time a Democratic administration has put our fiscal house in order, Republicans have taken as an opportunity to pass more giant giveaways for corporations and billionaires and blown massive holes in our budget. For example, the policies of President George W.
▶ 0:31:30Bush and his GOP Congress squandered the record federal budget surpluses of the Clinton years on tax cuts for the wealthy and the staggeringly costly forever wars in Iraq and in Afghanistan. 2017, President Trump and a GOP Congress passed a so-called Tax Cuts and Jobs Act, a law that increased the federal deficit by an astounding $1.9 trillion. At the time, no president had ever added more money to our deficit.
▶ 0:31:58But then last year, the GOP passed the obscenely ugly proflegate law, which will add an unprecedented and jaw-dropping four trillion dollars to the national debt because of its obscene giveaways to billionaires with the mega seal of approval.
▶ 0:32:14Of course, they paid for just a small fraction of this profleacy by stripping health insurance and food assistance from tens of millions of working-class Americans who are now living with these Marie Anuanet policies that came out of the Trump White House. So, Mr.
▶ 0:32:30Chairman, I will only support a constitutional amendment compelling Republicans to finally balance the budget if it also if it also compels them to stop throwing money at billionaires to crack down on record corruption and profit taking by their incourageable president and to get and to get their private army in ICE to start complying with the constitution like the first amendment, the second amendment and the fifth amendment.
▶ 0:32:57Maybe we could even pass a constitutional amendment to compel President Trump to respect the Constitution. Let's have a hearing on that topic. I yield back.
▶ 0:33:06Back without objection. Other opening statements. All other opening statements will be included in the record. Who seeks recognition?
▶ 0:33:12Move to strike the last word.
▶ 0:33:13Gentleman from Kentucky is recognized.
▶ 0:33:16You know, I'm all for balancing the budget, but I hate to tell Mr. Biggs this isn't going to work. The threshold for for spending out of balance is 2/3. And let me just go through I twothirds is not a high enough threshold. That's Let me go through some of the omnibus bills and the percentages by which they passed the House and the Senate. In 2016, an unbalanced budget passed by 73% in the House.
▶ 0:33:46In 2017, an unbalanced budget passed by 71% in the House. In 2018, an unbalanced budget passed with 83% of the vote in the Senate. In 2019, 69% of the House voted for an unbalanced budget. In 2020, 68% of the House voted for an unbalanced budget. In 2021, 68% of the Senate voted for an unbalanced budget.
▶ 0:34:13In 2022, 68% of the Senate voted for an unbalanced budget. In 2023, 75% of the Senate voted for an unbalanced budget. And in 2024, 80% of the House voted for an unbalanced budget. Just this year, in 2026, one of the minibuses passed with 91% and it's not even close to balancing.
▶ 0:34:35So, what would a twothirds threshold do to stop this body or the other body from spending us into oblivion like we've been doing since I just don't see it.
▶ 0:34:47Gentleman, yield for a question.
▶ 0:34:48I certainly yield to the chairman.
▶ 0:34:49Well, I we just heard from the ranking member. He blamed it all on Republicans. It sounds like Democrats were involved in those numbers as well. Is that right?
▶ 0:34:55I think it's the uni party. It's like you can you can the way we get budgets through the House and the Senate here is that when you don't have enough votes, you add more spending to it for somebody and then you develop a new constituency, a bigger constituency. And that's how you get to 60% in the Senate and 51% in the House.
▶ 0:35:16But you don't even need to get to that because we had, like I said, of the House voted. There were only 21 people who didn't vote for for the commerce, justice, science, energy, and water, and interior mini bus.
▶ 0:35:35Will the gentleman yield for a question?
▶ 0:35:36I I would yield.
▶ 0:35:38What What do you make of the example of what happened in the Clinton administration with a Democratic president and a Republican Congress, and the president was determined to come forward with balanced budgets, and there were record surpluses that took place for several years?
▶ 0:35:51You I'm glad you asked that. I looked at your chart. was very interested in it. You said Obama's budget, Biden's budget, Trump's budget. The Constitution gives us the power of the budget. We are the ones that spend the money, not the White House. The If you want a chart and you want to sh reflect accurately who is bankrupting this country, don't put the president's name on the chart. Put the Congress. Put who was the speaker of the house at that time.
▶ 0:36:17And I think what you'll find is Nancy Pelosi is responsible for over 30% of all the debt ever accumulated in this country today when she was speaker. The re reclaiming my time. Um here there's another problem that I have with this balanced budget amendment, the constitutional amendment. If for any year in which there's a declaration of war, it doesn't apply. Oh my gosh.
▶ 0:36:45We'll be declaring war on Madagascar or some poor country uh people can't find on the map on after we pass the rules and elect the speaker. It'll be the third vote of every session of Congress to declare war so we can get that little formality out of the way and start spending as much as we want. So that's a problem. I think you know I think the answer might be actually in the way that constitutional amendments are passed. You need what?
▶ 0:37:14Threearters of the states to agree. I think a a real balanced budget amendment, constitutional amendment could require the states, threequarters of the states to say, you know what, there's enough of an emergency. We're going to let you guys in Washington spend because you rightfully pointed out many states have balanced budget and 49 states and they stick to them. You can't trust anybody up here, Republicans or Democrats, whether who's in the White House or who the speaker is.
▶ 0:37:42So, um I mean I applaud the effort and I know this thing is super popular, but if you're at home listening, just remember every year we already pass a budget by more than twothirds. And when I say budget, I'm talking about an omnibus bill. It's not really a budget. It's just wanting spending and everything in one giant bill. It's always like a CR or an omnibus like the one we're going to vote on tomorrow. It's got half of all of government in it.
▶ 0:38:10And um these things pass with twothirds votes anyway. So I don't think the threshold's high enough. And with that I yield back.
▶ 0:38:18Gentleman yields back. Gentle lady from Washington's re excuse me. Gentleman from New York is recognized.
▶ 0:38:23Thank you Mr. Chairman. I am opposed to any balanced budget amendment. Uh the Congress is elected by the people to among other things enact a budget. If the people prefer the budget be balanced fine.
▶ 0:38:39if they vote for people who don't want to balance the budget also fine but beyond that we can balance the budget and as was pointed out when President Clinton was president we had four years of balanced budgets because he wanted to do it but what I also object to this amendment is it says any bill section four any bill to levy a new tax or to increase the rate of any tax needs a twothirds vote of the whole number of each house two-thirds not of those president voting but of the whole But
▶ 0:39:09that biases things. It takes a twothirds vote to increase the tax, but it it biases it against spending. We may want to spend. The people may want to spend money. They often do want to spend money. And this says essentially that they can't spend money unless they get twothirds vote. It biases it. If it said you can't sp you can't enact an appropriation without a two-thirds vote, it would be even worse. But at least it would be balanced.
▶ 0:39:39So this is an unbalanced amend uh uh constitutional amendment because the people by majority vote cannot increase the tax. Now we have billionaires effectively paying no taxes, paying tax rates lower than middle class people. We ought to increase taxes on those billionaires. But with this amendment, we couldn't do it without a two-thirds vote.
▶ 0:40:02If we attack I mean under President uh Trump we have several times twice in 1917 in 1917 in 20 17 and uh earlier this year uh last year rather we passed huge bills that would greatly increase the budget by doing what? By lowering taxes on We want to undo that.
▶ 0:40:28And it shouldn't take a twothirds vote to undo a tax or to raise taxes on billionaires, but a majority vote to in to to relieve taxes on billionaires. It's introducing a bias into the Constitution, a pro-billionaire, anti-people bias, and it must be opposed for that and many other reasons. I yield back.
▶ 0:40:49Gentleman yields back. Gentle lady from Washington is recognized.
▶ 0:40:52Thank you, Mr. Chairman. I'm gonna have some amendments on the underlying bills that we're discussing later, but uh I'm moving to strike the last word. Excuse me. Um but I want to speak on the fact that we are completely distracting from the real issues that face our country in the judiciary committee. And I've been beating on this drum for some time.
▶ 0:41:15But let me be clear, this committee is supposed to be looking at the constitutional rights of Americans that are being violated across the country. There is supposed to be a bipartisan coalition on both sides that actually respects not having a surveillance state that actually respects the fourth amendment and the fifth amendments, the right to be free of illegal search and seizure.
▶ 0:41:39There is supposed to be a Congress that is committed and swears an oath to upholding the Constitution. But we're not talking about any of those things today. We're talking about a false, amendment around a balanced budget when it's structurally flawed. I'll have some amendments around that.
▶ 0:42:03It doesn't allow for you to It requires a supermajority for you to raise taxes and actually bring in revenue. That's the other side of a balanced budget, folks. There's spending and there's revenue. But this one says, "No, you can't raise revenue." Why? Because this entire administration is about supporting the billionaires.
▶ 0:42:27And even former members of Congress on your side who were some of the biggest MAGA supporters have come out and said the whole thing MAGA was a big lie because they're recognizing that the only people that are getting rich right now are this tiny group of people including the president of the United States. So there's structural problems with this. Some of which I agree with Mr. Massie on some of which I don't.
▶ 0:42:54There's the fundamental issue that this president with your compliance, don't talk to me about Congress being responsible for authorization of funding. This Republican party for the most part, there are few people who have dissented and I respect them have put absolutely no controls on the president of the United States. There are a couple people that raise concerns every once in a while. They fold quickly.
▶ 0:43:21It's become a sport on our side to see how quickly people who originally raise concerns fold. That's what's happened. You've given over all authority of Congress and our article one powers to the president. You don't question him. You don't speak out against him. You don't stop anything that he's doing.
▶ 0:43:42And then on top of that, you stole from the taxpayers in your big bad betrayal bill to give 175 billion dollars to ICE and CBP. And you know what ICE and CBP are doing across the country? Masked agents dragging elderly people out of their cars.
▶ 0:44:08ICE and Border Patrol agents recklessly deploying chemical weapons in residential neighborhoods, including by schools, on kids. A two-year-old child left alone in a car in my district after ICE arrested his father.
▶ 0:44:23People exercising their First Amendment rights to peacefully protest and being dragged out of the car, shot, and murdered with no independent And in fact, the people who were supposed to conduct the independent investigations coming out and saying they did absolutely nothing wrong, contrary to what every American across the country sees with their own eyes.
▶ 0:44:47the kidnapping and disappearance of 5-year-old Liam Kos Ramos, who was used as bait to get his father, who by the way was in legal immigration proceedings here in the country. ICE designating detention cells specifically for US active duty service members having their parents arrested and deported, children as young as 2 years old detained in family detention camps.
▶ 0:45:15the highest number of detention deaths in two decades with 37 deaths just since Donald Trump took office. Immigration agents lawlessly ramming down doors without a judicial warrant. What is wrong with my colleagues on the other side? Are you going to allow this to continue while you try to distract us with some other cover up?
▶ 0:45:45Some fake balance budget amendment, some bill that targets trans kids? Is that is that what you're coming to now? Because we've worked together on surveillance and privacy, but are you speaking out against the constitutional violations that are happening right now that you should be against? I will have amendments on the underlying bills, but I just have to say, Mr. Chairman, I don't understand what we're doing in this committee.
▶ 0:46:15I yield back.
▶ 0:46:16We're completing the markup we began a couple weeks ago. What we're doing on uh the chair now recognizes
▶ 0:46:23gentleman from Virginia. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. Move to strike last word. Gentleman's recognized. I I won't waste time responding to the uh lies really of the gentle lady from Washington when she claims that people
▶ 0:46:39chairman you're undermining the gentleman needs to take down his words.
▶ 0:46:43You don't have a point of order.
▶ 0:46:44I have a point of order.
▶ 0:46:46I have a point of order. I request that the gentleman take down his words. He is or withdraw them. They're telling me to withdraw them, but I would demand you take them down.
▶ 0:46:56Committee will suspend. Don't call me a
▶ 0:46:59I will restate.
▶ 0:47:00Do not call me a liar.
▶ 0:47:02I will restate.
▶ 0:47:03You better.
▶ 0:47:03The time the time belongs to the gentleman. All right. The gentle lady is not being truthful when she says that people are
▶ 0:47:09Mr. Chairman
▶ 0:47:10peacefully protesting.
▶ 0:47:11Mr. Chairman,
▶ 0:47:12when they are interfering with ICE enforcement of the law,
▶ 0:47:15can't impugn the intent of a member. You are misstating the facts. Are you
▶ 0:47:23The time belongs to the gentleman from Virginia. I think he has said that he will he restated it and said that you weren't being truthful versus the word that was used prior. The time belongs to him. The gentleman from Virginia is
▶ 0:47:36I want to focus on the issue at hand which is not weird, which is not ludicrous when you are $35 trillion in That's serious. In fact, that is the most serious issue facing the future of this country.
▶ 0:47:55We desperately have to address the fiscal imbalance that has been created by both parties, by both ends of Pennsylvania Avenue over the last several decades.
▶ 0:48:10there and the gentlemen who have spoken and the gentle lady who has spoken said it correctly and that we as a body have responsibility but we haven't been able to have exercise that self-control to address it.
▶ 0:48:27And whether it's uh the Ways and Means Committee failing to address appropriations failing to address deficit spending, uh the regulatory state uh across authorizing committees, we all have a responsibility to step up and do our part. Um the Republican Study Committee has in fact offered balanced budgets every year, balanced over 10 years, balanced over seven years.
▶ 0:48:56Um, so the ranking member was incorrect that there are not balanced budget proposals out there.
▶ 0:49:02Will the gentleman yield for a quick
▶ 0:49:04Have any of those been brought to the floor for a vote? That's what I was pointing out.
▶ 0:49:07They have. In fact, um, it was the practice that when the president offered his budget, it was brought to the floor. The majority offered their budget and then the RSC budget was actually offered for a vote. So yes, that has happened in the past. It hasn't happened recently, unfortunately. I would like to see it
▶ 0:49:25brought to the floor.
▶ 0:49:26Thank you. I wasn't aware that it had ever happened.
▶ 0:49:28It has, but um you know we the train is off the tracks and whether it's the people calling for an article 5 constitutional convention or this committee taking action uh as is necessary to pass a constitutional amendment. There there must be action and it may not be perfect. The gentleman from Kentucky points out some of the uh questions about the wording, but let's get it right.
▶ 0:49:56Let's spend the time here and do what's necessary to get this amendment right so we can pass it. I think it is fiscally sound because it does require twothirds majority to spend beyond balance or raise taxes. Um the
▶ 0:50:10gentleman yield.
▶ 0:50:11I yield.
▶ 0:50:12Just as a uh as a point of curiosity, are you aware of what the combined net worth of every billionaire in the United States is? I I do not know that
▶ 0:50:21it's about $7 trillion to to so to respond to the other side. This is not a taxation issue as you were alluding to. This is fundamentally a spending issue. If you taxed every billionaire at 100% their net worth, it wouldn't dent the long-term trajectory of where we are. I thank the gentleman and uh I do think that uh it has to come time for us to take this important step because the interest on the debt is now 13% of our budget.
▶ 0:50:50Interest payments on the debt. It's more than we spend on Medicare, more than we spend on national defense. It's now the largest part of our budget. Um so if for our children, for our future generations, for this country, uh to continue to lead, uh we have to take this action today. So I'm I'm look forward to supporting the amendment.
▶ 0:51:16Um I plan to I thank the gentleman for offering it and u I yield
▶ 0:51:22Mr. Back,
▶ 0:51:23Mr. Chairman,
▶ 0:51:24J from California is recognized.
▶ 0:51:26Thank you. I move to strike. that
▶ 0:51:29um I actually do agree that the accumulated national debt is a challenge for our country and something that does need to be dealt with. Um the uh national debt that is now especially with the Trump administration's move to weaken the dollar and make um borrowing more challenging that you know this is something that does need our attention. I don't disagree with that.
▶ 0:51:58However, this amendment is a meaningless response to that. Even if this passes the House, it won't pass the Senate. Even if it goes out to the states, this is not going to become a part of the Constitution. I think this it's um pretty clear. We've I've been on this committee for a number of years. We've taken this up uh periodically and it's it's a lot of discussion that goes ultimately nowhere. Uh I think we need to take a look not only at spending but also at taxation.
▶ 0:52:29Uh the massive uh reductions in taxes on the wealthiest in this country were completely unwarranted and did a lot uh to aggravate our debt situation. But take a look at in the big ugly uh bill, my calculation, it's about 191 billion dollars that we allocated to immigration enforcement, allowing people dressed like they were going into Fallujah uh
▶ 0:53:00to attack people, break into cars, you know, drag women out of their cars and throw them to the ground. Just by comparison, the Marine Corps budget is about 57 billion. Uh the Israeli Army budget is about 46 billion. I mean, this this is over the top what we've done here and it's completely um uncalled for and is aggravating our budget situation.
▶ 0:53:28With that, I would like to yield uh to Mr. Nadler.
▶ 0:53:32I thank the gentle lady for yielding. I I agree that this this amendment is is absurd and we could easily solve our balanced budget problems by simply repealing the taxes, the tax cuts on millionaires and billionaires enacted over the last 10 years. But what is really the major problem in this country today is the fascism in our streets. The attacks on American citizens by masked hoodlams.
▶ 0:54:01If you were attacked by a masked person, you might think you were being kidnapped. You'd be justified in shooting the person to protect yourself. But we see people being shot for what? For driving a car. We see people we see these the the ICE goons uh break into people's homes without a warrant.
▶ 0:54:23We see them drag out a a man, an American citizen, in his underwear without even permitting him in the in the snow, without even permitting him to get dressed. This is the major problem we have today along with the attack in our elections.
▶ 0:54:40We saw last week um under Christy Nome's a direction or not not Christine Nome under uh Toss Gabber's direction an assault on the election board in Fulton County where they they would be permitted if they wanted to to copy the election results but not to take them with them and god know and do god knows what with them.
▶ 0:55:03I fear that this is beginning an attempt by the Trump administration to rig the elections this year to make the elections unfair by seizing in 15 or 16 Democratic cities the election machinery. Um and that would further the fascism we see in our streets. I think that is the major problem we facing this country today. the fascism in our streets and the nent attempt by the Trump administration to rig the election.
▶ 0:55:33Because after all, the Trump administration refuses to admit that the 2020 election was fair when 62 judges dismissed 62 lawsuits attacking it. It was completely fair. The Trump administration keeps saying it's not un that it was unfair, looking for evidence for it, which they're not going to find. And they're going to rig the they're going to try to rig the election. Those are our major problems today.
▶ 0:55:56Um, and that's what we ought to be addressing, not the stupid amendment, which as uh the gentle lady from California said is going nowhere and would be a bad thing even if it did. I thank the gentle lady. I yield back to her.
▶ 0:56:07Uh uh I reclaim my time and I yield
▶ 0:56:10Gentle yields back. Gentle lady from Wyoming's recognized.
▶ 0:56:13The misinformation is just absolutely off the charts today. But in reality, it isn't about what are facts and what is what is actually going on in the United States, but it is to deflect attention from what is actually happening. Um, the gentle lady from Washington made a comment about people getting filthy rich. Yeah, that's exactly right. People are getting filthy rich.
▶ 0:56:36a chosen few in Minnesota, Maine, Ohio, Washington, Oregon, and California absolutely defrauding the taxpayer from one end to the other, stealing millions and billions of dollars from the taxpayers. Um, we have folks on the other side. They attack our legitimate businesses while defending rampant fraud.
▶ 0:56:57You know the question that all you have to look at is you asked the question if 80% of the Somali community in Minnesota is on welfare why do they need the child the the hundreds of businesses of child care and for transporting people to various appointments if they are on welfare why in the world are they capable of sending millions of dollars every week back to Somalia?
▶ 0:57:19uh the fraud in this country is absolutely breaking the federal bank and it is absolutely connected to the the deficit and the debt that we are running. It is critical that we get a hold of this spending that we not only complete the investigations and hold people accountable for the fraud that is taking place in these communities in these states, but that we also look at what the federal government is doing and how we're spending the money.
▶ 0:57:46How is that money getting to these groups and these organizations to commit the rampant fraud that we've seen that has been exposed over the last couple of weeks? I think that it's fabulous that we're actually having the discussion. We're talking about trying to control spending. The other side is talking about taxing more and spending more. That isn't the solution and it's not how we're going to dig ourselves out of this hole.
▶ 0:58:08I support this bill for the reason that it is a a step in the right direction coupled with all of the other work that we're doing attempting to expose the manner in which people have been abusing the taxpayers in this country for the last couple of decades with the rampant fraud that we're seeing in primarily Democrat-run cities and states. With that, I yield back.
▶ 0:58:29Yes, I will yield.
▶ 0:58:31Thank Thanks. I thank the gentle lady for yielding to me. Uh this this amendment I I find it intriguing that folks sitting across the aisle said this is absurd. It is stupid. It is silly. It is a fool's errand. What they care about is spending more without any inhibition, without any constraint, without any reflection.
▶ 0:58:57It is a whole series of 25 years uh national security adviserss from both parties who have said the number one existential threat to the United States of America is the outofcontrol spending and the national debt and the growth in the national debt. When I was quoting an individual earlier, I was quoting our own our own colleague from California, Mr.
▶ 0:59:25Korea who said it's clearer than ever that the only way Congress will be able to produce a balanced budget if it is required to do so by law. He said that I think he's right. When my colleague from my side of the aisle says, "Well, this will never work because uh routinely more than twothirds vote for unbalanced budgets." He's right.
▶ 0:59:50When the Democrats say, "Hey, the Republicans are at fault." I say both parties are at fault. Both parties are at fault. Both parties have been proflegate and unwise uh stewards of the taxpayers's money.
▶ 1:00:10But it appears today that there's only one side that even wants to consider what to do and what to take a long-term view because the other side's like, "Oh, hey, we don't want to talk about that. We will deflect any way we can just so we don't have to talk about the terrible terrible trajectory we are on. And that's too bad.
▶ 1:00:34It's too bad uh this this amendment would actually, I think, take us a long way down the road if we could get it passed to being a little bit more fiscally responsible. Even in the states where 49 out of 50 have balanced budget amendments, you have states that manage to be proflegate and uh uh mismanaged.
▶ 1:01:00I think of California, which has has a massive amount of structural deficit and debt. I think that we should be considering this bill this day. And I'll yield back to the gentle lady from Wyoming.
▶ 1:01:13And I yield back. Thank you.
▶ 1:01:15Gentle lady yields back. Gentle lady from California is recognized. Thank you, Mr. Chair. I always feel like I've jumped on to the crazy caboose when I come into this committee. Um, the train is really off the tracks. Amen to that. Um, $35 trillion in debt. Okay, let's talk about it.
▶ 1:01:38I was coming over here thinking to myself, why are my Republican colleagues wanting to talk about debt when they are actually the ones setting the Americans people's dollars on fire and the dollars are actually worth less and less. I started writing these things down.
▶ 1:02:02Okay, these tariffs, these arbitrary tariffs that Donald Trump has placed on countries to actually bring them to the table to negotiate, the only thing those tariffs have done have made it more expensive at the grocery store, at the gas station when your rent is due. I have run into not one single soul who has said, "You know what? These tariffs have made my life better.
▶ 1:02:32Double down on these tariffs. I've not heard that. Raise your hand if you've heard it. How about this illegal, unlawful attack into Venezuela? And when we ask the people, okay, at any of the briefings, how much this is costing the American people, everybody starts looking up into the sky and saying crazy things instead of answering the question.
▶ 1:02:57I ended up talking to some oil executives who said all this drama that we don't want to talk about in any of the committees. This raid into Venezuela sting stealing these tankers could cost the American people a$100 billion. So our grandchildren will be footing the cost of this bill. That's debt. How about the $700 billion cut to Medicaid and Medicare?
▶ 1:03:24Y'all were trying to cut wick and snap for poor children. Children's health insurance. There is no Bible, gold or otherwise, that says make hungry, poor children worse off. How about the hundreds of millions of dollars to change the name from Department of Defense to Department of How is that benefiting the American people?
▶ 1:03:52million spent on whatever is going on at the Kennedy Center. I I mean, come on. Uh let me see. Donald Trump wants to sue the DOJ because he needs more money. He needs more money. That's our taxpayer dollars. That's your constituents taxpayer dollars. Reparations for the January 6ers.
▶ 1:04:13and all this drama with you all being and this administration running roughshot over the administ over the So we have to go to court to fight for the constitutional rights. People say, "Well, why? How is this even happening?" I don't know, y'all. I don't know why we have a president who doesn't like the Constitution, but we have to go to the courts and ask the judge to mandate that the president follow the Constitution.
▶ 1:04:40And every time that happens, it costs taxpayer dollars. The DOJ is charging you to criminalize and prosecute you. All of that is adding to the debt. So, no one, not no one say don't ever say never. No, don't be hyperbolic. But Republicans are not saying let's spend on the American people. But you are saying it's okay to spend on Donald Trump. fraud.
▶ 1:05:10How about selling our AI chips and national security to China for a 25% commission? We don't know what's going on with him and the Saudis now they're on the board of this I don't know board of directors for whatever this man's got going on. I mean, American people aren't. Where is their money? Most US subsidies. Companies receiving the most US subsidies.
▶ 1:05:34That's American Boeing, Intel, $15 billion subsidies to Boeing, $8.5 billion to Intel, $7.5 billion to GM. The list goes on and on. This list don't say Jane Doe. This list don't say Joe Smith. The American people are not getting their fair share.
▶ 1:06:00And like I said, last I checked when I talked to my constituents, they do want some relief. You all are cutting Medicaid and Medicare. Three4s of the Medicaid enrolles are in your states. So this is hogwash. Who? Mr. Chair. It's who we that we're even talking about this. And my colleague is correct. The train is off the tracks of the crazy caboose. And with that, I yield back.
▶ 1:06:27Gentle lady yields back. Gentleman from Tennessee is recognized.
▶ 1:06:31Thank you, Mr. Chair. I agree with everything my colleagues have said pretty much. This is insane. The deficit is insane and it's a great problem, but it's because of the fact that we have given money to the wealthiest in this country with the billionaire tax bill. And we put more money into ICE, making it the largest law enforcement agency in this country. ICE was given $75 billion over four years in the big ugly bill.
▶ 1:07:01They get more money than the FBI, the DEA, the US Marshalss, and the Alcohol, Tobacco, and Firearms, multiplied by two every year. They are the largest by far uh law enforcement agency in our country. And what are they doing? They've killed two Americans. They've killed two Americans in Minneapolis. They've killed them, Miss Good and Mr. Prete. They are dead Why?
▶ 1:07:29Because people we hired and we pay large amounts of money to just took their guns out and shot them. Shot them like Christine Gnome shot her dog. It is unbelievable what they've done and how they tried to emulate Kruella Gnome. You have a bad dog, you don't shoot it. You give it up for adoption. You take it to a shelter. But the ICE agents act like their head.
▶ 1:07:55who immediately came out and said these people were wrong that they were terrorists. Steven Miller said that he Mr. Prey was an assassin. I think it was Mr. Bonino said he was out to do massacres of of law enforcement officers and a major he never got anywhere near his gun, his legal gun that he had in his holster in his backside. He never reached for it and they were murdered.
▶ 1:08:24What are we turning America into? We've hired brown shirts to go out and harass our citizens. They don't even consider they consider the protesters as the opposition and they kill them and they when they're out there shooting off gas in in the community tear gas. Why?
▶ 1:08:51If they're doing their work, immigration work, they should be working on immigration case. That's their authority. They're not supposed to be the police in the city of Minneapolis. And they're not doing immigration work when they're lined up and firing off their tear gas and grabbing people in the streets. Why they're doing that is beyond me. When they grab those two ladies that Mr. Pretty went to help. What were they doing?
▶ 1:09:21They were doing Minneapolis St. Paul police work. They're not allowed to do that. And people come out like Steven Miller and Kellan Gnome and Donald Trump and Bonino or Bonvino or whatever his name is, and they criticize these people and defame them before they're even in the grave. We've got a messed up set of priorities in this country. But you know, Mr. Nattler said something after.
▶ 1:09:49He says, "Why are we giving billionaires tax breaks?" Mr. Naylor, did you forget the fact that the billionaires are going to pay for the new ballroom at the White House? They've got the money to pay for the ballroom now. Trump created his own piggy bank and they're happy to help him.
▶ 1:10:09The head of Amazon paid an outrageous amount of money, I think $40 million to promote Melania, the movie, the most panned movie in history. Nobody liked it and nobody went to it. She's going to pocket $28 million. You're talking about open and notorious unprosecuted corruption in our country.
▶ 1:10:37$28 million to Melania, who was the producer of the movie that basically her shoes. That was the movie. Will the gentleman yield for a question? Yes.
▶ 1:10:52So, you mentioned the bulldozing of the White House and the billionaires paying for the reconstruction that the Kennedy Center uh Donald Trump just announced is going to be closed for two years because none of the artists and musicians will go there anymore because some graffiti artist working for Donald Trump slapped his name on it. It's called the Trump Kennedy Center, even though Congress never did that. What about all the money that's going to be wasted over the next two years? They're talking about bulldozing the Kennedy Center.
▶ 1:11:19We're about out of time. You're exactly right, Mr. Nebraska and it pains me. John Kennedy inspired me to get into government. I lived through the assassination on television. It pains me to this day to hear about it. That building was built by Congress as a memorial to John Kennedy, an assassinated martyr of this country and a great president who was assassinated. And for Donald Trump to close it and put his name on it is a sacrilege and unbelievable. It's a narcissist out of control. I yield back the balance of my
▶ 1:11:48Gentleman yields back. The gentleman from California is recognized. Mr. Kra.
▶ 1:11:52Thank you, Mr. Chairman. First of all, Mr. Biggs, thanks for quoting me. I'm not quite sure where that came from, but you and I talk a lot. It's fine, but I actually want to say that I agree with Miss Hagaman. All of us want to go after fraud, waste, and abuse, but let's just not go after the blue states. Some of the blue states are actually net donors to the federal government. California, for example, give 80 to hundred billion dollars every year in federal taxes, more than we get back on an actual basis.
▶ 1:12:23So, we also want to see some of that money back. And frankly, we don't like fried, waste, and abuse. But like Mr. Massie has said, if we really want to get to the heart of this, both sides have to sit down and figure this out. Get rid of further waste and abuse. Yes. Get rid of unwanted wars. these undeclared wars, these ventures which I believe are not free but very expensive since we are using some of the best military technology in the world.
▶ 1:12:52But let's sit down and figure this out folks. Leaving our children with massive debt, massive interest, interest on the debt is probably close to being our biggest expense now at the federal level. We want to do this. Let's do it right and let's not talk about it again. We just funded ICE in a way that's unbelievable here. Why don't we cut back on that ICE funding?
▶ 1:13:18Send the money down to our public safety officers that all of us trust, that all of us know are trained to deal with local issues. My colleagues have talked about two Americans being killed by ICE. Those are the ones you know of. tell you a bunch of other stories in my district of people losing their eye, getting beat up, getting arrested for a couple of hours, getting arrested for a few days.
▶ 1:13:44American citizens breaking into their homes, no warrant. American citizens whose telephones are being tapped without any warrants. American citizens getting beat up. You don't hear about them because they're just too many stories. And frankly, a lot of them are very concerned, very afraid to speak out. Let's cut down the debt.
▶ 1:14:12And more importantly, let's talk about defending the constitutional rights of American citizens first and
▶ 1:14:21Would you yield, please?
▶ 1:14:22Of course.
▶ 1:14:23You're right. We need to go after fraud and abuse, and it's wrong. And the lady from Wyoming brought it up. But you know, Trump has pardoned at least 10 people who have committed frauds of over 80 and hundred million dollars convicted by juries andor plead guilty. And he's pardoned them. And he's pardoned those people who owe restitution to American citizens for the fraud in health care, for fraud in housing, for fraud in financial uh disputes.
▶ 1:14:53He's they don't have to pay their restitution back to the American people. It's in Ross El Brook's case. He owed $184 million in restitution and fines, wiped out by Donald Trump's pardon. He was had an online marketplace used by drug dealers to traffic narcotics and opioids, sentenced to life in prison, but was pardoned by Donald Trump.
▶ 1:15:15Jason Galenus, serial fraudster and con man, sentenced to 15 years in prison for his $80 million fraud scheme against union pension funds and Native American tribes, pardoned and his $84 million in restitution he owed to union workers and Native Americans eliminated.
▶ 1:15:31Paul Walszac, a tax criminal withheld more than $10 million from paychecks of his employees to conduct his lifestyle, lavish lifestyle, sentenced to 18 months of prison, 4.4 4 million in restitution, pardoned after his mother donated $1 million to Trump at Mara Lago. Todd and Julie Chrisley were granted pardons by Trump after their daughter spoke with the RNC and argued their parents were victims of political prosecution. No, they they were not.
▶ 1:15:57They were convicted by a jury and he ignored the fact that they were indicted during the first Trump administration. Trump pardoned fully pardoned them and the $22 million they owed to victims of their tax fraud and tax evasion schemes wiped out. So go after the fraud. Bob Dylan said, "You steal a little and they send you to jail. You steal a lot and they make you a friend of the king at Mara Lago." I yield back.
▶ 1:16:25Mr. Chair, I yield the rest of my time.
▶ 1:16:30Gentle lady from Vermont is recognized.
▶ 1:16:34Thank you, Mr. Chair. I want to just connect a few dots here we got to this place with ICE Americans, intimidating immigrants, legal residents.
▶ 1:16:56We got here because of a massive fraud that continues to be perpetrated on the American people by our president. He continues to lie about losing the 2020 election and so many of my colleagues on the other side continue to help him with that fraud.
▶ 1:17:20It is the knowing use of deception and to gain political advantage. And there was this critical time after January 6th when a number of people on the other side realized that it was time to stop carrying the water on this massive fraud.
▶ 1:17:51and they made public statements about how it had gone too far and a Rubicon had been crossed and we're done with this guy and this is dangerous for the And then that all got rolled back and they decided, you know what, we're going to continue to perpetuate this massive fraud.
▶ 1:18:16so many I mean this is the piece that I get asked about every time I'm back in Vermont and last week I was there for uh like all of you for a district work week had a massive um town hall and I get asked afterwards how is it that our Republican members of Congress that are supposed to represent their constituents continue to perpetuate this massive fraud on their own constituents that this president won an election when
▶ 1:18:46so many cases were dismissed. And in fact, Trump's own people said this was the safest, most secure election in American history. His own people said that. So, we sit here and we're asked to forget all of that.
▶ 1:19:07that actually the reason why we're here and the reason why $170 billion dollars were passed in the big beautiful bill this summer is because my colleagues on the other side refused to say no to this man. They refuse to say no even when they that it is corroding the very fabric of our society and our government.
▶ 1:19:35Because when you prop up a lie like this year after year after year, then the American people can no longer trust their government at all. And that is what we saw after the deaths of Renee Good and Alex Pretty. We had people in the administration before they even knew what happened standing in front of continuing to lie. And people now say we can't trust the government at all.
▶ 1:20:03This is what has been created because so many of you would not be honest about what happened and continue to not be honest about what happened and I just cannot
▶ 1:20:17pass over that
▶ 1:20:18the same thing.
▶ 1:20:20Time belongs to the time belongs to question time belongs to this is my time
▶ 1:20:24time belongs time belongs to the gentle lady. We had this little disc.
▶ 1:20:27I have never said
▶ 1:20:28time belongs to the gentle lady from Vermont. You can gentle lady can continue. I I I find that there is fragile fra fragility. Fragility
▶ 1:20:44that's that's what we're talking about here. And it often happens when I am
▶ 1:20:49I have found. Have you found that?
▶ 1:20:51Yes, ma'am.
▶ 1:20:51I often find it happens when I am
▶ 1:20:54Yes, ma'am.
▶ 1:20:56I see that the ranking member may have things to say. And I have a question for you. I'm happy to Yes. I I have a question for you. I share your exasperation after
▶ 1:21:03it's exasperation.
▶ 1:21:04In 2024, Donald Trump beat Kla Harris by more than two million votes. We didn't lie about it. Nope.
▶ 1:21:12We didn't proicate. We didn't fabricate. We didn't storm the capital. We didn't get people killed. We didn't drive Congress out of the chambers. We accepted it. That's what it means to live in a democracy. But in 2020,
▶ 1:21:23Donald Trump lost to Joe Biden by more than 7 million votes. Yeah. Not just a handful. 36 to 232. And yet I share your exasperation that certain colleagues just won't correct him about it.
▶ 1:21:33That's right. That's right. And and that until we deal with that fraud,
▶ 1:21:38until we deal with that, we will continue to be on the wrong track. I yield back.
▶ 1:21:43Gentle yields back.
▶ 1:21:44Some Mr. Chairman.
▶ 1:21:45Gentleman from Arizona is recognized.
▶ 1:21:48Yes. Victims shocked after Biden grants clemency to kids for cash judge and a $54 million embezzler. uh $200 million to the victims foregone because he was pardoned
▶ 1:22:02without objection.
▶ 1:22:03Biden commutes roughly 1500 sentences, pardons 39 biggest single day act of clemency, including to Babuba Hai Bob Patel who ripped off $60 million in fraud. Didn't have to pay that back. North Dakota judge blast Biden for setting fraudsters fee.
▶ 1:22:23Um, here you had guys who defrauded farmers, grain brokers to the tunes of tens and tens and tens of millions of dollars and they didn't get that restitution back. Biden commute sentences of two Illinois mega who actually
▶ 1:22:41without objection
▶ 1:22:42more than $54 million by one of them that there was no restitution back on that. And let's see what else I got. Oh, Biden clemency list includes individuals who defrauded taxpayers out of hundreds of millions of dollars.
▶ 1:22:57objection. Thank you.
▶ 1:22:59Gentleman yields back. Who seeks
▶ 1:23:03I have an amendment at the
▶ 1:23:04gentle lady. The clerk will report.
▶ 1:23:08A point of order.
▶ 1:23:09Point of order reserved by the gentleman from Arizona.
▶ 1:23:15Amendment to HJ res.
▶ 1:23:17Objection. The amendment be considered as read. The gentle lady from Washington is recognized to explain her amendment.
▶ 1:23:21Thank you, Mr. Chairman. My amendment would remove the requirement of a supermajority vote to impose new taxes or raise existing taxes. And before I get to that, um I just wanted to say that a budget is about choices. And I agree that we can make different choices both about spending and about revenue. And on spending, defense spending in the budget that that is about to go through, I'm not voting for it, but the package that's about to go through is almost a trillion dollars.
▶ 1:23:51And Donald Trump's proposal for defense spending for unconstitutional wars that he alone can declare apparently without any authorization from Congress. He's now proposing a $1.5 trillion budget for 2027 for the Defense Department. Most of which, by the way, goes to a very small number of private for-profit contractors.
▶ 1:24:14That budget, according to the Committee for Responsible Budget, just released an analysis that said a $ 1.5 trillion military budget would add $5.8 trillion to the debt over a decade. So, there's lots of choices we can make on the spending side about what we do and don't spend on. And I think there might be some agreement, some bipartisan agreement about places that we could cut. But I wanted to talk about the revenue side.
▶ 1:24:41This supermajority requirement to impose new taxes or raise existing taxes was the subject of discussion in a hearing that was held by the Constitution subcommittee a few months ago. One of the witnesses described this requirement as quote a one-way ratchet. Why did they say that? because it requires a twothirds vote for Congress to raise taxes on the wealthiest Americans and corporations to make sure that they're paying their fair share.
▶ 1:25:10But it only requires a simple majority vote to cut their taxes slashspending and critical benefits for working and middle class Americans. And I would just enter into the ask unanimous consent to enter into the record another article by CNBC on October 3rd, 2025 titled the wealth of the top 1% reaches a record 52 trillion.
▶ 1:25:36That was actually from statistics from the Federal Reserve. So, not exactly the most liberal of entities, but real data that shows that the top 1% have now accumulated 52 trillion dollars of wealth. My colleagues on the other side have supported this one-way ratchet for decades. In his first term, President Trump followed Republican presidents like George W.
▶ 1:26:02Bush by passing steep tax cuts for billionaires and corporations under the 2017 tax scam. In fact, in 2023, Americans for Tax Fairness reported that the richest 748 Americans wealth topped a record high five trillion, up 77% since those tax cuts were passed. And that the debt caused by those Trump tax cuts were then used by Republicans as an excuse to cut services for the vast majority of Americans.
▶ 1:26:32Same thing happened last year in Trump's second term. Instead of letting the tax cuts expire, Republicans made many of them permanent and then added on top of that the big bad betrayal bill that gives the wealthiest Americans $5 trillion in tax giveaways. These are all numbers in the trillions. In the same breath, that bill slashed 1.1 trillion from Medicaid, food assistance, and other health programs that just help millions of families who are struggling to get by.
▶ 1:27:03So, the Republican proposal would make it nearly impossible for Congress to reverse those tax cuts for the wealthiest Americans because it requires a twothird supermajority vote to quote increase the rate of any tax. The last time that any party held a two-third supermajority in both chambers was in 1967.
▶ 1:27:23So even if Democrats regained control of the House this year, this proposal would essentially prohibit us from undoing the harms of the big bad betrayal bill and would cement those tax cuts for billionaires forever and ever. The proposal also requires the supermajority vote to quote levy a new tax and that includes a federal wealth tax.
▶ 1:27:45Now last Congress I introduced legislation with Senator Elizabeth Warren establishing a tax on the top 0.05 05% of Americans, requiring them to chip in just two cents for every dollar of wealth over $50 million. Is anyone seriously going to say that multi-millionaires can't afford to put in this comparatively small amount when the federal minimum wage of seven bucks 25 can't even buy you a decent place to live?
▶ 1:28:15This is a question of choices. And I think that my amendment removing the supermajority requirement on raising taxes to ensure that the wealthiest pay their fair share is absolutely critical to make sure we don't balance the budget on the backs of workingclass Americans. Urge my colleagues to support the amendment and I yield back.
▶ 1:28:32Gentle lady yields back. Gentleman from New Jersey recognized.
▶ 1:28:35I have um heard the same misinformation over and over again and I know we're squeezed for time so I wasn't going to talk. I can't help myself because I just cannot let it go.
▶ 1:28:45That every single time. So, let's talk about just a few things. One, uh, tax cuts for the wealthiest billionaires and millionaires. I don't know. The guy that cuts my hair is not a billionaire. The waitress or waiter when you go into the diner is not a millionaire or a billionaire. The the folks that work in the casino industries and and work on tips are not millionaires or billionaires.
▶ 1:29:09the construction workers that I know that when they work overtime working their back off and they have to decide whether it's even worse worth it because they're not with their family and now are going to get a tax break. They're not millionaires or billionaires either.
▶ 1:29:25By the way, the young family that has just a new child, a new welcomed into this world and is getting a tax cut, um the child tax credit, they're not millionaires or billionaires or guess what folks, the people that have to go out and get car loans and now for the first time in many, many years are able to write off the interest that they're paying on the car loan. They're not millionaires and billionaires. Let's stop saying this.
▶ 1:29:53I mean, I know there's a certain political wisdom that you say something over and over and over and over again, people will believe it's true. And there may be some truth to that politically, but it's disingenuous. And quite frankly, in this judiciary committee, which is a committee that should be full of good information, we just shouldn't do that. It's just not true. It's not right. It doesn't help anything. Second thing in the big beautiful bill, we try to make that out.
▶ 1:30:23And I again, I have to give it to the other side. Politics, they're good at it. People are confused. It does all these things. Let's talk about the Medicaid just issue for one minute. So, if you are disabled, you still get Medicaid the way that you always did. If you are a young family, if you've got children, you do. If you're a senior citizen, you do. Almost everybody does. But if you're single, young, healthy and you can work, yeah, you've got to work 20 hours a week.
▶ 1:30:53Guess what? Most Americans are working more than 20 hours a week. Or if you don't want to do that, you can volunteer. You can go to the Humane Society and pet dogs. Or if you don't want to do that, you can get on the computer and work increasing your education, get your GED or learn a trade or get your a college degree or whatever it is to learn to be productive.
▶ 1:31:16All of these programs are to help people that are in need or people that need a hand up, but then you want to make them part of productive society. So, let's tell the truth. And that's why I'm speaking up now because for the few folks out there and in the real world that listen to this, I don't want them to be misinformed and the other side is misinforming them. With that, Mr. Chairman, I will yield to me.
▶ 1:31:42Yes, I will yield.
▶ 1:31:43The gentleman yield. I just want to echo what the gentleman said. I think this is this is this resolution from the gentleman from Arizona is exactly on target. Letting families keep more of their money is a good thing. letting moms and dads spend their money on their kids, their their family, their goals, their dreams is a good thing. And making it tougher for government to take their money in the first place is a good thing as well. And that's why I oppose the amendment and support the gentleman's resolution. With that, I'd yield back to the gentleman from New Jersey.
▶ 1:32:08Can I have the Do you have your time, Mr. Vandrew?
▶ 1:32:12Thank you. Thank you. And I I don't want to be labor and answer everything that was said, but I would just say about this amendment, it's absurd. It's stupid. It's insane. It's silly. It's a fool's errand. That's what I would say about that. And then I'd also say this. 1% of the people in this c uh the top 1% of wealth in this country pays 37% of all the federal income federal taxes.
▶ 1:32:405 the top 5% pay 61% of all the taxes paid in this country. The top 10% pay 72% of the federal taxes paid in this country. That is the fact. You'll back Mr. Vandrew. Yield back to you.
▶ 1:33:00The gentle gentleman from New York is
▶ 1:33:04Thank you, Mr. Chairman. Mr. Chairman, uh, gentleman from New Jersey makes the point, the valid point that the people who cut his hair, the people who deliver the groceries are not millionaires and billionaires. Of course they're not. But there are millionaires and billionaires. Let me name five. Jeff Bezos, Elon Musk, Peter Theal, Mark Zuckerberg, and they're not paying their fair share of taxes. Now, yes, I don't remember the statistics that Mr. Biggs gave us.
▶ 1:33:34Uh, and I I'm sure they're correct, but they're inadequate. The fact that the top 2% pays 10% of the taxes or whatever the figure is, doesn't mean they're paying their proper share. That depends on how wealthy they are. And clearly, they're not paying their fair share. And and that's a judgment, obviously. But it's a judgment that should be subject to a majority vote.
▶ 1:33:58Why would we want to say that a Congress that decided that Elon Musk wasn't paying enough taxes can't do that without a twothirds vote? These are judgment calls. Billionaires should pay more taxes. My opinion, Mr. Vanu may disagree. I don't know. But Mr. Van's opinion and my opinion should both be subject to majority votes, not to twothirds votes.
▶ 1:34:27Why would we tell the American people that they cannot through their representatives in Congress decide that Elon Musk is not paying enough taxes? That we should run huge budget deficits rather than increase Elon Musk's taxes. I I don't know why. And that's why I support the general ladies amendment and oppose uh the underlying amendment.
▶ 1:34:47Will the gentleman yield?
▶ 1:34:48I certainly will.
▶ 1:34:48You know, the uh the gentleman from New York makes a profound point. Everybody knows the rich get richer. Everybody knows the poor get trampled. Everybody knows the role that big money plays in Washington, in Congress with uh our colleagues. But now they want to make that the law. In fact, they want to make it so lopsided that you need twothirds in order to raise taxes in a progressive direction.
▶ 1:35:14Um our colleagues uh invite us to reflect on the fact that the wealthiest people pay most of the taxes yet they also get um extraordinary benefits uh from the government and from the society. That's what taxation is all about. It's a statement that we live in a community and all of us participate in shouldering the burden.
▶ 1:35:39But there are people, the Jeffrey Epstein class, the Bezos class, the Donald Trump class, who view it all as a ripoff. Government is not an instrument for the common good. It's not an instrument of the public uh uh interest. Government's an instrument for private self-enrichment for the guy who gets in and his wife and his family and their corporations and their friends. So, I'm happy to yield, but I just want to say this, that may be your public philosophy, but I'm sorry, it's not my time.
▶ 1:36:08I'll I'll get back to Natler so he can get it to you. But I will say this. We're going to have a referendum on this. Your public philosophy that government is an instrument for private self-enrichment for the guy who gets in and his family and they're making billions of dollars, literally billions of dollars in his first year in office or our vision of government, which is it's got to be an instrument for the common good of everybody. I yield back
▶ 1:36:31Mr. Nadler. Would you yield?
▶ 1:36:33I will yield to the gentleman.
▶ 1:36:34Thank you. Um, I just wanted to say that we can have a discussion about how much is actually going to working people versus the millionaires and billionaires. I'll tell you under the big bad betrayal bill, the average family earning less than 50,000 will get about a buck a day in tax cuts, which is completely overturned by how much more they have to pay for health care because Medicaid was slashed, the tax credits were taken away, all the other ways in which their costs increased.
▶ 1:37:03Meanwhile, the average tax filer earning a million dollar or more a year would receive about $90,000 in tax breaks. So, I think if you're going to give crumbs to working people and tell them to be grateful for it, I think a lot of people are not going to want to do that. That's why that bill was so unpopular. But on top of that, we're saying don't have a different threshold for looking at spending versus revenue.
▶ 1:37:29Why cement in a twothirds threshold for anything that involves tax breaks for the wealthiest and making the wealthiest pay their fair share. But then you're fine with just cutting spending for health care or energy assistance or housing or anything else. That doesn't make sense.
▶ 1:37:47So my amendment says let's at least make the thresholds the same because what you did in this current form of the bill is you said you need a supermajority to raise taxes on billionaires who have already got uh 5 sorry no that's the wrong one already got $52 trillion of wealth so why are you protecting them that's the question I have for you why not actually champion workingamilies time the gentle has yield back
▶ 1:38:16the gentleman yields back. Uh, so does the gentle lady and the gentleman, do they support making it tougher to raise taxes on the barber that cuts Mr. Van's hair? Because that was his point.
▶ 1:38:27Well, is that a do you want me to respond to that?
▶ 1:38:31Look, if you want to have a real discussion about how to cut taxes for working people and make sure that they can afford the expenses they they have currently, we should do that.
▶ 1:38:40Yes or no? The simple answer. You support making it more difficult to raise taxes on workingclass families, on small business owners. That was Mr. Vander's point. That's the point of the bill. Making it more difficult to raise the taxes on uh small business owners and families.
▶ 1:38:55Mr. Chairman, do you know that the recent New York Times Sienna poll says that 60% of Americans today cannot afford education. That 55% can't afford raising taxes on those those families.
▶ 1:39:10I don't. Yes. I I I make it harder to raise taxes on
▶ 1:39:13I believe that we actually have to support the fundamental expenses that Americans need to absorb around housing around healthare.
▶ 1:39:23We got to go vote, but I will yield any time that I have to the gentleman uh from New Jersey on this.
▶ 1:39:28I thank the chairman. You know, over and over again, we've seen this. I'm a high tax state, New Jersey. I see it everywhere. Um there's this discussion of progressive tax that the rich should pay their fair share. I agree. But you know who gets hit every time and go out into the street and talk to them? The middle class. We talk so much here and we should. It's good about the poor and about the very wealthy. The very poor and the very wealthy.
▶ 1:39:54The people that make everything happen in this country to a great degree who work the people that build your buildings, build your cars, fix your roads. I I can go through the list. They're middle class hardworking people. And if you told them, well, with these progressive taxes, we only increase the taxes on the wealthy. Uh, we don't want to hurt the middle class, they're not going to buy it because the middle class gets hit every single time, whether they're middle, upper middle, or lower middle.
▶ 1:40:22The workingclass people, and I've said this before, and I'm going to be outspoken about, the people at the very bottom are kind of getting helped. Maybe you have some points about the people at the very top, but the people in the middle, our working people who make this country go are getting screwed every time. With that, I yield back to the
▶ 1:40:40Gentleman yields back. The committee will stand in recess. Um, we may wait until the second vote series. We'll just My my gut tells me that's probably what we're going to do because there's a short time period between each vote series. Uh, with that, we stand in
▶ 4:43:26Committee will come to order. Uh the question before the committee is the amendment offered by the gentle lady from Florida. excuse me.
▶ 4:43:36Wrong coast. Wrong coast. Yeah. the um
▶ 4:43:39the uh the question is on the amendment, right? All those in favor say I.
▶ 4:43:51Those opposed? No. No. In the opinion, the chair, the nos have it and the amendment is not agreed to. Roll call. This the best way to get people here is to call the roll. Um the the clerk will call the role.
▶ 4:44:03Mr. Jordan,
▶ 4:44:05Mr. Jordan votes no. Mr. Isa Mr. Biggs Mr. Biggs votes no Mr. Mr. Tiffany Mr. Massie Mr. Roy Mr. Fitzgerald Mr. Klein Mr. Klein that's note Mr. Gooden Mr. Vandrew Mr. Nells Mr. Moore Mr. Mr.
▶ 4:44:32Kylie, Miss Hagaman, Miss Lee, Mr. Hunt, Mr. Fry, Mr. Growthman.
▶ 4:44:44Mr. Growthman votes no. Mr. Knot, Mr. Mr. Ander, Mr. Schmidt, Mr. Gill, Mr. Bumgardner, Mr. Rascin,
▶ 4:45:00Mr. Raskin votes I. Mr. Nodler, Miss Lofkrren, Mr. Cohen, Mr. Johnson, Mr. Swallwell, Mr. Lou, Miss Jipal, Miss Gipol votes I, Mr. Korea, Miss Scanlin,
▶ 4:45:21Miss Ganlin votes I, Mr. Negus, Miss Mcbath, Miss Ross,
▶ 4:45:27Miss Ross votes I, Miss Ballot. Miss Balot votes I. Mr. Garcia Miss Camager Dove. Miss Camager Dove votes I. Mr. Mosquitz. Mr. Goldman. Miss
▶ 4:45:44Mr. Fry, you're not recorded. Mr. Fry votes no.
▶ 4:46:14Gentleman from New York.
▶ 4:46:18Mr. Ner votes I.
▶ 4:46:25Miss Crockett, you're not recorded. Miss Crockett votes. Yes.
▶ 4:47:04Gentle lady from Florida.
▶ 4:47:07Miss Lee.
▶ 4:47:09Miss Lee votes no.
▶ 4:47:10Gentleman from Missouri.
▶ 4:47:12Mr. Ander votes no.
▶ 4:47:14Gentleman from Texas.
▶ 4:47:16Mr. Gooden votes no.
▶ 4:47:19Mr. Mcccleintoch votes no.
▶ 4:47:40Can you if you're going to be here, Andy, for this? I just
▶ 4:47:44I'm allowed to change out.
▶ 4:47:47Uh I'm going to go
▶ 4:48:10Clerk will report.
▶ 4:48:12Mr. Chairman, there are eight eyes and nine nos.
▶ 4:48:15The amendment fails.
▶ 4:48:18Who seeks recognition?
▶ 4:48:20Gentle lady from Pennsylvania.
▶ 4:48:22Um, Mr. Chair, I have two amendments at the desk.
▶ 4:48:26This do one at a time.
▶ 4:48:28I was going to request unanimous consent to offer them on block Clerk will report read. Excuse me. Read. Gentle lady reserves a point of order.
▶ 4:48:59Thank you. clerk
▶ 4:49:29will read the amendment.
▶ 4:49:31Amendment to HJ res 139. Without objection. Without objection, the minutes are considered as read.
▶ 4:49:39Gentle lady's recognized.
▶ 4:49:41Thank you, Mr. Chair.
▶ 4:49:43For decades, Republican presidents and members of Congress have talked a big game about fiscal responsibility, all while enacting policies that have exploded the federal deficit and the national debt. If Republicans wanted a balanced budget, they'd balance the budget. No constitutional amendment needed. But Republicans have only paid lip service to that goal.
▶ 4:50:08Instead, we have a legacy of 50 years of DC Republicans doubling down on the debunked, failed orthodoxy of trickle down economics, a legacy of handing out huge tax breaks to the ultra wealthy to help corporations and billionaires avoid paying their fair share at the expense of hardworking Americans, eroding the government's tax base while gutting funding for health care and food
▶ 4:50:38and exacerbating the greatest income equality since the guilded age and the era of robber barons. Instead of working to build a prosperous economy where everyone can get ahead, Republicans are now using a deficit problem that they helped to create to revive an idea to amend the Constitution that would force Congress to balance the budget on the backs of working and middle class families.
▶ 4:51:06Their balanced budget amendment would force cuts to Social Security and Medicare, programs that are the foundation of our government's promise to help folks with disabilities and seniors age with dignity. This amendment would essentially make it unconstitutional for Social Security and Medicare to draw down their reserves.
▶ 4:51:28The decisions that we make about taxes, spending, and budgets are or should be decisions about values, who we're fighting for, what kind of a country we are or want to be, and the future we're trying to create for our children. But this balanced budget constitutional amendment betrays the values Americans have long stood for.
▶ 4:51:47So, my amendments would exempt the Social Security and Medicare trust funds from the calculation of total expenditures and receipts, ensuring that this misguided proposal won't prevent people from receiving their hard-earned benefits. I hope my colleagues support my amendment and agree that our government should serve all Americans and not just the wealthy and well-connected at the expense of everyone else. I yield back.
▶ 4:52:13Gentle lady yields. Who else seeks Gentle uh gentleman from Wisconsin, Mr. Growthman is recognized.
▶ 4:52:23Yeah, you guys always say something wrong, so I'll give you a tutorial for just a second. The Republicans do not believe in trickle down economics. We believe in the LER curve. And it should be obvious that if you decrease the tax rate from whatever 30% to 25% or 60% to 40% that it affects decisions of people as to how hard they're going to work or how many capital gains they're going to declare.
▶ 4:52:54Um and as you lower the rate, people therefore report more income. So it is the ler curve that the Republicans follow and that is why we believe if you lower the marginal rate you get more income. Thank you. Will the gentleman yield?
▶ 4:53:17He yields to you, Mr. Korea.
▶ 4:53:19Thank you my colleague uh from Wisconsin. I I think you're right. It's a laugher curve, but I don't think u the laugher curve has ever resulted in reductions in expenditures and reductions in deficit. On the contrary, it's actually exploded our national
▶ 4:53:39You yield back to Mr. Growthman. Mr. Growthman, time is yours.
▶ 4:53:43Sure. Well, it's just obvious regardless of your income level that if the government taxes you at 60%, you're going to work less hard or you're going to play with the taxable income in a way you wouldn't if the government taxed you at 20%. Right now, it's more obvious when you have a percentage that's much higher. I think it was John Kennedy who cut the marginal rate from 90% to 70%.
▶ 4:54:11Why would you declare any income if you're taxed at 90%. But it's true of any percent. The same thing, by the way, is true of welfare payments, right? If you take away people's welfare payments, if they work harder, they don't work as hard. So, it's just the effect you're always going to have when you then the government takes more money. more income you declare.
▶ 4:54:36You can say it's not enough to make up for the the loss in revenue, but you can't say it's non-existent. It's just obvious. Thank you very much.
▶ 4:54:46Gentleman from Wisconsin yields. Who else seeks recognition?
▶ 4:54:50Gentleman from New York, Mr. Nadler.
▶ 4:54:51Move to strike the last word.
▶ 4:54:53Gentleman's recognized.
▶ 4:54:54Thank you, Mr. Speaker. I'm sorry, Mr. Chairman. Um, I always refer to the laughter curve as the laughter curve because it has been proven wrong for the last 60 years, 70 years. It is not obvious that you're going to work harder uh if you have a lower tax rate.
▶ 4:55:14Um, the gentleman just said that um we uh that uh under Kennedy the tax rate was reduced from I think he said from 90 to 70%. I don't recall an economic catastrophe during the Eisenhower administration because of the 90% tax rate. Um, people do not work harder because of having nothing to do with their tax rate.
▶ 4:55:38Um, I don't think anybody in this room would work harder or less hard at the uh at the job uh depending on the tax rate. For that we haven't gotten raises in years. So our uh pay in terms of inflation has gone down. Does that mean that the people in this room don't work at hard at their jobs?
▶ 4:56:01Um so lapper curve is is nonsense has been proven to be nonsense for decades and uh I support uh wholeheartedly the uh amendment offered by the gentle lady. I yield back.
▶ 4:56:16Oh, gentleman yields back.
▶ 4:56:18I'm sorry. I yield to the gentle. Gentleman yields to the lady from Pennsylvania, Miss Scandan.
▶ 4:56:22Thank you. Um, you know, I I understand the LER curve. It suggests lower tax rates can increase government revenue. It's criticized for lacking any empirical un uh evidence. It oversimplifies behavior and it certainly promotes inequality, which was one of the major issues we're trying to address address.
▶ 4:56:43In practice, it's been shown over and over again that tax cuts often fail to generate enough growth to pay for themselves, leading to higher deficits and reduce public services. Again, what we're trying to address here. Um, so I guess I would just also add in there, you know, I think our colleague from Wisconsin said, you know, it it obvious that this happens this way. said, "Introduce an article." All right.
▶ 4:57:09Seek unanimous consent to um introduce an article from the Kato Institute, resist the allure of laugher curve logic from November of 2023.
▶ 4:57:20Without objection.
▶ 4:57:20Without objection.
▶ 4:57:21Okay. Thank you. And I would to Mr.
▶ 4:57:25I'd ask the gentle lady, is it not true that the Kato Institute is a very conservative institution?
▶ 4:57:31It is. and they and they uh put out this article about how ridiculous the laughter curve is.
▶ 4:57:39They certainly offer a an empirically based critique.
▶ 4:57:44Uh I yield back.
▶ 4:57:46Thank you.
▶ 4:57:46Gentleman from New York yields back. Who else seeks recognition? Seeing none, the question is before us is the adoption of the amendments offered by Miss Scanlin. All in favor say I.
▶ 4:58:00Oppose. No. I appears that the nos have it
▶ 4:58:06that a roll call vote has been requested. Clerk will call the role.
▶ 4:58:11Mr. Jordan, Mr. Isa, Mr. Biggs, Mr. Biggs votes no. Mr. McClento, Mr. Tiffany, Mr. Massie, Mr. Roy, Mr. Fitzgerald,
▶ 4:58:27Mr. Fitzgerald votes no. Mr. Klein,
▶ 4:58:30yes. Mr. Gooden. Mr. Gooden votes no. Mr. Vandrew, Mr. Nells, Mr. Moore, Mr. Kylie, Mr. Kylie votes no. Miss Miss Lee,
▶ 4:58:47Miss Lee votes no. Mr. Hunt, Mr. Fry,
▶ 4:58:51Mr. Fry votes no. Mr. Growthman, Mr. Knot, Mr. Harris, Mr. Mr. Harris votes no. Mr. Ander Mr. Ander votes no. Mr. Schmidt Mr. Gil Mr. Bombgardner Mr. Raskin Mr. Raskin votes I. Mr. Nadler.
▶ 4:59:16Mr. Nadler votes I. Miss Laughrim. Mr. Cohen. Mr. Johnson. Mr. Swallow. Mr. Lou. Miss Jipal. Uh I miss Jipal votes I Mr. Korea
▶ 4:59:32Mr. Ka votes I Miss Scandlin
▶ 4:59:35Miss Scanland votes I Mr. Negus
▶ 4:59:38Miss Mcbath Miss Ross
▶ 4:59:41Miss Ross votes I Miss Balot Miss Balot votes I Mr. Garcia Miss Camager Dove
▶ 4:59:48Miss Cam Loger Dove votes I Mr. Mosquitz Mr. Goldman Crockett Miss Crockett votes I
▶ 4:59:58Mr. Mr. Mcccleintoch votes no.
▶ 5:00:01Mr. Vandrew, you're not recorded.
▶ 5:00:03Mr. Vandrew votes no. Mr. Jordan,
▶ 5:00:06Mr. Jordan votes no.
▶ 5:00:11Mr. Isa, you're not recorded.
▶ 5:00:13Mr. Isa votes no.
▶ 5:00:15Mr. Not, you are not recorded.
▶ 5:00:17Mr. Not votes no. Clerk will record.
▶ 5:00:35Mr. Chairman, there are nine eyes and 13
▶ 5:00:38The amendment fails. Who else seeks
▶ 5:00:44Gentle lady from California.
▶ 5:00:46Thank you, Mr. Chair. I have an amendment at the desk.
▶ 5:00:49Clerk will uh read the amendment. gentleman reserves a point of order.
▶ 5:00:59Amendment to HJ res 13.
▶ 5:01:01Without objection, the amendment will be deemed as read. Uh the gentle lady is recognized to explain the amendment.
▶ 5:01:08Thank you, Mr. Chair. This amendment simply reaffirms a basic constitutional principle that the president cannot claim that an extrajudicial killing or an overseas military campaign amounts to a declaration of war without explicit authorization from Congress.
▶ 5:01:29That clarity is essential because while Republicans and President Trump have prioritized cutting Medicaid, Medicare, healthc care tax credits, and even public media, they are perfectly comfortable wasting billions of taxpayer dollars on reckless unilateral foreign actions.
▶ 5:01:49And my question is, are your taxpayers getting their money's worth from all of these unilateral foreign actions that are costing us? We have seen this pattern repeatedly. The administration has invaded and taken over Venezuela, floated spending up to $6 billion dollar to effectively buy Greenland, threatened unilateral military action in Mexico, and threatened to topple governments in Colombia and Cuba.
▶ 5:02:19And none of this comes with serious, some would even say any, congressional debate, clear authorization, or honest accounting of the cost of these unauthorized military interventions to taxpayers. Once again, I have to ask, are your taxpayers getting their money's worth from all of these unilateral actions that are costing them?
▶ 5:02:45None of this comes with serious, dare I say any, congressional debate, clear authorization, or honest accounting of the cost to taxpayers. And if this majority truly wants to talk about balancing the budget, a good place to start is reigning in the president's unchecked military ambitions and fiscally absurd foreign policy fantasies.
▶ 5:03:12We went from declarations of being a president of peace to a butcher butchering up our constitution and our economy. Someone hungry for riches, hungry for your power as a congressperson, your power of the purse, your power of oversight, and your power to authorize war.
▶ 5:03:33Those actions should be subject to the same scrutiny and limits that Republicans are eager to impose on programs that keep Americans healthy and alive. You know, it's you don't seem to want this is how grotesque it's gotten. You don't want to have a five-year-old child have access to SNAP benefits.
▶ 5:03:58And when we're fighting for that, then there becomes some debate about like requiring five-year-olds debating if they should have work requirements to have a part-time job for getting a benefit to have fresh food. But no one says a hoot about what is going on in Venezuela, how much it is costing, how come none of that has received any congressional oversight or even authority. So this amendment draws a clear line.
▶ 5:04:27Congress decides when we go to war and taxpayers should not be forced to bankroll executive overreach while their health care is on the chopping block. And with that I yield
▶ 5:04:40Gentle lady yields back. Does the
▶ 5:04:42committee committee will suspend for a
▶ 5:04:47Well, Mr. Chair, I forgot to add. I would approve anyone support the bill.
▶ 5:04:51We're in suspension just a sec. Then I'll get back to you after we come back.
▶ 5:06:42How many Democrats crossed? 21 Dem Republicans
▶ 5:07:50Becca. Yeah. I I don't know what you're consuming, but I want a pound of it.
▶ 5:07:55Can you pass it on?
▶ 5:07:56Yeah. Pass it on, will you?
▶ 5:08:03That's the LA effect. your mic
▶ 5:11:45Uh chair is prepar uh prepared to rule. Does the gentleman excuse me? We're we're we're back in. Mr. Vandrew, do you insist upon your point of order?
▶ 5:11:57I do, Mr. Chairman.
▶ 5:11:59The gentleman is recognized. The gentleoman's amendment would introduce material beyond the scope and purpose of the bill before us and therefore violates House Rule 16 clause 7. I yield
▶ 5:12:13Sponsor of the amendment wish to be heard on the point of order.
▶ 5:12:16Yes, sir, Mr. Chair.
▶ 5:12:17You are you are recognized.
▶ 5:12:18Thank you. The fact that it took y'all so long to come up with that means that there is some legitimacy to this amendment. And I'm just reiterating and clarifying that in fact No entity other than Congress has the authority to um authorize expenditures. It's Congress that has the power of the purse just like it is Congress that has the power to declare war.
▶ 5:12:47So I'm just clarifying that. I'm reaffirming it. I'm restating it. It really shouldn't be a thing because you look it up in the Constitution. So I'm objecting. I'm
▶ 5:12:57Will the gentle lady yield? Yes, I
▶ 5:13:00I like your argument very much and it seems to me that the way I'm thinking about this is in two parts. One is since this is a constitutional amendment, almost anything would be relevant because we're writing a constitutional
▶ 5:13:12from a tabular raza. But in any event, the general lady's language is very specifically related to the particular point of uh a declaration of war. And as there was colloqui before I think bipartisan colloqui about the meaning of this it helps to sharpen the point about when uh this constitutional language is actually effective. So I I think it's a strong amendment.
▶ 5:13:38I I don't know about the metaphysics of declaring something not related to a constitutional amendment when it's up to us to write the constitutional amendment. But in any case this seems very closely tethered to what's already in there. King aka constitutional scholar. Thank you for clarifying that for all of us here today.
▶ 5:14:02Gentle lady, you still control the the
▶ 5:14:05I have so many things in my head that I want to say, but I'm going to regulate all of them and just
▶ 5:14:10Will you yield one more second?
▶ 5:14:11I object. Yes, I will. Well, just, you know, just to further my first point, which I agree is a little bit philosophical, but if you look at the 14th amendment, for example, there's so many different parts to the 14th amendment. Uh, it goes on for a couple of different pages. That's a constitutional amendment, and it's helping to build the constitutional infrastructure.
▶ 5:14:31But again, this doesn't roam remotely so far as, for example, punishing states by reducing their congressional representation if they disenfranchise part of the population. This is goes right to the point of a declaration of war.
▶ 5:14:46Thank you so much for saying that. I mean, I I don't think I'm suggesting anything novel, right? I'm just sort of reaffirming a principle of Congress and of the Constitution that we have the authority to declare war. I would think that everyone would want to be on record uh especially for their constituents as saying I was voted to represent my constituents here which and which means the power to declare war, the power of the purse, the power for oversight and I take those jobs, roles, responsibilities
▶ 5:15:16seriously and I will if need be periodically affirm those to my constituents and that's all this amendment is actually name.
▶ 5:15:28I yield back.
▶ 5:15:29Gentle lady yields back. I am prepared to rule.
▶ 5:15:38Hasn't ruled yet.
▶ 5:15:39Yeah, I haven't ruled yet, but I am prepared to rule. Pursuant to House Rule 16, clause 7, the gentle lady's amendment does not satisfy the subject matter and fundamental purpose test. Therefore, is not gerine, is out of order. Who seeks recognition?
▶ 5:15:56The the ruling of the chair.
▶ 5:15:58Can I move to table?
▶ 5:16:00The motion to table has been made.
▶ 5:16:03The question is on the motion to table.
▶ 5:16:05All in favor say I.
▶ 5:16:07Opposed? No.
▶ 5:16:09Eyes appear to have it do have it. So
▶ 5:16:15The roll call vote has been requested.
▶ 5:16:17The clerk will call the role.
▶ 5:16:19Mr. Jordan. Mr. Isa.
▶ 5:16:24Mr. Isa votes yes. Mr. Biggs
▶ 5:16:26Mr. Biggs votes I. Mr. Mcccleintoch.
▶ 5:16:29Mr. Mcccleintoch votes I. Mr. Tiffany.
▶ 5:16:32Mr. Massie. Mr. Roy. Mr. Fitzgerald.
▶ 5:16:38Mr. Fitzgerald votes I. Mr. Klein.
▶ 5:16:40Mr. Klein votes I. Mr. Gooden. Mr. Gooden votes I. Mr. Vandrew.
▶ 5:16:45Mr. Vandrew votes yes. Mr. Nells. Mr. Moore. Mr. Kylie. Miss Hagamman, Miss Lee, Miss Lee votes I. Mr. Hunt, Mr. Fry, Mr. Fry votes I. Mr. Growthman, Mr. Growthman votes I. Mr. Knot, Mr. Harris, Mr. Harris votes I. Mr. Herder, hi. Mr. Herder votes I. Mr. Mr. Gil, Mr. Bombgardner.
▶ 5:17:16Mr. Raskin,
▶ 5:17:17Mr. Raskin votes no. Mr. Nadler,
▶ 5:17:20Mr. Nadler votes no. Miss Laughrim, Mr. Cohen, Mr. Johnson, Mr. Swallwell, Mr. Lou, Miss Jipal, Missipal votes no. Mr. Korea, Mr. Ka votes no. Miss Scandlin, Miss Galan votes no. Mr. Nagus, Miss McBath, Miss Ross, Miss Ballot, Miss Ballet votes no. Mr.
▶ 5:17:48Garcia, Miss Cam Loger Dove, Miss Camlager Dove votes no. Mr. Moscowitz, Mr. Goldman, Miss Crockett, Miss Crockett votes no. Mr. Jordan
▶ 5:18:02Mr. Jordan votes yes. Miss Hagamman
▶ 5:18:04Miss Haggman votes yes.
▶ 5:18:08Miss Ross.
▶ 5:18:09Miss Ross votes no.
▶ 5:18:10Miss Ross votes no. clerk will report. Oh, Mr. Growthman.
▶ 5:18:37Mr. Chairman, there are 14 eyes and nine
▶ 5:18:40The uh uh ruling of the of the chair is Good enough.
▶ 5:18:48Who else seeks recognition?
▶ 5:18:52Gentleman from Wisconsin, Mr. Growthman. Yeah, I'd like to submit for the record a report from the budget committee entitled Democrats narrative falls flat in face of facts tax cut and jobs act yields historic government receipts without objection. Thank you.
▶ 5:19:08Who else seeks recognition? Question before you. Oh, the question is on favorably reporting the joint resolution. All those in favor say I.
▶ 5:19:18I oppose. No. Eyes have it. Joint resolution is ordered to be reported favorably to the House.
▶ 5:19:24Can we Yes.
▶ 5:19:25Can we have a recorded vote on this? Recorded vote has been requested. Clerk will call the role.
▶ 5:19:30Mr. Jordan,
▶ 5:19:32Mr. Isa,
▶ 5:19:35Mr. Biggs,
▶ 5:19:36Mr. BGs votes I. Mr. Mcccleintoch.
▶ 5:19:38Mr. Mcccleintoch votes I. Mr. Tiffany.
▶ 5:19:42Mr. Massie.
▶ 5:19:44Mr. Roy.
▶ 5:19:46Mr. Roy votes I. Mr. Fitzgerald.
▶ 5:19:48Mr. Fitzgerald votes I. Mr. Klein.
▶ 5:19:50Hi. Mr. Klein votes I. Mr. Gooden. Mr. Gooden votes I. Mr. Vandrew.
▶ 5:19:57Mr. Vandrew votes yes. Mr. Nells. Mr. Moore. Mr. Kylie.
▶ 5:20:05Miss Haggamman.
▶ 5:20:06Miss Hagamman votes I. Miss Lee.
▶ 5:20:09Miss Lee votes I. Mr. Hunt.
▶ 5:20:11Mr. Fry.
▶ 5:20:13Mr. Fry votes I. Mr. Growthman.
▶ 5:20:16Mr. Growthman votes I. Mr. Knot. Mr.
▶ 5:20:20Mr. Mr. Harris votes I. Mr. Hder.
▶ 5:20:22Mr. Herder votes I. Mr. Schmidt.
▶ 5:20:25Mr. Schmidt votes I. Mr. Gill. Mr. Mr. Raskin.
▶ 5:20:32Mr. Raskin votes no. Mr. Nadler.
▶ 5:20:34Mr. Nadler votes no. Miss Lofrren Mr. Cohen.
▶ 5:20:40Mr. Cohen votes no. Mr. Johnson. Mr. Swallow. Mr. Lou. Miss Jipal. M. Jipal. votes no. Mr.
▶ 5:20:52Mr. Ka votes no. Miss Scanland.
▶ 5:20:54Miss Scanland votes no. Mr. Negus. Miss
▶ 5:20:59Miss Ross.
▶ 5:21:00Miss Ross votes no. Miss Ballot. Miss Balent votes no. Mr. Garcia. Miss Camlagerdove.
▶ 5:21:08Miss Camagerdove votes no. Mr. Mosquitz. Mr. Goldman. Miss. Crockett.
▶ 5:21:16Miss Crockett votes no. Mr. Jordan.
▶ 5:21:18Mr. Jordan votes yes clerical report.
▶ 5:21:32Hold on. Hold. Excuse me. One second.
▶ 5:21:37How does the gentleman from California, Mr. Iso vote?
▶ 5:21:44Mr. Isa votes yes. Cler will report.
▶ 5:21:51Mr. Chairman, there are 16 eyes and 10
▶ 5:21:54The eyes have it and the joint resolution is ordered to be reported favorably to the House. Members will have two days to submit views. Without objection, staff is authorized to make technical and conforming changes. There we go. Pursuant to notice, I call up HR 1028, the Protection of Women in Olympic and Amateur Sports Act for purposes of markup and move that the committee report is favorably and move the committee report it favorably to the House. The clerk will report the bill.
▶ 5:22:25Without objection, the bill be considered as read and open for amendment at any point. Chair now recognizes the gentle lady from Wyoming, Miss Hegman, for an opening statement.
▶ 5:22:33Thank you, Mr. Chair. Uh the bill we are here to discuss today is HR1028, the protection of women in Olympic and amateur sports acts. The purpose of this legislation is simple. It modifies eligibility requirements for amateur sports governing organizations. Specifically, this bill adds clear definitions of men and women in the Ted Stevens Olympic and Amateur Sports Act.
▶ 5:22:57It further states that biological men cannot participate in competitions designated for women and girls. Ensuring equal rights for women has been a long and hard-fought battle. Today, two historic cases are before the Supreme Court regarding keeping men out of women's sports. As the United States prepares to host the Summer Olympics in 2028, it is important to ensure that female athletes are properly protected from male athletes masquerading as women.
▶ 5:23:27Thankfully, President Trump made protecting women's rights a day one priority. On February 5th, 2025, President Trump signed an executive order titled Keeping Men Out of Women's Sports. This exe executive order prohibits males from competing on women's and girls sports teams.
▶ 5:23:45The order was met with swift support from both the National Collegi Collegiic Athletic Association or the NCAA and the US Olympic and Parolympic Committee or USOPC immediately and and they they both immediately updated its policy to limit women's sports teams to athletes who are female. I applaud President Trump for these efforts.
▶ 5:24:08Throughout the Biden administration, we witnessed absolutely egregious examples of men increasingly intr intruding into protected spaces for women. Look no further than the tragic story of Payton McNab. In 2022, Payton, now an independent women's voice ambassador, was a volleyball player competing at her high school in North Carolina. A man playing on the opposite girls team spiked the ball into her head.
▶ 5:24:34And I would urge all of my colleagues on the other side of the aisle to watch the video to see what they are advocating for when they fight us against keeping men out of women's sports. Payton was knocked unconscious and is still dealing with long- lasting injuries from this incident, including impaired vision and partial paralysis on her right side. To those who deny the existence of this issue, it is very real. The left will stop at nothing until women and girls sports are erased and eradicated.
▶ 5:25:03Let me be clear. The time is now. Congress must act to protect these rights and opportunities that women have fought for for so long. Let's take this common sense approach to protect women and girls. Thank you for this opportunity and I yield back.
▶ 5:25:19Gentle lady yields back. The chair now recognizes the ranking member, Mr. Raskin, for an opening statement.
▶ 5:25:23Mr. Chairman, thank you very much. Uh, as everybody knows, authoritarianism vilifies and scapegoats minorities. This distracts the majority from the fact that the people in charge of the state aren't doing anything for the majority either. So, we're here today to debate another bill targeting MAGA's favorite scapegoat, the tiny group of Americans in the transgender community.
▶ 5:25:47The bill before us this time, the so-called protection of women in Olympic and amateur sports act purports to protect women and girls by conditioning the certification of an amateur sports organization by the US Olympic and Parolympic Committee or USOPC as a national governing body for a given sport on such organization's agreement to prohibit transgender women and girls from participating in an amateur athletic competition.
▶ 5:26:11Notably, the bill does not prohibit transgender male athletes from competing on sports teams or in competitions designated for men or boys. President Trump has put a target on the backs of the transgender community ever since he came back into office.
▶ 5:26:26One of the first executive orders he issued declared that the government would only recognize two sexes, male and female, which of course doesn't seem like a very devastating reputation of transgender people who may agree that these are the categories even if they have been mclassified between them. Uh two weeks after that, Trump issued another executive order to prevent transgender women and girls from participating in women's sports at every level of competition.
▶ 5:26:55uh contradicting the Biden policy which was to leave the decision to particular levels of scholastic supports in particular institutions. This legislation today is a solution in search of a problem. Its supporters have failed to point to any evidence that transgender women as a group consistently outperform cisgender women in women's sporting events.
▶ 5:27:16In fact, a 2024 study concluded that transgender women athletes actually have several physical disadvantages when competing with cisgender women. The International Olympic Committee has also permitted transgender athletes to compete since 2003. That's 23 years ago, but the US has only sent one transgender woman to compete. This bill is obviously dangerous, and deliberately cruel.
▶ 5:27:44What it will do is harm all women and girls in a number of different ways, including by subjecting them to unfair scrutiny over what their real gender might be. This is not a hypothetical concern. There are lots of examples of people accusing cisgender girls and women of being transgender and then arguing that they should be forced to prove their gender in order to compete in a sport.
▶ 5:28:07In 2024, a Utah State school board member falsely suggested in a Facebook post that a girl playing on the high school basketball team was transgender. The girl immediately became the target of threats, harassment. The school board member later tried to defend herself by saying that the girl had a larger physical build, which was what made her speculate falsely about the girl's gender identity.
▶ 5:28:32I hope everyone can still summon up some sense of shock that adults are publicly speculating about the gender identity of children. Why? Well, in this case, because a girl's body did not fit this adult's stereotype conception of what a teenage girl is supposed to look like. This bill could be even more dangerous than that, though.
▶ 5:28:53If women and girls have to prove their gender in order to compete in a sport, which would be the new law, we are inviting sports officials to become essentially gender detectives and gender judges, thus potentially subjecting girls to invasive and completely unnecessary exams simply in order to be able to exercise their right to participate in sports. That in turn heightens the risks of making athletes more vulnerable to sexual predators.
▶ 5:29:22I'm sure the Larry Nassers and Richard Strausses of the world would welcome a bill like HR1028 because they would seemingly be given another excuse to sexually abuse athletes under the guise of enforcing the new mega gender ideology and confirming the person's federally government approved assigned gender. The type of categorical ban that HR1028 mandates wouldn't just affect elite Olympic athletes.
▶ 5:29:49The bill imposes a blanket ban on amateur competition and many of those amateur athletes who participate in an organized sport are young people. Take USA swimming. In 2024, the average age of their members was 12 and a half years old. Given that more than half of all states have already banned trans women and girls from scholastic sports.
▶ 5:30:09This bill would deny trans youth the last avenue to athletic participation still available to them uh still available to them along with the social and academic and health benefits that organized sports provide young people. Furthermore, national governing bodies which are certified by the US OPC to govern and manage all aspects of individual sport are much better suited to determining who should be eligible to compete.
▶ 5:30:35These bodies are also best positioned to determine the right balance between inclusion and safety based on the dynamics of their different sports. For example, the qualifications, skills, and risks involved in a sport like rugby, which allows transgender men to compete without restriction in the male category, but requires transgender women to have certain testosterone levels in order to compete, are obviously much different than the qualification, skills, and risks involved in table tennis, pingpong, which has no documented
▶ 5:31:05policy on the participation of transgender athletes. And yet this bill pro uh would override all of the policies adopted at the Scholastic and team level currently determined by national governing bodies sport by Stewart and replace them with a federally imposed nationwide ban that may appeal and pander to a certain narrow political base but has no basis in fact performance outcomes or
▶ 5:31:36basic human decency and regard for the health of young people. Finally, in addition to being dangerous and unnecessary, the bill does nothing to address the actual problems facing women and girls in amateur sports. According to a report by the Women's Sports Foundation, the real barriers that women and girls continue to face in amateur sports include lack of financial resources, continuing bias against girls participation, a posity of female leaders and other role models, a relative lack of media coverage, devoted women's sports,
▶ 5:32:06and continuing workplace sex discrimination, and gender-based pay inequality for female coaches. In a letter opposing a bill last Congress that was substantively identical to HR1028, the Women's Sports Foundation and the National Women's Law Center, among others, wrote, quote, "This legislation does not provide any assistance with issues that all girls and women in sports face and instead invites dangerous stereotypes and sex discrimination based on misinformation. It should not become law.
▶ 5:32:35If my colleagues genuinely wanted to strengthen women and girls participation in sports, we would take steps to address the real barriers to opportunity. Instead of coming in like King Kong and crushing decisions at the right level, instead of making headway on true equity in sports, we're debating yet another unnecessary, cynical uh and bias-filled political stunt. I urge my colleagues to oppose this paternalistic one-sizefits-all bill and I yield back.
▶ 5:33:05Gentleman yields back without objection. All other opening statements will be included in the record. Chair now recognizes the gentle lady from Wyoming to offer an amendment in the nature of a
▶ 5:33:14Thank you. Um Mr. Chairman, I have an amendment at the desk.
▶ 5:33:17Clerk will report the amendment.
▶ 5:33:19Amendment in the nature of a substitute to HR102. Without objection, the amendment in the nature of a substitute be considered as read and shall be considered base text for the purposes of amendment. The chair now recognizes the gentle lady from Wyoming to explain the
▶ 5:33:32Thank you, Mr. Chairman. This amendment simply makes a small change to the short title, but it does nothing to alter the substance of the bill. With that, I yield back.
▶ 5:33:40Gentle lady yields back. Is there any discussion on the amendment in the nature of a substitute?
▶ 5:33:47Second amendment.
▶ 5:33:49Lady from a gentle lady from Washington is recognized. Mr. Chairman, I have an amendment at the desk.
▶ 5:33:53Clerk will report the amendment.
▶ 5:34:01Mr. Vandrew reserves a point of order.
▶ 5:34:06Amendment to the amendment and the nature of a substitute to HR1028 offered by Miss Gyipol.
▶ 5:34:11Without objection, the amendment the nature amendment will be considered as read and shall be considered and shall now be considered. Gentle lady from Washington is recognized for five minutes to explain the amendment. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. I want to be very clear that the guidance of international athletic institutions has long recognized categorical bans are unnecessary to achieve fairness. So, you have to ask ourselves, why are we spending time in the judiciary committee yet again to take up this issue?
▶ 5:34:39We've already concluded from the last debate that Republicans don't seem to want to do anything about accountability for ICE officers who shoot and kill citizens or hold ICE and Border Patrol agents accountable for violating the fourth and fifth amendments of the Constitution or investigate why the Department of Justice is still enacting a massive cover up of the powerful pedophiles in Jeffrey Epstein's ring and refusing to even investigate the people who
▶ 5:35:10are all over the Epstein files, including Donald Trump, by the way, who was in there 5,000 times, over 5,000 times, named. Instead, we're going to spend our time going to the same playbook of targeting a tiny group of transgender Americans in the name of protecting women and girls. Now, that's rich, too, because if we really wanted to protect women and girls, why does the majority keep voting against paid family and medical leave?
▶ 5:35:38Why did Republicans cut Medicaid funding that pays for 60% of births in Speaker Mike Johnson's home state of Louisiana? Why do Republicans keep trying to pass national abortion bans and even ban women from just accessing Is the priority of women and girls really on this bill or on building a life where women get the support and help that they need to take care of their families and actually make decisions about their own bodies.
▶ 5:36:09I don't believe for a second that this is about preventing women protecting women and girls, nor do I believe that this bill is necessary. Following President Trump's executive orders, the US Olympic and Parolympic Committee has already effectively banned transgender women from competing in women's sports.
▶ 5:36:26Republicans are wasting this committee's time because they have no answers to the real problems that Americans face on everything from higher prices on their groceries, on their health care to the unprovoked violence we're seeing unfold in slow motion before our very eyes. So, my amendment would simply require a report on how this bill would affect all female athletes since categorical bans on trans women harm all women.
▶ 5:36:54And I want to be clear that women's organizations across the country, including the Women's Sports Foundation, have denounced categorical bans on trans athletes for promoting fear, dangerous stereotypes, unfair scrutiny on high-erforming female athletes, and sex discrimination based on misinformation. So once again, don't tell me the bill is to protect women and girls. It actually does the opposite. And just think about this for a second. We talk about this every time there's one of these bills.
▶ 5:37:24How are you going to enforce this ban? How do you verify a girl or a woman's quote reproductive anatomy? In states with these bans, we've already seen shameful treatment of cisgender and transgender athletes alike.
▶ 5:37:43In Utah, a school board member falsely claimed a high school basketball athlete was transgender simply because of her quote larger physical build, which led to relentless harassment, bullying, and even threats of violence.
▶ 5:38:01And in Florida, during a school-led investigation into a transgender volleyball player, students were asked to describe the child physically and even asked if they had seen the child Is that what you want to bring into your states, into your schools, into your communities? We've already seen horrific sexual abuse against girls and women in sports.
▶ 5:38:28If a woman or young girl, if your daughter doesn't look feminine enough, should she subject to What's next? Y'all going to decide which kids can play with each other on the Let's remember that only 1% of the US population identifies as transgender. That's right, 1%. The idea that this small already marginalized group of people is going to prevent women from having athletic opportunities is simply absurd.
▶ 5:38:59And the constant slate of bills that attack transgender people puts them in the crosshairs of really dangerous and hateful behavior that can lead to death and suicide. There are real problems that face female athletes around lack of financial resources, a vulnerability to abuse and wage gaps. But that's not what we're spending time on.
▶ 5:39:21And I am just tired of the attacks on transgender people, on the children and the family members of so many people across this country. In the name of what? I don't know. Seems like pure cruelty. I yield back.
▶ 5:39:34Gentle lady's time is expired. The gentleman from New Jersey withdraws his point of order. Uh Mr. Honor
▶ 5:39:43to speak on the amendment.
▶ 5:39:45Uh thank you, Mr. Chairman. For the past 50 years, Title 9 has been an unqualified success, dramatically increasing participation in girls and women's sports at both the secondary and collegiate level. But in recent years, by allowing men identifying as women to dominate many events in women's sports, men have stolen over $490,000 of prize money from women in professional sports and over 91 1,941 gold medals.
▶ 5:40:16This is about fundamental fairness. Males have a greater lung capacity, larger hearts, more density, more bone density, and dramatically more muscle mass. All of which give them an enormous competitive advantage over Champion Olympic sprinter Allison Felix, to give one example, her lifetime best time in the 400 meters was 49.26 seconds. Think about this for a second.
▶ 5:40:43And Allison trained dozens of hours per week for years, and her hard work and dedication earned her the title of the fastest woman in the world at the 400 meter distance. But in 2017 alone, high school and young adult males outperformed that time. 15,000.
▶ 5:41:06My Democrat colleagues may deny that men have an advantage over women, that boys have an advantage over girls, but it's just a biologic reality. Another swimmer Will, aka Leah Thomas, ranked in the nation as a man only to steal the 500 meter freestyle championship as a pretend woman. To accept men and women's sports is to end women's sports.
▶ 5:41:35I thank the chairman for bringing this bill up for a vote today before the Winter Olympics kicks off on Friday. We're sending a strong signal to those aspiring woman athletes around the world who deserve access to fair competition and the United States is no longer going to tolerate the ideologicaldriven cruelty that destroys the sports that those women love. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. I yield back. Gentleman
▶ 5:42:00yields back to further discussion on the amendment. Miss Ross.
▶ 5:42:05Um, not on the amendment. We can vote on the amendment. I'll I'll speak on the underlying bill.
▶ 5:42:10The general lady yields back. Is there further discussion on the amendment?
▶ 5:42:13Gentleman from New Jersey is recognized for five minutes.
▶ 5:42:16I'm going to speak on the amendment. It may wander in a little bit to the bill, but still the amendment attempts to change the substance and structure of the bill in a way that's not beneficial. So, I will do that. I believe the other side. I I really sincerely I just think you're so off base here. I really do believe if you talk to most Americans, Democrats, Republicans, and independents, they find this to be wrong. What do they find to be wrong? Biological men in women's sports. Dr.
▶ 5:42:46Rand expressed it well, and I associate with his remarks. It's dangerous. It leaves women vulnerable. It's unfair. It's unsafe. It's wrong. Um, you know, I have a rule when people ask me about certain issues dealing with transgender issues and the whole host of things that come up now, and I mean this. I don't care what people do in their bedroom. I don't. That's up to them, their partner, their partners, God, whatever.
▶ 5:43:16That's not for me to say. But don't force it on our children and our young people, and don't make me pay for it. Those two rules, I wish we could stick to there. um that you know I know somebody on that side I'm sorry I don't remember who said that we were appealing to a narrow political base. I don't think so.
▶ 5:43:37I think what they're doing by having men in women's uh is so unfair that they are appealing to a very narrow base. Nobody is saying that somebody's got to go around and you know put people through all kinds of physical exams.
▶ 5:43:55Quite frankly, those folks that are transgender are usually proud of it, usually declare it, and you know, even in some cases where they're going to be in locker rooms and they're going to be showering with folks, it's going to be quite evident. And I don't think I have to describe the difference. I think we all know biology and know the difference between a biological man and a biological woman. Um, so it's not about investigations. It's not about ostracizing anybody.
▶ 5:44:25I mean, you've really got to feel badly. Seriously, for a woman who has worked for years to compete at whatever level, whether it is in their high school, their college, they make it to the Olympics, where ever it would be, and their hopes and their dreams, which all of us in a bipartisan way have worked to make sure that women have equal access, equal ability to do well in sports as well as in everything
▶ 5:44:55in life. and you dash their dreams because a good number of sports it just isn't fair. It does it doesn't work. It's not right. Um and I and I don't mean these people are weird, so somebody's going to try to misinterpret it, but forcing it into women's sports is weird and it's wrong and people don't like it.
▶ 5:45:19And if you talk to folks that are have families and have daughters particularly, they're upset about it and they don't like it. So, um, I don't support the amendment and I don't support the underlying bill. Yes.
▶ 5:45:32Mr. Would you yield for a question?
▶ 5:45:34Yes, I will.
▶ 5:45:35Um, the amendment that I have is actually just an amendment that requires an annual report that details the impact of categorical bans on cisgender female athletes. So I'm wondering given that we have a lot of conflicting information about how this would actually be enforced, what would actually happen, whether people would have questions asked of them simply for not looking a certain way, what the examination
▶ 5:46:05process would be. I'm wondering if you would be willing to accept the amendment, which is simply about a report so that we can have better information. Respectfully, I don't know that we need a report. Just another level of bureaucracy, more complication. This is not a big deal.
▶ 5:46:21I mean, I think as if this was the law of the land and it existed everywhere, we quite frankly wouldn't have a problem because people would know if you're a guy, you're not going to compete in wrestling and boxing and racing and so many other areas with biological men. And I I think that would be the end of it. We existed that way for many years. You can discuss other issues.
▶ 5:46:42If somebody's trying to get a job or whatever, you know, we could get into that, but on this, no, I think that we just clearly have a definition physically, biologically of a man and a woman. And there's no doubt, you know, some people can argue that women are a whole lot smarter. I wouldn't disagree with that, but there's no doubt physically in many ways most women uh when it comes to physical endeavors have a different biology than men do. It's not that complicated.
▶ 5:47:10We really are making something so damn complicated that just doesn't have to be. Leave families alone. Leave these girls alone. Let's just go on and have some degree of
▶ 5:47:22Time is expired. I yield back. Is there further discussion on the amendment?
▶ 5:47:27Mr. Kylie.
▶ 5:47:29Thank you, Mr. Chair. Uh the um representative from Washington indicated that we're only talking about a tiny number of athletes here. Uh so I wanted to share um with you how actually this odd obsession with opening the female division to both males and females uh has negatively impacted uh all of the athletes uh in a portion of my district. Uh I represent uh in my congressional district a school district known as Tahoe Truckucky uh unified.
▶ 5:48:00And this uh the schools in this district uh sit are in California, but they're close uh to the Nevada border. And for decades, they have competed in sports in Nevada uh instead of California. And the reason for that is that in Nevada, sports like uh soccer and tennis are spring sports. Uh whereas in California, they're winter sports. And in this very snowy area, it's very hard to play these sports uh in the winter.
▶ 5:48:26So, they've competed in Nevada to allow their student athletes those opportunities until this year. The state of California just ordered this district to no longer compete in Nevada, saying they must compete in California. And what is the reason for that? Because Nevada does not allow biological males to compete in female athletics.
▶ 5:48:48So what this means is that for students who play those sports, soccer, tennis, uh which are winter sports in California but spring sports in Nevada, they may not be able to play at all. All of the athletes, not some tiny fraction of them. Uh and even if they are able to field teams during the winter months, they'll be forced to go over uh what's called the Donner Pass, which is very treacherous to travel through uh during snowstorms. And so the safety of these students is going to be put at risk.
▶ 5:49:17This makes absolutely no sense at all. But it goes to show you that what is driving these policies is not any concern for anyone's rights or well-being. Uh it is some sort of warped ideology that doesn't seem to care about the well-being or rights of any students whatsoever. So I think that this bill is entirely appropriate.
▶ 5:49:41We need to work on assuring that our institutions, our athletic institutions at every level, the Olympic level, the the uh the collegiate level, uh as well as high school and youth sports, uh that the policies are rooted in biological reality, in common sense, uh in fairness, uh and in the law under title 9. So, I'll be uh supporting this measure today and I yield back.
▶ 5:50:04Gentleman yields back. Is there further discussion on the amendment? Miss Hagman.
▶ 5:50:11Oh, Mr. Roy.
▶ 5:50:14I thank the chair and I'll try to be brief in the interest of time. Um, look, you know, I've heard questions that are being raised about the inability to make these determinations or how difficult they will be. Some colleagues have mentioned the invasiveness. Uh, I mean, look, in in college sports or any of us who play college sports, you had to do all sorts of tests, uh, lots of drug tests, so forth. You can have, you know, cheek swabs that can uh do a lot of what is necessary for making determinations of of biological sex.
▶ 5:50:42The fact of the matter here is we simply just want to protect our girls. That's all we're trying to do. And by the way, this is not a radical position, right? The IOC is considering this for a reason. Now, they're hedging back and forth because they're indoctrinated with a bunch of frankly radical leftists in their organizational structure. But they recognize the reality of what we're actually dealing with here, which is that we're tired of watching our little girls getting a volleyball slammed in their face or getting tackled by somebody who's actually a dude.
▶ 5:51:11Like, that's the actual thing that we're actually concerned about. And so, you know, look, the the the reality here is this is not about trying to give a middle finger to President Trump, uh, you know, by opposing this. It's this is about giving a middle finger to the little girls out there like my daughter who want to be able to play sports and not play sports with a guy. That's it. This is not about, you know, through the party of women equality and all this stuff. And look, you want to talk about abortion, we can have that debate. We have it round and around. We want to protect little girls who are not yet born.
▶ 5:51:41So, we can have that debate all day long, but that's a debate we have had repeatedly. But what we're saying here is is we want to ensure that our little girls can engage in athletic activity and not be competing against dudes. I would yield to the gentle lady from Wyoming if she wants that time. You bet. Because I'm just going to briefly speak on the amendment. The over-the-top rhetoric put forth in support of this amendment, I think, gives up the game. The fact is that all you need to do to determine sex is a cheek swab.
▶ 5:52:10If you're an XX or an XY, you're either a boy or a girl. It's that simple. This isn't complicated. It's not like we haven't known what women and men were for not just a matter of years, but decades and centuries and thousands of years before that. The fact that we're having this conversation and this debate just absolutely epitomizes the left's ongoing effort to rewrite the English language in order to change the debate and destroy civil order. Cisgender is a madeup word.
▶ 5:52:38Cisgender is a that means nothing. Do not call me cisgender. I am a woman. You, this gentleman sitting next to me, he is a man. That's who he is. That is what our title is. That is what we have been described throughout history. We're not This bill does nothing to prohibit men from competing in men's sports.
▶ 5:53:03I will repeat, this bill does nothing to prohibit men from competing in men's sports. It does prohibit men from competing in women's sports. It is that simple.
▶ 5:53:18All we have to do is look at what happened during the Paris Olympics where we watched a dude beat the hell out of a woman in a boxing match and we have people on the other side of the aisle who actually believe that that is okay. That man is not a woman. He has been tested repeatedly. That is a man and he will not be allowed to compete against women in the future because he is a man.
▶ 5:53:48We do not want men beating up women. We do not want men in women's soccer or volleyball or basketball or rugby or swimming or any other athletic competition. This isn't difficult. All you need to do it for any kind of determination for sex is a cheek swab. The fact that you guys are talking about doing these inspections of people and the fact that the boxing association used to do that, that's sick.
▶ 5:54:18That is sick. This isn't complicated. And the fact that you're trying to make it complicated gives up the game. We want to protect women and girls. It's that simple. That's what this bill does. This amendment means nothing. It does nothing to protect women. It does nothing to protect women athletics. That is the reason why every person in this room, especially the women, should vote against it. I yield
▶ 5:54:43Gentleman from Texas yields back. Further discussion on the amendment. Uh, Miss Crockett.
▶ 5:54:49Okay. So, I I didn't know where I was. I was confused. I've asked a couple of questions. Are we on the GIAL amendment? Okay. I just want to make sure I'm on the right one, though. that talks about commits to submitting annual reports. Is this the one?
▶ 5:55:06It starts off that way to the corporation that include for each calendar year a maybe we should have let this one read, madame clerk, cuz I because it seemed like we confused a report describing the impact of prohibiting a person whose sex is male from participating in an amateur a amateur meaning not necessarily the little kids on the playground. Okay, want to be clear.
▶ 5:55:30uh amateur athletic competition that is designated for females, women or girls or the participation of females, women or girls in that amateur athletic competition. So are we are we talking about a report?
▶ 5:55:45So I I still listen now maybe maybe it's cuz the clerk didn't read the whole thing and that's not her fault. She was told that that was fine. I don't understand why and where my colleagues are going on everything else and now they want to be the protectors of girls and women. I didn't hear them screaming this when Renee Good was killed in the middle of the street in Minneapolis. I didn't hear any protection for Renee Good, a US citizen that was killed by the same people that the vast majority of you just voted to give more money to. I didn't hear the same thing.
▶ 5:56:12In fact, it was a lot of crickets, including specifically including the women as we were just lectured about what we need to do as women when it came down to the Epstein files. I I heard crickets. In fact, we could not get any signatures onto that discharge petition to the extent that we shut down the entire house and there was no business that was conducted in this entire country on behalf of our constituents. But let me be clear, the Republicans are going to protect girls and women because that's what this is all about.
▶ 5:56:42It's it's it's not about the report because the says it's about a report. Like miss me on being protectors. Just say that this is what you believe. this is what you're doing. But don't come at us and tell us as women what we should be okay with, what we shouldn't be okay with because it's just kind of like the same thing where I should be telling a lot of women on the other side of the aisle. I don't know how it is that you are not protecting women as they need protections over their own bodies to make their own decisions.
▶ 5:57:12The gentle lady yield for a question.
▶ 5:57:13I will yield for a question.
▶ 5:57:14Well, thank you, Miss Crockett, for those trenchant remarks. you know, our our friend and colleague from New Jersey started by saying, "What do most Americans think of as wrong?" So, he wants to ground people's approach to this bill on moral intuition. Well, what do you think the moral intuition of Americans is today about shooting Americans in the face for exercising their First Amendment rights or stripping them of their lawful gun and then shooting them 10 times? You think the vast majority of Americans reject
▶ 5:57:43Oh, I I know they do. You think that's why Donald Trump says he's going to deescalate and they're trying to get out of Minneapolis because the whole country rejects the bloody violent authoritarianism on display there?
▶ 5:57:53Oh, absolutely.
▶ 5:57:54Against women and girls and men and
▶ 5:57:57Yeah. And I can also uh remind my colleagues that feel so so so deeply about the children, the the same children that they don't want to have $6 a day to eat and SNAP benefits. But I know that they care so deeply about children cuz as myself and we Castro traveled to the Dilly facility in Texas where they kidnapped a 5-year-old out of Minneapolis and took him.
▶ 5:58:22I I don't remember any of my Republican colleagues going to check on the people that the people in the children the children maybe don't talk about their parents but the children that are currently You know, after we left Dilly, I made it clear that as someone who has practiced criminal defense, I have been in actual prisons. I have been in jails. This was the first time that I've been in a facility that doesn't even offer educational opportunities. So, you're snatching kids away from their schools sometimes.
▶ 5:58:51I do have a bill if y'all care about schools and and care about the hospitals and care about the churches. I do have I have a bill for that if y'all want to, you know, sign up. But nevertheless, these children are being kidnapped and then they are being thrown into a place that now has a measles outbreak. They are not being given adequate care whatsoever. And the children don't even have access to education. In this country, even somebody who is a convicted felon can go and get a degree.
▶ 5:59:19And these kids, their education has been stunted because this administration with the complicity of each of you on that side who refuse to acknowledge what is wrong because I agree some things shouldn't be right or left. They should be right or wrong.
▶ 5:59:36So, if we want to talk about the amendment, because I think you don't want to report because the reports will reveal what most of y'all don't want to actually admit, which is that when it comes down to trans people in sports on the collegiate level, we have 10 in this country. Y'all want to sit up here and write bills as it relates to literally 10 collegiate athletes. That's all we have that are trans. Yet, we have hundreds of people, thousands of people that are being incarcerated every single day.
▶ 6:00:04and we are and subjecting our communities to abuse and being terrorized. But no, no, no. Let's focus on the 10 trans kids. General lady's time has expired. Is there further discussion on the amendment? Mr. uh believe the gentleman has already spoken on this amendment.
▶ 6:00:25I have unanimous request recogniz without objection. I'd like to introduce new research reveals shocking number of gold medals trans identifying males have stolen from female athletes.
▶ 6:00:36Without objection, is there further discussion on the amendment? Mr. Raskin.
▶ 6:00:40Yeah. I move to strike the last word just to speak on the amendment.
▶ 6:00:42Gentleman is recognized under the five minute rule.
▶ 6:00:44Uh thank you very kindly. And I was unaware of the case that the gentle lady, Miss Hagman, referred to from uh the Olympic boxing gold competition. Uh it refers to an Algerian boxer um whose name is Ammani Khalif and she won a gold medal Friday at the Paris Olympics um emerging a champion from a tumultuous run at the games where she endured intense scrutiny in the ring and online
▶ 6:01:15abuse from around the world over misconceptions about her womanhood. She is what some people have called today cis uh a cisgendered woman. Others object to that. She's what I guess Miss Hagman would call a real woman or a biological woman.
▶ 6:01:30But in any case, uh Miss Hagman seems to have fallen for the kind of uh mass mob outcry and bias that led to people describing her as transgender and cheating another woman rightfully out of uh her title. Um how are we actually going to deal with this problem? Now, it seemed very quickly several people, including uh Mr.
▶ 6:01:58Roy and uh uh the author herself said, "We'll just use a cheek swab," which isn't anywhere in the bill. It doesn't appear anywhere in the the bill or the amendment in the nature of a substitute. What that says is that female means an individual who has had, will have, or would have um but for a developmental or genetic anomaly or historical accident the reproductive system that produces, transports, and utilizes eggs for Okay?
▶ 6:02:28And then a similar one for the male. So, uh we're not inventing the problem of how you're going to enforce this new rule that's never existed before that you want to impose. This is taking place where people uh as some members of the committee have just done have mistaken somebody else's gender identity, challenged it, and then demanded that they prove will yield
▶ 6:02:51that they really are. As soon as I finish, I'm happy to yield and then prove that they are what they really say they are. So that's a serious problem that you've got to deal with if you're going to impose this new gender ideology on the US Olympic Committee which is already dealing with this problem and again sorting out different sports according to uh different processes and balancing factors that they're taking into account.
▶ 6:03:17Some of the decisions that they make about basketball or rugby or soccer are different from the ones they're making about bad mitten or pingpong. But you guys want to impose one categorical rule on all of it and have the federal government override that entire process without even thinking through the problem of how you're going to prove that somebody is really X or Y um when somebody comes to challenge them. So again I I'm not an expert in this field at all.
▶ 6:03:47I would like to proceed on the basis of common sense and fairness. fairness to uh the girls who compete in sports as my girls have done as well as fairness to the daughters of other families who compete in sports who are transgender who also want to have the same kinds of opportunities to be part of a team and play in part of the community and don't present some kind of lethal physical threat to other people.
▶ 6:04:14And the one thing that I object to, and I understand it's a complicated issue, but I don't understand why some of our colleagues continue to insist on calling transgender women or transgender girls men or boys. Well, not according to them, they're not men. Not according to them, they're not boys. And in America, uh I think we have the freedom of expression and the freedom of identity. We get to decide what they are.
▶ 6:04:40The government doesn't decide that somebody is white or black or Christian or Jewish or male or female. It's up to the people ourselves to determine that. It's not up to the state. That's a fascist concept. And I'm happy to yield to your question, Miss Eman.
▶ 6:04:57Uh the gentleman that you're referring to in the that was in the boxing competition in Paris has been determined to have XY chromosomes from a 2023 test. And in fact, mark my words, I doubt that you will ever see him enter the ring again with women. That person is a man. I yield back.
▶ 6:05:16All right. Well, apparently that's disputed and that's that's the the road that people want to go down. I don't know if there's anybody else who's an expert on this, but in any event, it does reveal the central problem that if you're going to have the federal government now uh deciding to impose this test, you're going to have to figure out how to decide it. And we know that at least that one case in Utah where there was a girl who was maligned and vilified and threatened and she was born a girl and was a girl her entire life and I yield back.
▶ 6:05:46Gentleman's time is expired. Is there further discussion on the amendment?
▶ 6:05:50Mr. Chairman,
▶ 6:05:51Mr. Nadler,
▶ 6:05:53Mr. Chairman, the uh I agree with everything that the uh ranking member said, but let me add very There is now a scientific consensus of something that no one used to be believed to be true. There is now a scientific consensus that there are more than two sexes and that transgender people are a different sex.
▶ 6:06:19And by not by refusing to admit that we are committing uh or causing them um um great injury and there is a scientific consensus on this and uh that's all that need to be said. Everything else is irrelevant. I yield
▶ 6:06:40Gentleman yields back. Is there further discussion on the amendment? Seeing none, the question is on the amendment offered by the gentle lady from Washington. Those in favor of the amendment say I.
▶ 6:06:51Those opposed say no.
▶ 6:06:53The nos appear to have it. And the amendment is a roll call has been requested. The clerk will call the role.
▶ 6:07:00Mr. Jordan,
▶ 6:07:01Mr. Jordan votes no. Mr. Isa.
▶ 6:07:04Mr. Vigs.
▶ 6:07:06Mr. BGS votes no. Mr. Mcccleintoch,
▶ 6:07:08Mr. Mcccleintoch votes no. Mr. Tiffany.
▶ 6:07:11Mr. Massie?
▶ 6:07:12Mr. Massie votes no. Mr. Roy, Mr. Mr. Klein, Mr. Gooden, Mr. Vandrew,
▶ 6:07:23Mr. Vandrew votes no. Mr. Nells, Mr. Moore, Mr. Kylie, Miss Higgman,
▶ 6:07:32Miss Haggman votes no. Miss Lee, Mr. Hunt, Mr. Fry. Mr. Growthman,
▶ 6:07:42Mr. Growthman votes no. Mr. Knot, Mr. Harris, Mr. Harris votes no. Mr. Herder,
▶ 6:07:48Mr. Herder votes no. Mr. Schmidt, Mr. Gil, Mr. Bombgardner, Mr. Raskin,
▶ 6:07:58Mr. Raskin votes I. Mr. Nadler,
▶ 6:08:01Mr. Nadler votes I. Miss Lofrren, Mr. Cohen, Mr. Johnson, Mr. Swallow, Mr. Blue Miss Gyipol Miss Jipal votes I Mr. Korea
▶ 6:08:19Mr. Korea votes I Miss Scanland
▶ 6:08:22Miss Scanland votes I Mr. Noose Miss Mcbath Miss Ross I
▶ 6:08:29Miss Ross votes I Miss Balot Miss Balant votes I Mr. Garcia Miss Camoger Dove Miss Camogard Dove votes I Mr. Mosquitz Mr. Goldman. Miss
▶ 6:08:43Miss Crockett votes I.
▶ 6:08:47Mr. Kylie, you're not recorded.
▶ 6:08:49Mr. Kylie votes no. Clerk report.
▶ 6:09:10Mr. Chairman, there are nine eyes's and 10 nos.
▶ 6:09:12Vote being nine in the affirmative and 10 in the negative. The amendment is not agreed to. Is there any further discussion on the amendment in the nature of a substitute? General lady from North Carolina is recognized.
▶ 6:09:22Um, thank you. I move to strike the last
▶ 6:09:24General lady is recognized under the five-minute rule.
▶ 6:09:26Thank you, Mr. Chairman. Yet again, this committee is wasting its time on this bill when we could be addressing actual issues that greatly affect athlete safety and sexual abuse. And you know there the Energy and Commerce Committee actually has had some amazing hearings on this issue. Have we? No.
▶ 6:09:5231 former NC State student athletes have signed on to a lawsuit in my district alleging that the university did not do enough to protect them from being sexually abused by its former director of sports medicine.
▶ 6:10:08And we all know from the prodigious amount of reporting that at least 177 former Ohio State student athletes came forward alleging sexual abuse by a team doctor that took place over two decades. We shouldn't forget that sexual abuse of athletes also includes male athletes and that was the case both at NC State and Ohio State.
▶ 6:10:38And I have had victims of sexual abuse in amateur sports in my office telling me how harrowing their experiences have been and that Congress has not done enough. In 2017, Congress did act and created an organization that investigates abuse in sports, creating reporting processes and providing some training to prevent abuses.
▶ 6:11:05This organization was immediately overwhelmed with reports and has struggled. Last Congress, I introduced a bi-partisan bill, the Safer Sports for Athletes Act, that would improve the investigative process and ensure that national governing bodies for sports get the information they need to keep predators out of sports.
▶ 6:11:33I plan on reintroducing this bill very soon with my Republican colleagues and I would hope that members of this committee would sign on to the bill and that this committee in addition to the Energy and Commerce Committee could have hearings on what is really threatening amateur athletes, both women and men in sports.
▶ 6:11:59I've met with these victims on multiple occasions and listened to their stories. I've had male athletes cry in my office. This isn't a political game. It's about the lives and safety of young athletes and our responsibility to deal with rampant problems and protect these athletes futures.
▶ 6:12:28If this committee truly cared about protecting athletes and not just having a charade, we would focus on what we saw happen both at NC State and Ohio State and in Michigan and so many other places. But instead, we're wasting time on the latest culture war obsession rather than protecting the next generation.
▶ 6:12:57I urge this committee to actually start focusing on some serious issues that affect most communities in America. I want to protect amateur athletes. Help me do it and please, please have this committee put its focus where it belongs. I yield back.
▶ 6:13:20General lady yields back. Further discussion on the amendment of nature substitute. Mr. Biggs.
▶ 6:13:25Thank you, Mr. Chairman. I have two daughters that played collegiate sports and would have been shocked. They would have been shocked. I would have been shocked if bi biological men had played college fast pitch softball with them. Biological men have no place in women's sports. Period. That's not a partisan argument. It's a matter of fairness, safety, and basic justice for the women and girls who have sacrificed everything to compete at the highest levels. For more than 50 years, Title 9 has protected equal opportunity in education and athletics.
▶ 6:13:55It opened doors for generations of women who trained, competed, and excelled because the law recognized the simple truth. Biological differences matter, and women deserve a level playing field. Yet today, those protections are being eroded not by science, not by fairness, but by an ideology that insists biological sex is irrelevant, that women are merely identities, not a reality rooted in biology. Ignoring biological differences does not make them disappear. It only harms the very athletes Title 9 was written to protect.
▶ 6:14:25It forces women and girls to surrender their privacy, their safety, and their opportunities. And the consequences are real. In Arizona, in Arizona alone, transidentifying males captured 78 women's gold medals last year along with silvers, bronzes, and countless stolen dreams. These are not abstract numbers. They represent young women who trained for years only to lose to competitors with undeniable physical advantages. These are not small differences, they are decisive ones.
▶ 6:14:54In my home state of Arizona, we have many brave athletes uh who have spoken out. Marshy Smith, a 15time all-American swimmer and co-founder of Icon's Women, put it plainly, quote, "Women and girls need clear, durable protections in law that they can rely on. Our daughters deserve to train, compete, and win on a fair playing field." Close quote. She's right. Kaylee Ray, an NCAA volleyball standout, forfeited a match rather than compete against a male opponent.
▶ 6:15:21Shauna Glazier, a USA cycling champion, lost a race to a male competitor. Lauren Bondley, a USA triathlon athlete. All these brave women have courageously stood up and called out and exposed these injustices. And another brave action from Arizona women athletes was a 2022 letter to the NCAA from University of Arizona swimmers about Leah Thomas, which made the betrayal unmistakable. They stated a simple truth.
▶ 6:15:45Quote, "We feel we are witnessing irrevocable damage to a sport that has transformed our own identities for the better." Close quote. I should note that the NCAA never even responded to them. I ask unanimous consent for several letters and articles. Number one, University of Arizona Stars write letter to NCAA on Leah Thomas.
▶ 6:16:06Without objection,
▶ 6:16:08new research reveals shocking number of gold medals transidentifying males have stolen from female athletes. Without
▶ 6:16:14New York Time poll finds almost 80% of Americans oppose men and women's sports.
▶ 6:16:19Without objection,
▶ 6:16:20how do men and women differ
▶ 6:16:23Without objection.
▶ 6:16:24A piece called the transgender movement's harm to women.
▶ 6:16:27Without objection,
▶ 6:16:28Riley Gaines fires back at Senator Dick Durban for bowing to trans activists.
▶ 6:16:32Without objection.
▶ 6:16:34And a letter from W concerned women for America dated January 13, 2026.
▶ 6:16:39Without objection.
▶ 6:16:40We must act. And this why I'm pleased to co-sponsor HR1028, the protection of women in Olympic and amateur sports act defines female and male based on biological sex, not identity, not ideology, and requires amateur sports governing bodies to preserve female competitions for biological females. HR 1028 ends the confusion and ends the loopholes and it ends the unfairness that has robbed women of medals, scholarships, and opportunities.
▶ 6:17:08Girls deserve to compete on a fair field, not against biological males who identify as girls. Not against athletes with inherent physical advantages, and not in a system that sacrifices women's rights to appease political pressure. It's time to stand up for biology. Stand up for fairness. Stand up for our daughters, our sisters, and every woman who has ever stepped onto a field, a court, a track, or a bill or pool. I support the bill. Please protect women's sports. restore the integrity of competition for generations to come.
▶ 6:17:39And I yield back.
▶ 6:17:40Gentleman yields back. Is there further
▶ 6:17:46Is there further discussion?
▶ 6:17:49Gentle lady from
▶ 6:17:50Oh, gentle lady from Vermont is
▶ 6:17:52I have an amendment at the desk. Mr.
▶ 6:17:54clerical report.
▶ 6:17:58My amendment reserves a point of order.
▶ 6:18:05My amendment would all general lady will suspend. Clerk will report the
▶ 6:18:10Amendment to the amendment in the nature of a substitute to HR1028 offered by Miss Balotent. Page two line.
▶ 6:18:17Without objection, the amendment the nature sub pardon me. Without objection, the amendment we considered uh uh read and the gentle lady from Vermont is recognized. Thank you, Mr. Chair. To explain the amendment. My amendment would alter the bill text to prohibit sweeping bans on trans girls and women participating in girls and women's This bill mandates that a person's eligibility to participate in sports be determined by their reproductive system, not by their chromosomes, as my colleagues on the other side are arguing now.
▶ 6:18:47That's not what the bill says. The bill says based on the reproductive system. And this is not just adults. This is kids, too. With this bill, Republicans are saying that they want teachers and coaches to essentially become gender police. They think it's appropriate to interrogate young girls when they decide they don't look feminine enough or when they think a girl is a little too good at track or if their shoulders are too broad. And this isn't theoretical. It's already happening. We have instances of this already happening.
▶ 6:19:17And it opens the door to abuse by bad actors. Other people have talked about this and this is a strong concern that I have, especially child abusers. And as the release of the Epstein files has revealed, there are unfortunately a lot of very powerful wealthy men who will abuse girls and even more powerful men and women who will cover for those abusers.
▶ 6:19:40This bill requires that participation standards for youth should be the same as for the Olympics, which is of course the highest level of competition in the world. And this makes no sense. People can disagree and we can disagree on what rules are most appropriate for competitive sports at the highest levels. But I would hope that we could agree that young kids should not be banned from simply participating in sports teams with their friends.
▶ 6:20:11And Republicans want to make this about the Olympics, but the real impact of this bill is actually on youth sports. Nearly 98% of USA Swimming's 2024 members were under the age of 19. More than twothirds of USA hockey members were uh were youth players under this bill. These young people could be subjected to physical exams to check on their gender. It's your own bill. You wrote it.
▶ 6:20:41You're you put reproductive uh your reproductive system in there, not chromosomes. And so that's the perfect climate for a Larry Nasser, for a Richard Strauss at Ohio State, for Jeffrey Epstein. And it does put our children at risk. And HR 1028 does nothing to protect women in sports. It ignores the real problems that do exist in women's and girls sports, as other people have already said, but I got to just say it.
▶ 6:21:10Unequal pay, lack of resources, lack of accountability for sexual misconduct and Women's sports still have a massive gender pay gap. The average NBA player makes almost 80 times more than their WNBA counterparts.
▶ 6:21:30And instead of putting more money towards women's sports, this bill will force sports organizations to pay for costly and invasive screening procedures or they risk losing their certification. Instead of doing something about these very real problems that we're hearing about today, this bill is once again, unfortunately, about fear-mongering, it will continue to incite bullies and violence against innocent people, and it will cause mental anguish for children who
▶ 6:22:00just want to participate in sports and their families. My amendment centers the bill on a theme I hope we can all agree on, which is sports are for everyone. And the International Olympic Committee has said as much, stating that quote for athletes participating in sports up to the start of puberty. The committee feels strongly that fairness should prioritize inclusion and We all know sports teaches teamwork, discipline, and how to have fun.
▶ 6:22:30They provide a way for us to connect with other people, to be in community with other people. And we can't teach these values to our kids while we're intentionally excluding people. So, I asked my colleagues to support my amendment to change the language in this bill so that it prohibits a categorical ban on trans women participating in sports. And I just want to say like my colleague from Washington, I'm tired, too. I'm tired of these bills.
▶ 6:22:58I'm tired of people being scapegoed for all the problems in society. And I just want to just say trans people are not re responsible for the fact that you can't afford housing in this country or you can't afford education or health care. They're not responsible for the tariff regime that is driving up the cost of all the goods.
▶ 6:23:22Once again, we're here using our time to pick on a very small minority people in this country who just want to live. And I just want to also say most recent Fox News poll shows by 22 points the American public trusts Democrats more to deal with transgender issues than Republicans. And I yield
▶ 6:23:45Lady's time is expired. Is there a further discussion on the amendment? Mr. Vandrew, you
▶ 6:23:49know, just quickly, I don't want to take a lot of time here. Um, the general lady said she's tired. So are we. I'm just tired of an issue where women are the victims. I mean, I'm going to say something that I said before once over was a different subject. It was similar issue though. We're never worried about or the folks on the other side don't seem worried about the victims.
▶ 6:24:12Speak to the women that have been unfairly treated because they can't compete against a biological male or have been hurt or have lost their dreams or haven't been able to continue to compete at a higher level because of what's happened. It doesn't matter that it's not hundreds of thousands or millions of them. It matters even if there's one of them. This is like a no-brainer. Nobody wants to hurt anybody. Nobody's ostracizing anybody. No.
▶ 6:24:41And if they are, they shouldn't. Nobody's picking on anyone. It's very simple. women, young ladies, girls, whether they be in youth sports, high school, or college, should be able to compete with other women in women's sports. And if it's unf and again, nobody's saying that you have to go into a locker room or bathroom. Some of them may be in there and it may be quite evident that they are not biological women, that they're biological males.
▶ 6:25:11But you can, if it was necessary, check, but usually it isn't. They announce it and they're proud of it and that's fine. I don't want to hurt them. Nobody on this side of the aisle wants to hurt them. Nobody wants to do damage. Nobody wants to go after them. Just leave our women and girls alone. Let them have fun. Let them compete and let them fulfill their dreams. It's unfair. You're making an unfair competition. I don't know how else I It just isn't that complicated.
▶ 6:25:40And honest to God, I didn't see the poll. But I got to tell you, if you go out into any soccer field, any baseball field, any basketball court, just talk to young girls, women.
▶ 6:25:53Mr. Andrew, would you yield for a
▶ 6:25:54Sure, I will. I I I think I made my point. I will yield. Yes. Do you not believe that the conclusion of this bill may be that girls who are they are girls, okay, biological girls to use your terminology.
▶ 6:26:23You don't believe that there will be examples of bullying by people on their teams because they're looking the way that other people don't think they should look.
▶ 6:26:39This bill doesn't create that. Do I think it happens in many ways?
▶ 6:26:43Because you just said you just said there is no bullying that's happening. You said there's no bullying that's
▶ 6:26:48I'm going to No, I said we don't want to do that. You don't want to do that. the purpose. I'm going to reclaim my time. That's unfortunately human nature. Sometimes it's base, sometimes it's wrong. Nobody should go through that. Whatever they are, whatever color, whatever sexual, I don't care. As I said in the beginning of this conversation, I don't care what you are, what you do in your bedroom. Don't force it on me. Don't force it on my kids. Don't make me pay for it. That's all that we're basically asking here. And just fairness.
▶ 6:27:16What aren't is anybody on the other side going to say, "Man, I really feel sorry for this girl who worked so hard and should have won, but she didn't because she was competing against somebody that normally she wouldn't have." Do we feel bad for her? Are we sorry for her? Or are we worried about her rights, her family's rights? I I I don't hear that.
▶ 6:27:36I'm I'm so and I'm gonna wrap this up tired of us so focused on such a small group of people that nobody wants to bother that nobody wants to hurt but we shouldn't allow them to hurt young women either. Let's just everybody leave everybody alone and do what you're supposed to. I don't care what sex you think. I think biologically people are either male or female. what you think you are to going back to the uh ranking member.
▶ 6:28:07I mean, you can declare yourself anything, you know, and I'm not trying to be flip. I'm not. There are people, we've heard it, we've read it. It is factual that there are some people in schools now that say they're a dog or a cat and even want to go to the bathroom in a litter box. We've all read the stories. They're reality. I don't know that that makes you that, but I'm not going to interfere with that. I don't want it. I just don't want you to hurt the good people that want to live their life and be left alone. With that, I yield back.
▶ 6:28:35Gentleman yields back. Further discussion, Miss Cam Loger Dove.
▶ 6:28:40Uh, thank you, Mr. Chair. I I want to support um my colleagues amendment. I want to actually also support uh my colleague from North Carolina, her amendment as well, and I associate myself with both of their
▶ 6:28:53remarks. Both of you from Vermont and North Carolina. Yeah. Yeah. Okay. Um, yeah. Well, let's talk about privacy and protection and safety. Uh, for the record, I do want to protect um our athletes. I want to protect our boy athletes. I want to protect our girl athletes. I want to protect our girls.
▶ 6:29:18the president of the NCAA, and I know this was shared earlier, did tell Congress that there are less than 10, less than 10, and not all of them are transgender women. There are less than of the more than 500,000 NCAA athletes that this bill and these kinds of bills would be targeting. That is a small number.
▶ 6:29:43That is a small number to be using up so much of this committee's time when there are legitimate issues that are actually impacting someone's livelihood and their ability to be alive and to live safely.
▶ 6:30:02If we are going to talk about keeping predators um out of our sports, I mean the biggest predator is the NCAA mafia that is so focused on the bodies of our athletes and making revenue, getting more and more money. Scholarship's not a priority. Their mental health isn't a priority. Their physical health isn't a priority. Why don't we talk about how to rein that entity in?
▶ 6:30:32But we don't we don't why don't we talk about yes the pedophiles who have prayed on our young athletes our boy athletes and our girl athletes Larry Nasser was a name that was brought up. Where is the horror and outrage and shock over what that individual did?
▶ 6:30:58At one point, we were debating a bill where adults would be responsible for checking the genitalia of young kids, like to make a determination of who was a boy or who was a girl. I'm sorry.
▶ 6:31:11No one here, no one here who is a parent or is a godparent or an uncle or an aunt to a child would be okay hearing some story of some rando who's now been authorized to check the genitalia of their child because they just want to make sure of something. Get out of here. Get out of here. Go straight to jail.
▶ 6:31:38And if you're talking about, well, the women are the victims, the girls are the victims. Let's fight for them. Yeah. Okay. There's a list of young girls in those Epstein files.
▶ 6:31:55There is a young child, a minor, in her journal documentation of exploitation, sexual abuse, rape, and forced abortion, a survivor of Epstein. We're not talking about her in this latest trunch.
▶ 6:32:22Not the full, not the full, not the full release of the files. An 11 or 12 or 13year-old girl, naked, tied up, spread with her legs open on a man's knee, being burned with a magnifying glass. No one is sharing any outrage over that.
▶ 6:32:52I see your face. Exactly. That was my face, too. Disgusting, egregious, horrific. A child. If that was your and you have a DOJ that is putting the names of these women out there to be attacked and abused and vilified.
▶ 6:33:16and no one has any outrage, but you're gonna go up in arms and have all this drama about a transgender person. Most people, real talk, have never even met a transgender person. It's like a boogeyman. Like, talk about fight for these girls that are in these files that were abused, burnt up, raped. I yield back. General lady's time is expired.
▶ 6:33:45Further discussion, Miss
▶ 6:33:48just very just very briefly, I think that the Epstein files have now been mentioned upwards of 20 times during the course of this markup today when what we're focusing on is whether we need to adopt a law to prevent men from participating in women's athletics. Uh, one person even made the accusation that there is this whole slew of powerful men who have been covering for Jeffrey Epstein and their abusers. Uh, well, you want to know who actually ran cover for Epstein?
▶ 6:34:17Who actually uh covered for the abuser? Do you want to know who actually protected Jeffrey Epstein? Well, her name is Stacy Plaset, and she is a deer Democrat representative from the Virgin Island. So, if you want to go in and look at the Epstein files, why don't you go ahead and do a world word search for Stacy Plaset, representative from the Virgin Islands, the woman who was Jeffrey Epstein's fixer.
▶ 6:34:42So, if you want to talk about powerful men covering for Epstein, I think Stacy Plask has something as well to answer for being Jeffrey Epstein's fixer. So, I would start on that side of the aisle to determine what kind of work she was doing for Mr. Epstein because we know that she was his fixer and her name is in the in the Epstein files repeatedly.
▶ 6:35:04So, I think that what we really need to focus on here is the bill at hand, which is whether men should be allowed to compete in women's sports. I think we need to get back and kind of focus what we're talking about here. And that's what it is. If you want to talk about Epstein, I think the first person we need to go to is Stacy Plask. If you want to talk about the issue at hand, let's focus on this that I yield back.
▶ 6:35:28Gentle lady yields back. Further discussion, Mr. Rasca.
▶ 6:35:31Thank you very much, Mr. Chairman. Um, and I I rise in support of the the gentle lady's amendment. Uh, let me just respond immediately to what we just heard. Donald Trump was by Jeffrey Epstein's own account Jeffrey Epstein's closest friend for more than a decade. I'm happy to yield to the gentle lady from Wyoming if she chooses to deny that or has some evidence to rebuff that.
▶ 6:35:59Absolutely. Absolutely.
▶ 6:36:00Oh, you don't accept any of the
▶ 6:36:02No evidence of that whatsoever.
▶ 6:36:04Have you ever seen a photograph of
▶ 6:36:06Who was your
▶ 6:36:06I'm reclaiming my time, Miss Hagman. Reclaiming my time, Miss Hagman.
▶ 6:36:10Who was Epstein's attorney?
▶ 6:36:11I I'm reclaiming my time.
▶ 6:36:13Committee will come. The committee will come to order.
▶ 6:36:15I'm very happy.
▶ 6:36:16Mr. Raskin controls the time. Mr. for
▶ 6:36:18There are tons of photographs of Jeffrey Epstein and Donald Trump which the gentle lady apparently chooses not to see with her own eyes. There's lots of
▶ 6:36:28What's the last date of
▶ 6:36:29There's lots of video evidence of it. They were best friends for more than a Okay, there you you will find a lot of stuff out. If you are hinging your case on the idea that Donald Trump didn't know Jeffrey Epstein, you are in for a very serious public collapse. If that's your argument as this comes forward, you cannot compare.
▶ 6:36:52The argument is about Stacy Plask.
▶ 6:36:53Excuse me. I'd like my time restored.
▶ 6:36:56Committee will be in order. Mr. Raskin controls the time and he is not yielded.
▶ 6:37:01Mr. Rask. Stacy Plasuit is barely a comma in the encyclopedia of Donald Trump's complicity and involvement with Jeffrey Epstein and his international human sex trafficking ring. Okay? And if you don't understand that and you don't believe it, then you've not done anything to familiarize familiarize yourself with the evidence. Miss Hagaman, I'm sorry. And I know that your predecessor in office, Miss Cheney, would have done that.
▶ 6:37:29She was scrupulous and she was studious and she took the facts seriously and she was not an ideologue who just fell for a cult leader. Okay. Now back to the matter at hand. Presently the Olympic Committee has already made the decision I think in more than half of the sports.
▶ 6:37:49So it's already decided for example that with respect to boxing with respect to rugby with respect to swimming with respect to tennis and with respect to volleyball as I understand it that all of these are limited to the sex assigned at birth. That's already been decided.
▶ 6:38:09So we are intervening now as the United States Congress to make a decision about a miscellaneous category of a handful of other sports which have not even been mentioned by our colleagues which appear to still be open to transgender athletes.
▶ 6:38:25Here are the ones that I see them are skateboarding, skiing and snowboarding, um table tennis, pingpong, um and you then ultimate frisbee.
▶ 6:38:41Now, perhaps someone over there can explain why when American citizens are being shot in the face by federal agents and the entire heartland of the country is in an uproar because of Donald Trump's private paramilitary army that nobody on the other side seems to want to talk about, we should be talking about whether or not transgender girls or women should be able to participate in ultimate frisbee because That's really what
▶ 6:39:11we're talking about today. But they sure would much rather be talking about that than anything else. They don't want to talk about what's really in the Epstein files. I I'm surp I'm stunned. I'm astonished. I'm flabbergasted by Miss Hagman, who seems to go way beyond anything else I've heard from other Republicans. She seems to be in open denial that Donald Trump and Melania Trump had anything to do with Jeffrey Epste. That's astonishing to me.
▶ 6:39:36I think she's uh setting herself for a huge public relations fall by going that far. Oh, here's some photographs, Miss Hagaman. How do you see about those? Do you think those are created by artificial intelligence? You you got any problem with any of those pictures of your hero with Jeffrey Epstein, his closest friend, for more than a decade? Thank you for bringing forth the photographic evidence. Keep that up for a while. Apparently, some people haven't seen those pictures.
▶ 6:40:05They're very happy to talk about Stacy Plaset, the non- voting delegate from the Virgin Islands, or Bill Clinton. And anybody who was involved in any crime should be punished for it, whether they're Democrat, Republican, and independent. I'll say it right now. Will Miss Hagaman, the very distinguished general lady from Wyoming, say that? Will she say that Republicans should be punished for their crimes if they were complicit in a billion dollar international child sex trafficking ring? I don't think so. I don't think she'll say it. Not if it's Donald Trump.
▶ 6:40:36It's all about Donald Trump following him off into a path of oblivion. I yield
▶ 6:40:40Gentleman's time is expired. Is there further discussion? Mr. Moore,
▶ 6:40:45I yield to the gentle lady from Alman.
▶ 6:40:47Just very briefly, it clearly hit a nerve, didn't I, Mr. Raskin?
▶ 6:40:50Oh, very much so. You don't tell the
▶ 6:40:52It's very obvious. And that hits a huge
▶ 6:40:54I think that it's very obvious.
▶ 6:40:55Miss I'll interrupt her the same number of times she interrupted me, Mr.
▶ 6:40:59Controls the time and is not yielding.
▶ 6:41:01Mr. Mr. Chairman, hold on. the the the the ranking member just accused the gentle lady of of lying
▶ 6:41:08and I and I don't
▶ 6:41:09never use that word. Never used that
▶ 6:41:11Didn't tell didn't he say about not telling the truth?
▶ 6:41:18The committee will be in order. Mr.
▶ 6:41:20How was the standard established earlier today? Mr. Roy, you weren't here.
▶ 6:41:23The committee will be in order. Does Mr. Roy make a point of order? May may I ask may I inquire as to whether the gentleman but the ranking member accused the gentle lady of not telling the truth? I heard something to that effect that I might have misheard.
▶ 6:41:38Um if the general lady was denying that Donald Trump knew Jeffrey Epstein, that would not be a truth that I could endorse in the world of objective
▶ 6:41:48This is my time. I never made that
▶ 6:41:51I I'll yield back for now.
▶ 6:41:53Everybody calm down here. Okay.
▶ 6:41:56The committee will be in order. Mr.
▶ 6:41:59I would remind members to direct their comments to the chair. Uh the uh gentleman will continue in order.
▶ 6:42:07Oh, pardon me. Gentle lady will continue in order.
▶ 6:42:09Thank you. Uh the point of this is that nobody has made that claim yet. that in order to try to deflect attention from the fact that Stacy Plask was Jeffrey Epstein's fixer, the ranking member has become hysterical over the fact that there are published photographs of Donald Trump with Jeffrey Epstein. Nobody on this side has ever claimed otherwise or that they did not know each other. They absolutely did.
▶ 6:42:37But Donald Trump was not the attorney or the fixer for Jeffrey Epstein. Stacy Plasket was. So the point that I am making is when you have accusations being made by the other side about powerful men covering up for Jeffrey Epstein, I think the very first person you need to look to is Stacy Plaset, a powerful woman via New York and the Virgin Islands. That was the point. That doesn't have anything to do with Donald Trump.
▶ 6:43:07That has to do with whether Stacy Plaset is associated with with uh Jeffrey Epstein and she clearly is as is shown by the records. So if you are concerned about powerful people covering up for Jeffrey Epstein, perhaps you need to visit with Stacy Plask first. That was the point. Mr. Rascin and uh I don't think there's anything further to say. I yield back.
▶ 6:43:33I yield back, Mr. Chairman.
▶ 6:43:34Gentleman yields back. Is there further,
▶ 6:43:36Mr. chairman.
▶ 6:43:37Uh, gentle lady from Washington is
▶ 6:43:40Thank you, Mr. Chairman. Um, wow, there's a lot to say here. Uh, the gentle lady from Wyoming said that she doesn't understand why we brought up the Epstein files 20 times. Mr. Raskin made it 21. I'm going to make it 22. The reason we brought up the Epstein files is because you all keep telling us that we don't care about women and girls.
▶ 6:44:06That statement has been made over and over and over and over again. So, let me ask a little simple question, though there's not very many of you over there on that side. How many of you signed the discharge petition to bring the Epstein Transparency Act to the floor? Anybody over there? Because Mr. Massie is not there. He did. He led that. I give him tons of credit for that. Did anybody sign that discharge petition?
▶ 6:44:36Don't see a single hand being raised. How about on our side, members? How many of us signed the discharge petition to bring the Epstein Transparency Act to the floor? Yeah. every single person on this side.
▶ 6:44:51We wanted to investigate every single pedophile and pedophile protector that was in that Epstein ring and you have the timmerity over there to tell us that somehow we don't care about women and girls. Have you spent any time with those survivors? Because we have right ladies, we have
▶ 6:45:16all of us gentlemen as well. Oh, I see that there are so many ladies on this side and there's one lady on the Republican side. I don't know what it is about your party that doesn't seem to want to have women run over there in your party. But let me tell you something. We spent a lot of time with these survivors and the way they are being treated right now is stunningly Todd Blanch is out there saying there's nothing to investigate.
▶ 6:45:46Did you see that? He said, "There's nothing to investigate." I'm not even going to try to run an So, you all want to know why we keep bringing up Epstein? Because there is a massive cover up of the Epstein files and everybody involved. and you have the timmerity to suggest that we are the party that doesn't care about women and girls. Give me a freaking break. That's point number one I want to make.
▶ 6:46:17Point number two I'd like to make. You keep talking about protecting our kids. You talk about your little girls. I've got a little girl. I've got I've had kids. They're grown now. Um we want to protect our kids, too. And trans people are literally 1% of the population. But do you know how many bills have been passed in the last year targeting trans people?
▶ 6:46:48anti-trans bills passed in state legisl introduced in state legislatores across the country. And you think that that doesn't affect trans people and the trans community. You got Mr. Van Drew over there saying, "Oh, we just we don't want to be in anyone's business. We're not trying to hurt anybody. We just want to protect our girls." Let me tell you something. Trans people are being attacked across the country.
▶ 6:47:18And if you don't know that, you should study the statistics because the statistics are very, very clear. There has been doubledigit increases in violence against trans people since you all started introducing these bills across the country. 52% of all anti-LGBTQ incidents in the last year were directed towards trans people.
▶ 6:47:44And those of us that actually know and have trans people in our families know exactly what that means for them. They're carrying mace around. They're afraid of what's going to happen to them. They feel like they're not allowed to be who they are. And they're 1% of the population. They don't understand why you are obsessed with them. Point number three I want to make. You talk about all these things as if they're settled.
▶ 6:48:14You know, you say like, "Oh, there's so much evidence that shows that women are biologically inferior in strength and therefore blah blah blah blah blah." None of this is settled. In 2024, there was a study funded in part by the IOC and published by the British Journal of Sports Medicine that concluded that transgender a women athletes may actually have several physical disadvantages when competing with cisgender
▶ 6:48:44women. And I'm going to use that word again. Cisgender women. Cisgender. I'm going to say it again and again so you get comfortable with it. Cisgender women. So none of the stuff that you quote is settled and we shouldn't accept it as settled.
▶ 6:48:59The gentle lady's time is expired.
▶ 6:49:01I yield back.
▶ 6:49:01Is there further discussion? gentleman from Georgia.
▶ 6:49:08Thank you. I yield uh uh a minute to the gentle lady from Washington.
▶ 6:49:13Fantastic. Thank you. Because I wanted to just say, I am I said this before. I am just so tired of the way that you target trans people in this country. I don't think
▶ 6:49:28I don't know if you've talked to a trans person. I don't know if you have family members who are trans, but it puts people in very real danger. It heightens people's fears of trans people. There's nothing to fear from trans people. Just get to know some. This is what happened with gay marriage early on with marriage equality.
▶ 6:49:50People were like, "Oh my god, can't possibly uh tolerate marriage equality." But then guess what? You started to realize that we're all just people. But don't try to tell us that you're protecting women and girls and that you're not harming trans people because a you're not protecting women and girls. And none of you signed that discharge petition for the Epstein files to bring those files out into the open.
▶ 6:50:18And B, you're harming trans people, period, with things that are not So just don't delude yourselves. Thank you, Mr. Johnson. I yield to you.
▶ 6:50:30Thank you. And I yield uh to the gentle lady uh Rep. Balent.
▶ 6:50:35Uh just briefly, and I I can't believe I actually have to say this on the record, but because Mr. Andrew, uh, my colleague from New Jersey, waited weighed into this. I just want to be really clear that he spent his time continuing to spread a rumor that has been debunked over and over and over again. There were never litter boxes in schools. There were never kids dressed as dogs or cats using litter boxes.
▶ 6:51:05And yet he spends our time in judiciary bringing up once again a hoax. And you just need to look at um education week that put out uh an article about this litter boxes in schools. How a disruptive and demeaning hoax frustrated school leaders across this country.
▶ 6:51:24That was yet another instance of people trying to use a um a hoax to once again go after LGBTQ people in schools. It was if we allow LGBTQ people to be themselves, what will be next? It will be people dressed as cats and dogs using litter boxes. And so it never happened. It's not happening.
▶ 6:51:51And I can't believe that here in the Judiciary Committee of the United States House, I have to make that clear. And uh Mr. Johnson, thank you so much. I yield back to you.
▶ 6:52:02Thank you. I can't believe I just walked into the judiciary committee meeting
▶ 6:52:08and this is a uh markup of two bills. We've been at it all day on one bill and looks like we're going to spend half the night on a protection of women in Olympic and amateur sports bill.
▶ 6:52:24How ridiculous at this point in time with our democracy crumbling, with prices going through the roof and uh with the Epstein files still having uh not been fully accounted for and we are considering this legislation here uh which is by the way going to the
▶ 6:52:55authority to determine whether or not a female or anyone is female or uh Go look it up. It's real. Um or whatever they decide that the person is. I mean, it's going to be a man's decision. Uh I mean, we're taking ourselves backwards to the caveman era.
▶ 6:53:20Um, it's it's just really ridiculous that I have walked into this hearing at this particular time. I yield back. I have nothing left. I I'll yield balance.
▶ 6:53:34I just the the gentle lady's remarks uh refuting the most recent cat dog fallacy which I wasn't aware of uh brings to mind a fascinating article I read last night by professor Tim Snyder who's from Ohio and he was recalling how during the campaign both uh Vice President JD Vance and Donald Trump were promoting the absolute lie that uh there were Haitianameans in Springfield, Ohio eating dogs and cats.
▶ 6:54:04as well as eating pigeons and other birds. Well, all of it appears, according to Professor Snyder, to be a setup for an attempt to try to displace the entire Haitian-American population which has now been subject to termination of temp of uh TPS and to get them out of Springfield. But there was a court ruling one yesterday on that. But check out his writing about that particular myth. Thank you.
▶ 6:54:30Time has expired. Is there further Seeing none, the question is on the adoption of the amendment offered by the gentle lady from Vermont. Those in favor of the amendment say I. I.
▶ 6:54:41Those opposed say no. No. The nos appear to have it.
▶ 6:54:47A recorded vote is requested. The clerk will call the role.
▶ 6:54:52Mr. Jordan, Mr. Isa, Mr. Biggs.
▶ 6:54:59Mr. BS.
▶ 6:55:00Mr. Bigs votes no. Mr. Mcccleintoch. No.
▶ 6:55:02Mr. Mcccleintoch votes no. Mr. Tiffany, Mr. Massie,
▶ 6:55:08Mr. Roy,
▶ 6:55:09Mr. Roy votes no. Mr. Fitzgerald.
▶ 6:55:13Mr. Klein.
▶ 6:55:15Mr. Gooden. Mr. Vandrew.
▶ 6:55:19Mr. Vandrew votes no. Mr. Nells. Mr. Moore. Mr. Moore votes no. Mr. Miss Hagaman. Miss Lee, Mr. Hunt, Mr. Fry, Mr. Growthman,
▶ 6:55:38Mr. Growthman votes no. Mr. Knot, Mr. Harris, Mr. Harris votes no. Mr. Ander, Mr. Schmidt, Mr. Gil,
▶ 6:55:49Mr. Gil votes no. Mr. Bumgardner, Mr. Rascin,
▶ 6:55:55Mr. Raskin votes I. Mr. Nadler, Miss Laughrin, Mr. Cohen,
▶ 6:56:03Mr. Johnson,
▶ 6:56:05Mr. Johnson votes yes. Mr. Swallwell, Mr. Lou, Miss Gyipol,
▶ 6:56:11Miss Jipal votes yes. Mr. Korea,
▶ 6:56:14Mr. Korea votes yes. Miss Scanland.
▶ 6:56:16Miss Scandlin votes yes. Mr. Nagus,
▶ 6:56:19Miss McBath, Miss Ross, I.
▶ 6:56:22Miss Ross votes I. Miss Balant. Miss Balant votes I. Mr. Garcia Miss Kamagerd Miss Kamager Dove votes I. Mr. Mosquitz Mr. Goldman
▶ 6:56:36Miss Crockett votes I.
▶ 6:56:47Mr. Massie, you're not recorded.
▶ 6:56:49Mr. Massie votes no. Mr. Kylie, you're not recorded.
▶ 6:57:05Mr. Kylie votes no.
▶ 6:57:17Clerical report.
▶ 6:57:18Mr. Chairman, there are nine eyes and 10 nos. The vote being nine in the affirmative and 10 in the negative. The amendment is not agreed to. Is there further discussion?
▶ 6:57:29Generally, uh, Miss Scandlin is
▶ 6:57:32I have an amendment at the desk.
▶ 6:57:34Clerk will report.
▶ 6:57:38Mr. Vandrew reserves a point of order.
▶ 6:57:41Amendment to the amendment and the nature of a substitute to HR1028 offered by Miss Scanland. Without objection, the amendment will be considered as read. Uh, Miss Scanland is recognized for five minutes to explain the amendment.
▶ 6:57:55Thank you. Look, it's clear that the underlying bill here today is not about supporting and protecting women. It's about fear-mongering because the majority thinks they can score political points by attacking transgender folks. The proposal prescribes a one-sizefits-all ban that applies across all sports and all athletes, whether an Olympian or a youth sports club member.
▶ 6:58:23So, it's a bill that would pres prevent trans girls and women of all ages and all levels from participating in sports. Now, several of our colleagues have characterized Title Nine as having been written to protect women and girls, which is a false but completely onbrand rewriting of history by today's Republican party. When I was growing up, Title 9 was brand new.
▶ 6:58:48But it was clear that the law's purpose was to make everyone welcomed and included in sports. Starting with the introduction to that provision, no person shall on the basis of sex be discriminated against. So women and girls were not being allowed to participate in sports. And Title 9 was to help them uh be included.
▶ 6:59:11That should extend to our transgender neighbors and allow them to participate in sports as well. But this bill, you know, look, whether in school or elsewhere, we can't retreat from the policies that promote inclusion of all Americans in athletics, in employment, in academics, in our military, in any other aspect of our civic civic life.
▶ 6:59:40But that's what this bill has written is about. It's about exclusion. And as my colleague Ms. Ross has said there are real issues facing female athletes that we could be talking about today, but as usual, our Republican colleagues have missed the mark. Whether where's the discussion of legitimate barriers like lack of resources, vulnerability to abuse, bias, and wage gaps.
▶ 7:00:07This bill is part of a pattern for our Republican colleagues who are too willing to disregard Americans fundamental rights and freedoms in order to meddle in other people's personal medical decisions, blatantly caring about some rights and some freedoms for some people rather than those that all Americans should enjoy. Of course, we can't talk about women's equality or female for female athletes or anyone else without talking about access to reproductive health care.
▶ 7:00:35And since this bill from our Republican colleagues purports to define women by their reproductive systems, I think it only makes sense that we should talk about reproductive health care here today. The very thing that extreme anti-abortion lawmakers want to take away from everyone. That's why my amendment to this bill would prohibit amateur sports organizations from discriminating against women for being pregnant or accessing reproductive health care, including abortion.
▶ 7:01:05contraception or IVF. This includes not only athletes but the coaches, administrators, and staff on these organizations. Since the DOS decision to overturn Roie Wade, states across the country have moved to restrict access to reproductive health care, including banning abortion care, IVF, and certain forms of contraception. And the consequences have been devastating. Providers have been forced to relocate and close their doors.
▶ 7:01:32American women have found themselves in dangerous situations with their health, their livelihood, even their lives impacted. In the face of that reality, we need to make sure that athletes and staff working at those organizations aren't discriminated against for accessing necessary health care.
▶ 7:01:52If my Republican colleagues really want to support women, they should support this amendment and ensure that female athletes and all women have the freedom to make their own personal health care decisions. So, I urge a yes vote on my amendment and I yield back.
▶ 7:02:06Gentle lady yields back. The gentleman from New Jersey withdraws his point of order. Is there further discussion on the amendment?
▶ 7:02:14Seeing none, the question is on the amendment offered by the gentle lady from Pennsylvania. Those in favor say I.
▶ 7:02:20Those opposed say no. No.
▶ 7:02:23The nos appear to have it. A roll call is requested. Clerk will call the role.
▶ 7:02:29Mr. Jordan, Mr. Isa,
▶ 7:02:33Mr. Biggs.
▶ 7:02:35Mr. Mcccleintoch,
▶ 7:02:36Mr. Mcccleintoch votes no. Mr. Tiffany, Mr. Massie,
▶ 7:02:41Mr. Massie votes no. Mr. Roy,
▶ 7:02:43Mr. Roy votes no. Mr. Fitzgerald, Mr. Mr. Gooden, Mr. Mr. Vandrew,
▶ 7:02:52Mr. Vandrew votes no. Mr. Nells, Mr. Moore, Mr. Moore votes no. Mr. Kylie, Mr. Kylie votes no. Miss Haggman, Miss Lee, Mr. Hunt, Mr. Fry, Mr. Growthman,
▶ 7:03:11Mr. Growthman votes no. Mr. Knot, Mr. Harris, Mr. Harris votes no. Mr. Ander, Mr. Schmidt, Mr. Gil Mr. Bombgartner Mr. Raskin
▶ 7:03:28Mr. Raskin votes I. Mr. Nadler.
▶ 7:03:30Mr. Nadler votes I. Miss Lofrren Mr. Cohen. Mr. Johnson
▶ 7:03:36Mr. Johnson votes I. Mr. Swallwell. Mr. Lou. Miss. Gyipol. M. Jipal votes I. Mr. Korea.
▶ 7:03:45Mr. Korea votes I. Miss. Scandlin. Miss. Scanland votes I. Mr. Goose. Miss Mcbath. Miss Ross.
▶ 7:03:53Miss Ross votes I. Miss Balant. Miss Balant votes I. Mr. Garcia. Miss Camager
▶ 7:04:01Miss Camager Dove votes I. Mr. Mosquitz. Mr. Goldman. Miss Crockett.
▶ 7:04:07Miss Crockett votes I.
▶ 7:04:10Mr. Bigs, you're not recorded. Mr. Bigs votes no. Mr. Jordan. Mr. Jordan votes Mr. Herder, you're not recorded. Mr. Herder votes no. Mr. Gail, you're not recorded. Mr. Gail vets no.
▶ 7:04:40Cler will report.
▶ 7:04:42Mr. Chairman, there are 10 eyes and 12 nos. The vote being 10 in the affirmative and 12 in the negative, the amendment is not agreed to. Is there further discussion on the amendment in the nature of a substitute?
▶ 7:04:53I've just got a few requests, Mr. Chairman, if that's okay,
▶ 7:04:55Mr. Raskin.
▶ 7:04:56Um, let's see. The first one is a letter led by the National Women's Law Center and joined by other women's rights groups strongly opposing HR 1028.
▶ 7:05:05Without objection.
▶ 7:05:06Uh, I also ask unanimous consent to enter the record of a letter signed by 31 civil rights organizations strongly opposing objection
▶ 7:05:12HR 1028. And then finally, uh, this one is from Politico. Trump admitted furer over Epstein directs Bondi to investigate the Democrats.
▶ 7:05:21Without objection. Seeing, is there further discussion on the amendment in the nature of
▶ 7:05:28Seeing none, the question is on the adoption of the amendment in nature of a substitute. This will be followed immediately by a vote on reporting the bill. Those in favor say I.
▶ 7:05:36I. Those opposed say no.
▶ 7:05:40Opinion chair, the eyes have it. The amendment in the nature of substitute is adopted. Would
▶ 7:05:44you like to roll call
▶ 7:05:45on the on the amendment in the nature of
▶ 7:05:50Uh the amendment in the nature of substitute is adopted. The question is now on favorably reporting the bill as amended. Those in favor say I. I. Those opposed say no.
▶ 7:05:59The eyes have it. And the bill
▶ 7:06:01we have a recorded vote on.
▶ 7:06:02A recorded vote is requested. The clerk will call the role.
▶ 7:06:06Mr. Jordan, Mr. Isa Mr. Biggs.
▶ 7:06:12Mr. Biggs votes I. Mr. McClintto
▶ 7:06:15Mr. Mcccleintoch votes I. Mr. Tiffany.
▶ 7:06:18Mr. Massie.
▶ 7:06:20Mr. Massie votes I. Mr. Roy.
▶ 7:06:22Mr. Roy votes I. Mr. Fitzgerald. Mr. Klein. Mr. Gooden. Mr. Vandrew.
▶ 7:06:32Mr. Vandrew votes yes. Mr. Nulls. Mr. Moore. Mr. Moore votes yes. Mr. Kylie, Miss Hagman, Miss Lee, Mr. Hunt, Mr. Fry, Mr. Growthman.
▶ 7:06:49Mr. Growthman votes I. Mr. Knott, Mr.
▶ 7:06:53Mr. Harris votes I. Mr. Ander,
▶ 7:06:55Mr. Herder votes I. Mr. Schmidt. Mr. Gil.
▶ 7:07:00Mr. Bumgardner.
▶ 7:07:02Mr. Raskin,
▶ 7:07:03Mr. Raskin votes no. Mr. Nadler,
▶ 7:07:06Mr. Nadler votes no. Miss Lofgram, Mr. Cohen, Mr. Johnson, Mr. Johnson votes no. Mr. Swallwell, Mr. Lou, Miss Jipal, Miss Jipal votes no. Mr.
▶ 7:07:21Mr. Korea votes no. Miss Scandlin, Miss Scandlin votes no. Mr. Nagus, Miss Mcbath, Miss Ross, Miss Ross votes no. Miss Balot, Miss Balant votes no. Mr. Miss Camlagger, Dove, Miss Camlager, Dove votes no. Mr. Moscowitz, Mr. Goldman, Miss Crockett,
▶ 7:07:42Miss Crockett votes no. Mr. Kylie, you're not recorded. Mr. Kylie votes I.
▶ 7:08:13No, you're good.
▶ 7:08:24Mr. Fitzgerald, you're not reported.
▶ 7:08:26Mr. Fitzgerald votes I.
▶ 7:09:33How many? It's fine.
▶ 7:11:31Yeah, of course. Mr. Jordan.
▶ 7:11:50Mr. Jordan votes yes. Short one.
▶ 7:14:08Mr. Knits.
▶ 7:15:31Mr. Schmidt, you're not recorded.
▶ 7:15:34Mr. Schmidt votes I.
▶ 7:16:46Mr. Nells.
▶ 7:16:48Mr. Nel votes yes.
▶ 7:17:02Okay. The clerk will report.
▶ 7:17:05Mr. Mr. Chairman, there are 15 eyes and 10 nos.
▶ 7:17:07The eyes have it and the bill is ordered to be reported favor to the House. Members will have two days to submit views without objection. The bill will report as a single amendment. The nature of a substitute incorporating all adopted amendments and staff is authorized to make technical changes. That concludes the business committee's business for this meeting. The meeting is adjourned. That's almost that's almost redundant.