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Concurrent Resolution on the Budget for Fiscal Year 2021

Floor Speech

By: Ron Estes
By: Ron Estes
Date: Feb. 3, 2021
Location: Washington, DC
Issues: Government Budget and Spending

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Mr. ESTES. Mr. Speaker, in addition to treating and vaccinating for COVID, our main priority should be getting people back to work. This legislation doesn't do that. It is full of job-killing mandates and liberal special interest handouts. So it keeps schools closed. Operation Warp Speed was such a great development to get the vaccine rolled out there so we can get the economy going.

But one of the things that this resolution does, it bails out States that help top off their tax revenue for 2020. However, in my State of Kansas, the 2020 revenues are already higher than the 2019 revenues, including in our just completed month of January, 10 percent higher than a year ago.

So the States aren't suffering through the revenue loss because of the ability for people to still continue to grow and work as they can.

But the resolution does raise expenses for Main Street, nearly doubling the Federal minimum wage at a time when thousands of small businesses are already struggling to keep the lights on. This legislation also fails to recognize, as mentioned earlier, that there is nearly $1 trillion left from the previous COVID bills that Congress has already passed.

By the way, these were five bipartisan bills that were passed in 2020 in order to make sure that it addressed all of the issues that we reflect across our country. The Biden administration should instead be focused on families who are hurting the most, targeting, particularly, the more than 8 million people who have lost their jobs due to COVID.

Workers, families, and small businesses don't need more Washington regulations or mandates. They need to have the economy up and running again. Republicans believe we must increase wages and job opportunities for all workers, and we have gotten real results with tax and regulatory reforms, achieving historic surges in jobs and wages.

Unfortunately, this legislation does not build off of that successful playbook, but, instead, shows that the Biden administration is far more interested in advancing a radical leftwing wish list over our common economic policies that will help our Main Street businesses and families.

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