Legislative Program

Floor Speech

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Mr. SCALISE. Madam Speaker, I rise for the purpose of inquiring of the majority leader the schedule for next week.

Madam Speaker, I yield to my friend, the gentleman from Maryland (Mr. Hoyer), the majority leader of the House.

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Mr. SCALISE. Madam Speaker, on the school bill, I know one of the big concerns many people have been raising is trying to get schools open again.

Last week it was reported that 5,200 different schools were closed last week. And I know this Congress has sent billions of dollars to school systems across the country. The intent was that that money be used to get schools opened, and yet, there are some schools taking the money and staying closed, which goes against all the medical science out there. We know the damage this is doing to our young children, learning, depression, and so many other challenges that it creates for them.

Will there be any part of that legislation that helps require that in order to get money schools have to be open?

Madam Speaker, I yield to the gentleman from Maryland (Mr. Hoyer).

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Mr. SCALISE. Madam Speaker, I appreciate that. Maybe we can work on something that would ensure that as tax dollars are going to school systems that it is going to keep the schools open, not to allow them to then shut down on the kids because, as we know, the science is very clear that kids are much better off in school, safer in school than not being in school, and that the learning experience is dramatically less if they are not in school, as well as the mental conditions, the social development that is not occurring if they are not in the classroom.

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Mr. SCALISE. I yield to the gentleman from Maryland.

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Mr. SCALISE. Madam Speaker, our teachers have been true heroes through this, our frontline hospital workers, people that work at grocery stores; we have seen so many people rising up to the challenge, and even where governments failed their ability to do their job.

I know one challenge that, hopefully, we see resolved in the United States Supreme Court--it won't be today; we were expecting it maybe this week, but, hopefully, early next week we see the Supreme Court resolve these challenges where there were mandates on vaccines that required people to get fired from their job if they chose a healthcare decision on vaccinations.

I have been vaccinated. I know the gentleman from Maryland has too, but for those who haven't, whether they are frontline hospital workers or teachers, people shouldn't be forced to lose their job based on that choice they make. But the Supreme Court will, hopefully, address that and resolve that next week. It is something that is out of our hands now, but it is in the court's hands at the highest level.

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Mr. SCALISE. And I would hope the government would drop that mandate, but if not, it is hopeful that the Court would make it clear that the government doesn't have the authority to require that people get fired if they don't get vaccinated, encourage people to follow the science. If they have questions or concerns, that is a conversation they should have with their doctor, not a government mandate.

But as the gentleman knows, we may have disagreement on that, but fortunately for us, it will get resolved at the Supreme Court, hopefully, early next week.

I wanted to ask the gentleman since, we are looking at the schedule for next week, I didn't notice any of the bills that we have highlighted in the past that would address some of the many crises our country is facing, whether it is inflation, whether it is high gas prices, whether it is the border crisis--all that are running out of control--the empty shelves that we are seeing at so many stores.

Will the gentleman commit to working with us to bring some of the bills to the floor to address the real crises that are hurting hardworking families like the ones I just mentioned?

Madam Speaker, I yield to the gentleman from Maryland.

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Mr. SCALISE. Clearly, some of those bills that have been discussed and offered up in the past to address the inflationary problems but also the policies of this administration that have caused that. And as we know from the energy crisis, it is not pandemic related that gas prices are so high. This President made a decision starting on day one of his administration to shut down American energy production, to shut down pipelines in America, green lighting pipelines in other countries, begging foreign countries to make more oil, but shutting off and making it harder to make energy in America.

Clearly, that self-imposed supply shortage has created higher prices that we would love to see addressed. We might disagree philosophically on how to get there, but I don't think there is much disagreement from people who spend over $100 filling their car up that it needs to change. But if you look at the workforce challenges, and every small business owner I talk to--I would imagine all of us could share similar stories--our small business owners are telling us they can't find workers. Somebody might want to go to their favorite restaurant but they are waiting an hour and a half and wondering why a third of the tables are empty, because they can't get people to work.

And so as some might want to look at the unemployment number, clearly the number of people that are not even in the workforce that just stopped working because they can get paid, right now large amounts of money, to stay at home is a challenge that we should confront here in this Congress to help encourage people to get back into the workforce, not to be paying people not to work. And the enhanced unemployment benefits were, one, part of that problem, but there were many other parts of that problem.

But it is the idea that there are too many dollars, as the gentleman said, chasing too few goods is the driver of inflation, but the biggest driver of that is all of the money that has been spent in Washington. And if you look at about $6 trillion that has been spent on various relief packages--some of it was targeted to COVID, which we all supported, very bipartisan, some of it had nothing to do with COVID which, unfortunately, has created higher inflation--there is talk right now that the administration--and I am not sure if the Democratic leadership is having serious conversations on this--is looking at yet another bill, potentially over a trillion dollars of additional spending.

I would ask the gentleman, is that something that is anticipated to be brought to the floor? I would urge, if that is being looked at, to not do it because there is about $800 billion remaining from other relief packages that are unspent. And hopefully we stop the spending in Washington that is driving inflation and try to encourage the economy to get opened at a more rapid pace. And if people need additional help, to look to the money that is sitting there, the $800 billion that is unspent, rather than trillions more dollars that would be put into a marketplace that is already oversaturated with Federal spending that is driving this inflation.

Madam Speaker, I yield to the gentleman.

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Mr. SCALISE. I thank the gentleman, and clearly we have a difference on----

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Mr. SCALISE. What the effects of spending trillions of dollars would have. And Build Back Better, as the gentleman brought up, would be about $4.5 trillion of higher taxes, additional spending, things that, by many accounts, would increase inflation even higher; but we will see where the Senate goes on that bill. I am not sure if the gentleman is anticipating bringing other legislation, the bipartisan bills that we did, to do things like create Operation Warp Speed, which was maybe one of the most successful things government did in reaction to a pandemic in the history of the world, to come up with not one, not two, but now three proven and effective vaccines in less than a year to a virus no one even knew about. It never happened in the history of the world but something that we came together, Republicans and Democrats with President Trump, to achieve a great achievement, something we would sure urge President Biden to build on.

Because President Biden did run with a promise that he would, ``shut down the virus.'' Clearly, he has failed at that. We have asked through a number of different means to have hearings on some of the things we have heard concerns about. And I would start with testing. There was an article recently that the President was presented with a plan in October to come up with about 750 million tests that people could have for COVID at home that would be readily available by Christmas where they, in October, anticipated a resurgence of COVID by December.

It has been reported that the President rejected that plan. We have asked for a hearing into that. For whatever reason, the majority has not agreed to that. Here is a letter I sent to Mr. Clyburn and Mrs. Maloney through the Select Subcommittee on Coronavirus, as well as through the Committee on Oversight and Reform. Myself and Ranking Member Comer asked to have a hearing into some of these things, the testing failures that were reported. If they are true, we ought to hear about them. If they are false, the administration ought to be pointing that out. They have not, which tells me they must be true. But then why in October would the President have rejected a testing plan that could have prevented us from getting to the place we are at right now with this resurgence?

What about some of the national plans that the President said he had as a candidate that then he later told Governors recently he doesn't have a national plan on COVID. The mixed messaging coming from the administration is causing tremendous confusion across America, and we have asked that we have hearings to clarify, give the administration a chance to state their plan or the lack thereof, state whether or not they rejected a massive testing plan for the Nation in October that would have prevented what happened in December.

The lack of desire by the administration to be transparent about any of this is creating tremendous confusion across the country. This Congress could address that by holding hearings to get the facts out. I know we are going to continue to press for those kinds of hearings. I would hope we have them, but so far we have not gotten any response to the affirmative on that.

I don't know if the gentleman has anything to add. Maybe the gentleman would agree that we would have these kind of hearings to get some of these facts out or get some of these issues addressed.

Madam Speaker, I yield to the gentleman.

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Mr. SCALISE. The problem with President Biden's plan is that it has been reactionary and not visionary. When he was presented with a plan in October to make sure that every American that needed a test would have it in December, when they in October said there will probably be a real uptick in December, the President said no to that.

So if today he says let's go and order 500 million tests, that sounds fine and well, except that he said no to that in October when he could have staved off what we see, and that is hours-long lines of people to get tested. People shouldn't have to be waiting 5 hours in a line to get tested when the President in October was presented with a plan.

Again, if he wasn't, as it has been reported, he should come out publicly and say that. The report has been out for weeks now, and he hasn't done that.

We should be having hearings on this to find out what was the plan that was presented and who was involved, by the way, in rejecting that plan. Was the CDC involved? Was NIH involved? Was HHS involved in rejecting a forward-thinking plan in October that predicted what inevitably did happen this Christmas?

Who was involved in the rejection of that plan, and why did they do it? Is it that the administration doesn't want accountability? I don't know, but we have asked those questions, and we have asked for a hearing on that.

We have been told that it is not going to happen. I hope the gentleman would help push to get this to happen, to find this out so we don't play catch-up every time something happens, when there were there people saying: Let's try to stop something before it becomes a problem.

If there are people in the White House who said, no, we are not going to do it until it is a problem for families, those people ought to be removed from the White House. And they shouldn't be involved in the decisionmaking chain because their decisions caused maybe more death, surely caused a dramatic increase in ills that people are facing right now because it could have been staved off, and it wasn't. We don't have that information from an administration who promised to be transparent.

We did have a hearing a few days ago in the select subcommittee. It was a private hearing; it wasn't open to the public. I didn't agree with that, but that was the decision made by the majority. We have to start having transparency, as was promised to the people.

People deserve transparency. They deserve to have these questions answered and, frankly, to have a more forward-thinking plan, not a reactionary plan when forward-thinking was presented and rejected.

Madam Speaker, I yield to the gentleman from Maryland.

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Mr. SCALISE. Madam Speaker, under President Trump, when he created Operation Warp Speed, the one thing he did say is that we are going to move red tape so we can focus the entire scientific community, both the Federal agencies but also the private sector, in working together in removing the red tape so they can focus on getting a vaccine. He didn't say three, but he said let's at least get them the ability, all of these great companies, many that are American companies, to go put their innovation to work and get bureaucracy and red tape out of the way and follow science but expedite so that we can get there quicker when many scientists, including some who still testify at committees today, said it was going to take years to get a vaccine.

In less than a year, we had three. President Biden inherited that when he walked in the door and took the oath of office. He had three proven vaccines.

I know the gentleman talks about statistics. Look at COVID deaths. During the campaign, President Biden not only said he would crush the virus, but he said that anybody who presided over that many deaths-- that was months before the election--doesn't deserve to be President of the United States. I thought that was an inappropriate statement.

More people have died under President Biden's watch from COVID than under President Trump's. It was an unfair standard that President Biden put in place when he was at one of the debates. If he is going to say things like he is going to crush the virus and going to have a plan, but then he comes out and obviously didn't crush the virus and tells Governors that there is no Federal plan, I do think that is a mixed message, at the least. That dereliction in his promise, at the worst, ought to be confronted.

What is the plan, if there is a plan? If there is not a plan, admit there is not a plan. But you campaigned saying there was going to be a plan, and clearly, there is not one. Those are other facts that we can put on the table.

Clearly, when you look at how President Trump pushed the Federal Government to work and partner with the private sector to move red tape so we can expedite the research and the trials, more tests than were ever done maybe on any other attempt for a vaccine, and come up in less than a year with vaccines when many said it would take years, it was clearly a remarkable achievement that we all worked on. President Trump led the effort, and we funded it in a very bipartisan way, and it was very effective.

Obviously, this is a challenge for every country. There were other things said that ought to be put out there, and let's at least try to all be saying the same thing and focusing on the same thing.

When scientific experts say that this is what we anticipate happening--if you are going to reject that science, at least hold people accountable who were part of the discussions to reject that science, as I referred to the October rejection of a testing plan that would have been in effect for December that was rejected.

Madam Speaker, I yield to the gentleman from Maryland.

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Mr. SCALISE. Clearly, we have some disagreements, but as we both have advocated for the vaccine, I do think one of the differences that we may have is that I strongly feel that it is a personal decision. It is a medical decision. And if government thinks that shaming people, threatening people, and firing people is going to address that challenge, they have missed the mark, and I wish they would instead move away from the shame and the firing. Hopefully the U.S. Supreme Court agrees with us and stops at least the firings of people by mandates from the government and just encourages people to have that conversation with their doctor if they have hesitation. But, ultimately, it is a decision that each individual would have to make.

We will continue this conversation I am sure, and I yield to the gentleman.

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Mr. SCALISE. To be clear, I never said it was for health reasons. I said it was a health decision. So this is a medical decision that people are making.

Again, in the past we have seen this suggested by some in the medical community inaccurately that if you get vaccinated you can't get the virus. A Supreme Court Justice said that if you get vaccinated you can't spread the virus. That turned out to be false. We know whether vaccinated or not you can get the virus. You can receive the virus, you can give it to other people, and you can die. We know in the hospitals the higher propensity of people in the hospitals are unvaccinated.

Those are the kinds of things that we should be encouraging to get the facts out and then encouraging people to go make their decision with their doctor if they have concerns and questions.

There are valid questions. There are people in the past who have raised religious exemptions to other vaccines and, by the way, been given approval for those religious exemptions that today are not getting similar religious exemptions for this.

So let's just treat it equally, let's treat it fairly, and let's just focus on the facts. This idea that if you mandate something and threaten somebody it is going to change behavior, it is just not proving itself to be correct, and it is causing more division and forcing people into corners that they shouldn't be on. So hopefully, again, we can continue this conversation and get back to a place where we are in agreement which we have been in things like Operation Warp Speed.

Madam Speaker, I yield back the balance of my time.

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