Continuing Appropriations and Other Matters Act, 2025

Floor Speech

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Mr. JEFFRIES. Mr. Speaker, I thank the distinguished once and future chair of the House Committee on Appropriations (Ms. DeLauro) for her leadership and for yielding to me.

Mr. Speaker, I rise today in strong opposition to the extreme MAGA Republican effort to shut down the government and hurt everyday Americans.

My colleagues on the other side of the aisle have suggested that this is anti-woke week. It is not anti-woke week. It is Project 2025 week because, at the end of the day, my extreme MAGA Republican colleagues are determined to jam Trump's Project 2025 down the throats of the American people.

From the very beginning of this Congress, House Democrats have made clear that we will find bipartisan common ground with our Republican colleagues on any issue whenever and wherever possible in order to make life better for the American people, deliver real results, and solve problems for hardworking American taxpayers, and that is what we have repeatedly done.

House Democrats have repeatedly governed in the minority as if we were in the majority, finding bipartisan common ground to deliver for everyday Americans, and we are prepared to do that once again.

Yet, this extreme MAGA Republican shutdown bill that is on the floor of the House of Representatives today is not a serious effort to meet the needs of the American people in terms of their health, their safety, their national security, and their economic well-being.

The extreme MAGA Republican shutdown bill that is on the floor today would shortchange our veterans by $12 billion. That is a Project 2025 objective--$12 billion--shortchanging our veterans who have been suffering from painful exposure to toxic substances, burn pits, and Agent Orange.

People who have served our country, we should stand by them in the way that they have stood by us, but this extreme MAGA Republican shutdown bill will shut out the veterans of the United States of America.

The extreme MAGA shutdown bill will shortchange the administration of Social Security here in the United States of America. Why? Because one of the goals of Project 2025, effectively, is to end Social Security and Medicare as we know it.

There is no circumstance where we can support such legislation that will hurt the well-being of older Americans all across the United States of America. These are people upon whose shoulders we stand.

The extreme MAGA shutdown bill will shortchange everyday Americans who have been suffering harm from extreme weather events all across America, in blue States, purple States, and red States, shortchange our taxpayers by $25 billion. That is unacceptable. That is unserious. That is unconscionable for people who have had their lives upended.

Now, in the context of whether we are able, capable, to reach a bipartisan resolution, the answer to that is pretty clear because there is already an agreement connected to the bipartisan Fiscal Responsibility Act passed by both Houses of Congress last May, signed into law by President Joe Biden, that sets top-line spending numbers for fiscal year 2025. It also enters into an agreement across the parties that says there will be no partisan policy riders attached to an appropriations bill.

So, why are we here right now with an extreme MAGA Republican shutdown bill that includes elements, partisan elements, rightwing elements, extreme elements of Trump's Project 2025? That is a breach of an agreement that we all reached connected to the bipartisan Fiscal Responsibility Act.

This is a shutdown effort. That is not hype. That is not hysteria. That is not hyperbole. It is history because in the DNA of extreme MAGA Republicans has consistently been an effort to make extreme ransom demands of the American people, and if those extreme ransom demands are not met, we shut down the government. That is history.

The 1990s extreme MAGA Republicans shut down the government because they were determined to end Medicaid as we know it. In 2013, extreme MAGA Republicans shut the government down for 14 days, and the demand at that point was to repeal President Obama's signature legislative accomplishment, the Affordable Care Act, that benefits more than 100 million Americans.

In 2018 and 2019, extreme MAGA Republicans shut the government down for a record 35 days. What was the ransom demand in that particular moment? The former President and Republicans in the House and Senate demanded that the American taxpayer fund Trump's ineffective, medieval border wall, notwithstanding the fact that the promise was clearly made that Mexico would pay for that wall. Because we were defending taxpayer interests, they shut the government down for 35 days.

The notion that we are here today facing another extreme MAGA Republican-driven shutdown, concerned about it, the only thing standing between a shutdown and the American people is not hype, not hysteria, not hyperbole, not a hypothetical, it is history.

We are simply asking our traditional Republican colleagues to break with the extreme wing of your party, break with the extremism around a national abortion ban, break with the extremism connected with Trump's Project 2025, which, by the way, includes government surveillance of pregnancies and miscarriages. There is no circumstance that we can ever support such an outrageous agenda.

We are asking our traditional Republican colleagues to stand up for working families, the middle class, older Americans, our children, our veterans, and people from all across the land, in urban America, rural America, small-town America, the heartland of America, suburban America, exurban America.

Stand up for the American people as opposed to standing up for massive tax cuts for the wealthy, the well-off, and big corporations. That is the other part of Project 2025.

This is not anti-woke week. It is extreme MAGA Republican Project 2025 week.

House Democrats right now are the only thing standing between Project 2025 and the extreme agenda you want to jam down the throats of the American people and keeping the government open and doing the right thing for everyday Americans.

Vote ``no'' on this extreme MAGA Republican shutdown bill and partner with us to do the right thing for the American people.

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