Providing for Consideration of H.R. Don't Mess with My Home Appliances Act, and Providing for Consideration of H.R. Homeowner Energy Freedom Act

Floor Speech

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Mr. HORSFORD. Mr. Speaker, for more than a year now, working Members and families have been forced to pay the price for Donald Trump's illegal tariffs. Let's call them what they are. Blanket tariffs are blanket taxes. They are taxes that the American people have paid.

What did Donald Trump tax when he imposed these sweeping, unlawful tariffs?

He taxed your groceries. He taxed your baby formula and your strollers. He taxed the inventory sitting on the shelves of small businesses that are just trying to survive.

In my home State of Nevada, families have paid nearly $1,800 more in the last year because of these unlawful taxes. That is a rent payment, childcare, a car repair, and it is groceries for families that are already struggling to get by.

My district has seen the real-world consequences. A neighborhood cupcake shop, a local brewery, coffee roasters who built their dream from the ground up were all forced to shutter their doors this past year directly because their costs have skyrocketed and their customers can no longer afford these high prices.

Now the Supreme Court has spoken. The emergency authority used to justify these tariffs--taxes that Americans have paid--did not authorize this mess. In simple terms: This administration did not have the power to do it, and yet, they did. Billions of dollars were illegally taken--in my view, stolen--from the American people.

Now what are my Republican colleagues proposing? They are proposing a bill on appliances. They want you, the small business owner, the working parent, they want you to have to hire a lawyer or to sue the Federal Government to get your own money back. Donald Trump himself said that you may have to litigate this for 5 years. Mr. Speaker, 5 years? That is not relief. That is a bureaucratic maze. It is a rigged system designed to exhaust you, to outlast you, and to ensure that the little guy never sees a dime.

Well, we have a solution. My bill, the RELIEF Act, does something radical in Washington. It makes the government fix its own mistake. It requires automatic refunds of all tariff payments from the last year within 90 days--no application, no protest process, no lawyer required. If the government took it illegally, the government must give it back, period.

To the businesses that received those refunds, it is time to bring prices down for working people and families who have stood by you and who kept you afloat.

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Mr. HORSFORD. Mr. Speaker, if Republicans block this vote, they are voting to keep your money. They are telling Main Street America: Take us to court. They are choosing delay over relief and politics over people.

Tonight, the President will stand in this very Chamber and try to sell the American people on his economy. Working families don't need a sales pitch; they need relief. They need honesty. They need their money back--no more excuses, no more delays, and no more courtroom battles.

Let us return what was taken. Let us stand with small businesses. Let us stand with the working families.

Mr. Speaker, I urge my colleagues to defeat the previous question and to support the RELIEF Act.

They vote to keep life unaffordable. This is a rigged system.

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Mr. HORSFORD. Mr. Speaker, the President has disregard and disrespect for the American people when the Supreme Court told him that his actions were illegal, they were unconstitutional, and it is time to give the American people their money back, to give them relief--not disrespect, not disregard, but their money back.

Mr. Speaker, I urge my colleagues to defeat the previous question and to support my bill, the RELIEF Act. If they vote ``yes'' and deny me the ability to bring forward the RELIEF Act, they are keeping your life more unaffordable.

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