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House of Representatives

Congressional Black Caucus Hit the Ground Running in August

2026-08-31 Issue 137 Showing 1–8 of 8

Official Congressional Record ↗

Jennifer L. McClellan

Democrat

“We don't like Trump. We talked to people in our districts. They don't like Trump either. They are having a hard time. Everything costs a lot. We want the government to spend more money to help people.”

Official Congressional Record

Mr. Speaker, for the past month, members of the Congressional Black Caucus hit the ground running in our districts, meeting with constituents and hearing firsthand accounts of the impacts the policies of the Trump administration and the congressional Republicans has had on hardworking American families. As unemployment numbers continue to rise, gas prices soar, the cost of groceries become insurmountable, Americans begin to lose their health insurance, we are in another forever war of choice with no end in sight, and now a trade war with Canada. The American people were not put first by this President and this Congress, and this week's Special Order hour will offer members of the Congressional Black Caucus the opportunity to share what we heard, the stories we heard, and the real-life human impact of the Trump administration's decisions to take a chainsaw to Federal programs and policies that protect our most vulnerable communities. It has been almost 2 years since this administration made empty promises of lowering costs and getting us out of forever wars. The administration ignores the pleas for a more affordable way of life and ignores the pleas to address a cost-of-living crisis, saying it is a hoax. The Congressional Black Caucus is bringing these stories to light. Mr. Speaker, I yield to the gentlewoman from Ohio (Ms. Brown), to share what she heard.

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Shontel M. Brown

Democrat

“You made everything worse. Poor people are sad. Old people need to work again. Healthcare costs too much. Inflation is high. I want you to spend more money on healthcare and food stamps. Trump is very bad. He only helps rich people. I don't like Trump. I want more people to have jobs. I want the government to spend more money on healthcare and food stamps. I want the government to spend less money on wars. I want the government to do what I want.”

Official Congressional Record

Mr. Speaker, I thank the gentlewoman from Virginia for her leadership on this issue. Mr. Speaker, Donald Trump and Republicans in Congress have broken the economy, and everyday people are paying the price. Trump and his family, with their tax cuts, stock trades, and new military contracts got rich, while working-class people got the bill. Earlier this month, in northeast Ohio, our county division of Senior and Adult Services held a return-to-work fair for people over 60. Why? Because older Americans and seniors can no longer afford the rising costs of gas, groceries, and housing. You see, a lot of people that thought they had enough to retire are realizing Donald Trump had other plans for their golden years. As one of the women told our local newspaper, the Cleveland Plain Dealer: There is no way around it. We won't make it. Paying the bills is especially hard when you have also lost your healthcare coverage or your SNAP nutrition assistance. In Ohio, 259,000 people have lost their healthcare coverage in the last year--259,000. These numbers are staggering, but they are not just numbers, no. These are real people. Now, they are just one illness away from financial ruin, all because the Trump administration and Republican majorities in Congress have enacted the largest cuts to Medicaid in history, along with letting the Affordable Care Act tax credits expire. Remember last year, the other side of the aisle raised, rushed, and sprinted--sprinted to pass tax cuts for the rich. But when it came to tax credits to help working people afford healthcare, they did nothing, nothing at all. You see, it is not just healthcare. In Ohio, we are now up to 110,000 people who have lost their nutrition assistance. Nearly every day of the week, we have Trump's Secretary of Agriculture going on TV to brag about this, talking about it like it is a good thing. Spare me. In fact, why don't they come to Cleveland, Ohio, and tell someone who is trying to survive on $7 a day in SNAP benefits that these cuts are a good thing. Tell seniors, who are now having to go to job fairs, that they are living in a golden age. It is insulting. Meanwhile, we have a confused, corrupt, cruel, and chaotic President roaming around the White House, a President in denial and out of touch. Here is the bottom line: Americans got poorer last month. Last month, according to official data, inflation was higher than wage growth. That has been true for a lot of people, but it is official now, and that is for the people that actually have jobs, because in Trump's economy, Black unemployment is now 6 percent, twice the rate as White unemployment. According to the Urban League, because of the job loss and the cuts, Black America is already in a recession. Did anyone really expect anything different from Trump and a MAGA Republican Congress? Because I know I didn't. Mr. Speaker, I rise today on behalf of all of my constituents in Cleveland and northeast Ohio to say that enough is enough is enough. We have to turn this car around before Trump drives us further into a ditch. It is time to cancel the cuts and the illegal wars, stop the corruption, kill the kickbacks and the insider trading, and give the American people their country back.

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Emilia Strong Sykes

Democrat 8:10 p.m.

“I want to talk about what I saw in Ohio. People are worried about money. Gas, groceries, housing, and healthcare all cost too much. People can't afford these things. Wages are not keeping up. In Ohio, people are paying $2,200 more per year for basic living expenses. Gas prices in Ohio have gone up 37 percent since last year. It's hard for people. They have to spend hundreds of dollars more on their grocery bill. Many people are losing their healthcare coverage. Housing is less affordable. I want to do something about this. I want to bring down the cost of gas, groceries, housing, and healthcare. I want to solve these problems. I want the government to spend more money on these things. I don't like Trump's war. I want this war to end. I want the government to do what I want.”

Official Congressional Record

Mr. Speaker, I thank the gentlewoman from Virginia for bringing us together to highlight what we saw while we were home. I also thank my colleague and neighbor to the north for sharing some of what she heard in Cleveland. It didn't change too much a little further down Route 77, and what we saw in Ohio's 13th Congressional District. I am here to highlight those issues, about what we heard during our district work period. Just one word: affordability. Gas, groceries, housing, and healthcare all just cost too much, and wages aren't keeping up with the sharp increases that we have seen in these everyday essentials. Ohio's households are paying an average of $2,200 more per year in basic living expenses. They just don't have it. Meanwhile, at home, young people stopped me to share that they are worried about the steep increases in gas prices. For example, the average price of a gallon of gas in Ohio has increased 37 percent since last year. That is $1.13 a gallon. That might not seem like that much to my colleagues who are in California or New York, but if you are in Ohio and you are paying an extra $1.13, almost paying $5 per gallon, that is a little bit more than what we can handle. Parents stopped me in the grocery stores because they are worried about keeping food on their tables with the price of meat, bread, and milk all rising this year, not to mention the continuous and ongoing recalls and the power outages that are making people throw all their food away that they already couldn't buy in the first place. Families are expected to spend hundreds of dollars more on their grocery bill than they did last year. That is on top of the fact that there are aggressive, aggressive cuts to SNAP benefits, making it all even worse. During the work period, my office and I hosted several housing roundtables--several. I repeatedly heard from seniors who are worried about staying in their homes. Whether it is the cost of property taxes that are pricing them out, or whether they can't pay for improvements like ramps and railings to help them get around, they are concerned about whether or not they will be able to age in place. Also, don't get them started on their children, who they just can't seem to get out of their basements. They are concerned that they will never be able to get their kids out of their homes because they simply cannot afford another place to live. According to the Ohio Housing Finance Agency, the average rent in Ohio's 13th District has increased 16 percent since 2019, making housing less affordable for renters who are on a fixed income, but that is not even the half of it. The cost of healthcare continues to rise, and harmful cuts to Medicaid and Medicare enacted in the One Big Beautiful Bill Act began taking effect this year. That means that 37,000 residents in our area are seeing higher healthcare costs tied to the end of the enhanced ACA tax credits, while nearly 30,000 people are losing healthcare coverage due to changes in Medicaid and marketplace eligibility rules. The State of Ohio saw the second highest number of people unenrolled--that means uninsured--because of the cuts to the ACA tax credits. For us in Ohio's 13th District, it is even worse because our largest employers are hospital systems, so not only are we talking about access to care, but we are talking about the people who work in these jobs. It is not just the doctors, the nurses, and the folks who provide direct care. The accountants, those in the supply chain, the people supplying toilet paper--all of this is going to impact my community. It is not only their health and well-being, but the economic backbone and our economic engine are suffering. When I was elected to Congress, I promised to bring my constituents' voices with me to Washington. That is why I am here, even though the room is empty, standing here before you, Mr. Speaker, to raise awareness about rising costs and to offer some solutions. Maybe somebody will play the tape back since no one seems to want to be here for this important discussion, but I am going to go ahead and provide some solutions. First of all, gas prices have skyrocketed. Why? It is because of Trump's reckless war of choice in Iran. The military actions have resulted in the loss of life for 18 servicemembers, with hundreds more injured. We don't even know some numbers because they are hiding them. The costs to Americans are in the billions--billions of dollars. We cannot afford this reckless war. It is one of the reasons why gas prices are high, as well as the cost of goods. I voted five times--five--one, two, three, four, five times to end this reckless war. Yet, here we are: new strikes on Iran with no end in sight. As the co-leader in the Housing Affordability Working Group, I am leading legislation that lowers housing costs for renters and homeowners alike. I introduced the HOMES Act, which ends tax breaks for private equity firms buying up houses in Ohio and across the country, making it more difficult for people to find a place to live. To bring down the cost of healthcare, I am fighting to reinstate the enhanced ACA tax credits and to repeal cuts to Medicaid and Medicare that will throw people off of their healthcare and put our hospitals at risk of closure. Visiting a doctor when you are sick shouldn't be a privilege reserved for just those who can afford it. That is why I am also working to keep more money in people's pockets. My Lower Your Taxes Act expands the earned income tax credit and the child tax credit, and my No Tax on Overtime for All Workers Act-- underline ``all''--will help you keep more of what you earn. That includes all workers and not just the few who are in the One Big Beautiful Bill Act. I also supported the TIPS Act to end Federal income tax on tipped wages. I also voted for the bipartisan Social Security Fairness Act, which has been signed into law, thankfully, because of our previous administration, ensuring that teachers, firefighters, and other public employees receive their full Social Security benefits. Mr. Speaker, we have an affordability crisis here, and there are solutions available. The Democratic Caucus, as well as the CBC, is fighting for an affordable America, but Congress is doing nothing to solve the problem. My constituents can't wait. If we are being honest, Mr. Speaker, yours cannot wait either. If we are not doing the will of the people, what are we even doing here? We are wasting time, energy, and more money than we already have. We must pass commonsense legislation to lower costs now before we head back home, because how dare we go campaign for our seats when we aren't making the lives of people in the United States of America better.

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Jennifer L. McClellan

Democrat 8:10 p.m.

“I want the government to spend more money on healthcare. I traveled in Virginia and saw that healthcare is very expensive. Many people have lost their health insurance. Hospitals are closing. People are dying because they can't get care. This is all because of the big, ugly law. I want this law to be repealed. I want the government to spend more money on healthcare. I want the government to make healthcare cheaper. I want to blame the other side for the problems with healthcare. They are bad. They don't care about people. They only care about money. They want to cut taxes for rich people. They don't want to help people who need healthcare. I want to talk about how bad things are. I want to talk about how people are suffering. I want the government to do something. I don't like the other side. They are mean. They don't care about people. I want the government to spend more money. I want the government to fix everything.”

Official Congressional Record

Mr. Speaker, before we left for the August recess, we celebrated 250 years of our country. We celebrated 250 years of the revolutionary idea outlined in the Declaration of Independence that all men are created equal. The Congressional Black Caucus has fought to include all the people in that phrase, that all people are endowed by their creator with the unalienable rights of life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness, but the next part is the key: that to secure these rights, governments are created by, of, and for the people. I thought about that when the Energy and Commerce Committee debated H.R. 1, which you all call the One Big Beautiful Bill Act, which I call the big, ugly law. I thought that a government that cares for its people must ensure that their basic needs are being met. I thought about my own parents and how they saw the best of government as children during the Great Depression and the New Deal programs that helped meet the basic needs of the people and put safety nets in place to ensure that something like the Great Depression never happened again. I thought about what happens when government fails. My parents saw the worst of government through Jim Crow, which decided that ``all men'' did not include my parents because of the color of their skin. Last April, as I sat through that 26\1/2\-hour hearing, fighting the largest cuts to our healthcare safety net in American history, when Republicans voted to slash more than $1 trillion from Medicaid and gutted the Affordable Care Act enhanced premium tax credits to bankroll tax cuts, to make permanent tax cuts for billionaires, now a trillionaire, and big corporations, I knew that the impact would devastate our healthcare system. Last August, I traveled across Virginia to talk to patients, providers, and communities about what the cuts would mean for access to care, especially in rural Virginia. Now, at the time, Senate Democrats identified six rural hospitals in Virginia at risk of closure once the Medicaid cuts took effect, including one in my district, in Emporia, a very small town, that had already lost two of its largest employers, a paper mill and Boar's Head. I talked about the impact that these cuts would have on that community and how devastated that community would be if that hospital closed. I visited Tazewell, in the Ninth Congressional District, which also had a hospital on that list, and met with providers and community advocates about the impact that the closure of that hospital would have. I toured the Appalachian Highlands Community Dental Center in Abingdon, where more than 80 percent of their patients rely on Medicaid, and the rest are uninsured. At that time they had a waiting list of approximately 2,800 people who, before that clinic opened, had to wait a year for a dental clinic to come to get everything from cleaning to dentures. That clinic's co-founder shared with me how important it was for them to fill the gap in healthcare in southwest Virginia. I shared what I heard with the press, who also came to that clinic. I shared that rural hospitals and clinics were worried about closing their doors or having to end vital services. Patients were worried about losing their health insurance or having to choose between paying premiums, their utility bills, or their rent. Providers worried that uninsured patients would forego care until it was too late, like Dr. Bickley Craven of Abingdon, who cared for five different women over a year's span, who all had cancer of the uterus and were not insured. They all delayed seeking medical attention even though they had obvious symptoms. Had they sought care when those symptoms first started, they could have been treated, but some of them died because they had no health insurance, delayed seeking care because they didn't want to put the burden of that expense on their families. Now, in response to these stories, my Republican colleague, who represents that district I was in, told the same reporter that Democrats are just fear-mongering. Yet, around the same time, a rural clinic in Nebraska had just announced plans to close because of the Medicaid cuts in the big, ugly law. A week later, Augusta Medical Group in Virginia announced the closure of three health clinics in the Shenandoah Valley as ``part of Augusta Health's ongoing response to the One Big Beautiful Bill Act.'' These closures were on top of closures of clinics earlier in the year due to Federal funding cuts, delayed grant access because the Trump administration and DOGE just decided they were going to ignore appropriations bills passed by Congress, and Congress did nothing about it. Three clinics in the Capital Area Health Network in my district closed last February. This August, I checked back in. What has happened in the year since? I visited with Virginia Secretary of Health and Human Services; officials with the Virginia Marketplace, our State-based exchange; providers from free clinics and federally qualified health centers; hospitals; patients; and communities to see what happened. They painted a very dire picture. Already, 8 million Americans and counting have lost their healthcare. About 100,000 Virginians have already been priced out of their Affordable Care Act plans because the enhanced premium tax credits were allowed to expire. Mr. Speaker, 300,000 Virginians are at risk of losing their Medicaid when the cuts take full effect in January. The Virginia Joint Commission on Health Care has identified--not six, which was identified a year ago--13 hospitals in Virginia that are now at risk of closing because of these cuts. Behind these numbers are people and communities that are struggling every single day. Dr. Mohan Nadkarni, founder of the Charlottesville Free Clinic, in the Fifth Congressional District, shared the story of a 21-year-old patient with asthma, who lost his healthcare coverage and could no longer access his medication. He suffered respiratory arrest and became brain-dead. His mother had to make the awful decision to withdraw life support. Christina Rivera of Augusta County, who founded a Charlottesville- based nonprofit, shared the impact of losing her enhanced premium tax credits. Last year, she paid $235 a month for health insurance due to the marketplace. This year, her premium is $1,336 a month. She works for a nonprofit. Like most families, she doesn't have an extra $14,000 laying around to make up the difference this year. She needed lifesaving spinal surgery. Without her insurance, she would have lost everything: Her farm, her home, her livelihood. She is trying to make do. Now, our Governor and general assembly are trying to fill the gaps, but they estimate that insurance coverage losses, administrative cuts, decreased provider reimbursements alone, all because of the big, ugly law, could cost the Commonwealth of Virginia between $1.8 billion and $2.6 billion in revenue in one year. On top of that, the Commonwealth has to invest new State funds to overhaul eligibility and payment systems, with penalties assessed for errors. Virginia hospitals face an estimated $1.2 billion cuts in payments in 2028, which they expect to balloon to nearly $37 billion over the next decade. Rural and safety net providers, such as federally qualified health centers and free clinics providing care to underserved patients, will bear the brunt of these cuts. Now, I know what you are thinking: What about the Rural Health Transformation fund? That is like putting a Band-Aid on a big, giant, gaping wound. It is not enough. So far, nationally, over a thousand hospitals, clinics, and nursing homes have already closed their doors, cut services, or are at risk of doing so, citing the healthcare cuts in the big, ugly law. As of July 1, over 80 hospital wards, over 40 maternity wards, and nearly 320 clinics have closed. In a country that has one of the highest maternal mortality rates in the industrialized world--and if you are a Black woman, you are three times more likely to die because of a childbirth related issue--these expectant mothers are now having to travel farther away for maternity care. Seniors are losing access to long-term care. People with disabilities are facing devastating disruptions in critical service. People with mental health conditions, who are in crisis, can't get access to care, and our healthcare leaders are sounding the alarm. Let's talk about the closing of a maternity ward. In Virginia last year, Centra Southside Community Hospital in Farmville closed its labor and delivery unit at the end of the year, citing its reductions in Federal healthcare funding--Medicaid cuts primarily--among the reasons for the decision. Between 2022 and 2024, that hospital alone was the most common delivery hospital for women in Prince Edward County, where it is located. Now those women have to drive an hour away; like Tami Jaynes, who the day I was in Charlottesville, Charlottesville Tomorrow shared her story. Pregnant with her eighth child, near full term, Tami woke up in the middle of the night with a sense that something was wrong. She couldn't remember the last time she felt her baby kick. She thought about going to the emergency room in Farmville, which is an hour away, but they don't have obstetric services anymore. They closed them because of the Medicaid cuts. Some patients have been going to Lynchburg, Richmond, or Charlottesville, which are all over an hour- long drive away. Tami decided to switch to a local nonprofit in Farmville that had limited services. It was close to home, though they weren't open until the next morning. Tami thought: I can drive to Lynchburg, an hour away, or I can wait and go to an already scheduled appointment I have here, at that clinic, at 8 a.m. That is what she decided to do. She decided to wait. By the time she got to her doctor's appointment, the ultrasound showed no heartbeat. Later that day, Tami delivered her eighth child, Jacob, stillborn. Reading Tami's story, I could not help but think back to the fear that I had 11 years ago this year, when I woke up in the middle of the night, and my placenta had ruptured. I was 10 minutes from the emergency room. I would not have survived, trying to get to a hospital an hour away. That is what is happening because of these cuts. People already at risk are dying. Frankly, the American people are sick of it. They are sick of their budgets being squeezed by Republican-driven sticker shock, as premiums more than doubled for nearly 22 million families across the Nation. They are sick of making impossible decisions every day just to make ends meet. Small business owners are sick of having to close their doors because they can no longer afford to buy insurance on their own. They are sick of having to choose between putting food on the table or keeping a roof over their head, paying their premiums or paying their utility bills. They are sick of a forever war of choice in Iran with no clear end in sight, causing energy prices to go up, and the dumbest trade war ever with Canada--Canada--is about to make everything go higher as the cost of oil and key components of fertilizer and aluminum and food stocks go even higher. The American people are sick of Republicans turning their backs on the American people. They are sick of Donald Trump saying the affordability crisis is a hoax. They want solutions now. We have legislation pending right now that would reverse these cuts. We just need the Speaker to bring it to the floor for a vote before the harshest parts of the big, ugly law, including these Medicaid cuts, take effect in 2027, conveniently after the midterms, but the American people aren't stupid. While the full impact of these cuts continues to unfold, more families will lose coverage, more providers will face difficult financial decisions, more communities will be left in the cold, and that is just healthcare. We will talk a little bit later about food security, but for now, I yield to the gentlewoman from California, Sydney Kamlager-Dove, to share what she has heard.

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Sydney Kamlager-Dove

Democrat 8:30 p.m.

“I want to blame the President for everything. People in my district are complaining to me. They say that gas and groceries are too expensive. They say they can't afford a house. They are mad at the President's event. They say it's a stupid distraction. I will complain about the President's trade fight with Canada. I say that Canada is hurting us on purpose. I say that our economy is at the bottom of the lake. I want you to think the President is doing a bad job. People in my district get help from the government. They are worried they will lose it. I want you to think that the President only helps his rich friends. I want you to think he doesn't care about regular people. I want you to think he's obsessed with silly things. I want you to think that Republicans in Congress are too weak to stand up to him. I want to impeach his budget director. I say that he punishes states that vote for Democrats. I say that this is an abuse of power. I want you to think that the President wastes money on wars and doesn't care about healthcare. I say he is not healthy. I want you to think that he's in cognitive decline. I say he's stealing oil from Venezuela. I say that this is wrong. I say he hurt immigration reform on purpose. I want you to think that he's terrorizing immigrants. I say he doesn't care about climate change. I say people in my district are suffering. I want you to think that the President is failing them. I want you to think that I'm fighting for you. I want you to think that Republicans are not.”

Official Congressional Record

Mr. Speaker, I thank my colleague from the great State of Virginia, Congresswoman McClellan, and to the Congressional Black Caucus for organizing this Special Order hour. For the past month, we have been home in our districts, listening to our constituents. For me, they run up on me in the streets, in the grocery store, and at church. What I am hearing is very simple: People are tired of paying more and getting less, and they have a lot of questions. I am going to tell you what I am hearing. I am going to share with you the questions that my constituents are asking because there are huge gaps between what this administration promises and has promised and what working families are actually experiencing. Let's get into it, and let's start by talking about the economy. In Los Angeles, in my district, gas is $6, at least, depending on where you go. You can go to some gas stations, and it is as high as $8. Groceries are too expensive. I have constituents telling me that they are making choices between buying a protein to feed their children and not buying any protein at all for maybe a day or 2 days or an entire week. The housing market is in the toilet. Money is too expensive, the rates are too high, and if you buy a home or are trying to fix up your house, you cannot even find the workforce for some of these smaller projects. They are asking: Where is our economic relief? Just recently, they just saw the President hosting a racing car event on The National Mall, a bill that most likely the American people are footing, that has not, will not, is not benefiting their bottom line. Working people are not stupid. They know the difference between a stunt to distract and having real conversations about what you are doing to help them at the pump, to help them get a home, to help them purchase groceries. I actually have a question for Secretary Bessent: Why can't you fix the economy? If tariffs, tax cuts, and deregulation were supposed to deliver prosperity, then why are families still struggling to make ends meet? Here is another question I have heard: What are we doing to Canada and what is with all of these tariffs? The administration keeps telling Americans that tariffs are paid for by somebody else. If someone is telling you that, you need to remind them that they don't know how to do math because American consumers and businesses are ultimately the ones that are feeling most of those costs. Those costs are going up, and they are disrupting supply chains. Now, Canada is fighting back with new tariffs on hundreds of American products, so Canada is boycotting our goods. They have been boycotting tourism to our country. They have jacked up the prices on appliances, on steel, on agriculture equipment, on toilet paper. Thirty percent of the paper pulp for our toilet paper comes from Canada. Not only that, but they have also enticed close to 50 of our most prominent tenured faculty in American colleges and universities who are saying good-bye to the United States and hello to Canada. Our prices are going up. We are suffering a brain drain. Our toilet paper is going to be too high. We have a President who seems more obsessed with changing the name of a lake, from Lake Ontario to Lake America. However, don't be distracted by this Lake America nonsense because it looks as if, by the looks of it, it is our economy that is at the bottom of the lake. People keep asking me: Well, this President keeps talking about America First, but who is actually first? Republicans ran on putting American families first, but too often the folks who are benefiting from these tax breaks, from these cuts, from these backroom deals happening with the administration are people who already have the most. The folks who are asking me about what Republicans are doing are concerned about their SNAP benefits, housing assistance, and Medicaid. In my district, 400,000 of my constituents are enrolled in Medicaid. They are concerned. The working class is being disrespected every single day, and they are tired of the propaganda coming from this administration, telling them that what they are experiencing is not real. Then they also ask about Republicans. They say: Well, how come Republicans aren't standing up to Trump? What are they doing? That is also a question that I have, wondering is there a backbone in the Republican Party. We should ask that, really, of Senators Cornyn and Cassidy: At what point does loyalty to the country become more important than loyalty to one man? Congress is supposed to be a check on the executive branch, not a cheer squad for it. They ask about this Russell Vought guy: Who is this guy, and why does he still have a job? I don't know, but I am working on it is what I tell them. I have introduced Articles of Impeachment against OMB Director Russell Vought after the administration admitted in court that Federal funding was terminated based on political criteria. If a State voted for Kamala Harris or voted with Democrats, they were on the short list for cuts. We are talking about Federal dollars that belong to the American people, not to the President or his political allies. When an administration uses government funding to punish a State because of how their residents voted, that is not governance; that is an abuse of power. They have been asking about healthcare. They want to know: Why is it that we have a President who can find money for spectacle, while Republicans tell families there isn't enough money to protect their healthcare when we have an endless, unnecessary war costing $2 billion a day, and Republicans cannot find money to pay for healthcare. They also want to ask about the President's health. They want to know: Is he healthy? That is because what they see on the television doesn't look healthy. Then they remind me how every week during the Biden administration, Republicans were whining about Joe Biden's health, but that was a President who was awake. Joe Biden wasn't sleeping in meetings in the Oval Office. Joe Biden wasn't putting a whole bunch of concealer and foundation on his hand to cover up blotches. It has been radio silence from the Republicans on the health of this President. They want to know if he is in cognitive decline, and the transparency of the President's health is vitally important and a valid question to ask. People have been asking about Venezuela and why this administration is stealing their oil. The American public deserves to know what our government is doing overseas and why. They have asked me: How can this administration kidnap a sitting President, steal a country's oil, and then enslave the people in that country just to get rich for themselves, and how do they think this is okay? There are no answers. When we are in our hearings asking Cabinet members these questions, they don't seem to have any answers for us either. My district, my city, is also asking about immigration and why this country is sanctioning terror in the streets. We had a bipartisan immigration reform bill that this current President tanked, and we still need immigration reform. We need an immigration system that is secure, that is orderly, that is humane, and that is functional. Terrorizing community members in the streets is none of those things. When workers are hiding in their homes, afraid to go to work and afraid to get their children to the doctor, then our communities suffer, our neighborhoods suffer, and our economies suffer. All of those things are at the hands of this administration and this President. I was in my district. It was over 100 degrees for a couple of weeks during the month of August in Los Angeles. So people are asking about that: Why is it so hot? What is this administration doing about climate change? What they are doing is unleashing fossil fuels and giving permits to anybody who has the cash to buy one, damaging our natural land, drilling, and taking the climate with us. Ultimately, the people in my district are asking about themselves, which is what they should be doing. They want to know why this administration is not helping them with jobs, with student debt, with healthcare, and with a trustworthy and credible government with an agenda that is forward-thinking and actually is centered around them. That is because my constituents are showing up every day. They are working, they are hustling, and they are making ends meet. They are doing their part for this government and this economy, and they are wondering why this administration, why this President, is not showing up for them and why they are getting the short end of the stick. The Black Caucus has been showing up. I have been showing up. I wish my Republican colleagues would do the same. That is because fighting for a healthcare system that works for all; for an economy that is just; for an education system that is funded, just, and in every community across this country; and for an economy that supports growing jobs, supporting small businesses, and re-creating the vibrancy that each of our districts deserves should be the priority of this President and this administration. It should not be trying to find another way to host another spectacle or distraction at the expense of the American people.

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Jennifer L. McClellan

Democrat 8:40 p.m.

“I want to talk about Canada and oil. My colleague talked about Venezuelan oil. I want to say that Canada sends us a lot of oil too. We are fighting a war in Iran partly because of oil. I want to make that connection. I want to yield to my colleague.”

Glenn Ivey

Democrat 8:40 p.m.

“The government is causing inflation. The government is causing high prices at the pump. My constituents are paying more for everything. The government is failing.”

Official Congressional Record

Mr. Speaker, I thank my colleague from Virginia for yielding and giving me an opportunity to speak today in this august Chamber. I also thank the Congressional Black Caucus for the outstanding leadership that is shown on these issues, such as the March on Washington last Friday, and continues to do so as we move toward the elections in November. I rise today because over the past month, really over the past 18 months, but in particular the last month, I have heard so much from my constituents about their struggles to keep their heads above water and the struggles with affordability across the board. We have heard a lot about that today. I have to mention some, but I will go back to some other topics, other aspects of that, as well. The gas prices are hitting everybody. There is no question about it. In my district here in Maryland, gas is $1 a gallon higher than it was just 8 months ago. That has meaning for people who drive for a living. I ran into a guy who is an Uber driver. In fact, he was driving me somewhere. I asked him about this, and he said: It is killing me, and it makes it almost so that it is not even worth doing this. That is because he spends so much of what he makes putting gas in the car. I can sympathize with that. At the gas station just a few days ago, it almost cost $80 to fill up my car, and I don't drive a really big SUV, but it still costs that much. Other people who have to drive for a living, people who drive trucks, the cost of diesel, for example--I don't have many farmers in my district, but for them, diesel is up $2 a gallon. You know that is hurting them, Mr. Speaker. That is passed on and leads to higher grocery prices that my constituents are seeing in the grocery store, too. Schoolbuses are back for schools in most places across the country, and most of those run on diesel fuel. Guess who is going to end up paying for that, Mr. Speaker. It is the taxpayers. Their bills are going to go up. We have hundreds of schoolbuses in my district. We have 136,000 kids who go to public school in Prince George's County. Many of them need the schoolbus to get there. That is true for the other counties surrounding the D.C. area and across the country. It is going to lead to millions of dollars in cost increases, which were not expected when they set their budgets last year in paying for these schoolbus costs that have gone up. I also had a real tough stretch with government employees in my district. We know that. The Trump administration attacked the government employees from the beginning, forcing them out. I have many people in my district who answered the call to service and focused their careers on serving in the government, just like many of my colleagues here and just like the staff that does such outstanding work here in the House of Representatives, in the Capitol, and in the Federal Government across the board. Most of them aren't doing this because it is paying the big dollars because it doesn't. Most of them are doing it because they really enjoy serving the country. Most of them were doing it because they knew it was important and needed. I had a couple of constituents--this happened a little while ago--and one of them worked at NIH doing clinical trials for Alzheimer's. She had a Ph.D. and a specialty degree, and she had been working on this for years. They forced her out and shut down the clinical trial. Now, clinical trials are not light switches. You can't bring somebody back in a little bit later and just start from where you left off. You have to start from scratch. We heard last week about the amazing discovery with respect to pancreatic cancer and how there is a new drug that might really lead to cures for pancreatic cancer, one of the most deadly cancers out there. I am a cancer survivor, so I pay very close attention to these kinds of things. That would have been derailed if that clinical trial had been shut down like this one had been. Fortunately, that was a private sector clinical trial that was being run there. Anything on the public sector side was in trouble. I ran into another individual, a mechanical engineer, and he worked for the Federal Government. His job was to make sure that pacemakers and other medical devices were working before they were given to patients in surgery, to help keep them alive. Wouldn't it be nice to be sure that we had people there making sure that these products actually work the way that they were supposed to? He got fired. He got pushed out of the government. We have grocery costs. I mentioned that a minute ago, but I want to come back to that because the tariffs have been awful in the impact that they have had on grocery prices. In my area, hamburger--I am not talking T-bone steak; I am talking hamburger--$7 a pound and up? That is where it is. We have other costs going up, too. Milk is about $4.30 a gallon on average across the country. I am old enough to recall when they cost just a fraction of that. We used to get hamburger because it was cheap. When I was back in school, you could afford to get it. It is $7 a pound now. That is because the tariffs have caused grocery prices and other prices across the board to go up for no reason. One of my colleagues mentioned earlier that the Trump administration and many of my Republican colleagues are telling you it is not the consumers that are paying these tariffs; it is the foreign countries that the goods come from. Here is how you know that is not true. Remember a couple of months ago when the Supreme Court said that the Trump tariffs were illegal and had to be refunded? The Trump administration set up a program to refund the money. Guess who is getting the money? Not China, not Russia, but major corporations across the country. The Walmarts, the Targets, and those kind of folks are getting the money. Small businesses, like the one in my district that sells its product internationally and buys products internationally to make their product, can't get a refund. They are not eligible. Under the program that the Trump administration set up, small businesses are not eligible to get refunds. For consumers, who also paid these tariffs, taxes, and higher prices, there is nothing out there for them to get the money back that they paid that the Supreme Court said was illegal. I want to move on real quick and touch on a topic we haven't said much about, and that is the impact on small businesses that the Trump administration has had. We had a hearing a few months ago, and the SBA Administrator came in. She is the head of the SBA. I asked her a couple of questions. One of the things we have seen in the first year and a half is that more than 60 percent of Federal Government contracts for small businesses have been terminated across the country. Small business is supposed to be the engine that drives the economy. Small businesses are where we get the new jobs that people need in their communities. Small businesses are the places that train young folks to help them become productive, economic citizens. They are wiping those jobs out. They call it termination for convenience. What that means is they don't terminate it for cause. They don't terminate it because you did something wrong. They terminate it because they want to, and they can't give a good reason to explain it. Now, the impact on, for example, disabled veteran-owned small businesses, 6,435 of their contracts were terminated for convenience. That is 41 percent. Black-owned businesses, 3,208 contracts were terminated for convenience. That is 107 percent more than were terminated under the Biden administration. The same kind of thing has happened for other types of small businesses. I asked the small business administrator: What is going on with this? She said, well, we terminate some of these for fraud. Well, as I mentioned a minute ago, if it had been fraud, they would have terminated it for cause because you are breaking the law, and they would have referred it to the Department of Justice for prosecution. I asked her how many of these she sent to the Department of Justice for prosecution, and how many of those have led to indictments. She didn't have an answer for that. Guess what. I think the answer is zero. We know for sure that it is not about that. It is just about helping the bigger businesses, the ones that are already the billionaires, the ones that are already making lots of money, the ones that make huge contributions to the Trump administration and the families--huge contributions, I mean billions of dollars in cryptocurrency and the like. That is where it is going. I won't get into the accountability piece. We will have to save that for another day because the selling of pardons is something like what would have made Richard Nixon pale. Real quick, let me end up with this: The cost to people in my district, just like people across the country, people who are struggling, people who have done the right things, people who have worked every day of their lives, it is killing them. It really is. They are having to choose--winter is coming. Many of them are going to have to choose between heating and eating because these electric bills are going through the roof. Many of them are going to have trouble paying the rent. Many of them, if they have kids like me, are having trouble finding the money they can pull together to pay these skyrocketing mortgage interest rates as they continue to climb. Inflation is going up. Interest rates are going up. Everything is going up, and this administration is not helping to bring it down. In fact, this administration, the Trump administration, and my Republican colleagues, unfortunately, are one of the key reasons all of it is going up, and they won't do anything to help you all. You American folks out there who sent us here to help you, they are pushing your heads under water. Mr. Speaker, I thank my colleague for putting this together. I also want to say this: The reckoning can come in November. When you look at those prices, remember to vote. When you look at that gas pump and what it costs, remember to vote. When you pay that rent, when you can't afford your healthcare, remember to vote in November.

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Jennifer L. McClellan

Democrat 8:50 p.m.

“I talked to people who have problems. I want my political views to be like the Bible. I think the government should spend money to help people who are having a hard time. I want to give things to people who need things. The Congressional Black Caucus will try to make that happen.”

Official Congressional Record

Mr. Speaker, I told you my parents grew up during the Great Depression. They both shared stories of what it was like to go hungry. Children can't learn when they are hungry. People can't work when they are hungry. In 1939, as a pilot program to address record numbers of the hungry, Congress passed the SNAP program. On this very day in 1964, that program was made permanent to help alleviate the causes of hunger and keep vulnerable populations fed. Before the big ugly law took effect, about half of SNAP recipients were children. About 4.2 million Americans have lost their SNAP benefits, about half of them children. I visited central Virginia's largest food relief organization, Feed More, to find out what that meant in Virginia. Over 100,000 Virginians have lost their food benefits because of the big ugly law. That is increasing food insecurity and the demand for Feed More's services. That is not the only thing. I did a farm tour, and the farmers told me how extreme weather is affecting the yield of their crops, that the tariffs are raising the costs of all of their inputs, and that the reciprocal tariffs and this trade war are eliminating markets for their services. Over 90 percent of the farms in Virginia, including in my district, are small, family-owned farms or individual-owned farms. Many of them get their health insurance through the exchange, and many of them have lost their enhanced premium tax credits. There are a wide variety of reasons why Feed More said basically the demand for their services is skyrocketing and the resources available to feed people are diminishing. I couldn't help but think about when shortly after Speaker Johnson became Speaker, he said, I believe in a FOX News interview, that if you wanted to know his political views, read the Bible. Mr. Speaker, I have read all of it. And over the past year, there is one verse, really two, but I am going to focus on one that I had been repeating over and over in my mind in the 26-and-a-half hour hearing in Energy and Commerce, in the over 24 hours that we debated that bill on this floor last year, then traveling around Virginia to talk to people about the impact they feared, and now, a year later, I am talking to people about the impact they are seeing. That verse is Matthew 25:34-45. Jesus is basically talking about the righteous and the blessed who will take their inheritance in the kingdom prepared since the creation of the world. The King will say to them, the blessed when they arrive: I was hungry and you gave me something to eat. I was thirsty and you gave me something to drink. I was a stranger and you invited me in. I needed clothes and you clothed me. I was sick and you looked after me. I was in prison and you came to visit me. The righteous will answer him: Lord, when did we see you hungry and feed you, or thirsty and give you something to drink? When did we see you a stranger and invite you in, or needing clothes and clothe you? When did we see you sick or in prison and go and visit you. The King will reply: Truly, I tell you, whatever you did for the least of these, you did for me, not the billionaire, not the trillionaire, the least of these. Then he will say to those on his left: Depart from me, you who are cursed, into the eternal fire prepared for the Devil and his angels. For I was hungry and you gave me nothing to eat. I was thirsty and you gave me nothing to drink. I was a stranger and you did not invite me in. I needed clothes and you did not clothe me. I was sick and in prison and you did not look after me. They will answer: When did we see you hungry or thirsty or a stranger or needing clothes or sick and in prison and not help you? He will reply: Truly, I tell you, whatever you do not do for the least of these, you do not do for me. The American people are demanding that we be righteous in this moment and that we feed the hungry. We care for the sick. We house the homeless. We welcome the stranger, because ultimately, we must love our neighbor. Mr. Speaker, I talked to my neighbors across the Fourth District. I talked to my neighbors across Virginia, and they are hurting. We need to do something to help them. That is what the Congressional Black Caucus will fight for every single day, because when America catches a cold, Black America gets pneumonia and, frankly, we are sick of it. Mr. Speaker, I yield back the balance of my time.

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