“I am letting my colleagues speak first tonight before I give my own remarks.”

“Mr. Speaker, I am excited to welcome my colleagues to speak with me tonight during this Special Order. I understand some of my colleagues have commitments, and I want to be respectful of their time. I will have them start us off before I provide some of my own comments. Mr. Speaker, I yield to the gentleman from North Carolina (Mr. Knott).”

“I want to congratulate the girls' softball team from Johnston County, North Carolina. They won the Little League Softball World Series.”

“Mr. Speaker, it is my privilege to recognize and salute the Little League Softball World Series Champions from Johnston County, North Carolina, today. Earlier this month, they won a rigorous contest to become the champions, making all of North Carolina’s 13th Congressional District proud. The team is out of Clayton, North Carolina, and all of these girls and their coaches are from the greater Johnston County area. Many of them are classmates, neighbors, friends, and family. For the entire season, they worked, competed, and improved together. On August 8, they took the field against Kentucky in the championship game of the Little League World Series. They did not just win. They won in dominant fashion. Pitcher Anna-Lynn Clark threw a complete game and also completed a shutout. The team’s defense allowed one Kentucky runner to reach scoring position for the entire game. The final score was 2-0. This was, remarkably, their second straight shutout of the tournament. But the scoreboard is not the whole story. In the first inning of that championship game, the girls from Johnston County lost their starting second baseman to a serious injury. Her team did not fold. They rallied around her, dug in, and secured the victory. Mr. Speaker, I congratulate these champions, their families, their coaches, and the greater Archer Lodge community. All of North Carolina is proud of them.”

“I agree that the Little League World Series is the best sporting event of the year. Congratulations to the team.”

“Mr. Speaker, I concur. The greatest sporting event of the year is always, of course, the Little League World Series. Thank you to the gentleman from North Carolina for highlighting it, and congratulations to that incredible team. Mr. Speaker, I yield to the gentlewoman from Virginia (Mrs. Kiggans).”

“I voted to condemn socialism because it hurts freedom and individual rights. Our government works best when it stays small and gets out of the way of businesses and families. House Republicans have worked to cut taxes, lower housing costs, and stop insider trading in Congress. We work for you, and we must keep government limited.”

“Mr. Speaker, I rise today to speak on one of our Nation’s most sacred founding principles: the idea that the Federal Government should work for the American people, not the other way around. It is an ideal that dates back to the founding of our constitutional Republic and one that I never thought would need to be reaffirmed. However, it became a topic of debate this week, as my colleagues and I voted to advance a resolution condemning and denouncing socialism in all of its forms. Socialism, at its core, represents the very antithesis of small government. In socialist economies, the means of production are wholly owned and controlled by the State, completely dismissing the potential for human innovation and without the accountability and opportunity that only come from free market capitalism. Growing up during the Cold War, members of my generation witnessed the failure of the very socialist policies that some are advocating for today. We saw the poverty-stricken cities of eastern Europe, the underserved healthcare system of Cuba, and the violence committed against political dissidents that bravely spoke out against their failing governments. Socialism is not just about bad policy, but it represents principles that are fundamentally at odds with economic freedom and individual liberty upon which our great Nation was founded. I believe, just as the Founding Fathers believed, that government works best when it gets out of your way. We should never feel government. Unfortunately, so many rules and regulations have been put in place on local, State, and Federal Government levels that are growing the size of our government. Limited government means knowing where the Government’s responsibilities end and where people’s freedoms begin. That means cutting unnecessary red tape and protecting taxpayer dollars from waste, fraud, and abuse. Choosing to ignore identifiable fraud in our government isn’t just wrong. It is theft at the expense of the American taxpayer. A small government is one that supports our small businesses because it recognizes that they are the backbone of our local economies, driving job creation and opportunity across our Nation. A small government gives businesses the freedom to invest, grow, and put more men and women to work. A small government protects our environment without stifling growth and development. A small government sets its eyes on the responsibilities that only it can fulfill, from taking care of our veterans and securing our borders to providing a strong national defense and standing by our allies. We, as elected officials, have a duty to meet the constitutionally outlined obligations entrusted upon us every election day. These values that prioritize a small government are important to me as a commonsense Conservative, and they are the very same values that our brave men and women in uniform have gone to some of the most dangerous places around the world to defend. I have worn that uniform, my husband has worn that uniform, and my son proudly wears it today, as do so many across Virginia’s Second District. I am proud of the work that I, alongside my Republican colleagues, have been able to accomplish in pursuit of these ideals. We passed the Working Families Tax Cut Act to keep the Federal Government out of your bank accounts and out of your pocketbooks by doubling the standard deduction, expanding the child tax credit, and establishing a new deduction for seniors because we believe that you, not the government, should keep more of your hard-earned money. We passed the 21st Century ROAD to Housing Act to cut burdensome red tape so we can incentivize developers, lower costs, and put the American Dream of homeownership back within reach for millions of Americans. We most recently passed the Stop Insider Trading Act to increase transparency in Washington because public office should never be a pathway to personal profit. These pieces of legislation embody the very spirit of what it means to have a limited government. They reflect the belief that you know how to spend your money better than the government does, the potential for growth and innovation when Washington gets out of the way and, most importantly, the assertion that at the end of the day, we work for you. With much more work to be done, I couldn’t be prouder of what we have achieved and what Americans will continue to achieve. Limited government isn’t just a talking point. It has been proven to deliver prosperity and economic freedom for millions around the world, and it is firmly ingrained in the fabric of the American way of life. The United States is the greatest country in the world, not because of the power and scale of our government, but because we empower the people to live their lives by embracing freedom, ingenuity, and hard work here.”

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  Speech in the House

  Signal 29 of 100

  Much of this statement went to praise, blame, greetings, routine procedure or general stories rather than reasons, requests or specific points.

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“Representative Jen Kiggans does great work for our military members. Nobody cares about our service members more than she does.”

“Mr. Speaker, I thank the gentlewoman from the Commonwealth of Virginia for her remarks. I appreciate all of the work that she does. She cares. I have been able to go throughout her district with her to her military bases. I know of nobody who understands the issues more than her and who cares about the issues of our servicemen and -women more than Jen Kiggans. I thank her for sharing that message with us tonight. I now yield to the gentleman from Tennessee (Mr. Kustoff).”

“Critics are wrong about our tax bill. It helps small businesses and lower- and middle-income Americans, not billionaires. It caps the child tax credit so wealthy people cannot use it, and it helps working families keep more of their money.”

“Mr. Speaker, I thank the gentleman from Tennessee for his remarks. I loved the opportunity to work with him on that bill. As he brings up 199A, it is always fascinating. The one thing I wish we didn’t have to go through back here--there is a long list of that, I guess--is the misrepresentation of that bill. The vast majority of it is targeted at small business and middle- and lower-income Americans. There is a constant, let me call it, like I said, misrepresentation of ``this goes to the billionaires and doesn’t help the working class.’’ Then explain to me why the child tax credit is income capped, so middle- and lower-income Americans are the ones who take advantage of it. Then you add in the standard deduction, things like 199A, those are all targeted at small businesses and lower- and middle-income Americans. It is frustrating and disheartening to constantly hear the misrepresentation from the left on that tax policy. It is what it is, unfortunately, but it is one of the things that really wears on you because it is just not accurate, and they know it, but it is where we are. I thank the gentleman from Tennessee for sharing that. I now yield to the gentleman from the great State, maybe the greatest State, I think we can call it the greatest State in the United States of Utah (Mr. Kennedy).”

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  Speech in the House

  Signal 35 of 100

  Much of this statement went to praise, blame, greetings, routine procedure or general stories rather than reasons, requests or specific points.

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“Small government works best. As a doctor, I saw how insurance rules and government red tape hurt patients by getting between them and their care. More rules and spending make government slow and costly. We need to cut back federal rules and let people keep more of their money.”

“Mr. Speaker, I thank Congressman Moore for the opportunity to speak in this Special Order and also for the gentleman’s advocacy for our outstanding State. I am proud to be with my friend and the congressional delegation from the great State of Utah. Today, Mr. Speaker, I rise to speak on a principle that is as old as our Republic: Small government delivers big results. Before I came to this Chamber, I spent my career as a family physician in Utah. Throughout those years, I saw firsthand what happens when Washington inserts regulations and when the bureaucracy inserts themselves between people and their lives. As an example, I wanted to bring up an experience that I had as a doctor years ago with an individual with whom I spent a significant period of time in the room trying to understand the symptoms that this person described and trying to help them move forward in their health and well-being. In that circumstance, some of the symptoms that this person described worried me or had me concerned about a possible cardiac condition, some problem with their heart. I ordered a stress test, which is an expensive test. It is a test to look at the function of the heart to see if there are any blood flow issues or aspects of the heart that would threaten for a heart attack. I ordered that test, and, Mr. Speaker, I waited for days, ultimately 13 days, for the insurance determination as to whether they would pay for that test. On day 13, I received notification from this person’s insurance that they would not pay for the heart test. Come to find out, the very next day this individual suffered from a heart attack. The insurance in this case thought it was beneficial to their bottom line to reject the judgment that I had as a professional to determine that this person needed a preventative heart evaluation to make sure that they wouldn’t have a heart attack. Instead, they denied my efforts to diagnose this problem before it became a critical problem, saving themselves a few thousand dollars potentially on a heart test and subsequently threatening the life of this patient, as well as spending tens of thousands of dollars. Ultimately, the person went through the heart symptoms that they had. They went to the emergency department and were admitted to the hospital. They had a coronary artery bypass graft, the procedure that was done saving this person’s life, but after serious debility associated with that--and also this person’s life was threatened. Subsequently, the insurance company spent tens of thousands of dollars instead of a few thousand dollars on that person. Excessive government has built a great deal of bureaucracy between a doctor and that doctor’s patients. There are rules. We have approvals. We have requirements and determinations that are made somewhere far away by someone who has never met the patient and never sat with them or their family. In many cases, these individuals have no medical training at all, yet that person or those systems can still override the judgment of the professionals or the people. Nearly every one of those barriers began with someone’s good intention, someone who is trying to fix a real problem and believed that another rule, another program, or some other layer of government was going to be the answer to the problem. Unfortunately, Mr. Speaker, good intentions are where Big Government contributions end. That is because when those ideas are put into practice, Americans are too often left with a government that is slow, a government that is costlier, and a government that is more obstructive than is needed. For too long, Washington has operated under the flawed assumption that the size of the program measures its success and that the more money Federal agencies spend, the more the American people will benefit. Progress does not come from expanding bureaucratic power in this way. Progress comes from individuals, from their dreams, and from their aspirations and their inspiration. Nowhere is that principle more clearly demonstrated than in the tangible benefits that Americans are already seeing through the working families tax cuts. When we passed that landmark legislation, we made simple promises to the American people: They should keep more of what they earn, and we, Congress, would rein in Federal overreach, eliminate wasteful spending, and return resources to the people who worked to earn them. Today, those promises are producing real results in Utah and across the country. Mr. Speaker, the government cannot create lasting prosperity. The American people are who create lasting prosperity. When Washington steps back, American families will step forward. Mr. Speaker, I thank my colleague from Utah (Mr. Moore). I am grateful for the opportunity to address this issue.”

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  Speech in the House

  Signal 22 of 100

  Much of this statement went to praise, blame, greetings, routine procedure or general stories rather than reasons, requests or specific points.

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“We passed a bill this week to stop a government shutdown. It keeps the government open and gives us more time to make spending decisions. This bill protects funding for veterans, food aid, housing, disaster relief, transit, and national security. I am glad both parties worked together so workers and families will not be hurt by another shutdown.”

“Mr. Speaker, I thank the gentleman from Utah (Mr. Kennedy) for his excellent words. They come from a place of firm understanding, being a physician and recognizing that the answers are not derived from Washington. I had it couched. I was talking with a colleague the other day, saying that the legislation of the working families tax cuts that we accomplished last year had the largest spending reductions in history. At the same time, it has provided more relief to families with respect to the tax policy than any piece of tax legislation that we have seen. It is all focused on middle- and lower-income Americans. That is where the bulk of that comes from, and it gives them more opportunities and options to be able to choose their course, their decisionmaking, and their potential upward mobility. Mr. Speaker, I thank the gentleman for highlighting all of that. Mr. Speaker, this week, we passed legislation to prevent another government shutdown and provide more time to make intentional decisions about the other Federal spending aspects that still need to be accomplished. We acted early to keep the government open and made the investments needed to keep America running, putting the interests of families and businesses first. There was no last-minute crisis, just responsible government well ahead of the shutdown date. That keeps America moving forward. This bill protects veterans, families in need, and our national security. It preserves programs for senior nutrition; women, infants, and children in the WIC program; housing assistance; veteran services; and disaster relief. It provides the stability needed to meet critical national security obligations and maintain America’s strength. It extends major highway, rail, and transit authorities, which gives States and communities certainty while longer term legislation will continue to move forward. Now, we will continue debating, discussing, and moving forward on that larger appropriations process. We are ensuring the process is committee-led and Member-driven, as it should be, with more transparency and accountability. Last year’s government shutdown hurt American workers and families. I am grateful both sides of the aisle came together to avoid another one. Mr. Speaker, I yield back the balance of my time.”