Weekly Columns
From my family to yours, happy Thanksgiving! I hope you will join me in taking time to enjoy moments with friends and family and reflect on all that we have to be grateful for this year. This year in particular, I am thankful for the drive each of us has to make the United States a better place. So often, it is easy to be caught up in politics and the division created by different perspectives on how to make America a more perfect union.
This week, I cosponsored Congressman Fred Keller's Congressional Review Act to block President Joe Biden's vaccine mandate on businesses with over 100 workers.
As we celebrated our nation's veterans this past week, I hope we were all able to pause and count the many blessings we have in this country because of the sacrifices of others. We are fortunate to live in the United States of America, but our freedom does not come without a cost. Our liberty is hard-won by those who answered the call to serve.
According to the Wall Street Journal, President Biden's Department of Justice is proposing the United States government pay $450,000 to illegal immigrants who were separated from their children under the previous Administration's policies, for the mental health trauma they incurred.
Democrats are in disarray. You may have heard that phrase repeated on the nightly news or your social media feed, and I can tell you it's true. Democrats were finally able to produce the text of the reconciliation bill on Thursday afternoon, and it showcases policies that will continue to throw our nation into chaos. Inflation is skyrocketing, our southern border is in crisis, Americans are still stranded in Afghanistan, and supply chains have run dry. The now $1.75 trillion reconciliation bill fails to do even one thing to address these urgent issues.
Many Americans are grappling with the anxiety caused by the threat of federal COVID-19 vaccine mandates, mask mandates, and quarantine requirements. That's especially true for parents, teachers, and other education personnel. In an effort to bring their concerns to President Biden, I led a letter, which was co-signed by my fellow Arkansas Representatives, strongly opposing any federal vaccine mandate for schools.
My annual agriculture tour of the Fourth District is one of the best weeks of the year. I get the chance to travel the district end to end and meet with some of the hardest working men and women who keep America on her feet. All the people I've met with, from business owners to employees, have an important lesson to teach about their daily lives that I can take back with me to Washington.
It has been a busy week on Capitol Hill as lawmakers wait to vote on the $1.2 trillion infrastructure legislation, which is intricately tied to the $4.3 trillion reconciliation package. To pave the way for the massive spending packages that total over $5,000,000,000,000, Democrats voted, in a completely political move, to suspend the debt limit until just after the mid-term elections in 2022. This allows Democrats to completely pass the buck and avoid telling the American people how much each of us owe to cover the Democrats' massive spending priorities.
The founding principle of the United States is that Americans are guaranteed life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. House Democrats are stripping America's most vulnerable citizens of the right to life by passing a bill with the erroneous title of the "Women's Health Protection Act." A better name for this legislation is the "Abortion on Demand Until Birth Act."
This week, the House Transportation and Infrastructure Committee debated its small portion of the highly partisan $3.5 trillion reconciliation bill. The nearly $60 billion bill that we spent 15 hours debating is filled with unnecessary spending on liberal wish-list items that were too far left to make it into the bipartisan infrastructure package negotiated by the Senate and the White House.