At a House Republican press briefing on Tuesday, House Speaker Mike Johnson (R-LA) spoke about the GOP budget resolution.
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NewsTranscript
00:00Rarely do I get to raise the podium level, but I'm going to take great pleasure in doing that.
00:04Thank you. Yes, yes, that's right. It was too low for me. Everybody knows that for the record.
00:09Hey, good morning. Glad to have you all here. It's a very, very busy week on Capitol Hill, as you know.
00:15We had a great boost of excitement in the Republican conference meeting this morning.
00:20We welcomed our two new members from Florida. We were delighted to win those seats handily.
00:24And so Congressman Jimmy Petronas and Randy Fine join us. We got them on their committees, and they are joining the team.
00:32That team is going to be very busy. As you heard, the recount of sort of what we're going to be working on over the next few days here.
00:39Between now and Thursday, the House is going to pass some really important legislation.
00:42We'll ensure that only American citizens decide American elections, as you heard.
00:47We're going to prevent activist judges from issuing these unconstitutional nationwide injunctions and legislating from the bench,
00:53which has become a real problem. And we're going to roll back two burdensome Biden-era CFPB rules.
00:59This is all common sense issues, and they're things that make sense to the American people.
01:05Let me talk about the SAVE Act very briefly. You've heard some about this already.
01:08Polling shows that nearly 90 percent of the American people believe that proof of citizenship should be required to vote.
01:16There are a few issues in American politics that enjoy that level of bipartisan support.
01:21However, this should pass with a massive bipartisan margin. But watch, it won't.
01:27The Democrats are contorting themselves into a pretzel trying to justify some sort of vote against this.
01:33Last year, they argued we were too close to a federal election to make voting changes.
01:37And then they said that non-citizens don't actually vote.
01:41And then they said the SAVE Act will somehow result in voter suppression.
01:46Oh, that was total nonsense. Now they're claiming that the SAVE Act disenfranchises married women who changed their last names.
01:54I mean, it's absurd. What they're trying to do is protect the ability of non-citizens to participate in our elections.
02:00Plain and simple, that's what this is about.
02:02And we know it's a crisis because the last administration, as we all well know, opened the border wide,
02:07and we had, by some counts, 20 million illegal aliens come into the country, right?
02:12There's no mechanism in federal law, in current law, that requires states to prove citizenship.
02:19So even though it is currently against the law, only U.S. citizens should decide U.S. elections,
02:24there's no way to make sure that's actually happening.
02:26So the SAVE Act is so critically important. It follows common sense, and the American people are with us.
02:31Democrats, I predict, will not be, and they're going to have to answer for that.
02:34Let me talk about reconciliation. You heard a lot about this.
02:37This is the mechanism that we have to advance the Trump agenda in a big way
02:43and deliver results to the American people, all those who voted for these big changes.
02:48And this week, we're working in the House to advance the Senate's amendment to our budget resolution, as you know.
02:55Just to recount this, we've been working on this for over a year.
02:58We started this process well before most of the people in this room agreed with us
03:03that we would have this moment of unified government, where we would have Republican majorities in the House and Senate,
03:09and, of course, the White House as well.
03:10And so we started that process.
03:12I want to make four important points about the Senate's amendment to our House resolution.
03:17Number one, the budget resolution is not the law.
03:20All this does is it allows us to continue the process, begin drafting the actual legislation.
03:27It really counts, and that's the one big, beautiful bill.
03:29Number two, the Senate amendment makes no changes to the reconciliation instructions that we put into the budget resolution.
03:37So our objectives remain intact.
03:40Number three, any final reconciliation bill has to include historic spending reductions that we included in our resolution,
03:48while also safeguarding essential programs.
03:51And you've heard a commitment from us over and over that that will happen,
03:54and the President has said it himself over and over as well.
03:57The fourth point is that reconciliation will be a collaborative process between the House and Senate.
04:03You're going to see the Republican Party in both chambers working together as one team.
04:07I know that's a rare occasion, and people don't really know what that looks like,
04:10but we're actually going to do it this time.
04:12The House is not going to participate in an us-versus-them charade.
04:16We won't do it.
04:18To secure and accomplish our mission, we've got to be working together and rowing in the same direction,
04:24and I'm fiercely committed to doing that, and so is Leader Thune and our members on both sides.
04:30Passing this amendment just allows us to get off the sidelines and get on the field and start this game.
04:34It's the kickoff, so to speak, with one of my football metaphors, and we've got to get this done.
04:39Republicans have an historic, once-in-a-generation opportunity to deliver relief to hard-working families
04:46and set our country back on the path of prosperity.
04:48The American people desperately need us to take this action, and we will.
04:53As we wrote in a letter to our conference this weekend, time really is of the essence.
04:57There's a lot of pressure points that are outside of our control but are forcing this action.
05:02We're months away from the ex-state on the debt limit.
05:05The border security resources are being diminished.
05:07Markets are unsettled.
05:08And the largest tax increase in American history is set to hit families and businesses at the end of this year if we do not act.
05:15And for all those reasons, we have no luxury of complacency, and we really don't have time to dither on this thing.
05:21So we'll be moving that forward, and you'll see that action this week.
05:25Okay.
05:25With that on.