Scalise: Trump is Renewing the American Dream

Today, House Majority Leader Steve Scalise (R-La.) joined Speaker Mike Johnson (R-La.), House Majority Whip Tom Emmer (R-Minn.), Conference Chairwoman Lisa McClain (R-Mich.), and Congressman Gabe Evans (R-Colo.) to discuss the success of President Trump’s first six weeks in office. Leader Scalise highlighted how, by voting against House Republicans’ budget bill, House Democrats voted to increase taxes by trillions of dollars on American families, workers, and small businesses. In contrast, House Republicans voted to implement President Trump’s agenda by preventing tax hikes, bolstering American manufacturing, funding border security, lowering food costs, and unleashing American energy.
 
On Mardi Gras:

“Well, let me first say Happy Mardi Gras, everybody. Today is Mardi Gras Day in my home city of New Orleans. This is a Mardi Gras King Cake, which we enjoy to celebrate the day. This is not to torture you. This is to let you know I've gotten this for each of you, so it's all cut up. I'm going to pass this around. You don't have to write nice stories about me. You can, but this is – we like to share our celebration. There'll be about a million people from all around the world on the streets of New Orleans celebrating with the crew of Zulu, the crew of Rex, riding, and it's a great family event. My parents took me to Mardi Gras parades when I was a kid, and we take our kids now and pass that tradition on. I am so glad to be with all of you today, but I wish I was in New Orleans celebrating Mardi Gras. But here, put your cameras down for a minute. Take a piece, pass it around. If you get the baby, the tradition is there's a plastic baby in one of the slices. That means you have to throw the next King Cake Party, so we'll let you know where to get the cake, and you'll want more, believe me.”

On House Republicans working to fulfill President Trump’s agenda: 

“Anyway, on that note, so we start off on a really good note. We love to celebrate things. We're celebrating a lot. Tonight, President Trump is going to be celebrating the renewal of the American dream. And he's going to go into a lot of detail about how his agenda not only is starting to be carried out. In just less than two months, it's been a riveting pace that President Trump took to start getting our country back on track, but the work is just beginning. Here in the House, Congress has to play a critical role in helping the President do this. Part of that is passing President Trump's agenda. And one of the things we did from the Speaker on down is committed to getting the agenda moved through one big, beautiful bill, which means budget reconciliation, starting that process by passing a budget so that we can get to the reconciliation phase. And last week – with an overwhelming not one vote to spare, literally just by the margin we needed, which is all it takes, right – we passed our budget to the Senate to start the process of putting into law the things we need to do to deliver on that Trump agenda that 77 million people went to the polls to give all of us a mandate to do.”

On Democrats voting for tax hikes on hardworking families:

“In fact, the American people insisted that we do these things to reverse the damage from the Biden-Harris agenda. Number one, stave off a tax increase. Make sure that middle-class families don't see a massive tax hike. And notice, every Democrat voted no last week, which means Democrats voted to put a tax on over 99% of families that make less than a million dollars. You hear them talking about millionaires and billionaires. The people that would be hurt by Democrat actions are people that make well under a million dollars.

“President Trump is trying to eliminate the tax on tips, which, by the way, we support and will be in our package. The average salary of tip workers who will benefit from President Trump's agenda is a family making about $35,000 a year. That's who will benefit from that provision. They talk about billionaires and Elon Musk all day long because they want to hide the fact that it's middle and lower income families who will benefit from the Trump agenda because those are the people that have been devastated the most by the high inflation, high taxes, high cost of living we've seen from the Biden agenda.”

On President Trump bringing manufacturing back:

“More energy production in America, manufacturing more things in America, that's in our bill. It's going to be in this package that moves through, and for some reason, every Democrat wants to vote no on an agenda that lowers gas prices, lowers food costs. When people complain about the price of eggs, you can try to make political hay about it. You can try to do something about it. And you do something about it by lowering the energy cost, the cost to get products to the grocery store. And every Democrat voted no because they are okay with those families paying more. Well, families are fed up, and President Trump is going to be laying out tonight the things not only that he's already done, he's done a phenomenal job at getting the border secure. We need to do our part at funding the wall, funding the technology for our Border Patrol agents. That's also in our bill. 

“But President Trump is finally starting to bring manufacturing back to this country. The Whip talked about almost $2 trillion in private investment that's already being announced by some major companies, some major American companies, some countries in foreign nations that want to now come and build things in America because of President Trump's leadership. Leadership matters, and I think you're going to see great, strong leadership tonight in the President's [Joint Address]. We will be there. Looking forward to it.”

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