ADVANCING AMERICA FIRST POLICIES

On 2025-03-26, Representative Blake D. Moore (R-UT-1) delivered a floor speech titled "ADVANCING AMERICA FIRST POLICIES" in the House. The speech addressed immigration and also covered the economy, taxes. It referenced legislation: HR833.

ADVANCING AMERICA FIRST POLICIES

Congressional Record, Volume 171 Issue 55 (Wednesday, March 26, 2025) [Congressional Record Volume 171, Number 55 (Wednesday, March 26, 2025)] [House] [Pages H1290-H1294] From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [ www.gpo.gov ] ADVANCING AMERICA FIRST POLICIES (Under the Speaker's announced policy of January 3, 2025, Mr. Moore of Utah was recognized for 60 minutes as the designee of the majority leader.) general leave Mr. MOORE of Utah. Mr. Speaker, I ask unanimous consent that all Members may have 5 legislative days in which to revise and extend their remarks and include extraneous material on the topic of this Special Order. The SPEAKER pro tempore. Is there objection to the request of the gentleman from Utah? There was no objection. Mr. MOORE of Utah. Mr. Speaker, the last few weeks have been nonstop. The Trump administration and congressional Republicans have been advancing legislation and policies that put Americans first. Just last week President Trump issued an executive order that puts decisions about our students' education back where it belongs, in the hands of parents and the States. As the father of four young boys, I know firsthand that those closest to educating my children--the teachers, administrators, and special aides--are the ones who know what they need to get ahead academically and succeed. Data shows that our current educational system is failing our students. Our outcomes are not where they need to be. Reading and math scores are not where they need to be, et cetera. We have got plenty to focus on with this particular issue. I am right in the thick of it. My wife and I are very much in the thick of it. We could not be more grateful for the support that we have back home with our teachers. It has been probably one of the most positive things in our lives as we see those boys progress. House Republicans are also continuing to assess our education system [[Page H1291]] this week by advancing the DETERRENT Act, to protect our higher education institutions from foreign influence by strengthening gift and contract disclosure requirements and potentially banning contracts from foreign entities of concern. I applaud Michael Baumgartner, a new freshman out of Washington, for his work on this important bill. We are also seeking to reverse harmful Biden-era energy regulations on essential home appliances, including refrigerators and freezers. Americans deserve the ability to purchase the appliances that best suit their families' functional and financial needs. I am grateful to Congresswoman Stephanie Bice and Congressman Craig Goldman for taking the lead on this issue. I will speak more on these later. This week, we are seeing great progress in getting our reconciliation package to the next step. The efforts seek to serve Americans better by securing our border, supporting our economy, bolstering domestic energy production, maintaining a pro-family and pro-growth Tax Code, and much, much more. I thank each Member involved in these critical discussions for their work, and I thank my good friend from California (Mr. LaMalfa) for being here today to kick us off with his message. Mr. Speaker, I yield to the gentleman from California (Mr. LaMalfa). {time} 1445 Mr. LaMALFA. Mr. Speaker, I thank Mr. Moore for leading us in these efforts to help enlighten folks on what we are doing here in Congress to give people more choice, more options, and have goods be more reasonably priced and available for them. As we are coming out of the Biden administration, we saw a lot of devastation to the economic conditions for families, for homes, for small businesses, et cetera. In Washington, there seems to be an obsession with overregulation. It does make life harder for everyday Americans. Under the Biden administration, the energy efficiency standards became weapons of control, driving up costs, limiting choices and strangling economic growth. Under the antienergy agenda that President Biden had, American families felt the pinch every day, every time they turned on a light, heated their home, powered their appliances, or drove their car. These so-called efficiency standards didn't lower costs, they shifted the burden on to local level wallets and bank accounts. Back in my home State of California we see the impact firsthand, as these ideas seemed to start there first, between skyrocketing energy bills and blackouts caused by misguided policies. Public safety power shutoffs is what they call them. When the wind is blowing and they haven't trimmed the trees in the forested areas around the power lines they have to shut off the power rather than doing the work out in the forests that is needed, but that is another issue. All of this causes families to have to pay more for less reliability in their needs. This is the future that our Democratic colleagues seem to want for the rest of America, one where energy is not affordable nor dependable. The conversations keep pushing more toward wind and solar, which are fine in and of themselves, but they are a tiny part of the grid. They are not a 24/7 available source of power anyway such as we would get from nuclear energy, hydroelectric, natural gas, or coal. Those can be counted on at any time. You can turn them on and use them at any time. Obviously with the wind or solar you have to wait for the Sun to come up, the clouds to go away, for it to stop raining, or the wind to blow--as long as the wind doesn't blow too hard, which in that case, they have to slow down and shut off the windmill because the wind might spin it off of its hinges. Washington bureaucrats are now trying to dictate what kind of refrigerator you can have, what kind of stove you can use, and even how long your dishwasher should take to run. Most folks want to see that the dishwasher runs long enough to get things clean and dry; the same with your dryer, the same with your clothes washer. Folks want what it takes to get the job done, not some arbitrary shutdown of when a bureaucrat decides you have used enough energy. So really it is just limiting options and you being told what is good enough for you, rather than what you actually need. Californians have already been through a lot of this. We have been forced to live with policies that prioritize these whims of regulators over the needs of families. Indeed, we have seen the elimination of many outdoor tools, gas-powered lawn mowers, weed eaters, leaf blowers, and I will come back to even they are trying to take away generators. Now, how do you take away a gas- or diesel-powered generator? When the electricity goes off, and you need something to replace that at least temporarily, what do you power that generating vehicle with? It isn't going to be other electricity. Some will argue we need to have batteries with this power saved up. Okay. Well, there are a lot of issues with batteries on what it takes to make them, what do you do with the metals and the materials from a battery that is now no longer useful and it has to be discarded versus just having something that works at the flick of a switch or the pull of a cord. You can start your generator using gasoline or diesel and have great success like you had for generations. They want to take all these options away from us. Indeed, they do many things to inconvenience families, small businesses, and they also strangle our economy. It is amazing to go out to Tractor Supply or someplace like that, and they have a whole lineup of those outdoor appliances and they are all electric. It just happened overnight. I don't know how well they are selling or how well people like them, but we have to get to a point where we can overcome these mandates or at least not have them at the Federal level for the other 49 States or whatever amount of States that are not following California as more and more of them seem to want to get toward with California's craziness. Manufacturers are forced to spend millions trying to comply with these rules changing the dynamics, changing the makeup of how their equipment works. Take the electric car industry, for example. I remember back in California in about 1990, the California Air Resources Board, known as CARB, pretty famous now, I believe it was 1990 they wanted to mandate that 10 percent of all vehicles by the year 2000 had to be zero- emissions vehicles. At the time, all that would mean is, well, you have to use batteries instead of fuel. The manufacturers were standing on their heads, the auto manufacturers, trying to figure out how are we going to meet this mandate in 10 years for 10 percent production. You ended up with these basically glorified golf carts with batteries on them using the same old battery technology we had and finding out that you can't just slap a license plate on a golf cart and have a practical vehicle for people. They actually had to relent on that mandate before 2000 occurred, but you still saw these little golf carts running around dealerships with license plates on them pretending to be automobiles that people would buy. They don't always know by making a mandate--many in those institutions believe that, well, if we force the mandate, then they will come up with the technology. Well, battery technology still hasn't made a quantum leap into the future yet to where it can be such an incredible source and for long extended periods as really the previous generation. They have got more experimental materials. They have different, more exotic materials they are actually using now, but the battery life hasn't extended that much more than what batteries of 20 years ago were doing. The more we hamstring the energy production and force businesses to conform with out-of-touch mandates, the more time businesses have to waste on developing technology, which really isn't going to go anywhere. The further refinement of internal combustion engines has so far achieved amazing results with how clean gasoline and diesel engines are runnin

Referenced legislation: HR833