Washington, D.C. – Today, the House Budget Committee passed the Concurrent Resolution on the Budget for Fiscal Year 2027, a critical first step in unlocking the reconciliation process to support our troops, secure our elections, and strengthen our food supply.
Upon passage of the resolution, House Budget Chairman Jodey Arrington (TX–19) issued the following statement:
“Republicans are united and undeterred in our fight to restore America's greatness,” said Chairman Arrington. “We don't have a country if we can't defend it, and we don't have a democracy if people can't trust the outcome of our elections. Passing Reconciliation 3.0 will support our troops, secure our elections, and SAVE America.”
Chairman Arrington delivered the following opening remarks at today's committee markup.
Remarks as delivered:
After four years of lawlessness, incompetence, and what I think most Americans believe was a radical agenda after suffering one self-inflicted crisis after another, from the border chaos, to the cost-of-living crisis, 40-year-high inflation, to the projection of weakness on the world stage—the American people said, "Enough."
In the historic 2024 election, the American people overwhelmingly elected Donald Trump and unified Republican leadership here in Washington.
From day one, President Trump has hit the ground at Mach speed and moved with more purpose and urgency than any president in modern history, certainly in my lifetime. He has secured the border and stopped the flow of crime, criminals, and drugs that have been pouring into our communities and threatening the safety of our families.
He has rebuilt the military not on woke ideology but on warfighting, providing for the common defense, and restoring peace through strength.
He stopped the unfair trade practices that were perpetrated on our great nation, leveled the playing field for our farmers, ranchers, manufacturers, and our workers.
He declared war on fraud. One million dollars every minute of every hour of every day for a year is what is leaking in fraud out of the people's government, and he has a whole-of-government attack on that—over $500 billion a year in fraud.
He's ended the gravy train, free-rider foreign dependence on America's defense, and a whole lot of other things that are making America safer, stronger, and more prosperous.
For our part, Republicans in Congress passed the first reconciliation bill with no help from our Democrat colleagues to stop what would be the largest tax hike in history. We advanced what was the largest tax cut in history, providing permanent tax relief to hardworking Americans.
We also, in reconciliation one, ended the Green New disaster that was crushing American families and consumers with high energy prices and weakening our country. So, we're restoring American energy dominance.
We rooted out record savings in waste, fraud, and abuse: $1.6 trillion. That's twice as much as any Congress in the history of the United States. And I think, probably most importantly, we made the largest investment in the history of our country in national defense and border security.
So, we boosted the pay of our troops, along with their morale. And most importantly, we strengthened our military to provide for the common defense.
All of this, in the face of what I believe is unprecedented Democrat obstruction.
So let me make that case.
Exhibit A: the first longest shutdown in America's history.
We had an agreement. We put forward a clean continuing resolution to fund the government. We said, let's fund the government at what we agreed to fund it last year until we agree on how we're going to fund it this year.
The Democrats said no for the first time ever and shut the government down.
Here were their demands: repeal the safeguards for American tax dollars to stop them from flowing to people who are not eligible, or who are here illegally, or are capable of working but refuse to work. So, repealing the work that we did to root out waste, fraud, and abuse—that was their demand.
Secondly, later in the process, they demanded that we extend a COVID-era, fraud-ridden program that had defrauded taxpayers by tens of billions of dollars.
Those were their unreasonable and ridiculous demands.
Fast forward: government shutdown number two.
Democrats held hostage the American people's safety and the Department of Homeland Security: our Coast Guardsmen who protect our ports, our Border Patrol who stand in the gap and risk their lives to defend our sovereign border, CISA agents who protect us against cyberattacks—all of it shut down because of what I would say is unserious and even dangerous demands that would have returned our country back to wide-open border chaos, and it would have imperiled the safety of our law enforcement.
We had to use Reconciliation 2.0 just to fund Homeland Security.
My Democrat colleagues would not do that unless we defunded ICE and CBP.
So, we had to use reconciliation as Republicans only—not a single Democrat—to open up Homeland and fund ICE and CBP.
Not one Democrat voted to fund ICE and CBP.
Now we're at Reconciliation 3.0.
We still have obstruction.
I think as recently as two days ago, Democrats in the Senate said no collectively to what is historically a bipartisan National Defense Authorization Act, which basically are the policies that undergird the entire Pentagon and America's military.
They've also held up FISA, which is a critical tool for our intelligence agencies to protect the American people.
I can keep going down the list, but the message is loud, and it is clear to me that we're not going to get any help from our Democrat colleagues to do what I believe are two critical things to finish the fight that we said we would undertake for the people who gave us unified Republican leadership.
Here's the first and most important one: support our troops in time of conflict.
We can debate where we are, why we're there. You can't debate supporting our sons and daughters in uniform who salute the Commander in Chief and risk their lives for our freedom, for our security, for our ideals, for our interests anywhere, anytime.
This is a defense supplemental. It should be bipartisan. We should be able to work collectively to stand with our troops.
It will not happen, ladies and gentlemen.
We are using reconciliation to just give baseline readiness—not Star Wars and Golden Dome and transformative modernization of the military, just the bombs, bullets, and battlefield readiness for our men and women in uniform to finish the fight successfully and return home safely—that's it.
A $67 billion defense supplemental should be regular order.
We're going to use reconciliation because we're not going to let our troops be held hostage, like we saw our Coast Guardsmen and Border Patrol, etc.
Secondly, we're going to strengthen our food supply.
We're not going to allow instability and a lack of resilience in the food supply.
Food security is national security.
We're not going to be begging China or anybody to feed our families.
Thirdly, we have to do something to give confidence to the American people that there are, in fact, free, fair, and accurate elections.
We have a crisis in confidence in our elections.
Say what you want about corruption and fraud, whether it is in pockets or pervasive, we have a public crisis in confidence.
This may be the greatest threat to our republic.
Voter ID is not about politics; it's about public confidence, and it's an 80-20 issue.
And we have put it on the floor. We have put it on the floor repeatedly and gotten zero help from our Democrat colleagues.
Basic safeguards. Fundamental safeguards.
You need a voter ID to buy a six-pack of beer. You've got to show your ID to check into a hotel. Later on, we'll probably all be on an airplane. We'll have to show our ID.
And yet, we're not getting any support to do that to give confidence and integrity to our elections.
Look, voter ID is essential to the integrity of our elections.
Integrity in elections is indispensable as part of our representative government.
Every law passed by Congress, every judge confirmed, every president sworn into office derives their legitimacy from the confidence Americans have in our elections.
If Americans lose confidence in elections, they will lose confidence in our government, and even worse, they will lose confidence in their share of this great republic.
We celebrate 250 years. We all probably reread the Declaration of Independence.
Just governments—the only just governments—derive their power from the consent of the governed.
You cannot have the consent of the governed, nor can you have a just government, if people don't have confidence—tens of millions of people—in the transfer of the will of the people to their representative leadership in this great nation.
Until we address that, we are walking on shaky ground, and we are hanging by a thin thread.
So, yes, we are going to use reconciliation to make a run at doing what we think will save this country for our children's future and for the remainder of this century.
I can't think of a more important thing to work on.
We are united, and we are rallying to finish what we started when the American people sent us here.
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