Naples Standard

Last week, House Republicans were called back to Washington to debate and subsequently vote on Speaker McCarthy and President Biden's debt ceiling deal. After hearing about what had been negotiated, I was a no on this deal, but after reading the deal in its entirety, I was absolutely a no. 

Unfortunately, Washington did it again. While you were celebrating Memorial Day, this town was cutting another terrible deal that's going to put us in more debt. The disastrous debt ceiling deal included no cap in raising the debt $4 trillion, while only cutting $12 billion. It also kept Biden's baseline spending intact for federal agencies, canonized post-COVID overspending and does nothing to eliminate Green New Deal policies that were implemented under the previous Congress. These provisions do not reflect the priorities or best interests of the American people.

I called on my Republican colleagues to vote against this deal. I warned my colleagues that their constituents will ask them why they voted to keep all of Biden's policies intact, while all they did was vote to raise the debt ceiling. I told them to stand up and demand renegotiation. 70 of my colleagues joined this cause for fiscal responsibility. The reality is that we must curtail baseline spending in our country. We have to do this so we can have the opportunity to at least stabilize our debt position and in some respect, begin to pay down our trillions of dollars in debt. This deal did not do that. 

Unfortunately, the debt ceiling deal passed the House of Representatives with the support of 165 Democrats and only 149 Republicans. The fact that Biden White House talking points on this deal were very positive all week, should have been enough for our conference to realize that this deal was not serious about cutting down our debt. If we were going to keep all of Biden's overspending anyway, we should have at least tried to do something constructive like adding border security provisions.

Moving forward, our federal government must rein in spending and go back to pre-COVID spending levels. If we started paying down our debt today, it could take at least fifteen years to get closer to a balanced budget. The level of cuts & austerity measures that we will need to take, will only get more serious with inaction. Who this really hurts are the American people, who didn’t ask for this reckless Democratic overspending.

Furthermore, I introduced my thirty-third bill of the 118th Congress, the Short Line Rail Road Relief Act. This bill, which received the support of eleven Congressional cosponsors from coast to coast, authorizes the establishment of a disaster relief program to provide much-needed immediate financial assistance to our nation's short line railroads. Just months ago, Hurricane Ian made landfall in Southwest Florida, causing historic devastation in our community. Among one of the hardest hit entities in Southwest Florida was the Seminole Gulf Railway–which incurred catastrophic damage.

When a storm of this magnitude hits any area of our nation, it is the federal government's responsibility to make available the necessary resources to rebuild and restore vital components of a community. As Hurricane Season 2023 begins, it is imperative that we establish a means in which America's short line railroads can receive critical relief in the event of natural disasters.

As your Congressman, you have my commitment to work on your behalf and restore order and proper governance to The People's House.