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 Derek Schmidt (R-Kan.) to discuss the Senate taking up the House’s budget bill, bringing us one step closer to fulfilling President Trump’s agenda of helping American families who previously struggled under Biden’s disastrous economic policies. Leader Scalise also highlighted the importance of the Trump Administration’s work to eliminate waste, fraud, and abuse in the federal government and slammed Democrats for being more concerned with Elon Musk than the wasting of taxpayers’ hard-earned dollars.
 
On the Senate taking up budget reconciliation:

“We have another full week working through our legislative agenda while we also are urging the Senate to continue moving on the budget reconciliation process. This week, they will be taking up the budget that we sent over weeks ago. Of course, when you look at where the budgets are, we went through a lot of work within our conference, meeting with members that represent all different factions within our conference to come up with the ultimate targets that were laid out in our budget to direct 11 different committees in the House to take action in reconciliation. The Senate needs to go through that same process. They've got similar dynamics in the Senate. They've got fiscal hawks, moderates, the same kind of issues that they're going to have to resolve. But ultimately, it's only when the House and Senate come together, are we going to be able to deliver that big package for President Trump to get this economy back on track for the American people. And ultimately, that's who we're fighting for.

“We're fighting for those hardworking families who have been struggling too long under the weight of the failed far-left policies of President Biden that are still lingering. The Democrats, when they were in charge, when they added trillions in spending, inflation, interest rates, all the things that are still crushing families. We are finally starting to address those things one at a time. And it's taken time, but we're two months in, and you can already see the progress, but there's a lot more work to do. And so we're not slowing down in our majority.”

On House Republicans holding Democrat overreach accountable on the floor this week:

“We're not slowing down with the bills we're bringing. Of course, this week, the No Rogue Judges Act. And I think it's been laid out really well, the abuses that we've been seeing with some of these district court judges that just feel their role is to try to stop the duly elected President of the United States and Donald Trump because they disagree with his policies, as opposed to carrying out their duty to interpret the Constitution and the laws of this country. If they're going to overstep their boundaries, should they be able to have, literally at a district level, an ability to change the law for the entire country, when ultimately the US Supreme Court is going to have to decide many of these big issues? But we're taking that up.

“We're also, of course, going to continue to fight for the integrity of the vote to make sure that people that have come here illegally by the millions cannot register and vote, and that there will be actual safeguards and consequences for people who come to this country and vote illegally. We're going to bring that bill again, give everybody an opportunity to state their position on that as well.”

On rooting out waste, fraud, and abuse in the federal government:

“As you look at reconciliation, one of the things we're looking to do is to finally start to root out waste, fraud, and abuse in government spending. Obviously, the mandatory spending side is what we look at heavily on the reconciliation side. But we've been working closely with the President's DOGE Commission. For anybody who didn't see it, I thought it was a very refreshing exercise to watch Elon Musk and all the other leaders of DOGE come together and do, in essence, a town hall meeting talking about the methods, the methodology, and the sophistication that is being used to root out waste, fraud, and abuse in government spending. When people fill out their taxes in just two weeks, there's a lot of anger and frustration when people send their money into Washington, and they wonder when they hear these stories of the billions of dollars in wasteful programs.

“These aren't just anecdotes. As Elon and the DOGE commission members have been finding out, it's rampant throughout every agency in federal government, whether it's just inefficiencies, which is bad enough, or flat-out fraud, abuse, and corruption. They're identifying billions and hundreds of billions of dollars in waste that can and should be rooted out because every dollar of waste here in Washington, number one is deficit spending that we would not be adding to our deficit, but it's money that can be reinvested to make programs work the way they were intended by Congress and by the President – to see how serious they take these jobs. Many of these people are very accomplished in their own rights, people that have their own careers and are stepping aside and doing this work to make government work better for all the people of this country. I was very encouraged by it. I wish everybody in the country saw it because when you watch how the left is trying to demonize not the waste in government, I wish the left was as fervent at going after waste in government as they're going after the people that are trying to root out the waste in government.

“Elon's giving up a lot to do this. As an individual, you see the personal attacks, death threats that are being made against him. That's real, and it's disgusting and disgraceful. But it also shows he must clearly be touching on something to the core. How much waste is out there that somebody would threaten his life because he's trying to find out and root out that waste? We're going to continue working with DOGE to root out the waste, lock as much of it into law as possible. If we can fit it in a budget reconciliation, we surely will. If it's going to come later in a recisions package, then we're going to do it as best as we can to achieve those real savings for the taxpayers of this country who are counting on us to deliver.”

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