00:00But this bill wouldn't be heading over to the White House tonight without the incredible yeoman's unwavering support of Speaker of the House, my dear friend, Mike Johnson, our leader.
00:30Thank you. This is the vote tally card. We're going to frame this one, okay? 218, 214. Listen, I'm not going to give you a long speech. A lot has been said today, and these people are exhausted. A couple of us quite literally haven't slept in two days, so I'm a danger to myself and others right now. I'm not going to speak off the cuff.
00:58I'll just say this. I mean, many of you have asked me this question in the hall over the last couple of days, but when it looked like that we might actually deliver this thing, particularly this morning, how did you know?
01:08I mean, what kept you going? Why did you think this was possible? You guys made an audacious plan. You brought the most comprehensive, complicated piece of legislation, probably, arguably in the top two or three in the history of the Congress, with the smallest margin in U.S. history, which we had for a big chunk of the first hundred days.
01:27And you put this audacious timeline. You said you were going to pass it out of the house by Memorial Day. I mean, some of you openly laughed at me when I said that back in early February.
01:36And then we said we would get it done by July 4th. We beat Memorial Day by four days, and we got this one done a day early, I just want to point out, okay?
01:43So the question was, I mean, like, why? Why did you do that? Why did you think that was possible? Because it just sums up, I would sum it up with one word. It's belief, okay?
02:00We had a vision for what we wanted to do as a group. We believed in the election cycle last fall, that we were going to be given this great blessing of unified government, that we would have the White House and the Senate and the House aligned and alignment, unified government.
02:14And we did not want to waste that opportunity because we understand the history that comes along with it, the opportunity that we can do for the country, and we believe that we would have that chance.
02:23And then I believe in the people that are standing here behind me. I believe in this group, every single one of them individually.
02:28Some of them are more fun to deal with than others, you know? I mean that with the greatest level of respect. I love every single one of my colleagues.
02:39You know, even the ones I've got to spend the more time with, right? Because everybody's here, their motive is right, their heart is right, they're trying to do right for their constituents, they're trying to serve the greatest nation in the history of the world that we're going to celebrate tomorrow.
02:50We don't take that lightly. I know their hearts, and I know what their skill sets are, and I know what they bring to the table, and I get up every day excited because I know that each of them are going to bring that to the table, and they're going to serve their constituents.
03:03You could not have a greater group of public servants than the people standing in this room right here. They will give their all for this country, and man, that's what the framers intended when they put this thing together 249 years ago.
03:15This is what it was about. This is what it was about. So I believed in this vision. I believed in the group. I believe in America. I believe we have a raised nation.
03:32I'm going to say this very simply, and everybody here would articulate it in their own way. We had a tough four years before this last election cycle. America was in, we were in deep trouble.
03:40And we knew that if we won, and we believed we would, we knew that if we got unified government, we'd have to quite literally fix every area of public policy.
03:50Everything was an absolute disaster under the Biden-Harris radical, woke, progressive Democrat regime.
03:56And we took the best effort that we could in one big, beautiful bill to fix as much of it as we could, and I am so grateful to God that we got that done as we did.
04:08Because of the dedication, yeah.
04:15Lastly, it's no secret, I do believe in God. I believe in that motto that I referenced in the floor speech a little while ago.
04:22I believe that is what has made our nation the greatest in the history of the world.
04:26And some people shake their heads, and they think that's old-fashioned or something. That is a fact.
04:30When the framers put this together, they stepped out in faith. They did something that no nation had ever done before.
04:37The great statesman philosopher G.K. Chesterton of Great Britain said,
04:41America is the only nation in the world that was founded upon a creed.
04:45And he said it's listed with almost theological lucidity or clarity in the nation's birth certificate, the Declaration of Independence.
04:51We hold these truths to be self-evident.
04:52That we recognize, we boldly proclaim the self-evident truth that our rights do not come from the government.
04:59They come from God himself.
05:01He's the one that gave us our rights.
05:02That's right.
05:09Abraham Lincoln said in the Gettysburg Address,
05:11We are dedicated to this proposition, to one nation under God.
05:14A government of the people, by the people, for the people, shall not perish from the earth.
05:18This is an experiment. It's only 249 years.
05:22That's not a long span of time in human history.
05:25It's just a blip on the whole scale of human history.
05:28It is up to us to save it.
05:30It's up to the duly elected representatives of the people to come here and represent.
05:34And it's up to every single one of us.
05:37Of the people, by the people, for the people, all of us.
05:39So you've got to be engaged.
05:41And we've got to pass this along in the next generation.
05:43Reagan reminded us, freedom is not inherited in the bloodstream.
05:46It's got to be protected.
05:47It's got to be fought for.
05:48It's got to be taught to the next generation.
05:51So that they will have the same liberty, opportunity, and security that we have all known.
05:54And too often take it for granted.
05:56So I just want to say, we're going to get to the main event here.
05:58We're about to sign this bill and get it over to the White House.
06:00Okay?
06:01Some of these men and women have got to go catch flights and stuff.
06:14So we're going to sign this real quick, and I'll take a few questions.
06:16But I just want to say this.
06:17Do not take for granted what we have been given, this grand experiment in self-governance.
