Even with two-thirds of Americans thinking the country is on the wrong track, Democrats still pushed through their socialist spending spree legislation.

America is in CRISIS. Illegal immigrants have overrun our southern border. A gallon of gas hasn’t cost this much since Joe Biden was Vice President. Americans are paying more for just about everything while making less. Our supply chain is in crisis as we head to the holiday season.  Both Thanksgiving and Christmas will be the most expensive holiday meals ever. 

For months Pelosi and House Democrats have LIED to the American people about the true cost of this legislation, which the CBO says would add $367 BILLION to our deficit over the next decade. 

Make no mistake: This bill is nothing more than a wish list of Far-Left Socialist policies that the American people have already rejected. 

WHAT'S IN THE DEMOCRATS FAR-LEFT SOCIALIST TAX AND SPEND PACKAGE:

• Provides the IRS nearly $80 BILLION, giving the agency the broad authority to target families, farmers, and small businesses.
• Grants mass amnesty to millions of illegal immigrants despite the recent decision by the Senate Parliamentarian that this violates reconciliation rules.
• Does not include the Hyde Amendment, allowing taxpayer dollars to be used to fund on-demand abortions. 
• Perpetuates labor shortages by eliminating work requirements to receive welfare benefits for able-bodied adults - at a time when there are over 10.4 million job openings. 
• Expands Obamacare subsidies through 2025, overwhelmingly benefiting wealthier Americans and subsidizing people who already have insurance. 
• Unnecessarily expands Medicare benefits at a time when the program is going broke, ultimately harming choices for our seniors. 
• Includes Civilian Climate Corps that would employ thousands of young people to work on climate change mitigation projects. 
• Provides fake news organizations with up to 750 employees to get a tax cut at a time when their readership has declined due to their liberal bias.
• Over $400 billion in small business tax hikes, which will be shouldered by Main Street job creators.
• This bill impedes and bans domestic energy and mineral production, increasing our dependencies on resources supplied by OPEC, Russia, and China.
• Raises taxes on natural gas, raising the costs of nearly everything. 
• $800 billion in corporate tax increases
• Turns the Child Tax Credit (CTC) into permanent cash for kids welfare without work program.
• This is the most irresponsible and reckless spending bill in our nation’s history.

As ranking member of the Science, Space, and Technology Subcommittee on Energy, I know the importance of and the high potential of fusion energy, critical government-funded research like U.S. Department of Energy Fusion Sciences program, U.S. ITER, and the importance of partnership with private industry.

In the most basic of terms, fusion energy aims to create the equivalent of a controlled sun and harness it as a power source here on earth. Easy enough, right? But as you might imagine, the extreme temperatures, pressures, and confinement conditions required to do this also require a highly specialized environment. This makes achieving fusion energy one of the greatest challenges in experimental physics today.

The potential benefits of a fusion reactor are beyond calculation. The fuel is abundant and widely accessible, the carbon footprint is functionally zero, and the radioactive waste concerns are almost nonexistent. If we are serious about a clean energy future with lower power sector emissions, there is no ambition that fits the bill better than fusion.

The Department of Energy supports fusion R&D primarily through its Fusion Energy Sciences program. In fiscal year 2021, the FES received $672 million, but the House passed bipartisan bill I was proud to cosponsor, the DOE Science for the Future Act, seeks to nearly double that by fiscal year 2026.

This shows our overwhelming support for current research efforts and a bipartisan desire to leverage the untapped potential of fusion. I’d like to thank my colleague, Energy Subcommittee Chairman Bowman, as well as Ranking Member Lucas and Chairwoman Johnson for their leadership on this bill.

Domestically, DOE funds a diverse portfolio of fusion energy research through its world-leading national laboratory system and cutting-edge experimental facilities and resources, like the National Spherical Torus Experiment Upgrade at Princeton Plasma Physics Laboratory and the National Ignition Facility at Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory.

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Internationally, DOE supports U.S. contributions to the ITER project, which is a major international collaboration to design, build, and operate a first-of-a-kind research facility to achieve and maintain a successful fusion reaction in the lab. Although it is located in beautiful southern France, a significant percentage of total U.S. awards and obligations to ITER are carried out right here in the United States, funding research and component fabrication in American universities, national labs, and industry. And while the U.S. contributes 13 percent of the costs of ITER, we gain 100 percent of the scientific discoveries from this project. That’s a good deal!

This is why full funding for ITER is also included in the DOE Science for the Future Act.  Upholding our end of this deal is imperative to the success of U.S. fusion energy, and to America’s standing and credibility as a global scientific collaborator. I appreciated hearing more on this from Dr. Kathryn McCarthy, the Director of U.S. ITER Project Office.

Another necessary contributor to fusion research is, of course, the private sector. Due to robust DOE investment in this critical science, there are already 13 fusion energy companies are here in the U.S.  At the hearing, we heard from one of these companies - Commonwealth Fusion Systems, a startup aimed at commercializing fusion energy and has collaborated with the National Labs through FES’s Innovation Network for Fusion Energy (INFUSE) program.

At this week’s hearing, we heard from a witness panel that represents unique areas of fusion energy research. They each had a story to tell on how we’ve progressed over the last decade and where we are headed in the next.

No matter how you look at it, achieving commercial fusion energy technology will require strong U.S. leadership and consistent investment in discovery science. The United States must meet our goal of producing unlimited, emission free power through fusion energy. 

We should not be surprised to see the increasingly bold and aggressive actions by China and Russia recently. The United States has the weakest leadership we have seen in, arguably, our history. The recent news that China’s hypersonic weapons test demonstrated their success in developing and launching a long-range missile. This follows Defense reports that China is adding significantly to their nuclear arsenal. On Monday, Russia conducted an anti-satellite (ASAT) test, striking an old satellite and scattering debris in low-Earth orbit, putting astronauts and Russian cosmonauts aboard the International Space Station in harm’s way. What is America’s response from our top officials? They’re “stunned” and “shocked” as Joe Biden meets with Xi over zoom.

The United States must respond in a manner that adequately addresses the threatening behavior we are seeing. We have to say to our adversaries, “this behavior is unacceptable, and you will not be allowed to continue this way, or else.” Any other response is simply irresponsible and harmful for the future safety and security of America and our allies around the world.

Last Congress, my bill, the Space Technology Advancement Report (STAR) Act was added to the 2020 National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA). This bill focused on findings and recommendations provided by the U.S.-China Economic and Security Review Commission (USCC). In their 2019 Annual Report to Congress, the USCC highlights increasingly threatening behavior by the People’s Republic of China (PRC) in their campaign to dominate space through a variety of means. We know, because China has publicly stated it, that they view space as the next war-fighting domain. It is critical that the American government acts to secure and defend it.

Read the full bill text, here. 

Recent Co-Sponsored Legislation

• H.R. 2748 - Israel Relations Normalization Act of 2021
• H.R. 6016 - To prohibit executive agencies from requiring employees to receive a vaccination against infection by the SARS-CoV-2 virus under Federal contracts, and for other purposes.
• H.R. 6021 - To prohibit the payment of settlement agreements in certain cases, and for other purposes.
• H.R. 6033 - To require the President to certify to Congress that a member of the Quadrilateral Security Dialogue is not participating in quadrilateral cooperation between Australia, India, Japan, and the United States on security matters that are critical to United States strategic interests before imposing sanctions under section 231 of the Countering America's Adversaries Through Sanctions Act with respect to a transaction of that member.
• H.R. 6047 - To direct the Secretary of Health and Human Services to submit to Congress a report on COVID-19 natural immunity, and for other purposes.
• H.Res. 805 - Amending the Rules of the House of Representatives to require a witness who appears before any committee of the House of Representatives in a non-governmental capacity to disclose certain amounts received from the Federal government or a foreign government or certain foreign entities, and for other purposes.
• H.R. 5991 - To direct the Administrator of the Environmental Protection Agency to ensure the completion of a marginal well study by the Secretary of Energy so as to inform the development of certain rules under the Clean Air Act, and for other purposes.
• H.R. 5995 - To provide research on, and services for, individuals with clinical mental health complications following a pregnancy loss, and for other purposes.
• H.R. 6004 - To prohibit the use of funds for a United States Embassy, Consulate General, Legation, Consular Office, or any other diplomatic facility in Jerusalem other than the United States Embassy to the State of Israel, and for other purposes.
• H.J.Res. 65 - Providing for congressional disapproval under chapter 8 of title 5, United States Code, of the rule submitted by the Department of Labor relating to "COVID-19 Vaccination and Testing; Emergency Temporary Standard".
• H.Res. 800 - Recognizing the two-year anniversary of the November 2019 massacre by the Islamic Republic of Iran and condemning the human rights violations by the Islamic Republic of Iran.
• H.R. 5895 - Ending Payments to Non-American Citizens Act
• H.R. 203 - To designate the facility of the United States Postal Service located at 4020 Broadway Street in Houston, Texas, as the "Benny C. Martinez Post Office Building".
• H.R. 224 - To designate the facility of the United States Postal Service located at 5302 Galveston Road in Houston, Texas, as the "Vanessa Guillén Post Office Building".
• H.R. 5978 - To exempt Federal employees and contractors that are critical infrastructure workers from Federal COVID-19 vaccination mandates, and for other purposes.

Thanksgiving is next week!  Your offices will be closed November 24-26 and we will resume the weekly newsletter on December 3. 

I hope each and every one of you has a wonderful Thanksgiving surrounded by family, friends and loved ones. And may your day be filled with God’s uncountable blessings, memorable moments and happiness. Wishing you a blessed Thanksgiving.

Friends, 

This week President Biden met with Chinese President Xi Jinping.

President Biden has spent months attempting to convince America and the world that he would stand up to President Xi . Yet it was Biden who agreed to Xi’s demand for the virtual summit, which gives legitimacy to the global harmful acts of the Chinese Communist Party and damages America’s prestige. 

It was Xi who had a clear agenda of intimidating Biden, and when matched against his weakness, ended in the American president talking for talking’s sake, strengthening Xi and the Chinese, and eroding American power.

They discussed human rights abuses in Hong Kong and against Uyghurs, Taiwan, and climate change.  Left out of the conversation was the successful hypersonic missile test, U.S. intelligence agencies learning that China was secretly building a suspected military facility at a port in the United Arab Emirates and the origins of the COVID-19 virus.  

This summit appeared to serve only to encourage the CCP’s aggressive stance which makes the world less safe and undermines our credibility globally. 

But I want to hear from you!