On by the speaker, myself, senator schumer, congressman mccarthy and the president. We all understood what the deal said, for example, we have an understanding of what a poison pill was. A poison pill was anything that wasnt in the existing law. Anything that was not in the existing law. If there were to be any change, all five of us would have to sign off on it and guess what happened this morning in the appropriations is apparently, and i would call this a troubling development, there was an attempt to kind of change the rules, change th changed the gat he agreed to. Now look, one of the few things we agree to on a bipartisan basis around here is that it was a good idea to have a regular appropriations process. I cant overstate how difficult it was given to players involved to reach an agreement and here when whearwhen we begin to taket steps in our Committee Process here are democratic friends seem to want to try to wiggle out of the agreement that we all signed off on and voted on, so i think it is truly a Disturbing Development and i hope you will ask them about it. They will be out here shortly and let me just say again we dont want to have the Chaos Associated with government shutdowns. Its no way to run the government and we all agree to get past that and the game plan next week was to call up the committee plus a combination of defense, foreign operations and energy, the same configurations to speak or move on the house side obviously a Different Number at the same configuration on the house side to make it easier to smooth the final passage once we reached the conference so im going to call this a troubling sign, and i hope that is all it is and that we will get past this and allow the chairman and Ranking Member leahy to do their job and move these bills forward. I would echo that. We all voted for it with no stipulations and everybody on both sides i think knew what the agreement was it important that the democrats get back to the table and honor the deal they made earlier this year. I. , like many of my colleagues during the month of august at the chance to travel around my state. I visited terri farms, chambers of committee, had an opportunity to hear from the people i represent about the things they care about and that are important to them and of course you cant travel in these countries these days without hearing about chronically depressed Commodity Prices and the concerns of the agricultural economy and for the future might be. So it is important for the farmers and ranchers in any of my colleagues represent the house take u up that u. S. Mca freetrade agreement and its right there ready to go and a function where we will approve it and get it on the president s desk and signed into law to open up to some of the markets and increase the opportunities for the farmers and ranchers and the best thing we can do to get the economy up and going again. I hope the followon agreement about what he the bilateral deal, but if you look at the overall economy, we still have historically low unemployment, 50 year low unemployment, 6. 3 million jobs created since the president took office into a tenyear high people to see that progresprogress continues and tt way to do that i believe is to continue to put policies in place with conditions favorable to Economic Growth and job creation and higher wages and the best way to start is to get that trade agreement out of the house of representatives and over to the senate. But we can vote on it and send it to the president. The democrats had their climate debate last week. The schemes they came up with were radical and reckless. Elizabeth warren wants to eliminate Nuclear Power which of course is the largest source of zero carbon that we have in terms of energy in this country. Bernie sanders says he wants to eliminate tracking that has brought this to American Homes and as we said in colorado yesterday, he wanted to eliminate with 100,000 jobs, direct jobs dependent on it and up to 300,000 jobs a. Of able debating on thursday with members of the United States senate. This whole group, all ten are saying the sky is falling, proposing things that are unilateral, immediate and dire consequences in the economy. It will drive up energy costs, put people out of work, drive jobs overseas. Climate change is not an existential crisis. Its a legitimate concern. Republicans have solutions. Carbon capture and sequestration and advanced Nuclear Power. These are the ways to solve the problems with innovation, not taxation and government regulation. Senator capito and congressman cole and i went last week, monday and tuesday last week. Border crossings are down at 56 below where they were in may. Theres always a little of that but the numbers ar are lower thn they would traditionally be. I personally think that the barriers an into those things me a difference and they are part of what he ought to be doing where they make sense, but i also think the thing the president has accomplished that is making the most difference right now is the willingness of the Mexican Government to work with us under some persuasion of the president when they decided to do it but its making a big difference. There are 10,000 Mexican National guards at the guatemala border now. When the president made the agreement to open up the border and told there were less than 100 people at the border into now has 10,000. There were 15,000 Mexican National guard people working along the northern border along the border between us and them and maybe most important of all except for unaccompanied children, any native spanish speaker that doesnt have legitimate fear of going back to mexico is being sent back to await their court date. No more than 15 out of 100 people from el salvador or guatemala or honduras will ever pulqualify toqualify to stay atm hearing. Most of them figure that out and many are being flown back home before waiting weeks or two or three months in mexico. Its making a difference and wouldnt have happened if the president hadnt insisted and frankly if the new mexican president hadnt agreed to it. Its kind of going to have a lm effect as long as the maintain that relationship with them. Hello, everyone. Over the past august recess many of us were back in our home states traveling around visiting with constituents and that is what i was engaged in as well, doing what we call in iowa the grassley visiting all 99 counties. During that time i visited about 37 counties, 11 of them were town halls across the state of iowa. What i i am hearing from thouss and thousands in every corner of the state is that in particular farmers and our ethanol producers, they really want to see the congress applauding and making sure epa actions are more transparent. What i am hearing from seniors and working families is they want us to address the cost of rising healthcare and prescription drugs. What i am hearing from smallbusinessmallbusiness owned a greater labor pool with more skills ready to go to work. Also, what i am hearing from with other Small Business owners are keeping up with the regulation and decreasing regulation and keep the economy going and what im hearing from all iowans, no matter where they are from is that we need to get busy on the u. S. Mca. Very important trade deal. Ive not heard one i can say wee shouldnt be supporting it. So, we have a lot of work to do and a lot of things that really matter in everyday islands lives and we need to spend some time getting this type of activity is done. Im excited to be back and working with my colleagues on these important issues and look forward to wrapping up 2019 is a very successful year. Thank you, everybody. That afternoon. I spent much of the month of august traveling the highways and byways of indiana dealing doing what i enjoy most, visiting rankandfile hoosiers in hearing their interest and feedback with respect to the work of. There was a whole lot to talk about it as you might imagine tension with iran and the ongoing civil war in the country of yemen. I met with saudi arabias crown prince and have an opportunity to question the crown prince on a number of important matters, the crisis in jenin releasing the pledge to humanitarian assistance did indicate to me in saudi arabia in the coming weeks is going to make good on their commitment and i was informed that Legal Process continues and everyone will be brought to justice. So, my take away is this, diplomacy in the middle east is always challenging and complicated and especially difficult right now. And its really important that the United States of america in congress and executive branch continues to have a dialogue. These are going to be critical moving forward to address an important issue confronting a serious threat posed by iran continuing to work to end the worst humanitarian crisis in yemen and addressing the religious extremism that is fueling so many of these challenges. Let me address they were calling on us to pass a bill the president already said he was going to veto. For a month what ive said consistently is lets see if we can make the law. My members know the very simple fact that you have to have a president ial signature so we had a briefing from down at the white house and they are working on coming up with a proposal that the president would sign. The. It dominated the month of august and at least he could come backk with a level of seriousness but maybe we would like to get an outcome. So, we do in fact await word from the white house about what the president is willing to sign a trade thats important to a lot of my members and also at the risk of repeating the history lesson, it is the only way that we will get along. [inaudible] we dont know if its passed to become law and until they give an indication of what the president would like to sign, we are waiting to see what it looks like. Once you get the product, but this term is more appropriate because both sides then have to make a decision about something that is real. Just theatrics, press conferences to intimidate dot dr lee to make the law. We could actually achieve something on this issue. Im going to wait and assess the proposal that could become law and at that point i would be happy to explain my vote one way or another. We are engaged with a level of seriousness that i see completely nonexistent on the other side. Its all about trying to scare people, trying to create press conferences. We need to try to make a wall. These horrendous shootings deserve a response and im hoping we can get something that actually becomwould actually ben the United States of america. Good afternoon everyone thank you for coming. Im proud to be