Statement AI Analysis

Statement AI Summary:

Rep. McGovern delivers a floor speech sharply criticizing the Republican majority and President for foreign interventions, pardons of January 6 participants, rising costs of living, failure to extend Affordable Care Act tax credits, cuts to Medicaid and SNAP, and prioritizing trivial regulatory debates (e.g., showerheads) over urgent issues like healthcare, housing, and honoring law enforcement. He condemns the White House statement rewriting January 6, attacks Speaker Johnson for not displaying a required plaque honoring officers injured on January 6, outlines plans to force a vote to require the plaque, and urges colleagues to oppose the rule and Republican priorities that he portrays as favoring wealthy interests and Big Oil.

Statement AI Bias Category on Economy and Jobs:

Left-Leaning

Bias of All Statements by Jim McGovern on Economy and Jobs:

Statement AI Categories:

Economy and Jobs, Healthcare, Foreign Policy, Taxation, Social Security and Welfare, Criminal Justice and Law Enforcement, Civil Rights and Liberties, Housing and Urban Development, Energy Policy, Campaign Finance and Electoral Reform, National Security and Counterterrorism, Congressional Procedure

Date:

01-07-2026

Pages In PDF Link That Have Statement:

H112-H120

Congressional Record PDF:

Actual Statement Made In Congress:

If the member made multiple statements on that day, they were analyzed and accumulated together.

Mr. McGOVERN. Mr. Speaker, I thank the gentlewoman from Indiana for yielding me the customary 30 minutes, and I yield myself such time as I may consume. Mr. Speaker, it is a new year in America, but judging by the remarks of the gentlewoman from Indiana, it is the same old Republican Party. Here is where we are at on January 7, 2026. We have a Republican President who promised to put America first. Instead, in just under a year he has bailed out Argentina, bombed Venezuela, gave Qatar an air force base in Idaho, pardoned the former Honduran drug trafficking president, and cozied up to dictators all around the world. We have a Republican majority that promised to bring down prices. Guess what. Prices are going up. Families across this country are hurting. People are losing health coverage because you guys chose deliberately, Mr. Speaker, to let the Affordable Care Act tax credits expire. Rent keeps going up. Grocery prices keep going up. Paychecks are not keeping pace. Meanwhile, the President of the United States is openly boasting that America is now running a foreign country. His own advisers can't even answer basic questions about what the hell comes next, what the plan is, how this ends, or when the Venezuelan people can expect democracy. We have a Speaker of the House who is the weakest and most incompetent Speaker of the House in the history of this body. I mean, honest to God, Mr. Speaker, I don't know whether that is a good thing for the country or a bad thing. On one hand, he is so incompetent he can't get anything done. On the other hand, the things he wants to get done are crazy. Don't ask him his opinion on anything. He doesn't have one. He doesn't watch the news. I don't even think he goes outside. I don't know what keeps him so busy that he doesn't have an opinion on anything, but he certainly isn't legislating. With all that is going on--conflict, economic strain, and real crises facing the American people--let us turn to the calendar and see what important issue that this Republican majority has us debating on the floor this week, Mr. Speaker. Do you want to know what it is? It is not housing, not food prices, not rent, not war and peace, foreign policy, or America's future, no, no, no, no. All of us are here on the floor right now at the behest of this Republican majority to debate showerheads. You can't make this stuff up. As if that weren't bad enough, they are still trying to pass last year's appropriations bills. Let that sink in. These are bills that should have been passed months ago. That is the state of governance under this Republican majority: late, unserious, and completely detached from the lives of the people they claim to represent. One of these appropriations bills funds the Department of Justice and Federal law enforcement. That brings us to something Republicans would rather forget, but what our country must not: Yesterday marked the 5- year anniversary of the January 6 insurrection. It has been 5 years since a violent mob, whipped into a frenzy by the lie that Trump won the election even though he lost, stormed into this building to overturn a free and fair election. Mr. Speaker, it has been 5 years since law enforcement officers, Capitol Police, and others were beaten, crushed, stabbed, pepper sprayed and hunted down by a MAGA mob determined to overturn the election and stop the peaceful transfer of power. They hunted Members of Congress, Democrats and Republicans alike. I can still remember them chanting ``hang Mike Pence'' because I was here that day, Mr. Speaker, right where you are sitting right now, right in that chair. I was one of the last Members to leave the House floor, and I watched officers barricade the Chamber doors behind me here with furniture, knowing that they were outnumbered but refusing to surrender. I smelled the tear gas. I felt the chaos. I saw the mob outside of the Speaker's lobby. The officers who were here that day saved lives. They upheld their oath to the Constitution. Many of them were hospitalized. Many were permanently injured. Some died either from injuries sustained that day or by suicide after the trauma that they endured. Nearly 2,000 people were arrested, tried, and found guilty for their crimes that day. What did Donald Trump do? He pardoned every single one of them. He pardoned the criminals who beat officers bloody, desecrated this building, and tried to tear American democracy apart. In my book those pardons were unforgivable, unforgivable. Do you know what he did yesterday? He put up a disgusting, disgraceful statement on the official White House website lying about what happened that day, blaming the police, blaming the police and calling everyone who was here that day innocent. There was not a single mention, not a single mention of the 140 officers who were assaulted that day with weapons like bear spray, stun guns, hockey sticks, broken pieces of furniture, and flag poles--not a single mention. In fact, the White House even put up a statement that ``zero law enforcement officers lost their lives,'' which is a disgusting lie. It is a disgusting lie and a disgrace to the memory of Officer Brian Sicknick who laid in honor in the rotunda of this Capitol Building after he died in the aftermath of January 6. After all of that, after all of that, Speaker Johnson still refuses to display a plaque in the Capitol Building to honor the officers who stood up to the mob that day, a memorial he is required by law to put up. I mean, you know, here it is, Mr. Speaker. Here it is right here. That is what the Speaker refuses to put up. This is what it looks like. It is not the real one because the real one is downstairs in storage somewhere. Speaker Johnson refuses to hang it up. Why? Why? We all know why. We all know why. He won't hang it up because he is Donald Trump's puppet. That is all this is. If he hangs up the plaque, Trump might get mad at him. What a pathetic and shameful abdication of duty. I am sure the gentlewoman won't address a single point I made here about January 6. I don't know whether she is afraid of the repercussions, but the bottom line is that I just want to say, for the record: Shame on Republicans for trying to cover up their complicity in what happened that day, and shame on them for wasting the people's time on showerheads while ignoring the economic, democratic, and moral crises staring this country in the face. Mr. Speaker, I reserve the balance of my time. Mr. McGOVERN. Mr. Speaker, I yield myself such time as I may consume. Mr. Speaker, let me just respond to the gentlewoman: A lot of words, a ton of words, but as I predicted, there is not a single word about the brave officers who defended this Chamber and defended every Member of Congress on January 6 who were attacked by a violent mob. I heard not a single word, not a single word. I just also want to remind the gentlewoman, because maybe she forgot, regrettably, Republicans are in charge. They are in charge of the House, they are in charge of the Senate, and they are in charge of the White House. So they can complain about Joe Biden and they can complain about Democrats, but they are running this show. I was really fascinated to hear the gentlewoman talk about the shutdown. Again, the Republicans are in charge of everything. They have the votes to do whatever they want to do, but when the government shut down--it was a Republican shutdown, by the way. When it shut down, they could have worked on the appropriations bills, by the way, which were already late by definition. By the time of the shutdown, they were already late. Republicans could have worked on getting the appropriations work done. What did my Republican friends do? They decided to go home and take a vacation. They just left. They walked away. They did not do a thing. They went on an extended vacation rather than doing the people's business. I have to say to the gentlewoman: With all due respect, I do townhalls all the time. I don't know whether the gentlewoman does. I know a lot of Republicans do not, but when I do my townhalls, what I hear from people is about the high cost of living. I hear about the high cost of groceries. I hear about the high cost of healthcare. I hear about the high cost of housing. Mr. Speaker, do you know what I don't hear people talk about? It is showerheads. When they talk about freedom and liberty, they don't talk about showerheads. I don't know what planet my Republican friends are living on, but I have news for them: The number one issue in America is not showerheads. It is healthcare. It is affordability. It is housing. It is making sure that they can support their families. People look at life through their kitchen window, and they have to pay bills. They have to make sure that they make ends meet, and right now, under this Republican economy, life is too damn expensive. People can't afford basic needs. I just gave a 1-minute speech before we got into this debate about the increase in hunger in this country. Do you know what the Republican response to that is, Mr. Speaker, what the Trump administration is doing to combat hunger? They are now banning the monthly report, which gives us the data on how many people are hungry in this country. No, we are not investing in programs to help combat hunger. We are not fighting for higher wages. We are not trying to lower healthcare costs. We are just going to hide the information from people so that people don't know how bad the situation is. So, again, I appreciate all the gentlewoman's words, but, quite frankly, they ring hollow. What people want us to do is to fight to make life more affordable and more reasonable for them. Mr. Speaker, I reserve the balance of my time. Mr. McGOVERN. Mr. Speaker, I yield myself such time as I may consume. Mr. Speaker, again, the gentlewoman said nothing about January 6 or nothing about the brave men and women who protected this Chamber and all of us on that terrible, terrible day. I have to say that I was more than amused by listening to the gentlewoman spout about how great everything is right now: The Trump economy is perfect. Everybody is doing great. Everything is wonderful. Everything is terrific. I don't know whether the gentlewoman holds townhalls or not, but I wonder whether the voters of Indiana actually share that point of view. I have got to tell you, I don't think so because I don't think the voters in general in this country, the citizens of this country, share that view. Every poll that I have seen, every townhall that I have been at--by the way, not only in my district but in other States--people have complained about how expensive things are. They say Trump's economy is making life more expensive, more difficult. The price of health insurance is going through the roof because this Chamber won't extend the ACA tax credits. Groceries are going up. I don't know whether the gentlewoman goes to the supermarket or not, but the price of groceries is going up. Mr. Speaker, I ask unanimous consent to include in the Record an article from Politico titled: ``Poll: Trump's own voters begin blaming him for affordability crisis.'' Mr. McGOVERN. Mr. Speaker, I don't want to be lectured about wealthy people in this country because the Republicans have done everything they can to help those who were well off get more and those who are struggling get less. We saw the One Big Beautiful Bill Act that included tax cuts for multimillionaires and multibillionaires, giveaways to billionaires, giveaways to Big Ag, Big Tech, Big Oil, and we see cuts to programs that help average people in this country to get by. By the way, their big, ugly bill included a trillion dollar cut to Medicaid. They are cutting moneys for SNAP, the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program. That is basically to help people put food on the table. By the way, increasingly, a majority of the people who are on SNAP are working families, and they are cutting that at the same time that groceries are going up. However, if you are a billionaire, don't worry about it. We are fighting a war of oil right now because we want to make sure Big Oil, that invested so heavily in the last campaign, gets their payback. The bottom line is, when it comes to people who are well off, well connected, and have lots of money, you know, they are doing fine. Everybody else is getting screwed. If you ask the average person on the street about what they think of Donald Trump's economy, I will tell you what they will say. They will say it sucks. Mr. Speaker, I reserve the balance of my time. Mr. McGOVERN. Mr. Speaker, I yield myself such time as I may consume. Mr. Speaker, I will tell everybody a little secret here. The Republicans are really clever, but not really as clever as they think they are. The big, beautiful bill that they passed, the one that includes tax cuts for multimillionaires and multibillionaires and the one that guts Medicaid by a trillion dollars, is incredibly unpopular. It is incredibly unpopular. In fact, the Kaiser Family Foundation said that 64 percent of American families oppose it, and even FOX News says that 59 percent of the American people oppose it. Why do they oppose it, and why is it so unpopular? It is because of what is contained in it. Rather than fix that--and we just heard the gentlewoman do this. Rather than fix it, they renamed the bill the Working Families Tax Cut Act. That never passed the House. That is a new title they made up. They think all they need to do is change the title of a bill, and then the American people won't realize all the garbage that is tucked into the bill. It is like lipstick on a pig. It is ridiculous. This is insane. The American people are hurting because of the Republican policies. The American people are hurting because they won't extend the ACA tax credits. By the way, people will see their health insurance costs go down if the ACA tax credits are extended. The gentlewoman is all upset about it, but I will urge her to talk to some of her Republican colleagues, by the way, who have signed on to a discharge petition to force a vote on extending the ACA tax credits. We will begin that debate today and vote on it tomorrow. It is not just Democrats. There are some Republicans who are hearing from their constituents that they are getting screwed over on their healthcare, and they want us to do something. The bottom line is, they can change the titles of bills and all that kind of stuff, but if they don't change the substance, if they don't get Donald Trump to back off on his tariffs--which, by the way, are responsible for rising housing costs in this country--if they don't get him to change his views on that, things are going to continue to get worse. They can change the titles of bills all they want, but they are not changing the reality for millions of Americans. It is hard to believe that in the House of Representatives, which is supposed to be a serious body, this is what we are talking about. We are changing titles of bills so that maybe the American people won't know what we are talking about. Mr. Speaker, if we defeat the previous question, I am going to offer an amendment to the rule to bring up H. Con. Res. 33, which calls for the plaque honoring the brave police officers that defended this Capitol and our democracy on January 6 to be put up in the Capitol as required by law. Mr. Speaker, I am sick and tired of Republicans standing up and proclaiming their unwavering support for law enforcement when they won't even honor the law enforcement that saved them, that saved us and our democracy here on January 6. Yesterday was the fifth anniversary of the January 6 attack on the Capitol by supporters of Donald Trump. Over 140 officers were injured, an officer was killed, and others died by suicide following the trauma of that day. Do you know how the White House marked this anniversary? They marked it by putting up an Orwellian web page, rewriting history, and claiming it is the officers who were to blame for the violence. How disgusting. How despicable. How disgraceful. I ask my Republican colleagues: Do you really believe that crap? When you look in the eyes of the Capitol Police who guard this building, do you accuse them of being responsible for the violence of that day? How dare the President of the United States say such a thing, and how shameful of this Republican majority to stay silent in the face of this depravity and rewriting of history. Republicans found the time to illegally slap Donald Trump's name onto the Kennedy Center, defacing a memorial to a great President in a single day, within 24 hours, but a legally required honor for the officers who defended this democracy? It is 5 years of excuses, 5 years of delay, 5 years of cowardice and disrespect to law enforcement by Republicans. When all is said and done, history will not look kindly on these Trump Republicans and this Republican majority, and they all know it. At this point, let me say to my Republican friends that it is always the right time to do the decent thing, the thing the law requires, which is to hang the plaque honoring these brave men and women who put their lives on the line to defend us, to defend this building, and to defend this democracy. Mr. Speaker, I ask unanimous consent to insert the text of my amendment into the Record, along with any extraneous material, immediately prior to the vote on the previous question. Mr. McGOVERN. Mr. Speaker, I reserve the balance of my time. Mr. McGOVERN. Mr. Speaker, I yield myself such time as I may consume. Mr. Speaker, again, no discussion, no comments on what happened on January 6 or about what the White House put on its web page yesterday, blaming police officers for the violence of January 6, saying that no police officer died when we know that is a lie, and no explanation as to why we are having such a difficult time hanging a plaque that, quite frankly, the law requires us to hang. Again, the gentlewoman voted against an amendment to force the Speaker to hang the plaque. I am happy to yield to the gentlewoman if she wants to explain why she voted that way. Does she have any reaction to the White House's horrific and disgraceful statement yesterday, basically smearing the brave men and women who are in our law enforcement and the Capitol Police officers? Mr. Speaker, I am happy to yield to the gentlewoman. And nothing. And nothing. I mean, really? That is what things have come to? We can't even come together and stand in defense of the Capitol Police who defended us that day? We can't honor them? Somehow that is a no-no because Donald Trump doesn't like it. I mean, that really is shameful. Mr. Speaker, I reserve the balance of my time. Mr. McGOVERN. Mr. Speaker, I reserve the balance of my time. Mr. McGOVERN. Mr. Speaker, may I inquire as to how much time is remaining. Mr. McGOVERN. Mr. Speaker, I yield myself the balance of my time. Mr. Speaker, let's be honest about what we have seen from this Republican majority. Republicans can't govern. They can't lead. They won't and don't fight for the people who sent them here. They rush, rush, rush to the floor to redefine what a showerhead is. That is the big issue. They move at lightning speed on tax breaks for billionaires. They bend over backward to enrich Trump and his inner circle, going so far as to invade another country to grease the skids for Big Oil. It is not about democracy. It is not about human rights. It is not even about drugs. It is about Big Oil. The priorities of Big Tech, Big Oil, Big Pharma, and Big Banks move at lightning speed. Tax cuts for the wealthy pass overnight. Corporate giveaways face no obstacles. When it comes to protecting healthcare for millions of Americans, suddenly there is hesitation. Suddenly, there are delays. Suddenly, there is no money. Suddenly, they move in slow motion. Suddenly, we can't do anything. It may be 2026, but it is the status quo for this Republican majority. It is a new year but the same BS for them except when it comes to what is happening in Venezuela. Then they are dragging us back to 2003. Other than that, it is always the same funding from elite donors with phony talk about helping regular people. It is the same contempt for their own voters. It is the same recklessness abroad. It is the same incompetence at home. Here is what Republicans always underestimate. The American people are paying attention. They are not stupid. They know when billionaires get everything and everyone else gets excuses. They know when governance is replaced by stunts, distractions, and culture war nonsense. There is always a reckoning for that kind of failure. This year will be no exception. They know all the gimmicks. We passed this monstrosity of a bill called the One Big Beautiful Bill Act. The American people are horrified by what is in it. There are excessive giveaways to the wealthiest in this country. There are cutbacks in healthcare. There are cutbacks in everything that matters to working families. Every poll that is done says that it is incredibly unpopular. What do they do? Rather than fix the problem, they come up with a counterfeit name for the bill. It is no longer the One Big Beautiful Bill Act. Now it is the Working Families Tax Cut Act. I don't know what the hell that is. I don't know who came up with that idea. Maybe some pollster gave it to them, as if changing the name of what they call this big, ugly bill will make a difference. Mr. Speaker, all I can say is that with all that is going on in this country right now, with all of the concerns that the American people have, and with people desperately pleading with this Republican President and this Republican majority in the House and Senate to do something to make their life better, we have an opportunity to maybe legislate and help people. Instead, we are talking about showerheads. I mean, really? I urge my colleagues to vote ``no'' on this bill. Mr. Speaker, I will also again remind people about the vote on the previous question. We have a chance to actually do something positive today, and that is to honor the men and women who protected us on January 6. Unfortunately, Republicans on the Rules Committee all voted ``no'' to require the Speaker again to hang the plaque. They all voted ``no.'' Not a word has been said. There is no explanation as to why. Not a word about what happened on January 6 has been spoken on this floor by the Republicans today. I don't know how that can be. I don't know how that can be. Mr. Speaker, I was there that day. I was in the Speaker's chair. I saw what happened. I saw what happened when I walked out to the Speaker's lobby. I saw the people who protected us being beaten by this angry mob, and not a word. We can't get the Speaker of the House to hang up this plaque. That can change with the previous question vote. Mr. Speaker, I yield back the balance of my time. Mr. McGOVERN. Mr. Speaker, on that I demand the yeas and nays.

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