December 20, 2024
Dear John,

Looking for a Christmas Miracle

BIG News

Earlier this week, the House put forward a continuing resolution (CR) spending bill that contained too many unrelated provisions. Many members of Congress, including myself, indicated our opposition to that bill.

That caused us to go back to the drawing board. I worked with House leadership and President Trump to craft a clean CR, eliminating 1,400 pages of unrelated policies. Ultimately, Democrats voted against that bill, abandoning disaster victims, letting family farms fail, and shutting down the government.

We’ve continued to work on this issue, and I expect in the next few hours we will be successful in funding government until March, when we can work with President Trump to secure the border and restore fiscal sanity to our nation. 

BIG Update

The House DOGE Caucus held its first meeting this week and I was excited to be a part of it. Making our government more efficient and cutting spending is a big priority of the caucus and Trump’s presidency.

First meeting with DOGE Caucus

We had a great conversation on ideas to streamline the government to make the best use of taxpayer dollars, which is why I would have voted against the CR earlier this week. I heard from many of you who opposed the bill, and I agree, it was too big and spent too much money.

BIG Idea

In 2022, fentanyl was responsible for nearly 70% of drug overdose deaths for adults ages 18-45 – a staggering and preventable loss of life. Most of that fentanyl is coming from China. Steps must be taken to prevent this lethal drug from coming across our borders.

I’m a member of the Fentanyl Policy Working Group within the Select Committee on China and this week, we introduced three pieces of legislation to attack this part of the China threat from all sides. These bills will save lives and make our communities safer.

The bills would:

• Establish a joint task force to counter synthetic narcotics, primarily focusing on fentanyl coming from China.
• Establish new sanctions authorities against actors involved in fentanyl trafficking and expands existing sanctions authorities to target People’s Republic of China (PRC) vessels or ports that knowingly aid in fentanyl trafficking.
• Impose “docking fees” on PRC entities that fail to implement safeguards against the production and export of fentanyl precursors.

Making our communities safer requires securing our borders and staying tough on China.

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