• last year
House Republicans nominated Rep. Steve Scalise (R-La.) to replace Rep. Kevin McCarthy (R-Calif.) as the next House speaker in a closed-door meeting Wednesday—as the vacancy threatens to hamstring Congress’ ability to pass consequential legislation, including more aid for Israel and a new budget to avert a government shutdown.

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Transcript
00:00 (inaudible)
00:05 We -- yeah.
00:06 The Press: Your Speaker-elect --
00:09 The Press: Yeah, your Speaker --
00:10 The Press: Your Speaker-elect, what's your message
00:12 to unify your conference?
00:14 Secretary Azar: First, I want to thank
00:17 my House Republican colleagues
00:18 for just designating me as the Speaker.
00:21 Obviously, we still have work to do.
00:24 We're going to have to go upstairs on the House floor
00:28 and resolve this and then get the House opened again.
00:31 We have a lot of work to do,
00:34 not just in the House for the people of this country,
00:37 but we see how dangerous of a world it is
00:40 and how things can change so quickly.
00:42 We need to make sure we're sending a message
00:45 to people all throughout the world
00:47 that the House is open and doing the people's business,
00:51 making sure that we're unequivocally standing
00:55 and our first resolution that we pass under Speaker
00:58 Steve Scalise will be to make it clear
01:01 that we stand with Israel.
01:02 The McCaul-Meeks resolution
01:04 will be our first order of business.
01:06 But obviously, there's a lot more work to do.
01:09 The conversations we've been having with my colleagues
01:12 over the last few days leading up to this
01:15 show that there's a resolve that we need to get back to work.
01:19 There's a lot of business to take care of.
01:21 Families are struggling across this country.
01:24 You know, we passed a lot of legislation
01:26 to help families get back on track,
01:29 to address our border crisis,
01:30 to get our economy moving again,
01:32 to address the spending in Washington
01:34 that's driving inflation, high energy costs.
01:36 All of those bills that we've passed
01:39 and that we're going to continue to pass
01:40 that are sitting over in the Senate need to be taken up.
01:44 We've passed over 70 percent of the bills
01:47 to fund the government, dealing with appropriations
01:51 and setting the priorities of this nation's spending.
01:54 And the Senate has taken up zero.
01:56 The Senate has to start doing their work.
01:59 And, by the way, in that legislation,
02:01 including the State and Foreign Ops bill,
02:04 the Defense Appropriations bill includes funding for Israel --
02:08 things like Iron Dome, precision-guided missiles --
02:11 things that could be used today to help them in this war.
02:15 So, there is a lot to do.
02:17 I'm also going to be calling on President Biden
02:20 to sit down and talk about the crisis at the border.
02:24 As we have an open southern border --
02:26 and we've seen millions come in, in the last few years,
02:29 including people on the terrorist watch list
02:31 from all over the world.
02:33 If he doesn't know now, after what happened,
02:38 we cannot have an unsecure border.
02:41 We've got to secure America's border.
02:44 We've passed legislation to do that.
02:46 It's time we sit down and have a conversation
02:49 about how to secure America's border.
02:51 And it's not a Republican or a Democrat issue.
02:53 There are Democrat mayors all over the country
02:56 who have been calling on the President to do this, too.
02:59 That's a conversation we need to have today.
03:01 There is a lot of busy work to do,
03:04 a lot of important work to do on behalf of people
03:07 who are struggling not only here in America,
03:09 but who are concerned all around the world.
03:12 And we're going to provide that vision.
03:14 We have a lot of work to do.
03:15 Obviously, we've got some more conversations to have.
03:17 (crowd shouting)

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