WASHINGTON D.C., DC — EDITOR'S NOTE: This is the full text of Rep. Steve Scalise (R-La.) speaking to the media after the GOP voted to nominate him as speaker on Wednesday.
First, I want to thank my House Republican colleagues for just designating me as the Speaker.
Obviously, we still have work to do, we're going to have to go upstairs on the House floor and resolve this and get the house opened. Again, we have a lot of work to do. Not just in the house for the people of this country. But we see how dangerous of a world it is and how things can change so quickly.
We need to make sure we're sending a message to people all throughout the world, that that the House is open and doing the people's business, making sure that we're unequivocally standing. And our first resolution that we pass under Speaker Steve Scalise will be to make it clear that we stand with Israel, the McCaul-Meeks resolution will be our first order of business.
But obviously, there's a lot more work to do. The conversations we've been having, with my colleagues over the last few days leading up to this, show that there's a resolve that we need to get back to work. There's a lot of business to take care of families are struggling across this country.
You know, we passed a lot of legislation to help families get back on track to address our border crisis, to get our economy moving, again, to address the spending in Washington that's driving infliction, high energy costs. All of those bills that we've passed, and that we're going to continue to pass that are sitting over in the Senate need to be taken up. We've passed over 70% of the bills to fund the government, dealing with appropriations and setting the priorities of this nation spending. And the Senate has taken up zero. The Senate has to start doing their work.
And by the way, in that legislation, including the State, Foreign Ops Bill, the Defense Appropriations Bill includes funding for Israel, things like Iron Dome, precision-guided missiles -- are things that could be used today to help them in this war.
So there is a lot to do. I'm also going to be calling on President Biden to sit down and talk about the crisis at the border, as we have an open southern border. And we've seen millions come in in the last few years, including people on the terrorist watch list from all over the world. If he doesn't know now, after what happened, we cannot have an unsecured border. We've got to secure America's border, we've passed legislation to do that. It's time we sit down and have a conversation about how to secure America's border, and it's not a Republican or Democrat issue. There are Democrat mayors all over the country who have been calling on the President to do this, too. That's a conversation we need to have today.
There's a lot of busy work to do a lot of important work to do on behalf of people who are struggling, not only here in America, but who are concerned all around the world. We're gonna provide that vision. We have a lot of work to do.