24 Hours
By Rep. Dusty Johnson
Twenty-four hours. That’s how long it took for the House of Representatives to roll out massive agreements on a defense authorization package and a trade deal.
Government is a finicky thing. For months Congress has debated the United States Mexico Canada Agreement (USMCA), a trade deal that will deliver over 176,000 jobs and $68 billion to our economy. With only a few weeks left in 2019, the Speaker left us all on our toes, but we now have a trade deal House Democrats and the administration will support. The Trump administration fought for over a year to get the USMCA across the finish line, and I’m looking forward to voting in support of it as soon as possible.
We only have a handful of legislative days left on the 2019 calendar and almost overnight, the House and Senate were able to come together on a Conference Agreement for the annual National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA).
As a freshman congressman in the House minority, it’s not every day you get a bill signed into law. My legislation, the Rapid Fielding Defense Capabilities and Risk Assessment Act, which will help streamline defense acquisition efforts, was included in the final version of NDAA and will be signed into law by President Trump. Our nation’s military should never swing in the balance. The bipartisan NDAA agreement supports our nation’s military branches, ensures survivors of deceased service members receive their benefits, and provides the biggest raise our troops have seen in over a decade.
Congress doesn’t always work how it’s supposed to, but this was a very good week for bipartisanship. There’s still more work to be done, though.
Before the end of the year, the House and Senate must pass a budget agreement, take a vote on the USMCA agreement, and work out its issues on prescription drug pricing. There was robust debate on the House floor regarding drug pricing this week. House Democrats passed a partisan drug pricing bill which the president has said he would veto, and House Republicans introduced a bipartisan bill that encourages new innovation and has large support by the Senate. There are bipartisan drug pricing bills out there and I believe the House should focus on those.
A twenty-four-hour turnaround isn’t exactly conventional, but sometimes it takes getting down to the wire to get things done. I’m glad the American people received big wins in the House this week.
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The details of “NAFTA lite” are hard to find. Apparently we gained access to 3% of Canada’s dairy market. Big Deal. What did we give away to get that? No one is saying. No much of a win.
And Trump won second place in the China war.