Friends,
I’d like to wish a Happy Passover to everyone celebrating beginning this evening, as well as a blessed Palm Sunday to all observing on Sunday!

We had another productive week on Capitol Hill as the House passed legislation to limit judicial overreach and improve our nation’s election integrity. We also formalized the first step to slowing the explosion of federal spending to give our country a chance to right its financial situation.

This week, the House agreed to the Senate-amended version of the budget framework we passed last month. I supported this critical step toward funding border security, restoring our national defense, slowing the rate of spending growth, and preventing a massive tax increase on Kansas families and small businesses.

We have to face the facts: an enormous debt crisis fueled by unchecked spending threatens America’s future. Washington’s usual approach of overspending and kicking the can down the road isn’t sustainable. Thanks to decades of fiscal irresponsibility, we now must make hard decisions.

One of the most important aspects of passing the budget framework is allowing the movement toward the extension of President Trump’s 2017 tax relief, which will expire at the end of the year without Congressional action. If this relief expires, it will represent the largest tax increase on middle-class Americans in history. In fact, if Congress doesn’t extend these provisions:

• The average Kansas family’s federal tax bill will increase by $2,228;
• Kansas could lose up to 6,761 jobs, and;
• the average Kansas business’ taxes will increase by $988.

Extending this tax relief for families and small businesses is critically important, especially after four years of Bidenflation.

This budget certainly didn’t have all the spending restraint our country needs, but it’s a step in the right direction; we’re beginning to slowly turn the Titanic. Our financial situation is in a place where this budget resolution – which mandates billions of dollars of spending reductions – doesn’t even put us in the negative spending category. It simply slows the rate of federal spending growth while strengthening critical programs Kansans rely on.

Make no mistake though; our work is just beginning.

This week the House passed the No Rogue Rulings Act (NORRA). I spoke about the importance of this legislation on the House floor:

As I touched on last week, nationwide injunctions are designed to be an extraordinary remedy; unfortunately, these injunctions are being abused through overuse and are at risk of becoming just another step in the public policy process rather than the check and balance of traditional judicial review.

My amendment to allow nationwide injunctions only in extraordinary cases where the impact of a ruling would affect the nation at large was included in the bill that passed the House. My amendment also includes important procedural safeguards to limit stalling tactics.

The policy of reining in the overuse of nationwide injunctions was once supported by my colleagues on the other side of the aisle, who have now turned into opponents of the concept. Let’s look at the facts: President Biden’s entire four-year term in office saw 14 nationwide injunctions brought against his policies. In the first three months of President Trump’s second term alone there have been 17. In President Trump’s first term, which saw significantly more nationwide injunctions than any other President, these sweeping nationwide injunctions were overwhelmingly issued by Democrat-appointed judges.

NORRA now heads to the Senate, where I hope the Democrat Senators who were championing similar legislation last year stick to their guns and pass this commonsense measure for the good of the American people.

This week the House also passed the Safeguard American Voter Eligibility (SAVE) Act, which requires documentary proof of citizenship to register to vote in federal elections, and it had bipartisan support. Last week, I joined House Republican leadership to talk about the importance of this bill:

Years ago, a similar Kansas state law passed with large bipartisan majorities, but was subsequently struck down when courts found federal law prohibits states from enacting these proof-of-citizenship requirements. The SAVE Act amends federal law to fix that problem. I thought this issue was a no-brainer; unfortunately, more than 200 of my colleagues across the aisle voted against it.

We require documentary proof of age to drink at a bar; surely we should have at least that standard of proof in place to protect the sanctity of our elections.

Thank you to the thousands of Kansas who joined me this week for another telephone town hall!

We covered everything from veterans’ healthcare to DOGE to the Biden border crisis. Thank you to everyone who asked a question or listened in! We’ll be doing these monthly, so be sure to be on the lookout for the next one.