Chairman Burgess Opening Remarks on H.R. 5349 and H.R. 7198

As prepared for delivery:  

Good afternoon.

I hope everyone on this committee, including our two panels and our staff, had a restful Thanksgiving and extended break. I have been around for a few Decembers after an election and can speak from experience that the time with friends and family is a blessing as we reach the final stretch of this Congress. 

Today, the House Committee on Rules will consider two important bills. H.R. 5349, the Crucial Communism Teaching Act, and H.R. 7198, the Prove It Act. Each of these bills address critical issues related to our children’s education and federal regulations.
 
The first, the Crucial Communism Teaching Act addresses the alarming rate by which our youngest generations are unaware or ignorant of key facts about current and historical communist governments.

A report recently found that nearly half of Gen Z students are unaware that the Chinese Communist Party is responsible for more deaths than Nazi Germany. A quarter of Gen Z students hold a favorable opinion of communism and nearly 20 percent think communism is a better system of government than capitalism. This is a failure of our education system that must be addressed as this generation moves to become our future leaders. H.R. 5349 addresses this failure by ensuring school curricula address the atrocities of communist governments and their complete mismatch over the ideals of our constitutional republic. The bill received bipartisan support out of Committee markup and I hope it receives the same type of support on the floor.
 
The Prove It Act continues House Republican’s effort to rightsize the federal government and eliminate unnecessary burdens on our job creators. For too long, federal regulators have “ignored” or “underestimated” the cost they impose on small businesses. The result is a regulatory state that imposes $14,000 per employee in annual cost. This is on top of the cost of inflation, supply chain issues, energy unaffordability, and other burdens the Biden-Harris Administration has imposed on American businesses. When we disadvantage our main street businesses, communist governments like China fill the void with their own.
 
I look forward to the discussion surrounding these bills and will now yield to the Ranking Member, Mr. McGovern, for any comments he wishes to make.

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