🇺🇸 Sen. Ted Cruz pledges in Carrollton to fight for jobs growth in Texas (3 August 2024) [CC]

It is great to be with friends. Thank y'all for  hosting us. Thank you everyone for being here   and letting us interrupt for a few minutes. Your  busy workday. It is great to be here. Number one,   I'm honored to receive the endorsement of the  US Chamber of Commerce. That is a big deal.   I'm proud to stand with you. I'm honored to have  the support of the Texas Association of Business,   which is fighting every day for jobs, and I'm  honored to stand with workers and job creators   throughout the state of Texas. In 12 years in  the Senate, my number one priority every single   day has been jobs, jobs, jobs. The reason is  simple. That's the top priority of Texans. Every   part of the state, whether it's East Texas or west  Texas, whether it's the panhandle or the Valley,   Texans want jobs. We want more jobs. We  want higher wages, we want more opportunity.  And what I understand is that jobs  don't come from some bureaucrat in a   windowless office in Washington dc They come from  entrepreneurs, they come from small businesses,   they come from leaders putting capital at risk to  meet a need. But we also know that Washington can   screw it up mightily. And if you want to create an  environment where jobs are plentiful, the two best   levers are tax reform and regulatory reform. Every  time we lessen taxes, we simplify the tax code.   Every time we repeal job killing regulations, the  result is more jobs. There's satirical headline in   the Babylon B. It says Texas is building a wall  on its southern border consisting of nothing but   discarded one-way, U-Haul trucks from California.  Now, there's an enormous amount of truth to that   every day for more than a decade, we have had  over a thousand people a day coming to Texas.  Why? There are a lot of reasons, but the number  one reason is Texas is where the jobs are. And   in my view, this election for Senate is about one  thing, keeping Texas, Texas, we can't screw that   up. We want to remain an environment where jobs  are plentiful. And by the way, the states that   people are fleeing from, it's not complicated.  They're coming from bright blue states with   really high taxes and high regulations. They're  coming from California and Illinois and New York   and New Jersey and Connecticut, and they're  coming to Texas because you can provide for   your family because your kids have a better future  here because your grandkids have a better future   here. That's why people want to be in Texas. Now, I want to briefly talk about five legislative   victories in my time in the Senate, every one  of which is focused on jobs number one I 14.   I 14 is going to be a brand new interstate.  It's going to run from the Permian Basin East   through East Texas, ultimately all the way to  Georgia and the Atlantic Ocean. I was the lead   author of the legislation designating I 14. I  joined up with Raphael Warnock. Raphael Warnock   is a very liberal Democrat. He represents Georgia.  Raphael and I went to the Senate floor to argue   in favor of our legislation. I stood up and  spoke in favor of it. Raphael stood up and   spoke in favor of it. And then Tom Harper, who's  a Democrat from Delaware, Tom stood up and said,   you know what? If Cruz is for it and  warnock's for it, we all got to be for it.  And it passed a hundred and nothing on  the floor of the Senate. That legislation   is now designating a brand new interstate  that will be able to take oil and gas,   be able to take livestock and crops, be able  to take people, be able to take troops and   military equipment east to west, all across  Texas and all the way to the Atlantic Ocean.   Second legislative victory. I 27. I 27 is major  new interstate. It's going to run from Laredo   North through West Texas, through the panhandle,  through New Mexico, ultimately all the way up to   Canada. I 27 is also called the Porch to  Plains Corridor. That legislation, again,   I was the lead author of that legislation. I  joined together with Ben Ray Luhan. Ben Ray Luhan   is a Democrat from New Mexico. The legislation was  Cruise Luhan. Again, we got bipartisan support,   passed it through the Senate, passed it  through the House, has been signed into law.  Now, let me tell you the benefits of I 27, and  I'm going to rely on tdot, the Texas Department   of Transportation. They conducted a comprehensive  study of I 27, and they concluded that building   that would result in a 76% return on investment,  $3.4 billion in annual travel cost savings,   more than 17,000 new jobs and a $2.2 billion  annual increase to state GDP. That's a second   victory. We talk about a third, and it was one  that Glenn referenced. There are four new bridges   being built in South Texas, two in Laredo, one in  Brownsville, one in Eagle Pass, all from Texas to   Mexico. All of them were running into bureaucratic  roadblocks in the Biden administration and in   particular. So to build any bridge in America  right now, you have to go through what's called   Federal Environmental NEPA Review, and  that can be a time consuming and expensive   process to build an international bridge, a  bridge that crosses an international border.  You separately need a permit from the President  of the United States. So if you're building a   bridge to Mexico or to Canada, you got to get  a presidential permit. Now, the way it used   to operate is the president would grant those  permits conditional on the ultimate completion   of the Federal Environmental NEPA review. When  Joe Biden and Kamala Harris came into office,   they reversed that process. They announced  that they would grant zero presidential permit   any cross border bridges unless and until the  Federal Environmental NEPA review had been fully   completed. The impact of that decision was to  delay every one of those bridges 3, 4, 5 years. So   I found out about this issue about two and a half,  three years ago when leaders from Laredo came   to meet with me in dc They sat in my office, and  this is elected leaders, this is business leaders,   and they were frustrated out of their minds. And mind you, by the way, most of the elected   leaders in Laredo were Democrats, and they were  pulling their hair out at the Biden Harris White   House at why this Democrat White House was  blocking these bridges. And they asked me,   they said, Ted, can you help us with this? Can  you get this fixed? I said, absolutely. Now,   I got to tell you somewhat naively, I thought  it would be a simple matter. I thought I could   make a phone call to the State Department.  I could say, look, this is stupid. Change   this. Well, I made that phone call, but the  Biden State Department said, go jump in a lake.   They had no interest in what I had to say. So the  next stage, as I worked to unify the congressional   delegation in South Texas, I drafted a letter  to Tony Blinken, the Secretary of State. It was   joined by John Corny, my colleague in the Senate. It was joined by Henry Cuellar, a democrat,   Monica De La Cruz, a Republican, Vicente Gonzales,  a Democrat, and Tony Gonzalez, a Republican. All   of us joined the letter saying, this policy hurts  South Texas. It hurts all of Texas. Please change   it again. The Biden administration said, go jump  in a lake. So I drafted legislation to change it   legislation to expedite the permitting and to  direct the administration to speed up granting   the permitting. I introduced that in the Senate  Foreign Relations Committee. I serve on the Senate   Foreign Relations Committee, got bipartisan  support. Democrats and Republicans supported   my legislation. We passed it through the Senate.  We passed it through the house. It was signed into   law on December 22nd of last year. Now, December  22nd happens to be my birthday. I thought that   was a fantastic birthday presence. The impact of  that legislation, the permits have been granted.   Now it set a shot clock, it set a timer and  forced the White House to grant those permits.  And lemme give you a sense of the scope of how big  a deal this is. Glenn made reference to it. The   Texas Association of Businesses described this  as the most significant legislation for Texas   Mexico trade since the US Mexico Canada Trade  Agreement. Let me put this in scope. The World   Trade Bridge in Laredo, Texas is right now the  largest land port in America. It's eight lanes on   any given day. If you go down to the World Trade  Bridge, you'll see a line of 18 wheelers extending   into Mexico, 4, 5, 6 miles, and they'll just sit  there all day waiting to cross that bridge. Now,   mind you, when they're sitting there, their  engines are running. They're spewing pollution   in the air. It's terrible for the environment. It  drives up cost. You have produce that's going bad   as they're sitting there in the sun waiting to  cross. The city of Laredo is proposing expanding   that bridge from eight lanes to 18 lanes. That is a massive expansion. They're also   proposing a brand new bridge in Laredo called  the four five Bridge, and then another bridge   in Brownsville and another bridge in Eagle  Pass. Those bridges when completed every year,   Texas and Mexico does roughly $800 billion  in trade. When those bridges are completed,   it will mean billions of dollars of new investment  in Texas. It will mean thousands and thousands   of high paying jobs. It will benefit Texas  farmers and ranchers and manufacturers and small   businesses. It will benefit this car dealership  by reducing the costs of cars and trucks coming   across the border. And by the way, the way a whole  lot of cars and trucks are made is the process. We   got a lot of factories in Texas and you have  part of the manufacturing in Texas, and then   they ship the parts down to Mexico. They do more  manufacturing there, and a given car or truck can   go back and forth across the border two, three  times as they assemble different parts of it.  So speeding up that process, reduced costs for  consumers significantly. That's a third victory.   Fourth victory space. Glen made reference  to SpaceX down in Brownsville space is   incredibly important. For the last decade, every  single major piece of space legislation, the US   Commercial Space Launch Competitiveness Act, the  NASA reauthorization, two, NASA reauthorizations,   all three of those bills. I was the lead author  of joining with Democrats to author legislation,   investing in space, investing in nasa, investing  in commercial space. You go down to Boca Chica,   which is right by Brownsville. You look, I've  been to the SpaceX factory. It is amazing.   That used to be essentially an abandoned  piece of sand. It is now a factory that   is producing a rocket ship a month with a  precision down to the 10th of a millimeter,   and they are blasting off from down at the  southern tip of Texas. It is amazing to see it.  Also, you want to talk about innovation, used to  be in space, you fire rockets into space and the   rockets are just discarded. You fire 'em once  and you're done. Well, SpaceX said, well, heck   with that. How about we reuse them? And everyone  said, well, you can't do that. That's ridiculous.   And they said, sure we can. And if you look now  at their rockets, they launch up to deliver the   payload. They come back in and you see this in  Boca Chica. They have what they call chopsticks,   which are these gigantic arms that will reach up  and catch the rocket as it's coming down and put   it back on the landing pad. It is extraordinary.  And the legislation streamlining and investing   in commercial space has helped produce  thousands and thousands of high paying   jobs in Texas. Fifth and final example, the  FAA reauthorization bill. Again, I was the lead   author of that in conjunction with Maria Cantwell. Maria Cantwell is a Democrat. She is the chairman   of the Senate Commerce Committee. I'm the ranking  member on the Senate Commerce Committee. The FAA   reauthorization bill is landmark legislation,  $110 billion investing in aviation investing.   Number one in safety, the number one priority  of aviation has to be safety. Every one of us,   we put our families on planes. You want to  make sure your kids are all right when the   plane lands. That's got to be job one. But number  two, if you care about jobs, aviation is critical.   Texas is a massive aviation hub. We have multiple  major airlines based here in Texas. We have huge   and enormously efficient airports in Texas.  You look at aviation produces hundreds of   thousands of jobs here in Texas, and millions  of jobs depend indirectly on aviation. The FAA   reauthorization bill invest $4 billion in airports  in Texas and across the country in new technology.  It directs the FAA to hire the maximum number of  air traffic controllers. That increases safety   and it also reduces delays. It also invests in  technology on runways to avoid the potential for   runway collisions. We've seen multiple near  misses. Austin Strom Airport, there was a   southwest plane taking off at a FedEx plane, came  within 50 feet of landing on top of it. Now, I   can't count how many times I've sat in a southwest  plane at Austin Bergstrom Airport getting ready   to take off, and never once did I think a plane  might land on top of us and kill all of us. But   we came within 50 feet of that happening in Texas.  So this invests in technology to prevent that from   happening. There's also a huge victory for Texas  in particular in that bill, which concerns the   city of San Antonio has never had a direct flight  to Ronald Reagan, Washington National Airport.  And this is something the people of San Antonio  have been fighting 20 years for. Again, this came   to my attention, much like the bridges in Laredo,  when I was meeting with the city leaders from San   Antonio, again, mostly elected Democrats  and business leaders, and they said, look,   we deserve, we want a direct flight to Reagan.  It's not right that we don't have it. They'd   been trying for 20 years. They said, Ted, will  you lead the fight to make this happen? I said,   absolutely. So San Antonio is the seventh largest  city in America. It's widely called military city,   USA. It has a huge military population, both  active duty and veterans. You look at Reagan   airport, it is right next to the Pentagon. It is  right next to Arlington Memorial Cemetery. And so   in the FA bill, I drafted the provision directing  the FAA to expand the number of slots so San   Antonio could have a flight to and from Reagan. Now, here's what's interesting. This was the   single biggest battle on the entire bill.  And the Democrat senators from Virginia and   Maryland vigorously opposed this provision.  It was a massive battle. It was a battle   on the floor that delayed the bill several days.  It threatened to derail the entire bill. Well, I'm   proud to tell you, at the end of the day, Texas  won. The provision is in there. The final vote on   the floor of the Senate was 88 to four. The four  were the two and the two Maryland senators. So   it was over the flight to San Antonio. And San  Antonio will have that direct flight this year   as a victory for Texas. So I mentioned those five  examples because you often see in the news battles   that I'm having, typically with Democrats over  higher taxes, over more spending, over more debt,   over more regulations, over open borders,  over assaults on our constitutional liberties.  And I'm proud to lead the fight against any  policies that hurt Texas. But at the same time,   it is also an integral part of my job to pass  positive pro-growth projo legislation. In my 12   years in the Senate, I've authored and passed 100  separate pieces of legislation delivering jobs to   the state of Texas. Let me say one final point  and then we'll wrap up and open for questions in   the next Congress. We're going to have huge  battles over taxes, regulation, and energy.   And I got to say, in this election, the  contrast between me and my opponent,   Congressman Collin Allred, could not be more  stark when it comes to taxes. As y'all know,   most of the 2017 tax cuts are expiring next  year at the top of the ticket. Donald Trump   has said he would extend those tax cuts. Kamala  Harris has said she would allow them to expire.  The Wall Street Journal has described this  election as a 6 trillion election. That's   the delta between how much your taxes go up if  Democrats are in control versus how much they   go down. And by the way, if we have Republican  majorities, I'm going to fight to make the tax   cuts bigger and bolder because that's how you  produce jobs. But $6 trillion on the bottom   line for businesses and job creators on the bottom  lines for families, this is a ton of taxes. Now,   you look at Colin Allred in his first four years  in Congress, Colin Allred voted with Nancy Pelosi   100% of the time on every single vote. So  remember when you hear folks in the media   trying to tell you that he's somehow moderate, do  you think Nancy Pelosi is somehow moderate because   their voting records were identical? That means  he voted over and over again for higher taxes.  That means he voted over and over again for more  spending. That means he voted over and over again   for more debt. Now, I'm not aware that he has  actually said what he would do on the tax cuts   because he doesn't do what we're doing here, which  is press conferences. I think this is the 13th   press conference I've done in the past six weeks.  He went 60 days without doing a single one. So he   doesn't answer questions. But I have to assume  since he's endorsed Kamala Harris for president,   that he agrees that we should let the tax  cuts expire. I don't know, Jack, you ought   to try asking him that because I don't think he  said it publicly, but he won't answer you. So   good luck with that. But higher taxes for Texas,  small businesses and families, that's at stake,   regulations and energy. Look, energy is critical. If you don't like inflation, one of the biggest   drivers of inflation is the higher cost of energy.  And understand the higher cost of energy is   because the Biden Harris administration has waged  a regulatory war on oil and gas produced in Texas.   And I've got to say, in that regulatory war, Colin  Allred signed up and said, put me on the side of   the people attacking Texas and attacking jobs.  Colin Allred has voted against fracking, not once,   but twice on the floor of the house. Fracking is  what has produced this incredible renaissance,   this abundance of oil and gas. It is unlocked  shale reserves in Texas. Colin Allred is against   those jobs and for higher cost at the gas pump and  everywhere else. But not only that, there are very   few policies of the Biden Harris administration  that are more indefensible than what Joe Biden   announced earlier this year, which is a ban on  future permits to export liquid natural gas.  Now, Texas is a powerhouse. We are the largest  producer of oil and gas in America. America's   the largest producer of oil and gas in the world.  That ban on LNG exports is unequivocally harmful.   It kills jobs in the state of Texas. It hurts  our allies who desperately want Texas LNG. It   helps our enemies. It forces Europe to buy  gas from countries like Russia, like Iran   and Venezuela instead of from Texas. And it hurts  the environment. Why? Because gases produced in   Texas much more cleanly than it is in Russia or  Iran or Venezuela. It was a policy that I think   was spiteful. The White House was mad that Texas  was fighting to secure our own border and they   decided, let's punish Texas and let's hurt Texas  jobs. Well, the House of Representatives stood   up and voted to revoke Joe Biden and Kamala  Harris's ban on LNG exports on new permits.  And Colin Allred voted with Kamala Harris and  Joe Biden in against jobs in the state of Texas.   I've spent 12 years as the leading defender of  energy and oil and gas and all of the above jobs   in Texas. That's a big deal, and it's why I'm  proud to stand with the Chamber of Commerce and   the Texas Association of Business and with Texas  Small Businesses and workers throughout the state.   The 2017 tax cuts, which were the largest tax  cuts in a generation, produced incredible results   across the country, benefited 30 million Texans.  As a result of those tax cuts. We saw the lowest   rate of unemployment in 50 years. Those tax cuts  help produce the lowest rate of African-American   unemployment ever recorded. They also helped  produce the lowest rate of Hispanic unemployment   ever recorded in our nation's history. They  produced the lowest rate of unemployment for   women in 70 years. They produced the lowest rate  of unemployment for young people in 70 years. They   had enormous effect. And by the way, Congressman  Alread, he was not in Congress at the time,   but running for Congress. He was explicit. He  opposed those tax cuts. And so understand this   election, it's a choice on many fronts, but one  of the fronts is if Congressman Allred becomes   your senator, he will raise your taxes. If I remain your senator, I will fight to   cut your taxes. That is a very simple and clear  choice and understand that is both for families   and for job creators. So the position of Joe  Biden and Kamala Harris and Colin Allred is   jack up the taxes on all the small businesses  and all the job creators. Well, we're in a car   dealership. What do folks here think? If you jack  up the taxes on the car dealership, what do you   think's going to happen? You're going to see the  prices go up. So consumers are going to get hit.   You're going to see wages go down, and some of  you may lose your jobs. That's what happened   when government goes to your employer and says,  okay, we want millions more. That means that's   money. You can't pay workers. That means  that's money you got to extract in prices.  That's the position of Colin Allred. If you think  trillions of taxes more is good for Texas, well,   I'm sure that's what Colin Allred is telling  his hard left Democrat supporters. But I think   you ought to ask the state of California. You  ought to ask the state of New York. You ought   to ask the state of New Jersey. You ought to ask  the state of Connecticut. We know what happens   with that approach, which is the hell out of 'em,  regulate the hell out of 'em. And you know what   happens? People get in the U-Haul and they leave  because they can't get a job. We don't want that   to happen to Texas. Well, listen, thank you  for your leadership running your restaurant,   and thank you for being a small business owner.  And I got to say, first of all, so you're standing   next to my dad who lives in Carrollton as well. So I grew up, my parents were small business   owners, and I grew up in Houston. They owned  a small business, a seismic data processing   company in the oil and gas business. And so  my dad, my first job, my dad hired me when I   was eight years old as a computer operator. My  dad paid me a dollar an hour and he would have   me work a double shift on Thanksgiving day  and Christmas day. Now, he wasn't mean about   it. He'd bring me a plate of Turkey and stuffing  and cranberry sauce. He was nice, but he is like,   look, get back to work. And so I worked for  several years at a dollar an hour when I was 11,   I came into my dad's office, he had a big old  desk, he liked his big desk. And I came into my   dad's office and I said, dad, I'm doing the same  job that college kids are doing. You're paying the   college kids five bucks an hour. You're paying me  a dollar an hour. You're exploiting me because I'm   your son. And he cracked up laughing. And he said,  well, I was waiting for you to figure that out.  And so my first raise I ever got was a 400% raise  from a dollar an hour to $5 an hour. My dad said,   I wasn't going to give it to you until you had  the sense to ask for it. But look, I know the   challenges small businesses have. And by the way,  in terms of the challenges, look, I was in high   school in the eighties when oil collapsed and the  entire state of Texas felt it and felt it hard.   And in our family, we went bankrupt. We lost our  business, we lost our home, we lost everything.   And so when I went off to high school, I was  17, my parents were in bankruptcy. And so I was   on my own. And I went through, I still remember  that day, it was a Monday. My father came home.   We had 25 employees, he had 25 employees. I was a kid, but he had 25 employees. And   on that one day, he had to lay off 19 of those  employees. And I've never seen my father more   unhappy. He looked like he had been beaten with  a two by four, that it broke his heart. And   he had employees who argued with him, said,  Rafael, I'm not leaving. And he said, look,   you have a family, you have kids. I can't  pay you. I don't have the money to pay you.   So it's hard. I understand how difficult it is  to run a small business. By the way, if you care   about jobs, it's real simple. You care about small  businesses. Why two thirds of all new jobs in   America come from small businesses? If you create  an environment where small businesses are growing   and prospering and expanding, you have lots and  lots of jobs. If you create an environment where   you're pounding the living daylights out  of small businesses, the jobs disappear.  So your question specifically was about inflation.  And listen, inflation is hurting Texans every day.   You feel it when you go to the grocery store.  You feel it when you go to the gas pump. You   feel it when you pay your electricity bill every  month. You feel it on rent, you feel it on lumber,   you feel it, especially on mortgages. And I  got to say, by the way, a young couple goes   to buy their first house and they're discovering  now that a seven and a half percent mortgage is   very different than a two and a half percent  mortgage. And it means you get about half the   house you used to be able to get just a few years  ago. So inflation is a very cruel tax. And it's   interesting. Jack asked a minute ago about Colin  Allred and Kamala Harris wanting to raise taxes.   Inflation is a tax on everyone, and it particular  hurts the most vulnerable young people coming out   of school, seniors with fixed incomes who their  costs are not fixed and they keep going up.  Seniors have been hammered by inflation. Now,  what causes it? A couple of things. Number one,   Joe Biden and Kamala Harris and Colin Allred,  when they had Democrat control of the White House,   the House and Senate, they went on a massive  spending spree. They spent trillions of dollars   we didn't have. They borrowed trillions of dollars  we didn't have. And they ran the printing presses   and printed trillions of dollars. We didn't  have I, and many others said, if you do this,   you'll cause serious inflation. And they laughed  at us. They said, that is ridiculous. That's not   true. It will not happen. By the way, Colin, all  red voted for every penny of that spending. Well,   when you print a bunch of money, you devalue the  value of the money in your pocket that causes   inflation. The second driver of inflation  has been the war on oil and gas and energy.  And the Biden Harris administration has issued  regulation after regulation after regulation,   hammering oil and gas and driving up costs. And  oil and gas costs are not just when you fill up   your tank, they're also at the grocery store. So  big ingredient, for example, in fertilizer, if   you're growing crops. So farmers get hammered by  rising energy costs. Not only that, their tractor,   whether they're planting or harvesting their  crops, they got to fill the tractor. And so   the cost of diesel, not only that, the cost of  transporting their crops from the farm to the   warehouse to the grocery store, all of those costs  drive up inflation. Now, your question was a very   good one. How do we fix that? We fixed that, a  couple of things. Number one, by extending the   tax cuts, and I hope by increasing the tax cuts,  we will generate economic growth and productivity.  That's one way you combat it. A second way  you combat it. If Donald Trump is reelected   in November, and I very much hope that he is on  January 20th of next year, the war on oil and gas   and Texas energy will end. And lemme give a very  specific example. So in Brownsville, I was down   in Brownsville last week. I was at U-T-R-G-V, UT  Rio Grande Valley. U-T-R-G-V is 34,000 students.   It's incredible. And historically, look, the  Valley has been challenged socioeconomically.   There's a lot of poverty. There's been a brain  drain where young people leave the valley and   they come to Dallas or they come to Houston  because there weren't good jobs there. Well,   you now have in Brownsville number one, SpaceX.  We talked about that already, but that's got a ton   of high paying jobs. Number two, U-T-R-G-V just  announced a partnership with Los Alamos National   Laboratory to do work on nuclear science. That's going to be incredibly important   for engineers down in the valley. But number  three, next generation has a massive export   terminal for LNG, for liquid natural gas, $18  billion, enormously impactful, thousands and   thousands of jobs. Well, just a couple of weeks  ago, the DC Circuit Federal Court of Appeals,   a panel that consisted of a Biden judge and two  Obama judges revoked the permit for the LN export   plan in Brownsville. What does that mean? If  that doesn't get reversed in the court, that   $18 billion goes away? About 6,000 high paying  jobs in the valley disappear because when you put   left wing radicals on the court that oppose jobs,  it has a very real effect of destroying jobs. And   you want to know one of the consequences of this  race. If Colin Alread had been in the Senate,   he would happily vote to confirm the kind  of radical judges that will destroy jobs.  Whereas on the Senate Judiciary Committee, I fight  for judges that will follow the law and not impose   their radical policies in a way that hurts Texas.  I have been deeply active in the school choice   movement for 30 years. I believe school choice is  the civil rights battle of the 21st century. And   when it comes to school choice, I think  every child in Texas deserves access to a   quality education regardless of your  race, regardless of your ethnicity,   regardless of your wealth, regardless of your  zip code. And when it comes to school choice.   So the single legislative achievement that I, in  my time in the Senate concerned School choice,   and it was actually as part of the 2017 tax cuts,  I authored an amendment to expand college 5 29   savings plans to include K through 12 education  and college. 5 29 savings plans are tax advantage   plans that parents and grandparents can save for  their kids and grandkids. My amendment, we voted   on it about midnight on the Senate floor. It was  a 50 50 vote. It was evenly divided. The vice   president came to the floor of the Senate about  one in the morning, cast the tie-breaking vote.  Under that provision, which is now law parents  and grandparents can save not just for college,   but also for K through 12 education, for public  school, private school, parochial school,   religious school, your choice up to $10,000  per child per year. It remains the single most   far-reaching federal school choice legislation  that has ever been enacted. And it benefits up   to 50 million school kids across this country. I  got to say, the position of Democrats on education   may be even more defensible than the position  of Colin Allred and Democrats in support of   open borders. It may be even more indefensible  than their position in support of higher taxes   and higher debt. Why? Because the position of  Colin, Allred and Democrats is to trap children   in schools that are failing. And I got to say, C  opened a lot of people's eyes. Covid opened a lot   of people's eyes to what was being taught to kids. And a lot of parents got horrified as they saw   what was being taught to their children. And  if you look at, I think the parents and kids   ought to be able to choose the best education  for that child. And I got to tell you also,   in the wake of Covid, I talked about people  moving from blue states to red states.   There was a massive difference, which is in Texas,  there was a brief shutdown. And then we reopened   schools, we reopened businesses. We said, we're  going back to work, we're going back to school,   we're going back to church. We're not  shutting the state of Texas down. Well,   a lot of blue states kept their schools shut down  for a year or longer. There were tens of millions   of kids who didn't go to school. Look, I remember  when schools were shut down. Heidi and I, our   girls are 13 and 16 now, so they were younger then  Heidi and I, both of us, we would divvy it up.  I got the easier job. I got our daughter. Heidi  got the harder job. She got our eldest daughter.   We had two computers going. We're sitting  there with them while they're online. And look,   it was hard. We had two parents in the house. It  was hard for us. I can't imagine what it's like   as a single mom. If you had 3, 4, 5 kids, you're  trying to work a job or two. What it meant for   millions of kids is they didn't go to school  because the school was shut down. And I'll   tell you, on the Senate floor, I talked about the  trillions of dollars. Democrats spent their first   big massive spending bill. They were spending  tens of billions of dollars for education. I   had an amendment that I forced to vote for  on the Senate floor. It said the following,   it said, okay, every school could continue to  receive every penny of the federal money it   is receiving already, but the new billions of  dollars that are being appropriated right now.  This is what I said to my Democrat colleagues.  My amendment said the following, the school can   receive it if it's open. But if it's not  open, if the school is shut down and kids   are not allowed to attend in-person school five  days a week, then those schools, they still get   all the money they got yesterday. But they don't  get new money while the school is shut down to   not be open. And instead that money that you're  appropriating will go to each child in the form of   a $10,000 scholarship per child for them to go to  school while the schools are shut down. It was an   emergency provision. We voted on the Senate floor. It was a straight party line vote. It failed by   one vote. Every Democrat senator I went to, Joe  Manchin, Joe Manchin, had very briefly voted in   favor of my 5 29 amendment until Chuck Schumer  and the Democrats yelled at him and forced him   to change his vote. I said, Joe, you know  what is happening to kids is wrong. And he   just said, no, I can't do it. Understand the  consequence of this. Look at the data. As a   result of those school shutdowns, we saw the  biggest learning loss ever recorded and the   biggest increase in the racial gap, in the gap  of African-American kids and Hispanic kids from   Anglo kids that increased the most that has ever  been recorded. That's what Democrat shutdowns did,   is they hurt African-American children and  Hispanic children profoundly. And the data   shows those kids who didn't go to school for  a year, they will never fully catch up. They   will be hurt the rest of their life. So when it  comes to school choice, I'm proud to say I will   fight for the kids of Texas with every breath in  my body. Kids deserve an excellent education. When   my dad came as an immigrant from Cuba in 1957,  as an 18-year-old kid who couldn't speak English,   he was able to get an education at ut. And because  he got an education, he could work towards the   American dream. We need to fight for education for  every kid. Alright, thank you guys. Appreciate it.