Genevieve wood. On behalf of heritage and the clare loose booth assistance we want to welcome you. This or once a year event were speaker is a man, its usually a minute woman. For those arent familiar were made up of about 1000 women around washington. People who want to come together and network both on capitol hill another Public Policy organizations. Theres opportunity to hear from conservative leaders. No doubt mark meadows is a conservative leaders. His a successful Small Business leader. He decided its time to do something in washington. Hes been representing the good constituents since that time. He served on the House Oversight and government reform committee. In the house transportation and infrastructure committee. About a year ago he was elected chairman of the House Freedom caucus. About 40 members were committed to making sure those whose voices were not her warrantee to heard. Congressman meadows is a champion of all things conservative. Is a champion of physical responsibility, leader when it comes to prolife and pro family a strong supporter was Strong National defense. Hes been concerned with these issues for multiple years. They have been supporters of more than one organization that i have been a part of. Its been a pleasure to know them and its a pleasure to welcome him to the stage. That is and gentlemen, congressman meadows. [applause] thank you. Anytime he gets come and talk about conservative causes its a good day. Particularly today to have the honor to speak to so many of you who have been in the trenches for a long time. But to do it on capitol hill in everyday is a new headline with regards to shut down the tax reform in whats going to happen. I find it an honor and privilege to highlight whats happening to how we could have a family discussion about what happened a few short offices from here. Worth your life probably makes that hasnt been reported in various periodicals. Ill keep my remarks brief sweeney of questionandanswer will do that. I want to open with this, when youre the chairman you get either the credit of the plane anything that happened thats opposite what one party or the other wants to happen. Conservatives they feel Freedom Caucus members willing to speak up for them. It is imperative that we restore the confidence back in government that its a representative form of government. Too often people get elected they forget that they actually represent 750,000 people. Eleven say this is the voting card and so has my picture on it. A lot of members think once the picture gets on it belongs to them. Does not. Im belongs to the people of western carolina. More we remind our members that it is not therefore incurred but lost people, more conservative we will get. Today want to talk about perhaps what is use to talk about policy and the pragmatic way and pragmatism would be the two areas. Will be interesting. I got a blue burglar the other day. My Communications Director center. Anytime you get mention on the floor of the senate is normally not a good day for conservative member of congress. On this particular one that was. He slightly took as a compliment. Says Chuck Schumer says that house speaker, paul ryan needs to stand up to the House Freedom caucus because is trying to derail negotiations a longterm spending plan. It went on to say that he believes the military, which im a strong proponent for National Security and i believe we need to increase the spending there, he said the military and domestic Economic Growth portions of spenders should be treated equally. So he say we need to increase defense and increase every other aspect of the government at the same level. He say that regardless of need. The facts that suggest our military men and women, because of sequestration falling right behind. Some of our enemies abroad and we need to do that. Schumer said that democrats and republicans rather is making Good Progress on spending talks until the Freedom Caucus got involved. I think he met that as a negative. We see that is fighting for the millions of men and women who believe that we need to get some type of control over federal spending. Were in the midst of the tax reform debate. I believe that only will we have a tax reform bill signed into law by december 21, i think it could be earlier than that. And its time we start giving back the american taxpayer money back to them. I was shocked when i got here and people started talking in ways that we dont talk about North Carolina or any other state. I think they teach their kids here in washington, d. C. How to start counting 1,000,000,001, 1,000,000,002 instead of one to three. They raise the numbers in such a way and talk about a rounding error being two or 3 billion. If for my constituents people in this room and the people that you know, it is your number me, not the federal governments money. You need to be wise, efficient stewards of that. Some of the drama one headline said theres drama on the house for. Would you like to know the back story on what happened that night . Heres what happened. Also for run on monday morning with my wife. Were trying to get out of a little bit of turkey and dressing as we are out was think about how do we make sure we get a tax reform bill because we been complaining about the senate for a long time. He said if they would just go for 50 for threshold we be able to solve things because there are things that people said you ask for the senate we gave it to you. And you could not get things done. Then if you just give it the house, senate, and white house we will get things done. So what does the American People do . They give us the house, senate, and white house. The expectations are unbelievable in the delivery less than desirable. Here we are with the frustration that says people who give their hard earned dollars to support candidates with homemade signs all of the branches and certainly the white house and the results get held up in the senate. So when i saw that they actually got 51 votes in the senate i said, we need to not play around with this because you never know when theres one or two senators who will go rogue and change their vote the other way. So i got with jim jordan and i said what i think would be the best plan will be to not officially go to conference. And needs fixing, it needs help but the worstcase scenario would capacity and send it on. By going for conference what you do is take that off the table. You take it back in the house and senate and are still at the mercy of one or two in the senate. We felt like if we didnt make a motion to go to conference but we allowed it to happen in an ad hoc way that would have the best of both worlds. A bill that we could send to the president and we could continue to negotiate and everybody would have the same incentive. So we went to the house floor to hold up the votes. The Freedom Caucus wanted to focus on tax reform. We had enough votes to make sure we didnt go to conference. Just a few minutes before i get a call from the president aboard air force one who said he was concerned about not going to conference. That we needed to reconsider. When you get a call from the president you take it and usually start out by yes sir and, i understand sir. He was sharing some of his concerns dont you think that we had a good idea that we had a bill that was potentially acted upon in the house. We had those conversations and he was in transit between out west and coming back to the oval office. The speaker is actually not here in washington, d. C. So i committed to do that. You may have seen the drama on the house floor. Were holding up our votes, talk to the speaker and had a long conversation. For us it boiled down to two things, we believe we need to be fast about getting tax reform done. We dont need to negotiate every single aspect we been negotiating for ten months. We need to keep it narrow and make sure that middleincome wage earners can get real relief. In Small Businesses get tax relief. We believe that the deduction should stay where it is today not be lowered like it was in the house bill. So theres four or five components but as i looked at the this whole idea of spending in history from we passed a shortterm spending bill, thats to suggest that we did not know december 8 was on the calendar for three months and the deadline would have been december 8. Its time members of congress have time to get things done. You dont run your households are your businesses that way. Its not appropriate for running the largest economy in the world with a speed up, stop and hope for the best strategy. So the conversations were going off so cautious to not share the details of conversation but heres the back story ultimately the president s beaker encouraged us to go to conference. We release the House Freedom caucus you know the senate voted yesterday to go. So we are officially there yet theres a clear understanding we need to get tax reform done in the next week or ten days. The land and time a promise for future victories is over. I for too many times we are going to fight for something at a point in the future only to be disappointed. Another fight is coming up on december 22 based on Chuck Schumer and his continued direction, they are going to require to plus up every federal Government Program and agency across the town to levels we have not seen since the obama stimulus was voted into law. Thats troubling because when you look at numbers you looking at numbers that could close. If youre looking at the supplemental legitimate means you can look at a spending bill close to 200 billion. When you look at levels like that sound suspended bowls. We have to understand the policy but the pragmatic side of it means we have to step realistic deadlines. I believe three days before christmas makes for good decision. Other than what youre going to get someone for christmas. Those are the type of decisions you should be making before christmas. My wife would say long before that. Heres what i ask you to do, you have been a conservative credentials and have what you believe to be right and wrong. The second watereddown . What we need to be doing is putting together bills that make people vote on things that maybe they went normally want to vote on. So when we did a relief package on puerto rico, florida and texas why did we not put in a reform to the Flood Program that has been under water for a long time what we put that on their and then tear them to vote against it. Why dont we couple things to make the decisions difficult. Heres my ask, as we start to look at this, if no special gift other than the fact that i have negotiated all my life. I look at pressure points. Those are the only times to get concessions. We get people to come together and say i dont want to give you this. But if we come together we can make it happen. For far too long conservatives have conceded that policy ground because theyre being pragmatic and saying we have to get something done. We are basketball state and we call it going into the four corner defense when youre down by 20 points. The only thing you do is guarantee youll lose by less than less than you were before. Its time the American People see a win. Its time we make those difficult votes. Quite frankly there will be concessions that have to be made. The better they be made in the middle of negotiation when you have a difficult phone that we just give it up and not put on the table at all. I would ask you to reach out to your senators and encourage them to take tough votes. We say the senate takes more naps than boats. We often send the house they need to take a few more votes. Even if it fails with the American People want to see us to his fight and try to do that. I know we have good questions here. I give you one more behind the scenes story. As we look at tax reform should what has come out has been because of what we call the power of negation. Not that we have all the power to suggest that will get this or that done. Because quite frankly a lot of members are [inaudible] the committees. But because we can take official positions and say were not going to vote for something until we get it right on behalf of the American People, what happens is that we get brought into the negotiations. I ask you to be part of this as well. When you say no to something there is power in that. You cant frustrate people and say im gonna be no always or youll never get brought in. But we have to make sure were there. Sometimes things are not always as they seem. Ill close with this, we will have plenty of time for questions. When i got to congress i thought all you had to do was come up with a good policy and ultimately everybody would come together and embrace the idea. That does not happen in washington, d. C. So a true story, were about 45 minutes away from the closest walmart. In the middle of nowhere. The priest was going to give a woman speech. As she traveled down the mountain she realized she did not have any pantyhose. Wanting to make sure she made a good impression on the ladies she was speaking to she decides to pull in to the walmart and buy some pantyhose. She jumps out and runs in comes running back out gets ready to take off and realizes theres not a place to put them on between the walmart parking on where shes going. So she makes the decision to put them on. So you can kind of imagine how difficult that is. All the said she got this weird sense that somebody was watching her. She looked over and sure enough somebodys looking in the window at her. She opens her door and says what you want, you pervert. And he says, i dont know maam, but your sister car. So, sometimes things are not always as they seem. What i would ask of you is to be engaged because enough to realize that when you read the headline you can see behind the scenes and open it up a little bit and say we need to make sure we say forceful in our conservative principles. Having traveled from maine to california, michigan to florida and everywhere in between, this is a conservative country even though many would have you believe otherwise. I thank you for being committed month after month to the conservative cause and making a difference on capitol hill. Your advocates see makes a difference in policy and is starting to change the pragmatic part of giving people like me and the Freedom Caucus the courage to stand up for the forgotten. Thank you. Well open up now for questions. I want to confirm why is it that he felt by the 21st this bill might be passed and what can we expect after the 22nd. The 21st will be tax reform, but i believe there would be a spending bill before the 21st. Working now to come up with a package we comply side of the house be for the 21st. If it does not receive the attention in the senate and myself included the package that is adequate we passed 12 appropriation bills for the first time in six years. It went over there and set in the senate. Nothing happened so i expect that if the spending of that does not get done by the 22nd youll have to outcomes, perhaps a new cap scale that will be at levels that most conservatives the agreed to a may be a very shortterm cr that goes into the first part of january. On tax reform been on the president s test by the 21st, theyre all working very hard. Ive had a conversation this morning on trying to fix some things. Everybody believes this is not a fine line. It doesnt improve with time. We need to make sure we get it and the president s desk before you go home. Weather concerns any members have that might hold up the votes . We have all expressed those. As you may have seen on the house floor, we waited in terms of only providing enough votes that we didnt have a government shutdown. We could have stopped the continuing resolution. We talked to the leadership and this is what they believed would happen. So if you get a spending bill that has 150 with the dr. Fix senate, with the number of preauthorization we believe there needs to be some reforms thats for the foreign surveillance, those things being added and could be problematic. Yet, if you look at spending enough the Freedom Caucus is a non leverage point because you get enough democrats to come across a vote for. Im a graduate of the leadership institute. You sound like one of my constituents. God bless you. What im concerned about in the tax bill, can speak about how it will help seniors . Theres some baby boomers that are retiring, we need a level livable wage to support herself. While tax reform do for Senior Citizens . Thats probably one of the things when i look at the demographics of my district that we have been more focused on than anything else. I represent the western part of North Carolina. Im not running for senate so i can say its a pretty part of the mountainous areas. Weve all kinds of people that retire there. Were looking keenly about those that are on fixed incomes. The doubling of the standard deduction does help some. Its also one of the reasons why some of the senate levels get adopted. We went from three levels in the proposal and ended up at four. The senate is at seven. We will probably end up with more to make sure we can get those so every level gets a tax cut. That brings up another area. We were looking at those were about to go on to medicare and those who are on merit care, healthcare costs is one that can obliterate this savings. So to completely ignore the repeal of obama care for the copays and premiums that will come is ignoring what were doing. I was talking to somebody other 60s the other day and they said insurance premiums have popped up about 500 a month. Hundred 50 savings and tax thats what they were talking about, on tax reform i believe will get it right. Theres a big push back and not allowing that to be and theres been debate on how to make sure that doesnt penalize those that are retiring are about to retire were still working as seniors and just now with the same level of earning potential. In the next week or ten days we will repeal the individual mandate in this tax bill. By repealing that we will start working with the administration to bring down the premiums. The big problem i see with costofliving adjustments we sometimes figure those with iphones and cards and its more about groceries and gas and the things they buy every day a