Mike Lee

I do, however, applaud the House Freedom Caucus for the work that its done in proposing ideas to get us on a sustainable spending trajectory.

It's just not true. House Freedom Caucus has one member who asked for a vote on something like that, but the Freedom Caucus itself doesn't do that.

I do want to remind everyone, anyone watching this hearing, as well as American taxpayers more broadly, that it's Congress that ultimately determines annual spending and revenue levels, not the President's annual budget.

The Second Amendment, especially in what we saw with New York's framework, was fundamentally treated and held to a different standard.

If you just looked at more guns equals safety, there's over 400 million firearms in the United States. If that was the case, we should be the safest country in the world. So more guns is not the answer to safety.

I just want to emphasize, again, that the Second Amendment isn't something new. Yes, it is old. It's been in place since 1791.

The constitutional right to bear arms in public for self-defense is not 'a second-class right, subject to an entirely different body of rules than the other Bill of Rights guarantees.'

We're talking about a provision of the Constitution. It is different than a legislative priority.

His claims there don't add up.

I view this element as absolutely essential to protecting due process.

So 133 years later, we're still arguing over meaning of things enacted in 1890.

All right. Let's talk about the Open App Markets Act for a minute.

Unfortunately, the radical agenda of the Biden FTC has made it even harder to find common ground in the fight against Big Tech.

I'm against the status quo. I think we should try to move forward with a bill like this.

If we develop this, this could be another 130 years of exploratory litigation.

Part of what has left so many of us cynical about what happened with Parler is the fact that Parler was--it had hit its sweet spot.

By leaving these important terms vague and undefined, are they giving the game away? Giving the game away in that this would end up being a bill about protecting competitors, not competition, or not consumers.

I'm grateful to Senator Klobuchar for convening this hearing because we're here to discuss some really important issues.

I remain particularly opposed to the idea of granting any new authority to the Federal Trade Commission.

And yet this concept is not foreign to our competition policy. It's not foreign to antitrust law. This is pretty well-worn stuff.

Recent events, however, tell a little bit of a different story, a slightly different story than that.

It's my hope that this Committee will spend more of its time and effort this Congress deliberating ways to reduce our budget deficits.

Democrats in Congress and in the Biden Administration need to work with Republicans to promote American energy independence rather than promoting less efficient forms of energy.

Brazen regulatory overreach currently being carried out by unelected and unaccountable bureaucrats must come to an end.

Let's not fool ourselves. And most importantly, let's not fool those we represent, the American people.