Randy Weber

I believe that all children deserve educational opportunity and a chance for future success.  We are lucky to have such great schools, faculty, and staff in the 14th Congressional District of Texas.  As the husband of a now-retired 4th Grade teacher, I know firsthand the hard work and dedication that our teachers and administrators invest in educating our future leaders.  These public servants are the unsung heroes within our communities.

Unfortunately, ever-growing federal intervention in education has come at the expense of state and local control, has saddled teachers and school leaders with a tremendous paperwork compliance burden, and has failed to effect meaningful gains in education.  The data shows that millions of children pass through America’s schools without receiving an education that prepares them to succeed in life and to thrive in the increasingly competitive global economy.  America’s students need and deserve better.  I believe it is our local schools—not some remote bureaucrats—that are best equipped to meet the needs of our schoolchildren.  We need to restore state and local control of education to better serve students across the country.

Along Texas’ Gulf Coast, we take great pride in the diverse energy resources that we refine and ship.   That pride comes not only from how energy drives our economy, but also from knowing that we contribute to making America more secure.

American ingenuity and an abundance of shale gas have resulted in the United States becoming the world's largest producer of natural gas.  And now, thanks to liquefied natural gas (LNG) export facilities like those in Texas, American energy is reaching markets around the globe.

This is good news for hard-working Texans.  It is also good news for America’s national security.  Many of our allies around the world—ranging from South Korea to Germany—find themselves dependent on natural gas from hostile or autocratic regimes like Russia and Iran.  With American LNG hitting the global market, our friends and strategic partners abroad will have the opportunity to supply their energy needs from the United States.  Supporting our allies while creating good-paying jobs at home is a win-win.

With 90 percent of American LNG passing through the Sabine-Neches Waterway, this issue is especially important to our district.  That is why I’ve urged the Department of Energy to expedite the permitting process so that more LNG export facilities can quickly ramp up production to meet global demand.

As a father and grandfather, I agree that keeping our water, land, and air clean is important.  Policies that promote these valuable goals must also take into account their impact on job creation and economic growth.

 As you may know, Congress established the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) in 1970 to consolidate all the government’s pollution control responsibilities under a single federal agency.  Since that time, Congress added and expanded EPA’s authority to include the regulation of air quality, water quality, and chemicals in commerce, the development of regulatory criteria for the management and disposal of solid and hazardous wastes, and the cleanup of environmental contamination.  The implementation and enforcement of many of these federal requirements is delegated to the states.  In Texas, the Texas Commission on Environmental Quality (TCEQ) plays a leading role in enforcing regulations under the Clean Water Act and the Clean Air Act, and it does a good job of balancing environmental and economic concerns.

 In 2007, the U.S. Supreme Court decided in Massachusetts v. EPA that the EPA has the authority to regulate greenhouse gas emissions under the Clean Air Act.  This significantly expanded the EPA’s powers far beyond the original intent of the Clean Air Act, which was written to tackle the issue of local and interstate pollution.  Aggressive action to reduce these emissions in the U.S. will have a negligible impact as long as emissions continue to grow rapidly in countries like India and China.  Despite the increase in global emissions, Americans are reducing emissions without EPA’s recent regulatory proposals, and this will continue as more electric utilities switch from coal power to natural gas.  In fact, emissions of carbon dioxide, the primary greenhouse gas, has fallen 12 percent since 2005 according to EPA data.

 One of my top priorities in Congress is ensuring that regulations are based on sound science and benefit the American people.  Last Congress, I voted to increase transparency, independence, and scientific integrity at the EPA.  The House passed H.R. 1430, the Honest and Open New EPA Science Treatment (HONEST) Act of 2017, which would require the EPA to base its regulations on science that is publicly available and therefore verifiable by outside researchers.  I also supported H.R. 1431, the EPA Science Advisory Board Reform Act, which would strengthen the independence of the advisory board by providing increased opportunities for public comments and reducing conflicts of interest.  As a member of the House Committee on Science, Space, and Technology, I will continue to promote fairness, transparency, and public participation, as well as other commonsense reforms that ensure unbiased science at the EPA.

 

A budget deficit occurs when government spending is greater than the revenue collected in the same fiscal year.  In contrast, the national debt is the accumulation of each year’s deficit.  Since 1970, there have only been four years during which the federal government has not operated in deficit.  As a result, our national debt now exceeds $26.6 trillion, which translates into more than $80,000 per citizen.  

Lowering America’s debt burden is critical because when interest rates rise, the government’s debt payments will begin to crowd out other parts of the federal budget, and individuals will begin to see higher rates on mortgages, credit cards, and car loans as a result.

Mandatory spending—to include Social Security, Medicare, Medicaid, other directed outlays, and interest payments on the debt—consumes 70 percent of all federal spending each year.  In fact, interest payments on our debt have become the sixth largest category in the federal budget.  As long as outlays continue to exceed federal receipts, resulting in annual deficits in the billions of dollars, this situation is unsustainable.

While I generally oppose deficit spending, I realize these are extraordinary times, requiring strategic intervention to maintain national stability.  That said, we cannot spend our way back to recovery.  Congress must remember what hard working Americans already know: we cannot build a thriving economy on a bloated government that spends and taxes too much.  Reckless spending will push our debt burden higher, and the current generation of Americans will have the sad legacy of being the first to lower the standard of living for the next generation.  If we do not change course, current fiscal policies will push our debt burden higher than $30 trillion by 2022.

Obamacare has proven that it is not the solution to expand access and lower costs, which is why I support repealing the current law and replacing it with less costly and less burdensome alternatives.  Commonsense alternatives would spur competition by allowing individuals to purchase health insurance across state lines, and it would rein in the growth of health care costs by adopting medical liability reform that protects patients and doctors from expensive lawsuits.  Additionally, this approach would expand the ability for families and individuals to deduct their health care costs, while providing federal grants for state-based, high risk pools, and safeguarding individuals who have pre-existing conditions with limits on participants’ charges.

There is no question Americans pay too much for health care, including the cost of prescription drugs.  As you may know, U.S. prescription drug use has grown substantially during the past several decades as researchers have developed groundbreaking therapies.  In fact, $333 billion was spent on prescription drugs in 2017 alone.  Unfortunately, current law has restricted patient options for doctors and drugs, and bad actors have recently used a complicated regulatory system to retain a monopoly on drug supply and prevent competition in the market.  The result is far too often financially crippling for families.

 While it is important that we address the safety, quality, and access of our medications, we must ensure that the solutions to these public health concerns are addressing the true issue and not creating a massive overreach of the federal government that will stifle future drug research and development.  Prescription drug pricing has been a priority in Congress with several bills introduced in the House.  H.R. 3253, the Sustaining Excellence in Medicaid Act of 2019, was signed by the President and became public law on August 8, 2019.  This bill excluded authorized generics from the calculation of average manufacturer price for purposes of the Medicaid drug rebate program.

 H.R. 965, the Creating and Restoring Equal Access to Equivalent Samples (CREATES) Act of 2019, was introduced by Rep. David Cicilline (D-RI) on Feburary 5, 2019.  If enacted, this bill would promote competition in the market for drug and biological products by facilitating the timely entry of lower-cost generic and biosimilar versions of those drugs and biological products, while penalizing branded drug makers that withhold samples from generic manufactures.

During the last (115th) Congress, the House of Representatives voted to fully repeal the health insurance tax on May 4, 2017, when we passed H.R. 1628, the American Health Care Act of 2017, with my support.  Then, on July 25, 2018, the House passed H.R. 6311, the Increasing Access to Lower Premium Plans and Expanding Health Savings Accounts Act of 2018, also with my support.  The latter bill, if enacted, would have delayed reimposition of the tax until after December 31, 2021.  Unfortunately, both efforts died in the Senate.

 This Congress, I proudly co-sponsored H.R. 1398, the Health Insurance Tax Relief Act of 2019, which was introduced by Rep. Ami Bera (D-CA) on February 27, 2019.  The bill would delay the reimposition of the health insurance tax until after 2021.  The bill has been referred to the House Committees on Ways & Means and Energy & Commerce, and subsequently to each committee’s Subcommittee on Health, where it awaits further action.

Homeland security is vitally important.  To ensure our security, it is essential that we have strong borders and enforce our immigration laws.  Texans have a strong sense of fairness.  Unfortunately, our broken immigration system cannot be called fair.  It is not fair to those who patiently wait in line to enter legally.  It is not fair to American workers who must compete with illegal immigrants working for artificially low wages.  Our broken system and porous borders also leave us less safe.  Despite the tireless efforts of our Border Patrol and immigration enforcement officers, drugs and people continue to cross our southern border.  We can and must make this system better.

When I was in the Texas House of Representatives, I served as the Vice-Chair of the Border and Intergovernmental Affairs Committee and saw how drug and human traffickers endangered both Americans and immigrants.  Until the border is secured, immigration reform will not be effective.  Otherwise, lax controls merely incentivize additional illegal immigration, which, in turn, negatively effects employment and wage growth.

On December 19, 2017, the U.S. House of Representatives passed H.R. 1, the Tax Cuts and Jobs Act.  It was signed into law by President Trump on December 22, 2017.

Congress embraced the extraordinary opportunity to fix a broken system and to relieve the undue burden of costly taxes from so many Americans.  In reforming the tax code, we lower taxes for all Americans by reducing every single tax bracket.  The standard deduction has nearly doubled for everyone.  With lower taxes across the board, businesses, both large and small, will be better able to foster job creation, wage growth, and competitiveness.

In Texas’ 14th Congressional District, a typical middle-income family of four will see a tax cut of $2,432.

The tax reform law provides relief for American families.  It allows you to keep more of every paycheck by reducing tax rates at all income levels and nearly doubling the standard deduction to $12,000 for individuals and $24,000 for married couples.  It doubles the Child Tax Credit from $1,000 to $2,000 per child to better help parents with the cost of raising children.  It also preserves the mortgage interest deduction to help current and aspiring homeowners.  The law continues to allow people to write off the cost of state and local taxes up to $10,000 and provides you with the ability to deduct property taxes and income taxes—or sales taxes—to best fit your unique needs.

The tax law will also grow jobs, paychecks, and our economy.  It delivers historic tax relief for businesses of all sizes so our local job creators can keep more of their income to invest in their businesses and workers.  It helps unleash the growth of jobs and paychecks by allowing all businesses to immediately deduct the full cost of new equipment that improves operations and enhances the skills of workers.  It establishes America as a 21st century magnet for job creation and encourages companies to bring home their profits from abroad to invest here in our communities.  It protects American workers and prevents jobs from moving overseas by eliminating incentives that reward companies for shifting jobs, profits, and manufacturing plants abroad.

This law means more of your hard-earned money in your pocket.  It means more jobs created.  It means a fairer and simpler tax code.  It is pro-family.  It is pro-growth.  This is a tax cut for all Americans.

Since arriving in Congress, I have supported efforts to balance the budget.  I co-sponsored a resolution proposing a balanced budget amendment to the United States Constitution.  If adopted by Congress and ratified by three-quarters of the states, this amendment would prohibit federal spending from exceeding total revenues each fiscal year unless Congress authorizes more spending by a 3/5 vote of the Senate and the House of Representatives.

I supported House Concurrent Resolution 25, the House Budget Resolution which proposed a plan to balance the budget in ten years, introduced by Representative Paul Ryan (WI) on March 15, 2013.  Under that budget, spending would be roughly $41.46 trillion over ten years, which is a slower rate of growth in spending when compared to current law.  If followed, the federal budget would have reached balance in 2023, when the government would have produced a $7 billion surplus.

House Joint Resolution 5, a resolution introduced by Rep. Vern Buchanan (R-FL) on January 3, 2019, proposes to amend the Constitution by requiring a balanced federal budget.  If adopted by Congress and ratified by three-quarters of the states, this amendment would prohibit federal spending from exceeding total revenues each fiscal year.  It would also limit spending to an amount equal to 18 percent of the previous fiscal year’s gross domestic product.  If ratified, either of these two provisions could be overridden only if Congress authorizes a specific amount of excess spending by a roll call vote of two-thirds of the Senate and the House of Representatives.

First and foremost, our country owes the many women and men who have served our nation a debt of gratitude, and we in Congress strive to repay that every day.  The service rendered to our nation by our veterans has been critical to keeping America safe, and it is our duty to provide the appropriate care and compensation they deserve when they return home.  

As the son of a World War II veteran, I am also proud to employ veterans as key members of my congressional staff.  I will continue to advocate and work to allocate funds to ensure our veterans receive the services they earned.