High taxes and the growing threat from Communist China are two of the biggest challenges facing Americans, and they will be at the top of my agenda when I take the oath of office for a second time today representing Californians in Congress.
With a new Republican majority, we’ll start by kicking the government’s tax-and-spend addiction. Today, I am re-introducing legislation to defund the Biden Administration’s $80 billion plan to hire 87,000 new IRS agents targeting middle-class families with a flood of audits.
In the coming days, I will introduce legislation to stop government snooping on Americans’ finances and protect independent contractors from efforts to nationalize California’s disastrous Assembly Bill 5.
America faces many foreign adversaries, but none poses a greater threat than the Chinese Communist Party (CCP). As a member of the Congressional-Executive Commission on China, I will continue highlighting the CCP’s human rights abuses and efforts to spy on Americans and steal our technology.
We made a good first step in the recently passed National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA) by starting an assessment of LOGINK, a shipping logistics technology that the CCP could use to disrupt our supply chains and spy on U.S. Navy ships. To prevent the CCP from meddling in our supply chains or spying on our armed forces, we must ban this technology, and I will continue fighting to end it.
I recently returned from Taiwan where I saw first-hand the importance of our relationship with the island nation and the threat they face from the CCP. We must stand with Taiwan.
It’s not all doom and gloom. Working together, we achieved many successes for Orange County, getting many legislative priorities enacted into law.
When the supply chain crisis and bureaucratic mismanagement emptied shelves nationwide of baby formula, leaving parents desperate and hopeless, I introduced legislation requiring the government to make a plan to prevent this kind of crisis from happening again. We got that bill signed into law in just four days.
I also introduced bipartisan legislation to form a task force to address the ship backlog at the Ports of Long Beach and Los Angeles and prevent future disruptions. That proposal was included in the NDAA and became law on December 23rd.
When I came to Washington, I promised progress on local environmental priorities like the Surfside-Sunset sand replenishment and Newport Beach dredging projects, which were significantly delayed because the federal government refused to prioritize the necessary funding. Working with local stakeholders for years, I fully understood the importance of the sand issue. When I got to Congress, I advocated day-and-night to secure this funding and, in the end, we successfully brought home over $23 million for the restoration of our world-class beaches.
My team helped over 3,000 constituents navigate federal agencies and returned over $19 million dollars directly to taxpayers.
To ensure academic fairness and stand up to discrimination, I submitted an amicus brief in two Supreme Court cases challenging affirmative action, and introduced legislation to require transparency from universities that discriminate against Asian Americans on the basis of race.
Looking back on the last two years, I am proud to have kept my promises.
These are just some of the many wins we secured for Southern California families. However, high taxes, skyrocketing costs, and increasingly hostile foreign adversaries continue threatening our way of life.
Despite the new changes coming in this next session of Congress, my commitment to you remains the same: standing up for taxpayers and against higher taxes; doing everything we can to protect America from the Chinese Communist Party; and ensuring all Americans are on an even playing field.
Michelle Steel represents California’s 45th congressional district.
