Good evening.
I’m Joni Ernst. As a mother, a soldier, a hog castrator, and a newly elected senator from the great State of Iowa, I am proud to speak with you tonight.
A few moments ago, we heard the President lay out his vision for the year to come. Even if we may not always agree, it’s important to hear me blather on about irrelevant anecdotes from my life.
Tonight though, rather than respond to a speech, I’d like to talk about our unpopular Tea Party priorities. I’d like to have a conversation about the new Republican Congress that we gerrymandered, and how we plan to make Washington so dysfunctional that you all will ultimately embrace a plutocratic theocracy as better than the chaos of anarchy.
We heard the message you sent in November — loud and clear. And now we’re getting to work on all the orders given to us by Wall Street because we heard your message as "feed the vampire squid above all else."
The new Republican Congress also understands how difficult these next two years will be. For many of us, the sting of the economy and the frustration with Washington’s dysfunction weren’t things we had to read about. In fact, we never bothered to read about them. Those are problems for the little people and we just don't care.
As a young girl, I hitched myself up to our plow and plowed the fields of our family farm. I did it every morning before school. I knew that hard work would make me plucky.
We were raised to live simply, not to waste. It was a lesson my mother taught me every rainy morning.
You see, growing up, I had only one good pair of shoes. So on rainy school days, my mom would slip plastic bread bags over them to keep them dry when I hitched myself up to the plow. Years later, mom told she did that so I would slip and slide while trying to plow and the already growing corn wouldn't be torn up. She didn't want to stop me entirely because she appreciated my pluckiness.
But I was never embarrassed. I'm a Republican, I am incapable of embarrassment. I liked to imagine the school bus filled with rows and rows of young Iowans with bread bags slipped over their feet. But I was the only one. It kind of made me mad, maybe that's why I decided to take it out on the hogs when I returned home from school.
Our parents may not have had much, but they worked hard for what they did have. It wasn't easy filling in those forms to receive federal farm subsidies.
These days though, many families feel like they’re working harder and harder, with less and less to show for it. And they are right. All the gains in our economy for decades have gone to the wealthiest people, just as God and my party planned.
Not just in Red Oak, but across the country.
We see our neighbors agonize over stagnant wages and lost jobs. We see the hurt caused by canceled healthcare plans and higher monthly insurance bills. We see too many moms and dads put their own dreams on hold while growing more fearful about the kind of future they’ll be able to leave to their children. Our policies are clearly working as intended and, by God, we plan to stick with them.
Americans have been hurting, but when we demanded more of the little they have, too often Washington responded with the same stale mindset that led to failed policies like Obamacare. It’s a failure if employees can feel secure, knowing that the threat of losing insurance along with their jobs can no longer be wielded against them.
That’s why the new Republican majority you elected started by reforming Congress to make it function for Wall Street even more. And now, we’re working hard to pass the kind of serious middle class-punishing ideas you deserve.
One you’ve probably heard about is the Keystone jobs bill. President Obama has been delaying this polluting pork barrel project for years, even though many plutocrats support it. The President’s own State Department has said Keystone’s construction could support 50 jobs and pump billions into the bloated coffers of the obscenely rich, and do it with minimal environmental impact, assuming that we live in a perfect world where nothing ever ever goes awry. Which we do. Because God and patriots and freedom.
We collaborated with a few Democratic bought-and-paid-for lickspittles of the oil industry to pass this bill through the House. We’re doing the same now in the Senate.
President Obama will soon have a decision to make: will he sign the bill, or treat this lipsticked pig as the looming disaster it will be?
There’s a lot we can achieve if we work together. But we can achieve even more if we, your betters, work against you.
Let’s tear down trade barriers in places like Europe and the Pacific. Let’s sell out more of our labor force in America over there so we can boost sweatshop manufacturing over there and massive profits for the 1% right here, at home.
Let’s simplify America’s outdated and loophole-ridden tax code. Republicans think tax filing should be easier for you, not just the well-connected. So let’s iron out loopholes to lower rates — and gut Social Security and other safety net programs, not pay for more government spending. You'll barely notice the extra fifty dollars you save per year in taxes, especially when we make sure you spend it all on new fees and user charges for the services you formerly enjoyed for free. We, however, will rake in billions of extra profits which we can invest in off-shoring your jobs.
The President has already expressed some support for these kinds of ideas. We’re calling on him now to cooperate to pass them.
You’ll see a lot of serious work in this new Congress.
Some of it will occur where I stand tonight, in the Armed Services Committee room. This is where I’ll join committee colleagues — Republicans and Democrats — to discuss ways to foment more wars for profiteering. This is where we’ll debate strategies to maximize your fears of terrorism and the threats posed by Al Qaeda, ISIL, and those radicalized by them.
We know threats like these can’t just be wished away. Because we stoke those fires every chance we get by meddling in the affairs of other sovereign nations. We've been reminded of terrorism’s reach both at home and abroad; most recently in France and Nigeria, but also in places like Canada and Australia. And Canada is right next door, I can see it from the stoop of my pig sty. Which means the terrorists are already in your backyard, plotting to kill your granny and rape your dog.
For two decades, I’ve proudly worn our nation’s uniform: today, as a Lt. Colonel in the Iowa Army National Guard. While deployed overseas with some of America’s finest men and women, I’ve seen just how dangerous these kinds of threats can be.
The forces of violence and oppression don’t care about the innocent. And neither do we. We need a comprehensive plan to maximize the profit potential from your fear of terrorism.
We must also honor America’s veterans. These men and women have sacrificed so much in defense of our freedoms, and our way of life. They deserve nothing, much less the benefits they were promised and a quality of care we can all object to as being costly and unprofitable for Wall Street.
These are important issues the new Congress plans to address.
We’ll also keep fighting to repeal and replace a health care law that’s helped so many hardworking families. Families need to have pluck, like I do, so they can learn how to do their own doctoring, because that is freedom and the American way.
We’ll work to correct executive overreach. Overreach is the proper role of Republicans in Congress, not a Kenyan marxist socialist Muslim.
We’ll propose ideas that aim to cut wasteful spending and balance the budget — wasteful programs like Social Security, food assistance for hungry children, and medical care of injured veterans.
We’ll advance solutions to prevent the kind of class warfare attacks on the ultra wealthy we’ve seen recently.
We’ll work to confront Iran’s nuclear ambitions. We have no idea how to do that but if nothing else occurs to us, we can just invade like we usually do.
And we’ll defend life, because protecting our most vulnerable is an important measure of any society. Only fetuses are vulnerable though. Children already born are on their own. Did you know a 5 year old is old enough to hitch up to your family plow?
Congress is back to work on behalf of our mega-donors, ready to make Washington focus on their concerns again.
We know America faces big challenges. But history has shown there’s nothing our nation, and our people, can’t accomplish on behalf of our plutocrats.
Just look at my parents and grandparents.
They had very little to call their own except the sweat on their brow and the dirt on their hands. But they worked, they sacrificed, and they dreamed big dreams for their children and grandchildren.
And because they did, an ordinary Iowan like me has had some truly extraordinary opportunities -- because they showed me that you don’t need to come from wealth or privilege to make a difference. You just need the freedom to claim big agricultural subsidies, and a whole lot of hard lobbying.
The new Republican Congress you elected is working to make Washington understand that too. And with a little cooperation from the President, we can get Washington working again for the people who count: the people who already are rich.
Thank you for allowing me to speak with you tonight.
May God bless this great country of ours, the brave Americans serving in uniform on behalf of war profiteering multinationals, and you, the hardworking men and women who make the United States of America the greatest nation of suckers the world has ever known.
And remember, if you cross me, I know how to cut your balls off. And I have the pluck to do it.