Fighting for the working class for small businesses and rural areas is what I am passionate about. My father was an auto mechanic and a pastor, and my mother worked in a factory so we could have health insurance. I was raised in a single-wide trailer before we eventually upgraded to a double-wide when I was in junior high school. I am fighting for the working class because I’m a product of the working class. When it comes to letting people keep the money they earn and ensuring people have access to health care, these are the policies I think of when supporting the working class.

As Ways and Means Committee chairman, I authored the Working Families Tax Cuts to bring relief directly to families across southeast and south central Missouri. Because of that law, 97 percent of tax filers got a tax cut this year, and a family of four earning less than $73,000 now owes zero dollars in federal income tax. More than 7.5 million workers claimed No Tax on Tips, saving an average of over $7,000, and nearly 29 million claimed No Tax on Overtime. More than 35 million seniors claimed the new senior deduction, and nearly 40 million families claimed the enhanced Child Tax Credit, which we increased to $2,200. We also created Trump Accounts, giving every eligible child a $1,000 head start toward their future, and more than 7 million children are already enrolled. This is what tax relief for the working class should look like.

Our work includes health care, where affordability begins with accountability and transparency. Families are tired of being slapped with hidden prices at hospitals and insurance companies using loopholes to deny their claims. To that end, I recently summoned the CEOs of the nation’s largest insurers and hospital systems to testify before the Ways and Means Committee to demand answers on why they continue to prioritize profits over patients. Following that hearing, I fought to advance legislation through my committee to bring real transparency to health care pricing, because families deserve to know what care costs before they owe a dime for it.

But anyone from a rural area knows that the cost of health care doesn’t matter if you can’t access health care near you. In the Working Families Tax Cuts, I included the Rural Health Transformation Program to ensure our rural hospitals have what they need to stay open. And in the last week, I secured a $1.7 million grant for Salem Memorial Hospital through this program, ensuring this hospital, which serves thousands of families across Dent County, doesn’t close and force folks to travel even further. That’s what fighting for families looks like, and every Democrat voted against that relief for hospitals like Salem Memorial, which in total represents the largest investment in rural health care in American history.

Democrats try to claim that they’re the party of the working class, but as the old saying goes, actions speak louder than words. Every Democrat voted against tax relief like No Tax on Tips, No Tax on Overtime and No Tax on Social Security, and voted in favor of allowing the largest tax increase in American history to go into effect. Now more than ever, we need to ensure the policies we’re pursuing benefit the people we represent, and I’ll continue fighting so more families can afford to put food on their tables, clothes on their back, and gasoline in their cars.