Protecting Our Children From Dangerous, Irreversible Gender Transition Procedures

Protecting Our Children From Dangerous, Irreversible Gender Transition Procedures

Protecting Our Children From Dangerous, Irreversible Gender Transition Procedures

CLICK HERE TO READ PRESIDENT TRUMP’S EXECUTIVE ORDER

President Trump signed an executive order this week that states unequivocally what has been clear to the vast majority of Americans for a while: taxpayer dollars, and the U.S. government as whole, should not support irreversible and dangerous gender transition procedures on children. 

It is hard to overstate the importance of this executive action from President Trump. The Biden Administration was not only funding, but actively encouraging, these procedures on children. Now, we have an administration that is “following the science,” as the left likes to say, and halting any support for what amounts to the mutilation of children. 

Even with this executive order, Congress still has an important role to play. 

I’ve been pushing legislation in Congress to block taxpayer funding for hospitals that transition minors. I’m pleased to see this first step that seeks to block federal programs from covering these procedures for minors and prevent grant funding for institutions that promote this. We still need to pass legislation to defund this permanently, and I’m ready to work with President Trump to get that done in our budget reconciliation package.

My position, and President Trump’s position, is squarely in line with the American public. 70 percent of Americans oppose using puberty blockers on minors according to polling, and that doesn’t even include harmful procedures like double mastectomies on children. 

The left will continue to label efforts like President Trump’s executive order and my legislation in Congress as “bigoted, anti-trans” policy. But, in reality, our position is a commonsense view shared by the American people: we should not treat our children like lab rats in an ideological experiment that has irreversible consequences.

Why I push back on the haters, and the TRUTH about their lies

Why I push back on the haters, and the TRUTH about their lies

Friend and Fellow Patriot, 

I hope you had a great holiday season spent with family, friends, and loved ones. This past year was incredibly hectic and at times exhausting, for all of us. But America enters 2025 with a lot of promise. President Trump will be returning to the White House with a Republican majority in Congress to help him undo the damage done to our country by Joe Biden. It’s going to be a busy year, but I am confident that we will make serious headway on the important issues facing American families – tackling the Mexican drug cartels, securing our southern border, getting our economy back on track, and restoring peace through American strength around the world. 

I’m looking forward to this year, as it is the first time since I was elected to Congress that Republicans have control of the White House, Senate, and House. 

But I thought it was worth starting this year by addressing my recent back and forth on social media with people who spread lies about me. So here it goes. 

First, an explanation for why I even bother to do this: Primarily, it’s because you deserve to hear from me about serious allegations. You deserve the truth, straight from me. 

You know by now that I do not shy away from these public fights. It is in my nature to push back forcefully when I am being lied about in such a public way, no matter who is spreading the lie.

Do I want to be spending my time doing this? Of course not. I would rather be spending my time on the issues that matter to me and to the country – coming up with a national strategy to combat the Mexican drug cartels, helping our veterans access the treatment they need to stop the unacceptable rate of veteran suicide, and making sure our country is secure from our foreign enemies. I would rather spend Christmas break relaxing with my daughter than worrying why thousands of people believe lies told by anonymous accounts on X. Nevertheless, people who profit off of social media engagement have discovered using my name in a lie gets them a lot of engagement and a lot of money. So they do it constantly. It is a feedback loop fed by money and outrage, which is the nature of politics these days, unfortunately.

But every time one of these lies gains traction on social media, I hear from people like you who reach out to me directly asking whether a specific allegation is true. When I respond by saying of course it isn’t true, you usually ask me why I’m not pushing back. So, that’s exactly what I do. Your support is invaluable to me, and I feel that my supporters are being slandered whenever I am being slandered online with no response. 

Each of these allegations – insider trading, spearheading efforts to get a congressional pay raise, me making millions off of my public service – all of it is entirely false. 

Here’s the truth. No, I have never engaged in “insider trading”

Yes, I have made investments in the stock market since I’ve been in Congress. It is not something I started when I was elected; it’s something that I’ve done since I was a private citizen – just like anyone allowed to save money and invest it for their future –  and it is much less glamorous than you think. I have not made millions from the stock market. In fact, I’ve profited around $25,000 TOTAL since 2018. 

Some misleading stories or graphics on social media report a percentage gain, not the monetary value, of my trading volume to make it seem like I am investing millions and getting millions in return. Other misleading stories take the public reporting Members of Congress are required to submit on stock trades and make dishonest interpretations of the report. They do this by inferring the highest possible dollar amount from those reports. Here is what you probably didn’t know: Each report doesn’t have exact values of the stock trade, but rather ranges of investment amounts. We have to click a box in the online reporting. The first range is $1,000 – $15,000 per stock trade. Of course, the stories (and more importantly the headlines) infer the highest possible total from that range. In reality, every time I have made an investment in the stock market it is near the bottom of the range. Right now, my only brokerage account has about $23,000 invested in the stock market TOTAL. It has been around this amount during my entire time in Congress. Shocking, I know, considering how extreme the accusations against me have been. But as you can see, I am not exactly the Wolf of Washington. Quite the opposite. 

Now, to the allegation of “insider trading.” That is a serious allegation. In fact, it’s a crime. Let me be clear: I have never once used non-public information from my committee work, legislative work, or congressional investigations to make gains in the stock market. Period. 

And let’s apply some common sense logic: my records are public, which means everyone knows when I buy and sell stocks. This means everyone accusing me of insider trading knows I have only bought stocks ONCE in the last 3 YEARS. It’s hard to “insider trade” if you aren’t doing any trading. I buy and hold investments, many of which are not even individual stocks, but ETF’s. That simple fact makes the claims against me all the more malicious. 

I have said publicly, multiple times, that I would vote to ban Members of Congress from trading in stocks. I would be happy to rid ourselves of these BS claims about insider trading. I hope the bill to ban stock trading is one of the first we take up in the new Congress so I can be one of the first to vote for it. 

No, I did not “spearhead the effort behind the scenes” to raise pay for Members of Congress

Before Christmas, there was a heated and public debate surrounding a government funding bill that included a pay raise for Members of Congress. The pay raise wasn’t nearly as much as some online claimed (the raise was actually 3.8%… $6,600 total… not a 40% pay increase as was claimed), but it was a raise nonetheless.

I was accused of “spearheading the effort behind the scenes” to have this pay raise included in the government funding bill. That, of course, was a lie. I never talked to anyone in Republican leadership about the government funding bill itself, much less the pay raise for Members of Congress, and I was listed as a NO on voting for the bill before it was tanked. If I wanted a raise, I would have fought for the funding bill to pass. But I was a no on that bill. 

That lie grew legs from a podcast interview I gave before Thanksgiving, almost a month before the government funding fight. In the podcast, I pointed out that Members of Congress had not gotten a raise in 15 years and it is one of the reasons why much of Congress is populated by uber wealthy individuals. I did not say I would fight for a pay raise. I did not even say that I wanted one. I simply stated a fact – Congress is made up of a lot of rich people, in part, because Members of Congress have not even seen a cost of living increase in their salaries since 2009. 

No, I am not a millionaire nor did I become one since taking office. 

This is the easiest one to debunk. All of my finances are publicly reported. I honestly don’t know where some of the crazy numbers I see online even come from, which makes it hard to explain. We report ranges when reporting assets, so it’s possible that people wrongly assume the highest end of the range, I don’t know. In the end, some people get a kick out of spreading lies, what can I say.

Many Members of Congress can say they are millionaires (and they should not be shamed for that by the way… most of them worked for it, earned it honorably, and that’s the beauty of America!). I am not one of those members. I went straight from military service into Congressional service – not exactly a pathway to earn wealth. I wrote a book that was a best-seller, and it still didn’t make me a millionaire! I live in Atascocita, Texas, which is a middle-class community, not a gated one. I have not “profited” off my service in Congress. I am 40 years old, and my wealth is easily comparable to any 40 year old who has had consistent employment and good financial sense. I saved money while I was deployed to Iraq and invested in real estate as a young officer in the military.  I wrote a best-selling book. Does any of this sound like I’ve profited unfairly? Of course not. 

That’s the truth.

Of course, those aren’t the first ridiculous claims made against me and my character since I’ve taken office. And I know they won’t be the last. 

I’ve debunked lies in the past that I was “part of the WEF,” and lies that I “voted for red flag laws.” There was even a viral tweet these last few weeks that listed the “kickbacks” paid to Members of Congress from Ukraine aid. All of it was completely fabricated. False. Lies. Not even a hint of truth.

Why do the haters do this? I’ve got plenty of theories. But it really comes down to this: the twitter trolls know they can’t control me, and they know I will call them out. Truth telling is a threat to people who make a living off social media engagement, often gained by exaggerating, twisting, or entirely destroying the truth. 

In the end, that’s what this is all about. TRUTH. And I guarantee you that I will push back, at times aggressively, on smears against me. I simply won’t ignore lies about me, even when it would be politically convenient or beneficial for me to do so.

I tell you the truth and take the time to do it because I believe you deserve it. You are owed that as one of my supporters. 

Politics is a tough business and it always will be. But I am a fighter and always will be. I fight back when lies are told about me. I fight back when you’re being lied to. And I fight back when politicians and those grifting off of politics deliberately try to hurt our country. 

I am grateful for your dedicated support. Thank you for being in my corner and for reading these messages. 

Here’s to a safe and prosperous New Year for you and all Americans. 

In Service,

Dan Crenshaw 

Watch Kamala End Her Presidential Prospects

Watch Kamala End Her Presidential Prospects

Watch kamala harris end her presidential prospects

WATCH KAMALA HARRIS END HER PRESIDENTIAL PROSPECTS

Welp, Kamala Harris basically obliterated the central thesis behind her candidacy for president this week. 

Kamala Harris’s entire campaign is premised around her being a “change” candidate. Literally, the motto for her presidential campaign is: “New Way Forward.”

So, naturally, when Kamala Harris was asked on The View what she would do differently than Joe Biden as president, her answer was…. “NOT A THING.”

It is almost hard to believe until you watch her say it, so please watch the clip above to see for yourself. 

As a reminder, Kamala Harris has sat by while Joe Biden:

  • Unleashed inflation, raising costs for groceries, gas, rent, and everything else while wages have barely kept pace with rising prices.
  • Opened our borders and mass paroled criminal illegals into our country, which led to the senseless deaths of innocent American women and girls.
  • Fled Afghanistan in such horrific fashion that 13 Americans died, thousands of our allies were abandoned, billions in weapons were handed over to terrorists, and America’s credibility on the world stage was destroyed leading to unprecedented aggression from our adversaries. 

Kamala wouldn’t change anything? “Not a thing” comes to mind? 

This is what you’re going to get with a President Kamala Harris, the same failed policies packaged in a far-left, San Francisco radical. 

Vote for Donald Trump.

The Poster Child For Trump Derangement Syndrome

The Poster Child For Trump Derangement Syndrome

The poster child for Trump Derangement Syndrome

CLICK HERE OR ON THE IMAGE ABOVE TO WATCH THE FULL DEBATE

Debating liberals is one thing I enjoy in politics probably more than anything else. I like these debates because, usually, they are substantive discussions over which policies** are better suited to handle issues we all agree need to be addressed (immigration, foreign policy, taxation, etc.). 

Debating someone who calls themselves a “conservative” while also endorsing Kamala Harris over Donald Trump was a new one for me. But I decided to do it anyways because I thought it was important to expose just how shallow the arguments against Donald Trump really are. 

You can watch the debate above for yourself. The guy I was debating is the poster child for Trump Derangement Syndrome – none of his arguments were based on policy; all of his arguments were emotionally centered attacks on Donald Trump’s character. 

It’s a long one, but it is worth your time if you want a few tactics for debating people like this you might encounter.

Israel Must Defend Itself

Israel Must Defend Itself

CLICK HERE OR ON THE IMAGE ABOVE TO WATCH

As Israel systematically dismantles Iranian proxies in the Middle East, Iran is lashing out in an increasingly erratic manner.

This week, Iran launched a barrage of ballistic missiles on Israel in an escalatory attack. Thankfully, the missiles did little damage to Israel or Israeli citizens. But we cannot allow Iran to continue this aggression against our ally, and Israel cannot wait for another Iranian escalation. They must hit back hard and decisively. 

Iran’s reckless aggression has sealed its fate. Now, Israel has the momentum, and they’re not going to let it slip away. When you’re dealing with a threat like this, you don’t let your enemy rebuild—you keep the pressure on.

Equally important, the United States must give Israel the latitude and support Israel needs to deter further aggression from Iran. Only Israel can decide the time, place, and manner of their counter attack, but they should seize the initiative against an increasingly weak Iran. 

The Biden-Harris Administration is unfortunately but unsurprisingly showing weakness at precisely the wrong time elsewhere in the region, vacating U.S. presence from longstanding bases in Iraq in a misguided deal with the Iraqi government.

This sends the wrong message at the worst possible time—just when Iran’s regional proxy terror network is collapsing. Their leadership is in disarray, and their capabilities are crumbling. Now Biden-Harris want to give them some breathing room by handing over Iraq to Iran.

In the Middle East, strength is respected, and any sign of weakness is exploited. This deal will be seen as a display of weakness because it gives the Iranians exactly what they’ve wanted since 2003: less American influence in Iraq, giving them the opportunity to make Iraq a fully-fledged proxy state. 

Pulling back now would be a catastrophic mistake—a repeat of the Afghanistan debacle. It would be the unnecessary concession of hard fought gains, protected by a relatively small and cheap US footprint. And what would we gain from the deal? Nothing. Absolutely nothing. Let’s not make the same mistake again.

What We Must Do To Win This Election

What We Must Do To Win This Election

CLICK HERE OR ON THE IMAGE ABOVE TO WATCH

The majority of the electorate in this election have already made up their minds. President Trump has a core set of voters who will vote for him no matter what. Kamala Harris has the same thing on her side. The real fight in this election is for that slim share of voters in the middle – the undecideds – who have yet to make up their minds about who they’re going to vote for in not only the presidential race, but up and down the ballot. 

So, how do we win those voters to our side?

Elections are fundamentally about persuasion. Elections are not about screaming and yelling in our own bubble, to people who already agree with us. That wins us no new voters. We must go outside our bubble and into moderate or even liberal environments and speak to people who might otherwise not hear from us. 

That was my message for activists in Montgomery County, Texas, one of the most conservative areas of the entire country. I had a mission for our Republican activists: go out and persuade the independent and undecided voters to join us. And if you live in a deep red county like Montgomery, where a GOP victory is assured, you can volunteer in a blue county like Harris County. There is always more you can do – donate, volunteer, hand out campaign literature, walk blocks, anything. 

And the message to swing voters is simple: by every metric, you were better off under four years of President Trump than you were under Biden-Harris and America is better under conservative leadership at every single level of our government.

Debunking the Biggest Left-Wing Myth About the Trump Economy

Debunking the Biggest Left-Wing Myth About the Trump Economy

CLICK HERE OR ON THE IMAGE ABOVE TO WATCH

Another massive left wing myth that I debunked on Bill Maher’s show is one that Democrats use repeatedly: “Joe Biden inherited a crappy economy from Donald Trump, and that is the real reason inflation and the cost of living are so high.”

Nothing could be further from the truth. 

Joe Biden and Kamala Harris inherited an economy that was largely recovering from the pandemic. Biden-Harris inherited low inflation, and then skyrocketed inflation to 9%. Biden-Harris inherited an economy that had GDP growth not only returning to pre-pandemic levels but actually exceeding them by the time they took office. Even unemployment was largely returning to pre-pandemic levels by the time Biden-Harris took office. 

So, what happened? It’s very simple. Biden-Harris injected trillions of dollars of welfare (i.e. demand) into the economy while screwing up supply – specifically by restricting energy production and imposing regulations that suffocated economic growth. That is precisely what causes inflation: too much demand chasing too few goods. That’s why Joe Biden and Kamala Harris created the worst inflation America has seen since Jimmy Carter. 

Biden-Harris inherited a relatively strong economy from Donald Trump and destroyed it.

Which Party Has Gotten More Extreme?

Which Party Has Gotten More Extreme?

CLICK HERE OR ON THE IMAGE ABOVE TO WATCH

A constant refrain from Democrats is that it is the Republican party that has strayed from its original positions to more extreme policy stances. But is that actually true?

I debunked that myth on Bill Maher’s show with a simple experiment. Which party platform do you think the below quotes came from on the issues of immigration and the role of government?

On immigration: “We must remain a nation of laws. We cannot tolerate illegal immigration and we must stop it. For years, Washington talked tough but failed to act. Our borders might as well not have existed. Illegal immigration was rampant. Criminal immigrants, deported after committing crimes in America, returned the very next day to commit crimes again.”

On the role of government: “This is what our party stands for – the end of the era of big government. We need a smaller, more effective, more efficient, less bureaucratic government that reflects our time-honored values. The American people do not want big government solutions and they do not want empty promises.They want a government that gives a moderate, achievable, common-sense agenda that will improve people’s daily lives and not increase the size of government.”

That is actually from Bill Clinton’s party platform in 1996. You can read the full Democrat platform here.

Can you imagine any Democrat saying that in 2024? Of course not, because the party has strayed so far from those commonsense positions. They now believe that illegal immigration must be encouraged out of a misplaced sense of compassion, with Kamala Harris promising not to put illegal immigrants in jail and rather give illegal immigrants free health care. Democrats now believe that there are no limits to the size and role of government in our lives, which is why they constantly seek to expand the influence of the federal government. 

Meanwhile, you cannot find much daylight between Republican platforms of the past and Donald Trump’s platform today. Why? Because conservatives operate within a governing framework that is largely unchangeable. The shifts in our party’s policy positions are around the edges and minimal compared to the wholesale rewrite of the Democrat Party platform we’ve witnessed over the past decades. 

When your liberal friends try to tell you that Republicans have shifted to more extreme positions, show them this video. 

Unmasking the Pseudoscience: The Truth About ‘Gender-Affirming Care’

Unmasking the Pseudoscience: The Truth About ‘Gender-Affirming Care’

In 2007, there was only one pediatric gender clinic in the United States. Now there are close to 100. It’s impossible to overstate just how quickly the Left has radicalized on the issue of so-called “gender affirming care.” None of the people pushing this harmful pseudoscientific nonsense believed it 10 or 15 years ago.

According to data collected by Komodo Health and analyzed by Reuters, a total of 121,882 new diagnoses of gender dysphoria were added for patients ages six to 17 between 2017 and 2021. The rate of diagnosis increased by 20 percent each year between 2017 and 2020, and then shot up 70 percent between 2020 and 2021—the year kids were home due to COVID-19 lockdowns, when they spent much more time on their phones and social media.

These are real numbers that tell a real story. As the head of Boston Children’s Gender Clinic confirms for us, they are handing out puberty blockers “like candy.”

The Left accuses Republicans of creating this new fight in the culture wars out of whole cloth. In reality, we’re simply responding to a rapid onset of transgender ideology being pushed on our children in their schools, libraries, and even doctors’ offices. This is an entirely new phenomenon, pushed by people who know better in pursuit of so-called “compassion” for children suffering from sometimes temporary ideations about their gender.

Let’s be frank: It is not compassionate to perform a double mastectomy on a teenage girl who is insecure about her body. It is not compassionate to pump a 13 year-old boy full of puberty blockers, seriously affecting his ability to reproduce in the future. Our children cannot consent to life-altering procedures, and informed consent depends on evidence-based medicine.

We need to be able to trust that physicians are providing care that is backed by solid science, and so-called gender affirming care runs counter to evidence-based medicine.

The American Academy of Pediatrics (AAP), the Endocrine Society, and the World Professional Association for Transgender Health (WPATH) have all released policy statements in support of gender-affirming care. Other organizations, including the American Medical Association, have made public statements in support of “affirming” medicine without citing evidence. But not one of these organizations has done systematic reviews of the evidence, a method of review supposed to prevent the cherry-picking of studies and biased analysis. Their statements of support appear to be grounded in a fear of provoking rabid gender ideologues rather than in sound science.

On the other hand, Sweden, Finland, the U.K., and Florida have all done systematic reviews, and all reached the same conclusion: There is no evidence that the benefits of this approach for treating gender-related distress in youth outweigh the risks. Recently, Denmark also imposed restrictions, and Norway is poised to follow suit. Even progressive European countries recognize that high-risk and irreversible interventions must meet a high threshold of evidence. Remember, these procedures on children are permanent. There is no turning back once you start to change a child’s gender. And yet, as our peer-countries have admitted, there is zero high quality evidence for the benefits of this pseudoscience.

Roughly 70 percent of U.S. teens who go to gender clinics have comorbid psychiatric diagnoses that precede the onset of gender dysphoria. That raises a troubling question: Are we misdiagnosing gender dysphoria because of the affirm first, ask questions later approach we have adopted in the United States? Is this affirmative model biased toward one diagnosis—gender dysphoria—and biased toward “gender affirming care” as a treatment?

Medical experts around the world think so. That’s why 21 leading experts on pediatric gender medicine from nine countries recently wrote a letter to the Wall Street Journal sounding the alarm about the American affirmative model for youth gender dysphoria.

As legislators, we must stop rewarding medical institutions pushing this pseudoscience. That’s why I introduced legislation to block graduate medical education funding from any children’s hospital that provides gender transition procedures to minors.

This bill is commonsense: When 70 percent of Americans oppose using puberty blockers on minors, we should not force them to fund this sort of treatment with their tax dollars.

Children’s hospitals that are training providers in evidence-based medicine will still receive funding under my legislation.

The fact there is even an argument over whether we should permanently mutilate children is evidence of just how far off the rails our political discourse has become. We are marching our children down a path from which they cannot return. Science and common sense tell us these procedures are permanent, dangerous, and wrong.

We must refuse to participate in this madness for the sake of our kids.

This oped by Congressman Dan Crenshaw was originally published in Newsweek on August 31, 2023.

My Statement on the Fiscal Responsibility Act

My Statement on the Fiscal Responsibility Act

We vote based on realistic choices, not what we wish were true. Of course, I wish that Ronald Reagan was resurrected, and we had 60 votes in the Senate. Then we could enact massive reforms that truly put our spending on a reasonable path. But this isn’t the reality we have now. The reality we have is a slim House majority while radical Democrats have the Senate and White House. Our leverage is limited. 


But even with that limited leverage, we forced Biden to give up on every single demand he had. He first wanted a clean debt ceiling increase without reforms. We said no. He then wanted tax increases. We said no. He wanted cuts to our military. We said no. In the final bill, Biden got nothing, and we got about half of what we wanted. Of course we wanted more, but again, our leverage was limited.  

Here are other facts to consider. Whether you like it or not, there has to be a debt ceiling increase. The economic consequences are catastrophic if you let the government default on its debt. Your 401k would crash as markets crash, the cost of borrowing would increase and make our debt worse, and recession would be imminent. Only third-world countries have allowed this to happen. 

Some might say, “well if we cut spending, we wouldn’t have to increase the debt!” But this isn’t really true, not unless you’re fine with abolishing our Social Security and Medicare programs for our seniors, which account for nearly TWO-THIRDS of all spending. Yes, you read that right. Nearly TWO THIRDS. That means during these negotiations we are only arguing over 11% of all spending. Why? Because no one wants to touch Social Security, Medicare, Veterans benefits, or the military. That leaves all the other government agencies and programs which only account for 11% of spending. So, even if you abolished the entire federal government apart from the military, you WOULD STILL HAVE TO INCREASE THE DEBT LIMIT! 

So, given that there is no choice but to increase the debt ceiling, and given we only have control of the House, where does that leave us? With what options? The options are clear. They are (1) a Biden-preferred clean debt ceiling increase with no reforms, (2) a default and say goodbye to your 401k, or (3) a debt ceiling increase with all the reforms we got.  

Anyone claiming there is another option is being EXTREMELY dishonest with you. 

So what reforms did we get? About $1.5 TRILLION dollar decrease in spending over 10 years. Not bad. Environmental permitting reform which is HUGE for our energy sector. This means Biden can’t wait 10 years to allow a permit for a new highway lane or gas pipeline. We finally forced the reforms we’ve been trying to do for YEARS. Billions of dollars in investment and jobs for Texas will be unleashed because of this. We also got some additional work requirements on Food Stamp programs and required some spending limitations (called “pay as you go” requirements) on any administrative action taken by the Biden Administration. We also cut all funding for new IRS agents this year. 

There’s more, but those are the basics. The complaints from other Republicans aren’t about what’s in the bill, they’re about what’s not in the bill. But this is faulty logic. I can ALWAYS vote against something because it doesn’t have something I want. And it’s true, I can come up with a MILLION things this bill doesn’t have. No, it doesn’t fix our border, nor does it cure cancer, nor does it give me a new eye. But these are ridiculous excuses not to vote for a bill. Some Republicans will nitpick each of those wins and say they’re not enough. Well, I agree! They’re not enough! But that’s not that question. The QUESTION is (1) was this the best we could get? And (2) is it better than the alternatives, which is a clean debt ceiling increase or a default? The answers to both questions are very clearly YES. 

Many Members of Congress are afraid to take tough votes even when they know it’s the right thing to do. I’m not. Never have been. I could EASILY have taken the easy way out and voted “no,” and kept my voters in the dark about the truth. No one would write to me to complain about a “no” vote. But I won’t do that. I can’t help but tell you the truth. And the truth is that this bill was the best case scenario given the political reality we live in. There is no evidence from anyone that we could have negotiated a better outcome. None. Therefore, I had to vote yes.