today, to say thank you to chairman aguiar, vice chairman lew for inviting me to join this press conference this morning and also to thank my colleagues chairman neal and chairman boyle for their leadership. as my colleagues have mentioned, the republicans chaotic process to elect a speaker of the house, it's unprecedented and it's also dangerous. republicans are making side agreements, handshake deals that not only contradict their call for transparency but also attempt to short-circuit 2024 government funding process before it even gets started. appropriations bills i must pass bills. they require bipartisan, bicameral agreement like the house democratic majority secured when we passed the agreement, funding the omnibus bill in december. it appears, quite honestly, the republicans, they don't understand this process. because as an attempt to become speaker, kevin mccarthy reportedly already promised to cap spending at the 2022 levels in exchange for votes. let me just take a second to tell you about what that means. now obviously we do not have the exact -- that the speaker twitter for vo