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with inflation impacting millions of Americans across the country. And right here at home, it is *** critical time in our nation's capital where leaders are working hard, trying to come up with solutions. Joining us now in studio House, majority leader and Congressman Steve Scalise congressman. Thank you, sir for your time. Great to see you as always and we know the work never ends, walk us through some of the recent legislation trying to help improve the situation for Americans families. Yes, I appreciate it. and you touched on inflation and frankly, one of the biggest drivers of inflation are energy costs and you're seeing it, not only when you pay at the pump, but you're seeing in your electricity bills and whether it's *** cold winter or as we in Louisiana get ready for another hot summer. The electricity costs that we're paying are double digits higher. *** lot of that's because we've seen an attack on American energy, whether it's oil, natural gas, it's just been really hard to get permits to lease even Building the infrastructure like pipelines has been made very difficult. And so we're filing *** bill starting tomorrow called the Lower Energy Costs Act. And this is going to be *** major piece of legislation that brings in *** lot of different bills from three major energy committees in the House to ultimately focus on lowering energy costs. But making more things in America, we should not be relying on foreign countries whether it's Russia, Iran, Venezuela, Saudi Arabia, we should be making our own. We do it better and cleaner than anywhere else in the world. But importantly for Louisiana in my bill, the things that we're doing to open up energy, we also fix revenue sharing right now, Louisiana gets *** lower share of revenue drilling offshore than most states do that drill onshore. So we get parity there. And then even for wind energy, we're starting to see some interest in the Gulf of Mexico for wind development. But there's no revenue sharing that goes with that. And in my bill, I also take care of that to make sure that we get revenue sharing in Louisiana. And why that's important. We use our revenue sharing from energy production to restore our coast. So all these coastal restoration projects critical to flood protection. That would be additional funding millions if not tens of millions of dollars more *** year coming into Louisiana for coastal restoration. That would also be part of my bill as this legislation progresses in our capital. What again is your message just to the everyday. Taxpayer and Louisiana family here in Southeast Louisiana who can't afford to pay these high energy bills and everything else just for basic utilities is just stay engaged in the legislative process. You know, the decisions made in Washington have *** ripple effect. Throughout the country when President Biden came in, he made it very clear starting his first day that he wanted to make it harder to produce energy in America. Look, you saw it with the Keystone pipeline getting canceled on day. one delays as we saw even last week on lease sales, so the ability to just lease more areas in the Gulf of Mexico because if you start leasing today, it might take 5 to 10 years before you see the first drops of oil coming out of the ground. Do we really want to be dependent on foreign countries for our energy? This bill focuses on America. Let's produce our energy here, let's export it to our friends around the world. So they don't need to get it from countries like Russia There is some bipartisan relief here and some efforts amongst your colleagues and our congressman, Troy Henry as well and trying to get things done through the Breeze Act as well. Yeah. And so what you're looking at on the Breeze Act, *** lot of interest in renewables and I'm an all of the above guy. You know, let's the market dictate it. But at the same time as we're continuing to produce more oil, more natural gas and nuclear power needs to be *** big part of that mix. But also when in solar and they're far behind in their technological advancements, they will continue to advance. But there's private sector interest in the Gulf of Mexico to the tune of billions of dollars. There are no rules of the game right now. So the Breeze Act, which Troy Carter and I put in place that actually helps put some rules in place so that you know how to produce wind energy. But also the revenue sharing that goes with it, that money shouldn't all go to Washington traditionally with energy production, *** lot of the money stays locally in the states that want to produce energy in Louisiana. We choose to use that money for coastal restoration, which I've been *** huge champion of for *** long time here in Louisiana. We're used to Mother Nature and its impact with hurricanes. But last year we saw some deadly and destructive tornadoes specifically, not once but twice in ST Bernard. Arab, of course, you represent the wide majority of that district. What has been the federal response and what additional resources and or funding may be coming, coming to help the people of ST Bernard. Yeah, I went down to Arabi right after the tornado touched ground and Guy mcguinness has been doing *** phenomenal job with the council to helping that community which was devastated. We saw the house where you had *** death, unfortunately, but you also had *** lot of other destruction you know, I stood in the living room of one of the families where you're looking around and all the roof is gone, the walls are down so they do very narrow devastation where they hit. And so ultimately, wherever the federal government can help, we're going to be there and I was there just to let them know that anything we can do, we're there for the family. Louisiana pulls together. We've been unfortunately through more than our fair share of deadly storms over the years, but our community pulls together. We're tough and resilient people and just like the people of Arabi, they're coming back and another insurance crisis connected to these natural disasters, the insurance crisis here in our state, So many people trying to figure out how can they afford that and being removed from their former policy and going on, Louisiana citizens and not being able to really afford that. What help can be made, what help can be offered from the federal government to help people find the right homeowners insurance policy. Yeah. And I know the state just took some very significant action in *** special session and I applaud what they did because we need *** robust homeowners insurance market in Louisiana in South Louisiana. That's right now in jeopardy. But at the federal level, the flood insurance program, the national Flood Insurance program has serious problems, especially with what's called risk rating 2.0. *** lot of people are getting their flood insurance bills deep flaws that FEMA has and how they rolled this out. I don't think it's ready for prime time. In fact, I'm pushing to have *** hearing in Congress on the National Flood Insurance program and specifically risk rating 2.0 and how this needs to be revamped fema needs to go back to the drawing board because it's hurting families. Not just here in South Louisiana. I talked to my colleagues up in the northeast, any area where you're living near water by the way, about half of America lives near water. So this idea that this is just beachfront homes is *** fallacy. And so we need to get the federal government to recognize what's really happening out there. The flood protection that communities like those of us in South Louisiana had put in place to better protect us from storms are not even factored in to *** lot of these new maps that are coming out with Fema's risk grading 2.0. So it needs to be revamped In many ways. It seems our nation can come together but still remains divided with many issues. What's your hope moving forward in 2023, *** few months into this new year, then in turn, going into *** presidential cycle next year in 2024. My hope is that we just inject some common sense back into the policies coming out of Washington. I think *** lot of people, they look and they scratch their heads and they think Washington is detached from the real world and I think we need to get it rooted back on solving problems for families. You know, the rule should be if *** bill is coming up in Congress first question you should ask, is this going to help or hurt families who are struggling across America? Is this going to get our economy back on track and make us more competitive against countries like China who are adversaries and want to do us harm. And speaking of that technology is really scary as impressive as it is the thought of cyber security threats out there. Just put your moral perspective on keeping up our guard across foreign enemies. I think people recognize more now how vulnerable, especially our technology infrastructure is, but even personal privacy, we need to do more to push back on some of these companies. There's *** lot of scrutiny on companies Tik Tok, which is *** Chinese owned company where they're collecting *** lot of your data and *** lot of kids are on Tik Tok. Their facial recognition is basically completely owned by the Chinese Communist Party. They have all of that information and they have it for *** reason. And so I think we need to do more to look at it. We've been able to at least push back on some of the companies like Huawei and Z T E who are more the data routing companies of the internet where if you're sending *** text message and maybe you and I can text message, we're sitting next to each other yet. It's going through routers all across the country. And in many cases, it used to be going through Chinese equipment that then the Chinese Communist Party had access to the data that we were sending. I don't think most Americans want that. They probably don't even know it because it goes on behind the scenes. We need more transparency and more protection for individuals privacy on the internet. for you. The work never really stops, but you do get to visit home every so often and enjoy some of Louisiana's great festivities the spring time, always *** favorite of yours. I love being back in South Louisiana. Just last week I went fishing with my son. We caught some good red fish and speckled trout and then we black and the red fish, which is uh always *** treat to getting ready for another crawfish ball coming up. Not like living in South Louisiana went to the, the uh we, we had the uh uh the festival last yesterday and uh did *** little bit of um Saint Patrick's Day parading and we know you're *** big baseball guy. Of course, this is baseball season here throughout the state and maybe get you to the box. Check out that number one team in the country that I love. My Tigers are number one. And, uh, you know, hopefully we can get back to Omaha. We haven't been to *** college World Series in *** while and uh that would be fun to go to, I've never been to Omaha for the college World Series. So look, how about, how about we say this? You and I, we both go to Omaha when L S U makes it this year. That sounds like *** plan to me. Congressman, Steve Scalise. Thank you, sir for your time and thank you for what you continue to do for the people of Louisiana. Great being back. Thank you,