Former Libertarian Congressman Justin Amash Speaks at FreedomFest

Justian Amash served as a member of the US House (Michigan 3rd) for 5 terms (2011-2021). He was elected as a Republican but in the final 8 months of his last term, he registered as a member of the Libertarian Party, becoming the first, and so far, only member of the US Congress to serve as a Libertarian. He did not seek reelection in the Fall of 2020.

In February of 2024, he announced his intention to run for the US Senate. Later former President Donald Trump endorsed former US Congressman Mike Rogers in the race.

Earlier today Mr. Amash gave a 25 minute-long presentation to the FreedomFest conference in Las Vegas, Nevada. He was introduced by Lisa “Kennedy” Montgomery of the FOX Business Network . A partial transcript of that introduction, as well as portions of Mr. Amash’s opening and closing remarks follow. A complete video of his, and other presentations, is scheduled to be made available online by FreedomFest later this year.

KENNEDY: Justin Amash was truly one of the finest people in Congress we have had in generations. He was transparent. He was forthcoming. He was smart.

He is now running for (the US) Senate in the great state of Michigan. He truly is one of the finest messengers that this movement has ever known. So listen carefully and help him out in any way you can because we need him. Here is Justin Amash.

AMASH: I’m here to talk about taking back the Senate.

What does it mean to take back the Senate? From my perspective it’s not about taking it back for one political party; it’s about taking it back for the people.

We’ve heard a lot about saving democracy. People talk about this. They use it as a slogan, saving democracy. We hear it all the time. A lot of times from Democrats. They want to save democracy. Yet the system that we have right now in Congress is not at all representative. It’s not representative in any way.

In fact, I would say that we have an oligarchy. We have a few people in government who decide everything for everyone. . . .

The first thing I want to do as a Senator, and it’s something I focused on a lot in the House, is ensure that we open the legislative process to all members. Everyone you elect should be a part of the process. We shouldn’t have a system where all of you elect members of Congress, some in the House, some in the Senate, and they actually don’t have any power to do anything. They just have to wait for their instructions from someone else.

When I served in the House, to show you how bad it got, there was a four year period where not a single amendment was allowed to be offered on the House floor. Not one. So in over 200 years of this government, it was routinely the case that we could offer amendments as members of Congress, we could go to the House floor, and especially during appropriations season when we’re working on the spending bills.

The process was designed initially as a free and open process. If we’re working on a spending bill, any member of Congress can come to the floor, they can offer an amendment, and that amendment gets a vote. It doesn’t matter whether the leadership likes it or whether they don’t like it.
Gets a vote. Then at some point, in the interest of, I guess, what they thought was saving conservatism, Paul Ryan decided he wasn’t going to allow us to offer amendments anymore. He said, no, the Democrats are offering a lot of tough amendments.

We don’t want any of you to have to go on the record on these amendments. So instead, let’s just shut down the whole amendment process. I objected at the time, and I’ll tell you that most Republicans in the room supported that.

They applauded Paul Ryan for that. I said this would be used against conservatives, would be used against others to stop us from actually representing the people. Our job, when we’re elected, is to take those tough votes.

We’re there to take those tough votes, and we should have to take those tough votes. He shut it down. Nancy Pelosi then took the reins, and she went two years. In fact, she went four years after I left Congress. She continued to do it, didn’t allow amendments on the House floor. And now, many, many years later, I think there’s only been one piece of legislation where they even allowed us to offer amendments on the House floor since Paul Ryan changed the rules way back. I mean, it’s almost a decade ago now. So it shows you how broken the process is. . . .

Nobody should have to pay a bribe or do anything that looks like extortion to get legislation on the floor, to get a committee assignment, to be part of the political process. You elect people not so that they’ll go and work for the party, but so they’ll go work for you. We have to make the bills readable and accessible.

You’ve all seen these 1,000-page bills where they write up a bill in the back room. They write up a bill in the back room. It might be 1,000 pages. One time, I think, it was something like 5,000 pages. I want you to understand that when a bill in Congress is 5,000 pages, that’s not 5,000 pages. That’s a lot longer than 5,000 pages, because the bill is full of cross-references.

So it says things like, in this old act from 1976, on page 7, line 3, amend this. So something might be 5,000 pages, but it’s actually referencing a whole bunch of other pages. We’ve had situations where there are thousands and thousands of pages, and they tell you you have a day to read it.
A day to read it. One time, they told us we had half an hour. And they said, take it or leave it. Half an hour.

Now, some of you, I’m sure, have run businesses, been involved in business. Would any of you sign an agreement where the person on the other end of it says, hey, here’s 5,000 pages. You can review it for half an hour? Nobody would do that. Yet with the federal government, with the federal government, which affects all of us, this is what they do in Congress. So we need to make sure the bills are readable.

. . .

So, getting back to the subject of this, taking back the Senate, I think, as you can see, it’s not just about having Republicans in there. I think Republicans are marginally better than Democrats on these issues, but marginally. It’s not enough just to have more Republicans. We need to have people who actually care about the process, and elections are an opportunity to do this.

So, when you go to vote for someone, you need to ask them not just how do they vote on the substantive issues, not just will you vote to cut spending, will you vote to end the forever war, or stop all the surveillance, not just those issues. You need to ask them how they’re going to be on the process. Are you just going to toe the line? Are you going to do whatever the leadership tells you to do? Are you going to vote yes on bills that you weren’t given a chance to read? Are you going to vote for leaders who are violating the process, who are violating the ordinary rules of legislation?
You can’t pick the Senate majority leader. The Senate members pick the Senate majority leader, but you can pick the people who make up the Senate.

So, you need to make sure that when you do that, when you think about who to vote for, you ask them not just about the substantive issues, but where are you on process? Because if you don’t have a system where process is respected, where the rules of the Senate are respected, the rules of the House are respected, and where the Constitution is respected, if you don’t have that, then all of the substantive issues you care about, they’re going to go by the wayside. You won’t have a chance to actually debate those things.

I’ll leave you with this. A lot of you, you hear about the corruption, and you might ask yourself, is it all worth saving? Is it worth saving? Are we just too far gone? And this will be my answer to you. I think it is worth saving.

My parents came to this country as immigrants, and when I was a kid, I learned about the American dream, and how amazing this country is, and how fantastic our Constitution is. And I want to tell you, I’ve spent a lot of time studying constitutions around the world, laws around the world, the ways other countries govern themselves. Our Constitution is a miracle. It’s a miracle. Not perfect. There’s no such thing as a perfect system. But I’ll tell you, it is a miracle. That the founders and the framers of the Constitution put this thing together is a true miracle. And if we lose this Constitution, if we lose this system, I don’t think we’ll ever get anything back that’s even close to it.

So, I want you to go out there, stand up for the Constitution, stand up for the rule of law, stand up for a system that works for the people.

Thank you so much.