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Thanksgiving is a unifying holiday for our country and serves as a time for reflection on what matters most to us. It gives us a moment to pause, reconnect with loved ones, and celebrate our nation’s traditions. President Abraham Lincoln declared Thanksgiving a holiday in 1863 as step toward reuniting our country after the hardships of the Civil War. This sentiment still holds true today. America, and the world, has persevered through the devastating coronavirus pandemic, and are in the process of rebuilding and creating our new normal.

Thursday, Nov. 11, we honor the men and women who have bravely and selflessly served our homeland. It is days like these that we put differences, politics, and disagreements aside, and come together as a country to recognize why we are fortunate enough to live in the land of the free.

This weekend, millions of Americans are dreading turning their clocks back an hour knowing darkness will approach earlier throughout the cold winter months. Seasonal depression kicks in, along with scheduling confusion and mishaps, but what’s most concerning is the increase in car accidents and drop in economic activity.

I was honored to be appointed earlier this year to serve on the Select Committee on Economic Disparity and Fairness in Growth, where my colleagues and I will dive deep into issues related to economic fairness, access to education, and workforce development. This committee is similar to the mission of the Temporary National Economic Committee, which was founded by President Roosevelt after the Great Depression to address the distribution of wealth that played a role in triggering the economic collapse in 1929.

The Biden administration is searching for ways to pay for their partisan $3.5 trillion social policy bill, and one of the Democrats’ proposed solutions is to spy on taxpayers’ bank accounts. This would require financial institutions and service providers to report data on accounts to the Internal Revenue Service to help ensure that Americans are paying their “fair share” in taxes. Democrats claim that this would mostly impact wealthy Americans and businesses, but in reality, this targets virtually all working-class people in our nation.

After many weeks of partisan debate, legislation to increase the debt ceiling passed the Senate last week, resulting in House members being called back to Washington to vote on this renegotiated bill. I voted against the first version of the debt ceiling increase, and I will again be voting no because I firmly oppose this administration’s reckless, virtually unlimited, spending.