Get Americans Back To Work Act

Mr. Speaker, I ask unanimous consent that all Members have 5 legislative days to revise and extend their remarks and include extraneous material on the subject of my Special Order.

Mr. Speaker, during my time tonight, my colleagues and I will address the major crises happening here at home, happening close to home, and now happening abroad. Our message tonight will cover many topics, but the theme is consistent. These crises are self-inflicted. There are the direct results of disastrous policy decisions from the Biden administration.

We have a large number of Members who want to participate tonight, so I will begin immediately by yielding to the gentleman from central Pennsylvania (Mr. Joyce), my good friend.

Mr. Speaker, I thank the gentleman. The American people are counting on us, and they deserve a President who will ensure their safety, security, and freedom, both here at home and abroad.

Mr. Speaker, I yield to the gentleman from Florida (Mr. C. Scott Franklin), who represents Florida's Fifth Congressional District.

Mr. Speaker, my friend is exactly right. The people do know better, and the pain hardworking Americans are feeling is very real.

Mr. Speaker, I yield to the gentleman from Pennsylvania (Mr. Meuser), who represents Pennsylvania's Ninth Congressional District.

Mr. Speaker, my friend said it so well. This administration either doesn't understand those fundamentals of the economy or doesn't care. It is very perplexing.

Mr. Speaker, I yield to the gentleman from Indiana (Mr. Baird), who represents Indiana's Fourth Congressional District.

Mr. Speaker, ``reckless'' is a word we hear over and over tonight and as we talk to our constituents because there is no better word to describe what is happening with this administration.

Mr. Speaker, I yield to the gentleman from Florida (Mr. Gimenez), the former mayor of Miami who represents Florida's 26th Congressional District.

Mr. Speaker, my friend is exactly right. That language is dangerous, and our colleague that he referenced is contributing to the foreign policy crises that have developed rapidly over the last few months.

Mr. Speaker, I yield to the gentlewoman from Arizona (Mrs. Lesko).

Mr. Speaker, my friend from Arizona is exactly right. This crisis with China and the Chinese Communist Party is perhaps the greatest threat that we face as a people today, and we need the White House to stand strong. I am so grateful she brought that good word.

Mr. Speaker, I yield to the gentleman from Pennsylvania (Mr. Keller), who represents Pennsylvania's 12th Congressional District.

Mr. Speaker, Mr. Keller is correct. When we were kids, they taught us the value of a dollar. That is not what our Democrat colleagues are teaching anymore. Now they are subscribing to what we call fantasy economics, modern monetary theory and all the rest. Mr. Keller is exactly right, and I am so grateful that he brought that word tonight.

Mr. Speaker, I yield next to the gentleman from Texas (Mr. Babin), representing the 36th District.

Mr. Speaker, despite the obvious magnitude of that big problem on the border that we have seen and talk about all the time, hammering home that theme, there have been zero visits to the border by the President or the border czar, the Vice President.

In fact, when Kamala Harris was asked in an interview this week if she planned on visiting the border, she laughed about it. But I tell you, those Customs and Border Patrol agents will tell her that it is no laughing matter. I am grateful that Mr. Babin brought that forward tonight.

Mr. Speaker, I yield next to the gentleman from Tennessee (Mr. Rose), my good friend, who represents the Sixth District.

Mr. Speaker, that is such an important point. The evidence is mounting that China is indeed responsible for the COVID crisis, and we must hold them accountable.

Mr. Speaker, I yield to the gentleman from Louisiana (Mr. Higgins), who represents the Third District, and is the third Louisianan on the floor now.

Mr. Speaker, I thank Captain Higgins for those impassioned words. He is exactly right.

One of the things that is so heartbreaking, frustrating, unconscionable about this is we can solve this crisis at the border pretty simply. All we need the White House to do is reimplement the Trump-era policies because that increased border security, it discouraged illegal immigration and it reinstituted law and order, and we can do that, but they won't.

Mr. Speaker, I yield to the gentleman from Georgia (Mr. Carter), who represents Georgia's First Congressional District.

Mr. Speaker, that is a great reminder of who the President serves, and it is confounding to us that he doesn't understand these basic truths.

Mr. Speaker, I yield to the gentleman from Tennessee (Mr. Burchett), who represents Tennessee's Second District.

Always.

Mr. Speaker, the gentleman covered a lot, and he is right, this crisis we have, the jobs and the economy was so preventable.

Mr. Speaker, I yield to the gentleman from South Carolina (Mr. Wilson), one of my heroes in the Congress.

Mr. Speaker, the Biden administration Democrats continue to push policies that pay people more to stay at home than go back to work, so the results are not surprising at all.

Mr. Speaker, I yield to the gentleman from Pennsylvania (Mr. Perry), who represents Pennsylvania's 10th Congressional District.

Mr. Speaker, out of business.

Mr. Speaker, I am very grateful for those comments.

Mr. Perry is exactly right. He mentioned Economics 101. Some of our colleagues would do well to go take a refresher course.

Mr. Speaker, I yield to the gentleman from Georgia (Mr. Clyde), who represents Georgia's Ninth District.

Mr. Speaker, I thank my friend for those remarks, and I thank him for his service.

Mr. Speaker, may I inquire how much time is remaining.

Mr. Speaker, I yield to the gentleman from Texas (Mr. Gohmert), who represents Texas' First Congressional District.

Mr. Speaker, Mr. Gohmert is exactly right. And the scope of that tragedy is something that is hard to wrap your mind around.

Mr. Speaker, I yield to the gentleman from West Virginia (Mr. Mooney).

Mr. Speaker, how much time remains on the clock?

Mr. Speaker, I will need to summarize, then.

I am delighted to have had so many of my colleagues here tonight to help us sound the alarms and inform the American people what is going on here.

We have a crisis here at home. We have a crisis on the southern border. And we have multiple developing crises abroad. You heard the broad spectrum of all those tonight, Mr. Speaker.

Whether it is our concern about jobs in the economy with the rising inflation, with this humanitarian crisis with young children and traffickers and drug cartels at the border, or whether we are talking about this administration's critical foreign policy blunders, you can summarize it all, Mr. Speaker.

Maybe it was summarized best tonight by the gentleman from Pennsylvania (Mr. Perry). He said in one phrase: We have a leadership crisis.

We certainly do. But I will tell you, Mr. Speaker, all these issues and everything that my colleagues talked about tonight can and should be addressed in a bipartisan way. All of us on this side of the aisle want to do that. We are anxious to do that. We should all want Americans to get back to work. We should all want to end the humanitarian crisis at the border. We should all want to achieve peace through strength on the international stage.

It is time for President Biden and it is time for our Democrat colleagues to work with Republicans for the American people.

Mr. Speaker, I yield back the balance of my time.

Mr. Speaker, I thank my good friend, Mr. Johnson, for this Special Order, talking, unfortunately, about the things that make us sad to see happening in our country.

Here, before, they were talking about the climate crisis. We sure do have a climate crisis. We have a climate of unbridled spending happening in this country without any eye toward the consequences.

Of course, we have a border crisis. We have a law-and-order crisis going on.

We have a leadership crisis in this country. We are ceding the leadership of the United States of America to thugs in Russia, China, and Iran.

We have a political crisis, where everything is politicized, where we can't even get together on things we agree with because the other side forces you to take votes that potentially destroy the fabric of our country, our neighborhoods. The things that we agree on, we can't even do that here because there has to be a political price to pay for everything.

Of course, the financial crisis--inflation is here, and it is here to stay. In May, consumer prices spiked 5 percent from the previous year. That is the biggest spike since August 2008. Remember that? The beginning of the Great Recession?

We don't have to be doing this, but I think we are going to do it again. Overall, prices jumped at a shocking 9.7 percent annualized rate from March through May. That is 10 percent. Oh, by the way, that coincides with the time that the Biden fiscal policies started coming into play. They are beginning to devastate the economy like we knew they would.

In real terms, if you are driving, you are paying 40 percent more today than you did at the start of the year.

And it is artificial, right? We closed the Keystone pipeline down. We let Russia have their pipeline, but we closed ours down. Do you think the gas isn't coming? It is still coming. We are just paying a lot more for it because they have to put it on a truck or a train. Heaven forbid, it can't go through the Keystone pipeline. Oh, we can't have that.

Guess who pays? Every single one of us. But who does it hurt the most? Do you remember the days when you were growing up and couldn't afford to fill up your gas tank? You put five bucks in and prayed you got to the end of the week? That is who it is hurting, and it is happening again.

Food prices are up 2.4 percent, and the transport cost of food, up 25 percent. Again, who does it hurt the most?

Meanwhile, the May jobs report shows 9.3 million job openings in the U.S., nearly a million increase over the numbers for April.

That is the largest increase ever since the Bureau of Labor Statistics began counting. These are indicators of bad things happening. They are also indicators and a manifestation of bad policy when we, as the government, pay more for people to stay home than they make if they would go to work.

Who can blame them? They are looking out for their economic best interests. If they can make more staying home, well, God bless them. They have to because they have to pay the higher prices from all this inflation that is ``not happening.'' I say that tongue-in-cheek because that is what the President has told us, and that is what Janet Yellen told us.

Well, we might have been born at night, Mr. Johnson, but it wasn't last night. We know it is happening. It is obvious to any Economics 101 student.

The Biden administration and Democrats in Congress have extended these benefits through September. So guess what? It is just going to keep going.

Labor is going to cost more, and everything associated with labor is going to cost more. Who is it going to hurt the most? The people working the hardest at the bottom trying to make their way out.

Families can't afford it. Do you know who else can't afford it, Mr. Johnson? My good friend. I have a friend at home. He started a business 51 years ago. He came home from fighting for his country in Vietnam, and he started a business from scratch 51 years ago. He hired hundreds of people and was known around the world for his product.

Well, guess what just happened this month?

Mr. Speaker, gotta shut her down, man. Gotta shut her down. The policies affect people's lives.

Like I said, the President and Secretary Yellen said that inflation wasn't real just a few months ago. Now they are saying it won't be permanent. If you believe what they said a couple of months ago, you might as well believe that.

While they are pursuing another $6 trillion in spending, we can't go to the bank. We are just going to print it. Guess what is going to happen? It is going to be runaway inflation, and it is actually going to threaten the continuation of this very Republic. And that spending is in addition to the $2.1 trillion budget deficit for the first 8 months of this fiscal year, the largest on record, which follows $3 trillion last year, which was another record.

We just simply can't afford these reckless policies. We love our country. We want to work with the other side. This isn't working. It is not working for the American people. It is not working for any of us.

We are at the tipping point in a lot of ways in this country. One of them is economic, and we can do something about it. But we need the President to have some fiscal restraint. We need the people in this body to have some fiscal restraint.

Mr. Speaker, I thank the gentleman for offering this Special Order tonight. We don't need to kowtow. We don't need to kneel at the altar of the green crazy people who want to drive the agenda.

We have a great country, and we could save it. We don't have to let China open a coal plant--one every week--while we hobble ourselves and shut ourselves out of the great resources that we have in this country. We don't have to do it.

Mr. Speaker, I rise today to address an issue of great importance to all of our constituents: their economic livelihoods. It has only been 6 months since President Biden took office and already our country is moving in the wrong direction.

Under President Trump we saw unparalleled economic growth. Now under President Biden, we are faced with more and more government spending, fewer and fewer people going back to work, and skyrocketing inflation, which devalues your money. You can see here, a picture is worth a thousand words. 4.2 less percent value to your dollar today after all the spending the government has been doing here lately.

By the end of 2020, the economy was resurgent. And since the economy was crippled by the initial lock-downs in March and April of 2020, there had been an improvement in the unemployment rate each month, until this spring. After 11 months of significant job growth, the unemployment rate increased this past April for the first time since last year.

More Americans are getting vaccinated every day and COVID-19 restrictions are being lifted around the country. This should be a time when the recovery reaches new heights. There were 9.3 million jobs openings in April. That is more job openings than any other time in the last year. But those jobs may not get filled any time soon, due to President Biden and many of my Democrat colleagues' and

friends' decision here in this Chamber to continue an unsustainable level of Federal unemployment benefits. Some workers can make more money on unemployment than going back to work.

Commonsense dictates that if you pay people not to work, they will take you up on it. Most people will not act against their own economic interests by working if they can make more money staying home.

The failure of the Biden administration has forced some Governors to act on their own. So far, 25 States have announced plans to wind down the extra $300 a week in Federal unemployment benefits.

Governor Jim Justice in my State of West Virginia announced that our State will join that group here this month, in June. So when Federal leadership fails, Governors must step up and make the best decisions for their States.

West Virginia has had a particular problem with worker shortages for years now. Gil White, who is our State Director of the National Federation of Independent Businesses, was asked on WV MetroNews about the worker shortage, and he responded, ``That is not a myth; it's a reality. I don't care if it's large business or small business employers. I think there is a common theme that finding workers is very challenging, to say the least.''

After a tumultuous year with government shutdowns and strict capacity limits, the last thing small businesses need is a worker shortage that leaves them unprepared to meet the demands of a reopening economy.

President Biden's solution to this problem, along with every other problem, seems to be more spending of your hard-earned taxpayer dollars. But with our budget deficit at an alarming level, and you see it here how it is just skyrocketing, our budget deficit, more spending will bring about more problems.

Our debt is currently $28 trillion, and our deficits have grown substantially larger in the past year due to spending increases in response to COVID-19. And, yet, President Biden is currently pushing for more than $4 trillion in new spending. $4 trillion.

President Biden has proposed to build hundreds of thousands of electric vehicle charging stations, retrofit buildings across America, to make them greener, and a laundry list of other progressive priorities.

Despite his sometimes moderate demeanor, President Biden's platform is far left. President Biden made a long list of promises to the left wing of his party, like when he said he would ``get rid of fossil fuels.'' It should come as no surprise that his administration is shaping up to be the most liberal in recent memory.

We should not keep borrowing money from China in order to spend money that we don't have here in America. There is a simple solution, unwind these expensive government programs, continue opening up the economy, and let people earn a living again. That is our country's path forward.

Mr. Speaker, I have a couple more comments I would like to make on a separate issue.

I rise today to address the crisis at the southern border. These images here show children being dropped over the border fence, and show migrants nearly drowning trying to cross the river on the border.

Ladies and gentlemen, dumping children across a fence like this into the wilderness is not an immigration policy. That is child abuse. That is not how we are supposed to do this. It is an outrage. If President Trump had done that, he would be attacked everywhere.

The border crisis is a humanitarian crisis. Even the President of Guatemala, Alejandro Giammattei, blamed the Biden administration's open border messaging calling it ``lukewarm'' and ``confusing.''

He explained this messaging actually increases the number of unaccompanied minors that are sent out on the journey and are subsequently trafficked by coyotes and cartels.

Data shows that Customs and Border Patrol agents stopped over 180,000 illegal border crossings in the month of May alone, the highest in over 20 years. Look, we can have our own opinions, but we are not entitled to our own facts.

This is a crisis, ladies and gentlemen. It is time for America's border czar, Vice President Kamala Harris, to do her job and address the humanitarian crisis at the border to protect to lives of these young children.

Mr. Speaker, emails--as this headline says from Wendell Husebo--emails show Anthony Fauci scrambled at the beginning of the pandemic to determine the potential U.S. role in funding coronavirus research abroad, and that was because he provided money to a firm that provided money to the Wuhan lab.

As this points out, after Fauci made that comment that we didn't do that, a couple months later, the man responsible for steering U.S. Government funding to the Wuhan Institution of Virology, Peter Daszak, the president of EcoHealth Alliance, thanked Dr. Fauci on April 18, 2020, for publicly dismissing the theory coronavirus may have leaked from that lab to which they furnished money.

Here is another story from the same person. Anthony Fauci said in released emails: Drugstore masks are not really effective.

He told us, Oh, gosh, you know, we need to be taking a mask, everybody should be wearing a mask, but that was only after he had been against it before he became for it.

And this points out and quotes him as just being one of the biggest hypocrites. And in fact, that he completely lied to the American people, because he says that ``Masks are really for infected people . . . '' He goes on further: ``The typical mask you buy in the drugstore is not really effective . . . '' and he says, ``I do not recommend that you wear a mask, particularly since you are going to a very low risk location. Your instincts are correct, money is best spent on medical countermeasures such as diagnostics and vaccines.''

But as Fauci emails show, the U.S. scientists knew COVID looked engineered only days before insisting that the virus was natural. And that is another one of the reasons that Representative Taylor Greene filed the Fire Fauci Act, and I would encourage people to get on board.

But the virologist who told Fauci that SARS-CoV-2 potentially looked engineered--he eliminated his Twitter account. That article is June 7th.

And then we find out that ``weight-adjusted hydroxychloroquine and azithromycin boosted survival of ventilated COVID-19 patients by 200 percent,'' according to a study. We have had hundreds of thousands of Americans who have died while Fauci and others belittled a hydroxychloroquine regimen, and the good that it could do, and the good it has done for most of those who have taken it.

So we know that in the 1950s President Eisenhower said: No, we got no U-2 flights going over the Soviet Union. And they shot one down. He had to go on TV and say: I am sorry, I lied. I am very sorry, I thought I was doing the right thing by the country.

In the 1960s, President Kennedy, he went on television, and said: I am sorry. It is my fault, basically, that people died in the Bay of Pigs invasion.

But who is going to come forward and say, you know what, this was my fault? It is not going to be Fauci. We don't know if it will be President Biden, but somebody owes a big apology to the American people.

Mr. Speaker, I rise today on behalf of the people of Georgia's Ninth District to bring attention to two major issues plaguing our country as we speak, the economic crisis and the Biden border crisis, as both will affect our country for years to come.

Inflationary pressures are crippling consumer purchasing power at record rates, and our national debt is on the rise.

My constituents are eager to course-correct our Nation's fiscal ship so we can guarantee that the American Dream is attainable for future generations of Americans. Unfortunately, the Biden administration shows no signs of curtailing its spending habits any time soon, as Democrats are keying up a plan to shoehorn through Congress, the progressive American Jobs and Families Plan, which combined total $4 trillion in deficit spending.

Folks, the debt is already at $28.4 trillion. The White House has announced a budget that will leave the American people holding a stunning $39 trillion in debt by 2031. And what is truly scary? The interest payments on the debt are on track to eclipse our Nation's defense spending in just 10 years. As a military officer, that doesn't sit well with me.

The looming debt spiral will quite literally be the death of the American Dream as we know it if we don't act now. It is clear the Biden administration has no regard for Americans' pocketbooks, nor does it show any remorse for the future generations who will be left to bear the brunt of Democrat-controlled spending.

If that wasn't enough of a crisis, it has been 84 days since Vice President Harris was tapped as the border czar, yet she still has not made a trip to the U.S.-Mexico border. I have traveled to the border twice and have personally witnessed the escalation of the crisis. Why has the Vice President not gone?

The Department of Homeland Security published shocking statistics that paint a very clear picture of how the Biden administration policies are creating a devastating crisis on the border. Last month, encounters at the border exceeded 180,000. This level of apprehension has not been seen in over 21 years and is up 675 percent when compared to May of last year.

Dangerous human traffickers, gang members, and other criminals are smuggling deadly drugs over the border and into our communities at an alarming rate, refueling the opioid crisis, the very crisis former President Trump successfully subdued.

When we look at fentanyl seizures alone, Customs and Border Protection has already seized almost double the amount of fentanyl in the first 8 months of fiscal year 2021 than it did in all 12 months of fiscal year 2020.

The numbers will only continue to rise as more illicit substances come across the border through September, especially as Biden continues reversing Trump's successful border policies.

Enough is enough. We must put country over progressive politics, and I look forward to standing with my Republican colleagues to do so.