Disapproving the action of the District of Columbia Council in approving the Revised Criminal Code Act of 2022.

Madam President, I ask unanimous consent that the order for the quorum call be rescinded.

Madam President, I wanted to come down here because a single Senator in this Chamber, a colleague from Alabama, has put a blanket hold on every pending nominee and promotion of flag officers at the Department of Defense.

As far as we can tell--and this might be the intention of the Senator from Alabama; I don't know whether he knows this or not--there is no precedent for what the Senator from Alabama is doing. There is no precedent for what he has done. It has never been done, stopping the U.S. Senate from taking up promotions for uniformed military officers. These are promotions that happen to people as a group. These are flag officers at the Department of Defense that we have to ratify here in the Senate.

And we asked the Senate Armed Services--I couldn't believe it when I heard it. I couldn't believe it. But we asked the Senate Armed Services Committee if this had ever happened in the history of America, the history of the Senate; and the answer was, they have no record of that ever happening before.

And it is happening at an incredibly unusual and difficult time in the world's history with the biggest land war in Europe since the Second World War, China's saber-rattling in the Pacific. We just had an hours-long open session of the Intelligence Committee to hear the report from the head of the FBI, the head of the CIA, the head of the NSA, the head of the Defense Intelligence Agency. All of these folks were coming together to say: This is what the threat looks like. This is the global threat that America faces--a geopolitical landscape more unsettled than at any point in my lifetime, Madam President.

My understanding is that the Senator from Alabama has placed this unprecedented blanket hold because he objects to the Department of Defense's new policies to help our servicemembers access reproductive care. And I will have more to say about that in a minute; but I don't think I should wait any longer to advance these personnel. We should get this done today.

Therefore, I ask unanimous consent that the Senate proceed to executive session to consider the following nomination en bloc: Calendar Nos. 46, 47, 48, 49, 50, 51, 52; that the nominations be confirmed en bloc; that the motion to reconsider be considered made and laid upon the table with no intervening action or debate; that no further motions be in order to any of the nominations; that the President be immediately notified of the Senate's action, and the Senate then resume legislative session.

Madam President, I appreciate the words of the Senator from Alabama and his conviction. I will say he said I am mistaken on the facts.

I think one thing you didn't hear was any dispute at all that this is the first time in American history that a U.S. Senator has held up the promotion of flag officers--the first time. It is the first time in American history that any of the more than 2,000 people that have served in this body--but less than 3,000 people--have seen fit to hold up the promotions of people at DOD. That is not a fact that is in dispute, Madam President, as we sit here today on the floor.

You know, I have spent a lot of time when I come down to this floor-- and I am on the floor listening to people's speeches, or I am thinking about my own--thinking about the history of America. And broadly speaking--it has not always been true at every moment or at every juncture--but broadly speaking, the American story has been a story of expanding freedoms and expanding opportunity for the American people. It is the story of one generation after another putting their shoulder to the wheel to make our country more democratic, more fair, and more free.

It can be easy, when you are on this floor, to think about those victories as ancient history, as old as the marble in this Chamber. But it was only 100 years ago, our grandmothers' generation--our grandmothers' generation--when women in America didn't have the right to vote. That is just 100 years ago. It took 100 years for the people that were fighting for women to have the self-evident right to vote to vote, and they didn't get it until 100 years after they fought. And it was only 100 years ago that they got it.

It was only when I was born in the middle of the 1960s that we attempted, finally--finally--after the Civil War in the United States, after Reconstruction and then the redemption that came after that, after the Jim Crow

laws and the redlining that had happened in the United States of America--it was only after that that we finally tried to secure the rights of African-American citizens to vote, a promise that had been made after the Civil War was over and never fulfilled. I would argue it hasn't been fulfilled to this day.

By the way, when I was born in 1964--I was at the African American Museum the day before I got sworn into this body, this time with my family, and I said to one of my nephews--we were walking through the slavery exhibit--I said, I was born in 1964, which, to him, admittedly, that seemed like ancient history. But the year I was born was just 100 years since the people in this country still enslaved human beings. Just two short lifetimes divided when I was born from when we still enslaved human beings.

It was even more recent in our country's history--just 50 years ago, Madam President--before we secured the constitutional right to an abortion in Roe v. Wade, putting an end to the days when women in this Nation--when our mothers and our grandmothers--were forced into back- alley abortions in the United States of America, forced to carry pregnancies to term, and forced to live without any freedom to chart their own course about their lives or their families' lives. That was just 50 years ago when the Court in Roe v. Wade said there is a constitutional right at stake here; there is a constitutional right that we are going to protect here.

And in all of these cases, in my judgment, our fellow citizens have sought to broaden the horizon of freedom and equality in America. And our progress has never been in a straight line. The pages here should know that. We have always been in a battle. We have always been in a battle in this country between the highest ideals that have ever been expressed on the page by human hand, the words in the Constitution of the United States and the worst impulses in human history--the worst impulses in human history--in our case: human slavery and the genocide that was perpetrated on the Native American population that was here at a time when those incredible words were etched into the Constitution that are etched all over the walls of this beautiful building--a building, by the way, that itself, I say to the pages that are here, was built by enslaved human beings. And we are in that fight today.

Today, we face a decades-long campaign that stretches back, at least, to when Ronald Reagan was elected President. It is a battle that has been mostly invisible until recently to the American people, even though it has transformed American life. While that campaign had many objectives over its 40 or 50 years or so--those four decades--one of those objectives was to confirm a majority of Justices on the Supreme Court who subscribed to a radical constitutional interpretation called originalism, a legal document that was invented in the 1970s.

My colleague from Louisiana is here today. He is a distinguished lawyer. He might disagree with some things that I would say, but I was there at the origin of originalism. I was a lawyer trained a decade or so after this was something that was perpetrated by the Federalist Society and Anthony Scalia and the law-of-economics guys and Mark Feldstein and all these folks, as part of what they were trying to do with the Reagan revolution. And a huge part of that was originalism. It is the most amazing name. It is the most amazing name, I think, in political history. I don't think there has been greater branding in the history of mankind than ``originalism'' because it makes you think immediately: That is what the Founding Fathers must have set. It is their original intent, as if that could be divined across the decades, across the centuries, or across the ages, as if they even agreed with each other.

You don't have to go to a musical like ``Hamilton'' to see the disagreements that these people had with one another. That is the beauty of the founding of our Republic, which is to see the disagreements that they had with each other and the way they sorted through them and the compromises they made as a result of this disagreement--some of them, American tragedies that we live with to this day.

But they called it original. I just want the pages to know this and the law students that are out there today that might want to dispute this to just look up the history. There is a beginning of this. There is a beginning of this, and it does not start with John Marshall. It does not start with George Washington or Thomas Jefferson, who himself--Jefferson would be absolutely shocked to believe that there are people in the 21st century who think that we should be dictated to by the hand of the 18th century or the 17th century. There should be a revolution even less than in every generation.

If you had told me--I mean, we all knew about originalism when I was in law school. We certainly did. I did. We had professors who subscribed to it. Certainly, there are political people who subscribe to it. But if you had told me when I was in law school that I would live to see the day when a majority of the U.S. Supreme Court would subscribe to the originalist position of the Federalist Society, I would have said: That is not believable. That is preposterous.

I am not saying there wouldn't be people who wouldn't have fundamental constitutional disagreements with me on all kinds of things, but the idea that you would have a Court that would say originalism is where it is at? But that is what has happened, and it has been a 40-year campaign to do it.

I actually had a moment on the floor of this Senate once when I congratulated the leader of the Republican Party for having achieved his dream, having achieved his vision. I wasn't congratulating him because I agreed with him or that I felt positive about what he had done, but he had set out to carry that water, and he did it decade after decade after decade.

I said earlier that this wasn't really noticed by the American people, this battle. In many ways, it wasn't until 8 months ago. Eight months ago, we saw that majority take its most radical decision yet when it overturned Roe v. Wade, stripping the American people of a fundamental constitutional right to make their own reproductive choices--a right that Justices appointed by Republican and Democratic Presidents had upheld for half a century, for 50 years.

I have a colleague in this Chamber whom I love named Jon Tester, who is from Montana. He is a farmer. He is one of the last farmers in this place. He said to me--this was even before this happened--he said to me: My daughter is having to fight for things her mother never had to fight for because her grandmother won these freedoms. Her grandmother won these rights, and she won these freedoms and these rights when Roe v. Wade was decided half a century ago.

I read on the way home to Colorado--well, I guess in honesty, I read the decision--I am sure my friend from Louisiana read it earlier, too, when it got leaked by the Supreme Court somehow--something that should have never happened--something that should have never happened. That is when I first read Justice Alito's opinion. I had a chance, again, to read it on the plane back to Colorado, and I was hoping that it would be different because the opinion that I had first read as a draft opinion just dripped--dripped--with a cavalier dismissal of the right that it had destroyed. And when I reread it on the airplane, that is what I saw again.

Justice Alito's opinion doesn't even have the courage to grapple with the fundamental nature of the right it was stripping the American people of. It didn't contend with the simplest questions like what it would mean for millions of Americans, including for millions of American women like my three daughters.

Justices Breyer, Kagan, and Sotomayor expressed this in their dissent. They wrote:

[The majority opinion lacked] any serious discussion of how

its ruling will affect women. . . . It reveals how little it

knows or cares about women's lives or about the suffering its

decision will cause.

That is a quote of the dissent in that opinion.

Instead of grappling with the consequences of his ruling--which would have been, I am sure, painful even for Justice Alito to deal with, just as it is for women all over this country and their families to deal with the aftermath of this decision every single day since it has been rendered--Justice

Alito essentially wrote that if it wasn't a right in 1868, it is not a right today.

I mean, you have to give him credit. That is originalism, although he is not going back to the Constitution; he is going back to the 14th Amendment. If it wasn't a right in 1868, it is not a right today.

We ratified the 14th Amendment in 1868. That is the depth of the analysis in that opinion, which, if you were guided only by originalist ideology, I suppose that would be what you would say. The dissenting Justice pointed out that Justice Alito completely ignored that the men who ratified the 14th Amendment in 1868--and all of them, obviously, were men--did not perceive women as equals, did not recognize women's rights.

Quoting them now in the dissent:

When the majority says we must read our foundational

charter as viewed at the time of ratification . . . it

consigns women to second-class citizenship.

Of course it does. Women had no right to vote. Black Americans had no right to vote. The dissent continued:

Because laws in 1868 deprived women of any control over

their bodies, the majority approves States doing so today.

Because those laws prevented women from charting the course

of their own lives, the majority says States can do the same

again.

And that is exactly what we have seen with one State after another treating Dobbs as a green light to obliterate access to reproductive care for millions of American women and families. Many of us have spoken about how the ruling has harmed the privacy, the health, the freedom of our fellow Americans, and all of those are important.

Let me say also, this is a difficult issue in my State. I want the Senator from Alabama to know that and everybody to know that. It is a difficult issue for all of the families across America. It is difficult for anybody who has been through this. And I am certainly not cavalier about how difficult this decision is and the fact that different people have different points of view, different people have different religious perspectives, different people come from different parts of the country.

I thought about these things a lot over the years, and my conclusion is that it is best to leave this decision in the hands of a woman and her--well, whomever she chooses to consult--her doctor, her family. That is my opinion. I respect the opinion of other people who disagree about that. I realize that this is a heartfelt decision.

But there is a reason why people have been out on this floor and other places talking about the effect on freedom, the effect on the right to privacy, the effect on the health of our fellow citizens because it has an unbelievable effect on all of those dimensions.

But I don't think we have focused nearly enough on how the ruling will harm our national security, and that is what brings us here today. That is what brings us here today at this unprecedented moment, when a Member of this body, for the first time in American history, has said: No, I am not going to let a single person go through. I am not going to let any of these flag officers go through because I am upset with the policy that the DOD has pursued, that the DOD is pursuing a massive subsidy on abortion here, the abortion travel agency that the DOD has become. And because I don't like that--I am not accepting those characterizations of what the DOD is becoming--but because I don't like that, I am going to hold hostage the promotion of the flag officers at the Department of Defense.

Over a million men and women serve in our Armed Forces, supported by over 700,000 civilians in the Department of Defense. These are obviously moms and dads, sons and daughters who volunteer to risk their lives to protect ours. But when our men and women in uniform volunteer to serve, when they heed the call and they say, ``Sign me up,'' they don't get to decide where they serve. When our men and women in uniform volunteer to serve, they don't get to decide where they are going to serve; the Pentagon decides that. You can't sign up and say: Well, I would like to be in Colorado, or, well, I would like to be in Alabama, or I would like to be in a State where my reproductive healthcare is going to be covered or a State where it is not.

Before Dobbs was decided, our troops had at least some assurance that wherever the Pentagon sent them, they would have minimal access to reproductive care as a protected constitutional right. They knew that for 50 years--for 50 years, for 50 years--no matter where they served. That is no longer true. The Supreme Court stripped that right away, again, without even bothering to consider what it would mean for our troops based in States with no access to reproductive care. Justice Alito doesn't deal with that in his decision.

After Dobbs, one of the first calls I received was from a woman who once served as a senior officer in the Air Force. She immediately grasped how Dobbs is going to affect our military readiness. And that is what this is about--our military readiness. She understood, as, I would say, thousands of women in this country understood, how disruptive it is to force women in uniform to travel from their duty station to access care, to say nothing of the cost to her privacy when every single person in her unit finds out about it, knows about it, unlike any other medical procedure that we give people leave for, that people can get paid travel for. The privacy issues here are seismic, and the military readiness issues as a result are seismic, too.

Women are the fastest growing part of our military. They are about a fifth of our total force and over one-third of our civilian workforce. It is not hard to see why they might think twice before enlisting if they know they are going to be stationed somewhere that doesn't respect their reproductive freedom.

(Senator MURPHY assumed the Chair.)

The Senator from Alabama talked about how the DOD is having the worst recruiting they have had for generations. She is right. That is true. It is hard to see how this is going to help.

You don't have to take my word for it. A recent study from RAND concluded that Dobbs could increase attrition, decrease readiness, and hurt national security. And that is after the Pentagon had its worst recruiting season, as the Senator from Alabama suggested, since the Vietnam war.

In an attempt to deal with these issues 2 weeks ago, the Pentagon announced three new policies, and here is what they were.

By the way, I apologize to my colleagues who are here because I know you are here to give this other speech. I delayed for 24 hours or more, so I am going to just continue, and I will beg your forgiveness.

But these are the three things that have brought the Senate to a halt. These are the three things that have created an unprecedented objection to flag officers of the Department of Defense being approved in the common way that they have been approved in this body for 230 years.

The first of these policies authorizes travel allowances for servicemembers to access reproductive care if it is unavailable at their duty stations. That is important because they may not be able to afford to travel, which is why we pay for other procedures, like LASIK eye surgery or to remove a bunion, none of which seem to have gotten the objection of anybody in this body.

The second allows servicemembers to take absences without leave to access reproductive care. This recognizes, I think, the difficult choice a woman has to make in incredibly, profoundly challenging circumstances. LASIK surgeries aren't banned in Alabama or Connecticut.

The last policy extends the time before servicemembers have to tell their commanding officers about a pregnancy. It gives them just a little bit more time to deal with the shock that can come when somebody has an unexpected pregnancy and is trying to make a decision about what to do. This says that rather than get you in a position where you might find yourself feeling like you can't tell your superior officer the truth, this says take a little bit more time so you can think of it.

That is what these three provisions do, these guidelines do, these rules do, about giving the women in uniform the time and the privacy to decide if they want to carry a pregnancy to term or not--a decision that anybody on this floor, no matter what they think about this, surely can understand has become more complicated in the wake of Dobbs.

So I applaud the Secretary of Defense, Secretary Austin, for taking

these steps to protect our soldiers, our sailors, and our marines. He is in a difficult position. It is hard to do because, you know, I don't think many people were expecting that this would actually happen, and yet it has.

Instead of welcoming this leadership from the Secretary of Defense, some of my Republican colleagues have attacked these proposals. They call them--I am now not quoting the Senator from Alabama; I am quoting others who have written about this. They have called them ``disgusting.'' They have called them ``heavy-handed.'' They have called them ``disastrous.''

I could be wrong--I have certainly been wrong before--but I don't think the American people would consider it disgusting or disastrous that women in uniform don't have to dig into their own paycheck and use their limited leave to seek care that is unavailable because of where our government required them to deploy. I think fundamental fairness would say that is a reasonable reaction to the disruption that has been caused by the Supreme Court.

Now I am quoting the senior Senator from Alabama when I say:

The Secretary of Defense is following through with his

radical plan to facilitate thousands of abortions a year with

taxpayer dollars, so I will follow through with my plan to

hold all DOD civilian, flag, and general officer nominations

that come before the U.S. Senate.

OK. Let's just hold up here for one second. Thousands. The Senator was down here the other day saying this is not a readiness problem because it is only 20 abortions that DOD paid for last year. Well, I don't know the facts of every one of those abortions. I do know the facts of the DOD policy with respect to abortion on paying for it, and that is in cases where there has been rape, incest, or the life of the mother is at stake. And maybe that is what those 20 were.

But the Senator from Alabama himself said that what we are talking about here in the context of the rule are what he calls thousands and thousands of abortions that he is saying are subsidized by DOD because the DOD is willing to pay for the travel of women to go from a State that has banned abortion to a State that hasn't. I don't see how--how could that not be a matter of readiness when you are talking about thousands of people?

The Senator from Alabama said:

The American people want a military focused on national

defense, not facilitating a progressive political agenda.

I could not agree more--could not agree more--with the Senator from Alabama. The American people want a military focused on national defense, and for that reason, that is why I find it so hard to imagine that the American people would tolerate any Senator holding up critical national security personnel to impose their ideology.

The Senator from Alabama correctly says that abortion is illegal in his State. I read the polling data that shows that 55 percent of Alabamians actually support a woman's right to choose. But that is neither here nor there. In terms of the law in Alabama, the Senator from Alabama is right about that--abortion is banned there. In Alabama, abortion is banned at any stage of a pregnancy. It has no exceptions for rape or for incest.

Under Alabama law, doctors can face up to 99 years in jail if they perform an abortion. Last month, an Alabama State legislator announced a bill to treat abortion as murder. The State's attorney general suggested using a chemical endangerment law--a law designed to protect kids from methamphetamine--to prosecute a woman for taking a pill to terminate her pregnancy. That is the law. That is the debate that is going on in Alabama.

I recognize that Alabama has made certain decisions about this issue that are different from the ones that Colorado has made. We were the first State in America to decriminalize abortion in 1967. That was the State of Colorado, a Western State, 5 years before Roe v. Wade was ever decided.

In Colorado, we believe these decisions belong between a woman and her family and her doctor, and we don't accept that the government should impose itself on that private decision. And of course, that is not just what I believe; it is not just what Colorado believes; that is what the large majority of the American people believe. That is what the American people believe.

I acknowledge that Alabama has made a different choice, but what I can't accept is that its Senator would impose that choice on every woman and family in our armed services who happened to be stationed in his State or any State that doesn't protect access to reproductive care, because it is not just Alabama. It is not just Alabama. Eighteen States have banned abortion. Nine of them--nine of them--have no exceptions for rape or incest.

Many States have only begun their war on a woman's right to choose. Just yesterday in Florida, which is home to 22 military bases--22 bases, where men and women in the United States who signed up to fight or to join our military have no choice about where they serve. Governor DeSantis committed just yesterday to sign a 6-week abortion ban. He may be unaware--I haven't talked to him about it. I don't know. He might be unaware that one in three women doesn't even know that she is pregnant until around 6 weeks--or maybe he does know that. I don't know which would be worse.

Texas is posting $10,000 bounties to any resident who successfully sues a doctor or nurse for performing an abortion after 6 weeks or even someone who just drives their friend or relative or neighbor to have a procedure--a procedure that for the last 50 years--until this radical, originalist majority came into the Court--for the last 50 years, for almost my entire lifetime, has been a constitutionally protected right in this country.

All of us who are in this Chamber can remember how, in the aftermath of Dobbs, State legislators all around the country wrote laws restricting the freedom of female citizens to travel from States like Texas or Alabama that had banned abortions to States like Colorado that had ratified a woman's right to choose.

Now we have Senators here who aren't content to merely deprive servicewomen of reproductive care if they are based in a State where abortion has been banned; they want to make it even harder to travel to another State to avail themselves of that care.

From the vantage point of my daughters, the nearly 6 million people who live in Colorado, and the vast majority of Americans who support a woman's right to choose, I think there is a real question here about whose position is radical.

When the military pays for servicemen to travel from one State to another if they need LASIK eye surgery or a sinus procedure or to remove a bunion on their foot, is it really radical to imagine that servicewomen should have the right to travel--to have the price of that travel defrayed so they can get reproductive care?

That is just the debate we are having. That says nothing about why we are actually here today, which is the vehicle that the Senator from Alabama is using to delay the vote of every pending nominee and promotion at the Department of Defense at a moment when we have the biggest land war in Europe since the Second World War and China saber- rattling in the Pacific.

If you told most Americans that a single Senator in this place was delaying every nomination and promotion at the DOD, all for the privilege of making it harder for servicewomen to travel for reproductive care or take leave for that care or shorten the time a woman has to make a choice about her reproductive health before she has to tell her commanding officer--and those are the facts of what these rules do. If you told Americans that is what was happening on the floor of the Senate, I don't think they would believe it. I don't think they would accept it. And maybe that is the reason why it has never happened. Coloradans wouldn't accept it.

Like the Senator from Alabama, we in Colorado are honored to host a strong military presence in our State, from the U.S. Air Force Academy to Fort Carson, to Schriever, to Peterson, and to Buckley and Space Command, and we are honored to protect the reproductive care for the men and women who protect us.

In the case of Space Command, we have a live example, I am sad to say, of how the Supreme Court's decision could harm our national security. I will not go through the whole story today. I will spare the Senators from Alabama and Louisiana and everybody else who is here this painful and, as I describe it, saddest story I know.

Here is the essential point: In the waning days of the last administration--I think Donald Trump, President Trump, had 9 days left--our top generals recommended Colorado as the top choice for Space Command's permanent headquarters, but President Trump overruled them and said it should go to Alabama. He later went on the radio and said: They all were against me. They all said it ought to go to Colorado, but I overruled them, and I said it should go to Alabama.

Now, look, I do not think that is how we should be making basing decisions in this Nation. Every single person who has looked at this Space Command issue knows what the generals recommended, and they know they were overruled by the President of the United States for his own political purposes. We need to make these decisions according to the national security interests of the United States, not in the political interests of a President.

That is why, over and over, I called on the Biden administration to restore integrity to this process and honor the generals' original recommendation. They should have made that decision 2 years ago after President Trump made this decision, in the last few days of his administration, overruling these generals, the experts who know where Space Command should be.

But my specific issue with Space Command has led me to a much broader concern as I have studied this issue. In the wake of Dobbs, we literally have no policy to account for the harm of moving a base from a State that protects access to reproductive care, like Colorado, to a State that does not, like Alabama. We are now living in a world where the Pentagon makes basing decisions according to criteria like the number of parking spaces or the quality of schools or the availability of childcare. All of those are relevant decisions, important decisions, questions to ask. But one question they are not asking is about basic reproductive healthcare in a country where it has been legal, where it has been a fundamental constitutional right for the last 50 years, that the majority of the American people and the majority of the people in Alabama supports.

They are not asking whether a State prosecutes women who seek an abortion or imprisons doctors for 99 years for performing abortions or turns residents into bounty hunters against women. It is ridiculous that they would be counting parking spaces and not reflecting on what this world looks like for the people in our armed services, especially women and their families, post Dobbs. I can't agree that the Pentagon should care about how much it costs to house a family when it makes basing decisions but not whether the family has the freedom to plan its future.

The Supreme Court, because of its ideology, may not have had the courage to grapple with the consequences of its ruling on our men and women in uniform and on our national security, but that doesn't give us the ability or give the Department of Defense reason to shirk its responsibility. We have to stand on the side of expanding rights and expanding opportunity for Americans, not restricting them.

So, today, I am calling on the Pentagon to codify the policies it announced last month and develop a new framework that accounts for access to reproductive care in its basing and its personnel decisions.

I call upon my colleague from Alabama to lift his holds so the Senate can advance these national security personnel, because if our men and women in uniform can spend every day defending our freedom, surely, we can defend theirs.

I yield the floor.

Mr. President, first of all, I would say, with respect to my colleague from Alabama, I appreciate his arguments here.

He first says that he clearly doesn't have the ability to do this; that, somehow, this is up to Congress to pass a law to make sure that servicemembers who need to travel for reproductive healthcare have it paid for them, not the abortion, by the way, which is what the Senator from Alabama said--that is inaccurate--but the travel is his argument.

The reality is that the DOD, it is clear, can pay for servicemembers' travel for LASIK eye surgery, but current law doesn't say that. It can pay to have a bunion removed, but current law doesn't say that either. All of that has happened without complaint from this body because it makes sense that the DOD has the discretion to provide the care it believes its servicemembers require. And they are making those regulations as part of the law that they have been granted from our branch of government to make sure they care for our servicemembers. I think that is point 1.

Point 2, the Senator from Alabama talked about, you know, this being about who is paying for abortion. This is not about who is paying for abortion. This is about those three changes to the law I mentioned earlier. I won't go into them because I know my colleagues are going to lose their minds over my staying here. But those are the three things. One is travel. One is, you know, being able to take a little bit of a longer time to talk to your supervisor, and those kinds of things. So it is not about paying for abortions.

Although, I will say that the Senator from Alabama has another piece of legislation that he has introduced that objects not to the DOD but to the VA. He says this is radical. The VA has said: We have noticed that our policies that allow us to pay for abortion when the life of the mother is at stake don't also include exceptions for rape and incest, and we are going to add those exceptions for rape and incest. The Senator from Alabama has brought that to the floor and said he wants to have a vote.

I want to have a vote on that too. I can't wait to see how every single Senator in this Chamber stands on the Senator from Alabama's position that

having the VA add cases of rape and incest to the exception to allow it to pay for abortion is not somehow abortion-on-demand or abortion--as some people say, abortion after people have already had the child but is simply adding two things that probably 80 percent of the American people agree with.

On the last point, on Space Command's being decided on the facts, let me tell you something. Here are the facts as I understand them: The generals said they thought Space Command should stay in Colorado. The generals and the Secretary of the Air Force went to the White House with the recommendation of Colorado. The President of the United States, Donald Trump, overturned that recommendation on their advice. He went on the radio--the Rick & Bubba Show, I think it is called--in Alabama, where he said: Everybody was for Colorado, and everybody was against me on Alabama, but I made the decision to send it to Alabama.

Those are the facts on Space Command. And it is not off-topic. You know, it is not off-topic. That was a political decision that should never have been made. If the politics had not entered into that decision, the generals would have gotten their way, and Space Command would be in Colorado, and we wouldn't be having the conversation we are having today because no one in Colorado would be having their abortion rights stripped from them and being sent to another State that has banned abortion, where doctors can go to jail for 99 years because they perform an abortion, where laws that are meant to bring down folks who traffic in methamphetamine are being threatened to be used against women who use a chemical version of abortion.

This is not a complaint I have with the Senator from Alabama. This is my complaint with the White House. You should have dealt with this 2 years ago. And now I hope this administration will deal with, in the wake of Dobbs, this daily gray area that is tearing at the emotions and the well-being of members of our Armed Forces, who don't get to decide where they are stationed.

Alabama can have whatever law it wants. That is not up for me to decide. I respect that there are differences in this country, but people in this body have a duty and a responsibility to the men and women of the armed services, and we have a duty and responsibility to fulfill our duty and responsibility, which is not to hold up the promotion of flag officers at the Department of Defense because I have a position that is different from what others may think. That is what I think.

I yield to the Senator from Louisiana.

Mr. Speaker, I rise for the purpose of announcing the schedule for next week.

Mr. Speaker, the House will meet next Monday at noon for morning hour and 2 p.m. for legislative business.

On Tuesday, the House will meet at 10 a.m. for legislative business. At 9 p.m. the House and Senate will assemble for a joint session to receive President Biden's address on the State of the Union. Members should be seated in the House Chamber by 8:25 p.m.

On Wednesday, the House will meet at 10 a.m. for morning hour and 12 p.m. for legislative business.

On Thursday, the House will meet at 9 a.m. for legislative business.

We will be considering several bills under suspension of the rules during the week. The complete list of suspension bills has been posted on the Clerk's website.

Next week, the House is expected to consider a number of bills under rules: H.R. 185, to terminate the requirement imposed by the Director of CMS for proof of COVID-19 vaccination for foreign travelers and for other purposes.

H.R. 185 rescinds the Biden administration's vaccine requirement on travelers who are coming to visit the United States.

The House is also expected to consider H.J. Res. 26, disapproving the District of Columbia's City Council revised Criminal Code Act of 2021. H.J. Res. 26 makes it clear that Congress does not approve of the City Council's radical decision to reduce penalties for a variety of crimes, including many violent crimes.

Finally, we expect to consider H.J. Res. 24, disapproving the action of the District of Columbia's City Council in approving the Local Resident Voting Rights Amendment Act of 2022. What this resolution would do is reverse the decision by the D.C. Council that would allow illegal aliens to vote.

As we all know, our southern border has been wide open under President Biden. Millions of people have come into our country illegally, and he continues to keep that border open. We have talked about bringing legislation to this floor, which we are working on in committee, to secure America's border.

But, in the meantime, the idea that allowing people that are here illegally to vote here, not only undermines one of our most sacred rights in the United States, but it also sends the wrong message to those who are seeking to come into our country illegally.

We need President Biden to close the southern border, secure the southern border, get back to a legal process of immigration. That is what H.J. Res. 24 would do.

Mr. Speaker, I yield to the gentlewoman from Massachusetts (Ms. Clark), my friend, the new majority--minority whip of the House.

Mr. Speaker, what I would first say to the American people is, thank you for giving the Republicans the House majority to finally stop this mad rush toward socialism that we have seen in the last 2 years by the Biden administration: the taxing; the spending; the out-of-control policies that have led our country into one of the worst economic times we have ever seen. Inflation through the roof to the point where families can't even afford to put gasoline in their car. Inflation through the roof to the point where families can't even go to the grocery store and buy all the things that they would want. That is what the American people surely were fed up with.

The good news is, as I thank them for giving the Republicans the majority, which they did in the last election, Republicans have already gone to work delivering for those families. We have actually brought-- it is interesting, as the gentlewoman talks about scoring points, we have scored a number of points for those American people to the point where we have actually had a number of Democrats vote with us.

The bills that were called partisan just 2 weeks ago--we brought a bill to the floor to say, on energy, the Strategic Petroleum Reserve, which is supposed to be America's security blanket in case there is some major disruption with American energy supply. I am not talking about the disruption we have seen from President Biden's attack on American energy, which has been so severe that it has made our country dependent on foreign nations again, which is unconscionable, when we can produce our own energy, cleaner, better than anybody else in the world.

But it said, if you are going to raid, Mr. President, that Strategic Petroleum Reserve, you certainly can't do it

to sell it to China. It was called partisan when we filed it. What is interesting is a majority of Democrats actually voted for that legislation, and it is now over in the Senate.

I hope it ends up on President Biden's desk. I hope he signs it. But if he vetoes it, there was a veto-proof majority that passed that bill.

We just brought a piece of legislation a few minutes ago on to the floor to reject the ills of socialism; not just what we are seeing here in the United States socialist movement that has been damaging to our economy, but all throughout time, so many examples of socialist dictators killing millions and millions of people.

I am glad to say a majority of Democrats joined with us to vote for that bill. It is still a little bit shocking that 86 Democrats were not willing to stand up against the ills of socialism and that, I would consider, an extreme position, but clearly, there is still work to be done.

The American people, I am sure, will continue to engage their Members of Congress on those issues, but we are also going to continue to move policies to help families who are struggling; energy policies, obviously, and there is more to come on that.

The Energy and Commerce Committee just got constituted. They are working now on a good energy security package. The Natural Resources Committee and the Transportation and Infrastructure Committee are doing the same thing.

I had mentioned to the gentlewoman earlier, on the border, as we would like to see real security from our southern border. I hope President Biden, when he is speaking from the podium here in just a few days, will address that problem.

More people have come into our country illegally under President Biden's watch than the entire population of the State of New Mexico. Where it has caused real damage is more than 100,000 young kids, our young kids, have died because of drug overdoses from drugs like fentanyl because the drug cartels in Mexico now have operational control of America's southern border. That is disgraceful.

That is all brought on by President Biden's policies. He could end those today through executive action; reverse the things that he did that created the problem. He won't do that, so I do think it is important that this Congress take that action.

We still wait for the President to do it on his own, but we are not going to stand by. We will take our own action and show the country how we can get a secure southern border. I hope that would be a bipartisan vote when we bring that to the floor.

The 87,000 IRS agents--I don't know of any Member of Congress--I would love to hear from any of them--who have gotten phone calls from their constituents saying please double the size of the IRS.

Now, what they have said is please get Federal employees back to work because some people--I have got constituents that have been waiting 2 years for their tax return and, yet, you have still got about half of the Federal workforce that is working remotely, not coming into work.

I have got veterans who call my office all the time who can't get their benefits that they earned. They showed up for work, by the way, they showed up and said I am going to go defend the rights of this country, and some of them got injured. Some of them are trying to get their benefits today and can't because some of those people working, getting their full salary at the VA, are not showing up for work.

People that are waiting for passports to go visit loved ones overseas can't get their passports processed because some Federal employees feel they should get their full salary but not show up for work.

So we brought a bill this week to say you should show up for work. It seems pretty basic. It is unfortunate that there were less than a handful of Democrats that joined with us to do that.

So we are addressing the needs of those families who are struggling. Some of those votes have been bipartisan; some haven't. But we are going to continue to address them because they are bipartisan issues for America, even if they are not bipartisan in this Chamber and, hopefully, that improves over time.

Mr. Speaker, I yield to the gentlewoman from Massachusetts (Ms. Clark).

Mr. Speaker, the good news is, we not only have already brought some bills to achieve cost savings, we are going to continue to bring bills to achieve cost savings. In one example, the gentlewoman referred to a piece of legislation that deals with drug prices, and it was failed to mention that part of what that bill did was limit about 40 percent of lifesaving drugs to come to market.

We are already seeing right now a reduction in R&D and drugs being developed to cure new diseases because many of those countries that have government-fixed pricing also don't have many of the lifesaving drugs that America has because of that very policy.

I am curious to see which lifesaving drugs they don't want to have on the market in America anymore. You can go to Canada, you can go to France, and you can see a long list, unfortunately, of drugs that you can't get in those countries that you can get in America that save lives every day.

That bill also raised taxes to the tune of over a trillion dollars on Americans. It raised spending to the tune of over a trillion dollars in America. That has increased inflation.

The biggest concern I hear from families who want cost savings is to stop the mad spending in Washington. It has not only caused them to have to pay more for everything they buy, it has literally taken a paycheck a year--at least one month's pay a year--out of their pockets because of all of the spending we have seen in the last 2 years in Washington. Our constituents just want Congress to try to rein in that spending.

In fact, we brought another bill this week. We can talk about D.C., we can talk about other places, but all across America, most Americans are saying, let's get back to our lives, let's end this COVID emergency. We announced last week that we were going to bring a bill during this week to end the COVID emergency.

What was interesting was, after we took the lead, President Biden himself actually acknowledged that it does need to end, but he said he wants to wait until May to do it. What is interesting about waiting until May is it allows the Federal Government to continue spending billions and billions of dollars under the guise of COVID that has absolutely nothing to do with COVID, like paying people not to work.

Millions of people today are able-bodied, fully capable of working, but because of the waiving of things, like welfare-to-work requirements, where people can right now get $25,000, $35,000

a year to sit at home and not work, well, you know what that does. We want to reverse that policy. If somebody is capable of working, they should be working.

We believe in a social safety net for people. If somebody comes on hard times, that is why you have programs there.

We are in America. If you want to stay at home and not work, that is your right. Just don't ask that hardworking taxpayer, the single mom who is working two jobs, to pay for you to stay at home.

The Biden administration policies that pay millions of people to stay at home from work undermines Social Security because those are millions of people who our seniors are counting on to be in the workforce. These people are fully capable of being in the workforce paying into Social Security so that those who work their whole lives and earn that benefit can have confidence that it will be there for them.

When you have millions of people being paid by the Federal Government to stay home, of course it adds trillions to our deficit, but it also takes billions of dollars out of Social Security that we want to put back in. We want to shore up Social Security, but President Biden has undermined it with these policies that pay people not to work.

Our bill would end that immediately. Let's get those people back to work who are fully capable of working. Let's shore up Social Security immediately. We shouldn't have to wait more and more months like President Biden said he would want to do. Of course, if we didn't file that bill, he probably never would have wanted to end that emergency.

Hopefully, as we continue to lead, we will see the President follow along. We welcome him to join us in saving this country and getting the country back on track, so we will continue to bring bills to address those many problems our country is facing.

I earlier pointed out, I reject what President Biden did to undermine Social Security. In their discussions about the debt ceiling yesterday, Speaker McCarthy discussed with President Biden what Republicans are hoping to do. Frankly, I think most Americans have been hungry for us here in Washington to have the same adult conversation that they have been having at their kitchen tables for years as to how we can actually get spending under control in Washington.

We have talked about the problems of paying people not to work. It not only adds to our deficit and debt; it also undermines Social Security. Let's get people back to work who are fully able-bodied.

Let's talk about the Nation's credit card. The debt ceiling is a symptom of Washington's spending problem. According to Treasury, we are approaching in June the end of extraordinary measures where the Nation would exceed its debt limit. What that means for a family is: Families have credit cards. The credit card has a limit, a maximum amount you can spend. Many families would not like to spend up to that limit. Some like to pay their credit card off fully at the end of the month. Many don't have that luxury, so they watch what the maximum is so they know, okay, if I have got $300 before I hit it, I am not going to spend 300 bucks, because then the card will be declined.

Well, if you max out the card, which Biden has done in his last 2 years, $6 trillion minimum--those are the conservative estimates; some estimates go as high as $10 trillion that President Biden has racked up on the Nation's credit card. The $31.3 trillion maximum on the Nation's credit card has been hit by President Biden and the Democrat majority's spending the last 2 years.

Interestingly, when they were doing that spending, they didn't account for raising the cap on spending when they were spending the money. They pushed that off on us, so now we have to confront this problem that they created.

The conversation really should be focused on how we stop this from happening, how we stop maxing out the Nation's credit card. If a family maxed out their credit card, of course they would pay the minimum payment; of course they would pay the must-dos.

Again, Speaker McCarthy has made it very clear, we are fully committed to Social Security and those promises that have been made.

Why is it that the first thing President Biden threatens is Social Security?

A dollar is coming into the Federal Government; $1.29 is going out. That is the spending problem. If you really want to break it down in raw numbers, for every dollar the Federal Government takes in, it spends $1.29. Very few families sustain themselves on that kind of trajectory.

What we are saying is why don't we try to figure out, Republicans and Democrats--by the way, this shouldn't be a partisan exercise. Both sides should want to say if a dollar is coming in, how do we make sure that only a dollar goes out? That is not where we are today. Let's have that conversation. It is a responsible conversation to have.

In the meantime, let's make sure we are paying our debts and talking about how we can make reforms so we don't keep maxing out the Nation's credit card. That is what this debt ceiling discussion is about.

If we just give the President a blank check, which he asked for--he is not going to get it; nobody should just get a blank check, give me more money so they can just go spend more money--that is not responsible.

Let's figure out how we can stop the Federal Government from continuing to max out the Nation's credit card. There is no better time to have that discussion than after President Biden has maxed out the Nation's credit card.

We will have that conversation, and I think we can get to an agreement where both sides come together and say this is a problem we need to tackle together. Previous Presidents have done that, Republican and Democrat, working with Congresses of the other party. I think we can have that conversation.

Again, I think most of America has been saying it is about time Washington finally starts having that conversation because families have been having that conversation at their kitchen tables for decades and generations.

Madam Speaker, I appreciate you bringing up a number of constituencies that we need to fight to help.

Let's start with the people that have been struggling the most. The lower- and middle-income families, they have been struggling the most in the last 2 years. They thrived like never before during those Trump years that are being decried by the left.

Why did we see such growth from lower- and middle-income families into the middle class and into higher income categories?

Because we actually cut taxes so that we could be competitive as a Nation again and create millions of jobs. We actually created millions of jobs by cutting taxes and making our country competitive, and not keeping money in Washington, but actually freeing up power so that people could control their own destiny again. Those people did take control of their own destiny.

Again, we were losing our middle class during the Obama years. We were seeing great American companies leave America. You can get the list of them. It is a long list, unfortunately. Let's reverse that. Let's fight for those forgotten men and women.

The millionaires and billionaires have their attorneys and their accountants and all the folks on the left who took care of those millionaires and billionaires. How about we start fighting for those people who were left behind--because they were being left behind. We said, let's make a tax code that is competitive for them.

If you go back and look--and the good news is there is real data now. You don't have to wonder about it. You can throw away the talking points about the rich that are always thrown out there.

The income groups that benefited the most from those tax cuts were the lower- and middle-income groups, and millions of people became part of the middle class who were left behind. Those are the facts. The data is out there.

Some people are angry about that because they still want to live in this false universe where they just decry tax cuts because that takes power away from Washington. I think that is what scares the left so much, is when they see people being empowered again to be free to control their own destiny. Not bureaucrats and autocrats in Washington taking their money and then telling them what they can get back. Telling them how high they can go.

How about you break the ceilings and just let people go out and succeed and give them the tools to do it. If you want to go out and work and succeed and achieve the American Dream, it is there for everybody. We restored that again.

By the way, some of those tax cuts expire. I hope the gentlewoman and their side will join with us in continuing to keep that tax structure in place so those middle-income folks can continue to grow and thrive, but also for our seniors.

This is where the President, I think, is looking for ideas on how we can start living within our means again. As I will refresh, as the gentlewoman talked about, spending that has already been done and leverage and full faith and credit to the United States, none of that would even be a discussion point today, if--as the Democrats, when they had the House, Senate, and White House for 2 years, and spent over $6 trillion of money we don't have--they also would have addressed the debt ceiling at that time, we wouldn't be standing in this spot.

We literally took the majority weeks ago and the Nation has already hit its debt ceiling because of the spending; not by President Trump, he actually addressed the debt ceiling as we were putting policies in place that grew our economy and created a middle class again. That was already done.

Over the last 2 years, over $6 trillion in spending, but no time seemed to be

available to address the debt ceiling. So here we are. We are willing to have a discussion about how to get control over spending. There are really good ideas. In fact, many of these ideas will strengthen Social Security for our seniors.

I talked a little bit earlier about getting people that are being paid not to work back into the workforce. That will strengthen Social Security. How about we restore some of the work requirements that used to be there?

This goes back to Bill Clinton, a Democrat, who signed those work requirements. It helped get more people into the workforce. It helped give them a chance to achieve the American Dream, but it also strengthened Social Security. When the government is paying people not to work, they are not paying into Social Security. That undermines the program. We should be wanting to strengthen it.

By the way, there is also a long list, and we are going to be getting these lists out. I hope Democrats will go down this menu, and say, okay, we agree paying people tens, if not hundreds, of billions of dollars to get tax credits who don't even have Social Security numbers, who don't even live in America. If a tax credit is there, it is there for people who pay taxes, not for people who manipulate the system because, for whatever reason, this administration won't even verify a Social Security number. Just doing that verification would save tens, if not hundreds, of billions of dollars--we are talking about real money.

Those things could all help. These aren't cuts to things, these are savings for fraud; real fraud, waste, and abuse that equals hundreds of billions of dollars. We have been outlining these things. I haven't found any takers yet, but I am not going to give up. I think eventually we will get a lot of takers on the other side who will recognize this is something we all need to come together and do because there is no reason that the families who are working hard should be paying for somebody else to cheat the system. There are many, many examples.

We will continue to highlight them. We will actually bring bills to address those exact problems. All of that should be a part of this discussion so we don't keep maxing out the Nation's credit card.

Again, nobody just says, here, if their kid maxed out the card, they are not just going to give them a new card and say, go max out the next one. They are going to sit down and have an adult conversation about how you don't put the country in this situation again.

Mr. Speaker, I would say on that, you can go look at the tax cuts. After those taxes were cut, the Federal Government took in more money than it has ever done in the history of the country because more people were working, and lower- and middle-income people were making higher wages, lifting those at the bottom into the middle class, which was evaporating under the Obama years.

The data is very clear on that. Those tax cuts actually brought more money into the Federal Treasury. If anybody wants to dispute it, I challenge them to go to President Biden's Treasury website and find the numbers because they are there.

Mr. Speaker, I thank the gentlewoman for yielding. I enjoyed our first of many of these colloquies. As we look toward hearing from the President, which we welcome together into this Chamber, I look forward to working with the President to address these problems our country is facing so we can get the country back on track and focus on the challenges ahead. There will be many more conversations we will have.

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

Mr. Speaker, I thank the gentleman from Texas for yielding me the customary 30 minutes, and I yield myself such time as I may consume.

Mr. Speaker, Republicans are in charge of the House of Representatives. They control the schedule here. They control when bills get brought up for debate. They make the Calendar. We could be debating a bipartisan bill that actually helps get more people on to healthcare or lowers prescription drug costs and makes coverage more affordable, but instead Republicans are bringing to the floor a bill to chip away at the Affordable Care Act. They are siding with billionaire corporations and insurance companies and actually spending money to kick people off of healthcare.

We could be debating bipartisan legislation that makes it easier for regular middle-class Americans to buy a home, but instead, Republicans are bringing to the floor a bill that literally increases mortgage fees charged to middle-income borrowers.

Time and time again, this majority brings to the floor bills that benefit billionaire corporations, insurance companies, the rich and powerful, Big Oil, Big Pharma, all at the expense of everyday people back home who send us here to fight for them.

We could be debating bipartisan legislation that actually addresses our broken immigration system. Instead, Republicans are bringing to the floor a nonbinding resolution that condemns a nonexistent problem so they can go after immigrants once again.

We had a Member in the Rules Committee last night yelling and screaming and ranting and raving about all he thinks is wrong with our immigration system and the border. It was actually kind of scary.

Listen, I get being passionate about this problem. I am not here to argue that our immigration system doesn't need to be fixed. We all know that it could use a comprehensive overhaul, but we don't need to be screaming at each other about this nonbinding press release of a bill that does literally nothing to help deal with our border. My God.

Republicans want to talk about immigration, so let's talk about immigration.

Let's talk about how the Republican solution to the border is building a stupid wall that even they know won't work.

Let's talk about fentanyl. Let's talk about how most of it is trafficked through legal ports of entry in the United States by U.S. citizens, by the way, and let's talk about how President Joe Biden seizes more fentanyl at the border than Donald Trump did. That is just a fact.

Yet, we had a Member last night have a complete meltdown over this issue. Would Republicans rather the Biden administration not seize fentanyl? I don't get it. Make it make sense.

Let's talk about how, since the end of title 42 on May 11, unlawful entries along the southern border have plummeted. As of June 6, Customs and Border Protection had an average of 3,700

encounters between points of entry or unscheduled encounters per day, a decrease of over 70 percent.

Republicans don't want to talk about any of that. Instead, they are going to try to get people all worked up by scapegoating vulnerable migrants who are fleeing awful circumstances in search of safety.

I can't believe I have to say this, but migrants are not political pawns. They come to our country seeking a better life, often fleeing violence and oppression. They are human beings and deserve to be treated with dignity and respect. Yet, Republican Governors have treated migrants like they are garbage, busing them across the country like luggage, with no advance notice or coordination, dumping them outside after they call the press to show up and make a scene. I find it disgusting. I find it racist. I find it disrespectful to all that this country stands for.

This nonbinding press release that they are bringing to the floor isn't a serious attempt to solve a problem. They are dropping migrants off in New York City and then attacking New York City for trying to come up with solutions to the problem. This is absurd.

Then, Republicans claim gyms can't be used to house migrants because they want to ``protect students.'' Give me a break. Migrants have never been housed in a facility with kids. That is just a fact. In the Rules Committee last night, we asked the person who was bringing the bill before the committee to give us examples. She couldn't.

If we want to talk about protecting students, let us talk about protecting students. A thousand kids have died from gun violence this year. Where will the next school shooting be? Parents are terrified their kid will be next. Teachers are terrified that their class will be next. Students are terrified they will be next. Republicans are here regulating gyms instead of guns. What the hell is wrong with these people?

This majority is obsessed with demonizing, demeaning, and targeting people who are coming to the United States in desperate search of a better life. Stop appealing to the worst instincts in people. Stop peddling hate. Stop fueling racism.

Here is a contrast I want people to know about. President Biden and the Democrats are working to expand the middle class, to build a strong economy from the bottom up and the middle out. Democrats are lowering costs for working families, helping cut inflation by more than half since last summer.

Democrats have taken on Big Pharma to reduce prescription drug costs, and Democrats continue to fight special interests to lower healthcare costs while making childcare and housing more affordable for working families.

Democrats are investing in America and have created more than 13 million jobs since President Biden took office. Democrats are bringing supply chains back home, fixing our roads and bridges, and delivering clean water and high-speed internet to more communities.

Democrats are making our communities safer. We are committed to building on the gun safety legislation we passed last year by strengthening background checks and keeping dangerous weapons of war off our streets to protect America's kids.

Democrats know that we don't have to choose between an immigration system that reflects our interests and our values, and we don't demonize and attack people who want to come to this country in search of a better life.

You are seeing on the floor today exactly what Republicans have to offer: nothing, not a thing, no plans, no ideas. They are just interested in helping the rich and powerful and using immigrants as political pawns to drive a wedge between people. It is a rotten, shameful thing to do.

Mr. Speaker, I urge all my colleagues to vote ``no'' on this rule and the underlying bill, and I urge my colleagues on the Republican side to get serious about bringing legislation to the floor that will actually make a difference, that will actually help fix some of the challenges that we face in this country. This is a joke.

Mr. Speaker, I reserve the balance of my time.

Mr. Speaker, I yield myself such time as I may consume.

I appreciate the gentleman's tirade just now, but the bottom line is that nothing in this bill that his party is championing as somehow this important piece of legislation does anything to provide any assistance to any of these communities. Not one penny goes to offset any of the costs that might be incurred--nothing, not a thing.

I just don't get it. People come onto this floor and speak in sound bites and do press releases and then bring legislation to the floor that is nonbinding, that means nothing, that does nothing. This is ridiculous.

We need to fix our immigration system. We tried to do that when we were in charge. We had challenges in the Senate trying to overcome the filibuster, but we were trying to fix the system. That is a contrast to what we are doing here now, which is a nonbinding resolution.

By the way, a nonbinding resolution, to anybody who is watching, means it is just somebody's opinion. It doesn't do anything--no money, no assistance, no help to anybody. It is just like: ``I want to tell you what my opinion is.'' Big deal.

Mr. Speaker, I am going to urge that we defeat the previous question, and if we do, I am going to offer an amendment to the rule to provide for consideration of a resolution which states that it is the House's duty to protect and preserve Social Security and Medicare for future generations and reject any cuts to these essential programs.

We know, because we have heard from my friends, that they have their eyes on these programs. We need to get people on record to make sure that they will not vote for any cuts.

Mr. Speaker, I ask unanimous consent to insert the text of my amendment into the Record, along with any extraneous material, immediately prior to the vote on the previous question.

Mr. Speaker, I yield 3 minutes to the gentleman from Illinois (Mr. Sorensen) to discuss that proposal.

Mr. Speaker, I ask unanimous consent to include in the Record a Washington Post article titled: ``House GOP eyes Social Security, Medicare amid spending battle.''

Mr. Speaker, I yield myself such time as I may consume.

Mr. Speaker, it is simple. To lower the national deficit, House Republicans plan to try to cut Social Security and Medicare. This includes potentially ``raising the Social Security retirement age to 70, targeting younger Americans who have yet to obtain Federal benefits.''

We have a number of Members on the Republican side who talk about privatization all the time. That is their favorite word when it comes to Social Security and Medicare. We want to make sure the American people understand who is on their side and who is trying to undercut things that are very meaningful to them.

Mr. Speaker, I also point out that my Republican colleagues have been in disarray since they took the majority, and they have failed to pass meaningful legislation into law on behalf of the American people. As I said, they control this Chamber, the schedule, the committees, and what they bring to the floor.

At this point in the 117th Congress, that is the previous Congress, Democrats had passed 17 bills into law. At this point in the 116th Congress, under divided government, we passed 21 bills into law.

You want to know how much this majority has passed into law?

Six.

They are failing the American people. They are incapable of bringing legislation to the floor that can garner bipartisan support that has any chance in the Senate.

Mr. Speaker, I ask unanimous consent to include in the Record a comparison of the number of bills passed into law by May 31, which demonstrates how utterly unproductive this Congress has been.

Mr. Speaker, I yield myself such time as I may consume.

Mr. Speaker, I spoke about the unproductiveness of my Republican friends and how they are squandering all opportunities to help the American people since they have been in control but let me just talk to you about some of the stuff that we did when we were in charge of this place.

Let me remind people that because of the Affordable Care Act, which I think almost everybody over there voted ``no'' on, 40 million Americans have health coverage under the ACA. Women have access to preventive health services like breast and cervical cancer screening at no cost to them. Prescription drugs are more affordable for older adults.

Americans with disabilities are protected from discrimination on the basis of medical history or preexisting conditions. Lifetime caps on essential health benefits are gone. They are gone.

Since 2010 when the bill became law, Republicans have been obsessed with tearing it apart. Under Republican majorities, we have voted nearly 70 times to repeal and undermine the law. Nearly 70 times Republicans have tried to dismantle a law that provides healthcare coverage to 20 million people and covers preventive health services.

Today, Republicans are continuing this effort to undermine the ACA. It is maddening where their priorities are. It is maddening. Here is the deal. They know that they can't just repeal it outright because everybody doesn't want them to do that. What they are doing is they are going after it bit by bit by bit, trying to chip away at the edges and trying to kill it through a thousand cuts so that maybe people won't notice, that people won't notice when essential benefits are no longer guaranteed.

Healthcare ought to be a right in this country, and we ought to be building on the ACA, not tearing it apart, not tearing it down, not trying to make it more difficult for people to get the essential services they need, not to try to give people plans that don't provide the coverage for whatever may occur to them and their families.

Mr. Speaker, I think it is important to understand--again, the good news here is that all the bills they are bringing to the floor today have no chance in hell of going anywhere in the Senate because they are just over the top and extreme.

Make no mistake about what is happening here. They have a target on healthcare. They have a target on Social Security. They have a target on Medicare. Rather than trying to fix our immigration laws, what are they doing?

They are trying to tear this country apart. They are trying to demonize immigrants. They have no solutions, just a nonbinding resolution that does nothing. It basically addresses a fake problem that was totally ginned up by FOX News. That is where their priorities are. Certainly, we can spend our time doing more productive things.

Mr. Speaker, I reserve the balance of my time.

Mr. Speaker, I remind the gentleman that fentanyl is coming across the southern border because U.S. citizens are bringing it

across through ports of entry. Don't trust me on this. You can look to the conservative think tank CATO that will reinforce what I just said.

By the way, this bill that you are bringing here does nothing to solve the problem. It is a waste of time. There are no more resources; nothing to combat it. It is just a press release. What a joke that we are here debating something like this when we could be debating something that might make a real difference.

Mr. Speaker, I yield 3 minutes to the gentlewoman from New Mexico (Ms. Leger Fernandez), a distinguished member of the Rules Committee.

Mr. Speaker, I yield myself such time as I may consume.

Mr. Speaker, I have to say, what I am a little surprised about today is that nobody has raised the deficit or the debt because the Republicans were obsessed with that when they basically threatened to ruin this economy by not allowing us to move forward to increase the debt ceiling.

We had to have all these cuts from programs that help poor people. Throwing people off of programs like SNAP, the food benefit, that is what they did. I now understand why we are not talking about the deficit or debt today because of the bills that they are bringing to the floor.

One of the bills that we are talking about right now, the CHOICE Arrangement Act, cuts more than $348 million. That is what the CBO says.

Mr. Speaker, I ask unanimous consent to include in the Record the CBO score.

Mr. Speaker, that is just the beginning. House Republicans spent half a billion dollars on their H.R. 1 bill that would gut environmental protections and take tax credits away from people who want to upgrade their homes. Half a billion dollars was added to the deficit.

Mr. Speaker, $6 billion was added to the deficit on their deeply flawed H.R. 2, a bill attacking immigrants and essentially ending asylum as we know it.

Get this, $114 billion--billion with a b--was added through their H.R. 23 to protect the wealthy from paying their fair share of taxes. That was their very first bill on the House floor in this Congress, their top priority adding $114 billion to the deficit.

Over $505 million was added through the Republicans' bill last week to enhance access to firearm stabilizing braces.

Republicans are on a spending spree, all on the backs of real people--not the rich, not billionaire corporations, not by reallocating funding from the bloated Pentagon budget. Maybe some of you saw the ``60 Minutes'' piece a few weeks ago about the cost overruns, where former Pentagon officials said that they are spending hundreds of thousands of dollars on a switch that costs a couple hundred dollars.

We can't find a penny, yet they want to increase the Pentagon budget with no questions asked.

They can't touch any of the tax cuts for any of the billionaires or multimillionaires of big corporations. We can't do that, and we all know why. Google where they all spend their money on political campaigns. However, they spend all this money, and they want to balance the budget on the backs of regular, everyday people, and, in particular, the most vulnerable in our country.

Last night everybody was complaining about the CBO score--the CBO score. I guess I understand why my colleagues across the aisle would not want to support the hardworking, nonpartisan people at CBO. Maybe it is because they keep giving them bad news. Maybe it is because they keep saying to my friends that they are spending and spending and spending and it is adding enormously to our deficit and our debt.

Mr. Speaker, I raise this issue because my Republican friends like to come to the floor and talk about the deficit. Today they are not. I think it is because we had this conversation in the Rules Committee last night. I want people to know that they are driving up the deficit and the debt, and then when they want to talk about fiscal responsibility, where do they go?

They go to the middle class, and they go to the people who are poor. That is where their priorities are. So there is a big difference here.

Mr. Speaker, if the gentleman has no other speakers, I am prepared to close, and I reserve the balance of my time.

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

Mr. Speaker, I am surprised my friend has no further speakers. I thought because these bills were so important and unbelievably essential that there would be lots of speakers on the other side.

Mr. Speaker, we all know how valuable our time is here. We only have 13 scheduled legislative weeks until the end of the year--13 weeks that could be used to improve the lives of everyday Americans.

So how have Republicans in the House decided to use this week?

Are we working to make our communities safer or our educational system better?

No. We are not. Republicans would rather demonize immigrants and peddle hate than regulate guns or invest in schools.

They are in control. They can bring what they want to the floor. Don't take my word for it, Mr. Speaker. Look at what they are bringing to the floor.

Are we here to help regular Americans purchase their first home?

No. We are voting on a bill today that will make it easier for those well-off to get even further ahead while making it more difficult on middle-class home buyers.

Mr. Speaker, you can't make this stuff up, but that is what this bill does.

Are we passing legislation that will continue to expand people's access to affordable healthcare?

No. Republicans want to chip away at popular policy that provides quality coverage to millions.

There are very real issues that regular people in this country face every day, and I wish House Republicans could wise up and address them.

This is such a colossal waste of time. One of the bills is nonbinding, but the other bills aren't going anywhere. This is a waste of time. Rather than working across the aisle trying to find common ground, they continue to bring these messaging bills. These are bills that demonize immigrants and that continue to chip away at the Affordable Care Act. These are bills that continue to screw people in the middle class, and they continue to bring these bills to the floor.

I don't know who their base is, but apparently it is popular amongst their base.

This is not about legislating. It is not about making law, and it is not about improving the lives of anybody in this country.

So, Mr. Speaker, I urge a strong ``no'' vote on the underlying legislation and a ``no'' vote on this rule, and I yield back the balance of my time.

Mr. Speaker, on that I demand the yeas and nays.

Mr. Speaker, I yield myself such time as I may consume.

Mr. Speaker, I rise today in strong opposition to H.J. Res. 26, the second episode in the new miniseries where the House majority asks the United States Congress to act as a super city council of 535 members to make decisions for the people of Washington, D.C., which is a real city with a real city council and Mayor and which some of my colleagues apparently have never visited or had any real interaction with.

The people in Washington, D.C., want to make their decisions about democratic self-government for themselves. They don't want the Representatives of other Americans to come and make decisions for them.

President Biden was here this week for his great State of the Union Address, and, Mr. Speaker, when you could hear him over the heckling, he talked about the great progress we are making as a nation economically with 12 million new jobs.

In terms of support for Americans in their healthcare with the dramatic reduction in healthcare prescription drug costs, we have cut to $35 a month what people have to spend on their insulin shots if they have diabetes.

We just passed a record investment in climate preparedness to deal with the extreme climate emergency and all of the extreme weather events that people in the United States are experiencing across the country.

That is a national agenda. That is a real national agenda.

Now, my friends across the aisle want to spend this week instead superintending and reviewing the bills that are being passed by the D.C. Council for 713,000 American citizens who live in Washington, D.C.

Yesterday, it was about voting rights. Today, it is about criminal justice reform. I am sure down the road, just as in the past, it is going to be their gun safety laws, and it is going to be their laws allowing for Medicaid funded abortions for poor women. Then they will go after their LGBTQ laws and so on. There will be a parade of attacks on local democratic self-government in Washington, D.C.

Now, I believe that the people of Washington should be treated like all other American citizens. Right now what they have asked for is admission to the Union as a State.

Now, most of the Members of this body represent States that were admitted after the original 13. Thirty-seven States came in afterwards with Congress' exercise of its Article IV powers to admit new States. That was very much the design of the Constitution and the Founders' plan. Go back and read some Thomas Jefferson about that.

We were not set up as a country where certain people would make decisions for other people but people, instead, would be able to govern themselves. In fact, the basis of our attack on British rule over America was our rejecting the idea of virtual representation: that some people could make decisions for other people. No. The whole premise of American democracy is that people make decisions for themselves.

So the 713,000 taxpaying, draftable citizens of Washington, D.C.-- whose population has participated in every war America has ever fought from the point of the American Revolution to the Civil War and all the way up through the recent wars in Afghanistan and Iraq--those people are asking for admission to the Union.

This House of Representatives in the 117th and the 116th Congresses voted to give it to them. It didn't quite make it through the Senate, which is always slower on these things, but that is the trajectory that the people of D.C. are on.

Instead of trying to join President Biden and all of the great national economic progress, infrastructure progress, and healthcare progress we are making, the House majority decides instead to usurp the role of the D.C. Council and to begin to micromanage their government and finger paint all over their laws. That is what they are doing today.

Now, we don't have time to compare the laws of D.C. with the laws of each of the other States, but I just want my colleagues to be on notice that I have got the laws of the other States, and I can do those direct head-to-head comparisons.

I don't think we should go down this road. I don't think it is a healthy thing for us to be doing as a Congress because we should be respecting the democratic self-government rights of the people of Washington, D.C.

Nobody is more interested in public safety in Washington than the people of Washington.

Nobody is more interested in the processes of democratic self- government in Washington than the people of Washington.

Nobody is more interested in their healthcare policies and in their housing policies than them.

I invite any of my colleagues who have actually been to a meeting of the D.C. Council or their local advisory neighborhood commission to rise and tell us about the experience.

But if they haven't, then they should leave democratic self- government and local self-government of Washington to the people of Washington, D.C.

Mr. Speaker, I reserve the balance of my time.

Mr. Speaker, the gentleman from Georgia says he is in favor of the resolution because he cares about Washington, D.C.

Mr. Speaker, I now yield 5 minutes to the gentlewoman from the District of Columbia (Ms. Norton), someone else who cares about Washington, D.C.

Mr. Speaker, I yield myself such time as I may consume.

Mr. Speaker, my colleagues have put some stuff on the floor, and I will answer it.

The distinguished gentleman from Georgia invoked a couple of crimes in Washington, D.C., including one in the Metro. He didn't talk about the hundreds of crimes that were committed here at the Capitol, in Congress, in Washington, D.C., because he viewed

the events of January 6 as akin to a ``normal tourist visit.''

Now he dares to lecture the people of Washington, D.C., about keeping Washington, D.C., safe. He seeks to associate Washington, D.C., with crime. Indeed, he and his colleagues constantly try to link images of crime to what they call Democrat-controlled cities.

I did some research last night just to clarify matters. The seven States with the highest murder rates in 2020 all were States that were majority for Donald Trump in the 2020 election. The murder rate in the States that voted for Trump was higher in aggregate than the murder rate in the States that voted for Biden in each year from 2000 to 2020. I invite the gentleman not to lecture the people of Washington, D.C., about crime rates because the murder rate is worse in the red States than it is in the blue States.

Five of the ten cities with the highest murder rate through the first half of last year were in States that voted for Donald Trump in 2020. All those cities have higher murder rates than Washington, D.C. Among the top 10 is a city in the State represented by the sponsor of the disapproval resolution, Mr. Clyde.

Now, the Speaker rose to talk about both yesterday's resolution and today's resolution. He also gave the people of Washington, D.C., a lecture about diluting the vote when he rejects their admission to the Union as a State.

In other words, he is trying to squelch and nullify their statehood drive that would give them real political equality in the country, and then he says the people of Washington, D.C., are diluting the vote. Well, he is blockading the vote. He is preventing the vote for people in Washington, D.C.

Then he joins the chorus denouncing crime in Washington, D.C., which is suddenly of concern to them. I had not heard them mention that before. Well, it turns out that Bakersfield, California, has one of the highest crime rates in America, recently described as one of the top 10 deadliest cities in America for its size, and its crime rate is higher than that of Washington, D.C.

However, we are going to take this opportunity to kick around the people of Washington, D.C. Why? Because they are vulnerable, because they don't have voting representation in the House, and they have no voting representation or voice in the U.S. Senate. That is a scandal from the standpoint of democracy.

Instead of trying to solve that problem, my colleagues, instead, want to use the people of Washington, D.C., as a whipping post, as a pinata, something to kick around. I just think that that is outrageous, and it is wrong.

On January 6, when we were attacked at the Capitol and in this Chamber, there were hundreds of residents of Washington, D.C., who work for the Capitol Police, who work for the Metropolitan Police Department, who work for other police forces who came here to defend us. They came to defend the Congress that they are excluded from. You talk about patriotism, that is patriotism.

These people have a real grievance, a valid grievance, not an imaginary, fake, counterfeit grievance like a Presidential election which they still claim Donald Trump won, even though their arguments were rejected in more than 60 Federal and State courts.

Trump lost that election by more than 7 million votes, 306-232 in the electoral college. I am glad they are nodding over on that side of the aisle because these facts are indisputable, yet, still, they indulge the follies and the fantasies and the pathologies of Donald Trump.

That is what they do instead. They try to kick around the people of Washington, D.C., who defended us as patriots on that day.

There are veterans in Washington, D.C., and we will submit these for the Record, who have demanded their voting rights and demanded admission as a State. Yet, they dare to lecture the people of Washington, D.C., about what to do with their democratic rights.

Mr. Speaker, I reserve the balance of my time.

Mr. Speaker, I yield 2 minutes to the gentlewoman from the District of Columbia (Ms. Norton).

Mr. Speaker, I yield myself such time as I may consume.

The gentlewoman from the District of Columbia has just made a very powerful point, which is that on a whole range of offenses under the newly revised D.C. act that they want to overthrow, the criminal law is tougher in Washington, D.C., than it is in the distinguished chairman's home State of Kentucky.

On carjacking, on first degree murder, on involuntary manslaughter, the people of D.C. have chosen tougher penalties, but the gentlewoman didn't arrive to denounce Kentucky as soft on crime or weak on crime and say the whole United States Congress has to turn itself into a superlegislature for Kentucky and strike their laws down. That is up to the people of Kentucky. They don't even have a carjacking statute. You have to use armed robbery there, which gets you up to 20 years in prison. In the District of Columbia, they have a specific carjacking statute that could get you 24 years in prison.

That is the beauty of the Federal system, which I thought our colleagues supported, the idea that people decide at the local level whether they want tougher laws, as in the District of Columbia, or weaker laws, as in Kentucky. That is up to the people of the States to go offense by offense.

I am afraid that my friend and colleague, Ms. Norton, is taking them a bit too seriously because they are not really interested in scrutinizing the actual criminal justice policy. They just want to kick the people of Washington, D.C., around. They want to lord it over them.

We have President Biden here this week inviting both parties to work together for a continued acceleration of this great economic rebound we are in with 12 million new jobs, with us finally addressing climate change, with us finally getting prescription drug benefits to the people of America. He invited us to participate in a bipartisan national renewal, and what does the majority come back with? They want 535 Members of the United States Congress to act like a super-city council lording over the people of Washington, D.C.

It is unjust and unfair to the people of Washington, and it is beneath our dignity as a democratic Congress to be acting in this way.

Mr. Speaker, I reserve the balance of my time.

Mr. Speaker, I yield myself such time as I may consume. If you google carjacking in Kentucky, what will come up is, just a few months ago, two people were carjacked in different incidents at gunpoint in Louisville, which I think is in the State of Kentucky. Since we are talking about State laws, that is what should be relevant. Carjacking is, obviously, a problem across the country.

The conceit of the other side seems to be that they care more about crime and public safety in Washington, D.C., than people who live in Washington, D.C. We just got lectures from two different Members from New York about the terrible conditions in New York. Well, if that is what their concern is, then they should run for the New York State Legislature and change the laws that are involved if they can persuade their fellow citizens that they have it right. If they can't, then maybe they should reconsider what their agenda is.

In any event, if you want to micromanage the laws of Washington, D.C., and rewrite this 275-page act that was passed to revise the criminal code, which they hadn't revised in a century, with the input of Federal and local judges, prosecutors, public defenders, and the D.C. Council, then move to Washington, D.C., and run for D.C. Council.

These resolutions of disapproval come to the House floor without the benefit of a single hearing in the Oversight Committee.

They have not had a hearing where the Members of Congress could be heard on this, where we could have a single witness, where we could have a single fact introduced, much less have the members of the D.C. Council--who sent a letter petitioning for respect for democratic self- government in D.C.--had the right to be heard, much less if the Mayor had the right to be heard.

They keep invoking the name of the Mayor of the District of Columbia who said she does not want Congress to be overturning the laws of the District of Columbia, even if she opposes those laws.

Well, that is a principled position in favor of democratic self- government. I dare say, most of the Members of this body would say even if they disagreed with a law passed by their State legislature in their State and signed by the Governor that Congress should not selectively overturn that law. But that is precisely what they are proposing to do to the people of the District of Columbia.

Mr. Speaker, I yield 2 minutes to the gentlewoman from the District of Columbia (Ms. Norton).

Mr. Speaker, I yield myself such time as I may consume.

Mr. Speaker, if we were actually to pass this resolution of disapproval against Washington, D.C., at this point, I wonder what my colleagues think we do at that point.

Sitting as the super council for the District of Columbia, would we rewrite the law?

In other words, would we then conduct hearings on each of the offenses that the gentlewoman has just invoked?

Are we going to have hearings about involuntary manslaughter and first degree murder and carjacking and so on in the District of Columbia?

They don't even want to have a hearing on their disapproval resolution, much less do we want to have a hearing on each of these bills and take over the governance of the District of Columbia.

Let's respect the Home Rule Act that was adopted in 1973. Home rule operates here just like it operates in all of our States, which is local matters are decided locally. Let's leave it at that.

Mr. Speaker, I reserve the balance of my time.

Mr. Speaker, I am ready to close, and I yield myself the balance of my time.

I want to correct just a few of the major distortions that we just heard from the distinguished gentleman from Louisiana.

First of all, carjacking, as I understand it from this act, and I am willing to stand corrected, is not legal in the District of Columbia. On the contrary, it could be punished by up to 24 years.

I think the gentleman from Louisiana misunderstood my colloquy with the chairman of the committee because it is in Kentucky where carjacking is not a statutory offense.

If you were to charge the people who were committing carjackings recently in Louisville, you would have to charge them under armed robbery because there is not a carjacking statute.

Washington, D.C., has one, and it has a penalty of up to 24 years, which is more than you could get in Kentucky for armed robbery.

The second point is he said that crime was out of control in Washington, D.C. Well, the crime rate is higher in Bakersfield, California, which is represented by the Speaker of the U.S. House of Representatives.

A major city, New Orleans, in the gentleman's home State, in this quote from FOX News ``New Orleans closes 2022 with sky-high homicide rate not seen in decades: `Horrific'.'' New Orleans was given the grim distinction of murder capital of the U.S. in September.

But we don't need to have some kind of race to the bottom Olympics in terms of which State or which city has the worst crime rate.

We should get together to deal with the problem of gun violence, which is why I invite our colleagues to join us and more than 90 percent of the American people who support a universal violent criminal background check, but they oppose it.

They are locked in the stranglehold of the NRA, and they won't back this, despite the fact that all the police unions they cited today about D.C. support a universal violent criminal background check.

Why don't they do something about semiautomatic assault weapons on the streets of our cities and towns across America?

They won't do it. No, they would rather use crime simply as a political club to try to take away other people's democratic rights.

Mr. Speaker, it is scandalous, the way the majority purports to stand up for local self-government and home rule when they want to trample all of the democratic rights of the people of Washington, D.C.

Let's not sit as a super city council of 535 Members doing the municipal minutiae of the people of Washington. Let them govern themselves.

We should be on the pathway to statehood for them, but at the very least, respect their right to home rule. Nobody cares more about public safety in D.C. than the people of D.C.

Nobody cares more about the condition of their communities than the

people who live in them. That is a basic precept of democratic ideals.

I hope my colleagues will respect that, and I hope everyone will vote to reject this continuing series of disapproval resolutions against the people of Washington.

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

Mr. Speaker, on that I demand the yeas and nays.

Mr. Speaker, I yield myself such time as I may consume.

Mr. Speaker, I thank the gentleman from New York (Mr. Langworthy) for yielding the customary 30 minutes.

Mr. Speaker, here we are, 6 weeks into a new Congress, and the Republican majority has yet to bring substantive, serious legislation to the floor that does anything to address the serious issues confronting our great Nation.

Instead, we have seen Republican leadership buckle under time and again to the demands of a rightwing minority that seems more interested in stoking controversy and conspiracy theories than crafting actual legislation or governing.

Instead of delivering for the American people, we have seen precious time and taxpayer dollars wasted in power struggles and political stunts, rather than doing the people's business.

True to that pattern, today's rule provides for the consideration of three deeply problematic measures, measures that further the objectives of that extremist minority, measures that stoke division, that undermine government institutions, and that threaten fundamental American freedoms when they don't align with the radical right's ideology.

By caving to these fringe forces, Republican leadership is squandering precious time and taxpayer dollars that would be better spent working together on the issues most Americans want us to address lowering prices; housing, healthcare, and education needs; making our communities safer; and protecting our planet.

The first two resolutions under consideration today would nullify legislation recently passed by the democratically elected D.C. Council and, in the process, would undermine the fundamental right of citizens of Washington, D.C., to political self-determination.

H.J. Res. 24 would overrule the Local Resident Voting Rights Act, which was recently passed by the D.C. Council.

With this measure, the citizens of D.C. decided to join other municipalities around the country in allowing noncitizen residents to vote in local D.C. elections.

H.J. Res. 26 would nullify the Revised Criminal Code Act, the RCCA, which reformed D.C.'s criminal code. That code has not been comprehensively revised since it was first enacted in 1901.

The American people expect their Members of Congress to prioritize their most pressing kitchen table issues, but instead of focusing on lowering costs or creating better-paying jobs, we are here today to interfere with legislation duly enacted by the citizens of D.C. and their government.

Not only is that not what our constituents sent us to do, it is distinctly antidemocratic to substitute our policy judgment for the local policy judgment of D.C.'s elected officials.

The nearly 700,000 residents of the District of Columbia, a majority of whom are Black and Brown, are worthy and capable of self-government.

Instead of seeking to undo the work of that democratically elected body, we should be holding hearings and considering whether it is finally time to address the issue of D.C. statehood.

As my colleague, Mr. Raskin, said in the Rules Committee yesterday, if my Republican colleagues insist on acting as a colonial overseer of the District of Columbia, the least they can do is hear from the people of D.C.

Those promoting these resolutions should have called a hearing or at least attempted to engage the D.C. Council and community leaders in some way.

If my colleagues think they have the best interests of the people of D.C. at heart, let's hear from the D.C. residents.

I believe they have made it quite clear they don't appreciate being made a pawn in national political battles.

We owe it to the people of D.C. to enact statehood, not this radical attempt to interfere with the district's Democratic process.

The subject of these disapproval resolutions, the Revised Criminal Code Act and Local Resident Voting Rights Amendment Act, should be irrelevant.

But just so we are clear, let's look at the legislative history of those two acts that our colleagues across the aisle want to overturn.

Under the D.C. Home Rule Act, which is a Federal statute, the democratically elected 13-member D.C. Council is required to enact a new law twice, with at least 13 days intervening between each vote, in order to pass legislation.

Legislation passed by the council and affirmed by the Mayor or with a veto override is then transmitted to Congress for a review period.

The legislation takes effect at the expiration of the review period unless Congress intervenes by passing a resolution of disapproval.

Congress has only overturned duly elected D.C. laws three times before the misguided efforts that we are forced to consider today.

Now, the D.C. Council passed the Revised Criminal Code Act by votes of 12-0 and 13-0. While the Mayor vetoed it, the council voted to override that veto by a vote of 12-1.

The Revised Criminal Code Act is the culmination of a 5-year process to revise and update D.C.'s criminal code, which, as mentioned previously, has not happened since it was first created over a century ago.

Everyone in the D.C. legal system, from prosecutors to judges to defense attorneys to scholars, agrees that this revision is long overdue.

Our colleagues across the aisle object to the revised criminal code that has been crafted with so much care to meet local conditions because they don't like some sentencing provisions that seek to match up the law with current standards.

They posit that harsher penalties would be a greater deterrent to the criminal conduct that they want to target when, in fact, the data shows that harsher penalties in some of the States that they represent does not, in fact, deter that conduct.

So think about this: Republican politicians from Georgia and Kentucky and Texas, who haven't bothered to take the time to hold a hearing or study this issue, have decided to parachute in and dictate to the 700,000 residents of D.C. that they know better than those residents and their elected Representatives how to run their city.

Can you imagine how those politicians would react if the D.C. Council tried to tell them how to run the jails in Athens, Georgia; Lexington, Kentucky; or Buffalo, New York?

What is particularly infuriating is that our Republican colleagues claim that they want to block the D.C. law because they want to be tougher on crime. But, once again, this is empty rhetoric. Overturning the D.C. criminal code will do nothing to increase public safety in D.C. or anywhere else.

As I mentioned at the outset, we are 6 weeks into the new Congress, and the Republican majority has not brought forward any legislation to address crime in America.

They won't consider legislation to block the flood of unregulated guns into American communities, they won't ban the weapons of war that take innocent lives in horrifying and predictably regular mass shootings, and they haven't taken any action to address the societal issues that produce violence.

The second resolution under consideration would vacate the Local Resident Voting Rights Amendment Act, which the D.C. Council passed by votes of 12-1 and 12-0 after holding hearings and soliciting public comment.

This act would allow otherwise qualified D.C. residents who are not U.S. citizens to vote in local D.C. elections.

Qualified noncitizen residents could vote in races for Mayor, council, attorney general, neighborhood commissioners, school district, and local referenda.

Of course, this does not apply to Federal elections. Our colleagues are trying to paint this legislation as some radical new idea, but there is nothing in the U.S. Constitution--which I understand was read here on the floor today, so we could check--that prohibits noncitizens from voting in local, State, or Federal elections.

In fact, there is a long history in the U.S. of noncitizens being allowed to vote in those elections, and they have done so since at least 1704 in what would later become the U.S. At various points, 40 States have permitted noncitizens to vote. Congress only first prohibited noncitizens from voting in Federal elections in 1996.

Currently, there are at least 15 municipalities that permit noncitizens to vote in local elections. They do so in recognition of the fact that noncitizens, who are allowed to vote under such local laws, pay a variety of State, local, and Federal taxes, and they have an inherent interest in helping to shape policies in the communities where they live.

I strongly encourage all of my colleagues to oppose these profoundly undemocratic and paternalistic resolutions.

Now, today's rule also provides for consideration of H.R. 185, which would terminate the CDC requirement for proof of COVID-19 vaccination for foreign travelers to enter the U.S.

The CDC order was put in place to open the world back up and allow vaccinated foreign travelers to visit the U.S. while keeping our community safe.

Revising or revoking the COVID-19 public health guidance should be at the behest of public health experts with understanding and knowledge of global case trends, up-to-date data, and real-time safety information about emerging infections and COVID-19 epidemiology, not partisan politicians looking to settle political scores or curry favor with the disgraced former President and his base.

This bill would upend our current COVID-19 travel protocol, and worse, tie the hands of our public health experts by prohibiting any future order to require COVID-19 vaccinations as a condition of entering the United States.

As I said last week when the majority brought several bills to the floor attacking COVID-19 emergency declarations and vaccines, we shouldn't jeopardize our progress in fighting COVID with political stunts.

This is just the latest bill inspired by anti-vax conspiracy theories that has been rushed to the floor, uninformed by any hearings or any scientific evidence.

It is dangerous to repeatedly mislead the public about the efficacy of these vaccines that are proven to save lives.

This bill increases the risk of spreading new variants, just as hospitals and public health infrastructure are trying to rebuild.

Once again, an extremist fringe is putting politics over science and undermining public health experts at the expense of the American people, and Republican leadership is letting them get away with it.

We need Republican leaders to embrace science and promote the public

good, instead of undermining them to score political points.

I am disappointed that my colleagues continue to waste this body's time and taxpayer dollars on frivolous bills and resolutions.

Mr. Speaker, the resolutions and bill we are considering today do not address the issues we were elected to address for the American people.

We have now been in this Congress for over a month and have yet to take up any serious legislation. I hope my colleagues can work in a bipartisan manner to address the problems our constituents sent us here to solve.

Mr. Speaker, I urge my colleagues to vote ``no'' on this rule, and I reserve the balance of my time.

Mr. Speaker, I yield myself such time as I may consume.

Mr. Speaker, I include in the Record a letter from The Sentencing Project advocacy group, which is signed by over a dozen civil rights organizations opposing the Republican efforts to obstruct the enactment of the District of Columbia's Revised Criminal Code Act.

It states: ``Washingtonians know best how to address criminal justice policies in their community and deserve the right to determine their own laws. Local leaders are better positioned and retain more expertise to address safety and justice issues in the District than Congress.''

The Sentencing Project,

February 6, 2023.

Re Oppose efforts to obstruct the District of Columbia's

Revised Criminal Code Act.

Hon. Kevin McCarthy,

House of Representatives,

Washington, DC.

Chairman Jim Jordan,

Judiciary Committee, House of Representatives, Washington,

Mr. Speaker, I yield 3 minutes to the gentlewoman from the District of Columbia (Ms. Norton), our esteemed colleague.

Mr. Speaker, I yield myself such time as I may consume.

I am afraid we have to dig into the weeds a little bit with Rules Committee process right now.

Earlier, the gentleman from New York said that with this rule, the new majority has tied the number of times that more minority amendments were made in order than majority amendments.

While I am certainly supportive of minority amendments, that sounded wrong, so we asked our staff to check. They haven't had much time while we have been speaking, but they have already found at least two times that the Democratic majority did this in the last Congress, H.R. 302 and H.R. 963. Perhaps our colleagues need to check their facts.

What I do know is that this rule contains the 18th and 19th closed rules of this new Congress. That is already over 30 percent of what we did during the first year of the Democratic majority. So it is more like a return to Republican habits, just like they ran the most-closed Congress in history last time they had control.

I am also astonished to learn that it was the possibility of family separation that inspired our colleagues to introduce H.R. 185, when the issue of family separation due to our outmoded, broken immigration system has not served to inspire any urgency to reform that system.

Mr. Speaker, I yield 2 minutes to the gentlewoman from Texas (Ms. Jackson Lee).

Mr. Speaker, if we defeat the previous question, I will offer an amendment to the rule to ensure that H.R. 185 does not take effect unless it is certified that it won't decrease Social Security benefits.

Mr. Speaker, I ask unanimous consent to insert the text of my amendment into the Record, along with any extraneous material, immediately prior to the vote on the previous question.

Mr. Speaker, Social Security is the bedrock of our Nation's social safety net. Since its inception, it has lifted millions of our seniors out of poverty. Protecting the benefits that Social Security provides should be a priority for this Congress, for everyone in this Congress, as my Republican colleagues demand reckless cuts in exchange for paying our Nation's bills.

Democrats are going to continue to push to ensure that these vital benefits are protected and will continue to give Republicans every opportunity to ease the American people's anxiety by demonstrating with their votes, including on this measure, that they do not intend to cut Social Security.

Mr. Speaker, I reserve the balance of my time.

Mr. Speaker, I yield 1\1/2\ minutes to the gentleman from Virginia (Mr. Beyer).

Mr. Speaker, I yield myself the balance of my time for closing.

Mr. Speaker, these measures today do nothing to address the important issues facing American families. These resolutions are misguided and unserious at best and deeply undemocratic at their core. House Republicans continue to waste precious time and taxpayer dollars on power struggles and political stunts.

Republican leadership's acquiescence to the fringe forces in their party is a disservice to the American public. With all of the challenges this Congress should contend with, an extremist overreach to nullify democratically passed legislation and rolling back lifesaving COVID protections is a waste of precious time and resources.

My Democratic colleagues and I are here to work on behalf of the American people and are ready to do the serious work of delivering for them, fighting for better jobs and safer communities. We will oppose extremist attempts to stoke division, to undermine government institutions, and to threaten fundamental American freedoms.

I invite my colleagues to work across the aisle, to work together on the issues that matter to all of our constituents: lowering prices; addressing housing, healthcare, and education needs; making our communities safer; and protecting our environment.

Mr. Speaker, I urge my colleagues to oppose the previous question and the rule, and I yield back the balance of my time.

Mr. Speaker, on that I demand the yeas and nays.

Mr. Speaker, I demand a recorded vote.