Relating to the resolution (H. Res. 503) impeaching Joseph R. Biden, Jr., President of the United States, for high crimes and misdemeanors.

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.

Oh my God, Mr. Speaker. Let's get real here. Nothing about this is serious, not the process, not the intentions of the resolution's sponsor, not the impeachment case, not a single damn thing.

Yesterday, Republicans dishonored this House and dishonored themselves by bringing to the floor a ridiculous censure resolution against Adam Schiff because Donald Trump told them to.

Today, they are dishonoring this House and dishonoring themselves by bringing to the floor a ridiculous impeachment referral resolution against Joe Biden because Donald Trump told them to.

This body has become a place where extreme, outlandish, and nutty issues get debated passionately and important ones not at all.

In short, Mr. Speaker, the Republican Party is a joke. They talk about law and order when their frontrunner for President has been indicted on Federal charges.

They talk about respecting law enforcement. Then, they come in here and downplay the rioters who came in here on January 6 and beat up cops with fire extinguishers. I don't even know how they look the Capitol Police officers in the eye when they walk into this place.

They talk about how important it is that we follow a good process. Yet, the Rules Committee was called in late last night, literally at a moment's notice, where they deployed emergency procedures so we could refer this measure to a committee--what a spectacular emergency, truly something that needed to be done immediately.

We all know the truth. The real emergency here was that the Georgia wing and the Colorado wing of the MAGA caucus got into a fight right over there on the House floor about who gets to impeach the President first.

The truth is that Speaker McCarthy has lost control of this House, and it is being run by the MAGA fringe. This is nuts.

Kids get shot in their classrooms. Nothing.

Environmental disasters destroy entire communities. Nothing.

Our air is clogged with smoke because half the Northern Hemisphere is on fire due to climate change. Nothing.

But when the MAGA wing nuts say to jump, Speaker McCarthy says: How high?

According to news reports, it sounds like this resolution's sponsor is dictating to the Speaker which committees bills should be referred to, when he should put legislation on the floor, and how he should run this House.

That is who is in charge here, the MAGA extremists.

Frankly, they can try to impeach Joe Biden all they want, but all they are doing is impeaching themselves and making a mockery of this place while they are at it.

I get it. They don't like that their cult leader, Donald Trump, will go down in history as one of the worst Presidents we have ever had. They don't like that he was impeached twice and had a bipartisan conviction vote in the Senate. They don't like that Democrats tried to hold him accountable for trying to extort President Zelenskyy, who is now trying to defend himself from Putin.

They don't like that Congress tried to hold him accountable again, this time for trying to overthrow the government on January 6.

They don't like that he had nuclear secrets in his bathroom and in his desk, and God knows where else, and waved them around like it was nothing.

You know what? They don't like themselves for having to stand by him time after time and defend his lies. I know many of my Republican colleagues say in private what they are not willing to say here in public, which is that they think this is an embarrassment.

Still, they are here on the floor defending a three-time loser, sexual abuser, ex-President that has been indicted more times than he has been elected. It is pathetic.

Instead of dealing with their own issues, Republicans are going after Joe Biden to try to distract and deflect.

H. Res. 503 claims President Biden is intentionally facilitating a complete and total invasion of the southern border. This resolution claims that foreign cartels have complete control of our border. Seriously? It is insulting to the

Border Patrol agents that they claim to support, the ones that put their lives on the line every single day.

By the way, just to talk facts for a second--which I know my Republican friends hate to do--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 has reported over 70 percent fewer encounters between points of entry or unscheduled encounters per day.

Fentanyl seizures have increased under the Biden Presidency. To make that clearer for my friends across the aisle, that means that more fentanyl is getting picked up at the border before it makes it onto our streets. They are attacking Joe Biden for stopping more fentanyl. It makes no sense.

No, they would rather talk about building a stupid wall along our southern border that they know won't work or about the nonbinding resolution they put on the floor this week that demonizes migrants but does nothing to fix our immigration system.

They have a policy disagreement with President Biden and their first impulse isn't to pass an immigration bill. Their first impulse is to impeach him. Our Founding Fathers must be rolling over in their graves.

They are doing this all so they can distract from the fact that Donald Trump stole top-secret information and stored it in his bathroom and showed highly classified Iran attack plans to people and bragged about stealing classified government documents on live TV.

Trump is the legitimate national security risk. Don't come to us with this phony BS about how President Biden is the reason we have a crisis at our southern border.

Republicans can yell and scream all they want. They can rant and rave so that they get on FOX News tonight. It doesn't make them right. It is doing untold damage to this institution. They have no respect for the traditions of this House. It is grotesque. It is embarrassing. It is shameful.

We aren't debating matters that help or uplift people, rather we are debating garbage to make Trump happy. It is cowardly, and it is sickening.

What we have here is a joke, just like this Republican majority-- which is clearly going to be a temporary majority.

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

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

Mr. Speaker, that was an awful lot. I don't have enough time to respond to all the inaccuracies that were just stated.

Mr. Speaker, I ask unanimous consent to insert in the Record an article from Newsweek titled ``Fentanyl Surge

Started and Peaked Under Trump Despite GOP Blaming Biden.''

Mr. Speaker, I want to talk about this accusation about open borders. I don't know how many times we need to say it, but the United States does not have open borders. We didn't have open borders under Trump, and we don't have open borders under Biden.

Even the conservative CATO Institute knows that. Please stop incorrectly saying that our country has open borders. We do not.

Mr. Speaker, I ask unanimous consent to insert into the Record an article published by the CATO Institute titled ``Biden's Border Policy is Not `Open Borders'.''

Mr. Speaker, let me read an excerpt from the article-- this is from CATO.

``Practically since his first week in office, President Joe Biden has faced repeated criticisms from Republicans and some Democrats that his border policy amounts to `open borders.' This

criticism is not simply inaccurate: it is unhinged from reality in a way that distinguishes itself from normal political hyperbole. Indeed, U.S. immigration policy is effectively closed borders, and Biden's immigration policies and goals are largely the same as those of President Donald Trump.

``President Biden has not suddenly ended America's immigration prohibition and opened up U.S. borders to almost anyone who wants to come (as was largely America's immigration policy from 1776 to 1924). Instead, he has far more vigorously enforced immigration prohibition than the law requires, narrowing the few exceptions to the universal ban on legal immigration.''

Mr. Speaker, I point this out because this is crazy what is being talked about here on the House floor. This is not about a policy disagreement; if it was, maybe my friends would actually pass a bill that had an alternative policy.

The bill that they brought up on immigration this week was a bill that was a nonbinding resolution. It did nothing. It was just their opinion that expresses the sense of Congress. It was a ``nothingburger''. If they wanted to, they would legislate in a way that would change a policy, but that is not what they want to do.

This is about protecting Donald Trump. Donald Trump says to them, you know: Jump. And they ask: How high? That is what this is about. This is about covering up for the former President. It is about deflecting from the former President's criminality, the 37 felony counts that he has been indicted on, and they don't like it. Unfortunately, that is who he is.

Mr. Speaker, I yield 3 minutes to the gentlewoman from Pennsylvania (Ms. Scanlon), a distinguished member of the Rules Committee.

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

Mr. Speaker, I ask unanimous consent to include in the Record an article from Politifact titled: ``Are Biden's border policies to blame for fentanyl deaths? Experts say no.''

Fentanyl deaths in the U.S. were rising before Biden took office, and, in fact, he is intercepting more fentanyl than the previous administration did. I think we need the Republicans to get their facts straight.

The other thing I want to point out to my friends--and maybe they need to read their history books or read the Constitution--impeachment is about high crimes and misdemeanors. It is not about policy disagreements.

Mr. Speaker, it is clear that Republicans would rather the American public pay attention to anything--literally anything--other than the latest charges that their leader has been slapped with.

Mr. Speaker, I ask unanimous consent to include in the Record an article from The Washington Post titled: ``Here are the 37 charges against Trump and what they mean.''

Mr. Speaker, I would love to insert in the Record the entirety of the charges, but, apparently, I am told it is too long to be able to be put into the Congressional Record.

Let me say a couple of things. Trump is charged with 31 counts of violating a part of the Espionage Act that bars willful retention of national defense information by someone not authorized to have it.

He is basically charged with, among other things, conspiracy to obstruct justice, tampering with grand jury evidence, concealing evidence in a Federal investigation, and false statements.

Mr. Speaker, I get it. If I were they, I would want to talk about anything other than that, but those are the facts. No matter how you want to distract and deflect, Mr. Speaker, the American people are not going to ignore what I believe will ultimately prove to be criminality of the former President.

Mr. Speaker, I yield 2 minutes to the gentleman from Mississippi (Mr. Thompson).

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

Mr. Speaker, let me say to the gentleman who just spoke that I know exactly why he is here. I don't think this is--and the American people know--this is not a serious effort. I know my friends don't want to talk about Trump. They want to talk about Biden. So let's talk about Joe Biden.

I want to make something clear: Not only is any talk of impeaching President Biden completely absurd--as many House Republicans know--but President Biden has been a historic success over the first 2\1/2\ years in office.

He took office in the throes of the pandemic and in the midst of the chaos caused by his predecessor trying to illegally hold on to power, but that hasn't stopped Democrats from making huge strides to improve the lives of every American.

Democrats jumped into action by enacting the American Rescue Plan in the President's first months in office. That law changed the course of the pandemic and set the course of our economic recovery to be the envy of the rest of the world. It lifted more than 5 million children out of poverty, it safely reopened our schools, and it put money back in the pockets of middle-class Americans.

Every Republican voted against those things.

President Biden signed the bipartisan infrastructure law which makes historic investments in our roads, our bridges, and our transportation networks while improving public safety and creating jobs all across the country.

We passed into law the biggest piece of gun safety legislation in decades, and we enacted the Inflation Reduction Act less than a year ago.

President Biden is now busy implementing that law which will cut prescription drug costs for our senior citizens, lower the cost of healthcare for millions of Americans, make historic investments in clean energy, and make American-made solutions to our climate crisis.

It will do all of that while lowering our deficit, unlike so many of the bills this Republican majority has brought to the floor which would do the opposite.

This isn't just me saying how great all of this is. During the Financial Services Committee hearing yesterday, Fed Chairman Jerome Powell was asked about inflation.

He said: ``Everybody has very high inflation, the E.U., the United Kingdom, and many countries within Europe.''

He made one more important point: ``Our recovery is by far the strongest of any country.''

Just look at the results more broadly. More Americans have jobs right now than at any point in American history. Over the past 2 years, more small businesses have been created than at any other period on record. More Americans have health insurance right now than ever before in our history.

I could go on and on, but let me be clear. No one is saying things are perfect. There is a lot that we need to do.

We need to do more to keep our children fed. We need to do more to ensure every child gets the education they deserve. We need to do more to make sure the richest Americans pay their fair share. We need to do more to get guns off the streets.

I would love to see this Republican majority do anything at all to reach those goals or do anything that means anything to anybody.

Instead, we are here today debating this latest attempt by the Speaker to keep the most radical members of his party behind him. Quite frankly, it is embarrassing, and it is pathetic.

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

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

Mr. Speaker, I will say to the gentleman that we are well aware that the previous President was impeached twice and justifiably so.

The first impeachment dealt with his effort to try to extort Zelenskyy into getting dirt on Joe Biden in exchange for assistance so that they could defend themselves against Putin. I guess no one should be surprised because the President seems to have this--the former President seems to have this obsession with Putin.

Mr. Speaker, I ask unanimous consent to include in the Record a 2020 Roll Call article titled: ``Senate report outlines `grave' Russian threat in 2016 election interference probe.''

Mr. Speaker, despite the former President's repeated claims that Russian interference in our 2016 election was a Democratic hoax, a bipartisan Senate investigation and report released in 2020 made clear that there were extensive communications between senior Trump officials and people with strong ties to the Kremlin.

Senator Marco Rubio--the last time I checked, he was still a Republican--said: ``We found irrefutable evidence of Russian meddling.''

The report is damning. The facts are clear. Russia interfered in an election.

The second impeachment was really in response to what happened here, and everybody saw what happened here: A violent mob broke into this Capitol.

Mr. Speaker, 140 Capitol Police officers were injured. The mob destroyed sacred property in this building. They tried to overturn a legitimate election. They attempted an insurrection.

I was in the chair, one of the last people off the House floor. I saw some of my Republican colleagues here, hiding, cowering behind Capitol Police because they were afraid of what was going on that day.

Now, they come to the floor and say nothing happened, that it was a perfectly wonderful day, a typical day of tourism at the Capitol. It is disgusting, the revisionism that we see here.

So you are damn right that he got impeached a second time. He deserved to be impeached. If that is not an impeachable offense, I don't know what is.

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

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

Mr. Speaker, the gentleman said something that I agree with: The election cannot come soon enough.

I think people are just sick and tired of my Republican friends defending a three-time loser, sexual abuser, ex-President that has been indicted more times than he has been elected. It is pathetic.

We should be working on matters that actually help people. That is why Democrats have been fighting not only for commonsense gun safety legislation and investments in job creation and environmental protection, but we have also been insisting that we get a guarantee from the majority here that they don't go after Social Security and Medicare.

Mr. Speaker, I urge that we defeat the previous question, and I will offer an amendment to the rule to provide for consideration of a resolution assuring our constituents that the people's House will protect and preserve Social Security and Medicare for our future generations and reject any cuts to these essential programs.

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

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

Mr. Speaker, I will say to my friends that while you want to distract and deflect from all of Donald Trump's legal problems, they continue to mount.

I think there will be probably more charges, I expect, in the coming weeks and the coming months. While my colleagues do not want to talk about things like Social Security and Medicare because they are the party of privatization, the party of trying to undercut Medicare, we are going to fight them on those things.

We are going to continue to be a voice for the people of this country, for our senior citizens, for those who believe that Social Security and Medicare are important. We will not be deflected or deterred by whatever this circus is that is going on here today.

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

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

Mr. Speaker, I have to say that my friends on the other side of the aisle look small and pathetic and like losers. When they lose this House, this is going to be a reason why.

Mr. Speaker, my friends keep talking about open borders. That is an insult to the men and women in our Border Patrol who are risking their lives to protect our borders. It is just not true.

I entered in the Record an article by the conservative think tank, the Cato Institute, but facts don't matter. It is what plays on FOX News and how we can distract and how people can make up things.

I will also say, Mr. Speaker, that try as they might to deflect from the former President, we can't turn our back on what he has done.

Look, Trump literally can't help himself. He has admitted multiple times on air, during interviews, and to

others that he stole and shared top-secret government information. Talk about a national security threat. The call is coming from inside the house.

Mr. Speaker, I ask unanimous consent to include in the Record an article from Rolling Stone titled: ``Trump All But Confesses to Mishandling Classified Docs on FOX News.''

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

Mr. Speaker, I want the record to reflect that the previous President of the United States supported an insurrection to basically steal the election.

My friends think it is funny, but I will tell you this: Laugh in the face of the Capitol Police.

Mr. Speaker, 140 of them were injured. People lost their lives, and the best you can do is laugh--is laugh--about what happened that day? I mean, that is disgusting.

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

Mr. Speaker, by direction of the Committee on Rules, I call up House Resolution 529 and ask for its immediate consideration.

Mr. Speaker, for the purpose of debate only, I yield the customary 30 minutes to the gentleman from Massachusetts (Mr. McGovern), pending which I yield myself such time as I may consume. During consideration of this resolution, all time yielded is for the purpose of debate only.

General Leave

Mr. Speaker, I ask unanimous consent that all Members may have 5 legislative days to revise and extend their remarks.

Mr. Speaker, last night, the Rules Committee reported a rule to refer H. Res. 503 to the Committees on Homeland Security and the Judiciary. H. Res. 503 lays out articles of impeachment against President Joe Biden for his failure to secure the southern border of the United States.

We do a lot of things in this body, and we say a lot of things--I certainly do--about our beliefs and about what we think is happening to our country. What we are talking about here is, indeed, solemn. We are, in fact, talking about the mechanism provided by the Founders in the Constitution of the United States to check and hold the executive branch responsible.

The border crisis that we are experiencing today is extremely significant for the people in my home State of Texas. It is significant not just for Texas, of course, but for the entire country--but, in particular, for the people in my home State of Texas.

Since President Biden took office, there have been well over 5 million illegal migrant encounters along the southwest border. More than 204,000 illegal immigrants were encountered at the border in May alone. Those numbers are changing post-relaxing enforcement of title 42.

Mr. Speaker, 2 million aliens have been released into the interior of the United States, and 1.5 million, probably 1.7 million, maybe 2 million now, got-aways have successfully evaded border agents, by relatively conservative accounting.

Most concerning right now is the data we have shows that 125 individuals from the terrorist watch list have been encountered this fiscal year alone, and that compares to about 98 in all of last fiscal year and about 10 in the last year of the Trump administration.

The fact is, the people I represent are sick and tired of a Federal Government that is abdicating its fundamental duty to defend the border of the United States. That is what is happening.

The Federal Government exists primarily, borderline entirely, but certainly primarily, to defend the United States. That is why it exists. It is failing to do so not through maladministration, not through incompetence, but through dereliction of duty and a refusal to actually follow the laws of the United States.

The laws of the United States are there, expressly and specifically laid out, to ensure that our border will be protected, that our Nation will be secure. That is the fundamental question before us. When the executive branch fails to follow the law, when the executive branch fails to adhere to its duty to defend the Constitution and the laws of the United States, then what is it that the Congress, the people's House, is supposed to do in response?

The Founders gave us a mechanism. Here today, we are talking about putting forward and referring these articles to the Homeland Security Committee for determination of the extent to which the homeland is, in fact, not secure as a direct consequence of the refusal of the administration, well beyond maladministration but very specifically the refusal to follow the laws of the United States that is resulting in the direct consequence of the death and damage to the American people.

That is the truth. That is what we are experiencing. That is what we are experiencing in real time in Texas. My colleagues in Arizona, my colleagues throughout this entire country, are experiencing that in real time.

Just a few weeks ago, a Federal judge in the Northern District of Texas, Judge Reed O'Connor, issued an opinion, an order, and in it, he lays out: ``Defendants, illegal aliens, pleaded guilty to conspiracy to transport and harbor illegal aliens. The sentencing information shows that on behalf of the Juarez cartel, defendants participated in an alien smuggling conspiracy. . . . The smuggling organization charged $10,000 to smuggle an adult illegal alien into the United States and between $12,000 to $14,000 to smuggle a child illegal alien.''

It goes on to lay out how they discovered that there was an illegal alien in Baltimore who was being held for ransom so that his family wouldn't be abused by the Juarez cartel in a stash house in Fort Worth.

The members told the husband that they would do things to his daughter he would not like if he did not make this payment of $23,000, which he had not bargained for.

This is the state of affairs in our country. This is the consequence to those migrants who are seeking to come here, when my colleagues in the false name of compassion state that open borders are somehow good for them. This is causing crime to extend into our communities. This is causing us to experience the dangerous hand of cartels.

Just this morning, we had more news about cartels and their reach into Texas, into the United States. It is an everyday occurrence: bailouts, damage to ranches, harm to Texans, death to Texans, fentanyl. How many more fentanyl moms, how many more angel moms, how many more Americans need suffer because this President refuses to follow the laws of the United States that he raised his hand and swore an oath to defend?

That is why we are here, and that is why I support the resolution.

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

Mr. Speaker, I just note that this morning Texas DPS troopers arrested a Gulf cartel operative in the Rio Grande Valley smuggling people across the river. After having been paid thousands of dollars, they were moving five illegal immigrants into the United States.

This is somebody that had been affiliated with a dangerous cartel. It is happening every day in the State of Texas because this administration refuses to do its job.

Mr. Speaker, I yield 6 minutes to the gentlewoman from Colorado (Mrs. Boebert).

Mr. Speaker, I am moved by the references to solemnity after the chanting on the floor of the House yesterday for 5 minutes disrupting the Speaker of the House from carrying out his duties. I find it extremely moving.

I am also moved by the references to how we have not passed legislation, despite the fact that we passed H.R. 2, the most impactful border security legislation that has been moved off the floor of the House, without a single Democrat vote because they are ignoring what the administration is doing to the State of Texas, to migrants, and to the security of our country.

I am moved by the concerns for climate change which I am sure will assuage the angel moms and the fentanyl moms who have lost loved ones and the 72,000 Americans dead from fentanyl because my colleagues on the other side of the aisle and the President of the United States refuse to secure the border.

Mr. Speaker, I yield 2 minutes to the gentleman from Arizona (Mr. Crane).

Mr. Speaker, I yield an additional 15 seconds to the gentleman from Arizona.

Mr. Speaker, I yield 2 minutes to the gentleman from Florida (Mr. Donalds).

Mr. Speaker, I yield 2 minutes to the gentleman from Virginia (Mr. Good), my good friend.

Mr. Speaker, I yield 2 minutes to the gentleman from Arizona (Mr. Biggs), my good friend.

Mr. Speaker, I yield 2 minutes to the gentleman from South Carolina (Mr. Norman), my good friend.

Mr. Speaker, I yield 2 minutes to the gentleman from Tennessee (Mr. Ogles), my good friend.

Mr. Speaker, I yield 2 minutes to the gentleman from Florida (Mr. Mills), my friend and an Army veteran.

Mr. Speaker, I rise today in support of my impeachment bill that will hold Joe Biden accountable for the dereliction of one of his most basic duties and allowing an invasion to take place across our southern border that has compromised the safety and security of the American people.

With the passage of House Resolution 529 today, the House is taking historic action. For the first time in 24 years, a House Republican-led majority is moving forward with impeachment proceedings against a current President.

This bill allows impeachment proceedings to proceed through the traditional institutional channels by building a body of evidence at the committee level through the Committees on Homeland Security and the Judiciary. They will report out impeachment based on the evidence, and then the House adopting a resolution, so that when a trial occurs in the Senate there is an existing evidentiary record to rely upon when holding President Joe Biden accountable.

Since his first day in office, President Biden has trampled on the Constitution through his dereliction of duty under Article II to take care that the laws be faithfully executed.

Instead of enforcing our immigration laws, he has lawlessly ignored them and released more than 2 million illegal aliens into the interior of the United States without any enforcement mechanism to ensure that they appear in immigration court.

His actions and open borders agenda demonstrate that he has no intention of enforcing our current immigration and border security statutes on the books. Rather, he is deliberately making a mockery of the rule of law. By ignoring congressionally enacted statutes, Joe Biden is threatening our constitutional Republic's sacred separation of powers.

The National Border Patrol Union even noted that the leadership of the Biden administration are ``straight up liars.'' They even said, ``We'd say they should be ashamed, but that implies they have a conscience.'' This is the most corrupt administration in U.S. history.

Joe Biden's lawless disregard for our Federal laws have incentivized more than 5.5 million illegal aliens to attempt to cross the border, overwhelming Border Patrol, and allowing an invasion to take place that is causing real harm to the American people.

The Biden border crisis and massive wave of illegal immigration has fueled a record-breaking fentanyl crisis. Since President Biden has taken office, over 100,000 Americans have died from fentanyl, including 1,800 Coloradans.

Under his failed leadership, Border Patrol agents have encountered over 42,000 pounds of fentanyl at the southern border. That is just what they have encountered. In addition to smuggling fentanyl, the National Border Patrol Union has noted that ``the billions of dollars that Biden's policies make for them'' support a criminal enterprise of ``rape, murder, torture, child sex trafficking, and kidnapping.''

That is enough fentanyl to kill every American 28 times over. Innocent children are dying from fentanyl overdoses, and the devastation this deadly drug is causing to families and communities cannot be overstated.

President Biden's decision to cede operational control of the southern border to criminal cartels has endangered our national security. In just the first few months of fiscal year 2023, Border Patrol has already caught 125 people on the terrorist watch list trying to sneak into our country.

President Biden's lawlessness is threatening the very fabric of our constitutional system. Under the Founder's carefully crafted plan, Congress has the legislative power to pass the laws, and the President has the executive power to enforce the laws. The President does not have the power to arbitrarily overturn laws or to refuse to enforce the ones he philosophically opposes.

Rather, he is under a strict duty to take care that the laws of the United States are enforced. If a law is to be modified or overturned, only Congress has such power, not a rogue President taking unconstitutional, unilateral action.

By nullifying our immigration and border security laws through a systematic lack of enforcement, President Biden has not only threatened the lives of countless Americans with his fentanyl crisis and increased crime, he has threatened the very foundation of our separation of powers.

When a President tramples on the Constitution and ignores the laws on the books, it is Congress' solemn duty to restore our constitutional balance through articles of impeachment. Congress' power of impeachment was meant as the ultimate check and balance on the President.

The Founders hardwired this important accountability mechanism into our Constitution for such a time as this. To stand with the forgotten men and women across America who are suffering from Biden's record- breaking fentanyl crisis, to take action to secure the border, and to protect our constitutional separation of powers every Member should vote to hold President Joe Biden accountable.

Mr. Speaker, I am prepared to close, and I reserve the balance of my time.

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

We are here today not actually talking about the botched exit from Afghanistan that my friend from Florida rightly raises as a massive criticism of this administration, nor the Biden crime family syndicate that we are now dealing with with the son of the President of the United States. Nor are we dealing with the weaponization of government against the American people, including Scott Smith in Loudoun County for daring to stand up in defense of his daughter. Nor are we talking about energy production getting killed, leaving people stranded with high inflation and the inability to afford energy and unable to carry out their lives and prosper.

We are here talking about the border.

We are here talking about a dereliction of duty.

We are here talking about the violation of the fundamental first principle of the executive branch of the Federal Government of the United States led by the President to actually secure and defend the United States of America.

``All obstructions to the execution of the laws, all combinations and associations, under whatever plausible character, with the real design to direct, control, counteract, or awe the regular deliberation and action of the constituted authorities, are destructive of this fundamental principle and of fatal tendency.''--Washington's Farewell Address.

``Energy in the executive is . . . essential to the protection of the community against foreign attacks; it is not less essential to the steady administration of the laws; to the protection of property against those irregular and high-handed combinations which sometimes interrupt the ordinary course of justice.''--Hamilton, Federalist No. 70.

``Let every American, every lover of liberty, every well-wisher to his posterity, swear by the blood of the Revolution, never to violate in the least particular, the laws of the country; and never to tolerate their violation by others.''--Lincoln, Lyceum Address, 1838.

We are here precisely because the Constitution contemplated separation of powers, which is being violated every single day by an executive branch undeterred.

Our job in the House of Representatives is, in fact, to deter the overreach and abuse of authority by the President of the United States refusing to carry out the laws of the United States in detriment to the well-being, security, and lives of the people of this country.

That is our job in the House of Representatives. That is why we are here. That is why I support this rule. That is why I support this resolution. That is why I support this inquiry. We are just beginning.

Mr. Speaker, I yield back the balance of my time, and I move the previous question on the resolution.

Mr. Speaker, I cannot overstate the solemnness and sadness that I feel right now.

To see the House so debased by the invocation of our most grave constitutional duty--impeachment of a President--should disturb every patriotic American.

Just 49 years ago, Barbara Jordan, the great gentlewoman from Texas, invoked the solemnity with which any serious Member of Congress must approach our duties, and particularly the circumstances under which we should consider impeachment.

That solemnity has guided the majority in this House in recent years as we have tried to navigate an extraordinarily tumultuous time in service to our Nation and our constituents--a time in which we have seen a rogue former President run roughshod over the guardrails of democracy and decency, compromising our national security and disparaging the courts, the free press, law enforcement, Congress, and anyone who would try to hold him accountable.

During that time, we impeached former President Trump twice, but we did so based upon a careful and close study of law, history, our Constitution, and rigorous factfinding, as well as consideration of the impact upon our country. We prayed. We prayed for guidance to discharge our duties to our country, our constituents, and our Constitution with fidelity.

Today, as we confront this deeply unserious effort to impeach a President to serve partisan political posturing and political profiteering, I have to return to the words of Barbara Jordan.

She cautioned: ``Common sense would be revolted if we engaged upon this process for petty reasons. Congress has a lot to do: appropriations, tax reform, health insurance, campaign finance reform, housing, environmental protection, energy sufficiency, and mass transportation. Pettiness cannot be allowed to stand in the face of such overwhelming problems.''

Jordan's words could not ring more true today. Common sense is revolted by the political grandstanding and petty stunts allowed by the House majority. Days on end are wasted catering to the whims of an extremist minority.

We are marking 6 months of one of the least productive Congresses in history. Under the control of this MAGA majority, we have made no progress in addressing the most pressing issues facing America, whether gun violence, hunger, opioid abuse, housing, immigration, health costs, tax reform, or the environment.

So I must oppose both this rule and the resolution, because in the words of Congresswoman Jordan: ``My faith in the Constitution is whole; it is complete; it is total. And I am not going to sit here and be an idle spectator to the diminution, the subversion, the destruction, of the Constitution.''