Taxpayer Data Protection Act

Mr. Speaker, I thank the gentlewoman from Minnesota for yielding me the customary 30 minutes.

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

As the gentlewoman pointed out, this rule would bring H.R. 77, the Midnight Rules Relief Act, to the floor for debate and consideration.

The underlying bill is a bad bill. It was a bad bill back when we considered it in December, and it is still a bad bill now. This is a bad bill that is all about Republicans gutting protections that ensure the safety, health, and well-being of each and every American. It is a blatant power grab that was ripped right out of the pages of Project 2025.

Why would Republicans want the ability to roll back protections en masse with very little debate and in a way that could threaten the lives and livelihoods of regular people? Why would they want to do that? I will tell you why, Mr. Speaker. The answer is simple. It is so they can deliver big for their billionaire donors and special-interest friends, and it is so they can make it easier for greedy corporations and Wall Street CEOs to make a few extra bucks while they screw the rest of us.

Billionaires don't want workplace protections. They don't want rules that keep them from dumping toxic chemicals into our food, water, or air. They don't want restrictions on their corporate greed. Why would they? That digs into their bottom lines, and Republicans are happy to give the billionaires exactly what they want.

We have seen it in every policy coming out of the Trump White House. We have seen it in almost every bill that this majority brings to the floor.

They don't want to talk about that here on the floor, but, Mr. Speaker, Democrats are going to talk about it. We are going to expose it. We are going to highlight all the ways they are trying to steal from the American people so they can give more handouts to those at the top.

The American people deserve to know the truth about what is really happening here, and I am going to use my time on the floor today to continue to expose it all on behalf of House Democrats.

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

Mr. Speaker, I yield myself such time as I may consume. I want to inform the gentlewoman of the fact, which I hope that she knows, that the CRAs are already the law. We already have this authority to go after regulations that this body doesn't like. Multiple CRAs have been introduced by Republicans in this Congress, and to the best of my knowledge, not a single committee has held a hearing or a markup on any of them, not one. Not a single one has been brought to the floor for a vote or debate. What Democrats object to is Republicans bringing

en masse all these different things that they don't like, limiting debate so that we can't talk about them individually, and just shoving them down the throats of the American people. Whatever happened to single-issue bills that you all said you wanted?

This doesn't even require you bringing CRAs to the floor that are under the jurisdiction of one committee. It could be multiple committees.

You say you needed some emergency authority. You have the authority. What you don't want to do is you don't want to go through the debate. You don't want the American people to know what you are doing. You don't want them to know that you are going after things that ensure their safety and their well-being. I think that is shameful.

Mr. Speaker, I will say one thing here: I get why Republicans are so anxious to get more tax breaks for billionaires. I now get it, and I will urge the American people to follow the money. Follow the money, and you will understand why politicians are beholden to billionaires, why they want to do things like what we are talking about here today on the floor.

To anyone watching this debate who actually thinks that Elon Musk cares about them, all I can say is that it takes an extraordinary amount of self-delusion to believe that billionaires like Elon Musk are fighting for working-class people. I don't even blame Elon. He is just doing what greedy billionaires do. I do blame the Republicans here in the Congress who are letting him add to his billions by stealing from the American people.

Just this week, Trump and Elon started to dismantle the CFPB. Do you know what CFPB stands for, Mr. Speaker? The Consumer Financial Protection Bureau.

They messed up now because they are now showing their hand. It was never about waste, fraud, or abuse. It is about enriching themselves.

This is not just some random government agency that has no purpose. This is an agency designed to protect American consumers from unfair, deceptive, and abusive corporate practices.

Why would they want to do that? Why would Elon want to gut the CFPB? I did my homework and found out that Musk recently announced a partnership with Visa to enable payments on his social media platform, X. That means it would be subject to, you guessed it, CFPB oversight. Once Elon realized that, he wasted no time in declaring, in his own words, that the CFPB would soon ``RIP,'' rest in peace.

As if on cue, Trump listened to his boss, and he froze the CFPB's critical work. Nearly 2,000 employees were ordered to stay home and sit on their hands.

Mr. Speaker, the CFPB has been on the front lines of unrigging our economy, handling over 5 million consumer complaints, refunding $20 billion to the American people, and imposing over $4 billion in penalties on Wall Street for breaking the law.

This is not about waste or fraud or abuse. Every dollar spent on the CFPB returns twice as much to the American people. So then what is it about, Mr. Speaker? What is it about? It is about greed. It is about billionaire greed. They are shutting down the agency that stops billionaires from ripping off people. It is that simple. It is that simple.

Beyond that, Republicans will use this bill, the so-called midnight rules bill, to make it easier for banks to charge predatory fees that will adversely impact the people we represent.

Democrats support the CFPB, which protects people from these predatory big bank fees. Republicans, the big banks write their damn checks.

CFPB passed rules that stopped banks from charging predatory overdraft fees, passed rules that reduced expensive credit card fees, and passed rules to limit medical debt from credit card reports. Plain and simple, Mr. Speaker, the CFPB stands up to corporate greed, and that is exactly why Republicans, who are beholden to billionaires like Elon Musk, want to freeze it, want to gut it, and want to ultimately destroy it.

No one wants to talk about that on the other side of the aisle, but I must remind my colleagues the people of this country elected us to represent them, not to give billionaires and corporate profiteers free rein to rob working families blind.

Mr. Speaker, I ask unanimous consent to include in the Record an article from Reuters titled: ``Fed's Powell: No agency other than CFPB tasked with consumer protection enforcement.''

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

Mr. Speaker, first of all, the gentleman has it all wrong. The gentleman said that we don't want to come down here and debate all of these one at a time.

Yes, we do. Yes, we do.

What we don't want Republicans to do is to pack 1,400 regulations into one bill where there is no debate and nobody knows what the hell they are voting on and the American people don't know the harm that my colleagues are about to do to them.

Mr. Speaker, with all the urgency that I hear expressed on the other side about all these regulations, a number of CRAs have been introduced, and not a single committee has held a hearing on any of them. There hasn't been a single markup, nothing.

Republicans have had a month. What the hell are my Republican colleagues doing? This is not a busy week. We haven't had any busy weeks. This is a very light legislative schedule. It is incredible how light it is. It is not like we don't have the time.

Mr. Speaker, the gentleman doesn't want to talk about the fact that Trump and Elon, as we are speaking, are literally shutting the government down agency by agency and department by department.

I get that Republicans don't want to talk about that, but that is what is happening right now. The agencies and departments that are set up to work for the American people are being shut down. People are being told to stay home. It is illegal, and courts are now stepping up to the plate.

Mr. Speaker, the gentlewoman from Minnesota (Mrs. Fischbach)--oh, my goodness, I don't even know where to begin--says that the American people voted for this.

No. The American people didn't vote for higher bank fees. They didn't vote to have banks rip them off. Maybe they did in Minnesota, but nowhere else in the country do I think the American people voted for that.

Mr. Speaker, I urge my Republican friends to do their job. We haven't even finished last year's appropriations bills. We are running up to a deadline in March on a continuing resolution to keep the government open for this year because my friends who were in charge can't seem to kind of get their act together.

Mr. Speaker, if we defeat the previous question, I will offer an amendment to the rule to bring up H.R. 1101, the Taxpayer Data Protection Act.

In a matter of days after Donald Trump became President, Elon Musk and his DOGE minions gained full access to our government's central payment system at the Treasury Department.

For those watching at home, that is their data. It is their tax refunds, their Social Security benefits, veterans' benefits, and their bank account numbers. It is disturbing and alarming to hear House Republicans talk about unelected bureaucrats and the power that they wield.

That is Elon Musk. The people's data is in the hands of an unelected billionaire whose only actions thus far have served to help make him and his billionaire friends richer.

I don't even know what clearances these people have. Thank goodness a Federal judge, just days ago, blocked Musk's access to this data. Yet, Republicans and Musk are not stopping. This stuff can't be made up. Just this morning, Republican Representative Eli Crane from Arizona says that he is going to impeach the judge who blocked Musk. Really?

That is why we must consider the Taxpayer Data Protection Act and ensure that our Nation's payment systems and the people's data are protected.

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 2 minutes to the gentlewoman from Michigan (Ms. Stevens), the sponsor of this legislation, to discuss our proposal.

Mr. Speaker, I yield an additional 1 minute to the gentlewoman from Michigan.

Mr. Speaker, I yield myself such time as I may consume. I really understand why my Republican colleagues don't want to talk about what is going on in this country. I really do get it.

They want to change the subject. If I were them, I wouldn't want to talk about their lousy and unpopular agenda either. Nor would I want to talk about the fact that they are robbing these incredibly effective programs that help the American people to basically pay for a tax cut that is going to end up resulting in a multitrillion-dollar debt. I get that they don't want to talk about that.

They want to eliminate programs to help working families in this country. They are defying court orders to choke off money for, get this, cancer research. They are trying to choke off money for consumer protection. I just came from an Agriculture Committee hearing. They are trying to choke off money for our farmers, for rural America. They go on and on about waste, fraud, and abuse, but they don't want to talk about how their MAGA buddy, Pete Hegseth, Trump's Secretary of Defense, wants to dip into taxpayer money like it is his own personal slush fund.

They don't want to go there, do they? Again, you can't make this up, but this guy wants to spend $50,000 on an emergency paint job for his government housing. Mr. Speaker, $50,000. This is an emergency.

I wouldn't want to talk about that either if I were them. I wouldn't want to talk about that either if I were them, Mr. Speaker, but I have two words for Pete Hegseth: Home Depot. I can narrow it down to one word: Lowe's. You get paint at a much cheaper rate than $50,000 to repaint your government housing. It is ridiculous, and that is perfectly fine with my Republican friends. It is perfectly fine.

I can only assume that it is luxury paint for that price tag. Maybe my colleagues can correct me. Meanwhile, they have the gall to come down here and lecture us about government efficiency and waste? It takes my breath away.

Mr. Speaker, I ask for unanimous consent to insert into the Record an article from military.com titled: ``Hegseth Wants $50,000 for `Emergency' Paint Job to Move into Military Family Housing, Lawmakers Say.''

Mr. Speaker, this is the kind of corruption and waste and fraud that people deserve to know about, the kind that Republicans want to keep hidden from the American people during our debate today.

Well, guess what? I want to expose it.

Democrats are demanding answers because we think everyone deserves to know why this administration wants to spend 50 grand on paint for their fancy new houses while many of our troops live in housing with black mold and lead paint and can't pay the bills or make ends meet. That ought to be the priority, not a $50,000 paint job for the new Secretary of Defense. It is the same scam every single time. They do not care about efficiency or cost; they care about themselves.

This is about tax breaks for billionaires, giveaways for their friends, and making sure the rich and powerful never have to sacrifice a damn thing. These people don't buy their own groceries or pump their own gas. These are FOX News nepo babies that are fine with government waste as long as they are the ones doing it.

I am just so tired of this, Mr. Speaker. They are stealing from the American people. They do not care. They want to spend taxpayer money on luxury paint jobs for their fancy new houses while they screw over the rest of us, and Democrats are not going to put up with this BS.

This administration is corrupt, and we will call it out over and over and over and over again.

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

Mr. Speaker, I yield myself such time as I may consume. I am not prepared to close yet.

Mr. Speaker, again, we are here during a rule debate talking about this majority's agenda for Congress, and it is funny because Republicans have a razor-thin majority. They have no mandate.

A mandate is like you won by 20 or 30 or 40 seats. Republicans lost seats in the last election. Republicans have the smallest majority in nearly 100 years, and so Republicans need every single vote to pass crummy partisan bills like this one. They can't afford to have any of their Members miss a vote.

Mr. Speaker, when Democrats were in charge, when I was the chairman of the Rules Committee, we actually put in place proxy voting in response to a worldwide pandemic. Anyone could cast their vote remotely if they had an excused absence. Mr. Speaker, because it is 2025 and not 1725, and we actually can use technology to vote remotely.

The backlash we got from Republicans on this was insane. They went out to the press and said that proxy voting was illegal. It is unconstitutional. It is this. It is that. Then, guess what? They did it themselves.

Speaker Johnson voted remotely 39 times. Let me repeat that: Speaker Johnson voted remotely 39 times. He voted remotely so he could go home early. He voted remotely so he could visit school kids. He voted remotely for an entire week once. He just didn't show up.

Then, despite him voting remotely dozens of times previously, when Johnson became Speaker, he ended remote voting because he said it was ``unconstitutional.'' Yet, he voted remotely 39 times.

Imagine my surprise, Mr. Speaker--it totally blew my mind this week-- when I see that Representative Byron Donalds somehow voted, and he wasn't even here in this building.

Parliamentary Inquiries

Mr. Speaker, I have a parliamentary inquiry.

Mr. Speaker, are Members allowed under House rules to vote by proxy?

Further parliamentary inquiry, Mr. Speaker.

Mr. Speaker, are Members allowed to vote by proxy if they have a TV appearance in California that they really want to go to?

Mr. Speaker, this is really interesting now because last week Congressman Byron Donalds was at HBO studios in California, not on the House floor, but somehow news reports say he also voted here on the House floor at the same time.

This is so interesting, Mr. Speaker, because I have a tweet here from 2 years ago when Representative Donalds says: ``Today, House Republicans will vote to END proxy voting once and for all. The House of Representatives isn't a tech company. Its Members should work IN PERSON in the people's House.''

Yet, he voted by proxy after he voted to end proxy voting, and this is the kind of hypocrisy that appears to be a specialty with my Republican colleagues.

Mr. Speaker, further parliamentary inquiry.

Mr. Speaker, let's say a Member of Congress has a baby or they are undergoing treatment for chemotherapy or a close family member dies, is there a provision in the rules for them to vote remotely?

Mr. Speaker, this is not hypothetical, and I kind of get what is going on here, but we have a colleague, Representative Pettersen, who is currently home because she just gave birth. She can't vote because this majority has refused to put in place a bipartisan tool to allow it.

Meanwhile, Republicans are out here breaking the rules while they jet off to Hollywood.

Clearly, the rules apply and are held so sacrosanct by the majority that they can't be changed for new moms, but somehow they can be changed for interviews in Los Angeles.

Let it apply to thee and not me.

Mr. Speaker, further parliamentary inquiry.

Mr. Speaker, were Representative Donalds' votes recorded as if he cast them properly or has his absence been recorded?

Mr. Speaker, if I understand that correctly, they were recorded, even though he wasn't here in person?

Mr. Speaker, I have, and his vote was recorded, even though he wasn't here.

Let's just call this what it is: It is voter fraud under the rules that the Republicans have put into place.

Let's not even get started about who used Donalds' card to vote for him. They are fraudulently casting votes on the House floor to make sure they win every time whether or not they have enough Members here, but apparently voter fraud is okay if they do it. This is unbelievable.

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

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

Mr. Speaker, we have covered an awful lot today. We discussed how Trump, Elon, and their DOGE minions are trying to take down the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, an agency that has delivered more than $20 billion, that is $20 billion with a b back to consumers because Elon doesn't want his business to be regulated.

We talked about how former FOX News personality turned Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth wants to spend $50,000 in taxpayer money on a high-end house paint job all while Republicans cry about government waste.

We exposed how some Republicans are committing the equivalent of voter fraud in the United States Congress, and, yet, they still refuse to let new parents be able to vote remotely.

I have a name for all of it, Mr. Speaker: Corruption. Rule for thee, but not for me. It is hypocrisy.

Mr. Speaker, is there a single thing any of them, Trump, Elon, or any of the people on the other side have done or are doing to help regular people? Can they name a single thing?

They promised they would lower grocery prices. Egg prices are through the roof.

They promised $1 a gallon gas. Gas prices are going up since Trump took office.

Don't forget, they promised to end wars. Trump is now talking about sending U.S. troops to Gaza so that Jared Kushner can build a Middle East Mar-a-Lago.

Did people really vote to send their sons and daughters to be deployed in the tunnels of Gaza?

They promised America first, and they want to put tariffs on Canada and Mexico that Americans would have to pay for. They backed down when the markets started failing, and they got nothing to show for it.

Not a single thing has been done for the American people, just broken promises after broken promises after broken promises.

Republicans have a three-vote majority. They do not have a mandate. They need to work with Democrats to get anything done, anything of consequence that is, but, instead, they are too busy handing out favors to billionaires and putting themselves first, all at the expense of the very people who sent them here.

They want a government that only serves the ultrarich. We want a government that puts people first. I came to Congress to help people, not to hurt people.

You are not helping people when you are dismantling important agencies and bureaus that actually are there to protect the health and well-being of the American people. You are not helping the American people when you try to cut money from NIH to do cancer research. You are not helping people when you try to gut consumer protection organizations that are all about making sure that big corporations don't trample over regular people and take away their rights or overcharge them.

For the life of me, I don't understand the silence on the other side of the aisle. We have been in a new Congress now for over a month, and, again, nothing has been brought to the floor to help improve the quality of life for regular people. Not a thing has been done.

I don't know how my friends go home and face their constituents and answer the question: What did you do this week? We did nothing; nothing for you.

We did a lot of body blocking to help people like Elon Musk and other very well-off and well-placed people enrich themselves, but we did nothing for you, the American people. That is not what we should be focused on.

The underlying bill that this rule is about here today is just another in a string of pieces of legislation that are being brought to the floor that are about trying to pull a fast one here, to basically repeal all these consumer protections, all these things that are designed to help the American people, all at once so that nobody knows what is in them.

They can bring a bill that repeals a thousand regulations all at once, and we have no debate. That is not the way this place is supposed to work.

Mr. Speaker, I urge my colleagues to vote ``no'' on this rule and vote ``no'' on the underlying legislation. I urge my colleagues on the Republican side to start putting the people of this country first.

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

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

Mr. Speaker, Haley Stevens and I introduced the Taxpayer Data Protection Act last week. This is a very simple but, tragically, an urgently necessary bill to address the hack of the U.S. Treasury payment system by Elon Musk and his band of IT goons last week.

This bill would limit the Secretary of the Treasury's ability to give access to the payment system only to people who: A, have a top secret security clearance; B, have no conflicts of interest; C, are not special government employees; and, D, have been Federal employees for at least a year.

Why is this necessary?

What happened last week comprised one of the most significant breaches of privacy and threats to our national security, perhaps ever. I am not exaggerating.

This was done with the consent of Treasury Secretary Bessent. This point is important because some of my colleagues across the aisle have suggested that somehow what they are doing is just normal diligence.

This is decidedly abnormal. It is so abnormal, in fact, that, when David Lebryk, the Fiscal Assistant Secretary of the Treasury and former Acting Secretary of the Treasury, refused to grant access to Elon Musk, Secretary Bessent fired Mr. Lebryk so that Musk could force his way in.

Let's understand the scope of what happened. The Treasury Department manages a $5 trillion-a-year Federal payment system. This is the way that every branch of government pays their bills. Like any accounting system, it is critical that all of the bills it pays are approved, legal, and accurately recorded in our ledger.

This is how we make payments on savings bonds and other debt borrowed by the United States. It is how we pay employees. It is how we pay contractors. It is how we provide foreign aid. It is how we pay tax refunds, veterans' benefits, and Social Security reimbursements. It is how we distribute money to our intelligence agents and to intelligence assets who are embedded in hostile foreign governments. Take control of this system, and one can, quite literally, destroy the United States. To put it mildly, it is a target for our adversaries.

Yet, last week, unvetted, unelected, and unconfirmed individuals hacked into that system using insecure software and hardware.

Did they tamper with the code?

Did they manipulate payment systems to prioritize payments to companies controlled by Mr. Musk?

Did they inadvertently use hardware that had been infiltrated by our allies?

Did they take classified information with them on the way out that could make them a security liability?

As we sit here right now, we don't know the answers to any of those questions. All we have is denials from the hackers.

Mr. Speaker, on what basis should we trust them?

After all, they forced their way into the system with the full consent of someone who lied to his wife and was convicted of 34 counts of fraud for lying to financial and election regulators. As the saying goes: Fool me once, shame on you. Fool me every single time, shame on me.

I would suggest that we should instead trust what this individual said when he was on the campaign trail, when he promised to enact revenge on his political enemies.

Trump and Musk now have information that they could use to identify individual taxpayers who, I don't know, contributed to a charity that they oppose for selective retribution.

If they got control of the stop payment controls, they could now block congressionally mandated payments for healthcare, roads, and bridges; or to Governors or attorneys general who are currently suing to block their unconstitutional actions in the courts.

With the personal information that they have hacked into, they could go after judges who have forced them to pay hundreds of millions of dollars in penalties after being convicted in jury trials of fraud and defamation, and they could go after companies who compete with one of their many private entities.

As long as those risks remain, we have to assume that this is going to make every single American less likely to trust that they can provide their personal information to the United States Government.

To put it bluntly, what they did last week compromised the full faith and credit of the United States. If the President and Elon Musk were acting under the direction of a hostile foreign government, this is exactly what they would do.

Mr. Speaker, I am not saying that they are. I don't know. What I am saying is that, if their actions serve only to weaken the United States, that is at the benefit of Russia, China, Iran, and all of the other countries that my colleagues across the aisle claim to love less than the United States.

A functioning Congress would provide oversight. A functioning Congress would be subpoenaing witnesses and demanding public testimony. A functioning Congress would be treating this like the five-alarm fire that every American understands that it is.

Yet, here we find ourselves knowing only that the Republican leadership is completely unwilling to fulfill their oath to defend our country against all enemies, foreign and domestic, and unwilling to protect the prerogatives of the House.

Mr. Speaker, I hope that I am wrong, but my fear is they are a lost cause, which brings us to my bill with Congresswoman Stevens.

I know that there are Republicans in this body who love our country. There are Republicans in this body who I truly love and enjoy their company, and I know that they have told me privately that they are offended and ashamed by what Donald Trump is doing to it. Some of the Republicans have even called it out.

All it takes now is for three of my colleagues across the aisle to stand up to ensure that these last 22 days are an anomaly in our history rather than the beginning of its end.

For any Republicans watching who are, shall we say, democracy curious in this moment, who privately acknowledge that this has gone too far but worry about the political and, worse, personal threats that will surely come if Republicans stand up to Donald Trump, I leave my colleagues with the empathy and the wisdom of Thomas Paine:

These are the times that try men's souls. Many will, in

this crisis, shrink from the service of their country, but he

that stands by it now deserves the love and thanks of

men and women. Tyranny, like hell, is not easily conquered.

Yet, we have this consolation with us, that the harder the

conflict, the more glorious the triumph. What we obtain too

cheap, we esteem too lightly. It is dearness only that gives

everything its value.

To my Republican colleagues: The times have found us, and America needs them.

Mr. Speaker, I yield to the Congresswoman from Michigan, Haley Stevens, my esteemed colleague and author of this bill.

Mr. Speaker, I yield to the gentlewoman from New Mexico (Ms. Stansbury).

Mr. Speaker, I yield to the gentlewoman from Wisconsin (Ms. Moore).

The first thing we do is make sure that unless you have a security clearance, a top-secret security clearance, you cannot access those records.

The second thing it does is, if you have not been a Federal Government employee for at least a year, you cannot access those records. You cannot access those records if you are a special government employee because, let's remember, we have to have oversight over the people who are doing this.

People need to disclose what their conflicts of interests are, which brings us to the fourth piece. You cannot access those records if you have a conflict of interest.

Let's just say, hypothetically, you were running a satellite company that had large contracts with the United States and were also doing business in China and you might have reason to gain that system, that would be a conflict of interest.

No.

Mr. Speaker, I thank the gentlewoman from Wisconsin (Ms. Moore) for her remarks.

Mr. Speaker, I yield to the gentleman from Texas (Mr. Turner).

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

Mr. Speaker, Joseph Stalin said that one death is a tragedy and a million deaths is a statistic. When we talk about constitutional crises and hacks into $5 trillion systems, that risks sounding like a statistic.

I want to share just a couple of stories from my district--I represent, like all of us, \1/435\th of the population--to understand the real-life consequences that are happening now, first because of what Elon Musk and Donald Trump have done and second because of the failure of this body to fulfill its oversight role.

When these announcements came through, one of the first calls I got was from a local homeless shelter. They had been almost immediately locked out of their HUD portal. They were unable to receive any more payments. That means that 200 people in my community who thought they had housing for a cold night in the middle of January were at risk of being put back out on the street.

I got a call from a county health department that was wondering if they would be able to fulfill their WIC obligations. These are the payments to women, single women often, who have new children and are trying to make sure that they can get food. They didn't know what to tell these women, who relied on them for food and nutrition, about whether they would have the resources to keep their children alive.

The department of health and human services that called my office said that any pause of this legal, congressionally mandated funding could force them to shut down their employment and residential services offered to adults with intellectual and developmental disabilities.

What you do to the least of these, you do unto Me, right?

Four hundred people in my district and their families would have been shut out of that critical program.

I have heard from almost every single town in my district. Republican mayors, Democratic mayors, Federalists, Whigs, you name it, they are all calling and asking me whether the Federal Government will fulfill the obligations that they have underway for bridge repair, road repair, rail grade separations. They are wondering if they should continue those projects and potentially shift the risk onto their constituents.

What do they do if they don't have the borrowing capacity? If they have to shut down the project, can they finish it because it will probably raise the costs? This is all being done by a White House that claims to be pursuing financial efficiency.

At a local organization that provides victims of domestic and sexual violence with legal counseling, they have about 2,000 survivors they serve each year. They said that they are going to have to immediately scale back services and potentially close down entirely.

We are getting calls from people saying if a billionaire is so intent on cutting their access to Social Security, what happens to their health payments? I had a woman, who was a decent, kind, hardworking person, asking me if she should even bother paying her taxes this year because it is clear that Elon and Donald are dodging theirs and that they are defunding the enforcement agencies that would run an audit, and asking why she should even trust a Trump-led Treasury Department with that information.

These people are not limited to my district. They are not limited to people who voted for Kamala Harris. This hack affects every single one of us. Three patriotic Americans, Republicans, are all we need.

Mr. Speaker, I yield to the gentlewoman from Pennsylvania (Ms. Houlahan).

Mr. Speaker, I yield to the gentleman from New York (Mr. Kennedy).

Mr. Speaker, I yield to the gentleman from Colorado (Mr. Neguse), the assistant Democratic leader.

Mr. Speaker, some people have said that this bill is unnecessary because what is being done by the White House is simply going after waste, fraud, and abuse. I want to explain why that is actually the opposite of what they are doing.

First, we have to clarify that all of us in this body are the fiscal custodians of our Nation's wealth. To allow corruption or waste to persist is to squander the taxpayers' hard-earned money. We are all aligned on that issue.

Second, I would note that while we certainly have had our share of financial scandals and corruption over our history, they have almost always involved the illegal transfer of wealth from the government to the private sector--from patronage jobs to no-bid contracts to inflated hotel rates for Secret Service agents at the Trump hotel.

There is a pattern there. The easy proof of that is that while our Nation seems to have a lot of billionaires lately, you won't find them among our country's TSA workers, air traffic controllers, food inspectors, IRS agents, soldiers, intelligence officers, or the numerous other people who have dedicated their lives to public service, which makes sense.

Those of us in public service have chosen to live lives of elevated public scrutiny. A free press keeps tabs on us. Inspectors general and whistleblowers exist to ensure that grift and fraud are caught quickly.

If the Trump administration were genuinely concerned about waste, fraud, and abuse, what would they do that would be consistent with existing law? That is pretty easy. They would submit budget requests to Congress to increase funding to inspectors general and whistleblower protections. They would notify Congress of specific areas where they believe this abuse is happening, ask us to pass laws to close loopholes, and increase funding for enforcement. They would use their bully pulpit to strengthen the rule of law, remind everybody that there is a higher ethical standard to live to, and demonstrate by their behavior that they live by that standard and demand it of others.

That is the exact opposite of everything they have done. They have failed to submit budgets. They have ignored Congress' congressional power of the purse, putting spending decisions in the hands of economically connected oligarchs. They have fired or are threatening to fire inspectors general and whistleblower advocates, making it harder for ethical Federal employees to call out fraud when they see it.

They are firing FBI and other law enforcement officers who could prosecute those crimes, including ones who have active cases ongoing. They seem to have a specific bias, I would note, against FBI officers who are pursuing prosecuting waste, fraud, and abuse against the Trump family.

They are pardoning people who assaulted police officers and sending a message to the American people that ethics don't even matter. If you ignore the law, you can ignore the orders of

the court, according to JD Vance, because we are now living in a post- congressional era, according to OMB Director Russell Vought.

They are doing that while giving access to the Federal payment system to people who are not cleared and are massively conflicted. What they are doing is a case study in how to expand, perpetuate, and get away with waste, fraud, and abuse. A Congress that fulfilled its obligation to act as a check and balance on the executive branch would put a stop to that immediately.

Mr. Speaker, may I inquire as to the time remaining.

THE SPEAKER pro tempore. The gentleman from Illinois has 1 minute.

Mr. Speaker, I yield to the gentleman from California (Mr. Takano).

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

Mr. Speaker, by direction of the Committee on Rules, I call up House Resolution 122 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 have 5 legislative days to revise and extend their remarks.

Mr. Speaker, we are here today to debate the rule providing for consideration of H.R. 77.

The rule provides for H.R. 77 to be considered under a closed rule with 1 hour of debate, equally divided and controlled by the chair and the ranking minority member of the Judiciary Committee or their designees. The rule provides for a motion to recommit for the bill.

The Midnight Rules Relief Act addresses an inefficiency in the government and allows Congress to retain its current authority, overseeing administrative rulemaking without bogging down the legislative branch when we have so much work to get done.

In 1996, Congress enacted the Congressional Review Act, which requires agencies to submit rules to Congress and the Government Accountability Office before they can go into effect. This gives Congress an important legislative veto option over the agencies.

However, this legislation requires Congress to introduce separate joint resolutions for each agency rule it wants to disapprove. Members at the time had no idea how out of control the administrative state would become. Since the Congressional Review Act passed, agencies have issued around 2\1/2\ times more regulations during the last year of each President's term. Moreover, under the Biden-Harris administration, Federal agencies expanded their power at an alarming rate, undermining the legislative authority granted to Congress by the Constitution.

The Midnight Rules Relief Act empowers Congress to review and potentially disapprove several regulations that Federal agencies may attempt to implement in the last days of an administration by allowing Congress to disapprove multiple rules through one joint resolution if those rules were issued during the last 60 legislative days, the midnight hours, of a President's term. This would allow Congress to quickly regain control and oversee agency rulemaking during a time when there is consistently a huge increase in executive overreach.

I sincerely hope my colleagues on the other side of the aisle will support this bill. Just last week, we brought a bill to the floor that combats this country's fentanyl epidemic, something I know all of us care deeply about. Rather than debate the merits of the bill, my Democratic colleagues spent most of their time talking about what they believed has been executive overreach by President Trump. Comments were made that my colleagues are concerned that President Trump will try to do through executive order what he can't do through the legislative process.

Today, we present a bill that will help return authority to Congress and curb executive overreach. If my colleagues are truly concerned about executive overreach, then they should vote for this bill and start with the overreach that occurred in the final days of the last administration.

I thank Congressman Biggs for introducing this legislation, and I look forward to supporting this bill on the floor.

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

Mr. Speaker, all I can say is wow. There is a lot going on on the other side talking about this being a bad bill. This is a bill that will attempt to recover the Congress' ability and authority to overrule rules that are written in the last few days of a President's term. We should have that ability.

One of the things that we hear about when we are talking to our constituents is overregulation. Congress, the elected Representatives, needs to be able to deal with the overregulation and the rules, particularly in those last 60 days during an administration while they are on their way out the door and see it as a last-ditch effort. I see this as making sure we are responding to our constituents.

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

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

Mr. Speaker, I truly understand that the Democrats are very upset about losing the election, but the American people voted to change the direction of government.

They voted to end overregulation, voted to end growing government agencies and growing government in general, and they voted to end the growing deficit. They are done, and we need to move forward. We need to answer to the American people about what we are doing to make sure that we get these things under control.

I will also quickly address that it is incredible that my Democratic colleagues are trying to claim some moral high ground about single- subject bills. House Republicans have worked hard to bring single- subject appropriations bills to the floor and pass them individually.

When was the last time my Democratic colleagues did this?

Instead, my colleagues have passed massive omnibus spending bills when Democrats were in the majority, along with omnibus packages like the American Rescue Plan and the inflation expansion act. If Democrats would please spare us the false outrage at the idea of omnibus bills.

The truth is that this bill prevents the House from bundling CRAs with similar topics into smaller, single-subject packages.

There is also nothing that prevents the House from continuing to consider CRAs on a case-by-case basis, but we have to have the option. When an outgoing administration dumps rules in the last 60 days, we have to have that option to make sure that we are addressing issues.

I think our efforts toward single-subject bills demonstrate why Republicans can be trusted to use this tool responsibly, and I look forward to my Democratic colleagues abiding by their newfound commitment to single-subject bills the next time Democratic Members are in the majority.

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

Mr. Speaker, I yield such time as he may consume to the gentleman from Arizona.

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

Mr. Speaker, again, I understand that the Democrats are very upset about losing the election, and I am glad that my Democratic colleagues are showing the American people where their priorities are.

For 4 years, President Biden issued executive orders without the consent of Congress that increased inflation--we all saw that--created additional burdens for our small businesses--we heard about that--and limited consumer choices.

My Democratic colleagues said nothing, but when President Trump tries to stop our government from spending $20 million of taxpayers' hard- earned dollars to create a ``Sesame Street'' show in Iraq, or $2 million on transgender surgeries in Guatemala, then my Democratic colleagues howl and jump up and down about executive overreach.

The American people are sick and tired of being told that executive orders that put our Federal Government in the way of our businesses and our family budgets are responsible, but attempts like this bill to roll back these burdensome regulations are reckless.

The Democrats don't want government spending examined and don't want to address unnecessary programs. What my Democratic colleagues want to do is continue out-of-control spending, growing our deficit, and spending those taxpayer dollars--spending taxpayer dollars. These aren't our dollars.

We need to be responsible, and that is why they elected President Trump and Republicans. They want a change in the direction of this country.

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

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 to close.

I am just so glad that my colleague across the aisle pointed out that we have covered everything today but the bill under consideration in front of us. I should stand here kind of surprised that my colleagues on the left don't support this legislation, but of course I am not. Their lack of support proves what we already know: They don't actually care about executive overreach the way that they claim to.

Unlike the Democrats, Republicans are not changing the subject. We are focused on making sure we do the job the American people elected President Trump and the Republicans to do. It is the Democrats who are talking about paint and not talking about the bill in front of us. They are not talking about what we are doing.

I very often find myself trying to refocus the Democrats on the bill we have in front of us, which happens in many committees, but the Democrats insist on sticking to their talking points, their pro- regulation, pro-government spending agenda.

A great example today is the rant about proxy voting. This has nothing to do with the bill in front of us. It is a bill that deals with rule writing and the ability of Congress to undo rules and overregulation.

They stood silently while Joe Biden used the power of the pen to dismantle our southern border and tell Americans what kind of cars, dishwashers, and water heaters they had to have. All of this was done without a single vote by Congress, yet my Democratic colleagues never cried out about executive overreach then.

My Republican colleagues and I are committed to streamlining Federal operations and holding the government

accountable. This bill accomplishes both of those objectives, and this is the bill that we are here to talk about today. The 1996 CRA requires Congress to pass a separate joint resolution for each agency rule to seek its disapproval, slowing Congress' ability to hold the administrative state accountable and block burdensome regulations.

This legislation restores congressional control and allows us to review agency rules swiftly if they are implemented in the midnight hours of an outgoing administration. This is a simple, effective solution to improve and expedite the work of Congress and takes a step forward to curb out-of-control overregulation.

One could argue that none of the orders that the Biden-Harris White House implemented in the final days in office should go into effect, given the signal he received loud and clear in November that the American people do not want what the Democrats are selling. Perhaps that is a debate for another time. Today, we are here to streamline congressional practices at a time when we are consistently bogged down.

Mr. Speaker, I support the rule and the underlying legislation.

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

Mr. Speaker, this past weekend was Super Bowl weekend, and of course, I was in my district in Houston, Texas. I went back to get prepared to go to several events in reference to the Super Bowl. I thought the number one question that I was going to be asked was who I favor since the Houston Texans were defeated by Kansas City on their way to the Super Bowl.

However, all this week, Mr. Speaker, the question that kept coming back to me was: Congressman Turner, what is happening in D.C., and what is this about our personal information being in the hands of someone else?

From one event to the next, I was stopped and got these questions over and over again.

At the Super Bowl party, I guess you could say, again I thought people would be focused on Kansas City or Philadelphia, but when I arrived, people would come up to me and say: What is this that I am hearing about my personal information possibly being in the hands of someone else?

That is what I had to deal with this entire weekend. It is an issue that we simply cannot ignore, that someone--let's say, in this case, Elon Musk and his team of engineers--would go to the United States Treasury Department and literally take it over and have access to people's Social Security information, Medicare information, Medicaid information, taxpayer information, and the list goes on and on. This is a payment system that literally processes about $6 trillion on an annual basis.

When I came to this Congress as a new Member, that was not one of the issues that I thought I would be facing in the first month of being here in this 119th Congress, but it is an issue that I have had to deal with now over and over again.

Then, the next question that came to me, Mr. Speaker, was: All right, Congressman Turner, you are there, so what are you all doing to protect our information? What is the next step? What is Congress intending to do?

That was a difficult question to answer. What I did say to people is that many of us are not in agreement with what has taken place over the last few weeks. We did not approve someone coming in, taking over the U.S. Treasury Department, and obtaining your private, confidential information without your consent, so we are standing up and speaking against it.

Let me point out, which I think this is important, the questions that came to me did not just come from Democrats. The questions were also coming to me from Republicans, moms and dads, people who care about their information when they have heard so much about cybersecurity threats and information being stolen. That is what came to me.

For 8 years, Mr. Speaker, I was the mayor of the city of Houston, a nonpartisan position. As the mayor of a city, potholes are neither Democratic nor Republican. When it rains, it doesn't just fall on Democratic neighborhoods; it will fall on Republican neighborhoods. I have had a reputation of trying to call it as I see it, call a ball a ball and a strike a strike.

In this case, when I was at home, I heard from people from all walks of life and both sides of the aisle concerned about where their information was going, who had it, and whether or not the people who now have it were sufficiently vetted.

I could not say to them that the persons who have their information, who are going through their information, and who are using it for whatever purpose, that they have been sufficiently vetted. I can't respond to that. Literally, I can't respond to it because it was an issue that has not been debated on the House floor, but it is an issue that is important to moms and dads; people who are on Social Security, Medicare, or Medicaid; and for taxpayers who don't like sharing their information with just anyone.

I have been a lawyer for 40-plus years. During that time, there are certain things that are just very important for the average person, and their information is that important. My mom did not graduate from high school, and I don't say that in a negative sense because she and my dad raised nine kids and, I think, did an outstanding job. My mom, after my dad died, guarded her information very carefully, and a lot of things she would not even share with her kids. I was a lawyer in the family, but she was always concerned about who had access to her banking accounts, Social Security number, and things of that nature.

Right now in America, whether you come from Houston, Texas, California, Massachusetts, or Georgia, people are concerned about who has their personal information. If this issue is so important, then this is an issue that should be debated in the people's House by those of us who are closest to the people who we represent.

That is why I am a strong supporter of the Taxpayer Data Protection Act. Mr. Speaker, when I came here during orientation and in the days since, I was reminded that this Chamber is the people's House. We represent the folks who are closest to the ones who we speak for and should represent.

Now, I am not one who wants to stand up and demonize Elon Musk. I am not that person. However, when Elon Musk steps into this role with his team that very few of us have ever met, then he steps into the arena where we are the ones with the responsibility of safeguarding the American people's interests. Elon Musk and his team should not carry any more weight than those of us who have been duly elected and represent the people in our districts, in this country.

This is an issue, Mr. Speaker, that should be fully debated in this Chamber in the people's House. It is simply that important. That is why we must immediately debate and pass the Taxpayer Data Protection Act, which will protect our Nation's payment system and give hardworking Americans some sense of security.

I close by saying this: This is not a partisan issue. It is the people's interest. Throughout all of last year, we talked about what the people wanted, the real issues that affected real people. Nothing hits closer to them than their medical bills, their Social Security information, and their taxpayer information. People should have a right to know who holds that information, what they are doing with it, and how it is being used.

Congress has a responsibility here, Mr. Speaker. We cannot abdicate our role. If we are not allowed to debate it and decide what is in the people's interest, then we may as well go home

and allow Elon Musk and his team to sit in these chairs and make the decisions on what happens in our future.

That is something that I find unacceptable, so I am asking for Congress to debate this particular bill, the Taxpayer Data Protection Act, and allow the people's House to decide who should hold their information, who should have access to it, and how that information should be used. If we fail to do that as Congress, then we have abdicated our role to speak and represent the people.

Regardless of what district, regardless of what city or State, I hope we will not abdicate our role, be we Democrat or Republican. The people need to know that we stand up and represent their interests.

Mr. Speaker, I thank my colleague, the gentleman from Illinois (Mr. Casten), for his remarks, his dedication to this Chamber, to this process, and to the lawmaking. We are both in our fourth term.

Mr. Speaker, I thank you in obliging us with this Special Order on the grand discourse of our democracy.

It has always been a delight to work with Mr. Casten, a longtime member of the Science, Space, and Technology Committee, a dedicated member of the Financial Services Committee, and a thinker, to say the least.

When we came together last week to introduce H.R. 1101, the Taxpayer Data Protection Act, I actually don't think that that piece of legislation was on our minds until we witnessed the very troubling, concerning, and questionably legal actions of an unelected bureaucrat, billionaire, appointee going into the Bureau of Fiscal Service to get access to the wires and the information of our taxpayers to do God knows what with.

All of a sudden, the phones of Members of Congress were ringing off the hook: What is going on?

I couldn't take two steps in my beloved Oakland County in southeast Michigan, the district which I am so proud to represent, without somebody asking me, in deep concern, what was going on.

Mr. Speaker, I mentioned Mr. Casten's background, which was also tied to business and certainly tied to the workings of our Congress, but I happen to be a former Treasury official. I went into the Treasury Department as a political appointee right after an oath of office was taken in the early, early days of President Barack Obama's administration because I was a part of the auto rescue team.

What we were looking at was actually a real crisis in this Nation. For the kids watching back home, I don't know how old they are and how much they would remember, but we had a great recession going on. We had double-digit unemployment. We had a rocked financial services sector. We had an insurance market that was practically crumbling. We had housing with subprime mortgages up the wazoo. There weren't for-sale signs in front of people's homes.

Then there was the question about what was going to happen to General Motors and Chrysler because they were staring liquidation in the face.

Mr. Speaker, this Congress, in a different session and a different time, almost in that lameduck period before President Obama took office, passed something known as the Troubled Asset Relief Program to stabilize, ameliorate, and address our economy to make sure it didn't roll off of a cliff.

The Main Street effort of the Troubled Asset Relief Program was this effort to save General Motors and Chrysler from liquidation along with millions of jobs across this country, including 200,000 in Michigan.

They all came into the Treasury Department, from the smallest of suppliers, to the mayors, to the auto dealers, small businesses in their own right, even the foreign original equipment manufacturers, saying: Do not let them liquidate.

We used $80 billion of taxpayer money, which, by the way, was repaid--which, by the way, worked and which, by the way, rebounded the U.S. auto industry.

Did you hear that point? The Federal Government made money off of the $80 billion to save General Motors and Chrysler. Now we have a strong manufacturing economy with true innovation happening, and we are producing and making cars at a rate that was unfathomable at that time, over 15 years ago.

Never once, by the way, did we ever question or seek to knock on the door of the Bureau of Fiscal Service, which is off campus, by the way. It is not in the main Treasury building. We had bipartisan emergency workers. We had people from the Bush administration stay on. We had people from the Obama administration coming in. We were trying to save this country from falling off of a cliff. We were trying to save us from a true great depression, and no one was meddling in the wires.

Mr. Casten and I had to write this bill, the Taxpayer Data Protection Act, to put up and remind ourselves of guardrails. The painful point of this is that we are waiting and eager and just wondering when our colleagues, who don't even seem to be in this Chamber right now, are going to give us the bill to lower the price of goods? We are waiting.

I had a meeting in my district on housing. I brought all of the stakeholders together. We have beautiful homes in Oakland County, Michigan, but we don't have enough of them. We have homes that need to be rehabbed. There is building that needs to happen. So I brought together, as Members of Congress do, all of the stakeholders. I brought them together, and we invited HUD.

We invited HUD, but you know what, per a new executive order, HUD can't go to meetings. So we can't even have a conversation about how the heck we are going to lower the price of housing and get more housing built.

Mr. Speaker, the other thing my constituents are talking to me about on overdrive are the eggs. There are no eggs. We don't have eggs.

Mr. Speaker, there are eggs, but there are shortages on the eggs. People are going to the store, and they can't find eggs.

There was a headline last week in Pennsylvania that $40,000 worth of eggs were stolen. Just yesterday, in Washington State, more eggs were stolen.

I see this Commander in Chief doing all of these press conferences about every revenge tactic and different type of endeavor for the Federal Government.

What are we doing about the costs? What are we doing about the costs of everyday goods?

An executive order came out about the cost of prescription drugs, which are about to skyrocket again, and it is rolling back what we did to lower the cost of prescription drugs and put Medicare at the negotiating table.

This is unbelievable. This is a simple bill and a simple measure to protect the American taxpayer, to reestablish trust, yes, as duly elected Members of Congress, the stewards of the public trust as quoted and delivered by the great Henry Clay, otherwise known as the great compromiser of the 1800s.

We are the holders of the trust, so this bill is a matter that should just be done tomorrow. We should get this done. We are waiting for the leadership of this very body, those who move the bills to the floor, to give us something that will actually help the pocketbooks of the American people.