Floor Statements

Mr. Speaker, I rise in opposition to the amendment.

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

Mr. Speaker, the first thing is, I am baffled that this is even germane to the National Defense Authorization Act. Really.

I am not saying that the Survivors' Bill of Rights Act isn't good. It passed unanimously. But this amendment bribes States to enact the rights afforded in that Survivors' Bill of Rights Act.

When I was the president of the Arizona Senate, we didn't get Federal dollars when we went back and found a way to fund giving rape kits and making sure that we went back and started testing all of the old rape kits so we could start going after the bad guys.

This Survivors' Bill of Rights passed unanimously in 2016, but it is not a controversial concept, not at all. The concept is that States should do this. I mean, seriously.

I know you think it is really funny, that is good for you. Laugh away. But I am telling you right now, this has nothing to do with the National Defense Authorization Act.

States do this on their own when they have leadership in those States.

This isn't something you blow Federal dollars on. This isn't something you necessarily need to do that for because States will do it, and many States are doing it. I know my own State is doing it and has been doing it for 8 years now.

This has nothing to do with military readiness, has nothing to do with what this bill is supposed to be doing.

Again, I find myself saying: How does this even sit germane to the underlying bill?

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

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

It is my understanding that the Rules Committee waived that issue, not the parliamentarian, on germaneness. So that is not really a qualified argument; that is not a legitimate argument.

But if we talk about the substance of this, there are States that have taken the action that you are wanting to take. Maybe that is where you should take the fight, instead of wedging it into the National Defense Authorization Act. The National Defense Authorization Act is meant to fund the military for readiness to defend this country.

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

Mr. Speaker, I oppose this amendment. It doesn't have anything to do with the National Defense Authorization Act. I encourage everyone to vote ``no'' on it, and I yield back the balance of my time.

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

Mr. Speaker, I rise in opposition to the amendment.

Mr. Speaker, no one in this body believes that the United States military should be engaged in carrying out domestic policy on United States soil. We already have laws that prohibit that.

This amendment, however, would prohibit evidence obtained by the military in violation of the Posse Comitatus Act from being used in court or other legal proceedings.

This bill hasn't been to a committee this year. Last year, it was debated on the floor. This amendment stems from legislation that Representative Schiff introduced in response to rumors that President Trump was considering sending in the military to help quell the violence in Democrat-run cities during the summer of 2020. The military was never sent in, so this amendment is basically a solution in search of a problem.

The implications of this amendment are also unclear. We currently have a crisis on our southern border, a crisis that Democrats continue to ignore and is continually getting worse. We literally have about 8,000 to 10,000 people a day being encountered on the border, and then another 1,000 or more a day who are actually getting into the country as gotaways.

Some have suggested that the military could be sent down there to help stop this invasion. The question is, though, what happens if the situation at the southwest border becomes even more dire and, indeed, members of the military are sent in to help, and while helping and providing support, they obtain evidence of trafficking or smuggling, human trafficking, drug trafficking, et cetera? Will that evidence be excluded?

This is an issue that needs to go through regular order where the committees of jurisdiction can hold hearings and fully explore all possible consequences. That hasn't happened here.

Mr. Speaker, I urge my colleagues to oppose this amendment, and I reserve the balance of my time.

Mr. Speaker, I find it interesting. Nobody on this side mentioned evidence adduced from unlawful activities should be admitted. Those are words, as so often happens with my colleague, that are being imputed.

No. No. I specifically said legal activity. I specifically said if the military is sent down to the border to help. There was no imputation that that would be illegal conduct. What I said was that they obtained evidence of trafficking or smuggling while serving down on the Southwest border.

Now, if that is legal conduct, and they encountered evidence of trafficking or smuggling, my query was, should that not be used, should that not be permitted as evidence, and the reality of it is, it should be used for evidence.

When we talk about law, for instance, criminal law, if a police officer engages in criminal conduct to obtain evidence, that evidence is suppressed, including additional evidence which is considered the fruit of the poisonous tree.

The question here, and the reason that I said this needs to go back for regular order, is what do you do when you are involved in legal conduct, and you happen upon evidence of smuggling or trafficking? That is the real issue here.

The gentleman has already yielded his time and now wishes to take my time to explain.

The reality is he knows. This bill, or his amendment needs to go back for regular order for additional debate to determine all the consequences so when legal conduct produces or adduces evidence of smuggling or trafficking.

That is why I oppose this amendment. I urge my colleagues to do the same, and I yield back the balance of my time.

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

Mr. Speaker, I thank God for the decision that stops the heinous practice that has taken more than 60 million lives in this country over the last 50 years. I thank God that those voices that have been lost, we will not see that anymore. I hope and pray that that is the case. I thank them for that.

There is no right to take that life, but there is a right to defend yourself. We have a God-given, constitutionally protected right to protect ourselves, and the Supreme Court reaffirmed that yesterday.

This bill infringes on the constitutionally protected rights of law- abiding Americans, and it provides funding for States to infringe on Americans' Second Amendment rights and violate their due process rights.

It treats 18-, 19-, and 20-year-old Americans as second-class citizens. The Ninth Circuit recently held that the Second Amendment applies to 18-, 19-, and 20-year-old Americans just like it does to Americans over the age of 21.

This bill criminalizes routine gun transactions between law-abiding Americans.

Justice Alito, in his concurrence, highlighted the flawed logic used by the supporters of this bill. Alito said: ``Does the dissent think that laws like New York's prevent or deter such atrocities? Will a person bent on carrying out a mass shooting be stopped if he knows that it is illegal to carry a handgun outside the home? And how does the dissent account for the fact that one of the mass shootings near the top of its list took place in Buffalo? The New York law at issue in this case obviously did not stop that perpetrator.''

The essence of this is gun controls do not stop criminals because criminals have no regard for the law. That is the definition of a criminal.

This bill will restrict law-abiding Americans' ability to purchase firearms and protect themselves and their families. It violates a basic God-given right.

Mr. Speaker, I oppose this bill and urge my colleagues to do the same.

Madam Speaker, I thank the gentleman for yielding.

Madam Speaker, today we have heard impassioned arguments from House Democrats about the need to gather better data on the American population. In fact, the majority leader just said: Obviously, we take information to better provide services to Americans. That is what he said.

As required by the Constitution, the decennial Census is carried out every 10 years to conduct an actual enumeration ``in such manner as Congress shall by law direct.''

It is well past time--it is well past time that Congress, again, directs the Census Bureau to collect data on the citizenship of respondents.

I realize that many of my colleagues do not believe that there is a crisis on our southern border. But just last month, CBP had 239,416 encounters along the southern border. And what that means is every encounter is either a surrender or an arrest of somebody who is illegally in the country.

Of those, 25 percent involved an individual who had at least one prior encounter in the previous 12 months. This does not include the number of known and unknown getaways which, last year, are estimated to have been a million individuals we don't know anything about.

So whether someone is a U.S. citizen is an important data point that should be recorded in the Census and on other Federal data surveys. If we are going to get information, as the majority leader said, this should be in that panoply of information.

As we have heard today from my colleague across the aisle, data from these Federal surveys inform policy decisions. For instance, decennial Census data informs Federal funding and enforcement of the Voting Rights Act.

I believe we should know whether the Federal Government is serving its citizens well, but how can we do that when we do not know how many citizens there are, how many actual citizens there are, or where they live?

Today, I will offer a straightforward solution to this problem as a motion to recommit. If we adopt the motion to recommit, we will instruct the Committee on Oversight and Reform to consider an amendment to require the Federal surveys covered by the bill--including the U.S. Census--to also ask respondents whether they are U.S. citizens.

In contrast to asking intrusive questions about sexual orientation that serve no legitimate purpose, the Federal Government should have a better understanding of the U.S. citizens residing in America and those who are not citizens.

This information will better inform lawmakers and ensure the government is working to better the lives of Americans, which is what I have heard is the stated goal of the Democrats.

It is time that the U.S. Government--and U.S. Congress, especially-- works to protect the prosperity of the American people. Such serious work starts with strong borders and a sound immigration policy that is actually enforced.

Contrary to what the chairwoman stated in the Rules Committee, the Supreme Court has not decided it is unlawful to inquire about citizenship on the Census.

The Supreme Court--let me reiterate that--has not said you cannot inquire about citizenship. That is false. It has been done historically.

In the prior case before the Supreme Court, the process leading up to putting the question on the Census was flawed. Upon that basis, the question was decided.

But the decision states, ``The Enumeration Clause permits Congress, and by extension, the Secretary, to inquire about citizenship on the Census questionnaire.''

That is what we are doing. We are following the Constitution as has been recognized by the Supreme Court. It is critical to ensuring an accurate apportionment of Representatives in the House based on the Census--in this House--unlike the information this bill seeks to collect. Similar to your underlying bill, this information will be voluntarily gathered.

Today, the American people will finally get to see their Representatives take a vote on this important matter.

Madam Speaker, I ask unanimous consent to insert the text of the amendment in the Record immediately prior to the vote on the motion to recommit.

Madam Speaker, I thank the gentleman for yielding.

Madam Speaker, I just want to cover and address some of the statements made by the chairwoman regarding my previous statement.

She admitted in her statement that several surveys already gather the info that they seek in the underlying bill. Yet, that was a rationale for not asking the citizenship question.

What is good for the goose is good for the gander. You are already collecting some of this information, as you admitted, from 5 different agencies, and you want to expand it to 130. You said, well, you guys get it from the Department of Labor statistics on the question of citizenship. Hey, let's get it all across the board. Let's do it all across the board. Same rationale.

The chairwoman said the LGBTQ question will be voluntary, but the citizenship question is not. That is simply untrue. If you look at the amendment, that would be there.

We discussed this in the committee. All you are doing is you are adding, in some cases, just the word ``citizenship'' to the questions that you are already asking, or you are asking whether or not the respondent is a citizen of the United States.

That is voluntary. It is not mandatory. That is just untrue to say that.

Then the argument was made that the Supreme Court used a rationale that was inaccurate. The Supreme Court rationale for not allowing the Trump administration, through an executive agency, to ask the citizenship question on the Census was this: It was because the process was not initiated by Congress.

The Supreme Court specifically stated, ``The Enumeration Clause permits Congress, and by extension, the Secretary, to inquire about citizenship on the Census questionnaire.''

It had not been done by Congress. It had been done by a lower-level agency. So all of those things should now dispel the arguments against including this amendment. That is why I am going to encourage everyone in this body to support the motion to recommit.

Mr. Speaker, I have a motion to recommit at the desk.

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

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

Mr. Speaker, I thank the gentleman from Montana for yielding to me.

It is important for us to be here tonight. It is important for us to address the attack on the Second Amendment.

The reason I say that is that some people don't care about that Second Amendment. Some people would pack the Court to do away with that Second Amendment. That is an important right. It is so important that, in the Heller decision, Justice Scalia said: ``The very text of the Second Amendment implicitly recognizes the preexistence of the right and declares only that it `shall not be infringed.' ''

What does it mean when you say that right is preexisting? It means that it is not given by the government, and thus it cannot be taken away by the government. Instead, it is inherent in every individual, every person.

In fact, the reason I use the word ``individual'' is because Justice Scalia made very clear, after a very lengthy discussion regarding militia versus individuals, that this is an individual right. It isn't some kind of collective. It isn't some kind of government-organized right. It is a God-given right, and

thus it is prohibited for government to infringe upon that right.

Justice Scalia went on to say exactly what I just said. He said: ``This is not a right granted by the Constitution. Neither is it in any manner dependent upon that instrument for its existence. The Second Amendment declares that it shall not be infringed.''

Anyone who has taken an oath of office to honor and defend the Constitution against all enemies, foreign and domestic, how can they then vote for legislation that would surrender that right to the government?

My friends across the aisle have failed to remember how important it is. I am going to make three quick points.

Number one: Why is an AR-15 important? It is a gun that is light and easy to handle for people who are being attacked. It is a perfect defensive weapon. It is important that we remember that.

Second thing: Good guys with guns actually do save lives. Democrats ignored the recent incident in West Virginia where a woman used her 9- millimeter pistol to stop a shooter who was shooting toward a crowd of people, with an AR-15, by the way. They ignored the actions of Stephen Willeford, who stopped a shooting in Sutherland Springs, Texas.

If you are relying solely on the police to come--I love my friends of the blue. We rely on them. We depend upon them. But when someone is attacking you, you don't always have time to wait for those first responders to get there.

My last point is this: If you are 18, 19, or 20 years old, you still have that God-given right to defend yourself and to the Second Amendment.

The proposals of this body ignore the fact that the Ninth Circuit recently recognized and realized that they have those rights, and they struck down a California law that imposed a restriction on 18-, 19-, and 20-year-olds.

Ladies and gentlemen, those who are listening, don't give up your right. If you are a Member of Congress, don't take away this important God-given right.

Mr. Speaker, I thank Mr. Rosendale for letting me speak.

Madam Speaker, do you ever wonder how many of our colleagues in the Democrat aisle receive

Bloomberg money to advocate for taking away Americans' Second Amendment rights? I do.

You hear about the NRA. You sure don't want to confess the Bloomberg donations that you receive as you emasculate America's rights. Yet, we hear about your polling. But you know what, 6 in 10 Americans, including almost half of Democrats, support armed officers and leaders at schools to protect their children. Democrats oppose that.

We hear about due process. Due process doesn't mean you have an ex- parte hearing by an undisclosed informant who comes in and says, Look, we think this person is a danger to themselves or others, when the undisclosed informant has a grudge or an axe to grind. That is why you have 8,000 of those in Florida.

Due process doesn't mean we take away your rights and then you get to petition to have those rights reinstated. No, this bill is designed specifically to get around the laws that are present in 50 States that do address due process and do address people who are a danger to themselves and society. This bill is ripe for abuse.

Some States have enacted similar laws. In Connecticut, for example, nearly a third of all ex-parte orders are overturned once a judge hears both sides of the story.

And why is that? You have already taken away their rights. But almost a third of them are overturned.

In a markup last week, there was some confusion as to what due process means. It does not mean that you can deprive an individual of their rights first and then later let them have a hearing to reinstate those rights. But that is what this bill does. Deprivation first, a hearing later.

Madam Speaker, I urge my colleagues to vote ``no.''

Madam Speaker, it is my pleasure to take a few minutes.

The first point I will talk about, the most fundamental aspect that this needs to be contextualized with is that the Democrats have basically corrupted every institution in America, not the least of which is this institution, not the least of which are the committees and the roles of committees.

The gentleman from Pennsylvania said this is a show trial. He is exactly right. This is designed for television. It is not designed to find truth. It is not designed to say, let's come up with a legitimate legislative purpose, which is what the Supreme Court says you have to have if you are going to have a subpoena in the first place. You have to have a legitimate purpose. They don't have any.

So these are the same folks that sit on this committee, that are running this committee. Don't forget, they ran the two sham impeachments. The last sham impeachment was such a debacle, such an embarrassment to our institutions and the Constitution that the Chief Justice of the Supreme Court said, I am not going to show up.

So who do we have and what do we see? Well, they are not going to talk about tonight that four witnesses--four witnesses have testified under oath that 4 days before January 6, President Trump authorized up to 20,000 National Guard troops. Why won't they present that? Because it is indicia of what we would call in law the mens rea or culpability, your state of mind. And the state of mind said, we have to protect the Capitol.

What that means is there is no intention to incite. There is no intention to cause harm. But you are not going to hear about that, even though that has been testified to four different times.

The FBI has indicated pretty clearly that there was no collusion by President Trump to incite a riot on January 6. In fact, no collusion by President Trump or by any Member of Congress.

In fact, FBI Director, Christopher Wray, testified in the Committee on the Judiciary that he could not call what happened there an insurrection. But that is not what you are going to hear from the Democrats because they love that term, because they are all about hyperbole.

How about our former colleague, Denver Riggleman, a former Republican working for this committee? What did he say? Just the other day, he said: ``There is no smoking gun indicating that President Trump planned for the U.S. Capitol to be overrun by his supporters.'' But you are not going to hear that because this is--as they have accidentally said a couple of times--not about finding the truth but about narrative- building, and distracting the American public from the disaster that the Biden administration, Speaker Pelosi and her Democrats in the House, Chuck Schumer and his Democrats in the Senate, has perpetrated, has foisted upon the American people.

So you know what the Democrats want? They don't want us talking about: It costs me 85, 90 bucks to fill up my car with gas.

They don't want you talking about that.

They don't want you talking about: Hey, the size of that pack of tortillas that I just bought last week before it came out, they used to look like the regular corn tortillas. Now they look like mini tortillas. Same price, the same packaging.

They don't want you talking about that.

They don't want you talking about: Hey, kids, we are not going to be able to go on vacation this year.

They don't want you talking about any of that because that is what Americans are talking about.

They don't want you talking about the border. They don't want you talking about that.

When I was down to the border twice last week--two different borders, three different sectors--everywhere I walked, there were people coming up. You know what these folks told me? They said, ``We love Joe Biden.'' In fact, in Mexico he has got a 52 percent approval rating, while he is only 32 percent in the United States.

They want us to not talk about that stuff. They want to distract us. But the bad news for them is this: The reason you have to bring in an ABC producer is because your show stinks and that committee reeks, and no amount of production is going to give Liz Cheney charisma. Sorry to say. No amount of it is going to change and take that apart.

I know that there are others who want to talk about this but I just have to ask four or five things, if I can, Mr. Perry.

Why is Nancy Pelosi off limits? Why isn't she testifying before that committee?

Oh my goodness, we can't ask her what happened. We can't ask her what she knew, what she didn't know.

We can't ask her why she didn't approve and encourage Mayor Bowser to accept the authorized and offered 20,000 National Guard troops.

Why has the committee not released 14,000 hours of video of January 6? Why is that missing?

Why has the committee selectively, without appropriate context, leaked documents or testimony?

Why did Adam Schiff come out here and put up a poster and later have to admit that, yeah, he had doctored the poster?

Because they are lying. They altered evidence, as Mr. Perry said.

I will just close with this: Committee member, Jamie Raskin, he loves to say that anybody who questions an electoral outcome of 2020 is telling the big lie.

Of course, he questioned the 2016 election outcome. Was that the big lie? Hillary Clinton questioned that.

Joe Biden has already said the 2022 midterms are going to be illegitimate. Why? Because he is going to get his butt kicked, that is why.

I will tell you something. Jamie Raskin selectively edited video he used in the second Trump impeachment just a few days before the President was going to be vacating the Oval Office. If anyone is persisting in telling a big lie, it is members of the J6 Committee.

That is why they have to bring in a producer. That is why they deleted the tweet from their star witness from tonight. And what did he say back then? He said the Proud Boys were organizing together.

How many police were there at 11:22 on the steps of the Capitol? I Count 1.

This is a deliberate act. And he wasn't talking about the people who came in. He said someone in authority left the door open and the mob walked in. That is their witness tonight. They deleted that text.

This is an illegitimate committee. You are going to see illegitimacy on display meant to deceive the American people. That is what happens in former Soviet Union. That is what happens in Venezuela. That is what happens whenever tyrants and authoritarians get a little bit of power or think they have any.

Madam Speaker, as I watch what this January 6th Committee has done, as it unfolds, and the constant attack of President Trump, here is what I find interesting: It wasn't too very long ago that Chuck Schumer stood with a rabble attacking the United States Supreme Court. Chuck Schumer said: We are going to come up on you like, Justices Kavanaugh and Gorsuch, like a whirlwind. You will know.

He made threatening comments. And guess what? Last night, there was an assassination attempt. A gentleman has been arrested for attempted murder of Justice Kavanaugh. Not a peep from the President, not a peep from Nancy Pelosi, not a peep from anybody here.

You had a President who said let's march peacefully up to the Capitol. Let's let them know you are here. Let's fight for our rights. Somehow, that is incitement.

That is not incitement, but this committee that is there, they don't care about the truth. They don't care about equity. I don't even like saying that term, ``equity.'' How about equality before the law? They never are concerned with due process or equality before the law. That is a political, sham, narrative-building exercise to divert the attention of the American people away from the disastrous Biden policies.

Madam Speaker, I thank the gentleman for yielding.

I oppose H.R. 7910, the Democrats' latest gun control effort. Supporters of this bill do not want to protect America's Second Amendment rights because they don't care about Second Amendment rights.

Instead of addressing the societal issues that have been caused by decades of progressive leftwing policies that have assaulted the American family and American society, they want to ban guns.

They ignore the fact that many of the cities with the most restrictive gun control laws also have the highest levels of crime. They simply do not acknowledge that they don't believe in the Second Amendment.

But let's talk about what Republicans have proposed because Republicans have proposed many efforts. You just heard from Mr. Massie one of his.

Well, here is what you don't hear. I listened very carefully to the majority leader. He was enumerating through polls. But guess what? The majority of Americans believe schools would be safer if teachers were given options to carry a firearm. That comes from The Economist, the latest Economist poll last week.

A similar poll: 26 percent are safer with an armed guard. Utah allows teachers to carry a concealed weapon. They not only have not had a mass shooting, they have never had a shooting since that law has been in place.

Justice Scalia said in his Heller opinion that the very text of the Second Amendment implicitly recognizes the pre-existence of the right, the Second Amendment right, and declares only that it shall not be infringed. This is not a right granted by the Constitution. Neither is it in any manner dependent upon that instrument for its existence.

The Second Amendment simply declares that it shall not be infringed, but that is exactly what your bills do.

The Republicans have also said, let's harden the schools. Look, you have got $122 billion that you gave in relief, COVID relief to K-12. More than 90 percent of it remains unused.

And you say, well, we don't want to talk about doors. What do we do? We hide behind doors because they work.

You can harden schools and make them work. You can arm guards and make them work and make children safer.

We all condemn the acts of violence that have occurred throughout our country, but the answer cannot be restricting America's right to protect themselves. Every day, Americans use guns to protect themselves and their families. This bill will make it harder for Americans to do this. That is an inconvenient fact that my colleagues across the aisle simply can't and choose not to address.

Last week, at markup, Democrats repeatedly claimed that good guys with guns do not stop bad guys with guns. But Congressman Massie read a long list of incidents of good guys using guns to stop bad guys. But that list was ignored.

I will give you one. In Charleston, West Virginia, a woman with a 9- millimeter handgun stopped a shooter shooting into a crowd with an AR- 15.

Here is one. Stephen Willeford stopped a shooting at a church in Sutherland Springs.

I urge you to vote ``no.''

Madam Speaker, I ask unanimous consent to call up H.R. 471, the PAUSE Act, to protect all Americans from Biden's border crisis.

Mr. Speaker, I thank the gentlewoman for yielding to me. I would like to help set the stage here just for a moment. Imagine, if you will, 100,000 people entering the country illegally and stopped on our border just in the first 2 weeks of March of this year. But because of title 42, which allows the Border Patrol agents to immediately turn people away because of communicable diseases, that is the term used in title 42, they sent 50,000 of them back away. You don't have to imagine it because that is true. That is exactly what happened.

If you extrapolate that out, because you can, just looking at it from January, February, March of this year, they turned away over a quarter million people under title 42.

Now, when title 42 goes away on May 23, because that is exactly what this administration wants, you will double the amount of people who are coming in just through the apprehension route. We have another record month in March. Those numbers are just out. That means that you are going to be sitting on about 300,000 to 400,000 apprehensions that you are going to be releasing right into the United States of America.

What does that do? Everybody in here knows this because you have been down to the border. I have been down to the border with you. The cartels are in it to make money. As they see this opening up, more and more people getting freedom to the United States caught and released, what they will do, and what they are already doing, by the way, is they will advertise.

The NGOs that we help fund, that the United Nations funds, will advertise. It will be chaos, chaos on the border. My prediction is somewhere around 400,000 to 500,000 people a month coming in. But it actually could be more. A lot of people are talking about the ceiling now being 18,000 people a day when that goes away. I don't think it is going to be 18,000. I think it will exceed 20,000. If it exceeds 20,000, that is 600,000 a month coming in. That is bigger than the city of Mesa in Arizona, which is Arizona's second largest city.

You know what that means? In the last half of this year, the last half of the year alone, you are going to be sitting, as you said, at 4\1/2\ to 5 million people brought into this country illegally, and that is not counting the get-aways. The get-aways last year were at least 800,000.

It is enormous; it is dangerous; it is inhumane. I haven't even touched on the inhumanity of it. We are just talking up here. We are not getting granular. We are just talking about the overrunning of America, our culture, and our sovereignty. We won't have much of a nation after this is done.

You said it yourself, is this incompetence? The answer is no, this is willful. This is willful, and this is what they want.

Absolutely, 100 percent. Do you know how we know they have been emboldened? Because it used to be they would have the coyotes take the people up and locate them in the U.S. They don't do that anymore. The coyotes take them up, they put them on the border and say, ``We don't have to go in with you. Go in. Go in with your cell phone.'' Oh, by the way, Biden administration says now they are going to give away a cell phone to every illegal alien crossing the border.

But they will just come across. I have seen it; you have all seen it. They are walking across, they are FaceTiming their friends back home: ``Yeah, I made it in.'' They are dressed nice; they are dressed clean. The cartels are emboldened not just at the southern border any longer.

This is spilling over into the country, and we are seeing violence along the border because of it, and you are seeing cartel members ship all over. If there are drugs being distributed anywhere in the United States, you have got cartels there.

The average price right now is $4,000 to $7,000, unless you are from China, and then it is $35,000. Very few of these people have that to pay. Guess what happens? Either they can work it off by delivering illicit drugs, helping to smuggle human beings, including sex trafficking, or they come in, they get a job, and they are indentured servants. They are effectively slaves to the cartel, and they will never work it off, because the cartels are taskmasters at this. They know exactly how to keep these folks under their thumb.

He could enforce the MPP, the migrant protection protocols. That is the remain in Mexico policy. What he could do is, instead of enforcing that at 9 people a day--that is the number we heard earlier this week, 9 people a day--you could actually enforce it the way it was intended to be enforced, and that would be thousands a day because we have thousands of folks coming in. That would be another deterrent. That is just one of the things that he could do.

He could actually go in and encourage us to fix the Flores law or the TVPRA laws. All of those things would be deterrents. But, instead, he has opened it wide open. He has taken away any deterrent. Instead, he is basically encouraging people to come into this country illegally.

Well, first of all, the underground economy right now for people, my estimate is about 25 to 27 million illegal aliens in the country. You are going to bring in another 7 million, so you are going to have an underground economy. Those people who are not skilled laborers are going to have a tough time getting jobs. A lot of these folks are going to go on social welfare programs, even though they are not supposed to be allowed to. They will get on social welfare programs.

We are already on the verge of stagflation right now, high inflation and a shrinking GDP. As that happens, and you bring in that many people undocumented, you are going to actually exacerbate both those problems, and we may see the likes of something we haven't seen since Jimmy Carter. It might even exceed what happened under Jimmy Carter, who was probably the most unfortunate and incompetent President in my lifetime.

Mr. Speaker, it is great to be here. I got a kick out of the gentleman from Tennessee showing his age. He is talking about pot when it was 2 percent THC. He is thinking pot is still this drug where people get goofy and they eat Cheetos and nacho cheese Doritos.

He is not talking about the 99 percent THC pot that is being sold in some of these States where they have legalized recreational pot. I think that is really fun and anachronistic; very good to go back and think about how things were in the late 1960s, early 1970s.

Let's talk about a Mother Jones article that I have before me where they are analyzing the use of pot, and they are talking about, hey, look, this is what happens, you start seeing paranoia and psychosis come in. They are referring to New Zealand studies, long-term longitudinal studies about the dangers of pot.

That is interesting. We are not going to even talk about that because we don't have time to talk about that because we are focusing here on descheduling marijuana. What that does is that incentivizes marijuana use and distribution.

But this bill is also reckless in its approach. It provides no limits on or requirements to clearly identify the potency of marijuana or its extracts or concentrates. In 1995, for instance, the THC concentration was about 4 percent on average. Today, it goes between 20 and 99 percent.

It also doesn't deal with what the Surgeon General says needs to be the case, that the minimum age limit should be age 25. This doesn't get into any age limit. It doesn't cover that, yet that is what the Surgeon General says.

In fact, the Surgeon General's advisory says the human brain continues to develop from birth into the mid 20s, vulnerable to the effects of addictive substances, I don't know, like marijuana. In fact, it goes on to say frequent marijuana use during adolescence is associated with changes in the areas of the brain involving attention, memory, decision-making, and motivation.

Adolescent marijuana use is associated with declines in IQ, school performance and attendance, and life satisfaction, increased rates of suicide attempts.

You know what this bill does? It is a lot of fun, folks. What it does is, it says you can distribute this, under Federal law anyway, you can distribute this to an 11-year-old kid. The 11-year-old kid is going to have marijuana, be able to use it. You can't do anything to them here for that, that is for sure.

What it does do is it creates a tax crime. It creates a tax crime. You get rid of your marijuana crime, it creates some tax crimes. We all know how great the Tax Code is for ease of use and understanding.

Section 3 of the bill removes marijuana from the schedule of the Controlled Substances Act. It would no longer be a Federal crime to possess or sell marijuana, including to 11 year olds. Section 5, however, puts it into the Tax Code.

I think there is another fun aspect here. It talks about 600,000 arrests annually yet, the reality is that is for State and local crimes. In fact, there were 1,100 marijuana convictions in 2020 under Federal law. You know what those convictions were? Those were for transport and distribution. Now you are not going to be able to get to anybody for that.

Let's talk about how well this has worked in the L.A. Times pieces that talk about this. The L.A. Times does a massive expose. What do they find out? They say Prop 64 was going to solve all these problems, solve the problems. Instead what you have are thousands of illegal grow dispensaries. Why? Because they have a Byzantine code like what these guys are setting up here today. So you have a crisis in L.A. County, San Bernardino County and also in Riverside County.

Those grow farms use forced labor, as Mr. Bentz so eloquently talked about, the Oregon grow farms. These are being run in southern California by the cartels, who originate in Mexico, Ukraine, Russia, Bulgaria, and China. Yeah, that is what you are going to do, you are going to Federalize this. Well done. This is a piece of garbage. I oppose this legislation.

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

Madam Speaker, I thank the gentleman for yielding. It is good to be here.

I am glad my friend is raising awareness. I am going to go as quickly as I possibly can because I don't know how much time I am going to take up.

But let's talk about fentanyl for just one quick second. Local reporting out of Tucson was that last year 13 million fentanyl pills were seized in Arizona alone--13 million. DEA has said 40 percent of all pills seized have a lethal dose of fentanyl in them. I want you to think about that, Madam Speaker. You add that 13 million and you take it into what agents and local law enforcement has told us, and that is they only interdict 8 to 10 percent. That means you have got over 100 million fentanyl pills floating around.

The cartels control all of the border between every port of entry on our border with Mexico. Let me give you an example, Madam Speaker, of the story out of southern Arizona recently just in the last couple weeks.

A lady was found wandering around. Local law enforcement deputies found her and assisted her.

What did she have on her possession?

A bag full of pills. They wanted to know what this was, was this an illicit drug or illicit? What is going on?

She said: These are morning-after pills. I knew when I would be coming across the border that I would be raped multiple times so I brought a bunch of morning-after pills.

That is fact. That is what is happening. It is not humane on the border. I find myself baffled by this.

So let's talk about cartels a little bit more. In a story from just early January--and I have been down to the border and talked to this team since then, a cartel, a Mexican cartel put out a hit on Cochise County sheriffs' deputies--two of them--because they are on the border team. There is a small border team down there. They are very effective. They had a hit put on them by a cartel.

So what happens? What happens?

Why is the Biden administration ignoring this crisis?

Let's take a look at something else. In September of last year I said: How many unaccompanied children have been brought into the country?

One hundred ten thousand roughly.

They finally responded to a series of questions I had just this week.

They said: We have lost contact with 20,000 of those children.

They basically have lost 20,000 unaccompanied children.

This is the border under President Biden.

Now, in Cochise County, 82 miles, a remote border crossing area, between the Border Patrol and the Cochise County Sheriff's Office, about 16,000 illegal immigrants are detected every month in a huge, huge county. Two years ago the county recorded an average of 4 to 500 illegal aliens per month. Let's give it to you more starkly, Madam Speaker: under the Trump policies, we slowed down illegal immigration. Under the Biden policies, we went from 4 to 500 people a month in this massive county to now 16,000 a month.

What are they paying the cartels?

A minimum of $1,000, but typically more like $4,000 per person coming in. Most of these folks don't have $4,000.

So what happens?

They become indentured servants of cartels, and they are located in-- and I know Mr. Davidson is going to show you a map, Madam Speaker--they are in virtually every community in this country.

There is a reporter named Jorge Ventura. Jorge does a lot of work on the border issues. And I want to talk to you about cartels again and how they have infiltrated not just the border but they are also beyond the border. A year ago there were illegal marijuana farms in southern California. There are about 100 in L.A. County. It is a huge county both geographically and population wise. Its neighboring county, San Bernardino County, had about 2 or 300. Today over 200 illicit marijuana farms are in L.A. County and over 1,100 in San Bernardino County.

Now, why is that important?

It is important for you to understand that those are coming in from cartels. The mayor of Lancaster, Rex Parris, said in July of last year that it is the cartels. They had seized more than 16 tons of marijuana worth about $1.2 billion, and the mayor said: ``We are very, very close to driving down the freeway and seeing bodies hanging from the overpasses. That is what is coming.''

Why does he say that?

Because the cartels are ruthless. They have little value for human life. When you hear about children, toddlers being thrown over a border fence, that is the coyotes.

Whom do they work for?

The cartels. When you hear of children 2, 3, and 4 years of age wandering around in 115-degree heat in Arizona's desert without an adult present and without water, that is the cartels. They don't care about human life. This is a business enterprise, and the product is to move people and drugs into the country.

So what happened just a week ago, not even a week ago?

Prosecutors in Mexico in the town of San Jose de Gracia in the western State of Michoacan said that they can't determine how many people were killed because attackers cleaned up the scene and removed any bodies.

Mexicans have been left wondering what happened to about one dozen men who disappeared after they were seen lined up against a wall by drug cartel gunmen in this small village.

In a video filmed by a resident of the town that was later posted on social media, bursts of gunfire break out, smoke covers the scene, the camera cuts away, and all the men, perhaps as many as 17, were killed.

That is what cartels do. Cartels do not care about human life. And when I have had multiple briefings, as I go down to the border virtually every month of every year, I wonder where the border czar in this administration is. She got to El Paso, almost made it to the border, and didn't quite get there. It is kind of like when she went over to Ukraine, she made it to Germany but didn't make it into Ukraine.

I look, and I say: What happened?

Why is this happening?

And my briefers tell me the border is controlled by cartels. Between every port of entry no one enters this country without a cartel knowing about it.

When I was in the Tucson sector right before Christmas, I went down and you see 2 miles of fencing, and there is 8 feet of gap, then another 2 miles of fencing, and then it just stops, and then it goes for literally 60 miles with no fencing other than the Normandy barrier. I went to the gap, and I am standing there looking into Mexico. You can see, Madam Speaker, that gap is where all the pathways lead, and there is all the debris and crud that is out there.

I said to my folks who were with me: Please videotape it because I am going to explain what was going on here.

I didn't bother to tell CBP, because I get down a lot. Sometimes I tell them I am going to be there. An agent rolls up.

He said: Who are you talking to?

He didn't know who I was.

I said: I am not talking to anyone. I am doing the video here for my constituents.

He said: Oh. I thought you were talking to the cartel scouts.

I said: What do you mean?

He said: We literally chased--before we detected you, we chased four cartel scouts back up through that gap, and they sit in a hooch on this little bluff.

That is where the cartel scouts are as they are sending people through.

The way it works is this. They will send a group of 100 people to some place, maybe the San Miguel gate down near Sassabe, near the Tohono O'odham Reservation. That takes the four or five people that are trying to patrol that area. They will go to that gate. They have to process those individuals. It is so remote that it takes literally hours to remove those people and get them bused to a detention facility and processed.

In the meantime, they will see what we call ``known got-aways,'' dozens of known got-aways rolling through other parts of that border. They are dressed in camouflage. They are wearing carpet shoes. They have got backpacks filled with fentanyl and methamphetamine on their backs.

I am just telling you, I appreciate my friend from Ohio, his efforts, and this very important piece of legislation. And I call upon this administration, don't tell the American people--I am reminded of the ``Darkest Hour.'' It is a movie with Winston Churchill. The King says to Winston: Don't lie to the people. Tell them the truth.

I am asking this administration: Tell the people the truth. They can take it. They understand.

Because last year, over 2 million, about 2,500,000 people, entered this country illegally; another 1.2 to 1.3 million entered legally. Now, of those 2.5 million, probably about 1.5 million are wandering around this country. They are somewhere in this country today. This administration let them go.

Madam Speaker, we have to get control of our border. I find it remarkable that the deputy Homeland Security director was saying that we really need to protect the borders, that you won't have a sovereign nation without a protected border. But he wasn't talking about our border, which isn't protected. He was talking about the Ukrainian border.

I asked them to have the same concern and care for the U.S.-Mexico border as they profess to have for the Ukraine border.

Madam Speaker, I thank the gentleman from Ohio for yielding time to me. I am grateful that we are going to be voting today on this version of this bill. I think it is a much-improved version as opposed to the one that came out of committee. I am grateful to all those who worked hard on this to try to make this a better bill, and I am grateful for that.

I think when we reflect upon this bill and the history of our Nation--this Nation we all love and cherish--we recognize that we have to cure and acknowledge some issues and problems that we have had. And this is not the least of those for sure, but it is an important thing to recognize.

I appreciated the chairman of the Judiciary Committee mentioning George Henry White who was the first person to introduce an antilynching piece of legislation. George Henry White was from North Carolina. He was a Republican Representative. He was the only African American who was a Member of Congress at the time. After he left Congress in the early part of the last century, 1901, it would be 28 years before another African American came

into these important Halls of law and legislation.

One thing that Congressman White was very bold about was to fight and stand against disenfranchisement, to fight disenfranchisement and also to fight mob violence which took an incredible amount of courage and discipline, and I appreciate that and his history.

I am hopeful that we will make this a unanimous vote. I hope that we will record that vote for our posterity and for all Americans to know and recognize that the United States House of Representatives could come together as yet we may disagree on so many things, but on this issue that we can come together unitedly.

Madam Speaker, I appreciate the opportunity to speak on this, and I thank the gentleman for yielding.

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

Madam Speaker, in spite of the protestations of the gentleman from Maryland that we heard earlier that this bogus, fraudulently organized committee has a legislative purpose that is legitimate, and he said it was self-preservation, but everything every Democrat has said today is meant to attack one person, and that is Donald Trump.

And so I am reminded of the case that gave us the long progeny of all these cases that deal with legislative purpose in committees and subpoenas, the Kilbourn case. In that case, the Court ruled the congressional investigation unconstitutional because its real purpose was not to consider legislative reforms, as the House has claimed, but rather to investigate possible crimes by this citizen, a power only the executive and judicial branches have the right to exercise.

That is what we see happening here today.

This committee is illegitimate. It has violated its own rules of creation. It has violated its own rules of creation and it says they want to find out this massive truth here about what happened on January 6. You can't have a committee to find out what happened because you are interested. You can't do that. And that is what they are doing today.