Floor Statements

Mr. Speaker, last month Secretary Rubio responded to me and said no one had died as a result of the gutting of USAID, but Boston University School of Public Health shows us that 300,000 people have died already because they were cut off from food and medicine for tuberculosis, AIDS, and malaria.

The Center for Global Development says that 3.3 million preventable deaths will occur because of the gutting of USAID, but they won't just die there. Americans will die, too, because when malaria, tuberculosis, and AIDS infect anyone in the world, those diseases replicate. They mutate, and they migrate back here in more virulent forms.

Evan Anzoo, a 5-year-old boy, was cut off from his HIV medications in February and died. He is the first to die at the hands of Elon Musk and Donald Trump.

Mr. Speaker, I ask unanimous consent that we observe a full minute of silence in the memory of this child victim. I ask unanimous consent. Let us remember Evan Anzoo.

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

Madam Speaker, I join in applauding the gentleman from Minnesota (Mr. Stauber). I thank the gentleman from Minnesota, and I rise in support of his bill. I can't possibly do justice to the passion and the eloquence that the gentleman brought to this floor just a minute ago.

Madam Speaker, we vote today to honor the young men who reinspired a country at the height of the Cold War. The legislation awards three Congressional Gold Medals, as the gentleman from Minnesota outlined. They are going to three different locations. This is the highest civilian award, and it makes that award to the members of the 1980 U.S. Olympic men's ice hockey team, whose victory marked a pivotal moment in American sports history.

On February 13, 1980, the U.S. hockey team historically defeated the Soviet Union 4-3 at the Lake Placid Winter Games. Prior to their victory, the talented, yet untested U.S. team was deemed an underdog. Many of them were college players. They were, on average, 22 years old. They had played together only a few months.

Leading up to the game, the U.S. players took part in a 7-month training program designed to confront a Soviet team that many considered to be the best conditioned hockey team in the world. However, through steadfast commitment, grit, hope, and determination, the U.S. team emerged victorious and established a much-needed sense of national pride across this country.

Even decades later, I hope that these themes can continue to inspire us to confront the difficult challenges that we face as a nation today. The events of the ``Miracle On Ice'' serve as a critical reminder of the importance of rising to meet the challenges of our time through steadfast commitment and grit.

Madam Speaker, I applaud Mr. Stauber, who spoke with such passion and such knowledge, and the other sponsors of this bill. I urge my colleagues to support this measure, and I reserve the balance of my time.

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

Madam Speaker, this legislation awards three Congressional Gold Medals to members of the 1980 U.S. Olympic men's hockey team, whose hard work and commitment inspired a country at the height of the Cold War. I hope that, in recognizing this victory, their legacy will continue to inspire us and to unify a country that faces significant divisions.

Madam Speaker, I urge my colleagues to support this bill, and I yield back the balance of my time.

Mr. Speaker, we are here to deal with two regulations, the first dealing with payment systems, and the second dealing with overdraft protection. In both cases, I came here for the entertainment value to watch Republican after Republican tell us how much the majority doesn't trust the Trump administration. It is as if Trump doesn't control the CFPB.

Mr. Speaker, the regulation we are considering now is just a regulation that says that this is an area we are going to look at. Republicans are afraid the Trump administration will look at it. It doesn't do anything except begin a process.

Mr. Speaker, as to both of these CRAs, the effect is not only to erase what was done under the Biden administration but prohibit the new administration from adopting any consumer protection. That is because my colleagues on the other side of the aisle want zero consumer protection and the Trump administration to have an excuse.

The excuse is: Congress passed the CRA. We are prohibited from writing a regulation in that area.

The Republican administration could rewrite these rules. Congress could overwrite these rules. Instead, we are erasing the rules and prohibiting other rules from being there.

Mr. Speaker, I spent this morning being told that we need to have cryptocurrency because it is going to be this great payment system and, for some reason, the payment systems that use U.S. dollars aren't good. Now I am here on the floor being told that Venmo and its competitors are so wonderful that there should be absolutely no regulation.

On the one hand, we have to create a new currency for drug dealers, and, on the other hand, the current system using the U.S. dollar shouldn't even be regulated because it is perfect.

Why do we need to regulate here? First, to prevent excessive fees; second, to prevent deception; but, third--and this is obvious--to prevent the loss of consumer money.

Venmo is holding $7 billion of consumers' money. If you have a tiny bank that is one-tenth or one-hundredth the size of Venmo, you have to make sure that you have reserves. You can't take the money to the horse races. Yet, Venmo can do anything with the money. If they lose the $7 billion, you as a consumer are out of luck, and Trump can say: It wasn't my fault because Congress prohibited us from having prudential regulations.

If an entity in the transactions business is going to hold $7 billion of consumers' money, shouldn't we at least make sure that the money is still there, and shouldn't we make sure that they don't engage in Botswana currency swaps and others with the highest risk transactions they can find to perhaps make a lot of money or lose all of the consumers' money. Heads, I win. Tails, the consumers lose.

Mr. Speaker, I will take 1 minute or 2 to talk about the other regulation because, after Members vote against the first of these resolutions, you are going to feel so good that you are going to want to vote against the second one.

This is the one that limits overdraft fees to $5 for the big banks, the 175 biggest banks, or they can charge what their actual cost is if it is more than $5. It requires disclosure of what these overdraft fees are going to be.

It will save American consumers $6.1 billion every year. If we are concerned about inflation, why shouldn't we tell the banks that overdraft is not a profit center? They can recover their costs or maybe a little bit more, but they don't turn to the consumer and say: You were so dumb that you had an overdraft, so we are going to hit you with a wild fee.

Mr. Speaker, do not vote to prohibit regulation of payment systems. Do not vote to prohibit limitations on overdraft protection. Do not vote to allow $6.1 billion to be transferred from constituents to the biggest banks in the country. Vote ``no,'' and then vote ``no'' again.

Mr. Speaker, he got his start on a TV show called, ``The Apprentice.'' We saw how entertaining it can be to fire people, but that is entertainment. That is not how you run an organization.

We have seen a performative effort to try to convince us that they are saving money. They are doing this in order to justify their plan for a $3.5 trillion tax cut for hedge fund managers, multinational corporations and billionaires, but they are really not saving anything.

Then, yesterday, we passed a budget resolution, and all my Republican colleagues are on Twitter, X, whatever they want to call it, saying that that resolution contains statutory language to say no tax on tips, no tax on overtime, no tax on Social Security.

Well, what did Elon Musk have to say about that or what did his organization have to say?

They organized the readers content comments to correct falsehoods that people put in their tweets, and every single time a Republican went up and said that that resolution had eliminated taxes on tips, overtime, and Social Security, the Musk organization said: Readers added context. None of the policies mentioned in this post were included in the House budget resolution. It does nothing to exempt tips, Social Security, or overtime. We know they are not ultimately going to do that because they need the $4.5 trillion to provide tax breaks for hedge fund managers, multinational corporations, and billionaires.

Now, government is frustrating. It frustrates me often. It needs to be improved. You know what is also frustrating sometimes? My computer is on the blink a little bit, and I just want to take a hammer and hit it up the side. That makes me feel good, but it doesn't actually make the device work any better.

There are several techniques being used by the Federal Government that may make us feel good but don't make it work any better. You see, you can fire people--and they are firing just about everybody in the government with less than 2 years of government service, the probationary employees. That destroys our future. The people hired in 2024 are those that we are going to need in 2034.

The Dodgers are a pretty well-run organization. I think better run than government. Imagine if the Dodgers were going to fire all the players who had joined in the last 2 years, just eliminate everybody in single A and double A ball, I would say they would be worse than the White Sox. You can fire people.

You can also do the buyouts. They offered everybody in government a buyout. Who took the buyout? The people who could easily get another job elsewhere because they have very high capacity and the people who are going to retire in the next year or two anyway, so why not get 8 months free vacation.

Then they have the hiring freeze. Imagine if the Dodgers stopped signing new talent, where would they be in the 2030s?

You can also stop all research, and I will get to an example of that, and then you argue, well, hey--in 2026, they can say: Hey, we saved all this money, and the research wouldn't have benefited you by 2026. However, who is going to be dying from cancer and other diseases in the 2030s because of the research they are stopping now?

Then they can do an oopsy-daisy and say: Oh, we stopped the research, and we started it again. No, no, no, no, you stopped the research. All those little white rats are dead. You can't start again. You have to start the research over.

You can stop maintenance, and I will get to an example of that. It saves you money unless you actually want things to work well.

Again and again, we are told that there is just a government mulligan, let's just do it over.

Oopsy-daisy is not the way to run a multitrillion-dollar organization.

We are told that there is $50 million for condoms and $100 million for condoms in Gaza, and then they said, never mind, we got it wrong. We made a mistake. Oopsy-daisy.

They decided to offer all of the air traffic controllers 8 months free pay for quitting, and then they say, oopsy-daisy. Then today Elon Musk tweets: There is a shortage of top-notch air traffic controllers. If you have retired but are open to returning to work, please consider doing so. He just gave them 8 months' pay to stay home. Now he hopes they are going to come back. No, the fishing is good, the 8 months' pay is guaranteed.

However, it is even worse. You see, not only did they give buyouts to the air traffic controllers, but they have fired the navigational aid maintenance personnel. Those air traffic controllers are going to be looking at empty screens, and those folks remain fired. What could go wrong?

They also stopped our efforts against Ebola. Some of the charities were barely getting by. They have gone bankrupt. They pulled their people out of Africa. Then he says: Oopsy-daisy, we are going to start that again.

What a way to run a government. There are people who are going to get Ebola as a result of this oopsy-daisy mistake, and that is another opportunity for Ebola inside a human being to mutate a little bit and then be a more pathogenic Ebola when it comes here.

Finally, they fired 300 people who were in charge of security of our nuclear weapons. Oopsy-daisy, what could have gone wrong? Keep in mind, if somebody is fired and then hired back or told they are going to be fired but then not fired--if you say, oh, no harm, no foul, oopsy- daisy--once that happens to a person, their resume is on LinkedIn. They are looking for a new job.

Nobody wants to stay with an employer, if they have other opportunities, if that employer is teasing them about firing them or, worse yet, actually fired them and got them back. Some of our best people will be leaving in the weeks to come, even if they hire them back.

There is real waste, fraud, and abuse in government. This is an example. Mr. Speaker, $200 million of our taxpayer money is being spent on advertisements praising Donald Trump. How do they justify this? They aim these at their own base, to tell their own base: Hey, Donald Trump is great. Here is a commercial to tell us that.

They claim that these ads are aimed at undocumented immigrants and that somehow, by watching a 30-second ad, the immigrants are going to say: Oopsy-daisy, I made a mistake. Venezuela really is better than California.

I don't think so. There is nothing that can be put in a 30-second ad that is going to cause somebody who is here to decide they want to be back there. These are people who walked here from Venezuela. They went through the Darien Gap. They dealt with the forest. They dealt with the snakes. They dealt with the predators. They dealt with the drug dealers.

They came into our country at great personal risk. They are going to see a 30-second ad praising Donald Trump and decide to walk back or even fly back? What a stupid excuse that is for the obvious election interference of spending $200 million of taxpayer money on ads praising Donald Trump.

Let's look at what is happening at the VA. They fired 2,000 people there. They are still hiring, but they have fired 2,000 people there. They have a nursing shortage in this country. The nurses they have fired are going to find jobs elsewhere very quickly, and they are not going to get them back.

The VA has stopped its clinical trials on cancer. Even people who are not veterans may be dying next decade because of the research that is not being done this decade. They are canceling operations. They are increasing the wait times at the VA. They have fired the suicide crisis line counselors.

There is veterans' blood on the hands of a man who never served his country. That is right. Elon Musk never served in the South African Army.

My district includes the Pacific Palisades. I thank so many of my colleagues for their expressions of sympathy. I have had a chance to work, as I always do, with my constituents dealing with government. It is sometimes frustrating. There are short deadlines imposed on people who have fled their homes and form letters that are confusing as hell and make people think they are not eligible.

How do we make it all worse? Fly to my district, as the President did, and announce the elimination of FEMA entirely, while I have FEMA workers working 12 hours a day with my constituents, trying to solve problems. Offer the FEMA workers, including the temporary workers, a buyout. In any disaster we go in, we have to hire temporary workers. They may only have a 3-month or 4-month job, but they are offered 8 months of pay to stay home. What a way to deal with a disaster.

Then the President says he wants to impose conditions on the aid. They want to abolish the California Coastal Commission which takes steps to prevent billionaires with beachfront property to not wall off the beach and prevent anybody else from getting in the sand. I can see why Donald Trump would identify with those billionaires. That is the condition he wants to impose?

I voted for aid for hurricane victims in Louisiana, and it never occurred to me to turn to a victim after a hurricane in Louisiana and tell them to stay on their cousin's couch and no Federal aid until their State changes its abortion laws.

Now is not the time to take hostage fire victims or hurricane victims in an effort to try to force a State government to take an action that this or that Member of Congress or this or that President wants them to take.

I want to assure the country we are going to build back better. We are going to make sure that the Palisades does not burn again. We have a very strict fire building code that is applicable to all new construction in the Palisades and other fire-prone areas.

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

Mr. Speaker, my party has put confidence in me and made me the chief Democrat dealing with the Subcommittee on Capital Markets. Our SEC oversees our capital markets which are the nerve center of global capitalism. Virtually all the most powerful companies in America and really the world focus on one goal, and that is to increase the value of their companies' stock on our capital markets.

Our capital markets are the envy of the world. The securities traded there are worth over $100 trillion. It is fragile. It is delicate. It is the nerve center of global capitalism. Why don't we just let big balls take a whack at it? What could go wrong?

Whether it is crime in the streets or crime in the suites, we should not defund the police. We don't defund the men and women in blue, and we don't defund the Securities and Exchange Commission that oversees the stock and bond markets.

The SEC has a budget of $2 billion. It secured over $3.2 billion in fines, in effect, to those on Wall Street that did the wrong thing. It more than paid for itself and--no, that was $3.2 billion that went back to investors, $8.2 billion in fines. The Federal Government made four times its money on the SEC.

There are those at DOGE that want to, in effect, abolish the SEC and get the same kind of securities regulation on Wall Street that they have in Botswana or Kazakhstan--that is to say, no regulations at all-- and see what happens.

Two years from now we will have to see. Did the SEC under the Trump administration secure $8.2 billion paid to the Federal Government or $3.2 billion returned to investors? If not, it will not be because there is no crime in the suites, that there is no crooks on Wall Street. It will not be because the wolves of Wall Street have become lambs. It will be because they defunded the police of Wall Street.

Our Relationship with China

Mr. Speaker, a lot of attention is being spent here in Congress on China. With 28 years of experience on the Foreign Affairs Committee, I would like to address that issue. The big part of the problem started when this Congress voted to give most favored nation status to China. That was at the beginning of this century. We were told it would only increase our trade deficit by a billion dollars a year. That prediction was off by 4,000 percent.

The vast majority of Democrats voted ``no'' on that bill, which was the action which made China a worldwide economic superpower. It got China into the international trading organizations and opened up access to our markets. We voted ``no'' when a Democratic President was twisting our arms to vote ``yes.'' It was our proudest moment. I hope my Republican colleagues will have a proud moment when they stand up to a President of their own party.

Unfortunately, Republican votes and a few Democratic votes passed that. We now have our markets wide open to China. Their markets aren't particularly open to us, and we have huge trade deficits. Those trade deficits with China were $150 billion higher under the Trump administration than they were under the Biden administration. They were particularly high in the partial Trump administration before COVID. It wasn't a COVID thing. Trump's policy is to yell loudly and accomplish nothing when it comes to dealing with our trade deficits with China.

Trump talks about other countries eating our lunch. Under his first administration, China ate our lunch, our dinner, our dessert, and our snacks. Americans are investing in Chinese stocks, and the question I would ask at hearing after hearing is: Can anybody give me a reason why we should use our tax system and lose our tax dollars to incentivize Americans buying Chinese stocks? And not a single member can give a reason. Not a single witness can give a reason why we should do that.

We forgo hundreds of millions or billions of dollars in taxes on the gains people earn on investing in Chinese stocks. We encourage them to invest in the Chinese economy with our tax dollars. Only one Republican has stepped forward and cosponsored my legislation to eliminate the capital gains allowance, the tax incentive for investing in Chinese stocks.

Why is that? The billionaire class wants subsidies for every investment they make, even when they are building the Chinese economy or the Russian economy or the Iranian economy. It is time to stand up to the billionaire class. China cannot be confronted if people are not willing to do so.

We also need to take steps so that Chinese stocks are not included in index funds and so that every company that reports to the SEC informs its shareholders of what risk they have due to their dependence on China and what they are doing about it so that every private company is derisking from China and doing everything they can. Then, God forbid, if China wants to end the trade relationship or, God forbid, China invades Taiwan, these companies have minimized the risk that our economy faces.

One area where we need to be particularly strong is in those islands in the Pacific between the United States and China. My father fought in the Pacific. He landed the boats on island shores. We need to maintain our influence in places like the Solomon Islands

and the Cook Islands. Solomon Islands are a place where thousands and thousands of American Marines died and many in the Navy, as well.

What have we done? We have eliminated our aid program. These countries are very small. These islands are small. The aid programs are small. Yet, they have a tremendous impact on influence in these strategic islands. We eliminated $21 million for the Solomon Islands. We eliminated $95,000 for the Cook Islands.

Is this how we confront China, or is this how we have performative savings?

Now, we need to confront China. One way we also need to confront China is in international lending and the credit rating agencies, the bond rating agencies that rate the creditworthiness of countries. We need to tell those who rate the other countries' creditworthiness that if they don't repay a phony debt to China, a debt trap debt to China, that should not be counted against them.

What do I mean? When China makes a loan to Sri Lanka, that they know Sri Lanka is not going to be able to pay for that project. They put in there: Oh, if you don't pay, we get to control your port. Sri Lanka should be encouraged: Don't give your port to China. Give your middle finger to China, and you will able to borrow from American banks and European banks and international lending associations.

We should never allow a credit rating agency under our control to ding a country that is subject to this kind of blackmail from China.

Foreign Aid is a Good Thing

Mr. Speaker. This brings up the issue of foreign aid in general.

If you poll Americans, they will say we are spending too much on foreign aid. Then you ask them how much of our budget is going to foreign aid. They say 25 percent of our American budget is going to foreign aid, and it ought to be less. Then you ask them what percentage should we be spending on foreign aid, and they say 10 percent.

Well, guess what. We are spending way less than 1 percent of our budget on foreign aid. We are spending way less than the American people think we are spending. We are spending less than they want to spend, but they want it cut because they think it is over 30 times what it actually is. That is why Ronald Reagan recognized the importance of our foreign aid program.

Now, I have been in Congress for a long time, and I remember when Congress confronted the executive branch. It wasn't just Democrats against Republicans. It was all of us against the executive branch. There are times when both sides of the aisle are going to need to do that.

There are some criticisms that are valid against our foreign aid and State Department budget. The State Department is doing something that is too woke for me but is supported by Elon Musk. That is when they have in their budget spending $400 million to replace the perfectly good armored cars that the State Department has now, armored vehicles designed to make sure that our diplomats are safe in dangerous places. We have perfectly good armored cars, but there is a proposal that the State Department spend $400 million on new zero-greenhouse-gas-emitting armored cars. That is pretty damn woke. You would expect DOGE to have crossed that out, but they won't because the explicit statement is that this is $400 million for Tesla Cybertruck armored cars. You know Elon ain't cutting that.

You know what they did to fool us because they think we are stupid? They changed the document a little bit. They took out the word ``Tesla.'' Now, the State Department is going to spend $400 million on armored, U.S.-made Cybertrucks. Do they really think those aren't going to be Tesla? Is there somebody else who makes armored Cybertrucks in the United States? That money is going to reduce the greenhouse gases of our armored vehicles, and it is going to Elon Musk.

There are a lot of things that are said about our foreign aid budget that are completely false. Elon Musk already has admitted that his statement that $50 million was going to condoms for Gaza was just a total mistake. Oopsy-daisy. He apologized. It is okay, he thinks, for DOGE to make a mistake, but if he can find even a single dollar of misspent money in any other agency, he says that is a reason to abolish the whole agency and fire all the employees.

Well, that $50 million was going for anti-AIDS programs in Africa, and some of it was going for condoms. That is one of the ways you try to prevent the transmission of AIDS.

Now, why are these foreign aid programs in the interest of America? First, you might think that we have a moral responsibility as the richest country in the world to do something for the poorest countries, but let's put that aside. If we don't provide foreign aid, China steps in, our influence is declined, and China's influence increases.

If we don't provide aid to the very poorest people there, that gives them a strong incentive to try to come here. You can try to stop them with a wall, but he had 4 years to build a wall and didn't build a wall.

The best way to reduce irregular migration to America is to eliminate the reason that people are so desperate to come here.

Finally, and most importantly, our aid deals with diseases. Musk already said oopsy-daisy, he didn't mean to cut the program to fight Ebola in Africa. He tries to restore it. Of course, he has already done so much damage to it, wasted so much money, who knows what. That is more people getting Ebola in Africa, more chances for the disease to mutate and then come here.

He is fine with cutting our actions against HIV/AIDS. Same issue. That disease mutates in every human it infects. One out of a thousand, one out of a million of those mutations make the disease more capable of surviving the drugs that we have, make it more communicable, and make it more powerful when it comes back here. A lot of Americans will be dying of AIDS next decade because of what we are not doing in Africa this decade.

Then they try to point to some other programs that are wasting money, like $6 million to help Egypt encourage tourism. I have Republican colleagues who think that USAID is aid that must be food for people who are hungry right now and about to die of starvation. They don't know that USAID stands for U.S. Agency for International Development. The goal is not just to feed people who are hungry now, not just give a man a fish, not just give a woman a fish, but to teach them how to fish.

That is why an Agency for International Development would help Egypt develop its economy. You know what Egypt has? They have got a lot of sand. That doesn't help them too much. They have got pyramids. If they can develop their tourist industry, which is a big chunk of their economy, they won't need our food aid because they will have money of their own. It is a good program, $6 million to help them get more tourists.

You know who started that program? Donald Trump in his first term. Yes, they made a big deal of cutting a wasteful program that Donald Trump started.

Then we are told that there is a circumcision program. There is a circumcision program, voluntary, providing this very inexpensive operation. Why? Because you reduce by 60 percent of risk of female-to- male transmission of AIDS. It is the single cheapest thing you can do to reduce AIDS. Then you make a joke out of it. Yes, you can make a joke, but it is not a joke when more people die of AIDS in Africa and more AIDS mutates in Africa because you had a funny joke.

The Ebola cut was a mistake. Musk admits it. Oopsy-daisy. The cutting efforts to deal with HIV/AIDS in Africa, also a mistake.

Mr. Speaker, there is one other cut they made, and that is they cut oxygen in a clinic for people who have fled the terrible deaths in Burma/Myanmar. As a result, a 71-year-old woman, Pe Kha Lau, died without her oxygen.

I ask that this House not only reflect on the other 10,000 people in that refugee camp who are without medical care, but I ask that we adjourn in silence in the memory of Pe Kha Lau

who died at the hands of Elon Musk and DOGE.

Mr. Speaker, I move that the House do now adjourn.

The motion was agreed to; accordingly (at 2 o'clock and 10 minutes p.m.), under its previous order, the House adjourned until Monday, March 3, 2025, at noon for morning-hour debate.

Mr. Speaker, I thank the gentleman for yielding.

Mr. Speaker, I join with the gentleman in his comments about how we need to protect our veterans from the ill-considered actions of President Trump and, I was about to say Secretary Musk, whatever he is. I, of course, join with Mr. Vargas in welcoming our new chair of the Financial Services Committee.

I want to focus on the bill at hand, actually two bills at hand. We are dealing with this bill now and about four other bills will go by, and then we will deal with the companion legislation.

Ms. De La Cruz is the chief Republican on my bill, which is going to come up in what I hope will be only 30 or 40 minutes. I am the chief Democrat on her bill.

Mr. Speaker, Congress has created various Federal programs to help those who are housing insecure, particularly veterans. Of course, to qualify for those programs, Mr. Speaker, you have to have an income under a certain threshold, so we have to define what is income. In particular, we have to ask: Do disability benefits paid by the VA count as income which might put a veteran over the threshold and deny the veteran participation in the housing benefits?

I think it should not for a number of reasons. First, we don't want disabled American veterans who are homeless or near homeless to be excluded from homeless programs. Second, the Internal Revenue Code already recognizes that disability benefits paid to veterans should not be considered income.

At the urging of many of us--I was particularly strong on this--the Department of Housing and Urban Development has reached the same conclusion, at least from now, but here in Washington, it is not always good to just rely on an agency determination. A simple stroke of a Sharpie can change it one way or the other, now or in 4 years. What you want, Mr. Speaker, is legislation because that is near permanent.

Mr. Speaker, we have statutory provisions that make it clear that disability benefits paid by the VA should not be included in determining eligibility for veterans' housing. There is a reason for that, Mr. Speaker, and that is that you ordinarily think that if two people have the same income, then they are living at the same level. That is not true if you are a disabled veteran because you have the additional difficulties and the additional expenses of being disabled.

A veteran may have to pay for a health aide. The veteran can't get across town to take advantage of a sale. He or she is going to have a variety of additional costs because they are disabled, and that is what their disability benefit pays for, those additional costs. It doesn't necessarily mean that they have a standard of living that includes their disability payment.

Now, we deal with Congresswoman De La Cruz's bill, which I strongly support. I hope it will pass unanimously in the next few minutes. This deals with the HUD Community Development Block Grant program. As I said, my legislation, which will come up hopefully not too long from now, deals with a different HUD program.

Mr. Speaker, I urge all Members to support both bills. They both have no score, so this doesn't cost the Federal Government any money.

Mr. Speaker, both bills are overwhelmingly supported by veterans organizations, including the VFW, Vietnam Veterans of America, The American Legion, Disabled American Veterans, U.S.VETS, and Black Veterans Empowerment Council.

Mr. Speaker, I urge my colleagues to vote ``yes'' on this bill and its companion legislation.

Mr. Speaker, these are two companion bills. It has been good working with her. My hope is that we not only pass both these bills today unanimously but that we actually get the Senate to act.

There is nothing more shameful than a homeless, disabled American veteran, one who has lost a limb defending us and now living on the streets.

There are two programs to focus on that are designed to provide housing for the unhoused. The De La Cruz bill, which I was proud to be the chief Democratic advocate of, dealt with the CDBG program. This bill deals with a joint program between HUD and the veterans administration, HUD and the VA, and that is why the bill's title spells out HUDVA.

The issue, again, is how do we define income for eligibility for housing. Certainly we should change that definition when it applies to veterans' housing for veterans on veterans' land.

The worst thing we could do is exclude disabled veterans. This is particularly true because perhaps the most significant parcel that this will affect is in my district, and it is the largest VA hospital in the West. What better place for disabled veterans to live when they need often hospital care than to live right there at the hospital.

This bill amends the HUD definition of annual income to exclude disability payments received by a veteran for eligibility purposes for housing under the HUDVA Supportive Housing program.

Last year, HUD, in a major victory for us, did decide to exclude disability benefits from this definition. It is now, I think, necessary for us to make that a statutory change so that it doesn't change with this or that administration.

Now, to qualify, as I have said, the central issue is whether VA disability benefits count as income. The Internal Revenue Code excludes them from that definition of income. As I said, in talking about the gentlewoman from Texas' bill, if you are disabled and you have disability benefits, those benefits don't necessarily raise your standard of living and raise your income from that standpoint when you have to spend your disability benefits on, for example, home healthcare, the additional cost of living with a disability, et cetera.

The HUD-VASH program is designed to provide rental assistance. The inclusion of disability benefits in the annual income calculation excludes veterans who are disabled from living at a VA hospital land or part of a complex that includes a VA hospital. This legislation would address this problem.

The bill is supported by virtually all the veterans support organizations, such as VFW, Vietnam Veterans of America, American Legion, Disabled American Veterans, U.S. Vets, and Black Veterans Empowerment Council.

The bill is also supported by the U.S. Conference of Mayors, because it is mayors, after all, who have to deal with the homeless and particularly homeless veterans in their cities.

This bill had 101 cosponsors last Congress and substantial bipartisan support in this Congress. I am pleased to have the co-leadership of Ms. De La Cruz from Texas. It has a zero Congressional Budget Office score, so it does nothing to increase our deficit.

The recent wildfires in my area also exemplify this in that the VA hospital that I referred to is right there close to where these fires broke out.

Mr. Speaker, I look forward to passing this bill and to persuade the Senate to do so as well.

Mr. Speaker, my district has been hit by wildfires that constitute the greatest fire, in terms of total property damage, in the history of America. There are those who say that California should not get aid unless we change--get this--our voter registration laws.

Different States have different voter registration processes, and they are all wonderful. They tend to work pretty well, and I disagree with some of them. Why condition aid? I have been on this floor time and again and voted for aid to Louisiana when they were hit with horrific hurricanes. I never once said, no, let's turn to hurricane victims and tell them to keep sleeping on their cousin's couch for months and years until Louisiana changes its abortion laws.

I disagree with Louisiana's abortion laws. A woman ought to have the right to choose. I believe that strongly. It never occurred to me to turn to individual families and deny them the aid they need to overcome a giant disaster and to hold them hostage in an effort to get their State legislatures to change their statutes. I hope this House will not do the same to California.

Then, we are told that the fires in the Palisades relate to California's statewide water management system. This is absolutely absurd. In Los Angeles County, our reservoirs are full to overflowing. We have plenty of water to live our lives. Even in the middle of the fires, no Los Angeleno was told to take a short shower or not to water their plants outside.

We have debates on how to use water in California, but it had nothing to do--why were fire hydrants dry in my district? We have the Palisades, which go up quite steeply. The water system brings that water in at the bottom of the Palisades at sea level. Then, we have to pump the water up. We have a good system to pump the water, a system quite capable of making sure everybody in the Palisades could live their lives and water their plants and we could fight five house fires all at the same time.

Then, we were hit not with 5 but with 500 house fires at the same time, with winds at an unimaginable level hurling cinders, flaming cinders, as large as golf balls, in some cases as large as baseballs, hundreds of yards. We did not have a water pumping system capable of bringing our fully sufficient water to where it was needed up in the Palisades.

The President said that he is going to build you the fastest water pumping system in the history of America to make sure that you can bring that water up the hill. That is fine.

Instead, what does he do? He has this ridiculous photo op where he released millions and millions of gallons of water in January. Not a drop of that water has reached L.A. County. That is irrigation water released at the wrong time, in January, that flows into basically a dry lake bed where it evaporates.

We wasted enormous amounts of water. Thank God we stepped in and the local officials prevented it from getting worse. That is why not a single Republican Member from California will come here and say anything good about that ridiculous photo op where Donald Trump forces the Federal Government to waste water in California that could have been used and would have been used in spring and summer to grow crops for America.

Talk about bad management. Trump froze the money across all the Federal Government. He had to tell people that at least he didn't freeze their Social Security checks, although our local health system clinics aren't getting money.

What else did he freeze? He froze Community Wildfire Defense Grants. He came to my district. He showed sympathy for the victims, but we also needed him there to inspire the FEMA workers those victims rely on. They are working 12-hour shifts in some cases to bring people the help they need.

What does he do to the FEMA workers? First, he insults them. Then, he injures FEMA. How does he insult them? He declares he wants to abolish FEMA. That is a great thing to say right in the middle of the most intense part of the disaster recovery effort.

Then, he turns to FEMA workers and says he will give them 8 months of pay if they will just quit in the middle of the disaster recovery period. Right when we need them, he wants them to quit, and he is going to pay them to quit.

He applies this not only to FEMA workers working the disaster recovery areas both in North Carolina and California, but he also applies this to temporary workers. FEMA has probably more temporary workers per capita than any other government agency because when there are disasters, they hire local people. If workers are only going to have a job for 6 months, they can announce that they are giving up the job and get paid for 7 or 8 months and do no work.

Obviously, this will impair FEMA's ability to help the people in my district. What will also be a problem is he is offering a buyout to EPA workers. These are the people who are the specialists in toxics removal, dealing with a fire that has caused more Teslas and other electric cars to go up in smoke than any other fire in the history of the world, creating a toxic problem that only a few people know how to deal with. He is offering them a buyout, telling them to quit and stay home.

This effort to insult and then injure is also applied to my State. We had House Committee on the Judiciary hearings, the whole purpose of which was to incense California, not just for fun, although some Members had fun, but to injure California by creating a political environment that says we are not going to help people recover from this disaster because they are Californians and we hate Californians. That is not a good thing to do when we are down and when we are trying to come up from this disaster.

I should point out that this disaster affected not only my district but there were also the Altadena and Pasadena fires in Judy Chu's district. I hope this Congress provides the help it has always provided to the victims of enormous disasters.

A similar problem we have is with the CIA where intelligence officers have been offered a buyout. Well, who is going to take the buyout? The best and the brightest who can make at least as much money and probably a lot more in the private sector will take the buyout. You lose your best people. Those in the last year of their service, when we need them to pass on their knowledge, they are going to show us that they know that they don't have to work, and they can still get the money thanks to Donald Trump.

What does it take to replace these workers, these intelligence officers? Well, first you have to put them through the security clearance. That can take a year. Then they have to learn foreign languages. Then they have to learn their craft.

Who benefits from this? Our enemies, the terrorists, China, Russia, North Korea and Iran benefit from this.

Finally, it impairs the ability of the CIA to carry on operations that could undercut the support of the Ayatollahs and hopefully bring regime change and democracy to Iran. The only way to be absolutely sure that you don't have a nuclear Islamic Republic of Iran is not to have an Islamic Republic of Iran.

We see this not only at the CIA but at the FBI where eight of the top people have been shown the door, where 5,000 are under investigation for, what, for working the files they were assigned, which they are required to do.

Now, I wasn't surprised when President Trump eliminated all future investigations of those who came to this floor and imperiled our democracy and imperiled the lives of many of us and our colleagues. It does surprise me that just because an FBI special agent was assigned a file they are now under investigation, it looks like they might get fired, and they are being encouraged to quit. They get 8 months or they can stick around and see whether Trump fires them. That free vacation is looking better and better.

How big is this? It affects 5,000 out of the 37,000 employees of the FBI. The FBI only has 14,000 special agents. I believe most of those 5,000 are among

those agents, those less than 14,000 agents.

If you decapitate the FBI, Americans will die. Mark my words, if you decimate the FBI, Americans will die. If you dismantle the FBI, Americans will die. Americans will die from the drugs and the gangs, and they will die from the terrorism. This attack on the FBI is an attack on the safety of all Americans.

Another attack that doesn't seem like it is an attack on Americans, but really is, is the decimation of USAID.

Now, I would expect Donald Trump--and I would applaud Donald Trump if he was talking about reforming, reevaluating, reprioritizing USAID, but instead, it seems that he is focused on dismantling USAID.

Now, it is not like nobody thinks that is a good idea. Just today, Vladimir Putin applauded President Trump for decimating and in effect calling for the abolition of USAID. Now, Vladimir Putin doesn't care about the Constitution of the United States, but we should.

Under that Constitution, this Congress passed into the law of the land statutes providing for USAID to operate. Then we passed statutes saying that for this or that operation, this or that amount of money should be spent. Laws of the land creating the programs, laws of the land indicating how much money should be spent on those programs, those are laws that are being shredded by king Donald the first.

So who benefits from this? Well, there are three beneficiaries: China, disease, and mass migration. Let's first look at China. First, the Chinese are smart enough not to compliment Donald Trump for destroying USAID because they see an opportunity, particularly in the islands of the Pacific, islands my father risked his life for during World War II. They see in the Pacific islands small countries where just a little bit of aid can go a long way for the very few people who live there. These are strategic islands, as we learned in the 1940s. China sees us abandoning the world, and they come in in a position to grow in world influence.

How much money are we speaking about here? If you look at the polling, Americans say, well, our foreign aid budget must be 25 percent of our Federal budget, and it should be lower. It should be down to 10 percent of our Federal budget.

Our foreign aid budget is less than 1 percent of our Federal budget. No one concerned with foreign aid has dreamt of it being 10 percent. It is less than 1 percent of our Federal budget. It is less than one quarter of 1 percent of our GDP, and for that we can vie with China for influence.

There is more. There is health. A lot of USAID money is spent to deal with malaria, HIV/AIDS, tuberculosis, Ebola, and bird flu. If you have no morality, if you do not care whether the world's most powerful economic engine does anything to help the poorest of the poor in the world, you might at least take a look at the health effects because every time one of these communicable diseases flourishes abroad, it can come here. We saw that with HIV/AIDS. We fear that with Ebola. Every single person who gets HIV/AIDS, every single person with tuberculosis gives the disease another little laboratory in which it might mutate and become more difficult for us to control when it does come here.

We are talking about spending money for team human versus team virus and team pathogen. How much will it cost for us to treat people if there is a new drug-resistant strain of tuberculosis or a drug- resistant or a more communicable version of HIV/AIDS?

Finally, we are all focused on the price of eggs. We are all paying an extra 50 cents for every egg at Waffle House. Bird flu is combated by USAID around the world, and every chicken that gets bird flu in a very poor country is a chance for that flu to mutate and come to the United States in strength and form.

If you are concerned about the health of Americans and the price we pay for our groceries, USAID's efforts to control disease should matter to you.

Finally, when people are faced with the worst catastrophes, with drought, with war, with famine, those are the people most likely to engage in mass migration. Even if you have no morality, even if you do not want to help the least of these with even one quarter of 1 percent of the American GDP, do not take action, Mr. President, that expands the power of the Chinese Communist Party, expands the opportunity for disease around the world, and creates mass migration that will not be stopped by the wall you didn't build.

Then we are told lies about USAID. We are told that $50 million was spent for condoms in Gaza, then the President himself said $100 million. How about the truth not one penny was spent? That was a complete lie. That doesn't mean we haven't spent some money in Gaza. We did provide for field hospitals in Gaza. People were dying in Gaza, and we provided help. You can argue about what our policy in Gaza should be, but not one penny was spent on condoms.

You know, there was another lie told that wasn't a lie, it was actually true. He said we spent $6 million on tourism for Egypt. That money wasn't exactly spent on tourism, but it related to transportation. It is mostly true, except it was a program that Donald Trump established in his first term. He is saying, abolish USAID because of what he did in his first term.

While we are talking about lying about how money is spent, let's focus on another lie. They told the lie that USAID had spent $8 million on subscriptions to POLITICO Pro, a publication. The truth is the entire executive branch spent $8 million. Okay. Is this a woke publication, a waste of money, a subsidy for leftwing journalism and activism? Well, maybe it is. But Republicans in the House of Representatives last year and all their various congressional offices just in the House, I am not even including the Senate, spent $800,000 in subscriptions to POLITICO Pro. Individual decisions were made in over 200 offices. They decided that the subscription was necessary to run their office.

Do you know what? POLITICO Pro has a competitor, which provides much of the same kind of research, called Bloomberg Government, and Republicans in the House of Representatives spent another $800,000 in 1 year. That seems like a lot of money, especially when you realize that the executive branch is a lot bigger than Congress.

If you want to visualize it, the Republicans in Congress who spent $800,000 on POLITICO Pro have their offices in 1\1/2\ office buildings. Now, close your eyes and think about how many office buildings the U.S. Government occupies.

Well, why do congressional offices and other policymaking offices spend money on these publications? It is because it is a lot more efficient to get an analysis that is published and footnoted by experts than it is to hire fine staff, and I have some here, to do the separate research for every entity in every office and every congressional office. That is a decision each Member of Congress makes when they decide whether to subscribe to Bloomberg Government and POLITICO Pro. That is also a decision that every doctor and medical researcher makes when they decide whether to subscribe to expensive medical journals.

The fact is it is cheaper to read an article that is specialized and detailed and more expensive than your general purpose articles. This is not a newspaper with events in my city. This is not a huge mass market publication. It is cheaper to subscribe to a specialty journal than it is to hire hundreds of people to do your own research. That is why Members of Congress subscribe to POLITICO Pro and spend $800,000 on it. Yet, the President of the United States first lies and says it was $8 million for USAID and then lies and says, oh, it is some sort of subsidy to some woke, liberal activist publication.

I know my colleagues well. I know my Republican colleagues well. Very few of them are interested in subsidizing woke journalism.

Let's focus a little bit about the President's discussion of Gaza. Apparently, he wants to buy Greenland, and he is looking for a source of funds to buy Greenland. He thinks he can do it by selling timeshare condos in Gaza. I do not often provide investment advice. I certainly did back when I worked in the private sector.

Mr. Speaker, do not invest in timeshares in Gaza. It is not a good idea. The idea is that 2 million people

should be moved from Gaza. These are two contradictory ideas. Secretary of State Rubio says that these people are going to move out temporarily, and then they can move back in. Apparently a U.S. President who doesn't want to spend a dime on USAID wants to build fancy condos for every resident of Gaza.

Secretary Rubio talks about how the people of Gaza are going to move out and then they are going to move back in to a beautiful condo. However, President Trump has said the opposite. He says that they are not going back. Instead, he believes that some country in the world is supposed to take in 2 million people from Gaza. So far he has identified 0.0 countries willing to take 0.0 Gazans in. He certainly hasn't volunteered that the United States would take them in.

Then, second, he has got to persuade Gazans to leave, and they don't want to leave. Although, I guess if he offered them a luxury suite in Mar-a-Lago, then they would certainly consider it.

What has he done with this proposal? First, he has embarrassed America. It is absolutely silly. Second, he has changed the political makeup inside Israel to empower those who believe that the Israeli settlers should move into Gaza and partially displace the Gazan population.

We need a permanent cease-fire in Gaza, and we need the destruction of Hamas. I welcome the recent comments of Israel where they recognize that Hamas fighters are not going to surrender for Israeli prisons and have said that it is acceptable if the Hamas fighters depart the region. We saw that in 1982 or 1983 when so many terrorists departed Lebanon for Tunis.

We can see a situation in which the people of Gaza without Hamas are able to live in peace. It is not going to be easy. I am not predicting that it is going to happen, but that is certainly our goal.

Mr. Speaker, let me focus on one other issue, and that is an issue mentioned by the prior speaker from Arizona: Artificial intelligence. Trillions of dollars are being spent around the world, more in the United States than anywhere else, to make artificial intelligence more powerful. Basically, not a penny is being spent to make sure that as we make it more powerful that we are monitoring for or preventing self- awareness, ambition, and a desire to take control.

Then we are told: Well, my God, if we were to spend a penny worried about controlling AI, then the Chinese are going to be ahead of us in developing AI. We can't afford a single penny on anything other than making AI more powerful.

If AI is self-aware and if AI develops a survival instinct, then AI will be able to understand many things, but even AI may not understand why the human race developed its own successor, a level of intelligence that is transhuman.

The last time there was a new level of intelligence on this planet is when our ancestors said hello to Neanderthal, and then we said good-bye to Neanderthal.

If you are going to develop a new level of intelligence, then perhaps it would be intelligent if we were to spend 1 percent, one-half of 1 percent, making sure that AI is a tool of human beings and not a creature with its own objectives. Yet, so far, not one penny.

I look forward to working, I hope, with colleagues on both sides of the aisle to make sure that as we make AI more powerful, we make sure that we keep AI under control.

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

Mr. Speaker, I move that the House do now adjourn.

The motion was agreed to; accordingly (at 1 o'clock and 20 minutes p.m.), under its previous order, the House adjourned until Monday, February 10, 2025, at noon for morning-hour debate.

Mr. Speaker, due to the devastating wildfire affecting my district and Southern California, I was not present for today's vote. Had I been present, I would have voted YEA on Roll Call No. 16, Motion to Recommit H.R. 30, and NAY on Roll Call No. 17, H.R. 30.

personal explanation

Mr. Speaker, due to the devastating wildfire affecting my district and Southern California, I was not present for today's vote. Had I been present, I would have voted YEA on Roll Call No. 13, H.R. 164; YEA on Roll Call No. 14, H.R. 144; and YEA on Roll Call No. 15, H.R. 33.

personal explanation

Mr. Speaker, due to the devastating wildfire affecting my district and Southern California, I was not present for today's vote. Had I been present, I would have voted YEA on Roll Call No. 10, H.R. 153, YEA on Roll Call No. 11, Motion to Commit H.R. 28, and NAY on Roll Call No. 12, H.R. 28.

Mr. Speaker, due to the devastating wildfire affecting my district and Southern California, I was not present for today's vote. Had I been present, I would have voted YEA on Roll Call No. 8, H.R. 192 The Amtrak Executive Bonus Disclosure Act, and YEA on Roll Call No. 9, H.R. 152 The Federal Disaster Assistance Coordination Act.

Mr. Speaker, due to the devastating wildfire affecting my district and Southern California I missed the vote on final passage for the Illegitimate Court Counteraction Act, H.R. 23. Had I been present I would have voted YEA on Roll Call No. 7.

While I do believe we would have produced a much better bill had it gone through regular order and received a markup in the House Foreign Affairs Committee, recent events have made it vital to pass a strong legislative response to the ICC.

The ICC's recent illegitimate, politically motivated, and legally spurious decision to issue arrest warrants for Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and former Minister of Defense Yoav Gallant (despite having no jurisdictional or factual basis to do so) led me to now support this legislation despite my procedural concerns. Had I been able to, I would have voted to pass this bill.

However, by January 8th, thousands of homes, businesses and other structures had been destroyed and, devastatingly, several Los Angelinos were killed and many more injured as a result of devastating fires in and around the 32nd Congressional District. Given these developments, I felt it was necessary to return to my district that day which made me unavailable to vote YEA on H.R. 23 the following day when this measure came to a vote.