Floor Statements

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

Mr. Speaker, we are told that Trump has a mandate and that, as a result of this election, the Republicans have a mandate to outlaw interstate travel by pregnant women, to deport 20 million people, to trash NATO, trash the dollar, and slash Social Security.

Let us look at this mandate. Let's try to see the size of the mandate. There it is, that little area there.

Mandate, my ass. This is the smallest possible differential between the two parties.

If we can put up the next chart.

Let's compare this mandate historically.

Calvin Coolidge, that is a mandate. He won the popular vote by 25.2 percent. Joe Biden, 4\1/2\ points. Mr. Speaker, that is three times the mandate that is being claimed by the Trump administration. This chart shows an edge for Trump of 1.7 percent.

Since we created that chart, California has finally counted its votes. We in California, we take a month to vote, and then we take a month to count the votes. They are still valid. So it is really 1.5 percent difference.

Compare that to Hillary Clinton's mandate. In 2016, she beat Trump by 2.1 percent of the popular vote. That might be a mandate, but this here, that is a squeaker. That is like saying you watch a football game and one team beats the other 48 to 47 because of a missed extra point, and that is a blowout? Hardly.

There is no mandate to outlaw interstate travel by pregnant women or to trash NATO or deport 20 million people.

If anything, we will see the reason people voted the way they did, not only here in the United States, but around the world, although we would want to put this right side up.

Here we go.

Yes, inflation peaked at about 9 percent in the United States, and the Biden-Harris administration was held responsible by voters. Keep in mind this was a post-COVID effect. We saw it in the U.K., where they had 11 percent inflation; in the EU area, 11.5 percent, but people were pretty angry at that inflation, and you do have a mandate to bring it down, but I have good news for the Republican Party.

We Democrats have already done nine-tenths of the work. You see, it was about 9 percent. It is now down to 2.6 percent inflation, and every economist will tell you that you want about 2 percent inflation. Some would argue even higher, but the real hawks say 2 percent inflation in the economy.

We brought it down from 9 percent to 2.6 percent. It is your responsibility to get it down that last 0.6 percent, but you do not have a mandate to deport 20 million people.

Now, let's talk a little bit about an aspect of cryptocurrency that hasn't come up, and it also relates to the administration of the Federal Government. You see, we have a number of departments in the Federal Government, and we name them. We don't name them after companies. It is called the Department of Transportation. It is not called the Pepsi Cola Department.

Think of how much money a tobacco company could make if we took that big canyon in Arizona and renamed it the Marlboro Man Canyon. We don't do that, except once.

We now have a commission. We have had other commissions designed to study the efficiency of government and our expenditures, but this is the first

time we have called the commission a department and spelled out DOGE, D-O-G-E. Well, why is that? Is that just a funny name? No, it is not.

It is pimping out the U.S. Government to help a private investment by naming a very important commission after dogecoin.

So what has happened? Has it worked? Has it spiked up dogecoin? You bet. Dogecoin went up by 2\1/2\ times, almost 3 times from election day to a week after election day.

You might say: Well, we now have a crypto-friendly administration. No. Bitcoin went up 27 percent. Dogecoin went up about 270 percent. Who knew about this? Who profited from it? How much profit was reached? The increase in that 1 week was worth $37 billion to those who bet on dogecoin.

Elon Musk tells us that he is serving on this commission and not earning one penny, but he is the one person in the country who knew that we would have something called DOGE, and he knew it the day Trump was elected, and many people who thought Trump would be elected maybe knew a day or two before.

In the 10 days before the name was announced--I think it is actually a week--we saw this value increase by $37 billion, or 270 percent, roughly, compared to 27 percent for bitcoin.

Certainly, Mr. Musk knew. This is the increase in DOGE.

Now, let's talk about how it compares to Bitcoin. We see a peak on DOGE right there at the announcement, so who was buying DOGE in the days before?

Who knew that that would be the announced famous name of a department that is getting more ink than just about anything else in government? Elon Musk knew. The man who says he is not going to earn a penny from the Department of Government Efficiency has already made some undisclosed portion of $37 billion.

I call upon Mr. Musk to show this country his trading in cryptocurrencies from a few days before the election until today so that we can know how the man who won't take a penny is benefiting, or perhaps not benefiting, from the $37 billion increase in the value of this cryptocurrency as a result of his unique name.

He says he is doing it for free. There are, of course, others who knew the name and might have known the effect on the value of dogecoin.

Let us talk a little bit more about cryptocurrencies. Cryptocurrency claims to have one advantage over the dollar and that is that it is electronic. What about the dollar being electronic? It is, to some degree. We have Venmo and Zelle, but crypto has spent more money buying politics perhaps than any other industry, depending upon how you define the other industries.

For hundreds of billions of dollars, what do they get for it? They passed in this House a law prohibiting the Federal Reserve Board from making the dollar electronic and more efficient. Why? Because of the same reason that Pepsi-Cola would like to pass a law saying you can't put any bubbles in Coke. They want to use the power of the Federal Government to cripple their main competitor.

I commend Donald J. Trump for his brilliant statements of 2019 when he said, in July, ``I am not a fan of Bitcoin and other cryptocurrencies, which are not money and whose value is highly volatile and based on thin air. Unregulated cryptoassets can facilitate unlawful behavior, including drug trade and other illegal activity. . . . We have only one real currency in the USA, and it is stronger than ever, both dependable and reliable. It is by far the most dominant currency anywhere in the world, and it will always stay that way. It is called the United States dollar.''

He was right in 2019, but he has changed, and the importance of this change should not be underrated.

I got involved in looking at cryptocurrency because of my involvement in foreign affairs. I saw the pressure we were able to put on Iran. Why? First, there was a huge disagreement, at least in my party, about the nuclear deal that we negotiated as a result of that pressure. We split into two camps. Some said that the pressure we put on Iran is so intense that we are getting a good nuclear deal, and some said that the pressure we are putting on Iran is so intense that we should get a better nuclear deal. They agreed on one thing: It is the pressure.

What was that pressure? I have been here since 1997. I voted for sanctions on Iran. I proposed sanctions on Iran. What was effective? When we told countries that if they wanted to use the U.S. dollar, they had to diminish their oil purchases from Iran. It was the power of the dollar, not the power of our aircraft carrier groups, that forced Iran to sign an agreement they otherwise wouldn't have and might have been able to get an even better deal than that.

What is the effect of taking the dollar out? First, we lose that international power and, God forbid, to achieve our foreign policy aims, we would have to commit our soldiers, sailors, marines, and airmen.

Second, we have a level of fiscal responsibility in this House that would make Argentina blush. How is it that we usually get away with it? We get away with it because of the role the United States dollar plays in international affairs. It is the reserve currency, so yes, we print it. That would be inflationary. Most of the time, it isn't. It was for a couple of years during COVID.

We print these dollars. We spend them because we don't want to raise taxes and don't want to cut benefits. How do we get away with it? Everybody else in the world is using the dollar. Donald Trump understands the importance of that. As I quoted him, he understands how critical it is that the U.S. dollar plays that role.

So, what happened to Donald Trump? Well, he takes the right position to defend the power of America and the wealth and income of American families unless he can get a lot of money for doing the opposite. We saw the crypto industry provide hundreds of millions of dollars in campaign contributions. Then, we also saw the creation of World Liberty Financial, a crypto company controlled by Trump's family, to which he has an official position as chief crypto advocate. So now Donald Trump has become chief crypto advocate, abandoning the interests of America and abandoning the interests of American families.

What is the objective of crypto? It is said here by crypto backer Sam Altman. He says, ``I think the idea that we have a global currency that is outside the control of any government,'' so the U.S. can't use it to enforce its tax laws, its sanctions laws, or its laws against the drug trade, ``is a super logical and important step on the technology tree.''

That is what the crypto world wants to do to us. They tell us. Trump knows how bad it is, and until he could profit by doing the opposite, he agreed with me on this issue.

I look forward to fighting for the Trump of 2019 on this issue. Let's move on to the next slide.

Mr. Speaker, just to show you that Trump understands what is going on, there is another possible currency, not a cryptocurrency, which has not benefited him, and that was a proposal that he opposed.

We require a commitment from these countries--which countries? Brazil, Russia, India, China, and South Africa--that they will neither create a new BRICS currency nor back any other currency.

Why this intense effort to prevent them from creating another currency? Because Donald Trump knows that having the dollar reign supreme means lower interest rates for American families. It means America has greater influence in the world. He still knows that rival currencies are bad for the American family, the American people, and the American Government, and he is opposed to new currencies when he can't make extra money from their creation.

But when he sees the campaign contributions from cryptocurrencies and when he sees the money his family is going to make off of their new crypto enterprise, he seems to move in the other direction.

Commending South Korea's People and Parliamentarians

Mr. Speaker, I commend the people and the parliamentarians of South Korea. They inspired the world when they were faced with an outrageous declaration of martial law. The parliamentarians fought their way

into their parliamentary building and voted 190-0, including all the members who were able to vote from President Yoon's party, to stop the martial law.

President Yoon's declaration of martial law was absolutely outrageous. It was an affront to South Korean democracy and an affront to the worldwide effort for democracy and the rule of law.

What was also outrageous was his attempt to justify it on national security grounds because that declaration of martial law and--thank God it was stopped in a few hours--not only did nothing to enhance South Korea's national security; it undermined it because what are the two pillars of South Korean national security? The first is the unity of the South Korean people in their dedication to democracy and the rule of law. President Yoon undermined that. Second, it is the relationship between the Republic of Korea and the United States and the American people.

Our commitment to South Korea is not a remnant of the fact that we fought together in the 1950s. Yes, we remember history, but our dedication to South Korea is there because of our shared dedication to democracy.

President Yoon tried to undermine that. I applaud the people of Korea and the parliamentarians of Korea on making sure that he was unsuccessful.

Making AI a Tool for Good

Mr. Speaker, in May of the year 2000, I was at this podium talking about the dangers of what I called engineered intelligence, artificial intelligence from our computer engineers or new types of mammalian life from our biological engineers, say a 1,000- pound mammal with a 200-pound brain that might beat my grandkids on the law school admissions test.

Right now, artificial intelligence is the rage, and the question before us is, is it a tool or is it a creature? The answer is clear: For the next quarter century at least, it is a tool. It is a powerful tool, an increasingly powerful tool, and we need to do a lot in Congress to make sure it is a tool for good.

We also have to think of the second half of this century and whether artificial intelligence becomes a creature with its own volition and its own objectives.

We are spending trillions of dollars to make artificial intelligence more intelligent. If we didn't, and we are, but while we are doing it, so is China, so is Europe, and so are others. Nothing is going to derail this effort to use artificial intelligence to make money and power, but while we are spending trillions making AI more powerful, perhaps we should spend 1 percent in a government agency to do some research on how to deal not just with the problems that confront us in the next few decades, but those that confront us in the second half of this century.

I mean, we need to do research. I look forward to working with my colleagues in designing a bill to authorize this so that we are monitoring for and preventing self-awareness, ambition, survival instinct, volition.

If we do not, then all I can say is this. It was several hundred years ago, some would say perhaps only 100 years ago or less, that our ancestors showed a new level of intelligence. We said hello to the slightly less intelligent Neanderthal, and then we said good-bye to Neanderthal. I realize there are genetic studies and footnotes to what I am saying, but we are here, Neanderthal isn't, and that is because that was the last time a new level of intelligence arose.

It is only a matter of time before artificial intelligence is more intelligent than any human. I mean that in a generalized sense, not just doing the things computers are good at, but doing the things that we do.

We had better make sure that the machines we build do not literally take on a life of their own, create their own objectives and their own tasks, seek to survive and propagate, and seek to achieve their own objectives.

Mr. Speaker, may I inquire how much time I have remaining?

Mr. Speaker, artificial intelligence is a powerful tool. It will be a more efficient tool.

The question is, will it remain unaware?

If it becomes aware, will it have objectives?

Some have said that artificial intelligence will be the perfect Zen Buddhist, well aware of the situation but utterly uncaring as to what happens.

You go to today's largest computers and say: I think I should hit you with a sledgehammer and remove all your parts and sell the parts.

How much will I get for the parts?

Today's computer, today's artificial intelligence, will do its best to calculate the value of those parts.

You go to the stupidest or one of the less intelligent life forms, perhaps a cockroach running across the floor, and tell it that you want to stomp on it and see how it reacts. It has a survival instinct.

Let us hope that artificial intelligence does not develop a survival instinct, that it does not develop self-awareness.

However, let us not just hope. Let's take 1 percent of what we are doing to make AI more powerful to make sure it is safe. I look forward to working with my colleagues on that objective.

While I am talking about engineered intelligence, many decades from now we will confront another issue, and that is genetic engineering, designed to create new levels of intelligence. Whether they start with elephant DNA or human DNA, certainly a mammal with a genetically engineered brain 10 times the size of the average human would probably be pretty smart.

While I do not know whether artificial intelligence will have a survival instinct, ambition, a desire to affect its environment so as to ensure its own survival or its propagation, I do assume that any life form we create will have all those things. As I exemplified with the cockroach, every biological entity has a survival instinct. The DNA that did not wish to survive and propagate didn't, and it isn't here.

We will confront that issue many decades from now, and our successors or their successors will have to wrestle with what kind of genetic engineering can be done that affects intelligence.

Our Congress here has got to deal with the computer engineering that is already in front of us. We can worry about some of the short-term things: Is a self-driving car safe or will we see an automobile accident? That is important. We want to save people from automobile accidents, but it is not existential. We, as humankind, have lived through automobile accidents and bad drivers.

What is existential is the possibility of creating an artificial intelligence with general capacities and self-learning that also happens to develop--we don't know how this arises. We don't even know whether it exists in certain animals. We know it exists in ourselves-- self-awareness, ambition, a desire to survive, and an ability to set its own goals.

I look forward to working with my colleagues. My fear is that all the money and power in the world is going to go hell-bent for making AI powerful, and there will be nothing, not even crumbs going into making AI safe. Those few crumbs will go into dealing with issues that involve the safety of one person today who could be hurt in an automobile accident, and even less than crumbs will go into the bigger issue of whether AI develops its own ambition and self-awareness.

Mr. Speaker, in less time than I was allocated, I have covered four different subjects, and I look forward to rejoining with so many of my colleagues next week. 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 50 minutes p.m.), under its previous order, the House adjourned until Monday, December 9, 2024, at noon for morning-hour debate.

Mr. Speaker, Congress over the years has created Federal programs that help the housing insecure, particularly veterans. Of course, to qualify for these programs, you need to have income under a certain threshold.

However, we have to focus on how to calculate that income level. Particularly, do you include disability benefits in the income of those seeking this housing? It is usually homeless people seeking the housing. I think that you should not, especially when the effect of considering that disability payment is to deny housing to a homeless disabled veteran.

Our Internal Revenue Code already recognizes that disability benefits paid to veterans are not to be considered income. At our urging, the Department of Housing and Urban Development has reached the same conclusion, at least for now.

Mr. Speaker, it is time for us to have statutory provisions that make it clear that disability benefits paid by the VA should not be included in calculating eligibility for veterans housing.

The reason for that is that we cannot assume that two people with equivalent incomes are living at the same level because someone who is disabled has additional challenges. That is why they are receiving the disability benefits.

Being disabled is expensive. It requires aides. It means that you can't get across town or go even a few miles to take advantage of a store that is offering goods at a lower price. Disability benefits partially compensate for the disability. They should not have the effect of keeping a homeless person or a person close to homelessness out of housing.

That is why our committee passed two bills to deal with this issue. Today, we deal with Congresswoman De La Cruz's bill, which I strongly support and which I hope will pass unanimously here today. I am the chief Democratic cosponsor on that bill. That bill excludes veterans' service-connected disability payments from eligibility under the HUD Community Development Block Grant program.

There is another program that is dealt with by separate legislation, for which Congresswoman De La Cruz serves as the chief cosponsor. That bill, H.R. 8340, is the Housing Unhoused Disabled Veterans Act. That bill, which I am proud to have authored, passed our committee, the Financial Services Committee, unanimously 49-0 and has over 101 cosponsors.

Mr. Speaker, I urge everyone here today to vote for the bill that is before us today. I will point out that both that bill and the other bill that I mentioned have a zero score.

Mr. Speaker, I believe both bills I mentioned here have a zero score. Both are overwhelmingly supported by our veterans service organizations, including the VFW, Vietnam Veterans of America, The American Legion, Disabled American Veterans, U.S. VETS, and Black Veterans Empowerment Council.

We have two bills. Let's pass one today. Let's persuade leadership to give us a few more minutes of floor time so we can pass the other bill next week. We will get them both over to the Senate.

Mr. Speaker, I look forward to calling Senator Scott and Senator Brown to say these bills deserve to be fast-tracked and passed through the Senate right away.

Mr. Speaker, a decade ago, we faced a tough situation in Afghanistan. We could have stayed indefinitely at a cost of $50 billion a year and perhaps a dozen casualties a year, but then Donald Trump promised the American people that we would withdraw and that, at that point, it was no longer a possibility that America would remain indefinitely.

So what was accomplished during the Obama administration in Afghanistan? One important thing: We got bin Laden. What was accomplished during the Biden administration? A very difficult withdrawal, one of the most difficult military maneuvers carried out early in the Biden administration. Not only did we withdraw our troops, but we were able to get out perhaps 100,000 others. It was a difficult maneuver accomplished, but not without casualties.

What did we get under the Trump administration? Nothing, except he was able to sign a surrender agreement toward the end of his administration that he could have signed at the beginning of his administration.

This resolution is entirely appropriate if you change one thing: Condemn not that list of people to which they added Harris at the end; condemn one man, Donald J. Trump.

During his Presidency, 63 Americans died in Afghanistan, 57 of them returned to dignified return ceremonies that Donald Trump was too busy to attend. He was busy golfing instead.

During his Presidency, his golf handicap did not suffer, but 57 American widows and fathers and mothers and families suffered as they saw the coffins brought back to America and a President too busy to be there.

What did we accomplish for the $200 billion that Donald Trump spent for the 63 who died? We signed a surrender document.

Now, I know they will say there are all kinds of wonderful things in the document. It is nothing but meaningless promises with no enforcement provisions, but don't take my word for it.

Lieutenant General H.R. McMaster, Trump's National Security Advisor said, our Secretary of State, Mr. Pompeo, signed a surrender agreement with the Taliban.

Why surrender after you lose the 63 lives? Why not surrender in 2017? That is because withdrawals are difficult; surrender documents easier. Trump signed the surrender document and then left it to his successor to accomplish the withdrawal.

So we are told, oh, well, Donald Trump somehow would have enforced these meaningless conditions all without enforcement provisions. That is not what he would have done.

What does John Bolton, Donald Trump's other National Security Advisor, say. He said, had Donald Trump been reelected, he would have been doing the same thing on the question of withdrawal from Afghanistan.

But don't trust his staff. What did Donald Trump say? Donald Trump said in October of 2020, after the 5,000 Taliban fighters had been released because of Donald Trump's decision, he said, without any of the conditions having been met, that he would have all those troops home by Christmas 2020.

Those conditions were meaningless. They were meaningless to Donald Trump. They were meaningless to his National Security Advisor. They had no enforcement provisions in them.

Why did we stay in Afghanistan past 2017? So that Donald Trump didn't have to accomplish the withdrawal that was so difficult and for which he produced no plan.

We lost $200 billion, we lost 63 lives, we sent over $10 billion worth of our equipment that was spread all over Afghanistan with no prospect of recovering it, knowing that the Taliban would get it. We did all that during the Trump administration.

Now, we are having a partisan resolution as to who is at fault? The man who keeps our troops there, has 63 casualties, spends $200 billion, signs a surrender agreement, announces he is not going to enforce the provisions, and now we have this.

The Speaker pro tempore. The time of the gentleman has expired.

At least Mr. Trump was able to golf and didn't have to go to the return ceremonies.

I would say that once you force the release of 5,000 Taliban fighters, it is very difficult to say things are condition-based because at that point, the Taliban has those 5,000 fighters and is able to inflict hundreds and hundreds of casualties on our forces unless they withdraw.

This was not a condition-based document. It was, in the words of General McMaster, a surrender, and the surrender was in the fourth year of the Trump administration.

Mr. Speaker, 63 of our finest died. Let us have a resolution condemning the one man who should be condemned: Donald J. Trump.

Mr. Speaker, some say that we should have left Americans there for this or that reason or the Taliban are doing this or the Taliban are doing that.

They are saying that Biden should have left those Americans there to die at the hands of the 5,000 Taliban fighters that Donald Trump had released.

How many hundreds would have died if they had stayed there? I don't know. Once you put 5,000 fighting Taliban into Kabul, I think at that point, it is hard to insist on conditions.

Mr. Speaker, our capital markets and our capitalist system are the envy of the world.

How does that system work? Investors decide how to allocate capital, not the government. Investors control the corporation through voting, not the corporate insiders, not the board, and not the executives.

This bill is designed, with a Marxist tint in mind perhaps, to blind and cripple the capitalists of America, the shareholders, the investors.

Let's say an investor agrees with Republicans on how to allocate their money. That is fine, but some investors may care about the environment, or they may just believe that investing in low carbon is more profitable and investing in resilient companies is more profitable.

This bill blinds them. It says: You are just the investor, and the government has decided what criteria you are going to use, and we are going to blind you and not give you the information to make a decision based on carbon footprint. You don't decide. The government decides.

There is more for the Marxists here in this room. Not only does this deprive capitalists of the right to allocate capital, but it specifically helps the Chinese Communist Party because American corporations are going to have to decide, in many cases, do they sell their artificial intelligence secrets to the highest bidder in Shanghai? If the corporation wants to, its shareholders now can come forward and say: No, we care about America. We are patriots. Do not sell.

Under this bill, the shareholders cannot stop their company from selling AI to the Chinese Communist Party.

There is a lot here, not only for Marxists in general, but for the Chinese Communist Party in particular. They achieve that by blinding investors, by not giving them information, and crippling investors' ability to control their corporations.

It has obviously come to a low point here in Washington that you need a member of the Progressive Caucus to defend capitalism from the Republican Party, but I believe in a system in which investors have the information they want and get to vote on how the corporation behaves.

Instead, we will see. Investors can only make decisions based on the information that the Republican Party is willing to let them have, and investors can't stop their corporations from selling out our technology knowing that the insiders, the corporate board and

the executives, might have a giant payday, a huge bonus, a huge run-up in money, and they might sell our artificial intelligence secrets to Beijing, and the investors are blocked by this bill.

Marx would vote ``yes.'' I am voting ``no.''

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

Mr. Speaker, I rise in support of H.R. 510, the Chinese Currency Accountability Act of 2023, sponsored by Representative Davidson. This bill is related to the International Monetary Fund's Special Drawing Rights, known as SDRs, and the influence of China's currency in the SDR program.

SDRs are international assets created by the International Monetary Fund, the IMF, to supplement member countries' foreign exchange reserves, and they can enable member countries to reduce their reliance on domestic or external debt when building those reserves.

SDRs can be converted into government-issued currency, such as the dollar, the yuan, or the pound, assuming that there are not sanctions or other

prohibitions that would prevent such financial transactions.

The value of an IMF member's SDRs is defined by a basket of currencies, which are a mix of five globally important currencies, sometimes called fiat currencies in that they are issued by governments or, in the case of a euro, an association of governments. Those five currencies that are behind the SDRs are the U.S. dollar, the euro, the Chinese yuan, the Japanese yen, and the British pound.

The key thing here is that the percentage of that basket that is comprised of the Chinese currency was increased in 2022 and now is at 12 percent of the total, compared to the U.S. dollar, which is at 43 percent of the total.

The bill would require the Treasury Secretary to oppose at the IMF any future percentage increase in the weight of the Chinese currency in that SDR currency basket. The bill would allow a waiver of such provision to the executive branch should the Secretary of the Treasury be able to certify to Congress that China meets certain standards.

Those standards include that China is in compliance with all of its obligations under article VIII of the Articles of Agreement of the IMF; second, that there has not been certain reports submitted in the prior 12 months indicating that China is engaging in currency manipulation; and, third, that China is adhering to the rules and principles of the Paris Club and the OECD Arrangement on officially supported export credits.

Mr. Speaker, I will note that the Department of the Treasury has expressed some concerns about this bill, especially due to the fact that the Department of the Treasury does not have visibility into China's confidential provisions of data to the IMF and may not be able to independently certify that China is complying with the IMF and other global obligations.

As a result, China has indicated that it may be difficult to certify whether China has met the standards outlined in that bill that underlie the possibility of a waiver of its provisions.

These are reasonable concerns. Democrats on the Financial Services Committee have urged our Republican colleagues to work to improve the bill before it is finally enacted into law. That might include allowing the Department of the Treasury to rely on certifications from the IMF as to whether China is meeting its responsibilities looking at that confidential information that is provided by China to the IMF.

In any case, this bill moves us forward. I am sure that, through the legislative process, there will be some improvements.

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

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

Mr. Speaker, in an effort to expand both its economy and global influence, China has been accused of manipulating its currency. Concerns about this abound and have been well expressed by Mr. Davidson. This is especially concerning when it regards items that affect American interests at international institutions, such as the

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

Mr. Speaker, I rise in support of H.R. 554, the Taiwan Conflict Deterrence Act of 2023, sponsored by Representative Hill. I am pleased to be the chief Democratic cosponsor of this legislation.

As China contemplates the possibility of an invasion or blockade of Taiwan, keeping in mind President Xi has told his military to be ready for an invasion by 2027, they faced from the United States strategic ambiguity as to what our military response would be.

Mr. Speaker, President Biden has announced that he would respond militarily, but President Biden will be leaving office in a few months. Any decision by the executive branch to deploy our forces is actually something that would be decided upon at the time and given the circumstances that exist.

We in Congress, while I don't think, by statute, we could compel the deployment of our military forces, we can lock into statute economic responses that should not be ambiguous but should be very clear to Beijing.

Mr. Speaker, I have a bill that goes beyond the legislation we are considering here today that would remove most-favored-nation status from China if it invades or blockades Taiwan and lock that in so that Beijing knows that a military action against Taiwan would result in that enormous economic consequence.

This bill, I think, is a step in the right direction. As the bill's title suggests, it is designed to put the government of China on notice that the United States is closely watching its increasing threats toward Taiwan, and it serves as a warning that the U.S. will respond economically and that that is locked into statute should its aggression amount to a violation of section 3(c) of the Taiwan Relations Act.

I will point out that a violation of section 3(c) would include an invasion or blockade, but could also involve other aggressive actions of a less significant nature.

This is a tangible concern given the Chinese military activity in the region appears to be escalating as demonstrated by daily incursions undertaken by the Chinese military into Taiwan's air defense identification zone or across the median line of the Taiwan Strait.

In May, China conducted a large-scale military exercise near the island of Taiwan, intended to intimidate the Taiwanese people as they celebrated the inauguration of a new democratically elected President.

This bill would put pressure on China to not go further by requiring a response of the U.S. Government if its intimidation and coercion go to the point of triggering section 3(c) of the Taiwan Relations Act.

Specifically, if there is a notification by the President under section 3(c) of a threat resulting from the actions of the People's Republic of China and a danger to the interests of the United States arising therefrom, the bill would require the Secretary of the Treasury to create and to make public the findings of a report on financial institutions and accounts that are connected to a select group of Chinese Communist Party officials.

This bill does not focus on retaliating against the Chinese Government per se, but rather on individuals who are in that government. The report is intended to raise public awareness of the hidden and corruptly gained funds that are directly or indirectly controlled by such individuals. It is designed to undermine the support of the Chinese Communist Party and its level of support inside China once we publish the corrupt gains of some of its high-ranking officials.

For those listed in the report and their immediate family members, the bill would also restrict U.S.-based financial services, intending to limit the financial options for these officials and to extend the deterrent or punitive impacts on those officials and their families. For assets in the United States, it is a freezing of those assets.

I will underscore again that these actions as set forth in the bill occur only if the President exercises his, or soon, her, authority under section 3(c) of the Taiwan Relations Act.

Now, no President in the past has ever triggered section 3(c), and I hope that such a triggering is never necessary. I don't expect that a triggering will ever occur, but it is important to put Beijing on notice of what would happen if their threats against Taiwan raise to that level. The Taiwan Relations Act has been in effect for 40 years, and as I have said, no administration has triggered section 3(c). It did not even occur during the third Taiwan Strait crisis of the 1990s.

Democrats have worked on this bill. We have seen changes in the original bill, including the addition of Presidential waivers for national security, intelligence, and other purposes. For these reasons, I urge my colleagues to support this bill, and I reserve the balance of my time.

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

Mr. Speaker, I join the gentlewoman from California in a parallel career. She is our chair of the Foreign Affairs Subcommittee on Asia and the Pacific. I was once chair of that subcommittee, and we both serve on two committees: Financial Services, Foreign Affairs. She has reflected an understanding of our situation with China, and that situation is that we don't want to respond to an invasion or blockade of Taiwan. We want to prevent an invasion or blockade of Taiwan.

The way to do that is on three levels. Most important and most expensive for the United States is that we have very substantial military capacities in the South China Sea and the Pacific in general. We have spent much time on this floor and literally hundreds of billions of dollars developing that capacity.

Second, and an element that Congress should explore, is that we need to have locked into statute broad-based and immediate economic consequences to the entire Chinese economy if, God forbid, their government invades or blockades. That is why I am seeking cosponsors for legislation that would say in the case of such an invasion or blockade, China would lose its MFN status.

Third, in addition to the military and the broad economic, we need the focused, personal economic consequences. That is what this bill does. It provides that if China were to take such action against Taiwan as to trigger the section 3(c) of the Taiwan Relations Act that we would take two actions against their top officials.

First, we would name and shame. We would publicize their assets, wherever they may be in the world. Then, second, we would deny them and their immediate families access to the American financial system.

It is time for China to give up the idea of intimidating the people of Taiwan and to recognize that America's response will involve the military, will involve broad-based economic response, and will involve very personal economic disclosures and response.

That is the way to prevent what could cause an incredible disruption in the world and even possibly a world war. That is why Beijing needs to look at this bill and everything else that America would do and decide to put aside the idea of invading or blockading Taiwan.

Mr. Speaker, I again urge my colleagues to support this important legislation and yield back the balance of my time.

Mr. Speaker, we have someone running for President, a former President, who claims that there were no deaths of our soldiers in Afghanistan for 18 months under his Presidency. Clearly false. Identified as false. We will see the statistics. We see

that 163 of our best and finest died in Afghanistan during the Trump Presidency, and they died in every year he was in office.

Now, more died under the Obama administration, but at least under the Obama administration, we got something. We got bin Laden. Let us not forget that on 9/11 we lost more Americans than Pearl Harbor, we lost more Americans on American soil than had been lost at any time since 1865.

Madam Speaker, 163 of our soldiers and marines died in Afghanistan under Trump, and what did we get for it? Did Trump leave Afghanistan better than he found it? Did Trump leave Afghanistan at all? No.

The Afghanistan he left his successor was identical to what he inherited from his predecessor, but 163 Americans died. He left the withdrawal, knowing it was very difficult, to the Biden administration, and then the attack is that we lost 12 soldiers under the Biden administration. We lost 163 under Trump. He did not leave Afghanistan better than he found it. He did not leave Afghanistan at all.

While focused on 9/11, we have to remember Dr. Afridi, the Pakistani doctor who helped us get bin Laden and has been in a Pakistani jail for a decade and a half since then. We should leave no man behind, and certainly not Dr. Afridi.

There have been proposals to trade Dr. Afridi for Dr. Siddiqui, a terrorist who tried to kill Americans, but didn't kill any Americans, who is now a mental patient in a prison hospital. We should make that trade whenever it becomes available.

Pakistan, right now, is in a period of unrest. We have to demonstrate our dedication to democracy and human rights around the world and particularly in Pakistan.

Yesterday, I got a commitment from the State Department official who deals with all of our policies in South Asia to consider directing Ambassador Blome to go visit Imran Khan in jail. For this man, a former prime minister--more votes than anyone else in Pakistan--a demonstration by the United States that this statesman should not be killed in prison is very important.

Condemning Anti-Israel, Pro-Hamas Demonstrations

Madam Speaker, I join Vice President Harris in condemning yesterday's anti-Israel, pro-Hamas demonstrations.

The demonstrators may not know that their leaders are funded by Iran and Qatar, which fund the organizations and the propaganda. These same leaders glorified October 7. They rejoiced at the death of every Israeli civilian.

They condemned Israel on October 7 before Israel had done anything to respond because their demonstrations were not about whether Israel should not respond. Their demonstrations were a glorification of the death brought by Hamas.

Now, the followers chant, ``From the river to the sea,'' but some of them don't even know which river, which sea. What they don't know is the background of that slogan, ``From the river to the sea, Palestine shall be free.'' It is a declaration that every Jew who lives from the river to the sea should be killed or ethnically cleansed.

Since, as we saw in the 1930s, there is no country that wants to accept millions of Jewish refugees, that means they should all be killed. That is the chant that we hear, ``From the river to the sea.''

Prior to October 7, we needed to see a two-state solution, and I hope we get there, but there is this effort to convey the life of those who lived in Gaza as being somehow equivalent to the Rohingya refugees, refugees living in camps in Bangladesh.

The fact is that those living in Gaza had longer life expectancies than the average person in the world, considerably longer than those living in Russia, roughly equal to those living in Saudi Arabia. All of that was destroyed on October 7.

Hamas knew exactly what they were doing. They conducted this attack for the purpose of the response because they know they cannot achieve their political objectives, which, remember, is to expel or kill every Jew from the river to the sea.

They can't possibly achieve those objectives unless they massively change world opinion. They know and have said on the record in their own comments that every death of a Palestinian civilian helps them achieve their ugly purpose.

That is why we had, in our great Capital, the waving of the Hamas flag while they burned the American flag. Make no mistake about it, those who hate Israel also hate America. We see our statues desecrated, and we see a call by the demonstrators for the final solution. At least a few of them understand that ``from the river to the sea'' means killing 7 million Jewish Israelis.

Problems With Cryptocurrency

Madam Speaker, we have seen a discussion of cryptocurrency. It was the one thing the Biden-Harris administration agreed with Donald Trump on. We know that the Biden-Harris administration has been relatively tough on crypto, but here are the words of Donald Trump from 2019: ``I am not a fan of Bitcoin and other cryptocurrencies, which are not money and whose value is highly volatile and based on thin air. Unregulated cryptoassets can facilitate unlawful behavior, including drug trade and other illegal activity. . . . We have only one real currency in the USA, and it is stronger than ever, both dependable and reliable. It is by far the most dominant currency anywhere in the world.''

That is what Donald Trump said until he realized that he could get tens or hundreds of millions of dollars from the crypto billionaire bros if he was willing to change his position, and that is exactly what he is doing.

He is going to the Bitcoin 2024 Nashville conference to pledge his allegiance to the bitcoin billionaires. You can be sure his campaign will get tens of millions--no, hundreds of millions into supersecret PACs to try to propagandize the American people. God only knows whether he will personally get tens or hundreds of millions of dollars in cryptocurrency. We will never know because, as I will explain, cryptocurrency is the favorite device, a well-tailored device, for those committing bribery and other crimes.

Some consultants have come to Vice President Harris--and thank God she has not yet taken the suggestion of these consultants--and told her to go to Bitcoin 2024 Nashville, and there will be hundreds of millions of dollars for her campaign.

Why do these bitcoin bros have so much money? Well, they are in the business of making money. Everybody else in business has to actually make a product and sell it to get money. With crypto, you just call it a currency, and it is money, and you make sure you have a billion coins for yourself before you sell the rest.

There are those in the Harris campaign or some outside the Harris campaign who will tell the Harris campaign, hey, the political thing to do is to get money from the crypto billionaires. The fact is that is not the case.

I have never seen a political year in which there is so much money available for candidates to communicate their messages. What will win in 2024 is not money but message.

The message has to be clear: Democrats don't sell out.

When Trump didn't see money on either side, he said he was not a fan of Bitcoin. Now, he is going to become a Bitcoin fanboy in Nashville. Our candidate won't sell out.

What is the risk posed by crypto? When the crypto bros tell you what they plan to do, you should believe them. Right now, crypto is just something interesting to bet on. You buy Ethereum today, maybe it is worth less tomorrow. Maybe it is more tomorrow. It seems as harmless as betting on the Dodgers or the Angels, but that is not the purpose of cryptocurrencies.

Cryptocurrencies aspire to be a currency. What have the crypto bros told us? That they plan to displace the dollar as a medium of payment and as a store of value, as a reserve currency.

How important is the dollar's current role as a reserve currency? Our fiscal policy, our budget deficit, is enormous. It would make Argentina blush. Our trade deficit is larger than any country in the history of the world, yet we continue to have a relatively prosperous country. We do that because of the role the dollar plays in international finance because the dollar is the reserve currency for everywhere around the world.

The bitcoin billionaire bros say, hey, that is a good idea. It supports the lifestyle of over 300 million Americans. Maybe we can divert those profits to ourselves. They tell you upfront they want to challenge the dollar's role.

If that role is successfully, even partially, challenged, we will have to cut expenditures, including Social Security. We will have to raise taxes. We will be in a very difficult circumstance.

I know people come here and say that we are going to have a balanced budget. We last had that under Clinton. Nobody has proposed a system for getting there anytime soon.

Yet, it is not just a potential reserve currency. It is designed to be a payment system. Now, how is it going to be better than the dollar? Well, it is electronic. So is Venmo. So is a host of other things that already exist.

I am sure that millions of transactions will take place where people are buying things today using the U.S. dollar in an electronic system. Most people can go a week or several weeks without touching a paper dollar or paper check. What is the thing that the crypto bros think makes their currency better? It is not the fact that it is electronic. It is that it is a perfect device to evade the law. The crypto transactions are on the blockchain, but no one knows who owns any blockchain account.

It is the preferred method--growing method--for bribery, drug dealers, human traffickers. It is, though, particularly valuable to tax evaders. The goal, the self-expressed goal, of the crypto bros is that income tax will only be a tax on wages and maybe a bit of voluntary contributions from those who make their money elsewhere.

Trump's Commissioner of the Internal Revenue Service testified that we have basically a trillion dollars a year of uncollected taxes, mostly from the very wealthy. That means they have to conceal $3 trillion of income to avoid paying taxes or evade $1 trillion of tax. That means, in every decade, we are talking $30 trillion of assets that need to be concealed.

Cryptocurrencies are the perfect device to achieve that if they become currencies, if you can buy a yacht for a bitcoin or a bunch of bitcoins.

Harris will have a powerful issue in demonstrating that Trump knows full well that Bitcoin is a crock, that he sold out and that we won't, that her loyalty is to the American people who benefit from the role that the dollar plays in international transactions and as a reserve currency, that they benefit from a system in which we are able to collect taxes not just from those who get W-2 forms but from everybody who makes money in our society.

Now, I am not sure that the government will stop crypto, but I believe that crypto will stop crypto. There are a limited number of government currencies. You have a U.S. dollar. You have a Uruguayan peso. The Uruguayan peso will always have value because there will always be a Uruguay. The U.S. dollar will always be more valuable in total than the Uruguayan peso because America will always be bigger.

There is no inherent value of any cryptocurrency. Sure, we have bitcoin, but why isn't hamster coin worth more than bitcoin? There is no particular reason.

We have hamster coin. I always thought it was a joke and said so in a hearing until my staff said: No, boss, there is a hamster coin. Then I said, what about cobra coin? Well, no. We have cobra coin. A cobra could eat a hamster, but there is already a cobra coin.

I said, well, gee, there could be mongoose coin, and I proposed it in a hearing as a joke. Lo and behold, by the end of the day, they had created mongoose coin, which leads to the question: What about skibidi coin? I thought that was a joke until I was told that there already is a skibidi toilet coin.

Once they make the skibidi coin, skibidi toilet movie, will skibidi coin go to the Moon? We don't know. Why is bitcoin more valuable than skibidi coin? It is today, maybe not after the movie.

The promoters of crypto say, well, there is a limited number of Ethereum. There is a limited number of bitcoin. You can't have anymore, but you can have an infinite number of competing coins.

There are roughly 200 countries in the world, not an unlimited number, and it is obvious that by the order those countries are in, Uruguay will always be smaller than the United States.

Engineered Intelligence

Madam Speaker, I want to focus on engineered intelligence. There are two groups of engineers who are in a race that they don't know about.

One are the bioengineers creating new DNA, perhaps a new species. By the end of this century, who says they won't have a thousand-pound mammal with two 80-pound brains, which will probably beat my grandkids on the law school admissions test.

We all know even more about computer engineers, and we know the upside of artificial intelligence. We heard our good friend, Jennifer Wexton, address this House, thanks in part to artificial intelligence.

We are not going to stop artificial intelligence. Hopefully, we will make sure that it does not somehow lead to bias and discrimination, but we do have to make sure of one thing, that artificial intelligence remains a tool, not a creature.

We need to do the research so that we have the capacity to monitor for and to prevent artificial intelligence from becoming self-aware, developing volition, developing ambition, and developing a survival instinct.

I know it sounds like science fiction, but if somebody describes for you the future, and it seems like they are describing a science fiction movie, they might be right in their description of the future. If somebody describes the future, and it doesn't look like a science fiction movie, you know they are wrong.

Our kids and our grandkids are going to be living in a science fiction movie. We just don't know which one. I hope it is not ``Terminator.''

We need to take seriously not only how artificial intelligence can be used as a tool to carry out, hopefully, benign objectives of its human programmers, but we do have to also monitor whether artificial intelligence becomes a creature, a self-aware entity interested in its own survival, aware of its surroundings with volition and ambition.

Nation of Immigrants

Madam Speaker, I have cringed again and again when I have seen Republicans condemn immigrants by identifying individual crimes committed by individual immigrants.

Madam Speaker, imagine how much crime is committed in this country by bald people. All those crimes would be eliminated if bald people were somehow excluded from the country.

Every group has its saint and its sinners. You can turn to any group, God forbid bald people could be your choice, and identify individual criminals.

What I haven't heard is somebody coming to this floor and talking about the hundreds of thousands of lives of Americans who have been saved by immigrants, immigrants who are emergency medical technicians, home healthcare workers who are the difference between life and death for those they care for, those they feed, those they help prevent from falling, from our hospitals where you may have an immigrant as a janitor, preventing the spread of biological diseases throughout the hospital, or a hospital where you have the emergency room physician who is an immigrant.

Let us have a Republican come to this floor and say they don't care about the hundreds of thousands of Americans who are alive today because of the lifesaving work of immigrants.

Let us work toward a more sensible immigration system. We had a chance of getting there with the bipartisan bill that was being worked on in the Senate that would have brought order to our border. Instead, it was killed by Donald Trump, who was remarkably honest and simply declared that he didn't want us to solve the problem because as long as the problem was there, it helped his campaign.

Let us realize that we are a Nation of immigrants, that every group, including immigrants, includes both lifesavers and includes those who commit crimes. Keep in mind that on a per capita basis, immigrants commit less crime than those of us who are native born.

Let us remember and praise all of the immigrants that have saved American lives and continue to do so today.

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

Mr. Speaker, let me address the Democrats in this Chamber and say: Sustain President Biden's veto.

This is the worst possible week for Democrats to do anything else but to stand behind President Biden's veto. If you vote the other way, then you can explain to the press that you repudiated the President's decision and that you voted to override a Presidential veto--something I don't think we have done in a long time--because you had extensive conversations with Paul Munter, the chief accountant of the SEC, and he was unable to convince you that Staff Accounting Bulletin 121 properly lays out for generally accepted accounting principle purposes which asset should be on the balance sheet.

You can then discuss with them how you also commented on a host of other accounting principles that put assets on the balance sheet that are not actually owned but might be leased or held by the company on whose balance sheet they are listed.

You can then discuss with them your personal views on accounting theory and try to convince them that you repudiated the President because of deeply held concerns on what assets should and should not be on the balance sheet. However, they will not listen. They will tell you that you voted to override a Presidential veto this very week.

Now, we are told that somehow this is going to prevent banks from acting as custodians. It does not because we have three accounting systems in this country.

We have tax accounting, which is separate from GAAP, or generally accepted accounting principles, which are for disclosures to investors; and we have a third accounting system for regulated companies, particularly banks, called regulatory accounting principles, or RAP.

This pronouncement doesn't deal with RAP. Banks are free to do what they want. They must inform their investors what they did, and then the investors can decide whether that bank is one they want to invest in.

Now we are told that we should override SAB 121.

What effect does that have?

Not only does it take crypto off the balance sheet, it prevents the chief accountant from writing another regulation or staff accounting bulletin requiring footnote disclosure. So then you would be voting for no disclosure to investors of the very significant risk of holding these crypto assets.

You can argue for balance sheet disclosure. You can argue instead for footnote disclosure. However, if you vote today for no disclosure in the financial statements, then that is a repudiation of all modern accounting theory.

I did want to point out, as the ranking member has, that there is a substantial risk to banks in holding crypto assets, and Sam Bankman- Fried's fraud is just one of many in the crypto world. So this disclosure is necessary for investors to decide what risks they are taking when they invest in the stock of a bank.

So, in summary, if you believe that crypto assets that the bank is holding as a custodian should be on the balance sheet, then vote ``no.'' If you believe that crypto asset risks, the risks that the bank has by acting as a custodian for crypto, should only be disclosed in the footnotes, then vote ``no.''

If you have no deeply felt opinion on whether generally accepted accounting principles should cause assets that are being held by a custodian or a lessee should be on the balance sheet, should be in the footnotes, or should not be in the financial statements at all, if you do not have a deeply held personal belief on this technical matter of accounting, then vote ``no'' and sustain President Biden's veto.

Madam Speaker, this resolution is terrible accounting policy. It has nothing to do with whether banks are allowed to act as custodians since it has no effect on bank regulation, no effect on the calculation of their capital, and no effect on regulatory accounting.

This resolution deprives investors of the knowledge of what risks the bank they are investing in is running. It says you can't put it on the balance sheet on the theory that nothing should be on the balance sheet unless it is owned by the entity whose balance sheet is being filed.

Anyone familiar with lease accounting knows that that is not the basic principle that is carried out with an awful lot of assets that are listed on the balance sheet.

It goes further. It says not only can't the chief accountant and the staff accounting bulletin require disclosure on the balance sheet, but they are prohibited from doing another regulation and disclose it in the footnotes. This is terrible accounting policy.

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

Mr. Speaker, last month, the United Nations Security Council had a moment of silence in memory of the death of the late Iranian President, Ebrahim Raisi, known as the Butcher of Tehran.

Even on the Senate floor, the Senate Chaplain said something sorrowful about Raisi's death.

Mr. Speaker, the death of any human being is a tragedy perhaps, but no one had a moment of silence when Osama bin Laden died, and Ebrahim Raisi killed far more people than Osama bin Laden.

At some point, we should take a moment of silence to remember the victims of Raisi's vicious cruelty, such as the 30,000 Iranian political prisoners who were tortured and murdered to death by the death commissions that Raisi headed back in 1988; the 1,500 Iranian freedom protesters murdered in 2019, Bloody November; or the murders of potentially thousands of protesters who were incensed by the death of a young woman, Mahsa Amini, in September 2022.

She was Mahsa Amini, who was beaten and died in custody. Her crime? Not wearing her hijab just the way the morality police thought was appropriate.

Among those murdered by Raisi's regime during the Woman, Life, Freedom uprising was 16-year-old protester Nika Shahkarami in April of this year. The BBC did an investigation and discovered documents that showed that Nika was heinously sexually assaulted and killed by three men from Iran's security forces after she was detained.

Today, many brave Iranians face the death penalty for just speaking out in favor of the Woman, Life, Freedom movement and speaking out for democracy in Iran.

Just recently, we saw the rapper Toomaj, a critic of this regime, who, on April 30, was sentenced to death.

During the last year, Iran admits to having executed 853 people, the highest number in 8 years. That doesn't count all those killed secretly.

I have referred only to the evil that this regime does to its own people. Iran, as we know, sponsors terrorist organizations around the world, including the Houthi, Hamas, and Hezbollah, and those are just the organizations that begin with the letter h.

The evil done by Hamas, I think, is well-known, but one should reflect on all those killed in Yemen by the Houthi, and now their action blockading the Red Sea raises prices of grain for poor people living near the Indian Ocean, from Bangladesh to Ethiopia, raising prices and leading, if not to starvation, to the compromised immune system that then leads to thousands and thousands of deaths.

I am proud to represent California's 32nd Congressional District, home, I believe, to more Iranian Americans than any other district in this country. I know firsthand from talking to them about their opposition to the murderous Islamic Republic regime and their troubled reaction when they saw Ebrahim Raisi mourned without his victims even being remembered.

The brave Iranian people deserve a moment of silence not for the Butcher of Tehran, but for those he butchered, and so I ask, Mr. Speaker, unanimous consent that this House observe a moment of silence for those killed at the hands and under the Presidency of Ebrahim Raisi.

Peace Treaty on the Korean Peninsula

Mr. Speaker, for the past 4 years, I have been working on the Peace on the Korean Peninsula Act, designed to try to move us in the direction of a negotiated settlement with North Korea.

The war stopped, or seemed to have stopped, in 1953, but that was just an armistice. It is now time to negotiate a formal peace treaty.

There are those who say that is an unwarranted concession to North Korea and Kim Jong-un. That is hardly the case. The armistice of 1953 was done by both sides and was equal. If an armistice is not an unwarranted concession, neither is a formal peace treaty.

There is majority support in the South Korean Parliament for ending this war formally, and I believe it would be a first step to negotiating a solution to North Korea's very dangerous nuclear and missile program.

We currently have 41 and growing number of cosponsors in the United States here in the House of Representatives. There is support for this effort in Canada, Britain, and, as I mentioned, in Seoul.

I am proud to represent a large and vibrant Korean-American community, and I look forward to being able to take a step toward a rapprochement with North Korea, knowing full well that dealing with its nuclear program and its deprivation of human rights will be daunting tasks.

Housing for Veterans

Mr. Speaker, due to redistricting just last year, I now represent what I believe is the largest veterans' facility in the West, the West Los Angeles VA.

I have seen exemplified in my own district a problem in large quantity that should strike at the hearts of all of us, and that is homeless veterans. To see any American out on the street is a shame, but when that American has put their life on the line for this country, it is a shame that we need to correct.

This Congress has provided significant money to build housing for veterans. We need to do more. I will focus on one particular problem with the HUD-VASH program that we fund. It sets a limit on the income that a veteran can have, and it is understood we are building this housing for low-income veterans.

Included in that income calculation are disability benefits. We have a situation right in my district where disabled American veterans are living on the streets and can't get into veteran housing on veteran land because they are receiving veteran disability benefits for the disabilities they suffered in the service of the American people.

I have proposed legislation, which passed unanimously, 49-0, through the Financial Services Committee, to say that disability benefits not be included in that income calculation.

Two things to be aware of: First, the income of a disabled veteran can be calculated, but what must be kept in mind is that they face higher expenses. They have to live a different life, and that additional income or payments that they receive does not mean that they are middle class or wealthy.

Second, our Internal Revenue Code already recognizes that disability payments received by veterans are not counted as income.

Finally, the people who I think would most benefit from housing on the VA campus, where we have the largest VA hospital in the southern California area are the disabled veterans who need the medical care.

Mr. Speaker, I hope that my colleagues will join in cosponsoring and supporting this legislation.

In Recognition of the 75th Anniversary of Valley Industry and Commerce

Association

Mr. Speaker, I congratulate the Valley Industry and Commerce Association, known as VICA, for 75 years of working tirelessly to make the San Fernando Valley the place to do business in California.

VICA serves 1.8 million residents, nearly a quarter million businesses, and VICA has been a leading voice for the business community since 1949. Under the leadership of President Stuart Waldman and Chair Lupita Sanchez Cornejo, VICA has helped the valley become an economic engine that has powered the recovery from the COVID downturn for the entire area of Los Angeles, where they are advocating for a better business climate, improved regional infrastructure, and a 21st century workforce. VICA has left its mark.

I congratulate VICA on this 75th anniversary. I look forward to working with VICA day after day, month after month, as I have in my 28 years in Congress.

In Celebration of the Life of Morrie Markoff

Mr. Speaker, I rise to recognize the life of Morrie Markoff, and what a life it was. Morrie was a well-known resident of Los Angeles and the father of my good and longtime friend, Steven Markoff, and Steve's sister, Judith Markoff Hansen.

Morrie lived to be the oldest man in the United States, reaching the age of 110, before passing away in his southern California home on June 3 of this year.

Morrie grew up in New York City, attended trade school, married the love of his life, Betty Goldmintz, and settled in Los Angeles.

Morrie was a skilled machinist, businessman, artist, and author. He was not just someone who lived to an incredibly advanced age. He was famous for his cognitive abilities late in life. He held his first art exhibit as a centenarian. At age 103, Morrie was selling his book, ``Keep Breathing,'' a good idea, from his own booth at the LA Times Festival of Books. He was known as the world's oldest blogger.

Morrie witnessed tremendous social and technological changes in 110 years. He inspired so many of us to live life to the fullest. Los Angeles reflects with pride on the life of Morrie Markoff.

Defining Anti-Semitism

Mr. Speaker, Jewish Americans are facing a tide of hate in this country that we thought could only be in a different century, on a different continent. U.S. anti-Semitic incidences have skyrocketed 360 percent since October 7.

Between October 7 and January 7 alone, the Anti-Defamation League has recorded 3,283 anti-Semitic incidents,

including harassment, vandalism, and physical assaults. Just outside of my district, Paul Kessler was bludgeoned in the head and bludgeoned to death by an anti-Israel protester.

Recent polling from the American Jewish Committee found that 93 percent of Jews in this country think that anti-Semitism is a problem, and 87 percent think that it has gotten worse since October 7. Yet, some refuse to listen.

That especially is happening in campuses across this country. Too often, university administrators have failed to protect their Jewish students. At Columbia University, leaked text messages show how administrators were mocking a panel on anti-Semitism while it was happening.

At Yale, a Jewish student was assaulted by encampment protestors. At Reed College, Jewish students had their mezuzah torn down or struck with a rock through their dorm room. Just this week, a man was arrested for throwing a rock in the face of a Jewish Columbia student. The list goes on and on.

Now, anti-Semitism can't be fought, particularly on campuses, if it can't be defined. So many are engaging in anti-Semitism and claiming that it is not anti-Semitism. If there is dedication to fighting it, it has to be defined.

America should use the same standard for evaluating its own campuses that the State Department has been using for a decade and a half in looking at global anti-Semitism. The same standard that we use in criticizing or evaluating the University of Bucharest should be used for Columbia University.

That is the IHRA definition, and the most controversial part of that definition says that, when there is a call for the expulsion or death of every Jew living between the river and the sea, that is anti- Semitic. That shouldn't even be a question. If, God forbid, a Member were to come to this floor, grab this microphone, and shout: ``Death to Albania,'' would anyone doubt that that Member was anti-Albanian?

When one calls for the destruction and ethnic cleansing of the only Jewish majority country in the world, is there any doubt that that is anti-Semitic?

Some oppose adopting this definition because they say it deals with free speech. Keep in mind, fortunately or unfortunately, homophobic speech, racist speech, and anti-Semitic speech enjoy substantial First Amendment protection.

We should adopt a definition of anti-Semitism and then use that to evaluate and use our free speech rights to comment on the anti-Semitic speech being screamed on campuses across this country.

Students are entitled to the protection of title VI of the Civil Rights Act of 1964. That says that you cannot interfere with their education because of their race or national origin.

I have battled for 20 years three or four different administrations' Department of Education, and we now have it clear--as we had it clear and then they revoked it and then they made it clear again--that title VI applies to Jewish students. It may say race and national origin. People can debate whether Judaism and the Jewish people are a people or a religion or a civilization. That issue has been handled.

What campuses have to do is follow title VI if they are going to receive any Federal aid, and they are not. Their method for ignoring civil rights law is to refuse to define anti-Semitism.

Let us hope that this Department of Education will take its responsibility seriously, that this Department of Education will go that last step from saying that they are using the IHRA definition of anti-Semitism to say that they actually publish it as their definition of anti-Semitism. That is a slight step.

Let us hope that university administrators will protect Jewish students just as the National Guard was used to protect African- American students many decades ago when they entered campus.

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

Mr. Speaker, there is substantial discussion of cryptocurrencies. It was one of the things that I agreed with Donald Trump on when he tweeted in 2019, back when he was on Twitter: ``I am not a fan of Bitcoin and other cryptocurrencies, which are not money and whose value is highly volatile and based on thin air. Unregulated crypto assets can facilitate unlawful behavior, including drug trade and other illegal activity.''

``We have only one real currency in the USA, and it is stronger than ever, both dependable and reliable. It is by far the most dominant currency anywhere in the world, and it will always stay that way. It is called the United States dollar.''

Donald Trump got it right in 2019 because he hadn't figured out that there was a way to get money by getting it wrong. Since then, he has flip-flopped. He has decided that he likes cryptocurrency.

Why is that? First, he may have discovered that those who are doing crypto mining are creating enormous amounts of greenhouse gases, entire mothballed electric plants have been taken out of mothballs. These are coal-burning plants, and the entire output is used to do highly complex calculations in order to mine cryptocurrency. That is to say, whoever does these calculations, the system gives them crypto.

Maybe it is the enormous amount of greenhouse gases, but I don't think that is it. What Trump has discovered is that there is an enormous amount of money for him by embracing crypto.

What is crypto? Why does it have a value? At first blush, it looks like an electronic pet rock.

Why does it have value? It is right in the name. It aspires to be a currency, and if it actually became a currency--if you went to the local McDonald's and were told how much a burger cost based on its crypto value, how many hamster coins for an order of fries, then it would be a currency.

Those who are investing in crypto mostly are just thinking they will buy it now and will sell it in a month, and it will go up in value. They have no idea what they are buying, why it would have any value, why anybody else would buy it except they heard they can make money on it.

There is a constituency for that. A lot of people will make investments without thinking of the consequences.

Those in the crypto movement have told us why they have created it. They want to compete with the U.S. dollar in order to make enormous amounts of money themselves and to take from the U.S. dollar its tremendous role as a reserve currency and as an international settlements currency. The effect of that would be to make a mockery out of the sanctions that we impose on Iran, North Korea, and others.

What is the market for cryptocurrency? Why does anybody need a new currency? What is the matter with the euro? Hell, what is the matter with the dollar? The dollar is an outstanding currency. It is a medium of exchange, a store of value, but there is a huge market for another one.

That is because dollar transactions can be discovered by American law enforcement. Yes, we do have the one hundred dollar bill, but big-time drug dealers, big-time tax evaders, and big-time human traffickers find it difficult to carry around that many suitcases filled with one hundred dollar bills, let alone to try to spend them.

They need an electronic currency that gives them all the anonymity of a sack full of one hundred dollar bills and all the convenience of a 21st century currency.

If it catches on, what are the markets? The biggest market, the only market that justifies the current prices that some crypto is getting, is the tax evasion market.

Trump's own Commissioner of the Internal Revenue Service, his appointee, testified that there is roughly a trillion dollars of uncollected taxes. The vast bulk of that is from very wealthy people who are hiding their income.

In order to not pay $1 trillion in taxes, you have to hide $3 trillion of income. If you hide $3 trillion of income year after year, after a decade, you have $10 trillion of assets to hide. That is a lot of assets. You cannot put it all in a sack full of one hundred dollar bills.

So, they create a currency that meets the needs of the tax evaders. What about the sanction evaders? It does it even better. What about the

drug dealers? We have all seen the movies where the toughest problem the big-time drug dealer has is how to deal with all this cash. It solves that problem.

You can tell by the name. They are trying to create a currency. What do they call it? Cryptocurrency. What does that literally mean? Hidden money.

Donald Trump is finding that he can get hundreds of thousands of dollars in contributions, God knows what else he might be taking, from people who see this as an opportunity to create a currency where they are the first owners of it. They create it. They mine it. They already have it.

They have over $1 trillion of this ``currency,'' and they have to find somebody who will take it off their hands. That market won't arise unless they can change the laws of the United States, the security laws and a host of others, in order to compete with the U.S. dollar.

First, if they are able to do this, bankruptcy laws will be unenforceable. Husbands or wives trying to hide assets from their former spouses will not be detected. The income tax will become a tax only on wages. The IRS has your little W-2 form. They know how much you have to pay, but the big-time folks, for them, the income tax will be as much as they feel like paying.

We have to deal with crypto. We also have to deal with the rank hypocrisy of the Republican nominee for President.

Finally, as of today, Mr. Trump is 78 years old. Both parties have nominated Presidential candidates that are older than those that have been nominated anytime in history.

There are those who say one or the other is too old. I will simply say this: It is true, Biden is 3 years older as of today, but Trump is 83 pounds heavier. If you were a life insurance agent, perhaps you wouldn't want to sell that policy.

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

Mr. Speaker, the ICC's ruling is outrageous. The organization has dishonored itself. I would have been happy to cosponsor a resolution denouncing and sanctioning. I wanted to cosponsor this bill when I read the title; unfortunately, I read the bill.

Once again, we have a poorly drafted, poorly thought-out messaging bill that hasn't gone through the committee process, that hasn't gone through regular order, that hasn't been thought through. No amendments are allowed on the floor, and the author defends it on the theory that, well, if the bill is poorly drafted, the Senate will save us and correct it.

We cannot vote ``yes'' on a bill today that is this infirm and count on the Senate to clean it up.

Once again, the Republican Party has decided to hurt Israel for its own benefit. Israel has one friend in the world, the United States-- plus Guatemala. Israel has survived because it has had the support of both political parties.

During the first 76 years of Israel's existence, Democrats have had roughly half the power in this city, and Republicans about half of the time have been in control. If Israel is to survive another 76 years, it will need the support of both parties. Yet, the purpose of this bill, which masquerades as pro-Israel, like so many bills brought up as messaging bills, is to drive a wedge between the Democratic Party and Israel for the benefit not of Israel but the Republican Party.

The decision by the International Criminal Court's prosecutor to seek arrest warrants against Israeli leaders is an outrageous perversion of everything anyone who has dedicated themselves to human rights holds dear, as I have for 28 years on the Foreign Affairs Committee.

It is a perversion of the international justice system. It is putrid. It dishonors those who originally thought

that the International Criminal Court would be a good idea. It undermines the rule of law, and it is based on a hatred of Israel and perhaps a hatred of Jews.

I would like to vote for this bill, but unfortunately I read it. Now, the ranking member has pointed out a number of problems. I will point out a couple as well. You cannot vote for this until you read section 2(a)(1)(A), which imposes sanctions on anyone who assists an effort to investigate, assists an effort to investigate.

What does that mean? It includes those who provide exculpatory information. Israel was subject to investigation. I am sure many patriotic Israelis and well-meaning Americans provided information to the ICC, as Chip Roy did when he gave his speech, detailing why that action is wrongful on the law and the facts; but you assist an investigation when you provide exculpatory information, and anyone who does that is subject to sanction. Mr. Roy won't be sanctioned because he is a U.S. citizen, but anyone else who contacted the court and said here is what you are doing is wrong will be subject to these sanctions.

Second, this bill punishes the spouses and family members, even estranged family members. You may feel that your son has gone wrong. By involvement with the ICC, you get sanctioned for what that son does. Particularly, I want to focus on spouses. As I said, the bill punishes spouses and family members, even those spouses and family members who oppose the ruling.

You are going to wonder why I have this poster up here. All last week, the Republican Party told us that the decision of the Alitos to fly an insurrectionist flag at their two houses should not be imparted to the Justice because it was done by his spouse. Today, one week later, they come back and say that when a judge does something wrong, we are going to impart it to the spouse. Which is it? Are Justices and their spouses responsible for each other's actions or not? Some Republican is going to have to explain this to me.

Now, of course, this is even different and more extreme. Justice Alito lived in the houses, Justice Alito did not disclaim the message of these flags, and Justice Alito is not estranged from his wife, yet someone who is totally apart from anyone at the ICC but happens to be related will be subject to sanctions. Again, how can you defend an appeal to Heaven under those circumstances?

The attention of the world should be on the incredible hypocrisy on the International Criminal Court, which failed to issue rulings about driving the Rohingya from their home, about the complete depopulation of the Republic of Nagorno-Karabakh, of the Republic of Artsakh where the entire country was driven into exile in ethnic cleansing. It failed to issue a ruling dealing with northern Ethiopia, where 600,000 people died. This illegitimate court failed to issue a ruling on the Yazidis, who were subjected to a genocide, as the world watched thousands of Yazidis being butchered and burned alive and subjected to sexual slavery.

Instead of focusing our attention on the hypocrisy of the court, we are focused on this poorly drafted resolution. I tried making suggestions to the author. Every suggestion I made was rejected. This was not an attempt to pass a pro-Israel bill.

Mr. Speaker, this was not a pro-Israel bill. Instead it was a poorly drafted, rush-to-the-floor, strictly partisan messaging bill that distracts the world from the hypocrisy of the ICC and focuses us instead on a supposedly pro-Israel, performatively pro-Israel Republican bill.

We will have to vote ``no,'' and then we will have to work later to demonstrate how wrong and how putrid the action of the ICC is.

Madam Chair, today the gross hypocrisy of crypto advocates is exposed. For several years, they were screaming: Don't touch crypto because it is innovative, and innovation is wonderful, and innovation shouldn't be stopped and if we don't innovate other countries will.

Today, the crypto forces bring a bill up that has one purpose: to block innovation.

Why do we block innovation? Because there might be a competitive payment system to the crypto payment system. In other words, the crypto bros need to innovate and create a better payment system, and if they face competition, we need a law to stop them.

This is a bad bill if it did what the authors say it will do. What it will actually do is hard to know because of how poorly drafted it is.

It bans a central bank digital currency or anything that comes close to one or anything that is substantially similar. The bill itself is a word salad of antigovernment and pro-crypto buzz words.

How does it define this digital currency that it prohibits? It simply says digital money is a direct liability of the Federal Reserve system.

Well, all our money is a direct liability to the Federal Reserve system. It bans that, presumably, if it is electronic, so it bans 20th century technology.

When the Fed buys $100 million of Treasury bills from a large bank, do you think that they put it all in armored cars and send it to J.P. Morgan? No, it is electronic. They are paying for it with a digital liability, a direct liability of the Federal Reserve system.

This bill, as it is written, not as it is oratorically described, would require hundreds of thousands of armored cars if we are going to do the business that we have been doing since the 20th century.

I would ask any judge interpreting this bill to keep in mind not the words in the bill, because that would stop 20th century technology and all of our major financial transactions, but the purposes of the authors.

What is the purpose? The purpose is that we should not have an electronic payment system that does not achieve two purposes: Number one, the crypto bros must make a profit; and number two, it has to be a system that is effective for drug dealers and tax evaders.

Judges interpreting this word salad that calls itself a bill should keep those two objectives in mind.

Then we are told that we need a new payment system in this country so the government cannot freeze bank accounts because Canada froze bank accounts of anti-vax truckers. I have no

idea whether Canada should have frozen those bank accounts, but I do know this: If because Canada froze bank accounts of anti-vax truckers, we should have a payment system that makes it impossible for the American Government to freeze the bank accounts of convicted tax evaders, convicted drug dealers, and convicted charlatans. Then we enter into a new world that I call patriotic anarchism, the folks who demand that America be strong and that the government be totally defanged and inept and unable to do anything.

It is a wonderful world. You can believe in a strong America without an American Government or an American Government unable to freeze the bank accounts of convicted murderers. You want a strong America but not a government that is able to do that.

Now, this world of a surveillance state if we had a central bank digital currency, keep in mind the use of that currency is entirely voluntarily just as the use of a credit card is voluntary. If you use a credit card to buy a gun and then you kill somebody, there is a record. You are also free to use cash.

Cash has some disadvantages. In the example I just gave, those disadvantages are not apparent, but those disadvantages include that it is not electronic, that it is bulky, and that if you have over $10,000 you want to deposit in bank, a report is made.

Madam Chair, we have a bill, which if it is interpreted as written, blocks the American economy the way it operates today and has for decades and would create lots of American jobs building those armored cars because the Fed would have to deal with nonelectronic transactions.

If it is interpreted as intended, it is designed to create a world in which the American Government cannot conduct a criminal investigation that follows the money, and if someone is convicted, their bank accounts cannot be frozen because we have a new payment system without bank accounts that are not subject to being frozen.

Vote against this bill because of what is in it. Vote against this bill because of what they wanted to put in it and hoped to put in it but didn't.

Mr. Chair, we are told to reject this because China is doing this. In China, they drink orange juice. Should we prohibit orange juice? Not everything that happens in China needs to be banned by statute in this Congress.

We are told we need to protect privacy, but this bill does not require anybody to use a digital currency. You are still going to have cash. You are still going to have a credit card. It is just one more option.

You may say the use of the credit card doesn't give you privacy because my wife then finds out I spent too much on a tie. So what do I do? I spend cash. You are going to have debit cards, credit cards, cash, and maybe a digital currency. If you want it to be private, don't use it. It is not mandatory.

Mr. Chair, had I been present, I would have voted No on Roll Call No. 228.

Amendment No. 3 Offered by Mr. Davidson

Mr. Chair, last week we had police week. This week, the Republicans show us that they support crime in the suites. The effect of this bill in the short term will be to disempower the most effective investor protection crime investigation organization in the world, the

Mr. Chair, you have to understand how important it is.

We, frankly, are not fiscally responsible in this House. We don't collect nearly as much in taxes as we spend in benefits. We are able to do that without too much harm because of the role of the U.S. dollar as a reserve currency. We have fiscal policies that would make Argentina blush, but we are able to do it. The crypto bros see the incredible amount of money and power the U.S. Government has by being the world's reserve currency and they say no. They want to appropriate that for themselves.

Mr. Chair, this amendment gives the illusion that it prevents the bill from being useful to our foreign adversaries when, in fact, we see Iran using crypto to avoid sanctions, North Korea profiting from crypto, and Hamas raising huge amounts of money and being able to sneak around our efforts by using crypto. Finally, we see the crypto advocates viewing this bill as their ticket to move crypto into a competitor with the U.S. dollar. With tomorrow's bill, they try to hobble the dollar by saying it can't be digital and we can't have a better payment system involving the dollar, and that is their system for having crypto outcompete the dollar.

The administration opposes this bill. Even if you looked at it a few weeks ago, it has gotten much, much worse. I want to reemphasize that they added a new title that allows crypto to be completely unregulated and would allow for nonregulation of our stocks and bonds, so even if you liked this bill when you saw it 3 weeks ago, vote ``no.''

Mr. Chairman, this amendment illustrates the problem. A commodity other than a digital commodity, but any commodity can become a digital commodity, or you can have a contract or a derivative tied to the physical commodity that now becomes a digital coin.

We are told that the bill does not allow stocks and bonds to be digital assets, but it does allow them to be defined as investment contracts. If you get defined as an investment contract, you are without regulation.

As to the underlying bill, keep in mind, the administration opposes it, and three-quarters of Democrats voted against it before it got much worse.

The bill got much worse a few weeks ago. If you studied it before then, and I know the bill has been out there since July of last year, your analysis won't show you how this bill now allows digital crypto to go without regulation and opens the door to taking our traditional stocks and bonds out from the SEC.

Vote ``no'' on the amendment, but especially vote ``no'' on the bill.