Floor Statements

Mr. Speaker, I thank my friend from Missouri for yielding, and I rise in support of this legislation.

San Antonio, which I am proud to represent, has about 1.7 million people. It is the seventh-largest city in the country and is the second-largest market without a direct flight to Reagan National Airport.

It has about 82,000 Active Duty and about 100,000 veterans in the community. It is arguably the center of cybersecurity.

This is something that the delegation has been working on for a long time, and this is an important development.

For the reasons that I have just articulated, I give a great deal of thanks to the chairman for his hard work in getting this done and to Senator Cruz and his leadership over in the Senate to get these additional five slots which, by the way, will provide opportunities for other cities that are in the same situation. This, frankly, won't actually have a significant impact because there are already people flying from San Antonio to Reagan. They are just having to hop to do it. This will provide direct access. I am grateful for their support, and I will support the bill.

Mr. Speaker, I rise today to recognize the one-hundred fortieth anniversary of the Doss School in Gillespie County, Texas. It is the longest continually running school in the State and is located northwest of Fredericksburg.

Alumni, faculty, and students of the Doss School will gather to celebrate this milestone on May 18, 2024. Its motto is ``The small school with a big heart.''

School board president Cecil Crenwelge had this to say about the occasion, ``The history behind Doss School is truly remarkable. As we celebrate the incredible history of the school and its many alumni, we also have an eye to the future that is very bright.''

The original building for Doss School was officially designated a Texas Historic Landmark in 1985. The first classes at Doss School began in 1884. Mr. Tom Nixon donated land for the construction of a school building. Upon completion, students at Squaw Creek and Onion Creek schools merged with Doss and shared the new building. The school further expanded with a new building in 1927.

I would like to thank the Friends of Doss School for preserving local history and this community treasure. I wish the students and faculty of Doss School well in the upcoming school year.

Mr. Speaker, as usual, I appreciate my friend from Arizona, who is, if nothing else, dogged in his determination and consistent in making clear to the American people the problem that we face on our overall spending, including mandatory.

Specifically mandatory, as we refer to it, this broad basket of things that we have committed to do that is consuming our budget ever more every single year. It is an important point and one that we don't discuss enough as a body on what we should do about it.

The gentleman's point is precisely correct about the nature of the problem, the seriousness of the problem. When we are sitting here right now and we are roughly--I am going to use ballpark numbers--bringing in $4 trillion of revenue, but we are spending about $6 trillion, pushing $7 trillion--he is right--it depends on what we are talking about in terms of the accounting.

Basically, what you are saying is, you are printing money to fund effectively all of our discretionary budget and then some.

What I mean by that is, you are printing money to fund defense, the operation of the government, the Department of Justice, the Department of Homeland Security, all the things that you touch and feel and see because the $4 trillion is going to fund Medicare, Social Security, food stamps, veterans benefits that are mandatory, plus interest. There you are. You have used up all of your revenue.

The problem is, nobody in this town wants to do anything about it. My Democratic colleagues will hide behind ``you must increase taxes.'' My Republican colleagues will do nothing to actually limit spending in any meaningful way. They will just talk about ultimately needing to deal with mandatory spending one day and not do anything to deal with the spending issues now.

Where I depart from my friend from Arizona, respectfully, who is no longer on the floor--maybe not depart. Where I want to be more clear is the questions when we have debates on the floor of the House about spending items in what we call discretionary. That is the stuff that we can touch, the accounts, the Department of Defense, some of these issues.

My issue with that is less about mounting debt, although it is a part of it. It is that you are funding the demise of our prosperity. You are funding the bureaucrats who are at war with us. You are funding that which is undermining our ability to create economic growth and live freely to get out from under that financial morass.

In other words, you are not really going to address the debt problem by saving $5 billion on some small item, but what you are going to do is you are going to stop the interference with the American people.

Let me give you some examples. If you are a hardworking American out there and have a family of four, and you are a plumber in San Marcos, Texas, which I represent part of, you are just trying to go about doing your job. You need a pickup truck. You need to put all of your stuff in it. You need to be able to drive around. We are making that pickup truck impossible to afford.

We are making it literally impossible to afford. We are putting all of these requirements and demands on the vehicles. We are going to make it where you have to have electric vehicles, with the tailpipe rules and mandates. They are piling up on lots. They are getting more expensive.

If you want to go get your windshield replaced, it is like $1,500 now. It used to be $200 or $300. Why? We have all sorts of mandates and requirements and gadgets in the windshield.

Now, they are going to mandate vehicles that have automatic braking.

Every time you do that, you make this stuff more expensive. The market should bear that out. The market should sort that out. If you want a vehicle that has automatic braking, great. Pay for it. The vast majority of Americans will say: No, I can't afford that. I just want a simple car.

We are killing the ability of the average family to afford life. It matters. This is the problem.

In the House of Representatives, what we have become is the house of perpetuating corporate cronyism and the enrichment of a handful of folks at the expense of hardworking American families.

Then, I will have some of my colleagues who will throw out these random statements like: We should read the philosophers and conservatives of the past who were the traditionalists and rational in what they believed about limited government, not the radical populists of today.

I think that misses the entire point. It is not populist to believe we should stop spending money we don't have, driving up inflation, driving down the value of the dollar, and putting a tax on the hardworking American family. It is not populist to say that we shouldn't regulate our entire lives out

of existence with expensive vehicles and all sorts of demands on what you can and can't do, which makes things more expensive, or all of the green climate agenda that is empowering China, undermining our ability to have affordable energy.

That is not populism. It is not populism to say that maybe, just maybe, if you are going to send $95 billion overseas to fund war, maybe you should have to pay for that. That is not populist. It is rational. You can question the war. You could say that we should be focusing on America first, securing our borders first.

Maybe you could say that is populist. I think it is rational. It is sovereignty. The Founders, and importantly the conservative thought leaders of the 20th century, like Russell Kirk, believe that you actually do have to have institutions, but you believe in sovereignty and the rule of law. You believe that there are supposed to be limits, limits to what you do in feeding your appetite.

What are our limits? I am sitting here in an empty Chamber, but to my friend who is serving as the Speaker at the moment, what are our limits? What limits are we placing on this place?

To my friends who voted for continuing wars around the world, $95 billion, who paid for it? Your grandkids, your kids, you. You paid for it by printing money. We did not pay for it. We printed money to give it away--the same thing with the first $113 billion for Ukraine, the same thing for virtually everything we are doing.

I have had some supporters, particularly ones of financial means, who have called and said: Chip, why did you abandon the people of Ukraine? We must stop Putin.

I said: Great. Are you interested in having a 70 percent marginal tax rate next year to pay for it?

There were crickets on the other end of the phone.

We have lost perspective on what we are supposed to do here responsibly in this Chamber. That is the truth.

While we sit here and move a few bills across the floor, and while we just passed a massive, unpaid-for foreign aid package that funds both sides of the war in Israel--it gives $9 billion used by Hamas, used to have Palestinian refugees moving to the United States, funding both sides of that conflict, while we fund Ukraine, where we have no clear mission, no evidence that we can produce enough ammo fast enough to be able to help them when they are getting out-shelled no matter what and they are running out of men, even if you accept that all of that might result in some improvement, we are funding all of that.

We just voted on all of that. We just voted on an anti-Semitism resolution, which codifies thought-speech, so we can pat ourselves on the back and say: Look at what we did. Look what we did.

People feel good about it, but you didn't do a damn thing. In fact, you made things worse because you just empowered the Federal Government to go after thought-speech.

We do all of that. Right after, what did we do? We passed a massive omnibus spending bill, $1.7 trillion in two omnibus packages. We funded $200 billion for a new FBI headquarters, an FBI that is out of control.

We do all of these things, and what is happening in the meantime? What is happening right now? What is happening right now is that our borders are wide open.

The people in Texas are still feeling it every single day. We are dealing with the reality of roughly 1,000 to 1,600 people a day being paroled into the United States.

Nobody out there in the real world knows what that means. It means that there is a provision in the law supposedly there for a case-by- case basis to help a few people. The Biden administration is blatantly, unlawfully, illegally using that provision to expand it and dump literally 1,000 to 1,600 people a day. We believe 400,000 over the last year, according to the reports that we have, were dumped into the United States under what is called parole.

Guess what? How did Laken Riley's killer get into the United States? Parole.

There have been dozens of examples of individuals who were paroled into the United States under the Biden administration's policies who have gone on to kill, assault, and harm and undermine the security of Americans.

Think about that. That is what is happening right now, allegedly, on our watch. The fact is, we could have done something about it. A year ago this Saturday, Republicans passed what we call H.R. 2, which is the bill number for border security. It was a strong bill that would have closed the ability of the Biden administration to abuse parole. It would have closed their ability to abuse asylum. It would have ended the abuse of the unaccompanied alien children, using them as essentially a hall pass to get into the United States.

It would have fundamentally ended the Biden administration's abuse of law to dump people into the United States to the tune of something like 4\1/2\ million people who have been released into the United States under the Biden administration.

We did that. Republicans did that, and we did that after conservatives worked hard and worked with the Speaker to force this body of Republicans to walk away from the amnesty-driven, Chamber of Commerce-driven failure of the last two decades and pass a strong border security measure.

That bill is sitting over in the Senate, where Senate Democrats refuse to move it while they hide behind a sham piece of legislation, which would not secure the border of the United States, so they can try to blame Republicans in an election year.

What Republicans have failed to do is use the leverage of the power of the purse to force our Democratic colleagues in the Senate and the Biden administration to come to the table and deal with the border crisis, despite the rhetoric of our own leadership saying that we would do that.

We have fully funded the government at debt-increasing levels, busting the caps that were put into law. We are funding the government that is abusing our borders and dumping people into the United States unlawfully, paying off student loans unlawfully to the tune of $700 billion to $1.4 trillion. Meanwhile, we are racking up $34\1/2\ trillion in debt, barreling toward $35 trillion, with a trillion dollars every 3 months, with more interest than we pay for national defense, almost a trillion dollars in interest, barreling toward $2 trillion to $3 trillion of interest. Meanwhile, the number of retirees is growing, demands on Medicare are growing, and costs--the prices--of healthcare are going up.

That is all happening right now in real time. What are we doing about it?

This is a question that I want to ask my Republican colleagues: If the American people look at our Democratic colleagues and say: Man, that is insanity. We can't do that. That is crazy stuff. They want to have all sorts of woke policies and DEI. They want to let criminals out. They want wide-open borders. They want to keep spending gobs of money. They want to undermine our Western civilization, our way of life. Man, that is crazy. I don't want that.

They say: Well, we have to turn to Republicans. Let's vote for Republicans.

Let's say that happens. Let's say we are fortunate enough for that to happen with large enough numbers that we win the majority of the House, the majority of the Senate, and the White House, what are we going to do? I will bet you a significant amount that you will hear excuses out of this Chamber by Republicans in January, with a newly minted majority here, in the Senate, and in the White House, saying the following: Chip, we don't have 60 votes in the Senate. What you want can't be done. Chip, we have divisions in our own Conference, our own Republican majority. We can't pass everything you want to pass and then get it to the Senate and send it to the President. We are going to have to send over this compromise.

It has been happening for decades. The reason our borders are wide open--it didn't just materialize one day that Joe Biden just woke up and decided to open them up. It has been decades in the making with support from Republicans because they were too much in the pocket of the Chamber of Commerce. They were sitting down in the Rio Grande with a ``No Trespassing'' sign, and then over here with a sign saying: ``Help Wanted.'' Wink, wink, come on in. We don't care about the border.

That was happening. I know because I saw it. I saw it as a Texan. I saw it as

an American. I saw it as a staffer on the Senate Judiciary Committee, as a chief of staff for Ted Cruz. I saw the amnesty bills. I saw the desire to have cheap labor at the expense of sovereignty.

Let's talk for a minute about that cheap labor. I keep hearing from all of my colleagues--on both sides of the aisle, frankly--how important it is for us to continue to have a flow of people across our border, legal or illegal, because, quote, we need the workers.

Have you looked at what is happening to jobs? The jobs for Americans, American-born workers, post-COVID is flat or down. The actual engagement in the workforce is flat or down. Yes, there is growth from migrants to try to catch up on the number, but what we are doing is we are paying people not to work. We are paying kids to sit in their room, basement, whatever, playing Fortnite, kids in their twenties. We have low workforce participation from American citizens and workers while we try to then bring people in who, by the way, then use the social welfare state, who then have massive demands on the education system. How do I know that? I live in Texas. I see the schools. I see the rolls.

Tomorrow in the Budget Committee we are going to have a hearing on the cost and the impact of illegal immigration. Kinney County, Texas, just a little bit southwest of San Antonio, which I represent, we will have a witness here tomorrow from Kinney County walking us through roughly these numbers: The crime that they were dealing with in 2021, pre-Biden, was about 140 something crimes a year that they had to deal with. They are now at 15,000. Now, that is a lot of criminal trespass that Operation Lone Star and the State Department of Public Safety are trying to work to manage, but that is what they are dealing with. That is what they are dealing with in their court systems.

I can sit here and walk you through--we will have a hearing tomorrow; I won't do it here--the impact on the schools, the hospitals, all of the social services. Anybody who does a legitimate analysis of all of those costs compared to the taxes, sales taxes, which so many of my colleagues hang their hat on and say this is causing economic activity and they are paying taxes.

Yes, there is some of that, but we have created the welfare state which Milton Friedman famously said: I am all for open borders if you get rid of the welfare state. Now, that was pre-9/11. Let's say you have security, you vet everybody, you know who is coming here, do they want to harm us, or they are just hardworking people, they want to achieve the American Dream?

If you have a zero welfare state, I would say: Come on. I don't care where you are from, I don't care what you look like, come on. If you are coming to America and you are making your way and you are going to work hard, then you are going to follow our values and our principles, regardless of your background, regardless of your religion, because you are going to believe in the rule of law, you are going to believe in economic prosperity, you are going to believe in free enterprise and capitalism, you are most likely going to believe in God and everything that made this country great because you are coming here seeking the American Dream.

However, we are turning the American Dream upside-down. We are destroying that which migrants come to this country to achieve when they come here, they believe in this country, believe in the rule of law because that is what the American Dream is built around, and we are completely destroying it. That is the truth.

It is happening right now while we sit here and fiddle while America burns. I am going to say it over and over and over again until at least my Republican colleagues, who try to pretend to give a crap about the border, actually do something about it.

How many campaign ads, how many speeches are going to be given by my Republican colleagues between now and November about what they will do to secure the border? What are they doing right now? Shrugging. Sorry; can't do anything. It is Biden. What are we going to do?

How many more Americans are going to die while we shrug? Well, thank God the Founders didn't shrug. Thank God the men at Lexington and Concord didn't just shrug and say: Oh, well, I guess there is a tyrant. Thank God the boys at Normandy didn't shrug, and say: Why the hell are we across the ocean and we have to go take out this crazy guy Hitler? Thank God they didn't. Thank God the boys at the Alamo didn't shrug. We are shrugging it off, though. We are pretending it is not happening.

Is anybody paying attention to what is happening in London? Am I going to say it here on the floor of the House and get the scorn of people when I say: You have got a massive Muslim takeover of the United Kingdom going on right before our eyes? They would say: Well, Chip, what is wrong with that? Well, I have got some pretty strong concerns about Sharia law and whether that will be forced upon the American people. In this case the people of the United Kingdom. I have got pretty strong concerns about people who want to see Israel's destruction, who were happy about October 7, who were elected in the United Kingdom. Some might say that we have seen that here in the United States.

What are we going to do about that? We have 51\1/2\ million people who are foreign born in the United States. They have about 20 to 25 million kids. That puts it at well over 20-some percent of our population. It is the highest such number in the history of our country.

People say: Well, isn't that great?

Is it? Are we teaching people about Western civilization? Are we teaching people about the Constitution, the Bill of Rights, the rule of law? Are we teaching them Western values? Are we teaching them God exists? Are we teaching them the importance of freedom or are we teaching an entire generation--or two or three--to run around complaining about what is wrong and why the entire world is against them because of their skin color, their sex, their supposed gender identity, whatever the hell category we create to make people have an excuse for not just stepping up and achieving the American Dream?

That is what we are doing. Our borders are wide open. People go: Well, I know it is bad. It is bad, Chip, but what do we do about it?

Stop it. Like actually stop it. We literally just gave away every ounce of leverage we had. Why? To fund Ukraine. Unpaid for, with no clear mission. We said: Who cares about America's borders? Sorry, Chip, we couldn't get it done. I have got to go back to the people of Texas, and say: Well, sorry, we will get `em next time.

Look, nobody I know--Conservative, moderate, Democrat--nobody comes here expecting to get everything they want. It is a body of Representatives. It is the worst form of government except for all the others. I get it, but I am sick and tired of watching this play play out the same way every single time. The American people get screwed and get left holding the bag. That is the truth.

Every single hardworking family across this country right now who can't afford groceries, can't afford electricity, can't afford to buy a car, can't send their kid to a school that they can believe will teach them the right thing, teach them God exists, teach them their country is great, even just teach them that there is man and woman. No, none of that.

We are funding this radical climate agenda that is destroying our ability to have energy right now. You are not going to have an internal combustion engine in 10 years because these radical nuts are killing your ability to do it. Republicans are sitting back and shrugging, patting ourselves on the back for increasing mining for rare earth minerals in Minnesota or around this country rather than fully opening up American oil and gas, building American nuclear power. It is absurd. It is ridiculous.

The average American right now is wondering whether or not they can actually achieve the American Dream. I want to know whether my colleagues in this Chamber, Democrat or Republican, would come to the microphone and give a rip-roaring speech right now about why every American should believe they are going to be able to achieve the American Dream, because I will tell you right now, unless we lead, unless we take this moment to reverse

the direction we are headed, change trajectory, massively shift the direction of our country, then our kids and our grandkids will not be able to achieve the American Dream. They won't.

Well, Chip, how does that sell? What I am selling is a duty to fight. What I am selling is a duty to go fight to make sure those American kids and grandkids can achieve the American Dream. Fight for sovereignty, fight for citizenship, introduce legislation to demand that citizens only vote, to stand up and fight for the opportunity to go carry out your life because you can afford to do it because you have gotten rid of all the regulations that are constraining the hardworking American.

Go get rid of the corporate cronyism enriching the insurance companies, enriching all the big corporations across this country, hospitals and pharma, and strip it away. Get rid of the middlemen and empower doctors and patients and get all that crap out of the way so people can actually go get healthcare. Do that.

Cut the government bureaucracy. Get rid of the bureaucrats. Get rid of DEI. Get rid of critical race theory. Go to war with the bureaucrats, metaphorically, to stop destroying the American Dream. Don't just sit here and come here and give speeches about some basketball team that won the national championship, then go home and say: Look at me, I gave a speech about the basketball championship. Who cares? Their parents can't afford to live.

We have a duty in the people's House to do something. The iceberg is right in front us. My friend, Mr. Schweikert, just explained it. We are massively upside-down. We are bleeding out of every pore of our body in terms of money and debt. Our borders are wide open. We are increasingly unchurched. Our schools are indoctrinating our kids. Our universities are indoctrination camps. They are essentially daycares for elitists, and we just forgave their debts, their student loans.

Every hardworking American out there deserves a Representative who represents them. Democrat or Republican, Conservative, moderate, Liberal, why are you here? What is the point? Why get elected? Why get an election certificate?

The point is, stand up in defense of the rule of law and the Constitution. If you say you believe in limited government, limit it. If you say you believe in cutting spending, cut it. If you say you believe in securing the border, secure it. If you say you believe in peace through strength, then stop sending our military and our money into endless conflict and instead build a strong military here, sparingly used, make sure our men and women have the care they need when they get home, and send a message around the world that when we use force, it will be used quickly and massively.

This is what the people I represent want. They don't want any more of these feel-good bills because some organization declares ``a week.'' It happens all the time. Teacher week, got to do a teacher bill; cop week, got to do a cop bill. None of that is going to make this country freer or stronger or more secure.

We took an oath to the Constitution. I don't want any more excuses about well, Chip, this only offends the Commerce Clause a little bit. This one is better than that other version. Stop doing it. Go the other direction.

Stop selling watered-down Democrat-light, and go inspire the American people with something better so that the kids of this generation can get their lives out of these phones and get their lives out of the despair of wondering whether they are going to be able to have the American Dream and give them hope that if they go out and they work and work hard and they save money, they are going to be able to buy a house, have a family, they are going to get healthcare because they worked hard and they were able to do it. That is why migrants come here.

Stop paying people not to work. Stop the endless nonsense and drivel that comes out of this body in the name of doing something and, instead, stand up and fight for the American people. Don't give lip service on June 6 because it is the 80th anniversary of what those boys did when they walked into a wall of bullets. Stand up and do a fraction of what they did by having the nerve to vote ``no'' on something, even though somebody might tweet something mean about it.

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

Madam Speaker, I would note that today we have seen around the country an extraordinary display of anti-Semitic activity on college campuses throughout the country: Columbia University, USC, and even in Austin, Texas, at the University of Texas near where I live and a city that I represent in part.

We saw today protesters replacing the American flag with the Palestinian flag in Chapel Hill, North Carolina. We are seeing all sorts of derogatory actions and statements being directed to our Jewish brothers and sisters in this country, and it should not be tolerated. It should be called out. It is unacceptable.

It is not speech. It is not speech when you are engaging in the kind of conduct that we are talking about where a young Jewish man was being denied entry into a building and being asked whether he was Zionist.

This is not speech. This is action with these encampments when you take over a university, State-owned or private, in particular the University of Texas, a State university. When you take over at USC, you deny the ability of parents and students who have worked to graduate. You are blocking access. This is not speech. Let me be perfectly clear.

University of Texas President Jay Hartzell and the leadership of that university are doing the exact right thing by clearing out the people in the encampments taking over the university. President Ben Sasse at the University of Florida is doing the exact right thing by saying that the University of Florida is not a daycare, that these are adults, and they know full well what they are doing and that they will get the consequences of their actions. That is leadership.

The University of Texas has allowed free speech multiple times in respect to people who are protesting the conflict, protesting Israel, and supporters of the Palestinians. I think there have been 13 or 14 events at the University of Texas that have been officially sanctioned and other free speech.

Here is the thing. Yet again today, here on the floor of the House of Representatives, we had another show vote to make people feel good about themselves by passing a bill that says anti-Semitism in the title. That is what happened. It was put on the floor by Republican leadership, and it was put on the floor by Republican leadership despite knowing that it was pulled from going through committee. We didn't have a chance to amend it. We didn't have a chance to discuss it and debate it. We didn't have a hearing on it. It was jammed through to take advantage of this political moment while all of these horrific things are going on around the country. Republican leadership wanted to score political points, so they moved through legislation without the kind of deliberation and debate that is supposed to be carried out by the people in this Chamber.

As a result, today, a significant number of my Republican colleagues, including myself, voted no. As a result, we will be accused of--I don't know--being for anti-Semitic behavior, being accused by our friends and allies of not wanting to support Israel, supporting our Jewish-American colleagues and friends, constituents, and fellow Americans. Nothing could be further from the truth, but that is what will happen. It will happen because we dared to stand up and say we don't believe in thought police.

We don't believe that a bill should be brought to the floor of the United States House of Representatives, having not gone through committee, that has a reference to an international organization's definition literally in the statute, and then taking that international organization's definition and then literally in the statute representing and referencing the examples of anti-Semitic behavior.

I find the vast majority of the things that are listed in that to be horrific activity, and most likely, if not certainly, they are anti- Semitic, at least in most contexts. Some of them are problematic.

In totality, they certainly raise First Amendment concerns. They certainly raise concerns about something that I have opposed, to the best of my knowledge and ability, having read through the piece of legislation at every turn and every vote, to oppose the whole notion of hate speech, hate crimes, thought police, thought crimes, and

putting the government into your head and your motivations when you are engaged in criminal behavior.

Criminal behavior is criminal behavior. Violating people's civil rights is violating people's civil rights.

When we want to insert the government into what you are thinking and what motivates you, Madam Speaker, then you are empowering that which should never be empowered: the ability of the government to police thought, to police speech, and to police your views, not the views that carry out, then the actions. The actions are the problem. Police the actions.

Yet, that is what we did, and I am damned proud of my colleagues, particularly on this side of the aisle, who stood up and said no because it was a hard vote.

Madam Speaker, do you know what I have to spend my time doing tonight, tomorrow, and this week? I will be explaining to my Jewish constituents, supporters, and friends that I stand with them unequivocally.

They will say: What do you mean unequivocally? You voted against the bill that is titled anti-Semitism.

I will say it is because the slippery slope of tyranny that has led to the death, that has led to the harassment, and that has led to the abject discrimination and oppression of people around this world--those roads lead through the empowerment of government bureaucrats at the expense of liberty. Liberty stops at the door of harming somebody-- taking their stuff, blocking roads, and doing the kinds of things that actually directly impact and harm people--not what you think.

That is what we do. We do things for political motivations. The Republican leadership knew it, and they put it on the floor anyway.

I am sick of it. I am sick of my Republican colleagues who want to go out and campaign for power to maintain power to then come in here and do the very things we said that we oppose.

There is a bill in the House Judiciary Committee right now. That bill will say that the Department of Justice can go into a State and prosecute a cop killer if the local jurisdiction effectively refuses to do that.

That sounds good, doesn't it, Madam Speaker, if you are pro-cop and pro-police and have a George Soros prosecutor sitting in Austin, Texas, or New York City who is refusing to do their job, do their duty, and follow their conscience to go prosecute a dangerous individual who killed a cop? You say, well, Chip, of course, we should bring in the Department of Justice and take care of that horrific result.

Here is the problem: There is no end.

The bill is based on commerce. The gun transports in commerce. The defendant traveled in commerce.

Why does that matter? Let me ask you a question, Madam Speaker. The bill before the Judiciary Committee says that if something is involved in commerce, then the Federal Government and the Department of Justice, whether it is led by a Republican or Merrick Garland, can come in, based on whatever rationale they want, and say they are going to prosecute this crime committed against a cop.

Why not against a nurse? Why not against a doctor? Why not a firefighter? Why not a teacher? Why not a member of the clergy? It won't end.

Our Founders didn't set up a Federal police. Our Constitution does not contemplate a Federal police. Our Federal Government is not supposed to police us in our homes and in our communities.

It is egregious that there are cops who have been murdered and DAs who refuse to do their duty to prosecute their killers, but I will be damned if I am going to empower a government to extend beyond its constitutional limits using the same bastardized use of the Commerce Clause that we have decried for decades because it has expanded a government that is now tyrannically using its power to go after the American people, go after former politicians, including the former President, that is spending money we don't have, that is using that power to regulate us to death on virtually every bill that virtually every Republican on this side of the aisle who claims to be a limited government conservative votes for.

Why? It is because they don't want the Fraternal Order of Police or other law enforcement organizations to come after them.

Last night, I didn't even have an amendment circulated yet. I simply begged the question: Why are we putting forward a bill that expands the power of the Department of Justice under the Commerce Clause, no matter how meritorious our goal is in ensuring cop killers go to jail? Why are we doing that?

Aren't we limited government conservatives who don't believe in the expansive use of the Commerce Clause to expand the power of the Federal Government because it is used for thousands of other things that we don't like?

I hadn't even gotten the ink dry on the concept of an amendment when someone in the body had already notified police organizations and said: Go after him.

Do you know what, Madam Speaker? Go ahead. I work for 750,000 Texans. I respond to them, God, and the Constitution of the United States. I do not work for anybody in this Chamber. I do not work for any organization. I don't work for any donor. I work for the people, and I work for a people who are sick and damn tired of this institution run by a bunch of people who campaign saying one thing and get here and do another.

Madam Speaker, $34.5 trillion of debt, $1 trillion every 3 months--we already spend more on interest than on defense. We are about to crack $1 trillion of interest. They say we will hit $2 trillion to $3 trillion of interest by 2030. Our borders are wide open. We have kids dying. In Austin, Texas, four more people the other night died from fentanyl poisoning. A bunch of others had to be resuscitated with Narcan. The people of Texas are continuing to deal with thousands of people pouring across the border.

It is not in the headlines right now because universities are in the headlines, but everybody in Texas who is reeling from inflation, who can't afford a car, who can't afford their home, who can't afford the interest on their mortgage, who can't afford to buy groceries, who is dealing with crime on their streets, and who is dealing with open borders want some sort of sanity coming out of this institution.

What do we do? What are Republicans doing in all their infinite wisdom? We fund more of it. We fund the Department of Homeland Security again. We give the FBI a brand-new $200 million headquarters.

Madam Speaker, you can't even make this stuff up.

We give more power to the intelligence community to spy on Americans. We don't even protect Americans with warrants. Madam Speaker, you can't even make it up.

Over the last 16 months, there has been a battle that represents the larger war brewing within the Republican Party. That is because, unfortunately, my colleagues on the other side of the aisle have gone far down the rabbit hole of radical progressive policies that absolutely destroy our country every single day. They are littering our country with regulations, littering our country with all sorts of crime, littering our country with open borders, and engaging in endless wars.

All the stuff that is happening is because our Democratic colleagues are, frankly, undermining the American Dream, undermining Western civilization, and undermining everything we hold dear.

I want to tell you, Madam Speaker, there is a battle going on for the soul of the party and the country within the Republican Party. I want to tell you, Madam Speaker, I am not in the majority. I am not.

You say, Chip, you are in the majority of the House, and you have a razor-thin majority. No, I am not. I am not in the majority. I am in the minority, a minority of Republicans who try to wake up here and change this place rather than just campaign on it. That is the truth.

Right now, President Biden is considering bringing refugees from Gaza into the United States. I don't know what the background checks will be. I don't know what we will do to ensure that these are individuals who are not affiliated with terrorist organizations.

The number is something like three-quarters of the people of Gaza support what Hamas is doing in attacking Israel. Large numbers of civilians were involved in the attacks on Israel.

The bill we just voted on last week, the foreign aid package of $95 billion, is

it paid for? No. Does it fund Ukraine with no clear mission? Yes.

Everybody here who voted for it said: Don't worry. That will be the last. We just need that money, and when President Trump gets elected, it will be over.

The ink was not even dry, and they were already talking about a new Ukraine package for the fall, more Ukraine money. Do you think that will be paid for? No.

The money for Israel, $17 billion, is that paid for? No.

Was there another $9 billion that is going to be used for the nongovernmental organizations, the NGOs, and filter that money to Hamas? Yes.

Was there $5 billion in there that will go to refugee assistance? Yes. Will that refugee assistance fund moving some of these folks from Gaza to America to be your neighbor, Madam Speaker? Yes.

That is what we voted on. That is what we voted for. Thankfully, a majority of Republicans voted against it, but our illustrious Republican leadership brought it to the floor anyway. Why? We are told that we had no choice. There is no choice. That is always the excuse.

Meanwhile, here, in addition to the refugees who may be dumped in here from Gaza, in 2023, last year, in an 8-month stretch, about 200,000 migrants flew into the United States via the President's parole program. Eighty percent of those folks went to Florida, thousands went to Texas, and thousands were flown around our country.

The American people have no idea how bad the border situation really is. Our Democratic colleagues are practically giddy at what they are getting out of the Republicans in the House of Representatives, which is nada in terms of opposition. It is nothing, zero opposition to what our Democratic colleagues are trying to perpetrate on the American people by way of a President ignoring the law, racking up, I am told by independent outside organizations making determinations of the cost, about $800 billion to $1.4 trillion in student loan forgiveness.

Madam Speaker, you can't even make this up. What do we do? We pay for it. We keep paying for it. We are paying for the administration of it.

We didn't put any blocks in place through the omnibus appropriations bill. We didn't get a single change to open borders. We didn't get a single change to the student loan repayments or forgiveness. We didn't get a single change to the continuation of endless wars. We got negligible change on the FISA spying program. Right now, we have a backlog of several million people waiting for court proceedings as late as 2035 or 2037.

I was talking to some friends of mine the other night, who are a little bit more on the other side of the aisle, and they were saying: Republicans have issues with immigrants.

I said: Well, let me ask you a question: How many people do you think are in the United States who are foreign born?

I told them the answer: About 51\1/2\ million.

How many are legally coming every year? It depends on the year, but somewhere between 800,000, a million, 1.1 million. It depends on the year. It is almost a million. No other country is even close, by the way.

We are anti-immigrant because we think maybe we ought to pause for a second, maybe take stock of the state of our country? We can't pay for Medicare. We can't pay for Social Security without printing money. Hell, we can't pay for anything pretty much without printing money.

Here is the thing I would say to all of my Republican colleagues: Enjoy it when I come down here to the floor and I file a bill to raise taxes on whoever I decide needs to have their taxes raised on and have my colleagues explain how the majority is voting for more spending for endless wars and endless conflict and $95 billion for Ukraine and overseas conflict and not paying for it. I will tell you what, I will give you the ability to pay for it.

Do my colleagues want to go out and sell tax increases to all of their donor friends? Go ahead. Go ahead to my Republican colleagues because Republicans have been taking a free ride on the idea of trickle down now for 25 years.

Now, I believe in low broad tax rates creating the maximum economic growth and opportunity and driving up revenues to the Treasury without constraining the productivity of the American people. I believe that.

However, I don't believe in listening to people complain to me that we are somehow obstructing the great Ronald Reagan's view of what we need to do through peace through strength to go help other people around the world, like Ukraine. We are now $175 billion in. They already know they want another $60 billion, $100 billion. Hell, I saw a news account of $500 billion. Who is going to pay for that?

Some people around town have had the temerity to tell me: Chip, that is not that much money. Why are you gagging on an add? It is just $60 billion. It is just $175 billion.

The real problem is Medicare. Let me ask anybody who wants to jump in here. Oh, that is right, there are no more colleagues here.

Do you think that if you can't vote against a gay senior center in Massachusetts as an earmark that you are somehow going to go out and sell Medicare reform? No, you are not. You are selling a lie.

You are selling a fiction that, oh, trust me, one day, when we get the full power in the House, the Senate--never mind that we won't have 60 votes in the Senate, we will give that excuse next year--then, trust me, Chip, we will do something like set a percentage of GDP that we can tolerate as our overall spend level, and we will constrain, and we will fix this, and we will fix the doughnut hole, and we will fix all of these things nobody in America knows about, and we will pass some bills.

We will pat ourselves on the back, and we will pass another 10-year budget that has all of its cuts in the tenth year. Then, when it comes to the tax cut time, we are going to be for those tax cuts.

Again, I want to be very clear. I am for low taxes on the American people. Let me even go farther. If we are going to keep printing money, why do we have taxes at all?

I have asked that question in the Budget Committee. Nobody can answer it. If we are literally not going to actually adhere to a budget, balance the budget, constrain spending and do the responsible thing, which we never do, why on Earth would we not just get rid of taxes? If you are going to spend almost twice as much as you take in--which we are getting dangerously close to--if you take in $4 trillion and you are spending $3 trillion more than that--I don't know what the numbers are--why not just print the $7 trillion? It was a genuine question.

Oh, Chip, well, that would be irresponsible.

Why? We all know why. It is because we are living a fiction. We are living like this is something that isn't going to blow up on us. It is.

For all my colleagues who said: Oh, Chip, 1980s, Ronald Reagan, he stood up and he said: ``Tear down this wall.'' ``Peace through strength.'' Built the military. Do you know what our debt-to-GDP ratio was then? About 35 percent. Do you know what it is today? About 120 percent, depending on which numbers you look at.

It is insane. It is like, oh, well, we will send this because Ukraine will stop Putin. Well, let's put aside whether that is even true or not. When are you going to pay for it? You are not.

Then, today, it is like we are going to go put forward a bill so we can feel good about ourselves so we can go out to our Jewish friends and say: Look, we passed an anti-Semitism bill. Pat me on the back. I am anti-anti-Semitism. Meanwhile, you completely destroy any notion of a principle that we should be against thought police.

Last year, we set out to change this place. I think we successfully did it for a while. We got seven appropriations bills passed out of the House Chamber. We had votes on about 1,100 amendments. We passed the strongest National Defense Authorization Act we have ever passed. We passed the strongest border security package in H.R. 2 we have ever passed. We finally put to bed notions that, to do that, you had to advance amnesty.

We were able to, over the course of the last year and a half, move all of the spending debate to the point where nondefense spending was held flat and the defense spending that went up was

paid for by taking money out of the IRS expansion and COVID funds. We were having serious conversations across the ideological spectrum, getting votes on bills, having regular order, going to committee, voting on amendments, and this place was briefly working again.

Right now, I have never seen it worse, with bills being cooked up in back rooms, being jammed through without going to committee, without amendment, many of which have miserable policies in them. We spent $1.7 trillion in omnibus spending with all sorts of earmarks, all sorts of funding for FBI headquarters, continuation of broken and open borders, continuation of endless wars. We have busted the caps. Less than a year after passing the caps, we have busted the caps.

We then fund $95 billion of additional foreign aid after passing a reauthorization to FISA. I will note: Conservatives jumped in there, and I think we forced it down to a 2-year reauthorization of FISA, so we will get another bite at that apple in 2 years. You are welcome. They are crumbs of freedom and liberty.

I am telling you, if you want to save this country, you need to make sure that we have a Republican Conference that is going to do what they said they were going to do. You need to make sure that the minority of us who are coming to the floor to fight for you are no longer in the minority.

We have a little bit of time. I said good-bye this last weekend to my 89-year-old grandmother. She passed away Sunday morning. I know she is up there with Jesus, no doubt getting a laugh at some of my antics down here. She was a wonderful woman, went to church every Sunday. She lived right.

She, her generation, all who came before her, they didn't fight as she did. She served for 35 years in the Air Force as a civilian at Barksdale Air Force Base in Louisiana. Neither she, nor any of the other people who wore the uniform, nor any of the 400,000 tombstones at Arlington National Cemetery, nor any of the tombstones that are sitting over in Normandy when we go over there and we celebrate D-Day on June 6, on the 80th anniversary--none of those people gave the last full measure of devotion or are willing to risk the last full measure of devotion to mortgage this country away vote by vote, dollar by dollar, year by year.

We have a duty right now to take our country back because the radical, progressive Democrats and leftists who want to destroy it and who are going around city by city and university by university, they are not the majority. They don't represent a fraction of the people in this country who want to go about their job, honor God, take care of their family, work hard, earn a living, take care of their kids, start a business, achieve the American Dream. I am here to tell you: I am not going anywhere. We are going to take this country back because they don't get to have it.

We have to stand up as a party and do what we said we would do, or we will be in the ash bin of history.

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

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

The motion was agreed to; accordingly (at 6 o'clock and 40 minutes p.m.), under its previous order, the House adjourned until tomorrow, Thursday, May 2, 2024, at 10 a.m.

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

Mr. Speaker, I demand a recorded vote.

Mr. Speaker, I thank my distinguished colleague from Texas for yielding me time, and I very much appreciate his service. I apologize that I am here on the floor in opposition to a rule in his first week as chairman of the Rules Committee. I have great respect for him.

The gentlewoman was just essentially implying that for some reason this is somehow Donald Trump's fault. Ukraine was invaded by Russia under the watch of this President. That is the truth. This incompetent President has led to the situation that we sit in right now. People are dying in Ukraine, yes, but the problem is they are being funded with American debt. There is no skin in the game for the American people. We are not talking about tax increases. We are not doing anything to say that we are going to pay for this stuff as we rack up a trillion dollars of debt every 3 months.

The truth is, Americans are dying, not just Ukrainians, at the hands of wide-open borders, while literal hostiles flood into our country, fentanyl pours into our streets, and people are chanting, ``Death to America.''

The response by Republicans is to pass a $1.7 trillion, cap-busting, spending bill under suspension of the rules, handing the keys to the NSA and intel to continue spying on Americans. Now, we are on the floor under a rule to give another $100 billion to fund war, unpaid for, with zero border security under a rule which Republicans should oppose because it is a process predesigned to achieve the desired predetermined outcome, with no border security.

The individual votes on Ukraine, Israel, Taiwan, and a sweetener bill for TikTok are belied by the fact they are being packaged together as an amendment to the Senate-passed foreign aid bill. This was all precooked. It is why President Biden and Chuck Schumer are praising it.

The problem is, there were 9 amendments handpicked by leadership to be made in order despite 300 amendments having been filed.

Speaker Johnson said in January: ``If President Biden wants a supplemental spending bill focused on national security, it better begin with defending America's national security. We want to get the border closed and secured first.''

To that I say, amen, and I would say to Speaker Johnson, where is that?

Mr. Speaker, I thank my friend from Alabama for yielding. The gentlewoman is right, in part, in that we are here for two reasons. Yes, this bill will not become law--there is no question about that-- and it will not become law for two reasons.

The first reason is that our Democratic colleagues refuse to address the crisis at the border, and in fact, want to perpetuate it, encourage it, and cause more of it. The second reason it is not going to become law is because Republicans continue to campaign on securing the border and then refuse to use any leverage to actually secure the border. That is the reason; those two reasons right there.

That is why this will not become law. Let's be very clear with what we are dealing with here right now. We know the numbers. We can talk about the numbers, the 7 million that have been released into the country, the 2 million plus got-aways, the extent to which we have had a thousand pounds of fentanyl pouring across our border every month for the last 6 months, the 24,000 Chinese nationals, the 85 percent of whom are adult single individuals that have come across this border since October 1, which is more than the entirety of fiscal year 2023, and certainly more than the 381 in the last year when the policies of President Trump were in place

The reality is that we are being put in danger. The American people are getting killed. Laken Riley is dead because of policies of the Biden administration, specifically the parole policies that release people into our country to kill Americans.

That is what has been happening. Yet, we are going to do nothing about it. We have legislation right now that would fix the problem in significant part. H.R. 2, we passed it a year ago. It is a great bill. I support the bill. I support what is in it. It changes the policies, frankly policies that President Obama and Jeh Johnson asked us to change, like TVPRA and Flores. It changes the policies of abuse of parole and asylum by this administration.

We should get it signed into law. The only way to force Democrats to do it is to use leverage, and we are not going to. Despite the fact that the Speaker of the House repeatedly has said in January at the border, a trip I didn't take because I knew full well what would happen, it would be a show trip. That is exactly the truth. If President Biden wants a supplemental spending bill focused on national security, it better begin with defending America's national security.

We wanted to get the border closed and secured first. He said in a letter in December, supplemental Ukraine funding is dependent upon enactment of transformative change to our Nation's border security laws. Well, here we are today with a sham vote. Let me be very clear, the people saying that we stopped H.R. 2 in the Rules Committee and didn't allow it to get connected to or allowed to be attached to the Ukraine bill, they are lying. That is not true. It was a separate rule, a separate vote designed as cover, cover for Republicans to try to vote for a Ukraine funding bill without securing the border of the United States. Yes, I do agree with that point, that is the truth.

Mr. Speaker, I rise today to recognize the seventy-fifth anniversary of the Texas Lions Camp in Kerr County.

The Texas Lions Camp was incorporated as a 501(c)3 by the State of Texas on April 4, 1949. The polio epidemic was rampant during this time, and the Texas Lions were looking for ways to give children affected by polio a place where they could experience some normalcy in their lives. Congress passed two resolutions that authorized the sale of excess federal land surrounding the Kerrville Veterans Hospital. One of my predecessors, Congressman Ovie Clark Fisher, was instrumental in the passage of this legislation. Then-Senator Lyndon Baines Johnson was also an early supporter of Texas Lions Camp. Mr. Bill Mickelsen, a Lion from Kerrville, traveled tirelessly to Washington, DC to advocate for the ``Texas Lions League for Crippled Children'' camp in Texas. Mr. Mickelsen and his friend J.C. ``Buddy'' Murray created a detailed scale model of the Camp and eventually constructed the buildings.

However, one of the strings attached to the sale of five hundred and four acres was that the Lions had to raise $100,000 within six months to guarantee construction. In pursuit of these dollars, the Lions established their ``life membership status.'' A Lion was Governor of Texas at the time, Allan Shivers. He broadcasted over the radio a call for donations to the Camp. Mr. Jack Wiech served as the first president of Texas Lions Camp in Kerrville. He went on a speaking tour across the State to drum up donations. As the six-month deadline loomed, the Lions were still $20,000 short of their goal. Mr. Sealy McCreless of San Antonio wrote a check that pushed the Lions over their goal for the Camp fundraiser. The next step was to begin construction and raise $150,000 to cover those costs. The Lions hit the road again for a second fundraising campaign.

Mr. Herb Petry, the Lions Clubs International president at the time, said the Camp for special needs children ``is the best example of Lionism in action.'' Mr. Petry went on to say that ``what is being done in Kerrville under the banner of Texas Lionism must be pleasing in the sight of Him Who first taught us to serve, to be our brother's keeper, and to put the Golden Rule into practice.''

Mr. Mickelsen worked tirelessly for fifteen years to construct the Texas Lions Camp based on his original small-scale model. Famous Kerrville names, including Hal Peterson and Howard Butt of the HEB Grocery Company, donated resources to round out the construction and supplies for Camp.

Over the years, the Camp adapted to allow other special-needs children to participate. Children living with blindness, hearing and speaking disorders, and various crippled limbs all enjoyed Texas Lions Camp together. This defied the original prognostications of psychologists in the 1950s, who believed children with varying disabilities could not get along. However, they learned to help each other and combine their strengths to thrive. Several hundred adult blind were also trained at the Camp through a contract with the State of Texas for a couple decades into the 1980s.

Every summer, children with physical handicaps such as diabetes, down syndrome, polio, missing limbs, blindness, and other disabilities are accommodated every year at a weeklong camp session at no cost to their families. Over 82,000 children have attended Texas Lions Camp since it opened in 1949. The Camp motto is ``All Can Do!'' Campers experience a zip line, climbing wall, ropes course, fishing, boating, swimming, archery, arts and crafts, miniature golf, and much more. Therapeutic horseback riding was added in the 1980s and became a favorite pastime for campers. A more recent addition is the family camping experience, allowing the families of kids with special needs to experience Texas Lions Camp.

On a more personal note, my father, Don Roy, attended the Lions Camp in Kerrville when he was recovering from Polio in the 1950s, and still talks about the positive impact it had on him and the other children. I am grateful to the eight hundred Texas Lions Clubs International that work tirelessly to provide funds for children with special needs to attend Texas Lions Camp.

Mr. Chair, I have an amendment at the desk.

Mr. Chair, the amendment that I have put forward here requires the FBI to report to Congress on a quarterly basis rather than an annual basis the number of U.S. person queries conducted.

We simply want to have more information. We simply want to have the ability to look at this and understand whether the FBI is actually conducting these the proper way. We think quarterly is more efficient and more effective. By the way, we extended it, it does not kick in for 1 year.

The FBI was complaining it was too burdensome. The FBI couldn't get this done. They got a $200 million new headquarters, but they couldn't figure out how to get this done, so we gave them 1 year.

Great, so you have a year; quarterly reporting.

It also grants the chairs and ranking members of the Committees on Judiciary and Intelligence in the House and the Senate, the ability to go to the FISC.

Now, the problem is the chairman is going to say they oppose this. I know this because they put out their propaganda last night saying: This amendment would result in an unprecedented expansion of access to details on the most sensitive and highly classified current intelligence operations being undertaken by the government to numerous congressional staff which raises significant counterintelligence concerns.

We can't have congressional staff in the FISC. No, no, no, that would be terrible. We don't want to have Article I

be able to go over and get in front of the FISC and be able to see what is happening and protect American citizens. We would rather the intel community in all of its infinite wisdom be able to make all of the determinations about the security and safety of the American people.

By the way, we have all the provisions in the language that say that it is up to the intel world and the FBI and all the security people to set the circumstances and all of the requirements under what the congressional staff would have to have in terms of clearances. However, to say that we can't have congressional staff be able to observe the FISC, to be able to understand what is happening there, and be able to come back here so Congress can know what is happening to protect the American people is facially absurd.

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

Mr. Chair, pretty much the entirety of the debate that has been done here has been focused on the warrant requirement, right.

The reason that we have this particular amendment before us right now is simply to just be able have more reporting and more understanding of what is happening in the FISC. But there is always constant resistance by the intelligence community to looking under the hood. Because it is always the case that they want to use the fear.

``Perhaps it is a universal truth that the loss of liberty at home is to be charged against danger real or pretended from abroad.'' James Madison, Thomas Jefferson, May 13, 1798.

The fact is, the Founders knew precisely what would occur, that the government, in the quest to have power in the name of stopping foreign adversaries and in the name of fear, would use that power against our own citizens. That is what is occurring. That is what is happening.

We have before us real and obvious abuses--278,000 of those abuses, going after the American people. And our response is a bunch of technical stuff that chases the actual core problem.

Our friends don't want to get into peeling back the hood of what is happening in the intel community because our friends are the intel community.

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

Mr. Chair, to be clear, this amendment is about reporting requirements. However, on the point of the warrant, after the rampant abuses by the Federal Government, it is clear that we should have a warrant requirement under 702 to protect Americans from the querying of incidental communications collected en masse, under a broad reign of power, to target foreign entities. That is the truth.

This is the FBI that targeted Catholics, put pro-life progressive activists in jail, and targeted President Trump.

The proponents give up the game, saying openly the need to target U.S. persons, right here on the floor. The only thing that makes this warrantless collection of millions of Americans' international communications ``lawful'' is the government's certification that it is targeting foreigners and only foreigners.

If the government changes its mind and wants to go after an American, it should have to go back and get the warrant that it skipped on the front end. This is not that hard.

By the way, the argument that we would need 2,000 judges to filter through warrant requirements begs the question. Which is it?

The proponents' own data indicate they would only get a hit for 1 to 2 percent via metadata. Some of those will have exceptions under our warrant amendment that we offered, so it would probably be less than 1 percent; so the 2,000 judges argument is straight up false. It is just not that hard.

If you want to go after an American, if you want to look at their information, get a warrant.

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

Mr. Chair, I thank the gentleman from North Carolina for yielding.

I will just note that I certainly appreciate the intent of my friend and colleague from Texas. Obviously, we want to go after cartels, and we want to make sure we can stop the flow of fentanyl into our communities that is killing and ravaging Texans and Americans across our country.

The problem here is it is unnecessary. They can go certify right now. They can go right now and certify a whole other class. We don't need this law to do that. That is the important part. We don't need this amendment, and we don't need to risk expanding it.

Be that as it may, here is my real problem. Just today we have information where we had a terrorist on an Afghan watch list who was released into San Antonio, Texas. ICE just walked away from it, and now we have somebody on the terrorist watch list sitting in San Antonio, Texas.

So am I supposed to say I want to grant more power to the intelligence community and more power to the government that is releasing terrorists as we speak onto the streets of Texas? It defies any kind of logic.

They have the tools to do what they need to go after fentanyl without expanding FISA, which is being abused against Americans.

By the way, Mr. Chair, you need the warrant requirement in order to protect against expansion of FISA.

Mr. Speaker, by direction of the Committee on Rules, I call up House Resolution 1125 and ask for its immediate consideration.

Mr. Speaker, for the purpose of debate only, I yield the customary 30 minutes to the gentlewoman from New Mexico (Ms. Leger Fernandez), pending which I yield myself such time as I may consume. During consideration of this resolution, all time yielded is for the purpose of debate only.

General Leave

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

Mr. Speaker, today, the Rules Committee reported out a rule for four pieces of legislation: H.R. 7888, Reforming Intelligence and Securing America Act. This legislation reauthorizes title VII, section 702 of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act for 5 years from the date of enactment.

This bill is far from perfect, but we are going to have a lot of debate on that bill in just a moment in the rule and in 2 hours later. I will come back to that in a moment.

There are three other pieces of legislation. First, H.R. 529, Extending Limits of U.S. Customs Waters Act. This bipartisan legislation enhances Customs and Border Protections' air and marine operations mission by extending Custom's law enforcement authority from 12 to 24 nautical miles of the United States coast. This will help CBP combat unlawful activity in coastal waters at a time when we have significant problems with respect to our borders.

H. Res. 1112, denouncing the Biden administration's immigration policies. This resolution denounces President Biden's open-border policies. It calls on the administration to immediately put in place policies that will end the crisis at our southern border. This is an important message. It is an important statement, but I hope this Congress will speak with one voice against an administration that refuses to enforce the law. This resolution is one statement along those lines.

H. Res. 1117, opposing efforts to place one-sided pressure on Israel with respect to Gaza. This resolution affirms that Israel, our greatest ally in the Middle East, has the right to defend itself against Hamas and makes clear that the House of Representatives opposes efforts to place one-sided pressures on Israel to implement an immediate cease- fire.

This resolution is necessary because regrettably, embarrassingly, this administration took a seat, sat down, abstained, abstained in the face of the horrors that we saw unfold on October 7 to our friend, Israel; by sitting down when the United Nations Security Council called for a cease-fire, and pushing on Israel to walk away from its efforts to combat what Hamas has been doing to the people of Israel.

We should speak with clarity as the Congress of the United States that we stand in solidarity with the people of Israel, and this resolution is one way in which we can do that.

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

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

Mr. Speaker, the reason that we have a resolution on the floor to stand and say that we believe that the Biden administration is failing to carry out its duty to secure the border of the United States is because it is true. The American people need to know and see that, and see us speaking with one voice.

The reason that we have a resolution on the floor saying we should stand with Israel is because the administration walked away from Israel, abandoned them in a vote in the Security Council vote by abstaining.

That is the truth. That is why these resolutions matter. That is why they are here on the floor.

We are going to have a lot of debate here about the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act. On this, I think there is a lot of bipartisan agreement. There are a lot of bipartisan concerns about the size and scope of government. I think it is important to remember James Madison wrote to Thomas Jefferson on May 13, 1798: ``Perhaps it is a universal truth that the loss of liberty at home is to be charged . . . against danger real or pretended from abroad.''

The Founders knew what they were doing. The Founders intentionally built into the United States Constitution protections for us, protections for the people.

Unfortunately, the legislation before us doesn't do what is necessary to answer the question, to secure the people's rights. There are amendments that are in order that might get the legislation there.

Remember, section 702 allows the NSA to surveil non-U.S. individuals and organizations abroad if a significant purpose is to acquire foreign intelligence information, which it defines as information related to the conduct of U.S. foreign affairs.

Remember, there are some 230,000 targets that the government has, the blob, the intelligence community, that they are targeting over there, overseas, targeting externally. However, here is the problem: They are collecting information here in the United States on those individuals. We don't know who they are.

I asked the Judiciary Committee chairman and staff: Do you all know who they are? Have you gone into a SCIF and seen who they are targeting? The answer is no, we don't know who they are targeting.

Then, information is collected in communication to those individuals, which necessarily brings American citizens into the mix. The question is, what do we do about it? Remember this: The Privacy and Civil Liberties Oversight Board, in a report released last year, stated: ``Ordinary Americans may be in contact with section 702 targets for business or personal reasons even if the Americans have no connection to, or reason to suspect, any wrongdoing by their foreign contacts.'' That is an important issue. That is at the heart of the debate.

What we have right now before us is a rule to bring forward reauthorization of legislation passed so that we can go try to protect our country, supposedly looking outward, but it has ensnared American citizens in their information. That is why we are here. The question is whether we are going to have the ability to amend it to ensure that American citizens can be protected.

Mr. Speaker, I yield 3 minutes to the gentleman from Kentucky (Mr. Massie).

Mr. Speaker, I thank the gentleman from Massachusetts for his kind words for our colleague, Mr. Cole. Those of us on the committee will miss working with the gentleman from Oklahoma (Mr. Cole). Obviously, as the gentleman from Massachusetts pointed out, he is not going very far. He will be down the hall in the Appropriations Committee. I guess we won't get ahead of things. It has not been formalized yet, but it seems like that is the direction it is going. It has been an honor to work on the Committee with Tom Cole.

Again, without getting ahead of things, I think there are able folks on the Rules Committee, and Dr. Burgess from Texas very likely might move into that role, and I will look forward to working with him in the Rules Committee.

Mr. Speaker, I yield 2 minutes to the gentlewoman from Wyoming (Ms. Hageman).

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

I would point out that on this issue one of the concerns that we have is ensuring an adequate and fair hearing on the issue of the warrant amendment.

The gentleman from Kentucky (Mr. Massie) raised the issue as did the gentlewoman from Wyoming (Ms. Hageman), the importance of warrant protections for American citizens.

It cannot be overstated the extent to which, at our founding and throughout our history, it has been critical to place that constitutional barrier between the authority of government being used in the name of defense and in the name of security in a way that tramples on the rights and the security of the American people.

That is what is at issue.

That is the conundrum we face.

For all of us that wish to protect our country, we know first and foremost we must protect our civil liberties or there is no country to protect.

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

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

Mr. Speaker, I yield 2 minutes to the gentleman from Pennsylvania (Mr. Perry).

Mr. Speaker, I yield 2 minutes to the gentlewoman from Indiana (Mrs. Spartz).

Mr. Speaker, I yield 3 minutes to the gentleman from Ohio (Mr. Turner).

Mr. Speaker, I would point out that the concerns that we are looking at here, I think boil down to questions that people assert when they say, ``lawfully collected information.''

Therefore, you don't need a warrant to search the 702 data for United States citizens' information.

I think that is really at the crux of the debate going on. The rule that we have before us, which takes a product to respond to and make reforms and changes in response to some of the concerns raised, but then takes the critical and core component of warrant requirement and puts it off as an amendment subject to debate when there has been now some public pressure put on opposing the amendment.

That is the conundrum that you are seeing unfold, for the American people to understand why there is some hesitation here to proceed, when we are proceeding with reforms that don't get to the engine of the reform, reforms that might make some improvements but those improvements are in the periphery. They ignore the core problem, that fundamental issue as to whether or not you must have a warrant to look at the information of American citizens. That is it. That is at the core of it.

Mr. Speaker, we are talking about things that are significant. Just the tip of the iceberg: Searches by the intel community and the FBI included 141 Black Lives Matter protesters; two Members of Congress; journalists; political commentators; victims who contacted the FBI, people who came to the FBI offices to perform repairs; individuals on online dating services.

Now we have in this bill a carve-out for Members of Congress. We get a heads-up: Hey guys, you have been queried.

Why do we get something that 330 million Americans don't get?

Mr. Speaker, I yield 3 minutes to the gentleman from Ohio (Mr. Jordan), my good friend.

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

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

Mr. Speaker, I would like to summarize what we have in front of us, particularly with respect to the foreign intelligence surveillance issue. That is where we have, I think, the most debate.

The fact of the matter is, for the average American watching this, they are going to be confused as to what exactly we are doing because it is a complex issue.

I started this rule debate by quoting James Madison, who in 1798, I will repeat, wrote to Thomas Jefferson and said: ``Perhaps it is a universal truth

that the loss of liberty at home is to be charged to provisions against danger real or pretended from abroad.''

I think that is the question that is before us right now. It is the balance that a nation struggles with, if you are a republic like ours, a republic built on the back of liberty and our constitutional protections, that is trying to balance the need to stop evil abroad from attacking our people with protecting civil liberties at home.

What we have, for the average American to understand, is a big pot of collected information that is, in the words of the intel community, directed outward. That large pot of information is directed toward some 230,000 people, individuals and entities abroad. As I said earlier, we don't know who they are. We are not briefed on who they are. When we try to go into that kind of level of briefing, it is often cloaked in the intel world. They just say this is dangerous and important stuff. The Judiciary Committee chairman, for example, doesn't know who is on that list of 230,000 people.

From that list of 230,000, who we don't know, and which can expand or shrink at the whim of the intel community, we then take that information and communications with any of those individuals, if you are an American citizen, you can get swept up and viewed by the intel community. That is where the abuses took place.

I have heard some of my colleagues saying: You are asking for a secondary warrant when we say that the warrant amendment here is critically important. That misses the point that you have got an intelligence-driven apparatus to collect information abroad that then will sweep in communications by Americans citizens, or U.S. persons, into that database. Those communications can now be seen and can be viewed.

As I noted, the Privacy and Civil Liberties Oversight Board report released last year said: ``Ordinary Americans may be in contact with section 702 targets for business or personal reasons even if the Americans have no connection to, or reason to suspect, any wrongdoing by their foreign contacts. . . .''

That is the problem. That is why the Judiciary Committee, which is the committee with primary jurisdiction, put in place additional protections in the form of a required warrant if you are going to look at the information of those American citizens. That was the wisdom of the very broad, bipartisan 35-2 vote in the Judiciary Committee. That was removed.

The bill now put on the floor, the bill before us, now we are forced to proceed to a bill by virtue of a rule whereby we are not sure whether the issue at play, the warrant requirement, will be supported.

Now, that might be fine. You say we have an open process, but it wasn't really an open process. It was a structured rule. There were provisions that were sort of cooked up to achieve the result. That is what we are looking at.

In truth, there are amendments that have been part of the rule that are intel amendments which will expand FISA, which will expand the reach, and by all accounts, more likely than not, will pass.

Then there are the provisions that some support that would constrain the power, for example, the warrant requirement or the ``abouts'' language which would limit the use of the more generic ``abouts,'' so you have to target the specific individuals. Then there is the enhanced reporting, which happens to be my amendment. Those provisions are meant to constrain government.

The conundrum that you see, that you are going to see play out on the floor is: Do you support the rule to proceed, to move forward, under the hope that the warrant amendment will be passed? Because the sword of Damocles that is hanging over our heads is that this will expire and thus there will be pressure to pass a simple reauthorization for 5 years. That is the truth.

We will see what transpires. It is my considered judgment that we ought to try, as a body, to stand behind a warrant requirement to make sure we protect the American people.

The material previously referred to by Ms. Leger Fernandez is as follows:

An Amendment to H. Res. 1125 Offered By Ms. Leger Fernandez of New

Mexico

At the end of the resolution, add the following:

Sec. 5. Immediately upon adoption of this resolution, the

House shall proceed to the consideration in the House of the

bill (H.R. 12) to protect a person's ability to determine

whether to continue or end a pregnancy, and to protect a

health care provider's ability to provide abortion services.

All points of order against consideration of the bill are

waived. The bill shall be considered as read. All points of

order against provisions in the bill are waived. The previous

question shall be considered as ordered on the bill and on

any amendment thereto, to final passage without intervening

motion except: (1) one hour of debate equally divided and

controlled by the chair and ranking minority member of the

Committee on Energy and Commerce or their respective

designees; and (2) one motion to recommit.

Sec. 6. Clause 1(c) of rule XIX shall not apply to the

consideration of H.R. 12.

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

Mr. Speaker, I thank the gentleman from Utah for hosting a forum here on the floor for our colleagues to be able to talk about the important issues with respect to Bidenomics, such as you can even use that term as anything other than creating and inflicting pain on the American people through a big spending, highly regulatory inflationary environment that is killing the average hardworking American family. That is the truth.

My colleague from Utah brought a number of our other colleagues down to make that point very clearly, in addition to making the point that I have come to the floor of the House to underscore and reiterate. That is the importance of the United States of America standing side by side, shoulder to shoulder, with our friend, Israel.

We are not. That is the plain and simple truth. We are not standing side by side with Israel at a time when she most needs it.

Three days ago was April 7. That marked the 6-month timeframe since the brutal attacks of October 7. October 7 in Israel has become much like we describe September 11.

As we know, through both what is publicly available and those things that we have seen privately in terms of the information available, the videos that we have seen, the horrific slaughter of human beings in Israel, Hamas slaughtered children, raped women, burned whole families alive, and took hundreds of innocent civilians hostage. An estimated 1,200 Israelis were killed on October 7. Those numbers are still numbers that we are trying to track down.

An estimated 130 hostages of the initial estimate of 250 are still believed to be held in Gaza. To be very clear, that includes Americans. Americans are right now being held hostage by Hamas in Gaza. Ninety-one Israelis are dual citizens, and eight Thai nationals, one Nepali, one French-Mexican, but six Americans.

Instead of unequivocally backing Israel and the fight against Hamas, a United States-designated terrorist group, I want to be very clear, the Biden administration has been undermining Israel every step of the way.

Last November, on the floor of this body, the people's House, the Representatives of this body passed, on a bipartisan basis, funding for Israel. We did so immediately. It is something I am proud of. I am not shy to criticize Members of both sides of the aisle for the shortcomings of the people's House, but we came together on a bipartisan basis, and we passed, I think it was, about $17 billion in funding for our friends in Israel just over a month after the vicious attacks against them.

That bill would have funded their needs, shown that we would stand next to Israel, and importantly, it was paid for. It was paid for out of the expansion of the Internal Revenue Service, which most recently was found by the IRS' own inspector general to have 63 percent of the audits that were added are for people who make less than $200,000.

Mr. Speaker, 63 percent of the audits were for people who make less than $200,000. By the way, that is what we said would happen, if you expand the power of the IRS the average American, the average hardworking family, would get targeted by the bureaucrats at the IRS.

However, our Democratic colleagues and the President of the United States--a Democrat, radical progressive Democrats--are choosing the Internal Revenue Service, are choosing to target you, the hardworking American family, are choosing to side with Hamas over Israel. That is what is happening.

So instead of America standing up together united and standing right alongside Israel, our Democratic colleagues and the administration and in this body and in the Senate give lip service to standing with them, and instead, are trying to undermine them.

Again, I want to be very clear. Republicans in the House passed off of this floor with Democrat votes legislation that would fund Israel that was paid for--so we are no longer just spending money into oblivion--by taking away some of the increased expansion of the IRS that the IRS' own inspector general has acknowledged and reports as being used to target hardworking, middle-class families.

That is the truth. That is the distinction.

But it goes a lot further than that.

The Biden administration is trying to tie the hands of Israel. They are taking active steps to undermine Israel. President Biden told reporters that Israel's military operations in Gaza were ``over the top'' and the bombing was ``indiscriminate.''

President Biden told protestors: ``. . . I've been quietly working with the Israeli Government to get them to reduce and significantly get out of Gaza. I've been using all that I can to do that.'' That is the President of the United States.

On March 25, just a couple weeks ago, President Biden's representatives at the United Nations green-lighted, by abstaining instead of voting--by abstaining instead of voting--on a United Nations Security Council resolution calling for an immediate cease-fire without any connection to the release of hostages.

Can you imagine the leadership of our country where they could have a veto exercise in the United Nations Security Council, they chose not to exercise that, abstained, walked away, refused to stand up, and in essence, turned their back fully, not just on the nation of Israel but on every Jewish American who knows family and friends, and has their heritage connected to the great State of Israel. This President and my colleagues on the other side of the aisle turned their backs on Israel. That is the truth. There is no debate on that truth. It is literally what happened.

Now, by the way, the administration is all too happy to continue to throw billions of dollars to the United Nations. This is when I give a little wake-up call to my colleagues on this side of the aisle for continuing to fund a government at war with our people and at war with our values by giving more funding for the United Nations.

It is this administration that is throwing money at the United Nations--I think this last bill we moved was $3.5 billion. Let's keep in mind that the United Nations General Assembly, the paragon of virtue, has passed 153 resolutions condemning Israel. They have passed zero on China, zero on Cuba, zero on Turkiye. I can keep going down the list, but they have passed 153 resolutions condemning Israel.

Anybody with eyes can see what is happening. The prime minister of Israel, Prime Minister Netanyahu was correct when he said: ``Just as the United States would not agree to a cease-fire after the bombing of Pearl Harbor or after the terrorist attack of 9/11, Israel will not agree to a cessation of hostilities with Hamas after the horrific attacks of October 7.''

Every Member of Congress, the President of the United States, every Member of the Senate, we should be standing up shoulder to shoulder backing Prime Minister Netanyahu, backing Israel with their unequivocal right to defend themselves, their unequivocal right to root out Hamas from the hostile forces that have been attacking them and to not allow the international community to gaslight the world into saying that Israel is slaughtering civilians, because it is simply not true.

The press and the international community will throw out numbers of the casualties in Gaza, but what they don't tell you is that a large number of those casualties are, in fact, enemy combatants. They are literally operating like divisions, like a military, but they hide because they are cowards. Hamas are cowards, and they hide under schools, and they hide under hospitals, and they build tunnels all through the city, all through the streets, making it as hard as it has ever been in the history of warfare for a sovereign nation, Israel, to defend itself against evil, terrorists embedded in the civilian communities right underneath the streets of Gaza.

But what is amazing is that what will be studied for years to come is the extent to which Israel has bent over backwards, has worked to minimize the casualties. I don't have the most recent data, but I would tell you that it is something in the ZIP code of, I think, 19,000-ish casualties of civilians and about 13,000 terrorists or enemy combatants.

If you don't know how ratios work out in the world of combatants, this is actually an historic low. History will judge this as an extraordinary feat by Israel to attack those who levied the most heinous attacks on their people and are holding hostage--I will remind people--six Americans. History will view this as an unprecedented success in modern warfare to root out and target evil and try to avoid civilian harm.

Just to give you an example, I just told you there were roughly 19,000 civilian casualties to about 13,000 enemy combatant casualties. Mr. Speaker, there were 19,000 civilian casualties to about 13,000 enemy combatant casualties that I believe the data reflects that we see going on in terms of Israel and their engagement with Hamas in Gaza.

Here is a point of reference: According to the United Nations, civilians usually make up around 90 percent of casualties in war, which would be a 1-to-9 ratio. I mean, think about that. Think about the extent to which that is what the United Nations--the paragon of virtue, that has had 153 resolutions condemning Israel--the United Nations says the ratio is normally 1-to-9. And Israel has got it at something in the ZIP code of like 1-to-1\1/2\. While you have the enemy not marching in a line of red coats, not getting in the field and just marching at you as enemy combatants but hiding as the cowards that they are in the tunnels under the schools and the hospitals and the businesses and the communities in Gaza.

My colleagues on the other side of the aisle in this Chamber and in the Senate should be ashamed of themselves as should the President of the United States for walking away from Israel, going to the United Nations, abstaining from your role in the Security Council to stand aside Israel while buying into the nonsensical lies about what Israel is doing when they are actually doing probably the best job in the history of humankind to root out and target the enemy combatants and the terrorists who are embedded in the communities of Gaza.

It is an extraordinary feat. It is something we should hold up as a model of success and then stand alongside Israel. And what we should do is send over the $17 billion that we already passed off the floor of the House and sent to the Senate which is paid for by shrinking the IRS; an IRS which as I already pointed out is targeting hardworking American families as the Inspector General of the IRS noted.

Seek the truth. Figure out what is really happening.

I notice that the gentleman from Maryland (Mr. Harris) has joined me. I have been talking about the extent to which we should be standing alongside our friends from Israel, and I would be happy to yield to the gentleman from Maryland (Mr. Harris).

Mr. Speaker, I thank my friend from Maryland. His remarks are particularly meaningful as one who proudly wore the uniform of the Armed Forces of the United States. I appreciate him for his service in the military, as well as a Member of Congress.

Mr. Speaker, he says it exactly right. I think it is really critical to understand that it is disgraceful--I don't know what other way to put it--it is disgraceful for the American President to pressure Israel instead of Hamas. But that is what is happening. If we truly want to end the humanitarian suffering that war necessarily brings, the answer is never, and is not appeasement. It is not. It is the unequivocal support for Israel finishing the job. Everything else is a distraction.

The American people--I know the Americans I represent, the Texans I represent, I assume the gentleman's constituents--they want us to stand with Israel on a bipartisan basis. That means pressuring the Senate to take up the bill that we already sent them that is, in fact, paid for, that we sent in November, pressuring the Senate to bring up that bill.

By the way, for their part, Hamas can end this war immediately by accepting the fact that their side has lost the conflict, that Israel is going to exist, and that America is going to stand next to her. Because as long as we are in this body, we are going to be fighting to ensure that this country stands side by side with Israel, notwithstanding the fool-headed decisions of the current administration.

Hamas leader Ghazi Hamad pledged that the October 7 attacks were just the first time; that there will be a second, third, and fourth.

Will we pay a price, he says? Yes, and we are ready. We are called a nation of martyrs, and we are proud to sacrifice martyrs.

Are we awake? That is the truth, and it is not just Michigan on our soil, by the way. In Houston, Texas, this last week, there were individuals chanting ``death to America.''

It is coming to our shores, it is on our shores because a weak administration, a weak Congress is allowing it and encouraging it.

Calls for a cease-fire are called for Israel to surrender to Hamas and to surrender to terrorism.

Those are the words of Prime Minister Netanyahu, and he is completely correct.

A cease-fire will only allow Hamas to rebuild a planned another October 7. That is the truth.

Mr. Speaker, I close with one point here. I am never afraid to call out my colleagues on both sides of the aisle. I stand behind a speech I gave before Thanksgiving saying: What have we done? Name one thing.

But I want to say this: The debate for the soul of this country is happening on the Republican side of the aisle, and it is a debate that is being carried out on full display for the American people to see it, and it started with the Speaker's debate 15 months ago, and it has gone through a number of unbelievably important changes that we have been trying to make in this institution and we are not going to stop. We are not.

Last year, we were able to pass the strongest border security bill in history. I am proud of that as a Republican. It went over to the Senate, and it died at the hands of Democrats. We were able to pass a responsible increase in the debt ceiling with reforms that would have made this country stronger, more prosperous, with less inflation.

Unfortunately, side deals got done and that got sidetracked, but it was a giant step forward.

This body impeached for only the second time in history a sitting cabinet member, Alejandro Mayorkas, for his complete and utter failure to secure the border of the United States and his dereliction of duty.

I am proud of that. I am proud that this body has done that. I proud that we stood up and sent over legislation to the Senate that funded Israel, that took that money and paid for it out of the IRS. I am proud of that. When Republicans stand united for victory, stand united for freedom, stand united athwart our colleagues on the other side of the aisle and an administration that would undermine our country and undermine liberty and walk away from Israel and fund open borders, when we are united against that, we win, and we lead, and people follow.

When we, instead, cower down and say, Oh, we have to do something to get something done, just for the sake of it, then that is just unity with no purpose.

I am proud of the Republican Conference when we are united in purpose to defend the liberty of the American people.

I am proud today that we had a debate right here about the difficult decisions of foreign intelligence surveillance so we can go after bad guys, like the bad guys that want to hit Israel and hit us, but to do so while we are respecting the constitutional protections and the liberties that the Founders understood were critical.

We do not have a country that is worth preserving if we are going to burn the Constitution while we try to defend it. We must stand together to defend civil liberties while we stand together to defend our country. The American people expect no less.

We should stand side by side with Israel. We should unite to make sure that we can continue to carry out surveillance against bad actors while protecting civil liberties. We should stop spending money we don't have. We should secure the border of the United States. We should continue to do the great things this Republican Conference has been able to do when we are united and standing against an administration led by radical progressive Democrats that want to undermine the American Dream, destroy our sovereignty, leave our borders open, undermine our children's safety, put criminals on the street, side with Hamas over Israel. We can stand athwart that if will unite to do it. That is my call. That is what I believe we must do.

Mr. Speaker, I thank the gentleman from Maryland (Mr. Harris) for joining me, and 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 4 o'clock and 40 minutes p.m.), under its previous order, the House adjourned until tomorrow, Thursday, April 11, 2024, at 9 a.m.

Mr. Speaker, I rise today to recognize the seventy-fifth anniversary of the Texas Lions Camp in Kerr County.

The Texas Lions Camp was incorporated as a 501(c)3 by the State of Texas on April 4, 1949. The polio epidemic was rampant during this time, and the Texas Lions were looking for ways to give children affected by polio a place where they could experience some normalcy in their lives. Congress passed two resolutions that authorized the sale of excess federal land surrounding the Kerrville Veterans Hospital. One of my predecessors, Congressman Ovie Clark Fisher, was instrumental in the passage of this legislation. Then-Senator Lyndon Baines Johnson was also an early supporter of Texas Lions Camp. Mr. Bill Mickelsen, a Lion from Kerrville, traveled tirelessly to Washington D.C. to advocate for the ``Texas Lions League for Crippled Children'' camp in Texas. Mr. Mickelsen and his friend J.C. ``Buddy'' Murray created a detailed scale model of the Camp and eventually constructed the buildings.

However, one of the strings attached to the sale of five hundred and four acres was that the Lions had to raise $100,000 within six months to guarantee construction. In pursuit of these dollars, the Lions established their ``life membership status.'' A Lion was Governor of Texas at the time, Allan Shivers. He broadcasted over the radio a call for donations to the Camp. Mr. Jack Wiech served as the first president of Texas Lions Camp in Kerrville. He went on a speaking tour across the State to drum up donations. As the six-month deadline loomed, the Lions were still $20,000 short of their goal. Mr. Sealy McCreless of San Antonio wrote a check that pushed the Lions over their goal for the Camp fundraiser.

The next step was to begin construction and raise $150,000 to cover those costs. The Lions hit the road again for a second fundraising campaign.

Mr. Herb Petry, the Lions Clubs International president at the time, said the Camp for special needs children ``is the best example of Lionism in action.'' Mr. Petry went on to say that ``what is being done in Kerrville under the banner of Texas Lionism must be pleasing in the sight of Him Who first taught us to serve, to be our brother's keeper, and to put the Golden Rule into practice.''

Mr. Mickelsen worked tirelessly for fifteen years to construct the Texas Lions Camp based on his original small-scale model. Famous Kerrville names, including Hal Peterson and Howard Butt of the HEB Grocery Company, donated resources to round out the construction and supplies for Camp.

Over the years, the Camp adapted to allow other special-needs children to participate. Children living with blindness, hearing and speaking disorders, and various crippled limbs all enjoyed Texas Lions Camp together. This defied the original prognostications of psychologists in the 1950s, who believed children with varying disabilities could not get along. However, they learned to help each other and combine their strengths to thrive. Several hundred adult blind were also trained at the Camp through a contract with the State of Texas for a couple decades into the 1980s.

Every summer, children with physical handicaps such as diabetes, down syndrome, polio, missing limbs, blindness, and other disabilities are accommodated every year at a weeklong camp session at no cost to their families. Over 82,000 children have attended Texas Lions Camp since it opened in 1949. The Camp motto is ``All Can Do!'' Campers experience a zip line, climbing wall, ropes course, fishing, boating, swimming, archery, arts and crafts, miniature golf, and much more. Therapeutic horseback riding was added in the 1980s and became a favorite pastime for campers. A more recent addition is the family camping experience, allowing the families of kids with special needs to experience Texas Lions Camp.

On a more personal note, my grandfather was afflicted by polio, and my grandmother was his devoted caregiver. I will never forget their sacrificial love for one another and my family. I am grateful to the eight hundred Texas Lions Clubs International that work tirelessly to provide funds for children with special needs to attend Texas Lions Camp.

Mr. Speaker, I rise today to commemorate the 100th birthday of the Kerrville Veterans Affairs Medical Center in my district. This beautiful campus serves veterans from across multiple counties in the Texas Hill Country.

The Benevolent War Risk Society and the American Legion recognized the need for medical care of World War I veterans. Countless veterans contracted tuberculosis during and after that conflict. Fundraising for the hospital began in 1919. The generous Schreiner family of Kerrville donated over 700 acres of land for the hospital grounds. Unfortunately, funding ran out in early 1921. The American Legion came to the project's rescue and eventually donated the hospital to the State of Texas.

As a result, the name ``American Legion Memorial Sanatorium'' was bequeathed on the facility. The first patients were admitted on June 22, 1921. The federal Veterans Administration began to lease the hospital from the State of Texas two years later. The facility became the 93rd veteran hospital to open in the United States on July 12, 1923, under the name ``Veterans Administration Hospital at Kerrville.'' There were a total of 15 buildings on campus at the time, some of which are still used today.

President Herbert Hoover created the Veterans Administration in July 1930, changing the name of the hospital yet again. Over the years, efforts were made to expand. A two million-dollar project in 1947 resulted in 400 additional beds and a total of 8 hospital floors. January of 1960 saw the conversion of the facility to full general medical services.

On March 15, 1995, the South Texas Veterans Healthcare System was created when the Kerrville VA Medical Center merged with the Audie L. Murphy Memorial Hospital in San Antonio.

Over the years, the Veterans Administration donated most of the original land to various local entities. The current footprint of the Kerrville VA Medical Center is 70 acres, including a Veterans National Cemetery. My constituents will gather on April 12, 2024 to recognize the significant contributions of this medical facility to Texas veterans.