Floor Statements

Madam Speaker, I claim the time in actual opposition.

Madam Speaker, here we are again. The swamp is back in full force. We have a 1,000-page bill of $1.2 trillion filled with all manner of spending priorities that are at odds with the American people. That is what we have in front of us.

This bill is over 1,000 pages long. It contains hundreds of pages of report language, 1,400 earmarks, and we have had about 24 hours to review it. That is not the way to do business. The American people and American families are the ones left holding the bag. This is business as usual in the swamp.

Here is the deal to my Republican colleagues: You will own every single bit of this. If you vote for this bill, you own it. DHS funding contingent on signing H.R. 2 into law, that is what we did last year to make sure our border will be secure. That is punted, so you own it.

Defunding Alejandro Mayorkas. We did that in our bill. This punts that. It is no longer there. You own it.

Prohibiting mass parole and release of illegal aliens via the CBP One app. We did that in our bill last year. This bill gets rid of it. You own it. You own the continued mass parole of illegal aliens into our country. You own that. That is the truth.

It was mass parole that led to a Venezuelan gang member coming into the United States and killing Laken Riley. My Republican colleagues cannot go campaign against mass parole and use the name of Laken Riley because you pass a bill in her name when you fund the very policies that led to her death.

I hear all this, that we are going to increase ICE beds, and we are going to increase the numbers for Border Patrol.

The increased numbers for Border Patrol will process more illegal aliens. The increased number of beds for ICE will not be used because there are memos in place by Alejandro Mayorkas, whom we impeached and whom this bill will fund. Those ICE beds will not be filled. They won't be used, and we know it.

We set out to prohibit DHS from fast-tracking asylum. This bill doesn't do that.

We set out to make sure that this border would be secure and that you could end what happened yesterday in Texas where 100 illegal aliens bum-rushed our border, rolled over the Texas National Guard, fled into this country, and went to Border Patrol to get released into the United States.

That is what this bill continues to fund. Any of my Republican colleagues who want to spend this year campaigning against open borders, it is a laugh because today, if you vote for this abomination of a bill, you will be voting to fund it. You will be voting to fund the very policies that you will campaign against.

Madam Speaker, I reserve the balance of my time.

General Leave

Madam Speaker, I yield 1\1/2\ minutes to the gentlewoman from Florida (Mrs. Luna).

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

Madam Speaker, the Democratic leader talks about the mosaic. I assume by the mosaic, which anyone who votes for this bill today will be supporting, we are talking about $156,000 for the Hartford Gay and Lesbian Health Collective, an organization self-described as champions of LGBTQIA equity and provides training in cultural competency and access to healthcare for LGBTQ youth, or $2 million to an Oregon clinic that provides hormone therapy for kids, or the $850,000 for gay senior housing in Massachusetts, or $400,000 for Briarpatch Youth Services in Wisconsin that has gender-affirming clothing program for kids 13 to 18, or $400,000 to the Garden State Equality Education Fund, which helps minors transition genders, promotes biological boys playing girls' sports and using the same restrooms.

I could go on and on. How about the million dollars for the Inner- City Muslim Network, which calls for the destruction of Israel? That is what we are funding. That is precisely what we are funding in this legislation.

When the Democratic leader talks about a mosaic, that is what he is talking about.

My Republican colleagues, who will campaign against it all year--they will--they are voting to fund it today.

To be very clear, my Republican colleagues are voting to fund that so-called mosaic today unless they choose the right path and vote against it.

My friend from California, when he talked about the horrors that will happen if we have a CR, well, we shouldn't be here. This is the swamp acting like it does: have government funding expire on the Friday before a 2-week recess heading into Easter precisely to have the pressure of jet fumes so that the American people are the ones left holding the bag so that we, Members of Congress, can go off to our codels, can go travel, can go do your fundraisers, can make sure you get home. The ones left holding the bag are the American people.

When we talk about this, the game was given up when we talk about defense. Everything that is happening here is being done in the name of defense, everything that you see, and talking about our national security being undermined.

Well, tell me about national security in Texas when you have the National Guard getting rolled over in El Paso, when you have Texans dying from fentanyl poisoning, when you have gangs and cartels operating in Texas. Talk to me about national security then.

Madam Speaker, I yield 1\1/2\ minutes to the gentleman from Arizona (Mr. Biggs).

Madam Speaker, the distinguished former majority leader brings up FSGG, the Financial Services and General Government bill. What he left out was the fact that we are going to give $200 million to the FBI for its new headquarters, even after Republicans touted in the last massive omnibus bill that we are cutting the FBI and then relied upon getting rid of an earmark in Alabama to claim that it was a bigger cut than it really is.

Now what is happening to the American people, guess what? The FBI is getting a brand-new, shiny headquarters, despite running roughshod over the American people, spying on them. By the way, we extended FISA to continue spying on the American people.

We also failed to prohibit the Treasury from establishing a central bank digital currency. House Republicans passed that. In this deal that was cut we don't do that. Why? Why? Why would it be so abhorrent to ban a central bank digital currency?

Madam Speaker, I yield 1\1/2\ minutes to the gentleman from South Carolina (Mr. Norman), my friend.

Madam Speaker, I yield 1\1/2\ minutes to the gentleman from Georgia (Mr. Clyde).

Madam Speaker, I thank my friend from Texas for his remarks, but I would simply disagree.

All we are doing here is adding beds that aren't going to be used. All we are doing is adding money for a Border Patrol that won't be allowed to do their job. They will be processing more people and releasing them against the law under parole policies that are damaging the country and that led to Laken Riley's death. That is literally all this does.

Madam Speaker, I yield 1\1/4\ minutes to the gentlewoman from Georgia (Ms. Greene).

Madam Speaker, I yield 1 minute to the gentleman from Missouri (Mr. Burlison).

Madam Speaker, I yield 1 minute to the gentleman from Pennsylvania (Mr. Perry).

Madam Speaker, I yield 1 minute to the gentleman from Kentucky (Mr. Massie).

Madam Speaker, may I inquire as to the time remaining?

Madam Speaker, I yield 1 minute to the gentleman from Arizona (Mr. Crane).

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

The gentleman from Florida a moment ago talked about the fact that we defund UNRWA, and we defund some policies that are pernicious. I agree with him. It is a part of the process that we carried out last year when we set out to change this institution, to return to some sort of regular order, to have 72 hours to read bills, to be able to have single-subject bills, to offer amendments on the floor, to actually have an appropriations process.

We passed seven appropriations bills off the floor of the House. We passed three out of committee to the floor. We actually had some amount of debate and were able to move things through. We got some of our policy priorities. We sent them over to the Senate.

Then what did we do? We walked away and went back to business as usual in the swamp where a handful of people that they call the four corners all sit back and decide for you, not the people in this room as a body, but a handful of so-called cardinals, the same group that I heard guffawing in the back a minute ago, the same bloc of appropriators that think they are the ones that get to control the entire world and use our men and women in uniform as an excuse to undermine the national security of this country by spending money we don't have, by racking up debt to the tune of a trillion dollars every 100 days, while funding all manner of sin with respect to transgender surgeries, abortion tourism, funding the World Health Organization to give away our sovereignty, funding open borders with mass parole that led to the death of Laken Riley.

Madam Speaker, everybody who votes for this bill today owns it. They cannot go out and campaign this year saying they opposed this stuff when they wrote the check.

That is what is happening today. Every single Republican and every single Democrat who votes for this omnibus spending bill today owns it. They own the open borders. They own the woke military that we cannot recruit people to fight in. They own giving our sovereignty to the World Health Organization and international bodies. They own more funding for the Wuhan lab.

Yeah, that is all in there. They own it.

They own it. We should vote ``no.''

Mr. Speaker, do you want to win in November?

Then vote ``no.''

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

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

Mr. Speaker, I come here to the floor recognizing the state of affairs that we find ourselves in, given the extent to which the President of the United States and his radical progressive Democrat allies on the other side of the aisle here and in the Senate, are continuing an assault on the well-being of the American people with open borders, with inflationary spending, with radical environmental agenda policies that are regulating the economy to death, driving up the cost of goods sold, and overall diminishing America and the world. There is no other way to view it than intentional.

That kind of an assault on the well-being of the American people ought to be and deserves to be met with the kind of resistance that the American people who sent us here to represent them expect.

The American people, who sent at least Republicans here to be in the majority to stand athwart the radical policies of the Biden administration, supported by our radical progressive Democrats here in this House and in the Senate, they sent us here to stand athwart those policies. Therefore, it is our duty, it is incumbent upon us to actually do so.

Last year, when given the majority, a number of us set out to change the way the House of Representatives works, or should I say, was not working.

We set out to make sure that bills could be read, that you have 72 hours to review a bill.

We set out to ensure that you would have adequate and varied representation on the various committees.

We set out to ensure that there would be a process by which we could move appropriations bills out of committee on to the floor, from the floor to the Senate, so that we could pass individual bills, try to restore what we might call regular order.

We set out to do that last year. We passed seven appropriations bills out of the House, three more from the committees down to the floor, two others were ready to go. We passed H.R. 2, the strongest border security bill that has ever been moved off of the House floor. We passed the Limit, Save, Grow Act, which would elevate the debt responsibly while making policy changes to try to drive down the amount of debt that we are racking up on a daily and weekly basis.

Those are the things we are able to accomplish as Republicans when we were honoring the commitments that we made to our constituents, and we were not hiding.

Unfortunately, today, Republicans are hiding. They are hiding behind the fear of a so-called shutdown and hiding behind the so-called razor thin majority to pass a massive omnibus spending bill--the second part of a two-part omnibus spending bill that blows past the spending caps passed on a bipartisan basis, increases the spending over the very levels perpetuated by Nancy Pelosi that virtually every Republican in this Chamber opposed not 15 months ago.

They are about to pass legislation that will blow past those caps and spend more money, and they are going to do so knowing full well that we are not achieving the vast majority--barely any--of the policy changes that we fought for all last year in the appropriations process. That is the actual truth.

We are going to abandon the efforts that we set out to change this Chamber last year, and we are doing it violently.

We got a bill this morning that is over 1,000 pages long, $1.2 trillion, and we are expected to pore over it in 1 day, in 24 hours. We are still uncovering ridiculous uses of taxpayer funds. The American people are about to learn what some of those are.

Not only are we abandoning what we accomplished last year to try to take the House back, make the House work again, but we are abandoning the people of this country, the hardworking American people, right now, today, who are looking at their Congress and saying: What are you doing?

The hardworking Americans who sent us here are seeing their country being taken away from them right before their very eyes and seeing their way of life being eviscerated.

This isn't about holding on to power. We are not sent here to accumulate power. We are not sent here to run for re-election. We are sent here to do something. We are sent here to fight for the people who sent us here.

What we are doing right now is looking at a country that we love, a country that is being destroyed, throwing up our hands as Republicans, and saying that apparently it is just not worth the fight because we might have a poll that looks bad because of a shut down. That is what we are telling the American people.

Instead of using the power of the purse, the power of the purse to force change as was stated by James Madison in Federalist Paper 58: ``The House of Representatives cannot only refuse, but they alone can propose the supplies requisite for the support of government. They, in a word, hold the purse, that powerful instrument . . . all the overgrown prerogatives of the other branches of government. This power over the purse may, in fact, be regarded as the most complete and effectual weapon with which any Constitution can arm the immediate representatives of the people, for obtaining a redress of every grievance, and for carrying into effect every just and salutary measure.''

Those were the words of James Madison, the father of the United States Constitution. When he was arguing for the adoption of the Constitution, he was saying that this body, the one that I am standing in right now, the House of Representatives through the power of the purse is the only body in the world that can restrain the power of the executive branch, the President of the United States. We, this body, in concert with the Senate, of course, hold the power to check an out-of- control President.

Are the President of the United States and the people who work for him in this administration out of control? Yes.

How do we know this? Because the President of the United States goes to the microphone and says he is going to ignore the United States Supreme Court when the Supreme Court says you cannot do what you are doing, it is against the law, with respect to student loan bailouts.

The President of the United States is ignoring his duty and his oath of the Constitution to defend the border of the United States, using policies meant for very narrow exceptions for asylum and parole to blow open the border and endanger the American people.

That is tyrannical activity, an abuse of power endangering the people that we represent. That is what is happening. That is what the President is doing.

A President who has abused his power at the FBI and in the intelligence agencies. That is what is happening, and what is the response from Republicans? Crickets. It is beyond a whimper because they are afraid that someone might cry shut down. They are afraid that they might lose their

precious election certificate that I think apparently is what gives some people in this body their worth.

However, the election certificate is only as good as the people that we are here to represent, and they sent us here to do something, to change the place.

Today, in Texas, more than 100 illegal aliens charged past the Texas National Guard. The State I represent is on fire and trying to pick up the pieces as the Federal Government refuses to do its job, and we saw it unfold today in real time.

And what are my Republican colleagues going to do? Give the President and the Department of Homeland Security and the impeached Homeland Security Secretary more money.

Can someone explain that to me?

Can someone explain to me how any Republican can, over the next 6 months, go out and campaign against Joe Biden's open borders when they are writing the checks? They are going to do it tomorrow, right here on the floor of this body. They are going to write him the check and say, here you go, Mr. President. ``Thank you, sir. May I have another?''

Yes, I inserted ``Animal House.''

This bill does not include one single policy necessary to secure the border. I am tired of hearing Republicans go to the microphone, whether they are in leadership or rank and file, and say otherwise because it is not true.

I have heard Republican leadership go down and talk about ICE beds. Oh, don't worry, Chip, we increased the ICE beds.

Are you telling the American people that the ICE memos--that this administration has in full force--basically make it impossible for ICE to do their job, that those beds will, therefore, not be filled?

Oh, Chip, that is for future President Trump to use. President Trump can increase the ICE beds to what he had when he was President before, which was as many as 57,000 beds.

This is nonsense. It is nothing. No, it is worse than nothing. It is actually worse than nothing because my same Republican colleagues go up to the microphone and say that we are going to increase Border Patrol.

First of all, good luck recruiting more Border Patrol agents right now. They can't even achieve the numbers that they are currently at, at 17,000 or 18,000. No, in our bill we say: Oh, don't worry, we will be at 22,000 Border Patrol agents.

Guess how our Democratic colleagues characterize that amazing feat of negotiation that Republicans carried out? They characterize it as expediting the processing of more illegals because, you know what, at least they are honest about it, that is exactly what it would do.

You are going to give more funding for more Border Patrol agents to process more illegal aliens who are overrunning our border, overrunning our cities, overrunning our hospitals, overrunning our jails, overrunning our schools, driving mass crime into our communities, resulting in the death of Laken Riley, resulting in the death of Kayla Hamilton, resulting in the death of too many people for me to sit here and mention, and Republicans are going to go cower in the corner tomorrow, wring their hands, and say we can't talk about a shutdown. That is what is going to happen.

Meanwhile, we are going to go out this summer and do what? It is the 80th anniversary of D-Day, let's go give some speeches over in Normandy. What? You are so proud of those young men who walked into a wall of bullets and went up a cliff so that you could give your country away with billions of dollars to an administration that is going to allow every single thing they fought for to get winnowed away? That is the truth.

Every Republican tomorrow--and Democrat--every Republican tomorrow who votes for this abomination of a bill will own, personally own the mass release of illegal aliens in violation of law because you are funding it, on top of 4.5 million releases so far and almost 2 million got-aways so far. You vote for this, you own it.

You own the release of illegal aliens with notices to appear in court as far out as 2035 and growing and limited knowledge as to where they even are. You own it.

You own the unlawful mass parole programs, the use of the CBP One app. The funding you are voting for tomorrow will fund that, the mass parole of over 1 million individuals, including the known member of a Venezuelan prison gang who violently murdered Laken Riley. You own that. It was not good enough to pass a bill last week named after Laken Riley and then come here and write the check to the very people who were responsible for allowing it to occur.

You own bringing the chaos in Haiti to the shores of America via the Cuban, Haitian, Nicaraguan, and Venezuelan parole program. You own that. The Haitian migrant who raped a 15-year-old disabled girl who was here as a migrant in Massachusetts. You are funding that.

The dismantling of the migrant protection protocols that were effective under the previous President, you are funding that.

You are funding the halt of the wall construction.

You are funding the legal attacks on the State of Texas for standing up to try to secure our border even as our National Guard gets overrun. You are funding that if you vote for this bill tomorrow.

Texas has had to spend over $12 billion of its own money. I can tell you what you are not funding. You are not funding paying Texas back, and I am talking to my Texas delegation friends now. Are you literally going to go home to Texas when your own National Guard are getting overrun, your own State is not getting paid back, we are not getting any policy changes, you are going to increase the debt, and you are going to go try to sell that garbage to the people of Texas?

Spare me when I see you campaigning this year on border security. It is a fraud. It is a fraud for Republicans to campaign on border security while you fund it. You fund the lawlessness. You fund the open borders. You fund the death of Laken Riley. You fund the fentanyl pouring into our communities and killing our kids.

You own the DHS memos policies and rules that restrict Border Patrol's ability to do their job. You own it. You own the continued exploitation of unaccompanied minors, little girls getting sold into the sex trafficking trade, the 85,000 children that were lost by the very Office of Refugee Resettlement that you will fund tomorrow. You own it. Don't campaign against it and then write the check.

You own the funding for the sanctuary cities that refuse to cooperate with immigration law enforcement which, by the way, are hamstrung in the first place by an administration that doesn't care about the law. You own it. Don't go complain about sanctuary cities. You are funding it.

It is worse, as I said before, because DHS gets more money. They get an increase in funding not to change the policies, but to give Border Patrol the ability to process more people quickly, which means more people come to the border.

The Defense Department is also attached to this total capitulation on our border. We continue to fund a woke Department of Defense in the wake of a weak National Defense Authorization Act passed in December which, by the way, we were promised by Republican leadership was just one step. Just get past that, don't worry, then we will fight on spending.

Well, if this is what fighting on spending looks like, I am not sure why you bother flying to Normandy to go regale those who had the courage to walk into a wall of bullets and scale a cliff to defend America and go fight against Nazi Germany. Is this what we do when our hour is before us?

We will be funding, and, therefore, own if you vote for this bill, Biden's illegal Department of Defense abortion travel fund. You own it. By the way, all you social conservative groups out there, all you so- called pro-life groups, where the hell are you? Crickets. Silence, because you care about political power more than the very thing you say you are for. You know who you are.

Transgender surgeries in the Pentagon. Where are the social conservative groups? Cowering in the corner.

Woke DEI offices across the Pentagon destroying the military morale. You can't even recruit anybody to the Pentagon anymore. You are funding it. Don't complain about it while you are funding it.

Biden's climate change executive orders undermining our warfighting capabilities. You are funding it.

The deputy inspector general for diversity and inclusion extremism in the military. You are funding it. You own it.

The Department of Defense's ability to classify Americans' communication as misinformation. You are funding it. You own it.

State and Foreign Operations are part of this bill. We are going to export the radical, progressive Democrats' woke agenda abroad, and you are going to pay for it while we rack up a trillion dollars of debt every 100 days. You are going to take that borrowing, undermine your own dollar, drive up your own inflation, funding the bureaucrats who are carrying out this agenda. Congratulations, America, that is what your House of Representatives is doing, and that is precisely what you will have Republicans campaigning against after they funded it, after they own it.

I will give credit where it is due. Republican leadership, led by the Speaker, negotiated to defund UNRWA. Well, it is about dang time. Some of us were calling for that 3 years ago when we introduced legislation to do it. We had eight Republicans who voted against defunding UNRWA in September in the appropriations package.

Guess what? October 7 was one of the most horrific attacks on one of our friends in history, and we realized what many of us already knew, UNRWA was right there involved. UNRWA was funding it. The United Nations Relief and Works Agency was funding it.

Congratulations. We defunded an entity that is funding terrorists against our friends in Israel. Good. Let's put one over here in the win column, this green check box. Congratulations, Republicans, you did it. You did something that you can actually go sell.

However, sorry to say, you are still funding the World Health Organization, which wants to take away our American sovereignty, that worked to force COVID tyranny on the American people, force it down the throats of the American people. In the process of negotiating a new pandemic treaty that would massively expand its reach, you funded it. Congratulations, you own it. You own the World Health Organization.

You own the dystopian United Nations Population Fund, targeted at basically exterminating people. Congratulations, you own it. Again, to all you social conservative groups out there, thanks.

The Gender Equity and Equality Action Fund and LGBTQ envoys. Border security for Jordan and Pakistan, you are funding border security for Jordan and Pakistan, but you are not doing anything to secure the border of the United States. You own it.

The climate czar office, formerly occupied by John Kerry, flitting around the planet in his private planes. You paid for it; you own it. You are funding it.

$3.8 billion for the migration and refugee assistance programs while our southern border is not secure. Think about that.

Again, to my Republican colleagues, who vote for this bill, people are going to follow you around, you are going to campaign against all of these things. I know you are. I guess you are going to go all in, Texas Hold'Em style, on President Trump and say: Well, it is going to take President Trump to save us.

How is that separation of powers thing working out for you? Did you skip that part of civics, that we are a coequal branch of government? Oh, but Chip, we can't do that. We need a President to save us. Why the hell are you in Congress? We are actually supposed to be more important than the President of the United States. That is why we are Article I. However, we are too chicken to use the power, the most powerful tool that we have.

These guys can't do what they are doing to the American people and to our country without the money to do it. Not only are we giving them the money, we are giving them more money, and we are borrowing to do it, at extraordinary rates.

Does anybody need to be reminded that we are now spending more on our interest on the debt than we are on defense this year? All of the hawks in here who are totally happy selling out our country vote by vote so they can go home and say they brought home a troop pay raise, great, but you are now spending more on interest than you are on the Pentagon. In 2 years you are cracking a trillion dollars in interest.

The President's budget that he just sent to us has us spending more on interest over the next decade every year than we do on defense. Congratulations, Republicans, you own it.

How about the FBI headquarters? Good job, Republicans, you went out and campaigned when we passed the last omnibus bill and said: We got cuts to the FBI. You went out and sold that. First of all, it was bogus. The vast majority of the cuts came from one earmark from a building in Alabama that Richard Shelby got in the last Congress. He is no longer here to defend it, so you axed it and then claimed you had some massive cut to the FBI. That is called swamp politics.

However, now in this omnibus spending bill, guess what? We go ahead and fund the new FBI headquarters. Who cares that the FBI just massively spied on the American people? By the way, we haven't done anything about that except for extend their powers through the continuation of FISA without actually putting in a warrant to protect warrantless searches. Oh, we haven't done that yet, put that over there as another thing Republicans own, continued spying on Americans without warrants to protect them. Good job. What, are you going to go check that campaign box this year? We are going to stop and make sure FISA is no longer abused by the FBI. We are going to protect you, but we are not going to do it when we have the power to do it.

$200 million to the FBI for its new headquarters.

We don't prohibit the Treasury from establishing a central bank digital currency, which we did in the House bill. Somebody tell me, how can you not negotiate to stop the formation of a central bank digital currency, one of the most pernicious assaults on freedom that you could possibly have?

We couldn't even stand up as Republicans to demand that that stop. We passed it here in the House. The Senate didn't want it, apparently, or the Biden administration didn't want it.

In our grand negotiation, we didn't even do that. Do you know what a central bank digital currency can do? It can totally shut your life down, based on whatever they choose to prioritize.

Using too much gas because you didn't get an electric vehicle? No. Sorry. We are shutting you down.

Buy too much ammo this month? No. Shutting you down.

The Chicoms do this on a regular basis. We are trying to get in front of that, thinking maybe the basic foundational principles in the Constitution matter, but no. We couldn't even negotiate that.

Congratulations, Republicans. You own the continued ability of the executive branch to work up the formation and creation of a central bank digital currency. Congratulations. You own it.

No prohibition on the funds to invest in so-called ESG in the Federal Thrift Savings Plan, which we had gotten adopted. It got punted.

No prohibition on funds for Federal employee health insurance plans to cover the cost of transgender-affirming care. Guess what, Republicans? You own it. You are paying for it. Go home to your colleagues or your constituents and explain to them how excited you are to take their tax dollars and then add to that a bunch of borrowing to fund transgender-affirming care. Good job. You own that.

No prohibition on implementing Biden's climate change EOs.

No governmentwide prohibition on vaccine mandates. A few partial ones--we always want to be fair.

There was a note in the bill that moderately defunded the COVID vax and mask mandates. There was some modest defunding of the Wuhan lab in the DOD bill, but in the vast majority of it over at HHS, all the stuff in there that was carried out, it is still there. Congratulations.

We shut down the biggest economy in the history of the world--racked up $8 trillion in debt, put our kids behind--now to the tune of trillions of dollars of economic harm, all because we allowed the Wuhan lab to be abused, which we funded. Guess what? We are still funding it. Republicans own it.

Don't go out and campaign against the China virus or the Wuhan virus or

the Wuhan lab. You own it. You are funding it. Right now, today, you are doing it.

House Republicans had aggressive cuts to HHS last year, but now we are going to give a billion-dollar increase.

We are still funding the student loan Ponzi scheme. You go out and criticize President Biden and the student loan program, ignoring the Supreme Court. You are funding it.

Gender-affirming surgeries and drugs, you are funding it.

Research with aborted fetal tissue, you are funding it.

HHS and DOL DEI offices, you are funding it.

President Biden's radical antiworker agenda, you are funding it.

You are funding the Wuhan lab.

Again, I would like to give a shout-out to the social conservative groups out there for being so invested in life and DEI and all the issues involving, say, aborted fetal tissue that you are doing nothing about this bill because you like power.

We banned earmarks at one point. The previous omnibus spending bill had like 6,000 or something earmarks. I don't even know. It is hard to keep count. This one had a bunch more because it was Transportation. Everybody loves to get their little bridges and roads and stuff, but there are bike paths and all sorts of crazy stuff named after crazy people using your money. I am not sure where that is in Article I, Section 8, but whatever.

The bill contains 1,400 earmarks--this one does--for $2 billion. My colleagues think: It is just an earmark. I am a Member of Congress. I don't want to let a bureaucrat decide this. I get to decide how this is spent. I get to bring home something to my district that is so critically important to the well-being of my constituents.

That is what they all say. That is what they say when they bring back earmarks.

Chip, we know how to do this better than the bureaucrats. Why would you stand in the way of these all-knowing Congressmen to make the right decisions for their constituents rather than turning over that power to the bureaucrats?

Let's see how that is working out for you, America. $156,000 for the Hartford Gay and Lesbian Health Collective, an organization self- described as champions of--I don't know how many letters I have to put here together--LGBTQIA+ equity and provides training on LGBTQ+ cultural competency and accessing healthcare for LGBTQ+ youth. Well, that is a good use of money.

$1.1 million for an EV innovation hub while EVs pile up on all the car dealership lots around the country, while we fund the Chinese to make sure that they are enriched, and while we kill natural gas and kill energy in this country and make it harder for Americans to work, but I digress. We did a really cool bill today on energy, so everything is good.

$2 million for an Oregon clinic that provides hormone therapy to kids.

$850,000 for LGBTQ senior housing in Massachusetts. Yes, gay senior housing. Good job, Republicans. That is what you are funding.

$400,000 for Briarpatch Youth Services in Wisconsin. One of their programs is called Teens Like Us, LGBTQIA2S, whatever that is, with a gender-affirming clothing program for ages 13 to 18. You are funding it. You own it.

$400,000 to the Garden State Equality Education Fund in New Jersey that helps minors transition genders and promotes biological boys playing girl sports and using the same restrooms. Congratulations, Republicans. You own it.

$5 million for Mary's Center for Maternal and Child Care in Maryland. It does transgender procedures. ``Mary's Center can serve as your `home base' during the transition process.'' Congratulations, Republicans. Again, a special shout-out to all you great social conservative groups out there just whistling Dixie while this is happening.

$1 million for the Inner-City Muslim Network, which calls for the destruction of Israel. Guess what? We are going to go send an invitation for Bibi Netanyahu to come address a joint session right here in this body. I am sure we will get up, and everybody will wear a little Israel pin, and we will go, ``Yay, Israel. We love Israel.'' Then we will give a million dollars to the Inner-City Muslim Network, which calls for the destruction of Israel. Good job, Republicans. You own it.

$1.6 million for Cape Cod electric buses.

$350,000 for theater programs.

$567,000 for an inclusive playground. What is an inclusive playground? When I was kid, an inclusive playground was a bunch of bars that basically were about 150 degrees in the summer heat that you scalded yourself on where you are hanging up over a bunch of asphalt and taking your life into your own hands. It was equal--equal stupid but fun. This? I don't even know what an inclusive playground is, but there it is, $567,000 of money printed right out of thin air. Here you go.

$650,000 for Dartmouth-Hitchcock Nashua, New Hampshire, which also provides late-term abortions. Shout-out again to the social conservative groups--completely MIA.

$740,000 for increasing diversity in State hiring for the State of Maryland. Maryland can't figure out how to fund its own diversity programs without getting a Federal grant out of printed money?

$870,000 for a group that wants to defund the police in Connecticut. Republicans who get up and rant about police being defunded are going to fund the defunding of police in Connecticut. You can't make this stuff up. You can't.

$655,000 for Massachusetts Women of Color Coalition Inc. I don't even know what that is.

I could keep going.

The American people did not send us to Washington to continue down the road of destruction for the greatest country in the history of the world for which so many men and women have died to defend and protect it.

The cherry blossoms are all exploding. When we go walk down by the Tidal Basin, when we walk by the Jefferson Memorial, we read all those words. We walk by the Lincoln Memorial and go across the Memorial Bridge to what? 400,000 tombstones on the other side of the Potomac for those who either actually gave the last full measure of devotion or were willing to do it and survived, came back, and were buried there.

What did those 400,000 give that last full measure of devotion for? It wasn't for this. Yet, Republicans campaign on it all the time and then fund it.

I don't know how to go back to the people who I represent in Texas and tell them that while the National Guard had 100 illegal aliens bum- rush them in El Paso, while we have young women like Laken Riley getting killed by somebody released on mass parole, while a 2-year-old right outside of the Nation's Capital gets killed by someone let out on mass parole by this administration ignoring the laws, endangering our people, undermining our sovereignty.

I want to know, for the life of me, how a single Republican can look with a straight face at the people who they represent and say that funding is consistent with their oath to the Constitution, consistent with their duty to the people they represent, consistent with the fiscal responsibility they campaign on, consistent with the border security that they campaign on.

I want to know how they do that. If any Republican votes for this omnibus spending bill tomorrow, he or she owns it, owns every one of those funding priorities, owns the open borders, owns the woke Pentagon, owns the recruiting chaos at the Pentagon, owns the World Health Organization continuing to be funded to undermine our sovereignty.

This omnibus bill is the anti-American sovereignty omnibus bill, and Republicans should not vote for it. We didn't come here for more of the same while our kids have to inherit $34\1/2\ trillion of debt and another trillion dollars of debt every 100 days.

There will not be a country left to stand next to Israel. There will not be a country left to help Ukraine. There will not be a country left for our kids to inherit if you are borrowing, mortgaging their future, all to pay for open borders undermining our sovereignty, world organizations designed to undermine our sovereignty, all purposeful while my colleagues sit back and go: Gosh, I hope President Trump wins. I hope President Trump comes in, and then he will save us.

One individual was arguing with me here on the floor today. I said, ``Why

are we doing this?'' Well, we can't have a shutdown. We would lose.

Oh, boy. That is courageous, but okay. What if I accept your premise? What if I accept your premise that we can't do this because we have a thin majority in the House, don't have the Senate, and have a radical regime in the White House? Let me accept your premise. I have been around the block here in town a couple of times.

What happens next January? Say Republicans run the trifecta. Republicans win the White House, and President Trump is coming back in. We have the Senate with, say, 52 or 53 seats. We have a 10-seat majority or a 15-seat majority here in the House. Then what? Someone tell me then what because I have been there before.

We were there in 2017, and we didn't repeal ObamaCare and didn't pass healthcare reform.

We were there in 2018, and we didn't pass border security. Goodlatte 1, Goodlatte 2--we couldn't figure out what we were doing. We didn't do it.

What I said to this individual on the floor today was: Do you know what the excuse will be? We don't have 60 in the Senate.

That individual said: Well, we have to have a conversation about that.

That individual knows full well that the same excuses being levied right now to foist this monstrosity, this abomination, on the American people will be the same excuse in January: We can't shut down the government. You need 60 votes in the Senate, Chip. Don't you understand?

Yeah, I do understand. So do the American people, and they are tired of it.

They are tired of having their country traded away day by day, second by second, while our National Guard gets stormed at the border in El Paso, and we don't do anything about it.

We walk around wearing little pins, feeling good about ourselves as Members of Congress who refuse to stand up and defend the very Constitution that gave us the power to do something about it.

Instead of deferring to the President, we are supposed to use the Article I power under the Constitution to stop funding an executive branch that is at war with its own people.

We came here to change it. Last year we started to. We were working together to change this place, to vote bills off the floor, to have single-subject bills, and to have 72 hours--a mere 72 hours--to read a bill, and in just over a year, we have tossed all of that out the window, and we are back to business as usual. We jam a bill through in 24 hours. It is over a thousand pages. It is $1.2 trillion. It is littered with all manners of sin and earmarks and spending and programs that are undermining the well-being of the American people. We are still figuring out what is in it.

Tomorrow, Republicans have a choice. You can choose to fund an executive branch at odds and at war with the American people that you represent or you can choose to say no. If you refuse to say no, if you go along to get along, you own it. You own every penny. You own every program. You own every American who gets harmed by open borders. Don't dare come looking for sympathy as you are trying to campaign all year trying to win votes when your constituents come up to you and say, why in the hell did you fund it? Because you did.

Mr. Speaker, I yield to the gentleman from New York (Mr. D'Esposito), a colleague of mine, so that he can, I think, regale a basketball team or talk about some good stuff back home, which is always a good thing to do.

Recognizing Incredible High School Basketball Players Across the Fourth

District

Mr. Speaker, I thank the gentleman from New York. I appreciate what he came to the floor to address. We all have these great stories back home in our districts, and it is worth regaling those things, and I am glad he got the ability to do that.

Mr. Speaker, I want to give a special shoutout to my daughter today. Today is my daughter's 13th birthday, and I just want to say happy birthday to my little girl, who is out in California of all places for this Texan--out in San Diego with her mama having a little fun for her 13th birthday.

Happy birthday to my wonderful daughter, Virginia.

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

Mr. Speaker, I thank the gentleman from Georgia for yielding to me. I appreciate him getting this time on the floor for us to address such a pressing matter as the national security of the United States and the well-being of her citizens.

The truth of the matter is, the national security of the United States and the well-being of her citizens in terms of safety and security is not well. We are in danger in our country, on our streets, in our homes from people who are being let into the United States under the not just misguided but purposeful policies of radical progressive Democrats led by Joe Biden and as exemplified by my colleagues on the other side of the aisle in this body and in the Senate purposely releasing people in the United States they know to be a danger to our people.

They are using parole policies and asylum policies that we put in place out of the goodness of our heart to help people around the world, they are using those very narrow exceptions to the rules that secure our border to release thousands of people without vetting them or, frankly, without even caring, into the United States. The result has been the murder, death, rape, assault of American citizens.

My friend from Georgia mentions Laken Riley. I hate to politicize one family's devastation in the last month. She has obviously gained notoriety and caught the attention of the American people, but there are hundreds, thousands of examples of devastated families, whether you are talking about from fentanyl poisoning or the absolute disaster that is a mom in Texas finding her cheerleader daughter dead in the bathtub in her own home when she went to go see her perform cheerleading in Texas. That happened in December. Where is the bill named after Lizbeth? Where is the bill named after Kayla Hamilton, who was raped and murdered in her own home in Maryland, just up the road from here in the Nation's Capital. What about the 2-year-old who was murdered in Montgomery County, Maryland, just outside of the Nation's Capital, by somebody let out on mass parole by radical, progressive Democrats who don't give a rip about our Nation's security or the well-being of our citizens. That is the truth.

However, there is a worse truth, in my opinion. In the face of the observable endangerment of the American people by radical, progressive Democrats, Republicans who campaign against it are going to vote tomorrow--or the next day or whenever they decide to jam us with a bill that we have not yet read--to fund this. Republican colleagues who will spend this year campaigning against open borders and campaigning against the destruction of the lives of Americans at the hands of open borders led by Democrats--I want to be very clear, it is led and being carried out by radical, progressive Democrats--but my Republican colleagues will campaign against it, yet tomorrow they will fund it. Tomorrow or Friday or Saturday, whenever we get the bill--we haven't seen it yet--they will spend $1.2 trillion funding Defense which, by the way, is woke; funding State and Foreign Operations which, by the way, includes the United Nations and the World Health Organization; funding all manner of programs that are not good for this country, but notably the Department of Homeland Security carrying out these mass paroles, carrying out these mass asylums, carrying out the release of people into the United States, issuing memoranda saying that ICE should not actually pull these people up and then deport them from the United States. We will be funding that.

Now, not all of us. My friend from Georgia, my friend from Virginia who has joined us, my friend from Louisiana who spoke a minute ago, we won't vote for it. Republicans could stop it. We could stop it. Some are choosing not to. Why? Why? I think that is a question that should be asked.

When Republicans hold the House Chamber, why would they take the power of the purse and provide funding, hundreds of billions of dollars, why would they give this administration funding to carry out policies that release dangerous criminals onto the streets of the United States, including the known dangerous Venezuelan gang member, a prison gang member released into this country who killed Laken Riley? In my own district in New Braunfels, they found just last week a drug lord who is on the terrorist watch list or the most dangerous watch list for the FBI, 10 Most Wanted, found in New Braunfels, Texas, which I represent. I take my family there all the time. This drug lord was just found and arrested.

This administration is endangering America. My Democratic colleagues are all too happy to do it, but my Republican colleagues are all too happy to campaign against it, and then not do a dang thing about it when they write the check to fund it. Not one Republican should vote to fund this atrocity. Not one Republican.

I would debate any Republican who wants to come to the floor right now and debate me on it. You know what? Not one of them will. Not one Republican will take me up on debating the issue of using the power of the purse to fund the endangerment of the American people.

Mr. Speaker, we are in a cold war with China and some of my colleagues want to ignore this fact. We have legislation before us that is 12 pages long.

The bill is not a ban. It forces foreign adversaries, including Chinese Communists, to divest. The bill is not a bill of attainder; it is prospective, not retrospective.

The bill does not violate the First Amendment. It focuses on conduct, not content. It requires both being controlled by a foreign adversary and conduct that itself is espionage. If you just had one alone, it might be debatable, as the gentleman from North Carolina or Senator Paul notes, in that it might protect Americans' rights to seek out and obtain foreign propaganda. However, again, that is not this case because we have, and have as a trigger in the bill, demonstrated national security conduct harm.

To be clear, we have properly taken action at the device layer by banning Huawei and ZTE spy gear. We have taken action at the carrier level, prohibiting China Mobile and China Telecom from connecting to our networks based on a determination they are controlled by the CCP and a national security threat.

We now need to take action at the application level when malign CCP control has been demonstrated lest we render meaningless our past actions to protect the United States of America.

We should ban Chicom ownership of our farmland or drug manufacturing, but we should fight them here and ban the foreign ownership and control of American data and stop apologizing for the Chinese Communists.

Mr. Speaker, I thank the gentleman from Kentucky for yielding.

Mr. Speaker, I know he is probably as surprised as I am to be accused of taking orders from the former President and following whatever the former President says.

If the gentleman from Massachusetts wants to take a flight down to Mar-a-Lago, he is welcome to tell the former President that the gentleman from Texas and the gentleman from Kentucky take orders.

The reason that matters is because I had the President's former ICE Director, Tom Homan, under oath in the House Judiciary Committee, and I asked him that question.

I said: Were we articulating the massive problems in the Senate bill prior to the former President having commented publicly?

The answer under oath, of course, from Mr. Homan was: Yes.

That is because we all knew that the bill was a failed bill. We all knew that it was a prop.

The gentleman from Massachusetts makes crystal clear what the actual game is. The gentleman from Massachusetts gives up the game today. The gentleman comes to the floor of the House and says: ``Republicans own this issue now.'' That is an important phrase: ``Republicans own this issue now.''

What is really happening is my radical progressive Democratic colleagues who believe in wide-open borders, allowing mass release of immigrants into the United States that resulted in the death of thousands of Americans through fentanyl or through the danger of what we saw happen to Laken Riley, those radical progressive Democrats are realizing the American people are caught up to them. They recognize the reality that it is their policies that are resulting in the death and destruction of the American people.

What are they doing? They are putting forward bills that have no chance of succeeding and legislation that would not solve the problem; would codify mass releases; would not deal with unaccompanied alien children; would not deal with any of the issues with parole that the President is using to violate current law, which requires case-by-case analysis to process people in the United States; mass releases under parole; and violation of law that resulted directly in the death of Laken Riley.

My colleagues on the other side of the aisle know this, so they are trying to use a bill that they put forward, which won't solve the problem and will make it worse, to deflect and push blame politically to Republicans.

That is why the gentleman from Massachusetts on the floor of the House today said, ``Republicans own this issue now,'' because they are purposely trying to obfuscate the truth. The truth is Laken Riley is dead because the President of the United States, Joe Biden, who stood at that dais last week and lectured the American people, made the decision, with the full support and execution by Alejandro Mayorkas, to mass release people into the United States that they know contained mass numbers of criminals, terrorists. People from all over the world, including the Chinese Communist Party, have been released into the United States.

Laken Riley is now dead. Aiden Clark is now dead. Kayla Hamilton is now dead, beaten to death in her own home. Lizbeth Medina, a Texan, is now dead, beaten to death and murdered in her own home, found in a bathroom by her mom instead of seeing her perform her cheerleading in a parade.

That is the truth. My colleagues on the other side of the aisle know it, and they are now trying to deflect.

Mr. Speaker, I support this resolution.

Madam Speaker, I am glad to be here in an empty Chamber having the rigorous debate that we are so accustomed to here in the people's House, but that is, again, where we find ourselves with the level of debate at the moment.

We are left with bringing bills to the floor, having a couple of hours cut up and then moving on with whatever bill has been on the suspension calendar. That is not the kind of debate that we should have.

There is a bill that is coming before us tomorrow that I believe should have vigorous debate. I believe that it does raise consequential issues, and we should debate them here vigorously on the floor of the House.

I want to be unequivocally clear to the American people that I support it, and I support it unapologetically.

We have legislation before us that would ensure that foreign adversaries are not able to collect information on the American people and collect data on the American people and use that data to target the American people, undermine our national security, undermine our democracy, and undermine our way of life, which is precisely what is happening with the evidence we have before us.

Both classified and very publicly known information indicates very much that TikTok, which has significant ownership by the Chinese Communist Party, is targeting American citizens. There are some who are out professing that this legislation that would try to prevent that would somehow undermine our freedom.

Madam Speaker, I do not like the heavy hand of government being used, certainly not wantonly. An individual today who is fairly well-known out in the social media sphere put out and said that we had this classified briefing today and that the issue of election interference was brought up. This was a classified briefing that was not supposed to leak by the way. That is how things work in Washington. It was leaked.

Then we had the additional point here, not coincidentally, the anti- TikTok legislation. Let me clarify and stop. It is not specifically anti-TikTok legislation. It is antiforeign adversary control of American data and information legislation.

According to this individual, this ``legislation now being debated on the Hill would allow the Federal Government to force the sale of any social media platform that interferes in elections. Just so you know what is coming in 2025.''

Now, if I believe that to be true, I certainly wouldn't support the legislation. It is 12 pages long. I would note that a friend of mine who serves on the FCC, Brendan Carr, responded to this, and I happen to agree with Mr. Carr.

Mr. Carr wrote: ``It would be concerning to many if the bill allowed this.''

``This,'' being the post on X by someone this afternoon that I just recounted.

Mr. Carr says: ``It would be concerning to many if the bill allowed this. It does not. The text is definitive on this point. The bill does not apply to just any social media platform. Far from it. Here is the only and targeted application.''

Mr. Carr writes:

``One, if you are an individual user, the bill confers zero authority to the government over you.'' That is true.

``Two, the bill only applies to applications controlled by one of four foreign adversary governments previously codified in law by Congress--China, Iran, North Korea, or Russia. The bill is clear that it is not enough to merely have operations there or do business there. It must be `controlled' by one of those four governments.

Three, even then, the bill only applies if the application presents a demonstrated and significant threat to national security. Control by one of four foreign governments alone isn't even enough under the bill.''

You have got to have significant ownership by these foreign governments. You have got to have a demonstrated and significant threat to national security.

Four, and then, only after public process provided and Congress reported to with a description of the specific national security threat.

Every single one of those hoops (and more) must be cleared and met. So it is very narrow. It confers no authority to go after any other application--even if someone were to allege that it engaged in election interference.''

What is happening here is a reflexive reaction and a scaremongering tactic. Let me pause and say I do believe this legislation should have full debate. This is also why I prefer legislation to go through the Rules Committee. This is also why I prefer legislation to be amendable, amended, debated, but this bill was passed out, it is trying to be moved so that it doesn't open up for the possibility of undermining the legislation that was very narrowly crafted with a 50-0 vote out of the Energy and Commerce Committee.

Now, many of my conservative and more libertarian friends say 50-0 gives them the heebie-jeebies and I don't like it. That is my general default position in this town.

This is different. I will be very clear: This is different than what I am about

to talk about in just a minute, which is the uniparty in this town that decides everything for you and is bent on whatever the defense industrial complex says and jams through spending bills and limits our ability to proceed.

This is different because it is very specific and narrowly tailored toward the end of ensuring that Americans' data and Americans' safety and security are being protected. That is it. That may not be perfect, but nothing this body ever does is perfect.

This bill was put forward to address that issue and it is a giant step forward, in my opinion, to recognize the threat against our freedom and our liberty that the Chinese Communist Party poses to us, to our children, to our grandchildren, the extent to which they are using algorithms to undermine and focus on our kids.

That is what they are doing. They are targeting our children. We know it. They are targeting our people. We know it. They are skewing the data on the results.

If you do a search for China virus--now, just the utterance of those words makes the head of my colleagues on the other side of the aisle explode--the difference between Instagram, which is hardly some paragon of rightwing reporting, the difference in the algorithm response on Instagram versus TikTok is 400-1 if you search for China virus.

If you search for Hong Kong, I think it is 180-1. If you search for Tiananmen Square, I think it is 80-1. The fact is you are getting demonstrably shaped information out of TikTok. What most people don't understand, most parents at home while their kids are out using TikTok--and this is a parental problem, not just China--China is specifically limiting the information that kids can see in China.

They are making sure that the kids in China see patriotic, pro-China engineering, all of this stuff you want to try to have your kids see in order to make them into what you want to make them.

In our country, we are allowing freedom to undermine our freedom, and that is what is actually happening here. It is the false name of freedom, to be clear, to undermine our freedom.

It is not actual freedom because the freedom that we have is being attacked by China and we are sitting back in the false name of freedom saying, oh, no, let's not touch that.

I hope that tomorrow we will crack through that. I hope tomorrow on a bipartisan basis we will send a message that the Chinese Communist Party cannot knowingly attack us and get a response that is a whimper because that is what we have been doing so far.

If you wanted to destroy America, you would set out and do exactly what China has been doing bit by bit, targeting our people, undermining our access to information or at least information that they are trying to control and target our kids with propaganda very specifically.

Yes, we have problems with Google, but I am getting tired of the ``but Google.'' Yes, we have problems with Facebook, but I am getting tired of the ``but Facebook'' because I get that a lot. You want to break up Google, let's sit down and do it. I am happy to have a bipartisan bill to talk about that. You want to deal with Facebook, I am happy to have that conversation.

You want to talk about the misuse of the power of those big companies attacking First Amendment rights, targeting people for their political beliefs, happy to have that conversation, but do you know how hard that is? Because none of us want to use the power of the government to go after companies so that the government is saying what they know is best about what that means for our freedom and our rights here in this country.

That is what we are wrestling with under our Constitution to protect our rights. But when the Chinese Communist Party is actively targeting the American citizens, I am tired of people hiding behind the flag to let China do it. That is what is happening.

People are going to do it in the false name of freedom and in the false name of, oh, let's go do this because--I don't know--a former President says so or a media personality says so.

How about we do our job here in the House Chamber to take on the Chinese Communist Party and not act like they are not doing what they are doing? I think it is important. I support the legislation. I appreciate my friend, Mike Gallagher, working on it. I cosponsor it. I will defend it tomorrow. I will defend it in the future. I am defending it now. I hope we pass it tomorrow on the floor of the House.

I want to bring something up because that brings up the question of the uniparty in this town. The fact is, we have, yet again, reverted to the mean. This town has reverted to what it does best, which is a handful of people making decisions, dropping it on the floor, and then walking away from the deliberative process.

I want to reiterate that the bill I just talked about, I think we should go through committee and I think we ought to amend it. We are walking away from our duty that we fought for 14 months ago to have amendments, to open up debate, to run through the normal regular order, but more importantly than that even, to actually stand up to the powers that be in this town that make all the decisions.

Three years ago, I stood on the floor and I pointed out that our border was in chaos already, a mere 2 months into the Biden administration.

In his first full month in office, Federal law enforcement had already encountered more than 100,000 migrants at the border. It was spiking. It was spiking rapidly, and we all knew it. Those of us who went down to the southern border in Texas sounded the alarm and we got a lot of crickets in this town.

That was the beginning of the radical progressive Democrats' efforts to reshape America with mass releases into our country. Just in December, we saw 370,000 migrant encounters alone. Three years into this crisis now, radical progressive Democrats are trying to blame the crisis on Republicans.

You heard the gentleman, Mr. McGovern from Massachusetts, on the floor of the House today, he said something in the ZIP Code of, Republicans own this crisis now--which, by the way, was a giveaway. It was a tell. It was purposeful because our radical Democratic colleagues worked to try to get a bill in the Senate so they would have something to hide behind. Unfortunately, a handful of Republicans either wittingly or unwittingly went along, but the bill died because the bill doesn't do the job.

But here is the question: We have got a situation in our country where we have got wide-open borders. I will go through some of the details in a minute. Yet, today, we passed a resolution.

I supported it. I voted for it. I went to the Rules Committee, did my job, defended it, argued for it, came to the floor, debated it, argued for it. I support it, but come on. It is a resolution. Why? You want to know why? Because we refuse to use the power of the purse to stop President Biden. That is the truth. That is what we are actually doing.

Next week, in about 8 or 9 days, this Republican Party will saddle up with that Democratic Party filled with radical progressive Democrats who want to remake America, dump people into the country through mass releases. My Republican colleagues will saddle up with Democrats to pass a funding bill that will fund all of those open borders, and then they will try to go home and campaign: But I passed a resolution. I passed a bill that was named after Laken Riley. Aren't I great? Aren't I awesome?

The answer to that question is, no, you are not. You are not great. You are not awesome. Great and awesome is when you are willing to stand up and fight for the people you said you would fight for when you came here.

We control the power of the purse and I am tired of the excuses. We had another Member of Congress resign today. So now I will be told, Chip, we only have a one-seat majority or two-seat majority. I don't even know what it is anymore.

Let me ask the question: Does it matter?

In 2018, we had the House, we had the Senate, we had the White House, and we had a bigger majority than we have today and we utterly failed to secure the border. We totally dropped the ball. We didn't do it.

Why? I remember why. They would say, Chip, we don't have 60 votes in the Senate. Let me be very clear to the American people back home. There is always an excuse for why those who

campaign to come to this town fail to deliver. Always.

Here is a glimpse into what we will be funding next week. Here is a glimpse into what your Members of Congress, both sides of the aisle, led by radical progressive Democrats who, by the way, you will get more votes out of them than you do out of Republicans.

Every bill we have passed over the last 4 or 5 months of consequence have had more Democrat votes than Republican votes. Let's be very clear. That is the truth. You can't hide from the truth. You can't hide behind rules votes. You can't hide behind pointing fingers. This institution, the Republicans that run it, we are giving the ability for bills to come off this floor with more Democrat votes filled with radical progressive Democrats who want to remake America than Republican votes.

The last bill, the first half of this omnibus spending bill that spends at Nancy Pelosi's levels--I am sorry--more than Nancy Pelosi's spending levels, cracking the caps that we passed less than a year ago, that legislation passed I think with only two Democrats voting against it. Two.

Do you know who was in the Democratic Party? Two voted no. I think we had 83 Republicans vote no. You do the math. Which way do you think that bill tilts?

Here is what we are going to fund next week. We had 1,200 known got- aways recorded at the border on Sunday alone.

In this country, 1,200 people came into this country, we don't know who they are; we don't know where they came from; we don't know what they are doing, but I promise you, for at least a large block of them, they ain't up to good.

Four human smuggling loads were caught in 48 hours in Kinney County just this week, just out in San Antonio. These are friends of mine who live in that county.

Virginia authorities apprehended an illegal immigrant from Mexico in connection with the February 29 abduction of a 15-year-old unaccompanied alien child--illegal alien.

An illegal alien from Mexico was arrested for allegedly crashing into a Washington State trooper while drunk and high, killing the 27-year- old husband and father.

I have gone through and recounted all the deaths. We have talked about Laken Riley. We have talked about the 2-year-old who was killed just outside of the Nation's Capital by somebody who was released here by Joe Biden.

Meanwhile, criminals with ties to MS-13 and other gangs are selling fake green cards and Social Security cards to illegal aliens on street corners in Queens. That is happening right now. You are going to fund that.

A smuggler from Sullivan City who led Texas DPS on a high-speed chase in Hidalgo County was just recently arrested for evading, human smuggling, and DWI.

An illegal alien from Venezuela has been charged with manslaughter for a wrong-way accident in Missouri that killed a 12-year-old boy.

FBI Director Christopher Wray warned Monday the Bureau is ``very concerned'' about a human smuggling network with ties to ISIS that utilizes the southern border to gain entry into the United States.

Madam Speaker, 331 known or suspected terrorists were stopped at the border under Biden--169 in fiscal year 2023, 58 so far this year.

Members of a Mexican cartel shot at migrants who were taking Ubers to cross the southern border illegally, illegal aliens, leaving one woman dead. Nobody crosses the border without cartel permission. They have control.

Madam Speaker, 7.3 million illegal aliens crossed our borders since Biden took office. That is more than the population of 36 U.S. States.

Nearly 1.8 million known migrants escaped Border Patrol, the got- aways I was talking about before.

We have released some 4\1/2\ million of the 7.3 million illegal aliens that crossed our border. We have released 4\1/2\ million.

I want to stop there. For my radical progressive Democratic colleagues who say that nothing is wrong and they are not doing anything, they are making policy choices to release people into the United States using parole authority against the law to mass-release people, including the man who came in here affiliated with a dangerous gang in Venezuela and killed Laken Riley, not Lincoln Riley.

There are 331 on the terrorist watch list under Biden and 75,000 fentanyl deaths in 2022. The administration has paroled 1 million illegal aliens into this country, many of whom come from Haiti and Venezuela--pause--many of whom come from Haiti.

Has anybody looked at Haiti recently? There is some dude named ``Barbecue'' who is in charge of Haiti at the moment, basically running the show--a dude named ``Barbecue.''

We have people who are running like gangs and marauders and cannibals in Haiti, and now we are going to get a mass influx of people from Haiti.

In fiscal year 2023, DHS released more than 233,000 under the Cuba, Haiti, Nicaragua, and Venezuela categorical parole program--83,200 Haitians, 65,000 Venezuelans, 49,000 Cubans, 36,000 Nicaraguans. I could go on and on.

We have had more than 20,000 Chinese nationals encountered at the southern border since October 1, 2023. For context, more than 24,000 Chinese nationals were encountered across the southern border in all of fiscal year 2023. We have had 20,000 since October 1.

I could go down the list, but I want to give time to my good friend from Pennsylvania, Mr. Perry, a man who wore the uniform, who served his country with distinction, who serves his country with distinction now as a Member of Congress.

My friend from Pennsylvania, I assume that you are concerned. As someone who has defended this country around the globe, flew helicopters for the United States military, I assume it concerns you that we have 20,000 Chinese nationals that we have encountered at the southern border since October 1, 2023, and that we are poised as Republicans to vote next week to fund fully, with additional money, the government that is doing that to the American people.

It is 7.3 million.

Madam Speaker, I yield to the gentleman from Pennsylvania (Mr. Perry) to engage in a colloquy so the American people can understand what we are dealing with.

Next week, we are going to take up the second half of an omnibus appropriations package. There is no other way to describe it. It was an omnibus bill broken into two parts. That omnibus bill would spend approximately $1.66 trillion or, stated in plain terms, $30 billion more than Nancy Pelosi's spending levels passed a mere 15 months ago with abject opposition from the very Republicans in this Chamber who are going to vote next week to put the bow around two bills to make one omnibus spending package that will crack the bipartisan caps that we could have at least adhered to in order to limit spending.

Is that what the gentleman understands?

About 15 months ago.

To be clear, we are racking up an additional trillion dollars of debt every 100 days.

We are spending now, this year, more on interest than our national defense. We will be cracking a trillion dollars of interest in 2026. We are now going to pass a package that spends $1.66 trillion, which the CBO acknowledges will continue to rack up deficits into the foreseeable future. We are going to do that after having voted for a bill last week that funded a number of things from the MILCON-VA to Energy-Water and to other issues.

This next week, though, we are going to be voting on Defense. We are going to be voting on State-Foreign Operations. We are going to be voting on the Department of Homeland Security.

A lot of these are bills we passed last year as Republicans in the House. I ask the gentleman, when we passed legislation last year, we passed legislation to push back on the radical progressive Democrat agenda. In the State-Foreign Operations bill that we will take up next week, I would remind, the United Nations is a part of it to the tune of $12.5 billion. By the way, Texas has had to spend $12.5 billion over the last 3 years to defend itself when the Federal Government won't do it.

We are going to have $12.5 billion for the United Nations that is going to be funded this next week by this body, a United Nations that-- let me see if the gentleman agrees--has the United Nations Human Rights Council, which passed condemnatory resolutions on Israel 104 times to China's zero; a United Nations Population Fund, which is complicit in China's population control programs; the World Health Organization, which is complicit in COVID-19; UNRWA--I know the gentleman is familiar with this one--UNRWA, the corrupt organization that has been exposed since October 7 in terms of its engagement in the barbaric attacks by Hamas on the people of Israel.

We are funding it. Biden says he is not funding it, but will we make that clear next week? We did last fall. We made it clear, but not clear enough. Why is that? What did the gentleman do last fall?

It didn't pass because it didn't have unanimity among Republicans.

Now, will we vote this week to fund UNRWA? Now, even if UNRWA is taken out, which it is possible it will be, will we continue to fund all of the so-called humanitarian relief that is still getting funneled to Hamas?

Right.

Will we continue to fund through the State and Foreign Operations bill the President's radical anti-life agenda?

Will we pass, instead, any of the pro-life protections, like the Mexico City policy, or no?

What will we be funding? Continuation of the radical anti-life policies of this administration.

Will we be voting to end, or will we be voting to fund all of manner of wasteful and woke international envoys: The Special Envoy for Racial Equity and Justice, the Special Envoy to Advance the Human Rights of LGBTQI Persons, the Special Envoy for International Labor, the Special Representative for Palestinian Affairs? Will we be voting to fund that next week?

The gentleman served in the United States Army, correct?

The gentleman flew helicopters in the United States Army?

Does the gentleman believe that next week, we, as Republicans, should be voting to fund chief diversity officers across the Department of Defense that are destroying recruiting and turning our military into a social engineering experiment?

Should we fund the Air Force, which is reducing planned troop totals in their 2025 budget, cutting the total number of airmen in the service after missing its recruiting goals?

How about transgender surgeries at the Department of Defense being funded?

How about the Department of Defense's abortion tourism funding?

How about funding for a Department of Defense that has failed to fully reinstate members impacted by its vaccine mandates, at least 8,000? I just spoke with one of them the other night randomly at a bar/ restaurant here in the Northern Virginia area, who was upset that he got forced out of service in the United States military. Does the gentleman think we should be funding that?

Yet will not the very same people who will stand up and say we must fund this do so on the backs of the men and women in uniform saying that we must do this for defense, we must do this to make our defense stronger? Will they not be voting for all of those policies, undermining our own Defense Department?

On both sides of the aisle?

How about the HHS funding that we are going to be taking up next week, including the Office of Refugee Resettlement, which lost track, as the gentleman knows, of 85,000 migrant children, according to that bastion of rightwing conspiracy, The New York Times. They are working with the NGOs to make the crisis worse, the very NGOs that are receiving funding from the United Nations.

The gentleman from Pennsylvania just acknowledged, we are going to fund the United Nations, we are going to fund through our own HHS the Office of Refugee Resettlement, which lost 85,000 children, and we are not going to demand change, as necessary. Is the gentleman concerned about that?

Does the gentleman agree that we will be fully funding Joe Biden's student loan bailout schemes that were found to be unlawful by the United States Supreme Court? He literally stood at the microphone and said: I don't care, I am doing it anyway. Do you think we ought to be funding that?

Should we be funding, for example, under COVID, the continued funding of the Wuhan lab or anything with respect to EcoHealth Alliance without any accountability for any of the people who sent our entire economy into a tailspin, racking up $8 trillion of debt, sending our kids back in time in terms of their ability to compete, should we be continuing to fund those entities?

I guess now, in conclusion on this point, back to the border, an absolute tragedy that is unfolding for Americans reeling, like Laken Riley's parents, like Lizbeth's mom--by the way, you left out the fact, I understand, that she was supposed to be cheering at an event. Her mom went there to go see her daughter, and when her daughter didn't show up, she had to go home to find her daughter's lifeless body in the bathtub, killed by somebody here illegally, an illegal alien.

Again, I want to be very clear, the President of the United States, whether he knows it or not, a subject that we explored today in the Judiciary Committee, whether it is willful or not, he is certainly complicit because the buck stops with the President that they are releasing people into the United States in mass form, contrary to law, and endangering people like Laken Riley, like Lizbeth, like the 2-year- old out here in Montgomery County, like hundreds of examples, thousands of fentanyl deaths.

By the way, put all that aside, the fact is, we are destroying our country through the weight of what that means for our school districts, our prisons, our hospitals, what it means for healthcare.

We have 50 million foreign-born people in this country. My colleagues on the other side of the aisle act like somehow this is anti-immigrant or that we don't want to have immigrants in the United States when nothing could be further from the truth.

I assume that the vast majority of the people that I know working at Border Patrol, for example, who I know to be majority Hispanic, they want the law to be enforced.

I assume that we want to back the people who want the law enforced. Yet I want to be clear, we are going to fund all the things we just articulated and fund a Department of Homeland Security to continue to carry out mass releases in the form of parole, asylum, abuse of the law, undermining our security and safety.

By the way, I would point out, we are going to continue to fund the salary of Alejandro Mayorkas, who we impeached for violating his oath to the Constitution, violating the laws and endangering the American people. How does the gentleman feel about that?

The America I know enforces the rule of law. The America I know establishes a rule of law that attracts people from the world to come to our country. That is why people come to the United States of America, because the rule of law affords them the ability to prosper.

However, we are undermining the very thing that attracts people from around the world to come here. I know it is equality, justice, and freedom, but if you don't have the rule of law, none of those things matter.

If you don't have the rule of law, you will have chaos.

If you don't have the rule of law, you have what is happening in Haiti.

If you don't have the rule of law, you don't have a country.

If you don't have sovereignty and borders, you don't have a country.

If you don't have that, then there is no America to stand side by side with Israel.

If you don't have that, there is no America to even try to come to the rescue of any country like Ukraine or anybody else.

If you don't have a country, you have nothing on this Earth to be able to organize, to be able to defend the very liberty that we say this country stands for.

I would note that this body, Republicans, passed H.R. 2 just under a year ago. That bill would demonstrably change the situation at the border. It would enforce the law. It would reestablish the rule of law. It would still allow people to come here and make claims when they need them if they are being persecuted for their religious beliefs or political beliefs, but they would do so through the normal order.

The chaos would end. America would be better off, the Western Hemisphere would be better off, the world would be better off. Most of the individuals seeking to come to this country would, frankly, be better off, so they are not being abused by cartels or being forced to run from the Darien Gap all the way up through Mexico to make the tough journey to come to America, then they get here and have difficulty.

Why do I want to bring that up? I am going to be wrapping up here reasonably shortly so we can give the floor to another colleague. So why does it matter that we passed that bill last year? Because it is a good bill. It is a bill that would do the job.

While my colleagues on the other side of the aisle are playing games trying to hide behind legislation in the Senate that never would have gotten the job done, our colleague from Massachusetts (Mr. McGovern) today gave up the game on the floor today when he said: Republicans own this issue now. It was purposeful. He gave it up. He gave away the game. They want to hide behind a bill they knew wouldn't pass.

We passed legislation that would make a difference. It would save people's lives. It would be better for migrants, better for our country.

Here is the thing: I hear a lot of my colleagues on this side of the aisle run around and say something like, well, can we just get migrant protection protocols? Can we just get remain in Mexico?

Let me be very clear. That will not fix it. If you simply pass migrant protection protocol requirements, the President can just ignore them. If you do not end the releases, if you do not force an end to the releases--which, by the way, I did in a 3-page bill--then you have no border security. You cannot implement remain in Mexico and believe that that alone will solve the problem when parole is being abused, asylum is being abused, unaccompanied children will be abused. However, that is what some of our colleagues, even on this side of the aisle, are saying will be a solution if we package it together with Ukraine or Israel to move a bill.

Let me be very clear to everybody watching, any of our colleagues sitting in their offices watching: That is not good enough. It won't work. Don't bring that to the floor. That is not the way we should go.

At the end of the day, earlier today this Chamber passed a resolution condemning the Biden administration for its failures at the border for releasing people into the United States. Every Republican voted for it. Every Republican voted for it. Fine.

What will it do? What will it actually do? I voted for it. The President should be condemned. How many of those same Republicans are going to vote next week, though, to fund fully at a higher level the very things they voted against--or condemned, I should say--in the resolution that they just passed today? What do you think, my friend from Pennsylvania?

Madam Speaker, I will close with this. In a couple of years, this country is going to be celebrating its 250th birthday on July 2, 2026.

The question we have to ask ourselves is whether or not we are going to have a country that we pass down to our kids and grandkids. I believe we can and will.

I believe we only will if the people who campaign and go to the people saying that they are going to change this town, saying that they are going to stop the unlimited spending, saying that they are going to do something about a trillion dollars of debt racked up every 100 days, saying they are going to do something about a trillion dollars of interest in 2026--we are spending more on interest than our national debt--saying that they are going to secure the border of the United States, saying that they are going to end the woke and weaponized government targeting the American people, saying that they are going to make sure that we don't have endless wars that are making our military overstretched and overrun and making it difficult for our men and women in uniform with a woke military and undermining their ability to recruit and have a military that functions, when our colleagues go out and campaign on those things, we should deliver.

We should do something about it. We should be willing to give up the precious, to quote ``The Lord of the Rings,'' give up the precious of an election certificate if it means taking the steps necessary to fight for this country.

When the Founders gave us the power of the purse, articulated well in Federalist No. 58 by James Madison and otherwise throughout the Founding documents, that power of the purse was supposed to be used.

If you don't use it, what do you have left? An impeachment that you send over to the Senate to die in the Senate and then go campaign on it.

The balance of power matters. The separation of power matters. When a President of the United States is ignoring the law and the Supreme Court, violating all the norms of the past to undermine our sovereignty, endanger the American people, spend money we don't have, ignore the law, and make us weaker around the globe, when the President of the United States is doing those things, it is incumbent upon the House and the Senate, but particularly the House, to do something about it.

You shouldn't hide behind rules votes, thin majorities, and what the Senate has or doesn't have to say that we could use that power of the purse to force change out of a President.

I, for one, believe that on July 2, 2026, we are going to be able to stand up and say that we are doing the right thing.

I believe something is stirring in this country. I believe people are seeing what is actually happening. I believe people are seeing their country being taken away from them.

We are seeing people like Riley Gaines standing up. We are seeing people like Chloe Cole stand up against the madness, as well as Scott Smith in Loudoun County.

We are seeing the people around this country stand up and make their voices be heard, the parents who have taken their schools back, the parents who stood up in Texas and just had a strong election to try to force that State to stand up for universal school choice, to empower parents rather than bureaucrats, to stand up for our kids.

I believe that the American people are right now going through a great awakening, and it is time for the people in this body to catch up to the people.

It is time for the people in this body to stand up and do our part to make sure we restore that constitutional order and the very premise outlined in the Declaration of Independence for the pursuit of happiness so that in July 2026, we can say that our people live in a free country and that we have, in fact, kept the Republic, to quote Franklin after the Constitutional Convention.

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

Mr. Speaker, I thank the gentlewoman from Indiana for yielding.

Mr. Speaker, I would note, as a point of clarification, the legislation on the floor, there are two main parts.

The first part that the gentleman from Massachusetts was referring to did not go through committee. He is correct regarding the part that dealt with the issue with respect to ICE detainers relative to theft, burglary, et cetera.

The second half of the bill that deals with standing for States to be able to get into court to challenge the administration's lawlessness with respect to parole and asylum, that part did go through committee and was, in fact, debated.

Again, I am trying to set the record straight. I am acknowledging that the first half didn't, but the first half, the part that deals with theft, burglary, and so forth, so that we can have an ICE detainer placed on someone, is designed to deal with, in part, what we are dealing with in response to Laken Riley.

What my colleagues on the other side of the aisle do not want to talk about and what we will not hear the President of the United States tomorrow night in this room talk about is Laken Riley.

My colleagues doth protest too much about a bill that is named after someone who was harmed, given the extent of her injuries. There is a whole website dedicated to the bills that my colleagues on the other side of the aisle find a way to name after somebody in the wake of some emergency.

The fact here is we have a young woman who was 22 years old who was killed by someone who was released under mass parole by the policies of this administration, by this President, and by this Secretary of Homeland Security. He is only the second Secretary to be impeached in the history of our country because he has violated his oath to the Constitution, ignored the laws, and endangered the American people.

The simple fact is the President of the United States and my colleagues on the other side of the aisle--the radical progressive Democrats who are trying to remake America with wide-open borders--do not want to talk about Laken Riley. They do not want to talk about Kayla Hamilton, who was a 20-year-old with autism in Aberdeen, Maryland. A 17-year-old illegal alien from El Salvador was released into the country as an unaccompanied alien minor and killed Kayla Hamilton. He raped and beat her to death in her home in July 2022.

I do not believe that the President of the United States or my Democratic colleagues want to talk about Kayla Hamilton.

I don't believe that my Democratic colleagues want to talk about Aiden Clark, an 11-year-old boy in Ohio who was killed by a 35-year-old illegal alien who struck a schoolbus full of kids.

I don't think they want to talk about the 2-year-old in Montgomery County, Maryland, who was killed by somebody from Venezuela who was similarly released under mass parole under the policies of this administration, under this President, and under this Secretary of Homeland Security. They don't want to talk about that 2-year-old.

They don't want to talk about the adolescent girl who was raped by a Honduran who was released into the United States, again, under these policies. The simple fact of the matter is that is not what my colleagues want to talk about.

They don't want to talk about the young Texas girl, a cheerleader, murdered in the bathtub. She was found dead by her mom when her mom was expecting to see her at a cheerleading event subsequent to that.

They don't want to talk about that, and the President of the United States,

most assuredly, will not talk about those Americans tomorrow night in this room.

He won't. He will try to hide behind a Senate bill. He will try to hide behind a Senate bill that would have had no chance of passage. They knew it wouldn't pass. He will hide behind a bill that would have codified the mass releases that are endangering the American people, a Senate bill that would not have fixed the parole policies that resulted in the death of Laken Riley.

These are all facts that we know to be true, but my colleagues on the other side of the aisle want to hide behind the Senate bill because they know that their policies are indefensible.

Mr. Speaker, this legislation is one step in order to honor the memory of Laken Riley, and I urge my colleagues to support it.

Mr. Speaker, I thank the gentlewoman from Indiana for yielding.

Mr. Speaker, my colleagues want to, as I said before, hide behind the Senate legislation to try to suggest that House Republicans are not addressing the issue. Well, everybody who has been paying attention to the issue knows that we did, in fact, pass legislation just under a year ago that directly addresses the issues that are plaguing American citizens on a daily basis. This is a real issue.

Again, my colleagues on the other side of the aisle want to gloss over the real impact, not just on Texans, but as the folks that I met with in San Diego last week, what is happening to them and what is happening to their schools, what is happening to their jails, what is happening to their communities; and the people in Texas who have spent $12.5 billion to try to deal with border security--now having some success, by the way--doing our part to try to hold the line in Texas.

We are seeing the flow of the cartels moving into Arizona and California, which is no great thing for the country, but it is at least trying to relieve the pressure on Texas.

Also, the number of ranches, the number of people that I deal with all the time, but also the migrants. We just gloss over the little girls being sold into the sex trafficking trade. We gloss over the family in a stash house that my friend, who is a Federal judge, had to throw the book at somebody who was using this mom and her daughter to hold for a ransom of $25,000 against somebody who was here illegally in Baltimore. This is happening every day in our country.

I-35 and I-10, the intersection in San Antonio, which I represent, is a main thoroughfare of this trafficking of human beings, and this is all happening on the watch of the executive.

My colleagues want to try to pin the failure of open borders on a Congress for failing to give, what, more legislation and tools to a President who has the tools to do what is necessary to secure the border?

President Biden could deal with the border right now--everybody knows that--by enforcing the law, by enforcing existing law, law that requires detention, law that requires that you detain people who come to the United States, who--because we are a people who want to give people some sort of chance if they are dealing with a claim for asylum because they fear political persecution or religious persecution--have to make that claim. However, most Americans believe that we detain, adjudicate the claim, determine if it is legitimate, and do not allow our government, our executive branch, our President, to make a mockery of the laws by using parole and asylum authority to flood the American people with millions of people. We know this to be true.

My colleagues on the other side of the aisle have literally no defense to the reality that millions have been released into the United States. Millions have been flooded into our communities, our schools, our hospitals.

My colleagues on the other side of the aisle just kind of smugly smirk at what we have to deal with in Texas, what sheriffs have to deal with in Texas, what we have to deal with in our schools, in our communities, when we have to find the dead bodies of migrants on our ranches, because that is what happens.

Is the President of the United States going to sit up there tomorrow night and talk about the dead migrants that we find on ranches in Texas? Is he going to have the nerve to do that, or talk about the 53 migrants who died in a tractor-trailer in San Antonio last year in the Texas heat? Is he going to have the nerve to do that? No, because they are his policies, his choices to ignore the law.

My Democratic colleagues want to somehow say that it is on the majority when we passed legislation to try to force the President to do what his job is and his duty under the Constitution. They have the temerity to try to say it is on the majority when it is, in fact, our Democratic colleagues who refuse to actually hold the executive branch accountable, as is required under the Constitution under separation of powers.

Mr. Speaker, I thank the gentleman from California for yielding.

I note that we have only really had now two people speak in opposition to the bill out of the 40 minutes it has been on the floor, and that is just the reality of what we deal with here.

The fact of the matter is all of this is a shell game. Last year, Republicans were presented with a bill. It was supposed to cap spending at $1.59 trillion. Now, we have legislation that will do no such thing.

Republicans will go around and talk about how they scored major wins, how they somehow delivered for the American people. The fact of the matter is we did no such thing.

We signed up for caps at $1.59 trillion. We could have had $1.56 trillion if we would have passed a CR this year that would have triggered the caps.

The Limit, Save, Grow Act that we passed is 1.471 trillion, but we are not doing that. We are going to blow the lid off of caps of $1.66 trillion. That is what we are actually going to do, while my Republican colleagues are going to run around and say that they somehow delivered cuts by saying $24 billion of cuts off of a CR that not one Member of this body could come down to the floor and explain.

I would take that challenge. If any Member of the body can come down and explain to the American people in terms that they can understand, explain it. Explain exactly what the cuts look like.

What you will get are things like, oh, we cut 7 percent out of the FBI. What they won't tell you is 95 percent of that cut is eliminating an earmark from Richard Shelby because Richard Shelby is no longer here to defend his pet project building back in Alabama.

They are going to say, oh, look, we are cutting the Department of Justice and the FBI. The truth of the matter is, we didn't get any of the major wins that we worked all last year to get--all of these things like defunding the sanctuary cities refusing to report criminal aliens. That is gone. All of these measures are not in the bill.

I rise in opposition to this legislation. I hope my Republican colleagues will oppose it. We deserve to deliver for the American people the way we said we would to cut spending and secure the border of the United States.

Mr. Speaker, I thank my friend from Utah for his time down here on the floor pointing out some of the things that we most assuredly will not hear from the President of the United States and those that we wish we would hear from him.

I can tell you one thing we are not going to hear from the President of the United States tomorrow night in this Chamber is any specific actions that he would take or should have taken or apologies for his policies that led to the unfortunate passing 2 weeks ago of Laken Riley.

We know we will not hear that because our Democrat colleagues refuse to take ownership of the policies that the President of the United States has adopted and that Secretary Mayorkas has implemented on his behalf in direct violation of their oaths to the Constitution and under the laws of the United States. As a result, there are Americans who have died.

We know that the President of the United States is not going to take ownership over the high inflation that is decimating families, the regulatory state they put in place that has made the automobiles that the American people need to drive too expensive, allowing EVs to pile up on the lots of dealers while we put mandates in place, the extent to which we have now been banning liquefied natural gas exports by shutting down the ability to get them out of terminals, which is making us more beholden to the special interests and the corporate cronyism

that was all funded by subsidies under the Inflation Reduction Act, all policies led by the radical progressive Democrats that have complete control of the Democratic Party and that are the puppet masters, pulling the strings to which the President of the United States dances.

Tomorrow, he won't talk about those things. He will give a lot of excuses, hiding behind Senate bills and things that allegedly the House of Representatives are not doing.

I think it is a really important day. I need to say something as a Texan. Today is Alamo Day, the day that marks the end of the 13 days of assiegement and fighting and the final sacrifice of almost 200 brave men in the name of freedom at the Alamo.

I am proud to represent San Antonio. The Alamo means a lot to those of us in central Texas, particularly in and around San Antonio.

I think it is really important to note what that meant. I asked a year ago today when I spoke on this issue, or on this commemoration, I should say: What did they declare independence for? What did Travis and the men at the Alamo sacrifice for? A Federal Government that opens our borders to cartels? A group of Republicans who campaign on securing the border yet run away in abject surrender, refusing to actually do it?

That is the question before us right now. That is the question I asked a year ago.

I might remind everybody of the letter from William Barret Travis, commander at the Alamo, February 24, 1836: ``Fellow citizens and compatriots, I am besieged by a thousand or more of the Mexicans under Santa Anna. I have sustained a continual bombardment and cannonade for 24 hours and have not lost a man. The enemy has demanded a surrender at discretion, otherwise, the garrison are to be put to the sword, if the fort is taken. I have answered the demand with a cannon shot, and our flag still waves proudly from the walls. I shall never surrender or retreat. Then, I call on you in the name of liberty, of patriotism, and everything dear to the American character, to come to our aid, with all dispatch. The enemy is receiving reinforcements daily and will no doubt increase to 3 or 4,000 in 4 or 5 days. If this call is neglected, I am determined to sustain myself as long as possible and die like a soldier who never forgets what is due to his own honor and that of his country. Victory or death. William Barret Travis, Lieutenant Colonel Commandant.''

Now, that was nearly 200 men standing on the wall at the Alamo knowing almost certain death--knowing almost certain death is what they faced. It is notable that on this date, today, 188 years ago William Barret Travis who wrote that letter died.

Davey Crockett, who was fairly well known in the history of our country, who served in this Chamber--although not in this building but back behind us in the original House Chamber--Davey Crockett, a Member of Congress from the State of Tennessee, who like a number of Tennesseans came to the aid of Texas at the Alamo, Davey Crockett died that day, today, 188 years ago.

We Americans love to have our parades. We love to commemorate these kinds of events. Ask a Texan about the Alamo, and they will fill their chest and stick it out, and they will talk about how great Texas is.

Ask an American about D-Day or about our history and what George Washington did crossing the Delaware or talking about any of the great battles that our men and women in uniform have carried out on behalf of this great country, and they will well up with pride, they will stick their chest out, and they will talk about how great this country is.

But the question that I think needs to be asked sitting here on the floor of the House of Representatives in, yet again, another empty Chamber: What are we willing to do? What are we willing to do? What are the people of this body willing to do? What are my colleagues on both sides of the aisle willing to do in the face of the massive assault on our country that we are experiencing as we speak? What are we actually willing to do?

I have heard lots of speeches, even tonight, speeches about how much our debt is piling up around us and how we need to cut spending. Every single Member of this body, but particularly my Republican colleagues, talk about the debt. $34.4 trillion. Well, tomorrow it is going to be $34.5 trillion. We are racking up a trillion dollars of debt every 100 days, and yet, we give lip service to it.

So again, I go back to this point about these men standing on the wall at the Alamo facing certain death if these reinforcements didn't get there. They probably knew full well they weren't going to get them. Yet, they were willing to stand there and die.

For what? To be enslaved to $34.4 trillion of debt? To be told that you can't get the automobile of your choice? To be told that there is going to be a kill switch that will cut your car off if your eyes dart a certain way? To be told that you must accept untold numbers of illegal aliens coming into your country getting free services, free education, free healthcare while bankrupting your country?

Is that what those men died for?

Did those men die for criminals to be let out on the streets? Did they die so that one of these men's great-great-granddaughters could get murdered as a student in Georgia, or for example, in Texas a young woman that was found dead in a bathtub? A young cheerleader's mom wanted to go see her, expected to go see her at a cheerleading event, comes home, and she is dead in the bathtub.

Is that what these men sacrificed for? Is that what they put it all on the line for?

When we all talk about the men that sat in the foxholes of Bastogne freezing at Christmas so we could live in this country, did they fight for those things?

I have to be really blunt here. Did they fight so that Republicans could campaign on cutting spending and today on the floor of this Chamber vote to pass a bill that without question, undebatably, unquestionably increases spending significantly in the form of tens of billions of dollars over that of Nancy Pelosi's omnibus spending bill, despite the fact that we had bipartisan spending caps put in place last year, passed in this Chamber with majorities of both Republicans and Democrats and the Senate and signed by the President of the United States?

We ignored those caps, we spent more than those caps, and then we had the audacity to try to claim to the American people publicly that we cut spending. This is what the American people are sick of.

Let me be perfectly clear standing here. My colleagues on the other side of the aisle are, in fact, radical, progressive Democrats, period. They are pushing policies, along with the President of the United States, that is flooding this country with people from all over the world into Texas, into Arizona, into California, stacking our schools, stacking our jails, overwhelming our system, giving out benefits, paying money, all so that people like Marc Elias can challenge in court to stop Arizona from having a law that says only citizens can vote.

Now why might that be?

It is purposeful. It is happening every second, even as we pile up debt around our ears to the tune of $34.4 trillion and counting--a trillion dollars of interest in 2026; more interest than our defense this year.

It is astounding.

And my colleagues on this side of the aisle and that side of the aisle will hide behind either--from my radical, progressive, Democratic colleagues, they will hide behind taxes. They will say, oh, we have had too many tax cuts. Even though 2 years ago we had more revenue in the Treasury than we ever had.

My colleagues on this side of the aisle will hide behind mandatory spending. They will scratch their beards, look at you and say, oh, but, Chip, you're getting hung up on 17 percent of the budget. Can't you do math? Really.

Like they look at you like somehow you are insane because you are focused on the discretionary budgets sitting in front of you that you think maybe, just maybe, we should take the discretionary budget that we have total control of every year and demonstrate an ounce--an ounce of actual responsibility and fiscal sanity by saying maybe, just maybe, we shouldn't give

$12.5 billion to the United Nations. I am just throwing that out there--$12.5 billion to the United Nations to undermine our country, to work with NGOs to move people into the United States purposely. That is what the United Nations is doing. They worked with Hamas to attack Israel. We funded it. We did that. And they want to say, oh, well, who cares about that?

Well, what about the $12.7 billion in earmarks that we passed today on the floor of the House filled with all sorts of pet projects so our colleagues can go back home and say: Look what I brought home to you.

Why do I pick those two numbers? Why do I pick those two things, $12.5 billion in the United Nations and $12.7 billion in earmarks passed here?

They are massive numbers for both Democrats and Republicans. You know how much Texas has had to spend over the last 3 years to secure the border of the United States in Texas, which is the job of the Federal Government? $12.5 billion.

Do you know how much Texas has been paid back? Not a red cent.

All I can tell you is those boys that stood at that wall at the Alamo didn't do it for that. March 2, is Texas' Independence Day. I have got to tell you, read about the history of our independence. In 1836, Texas became a sovereign nation for a brief 9 years before we joined the Union. It has got a nice ring to it. But Texas joined that Union, and that Union and that Constitution says this country is supposed to protect its border, and it is leaving Texas exposed.

So with all due respect to Republican leadership and with all due respect to my colleagues on this side of the aisle, when I hear these excuses about we only have a two-vote majority, and sometimes you guys are taking down rules, that is swamp speak for I don't want to make the tough choice and say that we are going to go stand up on that wall like those boys did.

That is what it means.

It means Republican leadership is more concerned about defense spending for the defense establishment in this town. It means that Republican leadership is more concerned about ensuring that warrantless surveillance of Americans under FISA can continue without changing it.

It means that Republican leadership is more concerned about ensuring that we have money for Ukraine's borders rather than our borders.

That is the kind of thing we are talking about.

We are heading into the state of the Union tomorrow with the President of the United States who is in charge of a party of progressive, radical Democrats who want to remake our country, leave our borders open, spend us into oblivion, conduct endless wars, remake us with radical woke policies, DEI, and all the things that are destroying our country and dividing us up by race.

I want a Republican Party that is shoving it right back down and saying, you know what, we are going to pass a bill that funds this government at the caps we passed last year. We are going to send it over to the Senate. We are going to send it over with H.R. 2. It will secure the border of the United States. We are going to go around this country, and we are going to sell it to every single American. Like those boys on the wall of the Alamo, we are fighting for them. Like those boys sitting in the foxholes in Bastogne or walking into a wall of bullets in Normandy, we are fighting for them.

Instead, what always happens in this Chamber is that we find Members of Congress fighting for themselves--earmarks, political patronage, and power.

When are we going to lay it all on the line for the people we came here to represent? That is my question.

I didn't wear the uniform. I represent a hell of a lot of people who do and did, and it is an honor to do so. I feel like I owe every last ounce of devotion to this country and this Constitution and to them for laying it all out on the field there.

So when my colleagues say, why are you so pointed or so emotional about a particular topic or why are you down here animated? It is because of all of those people that sacrificed. It is those 400,000 tombstones on the other side of the Potomac River, many of whom gave the last full measure of devotion so that we could live free.

I have to tell you, we have an obligation to fight for this country, and I will call out President Biden and my radical Democratic colleagues for all they are doing to destroy this country, and I will work to do my best to make sure we have a Republican majority because my Republican colleagues want to preserve and fight for this country. I know it.

We are not going to do it by doing what we did today. We are not going to do it by continuing to spend money we don't have, bankrupting our kids, not securing our border, not getting the policies in place that we said we would fight for and cowering in the corner under accusations of a potential shut down of government.

Can you imagine the boys standing on the walls of the Alamo saying, oh, my gosh, do you know what they are going to do? They are going to tweet something mean about you and say, oh, my gosh, you are going to shut down the government.

Those guys were saying they are going to respond with a cannon shot with an Army of a thousand coming at them in San Antonio.

All those boys who were jumping out into stormy waters in Normandy going up cliffs, climbing and scaling the cliffs so your prize at that point is to try to march to Berlin.

Again, I did not wear the uniform. I have many colleagues who did. One of my colleagues, one of the men for whom I have such enormous respect for his service to this country and his service as a Member of Congress but, in particular, wearing the uniform of our United States military is my friend from Pennsylvania, Mr. Scott Perry.

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

Mr. Speaker, that is right, like literally a year ago.

I might just add on this chart, the gentleman refers to House Republicans last year, when we were trying to restore regular order and conservatives were working hard to do that and conservatives voted for a debt ceiling increase, even though we said we wouldn't and we shouldn't, we did. We voted for appropriations bills. Even though the caps were not honored, we did.

We have got colleagues saying we wouldn't work with them when we did everything we knew how to do, and by the way, by passing seven appropriations bills. Moving seven over to the Senate and ten down to the floor, we were able to enact policies to fight the radical Biden regime.

We defunded sanctuary cities refusing to report criminal illegals. We did that. This bill doesn't.

We prohibited the Department of Justice from giving lawyers to illegals, like you just mentioned. We did that. This bill doesn't.

We prohibited the Department of Justice from fast tracking asylum. We did that. This bill doesn't.

We defunded Biden's electric vehicle mandate, anti-power plant rules, and climate executive orders that are killing our economy. We did that. This bill doesn't.

We defunded ATF's pistol brace ban to save and protect Second Amendment rights. This bill doesn't.

We broadly defunded critical race theory and DEI executive orders. This bill doesn't.

We prohibited the FBI from using old construction funds for a new headquarters here. This bill doesn't.

We prohibited the Department of Justice from censuring unlawful speech, requiring the Department of Justice to create a better process for politically sensitive investigations, defunded the DOJ staff refusing to comply with subpoenas, and more.

We defunded the COVID vaccine mandates. We ended Biden's WOTUS rule. We prohibited pride flags from frying over Federal buildings. We prohibited funds for the Wuhan lab. We did all of those things. This bill does none of those and busted the caps.

Mr. Speaker, I yield to the gentleman from Pennsylvania (Mr. Perry), for the purposes of a colloquy.

Mr. Speaker, it happened right here when all but 83 Republicans voted for it. I think 132 Republicans voted for it. On the Democratic side of the aisle, I think it was 207 to 2 voted to continue to spend at higher levels, racking up more debt and more interest on our children and grandchildren.

Mr. Speaker, those gentlemen at the Alamo, who gave their last full measure of devotion, did it for an idea. Remember what they were doing, right? They were seeking separation from the federal government of Mexico and ultimately did so. A few weeks later, at the battle of San Jacinto, Texas wins, Texas becomes free, becomes its own nation. They are living freely. They were throwing off the shackles of a burdensome federal government which was, by the way, far less burdensome than this one.

Then they joined a union, the United States of America, under the idea that America would be amenable to Texas joining the Union to be free, to live free in a republican form of government, in a federalist system, where the people of Texas could live free under a limited government of enumerated powers that wasn't indebting its children and grandchildren into oblivion.

That is what we just did. In addition to all of those policies that we punted to the ground, Republicans in this body just voted to support a shattering $1.66 trillion bill, forsaking every other option we spent a year exploring.

We punted here. We had caps in place that would have spent right there, but we punted. Republicans punted in favor of that because it was the easy path in an election year, and that is what our children inherit.

That is not why they joined the Union. That is not why Texas fought at the Alamo to be free from Mexico and join the Union. They fought so that we could live free.

Mr. Speaker, I appreciate my friend for joining me. We came here tonight to celebrate what those men sacrificed for the State of Texas but for our country and the men like them and the women like them over our history. I hope we will do better. We owe it to the American people to do better.

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

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

The motion was agreed to; accordingly (at 7 o'clock and 25 minutes p.m.), under its previous order, the House adjourned until tomorrow, Thursday, March 7, 2024, at 10 a.m. for morning-hour debate.

Madam Speaker, I rise in opposition.

Madam Speaker, I am.

Madam Speaker, here we are again, kicking the can down the road and for other purposes, buying more time so that we can spend more money that we don't have at a time when we are going to eclipse more interest and more spending on interest than our national defense this year, and by 2026 we are going to be spending $1 trillion on interest. We are going to continue to spend moneys at the Nancy Pelosi-spending level of an omnibus bill that Republicans roundly oppose.

That is what is happening on the floor of the United States House right now.

We are going to continue funding this government at Nancy Pelosi's omnibus spending level. That is a level that will continue, by the way, to fund all of the priorities we oppose.

We are going to continue to fund the open borders that led to the death of Americans.

We are going to continue to fund the United Nations at $12.5 billion that is undermining our freedom and working against us to move people illegally into the United States. We are going to fund UNRWA which is funding Hamas, an enemy of Israel.

We are going to fund the IRS that is targeting Americans.

We are going to fund the Department of Justice that is targeting former President Trump.

We are going to do that today here on the floor of the House of Representatives rather than exercising the power of the purse that James Madison articulated in Federalist 58 that this body--this body-- is supposed to check an out-of-control executive branch.

That is what is happening today, and we should oppose it.

Madam Speaker, I yield such time as he may consume to the gentleman from Florida (Mr. Gaetz).

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

Mr. Speaker, the gentlewoman, it is important to note, voted against the FRA last year because, specifically noted in the gentlewoman's press release, the side deals that are being put in place in this exercise that we are going to be putting forward next week in appropriations bills, those side deals were not in the law that the gentlewoman just referred to.

To be very clear, everyone is going to go around talking about following the deal that was cut last year under the FRA, that we are spending at a certain level. The fact is another $70 billion was added in side deals, and that is why the gentlewoman opposed the FRA last year. However, those side deals are a part of this agreement that is plussing up and funding the bureaucracy that is at war with the American people.

That is the truth. That is the truth no matter how much people want to gloss over it on either side of the aisle, particularly this side of the aisle, because this side of the aisle wants to be able to campaign on border security. Do you know what? The border is not secure, and we are going to be passing a continuing resolution that continues to fund a DHS that refuses to secure the border.

These Americans are dead. These Americans are dead because illegal immigrants, illegal aliens, were released into the United States by this administration.

Laken Riley, 1 week ago today, was alive and well, and now she is gone because somebody from Venezuela was released on mass parole in El Paso, went into the United States, went to New York, was released after assaulting somebody, moved to Athens, Georgia, and killed this young woman because of the policies of the radical progressive Democrats that my colleagues on this side of the aisle want to campaign against but refuse to use the power of the purse to stop.

James Madison gave us the power of the purse, and we should darn well use it.

Mr. Speaker, I yield 3 minutes to the gentleman from Arizona (Mr. Biggs).

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

Mr. Speaker, I note that the gentleman, for whom I have a great deal of respect, was just using a lot of the arguments that I have heard over and over again. It is something that we have come to understand in this town as what we call the glossary.

When you run out of the, sort of, what are we actually going to fight over substantively, we should bring out all the terms, right? We talk about, oh, we only have a slim majority.

Well, I will remind my colleagues on this side of the aisle that the Democrats had a slim majority when they jammed through numerous massive bills, whether it is ObamaCare, whether we are talking about the Inflation Reduction Act. Yet, here we sit, and we are walking away from the majority that we were given, to use that majority, to use the power of the purse to stop an executive branch that is out of control.

A continuing resolution will continue to fund Biden's war on our border, and it is not just Biden. It is the radical progressive Democrats as a whole. It is a war on our well-being, a war on our security and safety.

That young lady who was killed in Georgia last week, that is happening over and over again in Texas: a young cheerleader was found in a bathtub, killed by somebody here illegally; a 2-year-old right here in Montgomery County, Maryland, outside of D.C., was killed by someone here illegally and released; a young person was raped last week in Louisiana by somebody here illegally from Honduras and released.

When are we going to stop it? When is this side of the aisle going to use the

power of the purse to stop it? I can promise you the radical progressive Democrats want it. They want open borders.

We are continuing to fund a weaponized IRS, continuing to fund a weaponized Department of Justice, like the DOJ that went after Mark Houck, went after Scott Smith. We are funding an EV, electric vehicle, mandate.

I heard my colleague talk about energy and water. What are we going to do to preserve American energy while the American people suffer? Our colleagues on the other side of the aisle are pursuing unicorn energy policy--EPA rules killing coal and natural gas plants, the World Health Organization, the United Nations, UNRWA, the ATF that is banning pistol braces and our Second Amendment rights, the Department of Education student loan scam that the President of the United States went to the microphone and applauded, ignoring the United States Supreme Court.

What are we going to do? Fund it. We are going to keep funding it.

What about the NIH and the FDA and COVID tyranny? What about the Department of Veterans Affairs, the chief diversity officers, the abortion travel fund, taxpayer-funded sex changes, transgender surgeries?

Your tax dollars are funding all of that, and we are going to continue it with a continuing resolution. To do what? To buy time to cut a deal that will do what? Spend even more money, rack up even more debt, continue these policies at war with the American people.

Mr. Speaker, I yield 2 minutes to the gentlewoman from Colorado (Ms. Boebert).

Mr. Speaker, respecting my friend from Texas, I would say, where were my Democratic colleagues when we were passing H.R. 2, which would actually do the job of securing the border?

It is hard for me to take seriously the claims of my Democratic colleagues, all radical progressives, that want to actually secure the border and don't have complete ownership of the fact that Laken Riley was killed by a Venezuelan let out by this administration under abuse of parole, which H.R. 2 would fix.

It would have fixed it, and my Democratic colleagues were nowhere to be found.

This body, this side of the aisle, did their job in passing a strong border security measure. We have legislation on the floor that did the job, but we had no support from our Democratic colleagues because it would have worked.

Then my colleagues on the other side of the building, in the Senate, passed legislation that would not do the job and now want to hide behind that. That is the actual truth.

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

Mr. Speaker, I yield 2 minutes to the gentleman from Virginia (Mr. Good), my friend.

Mr. Speaker, I yield 1 minute to the gentleman from Alabama (Mr. Moore), my friend.

Mr. Speaker, I yield 1 minute to the gentleman from Missouri (Mr. Burlison).

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

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

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

Mr. Speaker, to my colleagues on either side of the aisle, we have a fundamental responsibility under the Constitution of the United States to use the power of the purse to check an executive branch that is not following the law.

It is not enough to impeach, send to the Senate, sit back, grab the popcorn, and watch. We have a duty to actually defund tyranny and lawlessness. That is precisely what the Founders said. It is what the Founders wrote into the Federalist Papers. It is what they contemplated in Article I in the Constitution.

Do not go out and have talking points about dead Americans because of what this administration is doing by

letting people into this country to kill Americans like Laken Riley last week and then write the check that funds their broken policies.

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

Mr. Speaker, I first recognize and commend someone who has been working in my office most recently as director of operations, Corinne Schillizzi, who is unfortunately going to be leaving us after tomorrow, her last day here in the office, but she has been a wonderful part of our office. She is heading over to work with the former Vice President and do some work with his organization.

We will all miss her. I know the scheduling operation is always complex. I know the floor staff will miss working with her because she has been fantastic.

She will be joining another staffer of mine, Jonah Wendt, who was with me from the time I first ran for office in the summer of 2018, all the way until December. Jonah also left to work with the Vice President's organization. It means I need to have a word with the Vice President about taking my staff.

I am very delighted that they have this opportunity, and I thank them for their service.

I have the benefit of Corinne for the next 24 hours. I thank her, Jonah, and all of my staff, all of the great staff on the Hill--maybe almost all of the staff; it depends on the day.

I joke as a former staffer, but we can't do this without our staff. We can't do it without the floor staff, all the great employees here that keep this place operating. They tolerate us when we are holding the floor open late, forcing votes, and--I don't know--maybe giving a long speech on the floor of the House, which occasionally I might shorten just to make sure they can get home in time to have a reasonable night. I am ever thankful for their support and work.

I would note that my colleague from Texas was just complaining about the alleged weakness of the Texas grid.

Well, the only reason that there is any weakness to the grid is because we have had radical leftists embracing power schemes that have been funding our enemies in China and trying to promote a radical leftist agenda with unreliable energy--that is the truth; promoting windmill power in Texas, which on a windless day, oddly enough--hard to predict this, I know--doesn't produce a whole lot of power; or solar power, which, on a cloudy day--I know, again, hard to predict--doesn't produce a whole lot of power.

Therefore, if you have a deep freeze in the State of Texas that shuts down the windmill capacity and you have some other events going on, like some frozen gas lines, you end up having some difficulties. When you have had a war on reliable power, as my radical leftist colleagues have been doing for as long as I can remember, you end up with problems with the grid.

It is not just in Texas, it is nationwide. We have had rolling blackouts in California. Texas has been able to stave off those kinds of blackouts because we are trying to fight through the Federal mandates and the laws that come out of this body and the regulations that come out of the Federal Government that prevent us from being able to provide the power we need for the people of Texas.

Just last year, my colleague from Texas joined with my radical leftist colleagues on the other side of the aisle to advance the so- called Inflation Reduction Act, which has done none of

that, and which, by the way, is empowering China.

By the way, my colleague talked about enriching corporations. Well, guess what the Inflation Reduction Act does by subsidizing massive companies? Ninety percent of the subsidies go to billion-dollar corporations. That is the truth.

My colleagues on the other side of the aisle like to pretend they are doing something green when what they are doing is enriching fat cats and big corporations, sending money to China to build solar panels rather than burning clean-burning natural gas.

We voted today to advance a bill so that we could have liquefied natural gas being exported out of Texas. My colleagues on the other side of the aisle don't want to do that. They want to make us weaker. They want to hurt our economy. They want to make Russia more powerful.

They want to undermine Ukraine, even as they complain that we are not taking more borrowed money or more taxpayer money to give it to Ukraine to fund a war that doesn't have a mission. They want to undermine our ability to help Ukraine with liquefied natural gas. That is the truth.

Those are the actual facts of what is going on right now because my colleagues on the other side of the aisle are trying to advance a radical notion of unicorn energy, where we can have endless unreliable energy and then wonder why the grid might have a problem.

Why aren't we building nuclear power?

Why aren't we building more natural gas, of which we have an abundance in this country?

Why aren't we exporting more liquefied natural gas?

Around the world, half the world doesn't have access to reliable energy. Three billion people live in what we would call energy poverty. Why don't we export our energy so we can lift people out of poverty?

The fact is that China has 1,100 coal-fired plants, probably more than that now; they are building two a week. They are producing the vast majority of the CO2 going into the atmosphere. Meanwhile, my colleagues on the other side of the aisle want to declare war on the internal combustion engine here in the United States. If you get rid of every car in America and replaced it with an electric vehicle, you would impact CO2 by about, I don't know, 2 percent, maybe, worldwide, if you got rid of every single car in America.

Meanwhile, the average EV costs $16,000 more than an internal combustion engine automobile. The price of used cars is going up. We now have a mandate by this administration that the EVs are going to need to be two-thirds of the fleet by 2032, which means every American out there watching this, you are going to spend more for automobiles.

If you live in the cold, your battery is going to take longer to charge. If you plug it in at your house, your electricity bill is going to double or triple, because it uses as much electricity as your air conditioner.

Yet my leftist colleagues think that is okay. They have said so sitting in the Rules Committee. They have said so here on the floor. That is just the price of fighting climate change, they say. Except it is not going to actually fight what they claim they want to stop.

Why? Because around the world, other countries are producing CO2 in mass quantities. We are producing CO2 at our 1990 levels because of innovation, because of clean-burning natural gas--yes, from Texas. I have no problem with that. However, when my colleagues come down and say, oh, you are enriching corporations, they leave out that dirty little secret that we just passed a trillion- dollar bill that the American people have to pay for to subsidize our enemies, to subsidize billion-dollar corporations.

They undermine the very hardworking American family who wants to buy a car. The plumber who wants to have a truck. The family who wants to be able to have two vehicles to get around in; however, they can't afford them anymore because we are regulating them out of existence.

We are making it to where you can't even afford it, and then we are adding all sorts of requirements like kill switches.

Can you believe this? If your eyes dart because you are allegedly under the influence of something, your car is going to shut down. What if it is wrong? What if it is 10 below zero? What if you are across a railroad track? You are going to have cars that just shut down because of a kill switch. You are going to have the government telling you, you cannot get a car that doesn't have the expensive technology built into it to determine whether or not you might be under the influence. That is what we are doing to people.

We are going to make that car twice as expensive, and we are going to make it to where they might be unable to move their vehicle. This is unconscionable what we are doing.

I had a friend who went to replace a windshield the other day. It was $1,500 because it has some technology in it so you can see the speedometer in the glass and some other stuff.

I mean, who cares? What if I just want to have a windshield? It used to be 200 bucks. We have made everything more expensive. We are making everything so regulated that you can't possibly afford it.

You want to know why families are struggling, it is because of that. My colleagues live in unicorn land and pretend there are no consequences to regulation; there are no consequences to writing checks that we can't afford, funding and subsidizing big corporations all the time to advance their radical agenda.

They act like there are no consequences to open borders. The fact of the matter is, we have a problem in this town. I think I saw the Capitol Hill reporter Jake Sherman report today that somehow Republicans are in disarray and it has been the least effective Congress in history.

Let me just tell you something about the people I represent. They don't want this body to keep passing more laws and spending more money for the sake of it. They want us to actually stand up and fight for them. Standing up and fighting for them means doing something different.

I promise you that reporter and every other Capitol Hill reporter would judge success as continuing the status quo that has delivered us $34 trillion in debt, has delivered us stacks of laws that nobody can even count, literally.

I looked up the Department of Justice to count all the criminal statutes. They tried to do a study in the eighties, but they ran out and just gave up because they couldn't find all the laws. Yet we keep passing more laws. Just today, we passed more programs. We passed more stuff on the floor.

They say, Chip, why are you always voting no? Because we are $34 trillion in debt, and we have reams of regulations and reams of laws. What are those things doing to make the average American family's life better? That is the truth.

I will say something else. I am prone to being critical on a bipartisan basis or nonpartisan basis. The defense complex, the people that want to scare you to death that we are all going to die--yes, there are bad enemies in the world and we need to prepare to defend them. I will talk more about that in a minute, but we have a problem in this town that we will always spend more money because under the fear that people are going to say that we are going to be blown up, somebody is going to attack us.

Let me quote our former General Dwight Eisenhower, former President Dwight Eisenhower in his farewell address in 1961. He said: ``In the councils of government, we must guard against the acquisition of unwarranted influence, whether sought or unsought, by the military- industrial complex.''

I will remind you that this is 1961. This is 63 years ago almost to the day.

``The potential for the disastrous rise of misplaced power exists, and will persist. We must never let the weight of this combination endanger our liberties or democratic processes. We should take nothing for granted. Only an alert and knowledgeable citizenry can compel the proper meshing of the huge industrial and military machinery of defense with our peaceful methods and goals, so that security and liberty may prosper together.''

That is not happening today, Mr. Speaker. We saw it on full display this week right here in this body. We saw it in full display, because we were trying, on a bipartisan basis, to pass reform of

the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act, or FISA.

The fact is that FISA has been abused. Section 702 of FISA is a particular provision designed for us to collect information abroad to look outward in order to try to stop a future 9/11. That is its general purpose.

And it plays an important role in doing that. We have been gathering intelligence and been able to use it to prevent bad actors, but the fact is there has been enormous abuses.

The ODNI reported that the FBI conducted an estimated 204,090 United States person queries. That is 559 per day in 2022. An NSA analyst searched for the communications of two individuals the analyst had met on an online dating service. The government conducted a batch query for over 19,000 donors to a congressional campaign.

Mr. Speaker, that is your intelligence community and your FBI that is abusing laws designed to look abroad, to stop foreign enemies, and they are looking at you. They are using the power of government to surveil you, the American people.

That is wrong. It is why we have a Fourth Amendment. It is why we have rules about warrants.

When I was a former Federal prosecutor, I would have loved to have unfettered access to information. I had a bad guy who was sitting there, and I had a phone. The cop had the phone--and I had him on other stuff, but that guy had a phone, and he pulled the information off the phone and it had guns and drugs and pictures that were incriminating. He didn't get a warrant.

Well, the fact that we had had him for something else didn't mean that he still didn't need a warrant to look at his phone.

It matters. I couldn't use any of it. I couldn't give it to law enforcement to go look at the house or go try to track down what was on the phone. You know what? We are a better country for it because there were other tools to go after bad guys. I was able to put that bad guy in jail for a considerable number of years, but we weren't going to violate the Fourth Amendment to go further.

Yet, we violate the Fourth Amendment every single dadgum day against the American people in the name of foreign intelligence. Why would we do that? We do it because it is easy.

This week we had the opportunity to bring forward bipartisan legislation. When do you ever see Jim Jordan and Jerry Nadler hugging each other in agreement in the Rules Committee or in the Judiciary Committee, but they were.

We had bipartisan agreement, 35-2 I think was the vote out of the Judiciary Committee to say we are going to continue to allow the 702 tools to be able to go after bad guys abroad, but we are going to protect people here at home. We are going to use the Constitution. We are going to require that you have warrants to be able to get information, search databases on American people.

We haven't been able to bring it to the floor. You know why? Because the intelligence world, including some in our own Intelligence Committee, both sides of the aisle, the intelligence world that have worked over in the executive branch and the CIA, DNI, DOD, FBI, they all said, whoa, whoa, you can't do that or bad things will happen.

It is always behind this cloak, this veil. They say, oh, trust us. We see all the classified information. We know all the truth. You will be in danger. We will be in danger if you pass something like a demand-- that you have a warrant to get information on an American citizen.

Imagine that? If I walked around Washington, D.C., with a dog sniffer from every house going up and down the streets of Capitol Hill or through Georgetown or up through northwest or northeast or any part of this city, how many times do you think I would run across narcotics?

I can't do that, and we are not supposed to do that. Of course, law enforcement wants every tool it can have to go after bad guys, it makes their job easier; however, the Constitution says for a reason that you can't do that.

Every single one of us are mortified about September 11 and every other terrorist attack on our soil, but we should not give power to the Federal Government and the tyranny that can then be deployed upon the American people because we are afraid of what might happen. Freedom matters.

It is why we exist. Yet here we are with an opportunity with this bill that is expiring to make reforms that can protect the American people, and we are not going to do it. We only do token fixes that will make modest improvements but without the full protection of the Constitution wrapped around the American citizens. This body, the people's House, should do better.

I believe there is a full, strong majority of this body that would want to do that. We should bring that bill to the floor, and if my colleagues want to vote against it or take down the rule, make them go explain it to the American people. That is what we ought to do.

I don't mind defending my votes. Just last week, I was forced to vote on a suspension of the rules, a vote to give clean funding to Israel. Well, God bless America, I support Israel and I want to stand shoulder to shoulder with Israel, but I cannot go back to the people of Texas and say I am going to send a $17.6 billion check, even to our best friends, when we have not secured the border of the United States.

By the way, we are not paying for it. We cannot continue to write checks with borrowed money. We will not have a United States of America remaining to stand next to Israel. It won't exist. We won't have a dollar that is strong enough.

It is not just FISA. It is what we saw unfold in the Senate when they passed, cynically, taking out border security, sending $60 billion over to Ukraine, additional funding for Israel, a total package of almost $90 billion.

By the way, that is $60 billion for Ukraine. Do you know how much our entire budget is for the United States Marine Corps? $53 billion. Was one penny of that $60 billion paid for? No. It is just printed money.

We are printing money every year to the tune of $2 trillion just to keep the lights on, and we are going to write another $60 billion check to Ukraine?

God bless the people of Ukraine. I want them to push back. I want them to win. I want them to hold the line and preserve their country, but coming to us to write them blank checks is not a strategy. The Senate sent us over a $90 billion bill with $60 billion for Ukraine, billions for Taiwan, billions for Israel, and they do so without any mission defined.

We have gotten multiple different missions told to us by the administration. They have no clarity of what we are trying to achieve there.

Are we funding something that might result in victory for NATO, for Ukraine, for the United States or are we funding, yet again, a never- ending conflict in a proxy war that none of the people voting for this are going to go put themselves in danger for after we have already spent $113 billion, by the way, unpaid for?

Are you noticing a common theme here? Almost everything we do around here is unpaid for. Hell, if you look at our annual tax revenues--which in 2022, by the way, were as high as they have ever been--those tax revenues only pay for mandatory spending. That is D.C. swamp-speak for Social Security, Medicare, increasing amounts of veteran spending, all of the things that are on autopilot. All of that basically adds up to the revenues we bring into the Treasury, which I think is somewhere around $4 trillion.

All the other stuff--the Department of Defense, the Department of Education, the Department of Justice, HHS, this building, Congress, Senate, the White House, the FAA--is borrowed money. Every penny of it is borrowed money.

How can we look our kids and grandkids straight in the face and say: We are not killing the country that was given to us? Because we are.

My colleagues on the other side of the aisle always blame it on tax policy. As I said in the Budget Committee, I will absolutely have any conversation about tax policy my friends on the other side of the aisle want to have, but what I will not allow my colleagues on the other side of the aisle to do is blame deficits on tax policy.

In 2022, 19.6 percent of the American GDP was sent back to Washington, D.C. That is the highest level in history. It ain't a revenue problem. It is not. We have always, since we have had

tax policy, been somewhere around 17\1/2\ percent of American GDP--that is everything we earn--comes back here to Washington. Last year, I think it was about 17\1/2\ percent. It peaked in 2022, and then came back down. You have all that money, yet we can't fund all the stuff we have promised or that we decide to do.

I had friends, people back home, constituents, say: Why did you vote ``no'' on a bill for ALS? Why did you vote ``no'' on a bill for cancer?

I am a cancer survivor. I have friends with ALS. I voted ``no'' because we don't have any money. I voted ``no'' because we are lying to the American people--both sides of the aisle, but, with all due respect, particularly my colleagues on the other side of the aisle who just blame it on tax policy and then ignore spending like drunken sailors.

It is all on our watch. The footnote in history for my tenure in the House of Representatives is going to be that I destroyed the country. I mean, I am proud that I voted ``no'' for most of this garbage, but for this moment in time, the legacy of every Member of this body, their tombstone, is going to be that they destroyed the United States of America, the greatest country in the history of the world. That is going to be the legacy of this House of Representatives, of the next House of Representatives, of last Congress' House of Representatives because we utterly refuse to responsibly do our job.

We are $34 trillion in debt. When I ran for office in 2018, it was $21 trillion. I have been here for 5 years, and it has gone up $13 trillion. I voted against virtually every penny of it, but that doesn't make me feel any good because we are still up $13 trillion.

I will say to my colleagues on both sides of the aisle: What are we going to do about it? Will we have another study? Are we going to put together another working group? Or what if, maybe, we actually did our damn job, set a cap, and spent under that? Novel concept, I know, that every business, every nonprofit, every family in America largely has to contemplate.

We are going to have legislation that is going to come before us in 2 weeks. Do you know why? Because the government funding is going to expire in 2 weeks.

Again, my colleagues on the other side of the aisle have been driving an agenda through the administration, the Senate, and my colleagues here in this Chamber that spends more money, regulates the heck out of the entire country, shutting down the internal combustion engine, leaving us with wide open borders, letting immigrants out without bail, making our streets unsafe, perpetuating endless wars, driving up inflation.

My Senate Republican colleagues, unfortunately, too often want to join with them. On the Ukraine, Taiwan, and Israel funding bill, there is no border security. It is unpaid for, has no mission, but 22 Republicans decided that would be a good bill to join. With friends like these, as they say.

We will get a bill in 2 weeks to keep the lights on and keep funding government, something most of my constituents question. Most of my constituents come up to me and say: Shut down the border or shut down the government. They are sick of open borders. They are sick of fentanyl deaths. They are sick of their livestock getting out. They are sick of having people break into their homes. They are sick of their schools getting filled, their hospitals getting filled, their jails getting filled. They are sick of what is happening to their country.

However, here is the thing: My Republican colleagues rightly, properly, impeached Alejandro Mayorkas for a total failure to carry out his duty, a total failure to faithfully execute the laws of the United States, lying to me under oath at a House Judiciary Committee hearing, lying to the American people about whipping Haitian migrants. The House of Representatives, led by Republicans, impeached, for the second time in history, a sitting Cabinet Secretary.

That is not a bright moment for our country, but it was the right thing to do. It will go over to the Senate. They will hold a trial. He almost certainly will not be convicted. I don't know if it will be a party-line vote. It takes 67 votes to do it.

However, here is the thing. That is not enough. It is not enough for Republicans to send over an impeachment and then walk away, say we did what we could. It is not enough to pass H.R. 2, the strongest border security bill I have ever seen move off of this floor or any Chamber on Capitol Hill. It is not enough to do that. The American people want results.

Here is the question: When we have a funding bill that comes before us in 2 weeks, there will be two versions of it, probably--a big omnibus spending bill, multiple minibus bills, a continuing resolution. Are my Republican colleagues going to agree to continue to fund the government that is at war with them? Are they going to fund the salary of Alejandro Mayorkas when Alejandro Mayorkas was just impeached, has been lying to them, and is endangering the American people with wide open borders?

That is the power of the purse that James Madison eloquently stated in Federalist No. 58 is our power to check the executive branch. That is why we have it. Are we going to defund any of that? Are we going to withhold that funding for a Secretary run rogue? Are we going to keep allowing funding to be used for the education of illegal aliens flooding our country, for the $53 million that was funded in New York?

I don't know if it is all State money, local money, Federal money, whatever. All I know is $53 million, with cards going out to illegal aliens--illegal aliens in schools, illegal aliens in hospitals, illegal aliens in emergency rooms. We are the ones left holding the bag, in Texas, in particular, but also New York, also Chicago.

Are we going to keep funding it? Every Republican should have to answer that question if you are going to go campaign on saying that you are trying to secure the border. Why are you funding this?

We know our Democratic colleagues don't give a rip, and they want borders to be wide open to flood the zone with people from all over the world. There is no other reason for it. There is no other defense for it. It is a total abuse of asylum laws, a total abuse of parole laws, a total abuse of exceptions to the rule that you are supposed to have operational control of the border. We all know that. Anyone who can read knows that.

However, our Democratic colleagues are totally fine with wide open borders, endangering the American people, endangering migrants, empowering cartels, empowering China.

What will Republicans do about it? Pass an impeachment bill? Good. Pass H.R. 2? Good. Funding the very mechanisms that are at war with the people of Texas and the American people? Bad.

Stop doing it. Stop allowing those funds to be abused. Stop funding the NGOs that are working in consort with the cartels and the people in Mexico to move people up all the way from the Darien Gap, all the way up through the Northern Triangle, through Mexico, into the United States. Stop funding them.

It is a fact. We see it. Reporters have embedded with them. We know it is true, and we are funding the United Nations $12.5 billion a year. $12.5 billion to the United Nations, this body, including Republicans, is voting to fund.

Why? That same United Nations is working with NGOs to move people up from the Darien Gap all the way through Mexico to here. That same United Nations is funding Hamas.

Everybody says, Chip, you must give $17 billion to Israel. Well, why would I vote for $17 billion for Israel while we are funding our enemies, their enemies? That is what we are doing. Stop doing that. Stop funding our own enemies.

We are funding the mechanisms of the Inflation Reduction Act. We are funding billions going to China. We are funding billions going to China through Iran and the sale of oil. We are funding all of those operations. We are empowering all of those operations that are acting in direct opposition to our well-being.

We are funding the implementation of the liquefied natural gas ban on exports. We are funding the implementation of the rule that is going to require that EVs be two-thirds of our fleet by 2032, which will kill the American family with higher priced cars, cars that

are less functional. We are funding that.

We are funding the FBI, which is out of control. We are funding all of the intelligence bureaucracy that is using the FISA laws designed to target our enemies to spy on the American people. We are funding that.

We are funding the EPA's natural gas tax and methane rule, destroying access to reliable energy. We are funding the EPA's power plant rules aimed at knocking off coal and natural gas power plants, making us wholly dependent on wind and sun for energy when you don't always have wind and sun.

We are funding the Internal Revenue Service, doling out billions in those IRA tax credits to the corporations I described before.

We are funding the World Health Organization, which is continuing to advance policies in direct conflict to our own well-being.

We are funding the United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestinian Refugees, which I described before as funding Hamas and funding our enemies. Totally fine. Don't worry about it. We will go campaign against Hamas and go campaign that Israel is great, but we are going to fund them.

That might be the one we don't fund because now everybody's head is exploding because even though some of us introduced legislation 3 years ago to stop it, and everybody ignored it, now they find out, lo and behold, those people were actually there. They are actually employed by the United Nations. They were actually working with Hamas to attack Israel.

October 7 exposed what we already knew but were too stupid, lazy, and unprincipled to actually do something about it instead of funding it.

We are funding a pro-China, anti-Israel United Nations Human Rights Council. Why? We are $34 trillion in debt, yet we are going to write that check. I literally don't understand it. It just makes no sense.

Oh, Chip, bipartisanship. You have to understand. You don't have the Senate. You don't have the White House. Just say no and go explain it to the American people. Hi, America. Do you think that we should borrow money that we don't have, indebting your children in the future, weakening the dollar, increasing inflation so we can fund our enemies and Israel's enemies while also wanting you to borrow more money to fund Israel to fight the enemies that you are funding?

That is what we do. That is what Republicans do. That is what Democrats do. Republicans at least try. That is the difference.

We are going to fund an ATF rule banning up to 40 million pistol braces. We complain about it, we talk about how bad it is, but we are going to fund it. We are going to fund the ATF rule massively expanding background checks.

We are going to fund the Department of Education's student loan cancellation scheme. Despite the Supreme Court ruling against them, we are going to keep funding it. We will keep writing the check.

We are going to fund the public health agencies like the CDC and the NIH and the FDA, all still unaccountable for shutting down the greatest economy in the history of the world, foisting $8 trillion of debt on us, sticking our kids in the corner of the classrooms, undermining our economic prosperity, destroying healthcare freedom. We are going to keep funding them. Hold a couple of hearings, walk away.

We are going to keep funding the Department of Veterans Affairs' vaccine mandate. I have a bill, but who cares if I have a bill? So what? Pass a bill. What, so I can go campaign that I had a bill? Who cares?

We should ban the ability to introduce legislation until we actually stop funding all this stuff, so people can't hide behind passing a bill, saying I did something when you didn't.

I passed a bill to fund a new position at the State Department that will go after and stop bad things from happening. No, you didn't. You funded another bureaucrat who hates you. You funded another bureaucrat who wants to undermine your way of life. That is what you just funded, and it costs more money.

When we vote in 2 weeks to fund the government--because people will say you have got to fund the government, can't shut the government down, all the usual stuff.

We are going to fund chief diversity officers at the Department of Defense and throughout government. We are going to fund abortion tourism. We are going to fund transgender surgeries.

Yeah. Your tax dollars. I am sorry. We have already established your borrowed dollars are going to go to fund all those things that you don't even want.

The vast majority of Americans don't want that stuff. We are going to do it. We are going to fund endless arrays of bureaucrats who are at odds with your way of life.

The Democratic Party wants to end as much as humanly possible western civilization as we know it. They want to undermine our way of life.

They are totally good with wide-open borders. They are totally good with endangering the American people, totally good with indebting our children and grandchildren with trillions of dollars of debt, totally good with advancing radical energy policies that will result in energy poverty and the destruction of human life as we know it, totally fine with unreliable power, totally fine empowering China and our enemies in the name of unicorn energy. They are totally fine with an empowered government being used against the American people, all of that stuff.

I will say this in response to the chattering class here on the Hill that are attacking Speaker Johnson, or for that matter, were attacking Speaker McCarthy for the dysfunction of the House.

This Republican-led House is the only institution in the world right now standing up and yelling stop, to quote William F. Buckley. We are the only institution in the world right now standing against a radical leftist agenda.

Yes, I gave a speech saying name one thing because I want to get victories. I want to stand up and stop the radical left.

Well, we did something. We impeached Alejandro Mayorkas, and that is good. We did something last year in passing H.R. 2, but we ought to hold the Senate accountable and make them come to the table with us and stop what this administration is doing with tyrannical executive overreach, endangering the American people with wide-open borders.

We ought to use the power of the purse to stop funding 1, 2, 10, 50 of the things that I just described. We should use that power of the purse in 2 weeks. We shouldn't run scared.

We should embrace the caps that were passed last year in the so- called Fiscal Responsibility Act. It wasn't as good as I wanted, but there are caps.

Why are we running away from the caps?

Why would we honor side deals that were done behind closed doors, which even the Democrat appropriations chairwoman acknowledged in the Rules Committee were literally not in the text of the FRA. In fact, she voted against the FRA because those side deals were not in the text.

Why would we walk away from that?

We have the ability to constrain spending by about $100 billion less than what the powers that be want to try to negotiate over in the Senate.

If we passed a continuing resolution for the rest of this year funding government, it would be at $1.564 trillion.

If we advance the minibus using the side deals that the Senate wants us to do, it will be $1.66 trillion. That is $100 billion we could save; $100 billion you take away from the bureaucracy that is at war with your way of life.

That is what Republicans should do, but the reason we won't, most likely--we will keep trying. The reason we won't is because of what I started this conversation with: the defense industrial complex.

Everybody in this town says we are going to die if we don't fund defense and if we don't have FISA out there or an abused FISA because the intel community is out there wanting to collect all the information under the Sun, including against American citizens.

It will be as Dwight Eisenhower said: ``In the councils of government, we must guard against the acquisition of unwarranted influence, whether sought or unsought, by the military-industrial complex.'' That was 1961. That was 63 years ago. He was correct.

The general that helped us defeat Nazi Germany, that led us to D-day who became President of the United States foretold 63 years ago what we are seeing right now--that we will hide behind defense, we will hide behind the intelligence community, and we will do that to indebt our children and our grandchildren

In the name of security, we will undermine our security. We will not have the money to defend ourselves, much less the world.

We will not be able to stand side by side with Israel because we are not going to have a country left to stand next to them.

We have the opportunity as Republicans to stand and thwart a radical left that wants to kill our country. We should do it. We should do it proudly. We should run on it. We should stop dancing.

We have caps in place. Use them.

We have policies we know we need to achieve. Fight for them. We won't get them all. We may only get a few.

For the love of everything holy, fight for them because the other side wants to take away your way of life and is destroying this country. That is what is happening.

We have a duty to stand up for the people who sent us here. I embrace what Jake Sherman is saying. I embrace what the Capitol Hill reporters are saying. When we stand up and yell stop, to stand athwart the massive power and scope of government that is strangling the prosperity and the well-being of the American people, I am proud of it.

On that point, I am proud of what we have been doing under both Speakers this Congress because we have been having the debate that needs to be had on this side of the aisle. We have been having the debate the American people want us to have.

Unfortunately, we get no help from our colleagues on the other side of the aisle who are beholden to a radical left vision while they just allow America to slip through their fingers like sand--or our fingers-- while we watch it unfold.

I hope that when we come back from this recess, we will take up the mantle, stand athwart the tyranny of the radical left, band together, stop spending money we don't have, stop funding the tyranny against our way of life, stop allowing open borders, stop allowing our streets to be dangerous, stop funding wars without a mission with endless borrowing, stop doing everything we campaigned against.

Every single person that campaigned on this side of the aisle campaigned against those things. Stop continuing them. That is our duty. That is our calling. If we do that, we might be able to pass down this country to our kids and our grandkids.

When our country turns 250 years old in just over 2 years, are we going to be able to look at them and say that they have inherited a free country?

When those 56 men walked out of Independence Hall, signing their death warrant, we praise that every July Fourth. Are we going to honor it, or are we just going to use it as a parade symbol on July Fourth?

Are we going to honor the lives of the men that stormed the beaches at Normandy that were led by Dwight Eisenhower who foretold what we are now doing with the defense industrial complex?

Are we going to stand up and stop spending money we don't have and preserve liberty?

Are we going to do that, or are we just going to talk about them every June 6; about how great it was that they stormed the beach and walked into a wall of bullets?

We can't go around and help the world if this country isn't strong.

I keep hearing Ronald Reagan being raised up. Oh, look. He went over and stood in front of the Berlin Wall. You bet he did.

Yes, we had funded activities around the world in Afghanistan and otherwise.

First of all, we didn't have a hundred percent debt-to-GDP which we do now. We weren't $34 trillion in debt.

Second of all, and importantly, peace through strength meant peace through strength. Peace through strength. Not peace through endless wars, not peace through spying on Americans in the name of intelligence gathering against your enemies, not peace through unlimited borrowing, making our country financially insolvent. That is not what that meant.

Too many people in this town are totally fine hiding behind defense and hiding behind intelligence in order to undermine our well-being as a country in the false name of security. We should stop that. We should make this country secure by actually doing our job.

Mr. Speaker, I yield back the balance of my time and give the floor to my colleague from Texas (Mr. Green).

Mr. Speaker, I get no great joy being on the floor of the House of Representatives and talking about something as important and solemn as the removal of a Secretary of one of our Departments, particularly one as important as the Department that is in charge of homeland security. This is an individual who was appointed and then confirmed by the United States Senate. Impeachment is one of the highest charges we have as Members of the United States House of Representatives.

The charge by my colleagues on the other side of the aisle, particularly the ranking member on the Rules Committee, that this is a political exercise or that there are individuals taking ``orders'' from former President Trump, I think indicates the extent to which my colleagues on the other side of the aisle desperately want to make this political.

My colleagues on the other side of the aisle desperately want to take the abject and total failure of Democrat leadership on the southern border, resulting in death and destruction of the American people, the undermining of economic activity, the death of our children, fentanyl pouring into schools, ranchers who are getting absolutely decimated, the empowerment of cartels, and the empowerment of China.

This has all happened at record levels, record numbers, and my colleagues on the other side of the aisle know this. Therefore, they are desperately trying to deflect, deflect to legislation that was political and never had a chance to move from the Senate to the House, never had a chance to move, but they want to be able to deflect. They want to deflect an entire conversation about the failures of President Biden and the failures of Secretary Mayorkas to secure the border by not having a serious conversation about why we would be bringing Articles of Impeachment against a sitting Secretary.

The reason is simple: The Secretary of Homeland Security has blatantly ignored the laws of the United States he is charged to faithfully execute.

He has done so with reckless abandon. He has done so in a way that has

led directly to the death of American citizens and to the death of the very migrants that the Secretary suggests they want to try to help.

A thousand migrants along the southwest border are dead, and 53 migrants died in a tractor-trailer in San Antonio last year in the district I represent. Mr. Speaker, 75,000 Americans died from fentanyl poisoning last year.

These numbers are off the charts, at levels we have never seen before, and they are the direct result of the policies enacted by the Biden administration but very specifically by the Secretary of Homeland Security. It is his leadership of that Department that has led to an abject failure of the Department to secure the border.

It is not the line men and women of the Border Patrol or ICE who are out there trying to do their jobs. They are being denied the ability to do their jobs because the Secretary won't let them. The Secretary has turned them into processing machines. He has done so intentionally to flood the zone, and they basically acknowledge that.

He has turned the law upside down. The basic law requiring that they have operational control of the border, that we stop the flow, that you have to have papers to come to the United States has been turned upside down.

In its place, the administration, and specifically Secretary Mayorkas, has used exceptions to swallow the rule: exceptions for asylum, exceptions under parole that are supposed to be on a case-by- case basis, based on our benevolence as human beings to try to help people, a bipartisan desire to do so. We have been made to swallow the rule of actual border security. As a result, the numbers have been astounding.

The key considerations, of course, are the types of individuals that are coming into the United States. We are not talking about some workers who want to go from Nuevo Laredo to Laredo or Juarez to El Paso. We are talking about dangerous individuals from all over the globe, including 331 that have been encountered that are associated with terrorist organizations under this administration, under Mayorkas' watch, which compares to 11 under President Trump.

They say: Well, aren't they doing their job? They encountered them. No. Those numbers indicate who we are finding, not the 50,000 a month or so got-aways that are pouring into the United States.

Now we see cops being beaten in the streets of New York by people who are here illegally walking out of the court with no bail and flicking off the American people.

We have a woman being dragged out of a parking garage in New York by migrant gangs, dragged through the streets of New York.

We have all sorts of danger to the American people, people like a cheerleader getting killed in Texas by somebody here illegally and an illegal who posed as an unaccompanied child who lived with a family in Florida and then killed the family.

That is what we have happening in the United States of America, and it is directly a consequence of a Secretary of Homeland Security who is failing to secure the homeland as he is charged to do when he takes an oath to fulfill his duty to carry out the laws of the United States.

If the Attorney General just went out and ordered all the United States attorneys and prosecutors and assistant U.S. attorneys to stop enforcing the law, allow reckless abandon, he should be impeached. That is, in fact, a high crime and misdemeanor.

This is where I disagree with my colleagues on the other side of the aisle and a few, I think, on my side of the aisle, this notion of high crimes and misdemeanors and what it includes or does not include. It most certainly includes officials in the administration, in the executive branch, who are completely refusing to carry out their duty. Literally, his job is to secure the homeland, and he is refusing to do it.

The fact of the matter is, some of my colleagues have concerns about issues of maladministration and so forth. If you believe this is maladministration--and I do not. I think it goes beyond maladministration. It is the purposeful, willing ignoring of the law to endanger the American people. It goes beyond maladministration.

Even if you accept the notion that it is maladministration, I keep hearing people say: Well, the Founders rejected maladministration.

The fact of the matter is Colonel Mason put it forward. Mr. Gerry put it forward, seconded it. Mr. Madison raised a concern. He said the term would be equivalent to a tenure during pleasure of the Senate.

There was some debate. Gouverneur Morris, Colonel Mason withdrew maladministration. There was no vote. There was no affirmative rejection of it. There was a debate. They withdrew. Instead, in its place, he substituted--the language was not there at the time--other high crimes and misdemeanors.

Now, you go back and say: Well, what does that mean? Well, I wasn't there. You can go back and look. There are debates about what it meant.

One thing is, British common law had developed a definition of high crimes and misdemeanors that included but was not limited to maladministration.

Now, this is a debate worthy of academic debate, but the fact is, it is up to us. There are no elements of the crime in the Constitution. There is no specific requirement that there be a violation of statute. There is no mens rea in the Constitution. It is for us and us alone to determine.

When the Secretary violates his duty to the Constitution, violates his oath to defend the people of the United States and secure the homeland, then it is incumbent upon this body to call out and reject that Secretary--in this case, that Secretary being Secretary Mayorkas.

There are other tools at our disposal, but there are not many. We have the power of the purse. We should use it. That is a speech for another time.

One last point on this notion that somehow by rejecting the bill that the Senate was debating and that, by the way, has not been sent to us-- the Senate is merely debating it. They are not even debating it yet. They haven't even proceeded to it yet. They haven't even gotten past cloture on proceeding to it yet.

Why? Because it is fundamentally flawed. The bill does not do what my colleagues on the other side of the aisle are suggesting it does.

I am sorry. You are getting punched in the head 10 times. My colleagues on the other side of the aisle want to say: Well, sorry. We will just start punching you in the head five times. Why won't you take that half a loaf?

I am sorry. That is not how this works. That is not what we are here to do. We are actually here to stop the flow.

That bill was flawed. It would have set essentially in permanent stone, effectively, mass migration. It has 250,000 visas and 250,000 work permits.

It ensconces alternatives to detention as part of how the releases would work for asylum claims. It would spend $4 billion to hire up new asylum officers by this administration, by this Secretary, who has the power right now to stop this flow but refuses to use it.

The President of the United States could use 212(f) right now and stop the flow. The Secretary could apply the laws the way they are supposed to be applied with respect to asylum and parole. He could stop it right now but refuses to do so.

We are here to defend the people of the United States who don't have a voice. We are here to stand up for the forgotten men and women of this country who are tired of getting rolled over.

That is why we are here, and the Secretary of Homeland Security deserves to be held accountable. I rise in support.

Madam Speaker, I appreciate the remarks of the gentleman talking about the state of affairs. We disagree on a number of policies but might actually share some sentiment.

I, too, believe that we have significant issues we need to deal with right now with respect to the economy, the state of affairs for American families, hardworking Americans who are getting left behind, Americans who are not of the belief that they can actually achieve the American Dream. We are raising a generation--or now two--who do not believe they will be able to live in an America stronger than the one they have inherited from their parents.

That is true. I think the question here is: What is actually the culprit?

I think it is worthy to have debate about tax policy and the implications of taxes on corporations and families. Where do you spread the burden?

My Democratic colleagues are too often mesmerized by this attack on trickle down and corporate tax rates, and somehow that is blowing a hole into the revenue of the United States Government, which is simply not true.

In 2022, the United States Government brought in about 19.6 percent of GDP in terms of revenue to the Treasury. That represented the third highest mark in American history--or among the three highest marks--at a level seen only right after World War II and the end of the dot-com boom and the end of the nineties.

Now, why do I bring that up? Because my Democratic colleagues refuse to acknowledge that we are, in fact, bringing in massive amounts of revenue.

Now, where I might agree is maybe that revenue needs to be allocated slightly differently in terms of the impact on corporations or the wealthy or middle class. We can have those debates, but we are bringing in massive amounts of revenue.

I think the question here really is: What is making it difficult for American families to live? I think we all agree it is really difficult right now for an American family to live. I know my family feels it. I know my friends' families feel it. They are trying to figure out how to live, how to afford anything: whether they can send their kids to school; whether they can pay for healthcare.

I would suggest, and my Democratic colleagues would disagree, but I think most of my Republican colleagues would agree, the fundamental problem is that we have inserted the government into every aspect of our life.

Literally, every stinking thing we do the government has a hand. It is regulating us to death, choking out every bit of entrepreneurial spirit, every bit of the ability to get through the day without having to figure out what regulation or what law, what rule you have to abide by.

I can't even get in my car and figure out how to turn something on without figuring out some safety device. I can't fix the windshield without having to fix some regulatory thing that is allegedly there to make me safer that makes the car twice as expensive.

We are making ourselves absolutely incapable of achieving the American Dream. We are doing it to ourselves. That is what is happening. Yet, we just keep doing it over and over again.

This is, I think, the question of the moment: What are we going to do to restore the American Dream for the American people?

We, the Representatives, here in the House of Representatives, the people's House, what are we going to do?

Today wasn't the best day on the political scoreboard for Republicans. I am not going to lie. We spent a day, we came down here, we had a vote on impeaching Alejandro Mayorkas. It was a tie. We had to pull it down.

Then we had to vote on Israel, which was a suspension of the rules that fell short of the votes necessary to move on, so we are going to have to address all these things again.

But there is a bigger issue at play right now. There is something much more important going on. This town has been badly broken. This swamp that President Trump ran against has been consuming any ability for representation, for a government to actually serve the people.

What we have instead is effectively a bipartisan uniparty for decades now that has been driven almost entirely by spending massive amounts of money for government programs and for foreign aid, and for, most importantly, the defense complex, the defense world, driven heavily by war.

We have done that, and we have been messing around with tax policy.

What else? We pass a bill here and there; we do something here and there.

The fact is this whole system has been focused for entirely too long on spending other people's money, borrowing money, to try to buy votes with programs or to use the threat and the fear of war or supposedly our need to stand with some other country. All of that has been used as a political weapon every year to spend your money and spend us into oblivion and grow government and not do the things we say we will do otherwise.

What do I mean by all of that?

For the bulk of this entire century, we have been at war in some form or fashion. Not a declared war. We have had a couple of authorizations of the use of military force. We haven't declared war formally, but we have nevertheless been effectively at war for the bulk of the 21st century.

We spent $7 trillion, $8 trillion. We lost almost 10,000 Americans. We have had 75,000, 80,000 injuries. That is not talking about post- traumatic stress. That is not talking about the hundreds of billions of dollars we just set aside for burn pits. We have ongoing conflict right now.

We just had the President of the United States engaging in Syria and Iraq because we have troops in Syria and Iraq getting fired upon, and nobody in America knows why. Shouldn't this body speak to that? Shouldn't this body do something about that?

We are sitting back watching the President of the United States using powers under the Constitution to carry out defense of our men and women in uniform, which everybody in this Chamber with half a brain and heart wants to see us defend our men and women in uniform, but we are doing it because they are over there in a constant perpetuation of whatever this body did 20 years ago to sign an authorization of the use of military force for things that don't even exist now.

Saddam Hussein is dead. What the hell are we doing? When is this body going to actually stand up and decide what we are going to actually do and mean it?

Right now, today, we had to vote on whether or not we are going to fund Israel. I am a Christian. Israel is at the epicenter of my faith and the epicenter of most people in this world's faith. I have Jewish friends who are absolutely devastated about what happened in Israel on October 7. Of course we must and should stand alongside Israel, because the attack against them isn't just an attack against Israel, not just an attack against our ally. It is an attack against our way of life in western civilization, nothing less. Of course we should stand by Israel.

I voted to fund Israel in November, $14.3 billion. Today I voted ``no.'' I did not want to vote ``no'' with respect to a vote about standing alongside our brothers and sisters in Israel, but the people I represent at home, the American family trying to get by, are sick and tired of this town continuing to do the same thing over and over again. Pick a conflict, fund it; pick another conflict, fund it. Send our men and women in uniform overseas, fund it, with money we don't have.

We are not passing war bonds. We are not limiting sugar. We are just rolling around acting like nothing is actually happening, while we have $34.2 trillion of debt, and it is adding up something like $80,000 a second. What are we doing?

We should pay for that. Now it is not $14 billion but $17.6 billion. We have loads of slush funds around this town just sitting there, we could go grab and pay for it. Our Democratic colleagues refuse to do it. Republican colleagues tried to do it. Now we are walking away from that. I disagree. I disagree with walking away from that just so we can try to send a political message over to the Senate and embarrass Schumer and embarrass Biden. I think we should actually mean it when we say we should pay for supplemental spending. I don't just mean it for Israel. I mean it for Ukraine.

Senate Democrats, with a handful of Republicans, tried to just jam the American people with a $118 billion monstrosity that would fund Ukraine $60 billion; fund Taiwan; fund Israel at $17.6 billion; and fund, allegedly, border security to the tune of $20 billion. That bill is falling apart in the Senate because it doesn't actually secure the border.

Most Americans are sick and damn tired of getting sold a bill of goods, a bill that wouldn't secure the border that costs them $120 billion that is not paid for.

God bless, I am not afraid to criticize my friends on this side of the aisle. Republicans united, at least here, to tell the American people the truth about the bill they are trying to jam through in the Senate, and it looks like it is dead.

Going back to my original point, this town operates on autopilot, spending money to fund wars, spending money to fund government, to fund programs, and if you dare challenge that, the establishment bites back. That is what was happening in the Senate. That is what was happening with Mitch McConnell. That is what is happening with the cadre of people in this town who desperately want that $60 billion funding for Ukraine. It is not about the border.

They head pat people and say: We will give you some crumbs on the border; give us our $60 billion for Ukraine. We will go out, thump our chest, put a blue and yellow flag pin on our lapel, say we love people, and then we are going to go out and keep the war machine going. That is the truth.

Let's be very clear. I love Israel. If you talk to Israelis, they will tell you a part of our annual $4 billion that we send to Israel is a part of the same operation. That $4 billion, we will spend that money, it will come back over here to defense contractors to keep doing what they do.

Are they getting the right planes? Are they getting the right supplies? Is it the right cost? Is Israel able to defend itself without the United States, or is that $4 billion annual MOU, which I support-- maybe that is counterproductive. Maybe we want Israel to be standalone over there. When are we going to do something different? When are we going to peel all of this back?

I would posit, to great credit to my Republican colleagues right now, we are wrestling with changing this town. That is why it is messy.

I am not afraid to criticize colleagues on both sides of the aisle, including my Republican colleagues, like I said. Right now, I am actually proud of a Republican Conference that is struggling to try to find a way to stop an out-of-control executive branch led by President Biden and my Democratic colleagues, trying to save this country, trying to step up and protect American families, trying to secure the border of the United States, trying to find a way to limit spending, trying to find a way to stand with Israel, but to do it responsibly.

At every damn turn, my Democratic colleagues are trying to thwart us, because they are more interested in political posturing than figuring out how to stand up for the hardworking men and women of this country. They are more interested in advancing a radical leftist agenda that is advancing their crazy climate agenda, advancing wide open borders, advancing open streets where criminals are running lawless, judges in place that won't prosecute criminals, cops that are getting persecuted, walking away from Israel, and undermining Israel's sovereignty.

That is the face of the Democratic Party: open borders, dangerous streets, undermining the American family, forced transgender surgeries, girls in boy bathrooms, boys swimming against girls in swim meets. It is a radical leftist Democratic Party trying to destroy the America we know, western civilization, and our way of life on a daily basis.

Republicans are trying to stand to thwart that, with a bare minimum majority, and it is messy. That part is okay.

The question here is what are we doing now as Republicans? We cannot lose sight of the unity we have as Republicans that there is a way to secure border, we know what it is, we are going to stand up for it, and we are going to fight for it. We are going to keep fighting for it now. We are going to fight for it in this Congress. We are going to fight for it through the elections. We are going to fight for it next year when, Lord willing, there will be a Republican President.

No, we are not just going to pass the buck and say that any President can walk in and secure the border. I saw former President Trump make an allegation earlier today on one of his social media posts that all a President has to do is declare the border is closed and it is closed. With all due respect, that didn't happen in 2017, 2018, 2019, and 2020. There were millions of people who came into the United States during those 4 years.

What did happen was that that administration, led by the President, led by people who believe in America, led by strong leaders at DHS, worked to secure the border. They worked to get those numbers down, and they worked to force Mexico to hold people in place with the migrant protection protocols.

Now, we have got a job here as Republicans. Are we going to stand up and pass legislation to force this administration to do its job and to set the stage for a future administration to do its job?

There are loopholes in the law. I have many Republicans colleagues who will go out and say it is fine; we will just let the President do it. No. We have many things we need to fix in the law: asylum reform, parole reform, catch and release.

Our job is to stand up and fight and not walk away from what we have accomplished. This whole debate has been on our side of the field, which is border security. We are not talking about amnesty. We are not talking about wild-eyed future flowing immigration. We are talking about border security. That is precisely where the American people want us to be. That is precisely where we ought to be. We just need to finish the job.

You are not going to get solutions in this town with gangs of eight coming out of the Senate. All of these backroom deals that get cooked up and dropped on a weekend always fail, every time.

They come through the hard work of doing the process. Let's rewind the clock to last year for a second. People criticized the debate over the Speaker. We had a fight over the Speaker a little

over a year ago, and then we started working. We started working to pass bills through regular order, with single subject, with 72 hours to review it, and with amendments in committee.

Guess what. We passed the best border security bill that has ever been passed, and it was focused on border security and it would work. We passed the best National Defense Authorization Act, and it undid all of the woke nonsense that is destroying the military and refocused it on its mission. We passed caps to spending. Not what I wanted. But through Limit, Save, Grow, we set the standard, and we ended up working out a deal that Democrats signed onto that put caps in place.

We passed seven appropriations bills off of this floor and sent them to the Senate. We passed three other appropriations bills out of committee and to the floor. We had two others ready to go. We moved the ball forward. We processed 1,100 amendments. We were doing what we should do and it created unity.

That is the process we must go back to. For the last 3 months, we have been passing legislation through suspension of the rules, jamming through big bills for political points, and that is when you fail. That is when things fall apart.

The eyes of the world and the eyes of the American people are now on this place. There is no more hiding. There is no more cooking up backroom deals. The deals will be exposed, and the truth will come out. The bills that say they secure the border but don't will be exposed, as the one in the Senate just was. The big spending bills, the eyes of the world will see.

People are capable of making a decision. They are able to look up and say: You know what? I love Israel. I want Israel to wipe Hamas off the face of the planet, but I am not comfortable with giving them another $17.6 billion unpaid for, borrowed, while our border is wide open, exposed to terrorists coming across, while the Democrat administration, funded by our own body, is funding UNRWA and the United Nations, giving dollars that are going to the Palestinian authority and Hamas. We are funding the enemies of our allies, while Secretary Blinken is going to Israel and going around the world and undermining Netanyahu, undermining the domestic tranquility of Israel, purposefully.

All of that is going on, and we are going around saying: Oh, we must pass this check, we must give them money for munitions. Meanwhile, our own administration is slow-walking the munitions getting from America to Israel.

The American people get the joke. They see what is happening, and that is what you are seeing unfold on the House floor, Madam Speaker. People don't know what to do. The normal machinery in this place was designed to move large bills driven heavily by lobbyists, driven mainly by defense spending and some negotiation of defense versus nondefense in order to get a massive, bloated bill that would buy votes in November. That has been the MO of the United States House for as long as I can remember.

The gig is up. The American people are on to it. The American people are getting tired of being taken for a ride. They want us to actually do what we said we would do. They want us to actually secure the border. They want us to actually cut spending. Yes, they want us to stand with Israel, but they don't want us to write blank checks. This is not that hard.

Our colleagues in the Senate want to jam us here in the House. Democrat colleagues and some Republican colleagues in the Senate want to send over now with their border effort--not to secure the border but border political effort--very specifically designed as cover for our Democratic colleagues to have some reason to be able to run in November and say that it is Republicans' fault that the borders are wide open and not President Biden's.

Our Senate colleagues want to send to us now a Ukraine package with Israel. So for all of the viewers at home, what is happening is that we are responding by saying: Well, we are going to jump in front of that by sending a clean Israel bill, so we can separate Ukraine.

None of this is the regular order that the American people would expect. Put a bill on the floor, offer amendments, and let it rise or fall. Put Israel on the floor, put an amendment that would pay for it, and see what happens. Put an amendment on it that would cut UNRWA funding because why are we funding Israel while we are also funding their enemies?

Why don't we just put that on the floor with amendments and see what happens?

How about FISA?

Do all you Americans out there love being spied on?

Let's put FISA on the floor, let's put four or five amendments on it, and see what happens.

See if the American people want us to have warrants when people's information is being looked at.

Put the bills on the floor.

Ukraine, put the bill on the floor. Make a decision: yes or no, up or down.

Are we going to fund it?

Where are we getting $60 billion?

Are we just going to print it?

Do you want to know why your inflation is up, Madam Speaker?

Put it on the floor. Have a vote.

Madam Speaker, $60 billion. What is the mission?

What are we going to get out of it?

What are the limits?

Are the oligarchs getting it?

Are we paying for pensions?

Is it lethal aid?

Are we expecting to get Crimea and Donbas back, or are we expecting just to have a sovereign nation and Russians to be pushed back out?

Is that our call?

Do the American people want to spend their treasure?

Seriously. This is the question, and yet today we did it with Israel.

Why?

It is because we love Israel. Israel holds a special place in our heart. They are our friends and our allies, but, importantly, we all get the truth, it is our faith. We don't want to see Israel attacked.

Many of my colleagues have a Biblical belief that they have to stand by Israel. I do, too. I think it is important, but if we don't have rules, then we lose our own country. There will be no America to stand with Israel if we don't have sovereignty and we have open borders and terrorists coming in who are undermining our security.

There will be no America to stand with Israel if we are bankrupt and $34 trillion in debt and we are spending money we don't have even if it is for Israel. There have to be some rules. There have to be.

We go home, and we campaign we are going to cut spending, but we don't do it. We are going to vote in 3 weeks allegedly on omnibus or minibus spending bills. What that means is a big package of bills all brought over from the Senate with maybe some policy changes for the next 6 months, I doubt much, that spends $30 billion more than Nancy Pelosi's bloated spending levels that we all campaigned against.

How is that changing Washington or cutting spending or draining the swamp or fiscal responsibility or balancing the budget?

It is none of those things. It is none.

Yet my colleagues will run on passing balanced budget amendments which will not happen. We are going to go spend $17 billion and throw that out there to go fund Israel because they are our friend. I agree, but we are going to do that unpaid for.

So we just racked up another $17 billion on top of the $13 billion we appropriated last November for hurricanes and emergency relief, and now they ask for $60 billion for Ukraine.

When is that madness going to stop?

Meanwhile, my people in Texas are saying: When is the border going to get secure?

They want to know when the fentanyl is going to stop pouring into their communities and when migrants are not going to be walking through the streets grabbing people. An MS-13 gang member is grabbing young women and dragging them out of bathrooms. They killed a young woman, and a mom is saying: Where are you, America?

Do we not have a duty to defend this country?

Nevertheless, we are not going to do that.

We are going to vote to fund the government in 3 weeks that leaves this country exposed to criminals, to terrorists, to cartels, and to fentanyl. We are going to do it, Madam Speaker, you

watch. A bipartisan, uniparty bill will get voted off of this floor that does not a damn thing to fundamentally alter what is happening at the border while Texas takes it on the chin.

Why should Texans pay their Federal taxes? Why?

Why should Texans give a rip about what we do in this body when it is all against them? It is all against us as Texans?

For that matter, why should anybody pay taxes?

The rule of law matters if you want people to follow it. If we are printing money, destroying the dollar, and destroying the economy and bloating the government in hiring and funding bureaucrats to undermine your liberty to pass regulations to take away your happiness and undermine your ability to prosper, you are printing money and borrowing money to do that, what is the point of paying your taxes?

It hurts to write that check. It hurts to lose that money to go to the Federal Government, but if the Federal Government is just going to spend money anyway, why do Americans believe that they have a duty to go pay their taxes?

So we pay $2 trillion in taxes but borrow $2 trillion or pay $4 trillion in taxes but borrow $4 trillion?

That is crazy. I have got some colleagues who are waiting to come out on the floor, so I am going to in a few minutes yield.

Madam Speaker, here is the thing. This country is not done yet, but it is getting damn close. That is where we are. We cannot be a free and secure country if we are $34 trillion in debt and bleeding $2 trillion a year.

We cannot be a free, secure, and sovereign nation if our borders are wide open, terrorists are coming in, cartels are coming in, and fentanyl is pouring in.

We cannot be a free, secure, and sovereign nation if we are printing money to fund foreign conflicts that we don't have an actual vested interest in or if we do we are not acting like it, when we never declared war and we never really specifically authorized the force and we continue to fund it so that the machine in this godforsaken town can keep making money.

Why are the seven wealthiest counties in America right here?

We are printing money and funding it.

Three-quarters of the cars I drive by in this town are a hell of a lot nicer than any of the cars that I have got or that any of the hardworking people whom I represent have because we are printing money and funding this place to stick it to the American people every single day.

This is what the American people are on to. They are sick of the same game. They are sick of bills that come to this floor and are designed for a political purpose rather than to achieve an end that is constitutional, that is paid for, and that is responsible.

I was spending a lot of time in the last month out on the campaign trail, and my friend, the Governor of Florida, Governor DeSantis, would talk about his time in service in the United States Navy, but, more importantly, he would talk about when flying into Ronald Reagan National Airport looking out of the left side of the plane and seeing the Washington Monument, the United States Capitol, the Lincoln Memorial, the Jefferson Memorial, and the White House, and all of these monuments to our ideals, who we are as a people, the inspiring white buildings. Nevertheless, then he would point out that if you look out of the right side of the plane, Madam Speaker, when you are coming in that northern route down the Potomac River, you see a whole bunch of other monuments, evenly distributed, small, and all identical of the 400,000 men and women who are buried there having fought under that flag, the American flag, the 13 stripes and the 50 stars.

When we come here on this floor, all 400,000 of them, all of the hundreds of thousands buried around this country, all of those who have given the last full measure of devotion for something bigger than themselves, we carry that burden. We have to actually do the hard work of representation.

That does not mean flying here on Monday for a fly-in vote, having a dinner with some meaningless votes, getting up on Tuesday and Wednesday to do a series of preprogrammed votes for political purposes, and then flying out Thursday to go do a damn fundraiser back home.

That is what we do.

We have a responsibility to actually finish the work that those 400,000 started, that George Washington called ``the sacred fire of liberty.''

Liberty depends on us, though, and we are not going to be free if we are mortgaging our future.

We are not going to be free if we come down here and we are forced to choose to stand by our friend Israel or print more money.

That was the choice I was given. That is not a choice. That is not a choice we have to make; we choose to make it. We choose to take the easy path. We choose to fail to do our job and to actually follow some rules that will keep us somewhere close to the straight and narrow of caring for the legacy of those who came before us.

The hardworking American family out there today, right now struggling to get by, is looking to us to fix it.

It is not acceptable for a migrant to come into this country illegally, beat a cop in New York, get sent out on no bail, flick off the American people. That will destroy our country more than anything else.

That is not acceptable. It is not acceptable, and we have to end it, or we won't have a country left.

We have to stop spending money we don't have. We have to. It is not hyperbole. You can't make a good decision here about balancing interests if you just write blank checks. You can't do it.

One of my strong Jewish friends out in conservative radio was pointing out we are $34 trillion in debt--hell, $300 trillion in debt if you look at the entire Fed's balance sheet and everything that we have going on. What is $17 billion? That is exactly right, except I have to say it is exactly wrong, or we will never change this place.

I came here and said I wouldn't vote for unpaid-for supplemental spending, and even if my best friend is out there getting hurt, I have to find a way to do it the right way, or we are going to lose this country. Then, as I said, there will be no America left to stand with Israel. There will be no America left for some people to go to, no America left for migrants to seek to come to, to live a better life because the rule of law will be gone. The fiscal health of our country will be gone. The American Dream will be unattainable.

I think we can choose a different path, and I think Republicans are actually in the process of choosing a different path right now by challenging the status quo of this town that our Democratic colleagues want to continue to exploit to grow government and to regulate and to have open borders and to have our streets wide open. Republicans are standing athwart that, and right now is the opportunity for Republicans to make good on what we have been saying for my entire life. That is that the American Dream depends on what we do here to ensure that the Federal Government is not meddling in the lives of the American people, undermining their ability to prosper, undermining the American economy, making us less secure, empowering our enemies, emboldening those who want to do us harm, undermining Western civilization.

We can stop that. We can, in fact, as William Buckley said, stand athwart history yelling stop. The progressive movement that is designed to undermine our very way of life needs to end right now, and it ends by Republicans standing up on the wall and saying no.

That is our calling. That is what we need to do. If we do that and if we unite, then we will actually have the majority that we tend to try to buy with single votes on the House floor when, instead, you earn them by doing what we are supposed to do under the Constitution.

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

Mr. Speaker, I rise today to recognize Fort Martin Scott, one of the early United States Army forts established in the State of Texas.

I have the privilege of representing the historic town of Fredericksburg in the scenic Texas Hill Country. When the German immigrants arrived in Fredericksburg in the 1840s, they faced hardships including rocky soil, wild animals, disease, and skirmishes with Indians. John O. Meusebach, a leader of the settlers, secured a treaty with the Comanche Indians in 1847. A tenuous peace ensued, with occasional clashes between Indians and settlers. After Texas officially joined the United States of America as the twenty-eighth state in the union, she became eligible for military aid from the United States Army.

In March 1848, the Second Texas Legislature adopted a resolution in favor of establishing a line of Army posts between the Red River and the Rio Grande, in addition to measures that would preserve friendly relations between the Indian tribes and the people of Texas. Captain Seth Eastman, commander of Companies D and H, First Regiment of U.S. Infantry, arrived two miles below Fredericksburg on the bank of Barons Creek later that year. Captain Eastman named the location ``Camp Houston near Fredericksburgh.'' On December 28, 1849, Camp Houston was officially designated as ``Fort Martin Scott.''

The U.S. 8th Infantry Regiment was headquartered at Fort Martin Scott until December 1853. The Fort remained on official Army maps throughout the American Civil War. The Texas Rangers also utilized this site throughout our great State's history. Today, Fort Martin Scott adjoins the Texas Rangers Heritage Center on U.S. Highway 290.