Floor Statements

Madam Chair, I have an amendment at the desk.

Madam Chair, the amendment that I have offered increases funding for the inspector general by $20 million for an Office of the Special Inspector General for Ukraine Assistance, if authorized, to enhance the oversight and accountability measures for funds appropriated for Ukraine, increasing the inspector general by $20 million.

Over the last year and half, Congress has appropriated approximately $113 billion in response to Russia's invasion of Ukraine.

I am one of these individuals that believes that we did have agreements with Ukraine, and we have got to recognize those from the mid-1990s when we asked them to denuclearize and work with our partners in Eastern Europe.

I also don't believe that we ought to be just providing an endless supply of funds to Ukraine with no clear mission, with no clear accountability of the dollars, and without clear accountability of whether NATO and our European allies are upholding their end of the bargain.

This is a step to try to rectify at least one part of that: by making sure there is a fully empowered inspector general, to make sure that the information that we have is complete, and that we have a full understanding of every dollar that has already been appropriated and might be appropriated in the future, and to make sure that we are tracking it to the level that is necessary.

There have been a number of different issues that we have identified in the past. For example, if you look at other conflicts like Afghanistan, the lead for the Special Inspector General for Afghanistan found at least $19 billion in U.S. taxpayer funds sent to Afghanistan was lost to waste, fraud, and abuse from 2002 to 2020.

It is critically important that we track this and follow it and understand it.

Madam Chair, I reserve the balance of my time.

Madam Chair, I thank the gentlewoman for her comments, and I think we have a general agreement on what we are trying to accomplish.

I would note that in the NDAA we passed an authorization for this, and this would be the appropriation necessary to carry it out. That was the desire of our efforts to try to put a birds-eye view on this across agencies to ensure that dollars are being spent the way they are supposed to.

Madam Chair, I yield 1\1/2\ minutes to the gentleman from Arkansas (Mr. Womack).

Madam Chair, may I inquire how much time is remaining.

Madam Chair, I yield 1\1/2\ minutes to the gentlewoman from Indiana (Mrs. Spartz).

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

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

Madam Chair, the amendment I am offering reduces the salary of Cyrus Salazar, the director of the Department of Defense's Office for Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion to $1. You might ask why we would do that.

It is a power that we have in the House of Representatives under the Holman rule to try to restrain the executive branch, both in terms of expense, dollars and how they are being used, and in terms of what they are being used for.

The American people are frankly getting a little tired of a Department of Defense that is being taken far too often off mission, I hear it all the time. I hear it from veterans. I hear it from Active- Duty servicemembers. I hear it from recruits. With recruiting numbers at low levels, with morale at questionable levels, we need to re- instill in our military a crystal clear focus on mission first.

Importantly, when we are--to use the gentlewoman's term, which I take to heart--pinching pennies and trying to find dollars, we need to stop racking up $33 trillion in debt when we can't even figure out how to fund the salaries of our rank-and-file men and women in uniform at the level that we might need to when we are dealing with issues of increasing health costs, when we are dealing with issues of having a fully armed military with the latest and greatest technology to defeat China.

It would seem questionable that, for example, we would have positions like the following: The Air Force is looking for a supervisory Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion accessibility officer in Arlington, Virginia, that will pay between $155,700 to $183,500 per year.

Another one, the Air Force is looking for a Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion manager to work at Andrews Air Force Base in Maryland, that pays between $94,199 to $122,459 per year. There is another position in Alaska. There is another position in Alabama. I could go down the list, and this is the top of that pyramid.

What we are trying to say is we shouldn't do this. We need to stop this. We need to stop diverting the mission of the military, which is a laudable goal of ensuring you got a workforce that is representative of the population of this country. You don't need an entire bureaucracy within the Pentagon to do it that is then perpetuating a lot of divisive policies.

For example, West Point Academy slides told cadets that ``whiteness'' is ``a location of structural advantage, of race privilege,'' is ``a standpoint or place from which White people look at themselves and the rest of society,'' and ``refers to a set of cultural practices that are usually unmarked and unnamed.''

There is another, Kelisa Wing, former chief diversity officer at DOD's schools. ``I'm so exhausted at these White folx in these PD [professional development] sessions. This lady actually had the CAUdacity to say that Black people can be racist too.''

This is not the kind of thing that should be going on at the United States military and the Pentagon. This is one step of many that we need to take to return the military to its core mission and end this social engineering wrapped in a uniform, rather than doing the job of defending this great country.

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

Madam Chair, the United States military is one of the few institutions in America where the skills of the men or women on either side of you could mean the difference between life and death.

At the end of the day, it embodies I think Dr. King's notion of judging men and women on the content of their character, not the color of their skin. Yet, the Biden administration is infatuated with divvying us up by race, with divvying us up by our immutable characteristics.

The fact is, with all due respect--and I appreciate the gentlewoman's remarks and the tone in which they were offered--corporate America is slashing DEI officers amid a backlash of diversity programs across the country.

There is a story right here about the numbers of how many offices have been slashed over the last year, in part because they don't add much value to the bottom line in which the economy is hurting and people are suffering; and also in part because they are getting a backlash from having so much focus on divvying us up by race and all these characteristics--it is not actually good.

We are seeing this in countless corporations across the country. There is story after story, if you just Google it and see what is going on out there. I think the Department of Defense should be in line with where we are seeing our society recoil at this divvying us up by race. This is one way to accomplish that objective.

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

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

Mr. Chair, the amendment that is being put forward here would say that none of the funds made available by this Act may be used to carry out the observance of Pride Month authorized by the Under Secretary of Defense for Personnel and Readiness for the Cultural Observances and Awareness Events list.

First of all, that whole title should give you a little bit of pause. At the end of the day, in line with the amendment that I just offered, the goal here should be to ensure that our military is focused on the mission and building cohesion to accomplish the mission.

Now we have got the Department of Defense focusing on, for example, the Air Force releasing a memo entitled Department of the Air Force Observance of LGBTQ Pride Month which empowered installation commanders to plan and conduct appropriate activities in honor of Pride Month, which they then did. That then resulted in, for example, the Department of the Navy issuing a memo declaring June's month theme, ``Peace, Love, Revolution.'' There was a flyer advertising Robins Air Force Base 2023 Pride Month events, which included information for servicemembers and their families to attend the Pride Night game night and unity and diversity color run. Because some of the colleagues voiced opposition, Nellis Air Force Base approved and then canceled a scheduled drag show to celebrate Pride Month.

What on Earth are we doing? I represent Fort Sam Houston in San Antonio. I represent countless veterans attached to or who have served at Joint Base San Antonio or otherwise in central Texas. My constituents come to me, and they just shake their heads, and say: What are we doing? What happened?

We need to beat China. We need to be able to be in a position to carry out multiple-front wars around the globe, if necessary. We need to have the finest fighting force in the world with the best technology and the best training.

Again, it is one thing to respect someone's private life and differences, but to carry out your objective in the office without having the Department of Defense promoting events dividing us up by our various characteristics. That is the reality.

On social media, the marines tweeted a Pride Month image with rainbow-tipped bullets on a marine helmet featuring the words: Proud to serve. I am sure the Chinese military is quaking in its boots with the rainbow-tipped bullets being tweeted around the world.

The Air Force tweeted an image with the silhouette of an airman saluting in front of a Pride flag. The Navy changed their logo on social media to ships and aircraft in front of a rainbow flag.

Again, that is the flag right there: Red, white, and blue. That is the flag--no other flag--when we are talking about what the United States military should be standing in front of and should be projecting.

I have very few constituents who disagree with this sentiment that we should be focused on having a military that is designed to, when called upon, blow stuff up and kill people in defense of this country, as needed, and to be the best fighting force to accomplish that objective in the world. They need to be trained and to have a clear mission. And, oh by the way, side note, while I am sitting here on the floor talking about the Department of Defense appropriations, the military should not be engaged in endless conflict without congressional engagement in terms of authorization of the use of military force, which, by the way, we were supposed to be addressing by the end of this month. I will save that for a different speech.

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

Mr. Chair, I will be brief in the interest of moving things along. The only thing I would note is, with respect to the difference, for example, of talking about Christmas trees and celebrating the birth of our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ and putting up a Pride flag, I would say those things are different.

I would also note that there have been problems at the Department of Defense with people expressing their faith. In fact, there are Christians who are being limited in their ability to have Christian displays in their offices, and we had to have groups like First Liberty go litigate it in court in order to defend their right to be able to display said Christian symbols and statements in their office cubicle.

This is what is going on at the Department of Defense, and people don't understand it.

I think this is a commonsense effort to refocus our military on the mission to which it should be focused. Acknowledging that we are a diverse community is great, but the Department of Defense can acknowledge that diversity and bring people together to carry out the mission without perpetuating essentially social engineering at the Department of Defense.

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

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

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

Mr. Chair, the amendment that I am offering here would prohibit funds from being available under this act for the Marine Corps University Krulak Center's Reynolds Scholars program.

Now, I was unaware of this, relatively blissfully, I don't know, a couple months ago, but then the Marine Corps University's Reynolds Scholars Program at the Krulak Center is a year-long program for students who wish to explore ``gender and security issues.'' That may not have jumped up onto my radar screen, but I became aware because the official Krulak Center Twitter account publicly criticized the user for calling this program ``woke'' and calling this individual a stain on the legacy of marines.

Well, it seems inappropriate for a federally funded center, so it caught my attention. Then it became clear to me when I had a syllabus presented to me about what was being presented. Here are a few examples of the program themes listed in the official syllabus: ``Gendering War.'' ``What is gender and how is it different from biological sex?'' ``How are war narratives constructed through gender discourse?'' ``How can we imagine nonviolent masculinities and the role they might play in conflict?''

We are pretty darn violent.

``How might the United States Marine Corps strategic narrative be problematic for women, peace and security?''

Again, this is just something that my constituents, and I think a large block of the American electorate--dare I say a very sizable majority--would say, what are you doing?

I mean, again, let's assume we were swimming in money. Let's just assume that we had money coming out of our ears, that we had a $33 trillion surplus that we had banked up that we were just saving for a rainy day to spend $33 trillion. I don't know how you do that, by the way. Let's just assume that was the case. Let's assume we had a $2 trillion surplus this year instead of a $2 trillion deficit. Let's assume further that our recruiting numbers were excellent. Let's assume further that we had really strong morale. Let's assume further that our healthcare costs in the military were manageable or that our healthcare costs anywhere in this country at all were manageable in the post- Obamacare world in which prices have skyrocketed and insurance companies have made gazillions of dollars. Again, that is another speech for another day.

In that imaginary world where that were the state of things, would this still be a good idea to spend even $1 or $10 or $100,000 or $5 million or whatever the amount is that might be here, would it be a good idea to spend that money for this: ``How are war narratives constructed through gendered discourse?'' ``How can we imagine nonviolent masculinities and the role they might play in conflict?''

Again, the American people just want us to focus on making this government do its core constitutional duty, do it within its fiscal responsibilities; do it in terms of providing a mission to defend this country; secure our borders, provide for the general welfare in the sense that you are allowing the American people to do what they do best if the government gets out of the way. Stop bleeding money, stop racking up debt, defend the United States, stop social engineering, and just do your damn job as Congress. I think that ought to be a pretty simple goal and a bipartisan goal.

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

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

Mr. Chair, I agree with the gentlewoman that words hurt. The question is, how those words are deployed and what they do for the mission of our United States military. When I see taxpayer dollars going to fund a syllabus which was not something in public view, which then became in public view after an online kind of disagreement with things like, What is gender and how is it different from biological sex? And all of the things that we are focusing on, and we have talked about it in other contexts with funding transgender surgeries and funding other manners of the social engineering currently going on that I believe is ripping apart the fabric of our country, the strength of our military, and the cohesion of the finest fighting force in the world. I believe it is important for us to try to maintain that.

I am enormously proud of the women whom I have nominated for academies. I met with women and men just 2 weeks ago with my staff in a retreat where we went to the United States Naval Academy. I am enormously proud of their service, proud of everybody who has worn the uniform and been honorably discharged for their service, but we need to stand up for a military that is focused on its mission.

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

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

Mr. Chair, the amendment before us would prohibit any of the funds in the Defense appropriations bill from being used to carry out President Biden's executive orders on climate change.

Our military should be, as I have stated in these other amendments, focused on deterring and, if necessary, defeating our adversaries. President Biden wants to continue to sacrifice the strength of our defense in deference to the climate cult.

In 2021, Department of Defense spokesman John Kirby refused to say China was a bigger national security threat to the United States than climate change. He called them ``equally important'' and said it doesn't do anybody good to make a relative assessment of national security issues.

Secretary of Defense Lloyd Austin has said ``climate change is an existential threat to our Nation's security.''

Secretary of State John Kerry literally travels to China to discuss climate change, not China's increased aggression against Taiwan, not its expansion in the Pacific, not the oppression of its people.

Biden's executive orders have served as the catalyst for massive reforms in the Department of Defense that compromise and undermine national security to advance a climate fetish.

The Department of Defense's Climate Adaptation Plan includes radical proposals to reduce greenhouse gas emissions at the expense of our warfighting capabilities. According to the plan, the Department of Defense has identified climate change as a critical national security issue. It contains mandates on ``environmental justice'' because why miss an opportunity to push such an ideology.

The Department of Defense says it will transition to 100 percent carbon-free electricity, meaning America's war machine will literally depend on the wind and the Sun unless they are going to be moving, I guess, nuclear power, which my colleagues on the other side of the aisle have not been all too quick to help us move.

Meanwhile, China has 1100 coal-fired plants and is building close to 2 a week. We have been building zero. We have been constraining the development of natural gas-fired electricity, and we have only recently finally had one nuclear plant get launched I think for the first time since the mid-1970s.

The DOD has mandated that all nontactical vehicles be EVs by 2035. It is fair to say the tactical vehicles we need to win wars are not far behind. That means our defense will become wholly dependent on Chinese batteries and other critical minerals. I always wonder why my colleagues are not too bothered by the fact that 80 percent of these batteries are using cobalt, and they are being mined heavily by slave labor, often child labor.

There doesn't seem to be any concern about what that means by continuing to perpetuate a mandate to send us down that road when it won't dent CO2 production. It is living in a fantasy land. If you eliminated the internal combustion engine in the United States tomorrow you might dent all of worldwide CO2 production by about 1 percent, 1\1/2\ percent. Meanwhile, China and India are pumping it out in mass volumes. Yet we are going to inject this directly into the veins of our national security.

That is why I offered this amendment and believe that it is critically important, so that we can again have our military focused on a core mission of defending this country.

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

Mr. Chair, I note that recently China's military sent 103 warplanes toward Taiwan in a 24-hour period in what the island's Defense Ministry called a recent new high. Forty of these planes crossed the symbolic median line between mainland China and Taiwan.

There is a lot going on in the world. We are going to have debates about Ukraine. I am hopeful we will have a debate about Ukraine rather than just tacking on a continuing resolution and jamming it through to the American people, but that is a debate for another day.

The question here is whether or not we are going to have, in the gentlewoman's words, a strong military, a resilient military, and a strong economy on the back of that or wrapped around that when, in fact, what we are doing through the Inflation Reduction Act is spending almost a trillion dollars, according to The Wall Street Journal, in massive subsidies, 90 percent to billion-dollar corporations, heavily to the most elite, rich, frankly, usually White liberals in this country, driving around their EV-powered cars. We are subsidizing the crud out of that while we are decimating the natural gas strength of this country, which puts us in a much stronger position from a national security perspective vis-a-vis Russia, vis-a-vis China, rather than empowering China by saying, sure, let us please buy all of your solar panels and all of your batteries so that we can transfer our military to something that isn't even remotely ready to be transferred to.

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

Mr. Chairman, I have great respect for my colleague on the other side of the aisle from Texas. On this matter we disagree.

The Secretary of Homeland Security has entirely abdicated his responsibility to follow the laws of the United States. He has done so purposely, he has done so with complete disregard to his constitutional obligation to run the Department of Homeland Security, which by definition means he is supposed to secure the homeland--having released some 2 million people into the United States.

He has come before the House Judiciary Committee, and literally said, yes, we have operational control of the border, while staring directly at a statute defining operational control of the border under the Secure Fence Act. He later went back to the committee and said, no, no, no, that is not the definition I was talking about. He knew full well what he was doing.

He is trying to pull the wool over the eyes of the American people that he is somehow following the laws. That he is somehow following asylum laws and parole laws when he is using parole--which is supposed on a case-by-case basis--to literally dump hundreds of thousands of people into the United States.

Americans are dying. Kids are dying from fentanyl poisoning. The very migrants that my colleagues say this is supposed to be helpful for are dying in the Rio Grande or dying on south Texas ranches or getting sold into the sex trafficking trade, or dying, or getting abused in stash houses.

This is a blatant disregard of his duty. He should be removed from office. We sure as hell shouldn't be funding his salary. The Holman rule exists for us to exercise our Article I authority over an abusive Article II executive.

It is time for Congress to reassert its authority, to reclaim control, to use the power of the purse to stop the abusive authority by this Secretary to endanger the American people, to endanger migrants, and to undermine our Homeland Security.

Madam Chair, I have an amendment at the desk.

Madam Chair, the amendment I put forward prohibits funding in this act to President Biden's executive orders that put needless limits on immigration enforcement, scale back sound asylum policies, and establish its own set of immigration directives that Congress has not passed.

The executive orders that President Biden put in place as soon as he got into the White House have had an enormous negative impact on the ability of Border Patrol and ICE to carry out their job--in particular,

Madam Chair, I appreciate my friend from Texas, and I will certainly review the amendment. I am not going to withdraw it.

I want to review the amendment and see if the reference is somehow incorrect, but the intent of the amendment--and it is now, I am being told, a leg counsel drafting error on the number, so it is probably the number that my friend is referring to.

The purpose of it is very clear, which is to turn away the executive orders of the President of the United States that have been undermining our security.

The gentleman, I think, properly referenced the number. I think on that one, given that there is a drafting error, and I have three other amendments that accomplish the same thing, I am actually going to withdraw the amendment.

Madam Chair, I yield back the balance of my time and withdraw the amendment.

Madam Chair, I have an amendment at the desk.

Madam Chair, the amendment that we have in front of us prohibits funding from the act to be used to terminate the Migrant Protection Protocols. This is one of the most important things that we need to address.

H.R. 2, which this body, led by Republicans, passed in the spring, addresses the need to return to use of Migrant Protection Protocols to put in place the return to Mexico and remain in Mexico policies of the previous administration, which, when combined with the use of title 42 authority, were effective in eliminating the flow coming across our border.

When the current administration completely abandoned on day one the use of Migrant Protection Protocols, the reality is we have seen the resulting chaos at our border.

It is hard for anybody who is objectively looking at the state of our border to find any defense for the current

policies of the administration allowing the abject failure to occur.

This amendment would assert our Article I authority to say to the President that the President must not use funds to terminate the Migrant Protection Protocols--that is, we should not be funding the failure of this administration to do its job.

Very simply put, as we put forward in H.R. 2, the choices before us should be to detain, to put in expedited removal, or to put in a migrant protection protocol-type system, remaining in Mexico. Otherwise, you have what we have, which is an utter disregard for the border using parole authority wrongly--instead of on a case-by-case basis, mass releases under parole.

We have the use of asylum, not for persecution but rather as a blanket release into the United States, to the point of 2 million releases over the last 2\1/2\ years under this administration.

This is a very simple policy that we can adopt as a Congress to restrain the abuse of this administration.

Madam Chair, I reserve the balance of my time.

Madam Chair, the termination of this program resulted in a decrease by 64 percent for illegal alien apprehensions between ports of entries or found inadmissible at ports of entry.

Border encounters with Central American families--the main driver of the crisis for the better part of the first 2 years, comprised the majority of the MPP-amenable aliens--dropped by 80 percent.

A report found MPP to be ``an indispensable tool in addressing the ongoing crisis at the southern border and restoring integrity to the immigration system.''

The purpose of the amendment is to ensure that we are not continuing to fund the ending of the kinds of programs that could be successful-- that is the point. We are putting restrictions on the extent to which the administration can ignore the tools that it should be using.

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

Madam Chair, I have an amendment at the desk.

Madam Chair, the amendment before us is pretty simple. It prohibits funding from this Act to carry out the Department of Homeland Security's memo titled ``Guidelines for Enforcement Actions in or Near Protected Areas.''

The Biden administration issued a memo prohibiting ICE from arresting illegal migrants in most public places. If you look at a map, there are literally circles drawn that pretty much cover an entire geographic region. Effectively, they are making it impossible for ICE to do its job.

It is purposeful, and this amendment is pretty simple: Don't use money to do this stupid thing.

Madam Chair, I reserve the balance of my time.

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

Madam Chair, I have an amendment at the desk.

Madam Chair, this amendment prohibits--as I have done in a number of our other appropriations bills, successfully so far. This amendment prohibits any of the funding in the Homeland Security appropriations bill from being used to carry out President Biden's executive orders on climate change.

These executive orders are pursuing a climate fetish to the detriment of our ability to have national security and energy security. It is driving up the prices of energy and making us more

dependent on China and foreign sources of energy. It is making lives more difficult for the American people.

Alejandro Mayorkas, the Secretary of Homeland Security, has literally said, the climate crisis is the most prominent threat we face. Meanwhile, we have had 6 million migrant encounters, 2 million releases in our country, and 70-some-thousand Americans die from fentanyl poisoning. There are little girls and migrants getting abused in the sex trafficking trade and getting distributed through the United States. That is what the Secretary focuses on. It is absurd. This is pretty simple: Stop doing that.

Madam Chair, I reserve the balance of my time.

Madam Chair, I appreciate the brevity of my colleague, and I yield back the balance of my time.

Madam Speaker, by direction of the Committee on Rules, I call up House Resolution 723 and ask for its immediate consideration.

Madam Speaker, I claim the time in opposition to the point of order in favor of consideration of the resolution.

Madam Speaker, the question before the House of Representatives is: Should the House now consider House Resolution 723, the rule that is before us, a rule that we are looking to advance this evening to advance four appropriations bills that, when combined with the appropriations bill we passed in July, would fund 73 percent of government.

Meanwhile, the United States Senate has passed no appropriations bills, and in fact, sent a continuing resolution to the floor just now, just this evening, having not done its job to pass appropriations bills.

The fact of the matter is the waiver we are talking about here in the rules is a prophylactic waiver that my colleagues used all the time when they were in the majority. They know full well that is what they are doing. This is dilatory. This is purposeful. I would do it too if I didn't have all my folks back for the vote. That is what I would do. That is the reality of what we are talking about here.

My colleagues on the other side of the aisle are talking about unfunded mandates. Let's talk about unfunded mandates.

Let's talk about all of the subsidies that are going out for electric vehicles to subsidize the elite in this country that make over $200,000 and $250,000 a year.

Let's talk about the subsidies, 90 percent of the corporate subsidies going to billion-dollar corporations.

Let's talk about the mandates in the form of vaccine mandates, mask mandates, and all of the mandates during COVID that shut down the largest economy that this world has ever known.

My colleagues on the other side of the aisle complain about a shutdown. Yet, they are the masters of shutdown. They shut down and brought to a halt the great American economy resulting in exactly what you are experiencing right now: what the American people are feeling in terms of inflation, in terms of inability to afford homes, inability to afford gasoline, inability to afford power. Those are the mandates that the American people are concerned about. Those are the unfunded mandates that are killing their way of life right now at home.

That is the simple fact.

My colleagues are talking about the government and what it might cost if there is a government shutdown Saturday. Let's be very clear. If there is a shutdown on Saturday, it is because President Biden, Chuck Schumer, and my Democratic colleagues would prefer to shut down the government of the United States than shut down the border of the United States and protect the American people.

That is the simple truth. That is how there would be a resulting shutdown on Saturday.

They lament what might be the impact on government, and that is because they have a government, the American people have a government that is on autopilot. We have a government that is so big and is funded with mandatory spending and is on autopilot such that you cannot constrain it.

The American people are asking why. The American people are asking what can you do about it.

I will give you the answer: My Democratic colleagues want more of the same. That is why our Democratic leadership in the United States Senate has put forward a continuing resolution on the floor of the Senate just now, in the last hour, that will perpetuate the status quo, will continue to fund government exactly as it was funded last December at the obscene levels of that $1.7 trillion omnibus spending bill.

They are going to send that bill over here to the House and say to the American people they want status quo, business as usual, and they are going to pile on additional supplemental funding. That is their response to what the American people are feeling and seeing.

I, if I were my colleagues on the other side of the aisle, would also want to have a dilatory vote because I would not have actual solutions for the American people.

What we are trying to put forward here, again, are four appropriations bills that fund 73 percent of the government when combined with MILCON-VA, which we passed in July. That is what my colleagues on the other side of the aisle do not want to go ahead and move to. They want to put forward a dilatory point of order because they don't have answers for the American people.

Madam Speaker, I reserve the balance of my time.

Madam Speaker, as I said, this is a dilatory tactic by my colleagues on the other side of the aisle. I wouldn't want to speak about what is going on either.

I wouldn't want to speak about the story this afternoon of Hunter Biden receiving a $250,000 wire originating in Beijing with the beneficiary address listed as Joe Biden's home. I wouldn't want to talk about that.

I wouldn't want to talk about what we have been learning in the Committee on the Judiciary. I wouldn't want to be learning about what is going on or talking about what we have heard from the whistleblowers or from Devon Archer. I wouldn't want to talk about that at all. I would want to sweep that aside.

I wouldn't want to talk about the Department of Justice that targeted Scott Smith and put him on the domestic terrorism list.

I wouldn't want to talk about a Department of Justice that targeted Mark Houck and have used the FACE Act to go after pro-life Americans.

I wouldn't want to talk about anything that this administration is doing. I would want to delay.

Madam Speaker, I yield to the gentleman from Louisiana (Mr. Johnson), my good friend.

Madam Speaker, again, my colleagues don't want to focus on the

issues the American people care about, and they certainly don't want to talk about the issues that are, frankly, pretty embarrassing to the track record of my Democratic colleagues.

As I said, they don't want to talk about Hunter Biden. They don't want to talk about the Department of Justice and how it has been weaponized against the American people.

They don't want to talk about a Strategic Petroleum Reserve that has been decimated and the high cost of gasoline and electricity. They don't want to talk about inflation. They don't want to talk about housing prices.

They don't want to talk about a Department of Defense that is more focused on social engineering than carrying out the mission that it is given.

They don't want to talk about crime.

They don't want to talk about woke policies in which men are swimming against women in swimming meets.

They don't want to talk about the border. We are going to talk about the border, but I assure you, they do not want to talk about the border.

They talk about consequences.

Last Thursday, Texas authorities recovered the bodies of two migrants, including a 3-year-old boy who tried crossing the Rio Grande. Then 2 weeks ago, a 10-year-old migrant boy drowned while trying to cross the Rio Grande.

Last year, 853 migrants died crossing the southern border; 53 in a tractor-trailer in the city of San Antonio, which I represent.

Thousands of Americans are dying from fentanyl poisoning. There are moms that I have to talk to, dads that I have to talk to in Texas who have to bury another child because we refuse utterly to secure the border of the United States.

Again, the President of the United States, the Democratic leadership of the Senate, and the Democrat minority in the House utterly refuse to do their job to shut down the open border of the United States to secure our people. They are perfectly content with then shutting down the government because they refuse to do their job.

Madam Speaker, I reserve the balance of my time.

Madam Speaker, last summer, our Democratic colleagues sent a package, a minibus of six appropriations bills, and in one vote wiped their hands and said they were done. Then there was a massive omnibus spending bill that was sent over to us in December.

What I ask my colleagues is: What would you cut? What would you do to actually reduce the deficit and reduce the debt of the United States when we are $33 trillion in debt and we are going to have $2 trillion of deficit spending this year?

We are putting forward bills that would reduce spending. We are putting forward bills that would actually move the Department of Defense appropriations bills over to the Senate, and do so responsibly, the Department of Homeland Security appropriations bill, the State- Foreign Operations, and Agriculture, on top of MILCON-VA, which we already passed.

My colleague talks about wasting time. What have we been doing for the last 20 minutes besides waste time here on the floor of the House with a dilatory tactic, which my colleagues fully understand has no basis. They are objecting to a waiver that they have constantly used themselves.

The fact is they have no message so my colleagues are resorting to dilatory tactics.

Again, shut down the open border or risk shutting down the government of the United States.

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

Madam Speaker, for the purpose of debate only, I yield the customary 30 minutes to the gentleman from Massachusetts, pending which I yield myself such time as I may consume. During consideration of this resolution, all time yielded is for the purpose of debate only.

General Leave

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

Madam Speaker, on Saturday, the Rules Committee reported a rule for four appropriations measures and made in order 440 total amendments.

We bring to the floor H.R. 4365, the Department of Defense Appropriations Act; 180 amendments were made in order.

This bill, combined with the amendments that were made in order, takes significant steps to invest in resources that will help deter China, will cut the bureaucracy, will support military families and servicemembers, and will restore the Department of Defense's focus to warfighting rather than social engineering.

We bring to the floor H.R. 4665, the Department of State, Foreign Operations, and Related Programs Appropriations Act, 2024.

This bill would defund international bodies like the World Health Organization, eliminate woke offices at the State Department, defund John Kerry, and it stands up for Israel while funding our State Department and foreign operations.

H.R. 4368, the Agriculture, Rural Development, Food and Drug Administration, and Related Agencies Appropriations Act, 2024, was also a part of the rule.

This bill makes significant strides to reduce spending to pre-COVID levels, prevents members of the Communist Party of China from buying United States farmland, defunds the FDA's rule allowing abortion drugs by mail, and makes strides in ending wokeness at the United States Department of Agriculture.

Madam Speaker, importantly, these three bills, combined with the next one that I am going to talk about, reflect our commitment to reduce spending and an agreement to reduce spending further than the FRA, which was passed earlier this year, to a target of $1.526 trillion of discretionary spending.

That is our goal. That is our objective. It is something the American people are clamoring for from their leaders in Washington--to actually address the debt crisis fueling inflation and undermining the sovereignty of our Nation.

This is why we are here. This is the job we are supposed to do. I have offered to my colleagues that I wish this were July. We passed MILCON-VA in July. The Senate has passed nothing.

Last year, under Democrat control, six bills were packaged together in the summer and passed, and then a massive omnibus bill was passed in December.

I had an exchange with one of my Democratic colleagues a minute ago about this not being regular order, but this actually is regular order.

It is late in the process, I acknowledge. We are trying to move four bills that would total, when combined with MILCON-VA, upwards of almost three-quarters of the discretionary funding for our government.

Hopefully, we can reach some resolution as to how to move forward funding the government appropriately. We obviously have disagreements on what funding the government appropriately means, which stands here at the center of the debate, stands here at the center of the impasse, which brings me to H.R. 4367, the Department of Homeland Security Appropriations Act.

It is a good bill, has strong provisions, strong language in it to try to encourage the Department of Homeland Security and Secretary Mayorkas to do their jobs.

In our view, it is not sufficient because the Secretary, backed by the President of the United States, has utterly refused to do his job.

This should concern all of us. Every Member of this body, Democrat or Republican, Texas or New York, Florida or California, ought to be concerned with what is happening to our country, what is happening in Eagle Pass, Texas.

Madam Speaker, 11,000 human beings, 11,000 the night before last, 304,000 apprehensions in August--this is incomprehensible. The human toll is staggering; the deaths from fentanyl poisoning, the things that we have talked about ad nauseam on this floor.

As I was alluding to earlier, it is not compassionate to have open borders as currently exist under this administration and under the leadership of Secretary Mayorkas.

Last Thursday, Texas authorities recovered the bodies of two migrants, including a 3-year-old boy, trying to cross the Rio Grande.

Madam Speaker, 2 weeks ago, a 10-year-old migrant drowned while trying to cross the Rio Grande, and 853 migrants died last year.

This is every day in Texas. I get a phone call or a text from a rancher every day in Texas. They find a body on their ranch. How is that remotely acceptable?

That is at the center of this debate. There are countless issues we disagree on, countless issues we need to address, and the appropriations process can, in fact, through the power of the purse, address many of those issues. These bills do that.

My colleagues on the other side of the aisle say, well, these bills are dead on arrival. Well, that is how this process works. We put forward bills, and if there is disagreement, if the Senate disagrees, then we conference. I hope we can get to that stage.

I, again, will posit I wish this were July or August or 3 weeks ago, but we sit here with four bills that will fund almost 75 percent of the government when added to MILCON-VA.

Let's do our job. Let's work to move the DHS bill. Let's work together to figure out how to deal with the border.

To be very clear, we must address the border. That is a nonnegotiable truth;

that we must address the border. We can sit around a table and debate how, but we must address it.

There has been too much death, too much destruction, too much damage to States and to human beings across this country, and the Federal Government has an obligation to do its job, and that is what we are endeavoring to do.

Madam Speaker, I reserve the balance of my time.

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

First of all, with all due respect to the gentleman from Massachusetts, the bill we put forward does not cut funding. It increases spending over last year.

We can debate the merits of that and debate how much we need to restrain spending, but it is simply not true. Let's at least speak about the facts before us and the legislation in front of us.

I heard my colleague talking about getting our act together. I would say to my colleague from Massachusetts: How about the Senate and the President get their act together? How about they actually do their jobs and secure the border of United States?

The gentleman from Massachusetts just blithely swept it aside. Oh, it is an important issue. Tell that to the people in Texas. In August, 304,000 encounters, the fifth month in fiscal year 2023 over 200,000, 2.2 million in fiscal year 2023 encounters.

Since the President took office, there have been nearly 6 million illegal migrants encountered along the southwest border, more than the populations of Houston and Dallas combined.

We have had 2 million released in the United States, thousands of migrants traveling through the Darien Gap, trains chock-full of people, children getting sold into the sex trafficking trade on a daily basis.

We know it because it is in Federal orders from judges. These are not made-up facts. They are right before us, and my colleagues on the other side of the aisle don't care, and the Senate leadership, the Democrats leading the Senate and the President don't care, and the Secretary of Homeland Security doesn't care.

My answer to the question about why we are saying that H.R. 2 must be signed into law before the funding bill gets passed is because the law must change, and the Secretary must be forced to do his job because he is refusing to do it.

Madam Speaker, I yield 3 minutes to the gentleman from South Carolina (Mr. Norman).

Madam Speaker, the only people being held hostage are the American people by Democrat leadership in the Senate and in the White House; holding them hostage to a wide open border, endangering them every single day, including the 110,000 some-odd migrants that have been sent to and gone to New York City, and that are endangering our people on the streets.

The American people are, in fact, being held hostage because this Democratic leadership refuses to do their job to secure the border.

Madam Speaker, I yield 3 minutes to the gentleman from Texas (Mr. Burgess), my friend and colleague.

Madam Speaker, the American people are fed up, my constituents are fed up, the people we represent are fed up, and they are fed up with the very deal that the gentleman from Massachusetts just described that came out of the Senate.

Madam Speaker, that is 45 days of continued spending at the existing levels and continuing the status quo with an additional $6 billion for Ukraine, and nothing to deal with the border. Nothing. Zero changes at the border.

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

Madam Speaker, I yield 2 minutes to the gentleman from Florida (Mr. Gaetz), my friend and colleague.

Madam Speaker, how much time is remaining on both sides?

Madam Speaker, I yield 3 minutes to the gentleman from South Dakota (Mr. Johnson), my good friend.

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

Madam Speaker, one of the previous speakers from my colleagues on the other side of the aisle talked about victims, and I would note the extent to which we have countless victims, as we have talked about before, from the scourge of fentanyl poisonings across this country.

Two weeks ago, 1-year-old Nicholas Feliz Dominici died from fentanyl exposure from a kilo of fentanyl at an at-home daycare in the Bronx, New York, that, reportedly, a new arrival from the Dominican Republic was renting out.

More than 25,000 pounds of fentanyl have been seized in FY23. I spent time in August sitting on panels with moms and dads who lost their children to fentanyl poisonings--six children in the school district in which I reside. It is commonplace in Texas. It is becoming, unfortunately, more commonplace around the country.

How about the woman who was stabbed 28 times by an illegal immigrant with a criminal record in Pennsylvania, or the 10-year-old boy who was on a schoolbus on the first day of school killed by an illegal immigrant who ran into the bus? How about the father in Florida who opened his home to a supposedly unaccompanied alien child, who was 19 years old, and he stabbed and killed the father of this family who opened his home?

This is happening every day to the American people, and my colleagues on the other side of the aisle do not care. They watch Secretary Mayorkas completely ignore his duty to secure the border of the United States, leaving us entirely exposed to cartels and to the flood of fentanyl pouring into our communities. Border Patrol is overwhelmed, trying to manage numbers at the border, which is completely avoidable if the Secretary and the President would actually follow the law.

Republicans have responded with a bill that would force the Secretary to follow the law and that would improve the laws of the United States to secure the border of the United States, as we are constitutionally required to do. We have made that a condition precedent for giving more money to the Secretary of Homeland Security as he ignores his job and endangers the American people. We will continue to do that.

Madam Speaker, I reserve the balance of my time.

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

Madam Speaker, I have absolutely no idea what the gentleman from Massachusetts was just talking about. We have four bills before us here in the House of Representatives, four bills that, when combined with the MILCON-VA bill that we passed in July, would fund upward of 75 percent of our discretionary spending of government. That is what is on the floor of the House.

The fact is, the four bills we have before us represent this body doing its job. The gentleman says the Senate is going to be the adults who save us. This is a Senate that has passed not one appropriations bill. This is a Senate that today dropped on the floor of

the Senate a bill that no one had seen 45 minutes prior to the vote, a bill which would continue to spend at the levels adopted last December that are yielding $2 trillion a year in deficit spending.

If that represents the adults, I think I want to hang out with the kids because that is not the job that we are supposed to do--$2 trillion a year of deficit spending when we are $33 trillion in debt, continuing to fund an administration completely at war with the well- being of the American people and a Department of Justice weaponized against the people like Mark Houck, a father who wakes up with a raid at his home for defending his son, for exercising his free speech rights, completely not pursued by local authorities, taken to Federal court, and summarily dismissed within an hour by a jury. That is your FBI and Department of Justice at work.

This is the same Department of Justice that wants to label Scott Smith a domestic terrorist. That is your Department of Justice at work.

My colleagues on the other side of the aisle would say the Senate being adults and writing another check to that Department of Justice is a good use of your money.

My colleagues on the other side of the aisle would say it is a good idea to continue to rack up $2 trillion in deficit spending, to borrow more money, to increase inflation, to devalue the dollar, to spend money we don't have to fund a Department of Homeland Security that refuses to secure the homeland.

My colleagues on the other side of the aisle want to do this while thousands of Americans die from fentanyl poisonings, while cartels are empowered, while China is empowered, while China is selling the printing presses and the fentanyl pills to the cartels, while thousands pour into Eagle Pass, while 11,000 people just the day before yesterday poured across into Eagle Pass, while people are in railroad cars, while children are dying, while children get sold into the sex trafficking trade, where migrants are being held for ransom so their little girl doesn't get raped in a stash house in Fort Worth, Texas. All of that, I suppose, is from the adults we have in the Senate. They want to continue to fund a lawless administration, exposing our people to danger and exposing migrants to danger, all in the false name of compassion.

Well, if that is what adults look like, count me out. I am going to stand up for the American people who sent me here to stand up for them.

Madam Speaker, we are going to pass these four bills. We are going to work hard to do the work for the American people while the Senate can preen and posture with yet another swamp game by putting forward another continuing resolution of the status quo rather than trying to change this place, rather than trying to stand up for the people who sent us here to do something different: to reduce spending, to secure the border, to fund our troops at a higher level than we have ever funded them; a $28 billion increase for the Department of Defense while we undo the social engineering experiment and refocus the military on its mission to defend the United States.

I am proud of these four bills. I am proud to stand up here and advance them forward but let me be very clear: We are going to secure the border of the United States.

It will be up to Democrats to make a choice. Will they shut down this open border or will they shut down the government of the United States.

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

Madam Speaker, I thank my friend from Texas for his service to this great country, both in uniform and here in this body. I am honored to serve with him. I am honored to serve with all of the great Members of Congress that wore the uniform. I appreciate his remarks just now honoring many of those who have served and were properly awarded and recognized and many of his own constituents. It is an honor to serve with him, just as it is an honor to serve with the Speaker, also from Texas.

I am reminded, as I listened to my friend from Texas, of the engagements that I had with veterans that I represent in the 21st Congressional District in Texas between Austin and San Antonio just over August. One of the great things about when you are in your work period is engaging with your constituents. They have a funny way of reminding us why they sent us here.

I had countless veterans, civilians, asking me what is happening to their country, and many veterans, several men later in life, breaking down in tears asking questions like, what did they fight for to watch what is unfolding currently under this administration? What is happening to the country that they believe in?

My question right now for my colleagues in this Chamber is, when will it be enough? When will what we are experiencing, seeing with our own eyes every day be enough for us to act? I am not just speaking to colleagues on my side of the aisle, but the whole Chamber.

We have a responsibility under the Constitution of the United States to stand up in a government of separated powers and check an executive branch that is flouting the law on a daily basis. This is an administration that is engaging in utterly lawless acts on a daily basis, and it is resulting in the endangerment of not just individual American citizens but the Republic itself.

That is not hyperbole, and I don't say it lightly. I very much share the optimistic tenor of my colleague from Texas who just spoke on the floor talking about the hope that he has for this country, given the strength of this country in its past and the strength of so many of our American people.

As a friend of mine and a good, mutual friend of the gentleman from Texas (Mr. Ellzey) former Governor Rick Perry, wrote in the first chapter of a book about a decade ago: ``America is great, Washington is broken.'' Unfortunately, it remains broken, badly broken. No longer following the constitutional guidelines set forth, no longer serving the American people, and as the Constitution calls for, carrying out the general welfare of the people and securing the blessings of liberty. That is literally what our call is as servants in Washington.

My question, again, is when will it be enough?

There is a long laundry list of things that should be giving us great pause. Actual existential crises.

Spending. We will spend $2 trillion more this year than we take in. We are $32 trillion in debt, barreling toward $33, $34 trillion. We just passed a debt ceiling increase of $4 trillion, frankly, probably more than that; and, oh, by the way, our interest payments are now more than we spend on national defense.

Inflation is rampant. Are we going to do anything about it? The resounding answer currently from this body is ``No.'' We continue to fund appropriations bills that spend more than last year. It is just going up.

Are we going to do anything about spending? When will it be enough?

How about our Defense Department? This Defense Department is undermining our national defense by turning our military into what I describe as a social engineering experiment in a uniform. President Biden's Pentagon is outright ignoring the law by funding abortion tourism with taxpayer funding, in blatant violation of the traditional bipartisan agreement under the Hyde amendment to not do that. Let States decide, that is what the Court just said. We continue to fund it with Federal dollars.

President Biden's Pentagon is using millions of taxpayer dollars to fund gender-transition procedures. The Air Force released a memo entitled, Department of the Air Force Observance of LGBTQ Pride Month, which empowered installation commanders to plan and conduct activities in honor of Pride Month.

Color me crazy and reactionary that I think that every single dollar we fund to the Department of Defense ought to go to planes, boats, bullets, bombs, missiles, and training soldiers to use them.

Our military is paying chief diversity officers and inclusion officials upwards of $183,000 a year. The United States Marine Corps University has a year-long program that is dedicated to exploring gender insecurity issues. According to the official syllabus, which we found because we saw it on Twitter when they were trying to defend their position, they discuss program themes like ``gendering war'' with questions like, what is gender and how is it different from biological sex or how war narratives are constructed through gender discourse?

Again, we are $2 trillion in debt. Our recruiting levels are in the toilet at the Pentagon, China is building their military, and this is what we are funding. It is not like we have a $2 trillion surplus.

What are we doing? Do you really think having marines discuss how ``war

narratives are constructed through gender discourse'' helps us win a war?

COVID, the hysteria and the tyranny are already on the march again. This week we learned that CIA whistleblowers told the Select Subcommittee on the Coronavirus Pandemic that the CIA bribed its analysts to deny the lab leak theory. The whistleblower claims that six of seven analysts believed that the evidence pointed toward the Wuhan lab leak theory. The six were then given a ``significant monetary incentive'' to change their position.

Earlier this week, the FDA approved new COVID-19 boosters for children as young as 6 months old. Just one panel member argued that the new shot should initially be recommended only for older people. CDC's own data shows that giving 1 million teens the COVID vaccine will save between zero and one life and cause between 100,000 to 200,000 side effects, all while Moderna and Pfizer make more than $1.6 billion on the contract. Coincidence?

How about health? We are funding a healthcare system, broken by Washington and big insurance, and average Americans can no longer afford healthcare, no longer go to the doctors of their choice. ObamaCare is set to cost you 6 percent more in 2024. Some plans may spike 10 percent.

When I had cancer about 11 years ago, I went to MD Anderson. To the best of my understanding, under the ObamaCare plan that I would have to use as a Member of Congress, I wouldn't be able to go to MD Anderson.

How is that coverage? How are we doing that to the American people?

However, don't fear, big insurance revenue reached $1.25 trillion and profits hit $70 billion, a 300 percent increase in revenue and a 300 percent increase in profits from just 10 years ago. Life is good for big insurance.

UnitedHealth Group, $20.6 billion up, 16 percent year over year. Cigna, $6.7 billion up, 24 percent year over year. CVS Health, $4.2 billion. Humana, $2.8 billion. Meanwhile, the average American family spends more than $22,000 a year on premiums, which is expected to increase 6.4 percent this year.

In 2023, we will spend more than $1 trillion subsidizing insurance. Yes, we are borrowing another trillion dollars to subsidize those insurance companies I was just describing.

You like corporate cronyism? Well, you have got it.

How about energy? Are any of these things going to be enough? Healthcare, COVID, Department of Defense, wokeism, energy?

We are actively destroying our ability to have reliable energy to the benefit of China and a bunch of elitists who don't live in reality.

The Inflation Reduction Act has essentially a $1.2 trillion handout to subsidize billion-dollar corporations. Something like 90 percent of the subsidies are to billion-dollar corporations. Pretty much heavily led by very rich, White, elitist liberals, making money hand over fist with your subsidized money, giving money to China to fund solar panels from China, battery-powered cars, batteries with cobalt mined in the Congo almost entirely by slave labor, heavily including children.

Your taxpayer dollars and borrowed money at work.

Yet, it is not even producing a good result for the American people. Energy prices have increased by 40 percent since Biden took office, gasoline is up over 50 percent, electricity is up almost 30 percent. While oil is at $90 a barrel, our Strategic Petroleum Reserve is at its lowest level since 1983 because the President has been dumping the Strategic Petroleum Reserve in order to try to keep gas prices down while advancing a radical leftist agenda that is making it impossible for us to have affordable energy.

The Inflation Reduction Act expands subsidies for electric vehicles, 78 percent of which are claimed by Americans making over $100,000--of course--because the average EV costs $17,000 more than one with an internal combustion engine, which this administration wants to end. They don't want you to have an affordable car.

Then Secretary Granholm decides to go on a trek across the country to prove how great electric vehicles are. She goes up to a charging station, they are running behind. Oh, oh, we have got to find a charging station. They take a gas-powered vehicle, put it in a slot, block the slot, so the Secretary can get a photo op, and a family with a baby with an EV was sitting there waiting for a slot and couldn't get one.

That is your Biden administration at work trying to promote the propaganda of a leftwing radical vision for energy that is destroying hardworking Americans' ability to live their lives.

Poor people across this country, working-class people across this country are wondering how they can afford a car because this administration is living in a dreamland that won't dent carbon dioxide. India and China are dumping carbon dioxide into the atmosphere. You can get rid of every internal combustion engine in America and you will drop CO2 production by like 1\1/2\ percent. It is insane.

We are unilaterally disarming our competitiveness, our security advantage with respect to energy, and empowering China in the process.

Meanwhile, the Biden administration's EPA has implemented a rule that would enforce two-thirds of the new vehicles sold in the United States to be EVs by 2030. You can't make this up. That is a direct assault on the well-being of the American people.

What are we in Congress doing about it?

We passed a bill today trying to pull back on some of California's nonsense. We are really good at that, ladies and gentlemen, passing bills, knowing they will die in the Senate, going home, and campaigning about how crazy the administration is, and then putting all our eggs in the basket of one day in the future, trust us, when we have the biggest majority in the House and we have 60 in the Senate, and we have that President, one day, all at once, trust us, we will get it done.

How is that working out for you?

When will we use the tools we have before us right now? We have the power of the purse. Last time I checked, Republicans have the majority in this body. We should use the power of the purse to stop the radical abuses of this President and his administration.

Again, spending, $2 trillion deficit. Are we going to do anything about it besides, oh, it is a little better than what they would have done?

Are we going to do anything about energy? Oh, we passed a bill. Are we going to do anything about it?

Are we going to do anything about those healthcare prices?

Are we going to do anything about the continued advancement of COVID tyranny, mask mandates, vaccine mandates, and importantly the subsidy of vaccines to be forced upon American people? Are we going to do anything about it?

Anything about the Pentagon?

The Department of Justice, instead of focusing on locking up bad guys--and I say this as a former Federal prosecutor who locked up a few bad guys--instead of doing that, this Department of Justice is advancing a politicized form of injustice against American citizens and a former President.

My friend, Scott Smith, in Loudoun County, Governor Glenn Youngkin just pardoned Scott Smith. Now, remember, he was targeted as a domestic terrorist in conjunction with the National School Boards Association and the Department of Justice for going to a school board meeting to defend his daughter.

Mark Houck in Philadelphia, he was targeted, had a SWAT team show up at his door in Philadelphia because he dared to defend his son while engaging in his free speech rights in front of an abortion clinic.

The FBI is weaponizing the so-called FACE Act to target pro-life Americans, overwhelmingly targeting only pro-life Americans when they go engage in their free speech rights. Of course, they are targeting former President Trump; doing all they can to target the former President while also doing all they can to ensure that Hunter Biden and President Biden do not face justice.

Under the Department of Justice, we have the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, and Firearms. Earlier this year, the ATF issued a rule banning pistol stabilizing braces that are intended for recruiting shooters with physical disabilities and disabled veterans. That rule potentially makes felons out of up to 40 million Americans. It wasn't made in Congress, wasn't codified here. It was made by bureaucrats.

Now they are targeting private sales, trying to promote a universal background check, despite the fact Congress has rejected it.

How about your food? Will we do anything about food? We are ceding control of our food supplies to foreign nations because our government is making it really difficult, if not impossible, to farm in this country. The USDA projected the U.S. will become a net importer of food for the first time in its entire history in 2023.

Foreign ownership of U.S. agricultural land doubled from 2009 to 2019. China's agriculture investment in other nations has grown by more than tenfold since 2009, and Chinese companies are purchasing land near key defensive installations.

What are we doing about it?

What is this Republican majority and this Congress doing about it?

The IRS. We are still fully funding an IRS, and it just received a massive expansion. Yet, this IRS targets political opponents.

In 2021, the IRS targeted the nonprofit status of my friend Bunni Pounds' group, Christian Engaged, for simply being an organization that encourages Christians to vote.

It is not the first time. Remember, Lois Lerner?

The IRS has a history of this.

What are we doing about it?

We keep writing the checks to fund the bureaucrats that are at war with the American people. We do it every day, and everybody just shrugs. They just walk around and they say, Chip, don't you understand? The Democrats control the Senate. Joe Biden is in the White House. We just got a position to win an election next year, and then, then we will fight.

Do you know how many times I have heard that? When I was Senator Cruz's chief of staff 10 years ago, when I was a lawyer on the Senate Judiciary Committee 15 years ago, it is all I have ever heard.

Trust us. One day. One day we will use the power that we have in this body to change the trajectory of this country and to stop this weaponization of the Federal Government against the American people. You can't ignore that that is what it is.

When the Department of Justice is not blind and it is targeting people based on their political beliefs and targeting a former President instead of the current President because of its political beliefs, that destroys the rule of law in this country.

When the Department of Defense is more concerned about being woke than actually be weaponized against our enemies, that destroys morale and recruiting.

When the IRS is targeting people for their political beliefs, you don't have faith in your system of government. When your Department of Energy is more concerned about advancing a radical leftist agenda than ensuring our own national security and our own ability to power our people, our jobs, our ability to travel, you are funding the very mechanisms in government that are undermining the liberty and the freedom of people's right to go have a job, a right to go provide for their family.

Perhaps worst of all, the southern border.

In July alone, Border Patrol encountered across this country 240- something-thousand individuals. Reports today indicate that preliminary CBP data show migrant encounters for August are on track to surpass 230,000, making it the sixth month in 2023 above 200,000.

On Tuesday, a report surfaced that CBP apprehended more than 7,300 individuals across the southern border; I believe maybe 9,000 nationally.

Three of the four busiest Border Patrol sectors were in Texas:

The El Paso Sector had 1,100 illegal crossings.

The RGV Sector, 1,400.

The Del Rio Sector, 1,800.

We have had 10,000 criminals caught at the border in FY23.

Here is the thing. With over a million got-aways, who are we not catching? What do we do about the story we just saw unfold in Pennsylvania where a guy was charged with crimes in Brazil; he came to our country, brutally stabbed to death his girlfriend, then he's on a jailbreak in Pennsylvania? Illegal. Not legally present.

How about the 11-year-old boy in Ohio who just died because someone released by the President ran into a schoolbus on the first day of school. An 11-year-old boy, dead by someone here illegally released by this President.

According to the Inspector General of the Department of Homeland Security, DHS has the wrong addresses for 177,000 of the nearly 1 million people released into the United States between the spring of `21 and the summer of `22. Think about that.

Many of those addresses were used more than 50 times each. A car dealership, a bus station, a restaurant in Maryland, a church in Illinois were the addresses used.

Who are they and where are they?

If 99 percent of them are great people looking for a better way of life, God bless them. What about the other 1 percent?

You feel good about that? You feel secure in the United States, do you? Because as you drive around your suburban enclaves and you feel safe and secure, this is going to catch up to you, just like the New Yorkers who are starting to wake up and say, oh, this is kind of a problem.

Yeah, it is a problem.

The problem is there is a human toll. These are human beings. An illegal immigrant in Baltimore who was being held up for ransom for $23,000 while his wife and little girl were in a stash house in Fort Worth, Texas. They called them up and said: We are going to rape your little girl if you don't give us $23,000.

Is that what we are for in this country?

Are we for perpetuating the sex trafficking trade, the human trafficking trade, and slave labor?

Are we for what is happening to our Border Patrol, where we are losing Border Patrol because they are being lied about by this Department of Homeland Security?

Are we for a million people being released into the United States in a year?

Are we for the criminal activity we just saw in Pennsylvania or the boy in Ohio?

Are we for all the migrants now in New York?

Are we for the young man who came in as an unaccompanied alien child, a family took him into their home and he stabbed the father and killed them?

Is that what we are for?

If we are not for it, what the hell are we going to do about it? Besides preen, posture, campaign, and say, oh, yeah, we are going to do something about the border one day. Trust us. One day.

Well, that day is now. If we don't secure the United States, we shouldn't fund the agencies that refuse to secure it. That is what this is about.

When my Democratic colleagues complain in October if we are unable to find a resolution to fund the United States Government, I want them to look squarely in the mirror. It is you who is causing it. It is you who is abandoning your responsibility to secure the border of the United States.

It is you that is causing little girls to get sold in the sex trafficking trade. It is you that is causing ranches in Texas to get overrun. It is you that is causing criminals to get released into the United States. It is you that is undermining our strength in the Western Hemisphere, empowering China, empowering cartels to undermine our national security.

Over my dead body am I going to say that I am going to support funding a government that refuses to do its job to secure the border.

That is what the House of Representatives should be saying, in unison, to a President flouting the law.

That is what this is about.

Our Founders gave us the power of the purse. James Madison wrote about it in the Federalist Papers. It is not just a happenstance that the House of Representatives has that power.

In the Declaration of Independence, Thomas Jefferson wrote, ``When a long train of abuses and usurpations, pursuing invariably the same object evinces a design to reduce them''--the people--``under absolute despotism, it is their right, it is their duty, to throw off such government, and to provide new guards for their future security.''

When they created our government and gave us the Constitution, they gave us tools to avoid that, but let's be very clear. What happened to us?

The Declaration of Independence outlined 27 grievances. I have listed more

than that just here. A complete abandonment of the job and the responsibility of the Federal Government, leaving the State of Texas $10 billion poorer while it tries to do the job the Federal Government is suppose to do.

The American colonists protested because they weren't represented in Parliament. I would suggest right now that the American people, frankly, aren't being well represented in this body because this body is letting the executive branch run over them every bit as much as King George III was doing to the colonists in 1776.

You think it is hyperbole.

Look at our border; look at our system of justice; look at our energy, economy; look at our level of spending--a complete abandonment of our job.

Where are we? Why even go home this weekend?

Why were we gone in August?

Why aren't we right here forcing the conversation, forcing Senator Schumer and the President to come down to the Republican-led House of Representatives and say enough. It is enough. Enough to open borders, enough to a devastating energy policy, enough to lawlessness, enough to targeting the American people, enough words, enough promises. It is time to fight.

If we are not going to secure the United States of America, we shouldn't fund the government that refuses to do so. We should stand up and fight to defend the people that sent us here to fight for them.

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

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

The motion was agreed to; accordingly (at 6 o'clock and 27 minutes p.m.), under its previous order, the House adjourned until Monday, September 18, 2023, at noon for morning-hour debate.

Mr. Speaker, I rise today to celebrate the 100th birthday of Schreiner University in Kerrville, TX. A generous donation of land and finances by Captain Charles Schreiner in 1917 made this possible. He served with distinction in the Texas Rangers.

Capt. Schreiner outlined his vision for the Institute as ``facilities for high grade instruction and military training for boys and young men as preparation for college and university work.''

James J. Delaney served as the first president of Schreiner Institute. From the beginning, it has been committed to the Reformed tradition of the Presbyterian Church.

The first class of female students was admitted during World War II. Formal military training ended in 1971, and the Institute became fully coeducational.

In the year 2000, Schreiner's governing board voted to change the school's name to Schreiner University. The years immediately following the name change saw various renovations and new buildings take shape on campus.

Online classes started in 2014 and have expanded since then, now including a full online master's program. Recently, Schreiner introduced their Military Academy Preparatory School to provide paths for students into military service.

In its 100th year, Schreiner University is proud to bring back a pastime from its early days, football. Other sport disciplines for students include soccer, wrestling, equestrian, shooting sports, and tennis.

Today, Schreiner University president Charlie McCormick oversees a campus that offers over 30 different degree options. I am proud that the Hill Country is home to a university the caliber of Schreiner. Congratulations on 100 years of helping students achieve more.

Mr. Speaker, as I was preparing to give remarks, I was listening to my colleagues on the other side of the aisle, and one of the points being raised was about champions of Title IX and what would they say. I think that is a fantastic question.

Just today, in the House Judiciary Committee we had a witness, a young lady who is a swimmer for the University of Pennsylvania. I asked her whether Lia Thomas is a man or a woman. This female swimmer replied without hesitation that, indeed, that swimmer is a biological male.

Now, that gets sometimes dismissed as, I don't know, humorous or absurd or whatever in these culture battles, but the fact is the young lady testifying was a victim of sexual assault and didn't want to have to be in a bathroom changing with a biological male.

Yet, my colleagues on the other side of the aisle dismiss it. They dismiss Riley Gaines' concern about competing against a biological male, while they champion Title IX. You literally can't even make it up. Come to the floor, champion Title IX, and yet they destroy Title IX by virtue of saying, oh, yeah, it is fine. It doesn't matter if you are a dude. Suit up, jump in the pool and swim.

I asked one of the witnesses today, I said, well, you know, is the international federation of swimming, or whatever it is called, is that some grand rightwing conspiracy?

She kind of chuckled and said no. She knew where I was going, which is, that organization had banned Lia Thomas and other biological males from competing against women in the 2024 Olympics because of course they did, at least if they are being at all rational. It doesn't mean that won't change. It doesn't mean that the irrational won't take over. It doesn't mean that the absurd won't define how we live our lives.

But at least, in this case, the committee said, huh, yeah, maybe a dude shouldn't swim against girls in the swim meets.

My colleagues on the other side of the aisle dismiss that as rightwing lunacy, MAGA extremism. I never know what I am. I support Ron DeSantis and I am a MAGA hater. On the floor of the House, I am a MAGA extremist because I dare to stand up for the American people who are sick of having their world turned upside down.

I have my colleagues on the other side of the aisle saying, well, we have important work to do, but all they care about are book bans. Well, that is just a lie. It is just a straight-up lie, the accusations of book banning.

Do you know what kind of books have been put on the chopping block in Florida? Books that have straight-up pornography in them that parents dared to say, wait a minute, I don't think I want that in the public schools library.

Now, wait, is that what a book ban is? Because if it is, sign me up. Sign me up because I don't want that in my kids' library, and that is actually the fundamental question.

Are we going to stand up and say we are going to stand up for our kids? Are we, in this body, are people who just want normalcy and their lives back in legislatures across this country and in governors' mansions across this country going to stand up and say yes, there is man and there is woman; and no, the men shouldn't compete against women in their swim meets or their track meets.

No, we shouldn't put pornography of any kind, straight, gay, otherwise, in the public libraries of our kids' schools, and then be labeled as book banners; because if that is what you are going to do, I am going to stand up and say yes.

Meanwhile, my colleagues on the other side of the aisle want to shut down free speech. They want to say anything I am saying--in fact, what I am saying right now, they would say is disinformation. What I am saying right now, they would say if I put it on social media, they would be all too happy to have Big Tech companies with the power of government shut down my speech.

Now, I am protected on the floor of the House, but every American is supposed to be protected with free speech. I am going to keep saying it. I am going to keep saying that Lia Thomas is a dude, and I will say it here, and I will say it on social media, and I will say it on the streets. If they dare try to stop me, that is what the First Amendment is all about, and we are going to stand up and defend that. We are going to stand up and defend normalcy.

We had accusations that, oh, this is all made up. We actually had somebody in one of the hearings today in which we were talking about transgender issues and so-called dysphoria, we had a young lady who, I could barely speak after I heard her testimony. I could barely figure out what to say to her because she had started to be transitioned, changed sex, realized that she was going to lose the ability as a woman to breastfeed her children--hopefully one day--and she stopped.

She was testifying today about the horrors of the pressure being placed upon her to change her sex. She broke down in tears.

Then she was talking about one of the other witnesses at the table, a mom that was talking about her child, the Democratic witness, and saying how important it was to be able to have the transition.

Here is what our witness, Chloe Cole said:

``I understand that Mrs. Reynolds is scared for her child and I just want to set the record straight that I don't hate her. I don't think anyone in this room hates her.

``In fact,'' she said as she began to cry, and all of us, by the way, on the dais were holding back tears, ``I see my own mother and my own father in her, and that clearly she dearly loves her child and she is doing the best with that she has been given and, unfortunately, it is not much, and for that I am sorry.''

She remained emotional and she continued, she said:

``I think every parent deserves the utmost grace and guidance with how to help their child. I don't wish for her child to have the same result as I did.

``I don't wish for anyone to regret transition or detransition because it is incredibly difficult. It comes with its own difficulties and it is not easy.''

My colleagues on the other side of the aisle call that hate speech. They say that if we bring these questions up about transitioning people's sex, their God-given chromosomes and sex because you have got pressure on social media and the devil that is or are these devices that our kids spend hundreds of hours on, and you wonder, if I dare say that, oh, no, that is hate speech.

If you think I am crazy, look around the world. Look around the world. We had a public official in Finland who was being prosecuted last year, prosecuted, and is still having to go through it, for daring to have distributed materials saying that she believed in traditional marriage instead of same-sex marriage. She was being prosecuted, despite being a member of the Parliament.

I am just telling you, America, it is coming to a theater near you. Don't think for a minute that the people who are decrying what I am saying as hate speech don't want me to be in jail for it. They do, in a heartbeat. I would be put in jail for daring to stand up in defense of my faith, my values, my beliefs and, in this case, for simply saying there is man and there is woman. That is where we stand as a society.

I heard my colleagues on the other side of the aisle--this is not what I came to the floor to talk about, by the way. But I heard my colleagues on the other side of the aisle talking about schools and how we want to, you know, scare parents, by talking about these issues. This is all to scare parents they said in the hearing.

Well, how about this? Today, news report: Vermont school district removes male and female from the reproductive system lessons.

Let that sink in for a minute. I want you to think about it.

What is the first thing you do if you are a farmer and you get a new calf, or you are trying to--what do you do? Is it a boy or a girl?

What is the first thing you do when your baby is born? Is it a boy or a girl?

They are literally taking out of the lessons in the Vermont school district on reproductive system, they are taking out male and female. That is so bat-crap crazy I can't even possibly put it into words.

Yet, I am the one, according to my colleagues on other side of the aisle, who is hateful because we are trying to pass in a National Defense Authorization Act language to say that perhaps--color me crazy--our Defense Department should be focused on a mission to kill people and blow stuff up when called upon to do so, hopefully, on a limited basis, but really dadgum effectively when called upon to do so.

I think if I polled most Americans, they would say I want my defense to be better than every other country, by an order of magnitude, highly trained; and I don't think any of them would rank diversity, equity, inclusion, or transgender surgeries high on the national defense authorization list of priorities, or climate change.

I don't think most of my constituents care that they drive around battery-powered jeeps or battery-powered Hummers or battery-powered tanks. They actually want them to work. They actually want them to blow things up.

So we dare to say, how about the National Defense Authorization Act focus on defense?

My colleagues on the other side of the aisle come down crying hate, crying that we are injecting culture wars into the Defense Department. Well, wait. Who exactly is it that injected culture wars into the Defense Department? This administration, my Democratic colleagues, and we are trying to get defense back on track. We did so, by the way.

But our Democratic colleagues in the Senate are going to refuse to take up the version of the National Defense Authorization Act that we passed. They are going to want to cleanse it.

Let's not forget, some of my colleagues from the other side of the aisle, that when they cleanse it, what they are really doing is polluting the Department of Defense, which is driving down recruiting and driving down our effectiveness. We are losing simulations by the day. Our numbers are going down by the day. Our effectiveness is going down by the day. Our stockpiles are going down by the day because they have turned the Department of Defense into a social engineering experiment wrapped in a uniform, and that is criminal and we shouldn't stand for it.

That is not the only thing we shouldn't stand for. Yesterday, I had the pleasure of having Alejandro Mayorkas, the Department of Homeland Security Secretary before us in the Judiciary Committee. I reminded the Secretary that about 15 months ago he appeared before the Judiciary Committee.

When he did so, I asked him, point blank, Mr. Secretary, do you have, in your job as the Secretary, operational control of the border? He said, I do.

I said, wait. You have operational control of the border? I pulled up the statute, the Secure Fence Act, which requires this country and the Secretary carrying out his job to maintain operational control.

I pulled up a second board with the statute definition of operational control. It means you do not allow anybody to come across the border and into our country without papers and knowing who they are. You don't allow illegal trafficking. You don't allow narcotics to come across. You have operational control of the border.

I put all that up. I said, are you sure you have operational control of the border? The Secretary said, I do. I pushed on it multiple times.

Funny enough, in a different hearing later this year over in the Senate, the Secretary changed his tune. He said: Well, by that definition under the Secure Defense Act, I don't use that one. Under that definition, nobody has ever had operational control.

The fact is, the Secretary wants the American people to believe that our country is in charge of our border when anybody with eyes knows that it is the cartels that have operational control of our border. It is wide open and lawless while Americans are dying as a result of fentanyl poisonings; migrants are dying in the false name of compassion, as my Democratic colleagues pat themselves on the back while 53 people roast in a tractor-trailer in San Antonio, which I represent; and little girls are sold into the sex trafficking trade, as exposed in the ``Sound of Freedom.'' Cartels are making tens of billions of dollars moving human beings for profit.

That is what is happening, and my Democratic colleagues don't care, and the Secretary of Homeland Security doesn't care. The Secretary of Homeland Security lied in front of me, in front of the entire Judiciary Committee, in front of all America, by saying that he has operational control of the border when faced with the statute, knowing what it means and knowing full well that he does not, we do not, our country does not.

Governor Abbott was being criticized on the floor today by my colleagues on the other side of the aisle because he is putting up barriers. He is putting Texas DPS, Department of Public Safety, troopers down on the Rio Grande. He is deploying barriers in the middle of the Rio Grande. He is being criticized for being heartless.

Who is it that is heartless? Those who want the rule of law enforced and to tell the world that you don't flood our borders in a way that is going to empower cartels and endanger yourself, or is it heartless to allow all of those people to get sold into the sex trafficking trade, die in the Texas heat, get abused, get used by cartels like the Federal judge in Texas who upward departed a few weeks ago from the penalties under our statutes and the sentencing guidelines because he ran across a case where the cartels had a stash house in Fort Worth, Texas, a man illegally here, a father who was in Baltimore, Maryland, and he was being told by the cartels his daughter would be raped if he didn't pay $23,000.

That is happening every day in our country, every single day in the supposed greatest country on the face of the Earth and in history. We stand here, 435 of us, in front of that flag, and that flag is supposed to mean something, and it sure as hell doesn't mean anything if little girls are getting raped right here in D.C., up the road in Baltimore, in Houston, in San Antonio, in Laredo, in Fort Worth.

We have evidence it is happening every day, and we don't do anything about it except pat ourselves on the back and say, well, we can just interpret parole and interpret asylum laws and just tell the world to come on up through Mexico, but don't mind the fact that thousands of you are going to die. You are going to get used by the cartels. You are going to pay millions of dollars, and your little girls are going to get exploited--the sound of freedom, indeed.

We should be ashamed of ourselves. By the way, that goes for Republicans and Democrats because it has happened under both of our watches for far too long.

Why am I standing in front of this chart? Because, about 4 months ago, we passed in this body H.R. 2. We passed legislation that we know--we don't believe; we know--would take significant strides to securing the border of the United States, reestablishing operational control, limiting the flow, limiting the power of cartels, empowering ICE, empowering Border Patrol, reestablishing the rule of law so that we can be the beacon of hope that people want to aspire to come here to live under. Of course, that bill is sitting over in the Senate that doesn't give a whit.

What do we do about it? That is my question for Republicans. I can sit here and bash my Democratic colleagues all day long for not caring about what is happening in Texas, for not caring about the five kids in the school district where I live who died from fentanyl poisoning, not caring about the 200 a day dying from fentanyl poisoning while fentanyl pours cross our border, not caring about what is happening to Border Patrol agents, not caring that the Secretary of Homeland Security lied about Border Patrol agents allegedly whipping Haitian migrants, which we knew didn't happen and the Secretary knew didn't happen 2 hours before he went to the microphone and said they did it and they did it because of systemic racism.

All of that is true, and my Democratic colleagues will not want to pass H.R. 2. So, what will Republicans do about it? That is the question, and the answer is that we should recognize the power of the purse.

James Madison, Federalist Paper No. 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. . . . This power over the purse may, in fact, be regarded as''--and this is the most important part--``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.''

What that means is, we get to decide how the tax dollars and the borrowed dollars are spent to carry out the laws of the United States and no one else. We control the power of the purse. We are the people's House. It is our job to decide how those dollars are spent and then hold the executive branch accountable for carrying out the laws using those taxpayer dollars.

That is not only our opportunity; it is our duty in the House of Representatives.

That is the question for Republicans. Will we take inventory and decide whether we care more about steak dinners at night, making a golf event, or coming down to do three votes in a week and then getting home for the weekend?

I mean, I noticed today is Thursday. We have one appropriations bill passed. We are not coming in tomorrow. We are blowing out for a 6-week recess. The government is going to run out of money on September 30. That is one thing we know.

Most people I represent would tell you that they don't think we ought to spend more money, that we ought to spend less. So, the question is, between now and September 30, approximately 60 days from now, are we going to find the ability to pass appropriations bills that reduce spending, take our country back, and, most importantly, check the executive branch from the tyranny that they are engaging in over the American people?

The Department of Homeland Security is decidedly not securing the homeland. It is just true by any objective measure.

Last September, I asked my House and Senate Republican colleagues if they would vote for a CR and continue to fund the tyranny being waged by this administration. I sent a letter with six pages of examples of how a CR would continue funding the very things the GOP Members of this body campaign against.

That was September 27 of last year, about 40 days before the November election. What are the things GOP Members campaign against? Open borders and funding for open borders; authoritarian bureaucrats, the FBI, the IRS, the ATF, and the funding for those bureaucrats; tyrannical public health agencies that shut down our economy, mandated vaccines, mandated masks, and funding for those agencies; destructive energy policies through the Inflation Reduction Act, EPA, and Department of Energy undermining the ability of this country to produce reliable energy that makes the world work--by the way, 3 billion people on this planet do not have reliable energy and a billion people don't have electricity at all; funding for radical, anti-American ideologies at the Department of Education, NPR, and HHS; funding for the degradation of our national security with a woke Department of Defense. Nevertheless, 22 Senate Republicans still supported the CR, as did 10 House Republicans.

Funding runs out on September 30, and here we sit, once again--with two notable differences. We are now operating under bloated spending levels established by the FY23 omnibus bill passed last December. If you don't know what that means, it is just the way this place works. Spending runs out in September. If we haven't passed appropriations bills through both bodies that are signed by the President, people freak out. They want the lights to stay on. October 1 rolls around, and they pass a continuing resolution to keep the government going. Might pass it for a day or a week or a month. Often, they pass it for about 75 days.

Why would you do that on September 30 for about 75 days? Do the math. That ends up in the middle of December. The uniparty establishment of Washington elite, who doesn't give a crap about debt, who doesn't care about what is happening in their country at the end of the day, really cares more about getting home for Christmas. That is why.

What happened last December? That happened. A couple of days before Christmas, a $1.7 trillion omnibus spending bill was passed, funding Ukraine to the tune of about $45 billion, increasing defense spending by about 10 percent, increasing nondefense by about 7 percent. All of that got done while what? While we are at $32 trillion of debt and counting, long before, by the way, a big deal was cut raising your debt another $4 trillion on Memorial Day.

Again, that happened while Republicans were in charge of the House, and 17 Republican Senators voted for that. Why? I will tell you why: The defense establishment in this town, combined with those who wanted to try to do something for Ukraine, said: Well, we know we have a lot of debt, but we have to cut a deal. I want to go home for Christmas. I want to wear a blue and yellow pin on my lapel. I want to feel good about myself. That is okay. I will pass the buck down to my kids and grandkids with a big pile of debt.

Again, I am going to ask my Republican colleagues, will we vote to continue to fund this tyrannical government while our border is wide open, little girls are getting abused, some 80,000 to 90,000 Americans a year are dying from fentanyl poisoning, cartels are in power, and China is in power? Are we going to continue to do that?

We have the power of the purse. Will we use it, or will we curl up in a little ball, like we tend to do every single year, and say: ``Oh, no, they are going to criticize us for a government shutdown''? Every year, like clockwork.

I am all for moving the appropriations bills and getting them done by September 30, but I can promise you, as sure as the Sun is coming up tomorrow, Chuck Schumer and Senate Democrats are not going to bless the appropriations bills that we move through the House. They are not going to. They are going to then want to claim it is Republicans who are shutting down the government.

The question is, when we wake up on October 1, are we Republicans going to have agreed to spend even one more dollar to advance a tyrannical government that is stepping over the rights of the American people at the Department of Justice and the FBI, that is funding a woke government at the Department of Defense that leaves $85 billion behind in Afghanistan with no real accountability?

Importantly, for the purpose of what I want to talk about more right now, is the border. We have seen 5.6 million illegal crossings since January 2021. Under Secretary Mayorkas and President Biden, the number of known or suspected terrorists caught by border agents has increased each year: fiscal year 2021, 15, their first year; FY22, 98; FY23, 140 so far.

You think: ``Oh, gosh, they are doing their job. They caught all these guys.'' Well, what about the 1.8 million or so got-aways? Is anybody concerned about the got-aways when you know you have 140, so far, individuals nabbed who are known or suspected terrorists?

We have lost 85,000 kids, gone missing, can't track them.

As I said before, Border Patrol has seized 22,000 pounds of fentanyl. I don't know if you understand, but a sugar packet of fentanyl could kill most of the people in this room, depending on its strength. They have seized 22,000 pounds of fentanyl, which would kill hundreds of millions of people.

China sells the printing presses to cartels to make the pills that are killing our kids, kids that take Xanax or Adderall, boom, one pill, dead. It happens all across America. There are 72,815 fentanyl poisonings, 200 per day.

I represent Texas. As of this month, 46 Texas counties have declared an invasion because of the number and volume of migrants entering their communities. They have to deal with schools. They have to deal with hospitals. They have to deal with crime. They have to have police do the job that needs to be done. They have to deal with bailouts. They have to deal with fences getting cut. They have to deal with livestock getting out. They have to deal with fentanyl pouring into their communities. They have to deal with marijuana traffic. They have to deal with all sorts of dangers.

Texas has appropriated $10 billion to deal with the border. Texas should get that paid back.

I will be very clear. This Member of Congress will not vote for a single CR or DHS appropriations bill that does not address the border security issue, turning H.R. 2 into law, removing the actors at DHS that refuse to do their job, and paying Texas back for the damage being done to the State I represent.

I am not going to be alone. If those Senators think they are going to roll us, they have a fight on their hands--including Republican Senators. I don't care what party you are in. I don't care if you are a Republican or a Democrat. The time for our border being in chaos and dangerous and endangering migrants and endangering Americans, the time for that to end is now, not after another Presidential election.

My colleagues on the other side of the aisle say: ``Oh, we like to use all of this for politics, to raise money, to campaign on it.'' My constituents are sick of hearing about it. I don't get a whole lot of praise from my constituents for talking about it. They want us to end it. They are exhausted--ranchers breaking down in tears, 75-year-old crusty Texans who find a dead body on their ranch or are worried about their children, their livestock getting out, the ranch that has been in their family for years. Moms come to me having lost their children, like Stephanie Turner, who lost her son, Tucker, and who I have gotten to know, along with dozens of others.

The Secretary of Homeland Security has the audacity to come before the House Judiciary Committee and say he has it all under control and lie. Yet, a number of my Republican colleagues run around going, well, that is not a high crime or misdemeanor. Constitutional scholars, indeed.

It is, in fact, an impeachable offense to lie under oath, and the Secretary of Homeland Security has lied under oath. Putting aside all the other stuff, putting aside ignoring the laws, putting aside endangering Americans, all purposefully, put all of that aside, you think, ``Oh, that is maladministration. Maladministration was rejected by the Founders. Don't you see, Chip?'' I get these lessons all the time, Con Law 101, from my colleagues.

First of all, not 100 percent true. Maladministration is viewed by some of the people who have studied this to have been subsumed into what was known to be high crimes and misdemeanors at the time our Constitution was adopted.

Put that aside. The Secretary lied to us. That should mean something. That should matter. We should act on it. Either remove him or stop funding him or both.

I am going to call the question. This is fair warning. Oh, don't surprise me, I am told around here. Don't be surprised. It is July right now. We have 60 days until the government runs out of funding. I am telling you, I will fight the rule. I will fight every bill that comes to this floor that in any way will fund the Secretary of Homeland Security to continue to lie and fail to secure the homeland.

The things that we need to do we laid out in H.R. 2, the bill we passed this spring to secure the border: restart infrastructure, border wall construction; clear the cane; build roads; provide the resources needed to actually contain the flow; permanently implement the remain in Mexico policy that President Trump adopted that requires migrants to stay south of the border while any asylum claim is adjudicated; end catch and release; keep migrant families together while their claims are processed; treat minors from noncontiguous countries the same as we treat minors from Mexico by saying we will return them to their families; and end parole abuse and asylum abuse, restoring them to their original intent.

These things will reestablish the very rule of law that attracts migrants to come here. If you think and say, as my colleagues on the other side of the aisle often do, that this is anti-Brown, anti- Hispanic racism, that is a lie. Talk to Hispanic Texans, Hispanic Americans, sick of watching their communities get decimated, sick of watching the rule of law crumble, sick of watching cartels get into power, sick of watching their own die from fentanyl poisoning.

I am not going to allow the race-baiting and the game that we are going to call you racist to cow me away from standing up and defending the border of the United States, which we are required to do. I am not going to do it.

That is why I am going to keep offering amendments to end diversity, equity, and inclusion programs. I am going to keep offering amendments to stop the racial division being sowed by my colleagues on the other side of aisle, including the President of the United States and everybody running these agencies, undermining our Department of Defense, dividing our country, sowing seeds of hatred rather than bringing us together under that flag united. We should end it. I am not going to back away from it ever.

Let me close with one final point. I have some colleagues who I know want some time, and I will be happy to give it to them.

I have focused a lot on the border. There are a lot of things that need to change. When we passed the Limit, Save, Grow Act as a Republican Party in, I think, April, I felt that was one of the high watermarks, along with passing H.R. 2, of this Congress and laying out a vision for where we want to take the country--find a path forward to balance the budget, limit spending, cut the size and scope of the Federal bureaucracy, secure the border of the United States, limit the devastating damage that the so-called Inflation Reduction Act will be causing on our ability to be energy independent and the strength of our national security from energy freedom, cutting down the expansion of the Internal Revenue Service. There are other items in that, but we laid out an agenda. I hope we will stick with that as we go through the appropriations process.

In addition to the border, I have to say that the Inflation Reduction Act, which is effectively funding slavery in China, Congo, and around the world, needs to be ended, needs to be capped, limited, or ended.

Goldman Sachs estimates the IRA's unreliable energy subsidies will cost $1.2 trillion. Do you want to know how you ended up with $32 trillion, soon to be $36 trillion, in debt? There you go. We pass a debt ceiling limit increase. Within a month, we had already added another trillion dollars to the debt.

The IRA massively subsidizes EV purchases and manufacturing. The EPA has mandated two-thirds of new cars be EVs by 2032. I live in Texas. Driving from Austin to Midland ain't easy to do in an electric vehicle. I also don't have $70,000 sitting around to buy a new car that then is expensive to deal with when the battery goes out.

All of this is heavily owned by China. China has 80-plus percent, pushing 90 percent, of the battery-making manufacturing base. We are literally handing to China our entire energy security. It is like literally one of the stupidest things a free people has ever done. At a moment when we have military strength and economic strength that is being challenged around the world, the geniuses of this administration and my colleagues on the other side of the aisle decide we need to turn over our energy industry to our adversary.

It is so much worse. The Democratic Republic of the Congo produces 70 percent of the world's cobalt. NPR reported on how modern-day slavery in the DRC powers the rechargeable battery economy with children and mines. There are probably 10,000 to 15,000 tunnels that are dug by hand by artisanal miners. None of them have supports, ventilation shafts, rock bolts, anything like that, and these tunnels collapse all the time, burying alive children who are down there.

Trafficking--you have these malicious, sometimes called commandos, who will abduct children, traffic children, and recruit children from other parts of the DRC.

China owns 80 percent of the industrial cobalt mines in the DRC and controls 15 of the 19 primary mines in the country. It controls almost 80 percent of electric vehicle battery manufacturing. Eighty percent of solar panels installed in the U.S. come from Chinese firms. I could go on and on.

Meanwhile, while they do this, China has 1,100 coal-fired plants. We have 250. China is building two new coal-fired plants every week. We are sitting around playing unicorn games saying, hey, let's throw up a few more windmills and solar panels and just hope that we will be able to get our power from China.

Can you image, in 1939, going: Hey, let's go over to Germany and say, Why don't you provide our energy, we have a deal for you--or Japan. Here we sit. I want to bring it back to the final point and then I will be yielding time to my colleagues in whichever order they choose.

This is about humanity. We are empowering tyrants who are abusing children in mines around the world, enriching a handful of leftist elitists in the country through corporate cronyism to the tune of $1.2 trillion in the so-called Inflation Reduction Act while little children get exploited.

My colleagues on the other side of the aisle pat themselves on the back because they are fixing things for climate change. No, you are not. You are not denting CO2 production. You could get rid of every single internal combustion engine and you are going to drop CO2 production by 2 or 3 percent.

Meanwhile, our border is wide open. Meanwhile, as I said today, while I am sitting here in this Chamber a little girl has been driven up I-95 through the Nation's capital up to New York as part of the sex trafficking trade. The data indicates that it is so prevalent that it is likely true.

We know of the stash houses around this country. We know of the abuses being perpetrated on children. We know of the deaths of our children in this country to fentanyl poisoning. I am not going to subsidize and fund evil.

I am asking my Republican colleagues to join me in committing--before we get to the September 30 shutdown--to join our arms together and stand to thwart an administration that is tyrannically undermining our freedom and our safety in Texas and throughout this country. Little children, our kids, and our people are dying by the thousands because we refuse to do the basic duty of government, which is to secure our national borders.

Mr. Speaker, I yield to the gentleman from New York (Mr. Langworthy).

Mr. Speaker, I yield to the gentleman from Utah (Mr. Owens).

Mr. Speaker, I thank my friend from Utah.

Mr. Speaker, I yield to the gentlewoman from Florida (Ms. Salazar), my friend.

Mr. Speaker, I thank the gentlewoman for her remarks.

Mr. Speaker, I close by recognizing an individual that I have grown very fond of in my time here at the House of Representatives. I don't do a lot of these Special Orders and come down and talk about individuals, but since I have been in the House, getting to know Joyce Hamlett has been an extraordinary pleasure and honor.

I wish Joyce were on the floor at this moment because she is going to be retiring here shortly, either tomorrow or next week. She has worked here on the Hill for 35 years.

Speaker McCarthy already gave a fantastic speech detailing her bio and background. She grew up in North Carolina and she will be returning to North Carolina. She devoted 35 years here, working up from being in the cafeteria with her mom, if I remember correctly from Speaker McCarthy's speech, and serving as the elevator operator.

For over a decade, she has faithfully protected the mace. The mace of the House of Representatives is one of the oldest symbols of the United States Government representing Congress' order and authority. Her duty is to protect the mace that opens the House each day and closes it each night.

Mr. Speaker, I would note she was also responsible for keeping decorum on the floor of the House of Representatives, and I have been the recipient of her admonition on more than one occasion. It has been, frankly, an honor to receive it.

Mr. Speaker, I will miss her and I wish her God speed in her retirement. I thank her and all the staff that serve the House of Representatives. She is one of the best. I have worked with a lot of people over the years, she is an exceptional human being. We are a greater country and a greater body for her service.

Mr. Speaker, God bless Joyce, and I hope to see her today or tomorrow before she goes off to North Carolina.

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

Madam Chair, I have an amendment at the desk.

Madam Chair, this amendment that I am offering prohibits any of the funding in the MILCON-VA appropriations bill from being used to carry out what I believe are unnecessary and unscientific COVID-19 vaccine mandates at the Department of Veterans Affairs.

Now, there has been some confusion about this. Some people have said, oh, well, that is not really still going on. Well, I just got an email from the VA today saying, yes, it is.

There still are vaccine mandates that are being carried out at the VA and, to the best of my knowledge, it is the last remaining Federal vaccine mandate, and it needs to end.

Most Federal vaccine mandates ended in May of 2023, with the end of the public health emergency. The VA, though, was one of the few agencies to leave the mandate in place.

VHA Directive 1193.01, COVID-19 Vaccination Program for VHA Healthcare Personnel, outlines the policy and guidance for mandatory COVID-19 vaccination for Veterans Health Administration healthcare personnel is still in effect.

The mandate applies to EMS personnel, nurses, nursing assistants, physicians, technicians, therapists, phlebotomists, pharmacists, health professions trainees, clerical, dietary, environmental services, laundry, security, maintenance, engineering and facilities management, administrative, billing, and even volunteers.

If you want to volunteer at the VA, you better get a jab.

The COVID vax mandate is unnecessary. It hurts healthcare workers. I believe it hurts healthcare being provided to our veterans.

As of July 15, 2022, the VA had disciplined some 74 workers that we know of, some of whom were fired.

I do not believe the mandate is necessary to keep our veterans or the VA staff safe. The former CDC director has said that the vaccines can't do anything to prevent transmission.

This amendment is about ending COVID madness once and for all at the VA and making sure that anyone who wants to provide medical care to our great veterans can do so.

Madam Chair, I reserve the balance of my time.

Madam Chair, I would only respond to the gentlewoman from Florida when she said it only applies to healthcare personnel. I just rattled off an entire list of virtually every known possible human being and job that could apply at the VA, and a whole lot of them aren't, in fact, healthcare personnel.

I went through an entire list, including laundry, security, maintenance, engineering and facilities management, administrative, billing, even volunteers.

Instead, some of my colleagues have said, this doesn't apply to the VA. Like I said, we reached out to the VA and, sure enough, they replied today, yes, the vaccine mandate still applies.

Nevertheless, we get rid of the Medicaid. We get rid of the Medicare mandates. The private sector is out there. They can do what they want to do. The vaccine mandate has come and gone in terms of something that the American people believe we should tolerate.

They want to be able to move about without having the fear of losing their job, and we have people at the VA losing their job.

We have nurses that have given up their ability to practice. We have got it throughout our entire--we have members of our military that have been held up from being promoted and being able to advance. We have people at the VA. I have met with people who worked at the VA, some of whom who were facing losing their job. This should end. This madness should end.

That is what this amendment would do. It would ensure that no funding goes to continuing and perpetuating that mandate.

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

Madam Chair, I have an amendment at the desk.

Madam Chair, I have an amendment that prohibits any of the MILCON-VA funding appropriated from being used to modify or remove any VA display of the original mission statement.

Now, just a quick second before I go there. I didn't reserve my time because I thought we were trying to move things along. I am going to say, as a cancer survivor, as someone who did have chemo, and as someone who was on Neulasta to deal with a weakened immune system, I was in a hospital, and I wasn't being forced to wear masks and wasn't being forced to take any shots. If I wanted to take the flu shot, I could.

We have a CDC Director who said that this vaccine doesn't do anything to help the spread from other people to you. That is the whole point.

We should get rid of the vaccine mandates, but on another note of craziness from this administration, on March 16, 2023, earlier this year, the VA announced it updated the 1959 mission statement from: ``To fulfill President Lincoln's promise: `To care for him who shall have borne the battle, and for his widow, and his orphan' by serving and honoring the men and women who are America's veterans.''

Now, it is a gender-neutral version: ``To fulfill President Lincoln's promise to care for those who have served in our Nation's military and for their families, caregivers, and survivors.''

That is, it upends the quote that is directly from President Lincoln.

The original mission statement is posted in roughly 50 percent of the VA's facilities. The VA has been working through replacing them over the last couple of months by a directive. It is unclear how many displays are left.

The Trump administration resisted calls to change the motto and put an additional 140 plaques at national cemeteries bearing Lincoln's quote because it is a good quote. It is a historic quote.

The fact is, we should not use taxpayer dollars to allow this administration to unilaterally change the VA's historic motto and erase the words of President Lincoln in order to appease the radical left in advancing yet another one of their cultural revisionist efforts.

The VA's mission statement, established in 1959, appropriately used the words of President Lincoln in his Second Inaugural Address delivered on March 4, 1865: ``With malice toward none; with charity for all; with firmness in the right, as God gives us to see the right, let us strive on to finish the work we are in; to bind up the Nation's wounds; to care for him who shall have borne the battle, and for his widow, and his orphan.''

That quote obviously came from the timeframe in which we were concluding the Civil War, and it came a mere month, from my recollection of history, from when Abraham Lincoln was, in fact, assassinated.

The speech was in part the basis of the Department of Veterans Affairs' creation and declared mission.

The Department wants to continue to waste hard-earned taxpayer dollars to erase history and expunge Lincoln's words by replacing the VA's mission statement, all in an attempt to earn woke brownie points.

I am thankful, of course, for the millions of men and women who have served valiantly in our Armed Forces, but changing the VA motto is just virtue signaling. We should be focused on providing the quality care and benefits veterans have earned in a timely manner.

The average wait time for new primary care appointments within the 13 South Texas Veterans Health System facilities was 50 days; veterans seeking their first appointment locally at the new Pecan Valley clinic, an average of 98 days; the VA clinic in the district I represent, Kerrville, 23 days, and that is the shortest.

This amendment, like my other amendments, is about restoring VA focus, not advancing a political agenda out of step with the majority of Americans.

Madam Chair, I reserve the balance of my time.

Madam Chair, I will reiterate the extent to which this motto came directly from a quote from President Lincoln at his Second Inaugural Address at a particularly important and historic moment in our Nation's history. That was the point.

The literal culmination of the Civil War had occurred almost around that exact date or was occurring shortly thereafter and shortly before the President was to be assassinated, I believe in April, a month after this speech. To go back and edit this and then go around changing the VA to pull out a quote directly from Lincoln just, again, shows a lack of focus on what the VA should be focused on.

That is the point of the amendment. Can we just get back to trying to figure out how to provide care and do what we said we are going to do for millions of veterans who are tired of waiting and having technological systems that aren't working properly so they have trouble getting in and out of care and being able to use care in the private sector? There are lots of things we need to be fixing at the VA, and this is certainly not one of them.

Madam Chair, I think that I have made the point. I think the amendment should be supported. I think we should get the VA focused on what the people of this country want us to focus on, supporting the care for veterans.

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

Madam Chair, I have an amendment at the desk.

Madam Chair, this amendment prohibits any of the funding in the MILCON-VA appropriations bill from being used to carry out President Biden's executive orders on climate change.

I was gratified to have offered a similar amendment and to see it adopted on the floor of the House with respect to the National Defense Authorization Act, the NDAA. We believe that the United States military should have a singular focus, and that is also true for the Veterans Administration. It should have a singular focus--ensuring our veterans have the care they need, not advancing the climate fetish that is making us beholden to China for our energy needs, undermining our national security, and undermining the very reason veterans put their lives on the line to defend this country.

In August 2021, the VA put forward a ``climate action plan,'' which includes indoctrinating VA employees with so-called climate literacy, pushing renewable energy consumption, sustainable buildings, and greenhouse gas emissions at VA facilities.

Now, VA is transitioning its fleet of over 22,000 vehicles to zero- emission vehicles. Mind you, our American public, who want to go about carrying out their jobs and their livelihoods, can't even afford vehicles anymore because we are clamping down on the ability of them to go purchase vehicles because we are limiting the production of the internal combustion engine so we can have battery-powered automobiles that are being produced with lithium and cobalt and things being mined in Africa while children are being exploited and the Chinese Communist Party is being empowered, all while China, by the way, has 1,100 coal- fired plants compared to our 250. They are building two a week while we are basically doing nothing to advance anything with respect to reliable energy.

Instead, we are putting all of our eggs in the unreliable energy basket, which makes us beholden to China, the Chinese Communist Party, and our enemies around the globe rather than exporting liquefied natural gas and making us stronger.

Again, the Veterans Administration ought to reflect the American people and our strength by focusing on its core mission--providing healthcare and benefits that are necessary for those who have served to defend our country.

My Democratic colleagues apparently think you can power a VA hospital on wind and solar alone. Of course, you cannot. It is not possible.

Anybody who looks at it looks at the data and sees on a windless, cloudy day, how are you powering a VA hospital? You are powering it with fossil fuels. You are powering it with what little nuclear power we have, given that we have been unable to build a nuclear plant, by far the most reliable non-CO2-producing energy in the world. We haven't been able to do it since the 1970s because of the regulatory infrastructure in this country. It is absurd.

My colleagues on the other side of the aisle go around ballyhooing about carbon dioxide, and the one reliable energy that you can do has been prevented by regulatory morass through the better part of my lifetime of 50 years.

Instead, they go around producing wind and solar, which as more information comes out about how horrific it has been for the planet, how horrific it is for children throughout this world mining those minerals, how empowering it is for our enemies, and here we are trying to turn the VA into essentially a promotion of the climate agenda for the radical left.

Madam Chair, I reserve the balance of my time.

Madam Chair, I just reiterate the extent to which we are turning over our national security to our enemies. Eighty percent of the solar panels installed in the United States come from Chinese firms. Seven of the top 10 wind technology turbine manufacturers are Chinese firms. China controls 77 percent of EV battery manufacturing.

The fact is, our national security is dependent upon our ability to produce and export liquefied natural gas and being able to use the God- given minerals that we have in this country, oil and gas, to be able to power the world.

There are almost a billion people on this planet who really have no access to electricity, some 3 billion who don't have access to reliable electricity and energy, and all we are doing is constraining the ability of the world to produce the energy necessary for human flourishing.

We are all committed to trying to help improve the environment. Governor DeSantis in Florida has made enormous strides in improving the Everglades in Florida and received notoriety for doing so.

In Texas, we have the most wind production of any State in the country, but you have to beg the question as to whether that is a good thing or a bad thing if you don't have enough fossil fuels to back up the wind and the solar.

My colleagues on the other side of the aisle want to live in unicorn land and pretend that you don't need energy to power up the buildings in which we live in order to make us able to exist on this planet and actually have human flourishing in the face of weather and the conditions that we have to live through.

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

Madam Chair, I unfortunately missed one rollcall vote today. Had I been present, I would have voted NO on rollcall No. 369.

Amendment No. 2 Offered by Mr. Ogles

Mr. Chair, had I been present, I would have voted ``no'' on rollcall No. 361 and ``aye'' on rollcall No. 362.

Amendment No. 77 Offered by Mr. Perry

Mr. Chairman, I thank my friend from Utah for leading this amendment, and I thank my friends in the San Antonio delegation for standing up for the people of San Antonio, who are on the outside looking in.

San Antonio is a city of 1.5 million people. It is the seventh largest city, Joint Base San Antonio. My colleagues on both sides of the aisle just smirk it off and say: Oh, no, don't disrupt my flights. Don't disrupt my ability to get to my local airports.

Do you know what? The next time you come to San Antonio, explain that to the men and women in uniform serving their country who can't take a flight to Reagan because you guys got something in 1966, and now it is a protectionist racket to hold onto something for yourselves.

I won't take this flight, for the most part, unless I am going back to San Antonio. I have a direct flight because Austin was exempted, like 10 other cities were exempted. This is seven slots. It is less than 2 percent of the total. Stop the protectionist racket. Open it up to competition, seven airlines, seven slots.

Mr. Speaker, I thank the gentlewoman for yielding.

Mr. Speaker, I would note that my colleague on the other side of the aisle from Pennsylvania referred to the crisis that we are experiencing on the southern border as a ``fake'' crisis.

I just want everyone in America to understand: Our colleagues on the other side of the aisle believe that what we are experiencing on the southern border is a fake crisis.

She said: demonizing migrants. She is criticizing Governor Abbott for having to deal with the crisis that they call fake.

Governor Abbott, yes, moved migrants from Texas to other parts of the country, just like the mayor of El Paso and just like the mayor of New York. The mayor of New York, by the way, exists in a sanctuary city and then wants to come begging the Federal Government for money. That is the truth.

We know precisely what is going on along the southern border, and my colleagues on the other side of the aisle are not just in denial, they are literally making up facts. They are saying things that are completely untrue.

Did the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania have to appropriate $10 billion--$10 billion?

That is what the State of Texas had to do to make up for the fact that the Federal Government is not only refusing to enforce the law, but it is actively participating--as this President is doing and as the Secretary of Homeland Security is doing while he lies to me under oath in the Judiciary Committee--actively participating in the trafficking of human beings into the United States and the trafficking of little girls into the sex trafficking trade.

Was it a fake crisis for the 53 migrants who were cooked in a tractor-trailer last August in San Antonio, Texas? Is that fake?

Is it a fake crisis for the 856 migrants who died along the Rio Grande in south Texas and in Arizona last year? Is that fake?

Is it fake for the little girl who is sitting in a stash house in Houston, San Antonio, New York, or Philadelphia right now being raped by her captors?

Or in Fort Worth, Texas, as a Federal judge articulated in a Federal opinion just 2 months ago?

Mr. Speaker, I thank the gentlewoman for the time.

Mr. Speaker, of course, it is not fake.

We are having to impact the entire country, and that is why I support the gentleman's bill, Schools Not Shelters. Yes, we passed other legislation, like H.R. 2, which would address the problem but which my colleagues on the other side of the aisle and this President refused to do.

We are doing this, of course, jointly, while we are trying to move the FAA reauthorization. I support that bill too, but we must include slots--I just want to be very clear--for the people in San Antonio and for cities outside of the perimeter that was created in 1966.

It is critically important for the American people to have access to their Nation's Capitol--including San Antonio, with 1.6 million people, the seventh largest city in the country--to have access to the Ronald Reagan National Airport.

So I hope we will adopt that amendment so the FAA bill can move strongly to the Senate and get passed.

Mr. Speaker, I have been listening to my colleagues on the other side of the aisle decrying the alleged lack of action by those on my side of the aisle with respect to gun violence and with respect to guns generally.

I think it is important to note the primary driver of the current malaise and the current dangers upon citizens by those with guns comes from criminals and those who have mental health problems.

A full one-third of Americans are currently putting themselves out as depressed according to polls. We have mental health issues and drug issues with our children. We have problems with people who feel socially detached.

I can assure you, Mr. Speaker, that when I was a child, about the time I was born, fully one-half of American households had weapons and they had guns. Fewer than one-third do today.

The fact is we have a problem and an epidemic of people with mental health issues and we have a lack of resolve of leadership in this country to deal with those or to deal with the criminals perpetrating crimes. That is the truth.

My colleagues on the other side of the aisle rush to say that they want to get the guns. The fact is we need to stop the criminals. I was a Federal prosecutor. I spent my time in the United States Attorneys' Office targeting criminals with guns and putting bad guys behind bars. There has been a movement of late to allow these criminals back out on our streets. That is a mistake.

There has been a longstanding movement to not treat those with mental health problems, and it is getting infinitely worse with these devices, iPhones, and all of the focus that our young are directing towards electronic devices rather than engaging with their fellow mankind.

We know it, we see it, and we do nothing about it.

We rage against TikTok because of its relationship to China.

Why don't we rage against the extent to which these are addictive devices putting garbage in the minds of our children and creating environments where children get detached from reality and detached from society?

We see it unfold before our very eyes, and the response among leaders of this country is to form a task force. You don't need a task force to understand that our society is breaking down, and you don't need a task force to understand that our communities are breaking down.

This is what the American people are feeling on a daily basis. When I talk to my constituents, the people I run into, the people I run into on airplanes, Americans I don't represent and Americans I do represent, they know that something is very, very wrong with our country.

That is the truth. That is what the American people know.

Not just with politicians and not just with elective leaders, not just with Congress, and not just with the economy, but that something is just fundamentally wrong and fundamentally broken with our way of life.

They are not wrong. Just a couple of weeks ago, we celebrated Independence Day. One line from that document which was written specifically about and to King George citing the death warrants for all those who signed it, he said, Jefferson wrote, they wrote, they said that he--the king--has abdicated government here by declaring us out of his protection and waging war against us.

How different is that from our current situation?

The elites in this country are waging war against us. They are waging war against our values, waging wars war against or prosperity, and waging war against our natural rights as parents, as citizens, and as individuals.

The average Americans right out there today listening just want to play by the rules. They want to go to school, they want to get a job, they want to buy a house, they want to support their family, and they want to raise their kids. They want to raise their kids to be happy, they want their kids to be free, and they want a society--more importantly--they want a family that is flourishing and happy and that can achieve. All of that is what we historically call the American Dream.

What is the state of the American Dream today?

If I ask that question, half the people in the room would be staring at their dadgum iPhones because we don't engage with people anymore.

If I said this in the middle of a meeting of my colleagues, or if I said it in a restaurant, how many times do you see everybody just staring at these things?

The question here is: What happened to the American Dream?

If my colleagues were in this room--of course, they are not--I would ask: Do you believe the American Dream can be achieved by your children and by your grandchildren today?

Do you believe it?

Do you believe it is attainable?

Do you believe that if they play by the rules that they will achieve the dream?

Or do you think that the rich and the powerful--the large corporations, the government, your own leaders--are rigging the system to protect their own status and to protect their own wealth against your freedom and your prosperity?

We have a system where too often today, crony policies help big, woke corporations make windfall profits while families struggle with inflation and small businesses struggle to stay afloat amid a mountain of regulatory burdens and costs. That is the truth.

Everybody I talk to can't afford labor, they can't afford their supplies, they can't afford a car, they can't buy a new vehicle because it has been regulated to death, and they can barely afford their electricity bills.

That is the truth of everyday Americans right now, and they are wondering why? What happened to that American Dream?

The elites, on the other hand, bailed out Wall Street, and they forced Main Street to pay for it.

Now they are doing it again. Wall Street got a $1 trillion bailout after a heavy hand at tanking the economy, and they are making more money than ever now.

This year the Federal Government gave a $22 billion bailout to Silicon Valley Bank and Signature Bank of New York.

The administration only cares about their own. Treasury Secretary Yellen

said that small and regional banks wouldn't get the same treatment.

What exactly does ``too big to fail'' mean?

``Too big to fail'' means I am going to protect the fat cats down the street, but you at home are left holding the bag.

Since 2008, corporate profits have increased by 250 percent in the last 15 years. Hourly wages have increased less than 50 percent.

Mr. Speaker, you say: Oh, Chip, you sound like a Democrat.

What I am trying to say is we have a situation where, as the Founders predicted, the power structure in this town is too tilted to the power structure of Wall Street, and too tilted to the power structure in corporate boardrooms across this country.

Hardworking Americans are the ones who can't make it, and we should be here fighting for them, but are we?

In 1989, the typical American could provide middle-class essentials for a family of four by working 40 weeks a year leaving time for vacation or holidays. It will take that same individual 62 weeks to provide the same life for his or her family in 2022.

Think about that, Mr. Speaker. That is just 30 years.

What are we doing?

The political elites shipped jobs overseas while enriching themselves off the Chinese Communist officials who are taking those jobs and threatening our supply chain.

What do we do?

We respond with the CHIPS Act. Don't blame me. The CHIPS Act basically just increases that flow to China. It is nuts. You can't even make it up, Mr. Speaker, but that is what we do in the people's House.

U.S. manufacturing activity contracted in June for the eighth straight month declining 0.9 percentage points for May. It was the longest period of contraction in U.S. manufacturing since the Great Recession.

During COVID, we shut down the greatest economy in the history of the world. People got laid off, they lost jobs, and small businesses shut down. I have read stats of 100,000 small businesses getting absolutely whacked during the COVID hysteria driven by Dr. Fauci and the cronies in this town, but the wealthiest Americans got 40 percent richer during that same time.

Now, again, I am a believer in lifting all boats, but that is only true if the free enterprise and the free market system in this country is released unfettered to allow Americans to achieve the American Dream, but right now it is stacked, and it is stacked in favor of a small handful of elites against the hardworking average American.

In 2023, as I said before, we have seen three of the largest bank failures in American history. First Republic, $212 billion; Silicon Valley, $209 billion; and Signature Bank, $110 billion. There we were racing to bail out. That is not capitalism, Mr. Speaker. That is not free enterprise. Rushing in to bail people out is the elites protecting their own against the hardworking American.

For decades we have wasted money that isn't ours on policies and projects no one wants, and then we pass the credit card bill down to the next generation.

In the months since this body extended the debt ceiling for another 18 months until January of 2025, in the infinite wisdom of my colleagues on both sides of the aisle, we have already amassed another $1 trillion in debt since Memorial Day, and yet everyone in this body except for a handful gleefully skipped away after saying: Sure, let's raise the debt another $4 trillion.

It isn't going to be $4 trillion.

When are we going to get serious about what we are doing here?

What about wars?

We are now 21 years--22 years--into the authorization of the use of military force post-9/11, and we have not updated it. The 2002 authorization of force in Iraq--Saddam Hussein has been dead 15 years-- still exists. We have an authorization of force from 1991 that still exists and 1957 that still exists.

Why?

Because there is a cadre of people in this town who make a large sum of money and get a whole lot of power when there are endless wars continuing for this town to fund with borrowed money driving up inflation, killing jobs, and killing the American Dream. All of us people in this Chamber are running around talking about we have to do it for the defense.

For fiscal year 2022, the United States Federal Government spent $8 trillion on the post-9/11 wars in Afghanistan, Pakistan, Iraq, and elsewhere--$8 trillion, and that is not talking about the thousands of lives lost, the tens of thousands of lives permanently impacted through injury and post-traumatic stress disorder.

When the bill comes due, what do we do?

We raise the ceiling on what we can borrow as I said a minute ago. The $32 trillion we just increased to $36 trillion. CBO reported a $1.4 trillion deficit in the first 9 months of fiscal year 2023. That is $875 billion higher than the year before.

We spent more on so-called COVID relief from 2000 to 2021, around $6 trillion, than we did in the 3\1/2\ years of World War II.

Think about that, Mr. Speaker, World War II in current dollars amounted to $4.1 trillion. We are running around like a bunch of scared ninnies with masks and spent $6 trillion.

Why?

We could because we just wrote a blank check.

Since the Biden administration took office, prices have increased over 16 percent. The annual cost of inflation has been estimated to harm American households upwards of $8,900.

Household debt has increased by $2.9 trillion since the end of 2019. In the first quarter of 2023, aggregate household debt increased by $148 billion. Think about this.

How about education? We just want the taxes that we pay to teach our kids what they need to know to succeed in the real world, but teachers' unions and bureaucrats want to teach them that merit and achievement are bad, that skin color defines all of us, that there isn't man and woman, and that America is evil.

Meanwhile, their same beliefs want to undermine the basic parental right to raise their children in their own values and push harmful gender ideology on them.

In Cupertino, California, third graders were required to deconstruct their racial identities and then rank themselves according to their power and privilege.

In Evanston, Illinois, students listened to ``Not My Idea,'' a book about whiteness which states that whiteness is bad. An advisory board in Virginia's Loudoun County Public Schools demanded that teachers be dismissed if they criticized the district's equity training inspired by critical race theory.

The President of the American Federation of Teachers vowed the union will fight ``cultural warriors'' that want to deprive students of a robust understanding of our common history.

In Lexington, Massachusetts, fourth graders were taught to articulate what gender identity is and why it is important to use nonbinary language.

They give our kids pornographic and sexualized books such as ``Gender Queer: A Memoir,'' an explicit pornographic book; ``Flamer''--good grief--a graphic book about young boys performing sexual acts at a summer camp; ``This Book is Gay,'' a book containing instructions on the ``ins and outs of gay sex.''

I am on the floor of the House of Representatives, and I am reading this garbage. Our kids are being given this garbage, and you want to know why parents are dismayed, why parents are frustrated, why the American people are left scratching their head, saying something is terribly wrong.

At Round Rock ISD in Texas, at Walsh Middle School a training presentation instructed teachers not to tell parents if a student tells them they identify as transgender or nonbinary.

When the children of the elites go to the right schools, they get the right jobs. Everyone else gets to rack up debt to get a job in a hamstrung economy with a useless degree that is based more on indoctrination than on education.

Tuition is skyrocketing. We are not even able to afford the garbage education that the elites are foisting on the American people.

Now, if you get through that maze, and you want to buy a house, you can't. You can't afford it. In 1985, the average single family home was $82,800. In 2019, they would have spent $313,000; in 2020, $391,900; and in 2022, it reached $540,000. How can you afford that?

Mr. Speaker, 30-year mortgage rates have gone from 2 to 3 to percent to 7 percent in under a year. In 2021 with sub-3 percent interest rates, a $400,000 home cost $604,000 over 30 years. Today, with 7 percent interest rates, that same $400,000 home, which you can't even get in most places in this country, costs more than a million dollars over the 30-year span, interest accounting for 157 percent of the home price. Think about that. Earlier this year, mortgage demand plunged to the lowest level since 1995.

What about healthcare; a system where crony policies help big corporations make windfall profits while families struggle with inflation and small businesses struggle to stay afloat?

According to the Bureau of Labor Statistics, medical and health service managers, which are described as managers that, ``plan, direct, and coordinate the business activities of healthcare providers,'' i.e., bureaucrats--they might be private bureaucrats, but they are very publicly funded bureaucrats through private corporations, so-called-- they are slated to see 32 percent growth in jobs from 2019 to 2029. Not doctors; bureaucrats. This is compared to a 4 percent growth rate for physicians and surgeons if we can even get them educated.

Health insurance companies rake in roughly $1 trillion per year. Health and medical insurance companies placed second in biggest industries by revenue in the United States only behind retirement and pension plans.

I want to pause for a second. I was blessed to go to the National Museum of Military Vehicles in Dubois, Wyoming, 2 weeks ago when I was there around Independence Day. That museum is incredible, by the way. I recommend it to all listening.

A large part of the museum is dedicated to what we achieved in World War II. If you ask the average American what we achieved in World War II, at least those who were educated and informed enough to even tell you what World War II was, they will tell you that we beat Nazism, we beat Hitler, we beat Imperial Japan. Again, that is if we are lucky.

The fact is, it was an unbelievable demonstration of American industrial might. Absent our industrial strength, we lose. That is the truth. If we had not been able to develop what we developed, to take our manufacturing capacity and build thousands of planes, thousands of Jeeps, thousands of boats, thousands of guns, there is no way we would have been able to carry out what we were able to carry out in World War

Mr. Speaker, I thank the gentleman from Pennsylvania, and I want to pick up on what he has observed when he goes home to Pennsylvania, when he is traveling around this country. He has observed what I observe, having individuals pull me aside in an airport, on an airplane, driving around, at a gas station in Texas, at a gas station in Colorado, at a gas station in Virginia, all over this country, they pull me aside and say: Thank you. Keep fighting.

Just like you said, they don't give details. They get it. They see it. They want someone to stand up and fight for this country because they see this country slipping through our fingers.

As has long been said, where else are we going to go? What else are we going to do? As President Reagan said, there is nowhere else to go. This is it.

We are the beacon of hope for the world, and we are still the greatest country in the history of the world, but we are giving it away. We are losing it through a cultural rot and decay where elites are telling us that we have to apologize for being Americans.

In that museum that I walked through in Dubois, Wyoming, there is a great graphic--I don't have it in front of me, although I might be able to pull up a picture--that talks about the tens of millions of lives in this world that have been liberated by Americans.

Yes, we are an imperfect country. Yes, we have committed sins because all of us fall short of the glory of God. Yes, but we are a strong, righteous country that has bled for good around this world. Even in the center of sin, even in 1861 to 1865, we bled so that people around this world could be free, so they can know what it means to prosper.

Here we sit in this Chamber, in the luxury of the protections bought by the people before us, giving it away, shamefully dismissing it, undermining the American Dream for our kids and grandkids. It defies all logic to do that, but the Founders knew that it was likely.

Our job is to break that. When people ask me today: Why did you vote yes on five bills on the floor of the House today to say that we need to essentially end previously declared emergencies when you know, Chip, that there are bad guys connected to those emergencies and that we are using our resources to freeze their assets, take their money away, clamp down on them? Do you just want to walk away from that?

No, I want to restore order in this town. I want to restore order in this country, in this government, by saying you don't get to declare an emergency in 2003 and keep operating 21 years later under an emergency.

Come back to Congress. Let's figure out what we need to do. Let's figure out our authorizations of force. Let's figure out our use of our ability to freeze financial assets. Come back to Congress. We have to fight to restore order, or we are going to lose the Republic. The Republic depends on it.

One last point on that, and I will yield back. The rule of law matters. The Republic depends on it. It depends on us getting it right. I heard my colleagues earlier today referring to the border crisis as a fake crisis. I mean, I don't know what planet some of my colleagues live on to refer to what I see happening to human beings in south Texas--dying in the Texas heat; dying in tractor-trailers; getting forced into the sex trafficking trade, as we are seeing unfold, as we see depicted in the ``Sound of Freedom,'' the movie.

We are allowing that to happen on our watch in the supposedly most powerful nation in the history of the world. My colleagues dismiss it as a fake crisis. The Republic cannot sustain if that is how we are going to treat the rule of law and what we do at our southern border.

I have to say this to all my Republican colleagues right now: If you think I am going to vote for any of our appropriations bills without forcing this President to his knees to secure the border of the United States, you are out of your dang mind.

Enough. Use the power of the purse. Quit wilting in the corner. ``Oh, we have to fund government shutdowns.'' Whatever. Do your job.

That is my call to my Republican colleagues. Don't walk away from the fight. We blinked on Memorial Day. That is the truth. We blinked. $4 trillion, no policy changes, we blinked. We are not going to allow Republicans to blink again in this appropriations season.

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

Mr. Speaker, in this 2 weeks following Independence Day, you do a lot of thinking if you are, as I assume my friend was, part of an Independence Day parade. There are a lot of patriotic Americans out there, particularly in flyover country, who love their country and want to defend their country, and they just want their life back. That is it. They want that American Dream back.

By God, I am going to do everything I can do in this godforsaken town to give them their freedom back, to give them the American Dream back. I don't care who gets mad at me. I don't care who is worried about what bill he or she didn't get across some finish line that nobody in America generally cares about.

We are going to fight to change this town. ``Conquer or die,'' as General Washington said.

The fact is you have to ask yourself the question: Are you free? Are we free? Are we free if you pay taxes to a school that teaches your children that your country is evil, or that there isn't a difference between a man and a woman, if you can't even talk about God, much less pray to God? Are you a free American if that is what you are dealing with in the schools?

Are you free if you want to simply have a vehicle to move around, to carry out your livelihood to provide for your family, and you can't afford one because a bunch of elitists in Martha's Vineyard decide you have to drive an $80,000 battery-powered car?

Are you free if you are worried that your streets are unsafe, your border is wide open, and you are endangered, and fentanyl is pouring into your communities because your government refuses to do its one basic task? Are you actually free?

Are you free if you just want to go to the doctor of your choice and are prohibited from doing so because the government regulatory state and corporate cronies have combined to make a whole lot of money while you can't go to the doctor of your choice? Are you free?

Are you free if one President is treated differently than another President by the system of justice reporting to the President? Are you free?

Are we living in a free country? Are you free if you simply wanted to go about your way of life, but your government said you couldn't unless you stuck a needle in your arm with a vaccine created with full liability protection and then mandated by the very government saying you have to take it, and if you don't take it, you are going to lose your job? Are you free?

No, you are not free. It is about damn time that we live free again. That is why we are here.

Again, to my colleagues on this side of the aisle, I don't care about your checklist of stuff you want to campaign on. I don't care about what you don't want to vote on. I care about one thing and one thing only, and that is living free. It is our God-given right. It is what people bled and died for--living free, imperfect, in a simple world, but free.

That is our calling. That is our duty. Our duty isn't to get reelected. Our duty is to fight for the people who sent us here, to fight for them against a cultural elite who wants to rip away their lives.

That is what my mission is every day when I wake up in this godforsaken town.

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

Mr. Speaker, I thank my friend from Pennsylvania for his comments. I think I have less than a minute left, and I will close with, as I said before, as General George Washington said on July 2, 1776, 247 years ago, on the day we actually declared independence: ``The fate of unborn millions will now depend, under God,'' on our courage and our conduct. ``We have, therefore, to resolve to conquer or die.''

That is why we are here.

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 8 o'clock and 28 minutes p.m.), under its previous order, the House adjourned until tomorrow, Wednesday, July 19, 2023, at 9 a.m.

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

Mr. Chair, we have spent the better part of the last several days making clear to the American people that this side of the aisle wants to see a Department of Defense that is focused on its core mission, defending the United States of America, rather than divvying us up by race and dividing us and separating us.

I rise today to ensure that the Department of Defense is focused on its core mission rather than pursuing the political agenda of climate change to the detriment of the national security of the United States.

In 2021, Department of Defense spokesman John Kirby refused to say that China is a bigger national security threat to the United States than climate change. He called them equally important and said it doesn't do any good to make a relative assessment of national security issues.

Secretary of Defense Lloyd Austin has said climate change is an existential threat to our Nation's security.

Next week, Secretary of State John Kerry literally travels to China to discuss climate change, not China's increased aggression against Taiwan, not its expansion in the Pacific, not its oppression of its people, not the fact that they produce two new coal-fired plants per week on top of the 1,100 they have while we undermine our national security to pursue the climate-fetish agenda of the other side of the aisle.

President Biden's executive orders have served as the catalyst for massive reforms at the Department of Defense that compromise national security to advance this climate fetish.

The amendment that I offer would prohibit any of the funding in the National Defense Authorization Act, or that flows from that authorization, from being used to carry out President Biden's executive orders on climate change.

The Department of Defense's climate adaptation plan includes radical proposals to reduce greenhouse gas emissions at the expense of our warfighting capabilities. According to the plan, the DOD has identified climate change as a critical national security issue. It mandates environmental justice because why miss an opportunity to push divisive ideology?

The DOD says it will transition to 100 percent carbon-free electricity, meaning America's war machine will literally depend on the wind and the sun.

No one, including anyone on this side of the aisle, believes that we shouldn't pursue every advantage and technology to harness energy, no one. In Texas, we have embraced wind and we have embraced solar, but to our detriment when we have interfered with the market and interfered with our ability to have energy at our disposal and at our demand. We undermine our grid. We undermine our national security. We undermine reliability. We cause energy prices to go up.

In this case, in the context of the National Defense Authorization Act, we should not be pursuing this politically motivated climate fetishization that undermines our national security.

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

Mr. Chair, I appreciate my colleague for basically making the case for the very climate fetish that I describe. When he talks about the need for energy and its existence for national security, my point is having reliable energy. We have to have energy that is available and reliable and dependable. That is the whole point.

My colleague talks about nuclear power. Great. I am waiting with bated breath for my colleagues on the other side of the aisle to embrace and promote and push noncarbon-producing nuclear power.

We haven't generated a new nuclear power plant since when, the 1970s?

Georgia isn't even off the ground because of Federal regulation and interference.

The fact is, we are subsidizing and promoting unreliable wind and solar while subsidizing the hell out of electric vehicles, and my colleagues on the other side of the aisle want to use the Defense Department to continue to promote it, when it engaged in crony capitalism to enrich a small handful of elitists on the back of the hardworking American people while we subsidize China and make ourselves reliable on China for their minerals and what they produce.

It is absolutely astonishing that we would turn over our national defense capability to China at this point in time to pursue this radical agenda.

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