Floor Statements

Madam Speaker, I thank Mr. Schweikert for his dogged determination to try to shake this institution into not only recognizing but, Lord willing, addressing the looming crisis or the already existing crisis that we are dealing with. He does so eloquently, intelligently, and without fail. Virtually every time I feel like I have a Special Order, I am following the gentleman from Arizona, who is making his case to the 14 people watching on C-SPAN, but, man, those 14 people are loving it.

My voice is echoing like it often does in this Chamber for Special Orders.

Madam Speaker, I am here tonight because, while I wish it was a full Chamber, the fact is something that needs to be addressed that is shaping our public discourse is the extent to which my colleagues on the other side of the aisle and, in particular, in the administration are a little fast and loose with the facts. Maybe stated differently, the radical left, I will call it, particularly in the administrative state, the bureaucrats, the organizations out there that are the engine of the left, have entrapped the American people with a laundry list of lies.

As Thomas Jefferson once said: ``When once a republic is corrupted, there is no possibility of remedying any of the growing evils but by removing the corruption and restoring its lost principles.''

At the root of that corruption is when you are telling a constant barrage to the American people of things that simply are not true. It matters that we speak the truth. It matters that we deal with facts as objectively as possible.

To quote Jefferson again, to seek ``truth wherever it may lead.'' I am wanting to quote Jefferson as a graduate of the University of Virginia. Unfortunately, the University of Virginia is not the institution that it was founded to be, in terms of seeking truth wherever it may lead. I hope it can one day be restored to that purpose.

Take, for example, the World Health Organization, stipulated by the radical left as being a trustworthy organization worthy of the United States giving well over $100 million in American taxpayer funding every year. Yet, the WHO, the World Health Organization, is an organization that wants to undermine free speech by calling on WHO members to ``tackle false, misleading, misinformation, or disinformation,'' which we saw in full display during COVID.

It says gender exists on a ``continuum'' and is ``beyond binary;'' declares that disrupting reproductive health services is ``disempowering and dangerous'' and calls for full access to abortions in every country; has guidelines that highlight the importance of national programs establishing and providing gender-affirming care.

The fact is that it is not an objective institution. It did, in fact, tell lies and falsehoods.

In February 2020, Senator Tom Cotton went on FOX News and raised the question that it might be possible COVID-19 leaked from a Wuhan lab. Remember that it was put out that the Wuhan lab leak is a racist conspiracy theory. The New York Times and Washington Post accused Senator Cotton of being a conspiracy theorist. PolitiFact labeled the idea of a lab leak as a ``debunked conspiracy theory.''

Facts: The Department of Energy and FBI currently conclude that the virus most likely came from the Wuhan Institute of Virology lab, but that was literally months of back and forth.

How about the statement that the COVID vaccine is 100 percent safe? More than 11,000 claims of injury from the COVID-19 vaccine have been filed with the Countermeasures Injury Compensation Program. Four have already been paid out, and 23 more are eligible. The CDC has an entire web page dedicated to myocarditis and pericarditis. Pfizer's own website states: ``Myocarditis and pericarditis have occurred in some people who have received the vaccine, more commonly in adolescent males and adult males under 40 years of age than among females and older males.''

How about this one? Herd immunity means you want everyone to die. Dr. Fauci referred to herd immunity as letting it rip in an October 2020 interview with CNBC.

The fact of the matter is, people started talking about herd immunity, started talking about the recognition of immunity that you get from having had the virus. Who knew, except for every living human being with eyes who had the ability to discern how viruses actually work?

How about this one? Masks work. You remember running around the floor of the House of Representatives under the orders of House leadership. You must wear a mask or you are going to be fined. Remember that? Half of us were hiding in the back, sneaking in to vote so we could avoid the tyrannical whims of the previous Speaker because you were getting fined if you didn't wear a mask.

Well, Rochelle Walensky, on November 21: Masks reduce the chance of COVID-19 by 80 percent. Everybody needs to wear a mask.

Our schools were masked. Our children were masked. They were put in the corners with masks. They lost the ability to speak clearly. Our younger kids have speech impediments.

Fact: According to Tom Jefferson, who conducted one of the most comprehensive analyses of pandemic masking: ``There is just no evidence that [masks] make any difference, full stop.''

How about gender? Men can compete in women's sports, and it is still fair. Lia Thomas, a biological male swimmer for the University of Pennsylvania--and let's be very clear: If you have eyes, Lia Thomas is, in fact, a dude. That is just a simple, obvious truth. Everybody knows it. Literally everybody knows it to be true.

Lia Thomas won a 2022 NCAA Division I championship in the 500-yard freestyle instead of a woman. Thomas soared from a mid-500s ranking competing as male to one of the top-ranked swimmers in women's competition.

Transgender women are the same as biological women, we are told. Biological males have larger hearts, larger lungs, and a 12 percent higher hemoglobin, which helps transport oxygen to the blood. Grown biological males have approximately 36 percent greater muscle mass than grown females, yet transgender women are the same as biological women.

We couldn't even get our colleagues on the other side of the aisle to fully defend Title IX in the Rules Committee a few weeks ago. Title IX was the holy grail. It was the holy grail of equal protection. Now, it doesn't fit the narrative because transgender men, Lia Thomas, is apparently able to compete against women like Riley Gaines, and that is perfectly fine.

You just ignore your eyes. Don't you understand, they tell you it is so. Lia Thomas is a woman now, they say. Oh, really.

Parents cannot be trusted with their children's education. President Biden said it: ``There is no such thing as someone else's child. No such thing as someone else's child. Our Nation's children are all our children.''

Let me be perfectly clear. My children are my children. They are no one else's children. Be dang careful in trying to claim otherwise.

Parents who speak up for their children are domestic terrorists. One alleged ``terrorist'' cited by the National School Board Association was my friend Scott Smith from Loudoun County. He is a domestic terrorist, they say.

How about border crisis lies?

The southern border is secure, and things are better than you all expected, says the President of the United States. Well, since Biden took office we have seen 6 million encounters, the release of approximately 2 million migrants, and 1.5 million got-aways.

When title 42 was lifted last week, the President said that it is much better than you all expected. We still have 3,000 or 4,000 a day. We still have thousands of got-aways. We still have thousands of pounds of fentanyl.

Oh, by the way, the Texas Department of Public Safety is having to stand on the border with razor wire and not doing their job to secure the people in Texas because they are making up for an administration that lies.

My State is the one holding the bag. Tell that to the DPS agents, Mr. President. Get your happy rear end out of Japan and go to south Texas. Better than you all expected.

The President of the United States doesn't have the courage to go to south Texas. That is the simple truth.

According to the New York Post, migrants are being released in the interior with court dates that are as far out as 2035. Yet, the President and his mouthpiece at the White House are trying to tell the American people, using every channel of communication, that the border is secure. It is ``better than you all expected.''

I would note that, thankfully, States are coming to the aid of Texas, who are spending billions of dollars putting our personnel in harm's way, undermining our own security to deal with the job that the Federal Government is supposed to do.

By the way, we passed H.R. 2 that would secure the border. We did our job as House Republicans. I would say, just as a point for consideration, at the other end of Pennsylvania Avenue, and frankly, throughout this building, including this side of the aisle: Why would I vote for anything at all--debt ceiling, government funding, anything, until we pass H.R. 2 and sign it into law?

Why? Why would I do that?

I might be able to be convinced, but you better bring me a really good bill. If you want me to ignore the need for us to pass H.R. 2, sign it into law. I don't care that the Democrats control the Senate. I don't care that President Biden doesn't want to sign a bill.

I care about my country. I care about my State. I care about the kids in my county dying from fentanyl. I care about the migrants dying in the false name of compassion. I care that the Secretary of Homeland Security looked me in the eye in the House Judiciary Committee and lied under oath that we had operational control of the border. That happened.

The Secretary of Homeland Security also lied when he said, unapologetically, that Border Patrol agents who report to him whipped Haitian migrants on the Rio Grande. It is just simply not true. He knew it wasn't true. He had a memo given to him that said it wasn't true. He has now acknowledged it is an untruth.

Has he apologized? Has he apologized to the Border Patrol agents? Has he apologized to Americans? Has he apologized to Congress?

Of course not.

With all due respect to my colleagues in this Chamber, what do we ever do about it?

We haven't impeached him yet, have we, my fellow Republicans?

We have not impeached him yet. He should be impeached.

Are we going to limit funding unless specific riders are included?

Are we going to hold funding for the Homeland Security Department unless we pass H.R. 2, forcing them to actually do their job?

Again, I want to reiterate that the Secretary of Homeland Security lied about Haitian migrants being whipped by Border Patrol agents, and then blamed it on systemic racism.

Over the last several weeks, the Biden administration has been increasingly on its heels, unable to explain why they do not want to take up our very responsible legislation. This is legislation that would increase the debt ceiling about a trillion and a half dollars in exchange for actual fiscal reforms that would save $5 trillion over 10 years and $1 trillion in year one.

It would end the unfair student loan program that would pick winners and losers. It would favor someone who took out student loans and hasn't paid them off yet over the person who has student loans and paid them. It would favor the person who took out student loans and hadn't paid them off yet over the plumber who set up a business and never took out student loans. It would favor the person who took out student loans and hadn't paid them off yet by granting them the same benefit you get if you serve your country, put yourself in harm's way, put your life on the line, get a GI bill benefit--you are treated the same.

Oh, you got your degree in gender studies from Brown, and you are sitting in your parents' basement on your freaking parents' insurance program at 26 years old while you are tweeting out leftist garbage, and you get the same benefit as the guy or gal who went overseas, sat in a foxhole serving in the United States military.

Oh, that is all the same. That is all fine. No problem.

You know what? The President is going to fight us on stopping the $550 billion that they have got set aside for student loan bailouts. I think that is unacceptable. I think we ought to shove it down their throats. I think we ought to go around the country messaging it.

If the President of the United States wants to play chicken with the economy and risk defaulting, it will be on him. It will be the President who defaults. The President is the one who will choose whether to default.

Make the President own it. We have done our job. The American people are with us.

They want fiscal reform. They don't think we ought to spend money we don't have. They don't think $32 trillion in debt is acceptable. They don't think that we ought to pick winners and losers and pay off certain student loans versus others. They don't think we ought to expand the IRS by $80 billion and hire 75,000 or 80,000 new employees at the IRS--they don't.

They recognize that you are far more likely to be audited if you are poor or a minority than if you are not, and they don't think it is a good idea to expand the IRS.

The American people don't want us to take money up to the tune of $1.2 trillion, according to Goldman Sachs. To take those dollars, hand them off to corporations--90 percent of the subsidies going to billion dollar corporations--to elite, White liberals getting money from government so they can go around and say how great they are driving their Teslas, patting themselves on the back while they get enriched.

Let me be very clear. They get enriched through government subsidies to then make power with wind and solar that can't actually sustain a grid. You can't even make this stuff up. We tell lie after lie after lie to the American people that somehow it is good to have ``green energy'' that literally doesn't work if you don't have gas or nuclear backing it up.

Yet, that is what we are going to do. Republicans passed in the debt ceiling bill measures that would reduce the so-called Inflation Reduction Act expansion of those subsidies so that we are no longer taking money from hardworking Americans, blue-collar workers, people out there trying to make it. We are either taking money from them, borrowing or printing money, and handing it off to rich, elite, White liberals who like to feel good about themselves for their corporate cronyism.

It isn't capitalism. They are literally taking government money and getting rich for it. If you are out there working hard and you are trying to get by, you are trying to put your kids in a private school so they can actually learn that this country is good. You can actually learn and talk about God. You can actually recognize--and I am going to blow your minds here--that there are men and women. Oh, gosh, censor me that there are in fact men and women.

So if you are out there as a hard-working plumber, you and your husband or wife, whoever you are, you have got multiple jobs, you are working hard, you are trying to do right for your kids, you are driving a 15-year-old car, you are trying to get by, and these radical leftists come out and say: Don't worry, we are going to subsidize Teslas.

And you are like, oh, goody, how much does that cost?

Oh, that is $95,000.

Oh, great. I will just go buy a $95,000 car.

How does that work?

Well, you plug it in.

What does that do to my electricity bill?

It triples it.

Oh, that is great. I am sure that will be affordable for me.

What do I do if I need to drive from Austin to Midland?

Well, you won a prize. You can go hang out in San Angelo for 2 hours while you charge your car.

Who the hell wants to do that?

Yet that is what we are going to do.

I listened to one of my colleagues sitting out on the steps earlier today, one of my colleagues on the other side of the aisle. A whole class, like 100 minds full of mush were sitting there just ready to be informed by the genius of my colleague on the other side of the aisle informing them about how great it was that we were passing all these laws that would stop the production of CO2.

They are all: Oh, my God, thank you. Oh, you are saving the world.

It is a lie. It is literally a lie, and we all just sit around going along for the ride.

We say: What bills can we get passed?

I don't know. You tell me.

We have got kids out there being told by Members of Congress that we are saving them because we are somehow limiting what cars their parents can drive to actually go achieve the American Dream which they are no longer able to achieve because we actually knocked their knees out from under them.

Then we say: Oh, don't worry. The solution for your problem is a government program. We are going to just keep giving you more money. We are going to pay you not to work. Don't worry. We will subsidize you. We will pay for your school.

Oh, don't talk about choice. We are just going to pay for those public schools because how else are you going to indoctrinate the kids with the lies?

That is what is happening.

Oh, Chip, you are a conspiracy theorist.

Am I?

What did we learn during COVID?

Parents started looking, and they said: Hey, my kid is sitting over there, and they are looking at this little class on an iPad or a laptop.

You are like: Wait. Whoa. What are they teaching them? What did they say? Wait, that was somehow we are a racist country? Oh, wait, you mean oil and gas, well, that is evil?

I thought our country was built on oil and gas.

Wait a minute. I thought China has 1,100 coal-fired plants, and they are building two a week, and yet we are going to just decimate our ability to have a functional grid so we can have brownouts while we pretend you can have power on a windless, cloudy day.

They are out there telling the kids: Don't worry. We will have windmills and solar panels everywhere, but not nuclear power.

But I thought you hated CO2.

Oh, no. Never mind. Don't talk about that.

That is literally the kind of garbage we are talking about. They are just constant lies.

If you eliminate every internal combustion engine--every single one of them--in America, then you dent CO2 by less than a percentage point. Yet that is what my colleagues on the other side of the aisle are telling Americans, particularly kids: We are doing this for you.

Because if you do it for the children, then everything is fine. If you do it for the animals, the children, and the puppies, then everything is okay.

We put legislation together to save $5 trillion over 10 years. My colleagues on the other side of the aisle are going around saying: You are cutting the VA benefits.

We didn't cut anything--literally nothing. We simply put a cap in place that limits the total amount of spending to $1.471 trillion. Yes, that draconian amount of $1.471 trillion that we were operating on literally 5 months ago.

My colleagues on the other side of the aisle run down to the floor and say: You are cutting cops, and you are cutting veterans.

They are all lies. It is true. They are all lies.

The fact is the American people are sick of it. They are. The American people right now understand that right now the American Dream is increasingly unattainable for them or their children.

If you are measuring the ability to achieve the American Dream by how many government dollars you are taking or what government programs you are on or how much money your business is making because you are getting grants or subsidies or tax credits from a government that is $32 trillion in debt, then even under the best circumstances under our plans, or the President's plans, we are still going to be about $50 trillion in debt in a decade, and we just act like it is not so.

Seriously, just a note for everyone listening, all 14 of you, to my colleagues on this side of the aisle: We have been going around patting ourselves on the back because we passed a really strong debt ceiling bill that we should be proud of and a really strong border security bill, H.R. 2, that we should be really proud of.

I am proud of both of those bills, but now we have to fight for them.

Don't blink. Stand together.

You can't keep doing what we are doing, and you can't go home and campaign on irresponsible spending and balancing the budget when you won't actually do it.

My friend from Arizona just walked through all the mandatory spending problems. We are not even talking about that yet in what we are doing this year. We are just trying to hold the line on discretionary spending.

Madam Speaker, may I inquire how much time do I have remaining.

I am sure I can do something genius with the last minute.

The fact of the matter is that this country is hanging on by a very thin thread, and we all know it. Our job in this body is actually to represent the people. It is, in fact, the people's House.

To my colleagues on the other side of the aisle, where are you?

They are MIA. They are offering no plans to deal with spending and offering no plans to deal with the border.

To my colleagues on this side of the aisle: I am glad we passed a few bills, but they don't mean a thing unless we force the President and force the Senate to do something with them.

That gets hard, and it is our job.

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 8 o'clock and 50 minutes p.m.), under its previous order, the House adjourned until tomorrow, Thursday, May 18, 2023, at 9 a.m.

Mr. Speaker, ``It wasn't an accident. Policing in our country is inherently and intentionally racist. Daunte Wright was met with aggression and violence. I am done with those who condone government-funded murder. No more policing, incarceration, and militarization. It can't be reformed.'' Thus said Congresswoman Tlaib who was just down here talking about this.

Congresswoman Omar: ``You can't really reform a department that is rotten to the root.''

That is the truth of what my colleagues on the other side of the aisle think about law enforcement. The gentleman from Massachusetts is down here besmirching the 21 Members of our body who said no to the politicization of the Capitol Police.

You want to know why it is not in here? It is because my colleagues on the other side of the aisle want to turn the Capitol Police into political pawns. That is the truth.

We had a resolution in the last Congress, H.R. 1085--I voted for it-- giving a Congressional Gold Medal to the brave men and women of the Capitol Police who stood here on January 6.

Then my colleagues on the other side of the aisle didn't want to leave it there. They then added another resolution a mere 2 months later when they wanted to play politics. They are playing political games.

Instead of honoring our men and women of law enforcement, Democrats played political games on a different tragedy, April 2, 2021, when Officer Billy Evans was killed and Officer Kenneth Shaver was injured by a man obsessed with the Nation of Islam who slammed his vehicle into the north barricade of the U.S. Capitol complex. That didn't fit the narrative. That didn't fit the narrative of my Democratic colleagues, seeing they want to be able to come down here and make claims that they are not defunding the police, that we are. Because we dare to stand up and say we should have fiscal responsibility and set a top-line cap, my colleagues on the other side of the aisle want to besmirch Republicans for cutting all manners of programs.

Yet, they bring no solutions to the American people about ending the $32 trillion in debt, destroying the dollar, causing inflation, undermining jobs, and destroying our country. They know exactly what they are doing, and they are doing it on purpose.

We are going to stand with the men and women in blue across this country. That is what this resolution is about. It is about standing with them, and my colleagues on the other side of the aisle spent every waking moment undermining them, saying we should defund them when there were riots on the streets and our cities were burning to the ground. My Democratic colleagues didn't care. They allowed it to happen. They knew exactly what they were doing. That is what this is about.

I would add this: My father carries a card around with him. He is 80 years old. That card was given to him by his father, a chief of police of a small west Texas town. It is called: ``Jackie: `The Son of a Hard Boiled Cop.'''

You think I'm a hard-boiled copper

For writing a mere ``forty-three'';

Well perhaps I'm thinking of Jackie

And all the lad meant to me.

How's that? Tell you all about it?

Well, stranger, the boy was my son.

Mr. Speaker, and I continue:

God! What I'd give to hear, ``Daddy,''

Once more when the day's work is done.

The driver was just in a hurry,

He didn't intend any harm,

But the Sun and stars quit shining,

When I picked up my boy's lifeless form.

Well, mister, I'll tear up this ticket;

I don't want to ``pinch'' anyone;

But I'd ride this motor through hell-fires

To protect another man's son.

So the next time you feel like speeding

Or passing a boulevard stop,

Just pause and remember my Jackie--

The son of a hard-boiled cop.

My dad carries that with him to this day, and he is 80 years old. If my colleagues on the other side of the aisle want to play politics with cops, they can do it on somebody else's dime.

Mr. Speaker, today we congratulate the 2023 Service Academy appointees from the 21st Congressional District of Texas.

The following individuals have accepted Academy Appointments:

Sophia M. Akers, Health Careers High School, San Antonio, United States Military Academy. James C. Cowden III, Greystone Preparatory School at the University of Ozarks, Regents High School, Austin, United States Naval Academy. William S. Crone, Central Catholic High School, San Antonio, United States Merchant Marine Academy. Lukas C. Decker, United World College East Africa, Arusha, Tanzania, Comfort, United States Air Force Academy. Clay A. Dellinger, Huntsville High School, Alabama, Spring Branch, United States Air Force Academy. William H. French, Boerne High School, Boerne, United States Military Academy. James A. Garcia-Gallegos, Northwestern Preparatory School, Douglas MacArthur High School, San Antonio, United States Naval Academy. Houston K. Hendrix, Boerne High School, Boerne, United States Air Force Academy. Pierce D. Patterson, Deerfield Academy, Austin, United States Military Academy. Trieste A. Perciavalle, Smithson Valley High School, Spring Branch, United States Military Academy. Joshua A. Torres, Ronald Reagan High School, San Antonio, United States Military Academy. Joseph W. White, Alamo Heights High School, San Antonio, United States Air Force Academy. Gavin S. Woods, Smithson Valley High School, Spring Branch, United States Naval Academy. Josephine C. Zink, Ronald Reagan High School, San Antonio, United States Naval Academy.

These outstanding students have much to contribute to their chosen Academy and to our country. We appreciate their talents and their patriotism.

I hope my colleagues in the House of Representatives will join me in congratulating these truly heroic young men and young women.

Mr. Speaker, we are here today because of the abject failure of the administration to do its fundamental duty to protect the United States.

We have a wide open border, empowering cartels, empowering China to the detriment of American citizens and to the migrants who seek to come here, supposedly in the name of compassion. However, that is in the false name of compassion.

Dead migrants, lying along the Rio Grande and in ranches in south Texas. The extent to which migrants suffer in the Texas heat--53 dying in a tractor-trailer last summer in San Antonio; thousands being sold into the sex trafficking trade, being used as crass political pawns by a party devoid of anything substantive to take this country forward.

Republicans are standing up strongly to make sure that this country will stand for the rule of law that sets our country apart around the globe and attracts so many to want to come here.

Border Patrol right now apprehended over 10,000 migrants on Monday and 11,000 on Tuesday, the highest single-day totals ever recorded. There were 26,000 got-aways and 660,000 migrants waiting in Mexico. The President of Guatemala has confirmed 80,000 Venezuelan migrants are traveling to the U.S. ahead of title 42's expiration; 15,000 Venezuelan migrants crossed into Brownsville; Border Patrol Chief Raul Ortiz said he estimates 60,000 to 65,000 migrants are in northern Mexico.

I got a text from local law enforcement yesterday saying: We are almost at broken arrow. Every sector is near 150 percent capacity. DHS is calling for border agents from other northern and coastal sectors to help the southern border. The first 550 in a group of 1,500 servicemembers from the Army and Marines were set to arrive. A shootout between the Mexican Army and human smugglers erupted at the Pharr- Reynosa International Bridge. Schools in El Paso are adding more security. El Paso ran out of shelter. El Paso declared an emergency. Brownsville declared an emergency. Laredo declared an emergency. San Antonio is preparing; their migrant shelters are expressing concerns about being overwhelmed. Even our Nation's Capital is being overwhelmed. Now, the New York City mayor--a sanctuary city-- criticizing bussing, is bussing migrants outside of New York City out to the suburbs because my Democratic colleagues and the Democratic administration and Democratic leaders in so-called sanctuary cities don't give a whit about migrants. It is about political power, and they are costing lives. They are endangering Americans. They are causing children to die from fentanyl poisoning, and they know it. That is what is so pathetic and sad.

Republicans offer legislation today that would force this administration to do the job it refuses to do, by ending the magnet, by stopping the releases, by forcing us to do the job we are supposed to do to protect unaccompanied children from being atop train cars, being subjected to the abuses of cartels, holding families together while we adjudicate claims of asylum, and, yes, providing for a path for asylum while making sure we don't create a magnet for the abuse of migrants in the false name of compassion.

Republicans are leading. We are doing the job that the President refuses to do. The American people know it; they see it; and my Democratic colleagues are going to suffer the consequences for this abject failure.

Mr. Speaker, by direction of the Committee on Rules, I call up House Resolution 383 and ask for its immediate consideration.

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

General Leave

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

Mr. Speaker, we have a crisis at our southern border that has captured the attention of the American people but has fallen on deaf ears among my colleagues on the other side of the aisle and, much more importantly, the President and the administration at the other end of Pennsylvania Avenue.

Just yesterday, I received a text from multiple law enforcement officers along the southern border, whether it is with the Department of Public Safety from Texas or whether it is with Border Patrol. For example, this is a quote:

As of last night, the radios went crazy for west and south

Laredo, waves of folks, literally just group after group,

bum-rushing the border. The agents were spread thin as hell.

In my precinct, we are literally all doubled up because our

units are breaking down every other day. Ranchers are calling

every other day, stating there are folks on their property,

but we can't get there fast enough.

I hate to say this, but we are getting our rear-ends handed

to us. I used to have patterns, trends, and knew the dropoff,

pickup areas, but now it is an ``expletive'' free-for-all.

Approximately 600 bodies at the gate just half a mile east

from Yarbrough happening right now in El Paso.

I have hundreds of these texts right now flooding into my phone, like every other Member of Congress, because what is happening is an abject failure at the border. It is a humanitarian crisis for Americans and for migrants.

Mr. Speaker, 5 million have been encountered at the southern border, and 2 million have been released into the United States, incentivizing more to come.

Over 1.5 million have evaded apprehension--i.e., got-aways evading detection from Border Patrol since the beginning of this administration.

Fentanyl is pouring into our communities. Border Patrol has seized over 35,000 pounds of fentanyl. Just last Thursday morning, I met with three fentanyl moms out of dozens of moms that I met with because their children have died from fentanyl.

Eight children in the school district in the county in which I reside southwest of Austin have died of fentanyl poisoning since last August. Over 10 have had to be resuscitated, revived with Narcan.

Just last summer, 53 migrants were effectively cooked in a tractor- trailer in the hot Texas heat in San Antonio, Texas.

Mr. Speaker, 856 dead migrant bodies were found along the Rio Grande, in south Texas, and on ranches. Little girls are sold into the sex trafficking trade, held in stash houses in Laredo, Brownsville, El Paso, San Antonio, Houston, and throughout this country.

We know this to be true. It is documented to be true. Now, the administration can't even keep up with the children that we have, with 85,000, according to The New York Times, not able to be contacted.

My colleagues just blindly wipe that away, saying: That is not true. It was a phone call. They didn't get them. They must be with a family member.

What Member of this body would treat their child that way? Oh, I called and didn't get ahold of them. Oh, well.

We do that with 85,000 children. I guess that is not nearly as effective as a photo op in white pantsuits sitting next to kids in cages, allegedly, despite that those cages were created by the previous administration specifically for the protection of children. Oh, no. It doesn't look as good to have a photo op when you have 85,000 missing children.

Tomorrow, title 42 expires. Now, for the average American, title 42, they don't know what that is. What it is, is a part of our health code that allows us to say that we are going to turn people away in the middle of a pandemic.

Yet, the administration has been using that as effectively their only means of managing the border, to the extent you can call it managing the border.

In March, for example, there were approximately 200,000 apprehensions. We are going to blow right through that right now because we are at 10,000, 11,000, 12,000 apprehensions a day.

When you add those 200,000 apprehensions, not even counting all the parole, half of those are being turned away under title 42.

When title 42 expires tomorrow, more will come. There is an explosion at the border. None will be turned away because this administration has specifically chosen to ignore the law. This administration is refusing to do their job to defend the border of the United States.

The least compassionate, the least Christian, the least empathetic thing that a country could do is to allow human beings to be used as political pawns by cartels for profit while Americans die by the thousands, while migrants get raped, abused, and put in stash houses by cartels for profit by the thousands, while migrants die along the southern border by the hundreds, if not the thousands now, while our own people get overrun on their own ranches.

I sat and met with ranch owners in south Texas who had run across the dead body of a young woman, a mother with a baby, on their ranch.

Imagine the most powerful Nation in the history of the world thinking it is compassionate to have a system that allows that. Yet, that is precisely what we do.

Unfortunately, what my colleagues' response will be is, oh, we are going to have to do something about our immigration system and future flow in, figuring out what we are going to do to make sure that we reform immigration.

Don't you know that if we had comprehensive immigration reform, this would all just magically evaporate? That is completely not true.

The fact of the matter is, the starting point for any sensible border and immigration plan is a secure border in which you actually enforce the laws of the United States. Why? So people know what the rules are. We allow 600,000 to 1 million, 1.2 million, depending on the year, people to come into this country legally, as we should.

Yes, we need to reform our immigration system, but none of it matters if

we are going to embrace lawlessness and wide-open borders and ignore the rule of law to the detriment of people and to the detriment of the very system that attracts people from around the world.

We should be exporting the rule of law rather than importing lawlessness, fentanyl, death, and destruction. The legislation we have before us would be a giant step toward ensuring that we can hold this administration accountable to make sure that we secure our border, protect our citizens, and protect migrants who seek to come here.

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

Mr. Speaker, just a couple of points.

First of all, this tired talking point of 90 percent of narcotics being captured at the ports of entry; well, of course, that is the only place where we have Border Patrol. Because they are overwhelmed doing processing, we don't have anybody patrolling the border between the ports of entry. So, of course, you are collecting and finding a higher percentage of narcotics at the ports of entry.

The second point, is this idea that this is treating kids inhumanely. Let's be very clear that what we do in this policy is treat children from other countries exactly as we treat them from Mexico and Canada under current law.

More importantly, President Obama, that radical, MAGA extremist, President Barack Obama asked for this fix in his bill.

Mr. Speaker, I yield such time as he may consume to the gentleman from Texas (Mr. Burgess).

Mr. Speaker, I have to address, at least for a minute, this disparaging commentary about the Governor of Texas busing migrants.

Well, I guess my colleagues on the other side of the aisle would like to ignore the fact that the Democrat mayor of El Paso was teaming up with Governor Abbott to do that. The Democrat mayor of El Paso was teaming up with the Governor of Texas, Governor Abbott, to do just that. Walk a mile in our shoes in the State of Texas where we have hundreds of thousands of people pouring into our communities throughout the State of Texas. Welcome to the party.

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

Mr. Speaker, I yield an additional 15 seconds to the gentleman from South Carolina.

Mr. Speaker, I would just remind my colleagues that it was in December when we got a $1.7 trillion omnibus spending bill that was 4,000 pages long around 1 a.m., and then we voted on it the next day. In that bill there was specific language that prohibited the Department of Homeland Security from actually securing the homeland by securing the border.

Mr. Speaker, I yield 2 minutes to the gentleman from Missouri (Mr. Alford).

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

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

Mr. Speaker, this crisis has taken an unimaginable toll on the State of Texas, my home State, and the citizens there as well as the migrants seeking to come into this country. I get contacted every single day, like my colleagues from Texas.

In 2022, more than 2,000 Texans died from fentanyl poisoning, a 500 percent increase from 2019. I have already talked about the 53 migrants killed in a tractor-trailer in the Texas heat.

Texas has been forced to deal with it on their own, spending $4 billion of their own budget, $3 billion last cycle because we are having to deal with a job the Federal Government is supposed to do. El Paso, state of emergency; Laredo, state of emergency; Brownsville, state of emergency; San Antonio, beefing up to try to deal with the surge. We are dealing with it every single day in Texas.

Mr. Speaker, I yield 2\1/2\ minutes to the gentlewoman from Texas (Ms. Van Duyne).

Mr. Speaker, I yield 2 minutes to the gentleman from Oklahoma (Mr. Brecheen).

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

What we offer today through this rule will be legislation that will strengthen our southern border, secure this country, protect Americans, protect migrants, and ensure that our communities can be safe, particularly along our southern border in States like Texas where the Speaker pro tempore and I and many of our colleagues reside and other friends of ours in Arizona, New Mexico, and California, that are dealing with this every single day.

This bill is pretty simple. It strengthens and requires the administration to enforce existing law and closes the asylum and detention loopholes that have been exploited for years. It curbs release into the interior, a massive pull factor, by requiring DHS to detain, remove, or place in a safe third country, but in doing so allows a path for migrants to be able to pursue asylum claims and just simply follows current law to not be released into the United States. Again, it is pretty straightforward.

It reimplements the asylum deals that were working and ends the bogus asylum claims. It keeps families together while asylum claims are being processed.

It protects unaccompanied children by reforming TVPRA, a request from the Obama administration. It requires DHS to immediately resume border wall construction, which President Biden has halted.

The fact is the American people are very well aware of the crisis at the border that my colleagues on the other side of the aisle seem to ignore.

I had some friends send me, while I was speaking here, the comment section from The New York Times. I am not talking about Breitbart or something. I am talking about The New York Times. Page after page after page of citizens saying, for example: Though I have always voted Democrat, my vote in the next Presidential election will go to whichever candidate has the best, most seemingly effective plan for securing our border. It is the most pressing issue for our country.

If only the President and my Democratic colleagues would agree.

The fact of the matter is we have a devastating crisis that is killing Americans and killing migrants. Right now, to be very clear, our Border Patrol agents and law enforcement community along the southern border are overwhelmed. They are crying out for help.

I had a man text me just a minute ago that works with Border Patrol and DPS. He said:

We are in a Broken Arrow moment. We are overrun. We have no

place to go. We have a crisis.

This body needs to respond, and we need to take action as we speak.

Mr. Speaker, shortly, I will be offering an amendment to the rule. The amendment is a very short, one-page modification that makes clear that Congress will address, within 60 days, the dangerous cartels confronting our country. It will add a sense of Congress to clarify certain language involving agricultural issues relating to E-Verify.

amendment offered by mr. roy

Mr. Speaker, I offer an amendment to the resolution.

Mr. Speaker, I urge support for the resolution, as amended.

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

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

Mr. Speaker, I never know who I am, whether I am a rightwing MAGA extremist or a Ron DeSantis-supporting RINO. Today, where I am here on the floor is--I would just say this: ``I cannot agree to vote for a full increase in the debt without any assurance that steps will be taken . . . to reduce the alarming increase in the deficits and the debt.'' Those aren't my words. Those were Joe Biden's words in October 1984, when the debt was $1.5 trillion.

My colleagues on the other side of the aisle are hiding. They want to hide behind process. What they don't want the American people to know is that this bill has been available since last Wednesday; that of the 20 debt ceiling increases since 2000, only two have gone through committee; that H.R. 1 in this bill went through regular order and passed off the floor; that the REINS Act, which is in this bill in its existing form, passed this very body on a bipartisan basis in 2017; that the spending repeals that we have in this bill are clean cuts, cutting the very things that this body with Democrat control passed with 158 proxy votes in August, calling people back and forcing some of us to have to fly back with the kind of process that we learned to expect under Speaker Pelosi.

Instead, here, what did we have last night? Yes, we had an agreement late at night. Do you know what that agreement was, Mr. Speaker? It was a recognition of the deal that had already been constructed, which was to say we are going to repeal the god-awful IRA subsidies destroying our economy, which are absolutely going to enrich a handful of corporate America, pushing their green subsidies, enriching themselves, and destroying the American economy and energy freedom.

That is what we are doing: restoring exactly what agreement had been reached that we had decided last week.

The simple fact is that the American people don't really care what my Democratic colleagues have to say because it is more of the same scare tactics.

They want to say that we are cutting spending to oblivion, yet the reality is what we are dealing with, Mr. Speaker, is if you kept the fiscal year 2023 defense level spending--last year's defense spending-- and add to it the nondefense level of that MAGA extremist Barack Obama that he proposed in his last budget for fiscal year 2024, then you get exactly the $1.471 trillion level we are proposing. That is the truth.

Proposing pre-COVID nondefense level spending; proposing a defense to match China; proposing the kind of cuts the American people expect us to do in upfront first-year cuts, to cut student loans that are unfair to the plumber and making sure that they are biased toward kids who rack up debt; we are going to make sure that we are increasing our economic productivity by getting rid of the regulatory stranglehold with the regulations that are in the IRA regulations; and then we are going to make sure that we get rid of the COVID spending to $50 billion of unobligated dollars, in addition to making sure that the American people can carry out their business without constraint from government--in short, we are going to shrink Washington and grow America.

The American people are tired of the same. They want us to do our job. They are tired of Chuck Schumer and President Biden doing absolutely nothing.

Republicans in the House are doing our job, and we are going to send this over to the Senate.

Madam Speaker, I thank my friend from Wisconsin for holding the floor down here with--I am quite confident--riveting expositions on any number of great things because my friend from Wisconsin is a great American, and I do appreciate the gentleman.

It is important that we recognize the situation that this country currently faces with respect to our border crisis.

It is so beyond understanding that the so-called greatest country in the history of the world could allow an environment in which, as we speak here on the floor, a little girl is getting sold into the sex trafficking trade in Houston or San Antonio in a stash house; or as happened last summer, 53 migrants died in a tractor trailer, cooked in the Texas summer heat; or 40 migrants who burned up just this past week. All, almost a direct consequence of the chosen policies of this administration. That is the simple truth.

We have free will as the greatest country in the history of the world, the strongest country in the history of the world. We have to use that free will and make choices. Are we going to be a sovereign Nation that secures its borders and ensures safe passage and avenues for people around the world to come to this country, or are we going to allow cartels to maintain operational control of our border?

Are we going to allow cartels to use human beings as profit centers, no matter what it means for them and their well-being? Are we going allow China to exploit our borders and run fentanyl into our communities and kill Americans, or are we going to do our job and secure the border of the United States?

Those are the questions before us as Members of the House of Representatives. My message to my colleagues on

this side of the aisle is: When you campaign on securing the border and you are given control of the House of Representatives, you have an obligation to actually secure the border.

To my colleagues who run around using rhetoric about what is or is not Christian-like. I will say it is inherently un-Christian to allow migrants to die and call that compassion. It is inherently un-Christian to allow Americans to die from fentanyl poisoning and say that it is un-Christian to say that we should secure the border.

It is inherently un-Christian for us to turn our backs on the responsibility of being a sovereign Nation that defends the rule of law to be the beacon of hope for people around the world to come here in the first place.

This country has done more for more people around the world than any other Nation in history. Yes, our history is about opening our arms and allowing millions from around the globe to seek freedom and opportunity here, and we must continue to be. That must be built on the rule of law.

If we do not maintain the rule of law, then we forsake the very thing that attracts people from around the world. People come here from Venezuela, they come here from Cuba because of the rule of law. The rule of law is supposed to matter.

For people to hide behind asylum claims and hide behind exploitations of our law, to flood our border, such that we no longer have control of it, such that then the law becomes meaningless, turns the rule of law on its head and means we will not be able to be the place of refuge for the people around the world who need it.

More than that, we should be exporting the rule of law. We should be improving conditions in the Western Hemisphere and around the world rather than importing lawlessness and importing fentanyl and killing our own people and undermining the lives of migrants.

On March 13 a human smuggler transporting 11 illegal aliens in Ozona, Texas, was being chased by law enforcement, and during the chase the smuggler crashed into another vehicle killing the other occupants, including a 7-year old girl and her grandmother. The victims' names are Maria Alvarez and her granddaughter Emilia Tambunga. Two migrants perished from the crash. That is one example of hundreds I can give.

I run into the ranchers who find dead migrants on their south Texas ranches. Madam Speaker, 1,000 migrants have died along the southwest border last year.

The fact is we are seeing, as we speak, thousands rush our border from El Paso down along the Texas border because of the failed policies of this administration.

We have an obligation as a body, but while our Democrat colleagues bury their heads in the sand and refuse to acknowledge the crisis at the border, Republicans have an obligation to do exactly what they said they would do and what they campaigned to do, and that is to secure the border of the United States.

Let me be very clear. Securing the border of the United States does not mean more money. It does not mean more technology. It does not mean more Border Patrol agents. It does not mean throwing money at the problem. It means actually doing the job of enforcing the laws of the United States and embracing policies that will stop the abuse of our law, as this administration is doing to undermine it, to allow people to flood our zone, and to allow cartels to exploit it, which harms Americans and migrants.

We absolutely can and will ensure that people who have a credible claim to asylum will be able to have that claim heard while making sure that it is not exploited by cartels to rush our border with thousands of people and make it such that it is bad for them and us while fentanyl pours in killing Americans and undermining our security. That is actually our job.

I submit, Madam Speaker, that we should honor the promises that we made that gave us the majority because I can promise you if we try to pass border security that doesn't actually stop the problem, then we will no longer be in the majority.

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 1 o'clock and 32 minutes p.m.), under its previous order, the House adjourned until Monday next, April 3, 2023, at 2 p.m.

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

Mr. Chairman, the amendment that I am offering here directs the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission, FERC, as we refer to it, to withdraw two policy statements that massively expand the role of climate hysteria in certification of natural gas infrastructure, like pipelines and LNG export terminals.

In February 2022, FERC released two radical policy statements that massively increased the role that the emissions play in its certification of natural gas pipelines and LNG export terminals, which are so critical to our ability to affect world consumption of gas so that we can drive down CO2 and expand our role in the world and expand American energy interests.

This included requiring FERC to consider the upstream and downstream impact on emissions that building a new natural gas pipeline would have.

Even Senator Manchin said: ``The Commission went too far by prioritizing a political agenda over their main mission--ensuring our Nation's energy reliability and security.''

I want everybody to hear this. This move by FERC came 1 week before Russia invaded Ukraine. This administration is perfectly fine empowering our enemies to appease the climate activists, the climate cult. We saw it with Nord Stream 2. We see it right here.

We refuse to expand American energy right when we could be sticking it to Putin. Instead, we have everybody over here clamoring about what we need to do in Ukraine instead of having gotten in front of that by exporting American energy, by making sure that we control the world's supply of energy by putting out clean-burning American natural gas.

Just 1 week after FERC made this move, Russia invaded Ukraine, massively disrupting European natural gas supplies.

When the Western world was begging for U.S. LNG, this administration was giving them the middle finger to appease the climate cult.

Meanwhile, our enemies--China, Iran, Russia, Venezuela--are massively pumping out emissions. China has 1,100 coal-fired plants. They are adding two a week. We are not adding squat to our natural gas or coal production capacity.

Texas is about to be 50 percent wind and solar because we refuse to actually produce the coal and gas necessary to have power on a cloudy, windless day.

China accounts for 30 percent of global emissions--and increasing. Russian natural gas exports to Europe release 41 percent more emissions than U.S. LNG.

Bottom line: This administration's war on U.S. energy will not do a thing to help the environment but will hurt freedom and prosperity here and abroad.

We should accept this amendment. This amendment should be agreed to across the spectrum because it is good for American oil and gas. It is good for the world. It will actually help drive down CO2 while making our country stronger and helping us push back on Russia in the process.

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

Mr. Chair, I yield to the gentleman from North Dakota (Mr. Armstrong).

Mr. Chair, I agree with my friend (Mr. Armstrong).

If my colleagues on the other side of the aisle have no issues with the fact that they were amending these drafts and leaving it in draft form, we just want to give the certainty of saying to remove these. They were clearly a bad idea.

That is exactly what Senator Manchin was saying. Let's not go down this road.

This is the problem with FERC. FERC is becoming a radical organization that is inserting itself in places where it does not belong. When the executive branch oversteps its bounds, it is incumbent upon Congress, in Article I, to do something about it.

We are simply saying to pull these. Admit that this was a foolish direction to go, and let's ensure that we are sending a strong signal that we are pro-pipeline, pro-moving American LNG and making sure that we are exporting energy to the world that is actually clean burning and will help our economy, help push back on Putin, not make us reliable on China, and make us a heck of a lot stronger.

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

Mr. Speaker, I thank my friend from Pennsylvania. I couldn't help but notice my colleagues on the other side of the aisle going, yet again, to one of their pages in their playbook that they love to bring out every single time we have a debate--oh, who can you trust?

You can't trust corporate America. Guess what? I don't trust corporate America. I don't trust Big Oil. I don't. I don't trust them any more than I trust any of the big government bureaucrats that decide what is best for me. I do trust the market.

I do trust people being able to go out and use their capital to go out and produce the best energy for the American people. This administration and my Democratic colleagues don't want to do that, as exemplified by the fact that the President of the United States dumped 300 million barrels out of the Strategic Petroleum Reserve last year heading into an election.

Mr. Speaker, 300 million barrels. They cut the Strategic Petroleum Reserve in half in order to bail out their election because their policies were so bad. Even Goldman Sachs is saying that the so-called Inflation Reduction Act, which massively expands unreliable energy, would cost $1.2 trillion. That is the truth.

Mr. Speaker, I rise in support of the rule for this bill. I think it is critically important that we take a massive step forward to try to ensure that we open up exploration on lands, repeal the methane tax, and overall permitting.

It is only a simple step because the step that has to be taken is to free up the market from the ungodly amount of subsidies coming from Washington, subsidizing unreliable energy at the expense of capital being able to flow into the development of oil and natural gas and nuclear power to ensure that we have the power to live our lives.

When you have a cloudy, windless day, you have to have power. This building is powered by natural gas. Hospitals across the country stay open because of natural gas. The fact of the matter is, you cannot power the world right now with wind and solar power.

My colleagues on the other side of the aisle live in unicorn land with fairy dust, completely ignoring the reality of what happens to real Americans when the cost of their goods and services go up; when they have inflation skyrocketing and raising up; when it is destroying their way of life because people want to feel good about themselves hopping in their Tesla and rolling around pretending there is a magic energy tree. There isn't.

People's lives are at stake. My colleagues on the other side of the aisle want the American people to lack the energy that they need to live their lives productively and affordably. You want to know why inflation is going up?

Because this body has spent money it doesn't have. The Fed has printed money and jacked up the extent to which we have massive easy money out in the supply money. We have spent money we don't have. We have regulated the oil and gas industry to death,

such that we don't have the ability to actually back up their magic fairy dust energy supplies with wind and solar.

Mr. Chair, I have an amendment at the desk for H.R. 5.

Mr. Chair, I lend my thanks to the gentlewoman from North Carolina for her stewardship of the legislation we are addressing this week.

I am offering this amendment because I believe it is critically important for parents to have the ultimate say in the education of their children.

I first want to say that I support, as my colleague from Kentucky Mr. Massie does, eliminating the Department of Education altogether and leaving this to parents and the States.

Frankly, I would prefer to just block grant dollars to the States and give them full control in the absence of actually eliminating the Department of Education, which my next amendment will address. If we are going to be operating in this framework, then we might as well ensure that parents at least can have the benefit of dollars getting to them directly to be able to do as they see fit to educate their children.

The Parents Bill of Rights Act is designed to try to empower parents, give them the ability to see what their children are learning, see the curriculum. Despite the wailing and gnashing of teeth of our colleagues on the other side of the aisle with wild accusations of book banning-- which is completely inaccurate and devoid of fact--the fact is, we are trying to empower parents to be able to see what their children are learning.

My amendment, though, would give parents recourse by allowing them to take their tax dollars, the dollars that they send to Washington for a purpose, and put it towards the education of their choice.

Again, I would rather they not be laundering the money through this godforsaken town. I would rather that money go directly to the schools in their neighborhoods. If it is going to come here, I would like them to, at least, get the benefit of getting that money back to be able to use it to educate their children the way they believe is best for them.

I introduced this policy as a stand-alone bill called the SCHOOL Act in 2020 with my good friend, Senator Rand Paul, when parents' tax dollars were going to schools that closed their doors during the pandemic, that shut kids out of schools, that forced them into the corners with masks.

The results of that have been catastrophic. Twenty-three Baltimore schools have zero students proficient in math per State test results. Chicago Democrats are sounding the alarm on 55 schools reporting no proficiency in math or reading.

These are very serious concerns. In 2022, the National Center for Education Statistics evaluated the progress of children during the pandemic and revealed reading ability had suffered the largest decline since 1990.

To my colleagues who say that this defunds schools, first off, whose dollars are these anyway?

They are the American people's dollars. This government takes dollars and then does stuff with it.

We want to make sure that parents can use their dollars the way they feel is best for the education of their kids. We are returning to the families their money, so they have greater flexibility to provide the best possible education for their kids.

Mr. Chair, that is the goal of this amendment, and I reserve the balance of my time.

Mr. Chair, I would just add a couple of responses to my friend, the gentleman from Virginia.

Both of us are graduates of the University of Virginia. I am an extraordinarily proud graduate of Virginia, where Thomas Jefferson, frankly, helped frame the public diffusion of knowledge, as the gentleman knows, in trying to set up a structure for public schools in order to have broader access for more Americans and give them the ability and the benefits of public education.

I was public school educated K through law school, as was my wife, raised by a single mom. We went to Texas A&M University and the University of Texas School of Law, where we met. I am a big proponent of the public education system. I am a bigger proponent of empowering parents. I am a bigger proponent of being able to have checks and balances within the education system and allowing parents the ability to take care of their kids.

That is what this is about. When we talk about homeschooling, the purpose here is, you have got parents who are left on the outside looking in while the public school system has abandoned them during the pandemic, and they had to go do something about it.

They are abandoning them now by not providing them the proficiency of education as I just talked about in Baltimore and Chicago and in schools across the country.

To say that we should restrict parents from being able to use those dollars in private schools. Say that to the hardworking parents today scraping by to send $6,000, $7,000, $8,000, $9,000 to a Catholic school because that parent wants the best education for their child. I say let's actually empower parents. That is what this whole debate is about this week. That is why I offered this amendment.

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

Mr. Chair, my time is limited, and the gentleman has the right to close this out.

I would just say that we should have a robust debate about that.

This is very limited, as the gentleman pointed out. It is Title I money under the ESEA, so this would be limited in the total economic impact. I think it is just a nice way to give some dollars to parents to be able to go take care of their children.

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

Mr. Chair, I demand a recorded vote.

I have an amendment at the desk.

Mr. Chair, again, I thank the gentlewoman from North Carolina for her efforts this week and her efforts and devotion to education, generally, in her career.

I am offering this amendment because I believe that we should be empowering States and local schools in communities to be able to take care of our kids. I don't think the Federal Government has any business in this area for the most part. I don't believe the Department of Education should exist in the first place.

When I look at Article I, Section 8, I don't see anything about education. From my standpoint--and I believe it is a sentiment shared by many on my side of the aisle, and I have heard many of my colleagues on the other side of the aisle bemoaning Federal intervention this week--so let's just call the question then.

If we have concerns about Federal intervention into State affairs, then let's take the dollars and let's block grant them back to the States.

Now, my friend, Mr. Massie, has a sense of Congress that we should abolish the Department of Education, which I fully support. But if we have true concerns here, to my Democratic colleagues who are concerned about, oh, my gosh, heaven forbid that we have parents be able to see what is in the curriculum. This is too much Federal intervention.

How about we look at overall Federal intervention, in general, and let's block grant those dollars to States and allow State governments, local communities, local school boards and parents to make all the decisions?

We will just take care of your problem right now.

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

Mr. Chair, I yield 2 minutes to the gentleman from Oklahoma (Mr. Brecheen).

Mr. Chair, I thank my friend from Oklahoma for his support of the amendment. I agree with every word that he just shared with the body.

I would just note, again, my colleagues on the other side of the aisle have been raising a lot of concerns that my side of the aisle is inserting the Federal Government into the business of the States and localities.

Look, I will acknowledge, I don't love going down this road. I don't think we should have to. I think this should all be left to the States, and if the folks in California, the folks in New York, the folks in some State want to put this garbage in front of their kids, then let them hash that out.

As long as we are going to have the Federal Government inserting itself, which this body led predominated by my colleagues on the other side of the aisle, have been pushing now for years, at a bare minimum, shouldn't we ensure that parents have the ability to see what is in the curriculum, parents know what books are in the library?

That is the debate this week. What we are trying to do with this amendment is essentially call the bluff of my Democratic colleagues. Put your money where your mouth is.

If you don't like the fact that the Federal Government is involved in education, welcome to the party. Let's give the money right back to the States and local governments where they can do what is best for the people in their States and local communities.

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

Mr. Chairman, I demand a recorded vote.

Mr. Speaker, let's just make sure the American people know the truth. Parents have the right to know what their children are being taught. Parents have the right to be heard. Parents have the right to see the school budget and spending. Parents have the right to protect their child's privacy. Parents have the right to keep their children safe.

That is what my Democratic colleagues are objecting to. Notice how they are objecting. Notice what they are trying to do. It is a page as old as time in the Democratic playbook--fearmongering, racial division, peddling the lies of hatred, saying that somehow the legislation that would empower parents and give parents the right to know what their child is being educated with, know what they are being told, that somehow that is going to lead to banning of books.

What they are afraid of is they are afraid of a parent being able to come in, armed with the information of what is being taught to their children, armed with what is in the library, and holding school boards accountable, holding their educators accountable. That is precisely what my Democratic colleagues do not want to occur.

They are afraid of the Sunshine going into the classroom because they know that after COVID the veil has been lifted on a corrupted education system that has for too long been indoctrinating our children with racial division and hatred. Parents are now awakened. They have seen what is occurring behind the veil because the veil was lifted.

My colleagues go around peddling the fears of banned books, completely inaccurately trying to claim that books were banned in Duval County that weren't banned, books that were either not ordered--when, in fact, there are on average 13 books about Rosa Parks in every elementary school in Duval County. That is the truth. Nobody wants to pull books about Rosa Parks. Nobody wants to pull books about Roberto Clemente.

If there is legislation passed to make sure that we stop the ridiculousness of what books are being put in front of our kids, then people go: Let's pull books and look at it to make sure what is in it, and then they decide to put those books back when they pass muster. That is what my colleagues want to say are being banned.

What they do not want to talk about are the books that my colleagues from South Carolina just talked about. They don't want to talk about ``Flamer,'' a graphic book about young boys performing sexual acts at a summer camp. They don't want to talk about that.

Who does?

A bunch of fringe leftist groups that want to stick that stuff in our schools for our kids to read.

How about ``This Book is Gay,'' a book containing instructions on the ins and outs of gay sex.

This is what we want being put in the schools for our children?

Our Democratic colleagues do not want the American people, the parents, to know this. That is what this is about. My Democratic colleagues do not want parents to know that information. They don't. They have a bill in front of them that literally gives parents the right to know that and they are opposing it and opposing it with force.

To my colleagues who say: Well, this is sticking the Federal Government into the tent of local government, I say to them: Well, welcome to the club of actually being concerned about Federal Government overreach. I agree.

So I hope they will support my amendment then that would strike all the language and block grant the dollars to the States. They don't want to do that, ladies and gentlemen, because they want to meddle. They just want to meddle the way they want to.

They don't want to have a clean elimination of the Department of Education. I support my colleague Thomas Massie's bill to do that. My Democratic colleagues do not.

My Democratic colleagues will not support a block grant to States because they want to meddle. They want to interfere. They just don't want parents to know the truth. That is a dirty little secret.

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

Mr. Speaker, again, the facts are completely irrelevant to my colleagues on the other side of the aisle--completely irrelevant.

Introduced in the Record a little while ago was a story from December, again, trying to perpetuate this myth about book banning. Again, the context here matters that we are talking about legislation in this body to just ensure that parents know what is in the libraries and what is in the curriculum. It does nothing more.

Yet, that is the great offense. They are trying to perpetuate that myth about Federal perpetuation of so-called book banning. Let me be clear. Yes. Some local jurisdictions are removing certain books-- absolutely, and God bless them for it--books about explicit sex acts. Let that hang out over the Chamber.

No, I do not want America's children to have to be subjected to that kind of terrible indoctrination in the schools--absolutely not--and parents should be empowered to stop it. Instead, they want to perpetuate this myth.

The facts are true.

Mr. Speaker, I ask unanimous consent to include in the Record an article titled: ``Facts about library books in Duval County Public Schools.''

``February 17, 2023--Books about Roberto Clemente and Hank Aaron from the Essential Voices collection are among approximately 10,000 books that have been reviewed and approved through the new State-required book review process.''

The fact is there was a purchase of 1,300 books from Perfection Learning.

``The current effort to review all media center and classroom library books, which is now required under State law,'' was reviewed and completed. Those books were not banned.

As I said earlier, there are, on average, 13 to 14 books about Rosa Parks per school in Duval County. Those are the facts. That is the truth. This is a complete misrepresentation designed to scare people when, in fact, we want to empower parents and provide Sunshine for the American people to protect their kids.

Mr. Speaker, yesterday we were given the President's budget, which outlines the President's so-called priorities.

Well, his priorities were pretty clear: Continue to expand government at the expense of the American people. Expand government, a government that is at odds with the freedom, well-being, and prosperity of the American people every single day.

The simple truth is, as my friends in the House Freedom Caucus and a large number of my other colleagues in the Republican Conference have been articulating, we need to shrink Washington so that we can grow America.

We cannot sustain and grow out of the $32 trillion of debt and the $20 trillion of debt that the Congressional Budget Office just outlined that we are going to add over the next decade. We will not, as a country, survive through that if we do not get economic growth to the 3, 3\1/2\, and 4 percent levels that we saw under President Reagan, President Clinton, and in previous years. You are not going to get economic growth if you don't get the Federal Government off the backs of the American people and stop empowering them to target Americans, to undermine American freedoms.

Biden's budget would increase taxes and implement price controls to the tune of $3 trillion. That is the President's plan.

What does the media do?

They run around and go: Oh, he is reducing the deficit. He is reducing the debt.

Yet, by his own measures, he would be increasing the debt another $17 trillion over the next decade.

The American people look to this body and this town with utter amazement at how stupid we could possibly be. If you set out and tried to be more incompetent and more stupid than the people that have been running this town for as long as I can remember, I am not sure how you can do it.

Seriously. That would be a great exercise. Could anybody, if you put together 435 people here, 100 people on the other side, Presidents and bureaucrats, swapped out over the last, say, three decades, could it be any worse?

William F. Buckley said he would rather be governed by the first 435 people out of the phone book than the 435 people we send here. Is he wrong?

Seriously, it would be a great inquiry for us to consider.

We are $32 trillion in debt. Our borders are wide open. We have got American citizens unable to carry out their livelihoods, men and women in uniform who are being denied promotions and the ability to do their job in the Defense Department. We have got kids shut out from their schools, forced into the corners wearing masks, mental health issues, and they are set back generations in terms of their academic capability.

That is the best we have got? That is the best we can do?

We reject that. We believe in America. We believe in Americans. We do not believe that investing in Washington, investing in the Federal bureaucracy is good for the American people. We believe the opposite.

The President wants to tax and regulate $3 trillion to save increasing the debt $3 trillion over the next decade, down to $17 trillion. Whoo, boy, that will do it.

We propose an immediate savings of $3 trillion right now by cutting back

the woke weaponized Federal bureaucracy that is undermining the freedom of the American people so that we can make them more free and prosperous so that they can grow this economy so we can shrink the deficit, reduce debt, and reclaim the inheritance of being an American for our kids and grandkids.

Think about what Biden's budget would do. It would spend a total of $6.8 trillion next year, $500 billion more than this year, $2 billion for the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives to increase regulation of the firearms industry. I have got thousands of Texans that I represent who are facing being made a felon because a bureaucrat at ATF decided what precisely a pistol brace might mean for how their gun is regulated.

Think about that. Just some guy some, some gal sitting in central Texas bought a weapon under the law, and now a bureaucrat says you have got to do this, register this, or you are a felon.

Now, I think the Court will strike that down as unconstitutional, but why would this body, why would any Republican fund the bureaucracy that is going to make a felon out of the law-abiding citizen back home?

To my Republican colleagues: Don't do that.

How about $3.9 billion for the Department of Homeland Security's climate resilience programs? Think about that. $3.9 billion for the Department of Homeland Security, which, by the way, refuses to secure the homeland, allows 72,000 Americans to die from fentanyl poisoning, allows cartels to get empowered and slaughter Americans in the streets of Matamoros in northern Mexico without a peep from this administration. Nothing. Let's give that department $3.9 billion for climate resilience programs. Does anybody wonder why the American people look at us and say what in the hell are you doing?

$2 billion increase for the EPA to target American energy. Now, I want to remind people, I want to remind all the kids out there watching this thinking, oh, my God, but the world is going to end, we are going die, climate change, we are going to get extinguished. Oh, really? Oh, really?

Why is it that my Democratic colleagues who believe that the production of CO2 is going to be the end to humanity and the Earth as we know it will not remotely consider nuclear power, which produces not an ounce of CO2, but they won't consider it? Why? Because it is a religion. It is climate fetishism. It is about government control. It is about being able to target the oil and gas industry to undermine the well-being of the American people by empowering bureaucrats so they can feel good about themselves while China continues to pump out more CO2 than any other country, ratcheting it up week by week. There are 1,100 coal-fired plants in China. They build two a week while we sit around and play tiddlywinks with solar panels and windmills, leaving our grid in Texas unreliable, now almost 50 percent wind and solar. We have to think, wait, what happens on a windless, cloudy day? I don't know. How do you want to power up your schools or your hospitals or your homes or your businesses? Could it be that you have to rely on coal or gas or nuclear power? Of course, you do. Yet, my colleagues on the other side of the aisle--not here, of course; of course, with all due respect neither are my colleagues on this side of the aisle with the exception of the Speaker. This is just how we do things in Washington. This is debate.

A $2 billion funding increase for the Internal Revenue Service is in the President's budget. Now, I want every American to understand that. They just passed a bill last summer supposedly called the Inflation Reduction Act that gives the IRS another $80 billion to expand. So that is what the American people want: More IRS agents to go target more Americans to raise at most by the CBO's own estimate 100 or $200 billion over 10 years? So you're going to spend $80 billion to go target American citizens to bring in more money. By the way, the IRS targets poor people and minorities three to five times more than other Americans. So you're going to go hire more bureaucrats, you got $80 billion, and what does Biden do? Oh, that is not enough. $2 billion more for the IRS. Genius.

$100 million to the Department of Education in grant funding for communities to promote racial and socioeconomic diversity in their schools.

$62 million for the DOJ to exploit the FACE Act to target pro-life Americans. I could go on and on about the amount of money given to agency after agency, bureaucrat after bureaucrat to target the American people. The FBI targeted my now-friend Scott Smith in Loudoun County, whose daughter was assaulted in a school. He dared to go to the school board. He got challenged by law enforcement, and the DOJ was going to be putting him on a list as a domestic terrorist because the National School Boards Association was colluding with the White House to do so. Is that what we want to fund: a Department of Justice that would put a dad on a list as a domestic terrorist because he went to his school board to try to defend his daughter who was assaulted in a bathroom?

That is what this administration wants to prioritize: Funding a woke, weaponized bureaucracy that is undermining freedom. They want to fund the FBI that went after Mark Houck in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, for daring to defend his son when they were outside of an abortion clinic and somebody was challenging his son when they were exercising their First Amendment rights, and he defended him without anything significant happening. They were not prosecuted by State law. The feds went in, had a SWAT team at 7 in the morning on a Sunday--the whole family--went into their house threatening Mark Houck.

Is that what we want to fund?

Is that what we want to use the power of government for?

How about the $16,000--I know it is just $16,000; I realize that is chicken feed in this establishment--in State Department funding for a pro-prostitution LGBTQ group in Colombia. Is that how we want our tax dollars spent? That is just $16,000. It doesn't mean anything, does it? It does.

$1.9 million in Department of Education funding for an Illinois nonprofit that trains teachers to center equity in the classroom. We need our kids to know math, how to read, science, how to lead the world, how to beat China, and we got $1.9 million to center equity, whatever that hell that means.

$2 million for the State Department's Race, Ethnicity, and Social Inclusion Unit. As if the State Department is out doing wonderful things in the first place these days.

How about $158 million in economic law enforcement and military support for Mexico? Pause. Yes, you just heard that correctly. We, the taxpayers, are giving $158 million to Mexico for economic law enforcement and military support while we are getting flooded at our border, cartels are absolutely running amuck and owning the state of Mexico as a narco-terror state, running fentanyl into America, and killing Americans in Mexico. Congratulations, American people, you bought with $158 million a narco-terrorist state that is undermining our freedom and liberty killing Americans, endangering migrants, and endangering Texas. Congratulations, Americans.

$34 million for the Office of the Secretary of Homeland Security, Alejandro Mayorkas. $34 million for Alejandro Mayorkas to screw up America. Congratulations to the American people on how your tax dollars are being spent.

$1.7 billion, for the ATF that I described earlier that will make owners of the 10 to 40 million pistol braces in the United States felons. $6.3 billion for Anthony Fauci's NIAID, which was weaponized to completely lock down the United States and force vaccines on millions of Americans, massively increasing the profit of pharmaceutical companies--Pfizer and Moderna--making like $100 billion under government mandates for vaccines--government mandates for vaccines with liability protection for the companies for a vaccine that even the morons in the departments over at CDC, NIH, FDA are now at least acknowledging don't really do much for transmission; but, oh, yes, let's give them $6.3 billion.

$128 million for the office of the CDC Director who actively mislead Americans about COVID vaccine efficacy while CDC and Big Tech colluded to suppress vaccine information, which we know to be true. We saw testimony yesterday.

Our own colleague, Thomas Massie, had his own social media posts being edited and targeted in a disinformation campaign because anyone who dared question the wisdom of Anthony Fauci, anyone who dared question the government mandate that you stick a needle in your arm because they say so because they politicized a virus and a vaccine, you are going to be set aside. There was going to be disinformation on social media, Twitter, in collusion with all of those guys. They were shutting down free speech.

We should be horrified that the United States of America with a First Amendment to the Constitution, which is supposed to protect free speech, but not for Thomas Massie as a Member of Congress--yes, for him, too--but for every American, every American regardless of the ``truth'' of what you are saying, the government doesn't decide what the truth is. That is the whole point of free speech.

Yet, we are funding the very tyrants in the executive branch shutting down free speech, mandating vaccines, using the power of government to go after people and shut down their livelihoods, undermine freedom, undermine economic activity, and put us $32 trillion in debt so our kids and grandkids are going to inherit a bankrupt, tyrannical America.

We should change that. We should reject that. The great news is Americans across this country are rejecting it. They are saying no. They do want to live free. They don't want a government that is shutting down their ability to live free or their kids and their grandkids. They do want to send their kids to schools that teach them that America is great and good and teach them the tools they need to succeed in life, rather than teach them that they should be ashamed of their country or be a victim.

The American people under COVID woke up. More parents are homeschooling their kids. More parents are looking for private school. More States are adopting school choice. More businesses are rejecting the vaccine mandates. More individuals are saying no to those mandates.

God bless the young man who is in the United States Navy who rejected the vaccine mandate, and because of our bill that we finally jammed through in December as Republicans isn't being kicked out of the military, but he is still being harassed, he is still being denied the commanding officer job he always wanted. He is still being denied the ability to advance. They are going after him to pay the $75,000 of previous student loans. That must end.

$122 million for the World Health Organization, which pushed lockdowns, vaccine mandates, and colluded with the Chinese Communist Party to cover up its role in COVID's origin, and now with this administration wants to control our healthcare and control how we are going to deal with vaccines in the future. Why would any Republican vote to fund the World Health Organization today? Why? We should not. We should reject that. We are Americans. We decide how we are going to live.

$234 million for the EPA's clean water program so-called under waters of the United States, WOTUS, that put a 78-year-old veteran in jail for violating the waters of the United States by digging ditches on his land.

That is your government at work, ladies and gentlemen, $456 million for EPA ``clean air programs.''

Everybody wants clean air. I don't know anybody who doesn't want clean air. I don't know any State regulators who don't want clean air.

What we don't want is that to be used as an excuse to carry out the new methane tax, drive up gas prices via the ethanol mandate, and destroy reliable coal and natural gas power plants via regulation, which is precisely what it is going to do.

Yet, we are all going to just sit by as Republicans and go, well, shrug. I guess that is just what we do. We have to increase government.

All these kids are running around going, ``Well, we have climate change. What are we going to do?'' How about we embrace clean-burning American natural gas, develop more nuclear power, and recognize that China and India are the ones that are vastly growing and producing CO2 by developing more coal-fired plants while we sit around and play games, as I said earlier, with wind and solar, leaving us with unreliable grids and living on unicorn energy policies.

Mr. Speaker, $108 million in woke EPA environmental justice funding that will funnel through EPA's new Office of Environmental Justice and External Civil Rights, $108 million of your taxpayer money for environmental justice when we are $32 trillion in debt, you literally can't make up how stupid we are. Literally, you just can't. It is, like, no, no, no.

I mean, imagine the Founding Fathers going: Wait a minute. Hold on. In 2023, we are going to be $32 trillion in debt. We are not going to actually secure our borders as a sovereign Nation, allowing them to be wide open. We are going to submit to the authority of international organizations to tell us what to do and fund those international organizations to tell us what to do. We are going to fund massive bureaucracies to create things like the so-called environmental justice department with $108 million when we are spending a trillion and a half dollars more every year than we take in.

I mean, that is just, like, the tip of the iceberg. How stupid can a people be? The American people aren't stupid. That is why they look at Congress with utter disdain.

We are stupid unless we change, and that is my request of my colleagues on this side of the aisle, that we demand change.

When there is a debt ceiling fight this summer, when the President wants to play chicken and Russian roulette with the debt ceiling increase to borrow more money to raise our credit card limit, we should demand change. We should demand actual change. We should demand immediate change.

When we say return spending for the bureaucratic state to pre-COVID 2019 levels, and when my colleagues on the other side of the aisle and the President say you can't do that, you remind them about the $122 million for the World Health Organization or the $108 million for the ``environmental justice programs,'' or the $15 million for the United Nations bodies that develop the Paris Agreement--just that alone.

How about $7 million of Department of the Interior funding for the monarch butterfly, $20 million in earmarks dedicated to sidewalks--$20 million dedicated in Federal funding for sidewalks.

Boy, there is a real Federal nexus there, huh? Article I, section 8, thou shalt fund sidewalks. It is asinine.

Yet, that is what we do. It is like breathing for Members of Congress. Just keep funding crap because, well, I don't know. I have a dinner to go to, and I can't bother to peel back the appropriations bills or the big omnibus bill that is sent over by a bunch of Senators who are running to their steak dinners and can't even bother to do the appropriations bills in the first place.

This includes 18 Republicans, by the way, who voted for a $1.7 trillion omnibus spending bill, which I will constantly remind all 18 of them and all Americans of those 18 who voted for a massive $1.7 trillion omnibus spending bill that denied us the ability to secure the border and expanded the size and scope of the Federal Government.

It is not just a singular, one-party problem, ladies and gentlemen. This body needs a little religion, actual religion, and a little bit of fiscal sanity religion.

We can change that. We can shrink Washington massively. Right now, in year one, we can shrink Washington so that we can get it out of the way and grow our country back to prosperity.

That is step one in reclaiming our American birthright: shrink Washington, grow America.

We can save more than $3 trillion over the next decade if we cut the funding of the bureaucracy back to pre-COVID levels and cap future growth; rescind $91 billion of unobligated COVID money just sitting over there right now waiting for a bureaucrat to find something to spend it on; and end the unfair, unlawful $400 billion student loan bailout that the President promised that is going to be deficit spending this year.

Just boom, $400 billion of 2023 deficit spending. For what? Paying off the loan of some kid who went to college, got a sociology degree, and is hanging out in his parents' basement, tweeting and sitting on Instagram, and trying to find a job. Oh, no. We have to pay off

that kid's loan, but the plumber who didn't take out that loan to go to some liberal arts college filled with a bunch of White elite liberals patting themselves on the back for how compassionate they are for Brown people--that is what they do. Let's pay off their loans, but let's make the plumber eat it. That is crazy, absolutely crazy.

We reward irresponsibility instead of actually telling the hardworking American who does it all the right way that they are the one who gets rewarded.

Under no circumstances should Republicans vote to increase the debt to borrow to fund a $400 billion student loan bailout for rich, liberal, White elitists, for the most part, as a statistical matter, while we are leaving out hardworking Americans who didn't take out those loans like my wife, the daughter of a single mom who took two jobs, worked hard, and sent her to a State university, who worked to pay off her loans.

She is still paying them. Mr. Speaker, 20 years since we graduated from law school, my wife is still paying off the remaining vestiges of her law school student loans after paying her way and getting loans to go to Texas A&M and the University of Texas School of Law, doing the right thing, driving a 2000 Corolla with no options for, like, a decade.

That is what you do if you are responsible. That is how you are supposed to live. We can save that money right now and do more good for the American people than funding and paying off these student loans.

We can reclaim the $80 billion of Internal Revenue Service money that is sitting in a pot over there right now. We can reform welfare programs to get people back to work, protecting Social Security retirement and Medicare benefits in the process.

We can grow America by expanding liberty and promoting economic growth, forcing policy changes to make the government do its job, curb regulatory power by enacting the REIN IN Act to make Congress decide if the regulations by bureaucrats should be enacted if they have a major economic impact.

These are all things we can do right now and save up to $3 trillion over 10 years as a first step to shrinking Washington and growing America. That is our plan. The President's plan is to expand Washington and undermine America.

Mr. Speaker, I yield to the gentleman from Virginia (Mr. Good).

Mr. Speaker, I thank the gentleman from Virginia for his leadership. We joined together with our colleagues at the House Freedom Caucus this morning to announce what we believe is, I would say, the bare minimum, if you will, sort of the baseline for resetting the table on how we deal with spending and, importantly, empowering the American people by shrinking Washington and growing America because we trust the people to do it, not government.

This is an age-old debate, but this is something where leviathan, this great beast, this thing we call the Federal Government, is growing and expanding in power in ways that concern every American.

Just yesterday, in the House Judiciary Committee, there were conversations about the power of the Federal Government being used to chill speech, to target American citizens, to shut down their First Amendment rights.

Now think about it. Is there anything more concerning than the power of the government being used to chill the fundamental rights given to us by our Creator, as reflected in the Bill of Rights, than what we are seeing right now?

The FTC is going after, right now, targeting, they want to know-- wait--who is involved with all of this. They are actually targeting journalists, targeting private citizens.

Is that what the power of the government is supposed to be used for, I would ask the gentleman from Virginia.

I asked earlier, if you set out over the last 2 or 3 decades, to do

a worse job than the leadership of this country, in this Chamber, the Senate, the bureaucracy, and the White House, could you imagine doing a worse job than over the last 3 decades?

I mean, in truth, the amount of debt that has been accumulated, right--in 2003, when I was a baby staffer for a Senator on the other side of this building, the national debt was about $6 trillion.

Right. It is now $26 trillion more than that, and the President is patting himself on the back for saying, well, we are not going to increase the debt by $20 trillion; we are only going to increase it by $17 trillion over the next decade by taxing and regulating the American people into oblivion.

I would just ask the gentleman a last question here, and then we are going to--in a couple of minutes I want to yield to my friend from West Virginia.

Would it surprise the gentleman that we are spending $158 million in economic, law enforcement, and military support for Mexico--so, again, the American people, you and I, we are funding to the tune of $158 million, Mexico's law enforcement and military, while it is becoming a narco-terrorist state; cartels are literally killing American citizens in Mexico; infiltrating our country, causing 72,000 dead Americans from fentanyl poisoning? This is the thing the American people don't understand. Does the gentleman agree?

That is correct. If the gentleman doesn't mind, I am going to end here with a few minutes on the border and then yield to the gentleman from West Virginia. I thank my friend from Virginia for coming down.

On that point, what we are funding, 4\1/2\ million encounters of illegal aliens at the southern border since the beginning of the Biden administration, with 7,000, 8,000 migrants crossing a day, there are 1.3 million got-aways, and nearly 1.7 million illegal aliens released into the United States. That means we have released more into our communities than the population of at least 11 individual States.

Under this administration, there have been surges of known or suspected terrorists at the southwest border. There were zero in fiscal year 2019, 3 in fiscal year 2020, 15 in fiscal year 2021, 98 in fiscal year 2022, and 53 so far after 1 quarter in fiscal year 2023, these are individuals that are affiliated with known or suspected terrorists at the southwest border.

Last summer, 53 migrants died in a tractor trailer in San Antonio, which I represent, cooked in the Texas heat; and that is somehow compassion?

Mr. Speaker, 880 migrants have died crossing the U.S.-Mexico border in fiscal year 2022, and that does not count the thousands that have died across south Texas and other places and ranches; doesn't count the little girls sitting in stash houses, as we speak, getting sold into the sex trafficking trade, as Mayorkas and Biden fiddle, while our Nation's borders are burning.

Just last week, four Americans traveling to Mexico, one of them a mother of six, they were attacked by cartels in broad daylight. Two are dead. Two are getting care; and we give $158 million to Mexico for law enforcement and military.

This is why, today, I am re-introducing my legislation to designate these drug cartels as the terrorist organization that they are, so that any individual associated with them, that provides material support to a designated FTO would be sanctioned and could be pursued, lawfully.

Materials include, but are not limited to providing weapons, safe houses, lethal substances. Representatives and members of a designated FTO would be subject to removal. Financial institutions could be targeted. But the main point is to make clear that these dangerous cartels are the equivalent of ISIS and al-Qaida, right off our border, killing Americans, killing Mexicans, turning Mexico into narco- terrorist states; giving China an avenue to get to the United States to pump fentanyl into our communities, and this administration is doing nothing.

This Congress must not continue to fund a government that is at war with the American people, funding a woke weaponized Federal Government that is undermining our freedom, undermining our prosperity, undermining our liberty.

It is our duty, as Republicans and all Members of Congress, to use the power of the purse to defund the executive branch that is tyrannically at odds with the well-being of the American people.

Mr. Speaker, I yield to the gentleman from West Virginia (Mr. Mooney), my good friend. I appreciate his great service to our country, and I look forward to hearing from him.

Returning to the Gold Standard

Mr. Speaker, I thank the gentleman from West Virginia and appreciate his strong passion in representing the great people of West Virginia. He is a good friend, and I am glad that he could join us here today.

Earlier, I was talking about the need for this country to reclaim economic growth in order to dig ourselves out of the hole that this absurd institution and lack of leadership from Washington, D.C., has created for the American people in the form of $32 trillion of debt and ridiculously stagnant economic growth.

After decades of being able to achieve growth in the 3 and 4 percent range, we are now sitting in the doldrums of 1-percent-type economic growth. That might even be rather robust in the era of Joe Biden.

I yield to the gentleman from North Carolina (Mr. Bishop) to expand upon this important point.

Mr. Speaker, I appreciate my friend from North Carolina.

Mr. Speaker, I would inquire as to how much time we have remaining.

Mr. Speaker, I don't know if I will use every bit of that. I appreciate the point that the gentleman from North Carolina just made, because it is critically important and it merits at least one final repetition, that this great country racked up the level of debt that we currently have today relative to the size of its economy in 1946. But why was that? To rid the world of fascism, to confront our enemies, to defeat those enemies, and to protect this great country.

Then we embarked for 50 years and grew ourselves to the point to be able to balance the budget by 2000, with strong economic growth. It took that much time.

Here we sit today in 2023 with $32 trillion of debt, sitting, at the President's own admission, at 60 basis points of economic growth this year. He wants his grand solution to be, oh, we will just rack up $17 trillion more debt in the next decade, because I am going to save $3 trillion by taxing the American people and regulating the American people.

It doesn't work. This is President Biden's actual form of voodoo economics. He is going to level this country, layer mountains more debt on our kids and grandkids, all while funding the very things that are undermining our ability to have economic growth, prosperity, and freedom.

As I noted before, the millions of dollars going to the EPA to turn an American citizen into a felon and put him into jail because he had a pond on his ranch, the millions of dollars in the name of clean air that are going to methane regulations to drive the price of gas and the price of energy up for the average American.

Every single American should demand of his or her Representative in this body that we stand up to a tyrannical executive branch overstepping its bounds, undermining our freedom, and undermining economic growth.

Every Member of this body should look to cut spending this year of the Federal bureaucracy, return it to pre-COVID levels as a baseline, save $3 trillion by getting government out of the way, restore economic growth and hope and opportunity for our kids and grandkids, stop funding the very things that are undermining our well-being, secure our country, secure our border, have a sparingly used but lethal, nonwoke military that will kill people and destroy things when they need to, and restore the greatness of this country by shrinking Washington and growing America.

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

Madam Speaker, I thank the gentleman from Kentucky for yielding me time.

I thank our colleagues on the other side of the aisle for working with us on that unanimous consent, which I think is important. It is important for us to have a full debate and a full airing of the use of war powers in the United States.

As James Madison pointed out, it was critically important that we put that power in Congress. We should have this debate. If we are going to have troops in Syria, this body, this House of Representatives, this Congress ought to speak to it; and we shouldn't hide behind a 2001 authorization of the use of military force and not update that authorization of the use of military force.

I am not here to say whether we should or should not be in Syria. I am here to say that Congress should speak to it. We should debate it. We should decide. We should have an actual conversation in this body, on this floor, when we are going to place our men and women in uniform in harm's way. That is the point that we should be considering.

I very much believe that the gentleman from Florida has brought something forward using privileged tools that we have here in the body, and that we should take that under consideration. We should support the resolution the gentleman has brought forward, and if we have concerns, we should then have a debate, a full-throated debate, about the use of military force and our men and women in uniform in Syria.