Floor Statements

Madam Speaker, I have been listening to my friend from Texas, the gentleman from New York, and other speakers, my colleagues on the other side of the aisle, and I can't help but observe the reality of the Shelby County decision as it was offered by the United States Supreme Court's majority authored by Chief Justice Roberts.

Now, what my colleagues on the other side of the aisle fail to mention is the fact that the Voting Rights Act remains intact and the Voting Rights Act remains fully in effect, and its purpose to ensure and preserve the ability of Americans to vote remains fully the law of the land. The core question before the Court back in 2012 or 2013--I think it was argued in `12 and decided in `13--was whether section 5, the specific preclearance provision, was, in fact, constitutional.

Now, the fact of the matter is when this was reauthorized back in I think 2006, it was reauthorized based on a 50-year-old coverage formula.

Now, my friend from Texas knows that. My colleagues on the other side of the aisle know that it was using a 50-year-old coverage formula. Now, people may want to just kind of sweep that aside and say that doesn't matter, but then go back and read the Supreme Court's opinion in 1966 on the first challenge on the Voting Rights Act and what the Court was saying at the time, that when you set aside the fundamental role of the States in carrying out elections, when you set aside the 10th Amendment, Madam Speaker, as the 1965 Voting Rights Act was seeking to do, well, then there has to be a particularly strong purpose.

What was that particularly strong purpose?

Invidious discrimination of the kind of the Jim Crow South of the poll taxes and of massive disparities in voting rates among populations in districts where those prohibitions existed.

Fast-forward 50 years through several iterations of the reauthorization of the Voting Rights Act, and in 2012, 2013, when this was being debated and when the Court decided it, the Court said: Look, sorry, you can't apply 50-year-old data to uphold and reauthorize the Voting Rights Act.

Now, I know that, because I was a lawyer on the Senate Judiciary Committee, and I pored over every one of those documents that came before us and read and reviewed them sitting as a staffer on the Senate Judiciary Committee where we knew full well what the data was showing us and what the data looked like. But here we are right now and the American people are only hearing that part of the story that we are somehow unwinding the Voting Rights Act.

We have done no such thing.

Out of enormous respect for my friend from Texas, despite the way these hours normally work, I yield briefly to the gentlewoman from Texas.

Madam Speaker, I appreciate the gentlewoman. Let me just say, I think this body would do a wonder for the American people if we could engage in this for hours, not seconds. And I think the gentlewoman agrees that we should have this kind of debate back and forth so the American people can see so we can flush out our differences, because there are things we agree on, and there are things we disagree on.

What I would respond to the gentlewoman about the point of what occurred, poring over it as a staffer as I did, was that the Members, including the chairman of the Judiciary Committee then, Mr. Sensenbrenner, as well as on the Senate side--and I won't speak for the House, because I was on the Senate side--but I was in the room with Chairman Specter, I was in the room with all of those that were in 2006 going through all this, and I was in the room with about 15 Republicans who were sitting over there, each of whom said that it was unconstitutional, we can't really do this, but we dare not go down this political road.

Okay, well, that is what that is.

Fast-forward, and for my colleagues on the other side of the aisle to bemoan ``activist Courts,'' well, welcome to the club. Welcome to the party of being concerned about activist Courts. I would argue this is not activism, but, fine, let's have that debate about how much power we want to cede to the building over there across the street, because when we are talking about activism, we can go way back on activism in terms of our views in terms of Roe, in terms of Planned Parenthood v. Casey, and other areas in which the Court has inserted itself into the public domain.

But, okay, here we are. The legislature acted, and the Court said: Whoa, whoa, you can't do that.

Why did they do that? Applying the 10th Amendment, applying fundamentals of federalism, and applying the fact that States have primacy over election laws.

That is what the Court did. If you believe in judicial review subsequent to Marbury v. Madison, as I believe my friend from Texas, who is now leaving the floor, does believe in, well, then that is actually what the Court was doing. That is what they did. That is what the opinion says. When you read the opinion, Madam Speaker, it is just dripping with all of the things that you would expect it to be filled with in terms of deference to what occurred in 1965, what the Supreme Court said subsequent to that about why it was in a particularly important time for Congress to step over the role of the States because of the nature of the invidious discrimination in Jim Crow South and other areas of the country.

It wasn't just the South, by the way, there were counties all over the country.

But, Madam Speaker, when you looked at the data--and I pored over the data--we showed places there were counties in Florida that were covered, counties in Florida that weren't covered, and you could see that the voting rates of Black voters, Hispanic voters, and other voters, that vast numbers of people were turning out and showing up to vote, those numbers were even higher in some of the covered jurisdictions.

So you had no reason or basis to cover one county versus another in the State of Florida, Madam Speaker.

But I would challenge all of my colleagues on the other side of the aisle to go open up those views, go look in and look at the data, look at the tables, and what you will find, Madam Speaker, is that there were significant numbers of counties and States that were then at that time covered by the Voting Rights Act that had better turnout rates and better participation rates than those that were uncovered which left the Court looking at the law and said: Well, hold on a second.

The whole reason that the Court upheld the law was because there was a unique circumstance where there were mass disparities because of very direct actions by those States.

I want the American people to know that because that is what is being said right now.

So suddenly, if I say: Hey, we might want voter ID.

Now, why might we want voter ID? Just to ensure that the one person who is voting in one person, one vote is actually the vote.

I say I want voter ID. Maybe that is because I have witnessed reasons why that is so. Somehow that is voter suppression?

That is what is so entirely frustrating is that you come forward and you say: Hey, I think that there is a good reason for this that, in my mind, I see very clearly as being important for the integrity of the election.

Let's not get wrapped around in the 2016 or 2020 election cycles. I have said a lot on the floor of the House at various times about those matters. Let's just actually focus on voter integrity, election integrity, and wanting to make sure that the people who vote know that their vote is going to count fully, and that you are not going to have someone voting with your ID.

We know for sure that there are individuals who come to the United States and use the identification of others, of Americans. We know that for sure. That is a fact.

We know that we end up with multiple people voting. We end up with all sorts of different possible and potential fraudulent activity.

For example, The New York Times, in 2012: ``Yet, votes cast by mail are less likely to be counted, more likely to be compromised, and more likely to be contested than those cast in a voting booth.'' That is The New York Times, that bastion of rightwing conspiracy.

We know that the Carter-Baker Commission, Jimmy Carter, known rightwing conspirator from Georgia, and James Baker, again, not really known to be a rightwing activist, quote in their report, ``Absentee ballots remain the largest source of potential voter fraud.''

That is just data. It is just analyzing it. It is just fact.

Then, you go through other examples of known fraud.

Madam Speaker, 2016, at least 83 registered voters in San Pedro, California, received absentee ballots at the same small two-bedroom apartment.

In a 2018 North Carolina congressional race, a Republican operative, L. McCrae Dowless, Jr., had allegedly requested more than 1,200 absentee ballots on voters' behalf and then collected the ballots from voters' homes when they were mailed out. That was a Republican operative. I am an equal opportunity presenter of the facts here of how fraud can occur.

I can go through item after item. In 2017, an investigation of a Dallas City Council election found 700 fraudulent mail-in ballots signed by the same witness using a fake name.

There is other voter fraud in Texas. Since 2005, the Office of the Attorney General successfully prosecuted 534 incidents of fraud against 155 individuals, et cetera, et cetera.

I can go through county by county. In Medina County, Texas, four people, including an elected justice of the peace, were charged in February with 150 counts of election fraud. The charges included ballot harvesting and illegal voting. I can go example by example.

Now, were all of those examples I just gave enough to turn an election? I don't know. That is the point. We would like to know wherever that truth may lead, in whatever State and whatever county, wherever that takes us. But those are the facts.

So, when somebody comes forward and says, ``Hey, I think we ought to have voter ID. I think we ought to have voter ID or a way to attach an individual to a mail-in ballot,'' suddenly that is voter suppression? Right.

So, suddenly, Major League Baseball walks in and says: I have an idea. Let's pull out the All-Star Game from Atlanta, Georgia, where we could celebrate Hank Aaron in a 50 percent Black city, and let's go move it over to Colorado, into Denver, which is a 10 percent Black city. And let's pat ourselves on the back for being so exceptionally in tune with what is going on in the world. Let's move the All-Star Game to Colorado.

Why? The laws that were put on the books in Georgia this year, that were being voted on in Georgia, would basically make parity with what Colorado already has on the books.

This is the kind of debate we want to be able to have. Can we just, like, all agree? Let's get a whiteboard up and put the facts up of what these things are, what the bills are, what these laws are, and then at least be debating from the same sheet of music.

I may have a few more things to say. I know I have some colleagues here. I want to be mindful of their time.

I digressed there a little bit because I was hearing my colleagues on the other side of the aisle. But election integrity is so critically important right now, and I have colleagues from Texas who are completely abandoning their duty--I should say State legislature colleagues, to be clear--who are abandoning their duty to represent their constituents in the State of Texas in the legislature and have a full-throated debate about S.B. 1 and H.B. 3, the current bills in the legislative session, the special session in Texas, and have come to D.C. They are not doing their jobs.

Look, man, I generally want to flee D.C. to go back to Texas. It is rare that I see people saying I want to flee Texas to come to D.C.

But these Democratic members of the Texas Legislature have fled Austin to skip out on working in the Texas legislative session and have an open debate. They are coming to D.C. to sit down with the Vice President to go push and promote H.R. 1 or other bills to say we need to federalize elections instead of actually doing their job, which brings me to my point.

I will say a few things here, and then I will recognize my colleagues. At some point, we have to decide what it is that is actually sacred about what we are doing here as a Nation and as a body.

Our borders, right now, are wide open. Opioids are skyrocketing. Massive numbers cross the border. I will get into some of these details in a minute. We do it. I have done it before.

We have the schools that are teaching so-called antiracism.

I walked through the Austin airport today and saw the book by Ibram Kendi, the antiracism book. I can't remember the title. I saw it sitting there in the bookstore BookPeople. I didn't see a whole lot of conservative books in there, but I saw that book, sitting there in the front.

On page 19 of that book, he writes: ``If racial discrimination is defined as treating, considering, or making a distinction in favor of or against an individual based on that person's race, then racial discrimination is not inherently racist. The defining question is whether the discrimination is creating equity or inequity. If discrimination is creating equity, then it is antiracist.''

Interesting definition of discrimination. Not sure that fits within the Civil Rights Act, but I will leave that for another discussion.

But what I am saying is, we are heightening the level to which every single aspect of our lives is taken through a political lens, every single thing.

I am asking my staff to look at every hearing that this body has had since the beginning of January and tell me what percentage of the hearings has had a focus or something to do on race, on sexual orientation, or an issue in that type of framework. I guarantee you--I don't have to count them--that number is going to be massively high.

I will just go ahead and stipulate right now, without having done any counting, the percentage of hearings that this body has held, the percentage of hearings that focused on race, LGBTQ issues, sexual orientation, those issues will be extraordinarily high as a percentage.

So, the majority believes that is where our focus should be--while we just spent $6 trillion, while inflation is running through the roof, while small businesses can't hire people. My colleagues on the other side of the aisle know this because, assuredly, they have small businesses in their district, or they go to the restaurants, or they go to the places like I have gone to and they can't hire people because we are paying people more not to work than to work.

We have a principal focus on race-related issues, a complete abandonment of the responsibility of this body to secure the border of the United States. It is wide open, opioids running amuck.

Cartels own it. People are pouring across it, to their detriment and ours. Ranchers are getting overrun in Texas.

Now, today, just yesterday, or, I don't know, the last few days, the Senate Armed Services Committee voted overwhelmingly to draft our daughters. Heck, we had 8 Republicans of the 13 vote for that nonsense, to draft our daughters.

Who are we? Genuine question: Who are we, as a people, as a country? Where are the sacred boundaries of being able to decide how to live and to recognize truths that man is man, that woman is woman, and that I, as a father, do not want to have my daughter get drafted?

You say, well, you can draft your son, use the power of the government to draft your son.

We can have a debate about ending the draft. Everyone comes back and says: Well, don't worry. There is not going to be a draft. There hasn't been a draft in 50 years, so don't worry about it.

What do you mean don't worry about it? When my daughter turns 18 in 8 years and she has to go sign a piece of paper to register, I shouldn't be worried about my daughter getting drafted and getting sent to a foxhole in Afghanistan or Iraq or somewhere else? What do you mean don't worry about that?

Yet, that is precisely what this body is doing. The Senate Armed Services Committee voted on it; the House already has that language.

Let me be perfectly clear. I will not be honoring whatever law says it is drafting my daughter. That is the fundamental problem. The rule of law depends on it being rooted in any basic understanding of who we are as a people, where we come from, what our values are, and then actually being able to get the consent of the governed in a way that actually connects with the governed.

It doesn't just come on down from on high, from a Senate Armed Services Committee that votes, by the way, behind closed doors, not in public viewing. And by the way, none of them will go out and enforce this garbage. But somebody one day will show up and hand a form to my daughter and say, ``I am sorry, ma'am, you are going to have to register for the draft.'' And I am going to be sitting there as a dad-- and I promise you, my wife is a little more fired up about this than I am. My wife is going to be sitting there saying: ``Over my dead, dang body.''

Now, this is what we do when we rip apart our society, when we forget where those sacred boundaries are, about what the role of this institution is, or how we are supposed to govern.

I am going to pause for a few moments. I think both of my colleagues who are here wanting to speak to the issues that we are seeing unfold in Cuba, maybe a few other matters of importance to them. I certainly appreciate their time. I think they share some of the sentiments that I am sharing.

Madam Speaker, I yield to the gentleman from Texas (Mr. Babin).

Madam Speaker, I thank the gentleman from Texas, my friend, for his words, and I am going to yield to the gentleman from California here in just a moment.

I would ask one question to the gentleman from Texas, and I will repeat that question to my friend from California.

I share your enthusiasm and commitment for wanting to help the people of Cuba who are seeking freedom and obviously have been living under the thumb of tyranny for far too long.

I was chief of staff to Senator Ted Cruz. His father is a dear friend, and he knew all too well what life was like under that murderous regime.

Our friend and our colleague, Alex Mooney, his wonderful mother, similarly, at the same rough timeframe, was subjected to the horrors of Cuba in that time in the late fifties, early sixties, and then came to the United States.

But I would ask my friend, that as we watch these individuals from Cuba seeking freedom--and God bless them; we need to support them--and/ or seeking to come to the United States seeking freedom, do you believe that our country is itself upholding and adhering to the ideals that they are seeking?

Madam Speaker, I yield to the gentleman.

Madam Speaker, I thank my friend from Texas. I will yield to my friend in California in a moment.

I couldn't agree more with respect to the current situation we find ourselves and our country in. A country where we are now talking about vaccine passports, where we are talking about diving into the private affairs of American citizens in the alleged name of health and welfare of the people, we are forgetting that fundamental, core liberty of being free from government coercion.

When you go look at the Constitution and when we talk about the President of the United States talking about going door to door--and I know it

might have been a rhetorical statement, but you never really know. But when the Constitution contemplates going door to door, it does so only in a couple of contexts: the Census, and then protecting individuals against it, by, in the Third Amendment, preventing the quartering of troops in the homes of American people; by preventing, through the Fourth Amendment, unreasonable search and seizure.

That is what was on the minds of the Founders. That was why the Constitution was structured the way it was structured. It wasn't to empower government in the name of something supposedly greater, in the ``common good.'' How many hundreds of millions of people in this world have been slaughtered in the name of the common good? How many?

Let's ask the people of Cuba. Let's ask the people of Cuba, seeking freedom, seeking to either come to the United States or have the kind of freedom that they believe exists in the United States, and have that in Cuba, whether we should be empowering government, supposedly in the name of the good or the common good of the people.

Our Constitution exists to protect and preserve liberty. That is what it exists for. That is what this country was founded upon; a belief in the Almighty and a belief in liberty. And we are tearing that apart by the thread. Every single day we are tearing that apart by the thread.

Even as people today right now want to have a business, be able to employ people. They can't, because they are told by some bright-eyed leftist: Don't worry, just pay them more money. Without any concept of what that does to a bottom line. Without any concept what that does to an income statement, being able to actually raise money, risk capital, put their name on the line, borrow, and then hire people to engage in the business of their dream.

Maybe they inherited it from their family, their parents, their great-grandparents. What do we do? We just say: Don't worry about it, pay them $15 an hour. Like there is some magic fairy dust that tells people what the wage ought to be.

We destroy businesses in the name of being nice to people. You know what it does? It limits the numbers of jobs, drives up the prices of goods, causes people not to have jobs, causes people not to be able to get the job, and then be able to afford whatever it is they want to buy. All because somebody said, Oh, gee, I have got a magic number, $15 an hour.

Why not $20? Why not $50? I mean, if we are going to be all generous, hell, just make it $1,000 an hour. Oh, no, Chip, that is just crazy talk.

Child tax credits, why stop at $300? Modern monetary theory, just spend whatever you want to. Why not make it $30,000? Man, then everybody would be doing great.

My colleagues don't ever want to actually sit down and actually put pen to paper and figure out what in the heck can we actually afford as a country and what are we doing to the dignity of work? What are we doing to the American family? And what are we doing to freedom and the ability of the individual to prosper according to his or her hard work and according to what he or she wants to accomplish in their faith and what they want to put in, the toil they want to put in their life?

We are ripping that apart. We are ripping it apart in the name of compassion. Just like we are ripping apart the lives of migrants in the name of compassion, who are getting absolutely decimated by cartels. We do it and we say: Oh, look at us, how nice we are; when the little 7- year-old girl is sold into the sex trafficking trade because we put them in the hands of violent cartels along the border of Texas.

Does anybody care about the numbers? Does anybody look at what is actually happening down at the border? I know, there he goes again, there goes that crazy Chip Roy talking about the border again. Talk to my constituents. Talk to the people of Texas, who are getting absolutely crushed.

The numbers are astounding. We are not just talking about people and the problems that we are having with ranchers, and we are talking about the sex and human trafficking trade.

Right here we see the encounters by month. We have never seen anything like this. When Jeh Johnson headed up the Department of Homeland Security under President Obama, he said a thousand a month was a crisis. I was just looking at the numbers. We had a few thousand in a day just last week in the McAllen sector. We had 20,000 a week. We had a few thousand in a day in the Laredo sector, a few thousand a day in the McAllen sector.

We have had, I think--this is from memory--70 Border Patrol agents get COVID in the last month. We had 20 in Laredo.

All of this is happening in real time. All while the administration talks about unwinding title 42 and not worrying about what is happening at our southern border while telling us and preaching to us about vaccine passports. Oh, no, you better go mask up again.

Fentanyl. Right down here, fentanyl, 2021 versus 2020 fentanyl numbers. We are bringing in a thousand pounds of fentanyl in a month. A thousand pounds of fentanyl in a month. That is enough to kill millions of people. But that is happening right now. Nobody seems to care on the other side of the aisle. They say: Oh, don't worry, it is just fentanyl. No problem to see here.

Would you say that to my constituent who died with a valium laced with fentanyl recently? This is happening across the country. We are now at 92,000 or so opioid deaths in this country. I will come back to that in a minute, because I want to yield to my friend from California. But that is what we are facing.

Madam Speaker, I yield to the gentleman from California (Mr. LaMalfa).

Would the gentleman yield for just one second?

Would it surprise the gentleman to learn that I share his concern about the state of the United States military, given the politically correct nature of the current leadership?

I just met with a bunch of parents of the individuals that I have nominated to go to the academies, and these parents are beside themselves. They are saying, please, can you stop this? It is going to endanger my kids who are going to go serve their country at the academies because they hear the facts. They see that the U.S. Special Forces hired their first chief diversity officer; that the Department of Defense just hired a chief diversity officer; that a Space Force guardian was fired for saying the ``diversity, inclusion, and equity industry and the trainings we're receiving in the military via that industry are rooted in critical race theory which is rooted in Marxism.''

This isn't just embarrassing and un-American. It is making us weak. Our diplomats are apologizing to the Chinese Communist Party for racism when Beijing is running concentration camps. This is the reality of what we are doing to our military, where we are running ads talking about LGBTQ issues instead of actually just recruiting warriors to go defend the United States of America. I yield to the gentleman.

Madam Speaker, I thank the gentleman from California for his words, and I appreciate the passion and the commitment to what the gentleman just shared with not just me and with my friend from Texas, but with the American people.

I ask the Speaker how much time I have remaining?

Madam Speaker, I appreciate my colleagues for coming down and joining me. I would only add this: As we sit here and we hear so much negativity about what is going on, the virus, for example, and vaccines, we hear nothing from my colleagues on the other side of the aisle, but everybody is stonewalling and so forth. We have administered 188 million individuals with the vaccine in this country; 340 or so million doses. About 57 percent of the total population, about 80 percent of those over 65 have had two shots, 90 percent have had one shot.

We are well above the vast majority of the world in terms of total numbers. As a percentage, we are a little bit behind, because we are a large country. When you look at what we have actually accomplished-- remember, our colleagues on the other side of the aisle who last year were saying: This vaccine stuff, that is all fool's gold.

We know that is true. We know that is what our Vice President said, and a lot of our colleagues on the other side of the aisle said: Don't touch the vaccine. That is crazy stuff. Well, now, all of a sudden it is like: You better go get the vaccine. Run and get the vaccine. You have to get the vaccine. Get the vaccine.

Okay, I am telling my dad, a polio survivor, 78-years old: Go get the vaccine, dad. But what if you have natural immunity? Should you go get the vaccine? What if you are a kid? Should you go get the vaccine? Those are questions, and they are reasonable questions.

This government, in its infinite wisdom, shut down businesses, shut down schools, mandated masks, created all sorts of mental health issues, prohibited people from going to get cancer screenings and take care of themselves and their families, forced elderly couples who have been married for 40 or 50 years not to be able to say good-bye when one of them was passing away, all in the name of the government taking care of us.

In the infinite wisdom of the government I should just go run down and say: Oh, sure, let me run down and get the vaccine when how much money has been given to the pharmaceutical companies? How many billions of dollars are they getting, and how much do they get for the boosters?

By the way, my colleagues on the other side of the aisle were going after the profitability of the pharmaceutical companies at an oversight hearing that I was in last year, 2 years ago.

The bottom line here is: This country is a great country filled with great people, doing great things, every single day, and when this body and this government gets out of the way of the American people, they continue to do great things. The greatness and the future of our country lies with them and with the people.

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

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

I stand here alongside my colleagues in solidarity that we should be standing with the Afghans who stood together with our men and women in uniform. There is zero question that we should do that, and every veteran that I represent in the Texas 21 District shares that, as we have heard here on this floor.

I am supportive of that underlying principle, however, a self- executing manager's amendment was included that I had concerns with. It expands the program to include nonprofits and grantees, private organizations, that contributed to the United States mission in Afghanistan.

We don't know who would be included. We don't know how many people would now be eligible.

It expands the program to individuals who worked for the International Security Assistance Force without the need to perform sensitive and trusted activities for the United States forces. These people do not have to be Afghans, and we don't know how many people this would be. It weakens the standard for qualification.

Under current law, an alien has to verify that they have experienced or are experiencing an ongoing serious threat as a consequence of the alien's employment by the United States Government.

The new standard is, has asserted a credible basis for concern about the possibility of an ongoing or serious threat. A credible basis for concern about the possibility of is concerningly low, lower than even the credible fear standard of significant possibility we currently employ.

The bill allows for another 8,000 principal aliens to be granted this special immigrant status. We agree we want to try to help those principal aliens. There are 10,000 currently unused. That would be about the 18,000 number. Let's also remember that we have 3\1/2\ people come in per person on average. We have had about 125 to 130,000 folks come in. This would be about another 75 to 80,000. That does not include dealing with the NGOs.

So we are now massively expanding this program, which means we are going to be back down here at the well talking about new numbers and more expansions based on nebulous standards with respect to NGOs and private entities that aren't individuals who worked for the United States Government directly alongside our men and women in uniform.

That is more than concerning, and it brings me back to my final point: We have got to restore regular order in this body. We are not amending this, we are not debating it in committee, and we did not have a hearing on the specific manager's amendment that was added. It was just added, put on the floor, and put under the title of something that everyone supports, which means, Mr. Speaker, that you are put in the position of figuring out whether you are going to support the underlying matter while all these things are added to it which have serious concerns we should have debated in committee and debated and amended on the floor.

Madam Speaker, had I been present, I would have voted ``nay'' on rollcall No. 193; ``yea'' on rollcalll No. 194; ``nay'' on rollcall No. 195; and ``nay'' on rollcall No. 196.

Madam Speaker, had I been present, I would have voted NAY on Roll Call No. 197; NAY on Roll Call No. 198; NAY on Roll Call No. 199; NAY on Roll Call No. 200; NAY on Roll Call No. 201; YEA on Roll Call No. 202; NAY on Roll Call No. 203; and YEA on Roll Call No. 204.

Mr. Speaker, had I been present, I would have voted ``nay'' on rollcall No. 205, ``nay'' on rollcall No. 206, ``yea'' on rollcall No. 207, and ``nay'' on rollcall No. 208.

Mr. Speaker, right now, in Texas today, a little girl is being trafficked in human trafficking and sex trafficking. That is occurring. She is going to be put into the sex trafficking trade and be abused, and she is going to be done so because we have allowed cartels to have operational control of our border. That is true. These are the facts. We know these are the facts. It is happening every single day. We see it on the ground.

Yet the Vice President of the United States only found her way to go to El Paso as a pit stop on the way to Los Angeles, rather than actually meet with people in Texas to see what is actually going on in Texas.

We have no funding at all for the border, for ICE, for Border Patrol.

But you know what we have plenty of funding for?

Abortion. Taxpayer funding for abortion.

It is absolutely despicable the values that are being presented in the United States House of Representatives and the people's House.

Mr. Speaker, I ask unanimous consent that the Committees on Energy and Commerce, Ways and Means, and the Judiciary be discharged from further consideration of H.R. 18, No Taxpayer Funding for Abortion, and ask for its immediate consideration in the House.

Mr. Speaker, I thank my friend from Pennsylvania, and I thank the gentlewoman from New Mexico for articulating so well the state of our southern border, which is the direct result and the consequence of the rote incompetence of the current administration and my Democratic colleagues on the other side of the aisle. That is the best I can put it.

Or, frankly, it is the purposeful use of the border for political purposes. Because there is nothing else that can explain what is actually happening at the state of our border. That a political party would say that having cartels having operational control of our border, to the detriment of the well-being of the United States and its citizens; or the migrants who seek to come here, getting put into the human and sex trafficking trade, that somehow that should be seen as a compassionate position by my colleagues on the other side.

But I will tell you that it is a policy that is in the false name of compassion.

I note that Vice President Harris finally found her way to the border, although it was in a pit stop on her way to Los Angeles, taking 4 hours to stop in El Paso for a photo-op to go say hi to some Border Patrol en route to Los Angeles.

That is not the kind of visit that we have been talking about that is required of the President of the United States or his appointee, the Vice President, who is supposedly in charge of securing the border of the United States.

And I would note that this is real. That for those of us who go and spend time on the border and talk to ranchers getting overrun; talk to people getting harmed, getting broken into; high-speed chases in communities in south Texas; the massive amounts of opioids flowing into Texas and throughout the rest of our country; the number of migrants being abused in the human and sex trafficking trade, it is very real.

To the little girls who I have spoken to on the border and visited with, coming across the river at midnight, 1:00, 2:00 in the morning, and the dangers that they have been put into, I would ask my Democratic colleagues: Why don't they care?

Why don't my Democratic colleagues care about these migrants being abused and exploited by cartels?

Today, right now, as we speak, a child is on an interstate in Texas, heading to be put into child pornography and into the sex trafficking trade. As we speak in the people's House, it is happening, literally, at this moment.

Some amount of opioids is going into I-10, flowing over through Houston, throughout the rest of the southeast to be distributed throughout our country, heading west on I-10 to go out to the West Coast.

Why did Governor DeSantis send resources to Texas?

Because his State is getting overrun by opioid abuse that is coming through the southwest border.

We have a massively wide open border that is being exploited, and the reality of the situation is it is my Democratic colleagues who refuse to enforce the law. It is that simple.

Think, from October to December of 2020, in the previous administration, there were 185,000 expulsions made under Title 42, which the gentlewoman from New Mexico just discussed. That was 85 percent of all encounters. Think about that: 85 percent of the encounters we were able to expel under Title 42.

Compared to the Biden administration, since relaxing Title 42--not yet eliminating it, although that is allegedly coming--relaxing it, only 64 percent of encounters were enforced between February to April of 2021, leaving 289,000 expulsions under Title 42.

So what will happen when that additional 60 percent of people are taken in?

Border Patrol can't do their job, y'all. They can't. Border Patrol is overrun.

Our border is wide open between the ports of entry because the Border Patrol is processing people at processing centers in McAllen. The Vice President would know that if she hadn't missed the mark by 750 miles, landing her plane in El Paso instead of McAllen.

Tomorrow, 30 to 40 of my colleagues on this side of the aisle--to the best of my knowledge, zero, unfortunately, on the other side of the aisle--are going to the border to meet with Governor Abbott and former President Trump to talk about what is happening in McAllen, where the actual crisis exists.

My friend from Pennsylvania rightly noted that COVID still remains a major public health issue at the border, a risk for Americans and migrants. Latin America and the Caribbean have the world's highest death toll from COVID in proportion to its population, with 33 million reported infections and 1 million reported deaths.

Brazil leads the region. It leads the world in the daily average number of new infections reported. Colombia is reporting the highest rate of infections in South America. Guatemala is at peak. Honduras is at 86 percent of peak.

Border Patrol had 9,000 CBP employees test positive, and 32 CBP employees have died. As of March, 7.4 percent of tests given to UACs in the past year turned out to be positive, and multiple facilities have had positivity rates of 10 percent or higher. That is the reality of what is going on at the border.

Yet Title 42, the health code provisions that allow us to secure the border during a pandemic, during the spread of communicable diseases, is about to be jettisoned by the Biden administration, endangering the American people and endangering our Border Patrol.

We need to enforce the full Title 42 authority, and it is imperative for border and public health security. That is why we should defeat the previous question. We will amend the rule to immediate consideration of my friend from New Mexico's bill, H.R. 471, as amended, that will preserve existing border health protection measures intended to safeguard the citizens of our country.

Mr. Speaker, if my Democrat colleagues vote for the previous

question, which I expect that they will do, they are choosing to pursue a radical leftist environmental agenda that will harm Americans, that will harm Americans, rather than secure our border, which we are presenting as an option, for us to do our job in the people's House, to actually do our duty as the people's House to secure the border of a sovereign nation to the benefit of our people, of the State of Texas, our entire Nation as a whole, and the migrants who seek to come here.

That is the choice right now, ladies and gentlemen. It is a choice for this body. Choose to secure the border of the United States and make our country stronger, or secure a political agenda which has no hope of uniting this country and benefiting the American people.

The small businesses that the gentlewoman from Pennsylvania was talking about, let's talk about the small businesses that got crushed under COVID, crushed by the policies of this body and others, that were shutting businesses down to the tune of 100,000 businesses, forcing them to close.

Let's talk about the impact of our kids and schools and the masks being worn, and the mental health issues, and the cancer screenings that didn't occur because we had locked down and shut down our economy.

And, right now, let's talk about the damage being done to this country because of wide open borders with empowered cartels.

We should, right now, defeat the previous question so that we can amend it to do the work of the American people.

Is it still a requirement that you have to make a case that it is a virus or COVID-related reason for voting by proxy?

Madam Speaker, in December 1992, my friend, Lewis Chitengwa, defeated Tiger Woods in a tournament called the Orange Bowl in Florida.

A year later, my friend, Lewis Chitengwa, was denied entrance and asked to go into the back where the caddies go in when he went to the South African Amateur Championship. He went on to win that tournament, becoming the first Black man to win the South African Amateur.

Unfortunately, 20 years ago this Wednesday, my friend, Lewis, my brother in Christ, my teammate at the University of Virginia, went to see the Lord when he passed away from viral meningitis.

My teammates will be regaling his life this Wednesday. I am going to take to the floor for a Special Order in July to talk more about this man, who was ultimately inducted into the Hall of Fame in South Africa with a speech from the famous Gary Player.

Madam Speaker, I thank the gentleman from Georgia for his conviction and his dedication to this issue and getting us this opportunity for all of us to share that.

I appreciate the remarks from my friend, the gentleman from Kentucky. I couldn't agree more about how offensive what we heard from the President of the United States with respect to our Second Amendment protected rights; and then coming in and talking about the foolishness of our desire to have our Second Amendment rights protected when, in fact, we would be up against F-15s and potential nuclear weapons.

Imagine the absurdity of having the President of the United States say that.

Meanwhile, I live in Austin, Texas, where currently crime rates are skyrocketing. Murder rates almost double.

Why might that be?

The President of the United States gave a speech allegedly about crime.

Did he talk about the defunding of police? Did he talk about the $150 million stripped out of the budget in Austin, Texas?

How about Oakland right now, doubling down on their foolish defunding of the police?

It wasn't enough to take $15 million out of it last time, and now seeing murder rates skyrocket. They are now doubling down for another $16 million. They think that is going to solve their problems.

The genius of the current administration, my Democrats on the other side of the aisle, is to take police off the streets and then come after our Second Amendment rights.

How about the border of Texas?

The border of Texas is wide open with cartels operating fully from the Gulf of Mexico all the way up through Big Bend. They have operational control of our border. We have images of gunmen coming across the Rio Grande. We have humans being sold into sex trafficking and human trafficking. We have 7,500 pounds of fentanyl pouring across our border; Americans dying in this opioid epidemic. We have Americans in danger.

And what do Democrats want to do?

Take away our Second Amendment rights to defend ourselves as they defund police and empower cartels.

That is your Democratic Party, ladies and gentlemen. They want you to be in danger. They want you to have to suffer the consequences of their rote incompetence and disbelief in your ability to take care of your own families and your communities.

The President of the United States actually said the other day that, in fact, you are not allowed to have a cannon.

Well, you know what?

In Texas, there was a moment when we had a cannon and we looked at the Mexicans and we said: Come and take it, in 1835.

And that is what I say to the President of the United States: Come and take it, because it is our Second Amendment rights and we are going to defend ourselves.

And when he asks why we need 20 rounds of ammo, maybe it is because he is saying that he wants to come after the American people with F-15s and nuclear weapons.

Madam Speaker, today I rise to recognize the founding of VFW Post 12205 in Bulverde, Texas. I wanted to take a moment to congratulate Commander McKinnon and those who helped establish Texas's 290th VFW Post. Over the past several years, the number of veterans in the Spring Branch and Bulverde area has grown tremendously and the need for a new VFW has become ever more apparent. As a member of the Veteran Affairs Committee, it is critically important to me that we have organizations like VFWs present locally to serve our veterans and communities, but also to promote patriotism and the American ideals we desperately need more of today. I have no doubt that this VFW Post will be a source of camaraderie, service, and education. I hope my colleagues in the House of Representatives will join me in congratulating these American patriots at VFW Post 12205 on their inaugural meeting and success in their future endeavors.

Madam Speaker, I rise today to talk about the state of affairs here in the people's House and the extent to which the majority has been using the time on the floor of this valuable body, the people's House, to promote wokeness first rather than America first. And this is what we see every single day.

Madam Speaker, I have a few of my colleagues here tonight with me because this is such an important time in our country's history. We have so many important issues we need to be addressing, ought to be addressing, and yet, the people's House is not addressing them. And instead, the people's House is focusing on advancing wokeness first instead of America first.

I have got a number of things I am going to get into and talk about addressing these particular issues, but I would just note that my good friend's--and someone I admire a great deal--birthday is tomorrow, and that is Justice Clarence Thomas.

And for those who know his story and have read his biography, his autobiography, written through the eyes of his relationship with his grandfather--``My Grandfather's Son''--Justice Thomas, I think represents all that is great and good about this country.

He represents all that is great and good about overcoming the devastating impact of Jim Crow laws in the South, the discrimination that we saw rampant in his native hometown of Savannah, and watching his life story and walking through his life story, and the progression of what that meant and where he ended up and what he achieved.

And then what we witnessed in that fall of 1991 with the obscene, absurd actions by the Senate Committee on the Judiciary--chaired, by the way, by then-Senator Joe Biden--attacking this good man, Clarence Thomas, attacking his integrity, attacking his character.

And yet, what do we see out of the life and service of Clarence Thomas but the embodiment of the fulfillment of the American Dream and a recognition of what you can achieve when you fight for it, when you work for it, and you overcome the odds against you. And what a beautiful story it is.

And why do I raise that now? Because in a world of wokeness, in a sea of wokeness, all driving an agenda--purposeful, by the way, by my colleagues on the other side of the aisle--to divide this country by race, to divide this country, and to highlight issues of division and separation, as Justice Roberts fairly eloquently stated, he said: ``It's a sordid business, this divvying us up by race.'' And we see it every single day. And it is highlighted by this body. I am going to go through that in a minute.

Madam Speaker, every single thing this administration, every single thing this Democrat-led House of Representatives, everything that the Democrat-led United States Senate is doing, is designed very purposely to divide us by race, and we should be better than that.

And I think there are things that we all know that are on the minds of the American people, whether it is increasing prices, because we spent $6 trillion and lumber prices are going up, and housing prices are going up. We have a border that is under assault; cartels who run our border. And we are turning the keys of the kingdom over to Iran and China instead of siding with Israel. And we are flooding the economy with dollars and driving up inflation, but also racking up mountains of debt. All of these things are occurring.

And the regulations that my friend from Texas, Mr. Crenshaw, was just talking about, the regulation-strangling business, we are paying people more not to work than to work.

And all of our small businesses are at home going, ``stop it. Please stop it.'' I have introduced legislation set up to end those unemployment benefits.

Will we debate those here in this Chamber?

No. No, sir.

Why? Because we are going to advance woke legislation. We are going to talk about woke bills. We are not going to talk about all the small businesses--by the way, often owned by minorities, often owned by people who need to be able to hire people and they can't because this institution spent $6 trillion and doled it out to destroy the American Dream by paying people more to work than to not work. It is absolutely astounding.

And that is what we have. This Chamber is empty. What have we done today? We have voted on a couple of random bills--I don't know if they are suspension bills or what we did today. What are we even going to do this week? The American people don't know, because we are not doing anything. They're looking at this Chamber and they are saying: What are you doing?

We have an obligation to fight and defend the American people and to do

our job, and I am delighted to have my friends from Texas here.

Madam Speaker, I yield to the gentleman from Texas (Mr. Babin).

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

Madam Speaker, I thank the gentleman from Texas, and I appreciate his remarks and his comments very much.

Madam Speaker, in just a minute I am going to turn it over to the other gentleman from Texas--in just a minute--and I know he has got some issues he wants to talk about involving border security.

Because, as three representatives from Texas here, I think I can speak on behalf of the entire delegation, at least the Republican side of the delegation, that our State is under siege. Our State is under siege in a way that it has not been for upwards of almost 180 years.

And you think about what is happening at the border and the extent to which cartels have operational control of our border, the extent to which we have attacks on American citizens, ranchers who are getting their fences torn down, ranches that are being ransacked.

We have people who are struggling. We have migrants who are dying in these ranches, migrants who are dying on the rivers. We have migrants who are being abused on the journey. We have little girls who are being abused.

If you spend a minute, a minute on the Rio Grande, instead of pontificating in this godforsaken Chamber, and you go talk to these migrants who are coming across the Rio Grande, then you see what is actually happening to these human beings all in the false name of compassion.

Madam Speaker, I yield to the gentleman from Texas (Mr. Sessions), and I would ask what his views are about the current state of things with respect to the border.

Madam Speaker, I thank my friend from Texas. I particularly thank him for referring to me as young. I will take it.

Interestingly, and I will probably have more to say about this, but it was 10 years ago in July that I was diagnosed with Hodgkin's lymphoma, with a 4-month-old daughter and a not quite 2-year-old son, not 100 percent sure whether I was going to be able to do like I did last weekend and go see my son play Little League baseball and see my daughter go off to camp last week.

Madam Speaker, that will shift your world view a little bit, as they say, about what is important and what is not important. I can tell you, Madam Speaker, that my dedication to public service was fully renewed after getting through that.

I was very blessed that I got through cancer-free in a matter of months, and Lord willing, I am still cancer-free. There is plenty of wood around here, but I knocked on my head instead.

I am honored the gentleman took the time to come down here and join me and say such nice things. I know the gentleman knows that part of the purpose here is our collective desire in this body to do what is right for this country.

What I cannot for the life of me understand is why my Democratic colleagues continue to insist on using this body to stoke division and to separate us by race, by sex, and by wherever we come from--all the different ways they could possibly come up with to divide us rather than finding ways for us to unite together to protect, defend, secure, and advance this country going forward.

My colleagues from Texas know--I know my friends from Texas know--it has been a full 90 days since the Vice President of the United States was tapped by the President of the United States to be in charge of the border, yet the Vice President has not taken a second to come to the Rio Grande, to come to the Rio Grande Valley, to come to the border.

Now, it wouldn't be enough just to come. By the way, if the Vice President is listening, it is not enough just to go. But it sure would be nice if she could find the southern border on a map, get in her taxpayer-funded airplane, take a direct flight down to the border, and go take the time to meet with Texans, to go take the time to meet with migrants, to take the time to meet with local leaders, and to see what is actually happening in real time at the border.

I know the gentleman knows full well that we just had 180,000 apprehensions in May. We have had over 700,000 apprehensions this year, and we have had over 200,000 got-aways. The Border Patrol estimates 1,000 got-aways every single day coming through between the ports of entry because our Border Patrol is now running processing centers in McAllen.

We all know this. I believe the Vice President knows this. I sent the Vice President a memo outlining this just in case she doesn't know.

But it is happening to us in real time. It is happening to migrants in real time, and it is happening to ranchers in real time. I know my friends from Texas know that we have had 7,500 pounds of fentanyl that have been intercepted by Border Patrol. Fentanyl is killing our children.

What are we going to vote on this week? What are we going to do this week? I don't even know.

I flew back here from Texas, and I have half my colleagues still voting by proxy even though we are not wearing masks. We are still voting by proxy by saying: I am voting proxy because of the pandemic.

We are not even having half of our committee meetings because we are doing them virtually. We are doing them when we are home in our work periods.

Why aren't we here? Why aren't we here when there are 7,500 pounds of fentanyl pouring into our border? That is just the stuff we are capturing, by the way.

Do you know how many children are dying with marijuana that has been laced with fentanyl? It is happening right now, Madam Speaker.

You hear about the 80,000, 90,000 opioid deaths last year. Madam Speaker, do you know where this stuff is coming from?

Why did Governor DeSantis send resources to Texas to help secure our border? People said: Why would you do that? That is Texas. Because the map and the drugs that are coming into Florida are coming through the Southwest border, and anybody who follows it knows that to be true.

Why is that? Because the cartels that are now running the border profit immensely by moving human beings for profit and by moving fentanyl for profit.

The Cartel Jalisco New Generation just absorbed the Laredo faction and just absorbed the Cartel del Noreste of Los Zetas in Nuevo Laredo. They now have operational control of Tamaulipas. That is a dangerous cartel.

They are moving fentanyl for profit and moving human beings for profit, millions of dollars a day. We know this to be true. We know this from law enforcement agents on the ground--Texans, Federal authorities, Border Patrol, and ICE.

But they are not able to do their job because they are running processing facilities, processing facilities for human beings who we say we are helping because we are saying that we are giving them asylum. By the way, they are not claiming asylum under the statute that the asylum laws were meant to provide.

They come across the river, and there is a sign on trees at the Rio Grande.

By the way, the Vice President and my colleagues on the other side of the aisle would know this if they bothered to go to the Rio Grande.

If you walk down to the river, Madam Speaker, there is a sign. It says ``asilo'' with an arrow, and it points to a bunch of bright lights sitting under the bridge, saying go over there.

When I was at the river, I met about 50 migrants at about midnight. There was a group of them, and they were lost. They were going around in circles. So, I drove my truck down the path so they would have light in the dark, so they could get to the processing center.

These are good people seeking a better life. Ask every single one of them why they are coming here, and it is for a job and opportunity. It wasn't for asylum under our laws. We are making a mockery of our laws by saying that anyone who wants to come to our country for opportunity--God bless them, I understand why; I probably would too. If you look at the opportunity you have here, Madam Speaker, as opposed to El Salvador, Guatemala, or Honduras right now, I understand. But we are turning our laws upside down. That is not what asylum laws are for.

Why don't we just sit down and figure it out? Madam Speaker, you can't just say wide-open borders. You can't. It is irresponsible.

Listen to the leaders of Honduras, Guatemala, and El Salvador. They say it is irresponsible because it is devastating their own countries.

People say: Why don't they fix it? We should have policies to work with them to try to fix it.

But do you know what would fix it the most, Madam Speaker? If we didn't have a wide-open border. If we actually stood up and said: Sorry, you can't just come in unless you actually qualify under our asylum laws, which is a fraction, a tiny fraction, of the 700,000-plus apprehensions that we have apprehended since January 1.

But why aren't we here debating that? Why aren't we coming up with a solution to this problem so that migrants aren't being abused as I speak by cartels so they can make money?

This is the greatest country in the history of the world, but we allow that to occur. We allow that to occur, and we do so in the name of compassion. We do so when people stand up and say: Oh, well, we want to make sure these folks will get here.

Meanwhile, we have people screaming: Kids in cages.

Anybody remember that? Anybody remember the kids in cages? How many of my colleagues on the other side of the aisle ran to the cameras, sat in hearings, and screamed: Kids in cages?

The very structures put in place by the Obama-Biden administration. It is a fact. Everybody knows that that is who created the chain-link barriers in these facilities at the border. Nobody blamed Obama and Biden for doing that.

Air flow, ability to see the migrants, protect them. Oh, no, everybody went out and said: Kids in cages.

Why?

Because we had a massive influx.

But they said: Oh, they are drinking out of toilets.

It was a lie. They weren't drinking out of toilets. They were drinking out of a device that had the water fountain on the top with the toilet down below. We have them in facilities all over, in prisons facilities, where we have people coming in. The water supply in the bathroom right off of this floor is connected to the same water supply between the toilet and the sink. It is a pipe behind the drywall.

Yet they went around saying: Kids drinking out of toilets.

It is shameful. We can't have a rational conversation about what is actually happening in Texas. It is bad. There are children in stash houses right now.

Why are we sitting here doing nothing? Why are we going to have a vote this week on two suspension bills in a quest to go after more wokeness for, I think it is, some LGBTQ small business bill or something on a suspension that failed to get through on the two-thirds vote?

Okay. Debate that. Have it out. They tried to get it through on suspension. It didn't get through. So we are going to do a rule. We won't have any real debate on it, by the way. Everything that the American people see in here is all a sham. There is no actual debate on the floor of this body. And anybody who wants to come debate me on that, I am happy to debate it. There is no debate on the floor of the people's House, ever.

We haven't had an amendment on the floor of the House of Representatives, the people's House, since May of 2016, that was in order on open debate on the floor of the House so that any one of my colleagues could walk down here and say: Hey, I have got an idea. There is a bill. You know what I would like to do? I would like to change something in the bill. Here is an amendment. I would like to send it to the desk, offer my amendment. Hey, what do you think about my amendment? It might make the bill better.

Do you know when I would have liked to have had a debate on that?

Last Friday.

I would have liked to have had a debate on the Juneteenth bill.

Why?

Because the purpose of that bill was excellent. The fulfillment of the Declaration of Independence with the ending of slavery, which we recognize in Texas because of Juneteenth, I didn't support the bill because I didn't think the title was good. There were some other factors. But I didn't support it, and I would have liked to have amended it. Never got a chance to do it, ever. I would have liked to have had the ability to amend it, but couldn't do it.

All right. So you are forced with an up or down vote. We have 2,000- page bills that are $2 trillion. They are dropped on the floor and they say take it or leave it. And I say, you know what? I would like to cut something or add something. Can't do it.

I can go up to the Rules Committee and say: Here is my thing. And it gets voted down in the Rules Committee.

If you see amendments on the floor of the House, it is all a fraud. It is all a fraud. They are hand-picked amendments designed to make it look like we are amending, but we are not.

You know, 15 amendments from the majority, 5 amendments from the minority, bam. Hey, look at that. That is debate. We are killing our country by partisan dropping of bills, no matter who is in the majority, by the way.

I said that we haven't had an amendment on the floor since 2016. Guess who was in control of the House for 2 years of that?

Republicans.

When are we actually going to sit down and debate this stuff and do the things that matter?

Again, I go home to Texas and everybody is saying: How can you possibly be allowing this to be occurring on our border?

It is the fundamental duty of the Federal Government to secure the border of the United States, yet we have fentanyl pouring in. We have cartels who run the border. We have Mexico becoming a narco-terrorist state. We have danger to citizens in our country actually occurring.

We have human trafficking and sex trafficking occurring in San Antonio, Austin, all the way up I-35, going over to Houston. We stopped cars in the San Antonio suburbs that have nine immigrants in them going to a stash house in Houston, driven by an American citizen employee of a cartel.

I offered an op-ed explaining that to the San Antonio Express-News, along with the district attorney of Kendall County, Texas, and the San Antonio Express-News wouldn't print it, a fact-based op-ed. We ended up printing it in National Review or someplace online.

Who wants to have a conversation about this stuff?

The American people do. Everybody I talk to in Texas knows this is real. But here we are, and we have a House body and, frankly, an administration that is more interested in advancing wokeness every single day than addressing a wide open border that endangers us and the migrants who seek to come here.

I can't emphasize that enough: a wide open border that endangers American citizens, endangers our children, and endangers the migrants who seek to come here, which my colleagues on the other side of the aisle pat themselves on the back in the false name of compassion that open borders is somehow good for migrants. And it is a lie. It is a blatant lie.

Instead, what are we going to get?

We are going to get a so-called infrastructure bill next week, which will come through here on partisan lines. And what are we going to have in there?

There are the provisions and programs that prioritize funding based on race, ethnicity, gender, and socially disadvantaged status. One provision, it finds that race and gender-neutral efforts alone are insufficient.

The bill includes a study on how Federal infrastructure planning exacerbated systemic racial, regional, social, environmental, and economic injustices.

We have a bill that establishes 41 new Federal programs, $20 million a year for implicit bias research and training grants related to racial profiling; $5 million a year for a program to increase transportation job awareness and diversity; a carbon pollution reduction program.

On the international stage, what do we see?

Our own diplomats are undermining the greatness of America. We have got Linda Thomas-Greenfield, the Ambassador to the United Nations, who said that racial equity is her top focus, and that white supremacy is woven into our founding documents and principles.

Our adversaries, like Russia and China, are weaponizing the leftist agenda. At the summit in Alaska, Secretary Blinken brought up China's imprisonment of millions of Uighur Muslims, and China responded by arguing that the U.S. is not much different, mentioning Black lives matter. The Uighurs.

Military and veterans: Instead of working to develop a lethal, battle-ready force that will kill people and destroy things when called up to do so, which is the purpose of a military, under the guise of reviewing extremism within the ranks of the military in March, Special Operations Command hired its first chief diversity and inclusion officer.

We have seen examples of West Point cadets forced to attend critical race theory presentations. A Space Force officer was fired for saying, ``The diversity, inclusion and equity industry and the trainings we are receiving in the military . . . is rooted in critical race theory which is rooted in Marxism.''

The Biden VA will now be using American taxpayer dollars to cover sex reassignment surgery.

I had multiple parents of the kids that I was able--or 18-year-olds I was able to nominate to go to academies, and we had a celebration in San Antonio, and every single one of the parents were coming up to me and showing me these videos from the Air Force Academy, West Point Academy, talking about, you know, people having two moms and two dads and all of this woke training. For heaven's sake, it is the military.

I mean, China and Russia is just looking at us and saying: What in the world? Well, they are licking their chops.

You have got critical race theory in education. We are seeing a large-scale effort to impose tyranny over the minds of our children through taxpayer-funded indoctrination.

In Evanston, Illinois, students listened to ``Not My Idea: A book about

Whiteness,'' which states that ``whiteness is a bad idea,'' and ``always was,'' and that ``you can be white without signing onto whiteness.''

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

In Oregon, ``ethnic standards'' will require kindergartners to ``understand their own identity groups, including but not limited to race, gender, family, ethnicity, culture, religion, and ability.''

An advisory board linked to Virginia's Loudoun County Public School District demanded that teachers be dismissed if they criticize the district's equity training, inspired by critical race theory.

We saw the fellow who was removed or told that he had to be suspended in Loudoun County--I think he was finally restored--because he dared to speak up about this.

Meanwhile, we have got woke corporations all across America and their corporate boards moving the Major League Baseball All-Star Game from Atlanta, Georgia, which is 50 percent Black, to 10 percent Denver. I bet all of those White Coloradans driving around in their Subarus, patting themselves on the back when they go hiking with a rainbow flag on the back of their car or something, feel good about themselves, instead of celebrating Hank Aaron in Atlanta, Georgia.

Why?

Because Georgia was moving an election reform bill with laws that were almost identical to Colorado.

The Major League Baseball said: Oh, no, we are going to go join the woke brigade and we are going to go forward and we are going to move everything to Colorado.

Nothing was proved by that other than Major League Baseball's wokeness.

I talked about border security because it is so critical to the people of Texas. We can talk about the other things that are critical, all of these programs I just talked about.

People asked: Well, Congressman Roy, why do you come down here and often vote ``no''?

Because every single bill dropped on the floor of this House spends money we don't have, adds regulations that are going to kill small businesses, divides us by race, or adds more laws to the books.

Does anybody think we need more laws, more spending when we are $30 trillion in debt?

I just once would like to see an actual debate with the 435 Members representing the American people in this Chamber about what in the world we are going to do about $30 trillion in debt.

But we got nothing. We have got an empty Chamber. The American people can hear my voice echoing. We are not going to actually have a debate about it. We are just going to spend more money. It is just a race to see who can spend more money.

Does anybody have any belief that we are not endangering our kids and grandkids?

I mean, if somebody wants to come down here and expound on modern monetary theory about how spending all this money is absolutely fine, I am happy to listen. Most people in America don't believe it. We will have $30 trillion in debt soon; $6 trillion spent in the last year.

Do you know how much it cost to win all of World War II?

It was $4.1 trillion in current dollars.

We just spent $6 trillion in a year--appropriated. We will spend it out in a little over a year; $6 trillion.

We are shutting down small businesses, closing our schools. We have 100,000 small businesses closed, 100,000. And now we are paying people more not to work than to work.

Why do you suppose the Vice President of the United States refuses to come to the southern border? Why do you suppose the Vice President of the United States, or the President, refuses to go to the southern border and refuses to take me up on my offer to debate the Vice President anywhere, any time about the border?

Because she knows and the President knows they have zero defense for our current border policies. There is literally no ability to defend the current border policies of the United States. It is laughable. A high school debate team would destroy the President or the Vice President in a debate about our current border because it is so unbelievably unforgivable to turn our borders over to cartels.

But that is what this administration has done. And, again, look, it is all tied back together. This is all in the name of supposed compassion for people and a continued desire to try to drive a wedge and say: Oh, Republicans just don't want those Brown people to come here across our river. That is what it is about. That is the purpose of the fight and the divide.

Meanwhile, ask any Border Patrol agent, ask anybody along the Rio Grande, ask anybody who is being affected by it, ask any of the migrants about what is happening, how it is happening, about the journey. I am not saying the migrants who come here don't want to be here. They do.

But look in the eyes of the little 7-year-old girl on the border that I looked into, who had no mom, no dad, no uncle, no aunt, no brother, no sister, nobody with her. But we don't care. It is all fine. It is all fine for us to have a system in which a 7-year-old girl takes a journey by herself from Guatemala through Mexico in the hands of the cartels to get to our border. We say that is fine.

I can't state enough--and the reason I am using this time, and I went a little longer than the time I thought I was going to use, is because my friend from Texas used a little more time, and I appreciated his being here.

Every single person I talk to in Texas views this through the lens of an existential crisis, and yet it is absolute silence from the administration and this body.

People wonder why Governor Abbott is starting to say he is going to take it upon himself and the State to build a wall or to fund resources at the border.

We have had to do it for years, by the way. Basically, a billion dollars a year, or at least per session, Texas has been funding technology.

Do you know how often the Border Patrol is using technology funded by Texans? Cameras--because their Border Patrol cameras weren't working-- radios. Now the Governor is going down there saying he is going to do a lot of this, and Texas has got to figure out how to fund it.

It is our border; they are our communities. Yet crickets, absolute crickets, devastating crickets, from the Democrat-led House of Representatives and the Democrats in the White House, President Biden and Vice President Harris, who refuse to even come to the border.

I don't know, the longer this goes on--I get why the Vice President won't go to the border. How can you look any American in the eye and say you are doing your constitutional duty to defend the United States of America and secure our borders?

Does anybody understand in this Chamber and comprehend how bad it is for our future and the future of our neighbors to the south to empower cartels the way we are empowering them?

Instead of being able to compete with China, by having a robust free trade throughout the Western Hemisphere, to be able to have a strong Mexico that isn't a narco-terror state, that we can partner with, that we can partner with countries throughout the Western Hemisphere and compete against China and not have this pressure valve coming to our border; instead, we are damaging these countries and empowering the narco-terror state in Mexico, empowering cartels, weakening our country, and endangering Americans.

My friend from the House Judiciary Committee is here, and I am about to give my time up. I will give you a little warning here. In a couple of minutes, I am about to yield.

I appreciate the work that he is doing, with my friend from Colorado, trying to navigate the complexity of antitrust laws with respect to the size of massive companies, particularly massive big tech companies. We are going to have a pretty robust day tomorrow in the House Judiciary Committee. I do want to thank him, since we are here in the Chamber together, for the work that he is doing to try to address that.

I don't know if I will agree with every bill tomorrow. I know I am going

to support at least one or two. We will see what happens during the process of amending and debating.

What I would say to my friend is that it would be great if we could address every issue with both sides of the aisle engaging and offering amendments and restore regular order so that we can try to get to the heart and the truth of these issues.

We are never going to deal with our spending issues in this country if we don't sit down and roll our sleeves up, like a family or small business has to do. We are never going to address something like the border if we don't sit down and give and take and offer solutions that will work. We are never going to solve healthcare; we are never going to be able to have a strong national defense, without, by the way, being involved in endless conflicts.

I joined with my Democrat friends last week on a measure involving our presence in Iraq. I think we can find agreement at times if we will sit down and do it. But we can't bury our head in the sand and ignore existential crises and hope that they will just go away.

I will just close by renewing my call to my colleagues on the other side of the aisle, the Vice President and the President. Let's actually focus on these crises like the border, and let's actually do our job and our constitutional duty to address them. Let's actually do what we said we were going to do when we took our oaths to the Constitution of the United States, and we said we wanted to be a part of the people's House to debate, to amend, to vote.

I am not afraid of what we are going to do tomorrow. To my friend, we are going to offer bills, we are going to debate, we are going to amend, and we are going to vote. We should do that on the floor of this House, Madam Speaker. We should do that on the floor of this House.

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

Mr. Speaker, I was unavoidably detained. Had I been present, I would have voted ``nay'' on Roll Call No. 163.

members recorded pursuant to house resolution 8, 117th congress

Barragan (Gallego)

Cardenas (Gomez)

Cleaver (Davids (KS))

DeSaulnier (Thompson (CA))

Gaetz (Greene (GA))

Granger (Arrington)

Grijalva (Garcia (IL))

Horsford (Jeffries)

Hoyer (Brown)

Johnson (TX) (Jeffries)

Kim (NJ) (Pallone)

Kirkpatrick (Stanton)

Langevin (Courtney)

Lawson (FL) (Evans)

Lieu (Raskin)

Lowenthal (Beyer)

Meng (Clark (MA))

Mullin (Lucas)

Napolitano (Correa)

Nehls (Fallon)

O'Halleran (Stanton)

Payne (Pallone)

Porter (Wexton)

Roybal-Allard (Escobar)

Ruiz (Aguilar)

Rush (Underwood)

Sewell (DelBene)

Sherrill (Pallone)

Speier (Scanlon)

Strickland (Kilmer)

Wilson (FL) (Hayes)

Madam Speaker, I applaud the work by Congresswoman Jackson Lee, my colleague from Texas, on her work on this important recognition. And the gentlewoman knows that we discussed on the floor some of the concerns that I have that I share with my colleague from Louisiana.

I wish--because I do believe that there will be some division that comes out of embracing this so quickly, rather than running it through committee, by embracing a name that is going to be seen as conflicting, whether correlated with, or something with our July 4th national independence recognition.

And I understand it has been referred to as Independence Day over the years, and I understand why. I think for purposes of recognition by the United States Government, it would be my preference, and I would offer an amendment--if such things were ever done on the floor of this body. It is not, which is a sad state of affairs for the people's House. We literally never amend anything on the floor of this body.

I would offer an amendment embracing the recognition of this important day, June 19, 1865, and what that meant for the actual end to slavery, and obviously, we then passed the 13th Amendment, I believe, later that year in December. That is from memory, if that is right.

And I think it would be important, and I believe it has often been referred to in our history as Jubilee Day, as Emancipation Day, as Freedom Day, I would be amenable to any of those names. I don't believe that the title National Independence Day, I think, works. I would prefer that we just have a debate on that, and I wish we would have done that in committee.

I agree with the gentleman from Louisiana that it would have been preferred that we have that ability to do that, and that we should remember why regular order matters. As I told the gentlewoman from Texas (Ms. Jackson Lee) earlier, I would prefer that we have this be unanimous, and I am afraid that it is not going to be unanimous. It will pass and it will pass overwhelmingly. It is good that we will pass it and that this day will be commemorated, as it should, as we have been commemorating it in Texas for a long time.

But it would be my strong preference, and I just wish this body--I wish we could get back to a time where we could sit down and work together when we have these minor differences, because I believe if we did, we really would probably pass this unanimously. There may be one or two that would vote ``no'' because of the 660 million, or whatever, people would say.

But we recognize the importance of the day, and I would just implore my

colleagues going forward that on all of these issues, particularly where there is so much agreement, that we would find a way to come together to be able to hash out some of these differences so there could be a more unanimous belief and buy-in to what we are doing.

Madam Speaker, I thank the gentleman from Oklahoma and appreciate his work on this important matter, and my colleagues on the Republican Study Committee.

I am happy to be working on a task force to advance healthcare freedom, personalized healthcare, the ways that we believe we can get the American people to see the doctor of his or her choice without having to see an insurance bureaucrat or a government bureaucrat and be able to get access to care. And that is all germane, by the way, to this question of spending.

I think it is really important here, and I am going to talk in a minute about how good I believe it is that we have a 5-year balanced budget that the Republican Study Committee has put forward, and proving that it can, in fact, be done.

But let's talk for a minute about the irresponsible budgeting and spending of our colleagues on the other side of the aisle.

Most Americans hear these large numbers and they don't know how to put them in context. What our national debt is, over $28 trillion. But nobody knows what that means. It doesn't mean anything to the average person. We divide it and we say how much it is per person or family. We got numbers here, $226,000 per taxpayer, $85,000 per citizen. People still don't know what that means.

If you set out to count the roughly $28.2 trillion debt we have now, how long do you think that would take, Madam Speaker? 900,000 years if you counted one per second; one Mississippi. It would take you 900,000 years to count to $28.2 trillion. It is just absurd.

We are literally destroying the fiscal health of our country by the second. We are destroying it by the second. Our children and grandchildren are going to inherit this. But what is the real problem? We are killing our economy in the process. We are killing the American Dream in the process. We are killing small businesses in the process.

We just spent $6 trillion appropriated in the process of spending. $6 trillion in a year in the name of COVID, as my friend from Oklahoma and my other colleagues well know. $6 trillion. Some of that was worthwhile. I think there was some PPP money in there that helps small businesses that I was happy to support, but $6 trillion.

Would it interest the Madam Speaker to know that we spent $4.1 trillion for all of World War II, in current dollars? All of World War II, from the very beginning, from Pearl Harbor all the way to the second bomb in Japan, $4 trillion over 3\1/2\ years.

We just spent $6 trillion in a year, effectively shutting down our economy, scaring the heck out of our children, forcing them to wear masks, shoving them into the corners of the classroom, forcing people not to go to the doctor of their choice, all so that Anthony Fauci could find himself on the cover of another magazine, while perpetuating a whole lot of myths that scare the hell out of the American people. That is just what occurred over the last year.

And what is the impact of that? Well, last week the Bureau of Labor Statistics reported that year over year consumer prices rose 5 percent in May. Has anybody gone to go buy a sheet of plywood? Two times, three times, four times. Anybody talking to the builders in your districts? How is their pipeline looking down the road?

Did anybody go talk to the small restaurants and businesses out there? They are devastated, unable to hire people. Why? Because we are paying people more not to work than to work. How many people do you talk to that are in your district that say, well, I have got a help wanted sign up, but I can't get anybody to work.

How is that going to bring back the economy and bring back jobs and bring back opportunity and bring back prosperity for the American people? And, oh, by the way, how is it ever going to allow us to have any fiscal responsibility as a nation? And that is what we are talking about here.

And we are talking about a plan that Republicans are putting forward. Meanwhile, our Democratic colleagues have not passed a budget. We just had a deeming statement, or whatever it is we adopted, for $1.5 trillion, it just slid in this week. $1.5 trillion. It is like Monopoly money. Nobody even understands what we are doing here.

And so we have got a budget that we put forward that balances in 5 years. Why don't we debate it? For all the C-SPAN viewers out there, look how many people are in the Chamber. About, what, 10 of us. Ten Members, election certificates, in here. Why don't we have a bill on the floor and why don't we debate it?

How many Americans would love to hear that the people's House has not had an amendment offered on the floor of this Chamber since May of 2016 in regular order, an open amendment? Congressman Roy offers an amendment to a bill. Not since May of 2016, 5 years. It is all done in committee and rules and some smoke room in the back up here, just drop down, and we all go up and we vote ``yes'' or ``no'', and then we go out and give speeches. That is no way to govern. The American people know how to balance their own budgets at home. Businesses know how to balance budgets. Yet, this irresponsible government doesn't.

Madam Speaker, I would implore my colleagues on the other side of the aisle to follow the great work of the Republic Study Committee, and look at the budget that we put forward that balances in 5 years, bring it to the floor of the House, and allow us to have an open debate. Go through the Budget Committee, go to the floor, and actually have a debate about the fiscal health and responsibility of this country so that our kids and grandkids can inherit the greatest country in the world, rather than $30 trillion in debt, and leaving us crippled and unable to carry forward for the good of our country.