Floor Statements

Mr. Speaker, I would point out and agree with the gentleman from Georgia that in all that spending that is being bemoaned by our colleagues on the other side of the aisle by the previous administration, show me the opposition from our colleagues on the other side of the aisle. I will wait.

The truth is that was a bipartisan spendathon. Some of us opposed a good chunk of it, but it was bipartisan.

The reality here is we have legislation before us that is designed to constrain spending in a world in which we are $35 trillion in debt and in which we have $1.1 trillion in interest, more on interest than we are spending on the entire spending of the national defense. It is a world in which we are racking up another trillion dollars in debt every 2 or 3 months. This is an unsustainable course that we are taking, and this is what is definitively occurring with the rampant support of our colleagues on the other side of the aisle.

What we have also done is put forward legislation to enact policy changes, because the power of the purse, Article I, is supposed to be used by Congress in order to do what is necessary to constrain an out- of-control executive branch.

The truth is that on June 13, 2024, an illegal alien from El Salvador raped a 13-year-old girl at machete point while recording it in Queens, New York. The illegal alien was released from the border in June of 2021.

On June 14, 2024, an illegal alien from El Salvador was charged with the rape and murder of Rachel Morin, a Maryland mother of five. He illegally crossed the southern border in February of 2023 as a got- away.

That is not the first instance in Maryland. Kayla Hamilton was raped and murdered in 2022 by an illegal

alien. Her mom is begging for this Congress to stand up against the Biden administration to stop doing what is unconscionable with open borders that are endangering the American people.

On June 17, 2024, 12-year-old Jocelyn Nungaray was murdered by two illegal aliens from Venezuela in my home State in Houston, Texas.

On May 14, 2024, an illegal alien from Honduras who was released from the border in April of 2022, under this administration, pleaded guilty to third-degree sexual abuse of a 12-year-old girl in Waterloo, Iowa.

I could go on and on. I have pages and pages. My colleagues on the other side of the aisle want to hide behind legislation which even the current President couldn't stand behind when he said he could.

You know how we know that? Because he went to the microphone saying that he now magically has the power for an executive order, saying that when we have 2,500, we will set in effect the stop at the border. When the bill was 5,000, my colleagues on the other side of the aisle knew it was all a sham. They know it is all a cover vote. That is the truth.

Mr. Speaker, we have legislation here that would have Congress step in front of an out-of-control executive branch to secure the border of the United States. It is not unprecedented to hold a bill at the desk. We have done it before, and we should do it because we should use the power of the purse to stop an administration that is endangering the American people and the United States.

Mr. Speaker, it is unconscionable what this administration is doing. It is unconscionable what they are doing to the Department of Defense. It is unconscionable that they turned it into a woke social engineering experiment that is more concerned about transgender surgeries and pushing a radical agenda than ensuring that we have the military that is necessary to defend the United States of America.

There is no wonder that recruiting levels are down. There is no wonder that we have a morale problem at the Pentagon.

This legislation is designed specifically to refocus our military on doing its job, which is exactly what the American people want us to do: secure the United States, secure our border, and secure us without giving money to organizations all around the world.

I am proud that we restrict funding of the ICC, of the ICJ, and of UNRWA. UNRWA, by the way, which my Democratic colleagues want to continue to support, was, in fact, funding and putting people on the ground, literally. They were killing our friends in Israel.

This bill is a responsible effort to restrain an administration that is endangering the American people, and I am proud to support it.

Mr. Chair, I rise as the designee of the gentleman from Texas (Mr. Pfluger), and I have an amendment at the desk.

Mr. Chairman, I do have an amendment at the desk, and I do want to make clear that this is on behalf of August Pfluger, my colleague from Texas, who has been a champion of this issue since he has been in Congress.

The issue that is before us as we take up the Department of Homeland Security appropriations is the policy that the administration has put forward and, indeed, some Members of this Chamber, even some on this side of the aisle, have put forward. The policy would limit the ability to transport people who have come here illegally and that have been released into the United States by the administration into Texas. It would limit the ability to transport these individuals to other places in the country.

We have referred to this as the remain in Texas policy, which we Texans take significant issue with. The impact on the State of Texas cannot be overstated.

Texas, more than any other State in the Union, has been bearing the brunt of the wide-open border policies that have endangered the American people now for 3\1/2\ years, something that we hope to end soon.

We, in Congress, have a duty under Article I to do something about it. That is why we put forward, I believe, a good DHS appropriations bill.

We made clear that we need to secure the border in the process, but what we are not going to do is allow funds to be used to limit the ability of Texans to alleviate the damage being done to our State.

We have spent now, I think, $13 billion, with a b, to carry out the duties that the Federal Government are supposed to carry out under the Constitution of the United States. That is what Texas has had to do.

We have now been able to defray some of the traffic. We have now been able to decrease and force some of that traffic to other States, but we shouldn't be having to do that. We shouldn't be having to put up razor wire. We shouldn't be having to move our DPS troopers down to the border instead of allowing them to do their job to patrol the rest of the State, particularly because in the rest of the State, there are massive amounts of fentanyl pouring into our communities and our schools, killing our kids and killing the people in our community.

Our position is that under no circumstances should any of the funds in this bill be used to limit the ability of the Governor of Texas or any of the other leaders of the State of Texas, or, frankly, leaders in other States from transporting people out of Texas so that other States have to bear the burden equally or at least partially. It is not even close to equally, by the way, partially, as much as Texas.

In particular, take Kinney County, Texas. We had testimony in the Judiciary Committee from the leadership, the county attorney from Kinney County, Texas.

Prior to the Biden administration's policies being implemented, in 2021, they had about 150 arrests. Do you know how many they have had in the subsequent 3 years? Mr. Chair, there have been 7,000 arrests in a county of 3,000 people.

We have documented evidence of individuals who have been unable to go get 911 services in Kinney County because the sole ambulance in Kinney County, population 3,000, was out dealing with issues involving illegal aliens.

Meanwhile, the people who live there and pay taxes, a person died because they weren't able to get a 911 response because it is being consumed and those activities are being used to deal with the issue that the Federal Government not only refuses to deal with but, in fact, is purposely putting gas on the fire.

I am here to advocate for the amendment being offered by Mr. Pfluger to say that no funds shall be able to be used to implement such a policy.

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

Mr. Chair, my simple question, although the gentlewoman has yielded her time back, would simply be: What is the problem? What is the harm of putting the language in the bill if it is a policy that is not being implemented? I would tell you that it is a $13 billion rumor.

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

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

Mr. Chairman, in the wake of 3\1/2\ years of abject failure, but worse than that, purposeful action by the executive branch of the Federal Government to undermine the security of the American people, empower cartels, empower China, and allow little children, little girls to get sold into the sex trafficking trade for political expediency for the radical progressive Democrat left, in the wake of all of that with dead Americans, with Laken Riley, with Lizbeth Medina, with Kayla Hamilton, with all of the horrific stories, the stories of a 12-year- old little girl getting raped, a 13-year-old little girl getting raped, in the wake of all of that, now the administration wants to continue its lawlessness by the use and abuse of executive power to grant amnesty.

That is the goal. That is the aim. Our colleagues on the other side of the aisle, our radical, progressive Democratic colleagues, view this as political opportunism--nothing more, nothing less. This is not about the huddled masses being invited into the United States. This is not about anything of the sort. This is about political power. That is what this is about.

As a result, 53 human beings roasted in the Texas heat in a tractor- trailer in San Antonio, Texas, which I represent, because my radical, progressive Democratic colleagues and the radical, progressive Democratic regime in the White House at the other end of Pennsylvania Avenue care more about political expediency than these human beings. That is the truth.

They care more about political expediency than the individual Americans dying from fentanyl poisoning or any of the individuals that I just described who were murdered or raped or killed because we are allowing criminals to be released into the United States illegally, unlawfully, using and abusing parole authority.

Now, the administration wants to grant amnesty. Why? Trust us, it is out of the goodness of our hearts, we are told. No, it is for the political expediency of setting up future voters.

Importantly, and more presciently, this is all about creating more incentive for more people to flood the zone, to flood the border, to come into this country. That is what it is about.

It doesn't matter whether it empowers cartels. It doesn't matter whether it empowers our enemies. It doesn't matter what it means for the security of the people of Texas or anybody else in this country. It is all about flooding the zone with more numbers.

The legislation that we have before us, the amendment that we are putting forward, would prohibit the use of funds from promoting such a foolish amnesty plan by this radical administration that refuses to follow the law.

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

Mr. Chairman, I yield to the gentleman from Texas (Mr. Self), my good friend.

Mr. Chair, I appreciate my colleague from Texas. I agree with him, and I associate myself with his remarks.

The unilateral action by this executive branch is nothing new. They have been doing it with student loans. They have been doing it with all sorts of laws, where they ignore the law--parole authority, abuse of law, endangering the American people.

This would give permanent residence and a path to citizenship to hundreds of thousands of illegal alien spouses of U.S. citizens and their noncitizen minor children. That is being done through unilateral action by the executive branch.

This is not how we are supposed to make policy or law. It is important for us to use the power of the purse to push back.

Mr. Chair, I urge adoption of the amendment, and I yield back the balance of my time.

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

Mr. Chairman, this amendment will prohibit Homeland Security appropriations from being used to carry out President Biden's climate executive orders.

People might wonder why this is important. President Biden and Secretary Mayorkas have been doing a massive amount of damage to this country with wide-open borders. Not only do they endanger the American people, but they have literally lied and been caught lying about their own Border Patrol agents, who they accused of whipping Haitian migrants when they knew full well it wasn't true.

They have been targeting, undermining, and attacking their own personnel, their own law enforcement community, going after CBP and Border Patrol simply because Border Patrol wants to do their job. That endangers the American people.

That is not it. That is not all they are doing. The President's executive orders are undermining our national security and making us beholden to China in other ways, making us beholden to the rest of the world by undermining our ability to produce reliable energy--all in pursuit of radical, progressive Democrats' vision of unicorn energy policy, which is unreliable and will not produce the energy needed to be able to carry out and be competitive in the world.

EVs are piling up on lots as we speak. Dealers can't unload them. They literally can't. They can't sell them. Why? Because if I want to get in my car in Austin, Texas, and drive to Midland, I have to stop three times along the way and can't even find charging stations. Put aside the fact that the cars are more expensive, more unreliable, and more difficult to repair. That is the reality.

Meanwhile, unreliable energy is dotting our grids across the entire country, including Texas. Why? Because instead of pursuing logical policies like nuclear, if you care about CO2 production, or clean-burning natural gas, which has been driving down CO2 production around the world, we instead are choosing to litter the landscape with windmills and solar panels, which, by the way, are made out of what? Materials from China, which, by the way, come from what? They come from forced child labor, which is going out and forcing children to have to go out and be in work camps, to go mine the cobalt necessary for batteries, mine the minerals that are necessary for all the solar panels, the solar panels and the windmills that all have to be buried and filled in the ground, all of which, by the way, produces unreliable energy and puts us behind the rest of the world in energy production when 3 billion people on this planet don't even have reliable energy.

We are literally shooting ourselves in the economic foot. That is what we are doing. We are doing it all because, I don't know, the feels. I don't know, put a sticker on your Tesla while you drive around and feel good about yourself. Pat yourself on the back when you are

not denting CO2 production. You could actually get rid of every internal combustion engine car in America and you wouldn't reduce CO2 around the world by less than about 1\1/2\ percent, if at all.

The radical climate change executive orders by the President are undermining our national security, forcing the DOD, DHS, all these executive branch agencies to weaken their ability to be productive and get their job done.

Can you imagine the Border Patrol can't even talk right now on radios? They can't even communicate when they move along the border, if they are even allowed to go man the border. Instead, they are changing diapers in some room in one of the ports of entry because we have been dumping people in through parole policies.

Now they are going to be stuck down there trying to charge their batteries, hoping they can even go find the people crossing the river. You can't even make this crap up.

If you set out to destroy a country, if you set out to literally destroy a country, I don't know how you could come up with policies better than those of the radical, progressive Democrats, who want to remake this country in their radical, leftist image.

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

Mr. Chair, I would just note that it is critically important that we adopt these amendments to restrict the executive branch from carrying out these executive orders. They are undermining our efficiency and effectiveness.

Mr. Chair, I urge adoption of this amendment, and I yield back the balance of my time.

Madam Chair, I unfortunately missed a vote today. Had I been present, I would have voted Aye on Roll Call No. 285.

Stated against:

Mr. Speaker, I thank the gentlemen who were just speaking on the floor, my friend, Mr. Wenstrup, and my friend, Mr. Palmer, for what they were doing in reminding the American people what happened 7 years ago.

It too easily gets glossed over for the politically motivated attack on Members of Congress that it was. A lot of statements are made about January 6, about things that have occurred, but not enough is made about what happened that day when someone was targeting our friends, our colleagues, for political reasons. It gets, frankly, ignored, with all due respect, by some of our colleagues on the other side of the aisle.

Steve Scalise and everybody who was a part of it stand as, I think, a stark reminder of what is great and good about those who serve here who are willing to move forward for the good of the country.

The country shouldn't forget about what happened and forget what those gentlemen on that field went through and why that is so critically important. I thank them for that, and I certainly thank them for their continued service.

I do think it is really important that we remember, as a body, in that vein, why we are here. Why do we convene as a Congress? Why do we come here and engage from all over the country, from 50 States, and fly in here each week and conduct business?

Too often, it turns into a clock-punching exercise where people come in, fly in, do their votes, go to some meeting, go to some fundraiser, go to some event, go to a quick hearing, do their thing, go back, vote, and go home.

Yet, what we have to remember when we come here is that we are supposed to be stopping for a moment and remembering that we are representing 750,000-odd Americans each and that we have an obligation to fight for them and do what we said we would do when we ran for office to represent them in the first place.

When I go all over the country, doing campaign events or even a bunch of personal business, I am reminded that a lot of American people do watch what we say here. A lot of people do watch videos that get circulated around on social media.

From time to time, frankly, quite often, people bring up to me a speech that I gave about 6 months ago in which I asked rhetorically, but importantly and emphatically, to name one thing that we have done, name one thing that we accomplished. I was talking to Republican colleagues, in particular.

I stand behind that question. It is an important question to ask. Of course, it is often clipped to leave out the important part, which was to name one thing we have accomplished besides doing something that is equivalent to Democrat-lite or something that is the soft version of what our Democratic colleagues want to do.

I will remind people, because it is important, what we have been able to accomplish as a united Republican Party, under now the leadership of two Speakers over the last 18 months.

A little over a year ago, we passed the Limit, Save, Grow Act in which we had Republicans unite across the body to pass an increase in the debt ceiling that was relatively modest, $1.5 trillion is, sadly, relatively modest, in exchange for very significant policy changes to get our country on the right track.

We repealed the so-called Inflation Reduction Act subsidies that are subsidizing and empowering multibillion-dollar corporations, empowering China, and undermining our ability to produce energy effectively.

We implemented spending caps and put them in place to reduce the size and scope of government and to limit the size of discretionary spending and to cut back on the weaponized government at the Department of Justice and at the FBI and at the Department of Education and in so many other different agencies across the bureaucracy.

We passed the REINS Act to rein in the regulatory state and to say that if regulations are going to have a certain impact, they must be approved by Congress. We implemented work requirements on things like SNAP and Medicaid. We worked together to try to transform this country as we told the American people we would do.

We did that together. We united to do it. Again, we modestly increased the debt ceiling, modestly relatively speaking, in exchange for actual policy changes to take our country back and put it on the right path. We did that.

We passed a strong border security bill that effectively said you will be detained, as our current law contemplates, or you will be turned away. It is that simple.

Most Americans support that. You will be detained if you have some sort of a claim, asylum claim or something else or some humanitarian exception, but you will be detained for the full time until we adjudicate it, or you will be turned away. That is effectively what we passed in what we call H.R. 2, our second big bill number.

H.R. 2, is our border security plan that we, Republicans, united to pass. Again, for the first time in decades, if not ever, this body came together and we passed a bill that would legitimately secure the border of the United States and force the hand of an administration that is refusing to secure the border while our country is being undermined and endangered.

Even as we speak, I am seeing reporting pop up on my phone about the number of foreign nationals, the number of Chinese foreign nationals, 24,000 last year, the amount of fentanyl pouring in, and the dangerous individuals that are being encountered.

I am seeing reporting on a daily basis about this administration leaving our country wide open and refusing to do anything about it, so this Republican Congress voted last year to pass H.R. 2. We passed it, we sent it to the Senate, and Chuck Schumer did nothing with it.

The National Defense Authorization Act, we are in the middle of working on that bill, as we speak, for fiscal year 2025. We passed the FY24 NDAA and this year we are working on a bill that is similar, that is worthy of support by Republicans, by conservatives. I don't agree with everything in it, to be clear, but it is a bill that is taking a giant step forward to refocus our military on being a military.

Our military should be focused on killing people and blowing things up, on doing the hard work of defending a country when called upon to do it, hopefully, sparingly. We have a military that has now, currently, gone off track. It has been turned into a social engineering experiment. Recruiting is low.

We have individuals in our military who are tired of being told that they have got to be a part of abortion tourism or transgender training or whatever DEI planning and training that is being pressed upon them rather than just learning how to jump out of a helicopter or fire a gun.

Today, we passed amendments to the NDAA that will move it in the right direction. It will pull back on the DEI, pull back on all the transgender woke policies, pull back on the climate executive order by the President of the United States that is undermining the readiness of our military.

We passed that amendment today. We passed an amendment to end abortion tourism, so you don't have taxpayer dollars funding abortion because the Department of Defense should not be a social engineering experiment. Republicans today united to do that, just as last year we united to do that.

Just last week, we passed a bill to actually sanction, with teeth, the International Criminal Court because it is wishing to and seeking to issue warrants for the Prime Minister of Israel for simply defending his country. We passed that. We passed that bill with unanimous Republican support. I think there were two present votes, 42 Democrats.

We did that by uniting as Republicans to send a message to the world that we believe that not only is the International Criminal Court illegitimate, not only is the International Criminal Court wrong, not only is it undermining our ally Israel, but that we should sanction it with actual sanctions. Not watered down exceptions for the United Nations, exceptions for all manner of these international organizations so it doesn't have teeth, we passed sanctions with teeth. It is sitting over in the Senate.

Chuck Schumer refuses to stand with Israel. Chuck Schumer refuses to do the work that we are supposed to do as our country and allies are being targeted. More importantly, the International Criminal Court is carrying out activities that will be turned around and focused on us, that will be used against our own military.

Again, a united Republican Party over the last 18 months, when we have united, we have passed limits to spending, modest debt ceiling increases for legitimate policy changes that would put us on the right path, a border security bill that would actually secure the border, a National Defense Authorization Act--now maybe twice, come tomorrow-- that would repurpose our military on the military end or limit/reduce the social engineering and the woke policies. We passed an International Criminal Court sanctions bill with real teeth.

Last year, we passed a significant number of appropriations bills with significant policy changes, and we had 1,100 amendments processed. We were moving things in the right direction, but here is the trick.

There are a lot of pieces to this, but here is the trick: How do you get that turned into law? Here is the dirty little secret in this town, most of my colleagues on both sides of the aisle would tell you, you must win elections in order to get that done.

They are not wrong.

You cannot have the majority without elections. You cannot get the votes you need without the elections going the way you want; to get the votes you need to pass the law. I agree.

Here is the secret: You are never going to get stuff passed when you always have an excuse for not passing it.

I will say that again. You will never get something signed into law when you start with the excuse for why you won't get it signed into law.

All of the good things I just mentioned, all of the good things that I say that this united Republican Party has done in the face of absolute abject failure by our colleagues on the other side of the aisle and at 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue, we have done these great things, but they have stopped. They have sat in the Senate because you have to be willing to sacrifice something to fight to achieve and force these things to a conclusion.

Now, my colleagues will say: Well, you got to win more votes and you can't ask for too much.

There are times where you can ask for too much and there are times where you can say, we simply don't have the votes. However, when you have current Members of our own body saying: Well, Chip, we are not going to have 60 votes in the Senate in January, so you have to go ahead and factor that in to why we are not going to get appropriations bills that we would prefer, why we should only have a continuing resolution going into December, into a lameduck. Why? So we can then have the powers that be use the pressure of Christmas to pass an omnibus spending bill in December? I don't agree with that.

We are already being told that we don't have 60 votes in the Senate. We won't get 60 votes in the Senate, so you must accept it.

The reason why I am focusing on this for a second is, the people that I represent always ask me why. Why don't you get these things done?

The people I represent, frankly, people all across the country that I run into, they ask me why. Why can't you secure the border?

It is a pretty simple question. Why can you not secure the border? I then have to tell them, I am 1/435th of one-half of one-third of the Federal Government. So we have got to go build the votes.

When you have the votes to pass something like H.R. 2 and you send it over to the Senate, then the only question that is going to matter is whether it is this year, right now, or whether it is next year. If you hope to go out into the election season and get a bigger majority by a handful of seats, get the majority in the Senate by a couple of seats, and hope to get the White House, then you say, don't worry, we will do it then. Some will say, oh, we can't even do it then because we are not going to have 60 in the Senate.

The point is, you have to pick something and fight for it. You have to pick some number of things and fight for them. You have to take the message to the American people. You have to be willing to risk that ``precious,'' to quote ``Lord of the Rings,'' that election certificate that you hold on to so tight that you don't actually use it.

I would rather serve one more term and jam through as much freedom legislation as I possibly could than to serve 5 more terms or 10 terms and not get passed what we need to get passed.

The average American family today is hurting. The average American family today, the average young person in America today, can't afford their healthcare because this government has destroyed the healthcare market and made it impossible to afford. They can't afford a vehicle because this government has regulated vehicles and made the price of gasoline and the vehicles that they want to buy cost prohibitive. They don't think they can afford houses, and as often is the case can't, because this government has been blowing money, driving up interest, and creating an environment in which housing costs are now astronomically expensive.

They don't think that they can, frankly, bring a family into this world and have children because of the things I just talked about as they don't believe they can afford them.

We have a responsibility as leaders of this country, in this Chamber and the other Chamber, in the executive branch, to actually deliver for the American people, to preserve and protect the way of life that we cherish.

We sit here on the floor and regale the men who walked into the wall of bullets at Normandy or regale them on July Fourth or regale our Founding Fathers or the Declaration of Independence.

We have an actual responsibility to preserve and protect the pursuit of happiness. The ability to carry out and live your unalienable rights given to you by God, but we are not doing that. I just want to be blunt. We are not doing that.

I would say of late that I believe that the Republican Conference has been doing some good work to make very clear to the American people what we can and will do if entrusted with the majority, and a majority in the Senate, and a Republican in the White House. I believe we have been doing that.

I believe in the National Defense Authorization Act with amendments and policies that reduce the woke social engineering and increase the focus on military.

I believe in the H.R. 2 bill; the border security provisions.

I believe that the appropriations bills are moving in the right direction and changing the process. They are not perfect.

I believe in last year's Limit, Save, Grow effort and a lot of the policies we are trying to advance.

I believe in the International Criminal Court bill.

I believe in the bill that I hope to bring to the floor in a couple of weeks, the SAVE Act, to make sure that only citizens can vote in Federal elections.

I believe these bills demonstrate very clearly the difference between Republicans and Democrats and demonstrate very clearly what Republicans can do when we unite for a purpose to defend the American people against the very swamp that we campaign against.

However, you will never, never achieve those results if you come here and you capitulate on day one out of fear, whether fear of government shutdown, fear of failure, fear of the slim majority, fear of the possibility the President might veto it, fear of getting crosswise to some politician who might say something about you on Twitter.

Instead, we should take this great work and take it to the American people, take it through the elections, and then set up the fight. We should set up the fight in 2025 to take our country back because this country turns 250 years old in 2 years.

On July 2, 2026, we will be celebrating our 250th birthday of separating from England, and then 2 days later we came to an agreement on the language of the Declaration.

What are we going to do for the people on our 250th birthday? What are we going to be able to say to our kids and our grandkids on our 250th birthday?

Next year, what are we going to do to set the stage? If Republicans go out and get elected, take the White House, take the House, take the Senate, will we be able to take the policies that we came together to pass but failed to force through the Senate and failed to force the President of the United States to even move frankly halfway to our demands? Will we use our power then?

Will we use our power in January to get any of them signed into law? It doesn't matter if you keep getting elected, it doesn't matter if you go out and win elections if you don't do anything with it.

Will we finally take H.R. 2 in its form now, tweaked as necessary next January, hopefully made better and stronger, will we finally pass legislation to secure the border of the United States that will force the President and transcend time, not just in President Trump's tenure, but once and for all, will we do that as Republicans? We better.

Will we ensure that our tax policy is geared toward working class, hardworking middle-class families, small businesses that are struggling to make ends meet around this country as opposed to the massive corporations and K Street lobbyists? Will we do that? We better.

Will we actually cut spending? Will we address the $35 trillion in debt that we currently have that will be no doubt $38 trillion or so by the time we start the next Congress?

Will we try to alleviate inflation by ending the reckless spending without any limit or will we just shrug and continue to borrow into oblivion such that if you look at the interest that we just spent in May, it is 79 percent of all of the personal income taxes collected into the revenue, into the Treasury. Eighty percent of that which we collected from the American people through their hard work, we took their money, 80 percent of that is just used to pay interest expense in May.

Think about that. Imagine if you were sitting at home, 80 percent of your income from your job, imagine that, you have got 80 percent of your income from your job in May was used to pay the interest on your mortgage. What have you got left? What do you have left for electricity, for water, for gasoline, for food, for your kids, for your clothing? We don't.

Will we actually fundamentally finally deal with spending in the next Congress?

Will we fully restore energy freedom, repealing the subsidies or subsidizing massive corporations, undermining the ability of Americans to afford energy, driving up the prices of automobiles, piling up EVs on lots?

Will we repeal the disastrous Inflation Reduction Act, so-called, $1.2 trillion in subsidies, will we repeal it?

Will we end the so-called tailpipe rule that is crushing American families?

Will we take back our country and provide the energy freedom that allows for human flourishing as it is doing around the globe? There are still 3 billion people around the planet who don't have access to reliable energy. Why would we move backward instead of forward?

Will we end, as we are starting to try to do in the NDAA, a toe in the water, will we end the social experimentation at the Pentagon and, instead, bolster our military with the confidence and the pride of defending a country without being told you must follow a woke social agenda or no longer be in the military, you must take a shot or you will lose your job?

Will we make our military stronger but more sparingly used? Will we end endless wars but use the power and the strength of our military for peace through strength and use our diplomacy through the State Department and our energy policies to stop wars before they start?

Will we use our spending power to end the weaponization of government that right now has a 75-year-old woman facing 2 years in prison in Washington, D.C., right here, 2 years in prison because she prayed at an abortion clinic, because she dared to go to an abortion clinic at 75 years old saying, how much do I have left to give on this Earth? I am going to give a little of my life to try to stand up for the unborn, and even if you disagree with me, and even if she was carrying out a misdemeanor or doing something that was stopping the flow and the law enforcement needed to move them, 2 years in prison under the FACE Act?

Are we going to end the weaponization of government against its people, against its politicians, to end turning this country into a banana republic?

Again, I ask of my Republican colleagues: We have united in purpose and produced these great results, whether it is Limit Save Grow, or H.R. 2 and border security or the National Defense Authorization Act, or the appropriations bills, sanctioning the International Criminal Court, hopefully passing the SAVE Act, will we take those things and turn those to victories that force them through the Senate so that the President can sign them?

Will we finally take our country back and restore it to the American people and give them energy freedom so they can afford the energy that allows them to power their lives and afford the automobiles to go about their work?

Will we drive interest rates down so they can afford a home again?

Will we make education affordable and useful again instead of subsidizing it and then paying off the loans of those who haven't paid their loans off and ignoring those who never took out a loan in the first place?

Will we restore order on our streets and put criminals back in jail?

Will we secure our borders and stop the lawless from coming across the Rio Grande?

Will we end the reckless spending that is indebting our kids and our grandkids to a future in which the dollar is worthless, and their country is destroyed because we didn't do our job here?

Will we pass tax reform that is good for families and small businesses, not the K Street lobbyists and big corporations?

These are the questions the American people want us to answer. They are tired of the excuses. They are tired of sternly worded letters. They are tired of hearings. They are tired of speeches. I will look in the mirror. I am giving another speech. They want to see us do it.

My call to my colleagues on both sides of the aisle, but particularly my colleagues on the Republican side of the aisle, we owe it, we owe it to the 400,000 tombstones sitting on the other side of the Potomac, we owe it to all those who fought and died and bled for that flag and for everything it represents. We owe it to our kids and our grandkids; we owe it to the world so that America can continue to be the beacon of hope. We owe it to restore American independence, restore liberty and freedom, restore a faith and a confidence in a government that is doing its actual constitutional job. We owe them that, not excuses.

We owe them to deliver, not to come back and say: Well, we tried. We owe them every ounce of our being when we are here in this town to work and get our job done; not to play politics, not to campaign, not to go to another political event, but to be here and do our job.

It is an honor to serve in Congress, but there is no point in being here if we are not actually going to deliver for the American people who sent us here to deliver for them. We will win the arguments if we will make them. We will lose the arguments if we are too afraid to fight.

I am tired of the celebrations of all the people who have fought, bled, and died for this country with an absence of a conviction politically, with all due respect to the many veterans in this Chamber who wore the uniform and fought and bled for this country, politically are you willing to fight and bleed and politically die for your country? Until you are, until you are willing to risk that, until you are willing to take that election certificate and nail it up on the wall and say: I am going to take this thing for a spin, I am going to actually do what I said I was going to do, and then let the American people decide. Until we are willing to do that, then we are going to be relegated to, in Reagan's phrasing, ``the ash heap of history.''

I happen to believe that we can take this country back, but I happen to believe that if we don't, if we don't take the steps right now to rescue her, then we are going to lose her. We are going to be that generation that Reagan talked about when Reagan said we are only ``one generation away from extinction.'' The question for us is, what will we do?

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

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

The motion was agreed to; accordingly (at 7 o'clock and 40 minutes p.m.), the House adjourned until tomorrow, Friday, June 14, 2024, at 9 a.m.

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

Mr. Speaker, listening to my colleagues discussing the rule of law, I find it shocking because the average American is looking across their country wondering what happened to the rule of law.

I watch my fellow Texans getting destroyed by dangerous cartels and individuals being allowed into the United States who are terrorists and people moving fentanyl into the communities that killed six kids in the school district in which I live. That is happening every single day.

I watched a 75-year-old woman being put in prison by a politically motivated judge in the District of Columbia because she protested in front of an abortion clinic.

I want to say that again: This Department of Justice is putting a 75- year-old woman in jail for 2 years who is dealing with physical infirmities because she was praying and protesting in front of an abortion clinic.

That is astounding. That is what has happened to the rule of law. The American people are watching while statues are being defaced in the name of being pro-Palestinian, and people who are exercising their so- called free speech rights are advancing the cause of terrorism against our friends in Israel.

All this is happening right here, mere feet from the White House, and the American people are wondering how this world got turned upside down.

Here we sit, and we are debating the issue of the Attorney General of the United States, Merrick Garland, coming before the House Judiciary Committee just a little over 1 week ago. In that hearing, a number of questions were asked.

I engaged with the Attorney General. I asked the Attorney General if he did or did not claim privilege with respect to the transcripts of the audio recording in question when we were talking about Special Counsel Hur looking into the allegations of the abuse of classified materials by the President of the United States before he was President.

I asked him, and he said: No, no. We did not claim executive privilege with respect to the transcripts.

In a separate exchange involving the best evidence rule, the Attorney General was engaging with another colleague, a friend on the Judiciary Committee, about the best evidence rule and, in doing so, articulated and explained how the transcript was admissible under the best evidence rule, which is correct, but in doing so, he kind of gave up the game in which he described and said: They are the same.

He said to the committee: They are the same.

Now, he had just told me that they did not claim executive privilege with respect to the transcript. Then he said to all of us: They are the same. The audio recording and the transcript are the same.

Then he proceeds to say that he must, in defending the rule of law, claim executive privilege on the actual audio, and then he denied the Members of Congress the ability in the middle of an impeachment inquiry, duly constituted and voted on by this body on the House floor, an impeachment inquiry, to then deny us the ability to listen to the audio.

The fact of the matter is there is only one reason why the Attorney General would do that. He doesn't want us to hear it. That is why. There are really only two reasons why that would be the case. Either the transcript doesn't match the audio, or the audio is so bad that he doesn't want us to hear it because Special Counsel Hur put the entirety of his decision not to prosecute, not to pursue, and not to go after the President of the United States for abuse of classified materials entirely on the basis of what we perceive as the demeanor of the President. Only the audio can allow Congress the ability to determine the validity of that determination by the special counsel.

Madam Chair, the bottom line is servicemembers are going to be left stranded, thanks to this policy hidden in the DOD's joint travel regulations having to deal with advancing an agenda. That is what we are trying to avoid.

We want the Department of Defense, our military, to be focused on its core mission, nothing more, nothing less. We want our servicemembers to be able to go out and carry out their lives without being encumbered by bureaucracy.

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

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

Mr. Chair, I first will open up by congratulating myself because 20 years ago about an hour from now, my lovely bride said ``yes,'' and she has stuck with me for 20 years. So a hearty congratulations that my wife would put up with me for these 20 years, but I am deeply honored to count her as my lovely bride still to this day, so happy anniversary back in Texas.

Mr. Chair, I am offering an amendment here that would prohibit any of the funding in this National Defense Authorization Act from being used to carry out President Biden's executive orders on climate change.

Our military should be focused, very simply, on its mission as a military, not social engineering.

My colleagues on the other side of the aisle like to just dismiss this as some sort of political agenda. This is a foolish thing for us to come down and say. Our military ought to be focused very specifically on ensuring they have got the tools necessary to carry out their job, not advancing a radical agenda that is actually undermining our national security and undermining the readiness of our men and women in uniform because that is what is happening. That is the truth.

In 2021, the Department of Defense spokesman John Kirby refused to say that China was a bigger national security threat to the United States than climate change.

He called them ``equally important.'' Secretary of Defense Lloyd Austin has said that climate change is an existential threat to our Nation's security.

Five senior officials at the Department of Defense proudly explained in an op-ed that they attended the United Nations Climate Conference, COP28, citing the Biden administration's 2022 national security strategy as justification.

Just this point: Biden's executive orders have served as a catalyst for reforms at the Department of Defense that compromise national security in order to advance the climate fetish of our colleagues on the other side of the aisle, while China, again, as I said in a previous amendment, is literally building two coal-fired plants a week and we are doing nothing.

I mentioned that point, and one of my colleagues on the other side of the aisle said, well, you are so committed to fossil fuels.

Well, how about we produce more nuclear power?

We have done one, one in my lifetime. I am 51 years old.

The United States of America, the greatest country in the history of the Earth, has only produced one nuclear power plant in 51 years. If you are so committed to producing energy without producing CO2, why not build more nuclear power?

The fact is, it is not about that. It is not about that.

It is about chasing the unicorn theory of energy whereby you litter the landscape with windmills and solar panels. Never mind how those solar panels are created, never mind all the child labor being exploited, never mind the empowerment of China, and never mind the massive pits that you have to take and stick the windmill parts in that are all created by mountains of fossil fuels. Ignore all of that common sense. Ignore all of that.

Just sit around and pat yourself on the back because you drive an EV and you put a little sticker with your little equal sign and you put a little sticker on there saying, ``save the planet,'' and suddenly everything is all hunky-dory. Meanwhile, our defense isn't doing its job. Meanwhile, the entire world is looking at the United States and laughing. Meanwhile, the entire world that is producing more CO2 than we are is looking at us while we undermine the very development of the power that made this world a better place.

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

Mr. Chair, the Department of Defense's climate adaptation plan includes proposals to reduce greenhouse gas emissions. According to the plan, DOD has identified climate change as a critical national security issue. The plan contains mandates on environmental justice. The DOD says it will transition to 100 percent carbon-free electricity, meaning our entire war machine is going to be dependent on advancing this agenda.

Meanwhile, as I said, China has 1,100 coal-fired plants, building one and a half to two a week. The DOD has mandated all nontactical vehicles to be EVs by 2035. It is only a matter of time before it is going to be tactical vehicles.

The fact of the matter is, there is a reason the Department of Defense comes forward and says these things that my colleagues on the other side of the aisle say. It is, frankly, because they are being told to from the top for political reasons.

Everybody you talk to in the line, everybody you talk to at Defense is so sick and tired of having their life's dream of being able to serve this country, wear the uniform to defend it, be turned into a social engineering experiment. That is what is happening.

There is no evidence backing up that we are even denting CO2 with the radical policy we are talking about today.

Do you know what has? Clean-burning natural gas and nuclear power have. These fanciful, unicorn policies are doing garbage. They are doing nothing but destroying the military and destroying our economic competition.

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

Mr. Speaker, I rise today to recognize Peterson Health in their seventy-fifth year of serving the Texas Hill Country. The community is forever grateful to Hal and Charlie Peterson, two brothers who envisioned a full-service hospital in Kerrville, Texas. The Petersons' efforts began in 1944 by establishing the Hal and Charlie Peterson Foundation with an initial donation of one hundred dollars. Three years later, the Foundation board green-lit construction of a hospital for ``the benefit of the people of the Hill Country in general.'' The brothers started building on their land at Sidney Baker and Water Streets in Kerrville. Named for their father, the Sid Peterson Memorial Hospital opened its doors on July 3, 1949. I include in the Record an excerpt from the Petersons' opening ceremony speech that day:

``And so here it is; it's yours to use. If it will ease a

little the sufferings of the sick and injured; if it will

help a little to mend their broken bodies; if it will provide

a place where the next generation--and the next--can enter

this world with the best of care and attention, and if it can

do these things at a minimum of expense to those who must be

patients, then our purpose in building it and giving it to

the Hill Country community has been well-served.''

It was a world-class facility, the first in America to have

a central air conditioning system. Another groundbreaking

feature was the intercom system that connected each patient's

bed to the nurse's station. In 1969, the hospital underwent

extensive upgrades and increased bed capacity to eighty-six.

A six-million-dollar expansion plan was completed in 1985,

including a new Surgical Annex. The hospital became

independent from the Hal and Charlie Peterson Foundation five

years later. At the turn of the millennium, medical air

transport services were added to San Antonio and Austin.

In 2008, the hospital changed locations to the new Peterson

Health campus, complete with a brand-new hospital building.

It was the only hospital in Texas to be named a Top 20 Rural

Community Hospital by the National Rural Health Association.

A groundbreaking ceremony was held in 2022 for the Amanda and

J. David Williams Surgery Center which will expand surgical

capacity by 25% and procedure rooms by 50%. Congratulations

to CEO Cory Edmondson and the entire staff on seventy-five

years of service to the Hill Country. I applaud Peterson's

stated mission of ``maintaining their status as an

independent, private, nonprofit health system.''

Mr. Speaker, I thank my friend from Pennsylvania for yielding.

Mr. Speaker, before I start, I will join in a bipartisan moment of agreement with my friend from Massachusetts about Kelly Dixon.

I too wish her well. I wish her all the best in her next endeavors. The gentleman is correct about her intellect and her commitment to the institution. We have debated numerous times on the floor. As a former staffer, chief of staff to a senator, it is not always easy to walk the line and intellectually engage and spar with Members of Congress, for those without the election certificate, but to do so with the proper amount of respect in going toe to toe with Members in the right way. Kelly has always done that.

She does very much believe in keeping the traditions of this institution moving forward in the right way. I am deeply appreciative of that and of her service, and we will be wishing her well going forward and will miss her.

Here we are talking about the issues before us in this rule, the MILCON-VA funding and the International Criminal Court.

Just a quick moment on MILCON-VA funding--I note that this legislation that we put forward we have done so in good faith to increase spending for veterans--yes, increase spending for veterans-- because it is higher than that which has been put forward by the President in the President's budget. It is also, in aggregate, the total amount of spending that we are spending on veterans when you factor in mandatory spending and discretionary spending, will be greater under our spending than it would be last year.

Yes, we are trying to figure out how to do this in a fiscally responsible manner. We believe we have done that, and we have put forward the policy initiatives that we believe are important to constrain the administration to ensure that we are not advancing a radical agenda through the executive branch's actions.

The President has been aggressive in disagreeing with the United States Supreme Court and Congress in advancing a radical agenda, whether it is DEI, CRT, or student loans. We believe it is our power of the purse in Congress to be able to constrain that.

The thing I want to most talk about here is the International Criminal Court. This is an issue that really shouldn't be partisan, I agree. I have had numerous conversations with my colleagues on the other side of the aisle, and they have been good conversations. They have been healthy conversations with leadership on both sides of the aisle.

At stake right now is the critically important issue of ensuring that we protect America's interests. That is what is at stake right now in the International Criminal Court. It isn't just about Israel. In fact, it is not even specifically about Israel.

This would be a permanent change, a change to the law to ensure that if the International Criminal Court targets Americans or targets our allies, that we would sanction the International Criminal Court.

Now, let's be clear. This is an unprecedented action being taken by the International Criminal Court, seeking arrest warrants for the sitting Prime Minister and Minister of Defense of Israel. Say that out loud. That is what is happening with the International Criminal Court.

Neither Israel nor the United States is a party to this organization, yet this entity, the International Criminal Court, is trying to issue a warrant against the Prime Minister of Israel.

There have been longstanding bipartisan concerns about the ICC's undermining of the United States' sovereignty. Since the founding in 2002, every U.S. administration, both parties, has refused to join the court, fearing its politicization and misuse.

On April 2, 2021, Secretary of State Antony Blinken said: ``We maintain our longstanding objection to the Court's efforts to assert jurisdiction over personnel of non-States Parties such as the United States and Israel.''

NSC spokesperson John Kirby said, on April 30: ``We don't believe the ICC has any jurisdiction here.''

Both the Biden and Trump administrations and over 330 Members of Congress from both parties have rejected ICC investigations of the United States and Israel in the past.

Last night in the Rules Committee, talking about the Democratic witness: Do you believe the ICC should be able to target American servicemen? The answer was no.

The fact here is if you allow this to happen, you are opening the door. We need to make it crystal clear to our men and women in uniform that we will not tolerate the ICC going after them or our allies for simply performing their job.

This is not unprecedented in the sense that the ICC has tried to investigate U.S. servicemembers before, as the gentleman from Pennsylvania noted, but the reality here is this is pretty simple. This bill would sanction the ICC. Yes, it has teeth. Yes, it would cause some concerns and some pain for the members of the ICC. That is intentional.

We want to make them think twice, and we modeled it after existing legislation. We used a model. This is not something new. We believe this is critically important. This country, the United States, should stand united and hold the ICC accountable.

Mr. Speaker, I thank my friend from Texas, the chairman, for yielding, and I thank the ranking member and his staff and the entire staff of the Foreign Affairs Committee for their diligent work on this, for working all last week, for working through the weekend, and for the conversations.

On this one, it is important to note that I do believe that there is significant bipartisan agreement that we need to take action and stand with one voice in this country, the United States of America, to send a strong signal to not just the International Criminal Court but to the international community generally. We cannot stand by and allow the court to do what it is doing.

Let's remember why we are here. We are here because the International Criminal Court is seeking to issue warrants on the Prime Minister of Israel. It merits letting that just sit out there and marinate for a second that that is what we are dealing with. The Prime Minister of Israel is engaged in defending his country after the horrific October 7 attacks, which we have talked about in great detail on this floor--the assaults, the rapes, the beheadings of babies, the killing of innocent civilians. Israel is responding to what occurred and what happened to our Jewish brothers and sisters and others in Israel on October 7, and it is taking the attack to Hamas.

We recognize the difficulty of Hamas being fully intertwined with the civilians in Gaza. Israel is taking steps to send text messages, drop 15 million or more leaflets, leave voice messages, give 2 weeks' advance notice, do what they can to try to make sure that there are protections for civilians, keeping the overall civilian-to-combatant casualty ratio below historic norms by most accounts, including third- party observation.

Looking at Rafah, the international community is saying you can't go into Rafah. You go into Rafah and find 50-plus tunnels--now, I think it is 75 or more tunnels--that we know were being used to carry out attacks on Israel.

Israel is under assault right now, with missiles being fired with regularity by Hamas into Israel. This is Israel. This is not some random entity. This is Israel, our close ally, and you have a body, to which we have no sovereignty, for this country, that is being given to the International Criminal Court because we are not a party to it. We are not undermining our sovereignty. We are not going to do that as America.

That is what this stands for. That is what this says. This says that we should not be allowing the International Criminal Court to not just go after the Israeli Prime Minister but the door that that opens to go after our own servicemembers, to go after our own generals, to go after America's interests.

What happens here is going to be coming at us and our country. That is why it is important to speak with one voice, with authority, with force.

We have been working in good faith, and again, I want to compliment the ranking member and Democratic staff. Again, we were working through the weekend. I do believe there were amendments that we could have agreed to. There were changes that we could have agreed to that would have had bipartisan support here. I understand that the White House did not agree to that, and I think that is a shame.

I think the White House made the wrong call, plain and simple. I think the White House got this wrong, and I just hope that we will be here today united as a body, putting aside partisan differences, and that we will move this bill forward and send it to the Senate, where the Senate can work its will.

If the Senate wants to modify it and send it back to the House and try to address any of the concerns that have been raised by my colleagues on the other side of the aisle or this side of the aisle, great, the Senate can do that. They can send it back to us, and we can send a product to the President.

We need to address this, and we need to address it quickly. If we allow this to fester, then we undermine our own national security, and importantly, at this moment in time, we give credence and power to an international body to which we are not a party, to which Israel is not a party, and that is being used to flex political muscle by targeting the Prime Minister for defending his own country. That we cannot stand for.

Mr. Speaker, I hope that my colleagues support H.R. 8282.

Will the gentleman yield? Just making the Parliamentarian happy.

Mr. Speaker, for everybody watching at home, Social Security is predominantly on autopilot, mandatory accounts.

Interest is effectively on autopilot.

You don't want to default.

Now, you put defense over here as discretionary, although there are some issues in there in terms of some social spending. Call that discretionary. You have got Medicare, which is effectively mandatory. What you don't have on that chart is that obviously Medicare is growing and exploding, correct?

Right, and it is going up in perpetuity.

We have got a bubble that is going to----

Also not on there are significant other mandatory things. For example, we have veteran spending. We just voted on MILCON-VA. We have veteran spending based on burn pits and stuff that is about a $500 million or $600 million mandatory account.

We have what we do with food stamps on the farm bill and other things that we categorize as mandatory but are a little bit more discretionary.

My point is--and I don't want to take the gentleman's time; I will yield back--that you are putting up there stuff that we pretty much have to pay.

Mr. Speaker, I yield back to the gentleman from Arizona.

Will the gentlemen yield for one quick question?

Do our revenues for this year, FY24, cover what is on that chart?

Mr. Speaker, my main point for the average user is that the revenues we bring in from general taxes, corporate taxes, FICA taxes, the chart that the gentleman was just showing, does not cover even all of what the gentleman just put forward, much less the remainder of the government, the remainder of the Department of Justice, the Department of Homeland Security, the FBI.

I don't want to take up the gentleman's time, although I have time on the back end, and we are happy to bleed them together, but I would just add to the gentleman's point.

We have to address the drivers that the gentleman comes down and talks about every week for the most part and comes down with regularity that get to the heart of those numbers.

We look at it like some monolithic amount that we can't address when, in fact, if you drive the price of healthcare down through the innovations the gentleman talks about, through cures, competition, and the things that we know we could do, you could massively reduce that Medicare burden, reduce interest, and deal with a lot of the expenses. Then, as we grow our economy, we get ourselves into a good place.

Does the gentleman agree?

Correct.

Will the gentleman yield?

Would the gentleman agree that the fundamental obstacle to achieving what the gentleman just outlined is that it has a lot of complexities in it?

We will go through committees, figure out the work. It is tough work. We will do it.

Would the gentleman agree the primary obstacle to that is, and I am going to use this term broadly, the buildup--the gentleman referenced K Street and the army of lobbyists--the sort of corporatization of all things that we do, meaning healthcare is driven predominantly by the massive corporations--pharmaceutical, hospitals, pharma. My life got saved by great innovation in pharmaceuticals when I had cancer. I am for it.

But the corporatization, the corporate cronyism, the extent you have these massive entities, including, by the way, those that are driving our food supply, all the regulations prohibiting small farms and small meatpacking plants to ship the stuff to have local produce and local foods so that you can eat healthy. It is the massive corporate interests that come here lobbying for benefits and tax breaks that, by the way, are going to be front and center among Republicans when everyone says that we must go back and put in place all the tax benefits, which some are good, as I was talking about earlier.

Does the gentleman agree that some of these are part of the problem?

Madam Speaker, I thank the gentleman from Arizona (Mr. Schweikert), my colleague and friend, for his steadfast dedication to ensuring

the American people are informed, at least the 72 people that were watching C-SPAN while you were extemporaneously educating them.

In all seriousness, we were able to push this out. We were able to do clips. It is important that we continue to have this conversation.

The gentleman is correct, in very broad terms and very specific terms, about the extent to which we have a fiscal crisis looming. It is incumbent upon this body to do something about it.

We have structural reforms we could put in place that the gentleman is talking about. I think we just covered that quite nicely, but we also need to be aware of what we need to do with our discretionary spending and using the power of the purse, both to constrain the bureaucracy that is still a third of that annual spending and constrain that spending also for the purpose of limiting tyranny over the American people.

This is one of those things that frustrates me among my colleagues, both Democrat and Republican. The gentleman from Arizona is not in that group, by the way, because the gentleman from Arizona, I think, largely would agree with what I am getting at here. I have colleagues who will always slip into saying: It doesn't matter. Stop worrying about discretionary. Stop having a fight about $100 billion or $30 billion or whatever your debate is about constraining discretionary spending.

When I say that to the average listener, what I mean is what we spend every year on the stuff you see in the bureaucracy, such as the Department of Justice, the Department of Commerce, the Department of Homeland Security, and the Department of Defense, all of those things that make up the alphabet soup of government that, frankly, are the things impacting your life every day, or undermining, frankly, your freedoms every day.

The thing that drives me crazy in this town is you will hear Members of Congress who come down here and they say: Chip, we have a razor-thin majority. Don't you understand? Chip, it is all mandatory spending. You don't have to focus on this $100 billion. We are talking about $35 trillion in debt.

That happens all the time. I assume the gentleman from Pennsylvania (Mr. Perry) would agree with me. I assume, in his career, since he has been here a few years longer than I have, that we hear that as an excuse for ignoring our job to constrain the bureaucracy, using the power of the purse, almost every single day that we come down here to the floor, when we are in committee or in our conference meetings. I assume the gentleman agrees with me on that point.

You are quite right.

The gentleman is correct. I think that is one of the things I want to stress. I came down here not to talk about spending. However, on the heels of our friend from Arizona, I want to make the point and then pivot to what I think is important to talk about. I am sure the gentleman will agree.

In the context, it matters, right? What we fund matters. We are funding the Department of Homeland Security and for them to utterly fail to secure the homeland and endanger our own people and empower migrants to be able to actually flood in and get dumped into the United States, including the individual who was paroled into the United States and killed Laken Riley, including individuals who were dumped into the United States and shot those two police officers in New York just last week, including the individual who killed a woman named Lizbeth Medina in my own State--killed her, and her mom found her in the bathtub when she was supposed to be cheerleading on the streets. I can give example after example. We are funding that. We are funding the DHS that does that.

We are funding the FBI that has been politicized against the former President, against our own people, like Scott Smith and Mark Houck and other people around the country. We are politicizing the FBI and the Department of Justice that is using the FACE Act to put a 75-year-old woman in jail for 2 years for praying at an abortion facility.

You are paying for that, ladies and gentlemen. You, the American taxpayer, are paying for that, and guess what? With all due respect to my Republican colleagues, both Democrats and Republicans are funding it.

They are funding it, and they come down and they say: Well, we have a duty to do that.

Our Democratic colleagues will say: We must do all these things. You are politicizing this. You are making it this way.

My Republican colleagues will say: Well, Chip, of course, we would like to do that. Of course, we would like to fix it, but you don't understand. You can't do math. We have a razor-thin majority. We can't possibly get it done.

By the way, when did they ever talk about the razor-thin majority in the Senate, which exists?

One last point. Has my friend from Pennsylvania heard the same issues? I won't say who, but I have already heard very important Members of this body, in terms of their rank and committee, already talking about the fact that, no matter what happens in November, if we win the White House and President Trump is in the White House and if we win the House of Representatives, even grow our majority, and if we win back the Senate and have a majority of two, three, or four, depending on how you go look at the scoreboard, that we will not have 60 votes.

We are told: Unless you can do something on reconciliation, which is a maneuver--for all you Americans out there--to find a way to bend around the 60-vote threshold in the Senate, well, then you are just stuck. We are sorry. You just have to accept it, Chip.

Does the gentleman hear that all the time, and has he already heard Members already setting the stage for January to say: We can't do the things that we said we would do?

Right.

In the meantime, I want to pivot to the border point you just raised, but I would like to make the point. We are funding all those rules and the requirements that are driving the American family out of the ability to afford a life.

Just today, I had a crack in my windshield, and I was just there at the dealer's getting it looked at and getting it worked on. We couldn't go do a nondealer part for reasons I won't get into. It was $1,100 for a windshield. They used to be 200 bucks. You would call Safelite or somebody to come out, and they would replace the glass. Now they say: Well, you can't just replace the glass because it has all these sensors in the windshield.

Right. Guess what? Now, increasingly, all of these things are mandated by the idiots in this Chamber.

Right. The idiots in this Chamber voted to cause that to happen and back up what the regulators down the street are forcing on the average American.

Here is what I don't get, right? All my colleagues here, if I forced my colleagues, one by one, to go down to the microphone on any one of these issues and explain to their constituents: I am going to vote--as some Republicans did last fall--I am going to vote against eliminating a kill switch in a car, which is going to dramatically increase the cost of that car, dramatically increase the cost of that windshield, dramatically increase the chance that that car is going to shut down in the 20-below-zero cold in North Dakota and leave you on the side of the road because you have a computer determining whether you can start the car, if I made every Member go defend that, they would start to think twice about it because that is a hard thing to defend.

However, they didn't want to vote against it because MADD came around and lobbied for it. They didn't want to be against that, so 19 Republicans say: No. Sorry. I can't vote against killing the kill switch.

If you put it out there and start really telling the American people: Hey, should we have something in there that protects people from drunk driving, they will say: Well, I guess so.

What if that would cost you another $10,000 for the car?

They would say: Are you out of your freaking mind?

However, we do it, and we do it for the same reason Mr. Schweikert was talking about why our healthcare costs are high. It is because there is an army of lobbyists in town, or there is an army of people who are going to go out and say certain things. The one thing Mr. Schweikert said, when he talked about how we are going to make sure that we are protecting incumbents, he didn't mention about protecting the incumbency of the people in this room, people who hold onto their election certificate like it is the most important damned thing they will ever have in their life, instead of the opportunity to come here and do what we said we would do.

Does the gentleman agree?

There were 85,000 documented in one case, for sure.

And I am glad the gentleman brings this issue up because I would note that, today, while I was sitting in the House Judiciary Committee with the gentleman from California (Mr. Kiley)--who just came in to join us, who is going to take the microphone, I am sure, in a little bit--we had the Attorney General before us. We were questioning the Attorney General in the House Judiciary Committee.

In that exchange, I was asking the Attorney General about the extent to which he believes that it is wrong for Texas to have passed what we call SB4 in Texas to empower Texans to do the job of stopping people from being released into the United States, contrary to law, and endangering the people of Texas that has led directly to the death of Texans, does he believe, as the Attorney General of the United States, that it is wrong for Texas to do that?

The reason I asked him that question is because, as the Attorney General of the United States, he is, of course, leading litigation to stop us. He is suing Texas, taking us to court to try to prevent us from doing it because of the Supremacy Clause. The Federal Government is supposed to do this, and you don't have a say.

Well, hold on a second. If the Federal Government is supposed to secure the border of the United States and manage this inflow of people and it is violating the laws and dumping people into the United States, are we saying that the people of Texas can't, under the invasion clause or otherwise, say: It is our duty as the people of Texas to protect our citizens and our people?

The Attorney General, of course, said no. He has got to take us to court and go sue us. The fact is he is, therefore, ignoring--

I think he would say it is not.

I think he would say if you have got a literal army of people coming across the river, I suppose. I think they would probably fight us on that.

I am not sure that they have stipulated the former, but they certainly want to try to stop us from identifying and recognizing the latter. The reality is that the people of Texas are fed up and they are asking their leaders to do the job the Federal Government won't do.

I will compliment Republicans. I am not afraid to criticize both Republicans or Democrats. I will compliment Republicans for having done a year ago what we have never done, which is set

aside the absurdity of saying you have got to do amnesty and setting aside the absurdity of saying you have got to open the floodgates to more people coming into the country, even though we allow about a million people a year to come in.

Legally.

Even though we have 51.5 million people in the United States who are foreign-born. You have the Chamber of Commerce and all of the big interests coming down here saying: You guys have got to open up more immigration. You have to do it.

We always bow down. We always say: Okay, we will do that. We will do amnesty, but can we just get some security? We beg for crumbs.

A year ago, we did something different. We came together as Republicans, and we passed the most comprehensive and strongest border security bill we have ever passed.

Frankly, I don't think my colleagues fully understand the historical importance of that, even many who support it and talk about it and tweet about it.

I have been here in some various forms, now 5 years as Member of Congress. I was here as chief of staff for Senator Ted Cruz. I was on the Senate Judiciary Committee as a lawyer. I watched the debates and the failures and the Gangs of Eight and all of the machinations. I watched in 2017 when we had two different bills, so-called Goodlatte 1, Goodlatte 2. We left President Trump stranded. We blew it.

Last year, we came together, we set the terms of what we will now do next year. That matters.

When Republicans unite to achieve something, not unity for the sake of it. I get so tired of hearing my colleagues talk about unity. I say something like: To do what?

It doesn't matter. We have just got to unite. To do what? Right?

When we unite to say we are going to stand up and say we are going to secure the border of the United States, we did it. We didn't always agree, by the way. People swept aside our differences of opinion a year ago.

We fought through it. We met, we worked, and we passed the best border security bill we have ever passed. The Senate has sat on it. They tried to pass a sham bill, which the President today went to the microphone and gave up the game. Remember the Senate bill? The Senate bill said: Oh, don't worry, guys. We are going to cap the flow at 5,000.

A day. Which, by the way, Obama's Secretary of Homeland Security, Jeh Johnson, said a thousand a day was basically a crisis.

We are going to cap it at 5,000 a day, rest easy, but we are going to have all these exceptions. We are going to have exceptions for unaccompanied children; exceptions for parolees when we are violently just dumping people into the United States under parole; exceptions for foreign nationals who use the CBP One app, which is another version of parole.

We objected. All the Democrats said: You guys are not doing this bipartisan bill.

Guess what the President did today? He went to the microphone, and he looked at America and he said: ``We need to regain control of the border.''

The President of the United States today acknowledged to everybody watching and to every American that we do not have control of the border. That is what the President did today.

The President also went to the microphone today and said: ``I will cap it at 2,500.'' If the President of the United States has the authority today to issue an order to cap it at 2,500, did he not have that authority 2 months ago or 6 months ago or 2 years ago or 3\1/2\ years ago? Of course, he did. That gives up the game on the Senate bill when they said they would cap it at 5,000 and the President comes in 3 months later, why?

It is because he is looking at the polls and he is looking at his butt getting kicked and he is looking at losing the House and the Senate. Now, he is, like, oh, crap. I have got to do something to actually look like I care about the border when everybody in America knows I don't.

Madam Speaker, so he did it. He went to the microphone, and he said it and he made a joke of the Senate bill that all of those Senate Democrats and all of our Democratic colleagues have been lying to the American people that we have been obstructing good bills when they are the ones that put forward a sham bill and the President made it clear today.

Does the gentleman agree?

I will ask the gentleman a quick question, then I will leave both of us a little time at the end. We have got about 9 minutes left.

I will give a chance for us to talk about June 6, which is coming up in a couple days. I want to ask one thing today, in that we just talked about the border. We just talked about the extent to which they are wide-open, being ignored, endangering the American people. It is purposeful.

We just talked about the attorney general suing to get in front of Texas trying to secure our borders. I just want to point out the extent to which the current administration is defying and undermining the rule of law on a daily basis.

As we sit here in this Chamber and we sit here under Moses and we sit here in recognition of the importance of the rule of law, this administration is at war with the rule of law: the borders are open, ignoring the law; student loan repayments, ignoring the Supreme Court and the law to try to buy votes. You have got wide-open streets and criminals on the streets, and we are not prosecuting crimes that we need to prosecute.

More importantly, you have an administration hell-bent on trying to use the political apparatus to target a former President and to use it in direct violation of everything we understand and know about the importance of blind justice. You cannot get away from that reality.

Today, we have an attorney general who is choosing to target one President and say: I am going to charge you with a crime. Right? And then choosing not to charge the other President for basically the same crime with the classified record stuff. You have got the Attorney General of the United States saying, I am not going to turn over audio of the very rationale for why Special Counsel Hur said: No, we shouldn't go after the current President because, frankly, he is not mentally able to do it, and he will be a sympathetic figure.

They don't want to turn over the audio, even though it is the same material, and the attorney general testified to that today.

That is an abomination to the rule of law that you have got the New York prosecutor in complete and obvious coordination with the attorney general, where the deputy to the number three goes up and works with the D.A. in

New York and they prosecute the former President of the United States.

They prosecute him on a State law charge, but then they bastardize and shoehorn in a Federal charge they won't even define. Then they use that to run through multiple charges that most observers say may not even get through the State system without their supreme court in New York throwing it out.

We have got 6 minutes. I will get to this other issue.

Does the gentleman see the problem with what is happening to the rule of law, the very foundation that causes migrants to want to come here and the strength of this economy and this country?

Correct.

I assume the gentleman would agree with me--and I am going to switch topics, but it is a transition that makes it more meaningful--that when the boys walked into the wall of bullets that they walked into at Normandy in 1944 that they weren't doing it to toss aside the rule of law and the Constitution, all that this country stands for.

I have chosen not to go to Normandy and to make the trip. I didn't wear the uniform. I want to leave it to those who did. Some who wore the uniform aren't going. I want the gentleman to comment on this as he has served for almost three decades or something along those lines in the United States Armed Forces--just so everybody knows, today is June 4.

In 2 days, it will be 80 years since those men got in those boats, jumped out into the stormy seas, ran on to the sand, ran into a wall of bullets, went up the cliffs, and then went all the way to Bastogne, to Germany, went through all of what they went through, this is the message from General Eisenhower on the order of June 6, 1944:

``Soldiers, Sailors, and Airmen of the Allied Expeditionary Force!

``You are about to embark upon the Great Crusade, toward which we have striven these many months. The eyes of the world are upon you. The hope and prayers of liberty-loving people everywhere march with you. In company with our brave Allies and brothers-in-arms on other Fronts, you will bring about the destruction of the German war machine, the elimination of Nazi tyranny over the oppressed peoples of Europe, and security for ourselves in a free world.

``Your task will not be an easy one. Your enemy is well trained, well equipped and battle-hardened. He will fight savagely.

``But this is the year 1944! Much has happened since the Nazi triumphs of 1940-41. The United Nations have inflicted upon the Germans great defeats, in open battle, man-to-man. Our air offensive has seriously reduced their strength in the air and their capacity to wage war on the ground. Our Home Fronts have given us an overwhelming superiority in weapons and munitions of war, and placed at our disposal great reserves of trained fighting men. The tide has turned! The free men of the world are marching together to Victory!

``I have full confidence in your courage, devotion to duty and skill in battle. We will accept nothing less than full Victory!

``Good luck! And let us beseech the blessing of Almighty God upon this great and noble undertaking.''

Those words speak for themselves. We honor and tribute those who lost their lives, those who fought, those who came home, those few World War II veterans who remain with us.

I will turn over the remaining 1\1/2\ minutes to my friend who wore the uniform that I did not wear.

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

Mr. Speaker, anybody who is watching the world events unfolding today is well aware that our dear friends in Israel are under attack, but they are not just under attack by Hamas. They are, in fact, under attack from the anti-Western civilization radical progressives across the globe and, in particular, at the International Criminal Court.

In all ways, with respect to this attack on Israel, on Western civilization, on our own values, on the abuse of an international organization with no real legitimacy, the international court, the United States should have Israel's back.

Let's look back for a second at October 7. Let's look at what Israel is dealing with in addition to a long history of being under attack, of facing foes in the Middle East, of having to live in constant fear of attack, of having to live under the technology provided in a mutual relationship between the United States and Israel, the Iron Dome, with David's Sling, and with all the technology to shoot missiles down.

How many Americans would like to be sitting in Manhattan, D.C., Austin, Dallas, San Francisco, or any other part of this country, knowing that the only reason they are safely sitting there is that the missiles that are constantly being fired at them are being taken down by technology? I don't think that would sit too well with most Americans. I don't think most Americans would sit back if rockets

were being fired into our Nation from Juarez into El Paso.

I don't think we would just sit back and say that is great, fine, keep firing missiles, and we will just put up a shield and shoot them down. I think we would do something about it, and I think it would be pretty violent. I think we would be right to do so.

Look at October 7 for our friends in Israel. Let's start with the fact that 22 American citizens were killed. Let's add to it that 1,000 Israelis or more were killed and almost 3,000 injured. Mr. Speaker, 4,500 rockets were fired from Gaza by Hamas into Israel, and 1,300 targets were struck. Not since the Holocaust has this large of a number of Jews been killed in a single day. That is the truth.

Hamas beheaded at least 40 babies. Let that sink in for a minute. Hamas beheaded at least 40 Israeli babies.

Hamas terrorists not only raped and murdered Israeli women, but they forced husbands, families, and friends to watch. That happened. We have documentary evidence. We know this occurred.

A compilation of those atrocities captured on video shows gunmen shooting the dead bodies of civilians in cars, militants in the process of beheading a body with a hoe, burnt corpses thrown in a dumpster.

An eyewitness on October 7 said: ``To be afraid for your kids' life and your wife, it is a whole new level of fearing.''

A survivor of the attacks in Israel on October 7 said: ``I just waited pretty much that they will come and murder me, my wife, and my kids inside our house. I thought maybe if the terrorists enter my house, I will go out so they will kill me and they will leave my family aside.''

Another one: ``It was the worst horrific war scenes that you see only in movies around us.''

Another: The gunfire ``was nonstop,'' and we were ``waiting and waiting, and it is continuing, and you hear only the weapons of Hamas,'' and realize ``no one is here to save us.''

``As a woman who was there, I can say that the fear is endless. It can't be described in words. To be a woman in captivity is to be in constant fear, but the men there also undergo abuse,'' said one woman who was abducted during the October 7 attack.

There remain today over 100 hostages being held. So now steps in the International Criminal Court, the ICC. When President Trump came into office, he rightfully recognized the threat of the International Criminal Court. The international court was created under the guise of investigating and prosecuting the world's most serious crimes, but it actually represents a significant threat to our Nation's sovereignty.

In 2020, when President Trump came into office, he issued an executive order punishing by way of sanctions anyone at the ICC who goes after the United States, United States servicemembers, or our allies, such as Israel.

What did President Biden do in all of his infinite wisdom? He revoked those sanctions as soon as he got in office, effectively giving the ICC a free pass to target United States citizens and our allies, such as Israel.

They made an escalatory and unprecedented step just recently threatening to issue illegitimate arrest warrants for Prime Minister Netanyahu and other Israeli officials for alleged war crimes in Gaza. The application marks the first time ICC has sought to prosecute a major United States ally or the leader of a democratic country.

What you are seeing happen is an unprecedented assault on Western civilization on Israel and, by extension, on our sovereignty as Americans.

I view this court as an illegitimate court. It has no authority over America. Technically, we are a signatory to the court because President Clinton signed on, but he did not submit it to the Senate for any kind of ratification, so it has no legal force in America. Do you think that the ICC will target Americans? You bet they will.

If we don't act right now to quash what is occurring with the ICC targeting the Prime Minister of Israel--think about that. An international court with no real legal authority in the United States is targeting the Prime Minister of Israel for responding with military force to the attacks--rockets, murders, rapes, beheadings--levied against the citizens he represents as the Prime Minister, levied against them directly from Hamas.

By the way, Israel is a nation that has taken the unprecedented step in history to give warnings to citizens, civilians in Gaza, up to 2 weeks' advance notice. In one case, it dropped 15 million leaflets across Gaza to warn them that they needed to clear out because Israel was going to take out Hamas facilities, leaving text messages and voicemails, taking every step possible to warn civilians to move away from Hamas targets.

This is going to be studied for years to come what Israel has been doing to keep the civilian to combatant casualty as low as it is. We believe it is somewhere between 1 and 2. That is, frankly, well below the norms and the standards the United Nations talks about, well below some of the historic norms even for the United States.

This must be stopped because when they are going after the Prime Minister of Israel they are going to go after us. Put that aside. We can't stand by and allow an international tribunal to be targeting our ally and friend Israel for simply defending itself against attack.

This is why I was proud to join with Representative Mast from Florida and Representative Stefanik from New York to introduce the Illegitimate Court Counteraction Act to impose sanctions on the ICC officials who seek to go after U.S. citizens or our allies. It is modeled very similarly to the Trump executive order. It is also mirrored in legislation offered by Senator Tom Cotton from Arkansas over in the United States Senate.

As I have stated, the ICC, the International Criminal Court, is an illegitimate court. It represents a threat to the United States and our sovereignty. Frankly, we should be more aggressive than what we have put in this legislation. We are seeking to move quickly in a world in which the current administration is at war with Israel while they are trying to contend that they are allies.

In 2021, President Biden reportedly ignored a request for a phone call with the Israeli Foreign Minister. Earlier this month, President Biden threatened to cut off Israel's military aid while they are fighting a war against Hamas. Now, he is actively criticizing Israel's military strategy on the world stage.

In a Politico article it was stated: ``Top officials are publicly calling Israel's strategy in Gaza self-defeating and likely to open the door to Hamas' return--a level of criticism of the Middle East ally not seen since the war began in October.''

The Biden administration betrayed Israel, and frankly, our own well- being as a nation at the United Nations earlier this year when America abstained from a vote--abstained from a vote--when the United Nations was calling and demanding for an immediate cease-fire, which would have been a one-sided cease-fire, hamstringing Israel in its defense against Hamas.

The United Nations lowered its flag to mourn the recent death of the ``Butcher of Tehran,'' the President of Iran. The United States Deputy Ambassador to the United Nations, Robert Wood, stood for the moment of silence in honor of the former president of Iran.

This is what this administration is doing. They are taking steps directly to undermine Israel. We have never seen this kind of unprecedented undermining of one of, if not our closest, ally at a time when they most need our support.

I am not one to believe in blind support. I have, in fact, voted against funding here because I thought the funding was foolish and misguided because it included funding that would go to Hamas. We voted for, I think, about 15 or $16 billion of aid to Israel, something I generally supported, but it included $9 billion in humanitarian aid which we knew based on history, common sense, and experience would go to Hamas, and, in fact, it has.

We should not blindly support anybody. We should not just write blank checks. We should not pat ourselves on the back for support. When you have got an International Criminal Court that has no legal force in the United States, when you have got an International Criminal Court threatening to go after the Prime Minister of our very

close, if not closest, ally for defending itself when it is having rockets fired at itself from enemies that beheaded 40 of their own babies, I am sorry, that criminal court needs to be forcefully condemned by the United States.

At the same time this is all going on--and I hope we will bring forward this legislation forthwith. It is a good bill. It has, I think, 60 cosponsors and growing with a cross-section ideologically of the Conference. I hope we will bring this bill forward when we get back from Memorial Day recess.

I want to compliment the Speaker of the House, Mike Johnson, for his work in trying to move this bill forward. I want to compliment the chairman of the Foreign Affairs Committee, Michael McCaul, for his work in trying to get this moved forward and working with a broad cross-section of us to get legislation to condemn the International Criminal Court, pass sanctions, force them to understand that if they are going to act against our ally, if they are going to take an unprecedented step of issuing warrants against the Prime Minister for alleged war crimes, that we will sanction them and that they will have no welcome mat in the United States.

By sanctioning, we mean that all of the actors involved will not be welcome here. Their families will not be welcome here. Their visas would be revoked. Other penalties and measures, including any funds that potentially flow from the United States to get to the International Criminal Court, which are not supposed to occur but often do through these various NGOs, that we would take all the steps we can to undermine an International Criminal Court that has no basis.

While that is going on remember this: At every stage of the war from October 7, the regime of Egyptian President el-Sisi has undermined Israel's war effort in a bid to prevent the Jewish state from defeating Hamas.

Now, the financial interests of the el-Sisi family appeared to have been advanced significantly through cooperation with Hamas' efforts to build tunnels across the border with Egypt.

Now, how do we know that? Well, in the last 10 days or so, going back to May 11, Israel revealed that during early stages of the IDF's, the Israeli Defense Forces' operation in Rafah--now pause for a second. The world geniuses, all of the elites in the world body said, no, Israel can't go into Rafah. They were adamant about it. These are war crimes. You can't go into Rafah. There are civilians there.

Well, Israel has been going into Rafah. They need to root out the battalions there. They need to kill more Hamas. They need to destroy Hamas, leveling it to the ground, minimize civilian casualties and find every way they can to restore peace and well-being by destroying their enemy. We would want nothing less as Americans, I assure you.

Israel revealed that during the early stages of their operation in Rafah, IDF forces discovered more than 50 underground tunnels that traversed the international border between Egypt and Gaza. This story is not getting nearly the attention that it deserves.

What is it that the international bodies, what is it that the Palestinians in Gaza, the folks associated with Hamas and those that are enemies of Israel, what is it that they didn't want us to know?

The scope of the cross-border tunnel project indicates that Egyptian authorities were not merely aware of Hamas' operation, they were supporting it. They were partners. They were making money. By the way, there are all sorts of existing international agreements dating back to 1979 between Egypt and Israel.

How much American money is flowing to Egypt? How much American money is flowing to the very countries, the very entities that are attacking Israel? Yet, here they didn't want people to go into Rafah. They didn't want Israel to go in. Why? Because they knew that the game was going to be given up, that there was a concerted, coordinated effort throughout the Middle East region to find ways to dismantle, disrupt, attack, and destroy Israel.

That is the truth.

This President is effectively supporting it. He is pulling back on the resources given to Israel, undermining the diplomacy, calling for one-sided cease-fires, funding Iran, lifting sanctions on Iran, allowing billions of dollars of their oil money to flow to China, which is enriching Iran and empowering China and undermining our national security, undermining our ally, Israel. That is all occurring right now, all while the International Criminal Court is targeting the Prime Minister of Israel.

Now, this is nothing new. Egypt has tried to undermine Israel's military operations in Gaza every step of the way. Egypt has blocked the exit of Gazans from the war zone. Egypt has blocked humanitarian aid from entering Gaza while accusing Israel of genocide at the International Court of Justice.

Egypt has threatened to abrogate its peace treaty with Israel and tied the future of peace to Israel's bowing to pressure not to operate in Rafah. Egypt has undermined hostage talks and waged political warfare against Israel at the United Nations and other international arenas.

There is nothing new here, except we now know right in front of us the new information about Egypt reveals what we have known about the region's attack and assault on Israel.

There are 50 tunnels, and they keep counting them. Bodies of hostages have been found in the tunnels. It has been clear that there has been the movement of weaponry through the tunnels.

This is just more of the same from an administration that is endangering America on the world stage, undermining the safety and security of the American people, a disastrous, radical, progressive Democratic regime in the White House. Basically, all that regime is is propping up a President and using him as a puppet to carry out their radical leftist agenda.

There has been no accountability for the disastrous Afghanistan withdrawal. There has been no justice for the 13 servicemembers who died there. There has been no accountability for the billions in military equipment left behind.

This administration has created the worst border crisis in the history of our Nation and endangered our citizens. Authorities in this country apprehended an illegal alien just this week with a van they called a rape dungeon on wheels. They found children's toys inside with condoms and ropes.

This is your country.

This is happening in your backyard.

There are little girls getting sold into the sex trafficking trade as we speak. An illegal alien from Nicaragua is accused of restraining and blindfolding a 12-year-old girl while attempting to sexually assault her. The alien illegally crossed the Texas border in October of 2021 and was released--released. Mr. Speaker, 80 known or suspected terrorists have been encountered at the southwest border just in fiscal year `24--more than all of those encountered in FY `17 to `21 combined.

Meanwhile, we have sent $175 billion for a proxy war in Ukraine. We have no clear strategy and no defined objective, no oversight on spending. This administration is endangering the citizens it is supposed to be taking care of under the Constitution and defending our borders and securing us against enemies foreign and domestic.

That is the truth.

There is no defense.

If organizations like the ICC, the International Criminal Court, if organizations like the United Nations, if organizations like the World Health Organization, and the rest of them actually cared about human rights, they would be going after the real war criminals. They don't care about Hamas' crimes.

Yeah, the ICC says they are issuing warrants for Hamas, but they are trying to constrain Israel from going out and attacking and destroying Hamas.

What they care about is attacking and tearing down everything that is great and good about Western civilization that has done more for more people around this world than any other civilization in history.

Whether the President knows it is going on or not, that is what the Biden administration's actions have all been driving towards these past 3 years. They are destroying our sovereignty and weakening us on the outside while pushing chaos, economic ruin, and moral disintegration domestically.

I hope my colleagues will support the ICC sanctions bill. It is important. I hope we will all support it.

I have to address one other thing because while I think we will have unity among Republicans in pushing back on this International Criminal Court that is undermining our sovereignty and targeting our friend and ally Israel, and while I hope that we will be able to speak with one voice when we get back on that subject, there is another thing that is going on consistently here in this town.

Mr. Speaker, 18 months ago some of us set out to change the institution. We set out to change the rules and open up the process to be able to have more amendments, have more voice for the entirety of the majority in the decisionmaking of the leadership.

For a while that resulted in some changes. Last year, we were able to get Republican and broad support for what we called the Limit, Save, Grow Act in order to put forward a vision for limiting the increase in debt while expanding fiscal responsibility.

It was good legislation. We passed the strongest border security bill that we have ever passed. It had no amnesty in it. It had legitimate border security measures that have been rejected by Democrats, but would, by any objective measure, secure the border of the United States and almost assuredly would have meant that the killer who was paroled into the United States by the Biden administration would not have been able to be paroled and would not have been able to kill Laken Riley.

We passed that bill. We passed that bill as Republicans, uniting to do that. We passed seven appropriations bills. We processed about 1,100 amendments. We were able to move the ball forward in order to unite, in order to get this train back on track to see if we could do the appropriations process the right way.

There are many people in this body, particularly among my Republican colleagues, who want to hide behind rules and hide behind votes on rules, taking down rules, to say that we are not actually carrying out regular order.

Now, what does that mean for the average citizen out there? There are people in this town who want to have every excuse possible for blowing the budget of the United States, racking up debt, leaving the border wide open, sending more money overseas for endless wars, and then coming to us and crying about how, somehow, we don't get it. We don't get it.

We are supposed to all work as a team and agree to all the rules. Does it matter what is in the rule? What good is unity if your unity is for a terrible and stupid and destructive purpose? What good is unity if unity is going to rack up more debt and destroy our budget and destroy our children's futures and empower bureaucrats, empower tyrants, take away liberty, leave borders open, allow people to die, empower China, and send money to Ukraine?

What good are promises to say that you are going to secure the border of the United States before you deal with Ukraine and then do nothing of the sort? What good are rules that carry out that as a result?

When you hear a Republican decrying the fact that some of us want to say no and stand athwart history, yelling stop, to quote William F. Buckley, ask them what they have done. Ask them what they have done to limit spending, cut spending, secure the border. Ask them if they have done anything they said they would do. Ask them. Ask them to prove it. Ask them to show their votes, because nothing is going to change in this town as long as people bow down to the power brokers who tell you how it is.

I will again state on the floor of this Chamber, I answer to God, the Constitution, and the 750,000 people who sent me here. I answer to no committee chairman. I answer to no Speaker. I answer to no colleague. I answer to those Texans I represent and following the law.

My election certificate is every bit as valuable as anybody else's here. If they don't like it and want to go home and explain why they saddle up with Democrats for more Democrat support and majority Democrat support and they want to try to explain their votes, go ahead.

Explain the kill switches on cars that you voted for. Explain the Republicans who voted against defunding UNRWA last September 3 weeks before Israel was attacked by people funded by UNRWA. Explain that. The American people sent us here to change this place.

I had a colleague just a minute ago in a meeting who was just saying: Been here 14 years and we have done none of the things that we set out to do.

Amen.

We have an obligation as Members of this body to actually do the things we said we would do. I believe that the efforts that we set out to do 18 months ago resulted in positive change, and I am not going to let go of those things.

We did manage to hold nondefense spending flat. Defense spending that went up was paid for out of the hide of the IRS expansion and out of COVID money. We passed the best border security bill we could. We set the terms of the fight with the Limit, Save, Grow bill, for the defense spending bill. We put caps in place, which have already been busted. We started to push this place in the right direction and that is the direction we ought to go back to.

Over the next 5 or 6 months, the American people are going to have choices to make. I believe that they ought to return a Republican majority of the House and give us a Republican majority in the Senate, and I think they ought to put Donald Trump in the White House.

None of that will matter if Republicans aren't willing to come here and do what we said we would do and put every ounce of your election certificate on the line to do what you said you would do. We didn't come here to sit around for 2 years talking about how we get re- elected. We came here to save the country.

I hope that is what we will focus on doing. I hope most Americans will sit and watch my friend from Arizona's detailed explanations of where this country is headed if we do not seek, not just fiscal responsibility in the broadest sense, but, as he will no doubt say in a few minutes, smart ways that we go about doing what we can do to save this country with its mountains of debt piling up for a variety of reasons, all of which are things we can deal with if we just had the courage to do it instead of looking at each other talking about the next election. Once we get elected, we should do something with it.

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

Mr. Speaker, I notice it must be campaign season. My colleagues on the other side of the aisle are trotting out the age-old push-granny-off-the-cliff campaign talking points. It never fails.

If my colleagues want to have a conversation about how to save Social Security, the trustees just put a report out this week or last week pointing out that it is going to be underwater by 2033. The minority wants to ignore that reality. Instead of figuring out how we are actually going to deal with the problem, Democrats trot out the same old story about taxes.

By any objective measure, by any analysis by left, right, center, Libertarian, conservative, or liberal, you can tax literally the entirety of the top 1 percent of earners, but it can't possibly balance the budget. Literally, the math doesn't work.

We can throw all this around in election-year rhetoric, but the truth is our colleagues on the other side of the aisle are not just watching Social Security go bankrupt, but they are bankrupt in ideas on what to do about it.

The fact is you have to actually constrain spending, discretionary spending, deal with the issues we ought to deal with on mandatory spending, and recognize the fact that we are $34.5 trillion in debt. We are racking up $1 trillion every 3 months. We are now going to crack $1.1 trillion of interest this year alone--$1.1 trillion of interest, which is far more than our entire defense budget.

The fact is our retirees are going to have a problem in 2033. In fact, this trustee's report pointed out that they will be getting 79 cents on the dollar in 2033. We can have a conversation about what you want to do about taxes, but my colleagues on the other side of the aisle are all too happy to regulate and crush the entire American economy to death and drive up inflation, making all those Social Security recipients have less value in their Social Security dollars. That is the truth.

The average American can't afford to live, whether they are earning money in the prime of their earning potential, in their earning years, or whether they are a retiree because the dollar value is decreasing because we are printing money because, frankly, my colleagues on the other side of the aisle have no interest in actually being fiscally responsible--I am an equal opportunity basher of fiscal responsibility--nor do my colleagues on this side of the aisle, to be honest.

It is a repeating problem that never ends, but it is my colleagues on the other side of the aisle, my radical progressive Democratic colleagues--and there is no other way to characterize them--who want to use scare tactics in a campaign year rather than addressing any of the actual fiscal issues that affect our Nation.

The fact is that Democrats are destroying the American Dream, killing the ability of the average American family to prosper. Hardworking American families right now are struggling to pay bills, struggling to be able to buy a car. Why? Because we have regulated them to death. Why? Because, chasing climate fantasy, we are killing the ability of an American to go buy a car with an internal combustion engine.

We are piling up EVs on the lots of dealerships around the country. We are now embracing, because the Biden administration unilaterally embraced, a tailpipe rule that will mandate EV production, two-thirds of the fleet being produced by 2030.

My colleagues are crushing the American Dream before our very eyes.

That is what has happened. The so-called Inflation Reduction Act, mandating massive subsidies of so-called green programs, is actually subsidizing China and the massive corporations that my colleagues on the other side of the aisle decry.

Democrats want to increase the corporate tax rate, which will punish hardworking Americans who are trying to create wealth relative to corporations around the world, but my colleagues on the other side of the aisle don't want to undo the massive corporate subsidies they gave to Green New Deal recipients.

That is the truth, and it is destroying the average American's ability to live. Let's be very clear. Right now, Americans are hurting because of Democratic policies. Right now, Americans can't buy a car, can't go out and afford groceries, can't pay their power bills. Why? Because of my radical progressive Democratic colleagues and their policies regulating our entire economy to death and destroying the average American family.

Let's not talk about the price of homes, the price of real estate. All these things are things that are increasingly highly and heavily regulated. That is problem number one.

Let's talk about what our radical progressive Democratic colleagues are doing to destroy the rule of law. The rule of law is the single greatest thing that attracts people to come to the United States, the single greatest thing that attracts capital to create wealth and to create opportunity. It is the single greatest thing that has distinguished the United States of America and Western civilization from the rest of the world for now centuries, particularly since the founding of this Nation.

The fact is, the rule of law is being destroyed by my radical, progressive Democratic colleagues, it is purposefully being destroyed. This week, we have bills on the floor, and we are talking a lot about our police, our law enforcement officers, but it is not about a week. Weeks are stupid.

We come down here and we do all these things. We do ribbons and we do all these things that say, Oh, we are going to have a week. The fact is every week is police week. Every week our cops are in danger. Every week our cops are being undermined by radical progressives in cities around this country, endangering the people in communities while endangering the law enforcement who are supposed to protect them every single week--not just this one--every week.

Last year, November 2023, in Austin--a city which defunded our police by $150 million, driving down the number of cops. We are now at least 350, if not 500, below the level that we were supposed to be at, the level we were at before COVID because we don't have the ability to recruit law enforcement after decimating the budget. That was the radical city council, led by radical, progressive Democrats in Austin, which are reflected and mirrored by the radical, progressive Democrats sitting right here in this Chamber like Cori Bush who said we should defund the police, like the ranking member of the Judiciary Committee, Mr. Nadler,

who signed a letter along with our colleague, Ms. Ocasio-Cortez, saying we should defund the Metropolitan Transit Authority in New York. They signed that letter.

I asked the ranking member in the Rules Committee last night: How is that working out? How safe does New York feel? How safe is the subway system in New York City? Because right now I think there is a whole hell of a lot of people in New York and around this country who are looking at New York and they are saying: What happened? There is a whole hell of a lot of people who are looking at the Nation's Capital saying: How can I come see my Representatives and come to the Nation's Capital and feel like I am going to be safe?

Last year in Austin, where the radical, progressive Democrats on the city council defunded the police, we saw the unfortunate tragic shooting of police officer Jorge Pastore, who is a hero, who was shot and killed in the line of duty last November.

In San Antonio, we had three San Antonio police officers who were shot during a standoff with an armed career criminal who had absconded after getting bond and was wanted on multiple charges. Why? Because the radical, progressive Democrat DAs and the radical, progressive Democrat judges all funded by Soros, all-purposeful, all in a network around this country, they let these guys out and then they shot cops. 378 officers were shot in the line of duty in 2023, 138 peace officers died in the line of duty in 2023, 48 by gunfire, 10 by vehicular assault, 7 from a heart attack.

There were 150 ambush-style attacks against police in 2023, which claimed the lives of 20 officers. This year, 58 police officers have died in the line of duty. They are under attack every single day and my radical, progressive Democrat colleagues don't care because they are totally fine defunding them. They want to come to the floor of this body and say it is not true, when there are mountains of evidence saying it is. In fact, 113 of my colleagues voted against the resolution which decried the defunding of cops just last year.

In Austin, crime is skyrocketing. Seventy-three homicides in 2023 up from 71 in 2022. The highest level since going back some 40-odd years, all as a result of defunding the police to the tune of $150 million. The fallout, as I said, 350 vacancies. The Austin Police Department stopped responding to nonthreatening 911 calls in the fall of 2021.

Let's think about that. Austin's crime has increased, and overdoses are skyrocketing, in part, due to the lawlessness of our wide-open borders. You see, the rule of law doesn't matter to my radical, progressive Democratic colleagues. The rule of law is being undermined, the safety and security of the people that I represent is being undermined, and it is being made worse.

The fact is, now, we have a fentanyl crisis all across this country and, particularly, in places like Austin, Texas, where just 2 weeks ago, we had--I don't even know the exact number--but there were 75 reported cases of individuals overdosing in a matter of a 72-hour stretch, killing at least nine people. I can't remember the number of people they had to resuscitate by Narcan. It is the largest fentanyl poisoning in Austin for over a decade, and it is happening because this stuff is pouring across our southern border, which brings me to a point: the rule of law.

The rule of law, being undermined by our radical Democratic colleagues, who are undermining cops, defunding cops, the same radical, progressive Democratic colleagues who are leaving our border wide open and exposed, blatantly disregarding the law, undermining the rule of law, the very rule of law that attracts immigrants to come to our country and we have police officers killed by illegal aliens.

In March 2024, an illegal alien from Mexico was charged with crashing his car that killed a 27-year-old Washington State Trooper.

New York police officers were assaulted by a mob of illegal aliens. Five illegal aliens savagely assaulted two officers. The suspects were back on the streets without bail. I think they have been recently given some very minor sentences.

Let's never forget DUI fatalities as a result of those who are here illegally, including in Kerr County, which I represent in Texas, where you had a drunk, illegal alien crashing into members of the Thin Blue Line Motorcycle Club, made up of Active-Duty servicemembers, law enforcement officers, and retired officers, killing retired Officer Joseph Paglia of Chicago, United States Army Lieutenant Colonel Jerry Wayne Harbour of Houston, and retired U.S. Army Officer Michael White of Chicago.

Right here in our Nation's Capital, it has become a region of lawlessness and disorder. Crime in D.C. is up 30 percent. Violent crime up 37 percent from 2022 to 2023. We had one of our own Members of Congress who was carjacked just 10 blocks from here, another Member of Congress who was assaulted. We have had staff members, such as the staff member of Senator Rand Paul who was stabbed. We had a teenage gunman just a few weeks ago spraying AR-15 rounds and then pretty much was just let go.

This is the state of things in our Nation's Capital. It is the state of things in New York City. It is the state of things across our country. It is a return to lawlessness. If you don't have the rule of law, what do you have?

When you let violent criminals out of jail, what do you think is going to happen? By the way, there are people on my side of the aisle who are guilty of that. In the false name of compassion, we are letting people out on the streets who are endangering our own people.

The rule of law matters and you can't have the rule of law if cops can't enforce the rule of law and then be abandoned by the very people that are supposed to support them, and that is what is happening. You can't have the rule of law if the borders are wide open.

If you are ignoring the law, parole--which is supposed to be on a case-by-case basis--to pump thousands of people into our country, including, by the way, the individual who killed Laken Riley. He was unlawfully paroled into the United States by this administration. But guess what? There wasn't any consequence, except for Laken Riley, who is no longer with us.

That is what happened. That is the truth. It is lawlessness. Ignoring the rule of law, endangering the American people, and now you have the rank lawlessness of a sham trial against the former President in New York.

A bootstrap charge that relies on an unreliable witness being presided over by a biased judge. That is the truth, and anybody with eyes knows it. It is not the rule of law; it is the use of the law for political purposes and gain. It is, as some refer to it, ``lawfare'' against the former President of the United States.

I don't care what you think of President Trump, President Biden, anybody else, when you weaponize our system of justice for political purposes, you are nothing more than a third-rate banana republic. That is precisely what is happening in the State of New York right now by a lawless judge, a biased judge--who, frankly, should be investigated himself--who is targeting the former President for political purposes.

It is clearly obvious. No citizen, no citizen would be treated to the same attack as what is happening right now to former President Trump.

I am not afraid to call out Members on both sides of the aisle. I am not afraid to call about President Biden. I am not afraid to call out former President Trump. I am not paid to be a loyalist. I am not paid to be biased. I am not paid to wear a red shirt versus a blue shirt.

I am paid to represent 750,000 Texans, to follow the Constitution, to honor my duty to the Lord, and to do my job. That is what I am paid to do. But to watch the former President of the United States being hauled into court day after day with a sham trial, and you cannot describe it as anything but a sham trial.

The DA's office previously determined that its theory of criminal liability under New York law would not hold up. That is the truth. So they bootstrapped it into a felony because, frankly, it would have been time-barred if they hadn't done that. You have got to have the felony charge proving that Trump was concealing another crime. That is why they are now trying to pull in a Federal campaign charge, but the campaign laws in question are Federal and when New York's penal code speaks of concealing another crime, it must refer to a crime

under New York law, but they are trying to bootstrap it into Federal law. That is the truth.

It is hard to see how the government could meet the burden of proof. According to my good friend, Andy McCarthy, a former Federal prosecutor, he wrote that: `` . . . not unless there is as-yet- undisclosed evidence that Trump actually paused to consider the possibility that these payments were in-kind campaign expenditures, believed they might well be, yet went through with them anyway.'' All bootstrapped Federal law into State crime charges.

Neither the Justice Department nor the Federal Election Commission bureaucrats, whose expertise lies in the operation of the relevant laws, alleged wrongdoing by Trump. Yet here we are.

By the way, the whole theory hinges on Michael Cohen, who is widely viewed to have committed perjury in multiple locations, including before this very body in the House Oversight Committee as Chairman Comer has laid out for the public to see.

By the way, a convicted felon he is. By the way, disbarred he is, previously pleading guilty to perjury, financial crimes, and campaign finance violations.

The Southern District of New York decided it was best not to give him a cooperation agreement because they would have to rely on his testimony. Yet here we are. We have got this case proceeding with Bragg doing it for political purposes all in front of a biased judge.

Judge Merchan refused Trump's legal team's request that he recuse himself over bias because his daughter, Lauren, worked as a Democratic political consultant.

One of our own colleagues, Mr. Goldman--formerly a lawyer for Schiff, Representative Schiff, during Trump's first impeachment--is her client, and has also been working to prep Cohen for testimony this week.

By the way, the daughter of the judge has worked for prominent Democrats--Kamala Harris, Gavin Newsom, Congressman Adam Schiff, and has made multiple contributions to Democratic campaigns. Meanwhile, Bragg continues.

This whole sham of a trial undermines the rule of law and the faith of the American people in it. You do not have to love the political target, in this case, former President Trump to recognize the extraordinary damage that this is doing to the rule of law and our institutions. By the way, the purposeful damage that is attempting to be done is to President Trump himself. That is the purpose.

Not allowing this kangaroo court in New York to undermine his ability to continue to campaign to try to garner the votes necessary to win in November, come in here and clean up the mess that is being created by the lawless Biden administration.

The Biden administration is engaging in lawless behavior on a daily basis, whether it is student loans, ignoring the courts, wide-open borders, fentanyl pouring into our communities, perpetuating this undermining of cops, that is all happening in real time. It is hard to keep up with the rampant level of lawlessness coming out of the current administration and the abject failure of my radical, progressive Democratic colleagues on the other side of the aisle to do a thing about it.

I might note, as an equal opportunity basher of all Members of Congress, that nor has the Republican side of the aisle really done much to check the current President.

Wide-open borders? Funded.

FBI lawlessness, political witch hunts, weaponized against the people and the former President? $200 million new headquarters. If you fund it, you own it.

I can tell you that this lawlessness is demonstrably undermining the faith of the American people in the institution of Congress and of our institutions upon which our entire society rests.

Right now, people do not believe that our political system is working. They do not have faith in elections. They do not have faith that our borders are being protected. They do not have faith that our police are being supported, that our streets are safe. They do not have faith in a system of justice that will target a former President for political purposes and a Department of Justice that will be weaponized against the people.

A woman just yesterday or two days ago was sentenced to 57 months in jail, almost 5 years, because she protested at an abortion clinic in Washington, D.C. By the way, a progressive activist. A progressive activist in jail for 57 months. It is extraordinary.

What are we doing about it? We are Congress. It is right here in D.C. Does anybody care about this woman's life? Maybe it is a misdemeanor. Maybe she should pay a fine. I don't know, maybe a misdemeanor like 30 days in jail if she did something that was blocking people's access or something--I don't know--but 5 years in jail under a FACE Act, Federal prosecution? That is extraordinary. Does anybody care about what is happening to the weaponization of government against the people?

Again, do you believe that your Nation is sovereign and secure when our borders are wide open and terrorists and criminals come in? The answer is no.

The county attorney of Kinney County, Texas, was just testifying this week in the Budget Committee, and he said in 2021 they had about 150 prosecutions. Last year, they had 6,700.

My Democratic colleagues shrug that off like it is no big deal. They shrug off the $13 billion that Texas has to pay to deal with the wide- open borders. They shrug off the death of Laken Riley like it is just some happenstance because the President is violently disregarding our laws and pumping people into the United States in violation of parole laws.

Our cops are being targeted. They are not being prosecuted. Soros DAs are letting criminals out on the street. We are funding the lawlessness, letting people out on the streets. All of that is continuing while a judge goes after a former President of the United States, while a radical DA in New York, another Soros DA, is going after the former President for clearly political purposes with a sham trial.

All of that is happening. Why would the American people believe in the institutions of this country? You would think we would be doing something to try to restore that. Here we are. There is one thing we can do. One thing we should do to restore some semblance of confidence in our system this year.

House Republicans must pass the SAVE Act. House Republicans have the opportunity to make clear what 87 percent of Americans believe, that only citizens of the United States should vote in elections; and in this case in the SAVE Act, if they vote in Federal elections, they must be a citizen. They must produce documentary evidence of being a citizen of the United States to vote in a Federal election. There is vast bipartisan support across this country--87 percent of Americans--to ensure that you can believe in our system of elections, that only citizens will be voting.

Just last week, my radical, progressive Democratic colleagues unanimously opposed the bill to exclude non-United States citizens from the Census used to allocate congressional seats. Also last week, in a very clearly Freudian slip, President Biden described the millions of illegal aliens he has allowed into the United States as ``voters.'' Washington, D.C., fairly notoriously, just had a training program in April, training people to be able to make it possible for illegal aliens in D.C. to vote.

Now, they will all say, Chip, it is already unlawful for people to vote in Federal elections if they are not a citizen. Do you believe it? Do you believe that the jurisdictions across this country, including the Nation's Capital, including San Francisco, Oakland, and multiple places around this country that have embraced allowing illegal aliens to vote in local and State elections, do you believe that they are being checked to ensure that they are not voting in Federal elections?

Let me tell you this: Current law, in all of our infinite wisdom as Congress--because we get so many things right here--current law put forward by the Congress restricts the ability of States, restricts the ability of States to check to make sure that you are a citizen. True. True story. The brilliance of your United States Congress, they say by law you must be a citizen to vote, but then they say: You, State, can't check to make sure that the voter is a citizen.

Arizona has two systems for voting: State-based. Why? Because they passed a law saying only citizens can vote. They have a system to check. State elections, State races, local races, they are required to check for citizenship for that. For Federal elections, they don't. Now, how messed up is that?

The Constitution gives authority to the Congress to be able to ensure the integrity of our elections. Yes, the States can set the time, place, and manner of how the elections are carried out, but Congress has the power to step in to ensure that our elections are carried out appropriately.

We have a simple bill, the SAVE Act. It has 50-odd cosponsors in the House and growing. My colleague, Senator Mike Lee, in the Senate introduced it over there. It has multiple cosponsors and growing. This bill is simple--every single Republican should support it, and if they don't support it, they should answer why--should voters in the United States who are voting in Federal elections be citizens of the United States? 87 percent of Americans say yes. Anybody sensible says yes. Should anyone who is going to vote in those Federal elections in Congress, Senate, and for the Presidency, have to demonstrate that they are, in fact, citizens, by presenting a passport, by presenting a voter ID, a real ID from a State-issued driver's license, combined with a birth certificate, other forms that we lay out, like anything else you have to do. If you want to fly in this country, all the things that you have to do to prove you are who you say you are.

To my radical, progressive Democratic colleagues who protest, saying this is crazy, it is already a requirement that you be a citizen to vote. Then what are you afraid of? What are you worried about?

I will tell you what they are worried about. They are worried about making sure it is true. They worry about the fact that the vast majority of my radical, progressive Democratic colleagues would be perfectly fine getting rid of that law requiring citizenship to vote.

We need to call the question. We have a piece of legislation that is supported by vast numbers of election law experts and groups, supported by the Speaker of the House, supported by 50-odd Republicans and growing. This bill needs to be brought forward. It needs to be brought to the House Admin Committee. It needs to be brought to the Rules Committee and to the floor of the House. It needs to be voted out by my Republican colleagues or they need to explain why.

It is a simple question. If you want people to believe in their country, if you want them to believe in the rule of law, if you want them to believe in their system of government, if you want them to believe in the elections of their Representatives and of the President of the United States, so that we can avoid what happened in 2016 when my radical, progressive Democratic colleagues questioned the election of President Trump over Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, and did so vocally and loudly and repeatedly questioning. Again, in 2020, questions about the election; all the way right up and through January.

If you want to get rid of those problems, then make sure our elections are believable. Make sure that you know who is voting and, importantly, make sure that only citizens of the United States of America are voting in Federal elections. This is not a hard question. You either believe it or you don't.

To my Republican colleagues who want to hide behind federalism, don't. The Constitution of the United States is clear: Both in terms of our ability to deal with the election of Members of Congress and the President, as well as issues like naturalization, our power in this area is clear. Our ability to make sure that we can do it without unduly burdening the ability of a citizen to vote is clear. Get busy fixing it if you have got a concern, but don't hide because there is going to be nowhere to hide.

The future of our country depends on the faith the people of the United States have in our institutions. We should support our police. We should support the rule of law. We should put criminals behind bars. We should have a sovereign nation and a secure border. We should know who is here. We should remove illegal aliens. We should secure the border of the United States. We should make sure that only citizens vote in our elections. We should end the dangerous flow of fentanyl into our communities. We should stop countenancing the sham trials and the politicization of our judiciary system against the former President of the United States or the politicization of the Department of Justice against the American people.

If you want to restore the greatness of this country, if you want to create prosperity, if you want to be able to believe in a country, if you want to be able to restore the American Dream and pass it down to our kids and grandkids, the birthright of being an American, it all begins and ends with the rule of law.

The rule of law is why people have come to our country to achieve greatness. They don't come here for free lunches, not historically. Maybe more recently. As the great economist Milton Friedman said, he is all for open borders if you get rid of the social welfare state.

Well, ladies and gentlemen, we have a social welfare state. We need to limit the flow of people coming into the country and taking advantage of the social welfare state. We need to restore sovereignty. We need to make sure that criminals and terrorists aren't coming here. We need to secure the border, end the flow of fentanyl, make sure only citizens vote, support our law enforcement, keep criminals in jail, and keep the American people safe.

If you do that, there is a small chance that if combined with any kind of ounce of fiscal restraint by this body--I will not hold my breath on that one right now--we might be able to save this country for our kids and grandkids.

I want to be very clear, in particular to my Republican colleagues, if you think you are going to hide behind election season, if you think you are going to hide behind talking about what rules go down, what don't go down, if you think you are going to hide behind the Presidential election and the first 100 days of an agenda, if you think you are going to be able to hide behind that to avoid answering to the American people on what we said we would do--cutting spending, balancing the budget, securing the border of the United States, ensuring our military is strong, has the tools to carry out its job with a clear mission and care when they get home, but is sparingly used and not in endless wars, if you want to make sure that you can go to the doctor of your choice, get the healthcare of your choosing and not an insurance bureaucrat, if you want to make sure you can have a car that you can afford and electricity in your home, and if you want to be able to be free from the bureaucracy of a Federal Government strangling the American family, if you want to be able to send your kid to the school of your choice and be able to make sure that they are being taught that America is great and that God is real and that we can do great things, if you want those things, then you have to actually fight for them.

You can't just pass empty bills with empty titles because that is all we do in this damn place every day. We did it today.

We passed multiple bills that won't do a damn thing, all with fancy titles that make it hard for people to vote against whatever that additional spending or additional bureaucracy is.

That is what we did. We did it today. We will do it tomorrow. We will then try to campaign on those empty, nonsense bills.

Why don't we do something that matters? Why don't we actually do one thing we said we would do? Yes, I said it again to my Republican colleagues who excoriate me because of a speech I gave before Thanksgiving saying: Name one thing.

Well, we passed the TikTok bill on a bipartisan basis. We will require China to divest TikTok. I support that, all right.

We have this great SAVE Act we are moving. I hope we can actually pass it off the floor. We haven't done that yet. When are we going to step up to the plate and do the things we said we would do?

Have we cut spending? No. Did we honor the caps to even hold spending? No. Have we secured the border? No.

Have we reined in what I might refer to as endless wars and endless conflict for the last 25 years? We have had a perpetual war, funding other people's wars. No. Have we restored energy freedom? No. Have we restored healthcare freedom, go to the doctor of your choice? No.

When are we going to do one of those things? That is why we are here. That is why the voters sent us here.

We should get busy doing the things that we said we would do, and it all begins and ends with restoring the rule of law in this country: Stand by cops, bad guys in jail, sovereign Nation, stop letting people coming in, stop letting fentanyl come in, require that only citizens vote, and pass the SAVE Act to ensure that we can believe in our elections and that only citizens are voting in them.

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

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

The motion was agreed to; accordingly (at 8 o'clock and 33 minutes p.m.), under its previous order, the House adjourned until tomorrow, Thursday, May 16, 2024, at 10 a.m. for morning-hour debate.