Floor Statements

Madam Speaker, I thank the gentleman for yielding.

I rise in support of my legislation, the 504 Credit Risk Management Improvement Act of 2021.

As you may remember, this exact bill passed unanimously last December, and I hope the commonsense measure can pass overwhelmingly again.

For those who do not know about the 504 program, this was one of the first programs established at the Small Business Administration and has been a key tool for economic development.

To receive financing, 504 loan recipients must create jobs or meet public policy goals, like aiding rural development or revitalizing a business district.

In its economic development role, the 504 program has provided access to capital and helped build communities across the country for over six decades.

To ensure the program's continued success and viability for years to come, I partnered with Representative Angie Craig to craft a bill that provides the SBA with the tools necessary to maintain the long-term health of the 504 program.

This bill codifies the SBA's oversight responsibilities for the 504 program and provides the Office of Credit Risk Management with full control of the review process for certified development companies, known as CDCs, that deliver this program.

The legislation also establishes a formal process of communication between the Office of Credit Risk Management and CDCs to facilitate reviews to make sure the SBA is providing timely feedback to CDCs.

Additionally, this legislation requires the SBA to provide clear direction to certified development companies as they navigate environmental rules and regulations.

Finally, this bill will help ensure that the program continues to operate on the fees built into the program.

SBA programs, including the 504 program, have been at the forefront of economic aid to businesses struggling as a result of the COVID-19 pandemic. The SBA core lending programs will continue to play a key role in business recovery.

I am proud to do my part to ensure the 504 program continues to be a lifeline to businesses and communities today and into the future.

I thank Chairwoman Velazquez and Ranking Member Luetkemeyer for their leadership. I thank my colleague, Ms. Craig, for her partnership on this important bill. I also thank Mrs. Young Kim, Ms. Davids, Ms. Tenney, and Mr. Cohen for their support of this bill.

Madam Speaker, I urge my colleagues to support this legislation.

Madam Speaker, today I rise to honor Corporal Wallace Yau Kee Chang, one of the very few remaining Chinese- American veterans of World War II. In recognition of their service, these veterans were collectively awarded the Congressional Gold Medal in 2018--this body's highest honor. For his actions in Europe, Corporal Chang was also awarded the Bronze Star.

Just four days after Pearl Harbor, Corporal Chang started his military career as a Hawaii Territory Guard. In March 1945, he joined Army Company C in the 39th Regiment. While stationed in France and Germany, he took part in the central German campaign which led to the downfall of Hitler and the Nazi regime. After the war, he was appointed leader of the 39th Regimental band stationed in Rosenheim, Germany.

Corporal Chang is 98 years old and is a resident of Lumberton, North Carolina. I am very pleased to honor this great patriot and hope to call him a constituent for many more years to come. I thank Corporal Chang for his service to our country and to our community.

Mr. Speaker, today, I rise to observe the recent, almost simultaneous, passing of three prominent members of the Lumbee Tribe and the citizens of Robeson County, North Carolina: Mr. Lycurous Lowry, Mr. Paul Brooks, Sr., and Mr. Wyvis Oxendine.

These men displayed great fidelity to this important community and our Ninth District of North Carolina throughout their lives.

Mr. Lycurous Lowry dedicated 50 years of his life to Robeson County, serving 41 years as the president of the Robeson County Farm Bureau.

Mr. Paul Brooks, Sr. spent many years as a public servant to Robeson County, including being elected as the fourth chairman of the Lumbee Tribe.

Mr. Wyvis Oxendine leaves behind over 20 years of devotion to his community, which includes stints as a county commissioner, a magistrate, and an educator.

Mr. Speaker, these three men take their leave from us at almost the same time and leave behind an indelible impact on our community. I honor them for all they have done.

Mr. Speaker, the American people are a generous people, instinctively drawn to the idea of amnesty. It is a fine word, ``amnesty.'' It means a general pardon for offenses, an act of forgiveness for past offenses.

Of course, in the immigration arena, amnesty means not only pardon or forgiveness for violating our laws, but also a grant of important rights; ultimately, the privilege of citizenship. Sometimes that important distinction can be overlooked.

But what is particularly despicable in the present legislation is that Democrats exploit that fundamental spirit of generosity by misleading the American people about the scope of the proposed amnesty, its recipients, and its implications.

They would have you believe that this legislation responds to those President Obama dubbed Dreamers. In the gentlewoman from California's description, it is a 17-year-old who worked hard and became a model student and quarterback on the high school football team who doesn't even remember the time before he lived in the United States.

But this bill is not the Dream Act. Rather, it crushes the dreams of American workers. It is not for only 641,000 active DACA recipients. In this bill, Democrats want to provide amnesty for more than 2.9 million illegal immigrants, including even people who entered the United States illegally by January 1, 2021, just over 2 months ago, and all at a time when our unemployment rate is over 6 percent and working Americans are the hardest-pressed by the economic impacts of Democrats' affinity for lockdowns.

This bill also allows dangerous criminals and gang members to gain amnesty benefits, even if they have been convicted of multiple misdemeanors. If this bill is signed into law, adults from Syria, Yemen, Sudan, Somalia, Liberia, and Venezuela will receive amnesty.

This body should be prioritizing relief for American citizens, not illegal immigrants. I urge my colleagues to reject this misleading rhetoric and this dangerous bill.

Mr. Speaker, I thank the gentleman from Texas, my friend, Mr. Arrington, for hosting this Special Order, it is an extraordinarily important topic.

Here is another angle on it. Tomorrow, on the floor of this House, Democrats will pass two mass amnesty bills, H.R. 6 and H.R. 1603. Consider that at the very time Democrats are bringing these amnesty bills to the floor, what promises to be the largest surge of illegal immigration on the southern border in at least 20 years, is building toward an unknown climax. The Biden administration has precipitated a humanitarian crisis so big that even they can no longer deny it.

Less than 2 months after terminating President Trump's declaration of an emergency on the border, Secretary Mayorkas of the Department of Homeland Security, has been constrained to send FEMA, the Federal Emergency Management Agency, to facilitate the Nation's response to this crisis.

Today, in the Committee on Homeland Security, I asked Secretary Mayorkas about the deliberate and absurd rhetoric used by the administration: Come, but don't come now.

I was unable to secure from Secretary Mayorkas a straightforward acknowledgment that it is always wrong to incite migrants to enter the United States illegally.

And, amazingly, when I asked the Secretary whether he and the Biden administration had been expected or were surprised by the crisis that is now blooming on the southern border, he was caught off guard. He said he had no expectation whatsoever. I couldn't believe it, and I don't think the American people can believe it.

Just like the Biden administration's rhetoric, these bills signal economic migrants that if they make the dangerous trek through Central America and Mexico, they will be met with amnesty, taxpayer-funded healthcare, housing, and anything else you can think of.

Whether it is gutting the migrant protection protocols, otherwise known as ``remain in Mexico,'' and stopping border wall construction, the administration's message to migrants is clear: Come. Take your lives in your hands, brave the gangs, the coyotes, the smugglers, take the risk of sexual abuse. Come.

Today, the Democrats are augmenting that clear-as-day message with more promises of amnesty, and that will be the bills tomorrow, which everyone here know will fuel more illegal migration.

Let's face it, Democrats are committed to a regime of open borders, where any person from anywhere in the world has a right to enter the U.S. for any reason, even if that means migrants are assaulted or killed on their way to the border. And Democrats feel better about themselves. They assume a superior moral position by pursuing such a policy.

It is no wonder, but apparently no cause for reflection by the Biden administration, that the CBP very recently apprehended four individuals on the terrorist watch list crossing the southwest border. Secretary Mayorkas admitted that today, and then went on to say: Well, it is nothing unusual, more or less. Amazing.

I have heard some of my friends on the other side of the aisle complain that Republicans are not offering solutions.

Let me offer three: End all talk of amnesty. Reinstate the migrant protection protocols that provide more for their safety than the policy does now articulate. And finish building the wall. Let's resume a responsible border policy. Let's consider, for once, the interests of the American people.

Madam Speaker, I thank the gentleman for yielding.

Madam Speaker, the insidious and false pretext for this legislation endangers and ends lives. The bill rests on a false premise and promotes a false narrative that police are racists and use their power to advance racist ends. This narrative is a false and despicable slander.

Police officers do not leave their loved ones and risk their own lives every shift to oppress or discriminate. They do it to serve. They do it without fanfare and for little pay, and they have come to anticipate abuse in place of the respect that they deserve. They do it to save lives.

But the reckless ``defund the police'' rhetoric behind this legislation is forcing police to retreat and to leave the vulnerable at the mercy of those who prey upon them.

Madam Speaker, you should run from that rhetoric, as you are. Madam Speaker, you called the police ``rotten to the root'' and called for it to be ``dismantled.''

That rhetoric is killing people. Please stop the political games. Stop slandering law enforcement, and stop endangering our communities. Back the blue.

I thank the gentleman for yielding.

I noted that, at the outset, the bill sponsor, the gentleman from Rhode Island, said that every community deserves to be treated with dignity and respect. Every community deserves to be treated with dignity and respect.

The problem with this misnamed bill is that it does not treat every community with dignity and respect. You have heard from previous speakers that this bill takes pains to say your earnestly held religious beliefs are no defense.

What else does it do? Well, the basic way the legislation operates is to insert or substitute for the word ``sex'' as a protected classification the phrase ``sex, including sexual orientation and gender identity.'' If it did nothing more, it would be an echo of the Bostock decision in June. But it does do more.

It defines the term ``included,'' so ``sex, including sexual orientation and gender identity.'' If you go to the definition section, ``including'' is defined to mean ``including, but not limited to.'' ``Including but not limited to,'' why is that? What else does the bill intend to do that the bill declines to state?

Most significantly, Mr. Speaker, is that the bill removes the play in the joints. Let me explain what I mean. Concerning the public accommodations title, Title II of the 1964 Civil Rights Act, which, by the way, didn't cover sex, it defined what a public accommodation was for the purpose of ceasing the discrimination against Black Americans in public accommodations. What it said was, and it had a lot of synonyms, but hotels, restaurants, theaters, those were public accommodations.

That language is gone in this bill, Mr. Speaker. Instead, what it says is a public accommodation is ``any establishment that provides a good, service, or program, including,'' there is that word ``including,'' and there is a big, long list.

So any establishment that provides any good, any service, or any program in our society is covered, but we are still not done because of the rule's construction. ``A reference in this title to an establishment shall be construed to include an individual whose operations affect commerce and who is a provider of a good, service, or program,'' any individual, the cake baker, the photographer.

This bill flips the Civil Rights Act of 1964 on its head.

The Civil Rights Act of 1964 was designed to say: No longer will Black Americans be cut out of economic life in this country. And it was necessary, and it was a moral evil. This bill flips that bill on its head, and it says to every individual: A condition of your participating in the economic life of the country is that you buy all in, you buy into this lock, stock, and barrel. If you do not, you will be cut out of the economic life of this country.

There is no dignity and respect in that.

Mr. Speaker, today I rise to honor the life of Sharon Sanders, one of Charlotte's great philanthropists and the founder of Kids First of the Carolinas, which through the decades has provided essentials and Christmas gifts to over 35,000 children and families in the Charlotte area. Ms. Sanders died January 14 after a battle with cancer.

Sharon was a wife, mother, and friend to all, with an extraordinary passion for helping others. Her love for children led to her founding Kids First; and with the assistance of legendary Charlotte broadcaster John Hancock, the organization was able to expand outreach, providing for more than 2,000 children every Christmas and raising about $80,000 a year.

Even as she endured treatment for cancer, Sharon remained devoted to Kids First. Despite her hospitalization, she was overjoyed that they were, once again, able to help over 1,000 families during the holidays past.

Mr. Speaker, the Charlotte community will miss Sharon greatly. It is a privilege to honor her memory today.

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

Madam Speaker, I rise today in support of H.R. 546, the Effective Assistance of Counsel in the Digital Era Act.

This bill will modernize our criminal justice system by extending attorney-client privilege to electronic communication sent or received through the Bureau of Prisons' email system. This will ensure that incarcerated individuals can communicate with their attorneys efficiently and privately, as it should be.

Under the legislation, the Bureau of Prisons will be prohibited from monitoring privileged email communications between incarcerated individuals and that individual's attorney.

The attorney-client privilege is a vital component of our legal system that ensures a criminal defendant has an effective advocate in the courtroom. Emails between incarcerated individuals and their attorneys should fall under the attorney-client protections, but currently, that is not the case.

This bill will protect the rights of incarcerated men and women to speak openly and honestly with their attorneys via email, without fear that the prosecution is monitoring those communications. Other methods of communication, such as in-person meetings and letters, can be particularly burdensome and time-consuming. Even if an attorney is near the incarcerated client, it can take hours to travel to a detention facility and visit with the client.

Madam Speaker, H.R. 546 requires the Attorney General to ensure that BOP's email system excludes the contents of electronic communications between an incarcerated person and his or her attorney from the current email monitoring process.

The bill stipulates that the protections and limitations associated with the attorney-client privilege, including the crime-fraud exception, apply to electronic communications sent or received through the BOP email system. The BOP will be allowed to retain electronic communications until the incarcerated person is released, but the bill specifies that the contents may only be accessed under very limited circumstances.

Finally, H.R. 546 allows a court to suppress evidence obtained or derived from access to the retained emails if the emails were accessed in violation of the act.

Madam Speaker, I urge my colleagues to join me in supporting H.R. 546, and I reserve the balance of my time.

Madam Speaker, I have no further speakers, and I yield myself the balance of my time.

I wanted to say my compliments to the gentleman from New York in pursuit of this bill and the things he spoke to about the presumption of innocence and the right to counsel, among those sacred core rights that our Constitution guarantees to every individual in this country. This important bipartisan bill is preservative of that.

That is what we do in this Chamber. That is what this Congress should always do. So my compliments to the gentleman from New York and the cosponsors on this piece of legislation. I encourage my fellow Members to support it.

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

I yield myself as much time as I may consume.

I rise today in support of the Puerto Rico Recovery Accuracy in Disclosures Act.

In 2016, Puerto Rico was experiencing significant financial pressures brought on by sizable debt and related obligations. In response to Puerto Rico's financial crisis, Congress enacted the Puerto Rico Oversight, Management, and Economic Stability Act of 2016. The 2016 law established a bankruptcy mechanism for Puerto Rico to address its obligations.

Like the general bankruptcy law, the 2016 law enables bankruptcy professionals, like accountants, consultants, and lawyers, to apply for payment for their services upon court approval. But the 2016 law omitted disclosure requirements that apply to compensated professionals in proceedings under the general Bankruptcy Code, title 11 of the United States Code, pursuant to rule 2014(a) of the Federal Rules of Bankruptcy Procedure.

Most significantly, the gap in the 2016 law created a potential for undisclosed compensation terms and undiscovered conflicts of interest vis-a-vis parties of interest for professionals serving in Puerto Rico's bankruptcy.

To address this concern, this bill applies the disclosure requirements of rule 2014(a) to professionals serving in connection with Puerto Rico's bankruptcy and seeking compensation for those services.

The bill also requires oversight of the disclosures that bankruptcy professionals make.

This bill's disclosure and oversight requirements increase the likelihood that conflicts of interest will be caught and timely addressed before compensation decisions are made.

Taken as a whole, this added transparency will benefit important interests, such as those of creditors and taxpayers--and ultimately, of Puerto Rico itself.

Madam Speaker, I encourage my colleagues to support this bill, and I reserve the balance of my time.

Madam Speaker, I yield 5 minutes to the gentlewoman from Puerto Rico (Miss Gonzalez-Colon).

Madam Speaker, I thank the gentlewoman from Puerto Rico, and I thank the gentlewomen from Texas and New York.

Madam Speaker, I urge my colleagues to support the bill, and I yield back the balance of my time.

Mr. Speaker, I thank the gentleman for yielding me the time.

These articles charge incitement. Once before, the House impeached a President of the United States within a week of the alleged offense. That was President Andrew Johnson days after he removed Secretary of War Edwin Stanton in 1868. Over 50 years later, the Supreme Court declared unconstitutional the Tenure of Office Act that President Johnson had refused to obey.

In other words, the House was not only hasty, it was wrong, punishing noncompliance with the unconstitutional law. At least when that occurred, the constitutionality of the law in question was unsettled. Here, however, an angry House majority races to impeachment in direct violation of settled constitutional law.

Again, the articles before the House charge incitement to insurrection. They do not specify inciting language. The law is well settled: ``What is required, to forfeit constitutional protection, is incitement speech that `specifically advocates' for listeners to take unlawful action.''

The violence last Wednesday was abhorrent. Perpetrators should be prosecuted. Those responsible for security decisions held accountable. Congress can disapprove, revile, condemn, even censure. But Congress cannot, consistent with the rule of law, punish that which the Constitution's First Amendment declares protected. If my colleagues do it, the violators of the duty to this Constitution, however angry, will be those who vote for this Article of Impeachment. It is not Mr.

Green's Article of Impeachment. It is incitement, and the Constitution is settled on that point.

Mr. Speaker, I thank the gentleman for yielding.

Two questions, as we begin another 24 hours that will deepen the wounds of the country and the disaffection among Americans:

First, will you stop at nothing?

Second, is there any hypocrisy too far?

Let's call this what it is: An ultimatum, an attempt to intimidate and bully Vice President Pence. They are not seeking just the same ends as the gentleman from California (Mr. McClintock) said, they employ the same means. They seek to bully the Vice President to abuse power under the 25th Amendment, intended to provide for temporary or sudden incapacity of the President while they claim to be scandalized about the President bullying the Vice President one week ago to abuse power under the 12th Amendment.

With all due respect for the gentleman from Maryland, he has not answered: Why are you doing this now?

Tonight, the Vice President has clarified in a letter sent to all of us at 7:34 p.m. that this resolution has absolutely no other purpose. Here are three key things he said: ``I urge you and every Member of Congress to avoid actions that would further divide and inflame the passions of the moment. Work with us to lower the temperature and unite our country. . . . `'

Quote: ``As you know full well, the 25th Amendment was designed to address Presidential incapacity or disability.''

Quote: ``Under our Constitution, the 25th Amendment is not a means of punishment or usurpation.''

And listen to this one carefully: ``Last week, I did not yield to pressure to exert power beyond my constitutional authority . . . , and I will not now yield to efforts in the House of Representatives to play political games at a time so serious in the life of our Nation.''

The Vice President has given you your answer before you ask the question. No legitimate purpose to this resolution remains. Your ultimatum does violence to a core feature of the architecture of the Constitution. The Framers were emphatic about their purpose to avoid making the President a creature of Congress. The 25th Amendment was not ratified to change that, as you well know. Please do not pervert this important protection to undermine the Constitution.

Madam Speaker, I rise to speak in favor of the objection.

Madam Speaker, it has been quite a day. And in contrast to the gentleman's comments just now, I couldn't get over this text that I received from the mayor of Charlotte, Vi Lyles, about 30 minutes ago. She is a progressive Democrat, a political opponent for years, a tremendous and graceful person. She said:

Representative Bishop, I hope you are safe and well. It

must have been a day of anguish for the world to see our

Capitol buildings under siege. I know you have a long night

ahead and want you to know I was thinking about you, your

family, and staff.

God bless.

Vi.

Back home, the generosity of spirit still exists.

And I understand the sharp words and feelings on the other side tonight, but there are also good people back home, and I have heard from many, many, many of them.

News would suggest there are millions of Americans--that is a big number--millions, tens of millions, who believe something went awry in this election. And they aren't dumb. They aren't mindless. They don't believe things simply because the President says them. There were problems.

I know that Joe Biden will be President, but I don't know that it hurts or would hurt any of us to have the generosity of spirit to continue to reflect on what might be better or what might seriously have gone wrong here, even if you reject the notion that the result was wrong.

I would like to offer a slightly different perspective, a distinct perspective. Perhaps it will be rejected. I think if I were sitting on the other side of the aisle, it would be very difficult for me to listen to tonight, but you all have heard it said, and it certainly is true, that many executive branch officials around the Nation departed from State legislatures' enacted laws.

I know it is less understood how this came to pass.

It was not a spontaneous, independent decisionmaking, but it resulted, I would argue, from a coordinated, nationwide partisan plan. And the fact and scope of the plan really isn't disputed.

If you go to democracydocket.com, it is the website of Marc Elias, the national Democratic election lawyer who appeared in hundreds of cases across the country in the course of the election year.

This plan was not a response to COVID, by the way. It preexisted that. And his website shows that as well. He explained that in January of 2020.

It was a chaos strategy, a plan to flood State and Federal courts with hundreds of simultaneous election year lawsuits aimed at displacing State legislative control.

Now, as I have seen it, only the most experienced and independent judges appear to have recognized what was afoot. In the fourth circuit, dissenting judges Wilkinson and Agee said this: ``Let's understand the strategy that is being deployed here . . . Our country is now plagued with a proliferation of preelection litigation.'' And as they put it, 385 election year cases to that point on October 20, and they referred to the website healthyelections.org to verify that.

``Around the country,'' they wrote, ``courts are changing the rules of the upcoming elections at the last minute. It makes the promise of the Constitution's Elections and Electors Clauses into a farce.''

This was a political operation masquerading as a judicial one. And in keeping with that, it featured gross breaches of litigation ethics: forum shopping, repetitive suits after losses, and collusive settlements with cooperating Democratic officials of State and local governments.

That is what led to officials changing the rules in State after State, mainly through consent orders, or the preliminary, unreviewed decisions of State and Federal trial judges inclined by partisanship or having limited experience with the Electoral Clause.

In turn, the displacement of rules set by State legislatures led to chaotic conditions on the ground, about which so many Americans are angry and disheartened.

I think we can do better. I think that strategy was unwise, and I think, particularly in light of what has happened here today, we should.