Floor Statements

Madam Speaker, I rise in support of the America COMPETES Act. With this legislation we have an opportunity to strengthen domestic supply chains, invest in American manufacturing, and to lower costs for families, for small businesses, and seniors.

This pandemic has exposed deep weaknesses in our supply chains that have increasingly relied on foreign manufacturing, instead of making goods right here in America with American workers. This bill will help fix our broken supply chains so that we can build more critical components here in America, not overseas in China where government exploits its own people.

For Michigan's auto workers, this includes addressing the semiconductor chips shortage, which has shuttered auto plants and forced thousands of auto workers to temporarily be laid off. This bill will invest billions to bring chip manufacturing back to the United States.

Also, this legislation includes my legislation to create a new Trade Adjustment Assistance for Communities program, and it will help many older industrial communities that have been negatively impacted by trade communities like Flint, Saginaw, and Bay City. TAA for Communities will address the needs in these places and develop local economic development strategies.

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

Madam Speaker, today, I rise to recognize an incredible leader in mid-Michigan, Angie Hendershot.

For the past 25 years, my constituents in Flint, Saginaw, and Bay City have welcomed Angie Hendershot into their homes as a reporter and anchor with ABC TV-12. She is a trusted voice in our community. Local reporters like Angie play a vital role in democracy.

For the past 25 years, she has kept mid-Michigan informed and connected through her on-the-ground reporting and investigative journalism. Throughout her course of work, Angie has won many awards, including 10 Emmys and numerous awards from the Associated Press and Michigan Association of Broadcasters.

But for Angie, working at ABC 12 isn't just a job; it is a way to give back to the community she loves. She has demonstrated time and time again her commitment to mid-Michigan throughout her career with volunteerism and charity work. One of those initiatives is the annual diaper drive, where Angie helps to collect donations of diapers, wipes, and cash to help the Flint Diaper Bank supply more than a million diapers to local, needy babies every year.

Madam Speaker, I congratulate Angie on her achievements and this important milestone. I speak for our entire community when I say we look forward to welcoming her into our living rooms for many, many years to come.

Great work, Angie.

Madam Speaker, I thank the chairman for yielding and for his work on this important piece of legislation.

With the Build Back Better budget, we help lower costs for the working families that I represent. We lower healthcare costs by allowing Medicare to negotiate the price of drugs like insulin, lowering out-of-pocket costs for those families back home that I represent.

It will lower childcare costs by ensuring universal preschool for all 3- and 4-year-olds and expanding the child tax credit, which is a monthly tax cut helping working families with children pay for groceries and school supplies and take care of their monthly mortgage payments.

This Build Back Better budget isn't free. It is fully paid for. It is paid for by making corporations and the wealthiest Americans finally step up and begin to pay their fair share.

Today, Democrats are delivering on this important legislation to cut taxes and to lower costs for working Americans and for those middle- class families that I represent.

Madam Speaker, last week I lost my uncle, and the people of my State and this country lost a leader, former Congressman Dale Kildee.

Our hearts go out to my Aunt Gayle, and to my cousins David, Paul, and Laura, who are experiencing the kind of loss that I and so many of us know far too well.

He served here for 36 years, and he believed that this place, this Congress, and our government could be a force for good.

During that time, he had many, many legislative accomplishments around education, the environment, things that he cared deeply about, but I think perhaps his greatest contribution was the fact that he served here so long and left with so many friends because he served here with dignity, with kindness to everyone, with respect for everyone regardless of their position or their point of view.

I hope we can remember him for that, and I hope we all take note of that. It is an important message, especially now.

He believed that the role of government was to preserve, to protect, to defend, and to enhance human dignity. His life was a testament to that promise.

I would ask all present to join us in a moment of silence for my Uncle Dale.

Madam Speaker, I thank my friend and chairman for yielding time.

Madam Speaker, I rise today in support of this legislation to protect the American economy, to save it from catastrophe, and to prevent a default on the obligations of the United States of America. The full faith and credit of the United States can't be questioned. The full faith and credit of the United States should never be a partisan question.

We have passed action to address the debt limit 78 times--29 times with a Democrat in White House and 49 times with a Republican in the White House. In fact, when President Trump was in office, Democrats helped. We cooperated, and we helped to address this issue three times.

Yet now they are refusing to vote and refusing to support, meeting obligations that we already have. A robust debate about the future is fine, and we should have that, and we will have disagreements. But we should never, ever, ever question, let anyone question the promises made by the United States Government.

Mr. Speaker, I thank the chairman for yielding and for his leadership.

Mr. Speaker, I stand in strong support of this resolution, Congresswoman Lee's longtime effort to repeal the 2002 Authorization for Use of Military Force.

The Constitution is clear: Only Congress has the power to authorize war.

In 2002, this resolution was adopted in order to address the ongoing threat from Saddam Hussein and his regime in Iraq, the threat that it represented to America. Saddam Hussein is gone. A new government has been established in Iraq, and this AUMF is obsolete.

There are threats to the United States, and we have the authority to address those threats when they arise. There are ongoing threats that we ought to be able to debate here on the floor of the House of Representatives and act upon when our security is threatened. But no President of any party should ever be able to reach back two decades when Congress, on a different fact situation, authorized the use of force in order to authorize any use of force that they deemed to be important to them.

Congress has this authority, and we need to assert it. That is what we do today.

Mr. Speaker, I thank my friend, the chairman of the Budget Committee, for yielding.

Mr. Speaker, I support this legislation and the American people support this legislation because it is good for families, for seniors, for businesses, and it provides immediate economic relief to the people who are struggling right now.

$2,000 to every American, supported by Democrats and Republicans. Speeding up vaccinations, supported by Democrats and Republicans. Extending unemployment benefits, supported by Democrats and Republicans. Expanding the earned income tax credit and the child tax credit, cutting child poverty, supported by Democrats and Republicans.

I say it is supported by Democrats and Republicans with one exception: the Republicans who serve in this Congress.

Republicans across the country support it. Independents across the country support it. Democrats support it. This is the time to act.

Mr. Speaker, I am happy to be here today, to be on the record in favor of this legislation.

No one should be fired from their job or evicted from their home because of who they are or who they love.

This legislation will guarantee that our LGBTQ friends, neighbors, and family will be full members of the American family with all of the protections that come with that.

Mr. Speaker, I will just say one thing before I sit down. For anyone who ever wondered what they would have done in those days in the early 1960s, when the civil rights legislation was being debated here, let me just say this: Whatever you are doing now is what you would have done then.

Madam Speaker, I have a motion at the desk.

Mr. Speaker, I rise in support of this budget resolution, which gives Congress the additional legislative tool it needs to pass the urgently needed coronavirus relief for our constituents and for our communities. I am very pleased that President Biden has made defeating this virus his top priority.

This pandemic is not over. COVID-19 continues to pose both a health and economic crisis, so we have to respond with solutions that are scaled to the size and scope of this problem. By passing this resolution, Congress will be able to get relief to people more quickly: more resources for vaccine distribution; more aid to reopen schools safely; additional support for families, for seniors, for small businesses that are hurting.

I know that Republicans and Democrats share these common goals. In fact, they are speaking up all across the country. Republicans and Democrats support this big and bold approach.

We should work together in this body to manifest that and pass this legislation, so we get the people the help they need.

Doing nothing is not an option, and neither is doing too little. In fact, we have heard so much about the long-term economic impact. The truth of the matter is, doing nothing or doing too little will cost us more money, an estimated 4 million jobs that could be lost. The impact on families, the impact on all of us, would be tremendous if we fail to scale the response to the size of this problem.

Mr. Speaker, my Republican colleagues were very quick to use this very same process to pass legislation that we received the day before we voted on it, to give massive tax cuts to the very people at the very top of the economy. Now, when we see a crisis that literally is threatening the lives and the livelihoods of Americans, we have to use every tool we can to get them the help they need.

I support this resolution, and I urge my colleagues to do so as well.

Madam Speaker, 1 week ago, the President of the United States incited a deadly attack on the United States Capitol, while a couple of dozen Members of this House and I covered ourselves in that Gallery, away from the Trump mob. Five dead, including Capitol Police. If inciting an insurrection does not warrant impeachment, nothing does.

I took an oath to uphold the Constitution against all enemies, foreign and domestic.

Today, I uphold my oath.

Mr. Speaker, I thank my friend, Mr. Engel, the chairman, for his leadership on this issue, and my friends Mr. Bilirakis, Mr. McCaul, Mr. Wilson, and, obviously, Mr. McGovern, who have been working on this with me, along with Congresswoman Bass.

Congress cannot sit idly by while one nation kills its own people, blocks all communication to the outside world, and commits serious human rights violations. The people of Sudan, like all people, deserve the ability to determine their own future. They deserve a civilian-led democratic society. They deserve to not have to live in constant fear of violence.

It is for these reasons that we offer this resolution to affirm the position of the United States Congress, despite views that we may differ on, on other matters, and that we come together, Democrats and Republicans, across the political spectrum to denounce the trampling of human rights that is taking place in Sudan, to call on the Transitional Military Council to immediately stop any violence against those civilian protestors, and to begin the immediate transition to a civilian-led government.

The Sudanese people have a right to be free. They have a right to a democratic society. They have a right to not have to deal with the kind of oppression that they have experienced.

This resolution also lays out some very clear areas where Sudan simply has to improve if it wants to have a

productive relationship with the U.S. I believe that the U.S. should be engaged with Sudan, but we have to insist that the Sudan that we engage with and that the Sudan that we work with is a nation that is led by its own people and not subjected to the horrific examples of persecution that we have seen.

For three decades, the people of Sudan have suffered under terrible repression. Now that we have this moment where the page is turned, the worst thing would be to succeed one terrible period of oppression with another. That is why it is somewhat hopeful to see that there are some signs that some view as reason for optimism.

We have to make sure that this transition to a civilian-led government is something that actually takes place and that we don't allow Sudan to simply go back to the kind of military-led repression that we saw under Bashir. That is completely unacceptable.

While the situation is fluid, we have an opportunity to state with a very clear voice from the Congress of the United States, from the American people, to the people of Sudan and to the people of the world that the world is watching. We are paying attention to what takes place. We have a stake in the freedom of the people of Sudan.

That is why we are speaking up with one voice today. I am honored to join with my colleagues, as I said, across the aisle and across the political spectrum to speak with one voice on this subject. Congress has a chance to make a difference on this. The people of the United States stand with the people of Sudan. We deserve better, and they deserve better.

Mr. Speaker, I call on all of my colleagues to join us in this resolution and call for freedom and justice for the people of Sudan.

Madam Speaker, this week, the Trump administration is in court, arguing before the Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals to strike down the Affordable Care Act, including taking away coverage for people with preexisting health conditions. If the President gets his way, tens of millions of Americans lose their health insurance, including a lot of people I represent in Michigan.

For the 130 million Americans with preexisting conditions, insurance companies would then again be able to discriminate against them and deny them coverage.

That is what happens if the Trump administration prevails. If they gut the ACA, caps on annual and lifetime coverage could come back again, and 800,000 Michiganders will lose coverage.

While the President and his followers seek to roll back to those days when people could be denied coverage because they are sick--think about that, denied coverage because you are sick--we are fighting to continue to bring down the cost of healthcare. We have an agenda that is for the people to reduce the cost of healthcare and make sure no American has that fear.

Madam Chair, I thank my colleague for her leadership on this issue, and for yielding.

This amendment is really simple. It requires polluters who have contaminated drinking water with PFAS chemicals to clean it up. The amendment has the support of the Armed Services Committee and the Energy and Commerce Committee, and I thank the chairs of those committees for their help.

It also has the support of the International Association of Firefighters and the National Farmers Union because they know how important it is to clean up PFAS.

Communities like the community of Oscoda, in the northern part of my district, have waited too long for the Defense Department to act. This is a step toward getting these dangerous chemicals out of the ground and out of our groundwater.

I do understand that some groups are concerned about this amendment, utilities and airports. We pledge to work with them as this legislation moves through conference to make sure that we deal with the concerns that they raise.

But this is simple. This says that we are going to protect public health. Every day that we fail to act, the cost of PFAS cleanup just gets more expensive.

I encourage my colleagues to support this important amendment and to support the underlying bill.

Mr. Chair, I thank the chairman of the committee for working with me on addressing this PFAS contamination issue.

Today, the House is taking historic action to address PFAS contamination that is hurting communities, including communities like the city of Oscoda in my district in Michigan.

At the beginning of the year, I launched the bipartisan Congressional PFAS Task Force to bring together Members of Congress who are dealing with contamination in their districts. We wanted to work together on meaningful legislation to address PFAS and to protect public health.

I am very pleased to stand here today, 6 months later, in support of these amendments. The package of amendments included in this en bloc will help address PFAS contamination and ensure people have access to safe drinking water.

Included in the package are three of my amendments.

The first would direct the U.S. Geological Survey to look for PFAS contamination around the country so we know where people are potentially exposed.

My second amendment would require the Government Accountability Office to conduct a review of the military's response to PFAS contamination and its efforts to clean it up.

Another amendment that I was proud to work on with my friend, Congresswoman Dean from Pennsylvania, is to end the use of PFAS by the military by 2025. This will protect servicemembers from being exposed to these dangerous chemicals.

These provisions will mean fewer veterans, servicemembers, and families will face struggles like those in my district have faced. I am proud to see this come to the floor. I thank the chairman for his work on this.