Floor Statements

Madam Speaker, Harriet Salarno is a remarkable woman who went through the greatest tragedy a parent can suffer, inspiring her to change the lives of families across the nation.

On September 3, 1979 her eldest daughter Catina was murdered execution style on her first day of college. After being thrust into the criminal justice system Harriet soon learned that crime victims had no voice or rights in the system. She mustered a strong resolve that only a remarkable woman can, and she began the fight for a voice for crime victims and survivors as well as for public safety in California and throughout the nation.

To accomplish her mission, she founded Crime Victims United, the only political action group of its kind in the nation dedicated to advocating for survivors of crime and for public safety. Starting in 1982, she began her work by successfully getting the legislature to amend the California constitution to include crime victims' rights (the first one in the history of the nation). Nearly forty years later, she endeavors daily to ensure the victims of crime, survivors, and first responders are not forgotten. Her efforts have led to state and national reforms including constitutional amendments, legislative and regulatory changes.

Her vision, passion, and mission is clear in her formidable resolve to educate those that are often the most forgotten in our society. To this day she can be found at the legislature or in communities educating and advocating for others about crime victims and public safety. Her commitment to never have another family feel the pain and isolation she has felt, remains clear and strong to this day.

Harriet has never forgotten what victims need most; someone to listen, someone to grieve with, and someone to support them in their darkest of times. At the age of 88, she still goes to her office daily answering phone calls and emailing letters to assist victims. She sends cards to families on the days of remembrance; and she strives to allow families not only to grieve but gather the strength to move forward.

Truly she has changed the lives of those in despair.

While creating this unique organization, she raised two daughters and grandchildren who also share the same aspirations for assisting victims, ensuring public safety, and she has served as their role model to inspire community service.

Harriet has given our world multiple generations of those who are the helpers of those who most need it in their darkest time. It has been my privilege to work with Harriet over the years and a true honor to call her my friend.

Madam Speaker, April is Limb Loss and Limb Difference Awareness Month. More than 2 million Americans live with limb loss or limb difference, and an additional 28 million are at risk of amputation surgery. It is estimated that more than 500 Americans lose a limb each day. With great advances in prosthetics, sometimes we may not even know that those around us may be missing a limb.

There are many causes of limb loss, some not immediately apparent to us, including, number one, vascular disease, 54 percent of which includes diabetes.

Americans of all ages, from children to our seniors, are affected. Eighty-eight percent are over 45 years old. Of course, many of our brave servicemembers suffer injuries resulting in limb loss, over 1,500 currently from Iraq and Afghanistan.

Each of these Americans has their own story and faces unique challenges. Many amputations result from some preventable disease and have preventable issues, such as diabetes and peripheral vascular disease. This is another reason to raise awareness of limb loss and educate ourselves and others about what it is like to live with limb loss and limb difference.

Madam Speaker, the absurd proposal brought forth now to pack the U.S. Supreme Court out of thin air with four new Justices is the latest in a breathtaking effort to seize and seal power for Democrats. They know their policies frequently don't win at the ballot box or in fair elections, so they seek to stack a Court with a new set of Justices that they hope will hand them victories outside of the hallowed legislative process.

Justice Breyer, the late Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg, and even Joe Biden himself--who is quoted as saying packing the Court is a ``bonehead idea''--all disagree, at least at one time, that packing the Court to simply grab a majority is wrong-headed and un-American.

I am glad to enter into a constitutional amendment with Representative Dusty Johnson to ``Keep the 9'' and save our Supreme Court, to keep it above politics.

This is one of the most blatant, naked power grabs we have seen, ever. If this effort is somehow successful and allowed to stand, then you will not recognize the America we know, once knew, as pure power politics will indeed have won over our process that the Founders put in place.

Mr. Speaker, weeks ago, the Biden administration made Vice President Kamala Harris the border czar.

The question I have is: Which border?

We learned today that Czar Kamala is traveling to Guatemala. While we do need cooperation from Guatemala in halting the flow of illegal entrants from Central America, it defies logic that weeks after her appointment, Czar Kamala Harris has not visited the very border--our border--with Mexico that she has been tasked with protecting.

It seems as if the Biden-Harris administration has gone out of its way to ignore the seriousness of the border crisis it has created. Even as the number of illegal border crossers and unaccompanied minors shatter records, Democrats have declared that everything under the sun is infrastructure except a border wall. In fact, a wall protecting our border might be the only thing Democrats do not want to throw money at right now.

To the Biden administration and Czar Kamala: Border security is national security, and the American people are pleading for you to take steps to end this crisis you created. It is time to answer their call.

Madam Speaker, last year Portland, Oregon, cut $16 million from their police budget. This has led to a twenty-fold increase, unfortunately, in deadly shootings. Mayor Wheeler has been forced to reverse course now and ask for more funding for police.

Similar to this, the Biden administration is having to reverse course due to the crisis on the border. Now, many are getting hung up on using the word ``crisis,'' so FEMA is now involved, and they deal with disasters, hence, the Biden border disaster.

Less than 2 months in, the border is worse than it has been in two decades. And now, Biden has been forced to reverse course and ask Mexico to help control the flow of migrants once again, after previously dismantling the ``Remain in Mexico'' policy.

Also, on his first day in the Biden administration, they issued a proclamation to halt all border construction, despite Congress funding it and demanding that it be built. Now, just yesterday, the administration has said it was moving forward with border wall construction. Good.

As they are learning in Portland, Seattle, and Minneapolis, the Biden administration is learning law and order is also required on our border or you get a disaster.

Madam Speaker, let's acknowledge the reality of what we have right now, a big mess of a situation that hasn't been cured in several decades.

We used to have a system of invited workers, called the bracero program. Political battling has caused no new fix in all of this time. Similarly, this bill allows good workers, decent people, to get right with the law, with background checks, with restitution, and requirements to stay right with their ag worker status.

The same bill passed this House through committee last Congress with good bipartisan support. It has benchmarks that must be met by workers who are already here with history in ag, not opening the floodgates to more illegal entry and benefits. More recent entrants are required to remain in ag work for 8 additional years to remain eligible. We have caps in this bill to the current approximately 700,000 workers already here, with capped ratchets if more are needed.

It establishes an E-Verify for ag, with strong biometric screening for all these certified ag workers, something we have never had under E-Verify.

It codifies in law many of the pieces adopted in the Trump administration's H-2A rule, including staggered H-2A and making it much less burdensome for farmers to get these workers, especially dairy, which needs year-round workers and cannot have it now.

Madam Speaker, what this bill is not is amnesty, even though it may be dismissed as such. Americans have demonstrated they will not step forward to do this work, not with the nonworking benefits they can already access. Frequent anecdotes show that those that might, frequently quit after a few days because the work is too hard, even at dramatically increased wages.

This law does not hand out citizenship or allow anyone to cut ahead in line to apply for it. The same goes for green cards. No express lane for green cards, not even government benefit eligibility.

This is simply a way to get right with the law, have a capped pool of already in-place ag workers with legal status. That is better for the worker, the farmer, and for our system of ID'ing who is in this country currently. It is a vast improvement over what we have now.

Mr. Speaker, earlier this week, the House voted on H.R. 485, Stronger CAPTA, a reauthorization of the Child Abuse Protection and Treatment Act.

Abuse is obviously a horrible thing that no child should have to suffer. However, this legislation has multiple issues which I call on the Senate to fix. Notably, it would create a national registry of child abuse and neglect.

Now, this sounds good, but under current law, a person does not need to be convicted or even charged with a crime to be put on a State abuse registry, which leads to many parents being added due to misfiled paperwork or perhaps overzealous CPS workers.

Homeschooling parents in particular face this issue, and an appeal can take months or even years to get a name removed from the list. By nationalizing State registries, this problem will spread nationwide without a fix.

The legislation attempts to address this concern by creating a working group to study and make recommendations on due process concerns, but that is not a sufficient safeguard for Americans' due process rights.

A 2009 HHS report on the feasibility of a national child abuse registry noted that a national registry would be plagued by false positives, where an innocent person sharing a name with an abuser would be flagged in background searches.

I call on the Senate to fix this legislation.

President Trump is owed yet another apology from fake news outlets. The recent revelation about the Washington Post and its retraction and other disinformation sources going with a made-up narrative from ``sources'' in the Georgia election scandal prove, once again, that no act is out of bounds for the media, Democrats, and others with Trump derangement syndrome in their effort to discredit President Trump. The Washington Post even went so far as to criticize all conservative media for not covering this story.

Two distorted accounts of phone calls by President Trump got us two phony, baseless impeachment proceedings by this House. With no real review, witness testimony, or anything else resembling due process in the bum-rush to have round two of impeachment, the blatant political usage of this process is a stain on this institution and should be an embarrassment to all who drove it.

Apologies are owed not only to President Trump, but, more importantly, to the citizens of the United States, who lived through a year of being clamped down, their jobs lost and damaged, savings used up, and a giant legacy of deficit and death that this institution should be tackling.

Instead, many weeks and costs wasted on two impeachments in two years in the House. Shame on this institution for fulfilling this fake news.

Madam Speaker, after good results and success in recent years of defending and controlling our border, the Biden administration has turned on the green light that is seen all the way to Central America for immigrating here illegally, giving us the Biden border crisis.

It is not a matter of asylum, as asylum can be sought in Mexico. Continuing the trek to the U.S. border shows it is really about employment and economics.

Meanwhile, as our citizens struggle with unemployment and the shutdowns from COVID, the Biden border crisis has subjected border States, like my State of California, to COVID outbreak risks from those bypassing our laws.

This begs the question: Whose side is the Biden administration on, America's unemployed and COVID high-risk vulnerable or foreign interests for politics?

Indeed, it doesn't seem like they are on the side of Americans, and we are given, after less than 2 months, the Biden border crisis.

Madam Speaker, I thank my colleague from Texas, Mr. Roy.

Indeed, as another representative of a border state, we feel the effect as well of the Biden border crisis. President Trump saw the importance, as did many law-and-order Americans, of having a secure border. The Biden administration stopped construction of the security fence hours after being inaugurated. This has given us now the Biden border crisis.

Really bad enforcement of immigration, that seems to be their priority. Risking health of Americans with virus superspreaders is a result. As my colleague mentioned, the catch-and-release program is in full force.

Do we really expect people to be released in this country to come back to have a hearing within 2 years?

Past pattern shows not.

The Biden administration has just canceled an agreement with Mexico to keep the asylum seekers on that side of the border, which worked pretty well to keep the numbers down from those coming through Mexico from Central America. Now the incentivization of that is another big green light.

Look at the numbers we are talking about here. Just in January, the numbers increased to 78,000 and change. In February, 100,000 so-called encounters at the border for people who our personnel have to deal with or might be sneaking through without dealing with our personnel.

To add final insult to this policy, to Americans, to taxpayers, in the so-called COVID relief bill, checks can go to illegal immigrants who are coming here via this manner.

I mean, whose side is this administration on? The hardworking Americans coming through a COVID crisis, high unemployment? Who are they working for?

I don't think it is us. I don't think it is the American people.

As a Californian, I also want to harken back to two tragedies amongst many. In northern California, just a few short years ago, we lost a beautiful young lady named Kate Steinle in San Francisco, who was killed by an illegal immigrant who shouldn't have been here, who should have been deported at least five times over.

Jamiel Shaw from the Los Angeles area, whose father I have met. His dad lost his son to a killing by an illegal immigrant.

Whose side is this administration on when they carry out this policy just to either show they are different from Trump or that it is a political gain for them in their twisted view?

Madam Speaker, I thank my colleague for yielding.

Mr. Speaker, I am from California, and almost 2 years ago, the State passed a bill known as AB-5, where all workers would be presumed as employees unless the worker can show that they satisfy all three prongs of what is known as the ABC test.

It went into effect in January 2020, and it had quite a few exemptions in it--barbers, musicians, translators, home inspectors, golf caddies, things like that. But after the bill passed, flaws were found in it. They had to go back and legislate again to add newspapers. They had to go back and extend the time for others for when it would kick in.

So, what is happening? Here in this House, we are on H.R. 842. Now, I had an amendment that would provide for some of those exemptions. This provides for zero exemptions for this requirement that all would be presumed as employees.

We are going to go ahead and do actually worse than the State of California, passing the PRO Act without the exemptions.

Government should be here to foster economic growth, not restrict it. The PRO Act would kill growth, squash innovation in the gig economy and the American economy.

Why are we going backward here when we can learn from California's mistake?

Mr. Speaker, this week our colleagues on the other side of the aisle are proposing more gun control measures under H.R. 1446 and H.R. 8.

Mr. Speaker, our Constitution protects all your rights, not selectively by the State or issue. One bill makes you ask permission via background checks with no limits when and how you can purchase a firearm. If they don't complete their work in time, then no gun for you.

This is an indefinite delay of your rights.

Another supposed background check bill is designed to make criminals out of Americans who are merely trying to help out others. Under this bill if a neighbor with issues, domestic violence, or maybe a suicidal situation decides to give you their gun for safekeeping, you could end up with a fine and a year in prison--$100,000 fine and a year in prison for helping them by possessing that gun for them.

The same if someone has a problem with stalking or domestic violence. Maybe you loan a woman a gun. You could be also threatened with prosecution under that guise.

Neither of these bills work because they violate a simple truth: criminals don't follow gun laws. They are criminals. I have a more reasonable path: amendments to guarantee your rights under the Second Amendment.

Mr. Speaker, American voters deserve to have confidence in their election process. This is not it.

A few basic principles: voter ID so we know who is showing up and who is receiving ballots; a clean set of voting rolls so the people who are eligible--of all types, the people who are truly eligible in this country--are voting from their proper domicile; we know they are citizens; and we know they are the right age.

But somehow we find these things to be problematic and somehow this is going to be suppressing votes--what, for people being eligible to vote being the actual voters that they live in the right State, that they are the right age, and that they are citizens?

It is ridiculous the lengths that the Democrats want to go to upset our election process and the confidence people have in it. It could be really quite simple. Have the election end on election night. In one place in my district, they found a box 30-something days after the election. They had to open back up the certified election to take care of a box that had drop-off ballots in it.

We are making a farce out of our elections in this country. And this, by nationalizing them, will make it that much worse. In the Constitution, the Congress established the States will run their elections. We only need to have very narrow guidelines for how our Federal ones are conducted.

Madam Speaker, the top priority bill of the House of Representatives this year for the Democrats seems to be H.R. 1, known as the For the People Act.

What people is this going to benefit? For the politicians act, you might call it. It helps politicians and hacks like The Lincoln Project, not the people.

For example, if this bill passes, a political candidate raising approximately $800,000 in their campaign under certain guidelines could have the Federal Government match funds up to $6 million that could be used for anything put into campaign--$6 million of your Federal dollars going into a single congressional race under the right conditions.

These formulas are geared to ratchet up from the previous election cycle. As we know, campaigns get more expensive each time; so does the match.

Also, under this bill, the Federal Government would hand out $25 vouchers to every voter in three chosen States to donate to candidates. How much will that cost just to administer a program like that? We know the Federal Government doesn't do that cheaply, maybe $25 per check to give each $25 contribution.

If you hand a bureaucrat a hammer, they will see everything as a nail. The new system fines more people in order to raise funds for this campaign giveaway. The fines will go up, and businesses will be hurt, all in order to provide something not for the people.

Mr. Speaker, I thank my colleague from Arkansas. I appreciate the time.

Mr. Speaker, I rise in strong opposition to H.R. 803.

In my Northern California district, we are devastated year after year after year, as we are all over the West by wildfire and unmanaged forests. Adding 1.5 million more acres of untouchable lands because of wilderness designation does not help. It will merely make the problem worse.

What is the purpose of a new wilderness designation? What does it achieve?

It isn't needed to prevent a new highway or a new mine, oil and gas operations, or a new dam. Those are already difficult things to get permitted, taking years and years.

So why do we have to have this designation? We are already so far behind on forest management that I don't know when we will ever get out of it, because every year--every year--we have devastating fires affecting our public lands, the access to those lands, the private lands that are near them, and the towns of the people that live nearby them as well.

The economy has already been devastated in those areas because of regulatory ideas that come out of Washington, D.C., and California to stop the type of work that needs to be done for those logging communities.

Mr. Speaker, this is wrongheaded legislation and is unnecessary.