Floor Statements

Mr. Speaker, I rise today to honor the lives of Corporal Benjamin Lee Cooper and Officer Jake Alexander Reed, who made the ultimate sacrifice and gave their lives in the line of duty to the Joplin community.

Cpl. Cooper served his country as part of the U.S. Army for eight years and was stationed in Alaska and Hawaii during his service. Following his service in the military, he started a 19-year career in law enforcement beginning with the Joplin Police Department in 2003. He then served as a Sheriff's Deputy in Colorado, before ultimately returning to Joplin. Cpl. Cooper was an avid bowhunter, fisherman, and family man. He is survived by his wife and 2 daughters.

Officer Reed graduated with Honors from MSSU and became a Joplin Police Officer upon graduation. Officer Reed served with the Joplin Police Department for five years. He loved gaming, mountain biking, golfing, and spending time with his family and friends. Officer Reed's commitment to service continues as he spread the gift of life to several recipients as a vital organ donor. He is survived by his wife.

Both lives gone too soon, both lives we must remember forever. Their service to Joplin has left a lasting impact on our community and we owe them an eternal debt of gratitude.

On behalf of Southwest Missouri, I join the Joplin community today in honoring their lives, memory, and lasting impact they will forever have on our community.

Mr. Speaker, I rise today to recognize the career of John Joines, a Southwest Missouri public servant, who has spent the last 25 years fighting poverty in his community.

Mr. Joines began his career with the Economic Security Corporation, Southwest Area, in 1997 as a program planner. Within 2 years, he had made such an impact that he became

CEO in 1999 and is only the third person to hold the title since the corporation's 1965 founding. Since taking leadership of the organization, Mr. Joines has grown its workforce to over 300 employees, developed partnerships to create over 200 affordable housing units, worked with the Joplin School District to develop the Bright Futures program, and administered anti-poverty programs to hundreds of thousands of Missouri's low-income individuals and families.

Mr. Joines has served as a City Councilmen for Carthage, Missouri, and was appointed by the Governor to a Blue-Ribbon Committee to make recommendations for the Missouri Housing Development Commission. Mr. Joines also served as President of the Missouri Community Action Agency, and was an executive on the Region VII, CAA Board of Directors.

Mr. Speaker, Mr. Joines will be serving his last day as CEO of the Economic Security Corporation, Southwest Area, on March 31, 2023. I wish to recognize his career of service to the members of our community as he closes out his career this month.

Mr. Speaker, I thank Chairman Graves for his amazing leadership on this important topic.

The arrogance of liberal bureaucrats knows no bounds. When we think that they cannot go any further, they decide that they can regulate the rain that falls from the sky.

The waters of the U.S. regulation will cost our citizens, especially farmers in my State of Missouri, who, on average, own 300 acres, which is mostly small farms, it will saddle them with red tape.

Of course, we know why the Biden administration is imposing this on our citizens and our farmers. The administration is not at all interested in helping the average American farmer or supporting them. They are more interested in appealing to the radical environmentalists that want to control our lives.

Farmers have been hit hard with fuel costs, fertilizer costs, and supply chain challenges recently. The last thing they need is this. The EPA and the Army Corps of Engineers should rescind this rule and leave our farmers alone.

Mr. Speaker, as a cosponsor of this resolution, I fully support it and urge my colleagues to pass it.

Mr. Speaker, I thank my friend from Colorado (Mr. Buck) for yielding.

I am from Missouri, the Show Me State, and the home of Harry Truman, who said: ``Once a government is committed to the principle of silencing the voice of opposition, it has only one way to go, and that is down the path of increasingly repressive measures until it becomes a source of terror to all its citizens and creates a country where everyone lives in fear.''

This sounds like a nation that we see with China or Russia. Sadly, it is something that could happen in the United States if we are not vigilant here.

The First Amendment is this country's foundation. The diverse and competitive marketplace of ideas is the heartbeat that keeps this Republic alive. People need to be able to debate and to be able to challenge one another.

Yes, free speech means that people have the right to sometimes be wrong. Yet, over the last few years, we in the United States have ceded power as a Federal Government to Big Tech and Big Tech entities. We have executives from San Francisco to New York who have crowned themselves the free speech police for the rest of our Nation.

When Elon Musk purchased Twitter last year, he took a great step in the right direction by allowing an independent journalist to review the company's records, and their findings are now what we call the Twitter files.

It has confirmed what conservatives nationwide already knew what was going on, that Big Tech and Big Government were working together with the left to silence conservative views and voices and to relegate them to being a second-class citizen.

In one instance, the reporter found that Twitter censored the Hunter Biden laptop scandal in the middle of the Presidential election. Bari Weiss revealed that Twitter was, indeed, silencing conservative voices and shadow banning individuals. Perhaps what was most disturbing was that the FBI gave Twitter a list of accounts to shut down.

It doesn't stop there. Last year the DHS, our own Federal Government, tried to set up its own disinformation board. We see entities and businesses that the Federal Government has given special privileges to provide over-the-air television, cable television, right-of-way to deliver entertainment to the homes of individuals across America. These companies choose to silence conservative speech by first deplatforming and eliminating One America News Network and now going after Newsmax.

There is a famous quote about what happened during the Holocaust when the Nazis first came for some individuals and people said nothing. Then, eventually, they will come for you.

I say this not as a Republican or a Missourian but as a concerned citizen for a country that has these rights that were here because of the blood that was shed by thousands, if not hundreds of thousands, of patriots from the time of the American Revolution until today, who fought and died so that you and I would have free speech. We must fight all the attacks against the First Amendment and uphold the values that make this country so very special.