Floor Statements

Mr. Speaker, it is painfully obvious to myself, my colleagues, and the American people that the Republican Party is deeply unserious and unable to legislate. Their censure resolution against me today continues to demonstrate their inability to govern and serve the American people.

Over the last 3 years, I have tirelessly fought for my district and my constituents by bringing over $125 million to the district. I helped save members of my community over $7 million and resolved over 6,500 constituent casework issues.

I have introduced over 50 bills, resolutions, and amendments, and I had two bills on STEM education passed in the historic Chips and Science Act.

Even today, as Republicans force a censure on me, I introduced a new bill, the College Athlete Right to Organize Act, to ensure college athletes get paid for their time and hard work. No matter the result of the censure vote tomorrow, my constituents know I will always continue to fight for them.

Fighting for my district includes working to prevent a government shutdown. Just over 2 months ago, I was rushing to the Capitol to vote and prevent a Republican shutdown. When I tried to exit a door that I usually go through, it didn't open, and due to confusion and rush to go vote, I pulled the fire alarm.

I immediately took responsibility and accountability for my actions and pled guilty. Immediately. The legal process on this matter has played out. In no way did I obstruct official proceedings. The vote took place and Democrats were able to ensure we avoided a government shutdown.

Unfortunately, Republicans are here trying to rehash an already litigated matter. This is a matter in which the Republican-controlled House Committee on Ethics decided not to proceed with any further investigation.

This is an insult to the people I was elected to represent. Instead of passing meaningful legislation for the American people, some Republicans are

using this censure to waste our time and money. They are trying to make you forget about all of the rights they want to destroy.

They are trying to make you forget they want to take away your reproductive rights, your voting rights, your healthcare, your Social Security, and your Medicare.

House Democrats have been trying to focus on and address the issues the American people care about.

Can we please, please, please, please address the affordability crisis?

Mr. Speaker, millions of Americans are struggling to put food on their tables, pay their rent, and keep the electricity on.

Can we address the issue of gun violence.

Just this week, we broke the record for the most mass shootings in a year and we have lost over 35,000 people due to gun violence.

Can we address our crumbling public school infrastructure?

Kids are learning in schools with asbestos, no air conditioning, and mold. It is hurting their ability to learn, grow, and thrive.

Can we put an end to our massive spending on weapons and war, and instead invest in our communities and our kids?

The number one thing I tried to do as a middle school principal and as an educator for 20 years was to teach my students when they made a mistake, they owned up to it, they took responsibility, and they held themselves accountable. That is exactly what I did. Yet, we are still here.

Mr. Speaker, I rise in opposition to this resolution.

First and foremost, can we please stop misrepresenting Representative Tlaib's words? She does not want to kill Jews. She is not in support of Hamas. She is speaking as someone who is the only Palestinian American in U.S. history to serve in this body.

Without her voice, we would lack even more empathy for the people of Palestine. We would not have someone with direct personal experience speaking against the siege that is happening now in Gaza.

This body needs empathy and compassion for all people, not just people who look like the majority of my colleagues on the other side of the aisle. Maybe because of your lack of diversity, you lack the cognitive and emotional ability to recognize diverse opinions when they speak truth to power. You absolutely need to open up your mind to other people and other experiences, especially when they are Muslim, when they are women, and when they are people of color.

You had a Member of your party call my colleague a terrorist and didn't censure her, but we are having this conversation now about your interpretation of words.

Mr. Chair, during rollcall No. 544 on H.R. 4394, I mistakenly recorded my vote as ``no'' when I should have voted ``aye.''

Amendment No. 37 Offered by Mr. Garamendi

Mr. Chair, had I been present, I would have voted ``no'' on rollcall No. 325.

Amendment No. 64 Offered by Mr. Roy

Mr. Speaker, today, I rise to discuss my amendment to the fiscal year 2024 National Defense Authorization Act, Rules Committee amendment No. 778.

My amendment is very simple. It would reinvest $157 billion from our defense budget into our public education system.

Many of my colleagues may balk at that number. However, I remind everyone that we spend more on our national defense than the next 10 countries combined. We are secure as a nation in our military might because we have consistently supported the military industrial complex.

Where we have neglected mightily is another pillar of our democracy, which is our education system and our public school system.

As we continue to neglect our public schools, we are harming our most precious and most vulnerable resource, which is our Nation's children. Historically, this neglect is well-documented from redlining communities, underfunding public housing, underfunding green spaces, and underfunding schools in historically marginalized communities.

Before coming to Congress, I had the pleasure and privilege of working in our public schools for 20 years. I served as an elementary school teacher in the South Bronx before becoming a high school guidance counselor and dean of students, where I served for 3\1/2\ years.

Realizing that our schools weren't doing enough to unlock the unlimited potential of our kids, I wrote a proposal and opened up a public middle school in the northeast Bronx, where I served for 10\1/2\ years as its principal.

Our mission as a school was simple: Listen to our students. Listen to our families. Respond to the community's needs because that is what is necessary to unlock the magic, magnificence, and brilliance of our kids. I scoured the Earth to find additional grants and resources to bring into our school.

We didn't just invest in traditional curriculum, we invested in the holistic development of our kids. Now, what does that mean?

That means that we made sure that we focused on language arts, we focused on mathematics, we focused on science, but we also focused on STEM and STEAM, music, the arts, play, gym, mental health supports, food security, adult education, and everything to ensure the full development of our students and support for their families.

Mr. Speaker, I have to say to the House Chamber and to America, education, I argue, is the number one national security issue in our country. Because of historic miseducation, separation, and segregation across race and class, we continue to have these battles rooted in sexism, racism, and discrimination. We continue to have an economy that doesn't work for all Americans. When we invest in education, we invest in shared prosperity from rural America to urban America and everything in between.

Imagine a Nation where every single child, regardless of learning style, background, or race had access and opportunity to the American Dream.

When we invest in education, we have better healthcare, economic, and obviously, education outcomes. We deal with the issue of public safety. We deal with the issue of mass shooting. We deal with the issue of mass incarceration.

Invest in our children. Invest in our schools. Let us stop neglecting this critical area. We need to invest in this space in order to save our democracy and take it to the next level.

Mr. Speaker, if we defeat the previous question, we can bring up H. Res. 178, an important piece of legislation affirming the House's commitment to protecting Social Security and Medicare.

Protecting Social Security and Medicare must be a front and center priority of this Congress. We should be doing everything we can and using all of our power to work in a bipartisan way to make sure we protect Social Security and Medicare, as opposed to moving forward aggressively to raise military spending once again where we already spend more on our military and on our military industrial complex than the next 10 countries combined.

The American people need to know the Republican Party is attempting to invest more in war than it is in protecting our seniors.

Some of our seniors--55 million Americans--have been paying into Social Security and Medicare for 50 years, and by 2035, 75 million Americans will call themselves seniors.

We must protect our seniors. They have paid into our system. We must ensure that they have access to healthcare, to housing, to money in their pockets, and to food on the table. We often, particularly my colleagues on the other side of the aisle, seem to continue to marginalize and neglect the most vulnerable people in our society--our seniors included, our children included, and those who live in poverty included.

I represent New York's 16th Congressional District. It is one of the most diverse districts in the country. We have urban, suburban, and rural areas. I am constantly in the community talking to my neighbors. Never do I hear that we should invest more in the military industrial complex than we do in protecting Medicare and Social Security. I never hear those words.

I also want to identify our veterans as another vulnerable group that Republicans continue to leave behind, as not one Republican in the House voted in support of the PACT Act.

I thank the chairman for yielding me this time, and once again, let us do everything in our power to preserve and protect Medicare and Social Security. Let's not let the Republican Party cut it.

Mr. Speaker, I thank Representative Cherfilus-McCormick for her leadership and for bringing together the CBC this evening to once again discuss racism in America.

How long are we going to have to have this conversation? It seems like day after day, month after month, year after year, since 1619, we have had to have this conversation in some context.

The Supreme Court's decision, unfortunately, is not surprising because three of our Court Justices were chosen by one of the most, if not the most, racist Presidents in American history, former President Donald Trump. He chose three of the Supreme Court Justices. His slogan is to Make America Great Again, take America back to a time when African Americans did not have the rights that we have fought for and died for throughout American history.

Here we go again. This Supreme Court has now become a Supreme Court that legislates as opposed to a Supreme Court that simply implements the pillars of our Constitution, the same Supreme Court that rolled back Roe v. Wade not too long ago, that is now making it easier to carry concealed weapons in Democrat-led States with strong gun laws like New York, the same Supreme Court that says it is okay to turn away LGBTQ customers if you do not want to do work for that particular demographic.

This Supreme Court has gone rogue, and this Supreme Court has lost its legitimacy. Look at the reports: members of the Supreme Court receiving gifts from billionaire donors over the course of their careers, members of the Supreme Court allowing billionaire conservative donors to pay for their children's tuition as they attend private schools.

This is unacceptable. This is unethical. There are members of the Supreme Court who should immediately resign or be impeached because of taking these gifts from conservative billionaire donors.

These recent decisions rolling back Roe v. Wade and definitely the one as it relates to affirmative action are in alignment with MAGA Republicans and extreme conservative Republicans in our country. Notice the hypocrisy. Notice the disgusting decision to use the 14th Amendment, which was designed to protect the civil rights and citizenship of newly freed slaves. They use that argument to now take away rights from African Americans as it refers to entry into our most prestigious institutions.

This decision is going to prohibit millions of African Americans across this country who are brilliant from receiving the same access and opportunity as their White peers.

I think all of that is captured in this chart behind me when we look at the issue of wealth inequality in America. Look at this chart and the median family wealth gap. The average White family median wealth is $171,000. Compare that to the average Black family. The median in an average Black family is $17,409. The average Hispanic family is $20,920.

It is the consistent attack on Black and Latino communities that contributes to this wealth gap. It is not just the affirmative action decision in terms of the higher education institutions of America. It is also as it relates to employment opportunities, to career opportunities, to private investment in Black and Latino businesses, to the Federal budget, and where our money is allocated toward right here in this body, the United States House of Representatives.

It goes back to the issue of globalization and blue-collar jobs leaving Black and Brown communities as part of a race to the bottom for profit based on low-cost labor in other countries. When those factory jobs left our country and left Black and Latino communities, nothing replaced those jobs. As a matter of fact, I have misspoken. Something did replace those jobs: heroin, the numbers game, and crack cocaine replaced those jobs. Do you know what else replaced those jobs? Law enforcement.

You take away access and opportunity from a jobs perspective, from an economic perspective, from a higher education perspective--also, by the way, because of our support of redlining Black communities, the White middle class in the 1930s and 1940s was able to buy homes at very low interest rates, very low cost, move to the suburbs, out of public housing, and build their wealth. Do you know who was forced to stay in public housing? African Americans and Latinos. Those communities were considered devalued, less valuable because of the race of the people who lived there.

This is historic. This is not just the enslavement of Africans, not just Jim

Crow, not just the Black laws, not just the Homestead Act. This is redlining, the Iran-Contra scandal, and drugs in our community. Now, in 2023, we continue to have these conversations because of the Supreme Court's recent decision.

I am also here to say that to us in the Congressional Black Caucus and to African Americans across this country, these setbacks are only that. They are only setbacks. Each setback makes us stronger, makes us more powerful, makes us more united, and gives us a deeper sense of commitment and self-determination as we work to reclaim our Black sovereignty not just here in America but throughout the African diaspora, in the Caribbean, on the African Continent, and in Central and South America.

We don't die; we multiply. We will continue to multiply exponentially as we weather this storm, grow our enrollment in historically Black colleges--a shout-out to HBCUs for doing the great work that they do so that is going to grow.

We also are going to let our voices be heard as we vote with our feet and go to the polls next year because we have to bring transformational change to the United States of America. We have to build a nation that works for everybody, and right now, we do not have that nation.

I will close with this: The Supreme Court has not only revealed its illegitimacy through receiving gifts from billionaire conservative donors. We have to look at complete Supreme Court reform as it relates to ethics reform and ending lifetime appointments.

We also need to look at the size of the Supreme Court. It is time to expand the Court beyond the nine members. This nine-member Supreme Court has been in place since 1869. America was 30 million people in 1869. It is now 330 million people, over 10 times the size.

There are 7,000 cases presented to the Supreme Court every single year. They hear only 80 of them. They do not have the capacity to respond to the complexity, diversity, and nuance that is American society today.

It is time for democracy reform, and it begins with the Supreme Court. It also begins with the electoral college. It also begins with ending the filibuster. We change all that by voting the right people into office and getting the wrong ones out of office.

Mr. Speaker, I had technical difficulties. Had I been present, I would have voted ``nay'' on rollcall No. 232.

Mr. Speaker, last Sunday, May 14, marked the 1-year anniversary of the horrific mass shooting in Buffalo, New York.

America can only move forward if we acknowledge what is killing us in droves--white supremacist extremism.

Congress needs to lead and say clearly to the country that white supremacy is an existential threat.

Last year, a man, radicalized by the great replacement theory, drove 2 hours to a Black neighborhood in Buffalo with an assault rifle and opened fire. Ten lives were lost, and we are still collectively mourning.

We are also mourning the lives of those lost in other racist attacks, including in Allen, Texas, at the hands of a neo-Nazi extremist.

These once-fringe ideologies are now being openly promoted by too many in the Republican Party, which is seeking to criminalize migrants, ban Black history curricula, take away food from children and healthcare for all, and fan the flames of a culture war.

It has to stop.

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

The motion was agreed to; accordingly (at 2 o'clock and 40 minutes p.m.), under its previous order, the House adjourned until tomorrow, Wednesday, May 17, 2023, at 10 a.m. for morning-hour debate.

Mr. Speaker, today I rise to express my love and appreciation for the Pakistani-American community. I am proud to be introducing a resolution supporting a designation of March 23 as Pakistan Day.

The holiday of Pakistan Day, coming up tomorrow, marks the creation of the world's first Islamic Republic. Of course, Ramadan begins at sundown today, so I extend my best wishes for a happy Ramadan to Muslims around the world.

Pakistan Day is an opportunity for people of Pakistani heritage, wherever they live, to join with their neighbors in joy and celebration of their culture, their achievements, and their aspirations for the future. We are all enriched by this spirit.

I am deeply inspired by the contributions of Pakistani Americans who have given their brilliance to my district and our country as educators, innovators, public servants, organizers, and so much more.

Thank you to the American Pakistani Advocacy Group for your work which makes our democracy stronger.

I look forward to joining all those who will be observing Pakistan Day tomorrow, from Islamabad to Yonkers.

Mr. Speaker, we must all do everything in our power to organize and communicate with Mr. Biden to stop the Willow project.

We are living in a climate catastrophe. We have one human race; we have one planet; and we have people organizing across the country to make sure the Willow project doesn't happen and to make sure we invest in the clean, green, renewable energy that is going to save the human race and save the planet.

Mr. President, it was young people that organized across this country to help you get into office. Their number one issue is climate change.

Mr. President, it was young people who organized across this country to help us push back against the so-called red wave and maintain balance in the House.

And it is going to be young people who organize to help us win back the House in 2024 and help America to reach its ideals.

Stop the Willow project.

Mr. Speaker, I thank the CBC for putting together this Special Order hour.

I just want to start out by saying this is not just a CBC issue. We need the Tri-Caucus to be involved in this issue, and we need the Tri- Caucus to be speaking out on this issue.

We also need action and courage from the Senate in terms of stopping the unnecessary killing of Black people throughout our country.

Tyre Nichols should be alive. Trayvon Martin should be alive. Breonna Taylor should be alive. Atatiana Jefferson, Freddie Gray, Laquan McDonald--they all should be alive. Michael Brown, Eric Gardner, on and on and on and on.

Police brutality in our country is a disease that needs to be cured. It is rooted in historical racism and systematic oppression in our country.

This has to stop. Federal legislation needs to be implemented to stop it.

One of the things we are asking for is simple accountability; that is all. We support law enforcement when they are doing the right thing, but when they commit a crime, they should be held accountable. They are not above the law.

What is really painful is taxpayer money pays the salary of law enforcement.

Taxpayer money pays the pensions of law enforcement.

Taxpayer money pays for the settlements when law enforcement is sued in court.

Taxpayer money pays for the lawyers.

Cities go into debt using bonds to pay settlement claims. There is a billion-dollar industry of police brutality that comes out of the pockets of taxpayers.

If we are going to reach the ideals of our democracy and our Constitution, we need to stop the unnecessary killing of Black people in our country.

I will close with this: It is not just policing; it is the overall system of mass incarceration. We incarcerate more, and there are disproportionately more Black and Brown people in our country.

Mr. Speaker, I rise today to honor and celebrate the life of Colonel Johnnie Pantanelli.

Colonel Pantanelli embodied so many of our values. She fought for freedom, broke glass ceilings, and made sure the next generation of women flew.

Colonel Pantanelli served in the Marine Corps Reserves in 1944 and 1945, and soon after was told her service was no longer needed because the men were coming home.

Instead of quitting, she joined the Civil Air Patrol in White Plains and served as a wartime mission observer searching for German subs.

After the war, Colonel Pantanelli earned her pilot's license and survived

a plane crash during her flight training. She served for decades as commander of the squadron that is now named after her. In 2011, she earned the rank of colonel.

Colonel Pantanelli passed away on January 14, 2023. She would have been 98 in March.

New York's 16th District and I thank her for her service and send our deepest condolences to everyone impacted by this monumental loss.

Mr. Chairman, I have an amendment at the desk, No. 92.

Mr. Chairman, according to my friends across the aisle, the purpose of this bill is to promote energy security and lower costs for consumers. I hope they will agree that if our goal is to protect Americans, then we cannot allow price-gouging corporations to participate in any increased drilling on Federal lands under this bill. That would defeat the entire purpose.

My amendment to H.R. 21 simply says that if you price gouged the American people last year, you should not be allowed to participate in a plan whose goal is to reduce prices and promote the public interest.

Nobody can deny that Big Oil and Gas engaged in price gouging in 2022. They raked in record profits--$343 billion in the first three quarters of last year--at the same time that historically high gas prices were pummeling American workers across the country. Inflation gave these companies cover to jack up prices even higher. Supply chain disruptions and a refinery crunch gave them cover to keep supply restricted and to engage in market manipulation.

This is not my interpretation. This is what they broadcast to their investors. Exxon and Chevron executives, for example, bragged about maintaining capital discipline and about funneling billions back to shareholders in the form of dividends and stock buybacks.

We should not accept that behavior. Let's come together on a bipartisan basis and protect the American people from corporate price gouging.

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

Mr. Chair, I demand a recorded vote.