Mr. Speaker, I thank the gentlewoman from Minnesota for yielding me the customary time. Mr. Speaker, I yield myself such time as I may consume. Mr. Speaker, this is the last week the House is in session before Americans head to the polls…
Mr. Speaker, I thank the gentlewoman from Minnesota for yielding me the customary time.
Mr. Speaker, I yield myself such time as I may consume.
Mr. Speaker, this is the last week the House is in session before Americans head to the polls in November. Two weeks ago, the House was scheduled to work through the end of September. Now, Republican leadership canceled the final 2 weeks. That means whatever Republicans choose to do this week, that is it.
This is the majority's big chance. They have one last shot to look the country in the eye and make the case for why they deserve another 2 years of being in the majority, and they have absolutely blown it, Mr. Speaker, because here is the thing: There is no shortage of issues Republicans could address this week.
We have an affordability crisis. The cost of everything is up, thanks to Republicans' awful economic policies. We have technology moving faster than our government's ability to protect people. We have an illegal war that is escalating overseas.
There is a lot that we could be doing, but, instead, Republicans have us debating things I think most Americans would agree will do nothing to help them. There are fraud bills. Give me a break. The President of the United States pardoned fraudster after fraudster after fraudster, and you guys say nothing.
He rolled back the rules that protect the quality of our air, and you guys say nothing. I have to be honest. If this is their closing argument to the American people, lots of luck with that. Take this message home to every district in America. Good luck with that. That is because everyday people are opening their electric bills. They are filling up their cars. They are renewing their leases, and they are standing in grocery stores doing math in their heads deciding what goes in the cart and what goes back on the shelf. Every day they are wondering what the hell Congress is doing to help them.
Today's rule makes it clear: Republicans will do almost anything except lower costs for American families.
The national average for gasoline today is more than $4.31 a gallon. Diesel is more than $6.23 a gallon, the highest national average AAA has ever, ever, ever recorded. Now let me repeat that: Diesel costs are more now than ever before in history.
Energy prices are up more than 16 percent over last year. Food prices are still climbing. Nearly 50 million people don't know where their next meal will come from in this country, and inflation is running at 3.4 percent, though I personally believe the rate is probably higher than this administration is willing to admit.
That is what people are dealing with right now. Americans know that this economy is lousy. Wall Street, the billionaires, the CEOs, and the Mar-a-Lago class are doing better than ever, but for regular people, $50 buys less food than it used to. Filling your truck's gas tank costs another $20 or $30. The rent is going up. Insurance is going up. Everything is going up. For regular people, this economy sucks.
Mr. Speaker, you would think that Republicans would want to do something about it.
Where is the response to the tariffs that American businesses and consumers are ultimately having to absorb?
Trump's trade war with Canada is killing tourism. It is killing our farmers and our small businesses, including in the gentlewoman's district in Minnesota right now.
Why isn't she worried about that?
Where is the Republican bill to lower costs?
Where is the legislation dealing with the price of housing or providing relief at the gas pump?
Where is the serious effort to bring down health costs?
That is the disconnect that people are frustrated with. Congress has limited time. Floor time is valuable, and when families are getting squeezed this badly, they have every right to expect that their government will treat the cost of living like an emergency.
We can just add this: There are no opportunities for us to make any of this better, even if we tried. This is the 172nd closed rule that Republicans are bringing to the floor this Congress. No amendments are allowed. No amendments are allowed. Take it or leave it. This process is lousy, and this rule is garbage.
Mr. Speaker, I urge a ``no'' vote, and I reserve the balance of my time.
Mr. Speaker, I yield myself such time as I may consume.
Mr. Speaker, I can't believe Republicans would dare raise the issue of fraud or say that somehow Democrats aren't doing enough to combat fraud when the fraud that we all know exists is sitting right in the Oval Office.
This President has pardoned enough people that cumulatively would have contributed $2 billion back to consumers and taxpayers who they ripped off. He pardoned all of them.
How did they get pardoned?
They paid to get pardoned. That is the way this place works around here. We have seen this pay-to-play game going on which is disgusting.
Mr. Speaker, let me tell you some of the people who have been pardoned, these fraudsters who have been pardoned: George Santos, wire fraud; Ross William Ulbricht, pardoned for fraud with identification documents.
Rod Blagojevich was pardoned. He had eight counts of wire fraud under color of official right.
Brian Kelsey was pardoned. He was basically convicted of conspiracy to defraud the United States.
Devon Archer, another fraudster, conspiracy to commit securities fraud.
Trevor Milton, securities fraud, two counts of wire fraud.
Jason Galanis, two counts of conspiracy to commit securities fraud, investment adviser fraud.
Carlos Roy Watson, cofounder of Ozy Media, Inc., conspiracy to commit securities fraud, conspiracy to commit wire fraud, and aggravated identity theft, pardoned.
Michele Fiore, six counts of conspiracy to commit wire fraud, guilty of wire fraud. She was pardoned.
Another fraudster, Scott Howard Jenkins, conspiracy to commit bribery concerning programs receiving Federal funds, honest services mail fraud, and honest services wire fraud, honest services mail fraud, three counts of honest services wire fraud, pardoned.
Julie Chrisley, five counts of conspiracy to commit bank fraud, wire fraud, and conspiracy to defraud the U.S. to obstruct and impede the Internal Revenue laws.
Todd Chrisley was pardoned on conspiracy to commit five counts of bank fraud, wire fraud, conspiracy to defraud the U.S. to obstruct and impede the internal revenue laws.
Lawrence S. Duran: Conspiracy to commit 11 counts of healthcare fraud, conspiracy to defraud the United States and to receive and pay healthcare kickbacks. Again, pardoned by Donald Trump.
I have pages here, and I am happy to walk them over to the gentlewoman so she can see for herself. How do you defend this when you go home to your district? How do you defend this to people who are right now struggling to pay grocery bills and to say, hey, all these rich people, all these fraudsters, got pardoned by the President of the United States.
What is the Republican response? Nothing. Not a peep. Not a word. You don't say anything. Don't lecture us on fraud. You have no standing.
What is going on right now with the pardoning of these people is disgusting. I don't know how many of you saw ``60 Minutes'' the other night. They did a big piece on the pay-to-play schemes that are going on, where 9 to 10 of the people who are being pardoned don't even go to the Justice Department. They make a side deal. They donate to this cause or that cause, or they make a big political contribution, and guess what. They get pardoned. They get pardoned.
I am sorry. People are sick of the Mar-a-Lago class living by one set of rules and everybody else by a different set of rules. It is time to restore some integrity in our government. You want to get serious about fraud, then you have to focus on fraud that is going on in the Oval Office.
Mr. Speaker, I reserve the balance of my time.
Mr. Speaker, I yield myself such time as I may consume.
That is kind of the problem around here. People just read talking points and, again, not a word in response to all of these fraudsters that Donald Trump pardoned, as the gentlewoman leaves and tries to not address any of this stuff. I understand it because this is indefensible.
The taxpayers of this country have been denied over $2 billion in compensation because of these fraudsters
getting pardoned. These pay-to-play schemes are indefensible. Again, I don't want to hear any lectures about fraud from that side. You guys are enabling this fraud to happen on a regular basis. It is right in our faces. Everybody can see it, and it is disgusting.
Mr. Speaker, if we defeat the previous question, I will offer an amendment to the rule to provide for consideration of H.R. 10032, the No Payoffs for Pardons Act, which would prevent President Trump, or any future President, from giving out pardons in exchange for money, bribes, or political favors.
Mr. Speaker, our Founding Fathers gave the President the pardon power as a last-ditch safeguard against injustice, not as a tool for self- enrichment or political favoritism.
President Trump is handing out pardons like he is running a for- profit business, letting millionaires and Republican allies out of jail for crimes like Medicare fraud, crypto money laundering, and tax evasion.
In one case, he even pardoned a longtime Republican political ally named Michele Fiore in Nevada after she stole money earmarked for a statue to honor a slain police officer. She used that money for her plastic surgery. She deserves a pardon? What the hell is wrong with you people? This is crazy. This is insane.
If any Republican is brave enough to publicly agree that this corruption must end, I urge you to vote with Democrats to defeat the previous question.
Mr. Speaker, I ask unanimous consent to insert the text of my amendment into the Record, along with any extraneous material, immediately prior to the vote on the previous question.
Mr. Speaker, to discuss our proposal, I yield 2 minutes to the gentleman from New York (Mr. Morelle), the chairman of the House Administration Committee and the sponsor of this proposal.
Mr. Speaker, the speakers before the gentleman didn't address the fraud. The gentleman just defended it, and I am shocked. I am just stunned by the defense of this.
We want to go after fraud wherever it may occur, but what we are simply saying is that, right before our eyes, we have a President who is pardoning fraudsters.
I will read some more names:
Robert Henry Harshbarger, Jr., guilty of healthcare fraud, pardoned by Donald Trump--the gentleman is leaving; he doesn't want to hear it, and I get it; Joseph Lewis, conspiracy to commit securities fraud, pardoned by Donald Trump; and David Gentile, conspiracy to commit securities fraud, conspiracy to commit wire fraud, security fraud, two counts of wire fraud, pardoned by Donald Trump.
Here is the deal: It has caused victims to lose over $2 billion in compensation. That may not mean anything to the gentleman or to the Republicans, but people who have been screwed over by these fraudsters deserve compensation. Now, those victims don't get any compensation because Donald Trump pardoned everybody.
I can go on. I have pages of names here, of fraudsters that he has pardoned. I will read a couple more: Adriana Isabel Camberos, conspiracy to commit wire fraud and mail fraud, seven counts of wire fraud, and aiding and abetting; Julio M. Herrera Velutini, two counts of honest-services wire fraud; and David Levy, conspiracy to commit securities fraud.
I have pages of names here, of people who have been pardoned, and as a result of their pardons, victims have lost billions and billions of dollars in compensation.
There is not a word from my friends on the other side who are afraid to offend Donald Trump in any way because he might want retribution. We are supposed to be Members of Congress here. We are supposed to uphold the Constitution. We are supposed to do the
work that our constituents sent us here to do, not to cover up for activity, quite frankly, that is unconscionable.
Mr. Speaker, there are so many other things that we should be working on this week to help the American people, and the Republicans have just kind of walked away from that.
I want to take a moment and specifically talk about an actual emergency that we find ourselves in. Last week, a handful of AI safety researchers publicly sounded the alarm on the very real existential threat superintelligent AI poses to the future of humanity. There are credible claims that these major AI firms estimate a greater than 10- percent chance that AI could cause human extinction within a decade. Let me repeat that: There are credible claims that these major AI firms estimate a greater than 10-percent chance that AI could cause human extinction within a decade.
I don't know about my Republican colleagues, but I think that is a big deal. That makes me concerned.
Let's pause for a moment. We are talking about a greater than 10- percent chance we could all be dead soon if we don't do something to radically change the way we regulate and oversee AI.
The craziest part of all of this is that tech CEOs agree that their companies need to slow down before AI spirals out of control. They are calling on this government to help them do it. Anthropic's CEO, OpenAI's CEO, and even Grok's CEO, Elon Musk, agree that the government must step up to increase oversight of their companies. I don't necessarily trust these guys as far as I can throw them. Maybe they are calling our bluff. Either way, we clearly need to act.
What is the response from House Republicans and from this President when they hear these things: nothing, nothing, not a damn thing. The Speaker of the House is sending Congress home 2 weeks early. Trump is saying that communities that do not want data centers will end up ``backwards and poor.'' I mean, he actually said that.
I mean, seriously, these data centers are driving up energy costs. Big tech is making record profits. We have an existential threat from AI. People are begging us for action.
What has the President done? He said data centers are great. What has Congress done? Not a damn thing, nothing. The Speaker is sending us home early, so we don't even have an opportunity to maybe debate these issues or come up with some sensible regulation, nothing.
I think we need a national moratorium on these data centers. We need to immediately stop construction until Congress passes comprehensive legislation. People are begging us to take this on with full force.
Donald Trump's response is to write them off entirely, to insult them, to defend the ultrawealthy who are getting rich off AI at the expense of the rest of us and our future.
Get this: Just yesterday, Trump said that the only guardrail we need for AI is ``a STRONG AND SMART (High IQ!) PRESIDENT.'' I mean, let that sink in.
Well, I hate to break it to you, Mr. Speaker, but we don't have one of those. We don't have one of those, nor do we have a high-functioning Republican majority. If anything, Republicans here in the House of Representatives are more interested in jetting off to their next vacation than they are in solving the AI crisis or any other problem, for that matter.
Mr. Speaker, I reserve the balance of my time.
Mr. Speaker, I yield myself the balance of my time.
Mr. Speaker, before we finish, I want to bring this debate back to something very basic and speak directly to the American people. Are you better off now than you were 2 years ago? I think most people would say they are worse off, and the numbers back that up.
When Trump came into office on January 20, 2025, the national average for a gallon of gas was about $3.12. Today, it is more than $4.31. Diesel, the fuel that moves our food, building materials, packages, almost everything we buy, is now above $6.23 a gallon. That is the most expensive it has ever been in the history of the United States of America.
The annual inflation rate was 3 percent when this administration began. The latest number is 3.4 percent. Again, I think that is an undercount. Americans are estimated to have spent nearly $2,000 more last year, thanks to Trump's stupid tariffs and his illegal war.
That is why I find the conversation Republicans want to have today so disconnected from what is happening outside this building. I mean, we hear enormous promises. For example, Trump is promising $5,000 payments to American adults after the election if Republicans win, and only if Republicans win. Even Speaker Johnson has acknowledged that such payments would require congressional approval.
Needless to say, these $5,000 checks are never going to happen. We all know that, but I guess that is to be expected from a President who is the king of broken promises.
Trump said he would release the Epstein files, and then he did everything he could to hide them from the public, likely because he and his administration knows he is in them. Again, where is the pressure from the Republican leadership on the Epstein files? Nothing. It takes my breath away how my Republican friends just kind of turn their backs on what the right thing to do is.
Trump said he would end the Russia-Ukraine war in 24 hours. That is what he said directly. That was clearly untrue. This is now year four of a full-scale conflict.
He said he would end wars, not start wars. Yet we are over 6\1/2\ months into the war with Iran, and nobody believes there is an end in sight.
He said he would balance the Federal budget. Because of the tax cuts for millionaires and billionaires and because of this unpaid, reckless, illegal war, the debt just surpassed $40 trillion, and not a peep from Republicans. They don't care.
He said he would end inflation and lower prices ``on day one.'' Inflation is up. Prices are up. The economy has only gotten worse.
The trouble with these lies, Mr. Speaker, is that some people believe them. Some families may hear the President promise them $5,000 and then actually plan around that money. Maybe they are now planning to get that medical procedure they otherwise could not afford or believe that they will finally be able to pay rent or pay off their credit card and have enough food to feed their family for the next month.
They want to believe that when the President of the United States says something, that it is truthful, and we all know that they can't rely on that because he has broken promise after promise after promise.
It is wrong to make an empty promise like that. It is just cruel when the economy is this bad. There is no $5,000 check in this rule. There could be if Republicans think it is such a good idea. They could have done that if they wanted to, but they didn't. There is nothing about that.
There isn't a bill to bring down food prices in this rule or to address the housing crisis or to help people afford basic, everyday things. I don't know what the gentlewoman hears when she goes home, but I hear about the cost of living all the time. I hear about issues of affordability all the time, and constituents are asking me when Congress is going to do something.
They don't want to hear anymore about building a ballroom or an Arc de Trump or about a reflecting pool. They want to know when their grocery prices are going to go down.
This majority should be judged by what it actually puts on the floor, not by slogans, not by promises, not by press conferences, or what somebody says might happen someday. That day is today.
Republicans are in complete control. They have the House, the Senate, and the White House. They could do something right now to help people if they wanted to. The thing is, they don't care. They don't care that people are hurting.
The acceptance of cruelty is how one can characterize these policies that are going into effect that cut Medicaid by $1 trillion and cut SNAP by $200 billion. It is astounding. It takes my
breath away, but that much is made clear by their agenda this week.
They would rather waste time on rotten bills and go home for a month than to fight the necessary battles here in the Capitol to actually help folks.
We need an economy, Mr. Speaker, where getting to work doesn't break the budget, where buying groceries doesn't require a calculator or getting sick doesn't mean going into debt, and where an honest day's work is enough to build a decent life. It is definitely not too much to ask for. It just isn't. That ought to be the standard around here.
We ought to be coming to work to help the American people, yet Republicans time and time again fail to meet that mark. The American people see through the blatant corruption and the outright lies that Washington has become known for. It is time to hold this President, and especially the Republicans here in Congress, responsible for steering our economy off a cliff and driving our country into the ground.
Come November, I really do hope and pray for the sake of our future and for the sake of our country that we are going to correct course.
Mr. Speaker, I yield back the balance of my time.
Mr. Speaker, on that I demand the yeas and nays.
