Floor Statements

Mr. Speaker, I yield myself such time as I may consume.

I rise in support of H.R. 8976, which has bipartisan support.

Again, it is an honor to be able to support legislation named after Corporal Matthew A. Wyatt, who was a proud member of a military family, who joined the Marine Corps after graduating from high school in June of 2001. He was assigned to the 5th Battalion, 10th Marine Regiment, 2nd Marine Division in Camp Lejeune, North Carolina.

Marine Corporal Matthew Wyatt was deployed to the Iraqi-Jordanian border, where tragically he was killed in action at the age of 21.

Mr. Speaker, I urge passage of this legislation, which would honor his legacy by naming a post office in his hometown of Millstadt, Illinois, after him. I reserve the balance of my time.

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

Mr. Speaker, I yield myself such time as I may consume.

Mr. Speaker, this legislation would honor the life and legacy of the great Floyd B. Olson, Minnesota native and community postmaster for 25 years.

In addition to his important work making sure that the mail would be delivered through snow and sleet and rain, he was an Army veteran, an active member of a number of community groups, and active in politics. He belonged to the Roseau County Historical Society board and the postmasters association. I commend this legislation, and urge passage.

Mr. Speaker, I reserve the balance of my time.

Mr. Speaker, I congratulate the gentlewoman on this legislation.

My grandfather, who actually was in politics in Minnesota, was good friends with Floyd Olson, who also was in politics. He was a three-term Governor, an active member of the Democratic-Farmer-Labor Party, the 22nd Governor of Minnesota. Under his leadership, Minnesota instituted a progressive income tax, created a Social Security program for older people, expanded the State's environmental conservation programs, guaranteed equal pay for women, and fought for the right to collective bargaining and a minimum wage.

He is quite a great figure, and it is hard to think of a more deserving figure in Minnesota than that of Floyd Olson. We are delighted to endorse passage of this legislation.

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

Mr. Speaker, I yield myself such time as I may consume.

Mr. Speaker, I rise in support of H.R. 1695, the SAMOSA Act. I thank my friend and distinguished, imminent, erudite, and eloquent colleague, Mr. Cartwright of Pennsylvania, for his vigorous leadership on this bipartisan bill that will achieve big cost savings for the American people.

The government will spend tens of billions of dollars this year on software purchases and maintenance, which is a big chunk of the estimated $100 billion that they will spend on IT annually.

Previous efforts to increase oversight and transparency of expenditures on software, including the MEGABYTE Act of 2016, have helped the agency save hundreds of millions of dollars over just 3 years.

Serious challenges remain. For example, a recent audit by GAO found that software license data reported by the agencies was inconsistent due to wide variation in how agencies track and maintain their computer inventories and contracts.

Current software contract and asset management practices fall short of achieving enough transparency to allow the agencies to purchase software products and services that actually will meet their needs and priorities.

H.R. 1695, the SAMOSA Act, would require Federal agency chief information officers to conduct comprehensive assessments of the software paid for by government or in use in government or being deployed there. These assessments would update and expand the software inventories required by the MEGABYTE Act.

The bill would require agencies to submit these comprehensive assessments to GSA, OMB, GAO, and Congress to facilitate more effective oversight of Federal software contracts.

Agencies would be required to use these assessments to develop a plan to better manage software procurement and management, which would be required to include remediation of deficiencies, automation of management processes, and workforce training.

The Senate Committee on Homeland Security says the bill could save taxpayers up to $5 billion a year. This bipartisan legislation would enable the Federal Government to operate more effectively, efficiently, and transparently. I am happy to support its passage.

Mr. Speaker, I yield 4 minutes to the gentleman from Pennsylvania (Mr. Cartwright).

Mr. Speaker, I have no further speakers, and I yield back the balance of my time.

Mr. Speaker, I yield myself such time as I may consume.

Mr. Speaker, I thank the majority for working together with us to bring this bipartisan legislation to reauthorize the Office of National Drug Control Policy, or ONDCP, to the floor.

The office has the critical responsibility to coordinate the whole- of-government response to the Nation's continuing brutal addiction and substance abuse crisis, which affects every community in the land.

In the face of this crisis, new data shows that opioid overdose deaths have decreased 14.5 percent over the 12-month period ending on June 30, 2024, due, in no small part, to the strong actions of the Office of National Drug Control Policy.

To understand the addiction and overdose crisis, the Biden-Harris administration sees the need to address the problem at both the levels of supply and demand. ONDCP has taken decisive action to intercept the flow of fentanyl and other illicit substances into the country.

This reauthorization will further bolster our efforts to block the supply of drugs, including by funding the High Intensity Drug Trafficking Areas Program providing more than $275 million in grant making to law enforcement entities that will help keep illicit and harmful drugs off of our streets.

The reauthorization also confronts the problem by countering the demand for illegal drugs. The Drug Free Communities Program, for example, brings together approximately 35,000 people across the country to help prevent and combat youth substance abuse.

I am proud this authorization would make sure that this successful grant program continues. Research shows also that harm-reduction strategies, programs that meet people where they are, work. Under the Biden-Harris administration, ONDCP has adopted harm-reduction strategies as part of the national campaign to address the addiction crisis and save lives.

The office has supported community access to naloxone, syringe service programs, and fentanyl test strip distribution. The legislation will allow the office to continue these harm-reduction programs and will direct an evidence-based examination of opioid reversal medications, like naloxone.

During last year's hearing examining reauthorization, we discussed the importance of empowering ONDCP to identify and respond to new and emerging illegal drug threats, including Xylazine, a street drug that is used by veterinarians as a tranquilizer for large animals. This legislation will enable the office to continue this work as new threats come to market and begin to besiege our communities.

I thank the chairman and his staff for working with us on this bipartisan legislation in a bipartisan way, and I am happy to support reauthorization through 2031.

Mr. Speaker, I reserve the balance of my time.

Mr. Speaker, I thank the distinguished gentlewoman from Puerto Rico for her kind words. We have no further speakers, and I yield back the balance of my time.

Mr. Speaker, I yield myself such time as I may consume.

I rise in proud support of H.R. 8717. Sergeant Bill Hooser, who, as I understand it, is not a Hoosier from Indiana but rather is from Utah, launched his career in law enforcement when he joined the Santaquin City Police Department in 2017.

In February 2024, this year, he was promoted to sergeant for his strong commitment to keeping communities safe.

He was tragically killed on duty on May 5 of this year. We extend our very sincere condolences to his family, his friends, and the whole community that was traumatized by his death.

This legislation would honor Sergeant Hooser's legacy by naming the post office in Santaquin after him.

Mr. Speaker, I thank the gentleman for introducing the legislation. I urge passage of this legislation, and I reserve the balance of my time.

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

Mr. Speaker, I yield myself such time as I may consume.

Mr. Speaker, I rise in support of H.R. 8919. Shawn McCloskey was a member of the 3rd Battalion, 7th Special Forces Group, as an engineer sergeant in Fort Bragg, North Carolina.

While serving as an intelligence sergeant, Army Sergeant First Class McCloskey made the ultimate sacrifice on September 16, 2009, when he was killed by enemy forces on his third deployment to Afghanistan.

I urge passage of this legislation, which would honor his legacy and the sacrifice of Sergeant McCloskey and his family by naming a post office after him.

If I could add, Mr. Speaker, I just want to say something about the process by which we adopt post office namings because I am not sure that the whole Congress, much less the public, understands what we do.

This has been, for decades, a bipartisan process where a Member who is seeking to get a post office named after someone in his or her district will go and get the support of every member of that delegation, whether it is the Kentucky delegation, as in the case of the distinguished chairman, or the Maryland delegation in my case, and so on.

Once all the members of that delegation on a bipartisan basis, if it is bipartisan, have signed off, then it comes to our committee. We package them together and bring them to the floor precisely because we don't want it to be a matter of controversy. It should be a unifying thing for us when the beautiful thing occurs of naming a post office after someone.

Alas, we have a problem, and I am hoping that our experienced and talented chairman will help us resolve it. Apparently, in the Texas delegation, there are people who are refusing to sign on to bills on a bipartisan basis, and that is causing a lot of rancor. It is causing a lot of division, and we don't want this whole thing to blow up. We don't want it to be said that this is the first Congress in decades that can't even name a post office after someone.

I would just urge the chairman to work with us to help our colleagues in Texas get to yes and to return to what has been protocol, policy, and custom in the Oversight Committee for the last several decades.

Mr. Speaker, I reserve the balance of my time.

Mr. Speaker, I yield myself such time as I may consume.

Mr. Speaker, I restate our strong support for the post office being named after Mr. McCloskey in honor of his service and his sacrifice and in recognition of the sacrifice of his whole family.

I am sorry to intrude on Mr. McCloskey's time here by just returning to the general problem we are having.

I thank the chairman for his remarks, and I thank him also for helping us to pair together a post office favored by a Member of the minority with a post office favored by a Member of the majority, both of whom did not get the complete support of their delegations. We paired them together and we have decided to proceed in a bipartisan way to make that happen.

I am just addressing the general problem that seems to be spinning out of control a little bit where there are Members who are deliberately blocking unanimous consensus within their State, and that is going to create real problems. We don't want it to be a tit-for-tat situation where we have legislative sharpshooters trying to bring down post office namings in someone else's district or someone else's State.

I hope we can sit together and have a meeting and brainstorm about this for the next session because this is, obviously, at the very lowest level of Maslow's hierarchy of legislative need. However, if we can't even get together to do the postal namings as we have done for decades, it doesn't hold a lot of promise for bigger things like the budget, climate change, and so on.

I do hope the chairman will work with us in trying to address both the specific State eruptions that have occurred, and let's hope that we can keep them from spilling outward. That is not any kind of finger- pointing. We have had the problem on both sides, as the chairman knows. Let's just see what we can do to restore what I think has been a very good tradition, custom, and policy for several decades.

Mr. Speaker, I reserve the balance of my time.

Mr. Speaker, I have no further speakers, and I yield back the balance of my time.

Mr. Speaker, I yield myself such time as I may consume.

Mr. Speaker, I rise in very strong support of H.R. 9600.

President Carter was a great patriot, a great humanitarian, and a great citizen. He, of course, was a member of the Georgia State Senate. He wrote a beautiful book about his rise in politics. He was the Governor of Georgia, and he is, at 100 years old, I think our longest lived President that we ever had.

He did remarkable things in office, and he did remarkable things when leaving office. His wife, Rosalynn Carter, was an extraordinary first lady, beloved by our whole country. We are going to urge passage of this legislation.

Mr. Speaker, I yield 6 minutes to the gentleman from Georgia (Mr. Bishop) for any remarks he may have on this occasion.

Mr. Speaker, I yield myself the balance of my time.

I thank Representative Bishop for those beautiful and eloquent words. I am not sure in the extraordinary encyclopedia of President Carter's accomplishments if the gentleman from Georgia had a chance to mention his work with Habitat for Humanity, but I got a chance to work on a Habitat for Humanity project once with President Carter, and that is an indelible experience in my mind.

He is someone who operated with great compassion, as Lincoln said: ``With malice toward none; with charity for all.''

I thank the gentleman for doing this.

That will be an amazing post office for people to be able to go to, and people will be able to travel there with pride.

Mr. Speaker, I have no further speakers, and I yield back the balance of my time.

Mr. Speaker, I yield myself such time as I may consume.

Mr. Speaker, I rise in very strong support and great pride in this legislation, H.R. 6116.

Mr. Speaker, I yield 5 minutes to the gentlewoman from Florida (Ms. Lois Frankel) for any remarks she may have.

Mr. Speaker, I thank the distinguished gentlewoman from Florida (Ms. Lois Frankel) for bringing this forward.

Mr. Ferencz was, indeed, a great lawyer, a great humanitarian, and a great defender of freedom and democracy. We are proud to be able to push this legislation forward.

Mr. Speaker, I reserve the balance of my time.

Mr. Speaker, I yield 2\1/2\ minutes to the gentlewoman from North Carolina (Ms. Manning).

Mr. Speaker, I thank the distinguished gentlewoman from North Carolina (Ms. Manning), my colleague and, indeed, my cousin, for her thoughtful and eloquent remarks about Mr. Ferencz.

Mr. Speaker, we have no further speakers, and I yield back the balance of my time.

Mr. Speaker, I yield myself such time as I may consume.

Mr. Speaker, I rise today in very proud support of H.R. 9544. It is a proud day for people of Maryland. It is a proud day for the House Oversight Committee.

It is a proud day for the United States Congress that we have the opportunity to vote on a post office named after the late, great chairman of the House Oversight Committee, Elijah Cummings.

Mr. Speaker, Elijah Cummings was a favorite son of Maryland who devoted his life and his career to making the government an instrument of the common good for everyone and uplifting everybody in our society together. He was always seeking that higher ground, always telling us in the midst of debate and discussion we are better than this, that we can always lift ourselves higher to find unity and consensus around the values that make our country great.

Mr. Speaker, I yield 5 minutes to the gentleman from Maryland (Mr. Mfume), who is both his predecessor and his successor in office.

Mr. Speaker, I yield an additional 30 seconds to the gentleman from Maryland.

Mr. Speaker, I yield 3 minutes to the gentleman from Maryland (Mr. Hoyer), the former distinguished majority leader of the House of Representatives.

Mr. Speaker, I yield an additional 30 seconds to the gentleman from Maryland.

Mr. Speaker, I yield an additional 10 seconds to the gentleman from Maryland.

Mr. Speaker, I yield 3 minutes to the distinguished gentleman from Maryland (Mr. Sarbanes).

Mr. Speaker, I yield such time as she may consume to the distinguished gentlewoman from New York (Ms. Ocasio-Cortez), the vice ranking member of the Oversight Committee.

Mr. Speaker, I yield 2\1/2\ minutes to the gentlewoman from Florida (Ms. Wasserman Schultz).

Mr. Speaker, I yield myself such time as I may consume, and I thank the gentlewoman from Florida for those beautiful remarks.

Elijah Cummings was a great Representative for the people of Baltimore and for the people of Maryland. He was a great leader, and he was a great teacher, too.

I remember when I was in my third term in office, and I had started off here on the Judiciary Committee and the Oversight Committee, to which Chairman Cummings had recruited me. I was also on the House Administration Committee. Then, I had an invitation to go on the Rules Committee, but I was afraid that I might be overextended.

I went and sat right over on the floor next to Chairman Cummings where he liked to sit, and I told him that I was afraid that I might be overburdening myself with too many committees. He turned silent for a moment, and then he said: ``Raskin''--he spoke very sharply to me at that moment. I had never heard him use that tone of voice. I said: Yes? He said: You are never too busy to do that which you ought to be doing.

I never forgot that, and I have used that line for a lot of other colleagues. People will complain about being tired and exhausted and so on, but we are never too busy to be doing that which we ought to be doing.

Congressman Mfume, with this visionary legislation, is setting up a post office at 340 South Loudon Avenue in Baltimore that will be graced with the name of the great Elijah Cummings. How fitting that is, a place where people go to send letters and messages, because another thing I remember Chairman Cummings always saying was that children are the ultimate message that we send to future generations of people who we will never meet. He meant we have to invest in children and young people because they will end up defining a world that will long outlast and outsurvive us.

I hope that post office lasts forever, and I hope when parents take their kids to that post office to mail their letters, they will be able to tell them that there was once a great man named Elijah Cummings whose whole life repays a lot of study for all of us.

Mr. Speaker, I have no further speakers. I urge all of our colleagues on both sides of the aisle to support H.R. 9544, legislation in honor of a true American hero, and I yield back the balance of my time.

Mr. Speaker, I yield myself such time as I may consume.

Mr. Speaker, I am rising in support of H.R. 9775 to honor Noah Shahnavaz. Born and raised in Indianapolis, he joined the U.S. Army in 2016 where he was deployed to the Middle East as a

sergeant with the 591st Military Police Company.

Officer Shahnavaz transitioned to a new service role in law enforcement by taking a position with the Elwood Police Department in 2021. Tragically, he was killed on duty on July 31, 2022, during a traffic stop.

This bill would honor the life and the great service of Officer Shahnavaz and also recognize the sacrifice of his family by naming a post office in Elwood, Indiana, after him.

Mr. Speaker, I urge passage of the legislation, and I reserve the balance of my time.

Mr. Speaker, in closing, I urge passage of this legislation, and I yield back the balance of my time.

Mr. Speaker, I yield myself such time as I may consume.

Mr. Speaker, I am very happy to support H.R. 7507, and I rise for the purpose of doing that.

I did not know Congressman William Barrett, but he was a lifelong public servant, and this legislation would honor his legacy by naming a post office in Lexington, Nebraska, after him. He served in the Nebraska legislature for a dozen years, including as speaker of the house. He later represented Nebraska's Third District here in Washington in the U.S. House for a decade where he supported the drafting of the Freedom to Farm Act of 1996 which was a proud accomplishment of his.

Mr. Speaker, I urge passage of this legislation.

Although I didn't know Congressman Barrett, I would like to use the case of this post office naming in the interests of improving the process by which this is going on, Mr. Speaker. There are a handful of Members of the House who object to naming post offices after former Members of Congress, for example, Congressman Barrett from Nebraska. They don't like that.

Now, the problem is that the way that this process works is that under the protocols and the rules, the custom of the House Oversight and Accountability Committee is we wait for a recommendation from the entire congressional delegation, whether it is from Nebraska, California, or Florida. Obviously, in the larger States, it is tougher because you have got to get the sign-off of every Member. Once you have gotten the sign-off of every Member, then it comes to the House Oversight and Accountability Committee. At that point, we bring it to the floor.

Now, we are starting to encounter some difficulty. There are a handful of Members who are throwing a monkey wrench into the whole process by refusing to consent to post offices that are sponsored by a Member of the opposite party in their State. So that turns what has been a proudly bipartisan process for decades into a vehemently and perhaps destructively partisan process.

I raise this because I want us to do a U-turn from that. I don't want us to head down the road towards mutually assured partisan destruction on something that should be the opportunity for unity as we have seen on today's bills.

I ask all of our colleagues on both sides of the aisle to participate in the process the way Members have participated in this process for decades, to assent to the naming of post offices even when they are being recommended by Members of the other party.

If not, then I am afraid we are going to have to change the rules of the House so it will no longer be a unanimous recommendation of each State's delegation but something like a majority of the delegation or 60 percent of the delegation.

I do not want it to be said to the people of America that we have gotten to a point of such vicious partisanship that we cannot even get unity on post office naming bills. That would be a truly sad day for all of us across the board.

I invite any reflections by my colleagues on the other side of the aisle, but I beseech all of our colleagues to not stand in the way of post office namings that are not in your district and that are maybe not even in your State but you are trying to block them.

Here, the bump in the road are people who are withholding their assent at the State level and then escalating the conflict up the ranks. We can do as well as prior generations of people who served in this great and august body.

Again, Mr. Speaker, I restate my support for H.R. 7507, which will honor a lifelong public servant, Congressman William Barrett, whose party designation is completely irrelevant in this process. He was a U.S. citizen who served all of us, and we should be able to honor him in a bipartisan and unanimous way.

Mr. Speaker, I reserve the balance of my time.

Mr. Speaker, I yield myself such time as I may consume.

Mr. Speaker, I thank the gentleman from the Third District of Nebraska for his thoughtful remarks and his description of the life of Congressman William Barrett. I didn't know that he was a Republican Member of Congress, but that does not diminish in any way my support for this post office naming bill.

There was a bill that was up earlier today offered by a Member from Texas which did not have the support of all of the Members, and this was a Member who himself withheld support in other cases. I don't know the full extent of the controversy. I don't want to get into the complete controversy, but I hope that everybody on both sides of the aisle will respect the traditions and the customs of the U.S. House of Representatives because we have played nice and supported bills on all sides even when there are people trying to sabotage and sandbag bills that are being introduced by Democratic Members.

Up until this point, we have taken that position, but we would like to see that people are playing fair on this process and not taking advantage of our goodwill to stand by the bipartisan traditions of our committee, the Oversight and Accountability Committee, and the Congress in doing this.

We want to see that it is a two-way street and not a one-way street.

Mr. Speaker, I don't know if the chairman of the committee is still around or if there is someone else who could speak on behalf of the committee, but I hope that somebody at least will articulate a continuing devotion to the customs of the committee, which is that we work to get everybody's bills through and we don't try to sabotage and sandbag the bills from the other side at the State level because that will plunge us into a race of mutually assured postal-naming destruction that is not going to benefit anybody in this body.

I liked what the gentleman from Nebraska said, that Mr. Barrett, who this bill will have the post office named for, would ask the question: What will this do for the people in my district?

It will do nothing for the people of anybody's district if we start throwing a monkey wrench into this process. I hope that the Members in Texas and the Members all over the country will adhere to the protocols and the customs that have lasted for decades on the Oversight Committee and that I hope will last long after all of us are gone.

These post office namings are an opportunity to recognize and to celebrate truly great people in our districts and Nation, not the opportunity for ceaseless partisan conflict and sabotage.

Mr. Speaker, I reserve the balance of my time.

Mr. Speaker, I have no further speakers, and I yield back the balance of my time.

Mr. Speaker, I yield myself such time as I may consume.

Mr. Speaker, every year, Federal agencies spend billions of dollars purchasing software, including custom-developed code for websites, public databases, and mobile apps to improve the public's experience using government services. Too often, agencies keep custom-developed code for internal use rather than sharing it across the Federal Government with other agencies.

This can undermine interoperability, security efficiency, and certainly cost-effectiveness in the Federal Government's acquisition and use of software. The SHARE IT Act seeks to address these problems.

In 2016, President Obama released a Federal source code policy requiring the custom source code developed by or for the Federal Government be made available for reuse by all Federal agencies. Among other things, the policy required GSA to create code.gov to facilitate code sharing. As of 2019, code.gov featured more than 6,000 code bases from 26 different Federal agencies.

Despite this success, many of the 24 largest agencies required to post their custom-developed code inventory to code.gov under the policy still haven't done so, and the policy lacks an effective enforcement mechanism to ensure compliance.

To improve compliance and further unlock the benefits of sharing custom-built code, the SHARE IT Act would require agencies to list the custom code the purchaser produced and to share such code, either publicly, or governmentwide.

Among other things, it assigns agency chief information officers the responsibility of overseeing compliance with the act.

Mr. Speaker, I support the purpose of this bill, which is to promote innovation, collaboration, efficiency, and better value. However, as the administration has pointed out, it will require several key improvements before it can truly live up to its full promise.

Most importantly, Federal entities will need additional funding in order to effectively meet the new requirements of the bill.

Mr. Speaker, I reserve the balance of my time.

Mr. Speaker, I yield myself the balance of my time for the purposes of closing.

Mr. Speaker, I urge passage with the improvements aforementioned. We have no further speakers, and I yield back the balance of my time.

Mr. Speaker, I thank the distinguished gentleman from Texas for yielding.

Mr. Speaker, I had a law professor who once asked the class: What are the two most beautiful words in the English language? He said due process. I thought the answer might be free speech, but all four of these words are ravaged and devoured by H.R. 9495, which is truly a werewolf in sheep's clothing.

Mr. Speaker, it is a Federal felony crime today to provide any material support to terrorist groups. If your not-for-profit does that, then you are going to prison for at least 10 years and maybe for the rest of your life. Losing your 501(c)(3) tax-exempt status is the least of your worries.

If rendering support to terrorists is already a felony crime, then what is this all about?

Americans have an absolute First Amendment right to give money to support political groups that don't engage in terrorism, like the ACLU, Amnesty International, Razom for Ukraine, and the International Rescue Committee, but this bill would give the new administration unilateral power to designate any of them a terrorist-supporting group and strip them of their tax-exempt status while capsizing and inverting the Constitution's guaranty of due process.

In Freedman v. Maryland in 1965, the Supreme Court found that the government can only impose a prior restraint on speech, which is what this is, if there is first a judicial determination in an adversary proceeding in which the party being targeted can hear all the evidence against them, provide rebutting evidence of their own, and obtain an independent adjudication of the charge by a neutral judge. That is what due process is.

This sloppy bill thrown before us today contains everything condemned by the Supreme Court. The Treasury Department will be able to unilaterally affix the terrorist-supporting label on a not-for-profit group without going to court, without offering any legal proof, without meeting any legal standard, and without giving the target an opportunity even to know the evidence against them.

Although the Treasury Secretary must notify the group that it will be designated a terrorist-supporting organization in 90 days unless the Secretary is satisfied with the group's answer, it remains completely up to the Secretary to make a ``final agency determination'' without meeting any standard of proof.

Once this scarlet letter and the infamy of being designated a terrorist-supporting group are firmly affixed on the organization, the stigmatized then can finally go to a judge. Incredibly, the legal burden is explicitly put on them to prove they are not a terror- supporting group, completely reversing the burden of due process, which properly belongs to the government. A sixth grader would know this is unconstitutional.

This is an unlawful power to vest in any President and a dangerous power to vest in a President who shows no qualms about leveling threats of retribution and revenge against his enemies. The President-elect has said that Special Counsel Jack Smith should be arrested, former Congresswoman Liz Cheney, the former head of the Republican Conference, should be jailed, and the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Mark Milley should be court-martialed.

Mr. Speaker, you can imagine what they would do to a human rights group that dares to criticize Vladimir Putin or another of the beloved autocrats around the world.

Mr. Speaker, American civil society and the not-for- profit sector must be protected against political censorship and government vendetta.

To get America to bite on this toxic sandwich, they have tucked the rotten unconstitutional meat in with language clarifying that Americans held hostage are not subject to IRS penalties for failing to pay their taxes on time. The Senate already passed this fine legislation, and we could do that unanimously today. Instead, they want us to vote to give the President Orwellian powers and the American not-for-profit sector Kafkaesque nightmares.

I voted against this bill last week, and I will vote against it today, tomorrow, next week, for the next 4 years, and beyond.

Mr. Speaker, I yield myself such time as I may consume.

I rise in support of H.R. 9597, the Federal Acquisition Security Council Improvement Act. I am proud to be an original cosponsor of the bill.

I thank the gentleman from Louisiana and Chairman Comer for working closely with us on the legislation.

The bill strengthens the Federal Acquisition Security Council's capacity to guard our Nation's supply chains against foreign adversaries.

The council was established in 2018, and this bill would improve its governing structure by moving it into the executive office of the President and elevating FASC membership requirements.

The bill would always expand the council's authorities beyond supply chain security to include acquisition security more broadly and grants the council the authority to issue removal or exclusion orders of specific companies when necessary or when directed to do so by the United States Congress.

Finally, our bill would create a streamlined process for Congress to designate sources of concern and requires the council to launch an investigation into these sources, with appropriate due process government-wide input and potential subcontractor prohibitions.

Mr. Speaker, I commend the staff on both sides of the aisle for their creative collaboration on this legislation.

Mr. Speaker, I am closing with an admonition to everybody to vote for this bill, and I yield back the balance of my time.

Mr. Speaker, I yield myself such time as I may consume.

Mr. Speaker, I rise in support of H.R. 9592, the Federal Register Modernization Act. This bill represents a big step forward in streamlining how the Federal Government retains public records and communicates with the public.

The Federal Register Act of 1935 was designed to ensure government transparency by requiring publication of Federal laws, Presidential proclamations, agency rules, and public notices in the Federal Register.

Today, with the increasing use of digital devices to conduct government operations, an electronic edition of the Federal Register is published every single business day. The publication of hard copy agency document submissions to the Office of the Federal Register creates unnecessary redundancy and administrative burdens, and, as my friend from Louisiana says, administrative burdens and environmental waste.

In 1936, the Office of the Federal Register published 2,620 pages in a year, just over 2,500 pages. By 2023 the Federal Register had expanded to more than 90,000 pages in a year. The volume of Federal documentation has grown exponentially over the last century, so the need for a more efficient and streamlined process is obvious.

This act would align with the current digital practices of Federal agencies and eliminate the need for multiple print submissions.

This bill allows for electronic only publication of the Federal Register except for two print copies maintained by the Office of the Federal Register. By maintaining and improving the digital format of the Federal Register, the office will operate more efficiently, ultimately benefiting not only Federal agencies and the environment but also the American people.

Mr. Speaker, I support this commonsense, bipartisan legislation. I have no further speakers, and I yield back the balance of my time.