Floor Statements

Mr. Speaker, the consent of the governed; no taxation without representation; no conscription without representation; a republican form of government for American citizens.

All of our most essential democratic principles underwrite the trajectory of American political development, which

has been the admission of 37 new States since the original 13 launched the Union. All of these States were admitted by one mechanism, and one mechanism only, an act of Congress exercising congressional power under Article IV, Section 3 to admit new States.

There has never been a new State admitted by constitutional amendment. There has never been a State admission struck down by the United States Supreme Court, because the admission of new States is a political question in the juridical sense, which means it is vested exclusively in Congress to decide whether or not to admit new States. It is an exercise of the plenary power and judgment of the Congress, the people's branch. It is up to Congress to act.

The opponents of democracy for 712,000 tax-paying, draftable American citizens right here in Washington, D.C., have now focused on the 23rd Amendment as the basis of their opposition. But the 23rd Amendment is no obstacle in any way. The purpose of the 23rd Amendment was to make sure that the local population got to participate in Presidential elections. The admission of the new State vindicates that constitutional purpose.

H.R. 51 itself would immediately repeal the Federal statute that organizes the electoral college for the District of Columbia, taking care of the problem that our friends are concerned about.

So why don't they support H.R. 51?

Well, the floor leader gave the game away when he said, for him, this is all about two new progressive, liberal Democrat Senators. It is all about two new liberal Democrat Senators. They don't see taxation without representation. They don't see military service without representation, when tens of thousands of people from the Nation's Capital have served America in every war that we have ever had, going back to the Revolutionary War. They don't see governance without representation, without the consent of the governed. All that they see is two new liberal Democrat Senators.

But that cuts against everything that we believe in about American democracy. We do not deny people the right to vote based on our expectation of how they will vote. We don't disenfranchise people because we disagree with who they might elect.

I would defend with my life the right of the people of Kentucky and Arizona to send my friends here to represent them, even though I disagree with most of what they stand for, including their rejection of the rights of people from Washington, D.C. I would never disenfranchise just because of that.

Mr. Speaker, the people of Washington came to our aid on January 6. When we were being attacked by violent Fascist insurrectionists in this body, in this Chamber, in this Congress, they came to our aid. They sent hundreds of Capitol Police officers and National Guardsmen to defend us.

The people of Washington defend our democratic rights.

Will we defend theirs?

That is the question of H.R. 51. Let's pass statehood for the people of Washington.

Mr. Speaker, I thank the chairwoman for yielding.

Mr. Speaker, I hope that our distinguished colleagues don't flatter themselves to think that they are the first Members of Congress who oppose other Americans' democratic rights to wrap their arguments in constitutional clothing, because this has actually been the standard in American history.

With Texas, it was said that Texas could not be admitted because it would be unconstitutional and because it was its own country, and the Constitution nowhere gives Congress the power to admit a foreign republic as a State.

It was said Hawaii and Alaska could not be admitted because they weren't contiguous.

West Virginia, everyone knew, couldn't be admitted because it used to be part of Virginia, just like Kentucky was part of Virginia.

Oklahoma, it was said, was too poor and, therefore, did not meet constitutional requisites.

Utah was too Mormon.

New Mexico was too Catholic.

And on and on and on.

So this is very much in the mainstream of partisan political opposition to vindicating the rights of American citizens.

My colleague from Virginia invites us to say, well, just give Washington, D.C., back to Maryland, thereby conceding, of course, that Congress has the power to modify the boundaries of the District of Columbia, as was established in 1847, with the retrocession of Virginia.

There is one problem with this argument, the people of Washington, D.C., haven't asked to go back to Maryland, and Maryland has not requested that the land be given back to Maryland.

Instead, what we have is American citizens exercising their rights under the Ninth Amendment to the Constitution, organizing a new State and petitioning for admission to the Union. That is how America has grown.

They have demonstrated their commitment to our democracy by defending us against violent insurrectionists on January 6. Let's show our commitment to their democratic rights.

Madam Speaker, by direction of the Committee on Rules, I call up House Resolution 330 and ask for its immediate consideration.

Madam Speaker, for the purpose of debate only, I yield the customary 30 minutes to the gentleman from Pennsylvania (Mr. Reschenthaler), pending which I yield myself such time as I may consume. During consideration of this resolution, all time yielded is for the purpose of debate only.

General Leave

Madam Speaker, I ask unanimous consent that all Members be given 5 legislative days within which to revise and extend their remarks.

Madam Speaker, today the Rules Committee met and reported a rule, House Resolution 330, providing for three measures.

First, the rule provides for consideration of H.R. 51, the Washington, D.C. Admission Act, under a closed rule. It provides 1 hour of debate equally divided and controlled by the chair and ranking minority member of the Committee on Oversight and Reform and provides for one motion to recommit.

The rule also provides for consideration of H.R. 1333, the NO BAN Act, and H.R. 1573, the Access to Counsel Act of 2021, both under closed rules. The rule provides an hour of debate on each bill equally divided and controlled by the chair and ranking minority member of the Committee on the Judiciary and provides one motion to recommit on each bill.

The rule deems as passed H.R. 316, providing for the expenses of certain committees, and H. Con. Res. 30, providing for a joint session of Congress to receive a message from the President of the United States. The rule also restricts former Members' access to the House floor during the joint session.

Additionally, the rule provides authority through April 22 for the majority leader or his designee to move to en bloc postponed votes on any suspension bill considered on April 19 or 20 on which the yeas and nays were ordered.

Finally, the rule provides for recess instructions, same day, and suspension authority through May 20.

Madam Speaker, Tocqueville wrote in ``Democracy in America'' that in our country voting rights and democracy are always either contracting and retreating and shriveling away or voting rights and democracy are growing and expanding.

What a proud day for the United States Congress when we get to keep the trajectory of American democracy moving forward by voting to admit a new State to our beloved Union.

America began with 13 original States, and we in Congress have exercised our powers under Article IV, Section 3 37 different times to admit 37 new States to the Union, which means that nearly 75 percent of the States in America today were admitted after the original 13.

Today, we can keep the dynamics of democratic political growth and inclusion going in America by beginning the process of admitting Washington, Douglass Commonwealth to the Union by passing H.R. 51.

We have the opportunity to do something that hasn't happened here since 1959, when Alaska and Hawaii were admitted to the Union in January and in August of that year.

We can vote to admit a new State to the Union, and what a State it will be: A community of 712,000 taxable, draftable, law-abiding American citizens who actually pay more Federal taxes per capita now than do the people of any State, more in hard dollars than the people of 22 States combined. It is a community of people who have fought in every war that the Union has ever fought, going all the way back to the American Revolution.

And it was a community, significantly, that came to the aid of democracy, that came to the aid of the Union, that came to the aid of this Congress when we called on January 6, 2021.

More than 850 officers in the Metropolitan Police Department came and fought shoulder to shoulder with our Capitol officers in what has been described as waves of medieval violence by insurrectionists and Fascists attacking them with bats and sticks and American flagpoles and Confederate flagpoles and Trump flagpoles. They sent more than 150 National Guardsmen from Washington, D.C., 154 D.C. National Guard, 850 Metropolitan Police Department to come and defend a democracy that they are not yet a part of.

Now think about that. We had people who came and stormed the Capitol, laid siege to the Congress of the United States with fictionalized claims about a denial of their right to vote, and right in this city there are 712,000 American citizens who we know have their voting rights denied every single day, their rights to representation denied every single day, and they came to defend us against those who would have torn down the very citadel of democracy.

Think about that when we are deciding how to vote on H.R. 51.

The current status of the people in Washington, D.C., subjects them to two different forms of political domination and exclusion.

On the one hand, all of their locally adopted laws ultimately can be overturned by a Congress which they are excluded from, and it has happened many times throughout the history of the District of Columbia, as Congresswoman Eleanor Holmes Norton, the nonvoting Delegate, will tell you. Congress has tampered with the laws of adoption, laws of marriage, criminal justice laws, and voting laws in the District of Columbia.

But it is not just that. It is not just that the rights of democratic self-government are subject to the will of other people. It is also that this community of taxpaying, draftable American citizens is excluded from participating in Federal legislation because they don't have voting representatives in the House and in the Senate.

That means on matters relating to war and peace, the confirmation of U.S. Supreme Court Justices and other Federal judges, the development of Federal budgets, the regulation of commerce domestically and internationally, Federal criminal law, and Federal civil law, the people of Washington, D.C., are dealt out. They are excluded. And they want in. They want to enter the Union.

Most of us in Congress represent communities that were not part of the original 13 but then came in later. Now, I come from Maryland, which was one of the original 13, but most of the people in Congress represent States that came in later.

So, this is an act of fundamental democratic and civic self-respect on their part to be asking for equality and inclusion, and it is a matter of basic constitutional patriotism and democratic respect that we vote to admit them today.

I am very happy that we are kicking this process off by bringing this rule to the floor.

Madam Speaker, I reserve the balance of my time.

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

Let me address a couple of the specious constitutional objections that have been raised by our colleagues on the other side.

To begin with, it would be unconstitutional to turn the District of Columbia into a State. It would almost certainly be that, but that is not what the proposal is. The proposal is to redraw the boundaries of the District of Columbia to cede the residential lands to the new State to admit it. For that, there is both sound constitutional and historical precedent.

For one thing, Article I, Section 8, Clause 17 says that Congress shall ``exercise exclusive legislation in all cases whatsoever'' over the district that is to become the seat of government, meaning that Congress has the authority to modify the boundaries of the District of Columbia, which it has done.

It did that, actually, in 1791. Not long after the original boundaries were set, James Madison and 13 other Founders themselves voted to alter the boundaries. But our colleagues seem to believe that the boundaries of the District can't be altered by Congress.

In 1846, most significantly, Congress gave one-third of the District of Columbia to the Commonwealth of Virginia at the behest of slave masters, who correctly anticipated that the slave traffic would be abolished within the District of Columbia. It was given back, demonstrating that the authority of Congress to change the boundaries of the District exists.

If Congress can alter the boundaries of the District of Columbia in 1846 in order to serve the slave masters and to protect their institution, surely the Congress in 2021 can modify the boundaries of the District of Columbia in order to admit a new State and empower hundreds of thousands of people to live in political equality in the country.

My distinguished colleague from Pennsylvania invites us to believe that the 23rd Amendment is a constitutional impediment to adopting statehood for Washington, D.C. He doesn't explain why it is unconstitutional. He just asserts it would be unconstitutional.

The 23rd Amendment was adopted in order to give people living within the seat of government the possibility of voting for President and to have electoral college votes in a manner decided by Congress and then, in Section 2, requiring Congress to act in order to organize the electoral college in the manner of a State legislature organizing the electoral college for the State.

As I understand H.R. 51, introduced by Congresswoman Norton, this problem is taken care of at the moment of statehood admission because it repeals the statute which organizes the electoral college for the District of Columbia.

In other words, the moment the new State comes into being, the current statute that organizes the Presidential electors is repealed, so there is nothing to worry about. I agree that there is a certain kind of messiness in still having the 23rd Amendment on the books, but Congresswoman Norton has said she will be the first to introduce a formal constitutional amendment to repeal the 23rd, and who would oppose it?

Our colleagues have not been able to find a single person who would oppose it. Everybody would agree it would be simply nonsensical to keep it within the Constitution once the 712,000 people have negotiated an exodus from the Federal seat of government in order to become their own State.

So, I think that that is a red herring. It is an irrelevant distraction to this journey toward statehood and political equality that we are on.

Madam Speaker, I yield 2 minutes to the gentlewoman from the District of Columbia (Ms. Norton).

Madam Speaker, I yield the gentlewoman from the District of Columbia an additional 1 minute.

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

I thank the gentlewoman very much for her comments, and I want to reemphasize the point that she made at the end, which is that Congress has the exclusive authority to admit new States.

Congress has admitted 37 new States. None of them have ever been struck down by a court, despite serious constitutional objections being raised against almost every State.

Everyone knew that Hawaii and Alaska could not be admitted because they were not contiguous. Everyone knew that Texas couldn't be admitted because it was a separate republic, and there was no authority to admit a republic to the Union. It was said Utah couldn't be admitted because they were practicing polygamy there. And so on.

There have always been constitutional objections made, but the courts have always deemed this to be a political question, which means that, in the juridical context, it is up to Congress to decide. And Congress has always been guided, in the final analysis, by the overriding dynamic of American political history, which is democracy has to govern for people who live here.

Madam Speaker, I reserve the balance of my time.

Madam Speaker, I want to say a word in response to my colleague about the national political logic of statehood.

There is both powerful constitutional principle and national political logic that infuses every statehood admission going back to the very beginning of the Republic.

The constitutional principle is simply that of no taxation without representation and the consent of the governed. People who are part of the American Nation should be able to participate equally as complete citizens.

That is why Thomas Jefferson set out in the Northwest Ordinance that once a community got to be of a certain size--60,000, which, of course, is less than 10 percent of the size of Washington, D.C., today--that it would be eligible to come into statehood, to petition for statehood. The only real constitutional prerequisite is a republican form of government, that is the Republican Guarantee Clause.

That is the high-minded political ideal of constitutional principle, but it is also the case, as I have tried to argue with my colleagues across the aisle, that there is a hardcore political logic that is operated, and we see it in their arguments that they don't want to admit two Democratic Senators to the Republic, which is what former President Trump said in objection to D.C. statehood. He said there is no way we would accept two new Democrat Senators.

Actually, although I consider it a degradation of the process and a sort of tawdry form of argument, nonetheless, it has been very much part of American political history, which is why States have tended to enter the Union in pairs, like animals boarding Noah's Ark together.

That was the situation with Kansas and Nebraska, in the Kansas- Nebraska Act; that was the situation of Missouri and Maine in the Missouri Compromise; that was Vermont and Kentucky; that was Alaska and Hawaii back in 1959.

So, I say to my friends, okay, they don't see the problem of taxation without representation in Washington. They don't see the problem of governance without representation. They don't see the irony or the paradox or the contradiction of people putting their lives on the line to defend this Congress, this Union, on January 6 who don't get to vote for voting representatives in Congress.

They don't want to see that, fine. But they can at least see this: It has been in the Republican platform since 1940 that Puerto Rico should be admitted as a State. Every 4 years, they have said that the millions of people, American citizens, who live in Puerto Rico should be admitted as a State. It was in the platform in 2016. It would have been in 2020 if they had had a platform. They decided not to have a platform for the American people in 2020. But in any event, they have taken a very strong position--Ronald Reagan, Gerald Ford, you name it.

In fact, the Resident Commissioner from Puerto Rico is a Republican who has introduced statehood legislation in this Congress, who is fighting for statehood.

So, fine, there is the basis for common ground. Let's get together. The Democrats have been arguing for statehood for Washington, D.C., for a long time. The Republicans have been arguing for statehood for Puerto Rico for a long time. I assume everybody means it. Let's get together and do it the way this has happened periodically, systematically, throughout American history. That is the national political logic of allowing both of these states to come in together.

Not everybody gets everything that they want, and I do think that it is antithetical to the democratic form of government to say you don't want people to be represented because you don't like the way they are going to vote because they disagree with you on issues. I think that is fundamentally undemocratic and un-American.

Madam Speaker, in any event, we have the grounds for a compromise, and I am still looking for some colleagues across the aisle to stand up and say they will stand for the position

that they have embraced for decades, to say these two states should come in together.

Madam Speaker, I yield 2 minutes to my colleague from Pennsylvania (Ms. Scanlon).

Madam Speaker, the gentlewoman invites us to return the District of Columbia to Maryland, which, of course, debunks the argument that Congress cannot modify the boundaries of the District of Columbia.

But, in any event, that is not what the people of Washington, D.C. have asked for. They have used their rights as American citizens under the Ninth Amendment of the Constitution to organize a new State and to petition Congress for admission to the Union. Neither has the Maryland General Assembly asked for a return of the land to Maryland. So that certainly answers a set of political conditions that don't exist in the real world.

Madam Speaker, I yield 3 minutes to the gentlewoman from Texas (Ms. Jackson Lee).

Madam Speaker, I yield 1 minute to the gentleman from Maryland (Mr. Hoyer).

Madam Speaker, I have no further speakers, and I reserve the balance of my time to close.

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

Madam Speaker, let me start by saying that the majority leader hardly needs me to defend him, but I know that he was a strong supporter of the D.C. voting rights constitutional amendment where there was actually bipartisan support.

In those days, Republicans understood the grievous injustice being perpetrated against the people of Washington, D.C., and they supported granting people in D.C. two Senators, or what my colleague would call two ultraliberal Senators, as well as the Representatives in the House to which they were due.

There were certainly people who were saying there were other ways of accomplishing it. Now, unfortunately, that bipartisan consensus collapsed even though it passed the Senate and the House back in the day. I don't hear any of my colleagues saying they are for it now.

Mr. Hoyer, the majority leader, is supporting the only viable vehicle for getting equal rights for people in Washington, D.C., that exists today, which is statehood, which is how 37 new States entered the Union with Congress' exercise of its powers under Article IV of the Constitution.

The gentleman waxed eloquent about the vision of a great Capital City, but being a strict textualist, I assume that he wants to pay some attention to the text of the Constitution. Article I, Section 8, Clause 17, the District Clause, sets a maximum, a ceiling that the District may be no more than 10 miles square, but there is no minimum there. It didn't say it must be at least 6 miles square or 2 miles square or 3 miles. No, that is up to Congress. In other words, it is a political question within congressional power, our plenary power, over the District of Columbia.

Finally, the gentleman, I suppose, gets to the heart of the matter when he says that, for him, it is all about two ultraliberal Senators. I would ask every Member of this body to think about that for a second, reflect on that. In America, I don't think we deny people voting rights based on how they are going to vote. I don't think we deny entire States and political communities representation based on predictions of who they might elect.

In fact, there is a Supreme Court case about that called Carrington v. Rash. When armed services members in Texas were disenfranchised because it was suggested they would vote in a way more identified with the national government than with local cultural values in Texas, the Supreme Court struck it down and said that, in American democracy, we do not allow government to disenfranchise people based on predictions of how they are going to vote or who they are going to elect.

That is precisely what the gentleman invites us to do here, to deny 712,000 taxpaying, draftable U.S. citizens, who came to our aid on January 6, to deny them their equal rights under the Union, under the flag, because he predicts that they are going to elect people whose policy views are contrary to his own.

Madam Speaker, I would suggest that is totally antithetical to the meaning of American constitutional democracy. Everyone should take a walk around Washington. You will see flags in the yards of all the people here, yards that we pass by every day when we come to Washington, and they say, ``D.C. 51.'' They want their statehood. Let's listen to the people of Washington.

If you can't quite stomach that, then read the Republican Party platform itself, which calls for Puerto Rican statehood, and let's see if we can do it together. Let's bring in millions of disenfranchised people in America.

Still, I get radio silence from my colleagues on that. Not a single one will opine about whether or not the people of Puerto Rico should be admitted as a State.

Madam Speaker, I urge all of my colleagues to vote ``yes'' on the rule and the previous question.

The material previously referred to by Mr. Reschenthaler is as follows:

Amendment to House Resolution 330

At the end of the resolution, add the following:

Sec. 8. Immediately upon adoption of this resolution, the

House shall resolve into the Committee of the Whole House on

the state of the Union for consideration of the bill (H.R.

2321) to direct the Secretary of Homeland Security to

establish a plan to respond to irregular migration surges at

the border, to establish an irregular migration surge border

response fund, and for other purposes. The first reading of

the bill shall be dispensed with. All points of order against

consideration of the bill are waived. General debate shall be

confined to the bill and shall not exceed one hour equally

divided and controlled by the chair and ranking minority

member of the Committee on Homeland Security. After general

debate the bill shall be considered for amendment under the

five-minute rule. All points of order against provisions in

the bill are waived. When the committee rises and reports the

bill back to the House with a recommendation that the bill do

pass, the previous question shall be considered as ordered on

the bill and amendments thereto to final passage without

intervening motion except one motion to recommit. If the

Committee of the Whole rises and reports that it has come to

no resolution on the bill, then on the next legislative day

the House shall, immediately after the third daily order of

business under clause 1 of rule XIV, resolve into the

Committee of the Whole for further consideration of the bill.

Sec. 9. Clause 1(c) of rule XIX shall not apply to the

consideration of H.R. 2321.

Madam Speaker, I yield back the balance of my time, and I move the previous question on the resolution.

Mr. Speaker, Americans are 25 more times more likely to die from gun violence than people who live in other developed countries, and on that point our perpetually outraged and indignant colleagues have absolutely nothing to say.

We lose 38,000 people a year, more than 100 people a day. From Newtown, Connecticut, to El Paso, Texas, gun violence is ripping the heart out of our social contract, making life for more Americans nasty, poor, solitary, brutish; in short, a Hobbesian state of war.

H.R. 8 will close three gaping loopholes in the law; the gun shows loophole, the internet loophole, and the private sale loophole, cutting down precisely on the traffic in illegal guns, which our colleagues cite as the source of criminal gun violence.

In opposing the American Rescue Plan, they voted against science. In opposing H.R. 1, they voted against democracy. And now in opposing H.R. 8, they are voting against public safety and the social contract itself. What a moral collapse for a once-great party.

Mr. Speaker, some of my colleagues are invoking the Second Amendment quite promiscuously today, but they obviously haven't read any of the relevant Supreme Court authority because Justice Scalia, in District of Columbia v. Heller, explicitly upheld reasonable, commonsense regulations to guarantee that violent criminals don't get guns.

So, everything that we are doing is perfectly in advance of, in pursuit of, Second Amendment rights that are exercised coextensively with the public safety and with the common good.

Here is a regulation that we need, that we have known we have needed ever since a violent white supremacist killed nine African-American Christian worshippers at a Bible class in Charleston, South Carolina. He should have been denied a gun, but he got it because the background check search wasn't completed in 3 days. He got it automatically, although he shouldn't have had it, and nine people are dead because of it.

We say, let's close that loophole. Just like with H.R. 8, let's make sure that the universal background check is universal.

Mr. Speaker, 90 percent of the American people support it.

Mr. Speaker, I thank the chairman very much for yielding.

Mr. Speaker, this is reasonable, commonsense gun safety legislation contemplated by Justice Scalia, by the Supreme Court, under the Second Amendment of the Constitution.

It is what America needs so that we don't have a rate of gun violence and gun deaths 25 times higher than everybody else in the industrialized world.

Yet, some people are so under the spell of the NRA, a deeply corrupt organization that is ripping off money from loyal gun owners around the country, that they are unwilling to stand with the common good.

Mr. Speaker, the amendment proposes to knock out the

heart of the Honest Ads Act, so the public won't know who is purchasing ads online. That is the exact opposite of what we need to be doing. We need far greater transparency about who is polluting the airwaves and who is polluting the internet with propaganda and fake news. We should know who is paying for all of that.

This used to be a very solid bipartisan commitment between Democrats and Republicans. Everybody agreed there should at least be disclosure of campaign spending.

Now, they not only want to put out propaganda online, but they don't even want anybody to know who is paying for it. That is the opposite direction that we should be moving in America.

We should be defending everybody's right to vote, everybody's right to participate against all of the schemes to undermine voting rights, and we should make sure that everybody knows who is putting money into the political system.

I urge a ``no'' vote on that amendment.

Mr. Speaker, it is a great day for America when we are advancing the civil rights of all Americans, and that is what the Equality Act does.

All of the free exercise constitutional arguments being advanced today-- The SPEAKER pro tempore. The gentleman will suspend. Will the gentleman please put his mask on.

Mr. Speaker, all of the constitutional arguments being advanced today by our colleagues have been decisively repudiated and rejected by their hero, Justice Antonin Scalia, in the 1990 decision Employment Division v. Smith, where Justice Scalia, for the Court, emphasized that there is no religious free exercise exemption from secular laws of universal application, including civil rights laws, including child labor laws, including child abuse laws. And every scoundrel in American history has tried to dress up his or her opposition to other people's civil rights in religious garb.

We saw that in 1964, in the Heart of Atlanta Motel case and in the Ollie's Barbecue case, where motel owners, hotel owners, lunch counter owners came in and said: We have a religious free exercise right not to serve interracial groups or interracial couples. We don't want to allow an interracial couple--you get where I am going.

Madam Speaker, smashing windows and beating police officers over the head with fire extinguishers, a bloodthirsty mob attacked the Capitol and invaded this Congress last Wednesday. They erected a gallows and repeatedly chanted: Hang Mike Pence.

They stormed Speaker Pelosi's office yelling: Where is Nancy?

They brandished the Confederate battle flag and occupied the Senate Chamber. They wounded dozens of people, hospitalized dozens of people, and killed five of our people. For 6 hours, they shut down the counting of electoral college votes--our sacred process under the Constitution for peaceful transfer of power in the United States.

They may have been hunting for Pence and Pelosi to stage their coup, but every one of us in this room right now could have died. As Senator Lindsey Graham said: The mob could have blown the building up. They could have killed us all.

And now the far right is calling for a return engagement from January 17 to January 20. They are asking the President to pardon the conspirators in last week's rampage as they prepare for a race war again next week. It is a bit much to be hearing that these people would not be trying to destroy our government and kill us if we just weren't so mean to them.

Despite the floor leader's desperate effort to polarize this body and this Nation along party lines, it is the chair of the Republican Conference who best articulated what happened in a statement yesterday, and I recommend every American read this. Liz Cheney of Wyoming, the elected chair of the Republican Conference, wrote that ``the President summoned this mob, assembled this mob, and lit the flame of this attack. Everything that followed was his doing. None of this would have happened without the President. The President could have immediately and forcibly intervened to stop the violence. He did not. There has never been a greater betrayal by a President of the United States.''

Ms. Cheney says that ``there has never been a greater betrayal by a President of the United States of his office and his oath to the Constitution.''

Read Ms. Cheney's statement. Let's come together and impeach the President for this high crime against the Republic. We don't have a minute to spare. He is a clear and present danger to the people.

Mr. Speaker, pursuant to House Resolution 38, I call up the resolution (H. Res. 21) calling on Vice President Michael R. Pence to convene and mobilize the principal officers of the executive departments of the Cabinet to activate section 4 of the 25th Amendment to declare President Donald J. Trump incapable of executing the duties of his office and to immediately exercise powers as acting President, and ask for its immediate consideration in the House.

Mr. Speaker, I ask unanimous consent that all Members may have 5 legislative days within which to revise and extend their remarks and insert extraneous material on H. Res. 21.

Mr. Speaker, I yield myself 3 minutes to begin.

Mr. Speaker, we have experienced the trauma of a violent attack on this House of Representatives, on this Chamber, and on all of the people who work here.

An armed, lawless, and enraged mob smashed windows, beat up and crushed Capitol Hill Police officers who cried out in agony; overcame and subdued law enforcement; killed or caused the deaths of at least five American citizens, including a heroic Capitol Hill Police officer, Brian Sicknick, and four other Americans; inflicted serious injuries on dozens of our police officers and other people, including 15 officers who had to be hospitalized.

Chanting ``stop the steal'' and ``hang Mike Pence,'' they threatened the lives and safety of the three individuals in the line of succession to the President of the United States. They built a gallows right outside the Capitol.

They screamed, ``Where is Nancy?'' They stormed the Speaker's office, and they occupied it. They stole government property. They trashed the place.

They terrorized officers, staff, and Members. They brandished the Confederate battle flag in the Capitol of the United States, something that didn't even happen during the Civil War.

They allowed hundreds or thousands of people to enter the Capitol without metal detectors or any kind of security screening at all, not only to desecrate the temple of democracy and to spit in the face of Congress but actually to interfere with the counting of electoral college votes in the 2020 Presidential election.

They may have been looking for Vice President Pence and Speaker Pelosi, but every person in this room could have died. As a shaken Senator Lindsey Graham said, ``The mob could have blown the building up. They could have killed us all.''

Mr. Speaker, whether or not you believe the President's course of conduct in encouraging, building, summoning, assembling, and inflaming the mob--lighting the flame, as Congresswoman Liz Cheney put it in a very powerful and cogent statement this evening--whether you believe that that was a high crime and misdemeanor, an offense against the Republic, that is a question for another time. And to put my cards on the table, I think it was a crime against the Republic.

But leaving that aside, I think every Member in this body should be able to agree that this President is not meeting the most minimal duties of office. He is not meeting the oath that he swore, to uphold and defend the Constitution against all enemies, foreign and domestic. He is not protecting and defending the democracy itself, the process of electing the President. He is not respecting the peaceful transfer of power. He is not taking care that the laws are faithfully executed. He is not protecting the Republic against mob insurrection, invasion, and hostility. He is not protecting the republican form of government for the people of the United States when he allowed this to happen.

Mr. Speaker, I yield myself an additional 30 seconds.

Mr. Speaker, this resolution is simply asking Vice President Pence to exercise his powers under the 25th Amendment of the Constitution, section 4, to convene the Cabinet and to mobilize the Cabinet to state and articulate what is obvious to the American people--this President is not meeting the duties of office and is clearly not capable of it-- and to transfer the powers to the Vice President under the 25th Amendment.

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

Mr. Speaker, I yield 1 minute to the gentlewoman from California (Ms. Pelosi).

Mr. Speaker, I yield 1 minute to the gentlewoman from California (Ms. Lofgren).

Mr. Speaker, the gentleman reasonably poses the question: Why are we doing this?

We think that the President of the United States constitutes a clear and present danger to the Republic and to our people.

For example, on the white supremacist websites that helped to build the President's mob, they are now calling for a return engagement on the days of January 19 and 20. They are calling again for an attack on the Capitol, and they are calling again for the State legislatures, now in 50 States, to be surrounded.

What will the attitude be of the President of the United States? Will he give them aid and comfort? Will he wink at them? Will he send them positive tweets and messages, calling them patriots?

Also, on extreme rightwing websites, they are calling for the President to pardon the organizers of the armed violent insurrection that took place in this body not even a week ago. What if the President decides to pardon them?

We know this President is not living up to the most minimal duties of his office. That is why we are doing this, to protect the public.

By the way, we are not telling the Vice President what he must do. We have no authority to do that. We are telling him what we think he should do and that the Congress will be with him because we know that he has come under extreme rightwing pressure on everything from the counting of the electoral college votes to his positions on a whole range of things to go along with Donald Trump. So, we are trying to counterbalance that attack on him from the right to say the people want to see a peaceful way through this.

I yield 2 minutes to the gentlewoman from Texas (Ms. Jackson Lee).

Mr. Speaker, I am honored to yield 2 minutes to the gentleman from New York (Mr. Katko).

Mr. Speaker, I yield 1 minute to the gentleman from Tennessee (Mr. Cohen).

Mr. Speaker, I yield 1 minute to the distinguished gentleman from Georgia (Mr. Johnson).

Mr. Speaker, I yield 1 minute to the gentleman from California (Mr. Swalwell).

Mr. Speaker, I yield 1 minute to the gentlewoman from Texas (Ms. Garcia).

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

Very quickly, the gentlewoman, whom I have not had the pleasure to meet yet, confuses disability and incapacity. Franklin D. Roosevelt was in a wheelchair. He had a disability, and he was one of our greatest Presidents. President Lincoln, according to historians, suffered from depression, but he was one of our greatest Presidents.

Incapacity is different. Incapacity is demonstrated by President Trump's complete, total inability to conform his conduct to the rule of law and the Constitution.

I yield 1 minute to the gentlewoman from Georgia (Mrs. McBath).

Mr. Speaker, I yield 1 minute to the gentleman from Colorado (Mr. Neguse).

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

I heard one of our colleagues say it was the fault of the mob, not Donald Trump. But who summoned the mob? Who created the mob? Who assembled it?

You don't have to trust us if you don't like what you call ``Democrat Members.'' We do prefer Democratic Members for the new ones, but how about this? Listen to the chair of your own conference.

The chair of the Republican Conference, Liz Cheney, said, ``The President of the United States summoned this mob, assembled the mob, and lit the flame of this attack. Everything that followed was his doing. None of this would have happened without the President.''

So you can hate the Democrat Members all you want. That is the chair of the Republican Conference.

Mr. Speaker, I yield 1 minute to the gentlewoman from New York (Mrs. Carolyn B. Maloney).

Mr. Speaker, I yield to the gentleman from South Carolina (Mr. Clyburn).

Mr. Speaker, I yield 1 minute to the gentleman from Illinois (Mr. Krishnamoorthi).

Mr. Speaker, I yield 45 seconds to the gentleman from Florida (Mr. Soto).

Mr. Speaker, I yield 1 minute to the distinguished gentlewoman from California (Ms. Waters).

Mr. Speaker, may I inquire how much time both sides have remaining?

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

Mr. Speaker, the cancel culture of violent white supremacy tried to cancel out all of our lives last Wednesday.

Mr. Speaker, I yield 1 minute to the gentleman from California (Mr. Panetta).

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

Mr. Speaker, I yield 45 seconds to the gentleman from California (Mr. Bera).

Mr. Speaker, I yield 45 seconds to the gentleman from California (Mr. Gomez).

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

Mr. Speaker, I yield 1 minute to the gentlewoman from New York (Ms. Velazquez).

Mr. Speaker, I yield 1 minute to the distinguished gentleman from California (Mr. Schiff).

Mr. Speaker, may I inquire how much time is remaining on both sides?

Mr. Speaker, I yield 45 seconds to Mr. Espaillat from New York.

Mr. Speaker, I yield 45 seconds to the gentleman from Illinois (Mr. Danny K. Davis).

Mr. Speaker, I yield 45 seconds to the distinguished gentleman from California (Mr. Thompson).

Mr. Speaker, I yield 30 seconds to the gentleman from Georgia (Mr. David Scott), who is the distinguished chairman of the Agriculture Committee.

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

Madam Speaker, I claim the time in opposition to the objection.

Madam Speaker, I thank you first and all my dear beloved colleagues for your love and tenderness, which my family and I will never forget.

Abraham Lincoln, whose name is a comfort to us all, said: ``We have got the best government the world ever knew.''

It is best because the first three words of the Constitution tell us who governs here: We the People.

Watch this proceeding today and tell the world with pride, as Lincoln did, about the brilliant meaning and promise of our country. Our Government belongs to the people.

As President Ford said: Here the people rule.

Today we are in the people's House to complete the people's process for choosing the people's President. We assemble into joint session for a solemn purpose that we have all sworn a sacred oath to faithfully discharge. The 12th Amendment obligates each and every one of us to count the electoral votes to recognize the will of the people in the 2020 Presidential election.

We are not here, Madam Speaker, to vote for the candidate we want. We are here to recognize the candidate the people actually voted for in the States.

Madam Speaker, the 2020 election is over and the people have spoken. Joe Biden received more than 80 million votes. Seven million more than President Trump. A number larger than any other President has received in U.S. history. The sweeping popular victory translated into an electoral college victory of 306-232, a margin which President Trump pronounced a landslide when he won by those exact same numbers in 2016.

So now we count the electoral votes that were just delivered to us in the beautiful mahogany cases brought by those hardworking Senate pages. These mahogany cases contain only the 538 electoral votes that were sent in by the States, not the 159 million ballots that were cast by our constituents. Those were counted 2 months ago by hundreds of thousands of election officials and poll workers across America who risked their health and even their lives in the time of COVID to deliver what our Department of Homeland Security called the most secure election in American history. Many of these officials have endured threats of retribution, violence, and even death just for doing their jobs.

Just as the popular vote was for Biden, so was the electoral vote. On December 15, Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell recognized it. ``The electoral college has spoken,'' the Senator said from the Senate floor. ``Today I want to congratulate President-elect Joe Biden.''

Yet, we have seen escalating attacks on our election with unfounded claims of fraud and corruption. More than 60 lawsuits have been brought to date seeking to overturn the results. They have failed repeatedly and they have failed spectacularly.

Every objection we hear today maligning our States and their officials--both Republican and Democrat--has been litigated, adjudicated, and obliterated in both Federal and State Courts. The President has not just had his day in court, Madam Speaker, he has had more than 2 months in court looking for a judge to embrace these arguments. In more than 50 cases, Madam Speaker, at least 88 different judges, including many appointed by the President himself, have meticulously rejected the President's claims of fraud and corruption.

Take Georgia U.S. District Court Judge Steven Grimberg, who was named to the bench by President Trump last year. He rejected President Trump's prayer to block certification of Biden's victory in Georgia, saying it ``has no basis in fact or law.''

Take U.S. District Judge Brett Ludwig, another Trump nominee who took the bench in September. He dismissed a lawsuit seeking to overturn the results in Wisconsin, calling it ``extraordinary.''

He said: ``A sitting President who did not prevail in his bid for reelection has asked for Federal Court help in setting aside the popular vote based on . . . issues he plainly could have raised before the vote occurred.

``This court allowed the plaintiff the chance to make his case, and he has lost on the merits.''

Trump has asked for the rule of law to be followed, Judge Ludwig observed, and he said definitively: It has been.

I have been a constitutional law professor for 30 years, and if I were to test my students on these decisions, it would be the easiest test in the world because the plaintiffs have lost nearly every case and every issue in the most sweeping terms. That is all they would have to remember. There is no basis in fact or law to justify the unprecedented relief that is being requested of nullifying these elections.

We are here to count the votes. Let us do our job.

Madam Speaker, the baseless attack on Pennsylvania and its electors brought to mind, for me, the great Tom Paine, the champion of popular democracy, who came over to America to fight with us in the Revolution against the king. He lived in Philadelphia, where he wrote ``Common Sense'' and ``The Age of Reason.'' And Paine said: In the monarchies, the king is the law; but in the democracies, the law will be king.

When you think about it, the peaceful transfer of power is the central condition of maintaining democracy under the rule of law. That is why the famous election of 1801 was such a big deal.

When John Adams relinquished the Presidency to his passionate adversary and lifelong friend Thomas Jefferson, it was the first peaceful transition of power between democracies in a democratic republic in the history of the world.

And he said, as he rode back to Massachusetts from Washington, Adams said that he did this because we are a government of laws and not of men. We will betray this principle if we trade a government of laws for a government of men or, even worse, a single man, or an impressionable and dangerous mob

intent on violent sedition and insurrection against our beloved democratic Republic.

Here is Abraham Lincoln right before the war. At what point, then, is the approach of danger to be expected? I would answer, if it ever reaches us, it must spring up amongst us. It cannot come from abroad. If destruction be our lot, we must, ourselves, be its author and its finisher.

Madam Speaker, my family suffered an unspeakable trauma on New Year's Eve a week ago. But mine was not the only family to suffer such terrible pain in 2020. Hundreds of thousands of families in America are still mourning their family members. Many families represented in the Congress are still mourning their family members who have been taken away from us by COVID-19, by the opioid crisis, by cancer, by gun violence, by the rising fatalities associated with the crisis in mental and emotional health.

Enough, my beloved colleagues. It is time for America to heal. It is time for our families and communities to come together. Let us stop pouring salt in the wounds of America for no reason at all. Let us start healing our beloved land and our wonderful people.

Mr. Speaker, by direction of the Committee on Rules, I call up House Resolution 491 and ask for its immediate consideration.

Mr. Speaker, for the purpose of debate only, I yield the customary 30 minutes to the gentleman from Georgia (Mr. Woodall), pending which I yield myself such time as I may consume. During consideration of this resolution, all time yielded is for the purpose of debate only.

General Leave

Mr. Speaker, I ask unanimous consent that all Members be given 5 legislative days within which to revise and extend their remarks.

Mr. Speaker, on Monday, the Rules Committee met and reported a rule, House Resolution 491, providing for consideration of H.R. 3494, authorizing intelligence community programs for fiscal years 2019 and 2020 and retroactively authorizing fiscal year 2018 appropriations under a structured rule.

The rule provides for 1 hour of debate equally divided and controlled by the chair and ranking minority member of the Permanent Select Committee on

Intelligence. The rule self-executes a manager's amendment from Chairman Schiff that makes technical and conforming changes and adds additional language that authorizes the CIA to expand death benefits to cover officers killed abroad. The rule makes in order 31 amendments and provides one motion to recommit.

Additionally, the rule provides for consideration of House Report 116-125 and its accompanying resolution recommending that the House find Attorney General Barr and Secretary Wilbur Ross in contempt of Congress for refusing to comply with congressional subpoenas under a closed rule.

The rule provides for 1 hour of debate equally divided and controlled by the chair and ranking member of the Committee on Oversight and Reform.

The rule also provides for consideration of H.R. 489 under a closed rule.

The rule provides for 1 hour of debate equally divided and controlled by the chair and ranking minority member of the Committee on the Judiciary.

Finally, included in this rule is a process for consideration of committee-reported or Senate-passed joint resolutions disapproving of certain transactions under section 36 of the Arms Export Control Act. This process allows for the chair of the Foreign Affairs Committee to call up such a joint resolution 1 day after it is noticed by the majority leader and provides 20 minutes or an hour of debate and a motion to recommit.

Mr. Speaker, the Intelligence Authorization Act, H.R. 3494, authorizes programs at 16 intelligence community agencies and offices, including the Director of National Intelligence, the CIA, the Department of Defense, the DIA, the National Security Agency, and the

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

Mr. Speaker, I thank the gentleman from Georgia (Mr. Woodall) for his very thoughtful and moving remarks, which are very appealing to me, especially since I am a law professor first and only a politician thereafter.

And, you know, we all have to deal with the political party system as it exists in the America of today, but I like to think of the Presidents who kept a kind of dual mind about it. They knew that they had to be part of it in order to operate, as all of us do, but also to try to think about the broader whole.

You know, Jefferson in his first inaugural address in 1800 said that we are all Republicans, we are all Federalists. And he also said:

If I could only go to heaven with a political party, I

would prefer not to go.

George Washington said to us:

We have to keep in mind that the word party comes from the

French word partie, a part, and when we govern, we should try

to keep in mind the whole.

Mr. Speaker, I thank the gentleman for at least the one cheer of a potential three hip hip hoorays you might have given us on the Intelligence Authorization Act.

We do think that the contempt citation is necessary precisely for the reason you suggest: to uphold the institutional integrity of Congress.

We have gotten together in the past across party lines to demand that the executive branch gives us the information we need, and we believe that we are completely on that course.

Finally, as to the resolution about the remarks telling U.S. citizens to go back to the country they came from; it is hard for me not to see something that could be more unifying than that; that it is an essential value that I know every Member of this body holds, that we do not make a distinction in the legal or political rights or entitlements or responsibilities of natural-born citizens and naturalized citizens, and that it is utterly offensive to our system of government to tell people to go back to where they came from just because you have a political disagreement with them. It is wrong.

Mr. Speaker, I yield 5 minutes to the gentleman from Massachusetts (Mr. McGovern), the chair of the Rules Committee.

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

Mr. Speaker, before I go into my time, may I make a parliamentary inquiry?

Mr. Speaker, do we take it to be against the rules of the House to describe statements made by the President as racist as a violation of House rules?

Mr. Speaker, launching into my time, I yield 3 minutes to the gentlewoman from Texas (Ms. Jackson Lee).

(Ms. JACKSON LEE asked and was given permission to revise and extend her remarks.)

Mr. Speaker, I yield an additional 30 seconds to the gentlewoman from Texas.

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

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

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

Mr. Speaker, on the question of holding the Attorney General and Secretary of Commerce in contempt for refusing to turn over repeatedly requested documents and witnesses, our good friends now confuse two legal questions with a policy question.

The legal question is: Did they violate the law in imposing the citizenship question on the Census? Yes, they did violate the law. They violated the Census Act. They violated the Administrative Procedure Act. They violated pretty much every administrative principle we have in this country. Chief Justice John Roberts said it, someone who is beloved to my colleagues over there.

But the other legal question is: Can the executive branch decide willy-nilly that they are going to stop cooperating with congressional subpoenas and requests for documents? No, they can't, and I hope that that would be a unifying dictum for everybody in this body that we stand up for the right of the people's Representatives to obtain the information that we need.

Now, my dear friend from Georgia made the point that he wished that we could proceed in a more bipartisan fashion. I have actually been very cheered by the number of our GOP colleagues who have denounced the President's remarks over the weekend and this week.

For example, we get a statement from--I am not making it up. I know that they are out there. Here we go. Mr. Fred Upton: ``Frankly, I'm appalled by the President's tweets. There's no excuse. The President's tweets were flat-out wrong and uncalled for.''

Pete Olson: ``The tweet President Trump posted over the weekend about fellow Members of Congress are not reflective of the values'' of my district. ``I urge our President immediately disavow his comments.''

Senator Murkowski: ``There's no excuse for the President's spiteful comments--they were absolutely unacceptable and this needs to stop.''

John Kasich: ``What @realDonaldTrump said about Democrat women in Congress is deplorable and beneath the dignity of the office. We all, including Republicans, need to speak out against these kind of comments that do nothing more than divide us and create deep animosity. . . .''

I reserve the balance of my time.

Mr. Speaker, I am sorry. Does the gentleman mind repeating?

Mr. Speaker, I am sure the gentleman was not, unfortunately, just because of the press of time.

The vast majority of Members on both sides were not consulted in the manner----

Mr. Speaker, I urge a ``yes'' vote on the rule and the previous question.

I will just take a second to say to my friend that there have been hundreds of conversations that have been taking place here, but, of course, the gentleman knows that the committee system works in such a way that legislation is put in and not everybody is consulted. The legislation he has praised so effusively today in the Intelligence Committee, none of us outside of the Intelligence Committee were consulted about it.

So I think we have got a consensus here rejecting and repudiating the tenor and the meaning of the President's remarks, and I hope that this process of dialogue which has been so wonderful today with the gentleman from Georgia leads to an outcome where all of us will vote for the previous question

The text of the material previously referred to by Mr. Woodall is as follows:

Amendment to House Resolution 491

At the end of the resolution, add the following:

Sec. 7. That immediately upon adoption of this resolution,

the House shall resolve into the Committee of the Whole House

on the state of the Union for consideration of the bill (H.R.

3765) to amend title 13, United States Code, to require that

any questionnaire used for a decennial census of population

contains a question regarding citizenship, and for other

purposes. The first reading of the bill shall be dispensed

with. All points of order against consideration of the bill

are waived. General debate shall be confined to the bill and

shall not exceed one hour equally divided and controlled by

the chair and ranking minority member of the Committee on

Oversight and Reform. After general debate the bill shall be

considered for amendment under the five minute rule. All

points of order against provisions in the bill are waived.

When the committee rises and reports the bill back to the

House with a recommendation that the bill do pass, the

previous question shall be considered as ordered on the bill

and amendments thereto to final passage without intervening

motion except one motion to recommit with or without

instructions. If the Committee of the Whole rises and reports

that it has come to no resolution on the bill, then on the

next legislative day the House shall, immediately after the

third daily order of business under clause 1 of rule XIV,

resolve into the Committee of the Whole for further

consideration of the bill.

Sec. 8. Clause 1(c) of rule XIX shall not apply to the

consideration of H.R. 3765.

Mr. Speaker, I yield back the balance of my time, and I move the previous question on the resolution.

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

The motion was agreed to; accordingly (at 10 o'clock and 24 minutes p.m.), under its previous order, the House adjourned until Tuesday, July 16, 2019, at 10 a.m. for morning-hour debate.

Mr. Chair, ridiculous, ludicrous, absurd, all of this, right?

Well, I guess the Constitution is absurd because the Founders of the Constitution took pains to build not one but two Emoluments Clauses right into the text of the Constitution.

Article I, section 9, clause 8 says that no one who comes to work in this room, nor the President of the United States, can collect any present emolument--which means any payment--office or title of any kind whatever--the most absolute, categorical language you will find in the Constitution--of any kind whatever from a foreign prince, king, or government, without the consent of Congress.

That is number one.

Then, number two, in the domestic Emoluments Clause, the Founders wrote in that the President was limited to his salary, which could be neither increased nor decreased by this.

My friend is waving the newspaper, and I can't wait to get to refute his point. He is going to have to read a little more deeply into judicial opinions if he is going to cite them on the floor of the House of Representatives, because this decision was simply that Maryland and the District of Columbia, whose attorneys general came forward to say that the President's receipt of emoluments at the Trump Hotel was damaging local business, did not have standing; and the court said it is up to Congress to decide this because they didn't have standing, as States, to hear it.

It was not on the merits of the case, if you go back and look. It was about whether they had standing to bring it.

We have got the standing because the Constitution of the United States says

that we are the ones whose consent is required before the President can decide to get rich in office.

The Founders wrote a Constitution where the President and everybody in this room is supposed to be 100 percent loyal and faithful to the people of the United States of America, not to foreign governments.

This President spent 270 days at Trump-owned properties.

Think about that for a second. What if Barack Obama had not only taken the press corps and the government with him to Martha's Vineyard, but made everybody stay at the Obama Hotel and he directed the government to spend taxpayer moneys at the Obama Hotel in Martha's Vineyard?

There would be a revolution over on that side of the aisle.

That is what is happening right here. Every time that President Trump goes to Mar-a-Lago, they are spending $60,000, estimated by the GAO, every weekend that they take government resources down there. And we pay it.

It is wrong, and it is against the Constitution.

Mr. Chair, I am totally in favor of this amendment.

Mr. Chairman, I have an amendment at the desk.

Mr. Chairman, I rise to offer an amendment that will save the American taxpayers millions of dollars, restore the appropriate focus of the July Fourth holiday as a universal, nonpartisan celebration of our Nation's independence, and ensure that taxpayer money is spent for public, nonpartisan purposes, not private, personal, and partisan ones.

This amendment will ban military parades and shows organized at the personal request of the President that serve no other governmental or military purpose.

What happened this last Fourth of July was a shameful, extravagant, and profligate display of quasi-monarchical pageantry which delighted the President and the political guests that he brought in on special tickets, but no one else.

This year's July Fourth celebration, at the President's insistence, featured seven flyovers of 24 different military aircraft, including B- 2s, F-22s, F-35s, displays of ceremonial units, mobilization of tanks and other military equipment, all on the National Mall, an unprecedented Presidential speech in front of the Lincoln Memorial on the Fourth of July, and hundreds of thousands of dollars of fireworks that generated so much smoke that the fireworks could barely be seen by the people sitting on the Mall.

And all of that was inspired by the President's observation of a similar military display when he was in Paris for Bastille Day.

And guess who pays the price for all this? The taxpayers do. That is right. The National Park Service was forced to divert $2.5 million in park fees to help cover the costs for this event.

The Washington Post estimated that the combined hourly rate of the seven flyovers of military aircraft, the B-2 Stealth Bomber, the F-22 Raptors, and the F-35 Lightnings, would have cost at least $560,000 per hour. $560,000 per hour.

The Defense Department said this week that it used money from the military services' training budgets to pay for these demonstrations ordered by the President's whim, and spent additional funds to transport the military equipment, which shut down traffic in Washington D.C. for most of the day.

Just yesterday, we learned the District of Columbia spent $1.7 million, an amount that, combined with police expenses for the demonstrations through the weekend, has wiped out funding intended to protect the Nation's Capital.

And now the President is saying he wants to do it all over again next year on the Fourth of July, and into the foreseeable future. We obviously cannot allow that to happen.

This amendment will save all of our money. It will depoliticize the Fourth of July, and call us back to its original, honorable purposes and the way we have always celebrated; and it will send a message to the executive branch that the Federal Government serves the people, not one person.

We have no kings here. We have no queens. We have no monarchs. We have no royal pageantry.

I urge my colleagues to support this amendment.

I reserve the balance of my time.

Mr. Chair, the hardworking men and women of the Armed Services certainly don't need a bunch of ceremonial pageantry paid for by the taxpayers simply because the President decides, upon a monarchical whim, that he wants to see one outside in front of the Lincoln Memorial.

The gentleman from Colorado says that this is too broadly written. On the contrary, it is very specifically written. It would still permit ceremonial displays of units that have been traditionally used at ceremonies and events, such as the Presidential Salute Battery, the Old Guard, the Fife and Drum Corps, Blue Angels, Thunderbirds, and so on.

What it will not permit is the President himself calling up for a private or public exercise outside of authorized military operations or activities, these kinds of exhibitions or parades.

So if it is traditional, if it is something that the Army and the Navy have always done, if they think that there is a legitimate governmental function for it, yeah.

But the President cannot simply snap his fingers and say I want to have some kind of display of all the military weaponry because that is what I saw when I was on the Champs Elysees, and I saw them on Bastille Day marching down the street.

We know, and he has admitted publicly, that this was the genesis of the whole thing. He saw that, and he wanted that in America.

Well, guess what? That is not how we celebrate the Fourth of July in America; and we certainly don't do it with Defense Department dollars, and we certainly don't do it with taxpayer dollars.

If the President is so generous that he gives his salary back, even though he is collecting millions of dollars from all of the government expenditures down at the Trump Hotel and the Trump golf courses, and all of the foreign governments that are spending money over at the Trump Hotel--if he is so generous, then why doesn't he pay for it himself?

The taxpayers should not have to pay for such a ludicrous display of the President's own vanity.

I reserve the balance of my time.

Mr. Chairman, I yield 15 seconds to the gentleman from Virginia (Mr. Beyer).

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

Madam Speaker, I rise in support of the SAFE Act because Vladimir Putin conducted a sweeping and systematic campaign to disrupt and destabilize our Presidential election in 2016.

Some say we can't pass the SAFE Act to guarantee the security of our elections, that because of federalism, we should let the States work it out on their own.

But we are not the fragmented, divided States of America. We are the United States of America, and that is the way we were designed.

Article IV, Section 4 of the Constitution, Madam Speaker, says Congress ``shall guarantee to every State in this union a republican form of government, and shall protect each of them against invasion.''

What does it mean by ``republican form of government''? It doesn't mean a Republican Party form of government. It means a representative form of government. That means we must have a system that accurately translates the popular will into the election of a Congress.

This is a massive technical challenge in a country of hundreds of millions of people, 50 States, and thousands of jurisdictions, especially in the computer age. We need voter-certified, paper-ballot voting systems in every State in the Union. We need risk-reducing audits. We need real accountability for election vendors. We need voting machines manufactured in the United States, where our democracy is created, too.

Madam Speaker, I want to thank the chairman, Mr. McGovern, for his extraordinary leadership on H.R. 2722, the Securing America's Federal Elections Act, the SAFE Act.

Madam Speaker, we were attacked as a country in 2016. We were not attacked as Democrats or Republicans or Independents. Our Nation was attacked.

Special Counsel Mueller found that Russia conducted a sweeping and systematic campaign to subvert and undermine the U.S. election on behalf of one party and one candidate as opposed to another party or another candidate, but you know what, that should make no difference to us today. It could have been the reverse.

I would hope that all of us would be standing together as Americans to reject foreign interference in our elections.

What did the Russians do? Well, they conducted cyber surveillance and espionage and sabotage at the Democratic National Committee, at the Democratic National Campaign Committee, and at Hillary Clinton's headquarters. They injected racial and ethnic propaganda and poison into our body politic through Facebook, through Twitter, through social media, and then they directly entered into the websites of 30 different State boards of election across the country, with varying degrees of success, according to how well prepared the different election boards were.

Now, in response to all of this, what do we get from the President of the United States, the Commander in Chief of the Armed Forces? What we get is denunciation of what he calls the Russian hoax. He rejects the evidence offered to him by his own intelligence agencies and leaders. He rejects all of the evidence compiled by Special Counsel Robert Mueller. He rejects the conclusion that there was a sweeping and systematic effort to undermine our election.

H.R. 2722 says we need to protect our election in 2020. It is precious. Our democracy is precious to us, so we will promote accuracy, integrity, and security through voter-verified permanent paper ballots, and provide grants to the States to carry out the security improvements that we need. It will establish cybersecurity requirements for voting systems and require testing of the existing hardware and software to make sure there is not malware in there, to make sure that it is not being manipulated, and it will implement risk-limiting audits to ensure the accuracy of vote tallies in an efficient manner.

Madam Speaker, we have a philosophical difference with our friends. It is not just that the President denied the existence of the attack, but the Republican-controlled Senate did nothing, they offered us no plan. They controlled the House and the Senate in the last Congress. They did nothing. They offered us no plan for securing our elections against foreign attack in 2020, which is why we have come forward with an attempt to prevent the attack in 2020.

Now, we have a philosophical difference with them, because when we say that America needs to act, they say federalism, let every State work it out on their own.

I heard one of my colleagues say they are doing a great job at the local level running the elections. But we are not talking about running the elections, we are talking about protecting the security of our elections against a foreign attack.

It is like we are saying we need to defend the country, and they say, well, we have got great local police forces all across the America. The police forces may be great, but we still need a national defense.

The election boards might be doing a good job in some places, maybe less so in others, running the local elections,

but we still need to protect all of our elections against the foreign attack that was described in detail by Special Counsel Mueller.

There is a constitutional basis and imperative for doing this. I direct my friends to Article IV of the Constitution, the Republican Guarantee Clause, which my good friend from Illinois suggested may have been the Republican Party guarantee clause. I know he was kidding when he said it. It is not the Republican Party guarantee clause; it is a guarantee of a republican form of government.

``The United States shall guarantee to every State in this Union a republican form of government, and shall protect each of them against invasion''.

That is a constitutional command that we must protect every State in the union's republican form of government.

Well, what is a republican form of government? A republican form of government is a representative form of government where the voters vote for their leaders. It is republican only if the will of the people is properly expressed through an election, we get the will through an election, and it has integrity and accuracy and safety. That is what this bill is about.

Madam Speaker, I urge everybody to support H.R. 2722.