Floor Statements

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

Mr. Speaker, while their leader boasts of pardoning hundreds of convicted violent felons who attacked and brutalized 140 police officers in this building, the party formerly of Abraham Lincoln in Congress today is working to create a new crime and to perfect three great GOP legislative arts visible this week: Number one, complete legislative redundancy; two, interfering in other families' private lives to prey on their tragedies and medical catastrophes; and, three, threatening to send American doctors to jail.

Mr. Speaker, I yield 3 minutes to the very distinguished Congresswoman from the Third District of Minnesota (Ms. Morrison) who is a mother of three, an OB/GYN, and a former State legislator serving in her first term. This is her first speech on the House floor.

Mr. Speaker, I yield 2 minutes to the gentlewoman from Massachusetts (Ms. Clark), the minority whip.

Madam Speaker, I yield 3 minutes to the distinguished gentleman from the 26th District of New York (Mr. Kennedy), a father of three and the still-bereaved father of Brigid Nicole.

Madam Speaker, I yield an additional 20 seconds to the gentleman from New York.

Madam Speaker, I thank Mr. Kennedy, Ms. Morrison, and Ms. Clark for their poignant, riveting personal testimonies. I hope our colleagues are listening to our colleagues over here.

This bill is all about demonizing women, threatening doctors, exploiting other people's tragedies, and dividing the country.

Madam Speaker, I reserve the balance of my time.

Madam Speaker, I appreciate the passionate vehemence of the gentleman, but the whole substance of his argument completely undercuts the meaning of their bill.

In the case that I could hear him talking about, Kermit Barron Gosnell was an American serial killer who indeed engaged in precisely the conduct the gentleman is talking about and was convicted of murder in Pennsylvania, in Philadelphia.

Infanticide is against the law in 50 States in America, and this guy was picked up for the conduct the gentleman spoke of. He was prosecuted for it, and he was sent to jail.

No.

Madam Speaker, I would like my time restored.

I yield 1 minute to the gentlewoman from Pennsylvania (Ms. Scanlon), the distinguished ranking member of the Subcommittee on the Constitution and Limited Government.

Madam Speaker, I yield 1 minute to the gentleman from New York (Mr. Nadler).

Madam Speaker, I include in the Record a letter calling this a dangerous government intrusion into medical care which injects politicians into the patient-provider relationship, signed by The American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists, the American Academy of Nursing, the American Academy of Pediatrics, the American Public Health Association, the American Society for Reproductive Medicine, the Society for Maternal-Fetal Medicine, and a dozen other organizations.

January 22, 2025.

Dear Members of Congress: We, the undersigned medical and

health professional organizations, stand in strong opposition

to H.R. 21/S. 6. This bill represents a dangerous government

intrusion into medical care.

H.R. 21/S. 6 is a departure from current law. It injects

politicians into the patient-provider relationship,

disregarding health care professionals' training and clinical

judgment and undermining their ability to determine the best

course of action with their patients. Patients need and

deserve access to compassionate and appropriate medical care.

Every patient needs to be able to make the decision that is

best for them and their family. H.R. 21/S. 6 would impose

criminal and civil penalties on clinicians that could chill

the provision of care by those who work with high-risk

patients in complicated situations, limiting access for their

patients.

Abortion is safe and is a component of comprehensive

medical care. Health care professionals who provide abortion

care comply with existing laws and provide excellent care.

People seeking abortion care, including those with pregnancy

complications, deserve the highest quality medical treatment

based on their individual health circumstances. H.R. 21/S. 6

seeks to undermine access to abortion by stigmatizing the

health care professionals who provide essential care.

We urge lawmakers to oppose the insertion of politics into

medicine and vote against H.R. 21/S. 6.

Sincerely,

American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists,

American Academy of Nursing, American Academy of Pediatrics,

American Association of Child and Adolescent Psychiatry,

American College of Nurse-Midwives, American College of

Physicians, American Gynecological & Obstetrical Society,

American Psychiatric Association, American Public Health

Association.

American Society for Reproductive Medicine, American

Society of Hematology, Council of Chairs of Obstetrics and

Gynecology, Infectious Diseases Society for Obstetrics and

Gynecology, National Association of Nurse Practitioners in

Women's Health, North American Society for Pediatric and

Adolescent Gynecology, Physicians for Reproductive Health,

Society for Maternal-Fetal Medicine, Society of Family

Planning.

Madam Speaker, I yield 1 minute to the distinguished gentlewoman from Georgia (Mrs. McBath), who is a member of the Judiciary Committee.

Representative McBath herself has experienced three miscarriages and had to give birth to a stillborn child.

Madam Speaker, I yield 1 minute to the gentlewoman from California (Ms. Kamlager-Dove).

Mr. Speaker, I yield 1 minute to the gentlewoman from Florida (Ms. Wasserman Schultz).

Mr. Speaker, I yield 1 minute to the gentlewoman from New Mexico (Ms. Leger Fernandez), who is the chair of the Democratic Women's Caucus.

Mr. Speaker, I yield 1 minute to the distinguished gentlewoman from Oregon (Ms. Bonamici), who is the mother of two wonderful grown children and a consumer advocate.

Mr. Speaker, I yield 1 minute to the gentlewoman from Florida (Ms. Lois Frankel), who is the chair emerita of the Democratic Women's Caucus and who is also a proud mother and grandmother.

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

Mr. Speaker, we ask the mothers and fathers of America: Who do you want in the doctor's office with you making this decision, a medical decision, OB-GYNs and doctors who vehemently oppose this legislation, or the MAGA politicians who are applauding this week the release of hundreds of violent cop assaulting convicted felons.

The vast majority of American people reject this legislation and say: Let us trust the medical practitioners.

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

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

Mr. Speaker, my distinguished colleague from Texas keeps referencing his female staff and colleagues, but it seems like there has been a coed exodus from his side of the aisle as support for this bill vanishes. In the meantime, I don't have enough time, and I am happy to be yielded time to share with my colleagues.

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

Mr. Speaker, I yield 1 minute to the gentlewoman from Oregon (Ms. Bynum), the distinguished Representative and mother of two.

Mr. Speaker, I yield 1 minute to the gentlewoman from Massachusetts (Ms. Pressley), the co-chair of the Reproductive Freedom Caucus.

Mr. Speaker, I yield an additional 20 seconds to the gentlewoman from Massachusetts.

Mr. Speaker, I yield 1 minute to the gentlewoman from New York (Ms. Gillen), the distinguished Representative and mother of four.

Mr. Speaker, I thank the gentlewoman for her eloquent words. When will Republicans stop feeding on other people's tragedies? We don't need MAGA in the delivery room.

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

Mr. Speaker, I yield 1 minute to the gentlewoman from Oregon (Ms. Dexter), the mother of two and a critical care physician.

Mr. Speaker, I yield 1 minute to the gentlewoman from California (Ms. Simon), the mother of two, who, like so many women, was forced to make a choice when her child died in utero.

Mr. Speaker, I yield 2 minutes to the gentlewoman from California (Ms. Chu).

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

Mr. Speaker, now we have had the opportunity to be lectured about life by a gun dealer. That is pretty impressive. I think he gave the game away when he finished his remarks by saying ``life begins at conception,'' a proposition that is rejected by the overwhelming majority of the American people who think that women have a right to choose, but that is a topic for another day. After spending all their time saying it wasn't about abortion, I am afraid he gave the game away at the end.

This bill is an exercise in complete legislative redundancy. It is an interference in other people's private and medical lives to prey on their personal tragedies and catastrophes as we have heard throughout the debate. It is a shocking threat to send OB/GYN doctors and physicians to jail at a time

when we have a chronic shortage of OB/GYN doctors and physicians as well as nurses across the country.

Their bill proposes to move in exactly the wrong direction, which is perhaps why they had a shortage of speakers on their side and we had a shortage of time because I could have had dozens more people who wanted to speak on behalf of the American majority against this absurd attempt to interfere in the medical lives of the American people.

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 opposition to S. 5.

We have all these fine speeches and all these fancy parties with billionaires and Congressmen in tuxedos; all these executive orders for Big Oil and tech broligarchs; all these complete and unconditional pardons for Proud Boys, Oath Keepers, and violent extremists who chanted ``Hang Mike Pence'' and smashed, swarmed, and wounded our police officers in this building with steel poles, baseball bats, American flags, Confederate battle flags, and bear mace--all this sound and fury on day one and week one, but nothing to bring down grocery prices; nothing to bring down the cost of rent, as they promised; nothing to improve our healthcare system or build on our success in the last Congress in reducing prescription drug prices; nothing to get health insurance coverage for millions of people who don't have it; nothing to bring down the cost of housing or build new housing; nothing to combat the nightmare of climate change, other than the full-scale retreat of withdrawing from the Paris climate accord; nothing to address the real problems faced by the American people.

Today, they want to change the subject from the indelible and shocking public safety disaster of the President releasing hundreds of convicted felons, specifically violent, cop-beating felons caught on tape in the act, whom he had incited on January 6, 2021, back into the population with no plan for protecting the American people or the public safety.

What do they want to talk about today in their wisdom? Public safety and immigration. Great. Let's do it.

This bill does nothing to address the major problems we face in the immigration system or to secure the American border, nor does it do anything to address the major problems we face in public safety, such as the central and overriding problem of out-of-control gun violence, which takes tens of thousands of American citizens' lives every year and is the leading cause of death among American citizen children up to the age of 18.

Mr. Speaker, it may surprise a lot of Americans, but we actually know how to solve these problems, how to make substantial progress on both immigration and public safety. The roadblock is that the majority completely lacks the political will to do it.

Why? Well, the Republicans are divided between two extreme positions: the big business tech oligarchs who bankroll their party and who love cheap foreign labor under the current regime, and the inflamed, nativist, MAGA element who want to shut down all immigration, including legal immigration, and believe in rightwing conspiracy theories like the racist great replacement theory.

Congress could pass bipartisan, comprehensive immigration reform this week. Senate Republicans and Democrats reached a powerful and painstaking compromise with President Biden last year to fortify our border with more border agents and more enforcement, more detection technology, more asylum judges, and more funding, but President Trump told House Republicans to tank this popular bipartisan agreement, to sink it.

He didn't want a bipartisan border solution to improve things in the real world. He wanted a permanent border crisis to run against on TV.

Not doing anything means that Trump doesn't offend his big business supporters who want cheap foreign labor under the current regime, but it allows him to pander indefinitely to his MAGA base with nativist rhetoric and tiny, little messaging bills that move a few words around but don't fundamentally change anything.

We should add to the tough border measures already negotiated last Congress a meaningful pathway to citizenship proposed for Dreamers, TPS holders, and other law-abiding, productive immigrants.

If we move from demagoguery to deliberation, we can flesh this out, and we can make immigration work for America, a nation built on immigrants.

We have huge job shortages in agriculture, manufacturing, retail, seafood, nursing, hospitals, and many other areas. We should not be plunging America into chaos to deport millions of people when we already need millions of new people to work here.

If the GOP plan of deporting 12 million people were really to happen, it would plunge us into another Trump economic crisis like the last one under COVID-19 but maybe even cause a depression this time.

The vast majority of Americans know what common sense dictates. We must make it a lot harder for people to get into our country illegally, but we must make it a lot easier for people to get into our country lawfully.

Today, only 2 percent of people seeking admission lawfully are admitted, and Donald Trump, in his first administration, crippled legal immigration into the country. He banned many legal immigrants unable to prove that they have high incomes. He banned immigrants from 13 specific countries. He banned most visa applicants and most skilled temporary workers, deeming them an economic threat. We must reform our system consistent with our values as a nation.

Similarly, when it comes to public safety, we could arrive at a commonsense, bipartisan agenda right now to make our communities a lot safer if we were serious about it.

Let's take the central problem of gun violence, for example, which now takes more than 48,000 American lives a year and is the leading cause of death for children and young people in America up to the age of 18.

Gun violence costs us, costs America, an astonishing $557 billion a year, Mr. Speaker, more than half a trillion dollars a year because of gun violence.

Mass shootings with an AR-15 or other assault weapons have become a terrifying feature of gun violence in America, although they account for just over 1 percent of the tens of thousands of lives we lose generally to gun violence, with old-fashioned handgun homicides, suicides, and accidents continuing to cause the vast majority of deaths.

Here are some policies that the vast majority of Americans support that we could pass this week if they would allow us to do it, Mr. Speaker.

Congress could close the loopholes in the Brady legislation, like the internet loophole and the private gun show loophole. We could pass universal violent criminal background checks on all gun purchases, something supported by upward of 90 percent of the American people, vast majorities of people of both political parties, independents, conservatives, liberals, gun owners, and non-gun owners. Almost everybody supports it.

We could pass a military-style assault weapons ban, which more than 60 percent of Americans support. We could crack down on the proliferating danger of ghost guns. We could expand red flag laws nationwide.

Alas, our colleagues refuse to do any of it because their well- advertised compassion for the American victims of violent crimes committed by undocumented aliens, which they base their entire argument on and which we all share, apparently does not extend to the far larger class of American victims of violent gun crimes committed by other American citizens, even though we have not just 48,000 Americans killed every year but 115,000 American citizens wounded and maimed trying to survive this gun violence debacle handed to us by the NRA and their followers in Congress.

They argue that the Second Amendment prevents all these commonsense gun safety measures, even though the Supreme Court has repeatedly upheld them, including an assault weapon ban, criminal background checks on gun buyers, and so on.

When a white supremacist gunman bearing an AR-15 assassinates dozens of American citizen schoolchildren in Connecticut or Florida, dozens of citizen and noncitizen Walmart shoppers in El Paso, Texas, supermarket shoppers in Buffalo, worshippers at the Mother Emanuel Church in Charleston, South Carolina, or worshippers at the Tree of Life synagogue in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, our colleagues extend only thoughts and prayers. They say nothing can be done. Alas, there is just evil in the world, and the Second Amendment keeps them from acting. We just have to accept this as the inescapable human price and sacrifice paid for the Second Amendment, even though that is not what the Supreme Court says.

At least today shows they think something can be done to stop violent crime in America. Will they take their newfound sense of moral outrage and compassion and apply it not just in one case but to the tens of thousands of victims of gun violence in America? America is waiting for an answer.

What is the majority proposing today? S. 5 is a bill to subject to mandatory detention not just undocumented people who have been convicted of theft, shoplifting, and other criminal offenses, which has been the law supported unanimously by both parties since 1996, but people who have been simply charged with such offenses or arrested for such offenses, even if the charges are dropped or even if they are never filed in the first place.

It is an odd way to fix the border because it has nothing to do with the border, and it is an extremely attenuated and constitutionally dubious way to protect public safety.

The vast majority of serious crimes committed in America are committed by American citizens, not aliens, and the vast majority of aliens don't commit crimes at all.

However, this bill doesn't even focus on the culpable class of undocumented immigrants who commit crimes. That the law already does. It focuses on those who are arrested even if they are never charged or those who are charged with crimes even if they are never convicted or even if their charges are dropped.

A young person in DACA who is with a group of friends when one of them is arrested for shoplifting and then all the kids get charged will be subject to mandatory detention and deportation even if the child was not shoplifting and the charges are dropped.

The bill is likely to pass, no doubt, because of the profound sympathy we all share for the parents and family of Laken Riley who have suffered an unthinkable, totally shocking, and profoundly unnecessary trauma. This should not be a partisan issue, and it should not be demagogued for partisan purposes.

Nevertheless, when we get serious about comprehensive threats to public safety in our immigration system, we will have to address the mass crises staring us in the face, like the gun violence epidemic, which takes the lives of tens of thousands of American citizens every year at the hands overwhelmingly of U.S. citizen gunmen.

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

Mr. Speaker, I yield 2 minutes to the distinguished gentleman from New York (Mr. Espaillat).

Mr. Speaker, I yield 2 minutes to the distinguished gentleman from Florida (Mr. Frost).

Mr. Speaker, I yield an additional 1 minute to the gentleman from Florida.

Mr. Speaker, I yield 3 minutes to the gentlewoman from New York (Ms. Ocasio-Cortez).

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

Mr. Speaker, I yield 2 minutes to the gentlewoman from Illinois (Mrs. Ramirez).

Mr. Speaker, I yield 2 minutes to the gentlewoman from Michigan (Ms. Tlaib).

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

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

Mr. Speaker, may I inquire as to the time remaining.

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

Mr. Speaker, I am sorry that Representative Collins has left. I was just presented with a tweet that he sent out about the New Jersey-born Episcopalian Bishop Mariann Budde, who performed a service as part of the inaugural ceremonies. Apparently, he was not pleased with what she had to say, and he wrote, ``The person giving this sermon should be added to the deportation list.''

I would have asked him whether he was serious about that. Of course, the Episcopalian Bishop is a U.S. citizen, but, of course, that is very much in the spirit of the times. It reminds me of the period of the Alien and Sedition Acts in 1798 when there was an effort to use the Alien and Sedition Acts, which have been invoked recently by the new President, in order to persecute the political opponents of the administration as well as to chase down and kick out of the country all of the dangerous French immigrants who were spreading revolutionary propaganda in the country. A friend of Jefferson's wrote to him, John Taylor, to say how exhausted he was by all of the political fighting and the demonizing of immigrants and the attempt to shut the borders down and to attack political opponents as enemies of the State, and so on.

Jefferson wrote in this beautiful letter back--you should check it out online, if you can. It is a letter to John Taylor. In it he counseled patience.

He said:

A little patience, and the reign of witches shall pass

over, their spells dissolve and the people, recovering their

true sight, recover the true principles of their government.

In the meantime, we are suffering all of the horrors and

indignities of the hysteria. If the game runs against us at

home sometimes, as inevitably it will, then we must have

patience because this is a game where principles are at

stake.

Our colleagues have spoken up for nothing other than due process. The idea that the bipartisan compromise that has been cemented and lost since 1996 should stand, saying that we want the immediate detention and deportation of undocumented people who actually commit crimes. In an effort to drive a wedge in this body, they now say they want to move from people who have been convicted of crimes, which obviously accords completely with common sense, to people who have just been accused or charged with crimes, even if the charges are dropped even for offenses as small as shoplifting.

In any event, we don't claim somehow that one side or the other is morally righteous and the other is morally wrong. We are trying to have a public policy debate. In the role of public emotion in public policy debates, Mr. Speaker, is an interesting thing. Some people think it is enough to show up and say, there has been a terrible event. There has been a sickening murder or rape, therefore, you must pass our bill without even reading the bill, without even looking to see what is in the bill. Does it make sense as a matter of public policy?

If that were the standard they actually believed in, they would be voting for all of the gun safety legislation they have been rejecting, because every time there is a massacre, whether it is in Connecticut or Florida or Texas or Illinois or any of our communities, we come in and we say, we want what the American people want in public opinion polls: a universal, violent criminal background check. We want a ban on military-style assault weapons.

There is no reason 18 year olds should be bearing AR-15s and showing up in classrooms and churches and synagogues with weapons of mass destruction. If it were enough just to appeal to emotion, they would be voting with us, but, no, they say that conflicts with their public policy understanding.

Well, at the very least you would think they would have the burden of telling us what they do support, but we never hear anything. You don't hear a peep out of them about gun violence because the second amendment, as they misinterpret it, is sacrosanct as well as their NRA support and contributions. That is what they bow down to is the National Rifle Association when it comes to this policy debate because they won't advance anything that conflicts with the NRA, even if the Supreme Court says it is perfectly fine.

We had a ban on assault weapons for a decade. It was perfectly constitutional. We have the Brady act. We have a violent criminal background check, but even though expanding it to make it universal would save hundreds or thousands of American citizen lives every year, they won't touch it.

Don't invoke emotion selectively and say everybody has got to go along with what you are saying without even analyzing the policy implications and the constitutional implications if you are not willing to put anything on the table to reduce the sickening death toll for gun violence in America. There is nothing in the world that approaches what we have got here. It is 25 times higher than the EU countries, dozens of times higher than Japan, Canada, U.K., you name it. Yet, they pretend as if there is no problem and they seize on an opportunistic bill like this to try to drive a wedge within our Congress and within our people.

I hope they do better when we get to the second week of this new administration than freeing violent criminal felons who stormed this Capitol and attacked our police officers than bringing forward a bill like this to try to cover up for their complicity with that sickening violence against our constitutional order.

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

Mr. Speaker, on that I demand the yeas and nays.

Mr. Speaker, I yield myself such time as I may consume. I am delighted to be here with you and with the gentlewoman from Florida.

Mr. Speaker, America's immigration laws are like an admissions policy for the country: How do you get into America, who gets kicked out of America, and for what reasons. Our immigration laws today will get you kicked out, deported from the country if you commit rape, other sex offenses, domestic violence, or, indeed, any other crime of violence. That is the law today. You are convicted, you are deported, you are out. That has been the law for decades in America.

Our immigration law establishes a similar policy on the way in. It provides that anyone seeking admission to America who has committed a violent sex offense or a crime of domestic violence is inadmissible to our country.

Since the 1930s, case law has made it perfectly clear that rape, domestic violence, and sexual battery are all ``crimes involving moral turpitude,'' which make the perpetrator inadmissible to America. That has been the law in our country for decades.

What does H.R. 30 add? If committing a sexual assault or domestic violence will already render you deportable and inadmissible under our laws, why do we need to create another section of the law doing the same thing? Is it necessary, or is it redundant?

Of course, its being redundant or unnecessary may not be a sufficient reason to vote against the bill. After all, I cheerfully admit that this body, under the stewardship of our friends, passes a lot of unnecessary and redundant legislation in the House just to send a message, as they say. Perhaps this is what our friends set out to do today, to pass another simple messaging bill.

The complication today is this: The way this messaging bill is actually written will create big problems for many, many victims of domestic violence. That is why more than 200 national, State, and local groups advocating for the victims of rape and the survivors of domestic violence, the people across America we should be listening to today, strongly oppose the bill our colleagues have brought forward.

The National Task Force to End Sexual and Domestic Violence sent us a letter urging us to reject H.R. 30. I urge every single Member of Congress to read this letter carefully before you vote on this bill.

The groups fighting domestic violence warn that this legislation ``can ultimately have devastating consequences for immigrant victims of domestic violence.''

The signers of this letter include a range of national groups like the YWCA, National Council of Jewish Women, AFL-CIO, Coalition of Labor Union Women, and dozens of State and local groups, like the California Partnership to End Domestic Violence, Colorado Coalition Against Sexual Assault, Maryland Coalition Against Sexual Assault, Mississippi Coalition Against Domestic Violence, Catholic Charities in Omaha, Nebraska, and dozens and dozens more from States across the country. Please read this letter.

These are groups working to change the law and culture to stop rape and domestic violence in our country, but they see that this poorly drafted legislation would end up harming untold numbers of victims of domestic violence themselves, the putative beneficiaries of the act.

Here is why: When it comes to crimes involving moral turpitude, there are exceptions in the law to protect domestic violence victims who often get swept up in the very laws designed to protect them.

Anyone who has ever been a prosecutor or a public defender in this Chamber knows that it is common for abusers to accuse their victims of domestic violence themselves and assault, sometimes truthfully, often falsely. In any event, it is well known that the victims get arrested, prosecuted, and sometimes even convicted simply for defending themselves and fighting back against their abusers and rapists.

Here is a real-life example drawn from the domestic violence survivor advocacy groups opposing their legislation. A young woman on a student visa here was trapped in an abusive relationship, and her estranged boyfriend tried to rape her. She fought back, biting his ear and drawing blood.

She then called the police to report the rape, but upon seeing the boyfriend's injury, the officers also arrested the female victim, whose language skills kept her from comprehensively explaining what had happened at that point. She spent several days in jail and was ultimately convicted of misdemeanor domestic violence, but the judge sentenced her to time served once she got a lawyer and translation services, which allowed the context of the violent abuse that she had been enduring to become made plain to the police and the court.

Because of exceptions that exist in our laws today, this woman was not deemed inadmissible to America because her simple assault charge carried less than a 6-month penalty. Under the new bill, which would establish inadmissibility without any waivers or exceptions at all for victims, she would clearly have to be deemed inadmissible to America. No exceptions would exist any longer for domestic violence victims who have committed minor crimes in the context of resisting their violent abuse.

This means that the victim in this case, who is legally in the United States on a student visa while she attends college, would be barred permanently from obtaining a green card or any new immigration status simply because she was a victim of an attempted rape who fought back against her attacker. With no ability ever to adjust her status under the law, she would be deported and kicked out of our country permanently.

Some might say that this is the price she should rightly pay for biting or hitting back at her violent abuser, but do we really want to say that we would not want our daughters, sisters, or mothers to do the same in that situation?

Should we really compound the horrors of domestic violence and assaults with a harsh immigration penalty on victims? Do we want to give domestic abusers more power over their victims by giving them more opportunities to file charges, true or false, against their victims to keep them from reporting their abuse to authorities?

It seems we live in a time, Mr. Speaker, when it is very easy to forgive sexual abusers, assailants, rapists, and sexual harassers who have a lot of power and wealth in society but very hard to forgive their victims for fighting back.

Look what is going on across the hallway. Secretary of Defense nominee Pete Hegseth has been credibly accused of sexually assaulting a woman at a conference in 2017 and entered into a major private financial settlement over the charges, and there are people planning to vote for this legislation today who also support his nomination.

Education Secretary nominee Linda McMahon and her husband were recently sued for failing to act on credible allegations of sexual abuse within the World Wrestling Entertainment organization.

Finally, of course, the President-elect's initial pick for Attorney General, Matt Gaetz, faces numerous allegations of sex trafficking a minor and statutory rape.

There are civil adjudications of sexual abuse going to the very top of the new administration. The law, as it stands today and as we have had it for decades, provides for waivers to protect the immigration status of victims of domestic violence who are charged with fighting back against their abuser.

While the proposed bill would retain waivers for victims in the deportability context, it would not allow for waivers or exceptions in the inadmissibility context. I don't know why this asymmetry and discordance were written into this legislation, whether it was deliberate or just accidental, but the upshot is that the entire national movement working to arrest and reduce domestic violence in America is now opposing this bill that claims to be in support of the victims of domestic violence.

We note another serious problem with the bill, which makes it backfire again against victims. It would significantly expand the definition of ``domestic violence'' to include the statutory Violence Against Women Act definition that is used for the civil context of grants and funding. This much broader definition was never designed to be used in criminal law. In fact, the definition explicitly says that it covers conduct ``that may or may not constitute criminal behavior.''

The definition of domestic violence under existing Federal criminal law, which is currently also used in immigration law, focuses on the element, Mr. Speaker, of physical force, but the broader VAWA-based definition appropriately fitted for grant and funding purposes sweeps in a broad range of behaviors, including verbal, psychological, economic, or technological abuse.

Once again, in the inadmissibility context, this transposition can have severe consequences. Imagine a domestic violence victim covered by DACA who flees her abuser and removes half of the money from their joint bank account, enough to get a train or bus ticket to get away. Imagine the abuser calls the police and claims that she stole money from him and committed a theft. By merely admitting to the fact that she took funds out of their bank account, the victim could end up being deemed inadmissible and then removed from America.

Remember, the new inadmissibility grounds created by this bill do not require a conviction but a mere admission of the underlying facts.

The point is clear: If our goal is to prevent violence against women by illegal aliens, as the bill's title says, our current criminal and immigration laws already do that. We have strict punishments in place for anyone who commits such crimes, including deportation and inadmissibility for foreign nationals.

This bill would only make the immigration laws much harsher on the victims of domestic violence, sexual battery, and rape, which is the opposite of what we should be doing.

America, when it lives up to its ideals, as Tom Paine said, will become an asylum to humanity, not an insane asylum, mind you, but a place of refuge for people seeking freedom from religious, political, and economic oppression, and also, I might add, the kind of private gender violence that creates oppression and tyranny in the home.

Two centuries later, Ronald Reagan echoed the sentiment, reminding us that America was a ``shining city upon a hill,'' a refuge ``for all the Pilgrims from all the lost places who are hurtling through the darkness, toward home.''

Last year, we celebrated the 30th anniversary of the Violence Against Women Act, and we must continue our work to oppose the tyranny of domestic violence over women in our country, but this legislation would set back our efforts to protect survivors and to stop abuse.

Mr. Speaker, I ask the majority to reconsider this legislation and for my colleagues to join us in opposing it.

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

Mr. Speaker, I yield 5 minutes to the gentlewoman from Washington (Ms. Jayapal).

Mr. Speaker, I yield an additional 1 minute to the gentlewoman from Washington.

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

Mr. Speaker, I wonder if our colleagues could explain why more than 200 groups advocating for women's rights and women's security are opposing this legislation?

Can they explain why the groups that are on the front lines of opposing domestic violence reject their legislation as sloppy and bound to hurt the victims?

We have heard no explanation about that, and we reject the slur that we are somehow standing up for the abusers here when we are standing up for the victims. This legislation, if it were to pass, would actually make it a lot easier for the abusers to terrify and intimidate the victims.

Mr. Speaker, I yield 2 minutes to the very distinguished gentleman from California (Mr. Correa).

Mr. Speaker, I yield 2 minutes to the distinguished gentlewoman from California (Ms. Simon).

Mr. Speaker, I yield the gentlewoman from California an additional 1 minute.

Mr. Speaker, I thank the gentlewoman for her distinguished remarks, and I reserve the balance of my time.

Mr. Speaker, I yield 1\1/2\ minutes to the distinguished gentleman from New York (Mr. Nadler).

Mr. Speaker, I yield the gentleman from New York an additional 15 seconds to conclude.

Mr. Speaker, I yield 2 minutes to the distinguished gentlewoman from Wisconsin (Ms. Moore).

Mr. Speaker, I yield an additional 15 seconds to the gentlewoman from Wisconsin.

Mr. Speaker, I am prepared to close.

Mr. Speaker, I ask unanimous consent to include in the Record the text of this amendment immediately prior to the vote on the motion to recommit.

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

I can't blame my colleagues because they ran on a platform of doing better than Joe Biden on the economy, but he gave us an economy that is the glory of the world and ``the envy of the world,'' as The Economist magazine put it recently. It created 16 million new jobs, a roaring stock market, and a revived manufacturing sector.

Instead of doing anything to lower the price of groceries, which is what they promised, and to lower the price of energy, which they promised, they come back and basically ask us to pass what is already in the law but they subtract from their duplicative and redundant section the waivers and exceptions that protect the victims and survivors of domestic violence.

Instead, they just want to associate all immigrants with criminal delinquency. The vast majority of rapes in America of American women are committed by citizens, and the vast majority of noncitizens never commit rapes.

Donald Trump released 58,184 noncitizens with criminal records who came in during his administration, including 8,620 violent criminals and 306 murderers. ICE ended up rearresting 11,000

noncitizens who had been admitted under Donald Trump.

We can sit here and demagogue back and forth and say, ``You let someone in who did something bad. You let someone in who did something criminal,'' but we are not going to do that. We want to make progress for America.

Let's reject this opportunistic, silly bill, and let's move forward to guarantee the safety of America's women.

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

Mr. Speaker, on that I demand the yeas and nays.

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

Mr. Speaker, the Biden administration brought us back from a devastating pandemic and the Trump economic crisis by investing in American workers, American manufacturing, and American infrastructure. Our policies for the working-class majority instead of the tiny rapacious billionaire class pulled our economy back from the brink.

Today, our Nation's economic strength is ``the envy of the world,'' as The Economist magazine put it, with

an unemployment rate of 4.2 percent, wages rising across America, and the gross domestic product growing at a robust 3.1 percent.

Moreover, the murder rate is way down in America. Unlawful immigration at the southern border is now below where it was when Donald Trump left office 4 years ago. The roaring stock market, which is what Trump and his billionaire entourage care about, just completed its strongest 2 years in a quarter century.

Now, it is time to make sure all Americans enjoy the benefits of this astonishing economic growth. We should be coming together today to increase the minimum wage, to lift children out of poverty, and to strengthen unions, Social Security, Medicare, and the middle class. Donald Trump is instead assembling a billionaire Cabinet from the top 0.00003 percent of the wealthiest Americans, drawing the top tier of his new administration from poolside cocktail hour at Mar-a-Lago and setting up the broligarchs and the plutocrats to plunder an even larger share of government contracts and public resources.

Trump campaigned on the seductive promise of bringing down the high post-COVID-19 prices for rent, groceries, consumer goods, and healthcare, but now he is preparing to give power over the economy to his team of globe-trotting, dictator-dealing CEOs and billionaires, the very people responsible for exploiting the pandemic to increase prices in the first place.

I doubt the billionaire oligarchs have any interest in bringing down the cost of living for the working middle class in America, but if they do, Democrats stand ready to work with them. After all, we are the ones who dramatically lowered prescription drug prices in Medicare, capping out-of-pocket monthly expenses at $35 a month. I had constituents who were paying $500 a month for insulin as diabetics before that, and it is capped now at $35 a month. We capped annual total out-of-pocket expenditures for prescription drugs at $2,000 a year.

It was the MAGA Republicans deep in the pocket of Big Pharma who categorically and vehemently opposed us every step of the way on lowering prescription drug prices in Medicare.

If our colleagues now have good policy proposals for continuing to lower prices as we have done, which is what they campaigned on, by all means, bring the proposals forward. Let's see them.

Democrats have repeatedly crossed the aisle to hammer out bipartisan compromise. Last year, President Biden and Senate Democrats worked with the ultraconservative Republican Senator James Lankford to arrive at a tough bipartisan border security deal, but President Trump aggressively tanked the deal, openly expressing his preference for rallying against a border crisis rather than actually developing a border solution.

Now, today, the Republicans are on the floor but not with their long- awaited, entirely missing policy solutions to the problems of inflation or immigration. Instead, their bill today is an empty and opportunistic measure. It is not, like the compromise they tanked in the last Congress, a bill for greater border security or better technology in the ports of entry, expanding legal pathways to immigration and citizenship for millions of people, or addressing huge immigrant visa backlogs. No, this bill would upend 28 years of mandatory immigration detention policy by requiring that any undocumented immigrant arrested for theft, larceny, or shoplifting be detained even if they are never convicted or even charged with a crime.

This is a radical departure from current law, which since 1996 has generally required mandatory detention only for persons who are criminally convicted or who admit to having committed certain serious crimes--that is, when criminal guilt is certain and established beyond a reasonable doubt.

Under this bill, a person who has lived in the United States for decades, say for most of her life, paid taxes, and bought a home, but who is mistakenly arrested for shoplifting would not be free to resume her life. Rather, she would be detained and deported even if the charges are dropped and even if the police admit that the arrest was mistaken.

Consider a young Dreamer or TPS recipient who is with a group of friends after school and someone in the group shoplifts, stealing a candy bar. To scare the whole group straight, everyone is arrested, whether they were involved in the shoplifting or not. However, nobody is charged, and the charges are dropped. For most of the kids, it is a humiliating afternoon and a valuable life lesson, but for one of them, a young person who has been in America lawfully for years with his or her family, the consequences would be devastating under this legislation--mandatory detention and deportation from the country just for having been arrested, even if never charged.

It seems to me passing strange, Mr. Speaker, that our friends are taking this position when they do not even believe that the criminal justice system can be trusted when a jury unanimously convicts someone who has had the best legal representation money can buy in the State of New York on 34 different felony criminal counts after an extended criminal trial with all due process protections, including cross- examination and the right to counsel being afforded.

If the criminal justice process cannot be trusted to identify a truly guilty person even when that person has been arrested, charged, indicted, prosecuted, represented at every stage, given an opportunity to cross-examine all witnesses, and to testify personally, and then is unanimously convicted by a jury of his peers beyond a reasonable doubt, how can the criminal justice process be trusted to identify a truly guilty person just with an arrest and no indictment, no prosecution, no cross-examination, no neutral adjudication by an impartial judge, no fact-finding, and no criminal conviction by a 12-person jury beyond a reasonable doubt?

Mandatory detention has always been reserved for people who are convicted of crimes and actually commit crimes. Expanding the detention requirement to include every person who has merely been accused of or arrested for, even if not charged for shoplifting, for example, collapses the distinction between actual conviction on serious events versus simply being charged with or arrested for something very minor even if the charges don't even lead anywhere.

Congress has never even appropriated sufficient resources to detain all noncitizens who do fall under the currently serious mandatory detention categories. Even President Trump, during his first term, never tried to detain all migrants theoretically subject to mandatory detention. Therefore, this extremely elastic new provision adds nothing to the equation other than more empty rhetoric and greater bureaucratic bloat.

The bill also seeks to give State governments authority and control over the Federal immigration system by trespassing on the Article II executive power in a way that eight out of nine Justices on the Supreme Court completely repudiated 2 years ago as a blatant violation of the separation of powers.

The bill seeks to give State attorneys general precisely what the Supreme Court has denied: constitutional standing to sue the Federal Government in court for perceived violations of sections of the Immigration and Nationality Act so States can block Federal immigration policies, capsizing the Supremacy Clause and expanding judicial power to encroach upon executive discretion under Article II.

In June of 2023, the Supreme Court in the United States v. Texas emphatically rejected the alleged standing of States to sue the Federal Government to alter the government's immigration arrest policies. This bill attempts a legislative bypass of this constitutional decision in U.S. v. Texas written by Justice Kavanaugh and joined by eight of nine Justices on the Court.

In rejecting the States' standing argument, the Court observed, among other things, that lawsuits alleging insufficient arrests or prosecution run against the executive branch's exclusive Article II authority to enforce immigration law, which includes the discretion to determine enforcement priorities in the face of a chronic lack of resources and shifting public safety, public welfare, and foreign policy needs and priorities.

If this bill were to become law, both provisions would have the perverse effect of undermining the Federal Government's efforts to prioritize the detention and the deportation of the truly most dangerous convicted felons. With the vastly expanded new statutory scope and new authority for States to get legal standing on steroids, the government can be sued by a State for not detaining everyone charged with or not even arrested for the pettiest of crimes like shoplifting.

This bill tries to give States standing to sue for harms as small as $100, dramatically shifting power from the executive branch to the courts and the Federal Government to the States, both in ways considered completely dubious by the Supreme Court.

Like many of the immigration-related bills the GOP is now advancing, this one seems to follow a simple strategy: Pick a crime, paste into it a template immigration law covering convicted criminals, and then require detention or deportation of certain persons merely accused of committing the crime or arrested for committing the crime. No due process is required at all. This allows us to get up and demonize immigrants without doing anything to fix the immigration system and to act tough without actually making America safer or solving any of the problems within the immigration laws.

We should be working together on comprehensive, meaningful reform. My colleague from California invites us to believe that the only crimes committed by undocumented aliens are those who entered during the Biden administration. Well, in fact, if you look at it, hundreds of thousands, 500,000 crossed the U.S.-Mexico border in the first Trump administration, and over 1.1 million people who crossed during the first 4 years of his administration were eventually released from custody.

One of the people released from custody, an undocumented alien, is charged with murdering 19-year-old Adam Luker from Alabama. Why don't we have a bill named after Adam Luker? Is it because of the inconvenient fact that the undocumented alien who killed him came in under Donald Trump? I would hate to think so. However, we can find lots of cases like that.

That is not what we should be doing here in Congress. We should be seriously confronting the problems in a serious way together rather than just trying to make partisan hay out of other people's tragedies in their lives.

Mr. Speaker, this legislation does not move the ball forward on any of the problems facing America, and they are being moved under closed rules without a hearing, without any legislative scrutiny. This means that no Member--not only just Democrats, but Republicans, too, no Member--can offer any amendments to repair the gaping flaws and gaps in these slapdash political bills.

I would urge our colleagues to take a much more serious approach here. The murder of Laken Riley was an unspeakable and appalling crime, a heinous act, and no parent, no family should ever have to bear such a calamity. We must take clear steps to make sure that people who commit crimes like this are punished to the full extent of the law. I trust that my friends agree that those who commit horrific, violent crimes like these must be prosecuted to the fullest extent of the law.

This bill fails to take any meaningful action to improve our broken immigration system and to prevent crimes like this from occurring again, whether the undocumented aliens entered under a Democratic administration, as they have, or a Republican administration, as they have. We are asked to vote on a bill that fails to address any of the real issues at stake, and we are foreclosed from offering any amendments to improve this sloppy and political product.

Mr. Speaker, I urge all my colleagues to oppose this legislation, and I reserve the balance of my time.

Mr. Speaker, I yield 3 minutes to the distinguished gentleman from New York (Mr. Nadler).

Mr. Speaker, in fact, the Democrats got behind a bipartisan border security bill, which beefed up law enforcement at the border, which beefed up judges at the border, and that was tanked by Donald Trump and by Republicans in the House.

They are the ones, Mr. Speaker, who refuse to engage in meaningful legislative work to get the job done here. Democrats won't be lectured by our colleague that we don't stand up for the American people.

The author of this legislation actually yesterday sent out a tweet, a social media statement, characterizing the January 6 violent assault on this Chamber where 140 officers were wounded, injured, and hospitalized by a rampaging mob this way: ``On this day in history, 2021,'' said the gentleman, ``thousands of peaceful grandmothers gathered in Washington, D.C., to take a self-guided, albeit unauthorized, tour of the U.S. Capitol Building.'' I like that touch, ``albeit unauthorized.''

``Earlier that day, President Trump held a rally, where supporters walked to the Capitol to peacefully protest the certification of the 2020 election. During this time, some individuals entered the Capitol, took photos, and explored the building before leaving.''

Well, isn't that sweet. We see exactly how much faith and confidence they really have in the American criminal justice system and how much they really stand on the side of law enforcement. Yeah, it was a just a leisurely stroll by a bunch of peaceful grandmothers on January 6.

These are the people that now are inviting us to dramatically change the immigration laws without even a hearing as to what it is going to mean in any particular case.

Mr. Speaker, I yield 5 minutes to the distinguished gentlewoman from Washington (Ms. Jayapal).

Mr. Speaker, I yield an additional 1 minute to the gentlewoman from Washington.

Madam Speaker, I reserve the balance of my time.

Madam Speaker, I reserve the balance of my time.

Madam Speaker, I reserve the balance of my time.

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

Madam Speaker, I am moved by the words of the gentleman from New Jersey who said: Don't give us words. Words don't matter. Speeches don't cut it. Speeches don't do it.

It sounds like an absolute echo of what you hear from our colleagues whenever there is an explosion of gun violence in any of our communities. We hear thoughts and prayers, lots of words, but no action.

The fact that there is sympathy or condolences, I agree with the gentleman, is not enough. We need real public policy changes that will be effective and that will be constitutional.

That is what the discussion is about today. Will these policy changes, in fact, be effective? Will they be constitutional or not?

I agree that we should move from the situation of identifying and empathizing with people who have suffered terrible family tragedies and private tragedies to effective public policy. That is our job as legislators.

Madam Speaker, I reserve the balance of my time.

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

In answer to the distinguished gentleman, he stated precisely what the law is now. He said: How can we go back to our districts and not defend the immediate deporting of people who have committed theft? That is what the law is. They want to change the law to go from someone who has actually committed theft, or been convicted of theft, to people who have been charged with it, even if the charges have been dropped, or arrested for it, even if charges were never brought in the first place.

I think that the misstatement of the meaning of this legislation speaks very deeply to what an opportunistic exercise this really is.

What the gentleman was asking for is the law today.

Madam Speaker, I reserve the balance of my time.

Madam Speaker, may I inquire as to how much time is remaining?

Madam Speaker, I yield myself the balance of my time to close, and I thank the distinguished gentleman from California for this debate.

I must say that the legislation before us and the approach that it embodies reflect a profound disrespect for our criminal justice system and for our constitutional values.

To begin with, they want to change the mandatory detention provisions which we have had since 1996 on a bipartisan basis for the last 28 years. We have operated on the basis of criminal conviction, which is obviously congruent with the constitutional demands and values that we have in our country.

Now, without having a legislative hearing, they want to radically revise the statutes to say that it is sufficient for somebody to have been charged with or arrested for an offense like shoplifting or theft, even if the charges are dropped and even if charges are never brought after an arrest is made. It seems to me that they are backtracking from purported fidelity to our constitutional values.

Similarly, they want to essentially overthrow Justice Kavanaugh's 8-1 decision in the United States v. Texas from just a couple of years ago where the Supreme Court determined that States do not have standing to go to court to say that they don't like the way that a particular administration is allocating its resources and implementing a public policy.

Now, if they want to argue that there is a law that is unconstitutional, they can argue that, but they can't go to court and simply say that the executive branch is implementing the law in a way that a particular State doesn't like. Yet, they want to occasion that massive shift of power, as Justice Kavanaugh characterized it, so that the States would essentially be able to control Federal immigration policy.

I am still reeling from reading the author of this legislation's statements yesterday, which I think also speak to a fundamental disrespect for the rule of law, which says: Since January 6, hundreds of peaceful protesters have been hunted down, arrested, held in solitary confinement, and treated unjustly. Countless hours and taxpayer dollars have been spent pursuing innocent grandmothers and raiding President Trump's home while terrorists and millions of illegal immigrants continue to cross our Nation's borders.

That is the fundamentally demagogic and lawless approach to this whole debate that they have taken. Our body was invaded by a mob of insurrectionists who injured 140 officers, wounding them and hospitalizing them, and they cannot even acknowledge that as a fact but instead change the subject to millions of people crossing the border illegally, which over the decades has undoubtedly happened under both Democrats and Republicans. That is what we should be working on today.

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

Madam Speaker, on that I demand the yeas and nays.

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

Mr. Speaker, the Working Dog Health and Welfare Act, S. 2414, requires agencies that manage working dog programs to implement recommendations that were made by the GAO in 2022 to improve the health and welfare and safety of working dogs.

It would also require any new program to comply with these recommendations. Agencies and contractors across the government use working dogs to support critical mission areas, such as law enforcement and security.

As of February 2022, Federal Government entities employed over 5,600 dogs. They help to detect explosives and narcotics, they conduct patrols and search and rescue missions, they help detect and apprehend suspects, and they support wildlife management. However, there is currently no consensus health and welfare standard that applies to the management of Federal working dogs.

In its report, GAO identified 18 critical issues important to the health and welfare of working dogs, which the agencies should address. That includes recommendations on everything from detection of abuse, neglect, and emergency medical care, to rest, length of on-duty time, and then canine retirement.

GAO found that of the 40 Federal working dog programs that are directly managed by Federal agencies, only 9 addressed all of these issues as important to the health and welfare of the dogs.

The bill requires all departments, agencies, and contractors managing working dog programs on behalf of an agency to implement these recommendations within 6 months of the bill's enactment.

Mr. Speaker, I urge Members to support this commonsense bill for animal welfare and animal rights and for those dogs who work hard in the Federal Government, and I reserve the balance of my time.

Mr. Speaker, I urge everybody to support this fine legislation, and I yield back the balance of my time.

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

I rise in support of S. 4716, the Financial Management Risk Reduction Act, led by my esteemed colleague, Chairman Gary Peters of the Senate Committee on Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs, with Senator Ron Johnson as his co-lead. I also thank Representative Greene for leading the House companion.

Mr. Speaker, it appears financial management risk reduction is, indeed, an issue that speaks to everybody on both sides of the aisle. The bill would improve the quality and usability of independent audit data and enhance oversight of Federal funds.

The Single Audit Act of 1984 requires Federal grant recipients that receive more than $750,000 to report an independent audit of their internal financial controls annually to the government. It sought to increase accountability while reducing burden on grant recipients by mandating a single, consolidated audit rather than audits on a discrete grant-by-grant basis. In 2022, over 40,000 State, local, Tribal, and territorial governments and not-for-profits submitted single audits.

The Financial Management Risk Reduction Act addresses recommendations made by the GAO, which were aimed at increasing the usability of single audit information to reduce Federal financial management risk. The bill codifies certain portions of OMB's Uniform Grants Guidance requiring agencies to conduct quality control reviews on its audits and directs OMB to coordinate a governmentwide audit quality review every 6 years.

Finally, the bill would direct OMB to create a governmentwide strategy on financial risk regarding single audits and instructs GSA to create analytic tools to use single audit data more effectively.

This is a good bill that will improve the quality and accessibility of audit data, increasing the transparency and accountability of Federal spending.

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

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

I rise in support of H.R. 9595, the FIT Procurement Act. This bill is modeled after a bipartisan Senate bill led by Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee Chairman Gary Peters, along with Senator Cruz.

The act streamlines and simplifies Federal procurement to help agencies acquire commercial technology in a timelier way and to make it easier for businesses to compete for contracts.

Mr. Speaker, I am happy to support this bill today. I associate myself with the remarks of the distinguished gentleman from Missouri. I urge passage of this bill, and I yield back the balance of my time.

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

I rise in support of H.R. 6244, introduced by Congressman Vicente Gonzalez of Texas, which would honor the impressive legacy and the sacrifice of 1st Lieutenant Zermeno by naming a post office after him in Brownsville.

Mr. Speaker, I yield 2 minutes to the distinguished gentleman from Texas (Mr. Vicente Gonzalez).

Mr. Speaker, I thank the gentleman for his compelling remarks, and I support passage of H.R. 6244. I yield back the balance of my time.

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

Just to complete a little bit of the portrait of Sergeant Major Waugh, which was begun by Mr. Burlison, Sergeant Major Waugh also served in the Green Berets within the U.S. Army Special Forces in 1954.

When he retired from the Army, he returned to serve as a paramilitary officer within the CIA Special Activities Division. Waugh was one of the oldest field operatives at the age of 71, providing critical intelligence and guidance to Afghan troops.

In his career, he earned a Silver Star, four Bronze Stars, eight Purple Hearts, and the CIA's Intelligence Star. He passed away in April 2023 at 93 years old.

The legislation would honor his legacy, his extraordinary more-than- 50-year military career, and his dedication to the country by naming a post office after him in his hometown of Bastrop, Texas.

Mr. Speaker, I urge passage of the legislation, and 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 support of S. 59, introduced in the Senate by Senators Sinema and Lankford. The House passed a substantially similar bill to this in January of last year. I commend Representatives Foxx and Connolly for their excellent work on the bill.

The legislation makes evaluations more useful in assessing the skills of candidates for Federal jobs and makes the hiring process more efficient and more effective rather than relying on attainment of an educational degree to determine candidate qualifications in the Federal hiring process.

Subject matter experts in agencies would develop assessments that are designed to test specific knowledge needed for the position. This overhaul would better match qualified applicants with open positions and expand employment opportunities to candidates with various professional and educational backgrounds.

The Chance to Compete Act aligns with the Office of Personnel's guidance released in May of 2022, which strives to modernize the process of assessing and hiring Federal job candidates. Establishing hiring methods that are more skills-based will improve agency managers' ability to hire people who possess the right skills and knowledge to do the job and also allow agencies to hire from a much broader pool of qualified applicants.

The bill directs OPM to study the feasibility of creating an online platform for sharing candidate assessments between agencies. Under the legislation, agencies may also assemble talent teams to support this assessment of job candidates in the hiring process.

The OPM Director would be required to submit annual progress reports to Congress for 5 years on the use and the effectiveness of the new skills-based assessments.

The GAO would be required to submit a report on implementation of the bill 3 years after enactment. The bill streamlines the hiring process for agencies and will shorten the time it takes to bring new and well- qualified employees aboard.

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

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

Mr. Speaker, I urge all my colleagues to support S. 59, and I salute Ms. Foxx on her excellent leadership and stewardship 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 also in strong support of S. 4077 introduced in the Senate by the distinguished California Senator Padilla, which would honor the legacy and public service of the late Senator Dianne Feinstein. She was a trailblazer, breaking barriers as the first woman to be elected as mayor of San Francisco, California.

After her election to the U.S. Senate from California, she became the first woman to serve on the Senate Judiciary Committee, the first woman chair of the Senate Committee on Rules and Administration, the first female chair on the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence, and the first woman to serve as ranking member of the Senate Judiciary Committee.

She championed legislation to advance civil rights, civil liberties, human rights, and environmental protection.

Thanks to her leadership, Congress secured the first Federal assault weapons ban in 1994.

Her legacy is one of unswerving devotion to public service and the common good.

Mr. Speaker, I urge passage of this legislation which would name a post office in the birthplace of her political career, San Francisco, in her honor.

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

Mr. Speaker, I also have no further speakers. I support passage of S. 4077, and I urge all of my colleagues to join me.

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

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

Mr. Speaker, I thank the distinguished gentlewoman from Colorado (Ms. Boebert), my friend, for bringing forward H.R. 8753.

This bill would require the U.S. Postal Service to designate unique ZIP Codes for more than 50 different communities across America. The legislation actually combines multiple bills that have been introduced in this Congress by both Republicans and Democrats that aim to address specific community concerns expressed over a long period of time about disrupted mail delivery, undeliverable and lost mail, and geographic confusion.

I commend Representative Boebert for her very creative and undaunted work on this issue, which has been a chronic headache for residents of dozens of small communities across the land.

For example, Scotland, Connecticut, is a municipality with only 600 addresses, and it is broken up into six different ZIP Codes. The town has reported multiple instances of disruptions in mail delivery, including absentee ballots in recent elections. The town has already sought the assistance of the Postal Service, which operates a ZIP Code Boundary Review Process, and even sent an appeal after their initial petition was denied.

The process has been protracted and a tough task for them, as well as for other communities covered by Ms. Boebert's legislation. The distinguished gentlewoman's bill operates as a last resort for towns to get the resources and the attention that they deserve.

Mr. Speaker, I am delighted to support this legislation. Congress has designated new ZIP Codes via legislation in the past. I found the Postal Accountability and Enhancement Act, enacted in 2006, required the designation of unique ZIP Codes for four different towns. This one is far more comprehensive.

Mr. Speaker, we are delighted to endorse the legislation, and I reserve the balance of my time.

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

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

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

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

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 Louisiana (Mr. Graves) for his very thoughtful and insightful remarks on this. We had the Postmaster General with us yesterday in the Oversight Committee, and we are facing a crisis in lots of parts of the country in terms of undelivered mail, late mail, and inefficient delivery taking place. In the meantime, the costs are going up and up.

There is a lot of work that needs to be done in the post office. The post office is really the only Federal department that is defined by the Constitution itself. It is in Article I of the Constitution. The post office created the national transportation network, the postal roads. It created the national information network. Benjamin Franklin was the first Postmaster General.

We have got to bring the post office back to a point where we can rely on it to do the basic things that are so essential to our economy and to our society, and one of them is lining up the ZIP Codes properly.

Again, I thank the distinguished gentlewoman from Colorado for her initiative, which is truly bipartisan, to loop together all of the communities that have been very frustrated and disappointed in this process to say that Congress will, indeed, act.

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

Madam Speaker, I reserve the balance of my time.

Madam Speaker, I reserve the balance of my time.

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

Madam Speaker, I understand we have a few moments before our friends arrive for the next discussion.

I, again, commend the distinguished and passionate gentlewoman from Colorado for her really creative work on this legislation.

I know it means a lot to thousands and thousands of people across the country. It is going to make people's lives a lot simpler. The post office should be something that facilitates our work in small business, our work sending out bills or checks and receiving them, and the post office should not be something that gets in the way.

This legislation will definitely ameliorate a problem that exists, and we hope it will facilitate life, commerce, and social action taking place in lots of parts of the country.

This also gives me the opportunity to thank my colleague for engaging in this legislative endeavor in a totally bipartisan way. We live in a time where partisan feelings are intense and ferocious and, of course, that is not historically novel.

There have been partisan tempers flaring basically since the Federalists and the Democratic Republicans went at it in the election of the 1800s. I suppose George Washington was the last President who actually won a unanimous verdict in the electoral college. He got all the electoral college votes. Everybody loved Washington.

After that, we formed political parties. There is nothing evil about political parties. The alternative of having political parties, I suppose, is a one-party system something like is developed in China with the Communist Party there or in Russia under Vladimir Putin or what Orban is working on with illiberal democracy in Hungary.

There is an easy way to get rid of partisanship if partisanship is the problem and that is you get rid of political parties. We can't do that because political parties are a sign of health in a society because people have different views about things and political parties are a great way to articulate different agendas and programs, bring them to the electorate, bring them to the voters, and to express conflict in a civil and nonviolent way.

The problem, of course, is when we elevate our devotion to party above our devotion to the Constitution and the Bill of Rights in the country as a whole. All of us who aspire and attained a public office are nothing but the servants of the people, all the people.

We might get elected with a little ``R'' next to our name or a ``D'' next to our name or an ``I'' next to our name, but once we swear our oath of office, we are there to uphold the Constitution for everyone and we are there to serve all of the people. That is our job.

If you say that sounds romantic or that sounds idealistic, actually, that is how we conduct most of our lives as politicians. If you come to my district office out in beautiful Rockville, Maryland, in the beautiful Eighth Congressional District, and you have a problem, let's say, with Social Security or Medicare or Medicaid or the post office or PPP loans, whatever it is, we will go to bat for you. We will go to work for you to help you navigate the twists and turns of the public system and Federal bureaucracy.

We never ask, are you a Democrat? Are you a Republican? Are you an Independent? If you are my constituent, we will go to bat for you. I know that is true of my friend from Colorado, too. She is there to serve everybody: Republicans, Democrats, Independents, others, and people who hate all the political parties.

All of those people are Americans and deserve the programs and the services of the government at the very least and certainly all of the rights and the freedoms that they are entitled to as Americans under the Constitution and the Bill of Rights. We have the honor and the privilege to serve the people, to serve all America, and to serve the Constitution and the Bill of Rights.

We are not the masters of the people. Anybody who occupies public office, no matter how high or how low, is nothing but a servant of the people. That is

why the Founders created a system where if people begin to act like kings and queens and lords over the people, that is when we throw them out through elections or we evict, we eject, we reject, we impeach, we convict if we have to do that, but the Constitution has an electoral system to keep the process moving.

All of us are just servants of the people. Just like we are there to serve the people, the Federal departments we set up, like the post office, which I think still, even with all of the problems, is our most popular Federal function. With hundreds of thousands of hardworking, devoted people working in the post office, all of them work for the government, work for the Congress, which works for the people.

The three most important words in our Constitution are the three most important words in our country, we the people, and we reject every form of despotism and dictatorship and anybody who would try to overthrow rule by the people.

In this bill, which may be deceptively simple and may apply only to tens of thousands or hundreds of thousands of people in the country, what we see is a democratic representative government in action. When we are trying to live up to our oaths, we can act in a bipartisan way. We can remember where the word ``party'' comes from. It comes from the French word ``partie'', which means a part. Each of our parties is nothing but a part of the whole.

When we are doing our jobs right, as Ms. Boebert is today, then we are acting in the interest of the whole without regard to political party or sect. I am proud to be a part of this legislation, I am proud to support it, and I am very hopeful that our friends in the Senate will pick it up quickly and we can move it through this Congress.

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

Mr. Speaker, I thank the gentlewoman for yielding me time.

Mr. Speaker, I am just becoming acquainted with the amendment and the legislation now, but it seems to me it is a very good idea to educate people on the dangers and the perils of Communist totalitarianism, as well as other kinds of totalitarianism, such as Nazi and Fascist totalitarianism, the forces we defeated in the last century.

Obviously, there are a lot of Americans who need a primer on the dangers of Communist totalitarianism, such as the President-elect, who still seems to have a love affair with Kim Jong-un, the last remaining Communist dictator on Earth, who is a major threat to the human rights of people who live in North Korea.

Vladimir Putin, the former head of the KGB, who described the collapse of the Soviet Union as the worst catastrophe of the 20th century, remains a severe threat to democracy and freedom all over the world.

Along with the distinguished chairman of the committee, I am sorry that there is not an explicit recognition of Nazism and fascism here, but there is no problem with educating people about the dangers of Communist totalitarianism because there are so many people, including the President-elect, who seem not to remember the dangers of Communist totalitarianism and what people like Vladimir Putin did under Soviet Communism and the threat that continues to be posed.

Mr. Speaker, I think the amendment makes good sense to identify the Chinese Government's violent mistreatment of the Uyghurs, of people in Tibet, and continuing human rights violations that are taking place.

This means we shouldn't be making alliances with Communist and totalitarian oligarchs all over the world. We should be criticizing them and challenging them for the violations of human rights of people who live under their empire.

America should not be aligned with the oligarchs and the Fascists and the Stalinist Communists all over the world. We should be aligned with the democratic movements, people who are struggling for freedom and human rights.

I am sorry that this was written in such a partial way, but it at least gets at part of the problem, and I hope it will be a real education to the incoming administration, as well as to young people, about the dangers of people like

Vladimir Putin and Kim Jong-un, Communists who have undermined human rights and freedom in our time.

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

Mr. Speaker, I rise in very strong support of H.R. 9360 for two reasons. One is the reason of process, which is,

as I understand it, the unanimous support of the Tennessee congressional delegation, which has always been the process threshold for these bills. Secondly, because of the substance.

Harold Middlebrook was born in Memphis, as my distinguished colleague, Mr. Burchett, tells us. He went to Morehouse and became involved as a college student in the civil rights movement. He was active both with the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee and with the Southern Christian Leadership Conference.

At SNCC, he participated with Bob Moses and Ivanhoe Donaldson and a number of the other activists in SNCC, which was the organization that went door to door registering people to vote at great risk to life and limb.

They coined the expression ``one person, one vote'' later assimilated into the Supreme Court's ``one person, one vote'' equal protection discourse in Reynolds v. Sims and Wesberry v. Sanders, but it started as a slogan of the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee.

Reverend Middlebrook came to pastor churches in Memphis, Bolivar, and Knoxville. He founded the Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. Commemorative Commission of Knoxville in honor of his late friend.

It is an honor to be able to rise in support of this legislation to create a post office that will be named in honor of Harold Middlebrook. I urge passage of the legislation, and I yield back the balance of my time.

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

I rise in support of the Federal Agency Performance Act. I also thank my colleagues, the gentleman from South Carolina (Mr. Timmons) and the gentleman from California (Mr. Khanna), for leading this bill to modernize the Government Performance and Results Act of 1993, which we refer to as GPRA, I believe.

I am pleased to support this bipartisan legislation. I thank Senator Peters, the chair of the Senate Committee on Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs, for his leadership of the bill on the Senate side.

GPRA established a performance management framework in 1993 for Federal Government agencies. It was last modernized in 2010, so we are overdue serious attention to make sure the framework is operating as effectively and smoothly as it can.

This bill would promote both accountability and transparency. It would codify OMB's practice of conducting regular strategic reviews of Federal agency performance goals, and it would also set new requirements to improve publicly available data on performance.gov, allowing the public greater transparency into agency progress toward the goals that have been set forth.

The bill makes commonsense updates to ensure agencies are providing services to the people as efficiently and as effectively as possible, which is why we have a government, to serve the people.

I encourage all my colleagues to support this bill, and I reserve the balance of my time.

Mr. Speaker, I have no further speakers. I urge everybody to pass this, and I yield back the balance of my time.