Floor Statements

Mr. Chair, I would like to start off by applauding my colleagues for including language in H.R. 1 that reaffirms our Nation's commitment to protecting freshwater resources, especially the Great Lakes.

This bill upholds our commitment to protecting our natural resources in Michigan and upholding the ban on oil and gas development in our Great Lakes. We are blessed with rich waterways and have an obligation to protect them.

We talk a lot about becoming energy independent, but what does this mean for our country and the American people?

It starts with access to essential resources without relying on the goodwill of foreign nations, especially our adversaries.

Mining is essential to our energy strategy and manufacturing independence. Without independent, secure, and safe minerals, there is no manufacturing independence. Worse, there is no national security.

I put forward the national strategy to reshore mineral supply chains amendment because I believe it is one of those commonsense issues that both sides can agree on.

Democrats have advocated for an electric future. That hinges on sustainably sourced mining.

Republicans have made it clear that establishing energy and manufacturing independence to grow our economy and lower prices is a top priority.

I have actually found a bipartisan partner in the White House. Last week, I asked Secretary Blinken whether he would be open to participating with me on legislation to create a 21st century national strategy to strengthen the American industrial base to reshore our critical minerals and end slavery in our supply chains.

His answer? We welcome working with you on that.

This amendment is a practical step toward that goal.

To the Chinese Communist Party, my amendment signals that America is done being taken advantage of. To the rest of the world, it shows that America stands strong and strategically. To hardworking Americans, it means lower costs and more money in their pockets.

I represent the number one manufacturing district in the country, but our Great Lakes are table stakes for anyone who seeks to represent them. We must have balance in how we approach this, and I believe H.R. 1 strikes that balance.

America has leaned on the 10th Congressional District in a world war and a global pandemic, and we expect to be called upon again. We will stand ready to help, but we must be prepared. That starts with a national strategy to reshore mineral supply chains. It is critically important.

Madam Speaker, I ask unanimous consent that when the House adjourns today, it adjourn to meet at 9 a.m. on Friday, March 3, 2023.

Madam Speaker, South Africa's Government has recently adopted a worrying path highlighted by its refusal to clearly oppose Putin's war of aggression in Ukraine and its shameful decision to host Russia and China for naval exercises on the war's anniversary.

I am a combat veteran. I have participated in both war games and war. Make no mistake, one is intended to prepare for the other.

In hard times it is easy to be seduced by the siren song of isolationism. Allowing vacuums of American influence around the world to be filled with Chinese yuan and Russian lies is a threat to our American economy and security at home.

We must speak softly and carry a big stick. And with our big stick, we must eliminate safe havens for terror organizations in Africa that would metastasize into direct threats to America in the Western Hemisphere; ensure that American-made goods both catalyze economic growth at home and help reduce long-term aid dependence in Africa; and eliminate slave labor in our battery supply chains starting with minerals stripped from Africa on the backs of Black children.

In a world where America is no longer the only choice, we must return to being the most desirable choice. It is in our vital national interest to ensure that when nations like South Africa have a choice between China or the United States of America, they will always choose America first.

Madam Clerk, I rise to nominate Kevin McCarthy for Speaker of the House.

Madam Clerk, there has been a lot of talk about history over the last few days. 1856 was the last time it took longer than 9 votes to find a Speaker of the House. It took 133 votes over 2 months.

Without question, the issues that divide us today are much less severe than they were in 1856. In fact, there is far more that unites us than divides us, regardless of our political party or ideology.

The issues today are over a few rules and personalities, while the issues at that time were about slavery and whether the value of a man who looks like me was 60 percent or 100 percent of a human being.

It was a long, drawn-out, painful process, but it needed to happen. In the end, Nathaniel Banks won by the slimmest of margins. But the margins don't matter when your policies are on the right side of history. On that day, long ago, the good guys won. On that day, long ago, the abolitionists won. On that day, the people who believed in

freedom and self-determination won. The leading Republican nominee won then, and the leading Republican nominee will win again today.

Since then, our Nation has made a lot of progress. That includes families like mine. My family has gone from slave to the floor of the United States House of Representatives, being the first Member of his freshman class to speak.

In a series of five generations, my family has gone from slave to right here since 1856. My father and mother were born in the 1940s and 1950s in the Jim Crow South, and my dad lived directly across the street from a school he couldn't go to because he was Black. He started a business with one truck, one trailer, no excuses, with the help of his wife, and now his son stands here on the precipice of taking back the majority for the American people and taking this Nation in the right direction.

I am a freshman. I have only been here a couple of days, but I have heard a lot of D.C. politicians tell me about how broken D.C. is. I don't need D.C. politicians to tell me how broken D.C. is. The American people have already told us how broken D.C. is by giving the Republicans the majority so we can fix this mess.

We will counter the socialist movement of envy and confiscation with a conservative movement of access and opportunity. We will stand on the right side of history again. We will end the growth of government, and we will stop 87,000 new IRS agents from picking through your pocketbooks. We will secure our energy independence. We will ban the sale of petroleum from our strategic reserves to China. We will establish a bipartisan select committee specifically to keep our eye on the ball in China. We will address the crisis at the border that is killing Americans by the day and improve both our safety in our Nation and our dignity for those who come here in search of a better life.

But not yet. We are still stuck at the starting block. The American people have told us, by putting a Republican majority here, that they want Republicans to lead, and they want a government that works and doesn't embarrass them. We are failing on both missions, and that must change today.

Benjamin Franklin said: We must hang together, or we will, most assuredly, hang separately.

We are stuck in a malaise, at an impasse, and we will stay here and not be able to fight the real conservative fight until we find a way to come together and fight that mission together.

Yesterday, we experienced, very briefly, our first win. It was a small victory. It was a small victory, but didn't it feel good? We have been working hard for that victory, and there are much more to come.

As a cadet at West Point, I learned the phrase that has always been my motto throughout my life: ``Mission first, people always.''

Right now, the people are left out. Right now, they don't have a Congress to speak for them at the highest level of government. Right now, every individual in this room can concede that the rounds that we have taken are not what we told our constituents we would do. We told them that we would fight the opioid crisis.

For perspective, there is a hallowed monument that my father took me to. My father is a Vietnam veteran. This monument has a total length of 500 feet, nearly 2 football fields. It is 10 feet high, and the letters are only a half inch, with 58,000 names, for a war that lasted years. According to the CDC, in 2021, we lost almost twice as many people as we lost in Vietnam to overdoses. We lost 600 Americans to overdoses since Tuesday.

We are talking about the debt rising. You can't count how many dollars we have spent of our great-grandchildren's money since Tuesday.

The work we promised the American people we would do, we are welching on that promise. But I have hope. I have hope that we will be able to come together unified and put the right person in leadership. From many, one, e pluribus unum.

I am standing here today because I am the seventh Member to stand up in support of Kevin McCarthy for Speaker. He has earned my trust. The first time we met was in his office under the watchful gaze of a Frederick Douglass painting. He told me in that office, on the eve of the 2019 State of the Union address, that there is nothing that could be said or done during that address that embarrassed him more than the fact that when the Democrat side stood up, they would look more like the United States of America than we do.

He set out not to compromise our values, not to compromise our ideology, but to work harder to make sure that more people with diverse perspectives and different lived experiences could be here. In the very next election, he won 14 seats up from 199. All the seats he won were with minorities, women, and veterans. The very next cycle, this next cycle, he helped me and my good buddy and classmate, the Congressman from Texas, Wes Hunt, double the number of Black Republicans in the Republican Conference.

We have a long way to go, but we have come so far. We have come so far. We can't quit. We can't quit. You don't fire a guy who is winning.

Look at the Governor's mansions and legislatures we lost across the country just this past cycle and look at the gains that Kevin McCarthy has made uphill, getting the gavel as minority leader in half the time. The mainstream media likes to laud the leadership of Nancy Pelosi. Kevin McCarthy won the gavel back as minority leader in half the time going uphill.

We want to talk about people who can win. I am a Lions' fan, and I am well acquainted with snatching defeat from the jaws of victory. We need to learn how to win. We need to learn how to take victory.

With Kevin McCarthy's leadership, he has given us victories on rules. He has given us victories on keeping costs down. He has given us victories with winning the majority back. I am so proud to be a part of the majority-making class. He has earned my trust, and, hopefully, he will earn your trust.

He has got 90 percent of us in the Conference. When is the last time any of us had 90 percent approval ratings?

Kevin McCarthy, you will see up there, has over 90 percent approval ratings. If you really want to start making history, let's do it the right way.

We need a conservative fighter to help this country get back on the right track, but the first thing we need to do is elect Leader McCarthy as Speaker of the House.

I am ready to make history, and I know you are. I am excited to work with each and every single one of you because we have a job to do.

At the direction of the Republican Conference, I advance the name of Kevin McCarthy as Speaker of the House for the 118th Congress.