Floor Statements

Mr. Speaker, I thank Representative Kelly for sponsoring this Special Order tonight.

Mr. Speaker, on Friday of last week, President Biden signed an executive order undermining democratically passed State laws that limit abortions. His executive order directs the Department of Health and Human Services to protect access to life-ending abortions including the dangerous and deadly chemical abortion pill. This goes directly against the Supreme Court's recent decision that allows the people through their elected Representatives to decide on this issue for themselves at the many States.

Unfortunately, the President caved to the extremists who support abortion up until the moment of birth and is now going against his oath of office by directly undermining the law of the land. Meanwhile, pregnancy centers, which provide compassionate support to pregnant mothers, and churches are under attack by the left.

Where is the executive order protecting these organizations and institutions?

In America, the first inalienable right is the right to be born--the right to life. Countless lives have been lost to abortion since Roe became law. Now is our time to right these wrongs and stand for life. The President has a constitutional duty to uphold the law of the land, not undermine it.

Mr. Speaker, had I been present, I would have noted ``nay'' on rollcall no. 310.

Members Recorded Pursuant to House Resolution 8, 117th Congress

Barragan (Correa)

Beatty (Carter (LA))

Bentz (Obernolte)

Brown (MD) (Evans)

Cardenas (Correa)

Castro (TX) (Neguse)

Cherfilus-McCormick (Evans)

Cohen (Beyer)

Crist (Schneider)

DeFazio (Pallone)

Doggett (Beyer)

Fallon (Gonzales, Tony)

Hartzler (Bacon)

Issa (Garcia (CA))

Jayapal (Neguse)

Johnson (TX) (Jeffries)

Kahele (Correa)

Katko (Meijer)

Kirkpatrick (Pallone)

Lawrence (Stevens)

Leger Fernandez (Kuster)

Lieu (Beyer)

Mooney (Miller (WV))

Moore (WI) (Beyer)

Moulton (Stevens)

Newman (Beyer)

Panetta (Beyer)

Pappas (Kuster)

Pascrell (Pallone)

Payne (Pallone)

Peters (Correa)

Pingree (Kuster)

Porter (Neguse)

Reschenthaler (Meuser)

Rice (SC) (Mace)

Ryan (Beyer)

Salazar (Gimenez)

Sires (Pallone)

Soto (Neguse)

Taylor (Babin)

Timmons (Armstrong)

Trahan (Stevens)

Walorski (Baird)

Wasserman Schultz (Schneider)

Williams (GA) (Carter (LA))

Wilson (SC) (Lamborn)

Amendment No. 2 Offered by Mr. Jones

Mr. Speaker, I rise today as middle Tennesseans struggle to afford record-high gas prices caused by the Biden administration's antienergy prices.

If you recall, in April of this year, President Biden announced he would be raiding the Strategic Petroleum Reserve to help ``ease the pain American families are facing at the pump.''

Since then, the average price of a gallon of gasoline has risen from $4.20 a gallon to over $5 a gallon, while putting our national security at risk as the Strategic Petroleum Reserve is now at its lowest level since 1985.

What is even more alarming is a new press report stating that 950,000 barrels of the oil Mr. Biden took from the Strategic Petroleum Reserve were sold to a state-owned Chinese company. If this is true, it is difficult to find the words to adequately describe how utterly outrageous it is.

President Biden must do better, and he must answer questions associated with this apparent sale of oil from our Strategic Petroleum Reserve to our most dangerous geopolitical adversary, China.

Madam Speaker, Federal Reserve Chair Jerome Powell has confirmed what we knew all along: Inflation isn't because of Putin's disgraceful invasion of Ukraine. It is because of President Biden's and congressional Democrats' reckless spending.

Earlier this week, during a Senate Banking Committee hearing, my friend and fellow Tennessean, Senator Bill Hagerty, pointed out that inflation had already risen to 7 percent well before the war in Ukraine.

He asked Chair Powell if the war in Ukraine is the primary driver of inflation. Chair Powell responded, ``No. Inflation was high before, certainly before the war in Ukraine broke out.''

This isn't a Putin price hike, it is Bidenflation, and the Biden administration and congressional Democrats and their allies in the mainstream media need to stop with the misdirection and misleading excuses. Thankfully, Tennesseans are smart and can recognize the difference.

Taking responsibility for mistakes followed by straight talk are necessary prerequisites for getting us out of this

mess and are our minimum expectations for the President of the United States. President Biden must do better.

Mr. Speaker, almost 50 years ago, the Supreme Court incorrectly decided that the right to end an unborn child's life existed in the U.S. Constitution. On that day, the United States became one of only six countries that allow abortion on demand throughout the entirety of pregnancy, putting us in the same category as Communist China and North Korea.

Now, almost 50 years later, we might be on the precipice of the Court correcting their egregious mistake. Unfortunately, due to the actions of a rogue actor with no regard for the laws or institutions of our country, Justices must withstand attempts to dissuade them from changing that ruling. Inexcusably, those attempts to intimidate the High Court's opinion have even turned violent.

In fact, since that rogue actor, who I believe broke the law and should be held accountable to the full extent of the law, leaked Justice Alito's draft opinion on Dobbs v. Jackson, a fence had to be constructed outside the Court to prevent attempts from leftwing agitators to ``burn it down.''

There was also a reported attempt to assassinate Justice Kavanaugh, which was thankfully foiled by our brave law enforcement officers.

As we are all surely aware, anti-life demonstrators have held protests for weeks outside the homes of Justice Clarence Thomas, Amy Coney Barrett, and Brett Kavanaugh, which is a direct violation of 18

Madam Speaker, Tennesseans are fed up with prices at the pump. They are paying double what they were a year-and-a-half ago because of the attacks on American energy that began on day one of the Biden administration. Now, the President has asked Congress to consider a gas tax holiday. How curious.

This is what Washington does when there is a big problem. Politicians pretend they are looking out for you, but they are just looking out for their own poll numbers.

Those aren't my words, Madam Speaker. That is a quote from President Biden's former boss, Barack Obama, on the campaign trail in 2008. He said a gas tax holiday would threaten Federal highways and possibly cost jobs while only saving families pennies a day. He called the idea an election-year gimmick, not a real solution. I agree.

A real solution would be supporting policies that return our Nation to energy independence.

Madam Speaker, recently, Cecilia Rouse, the chair of the White House Council of Economic Advisers, was trying to explain away the challenges that runaway inflation presents to most American households, and she said, ``Most American household balance sheets are strong and can provide some cushion for rising prices.''

I was shocked to hear these remarks coming from one of the President's top economic policy advisers. Madam Speaker, most Americans, in fact, do not have a cushion for rising prices. A recent survey found that 56 percent of Americans cannot cover a $1,000 emergency expense from their savings.

That is why I led a letter demanding that Chair Rouse apologizes to the millions of Americans struggling with skyrocketing prices due to the failed economic policies of the Biden administration. I include this letter for the Record.

House of Representatives,

Washington, DC, June 15, 2022.

Dr. Cecilia Rouse,

Chair, White House Council of Economic Advisers, Washington,

Madam Speaker, if remarks like these are reflective of the advice being given to the President of the United States, it is no wonder that they continue to enact policies completely out of touch with the American people.

Gas Tax Holiday

Madam Speaker, if you were on a drive through middle Tennessee right now and needed to fill up, let's say, a 2015 Ford F- 150, you would pay about $120. A gas tax holiday would take fewer than $5 off that bill.

Yet, this is the latest Band-Aid solution being tossed around by the Biden administration. President Biden has already depleted our Strategic Petroleum Reserve to its lowest point in 35 years, weakening national security while doing little or nothing to lower gas prices.

While every dollar certainly counts, saving only $5 out of every $120 from a gas tax holiday will not make much of a difference in our personal budgets, but it will have a crushing effect on our ability to pay for the Federal highway system.

Instead of kneecapping our Nation's infrastructure, the President should immediately approve the more than 4,000 pending applications for drilling and end the freeze on oil and gas leases, yet President Biden refuses.

The key to getting prices down is simple: reestablish the energy independence President Trump created.

President Biden simply must do better.

Madam Speaker, more than 7 weeks ago, we woke up to headlines that the Supreme Court of the United States would likely overturn Roe v. Wade. I believe the leaker broke Federal law in an effort to change the outcome of the High Court's ruling.

We have seen protests outside Justices' homes. In Associate Justice Brett Kavanaugh's case, we have seen an assassination plot. We have also seen more than a dozen attacks on pro-life organizations across the country, including vandalism, destruction of property, and even firebombing.

This is why I joined more than 100 House Republicans in a letter urging the Department of Justice to investigate these attacks. They not only deserve to be a top priority for the DOJ, but we believe they should be investigated as instances of domestic terrorism.

We must make it clear that we are a Nation of laws, never mob rule.

Madam Speaker, I thank the gentleman for yielding tonight.

Madam Speaker, I rise today to address another devastating record set on President Biden's watch, this time along our southern border. Numbers released last week from U.S. Customs and Border Protection tell us there were more migrant encounters in May of this year than any month on record. May was also the fourth straight month of encounters reaching more than 200,000.

Here are the numbers: 239,416 total encounters. That is up 32 percent from May of last year, and nearly 10 times the number of encounters during the same month in 2020. Twenty-five percent of migrants were repeat offenders, meaning they have been deported or arrested before. Agents also reported 20 percent more unaccompanied minors crossing the border compared to just April of this year.

This continues to be a national security and humanitarian crisis, and it is only getting worse.

And if you can believe it, the numbers could actually be much worse. Had it not been for a Federal judge delaying the Biden administration's plan to end title 42, who knows how many people would have crossed into our country illegally?

Title 42 is a critical tool for our already overwhelmed Border Patrol agents. Yet, the Biden Justice Department continues to fight for the administration's dangerous, reckless, open border policies by appealing that judge's decision.

Since President Biden took office, more than 700,000 people have avoided law enforcement and made their way into our country. We really don't know who these people are. Agents stopped at least 50 people on the terrorist screening database in just a 9-month period.

This begs the questions: Out of those who evaded law enforcement, those 700,000, how many could potentially be on the terrorist watch list?

Where are those people?

What are their intentions?

How will they impact the lives of American citizens?

Republicans may sound like a broken record when it comes to the border, but we wouldn't have to talk about it so much if it were not for the broken policies of President Biden and his DHS Secretary Mayorkas. They simply must do better.

Mr. Speaker, our country is in an inflation crisis caused by the Biden administration's failed leftwing, progressive policies.

We have families who can't find baby formula for their newborns, grocery stores with empty shelves, workers filling up their gas tanks for twice what they paid 2 years ago, and farmers paying triple for fertilizer compared to two harvests ago.

H.R. 7606, the bill that passed the House last week, will do nothing to combat these crises in the immediate future. Instead, Congress should consider a bill introduced by the gentleman from Pennsylvania (Mr. Thompson), my friend and ranking member of the House Agriculture Committee.

H.R. 8069, the Reducing Farm Input Costs and Barriers to Production Act, will work to immediately combat rising food and fuel costs and has the support from our farmers, ranchers, and producers.

However, once again, Democrats passed a bill that doesn't fix our problems, nor does it increase our domestic food or fuel production, and they blame everything on Republicans. Let the record show we offered real solutions, and Democrats simply did not listen.

Mr. Speaker, I want to make it clear: just because Democrats named their bill the Lower Food and Fuel Costs Act does not mean this bill will achieve that goal.

The only thing it really achieves is a campaign talking point for Democrats responding to constituents frustrated with higher prices at the grocery store and the gas station caused by their reckless spending.

Instead of wasting our valuable time debating this bill that will never become law, we should pass H.R. 8069, the Reducing Farm Input Costs and Barriers to Production Act, introduced by Ranking Member Thompson, which includes real, immediate solutions our farmers, ranchers, and producers support.

His bill, which I am proud to support, would reverse the EPA's reckless actions related to crop production tools, reverse the Biden administration's confusing and disastrous changes to the Waters of the United States rule, and would withdraw the SEC's ludicrous ESG rule on climate-related disclosures, an action that has received bipartisan support.

Mr. Speaker, our Nation is facing a lot of problems: historic inflation, sky-high prices at the pump, and a shortage of baby formula.

But it is important not to lose sight of another crisis going on more than 1500 miles southwest of where we are gathered right now: 2.6 million illegal immigrants have been apprehended at our southern border since President Biden took the oath of office.

There were more than 234,000 migrant encounters at the border just in April. That is the most for any month in history. That is also a 1,268 percent increase from April of 2020.

Border Patrol seized more than 340,000 pounds of drugs since last October, including enough fentanyl to kill more than 2 billion people.

Yet, this administration is still fighting to repeal title 42. It is past time to put an end to these open border policies and put the American people first.

Mr. Speaker, I thank the gentleman for yielding.

H.R. 2543 will do nothing to resolve the long list of crises the Biden administration's policies have caused, such as runaway, devastating inflation; massive Federal debt; unacceptably high gas prices; a skyrocketing crime rate; and an open border that allows millions of illegal immigrants and tons of deadly fentanyl into our country.

This bill, which has no chance of becoming law and is dead on arrival in the Senate, would impose additional and burdensome reporting requirements on public companies, reduce access to credit, distract the Federal Reserve from pursuing its statutory mandate, and further politicize our regulatory agencies.

Families in middle Tennessee can't find baby formula and are struggling to pay for groceries and gas while Democrats are jamming through a partisan bill just to score political points with their leftwing progressive base. We must do better for our constituents and for our country.

So true. Thank you, Vice-Chairman Johnson. I appreciate that.

Madam Speaker, the average cost of a gallon of gas in this country just passed $5 per gallon for the very first time. I repeat: The average cost of a

gallon of gas in this country just passed $5 per gallon for the very first time.

I would like to remind Americans, especially those on the other side of the aisle who may not be affected because they drive electric vehicles, that prices at the pump started to go up well before Vladimir Putin's disgraceful invasion of Ukraine.

In fact, they started climbing shortly after President Biden took office. It is not a coincidence. It is not an unintended consequence. It was the President's intended outcome.

The President doesn't beat around the bush on the topic of fossil fuels. On the campaign trail, he pledged to get rid of them. I would say he is well on his way to keeping that promise.

Remember, this country was a net exporter of oil. Now we are stuck hoping the President has a good meeting with the Crown Prince of Saudi Arabia, the same country he called a pariah, one that we hope results in them producing more oil and, hopefully, lowering global prices.

This administration has taken many steps to make it next to impossible to expand drilling here at home. We all remember how quickly the President killed the Keystone XL pipeline with no regard for the impact that would have on those jobs or how dependent it would make us on foreign oil suppliers.

This administration has also proposed more than $80 billion in tax increases on energy producers in the first two budget cycles since being in office.

We know the war in Ukraine has impacted fuel prices, but we Republicans argue that we didn't have to be reliant on foreign countries. If we just used the oil we have here at home, we probably could have kept prices down. Now, we are asking OPEC to produce more. It makes no sense.

The President calls this moment an incredible transition. I see nothing incredible about it. In fact, the only transition I see is the American people going from being able to provide for their families to being stuck at home because of record inflation and gas prices that have more than doubled.

We are not going to go from oil to electric consumption overnight. The grid isn't ready for an all-electric future. We should pursue an all-of-the-above approach that includes oil. The Tennessee Valley Authority uses 39 percent nuclear, 19 percent coal, 26 percent natural gas, 11 percent hydro, and 3 percent wind and solar to power millions of homes across the Tennessee valley. That is how you make sure you are not just energy independent, but you are energy dominant.

The answer isn't raiding our Strategic Petroleum Reserve. The answer certainly isn't relying on foreign countries for supply. The answer is tapping into the resources with which our Nation happens to be abundantly blessed.

Mr. Speaker, inflation is at the highest level we have seen since Jimmy Carter was in the White House.

I have spoken many times about rising prices being fueled by out-of- control spending. Today, I rise with even more proof that this has been the case.

President Biden's 2021 COVID stimulus bill overheated the economy, just as I, and many other Republican Members of Congress, along with numerous economists from both sides of the political divide, predicted.

Now a report by the non-partisan Congressional Budget Office shows that spending did, in fact, create a worker shortage which strained supply chains and contributed to the economic crisis in which we find ourselves today.

One year ago, companies across middle Tennessee were struggling to find workers. More than 160,000 Tennesseans were unemployed; yet 218,000 jobs were

available. Folks were earning $15.75 an hour to stay home because of the unnecessary $2 trillion bill pushed through by congressional Democrats on a party line vote.

Employers became desperate. Many were forced to offer massive sign-on bonuses and other incentives just to find enough workers to continue operating as normal. Unfortunately, some had to close their doors.

Tennessee's Governor Bill Lee, a businessowner himself, recognized the damage enhanced Federal unemployment benefits were causing on restaurants and retail stores. He noticed many couldn't compete with $300 a week from the Federal Government on top of State unemployment benefits.

Fortunately, he put a stop to the flow of Federal unemployment dollars in Tennessee, and he was right. At last check, there were about 13,000 unemployment claims in Tennessee, compared to roughly 60,000 claims this time last year.

Still, the cost of living has increased every month under the Biden administration, and the nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office projects it will continue to impact Americans at least into 2023.

This is what happens when you do what is politically expedient. This is the direct result of runaway deficit spending.

The Federal Reserve is now having to be the adult in the room and raise interest rates to lower inflation. Raising interest rates is a harsh step, but one made necessary by the Biden administration's reckless handling of the economy.

It will make it harder and more expensive to borrow money for your first home or to buy a new car. Raising interest rates will also cause our economy to slow down. This means people will lose their jobs, their savings, and in many cases, even their small businesses.

Our economy already got 1.5 percent smaller in the first quarter of the year. It is why many economists are predicting a recession or worse in the next 12 months.

It didn't have to be this way. The President and congressional Democrats didn't have to borrow and spend so much money. This administration inherited one of the strongest economies in my life. It took fewer than 2 years for them to completely destroy it. President Biden must do better.