Joseph P. Kennedy III

Madam Chair, I wish to speak on behalf of the amendment.

Madam Chair, I begin by thanking the chairman of the committee and his staff for their dedication to getting this amendment here today and for their long and strong defense of our electoral system from foreign interference.

Madam Chair, a few weeks ago, Special Counsel Robert Mueller stood before the American people and issued a stern warning and an ominous challenge. In what he referred to as the central allegation of his 2- year-long investigation, he told us that there were ``multiple, systemic efforts to interfere in our election. That allegation deserves the attention of every American.''

Our democracy was attacked, our government undermined, and our election system weakened. We were manipulated.

A foreign adversary exposed many of our worst impulses as they hacked, prodded, forged, stole, lied, and exploited in a coordinated and sustained effort to change the trajectory of this country.

We cannot change what happened in 2016, but we can learn from it because our adversaries certainly did. They watched as politicians were all too eager to use hacked material. They took notes as social media networks were used to inflame racial, geographic, and demographic divisions.

According to the ``Worldwide Threat Assessment'' by the Director of National Intelligence, Dan Coats, Russia, China, and Iran already have their eyes trained on 2020.

That is why we must proactively create a foreign threat response center tasked with identifying and rejecting any attempts by any adversary to influence our political process because we cannot hold ourselves up as a beacon of democracy if we are not willing to defend the institutions upon which our democratic system rests.

By removing politics from this response and coordinating it under one roof within the intelligence community, we can rebuild that faith in our system.

In this body, we have no greater responsibility than to protect the sanctity of our elections, to protect the trust of our citizens, and to protect our faith in government. That is what this amendment codifies.

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

Madam Chair, may I inquire how much time I have remaining?

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

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

I would just say, in closing, that I appreciate the gentleman's words and the work that they did with us to get the report language into the version last year. I would point out that much of the intent behind this legislation and this amendment is directly related to what the gentleman indicated around an ongoing threat assessment from Russia, China, and Iran.

The issue isn't so much, has that threat been identified? It is, what has the Intelligence Committee done to ensure the sanctity and the purity of those elections?

I think this amendment speaks for itself. I urge my colleagues to adopt it.

I yield back the balance of my time.

Mr. Chairman, I thank the chairwoman for her passionate work on this issue.

The President's transgender military ban doesn't just ignore science, expert testimony, military experience, and the advice of all five military chiefs of staff, it ignores the men and women who are willing to die in defense of our freedom.

So I ask my colleagues one simple question: Are you willing to look into the eyes of a trans servicemember and tell them that they are not qualified to serve in our Nation's Armed Forces simply because of who they are, that our country won't allow them their most basic freedom while expecting them to die for our own?

If our Nation's fundamental promise that we are all created equal doesn't apply to all, then what are we asking them to defend in the first place?

Mr. Speaker, this administration continues to tell us that our economic recovery is chugging along, that it has even been hypercharged under President Trump.

They say there is well over 7.5 million unfilled jobs and 6 million people looking for work, that wages are beginning to pick up. The stock market has reached record highs and the unemployment rate, record lows.

So why aren't our constituents celebrating, saving, and spending at equally historic rates?

Mr. Speaker, everyone in this Chamber knows what I am talking about. They can feel it. Why does it all seem so fragile, like this country is walking on economic eggshells?

Because that is how it feels to American families every single day. Because in today's America, you can work a 12-hour shift, 7 days a week, year after year--get in one car accident on your way home from work and end up bankrupt.

Because the cost of a college education is leaving a generation of graduates with a high-interest mortgage without the house.

Because the cost of childcare is becoming even more unaffordable than that college degree.

Because the cost of a two-bedroom apartment swallows up the income of a full-time minimum wage worker in every single neighborhood in our country.

Because nearly 40 percent of Americans can't afford an unexpected $400 medical bill, and skyrocketing pharmaceutical costs are forcing families to open GoFundMe pages to keep their kids alive.

Just over a decade after hitting rock bottom, our economy is still sick for a very simple reason: We haven't correctly diagnosed the cause of that illness.

We are comforted by the improvement of external symptoms, like stock

prices and unemployment rates; meanwhile, our economy's heart is in dire straits. Small businesses are shuttered, factories are fleeing, family farms are closing, and once-prosperous American towns are barely scraping by.

To blame for this chronic illness is a system that has whittled away protection, opportunity, justice, and dignity for the American worker.

Our workers rise like their parents before them--early. They work hard to provide for their family for well into the night; they skip lunch breaks; they defer vacation; they trade with coworkers to take an overtime shift--all to care for the ones they love. And yet the jobs that they hold won't even allow for that.

The whole point of a job is to earn a living and make a life, to contribute to something purposeful, to be able to provide for your loved ones in return.

If American jobs can't meet the needs of Americans, then what is the point? How will the greatest economy in the world possibly endure if its people can't keep up.

Mr. Speaker, I read a story a few weeks ago about a few local Home Depot employees who built a walker for a little boy whose parents were not certain that insurance would cover a proper one. And just yesterday, news sites blasted a story of a 9-year-old little boy in California who used his own allowance to pay off the lunch debts of his classmates.

The goodness of those workers, of those children is incredible, and thank God we have people like them among us. But a moral, a just, a fair, an accountable, and a decent economy wouldn't call those stories heartwarming but heartbreaking, a damning indictment of a system that bars countless Americans of basic necessity, particularly in their moments of deepest need.

A moral capitalism would put quality on the same page as quantity. It wouldn't just ask for integrity and decency from the public and private sectors running our economic show, it would demand it, with laws that work in tandem to guarantee that when our kids get sick, we can take care of them; when our roof falls, we can repair it; when our stomachs ache, we can fill them; and when we tire, we can rest.

Mr. Speaker, that shouldn't be too much for anyone to ask.