Floor Statements

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

Mr. Chair, I rise today to offer my amendment that utilizes the Holman rule to reduce the salary of Shawn Skelly, Assistant Secretary of Defense for Readiness. That salary shall be reduced to $1.

As the Assistant Secretary of Defense, Mr. Skelly is the principal adviser to the Secretary of Defense and the Under Secretary of Defense for Personnel and Readiness on all matters related to the readiness of our Armed Forces.

In that capacity, he is supposed to develop policies and plans, provide advice, and make recommendations for total force readiness programs, reporting, and assessments of readiness to execute the national defense strategy.

Like many of Biden's bureaucrats, Mr. Skelly is failing at his job and the basic responsibilities. On his watch, the Army missed their recruiting goal by 15,000 soldiers last year, and all other branches were forced to dig deep into their pools of delayed entry applicants to meet their recruitment goals.

On top of that, the Army, Navy, Air Force, and Coast Guard are all expected to fall short of their recruitment goals this year.

Mr. Skelly has also been with the Biden administration since the beginning and was appointed to the transition team--some irony there-- in November of 2020.

As the Assistant Secretary of Defense for Readiness, Mr. Skelly played an instrumental role in the disastrous and shameful withdrawal from Afghanistan that killed 13 of America's finest, 13 American heroes in that embarrassing surrender to the Taliban.

As DOD's highest ranking trans official, this delusional man, thinking he is a woman, embodies and espouses the wokeism that is causing significant harm to our military readiness and troop morale.

The military shouldn't be focused on this woke agenda and combating climate change. With Mr. Skelly at the helm of readiness, these misguided policy pursuits will continue to be at the forefront of DOD's priorities.

I urge my colleagues to support my amendment to restore the focus of our Department of Defense to defend our Nation. Mr. Chair, I reserve the balance of my time.

Mr. Chair, I guess delusion runs deep in the Democratic Party. I would go on the record to say that science is a friend in this case and, sure, if you want to call Mr. Skelly a ``her,'' his chromosomes are still X-Y, and we trust the science over here rather than delusion and playing dress-up and imaginary games with our military readiness.

Our military needs to be lethal and able to defend our national security, not pander to the woke extremist left and make up fairy tales.

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

Mr. Chair, I just want the Record to reflect that there is nothing hateful about truth. Again, I urge my colleagues to support my amendment to restore the focus of our Department of Defense to defend our Nation. I look forward to this Holman rule being utilized to reduce the salary of Secretary Shawn Skelly, the Assistant Secretary of Defense for Readiness, to $1.

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

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

Mr. Chair, I rise in favor of my amendment, which will reduce the salary of Norvel Dillard, director of Diversity and Inclusion Management at the Office of Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion of the Department of Defense, to $1.

Norvel ``Rock'' Dillard is a part of Joe Biden and Lloyd Austin's attempt to woken and weaken our military. He works in an office that should not exist doing a job that also should not exist.

Our military is not a social experiment, and we definitely should not be treating it like one or spending taxpayer dollars to do so.

Woke ideology undermines military readiness. It undermines cohesiveness by emphasizing differences based on race, ethnicity, and sex.

It undermines leadership authority by introducing questions about whether promotion is based on merit or quota requirements. It leads to military personnel serving in specialty areas for which they are not qualified or ready. It takes time and resources away from training activities and weapons development to contribute to readiness.

Unelected bureaucrats at the DOD need to be held responsible for their failed leadership, which has distracted from DOD's mission and jeopardized the United States military's ability to defend our country.

From the botched Afghanistan withdrawal that left 13 American soldiers dead to the implementation of a woke agenda that has weakened our military and caused recruitment to suffer, bureaucrats like Norvel Dillard have continued to put a leftist agenda ahead of our national security.

The Federal Government's obsession with diversity, equity, and inclusion needs to come to an end, especially at DOD, where our brave servicemembers volunteer to put themselves in harm's way to fight for freedom. They don't care about the skin color of their brothers and sisters in uniform. They care about completing the mission and going home to their families. Our Defense Department should have the same mindset.

Mr. Chair, I urge my colleagues to support my amendment to restore the focus of our Department of Defense to defend our Nation.

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

Mr. Chair, my colleagues on the other side of the aisle agree that there is a recruitment crisis. Why is that? I think it is because our brave men and women who put their lives on the line to serve our Nation dutifully, with honor, don't see a true Commander in Chief in office. They don't see true leadership that they can be proud to serve alongside, to serve under.

I don't believe that our brave men and women see that they will be taken care of when they put their lives in harm's way to defend our Nation, to defend our allies throughout the world.

Let me ask my colleagues a broad question: This Office of Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion, did that save our 13 servicemembers in Afghanistan, or did it distract from the actual mission?

I heard from my colleagues, Mr. Chair, on the other side of the aisle that this was a way to ridicule and disrespect. I think it is ridiculing to promote someone who does not have the qualifications needed for a position just because of how they identify, their race.

This is what is ridiculing. This is what is disrespectful.

This woke agenda, this DEI, this movement that the left has created, I see it as a way to erase women. I heard my colleague on the other side of the aisle talk about, in the 1970s, there was a recruitment effort to bring more women to our military, and if that were the case today, if that were the mission today, to offer a more diverse military and recruit more women, well, my colleagues on the other side of the aisle would simply put men in a dress and put them in heels. Heck, I got some red lipstick you could borrow.

That is not the answer. The answer is readiness. The answer is that we are all equal under the law, and you do not promote someone simply because of these qualifications.

Mr. Chair, I urge adoption of my amendment, and I yield back the balance of my time.

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

Mr. Chair, I rise today to offer my amendment that utilizes the Holman rule to reduce the salary of Ur Jaddou, director of U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services, to $1.

Ms. Jaddou is a radical leftist. Before joining the Biden administration, she worked for an open borders group called DHS Watch. While at DHS Watch, Jaddou called for stopping Border Patrol funding and referred to CBP as President Trump's ``personal militia.''

Ms. Jaddou has also previously called for the mass release of illegal immigrants. Someone like this should not be in a position of influence at the Department of Homeland Security. She has no regard for the rule of law.

Ms. Jaddou proposed and finalized the rule Procedures for Credible Fear Screening and Consideration of Asylum, Withholding of Removal, and CAT Protection Claims by Asylum Officers, which removed ICE attorneys and the adversarial process from the credible fear asylum application process. The rule violates the jurisdiction of Department of Justice immigration judges as stated by section 103 of the Immigration and Nationality Act and the Homeland Security Act.

Ms. Jaddou also heavily prioritizes USCIS resources to adjudicate and issue employment authorization documents for millions of illegal aliens, parolees, and ever-expanding populations of temporary protected status instead of adjudicating lawful nonimmigrant and immigrant applications. These misguided amnesty pursuits have rapidly increased the USCIS' pending backlog to over 9 million cases.

Jaddou previously pushed other amnesty policies in her role as USCIS during the Obama administration.

Specifically, she aggressively tried to expand parole in place in order to bypass Congress and implement mass amnesty.

Jaddou has also defended the unconstitutional Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals program, falsely claiming this is a permissible exercise of discretion by the Secretary of Homeland Security.

As an attorney, she should know only Congress has the authority to authorize this type of program. With that, Obama and DHS should have never unilaterally created this amnesty program.

Jaddou in her current role is literally enabling and supporting the Biden border crisis. In August alone, there were 232,972 illegal immigrants encountered at the southern border.

Customs and Border Patrol has seized 25,500 pounds of fentanyl so far in fiscal year 2023. Of course, that is only what has been seized, not what we know is coming into our country illegally and killing Americans, at least 300 a day.

Biden's bureaucrats like Jaddou are literally allowing deadly fentanyl to easily flow into our communities and kill our children.

My amendment is supported by the National Immigration Center for Enforcement, NumbersUSA, and the American Accountability Foundation.

I urge my colleagues to support my amendment and hold Ms. Jaddou accountable for her blatant disrespect for the law of our Nation.

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

Mr. Chair, I do appreciate my colleague on the other side of the aisle and his efforts to promote border security.

He and I have had conversations about the border. I realize that he represents a district on the border, and I appreciate his sincere concern for what is taking place.

Unfortunately, we do have an invasion. My colleague mentioned that much of the fentanyl that is coming into our country is being found at the ports of entry.

We know that it is being found at the ports of entry, but unfortunately, our Border Patrol agents are overrun, they are overworked, and there is just too large of a surge for them to handle everything that is happening at the border.

Certainly, we want more funding to secure the border, but we don't want more funding for our Border Patrol agents to simply be process agents and bring people into our country in these mass amounts that we are seeing.

I do appreciate my colleague and his efforts to work with us to secure the southern border, and I look forward to future conversations, as well.

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

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

Mr. Chair, I rise today to offer my amendment that utilizes the Holman Rule to reduce the salary of Under Secretary of Homeland Security for Intelligence and Analysis, Kenneth Wainstein.

In 2020, Mr. Wainstein claimed that President Donald Trump's leadership

was a threat to the rule of law and endorsed Joe Biden for President of the United States.

I will tell you what is a threat to the rule of law: blatantly violating Federal immigration law and intentionally facilitating a complete and total invasion at our southern border.

I will tell you what is a threat to the rule of law: refusing to cooperate with State and local law enforcement officials as required under Section 287(g) of the Immigration and Nationality Act.

I will tell you, Mr. Chair, what is a threat to the rule of law: pursuing a radical open border agenda, purposefully and willfully circumventing every safeguard, check, and balance required by law, allowing terrorists and deadly drugs like fentanyl to freely flow into our great country.

This administration has presided over the largest influx of illegal immigrants in American history. Since they took power, there have been over 6 million illegal crossings of our southern border. That's right-- 6 million.

Under this administration's watch, illicit fentanyl has killed more than 100,000 American citizens. Furthermore, 151 people whose names appear on the terrorist watch list were stopped.

I applaud our brave men and women who serve as our Customs and Border Patrol agents who were able to detain these 151 people who are on the terrorist watch list.

They were trying to cross our southern border, an all-time record of known terrorists on the watch list crossing into our country, beating the previous record also held by the Biden administration in fiscal year 2022. This is more than the encounters in all fiscal years 2017, 2018, 2019, and 2020 combined.

In August, we discovered that a smuggler with ties to ISIS was helping migrants enter the United States from Mexico. This madness needs to end.

This has all occurred on the Under Secretary of Homeland Security for Intelligence and Analysis, Mr. Wainstein's, watch.

The American people deserve to have a Department of Homeland Security committed to securing the homeland, not sitting idly by as terrorists flock across our wide open southern border.

My amendment is supported by the National Immigration Center for Enforcement, NumbersUSA, and the American Accountability Foundation.

I urge my colleagues to support my amendment and hold Mr. Wainstein accountable for not doing his job and for his role in facilitating the worst border crisis in our Nation's history.

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

May I inquire as to how much time is remaining.

Mr. Chair, I would agree with my colleague on the other side of the aisle. We do want to sit down and have a conversation.

We realize we are in divided government right now, and that is the process that we are currently working on. We are trying to avoid doing things as normal as they have been done since the mid-1990s here in Washington, D.C.

We do not want to govern and fund the entire government with a straight up and down vote ``yes'' or ``no.''

We don't want continuing resolutions or omnibus bills. We want to go through the funding of the Federal Government bill by bill, sit down, and work with our colleagues on the other side of the aisle.

This will be bipartisan. This will be bicameral. We do not have the majority in the Senate. We will have to come together in conference and hash out our differences and work with one another.

I do agree with my colleague that we are going to have to work together in a bipartisan, bicameral way to fund the Federal Government.

I understand that there are a lot of scary numbers of people who would be impacted by a shutdown, but that is why this week we are here, passing four appropriations bills to fund the Federal Government, to avoid a full government shutdown.

There may be a partial shutdown for a short amount of time, but I believe that we can come together and alleviate that and come to a resolution soon.

We can do our jobs. We are passing the Department of Defense bill. We have that on the floor. We are also bringing up the Department of Homeland Security bill, the State and foreign ops, and the ag bill. We can fund these parts of the Federal Government.

Mr. Chair, again, I urge my colleagues to support my amendment, and I yield back the balance of my time.

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

Mr. Chair, I rise today to offer my amendment that utilizes the Holman Rule to reduce the salary of the U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement Assistant Director, Office of Immigration Program Evaluation, Claire Trickler-McNulty, to $1.

Ms. McNulty needs to be held accountable for her blatant disregard of our Nation's national security. Ms. McNulty is an advocate for open borders and is implementing policies that encourage illegal entry.

Ms. McNulty admitted publicly that she stayed at the Department of Homeland Security during the Trump administration to sabotage border enforcement.

Ms. McNulty worked for an organization known as KIND where she provided legal services for illegal aliens to fight deportation and stay in the country even though they broke our laws and entered America illegally.

Now this open borders advocate is supposed to help protect America's cross-border crime and illegal immigration that threaten national security when she clearly has no interest in following the law and doing either of these things.

The appointment of Ms. McNulty is a prime example of the Biden-Harris administration's ignorance to the importance of securing the border. Not only is she an open borders fanatic, but she was behind an $80 million no-bid contract that the DHS Inspector General criticized as improper.

The Biden administration has essentially closed ICE down. They do nothing about people entering the country illegally, that has been shown repeatedly. Just look at the 151 terrorists on the terror watch list that have entered America on Biden and McNulty's watch.

During Ms. McNulty's tenure at ICE, instead of protecting our borders and enforcing our laws, ICE now is acting more like a social service agency for illegals.

ICE is even partnering with groups that campaign for ICE to be abolished, that give aid to illegal aliens, and that award contracts that strictly prohibit tackling the whereabouts of illegal aliens.

Mr. Chair, I urge my colleagues to support my amendment and hold Ms. McNulty accountable for doing her job, or not, and for her role in facilitating the worst border crisis in our Nation's history.

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

Mr. Chair, I would remind Members that Ms. McNulty only stayed in the Trump administration, as she was quoted, to sabotage border security efforts. That is not genuine. That is un-American. It is not dutiful.

There are many things that we are doing right now to avoid a shutdown. I certainly do not want a government shutdown. That is why my colleagues do not want a government shutdown. That is why we are debating these four bills and why we are debating the amendments to these four bills.

I agree with my colleagues on the other side of the aisle, and maybe many on my own side, that we should have done this sooner. We should not have waited until the deadline, but here we are, and we are all in Washington, D.C., working diligently to ensure that the debate is heard on these bills and we have an opportunity to fund these very important aspects of the Federal Government.

Mr. Chair, I urge adoption of my amendment, and I yield back the balance of my time.

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

Mr. Chair, I rise today to offer my amendment that utilizes the Holman rule to reduce the salary for the Officer for Civil Rights and Civil Liberties, Shoba Sivaprasad Wadhia to $1.

DHS's Office for Civil Rights and Civil Liberties is staffed with people that literally want to abolish the U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement, an agency whose mission is to protect America from the cross-border crime and illegal immigration that threaten national security.

The woman that leads DHS's Office for Civil Rights and Civil Liberties once said that illegal immigrant felons, convicted of murder and rape, shouldn't be eligible for deportation solely because of their crimes.

Let me repeat that. Wadhia believes that illegal immigrant felons convicted of murder and rape should not be deported. She has also advocated for purging the term illegal immigrant and tried to humanize illegal immigration in order to allow mass illegal immigration.

Throughout her career, this open border bureaucrat has aggressively pursued pro-amnesty policies and even defended illegal immigrants in court who should have been deported.

In her current role, she is literally enabling and supporting the Biden border crisis. Since Joe Biden took office, more than 6 million illegal aliens have entered America. In August alone, there were 232,972 illegal aliens encountered at the southern border, and that does not include the got-aways who were not encountered by our brave Custom and Border Patrol agents.

Customs and Border Patrol have seized 25,500 pounds of fentanyl so far in fiscal year 2023, a deadly drug that is literally killing our children.

Mr. Chair, 25,500 pounds is only what was seized at the border, not what is still flowing freely into our country. Biden's bureaucrats are literally allowing deadly fentanyl to easily flow into our communities.

She has also been a major part of the Federal Government's obsession with diversity, equity, and inclusion, consistently forcing woke policies down the throats of public servants. These woke Federal policies shouldn't be embedded in our Nation's border and national security policies. These misguided agency initiatives need to come to an end.

My amendment is supported by the National Immigration Center for Enforcement, NumbersUSA, and the American Accountability Foundation. I urge my colleagues to support my amendment and hold Shoba Wadhia accountable for her going rogue in an administration that has ignored the rule

of law and has facilitated the worst border crisis in our Nation's history.

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

Mr. Chair, legislating is beautiful. It is great to actually be down here debating the real issues that Americans are faced with day in and day out.

I do agree with my colleague on the other side of the aisle that we should have been debating this bill on June 22, but here we are. It is our responsibility to pass these appropriations bills, 12 individual appropriations bills in total, to the Senate.

What the Senate does is up to them and their Chamber. This is our House and it is our responsibility to do our part of our jobs. That is exactly what we are doing tonight.

I, too, would like to see our border secured. And I look forward to my colleague on the other side of the aisle joining us to support H.R. 2 to secure the border. I can tell he is very, very enthusiastic about actually accomplishing something rather than just throwing money at a problem and creating more processing agents.

I can see the sincerity and hear the sincerity in his voice that he wants a secure Nation and secure borders, especially since he represents a district on the southern border and encounters our brave Border Patrol agents each and every day.

My colleague has brought up several times tonight that you cannot have punishment without a trial. Well, this Holman rule is part of our House rules. We are a self-governing, majority rule body. The Holman rule is here in place to hold unelected bureaucrats accountable.

If my colleagues on the other side of the aisle have any sort of qualm with punishment without trial, I would encourage them to visit our January 6 prisoners in the D.C. jail.

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

Madam Chair, I have an amendment at the desk.

Madam Chair, this amendment decreases the salary of the Deputy Under Secretary of the Food and Nutrition Service.

Madam Chair, I reserve the balance of my time.

Madam Chair, one moment. My apologies. I do not have amendment No. 77 in front of me, but, Madam Chair, I urge adoption of amendment No. 77 to be considered to decrease the salary of the Deputy Under Secretary.

Madam Chair, I reserve the balance of my time.

Madam Chair, I yield 1 minute to the gentleman from Maryland (Mr. Harris).

Madam Chair, I rise today to offer my amendment that utilizes the Holman rule to reduce the salary of Deputy Under Secretary of the Food and Nutrition Services of the Department of Agriculture, Stacy Dean, to $1.

As the Deputy Under Secretary for Food, Nutrition, and Consumer Services at USDA, Ms. Dean has spent her career helping bureaucrats use loopholes and gimmicks to gut requirements for able-bodied adults and bypass Federal eligibility requirements, even going as far as to help States make millionaires qualify for the program.

The last thing Americans need are higher prices, fewer jobs, and the largest expansion of our welfare State in a lifetime. The Biden-Harris administration expansion of the welfare State abolishes work ethic and promotes a new generation of government dependency.

I have lived under government dependency, and I am thankful that I have broken free of that cycle given my life experiences and developing work ethic. I am one of the few who was able to break free of that cycle of dependency.

Stacy Dean, without Congressional approval, unilaterally increased Title IV of future farm bills by no less than $256 billion. Stacy Dean has spent her life's work concocting ways to expand the welfare State and was given latitude to do so under the Biden administration with no consequence, no oversight, and no boundaries. No amount of endless government checks can address the underlying challenges families face.

The best way to help American families is with good-paying jobs, not endless government checks.

Madam Chair, 25 years ago in the face of rising welfare caseloads, long durations in poverty, and no work for millions, Republicans and Democrats came together to reform the Nation's welfare system.

These reforms were based on one simple idea: The best way out of poverty is a job. Even the Bible says if you don't work, you don't eat.

Ms. Dean has also allowed a 25 percent increase to food stamp benefits, which was not only unprecedented, but abandoned the cost- neutral policy the Department had followed for 45 years.

Madam Chair, 25 years ago, in the face of rising welfare caseloads, long durations in poverty, and no work for millions, we said this was enough. That cannot be reiterated enough.

This move displayed Dean's blatant disregard for program transparency by failing to even consult USDA's own chief economist. Worse yet, this move went far beyond Congressional authority granted under the 2018 farm bill, all thanks to Ms. Dean.

Ms. Dean even went as far as to expand woke LGBTQ+ free school lunch policies absent Congressional approval and direction.

Madam Chair, I urge my colleagues to support my amendment and hold Ms. Dean accountable for going rogue in an administration that has ignored the direction of Congress.

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

Madam Chair, I have an amendment at the desk.

Madam Chair, I rise today to offer my amendment to prohibit funding for the USDA's Equity Commission.

Our farmers and ranchers are fed up with a government that is weaponized against them and are fed up paying for commissions that simply should not exist.

The USDA Equity Commission was born out of a Biden executive order

calling for Federal departments to address, ``racial equity,'' because they believe even agriculture is racist.

This Commission made over 30 recommendations to make the USDA more woke. This includes diversity training for farmers and ranchers, expanding language access, and even supporting legislation that removes restrictions on food stamp eligibility based on immigration status, or even criminal records.

This commission also opened up the door for Joe Biden's racist $4 billion plan for minority farmers and ranchers to pay their loans because the USDA is racist.

Joe Biden's USDA is even holding school lunch money hostage to force a curriculum that sexualizes our children. This administration is acting like a schoolyard bully, saying, if you are not going to do what I want, I am going to take your lunch money. Quite literally.

They are holding school districts hostage in order to shove their radical agenda down our throats to ensure biological men are allowed to use the same restroom as five-year-old girls. This is madness.

This administration is so distracted by pandering to their own leftist agenda to prioritize diversity, equity, and inclusion that they simply cannot manage their policies that have driven the price of milk and eggs up over 50 percent for the average American family for those items.

Let's return our focus to our USDA to what it should be--providing leadership on food, agriculture, natural resources, rural development, nutrition, and related issues based on public policy, the best available science--real science, please--and effective management, not pandering to the woke mob.

I urge passage of my amendment and, Madam Chair, I reserve the balance of my time.

Madam Chair, I yield 30 seconds to the gentleman from Maryland (Mr. Harris).

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

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

Mr. Chair, I rise today to offer my amendment that prevents USDA from using funds for woke extreme leftist courses, books, and study guides as part of this administration's woke LGBTQI+-- whatever other letter you would like to add for the flavor of the day-- Pride Month agenda.

Biden's woke bureaucrats implemented woke courses, books, and study guides for Department employees' training that defy congressional intent and mandate leftist indoctrination.

Mandated Department courses and curriculum for the Federal employees included topics like Pride Leadership: Strategies for LGBTQ+ Leader to be the King Or Queen of Their Jungle; the Queer Advantage: Conversations with LGBTQ+ Leaders on the Power of Identity; Out and Proud: Approaching LGBT Issues in the Workplace; Gender Ambiguity in the Workplace: Transgender and Gender-Diverse Discrimination; Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, Transgender, and Queer (LGBTQ+) Program.

In total, there were more than 20 different LGBTQI+--add your letter--training sessions and courses required by USDA that cower to the left's woke indoctrination policies, defy congressional intent, and contradict the agency's mission.

Federal employees devoted to public service shouldn't be forced to participate in extreme training sessions that contradict their own values.

I urge my colleagues to support my amendment and prevent Federal employees from being forced to participate in extreme training sessions for the purpose of pandering to a woke agenda.

Madam Chair, I reserve the balance of my time.

Mr. Chair, maybe the USDA should spend their time educating those on how to tell the difference between a heifer and a bull. Maybe then we can actually bring some common sense to this topic.

Also, I would like to note that my colleague on the other side of the aisle, the gentleman, failed to mention some letters when referencing the LGBTQI+ community, which is not very inclusive for their party's agenda. I just wanted the record to reflect that there definitely were some letters missing from that description, which is extremely offensive.

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

Mr. Speaker, I rise to oppose the motion to instruct conferees to not include Representative Ronny Jackson's amendment in the fiscal year 2024 NDAA.

This policy is a gross misuse of taxpayer dollars to circumvent State laws and violates the decades-old, bipartisan Hyde amendment.

It is clear that Joe Biden and Lloyd Austin's Department of Defense is more focused on appeasing the woke mob of pink-hat-wearing feminists than focusing on keeping our Nation safe.

This is the same DOD that surrendered to the Taliban, costing the lives of 13 brave servicemembers. This is the same DOD treating our military like a woke social experiment. This is the same DOD the House will vote to fund later this week.

The Department of Defense should be focused on readiness and lethality, not spending taxpayer dollars to kill the lives of innocent, unborn babies.

We are not going to give up on this cause that is righteous, and we are not going to stop fighting to give voice to the voiceless.

Since Roe v. Wade in 1973, over 63 million lives have been lost to abortion. I personally have held a newborn baby born at 23 weeks old, 1 pound, 8 ounces. I know that her life has just the same worth and value as any one of us standing here today.

Mr. Speaker, I thank my friend and colleague, Congressman Ronny Jackson, for his leadership in restoring our military focus and protecting these precious unborn lives.

I am proud to stand with my colleagues in defense of these children, as well as with millions of Americans across our Nation.

Mr. Speaker, I urge my colleagues to oppose this motion to instruct.

Mr. Speaker, I hereby remove my name as cosponsor of

Madam Chair, I rise in favor of the en bloc amendment package, which includes six of my amendments that redirect funds from Biden's bloated bureaucracy to actually help our Nation's veterans.

Our men and women in uniform and our Nation's veterans put everything on the line to defend this great country and our freedoms. They deserve the best care that America has to offer.

Caring for our veterans should be a priority in our annual funding bills. That is why I drafted these amendments that transfer dollars from the Federal bureaucracy to provide additional resources for veterans, including veteran mental health programs, medical and prosthetic research, the Board of Veterans' Appeals to help reduce its backlog and process veterans claims more quickly, gravesites for veterans in areas where a veteran cannot be buried in a VA national cemetery, construction of State extended care facilities, the Staff Sergeant Parker Gordon Fox Suicide Prevention Grant Program, and veterans telehealth and rural health.

Don't believe the lies on the other side of the aisle. The Republican majority is committed to fully funding our veterans healthcare programs and funding veterans benefits and VA programs.

Earlier this year, they falsely claimed that the Limit, Save, Grow Act would cut veterans benefits, even though it didn't even mention veterans in the bill.

The White House and the leftists falsely tried to claim that this bill cut veterans benefits before it was even released. We didn't even have the text yet.

Let me say this again: This bill fully funds our veterans and even provides an increase of $1.5 billion above the discretionary funding level contained in the fiscal year 2023 bill drafted by Democrats.

The only thing this bill cuts is wasteful spending, and it ensures the Department can no longer be politicized by putting veterans and their needs above a rainbow flag or pronouns.

My support for our servicemembers does not end when their service is complete. I am committed to ensuring that our Nation's most precious resource, its sons and daughters and mothers and fathers who answered the call to serve in uniform receive the essential healthcare and benefits they have earned.

I applaud the committee for taking on this difficult task of prioritizing limited resources for our veterans.

Madam Chair, I urge my colleagues to vote in favor of my amendments, as well as the underlying bill, which fully funds our veterans.

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

Mr. Speaker, I rise today in support of my bill receiving consideration on the House floor that would terminate the national emergency related to the Congo.

National emergencies are supposed to be temporary by definition and limited to 6 months by law unless there is a justifiable reason for an extension. They aren't supposed to linger on for decades with no oversight from Congress or the executive branch.

Clearly, this process is broken for national emergency declarations, and it needs reform. Having been in Washington, D.C., for over 2 years now, I clearly realize nothing gets accomplished here without force.

Today, we are raising the issue of this broken system, and that should be something that Members on both sides of the aisle can all agree with. Congress needs to do its job.

By law, Congress shall meet to consider a vote on a joint resolution to determine whether a national emergency shall be terminated after 6 months. Do you hear that? Congress shall do its

job. Then, they should meet again for that same consideration of each extension of any national emergency every 6 months.

Congress has been required by law to consider a joint resolution for the Congo since April 27, 2007, 16 years ago, and 31 more times since.

Shockingly, Congress has never once reviewed the national emergency related to the Congo over that 16-year timeframe, despite the clear language in section 202 of the NEA requiring review every 6 months.

Administration after administration just keeps on unilaterally rubberstamping these extensions without even providing a report or update to Congress on how much taxpayer money is actually being spent. What are they spending it on? What is the need to extend this temporary national emergency authority?

These national emergency declarations have become the deep state's favorite foreign affairs slush fund. There is literally no spending transparency whatsoever out there on the 41 national emergencies currently in place. Congress is allowing the swamp to continue to shift and funnel an unknown amount of taxpayer dollars to an overseas dark hole.

I know that some of my colleagues will argue that some of the national emergencies we are terminating today won't save that much money. If that is the case and we are only sending a couple hundred thousand dollars in aid and munitions to a particular country, then that country no longer meets the definition of a national emergency. If it is tens of millions of dollars or even hundreds of millions of dollars that we are sending to certain countries as a result of these 41 national emergency authorizations, then taxpayers have the right to know these costs, and Congress has a responsibility to provide oversight on these dollars.

The current sanctions in the Congo have also not addressed the real issue that is there, which is the Congo mineral conflict. Nearly 40,000 children are estimated to be mining cobalt with their bare hands in the Democratic Republic of the Congo right now. They are working in unsafe conditions.

This is the real humanitarian crisis taking place in the Congo. If we want to talk about sanctioning anyone for what is going on in the Congo, it should be China, which is exploiting these children and sucking up the Congo cobalt.

Mr. Speaker, I have heard scare tactics that voting for this bill to end Congo's national emergency would unfreeze the assets of Viktor Bout, an arms dealer who was accused of supplying arms to al-Qaida. I encourage everyone on both sides of the aisle to not be tricked into voting against my bill based on this false assertion.

Viktor Bout was never a citizen of the Congo or of the United States, and the current sanctions only apply to United States assets. Viktor Bout is currently living and running for political office in Russia.

If the U.S. wants to impose further sanctions against him--and I think we probably should--it can do so under the same mechanisms it has imposed more than 2,200 sanctions against Russia in the last year and a half. This is not the only way to sanction a terrorist. We have many other avenues that we can go down, as is seen in these 2,200 sanctions from just the past year and a half.

Mr. Speaker, I agree that Viktor Bout is a threat, so much so that I condemn the President's action and this administration for having traded him for a professional women's basketball player that was locked up for bringing marijuana into Russia.

Mr. Speaker, I have not yet heard a compelling argument to vote against my bill.

Mr. Speaker, I urge adoption of my bill. I urge Congress to actually roll up their sleeves and do the hard work of authorizing stuff like this or putting an end to it, exposing to the American taxpayer exactly where their tax dollars are going and what it is being spent on so we know if we are sending our tax dollars overseas to terrorists with no oversight.

Mr. Speaker, I yield 2 minutes to the gentleman from Arizona (Mr. Gosar), my colleague.

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

Mr. Speaker, we have heard a lot about the forced termination of these emergencies as being reckless and dangerous because it would remove sanction designations from hostile foreign actors.

I agree that the people who are on this list should be sanctioned, but also I see what is reckless and dangerous is continuing to funnel hundreds of millions of dollars to foreign countries, many with bad actors, over a 20-year period with no congressional oversight of how much taxpayer money the deep state is sending out the door.

It is also irresponsible that Congress is ignoring the law and not reviewing these 41 national emergency declarations every 6 months as required by law.

It is also reckless and dangerous that Congress is allowing Joe Biden to have unilateral authority from these national emergency declarations to draft Americans without consent into Active Duty, authorize chemical and biological weapons testing on humans--including Americans--and seize private property of the United States citizens.

Joe Biden decided to release and trade Viktor Bout when he still had nearly 15 years on his sentence. We can find another way to sanction him rather than just giving him a free pass, like the other terrorists who are on this list, without going outside of the bounds of Congress' official duties.

Mr. Speaker, I urge adoption of this bill, and I yield back the balance of my time.

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

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

Mr. Chair, I rise in favor of my amendment, which prohibits Department of Defense Education Activity schools from purchasing and having pornographic and radical gender ideology books in their libraries.

The Department of Defense Education Activity services over 66,000 military-connected children in the Americas, Europe, and the Pacific.

My colleagues on the other side of the aisle will mischaracterize this amendment as extreme. All the while, the Biden administration has spent the last 2 years promoting radical gender ideology to impressionable young children in K-12 schools throughout our country, including our military schools. Now that is extreme.

Speaking as the mother of four boys, enough is enough. I don't send my boys to school to receive indoctrination from the woke mob or to be sexualized by groomers. The same can be said for our servicemembers who are also parents that send their children to DoDEA schools.

I will take some time to discuss the books that have been found in DoDEA libraries that contain explicit sexual details not appropriate for children.

One book titled, ``All Boys Aren't Blue,'' published in April 2022 is a book included in DoDEA libraries. It is described as a nonfiction ``manifesto'' by George Johnson that includes lines with sexually explicit content. The book describes oral sex, ejaculation, anal sex, pornography, and masturbation.

Another book, ``This Book Is Gay,'' also included in DoDEA libraries, discusses the casual hookup site ``Grindr'' and includes detailed information on how to have gay anal sex. This book includes details about sex parties, orgies, and sex toys.

Another book, ``Gender Queer,'' by Maia Kobabe, again included in DoDEA libraries, contains explicit imagery of oral sex.

``Middle School Is a Drag'' by Greg Howard, included in DoDEA libraries, is about a 12-year-old boy who starts a talent agency business for child drag queen performers. One of the kids he signs is an 8th-grader named ``Mistress of Madness and Mayhem.''

I see some folks getting uncomfortable in this room right now, and I would agree that this is very uncomfortable, especially for our children in K-12 schools.

Another book that is found, ``Some Girls Bind'' by Rory James, included in DoDEA libraries, explores the journey of a character who questions whether she is ``genderqueer.'' The teen binds her breasts every day ``to feel more like herself.'' Chest binding is associated with some medical risks, which can be permanent.

``Julian is a Mermaid,'' found in DoDEA elementary school libraries, describes a boy who wants to become a mermaid. During the book, the boy repeatedly strips down to his underwear. Later he puts on lipstick and dons a headdress. He is then given costume jewelry before being taken to the NYC Mermaid Parade where he can freely express himself.

Here is the bottom line: Let's stop grooming our children, including our military kids. It is gross. It is wrong. I am here to take a stand against it, and I urge my colleagues to pass my amendment to protect our military children from obscene content they should not be exposed to.

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

Mr. Chair, I would say that allowing these books in our DoDEA schools is what is harmful. Saying that I am characterizing this as pornography, no, I am saying exactly what it is.

As a mom, I am not allowed to show my children triple-X-rated videos, nor would I. That is illegal. They have to be 18 to watch this. We have ratings on things.

I am simply saying do not allow this in our children's schools. This is something that is harmful. It is grooming our children and indoctrinating them, and I urge adoption of this amendment to put an end to it in our military schools.

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

Mr. Chair, I rise in favor of my amendment, which will require the Government Accountability Office to make its report on the findings and conclusions of its study of the Federal Housing Finance Agency's loan-level pricing adjustment revisions publicly available online.

My commonsense amendment will provide transparency for the administration to answer to the American people.

The latest FHFA fee change could result in thousands of dollars in additional fees for lower risk homeowners over time, while encouraging and rewarding financial irresponsibility. This is a gross overreach and will ultimately contribute to the growing inflation problem we have in this country.

Raising housing costs at a time when mortgage rates are at their highest, thanks to the Biden-Pelosi spending spree, will make housing less affordable and will result in higher mortgage costs and reduced access to credit for most borrowers.

Joe Biden's agenda of equity over equality defies common sense and will endanger the stability of the housing market. The Republican majority is fighting tooth and nail to protect middle-class home buyers from Joe Biden's new socialist tax, which puts homeownership out of reach for the middle-class American.

Borrowers with excellent credit should not be punished for doing right and be forced to bear more financial burdens due to the fiscal irresponsibility of others.

Unelected bureaucrats in Washington should not have the ability to impose these un-American regulations on hardworking middle-class families. I am glad this bill puts an end to business as usual here in the swamp.

I thank the gentleman from Ohio (Mr. Davidson) for his leadership to block Joe Biden's new socialist tax to force middle-class borrowers to subsidize risky loans.

Mr. Chair, I urge my colleagues to vote in favor of my amendment, as well as the underlying bill, and I reserve the balance of my time.

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

Mr. Speaker, I rise today in support of my impeachment bill that will hold Joe Biden accountable for the dereliction of one of his most basic duties and allowing an invasion to take place across our southern border that has compromised the safety and security of the American people.

With the passage of House Resolution 529 today, the House is taking historic action. For the first time in 24 years, a House Republican-led majority is moving forward with impeachment proceedings against a current President.

This bill allows impeachment proceedings to proceed through the traditional institutional channels by building a body of evidence at the committee level through the Committees on Homeland Security and the Judiciary. They will report out impeachment based on the evidence, and then the House adopting a resolution, so that when a trial occurs in the Senate there is an existing evidentiary record to rely upon when holding President Joe Biden accountable.

Since his first day in office, President Biden has trampled on the Constitution through his dereliction of duty under Article II to take care that the laws be faithfully executed.

Instead of enforcing our immigration laws, he has lawlessly ignored them and released more than 2 million illegal aliens into the interior of the United States without any enforcement mechanism to ensure that they appear in immigration court.

His actions and open borders agenda demonstrate that he has no intention of enforcing our current immigration and border security statutes on the books. Rather, he is deliberately making a mockery of the rule of law. By ignoring congressionally enacted statutes, Joe Biden is threatening our constitutional Republic's sacred separation of powers.

The National Border Patrol Union even noted that the leadership of the Biden administration are ``straight up liars.'' They even said, ``We'd say they should be ashamed, but that implies they have a conscience.'' This is the most corrupt administration in U.S. history.

Joe Biden's lawless disregard for our Federal laws have incentivized more than 5.5 million illegal aliens to attempt to cross the border, overwhelming Border Patrol, and allowing an invasion to take place that is causing real harm to the American people.

The Biden border crisis and massive wave of illegal immigration has fueled a record-breaking fentanyl crisis. Since President Biden has taken office, over 100,000 Americans have died from fentanyl, including 1,800 Coloradans.

Under his failed leadership, Border Patrol agents have encountered over 42,000 pounds of fentanyl at the southern border. That is just what they have encountered. In addition to smuggling fentanyl, the National Border Patrol Union has noted that ``the billions of dollars that Biden's policies make for them'' support a criminal enterprise of ``rape, murder, torture, child sex trafficking, and kidnapping.''

That is enough fentanyl to kill every American 28 times over. Innocent children are dying from fentanyl overdoses, and the devastation this deadly drug is causing to families and communities cannot be overstated.

President Biden's decision to cede operational control of the southern border to criminal cartels has endangered our national security. In just the first few months of fiscal year 2023, Border Patrol has already caught 125 people on the terrorist watch list trying to sneak into our country.

President Biden's lawlessness is threatening the very fabric of our constitutional system. Under the Founder's carefully crafted plan, Congress has the legislative power to pass the laws, and the President has the executive power to enforce the laws. The President does not have the power to arbitrarily overturn laws or to refuse to enforce the ones he philosophically opposes.

Rather, he is under a strict duty to take care that the laws of the United States are enforced. If a law is to be modified or overturned, only Congress has such power, not a rogue President taking unconstitutional, unilateral action.

By nullifying our immigration and border security laws through a systematic lack of enforcement, President Biden has not only threatened the lives of countless Americans with his fentanyl crisis and increased crime, he has threatened the very foundation of our separation of powers.

When a President tramples on the Constitution and ignores the laws on the books, it is Congress' solemn duty to restore our constitutional balance through articles of impeachment. Congress' power of impeachment was meant as the ultimate check and balance on the President.

The Founders hardwired this important accountability mechanism into our Constitution for such a time as this. To stand with the forgotten men and women across America who are suffering from Biden's record- breaking fentanyl crisis, to take action to secure the border, and to protect our constitutional separation of powers every Member should vote to hold President Joe Biden accountable.

Mr. Speaker, I thank my colleague, Anna Paulina Luna, for leading on this very important issue.

Adam Schiff is a complete disgrace to our Nation and to our Constitution. He put the American people through 4 years of an endless impeachment hoax that he knew from the beginning was a lie. He represents the worst of permanent Washington, using his position of trust to lie to the American people.

He received intelligence briefings that other Members and the public did not have access to. He used this position of trust to lie and to advance his own partisan agenda. Schiff's disgraceful time in Congress has destroyed Americans' faith in our institutions.

Today, I am proud to stand with my colleague and friend from Florida, Anna Paulina Luna, to try to undo some of the damage that Adam Schiff has done by finally holding this crook accountable.

Today, we are saying that enough is enough by censuring him and referring him to the Ethics Committee.

He told the American people that he had proof that the Trump campaign asked the Russians for help in a conspiracy. That was a lie.

He claimed that he was not working with anonymous informants during the impeachment hoax. That was a lie.

Everyone with common sense knew that Adam Schiff was lying all along, including the Director of Intelligence, Obama's former Attorney General, the FBI deputy director, and more. However, Adam Schiff doubled down on his big lie claiming he had a smoking gun proof of a conspiracy, but the only conspiracy going on was his conspiracy to defraud the American people by taking down their duly elected President.

When Adam Schiff got caught lying, he did what all liars do and tried to cover the truth even more. He even used his taxpayer-funded staff to ask Twitter to censor journalists fact- checking his lies, but Adam Schiff won't get out of this one by calling in a favor. Today, we are holding him accountable and censuring him for his lies to the American people.

In order to restore the trustworthiness of the House of Representatives, every Member should vote to censure Adam Schiff so that we can speak with one voice to assure the American people that these lies will not be tolerated.

Mr. Speaker, I urge every one of my colleagues with good and decent intention to vote for this resolution.

If Adam Schiff has a shred of human decency left, he would resign from Congress in disgrace. His tombstone should read of his failed career in Congress and should be one word: liar.

Mr. Speaker, pursuant to clause 2(a)(1) of rule IX, I rise to give notice of my intent to raise a question of the privileges of the House.

The form of the resolution is as follows:

H. Res. 503, impeaching Joseph R. Biden, Jr., President of the United States, for high crimes and misdemeanors.

Resolved, That Joseph Robinette Biden, Jr., is impeached for high crimes and misdemeanors and that the following articles of impeachment be exhibited to the United States Senate:

Articles of impeachment exhibited by the House of Representatives of the United States of America in the name of itself and of the people of the United States of America, against Joseph R. Biden, Jr., President of the United States, in maintenance and support of its impeachment against him for high crimes and misdemeanors.

Article I: Abuse of Power

The Constitution provides that the House of Representatives ``shall have the sole power of impeachment'' and that the President of the United States ``shall be removed from office on impeachment for, and conviction of, treason, bribery, or other high crimes and misdemeanors''. In his conduct as President of the United States, and in violation of his constitutional oath faithfully to execute the office of the

President of the United States and, to the best of his ability, preserve, protect, and defend the Constitution of the United States, and in violation of his constitutional duty to take care that the laws be faithfully executed, Joseph R. Biden, Jr., has abused the powers of the office of the President of the United States, in that:

Using the powers of his office, President Biden has knowingly presided over an executive branch that has continuously, overtly, and consistently violated Federal immigration law by pursuing an aggressive, open-borders agenda by purposefully and knowingly releasing more than 2 million illegal aliens into the interior of the United States without the intention or ability to ensure that they appear in immigration court to face asylum or deportation proceedings.

President Biden has intentionally facilitated a complete and total invasion at the southern border. President Biden ended the Migrant Protection Protocols to require aliens seeking asylum to remain in Mexico while being processed by the Department of Homeland Security. President Biden has closed Department of Homeland Security detention facilities and refused to cooperate with State and local law enforcement officials in securing the border. He has allowed illegal aliens to enter the United States as asylum seekers despite knowing they did not qualify for asylum. President Biden has pursued this open- border agenda purposefully and willfully, circumventing every safeguard, check, and balance required by law, resulting in mass illegal immigration into the United States, to the detriment of the American people.

President Biden, with such conduct, has demonstrated a failure to uphold Federal immigration law, violating his oath to the Constitution if allowed to remain in office, and has acted in a manner grossly incompatible with the rule of law and to the manifest injury of the people of the United States.

Wherefore, President Biden, by such conduct, warrants impeachment and trial, removal from office, and disqualification to hold and enjoy any office of honor, trust, or profit under the United States.

Article II: Dereliction of duty

The Constitution provides that the House of Representatives ``shall have the sole power of impeachment'' and that the President of the United States ``shall be removed from office on impeachment for, and conviction of, treason, bribery, and other high crimes and misdemeanors''. In his conduct as President of the United States, and in violation of his constitutional oath faithfully to execute the office of the President of the United States, and in violation of his constitutional duty to take care that the laws be faithfully executed, Joseph R. Biden, Jr., has neglected the constitutional duty of the office of the President of the United States, in that:

Neglecting the powers of his office, President Biden has abandoned his duties to ensure that the laws are faithfully executed and upheld, by presiding over an executive branch that has continually, overtly, and consistently refused to enforce the Nation's immigration laws and secure the southern border. President Biden has endangered the security of the United States and the health and safety of the American people. President Biden has caused a national security crisis and is endangering the lives of the American people.

President Biden has presided over the largest influx of illegal immigrants in American history, and as evidence of his dereliction, the deportation cases pursued by his administration are at historic lows. President Biden's negligence of duty has resulted in the surrender of operational control of the border to the complete and total control of foreign, criminal cartels, putting the lives of American citizens in jeopardy. On President Biden's watch, illegal aliens have been processed and released into the interior of the country under a mass system of parole, contrary to the clear terms of Federal immigration law. Utilizing the ``CBP ONE'' program, the executive branch will release nearly 40,000 illegal aliens per month into the United States. He has failed to uphold the mandatory detention and deportation provisions of immigration laws, resulting in the mass entry of inadmissible aliens and the continued presence of deportable aliens. Through this complete and total dereliction of duty and extreme absence in oversight of his own administration's policies, President Biden has allowed more than 1.5 million illegal immigrants to invade the southern border. On Joe Biden's watch, illicit fentanyl has killed more than 100,000 American citizens. In fiscal year 2023, U.S. Customs and Border Patrol seized more than 9,000 pounds of fentanyl at the southern border.

In his failure to uphold the rule of law, President Biden has demonstrated that he will neglect his duty to execute the office to which he has been entrusted, violating his oath to the Constitution if allowed to remain in office, and has acted in a manner grossly incompatible with his constitutional duty to take care that the laws of the United States be faithfully executed.

Wherefore, President Biden, by such conduct, warrants impeachment and trial, removal from office, and disqualification to hold and enjoy any office of honor, trust, or profit under the United States.

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

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

I rise in favor of amendment No. 1 as it revises the Comptroller General's congressional review report to include an estimate of the effect on inflation.

Without my amendment, the real-life consequences of Joe Biden's spending spree in the White House will not be taken into account by Congress as they perform their Article I duties. This will provide transparency for the administration to answer to the people's House.

The GOP majority has been empowered to hold the Biden administration accountable and demand transparency by revealing just how much Biden's executive orders are costing American families and small businesses.

Coloradans are struggling right now as they deal with the disastrous effects of Joe Biden's destructive economic policies. The policies passed last Congress unleashed record inflation on Americans, which has decimated our bank and retirement accounts, increased gas prices to record levels, raised utility bills, drove up grocery costs, and made it harder for Americans to live their lives as they intended.

This excessive spending has real consequences. American families will pay an $8,581 inflation tax over the next year. Currently, 20 million Americans cannot pay their electric bill. We have seen a 4.3 percent decline in real wages since Biden took office. Americans have lost more than $2 trillion in retirement savings. Americans are paying more for everything because of leftwing extremist policies.

My amendment will allow House Republicans to conduct important oversight over these expensive executive regulations to ensure Joe Biden cannot continue to issue rules that send America into a deeper inflation crisis.

Mr. Chair, I urge my colleagues to vote in favor of my amendment as well as the underlying bill.

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

Mr. Chair, I think it is perfectly reasonable to have a report that looks into the spending that has been taking place for the past 2 years and beyond.

This inflation is impacting millions of Americans across our Nation. As I stated, American families will pay $8,581 in an inflation tax. We should be looking into the impacts of the spending that is taking place in Washington, D.C. Even if it is an estimate, we need to have an idea of how this is impacting families and why we currently have

20 million families that cannot afford their utility bills and why we have seen this 4.3 percent decline in real wages since Biden took office. I would like to see that report.

Mr. Chairman, again, I urge my colleagues to vote ``yes'' on amendment No. 1.

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

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

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

I rise in favor of my amendment, which will require the Comptroller General to publish the GAO study of rules on its website.

My simple, straightforward amendment ensures that the American people will be better informed of the regulations unelected bureaucrats are imposing on them, costing as much as $2 trillion in compliance costs and economic losses.

During the first year of this administration, the Biden White House added more than $200 billion in new regulatory costs. Without my amendment, the real-life consequences of Joe Biden's leftwing agenda will not be seen by those impacted most.

This will provide transparency for the administration to answer to the American people.

While the Federal Government continues to spend trillions of dollars it doesn't have, inflation has hit a 40-year high. Everything we buy, including food, gasoline, and so much more, costs more.

Instead of addressing these major economic concerns head-on, the Democrats' solution is to keep imposing unnecessary regulations and spending money we do not have.

The GOP majority has been empowered to hold this administration accountable and demand transparency by revealing just how much these regulations are costing American families and small businesses.

Unnecessary government regulations and excessive red tape impose crushing economic burdens on the people in my district and across our great country.

Since Joe Biden took office, his administration and unchecked bureaucrats are going full steam ahead on enacting a radical leftwing agenda throughout unilateral executive action.

House Republicans should be working to cut wasteful spending, get to the bottom of fraudulent payments made by the Federal Government, support American energy production, and oppose tax increases proposed by the Democrats.

Economic strength and job growth result from policies that unshackle job creators, allow American ingenuity, and provide certainty.

My amendment ensures the legislative branch, and the American people can provide proper oversight and no longer allow this administration to go unchecked.

I urge my colleagues to vote in favor of my amendment as well as the underlying bill.

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

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

Mr. Chair, I rise in favor of my amendment, which will require the Comptroller General's Congressional Review Report to be made available to the congressional committees of jurisdiction.

This simple, good-governance amendment allows Congress to take back its Article I authority in our system of checks and balances. This will provide transparency for the administration to carry out its congressionally authorized duty.

By requiring the administration to submit its plan to the people's House, we can provide important oversight and provide feedback. It is time for the legislative branch to actually do its job rather than ceding all the power to the White House and bureaucrats.

Our Founders were determined to create a government whose branches work together. By requiring the Comptroller General to submit the Congressional Review Report to the congressional committees of jurisdiction of the rule, we will allow Members who know these issues best to examine the real-life impacts of these executive regulations.

Congress needs to take back its power and advocate for the American people we represent. My amendment will ensure these voices do not go unheard. Hold this administration accountable and ensure Biden's streak of unchecked power comes to an end.

I urge my colleagues to vote in favor of these amendments as well as the underlying bill.

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

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

Mr. Chairman, I rise in favor of my amendment which will prohibit the administration from unilaterally implementing extremely costly regulations that would result in the unavailability in the United States of a type or class of product based on the type of fuel the product consumes.

My amendment ensures that the Consumer Product Safety Commission focuses on actual hazards with design rather than targeting fuel sources.

We have a crisis at our southern border. Americans are worried about being able to provide for their families and not pay $10 for a bag of grapes. Meanwhile, the Biden administration is focused on controlling the kind of stove Americans use in their homes.

Mr. Chair, 100 percent of the currently available freestanding gas stoves and 96 percent of gas cooktops will not meet the new standards proposed by the Biden administration's Department of Energy.

The Department of Energy estimates savings would average $1.50 per year.

Mr. Chairman, do you know how much a gas stove that is compliant under this proposed rule would cost on average?

Installation costs are anywhere between $3,600 on the high end to $2,000 on the low end. Adding that to the cost of the stove puts you out another $3,000 to $4,000, at least. Saying it will save consumers money is a flat-out lie. Forcing people to switch to expensive alternatives will only further increase costs for hardworking families in my district and across America.

This reminds me a lot of when Mayor Pete said that if you can't afford the price of gas due to the administration's anti-American energy policies, then Americans should just shell out $40,000 to $55,000 for a new electric vehicle.

This administration has proven to be completely out of touch.

Never mind the fact that Biden has also targeted dishwashers, refrigerators, water heaters, furnaces, and air conditioners. On top of families paying more for everyday costs due to Bidenflation, it is clear this administration has prioritized pandering to Green New Deal extremists rather than saving American families' hard-earned money.

I do thank my colleague, Representative Kelly Armstrong, for his leadership to ensure the CPSC cannot abuse Federal funds to regulate gas stoves.

Mr. Chairman, I urge my colleagues to vote in favor of this amendment as well as the underlying bill.

I yield to the gentleman from Florida.

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

Mr. Chairman, may I ask how much time I have remaining.

Mr. Chairman, what makes no sense is the speech that we just heard regarding this amendment. There is so much of that that I cannot even fathom to put together.

I am hearing a lot about hazards from gas stoves that would cause harm for our children. I have four children. We have always had a gas stove, and they are doing pretty well.

I can see that the gentlewoman from Illinois has made it pretty long in her lifetime with the so-called dangers of gas products here in America.

Mr. Chairman, let me tell you what really is hazardous. What really is dangerous is the Green New Deal extremism that comes from the left because they want to suppress our good, clean energy right here in the United States of America that is cheap, that is reliable, and it is actually something that is affordable for Americans right now, unlike everything else because of the inflation that we are seeing from this administration.

What is hazardous and what is really dangerous are the tens of thousands of children who are mining for cobalt in Chinese-owned mines in the Congo with their bare hands. That is what is dangerous, and that is what this Green New Deal extremist policy encourages and pushes.

I have voted on so many bills for the Uighurs that are suppressed by the Chinese, but we never talk about the slave labor that takes place to produce the energy that the other side is trying to force on Americans with their overreach of government policy. That is what is dangerous.

An open border with fentanyl pouring over, that is dangerous. Families not being able to afford to feed their family, that is dangerous.

Mr. Chair, I urge the adoption of this bill that makes so much more sense than the speech that we just heard from the other side of the aisle.

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

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

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

Mr. Chair, I rise in favor of my amendment, which will require the Department of Homeland Security to create an annual report on the number of illegal aliens who have been deported for assaulting a law enforcement officer. This report will be made available to Congress and to the public on the DHS website. My amendment will promote accountability and transparency for the removal of these criminal aliens.

The complete and total invasion taking place at our southern border has made America less safe. Biden's border crisis has opened the door to human traffickers, gang members, and other dangerous criminals who enter our country with malicious intent, threatening the safety of our citizens and the police officers who serve as our first line of defense against crime.

Earlier this year, a female Border Patrol agent was violently attacked by a male alien while attempting to make an arrest.

Last year, two law enforcement officers were injured by an illegal alien when responding to a disturbance in New York. One officer suffered a concussion and the other had a broken hand.

We cannot allow these criminals to run rampant in our communities. The American people have the right to know if illegal aliens are attacking law enforcement officers and to what extent. That is why my amendment requires DHS to be accountable and transparent about the removal of these criminals.

Rather than wasting time on the Democrats' agenda to keep our southern border wide open and defund the police, House Republicans are proud to back the blue, especially this week on National Police Week as we recognize these brave men and women throughout our country for their service.

We, as Republicans, have proposed policy solutions to put an end to Biden's border crisis.

Mr. Chair, I thank my colleague, Representative Andrew Garbarino, for his leadership to ensure that we can hold these illegal criminal aliens accountable for violence against law enforcement officers with

Mr. Chair, I am glad that we have found some common ground on this.

I thank my colleague for supporting this amendment, and I yield back the balance of my time.

Mr. Chairman, I demand a recorded vote.