Floor Statements

Mr. Speaker, I thank my friend for his many years in this arena defending the sanctity of every human life. I rise this afternoon to mark this historic lifesaving anniversary.

Three years ago today, the Supreme Court corrected an egregious and tragic error and affirmed an undeniable truth that was originally affirmed in our Nation's birth certificate, the Declaration of Independence. That truth is that every single person is made in the image of God, and they are thus bestowed with inestimable dignity and value.

Our value is not related in any way to the color of our skin or what ZIP Code we live in, what our talents are, what are hobbies or our aptitudes are. It is all irrelevant because our value, our intrinsic value, is given to us by our Creator. That is what the Framers of this grand experiment in self-governance believed.

The Dobbs decision, which moved the question of regulating abortion to the people's elected representatives, reversed 50 years of inhumane social engineering and has saved hundreds of thousands of innocent lives in the process.

Susan B. Anthony Pro-Life America estimates that post-Dobbs, pro-life policies have now saved more than 200,000 lives annually. That means at least 200,000 more babies every year are being given the blessing of life, the opportunity to be born. How profound that is.

On this very joyous, lifesaving anniversary, we remember the more than 63 million who were never given that opportunity to live, and we vow to continue building a culture of life and advancing policies which protect the sanctity of every single human life.

I again salute my friend Chris Smith, the chairman of our Pro-Life Caucus, for all his work for so many decades in this arena. I thank him for holding this Special Order hour this afternoon.

Mr. Speaker, after that very long and wandering speech, my friends, and after a long week and a long night and countless hours of work over the past year, a lot of prayer and a lot of teamwork, my friends, it quite literally is again morning in America, isn't it?

After 4 long years of President Biden's failures, President Trump's America First agenda is finally here. We are advancing that today. What we are going to do this morning is truly historic, and it will make all the difference in the daily lives of hardworking Americans.

The Dallas waitress pulling overtime, the Detroit mom counting bills late at night, and the Kentucky coal miner waiting on his second chance are the forgotten men and women of our country that we are all called here to serve.

The one big, beautiful bill will deliver for those people. It revives our economy. It will deliver historic tax relief. It will make the largest investment in our border security in a generation.

It will unleash affordable American energy again, restore common sense to government, secure generational savings, and strengthen our national defense, while it also strengthens our essential programs like Medicaid for the people who need it the most. That is what we are doing with the one big, beautiful bill.

To put it simply, this bill gets Americans back to winning again, and it has been a long time coming. This one big, beautiful bill is the most consequential legislation that any party has ever passed, certainly under a majority this thin.

Legislation of this magnitude is truly Nation-shaping and life- changing. It is the kind of transformational change that future generations will study one day. They will look back at this day as a turning point in American history. It is exactly what we were sent here to do.

Let the record show that when the House Democrats vote in a few moments, this is what they will be voting for. Their vote will show that they are apparently for the largest tax increase in the history of our country. When they vote against this bill, they will be voting for waste, fraud, and abuse. They will be voting against safer communities, American energy dominance, and American strength on the world stage.

Today wouldn't be possible without the leadership of arguably the most powerful, the most successful, and the most respected President in the modern era of the United States.

Our Democratic colleagues mock the objective truth. We were delivered unified government, my friends, in November. The White House, the Senate, and the House were delivered to the party on this side of the aisle. My Democrat colleagues can laugh all they want.

None of this would be possible without the leadership of the 45th and the 47th President of the United States, Donald J. Trump. It would not be possible without the really hard work of the men and women on this side of the aisle.

I want to name our chairmen of our House committees that produced and did all the hard work to produce the big, beautiful bill. Scripture says that we give honor where honor is due, Mr. Speaker. We are going to do that here quickly.

I recognize Chairman G.T. Thompson of the Agriculture Committee, Chairman Mike Rogers of the Armed Services Committee, Chairman Jodey Arrington of the Budget Committee, Chairman Tim Walberg of the Education and Workforce Committee, Chairman Brett Guthrie of the Energy and Commerce Committee, Chairman French Hill of the Financial Services Committee, Chairman Mark Green of the Homeland Security Committee, Chairman Jim Jordan of the Judiciary Committee, Chairman Bruce Westerman of the Natural Resources Committee, Chairman James Comer of the Oversight and Accountability Committee, Chairman Sam Graves of the Transportation and Infrastructure Committee, and Chairman Jason Smith of the Ways and Means Committee.

I make special mention of Chairwoman Virginia Foxx of the Rules Committee who, by my count, sat in that chair and led that Rules Committee for what seemed like 2 straight days. I think she took two short breaks. She is the Iron Lady of the House.

Mr. Speaker, I am so grateful for all of their hard work. The beauty of what we produced with the one big, beautiful bill over here is that this was a team effort. These were men and women who were elected to come here. They are the duly-elected Representatives of the people back home. They rolled up their sleeves. They got down in the trenches.

We began this effort over a year ago. It was actually March of last year because we anticipated and believed that we would be delivered a unified government and that we would have a Republican leader in the White House, which is Donald J. Trump. We believed that we would have the Senate and the House and that we would have that moment of opportunity.

We planned, we worked, and we locked arms together as a team. We have delivered this against all odds. The media has tried to divide us. They have written our eulogy about 10 times. Mr. Speaker, do you know what? Sometimes it is good to be underestimated, isn't it?

We got this done, and I am so proud of the work of every Member of this House Republican Conference who worked in their committees. Every single Member had a say in this. Every single constituent, the millions of people who are represented, have their voices and their interests reflected because we did this together as a team. It is quite an achievement.

I just want to say that all that tireless work has led to the hard work of crafting this legislation, and we have been ready since day one to deliver on this agenda. Unified control of government is a rare mandate. It doesn't happen very often. It has happened just three times for our party in the last half century. We do not take it for granted.

We are delivering on that mandate here today. The American people gave us a mandate in November. They sent a message with their vote. They gave this side of the aisle the power, and we are going to use it to make their lives better. What we are achieving here today is nothing short of historic, and that is true.

House Republicans are getting it done again.

In the Republican Party, we believe in a simple principle. We believe that America really is a shining city on a hill.

Ronald Reagan used to talk about that. He was referencing Scripture. He understood that America is exceptional. He understood that, as it says right there above the Speaker's rostrum, our national motto, that we trust in God, in God is our trust.

These are the things that make our Nation exceptional, and the people of our country deserve--they deserve--better. We have been working hard to deliver so that the people of our country see this again as a shining city on a hill and that people around the world see us for who we should be.

One thing we can all agree on on both sides of the aisle is that a strong America is good for everybody all around the world. All of us together, regardless of party, were called here to stand together and defend those freedoms and to defend those foundations that made us the greatest Nation in the history of the world.

All of us have to look and recognize that the shine has not been on that city in a while. We are here to restore it. This piece of legislation, as large as it is and as historic as it is, will do that very thing.

Mr. Speaker, we are accomplishing a big thing here today, but we know this isn't the end of the road just yet. We have been working closely with Leader Thune and our Senate colleagues, the Senate Republicans, to get this done and delivered to the President's desk by Independence Day. That is July 4th.

Today proves that we can do that, and we will do that. It doesn't matter how much the media doubts this or how much the Democrats give us their narratives, it doesn't matter how long the speeches are, it doesn't change the facts. We are delivering, and we are doing it in a big way.

So to our friends in the Senate, I would just say that the President is waiting with his pen. The American people are waiting for this relief. They are waiting for these life-changing results, and we are going to finish this job.

This is a historic moment that we will be talking to our children and our grandchildren about, and everyone will remember: America is back.

Mr. Speaker, this afternoon we will be voting on legislation that demands the attention of every single American. This will be one of the most important votes that Members of this Chamber will ever take in their entire careers. It is an issue that we never thought we would actually have to address, but that moment has come to us now.

Should Americans and Americans alone determine the outcome of American elections, or should we allow foreigners and illegal aliens to decide who sits in the White House and here in the people's House and in the Senate?

As the progressive wing of Washington has slowly crept in and marched through our institutions and has infected every level of government, they have brought us to a generation-defining moment. That is the moment that we have upon us now.

Because the Democratic Party has shown time and time again that they want our borders wide open to every country on the planet and they want illegal aliens voting in our elections, we now have reached a fateful decision point.

Here is the critical question: Should only American citizens, citizens of this country, be allowed to determine who controls the people's House, the Senate, and the White House?

Every Republican, every one of our colleagues, emphatically says yes. The answer to that question is yes, and every Republican will vote for the bill that we have on the floor today.

This is a question that almost every American agrees with us upon. Here is the number: 89 percent of Americans believe that only Americans should decide our elections, and that includes, by the way, 82 percent of Democrats, 80 percent of Black and African-American voters, and 76 percent of Hispanic and Latino voters. Everybody who looks at this question answers it the right way, just about everybody.

We are about to find out here very shortly if all of the Members of this Chamber agree.

Americans all over the country understand what is at stake here. They refuse to hand over our country to illegal aliens, cartels, traffickers, violent criminals, and murderers. That is what is at stake.

Now, I hate to say it, but we have so many noncitizens in the country right now that if only 1 out of 100 of those illegal aliens voted, you are talking about hundreds of thousands of votes being cast.

Remember, these aren't huddled masses of frightened families yearning to be free.

In January of this year, we took the largest delegation of Members of Congress to the border. January 3, we went to Eagle Pass, Texas. It was the epicenter of the open-border crisis at the time. We met with Border Patrol agents and high officers in U.S. Customs and Border Patrol. They told us the truth.

They said, down there at Eagle Pass, of all the many, many countless people who come across that border illegally, because Joe Biden and Secretary Mayorkas opened the border wide, they said: You should know this, Members of Congress, 70 percent of the people who crossed illegally at Eagle Pass, down there in the Del Rio sector, are single adult males between the ages of 18 and 49. These are not huddled masses of people seeking refuge from persecution and seeking asylum here for just causes. These are people who do not have our best designs in mind.

Because of Joe Biden's open-border policies, we have ISIS smuggling rings operating in our country. We have cartels who have operational control of the border. We have Chinese and Russian spies here in our midst roaming freely in our country. We have murderers and rapists offending again and again across the country, and they are never deported.

These are people who Joe Biden and his administration are releasing into the country every day. The Director of the FBI has testified multiple times now before Congress, before our committees, and he has said: All the red lights are flashing. What is he referring to? The unprecedented dangerous situation.

The enemy is here. The enemy is in our country now and is endangering American citizens, law-abiding citizens.

You see the headlines on the news now almost every day: another violent act committed by an illegal.

Joe Biden did that to the country. His administration did that because

they opened the border. They engineered the open border. It is absurd and outrageous, and people know it. That is one of the things that is going to be a big factor in November.

I will tell you this, too. Since our elections are so razor thin, it is not just the physical safety of our communities that are in jeopardy. It is also the integrity of the ballot box.

With just a few precincts and a few States often now deciding the makeup of the Congress and the White House, we aren't just facing dangerous individuals; we are facing a dangerously high number of dangerous individuals who could actually change the outcome of our elections and thus determine the future of this great Republic.

Just as our dear friend Congresswoman Miller-Meeks will tell you, she won her elections in 2020 by 6 votes. Some of these elections, some of your elections, are very, very close. We have to keep that in mind.

Here is the solution. Today is this fateful moment. Again, I think it may be the most important vote you will make as a Member of this body because you are going to determine the course of this country today. You are going to determine whether you want the elections to be safe and fair.

The SAVE Act is the bill before us. It is not complicated. It is written in very plain language so everyone can read it and understand it. We are merely suggesting that because so many illegal aliens are in the country--and there is no disputing that there are millions upon millions of them. I think the actual count is probably somewhere close to 16 million illegals who have come across the border in the last 3\1/ 2\ years since Joe Biden opened it wide beginning on his first day in office--because there are so many of them here, I ask our guests in the gallery this question: Is it worth adding a layer of protection to ensure all of those illegals cannot register to vote? Everybody would answer yes, if we asked for an audible response, because that is obvious to us.

Everybody understands the SAVE Act will do several important things, and all of them are obvious, commonsense measures.

Here is the list:

Number 1: It requires State election officials to ask about citizenship before providing voter registration forms. What a concept.

Number 2: It requires an individual to provide proof of citizenship if indeed he or she wants to register to vote in our Federal elections.

Number 3: It provides States with access to our Federal agency databases. Why is that so important? So they can remove noncitizens from voter rolls and confirm citizenship for individuals who lack that all-important proof of citizenship.

Number 4: It directs the Department of Homeland Security to determine whether to conduct removal proceedings if an illegal alien, a noncitizen, has been identified as having registered to vote in Federal elections.

American citizens will be protected and in no way harmed by this bill. There is not a conceivable argument that the Democrats can make to oppose the commonsense measures that we are putting before them today. Nothing changes the voter registration process in the States.

The only people who will face hurdles here are those who are trying to break our Federal laws. That is why it is patently absurd that the White House issued a veto threat. President Biden says he is going to veto the bill, and Democrat leadership right now is engaging in a very robust whipping operation to stop this bill from being passed. It is absolutely outrageous, and the American people need to know what is happening here.

It is dangerous. It is dangerous for the future of our country. It is dangerous for the future of your family, if you are watching at home.

Joseph Story was a great American legal scholar and Supreme Court Justice, the author of the seminal ``Commentaries on the Constitution of the United States'' that we used to have to read in law school. He said it this way on this subject. This is very important. Listen to what he said.

He said: ``If aliens might be admitted indiscriminately to enjoy all the rights of citizens at the will of a single State, the Union itself might be endangered by an influx of foreigners, hostile to its institutions, ignorant of its powers, and incapable of a due estimate of its privileges.''

He said that so well. I wholeheartedly agree. I know everyone on our side of the aisle does.

If we are going to maintain this great American experiment, this grand experiment in self-governance that we have now kept for 248 years, if we are going to keep it for more, then we have to ensure that the outcomes of our elections remain in the hands of Americans alone.

Now, some of our colleagues are arguing and some of the outside interest groups who want those open borders, the open borders crowd, they are pointing out that it is already illegal to vote, and you don't really need to do this. That is true, it is illegal to vote under Federal law. Only a U.S. citizen is supposed to vote in a U.S. election.

But here is the problem: The law is not being followed. Even though it is already illegal, this is happening.

Let me give you a couple examples.

In Georgia, State election officials are catching thousands of noncitizens who are trying to register to vote, but they are one of only a few States that is making that effort right now to check the voter rolls on the front end before the disaster occurs.

In May, the State of Ohio, they had to remove 137 noncitizen voters from the rolls when they did a quick check.

In May of last year, Virginia removed almost 1,500 noncitizens from their voter rolls. Here is the catch: It was only after more than 800 of those noncitizen ballots had been cast in 2019. They already participated in an election illegally.

It shouldn't surprise us that criminals who break our border laws are also going to break our election laws. These are not paragons of virtue in all these cases, as the 70 percent of people who come across the border who are military-aged males come into our country without any deterrence at all. They are not law-abiding citizens. They are illegal aliens, and they should not be participating in the election.

Remember, if just a small percentage, a fraction of a fraction of all those illegals that Joe Biden has brought in here to vote, if they do vote, it wouldn't just change one race, it might potentially change all of our races.

Now, despite the claims of our opponents, it is also true there are no current preventative mechanisms to ensure that only those registering or voting are actually citizens.

Perhaps the Democratic Party would prefer that we only identify fraudulent voters after the fact, after an election is already decided and the new Members are sworn in. That is not acceptable. That doesn't instill trust. It doesn't ensure the integrity of the system.

Of course, that is nonsense. It is good and right to take preventative action now. We can look out on the horizon. We know the storm is coming. We know we have an unprecedented number of illegal aliens. We know many of them are being encouraged to register to vote, and they are doing so. We know we have a problem.

We have a duty here under the Constitution to ensure it doesn't happen. We have an instrument before us, a piece of legislation, that will do just that, and there is no excuse--no excuse--to oppose it.

Of course, preventative action is desperately needed because of all this, and the stakes are so high, and the loopholes are so wide that we have to do it.

Regardless of what the detractors say, the voter laws are really that lax. If a citizen wants to vote for President, they just have to go to their local DMV, they go to the local welfare office or some other government agency, and they are given a very simple form that says while you are here signing up for taxpayer benefits, Mr. Noncitizen who just came across the border and was sent here by plane, train, or automobile by an NGO who, by the way, is sending the receipt for that to the U.S. taxpayer that we are all funding, hey, since you are here and signing up for benefits, do you also want to register to vote? On the form that was passed by Congress back in the early nineties, the motor voter registration law, it just has one little box that asks: Are you a U.S. citizen? How many people are checking that box who are not supposed to?

Well, the problem is, whoever is working there is not allowed under current law to ask for proof of that citizenship. If somebody checks the box, they can't stop them and say, hey, do you have any paperwork to prove that? Where are you from? You have a funny accent. Oh, you don't speak English? Are you a citizen? They don't have any way to prove it.

I believe I stand with the American public when I say our elections are just too important to simply rely on the honor system by people who have already proven they have no regard or respect for our laws.

Would we be so foolish as to think every one of the 500 got-aways sneaking through our southern border every single day have good intentions? Come on. We have got to apply reason and common sense.

Would we prefer to wait for fraud to happen and only do something after elections are finalized? No. We have to catch the fraud on the front end so there is no question about the integrity of our votes. Again, this is our duty to do so.

If we don't catch any unlawful voters, great, that is wonderful. It means our systems are secure. If we do catch unlawful voters, then good, we stop them from voting. We did what was right by the Constitution, right by our Federal law, and right by the people that we represent.

There should be no objection to this legislation at all.

I will conclude with this: I have been here 8 years. Every so often in this Chamber, we take a vote that clearly reveals what we think about the world. There are important votes every day, but there are some votes that define who we are. It defines our world, and it defines what we believe about the Constitution and about the rule of law. It defines our careers, and it defines our character. It is a signal to the voters fundamentally about what we believe about our country.

Republicans want 100 percent participation by citizens in our elections, eligible citizens who can vote. We want everybody to vote. We want 100 percent participation, but we want zero percent fraud. We want American citizens to be the lone people who decide our elections.

Here is the question that is about to be answered on this floor: Do Democrats want that same thing, or do they want to hand over our country to the worst impulses and nefarious plans of foreign spies and criminals who will exploit the system for their own gain?

Republicans are anxious to get this done. We are anxious to take the necessary steps to protect the integrity of every single vote, and we will ensure that we have free and fair elections, and we will ensure that only Americans decide American elections.

The question that will be answered--and it is not a rhetorical question; this is a real live exercise--can Democrats say the same thing? Is there any measure that they will take to reduce the opportunity for fraud? Today is their chance, and, unfortunately, I am not that hopeful that they are going to do the right thing, but you are about to find out.

Mr. Speaker, I rise today to recognize Dr. Os Guinness for his distinguished career and his service to the American people and to Christians around the globe.

Dr. Guinness has dedicated his life to thinking, writing, and speaking about the turbulent times in which we live. In the context of a Judeo-Christian worldview, he has provided thoughtful insights and wise counsel within the U.S. Capitol and to leaders and laypersons worldwide.

I have been personally impacted by Os, which he prefers to be called, through his challenge to live for our ``Audience of One,'' a term he used in his book The Call to refer to our Heavenly Father. He has reminded me, and so many others, that we ought to dedicate our lives to that cause, to love our enemies, to promote justice, and to seek the good of the city in which we live.

Os is beloved by so many on Capitol Hill. For more than 30 years, he has been involved with Faith and Law, an organization that helps hundreds of Christian staff members on the Hill think about their vocations in government through a biblical worldview. He draws the largest audiences of any speaker at their gatherings and has been meeting for breakfast with Members of Congress for several years. His listeners always leave with a better understanding of the times in which we live, and our calling to live out our national motto: In God We Trust.

In recent days, Os has been challenging us to consider the 250th anniversary of the birth of our great Nation, which we will celebrate in 2026. He's referring to the anniversary as a ``civilizational moment,'' and is asking if 2026 will be America's expiration date or a challenge to renew the great experiment in freedom.

I'm optimistic that we are up for the task.

Os was born in China, during World War II, to medical missionaries, and witnessed the climax of the Chinese revolution in 1949.

He was educated in England, where he completed his undergraduate degree at the University of London and his Doctor of Philosophy in the social sciences from Oxford University. Os has written or edited more than 30 books, including The Call, Unspeakable, A Free People's Suicide. The Global Public Square, and The Magna Carta of Humanity.

Os has also been a Guest Scholar at the Woodrow Wilson Center for International Studies, a Guest Scholar and Visiting Fellow at the Brookings Institution, and Senior Fellow at the Trinity Forum.

More importantly, he is the proud husband of Jenny and father of C.J. I have had the honor of meeting with both Os and Jenny on many occasions and have greatly appreciated their commitment to fasting and praying weekly for America's leaders.

The impact of the life and work of Dr. Os Guinness will be felt in the Halls of Congress and around the globe long past the time that we are here. I know that I, and many more around the world, are trying to live by the words he wrote in his book, The Call: ``We are not primarily called to do something or go somewhere; we are called to Someone. We are not called first to the special work but to God. The key to answering the call is to be devoted to no one and to nothing above God himself.''

On behalf of the United States Congress--and countless colleagues who have been impacted by this great man--it is my honor to recognize Dr. Os Guinness for his distinguished career and impact on our Nation.

Mr. Speaker, I thank the gentleman for yielding.

I rise today in support of H.R. 7423, a bill to designate the United States Post Office in Rayville, Louisiana, after our dear friend and our former Louisiana Fifth District Congressman, Luke Letlow.

In December of 2020, Luke tragically passed away just days before taking his oath of office and serving here with us in Congress.

We were all devastated. He was in the prime of his life, 41 years old, with two beautiful children and a lovely wife, Julia, who is one of Kelly's and my favorite people in the world.

He had spent his entire professional career serving the people of Louisiana in the Governor's office and our congressional delegation.

There was no greater ambassador of Louisiana culture and values, and I have no doubt he would have been a leading Member of our delegation and of Congress.

Luke was a native son of Start, Louisiana, a town of just a few hundred people nestled outside of Monroe in northeast Louisiana, and it was there that he developed what was truly a servant's heart.

He had a peaceful, easygoing nature. Everybody loved him. Whoever held his attention was the most important person in the world at that moment.

Luke listened first, and then he acted--a quality this town could use a lot more of. He was passionate about Louisiana, about our issues like agriculture and energy and, more than anything else, his beautiful family.

I don't remember having many conversations with Luke that did not involve his family because he was so proud of them.

I know he is smiling down upon his wife, Julia, our extraordinary colleague who has been such a tremendous asset to this institution and a great champion for our State.

Their two beautiful children, Jeremiah and Jacqueline, who have become fixtures around here, are blessed to have incredible role models as parents.

I am grateful to our entire Louisiana delegation for joining together in this effort, and I am grateful for the idea that we have had here. I am grateful for the comfort of knowing where he is.

By passing this legislation, the Rayville community will continue to honor the life and legacy of a great American and a great Louisianian. I look forward to its swift passage.

Mr. Speaker, since 1983, the U.S. Congress (House and Senate) and the German Bundestag and Bundesrat have conducted an annual exchange program for staff members from both countries. The program gives professional staff the opportunity to observe and learn about each other's political institutions and engage in discussion regarding mutual interest.

A staff delegation from the U.S. Congress will be selected to visit Germany from Friday, June 28-Sunday, July 7, 2024. During this exchange, the delegation will attend meetings with Bundestag/Bundesrat party staff members, and representatives of numerous political, business, academic and media agencies.

A comparable delegation of German staff members will visit the United States from Saturday, September 14-Sunday, September 22, 2024. They will attend similar meetings in Washington organized by the members of the U.S. delegation.

The Congress-Bundestag/Bundesrat Exchange is highly regarded in Germany and the United States and is one of several exchange programs sponsored by public and private institutions in the United States and Germany to foster better understanding of the politics and policies of both countries. This exchange is funded by the U.S. Department of State's Bureau of Educational and Cultural Affairs.

The U.S. delegation shall consist of experienced and accomplished Hill staff who can contribute to the success of the exchange on both sides of the Atlantic. The Bundestag reciprocates by sending senior staff professionals to the United States.

Applicants should have a demonstrable interest in events in Europe. Applicants need not be working in the field of foreign affairs, although such a background can be helpful. The composite U.S. delegation should exhibit a range of expertise in issues of mutual concern to the United States and Germany such as, but not limited to, trade, security, the environment, economic development, health care, and other social policy issues. This year's delegation should be familiar with transatlantic relations within the context of recent world events.

Please note that there is a significant time commitment aspect for those selected for the program. In addition, U.S. participants are expected to plan and implement the meetings and programs for the Bundestag/Bundesrat staff members when they visit the United States.

Members of the House and Senate who would like a member of their staff to apply for participation in this year's program should direct them to submit a resume and cover letter in which they state their qualifications, the contributions they can make to a successful program and some assurances of their ability to participate during the time stated.

Applications should be sent to the Office of Interparliamentary Affairs, HC-4, the Capitol, by 5 p.m. on Friday, March 8, 2024. Please submit the application and any questions to [email protected].

Mr. Speaker, today I rise and stand to honor the career and service of Mr. Murray Viser, President Emeritus of Barksdale Forward.

Throughout his impressive career, Murray has made countless contributions to his community and country. In appreciation of and to honor his service, I, on behalf of all the people and organizations he has aided, the greater Barksdale community, the State of Louisiana, and this great nation, offer my sincerest gratitude for his 30 years of service.

Murray was a pioneer in his profession. In 1993, he founded Barksdale Forward, an organization that advocates for Barksdale Air Force Base and its surrounding community at the local, state, and federal level. Barksdale Forward was the state's first organized defense community, and with Murray's vision and assistance, he inspired others to form defense communities inside Louisiana and across the country. Murray's work has greatly contributed to making Barksdale Air Force Base and the community around it the wonderful place it is today.

Murray's contributions extend past his work with Barksdale Forward. In 1999, after serving as the President of STARBASE Louisiana, Murray brought the program to Barksdale Air Force Base. At the national level, Murray was a leading advocate for the creation of the Long-Range Strike Caucus and has acted as a Civic Leader for the Air Force Global Strike Command since its creation in 2009. It was in this role that he received his honorary call sign, ``BUFF,'' in recognition of his long support of the B-52 bomber and Barksdale Air Force Base.

I applaud Murray for all of the impacts he has had over the years and for his continued service as a member of the Louisiana Military Affairs Committee, a post he has held since 1993. Murray has brought faithful, virtuous, and steadfast leadership to each organization he has been a part of, including St. Mark's Cathedral School, the Boeing Bomber Coalition, and the Air Combat Commander's Group.

I thank his wife, Patricia, and his daughter, Mary-Elizabeth, for sharing him with us and supporting him in his great career. There is no doubt that his work and impact will continue to be felt after he has stepped away from this chapter of his life. I urge my colleagues in this chamber to join me in congratulating Mr. Murray Viser on a distinguished career and well-deserved retirement from Barksdale Forward.

Mr. Speaker, it has been nearly 100 days since my colleagues elected me to lead this Chamber, and I cannot express how grateful I am for their trust. This is the honor of my life and it means everything to us.

Despite the challenges that we face day in and day out and the tough fights that lawmaking inevitably brings, I still believe that we can, again, be a shining city on a hill. I believe that we can champion, again, what I call the seven core principles of American conservatism, but really they are the seven core principles of America.

They are our foundations. I believe that it boils down to individual freedom and limited government and the rule of law, peace through strength, fiscal responsibility, free markets, human dignity.

These are the things that made us the most successful, most extraordinary Nation in the history of the world. We are also the most benevolent, but it can't be maintained if we sacrifice those foundations.

Today, however, I need to address the burning issue, the unprecedented challenge that we find ourselves in, demands that we all address, the issue of the day, and it is no surprise to anyone in this Chamber that that issue is America's border security.

As I said here on the night that I took my oath, we have a catastrophe at our southern border. It is because the border has been deliberately opened wide that we see the terrific horrors that are taking place across our country right now.

Here is a short list. From Texas to New York, waves of illegal immigrants are now overwhelming our communities. Just since the time I was elected Speaker, less than 100 days ago, more than 700,000 illegals have been welcomed into our country illegally by the Biden administration.

American schoolchildren have been forced into virtual schools. Why? So migrants can sleep in their school buildings. Korean war veterans of the U.S. have been booted from nursing homes that were sold to house migrants. Our streets are being flooded with fentanyl. Hundreds of thousands of children and adults are being poisoned and losing their lives. Vulnerable children and women are being exploited and trafficked by cartels, and that is happening even within our borders.

The fallout goes on and on and on, and I am here this morning to beg my colleagues to help us force the administration to take action. We have to stop this now and put Americans and America's border security first.

In January, I took the largest ever congressional delegation down to the southern border. We had 64 Members, 64 House Republicans, representing more than half the States in this country. Why? Because now, every State is a border State.

During our trip, we met with senior Border Patrol officials and officers and local sheriffs and ranchers and landowners and community leaders who are dealing with this crisis right there at the line, and we heard about how they are struggling to deal with the overwhelming surge of illegals who are flooding into our Nation.

While the Senate and the White House were negotiating a so-called border security deal, one Border Patrol official, a 33-year veteran of Border Patrol, a high-ranking official in the agency, compared the situation this way. He said: What we are being asked to do right now is administer an open fire hydrant. He said: Please convey to our friends in Washington, we don't need more buckets. We need to turn off the flow. His metaphor explains the situation perfectly.

Since President Biden and Alejandro Mayorkas assumed office, there have been more than 7 million encounters with illegal aliens just at our southern border alone.

Mr. Speaker, 35 of our 50 States, including my home State of Louisiana, don't have a population that large, yet that is how many people have been apprehended in just the past 3 years.

Among those who have been apprehended on the southern border between ports of entry, more than 300 individuals were on our terrorist watch list. The frightening question is, if so many terrorists were caught attempting to cross our borders, how many have entered undetected? We suspect it is a much higher number.

We know that there are at least 1.8 million got-aways that we know have escaped CBP. Who knows what dangerous plans those got-aways are making and what foreign adversaries they may be speaking with?

Understand, the situation at our border presents a clear and present danger to our national security, and it demands that it be addressed.

Even officials within the executive branch are saying so. FBI Director Christopher Wray told the Homeland Security Committee in November that these got-aways are a great concern for the agency, and that all 56 of our joint terrorism task forces are trying to identify who these people are.

While we don't know how many terrorists are inside our border, it is an unknowable number, we do know that fentanyl is pouring into our communities like an open sewer.

Right now, the leading cause of death for Americans aged 18 to 46 is fentanyl poisoning. Fentanyl seizures have increased 2\1/2\ times since President Biden took office. That is just the seizures. The rest of it flows right in.

Even as some of it is seized, we know much more is making its way into our schools, in our neighborhoods, and virtually every community in America.

Just a quick snapshot of my State in New Orleans, in my home State, 95 percent of the drug overdoses in New Orleans are caused by fentanyl.

We see that this poison is ripping families apart.

Victoria McCulley from Baton Rouge was only 29 years old when she lost her life to fentanyl. She was buried by her parents, leaving behind her brother, her sister, and young son.

Alex Stinson is another victim. Like Victoria, he was from Baton Rouge. Sadly, also like Victoria, he died from fentanyl poisoning before his 30th birthday, leaving behind a heartbroken mom and dad and sister.

Near Slidell, Louisiana, just last week, a precious 2-year-old child was found dead in her home with fentanyl in her system.

Moms and dads, brothers and grandmothers, all of us are losing loved ones to a drug that is being smuggled across the border in droves. It is a parent's worst nightmare--burying a child. Sadly, because of our open border, more and more parents are having to experience that unspeakable tragedy.

That leads the American people to ask a very important question, and it is one that we have been asking on this side of the aisle for a long, long time: Where in the world is Secretary Mayorkas on all of this?

He is the Secretary of the Department of Homeland Security. It is his responsibility to prevent these harmful drugs from flowing into our country and to secure that border, and he has done nothing of the sort.

As we have heard from Border Patrol agents, he is doing exactly the opposite. He is handicapping law enforcement. He is limiting their ability to catch narcotics like fentanyl. He is making it virtually impossible, as they say in their own words. They told us down at the border in Eagle Pass, it is impossible to do the job they were trained to do.

Perhaps the Secretary is busy identifying more people on the list that he can release on parole. Because, just since fiscal year 2022, Secretary Mayorkas has released into the country more than 1.5 million aliens. He just sent them out into the country on what they call parole.

Remember, the Immigration and Nationality Act states very clearly that parole should only be used on a case-by-case basis and a temporary basis, but millions of illegals right now are being granted parole and spending many years in the United States before they are ever even expected to appear before a judge. Some of them are given a piece of paper that says we will see you in a decade. It is absurd.

This mass parole is neither temporary nor selective. It is a clear violation of Federal law. It is dangerous. It is subversive. It is intentional.

To make matters worse, we have learned that the Biden administration is now just simply releasing 85 percent of the illegals who come across that border right into the country. They are coming to a neighborhood near you.

For reference, by the way, if you are watching the metrics, in 2013, the Obama administration detained 82 percent of illegal aliens. How do we go from detaining 82 percent to releasing 85 percent? It only happens if this is by design. It only happens if it is an orchestrated, intentional effort by the administration to do exactly that, and that is what the evidence shows.

John Adams famously said, ``Facts are stubborn things.'' These are the facts and you can't look away.

This is only part of why Chairman Green and the House Homeland Security Committee marked up Articles of Impeachment last night. They wrapped that up at about 1:15 this morning, and they did very important work for our country. We will be moving forward swiftly on those articles. It is long overdue, but Secretary Mayorkas is only part of the problem.

Earlier this month, I released a memo documenting 64 specific actions that the Biden administration has taken to undermine our border security and to promote the mass release of illegals and dangerous persons into our country. Here is just a couple of the many alarming actions. This is all public. Everybody can go see this.

The day he took office, the very first day that he walked into the Oval Office, President Biden revoked Executive Order 9844. Do you know what that did? It ended construction of the border wall that Congress had already paid for. Everybody has seen the images on TV. The material is out there rotting in the sun and the elements. Why? Because Joe Biden decided unilaterally he didn't want a wall.

In February 2021, the administration stopped applying title 42 expulsions to children and by doing that, incentivized families to send unaccompanied children through Mexico under the watch of cartels and traffickers.

Since then, the administration admits it has lost track of more than 80,000 unaccompanied children somewhere in the U.S.

When we were down at Eagle Pass at the Del Rio sector, we went through one of these processing centers and what we saw down there was heartbreaking and infuriating. You see these small children, they are unaccompanied minors. Some of them can't even speak the language, obviously. They have interpreters there, but they don't even know who they are. These are young children. They don't know what their full names are, where they hail from, who their parents are. They sit them there and they ask them some preliminary questions, and if the children don't know it, do you know what they do? Literally, they take a sticker and they put it on the chest of the little child that says Jane Doe or John Doe.

What happens to them after that? Border Patrol says they don't know. Their job is just to process them. They are released, presumably, into the hands of NGOs, nongovernmental organizations, who are being funded, by the way, by American taxpayers who do something with the children and then they just disappear.

We know 80,000 of them are missing. We don't know where they are. Have they been put into trafficking rings? We can only guess.

We know that some of these kids are being trafficked for free labor and being forced to do things that are too appalling for us to articulate on this floor.

Everybody here knows that is happening, and we are not demanding the President stop it. He can. He has the power to do it.

I will continue.

In October 2021, the Biden administration revoked the Migrant Protection Protocols that have been instituted under President Trump. That is the policy that we all know colloquially as remain in Mexico, right?

The remain in Mexico policy kept asylum seekers in a safe haven third country while they were seeking asylum in the United States. You know why that works so magically well? Because it sent a message around the world that you shouldn't pay your lifesavings to a cartel to traffic you through Mexico and drop you over the U.S. border because you are not going to be dropped over the U.S. border. Save your time and treasure and trouble. Don't take that dangerous journey because the word goes out on social media to countries all around the world they are not going to let you in.

Is that the most commonsense rule you have ever thought of? The President doesn't agree. President Biden doesn't agree because he stopped it. He issued an executive order to stop that commonsense rule.

A senior Border Patrol officer told us on that trip to Eagle Pass that if President Biden, by the stroke of a pen,

would issue an executive order today to just simply reinstate remain in Mexico, they think that that would stop the flow by 70 percent, 7-0.

He does not seem to care. I told President Biden this myself on multiple occasions, most recently, a couple weeks ago on the phone. I read him the law that says he has all this authority, but he refuses to act.

That is even despite court orders, by the way, that instructed the administration to reinstitute remain in Mexico while the litigation was going on.

Do you know what they did? They ignored it. The administration refused it.

I can keep going. In September 2022, the Biden administration reversed a 2019 DHS public charge rule. What was that about? They began granting entry to aliens who we all know will be a burden to taxpayers to receive immigration benefits.

This matters because it is one of many instances in which the Biden administration is actively incentivizing illegals to come to the United States. We have laid out the welcome mat and told everybody around the world: Come on, come on. You know what? The U.S. taxpayers will take care of you.

Do you know how much it is costing the American people at home, all of our constituents? Billions and billions and billions of dollars. To do what? To provide for people who are intentionally breaking our laws. Billions and billions of dollars to house them, educate them, clothe them, and take care of them.

Why should we bear that burden when they break our laws? That is what our constituents are asking, and more people in this Chamber need to be asking it, as well. We are asking it on the House Republican side. We need our Democratic colleagues to join us.

Instead of threatening illegal aliens with deportation, we are rolling out the welcome mat, including for aliens who will drain resources. Here is the other tragedy: Those resources, the precious taxpayer dollars, are intended for and paid by American citizens. However, when you drain those resources and you spend them on illegals from other countries, you cannot take care of your own. It is a travesty.

You can also see this with how DHS has abused the CBP One app. We have got an app; and we have made it even easier now. In January 2023, they expanded the use of the app so aliens could just make appointments and then be released immediately right into America's interior.

Sure enough, guess what? Ninety-five percent of all illegals who simply scheduled appointments through the app were released right into the United States on what they call parole. That is right, all they have got to do is just download the app because they all have smartphones, many of them coming over the border. Download the app, make an appointment, and the President of the United States will release you into a network of NGOs who will put you on a plane to the destination of your choice, without any identification, by the way, while Americans are waiting in line to get through TSA.

It is all on the dime of the American taxpayer. Ask yourself, is that right? Is that just? Is that good for America or anybody else involved? It is not.

The open border combined with the incentives to come have produced a catastrophic year for our Border Patrol agents. In September 2023, U.S. Border Patrol recorded more than 270,000 illegal alien encounters at the southern border in one single month. That was the largest ever up to that point. However, guess what? That record was broken just a couple months later because this past December 2023, CBP recorded more than 302,000 encounters, almost double the population of my hometown of Shreveport, Louisiana. In just one month, 302,000 people just walked right into the country, and we saw it down there with our own two eyes.

Most recently, as President Biden has failed to exercise his constitutional obligation to police the border and protect Americans, now he has undermined Texas' ability to protect its citizens, its residents. Texas has a constitutional authority to take care of its people. The first job of the government is to protect its citizens.

When the Texas Governor has acted to do that, the Biden administration and the President himself have intervened. They have taken him to court. They are cutting the razor wire. They are taking away the measures that the State of Texas has taken out of desperation to protect its own people.

I could go on and on and on about all this: the numbers, the actions, the 64 actions that we have documented that President Biden has specifically taken to open that border up. It is crystal clear, his policy choices and Secretary Mayorkas' refusal to comply with the law are driving this border catastrophe.

The Biden administration has replaced detain and deport with catch and release. Instead of order, they have chosen for us disorder and chaos. Rather than securing the homeland, they have ceded the homeland to cartels and traffickers.

By the way, at the Del Rio sector alone in Eagle Pass, Texas, they told us it is estimated that the cartels, I think, are making $3.5 million a day trafficking human beings into the country. Do the math. They are making over a billion dollars a year bringing undocumented children, trafficked children, victims right into the country, and they are just bringing them in.

They are doing this intentionally. They have chosen disorder and chaos. They have ceded the homeland to the traffickers and the cartels. The Department of Homeland Security has effectively become a taxi driver to just help traffickers complete the last few miles of their human smuggling operation, and they are making billions of dollars in the process. It is all absolute madness, and it is dismantling the safety of our communities.

The House Judiciary Committee, where I served before I became Speaker, recently released a report showing that right now there are more than 617,000 aliens on ICE's nondetain docket who also have criminal convictions or pending criminal charges. That is right. You heard it right. That means that more than half a million known criminals, illegal aliens are in the U.S. in our communities, free to reoffend and victimize American people.

Another sad secondary effect of this is that the President's actions are also creating a permanent underclass in our society, an underclass of noncitizens who receive many of the benefits of citizenship. He is inviting chaos and disorder within our land that is tearing at the very fabric of our society.

The President can put a stop to this. President Biden and Secretary Mayorkas have designed this catastrophe. Now, rather than accept any accountability or responsibility for what they have clearly done, President Biden wants to somehow try to shift the blame to Congress for his administration's catastrophe by design. It is absolutely laughable. No one is falling for this.

My counter is this: If President Biden wants us to believe he is serious about protecting our national security, he needs to demonstrate good faith and take immediate action to secure the border, but he won't do it. He needs to immediately stop the mass release of illegals into our country, but he won't do it. If he wants our House Republican Conference to view him as a good-faith negotiator, he can start with the stroke of a pen. However, he has got to do it quickly.

Last week, I received a letter from former top FBI intelligence officials, including the former Assistant Director, Directorate of Intelligence.

Mr. Speaker, I ask unanimous consent that the text of this letter be included in the Congressional Record.

In the letter, the signers said that America is facing a new and unfamiliar threat. As my colleagues know, you never want to hear our intelligence leaders speak about an unfamiliar threat, but these former FBI officials told us that we are suffering a soft invasion along our southern border. They are stating what is obvious to all of us.

They noted that we are experiencing a surge--listen to this--of military-aged, single men who are pouring into our country over the southern border from adversarial nations, by the way, and from terrorist regimes.

When we were at Eagle Pass in the Del Rio sector on January 3, with 64 House Republicans, they told us that between 60 to 70 percent of the people coming across the border right there at that epicenter are single, adult males. They are military aged. These are not huddled masses of families seeking refuge and asylum. These are people coming into our country to do only God knows what, and we are allowing it. The Biden administration is allowing it.

We have noted that they are coming from adversarial nations, from terrorist regions. We have no idea what they are planning. In fiscal year 2023, Border Patrol encountered illegals from 170 different countries, including hundreds from Iran, Syria, thousands from Russia, tens of thousands who

have come in from China. Tell me that is not dangerous.

In this letter, law enforcement and intelligence leaders are warning us that we may very well suffer a preventable terrorist attack here on the homeland if we don't immediately secure that border and remove these dangerous terrorists from inside our borders.

House Republicans, of course, have acted. Last year, we passed the Secure the Border Act. This legislation would address the catastrophe, fix the asylum and parole processes that are so broken, and support our Border Patrol agents. The Senate could take that bill up today. Chuck Schumer and the Democrats in the Senate have been sitting on it in their majority for 9 months. They could do it right now. They could vote on that and send it to the President's desk, but they won't.

Why? Because they are apparently okay with this, as well.

While there may be some who think that it is not a good time to act, I disagree. Good policy, like a strong border, securing our Nation, and defending our sovereignty is always good politics. It is the right thing to do. It is the moral thing to do. It is the constitutional thing to do. It is the commonsense thing to do. I cannot, for the life of me, understand why the President won't agree with that.

I have asked him myself, repeatedly: Mr. President, do something about it. He hems and haws and pretends that he doesn't understand what his authority is. He knows what it is.

To be sure, we are not going to agree to a fix that doesn't actually solve the problem. We would be derelict in our duty if we did that. We know what the problems are, and we know how to fix them. Just like the Border Patrol official told us on that trip to the Rio Grande, House Republicans are not here to supply more buckets. We are here to stop the flow.

Stopping the flow is not rocket science. It takes political courage. It takes transformational policy changes, and we know what policy changes will accomplish that. This is not conjecture. It is not Republican talking points. This is what the experts at the border, at the epicenter, tell us is necessary and needed, and it is insane that we will not supply it.

We are also taking action this very week, right now. We are doing this every day. I thank Representatives Ciscomani, McClintock, and Moore for their hard work on four very important bills that the House is considering even this week. These bills will hold foreign persons, like criminal aliens, accountable for their crimes and keep them out of our communities.

One of those bills is the Agent Raul Gonzalez Officer Safety Act, named for Border Patrol Agent Raul Gonzalez, who died in the line of duty while pursuing a group of illegal aliens. It would provide stiffer penalties for aliens who attempt to evade arrest by the Border Patrol.

We will also consider a bill to ensure that aliens who are convicted of drunk driving are both deportable and inadmissible. Believe it or not, they are not currently.

The third bill would provide stiffer penalties for illegal aliens who engage in Social Security identity theft.

The fourth bill would ensure that aliens who have ties to Hamas and the Palestine Liberation Organization will not be granted entry into the United States.

These bills are obviously commonsense measures to protect the American people. They should gain the support of Republicans and Democrats, but my guess is not many Democrats will support it.

The Republicans in the House will continue to press for secure borders to ensure America's immigration system serves the national interest and does not benefit aliens who are a danger to our own people.

Last Friday, President Biden came out in support of the Senate's deal, which we haven't seen yet. There is no text yet, but from what we have heard, this so-called deal does not include these transformational policy changes that are needed to actually stop the border catastrophe.

Among the reported details of the bill--again, I am working off reports because I haven't seen the text, but apparently, reportedly a new authority would be created in the law so the President can ``shut down the border once daily crossings exceed 5,000 a day.''

You heard that right. It is illegal to cross our border, but apparently we are concocting some sort of deal to allow the President to shut down the border after 5,000 people break the law.

Why is it 5,000?

If you add that up, that would be a million more illegals coming into our country every year before we take remedial measures. It is madness.

We should be asking: What kind of enforcement authority kicks in at 5,000 illegal crossings a day? The number should be zero. Zero. I don't care what congressional district you go into in America, poll people at random on the street, and ask them: Hey, should we allow 5,000 people to break our law each day to get a million into the country or should we stop it at zero and enforce our law?

I don't know another word to describe it. It is madness. Anything higher is simply surrender. Anything higher than zero is surrendering our border, surrendering our sovereignty and our security. It is important to point out--and I want to make this very clear--in the President's statement on Friday, he falsely claimed that he needs Congress to pass a new law to allow him to close the southern border. It was a false claim. He knows that is not true.

The President has been around Washington for a long time, and the President repeated his claim yesterday on the White House lawn. He said: I have done all I can do. Just give me the power I have asked for.

Moments after his comments, the President's own spokeswoman contradicted him and said: There are things that are within his power to secure the border.

Well, hello, of course there are. The law is very clear. Anybody can google this. Any American citizen can just pull this up and read it for themselves. Let's set the record straight. What he said is demonstrably false. I have explained it to him specifically. I read the President of the United States the law, the black-letter law, on the phone about 2\1/2\ weeks ago. I said: Mr. President, it says very clearly you have all the tools and the executive authority necessary to reverse the catastrophe that you have created. He has those tools right now, and he has since day one.

The Immigration and Nationality Act, for example, coupled with recent Supreme Court precedent, give the President ample authority to suspend the entry of all aliens or any class of aliens or impose any restrictions he may deem appropriate.

That is the broadest authority that Congress probably has ever given a President, and it has been there for a long, long time. In fact, the very provision that I just read you was used by the Obama administration more than 19 times. It has been used, I think, 69 times by Presidents since 1980, but not by President Biden. He pretends it is not there.

Any attempt by this President to pretend that he is a bystander bereft of any ability to secure the border is patently absurd, and we are going to continue to remind the American people of that. If we take a step back, and we consider the current catastrophe at the border, we can all see that our country is at a critical decision point.

We are at a moment where we have to decide right now as a Congress, as a people. We have to decide as the American people if we have borders or not.

We have to decide if we believe in the rule of law or not. We have to decide if we are a sovereign Nation or we are not.

House Republicans do believe that America has borders and that we are a sovereign Nation. We believe we must set limits on the number of immigrants who enter, obviously, and the American people have a say on immigration policy.

Understanding who enters and enforcing our immigration laws are critical components to maintain a sovereign country. If you do not have sovereignty, you do not have a country.

I also believe that border security is part of our solemn obligation to safeguard the well-being of our citizens and uphold the principles that define who we are as a Nation.

In no sense is border security somehow an act of hostility to neighboring

countries. It is exactly the opposite; because a weak border weakens America, a strong border is good for America, a stronger America is good for everybody around the world, and everybody in this Chamber should acknowledge that.

Just as we lock our doors at night to protect our homes, we secure our borders to protect our homeland. My friends, that is our sacred obligation.

We in the House Republican Conference desperately want to protect our homeland because we want to ensure that all of our children and grandchildren can continue to enjoy the blessings of liberty that we have enjoyed and that we have loved and experienced, and we can continue this grand experiment in self-governance we began in 1776.

Here is the question. I will leave you with this: Does President Biden want that? Does President Biden believe in the rule of law? Does President Biden believe that we are a sovereign Nation? Does he believe that Americans and not those from other countries should be put first?

Every American citizen should be asking these questions of the President and helping us demand his answers. We won't stop. We are going to continue.

Mr. Speaker, I rise this morning to introduce my longtime friend, Bishop Larry Lawrence Brandon, who I have the honor of hosting as our guest chaplain in the House today.

Bishop Brandon is the senior pastor of Praise Temple Missionary Baptist Church, which has faithfully served the people of the Shreveport-Bossier area for over three decades.

In 1992, Bishop Brandon and six others founded Praise Temple. They met in the homes of local church leaders for prayer offerings and Bible study until they eventually moved into a worship space in Shreveport.

Under his dutiful stewardship, the church flourished. They have built the ``church where the doors swing on the hinges of love,'' as their motto states.

Last year, he moved back to his hometown of Oakland, California, to expand his ministry, but he holds deep ties to our area back home and is a beloved member of our community.

Bishop Brandon has been a trusted leader in the Shreveport-Bossier area. He has served in leadership roles in local nonprofits, civic organizations, faith-based ministries, and still serves as president of the Northwest Louisiana Community Development Corporation.

Bishop Brandon has been a great advocate for the sanctity of human life, and his work in the community and in biblical scholarship has served as an important reminder of the eternal hope that we have in Christ.

I am grateful that he is joining us as our guest chaplain.

Thank you all. First, a few words of gratitude. I want to thank Leader Jeffries. I do look forward to working with you on behalf of the American people. I know we see things from very different points of view, but I know in your heart you love and care about this country and you want to do what is right. We are going to find common ground there.

I want to express my great thanks to our Speaker Emeritus, Kevin McCarthy. Kevin has dedicated over two decades of his life to selfless public service; 16 of those years in this House. You would be hard- pressed to find anybody who loves this institution more or who has contributed more to it. He is the reason we are in this majority today. His impact can never be overstated. I want to thank him for his leadership, his friendship, and the selfless sacrifice that he and Judy have made for so many years. You helped build it, Kevin, and we owe you a great debt of gratitude.

I want to thank the dedicated and overworked staff of this beleaguered House. They accept praise so stoically. Ms. Susan Cole, our House Reading Clerk--yes, all the clerks and all the staff, they are terribly overworked. This has been a grueling process, but they have served an integral role in keeping our Republic. We thank them for that service. I know we all do.

I want to thank my dedicated wife of almost 25 years, Kelly. She is not here. We couldn't get a flight in time. This happened sort of suddenly. We are going to celebrate soon. She spent the last couple of weeks on her knees in prayer to the Lord, and she is a little worn out. We all are.

I want to thank our children: Michael, Hannah, Abby, Jack, and Will. All of our children sacrifice. All of them do, and we know that. There are not a lot of perks to being a Member of Congress' kid. I want to thank all of your families as well for what they endure and what they have had to endure for the last few weeks. We have been here awhile.

I want to thank my faithful mother, Jeanne Johnson, who bore me at the age of 17; my brothers, Chris and Josh; my sister, Laura; all their families and all of our extended family. In Louisiana, family is a big deal, and we have a bunch of them.

I especially want to thank all the extraordinary people of the great State of Louisiana. We have never had a Speaker of the House hail from our State, and they have been lifting us up. I thank the people of Louisiana for the opportunity to serve you in Congress, and I am humbled by your continuous support. We will make you proud.

To my colleagues, I want to thank you all for the trust you have instilled in me to lead us in this historic and unprecedented moment that we are in. The challenge before us is great, but the time for action is now, and I will not let you down.

I want to say to the American people on behalf of all of us here: We hear you. We know the challenges you are facing. We know that there is a lot going on in our country, domestically and abroad, and we are ready to get to work again to solve those problems, and we will.

Our mission here is to serve you well, to restore the people's faith in this House, in this great and essential institution.

My dad, it was mentioned my dad was a firefighter. He was an assistant chief of the fire department in my hometown of Shreveport, Louisiana, a little town in northwest Louisiana.

On September 17, 1984, when I was 12 years old, he was critically burned and permanently disabled in the line of duty. All I ever wanted to be when I grew up was the chief of the fire department in Shreveport. After the explosion on that fateful day, he nearly died and it was a long road back. It changed all of our life trajectories. I am the oldest of four kids.

My dad lived with pain all the rest of his life, for decades more. I lost my dad to cancer 3 days before I got elected to Congress. He wanted to be there at my election night so badly. I am the first college graduate in my family. This was a big deal to him.

Several weeks after that, in early 2017, it was my freshman term, and it fell to me to be in the rostrum one night to serve here as Speaker pro tempore. I thought that was a big deal until I figured out that is what you do for freshmen late at night.

I think, if my memory serves, Ms. Jackson Lee was winding down one of her long, eloquent speeches--not that I was not enraptured by her speech. I looked up at the top of the Chamber there and I saw the face of Moses staring down. I just felt in that moment the weight of this place, the history that is revered here, and the future that we are called to forge, and I really was just kind of almost overwhelmed with emotion.

It occurred to me in that moment that it had been several weeks, and I had not had an opportunity yet to grieve my dad's passing. I just had a sense that somehow he knew. I had tears come to my eyes, and I was standing here, and I am wiping them away, and then it suddenly occurs to me the late-night C-SPAN viewers are going to think something is very wrong with the new, young Congressman from Louisiana. It wasn't Sheila's speech, I am sorry.

I just knew in that moment that my dad, my father, would be proud of me, and I felt that he was. I think all of our parents are proud of what we are called to do here.

I think all the American people at one time had great pride in this institution, but right now, that is in jeopardy. We have a challenge before us right now to rebuild and restore that trust.

This is a beautiful country. It is the beauty of America that allows a firefighter's kid like me to come here and serve in this sacred Chamber, where great men and women have served before all of us and strived together to build and then preserve what Lincoln did refer to as the last, best hope of man on Earth.

We stand at a very dangerous time. I am stating the obvious. We all know that. The world is in turmoil, but a strong America is good for the entire world.

We are the beacon of freedom, and we must preserve this grand experiment in self-governance. It still is. We are only 247 years into this grand experiment. We don't know how long it will last, but we do know the Founders told us to take good care of it.

I want to tell all my colleagues here what I told the Republicans in that room last night: I don't believe there are any coincidences in a matter like this. I believe that Scripture, the Bible, is very clear, that God is the one that raises up those in authority. He raised up each of you, all of us. I believe that God has ordained and allowed each one of us to be brought here for this specific moment and this time. This is my belief.

I believe that each one of us has a huge responsibility today to use the gifts that God has given us to serve the extraordinary people of this great country--and they deserve it--and to ensure that our Republic remains standing as the great beacon of light and hope and freedom in a world that desperately needs it.

It was in 1962 that our national motto, In God We Trust, was adorned above this rostrum. If you look at the little guide that they give tourists and constituents who come and visit the House, if you turn in there to about page 14 in the middle of that guide, it tells you the history of this. It says very simply: These words were placed here above us. This motto was placed here as a rebuke of the Cold War-era philosophy of the Soviet Union. That philosophy was Marxism and Communism, which begins with the premise that there is no God.

This is a critical distinction that is also articulated in our Nation's birth certificate. We know the language well, the famous second paragraph that we used to have children memorize in

school, and they don't do that so often anymore, but they should.

G.K. Chesterton was a famous British philosopher and statesman. He said one time: ``America is the only nation in the world founded upon a creed.'' He said it is listed with almost ``theological lucidity in the Declaration of Independence.''

What is our creed? ``We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal,'' not born equal, created equal, and they are endowed with the same inalienable rights--life, liberty, the pursuit of happiness. That is the creed that has animated our Nation since its founding, that has made us the great Nation that we are.

We are in a time of extraordinary crisis right now. The world needs us to be strong. They need us to remember our creed and our admonition.

Turmoil and violence have rocked the Middle East and Eastern Europe. We all know it. Tensions continue to build in the Indo-Pacific. The country demands strong leadership of this body, and we must not waver.

Our Nation's greatest ally in the Middle East is under attack. The first bill that I am going to bring to this floor in just a little while will be in support of our dear friend Israel, and we are overdue in getting that done.

We are going to show not only Israel but the entire world that the barbarism of Hamas that we have all seen play out on our television screens is wretched and wrong, and we are going to stand for the good in that conflict.

We have a catastrophe at our southern border. The Senate and the White House can no longer ignore the problem. From Texas to New York, wave after wave of illegal migrants are stressing our communities to their breaking points.

We know that our streets are being flooded with fentanyl, and in all of our communities, children and even adults are dying from it.

The status quo is unacceptable. Inaction is unacceptable, and we must come together and address the broken border. We have to do it.

The skyrocketing cost of living is unsustainable, and Americans should not have to worry about how they are going to feed their family every week because they can't afford their groceries anymore. Everybody in this room should think about this.

Here are the stats: Prices have increased over 17 percent in the last 2 years; credit card interest rates are at the highest level in nearly three decades; and mortgage rates are now at a peak we haven't seen since 2001. We have to bring relief to the American people by reining in Federal spending and bringing down inflation.

The greatest threat to our national security is our Nation's debt. While we have been sitting in this room, the debt has crossed to almost $33.6 trillion. In the time that it is going to take me to deliver this speech, it will go up another $20 million in debt. It is unsustainable. We have to get the country back on track.

We know this is not going to be an easy task, and tough decisions will have to be made, but the consequences if we don't act now are unbearable.

We have a duty to the American people to explain this to them so they understand it well. We are going to establish a bipartisan debt commission to begin working on this crisis immediately.

We all know that we also live in a time of bitter partisanship. It was noted, and it has been on display here today. When our people are losing their faith in government, when they are losing sight of the principles that made us the greatest Nation in the history of the world, I think we have to be mindful of that. We are going to fight. We are going to fight vigorously over our core principles because they are at odds a lot of the time now in this modern era. We have to sacrifice sometimes our preferences because that is what is necessary in a legislative body, but we will defend our core principles to the end.

In his farewell address, President Reagan explained the secret of his rapport with people, and I like to paraphrase his explanation all the time. He said: You know, they call me the great communicator, but I really wasn't that. I was just communicating great things, and they are the same great things that have guided our Nation since its founding.

What are those great things? I call them the seven core principles of American conservatism, but let me concede to you all, I think it is really quintessentially the core principles of our Nation. I boil them down to individual freedom, limited government, the rule of law, peace through strength, fiscal responsibility, free markets, and human dignity. Those are the foundations that made us the extraordinary Nation that we are.

You and I today are the stewards of those principles, the things that have made us the freest, most powerful, most successful Nation in the history of the world, the things that have made us truly exceptional.

In this time of great crisis, it is our duty to work together, as previous generations of great leaders have, to face these great challenges and solve these great problems.

I will conclude with this: The job of the Speaker of the House is to serve the whole body, and I will, but I have made a commitment to my colleagues here that this Speaker's office is going to be known for decentralizing the power here. My office is going to be known for Members being more involved and having more influence in our processes, in all the major decisions that are made here for predictable processes and regular order. We owe that to the people.

I make this commitment to you, to my colleagues here and on the other side of the aisle, as well: My office is going to be known for trust and transparency and accountability, for good stewardship of the people's treasure, for the honesty and integrity that is incumbent upon all of us here in the people's House.

Our system of government is not a perfect system. It has got a lot of challenges, but it is still the best one in the world, and we have an opportunity to preserve it.

The last thing I am going to say is a message to the rest of the world. They have been watching this drama play out for a few weeks. We have learned a lot of lessons, but do you know what? Through adversity, it makes you stronger. We want our allies around the world to know that this body of lawmakers is reporting again to our duty stations. Let the enemies of freedom around the world hear us loud and clear: The people's House is back in business.

We will do our duty here; we will serve the people well; we will govern well; and we will make everyone proud of this institution again. We are going to fight every day to make sure that is true.

I look forward to the days ahead. I genuinely believe in my heart that the best days of America are still ahead of us. God bless you, and God bless the United States of America.

I am now ready to take the oath of office.

I ask the Dean of the House of Representatives, the Honorable Hal Rogers of Kentucky, to administer the oath of office.

Mr. Speaker pro tempore, pursuant to clause 7 of rule XX, I move a call of the House.

Mr. Speaker pro tempore, pursuant to clause 7 of rule XX, I move a call of the House.

Mr. Speaker pro tempore, pursuant to clause 7 of rule XX, I move a call of the House.

Madam Speaker, I thank the gentleman from Texas for all of his hard work here.

I just heard one of our colleagues over here suggest that somehow Republicans are in favor of a government shutdown. No one desires a government shutdown.

What we desire and what we are working towards is changing how Washington works. That is the commitment that we made to the American people. That is why they gave us the majority.

How do we do that? We have to change the decades of reckless spending and corruption. We have to change the weaponization of the Federal agencies that are designed to protect and serve the American people instead of being used against them.

We have to change the opening of the borders that is destroying our communities contributing to the rising crime wave.

We have to change the way that the Biden administration is administering the economy.

We have to change the radical shift, the forced transition that they are trying to push us into, this radical green energy transition. It is nonsense.

The American people have had enough. They see the Democrat policies destroying our economy, destroying our security, destroying opportunity for their children and grandchildren.

We are taking a stand here. We are operating in good faith. We are negotiating together for the best outcome for the people, and we do not desire a shutdown.

Mr. Speaker, I thank Chairman Rogers and Representative Jackson for their important work on this really critical issue.

Mr. Speaker, historically, Americans have transitionally held the most positive view of the U.S. military among all of our institutions, but something changed last year. Right now, less than half of Americans now have a great deal of confidence and trust in the military.

You want to know why? The reason stated is because the military leadership has become overly politicized. They are addressing issues that don't have anything to do with our national defense.

The best example of that probably is Secretary Austin's policy of reimbursing travel expenses for servicemembers seeking an abortion.

The law is clear, as the chairman has stated. Title 10, section 1093, explicitly prohibits funds available to the DOD from being used to perform abortions.

The statute was drafted, passed, and signed into law by the people's duly elected representatives. This politicized Department of Defense has decided to create a workaround.

Thankfully, the House-passed NDAA will end this lawlessness. We have to stand for that. The House has spoken on the issue, and the House's position is very clear.

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