Floor Statements

Madam Speaker, I rise today to honor Dr. Preston Phillips.

Dr. Phillips was a gracious and loving husband, father, and brother who dedicated his life to his family, his community, and to saving lives.

Earlier this month, Dr. Phillips was murdered during a tragic mass shooting at a hospital in Tulsa, Oklahoma, by a shooter who purchased an AR-15 2 hours before the shooting and a handgun less than 2 days before the shooting.

Nothing we say can bring back a devoted father who did so much to save the lives of others as a doctor. Nothing will ease the pain of his wife and his three children who have to bury him far too soon. My heart goes out to all the families of the four people killed and the community in Tulsa that still grieves.

This tragedy has also struck close to home for me. Dr. Phillips was the father of Elise Phillips, a valued member of my staff here in D.C., a member of our House of Representatives family who has spent the last year tirelessly serving the people of Washington's Seventh Congressional District as my legislative counsel. I, and our whole office, grieve with Elise and her family.

This past weekend, I was honored to attend Dr. Phillips' funeral service in Tulsa at the invitation of the family. It was immediately clear to me what an exceptional community Dr. Phillips and his strong and courageous wife, Melody, have built around themselves over their life together. Everyone I met described Dr. Phillips as a man of extraordinary warmth, brilliance, and compassion.

Dr. Phillips came from humble beginnings, and his life is a testament to what can be achieved with determination. He got his first job at the age of 8 shining shoes and gathering shopping carts. He used this money to pay for veterinary bills for his family's dog, Blackie.

In high school, he discovered his love for medicine and focused on his studies with great dedication. Dr. Phillips was then granted admission to Emory University where he graduated with bachelor's degrees in religion and chemistry and a master's degree in organic chemistry.

He continued his education at Harvard Medical School and then completed his residency at Yale University School of Medicine. Dr. Phillips began his formal medical career in my home district of Seattle in 1997, and he practiced there for 8 years before moving to Tulsa, Oklahoma.

As the Representative for Seattle's Seventh Congressional District, I want to convey how proud we are of Dr. Phillips and his significant contributions to our community.

During his career, Dr. Phillips emphasized giving back to community. At Yale, he founded the Yale Minority Medical Association, which focused on recruitment, mentorship, and retention of minority students in the medical field.

His generosity was boundless, and he touched countless lives here and abroad. A prime example were his annual trips to Togo in Africa to perform pro bono surgeries for underserved communities and where a clinic operating room still bears his name.

For many of his patients, Dr. Phillips was not just a medical professional. He was family. Throughout his decades of orthopedic practice, his patients became informal grandparents, aunts, uncles, and lifelong friends for him and his three children, whose childhoods were defined by these relationships. I am so honored to have met so many of these people at the funeral service.

Even more so, his son and two daughters were defined by living in a household where love, warmth, and patience were the norm from Dr. Phillips and his wife, Melody.

I, and all those I represent, have benefited from their love and warmth both during his time practicing medicine in Seattle and through his brilliant daughter, Elise.

I am incredibly grateful to have Elise as part of my D.C. staff, and I see in her the same virtues that made her father such a respected and loved man in his community.

Those at Dr. Phillips' service asked me to ensure that Congress passes sensible gun reforms to honor Dr. Phillips and to do all we can to ensure that tragedies like this never happen again.

Last week, the House of Representatives passed the Protecting our Kids Act, a lifesaving package of gun safety legislation to raise the age of purchase for assault rifles to 21, control the sale of ghost guns, limit the number of rounds in a magazine, and require the safe storage of firearms.

Legislation won't bring Dr. Phillips back or the thousands of gun violence victims back, but I hope that it brings a degree of comfort to Dr. Phillips' family and to all the families of the ones we lost that we, in Congress, will not stop until we bring an end to the gun violence crisis that has plagued our country for far too long.

Rest in power. Rest in peace, Dr. Preston J. Phillips.

Madam Speaker, the Protecting Our Kids Act is about saying no more to mass shootings, no more to children murdered in schools, no more to Black people murdered at the grocery store, no more to doctors being murdered in hospitals, no more to losing our children, our fathers, mothers, siblings, and friends in this uniquely American epidemic of gun violence.

The families who have lost loved ones know that these deaths are not inevitable. We need to act now.

This bill has simple but effective solutions: Raise the minimum age to 21 to buy a semiautomatic rifle, prohibit gun trafficking and high- capacity magazines, require safe storage, and crack down on ghost guns and bump stocks.

Had these protections been enacted in 1999, they would have stopped at least 35 recent mass shootings and saved over 400 lives.

Today, we can choose to mean it when we say ``never again.'' Vote ``yes.'' Save lives. Save children. Save our communities.

Madam Speaker, I thank Chairwoman Maloney for her tremendous leadership on so many issues, including reproductive rights, and for holding a hearing earlier in her committee on abortion and inviting several of us to testify.

I am very proud to be here as the chair of the Congressional Progressive Caucus. This is our Special Order hour, and I couldn't be prouder to be dedicating this Special Order hour to this critical issue of women's freedom, because that is what we are talking about is women's freedom.

The leaked draft opinion from the Supreme Court represents an unprecedented, unlawful, and unjust attack on our constitutional reproductive rights. Reproductive rights groups and Black and Brown folks on the front line of this fight have been sounding the alarm for years that this day would come. The leaked draft opinion is a culmination of decades of insidious work from the extreme right, who have rigged the system in their favor.

I speak to you, Madam Speaker, today as one of the one in four women in America who have had an abortion. For people to understand how I ultimately decided to have an abortion, I have to start with the birth of my first child, Janak. Janak was born at 26\1/2\ weeks while I was on a 2-year fellowship in India. She weighed only 1 pound 14 ounces, and upon birth she went down to a weight of just 21 ounces. Janak was so small, she fit into the palm of my hand. She was no bigger than a medium-sized squash. For 3 months, we did not know if Janak would live or die. She needed multiple blood transfusions, she had to be fed drop by drop, and she constantly had her heart stop and restart.

We returned to the United States after 3 months, and in those early, intensely difficult years, Janak had hydrocephalus, water in her brain. She had seizures and she returned repeatedly to the emergency room because of life-threatening pneumonia. The fact that Janak is today a 26-year-old beautiful human being is a true miracle, and the greatest gift in my life.

At the same time that Janak was born, I was also fighting to keep my legal permanent resident status, married to a U.S. citizen and with a U.S. citizen child, and yet without the ability to return with the same status that I had. In the end, I was able to return to the United States with Janak, provided that I started from scratch to qualify for citizenship.

As a new mom taking care of a very sick baby and recovering from major surgery myself, I was struggling. I experienced severe postpartum depression and post-traumatic stress disorder that was only diagnosed after I contemplated suicide and realized that I needed to seek help. My marriage did not survive. We split custody of Janak, and I was a part-time single parent.

Shortly after, I met a wonderful man who is my husband today. I knew I was not ready to have another child, so I religiously took my daily contraceptive pill. Despite that, I became pregnant. I consulted with my doctors, who told me that any future pregnancy would likely also be high risk to me and to my child, similar to what I had gone through with Janak. I very much wanted to have more children, but I simply could not imagine going through that again.

After discussions with my partner, who was completely supportive of whatever choice I made, I decided to have an abortion. Two decades later, I think about those moments on the table in the doctor's office, a doctor who was kind and compassionate and skilled, performing abortions in a State that recognizes a person's constitutional right to make their choices about their reproductive care.

For me, terminating my pregnancy was not an easy choice, but it was my choice, and it really shouldn't matter if it is a difficult or hard choice. That choice, that freedom is what has to be preserved for every pregnant person, a freedom that cannot be dictated by people in the minority pushing their extremist agenda on everybody else, the Supreme Court included.

Until 2019, so for 15 years, I never spoke publicly or privately about my abortion. In fact, I didn't even tell my mother about it. Some of it was because as an immigrant from a culture that deeply values children and in a society that still stigmatizes abortion here in the United States, I felt a shame that I never should have felt.

Two years ago, I decided to tell my story as a Member of Congress because I was so deeply concerned about the abortion ban legislation that was coming out from States across the country, and I became only the second Member of Congress to publicly talk about my abortion.

Today, as we are on the cusp of a horrific decision from the Supreme Court to criminalize women's rights and the right to an abortion, we all have to speak out to tell our truths if we are able. I want you to know that there are so many different situations that people face in making these choices.

Whether the choice to have an abortion is easy or hard, whether there are traumatic situations or not, none of this should be the issue. It is simply nobody's business what choices we pregnant people make about our own bodies. Let me be very clear, I would never tell people who don't choose to have an abortion that they should have an abortion, nor should they tell me that I shouldn't. This is a constitutionally protected, intensely personal choice.

I did not suffer the economic issues that so many poor people suffer. I did not suffer from living in a State that doesn't allow pregnant people to make these choices, and I was very privileged to live in a world post-Roe v. Wade where abortion had been established as settled law as a constitutional right.

Today, abortion is still the law of the land, and providers remain hard at work to give the care that so many desperately need and deserve. But it is clear that the Supreme Court, a majority on the Supreme Court who were appointed by two Republican Presidents who did not win even the majority of the popular vote, that the Supreme Court is poised to overturn this fundamental right to choose. And the communities that will pay the steepest prices are our low-income communities, our Black and Brown communities, our LGBTQ communities.

The Progressive Caucus and our members have been at the forefront of protecting these rights and ensuring that we in the House passed the Women's Health Protection Act, that we work to repeal the Hyde amendment, and that we remove the stigma around abortion care and reproductive health choices.

This is existentially urgent, and we will not allow the Supreme Court or the United States Senate, the people who voted against the codification of Roe v. Wade, to win in this battle. We

will fight to the very end for our freedoms.

Madam Speaker, workers' rights are human rights. The labor movement has shown us what is possible when we dream big and fight hard. Tonight, we will clear yet another hurdle in the battle for workplace safety and dignity.

I thank my colleague, Representative Levin, for his tremendous leadership on this resolution. With House Resolution 915, congressional staff will be able to organize and bargain for a better workplace without fear of intimidation or retaliation.

As someone who organized with unions, working people, and for collective bargaining rights before coming to Congress, I know how important it is that we guarantee our staff that same

right. As a co-lead of the PRO Act, I have continuously pushed for pro- worker policies that prioritize safety, equity, and better pay. Like other workers, congressional staff deserve to be protected at work. They put in long, hard hours. They work incredibly hard to serve the people.

We must lead by example and show our gratitude by ensuring our staff have the right to bargain, to organize, and to unionize.

Madam Speaker, I thank the chairman for yielding.

Madam Speaker, I rise in strong support of the Forced Arbitration Injustice Repeal Act.

Forced arbitration deprives workers of the choice to have their day in court. When companies impose forced arbitration clauses, they choose every aspect of the process. They choose the mediator; they choose the location; and they choose the terms of the relief.

This is a lose-lose scenario, and it disproportionately harms workers, particularly women and communities of color, but it imposes enormous consequences for everyone.

You sign a contract for car repair, for car rental, for any consumer transaction, and when you need that car rental, hidden in those contracts is a prohibition from you taking any claim to court. No choice, no notion, even, for the majority of people that this fundamental right to that choice to sue an unscrupulous corporation is being taken away from you when you sign that contract.

Madam Speaker, I think of this bill as a bill for the little guy or the little woman. Women and people of color forced into arbitration face mostly White male arbitrators in environments that heavily favor corporate interests.

When musician Jay-Z entered arbitration without a single Black arbitrator in the room, he asked for ``neutrals of color.'' But only three suggested alternatives were Black, one of whom was a partner at the law firm representing the opposing party.

Eliminating forced arbitration would open the courthouse doors for women, for workers of color, for poor folks across this country, advancing social equity and aiding the fight against discrimination. But it is also the right thing for every single consumer to be able to pursue this right to a day in court.

Just last week, President Biden signed into law my bill with Representative Cheri Bustos to ban forced arbitration in cases of sexual harassment and sexual assault. That will protect the right of 60 million workers to a fair day in court. And that is just the people who are subject to employment contracts.

On top of that, it will apply, and it will apply retroactively, to all the contracts around sexual assault and sexual harassment. That is huge progress.

What is good enough in cases of sexual assault and sexual harassment--and that bill passed in a bipartisan and bicameral way--is good enough for all workers.

It is time to take the next step by passing this bill to extend these protections to a fair day in court across the board.

Again, we emphasize that if somebody wants arbitration, it doesn't stop that route, but it does say you can't be forced only into this and into denying your day in court.

Now, let's also be clear that the FAIR Act is carefully crafted to protect unions. It preserves essential union bargaining power while creating freedoms for nonunionized workers. My colleagues on the other side of the aisle have introduced an amendment that would undermine that power. This cannot happen. We cannot allow our Republican colleagues to undermine unions and the foundation of our middle class.

Madam Speaker, I urge my colleagues to pass the FAIR Act, and I thank Congressman Hank Johnson for his leadership.

Madam Speaker, I rise today to honor my constituent, Leanne Kim Do, from Seattle, Washington.

Today, on the day of President Biden's State of the Union Address, we celebrate the bold and progressive accomplishments that have bolstered our economy and served as a critical lifeline for families and small business owners across our nation. I am proud to have worked alongside President Biden to enact the American Rescue Plan and Infrastructure Investments and Jobs Act, two landmark pieces of legislation that invest in our communities and create good paying jobs for Americans.

Leanne, a writing skills teacher and working mother of three young children, was a direct recipient of the Child Tax Credit and is a testament to the real differences these payments have made in the lives of Americans. Both Leanne and her spouse, Nathan, uplift the brilliance of marginalized communities in their work but neither were provided with paid family leave to welcome their third child into their family. The Child Tax Credit payments allowed them to take much needed time off without worrying about how they were going to pay their bills or having to leave their cause-driven professions for higher pay.

This past year we have made critical investments in vaccine distribution, rental and nutrition assistance, grants to small businesses, and funding for schools and child care facilities. It is imperative that we keep this momentum up and continue to deliver for families, like Leanne's, across our Nation.

Madam Speaker, this is a landmark day. H.R. 4445, the Ending Forced Arbitration of Sexual Assault and Sexual Harassment Act, will ensure that tens of millions of people are no longer silenced in instances where there is sexual harassment and sexual assault.

These forced arbitration agreements require that people with disputes against a company use a secretive, one-sided mediation process instead of the judicial system. Sexual assault and sexual harassment survivors with claims against a company are stripped of the right to decide how to pursue accountability for their perpetrator. It is a lose-lose scenario. People are left with little alternative but to sign these agreements, and yet, they often face retaliation and backlash when they are pursuing their claims.

This bipartisan bill is essential for survivors like Tatiana Spottiswoode, who bravely testified under the protection of a friendly subpoena at a House Judiciary Committee hearing. Tatiana needed that protection because forced arbitration took away all of her rights to speak publicly about the severe harassment that she had endured from her boss and her abuser, former CEO of Afiniti, Zia Chishti. At the hearing, Tatiana testified that ``the person who changed my life forever continues to abuse me because forced arbitration gives him the power to do it in secret.''

Tatiana's freedom to discuss her experiences publicly had real impact. Mr. Chishti was finally fired, and the former Prime Minister of the U.K. resigned from the advisory board of her abuser's company. Her story, and countless others like hers, show why this bill is so critical.

I am so proud to colead this bill with the incredible Representative Cheri Bustos. And I thank Representative Bustos and Representative Morgan Griffith and Representative Ken Buck for their leadership, as well. No one should have to endure what happened to Tatiana and so many others like her. We have an opportunity in the House of Representatives to set this right for millions of brave survivors.

Vote ``yes'' to pass H.R. 4445.

Madam Speaker, I rise to offer amendment 22 as a designee of Congressman Jamaal Bowman.

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

Madam Speaker, I first want to offer my congratulations to the chairwoman of the committee for this very, very important piece of legislation.

Madam Speaker, I rise today as the designee of Congressman Jamaal Bowman to offer this amendment. The climate crisis is the single biggest threat facing humanity, and if we are going to address it at the scale needed to limit global warming to not more than 1.5 degrees Celsius, we are going to have to work together. We are going to need unprecedented levels of global cooperation and collaboration to meet everyone's basic needs, including food, clean water, and keeping the communities we call home habitable.

At the same time, we increasingly rely upon sanctions as a key foreign policy lever. The material impact of sanctions is known to undermine the human rights of civilians who can get cut off from access to basic needs, often the same basic needs that are threatened by the very climate crisis, as we see increasingly more frequent extreme weather events.

This amendment would simply require the State Department to issue a report in coordination with the Department of Energy on the impact that sanctions have on our ability to be innovative in addressing the climate crisis and economic justice. This will give us important information as we seek to create and craft sanctions or understand the impact of sanctions and decide not to use them.

Madam Speaker, I reserve the balance of my time.

Madam Speaker, I am prepared to close, and I yield myself the balance of my time.

Madam Speaker, I don't really understand--and with tremendous respect to my colleague across the aisle--how assigning a report so that we can get more information about the effect of sanctions on the people of a country undermines in any way anything that we are trying to do in this bill. In fact, competitiveness is deeply tied to whether or not we adhere to human rights values that the United States holds very dear. And the question of how we can be most effective in our policy is very important to this bill.

So I really don't understand why we wouldn't want the information that a report is going to generate unless we are afraid that it is going to present some choice that feels very difficult to us. So I am not sure why there would be resistance to a report that says, Department of Energy, in coordination with the State Department, tell us what impact sanctions have on our ability to be innovative, one of the key goals of this bill, in addressing the climate crisis and economic justice.

Let's not disentangle competitiveness from justice. Let's not disentangle competitiveness from our ability to uphold our core values as a country.

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

Madam Speaker, I rise today to offer an amendment to the America COMPETES Act section 60501.

Madam Speaker, I rise today to encourage my colleagues to vote for my amendment to section 60501 of the America COMPETES Act, which asks the Treasury Department to study the growth of Chinese Government influence and illicit finance in Afghanistan.

My amendment would also require the Treasury to examine the humanitarian impact of U.S. sanctions in Afghanistan, projected increases in civilian deaths and refugees, and the resulting effect on additional Chinese Government influence in Afghanistan.

Today's New York Times published a harrowing front-page article headlined ``Over a Million Flee as Afghanistan's Economy Collapses,'' which reports that for millions already living hand to mouth, Western sanctions have led to life-threatening hunger across the country as incomes have dried up and humanitarian aid has been obstructed.

After our withdrawal from Afghanistan, U.S. sanctions on the Taliban have impacted the broader functioning of the entire Afghan Government, including schools and hospitals, which cannot buy food for patients or gas to heat their buildings.

The New York Times reports that, according to aid organizations, starvation could kill 1 million children this winter. These fatalities could far exceed civilian deaths resulting from 20 years of war.

The United States has frozen $9.4 billion of the Afghan central bank's foreign reserves, making it impossible for the country's financial system to function and threatening to collapse the entire economy.

U.N. Secretary General Antonio Guterres has pleaded for ``increased liquidity'' to ``free up frozen currency reserves and reengage Afghanistan's central bank'' to ``pull the economy back from the brink.''

Former Republican South Carolina Governor David Beasley, now the head of the World Food Programme, similarly said that unless those Afghan central bank funds are unfrozen, ``this country will absolutely collapse.''

A senior official at the International Red Cross pointedly asked: ``Can the international community hold 39 million people hostage to the fact that they do not want to recognize the authorities that are now in place in Kabul and in Afghanistan?''

If appeals from the world's leading humanitarian and aid organizations on the devastating impacts of current U.S. policy do not persuade my colleagues, I ask them to consider whether Afghanistan's economic crisis will pose an opportunity for neighboring China to expand its influence in the country.

For those seeking to better understand the Chinese Government's influence in Afghanistan and the rise of illicit financial transactions in the country, my amendment would ensure that we have this information.

I urge my colleagues to support this amendment, which simply requires additional information on the impact of U.S. sanctions on Afghanistan's migration, mortality, financial health, and influence from the Chinese Government.

Madam Speaker, I reserve the balance of my time.

Madam Speaker, we join the American people in telling the President that he did the right thing by finally ending this never- ending war in Afghanistan.

However, we can't abandon the country and its people. We have to make sure we get aid to the people of Afghanistan in the wake of our 20-year war there.

In addition to the moral urgency of reevaluating a set of economic policies that threaten to harm untold Afghan civilians, including 1 million children, American policymakers deserve to have a complete and comprehensive picture of what is occurring in Afghanistan, including an honest understanding of our own actions, their human impacts, and their political and economic effects.

We must not be afraid to connect the dots. Indeed, this is a pre- condition to changing U.S. policy when it contributes to outcomes that contradict our own interests and our own values. Any report on Afghanistan's financial picture would be gravely incomplete without also examining current U.S. policies.

I urge my colleagues to vote ``yes'' on this amendment, and I yield back the balance of my time.

Madam Speaker, I thank my colleague, Representative Bowman, for his incredible leadership. It has been a true honor to serve with the gentleman in the Progressive Caucus, this Special Order hour has always been the Progressive Caucus' Special Order hour led in his very capable hands and also to be able to serve with him on the Education and Labor Committee. The gentleman brings tremendous power to the actual experience of education through his own background. I am so proud to serve with the gentleman.

Madam Speaker, I, too, am here to talk about the need to cancel student debt. This is a tremendous crisis for 36 million Americans who are being crushed by $1.8 trillion in student loan debt.

When I first ran for Congress in 2016, the number was $1.2 trillion; then it was $1.3 trillion, $1.5 trillion, now it is almost $1.8 trillion in student loan debt. Working families and students are counting on this administration to build us all back better.

But many families like those I represent in Seattle cannot thrive with the crippling burden of student loan debt holding them back at every single turn.

With the student loan moratorium expiring at the end of January, borrowers are literally just a few weeks away from resuming to pay substantial amounts of their income toward student loan payments and the crises that they are facing, the trauma that they are facing as they think about what they are going to do when this moratorium expires and how they are going to make these payments. Over one-quarter of borrowers expect at least one-third of their income will go toward student loans once the pause ends, and they are terrified. Eighty-nine percent of full-time employed borrowers are expecting to be financially insecure come February 1.

While that number is concerning, it should not be surprising. The economic toll of the pandemic has made it tough for one-quarter of all adults to pay their bills. To make ends meet, people have stayed afloat by using the money that would have gone to student loan payments on all the other essential costs that they have. Eighty-seven percent of borrowers report using these savings to pay off other bills.

This is personal. My office recently heard from a mother and a veteran in the Seattle area who was delinquent in her payments even before the first case of COVID-19 hit our country. She is glad that the pause has given her a chance to catch up on payments, but she is concerned that very soon she will have to choose between paying her mortgage and repaying her student loans after January. Not having to make student loan payments has helped her and her family. But should this pause end without student debt cancelation, she and her children will be on the path to financial ruin. We have the power to make sure that does not happen. This administration has the power to make sure that does not happen.

The good news is that this administration does have, as my colleague said, the authority to do what is right for families like hers and like so many that I have been hearing from. Clearly, if the pause on student loans and interest was necessary to help families sustain themselves through the pandemic, then ending it without any form of permanent student debt relief would be harmful, especially as many families are continuing to struggle during this ongoing crisis.

Consider the tremendous strides the Biden administration has made toward reviving our struggling economy: low unemployment, reopened businesses, and vaccinations driving consumer demand. Eliminating $50,000, at least, of student debt per borrower would increase average yearly pay by $3,000 which in turn would increase GDP by $1 trillion.

Cancelation would also solidify access to important paths for building the middle class which have been delayed due to student loan debt. More than 80 percent of borrowers with student loan debt report that that debt is holding them back from being able to afford a home. Many would be in a better position to begin saving for homeownership as well as retirement or starting a business.

Student loan forgiveness would also help close the wealth gap, as Mr. Bowman pointed out, especially in communities of color. Black, Latinx, and Native borrowers are more likely to struggle with repayments and consequently default on their loans at higher rates. Further, it is estimated that Black borrowers on average owe nearly $53,000 in student debt, the highest compared to other communities. In fact, the average student debt for Black households tripled in the 12 years following the 2008 recession with student debt held by Black borrowers being triple what White borrowers owe just 4 years after graduating.

So, yes, this is clearly a matter of racial and economic justice.

Low-income and middle-class Americans are encouraged to pursue higher education as a tool for economic and social mobility. But here is the catch, the enduring weight of student loan debt negates opportunities for many borrowers to truly transform their lives and our country.

As the lead sponsor of the College for All Act in the House and a proud cosponsor of the debt cancelation bill from Representative Omar, I know that eliminating student loan debt will better ensure that earning a degree remains a strong path to social mobility and economic security, particularly during this pivotal moment for our recovery. That is why the administration should cancel student loan debt.

They can start with immediately eliminating at least $50,000 in student loan debt per borrower before the payments begin again. It is a single action that can cement progress for an entire generation of Americans and those who come after that. So let's deliver that financial breathing room. Let's deliver on racial equity and economic security by canceling student loan debt.

Madam Speaker, this is an incredible day. The House will pass the Build Back Better Act, President Biden's popular and necessary agenda, and say to Americans everywhere: We have got your back.

Today, we say to families everywhere that we will cut your childcare costs in half and provide universal pre-K to 3- and 4-year-olds.

Today, we are finally going to take on Big Pharma, cut the cost of prescription drugs, and make sure that people can afford the cost of insulin.

This bill makes the biggest Federal investment in housing in our history and allows America to truly lead on taking on climate change, with half a trillion dollars of investment and 40 percent of those funds going to communities that are most disproportionately burdened by the effects of climate change.

For the first time in 35 years, we say to immigrants: You are truly essential, not expendable. We will protect Dreamers, TPS holders, essential workers, and farmworkers.

I thank President Biden for his leadership. We will provide transformative change for people across America and invest in our competitiveness; our thriving, not surviving; and our humanity.

Madam Speaker, I missed Roll Call 368 on November 5, 2021. Had I been present, my vote would have been yea.

Members Recorded Pursuant to House Resolution 8, 117th Congress

Axne (Clark (MA))

Babin (Nehls)

Baird (Mooney)

Barr (McHenry)

Barragan (Huffman)

Bilirakis (Fleischmann)

Boebert (Franklin, C. Scott)

Brooks (Moore (AL))

Buchanan (Smucker)

Bucshon (Banks)

Cardenas (Gomez)

Cawthorn (Nehls)

Clarke (NY) (Kelly (IL))

Costa (Sanchez)

Crawford (Stewart)

Crenshaw (Ellzey)

Cuellar (Veasey)

Demings (Kelly (IL))

Deutch (Rice (NY))

Duncan (Rice (SC))

Frankel, Lois (Clark (MA))

Gaetz (Greene (GA))

Gibbs (Smucker)

Gonzalez (OH) (Meijer)

Gonzalez, Vicente (Gomez)

Gosar (Greene (GA))

Green (TN) (Joyce (PA))

Hagedorn (Carl)

Hartzler (Walberg)

Kind (Connolly)

Kinzinger (Rice (SC))

Kirkpatrick (Stanton)

Krishnamoorthi (Spanberger)

Lawson (FL) (Evans)

Lesko (Miller (WV))

Long (McHenry)

Luetkemeyer (McHenry)

Maloney, Carolyn B. (Clark (MA))

McEachin (Wexton)

Meeks (Kelly (IL))

Meng (Clark (MA))

Moolenaar (Bergman)

Mullin (Lucas)

Napolitano (Correa)

Newman (Manning)

Obernolte (Steel)

Payne (Pallone)

Pingree (Kuster)

Porter (Wexton)

Reed (McHenry)

Rodgers (WA) (Herrera Beutler)

Rush (Underwood)

Sewell (Kelly (IL))

Sires (Pallone)

Smith (WA) (Courtney)

Speier (Scanlon)

Steube (Franklin, C. Scott)

Strickland (Clark (MA))

Swalwell (Gomez)

Tiffany (Fitzgerald)

Van Duyne (Jackson)

Walorski (Banks)

Waltz (Salazar)

Wilson (FL) (Hayes)

Wilson (SC) (Timmons)

Yarmuth (Beyer)

Madam Speaker, I missed rollcall 335 on October 26, 2021. Had I been present, my vote would have been ``nay.''

Members Recorded Pursuant to House Resolution 8, 117th Congress

Butterfield (Kildee)

Cardenas (Gomez)

DeFazio (Brown)

DeSaulnier (Beyer)

Doggett (Raskin)

Green (TN) (Joyce (PA))

Kahele (Jacobs (CA))

Kelly (PA) (Keller)

Kinzinger (Gonzalez (OH))

Kirkpatrick (Stanton)

Lawson (FL) (Soto)

Lieu (Beyer)

Luetkemeyer (Long)

Meng (Jeffries)

Payne (Pallone)

Porter (Wexton)

Rush (Underwood)

Sires (Pallone)

Takano (Cicilline)

Thompson (PA)

(Reschenthaler)

Trahan (Lynch)

Watson Coleman (Pallone)

Wilson (FL) (Hayes)

Madam Speaker, one in four women across America has had an abortion. I am one of them.

It is a deeply personal choice about control of our own bodies and the consequences of a choice that only we will have to live with. Do not criminalize me and millions of women like me around the country. Do not criminalize those that help us.

Let me be clear. The cruel Texas abortion law and decades of efforts to repeal Roe v. Wade are nothing but attempts to control our bodies and our choices.

Madam Speaker, terminating my pregnancy was not an easy choice for me, but it was my choice. It is time to preserve that for all people.

Madam Speaker, I missed Roll Call 265 on September 21, 2021. Had I been present, my vote would have been Yea.

Madam Speaker, I thank Congresswoman Teresa Leger Fernandez. It has been a joy in Congress to have the gentlewoman's voice, to have her passion, and to have her advocacy. This is what makes me so proud to be the chair of the Congressional Progressive Caucus because of the words, the passion, and the advocacy of Representative Bowman, of Congresswoman Leger Fernandez, and of our 94 other members who are part of the Progressive Caucus. The Special Order hour that we host for this Progressive Caucus is about the issues that matter to the Congressional Progressive Caucus.

Let me be very clear, progressives have been at the forefront of fighting for comprehensive immigration reform for a very long time. Our Progressive Caucus is extremely diverse. We have members who are part of the Hispanic Caucus, part of the Asian-American Caucus, and part of the Black Caucus.

The reality is that we represent the diversity that is immigration today in this country.

Madam Speaker, when I think about immigration, this is very personal to me for multiple reasons. I am an immigrant myself. I am one of only two dozen Members of Congress who serve in Congress who is a naturalized citizen. When I came to Congress in 2017, there were actually only six of us at that time. Then it moved to 12, and now it moved to 24. It is good that we are here and that we are representing the voice of immigrants who come from all over the world seeking refuge because that is the identity that the United States has as a place to seek refuge.

I came here when I was 16 by myself. My parents just had a few thousand dollars in their bank account, and they used all of it to send me, their child, across the ocean by myself at the age of 16 because they believed that this was the place that I would have the most opportunity.

But it isn't just that. It was 20 years ago that in Washington State I started what was a grass-roots effort to organize against the Bush administration at that time cracking down on immigrants, Arab Americans, Muslim Americans, and South Asian Americans and curtailing civil liberties. That was the moment that I got involved in grass-roots organizing around immigration issues and ended up starting and founding what became the largest immigrant advocacy organization in Washington State and one of the largest in the country.

Madam Speaker, if John Lewis were here, he would tell you that the first thing that I said to him when I came on to the floor is: You taught me how to make good trouble.

The reason is because I, too, got arrested multiple times fighting for immigration reform in civil disobedience that was about calling attention to the pain of the country when we treat immigrants with the cruelty that we have treated immigrants with both Democratic and Republican administrations through the past to today.

Yes, Donald Trump did something to the immigration system that was beyond anything that had been done before. But we should be clear that much of the cruelty has existed prior to the Trump administration coming in going back to the exclusionary history of immigration law in America, but then also continuing through what was called welfare reform. That was the so-called immigration reform that actually began the criminalization of immigrants in the United States.

So the work that we do here in Congress as Representatives of our communities on so many levels is incredibly important, because we get to change the conversation about what the issue is and what we need to do. We also get to change the conversation about where to put the priority for legislative fixes to the issues that we are facing.

We have an opportunity coming up in the reconciliation package to do the right thing for immigrants--not just for immigrants, by the way, to do the right thing for America, because let's be very, very clear, America would not survive without the labor and the toil of immigrant communities. That is why I am so excited about the opportunity to actually advance a path to citizenship for Dreamers, TPS holders, essential workers, and farm workers in the upcoming reconciliation package.

This is an opportunity for us to actually face the truth about who it was that kept the country going during the COVID-19 pandemic. The COVID-19 pandemic only underscored how our communities and our economy rely on the work of immigrants. Throughout the pandemic, immigrant workers have filled a broad swath of duties from picking and preparing the food we eat, to cleaning our homes and community spaces, to serving as front-line medical professionals and the heroic teachers who educated our kids over Zoom.

We are talking about an estimated 5.2 million undocumented immigrants who were serving as essential workers, nearly 15,000 DACA recipients who have pivoted to remote learning as teachers, 1.7 million immigrants working in the food supply industry to put food on our tables, and over 200,000 undocumented immigrants working as healthcare practitioners including as registered nurses and home health aides.

That is why we put as one of our top five priorities for the Congressional Progressive Caucus in the reconciliation package a roadmap to citizenship for these essential workers.

One million of these undocumented essential workers are also Dreamers. Just a few weeks ago, a judge in Texas cruelly ruled against the DACA program, stopping the government from processing new applications and, once again, throwing the status of hundreds of thousands of DACA recipients back into limbo.

This is not what the American people want. It was yet another urgent reminder about why we need to end the filibuster in the Senate and pass the

Dream and Promise Act that we already passed multiple times in the House of Representatives.

This, though, cannot wait. We cannot wait, and so it is time for us to act in this upcoming package.

Further, over 7 million immigrant essential workers do have legal status, but they only have temporary status or are waiting to adjust their status. When we talk about immigrant essential workers, it is crucial that we recognize that many of them do have legal status and have been waiting--in some cases, in waiting lines projected to last over 80 years to transition--to a roadmap to citizenship.

I know that when I became a citizen, Madam Speaker, it was after 17 years of being on multiple visas. By the time I became a U.S. citizen, it was impossible for me to uproot my family, my parents, and bring them to the United States to be with me. That is why they still live in India, and I live here. I have not lived on the same continent as my parents since I was 16 years old.

Every day, essential immigrant workers put their own health and the health of their families at risk, showing up to work on the front lines so that we and our families could stay safe. They do all of this knowing full well that a simple traffic stop could tear them away from their families and communities, and that should they get COVID, they likely wouldn't have access to healthcare.

For instance, TPS holders have been serving on the front lines, even as the former President rescinded their TPS designation and threatened to rip them away from their communities.

Recognizing the tremendous contributions of immigrants, countries like France actually acted to expedite citizenship for essential immigrant workers. Not only is that the right thing to do, but it is also good for our communities and for our economy.

Most of these workers have lived alongside us as friends and neighbors for over a decade. They are deeply rooted in our communities. Many have U.S. citizen children and family members, and tearing them from their homes and their families would leave gaping, irreplaceable holes in communities across the country.

Moreover, if doing the humane thing isn't enough for you, and if doing the popular thing isn't good enough for you either, then look at the economic benefit. In 2019, immigrant essential workers had an estimated $860 billion in spending power, and that is after paying up to $239 billion in Federal and payroll taxes, as well as an estimated $115 billion in State and local taxes. So it is clear that immigrants are helping to sustain our communities and bolster our economies.

Madam Speaker, the gentlewoman and Mr. Bowman were talking about the importance of going to the border, and I just have to recall some of the worst cruelty that I saw in the last 4 years. I was the first Member of Congress to go into a Federal prison where mothers and fathers who had been separated from their children, in many cases, babies as young as 3 months old, under the previous administration and the previous President, when they were imprisoned--these parents were imprisoned and separated from their children.

When I went to see them, a couple of weeks into this crisis, and as the first Member of Congress to do so, I met with hundreds of parents, mothers and fathers who did not know where their children were.

Some of them were given slips of paper that had names of children on them. But guess what? They weren't their children because DHS had lost all trace of which children belonged to which parents.

What we know today is that there are still hundreds of children who are separated from their parents. Their parents have been deported, in some cases, and they will never be reunited. This was by design. This was cruelty of epic proportions perpetrated by the last President and everybody who went along with those policies. Not all Republicans did, by the way.

I remember when Laura Bush spoke out against this and said this is not who America is. Well, I have a different perspective on that because we have had a lot of things happen in America that remind us that we have a bad side to America as well.

But we have resilience. We have refuge. We have humanity. When that trumps, that is the best of America.

The reality is, Madam Speaker, I went down to the border, as well, multiple times. In fact, I see my colleague over here. I think he called me--I forget what he called me, but I think he called me a Congresswoman coyote.

No, I am not yielding to you, Mr. Gaetz. But I appreciated that because I helped children across the border as a Member of Congress.

How could anybody be against that? These were children traveling alone. Had I not been there, as a Member of Congress, they wouldn't have gotten over and been able to be processed because the last administration actually closed all the ports of entry.

When I went to Tijuana and met with so many of these people--I remember a 15-year-old boy who had been shot in his knee. His mother said to him to just go as quickly as he can because his brother had already been killed by gangs. Just go. Just go. Just try to get there.

This was a strapping young boy, and he wept as he played me the message that his mother had left him so that he could listen to it over and over again in the shelter that he was in to get away from gangs and violence.

This is what we are dealing with. That is why I have introduced the Roadmap to Freedom resolution, which lays out a positive vision of who America is, and who we should be, and who we can be if we continue to embrace those roots by which everybody came here, unless you were Native American. Either you came enslaved on ships against your will and were forced to work and your labor was taken, or you came as an immigrant in some category.

The reality is, Madam Speaker, there are many things that we have to do. Thank goodness this new administration closed the Irwin Detention Center, where women were being sterilized without their consent. Thank goodness that for-profit, private detention center was closed in Georgia.

We had that resolution--that was my resolution--on the floor. And do you know what? It passed with bipartisan support. Members on the other side of the aisle, as well, couldn't stomach that.

We have an opportunity here to do something really tremendous in the next reconciliation package. I know firsthand that our immigration story is one of struggle and resilience. Immigrants push boulders up mountains, and we succeed because we have to. There is no other option for us.

It is that strength of courage that comes out of struggle that is what defines America, defines immigrants in America. So, I look forward to doing everything I can to make sure that the Congressional Progressive Caucus continues to push for bold, progressive immigration reform and that we make sure that we get a path to citizenship for our essential workers who have been taking care of all of us through this pandemic.

Madam Speaker, I thank Representative Leger Fernandez for her tremendous work, her leadership, her heart, and her passion.