Floor Statements

Mr. Speaker, I rise today to celebrate the appointment of Hamdi Mohamed as the President of the Port of Seattle Commission.

Commissioner Mohamed's tenure and appointment are historic. She is the first woman

of color and immigrant to serve as Commission President. When Commissioner Mohamed was elected to the Poll of Seattle Commission in 2021, she became the first Somali woman elected to public office in Washington State and the first Black woman elected to the Port of Seattle Commission.

Commissioner Mohamed embodies the values of public service. As the Director of the City of Seattle's Office of immigrant and Refugee Affairs, she helps create pathways to achieving the American Dream for underrepresented and marginalized communities. Her work at the City of Seattle builds on her more than decade of experience fighting poverty and empowering immigrants. During the COVID-19 pandemic, she helped lead King County's initiatives to invest in small businesses and community organizations while simultaneously working to uphold public health. I am also proud to have worked alongside Hamdi for many years, first when she joined the organization I founded, OneAmerica, as a college intern, and during her time in Congress as my Deputy District Director.

As a Port of Seattle Commissioner, Hamdi has served as a champion for South King County and communities throughout the Puget Sound region. Her work to spur economic development through increased funding for workforce development, institutionalize equity in budgeting, lead innovative initiatives for climate action, uplift small businesses and enhance regional infrastructure have been integral to the success of the Port of Seattle.

As she begins her tenure as the President of the Port of Seattle Commission. I ask my colleagues to join me in celebrating Commissioner Mohamed's historic appointment and service to our country.

Mr. Speaker, I rise today to recognize Northeastern University on the occasion of the 10th anniversary of establishing a campus in the City of Seattle.

In 2013, Northeastern opened its doors in Seattle with two programs, 32 students and 500 square feet of space in South Lake Union, A decade later, the campus has nearly 1,800 graduates, a dozen graduate-degree programs, hundreds of industry and community partnerships, and is among the largest of Northeastern's 13 global locations.

Northeastern has worked to bring programs in high-growth fields to the Pacific Northwest, such as computer science, data analytics, global studies and project management. Each program is designed to help students thrive in careers through classroom learning and real-world experiences.

On the occasion of this milestone, I am proud to recognize Northeastern University as a partner and valued member of the Seattle community.

Mr. Speaker, extreme MAGA Republicans in the House are on a Donald Trump-directed fishing expedition. In fact, they have been on a fishing expedition for months with embarrassing results--nothing-- no bites, no evidence for anything that justifies impeachment.

There are no fish to catch in this Republican swamp, and good luck to all these Republicans who have to go home and justify a sham impeachment to their districts while telling them that we haven't passed the budget, haven't reauthorized the farm bill, haven't done a single thing that helps Americans live their lives. Instead, we are wasting time on bogus censure resolutions and bogus impeachment inquiries.

We have 1\1/2\ legislative business days left in the year. We should be passing bills to help working families, but that is not what we do under extreme Republicans' control. Vote ``no'' on this new fishing expedition.

Mr. Speaker, Congressman Bowman is a brilliant, committed, progressive Member who has dedicated his life to equity and opportunity for kids. He is a leader in economics, education, and racial justice. He is a leader of the Green New Deal for public schools, and legislation to pay artists what they are worth.

He made a mistake. He apologized. He paid the fine. The Ethics Committee declined to further investigate this matter. That should be the end of this.

However, what are we doing here? Republicans would rather waste time with political stunts and demonizing a Black Member. They want people to forget that they want to strip healthcare from Americans. They want people to forget that they want to cut Social Security and Medicare, the two most important and trusted programs in the country. They want people to forget that they are denying election results on that side, your right to vote.

Right now they will do anything to distract from what they are really doing. There is nothing to show for the majority but chaos, infighting, and cruelty.

I just have to end with this. Just a few weeks ago, Congressman Chip Roy stood on the floor of this Chamber and called for his fellow Republican colleagues to ``come explain to me one material, meaningful significant thing the Republican majority has done. . . . `'

The answer is obvious. Nothing.

Oppose this resolution.

Mr. Speaker, I rise in strong opposition to this resolution.

Congresswoman Rashida Tlaib is one of only two Muslim-American women elected to this body, and the only Palestinian-American in Congress. She has fought tirelessly and successfully to get clean drinking water for her constituents and to ensure that people have housing and environmental justice.

If we truly want Congress to be a diverse body that represents the diversity of views across this country, then we have to be willing to stand up for those diverse views to be expressed. We don't have to agree with them, but we do have to protect the right to the freedom of speech which this body is absolutely required to do.

Our country and our world are in crisis. People are suffering everywhere. Historic and present traumas for Jews, Muslims, Arabs, South Asians, Sikhs, and so many others are playing themselves out, and we as the elected Representatives of the people should be working together to protect the rights of every American to say what they believe and ensure that we preserve our democracy.

Vote ``no'' on this terrible resolution.

Mr. Speaker Pro Tempore, I rise today to honor my constituent, Megan Rapinoe, who is retiring from professional soccer after an inspiring 17-year career.

Over her distinguished career, Megan's athletic prowess and activism for equity have inspired Washington's 7th Congressional District and the world. Megan helped lead the United States to victory in two FIFA World Cups, received Olympic gold and bronze medals, and was named The Best FIFA Women's Player 2019. In addition to being a superstar on the field, Megan has courageously utilized her platform to advocate for social justice. She is an outspoken champion for equal pay and gender equality, knelt in solidarity with Colin Kaepernick in support of the Black Lives Matter movement, and continuously stands up for LGBTQ+ rights and other critical social justice issues. Through her sacrifice and hard work, the U.S. Soccer Federation now guarantees equal pay to men's and women's soccer teams and the state of women's soccer in the United States is in a much better place than when her career began.

As she enters retirement, I ask my colleagues to join me in celebrating Megan's accomplishments and service to our country. Her achievements on the field, coupled with her fearless and unapologetic advocacy, have set an incredible example for young athletes everywhere. She changed the way that not only little girls could see themselves in soccer, but she also showed everyone what it looks like to be who you are and to fight for the things you believe in. Her legacy will continue to inspire those in Washington's 7th Congressional District and beyond.

Madam Chair, I have an amendment at the desk.

Madam Chair, my bipartisan amendment would prevent funding from this bill to be used to carry out the Defense Department's ``unfunded priorities list.'' This list that the DOD is required to send to Congress is simply a wish list of things that individual commanders and generals would like to fund and by definition have been determined nonessential to our national security.

This practice does not serve the national security interests of the United States, and it was not mandatory until the passage of the fiscal 2017 NDAA. Mandating these wish lists only serves special interests in the defense contractor industry eager to grow their profits by selling expensive equipment that was not important enough to make it into the Pentagon's own budget. This is corruption and a waste of taxpayer dollars.

This practice has long been criticized by DOD officials and lawmakers of both parties. Bush-appointed Defense Secretary Robert Gates all but banned the list, strongly discouraging his generals from submitting wish lists to Congress during his tenure. Senator John McCain, chair of the Senate Armed Services Committee, publicly stated his skepticism of the practice.

In fact, in response to a letter that I sent to the Department of Defense on this practice, Under Secretary of Defense Michael McCord said on behalf of Defense Secretary Austin: ``Therefore, the Department supports your proposal to repeal the requirement in 10 U.S.C. 222a''-- that is, to send Congress an unfunded priorities list.

These wish lists are packed with billions of dollars of excessive line items, this year totaling more than $17 billion on top of the $842 billion requested by the White House. The Space Force alone requested half a billion in unfunded priorities, almost all classified. Meanwhile, we cannot verify that the money that we authorize for DOD is even spent responsibly because the Department of Defense has never passed a budget audit.

Madam Chair, I urge my colleagues, especially those across the aisle who are interested in fiscal conservatism, to vote ``yes'' on this bipartisan and commonsense amendment.

I thank my Republican colleagues, Congressman McClintock and Congressman Davidson, as well as members of my own party, Congressman Garamendi and Congressman Moulton, who understand that this is wrong and have worked in concert with me to rein in this wasteful spending that has no benefit to our national security.

Madam Chair, I reserve the balance of my time.

Madam Chair, I yield such time as she may consume to the gentlewoman from Minnesota (Ms. McCollum), the top Democrat on the Appropriations Committee's Defense Subcommittee.

Mr. Chair, I yield such time as he may consume to the gentleman from Illinois (Mr. Garcia).

Mr. Chair, I include in the Record the letter from Under Secretary of Defense Michael McCord that I quoted from earlier.

Under Secretary of Defense,

Washington, DC, March 20, 2023.

Hon. Pramila Jayapal,

House of Representatives, Washington, DC.

Dear Representative Jayapal: I am responding on behalf of

Secretary Austin to your letter of January 31, 2023,

regarding the submission of unfunded priorities lists (UPLs)

to Congress.

The Department appreciates your sustained commitment to our

service members, their families, and our entire work force.

We are grateful for your leadership, and we share your

commitment to maximizing the impact of every dollar Congress

appropriates.

The practice of senior military leaders providing to

Congress a list of unfunded priorities was initiated by

Congress, first as a request and, since 2017, as a statutory

requirement. This process was created by Congress and we

agree the Congress should reconsider the merits of this

approach. Every Department of Defense (DoD) budget supervised

and submitted by Secretary Austin is built to implement his

National Defense Strategy and represents the Department's

highest priorities. The current statutory practice of having

multiple individual senior leaders submit priorities for

additional funding absent the benefit of weighing costs and

benefits across the Department is not an effective way to

illuminate our top joint priorities.

Although Secretary Austin follows a similar practice to

that of former Secretary Gates by requiring that these lists

are submitted for his review, that process alone does not

effectively address the underlying issue of requiring

individual leaders to submit proposals with no necessary

connection to the Secretary's global priorities. Therefore,

the Department supports your proposal to repeal the

requirement in 10 U.S.C. 222a.

In contrast to the UPL requirement, in November 2022, after

the Congress had already decided to increase the Department's

budget, and in response to multiple Congressional inquiries

as to how higher than expected inflation was impacting the

Department, DoD

provided the congressional defense committees, as drafting

assistance for conference, our best assessment of the highest

priorities for additional funding, with a focus on addressing

unbudgeted inflation. This document was in lieu of, not in

addition to, any unfunded priority list submitted under 10

U.S.C. 222a.

That list included upward adjustments for various fact-of-

life increases including service member's Basic Allowances

for Housing and Subsistence rates, health care costs,

additional costs to complete military construction projects,

and fuel price impacts. The list also included other critical

emergent requirements such as the Civilian Harm Mitigation

and Response Action Plan you noted, as well as additional

funds to increase capacity to enable the Defense Industrial

Base to accelerate the replacement of defense articles being

drawn down and provided to Ukraine.

I hope that this information is helpful and look forward to

working with you in the 118th Congress. A similar letter is

being sent to the other signatories of your letter.

Michael McCord

Mr. Chair, I close out by saying that we know that the Department of Defense is necessarily a hierarchical institution where the top leaders identify the most important priorities across a very vast swath of departments within the Department of Defense, and they are the ones who we confirm, frankly, to be in charge of that appropriations request and budget.

What is happening now with this unfunded priorities list--and we have had testimony on this in the Budget Committee and other committees--is that these lists are just coming from people who simply do not have any authority to determine the importance.

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

Mr. Chair, I demand a recorded vote.

Mr. Speaker, I ask unanimous consent that all Members may have 5 legislative days in which to revise and extend their remarks and submit extraneous material in the Record.

Mr. Speaker, we have seen workers standing up to corporate greed and fighting for better rights on the job, good benefits, and fair wages.

Today, our Congressional Progressive Caucus Special Order hour is devoted to this topic and to our solidarity with striking workers at UAW plants across the country.

This week, the United Auto Workers authorized a strike. As a long- term organizer myself, and as the chair of our 103-member strong Congressional Progressive Caucus, a caucus that has been at the center of championing labor issues, I am proud to stand in solidarity with the nearly 150,000 United Auto Workers across the country.

Let me start today by thanking all the workers who have had the courage to organize, the courage to use their collective power to stand up for better pay, cost-of-living adjustments, increased job security, and many other critical benefits that they deserve to live with dignity.

Unionization is fundamentally about workplace democracy, about the engagement and the priorities of workers; your benefits, your hours, your pay, your priorities. Nobody tells you what those are except the workers themselves.

UAW workers are showing us what it means to have collective power to stand together and to demand better.

Over the last decade, CEOs at the Big Three automakers have seen their salaries skyrocket by 40 percent, and these companies have made close to $250 billion in profits over the last decade.

Let me just say that again: A quarter of a trillion dollars in profit for these three automakers, while workers in the auto manufacturing industry have actually seen their wages drop by more than 20 percent when adjusted for inflation.

Just listen to these numbers.

At Ford, the CEO makes 281 times that wage of the median worker.

At General Motors, the ratio is 362 to 1, and at Stellantis, which makes Chrysler, Jeep, and Ram, the ratio is 365 to 1.

Do these CEOs work hundreds of times harder than their lowest paid workers?

The answer is, there is nothing at these companies without the workers. There would be no profits without these workers. Why is it that they cannot share in the profits in an equitable way?

It is workers who have built the successes of these companies and led them to these record profits. Yet, these same workers have reported being forced to work 12-hour shifts for 90 days straight without a single day off. That is just unconscionable.

It is unacceptable for these CEOs to be raking in multimillion-dollar salaries while their workers are forced to strike for the pay raises and the benefits they should be entitled to.

UAW has been clear about their demands for months. We are in this situation because the Big Three automakers, their CEOs, have refused to even come to the table in meeting workers' demands halfway. These companies need to come to the bargaining table in good faith. They cannot expect workers to continue working unreasonable hours without job security to make cars that they cannot even buy.

In spite of the failure of the Big Three to grant workers' demands, the unionization movement is not slowing down. When their contract expired on Thursday, September 14, UAW president Shawn Fain announced initial strikes at three plants that include nearly 13,000 workers. Still awaiting a fair contract, a new strike deadline of this Friday, September 22, at noon has been announced if Ford, General Motors, or Stellantis haven't made progress toward a new agreement.

Many of these CEOs frame UAW's demands as unreasonable, but let me be clear about something. Labor costs make up only about 5 percent of the costs that goes into a vehicle. These companies could raise worker wages to the levels they are asking without raising costs to consumers and still rake in billions in profits.

Let's not forget who stepped up and sacrificed during the recession. These companies actually got billions of dollars in taxpayer bailouts, and autoworkers were the ones who took life-changing cuts to benefits and wages just to keep the industry alive because they cared about that industry.

For the Big Three, this is a huge opportunity to lead and to repay the American taxpayers and the autoworkers who made the sacrifices to keep those companies afloat.

These big corporations should be standing with instead of against the very workers who built their companies from the bottom up, and any management that says otherwise does not understand what workplace democracy means.

It is clear that President Biden understands what is at stake. He just recently said--and it is quite unprecedented for a President to say this--the Big Three ``should go further to ensure record corporate profits mean record contracts for the UAW.''

We agree. House Democrats in the Congressional Progressive Caucus understand this, too. That is why we in the House have passed the PRO Act multiple times, despite it dying in the Senate because of a Jim Crow legacy filibuster.

That is why we are bringing manufacturing union jobs to America in every corner of this country. Unions keep our economy strong. They protect our workers. The power to come together and organize is so important, and it is a right that I will always defend in Congress.

As workers at UAW and other unions across the country push for fair pay and better benefits, we at the Congressional Progressive Caucus, we in the Democratic Caucus, will be standing with them in solidarity today, tomorrow, and forever.

Mr. Speaker, I yield to the gentlewoman from New York (Ms. Meng), who has been a champion for labor issues and of justice in general.

Mr. Speaker, I yield to the gentlewoman from Michigan (Mrs. Dingell), a member of the Congressional Progressive Caucus executive board who has really been on the front lines of this fight, who has been telling us for months that we need to pay attention to this, and who has been fighting at every turn for workers.

Mr. Speaker, before the gentlewoman leaves, I would engage in a colloquy with her for a couple of minutes.

I know she has been on the picket lines with workers. She has talked to striking workers. Can she tell us some of what she is hearing about what people have been giving up, just in terms of their own security, their own ability to take care of their families?

I yield to the gentlewoman from Michigan.

Mr. Speaker, I thank the gentlewoman so much for her leadership, and I thank her for sharing that.

I think it is really important to remember that these are the workers who actually saved the auto industry by giving up defined benefit pension plans, by giving up salary increases, wage increases, benefit increases at that very time when we needed them to because they care so much about making sure that we have a competitive auto industry. I know that that has been everything that the gentlewoman has worked for, as well.

Mr. Speaker, I yield to the gentlewoman from Illinois (Mrs. Ramirez), who is also on our executive board for the Congressional Progressive Caucus and also has been a champion for workers and for justice throughout her career. We are so delighted she is now here in Congress to do that work.

Mr. Speaker, I yield to the gentleman from California (Mr. DeSaulnier), a colleague who serves on the Education and the Workforce Committee with me and has been, again, at the forefront of championing labor issues.

Mr. Speaker, I thank Representative DeSaulnier for his comments.

Mr. Speaker, I yield to the gentlewoman from New York (Ms. Velazquez), the ranking member of the Small Business Committee and a member of the Congressional Progressive Caucus executive board, somebody who has truly seen around the world the plight of workers and the need for justice.

Mr. Speaker, I will take a minute, just in case anybody who is out there listening has been interested in the concept of strikes.

I think it is important to say that striking is not an inherently bad or inherently good thing. It is not a failure of our system. In fact, it is a tool that is used to rebalance power between employers and workers.

Employers don't have any right to pay unsustainable wages. They don't have any right to put forward unsustainable benefits. They don't have a right to keep families unstable by filling their workforce with workers that they just name as temporary, even though sometimes they work for 8 or 10 years. They don't have any right to put the burden of a worker's retirement on families or on governments, particularly when so many of these autoworkers have spent generations working for these companies and building these companies. Employers have no such rights.

Striking is actually the noble way that workers can reset the power dynamic so that they and their families can get what they deserve. They make the decision to strike very soberly. If you listen to many of the autoworkers that are on the picket lines today, they talk about how they have been saving, preparing for this moment. They have not been going to movies. They have not been spending on things that they might otherwise spend on, because they know that in striking, what they are doing is fighting not only for their wages and benefits and working conditions, they are actually fighting for the wages, the benefits, and the working conditions of generations of workers to come, perhaps even their sons, their daughters, their children, their grandchildren, to be able to have good jobs.

I think that is a really important thing to think about. For us, our job, I think, is as a community of those workers to support that decision, especially when inequality is hurting our society so badly.

Here in Congress, I think our job as Members of Congress is to make sure that we strengthen the right to collectively bargain and to organize, to make sure that workers have that power, to work with management.

In many parts of the world, it is not an adversarial relationship, and it is not an adversarial relationship because both management and workers understand that a company can do better when management supports workers, when workers are paid well. Of course, by the way, when workers' wages go up, they spend more. When they spend more, their communities do better, their businesses do better, and everyone does better.

The tragedy of the last many decades really, accompanied by policy that has forced these changes, is that trickle-down economics doesn't work. What actually happens in trickle-down economics is a few people at the very top get rich and everybody else loses out. That is why we have the highest inequality in our country in half a century. It is why not just income inequality, but wealth inequality is at its highest. It is why in the wealthiest country in the world, we have 130 million people who are poor and low wage.

When workers are striking, it is a reflection, a consequence of bad policy choices that have not furthered the goal of equity and equality and fairness, and it is also a rebalancing of power.

I was interested, so as I was thinking about this Special Order hour, I looked up how many strikes we have seen recently. Just since the beginning of this year, there have been 247 strikes so far that involve 341,000 workers.

When you look at what has happened out of some of the big contracts we have seen, from the port contracts to the graduate students and the research students in my home State of Washington, the UPS workers, what you are finally seeing with collective bargaining is the ability to move wages in the right direction. Of course, if that doesn't happen, then the tool of a strike is always on the table as a way to force people to listen to the demands of workers.

I think today, as we think about the situation that we are in, everybody understands how important the auto industry is to us in this country. We all understand that we have competition from other countries around the world and that the way that we are going to make sure that we keep our industry strong is to bring back manufacturing to the United States. That is exactly what Democrats and President Biden have been pushing for with the bipartisan infrastructure bill, with the Inflation Reduction Act, with all of the bills that we have passed, with the CHIPS and Science Act.

The reality is that we are trying to bring back jobs to the United States and to make sure that they are good union jobs. Unfortunately, there are people who are cynically using the UAW strike to try to say that they stand up for workers, like our former President. He is saying that he is going to go to Michigan, he is going to suddenly appear to speak to the autoworkers. I would just remind anybody who is watching that under the former President, we lost hundreds of thousands of jobs that were offshored. We didn't make the American economy more competitive. We didn't bring back good union jobs.

In fact, my colleagues across the aisle have opposed us almost unanimously. We have some Republicans who have stuck with us on the PRO Act to advance collective bargaining. We have tried to move forward increases to the minimum wage. We have done all of the things on the Democratic side with very little, if any, Republican support, depending on the bill,

to make sure that we are strengthening the middle class and the bottom, creating a bottom-up and middle-out economy that benefits all of us.

Nobody is against people earning profits. What is wrong is to earn those profits at the cost of the workers who actually make those profits for you. That is wrong. That is why we are so proud to stand in solidarity with the autoworkers, with the United Auto Workers.

We thank the president, Shawn Fain for his strength of negotiating and for his clarity of vision, for his moral call for everybody to do better, because when everybody does better, everybody does better. When only a few people at the very top do better, everyone suffers.

Mr. Speaker, I hope that the striking autoworkers across the country know that the Congressional Progressive Caucus and that House Democrats stand with them in this very difficult time. We promise that we will continue to protect workers, to protect collective bargaining, to expand collective bargaining, and to make sure that workers everywhere enjoy the rights and the dignity that they deserve.

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

Mr. Speaker, I move that the House do now adjourn.

The motion was agreed to; accordingly (at 3 o'clock and 42 minutes p.m.), under its previous order, the House adjourned until tomorrow, Thursday, September 21, 2023, at 9 a.m.

Mr. Chair, Congress should invest in supporting an aviation sector that puts people first to enhance passenger experience, bolster the aviation workforce, and promote safety for all. I am concerned that several meaningful measures proposed as amendments and supported in principle on both sides of the aisle, were not given fair consideration or debate on the floor. Although I will be voting in favor of this legislation, I urge the Senate to make improvements to the bill, including to maintain the current retirement age for pilots at age 65.

Raising pilot's retirement age would put the U.S. in conflict with international standards, which require pilots to retire at 65. Commercial pilots aged 65 or older will be ineligible to fly internationally. Junior pilots, who have endured financially burdensome trainings, will be displaced by their more senior colleagues, and have to return to a backlog of pilot training to requalify for new roles. These complications will likely result in higher costs to airlines and increased ticket prices to consumers.

Our Nation's premier aviation package should also include protections for the travelling public. The Biden Administration led the way in proposing measures to combat junk fees from airlines. These include banning family seating junk fees, requiring transparency in add-on fees, and generating automatic refunds for flight cancellations and delays within an airline's control. Taxes and fees can pad as much as 40 percent of a ticket's cost, and the administration's proposals would help reduce flight costs for travelers. Instead of building off those protections, this bill would interrupt the administration's work towards establishing these important protections. It also erases transparency protections that have been in place for more than a decade regarding disclosing taxes, fees, and surcharges.

America needs the stable, long-term funding provided by this reauthorization. It also needs reforms for safety, transparency, and workers which were excluded from the bill. I urge the Senate to address these shortcomings as this bill moves forward.

Mr. Speaker, this is an outrage. Republicans want to drive us over the cliff into default and catastrophe, cut off healthcare and Social Security payments, and drive up interest rates so more people are homeless and hungry.

Five Republicans could join all 213 Democrats and lift the debt ceiling right now, but they went home.

My constituent Amy called me absolutely terrified that she is going to miss her Social Security payment. If that happens, then she can't pay her rent and won't have a place to live.

Amy heard Republicans yesterday say the quiet part out loud. They said: We don't want to negotiate with our hostage.

Well, Amy is your hostage. She and millions like her--teachers, firefighters, seniors, veterans--are demanding that Republicans stop playing games with their lives.

Donald Trump presided over the third largest deficit increase in the debt ever because they spent almost $2 trillion on tax cuts for the wealthiest billionaires, and now they want poor and working people to pay that bill.

Stop it. Pass a clean debt ceiling right now.

Mr. Speaker, I rise in opposition to this cruel resolution that will force low- and middle-income student loan borrowers to face severe financial hardship.

In a reckless reversal of the payment pause, this measure sends an average of $1,000 in surprise student loan bills to over 40 million Americans. This absurd

approach to block President Biden's student debt relief plan hurts those who are most at risk.

Older Americans owe a fifth of all student debt. Their debt has increased fivefold in the last 20 years. Black Americans owe an average of $44,800 in student debt. Over 6 million Americans living in rural areas owe an average of $35,000. Reversals to the Public Service Loan Forgiveness would put 260,000 public servants and 46,000 servicemembers back under the thumb of these crushing payments.

Those who receive that Public Service Loan Forgiveness have played by the rules for years and sacrificed too much to have partisan efforts steal relief that they were already given and counting on.

Our job is to protect working people, and that should mean ensuring that no one goes into unpayable debt just to get a degree to pursue their dreams. This Republican plan would increase the likelihood of defaulting for teachers, for law enforcement, for public servants across the board, and it would be a drop in the bucket toward actually addressing the deficit.

Yet Republicans took $1.9 trillion from taxpayers and handed it to corporations in tax cuts, and dozens of them have absolutely no qualms in pocketing over $22 million in PPP forgiveness just in this body across the aisle.

Congress should be prioritizing aid to seniors and borrowers from working families, not the wealthy. Vote ``no'' on this extreme, unworkable, and cruel resolution.

Mr. Speaker, I include in the Record a letter signed by over 260 organizations, including labor, civil rights, and consumer protection groups calling on Congress to reject this harmful resolution.

May 8, 2023.

Hon. Chuck Schumer,

Majority Leader, U.S. Senate,

Washington, DC.

Hon. Kevin McCarthy,

Speaker, House of Representatives,

Washington, DC.

Hon. Mitch McConnell,

Minority Leader, U.S. Senate,

Washington, DC.

Hon. Hakeem Jeffries,

Democratic Leader, House of Representatives,

Washington, DC.

Leader Schumer, Minority Leader McConnell, Speaker

McCarthy, and Minority Leader Jeffries: The undersigned 261

organizations representing millions of students, workers,

people of color, veterans, people with disabilities,

consumers, and people of faith write in strong opposition to

bicameral efforts to use the Congressional Review Act (CRA)

to overturn President Biden's actions to pause student loan

payments and provide student debt relief for low-income and

working-class Americans continuing to recover from the deadly

COVID-19 pandemic and its devastating economic fallout.

In March, policymakers in the House and Senate unveiled a

CRA resolution to retroactively overturn the pause of federal

student loan payments and interest accrual, and President

Biden's debt relief plan. If successful, these CRA efforts

would immediately force tens of millions of borrowers into

abrupt and unplanned repayment with devastating effects,

including adding thousands of dollars of payments and

interest onto their loan balances. It will also force the

Department of Education to unwind loans forgiven under Public

Service Loan Forgiveness for first responders, nurses,

educators, servicemembers, and hundreds of thousands of other

public service workers across the country. These actions are

a clear attack on millions of the most vulnerable workers and

families who are still reeling from the devastating impact of

Mr. Speaker, I rise in strong opposition to this resolution, and I do so sadly because there are many things that my good colleague across the aisle from Colorado and I agree on and work on. This is unequivocally not one of them.

The reason I am so distraught by this resolution is because I am the proud chair of the Congressional Progressive Caucus. We are a caucus of 102 Members in this body. We have done many wonderful things for our constituents and people across the country.

In fact, we have even worked with the Freedom Caucus, the gentleman from Arizona, to take on some things around accountability of law enforcement, surveillance, privacy rights--many issues that we agree on.

The characterization of progressives within this resolution makes it absolutely impossible to support the resolution.

I think, unfortunately, that is the point that my friends are trying to make. They are trying to make us vote against a resolution that supports law enforcement by inserting these provisions that are characterizations that are absolutely harmful and encourage hate against us as progressives representing our constituents.

Now, we already passed a resolution honoring law enforcement this week, but this resolution literally makes it impossible for us to support.

I want to raise a couple of points about this. My colleague from Arizona said we want to hold Federal law enforcement accountable. Well, that is exactly what Democrats sought to do when we passed the George Floyd Justice in Policing Act, which not a single Republican voted for.

We need accountability of all of our agencies at all levels. That doesn't mean we don't appreciate the work that those agencies do. We absolutely do.

As somebody who experienced violent threats against my life and my family's life from a man showing up with a gun at my house, I was defended by our local law enforcement, and I am incredibly grateful to them.

I resent the characterization that somehow we progressives do not support law enforcement just because we want to have accountability in our communities so that Black and Brown people can walk down the streets and feel safe.

In addition, this is not about honoring law enforcement because, last week, I tried to introduce an amendment in committee that said if we are going to honor law enforcement, then let's honor the brave men and women of the United States Capitol Police and all levels of local, State, and Federal law enforcement that defended us in this body on January 6, 2021, when a violent group of rightwing MAGA extremists came and launched an insurrection against this body.

I was trapped in the gallery right there, right there in those seats.

Mr. Speaker, long after other people were evacuated from the gallery, some of my friends and I were trapped there. We saw everything happen.

I introduced an amendment to honor those Federal law enforcement people, and do you know what? Republicans could have taken it and voted against it if they wanted to show where they stand, but they didn't. They hid behind a ridiculous assertion of germaneness and essentially silenced our voices.

I think we have to be real about what this resolution is, and with great respect to my friend from Colorado, we want accountability of all agencies.

They want to defend Federal law enforcement. We want to honor all law enforcement, including those who defended us here at the Capitol on January 6.

Let my Republican colleagues call out that it was an insurrection on January 6 and that our Federal law enforcement and local law enforcement that defended us here deserve the same honor that they are planning to give to local law enforcement.

Let's honor all law enforcement, and let's take out the references to progressives, which I take great offense to.

Mr. Speaker, I vote ``no'' on this resolution, and I call on my colleagues to vote ``no'' on this partisan and, frankly, hypocritical resolution.

Mr. Chair, I rise in strong opposition to H.R. 2494. Once again, the majority has put forward an extreme and unworkable piece of legislation. No one condones serious assaults against law enforcement officers. However, H.R. 2494 goes well beyond serious crimes to include minor offenses and would even allow people to be deported without an arrest, let alone a conviction.

We hear a lot about the border from my Republican colleagues, but let's remember that this bill has absolutely nothing to do with the border or with undocumented immigrants. All this bill does is add a new way for people who are living here lawfully in the United States to be deported. Most importantly, we are talking about the ability to deport lawful, permanent residents, people with green cards.

My Republican colleagues like to say that they support legal immigration, that these immigrants did things the ``right way.'' Do we really want to be deporting people with lawful status, many of whom are eligible to apply for citizenship for low-level offenses without a conviction, without due process, without a day in court?

Let's remember that convictions for serious assaults on law enforcement are already offenses that make someone deportable under current law. Our immigration laws can be very unforgiving and many times capture actions that we do not intend to include.

Under current law, if an individual is convicted of a crime of violence and sentenced to a year or more in prison, that is an aggravated felony and that person is deportable. The same is true for someone who is convicted of what is called a crime involving moral turpitude, where the crime is punishable by imprisonment of 1 year or more.

Both of these deportability grounds are already invoked when someone is convicted of a serious, intentional assault on a law enforcement officer, where bodily injury occurs or is intended. Under this bill, no conviction is required at all. Merely committing the ``essential elements'' of an assault makes someone deportable. Who is to say what an essential element is? This bill certainly doesn't define it.

I just want to give a couple more examples to what the ranking member already gave of what could happen under this bill and the unintended consequences of not requiring a conviction.

Let's say someone gets a parking ticket. They are upset about getting a parking ticket. They crumple up the ticket, they throw it on the ground, and it lands in front of the feet of a police officer. That would actually be considered assault.

Let's say an EMT is on the scene of an accident and they are going to give someone medical care, but that person is in the throes of having just been in a serious situation, they are afraid, they have pushed the hand of that EMT away, and it seems like they are pushing that person away. That action would be an assault against a law enforcement officer, a deportable offense, both of them, under this bill.

Unfortunately, during our markup, which was lengthy, we learned that our Republican colleagues are completely fine deporting people for this kind of conduct. In fact, one Republican colleague even said that he is fine deporting someone if there is no contact at all with law enforcement. They referred to lawful, permanent residents--which I was a lawful, permanent resident, probably one of the few in this body that actually knows what that means--many of whom have lived here for decades as mere ``guests'' in this country and rejected any attempt to institute any due process or basic parameters around this unworkable piece of legislation.

Instead of attempting to score cheap political points during National Police Week, my colleagues should be working with us on real bipartisan solutions to achieve humane and just immigration reform. I urge my colleagues to reject this bill.

Mr. Speaker, I rise in strong opposition to H.R. 2, the Secure the Border Act.

From day one, Republicans made clear that they would pursue an unworkable enforcement-only approach. I was encouraged when I saw some of my Republican colleagues courageously standing up to their caucus to fight to protect access to asylum.

Yet, here we are today, debating a cruel, extreme, and unworkable bill that guts asylum for everyone who does not live in a neighboring country or cannot afford to fly directly to the United States to seek protection.

It is a bill that bars anyone who seeks protection by entering the country between ports of entry from ever being able to obtain asylum, even if they are an unaccompanied child or fleeing from a totalitarian dictatorship.

It is a bill that decimates Customs and Border Protection's ability to process people for asylum at ports of entry.

It is a bill that mandates indefinite family detention and the detention of children.

One Republican colleague told us that ``trying to ban legitimate asylum claims . . . is very anti-American.'' His words, not mine.

Another Republican said: ``It will never pass the Senate if we are only talking border security.''

Yet another Republican cautioned against only moving border security legislation, saying: ``It is immoral. . . . And it is wrong that we as a society allow for millions and millions of people to live in the shadows.''

Mr. Speaker, I was encouraged by those comments because it showed me that there were people on the other side who understood, at least at some level, that what happens at the border is simply a symptom of an improper immigration system that desperately needs to be modernized to meet the needs of our economy and our families.

I thought that perhaps we would be able to work together in a bipartisan way on those pieces instead of trying the same 30-year-old failed strategy of cruel enforcement-only methods that can continue to destroy legal pathways and violate our values. We all know those simply don't work.

Unfortunately, it sounds like the Speaker has tempted those individuals who were talking with their values to now vote ``yes'' with a few meaningless concessions and promises. Their constituents will still know exactly what they are doing when they vote ``yes'' on this bill.

The bill before us today has only gotten more extreme than when those initial comments were made. It still ends asylum. It still strips protections for unaccompanied children. It still mandates the detention of families and children. It will still wreck our economy.

What Democrats are committed to, what our families and our country need, is to have an updated, orderly process for people to come to America, to stay, to work here, to be with their families and their loved ones, to have the ability to travel back and forth, to be seen in a country that too often uses immigrants without giving them full dignity and respect.

The immigration system is made up of many different legal pathways-- whether you are a refugee fleeing war and economic devastation, an asylee who is fleeing persecution, or a worker who is seeking to come here and work in the many fields that demand immigrant labor and skills, from agriculture to healthcare; whether you are a child, a parent, or a sibling who seeks to be reunited with your immediate family; or whether you are somebody who wants to start a small business or lead a major company.

Unfortunately, the previous administration stripped so many of those pathways, decimated the funding to process those who seek to come in, and did nothing for those who have been here often for 15 years or more.

That is why Democrats have put forward real, bipartisan solutions to humanely fix and modernize the immigration system, including the recently introduced comprehensive bill by Linda Sanchez to reform our immigration system in a humane way.

Immigration has been the unique genius of America's history, necessary to our economic vitality, necessary to the success of the country.

We know what we need to do to fix the system, Mr. Speaker. That is not a question in terms of policy. In fact, just 10 years ago, a bipartisan, comprehensive immigration bill passed the U.S. Senate with 68 bipartisan votes only to come to this floor, the floor of the House, where the Republican majority refused to bring it to a vote. Why? Why, Mr. Speaker, did it not come to a vote in the House with that huge of a bipartisan majority in the Senate? Because Republicans in the House knew that it would pass in a bipartisan way, and somehow my friends

on the other side think that it benefits them to have an immigration system that is broken so they can continue to vilify and demonize immigrants who are here and stop them from doing the work they need to do and from being respected. We need to call this hypocrisy out over and over again.

Mr. Speaker, the American people support immigration. We are ready to work with serious Republicans to pass meaningful reforms, not an enforcement-only strategy that will continue to be a failed strategy no matter who is in the White House, but actually a strategy that allows people to come to this country that upholds our values and that is not un-American but is the very essence of what America stands for, for so many people around the United States, including me, somebody who came here at 16 years old by myself to this country.

Now, after so many years of fighting for this country, I am able to be here as a United States Congress Member. Those are the values that we need to remember.

Vote ``no'' on this extreme, unworkable, cruel bill. It is a patchwork of overlapping and contradictory bills that are just about enforcement only, not about real solutions.

Mr. Speaker, it is clear that my friends on the other side do not have real solutions to this issue and just want to keep this out there so we can continue to demonize immigrants. Democrats will not stand for it. Vote ``no.''