Floor Statements

Mr. Speaker, I can understand why there is some confusion. I understand why we can get distracted by foreign nations and communism, which most of us agree is a bad thing.

What I think is enlightening, though, is how we opened. What was stated, in my understanding or recollection, was that it was just said that the last Democratic-controlled Congress was the most effective and productive in recent history, which you just agreed to.

The standard that the statement was made and measured by, though, shows

why we are having this discussion, why my Democratic colleagues are confused.

They equate record spending, record debt, and unprecedented control by government over private business as success. That is why they are confused about what this bill is about and why it is germane.

They do not understand what socialism is or, worse, don't recognize that their policies are in direct support of socialist leanings. Their policies have continuously placed government in a position to control businesses, picking winners and losers, deciding what is moral and immoral, and continue to advance the idea that government somehow should have been empowered to solve the very problems that it created.

To clear up things and create less confusion, we are trying to counter a movement that is moving toward something we have never been, a socialist nation.

We are a unique government created by the people, for the people, empowered to protect, not to provide for, and not to determine the outcome of people's endeavors.

We are uniquely positioned to benefit our citizens by empowering them, not through more government. I believe that we the people are far more valuable than we the government. That is why we speak against bigger government and socialism.

Madam Speaker, this week, Americans are hearing about yet another battle over the debt ceiling, a fiscal restraint that was supposed to stop Congress from spending too much.

Every couple of years, Congress basically gives itself a free pass and votes to raise the debt ceiling, kicking the can down the road. With a national debt over $31 trillion, this is a game our country cannot afford to keep playing.

Today, President Biden is set to miss his budget deadline as required by law for the third consecutive year. I would love to see us actually handle the budget one item at a time rather than in a typical omnibus.

Vilification of debt control and protecting our future generations is not where this discussion should start. We are not going to get rid of this deficit in 1 year, but we can get rid of something this year. Can we at least have a small step toward reducing our national debt for the future of our children?

Hardworking American families have balanced budgets every month, every year, and they deserve a government that does the same.

Well, sir, you asked for a physician to stand. I am a physician. I am an emergency medicine physician who served during the entire COVID pandemic from before the pandemic began.

I am sure I was exposed to it over a thousand times with thousands of patients that I treated for COVID, some of which I intubated.

We had healthcare workers who had decades of experience exposed over and over again before there even was a vaccination. People went home sick. They had fevers.

It may surprise you that I was never tested for COVID. Not in the entire career that I have had as an emergency physician have I ever been tested for COVID.

I came to work time and time again, putting my life on the line. I lost friends. I watched people put their lives on the line and come to work when everybody else got to call in or stay home based on congressional mandates or congressional exceptions because we were essential, because we understand our profession.

We understand how important it is to public service, to save lives, to learn and to continue to grow, to have the debate over what would and would not work for patients, and we evolved.

It wasn't just one size fits all for medicine. People are not treated the same because people are different. Different exposures require different treatments.

Once you have had the disease, you develop an immunity. If you have immunity, and you are exposed to a vaccination within a certain time, you can have a hyperimmune response that can be harmful.

This is not taken into account by congressional people who do not understand medicine, who have not been to medical school, who have not had a residency, who have not had decades of experience either as a doctor, a nurse, a mid-level, or some other healthcare professional who understands healthcare far more than anybody who sits in these seats, who have never treated one patient or read one book or had one test concerning the outcome of a patient. They have never held the hand of a patient who is dying.

So, I would challenge you, sir, to consider a healthcare professional, when they get to determine their own fate as they continue to put their lives on the line to serve the very people that we are supposed to be serving here in Congress.

Madam Speaker, today I address something that is near and dear to everyone's heart, and that is food security.

One of my biggest concerns right now, as I have become educated on the things that concern Americans, is the fact that all around the world right now, we are facing food shortages. A lot of this is created by our own actions.

If you look in Ukraine right now, you have food rotting in bins because of a war. The breadbasket of Europe is not going to be producing crops in the next year because of the war.

In China, you have massive pollution which is contaminating their agricultural output.

Meanwhile, you have countries like India that are reliant on foreign fertilizer that are going to be choked off because of the environmental movement.

You have the Netherlands and Germany reducing their nitrates in their fertilizers, which they haven't done since World War I, which created a famine back then.

In the United States, we have a third of our chickens and our eggs that are being reduced because of Avian Flu.

Meanwhile, we are allowing Chinese nationals and billionaires to buy up millions of acres of farmland. This is concerning for many reasons. If we thought that the pandemic was a reason for government to overreach, if we thought that that was going to be a crisis, imagine what it would be like if we ran out of food, if we have food shortages.

When you realize that we had people panicking over toilet paper, imagine what they will do when they panic when our cupboards are bare. This could be a worldwide reason for war.

It is also another reason for government to increase their control. There is always a reason for people to turn to the government to solve the problems that the government created; and that is my main concern today, to be something proactive rather than reactive.

We see it coming. We can see that any foreign national country could come up with a virus to contaminate our livestock or even our crops; and yet, we are doing nothing to proactively make sure that Chinese nationals can't buy farmland in America; that billionaires can't buy millions of acres of farmland and artificially increase prices during a food shortage.

We, as Congress, need to be proactive. We need to reach out and make sure we are doing things to strategically protect our food resources, both here and abroad.

We need to fight back this idea that the environmental movement shouldn't use fertilizer, shouldn't produce agriculture; shouldn't be having foresight to protect human life over all else.

Madam Speaker, I propose that Congress is realistic in the way we allow people to purchase. I am all for a free market. I am all for allowing people to sell to who they want to; but always with the idea that America still comes first, and Americans are protected in the process; that we don't turn to the government to solve the problem that we are creating, and that we don't allow foreign nationals to affect our food supply because this would be catastrophic, both here and abroad, and would lead to wars, as we have seen over and over through the history of this world.

Mr. Speaker, I rise today in support of the people of Iran as they struggle against an oppressive and dangerous regime.

I also commend our great Iranian-American community in Georgia and across this Nation who hope that their friends and family on the other side of the world may one day have the freedom and prosperity we all enjoy in the United States. They are great patriots and valued citizens.

For 4 consecutive months, Iranians have been protesting and calling for the downfall of the clerical regime in Tehran. Their rulers have brutally repressed dissidents and protesters, killing women who violate their dress codes and men who stand up for their sisters, mothers, wives, and daughters.

In the 117th Congress, 260 bipartisan Members of Congress cosponsored H. Res. 118, which expressed unequivocal support for the Iranian people's desire to establish a secular, democratic, and nonnuclear republic.

I hope that we can attract even more bipartisan signers for our resolution this week, of which I am a proud cosponsor.

Mr. Speaker, I rise today in defense of the Second Amendment, which is, once again, under attack by the unelected Federal bureaucrats in Washington.

The Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms, and Explosives is seeking to reclassify firearms with pistol braces as short-barreled rifles, a classification which threatens to make criminals of tens of millions of law-abiding Americans who have already purchased these.

The extra red tape, fees, and registrations that the ATF wants to require is an unnecessary punishment for shooting enthusiasts who purchased perfectly legal accessories to their legal firearms.

This follows a long pattern we have seen for decades in Washington's antigun, unconstitutional policies, which could never make it through Congress as a law that is imposed upon the public through the rule- making process.

Americans are tired of unelected Federal agencies spending their tax dollars attacking and curtailing the constitutional rights of law- abiding citizens.

Offered By: Mr. McCormick

Amendment No. 17: Page 3, line 9, strike the closing

quotation and the final period.

Page 3, after line 9, insert the following:

``(4) Implementation.--Not later than 90 days after the

plan under paragraph (1) is developed, the Secretary shall

implement such plan.''.

Madam Speaker, I rise on this occasion to appreciate my constituents, especially those who have immigrated from India. We have a very large portion of my community that is made up of almost 100,000 people who have immigrated directly from India.

One out of every five doctors in my community are from India, they represent some of the best citizens we have in America. We should make sure that we streamline the immigration process for those who come here to obey the law, pay their taxes, and be the most creative and productive in society.

Although they make up about 1 percent of American society, they pay about 6 percent of the taxes. They are amongst the top producers, and they do not cause problems, they follow the laws. They don't have the problems that we see other people have when they come to the emergency room for

overdoses, depression, and anxiety because they are the most productive, most family-oriented, and the best of what represents American citizens.

God bless my Indian constituents. I look forward to meeting with the ambassador. God bless Dr. Kulkarni as she finishes her appointment as Consulate General of India to Atlanta.

Mr. Speaker, we have, right now, a situation where the President is visiting the border.

In my line of work, as a young lieutenant, I flew along the border and knew that there was a problem in the early 1990s. As a matter of fact, in the mid-1990s, as a forward air controller, we had to stop operations at nighttime as vans bouncing around in the middle of our operations made us cease fire so we could chase illegal immigrants out of our firing ranges. Then, as an emergency medicine doctor, I treated patients who came here illegally.

Most people don't realize the consequence of our actions, of our poor border security, and what it has done. We understand the numbers. We understand the millions that are coming across the border, 4 million since we have had a new President, but not the downwind consequences when you provide laws that encourage bad behavior and punish good behavior.

One of the things that most people don't realize is that when you go to the emergency room and are waiting in line behind a lot of people who came here illegally, you are not only waiting in line behind them but you are also paying for their bills. Many people are coming across the border to receive treatment for their chronic illnesses that cost millions of dollars per year, and those are several patients per hospital. We are talking about billions, even tens of billions of dollars, spent on people who come here illegally. It comes from taxpayer money, both out of your pocket and through your taxation, which adds to our debt, which, of course, is going to be paid for by our children.

To make it worse, we punish those people who come here the right way. In my district, we have a huge immigrant population, people who come here from all over the world, whether it be India, Europe, South America, and they have to wait in line with a glutted immigration policy that makes it very difficult for them to follow the law. Meanwhile, we reward those people who break the law.

I think we need to change our laws. I think we need to make it more streamlined for people who follow the law, who are good citizens, who paid their taxes, who have jobs, who create jobs, and make it more difficult for people who break laws.

I think, right now, when you talk about the overwhelming number of people coming across the border, and when you have the President go down there and have the borders cleaned up so he can view something that doesn't really exist, which is a problem where we don't protect our sovereign border, which is one of the President's main responsibilities; where you have people's property violated; where you have people's rights violated; where you have crimes.

Of course, as an emergency medicine physician, this last year I lost four patients who came in from fentanyl overdoses that I was not able to revive. Now, almost every single night, I do revive somebody, so it is something I literally witness almost every single shift, usually several times per shift.

The opioid crisis is real, and it is something that is killing over 100,000 Americans per year. Every year, we are setting a new record, and we have done nothing of consequence to really stem that tide.

I think it is with the greatest earnest appeal to my fellow Republicans and Democrats that we watch after our own house. It is okay to be compassionate. It is okay to reach out and help people, but we have to do it the right way.

Most importantly, we have to make laws that encourage good behavior, that people coming here are rewarded for following the laws. They are rewarded with citizenship when they do the right thing, and we are punishing people who come here with ill intent.

Finally, I would like to point out that we are experiencing diseases here in America we haven't seen in decades. Where is it coming from? It is because we don't have good screening procedures.

It used to be, to come to America, you couldn't even come here if you had glaucoma. Now you can come here with every kind of disease process there is, and we will never even know that you are even here.

If you look at the terrorists coming across the border--we know that we have at least nine terrorists we have caught in the last month, but we don't know how many got away. It is because we have poor border security.

So, it is not just for one thing; it is for many things that we need to secure our border, make sure that we are a sovereign Nation, and follow the law.

Mr. Speaker, I rise today in defense of those who defend the unborn.

I join my esteemed colleague, Mike Johnson, in calling out against violence. Not all of us believe in the Bible, but those who do understand that there are over 100 references to a child before it is born.

For those of us who believe that the child is in existence and recognized by God before they are born, wouldn't it be immoral of those people to not stand up for what they believe is life?

Therefore, I call on all those people who respect those beliefs and respect the Bible, respect their God, that we defend those people in making sure that we don't have violence, and we call out, as a united body, both Democrats and Republicans, to protect those who stand for what is right.