Floor Statements

Mr. Speaker, I will vote ``no'' today on the $17 billion aid package which provides a blank check to Netanyahu, Ben-Gvir, and the extreme rightwing government in Israel.

How dare Ben-Gvir, Israel's national security minister, have the gall to criticize America while calling for the mass expulsion of Palestinians?

I will vote ``no'' because this bill includes zero humanitarian aid while children are dying and 400,000 Gazans face famine.

I will vote ``no'' because this bill undermines human rights and international law, ignoring the recent ICJ decision calling on Israel to do more to protect Palestinian civilians.

I will vote ``no'' because it is painfully obvious to the entire world that what is needed today is a permanent cease-fire and the release of all hostages.

There come moments in a Nation's history when our actions reveal our values. This is such a moment. We must stand for stopping the bombing, for ending this brutal war, and for justice in the Middle East with a Palestinian state with equal rights living side by side with Israel.

Mr. Speaker, for patients with leukemia, doctors often prescribe Imbruvica. In 2021, Johnson & Johnson and AbbVie sold it for a combined $10 billion.

Keytruda, a drug prescribed to cancer patients, netted Merck $20 billion; and Humira, a prescription drug for arthritis, allowed AbbVie to rake in $21 billion. This needs to stop.

Big Pharma is putting profits over people. They have three lobbyists for every one Member of Congress and have spent $370 million on lobbying while making excessive profits on the backs of cancer families.

That is why Senator Sanders and I have a bill to rein in prescription drug costs, and that is why I said let's ban PAC and lobbyist money. Americans shouldn't pay more for their drugs than the average price people in other countries are paying.

Mr. Speaker, we have a housing crisis in this country. People are struggling to afford rent, and many can't even think of buying a house.

Basic housing is an economic and human right.

Here are five things we must do:

First, we need 7 million new housing units to fill the gap and a $445 billion investment in the housing trust fund.

Second, we need to pass my Stop Wall Street Landlords Act to help prevent Wall Street from buying up single-family homes.

Third, we need to provide down payment assistance for first-time homebuyers.

Fourth, we need to--as Representative Cori Bush called for--provide protection for tenants and provide financial assistance before tenants get evicted.

Finally, we need to provide grants for neighborhood stabilization, like the culinary union did, so rent doesn't increase beyond inflation.

We need to address the Housing crisis.

Madam Speaker, all I want for Christmas is to clean up the corruption in Congress.

That is why tomorrow morning I will be introducing my political reform and anticorruption resolution, supported by Unusual Whales, Capitol Trades, and Quiver Quantitative. CREW has also done important work on these issues.

It calls for five things: First, a ban on all PAC and lobbyist money; second, a ban on Members of Congress trading stock; third, a ban on Members ever becoming lobbyists; fourth, term limits for Members of Congress and Supreme Court Justices; and, fifth, a binding Code of Ethics for the Supreme Court.

The American people on both sides are frustrated by the corruption in Washington. We need real change. I hope Members on both sides will support this resolution that we introduce tomorrow.

Mr. Speaker, yesterday before the climate summit at the U.N., tens of thousands of people marched.

I want them to know that some of us in this building hear you, we see you, and we understand your demand for urgent action.

We have seen in my State the wildfires in California. We have seen the flooding in New Hampshire and Vermont. We have seen the hottest summers recorded, and we have seen the smoke-filled air.

We need this President to declare a climate emergency. We need to stop the export of our oil to other countries.

We need to stop subsidizing fossil fuel companies. We need this President to keep his promise of no new drilling on public lands. That means no to the Willow project.

We need to stand with the UAW workers who are building EVs to make sure they have a fair wage.

Thank you to Gen-Z for Change. Thank you to Sunrise. Thank you to Climate Defiance. Thank you to all of the groups who are marching.

Madam Speaker, the American people are frustrated and exhausted with the corruption and role of big money in the Halls of Congress. That is why I am introducing a five-point plan.

First, ban all PAC and lobbyist money to congressional campaigns. I don't take a dime of it.

Second, ban completely stock trading and Members of Congress from ever becoming lobbyists. Activists like Unusual Whales, Quiver Quantitative, and the leaders at CREW have been mobilizing for this.

Third, term limits for Members of Congress.

Fourth, term limits for Supreme Court Justices.

Fifth, an ethics code for Supreme Court Justices.

This is common sense. The people demand it. It is time we give them back their government and reform in Washington. We should have bipartisan support for this five-point plan.

Mr. Speaker, recently I traveled to Lordstown, Ohio, in Ashtabula County, Ohio; Johnstown, Pennsylvania; and Farrell, Pennsylvania. I saw steel mill after steel mill shut down, including in Cleveland, in Detroit, and in Downriver, Michigan.

Of the world's top 15 steel companies, China has 9 and the United States of America doesn't have a single one. How did we let this happen as a country? How did we decimate American steel, costing community after community so many good jobs, hurting urban centers with large African-American working populations, and hurting factory towns across America? This was a colossal mistake.

In the 1950s, we used to make over 50 percent of the world's steel. That is down to 2 or 3 percent. Today, China makes nearly 50 percent of the world's steel.

This is a national security issue if we ever have to mobilize for our military. This is a climate issue. China's steel puts three times the emissions into the atmosphere than American steel does because we use electric arc furnaces and recycled material, unlike the blast furnaces that China uses.

It is time for America to have a strategy to bring modern steel production back home. We can make steel that is cleaner and of higher quality; and we can revitalize towns like Johnstown, Pennsylvania; Lordstown, Ohio; Akron, Ohio; and Downriver, Michigan, if we build these modern steel plants.

I am going to be working with my colleagues on a bipartisan basis to introduce a modern steel act to say that the government should partner with our steel unions and with our steel companies to build modern steel in the United States of America.

This will be clean steel with either hydrogen or electric arc furnaces. This will create good-paying jobs. This will be good for national security, and this will ensure that America leads in steel in the 21st century, not China.

Mr. Speaker, we made a big, big error in the United States of America, losing our lead in domestic production. It is time for our country to become a manufacturing superpower again. It is time to begin that with modern steel.

Mr. Chairman, I thank Ranking Member Smith and Chairman Rogers for their support of my bipartisan amendment to require the Department of Defense to track whether their equipment is made in the United States. I was surprised that the Department of Defense does not know whether essential weapons equipment today have component parts that are made overseas and what percentage are made overseas.

We have a problem in this country in terms of our industrial base. Of the top 15 steel companies in the world, 9 of them are in China. Not one is in the United States. We just realized, in terms of artillery to Ukraine, that we don't have enough conventional artillery, forcing us to be considering cluster bombs.

We need to build our industrial base, and to do that, we need to figure out where the Department of Defense is getting weapons and the component parts, what are essential weapons and essential supply chains, and how we can ensure that those essential supply chains are made in the United States of America.

This bipartisan amendment will help us get that information and that data.

Mr. Chairman, again, I thank Ranking Member Smith and Chairman Rogers for including this in the NDAA.

Mr. Speaker, there are 45 million Americans waiting on the Supreme Court decision to see if their student loans will be forgiven.

Let me be clear: We cannot continue the resolution of student loan payments until we make good on our promise to forgive them. If students are having to pay student loans in September, they will then have less money to spend, and it will hurt us and possibly drive us into a recession.

Under the Higher Education Act, the President has the authority, and he should exercise that authority to make sure students aren't repaying their loans come this September, regardless of what the Supreme Court does.

Mr. Speaker, on May 17, 2023, I inadvertently cast a ``yea'' vote for H. Amdt. 176 to H.R. 3091. I intended to vote ``nay.''

Mr. Speaker, I thank Representative Takano for his leadership. I am glad that veterans can still bring this House together.

Mr. Speaker, I was honored to work with Speaker McCarthy back in 2017 on the pilot program, which has been a resounding success to provide veterans who serve this Nation with a technology skill so they can get jobs when they are back in the United States.

There was an 84 percent graduation rate, 12,000 veterans have been helped by this program, and the average salary was $65,000. These are the types of things that we need to do in the House, bringing the House together to actually improve veterans' lives.

I appreciate Representative Ciscomani's leadership, and I look forward to this program being permanent and hopefully expanded so veterans who serve our Nation, who do the highest duty, have the opportunity to have secure livings when they are back at home.

Mr. Speaker, tomorrow the Republicans are bringing a bill to the floor that seeks to ban trans women and girls from participating in women's sports. This bill is morally wrong, it is cruel, and it is discriminatory.

President Biden has already promised to veto it, but when the United States House of Representatives passes a bill, it sends a message. If you are a trans kid right now, the message coming from our government is that you don't belong.

This leads to bullying, isolation, depression, and even suicide. I want to speak to the trans kids in America today. I want to say you belong in the American family. We are proud of you. Democrats must not be quiet. We must speak clearly to uplift and protect trans kids. We must recognize that a harm to trans kids threatens a harm to everyone, and we must embrace our diversity as a unique American strength that has the ability to unite us.

I urge my colleagues to vote ``no'' on this cruel discriminatory bill tomorrow.

Mr. Chairman, I thank the gentleman for his leadership on climate and for the role he played last Congress in passing the most historic climate legislation in the history of this country. Finally, something inspired young people, not just around this country, but around the world.

Now, what does the other side want to do? They want to start to repeal it.

That legislation which put $369 billion into climate only marked 0.1 percent over the next 10 years of what our economy is going to be, $300 trillion. It was a 0.1 percent down payment, the largest in history; and what do they want to do? They want to take away the $27 billion Greenhouse Gas Reduction Fund.

Where does that money go? It goes to rural America. It goes to factory towns. It goes to communities of color,

who have faced too much pollution, who have too much cancer in their communities. They want to take that money away from rural America, from factory towns, and who do they want to give it to? They want to give it to the fossil fuel companies. The fossil fuel companies, that is really what this bill is about. It is decreasing the royalty rate that fossil fuel companies pay on taxpayer land. It is a handout, a subsidy, a further subsidy to Big Oil.

Now, the GAO has said that it will do nothing to increase oil or gas production, and we all know the facts that oil production and gas production under this President is up. Those are the facts, that it is up.

They don't care about the production. Don't let them confuse you. They want to give subsidies to Exxon, Chevron, and Big Oil that are making record profits off the war in Ukraine and fleecing the American people.

They want to take away money from rural communities, take away money from factory towns, take away money from Americans who are suffering and give fossil fuel subsidies. That is wrong, and I thank Mr. Pallone for opposing it.

Mr. Speaker, let me be clear. The Democratic Party does not believe that the government should control the means of production. No Democrat believes that there should be government gas stations or government technology companies or government car companies.

So what does the Democratic Party believe? We believe every person in America should have childcare.

What do the Republicans say?

Their answer: Well, look at how many people Stalin killed.

We say: Let's give everyone healthcare.

The Republicans say: Well, we can't do that. Look at how many people Pol Pot killed.

We say: Let's make sure everyone has equal opportunity.

The Republicans say: We can't do that. Look at how many people Kim Jong-un is starving.

Give me a break. The American people are catching on. They know that we have lost 25 percent of wealth in the working class and middle class since 1980.

They know that the real crimes are not crimes happening abroad but the crime of paying starvation wages for hard work.

This party is actually solving the problems of the American people. That party is giving rhetoric about foreign regimes.

People will see through the rhetoric and side with the Democratic Party.

Mr. Speaker, I rise today to celebrate the historic achievements of Ron Klain, one of the best chiefs of staff in modern American history.

Ron Klain helped craft the American Rescue Plan, finally prioritizing working families and the middle class.

Ron Klain helped implement the President's vaccine plan that made Americans return to normal life.

He was key, in a closely divided House and Senate, to passing the CHIPS and Science Act. He was key to the infrastructure bill, to help the House caucus come together, progressives and moderates, and Republicans.

Ron Klain succeeded because he had personal relationships with so many Members. I believe when history is written, he will be regarded as one of the best chiefs of staff.