Floor Statements

Mr. Speaker, this week, we will vote on bills to defund the police, sow the seeds for our next financial crisis, and remove any remaining fig leaf that we might hide behind when we insist that Congress is a coequal branch of government.

I am, of course, referring to the highly misnamed GENIUS and CLARITY Acts. Let's dive in.

The way a tool is used is the purpose of the tool. If you watch a carpenter use a screwdriver, Mr. Speaker, you can ignore someone who says that those tools are for hammering nails.

Crypto has been around since 2009. Watch how people used crypto over the last 16 years, Mr. Speaker. You can ignore anyone who says that this is a tool for legitimate finance. That is because the tool is overwhelmingly used for crime.

The Russians use crypto to evade sanctions and fund their war in Ukraine. The North Koreans use it to fund their nuclear program. Hamas used it to fund their October 7 attack. Fentanyl traffickers use it to get paid. All, 100 percent, of ransomware attacks get paid in crypto.

That is a really good argument for legislation, and if the crypto industry did not want to hang out with criminals, then they would have welcomed good legislation. These bills are not that.

The CLARITY Act would exempt any platform that is the network for crypto transfers from any regulation at all. That might be attractive to my Republican colleagues because Donald Trump's World Liberty Financial is one of those platforms.

The CLARITY Act would defund white-collar police by shifting most of these coins from the well-staffed, well-funded SEC to the much smaller CFTC. It would exempt whole classes of crypto, the so-called memecoins, from any regulatory supervision.

Do you know the Trump coin, Mr. Speaker? That is a memecoin.

It would allow normal, healthy public companies to evade all SEC regulation by tokenizing their stock so they can raise more money from less informed, less sophisticated, and dumber investors.

Finally, it would allow anyone to create a self-hosted wallet, which is basically an online account where they can transfer assets between anonymous users with absolutely no regulation. If the goal is to make money laundering easier, then I have no idea how to make the CLARITY Act better.

Yet somehow, the GENIUS Act manages to be even worse because it connects the fraud of crypto to the real financial system. The GENIUS Act is for so-called stablecoins. I say so-called

because they are neither stable nor are they coins. They are bits of computer code that can be bought and sold at any time, in theory, for one real U.S. dollar. As of May, there were $247 billion of stablecoins in circulation.

How is the tool used? Six percent of them are used to buy things. Nearly 90 percent are used to provide a liquidity bridge between much shadier cryptocurrencies, the ones contemplated by the CLARITY Act.

To state the obvious, Mr. Speaker, no one will sell you a gallon of milk for a Trump coin, but they will take dollars. Criminals need stablecoins so they can make crypto crime pay.

The blockchain, of course, doesn't fix this because smart criminals cover their tracks. They have created these digital mixers that comingle lots of crypto together and spit out a clean, or shall we say laundered, blockchain. This is why the United States Treasury Department has described offshore mixers as a primary money laundering concern.

Of course, you can't make a profit buying and selling something at the same price, so the stablecoin issuers, like banks, want to earn interest on the dollars they hold, except that those issuers are not regulated like banks. We saw this when Silicon Valley Bank collapsed and the price of the USDC stablecoin, which was supposedly worth a dollar, fell to 88 cents as the run on the bank exposed the company's failure to keep cash deposits in insured accounts. USDC only looks stable today because the taxpayers bailed them out with the FDIC.

The GENIUS Act makes this problem even worse by saying that, in the event of a future bank run, those uninsured crypto deposits, the irresponsible depositors, get a claim on money before your deposits, you as a good depositor, Mr. Speaker. That puts every American's deposit at risk.

Amendments were introduced to fix every one of these problems, and every one of them was rejected, which brings me to a final point: Do you know who really benefits from crypto? Corrupt politicians do.

Just last week, the United Arab Emirates sent $2 billion to convicted money launderer Changpeng Zhao, using coins issued by Donald Trump's family. That is $2 billion in their bank account. The Trump family will earn about $30 million off this transaction, and Mr. Zhao is now asking for a pardon.

These bills will make all of those crimes easier, and if we build it, crime will come.

When the crime happens, when the President gets richer, Mr. Speaker, when your bank fails, when your deposits are wiped out, and when the crypto bubble pops, just don't say that you weren't warned.

Mr. Speaker, if you run a company that is losing market share, then you have three choices: You can go bankrupt, you can innovate, or you can come whining to Washington saying that competition scares me.

In this bill, the Republican Party is delivering that protection from competition to the fossil fuel sector.

Some numbers: In the last 15 years, coal use is down 50 percent; oil use is flat; gas is losing market share.

That is because people are transitioning to renewables. If you don't have to burn fossil fuel, Mr. Speaker, then you don't have to buy fossil fuel. People like cheap energy.

That is awesome. In the IRA, we passed rules to make sure that everybody could access those technologies, not just ones with disposable income. It is great for consumers. We prioritize those investments in red and blue States.

The result of all that is that the oil and gas sector doesn't like competition for the same reason the Republican Party doesn't like DEI, Mr. Speaker, because mediocre folks are scared about meritocracies.

They are now slashing those programs that were building out transmission, that were leading the Renaissance technology, and that were building out nuclear and solar not because they are clean, but because they are cheap. We are getting higher energy prices, a less reliable grid, and more extreme weather, all so that the fossil fuel industry doesn't have to face competition.

That is not capitalism. It is state-directed socialism. You own your life choices, Mr. Speaker.

Mr. Speaker, I rise in your defense and in defense of all of your fellow Medicaid beneficiaries.

Now before you say, wait a minute, Medicaid is for poor people, and I am not poor. Here is the thing: If you cut Medicaid, community health centers shut down, which means that instead of preventative care, folks go to emergency rooms. If you ever need urgent medical attention, and there is an ER bed available, you are a Medicaid beneficiary.

If you cut Medicaid, public school kids with special needs won't get the targeted resources that they need. If you are a kid or if you are the parent of a kid who is getting help from a teacher who is not otherwise overwhelmed by their workload, then you are a Medicaid beneficiary.

If you cut Medicaid, a whole lot of hospitals will close. If you have an operating hospital within driving distance of your home, congratulations, you are a Medicaid beneficiary.

Medicaid benefits all of us. Yet, the Republican plan that they are debating would cut that program by $700 billion, making us all sicker, more vulnerable, and making sure that people die. However, at least they can tell Donald Trump that they gave him a tax cut.

I hope they are proud of themselves because no one else is.

Mr. Speaker, a few weeks ago, I got a call from a constituent whose 46-year-old son had just

been diagnosed with stage IV colon cancer back in December, and the whole family is now wondering whether he is going to live long enough to see his kids graduate from high school.

It is sad. We sort of shared the pain of fathers who lost kids, worried about losing kids. There is no need to tell anybody here that cancer sucks.

That wasn't why he called. He called because his son's doctors told him that as you go through the course of this treatment, typically, chemo stops working after about 6 months. You see some tumor reduction, and then it stops working. At that point, you really need to start looking for alternatives.

Typically, those alternatives mean you start getting into experimental trials. Those are no longer available because Trump and Elon Musk's cuts to NIH are forcing the local hospitals, the local universities, and the drug companies that would have done these clinical trials, to shut them down.

As he put it to me: As a father, I have to balance hope with reality, but it seems like all I have right now is reality.

Then he said to me: Do the Republicans you work with know that they can get cancer, too? Are any of them going to stand up? Don't they get these calls from their constituents? Why don't they care?

I see them all looking away. How would you have me answer that question?

I tried. I did my best to explain the psychology of folks I work with who fear Trump more than they fear cancer. Mostly I just got sad because this is a guy who said I want hope; all I have is reality. What I want for hope is medicine, and all I could give him was political science to give him some reality.

These stories are in all of our districts. All of our constituents want hope. It is the least we can give them, and we are failing.

Mr. Speaker, I ask my Republican colleagues to just please grow a spine. Stand up. Give us some reason to hope. Give me a better answer to the next constituent who calls my office, or indeed yours, with those same questions.

Mr. Speaker, I missed Roll Call vote nos. 111 and 112 because I attended my daughter's senior awards night ceremony. Had I been present, I would have voted Nay on Roll Call No. 111, H.J. Res. 87, and Nay on Roll Call No. 112, H.J. Res. 89.

personal explanation

Mr. Speaker, I rise to share the story of a Federal scientist who, in his own words, was fired by President Trump and Elon Musk.

Here are his words:

I worked for the U.S. Geological Survey. I was a small

aircraft operator and captain of a research vessel. As the

only captain at my science center, my termination effectively

shuts down a vessel that is required for a number of ongoing

projects. I am also the engineer on the boat and I am not

sure my vessel will survive termination.

That is Federal money and Federal research that is being lost.

Madam Chair, I want you to imagine that a friend came over to you and said: Donald Trump taught me how to save 50 percent on my shoe purchases. All you have to do is cut off one leg.

It is just math, as the gentleman from Arizona says. So let's get out the saw and head to Foot Locker.

Now, Madam Chair, if you were a good friend, you would tell them: You are crazy, and you need to stop thinking that Donald Trump likes you.

Nonetheless, here we are today talking about the idea that we are going to save money by gutting Medicaid; slashing food assistance; defunding white-collar law enforcement, the police; and exploding budget deficits so that we can do what Donald Trump told you he wants: Give a $4\1/2\-trillion tax cut to the wealthiest Americans.

So I would say to my Republican colleagues as a friend: Donald Trump doesn't like you. He doesn't really like anybody. He just assumes that you will

never find the courage to stand up to him so he is going to keep asking you for more until you finally do.

If you are sick of being bullied and if you are ready to act like the leaders you claim to be and make sure that we leave this country in a little better shape than we found it, then grow a spine and vote hell no on this budget resolution.

Mr. Speaker, I thank the gentleman for yielding.

Mr. Speaker, last week, my colleague, Haley Stevens, and I introduced the Taxpayer Data Protection Act. I am going to get to that in a minute.

I woke up this morning to find that apparently this bill had gotten Mr. Musk's attention. I will read the tweet from that great statesman and special government employee, Elon Musk:

``Any given law will do the opposite of its name.

``The one this guy wants to pass is called `Taxpayer Protection,' which means its real goal is giving taxpayers the shaft!

``What he really cares about is hiding the biggest scam in human history.''

Those are his words, the great statesman, Elon Musk.

I would point out that we attack what we fear. As Teddy Roosevelt said: It is the man in the ring who matters.

I would like to give Mr. Musk a little view from inside this ring. A couple of weeks ago, Elon Musk and his goons hacked into the Treasury payment system. That is the system that controls $5 trillion a year of payments. They came in with unsecured software, unsecured hardware, and unvetted individuals. They claimed they only had read-only access. It now turns out that they actually had write access, as well.

We don't know what information they extracted from that system, but it may make them targets of our foreign adversaries. They could have stolen data that affects the privacy of every single American taxpayer. They also potentially accessed data on the payment systems and identities of intelligence assets that we have embedded overseas in hostile foreign governments who are risking their lives to keep America safe.

What this bill does is exactly what it says it does, notwithstanding this childish tweet. It is the Taxpayer Data Protection Act.

I point out that the only reason Mr. Musk got into the system is because, when he asked Treasury Secretary Bessent to let him into the system, the civil servant and patriot, David Lebryk, who was running the system, said: No, you cannot do this. At that point, Secretary Bessent fired Mr. Lebryk, and the theft of data occurred.

What we did in this bill is said that, going forward, the Treasury Secretary cannot allow anybody to access the Treasury payment system unless: number one, they have a top secret clearance; number two, they have no economic conflicts of interest; number three, they are not a special government employee; and, number four, they have been employed by the Federal Government for at least 1 year.

That is a problem if one is a Nazi-saluting, economically conflicted, special government employee who is so desperately in need of validation that they bought a social media company and tweaked its algorithm to amplify their own tweets and fill their own sense of self-worth, who is currently cosplaying as a public servant.

It is not a problem for taxpayers. It is not a problem for data integrity.

I understand protecting personal data has never been Elon Musk's jam, but it is necessary. This bill does exactly what it says, which is why he fears it and why he attacks it.

Let me say what I fear. I fear what happens to our country if his conflicts of interest are allowed to run roughshod and trample over Americans' right to privacy and all that has ever truly made America great.

We are attacking what we fear, as well, and I hope that we can find three Republicans who are committed to the idea that that is something worth defending.

Mr. Speaker, Haley Stevens and I introduced the Taxpayer Data Protection Act last week. This is a very simple but, tragically, an urgently necessary bill to address the hack of the U.S. Treasury payment system by Elon Musk and his band of IT goons last week.

This bill would limit the Secretary of the Treasury's ability to give access to the payment system only to people who: A, have a top secret security clearance; B, have no conflicts of interest; C, are not special government employees; and, D, have been Federal employees for at least a year.

Why is this necessary?

What happened last week comprised one of the most significant breaches of privacy and threats to our national security, perhaps ever. I am not exaggerating.

This was done with the consent of Treasury Secretary Bessent. This point is important because some of my colleagues across the aisle have suggested that somehow what they are doing is just normal diligence.

This is decidedly abnormal. It is so abnormal, in fact, that, when David Lebryk, the Fiscal Assistant Secretary of the Treasury and former Acting Secretary of the Treasury, refused to grant access to Elon Musk, Secretary Bessent fired Mr. Lebryk so that Musk could force his way in.

Let's understand the scope of what happened. The Treasury Department manages a $5 trillion-a-year Federal payment system. This is the way that every branch of government pays their bills. Like any accounting system, it is critical that all of the bills it pays are approved, legal, and accurately recorded in our ledger.

This is how we make payments on savings bonds and other debt borrowed by the United States. It is how we pay employees. It is how we pay contractors. It is how we provide foreign aid. It is how we pay tax refunds, veterans' benefits, and Social Security reimbursements. It is how we distribute money to our intelligence agents and to intelligence assets who are embedded in hostile foreign governments. Take control of this system, and one can, quite literally, destroy the United States. To put it mildly, it is a target for our adversaries.

Yet, last week, unvetted, unelected, and unconfirmed individuals hacked into that system using insecure software and hardware.

Did they tamper with the code?

Did they manipulate payment systems to prioritize payments to companies controlled by Mr. Musk?

Did they inadvertently use hardware that had been infiltrated by our allies?

Did they take classified information with them on the way out that could make them a security liability?

As we sit here right now, we don't know the answers to any of those questions. All we have is denials from the hackers.

Mr. Speaker, on what basis should we trust them?

After all, they forced their way into the system with the full consent of someone who lied to his wife and was convicted of 34 counts of fraud for lying to financial and election regulators. As the saying goes: Fool me once, shame on you. Fool me every single time, shame on me.

I would suggest that we should instead trust what this individual said when he was on the campaign trail, when he promised to enact revenge on his political enemies.

Trump and Musk now have information that they could use to identify individual taxpayers who, I don't know, contributed to a charity that they oppose for selective retribution.

If they got control of the stop payment controls, they could now block congressionally mandated payments for healthcare, roads, and bridges; or to Governors or attorneys general who are currently suing to block their unconstitutional actions in the courts.

With the personal information that they have hacked into, they could go after judges who have forced them to pay hundreds of millions of dollars in penalties after being convicted in jury trials of fraud and defamation, and they could go after companies who compete with one of their many private entities.

As long as those risks remain, we have to assume that this is going to make every single American less likely to trust that they can provide their personal information to the United States Government.

To put it bluntly, what they did last week compromised the full faith and credit of the United States. If the President and Elon Musk were acting under the direction of a hostile foreign government, this is exactly what they would do.

Mr. Speaker, I am not saying that they are. I don't know. What I am saying is that, if their actions serve only to weaken the United States, that is at the benefit of Russia, China, Iran, and all of the other countries that my colleagues across the aisle claim to love less than the United States.

A functioning Congress would provide oversight. A functioning Congress would be subpoenaing witnesses and demanding public testimony. A functioning Congress would be treating this like the five-alarm fire that every American understands that it is.

Yet, here we find ourselves knowing only that the Republican leadership is completely unwilling to fulfill their oath to defend our country against all enemies, foreign and domestic, and unwilling to protect the prerogatives of the House.

Mr. Speaker, I hope that I am wrong, but my fear is they are a lost cause, which brings us to my bill with Congresswoman Stevens.

I know that there are Republicans in this body who love our country. There are Republicans in this body who I truly love and enjoy their company, and I know that they have told me privately that they are offended and ashamed by what Donald Trump is doing to it. Some of the Republicans have even called it out.

All it takes now is for three of my colleagues across the aisle to stand up to ensure that these last 22 days are an anomaly in our history rather than the beginning of its end.

For any Republicans watching who are, shall we say, democracy curious in this moment, who privately acknowledge that this has gone too far but worry about the political and, worse, personal threats that will surely come if Republicans stand up to Donald Trump, I leave my colleagues with the empathy and the wisdom of Thomas Paine:

These are the times that try men's souls. Many will, in

this crisis, shrink from the service of their country, but he

that stands by it now deserves the love and thanks of

men and women. Tyranny, like hell, is not easily conquered.

Yet, we have this consolation with us, that the harder the

conflict, the more glorious the triumph. What we obtain too

cheap, we esteem too lightly. It is dearness only that gives

everything its value.

To my Republican colleagues: The times have found us, and America needs them.

Mr. Speaker, I yield to the Congresswoman from Michigan, Haley Stevens, my esteemed colleague and author of this bill.

Mr. Speaker, I yield to the gentlewoman from New Mexico (Ms. Stansbury).

Mr. Speaker, I yield to the gentlewoman from Wisconsin (Ms. Moore).

The first thing we do is make sure that unless you have a security clearance, a top-secret security clearance, you cannot access those records.

The second thing it does is, if you have not been a Federal Government employee for at least a year, you cannot access those records. You cannot access those records if you are a special government employee because, let's remember, we have to have oversight over the people who are doing this.

People need to disclose what their conflicts of interests are, which brings us to the fourth piece. You cannot access those records if you have a conflict of interest.

Let's just say, hypothetically, you were running a satellite company that had large contracts with the United States and were also doing business in China and you might have reason to gain that system, that would be a conflict of interest.

No.

Mr. Speaker, I thank the gentlewoman from Wisconsin (Ms. Moore) for her remarks.

Mr. Speaker, I yield to the gentleman from Texas (Mr. Turner).

Mr. Speaker, may I inquire how much time is remaining.

Mr. Speaker, Joseph Stalin said that one death is a tragedy and a million deaths is a statistic. When we talk about constitutional crises and hacks into $5 trillion systems, that risks sounding like a statistic.

I want to share just a couple of stories from my district--I represent, like all of us, \1/435\th of the population--to understand the real-life consequences that are happening now, first because of what Elon Musk and Donald Trump have done and second because of the failure of this body to fulfill its oversight role.

When these announcements came through, one of the first calls I got was from a local homeless shelter. They had been almost immediately locked out of their HUD portal. They were unable to receive any more payments. That means that 200 people in my community who thought they had housing for a cold night in the middle of January were at risk of being put back out on the street.

I got a call from a county health department that was wondering if they would be able to fulfill their WIC obligations. These are the payments to women, single women often, who have new children and are trying to make sure that they can get food. They didn't know what to tell these women, who relied on them for food and nutrition, about whether they would have the resources to keep their children alive.

The department of health and human services that called my office said that any pause of this legal, congressionally mandated funding could force them to shut down their employment and residential services offered to adults with intellectual and developmental disabilities.

What you do to the least of these, you do unto Me, right?

Four hundred people in my district and their families would have been shut out of that critical program.

I have heard from almost every single town in my district. Republican mayors, Democratic mayors, Federalists, Whigs, you name it, they are all calling and asking me whether the Federal Government will fulfill the obligations that they have underway for bridge repair, road repair, rail grade separations. They are wondering if they should continue those projects and potentially shift the risk onto their constituents.

What do they do if they don't have the borrowing capacity? If they have to shut down the project, can they finish it because it will probably raise the costs? This is all being done by a White House that claims to be pursuing financial efficiency.

At a local organization that provides victims of domestic and sexual violence with legal counseling, they have about 2,000 survivors they serve each year. They said that they are going to have to immediately scale back services and potentially close down entirely.

We are getting calls from people saying if a billionaire is so intent on cutting their access to Social Security, what happens to their health payments? I had a woman, who was a decent, kind, hardworking person, asking me if she should even bother paying her taxes this year because it is clear that Elon and Donald are dodging theirs and that they are defunding the enforcement agencies that would run an audit, and asking why she should even trust a Trump-led Treasury Department with that information.

These people are not limited to my district. They are not limited to people who voted for Kamala Harris. This hack affects every single one of us. Three patriotic Americans, Republicans, are all we need.

Mr. Speaker, I yield to the gentlewoman from Pennsylvania (Ms. Houlahan).

Mr. Speaker, I yield to the gentleman from New York (Mr. Kennedy).

Mr. Speaker, I yield to the gentleman from Colorado (Mr. Neguse), the assistant Democratic leader.

Mr. Speaker, some people have said that this bill is unnecessary because what is being done by the White House is simply going after waste, fraud, and abuse. I want to explain why that is actually the opposite of what they are doing.

First, we have to clarify that all of us in this body are the fiscal custodians of our Nation's wealth. To allow corruption or waste to persist is to squander the taxpayers' hard-earned money. We are all aligned on that issue.

Second, I would note that while we certainly have had our share of financial scandals and corruption over our history, they have almost always involved the illegal transfer of wealth from the government to the private sector--from patronage jobs to no-bid contracts to inflated hotel rates for Secret Service agents at the Trump hotel.

There is a pattern there. The easy proof of that is that while our Nation seems to have a lot of billionaires lately, you won't find them among our country's TSA workers, air traffic controllers, food inspectors, IRS agents, soldiers, intelligence officers, or the numerous other people who have dedicated their lives to public service, which makes sense.

Those of us in public service have chosen to live lives of elevated public scrutiny. A free press keeps tabs on us. Inspectors general and whistleblowers exist to ensure that grift and fraud are caught quickly.

If the Trump administration were genuinely concerned about waste, fraud, and abuse, what would they do that would be consistent with existing law? That is pretty easy. They would submit budget requests to Congress to increase funding to inspectors general and whistleblower protections. They would notify Congress of specific areas where they believe this abuse is happening, ask us to pass laws to close loopholes, and increase funding for enforcement. They would use their bully pulpit to strengthen the rule of law, remind everybody that there is a higher ethical standard to live to, and demonstrate by their behavior that they live by that standard and demand it of others.

That is the exact opposite of everything they have done. They have failed to submit budgets. They have ignored Congress' congressional power of the purse, putting spending decisions in the hands of economically connected oligarchs. They have fired or are threatening to fire inspectors general and whistleblower advocates, making it harder for ethical Federal employees to call out fraud when they see it.

They are firing FBI and other law enforcement officers who could prosecute those crimes, including ones who have active cases ongoing. They seem to have a specific bias, I would note, against FBI officers who are pursuing prosecuting waste, fraud, and abuse against the Trump family.

They are pardoning people who assaulted police officers and sending a message to the American people that ethics don't even matter. If you ignore the law, you can ignore the orders of

the court, according to JD Vance, because we are now living in a post- congressional era, according to OMB Director Russell Vought.

They are doing that while giving access to the Federal payment system to people who are not cleared and are massively conflicted. What they are doing is a case study in how to expand, perpetuate, and get away with waste, fraud, and abuse. A Congress that fulfilled its obligation to act as a check and balance on the executive branch would put a stop to that immediately.

Mr. Speaker, may I inquire as to the time remaining.

THE SPEAKER pro tempore. The gentleman from Illinois has 1 minute.

Mr. Speaker, I yield to the gentleman from California (Mr. Takano).

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

Madam Speaker, we are in a constitutional crisis. The President of the United States is trying to delete the 14th Amendment, ignoring Congress' constitutional power of the purse to illegally block Federal spending, exposing the identities of our intelligence officers to our enemies, and sending Elon Musk's unvetted minions into our financial systems to steal Americans' private information.

In the normal course, these violations would be prosecuted by the Department of Justice, but their leadership has put personal politics over the rule of law. In the normal course, Congress would act as a check and balance, but Republican leadership in both Chambers is most charitably described as missing in action. We are only 19 days in.

The White House is now dismantling USAID, pulling back on our soft power at the precise moment when China and Russia are trying to increase their influence over global affairs.

Is this because of social media conspiracies, foreign influence operations, or just because Elon Musk is still angry that USAID helped to topple apartheid in South Africa? There are no good answers to that question.

They are targeting the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, stripping our ability to make weather forecasts in the wake of rising seas, surging hurricanes, and ever more devastating wildfires. Take away our ability to give advance notice of those storms, and Americans will die.

They are opposing competitive markets, as they refuse to enact existing laws to build out EV charging networks and renewable energy because my colleagues on the other side of the aisle know that to do so would be to bring resources onto our system that would further erode the market share of more expensive and dirtier energy.

Madam Speaker, they have now stolen data from the Treasury Department files so that Elon Musk, a man who gives Nazi salutes and actively campaigns for the neo-Nazi party in Germany, can access personal information that could potentially be used to target his political enemies. This is the very foundation of fascism, all of which leaves us in this Chamber with a choice.

As we sit here on the fulcrum of history, we can act to make these 19 days a footnote to an otherwise noble history of these United States, or we can go to our graves knowing that we did nothing during the 19 days that forever destroyed this 250-year-old experiment.

We can choose evil in this moment. We can choose to ignore everything that Jesus preached in the Sermon on the Mount as we persecute the meek so we can enrich the merciless.

We can choose cowardice.

We can give $1 to a homeless man on the way to work so we can take away hundreds of millions of dollars from housing assistance once we get there, telling ourselves that to do anything else would be to cause our seat to be filled by a less compassionate soul.

We can decide that if we aren't in leadership, then our job is just to follow orders. Sometimes that excuse works. It didn't at Nuremberg.

There is no difference between any of those choices. They all lead to the same outcome.

For this reason, I will be offering a fourth option. At the appropriate time, I will offer a motion to recommit this bill back to committee.

If the House rules permitted, I would have offered this motion with an important amendment to this bill to say that it shall not take effect until the illegal freeze of taxpayer dollars that Congress appropriated to the Department of the Interior, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, and other agencies has stopped; civil rights and employment protections for nonpartisan Federal public servants are restored; and DOGE and billionaires like Elon Musk no longer have unlawful access to Federal Government systems and the private, sensitive data of taxpaying Americans.

Madam Speaker, I ask unanimous consent to insert the text of my amendment into the Record immediately prior to the vote on the motion to recommit.

Madam Speaker, that motion is a chance for all of my colleagues to choose leadership, to choose patriotism, to choose to honor the oath that we all took to the Constitution, to be remembered and honored by future generations, and, in the words of William F. Buckley, to stand athwart history and yell stop.

Mr. Speaker, I have a motion to recommit at the desk.

Mr. Speaker, on that I demand the yeas and nays.

Mr. Speaker, last week I spent an afternoon at the National Air Traffic Control Center in Aurora, Illinois. I had been invited to discuss some work our office has been doing to make sure these folks are not penalized for seeking mental health care. None of us could have anticipated that our visit would be after the crash of American flight 5342 in Washington, but it is safe to say that that office was shook. Then we started talking about mental health.

One employee said that their staff still remembers the arson attack on the facility back in 2014 and that they were nervous that recent budget cuts have limited their ability to maintain security levels at the facility.

Another employee asked how should they interpret announcements from the Trump White House that Federal employees were going to get laid off. Would they have a job? If they got laid off, who was going to do their work? How would they continue to support their families?

A female air traffic controller asked why Donald Trump immediately blamed the crash on DEI hiring practices. It wasn't lost on any of us that our air traffic controllers, like our society, are not exclusively straight, White men. She was wondering if she was about to get fired solely on account of her gender.

Now, let that all sink in. These are hardworking Federal employees who have dedicated their lives to keeping our skies safe. They are overworked, underpaid, and now they are wondering whether the President of the United States, his Republican enablers, and his IT goons are about to fire them, curtail their pay, and blame them for airline tragedies because of the way they look, who they love, and how they pray.

What possible good comes to the American people by having a bunch of stressed-out air traffic controllers?

The United States Government can't function without these nonpartisan civil servants: our air traffic controllers, our TSA agents, our VA hospital workers, and the people who make sure your Social Security payments get through.

Why would we want to break that? Maybe you want to break it because you are carrying out Russia's foreign policy. Maybe you want to break it because you are just a grifter who has figured out that you are going to short the stock market after you tank it. Maybe you are just a coward. Maybe you are an idiot. Maybe you think it is better to be proximate to power than to stand up for whatever is right. Whatever it is, it ain't patriotism, and it scares the dickens out of me that standing up for America in 2025 is a partisan endeavor.

Mr. Speaker, the International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance defines anti-Semitism, in part, as using symbols and images associated with anti-Semitism and denying the intentionality of the genocide of the Jewish people by Nazi Germany.

Here is Elon Musk, giving Nazi salutes, supporting the neo-Nazi party in Germany, and telling them that Germany has ``too much after focus on past guilt.''

This weekend, Mr. Musk was given access to U.S. citizens' personal data and the disbursement of Federal resources, allowing him to decide which Americans are able to access Federal programs like SNAP, Social Security, and Medicaid.

Let me be very clear. Putting anti-Semites in charge of the allocation of government resources and personnel does not end well for any of us. Fascism survives only so long as the evil at the top is supported by cowards down below who are willing to look the other way in exchange for some proximity to power.

Is the Republican Party going to stand up against anti-Semites and stand up for American people, or will they sit in silent, cowardly complicity with the evil of their leaders?

The world is watching us, Mr. Speaker.

Mr. Speaker, step right up, and prepare to be amazed.

This is an ordinary folder. As you can see, Mr. Speaker, no hidden compartments, and yet inside it is an invisible rabbit.

If you like that trick, Mr. Speaker, then you are going to love Donald Trump's national energy emergency. It is also totally imaginary, but as any good carnival barker will tell you, there is a sucker born every minute who falls for this shtick.

Let's review the numbers. Under the Biden administration, the U.S. created 16 million jobs, had the fastest growing economy in the OECD, held oil demand flat, drastically cut coal use, and embraced cleaner, cheaper renewables and efficiency. We decoupled economic growth from fossil fuel giving American people more heat, more light, more power, and more money.

That put downward pressure on domestic oil and gas prices which caused domestic fossil producers to export into less developed and more remunerative overseas markets.

Now, Mr. Speaker, before you say: There is no emergency here, consider this from the perspective of our poor oil and gas producers. They are losing market share. They are making less money. However, they have got an ally in Donald Trump. After all, he is the guy who forced the Saudis to curtail production in 2020 to drive up oil prices and oil industry profits. That is right. He made sure U.S. consumers paid more for gasoline.

Ta-da.

Don't be a sucker, but if you are, Mr. Speaker, I am available for parties, and I can solve all your invisible rabbit problems. You can keep hopping, Mr. Speaker.

Mr. Speaker, last week the Speaker of the House and the majority leader said that the report into serious allegations of misconduct by former Representative Matt Gaetz was ``moot'' because he had resigned from Congress.

I rise today to remind my colleagues of four names and 4 years: 1987, Bill Boner; 1990, Don Lukens; 2006, Mark Foley; 2011, Eric Massa.

Those are four Members of Congress, spanning each of the last four decades: two Democrats, two Republicans. All four of them resigned from their seats while under investigation by the House Ethics Committee. Allegations against these Members included acceptance of bribes; sharing inappropriate, sexually explicit images; and sex with a minor child.

In all of those cases, the work of the Ethics Committee continued even after their resignation. In three of the four cases, the report of the Ethics Committee was released to the public.

In none of those cases did anyone have the gall to declare those reports to be moot.

Now, in 2024, another Representative has resigned while he was under investigation by the House Ethics Committee for allegations, including acceptance of bribes; sharing of inappropriate, sexually explicit images; and sex with a minor child. Mr. Gaetz is also alleged to have engaged in illicit drug use.

We all understand that even the allegation of such activities being committed by one of us cheapens this whole institution. We also all respect the traditions of this House. While they may sometimes need reform, we tread carefully before setting any new precedents.

We find ourselves with a tradition going back at least four decades that Members of the House who are under investigation by the Ethics Committee for these sorts of allegations cannot prevent that information from becoming public simply by resigning from their seat, yet that is exactly the precedent that the majority voted to upend last week when they voted to kill the resolution to compel the release of the Ethics Committee report on Mr. Gaetz.

Every Member of this body now needs to ask themselves if they believe that the precedent of this House holding itself and its Members to a higher ethical standard is one worth keeping.

They need to ask themselves if they believe that even if you resign from this body, future employers, whether in the public or private sector, should know if you can be trusted to represent their institutions with dignity and honor, can be trusted with their financial resources, can be trusted around underage children.

Make no mistake: Everyone who voted against the release of the report last week was saying that, no, the time has come for a new precedent where the rules no longer apply to us; where from this day forth, the Republican majority shall loudly proclaim: What happens in D.C. stays in D.C.

As our friend and former colleague Elijah Cummings would have reminded us, we are better than this.

Upholding precedents and maintaining the integrity of this House is not moot.

Mr. Speaker, I rise to raise a question of the privileges of the House and offer a resolution previously noticed.

Mr. Speaker, on that I demand the yeas and nays.