Floor Statements

Mr. Speaker, I yield back to the majority leader to inquire as to the calendar for the remainder of this week--the bills that we just finished voting on, go through the rest of the bills that were on the schedule. Since there is no schedule that we see before us, if the majority leader could tell us what to expect next after this last vote.

Mr. Speaker, I thank the gentleman for yielding. As we anticipate possible votes tonight, possible votes tomorrow, the two major pieces of legislation that are still out there, and specifically the bill that went before the Rules Committee yesterday, roughly 2,500 pages.

One of the things we talked about is, if that bill were to come to the floor, currently there is no Congressional Budget Office or Joint Committee on Taxation score on those bills, would there be a score on those bills prior to them coming to the floor for a vote?

The JCT is obviously important, and I appreciate that the gentleman said there would be a JCT score, but on the CBO score, there have been some significant changes made in the Rules Committee since those CBO conversations.

Would that be revised to include the new version of the bill?

Madam Speaker, I rise today to honor an American hero and a dedicated husband and father. Jared Keyworth, from Mandeville, LA, served as a Senior Inspector with the United States Marshals Service and tragically lost his life in the line of duty earlier this month.

Senior Inspector Keyworth began his service with the Marshals in July of 2010. Upon graduation from the United States Marshals Academy, Senior Inspector Keyworth was first assigned to the District of Colorado-Denver and later served in the District of Southern Florida- Miami and District of Eastern Louisiana-New Orleans. In 2018, he was selected to serve the USMS Investigative Operations Division, Technical Operations Group in Baton Rouge, LA.

Prior to Senior Inspector Keyworth's service with the United States Marshals Service, he served his nation in the United States Army ``Old Guard'', the Caisson Platoon, HHC 1st Battalion, 3rd U.S. Infantry Regiment. While in the Army, Jared Keyworth escorted the riderless horse, the symbol of a fallen leader who will never ride again, during President Ronald Reagan's funeral.

On September 28, 2021, Senior Inspector Keyworth was critically wounded while in pursuit of a violent felony offender in the state of Mississippi. He passed away on October 1, 2021.

Jared will forever be in our hearts and minds, and Jennifer and I will keep his family in our prayers. We are eternally grateful for his service to our great country.

Mr. Speaker, I rise today to honor an American hero. Jared Keyworth from Mandeville, Louisiana, served as a senior inspector with the United States Marshals Service and tragically lost his life in the line of duty earlier this month.

Senior Inspector Keyworth began his service with the Marshals Service in 2010 and took on assignments in Denver, Miami, and New Orleans. Most recently, he was selected to serve in the marshals' technical operations group in Baton Rouge.

Prior to Jared's service with the marshals, he served in the United States Army's Old Guard. During President Reagan's funeral, Jared escorted the riderless horse, the symbol of a fallen leader who will never ride again.

On September 28 of 2021, Jared was critically wounded while in pursuit of a violent felony offender. He passed away on October 1.

Jared will forever be in our hearts and minds, and we are eternally grateful for his service to our great country.

Madam Speaker, I rise for the purpose of inquiring of the majority leader the schedule for next week.

Madam Speaker, I yield to the gentleman from Maryland (Mr. Hoyer), my friend, the majority leader.

Madam Speaker, I thank the gentleman. As we go through the bills that may come up next week--of course, we just finished a week bringing some bills to the floor, but as we look around the country, clearly the main concern we are hearing from families are all of the various crises that are facing American families.

You have an inflation crises with goods of all kinds costing dramatically more when people go to buy things at the grocery store. If they try to get a new appliance, they are waiting longer, they are paying more money.

You think about the energy crisis with families paying 50 percent more for gasoline, in some cases, with dramatic increases at the pump and the pain that it causes, especially lower income families.

The border crisis, where every day we see stories of thousands of people coming across our border illegally. The Attorney General was before the Committee on the Judiciary and he couldn't even give a number of how many people have illegally crossed or plan to address it.

The supply chain crisis that we see getting worse and worse with ships backed up, maybe almost all the way to China, because that crisis is not being addressed.

So when you think about all these crises that families are angry about--it is hurting hardworking families, it is costing them, it is taking money out of their paychecks--there has not been a single bill brought to this floor last week. It doesn't sound like any is being brought to the floor next week to address any of those crises.

I would ask the gentleman, would he be open to bringing actual legislation to the floor to address the various, serious crises that families are facing today?

Madam Speaker, I yield to the gentleman from Maryland.

Madam Speaker, clearly, we stand ready to help on all of those issues. But had Washington spending and borrowing money solved the problem, we would not have any of these crises because trillions of dollars have been borrowed and spent under this administration.

In the previous administration, we worked together on those budget deals, every one of them. The Paycheck Protection Program and the CARES Act were all very bipartisan, and it included addressing the debt that went along with it.

There has been nothing bipartisan in any of the debt that has been racked up under this administration. So if the gentleman is concerned about the full faith and credit of the United States, which we all are, then stop borrowing and spending trillions more dollars.

Families get this, by the way. Families know that if spending trillions was going to solve the problem, there wouldn't be a problem because trillions have been borrowed and spent just from January to October. What they know is it is the very borrowing and spending of trillions of dollars in Washington that has exacerbated these problems.

The inflation crisis would not exist if you didn't have Washington borrowing and spending trillions more dollars, making it harder for people to get back into the workforce, making it harder for the supply chain to be addressed.

What was inherited? I think we know what was inherited by the Biden administration. We had energy dominance the day President Biden took the oath of office. Not only were we producing enough energy for our needs, but gas was less than $2 a gallon all across America. We were exporting oil and natural gas to our friends around the world. We were undermining our enemies around the world.

Instead of President Biden begging OPEC and Russia to produce more oil, we were actually shipping oil and gas to our friends because we could produce enough for ourselves. We created great American jobs here at home. We had low-cost energy.

By the way, the technological advances we made here in this country, if there is anywhere in the world where fossil fuel production is going to be done, you want it done here because we have actually lowered carbon emissions. We were lowering carbon emissions in America while producing more energy. Now we have become more reliant on OPEC nations, on Russia.

Not only is that bad for American families, but they are paying more at the pump because of that crisis created by President Biden's actions. He inherited an energy-dominant Nation. Now you have the President of the United States begging OPEC and Russia to produce more oil, which they are not going to do because they want oil to be over $80 a barrel, but they actually emit more carbon to produce the same oil.

Oil is going to be needed to run an economy, any economy anywhere in the world. You want to make it here because we do it better than anybody else. But that is not what is being done. We have an answer for it.

I know, last night, President Biden was asked specifically about this crisis that he created. His response was, ``I don't have a near-term answer'' for high gas prices.

Well, President Biden might not have an answer, but we do. We have a number of bills, and I know the gentleman has pointed it out. We have a number of answers.

Here is one. H.R. 684 green-lights the Keystone pipeline. You want to talk about creating thousands of good jobs, private-sector money, more energy independence for America; this bill would do just that, and it would do it today.

If pipelines were a problem--I know President Biden doesn't want American pipelines, but he green-lighted the Russian pipeline, the Nord Stream II. So, clearly, it is not pipelines; it is American pipelines he doesn't want.

Why don't we bring up H.R. 684 to create jobs and lower energy costs? H.R. 543 and H.R. 859 would both green-light more production in America that President Biden shut down. There was production going on all across America, really good, safe, environmentally sound production. Again, our standards are the best in the world.

For people who want to bash America, go find a country that produces energy that does it better than America. We do it best. Yet, President Biden, through executive action, shut a lot of that production down. These bills would open that back up again. These bills would lower gas prices.

I know President Biden isn't interested in that because, in his own budget, he specifically blocks the Corps of Engineers from doing infrastructure projects that would lower energy production. President Biden blocks that. You would think OPEC would have come up with that idea or maybe Russia would have come up with that idea. No, that was President Biden in his own budget who said you can't even do infrastructure projects if it lowers energy production. Who would come up with that? Yet, that is in his budget.

Then you go to the border crisis, again, self-created. President Biden inherited a secure border. A wall was being built. You had agreements with South American and Central American countries.

Remain in Mexico was a great policy that President Biden reversed; he blocked it. Did he block it because it was bad policy? No, it was working really well. It was an agreement between two neighboring countries. He just blocked it because President Trump did it. It was working, yet he got rid of it. He could go and reinstate that tomorrow.

We have bills that would solve the border crisis. I will read a few of them off.

H.R. 4828 is a bill I brought to the majority leader's attention back a month ago, in September. This is a bill that deals with a number of problems facing our border today, and it would give more tools to our Border Patrol agents to secure our border.

H.R. 471 is another bill I brought to the gentleman's attention a month ago that would help secure America's border, dealing with the crisis.

None of these bills seem to draw the interest of the majority even though every one of them would address these very real crises facing families that were not around a year ago.

President Biden inherited a secure border; he inherited energy dominance; and he inherited an economy that was recovering from the worst pandemic we have seen in lifetimes. Then, on top of that, there is a proposal to raise trillions more in taxes, more in Soviet-style spending coming out of Washington that would make inflation worse.

The gentleman is correct. We don't support those ideas that would make inflation worse, that would raise gas prices even higher. But we bring a lot of good ideas that would address these crises. We just want to see these ideas brought to the floor.

When you look at the floor schedule and there is nothing last week, next week, a month ago to address any of these crises, these are the things that families are having the hardest time with, and they are struggling.

Inflation is the biggest tax on lower and middle-income families. President Biden promised he wouldn't raise taxes on anybody making less than $400,000.

Yet, in the tax proposal that President Biden wants to bring forward by next week so that he can go fly to Europe and talk about other proposals that would make it impossible to produce energy in America, they include, among other things, a natural gas tax. That tax would fall the hardest on lower income families, not the millionaires and the billionaires. It would be people making less than $60,000 that would be hit the hardest by a natural gas tax. Yet, it is in the bill.

You talk about adding 83,000 IRS agents. Maybe some people in Washington think that is job creation. Most people in America have shivers running down their spines at the thought of the Federal Government, which now wants to track every transaction if they make more than $10,000 a year, to track all their transactions with 83,000 new IRS agents. Again, maybe to some that is called infrastructure, but to most people, it is called a nightmare right before Halloween.

Why don't we bring bills to the floor to address these crises? If these aren't the bills that the majority likes, let's work on some other ones. All of these would address these problems, and many of them would get us back to the point where we were, where we had a secure border, where we had energy dominance, where we had jobs being created.

Each of these last few months you have seen jobs created dramatically lower than what the projections were because there are all of these self-created crises by the administration that are making it harder on hardworking families. It is the lowest income families that are being hit the hardest by these failed policies and all the Big Government socialist spending coming out of Washington. We don't need more. We need to actually go and confront the problem that is creating a debt crisis and all the other crises that families are facing.

It is not going to be by spending more money and taxing people more. It is going to be by working to address each of them, starting at the root of the problem and what created them. I yield to the gentleman.

Madam Speaker, I sure hope that the gentleman is concerned not just about making sure the credit card bill is paid but making sure that the spending that maxed out the credit card is being done responsibly.

There are some key facts the gentleman left out in his conversation about how we got here. We got here because in January, one party, the Democratic Party--who is in the majority in the House, is in the majority in the Senate, and has control in the White House--made a decision--I don't agree with the decision--but made a decision that they were going to go it alone on the spending side. They decided that they were going to go max out the credit card. We urged them not to do it. We still to this day are urging not to go and just spend trillions and trillions more dollars.

If my friend wants to work with us on what the responsible decision should be, we are right here. We have been here from the beginning.

Madam Speaker, do you know, to this day President Biden has not met-- we are in October, late October. President Biden has not met with the House Republican leadership on any of these issues--any of them.

The gentleman referenced a number of opportunities where it was described we were there to help President Trump. The majority wasn't just there to help President Trump, the majority was in the meetings when the decisions were being made.

The Paycheck Protection Program was not a partisan exercise. In fact, it was one of the most successful bipartisan exercises I have seen Congress come together and do. Everybody was in the room making those decisions. They were all very important decisions and big decisions that involved a lot of money, and we all made those decisions together. We all voted for those bills together, and then, ultimately, the spending that went along with it, the debt that went along with it was part of that negotiation and we voted for it together.

There has not been a decision made this year where the majority has negotiated with the minority to figure out if we could come to an agreement, so the majority did it on their own and look, the majority had the votes to do it.

But when the majority maxes out the credit card on their own, don't come and chide our side and say: Well, you need to be there to pay the bill when we weren't included in the decision to max out the credit card. And now that the credit card is maxed out, it is not as if there is an effort to slow down, in fact, it seems like it is full steam ahead, damn the torpedoes, spend trillions of dollars more on additional things like, again, 83,000 more IRS agents.

Madam Speaker, do you think anybody on this side supports that?

That is not something we support. It will rack up more debt, by the way. We don't support it, but I guess the gentleman expects we should pay for it even if we don't support it. Maybe if there was a negotiation where both sides were part of it.

Sam Graves, who is the ranking member of the Transportation and Infrastructure Committee, has not been included in any of these decisions on infrastructure. Yet, I am sure the gentleman would expect him to vote for whatever comes out of a partisan exercise. That is not how things work, and I know the gentleman knows that.

Again, if the President wants to work with us--

Of course, those are true.

We all negotiated on the three different debt ceiling increases that happened under the Trump administration, including CARES and the Paycheck Protection Program. They were very bipartisan.

Does the gentleman disagree with that?

Those are the facts. And so when the gentleman looked at those facts, the gentleman talked about jobs and COVID. Before COVID happened, we had the hottest economy maybe in the history of our country. Wages were up for every demographic group. Those are facts. The gentleman saw small businesses up and women-owned small businesses were up over 20 percent. African-American unemployment was at its lowest level, Hispanic unemployment was at its lowest level, and then COVID came along.

Maybe there is a reason why the majority won't hold a hearing on the origin of COVID, but if the gentleman wants to just say because of COVID all of that is Donald Trump's fault, clearly the economy shut down, and we worked to get it back going again, and it is coming back. Frankly, some of the efforts to pay people not to work--and it is not just enhanced unemployment, it is a whole list of things--are hurting the recovery.

But those things were happening before COVID hit a year and a half ago, and it was because of good, sound policies that got us a secure border and that got us energy dominance, and, frankly, it was things like that that helped us get the economy going again because it was creating good jobs.

Keystone pipeline was moving forward. Those are good union jobs, by the way, and that was ended by President Biden unilaterally. He never even tried to have a meeting and a conversation with us to see if we could come to an agreement.

Again, I guess it is the prerogative of the majority. If the gentleman is in the majority, then the majority doesn't have to talk to the minority. But just because the majority didn't talk to the minority and they made decisions on their own about what they wanted to do, they didn't try to reach an agreement with us, to come to us after the fact when the majority has spent trillions of dollars, it has wreaked havoc through our economy, it has led to inflation we haven't seen in generations and gas prices we haven't seen in decades, then the majority wants to come and not ask us how to fix it--we have got ideas on how to fix it--the majority asks us to pay the bill.

Why don't we work together on the front end and not rack up trillions more in spending?

Because the things the gentleman talked about would rack up trillions more in spending which created these problems, and we were not a part of those conversations. I wish we were a part of the conversations and it was done in a bipartisan way. But, again, President Biden, 10 months into his administration, has yet to sit down and meet with House Republican leadership to talk about any of these ideas and solutions we could come up with together which is how it should be done.

Madam Speaker, I yield to the gentleman.

No one is being threatened.

Madam Speaker, I would be happy to answer the question. It might not be the answer the gentleman wants, but I would be happy to be part of an actual bipartisan negotiation on how to solve our country's debt. That has not happened.

But if you look at the bill that the gentleman brought to this floor to deal with the debt over a month ago, it absolutely dealt with spending, not that already happened, but that will happen in the future, including the trillions of dollars of debt-laden bills that spend more money in Washington.

It picked a date, and the date that the gentleman put in the bill that was brought to this House floor was December 31, 2022. That is not spending we have already done. That is spending that the majority plans to do in a very partisan way, not just through this year but through all of next year.

When we are not even included in those decisions, then you come and say, well, you should just be expected to pay for whatever we want to spend, trillions more, between now and the end of a year, over a year from now, that is not a negotiation. That is not even an attempt to want to work with the other side.

Now, again, the gentleman is in the majority. In the Senate, they are in the majority, and the gentleman very well knows that both sides have the ability, if you want to do the spending on your own, to address the debt that would be created by all of that spending on your own. It doesn't take 60 votes. The gentleman is well aware that there is a legislative instrument that if all the spending wants to be done in a partisan way--and I am talking about the trillions that are still laying in front of us that the gentleman said may come to the floor next week, not necessarily will, might come to the floor, might come to the floor a month from now, might come to the floor a year from now. And we won't even be included in those negotiations, but we ought to be expected to vote for the debt that would be racked up by it?

If the other side were being asked to do that, you know your majority wouldn't go for that. But we wouldn't do it. We would at least include you in a negotiation. If we didn't want to, then we would be responsible for doing it on our own if we did the spending on our own. And the tools are there to do just that.

Threatening to default on the Nation's debt when legislative instruments are included in this majority to not have default is irresponsible. That threat keeps being thrown out there by the majority, even though the majority knows they could, with a majority vote in the House and a majority vote in the Senate, address the debt that wants to be racked up between now and next December.

Again, I would urge that all of that new spending doesn't happen, that we come together and negotiate what budget limits should be like we have done in the past under Republican and Democrat Presidents. Those were bipartisan deals. There has been no bipartisan attempt to do that this year.

Why is there opposition to infrastructure? Well, first of all, if there was a desire to do bipartisan infrastructure, you are going to find a lot of takers over here. I know the gentleman made an assertion--probably not realizing it--but there would have been no threats, no threats made on our side of the aisle on a bill.

Now, I see people being followed into bathrooms on the other side and all kinds of other things being done. There are no threats on this side. What we said is, we want an infrastructure negotiation. But the day that the deal was reached in the Senate with the President, he turned around about an hour later and undermined that deal by tying it, linking it, to the tax-and-spend bill.

That is when it became a problem because taxing and spending trillions more dollars would be a problem to this country. It would hurt middle-class families and lower income families to have that natural gas tax, to have all the additional inflation on top of the inflation they already see. It became a problem for all of those reasons, that package, not the individual bill.

As the President himself has said multiple times, as the Speaker herself has said multiple times, it is not a standalone bill. It is not two standalone bills. It is a package. They are married together at the hip.

That is where the opposition comes from. By the way, there is a really

good bipartisan infrastructure bill that is out there. S. 3011 came over from the Senate unanimously. $500 billion of infrastructure is authorized in this bill. If the gentleman would bring this up for a vote, it would probably fly overwhelmingly. It would allow for, again, about $500 billion immediately that could be spent on infrastructure all across this country, plus an additional large sum next year--maybe $100 billion next year--on top of the $500 billion.

It just passed out of the Senate unanimously; every Republican, every Democrat supported this bill. This is real infrastructure. This is not tied to some tax-and-spend bill that maybe the gentleman might think is a good idea. We surely don't. We know how damaging it would be to our country and to our economy and to middle and lower income families.

This is a very bipartisan bill that could be bipartisan here, where we could be a part of a negotiation on something really good, where States wouldn't have to wait months. They have the money ready to go today. This gives them the flexibility to make their own decisions on what is best for the infrastructure in each of these States.

Maryland would be able to control their own destiny on over $1 billion. Louisiana would be able to control their own destiny on over $1 billion today if this bill passed.

So, absolutely, we support real infrastructure. If it is tied together and married to something that would be devastating to the economy, of course not. Maybe if the majority would look at delinking those two and abandoning the bill that would raise taxes--and even internally in the Democrat Caucus those discussions have been going on. That is not just Republicans asking for that. There are a number of Democrats asking for that, too. That would be a bipartisan initiative to say we are jettisoning this idea that we are going to raise hundreds of billions, if not multiple trillions--whatever the number--if it is $1 trillion, $5 trillion it would be devastating to our economy and middle-class families.

Let's abandon that and go work on something that would actually be real infrastructure that we could all rally behind. It would pass overwhelmingly. It would be good for the country. President Biden would get to sign it into law. We would support that.

I ask the gentleman to look at S. 3011, and if he is not a supporter of that plan that passed with 100 Senators, maybe there is a better idea. But this one is a really good one that got every Republican and every Democrat in the Senate earlier this week to say yes. We would be happy to say yes to it as well if we are given that opportunity. I yield to the gentleman.

Madam Speaker, I thank the gentleman again for his comments.

There is clearly a bipartisan bill on infrastructure that we would be happy to support, S. 3011. Nobody in the House on the Republican side was included in any of those negotiations, including the ranking member of the Transportation Committee who he himself has been urging a large bill. $450 billion was put on the table, which, by the way, if that were passed, it would be the largest infrastructure bill in the history of the United States. He was pushed out of the negotiations.

Again, the majority has that ability because they are in the majority, but they surely never tried a bipartisan negotiation, as well the gentleman knows, on those prior budget agreements.

It wasn't just voted for or against because of who was in the White House. It was voted for by both parties because the negotiation on what that spending limit was was agreed upon by the leadership of both sides.

The House, Senate, Republican, Democrat, we came to agreement on those budgets, and that is why the gentleman voted for it. That is why I voted for it, because it was a negotiated agreement. There was give and take on a number of items but ultimately agreed by a date certain but under a budget agreement.

There is a date certain of December 31 of 2022 that has no bipartisan agreement. We know what a lot of the spending will be, because trillions have already been spent that we were not included in and we strongly opposed. The gentleman knew that when he brought the bills to the floor, but he wanted to bring them to the floor anyway because you had the votes. I get it. That is the way majorities work.

But if you decide to exclude one party from negotiations and go spend the money anyway and then have a whole list of trillions more in spending down the road and include that in a bill, I don't really think anybody expects the people who were pushed to the curb to vote for the credit card limit being increased with all the spending that is going to continue to be racked up--not that has already been racked up--that will be racked up between now and December 31 of 2022 is going to be done in a partisan way. That is what the record has been so far this year on the trillions that have already been added by bills passed by this majority. They weren't bipartisan. Again, that is the prerogative of the majority.

We have stood here ready. We have listed bill after bill to address crisis after crisis, none of which have been brought to the floor. We are still ready to go to solve these problems. We have

talked about a bipartisan bill on infrastructure that we can support. Ultimately, the majority makes that decision.

I yield to the gentleman.

Madam Speaker, we need to do this in a bipartisan way, which hasn't happened. But partisanship is not patriotism, and we have seen a lot of partisanship.

I have served in leadership under three different Presidents now. When we had to negotiate how to come together on the priorities of our government, how to properly fund things and deal with our debt, under President Obama, we had those bipartisan meetings in the White House. When President Trump came in, we had those bipartisan meetings in the White House. Still to this day, late October, 10 months into his Presidency, there has not been a single time where President Biden has brought a bipartisan group of our leadership together.

I understand he has met with Democrat leadership many times in the White House. Again, that is his prerogative. He is the President; you are in the majority. If you want to do all of this in a partisan way, I don't suggest it is healthy and I don't suggest it is the right way. Every President I have served under in leadership has had bipartisan meetings to have these conversations and come to an agreement. That has not happened under this President.

He ought to go and live by the words that he promised during the campaign, that he would work with both parties in a bipartisan way. To not have met with House Republican leadership once during his Presidency, 10 months in, is not an acceptable way to run this government.

Then all of a sudden, things end up partisan, and everybody throws their hands up and goes: How did this happen? Just reach out. He is the President of the United States. If he says let's go tomorrow, we will be there tomorrow. But he won't do that. We have asked for meetings. At some point they have to have them.

Again, if he doesn't want them to happen, that is his prerogative, because the same party controls all levers of government. But if the same party controls all levers of government and wants to just toss aside the other party in either Chamber--oh, we worked with Senators. Even some of those Senators that were mentioned are not supporting what is happening with debt, because there has been no negotiation with both parties on the debt, on the spending that gets us to the debt. So there can be proposals for trillions more in spending. If we oppose it, we have been very clear why we have that opposition.

It wasn't us that married those bills together. President Biden came here just two weeks ago. They said he was going to be closing the deal. He was going to be the closer. We were going to have a vote on the House floor. The Speaker promised there would be a vote on the House floor.

Instead, at that meeting, it has been reported that he said the two bills are tied together. Since then, he said: I want both of them coming to me. He has tied them together. I wish he wouldn't. That is the President's prerogative. He has made it very clear. The Speaker has made it very clear. It has not been our side that has done that. We want to separate those as a package, but they have been kept together as a package. Until then, at least we have been looking for other opportunities, and we found one in S. 3011 that passed the Senate unanimously. That would be $500 billion in real infrastructure today. Every Governor of every State would have the ability to start doing $500 billion in new infrastructure projects. We think that would be really good for our country. We support it. We are ready to negotiate.

Madam Speaker, I yield to the gentleman.

Madam Speaker, we stand ready to work, if there is bipartisan efforts made. We will see if that develops.

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

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

Madam Speaker, I want to thank Chairman Pallone and Ranking Member Rodgers of the full committee, as well as Ranking Member Latta and Chairman Doyle of the Communications and Technology Subcommittee, for helping bring my bill, H.R. 3919, the Secure Equipment Act, to the House floor.

Madam Speaker, I also want to especially thank Congresswoman Eshoo for partnering with me on this bill. We have worked on a number of telecommunications laws, and this is yet another example of Congresswoman Eshoo and I coming together, and our staffs, to address a very important threat to American families.

Madam Speaker, my bill is about one thing, and that is stopping the Chinese Communist Party and Chinese companies that act on their behalf from compromising our telecommunications networks and stopping them from jeopardizing American national security and the important data that all Americans hold sacred.

H.R. 3919, the Secure Equipment Act, puts a full stop to China infiltrating our networks by prohibiting the FCC from issuing equipment licenses to Chinese telecommunications equipment companies that are identified as national security threats.

This legislation builds off the important work of the Energy and Commerce Committee when it came together in a bipartisan manner in 2019, as Chairman Pallone mentioned, on his critical legislation that will address the threat of China by getting the Secure and Trusted Communications Networks Act signed into law.

One of the requirements of that act instructed the FCC to publish a list of telecommunication equipment companies deemed to be national security threats. In fact, earlier this year, the FCC published that list of companies. As you can see, five companies ended up on that list. All of these companies are Chinese companies that are either partly or wholly owned by the Chinese Government and that have ties to the CCP.

Madam Speaker, we know all too well that the CCP wastes no time and no opportunity to expose American vulnerabilities and to try to undermine our national security. There are way too many examples of that.

Since all Chinese companies are subject to Chinese national security laws, at any point the CCP could choose to exploit these listed companies and require them to tap into their access in American networks to gain critical, sensitive data, both from individuals as well as sensitive government information.

While the 2019 law made great strides in thwarting the threat of China in our networks, U.S. carriers can still privately purchase equipment from these listed companies on the open market.

By prohibiting the FCC from issuing any equipment licenses to these companies that are listed as national security threats, our bill seeks to close the gap in existing law and slam the door on jeopardized Chinese equipment from threatening our American networks and from threatening the privacy and data of American families.

Madam Speaker, the time has never been more urgent. It is important that this body do all it can to stop the undue and malign influences of the CCP from infiltrating our data and our telecommunications network.

Madam Speaker, I urge all of my colleagues to support this bill, and I reserve the balance of my time.

Madam Speaker, I yield 2 minutes to the gentleman from Ohio (Mr. Latta), the ranking member of the Communications and Technology Subcommittee.

Madam Speaker, I yield 1 minute to the gentleman from

Indiana (Mr. Pence), my friend and also a member of the committee.

Madam Speaker, the gentleman does not, and I am prepared to close.

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

Madam Speaker, I would just again join, along with my colleague, Anna Eshoo from California, in urging all Members of the House to pass the Secure Equipment Act and protect the privacy of data from Americans as well as that sensitive information that flows across networks that is also held by the government.

Let's delist and not certify companies that have already been deemed by the FCC to be national security threats. I urge all of my colleagues to support this bill, and I yield back the balance of my time.

Madam Speaker, I thank my friend from Pennsylvania, Dr. Joyce, for yielding and for leading this effort to defend American energy.

Madam Speaker, you might wonder: Why are we on the House floor defending American energy? Who could possibly, in the United States Congress, be opposed to American energy?

Unfortunately, as we have seen this year, from President Biden to Speaker Pelosi to this whole Democrat majority, they have had an all- out assault on American energy.

It started day one when President Biden took the oath of office. That day,

he drove down Pennsylvania Avenue and started signing executive orders to destroy America's energy independence.

It started with the Keystone pipeline. It was a great relationship between the United States and our great friend, Canada, our neighbor from the north, a pipeline to bring energy to America where it could be refined in a really good, environmentally protective way in the United States of America. But President Biden said no.

You would think he said no because he is just against pipelines in general, except just weeks later, President Biden green-lighted a pipeline in Russia, from Russia to Germany. So, President Biden was against American energy jobs and American pipelines, but he was okay with helping Russia, giving a gift to Russia.

He kept going on and on. He put a moratorium on drilling in the United States, but then, just weeks ago, he tried to ban not only American energy but then he goes and begs OPEC and Russia to produce more oil. You can't make this stuff up.

If American energy is so bad, why are you begging OPEC and Russia to produce fossil fuels? They are either good or they are bad.

The question here, Madam Speaker, is: Where should energy be made?

If you look at this whole global warming, Green New Deal push by the President to increase taxes on Americans, you wonder why Americans are paying 40 percent more for gasoline at the pump. It is because of President Biden's assault on American energy.

But he has given OPEC a free pass. In fact, he is giving OPEC more leverage by cutting off our supply and letting them increase their supply.

Now, you might think Russia or Saudi Arabia or China came up with this crazy strategy. No, it was President Biden and Speaker Pelosi and a Democrat Congress that came up with this, and you are seeing it in their tax proposal, this crazy $5.5 trillion massive tax-and-spend proposal we are going to see come into play this week on the House floor--more assaults on American energy.

Who pays? I will tell you who pays: the American consumer, families, hardworking families. In fact, the people hit the hardest are the lowest income people.

Remember when President Biden promised if you make less than $400,000, you won't pay a dime in new taxes? Sounded great, except he is already pledging to break that promise by increasing taxes on, among many other things, natural gas.

That is right. If you use natural gas to heat your home or cool your home, you are going to pay more, double digits more, every single month under President Biden's plan. That is right. He broke that promise.

Then if you look at all of his other assaults on American energy, if it was all about carbon emissions and saving the planet, well, guess what? Those foreign countries that we were talking about, whether it is Russia or OPEC nations, they emit more carbon to make the same oil. To produce oil emits carbon.

In America, we actually do it better than anywhere else in the world. If you want to reduce carbon emissions, make more of it here in America, not less.

Why would you want to give a gift to countries that don't have the same standards we have?

Too often, you see liberals on the other side wanting to bash America every single day. You know, hit America, attack America.

Enough is enough. People are figuring this out. They are paying more at the pump. They are paying more at the grocery store. They are paying more for everything because of these radical assaults on American energy and American entrepreneurialism.

Free market capitalism is under assault by Big Government socialism. That is what this fight is about.

We are going to continue to stand up for American energy and to get the facts out. If you are going to make stuff anywhere in the world, if you want to produce steel, make it in America, because if you make it in China or India or some other country, they emit five times more carbon.

Yet, what President Biden is doing in his policies is attacking that very American energy that works to create great jobs here at home to rebuild our middle class, to help those hardworking families who are sick and tired of paying more, and stop giving gifts to foreign countries like China.

I thank my colleague from Pennsylvania for his leadership.

Mr. Speaker, I rise to inquire of the majority leader the schedule for next week.

Mr. Speaker, I yield formally to the gentleman from Maryland (Mr. Hoyer), my friend, the majority leader.

Mr. Speaker, I thank the gentleman.

As it relates to the reconciliation bill that the Budget Committee will be taking up tomorrow, the initial estimates on that bill are that it would, roughly, add up to be about $3.5 trillion in new taxes and spending.

There are now estimates that that number will mushroom to well over $4.2, $4.3 trillion or higher, but we still don't have a CBO score on the lion's share of that legislation. The word we are getting from CBO, it may be weeks or months that we would get that score.

Does the gentleman know what the timeline is for getting an actual estimate from CBO on what the cost of that legislation is and will be, come tomorrow, when the Budget Committee takes it up?

Mr. Speaker, I thank the gentleman.

Then last week, I think we had about a dozen committees in Congress that took up different parts of that bill. Unfortunately, it seems that the cost keeps going up.

Could we get an assurance that before the bill actually comes to the floor for a vote before this House, we would get a CBO score to know how many trillions of dollars in new taxes and in new spending would be included and voted on before the House?

And, obviously, paid for would include new taxes--

--including things like that are in this bill. There is a tax on natural gas, which every family in America that uses natural gas to heat their homes in winter or cool their homes in summer would have to pay.

I know that President Biden had committed that nobody making under $400,000 would pay any new amount in taxes. Clearly, that provision of the bill would violate President Biden's pledge.

I am not sure if the gentleman anticipates new taxes like that being removed from the bill so that the President's pledge would not be violated.

If you have any insight on that, I would be happy to yield.

Does the gentleman know if there is a possibility that the bill before the Budget Committee tomorrow, because they did expedite that hearing--just yesterday, there wasn't supposed to be a Budget Committee on Saturday to take up the reconciliation bill, so, clearly, it has been sped up. Is that because there is a possibility that the reconciliation bill could be voted on before the House next week?

Does the gentleman have any idea on when we would find that out?

Well, I will be watching, for sure.

We all will.

On Monday, the schedule shows that the infrastructure bill is supposed to be coming up before the House floor. Is that going to be for debate and consideration, or will there be an actual vote on Monday night on the infrastructure bill?

Well, we will be very involved in that debate as well.

As it relates to the next few weeks, there has been some talk that possibly the week of October 4 or beyond may be taken back as district work schedules to come back here.

Does the gentleman have any insight into what the schedule holds from October 4 and beyond?

Well, we know that next week we anticipate, as the end of

the fiscal year comes, that there would be the continuing resolution possibly coming out of the Senate.

I know when it came out of the House, it was very clear that the Senate was not going to entertain the debt ceiling as part of the continuing resolution. So, clearly, the Senate is going to have to resolve what happens with the debt ceiling, although we have been told extraordinary measures would continue through October. So that is not as looming of a deadline as the September 30 government funding deadline that the CR would be involved with.

I know, on our side, we were very disappointed to see when something had to be pulled out on Tuesday, whether it was going to be the Iron Dome funding or the debt ceiling. Knowing that the Senate was not going to process the debt ceiling as part of that instrument, it would have seemed, to keep that on track, to remove the debt ceiling and deal with that separately, as the Senate ultimately will have to, and then keep the CR with the Iron Dome funding moving forward on something that could be a bipartisan vote.

Obviously, that didn't happen Tuesday. I would expect we will see something very different happen in the Senate. They may send that back to us sometime next week.

Does the gentleman have a timeline for what we should expect on legislation dealing with the funding of government prior to the September 30 deadline?

Mr. Speaker, I want to remind the gentleman that if you go back, both Republican and Democrat Presidents, whether it was a Republican Congress or a Democrat Congress, you had budget agreements that involved both agreements on spending and on debt. Bipartisan agreements.

The gentlemen should also recognize that this year there has been no such effort to reach out to the Republican side to get agreements. The gentleman is well-aware that under President Biden, while he promised during the campaign that he would work with everybody, he would work with Republicans, work with Democrats, instead, it has been a go-it- alone strategy on spending and on debt.

Very much to our opposition, we were against the trillions of new spending. We weren't consulted about the debt.

Mr. Speaker, I will yield, but I first need to point out, because the gentleman did mention, that when we cut taxes, the Tax Cuts and Jobs Act, that cutting taxes reduced revenue to the Treasury. Maybe under a liberal ideology that is the thought process of how economics would work, but that is not how economics worked, and it is not how reality worked.

When we cut taxes, we actually kick-started our economy. We brought millions of jobs back to America, and the Federal Treasury took in more money. Cutting taxes brought in more revenue to the Treasury. In fact, if you go look at States like New York that raised taxes to try to go after millionaires and billionaires and picking winners and losers and dividing people, as they raise tax rates, they see people moving out of their State, less revenue.

In America, when we saw higher and higher tax rates ultimately getting to a 35 percent corporate rate, highest in the industrialized world, what we also

saw was great companies moving out of America, out of America to be able to stay afloat, not to avoid paying taxes. They were still paying taxes. They were just moving to other countries where they could remain competitive because they could no longer remain competitive in America.

It was by the hundreds that we would see what are called inversions, great companies moving out of America. Now, on the left, every time they would move they would wring hands and call the company's name. We would call the companies, and say, Why are you leaving? They didn't want to leave. They wanted to stay afloat so that they didn't have to fire the thousands of America workers they had. They wanted to stay viable.

So when we cut taxes, do you know since the day the Tax Cuts and Jobs Act was signed into law, there has not been a single inversion in America. Not a single American company moved out of America. In fact, the opposite. We saw companies by the droves moving back in. We saw jobs by the millions coming back to America.

So, again, to give an economics lesson, when we cut taxes the Federal Treasury actually took in more money, not less, because people created more jobs in America. They brought jobs back to America.

Companies increased wages. In fact, the biggest wage earners--and you can go look at the Department of Labor statistics--the bigger wage earners were lowest-income workers. All that goes away if this bill coming before the Budget Committee tomorrow is to pass. I hope it doesn't. But if it does, every economics expert that looks at the success of the Tax Cuts and Jobs Act has also recognized that it will lead to millions more jobs leaving America if they raise those rates.

If you put a natural gas tax on families, estimates are over a 12 percent increase in household electricity rates on families which, by the way, would hit lower-income people the hardest. That is the reality of tax increases and tax decreases.

So that brings us to the debt ceiling. The reason we voted against it were many. One was that, for whatever reason, the majority party decided to gut the Iron Dome funding that was initially in the bill; a billion dollars to allow Israel to replenish the Iron Dome missiles that were used defending themselves against terrorist attacks from Gaza, fueled by terrorist organizations, and backed by proxies like Iran. That is one of the driving reasons that you saw all of those ``no'' votes.

But if you also look at where the debt came from, it came from very partisan policies. There are 14 different bills this year where the majority party waived the PAYGO rules. PAYGO was a policy that said, you pay as you go. You want to pass policy, you want to spend money, pay for it.

It is a pretty commonsense idea, except on 14 different pieces of legislation this year, the Democrat majority waived PAYGO, racking up trillions in new debt. We didn't vote for this spending. If the majority party wants to go it alone and have a partisan spending spree that jacks up trillions of new spending and debt, then it is incumbent upon the majority party to go address the debt ceiling consequences that were created by this reckless spending.

Fourteen different times your party waived PAYGO. We didn't vote for that. But then you want us to pay for it? That is not how this works. If the majority party wants to work with us on a budget agreement, we are right here. We have never been asked to be a part of a budget agreement. We surely weren't consulted about the spending because we opposed those levels.

There were things we wanted to do, including on some of the relief packages where we felt, let's focus in on helping people who are struggling, not paying people not to work, not bailing out States that are flushed with multi-billion dollar surpluses, while sending that bill to our kids.

That is not responsible, but that is what the majority party did. And as they jacked up all that spending, they jacked up debt and bumped us against the debt limit. We are not going to be a part of that because we didn't agree with the spending. We weren't consulted on the spending.

If your party wants to spend money, your party ought to be responsible enough to deal with the consequences of it. We are more than happy to work with you on how to solve this spending and debt problem in a bipartisan way, and I yield to the gentleman.

Mr. Speaker, I thank the gentleman.

I do need to correct the Record because the gentleman implied that the relief packages from 2020 were part of the debt ceiling that is being raised in the current legislation that is moving forward. That is just not accurate.

I have seen talking points out there, but Mr. Speaker, if you look at the trillions that my friend and I supported that were good policy, that was included in the debt ceiling negotiation from last year. It was in there. It was part of the debt ceiling negotiation from last year. That was passed on a bipartisan basis.

What we are talking about for this year, including the $1.9 trillion that was not a bipartisan package, is new debt. What is being anticipated in the $4 trillion, $5 trillion-dollar-package that the Budget Committee is taking up is going to be new debt that would be included in the debt ceiling negotiation that my friend would expect us to vote for.

We don't support that new spending and that new debt. We did support the spending and the debt from last year in the relief packages that we all supported--and we paid for it--in the debt ceiling negotiations from last year. The gentleman might have different talking points, but that is a fact. It was legislation that was voted on in a bipartisan fashion.

It was voted on on a bipartisan basis and was passed by Congress. Where the debt ceiling is today is ultimately going to be negotiated in the Senate, but it won't be in the bill that was sent over to the Senate on Tuesday.

The Senators have made it clear. They don't have 60 votes for that bill. It is a 60-vote bill. They might have to take it up under a reconciliation package. That is for the Senate to decide. Maybe in the next few days the Senate will decide that and send it back, but that was not something that anybody expected the Senate to pass when it left the House on Tuesday.

Mr. Speaker, I yield to the gentleman.

Again, this will continue as we see whatever comes out of the Budget Committee that will be trillions. We know it is trillions. We just don't know how many, maybe 4, maybe 5 trillion in new debt that the date that was put in the legislative text--it wasn't an amount, it was a date that the majority party included--in December of 2022 that maybe that changes in the Senate, but it would include the trillions, not only that were included in the $1.9 from earlier this year that was partisan, but also on this tax-and-spend bill that is moving through Budget tomorrow.

I would like to ask one final question about other potential legislation for next week. I know the gentleman and I have had conversations in the past about bills that maybe aren't currently scheduled that could be, some of them have been added to the schedule, not all.

We know there is a crisis at our southern border. There are a number of legislative instruments that have been filed to try to confront it. I haven't seen any of those come to the floor. They are surely not listed for next week, but there are a number I would at least like to bring to the gentleman's attention to see if they could--as we are watching the border get even more out of hand--potentially give tools to the President to address it in a way where he is not addressing it today.

We know there has been a bill by Ms. Herrell, the number of that bill is H.R. 471, the PAUSE Act, which would allow for enforcement of Title 42 in a way more clear than the administration has expressed their abilities.

We also have H.R. 4828 by Mr. Katko which gives even more additional tools to help secure the border.

I would hope the gentleman would look at those legislative instruments. As there are maybe more days we will be here than there are legislative instruments anticipated, these could be other bills that we could take up that would deal with very pertinent and serious problems that our country is facing that aren't being addressed.

Mr. Speaker, I yield to the gentleman.

Mr. Speaker, I appreciate that, and I look forward to having those conversations with the gentleman from Maryland on that and all the other issues that will come before us next week.

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

Mr. Speaker, I thank my friend from Tennessee for yielding and especially for his passion, the statements that he just made, and the importance of not only standing up for Israel, which we all need to do, but standing up against anti-Semitism, against the kind of attacks on Israel that the very Iron Dome are necessary for.

The Iron Dome represents one of those great partnerships between our two great nations, this great bond between the United States and Israel, allowing Israel to defend themselves, defend themselves against attacks from Gaza, against attacks from terrorists who want to destroy Israel as a Jewish state. That is what this has always been about.

It had been heartening for decades that this was always a bipartisan issue. We shouldn't have to be here today to pass this bill because it should have been passed on Tuesday. There was a vote on the House floor to ensure Israel had the money to defend themselves, to put that billion dollars back in. On a straight party-line vote, every Democrat voted it down. I don't know why on Tuesday they were against Israel's Iron Dome's defense. Today, maybe things will change. Hopefully, things will change. But we ought to always stand with Israel, and especially with what their Iron Dome represents.

I have been to Israel. I have been to areas where the Iron Dome is actually utilized effectively to save Jewish lives, to save everybody's life who lives in Israel, whether it is Jews, Palestinians. Anyone who lives in Israel under threat of terrorist attack can at least have some solace at knowing that the Iron Dome is there to protect them.

Thousands of rockets were fired into Israel by terrorists, and that is why we need to put this billion dollars in place to allow them to replenish the Iron Dome missiles that saved lives in Israel. Save lives in Israel, that is what this is about.

We should be with Israel, not just on Thursday. We should also be with them on Tuesday, on Monday. Every single day, we need to stand with our ally Israel against attacks that we see from anti-Semites around the world.

Mr. Speaker, I strongly urge passage of this bill.

Madam Speaker, today I rise to recognize Marty Reiser, a man of immense character and integrity who selflessly served the American people for over 20 years.

After graduating from the College of the Holy Cross, Marty started at the Department of Commerce as an appointee under President Ronald Reagan.

In the 1990s, Marty came to the House of Representatives, where he worked for Congressman Dan Miller in a variety of roles, ultimately finishing up as his chief of staff. After leaving Capitol Hill, he went on to a think tank and taught high school before managing Xerox's governmental affairs team.

In 2011, Marty came back to the House, joining the Ways and Means Committee's Health Subcommittee, where he was instrumental in crafting legislation that would provide quality healthcare for millions of Americans.

On August 18, 2014, Marty joined my team and has been a vital part of it ever since. With a servant's heart and attention to detail, Marty is an expert not only on House procedure, but on all issues passing through the whip's office, and is relied upon in all other leadership offices as well.

Thank you, Marty, for your faithful service to the House of Representatives, and best of luck in your future. You will be missed.

Madam Speaker, I thank the gentlewoman from Minnesota for yielding.

Madam Speaker, I rise to object to this whole process. What we are doing here today, this is an example of the misplaced priorities of this Democrat majority.

Let's start with the bill at hand, this package of bills that includes a budget that I am sure very few people in this Chamber have read, that authorizes the taxing and spending of trillions more dollars.

Now, what does that mean? They call it the for the children act. It really should be called the mountains of debt for the children act because that is what it does. If you look at inflation today, every family in America is facing inflation. They are paying over 40 percent more for gasoline, for cars, for things that they buy at the grocery store.

Families know that if you add trillions more in debt, trillions more in spending, trillions more in taxes, inflation will only go up and you know who is going to pay for it. It is not anybody in this Chamber, Madam Speaker. Under their own budget--it says it--it is the children. That is who is going to pay for it.

Right here. Just go to page 7 where it authorizes up to $45 trillion in debt--we are at about $28.6 trillion right now--$45 trillion in debt with taxes and spending through the roof that will hit every family in America, Madam Speaker.

Then let's get back to those priorities. Now, you would think with the backdrop of everything that we have been dealing with in Afghanistan, as we here in this Chamber, with so many of our veterans who served in Afghanistan honorably, have been calling on the President to ensure and commit that he will get all Americans out. Yet, what is our President doing? I will tell you what he has been doing. He has been working the phones pressuring Members of Congress this week.

I wish, Madam Speaker, I could say he was pressuring Members of Congress to help get Americans out. That is not what he was doing. He was working the phones this week pressuring Members of Congress to vote for this trillions of dollars in spending and tax package. That has been President Biden's priority.

He just said today he is going to bow to the Taliban's deadline of August 31 even if we don't get all Americans out. President Biden should be the President of the United States; not bowing to terrorists; not bowing to anybody except committing that he will get all Americans out instead of living by some artificial deadline.

Every ounce of his energy ought to be focused between now and next Tuesday, the date he set and the date the Taliban set, every minute he ought to be spending between now and next Tuesday should be focused on getting all Americans out. But if he fails to do it, people will look back and say: What was he doing instead? What were the President of the United States' priorities? He was pressuring Members of Congress to vote for this garbage: trillions of dollars in debt and spending, rather than focus on getting Americans out of harm's way that he left behind.

It is a national and international disgrace. Our priorities ought to be with the American people. That is what we will fight for. That is why we oppose this whole process.

Mr. Speaker, I rise in strong opposition to the bill, but I specifically want to talk about a provision that is being gutted that for decades has been bipartisan, Mr. Speaker, that is the Hyde amendment.

Back in the 1970s, when Henry Hyde came to Congress from Illinois, one of his main objectives was to protect life. He started on a quest to do that on a number of different fronts, and he ultimately found a bipartisan consensus put into law back in 1976 to say that no taxpayer funds should be used for abortion. It was actually something that Republicans and Democrats rallied around.

Since that time, every appropriations bill that has moved through Congress, for over 40 years, has included Hyde protections, until today.

This is a sad day when you see how the Democratic Party has changed from the party back then.

I want to read a quote, Mr. Speaker. This is from 1994. A prominent United States Senator said: ``Those of us who are opposed to abortion should not be compelled to pay for them.''

You know who said that? Joe Biden said that, Mr. Speaker.

Where is that Joe Biden today? Where is that Democratic Party today that has changed and moved so far away from those principles that were bipartisan? By the way, most Americans today, including many people who consider themselves pro-choice, think it is wrong to use taxpayer funds for abortion. Yet, this bill guts that decades-long tradition.

Again, I will read from Joe Biden himself. ``Those of us who are opposed to abortion should not be compelled to pay for them.''

Why would we be abandoning that decades-long tradition that is also held by most Americans across this country?

Not only, Mr. Speaker, are they gutting Hyde protections in this bill, they actually put millions of taxpayer dollars in this bill to fund Planned Parenthood facilities. So that is how far the party of old on the Democrat side has gone, to this Democrat socialist party that now supports taxpayer funding of abortion, including directly to the largest provider of abortions in America.

This must stop. We will fight to stop the gutting of the Hyde amendment and the break from this bipartisan tradition.

Before this process is over, let's get back to those principles that unite most Americans and should unite all of us in Congress, that no taxpayer funds should go to provide for abortions.

Mr. Speaker, I rise for the purpose of inquiring of the majority leader the floor schedule for next week, and I welcome the majority leader back to the colloquy. It is good to see him spry.

Mr. Speaker, I yield to the gentleman from Maryland (Mr. Hoyer), my friend.

Mr. Speaker, I thank the gentleman for that information as we look toward this appropriations process coming to the floor next week.

I would hope it doesn't take the same tone that it took in committee, and that is a hyper-partisan approach, which in years past, we have seen Republicans and Democrats come together to ultimately determine how best to fund this United States Government. And any bill that is going to get sent to the President's desk is going to ultimately be a bipartisan bill.

Unfortunately, that is not the bill that is going to be coming to the floor. There are a lot of very extreme radical elements that were put in that bill, but there was also something very alarming, and that was a break, a departure, from over 40 years of bipartisan agreement on what is known as the Hyde amendment.

Henry Hyde, in the 1970s, was able to get agreement between Republicans and Democrats to say on all the things we may disagree with, let's at least agree that taxpayer funding should not be used for abortions. And overwhelming majorities of Republicans and Democrats have supported that going back to 1976.

This appropriations bill guts the Hyde amendment. And why this Democrat majority decided to break from decades of bipartisan agreement on Hyde is perplexing. But I would hope, among many other things, we would be able to have that full debate on the House floor; that amendments like restoring Hyde would be made in order, not a closed process, not a very narrow process where the goal would be to push a hyper-partisan bill out of the House that won't become law, which means it would be a very futile exercise that we would be participating in next week, but, in fact, to work in a bipartisan way on those things that we can come to an agreement on about how to properly fund the government.

I am not sure if that is being anticipated with the seven bills that are coming in this bloated bus, but I would hope that the majority, as the Rules Committee looks to determine which amendments would be made in order, would go to an open process and let things like the Hyde amendment be debated, and frankly, to be supported in the bipartisan way that it has always enjoyed going back over 40 years.

Mr. Speaker, maybe the gentleman could shed light on that, and I would yield to the gentleman.

Mr. Speaker, hopefully, like I said, we get the opportunity to have that open debate process so that we can bring amendments like restoring Hyde to this floor.

Mr. Speaker, I would also like to ask about something that is going to be coming up next week, and that is this January 6 Commission that the Speaker created is expected to meet next week.

Yesterday, we saw an alarming departure from Congressional tradition, and that is Speaker Pelosi unilaterally made a decision to remove minority members from that committee. You go through the history of Congress, and prior to this year, never has the Speaker denied the minority the ability to choose who they are going to put on committees. And not only did it happen yesterday with multiple members, a ranking member of a standing committee was removed, an officer in the United States Navy was removed from that committee, without explanation.

That, first of all, undermines all credibility that this committee will have. It is clear that now it is an attempt by the Speaker to just completely politicize that committee. Why the majority chose to abuse power in that way and deny minority rights in that way is perplexing, but it doesn't bode well for the institution, and it surely doesn't bode well for the impartiality and the credibility of this committee.

I don't know if the majority is looking at reconsidering that decision, but

obviously, it is unprecedented. And if the gentleman wants to explain that, I will be happy to yield.

That was not the reason that Ms. Cheney was removed as chair.

It had nothing to do with the statements that were made.

An opinion we don't share because it is not accurate.

Mr. Speaker, that wasn't the opportunity that we asked for, and I think the majority leader knows that the minority leader put a number of issues on the table that he wanted included in that review, and those were rejected. They were rejected by the Speaker, and they were rejected by the majority.

The majority leader will have an opportunity, but there were a number of things you said that I think need to be cleaned up because they are just not accurate.

If you look at the Members that were kicked off from the minority side yesterday--still no explanation given, by the way--that includes a ranking member of a committee and an officer in the United States Navy who was removed yesterday by Speaker Pelosi with no reason given in an unprecedented way.

Maybe Speaker Pelosi and maybe this majority don't want to see all the facts come out because those two Members who were removed yesterday were raising very serious questions that ought to be answered, whatever those answers are. Whatever those facts are, they were publicly raising questions.

Maybe because they raised those questions that might be uncomfortable for the majority, they were removed from the committee with no explanation given. That had never happened before in the history of this Congress.

Again, if you want the facts, don't sit there and say that you want the facts if you are going to remove people who are trying to get facts, who are raising serious questions that should be answered. They raised them publicly, and they were going to raise them in the committee. Maybe because they were going to raise those tough questions, they were removed by the Speaker, Members of the minority who were removed by the Speaker.

I don't know if that is the new precedent that the majority leader wants to see in the future. But I will tell you, since the gentleman likes quoting Liz Cheney, I will read this quote from Liz Cheney: ``Speaker Pelosi and the Democrat majority have no business determining which Republicans sit on committees.'' That is from Liz Cheney, if the gentleman wants to quote.

Mr. Speaker, that is a quote about Mrs. Greene, but it is a general quote about whoever it is. You could go down your list.

By the way, there were Members of the majority who are on that committee who voted on January 6 to reject electors. Maybe not this year's January 6, but as the gentleman knows, every Republican President this century has had Democrats on this House floor object to electors being seated, including multiple members of the January 6 committee on the majority side. They weren't removed. In fact, they were appointed by the Speaker.

Yet, two of our Members, who raised very serious questions about facts that should be answered, wherever those answers lead, were removed because

maybe the majority doesn't want all the facts to come out. Maybe they only want a certain narrative to come out. That is not an investigation. That is a kangaroo court, if that is the approach that is going to be taken.

But the action taken yesterday by the Speaker, the unprecedented action, undermines the credibility of that commission, and it is a shame for the institution because the Members we appointed were going there to find the facts, to help participate in finding the facts.

Clearly, that is not the interest now of this committee. That was exposed yesterday in the Speaker's unprecedented action.

It is not something that this institution, whether it is Republicans running it or Democrats--and as the gentleman knows, that pendulum swings both ways. But never before this year had a majority removed Members that minority leaders submitted for committees. It is just not what has happened in this institution. But, now, it seems to be the norm because maybe some people that are asking tough questions are asking too tough of questions that this majority doesn't want to be answered, kind of why this majority won't have a hearing on the origins of COVID.

In fact, it was Mr. Jordan, along with myself and others, who has raised serious questions that have been backed up by many medical experts around this country that COVID-19 very likely started in the Wuhan lab and was leaked out. Medical experts from every walk of life have looked at the genetic makeup of this COVID-19 virus and said it couldn't have been transferred from bats to animals to humans. In fact, it was likely modified genetically in the lab in Wuhan.

Yet, there is not a single hearing that has been held by this majority on whether it was gain-of-function research, possibly funded with taxpayer money. All of those questions should be raised, but maybe the majority doesn't want those facts to come out.

We should want the facts to come out wherever they lead. So don't pound the desk and say you want the facts when you remove people who are asking questions to get at the facts. It shouldn't be a one-sided question and argument.

Mr. Speaker, I yield to the gentleman.

Mr. Speaker, but why not look at all of them?

Mr. Speaker, if the facts were what the majority wants, then the majority wouldn't be afraid of certain Members asking tough questions that maybe the majority doesn't want.

Since the gentleman brought up Mr. Jordan, I will tell you a question that Mr. Jordan has been raising publicly. One of the questions Mr. Jordan has been raising is: Why weren't the Capitol Police better equipped when there was intelligence prior, weeks prior to January 6, that there may be large crowds, that there may be threats? Why weren't the Capitol Police more equipped? Were National Guard offered to the Capitol that were rejected? And at what level, if that is the case, were they rejected?

Maybe he was starting to ask those questions. Maybe he should have just sat back and not raised those questions until after the committee started, but he started raising those questions.

By the way, they are important questions to be answered, but he won't be able to ask those questions about why the Capitol Police weren't better equipped because Speaker Pelosi yanked him off the committee when he was selected by the minority leader.

You can talk about the power of the Speaker and brag that that is her power, but just because you have the might doesn't make it right. What she did was an abuse. To say, ``I am just going to choose who on the Republican side I am going to allow, but, boy, if some other Members are going to ask tough questions, I have the power to take them off,'' that is not what power is used for.

This House, this democracy, we should want the facts. If some Members are going to ask tough questions, you should want everybody to be asking tough questions. If the facts lead there, you go there. If the facts don't lead there, you go somewhere else and ask more tough questions.

If some Members are going to ask tough questions that the majority doesn't want to be asked, that undermines the credibility of that commission to remove them from asking those questions.

Mr. Speaker, I yield to the gentleman.

Mr. Speaker, they haven't said publicly whether they

would or not. Mr. Jordan sure did. Again, maybe he was punished for raising tough questions in advance of the hearing instead of waiting.

But in the end, those were questions. Sheriff Nehls, who was also one of our selections, was right there with these brave Capitol Police officers, holding down the House of Representatives so that the Chamber wasn't breached. Sheriff Nehls was right there.

But, again, if the integrity of that commission is now undermined because Speaker Pelosi chose to remove people who were going to ask tougher questions, then, ultimately, it proves that this is not a commission set on finding the facts. It is a commission set on establishing a narrative regardless of the facts. That is a disgrace, for this institution to go down that road.

There is still time to reconsider. Mr. Speaker, I would urge the majority to reconsider how they use or abuse the power that is vested upon them.

Mr. Speaker, I yield to the gentleman.

Mr. Speaker, it is unfortunate that as that commission starts, it will not include other Members, Republican Members, who wanted to ask some of those tough questions in terms of supporting the police.

I don't think the gentleman has seen any stronger support for police than on this side of the aisle. I have been maybe more vocal than anyone about support for the United States Capitol Police because I wouldn't be here alive today without the bravery and heroism of the Capitol Police, and I think we all stand with them.

Ultimately, when you look at the supplemental that came through the House in May, there were a number of Members on the Democrat majority side who voted against that supplemental who have been vocal about defunding the police.

And, in fact, we have been trying to bring up H. Res. 352, which expresses support for police in opposition to this crazy, radical idea of defunding the police, where in many of these cities that have actually defunded the police, they have seen rapid increases in crime.

Even more--and I know I have held roundtables with sheriffs from the New Orleans area, as many of my colleagues have met with law enforcement--they will tell you the biggest challenge today, in addition to the growing crime wave, they are seeing is a demoralization around the country for police because they see these efforts to defund the police and they see elected oficials speaking out publicly against police. It is not coming from the Republican side. I think the gentleman knows where it is coming from.

Why won't this bill be brought to the floor to just express support for police?

The fact is that the majority on the Democrat side will not bring a resolution to express support for police, H. Res. 352, by Ms. Malliotakis and others, at a time when we are seeing around the country not only a demoralization but an increase in resignations. People are leaving the great work of law enforcement because they see in those communities that have defunded the police a lack of support. Most sheriffs will tell you they are having trouble recruiting new people right now because of the attacks on police all around the country that we saw from the summer where cops where murdered, shot, beaten. Yet a resolution to express support to let them know that we have their back still won't be brought to the floor by this majority.

I hope the gentleman would look at bringing H. Res. 352 to the floor so that we can actually express to all police that we support them and that we do have their back.

Mr. Speaker, I yield to the gentleman.

Mr. Speaker, I will just point out that President Biden himself a year ago said he supports efforts to divert money away from police, which, by the way, is the same thing as defunding police. If you are diverting money away from police, then you are defunding police. But, again, there is a resolution that has been sitting out there for a while now expressing support. I hoped we would bring that to the floor and express that support.

There are also a number of other issues dealing with inflation. We are seeing a dramatic increase in inflation across this country. Everything someone buys when going to a grocery store, we are paying more for things like eggs and milk. If you try to go on a summer vacation right now, you are paying over 40 percent more for gasoline. You are seeing it across the board, and that dramatic increase in inflation is a tax. It is a tax on hardworking families.

This chart shows for the gentleman so many of those things. Used cars are up 45 percent, if you can even find a car to buy because there is such a shortage when the government is paying people not to work.

The borrowing, by the way, and spending of trillions of dollars-- which are some of the items that are going to be coming to the floor next week and beyond, trillions more, much of it deficit spending--is part of the reason we are seeing inflation: gas 45 percent up, home prices 15 percent up, milk 5 percent, laundry machines 29 percent, if you can get one. You might have to wait 6 months to get a washer and dryer.

All of this is a tax on hardworking, middle-class families.

What we should be doing is bringing legislation to the floor to confront these problems, not to keep spending trillions and trillions more in deficit spending and higher taxes that ultimately would lead to more evaporation of middle-class jobs which is what the majority is bringing, but I would hope that the gentleman would look at working with Republicans on legislation to start addressing some of these problems that are affecting household families all across the country.

Republican, Democrat, Independent, doesn't matter, they are seeing this problem, and they would like to see this Congress confront it, not make it worse with more deficit spending, with more multitrillion- dollar spending bills and higher taxes that will ship more jobs overseas, shutting down energy production in America.

While the President is signing or authorizing agreements with Russia to use pipelines to ship their energy to other countries, he is shutting down pipelines in America so that we can use more of our natural resources, again, leading to higher prices across the board, things that are adversely affecting families.

I hope we can bring legislation to confront these challenges to the floor, and I yield to the gentleman.

Mr. Speaker, as we look at those bills coming to the floor next week, frankly, they would make those problems worse. I know when we talk about the inflation side--we talk about inflation, because it is the thing we hear the most when we talk to our constituents back home, because regardless of the statistics, the data is little solace if you see your dollar going for less further, less far. In fact, you see your dollar not going as far because whatever you are making, you are spending even more money than you were spending before and waiting longer to get things because of these policies.

In fact, the spending itself is part of the problem that is leading to inflation. People get that. And so they look at these multitrillion- dollar spending bills and they are starting to ask the questions: What is really in those bills? If it is not things to help my family, because I am paying more with all of this new spending, what is in it?

We just found out today there are millions of dollars in the bill that is coming to the floor next week specifically just for one entity, Planned Parenthood of Mar Monte, San Jose, California; Planned Parenthood, the largest provider of abortions in the country. So not only is Hyde being discarded, the mutually agreed upon, bipartisan, and not just Henry Hyde with a few other people. Henry Hyde passed this in the 1970s under a Democrat majority. Democrats and Republicans said taxpayer funding shouldn't be used to provide abortions, and it had always been sacrosanct in spending bills that this Congress passed, Republican and Democrat, since that time until now.

So not only are they gutting Hyde in the bill, but they are putting millions of dollars into Planned Parenthood by name. This is what drives people nuts when they see that kind of spending and a disconnect because they are paying more money for regular household goods. And instead of us confronting that on the floor, they see this kind of spending that is generational, because it is the next generation that will have to pay for it. Because as much as it seems this majority wants to raise taxes to spend more money, even all the taxes that would run more jobs out of this country don't cover all of this kind of radical spending.

I would hope we go a different direction. We surely will be opposing that kind of radical spending and it surely won't be helping those families who just want answers, who just want to see relief from the problems that they are facing.

I yield to the gentleman.

Mr. Speaker, the final point I would like to bring up to the leader, we are seeing something that is actually very encouraging in Cuba; that is, the people of Cuba taking to the streets to demand freedom; something that has been decades in the making. I would hope that we see all government leaders, Republican, Democrat, executive branch, legislative branch, all expressing our support for the Cuban people who seek freedom, because I think one of the most heartfelt signs that I know I saw, and so many of my colleagues saw just a week ago, were not only people taking to the streets to call for freedom, they were carrying the American flag in Cuba.

We see this all around the world. It is one of the things that for all of our differences brings us together, and that is that here in the United States Congress, we are not only working to promote freedom in this country and to preserve it for future generations, but this freedom that we work to preserve inspires people all around the world. Whether it is Cuba, or in Iran which we saw years ago, or any other country, when people seek freedom, there is really only one flag that they wave, and that is the United States flag.

Our colleague, Mario Diaz-Balart, whose family fled Cuba, like so many of our colleagues, some first generation. Carlos Gimenez, former mayor of Miami-Dade, personally fled Cuba seeking freedom--and talking about the American Dream--he is a first generation who fled a socialist nation who is now a sitting, voting Member of the United States Congress, who now wants to express support for the Cuban people.

So there is a resolution, H. Res. 527, that expresses our solidarity standing with the people in Cuba who are seeking freedom. I would just ask the gentleman if he would look at bringing that bill to the floor. The people in Cuba are trying to get that freedom, and they are being heavily oppressed. Many may even be being murdered right now as they have shut down the internet. They shut out the media, because there is no freedom of the press.

We are hearing stories that are very alarming. If we can express our support that we are standing with those people in Cuba who do seek freedom as well, I think it would be a strong signal. I ask the gentleman if we could bring that to the floor.

Mr. Speaker, I appreciate that. Hopefully, we can work together to get that brought to the floor and express that support in unison and that would send a strong message.

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

Mr. Speaker, as we remember the life of Jerry Lewis, I remember the first time that I had the opportunity to meet with him. It was back in 2005. I was a State representative from Louisiana, and Hurricane Katrina had ravaged the whole New Orleans region.

Thousands of people were out of their homes. The city was decimated. The whole region was decimated, and we were starting to work on a plan to rebuild New Orleans.

Obviously, there was a big Federal role to be played. President Bush had committed to help us, but it took action from Congress to ultimately make that happen, to rebuild the levees so that the communities could be protected, to help people get back in their homes. And that brought me to Jerry Lewis.

He met with me and a few other people, and he committed to do the things that needed to be done to help us get back on our feet at our lowest point. That is who Jerry Lewis was.

The city of New Orleans, the people of the New Orleans region, owe a great debt to Jerry Lewis for the things he did, the real action he took to help build New Orleans back after Katrina.

Madam Speaker, I rise for the purpose of inquiring of the House majority whip the floor schedule for next week.

Madam Speaker, I yield to the gentleman from South Carolina (Mr. Clyburn) my friend, the House majority whip.

Madam Speaker, as we look at some of the bills that are going to be coming to the floor next week, I know there has been a lot of talk about infrastructure.

As we saw over these past few days, there is a bipartisan bill that is being worked through mostly in the Senate, where a number of Republicans and Democrats had seemed to reach an agreement on what would be considered traditional infrastructure without tax increases. It has now become a little more confused by a suggestion that maybe the Speaker has said it has to be tied to a budget reconciliation bill that would possibly raise taxes, which is surely not where we are. It doesn't seem to be where the bipartisan group in the Senate is.

I would ask the gentleman: Is there any expectation--because we don't have a budget that has moved through the House, and a budget would have to move first to create the ability for a budget reconciliation bill to move through the House or the Senate, if that even happened.

Is there expectation there would be a budget resolution coming to the floor in the upcoming weeks?

Madam Speaker, I yield to the gentleman.

Madam Speaker, for decades, we have never really had a disagreement on what infrastructure means. I think most Americans would recognize the definition that we have always gone by on a bipartisan basis, and it is roads and bridges, waterways and ports.

I think, recently, both sides would agree that broadband is something that we would include in that definition, but that is what always was the traditional definition of infrastructure by both parties.

It seems like on the majority side they are trying to change that definition to include a lot of extraneous things of which were not part of the Senate bipartisan agreement. But the other new addition seems to be this idea that a bill, a shell reconciliation bill to raise taxes, would now be something that would maybe hold hostage the rest of the bipartisan agreement.

I hope that is not the road we go down, especially considering there does

seem to be a lot of bipartisan movement on something that we would all agree is traditional infrastructure.

I know the bill next week that is being brought to the House floor does not meet that bipartisan test of what Senators and others who are trying to work together have reached agreement on. So, hopefully, this doesn't get bogged down in a fight on things that are not considered infrastructure.

I don't know if the gentleman has anything to add to it. I would hope we would go down the road where both parties could come to an agreement and we could actually get something done.

Madam Speaker, I yield to the gentleman.

Madam Speaker, I appreciate that. I hope as we look toward something that we could all agree on, that that is the road we stay on, so to speak, as we talk about infrastructure, not extraneous things that we don't agree on.

Clearly, we have looked at and agreed on things like broadband, and we have seen the FCC take good steps to continue to expand broadband, especially in rural areas where there is a true digital divide that we are trying to overcome.

I know Congress has come together many times in the last few years to try to put more money in place to bridge that gap on the digital divide. There is still more work to do. Especially during the pandemic, we saw there are more needs. But if we could keep it focused on those things, I think you will see a lot of bipartisan agreement. Once it gets beyond that, that is where things break down.

What I want to ask about, something that is going to expire at the end of next week, and that is this proxy voting scheme that has been going on since May of last year.

From what the majority had presented when this got created was the reason that proxy voting was there is because we had a pandemic and things were shut down, and people had trouble getting around and maybe were concerned about the virus and not wanting to leave maybe their home or their local community.

Obviously now, with a vaccine readily available for any American who wants to take it, with more States opening up, and you are seeing even here in Congress many committees that were not having in-person hearings are now getting back to in-person hearings.

So what I would ask the gentleman is: When proxy voting expires on July 3, can we let Congress get back to the normal work and not renew proxy voting?

Because, as we have seen, there is a lot more cooperation, a lot more agreement you can reach when you are here in person working together that you just can't get on a Zoom or Webex call or just somebody staying at home proxy voting and not coming here to Washington when now everyone, who wants to, can come.

We have looked at what this has done. It has hurt the institution, in our opinion. But there are six Democrats who, since this got started last year, have never come to vote in person except for the vote for Speaker of the House because that is a vote that you cannot cast by proxy. So if they were able to get here for the vote for Speaker in January, yet on every other vote have not cast a single vote in person, then it is clear it is not because they have no ability to get to Washington.

It feels like there is an abuse of this proxy voting that has shown it needs to end. I don't know if there is an expectation next week that the majority would renew this. We would urge strongly that we let it expire on July 3, and then get back to the work that we do in person.

Madam Speaker, I yield to the gentleman.

Madam Speaker, I appreciate that. Hopefully, we just let it expire. Clearly, that is our hope. We urge the majority to consider that because, if you look at voting, it is good that we are finally limiting the time so we can have a normal voting schedule or at least get closer to that.

As we look at the appropriations process, for example, where appropriations bills will start moving out of committee in July, may start coming to the floor in July, as we know, if we have a robust, open process for appropriations bills, typically you might have 100 amendments on a given appropriations bill, and so many times we have late-night votes. We have 2-minute votes because, if Congress is truly going to process those amendments in an orderly way, even 15-minute votes or 5-minute votes haven't worked. So we went to a 2-minute voting schedule.

You can't do that if we have proxy voting because, as the gentleman knows, it does eat up a lot more time and delays our ability to move through a normal appropriations process.

So looking toward that, the July 3 date is there. If it expires, as we hope it does, I think that would help Congress to more effectively work through some of the big bills that we have on our calendar ahead. I know you all will be considering that. I think the gentleman knows where we are and what we would hope happens.

I do want to ask about some of the crises that we are seeing around the country. You look at inflation continuing to be a growing problem. We had in our committee the Federal Reserve Chairman Powell just a few days ago, who talked about the concerns with 5 percent inflation we continue to see.

Whether it is gasoline prices, double-digit increases, everything we buy at the grocery, you are starting to see larger increases in costs for grocery items. Housing, if you are just trying to buy a house, to renovate your house, those costs are higher. If you want an appliance, you might have to wait for 6 months.

Much of that is because of the labor shortage. Every small business you talk to says the biggest impediment they have to getting their businesses back up again is that the Federal Government is paying people more money not to work than to go back to work. When you have millions of job openings, it doesn't seem to make sense that we are allowing people to be paid not to work when businesses are trying and struggling to get back on their feet from this pandemic.

I don't know if there is an anticipation to bring legislation to start confronting some of those problems.

Clearly, we see the Vice President at the border today. While she is not at

the areas of the border where you see the biggest increases in illegal crossings, we know that there is a crisis in the United States. And it is not just people in South and Central America coming across. We are seeing people from Middle Eastern countries. There have been people on the terrorist watch list who are coming. I hope that as she comes back from that trip--hopefully she has met with Border Patrol agents.

People have told us what the problems are. The President could address all of this today by reversing some of his executive actions that have opened the border. But if he doesn't, I hope Congress would look at bringing legislation to confront a lot of those challenges that I talked about.

I am not sure if you all anticipate bringing bills like that, but I would ask the gentleman if he had any comment on that.

Madam Speaker, I would be happy to yield to the gentleman.

Madam Speaker, I thank the gentleman for yielding.

As we know, the Federal Reserve Chairman has some tools available to him, if need be, to address problems in the economy that we are starting to see, but we also know that those tools are very harsh. Hopefully, those tools would be a last resort.

So it is important for us, as policymakers, to not just sit back and wait for problems to occur that then the Federal Reserve Chairman has to address because we haven't. Because we know if he does those things, whether it is limiting money supply, interest rate increases, those are all things that would hurt hardworking families all across the country.

So as he even recognized, right now the enhanced unemployment benefits that are, by all accounts, the reason that we are having a worker shortage, the reason that every small business is having trouble getting more people back to work so they can meet that supply demand that is starting to create inflation, he did acknowledge that when those enhanced benefits run out, then you will see the worker shortage get better and improve and people start going back to work.

We could end those earlier, acknowledging there are millions of job openings. We shouldn't be paying people money to not work when there are jobs that are available right now and they can't find takers.

What we have seen is a majority of States now have said: We are going to end those benefits on our own so that people can get back to work, so that we can get our economies moving.

Many large States--Florida, Texas, Tennessee, and many other States-- by the end of next week will do that.

I am proud that yesterday in my State, our Governor, who is a Democrat, signed a bill working with Republicans to end our enhanced unemployment benefits in Louisiana by the end of July.

He acknowledged, as a Democrat, that you can work together, and that this is a problem, so let's address this problem. While States are addressing it, some are not. Many have.

But, hopefully, Congress can look at ways where we can address some of these problems earlier so that it doesn't fall in the lap of the Federal Reserve Chairman, and then he has to take harsh steps to deal with the problems that we should be fixing as we see them coming.

I yield to the gentleman if he has anything else. That is all I have.

I appreciate that because I work well with our Governor. We might not see eye to eye on everything, but Governor John Bel Edwards is addressing those problems adequately. He worked with the Republican legislature. They got an agreement, and it was a good agreement.

I know you have a good relationship with your Governor. You and I have a good relationship. Hopefully, we can use those good relationships to prove people wrong who look at Congress and say: Why can't they get agreements on things?

Again, we are seeing some positive movement on the Senate side. I haven't seen the details, and the details are very, very important. But, hopefully, on these big issues, we can work together and build those relationships so that we can actually solve these problems and solve them in a way that doesn't harm families, where it could end up in a harsh place if we don't confront those problems. I know we will be talking more about that in the future.

If the gentleman is not the one doing the colloquy in the future--we hope the majority leader is back--I have enjoyed this colloquy with you. We, obviously, enjoy our relationship on many fronts, but it has been a pleasure to work with you on the colloquy.

Hopefully, the majority leader is here next time, and he has big shoes to fill. I yield to the gentleman.

He will probably be moving around even faster. I will not challenge him to a race. I am not quite where he is yet, but I am working to get there.

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

Madam Speaker, I ask unanimous consent that the Committees on Energy and Commerce, Ways and Means, and the Judiciary be discharged from further consideration of H.R. 18, the No Taxpayer Funding for Abortion Act to codify the Hyde amendment language, and I ask for its immediate consideration in the House.