Floor Statements

Mr. Speaker, someone please wake me up. I think I am having a nightmare.

What if I told you that, in the Middle East now, there is a place where Christians, Muslims, Arabs, Kurds, Assyrians, Yazidis--women and men--all sit together at the same table, as the result of the beginnings of a democratic process where tolerance and pluralism is a core value, and where we have seen safety, security, and prosperity emerge from the ashes one of the most horrific conflicts of the modern age. What if I told you that.

What if I told you that a foreign state actor spent $10 million a month, to our reckoning, to influence thought in Washington, D.C., alone, to tell lies about this fledgling, tolerant democracy in the Middle East.

What if I told you that the very Iranian regime that took the lives of American women and men on the battlefield in Iraq was celebrating right now along with Vladimir Putin and Bashar al-Assad and Turkey's neo-Ottoman fascist Erdogan.

I can tell you all those things because they are true.

Someone please wake me up. I think I am having a nightmare.

I just spent my Thanksgiving and 2 weeks of my life--a lot of money and a lot of time--away from my family to meet with brave people spanning multiple ethnicities who, like the First Continental Congress, have the recognition of exactly no foreign governments as a legitimate emerging government; who are different from you and me only by virtue of the happenstance of fate that they would be born somewhere as opposed to another place; who have quite literally shed the lifeblood of their children on battlefields that most Americans have never heard of, from Deir ez-Zor, Manbij, Jarablus; people who fought, bled, and died in homes that their families had inhabited in the Kabul River valley, the Jazeera province; and who were the tip of President Trump's spear in rooting out the combat components of a radical, warped, hateful ideology embodied by Daesh or ISIS.

And today, without warning, we said good luck.

The Syrian Democratic Council is not a Kurdish experiment in north and eastern Syria. It is an experiment that was largely started by Kurds, yes, but it is an experiment that includes men and women from across the ethnic and religious diversity of the region.

What we read about in any publication that comes out of Turkey, which has about the worst press freedom on the planet, is how the PKK has been engaged in terrorist activity in Turkey, and anyone affiliated with the PKK by virtue of the accident of their birth as a Kurd is somehow a terrorist. Folks, this is not true.

I met with everyone, from chief executives down to city councils. When you go to Deir ez-Zor, where the bulk of the population is Arab, the city council is Arab. And when you go to Manbij, the leadership is Arab. And when you go to Jazeera, the leadership is Kurdish and Christian, and it is male and female.

This Chamber that we stand in, in this venerated body, exists not only because of the blood and sweat and tears of innumerable Americans not only in the Revolution but throughout our history, but also because foreigners were willing to stand up in support of an idea that was freedom and self-determination: Lafayette, Pulaski, Kosciuszko, von Steuben--German, Polish, French.

Yet again, we betray those who have shed their blood to advance American policy.

Look, don't make the commitment to begin with. It is one thing to learn that the United States has equivocated on its policy and people died. It is another thing to learn that the United States is equivocating on its policy and people with whom you have broken bread are about to die.

I told them when I was there: I am here on my own time. I do not formulate American policy. I happen to be a Member of Congress, but, by God, I will stand up and be heard so that you might have the right that was bequeathed to you, not by a political administration anywhere, but by God, to live free of fear, to sleep soundly in your ancestral home, to worship or not worship as you choose.

Ain Issa is the name of the town where, by happenstance, the Syrian Democratic Council has put some functions of its government. Ain Issa translates to English as the ``Eyes of Christ.'' You can't make this up.

In my entire life, I have been proud of the 1 in 26 luck that I had to slip from the womb the son of Lois and Tom Garrett in the Commonwealth of Virginia, born in Georgia, in the greatest country on the face of the planet.

But how many times must we muck up the endgame: the bloodletting in Cambodia and Laos, the purges in Iraq after 1991, the betrayal of the Kurds in 1985, the ignoring of vindictive revenge killings in 2004, the encouragement and then withdrawal in 2017.

Ironically, Mr. Speaker, the Russians are far more loyal friends than the Americans are. It is beyond me.

Somebody wake me up. I am having a nightmare.

To say that ISIS is defeated and that was our sole mission is, at the very least, to exhibit a complete lack of understanding of what is going on, on the ground.

I stood on the front lines near Jarablus by a building that was shot up that day by the Free Syrian Army, who we funded, at a military post manned by people of various ethnicities. And the Free Syrian Army did this while the Turkish military watched.

Iranians seek to build a land bridge to the Mediterranean. Hezbollah is a wholly owned subsidiary of Iran--it functions in Israel--and is the only terrorist organization I know of that has taken human life on every single inhabited continent--Oceania, Australia, Asia, Europe, Africa, South America, North America. And we are just opening up the door.

Eighty-seven people were killed in Deir ez-Zor province within 24 hours on either side of the time I visited. This wasn't a long time ago. This was Thanksgiving.

This fight is long from over. Frankly, if I am an ISIS recruiter, the idea that, ``Look, the Americans are leaving,'' will only strengthen their position.

So let me make this metaphor, Mr. Speaker. We have a patient. That patient is Syria. It is stricken with four cancers. There is the regime in Russia; there is Turkey; there is Iran; and there is ISIS. We have just eradicated the bulk of one cancer, dropped the scalpel, left the surgery room, and declared that the patient is healed.

Candidly, the people in north and eastern Syria would be far better off if we had never come to help, because the brave women and men who have stood up to lead a democratic movement have identified themselves for extermination.

I sat down in Manbij with the military council, with an individual, it is my understanding, who was attacked with an IED the next day, and we have declared victory. This was 2 weeks, 3 weeks ago.

So let me be clear, and let me counter some propaganda. When the only people celebrating this decision are Turkey, Iran, and Russia, it might be a bad decision. When you hear that the Syrian Democratic Council and the forces in north and eastern Syria are Kurds, that defies the reality on the ground, the reality that I saw, and the people with whom I spoke.

The definition of insanity, Mr. Speaker, is doing the same thing again and again and expecting a different result. Let me tell you what I know, so that a month from now, I can say, ``See, I told you so,'' and maybe I will have that because 4-plus-or-minus million people in north and eastern Syria won't even have so much as their homes.

Turkey is going into Manbij. They have been telling us that for a month. They said: We have got to get the Kurds out of Manbij. Guess what? The Kurds aren't controlling Manbij. The Syrian Democratic Forces, which includes some Kurds, are in Manbij, but they are out.

This is like post-World War II Japan or Germany saying: You need to get the African-American soldiers out of Berlin. It is racist on its face, ridiculous, and denies the reality on the ground, and apparently, nobody in the decision-making scheme has bothered to figure out what the actual truth is.

So the Turks are going into Manbij. Now, what will that look like? Well, we know what happened in Afrin and al-Bab. They fly the Turkish flag over the courthouses. They have changed the street signs to honor Ottoman sultans. I can show you a video, Mr. Speaker, of a paramilitary police force raising their right hands in a Hitleresque salute shouting: ``Long live Erdogan,'' in Turkish. This is on Syrian soil.

The children are educated in a different language. And the hospital in Afrin, which used to have a sign outside in Kurdish and Arabic, now has a sign outside in Turkish. In Jarabulus, the commanders with whom we spoke said when Turkey came in and said they rooted out ISIS, we looked through the field glasses the next day and lo and behold, the same people that were there the day before in ISIS uniforms were there in uniforms sanctioned by Turkey.

Oh, by the way, I just learned that we are going to sell $3.5 billion worth of Patriot missile batteries to Turkey to go along with the F-35 fighters that I guess they can use to bomb the sovereign nation of Iraq like they did last week in U.S. F-16s, perhaps this time more effectively. This is insanity.

And I am not anti-this administration. I am not anti-this President. I am anti-foolish policy that will cost human lives that will be perpetuated and exacerbated by foolish foreign policy which preceded it.

I am not suggesting we attack anybody. I am suggesting we don't turn and walk away. People who depended upon us and took us at our word are going to die, and we are worried about what we get for Christmas.

I mean, I don't have words. So, Mr. Speaker, I don't know what more I can do. But I will not stop.

With great power comes great responsibility. Contrary to what some people might say, we live in a great Nation. Our policy sucks. And to walk away from commitments that we made because it is politically convenient is beyond shameful. This matters. Iran is giddy. Erdogan is giddy. The Russians have punked us, to use the jargon of the day. And the band played on.

I don't know. Somebody wake me up. I am having a nightmare. I mean, I represent the citizens of the Fifth District of Virginia, and I love them. I love my district. But I value human life, and I believe that if we make commitments, we should keep them. And if human life is lost because we can't keep our word, we need to take a long, hard look at exactly who we are.

Mr. Speaker, with that, I yield to the gentleman from Texas (Mr. Gohmert).

Mr. Speaker, I yield to the gentleman from Wisconsin (Mr. Grothman).

Mr. Speaker, I yield to the gentleman from Maine (Mr. Poliquin).

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

Mr. Speaker, very quickly back to Syria, if anyone tells you that this is Turks versus Kurds, they should tell Sheikh Bandar, the leader of thousands of Arabs who fight alongside the Kurds and the SDF. If anyone tells you it is Turks versus Kurds, they should tell that to Commander Johannes, the leader of thousands of Christians who fight alongside Arabs and Kurds.

This is not a Kurdish experiment; it is a human experiment. It is an experiment in democracy. We made a commitment. We should keep our word.

Mr. Speaker, if anyone is watching, I hope they will contact their political leaders and ask them to stop the sale of Patriot missiles and F-35s to the aggressive Turks. I hope they will know the Iranian military is on the ground in Syria right now everywhere in the form of the IRGC, except the place that we are about to abandon.

Mr. Speaker, I thank the men and women across the world who stand up for the basic idea that all people are endowed by their creator with certain inalienable rights, and among these are life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.

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

Mr. Speaker, over Thanksgiving, I had the amazing opportunity to accompany some impressive individuals and thought leaders from the Freedom Research Foundation, on my own dime and my own time, into Iraq and northeastern Syria.

There was a debate that ran between myself and one of these individuals over what was more dangerous, ignorance or evil. Ultimately, I suggest that perhaps ignorance is dangerous and evil is dangerous, but the most dangerous thing might be the ignorance of evil itself. In order to vanquish evil, we must first vanquish ignorance. We must recognize the evil that exists in order to correct it.

Tonight, to that end, I will speak to the realities on the ground, not only in the Middle East, but in so many parts of the world, but specifically in Iraq and Syria right now as I speak. If we don't get this right, not only will innumerable lives vanish, but entire cultures will vanish.

To my left is an image of individuals restrained and then set on fire, one of many barbaric acts that I could have chosen to visually depict the horrors that have been visited upon this region since the rise of ISIS and the Syrian civil war began.

Edmund Burke once said--and I will paraphrase, ``The only thing necessary for evil to triumph is for good people to do nothing.'' I might submit that the only thing worse than doing nothing is doing the wrong thing. All too often in the Middle East Western governments' policies are some combination of the two: nothing and the wrong thing.

There are any number of ways to illustrate this, but one might be this depiction of an individual who was actively committing atrocities against

their fellow man and who was later welcomed into a Western nation as a refugee. That he went through a vetting process and was deemed to be a refugee from the very horror which he perpetrated is an anecdotal but very real evidentiary indicator of the fact that sometimes governments get it wrong.

We have gotten it wrong enough in this part of the world recently that we have seen not only ethnic cleansing but genocide on a scale that really and truly is hard to imagine the mirror of--perhaps Cambodia, certainly during the Second World War. In fact, I spent the better part of a year living in a tent in the former Yugoslav Republic of Bosnia because of ethnic cleansing and genocide. But let's put this in light.

We look the other way or do nothing so often that it becomes almost second nature. In 70 years, as civil war has raged in Burma, minority peoples--the Chin; the Kachin; the Wa; the Shan; and now, finally, receiving some attention, the Rohingya--are persecuted, exterminated, and displaced by a raging government.

And the West is quiet, perhaps not because we condone it but because we are not aware of it.

In Rwanda, over a period of 100 days, we lost about 10,000 lives a day. That is a million people.

In Bosnia, 8,000 were killed in Srebrenica in 1995.

These war crimes begat the ICTY, the International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia. Yet, as we see ISIS rolled up into its final stronghold in the Deir ez-Zor province of Syria, with fighting currently going on as we speak around Hajin, no similar thing exists.

In fact, we see individuals whom we can identify who have immigrated to Europe who have not at all been held to account. That, in itself, is a shame and a tragedy and something that I would hope to see corrected.

But in Syria and Iraq not only have we done nothing; we have gotten it wrong. We gave roughly a billion dollars to the Free Syrian Army. Components of the Free Syrian Army included Jabhat al-Nusra, which was essentially al-Qaida--we have now armed and funded al-Qaida to fight ISIS--components now of antiregime forces like al-Sham, which has been co-opted by an expansionist, arrogant, hostile, evil Turkish leader named Erdogan. And, in the meantime, we have seen any number of minority communities persecuted, displaced, murdered, and raped across the region.

To my left, your right, you will see a pie chart. It is 100 percent of a pie chart. That represents the approximately 3 million Christians in Iraq and Syria at the high point of their population in the 21st century. What remains of that pie chart is that: 2.7 million human beings displaced, raped, murdered, tortured, et cetera. And we have done nothing, truly, to effectively stop this.

There was lament from the White House and many others, myself included, about the disproportionate numbers of individuals admitted as refugees by virtue of how it reflected the total population of these areas and their faith. But the answer is not to remove Christians or Yazidis or Circassians or Armenian minorities from Iraq and Syria; it is to create a circumstance where they can live in their home safely without fear.

Yet we haven't done that. Mr. Speaker, 2.7 million, ballpark. Again, you can go to CIA World Factbook or any number of sources. That is three people displaced, killed, et cetera, roughly, for every one in Rwanda. That is 325 people displaced or killed for every one in Srebrenica.

And we sit. And our foreign policy seems to be driven, oftentimes, by whatever the largest interests at play are. We are much more concerned with what the Russians are doing, with what the Turks are doing, with what the Iranians are doing. I could say what the regime was doing, but I have already mentioned the Russians.

I understand that from a geopolitical sort of big-picture scale, but I would submit the following, Mr. Speaker: If you want to get the big things right, you must first start by getting the small things right. If you want to understand what is going on in the world and get it right for tomorrow so that we can prevent this sort of suffering and inhumanity in the future, then you must first find those who share your values and align with them today.

What are these atrocities that have been committed, specifically against the Christian community but not exclusively, against the Yazidi community, against Shia or Sunni, depending upon who had the upper hand, where, and when--crucifixions?

There is a cottage industry in kidnapping and ransom. At one point, over 200 Christians were kidnapped and ultimately ransomed off for millions of dollars, which then went to fund the very entities that kidnapped them to begin with.

And when things didn't move quickly enough, Mr. Speaker, three innocent people were murdered just to make a point. We didn't hear about it on the nightly news.

We see a displacement and an ethnic cleansing taking place particularly in Iraq, where collaborators search through titles and then find a cousin and take a deed and sell it to someone who has been selected by entities that seek to change the demographic makeup of an area, who is of a particular faith.

So the Shabak population, perpetually a victim population in itself, has been moved into Christian areas to repopulate them with those who will be complicit in the rearrangement of entire regions.

In fact, before the conflict in Iraq, there were vibrant, thriving Christian communities in Bosra, in Baghdad and Mosul. Now we have seen them rolled up, pushed out of the country, murdered, and then, now, essentially contained, by and large, in an end of a plain.

The Khabur River area in Syria was under siege by ISIS, where churches and homes were destroyed, but where, also, the regime of Bashar al-Assad dropped bombs from aircraft.

And if this victimization isn't bad enough, it is multiplied by the fact that ISIS and those who fight against ISIS, in the case of the Free Syrian Army, hold with great disdain the West. And so, therefore, if you happen to be Christian, you are identified by default as pro- Western, and, therefore, the argument is let them help you.

Well, these people are not any more Western than I am Middle Eastern, but they are victims of that perception. And we do nothing.

So we know that minority groups have been victimized by Sunni extremists and ISIS, Shia extremists, Hezbollah, radical elements of the PMU, the Hashd al-Shaabi, by the Free Syrian Army, by Turkey and their co-opting of some of these very elements, by Russia, and by the regime, who not only drops chemical weapons on those who oppose them in regime-controlled areas, but also in the areas that are not.

All of these exploit or target religious minorities in order to maintain political power. And it is a play that is as old as tyranny itself, that you would find a minority group that was large enough that everyone might know someone in that minority group and then ascribe to them all the problems of your society; and then, in creating a victim, unite your society against that minority group in order to maintain your own power.

It is the face of evil.

And who does this? Well, the regime, Russia, but Turkey. Turkey, in particular, has been guilty and, I think, is egregiously so by virtue of the fact that we refer to them constantly as our NATO ally.

Turkey has taken the occasion of calamity in Syria in order to enhance and expand Turkey itself. This is absolutely, positively, unequivocally undeniable.

To my left, your right, you see pictures of the entrance to the hospital in Afrin, along with al-Bab and Jarabulus areas that the Turkish have taken military control of under the auspices of a cleverly named marketing ploy called Euphrates Shield, which tacitly was designed to help root out ISIS.

If indeed this was designed to help root out ISIS, why do Turkish flags fly above the buildings in Afrin as opposed to Free Syrian flags?

Why is it that the sign in front of the hospital is no longer in Kurdish and Arabic but now in Turkish and Arabic?

Why are they changing the names of the streets in Afrin to Turkish names?

Why have they changed the language in which students are taught in school?

Why is the police force in Afrin equipped with Turkish equipment swearing allegiance to Erdogan, speaking Turkish, and imposing a Turkish will upon a people who are not even ethnically Turkish?

In fact, to compare Afrin or Jarabulus or al-Bab to the Sudetenland is to forget the fact that there were actually Germans in the Sudetenland when it was ceded to Hitler.

So we have seen an expansionist Turkey use the calamity of ISIS and the Syrian civil war to grab land and then impose upon a people a language that is not their own, rules that are not their own, enforcement that is not their own, and tyranny that is not their own.

And this is the tip of the iceberg. These are our NATO allies. They spend millions of dollars a month in this city to influence policy and opinion. They put our air base at Incirlik under siege, quite literally, cutting water and power to that facility where nuclear weapons are stored and, candidly, were a scintilla away from storming the gates and visiting unimaginable terror on our servicemen and -women stationed there.

They brutalized, kicked, stomped, punched, and hit with ASPs and wands American citizens on American soil.

They attacked and killed civilians in Syria with U.S.-made weapons, F-16s, and now we are going to sell them F-35s?

Erdogan speaks in favorable terms of the Nazis. Turkey, our NATO ally, is engaged in three-party talks regarding the future of Syria with such global good actors as Iran and Russia, negating the thoughts or interests of their ``NATO allies'' or, more importantly in my estimation, the very people who suffer under their jackboot.

They have imprisoned over 50,000 people as a result of an uprising and have been rated to have one of the least free presses on the planet Earth.

They conflate truth with fiction, and they manipulate U.S. policy by conflating the YPG with the PKK and the PKK in Syria with the PKK in Turkey and, even now, are demanding a ``Kurdish withdrawal'' from Manbij, where I met with members of the military council, suggesting that the YPG unilaterally controls Manbij.

Well, I have news for you, Mr. Erdogan. It has already been done. The SDF controls Manbij, and the leaders of that military council might have some Kurds among them, but they also include Arabs and Christians and everyone else who lives in that region.

And we are negotiating with them over this because they play word games and they are a step ahead of us.

One of the most amazing stories I heard was outside Jarabulus at the front lines from a local commander who said that when the Turks came into Jarabulus, the ISIS fighters that the Turks said they had vanquished never actually vanished but only changed uniforms.

In fact, where I stood, machine-gun fire had impacted that same very day from forces of the Free Syrian Army who sat about 3 kilometers in front of the Turkish military base on that side of the line.

In other words, and I can tell you this based on my time in a uniform, if Turkey didn't want them to be there, they wouldn't be there. And what was ISIS that the Turkish said they would vanquish is now the same people in different uniforms working for Turkey, spreading the same sort of terror.

And they have the hubris to demand that the Syrian Democratic Forces, which are a multiethnic, tolerant, pluralistic group which represents the various ethnicities and religions of the individuals on the ground, is synonymous with the Kurdish element, the YPG, which, yes, indeed, had a great deal to do with liberating Manbij from ISIS but is no longer responsible for that area. Why? So that they can co-opt control of that area without firing a shot.

And I can assure you of this: The people there are rightly afraid.

And as if Turkey was not bad enough, Mr. Speaker, Iran. We, the United States, withdrew from Iraq to maintain a political promise, thus creating a vacuum, and everyone knows that power abhors a vacuum. And so when that vacuum was created, the Iranian regime took advantage of years of exploitation of Shia in Iraq by Sunni and the Hussein the Ba'athist administrations and essentially flipped the script.

Now, there are people in Baghdad who are working very hard to get this right. We have friends in Baghdad, but Iran is working, as we speak, to undermine this fact.

They promote and fund ethnic cleansing. They help to move properties where Christians or other minorities have been displaced into the hands of other groups, which will change the composition of the area, thus allowing them greater ease in control. They have killed, maimed, injured innumerable of our brothers and sisters, Iranian weaponry on the battlefield in Iraq.

And then there is the regime and Russia. So many people suggest that, perhaps, in the Middle East, in Syria in particular, there are no good guys. Well, there are. And the regime and Russia have sought to play this to their advantage.

Make no mistake; the Russians don't care so much about the Assad regime as they do about a warm-water port in the Mediterranean, which has been a dream in Russia since the czars, transit to the Atlantic through the Mediterranean without the need to cross the Bosporus out of the Black Sea.

But they have also weaponized religious leaders against their own people, essentially creating circumstances wherein, if bishops and patriarchs told the whole story about what was happening to their flock on one side of an imaginary line, they might endanger their flock on another.

They have bombed not only their own civilians but the Khabur River Valley in areas they didn't control, and then stood back and gladly blamed those atrocities on other parties. And they do this because we don't understand exactly what is being done.

So we have identified the problems, but what are the solutions? Long- term solutions mean getting the little things right first. To get the little things right, we have to find the people who share our values. And they do exist.

What can we do to this end? In Iraq, I think, recognizing the KRG as a self-governing subentity of a greater Iraq, their legitimacy, and then fostering and encouraging their devotion to pluralism.

We talk about atrocities committed. It is interesting how many times I heard the story of a million Christians murdered at the hands of the Ottoman Turks, having contracted the Kurdish population in 1915. And so the Christians said when the Iraqi government forces pulled out from in front of the Christian towns, particularly the Nineveh Plains, and left them exposed and defenseless to the rise of ISIS, they knew--they just knew that no one would help because the Kurds had not been their friends 100 years earlier. And yet it was these Kurds who stepped in and stopped ISIS, at least long enough for people to flee with their lives.

And so this commitment to religious minorities to other minorities is perhaps bred of the fact that the Kurds themselves, within the greater nation of Iraq, are a minority. But I am not terribly concerned with where it comes from. I have more concern with what the result is.

So if there is a commitment to tolerance anywhere that has been demonstrated on the ground in Iraq, it is in the subregion of Iraqi Kurdistan. This is a shared value. These are people with whom we can work.

We should insist that Iraqi authorities in the central government in Baghdad adhere to their own constitution. What I do mean by that? Well, in the Iraqi constitution, there is a revenue-sharing agreement that creates a federalist system by virtue of funneling moneys to areas based on population, et cetera. And for years on end, this very money was lorded over the Kurdish regions in order to demand compliance.

And, again, I am not advocating for an autonomous Iraqi Kurdistan. I am advocating for a self-administrating subentity of a greater Iraq. But if we are going to help the Iraqis, we need to demand that they actually follow their own constitution, because they are right now weaponizing against the very people that they purport to serve.

We should direct U.S. aid in any form that it is administered to the government at the closest level to the people. Decentralize--as Thomas Jefferson once said, that government closest to

the people governs best and is most easily held to account.

Too often American aid is pilfered along its way from the United States through a central government to a regional government to a local government or entity. Let's find the good guys. Send it straight to them.

How do you do this? Well, within these subregions, we can find other subregions. For example, the Nineveh Plains in Iraq. I have spoken with Prime Minister Barzani, with the interior minister, with the finance minister--entire communities, literally towns and cities pushed free of their generational inhabitants that could come back and create a bastion of tolerance and adversity inside of a region that knows far too little of both.

And so the establishment of a Nineveh Plains Council and the directing of aid to that Nineveh Plains Council, not as an independent entity of a nation of Iraq or from Iraqi Kurdistan, but there within, in the Federalist construct, we would be siding with those who share our values to create outcomes that are consistent with our values.

And let me articulate briefly on what those values are: that all people are created equal and endowed by their creators with inalienable rights, and among these are life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.

Now, if I could spend 11 days in the United States of America and hear Jefferson and Locke and Hobbes and Madison and Mason quoted nearly as often as I did in north and eastern Syria or northern Iraq, I would think we were getting civics and history right. But these common values are what we will build a sustainable and peaceful future on.

Support concrete steps to establish a true multiethnic, multireligious, pluralistic government in Iraq. The framework exists. So, for example, if Iraq is the United States, then Iraqi Kurdistan is California, and Nineveh Plains is Los Angeles, and separate, between these entities, into the appropriate realms, those government structures of each.

In other words, the political leaders shouldn't be making religious decisions. The religious leaders shouldn't be making political decisions. The economic leaders shouldn't be making security decisions. And security leaders shouldn't be making economic decisions. This isn't Tom's idea. These folks have figured this out. What we are not doing is helping them get it right.

Again, if Iraq is the United States, then the KRG is California, and Nineveh Plains is Los Angeles. Get Los Angeles right, it will help California. Get California right, it will help Iraq.

And the same can be said in Syria. What does right look like? Again, repeatedly, people coming to me saying: Well, Mason said; Madison said; the Declaration said; the Constitution said. The SDC, the Syrian Democratic Council, governs north and eastern Syria, again, just like a State government might govern a subentity of the United States. There is not some desire for independence from Syria, but instead for a greater Syria that respects basic human rights and freedoms. These are American values and ideas.

And it is not just the SDC in north and eastern Syria. They have separate councils in every single town, and these towns' councils look like the towns.

If a population of Circassians exist, the Circassians have representation. There are more women in leadership positions by proportion in north and eastern Syria than there are in the United States House of Representatives. The Turks tell us that north and eastern Syria, the Syrian Democratic Council, is a subentity of the Kurds. The Turks are lying.

Let me tell you what the Syrian Democratic Council looks like. It looks Arab. It looks Kurdish. It looks Christian. It looks Yazidi. It looks Circassian. It looks like a man. It looks like a woman. It looks liberal. It looks conservative. It looks like you and me.

And what do we do to get it right? Well, the first thing that we could do that wouldn't involve spending a single dime of taxpayer money is recognize the right of the Syrian Democratic Council to exist as an independent subentity of a greater Syria. Mr. President, you could do this with one tweet.

Again, I am not advocating on behalf of an independent nation in north and eastern Syria. I am advocating on behalf of a Syrian nation that shares values based on what the leaders in this land that have undergone so much tragedy, so much dying, so much rape, have suffered through to beget.

Instead, we shape our policy on what might the Turks do, what might the Iranians do. I have got bad news. There is not a darn thing we can do to make them like us. Meanwhile, we have got people who inherently are drawn to us by virtue of an idea that everyone has a right to go to sleep in his or her own community without fear that they won't wake up in the morning; who just need us to say: Yes, you have a right to be there.

What other steps? Allow visas for the SDC leaders to get to the United States. That is right. They have essentially what is a state government. Their leaders aren't allowed to come here. Their leaders aren't allowed to walk the halls of this building like leaders from every other nation in the world and tell their story.

Stroke of a pen. Suggest that the values articulated in the SDC social contract be mirrored in foundational documents for a new Syria. These values include tolerance, pluralism, secular government--not secular society--freedom of religion, freedom from religion, equal rights for women, no persecution of people based on sexual orientation, the right to aspire and attempt and endeavor and succeed. These are American values.

I am not suggesting that we say that the SDC social contract should be adopted by all of Syria. I am suggesting that we suggest that when we negotiate this, because heretofore they are not even invited to the table, that they look at those values and seek to mirror those as part of any source of a sustainable future in that country.

To that end, we should insist on the inclusion and recognition of the SDC in any peace negotiations. We should establish immediately a no-fly zone over north and eastern Syrian. If the north and eastern Syrian SDC doesn't want you flying and the United States doesn't want you flying, you can't fly. Why? Well, because the Turks have stationed artillery on the border. They have shelled across the border. They have killed civilians across the border. The regime has dropped barrel bombs in the Khabur River Valley and killed civilians across the border, and the SDC--God bless them for trying--doesn't have any way of stopping it.

We should inform Turkey that the YPG is already out of Manbij and that the SDF isn't the YPG. We should inform Turkey, ultimately, that they can get out of Syria or they can get out of NATO.

The farce that suggests that Euphrates Shield is somehow in operation where Turkey collaborates with the world to rid it of the evil of ISIS is proven false by virtue not only of the horrific atrocities committed by the Turks, not only of the allowing of the Turks--of the forces that are ostensibly under their control to continue to attack peaceable peoples in the region, but also by the renaming of the streets, the hospitals, the schools, the police departments in the areas which they have occupied under the auspices of combating ISIS.

When was the last time the United States Army ever liberated an area and then changed the language to English and flew the U.S. flag over the hospital and the county administration building? These are not our allies.

What can we do to help not only in Syria and Iraq but in both? Make a concrete commitment to governments at whatever level--at the local level as embodied by the conceptual Nineveh Plains Council; the state level as embodied by a KRG, who, while not perfect, is acting a whole lot more in alignment with values of tolerance and secularism than anyone else in the region; and the Federal level in the instances of places like Jordan, make concrete commitments to these people who share our values.

This means more than money. Support Iranian opposition groups, insist that our allies ought to do business with us or with the Iranians, suspend the sale of weapons to Turkey until the Turks begin to behave like a nation that belongs amongst the community of nations.

In closing, Mr. Speaker, I am proud to be an American. I am proud of American values. But we, like all human beings, are imperfect.

Contrary to the thoughts of some, America is not the source of all the world's problems, we are also not the solution. But with great power comes great responsibility, Mr. Speaker, and we have been given great power.

It is our duty to get this right. Just like in the parable of the talents--to whom much is given, from whom much is expected. There is no excuse in remaining ignorant. People are dying. We need to get this right.

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

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

The motion was agreed to; accordingly (at 8 o'clock and 57 minutes p.m.), under its previous order, the House adjourned until tomorrow, Tuesday, December 11, 2018, at 10 a.m. for morning-hour debate.

Somewhere, Mr. Speaker, someone is watching what is going on in this Chamber. Even now, probably in a Nation of 320-plus million, many someones are watching, and most of them don't have a clue who I am, and that is okay. But the fact that most of them don't have a clue who the lady pictured to my left, your right, is, is not okay.

On April 23, 1951, in Prince Edward County, Virginia, at the R.R. Moton High School, a 16-year-old student named Barbara Rose Johns strode onto a stage and implored her peers at this all-African American high school to assert their God-given rights of equality.

I am honored today by the presence of Ms. Johns' sister, Joan Johns, in the gallery. She is tickled when she speaks to me, which tickles me, because I am tickled when I speak to her. I told her earlier today, Mr. Speaker, that I was in love with her sister. It is interesting, because she is sitting with my wife.

The reason that I say that is that I love America, and as a member of the State house, I had the honor of carrying legislation that made April 23 Barbara Johns Day in Virginia. The reason is that Barbara Johns' story is a story that every American should know.

Someone had the temerity to tell me, as I worked towards creating Barbara Johns Day, ``That is Black history.'' Mr. Speaker, it is not Black history or White history. It is American history. And America is not Black or White or brown. America is an idea.

So when the Founders drafted the preamble to the Constitution and called for us to form a more perfect Union, the presence of the word ``more'' implied a perpetual duty. And the revolution that cast off an oppressive government from across an ocean against Great Britain is one that I would argue was perpetual, and that another hero of mine named Thomas Jefferson was a slave owner, certainly an imperfect man, who articulated near perfect ideas.

Fast-forward to April 23, 1951. Barbara Johns, with a clean and clear and bright mind, influenced by her teachers and her Uncle Vernon Johns, understood that rights are not given by government but by something bigger, and understood that the duty of a citizen and a free nation was to assert their God-given rights. So the idea of something as draconianly oppressive as separate but equal was intolerable.

That day, she implored her students to walk out of Moton High School and the tar paper shacks and the leaking roofs and to demand equality not of outcomes, but of opportunity, because that is what America is supposed to be--without regard to gender, without regard to race, without regard to faith.

Now, what that manifested itself in was a court case, Davis v. Prince Edward County. That court case was amalgamated into another case of which I hope that people have heard, Brown v. Board of Education. The difference between that case and every other case was that those were initiated by lawyers, and this case was initiated by a 16-year-old girl who understood that the promise of liberty was not just to one group or another, that the American Revolution was perpetual, and that God had given her rights just like everyone else to be asserted as a citizen in a free society.

The fact that people watching don't know who I am is fine by me, but the fact that our students don't understand that America is supposed to be not Black or White or brown, but an idea wherein all people are created equal with an opportunity to succeed based on their work and their merit, that is not okay.

As a result, Mr. Speaker, we filed H.R. 5561, the Barbara Johns Congressional Gold Medal Act. Her efforts, without lauding herself, without patting herself on the back--indeed, going forth from this date and living a humble life as a wife and a librarian, as she aspired to-- are the embodiment of the nameless faces of millions who sacrificed so that we can live in a country that seeks to employ an idea that is the greatest idea known to the history of free people.

The civil rights movement is not a Black history story. It is not a White history story. It is an American history story. We are not a Black nation or a White nation. We are a nation built on an idea, and our students and our posterity need to understand that what makes us great is that this right fought for by people like this lady isn't universal.

So, Mr. Speaker, I hope that if the President is watching, he will file a Presidential Medal of Freedom; I hope that if Members or staff are watching, they will sign on to the Barbara Johns Congressional Gold Medal Act; and I hope that if students are watching, they will go to school tomorrow and tell their peers this is a country where people stood up so that we all have a chance to be that which we dream to be, because that is who Barbara Rose Johns was, and it is an American history story worth telling.

Wildfires

Mr. Speaker, it is one of my great pleasures to educate young people about the United States Constitution.

I find myself in an interesting position today because the people that I am educating aren't that young. One of my colleagues said that we are requesting documents to which we are not entitled. Checks and balances, anyone? We are entitled to whatever we ask for from agencies we established and fund and oversee.

Someone also said we are showing that politics is bigger than the law. Mr. Speaker, the Constitution of the United States is the law. This should have never come to this point that we should need a resolution of the House of Representatives to indicate that an executive branch entity that is funded by, established by, and overseen by this very House of Representatives should be compelled to give to us that to which we are entitled.

The next vote is a symptom of a much greater disease. We have a petulant Department of Justice defended by a petulant minority party.

Article I, section 8, Necessary and Proper Clause: It is the power of the legislature to establish comprehensive entities, to oversee such executive entities, and to fund such executive entities.

Mr. Speaker, we just witnessed a vote where 224 people, along party lines, voted to compel an executive branch entity established and funded by this body to do its job; and 182, along party lines, voted against having them be responsive to the checks and balances established in the Constitution of the United States.

There shouldn't even need to be a vote. Have the ``nays'' not read the Constitution? or do they just not care?

We established the DOJ. They refuse the oversight like a petulant child by withholding documents. Perhaps the time has come to look at our third responsibility, and that is the money.

If President Trump won't compel disclosure, if DOJ won't comply with the instruction of the body that established them and funds them, perhaps it is time to dock this petulant child's allowance. The power of the purse is ours.

In a perfect world, DOJ would never face such sanctions. But as the vote that we just witnessed has indicated, we don't live in a perfect world.

So as I see it, there are two options: DOJ can do their job and turn over the documents, or I and others of like mind can demand that we began to stop funding this petulant child who flaunts its ridiculous unissued power in the face of those who understand the Constitution and the citizens of the United States.

It is unconstitutional; it is arrogant and insubordinate; and it should stop; and any ruse of legality that is delightfully tap danced on by those who conveniently use the Constitution when it suits and then pervert it when it does not is not the direction this country needs to go if our tomorrows shall be as prosperous as our yesterdays.

Mr. Speaker, I move to suspend the rules and pass the bill (H.R. 5890) to require the Secretary of Health and Human Services to provide assistance to States in complying with, and implementing, certain provisions of section 106 of the Child Abuse Prevention and Treatment Act in order to promote better protections for young children and family-centered responses, and for other purposes.

Mr. Speaker, I ask unanimous consent that all Members may have 5 legislative days in which to revise and extend their remarks and include extraneous material on H.R. 5890.

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

Mr. Speaker, I rise today in support of H.R. 5890, the Assisting States' Implementation of Plans of Safe Care Act.

In 2016, a staggering 2.1 million Americans experienced an opioid abuse disorder. To put that in perspective, the number of fatalities based on opioid abuse in the most recent year approaches the number 60,000. To put that in perspective, it is nearly sixfold the number of alcohol-related deaths on our highways. It is nearly twofold the number of automotive deaths on our highways. It is, in fact, greater than the number of deaths from automobiles plus nonsuicide-related firearms deaths combined.

What is more troubling is that this number only takes into account those who directly suffered from substance abuse. What it does not take into account are the many people who experienced the secondhand trauma of a loved one struggling with opioid addiction.

One of the greatest tragedies of the opioid epidemic is that thousands of children have been swept up by the current of the epidemic due to the substance abuse of a family member or other adult tasked with caring for them.

The Child Abuse Prevention and Treatment Act, CAPTA, recently amended in 2016 by the Comprehensive Addiction and Recovery Act, CARA, requires States to implement a plan of safe care to protect the health and safety of young children and promote a family-centered approach to treatment and service delivery. Unfortunately, the requirements included by CARA failed to provide States with substantive guidance and information, which has led to significant confusion and poor implementation of plans of safe care.

States and localities might benefit from written guidance and technical assistance provided by the Department of Health and Human Services as they strive to meet Federal requirements and address the known challenges in their individual plans. Through an enhanced understanding of the requirements, States will be able to better protect the well-being of children and infants when working with families impacted by the trauma related to opioid abuse.

It is clear the opioid epidemic is already multigenerational in nature, as children must confront the pain of an addicted parent or guardian. By strengthening States' responsiveness and plans of safe care, we can help give these children the protection they need while strengthening families for long-term success and stability.

I urge my colleagues to support this legislation.

Mr. Speaker, I reserve the balance of my time.

Mr. Speaker, I yield such time as she may consume to the gentlewoman from North Carolina (Ms. Foxx), the honorable chairwoman.

Mr. Speaker, I am prepared to close if the gentlewoman from Oregon would like to conclude her remarks.

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

Mr. Speaker, I thank the gentlewoman from Florida, as well as the chairwoman from North Carolina and my friend and colleague from Oregon (Ms. Bonamici).

I strongly urge my colleagues of every political stripe to recognize that, perhaps while responsibility is best exercised when taken and not given, we contemplate here the outcomes for so many innocents who are unable to determine their circumstance, that is, indeed, children who are born into this horrific affliction of opioid addiction, and understand that, while one might wax poetic about things like personal responsibility and accountability, the Federal Government does, indeed, have a role to fill a vacuum where the States have not acted in the circumstance wherein those who suffer suffer by virtue of circumstances far, far beyond their control.

I would hope that the Members of this body on both sides would find themselves compelled by the sheer mathematical magnitude of the epidemic that is the opioid crisis--again, one that takes more lives than nonsuicide gun violence and automobile accidents combined, and one that impacts not just those who exercise choices but those impacted by circumstances far beyond their control--with this but a humble step, not a panacea, towards creating a better circumstance wherein all Americans experience something closer to an equal opportunity to prosper.

Mr. Speaker, I urge my colleagues across both sides of the political spectrum to vote in favor of H.R. 5890, and I yield back the balance of my time.

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

Mr. Speaker, it is an honor, the likes of which I can't think of a comparison, to stand here, in this week of April 2018, and commemorate a battle undertaken by a student that I would argue was a continuation of the American Revolution.

The American Revolution began when a group of White male landowners cast off the tyrannical throne which lorded over them from across an ocean, but it moved forward 80 years later when a million Americans, through disease and starvation and battlefield death, gave their lives to rid this Nation of the horrific institution of slavery. Then 55 years later, I would argue that it continued when the franchise was extended through women's suffrage to women.

Then 30-plus years after that, by a 16-year-old high school student at the R.R. Moton High School in Farmville, Virginia, who had heard about the foundational ideas espoused by a slave owner named Jefferson who wrote that all people are created equal, but couldn't reconcile that with her life experience, because in the county where she lived, a brand-new high school had been built, but only some kids could attend it.

So in extending this American Revolution that continues to this day, this 16-year-old young woman, Barbara Rose Johns, led a school walkout that was the only student-initiated case amalgamated into the decision in Brown v. Board of Education, which rid America of the ridiculous lie that was ``separate but equal.''

So her walkout was not to take rights from others, but to extend rights to all, and the idea of an American Nation founded on the idea that all people had fundamental rights, and that it was the role of government to protect those.

Mr. Speaker, I yield to the gentleman from Virginia (Mr. Scott), my colleague.

Mr. Speaker, I thank Congressman Scott for his comments.

I refer to myself as a nerd--which is okay, because the nerds usually win in the end--who loves history. My acquaintance with the story of Barbara Johns did not begin as a school student taking Virginia history in Virginia, it did not begin as a student at a top tier university studying history.

It began when I became a candidate for the State Senate of Virginia. The district that I wished to represent and had the honor of representing included Farmville. So when I went to Farmville, I had the opportunity to attend a function at the Moton Museum, which stands where R.R. Moton High School stood and, in fact, encompasses the bulk of that facility.

I heard about Barbara Johns, and I thought: Who is Barbara Johns? And the more I learned about Barbara Johns, the more I was amazed that I didn't know the answer to that question.

When we put in a bill to commemorate April 23, the day that this courageous, and I would stress without ceasing, 16-year-old student-- when I was 16 years old, I think I was more concerned with the zit on my nose and whether I could get a homecoming date than whether I was going to change the world.

But when I learned more about her and we put in a bill to commemorate April 23 as a holiday in the Commonwealth of Virginia, it was my hope that one day someone would look at a calendar and see Barbara Johns Day and say: Who was Barbara Johns?

Someone had the temerity to say to me: Well, Tom, this is Black history.

I reject that on its face. This is not Black history or Brown history or White history. It is American history, and it is red, white, and blue.

That this country is the worst nation in the world, except for all the others, to paraphrase Winston Churchill, is something that I am proud of.

That we were founded by geniuses like Jefferson, who was a flawed and fallen man by virtue of his participation in an evil, evil enterprise that was the slave trade, does not diminish the brilliance of the idea expanded upon by Locke and Rousseau and Hume, of natural law that all people have certain fundamental rights. That is who we are as a country.

The reason I postulated earlier that the American Revolution should never end is because in the preamble to the Constitution, our Founders gave us not a perfect union, but sought to establish

a more perfect union. And the word more's inclusion is important because it implies the perpetual need to act because, in any institution governed by flawed and fallen human beings, there will always inherently be imperfection, but that does not absolve us of our duty to do the best we can.

You can judge a nation and its character by the people whose virtues it extols. And to suggest that Barbara Johns is an American hero is to understate it.

Again, a revolution to cast off a tyrannical crown, followed decades and decades later by a civil war to abolish a horrific, horrific activity, followed by a fight for generations to ensure suffrage to an entire sex, followed 30-some years later by a young girl with the courage to stand up and assert that justice should be equal for all, and that transcends even educational opportunity, inarguably.

So I hold in high regard foundational heroes like Patrick Henry, and I have spoken from this spot on this floor before and talked about his speech: ``I know not what course others may take, but as for me, give me liberty or give me death.''

But my favorite ``Patrick Henryism'' was when, on speaking on separating from the crown, someone from the back of the room shouted ``Treason,'' and Henry said: ``If this be treason, make the most of it,'' a willingness to stand and fight and die because something was the right thing to do.

Now, let's skip forward to a 16-year-old girl in the segregated South. She undoubtedly had the fortune of a strong family. I have had the honor of speaking on multiple occasions with her sister and an amazing uncle in Vernon Johns, a pastor first educated at Virginia Theological Seminary and then at Oberlin and, I believe, at the University of Chicago.

But Vernon Johns studied what? The classics and natural law, the Jeffersonian ideas that liberty was inherently a gift to humans, not from a government, but to be protected thereby. And so I like to imagine, and presume it is true because I asked Joan Johns, with whom I spoke last, if they ever discussed these sorts of things with their Uncle Vernon, and she said, of course; that someone had to stand up and assert these God-given rights in a land where they weren't protected by the government in accordance to its responsibility.

Who did that? A 16-year-old young woman.

Okay. What was the cost? Well, no different than Patrick Henry, who said: ``If this be treason, then make the most of it,'' quite literally, Barbara Johns had to move away for fear for her life.

People think about the civil rights movement as many things. Many don't realize that well over 1,000 people died, a lot in civil unrest, but also in things like horrific bombings of churches based on the color of the skin of the people who attended them.

So the threat to Barbara Johns was existential and real but, in the face of that threat, she stood, and she led. And it wasn't about self- aggrandizement. There was no future political career. Barbara John's aspiration in life was to be a librarian. She became one.

But when her moment came, she led. And she led, not to take from anyone, but to give to everyone what is inherently their right and should be cherished and protected by government.

And so we have, with incredible humility, had the opportunity to serve in this hallowed institution, and this week, have filed for Barbara Johns to receive the Congressional Gold Medal. It is the highest award that can be bestowed by this Chamber.

Tragically, Ms. Johns passed from this life in 1991, but I would submit that she is well-worthy of this honor. And then if bestowing this honor upon her posthumously will lead more American young people to read and learn about the leadership and courage demonstrated by this school student from Prince Edward County, Virginia, then it is well worth doing.

I in no way, shape, or form mean to make light, but if Bob Hope and Roberto Clemente and John Wayne and Arnold Palmer and Dr. Muhammad Yunus and Louis L'Amour can receive the Congressional Gold Medal, then, by gosh, Barbara Rose Johns Powell deserves it.

This is a story that should be told. And it is not a political story, it is an American story. It is not a black or white story, it is an American story. It is not a story about a powerful woman, it is a story about a powerful human being.

We, collectively, are great because individuals have been allowed and encouraged and supported and uplifted and extolled for doing great things. And it is ridiculous that I should have studied Virginia history, American history, and then majored in history in college, grown up less than 100 miles away from where this young woman did this amazing thing, and have never heard her name.

So today, I genuinely and sincerely thank my colleague, and I hope that somebody at home somewhere is Google searching Barbara Rose Johns, because hers is an amazing story, and we stand on the shoulder of such giants. It is overdue that she be recognized for her contribution to our American family.

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

Mr. Speaker, I ask unanimous consent that I may hereafter be considered to be the primary sponsor of H.R. 756, a bill originally introduced by Representative Chaffetz of Utah, for the purpose of adding cosponsors and requesting reprintings pursuant to clause 7 of rule XII.

Mr. Speaker, I thank my colleague, the gentleman from Florida (Mr. Yoho), on this day when we honor dogs that serve honorably, just like the women and men who serve our country, for putting on this Special Order.

Anyone who has ever had a dog understands the depths of the bonds that can develop between human beings and their four-legged friends. I can remember every single dog that we have ever owned. I can remember how each one died. I can remember being there when two died. I never had the discipline or the opportunity or honor to serve with the working dogs that defend not just our country abroad, but also here at home. But as I say, of my time in the military, I am not a hero, but I have gotten to meet some.

In researching for this opportunity to honor those four-legged heroes and those with whom they work, I had the opportunity to read about some books: ``Always Faithful,'' a book about Marine Corps working dogs by William Putney; ``The Dogs of War'' by Lisa Rogak; ``War Dogs'' by Rebecca Frankel; and ``Sergeant Rex'' by Mike Dowling, among the most highly commended; as well as ``Unconditional Honor'' primarily by Cathy Scott,

which recognizes the fact that those of you watching at home, and this Record, might not contemplate, and that is the role that dogs play, not just on the battlefield and in finding missing people, and fighting crime here at home, but also when helping our servicemen and -women recover from wounds visible and invisible when they return to this country.

Indeed, thousands of servicemembers, welcomed by a climate that is shifting as it relates to service dogs, take the definition of working dog beyond the battlefield and outside of the field of crime and punishment into bedrooms and living rooms, and they help our brothers and sisters heal from wounds that most of us, praise God, will never be able to imagine.

As I think has been noted, at any given time, there are more than over 2,000 military working dogs with roughly 700 working overseas. These specially trained dogs can cost anywhere from $5,000 to $30,000 to procure and train, and about 30 service dogs annually are killed in the line of duty.

When I was in the military, we always looked with admiration upon the individuals who had the decorations and the pins and an adornments that very few people would earn. One was HALO wings. That stands for high altitude low opening. That is when you jump out of an airplane so high that someone couldn't possibly imagine that there might be someone inserting via this mechanism. Well, indeed, we have military dogs that insert this way, as well as strapped to their handlers via helicopter, and every other imaginable circumstance.

In fact, as I look at history, the oldest documented accounts of dogs either being used as accoutrements to defend their people or accompanying their masters onto the field of battle are almost 3,000 years old, and this is about as long as we can go back into documented written history. But tonight, Mr. Speaker, I want to speak briefly about a personal friend and hero.

In early 2006, Patrick Sheridan of the Louisa County Sheriff's Office procured Magpie Electric Potential from a bloodhound kennel in New Jersey and began working very hard with what I believe was the second dog that Lieutenant Sheridan would train. In fact, Lieutenant Sheridan and his K-9 team have become so successful in working K-9 operations and scent tracking, specifically, that they have tracked individuals on multiple continents and in multiple nations. And over the course of Magpie Electric Potential's, aka Maggie's, 6-year career, she worked almost 350 calls for service.

In 2010 alone, her duties ranged from trailing breaking-and-entering suspects and suspects in violent crime cases to helping locate a missing 5-year-old child before that child succumbed to the elements.

On December 12, 2011, Maggie and Lieutenant Sheridan were not engaged in chasing down a drug dealer or finding some horrific individual and preventing them from visiting domestic violence on someone once too frequently victimized, but, instead, searching for an individual who had been reported missing and suicidal. I make this point to note that these dogs defend the people with whom they serve and the people of our communities.

On this occasion, Maggie, while trailing again on nearly her 350th working call, encountered a pit bull and ultimately was attacked and succumbed to her injuries. Her end of watch on December 12, 2011, represents one of hundreds of working dog deaths just this century.

I, too, commend former President Bush for the establishment and the use of private citizen dollars to do such of a War Dog Memorial and hope that we will see something similar done as it relates to those working dogs who defend us not in the military, but in law enforcement here at home, not only by pursuing and apprehending criminals, but also by finding missing children and those who might harm themselves.

Mr. Speaker, I would commend to those viewing and to the Members of this body, when they find a dog handler or someone who had worked as a dog handler in the past, please say ``thank you'' for the dedication, time, and loyalty that is, indeed, reciprocal and unconditional because we need never fathom how many lives have been saved.

Mr. Speaker, I thank the gentleman from Alabama for yielding and the gentleman from Missouri.

The Bible says: Greater love hath no man than this, to lay down his life for his brothers and sisters.

On September 12, 1997, a little boy was born to a hardworking couple and named Dakota Kyle Rigsby.

Dakota's father served in the military, and this would influence Dakota's decision to one day follow in his father's footsteps and also serve this great Nation.

Every young man and woman, and every parent who kisses a child good- bye, understands that the potential price for such a decision is to make the ultimate sacrifice for something that is bigger and greater than yourself, and on June 17, 2017, Dakota Kyle Rigsby did just that, along with six colleagues: Yeoman 3rd Class Shingo Alexander Douglass; Sonar Technician 3rd Class Ngoc Truong Huynh; Gunners Mate 2nd Class Noe Hernandez; Fire Controlman 2nd Class Carlos Victor Ganzon Sibayan; Personnel Specialist 1st Class Xavier Alec Martin; and Fire Controlman 1st Class Gary Leo Rehm, Jr.

I often joke that the United States is the worst country in the world except for all the others.

When a slave owner named Jefferson articulated an idea for the world that all people were created equal, it harkens to the preamble to the Constitution that gives us not a perfect union, but asks us to work towards a more perfect union, which means that there is always work to be done.

Mr. Speaker, this work is invariably done in most instances by women and men whose names we will never know. So we carry this bill so that one of those heroes upon the backs of whom our Nation is built will be remembered, even if only in a small place in a small way, for sacrificing every single one of his tomorrows to help us continue to be free.

He joins the legion of Americans numbered in the millions who have given the ultimate sacrifice. We know the name of Abraham Lincoln. We know the name of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. We need to remember the names of people, heroes like Dakota Rigsby.

So this young man, devoted to service, demonstrated this from his time in high school as a volunteer firefighter to that eventful night when he executed his duties and went to bed for the day on the USS Fitzgerald.

I understand that there is a lot that we still need to do in this country, but please understand that we are where we are because better people than us have given all of their tomorrows for us to be here.

I would submit that when you hear that national anthem, while I would defend to my last breath your right not to stand, that you do stand. Stand up for Dakota Kyle Rigsby because, by God, he stood up for us.

Mr. Speaker, it is an incredible honor to stand today in honor of the legacy of the Reverend Billy Graham.

The population of the United States when Reverend Graham was born was 103 million. Over the course of his life, Reverend Graham spoke to more than twice as many people who existed in the country the day he was born in person about the greatest gift that one can ever be given, and that is the gift of eternal life and salvation by a Creator so benevolent as to look the other way on the undeniable sins of each of us.

So as I look to try to leave an impact on the world, I understand that people far greater than me have left far greater an impact than I could ever leave. I want to use Reverend Graham's words in closing to honor Reverend Graham not for who he was, but for his commitment to his Savior Jesus Christ.

Reverend Graham said: When wealth is lost, nothing is lost. When health is lost, something is lost. And when character is lost, all is lost.

Reverend Graham said: The greatest legacy one can pass on to one's children and grandchildren is not money or material things accumulated in one's life, but a legacy of character and faith.

I think most appropriately, in closing, he said: I look forward to death with great anticipation to meeting God face to face.

Finally, he said: I haven't written my own epitaph. I am not sure I should. Whatever it is, I hope it will be simple and it will point people not to me, but to the God that I served.

I thank Billy Graham, and I pray God would send us more. Amen.

Madam Speaker, it is a somber time to come into this Chamber as we have colleagues at the other end of the building who formed something they call the Common Sense Coalition, which is, I think, a gentle euphemism like so many things in this town are, which might well be called the ``kick the can down the road'' coalition, the ``doing the same thing again and again and again and again and expecting a different result'' coalition, or the ``those who do not learn from the past are doomed to repeat it'' coalition.

The photo that is to my left and to your right if you are viewing at home is of me at a ceremony at Red Hill Farm in the Fifth District of Virginia, where a man named Patrick Henry lived.

Patrick Henry is notable as an early patriot who sought to ensure the blessings of self-determination and liberty for a fledgling nation that determined that it was unjust that they should be governed by edict from across the sea and most notably said the words: ``I know not what course others may take; but as for me, give me liberty or give me death.''

Indeed, anyone who signed the Declaration of Independence understood at that time that they were literally signing their own death warrant, yet they did because it was the right thing to do.

Today we have degenerated into a political class that knows pandering and efforts to placate individuals without the interests of the mass constituency that we all unitedly serve, and that is the American people.

In fact, when Patrick Henry spoke about liberty one day in a separate speech, from the back of the room, someone shouted, ``Treason,'' and Henry responded eloquently: ``If this be treason, make the most of it.''

What has happened to our leaders?

So that day I spoke to a group of a couple of dozen new Americans from every corner of the world--from Asia, Africa, the Middle East, Europe, and South America--who had, in some instances, worked decades to become Americans and to earn those blessings of liberty gained for us by people like Patrick Henry, like 1 million nameless faces who died of combat death, disease, or starvation during a war to end the horrific institution of slavery, and like Abraham Lincoln and Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.

So they, indeed, looked like America--Brown people, White people, Black people, Asian people, American people--and they earned it. But what is coming out of the Senate now essentially throws aside the sacrifices of so many in order to score political points.

It was, indeed, one of the greatest honors of my life to welcome those new brothers and sisters to our American family. Yet the process through which they pained and labored does not in any way mirror the process that we would continue by kicking the can down the road under the proposed Senate ``compromise.''

I could really, literally, do this all day, all week, all month, and all year if I wanted to highlight the cases of individuals who had lost their lives because our Federal Government is completely unwilling to enforce the laws that it currently has on the books.

Many of you recognize the lovely face of Kate Steinle, who was enjoying a beautiful afternoon in the Embarcadero district of San Francisco on pier 14 with her dad. A graduate of Cal Poly, San Luis Obispo, she worked in the medical field and had recently moved in with her boyfriend when an illegal who had been deported 5 times, who the local government refused to turn over to Federal authorities, discharged a weapon that he stole from a member of law enforcement at what he said was a sea lion--which is bad enough--and killed this lovely young woman whom her friends say loved yoga and helping others.

Reports indicate that among her last words was a plea to her father to please help. She passed away because we refuse to enforce our law.

Edwin Jackson, a linebacker for the Indianapolis Colts, was born in the same town that I was: Atlanta, Georgia. He didn't have big-time football offers out of high school. Indeed, instead of the University of Georgia or Florida or Clemson, he matriculated to Georgia Southern University. But he worked, and he worked with an optimism that radiated from the very smile on his face.

And not long ago, Edwin Jackson became one of nearly 1,000 people per year who die in alcohol-related accidents involving people in this country illegally; as well as his Uber driver, Jeffrey Monroe, who should also be noted. Edwin Jackson's obituary indicated that his greatest goal in life was to be a positive role model for young people to overcome challenges.

The individual who was detained had a blood alcohol content of .239, or nearly three times the legal limit. He had been deported twice before, tried to run from the scene, and lied to police officers about his name upon his apprehension.

Edwin Jackson and Jeffrey Monroe are dead because we refuse to enforce our laws.

Denise Mosier, in my home State of Virginia, in 2010, was riding in a van with two other nuns from the 33-women monastery where she made her home, aspiring to help people. Her two dear friends were horrifically injured in an accident that took Miss Mosier's life. This Benedictine nun had devoted her life to the service of others. Quite literally, you could find nothing bad that anyone could say about this woman.

The driver who took her life was ultimately charged with DUI third or subsequent offense. He had arrived illegally in this country and was only weeks away from a deportation hearing, which he was only having because of his multiple prior arrests for driving under the influence.

Tragically, our unwillingness to enforce our own laws cost about 10 percent of the community at the monastery where Denise Mosier made her home dearly and cost about 4 percent their life.

In fact, 13 percent of all drunk drivers arrested in the United States every year are here illegally--13 percent of 1.5 million. And the death toll of drunk-driving-related offenses in this country is about 10,000 per year. So extrapolating those numbers, nearly 1,000 people per year are killed in alcohol-related accidents involving those here illegally. And we refuse to enforce our own laws.

Peter Hacking was a volunteer fire department captain in Texas. One afternoon not long ago, Peter stopped off Highway 78 to pick up his children, which included 4-year-old Ellie and a son who was 2, when they were killed by a previously deported drunk driver, who ultimately received a sentence of about 2 years, and who was here because we will not secure our border and we will not enforce our laws.

Let me be clear: those two dozen or so individuals whom I had the great honor--of all faiths and all creeds from around the world--of welcoming into our American family are American just like everyone watching this today. But those who are not here legally, who will not go through the processes prescribed by this very body, are a discredit to those who work so hard and those who have sacrificed so much to make this Nation the beacon of freedom that it is. And no nation of laws can perpetuate itself so long as it looks the other way as its laws are selectively enforced and not enforced.

Tessa Tranchant, from Virginia Beach, Virginia, was riding with a girlfriend and killed by a drunk driver here illegally.

Danny Oliver and Michael Davis were law enforcement professionals from Sacramento, California. They were murdered by a frequently deported individual who swears that he will find a way to kill more police officers.

Dominic Durden was killed while riding his motorcycle by an illegal drunk driver.

Jamiel Shaw was brutally shot and murdered by an illegal.

Marilyn Pharis, who devoted her life to the service of this Nation in the United States Air Force, was beaten, tortured, raped, and murdered by an illegal who had been arrested 6 times in 15 months, the most recent time being 8 days before this crime was perpetrated but not reported to Federal authorities because the sanctuary community that she was in did not deem it worthy to report.

I want to see a healthy and robust immigration system into this country, legally. I want to live in a nation that enforces the very laws that these bodies pass to protect those people who we are tasked with serving, the American people, be they naturalized or native born.

I literally could keep telling these stories for weeks and weeks and weeks.

So we now find fiscal responsibility a rallying cry from individuals who don't seem to care about that at any point in time except for when it is convenient to their political agenda. We have a President in the White House who suggested that we would build a border wall and we would have those who are responsible for the immigration problem pay for it. We have a media that glowingly and gleefully pokes fun and asks: How is that plan going for you?

Well, I have a proposal. About 92 percent of foreign nationals in U.S. Federal prisons are here illegally. That is over 9 out of 10. That comes out to about 34,500 inmates in our Federal prison system here illegally. And they are not here for immigration violations. They are here for robbery; they are here for rape; they are here for murder.

The cost to incarcerate one individual in the Federal prison system annually is about $32,500. I'm not that good at math, but that comes out to about $1.1 billion per year. If you move away from the Federal prison system and extrapolate those numbers across the State prison systems, you are looking at something like $9.5 billion per year to incarcerate illegals here convicted of violent crimes, felonies. We are talking about prisons, not jails.

Now, the Senate plan says: Okay. Well, what we are going to do is we are going to spend $18 billion over 10 years.

I will tell you what. If we can just secure the Southern border and stop the inflow of illegals, we could reduce our Federal and State prison expenditures by about $9.5 billion a year, and I'll get you your $18 billion in 2 years.

In other words, you want to pay for this wall?

Build it; it will pay for itself. And that is in dollars and cents.

But, folks, how do you quantify the lives of these people?

How do you put a dollar value on the life of a woman who spent her entire life serving our country and was tortured, raped, and murdered by someone who had been arrested just 6 days before and, under the Federal law, should have been reported to Federal authorities, but they didn't think it was necessary in California?

Or Jamiel, is there a dollar value you can put on this young man's life?

How do you quantify these lives? How about these law enforcement professionals? How about this teenage girl from Virginia Beach, Virginia? How about a firefighter and father of a 22-month-old and a 4- year-old? How about a nun who devoted her entire life to serving others? How about a football player who worked his way up from the bottom and only wanted to motivate and inspire young people who faced challenging circumstances?

I genuinely love my brothers and sisters of all races, creeds, and origins; I genuinely do. I welcome them to apply to a process to allow them to avail themselves of the benefits of, I believe, the greatest Nation the Earth has ever seen. Winston Churchill said: ``Democracy was the worst form of government, except for all the others.'' This is the worst country in the world, except for all the others.

But if we won't enforce the laws that we pass, who are we? What have we become? And if we won't protect those people who protect us-- firefighters, police officers, nuns, and mothers--how can we look at ourselves?

Mr. Speaker, I yield to the gentleman from North Carolina (Mr. Budd).

Madam Speaker, I thank Representative Budd for his comments.

At this time, I yield 5 minutes to the gentleman from Florida, (Mr. Yoho).

Madam Speaker, I thank the gentleman from Florida (Mr. Yoho), my friend and colleague, for his comments.

In 42 years, 3,037 Americans have been killed on U.S. soil by foreign-born terrorists. There have been 182 foreign-born terrorists, to be precise, who have taken the lives of almost 3,050 Americans, and 63 of those 182, or greater than a third, came here legally on visas, to include the diversity visa scheme. In fact, our office has tried relatively diligently to calculate the actual death toll of native-born Americans by recipients of diversity visas, unsuccessfully. These are difficult data points.

But just in the last few years, the name Sayfullo Saipov has been in the American news. This jihadist who had an admiration for terrorists, to include the murderous raping, intolerant thugs of ISIS, took the lives of eight Americans and injured many more in a truck attack on Halloween, just last October. He was the recipient of a diversity lottery visa.

Before that, Abdurasul Hasanovich Juraboev from Uzbekistan was also the recipient of a diversity lottery visa, and he was arrested in 2015 for conspiring to ``kill as many Americans as he could.'' He wrote:

I am in the USA now. We don't have the weapons we need. Is

it possible to commit ourselves as dedicated martyrs anyway

while here? What I am saying is, to get guns, to shoot Obama,

and then maybe get shot ourselves. Would that do? That would

strike fear into the hearts of the infidels.

This legal diversity visa recipient from Brooklyn said:

If this is not successful, maybe bomb Coney Island.

Fortunately, he was arrested before he could bring to fruition his plans to assault individuals in the very Nation that had so graciously opened its doors.

It is incredibly interesting to me the results that I learned when my wife and I engaged in that which is all the rage these days and looked at our DNA. I found out I had relatives from multiple continents, and I am proud of that. But I am an American just like those people who stood with me that day at the home of the great American patriot Patrick Henry, from Africa and Asia, the Middle East, South America, Europe, Oceania. They are my American brothers and sisters. They did everything by the numbers and availed themselves of a dream that we all share. Those who do not, cheapen the sacrifice made by so many who have come before them.

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

Mr. Speaker, let the record show that I was present for the Roll Call vote 044. Had my vote registered properly, the Roll Call would have shown my ``Yea'' vote on Roll Call No. 44

Mr. Speaker, it is humbling to have the opportunity to stand in this Chamber to speak on so important a subject as China's role in the world in 2018.

Having had the privilege also of leading American soldiers on foreign soil, Mr. Speaker, I understand that the last resort in any circumstance should be military action, and so I wish to make clear that the strong words that will follow are not directed to be a threat to the People's Republic of China but, instead, to be encouragement to the people thereof.

We want peace and to work alongside all nations in a community of nations, but it is our duty, as free people, to express the basic rights inherent to our very existence in this world.

Mr. Speaker, I would say to the Chinese people today that we still hold these truths to be self-evident, that all people are created equal and endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable rights, and that among these are life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness--this message directed, again, to the people of China because the oppressive Communist, dictatorial regime seems hell-bent upon denying these very rights not to nations across the world aside from China, but to the

very people whom they purport to serve; and in so doing, they not only oppress those people, but also perpetrate schemes that lead to a lower quality of life and enhanced threats to people across the globe.

Industrial espionage costs the very livelihoods and well-being of workers in every continent of the world. Intellectual property theft isn't about the hundreds of billions of dollars stolen from those who had the wherewithal, energy, and vision to create, but about the child who won't have an opportunity to attend college because the job that his or her parent might have had has been quite literally stolen by Chinese malfeasance.

Propping up a regime in North Korea that literally engages, in the year 2018, in the enslavement of their own citizens and turning a blind eye on those practices, which, Mr. Speaker, I suppose shouldn't be a surprise when you look at the human rights record of the People's Republic of China itself, I don't have time, nor do my colleagues, though I commend Congressman Yoho for this hour, to recount the number of victims of human rights violations, of prisoners of conscience, of victims of state oppression, of those who had the temerity to stand up and suggest that individuals have certain basic fundamental human rights only to reap horrific consequences underneath a totalitarian Communist regime in the People's Republic of China.

But in the limited time that I have, forced abortions of human life, to the tune of tens and tens and tens of millions; Mr. Speaker, child labor laws drafted by the People's Republic of China that look wonderful on the global stage, but practices that one recent survey indicated would have the entire population of the State of Ohio worth of 10- to 14-year olds working what one recent news story characterized as 16 hours a day, 28 days a month in 2018.

Their laws indicate that they have ended the practice of organ harvesting, and yet mathematical data indicates that, in China, if you are part of the ruling class, it is not hard to find that kidney, that bone marrow, that heart.

This sort of oppression is foisted upon the people of China, while all too often the United States and other nations of the world turn a blind eye not in the interest of respecting cultural differences, but in the interest of our pocketbooks.

We still hold these truths to be self-evident. And if I could do nothing else while I am here, Mr. Speaker, but to speak and encourage nations of the world, but, more importantly, the people oppressed by regimes such as that of the Chinese dictatorial, Communist, totalitarian state, and tell them that we understand, we have their backs, they have our support, then I will have accomplished something.

I am of an age, Mr. Speaker, when one of the images permanently seared in my memory is of a lone man standing in Tiananmen Square facing down a main battle tank. And when I think of that image and then I think of the United States, I think of Patrick Henry, who not only said, ``Give me liberty or give me death,'' but also said, when someone yelled from the back of the room, ``Treason,'' ``If this be treason, make the most of it.''

I think of a 16-year-old girl in Farmville, Virginia, Barbara Johns, whose family had to move because she had the temerity, after discussing the Declaration of Independence with her uncle Vernon Johns, to question why there was a school that only White kids could attend.

And I think of the charge in the Constitution of the United States not to be a perfect Union, because we are not there yet, but to be a more perfect Union.

So then I contemplate my responsibility not only as a Member of this body, and it is obviously to serve the constituents of the Fifth District of Virginia in the United States of America, but also to stand up for human beings across the globe.

And China, we still hold these truths to be self-evident. We will not turn a blind eye on policies that lead to forced abortions of living humans, that lead to child labor policies of 16 hours of work a day, 28 days a month of a number of kids between the ages of 10 and 14 that mirrors the population of the State of Ohio.

We will not turn a blind eye to policies and public statements saying you have ended organ harvesting when all data indicates that you haven't. And then we will not turn a blind eye to the oppression of any minority, and particularly religious minorities, whether it is Falun Gong or Christians or Muslims in the west of China.

So I know in this age of the internet, this age of the world wide web and global communication, that the people of China, though their government seeks to inhibit the flow of information, will hear this, and the message is simple: You are my brothers and sisters. You are human beings just like us. You have the same rights that we have. You will not be given these rights by a government but by a creator or by nature, depending on your belief structure. And if you have the courage to stand up, understand this: We will support you.

Mr. Speaker, I would just, again, commend the Member from Florida, Congressman Yoho, as it relates to this opportunity.

I think it is important to remember that, just like Americans, whether it was the Revolutionary War or the civil rights movement, the Chinese people have bled. They have sweated. They have paid the price for the basic human rights that we all enjoy here.

And again, I would commend the American consumer to consider the reality of child labor, of exploitative policies as relates to industrial espionage, of exploitative policies that literally deprive Americans of livelihoods perpetrated by the Chinese, and to shop with that in mind until we see real reform from China.

I have been frustrated heretofore with the efforts sometimes of our very own government as it relates to putting any force or its proverbial money where its mouth was to this end, but I believe there is power in the people of the United States.

And so I would encourage people, again, to shop with their consciences until we see actual acts beyond words from a regime that has a history of saying and doing all the right things in public but allowing the perpetuation of horrific, horrific circumstances on their very people at home, in private.

Mr. Speaker, I ask unanimous consent that my name be added as a cosponsor of H.R. 756, a bill introduced by Mr. Chaffetz.