Floor Statements

Madam Speaker, Carolyn Maaitis was a beloved crossing guard from Basking Ridge, New Jersey. Carolyn passed away on May 17, 2021, after a courageous battle with cancer.

Carolyn was a cherished member of her community, who spent the last 28 years ensuring the safety of Basking Ridge children as a crossing guard near the Liberty Corner School. Along with her husband, George, Carolyn was a source of love and support to the students and families who knew her.

Carolyn prepared goody bags full of snacks and stickers on holidays, gave cards and small gifts on birthdays, and always had treats on hand for the neighborhood dogs. She never forgot to ask how a sick family member was doing and continually kept up to date with those around her.

I join the Basking Ridge community in mourning her loss. Carolyn exemplified what it means to be an upstanding citizen and neighbor. Her presence will be missed by all.

Madam Speaker, it is good to be able to stand on the House floor and speak, not about the crisis of the day or even my hopes for tomorrow, but about something this Congress has delivered to make people's lives better.

When I first ran for this job, the number one demand I heard from voters was to make healthcare more accessible and the Affordable Care Act more affordable. With the American Rescue Plan, that is what we have done in a major way.

By increasing ACA subsidies and capping premiums, we are enabling the typical middle-class family with marketplace coverage to save hundreds of dollars a month. A 60-year-old couple making $75,000 a year will save almost $1,400 a month. That is life-changing.

Now we just have to make this permanent; to keep the promise that no American should be crushed by the cost of their healthcare; and to give people hope that, if they continue to vote for better government, they will continue to get it.

Madam Speaker, as we mourn the victims of another senseless mass shooting in America, I rise to recognize two police officers in my district: Jeffrey Johnson and Michael Pollack of the Westfield Police Department, who prevented a potential mass shooting in my district in 2019.

On June 13 of that year, Officers Johnson and Pollack responded to a call at Tamaques Elementary School in Westfield, where they were met with a man armed with a .45-caliber gun, hollow-point bullets, and 130 rounds of ammunition; an arsenal much of which is not legal in New Jersey, but which he had obtained legally in another State.

The officers disarmed and arrested the man, potentially saving the lives of teachers, staff, and kids. The officers recently received the Hero Award from our Union County Prosecutor's Office, and I continue to honor their heroism here on the House floor today.

This incident is another reminder that while we have strong gun laws in New Jersey and one of the lowest rates of gun violence fatalities in the country, as a result, many of our neighboring States do not. As long as our gun laws are inconsistent across State lines, those who wish to commit mass murder will find the means to do so.

Mr. Speaker, had I been present, I would have voted ``nay'' on rollcall No. 71.

Madam Speaker, today I rise to honor Ridge High School Thespian Troupe 7742.

As part of New Jersey Thespians' Trick or Treat so Kids Can Eat program, Troupe 7742 collected close to 170 pounds of food for the Somerset County Food Bank. Their donation efforts came at a critical time for many New Jerseyans who are utilizing community food banks now more than ever before.

Ridge High School Thespian Troupe 7742 is comprised of students who not only excel in the arts, but who also strive to make a difference in their own neighborhood. Their contributions here demonstrate just that. Thank you to Troupe 7742 for the work they do to enrich and give back to the Somerset County community.

Mr. Speaker, when we talk about unity, let's remember we were united last October when the House came together almost unanimously to condemn QAnon in a resolution that I had introduced. We said that QAnon was fanning the flames of anti-Semitism, that the looney lies it was spreading online would lead to people being killed in the real world.

But then yesterday, Mr. McCarthy, the minority leader, said something that mystified me. He cited that resolution as a reason not to remove Representative Greene from her committee. We had already condemned QAnon, he suggested, so why would we need to do anything else?

It is like saying: We condemned bank robbery last year. We don't need to actually stop any bank robbers this year.

How could almost 400 of us say that QAnon is a threat and then when we see someone who has spent years spreading the same conspiracy theories, the same anti-Semitism, the same calls for violence, someone who 3 days ago called her critics pedophiles--not 2 years ago; 3 days ago--then say that person should be given all the privileges of a Member of the House?

Mr. Speaker, if you condemn QAnon, that means you have to fight it. If you believe that these conspiracy theories are dangerous, you have to separate yourself from the people who are spreading them.

If even a substantial number of us stand with Representative Greene today, violent extremists will see it as another sign that they have a legitimate place in our national debate, that respectable leaders in our society either embrace them or fear them too much to stand in their way.

I ask you, do not send this message. Let's unite against extremism, not with it.

Mr. Speaker, when I saw the President's comments over the weekend, my first thought was, my politics may not always be the same as the Congresswomen he was attacking; but all of us are Americans. And unlike most of them, I was actually born in a foreign country.

I took the oath to support and defend the Constitution of the United States when I was 10 years old, with my mom, when I was sworn in to be a citizen 5 years after we came here from Poland.

Does the President think I should go back because I am an immigrant who disagrees with his policies?

There are 44 million of us American citizens who were born somewhere else, and we new Americans know what it means to be American because we chose America. We know the alternative.

Many of us do come from broken countries, a communist country, in my case, broken by communism and, in many cases, broken by leaders who did just what we are condemning today, using race and religion to divide people.

The President may be doing it cynically. He wants the drama. He wants the reality show.

In my district, we have to deal with the reality that these words are dangerous. Every synagogue in my district either has armed security or is struggling with the question of whether to have it. Every mosque has State Police coming to Friday prayers.

We know that the words the President uses to drive up his ratings can be like sparks to the gasoline of disturbed minds in our country; that the man who massacred Jews in Pittsburgh was obsessed with migrant caravans and blamed Jews for helping refugees; that the man who murdered Muslims in Christchurch, New Zealand, believed immigrants are invaders who should go back to their country.

These fringe haters have always been with us. Never before have their twisted thoughts been legitimized by the highest leaders in our land.

Yesterday, after the President's tweets, the neo-Nazi Daily Stormer website gloated that this is the kind of white nationalism we voted for.

Now, we have to decide, is this the kind of politics that we want in our country?

Mr. Speaker, this resolution is not really about the President. We know who he is. My Republican colleagues know who he is.

The question is--the only question left to us is, who are we? Because this is not about him. This is about us.

Are we still the country of immigrants and of laws that every great American leader, from Ben Franklin, to FDR, to John F. Kennedy, to George Bush, believed in?

Do we still believe what Ronald Reagan said that: ``Americans lead the world because, unique among nations, we draw our people, our strength, from every country and every corner of the world;'' that new Americans ``renew our pride and gratitude in the United States of America, the greatest, freest Nation in the world''?

This is the choice that every Member of the House will have to make tonight. Do we agree with President Reagan's hopeful, confident, patriotic vision of America, or with President Trump's message of fear?

Mr. Speaker, Republicans and Democrats can afford to disagree about many things in this House; but let us not be divided on decency to our fellow Americans.

At this defining moment for our country and for this body, let us come together to support this resolution.

Mr. Speaker, I thank Chairman Engel for his leadership on this issue. I also want to recognize Ranking Member McCaul and all my colleagues on the Foreign Affairs Committee for working with me to ensure that we could move forward with this bill in a bipartisan way.

All of us agree that our relationship with Saudi Arabia is important, but we equally agree that how the Saudi Government treats its people and the people of other countries is important.

We have known this for a long time, I think, but last year's murder of Jamal Khashoggi by the Saudi Government makes it especially important that we take meaningful action in defense of our interest and our values.

When I was campaigning for Congress last year in New Jersey, foreign policy issues did not come up very often, and yet the murder of Jamal Khashoggi somehow broke through the noise. I was asked about it a lot.

I think this is because people understand that, while human rights violations in countries like Saudi Arabia are all too common, what happened to Khashoggi was not common. He was not killed, after all, inside Saudi Arabia. He was a resident of the United States. And yet the Saudi Government lured him into one of their embassies on the soil of a NATO country, where they brutally slaughtered him.

Many governments around the world abuse their people. Very few governments reach out beyond their borders to kidnap or kill people living in other countries. Russia has done it; Iran has reportedly done it.

But this kind of crime is very rare. It is profoundly in our interest to keep it rare, and that is why it is essential that we name and hold accountable those who are responsible for the killing of Jamal Khashoggi.

We need to do this not because what the Saudi Government did was wrong, but because it crossed a line that no partner of the United States should ever be allowed to cross--not just because it showed a lack of respect for human rights, but because it demonstrated a lack of respect for the United States.

Let's remember that there are thousands of Jamal Khashoggis living in America today. Men and women who have taken refuge in our country from dictatorships around the world and who sometimes speak up about injustices in their countries of origin.

If the Saudi Government gets away with what it did to a resident of the United States, what is to stop China or Russia or Cuba or Iran or North Korea or Venezuela or any other dictatorship from doing the same.

We know it is not their scruples that hold them back. The only thing that stops them is their fear of the consequences if they do this to somebody living in our country or to an American abroad. That is why there have to be consequences.

Our bill ensures that there will be. It requires the Director of National Intelligence to give us a list of everyone--without exception--whom the intelligence community believes to be responsible for planning, executing, or covering up this terrible crime. All on this list will be subject to a visa ban. The sanctions can only be lifted if the Saudi Government takes meaningful steps to reform human rights conditions in the kingdom.

Mr. Speaker, it is clear that, while the Saudi Government has faced a lot of rhetorical condemnation for what they did to Jamal Khashoggi, it has not yet gotten the message. We know that the FBI has visited at least four Saudi dissidents living in the United States since Khashoggi's murder to warn them about the threats to their life from Saudi Arabia, including as recently as 6 weeks ago.

The Saudis also continue to imprison American citizens without trial or charge, despite repeated requests from the Trump administration for their release. While I appreciate that the State Department has sanctioned several Saudis for their involvement in Khashoggi's murder, this action also risks sending the wrong message.

By only sanctioning the rogues, whom the Saudis themselves are willing to throw under the bus for this crime, we risk reinforcing the Saudi Crown Prince's lie that the murder of Khashoggi was a rogue operation.

The relationship with Saudi Arabia is important, but it is not so important that we have to lie for the Saudis or allow them, literally, to get away with murder. No relationship and no individual is so important that we need to debase ourselves in that way.

Now is the time to send the message, especially now, before Mohammad bin Salman ascends to the Saudi throne, that this is wrong.

Now is the time to make clear that reckless behavior, whether the murder of an American resident or the kidnapping of the Lebanese Prime Minister or the blockade of Qatar, carries a price, that the men who rule Saudi Arabia, who, after all, depend far more on us than we depend on them, need to take our interests and values into account rather than always counting on us to cover up for them.

Madam Chair, I have an amendment at the desk.

Madam Chair, let me begin by saying what this amendment will not do.

It will not end our security relationship with Saudi Arabia. It will not prevent us from helping the Saudis defend themselves against the Houthis or Iran or anybody else. It won't prevent us from working with them to deal with maritime threats in the Persian Gulf or from sharing intelligence about terrorism.

It will not, in other words, preclude us from doing anything that is in America's national security interest.

All it will do is stop something that is categorically harmful to our national interest: the provision of offensive weapons that enable Saudi Arabia to keep defying our advice by bombing Yemen and prolonging the war there.

There is a reason why people say that this war has caused the world's worst humanitarian crisis. More than 200,000 civilians have been killed or died of starvation.

While the Houthis are to blame for much of this, Saudi and UAE airstrikes are responsible for two-thirds of Yemeni civilian casualties.

There was a strike on a funeral where more than 150 civilians were killed, a strike on a school bus that killed 40 kids, on a Save the Children Hospital, on a wedding.

These were not mistakes. These were deliberate and precise attacks. And everybody in Yemen knows that the bombs causing the suffering are made in the United States.

Who benefits from this? Certainly not us. From a strategic perspective, the only winner is Iran. By making a relatively small investment in Yemen, the Iranians have drawn the Saudis into this quagmire which tarnishes them and the United States and pushes Yemenis into Iranian hands.

Over two administrations, the U.S. Government has tried to use its influence to change how Saudi Arabia fights this war. I know about this effort because I was in charge of it in 2015 and 2016 at the State Department. It was worth a try then, but the Saudis did not listen to us.

Under both the Obama and Trump administrations, we have given the Saudis specific lists of targets not to strike. We have told them: Do not hit this specific hospital or this port facility or that bridge. And then, repeatedly, they have gone ahead and hit the

precise coordinates on our no-strike list.

And then we just keep on selling them the bombs.

What does that say to the people of Yemen? What does it say to the leadership of Saudi Arabia?

Now, I know some have argued that, if we want to protect civilians in Yemen, it is better to at least make sure the Saudis have precision munitions to help them avoid collateral damage. This argument does not make sense. The Saudis are using our precision weapons to precisely hit the wrong targets.

Others have said that, if we don't help the Saudis, the Russians or the Chinese will. That is nonsense. The Saudis use American aircraft. Last I checked, you cannot service an F-15 with MIG parts. They are, for the foreseeable future, utterly dependent on us.

The question we have to decide is: What kind of relationship are we going to have with Saudi Arabia? Is it one in which the Saudis can do whatever they please, contrary to our advice, contrary to our interests, knowing that, whatever they do to us, we will take it on ourselves to save the relationship? Or will we finally recognize that, while we benefit from working with Saudi Arabia, the Saudis need us far more?

This is a measured amendment, Madam Chair, that deals with precisely the Saudi conduct that we most oppose, without undermining our ability to cooperate with Saudi Arabia on other issues. I urge my colleagues to support it, and I reserve the balance of my time.

Madam Chair, I yield 1\1/2\ minutes to the gentleman from Washington (Mr. Smith).

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

Mr. Chair, I have an amendment at the desk.

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

Mr. Chairman, the amendment I have offered increases minimum funding for the IRS' Tax Counseling for the Elderly program.

Filing taxes remains a far too complicated task in America. I am sure we can all agree on that. This vital program provides free tax assistance to people age 60 and older. It is particularly helpful to filers who have questions about their pensions and retirement.

In my home State, New Jersey Citizen Action is one of the grantees for this program. They do tremendously positive work, which will only be enhanced with additional funding.

There are several reasons to strengthen this program:

First, older Americans are often subjected to financial exploitation schemes. According to AARP, every year, abuse and exploitation rob older Americans of $3 billion--and this is only the amount that is reported. Having another set of eyes on elderly filers' finances would help to identify the victims of these schemes and help us to combat them.

Next, the ongoing controversy surrounding TurboTax, which manipulated taxpayers into paying to file their returns despite being eligible to file them for free, underscores the need for programs that help those most vulnerable to manipulation. Relatedly, the way we file our taxes is obviously evolving at a faster rate than many people can keep up with, including those who have filed on paper their entire lives.

Finally, the new tax law created additional confusion for many filers. The loss of the State and local tax deduction hurt many taxpayers in my district, especially seniors struggling to stay in their homes on a fixed income who were surprised not to get the refunds they have come to count on.

So, in sum, we should do everything in our power to protect older Americans and ensure they can file their taxes securely and with confidence. Let's help this program help even more people next year.

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

Mr. Chair, I demand a recorded vote.

Mr. Chair, my first amendment increases funding for the Department of Transportation's Office of the Inspector General by $1 million and decreases funding for the Office of the Secretary by $1 million.

I am very concerned about recent reports that the Department assigned senior officials to smooth a ``special path'' for the Senate majority leader's favored grant projects.

I have no problem with funding transportation projects in Kentucky or any other State. We should all have a problem with the Department setting up a concierge service for one State while slow-walking obviously critical projects like New Jersey's Gateway Program.

My second amendment makes clear that the Capital Investment Grant program cannot be run in a manner outside the bounds we have established in law. Congress never intended for politically motivated, indefinite delays to transportation projects or for some projects to be held to a much higher standard than others.

Infrastructure spending is something we all agree on. It is something we all need.

Every part of the country will lose, if not now then eventually, if we allow grantmaking to become politicized and the intent of Congress to be ignored.

Mr. Chair, I urge support for the en bloc amendment.

Mr. Chairman, I have an amendment at the desk.

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

Mr. Chairman, my amendment increases funding for the Low or No Emission Grant Program by $6 million, from $94 million to $100 million.

The program, as the name implies, provides funding to State and local governments for zero- and low-emission transit bus programs.

Using funds from the first and second round of the Volkswagen settlement, my State of New Jersey has begun our transition to electric transit and school bus fleets. This program, and others like it all across America, would benefit greatly from additional funds from the Low or No Emission Grant Program.

The benefits to our country will be profound.

First, we get reduced carbon emissions. The Department of Transportation has estimated that each zero-emission bus has reduced carbon emitted to the atmosphere by 1,690 tons over its 12-year lifespan, or the equivalent of taking 27 cars off the road.

Second, we get healthier kids. Smog from diesel buses drives up rates of asthma with children and low-income communities suffering the most.

Finally, it is good economics. While electric buses cost more up front, with their lower maintenance costs, they save around $39,000 per year over their lifetime, a savings to taxpayers of more than $150,000 per bus.

So I hope my colleagues will agree that this is a smart investment. It will speed our transition to a clean energy economy and it will do it in a fiscally responsible way.

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

Mr. Chairman, I yield 1 minute to the gentleman from North Carolina (Mr. Price).

Mr. Chairman, I would add that we are not reducing the grants available for bus programs in this country. We are simply recognizing that there is a transition under way in our economy, a transition to clean energy. We want to speed that transition and we want to make sure that America leads that transition because, if we don't, somebody else will.

We want American companies to be the world leaders in producing electric buses, for example. We know that there is an upfront cost. There is a long-term savings, but an upfront cost that the Federal Government can help with. It will be good for our economy, in addition to being good for the environment.

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

Mr. Chair, I have an amendment at the desk.

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

Mr. Chair, when I visit a synagogue or Jewish community center in my congressional district these days, I usually pass by an armed security guard. Inside, there is talk about safe exit routes and the cost of adding bulletproof glass and other security enhancements.

When I visit mosques during Friday prayers, I have noticed that State Police officers generally, these days, are standing watch outside. My friends at Hindu and Sikh temples are worried as well.

There is a lot of angry, intolerant rhetoric in the United States and other countries like ours these days, and we know it comes from all sides of the political spectrum, but the guards at the gates of places of worship are not there because of a general fear of intolerance. They are there because of a specific threat from a specific group of people.

Domestic terrorists, white supremacists, or neo-Nazi terrorists, like those responsible for the attacks at the Tree of Life Congregation synagogue in Pittsburgh, the synagogue in Poway, California, and the mosque attack in Christchurch, New Zealand.

According to the Anti-Defamation League, 73 percent of terrorist killings in the United States since 2009 have been committed by domestic terrorists who spouted white supremacist ideology, as compared to 23 percent committed by Islamic extremists.

In 2018, there were 50 extremist murders in the United States. All 50 were

committed by adherents of far right-wing extremist groups. Anti-Semitic incidents rose by 60 percent from 2016 to 2017.

If this threat came from outside the United States, we would be consumed by it here in Congress, as we were when we awoke to the urgency of reorienting our national and homeland security strategy to fight al-Qaida after 9/11. That it is coming from within, from our fellow Americans, makes it more sensitive but no less urgent, and there is more work to be done.

Though the FBI acknowledges that domestic terrorists claim more lives in the United States than international terrorists, it has told us that its counterterrorism case numbers line up around 20 percent for domestic terrorism, 80 percent for international terrorism.

The Department of Justice's senior official for dealing with its Domestic Terrorism Counsel runs what is basically a one-man operation. And in the last 2 years we have actually cut funding at the Department of Homeland Security to counter domestic violent extremism.

This amendment begins to correct the imbalance. It would add $1 million to the budget of DOJ's National Security Division to be directed to the Domestic Terrorism Counsel. In the underlying bill, we already recommend that the Counsel be elevated to have a Deputy Assistant Attorney General with adequate staff and resources.

The goal is to give a senior official at the Justice Department the stature and the tools needed to lead this effort so that we can focus as much attention on the rising threat of domestic terrorism as we have rightly devoted to the threat from groups like al-Qaida and ISIS.

So let us do more than just condemn anti-Semitism and other forms of hateful intolerance in this body. Let us actually do something practical to protect people from violence.

Mr. Chair, I urge bipartisan support for this amendment, and look forward to working with my colleagues on all sides to advance this goal in the year ahead.

I yield back the balance of my time.

Mr. Speaker, June is Gun Violence Awareness Month, and I am so tired of watching innocent children being lowered into the ground.

A week ago, there was another mass shooting in Virginia Beach. The shooter had a sound suppressor and a large capacity magazine. And it struck me: these things which gave him an advantage are banned in my home State of New Jersey. We have one of the lowest rates of gun violence of any State in America.

Why is that? We have poverty, we have crime, we have mental illness just like other States, but we also have sensible gun laws.

It has been just over 100 days since the House passed a sensible gun bill that the vast majority of Americans support. Universal background checks will save lives. The Senate could pass this bill today, but the Senate majority leader refuses to hold a vote.

Mr. Speaker, this is what the voters who sent us here are most tired of: special interests blocking action on what most of us agree must be done.

It is time for the Senate to give the American people the safety and common sense that they voted for and, at long last, pass universal background checks.

Madam Speaker, I move to suspend the rules and agree to the resolution (H. Res. 393) remembering the victims of the violent suppression of democracy protests in Tiananmen Square and elsewhere in China on June 3 and 4, 1989, and calling on the Government of the People's Republic of China to respect the universally recognized human rights of all people living in China and around the World, as amended.

Madam Speaker, I ask unanimous consent that all Members have 5 legislative days in which to revise and extend their remarks and include extraneous material on H. Res. 393.

Madam Speaker, I yield 1 minute to the gentlewoman from California (Ms. Pelosi), the Speaker of the House.

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

Madam Speaker, I thank Chairman McCaul for his eloquent statement and his leadership on this issue, and I rise in very strong support of this measure.

Thirty years ago, I was here on Capitol Hill, my first job out of college. I was working on the Senate side for the late, great Senator Daniel Patrick Moynihan, and one day, I was sitting in my cubicle and we were watching our TVs, which were tuned to this novelty station called CNN that was bringing these events live to us, something we had never really experienced before.

One day we looked up, and we saw the image of this young Chinese man with his grocery bags standing in front of that line of tanks, and we watched it unfold for about 2 minutes. It seemed like forever. We did not know what would happen. Would he be killed? Would he be run over? It was a moment that changed my life and changed the world.

We all know what happened afterwards: a massacre; mass arrests; efforts that continue to this day to bury the truth of what happened in Tiananmen Square.

The Chinese Government has tried to erase the memory of that day from our collective memory. Here is something very important, something that should command our attention: the Chinese Government today is not satisfied merely with censoring its own people. It is insisting on censoring the entire world.

It is trying to intimidate companies, and universities, and individuals all around the world into never uttering the words, ``the Tiananmen massacre.''

With this resolution, we say to the Chinese Government that they cannot intimidate the United States of America. This resolution makes clear we are going to speak the truth about the crime that they have committed 30 years ago, and all of the crimes they continue to commit today: the wholesale imprisonment of lawyers; their efforts to crush the culture and heritage of the Tibetan people; the mass surveillance technology they are exporting to the whole world; and the mass internment of innocent men, women, and children in Xinjiang.

We see the significance of these actions, not just what the Chinese Government is doing on human rights, but what is being done on trade, and in the South China Sea. All of them are an effort by the Chinese Government to break free and to rewrite the rules that keep the world safe and free.

We see the Chinese Government's attempts to silence us on these issues for what it is, a sign of weakness, not of strength.

The Chinese Government's power rests on a fragile foundation of falsehood. It depends on people forgetting the past. It depends on people believing a lie. So today, we say that they are failing, and they are going to fail. It has been 30 years. We still mark this anniversary. We still remember Liu Xiaobo and all of the heroes of the square. The footage of Tank Man still plays on TV, and thanks to the internet, more people are seeing it today than saw it in 1989.

We will carry on until we know his name, until the Chinese people have the freedom that they fought peacefully for that day and that they so richly deserve.

Madam Speaker, I reserve the balance of my time.

Madam Speaker, I yield 5 minutes to the gentleman from Massachusetts (Mr. McGovern), the author of this resolution and one of the greatest champions of human rights I have had the privilege to know.

Madam Speaker, I yield myself such time as I may consume for the purpose of closing.

I will simply say that our disagreement here, the disagreement we have been expressing in such a united way, is not with China. It is certainly not with the Chinese people. It is simply with the Chinese Government.

We stand in full agreement with the Chinese people, with everybody in China who wishes to live in a country governed by respect for the rule of law and for human rights. That is what this resolution is about.

Madam Speaker, I urge my colleagues to support this resolution, and I yield back the balance of my time.

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

Madam Speaker, I rise today to express my strong support for the bipartisan SECURE Act. This bill will enable hundreds of thousands of working and middle-class Americans to retire with the dignity they deserve.

According to the AARP, 72 percent of New Jersey's workers say they are anxious about having enough money to live comfortably through retirement, and 86 percent of workers without access to a retirement savings account would take advantage of one if available.

Madam Speaker, 1.7 million people in New Jersey work for employers that do not provide access to a retirement plan. So this year, our State passed a law requiring businesses with 25 or more employees to participate in a retirement savings program. The SECURE Act will make it much easier for small- and medium-sized businesses in New Jersey to meet this requirement by allowing them to pool together to create multi-employer plans. It also expands access to retirement accounts for home healthcare workers, a rapidly growing sector of our economy.

Passing this bill today will go a long way toward helping Americans retire with peace of mind. I am grateful for the bipartisan support, and I urge my colleagues to back the bill.