Floor Statements

Madam Speaker, I will speak on a related matter, and that is how our Forest Service approaches fire in our densely overcrowded and drought-stricken forest.

Madam Speaker, on July Fourth, lightning struck a tree in the Humboldt-Toiyabe National Forest in Alpine County, California, starting a small fire that smoldered just over a quarter of an acre of rugged terrain.

Now, instead of immediately attacking this fire, the U.S. Forest Service decided to monitor it instead--that is to say, to do precisely nothing.

On July 16, 12 days later, that small fire of a quarter of an acre, now called the Tamarack fire, exploded out of control. It has now consumed 70,000 acres as of this writing. One of the towns in its path is Woodfords, California.

In 1987, the Woodfords Fire Department responded to a report of fire on Forest Service land near their town in the same forest. They, too, were turned away. In fact, Federal officials threatened Woodfords' residents with arrest for even trying to extinguish the small blaze.

Hours later, that fire exploded to 6,500 acres, costing 25 families their homes. Apparently, the Forest Service has learned absolutely nothing in 34 years.

This let-burn policy of Federal land managers began back in 1972 during the height of the radical environmental movement. It stems from the premise that fire is nature's way of cleaning up forests and that active suppression of fire leads to a buildup of excess fuels.

That is right, as far as it goes because an untended forest is just like an untended garden. It will grow and grow until it chokes itself to death and will ultimately be consumed by catastrophic fire. That is how nature gardens.

The U.S. Forest Service was formed to remove excess growth before it can burn and to preserve our forests in a healthy condition from generation to generation.

In California, active land management reduced acreage that was annually lost to wildfire for more than 4 million acres a year in pre- Columbian times to just a quarter-million acres during the 20th century.

Federal foresters marked off excess timber and auctioned it to timber companies, which paid the Federal Government for harvesting rights.

Environmental laws adopted in the 1970s now require years of environmental studies at a cost of millions of dollars before forest thinning can be undertaken. That essentially brought the era of active land management to a halt.

The result? California's wildfire damage has returned to its prehistoric level, more than 4 million acres lost to catastrophic wildfire last year. You see, nature is a lousy gardener.

In 1988, when the Federal let-burn policy produced the disastrous Yellowstone fires, President Reagan reversed it. ``I did not even know'' the policy existed, he said. ``The minute that this happened out there and Don Hodel went out, he made it plain that, no, we were withdrawing from that policy.'' That is what President Reagan said.

Unfortunately, Reagan left, and the policy returned. The devastation that it has caused since then is tragic, avoidable, and incalculable.

Especially given the hazardous conditions of today's forest, sensible policy would give top priority to extinguishing the small fires before they can explode out of control into mega-fires.

Scrambling to explain their obvious dereliction of duty, Deputy Forest Supervisor Jon Stansfield complained

that they just didn't have the resources to put out the small fire when a water drop by helicopter could have stopped it cold.

Yet, they had the resources to photograph it by helicopter, and they had the resources to do countless airdrops after they had allowed it to explode out of control.

Now, the Federal Government owns 96 percent of Alpine County, leaving it with virtually no tax base and entirely dependent on tourism attracted by the national forest. The fire has not only taken people's homes and destroyed their businesses, but it has severely damaged the forest resource that Alpine County's entire economy depends on for tourism.

It is dangerous nonsense to monitor incipient fires in today's forest tinderbox, even if they seem to pose no immediate danger. No person in his right mind would monitor a rattlesnake curled up in his bedroom because it isn't doing much of anything at the moment. He would kill it before it does.

In our national forests, only the Forest Service can prevent small blazes from becoming forest fires, and it is about time they did.

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

Mr. Speaker, this bill is the culmination of 20 years of policy failures in Afghanistan, and it comes at the same time that our southern border has been recklessly opened to the world. This measure's only redeeming feature is that the alternative is even worse.

Let's begin with the debacle occurring on what, until January 20, was our southern border; finally secured by President Trump's policies.

On his first day in office, President Biden reversed those policies. He stopped the ``remain in Mexico'' protocols that required asylum claimants to remain there while their claims could be adjudicated. He stopped all construction on the nearly completed border wall, leaving construction gaps that make it all but useless. And he ordered our enforcement agencies not to faithfully execute the law.

The result is that over a million foreign nationals have illegally entered our country this year, with a projection of 2 million by the end of the year. Now, that is the entire population of Wyoming, Alaska, and Vermont combined. And the Gallup organization warns that based on its polling, there are 42 million people just in Latin America and the Caribbean who intend to follow. And this occurs at the same time that 20 years of failed policy in Afghanistan is culminating.

The attack on September 11, 2001, was our generation's Pearl Harbor. It was conducted by al-Qaida, which was acting as an agency of the Taliban government of Afghanistan, which gave it support and protection.

Now, the day after the attack on Pearl Harbor, Congress pledged the entire resources of the country to the war and the President pledged to win through to ``absolute victory.'' Days after the attack on New York and Washington on September 11, Congress voted a tepid Authorization for the Use of Military Force--whatever that is--and the President told us to go shopping.

For 20 years, we dithered, twiddled, postured, hesitated. We attacked Iraq, that had nothing to do with 9/11, and put a lot of brave troops in harm's way without giving them the support that they needed and without our leaders ever having a clear objective, much less any will to win.

You know, it was from that very podium in this Chamber that General Douglas MacArthur warned that in war there is no substitute for victory. That is a lesson our leaders have failed to learn time and again. So this debacle is now coming to its sad, shameful, and sorry conclusion.

The Taliban again threatened to seize this ill-fated country, imperiling the thousands of Afghans who assisted our troops in various ways. To encourage their help, we passed the Afghan Allies Protection Act of 2009, which created a special immigrant visa, or green card program, for Afghan nationals who worked with the United States Government for at least a year, and who face retribution from the Taliban. This program also provides green cards to their spouses and their children.

Now, during the 20 years that our troops have been in Afghanistan, tens of thousands of Afghans have worked for or on behalf of the U.S. Government in one capacity or another, and to date, over 15,500 green cards have already been issued to the principal applicants. And then additionally, for each principal applicant, an average of 3.5 green cards have been issued to spouses and children. That is about 70,000 that we have already taken in. That is a city the size of Bowling Green, Kentucky. But many more are still there.

So we have before us H.R. 3985, the ALLIES Act. It makes changes to the Afghan special immigrant visa program to accommodate the accelerated withdrawal that the President has ordered.

The emergency created by this order means that we will not be adequately vetting arrivals under this program. Those already admitted have had to meet eligibility requirements. They have had to undergo security and background checks. If we had been able to develop this legislation the old-fashioned way, through real face-to-face meetings and good-faith discussions, I think we could have produced a process that protected both the American people and the Afghan families who sided with our government. But alas, that was not to be under this majority.

Instead, H.R. 3985 authorizes 8,000 more green cards on top of the 10,000 authorized but still unclaimed. Now, given that 15,500 principal green cards have been processed over the 20-year life of this program, the odds of processing a like number in a matter of months is pretty slim; unless, of course, the administration cuts processing and vetting corners, which I think is a given.

H.R. 3985 also increases the eligibility pool for the Afghan special immigration visa program in two ways.

First, it removes the requirement that Afghan nationals who worked with the U.S. coalition forces must have performed ``sensitive and trusted'' activities for U.S. personnel. This provision was added several years ago with the understanding that there must be limits on the number of people who come to the U.S., and in an attempt to ensure that the limited number of green cards available actually go to those Afghan nationals who are most in danger.

Now, we have asked the administration how many individuals may be eligible once this language is removed from the statute. Their answer? They don't know. And they don't care.

Second, this bill extends program eligibility to Afghans whose employers received grant funding from the U.S. Government or were in cooperative agreements with the U.S. Government and who ``contributed to the United States mission in Afghanistan.''

Well, I am concerned that we do not know exactly what can be considered as contributing to the United States mission in Afghanistan or how many people to whom this could apply.

The bill also eliminates the requirement that an applicant has experienced an ongoing, serious threat as a consequence of his or her qualifying employment. This requirement is one of the main reasons for the creation of the program; to help ensure the safety of those in danger because of working with the U.S.

This means that among the worthy asylum seekers, we are likely to see

those without merit, or worse, those who seek to do our country harm, because the vetting process is effectively abandoned by this bill. And this comes at a time when the asylum process is being made a mockery by thousands of meritless claims a day showing up on our southern border and being admitted into our country.

I wish we could have had an honest and open discussion about the wisdom of eliminating this requirement in committee. Unfortunately, the Democrats chose to bypass the committee process. But with the American withdrawal fast approaching, we are left with this deeply flawed bill on the one hand, or the very real prospect of watching Afghan patriots being hunted down and seeing them and their families hung by construction cranes. So I will support this bill as the least bad option that the Democrats have left us.

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

Mr. Speaker, I yield 3 minutes to the gentleman from Florida (Mr. Waltz), a veteran of the Afghanistan war.

Mr. Speaker, I yield 2 minutes to the gentleman from New York (Mr. Jacobs).

Mr. Speaker, I yield 2\1/2\ minutes to the gentleman from Texas (Mr. Roy).

Mr. Speaker, I yield 3 minutes to the gentleman from Texas (Mr. McCaul), who is the ranking member of the House Foreign Affairs Committee.

Mr. Speaker, I yield 2 minutes to the gentleman from Florida (Mr. Dunn).

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

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

Mr. Speaker, I yield 2 minutes to the gentleman from Michigan (Mr. Meijer).

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

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

Mr. Speaker, this is a tragedy in so many ways; the loss of so many of the best and brightest of our youth because of political and military leaders who were willing to put them in harm's way but without a commitment to victory and without the willingness to back them with the full might of the United States.

For Afghanistan, it means the best and brightest of that country, the very people who were willing to risk their futures for freedom are the ones who are now being forced to flee, depriving Afghanistan of the most patriotic citizens who could otherwise have formed the core of a free government if we had finished the job we started.

It is to be greatly hoped that like the Iranian diaspora, they will focus their energy from abroad to support the resistance movement that is sure to emerge under the yoke of Taliban oppression. It is to be greatly hoped that our Nation will finally return to a tradition that served us well for nearly 200 years; that there is no substitute for victory and no excuse for waging war without the absolute commitment to swiftly win it.

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

Mr. Speaker, I thank the gentleman for yielding, and I thank Congressman Calvert for organizing the tribute to Jerry Lewis today.

I knew of Jerry Lewis many years before I had the honor to know him personally. He was elected to Congress the year that I graduated from college in southern California, and he was a well-known name then because of his activism for air quality, which at the time was a very serious concern in that region.

I then had the opportunity and honor to actually be able to work with Jerry in Congress. And I have to say I was a bit leery about him at first. Jerry was a bit of the Republican old guard and I had spent an entire career fighting that affectation, but what I found was a man who was willing to listen as well as to be heard, a man who was so interested in the process and the give and take and the sharing of ideas, that he really demonstrated what this institution is all about, how it did work, and how it could work in the future if we could learn from his example and his life.

I am very honored to join in the tribute to him today on the floor.

Madam Speaker, I rise today to recognize the passing of one of our great local educators, Jamie Mathias, a Social Sciences teacher within Del Oro High School for 22 years. Jamie's singular goal for students was to encourage each one to better themselves; be that in the classroom or through athletics. Jamie always pushed students to reach their next level and become the person he knew they could be.

Jamie was a father figure, a coach, and a mentor to many students during his time as an educator. His academic impact on our community will be felt for a very long time. The young minds he molded and inspired that are now spread across our county are the living legacy of what a great teacher will leave behind.

Most importantly, Jamie was a family man, devoted to his family and raising his children to be exceptional members of our community. They carry with them the many life lessons that Jamie imparted over the years. My deepest condolences and prayers go out to the Mathias family, especially to his wife and children. I thank Jamie, for his extraordinary impact in our schools, and the countless students he encouraged.

Madam Speaker, ever since the Magna Carta, it has been a settled principle of good governance that the power that appropriates public funds should not be the same power that spends them. This is at the heart of our Constitution, the separation of powers.

Simply speaking, it is mother's rule writ large. Mother has one slice of pie left and two hungry sons. How does she cut the pie so that both brothers are satisfied? One slices, the other chooses. One brother cannot abuse his powers precisely because of the powers accorded to the other.

And it is the same with our Constitution. One brother makes law, but cannot enforce it; the other enforces law, but cannot make it. One brother appropriates money, but cannot spend it; the other spends money, but cannot appropriate it.

Now, imagine how differently mother's rule would work if the same brother who sliced the pie also chose his piece.

Yet that is exactly the principle of congressional earmarks: Choosing the same slice of pie you have just cut or, more precisely, spending the same money that you have just appropriated. Nearly 1,500 earmarks, totaling $5.7 billion, have been dropped into the so-called infrastructure bill alone since a bipartisan spending frenzy revived this corrupt practice this year.

This monumentally bad idea rests on two arguments. The first is that elected Members of Congress, and not unelected bureaucrats, should spend the people's money. The problem, of course, is that Representatives aren't elected by all the people, only by their distinct constituencies. Representatives are inherently biased toward their own districts. That is why Congress is designed to act collectively.

Only the executive answers to the entire Nation and can resist the manifest excesses of a body controlled by 535 demanding constituencies and their district-focused Representatives. That is why appropriating money is a congressional function, and spending it is an executive one.

The second argument is that earmarks can grease legislation by buying off the votes of individual Members whose judgment would otherwise oppose a measure. Add a few local projects for that Member, and suddenly a bill he would never vote for on its merits becomes a local imperative overriding his sound judgment.

Please explain to me how that is a good thing.

And if earmarks are to be handed out as a reward for voting legislation, Members will prudently keep a list of earmarks handy as the demand for vote for any bill, whether or not they already plan to vote for it.

And this is not a theoretical discussion. We have learned the hard way what comes from breaching the Constitution's checks and balances.

The first problem is the corrupting nature of earmarks. When we place the power to appropriate and the power to spend in the same hands, we bypass the most important check that we have against corruption.

A local company produces a product the Pentagon neither needs nor wants.

Well, what to do?

Ingratiate yourself with the local Congressman; have him tell the Pentagon what it needs and who will provide it; and then reward him lavishly at election time and repeat. It should come as no surprise that many of the congressional scandals of the 1990s and 2000s arose from earmarks.

Second, earmarks bypass the normal process in which projects compete on their merits. Worthy projects don't need earmarks if appropriations are spent by the executive branch, according to well-established competitive, open-bid procedures. Earmarks are only required to protect unworthy projects from merit-driven competition. And even if there is such a thing as a good earmark, the price invariably is logrolling all the bad ones.

Third, earmarks harm the central tenet of federalism: That local projects should be financed by local communities, and Federal expenditures reserved for the Nation's general welfare.

When a local government proposes an earmark, what is it saying?

It is saying the project is so low on its priority list, it won't spend its own local taxpayers funds; but it is perfectly happy to have taxpayers in other communities foot the bill. The result is a grab bag of dubious projects that rob St. Petersburg to pay St. Paul for projects St. Petersburg doesn't deem worthy enough to spend its own funds on, and that St. Paul pays for but receives no benefit from.

We have sung this old song many times before and it has never ended well.

Madam Speaker, I rise today to recognize a gentleman who defines devotion to country. Colonel Hank Adams enlisted as an infantryman during World War II then proceeded to serve this country for 41 years as a soldier in the United States Army. His steady advancement from private to sergeant major to second lieutenant and then colonel is testament to a life's work undertaking demanding and often dangerous assignments extremely well. Yet, immediately after his retirement from active duty, Col. Adams continued his work to make our armed forces the best they can be. For 34 years and counting, he has served as a U.S. Military Academy Liaison Officer relentlessly working to find and mentor the very best young men and women to lead our armed forces.

Col. Adams has provided critical assistance to me and the citizens of California's Fourth Congressional District. For 12 years, he has been the presiding member of my Service Academy Nomination Panel--and the only member with a Ruptured Duck on his lapel. His wise council and collegial coordination with the other former and active duty military officers on the panel has meant over 120 of the finest from this district have gone to our academies and then proceeded to protect this nation.

We must remember and honor men like Col. Adams who have made this county the freest and therefore the greatest in history. His lifetime example of putting country above self is increasingly rare. All too often, it is forgotten that the freedoms we enjoy are afforded to us by the service and heroism of men Like Col. Adams. I am proud to rise today in gratitude and recognition of Col. Hank Adams' 75 years of continuous, uninterrupted service to our country.

Madam Speaker, when the Democrats passed Mr. Biden's $1.9 trillion spending spree in March, a lot of people got a lot of free money, thousands of dollars in many cases. But the bill is already coming due for that free money, and as many of us warned, it turns out that free money is very expensive.

Indeed, it turns out that the very same families most harmed by the lockdowns will be the most harmed by paying the bill for the lockdown relief. It comes to about $15,000 for an average family, and the first installment is reflected in the rising inflation sapping the purchasing power of working families.

Government cannot put a single dollar into the economy that is not first taken out of the same economy. When government spends a dollar for you, it has already decided to take a dollar from you. And it can only be taken back in three ways: from your current earnings through higher taxes, from your future earnings through borrowing, and from your savings and purchasing power through inflation. There is no other way to pay for every dollar that government spends. Inflation is the most insidious of these taxes because it silently hollows out everything that a family labors to achieve.

Anyone who has gone near a gas station or a grocery store in the last few months can now see where their relief checks came from and how they are going to be paid back. The Democrats shut down productivity with their lockdowns, and then they flooded the economy with dollars. More dollars chasing fewer goods is the classic recipe for inflation. And this is just the first installment of the bill already coming due for the left's reckless spending.

The Consumer Price Index increased 4.2 percent in April. It was 2.6 percent in March, and it is 4.2 percent now. Core inflation is already growing faster than at any time since the end of the Carter administration.

Now, what does that mean, exactly? Well, it means that if you have managed to save $100,000 for your retirement, the government has just taken out $4,200 of it because your savings are now worth that much less. Your balance hasn't declined, but its purchasing power has lost $4,200.

Check your grocery bill or your utility bill. How much more are you spending to put food on the table or heat your home? There are other bad policies at work as well--green energy, for example--but a big part of that difference is your inflation tax, paid directly from the reduced purchasing power of your money. And that is true of everything you buy.

It doesn't stop there. The Democrats are promising a massive increase in corporate taxes while assuring the gullible not to worry, that only the corporations will pay it. But corporations don't pay corporate taxes; you do. You pay them as a consumer through higher prices. You pay them as an employee through lower wages. And you pay them as an investor through lower

earnings--your 401(k), for example. There is no other way that a corporate tax can be paid. And the resulting reduction in productivity will further feed their inflation tax.

The Democrats' sick joke is this: Everything that the government has handed out to your family is already being taken back from your family through higher prices, and that pain is only beginning.

What makes the Democrats think that socialism will work any better here than every other country that has tried it? It consistently produces shortages, unemployment, inflation, poverty, and malaise wherever it is imposed. And I am afraid we will continue down this dismal path until Americans awaken to the simple economic realities that the Democratic socialists have now unleashed upon our country.

In his inaugural address, Thomas Jefferson surveyed the boundless bounties of our Nation and asked: ``With all these blessings, what more is necessary to make us a happy and a prosperous people? Still one thing more, fellow citizens: a wise and frugal government, which shall restrain men from injuring one another, shall leave them otherwise free to regulate their own pursuits of industry and improvement, and shall not take from the mouth of labor the bread it has earned. This is the sum of good government.''

Madam Speaker, Americans deserve a wise and frugal government. But it is not enough to deserve it. We have to demand it at the ballot box.

Mr. Speaker, last year, we had achieved operational control of our southern border for the first time in generations. Trespassers knew they would be turned back, so they never started the perilous journey.

On his first day in office, Joe Biden canceled the border wall, ordered ICE not to faithfully execute the laws, and canceled the remain-in-Mexico policy for asylum claims. This sent a powerful message throughout the world that America's borders are wide open. So now we are 4 months into an experiment that will test how long a country without borders can survive.

The numbers speak for themselves. The week of the 2020 election, scarcely 100 family units illegally crossed our border. By the week of the inauguration, 1,100 did. By the last week of March, it was over 14,000 in a week.

In February, the Border Patrol encountered roughly 100,000 aliens illegally crossing our border. That is about the size of South Bend, Indiana. By March, that number had grown to over 170,000. That is about the size of Salem, Oregon. Last month, the number reached nearly 180,000, the population of Providence, Rhode Island, a 900 percent increase over April of last year.

Thirty-eight percent are being released into our country. In April, ICE deportations fell to their lowest number in history. Felons that the law requires to be deported are instead deliberately being released into our neighborhoods.

In the last 2 months, I joined delegations led by Congressmen Jordan and Biggs across the southern border. In the Rio Grande Valley sector, we watched one night as hundreds of aliens from Central America illegally crossed our border with impunity and entered a Disneyland- style queue. After a brief interview, groups in the company of small children were dropped off at transportation hubs to be taken anywhere in the United States they wanted to go without even being given a notice to appear in court.

Unaccompanied minors were taken to a holding facility where they were placed in cattle pens. One unit designed for 33 people had over 500 in it. After a few days, they were transferred to HHS facilities.

No effort is made to safely return them to their homes. Every effort is made to place them in the United States, often with family or friends who are themselves here illegally.

The President just transferred $2 billion to accommodate this flood that he has created, taken from funds Congress appropriated to rebuild our emergency medical reserve and fund COVID testing. Simply stated, Americans last.

In the San Diego, El Centro, and Yuma sectors, we saw the nearly completed border wall built by the Trump administration made useless because of small construction gaps that can't be filled because Mr. Biden has forbidden it. Aliens just calmly walk through them.

We saw one group taken into custody from Romania. Another group of about 20 were from Cuba, Russia, and Armenia. From all over the world, people are flying into Mexico on tourist visas, making their way to border towns, and then walking through the gaps to enter the United States illegally.

In California, one officer told us their orders were to process as many illegals into the country as fast as possible. From its polling, Gallup estimates there are 42 million people now living in Latin America and the Caribbean alone who intend to come to the United States if they can. And now they are.

We are witnessing the beginning of a mass migration of historic proportions, one that no civilization in human history has ever survived. One Border Patrol officer warned us that every community in America is about to become a border town. Every American will feel it as classrooms are filled with non-English speaking students; as gangs proliferate; as criminal illegal aliens are released in our communities; as hospital emergency rooms are packed with illegals demanding basic medical care; and as a desperate labor market is flooded with low-wage illegal labor, meaning lower wages and fewer opportunities for working Americans.

This is not accidental. This administration is pursuing a deliberate policy to fundamentally change the culture, electorate, and founding principles of our Nation. It is working, and it will continue as long as the people responsible for it remain in public office.

History is littered with the ruins of nations that fail to control their borders. Whether ours soon joins them depends on Americans taking back their government before it is too late.

Madam Speaker, I rise today to acknowledge the remarkable life story of an American hero, Captain Paul Jacobs who passed away this past December. Captain Paul Jacobs served six combat tours in Vietnam, though it was his last tour that forever enshrined him as leading one of the U.S. Navy's greatest humanitarian efforts.

As U.S. forces began withdrawing from South Vietnam in late April 1975, Captain Jacobs was then commanding the destroyer escort USS Kirk off the coast of Vietnam. To escape being captured by Communist North Vietnamese forces, South Vietnam helicopters loaded with refugees swarmed out toward the U.S. fleet. After hearing rumors that any South Vietnamese pilot captured by the North Vietnamese would be tortured, mutilated, and imprisoned, while their families would be made outcasts or worse, they fled desperately trying to escape that fate.

Upon realizing this, Captain Jacobs offered his ship as a safe haven for the South Vietnamese refugees. Helicopters began arriving and all hands aboard the Kirk--including Captain Jacobs--pushed unloaded helicopters over the side to make room for incoming ones. In all, 12 helicopters, packed with refugees, had landed on one of the Navy's smallest warships. Captain Jacobs then transformed the Kirk into a humanitarian aid station, providing food, comfort, medical care, relief from a blazing sun and hope to the men, women and children they'd rescued. It is no exaggeration to credit Captain Jacobs' steadfast leadership in the face of such hardship for saving the lives of those 30,000-plus Vietnamese sailors and refugees.

The United States Navy has a proud tradition of courageous, competent, indefatigable, and independent ship captains, who fear not what lies over the horizon, and who earn the respect and fidelity of their crews through their fair and steadfast leadership. Such will be Captain Paul Jacobs' legacy. In California's Fourth Congressional District and in Captain Jacob's childhood hometown in Maine, we share profound grief over his passing.

And so today, I rise to bid Captain Paul Jacobs--the United States Navy's most revered humanitarian--farewell. May he always have fair winds and following seas.

Madam Speaker, I rise today to acknowledge the remarkable life story of an American hero, Captain Paul Jacobs who passed away this past December. Captain Paul Jacobs served six combat tours in Vietnam, though it was his last tour that forever enshrined him as leading one of the U.S. Navy's greatest humanitarian efforts.

As U.S. Forces be withdrawing from South Vietnam in late April 1975, Captain Jacobs was then commanding the destroyer escort USS Kirk off the coast of Vietnam. To escape being captured by Communist North Vietnamese forces, South Vietnam helicopters loaded with refugees swarmed out toward the U.S. fleet. After hearing rumors that any South Vietnamese pilot captured by the North Vietnamese would be tortured, mutilated, and imprisoned, while their families would be made outcasts or worse, they fled desperately trying to escape that fate.

Upon realizing this, Captain Jacobs offered his ship as a safe haven for the South Vietnamese refugees. Helicopters began arriving and all hands aboard the Kirk--including Captain Jacobs--pushed unloaded helicopters over the side to make room for incoming ones. In all, 12 helicopters, packed with refugees, had landed on one of the Navy's smallest warships. Captain Jacobs then transformed the Kirk into a humanitarian aid station, providing food, comfort, medical care, relief from a blazing sun and hope to the men, women and children they'd rescued. It is no exaggeration to

credit Captain Jacobs' steadfast leadership in the face of such hardship for saving the lives of those 30,000-plus Vietnamese sailors and refugees.

The United States Navy has a proud tradition of courageous, competent, indefatigable, and independent ship captains, who fear not what lies over the horizon, and who earn the respect and fidelity of their crews through their fair and steadfast leadership. Such will be Captain Paul Jacobs' legacy. In California's Fourth Congressional District and in Captain Jacob's childhood hometown in Maine, we share profound grief over his passing.

And so today, I rise to bid Captain Paul Jacobs--the United States Navy's most revered humanitarian--farewell. May he always have fair winds and following seas.

Mr. Speaker, racism is the practice of according rights and privileges to an individual not based on equality under the law, but, rather, according to what race that person was born. It is antithetical to every principle our country was founded upon, from the promise of our Declaration of Independence that all men are created equal to the equal protection clause of our Constitution. It was a malignancy we fought a civil war to remove. For generations, it has been denounced by every American of goodwill for the evil that it is.

Yet, this dangerous social pathology is now rampant in this House. The Judiciary Committee recently adopted a measure on a party-line vote to establish a commission with the avowed purpose of enshrining racism into law under the guise of slavery reparations.

The biased composition of this commission--there is not a single Republican appointment--lays its intent bare for all to see. It is designed to reach into the dead past, revive its most malevolent conflicts, and reintroduce them into our age.

I cannot imagine a more divisive, polarizing, or unjust measure than one that would use government force to require people who never owned slaves to pay reparations to people who never were slaves--based not on anything they did, but solely because of what race they were born.

History offers us an inexhaustible supply of grievances and injustices that are powerful enough to stoke hatreds and resentments that can tear any society apart. That is what this movement is all about. It is evil in its effect, if not in its intent.

Lincoln often pointed out that our country was born into a world where slavery was an established institution. The American Founders reviled it, and they placed principles in our founding documents that they were confident would ultimately place that wicked institution upon the course of ultimate extinction and would lead to a republic where men and women of every race and background could, together, enjoy the blessings of liberty. Equal justice under law means a colorblind society where race simply becomes irrelevant, and until recently, we had made tremendous progress toward that vision as a nation.

Martin Luther King expressed the gold standard of racial harmony: that we should be judged by the content of our character and not the color of our skin. It is the equal protection of the law and the vision of a colorblind society stretching from the American Founders to Lincoln and King that is now under attack by the racist left.

Yes, there are racists in our society. There are racists of all colors in every society; it is the baser side of human nature. But no nation has struggled harder to transcend that nature and isolate and marginalize its racists than have Americans.

Yes, extremely damaging and foolish policies have disproportionately impacted Black communities in recent decades. Union-dominated schools that have failed to educate our children in inner cities, welfare programs that have destroyed families, and the withdrawal of police protection from crime-plagued neighborhoods are certainly among them. But these policies devastate every community where they are practiced, regardless of race. The answer is to change those policies, not to excuse them because they are ideologically pleasing to the left.

The racist left is content to ignore all of these current ills. It, instead, attempts to set neighbor against neighbor and American against American on the basis of their race. They say this is healing. It is precisely the opposite. They know it. Indeed, they count on it.

I think all Americans of goodwill and of every race and creed have had enough of this. We are tired of seeing our children taught to hate themselves and to hate each other. We are tired of seeing our country demonized as racist by those whose first and solitary focus is on race. We are tired of the lie that our Nation is systemically racist when it has done more to produce a civil and tolerant multiracial society than any people in the history of civilization.

It is long past time that every American of every heritage denounces this evil for what it is and to extirpate from our civil discourse those race-baiters of every persuasion who have polluted our national dialogue and corrupted our national heritage.

Madam Speaker, this bill presents a very simple question: Should we all but strip the President of his authority to restrict travel from countries that pose a danger to the United States?

Ronald Reagan and George Bush used this authority to protect our country. So, too, did Barack Obama and even Joe Biden as recently as January 25.

President Trump invoked this authority against countries that were hotbeds of international terrorism and that were not cooperating with the United States in providing basic information about travelers coming from these countries. Now, the left calls it a Muslim ban. What nonsense. The President's orders affected only a tiny fraction of Muslim-majority countries and a sizable number of non-Muslim countries. The Supreme Court cited this obvious truth when it fully upheld the President's actions. In fact, when a rogue government changed its policy and cooperated with us, the restrictions were lifted.

Without this authority, the President would have been powerless to take simple, prudent precautions against terrorists and criminals from entering the United States.

The President's ability to protect against threats, negotiate security protocols, and, when necessary, retaliate against discriminatory actions by other countries depends on his having this power at his immediate disposal.

This bill, instead, forbids the President from taking action until he can show that it is the weakest possible measure at his disposal. It requires him to get his own Secretary of State's permission, which is a constitutional absurdity, and it gives anyone who claims any harm the standing to block an order in Federal district court.

So, I ask, in this world that is becoming increasingly threatening and unstable, does this bill make us more safe or less safe? The answer should be self-evident to anyone who is not completely besotted with the woke insanity of the radical left.

Madam Speaker, we are way beyond any question of whether we face a border crisis. The question now is whether we have a border at all.

When I put that very question directly to the president of the Border Patrol, his answer was an emphatic: No, we do not.

By abandoning the border wall, rescinding the remain in Mexico policy, and obstructing enforcement of court-ordered deportations, President Biden has produced a mass illegal migration of historic proportions, preying most tragically on young children and making the Mexican crime cartels billions of dollars.

The only border security measure he hasn't pulled down is the ability of the CBP to stop illicit activity at our official ports of entry, where large volumes of narcotics and other contraband must pass.

Judiciary Republicans recently visited our facility at Hidalgo crossing, where thousands of cars and trucks passing through the port of entry must be inspected daily to protect our country from high- volume cartel smuggling. Our officers are experts at spotting suspicious traffic hidden among the high volume of legal crossings without unduly delaying honest commerce and passage.

Now, to do this, they wave the suspicious traffic to secondary inspections, where they can locate and stop contraband that is often ingeniously hidden.

Now, this has been a tremendous inconvenience to the cartels. We saw millions of dollars of methamphetamines and other deadly drugs, as well as infected fruits and vegetables heading to American markets, recently seized at these secondary inspections.

But H.R. 1573 would grind legitimate trade and travel to a halt by providing that anyone referred to secondary inspection can, within an hour, consult with an attorney and call other third parties. Now, there are more than 17 million secondary inspections conducted each year at our 328 ports of entry.

Can you imagine the effect of this bill?

It is not limited to attorneys. A smuggler pulled into secondary inspection could warn confederates behind him that their hiding places have been discovered, turn back.

The officers told me they are already overwhelmed, using antiquated facilities, and suffering manpower shortages. This bill gives the CBP the Hobson's choice of curtailing inspections or routinely backing up traffic for hours on end.

The inspection itself is not a criminal process. It is a screening process to assure that only legal products enter our country. Only when it becomes a criminal matter is there a right to counsel.

Now, if this isn't actually written by the crime cartels, it is certainly entirely in their interest and service. It speaks volumes about the attitude of the Democrats on the security of our border, the safety of our citizens, and the sovereignty of our Nation.

Mr. Speaker, this bill is just the first taste of a bitter brew concocted by those who pushed through $1.9 trillion of pure deficit spending last week.

Now, this measure involves our paygo rules. You remember paygo. The current version dates to 2010. In those days everyone was worried about a $1.3 trillion deficit and $13 trillion of national debt. Isn't that adorable?

Paygo requires across-the-board spending cuts to offset any bill that spends money we don't have. And we just spent a lot of money we don't have. As paygo works, the first installment payment for this Biden binge is $345 billion of spending cuts every year for the next 5 years, and that includes $52 billion in paygo and BCA cuts to Medicare, which is expected to go broke in 2024 as it is. Now, that is just to pay for the party the Democrats had the other day. So it is time to pay for it.

How do you deal with a bill like that? Well, it is pretty simple: Just forget about it. Just wipe it off the books and start planning the next trillion-dollar spending spree. In fairness, that is how both parties have addressed paygo since we passed it. And the net result is the deficit has nearly tripled and the debt has more than doubled in less than a decade.

At least the Republican tax cuts in 2017 helped produce such a strong economic recovery that our revenues went up. They didn't go down. Now, that should have reduced our deficit, but our failure to control spending instead drove that deficit still higher. In short, it is the spending, stupid.

No nation has ever spent, taxed, and borrowed its way to prosperity, but many have spent, taxed, and borrowed themselves into bankruptcy and ruin. History warns us that nations that bankrupt themselves aren't around very long, because before you can provide for the common defense and promote the general welfare, you first have to be able to pay for them.

Excessive debt saps the credit of a nation that is its lifeline in times of genuine peril. It consumes the future prosperity of the nation as interest costs swell. It saps the economic vitality of our Nation by crowding out capital that would otherwise be available to consumers and home buyers and businesses. It robs the currency of its value, pilfering the Nation's savings and their pensions. It alienates capital markets until interest rates rise and interest costs balloon into a debt spiral. Once this starts, there is no way to stop it until the whole house of cards crashes down.

Do you know want to know what that looks likes? It looks a lot like Venezuela.

In the spring of 1945, there was serious concern whether we could continue the war into 1946. Bond sales were failing miserably, war taxes, spending, borrowing, and inflation had hollowed out our economy, and the Nation's credit was nearing exhaustion. Now consider this: we are carrying a larger percentage of debt today than we were at the very end of World War II, and I fear how we could respond to a similar sustained national threat today.

When a colleague told the great economist, Adam Smith, that a British defeat would be the ruin of the nation, Smith calmly observed: ``Be assured, my young friend, that there is a great deal of ruin in a nation.''

But as I look at the unprecedented and unsustainable debt that these policies are producing, I can't avoid a sense of foreboding that our Nation is fast running out of ruin, and that a terrible day of reckoning is coming.

Mr. Speaker, last year, we finally achieved operational control of our southern border for the first time in decades. The Trump administration had made it clear that our border would be enforced, and illegal immigration dropped dramatically.

That all ended on January 20, when Joe Biden issued executive orders to stop deporting illegal immigrants, abandon the border wall, admit anyone claiming to be under 18, and rescinding the Remain in Mexico policy for asylum claims. That message has been heard loud and clear.

The Border Patrol reported more than 100,000 encounters in February alone. Think about that. That is the entire population of South Bend, Indiana, or Green Bay, Wisconsin, in a single month, and it is getting worse.

We are way beyond the debate over whether this is a border crisis. The question now is whether we have a border at all.

What is the Democrats' response? This bill promises a path to citizenship not only for 700,000 DACA recipients but millions more who illegally arrived prior to January 1, were under 19 when they arrived, and have only committed two misdemeanors.

How do they prove they qualify, Mr. Speaker? Under this bill, it means having a friend vouch for you.

Now, we all sympathize with those illegally brought here as young children years ago, and more than 200 Republicans supported legislation in the 115th Congress to give them legal status. But it included measures that secured our border and enforced our laws to discourage another generation of young people being brought here exactly as we are seeing unfold today.

Why are so many children being placed in the hands of Mexican criminal cartels and forced to suffer the 2,000-mile trail of terror to our border? Because it works.

Mr. Speaker, this bill proves the Mexican crime cartels are right: You will be admitted into our country and need only wait for the next amnesty.