Floor Statements

Madam Speaker, it was no accident that when we finally won control of the border and cut the flow of low-wage labor, Americans saw the strongest wage growth in 40 years, the lowest unemployment rate in 50 years, and the lowest poverty rate in 60 years. For the first time in decades, the wage gap between rich and poor narrowed.

Now, this bill extends amnesty, green cards, and a path to citizenship to somewhere between 1 and 2\1/2\ million illegal immigrants now working in agriculture and their families in a manner that will depress wages, not just in agriculture, but in every field of the economy for years to come.

Madam Speaker, if you obeyed the law and came here legally to work, then you cannot qualify as a certified agricultural worker. You must have come here illegally, and you must have worked here illegally for at least 1,035 hours in the last 2 years. That is about 13 40-hour workweeks a year. You get legal status for yourself and your family for the next 5\1/2\ years. You can get indefinite extensions as long as you work in agriculture 575 hours or about 14 weeks a year. If you do this for between 4 and 8 years and you get a green card, then your family gets green cards and you are on a 5-year path to citizenship. The green cards give you the right to work in direct competition with American workers in any sector of the economy.

Madam Speaker, let me emphasize that if you came here legally and worked the same hours, then you are out of luck. If you obeyed the laws, well, you are just a schmuck.

It utterly escapes me how America's working families are helped by flooding the labor market with millions of low-wage workers under this program. As these workers get green cards, they are sure to move from agriculture to high-paying jobs, ensuring a continuous need for new agricultural workers to replace them.

Between the two immigration bills today, somewhere north of 4 million illegal immigrants will qualify for amnesty, legal employment, and a path to citizenship as a reward for breaking our laws.

Is it any wonder that our Border Patrol is now completely overwhelmed as millions of economic refugees rush our border in expectation of the same rewards?

This bill would bring a tragic end to the blue-collar economic boom that President Trump proudly announced on this floor just a year ago. Here is the real tragedy: During the Trump blue-collar boom, the poorest Americans were making the greatest gains, and it is precisely these American families who will be the most harmed by these amnesty bills.

Trump had their back. Biden is on their backs.

Madam Speaker, I yield 3 minutes to the gentleman from Arizona (Mr. Biggs).

Madam Speaker, I yield 3 minutes to the gentleman from Texas (Mr. Roy).

Madam Speaker, I yield the gentleman from Texas an additional 30 seconds.

Madam Speaker, I yield 2\1/2\ minutes to the gentleman from Georgia (Mr. Hice).

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

I can assure the gentlewoman from Texas that we are outraged by the fact that this administration's policies and pronouncements have encouraged thousands upon thousands of children to be placed on that trail of terror in the hands of Mexican criminal cartels and brought here on the expectation of admission, an expectation that this administration is fulfilling.

I must also assure the gentlewoman that this certainly is an amnesty bill. It allows anyone who is here illegally, who can claim to have worked the equivalent of 13 40-hour weeks over 2 years, legal status, amnesty. The documentation can be as little as having a friend vouch for them.

Madam Speaker, I yield to the gentlewoman from Texas.

Madam Speaker, reclaiming my time.

This only applies to illegal aliens. If you are legally here, obeying our laws, you are out of luck with this bill. What this bill says is, if you are here illegally and can have a friend vouch for you that you worked 1,000 hours over the last 2 years in agriculture--again, that is the equivalent of 13 40-hour weeks--you get legal status.

This is one of the many reasons why we are seeing this response from around the world now flooding our southern border.

Madam Speaker, I am pleased to yield 3 minutes to the gentlewoman from Indiana (Mrs. Spartz).

Madam Speaker, no one disputes that this bill is a huge windfall to big agriculture. The problem is that it comes at the expense of American workers.

Madam Speaker, I reserve the balance of my time.

Madam Speaker, I yield 4 minutes to the gentleman from Wisconsin (Mr. Tiffany).

Will the gentleman yield?

Not this session, no.

Madam Speaker, I would remind this Speaker that Cesar Chavez was one of the most outspoken adversaries to illegal immigration, precisely because he knew what that did to depress the wages of the legal immigrants that he represented through the United Farm Workers.

I yield 1 minute to the gentleman from Pennsylvania (Mr. Thompson), the ranking member of the Committee on Agriculture.

I yield 1 minute to the gentleman from California (Mr. LaMalfa).

Madam Speaker, I would just point out, the last 30 seconds was on the time of the gentleman from New York. I reserve the balance of my time.

Madam Speaker, I reserve the balance of my time.

Madam Speaker, I yield 2 minutes to the gentleman from Ohio (Mr. Davidson).

Madam Speaker, I am pleased to yield 3 minutes to the gentlewoman from Minnesota (Mrs. Fischbach).

Madam Speaker, I yield an additional 1 minute to the gentlewoman.

Madam Speaker, may I inquire of my friend from California if she has any additional speakers?

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

Just yesterday, the Secretary of Homeland Security told the Homeland Security Committee that the border is secure. The Secretary said the border is secure, despite saying only 1 day earlier that the Department of Homeland Security is on pace to encounter more individuals on the southwest border than we have in the last 20 years.

He said the border is secure, despite a 590 percent increase in the number of family units crossing the border in the first 6 weeks of the Biden administration.

He said the border is secure, despite Customs and Border Protection referring over 7,300 unaccompanied alien minors to the Department of Health and Human Services during the month of February. That is the highest number of referrals in any February in the history of the program.

He said the border is secure despite the Biden administration's plan to use the Dallas Convention Center to house thousands of the unaccompanied minors who the cartels have smuggled across the border.

No matter what Secretary Mayorkas says, the fact is the border is not secure, and it is not secure because of President Biden's dangerous immigration policies.

We know that when foreign nationals think they can easily get into the U.S. and be rewarded with legal status, which is what this bill does, they flood the border.

We are watching that happen before our eyes. Aliens are flooding the border in response to the President's rhetoric and policies and in response to the promises of additional rewards made through bills like this.

Talk of amnesty fuels border crossings. That is a fact.

This bill grants amnesty and a special path to U.S. citizenship to at least 1 million farmworkers currently in the United States. I have seen estimates that go up to 2\1/2\ million--nobody really knows--as well as to their spouses and children.

This bill allows aliens to get green cards even if they illegally reentered the U.S., committed immigration fraud, voted illegally in a Federal or State election, or have two serious misdemeanor convictions.

The supporters of this bill claim that illegal aliens who get green cards must work in agriculture. However, the bill includes broad waiver authority that allows those who did not complete all the work requirements because of weather conditions or COVID or if the alien was fired, among other situations, to still get a green card.

Those legalized under this bill would, from the outset, compete directly for jobs with Americans. Nothing in this bill prevents those who get employment authorization during the initial process from working in nonagricultural labor sectors. And of course, once they and their family members get a green card, as provided under this legislation, they are free to work wherever they want.

This bill sends a powerful message and an invitation to those who cross our borders illegally that they can expect to be rewarded with legal status and, ultimately, green cards and an expedited path to citizenship.

But far worse than that, it floods our market with low-wage labor at a time when Americans are struggling to recover from the devastating lockdowns that have crushed the dreams of so many working families.

I will end as I began. The people who were most helped by the economic expansion that we saw were working-class Americans because the Trump administration got control of our borders and stemmed the flow of this illegal labor.

They made the greatest gains during the expansion; they have been the most harmed during the lockdowns; and this adds to their burdens and woes by ensuring that the market for their skills and labor will remain stagnant for a decade to come.

Please don't do this to those good Americans in this perilous time for our country.

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

Madam Speaker, nearly a half century ago, Congress passed the equal rights amendment and sent it to the States with a 7- year deadline for ratification. When that deadline expired in 1979, it was three States short of passage.

Many States rejected it because it was duplicative of the Fifth and 14th Amendments to the Constitution. Our Constitution already guarantees that all Americans receive equal protection under the law, and indeed these provisions have driven our progress as a society.

More importantly, many felt that the ERA would unleash a crippling avalanche of activist litigation that could have unforeseen and unintended implications to issues ranging from abortion to freedom of conscience and freedom of speech.

Today, 50 years after its adoption, the Democrats propose to retroactively amend the ERA to remove its deadline. They argue that Congress can alter amendments it has sent to the States, even a half century later, and yet still count their ratification votes from a half century ago.

This would allow them to add three States that voted to ratify long after the deadline was passed for the very amendment that established that deadline.

Of course, they don't explain how to deal with the five States that have since rescinded their ratification votes.

The courts have already ruled against this approach as brazenly unconstitutional.

As Ruth Bader Ginsburg, an ardent supporter of the ERA, pointed out a few years ago: ``So, if you count a latecomer on the plus side, how can you disregard States that said, `We've changed our minds?'''

If the majority were serious, it would reintroduce the ERA and debate it openly and constitutionally, as Justice Ginsburg suggested. They won't, because they know that in the nearly half century that has passed since the ERA was proposed, the world itself has passed them by.

Mr. Speaker, there is one thing that all sides can agree on: This is the most leftwing bill ever passed by the Congress.

But beware. There is no such thing as free money. All of it must be borrowed from the same capital pool that would otherwise be available as loans to consumers, home buyers, and small businesses. And it will be repaid entirely from your future earnings in the years ahead.

Divided by the number of U.S. households, the bill, for an average family, comes to roughly $15,000. Now, that is money that has to be taken from your family through future taxes and inflation, through lower wages and earnings as businesses pass along their costs. That is the only way that government debt can be financed.

Government lockdowns have devastated America's prosperity. The answer is to end the lockdowns, not rob Americans of their futures by crushing their families under debt that will destroy their opportunity, independence, and prosperity in the years ahead.

Mr. Speaker, H.R. 8 is brought to us by the same organizations and politicians who have made no secret of their intention ultimately to strip law-abiding citizens of their right to defend themselves. Now, they know they can't do it outright, so they do it through cynical measures like this, which weave a web of laws so intricate that, sooner or later, everyone can be caught up in them.

This law affects not only sales but any transfer of a weapon for any period of time. A couple of years ago, a 10-year study by Johns Hopkins and UC Davis concluded that California's background check law had no effect on gun homicides or suicides. None.

The purpose of this bill is not public safety. That is its deceptive facade. Its purpose is to make gun ownership so legally hazardous, so fraught with legal boobytraps and draconian penalties, that no honest and law-abiding citizen would ever want to take the risk.

Most criminals already get their guns illegally. They are unconstrained by laws like this. This bill is aimed squarely at law- abiding citizens, moving us closer to a society where decent people are defenseless and armed criminals are kings.

Mr. Speaker, what is the so-called Charleston Loophole?

It is a provision that gives the FBI 3 days to provide a background check for a citizen to buy a gun. Now, 3 days for a background check doesn't seem unreasonable since a credit card check takes about 3 seconds.

Now, if the FBI fails to give a clear ``yes'' or ``no'' in 3 days, the sale can proceed. That protects our Second Amendment right from arbitrary denial by inaction, and the clearance is good for 30 days from when you begin that transaction.

Now, this bill repeals the 3-day limit and replaces it with a multistage bureaucratic review process that can span up to 20 business days.

It is really quite clever. Your clearance is good for 30 calendar days from the day you begin the transaction, but the clearance can be delayed for up to 20 business days. So if you applied on January 15 of this year, 20 business days takes you to February 16. By then, your purchase window will have expired 2 days earlier, on February 14. You have to start the process over, applying for a new background check in a perpetual cycle. They never have to say ``approved.''

Would a government abuse its citizens like that?

I don't know. Maybe we should ask Lois Lerner or Andrew McCabe.

Mr. Speaker, whenever the left takes control of local law enforcement, the result is predictable and catastrophic. They act to defund the police, deliberately withhold police protection from law- abiding shopkeepers and citizens, declare sanctuaries for criminal illegal aliens, decline to charge criminals, and prevent law-abiding citizens from protecting themselves.

Mr. Speaker, we are now suffering the result: skyrocketing homicides, shootings, and other violent crimes, preying most of all upon the decent citizens of our inner cities. Now, after their summer of love and lawlessness, look at the results. Their storefronts are boarded up. Their buildings are burned out. Their streets are increasingly surrendered to the lawless.

Frankly, the Democrats in Congress that have applauded these policies would not be my first choice to micromanage every police department across our country as this bill does; just saying.

The ultimate target of the left is not isolated abuses by law enforcement officers but, rather, law enforcement itself. As we can now see, without law enforcement, there is no law.

Madam Speaker, democracies die when one party seizes control of the elections process, eliminates the safeguards that have protected the integrity of the ballot, places restrictions on free speech, and seizes the earnings of others to promote candidates they may abhor. That is the bill before us today.

The most dangerous provision nationalizes the mass mailing of ballots to voter rolls that contain untold numbers of people who have moved or died. It allows ballot harvesters to knock on doors and collect these ballots. There is no chain of custody from the time the ballot is mailed until the time it is returned.

Ballots can be cast weeks before the election under the duress of family, friends, or precinct workers. Even if it doesn't rob our elections of their actual legitimacy, it certainly robs them of their perceived legitimacy, destroying the trust that the loser of any election must have to accept the winner was rightful. That is the bitter legacy of the last election under these practices.

Why would anyone want to institutionalize them?

Mr. Speaker, to my fellow Americans, all of this free money is coming out of your future earnings.

Divided by U.S. households, $1.9 trillion comes to roughly $15,000 for an average family. You will pay that back through your future taxes and inflation and through higher prices and lower wages as businesses pass along their taxes.

You won't see it all directly, but you will feel it. It is the car you won't be able to afford someday soon or the home you won't be able to qualify for.

Madam Speaker, before the lockdown left took a wrecking ball to our economy, we were enjoying one of the greatest expansions of economic opportunity in our lifetimes. Unemployment was at its lowest rate in 50 years. The poverty rate was at its lowest rate in 60 years. Most importantly, wage growth was the strongest in 40 years, and the wage gap between rich and poor was narrowing for the first time in many years as blue-collar wages increased dramatically. The unemployment rate for women was the lowest in 70 years. For African Americans, Hispanic Americans, Asian Americans, veterans, disabled Americans, and those without a high school diploma, unemployment was the lowest ever recorded.

Now, the tax and regulatory relief we won in 2017 and 2018 explained much of that success. But something else was going on that caused the extraordinary improvement of wages for unskilled or low-skilled workers. It was because the Trump administration restored control of our borders and stemmed the flood of low-wage labor that had been suppressing wages for American workers for decades. Big business and big agriculture hated this policy because it required them to pay higher wages to Americans, but in the growing economy it produced, working Americans who had been left behind for decades finally began to prosper.

Now, did we learn nothing from this blue-collar boom?

The Democrats that these families trusted to look out for their interests in the recent election are betraying them at every turn. Nowhere is that clearer than the Democrats' zeal to open our borders to a new wave of illegal immigration.

The President's executive orders have already produced a new migrant crisis on the southern border. One abandoned the border wall in mid- construction. Another undermines the longstanding requirement that immigrants be able to support themselves and not burden American taxpayers.

Another ends the Remain in Mexico policy for those making asylum claims, the vast majority of those claims being dubious. Yet another effectively releases illegal immigrants accompanied by youths under 18 directly into the United States.

Another grants what amounts to sanctuary status for a wide variety of criminal offenses, including drunk driving and sex offenses. Another restores unrestricted travel from hotbeds of international terrorism.

The worst one orders ICE not to deport illegal immigrants for 100 days. That order now enjoined by a Federal judge begs the question: What is the difference between abolishing ICE and forbidding ICE to do its job?

Customs and Border Protection agents report in the last month the flow on the southern border has nearly doubled from 2,000 a day to 3,500 a day. The number of illegal immigrants encountered on the southern border during the first 4 months of the last fiscal year was nearly 165,000. That number has nearly doubled this year to more than 295,000.

Every American needs to clearly understand what this means to their lives, their families, their communities, and their futures.

How are American workers helped by flooding the labor market with another wave of illegal immigration?

How are our children, who have been robbed of an entire year of their educations, helped by filling their classrooms with non-English speaking classmates?

How are our streets made safer by allowing aliens who drive drunk to remain on our roads rather than be arrested and placed in removal proceedings?

How is our Nation made safer by reopening virtually unrestricted travel with nations that foster terrorism?

How are our communities made safer by making it harder to deport criminal illegal aliens and gang members?

How are our hospitals made more accessible by overwhelming emergency rooms by illegal immigrants demanding care?

Why would they pursue these policies that strike most acutely and painfully at America's working families? Especially now when those families are reeling from the effects of a year of repressive lockdowns?

Those blue-collar workers who made the greatest gains during the Trump economic expansion are the most harmed by reversing the immigration enforcement that produced it.

Let us not forget that millions of legal immigrants who obeyed our laws, respected our Nation's sovereignty, waited patiently, and have done everything our country has asked of them have also been made victims of the Democrats' pursuit of open borders.

Without enforcement of our immigration laws, our borders are meaningless. And if our borders are meaningless, then America ceases to be a nation and instead becomes a vast international territory between Canada and Mexico.

Mr. Speaker, I fear that is the ultimate objective of the left and that the only force that can stop them now is the American people at the ballot box.

Mr. Speaker, this law could not be plainer. It says gender is not a question of genetics, but of personal choice. And leftist dogma now calls for this doctrine to be imposed under force of law, and the effect is frightening.

States that have adopted similar laws have threatened safe spaces for women and intimidated the free exercise of conscience. But let me focus on just two aspects: How this destroys women's sports and renders parents powerless to protect their own children.

Selina Soule, a teenager, worked her heart out and qualified for the Connecticut State championship track meet a few years ago. This is her experience:

She said, ``Eight of us lined up at the starting line . . . but when six of us were only about three-quarters into the race, two girls were already across the finish line. . . .

``What just happened? Two boys identifying as girls happened.

``Fair is no longer the norm. The chance to advance, the chance to win has been all over for us. . . .

``This policy will take away our medals, records, scholarships and dreams.''

An anguished mother named Elaine, told her story: She said, ``Let me explain to you how this works. . . . Questioning a child's professed gender identity is now illegal.

``So, if a little boy is 5 years old and believes he is the opposite sex, affirmative care means going along with his beliefs. Parents are encouraged to refer to him as their `daughter' and let him choose a feminine name. . . .

``Is it really harmless to tell a child who still believes in the tooth fairy that he is of the opposite sex?

``If a 10-year-old girl is uncomfortable with her developing body and suddenly insists she is a boy, affirmative care means blocking this girl's puberty with powerful drugs.''

America, wake up. This is the brave, new world that House Democrats propose under the name ``equality.'' The parents of every daughter, who has ever poured their hearts into a sport should be outraged that their daughter's dreams and hopes no longer matter to their own Representative.

Every parent who would give their life to protect their child should be livid that this bill is about to replace them with bureaucrats who can administer puberty-blocking drugs on their child's say-so.

And every American should be scared as hell to realize the ideological extremism that is now running rampant behind the razor- wired militarized U.S. Capitol. It is hard to believe that we once called it ``the people's House.''

Let this be a wake-up call to every voter. If you elect enough radicals to the Congress, you will get a radical Congress.

Mr. Speaker, everything we touch in our daily lives,

everything that makes our existence possible, everything that makes us more comfortable and more prosperous, everything we see in this Chamber comes to us in only two ways. It is either grown or it is mined. That is a universal truth.

Everything we enjoy on this planet is either grown or mined. Fortunately, nature has given us a super abundance of resources and left it to us to responsibly reap and to manage this bounty.

But it is precisely these resources that the left has waged war against for an entire generation. The very things that make us prosperous and comfortable are the things the left attempts to place off limits.

Is it any wonder that the more they extend their domain, the worse the human conditions that they produce?

This bill declares another 1.5 million acres of public lands, mostly forests, an area about the size of Delaware, a wilderness area, off limits to forest management, timber harvesting, and even many forms of public recreation. An untended forest is like an untended garden. It will grow until it chokes itself to death and succumbs to disease, pestilence, and, ultimately, catastrophic wildfire.

These restrictions have abandoned our forests to neglect and produced the paradox of a severe national lumber shortage while the government sits on vast timber reserves.

This bill places 1,200 more miles of rivers under similar restrictions that create water shortages in some of the most water- abundant regions of our country.

It prevents mineral extraction and energy production from another 1.2 million acres, killing jobs, crushing the economy, and empowering our international adversaries. At a time when the Federal Government's bad management practices have created a $12 billion maintenance backlog, this bill takes another half million acres of land into Federal mismanagement.

Understand what that means to local communities. This is land that is producing no taxes and little commerce. Much is being seized over local objections in States where the Federal Government already controls more than half of their entire land area.

Mr. Speaker, this is a direct attack on working Americans who depend on the resources of our Nation to put food on their tables and a roof over their heads. It is an attack on the prosperity and security of our people, and it is what we have come to expect from the greens gone wild on the other side of the aisle.

The result will be more dead forests, more water shortages, increasing costs for energy and consumer goods, lower wages, and fewer jobs.

These policies always produce want from plenty, and I am afraid they will continue until the American people finally demand that we restore the nation of abundance that we once took for granted.

Mr. Speaker, we are now nearly 1 year into the most self-destructive social experiment in the recorded history of human civilization.

On this day 1 year ago, we enjoyed the greatest economic expansion in our lifetimes. The poverty rate was at its lowest in 60 years. The unemployment rate was the lowest in 50 years. Wage growth was the strongest in 40 years. The wage gap was narrowing, with blue-collar wages rising the fastest. Unemployment rates for minority groups and women were at the lowest ever recorded.

Then, over the course of just a few catastrophic weeks, our government took a wrecking ball to it all. In the second quarter, GDP plunged by one-third, the worst decline in productivity ever recorded. Unemployment skyrocketed to its highest levels since the Great Depression. Tens of millions of Americans lost their jobs. Trillions of dollars of the Nation's wealth were squandered.

In the months since, our children have been robbed of a year of their education. Millions of Americans have been forbidden from earning a living by their own government. Shopkeepers have seen their life's work destroyed, and when in desperation they try to hold on, they are led away in handcuffs.

Our most cherished rights to worship freely; to peaceably assemble; and not to be deprived of our lives, liberty, or property without due process of law have all been destroyed.

Now, COVID did not cause this damage. Public officials did. They promised us it was for our own good and that it would save lives. But mounting evidence in multiple scientific studies is putting the lie to these sophistries. It is becoming increasingly, tragically, and bitterly clear that the lockdowns have not only failed to save lives, but they are costing lives.

Last month, the University of Denmark released the results of a study comparing Danish municipalities that locked down with those that did not. Their conclusion: The lockdowns had ``statistically insignificant effects.''

Their conclusion mirrored a similar study out of Stanford University that compared eight lockdown nations and two non-lockdown nations. They concluded: ``We fail to find an additional benefit of stay-at-home orders and business closures.''

Now, these are studies based not on assumptions and models but on actual, real-life, hardcore data. That is what the science is telling us, and it is telling us the same thing for multiple studies: The lockdowns have not saved lives, certainly not to any statistically significant level.

But it gets worse, much worse. We are now seeing mounting evidence that the lockdowns are costing lives on a staggering scale. Last month, the National Bureau of Economic Research warned that increases in poverty caused by the lockdowns will cost more than 800,000 American lives over the next 15 years due to higher poverty levels, with the deaths disproportionately affecting African Americans and women. That comports with a U.N. warning that tens of millions of people worldwide are being pushed to the brink of starvation.

Suicide rates have jumped dramatically over the past year. Dementia deaths between March and September jumped 13,000 as patients were left with little means of social interaction. San Francisco reported that additional deaths from drug overdoses exceeded the total COVID deaths in 2020.

According to The Wall Street Journal, the CDC reported 475,000 excess deaths in the United States at a time when it was reporting 281,000 COVID-related fatalities. Now, that difference is 192,000 additional deaths unexplained by normal mortality and COVID combined.

Could it be this is the butcher's bill from a folly that has produced skyrocketing suicides, drug and alcohol deaths, domestic homicides, isolation-related deaths, delayed health screenings, delayed health treatments, and poverty-related deaths?

Unlike COVID, which is a curse brought us by nature, lockdown deaths are the fault of specific individuals in positions of public trust who imposed draconian restrictions out of panic, fear, ignorance, or egotism. They preened and virtue-signaled and boasted how much they cared for the lives of others while they have pursued a folly that is needlessly taking an appalling toll of lives and livelihoods.

Some of those responsible hold power by virtue of appointments by elected officials while others are elected officials themselves, and I fear this nightmare will not end until the officials who are responsible for it are removed from the offices they hold.

Mr. Speaker, $2 trillion in revenues, $6 trillion in spending. This is madness. This is how countries commit fiscal suicide: force

the economy to shut down, and then hand out government checks.

The problem, of course, is that the government does not finance the economy. It is the economy that finances the government.

And when you wantonly destroy millions of jobs by forcing small businesses to shutter, by canceling construction and energy production across the country, when you flood the labor market with millions of illegal immigrants at a time when millions of Americans are out of work, you shut down the economy, and you shut down the tax revenues that the economy produces and that the government spends.

And so we borrow instead. Now, this budget requires $4 trillion in borrowing. Now, where will it borrow this $4 trillion from? The future earnings of your family, of course.

Let's add this up. There are 129 million households in the United States. $4 trillion comes to $31,000 added to the debt of every household in America, at the average.

Now, this isn't theoretical. That is real money that will be repaid by every family through its future taxes, tax-driven price increases, lower wages, and inflation. That is the future for our families that the Democrats set in motion today while they promise to help us through these tough times with this sorry excuse for a budget resolution.

Mr. Speaker, it is not just our future that is being robbed. That money must be repaid in the future, but it must be borrowed in the present from the same capital market that would otherwise be available to loan to consumers seeking to make consumer purchases that drive two- thirds of our economic growth, or businesses seeking to recover, or to home buyers seeking to buy homes. That money will not be there for them because the government has borrowed it instead.

Now, remember, the government cannot put a single dollar into the economy that it has not first taken out of that very same economy. If I take a dollar from Peter and give it to Paul, it is true, Paul has an extra dollar to spend. That is what the Democrats are calling stimulus. But it is equally true that Peter now has one less dollar to spend in that same economy, which is why these stimulus schemes never work in the present and always diminish our future.

Mr. Speaker, our country is in desperate condition because of government-mandated lockdowns that have failed to slow the coronavirus while they have laid waste to our economy and the livelihoods of millions upon millions of Americans.

There is only one relief measure that will rescue our Nation from this dystopian nightmare: End the lockdowns.

History is screaming this warning at us. Countries that bankrupt themselves and destroy their economies simply aren't around very long. Let that not be the epitaph of the United States of America.

Madam Speaker, I didn't like the President's speech on January 6 either. I thought he was wrong to assert that the Vice President and Congress can pick and choose which electoral votes to count. He was wrong to set such a confrontational tone in a politically tense situation.

But what did he actually say? His exact words were: ``I know that everyone here will soon be marching over to the Capitol Building to peacefully and patriotically make your voices heard.'' That is impeachable? That is called freedom of speech.

Now, he also threatened to oppose candidates in future elections. And, by the way, that was directed at Republicans like me who had resolved to uphold the constitutional process and protect the electoral college. Well, so what? That is called politics.

If we impeached every politician who gave a fiery speech to a crowd of partisans, this Capitol would be deserted. That is what the President did. That is all he did.

He specifically told the crowd to protest peacefully and patriotically, and the vast majority of them did. But every movement has a lunatic fringe. Suppressing free speech is not the answer. Holding rioters accountable for their actions is the answer, and we are.

If we prosecuted BLM and antifa rioters across the country with the same determination these last 6 months, this incident might not have happened at all.

Now, short of declaring war, the power of impeachment is the most solemn and consequential act that Congress can take. To use it in this manner, in the heat of the moment, with no hearings, no due process, many Members phoning in their votes after a hastily called debate, exactly 1 week before a new President is to take office, trivializes this power to the point of caricature.

The Democrats have won everything in sight--the House, the Senate, and the Presidency. In a republic, that calls for magnanimity by the victors. Only in a banana republic does it call for vengeance.

Benjamin Franklin warned us that ``passion governs, and she never governs wisely.'' In our passions this week, we have set some dangerous new precedents that will haunt us for years to come. Yesterday, we redefined intemperate speech as a physical incapacity requiring removal from office. Today, we define it as a high crime and misdemeanor.

Well, the moment any Member of this body gives an impassioned speech and the lunatic fringe of their movement takes license from it, be prepared to answer to this new precedent that we establish today.

Now, I could cite plenty of provocative speeches made by Democrats that directly preceded violence this summer, but we have already had enough of that.

After 600,000 Americans had perished in the Civil War, Abraham Lincoln appealed to the better angels of our nature. He said: With malice toward none, with charity for all, let us bind up the Nation's wounds. Those words were so important to the unity of our Nation they are inscribed in marble at the Lincoln Memorial.

I cannot think of a more petty, vindictive, and gratuitous act than to impeach an already defeated President a week before he is to leave office. President-elect Biden's promise to heal the Nation becomes a hollow mockery in the harsh reality of this unconstitutional act.

God help our country.

Mr. Speaker, what a sad and ominous way to begin the 117th Congress. Hasn't this body done enough in the last session to divide our country and abuse our Constitution without carrying that damage into the new session?

The 25th Amendment specifically addresses the incapacity of the President to discharge the duties of his office. It was never intended as a political weapon when Congress doesn't like the way he discharges those duties.

Now, I have read that speech. He never suggested rampaging the Capitol and disrupting the Congress. He urged them to--and this is an exact quote--``peacefully and patriotically make your voices heard.''

Now, many of us Republicans joined a bipartisan vote to respect the electoral college votes despite our suspicions, our misgivings, and our desires. We did this because the Constitution commanded it and our institutions depend on it. Now, today, those same principles should compel a bipartisan vote to oppose this grotesque abuse of the 25th Amendment.

Last week, the majority argued that the President tried to misuse the Constitution to overturn the votes of the electoral college. Well, he asserted no direct power. Rather, he urged the Vice President and Congress to do so. Many of us declined his bad advice.

Yet, this week, the majority directly is asserting power to misuse the 25th Amendment in a manner that does overturn the votes of the previous electoral college. Don't they see that they are committing directly the same offense they accuse the President of committing indirectly?

Every act we take builds a precedent for future acts. Once Congress asserts

this new role as armchair psychiatrists and a new power to equate intemperate speech with functional disability, the most important pillars of our government--stability, the rule of law, and the separation of powers--will fracture.

It won't affect this President, but it will stalk future Presidents from this day forward. For their sake, please don't do this.