Floor Statements

Mr. Speaker, Laken Riley's death was foreordained the day that this administration took office and reversed the successful Trump policies that had finally secured our borders.

Since that day, just 3 years ago, more than 6 million illegal aliens have been allowed to enter our country, a population the size of the State of Missouri, our eighteenth largest State.

Very little is done to vet these millions of illegal migrants. We don't know how many terrorists or violent criminals are among them. Additionally, worse, this administration seems not to care.

However, we do know that the number of suspected terrorists that we are apprehending has skyrocketed and that violent international crime cartels and violent foreign gangs are now operating freely in our communities, often protected from deportation and detention by the Democrats' sanctuary laws.

One of these criminals is now accused of the brutal murder of Laken Riley. We do not know how many such monsters this President has allowed into our country, but we are slowly, painfully, and tragically finding out victim by victim.

In this case, the suspect was paroled into this country through a shocking abuse of power by this President. He was repeatedly arrested for theft and other crimes in sanctuary jurisdictions and was each time released back onto our streets.

The bill before us would require this administration to detain illegal aliens who commit theft, burglary, larceny, or shoplifting, something it simply refuses to do. It would also allow States to bring civil action against Federal officials who refuse to enforce these laws.

Today, the name on the bill is Laken Riley. Tomorrow, it will be another victim of these policies, another son or daughter or loved one, and it won't stop until this administration is stopped. That can only be done by the American people.

Mr. Speaker, Secretary Mayorkas is guilty of maladministration of our immigration laws on a cosmic scale, but we know that is not grounds for impeachment because the American Founders specifically rejected it.

They didn't want political disputes to become impeachments because that would shatter their separation of powers that vests the enforcement of the laws with the President--no matter how bad a job he does.

Cabinet Secretaries can't serve two masters. They can be impeached for committing a crime relating to their office, but not for carrying out Presidential policy.

This border crisis can't be fixed by replacing one leftwing official with another. It can only be fixed by the American people at the ballot box by replacing this administration with one committed to securing our borders, defending our country, and upholding the rule of law. Americans are already coming to that conclusion.

Mr. Speaker, I am afraid that stunts like this don't help.

Mr. Speaker, I ask unanimous consent that all Members may have 5 legislative days in

which to revise and extend their remarks and insert extraneous material on H.R. 5585.

Mr. Chairman, on December 7 of 2022, Border Patrol Officer Raul Gonzalez got up, he got dressed, kissed his family good- bye, and left for work.

His family would never see him again. He was killed later that day in Mission, Texas, doing his job trying to protect our country. A group of illegal aliens and their smuggler led him on a high-speed chase that ended in a fatal wreck that took his life.

Now, this is becoming an increasingly common story along our southern border in the age of Biden's open-border policies. The number of high- speed chases by Border Patrol or local law enforcement has exploded along with the illegal human trafficking and smuggling that they are trying to stop.

The Biden administration's lax enforcement of our immigration laws has incentivized this, creating the conditions that create these deadly high-speed chases, and the problem has now reached critical levels.

One lifelong Arizona resident reflected on the dangers of Highway 90 in Cochise County, now a major smuggling route. She said, It is scary to the point you don't want to drive the highway, but to get to work you have to. I am actually scared about going out into the public sometimes, because what if there is a high-speed chase and something goes sideways, they get into a car accident, hop the curb and hit anybody?

In Tombstone, Arizona, U.S. Marshal Jim Adams spoke of the high-speed chases racing through his town. He said, This is a weekly occurrence, sometimes daily, sometimes several times a day.

Americans near the border should not be living in terror for themselves or their loved ones being killed by high-speed chases caused by cartel smugglers. Yet, in many communities, they do now.

Human smuggling is an incredibly lucrative business. According to Border Patrol estimates in the Del Rio sector alone, cartels profit $32 million a week for a staggering total of $1.6 billion per year just in that one sector. The cartels expertly control their side of the border. Nobody gets through without paying them.

Yet, while the cartels are making billions controlling their side of the border, Joe Biden is spending billions of dollars while abandoning control of our side of the border.

This bill is very simple. It makes it a Federal crime to evade the Border Patrol or local law enforcement that is assisting the Border Patrol within 100 miles of the international border. If you are a foreign national, it makes the conviction or admission of such a crime grounds for inadmissibility and removability. If you hurt somebody, we will put you in prison for 5 years. If you kill somebody, we will put you in prison for 10 years. If you are a foreign national, we will send you packing when you get out.

That is what the Democrats in this House will oppose today, and that should be a wake-up call for every American.

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

Mr. Chairman, I yield such time as he may consume to the gentleman from Arizona (Mr. Ciscomani), the author of this bill.

Mr. Chair, I yield 5 minutes to the gentlewoman from Texas (Ms. Van Duyne).

Mr. Chair, I yield 5 minutes to the gentlewoman from Texas (Ms. De La Cruz).

Mr. Chair, I yield myself the balance of my time to close.

Mr. Chair, setting aside my good friend's weird obsession with Donald Trump, I hope Americans will take note of what has been said in this debate.

The Democrats made the point, well, why chase them and endanger themselves and the public? Why not just let them go?

Well, the answer should be obvious. Under the Democrats' open-borders policy, all that you have to do is flag down a Border Patrol officer and make a phony asylum claim. Under their policies, you will be immediately released into our country. You will get a plane or bus ticket anywhere you want to go. You will get free meals, free snacks, free clothes, free phones. You immediately qualify for free medical care, free housing, free education for your children. Within 6 months, you will be given a work authorization to undercut working American families. You will be assured that your phony claim won't be heard for many years into the future, if you show up at all.

Also, when you are finally ordered deported, as is the case with the overwhelming majority of these claims, that court order will simply be ignored by our own government. There are already currently 1.3 million such deportation orders that the administration already simply ignores.

With all of these benefits waiting for you simply by flagging down a Border Patrol officer, why in the world would you want to evade capture by endangering your own lives? Well, the only reason I can think of is that you are either hiding a criminal record, or you are committing a crime.

I remind the gentleman that is why the Border Patrol chases evaders. They have caught hundreds of known terrorists and countless pounds of fentanyl and other deadly drugs by doing so.

FBI Director Chris Wray warned the Judiciary Committee that this constitutes a massive security threat--his words--a massive security threat. Let that sink in. And then consider the barbaric terrorist attack 103 days ago in Israel.

I believe it is just a matter of time before we see a coordinated terrorist attack in our own country from elements that have entered as a direct result of Biden's policies. We have already seen lone wolf attacks in Belgium, France, Germany, Denmark because of their lax border policies. I am afraid this is only the tip of this iceberg.

I, again, remind the gentleman that is why we chase evaders, and those evaders need to be held accountable to the law and punished, and, if they are foreigners, they need to be removed from our country. Yet, the Democrats object to this.

Now, the Democrats have argued that the bill should not include a mandatory minimum sentence. Well, let's go over specifically what they object to. If you cause a high-speed chase that injures somebody, you are going to serve a minimum of 5 years under this bill. If you kill somebody, it is a minimum of 10 years.

Does any reasonable person believe these mandatory minimums are unreasonable? Ask the American who has been paralyzed in such a crash if it is unreasonable. Ask the family of the mother who has been killed in such a crash if that is unreasonable. The only people who seem to think that this is unreasonable are the Democrats in this House, and voters might want to do something about that.

The Democrats argue that the bill is unnecessary because aliens who are convicted of fleeing an immigration checkpoint are already removable. You heard that argument several times. Well, that is true, but it only applies to those who are fleeing a checkpoint. It doesn't make the alien inadmissible to come back into our country, either.

This bill applies to all smugglers causing dangerous crashes or chases within 100 miles of the border, and it creates serious penalties for those who injure or kill officers or bystanders during these pursuits.

Now, the Democrats have also claimed that this measure would destroy due process by deporting an alien who hasn't actually been convicted of a crime.

Well, actually, this bill requires either a conviction of a crime, or an admission of committing that crime. That is the same standard we apply to aliens guilty of overstaying a visa, violating nonimmigrant status or condition of entry, smuggling aliens, committing marriage fraud, being a drug user or a drug addict, falsely claiming United States citizenship, or engaging in espionage. This bill simply adds evasion of the Border Patrol to this existing list.

By the way, a confession is not an idle matter. Under 80 years of precedent, the alien's confession has to be explicit, unequivocal, and unqualified. The Department of Homeland Security then has the burden of proof to show that the statement meets the requirement for removal purposes, and an immigration judge must then find that the admission is based on reasonable, substantial, and probative evidence.

This is hardly a casual confession, but it does save years and years of court proceedings and appeals.

Mr. Chair, we have heard directly from the officers and citizens of our border communities of the dangers that they now face day after day as cartel smugglers drive at high speeds through their towns to evade the Border Patrol or the police.

This bill says, if you clearly admit to this crime or you are convicted of it and you are a foreign national, we will not only deport you, but it will be grounds for forbidding you from returning, which is not part of the current law.

The bill says to legal and illegal residents alike, if you hurt somebody while causing this reckless hazard, we will throw you in jail for 5 years; if you kill somebody, it is 10.

The Democrats are opposed to these reforms. We should tell people everything they need to know about the obstacles that we are facing to securing our border and returning our border communities to peace and safety.

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

Mr. Chair, I claim the time in opposition to the amendment.

Mr. Chairman, this amendment requires a new fact to be proven at trial that the pursuing law enforcement officer was ``under the command'' of the U.S. Border Patrol in each and every case.

I can imagine many circumstances where local law enforcement is alerted to a Border Patrol chase that is going through their jurisdiction and then act immediately to assist them without necessarily being directly under their command.

The issue is not who is pursuing smugglers but rather the circumstances of the pursuit; namely, this person is evading the Border Patrol. It is unlikely that during each and every pursuit in progress the Border Patrol is going to have time to deputize local law enforcement and place them under their command.

This is a ridiculous expectation, so ridiculous as to raise the suspicion that it is intended solely to render the bill unworkable and meaningless.

These high-speed chases occur far too often in our border communities, and State and local law enforcement are often first responders in protecting these communities along with the Border Patrol.

This amendment would serve only to challenge law enforcement, who are properly doing their job, to stop smugglers and illegal aliens from terrorizing their communities.

Mr. Chair, I, therefore, oppose this amendment, and I reserve the balance of my time.

Mr. Chair, I am prepared to close if the gentlewoman is finished.

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

Mr. Chair, I was just shocked to hear the gentlewoman accuse the Governor of Texas of murder. This is an example of the kind of extremism that we see on the left in this House today.

Now, the fact is the Border Patrol agents are strained to the breaking point by this administration's open-border policies, and they often rely on local law enforcement having their backs.

If the gentlewoman doesn't know what active assistance is, it is a high-speed chase that is going through their community and they are there in a position to back up the Border Patrol. Mr. Chair, you can't negotiate that. You cannot be deputized. That is part and parcel of law enforcement. You have to spring into action.

When overt local police are providing this assistance, they should have the protection that this bill provides. It also puts every smuggler on notice that if they are trafficking human beings or drugs across the border and they are pursued, then they darn well better pull over.

Apparently, this is just too much for the Democrats to bear. I am not sure whether we should laugh this amendment off the floor or merely defeat it. In either event, it is a foolish idea.

Mr. Chair, it deserves a ``no'' vote, and I yield back the balance of my time.

Mr. Chairman, I move that the Committee do now rise.

Mr. Speaker, President Biden marked the third anniversary of the January 6 Capitol riot by calling it a ``day that we nearly lost America,'' and he asked: ``Is democracy still America's sacred cause?''

That is an important question. What happened on January 6 was a national disgrace. A riotous mob disrupted the Congress and its congressional responsibility to observe the counting of the votes of the electoral college. To conclude that ``we nearly lost America'' to a lunatic wearing buffalo horns that day is hysterical hyperbole, to say the least. True insurrections are made of sterner stuff.

When the last of these yahoos was kicked out of this building a few hours later, Congress calmly completed the electoral count and confirmed Joe Biden's election.

Nevertheless, Mr. Biden is correct to raise concerns about the growing threats to our democracy, and he is right that democracy depends on the loser of an election accepting its outcome as the legitimate will of the majority. Many Democrats refused to do that in 2016 and many Republicans in 2020.

Why do so many voters no longer trust the integrity of our elections? Could it be that so many of the safeguards that assure a fair election and an accurate count have been stripped away?

For hundreds of years, we all looked our neighbors in the eye as they handed us our ballots. We all cast our votes in curtained booths where no one could influence us. We all watched our ballots placed in locked containers. At 8 p.m., we knew exactly how many votes had been cast, and a few hours later, we knew the outcome of all the elections.

We all had our say during the campaign, and we waited until the debate was over to make our decision on election day. It was very hard to cheat, and everyone could trust that process.

All that has changed. In recent years, the leftist Democrats have rigged election laws to extend voting over an entire month, accept ballots after election day, harvest ballots by political operatives, use mail-in ballots where there is no chain of custody, prevent observers from unobstructed views of ballot counting, and suppress debate and hide critical information from voters.

Freedom of speech is the beating heart of democracy, yet the left- leaning bureaucracies, increasingly independent of the will of the voters, actively colluded to influence elections by intimidating political opponents, starting with the Tea Party. They have

promoted utterly false narratives, most notably the Russian collusion hoax.

Courts have recently found the government guilty of violating the First Amendment by actively pressuring social media platforms to censor the very political dialogue that is central to the functioning of a democracy. The President even attempted to establish a disinformation czar to decide what information could reach voters.

Our fundamental democratic institutions are also under growing attack. The left has been very clear that it intends to pack the Supreme Court by creating new seats for leftist appointments and to pack the Senate by creating overwhelmingly Democratic States, like Washington, D.C.

Less than 2 years ago, leftist mobs descended on the homes of Supreme Court Justices in an illegal attempt to pressure and intimidate them, yet Mr. Biden's Department of Justice refused to enforce the law that protects jurists from such bullying.

The President has opened our borders and produced an illegal mass migration unprecedented in our history while his party has pushed to permit foreign nationals to vote in our elections, making a mockery of Americans' right to self-determination.

How does Mr. Biden explain the unprecedented acts of his agents seeking to ban from the ballot candidates who directly challenge his candidacy? It is not just the brazen and unconstitutional attempt to keep his leading Republican challenger from the ballot. The agents of his party have been aggressively working to ban Democratic primary challengers as well and seizing from Democratic voters in Iowa the right to have any meaningful say in next week's election, for fear they would not vote for him in sufficient numbers.

Mr. Speaker, our democracy is indeed under attack from the lunatic fringe on both extremes. When we ask which presents a clear and present danger to our democracy, I would respectfully but earnestly suggest the President remove the log from his own eye before he criticizes the speck in his neighbor's.

Mr. Speaker, the ancient Greeks would have appreciated the irony of this story. Kevin McCarthy spent his life preparing for the job that he held for just 269 days. For decades, he devoted all his energies and skills to building one of the most formidable political organizations of our time that ultimately took back the House last year.

In those 269 days as Speaker, despite the most slender of majorities, and with Democrats controlling the Senate and White House, he cut $2 trillion of spending over the next decade. He forestalled the hiring of an army of IRS agents. He curtailed the woke policies plaguing our Armed Forces. He averted a government shutdown in a dangerous world.

He reopened the Capitol to the American people. He launched historical investigations into government corruption. He produced the strongest border security measure in a century and landmark legislation to restore American energy independence.

On his 269th day as Speaker, he enjoyed the overwhelming support and confidence of his Republican colleagues. He was completing the process of adopting the most conservative appropriations bills in decades. He had put House Republicans in a commanding position to sweep the 2024 election. National polls recorded that he had become the most popular elected official in America.

His speakership ended on that day. It did not end because of the Republican Conference. It ended because of eight sad and pathetic mediocrities nursing petty personal grudges. As Shakespeare said: ``This house is turned upside down since Robin Ostler died.''

This is not the end of the tale. History commands, and we must obey. Soon, Kevin McCarthy will be called back to the national stage to play a vital and leading role in a command performance by history to save our beloved country.

Mr. Speaker, when the presidents of MIT, Harvard, and the University of Pennsylvania were invited to denounce open race hatred on their campuses, they wrapped themselves in the mantle of free speech.

People have a right to say what they think as long as it doesn't become threatening conduct, they said. On this narrow point, they are right, but that does not explain why anti-Semitism is rampant on their campuses.

It is not a tolerance for outrageous speech that is the problem. It is a complete intolerance of patriotic speech.

According to the Foundation for Individual Rights and Expression, the two most intolerant and oppressive universities in the country are Harvard and UPenn. MIT ranks 136 out of the 254 universities surveyed.

How is it possible that such depraved and discredited philosophies as Marxism, totalitarianism, racism, Islamic fascism, and anti-Semitism now flourish on these college campuses? It is because, for years, the antidote to these social pathologies--the American founding principles of freedom, democracy, tolerance, and justice that have always kept them in check--have been systematically suppressed and removed from campus discussions.

A generation ago, only the lunatic fringe of our society would deny or minimize the Holocaust, cheer the slaughter of innocents in their cribs, or praise the fascist governments that produce such horrors. The spectacle of university presidents maintaining that genocide was a contextual matter would have been absurd. Why? Because people of good will had the freedom to present the other side, and the other side was always compelling.

The only way to separate truth from lies or wisdom from folly or good from evil is to place the two side by side and then trust the common sense and good judgment of the American people to know the difference.

This free exchange of ideas is the beating heart of democracy. It is the sole purpose for which this Capitol Building was constructed.

We have based our entire form of government on the assumption that more than half of the people are right more than half of the time, but it assumes that people have the full and unfettered freedom to express themselves and to challenge the claims and opinions of each other. In such an exchange, the good, the moral, the wise, and the right will ultimately rise to the top.

There are only two ways to resolve disputes among human beings: reason and force. The American Founders built an empire of reason enshrined in the First Amendment. Freedom of speech, of the press, of religion, and of peaceful assembly are the very tools that Americans have used for two and a half centuries to resolve our differences civilly and chart a path to a better future.

In this brave new Orwellian woke world that we have entered, speech in opposition to leftist views is violence; violence in support of leftist views is speech; racial discrimination is social justice; and force rather than reason is the legitimate way to resolve our differences.

They tell us that shouting down opponents, disrupting civil discussions, rioting in the streets, and threatening or even practicing violence against opponents is freedom of expression. The ultimate expression of this rot is the moral confusion that sees the killing of babies as a legitimate way to resolve grievances.

Polls on campuses tell us that the vast majority of college students fear even expressing views that conflict with leftist orthodoxy.

We are now learning that the Federal Government itself colluded with tech companies to deny the American people crucial facts and analysis over everything from COVID to the Russian collusion hoax to Biden family influence peddling.

Major newspapers that once thrived on vigorous debate have said they won't even print opinions contrary to leftist orthodoxy on climate change.

Free societies do not fear words and thoughts, even those that are hateful,

ugly, evil, or obscene, because the same freedom that protects these darkest impulses of our nature also protects the right of men and women of good will to confront them, expose them, and reject them.

This is what these university presidents and their many confederates have taken from our campuses, and this is what the left is taking from our society. This is what we must restore if we are to resume the upward path toward peace, prosperity, happiness, and justice that our freedom ensures and that our First Amendment protects.

Mr. Speaker, short of declaring war, impeachment is the most serious act that Congress can take. It must be confined to the narrow grounds established by the Constitution and never used to settle political differences.

However, the Democrats would have us simply turn a blind eye to mounting evidence of a family influence-peddling scheme that implicates the President. This we cannot do.

We owe it to the country to get to the bottom of these allegations, and that requires the House to objectively invoke its full investigatory powers, respect the due process rights of all involved, and lay all of the facts before the American people.

Last session, the Democrats made a mockery of impeachment, and we cannot allow them to become our teachers.

Shrill voices should be kept far from this inquiry lest they undermine its legitimacy and credibility.

Congress has an obligation to approach serious accusations seriously. With this vote, we do so.

Mr. Speaker, I rise to wish a happy 100th birthday to Ruth Sellers of Mariposa, although the general consensus is she is really in her midfifties. Skeptical or not, the town is going to celebrate with her tomorrow. From our Nation's Capital, I want to join them to express our love and respect.

An Army brat, she spent her youth in prewar China and the Philippines. In the war, when she wasn't Rosie the Riveter at the Newport shipyard, she was a USO volunteer, where she met her husband, Earl.

After a successful career at IBM, she retired to Mariposa in 1986 and has since been a terrifyingly inexhaustible force of nature in so many community endeavors it would take an hour to catalog.

She will be celebrating many more birthdays in the year ahead, and Mariposa will be better for it.

Happy birthday, Ruth.

Mr. Speaker, the attack on Israel by Hamas on October 7 was an unprovoked act of barbarity and butchery that targeted innocent civilians and broke every rule of war dating back to medieval times.

The sinister nature of this attack and the genocidal character of the government behind it should shock the conscience of every man and woman of good will on this planet.

As the Nazis were systemically murdering 6 million Jews, the civilized nations of the world took up arms in defense of the defenseless, annihilated the scourge of Hitler and Hitlerism, and vowed to never allow such crimes to be permitted again.

To assure this objective, these United Nations restored the Jewish state to the Jewish homeland, whose roots in Israel trace back to the dawn of human history.

Never again. Israel exists today to maintain and uphold that sacred vow of mankind.

Never again. The generation that survived those times knew how vital that declaration is and how essential the existence of Israel is to fulfill it.

Yet, the genocidal hatred that produced the Holocaust was never completely extinguished. It has now morphed into a more virulent strain of Nazism that came on full display on October 7. Shockingly, we are seeing support for that ideology in the riots unfolding on our streets and on our campuses, and it has even seeped into the Halls of Congress.

Now, I oppose punishing anyone for their opinions, even vicious opinions, but they should be denounced at every opportunity, and the destructive policies they advocate should be decisively defeated; which brings me to the folly of the Biden administration.

Now, Hamas is the popularly elected government of Gaza. When it attacked, Israel responded the only way it morally could, by waging war with all of its might and resources.

Gaza was not provoked by Israel. Quite the contrary: In 2006, Israel granted the people of Gaza the right of self-government, and they promptly responded by electing Hamas. Last week, a poll of Palestinians found overwhelming support for that government and the atrocities that it has committed. There is no moral equivalency here. Israel has practiced tolerance toward all its Arab neighbors while Hamas is dedicated to the annihilation of Israel.

War is hell on Earth. A nation forced into it has a moral obligation to put all of its resources behind its soldiers and to achieve unconditional victory as quickly as possible, and then to resolutely destroy the government and culture that unleashed it.

The demands for a cease-fire by the Biden administration, the provision of so-called humanitarian aid to Hamas-controlled Gaza, and demands for proportionality are utterly self-destructive to all involved because their practical effect is to prolong the conflict indefinitely.

In war, you don't want a proportional response; you want the most disproportional response you can muster. The more disproportional it is, the sooner it is ended.

Humanitarian aid is what you send after the enemy has unconditionally surrendered and not a moment before. Can you imagine sending food and fuel into Nazi Germany during World War II? That is lunacy.

The fountainhead of this problem is Iran. It is funding the most extensive terrorist network in history. The sanctions against Iran were producing a growing popular resistance to that regime, yet each time it was about to boil over, Obama, and later Biden, took billions of dollars owned by the Iranian people and instead turned it over to their oppressors in Iran.

Biden's refusal to enforce sanctions has meant an estimated $30 billion of revenues to Iran. It was about to release another $6 billion when the attack on Israel embarrassed them into temporarily backing down.

When President Biden releases money to Iran or relaxes sanctions, he is funding the very terrorist operations unleashed against Israel. When he

leaves our borders wide-open, he is creating an open pathway for terrorists into our country. When he sends aid to Hamas-controlled Gaza, he gives aid and comfort to the very forces that unleashed such terror upon Israel and aspire to unleash it against America.

For our own sake, and for the sake of humanity, America must stand unconditionally with Israel, cutting off any resources to its adversaries and providing the arms, ammunition, and moral support it desperately needs.

This is the only way to restore the full force of civilization behind these two sacred words ``never again.''

Mr. Speaker, as Homeland Security Secretary, Alejandro Mayorkas has carried out the Biden administration's open border policy and deliberately produced the worst illegal mass migration in history.

Since he took office, he has released 3 million illegal immigrants directly into the country, a population the size of the entire State of Arkansas.

While the Border Patrol has been occupied changing diapers and taking names, an additional 1.7 million known got-aways have entered, as well. That is an additional illegal population the size of the State of Hawaii.

The impact on our schools, hospitals, homeless shelters, working families' wages, social programs, law enforcement, national security has been catastrophic.

The national security implications of 1.7 million illegal individuals about whom we know absolutely nothing are terrifying in light of the October 7 attack on Israel.

Now, in response, many are demanding Mayorkas' impeachment for ``failing to maintain operational control of the border'' as Congresswoman Greene's resolution puts it. He is certainly guilty of that, and a whole lot more: maladministration, malfeasance, and neglect of duties on a truly cosmic scale, but these are not impeachable offenses.

We know this because the American Founders specifically rejected these terms at the Constitutional Convention.

As Madison explained, they feared that such imprecise grounds could be twisted into a weapon for political grievances and turned against the executive branch whenever Congress saw fit. This would make the President a mere minister of Congress and make his subordinates answerable to the legislative branch instead of the executive powers that are vested solely in the President. This would utterly destroy the separation of powers at the heart of our Constitution.

They chose, instead, very specific and limited charges of treason, bribery, or other high crimes and misdemeanors.

True, many politicians through the centuries have tried to pervert the term ``high crimes and misdemeanors'' into a similarly vague definition, but the Founders would not have substituted one vague term for another, and thus we are left with the plain meaning of the phrase, clearly defined crimes related to the duties of the office.

If Ms. Greene is successful in redefining impeachment, then the next time Democrats have the majority, we can expect this new definition be turned against the conservatives on the Supreme Court and any future Republican administration. Furthermore, there will be nobody to stop them because Republicans will have now signed off on this new and unconstitutional abuse of power.

We must never allow the left to become our teachers. Theirs is a world of strictly situational ethics antithetical to our Constitution and to the rule of law. I vigorously opposed the sham impeachments of Donald Trump for exactly the same reason.

Now, what is the practical effect of impeaching Mayorkas, other than assuring that Republicans will have no defense when a future Democrat majority turns this new definition against them?

Even in the delusional fantasy where two-thirds of the Senate were to remove him, the same policies will remain in place as long as the Biden-Harris administration holds office.

This crisis was set in motion by voters who elected them and can only be fixed by voters replacing them with a President determined to secure our border as Donald Trump did.

Elections have consequences, sometimes terrible consequences, and this is one of them. The only Cabinet Secretary ever impeached was Ulysses Grant's Secretary of War for running a family bribery scheme. The House Oversight Committee is painstakingly assembling evidence that suggests the Bidens may have been doing exactly this for decades.

Such a serious inquiry can only have legitimacy and credibility if the rule of law is respected and the constitutional guardrails are observed.

By failing to abide by due process and constitutional constraints, Ms. Greene is tainting this serious impeachment inquiry with a shoot- from-the-hip stunt that is reckless, partisan, and manifestly unserious.

In Robert Bolt's ``A Man For All Seasons,'' William Roper vows ``to cut down every law in England'' to get at the Devil.

Sir Thomas More replies, ``Oh? And when the last law was down, and the Devil turned 'round on you, where would you hide, Roper, the laws all being flat? This country is planted thick with laws, from coast to coast, Man's laws, not God's. And if you cut them down, and you're just the man to do it, do you really think you could stand upright in the winds that would blow then? Yes, I'd give the Devil the benefit of the law, for my own safety's sake.''

Mr. Chairman, I would first remind the Democrats that illegal immigration is not a human right. It is a Federal crime.

Now, the national parks were set aside for the use and enjoyment of the American people, but President Biden is now expropriating these lands for the benefit of the 3 million illegal immigrants whom he has deliberately released into our country. This bill would halt that abomination, and I wholeheartedly support it.

Nevertheless, the misuse of our public lands is, frankly, the least of our problems. The impact this is having on social services, our schools, our hospitals, our homeless shelters, the safety of our neighborhoods, the security of our country, and the rule of law itself has been catastrophic.

Elections have consequences. The American people need to decide whether they want this to continue or whether they will replace this President with

one who is determined to recover not only our Nation's lands but our Nation's sovereignty.

Mr. Speaker, if there was ever a time for sobriety, wisdom, and caution in this House, it is right now.

If this motion carries, the House will be paralyzed. We can expect week after week of fruitless ballots while no other business can be conducted. The Democrats will revel in Republican dysfunction, and the public will rightly be repulsed. It will end when the Democrats are able to enlist a rump caucus of Republicans to join a coalition to end the impasse.

This House will shift dramatically to the left and will effectively end the Republican House majority that the voters elected in 2022. This, in turn, will neutralize the only counterweight in our elected government to the woke left's control of the Senate and the White House at a time when their policies are destroying our economy and have opened our borders to invasion.

There are turning points in history whose significance is only realized by the events that they unleash. This is one of those times. We are at the precipice. There are only minutes left to come to our senses and realize the grave danger our country is in at this moment. Dear God, grant us the wisdom to see it and to save our country from it.

Mr. Speaker, Benjamin Franklin described the limitations of any deliberative body in his closing speech to the Constitutional Convention. He said: ``When you assemble a number of men to have the advantage of their joint wisdom, you inevitably assemble with those men all their prejudices, their passions, their errors of opinion, their local interests, and their selfish views. From such an assembly can a perfect production be expected?''

We have certainly approached these limits in our deliberations in recent days, and I pause for a moment to assess where we are and where we are going. The Roman Empire fell for many reasons, but the two most prominent were that it destroyed its economy by overspending and failed to secure its borders.

Clearly, these two self-inflicted calamities are converging right now upon our country, and we are fast running out of time to avert them. For this reason, House Republicans have sought, with the most slender of majorities, to reverse these policies, albeit imperfectly.

A few weeks ago, we passed H.R. 2, the strongest border security bill in a

century. Over the past months, our majority on the Appropriations Committee has drafted the 12 appropriations bills, which bend discretionary spending down and enact important reforms.

I admit that we are inexcusably late in that process. The approach of the fiscal year, though, provided us impetus to complete this work. Last week, we began taking up and adopting appropriations bills that now comprise 70 percent of Federal discretionary spending on the eve of an impending shutdown.

We have learned from experience that a government shutdown can be administered in a manner that does enormous damage to the economy and to the lives of millions of Americans.

The President, if he wishes, can destroy every small business on Federal land and those adjacent to Federal land. Obama went so far as to barricade every monument and memorial, chain the gates of every acre of Federal land, and even barricade the turnouts overlooking Yosemite Valley so that people couldn't even pull over to catch a glimpse of it.

Mr. Biden had made it very clear that he had intended to follow that strategy, specifically designed to create a panic and to force an immediate resolution in favor of the status quo.

Accordingly, our Conference put forward a 30-day continuing resolution to avert a shutdown, while reducing nondefense discretionary spending by 8 percent and enacting the border security bill that we had previously passed.

Unfortunately, 21 Republicans joined House Democrats to defeat this resolution. Now, out of time and faced with an imminent shutdown, our Conference directed the Speaker to put a 45-day continuing resolution on the floor without the previous reforms as the only way to avert a shutdown and to continue our work to complete the appropriations process. We canceled the October recess to complete this work.

Yet now we are faced with the threat that a Republican will move to vacate the Republican Speaker of the House. It will only require four other Republican Members to join the Democrats to achieve this result. The immediate effect will be to paralyze the House indefinitely because no other business can be taken up until a replacement is elected, just when we are on the verge of completing the appropriations process that, in turn, will finally initiate discussions with the Senate that are vital to change the dangerous path that our country is on. I cannot conceive of a more counterproductive and self-destructive course than that.

The supreme irony is that this is being initiated by self-described conservatives. Do they honestly believe that when the Democrats side with them to remove a Republican Speaker that they will then side with them to name a more conservative replacement? Of course, not.

The Democrats will certainly recruit the most liberal Republicans to establish a left-of-center coalition to run the House. This is exactly what happened in California in 1994. A coalition Speaker will move the administration of the House sharply to the left and effectively end the Republican House majority that the people elected in 2022.

I implore my Republican colleagues to look past their prejudices, their passions, their errors of opinion, their local interests, and their selfish views, and to make a wise decision when it is needed most at this critical moment in the life of our country.

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

Mr. Chairman, I have offered this amendment many times over the last 15 years because until we can cut this poster child for government waste, I despair of us ever being able to bring Federal spending under control.

They call it Essential Air Service, but it is the least essential program in the entire U.S. Government. This is a direct subsidy paid to airline companies to fly empty and near-empty planes from small airports to regional hubs.

This was supposed to be a temporary program to allow local communities and airports to adjust to airline deregulation in 1978, 45 years ago. Instead, it has grown to include 111 airports in a program that has doubled in cost in the last decade.

I emphasize that this program has nothing to do with emergency medical evacuations. It solely subsidizes regular, scheduled, commercial service that is so seldom used that it cannot support itself. Why can't it? Because in many cases, the small airports in the program are less than an hour's drive from regional airports.

Essential Air Service flights are flown out of Merced Airport near my district in the Sierra Nevada of California, yet Merced is less than an hour's drive from Fresno Airport, offering scheduled flights throughout the West.

Subsidized service is available from Lancaster, Pennsylvania, just 31 miles from Harrisburg International Airport. Subsidized flights from Pueblo, Colorado, are just a 45-minute drive from Colorado Springs Airport, and on and on.

There is supposed to be a $200 cap on the subsidy and a minimum of 10 passengers per day, yet 55 airports are able to waive these requirements, and they have all been granted. Per-passenger subsidies on some flights are now nearly $1,000 per passenger. By comparison, you can charter a small plane for around $150 to $200 an hour. Currently, 42 of the 111 flights subsidized are for flights of 9 people or less. These flights of 9 or less are still costing the taxpayers over $120 million in fiscal year 2023.

Over the next few years, this program will cost taxpayers over a billion dollars in direct appropriations, which this amendment would cease. The program is receiving $390 million in subsidies this year.

If a route cannot generate enough passengers to support its costs, the passengers themselves are telling us it is not worth the money to them. Maybe we should listen to them.

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

Mr. Chair, I yield 1 minute to the gentleman from Pennsylvania (Mr. Perry).

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

Mr. Chairman, Mr. Graves promised us reforms. Well, we have been hearing those promises for the last 15 years that I have been bringing these amendments up, and they never happen.

My Republican colleagues love to campaign for economies in government. Yet, when the easiest possible economy in government is presented to them, they can't bear it.

I would pose this question: Why should the taxpayers of every community in America pay for the tickets for their subsidized air service when those airports are often less than an hour's drive from a regional airport?

If their customers aren't willing to pay for those tickets, why should the people of our districts be required to pay for them through their taxes?

It is time that Republicans kept their promises and started making the fundamental reforms that are necessary to bring spending under control before we bankrupt this government.

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

Mr. Speaker, I opposed the original version of this resolution, not to defend Mr. Schiff's lies, but to defend the process that exposed those lies. We must never punish speech in this House, only acts. The only way to separate truth from falsehoods or wisdom from folly is free and open debate. We must never impose excessive fines that would effectively replace the constitutional two-thirds vote for expulsion with a simple majority.

This new version removes the fine and focuses instead on specific acts, most particularly the abuse of his position as Intelligence Committee chairman by implying he had access to classified information that did not exist and his placement into the Congressional Record of the Steele dossier that he knew or should have known was false.

I hope, however, that we will hereafter return to the principles of due process that the Democrats stripped from our precedents in the last session.