Floor Statements

Madam Speaker, the central architecture of the Constitution is the separation of powers. It is really just mother's rules, writ large.

One slice of pie; two hungry brothers. How does mother slice the pie so both brothers are happy? Pretty simple. One slices; the other chooses. The powers given to one brother cannot be abused because of the powers given to the other.

That is the brilliance of our Constitution. One brother makes law but cannot enforce it; the other brother enforces law but cannot make it.

Article I is the first and longest article in the Constitution. It begins with the words: ``All legislative powers herein granted are vested in a Congress of the United States.''

When a law was to be made, the Founders wanted a great big rowdy food fight. They wanted every voice expressed through their Representatives. They wanted the decision held up to every light. They created two Houses with decidedly different perspectives so that the Congress would even argue with itself. They wanted it hard to make laws so the Nation wouldn't be smothered by them, and they wanted those who make those laws directly answerable to the people.

But once made, they didn't want laws to be carried out by hundreds of squabbling prima donnas. That's why we have Article II: ``The executive powers shall be vested in a President of the United States.'' One official, independent of the Congress but also accountable to the people, was to carry out those laws; not make them, but to take care that they are ``faithfully executed.''

Then in Article III, mother, the Supreme Court, independent of both brothers, is there to resolve disputes.

How different it is today. Today, executive agencies which are not elected and often act independently of the elected President, make ten times the laws that Congress makes. They then enforce the laws that they have made, and if they accuse you of violating them, you have to prove your innocence in an administrative court run by the same agency that made the law, accused you of breaking it, and which keeps the fines that it takes from you.

Madam Speaker, while the courts give intentional scrutiny to the laws made by Congress, under the doctrine of Chevron deference, they have to give wide latitude to the acts of agencies that lack any checks and balances.

Madison warned that when all of the powers of government are in the same hands, you have tyranny. Just ask anyone who has been hauled before this Kafkaesque process.

This bill starts to return the law to its constitutional moorings by repealing this despotic doctrine and placing the acts of unelected administrative state under the same constitutional scrutiny as those of the elected Congress.

Mr. Chairman, this bill presents a question that is fundamental to the central architecture of our Republic: Who is to make law?

This has been pointed out, and the Constitution is very clear on this: ``All legislative powers herein granted shall be vested in a Congress of the United States.''

What about that passage do my friends on the other side of the aisle not understand?

The Founders wanted it to be hard to make laws so that society isn't smothered by them. They wanted every voice in the land to be heard through their elected representatives and be accountable and answerable to the people.

The modern regulatory state takes these powers from the people and gives them to unelected bureaucrats. An unelected agency writes the law, and then it enforces the law that it has written. If it accuses you of violating its law, you have to answer to the agency in a court run by that agency without a jury, and the agency keeps the fines that it assesses on you. Is there any more profound threat to a democracy than that?

Ten times more laws are written by the regulatory agencies today than by the people's representatives. Americans now have 10 times the chance of being hauled into an administrative law court for breaking an agency regulation than they have of being charged with a statutory crime where they have the full protection of the Bill of Rights.

The REINS Act starts to put this genie back in the bottle by requiring that regulatory acts that impose more than $100 million of costs to the American public must be enacted by the elected Congress. That means if you don't like that law, you can hold your elected representative directly accountable. That is what a democracy is, a government that answers to the people.

Opponents of this bill tell us that we must defer to the experts. That is not a democracy. That is an oligarchy. We have just endured the folly of experts--lockdowns and mandates the experts told us would slow the spread of COVID. We now have study after study documenting that their measures not only failed to protect us but did incalculable damage to the economy and to the education of our children, and needlessly cost lives through delayed health screenings and treatments, drug and alcohol-related deaths, and increased suicide rates. No representative voted for these measures. The regulatory state simply imposed them.

Experts are there to advise us from every perspective. It is then the responsibility of elected representatives on behalf of the people to sort through their perspectives and advise and chart a course that takes into account all the issues at hand and be accountable and answerable to the people for those decisions.

Mr. Chair, this bill starts us back toward that democracy.

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

Mr. Speaker, on Inauguration Day, our border was secure. The Trump policies had slowed illegal immigration to a trickle. That afternoon, Joe Biden reversed these policies, and in the last 27 months the Democrats have deliberately admitted into our country more than 2.1 million illegal aliens.

Now that is larger than the entire population of the State of Nebraska, and while the Border Patrol was overwhelmed, more than 1\1/2\ million known got-aways entered as well. That is an additional population larger than that of Hawaii. All of this occurred in 27 months.

As we can see at this very moment, this was only a prelude to the mass invasion now unfolding before our eyes. The Border Patrol Union warned us yesterday: ``Field reports from agents across the southern border verify the enormity of this tidal wave of illegal aliens coming now. Huge groups are overwhelming stations, and it is completely out of control. Massive releases beginning and it's going to get much worse.''

Now for Americans, this means classrooms packed with non-English speaking students, hospitals flooded with illegals demanding uncompensated care, violent criminal cartels and gangs introduced into our communities, fentanyl killing an average of 300 Americans every day, suppressed wages for working Americans, and the collapse of the social safety net that was supposed to take care of Americans in need.

For the millions of illegal migrants, it means exposure to hazardous conditions that have claimed 2,000 lives that we know of. Many arrive sick, traumatized, starved, brutalized, raped, and deeply in debt to the cartels.

These are not asylum seekers. Asylum is a specific refuge for those singled out by their government for persecution because of race, religion, or political beliefs. Asylum is achieved by crossing the first international border that separates you from that government. Asylum is not an open invitation to bum-rush our borders, but the Democrats have made it precisely that.

If you make a fraudulent asylum claim, you are now guaranteed to receive immediate admission into our country, you get cash, a range of free goods and services, indefinite residency, and indefinite work authorizations. Then, when your claim is ultimately rejected by a clogged court system years in the future, you will not be deported, and you only need to wait for the next amnesty.

This makes a mockery of legitimate asylum, the sovereignty of our Nation, and the rule of law. Our bill removes the incentives to break our laws by reinforcing the existing requirement that forbids releasing asylum claimants into the country until their claim is resolved.

This bill also returns unaccompanied minors safely home as we already do with children from Mexico or Canada, but this administration sends all other children to poorly vetted so-called sponsors in this country with little concern or follow-up over the conditions into which we have abandoned them. Many become indentured servants, slaves to the cartels and their gangs, forced into sex trafficking, labor trafficking, and drug trafficking under horrific conditions.

The only way to stop this trafficking is to return these children safely home. The cartels are paid thousands of dollars to bring them to the United States, and that will stop the moment we return these children to their homes. Every Border Patrol agent I have talked to tells me that this is the only way to stop this heartbreaking tragedy.

For those crossing as families, this measure keeps them together. It allows them to make their asylum claim and then to wait in Mexico or in a family residential center until their claim is heard.

This measure removes the incentives for cartels to traffic children to pose as families in order to be automatically released into our country as the Democrats are doing.

Mr. Speaker, I thank Mr. Biggs, Mr. Roy, Mr. Calvert, Mr. Carter of Texas, Mr. Johnson of Louisiana, Mr. Tiffany, and Mr. Moran for their work that comprises the judiciary section of this bill and my thanks to the many Members who helped craft it into its current form.

Yes, we are a nation of immigrants. We are also a nation of laws. Millions of immigrants come to our country legally every year. They obey our laws. They wait patiently. They do everything our country asks of them. Meanwhile, millions of illegal immigrants are cutting in line in front of them aided, abetted, encouraged, and rewarded by Democrat officials.

It has been said that this bill has no chance in the Senate and if it did pass that it would be vetoed by the President. Well, that is a question that the American people must ultimately decide before it is too late.

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

Mr. Speaker, I am pleased to yield 2 minutes to the gentlewoman from Florida (Ms. Lee).

Mr. Speaker, I am pleased to yield 2 minutes to the gentleman from Alabama (Mr. Moore).

Mr. Speaker, I am pleased to yield 3 minutes to the gentleman from Florida (Mr. Diaz-Balart), the sponsor of H.R. 2.

Mr. Speaker, I yield 1 minute to the gentleman from Guam (Mr. Moylan).

Mr. Speaker, I yield 3 minutes to the gentleman from Texas (Mr. Moran), the author of one of the measures in the bill.

Mr. Speaker, I yield 1 minute to the gentleman from Arizona (Mr. Ciscomani).

Mr. Speaker, I yield 3 minutes to the gentleman from Ohio (Mr. Jordan), the chairman of the House Judiciary Committee.

Mr. Speaker, I yield 2 minutes to the gentleman from Texas (Mr. Nehls).

Mr. Speaker, I yield 2 minutes to the gentleman from California (Mr. Kiley).

Mr. Speaker, I yield 2 minutes to the gentlewoman from Wyoming (Ms. Hageman).

Mr. Speaker, may I inquire how much time I have remaining?

Mr. Speaker, I yield 3 minutes to the gentleman from Wisconsin (Mr. Tiffany), the author of one of the measures in this package.

Mr. Speaker, I yield 3 minutes to the gentleman from Louisiana (Mr. Johnson), the author of one of the other measures in this package.

Mr. Speaker, I yield 2 minutes to the gentleman from Texas (Mr. Gooden).

Mr. Speaker, I yield 3 minutes to the gentleman from Texas (Mr. Roy), one of the moving forces behind this bill.

Mr. Speaker, I yield 1\1/2\ minutes to the gentlewoman from Arizona (Mrs. Lesko).

Mr. Speaker, I yield 3 minutes to the gentleman from Texas (Mr. Carter), the author of one of the other measures in this package.

Mr. Speaker, I yield 3 minutes to the gentleman from Arizona (Mr. Biggs), one of the leaders in our Conference in confronting this crisis.

Mr. Speaker, I yield 2 minutes to the gentleman from California (Mr. Issa), my colleague.

Mr. Speaker, I yield 2 minutes to the gentleman from New Jersey (Mr. Van Drew).

Mr. Speaker, may I inquire as to the time remaining.

Mr. Speaker, I yield 2 minutes to the gentleman from Wisconsin (Mr. Fitzgerald).

Mr. Speaker, I yield 2 minutes to the gentleman from South Carolina (Mr. Fry).

Mr. Speaker, I yield 2 minutes to the gentleman from Oregon (Mr. Bentz).

Mr. Speaker, I am prepared to close, and I reserve the balance of my time.

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

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

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

Mr. Speaker, I am ready to close, and I reserve the balance of my time.

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

Mr. Speaker, we know how to secure our borders and protect our country. We had done so under the Trump administration. The remain in Mexico policy slowed illegal immigration and phony asylum claims to a trickle. The border wall was nearing completion. ICE was actually enforcing court-ordered deportations.

All of that changed when the Democrats seized control of our government and reversed all of these policies, and the result we can now see all around us. It is affecting our schools, hospitals, law enforcement, working families' wages, and social services that are now strained to the breaking point and soon beyond the breaking point.

This bill simply restores those policies that worked and makes it more

difficult for a future President to refuse to faithfully execute the laws.

I ask the American people to watch the catastrophe that is unfolding right now on our collapsing southern border. What we are seeing is something historic. It is a mass, illegal migration on a scale the world has never seen and that no civilization has ever survived.

At this hour, history is screaming this warning at us that countries that cannot or will not protect their borders simply aren't around very long.

Without enforcing our immigration laws, we have no immigration laws. Without immigration laws, we have no borders. Without borders, we have no country.

Let that not be the epitaph of the American Republic, what Lincoln called ``the last best hope'' of mankind on this Earth.

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

Mr. Speaker, for the first time in my 15 years in Congress, I will vote for a debt limit increase because for the first time we have a bill that is serious about controlling the reckless spending that is destroying America's productivity and its prosperity-- $4.8 trillion in savings.

How could anyone who cares about the debt not vote for this measure?

The debt limit is there for a reason. If your family is living beyond its means and needs to raise its credit limit, it better sit down around the kitchen table and have a serious discussion over the circumstances that have gotten it into this mess and what steps it needs to take to get out. The debt limit is there to assure that we have exactly that discussion as a Nation.

Now, the President and the Democrats across the aisle say they are not willing to engage in that discussion. Well, to coin a phrase, ``Come on, man.''

When Bill Clinton lost the House in 1994, he reached across the aisle to work with House Republicans. Together, a Democratic President and a Republican House accomplished wonderful things. They reformed the welfare system, as this bill does; they cut spending as a percentage of GDP; they produced the biggest capital gains tax cut in history; but most importantly, they balanced four budgets in a row and produced one of the greatest economic expansions in our Nation's history.

By the way, Clinton was reelected.

Americans are soon going to ask themselves, are we better off than we were 4 years ago?

Mr. Biden is going to need a better answer than doubling down on policies that two-thirds of Americans are desperately trying to tell him have put our country on the wrong track, and that answer is right here before us today.

Mr. Speaker, I beg the Democrats to join us to set our Nation's finances in order.

Madam Chair, everything around us that makes our lives possible is either mined, or it is grown. Everything.

Above the Speaker's chair is a plea from Daniel Webster to those who serve in this House. ``Let us develope the resources of our land, call forth its powers . . . and see whether we also, in our day and generation may not perform something worthy to be remembered.''

Yet, for 50 years, the environmental left has slowly strangled our Nation's ability to do just that. In the process, it is impoverishing the American people.

One of its most powerful weapons is the National Environmental Policy Act imposed in 1969 with the promise that it would protect the environment.

It has done exactly the opposite. It has made it endlessly time consuming and ultimately cost prohibitive to manage our forests, to provide abundant water for our people, and to prosper from our vast energy and mineral resources.

My district comprises the forests of the Sierra Nevada and the agricultural heartland of California's Central Valley.

The left promised us that NEPA would protect our forests and water resources. Come to my district, and you will see what a cruel and demonstrable lie that has become.

Excess timber is removed from our forests in only two ways. If we don't carry it out, nature will burn it out.

Throughout the 20th century, the U.S. Forest Service marked off surplus timber and auctioned it to logging companies that paid us to remove it.

The result was healthy, resilient, and fire-resistant Federal forests, a steady revenue source for forest improvements, and thriving mountain economies.

Then came the National Environmental Policy Act. Simple forest thinning projects now require an average of 4\1/2\ years of environmental studies, costing millions of dollars, more than the value of the timber.

Instead of making money for the government, removing excess timber now costs us money. As a result, our forests have become morbidly overgrown, carrying four times the timber that the land can support.

In that stressed condition, the trees succumb to disease, pestilence, drought, and ultimately catastrophic wildfires we haven't seen in over a century.

California is one of the most water-rich regions of the country. Yet, the farms of the Central Valley have had their water systematically choked off because NEPA and other environmental laws make major new reservoirs all but impossible to build. Record rainfall this year is being lost to the ocean simply because we have no place to store it.

When the little town of Foresthill tried to add a $2 million spillway gate for additional water storage, they discovered that because of NEPA, they also had to budget an additional $1 million for environmental reviews and $2 million for environmental mitigation.

After more than a decade, the project has yet to be built. The last reservoir over a million acre-feet constructed in California was completed in 1979. Meanwhile, the State's population has nearly doubled.

Madam Chair, when something is plentiful, it is cheap. When it is scarce, it is expensive. NEPA is making everything we depend upon in our lives increasingly scarce, and therefore, increasingly expensive.

The left obsesses over a 1-degree rise in temperature over the next century, but they couldn't care less that they are making it impossible for people to heat their homes in subfreezing winters.

They promise us they care about the environment, but they couldn't care less that entire human communities' and species' habitats and millions of acres of forest are being laid to waste by preventable mega fires.

They obsess over the snail darter but couldn't care less that they have destroyed thousands of agricultural jobs, idled a half million acres of California farmland, and sent grocery prices skyrocketing.

They promised us that NEPA would protect our forests. Instead, it is destroying them.

H.R. 1 begins to dial back the damage that NEPA has done, both to the environment and to the quality of life of all Americans, simply by reducing the time and cost required for these massive bureaucratic studies.

The question before us is whether our children will grow up in a world of scarcity, poverty, and misery or one of abundance, prosperity, and optimism.

That is the simple question before us. We choose prosperity; a future of abundant and affordable energy, water, food, lumber, minerals, and all the material comforts and benefits that flow from the resources our country has been blessed with.

That is something worthy to be remembered, and that future can begin with this vote today.

Madam Speaker, I thank the Ways and Means Committee

for taking up my bill, H.R. 187, the Default Prevention Act, today.

Similar bills I introduced passed this House in 2013 and 2015, and I am gratified the committee would take it up in this session. The bill simply provides that even if there is a fiscal impasse in our deliberations over the debt limit, the debt of the United States will always be paid in full and on time.

Frankly, that is already the law. Our revenues vastly exceed our debt service costs. As every family knows, if you are living off your credit cards, you better make the minimum payment first. The law and the Constitution require it.

The organic act that established the Treasury Department in 1789 is clear on this point: `` . . . it shall be the duty of the Secretary of the Treasury to digest and prepare plans for the improvement and management of the revenue, and for the support of public credit. . . .''

I repeat: The management of the revenue and the support of public credit.

The Constitution is also crystal clear. The 14th Amendment commands that the public debt is not to be questioned. The GAO spelled it out so there would be no doubt when they answered the Senate Finance Committee in 1985, ``The Treasury is free to liquidate obligations in any order it finds will best serve the interests of the United States.''

Yet, over the years, various Presidents have threatened to default on the debt as a way to roil markets and pressure lawmakers to bend to their will. This President, sadly, is no different.

Even while the Obama Treasury Department was denying it had the ability to prioritize payments to pay the debt first, we later discovered it was making preparations to do exactly that. We also discovered documents that revealed that Federal Reserve officials were appalled that the administration would ever suggest defaulting because such statements ran a severe risk of panicking credit markets. We are hearing those same statements today from some Democrats in this Congress and in this administration.

The Default Prevention Act simply takes this threat off the table. Amendments being offered by the committee also require priority be given to Social Security, Medicare, and defense to assure no President can threaten to hold seniors or servicemembers or veterans hostage, as well.

Nor is this unusual. Most State constitutions provide that first call on any revenues is to maintain and protect their sovereign credit. Indeed, several years ago, in testimony to the Senate, Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke praised these State provisions for maintaining confidence in State-issued bonds.

This is not to endorse a prolonged impasse over the debt limit. Postponing prompt payment of other bills is not a good thing, but the full faith and credit of our country is fundamental to paying all of those other bills, and that is why we should prevent any President from threatening to default on that credit.

The most preposterous claim we hear is that this prioritizes paying China before other obligations. The fact is, most debt is held by Americans, including most likely your pension fund. China holds about 3.2 percent of our bonds.

The debt limit is there for a reason. If your family is living beyond its means and needs to seek an increase in its credit limit, it had better sit down around the kitchen table and have a very serious discussion over the circumstances that have gotten it into this predicament and what steps it needs to take to get out. That is why we have a debt limit, to have exactly that discussion as a nation.

That is why it is so disturbing when the President says he is not even willing to discuss the subject. Well, considering the fact that he has added $3.7 trillion to the national debt in just 25 months in office, that is irresponsible.

Not discuss it? Why in the world does he think we have this building with the dome on top at the very center of our Capital City?

It was built exclusively to have these discussions, to talk out our differences, and to reach a wise and satisfactory conclusion for our public policy questions.

Not discuss the biggest fiscal threat our Nation has ever faced?

He can't be serious.

However, serious or not, no President should have the ability to threaten to default on our debt, to destroy the full faith and credit of the government, or to take hostage our seniors, our veterans, and our other servicemembers. This bill prevents him from ever threatening to do so again, and it needs to be enacted.

Mr. Speaker, it is often said that socialism is sharing and capitalism is selfishness. It is precisely the opposite.

The only way to prosper in a capitalist society is to identify what somebody else needs and to provide it for them better than they can provide it for themselves, whether it is sweeping a floor or designing a microchip.

Socialism is taking what one person has earned by helping others and giving it to someone who hasn't.

Socialism always produces poverty and misery because when you take a dollar from Peter and give it to Paul, both have been robbed of that dollar's incentive to help each other. Peter has been denied the reward of his dollar's worth of work, and Paul no longer needs to help someone earn that dollar.

Socialism and slavery both spring from exactly the same rotten principle, as Lincoln put it, that you work and toil and make bread, and I will eat it. Both have been championed by the same party through the ages.

Mr. Speaker, if you want to understand successful law enforcement, the first place to look is the career of El Dorado County Sheriff John D'Agostini.

It is not hard. It was under his leadership--in fact, it was because of his leadership--that the day-to-day operations of his department became the subject of the popular TV series ``Sheriffs: El Dorado County'' that ran from 2014 to 2019.

It is the very definition of successful policing, pioneered by Sir Robert Peel and perfected and practiced by Sheriff D'Agostini. Ideal police departments are run as extensions of the communities they serve. They work in partnership with local citizens, and this was the heart of Sheriff D'Agostini's success.

I have seen it over and over in action. During the devastating King fire, I watched him at his post even when his own ranch was imminently threatened. During the Caldor fire, he opened that same ranch to the stream of evacuees who had fled the devastation with only the clothes on their backs. I can't tell you the number of times I watched him during these terrifying disasters--always calm, always focused, always reassuring, and omnipresent.

He is loved by his community and his department because he loves them, and that caring is what binds the community to the sheriff's department and exemplified and, indeed, defined his successful record of modern policing.

He was first elected in 2010 by a razor-thin margin of 1,300 votes, but as he proved himself, he became a beloved institution in the community and won reelection overwhelmingly in 2014 and 2018 and would have won by acclimation in 2022, but for the fact that he chose to retire back into the community he has so faithfully served and protected.

They were not all easy years. He lost a deputy to an illegal alien in a marijuana grow in 2019 and became a national figure warning of the dangers that our porous border and sanctuary policies present to communities across America and to those who risk their lives to protect us.

When State bureaucrats ordered businesses to shut down during the COVID hysteria, Sheriff D'Agostini stood up for the constitutional rights of his constituents and refused to destroy their livelihoods. His courageous stand has since been affirmed by the mounting evidence that the lockdowns cost lives, destroyed livelihoods, and did nothing to slow the spread of the disease.

Sheriff D'Agostini worked his way up through the ranks, first graduating from the Sacramento County Sheriff's Academy in 1993. Throughout his career, Sheriff D'Agostini served in numerous positions, including patrol deputy, detective, SWAT team member, narcotics investigator, rangemaster and firearms instructor, and investigator for the Amador County District Attorney's Office.

Sheriff D'Agostini is well known for his many accomplishments and contributions to the community, including his leadership in constructing a new public safety headquarters located in Placerville. This building now provides local law enforcement with emergency operations services, a 911 dispatch center, a morgue, an evidence building, and a special operations and training building, as well as an indoor shooting range and armory.

Mr. Speaker, without law enforcement, there is no law, and without law, there is no civilization, which is why it is impossible to overstate the necessity of our local police departments and the law and order they uphold within our communities.

I am proud today to congratulate John on his numerous accomplishments and his exemplary leadership, and, on behalf of the grateful citizens across El Dorado County, thank him for his extraordinary service.

El Dorado County has been extremely fortunate to have had his leadership for these past 12 years. Although he isn't going anywhere-- he is retiring right back into the community that raised him--and although his successor is well prepared under his tutelage to carry on his successful policies, that won't stop us from missing him anyway in the role that he defined and the responsibilities that he discharged so well.

Mr. Speaker, in order to enforce our laws, we give terrifying powers to such agencies as the FBI, the IRS, and the CIA, among others. The misuse of these powers to effect political outcomes would be fatal to freedom, and it is the hallmark of any dictatorship. This, our Constitution, was written to prevent whoever is in power.

Now, in recent years we have watched the IRS target individuals because of their political beliefs. We have seen a glaring double standard in the enforcement of our laws by our Justice Department based on the political beliefs of their targets. We have seen their powers used to intimidate citizens into silence, whether the Tea Party or parents questioning their school boards.

Most alarmingly, we have seen the use of the FBI and our intelligence agencies to suppress political viewpoints disagreeable to those in power or to manufacture or propagate one of the greatest scandals in American history: the Russian collusion hoax.

Now, when a government can interfere with the elections that govern it and when agencies can act independently of the outcome of these elections, then democracy will die.

This select committee is designed to get to the bottom of these alarming allegations, and I would hope the Democrats would be just as eager to sort this out as the Republicans. After all, it was not that long ago that these powers were turned against the left and could be again if we do nothing.

As Madison warned: Democracy alone is not enough to protect our liberty, for in a pure democracy, 51 percent of the people can vote any time to throw the other 49 percent in jail. That is why we have a Constitution which limits the powers of government through checks and balances like this Congress and like our Bill of Rights, and it is why each of us takes an oath to support and defend it.

Let us all honor that oath today.

Madam Speaker, we have heard a lot about self- determination today, but let's put that to the smell test.

The options that the Democrats are presenting to the Puerto Rican people don't include the most obvious choice, to remain as a commonwealth. So if you prefer the status quo, you are completely out of luck. The Democrats have already decided you are not allowed to vote for that. That is not self-determination. That is rigging an election.

Now, if none of the three options the Democrats have chosen for you gets 50 percent, then there is a runoff, even if the option dropped was the clear second choice of voters. And a narrow, transient majority seems to be most likely, since the November 2020 plebiscite scored just 52.5 percent in favor of statehood, 47.5 percent opposed, with just 53 percent turning out to vote. Completely ignored is the right of all the American people to discuss and decide so momentous and irreversible a question as this.

Statehood would mean that in the next reapportionment, other States will lose a total of four seats in the House of Representatives in order to accommodate the Puerto Rican delegation.

Only about 20 percent of the population is fluent in English, which means that we would be admitting a State whose vast majority is isolated from the national political debate that is central to our democracy.

Nor will statehood solve Puerto Rico's economic problems. Residents would now have to pay all Federal income taxes from which they are currently exempt. The GAO estimates that would cost Puerto Rico 70 percent of its existing manufacturing base. There is not even a CBO estimate of the cost to American taxpayers of admitting a chronically mismanaged and utterly bankrupt State government.

The economy of Puerto Rico is expected to underperform the national economy, which is itself a disaster. For American taxpayers, it would mean a new State that has the lowest per capita income in the country and the largest per capita debt. Its labor participation rate is 40 percent, compared to 62 percent nationally. Forty-three percent of the population lives below the poverty line. Its academic performance would be the worst in the Nation.

So how does it benefit America to admit a State that would be the most indebted, uneducated, poorest, and least employed State in the Nation?

We don't get to consider that question, because under this bill, Congress gets no further say in the matter once Puerto Rico has voted. That makes it a blanket abrogation of the responsibility of Congress to make these decisions in the best interest of all of the people of the United States.

Whichever of the three options is chosen would be automatically enacted without any further debate or decision by Congress. It hands the constitutional authority reserved for the welfare of the entire Nation to the hands of what would be a narrow and transient majority in Puerto Rico.

The only debate in Congress on Puerto Rican statehood is the debate that we are having right now, when the Nation is oblivious to the legislation or its implications. Our constituents will awaken across the country to the realization of a fait accompli that was quickly rushed through the very last days of session with no opportunity for national debate on the implications of making such a profound and permanent change in the fabric of our Nation. This is as cynical as it gets.

If the motion to recommit is adopted, I will introduce an amendment that will require the question to be returned to the House for a full national debate on such a momentous issue and require a two-thirds vote to assure a broad, bipartisan consensus.

Madam Speaker, I ask unanimous consent to insert the text of the amendment in the Record immediately prior to the vote on the motion to recommit.

Madam Speaker, I have a motion to recommit at the desk.

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

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

Mr. Speaker, ironically, this bill doesn't even serve the interests of immigrants from around the world except for two countries, China and India.

By removing the per-country caps on employment-based visas, the practical effect of this bill is that, for the foreseeable future, the citizens of only two countries, China and India, will be admitted to work here. Workers from every other country will have to wait many years until that backlog clears.

Supporters contend that no one currently awaiting a green card will be adversely affected. That may be true as far as it goes. But what they leave out is that this bill will produce long delays for future applicants from every country except for China and India.

Even the liberal American Immigration Lawyers Association points out that ``many applicants will now face longer wait times.''

Now, supporters are fond of comparing the populations of various countries as an argument that uniform percentage caps are unfair. But what they forget is that when a country's allotment isn't reached, its vacant slots then spill over to higher-demand countries. India, for example, accounted for 35 percent of the green cards issued last year, five times their percentage cap. But that, apparently, isn't enough for the left.

The bill also threatens our national security. China has been stealing U.S. technology for years through programs like the H-1B visa.

According to The Washington Post, one such initiative resulted in ``the arrests of six Chinese researchers accused of lying on their visa applications about their ties to the People's Liberation Army'' and ``more than 1,000 researchers who had hidden their affiliation with the Chinese military'' fleeing the U.S. within months.

The supporters assure us that anyone with direct ties to the Chinese Communist Party is not eligible, but that completely ignores the fact that the CCP exerts coercive control over all Chinese nationals, whether or not they are CCP members, so this assurance is meaningless.

As currently drafted, this bill would also result in the immediate exclusion from green cards special immigrant religious workers from around the world for the next few years. Those cards will, instead, go to special immigrant juvenile green cards for unaccompanied alien children from the Northern Triangle countries.

It is precisely this provision that has been exploited by the crime cartels in trafficking unaccompanied minors into this country, and this bill makes it worse.

But the most pernicious provision allows certain temporary visa holders to file an application for adjustment for status despite the fact that no green card is available to them. That is the reason you have the long delays that the gentlewoman mentioned.

The result is that many temporary visas will essentially become permanent because the alien visa holders will be able to live and work in the U.S. as if they had a green card.

That raises an important question: What is it that the Democrats have against American workers?

This bill is a direct attack on their job opportunities and livelihoods. So much for the advice to unemployed fossil fuel workers: Well, just learn to code.

All this becomes a theater of the absurd in light of the mass illegal migration that the Democrats have aided, abetted, and encouraged since they reversed the Trump border measures that had finally secured our borders.

It was no coincidence that as the flood of illegal migration slowed to a trickle, working-class families saw their biggest wage gains in decades, and the income gap between rich and poor began to narrow.

Now that the borders have been collapsed by the Democrats, those wage gains have been wiped out as millions of illegal aliens are deliberately allowed into the country to compete with those struggling American families. The Democrats remain silent on this continuing crisis.

The American people had trusted the Democrats to look out for their interests, and they are now discovering how tragically misplaced that trust has been. That is the crux of this bill, a big fat middle finger to America's working families, and I am afraid that won't change until the people responsible for these policies are turned out of office.

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

Mr. Speaker, I yield 4 minutes to the gentleman from Arizona (Mr. Biggs).

Mr. Speaker, I yield an additional 1 minute to the gentleman from Arizona.

Mr. Speaker, I yield 4 minutes to the gentleman from North Carolina (Mr. Bishop).

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

Mr. Speaker, I yield myself the balance of my time to close. I think it is important to note why we have those per-country caps. Ours is a Nation of immigrants. Except for those descended from Native Americans, every one of us is an immigrant or the descendant of an immigrant.

The American people are drawn from every country on this Earth; and from these disparate and diverse populations, we have created one great Nation, the American Nation. Here there is only one race, the American race.

This remarkable achievement is made possible by a single word-- assimilation. Our immigration laws were written specifically to accommodate that process. They were written to assure that as immigrants come to our country they bring with them a sincere desire to become Americans, to raise their children as Americans, to acquire a common language, a common culture, and a common appreciation of American principles. That is the only possible way to blend so many discordant, disparate, and diverse populations into a common people devoted to the same principles that have produced the happiest, most just, most prosperous, most free, most advanced, and most envied civilization in the history of mankind.

But assimilation is hard. As Winston Churchill said from that very rostrum: ``We have not journeyed all this way across the centuries, across the oceans, across the mountains, across the prairies because we are made of sugar candy.''

Becoming an American requires learning a new language, accepting and adopting new customs, adapting to a new culture, and accepting new beliefs. Assimilation breaks down if the concentration of immigrants from any single country reaches a level where assimilation is no longer necessary for that population. Instead of e pluribus unum, from many nations one great nation, from many people one great people, we instead see e unum pluribus: from one nation, many isolated, insular, and segregated communities that become foreign enclaves rather than an integral part of our national identity.

We have all heard the heartbreaking tales of American workers not only being displaced by foreign workers but being forced to train their replacements as a condition of severance pay. This bill assures a never-ending supply of foreign labor for American corporations.

Under this bill, any alien on an employment-based green card waiting list for more than 2 years could apply for adjustment of that status. Once an alien has filed an adjustment of status application, he or she is eligible for a work permit. However, unlike an employment-based green card, which generally requires a showing that the wages and conditions of Americans are not adversely affected, this work permit is considered an open-market employment authorization document, meaning the alien can take any job at any wage, and there are no protections for American workers.

So this bill essentially converts temporary visa holders to permanent status at the expense of American tech workers. This rewards the very same companies who for years have fired their American workers only to replace them with cheaper foreign labor.

American workers, particularly Black and Hispanic Americans, are going to be particularly hard hit. Pew Research estimates that each group only accounts for about 9 percent of the STEM workforce, and this measure assures that competition for those positions will become much greater and the wages much lower.

The per-country caps exist to assure that the population of no single nation can come to dominate the overall immigrant population coming to these shores. Thus, under current law immigrants from one nation cannot claim more than 7 percent of the visas, but under this bill, the employment-based limit is eliminated.

If this is allowed to happen, assimilation breaks down and the entire foundation of a nation of immigrants is shattered. As I said earlier, the practical effect of this bill is that the population of only two countries, China and India, will almost exclusively dominate the receipt of employment-based green cards for the foreseeable future at the expense of the people of virtually every other country in the world. Instead of an equitable distribution of green cards across all countries, they will in effect be limited to two.

In one employment-based green card category, EB-5, all the green cards will go to Chinese nationals for several years. In another category, EB-4, religious workers will be precluded from getting green cards. Instead, these will go to the alien juveniles from Northern Triangle countries who crossed our border illegally. This imbalance would undermine the fundamental mechanism of assimilation, and I fear that is the point.

Assimilation has become a dirty word to the left. They seek not unity, not one united people but, rather, a people divided into warring, racial, and ethnic factions, divided by language, culture, ethnicity, and ultimately grievances. No nation can survive very long tearing itself apart this way.

The collapse of our southern border and refusal of the Democrats to defend the sovereignty of our Nation from the unprecedented illegal mass migration that they have unleashed will spell the end of this Nation if it is allowed to continue much longer. This bill is a small part of that policy, and it is destructive in its effect if not its intent.

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

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

Mr. Speaker, DHS Secretary Ali Mayorkas has repeatedly asserted, including in sworn testimony to multiple committees of this House, that the southern border is secure. This, of course, is a lie, and not even a subtle one.

We know the numbers--a stunning 4.1 million encounters since inauguration day, when Joe Biden reversed the Trump administration's enforcement measures. In the same period, another 1 million known got- aways have entered the country while the border patrol has been overwhelmed changing diapers and arranging for transportation for thousands of illegal crossings each day.

So how do our Democratic colleagues react to this unprecedented illegal immigration they have unleashed?

Do they call on the Biden administration to stop the releases?

Do they call on the President to actually enforce U.S. immigration law or at least stop incentivizing this mass illegal immigration?

No. Instead, they produce this bill, that readmits immigrant veterans who were later deported, mainly for committing criminal offenses.

This needs to be clearly understood. A noncitizen who joins the military promising to defend our country, and instead commits crimes against the citizens of our country is subject to deportation, and rightly so.

This bill adds a political advisory committee, handpicked by Mr. Mayorkas that, in effect, can override our deportation laws, and it invites criminal offenders who have already been deported back into our country. It presumes they are of good moral character despite their criminal offenses simply by producing a green card. This is astonishing.

Let's be very clear, that the vast majority of legal immigrants who enlist in our military do so because of patriotism toward our country, and they are exemplary citizens and exemplary members of our Armed Forces. In recognition of their service, we offer them special avenues for naturalization under the Immigration and Nationality Act.

That is as it should be. About 3 percent of U.S. veterans today are foreign-born, and many of them have chosen to become U.S. citizens. But that is not what this bill is about. This bill is about the bad apples who have been ordered deported for breaking our laws.

Since its creation in 2002, U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services has naturalized over 148,000 members of the U.S. military.

If an alien servicemember or veteran is removed from this country, it is only after that alien has had their due process in immigration court and an immigration judge has issued a final order of removal.

Alien servicemembers and veterans are also afforded a special process upon encounter by Immigration and Customs Enforcement officials, under which, through a totality of the circumstances approach, ICE agents determine whether arrest and placement in removal proceedings are the appropriate actions to take.

However, in this bill, the Democrats have decided that an advisory committee of people chosen by Secretary Mayorkas is better equipped to determine whether an alien's actions warrant removal than a trained ICE official.

Yesterday in the Committee on Rules, the chair of the subcommittee even indicated that these random people chosen by the Secretary would be better than a trained immigration judge at determining whether an alien should be able to stay in the U.S.

During the Committee on the Judiciary markup, my Republican colleagues offered an array of amendments aimed at ensuring alien servicemembers, veterans, and their family members who committed serious crimes would not be able to benefit from the provisions in this bill that prevent removal and allow green cards to be issued.

We tried to prevent individuals with convictions for things like drug trafficking, firearms trafficking, explosives trafficking, perjury, domestic violence, obstruction of justice, and even illegal voting from being able to benefit from the bill's provisions, but the Democrats rejected nearly all such amendments.

They did reluctantly agree to exclude murderers, rapists, and child sex abusers as beneficiaries of this bill. I suppose we can claim some progress.

They couldn't even bring themselves to accept an amendment to preclude aliens who have DUI convictions from benefiting from this bill. They decided that five DUIs were too many. So, ridiculously, the bill allows aliens to have four DUI convictions and still benefit from this bill.

Democrats in committee also opposed an amendment to ensure that alien veterans who benefit from the bill were honorably discharged from the military. Right now, as the bill stands, it only requires that the alien have been discharged under other than honorable conditions.

Democrats also rejected a Republican amendment that would have given the victims of a crime committed by the alien servicemember a say in whether or not the alien should face immigration consequences.

This bill once again lays bare the true objectives of the Democrats. First, ignore the 4.1 million illegal aliens encountered by Border Patrol and the 1 million got-aways as well, blurring the distinction between legal immigrants who obey our laws and the millions of illegal immigrants that the Democrats are now happily allowing to stream into our country. Then, they introduce bills like this that blur the distinction between the many legal immigrants who have honorably served in our Nation's Armed Forces and the handful of bad apples who have broken our laws and have been ordered deported for doing so.

This is the woke insanity that grips the Democratic Party today. Thank God the voters have just broken their grip on the House of Representatives.

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

Mr. Speaker, I yield 3 minutes to the gentleman from Illinois (Mr. Bost).

Mr. Speaker, the gentleman is correct that the legislation emanating from the Judiciary Committee doesn't have anything to do with the border because the Democrats, having created this monumental crisis, refused to do anything to address it.

Instead, we are left with bills like this that set distractions on the most important question facing America today.

Mr. Speaker, I yield 4 minutes to the gentleman from California (Mr. Issa).

Mr. Speaker, I yield such time as he may consume to the gentleman from Ohio (Mr. Jordan), the ranking member of the Judiciary Committee.

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

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

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

Mr. Speaker, we can now plainly see the effect of the Democrats' open border policies on communities across our Nation; the strain on our schools, our hospitals, our public safety, working class wages and opportunities, and social services.

No civilization has ever survived the magnitude of illegal mass migration that the Democrats have unleashed upon our country in the span of just 23 months; and Gallup warns us there are another 42 million people living in poverty just in Latin America and the Caribbean who intend to come here now that they can.

When Secretary Mayorkas appeared before the House Judiciary Committee, he couldn't tell us how it benefits the American people to have their classrooms packed with non-English-speaking students, their emergency rooms flooded with illegals demanding basic care, how their families will be safer with increased gang activity and fentanyl inundating communities, or how working families will be made better off by flooding the labor market with cheap illegal labor, or how taxpayers are served by footing the bill for supporting a largely unskilled, uneducated, and dependent population.

Now, where is this bill taking us? Well, we already know because we have already had a taste of it. For a while, we allowed aliens on temporary visas and even illegal immigrants here under DACA to enlist so that they could claim a fast track to citizenship. It was called the MAVNI program.

One MAVNI enlistment, Ji Chaoqun, was found to be a Chinese spy. A number of foreign nationals who enlisted in our military were subsequently deported for committing crimes. That program was such a debacle that the Obama administration, the architects of DACA, had to suspend it in 2016 because of the danger it posed to national security.

Now, foreign nationals who come to America legally, who obey our laws and seek to serve our country because of a love of it and of the principles upon which it is founded, are one of our greatest strengths.

Eleven years ago, I spoke at the funeral of Corporal Gurpreet Singh, whose family had emigrated from India legally 11 years before.

Let me tell you a little bit about Gurpreet Singh. His father described him this way. He said Gurpreet ``was always a very patriotic man for the U.S. From the time he was a little boy, he knew he wanted to serve in the U.S. military. Gurpreet was very proud of his service with the Marines.''

Corporal Singh was wounded in combat, chose to return, overstayed his assignment in order to relieve a friend, and was killed in action in Helmond Province, June 22, 2011.

Yet, the Democrats are either unable or unwilling to tell the difference between a Chinese spy like Ji Chaoqun and an American hero like Gurpreet Singh. It appears the Democrats are attempting to equate the heroism, devotion, and fidelity of heroes like Gurpreet Singh with the convicted criminals that a court has ordered to be deported from our country, or the lawless, illegal mass migration the Democrats are not only ignoring, but actively aiding and abetting with their policies.

Now, even if every convicted criminal the Democrats are trying to benefit with this bill were meritorious, wrongly convicted of crimes and exemplary in every way, we are still talking about an infinitesimal fraction of those who are being allowed into our country every day by the dangerous policies of this administration. That includes 120 known terrorists we have intercepted, and God only knows how many more among the 1 million got-aways who have entered our country on Joe Biden's watch.

The Immigration and Citizenship Subcommittee of the Judiciary Committee has done nothing to address this crisis; the Judiciary Committee has done nothing to address this crisis; and the House has done nothing to address this crisis, a crisis that literally began on Inauguration Day when Biden reversed the policies of the Trump administration that had finally secured our borders.

I can assure the American people that 28 days from today, all of that is going to change.

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

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

Mr. Speaker, I would remind my friend that every alien who serves in our military has the right to naturalize; but that does not give them a right to commit crimes against our country, and that is what this bill does.

This amendment sets 90 days as the deadline for promulgating regulations to implement this bill, a bill that overrides the laws governing deportation of aliens who commit crimes in our country if they have enlisted in the Armed Forces. It raises some disturbing questions.

Why is it that the bill surrenders legislative prerogatives to the executive? If you are going to write the law, then write it in its entirety in the open.

Yes, we have been granting these powers to the executive branch for a very long time. The point is that 10 times more laws are written by the bureaucracies than by the body solely vested with lawmaking authority, but we will save that discussion for another day.

Ninety days is an absurdly short period of time to write the regulations, publish the regulations, allow for full public input for the regulations, rewrite the regulations in light of public comments, and publish the final version. It begs the question: Why?

Is it possible that the supporters of this law know exactly what they want to do and have no interest in listening to the public? That has been the history of the left's approach to defending the public safety and the Nation's sovereignty, so it would not much surprise me if this is the case.

Mr. Speaker, I would simply say that it is clear that the supporters of the amendment are simply trying to rush a bad bill into implementation without the public having any opportunity to see the ramifications of this bill's provisions.

As I said earlier, we tried to get into the bill a provision that would allow the victims of these criminal aliens to testify as to the impact of the crimes on their lives, and the Democrats rejected it.

Notice and comment periods themselves require 30 to 60 days after the notice of proposed rulemaking is published for the public to submit comments about the proposed rule. After that, the agency has to comb through and respond to all of the submitted comments. There is simply no way to comply with Executive Order 12866's economic analysis requirement for a significant rule, and that is certainly what this is, within a 90-day period of enactment.

It is apparent that the Democrats are trying to rush out an interim final rule on this bill before the American public has any opportunity to see what they are doing. We can only conclude that the Democrats know that the American people are not going to like what they see.

Mr. Speaker, I urge a ``no'' vote on the amendment and a ``no'' vote on the underlying bill, and I yield back the balance of my time.

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

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

Madam Speaker, whether in 60 seconds or 60 hours, it is impossible to do justice to the heroism, patriotism, and service that defines the life of Colonel Bud Anderson.

He flew 116 fighter combat missions over Europe in World War II, shot down more than 16 enemy aircraft, and was decorated 25 times, including two Legions of Merit, five Distinguished Flying Crosses, the Bronze Star, 16 air medals, the French Legion of Honor, and the French Croix de Guerre.

Chuck Yeager called him a ``mongoose'' and ``the best fighter pilot I have ever seen.''

After distinguished service in Korea and Vietnam, he managed McDonnell Douglas' legendary flight facility at Edwards Air Force Base.

He is still going strong at the age of 100, and today, I am pleased to announce, at the request of Congressman LaMalfa and myself, that the Air Force has just promoted him to the rank of Brigadier General, effective December 14.

God bless you, General Anderson. Congratulations, and thank you on behalf of a grateful Nation.

Madam Speaker, I voted for this bill in committee because it is a worthy objective.

Assisting prisoners to successfully reenter society, find jobs, and take their place as law-abiding citizens is essential to the safety and stability of our society.

But on further reflection, I have come to believe that this is a program that the Federal Government should not be funding through grants to local organizations.

Grants have become the third biggest expenditure of the entire Federal Government, behind only Social Security and National Defense.

We give away a half-trillion dollars a year in this manner, that is roughly $4,000 from an average family's taxes, with little oversight, little accountability, little follow-up, and little results.

Reentry preparation should be a top priority of Federal and State prison systems. State prisons are a State responsibility. They should be funded by taxpayers of the individual States. Probation departments exist precisely to promote reentry, and the model in this bill should be considered by them.

Now, Federal prisons are our responsibility, and we also have probation services that should be striving toward implementing concepts in this bill.

If this measure funded Federal programs that expanded reentry preparation within the Federal prisons and probation system, I would strongly support it, but it doesn't. Instead, it takes the money of a taxpayer in one State and throws that money at a nonprofit organization in another State with the hope that some good will come from it. And some might.

But more likely, it will disappear into the salaries of various groups who will write glowing reports of their work and apply for more grants next year. And if for some reason the Federal Bureau of Prisons is unable to provide these services, then they should be competitively bid out to contractors with specific performance measurements and accountability.

Federal grant spending is completely out of control and it has to stop. Reckless spending--all for good causes--I have never seen a grant program that doesn't promise to do good things, but it is destroying our prosperity. That spending is driving the worst inflation in 40 years and the most ruinous debt in our Nation's history. And it is hard to find a grant program that actually delivers on its promises.

I think it is time that we began to spend taxpayers' money as carefully as they spend what they have got left after we have taxed them into debt.

This bill falls short of that responsibility.

Madam Speaker, the announcement of Mike Garcia's election makes it official: The American people have entrusted Republicans with the House majority.

They do so at a time of unprecedented fiscal peril for our country: 40-year high inflation, economic recession, and an approaching debt crisis, all driven by the most reckless spending in our Nation's history. History is screaming this warning at us: nations that bankrupt themselves aren't around very long.

Republicans must reclaim the mantle of fiscal integrity and fiscal responsibility, and we should start by renouncing the tawdry, corrupt, and irresponsible practice of congressional earmarks, in which individual Congressmen direct spending to pet projects in their districts or grants to favored supporters, bypassing merit-driven competition.

I have proposed to the House Republican Conference a rule forbidding congressional earmarks and expect a vote on it when we return after Thanksgiving.

Earmark supporters argue that the power of the purse rests with Congress; therefore, its elected Members, and not unelected bureaucrats, should make these decisions.

Well, no, not exactly. Representatives are supposed to be biased toward their districts; that is why Congress is designed to act collectively. Ever since Magna Carta, it has been a settled principle of good governance that the power to appropriate funds should be separated from the power to spend them.

This is at the heart of the constitutional separation of powers: Congress appropriates funds but cannot spend them; and the President spends funds but cannot appropriate them. This is the single most important protection we have against political corruption and pork barrel spending. Earmarks undermine this principle, and it is no coincidence that most of the congressional scandals over the years have involved earmarks.

A local company produces a product the Pentagon neither needs nor wants. So what to do? Well, it simply ingratiates itself with the local Congressman and has him tell the Pentagon what it needs and who will provide it. Then it rewards him lavishly at election time and repeats.

Worthy projects, in open competitive bidding, do not need earmarks; they rise or fall on their merits. And if there is such a thing as a ``good'' earmark, the price to be paid is all the bad ones. That is a high price indeed.

Just the last omnibus spending bill in March included nearly 5,000 congressional earmarks totaling $9 billion for some of the most egregious examples of waste in the Federal budget: feral swine management in Arkansas, a national atomic testing museum in Las Vegas, a sheep experiment station in Idaho.

Now, Members can and should advocate for their districts, and make the case for projects they deem worthy of the money that Congress has appropriated. The problem with earmarks is blurring these two rules and having Members both advocate and decide.

Now, many say they don't trust this President and his deputies to administer these funds appropriately and evenhandedly, and I agree. But if you don't trust the President to administer the funds that we appropriate, then don't give him the money, period.

We hear that earmarks simply assure that local governments get a fair break. No, what they actually do is turn the Federal budget into a grab bag for local pork spending by the most powerful Members in Congress; and they undermine the central tenet of federalism: that local projects should be financed by local communities and Federal spending 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 doesn't dare spend its own taxpayers' money. But it is perfectly happy to have taxpayers in other communities foot the bill.

The result is a long list of dubious projects that rob St. Petersburg to pay

St. Paul for projects that St. Petersburg doesn't benefit from, and St. Paul doesn't deem worthy enough to spend its own money on.

Finally, it is said that earmarks can ``grease'' legislation by buying off the votes of individual Members. 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. But explain to me, how is that a good thing?

Our new majority needs to make a dramatic, concrete, and credible statement that business as usual in Washington is over. Is there a more powerful statement we can make than to swear off this wasteful and corrupting practice of congressional earmarking?