Floor Statements

Mr. Speaker, I ask unanimous consent that all Members may have 5 legislative days in which to revise and extend their remarks and include extraneous material on H.R. 1425.

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

Mr. Chairman, I rise in strong support of H.R. 1425, Congressman Tom Tiffany's No World Health Organization Pandemic Preparedness Treaty Without Senate Approval Act.

This bill ensures that the Biden-Harris administration does not circumvent Congress, and it requires that any international instrument on pandemic prevention, preparedness, and response as agreed to by the World Health Assembly must be considered by the Senate as a treaty.

When it comes to imposing binding international obligations on Americans, the executive branch cannot go it alone. In our Constitution, in our republican system of government, the people's elected Representatives in Congress must give their approval.

An international treaty that cannot command the support of two-thirds of the Senate is not actually a treaty. While one administration may submit to it, it certainly does not bind our Nation or future administrations.

This proposed World Health Organization Pandemic Agreement is no exception. In fact, that potentially expansive agreement especially needs proper review and debate by the American people's elected Representatives.

Article 19 of the WHO Constitution states that such agreements must be submitted to each member state for review ``in accordance with its constitutional processes.'' Our constitutional process requires ratification by the Senate for something to be considered a treaty before it may come into force.

Likewise, during the World Health Assembly in May, the World Health Organization Director-General promised that any agreement ``will go to parliaments for consideration and ratification.'' We don't have a parliament. In our body, it would go to the Senate.

It isn't being sent there by the Biden-Harris administration. Why does the administration not want this to go to the Senate? That is an important question to ask. They certainly have not kept the drafting and negotiations transparent or accountable to the American people.

Now that negotiations are supposed to conclude by early 2025, there remains a distinct possibility that the World Health Assembly will try to call an emergency vote on a final draft treaty before a new U.S. administration takes office.

Far too little attention has been paid to what this treaty would mean for health policy in the United States and elsewhere. The latest draft is limitless in scope and contains overly broad language that can be read to support abortion and radical left ideology. It claims to impose undefined financial obligations. It grants more authority to the WHO, potentially infringing on our sovereignty. It threatens both intellectual property and free speech rights. It provides zero accountability for China.

The pandemic treaty would give more U.S. taxpayer dollars to the WHO bureaucrats to manage, even though the U.S. has already spent billions on pandemic preparedness. In total, the U.S. has spent around $2.2 billion toward global health security which, along with the Pandemic Fund donations, goes toward strengthening global health systems, supply chains, healthcare workforces, and international laboratories.

In addition, the International Health Regulations have been in place since 2005 as a mechanism to address infectious disease outbreaks around the world. They were just updated this past May to include a new financial mechanism. Why do we need yet another

funding stream of U.S. dollars for pandemics?

What is also concerning is how the treaty is being used as a vehicle to promote and implement a radical left ideology. If this treaty were truly a model for promoting global health security, then the World Health Organization would keep it clean of divisive and controversial items, not just for Americans' interests but for interests around the world in keeping with the humanitarian principle of neutrality.

Americans remember and are still recovering from the devastations of COVID-19. Many lives and livelihoods were lost, and we can certainly and should prepare for future pandemics. However, Americans also remember the WHO's egregious mishandling of COVID-19. World Health Organization Director-General Tedros enabled the Chinese Communist Party's grand COVID-19 coverup in the winter of 2020 by parroting the Chinese Communist Party's lies such as that the virus did not spread via human-to-human transmission that contributed directly to death and disruption around the world.

Despite that colossal failure, the World Health Organization still has not addressed China's involvement in the pandemic's creation or spread and have not conducted internal reforms necessary to address its own role in the mismanagement of that pandemic. Instead, WHO is asking for more money, more authority, more legitimacy, and less accountability. The Biden-Harris administration is supporting their efforts to do so.

Thankfully, H.R. 1425 ensures that the American people, through their elected Senators, will have the opportunity to review any pandemic treaty, especially the sweeping grant of power and money to the World Health Organization.

Mr. Chair, I urge my colleagues to join me in supporting this bill, and I reserve the balance of my time.

Mr. Chair, I yield 4 minutes to the gentleman from Wisconsin (Mr. Tiffany), the author of this very important bill.

Mr. Chair, the ranking member highlights that the World Health Organization somehow gives a head nod to sovereignty. It is true that in their most recent public draft they mention sovereignty, but only to the extent that they agree that it is in their interest. So somehow they take a position where they are going to judge whether it really conforms or not. That should be alarming, and it should persuade my colleagues to not vote on party lines, but instead, to unite in support of this good bill.

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

Mr. Chair, I yield 3 minutes to the gentleman from Texas (Mr. Self), a member of the Committee on Foreign Affairs and a cosponsor of this bill.

Mr. Chair, I yield 3 minutes to the gentleman from Virginia (Mr. Good).

Mr. Chair, I have no additional speakers, and I reserve the right to close.

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

Mr. Chairman, it seems that the ranking member feels confident that if this were exposed to the legislature of our own country that it would torpedo the agreement. That is what he said.

He also said, maybe in a different context, that if our voices are not heard, then America is weaker. Well, he joins a long line of members of his party who say things like: To protect our democracy, we have to avoid democratic processes. We can't allow the people's voice to be heard. We have to use the elite to protect everyone, people who know best. Frankly, if we can't just do it within the Biden-Harris administration, we should do it as partisan globalist institutions and not let it be subject to scrutiny.

In fact, maybe he is on to something. Secretary Blinken, when he testified before our committee last, said that he has remaining concerns.

We don't know that this is a final draft because the Secretary of State says that he has lingering concerns, and he is not sure before his term ends as Secretary of State that they can reach a final agreement.

He is not sure that he can.

Why?

It is because he has concerns about intellectual property infringements and things that would hurt the sovereignty of our own country. This subjects the agreement, frankly, to what article 19 of the WHO constitution says. It states that such agreements be submitted to each member state for review ``in accordance with its constitutional process.''

The World Health Assembly in May, the World Health Organization Director-General promised that any agreement ``will go to the parliaments for consideration and ratification.''

This administration wants to avoid that, and their proxies here in the House want to make sure they can get away with it. That is what this bill is about.

I, again, thank Mr. Tom Tiffany from Wisconsin for introducing this bill and Chairman McCaul for moving it through committee and to the floor.

What the other side is claiming is that Congress should not have any role in addressing a sweeping international health treaty that will affect the health, finances, and freedoms of American citizens, and I think it is dead wrong. This bill is the minimum due diligence that we owe the American people.

Mr. Chair, I urge support for H.R. 1425, and I continue to reserve the balance of my time.

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

Mr. Chair, I yield myself the balance of my time for closing.

Just a reminder to all of our colleagues following this vigorous debate that this bill is not about PEPFAR. This bill is about the administration's desire to enter into a treaty with the World Health Organization to surrender our sovereignty without following our constitutional process.

This bill would require the Senate to ratify a treaty. If it is going to have the binding force of law on future administrations, that is what our process requires in our Constitution, and frankly, it is what is acknowledged by the World Health Organization itself. It is what they are expecting of other countries, but somehow the Biden-Harris administration doesn't expect it of us and, sadly, their proxies don't either.

The other side mentioned in their debate that viruses don't recognize boundaries, that pandemics don't recognize borders, but the reality is the response does. We saw very different responses around the world, some pretty alarming and downright dystopian. If the World Health Organization chose to do that, America should sovereignly make its choice for our country, for how we react to it.

Of course, that is what is going to happen. Admittedly, some future administration might move in lockstep with the World Health Organization, but without the effect of a treaty, the United States certainly isn't obligated to, and perhaps that is a good thing.

Maybe it is a good thing that they are going to skip this. Maybe the administration will avoid it coming up in the Senate. Maybe the administration would veto it if we did get it over the finish line, but certainly, we should never surrender our sovereignty to the World Health Organization, in particular.

I thank Mr. Tiffany for introducing this bill and Chairman McCaul for moving it through our committee and to the floor.

Mr. Chair, I encourage all of our colleagues to support H.R. 1425, and I yield back the balance of my time.

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

Mr. Speaker, I rise in support of H.R. 510, the Chinese Currency Accountability Act. I was proud to introduce this measure last year, which the Financial Services Committee embraced with a vote of 40-0.

Mr. Speaker, the International Monetary Fund acts as the world's lender of last resort, and its Special Drawing Rights serve as a unit of account for its activities. SDRs are also important reserve assets on the balance sheet of central banks. As such, SDR holdings can earn interest, and SDR liabilities can incur costs.

Prior to 2016, both the value and interest rate of the Special Drawing Rights was determined by major currencies issued by market economies and their central banks and overseen by democratic governments. They were the dollar, the euro, the yen, and the pound sterling.

China is not a market economy, so it is astonishing that the International Monetary Fund, with the approval of the current Treasury Department, then decided to add the Chinese renminbi to its currency basket. On a number of measures, the renminbi was nowhere near the level of these other currencies, and, of course, the Chinese Central Bank is the furthest thing from what one would call independent or representative of a market economy. This is still the case today.

Even more bewildering was the 2022 decision to increase the renminbi's weight, the proportion of influence it has, within the currency basket.

By this time, it was not only clear that China's exchange rate management remains subject to the whims of the Chinese Communist Party, but the IMF also knew that China's predatory lending to developing countries was putting the viability of IMF programs in jeopardy. In fact, China's Belt and Road Initiative is designed to undermine the International Monetary Fund, so why would IMF grow the rate or influence of it after having already made the mistake of even including it?

Currently, China's Communist Party is an economic and strategic rival, and hopefully it remains a rival in the market. However, China should not be allowed to skirt the rules at the expense of American taxpayers and at the expense of our market.

It is unacceptable for the IMF to preach to the world on debt transparency, the rule of law, and central bank independence while it is rewarding the Communist Party in China for violating every single one of these principles.

Our legislation says enough is enough. It requires the Treasury Department to oppose further increases of the renminbi for the IMF's currency basket until Treasury can certify that China is complying with the rules of the road.

As a member of the World Trade Organization and other international organizations China is part of, if we follow the rules, China should be held to the same standards. Of course, they are not doing that. It would include upholding China's obligations under the IMF's Articles of Agreement and complying with the same lending rules that other large economies have committed to.

This also means China would have to take significant steps toward restructuring its Belt and Road loans so that they are not actually working to undermine the IMF. In other words, the Chinese Currency Accountability Act isn't about holding China to different standards, but, rather, holding them to the exact same standards everyone else is held to.

Mr. Speaker, I urge all of my colleagues to support this measure.

Mr. Speaker, at this moment, Mrs. Paulette Harlow, a 75-year-old Catholic grandmother, is locked in a Federal prison cell. Why? For peacefully and prayerfully blocking access to a third- trimester, late-term abortion mill.

Mrs. Harlow is one of many convicted under the Biden administration for violating the FACE Act, which prohibits any obstruction to abortion clinic entrances. For that offense, this wheelchair-bound grandmother will spend 2 years in jail. Meanwhile, the same prosecutors declined to prosecute 67 percent of all people charged with a crime in Washington, D.C., even violent crimes.

At sentencing, the judge mocked her and her faith, demanding that she ``make every effort to stay alive'' as part of the ``tenets of [her] religion.''

Biden's DOJ is politically weaponizing our justice system through selective enforcement, disproportionate sentencing, and bigotry. Congress must stop these political persecutions and help save the lives of unborn babies.

Mr. Chair, my amendment really should be called the define the mission act for Ukraine or the define the mission amendment.

We voted on this last summer as part of the National Defense Authorization Act, and 129 of our colleagues agreed that the administration should define the mission.

Before this, this might have been summarized as the Powell doctrine for years. Before we get into a war, we should decide what we are trying to achieve with the war. The administration has gotten by in Ukraine since the inception by saying as much as it takes, as long as it takes.

We searched for that phrase and found it back in 2004 when the administration at that time decided that we were going to shift from going after the terrorists that bombed the United States on 9/11, or used airplanes to target our citizens, to rebuilding Afghanistan. The phrase they used was ``as much as it takes, as long as it takes.'' That was used to keep the mission going all the way until the Biden administration left in the most disastrous way possible by taking the military out first and leaving civilians behind and getting them out.

That was on August 31, 2021. The very next day, on September 1, 2021, the Biden administration entered into a strategic partnership agreement with Ukraine to support their membership in the European Union and NATO. This led to an escalation, and the Biden administration, rather than using leverage to create a peaceful resolution and prevent a war in Ukraine, fostered that war.

Nothing excuses Putin's invasion of Ukraine. The question is, what are we going to do about it? To this date, apparently, we are just going to keep cutting checks. For the American people, a lot of times people say of course, and what they really mean is to get the Russians out of Ukraine. Why not state that that is the objective? Why not state whether it is to get all the Russians out of Ukraine, including Crimea, or not?

Mr. Chair, you have seen the State Department say variations on that. In fact, you have seen Under Secretary Nuland say that the actual mission is that we get war crimes tribunals for Vladimir Putin and regime change in Russia. Is that the mission?

Recently, Senator Lindsey Graham, a Republican, said that the mission is actually about rare earth minerals that Ukraine has. In that sense, if it is about minerals, does this really go back to when Yanukovych in November 2013 said that he is going to do a trade deal with Russia instead of a trade deal with the European Union?

Shortly after that, there was a coup, a regime change, and an actual insurrection that resulted in a new government in Ukraine.

None of this excuses what Vladimir Putin has done. We should be rightly rejecting what Putin has done in Ukraine.

So far, the United States has spent more than $170 billion on the war, but we still haven't defined the mission. You can't really hold the administration accountable for success or, in this sense, potentially for failure.

The reality is that if we keep cutting checks, Ukraine does not have the resources, the manpower, the skill to deploy all the weapons it will take to extract all the Russians from Ukraine. They just don't.

We want them to be able to do that, but we have also taken off the table a path to a peaceful resolution.

In the spring of 2022, in the early days of the war, the Biden administration scuttled peace negotiations. Well, presumably, because they had a mission that they were actually trying to achieve in mind.

I have sent questions to them. I finally got a response, and I wanted them to define what it is.

They came up with something, finally, that says the United States' goal is an independent, democratic, and economically stable Ukraine, governed by

the rule of law and integrated into Euro-Atlantic institutions. That is an answer, but they could give us a classified answer.

The point of this bill is to say: Tell us exactly what you are trying to do. That is not something you can have that you can hold accountable.

In fact, I asked former Chairman of the Joint Chiefs Milley this in the House Foreign Affairs Committee. I said: General, does this qualify as a mission statement in the military? He said: Absolutely not. You would want more precision on that.

All I am asking is the same thing that our military already knows how to do: define the mission. Do it in a classified setting, by all means, but do it in a way where we can hold you accountable for the results.

That is the point of amendment No. 38. I encourage all of our colleagues to support it. I thank the chairman and the committee for their support in this en bloc, and I thank the chairman for this time.

Madam Chair, I rise in strong support of banning central bank digital currency. Why do we do this? As Congressman Hill pointed out, Congress clearly has the Article I authority under the United States Constitution over money, and we should exert that.

In the absence of exerting that with respect to central bank digital currency, the Federal Reserve is plowing right ahead. They are actively hiring programmers to write code to develop a central bank digital currency. To have colleagues say: Oh, well, they won't turn it on, to me is equivalent to having the Empire in Star Wars build the Death Star but promising not to turn it on.

Once it exists, it poses a threat, and they are not responding to Congress right now. They are not. They are not listening to our values that are reflected in our Constitution to protect our civil liberties. In fact, our colleagues are encouraging them not to. They are saying in their own words: Oh, we have to be more like China.

The version of central bank digital currency, the version that Project Hamilton is embracing, is the same version China is developing, and it is being developed all over the world with more than 100 countries looking at implementing a central bank digital currency all under the same model that the Bank for International Settlements, the central bank for the central bankers in Switzerland, is proposing, and it is the same creepy surveillance tool that the Chinese Communist Party is using, which is centrally managed, centrally filtered.

What definition is used here? Well, I am not sure that we could gather that from Mr. Sherman's comments, but it is the same definition that was used on March 9 in 2022 when the Biden administration released Executive Order 14067. The definition of H.R. 5403, this bill, is the same definition that we are addressing chosen by the Biden administration.

We want to ban that.

Madam Chair, we don't want to ban that just to establish it. We want to ban the development of it.

Another fallacy that they point out though is that this would turn off research. No, by all means, study it, find all the problems with it, and make sure that the people know: Don't go down this path.

That is the point of this bill.

If Congress uses Article I authority to subsequently set the parameters, as is our constitutional obligation, we could do that with a subsequent bill. The reality is, the Federal Reserve is not responding to dialogue. They need to respond to a law.

Mr. Chair, I rise to support Mr. Mooney's amendment.

The CBDC Anti-Surveillance State Act demonstrates House Republicans' unwavering and thorough conviction that the Federal Reserve must not issue or develop a central bank digital currency without expressed authorization from Congress.

While I support this bill wholeheartedly, I think it can go further with this amendment by being clear. Word weasels want to come up with phrases like pilot. Oh, we are not really doing that.

Yes, you are. The pilot project represents a first step that we could take, and, as you see, the Federal Reserve is spending time and resources building a team, actively hiring and staffing, and outsourcing for this. It is logically consistent that this pilot could be developed to something further.

Mr. Mooney's amendment will not only remove the CBDC pipeline the Fed is already building, but it will also ensure that any future efforts to test or research CBDC are approved by Congress.

Mr. Chair, I urge all of our colleagues to support this amendment and this bill.

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

Mr. Chair, I applaud Congressman Emmer's hard work on getting this important piece of legislation to where it is today. I am encouraged that so many of my colleagues like Mr. Hill, Mr. McHenry, Mr. Huizenga, Mr. Barr, Mrs. Wagner, and subcommittee chairs on Financial Services are united on this. I wish that extended across the aisle because central bank digital currency is the creepiest surveillance tool known to man.

Every dystopian fiction out there whether ``Brave New World,'' ``1984,'' what I consider Scriptures, the ``Book of Revelation,'' shows the corruption of money from its proper use as a store of value and a means of exchange into a tool for coercion and control, something that can filter people's access to their own money and their ability to use it in a free society.

Why would we enable it? Everywhere it is depicted as evil. Why would we even tolerate that, but our own government is doing it. Frankly, the underlying text prevents the Federal Reserve from establishing a central bank digital currency, and this amendment is important because we should be clear: We don't want them to design it; we don't want them to build it; we don't want them to do development work on it; and we certainly don't want them to issue it. That authority is reserved for Congress.

There may come a point where our form of money looks different than it does today, but it should always have the characteristics of permissionless peer-to-peer payments like cash. Saying: But cash is one option in the system, doesn't cut it when the whole underlying architecture becomes permissioned, conditioned on your ability to be granted access to your own property from a central government.

This is a bad system, and it is great today for us to have the opportunity to ban it.

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

Mr. Chair, the gentlewoman correctly recognizes that we are piling on. We want it to be absolutely clear to the word weasels in the executive branch that try to find a way to scheme and maneuver and even, in spite of Supreme Court rulings, come up with new executive orders whether it is forgiving student debt, launching climate change initiatives, banning bump stocks, pistol braces, warrantless searches, you name it. They have got a way to get past the clear intent of Congress. We want to close every possible venue, absolutely.

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

Mr. Chair, I think we have made it clear with the amendments, with our statements, and with the bill text that we need to ban central bank digital currency. Do not let them design, develop, or build a death star only to promise not to turn it on.

We need to prevent the Federal Reserve from doing this. All this should make it clear that that is the clear intent of Congress.

Mr. Chair, I encourage all of our colleagues to unite in support of this bill and this amendment, and I yield back the balance of my time.

Mr. Chair, I rise in strong support of this long overdue legislation. It builds on the framework that my colleagues and I have worked on for at least 6 years beginning with the Token Taxonomy Act in 2018.

Its core is a bright-line test to define what digital assets or securities are regulated by the SEC and which are commodities under the jurisdiction of the CFTC.

Innovators and investors will no longer risk their freedom and their fortunes by simply launching a company and raising capital. The law will be clear, and regulation by selective enforcement must end.

Additionally, and perhaps most notably, this bill also provides first-ever Federal level protection for self-custody of digital assets. This protection, which is very intentional, mirrors my Keep Your Coins Act, and it is a giant step toward restoring the right to privacy and private property protecting permissionless transactions using digital assets.

In an account-based financial system where Americans must rely on intermediaries, self-custody provides the only protection against third parties controlling the individual's transactions.

Thirdly, self-custody provides the first line of consumer protection where individuals can eliminate third-party liabilities who hold their assets.

For too long we have pushed innovation and investment in digital asset projects overseas as Congress has constantly failed to bring the clarity that we need. We finally have the chance to end this trend and solidify ourselves as the leaders in this industry.

Mr. Chair, I urge the Senate to quickly take up this bipartisan legislation and send it to the President's desk as soon as possible. Please vote ``yes.''

Mr. Speaker, I thank the chairman for yielding time.

Mr. Speaker, this accounting bulletin has proven to be a barrier to publicly traded banks having an ability to meaningfully engage in distributed ledger products due to their overly broad definition of a crypto asset. SAB 121 makes no distinction between asset types in use cases, but, instead, generally states that crypto assets pose certain technological, legal, and regulatory risks, requiring special on- balance-sheet treatment.

All other assets, if you want to make a deposit at a bank, they are glad to hold custody of the assets, but somehow these assets qualify for special treatment.

Normally, if there was on-balance-sheet treatment, it would also just be a clean entry. There wouldn't be a mark to mark it that would require not just a balance sheet treatment that would be appropriate for a custody of a certain kind of asset, but you would have income statement flow throughs and all kinds of other risks.

Why would a bank need to cover extra risk up to 100 percent of the deposit of an asset simply to take custody of the asset? This is a special treatment that applies just to these assets, so applying on- balance-sheet treatment for crypto assets wrongly subjects customer assets to creditors' claims in the event there was a failure of a custodial institution.

In a traditional bankruptcy, assets are accounted for on balance sheet and are subject to creditor claims. Conversely, assets held in custody for customers are accounted for off balance sheet and, thus, are protected from creditor claims in bankruptcy because they remain the assets of the company.

We would see this distinction in a company like Fidelity, where the assets are off balance sheet, versus a company like Silicon Valley Bank when they went bankrupt. The depositors were literally at risk. Why would we change the standard with this out-of-jurisdiction rulemaking by the SEC?

Requiring custody crypto assets to be accounted for on balance sheets risks losing the bankruptcy protections of custodial services. This is an important distinction from the treatment for a broker-dealer that would be subject to a different form of bankruptcy under the Securities Investor Protection Act. Distributor ledger technology does not change the underlying nature of risk of traditional assets, nor do they present risks that SAB 121 purports to address.

Mr. Speaker, I include in the Record three letters: A letter dated August 23, 2023, cosigned by Chairman McHenry and Representative Hill, sent to the Comptroller General at the Government Accountability Office, urging GAO to complete its assessment on whether the Congressional Review Act applies to SAB 121; a letter dated February 14, 2024, cosigned by the Bank Policy Institute, the American Bankers Association, the Financial Services Forum, and the Securities Industry and Financial Markets Association, sent to the SEC requesting a meeting with the SEC Chairman, Gary Gensler, urging him to reconsider SAB 121; and, lastly, a bipartisan, bicameral letter dated November 15, 2023, cosigned by five Representatives and two Senators, sent to the Federal Reserve, the OCC, the FDIC, NCUA, urging the agencies to withhold enforcement of SAB 121 in light of GAO's decision.

House of Representatives,

Committee on Financial Services,

Washington, DC, August 23, 2023.

Re SEC Staff Accounting Bulletin No. 121 and the

Congressional Review Act

Hon. Gene Dodaro,

Comptroller General of the United States Government

Accountability Office, Washington, DC.

Dear Comptroller Dodaro: We write to inquire about the

status of the Government Accountability Office (GAO)'s

decision regarding the applicability of the Congressional

Review Act (CRA) to the Securities and Exchange Commission's

(SEC) Staff Accounting Bulletin No. 121 (SAB 121). We are

concerned that SAB 121 is not guidance but rather should be

considered a major action undertaken by the SEC. This letter

underscores the request by Senator Lummis expressing her

shared concern about the effect of SAB 121. To date, GAO has

not rendered a decision.

To underscore Senator Lummis' position, SAB 121 should be

construed as a rule for purposes of the CRA. SAB 121 is not

an interpretive rule. It is not a general statement of

policy. Rather SAB 121 is a major policy change that

fundamentally impacts the way customer assets under custody

are treated for balance sheet purposes. The Bulletin

significantly impacts a number of entities within the SEC's

purview but also state and nationally chartered banks and

trust companies.

Separately, it is important to note that Congress continues

to make progress on legislation establishing a regulatory

framework to provide certainty for the digital asset

ecosystem. The Committee's work to report out legislation

governing both the issuance and use of payment stablecoins as

well as the regulation of digital asset intermediaries is

consistent with the recommendations made by GAO this past

June. This legislative work should not be subverted by

unelected bureaucrats through opaque and unaccountable

processes such as SAB 121.

We encourage you to protect the prerogatives of the

legislative branch by determining SAB 121 as a major rule and

subject to the CRA. We appreciate your attention to this

matter.

Sincerely,

Patrick McHenry,

Chairman, Committee on Financial Services.

French Hill,

Chairman, Subcommittee on Digital Assets, Financial

Technology, and Inclusion.

Mr. Speaker, I thank my colleague for yielding.

Those are a lot of words from the opposition to this bill to say that citizenship does not matter. That is basically their argument: We don't care if you are a citizen.

In fact, they encourage you to not be a citizen. Sanctuary cities and States invite everyone from the world to flood their cities, and they need it. They have said as much in interviews that their population is fleeing their horrible policies in States like California, Illinois, Maryland, New York, and elsewhere, and they are going to places that have more freedom and less government.

So what do they do?

They import new people who don't know better, and, yes, the conditions are better there than the places they are fleeing, but as my colleague, Mr. Graves, was pointing out, California has six to seven Members. That is more than many of our States. Yes, Texas has Representatives because they, too, have a large illegal population, and the Biden administration is doing everything possible to prevent them from stopping this invasion of our country.

It is willfully and purposefully, and I will add skillfully, undermining the value of U.S. citizenship to flood this country with noncitizens.

I want to tell some great news to my colleagues: Foreign nationals do have representation in the United States at embassies or consulates. Their representative is not here in the United States Congress. I represent United States citizens, and so do my colleagues.

Nonetheless, noncitizens do not vote, and they should not vote, but don't let that stop them. They are working to change that too so that they can vote. We found that noncitizens are voting, and they found loopholes to do that with the Motor Voter Act.

We have to defend the value and right of U.S. citizens. The only way to do that is to do the very purpose of the Census, which is to apportion Representatives.

Now, we get a lot of other ancillary benefits from the Census, but the constitutional purpose of it is to know who is here.

Now, they want to know everything else about you, Mr. Speaker, how many hyphens you have in your ethnicity, national origin, what you believe about your religion, how much you make, and every other way they can invade your privacy, but they don't give a rip whether or not you are a United States citizen.

The American people deserve to be fairly and equally represented, and the only way that is going to be done is if we know who is a citizen, and the apportionment is based on United States citizens.

This amendment needs to be passed.

For assurance, for the previous three Congresses, I have introduced a constitutional amendment. In this Congress that is H.J. Res. 37. I assume Mr. Raskin will run down and cosponsor it immediately because he knows that he could amend the Constitution and defend the principle that is at stake here.

Mr. Speaker, I urge all of our colleagues to sponsor this bill and to vote ``yes'' on this bill and get it passed.

Mr. Speaker, on February 1, 2022, the President signed into law S. 1404, which awarded a Congressional Gold Medal to the 23rd Headquarters Special Troops and the 3133d Signal Service Company, known as the Ghost Army. The Congressional Gold Medal is the oldest and highest civilian award in the United States. I rise today to honor Sergeant Major James Collins Taylor II for his contributions, sacrifices, and patriotism while serving in the Ghost Army during World War II. Due to the unit's sworn secrecy, their service and contributions went unnoticed for far too long.

Sergeant Major James Collins Taylor II was born in Mission, Texas, on November 13th, 1915. Mr. Taylor joined the Civilian Conservation Corps. After the outbreak of World War II, he was assigned to the 23rd Headquarters Special Troops. This specialized unit comprised only 1,100 brave Americans and often served near the front lines.

Mr. Taylor helped conduct numerous deceptive campaigns with the Ghost Army throughout Europe. During his service, he received a Certificate of Merit and was promoted to Sergeant Major of the Army--the highest rank possible for an enlisted soldier. While the Ghost Army's work was secret, its impact was substantial. The Ghost Army performed 22 ``deception missions'' across the front lines of France, Belgium, and Germany. By simulating the movement of 30,000 service members, the Ghost Army fooled German forces and aided General Patton at several critical junctures in World War II.

It is my honor to recognize the service Sergeant Major James C. Taylor and the Ghost Army. Their dedication and service saved thousands of American lives. Although the Congressional Gold Medal reaches Mr. Taylor posthumously, he is survived by a grateful family and country.

Mr. Chair, I thank the gentlewoman for yielding. Frankly, in the House it is rare today that we have an issue that doesn't break on party lines, and privacy, unfortunately, isn't unanimous.

The Fourth Amendment is clear that if the government wants to serve your data, they need to have probable cause and a warrant or a subpoena.

The Fourth Amendment is a restriction on what government can do. It is not a restriction on commerce.

Unfortunately, government agencies are buying nonpublic data that would otherwise require a warrant or a subpoena.

Congress confronts an opportunity today to end that practice by passing the bipartisan and bicameral Fourth Amendment Is Not For Sale Act. Nothing in this bill would prohibit a search, paid for or otherwise, of public information. It would, however, restore privacy protections grossly infringed by current practices. Congressman Higgins, a career law enforcement officer, is offering an amendment today that makes that clear. We have heard from law enforcement agencies, and we want to make it clear, nothing in this bill is designed to make your job harder to do.

Mr. LaLota will offer an amendment that I do adamantly oppose. Frankly, it strips much of the content of the bill, and I regret that I do oppose that amendment because it undermines the intent of the bill.

Closing this data broker loophole is an important step toward restoring a government small enough to fit within the Constitution, and we could afford a government that small.

Finding bad guys would be easier if you had perfect information on everybody and full surveillance all the time. It has been recognized that the Third Amendment was put in place, despite the fact that we all might be more secure if we had a soldier stationed in our homes, but the Third Amendment prevents the government from doing that.

The reality is that technology today effectively puts the government everywhere we go. We all essentially have a digital ID. It is a phone number, and we carry it with us. It is tracked. It goes to your car. Your car spies on you, as well.

This data is being collected. People say, well, this amendment doesn't deal with all that. So let me address that concern. People back home might not realize that the committee structure in Congress is broken up into areas of jurisdiction, meaning that certain committees can deal only within their area of jurisdiction.

The Judiciary Committee can reform things in that committee of jurisdiction, but other committees like Energy and Commerce would have to address a broader topic.

People back home wonder why there so many half-baked solutions to problems. Well, a lot of it comes down to our jurisdiction. We don't solve the whole problem often.

What about foreign governments buying our data? Congress in the House passed a ban on that last month. Just prior to the House ban, exporting your data was banned by executive order from the Biden administration. These are safeguards that are bipartisan, and, in some ways, they have already reached to the executive branch.

Again, the Fourth Amendment is designed as a limitation on what the government can do. I am grateful to have the support of over 150 organizations from Gun Owners of America on the one hand to the American Civil Liberties Union on the other.

This is an issue that goes far and wide. It is important to understand, too, people might realize that if they have got a journal that they close it up and they keep it in their house, whether it is by their bed or in a bookshelf or in a safe, the government has to get a warrant or subpoena to get access to that, but your electronic communications don't enjoy the same kinds of protection. They are not being protected by the Fourth Amendment because you have trusted a third party with that, like Gmail, like Microsoft, like Apple. Somebody has your emails, and, because of that, the government is getting access to some of this very private information, nonpublic information, because they are able to buy it.

They shouldn't be able to buy it. If this bill passes and becomes law, they won't be able to buy it and bypass your Fourth Amendment rights.

I encourage all of our colleagues to support this important legislation. Look, freedom surrendered is rarely reclaimed. We have such an opportunity today to reclaim the right to privacy that is supposed to be protected by the Fourth Amendment. I hope everyone will join me in defending freedom today.

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

Mr. Chair, the purpose of this amendment is a technical correction. Often this is done simply in the Rules Committee. For some reason, they chose not to do it.

The bill itself states that existing Federal laws are the exclusive means by which the government obtains location information of U.S. persons or persons inside the United States, their web browsing history, internet search history, or any other data that would require a court order.

The list is complete except for section 702 of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act. That needs to be added. That is all this amendment does is simply cover comprehensively the list of authorities, including section 702 as a covered authority. The bill isn't really complete without covering that.

I think last week the body spoke that they want to continue to have the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act. This bill would say it also covers everything, including what just passed last week.

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

Mr. Chair, I will close by saying I think the case is clear. I appreciate Mr. Nadler for working with me.

I thank Senator Wyden and Senator Lee for being champions of this on the Senate side. I thank the unusual cohort of colleagues here. We have Zoe Lofgren, Pramila Jayapal, Sara Jacobs, and Jerry Nadler from the Democratic Party, and on our side Chairman Jim Jordan, Andy Biggs, Thomas Massie, and me.

There are so few things today that everyone agrees on. When you have the political spectrum covered from those angles, I think, hopefully, the American people will see this is a reliable solution. It moved through the Judiciary Committee with unanimous support. We don't believe it will get unanimous support today, but I sure hope that it passes.

Mr. Chair, I encourage my colleagues to support this amendment and the underlying bill, and I yield back the balance of my time.

Mr. Chair, I thank the gentleman for yielding.

Mr. Chair, I strongly oppose Mr. LaLota's amendment.

He makes a great point. We all want to stand with law enforcement. That is a unifying position for Republicans, and I think most Democrats want to support them, as well.

Nothing in this bill prohibits them from doing their job. The Fourth Amendment is a restriction on government activity though, and they are already used to getting warrants for all kinds of things. The novelty is the way that they acquire data to avoid getting a warrant or subpoena. In fact, under the Electronic Communications Privacy Act and the Stored Communications Act, they are required to get a court order.

This amendment doesn't make it clear that this isn't an effort to expand that to say, no, you don't really have to do that anymore.

It is an expansion of surveillance without a warrant instead of the purpose of the bill, so it is hostile to the entire purpose of the bill. It guts the core of the protection that is meant to be restored here.

Mr. Chair, for that reason, I oppose Mr. LaLota's amendment, and I strongly encourage our colleagues to do the same so that we can pass a very functional Fourth Amendment Is Not For Sale Act and restore the infringed right to privacy that Americans need restored.

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

Mr. Speaker, I encourage all of my colleagues to support this bill.

We all swore an oath to support and defend the Constitution. The Fourth Amendment does not say that if you have nothing to hide, you have nothing to fear. It says as an American, you have a reasonable expectation of privacy. It goes on to say that you can have that privacy infringed upon if there is a probable cause warrant or a subpoena issued.

What our agencies are doing, though, is they are buying data around that to avoid having to even get a warrant or subpoena in the first place.

The Fourth Amendment is Not For Sale Act protects private information. Public information is not prohibited in any way. Whether you pay somebody to do the search for you or you do it yourself, public information is like the plain view doctrine. There is no limitation on that.

Mr. Higgins is clarifying that. Clay Higgins, one of our colleagues, has served as a lifetime law enforcement officer. The Judiciary Committee, where numerous law enforcement officers serve, couldn't possibly be more pro-law enforcement because they have done the career themselves, and they have supported this bill out of committee.

To clarify that this bill is for law enforcement, Mr. Higgins has offered an amendment to say what the intent of the bill is. Automated license plate readers are there. That information has already been disclosed to the government. You know you have disclosed it. The license plate is designed to be a plain-view item in public.

Nothing about this should make policing harder, except that as Ketanji Brown Jackson, a Justice on the United States Supreme Court, said: The First Amendment is getting in the way.

Of what? Filtering speech.

If you think that the Fourth Amendment is getting in the way of enforcing the law, it is designed to. It is supposed to be a limitation on the ability of government to go after citizens because the government is entrusted with great powers.

Mr. Speaker, this rule is an important process to getting a vote on the bill. I thank the leadership team for putting it on the floor today.

Mr. Speaker, freedom surrendered is rarely reclaimed. Today, we have an opportunity to make progress. After 9/11, the PATRIOT Act passed. One Senator voted ``no.'' Sixty-three Members of the House of Representatives voted ``no.'' Both parties failed with that vote.

FISA has been reauthorized, and it never gets a full, clean vote. It is little tranches. In 2020, we ended the business records surveillance program, section 215. The government didn't stop collecting business records; they just stopped doing it in conformance with section 215 of

Mr. Speaker, I thank the gentleman for yielding time.

Mr. Speaker, I think it is important we solve the right problem. The gentleman from New Jersey, who isn't actually opposed to the bill, seems to have identified the real issue, which is data privacy. I think it is important that we solve the correct problem.

Our problem with all these companies, social media and otherwise-- your car, your phone, you name it--is surveillance. The spying that goes on of American citizens does need to be addressed, and it should be addressed by the Energy and Commerce Committee.

I have long pleaded with Members of both sides of the aisle to pass H.R. 4639 to reclaim the privacy rights that are so deeply infringed in our country, and by avoiding that problem, we take away the energy and momentum to address the root issue.

Frankly, the people sponsoring this bill today claim that the real issue is ownership.

Nonetheless, who owns this company?

It is not 100 percent owned by ByteDance. Mr. Speaker, 60 percent of it is owned by investors, including American investors; 20 percent is owned by the founders; and 20 percent is owned by employees, over 7,000 employees. The company's headquarters is not in China, it is in Singapore. The American user data isn't housed in China, it is housed in Texas controlled by a database owned by Oracle.

The administration seems to believe that they can ban the export of Americans' sensitive data not just on TikTok but on all platforms because they just issued an executive order banning the export.

Now, I wish this were the bill that Pramila Jayapal and I have sponsored that we were moving, the Fourth Amendment Is Not For Sale Act. It passed Judiciary, but its complement to prevent foreigners from buying it would also address the privacy concerns.

So if we think we can address the privacy concerns, then what is left to address?

Frankly, it is content moderation.

Mr. Speaker, do you remember before Elon Musk bought the crime scene at Twitter? It was all a conspiracy theory that these algorithms were silencing and canceling people. You guys are crazy.

No. When Elon Musk bought Twitter he did keep it operating with 80 percent fewer employees, but what we found is a lot of the employees were trying to do content moderation, shape who sees what and how they see it, which algorithms are used, and how does it promote certain people and filter others.

So, really, Mr. Speaker, what you are saying here is that if you are not fully engaged with America's three-letter agencies in content moderation, we plan to TikTok you.

Moreover, this bill isn't just limited to TikTok. It is a coercive power that can be applied to others, apps like Telegram and TUR. Things that provide privacy would be targeted by this bill--perhaps Tether, one of the things that they can't control as a monetary system.

When you look at companies, Mr. Speaker, if it enables one user to see content that isn't approved, it is subject to a $500 million fine per user.

Mr. Speaker, this is meant to be able to take out anything, including email where its one user sees it. So it could target an infinite number of companies, but not an infinite number of places.

So, for that, I do applaud the work that was done to back off from the dystopian RESTRICT Act, but this is essentially a downpayment on the RESTRICT Act. I encourage everyone to look up the RESTRICT Act.

This is what the administration really wanted to do. What Members of Congress on both sides of the aisle wanted to do is to create a bigger surveillance state, and that is what the Intel Committee wants to do with FISA, is to make it bigger. We have to shrink it and protect our Fourth Amendment right to privacy.

Madam Speaker, I always tell people back home: Beware of bipartisanship. The most bipartisan thing in Washington, D.C., is bankrupting our country, if not financially, morally.

As my colleague from Texas just highlighted, it is not just the spending; it is all the terrible policies that are attached to the spending.

We can tell by the way the time is structured, but it is bipartisan. It is 50/50 Republicans and Democrats. One of the mottos in the first unit I was in in the Army was, ``Deeds Not Words.'' The words are so good.

I was down at the border with the Speaker and 60 of my colleagues, and we were going to fight. We were only going to fund a border that is secure. We were going to fund the government, but only if we secure the border. We were going to make the Senate a counteroffer, but by the time we could even get back to this town, our Speaker had surrendered to a four-corners deal, the very thing we said we wouldn't do.

It is the deeds that are the problem. If we were back in the minority, we would be united again. We would be opposed to this. We were just a year ago. We were opposed to it. The words were good, and the deeds were also good, but now when we have the chance to govern, it seems we have lost our resolve.

Who is getting hurt by this? The American people are getting hurt by this.

None of us promised to come here and do this. We promised, as Republicans, things that are in conflict with the Biden administration's promises, and the only way we are going to do that is to force the vote.

By going along with this, let's be clear, we are being buried. We are being buried by debt. We are being buried by crime. We are being buried by an invasion at our border, buried by fentanyl, buried by drugs, by suicide, by endless wars, by failing schools, by corruption. Frankly, it is a fatal overdose of government. I wish I could just wake up and it not be true, but it is.

Mr. Speaker, I rise to draw attention to a situation in Honduras that threatens American investment in the region.

President Castro has threatened to expropriate resources from U.S. investment in Honduras in contravention of the Dominican Republic- Central America Free Trade Agreement (CAFTA-DR). Seven of my Republican colleagues and I wrote a letter to Secretary of State Anthony Blinken and U.S. Trade Representative Katherine Tai urging the Biden Administration to enforce investor protections in U.S. trade agreements. We cannot allow U.S. trade agreements to go unenforced or leave U.S. investors defenseless.

While I received a response to our letter, it did not clarify how the State Department will defend the rights of U.S. investors if the Honduran government follows through on its statements and actions, which indicate an intent to take that property. Americans invest money in Central and South America with the reasonable expectation that the U.S. will protect their investments from theft. These investments help extend economic stability to the region.

In addition, China's efforts to replace the United States as a trade partner with Honduras pose a national security threat near our southern border. On September 21, 2023, the President of Honduras, Xiomara Castro, spoke at the United Nations, where she bragged that her nation had ``officially opened relations with the People's Republic of China.'' In addition, she condemned sanctions on communist countries like Cuba and Venezuela. These are troubling statements from President Castro, especially when paired with her government's actions.

The PRC's influence is rapidly increasing in America's backyard. I urge the Biden Administration to reassert the principles of the Monroe Doctrine and protect American interests in the Western Hemisphere.