U.S. House of Representatives U.S. House of Representatives
Independent caller Bob from Sterling, Virginia, highlights overlooked resolutions—H. Res. 64 and SJR 98—to block military action against Venezuela’s Maduro, citing media silence and failed Senate votes, while Rep. Ro Khanna warns of a Caribbean buildup risking another regime-change war. Meanwhile, H.R. 3668 sparks debate: Republicans argue pipeline delays raise gas prices by 160% and cost Americans $76B by 2040, while Democrats call it an assault on environmental laws, noting expired safety legislation. Al Green’s impeachment push frames Trump as a democratic threat, tying his policies to segregationist history, while Chip Roy counters with systemic healthcare reforms and immigration crackdowns, including the PAUSE Act and Sharia bans. California’s budget woes—$124B spent without progress—and Social Security critiques over work incentives and disability wage certificates underscore partisan clashes over governance, economics, and rights. [Automatically generated summary]
There are resolutions in both the Senate and the House to stop President Trump from conducting an attack on Venezuela, which he has repeatedly said he's going to do for the purpose of removing Maduro from power.
The resolutions are Congressional Resolution No. 64, introduced on December 1st, and Senate Joint Resolution 98, introduced on December 3rd.
As a consumer of news from many sources, including C-SPAN, all the networks, cable, nobody is informing the public about this legislation.
So the public is not aware and therefore won't be able to contact their rep or senator to demand that they support it.
An earlier vote in the Senate on the resolution failed by a very narrow margin.
So this time, let's inform the public so that we can do our civic duty to stop another military attack and more war.
Receive us into your presence, O God, and accept our offerings of praise and the intentions of our hearts.
For we come before you just as we are, with deep desires to serve you faithfully in this place where what we do has impact on our communities and our country, on our neighbors, as well as on this nation.
With our eyes on you, may we be disinclined to assume that it's our success, our influence, or our efforts that will matter at the end of the day.
Rather, help us to see that when we live the lives you have called us to, when we are obedient to your law, when we demonstrate your compassion, when we humble ourselves to your divine plan, our work should reveal your impact on each of us and your power over this world.
God, you so love us that you, knowing both our strengths and weaknesses, our character and our quirks, nonetheless, you not only receive us, you use us to do the work of your kingdom even here.
Enable us then to be good and faithful servants, that we may share in your eternal joy.
The Pledge of Allegiance will be led by the gentleman from North Carolina, Mr. Davis.
unidentified
Please storm me out.
Pledge allegiance to the flag of the United States of America and to the Republic for which it stands, one nation under God, indivisible, with liberty and justice for all.
Without objection, the gentleman is recognized for one minute.
unidentified
Thank you, Mr. Chair.
Mr. Speaker, I want to take this opportunity to recognize the importance of the House's passage of the 2026 National Defense Authorization Act earlier this week.
The 2026 NDAA codifies critical provisions of President Trump's peace-through strength agenda, including authorizing full funding for the Sentinel ICBM program.
The Sentinel program is set to provide essential upgrades to the land-based component of our nuclear triad.
I want to thank the airmen, the security forces, the missileers, everyone at Malmstrom Air Force Base in Great Falls, Montana for their continued hard work on the initial planning and construction phases of this project.
Mr. Speaker, I rise to note an extraordinary act of patriotism of one of our fellow citizens.
I rise today to thank McKinsey Scott, formerly the wife of Jeff Bezos, for donating $50 million to Bowie State University, the largest single contribution in the school's history.
Bowie State University is not only Maryland's oldest HBCU, it is one of our state's finest higher education institutions.
Period.
McKinsey Scott's generous gift will help make Bowie State University even more affordable and support the groundbreaking research students produce every day.
With her historic donations to Bowie State University, Morgan State University, and the University of Maryland Eastern Shore, McKinsey has proven herself to be an honorary Marylander, an American who cares about investing in our future, an American who understands the importance, critical importance, of education in our state, in our nation,
I began this week in my district at Penn State Abington's new collegiate recovery program with students in recovery for drug or alcohol addiction or who have been affected by others with addiction.
It's a place for students to be in community with each other and with professors and experts in addiction and recovery.
How I wish every school, every family would have such an opportunity.
And what are we doing here in DC?
The President and Republicans in Congress are ripping the hope of recovery away for so many, slashing and shuddering SAMHSA, the Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration.
Their big beautiful bill gutted nearly $1 trillion for Medicaid.
In my state, 100,000 people through Medicaid have access to treatment and to recovery.
That's in jeopardy.
And in 19 days, ACA tax credits will expire, spiking premiums overnight.
30,000 Pennsylvanians have already dropped coverage.
By the end of January, it is estimated by my governor, 150,000 will be without insurance.
Mr. Speaker, I rise today to sound the alarm on the military buildup in the Caribbean, edging us closer to a regime change war in Venezuela.
The Trump administration has sent the Gerald Ford aircraft carrier, our largest aircraft carrier.
10% of our Navy is in the Caribbean, including destroyers and submarines.
We've got 15,000 troops in Florida and Puerto Rico, including Marines, who are ready for amphibious landings, and we have F-35s and B-52s flying across the Caribbean and Venezuela airspace.
We do not need, after Iraq, after Libya, after 20 years in Afghanistan, after Yemen, and other regime change war, it's time for the American people to oppose a regime change war in Venezuela.
It seems the game of mid-decade redistricting is still ongoing.
I commend Indiana for recognizing that this isn't good for democracy and it's not good for our country.
It's wrong for Democrats.
It's wrong for Republicans to draw maps mid-decade for the sole purpose of putting up points on the scoreboard, which is why I introduced the RESIT Act and call on Congress to pass it.
Congress must restore electoral stability to enhance trust.
With elections every other year, imagine assemblies across the country waiting to see the results, only to redraw the congressional districts to run up the points.
The people deserve better.
The people deserve the voices to be heard.
We must put our constituents first, stop the political gangsmanship, and bring this redistricting madness to an end.
Without objection, the gentlewoman is recognized for one minute.
unidentified
Thank you.
Mr. Speaker, I rise today with great pride to congratulate Southside High School's girls volleyball team on winning the New York State Class A girls volleyball championship.
On behalf of Nassau County and New York's 4th congressional district, I want to take this opportunity to commend and celebrate these young athletes for their dedication, their teamwork, and their perseverance.
This year's championship marks Southside's second state title in program history and its first since 1993.
A testament to the strong foundation built by players and coaches over many, many years.
Congratulations, Cyclones, on your remarkable victory.
You've made Rockville Center and New York's 4th Congressional District very proud.
The Chair announces the Speaker's appointment pursuant to Section 2B2 of the Commission to Study the Potential Transfer of the Weitzman National Museum of American Jewish History to the Smithsonian Institution Act, Public Law 118-144.
and the order of the House of January 3rd, 2025 of the following individuals on the part of the House to the Commission to study the potential transfer of the Weitman National Museum of American Jewish History to the Smithsonian Institution.
Union calendar number 253, H.R. 3668, a bill to promote interagency coordination for reviewing certain authorizations under Section 3 of the Natural Gas Act and for other purposes.
Pursuant to the House Resolution 936, the bill is considered red.
The bill shall be debatable for one hour, equally divided and controlled by the chair and ranking minority member of the Committee on Energy and Commerce, or their respective designees.
The gentleman from Ohio, Mr. Latta, and the gentleman from New Jersey, Mr. Pallone, each will control 30 minutes.
The Chair recognizes the gentleman from Ohio, Mr. Lana.
Mr. Speaker, I ask unanimous consent that all members may have five legislative days to revise and extend the remarks on the legislation and to insert extraneous material on HR 3668.
Mr. Speaker, I yield myself such time as they may consume.
Our nation is at a cross, and I yield myself as much time as I may consume.
Mr. Speaker, our nation is at the crossroads when it comes to powering our future.
This pivotal moment will shape our economic trajectory, national security, and global competitiveness.
After years of modest growth on electricity consumption, the next five years could see upwards of 128 gigawatts of new demand.
The vast majority of this demand growth will require new baseload dispatchable power, and natural gas will fill that gap.
Unfortunately, the build-out of interstate natural gas pipeline infrastructure has faced significant challenges.
Approvals are often delayed due to a lack of coordination, pure inaction, or outright obstruction by states and relevant federal agencies.
Section 401 of the Clean Water Act has turned into a procedural choke point with varying application and drawn-out state reviews undermining otherwise federally authorized projects.
This has resulted in energy shortages in certain areas of the country, exposing consumers to high prices, and our grid to increased vulnerability.
In fact, a recent study estimated that pipeline blockades have already driven average natural gas prices up by 160 percent in major demand centers.
This doesn't have to be the case.
Activist states like New York have used their delegated authority under Section 401 to repeatedly kill interstate natural gas pipeline projects.
These Clean Water Act denials haven't been because of legitimate water quality impact concerns.
The base of these blockades has been in the name of radical climate agendas, ignoring what is best for consumers, grid reliability, and economic growth.
During the 2013 to 2021 time period, several pipeline projects were canceled, leading to a pipeline capacity growth of only 26 percent.
Meanwhile, natural gas demand increased by 49 percent.
This trend will be compounded if there are not statutory reforms.
H.R. 3668 would strengthen the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission, FERC's lead agency role in further define the process for participating agencies.
Additionally, under this legislation, instead of having to obtain a Section 401 certification from a state through its EPA delegated authority, FERC would incorporate this water quality review into its existing National Environmental Policy Act NEPA review, including any terms or conditions proposed by states that are required for compliance with the underlying statute.
Opponents argue that this legislation will gut the Clean Water Act.
However, this legislation doesn't even amend the Clean Water Act.
It maintains statutory protections of legitimate water quality concerns.
FERC already analyzes water quality impacts as part of the NEPA process, imposes mitigation measures as needed, and is equipped to respond to raised concerns as part of the review process.
Again, nothing in this legislation alters the environmental review of these projects.
Expanding natural gas pipeline capacity is estimated to save Americans $76 billion by 2040.
Without statutory reforms to Section 401 of the Clean Water Act, these savings will not be realized.
Our nation will not be able to compete with China in the intelligence race, and our electric grid will experience serious vulnerabilities.
I urge my colleagues to support this legislation, and I reserve the balance of my time.
Mr. Speaker, I rise in strong opposition to H.R. 3668.
This bill is an outright assault on our nation's environmental laws.
It completely strips states of their ability to enforce clean water laws when it comes to pipelines.
And I have to say, Mr. Speaker, that I was surprised when I first saw this provision of the bill.
I thought Republicans were the party of states' rights, so surely they wouldn't take away a state's right to enforce their laws and have a voice in the pipeline siting process.
But Democrats offered an amendment at our committee markup that would obstruct this provision, and Republicans voted against it.
So here we are, Republicans on the House floor pushing forward legislation that actively and intentionally sells out states' rights.
Much like their promise to lower prices, I guess that was also just an empty campaign slogan.
But their bill goes even further than that.
It also makes the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission, or FERC, responsible for enforcing the Clean Water Act for pipelines.
Now, there's just one problem with that, and that is that FERC has no idea how to do that.
At an Energy and Congress Committee hearing in April, we heard from FERC that they do not currently have the staff expertise or resources to execute this bill properly.
So this bill is also a bad solution in search of a non-existent problem.
FERC confirmed for us that they have not even seen issues with state clean water permits for pipelines.
But as usual, Republicans simply do not care about the facts.
The language surrounding the Clean Water Act is not the only defect with this bill.
Despite claiming that the bill aims to improve interagency coordination for pipeline permits and authorizations, the bill actually discourages it by pitting agencies against each other.
Instead of letting FERC work collaboratively with other agencies as the process does now, this bill makes FERC the adversary of other agencies by forcing it to breathe down every other agency's neck and make decisions of whether to exclude other agencies from the review process entirely.
And that is simply not an efficient or collaborative process, in my opinion.
And I also want to take a moment to note that while Republicans are obsessed with destroying our public health and environmental laws in order to speed up the construction of more pipelines, they have failed to pass basic laws to ensure that those pipelines are safe.
The authorization for pipeline safety activities at the Pipeline and Hazardous Materials Safety Administration or FIMSA expired about two years ago.
And at no point in the last two years have Republicans put a bill on the floor that would reauthorize pipeline safety activities.
I guess they don't care about that either.
Instead, they have allowed the Trump administration to run roughshod over the very concept of safety, repealing numerous rules designed to protect our communities and workers, and even withdrawing a rule that was required by a law that President Trump himself signed.
So this bill, Mr. Speaker, and other energy bills we consider this week out of the Energy and Congress Committee are not a serious attempt at a permitting package.
I know the Republicans keep saying, oh, this is permitting reform.
It's absolutely not true.
They do absolutely nothing to make it easier to expand or improve our power grid, despite this being a time when our grid reliability is a growing threat.
And for years, Democrats have been clear.
A permitting package is impossible without reforms to the way we build transmission lines that transport electricity across the country.
None of these bills address that either.
Instead, we have a slate of bills that cut corners for fossil fuel infrastructure, abolish states' rights to rule or to have a role in the pipeline process, and serve absolutely no one except the worst corporate polluters, all while the Trump administration blocks and cancels new clean energy projects across the country.
So, Mr. Speaker, these bills basically double down on field Republican energy policy and say they've already driven up energy bills on American families and pollution in just the 10 months since Trump took office.
The President promised to cut Americans' power bills in half, but instead, he and Republicans are causing them to soar with their backward policies and their war on cheaper clean energy.
Electricity prices are up 13 percent nationwide, and Trump calls the issue of affordability a hoax.
That's how out of touch the president is, and the Republicans continue to blindly follow him down the path.
So, Mr. Speaker, I urge my colleagues to vote no on this bill, and I reserve the balance of my time.
My bill, H.R. 3668, would guarantee we protect the environment, ensure we protect public health, and lower energy costs by speeding up energy projects through much-needed reforms to the permitting of interstate natural gas pipelines.
The development of interstate pipelines currently faces significant regulatory and statutory hurdles.
In fact, in 2024, we produced less than half the pipeline miles we built just five years ago.
Our regulatory and statutory permitting process must both protect the environment and reflect the urgency and importance of the projected growth in natural gas demand.
Despite the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission being granted increased authority under the Energy Policy Act of 2005, pipeline project approvals are consistently delayed because of a lack of coordination between the numerous agencies involved in the permitting process.
My bill would make this process more efficient by bringing stakeholders, including agencies, to the table so concerns can be identified early in the process.
From there, agencies participating in the permitting process would perform important environmental reviews while complying with schedules established by FERC.
H.R. 3668 would also improve the water quality review process by moving that responsibility from the states to FERC.
For the past decade, a few states, especially in the Northeast, have used this federally delegated Section 401 authority to obstruct interstate projects.
These states have stood outside the FERC-led National Environmental Policy Act process and used their Section 401 authority as a one-state veto of a multi-state project of national significance.
This has been detrimental to development of critical pipeline infrastructure.
I want to be clear.
My bill would continue the safeguards of the environment.
We have some of the strongest environmental laws on the planet.
This legislation protects those laws while expediting critical energy infrastructure.
We want to fuel our nation forward.
And if we want to lower costs for consumers, win the AI race against China, and strengthen our position as an energy superpower, it is critical that we have a regulatory and statutory process in place that allows us to build infrastructure in this country.
I urge my colleagues to join us in support of this legislation.
Let me say I have great respect for the sponsor of this bill, the gentleman from North Carolina, but I can't believe that he raised the issue of electricity prices in the context of this bill.
The bottom line is electricity prices are up 13 percent nationwide just since President Trump took office.
And natural gas prices are up 8 percent nationwide since a year ago, 14 percent in my home state of New Jersey, in part due to increased exports of liquefied natural gas.
Both of these figures are vastly outpacing inflation, which is already sky-high thanks to the president's tariffs and health care and housing crisis.
And let there be no mistake that Republicans and President Trump own this affordability crisis.
And affordability isn't, as the President said, a Democratic scam.
It's an issue that is impacting hundreds of millions of American families that each week are struggling to make ends meet.
And energy affordability is especially critical.
80 million Americans are struggling to pay their utility bills, and Republicans refuse to do anything about it.
And this bill is only going to make it worse.
In fact, Mr. Speaker, the Republicans have made this whole situation with electricity prices so much worse.
The big, ugly bill they passed this summer will raise electricity prices by over 61 percent over the next decade thanks to its attacks on clean energy.
And the president's pursuit of unlimited LNG exports would increase natural gas costs by over 50 percent.
And that's on top of the thousands of dollars that the president's tariffs have already cost American families.
So they have, the Republicans have no plan to address the affordability crisis.
American families are forced to pay the price, and this bill is only going to make it worse.
But again, I reserve the balance of my time, Mr. Speaker.
When you're talking about changes in electricity prices over the last 20 years, it's important to look at this chart.
This is from the EIA.
If you look at the top 12, and as the gentleman from North Carolina pointed out about his legislation, that, you know, especially in New England, the states up there.
But look what's happened here.
You look at California, Hawaii, Maine, Massachusetts, Connecticut, and Rhode Island in the top six.
You should look at these prices going up.
And you round up the top 12, you look at Vermont, New Hampshire is also in there, and New York, and New Jersey.
What's happening is why we have to have this legislation.
When you have the states pushing back on trying to get the pipelines in and pushing into just one type of energy source, it's hurting their people.
And we know that because earlier this year there was an article that came out that the New England governors were all complaining that their citizens were going to pay 40% more for utility prices this fall.
Why is that?
Right here.
And this is why this legislation is needed.
And at this time, I want to recognize the gentleman from Texas, the vice chairman of the Energy Subcommittee, for four minutes for his statement.
Gosh, Mr. Speaker, you know, fairy tales began once upon a time.
You know how those begin.
We're hearing one today, right here in our very presence, saying that somehow the big beautiful bill has caused this problem.
Mr. Speaker, the plain and simple fact is the American population is growing.
Our economy is growing, and natural gas already provides more than 40% of the electricity Americans rely on every day.
And during this time period, 2013 to 2021, several pipeline projects were canceled, leading to a pipeline capacity growth of only 26%.
Let that sink in.
Meanwhile, natural gas demand has increased by 49%.
Do that mass.
This trend will be compounded if there are not statutory reforms.
It is absolutely dishonest to try to blame LNG on this.
America can't run without energy, Mr. Speaker.
And like it or not, a lot of that energy comes from natural gas.
When we stopped building pipelines between 2013 and 2021, listen to this.
Over 25 million homes were put at risk.
That's exactly what H.R. 3668 fixes.
This bill clarifies that the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission is the lead agency for coordinating the environmental review process for interstate, interstate natural gas pipelines.
And it requires other federal and state agencies to align their reviews with FERC's timeline.
It's written with a clear objective, reducing delays and improving coordination.
Did I mention that American households, the gas has been really needed to be given to a lot more American households?
So here's what we're going to do.
We've already seen what happens when we don't build.
Again, pipeline cancellations put over 25 with an M million homes at risk, 25 with an M million homes at risk.
Do the math.
Do that math.
With the average home, 3.15 person in that household, that is nearly 79, again, M with a million 79 million people affected.
And that doesn't even account for, Mr. Speaker, for higher prices or the hit to our energy security.
The actual job, actually, possibility that our energy security is going to be damaged severely.
So, Mr. Speaker, if we want reliable power and lower costs, we've got to stop telling fairy tales and we've got to start doing.
That's exactly what my friend and colleague Congressman Hudson's bill does.
My Energy and Commerce Committee colleagues and I have been hard at work this year crafting common sense legislation, legislative solutions to improve our burdensome federal permitting process.
Due to unclear review processes and a lack of coordination amongst government agencies, pipeline infrastructure approvals in this country have been significantly delayed in many cases, often resulting in insufficient infrastructure to transport our clean natural gas.
The result is an electric grid that is less reliable and increased utility prices for hardworking Americans.
While natural gas demand is expected to reach an all-time high, accounting for more than 40% of electric generation in the U.S. next year, this is clearly a pressing issue that must be addressed immediately.
This legislation bolsters FERC's rule as the lead agency in the natural gas pipeline review process, empowering them to oversee communication between agencies and streamline pipeline reviews and approvals so Americans can access the energy they need on a daily basis.
The build out of interstate natural gas pipeline infrastructure is essential to ensuring domestic energy can be transported efficiently and meeting growing electricity demands.
H.R. 3668 should be an easy yes vote for members on both sides of the aisle, and I yield back.
Mr. Speaker, I'd like to yield now such time as he may consume to the gentleman from Ohio, Mr. Lansman, who's a member of the Energy and Congress Committee.
The bill weakens states' rights and their ability to manage clean water.
It essentially says, look, we're going to send these pipelines through your communities, through your states, and we don't want to hear anything from you.
We don't want you to raise objections, even if it is around the quality of water, the quality of air.
It's also true that it doesn't fundamentally address the larger issue or a big issue of the rising costs of energy and the impact that the global trade wars that this administration has pursued has had on the rising costs of utility bills.
So, for this reason, at the appropriate time, I will offer a motion to recommit this bill back to committee.
If the House rules had permitted, I would have offered an amendment to this bill requiring the Department of Energy to tell the American people in a report how this administration's illegal tariffs, these trade wars, have raised prices on electricity and gas.
The Joint Economic Committee estimates that families have already paid $1,200 more this year because of the tariffs.
The tariffs and the trade wars have jacked up prices, and that includes energy prices.
We need accountability.
The American people deserve to know how much this is costing them so that they can push on us to end these trade wars and the high cost of living, including energy costs.
So, I ask for unanimous consent to insert into the record the text of this amendment, and I hope my colleagues will join me in voting for the motion to recommit.
I rise today in support of the Interagency Coordination for Pipeline Reviews Act, legislation that will bring much-needed reforms to the federal permitting process.
Natural gas has become the foundation of America's energy mix, accounting for almost 40 percent of our total energy production and 43 percent of electricity generation.
The shale revolution has ushered in a new era of American energy independence and revitalized communities in Ohio and across the Appalachia region as they tap into the vast natural gas reserves beneath our feet.
But in order to move this energy from the well pad to the customer, we need modern, reliable infrastructure.
Far and away, the best way to transport natural gas from point A to B is by pipeline.
It is safer, more efficient, and cheaper, further reducing costs for consumers.
But because of the outdated regulations, a lack of coordination and political obstruction, critical pipelines that provide reliable, affordable energy for our constituents have been delayed or blocked altogether.
The truth is, America's power demand is surging, and to meet this challenge and power the future, we need pipelines.
This legislation streamlines regulatory oversight, establishes clear timelines for environmental reviews, and helps lower cost for American families by unleashing our full energy potential.
Thank you, Mr. Speaker.
unidentified
I yield back.
Gentlemen Reserves, the gentleman from New Jersey is recognized.
Mr. Speaker, I once again rise in strong opposition to this bill, but I have to say that I keep hearing from my Republican colleagues about permitting reform.
In fact, they have been calling this a permitting week here in the House.
But the reality is they're not interested in any kind of permitting reform unless it involves streamlining the ability to eliminate barriers for fossil fuels, for gas pipelines, for example.
They have no interest in dealing with permitting reform in general that perhaps would help bring clean sources of energy to the public.
I would like to build more, have more opportunities for clean energy, for renewables.
And we could certainly work on permitting reform in that regard.
The President says there shouldn't be any windmills, there shouldn't be any solar panels, there shouldn't be any renewables at all.
The only thing that he wants to do is go back to fossil fuels, oil, gas, and coal.
And so when I hear about permitting reform on the other side, I kind of laugh because we could be working together with the Republicans on proposals that would lower the cost of energy and unleash domestic clean energy.
And Republican permitting reform in an effort to eliminate barriers to clean energy could be on the table, but they don't want to do that.
Instead of proposals to make things better, Republicans are offering bills that would discriminate against clean energy, would mandate old and expensive coal plants to stay online long past their retirement date, and this bill, which would strip states of their ability to enforce their clean water laws on gas pipelines.
Instead of doing what I would consider the hard work to find a bipartisan path forward, Republicans are simply giving up.
I think this is incredibly damaging to the House as an institution.
Republicans could have worked hand in hand with Democrats here and in the Senate, and we could have all worked together to find a path forward.
But instead, bullied into submission by President Trump and the MAGA, Republicans are moving bills with no Democratic support and are cutting the House entirely out of any discussions with regard to any permitting reform.
Instead of discussing this bill that essentially pollutes our waters, we should be discussing legislation that would make it easier to plan, permit, and pay for an expansion of the power grid, and a lot of that could be based on clean energy.
And instead of discussing this legislation, we should be discussing ways to reinstate the billions in grants and loans that were approved by Congress that the Trump administration illegally cut off during the Republican shutdown.
Instead of discussing this awful bill today, we could be discussing proposals to grant certainty to energy developers so the president can't just arbitrarily cancel a wind or a solar project just because he doesn't like the way it looks, which is what he says all the time.
So there's a lot that we could be doing with regard to trying to bring more energy to market, including clean energy.
I rise today in strong support of H.R. 3668, the Improving Interagency Coordination for Pipeline Reviews Act.
The truth is, interstate natural gas pipelines are what keep our lights on, our showers hot, and prices reasonable.
To the gentleman from New Jersey's point, interstate pipelines also have provided the largest decrease in emissions in our country, and they have made it possible to deliver by backing up all of the renewables that are on the system.
Look, overnight lows this weekend in my state of North Dakota are forecasted to be 20 below zero.
Having heat provided by natural gas is literally the difference between comfort and chaos, and yes, between life and death in states like mine.
If we want affordable and dependable energy in our country, then we must build the infrastructure that delivers it.
But too often, these projects are delayed or blocked by a federal permitting process that is far too inconsistent.
When one state can derail an interstate pipeline, entire regions pay the price.
We have already seen this time again in the Northeast.
In the Northeast, shortages have already threatened reliability and driven prices through the roof.
This bill brings long-overdue accountability and coordination to the federal permitting process for interstate natural gas pipelines.
It strengthens FERC's lead role, requires agency and federal partners to follow clear timelines, and requires reviews to take place concurrently, not in endless succession.
And it still preserves every requirement under the Clean Water Act.
This bill modernizes the permitting process so we can build the pipelines that keep energy affordable, so we can build the pipelines that power our economy, so we can build the pipelines that strengthen America's energy security.
And did I mention that we can build the pipelines that keep energy available and affordable for Americans?
I urge my colleagues to support this important legislation.
I heard what the previous speaker said, and this rehash is the same thing that we discussed with some of the bills that were voted on yesterday, which is this notion that somehow fossil fuels are reliable and renewables are not.
I mean, look, there are reliability problems with every form of energy.
unidentified
But what we need to do is to say that we're going to do all of the above, right?
And Republicans keep saying they're for all the above, but the President and they continually say no renewables, no wind, no solar, and other forms of renewables.
And so, you know, this idea that somehow one form of energy is more reliable than another is simply not the case.
But that's not what I wanted to close to talk about, Mr. Speaker, because I want you to understand and my colleagues to understand how concerned I am about pipeline safety, which of course they simply ignore.
I mentioned this earlier, but one of the things that really disturbs me about this bill is that Republicans are pushing to remove environmental safeguards for gas pipelines at the same time they're refusing to act on vitally important pipeline safety legislation.
Authorization for FIMSA, the pipeline safety statute that we have, that expired over two years ago on September 30th, 2023.
And since then, Republicans haven't moved a single bill on pipeline safety to the floor of the House.
They simply have not.
And it's certainly not because everything is going well with pipeline safety.
Doge devastated FIMSA's pipeline safety office in the Department of Energy.
Energy Transfer, a pipeline company and key LI of President Trump, is attempting to declare pipeline safety enforcement unconstitutional in the courts.
And this spring, pipeline safety enforcement actions dropped to a new low.
And it's just a disaster over the Department of Energy.
There's nobody doing anything about pipeline safety.
So Democrats wondered if this was an oversight by Republicans.
Surely they would want to ensure that pipelines are safe before making it easier to build more of them.
So my colleague, Ranking Member Castor, filed an amendment to this bill that would have prohibited this bill from taking effect until Congress reauthorized the pipeline safety bill.
Unfortunately, Republicans blocked it from coming to the floor.
They are happy to talk about removing environmental protections for gas pipelines, but are still, I would think, ashamed to talk about how they're letting vital safety provisions expire.
Congress can't guarantee the safety of pipelines that the folks who are supposed to be policing them are no longer at the beat.
And so, my point is, you know, they keep talking about permitting reform, but they don't work with us on that.
They keep saying that they want all kinds of energy, but they cut off any possibility of clean energy with renewables.
And then they say, well, we don't need to have any kind of restrictions whatsoever or investigation or review when we cite pipelines.
But at the same time, they gut and refuse to do anything about pipeline safety in general.
So, again, this bill is a threat to our safety, it's a threat to the environment, and I urge my colleagues to oppose it.
And with that, I yield back the balance of my time, Mr. Speaker.
You know, natural gas is the most affordable and reliable energy solution.
And also, if it comes from the United States, it's clean.
And expanded pipeline capacity is critical to lowering costs for American families and businesses.
And we have had hearings on pipeline safety this past summer.
And for too long, states have used Section 401 authority as a one-state veto of multi-state projects with national significance.
And again, the facts speak for themselves.
If you want to look at the top 12, and it's New England, New Jersey, New York, these people that live there ought to ask their governor, their state legislators, their regulators, why their prices are so high.
It's simple, because the states, again, have used that veto.
As global natural gas demand is projected to continue to grow for decades to come, investment in pipeline projects will be of utmost importance to keeping prices low for our nation and to keep it secure.
You know, in the 1970s, when we had an oil embargo across this country when the Arabs cut us off, we were told we had no energy in this country.
And what's happened?
If you put the right laws in place and have the regulations to follow and turn the entrepreneurs and innovators loose in this country, we're number one in the world.
Number one in the world.
We produce more natural gas.
It's the cleanest.
So this is what we're looking at.
And when we had a hearing earlier this year with our RTOs and ISOs that regulate across the energy grid out there, they told us all the same thing.
They told us all the same thing.
We've got to produce more energy in this country, not less.
And at the same time, you better not be taking any generation offline.
Right now, we're scheduled to take 115 gigawatts of power offline in this country.
And when our adversary, Communist China, they're doing what?
They're out-producing us.
We're projected to need 170 gigawatts on top of that.
It's time that people wake up.
And we do have an all-the-above policy in this country.
A republic has brought it forth in 2008.
In 2008, we said, look, we're not going to pick the winners and losers, and that's important.
When the federal government wants to go out there and pick the winners and losers, this country is going to lose.
H.R. 3668 is the solution.
I thank the gentleman from North Carolina for his leadership.
I urge all my colleagues to support this bill, and I yield back.
Those favoring a vote by the yeas and nays will rise.
A sufficient number having risen, the yeas and nays are ordered.
Members will record their votes by electronic device.
Pursuant to clause 9 of Rule 20, this 15-minute vote on the motion to recommit H.R. 3668 will be filed by a five-minute vote on passive H.R. 3668.
If ordered, this is a 15-minute vote.
unidentified
And live coverage from the House floor this Friday morning as members come to the chamber to vote.
Friendly Faces, Tough Politics00:12:26
unidentified
This is a motion on a bill that would aim to expedite the permitting process of natural gas pipeline projects and liquefied natural gas import and export terminals.
If it passes, this motion will send the legislation back to committee.
This is the first vote of the day.
And as members come to the floor to vote, we'll show remarks by President Trump that he made last night during the congressional ball that was hosted at the White House.
I see some faces that are friendly, but they could be friendlier.
But I think we're going to do great.
And we've got a lot of good things to happen.
We know our first lady, she worked so hard on making this so beautiful.
And the decorations, she's been given wonderful reviews for the trees and all of the Christmas decorations.
So thank you very much.
So we have a very special Congresswoman with us, Julia Lettlow.
Where is Julia?
And it was just announced, and in fact, I just heard that she went to the dip room where she officially announced with a very handsome man her engagement.
And with that, and with that, automatically comes jobs.
And today, for the 52nd day, we hit an all-time stock market high.
And that's great.
And that means 401ks.
That means a lot of things are happening.
It means jobs.
And I think when the real numbers start coming out and when the real pollsters start doing the polls, I think you're going to see some really fantastic numbers.
And that's good for Republicans, frankly, and Democrats.
I want to, again, thank our First Lady for working so hard on this.
She's done so well.
It's the, let's see, she's done it four times.
This would be the fifth time.
And I would say this is the best, although I liked the red tree.
She got criticized for the red trees.
Then I liked the white trees, and she was criticized for the white trees.
Then I liked the green trees, and she got criticized, and she went back to green, and they love it.
So I don't know what's going on.
I think this is a little bit of a different administration maybe than the first.
But I want to thank all of the great people in the room, both Democrat and Republican, who worked so hard on behalf of our great nation.
You're members of the greatest legislative body in the history of our country, history of the world, really.
And we have the greatest nation anywhere in the world, and it's getting stronger, bigger, better.
And I just want to thank you, because sometimes we don't work together, but we come up with great ideas together, and that is true.
So tonight, we're going to set aside all political differences.
We're not going to criticize each other.
We're going to love each other.
And we're going to come together not as Democrats and Republicans, but as fellow Americans to give thanks for this nation, which is so great indeed.
And It's a tremendous, I think it's a tremendous tribute that I think it really is.
I think it's a tremendous tribute that so many Democrats have joined us tonight.
High level.
I know almost every single name on the list.
It's a very impressive list, too, I must say.
But let me also say a very special thanks to all of the spouses and loved ones here tonight.
You make incredible sacrifices for us as politicians.
I call myself now a politician.
I never thought that was going to happen.
I never thought that was going to happen, but it happened.
But none of what we absolutely do, whatever, would be possible without you.
And I want to thank my great wife, my great first lady, for helping me.
But every single one of you have been helped by your spouse.
I want to also thank our really wonderful, great Vice President, JD Vance, who's here.
And many of you in Congress worked very hard, both, both sides, this year to keep the promises that you were elected on, to deliver big wins for the American people.
And Democrats worked very hard, too.
I mean, I think you could get rid of a couple of your little policies like men and women, sports, open borders, transgender for everybody.
unidentified
But other than that, other than that, I like what you're doing.
We passed the largest spending cuts in American history.
And we have the largest regulation cuts by far in American history.
All of these things were just passed.
You passed the Lake and Riley Act to get criminal aliens off the streets so they don't kill our people, hurt our people, mug our people, slice up our people, which is what they did.
They're not doing it so much because crime is way down.
And you passed the Genius Act to unleash a new era of financial innovation.
And on a bipartisan basis, working with a woman named Melania.
Have you heard of Melania?
But working with our great first lady, you passed the Take It Down Act to protect our nation's youth from some horrible people.
And I think, I'm not sure, that was, this is hard to believe.
I believe this is correct.
It was just about a unanimous vote to which I said, maybe you should be doing my job.
Yes, she looks at me like, you know, what was the big deal?
But that was a great thing that she did, and a great thing that all of you did.
Very soon, I'll hopefully be signing a National Defense Authorization Act that makes a historic investment in the United States military, which I think most people want to see.
And I look forward to working with each and every one of you in the coming year to make our nation stronger, safer, wealthier, healthier.
And I really believe we can work on health care together and come up with something that's going to be much better, much less expensive for the people, less expensive for our nation, but really most importantly, better and less expensive for the people.
And we have an idea that rather than making these massive payments where they, you know, their stocks went up 1,700% over a short period of time, the insurance companies, we make beautiful, big payments directly to the people and they buy their own health insurance.
And it's so good and so popular and everybody wants it.
And I think, frankly, I think a lot of the Democrats are going to want it too.
It's been a very popular, ever since I uttered those words about a month ago.
It's been very, very popular.
So hopefully we can get that done together.
So I want to just say in closing, have a fantastic, you're going to have a fantastic evening.
This food is unbelievable.
The White House is known for great food, and it's better than that.
And it's a great house.
It's a special, special place.
You know, I've had a lot of nice houses, but I have to tell you, this house, it's just special.
It's one of the reasons that every one of these events, all of them, are packed, sold out, waiting room, they're begging to come.
People love the White House, and people love our country, and we love the Republicans, and we love the Democrats, so we love everybody else.
We love everybody, especially tonight.
Now, tomorrow I'll have to deny I ever said that, but that's okay.
The only thing I can tell you, I know one thing for sure, Mr. Speaker, it's going to be great.
It's going to be great for children.
Okay, I don't know what it is she's doing, but I know it's going to be great for children because she loves children and she's got a wonderful boy and she's very proud of her boy, but she loves children.
And if she puts it out, it'll be maybe unanimous again or whatever that was, but very close, unanimous again.
I want to thank you all.
Have a great Christmas, a great Hanukkah, and a fantastic year.
But we're going to have a great three years, four years, ten years.
We're going to make it great.
Our country is going to be strong, safe, rich.
It's going to be great.
We're going to make America great again.
Thank you, everybody.
Thank you very much.
House Vote Underway00:15:58
unidentified
And the vote underway here on the House floor is on a Democratic motion to send the permitting measure back to committee.
The underlying measure, H.R. 3668, would expedite the permitting process for natural gas pipeline projects and liquefied natural gas terminals.
If this motion fails and the legislation passes in the next vote, it'll go on to the Senate for consideration.
About 127 members still need to cast their vote, and as they do, we'll show some of our very own Washington Journal.
He's a member of the Armed Services Subcommittee and also sits on the Agriculture Committee.
Congressman, I want to begin with the economy.
The Associated Press out with a new poll that found only 31% of U.S. adults now approve of how President Trump is handling the economy.
Paired with that is the front page of USA Today with the headline, Poll finds inflation taking a heavy toll.
President Downplays Affordability Concerns.
We also saw Newt Gingrich telling the Hill newspaper that if the economy doesn't turn around, it's not going to be good for Republicans in the midterm elections.
What role should Congress play in the strikes that we're seeing from this administration in the Caribbean and Latin America against alleged drug runners on these boats?
The opposition leader who won the Nobel Peace Prize, the opposition leader in Venezuela, the headline in Wall Street Journal this morning is that she hails the U.S. help, saying that the moves like seizing the oil tanker are key in fight for democracy in Venezuela.
I am very reluctant to be supportive of an invasion of Venezuela.
I think it's hard to pressure Maduro and maybe compel a regime change internally with our pressure on sanctions and cutting off the funding from, you know, by taking these boats, taking off the funding that Maduro's relying on.
But again, we don't know what the president's doing because they've said very little.
I wasn't supportive when he was nominated, but when he got confirmed, I said we should give him a chance and prove himself because at that point, we want him to be successful.
Those favoring a vote by the yeas and nays will rise.
A sufficient number having risen, the yeas and nays are ordered.
Members will record their votes by electronic device.
This is a five-minute vote.
unidentified
And this is the last vote expected today in the House.
Final passage of legislation aimed at expediting the permitting process of certain natural gas pipeline projects and liquefied natural gas import and export terminals.
If it passes here in the House, it'll go into the Senate for consideration.
As lawmakers cast their votes, we'll return to our very own Washington Journal.
On NATO, Ukraine, him and his Undersecretary for Policy, again Mr. Colby, they come off as being very anti-NATO, and they have, I think, been undermining our support of Ukraine at every step.
And this is going to damage us for way beyond their tenure in power.
You know, the NATO countries have been, we've had great relations with them for 75 years.
It's been our foremost alliance to hold the peace.
And I see this administration and Secretary of Defense Hegseth at the lead undermining that alliance.
And it's a shame because it's going to hurt us for many years to come.
We'll go to our first call here from Missouri City, Texas Independent caller, Matt Malik.
Good morning.
unidentified
Hi, you know, this morning, I have three points I'd like to make.
First of all, the House of Representatives, along with Donald Trump and the Republican Party, have not passed, introduced, or even spoken about any bills to address affordability.
In fact, their strategy is to just repeat lies over and over again, hoping their supporters will start to regurgitate those lies, such as gas is $1.97 a gallon.
There's nowhere in the country where gas is $1.97 a gallon.
In fact, the year-to-year average is only $0.06 lower than last year.
Also, secondly, this so-called war on drugs and striking these boats in Venezuela is just completely false.
We have no evidence that these people are carrying drugs.
And in fact, if this were a true war on drugs, wouldn't we revert back to the draconian syndic that black people suffered under the Rockefeller drug laws when three grams of crack cocaine got you 10 years of minimum mandatory sentencing in federal prison?
This is not a war on drugs.
This is the prelude to an invasion of Venezuela because they have oil.
This is Iraq 2.0, and we're being walked into it slowly by a band of buffoons such as Donald Trump, Pete Hegseth, Pam Bondi, and the rest of the cabinet who have done nothing for the American people but spread propaganda and nonsense.
Here's another headline to share with all of you from theson.com.
Seething tyrant raging Maduro vows to break America's teeth after U.S. seizes the Venezuelan ship as Trump shrugs.
I assume we keep the oil.
Let's go to Tyrone in New York.
Democratic caller.
unidentified
My call.
And thanks for coming on and answering questions.
My question is: part of the Republican Party, I call it the Confederate Party, that has been calling for the destruction of our government from when they said they want to make it small enough to drown in the bathtub to the other gentleman, Bannon, talking about deconstructing the administrative state.
Republican Views on Immigration00:03:45
unidentified
These people have been working progressively to make our government, as they said, small enough to drown in the bathtub.
And if you want to drown something in the bathtub, that means you want to kill it.
They complain about the Affordable Care Act when they have worked done nothing but work against trying to make sure this thing don't operate the way that it's supposed to.
Now, I know you are a Republican, and I know you see this stuff that goes on inside your own party.
And I'm wondering, how is it when you see Donald Trump come out and say, you know, we want people from Norway, and they're actively trying to stop legal immigration?
They're grabbing people when they're trying to get legal status in this country.
They break the immigration laws.
They try to make sure that they don't work.
If I'm a thief, a robber, a criminal, I'm going to try to make sure the legal system don't work the way that it's supposed to.
I'm a Reagan Republican, and Reagan Republicans believe in legal immigration.
We don't want illegal immigration.
We want to know who's coming here.
But when we have legal immigration and we bring in people that are nurses, high-skilled, and we need some low-skill or seasonal workers on our agriculture, it works for America.
Without legal immigration, our population would be decreasing.
We'd have a birth rate of 1.8.
Optimally, you want about 2.1.
And it would take legal immigration to make that possible.
And I hear from every major employer, they can't find enough workers.
So we should find, we should try to have a legal immigration that works for our economy and works for our country.
So I would give the caller that.
Also, a Republican principle, if you come from the Reagan side of the party, we do believe in federalism.
We believe in keeping power at the city, the state level, as much as we can.
Congress should be within Article I, Section 8 with the authorities that are in the Constitution there.
But we've gone way beyond that.
And so if you're a Republican of the Reagan vintage, you want to bring us back down and do what the Constitution has asked us to do.
Now, I do think there's been some maybe over exaggeration from some of the folks in the administration, like the colours of drowned in the bathtub.
The Homeland Security Secretary, Christine Noam, faced criticism from Democrats yesterday at an oversight hearing on Capitol Hill about global threats, many of them saying she should resign.
Well, I wouldn't ask her to resign, but I would push her on a couple of areas.
One is CISA.
So right now, we've been downgraded in our cyber defenses by people who have evaluated how we're doing.
So you look at Cyber Command, that's our military arm of cyber.
We've not had a commander there for nine months, roughly, because the administration fired the most, I would say, the most effective, the most knowledgeable man we had on cyber because some crazy lady came into the White House and wanted him fired.
I rise to celebrate a milestone that truly brings a smile.
This week, Dr. William Stewart Mitchell, the third, of Fleming Island, Florida, marks his 100th birthday, a century defined by faith, family, and devoted service to our nation.
Dr. Mitchell graduated valedictorian of Hamilton County High School before entering the Navy in 1943.
Recognizing his talent, the Navy placed him in the B-12 program at Emory University, where he again graduated valedictorian of dental school.
He went on to serve with the 1st Marine Division at Camp LeJeune, providing essential care as a naval officer in the dental corps.
His distinguished career spans sea service, active duty, reserve duty, and retiring as a lieutenant commander.
Mr. Speaker, Dr. Mitchell has built a legacy of excellence and dedication to others.
Today, we honor him as he celebrates 100 years on this planet, and we recognize a life that has given this nation countless reasons to smile.
It's a privilege to share his story with this chamber.
For what purpose does the gentleman from Missouri seek recognition?
Without objection, the gentleman is recognized for one minute.
unidentified
Mr. Speaker, I rise to recognize the Washington University women's soccer team who just secured their second straight Division III national championship.
These student athletes reflect the best of St. Louis.
What they achieved this season didn't happen by accident.
It came from years of work, a culture of accountability, and a shared belief that success in the classroom and success in competition strengthen each other.
St. Louis is proud of them, Washu is proud of them, and their run reminds us that our city grows stronger when we invest in our young people.
I congratulate the players, the coaching staff, and the entire community.
And I'll admit, a lot of us are already looking forward to the three-peat next year.
Without objection, the gentleman is recognized for one minute.
unidentified
Mr. Speaker, I rise to honor the Pioneer High School football team.
The Pioneer Panthers had an incredible season and a well-deserved visit to the 1A State Championship Finals.
While the end of this football season wasn't what the Pioneers team really had hoped for, each and every one of the football players on this team should be proud of the hard work that allowed them to reach the state championship.
Your dedication in every game is an inspiration to your school and to your community.
I also thank the parents, the teachers, the staff, and the coaches for all their contributions and support throughout this football season.
Congratulations to the Pioneer Panthers on reaching the IHSAA 1A Football State Championship.
And I know you will continue to deliver great successes on and off the football field in years to come.
Mr. Speaker, I rise today as this Sunday marks the 13th anniversary of the shooting at Sandy Hook Elementary School in Newtown, Connecticut.
On December 4th, 2012, I'm sorry, December 14th, 2012, a senseless act of gun violence claimed the lives of 20 innocent children and six selfless educators.
This day continues to be one of grave reflection and sadness for the people of Connecticut.
There are no words to describe the heartbreak I felt on that day.
And after all these years, the hurt is still raw, and I still feel that same heaviness.
Communities across the state and the nation remember the stories of those children in that kindergarten class.
We honor their memories and reaffirm a shared commitment to end the epidemic of gun violence.
Today, we remember, reflect, and honor the lives of those we lost and hold the Newtown Sandy Hook community up in prayer.
For what purpose does the gentleman from Virginia seek recognition?
unidentified
I ask unanimous consent to address the House for one minute and to extend my remarks.
objection the gentleman is recognized for one minute all right Mr. Speaker I ask you Mr. Speaker I rise to recognize the 50th anniversary of a great company in my district 50 years ago, Bill Yancey founded HITESS Labs to test naval equipment and ships to make sure they can survive shock and vibration.
Using machines and explosives, HITEST has tested everything from the smallest electronic components to entire completed ships, which requires 40,000 pounds of explosives.
HI-TEST ensures that our sailors and Marines are kept safe and that our ships can continue to fight.
They have a facility which is the biggest and best in the entire world, and their all-American crew of engineers and craftsmen are the best in the world as well.
Located in the 5th District of Virginia, this company is still owned by Bill and is operated by his family, keeps America in the fight on the sea.
Mr. Speaker, we have reached the precipice of a full-blown health care crisis in North Carolina and this country.
ACA tax credits are only weeks away from expiring, and unless Congress acts, an estimated 157,000 North Carolinians will lose their coverage.
This week, I led my North Carolina colleagues in demanding actions from Speaker Johnson.
Where is his strategy?
Where is the plan?
I am the proud co-sponsor of a bipartisan solution to this crisis, but Speaker Johnson refuses to put any bill on the floor for a vote.
Next week is our last legislative week of the year and our last chance to preserve access to life-saving care for our constituents.
On behalf of the people of North Carolina, I am pleading with my Republican colleagues to join Democrats in saving health care for millions of Americans.
Mr. Speaker, I rise today to honor the 125th anniversary of Great Dane.
The company began in 1900 as a Savannah Blowpipe Company in Savannah, Georgia.
What began as a blowpipe company turned into a steel products company, helping shape the transportation industry with trailers, flatbeds, refrigerated and dry freight.
Since then, the company has been expanding past its hosted city routes to 11 different plants across America, employing 4,000 people.
In the 1940s, the company revolutionized food distribution by circulating air over ice blocks to keep things fresh.
In World War II, the company was honored with the Army-Navy Excellence Award for making military-grade trailers to support troops in Europe.
Nine years ago, a state-of-the-art research and development lab opened for the company in Savannah.
Let us celebrate this extraordinary company, whose legacy of innovation, endurance, and excellence continues to shape the world of transportation and inspire future generations.
Mr. Speaker, I rise today because American utility prices are going up, and those currently in charge of this country are doing nothing about it.
My constituents are looking at monthly bills that have increased by 19 percent, and that's not affordability plus plus plus.
Rather than looking for bipartisan solutions to make energy more affordable, this majority in the Trump administration continues to fixate on putting young people back in coal mines and reopening Alaska to oil and gas drilling.
There is no set correlation between more drilling and lower consumer prices.
We must act now to fix our outdated electric grid to bring more renewable energy sources online.
This will make us less reliant on natural gas prices that fluctuate.
This week, the majority brought bills before this House claiming to save Americans money on utility bills, but these bills did nothing to update our electric grid, interconnect clean energy projects, or combat the Trump administration's attacks on clean energy permitting.
While we waste our time on this legislation, I continue to hear from constituents worried about being able to afford the next utility bill.
This is not how Congress should function in the face of an affordability crisis, and this crisis is real.
Nearly four centuries ago, the National Guard was founded in the Massachusetts Bay Colony.
Since then, the National Guard has exemplified the spirit of citizen soldiers, ordinary men and women who answer the call to serve their community and country at a moment's notice.
From the footstep, from the footprints that mark the snows at Valley Forge to the sandy beaches at Normandy, from the skies above Vietnam to the deserts of the Persian Gulf, the National Guard has been there for America every step of the way.
For 389 years, these men and women have represented America's best.
Today, we honor the men and women who have worn the uniform of the National Guard, past and present.
We salute their sacrifice, their courage, and their unwavering dedication to serving the American people through war and peace, disaster and recovery, and every moment in between.
Happy birthday to the National Guard.
Thank you, Mr. Speaker, and I yield back the balance of my time.
Mr. Speaker, today I rise to honor the life of Ms. Candace King.
Candace was a lifelong resident of Prince William County and the beloved daughter of my friend Delegate Kendi Munden King and Deputy Sheriff Joshua King.
Candice was known for her kindness and creativity and ability to brighten every room.
She left a lasting impact on her peers, teachers, and community.
Tragically, Candace passed away from complications with sickle cell disease.
We need to invest more in medical research, expand access to care, and raise greater national attention to this serious disease.
I extend my deepest condolences to Delegate King, Deputy Sheriff King, and their entire family.
Their strength in the face of unimaginable loss is truly inspiring.
I ask my colleagues to join me in honoring the life of Ms. Candace King, who was only 15 years old when she passed.
Mr. Speaker, I rise today to welcome the Swire Coca-Cola manufacturing plant to Colorado Springs.
This week, the company announced a 620,000 square foot facility at Peak Innovation Park near the Colorado Springs Airport, a $475 million investment that will create at least 170 jobs and modernize production for more than 230 beverage options across 60 well-known Coca-Cola brands.
I also congratulate the Colorado Springs Chamber of Commerce for helping bring this economic boost to the Pikes Peak region.
This news shows once again that Colorado Springs is becoming an economic titan of the West and a destination for global brands.
And I'm personally very excited for easier access to my favorite drink, Diet Coke, right in my hometown.
With that, I yield back and thank you, Mr. Speaker.
Without objection, the gentlewoman is recognized for one minute.
unidentified
Mr. Speaker, I rise to recognize George Fox University's women's golf head coach, Mary Jo McCluskey.
In 2006, Coach MJ helped found the women's golf program at George Fox, and since then, she has coached hundreds of talented student athletes.
During her time coaching, she's put together an inspiring track record.
She is an eight-time NCAA Division III West Coach, West Region Coach of the Year, a 10-time Northwest Conference Coach of the Year, and has an NCAA National Championship under her belt.
In addition to coaching her award-winning team, she recently published a book titled When Girls Win, which delves into the personal challenges Coach MJ has faced as a woman in a male-dominated field, while illustrating how people like you and I can build a winning mindset.
Mary Jo has been a fixture at George Fox University, and her hard work and determination led her to be one of two inductees to the Women's Golf Coaches Association's Hall of Fame.
Oregon 6th District is extremely proud of what Coach MJ has achieved.
Her tremendous honor is not only a testament to the investment she has made in herself, but also her family, her community, and most importantly, to her team.
I rise today to recognize my friend, Ms. Emma Hall, my Deputy Chief of Staff and the first and only communication director since the beginning of my journey here to D.C. Emma has served in my office and constituents of Utah's 4th District for nearly five years.
During this time, I've come to rely on her sharp instincts, her keen attention to details, and unwavering commitment to keeping my constituents back home informed of the day-to-day efforts here in D.C.
It is often said in Congress, if we do not communicate what we're doing, folks back home will assume we're doing nothing.
With relentless consistency, every bill, letter, hearing, and town hall meeting has been communicated with my constituents with professionalism, clarity, and if I may say, refinement.
Ms. Hall is meticulously organized, with tasks completed weeks ahead of schedule.
Nothing is left for the last minute.
She is the heart and soul of our team.
No birthday is forgotten without a card, cake, or celebration.
Over these years, last five years, her leadership and thoughtfulness has helped in an effort to make my team feel like a family.
And for that, Emma will always remain a member of Team Loins.
Emma, our entire team will miss you, and we wish you the very best of your new endeavor.
Mr. Speaker, I rise today out of deep concern for the direction of our nation.
Immigration policies restricting green card holders, banning asylum seekers from 19 third world countries, cutting their work visas, and terminating TPS will have dire economic consequences.
Immigrants have sustained America's economy for generations, and in my home state of Florida, they make up over 30% of our workforce and contribute more than $170 billion in spending power.
Many industries such as construction, agriculture, hospitality, and health care are already suffering severe shortages.
Ending TPS for nearly half a million Haitians and Venezuelans will devastate these sectors, and the blatant ban on 19 countries will block the students, nurses, entrepreneurs, scientists, and drive American innovation to a stagnation.
It blocks the next Einstein and the next Carnegie.
We need strategic policies that are workforce-driven, create merit-based pathways, and expand skills trainings for Americans to meet this moment.
I urge this chamber to support immigration systems that strengthen American families, businesses, and our economy.
Mr. Speaker, I rise today to honor Lieutenant Sarah McCarthy, who recently passed in the line of duty in St. Charles County at the St. Charles County Ambulance District.
As a former physician, I know firsthand the dedication and compassion required of those who answered the call in our emergency medical services.
And Sarah lived that calling for 23 years.
Her final act of generosity was as an organ donor, reminding us that once again of her deep commitment to saving lives, even in her final moments.
Throughout her service, she cared for thousands of patients, contributed proudly to the St. Louis St. Charles County Honor Guard, and played an important role in the STARS program supporting children with special medical needs.
Her colleagues remember her as someone who never hesitated to step forward for those in need.
Lieutenant McCarthy embodied the very best of her profession, and she will be deeply missed.
Mr. Speaker, this week I introduce articles to impeach Secretary Pete Hexet for murder and conspiracy to murder and reckless and unlawful mishandling of classified information.
From issuing orders to kill everybody on board a small boat with no evidence of wrongdoing to launching a follow-up strike to finish off survivors barely clinging to their life, his actions are not just reprehensible, but illegal as well.
He also put lives of our own troops in danger by leaking classified war plants in an unauthorized signal chat.
Former military attorneys have come out and asserted that his actions have risen to the level of war crimes.
Mr. Hexett must resign from his position or be impeached by this House.
Mr. Speaker, I rise today to honor the life and extraordinary service of retired Schuyler County Sheriff William E. Yesman Jr., whose passing on November 29th is deeply felt across the community that he faithfully served for more than three decades.
Sheriff Yesman began his service to our nation and the United States Coast Guard, demonstrating the duty, discipline, and integrity that would define his long career in law enforcement.
He joined the Schuyler County Sheriff's Office in 1985 and over 36 years rose to the ranks to ultimately serve and be elected as sheriff.
More than the top law enforcement officer, he was a mentor that shaped the careers of countless officers and strengthened the department that he loved so much.
His steady guidance, professionalism, and deep commitment to public safety have left an indelible mark on his entire community.
Mr. Speaker, I ask that the House join me in honoring Sheriff Yesman for his lifetime of exemplary service and in extending our deep condolences to his wife Ann and his son Sergeant Andrew Yesman and the entire Yesman family.
Mr. Speaker, I rise today to recognize the Minneapolis Fire Department for the historic assembly of their first all-native fire crew.
Manned by Captain Michael Graves, fire motor operator Jesse Strong, and firefighters Johnny Crowe and Bobby Hedberg, the new crew operates Engine 10 out of the firehouse number six in Minneapolis.
The four firefighters share one goal, to build trust between the department and the communities it serves.
Beyond responding to fire and emergency medical calls across South Minneapolis, the crew makes diligent efforts to attend community events and ensure young kids see their identities represented in public service.
I'm incredibly grateful for the work they do to keep our city safe and inspire future generations to give back to their communities.
Mr. Speaker, affordability, the buzzword of late, well, it's also the key word in the Affordable Care Act, which kicked in well over a decade ago now.
And where are we at now?
We're about to run into a cliff here at the end of this month because it isn't affordable and it can't be paid for by conventional means.
Instead, we have to pave over it with either borrowed money and what makes things unaffordable to begin with in the medical industry.
Mandates, whether it's on hospitals, whether it's on doctors, whether it's on any aspect of the cost of equipment.
Again, energy.
Energy is a big part of everything, just to run our buildings, just to run our offices, just to run the clinics.
But the mandates that we have to, that are saddled upon our hospitals, for example, my home state of California.
Earthquake mandates that go back three decades where hospitals that are perfectly good shape and non-earthquake zones, yet they have to be replaced and spend millions and millions to be brought up to code.
When they change the rules in the middle of the game, when you're building or remodeling a hospital and they approve a plan, and at the end of the plan, at the end of the construction, they make you change the plan and request brand new equipment.
They're making it unaffordable with mandates with rules that are not conducive towards delivering health care.
I rise today to honor the exceptional service of Mayor Kathy Sheehan as she prepares to retire at the end of this year after three impactful terms, leading the City of Albany.
Since taking office as Albany's 75th and first female mayor, Mayor Sheehan has been a tireless advocate for equity, opportunity, and responsive government, giving every neighborhood and every resident a chance to shape the city's future.
Her steadfast leadership has ensured that key federal and local investments were put to work effectively, lifting up families, strengthening local businesses, improving transportation, and preserving the vibrancy and the character that make Albany such a special place.
It has been one of the greatest honors of my service in Congress to support her passionate efforts to build a stronger, fairer, and yes, more reliant city, a more resilient city.
On behalf of the entire 20th Congressional District, I offer my heartfelt congratulations to Mayor Sheehan on a well-earned retirement.
And while she may be stepping away from City Hall, I know her leadership, her principles, and her example will continue to guide and inspire Albany for many years to come.
This fabulous woman is Asia Wilson, who was named Times 2025 Athlete of the Year.
She became the first player in either the WNBA or the NBA to win championship, claim the scoring title, and be named finals MVP, league MVP, and defensive player of the year, all in one season.
Her impact was pivotal as the Las Vegas Aces won a record 16 straight games at the end of the regular season and then swept the finals to capture their third championship in four years.
But beyond those statistics, Asia continues to elevate the sport.
She inspires young girls and she uses her platform to advance equity and empowerment across women's basketball.
We all want to be like Asia.
Beautiful, smart, talented, and kind.
Thank you.
Congratulations.
And we are so, so proud of you in Las Vegas District 1.
Mr. Speaker, I rise today to sound the alarm across Ohio.
The Trump administration has recklessly frozen all of Ohio's manufacturing extension partnership offices.
I repeat, manufacturing extension offices.
Members of Congress on both sides of the aisle have worked hard to grow manufacturing jobs in America in places we represent to recover from the four decades of outsourcing of U.S. production.
I'm really shocked at what they've done.
This impulsive decision is a direct blow to family-owned businesses and American entrepreneurs competing against communist China, Mexico, and every other low-wage haven in the world.
This decision delays critical upgrades, injects uncertainty into local production lines, undermines new jobs being created, and undermines every worker this nation depends upon.
The Department of Commerce should release and restore these job-creating dollars immediately.
Congress voted for them.
They should be expended.
If the Trump administration can send $40 billion off to Argentina to buy foreign beef that hurts Ohio cattlemen, they ought to restore this support to boost U.S. factories, companies, and new jobs here at home.
This is simply unbelievable.
And by the way, the U.S. Commerce Department Secretary is a Wall Street magnate.
He doesn't understand what it takes to create manufacturing jobs in this country.
Mr. Speaker, I would like to remind us on how this nation used to do its children.
Before 1975, this country locked up 200,000 disabled children and institutions.
We shut the schoolhouse door on children who were deaf, children who were blind or different in any way that we deemed inconvenient.
Then parents and advocates and attorneys, they fought and they won.
We passed laws on this floor that said every child in this nation belongs.
And we created the Office of Civil Rights and the Department of Education to enforce those promises in real time and to investigate complaints.
Earlier this year, employees in this office were fired.
They were dismissed.
Now over 25,000 families are waiting for justice on their complaints.
The Trump administration just requested some of these attorneys temporarily come back to work this week to clean up the mess that the administration caused.
But students and their families have already paid the price.
The dismantling of the Department of Education is not reform.
This is resurrection of abandonment.
Children deserve protection and not pathology, and I'll yield back.
Mr. Speaker, I rise today to address an issue which unites all of us, protecting our youth and protecting almost everyone online.
This week, Australia implemented a social media ban for kids under the age of 16.
Well, I don't suggest the U.S. mirror Australia or EU regs exactly.
It demonstrates global pushback on big tech's unregulated impact on our privacy, our safety, and our well-being, particularly for our children.
For too long, these companies have operated powerful systems with little oversight and no guardrails, with an aim to prioritize profits over our health and our safety.
Before I came to Congress, I worked as a comm attorney and nonprofit advocate for common sense media, advocating on these issues.
It is in this life work that compelled me to join Rep Kennedy of Utah in introducing the bipartisan Algorithm Accountability Act.
Platforms must begin to be held accountable for designing, testing, and operating platforms safely and to be responsible for foreseeable injuries or for harm to its users, particularly to children.
Under the Speaker's announced policy of January 3rd, 2025, the gentleman from Texas, Mr. Green, is recognized for 60 minutes as the designee of the minority leader.
Mr. Speaker, and still I rise, a proud, liberated Democrat, unbought, unbossed, and unafraid.
I rise today because I believe in the Pledge of Allegiance.
I am known to wear this tie that has what I consider a meaning that expresses much of what the pledge is all about.
There are many people who have said to me that the tie is old, that it appears to be soiled and stained.
But it's my favorite tie.
It's a tie that I will never surrender.
It's a tie that means something to me because it stands for something.
It stands for the Pledge of Allegiance.
More appropriately, it stands for some specific words within that pledge.
Those words are liberty and justice for all.
Liberty and justice for all.
I do pledge allegiance to liberty and justice for all.
And I rise today to thank the courageous persons who on just yesterday took a stand for liberty and justice for all.
I rise to thank the 140 persons who on yesterday voted to support H. Res 939, House Resolution 939.
This resolution, House 939, impeaching Donald John Trump, President of the United States, for high crimes and misdemeanors.
I rise to thank the 140 persons who supported this resolution.
I rise to thank the 47 persons who did not oppose what we were doing, but chose to simply say, I will vote present.
That was a significant vote as well.
I rise to thank them.
All of these persons had the courage to say to Donald John Trump, things are changing in this country.
You are likely to face a vote of 218 more persons who would vote to have you impeached.
I rise to thank them for their courage.
But I also rise with my cane in hand to thank two people.
I want to thank John Boniface.
John Boniface.
John Boniface, constitutional scholar, John Boniface.
There are many constitutional scholars in this country.
Let me harken back just a moment to make this point perspicuously clear.
There were many people who understood what invidious discrimination known as segregation, but in fact was racism.
There were many who knew what it was.
They understood it.
They could articulate it well.
They were great orators, but they had something that set them apart from Dr. King.
It was a lack of courage.
Dr. King was set apart from the intellectuals and great orators of his time because he had courage.
It was his courage that allowed him to go to Birmingham and from the Birmingham jail to write a letter that explained why the movement existed and why it was so important.
It was courage.
John Boniface, constitutional scholar par excellence, John Boniface has something that many other constitutional scholars just don't have.
They're brilliant.
They can elucidate and explain to you the Federalist papers in great detail.
They can tell you why you shouldn't and why you should do something.
But they don't have the courage of John Boniface.
The courage to speak not only truth to power.
You can speak truth to power by simply saying power.
There's a problem and we need to address it.
He will speak truth about power, which means you go to power and you say power, there's a problem, and you're it.
You are it.
John Boniface has that kind of power.
John Boniface has that kind of courage.
John Boniface, I thank you for what you have done to help me move impeachment to the floor of the House of Representatives for a vote.
I want history to know who you were.
I want people to know that you left big tracks, big tracks in the sands of time.
I want people to know that you came from one direction and that you proceeded to another, a righteous direction.
I want people to know who you are.
I want people to know who Jessica Denson is, who is the mother, founder of the removal coalition, who believes that impeachment, conviction, and removal, that that's a part of the process, but it is also the solution.
Jessica Denson is a courageous woman, a courageous woman who has a voice that is sometimes amazing to me in terms of how she so clearly articulates the issues of our time.
I want people to know that she had the courage to be there when we were in front of the Lincoln Monument, to be there, to be the key, the cornerstone of the movement that caused us to get to the Lincoln Monument, that she was there to support, but also to push for impeachment, conviction, and removal.
She is truly one of the great patriots of our time.
I thank you for your courage.
I also want to thank the millions of people now who are associating themselves with this courage of Boniface, with this courage of Denson, with this courage of the 140 who on yesterday voted to support H. Res 939, of the 47 who also took a position that I appreciate greatly.
There is courage.
I have to mention courage because these things don't happen simply because you want them to.
It is not easy to do what we did yesterday.
It is not.
There are all sorts of forces, cross currents, winds, all sorts of energy pushing back.
Those who are antithetical to my views, they like to say that Al Green has gone rogue.
It's in the papers today.
Al Green is coming before Congress and he has his cane and he's just waving his cane.
That's what they say.
They would have me become a person who is just another person from some dark place who doesn't know what he's talking about.
So they talk about waving my cane.
Yes, I'm waving my cane.
And I'm pointing it straight at all of you who are antithetical to righteousness, antithetical to what we did yesterday in bringing these articles to a vote.
I'm pointing my cane at you.
I'm pointing at those people who are a part of the news media, who will bring me up and say things about me, but won't allow me to respond to them.
You know who you are.
But as I was saying, I want people to know about this courage and the pushback and the antithetical forces.
I want people to know about it.
And I want people to know that I understand what happened yesterday.
It was comparable to what happened at the Edmund Pettus Bridge.
Yesterday was a seminal moment in time.
It was comparable to what happened.
It was comparable to what happened when John Lewis explained it to me.
What many people never discuss is the fact that there were many people who thought that you shouldn't go to the Edmund Pettus Bridge.
It's too dangerous.
If you go to the Edmund Pettus Bridge, you could be hurt.
You know what the constabulary will do.
There were people who warned them, admonished them, pleaded with some of them, saying, those people will hurt you.
These people are inspired by hate.
There's some evil people among them.
It was courage, however, that said, go on to the Edmund Pettus Bridge.
Go on to the Edmund Pettus Bridge.
Not only did they go, but when they reached that crest, they could see a point where the constabulary was there, some on horseback.
And they knew at that point that some of those people who admonished them were right.
But they marched on.
They did not allow fear to prevent them from doing a righteous thing, even when they knew the consequences could be harmful.
I keep saying it, and I'll say it until I make my transition.
John Lewis told me that he thought he was going to die on that bridge.
But he marched on.
Yesterday, in spite of a lot of admonitions, people marched on.
People marched on and they took a courageous vote.
A vote that is going to be marked as a seminal moment in time.
A vote that will have an impact on the rest of time.
Because it sent a message to a reckless, ruthless, lawless president, indicating that your time in office as a reckless, ruthless, lawless president, that time, your days are numbered.
No one wants to see you harmed physically.
That's not the case.
But there are people who do not believe that you should serve out this term of office given your behavior in office.
There are people who believe that you ought to be impeached, you ought to be convicted, and you ought to be removed.
I am one of the people.
I am one of the people.
We, the people of the removal movement, believe that you, sir, should be an example of what a righteous government will do when a person who would subvert the Constitution has slithered his way into office.
You, sir, should be the example.
You, sir, by your behavior, by your actions, by your words, by your deeds, you, sir, should not hold the title President of the United States of America.
And you should be removed.
I know that there are some who would want to wait.
Well, he'll leave office in a couple of years.
And after he leaves office in a couple of years, we'll get back to our normal lives.
This man is having a long-term impact on American society.
Not the case.
There are others who want to mimic him.
There are many Trumps.
Not many in terms of numbers, although I could argue that there are large numbers.
But there are many in terms of being smaller now who would like to enlarge their persona, enlarge their image, enlarge their reach, enlarge their power.
Many Trumps who want to be another Donald Trump.
They're out there.
And we need to do something to let people know that when you behave as he has behaved, justice will be served.
Yesterday, the sword of justice swung across the House of Representatives and it left its indelible mark.
People know now that we mean business.
Yes, we mean business.
So to the millions of people who have joined the impeach, convict, and removal coalition, I thank you for being there.
And you got a right to say it without having someone indicate that you somehow have done something wrong and that you somehow ought to be hanged.
Now I'll say more about that in just a moment.
I have much to say about that.
But before I say it, I want to say this.
If you, any one of you, if I, if I threaten the President of the United States of America, got a punishment here in my hand.
If you're convicted under 18 USC, Section 871, of threatening the President of the United States, you can suffer consequences, including up to five years in a federal prison, fines of $250,000, a permanent felony record, possible restrictions on future employment,
firearm ownership, and other rights.
So now, if I or any one of you should indicate in some way that the president ought to somehow receive a death sentence,
or if I or one of you should indicate that the president ought to be hanged, I guarantee you this president would have you arrested.
I guarantee you you would be incarcerated.
I guarantee you, because you can indict a ham sandwich, they say, you would be indicted, and I guarantee you you would go to trial.
If you do something that is considered threatening, if you say, here's a good word, if you say the president ought to receive death, be punishable by death, or if you say that he ought to be hanged, as the president has said here when he posted a third party's post indicating hang them, Washington would.
indicating here that their behavior was seditious behavior punishable by death.
Now I'm talking about the persons who did the right thing, the righteous thing, the lawful thing of saying to people in the military, don't follow illegal orders.
And they find themselves, not the president, but themselves being suspect.
The president who has threatened execution, people don't want him impeached.
Some.
Now there are some who do, but they have various reasons for why they can't take the stand.
They can't say it.
Well, I can.
So for all of you who want to say it and can't say it, I'm saying it for you.
I'm saying he should have been impeached.
I'm saying that if ever there was a president in the history of the United States of America who should be impeached, it is Donald John Trump.
What he said he should be impeached for.
Now, there are people who would say, well, you do know that he went over to Fox News, that he slithered his way over there.
And after being there, he indicated that he didn't intend for anybody to be killed.
Maybe not in those exact words.
But he didn't intend.
He didn't intend for that to be the case.
Do you really think that if I said the president ought to be hanged, that I could go over to Fox, well, Fox wouldn't allow me to say it, but some news source and say, oh, no, no, no, forgive me, I made a mistake.
It was a slip of my tongue.
No.
This president would not allow it.
He would consider this a threat.
I'd be facing a fine.
I'd be facing going to prison.
But the president is with impunity, saving what happened yesterday, with impunity, making threats against judges, making threats against members of Congress.
And for those who say, well, that's just Congress and they're just judges.
Let me tell you how it impacts your life.
If you go before one of the judges that the president has threatened and you believe that the president's threats can make a difference, will you question the judgment of the judge he puts in the judiciary in question, the judgments, when he can intimidate judges to the extent that you think judges are acting because of the president's actions that he's taken against the judge?
This is bigger than you are as a person.
It's about all of us as people threatening the judiciary, threatening the independence of the judiciary, not respecting the separation of powers.
We want to believe that the judge is going to be objective, that he's not going to be subjected, that he's not going to, or she's not going to subject her most precious judicious thoughts to the whims of a president who is reckless, ruthless, and lawless.
That's what you want to believe.
Okay, well, maybe that takes care of the judges, Congressman Green, but what about members of Congress?
He's just threatening them.
Remember, we had a member of Congress who was wounded.
There was an attempt to assassinate her.
There were innocent bystanders there with her who were harmed.
Deadly.
It's about all of us.
It's about when we are out in the public.
It's about some person taking to heart what the president said when he said death, when he said, hang them.
It's about all of us.
So I have no regrets for what I have done.
Zero.
And would challenge anyone to come and stand over here or here and stand with me.
I challenge you to come and stand and point out why I shouldn't have done what I've done or we shouldn't have done what we have done, meaning those who are part of the removal coalition.
Come, I challenge you.
Let's talk before the world.
Any one of you.
I'm proud of what I've done.
I would do it again.
I want you to know that in doing this, we are putting the country above some people.
We are because it's the country that contains all of the people.
All of the people are more important than some one or two, ten people, maybe, maybe 23.
More important than 23 people.
It's the country we're trying to save.
Well, how do you save the country without having control of the House of Representatives, Al by showing the country that what is happening to this country is going to cause us to dissolve into something that we have been fighting?
We're already at the point of having a person who is less, maybe less than a dictator, but an authoritarian.
We're getting close.
When the president controls one side of the aisle that has a majority, the Republicans, when a president, and that's in the House, controls one side of the aisle called Republicans in the Senate, when a president has stacked the Supreme Court of the United States, yes, he stacked the deck.
When he stacked the Supreme Court and he's got rulings that people never thought the Supreme Court would render, all that's left is impeachment.
That's all that's left.
And there are those who will say, well, let's just wait.
Why don't we wait?
They told Dr. King to wait.
One of the things that Dr. King said in response to this notion that we must wait, one of the things that he said was, the time is always right to do what is right.
So now, I say to you, what we did yesterday was not only right, it was righteous.
Because everything in those articles is true.
It's righteous.
And we don't have constitutional scholars coming out and saying, well, it really doesn't comply with federalist number of whatever.
That's not the argument.
The argument is, this is not the time.
I differ.
The time, as Dr. King put it, is always right to do what is right.
Now, Dr. King didn't expect everybody to do what was right when he was doing it.
And I don't expect everybody who believes that what we're doing is right but won't do it themselves to do what is right with us.
I understand.
But what I don't want you to do, and I beg that you not do, is assault the people who are standing up for you in clever language.
Don't do that.
Don't assault us.
We may fight back, but don't do that.
I'm not, I have bigger things to do.
I'm not going to say ugly things.
But my point is, this is bigger than any one of us in this Congress.
It is bigger than the Congress, House, and the Senate together and the judiciary.
What kind of country will he leave when he leaves office?
That's what we're dealing with.
And my friends across the aisle are very much aware of how he is encroaching upon the separation of powers, the judiciary, how he is threatening the Supreme Court and threatening judges with abusive, vituperative language.
When you threaten one judge, you're threatening them all.
So let's not kid ourselves.
He's doing it.
So now I'm going to share this with you.
I know who this president is.
I want to make sure that you understand that I'm going to a different topic in sharing with you who he is.
But I want to tell you who he is.
Because in telling you who he is, I will be going to a different topic.
I've made my point about impeachment.
But I want to tell you who he is.
Because I've seen him before.
I know him.
This is a different topic now because there's more to be said about this president than what was said in the Articles of Impeachment.
And I want to say that more that has to be said at this time about who he is that wasn't in the Articles of Impeachment.
And to say that, I'm going to move to another podium.
I'm going to move to another podium.
So give me just a moment as I move to another podium.
And still I rise, Mr. Speaker, and I rise now to explain to the world who Donald John Trump is.
I've seen him before.
I've seen his cousins.
I've seen his relatives.
I'm going to tell you who he is.
I saw him on June 11th of 1963 when he stood in the schoolhouse door.
He was George Wallace.
I saw him.
When he fought desegregation in this country, I saw him.
He metamorphoses.
He changes.
He's a ship.
Ship shafer.
Changes his makeup, his appearance.
Now, those who are going to take that literally and say, gosh, he thinks that Donald Trump was George Wallace.
But there are other people who understand that I'm saying George Washington was a forerunner of Donald Trump.
So I saw him.
I know who he is.
He wasn't Washington, but he's, in a sense, his cousin.
He was George Washington's cousin.
He's a relative.
Not because of ethnicity, not because of race, but because of behavior, relative in terms of they're related in terms of their behavior.
I know who he is.
I saw him in 1964 when he was Lester Maddox and he had an axe handle and he used his axe handle to threaten people of color.
I saw him with that axe handle when he wouldn't allow black people into his restaurant.
I know who he is.
I saw his cousin, Milton Friedman, Nobel laureate, when after the Brown versus the Board of Education decision was rendered, he went public and said, let's use vouchers to maintain segregation.
That's another way of saying, let's use vouchers to maintain racism because that's what segregation was.
It was racism.
I know who he is because I've read about him and what he did on May 18th of 1869 in Plessy versus Ferguson, the case that allowed invidious discrimination to bloom and blossom and permeate society.
I know who he is.
Some of you don't know.
You've not had a chance to review his history as I have.
I know his cousins.
I know his relatives.
I know who he is because I've read about what his relatives did on March 6th of 1857 in Dred Scott versus Sanford when they concluded this Chief Justice that a black person had no rights that a white person had to respect.
I know who he is.
I know the people that were there before him to pave the way for him to do what he's doing now.
I know him.
And because I know him, I have to fight him.
I know what he did in my lifetime.
He didn't have a personal hand in what happened.
But when I say he did, I'm talking about the people that have made it possible for him to do what he's doing now.
So let's just say I know what they did, so that Fox News and some of the many others who are antithetical to hearing the truth, maybe they won't obliterate the truth to the extent that they're perfectly capable of doing.
But here's what I know.
I know what happened in my lifetime when I had to go to the back door to get my food.
I remember when I had to drink from a filthy colored water fountain, when there was a pristine white water fountain right next to me.
Well, you're saying that's not happening right now.
No.
But we're headed in that direction.
We're headed in that direction.
I don't want to return to that past where I was a suspect simply because of the color of my skin.
I was a suspect.
We are now at a point in this country to tie this together where there are people who are suspect because of the way they look, just as I was a suspect, because of the way I looked.
If you are Latino in the United States of America, given the behavior of the king's men, that would be President Trump.
Given the behavior of the king's men, you are suspect.
You are a suspect.
And the king's men can show up with a mask, faces covered, collect you.
That's a very kind way of saying it.
Put you in some vehicle and then storm away to some distant place.
Lock you up.
Relatives don't know where you are.
No due process.
I know, I know who you are.
I know where you're going.
I know what you want to do.
I've suffered what you would return if you could.
I know.
Yes.
I see how you have decided that you and you alone determine what the law is in this country.
You and you alone will decide whether a person should be locked up or released.
Unlike what the Constitution requires.
I know who you are.
I understand that there's an attempt to roll back the clock.
People of color are becoming suspect in this country.
Now, you can be African American, you can be Asian, you can be Latino, but we're moving toward your being suspect.
But there are people of goodwill of all colors who are going to fight this.
I pray that we will succeed.
People of goodwill who are white who are standing with us.
But it's easy to see if you care to look at how the president has now said, yes, I said they were ass-hole countries.
Yes, I said it.
How the president is now saying, in South Africa, there's genocide.
We'll bring in the white South Africans.
But if you're from one of the 19 countries, actually, it's 18 that are predominated by people of color, we've got to put a hold on you.
Look, there is no one so blind as he who won't see, not he who can't, but he who chooses not to see.
I know who he is.
I know what he's done to lay the foundation.
Not him personally, but the many who came before him and who know how to use hate as a weapon to change society.
And that's what he's doing.
He's using hate.
He's using beneficial bigotry.
How does beneficial bigotry work, Al Green?
Well, here's how it works.
You go to someone who is a principled person, someone who has been fighting for liberty and justice for all, and you do them a favor.
And in exchange for that favor, you only require one thing: loyalty.
Just give me your loyalty.
Give me your loyalty in the future.
The thing that he has done can sometimes be a benefit to the person.
Most of the time it is.
But it can also be detrimental to some other people.
He uses beneficial bigotry.
Beneficial bigotry.
It is beneficial bigotry that he has used against the Palestinians.
It is.
It is.
Beneficial bigotry to say that they should be obliterated.
To say that the Palestinians don't deserve a country.
Used it to do all that he can to eliminate the possibility of a two-state solution.
That plan that he has is nothing more than a land grab.
I know who he is.
I see what he's doing.
And others do too.
They just don't have the ability to stand in the well of the House of Representatives and say it.
So I'm saying it.
Yes, he's a beneficial bigot.
And then those who benefit from his bigotry, they are loyal to him.
People who would never allow a person to do such a thing if he hadn't done favors for them.
They would speak out and speak up against his bigotry.
But they don't because he's done favors.
Those who are part of the evangelical movement, they see what's happening to the country.
They have an opportunity to preach on Sunday all of the righteousness.
And then on Monday, they benefit from the bigotry.
And as a result, righteousness becomes secondary to the loyalty that they pledged because he did something for them.
So I'm saying to you, dear friends, in this part of my message today, I'm not going to relent.
There are some who would have me go away.
There are some who've already indicated there was a news story out today about how I'll be defeated at the next election and I'll just become a part of a bygone history.
They've already prognosticated my defeat, called me a rogue.
Well, friends, all of this may happen, but I'll say this to you.
It won't change my opinions and it won't change who I am.
I believe in this flag.
I believe in liberty and justice for all.
I don't support beneficial bigotry.
I don't support people who would desecrate what the flag really means as it relates to the Constitution.
Those were not the last articles of impeachment that will be brought to the floor.
Those yesterday, HRES 939, they're not the last to be brought to the floor for a vote to remove Donald John Trump from office.
Mr. Speaker, first, before I begin, I ask unanimous consent that when the House adjourns today, it adjourned to meet at noon on Monday next for morning hour debate and 2 p.m. for legislative business.
Without objection.
Under the Speaker's announced policy of January 3rd, 2025, the gentleman from Texas, Mr. Roy, is recognized for 60 minutes as the designee of the majority leader.
Well, I thank the Speaker, and it's great to have had the chance last night to be at the White House with the President and his cabinet, my colleagues,
obviously celebrating the Christmas season and our collective belief that this season is particularly important for the American people in recognition of who we are as a people and as a Judeo-Christian society in celebrating the birth of our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ.
And it's not just a holiday for white lights and garland and making merry.
It is a holiday that serves at the center of who we are as a people.
As the Speaker knows, sitting there in the Speaker's chair under In God We Trust, it is that collective faith that we have in the Lord Almighty and our collective belief in his Son that has served at the core of the strength of this country from its founding.
And I'm going to talk about two things today that are related to that.
One is a policy issue.
That issue is the ability of the American people to get health care and care for one another.
And the other is defending our Judeo-Christian heritage and Western civilization from the onslaught of those that wish to push the Islamification of our country into the forefront.
And I'm going to start on the point of the policy of health care because I think it goes to the central problem we face as a people right now.
A lot of folks are talking about, quote, affordability.
It's become the political hot button buzzword, affordability.
This is being driven intentionally by my colleagues on the other side of the aisle because they've got virtually nothing to run on.
And so they made a choice to shut the government down in order to set up a fight and to try to elevate the issue of health care because they believe they can win on it politically.
So I want everybody to think about that for a minute.
They shut down the government because they want to politicize the issue of health care, not actually work to solve the problem.
Republicans, in my view, have avoided the issue of health care out of political fear, historically.
I believe that this Republican Congress, this Republican House and Senate, and this Republican-led White House has the opportunity today to transform health care for the American people so that it can be affordable, so that they can have choice, so they can go to the doctor of their choice, to empower doctors and patients, not insurance bureaucrats and government bureaucrats.
And I want to repeat that again, because I'm going to engage in a colloquy and yield to my friend from Missouri in a moment on this important topic.
Right now, the average American family is getting crushed, unable to afford health care, because Democrats broke our health care system.
I want to be very clear.
Democrats knowingly chose to break the American health care system 15 years ago.
We told the world what would happen, and it has come true.
American families and the businesses that employ most of them, they're spending about $25,000 a year for insurance premiums that give them fewer options, restrictions on what they can do, higher co-pays, higher deductibles, and fundamentally makes it impossible for them to have actual care.
And I go back to my point about In God We Trust and celebrating the Christmas season.
And as Christians, we are called to take care of those less fortunate than we are.
We are called to help those who need help.
That is why if you go look at so many of our hospitals historically that were nonprofits built up from faith-centered institutions.
That's why there's so many hospitals or saints fill-in-the-blank hospital.
Because Christians came together to say we should care for those who need help.
But then came in government.
In all of its infinite wisdom, government came in and regulated health care, restricted our options, socialized the payments.
And now what is the result?
An impossibility of the average American family to be able to actually get health care from the doctor of their choice.
The inability to go get insurance that will give them comfort that if the cancer that I got in 2011 hits them, that they'll be able to go get care because they can't afford it.
And they can't afford it because we broke it.
And we didn't break it.
Democrats broke it.
And right now, Republicans have a choice.
Go along with Democrats to continue to socialize health care, continue to enrich insurance companies, continue to take away options from the American people, or stand up for health care freedom.
Stand up for the ability of an average American family to be able to go to the doctor of their choice, get insurance, go have health-sharing ministries, go to MediShare, be able to defray cost rather than having constrained, regulated, no-option, expensive health management by bureaucrats.
That's what we have.
The fact is, there's this big debate right now about so-called subsidies.
I want to be very clear about what we're talking about.
We're talking about COVID-era pandemic cash that was thrown out into our economy, in this case, for some plus-ups for some subsidies for the broken Obamacare system.
And now we're five years removed from COVID, and my Democrat colleagues are trying to say that if we don't extend those subsidies, somehow we're denying people health care.
That's just flat false.
It's a lie.
The fact is, Obamacare remains in place.
Its subsidy structure remains in place, for better or worse.
And those subsidies that they're talking about would literally go into the pockets of insurance companies whose profits are up a thousand plus percent over the last decade.
It is an insurance enrichment scheme.
My Democratic colleagues broke health care, and now they are down here saying we must give more money to insurance companies.
That's what they're saying.
And any Republican who goes along with that needs to answer for doing the same thing.
Why would we give more money to the insurance companies that saddled up with government to enrich themselves rather than help the American people?
85% of all Affordable Care Act revenue insurers receive comes from the federal taxpayers.
85% of all of the revenue, I should say, that the insurers receive are coming from the federal taxpayers.
Insurers received at least $35 billion in federal subsidies in 2024 for people who didn't use their plan a single time.
$35 billion went into the pockets of insurance companies for people who didn't even use their plan.
I want to say this, then I'm going to yield to my friend from Missouri.
We have solutions.
When people say Republicans don't have a plan, it's false.
We've put out plans.
We've put out solutions.
We have solutions.
We believe in expanding people's access to care by empowering them with the same tax treatment, equal tax treatment that corporations get.
Individuals should get the same tax deductions and tax breaks to be able to have health care.
We believe in expanded health savings accounts that you can use for direct primary care to go to a doctor, have that doctor's cell phone number, have a relationship with that doctor, not be put into some complicated scheme where you have to get approval for somebody who's in network or not in network, who may or may not be within 100 miles of your house.
We want American people to be empowered.
We want them to be able to go defray costs and share costs in health sharing ministries and MediShare and all these different organizations that are, frankly, the last lifeboat that people have right now for access to care.
We want to allow providers to own hospitals rather than being restricted from being able to do that so that the corporate monolithic hospitals are the only option.
We want a thousand flowers to bloom for people to have the freedom option.
And guess what?
You can leave Obamacare, the Affordable Care Act structure all in place.
Leave it all sitting there.
But just provide the American family with a freedom option.
Allow them to have choice.
Shouldn't that be our right in America?
People talk about a right to health care.
What they're really saying with that is that government should be providing health care rather than the individual, the family, being able to have the right to get the care of their choice.
What on earth kind of freedom do you have in a country where you literally can't go get health care?
You're prohibited from it.
The government has stopped us from exercising our freedom.
We have plans.
What we don't have is the backbone and the willpower to stand up and deliver.
And I say do it now.
I say stand up and fight for health care freedom now.
I'm tired of it.
I don't want another election.
I don't want another, don't worry, we'll do it next time.
I want to do it now because too many people are suffering at the hands of a bureaucracy and the tyranny of government-run health management rather than the ability to get care.
The current situation with respect to health care exists entirely by record of vote and a record of policies because my Democrat colleagues put forward policies that the American people are having to live under today.
They broke the health care system.
My Democratic colleagues are proposing an insurance company enrichment scheme.
Literally, they are printing money in the treasury and giving it to insurance companies.
Their solution for health care is enriching insurance companies.
Our solution for health care is empowering doctors.
Our solution for health care is empowering people.
Our solution for health care is spreading costs out among people who want to help each other out in the American way.
It is why I started talking about Christmas.
The question for Republicans is, if not now, when?
When are we going to stand up and deliver for the American people that basic right, I will say it, right to access health care of our choice without government interfering, without government regulating, without stealing our ability to care for our own families and loved ones in our community.
I know my friend from Missouri feels the same way.
He's done incredible work on this subject.
We are aligned, I think almost entirely, on the opportunity for Republicans to lead, the opportunity for Republicans to stand up and deliver for the American people on health care freedom for every American.
I thank the gentleman from Texas for yielding and thank you for your passion and leadership on this topic and many others.
Mr. Speaker, today I rise to address one of the most urgent issues facing the American family today, which is health care affordability.
Under the Biden administration, inflation surged to levels that we haven't seen in decades, in generations, and health care costs rose right along with it, driving premiums, deductibles, and out-of-pocket expenses higher and higher and higher for families across this country.
Whether you're in an employer-sponsored plan or whether you're in the individual market, it doesn't matter.
The entire thing has been destroyed by the Democratic Party and their schemes.
For years, Washington has told the American people that if we just spend more, if we just mandate more, if we just regulate more, then health care will somehow become cheaper.
It'll become simpler and more humane.
But that promise clearly has failed in a spectacular way.
We're watching it fail out in flames as we speak.
The Affordable Care Act was sold as a solution.
It has locked families instead into a system where premiums keep rising and deductibles keep climbing, networks shrink, and patients are left with coverage that they can't even use and bills that they can't even predict.
Washington inflated the demand with subsidies and mandates, while simultaneously choking off the supply through regulation, licensing barriers, and protection of entrenched interests.
When government pours taxpayer dollars into a system that restricts competition, prices rise, efficiency collapses, and accountability disappears.
And through it all, the one group that was systematically excluded from decision-making is the patient themselves.
That is the fundamental flaw of this current system.
Americans are not allowed to control their own health care dollars.
Instead, those dollars are routed through insurers, through employers and federal agencies that never feel the pain of the cost, and they never face the consequences or have to deal with the time restraints.
Mr. Speaker, when we don't control the money, you don't control the choices.
And contrary to the claim that, as my colleague from Texas has mentioned, that we don't have any ideas, that is not at all the case.
There have been multiple bills that have been sponsored year after year by thought leaders like the gentleman from Texas, but yet they haven't come to the floor for a vote.
They haven't been given ample opportunity.
Well, I'm glad to see that now there's an appetite for this discussion, because this House is already filled with serious, actionable reforms that give Americans real options beyond Obamacare.
I recently co-sponsored or co-signed a letter by Representative Biggs that highlighted 14 distinct health care reform bills that are out there, all of which present much better, more affordable solutions than the current disaster that we're facing with Obamacare.
And that is why I'm promoting a new framework that's called Maha, Make America Healthy Again, a patient-centered alternative that restores choice, restores transparency and affordability without expanding government control or forcing anyone to give up their current coverage.
Maha is built on two simple ideas.
First, Maha Accounts, which are a modern, flexible, tax-free health account that puts individuals and families back in charge of their health care spending.
In essence, this is following through on the things that our president has truthed.
Stop giving the money to the insurance companies.
Give the money to the people.
These accounts allow for Americans to save and spend their own money on the care that they actually choose, the insurance premiums that they want to pay, the direct primary care, long-term care, and wellness expenses like healthy food and fitness.
Imagine encouraging Americans to take their pre-tax dollars and go buy the healthy food that will sustain their family.
Contributions will grow tax-free within these accounts, and families can even help a neighbor in need through a direct tax-advantaged charitable support.
This isn't about micromanagement from Washington.
It's about restoring personal responsibility and real purchasing power.
Second part of Maha is the insurance, which will be a new affordable insurance option that's paired with these accounts that emphasizes transparency, competition, and catastrophic protection rather than all of the bloated mandates.
These plans eliminate unnecessary requirements that have been proven to fail and drive up the costs in Obamacare.
It will cap excessive provider pricing, expand access through telehealth and workforce reforms, and guarantee coverage without annual or lifetime benefits.
Together, the Maha Accounts and Maha Insurance offers something that the Affordable Care Act never did, a real alternative.
And let's be clear, this does not force anyone to abandon their current coverage.
If you like the crappy ACA Obamacare plan that you currently have, you can keep it.
But Americans deserve another option, one that treats them like an adult, not line items in a federal spreadsheet.
Mr. Speaker, the American people are tired of being told that confusion is inevitable, that high costs are unavoidable, and that Washington knows better than they do.
They are tired of a system that protects insurers and institutions and lobbyists while families struggle to make ends meet.
Give the people control over their health care dollars.
We can continue doubling down on a failing system that promises coverage but little care.
Or we can offer Americans a new path, one grounded in freedom, one grounded in responsibility, and trust in the people that we serve.
Mr. Speaker, the American people, and I want to make this very clear, Mr. Speaker, the American people don't want Republicans to do half measures or to tinker around the edges.
They want politicians to stop writing blank checks for a broken system and finally deliver the kind of transformative health care solutions that this country and these people deserve.
Anything less borders on political malfeasance.
unidentified
And with that, I yield back and I thank my colleague from Texas for allowing me this time.
I know my friend from Missouri needs to head home.
Before he heads out, I would just ask him just a couple of quick questions in colloquy.
Does, for the average viewer out there, can't necessarily follow all this, right?
If we distill this down simply, no matter what you call it, no matter how you define it, what we're simply proposing is that individual families, individuals, be able to get the same tax benefit as currently corporations get when they're putting their dollars into a Blue Cross or Aetna or some other insurance plan, right?
So instead of having an employer, because of a broken system, be created by wage controls post-World War II, okay?
Instead of employers only being able to get the tax break when they give dollars into an, you know, get to pays Blue Cross to provide some sort of plans, and then you have to then further subsidize that, right?
So maybe your employer puts in $1,800 and you put in $900 and total it's costing you $2,700 a month.
Instead, we're saying, look, get the same tax break, employer, but put it into a massively expanded tax-free account where you're able to use it for insurance, real insurance, that you can go get catastrophic coverage, or and or direct primary care, all sorts of plans out there where you've got a doctor that says, look, for $100 a month, you can call me.
I'm at your call.
I'll do this kind of service.
And or health sharing, whether it's secular or faith-based, where you have, oh, wait a minute, I don't need catastrophic insurance for this problem.
It's a broken leg.
But I don't have $5,000 for the emergency room visit and all the care and whatnot.
So you share and defray that cost across people in a faith-based organization, often, but sometimes secular.
So isn't that the engine of what we're talking about?
And then would it not require us to simply say you can leave Obamacare in place?
That can sit there, keep doing what it's doing, but we're going to give people this option.
So employers can put it in there.
And if you're self-employed, you can get the same tax break.
It's all equal tax treatment.
Nobody's treated differently.
And we would have a product over here that would allow for true catastrophic insurance, right?
Not regulated, not all sorts of complications, not telling you what you can do, not do, but a risk-based product that says, hi, I'm a healthy 24-year-old.
I would like to just know that if I'm in a bad accident or I get cancer, that I'll be able to have care.
And I will pay $100 a month for that risk assessment, and the insurance companies can figure all that out.
And the last point, to that point, when our Republican colleagues in particular and other colleagues, and they talk about all these things, we need transparency.
We need association health plans.
I support that.
I support transparency, right?
We need to fix some particular technical thing with our existing plans, right?
Whatever these little solutions are, PBMs, right?
There's always, oh, we're going to do something on PBMs.
What will be transformative, right, is giving individuals and patients the power to deploy the dollars in a tax-advantaged way in a marketplace where they can go get the options that's best for them.
In fact, the swampy thing to do, what you would expect this town to normally do, is to tinker with those things and do what they've, what the conventional thought is before, let's tinker with PBMs, let's tinker with this account or this.
And you've got a crappy little engine in there that doesn't work, but you add four-wheel drive and you add leather seats and you do all the stuff to make it a nice truck, but it's got a lawnmower engine in it, would it work?
They fall into the trap of, oh, please give me the leather seats on the F-250, or I really want the four-wheel drive, or I really want a good bedliner and bed cover.
And, oh, give me all the options and music and speakers.
And, oh, it looks great, great running boards.
But you got a frickin' lawnmower engine.
The truck's useless.
We've got to actually transform health care.
And we have the opportunity to do it with proposals like yours, like mine, like a number of proposals our colleagues have.
The question is: will we have the willpower to do what the president has laid out, which is stop subsidizing insurance companies, stop enriching insurance bureaucrats, and empower the American people?
I thank the gentleman first time safe travel back to Missouri.
Hopefully next week we can get busy saving the American people from a broken health care system.
I'm going to take a few minutes in the time that I've remained here to talk about another issue that is critical to the important to the state of Texas and to this entire country.
And that is the fact that America, Texas, and Western civilization are under attack from within.
The cheap labor lobby, left-wing NGOs, radical progressive Democrats, Marxists, globalist organizations, the United Nations, they've mobilized a coordinated effort to subvert our security, our immigration system, to harm the American people.
Particularly concerning is the threat posed by Islamists who are spreading Sharia law into Texas, who are advancing throughout the country, and who have a stated goal of undermining American life, not assimilating into it.
This is a political movement, well-funded, targeted at the American people, Western civilization, our rule of law, and the Constitution.
We should not be allowing more people into this country who are adherent to Sharia law.
Period.
The Muslim Brotherhood's own motto is: Allah is our objective, the Prophet is our leader, the Quran is our law, jihad is our way, dying in the way of Allah is our highest hope.
Meanwhile, Europe has fallen.
London, Paris, mere shells of their former strong self.
You watch veterans who fought to defend the United Kingdom in World War II, those still alive tear up and cry, wondering what it was they fought for when they watch the radical extension of Islam into the streets of London and throughout the United Kingdom.
In France, a majority of young French Muslims put Sharia above their own national laws, and more than a third have sympathy for Islamification.
French officials have warned President Macron that Islamists are infiltrating France's Republican institutions and are a threat to national cohesion.
The authors of the report to Macron identified the Federation of Muslims of France, FMF, as the main French emanation of the historic Muslim Brotherhood, which was founded 100 years ago to promote a return to core Islamic values.
They said the FMF controlled 139 places of worship in France and a further 68 affiliated, in all around 7% of the total.
The organization ran some 280 associations.
Seven out of 10 French voters would back a ban on the Islamic veil in public because of what's happening in France.
In the United Kingdom, Muslims are increasingly turning to Britain's Sharia courts, which are not part of UK law and operate as informal bodies.
The number of Sharia courts in Britain has grown to 85 since the first began operating in the country in 1982.
Polls have found that 41% of the British public believe that Muslim immigrants have had a negative impact on the United Kingdom.
Nearly half think that Muslim women are pressured into wearing the hijab.
And almost a third think that Islam promotes violence.
Parallel legal systems are not keys to a thriving society.
There must be one rule of law for all of the people.
All the way back in 1991, a lot of people won't know this, the Muslim Brotherhood issued a memorandum about North America detailing a plan for, quote, the enablement of Islam in North America, establishing an effective and stable Islamic movement led by the Muslim Brotherhood, which adopts Muslims' causes domestically and globally, and works to expand the observant Muslim base.
It was a coordinated and specific effort to advance Islam into the United States.
Our founders did not envision a nation that remotely resembled today's Muslim world and the radical elements of Sharia.
America was founded as a nation grounded in a distinctly Judeo-Christian history and understanding of human nature.
It was the United States, it was Great Britain that led the ending of slavery.
John Adams said, One great advantage of the Christian religion is that it brings the great principle of the law of nature and nations to the knowledge, belief, and veneration of the whole people.
Thomas Jefferson and John Adams hinted at the incompatibility of America's Republican virtues with the values of Muslim nations after meeting with the Islamic ambassador about the Barbary states' inclination to make war upon nations that did them no wrong after they were informed it was a requirement of the Quran.
Jefferson's papers.
In 1786, he wrote, We took the liberty to make some inquiries concerning the grounds of their pretensions to make war upon nations who had done them no injury and observed that we considered all mankind as our friends who had done us no wrong nor had given us any provocation.
The ambassador answered us that it was founded on the laws of their prophet, that it was written in their Quran that all nations who should not have acknowledged their authority were sinners, that it was their right and duty to make war upon them whenever they could be found and to make slaves of all they could take as prisoners, and that every Muslim Muslim who should be slain in battle was sure to go to paradise.
That's Jefferson in 1786.
Our founders knew that Sharia law was not consistent with Western civilization and our values.
Sharia law is a problem that is growing throughout the United States and certainly growing in Texas.
My home state bore the brunt of a four-year mass migration invasion under the previous administration.
But there's been a quieter one of Islamists leveraging our immigration system and corporate interest to extend and use diversity visas, chain migration, H-1B visas to flood our country with people who don't believe in it and have no intention of assimilating into it.
A new Muslim community in Texas, not even a few days old, 150,000 square foot Muslim community center was opened in Houston.
Epic City in Plano, outside of Dallas-Fort Worth, has raised all sorts of questions about their intentions to create an effectively Muslim-only community where Sharia law no doubt would and would will be practiced.
Now they've renamed it the meadow rather than the East Plano Islamic Center, but they continue to develop and grow it.
Even as there are almost 300 mosques in Texas and more mosques being built in Texas every day than any other state in the Union.
But meanwhile, let's look at what's going on in the United States broadly.
Our nation's foreign-born population has reached 51.9 million people, comprising some 16% of our population.
We're at the highest levels of percentage in our history.
The last time we had a similar level of foreign-born population in roughly 1920, we froze immigration.
And largely for about 40 to 50 years, we froze it.
And then it has been exploding over the last 50 years.
I've introduced legislation called the Pause Act to pause immigration and to pause it until we get our hands around all of the problems that are currently plaguing our immigration system.
The abuse of birthright citizenship.
To have profit-centered ways to create American citizens by people coming here, coming across the Rio Grande, having children, making citizens that then can use American resources, our hospitals, our schools, our legal system, our welfare.
We continue to allow a broken visa system to have extended family members be brought into the United States expansively and purposely.
H-1B program has been exploited and abused now for years and must be abolished or massively reformed.
We obviously have still a very badly broken border that is only currently being held in check by a president and by leadership in the administration who are devoted to doing it and are empowered to do it.
But all of the ways in which Biden, my orcas, and that entire administration allowed our border to be wide open and have 10 million flood our country, all of those things still remain in place statutorily.
Congress could fix it.
We haven't.
The House passed legislation two years ago, what was in that Congress, H.R. 2, to meaningfully change the law so that it can't be exploited to endanger the people.
We have not brought that back up again this year.
We should.
We should codify these changes.
Our priorities matter.
The results of this are stark.
Thanksgiving week, we saw what happened with the West Virginia National Guard service member, specialist Sarah Beckstrom, who was 20 years old.
Staff Sergeant Andrew Wolfe, 24, savagely ambushed and shot blocks away from the White House.
Specialist Beckstrom tragically lost her life.
The attacker, Ramanula Lakenwald, an Afghan national who was imported through the Biden-Mayorkas Illegal Operation Allies Welcome Parole Program.
drove from Washington State to carry out this diabolical act in our nation's capital.
According to DHS, over 5,000 Afghans brought to the United States through Operation Allies Welcome had either national security or public safety concerns.
We are importing people who want to undermine and destroy our country.
And both sides of the aisle have been guilty of this.
This is not a debatable reality.
It's literally occurring.
For us to survive, we have to act.
We need to pass the PAWS Act.
We need to pause immigration.
We need to pass legislation like the bill that I introduced to preserve a Sharia-free America that would prohibit the entry of people that are known to be adherent to Sharia law, which is deeply in conflict with our values and our laws.
We should take away the tax status of CARE and other radical organizations with ties to terrorists and a vast network of well-funded organizations using American tax dollars, United Nations funds, wealthy donors, George Zoros funding, foreign funding, nation states, all pouring in to organizations, NGOs driving this agenda.
The Marxist-Islamist red-green alliance that wants to destroy America as we know it.
I introduced legislation to take away CARES tax status.
Why are we giving them tax breaks to try to destroy America?
Which brings me to the final point, which I was alluding to before on HR2.
That is legislation designed to codify effectively what President Trump is doing.
To stop the abuse of parole, to stop the abuse of asylum, to stop the abuse of catch and release, to stop all of the abusive ways in which an exploited border can undermine our security and endanger us.
We cannot rely on the administration to do it.
Congress needs to act.
Congress needs to codify it.
Congress needs to change it.
And states and state leaders need to stand up and use the legislation that we did pass in January to enable suit against the federal government when they failed to secure the border that we included in the Lake and Riley Act because states can no longer be beholden to a federal government that refuses to secure the border.
We have a reprieve under President Trump.
That reprieve will no doubt one day come to an end.
And states must be empowered and have leaders who are willing to stand up and fight.
States need to challenge things like Plyler versus Doe, the Supreme Court ruling that said that we must have taxpayer funding going to pay for the education of illegal alien children.
You want to choose to do it, that's for you to decide.
But we should not be forced to use taxpayer dollars to do that, and we should challenge that Supreme Court ruling, and we should stand up to defend our country.
The fact is, you can't win a war that you're not willing to recognize exists.
And it is undeniably true after the election of the mayor in New York, Mamdani, with what's going on in Dearborn, with what's going on in Minneapolis, with what we're seeing happen in Texas, Dallas, and Houston, what we saw unfold in London and Paris, that there is an attack on the Western way of life, and we must stand up and defend it if we're going to be able to pass down a country to our kids and grandkids.
The chair lays before the house the following enrolled bills: Senate 356, an act to extend the Secure Rural Schools and Community Self-Determination Act of 2000.
Mr. Speaker, I rise today to make a statement about efficiency in government because there was a statement from the governor of my state that many of us found quite surprising, where he recently said that long before there was Doge, California was already streamlining government to be more efficient, responsive, and accountable.
Apparently, California being a model of efficiency, in the governor's view.
This came as a surprise to many of us because in the course of just five years during Governor Newsom's tenure, the state budget increased by $124 billion.
That's over a 50% increase in spending without really any measurable improvement in government performance.
When you look at California ranking first in the nation in homelessness, in poverty, in unemployment, having some of the worst roads, some of the worst achievement gaps in our schools.
But I did want to highlight just a few examples that I think are particularly revealing when it comes to the low quality of government service that citizens of California are receiving and also to some extent the lessons that we can draw from that here at the federal level,
where I think continuing to improve the quality of government service, giving taxpayers a higher return on their tax dollars, remains a vital imperative.
So remember, the governor said that California is a model of efficiency.
His exact words, California is already streamlining government to be more efficient, responsive, and accountable.
Well, apparently, this includes a $128 billion bullet train that still shows no signs of coming into existence.
Now that's the estimated total cost, the amount that's already been spent is somewhere in the neighborhood of $16, $17 billion.
But we're now 18 years into this thing and not a single bit of track has been laid despite all of this massive spending.
And the New York Times has estimated that the project isn't even on track to be finished this century.
Another example, the state auditor in California found that the state spent $24 billion to combat homelessness and completely lost track of the money.
Couldn't say where it went, couldn't say what impact it had on outcomes.
There were no metrics.
And during the time that this spending occurred, homelessness in California absolutely skyrocketed to the extent that the state has about half of the total unsheltered homeless in the entire country.
The state also squandered $32 billion at a minimum on unemployment fraud.
So what's going on in Minnesota is small potatoes compared to what we witnessed in California during the COVID years, where the state failed to take basic fraud protection measures that other states had taken.
And as a result, fraudsters were easily able to purloin the state treasury and use those billions to fund further criminal activities.
Now, I say that there are lessons for the federal government because during the last administration, the labor secretary in California most responsible for that entire fiasco was actually nominated to be the Secretary of Labor here in Washington, D.C., although never confirmed by the Senate.
So to some extent, the lesson was learned.
Or we have recent reports, just in the last couple weeks, that the $650 million 911 system that the state has been charging Californians on their phone bill for for several years now is being scrapped entirely because the technology doesn't work.
They spent $650 million building this so-called next generation 911 system, and our system does very much need to be updated.
But because the state couldn't manage to get the technology right, it is all going to waste.
Those funds will never be recovered, and our 911 system remains antiquated as a result.
And bear in mind, Sacramento is a stone's throw from Silicon Valley, where the technology that is required here is fairly rudimentary in terms of what is needed.
And I would just mention one final example, which is the California State Capitol itself.
Because our governor has had a lot to say about certain renovations going on at the White House, and yet the California state legislature approved several years ago a $1.2 billion renovation of the state capitol itself.
I voted against that measure, by the way.
But now the cost of that seems to have ballooned, and we don't know even by how much, because the state is refusing to say.
Despite the persistent efforts of local journalists to get an answer and other legislators as to how much this project is costing our taxpayers, they won't even say how much.
But we have gotten some hints of some of the measures that the project leaders have taken, such as shipping stones to Italy in order to be treated and refined.
So it does not seem that this particular project is exactly a model of efficiency either.
So I bring these examples up to highlight the need for reform in my home state, to reorient the way our government works towards a paradigm of citizen service, because we see corruption and incompetence and special interests and a whole host of other agendas that stand in the way of the use of taxpollers to actually serve our citizens.
And indeed, California is the exact opposite of a model of efficiency as we sacrifice the most and get the least in return.
So I'll continue to do everything I can to change that paradigm in California, as well as to find ways to learn from it and to reorient our federal government towards a model of citizen service and efficiency as well.
Mr. Speaker, this week I signed a discharge petition to stop insider trading, to ban stock trading by members of Congress.
I have been a co-sponsor of this measure offered by my colleague from Florida, Ana Paulina Luna, and we've gotten a number of bipartisan co-sponsors for it.
And yet still the bill has not moved.
It has not been brought to the floor by House leadership.
And so I have signed this discharge petition, which is a legislative mechanism by which the members of the House can bring a bill directly to the floor without the blessing of leadership.
And I have not been particularly inclined to sign these petitions in my first couple years here in the House, but I have come to the view that they have become more necessary given the House's somewhat diminished role in recent months in terms of actually driving policy forward.
So I've also signed a couple other petitions related to the health care reforms that we're seeking to advance.
And I was particularly concerned when I heard the Speaker himself suggest that he might try to stop discharge petitions from happening altogether, which would be a terrible idea.
It would mean that the House is no longer truly a majoritarian institution.
And so I think that this action by affirming the value of discharge petitions and by bringing to the floor a bill to ban trading by members of Congress will be are both important steps towards restoring trust in this institution.
Because let's face it, Congress is not held in particularly high esteem by the American public right now.
I've seen recent polls showing that Congress's approval rating is around 15%.
And in many ways, that reputation is well deserved.
This is a simple measure that we can take that would at least restore a little bit of trust and be a step in the direction of good government.
I'm hoping that it will continue to get the requisite signatures short of leadership agreeing to bring it to the floor, and then we can get it passed and signed into law.
Mr. Speaker, I rise again today to advocate for an end to the redistricting war that has been cascading across the country.
I've introduced legislation that would say we should not have mid-decade redistricting.
It should not be done in any state.
And I opposed what happened in Texas to re-gerrymander that state in the middle of the decade.
And I opposed what happened in California.
I opposed the efforts that are afoot as well in other states.
And I applaud the decision by the Indiana State Senate to not move forward with a mid-decade gerrymander in a fairly overwhelming vote yesterday.
The fact is that gerrymandering is an affront to representative government and to democracy.
And what we're seeing right now runs against the desires of members of this body on both sides of the aisle and certainly runs contrary to what is in the interest of the country.
Now, I have called upon the leadership in the House for months to bring this bill to the floor or to otherwise reach an armistice in this redistricting war.
And I believe it was a failure of leadership, frankly, on both sides, to allow this to happen.
And as I warned months ago, the whole thing is basically turning out to be a wash.
If you look at the various election forecasters, they say, yeah, you're probably not going to see either side really gain much.
So all of this effort, all of this money, all of this political capital spent redrawing maps, upending the districts of dozens of our members on both sides of the aisle, and to what end?
Nothing good is coming for it.
Maybe if the Speaker, and I cannot let the minority leader off the hook either, because he's been actively involved in these efforts, had been more focused on, let's say, health care policy than trying to redraw district maps, we wouldn't be in a position where we're now three weeks away from Americans seeing a massive increase in health care costs.
So I am again calling for my bill to ban mid-decade redistricting to be brought to the floor for a vote.
And I'm also working on legislation to end gerrymandering in this country once and for all by assuring that every state has an independent commission, much like the one that we had in California until recently.
I think that if we can take that step to end gerrymandering, to have fair maps across the country, then it'll restore power where it belongs, and that is to the voters themselves.
Mr. Speaker, as chair of the House subcommittee that covers K-12 education, I'd like to have the opportunity to go and visit high-performing schools to see the lessons that we could learn.
And this morning I had the chance to visit a KIPPS school, Knowledge is Power Program, here in Washington, D.C. There are 20 KIPPS schools in D.C. There are many, many more all across the country, including many in California.
And this is a truly high-performing charter school network that tends to enroll students who are below the poverty level, that operates in underserved communities, and that yet has outstanding results by any measure, by student test scores, by graduation rates, by the number of students who go to college.
They really have just been knocking it out of the park for years, much like Success Academy, which operates in New York City, and I had the chance to visit one of their campuses a couple months ago, that if they were considered their own school district, they would literally be the highest performing district in the state of New York.
So these examples of success are unfortunately not the norm when it comes to public education in America today, and in particular in my state of California.
The latest Nations report card showed that student achievement is at an all-time low in this country.
We have not bounced back to even where we were prior to the COVID years.
We continue to fall behind our peer nations in terms of the level of achievement for our students.
In California, in particular, we've seen over the course of the last several years almost $40 billion more that is now spent on an annual basis on education.
And what do we have to show for it?
UC San Diego, which is a pretty high-ranking school, recently came out and said that their students, their incoming students, are not prepared to do basic math, even the most basic math.
They have had to now put one out of every eight students into remedial math courses.
They've had to expand the remedial courses they offer to make them even more remedial.
That is the result of a state like California that has done everything possible to quash high-performing charter schools like the ones I just mentioned, Success Academy and KIPP, and instead support, prop up, a failing education model, the idea that you are assigned to one school in your zip code, whether it is good or bad, whether it teaches students to read and do math or not.
So in the subcommittee that I have the honor to chair, we have been focusing on both the problems and potential solutions for public education in America.
And I think there is a great deal to learn from schools like KIPP and Success Academy, which set high expectations for students, which teach literacy and numeracy the way that it's supposed to be taught, that have high levels and expectations for their teachers and help prepare them as they need to be prepared when it comes to professional development,
and that focus like a laser on student achievement and engaging parents and everything that comes with giving students access to a quality education.
Programs like these schools like these show that every child in this country can indeed succeed.
And we need to make it a matter of great urgency to make sure that every child in America has that opportunity.
Mr. Speaker, I will be introducing in the House the Right to Representation Act, which is a measure that has become necessary in order to assure that districts in this country are not denied representation here in the House.
We recently had a period of time in which a newly elected member of the House from Arizona was not seated as a member for week after week after week for what I believe was a record period of time, despite the fact that she had won her election, the election had been certified, and that the district was going without representation until she was seated.
Now the House of Representatives was not here during that time, which was itself a big problem that the House canceled its sessions for six weeks on end while the government was shut down.
But nevertheless, this member, Ms. Grahalva from Arizona, could have been sworn in during what's called a pro-forma session.
And I think that this is simply wrong, that she was not, that she had to wait over a month, I believe, after she should have been sworn in, to actually have the opportunity to begin representing her constituents.
And I don't want to see anything like this happen again, regardless of which party controls the House, regardless of which party the member who is waiting to be sworn in represents.
So my bill is very simple.
It would simply say that after an individual has prevailed in a special election, then they have the right to be sworn in on the next legislative day, whether that's a pro-forma session or a regular session.
I think this is a common sense measure and it will assure that we don't see what we just saw with the representative from Arizona ever happen in this chamber again.
Mr. Speaker, I rise today to recognize and congratulate Chief Brian Estes of the Cal Fire Nevada Yuba Placer Unit and the Placer County Fire Department, who is retiring at the end of this year after an exceptional career of over 35 years in the fire service.
In 1991, Chief Estes graduated at the top of his class from the Butte Fire Academy, launching him into a long and successful career.
He began working as a firefighter, as a fighter fighter at a station in San Diego County.
Four years later, he joined a CAL FIRE helicopter crew at Tuolumne County, where he stayed for another four years.
During this timeframe, he held various leadership positions such as CWN Manager, Military Helicopter Manager, and he coordinated with the California National Guard as a military liaison officer.
In 1998, Brian Estes was promoted to Fire Apparatus Engineer and was assigned to the Amador El Dorado Unit.
Brian climbed the ladder and was promoted through the ranks during his time on the unit, becoming captain in 2000 and being promoted to battalion chief in 2005.
In the coming years, Chief Estes responded to some of California's most challenging fires, joining deployments and leading 14 Type 1 incidents across California as Type 1 incident commander.
Brian Estes continued to promote and served as Assistant Chief of Operations, Deputy Chief of Operations, and then finally as Unit Chief for the Nevada Yuba Placer Unit and Fire Chief of the Placer County Fire Department.
He had the honor of leading over 450 personnel and overseeing a $100 million budget across 1.7 million acres of state responsibility area.
As Placer County Fire Chief, Chief Estes oversaw municipal services across 1,000 square miles and served over 70,000 residents, protecting $80 billion in assets.
In these capacities, he has been an outstanding force in protecting the quality of life in our region by leading the front line of defense against the all-too-common California wildfire.
Chief Estes is widely respected for his exceptional leadership skills and unwavering commitment to collaboration.
Under his guidance, his units operate with greater strength, efficiency, and purpose, reflecting his ability to maximize their potential and bring out the best in those he leads.
A lifelong public servant, Chief Estes is truly a pillar of our community, defined by his consistent, active engagement and deep dedication to those he serves, going above and beyond the regular Call of Duty.
It has really been a privilege to work alongside Chief Estes throughout my time in office, and it's an honor to represent someone held in such high esteem by his friends, family, colleagues, and community.
Therefore, on behalf of the United States House of Representatives and California's 3rd Congressional District, I wish Chief Estes a happy retirement and thank him for his many years of service.
As we adjourn for the weekend, I'd like to address three issues which affect Americans and are issues that I don't think have been discussed quite as much as we ought to.
The first issue concerns this transgender situation.
We spent a lot of time talking about guys and girls' sports, which is a problem and ought to be dealt with.
I think it polls very well, but an even more significant concern is that of our out-of-control psychiatric profession treating this as a genetic problem in which people should even have to have surgeries to deal with this.
And they have surgeries on young people, people as young as 16 or 15 or 14 years old, surgeries that will affect them for the rest of their lives.
Just as bad, they give puberty blockers to these young people, not knowing what the long-term effects will be.
Recently, new information that should have come as a surprise to no one, but perhaps will come to a surprise to the mainstream media.
A new study came out showing that the number of young adults identifying as transgender plunges by nearly a half in two years, exposing what a lot of us knew all along that it was largely a social contagion.
It was not a genetic disease that required surgeries or permanently changing people's lives.
And as I pointed out before, this affects not only the people themselves who maybe have puberty blockers or surgeries, it affects the parents, it affects the grandchildren, the parents who will never have grandchildren because their children were roped in to this by the liberal news media, by the liberal psychiatric psychological associations,
by hospitals that make money off this deal.
I'm really afraid this is something since it's a nationwide problem that should be dealt with in Congress, and I think it's going to be dealt with soon, in which we begin to refuse this sort of treatment and even more refuse these surgeries to people, let's say, under the age of 21.
Can anybody honestly say that you would advise someone who is 20 or 19 years old not to or to have surgery permanently altering your body for the rest of your life?
Think how your ideas in life have changed, your opinions on life have changed between when you're 18 or 19 or 20 years old and when you're 45 or 50 years old.
But the know-it-alls in the psychiatric and psychology profession are encouraging people to have surgeries, are giving people puberty blockers, and I'm afraid the U.S. Congress is just going to have to step forward and say no.
I hope our leadership team in the near future puts something forward that says that no, and it really should be greater than that.
I mean, you can't be a congressman until age 25, but at least goes to age 21, puts an end to this, and stands up to the psychiatric psychological associations.
So there's one issue I think we ought to deal with.
Now I'll deal with another issue, and this kind of deals a little bit with Social Security.
Right now, there are older people who make the mistake of retiring and getting Social Security, and all of a sudden they'd like to go back to work and make some more money, but they aren't able to.
Earlier this session, we played a little bit around with the Social Security Trust Fund in which, or the end of the last session, in which way too many people voted for giving more Social Security dollars to some governmental employees, about $24 billion a year.
But if they, rather than encouraging more people to retire, if our leadership team wants to encourage more people to work, which we should, we should increase the amount of money that a senior can make before that money, before their Social Security is taken away.
Right now, if you make more than $19,500 a year on our Social Security, when you get to that point, the government begins to take away your Social Security check.
In other words, right now we're in the business of trying to discourage people from working if they're 68 or 69 or 70.
Let's pass the Senior Independence Act, which increases that amount from $19,500 to $30,000 so that the older people who need a little bit more money, and even more, it's good for people to work.
If these older people want to get out of the house, get a little more social stimulation by working, they are not penalized for doing so.
So I strongly encourage our leadership team.
I realize that they'll say that it'll encourage more people to retire early and might cost the government a little bit of money.
But we had plenty of money to give people who were retired, to encourage people to retire last January.
Let's encourage and free up older people and let them work a little bit more.
And of course, we have a labor shortage in this problem.
So it would also be good for our economy as we see a few more people going to work, maybe working 30 hours a week instead of working 20 hours a week.
And like I said, we want to boost our economy a little.
There are so many, particularly retail outlets out there, though some factories as well, who so desperately are looking for some more labor, particularly as we're finally kicking some people out of this country or illegally, some of which are working.
It would be great to have more 68 or 69 years old.
And I hope our leadership will find a way to pass the Senior Independence Act and allow seniors to make $30,000 a year.
Now the third issue I want to deal with comes under 14C, which is the provision which allows people who have some physical problems, spina bifida, Down syndrome, other problems, sometimes paraplegics, to work.
And given the current situation, in order to make it financially viable to have them work, they have to work for under minimum wage.
Nobody ever forces people to do this, but they do it to earn a little additional money.
Most of these people are on SSI.
They don't need the money to pay the mortgage or pay the rent, but they would like to have a little bit more money to buy some of their own clothes, perhaps buy gifts for parents or what have you.
And there are really misguided people out there who are trying to get rid of 14C certificates and, in essence, make it against the law to pay somebody $4 or $5 or $6 to work because of problems that are out there.
I have right now formed a caucus called the Congressional Disability Employment Caucus, which is dedicated to the preservation of the 14C program, provide a little bit of structure to the effort to continue to allow people with different abilities to have the freedom to work for a little bit smaller amount.
I think it's just horrible that some people want to take away this freedom.
I believe in counties in which this freedom has been taken away, what happens is people who are right now are working for $4 or $5 an hour wind up in what they call day services.
And they sit around and watch television, or maybe they're taken on a trip to somewhere, but they miss out on the enjoyment of work.
They miss out on being like their siblings in which they are able to go to work today and to a degree support themselves.
And I think it's just tragic when that is done and they're deprived of the freedom to work.
I will encourage all of my colleagues to track down any 14C employers in their district and see how meaningful it is for these people with different abilities to be able to work and to be able to earn their own money.
And it's not just an economic decision, it's a social decision as well.
One of the things that scares parents or guardians who are dealing with people in this situation is what's going to happen to them when the parents are gone.
Are they going to have any friends?
Are they going to have any social structure?
And even more than people in other jobs, the social structure provided by people in employers that use 14 certificates does provide these folks with friends.
We all to a certain extent socialize with the people we work with.
But especially for these people, it's important to have friends outside their immediate family.
And when you begin to shut down these employers, you're depriving these people of the friendships that they will form in employers who give 14C.
So first of all, I beg my colleagues, we all like to get reelected, right?
I beg my colleagues to tour facilities that have 14C certificates, see how happy the people are who work there, see how important both economically as well as socially it is for these folks to have the freedom to work in these facilities.
And I hope Congress stands up to the freedom haters who want to deny these folks the ability to work in a little bit different setting that they want to do.
So there are three issues that I ask Congress to take up and consider.
I want Congress to pass whatever legislation is necessary to make sure we always protect the 14C certificates.
I ask Congress to take up raising the amount of money a senior can make before we take away their social security, both for the good of the overall economy as well as for both the financial and social help, social assistance of our senior citizens.
And finally, I ask Congress to do something to make sure these out-of-control, lack of common sense psychiatrists, psychologists are at least not able to give puberty blockers or surgeries on people under the age of 21.
And like I said, I think we should ban it even above that amount.
I've certainly sat and heard people talk about how they regret their surgeries.
But it seems in our society when it comes down to drinking, when it comes down to smoking, age 21 is a limit in which we allow people to do more.
If any of my colleagues would want to introduce an amendment to age 25, and our forefathers didn't feel we were qualified to be congressmen until we were age 25, I would be happy to go for an age 25 limit as well.
But I'd like to be debating that in conference next week.
Accordingly, the House stands adjourned until noon on Monday next for morning hour debate.
unidentified
The House today considering legislation aiming to expedite the permitting process of certain natural gas pipeline projects and liquefied natural gas import or export terminals.
Members will return next week for legislative business.
When that happens, be sure to follow our live coverage of the House here on C-SPAN.
Today, on a special edition of Ceasefire, we'll feature highlights from our host and political White House Bureau Chief Dasha Burns' in-depth interview with President Trump on a range of topics, from the state of the economy and expiring ACA subsidies.
Not just the coverage that we get of both chambers on one and two, but programs like Washington Journal that allow policymakers, lawmakers, personalities to come on and have this question time during Washington Journal.