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ISSUES OF THE DAY
The SPEAKER pro tempore. Under the Speaker's announced policy of January 4, 2021, the gentleman from Texas (Mr. Roy) is recognized until 10 p.m. as the designee of the minority leader.
Mr. ROY. Madam Speaker, I have been listening to my friend from Texas, the gentleman from New York, and other speakers, my colleagues on the other side of the aisle, and I can't help but observe the reality of the Shelby County decision as it was offered by the United States Supreme Court's majority authored by Chief Justice Roberts.
Now, what my colleagues on the other side of the aisle fail to mention is the fact that the Voting Rights Act remains intact and the Voting Rights Act remains fully in effect, and its purpose to ensure and preserve the ability of Americans to vote remains fully the law of the land. The core question before the Court back in 2012 or 2013--I think it was argued in `12 and decided in `13--was whether section 5, the specific preclearance provision, was, in fact, constitutional.
Now, the fact of the matter is when this was reauthorized back in I think 2006, it was reauthorized based on a 50-year-old coverage formula.
Now, my friend from Texas knows that. My colleagues on the other side of the aisle know that it was using a 50-year-old coverage formula. Now, people may want to just kind of sweep that aside and say that doesn't matter, but then go back and read the Supreme Court's opinion in 1966 on the first challenge on the Voting Rights Act and what the Court was saying at the time, that when you set aside the fundamental role of the States in carrying out elections, when you set aside the 10th Amendment, Madam Speaker, as the 1965 Voting Rights Act was seeking to do, well, then there has to be a particularly strong purpose.
What was that particularly strong purpose?
Invidious discrimination of the kind of the Jim Crow South of the poll taxes and of massive disparities in voting rates among populations in districts where those prohibitions existed.
Fast-forward 50 years through several iterations of the reauthorization of the Voting Rights Act, and in 2012, 2013, when this was being debated and when the Court decided it, the Court said: Look, sorry, you can't apply 50-year-old data to uphold and reauthorize the Voting Rights Act.
Now, I know that, because I was a lawyer on the Senate Judiciary Committee, and I pored over every one of those documents that came before us and read and reviewed them sitting as a staffer on the Senate Judiciary Committee where we knew full well what the data was showing us and what the data looked like. But here we are right now and the American people are only hearing that part of the story that we are somehow unwinding the Voting Rights Act.
We have done no such thing.
Ms. JACKSON LEE. Will the gentleman yield?
Mr. ROY. Out of enormous respect for my friend from Texas, despite the way these hours normally work, I yield briefly to the gentlewoman from Texas.
Ms. JACKSON LEE. The gentleman is always enormously courteous, and I will be brief.
Since I was on the committee the gentleman might have been staff, but I know in the House, for example, we had at least 100 hearings and 15,000 pages of testimony. It was chaired at that time by Jim Sensenbrenner, a Republican, who was meticulous in making sure we had a record. So I am not sure where the gentleman is getting his information from.
I will just finish by simply saying that the voter suppression laws that we are dealing with today are all engaged responding to the big lie that there was not a legitimate election in 2020, and my good friend knows that President Joe Biden and Kamala Harris were elected in 2020. So we wonder the basis of these voter suppression laws.
Madam Speaker, I thank the gentleman, and I will not take more of his time.
Mr. ROY. Madam Speaker, I appreciate the gentlewoman. Let me just say, I think this body would do a wonder for the American people if we could engage in this for hours, not seconds. And I think the gentlewoman agrees that we should have this kind of debate back and forth so the American people can see so we can flush out our differences, because there are things we agree on, and there are things we disagree on.
What I would respond to the gentlewoman about the point of what occurred, poring over it as a staffer as I did, was that the Members, including the chairman of the Judiciary Committee then, Mr. Sensenbrenner, as well as on the Senate side--and I won't speak for the House, because I was on the Senate side--but I was in the room with Chairman Specter, I was in the room with all of those that were in 2006 going through all this, and I was in the room with about 15 Republicans who were sitting over there, each of whom said that it was unconstitutional, we can't really do this, but we dare not go down this political road.
Okay, well, that is what that is.
Fast-forward, and for my colleagues on the other side of the aisle to bemoan ``activist Courts,'' well, welcome to the club. Welcome to the party of being concerned about activist Courts. I would argue this is not activism, but, fine, let's have that debate about how much power we want to cede to the building over there across the street, because when we are talking about activism, we can go way back on activism in terms of our views in terms of Roe, in terms of Planned Parenthood v. Casey, and other areas in which the Court has inserted itself into the public domain.
But, okay, here we are. The legislature acted, and the Court said: Whoa, whoa, you can't do that.
Why did they do that? Applying the 10th Amendment, applying fundamentals of federalism, and applying the fact that States have primacy over election laws.
That is what the Court did. If you believe in judicial review subsequent to Marbury v. Madison, as I believe my friend from Texas, who is now leaving the floor, does believe in, well, then that is actually what the Court was doing. That is what they did. That is what the opinion says. When you read the opinion, Madam Speaker, it is just dripping with all of the things that you would expect it to be filled with in terms of deference to what occurred in 1965, what the Supreme Court said subsequent to that about why it was in a particularly important time for Congress to step over the role of the States because of the nature of the invidious discrimination in Jim Crow South and other areas of the country.
It wasn't just the South, by the way, there were counties all over the country.
But, Madam Speaker, when you looked at the data--and I pored over the data--we showed places there were counties in Florida that were covered, counties in Florida that weren't covered, and you could see that the voting rates of Black voters, Hispanic voters, and other voters, that vast numbers of people were turning out and showing up to vote, those numbers were even higher in some of the covered jurisdictions.
So you had no reason or basis to cover one county versus another in the State of Florida, Madam Speaker.
But I would challenge all of my colleagues on the other side of the aisle to go open up those views, go look in and look at the data, look at the tables, and what you will find, Madam Speaker, is that there were significant numbers of counties and States that were then at that time covered by the Voting Rights Act that had better turnout rates and better participation rates than those that were uncovered which left the Court looking at the law and said: Well, hold on a second.
The whole reason that the Court upheld the law was because there was a unique circumstance where there were mass disparities because of very direct actions by those States.
I want the American people to know that because that is what is being said right now.
{time} 2120
So suddenly, if I say: Hey, we might want voter ID.
Now, why might we want voter ID? Just to ensure that the one person who is voting in one person, one vote is actually the vote.
I say I want voter ID. Maybe that is because I have witnessed reasons why that is so. Somehow that is voter suppression?
That is what is so entirely frustrating is that you come forward and you say: Hey, I think that there is a good reason for this that, in my mind, I see very clearly as being important for the integrity of the election.
Let's not get wrapped around in the 2016 or 2020 election cycles. I have said a lot on the floor of the House at various times about those matters. Let's just actually focus on voter integrity, election integrity, and wanting to make sure that the people who vote know that their vote is going to count fully, and that you are not going to have someone voting with your ID.
We know for sure that there are individuals who come to the United States and use the identification of others, of Americans. We know that for sure. That is a fact.
We know that we end up with multiple people voting. We end up with all sorts of different possible and potential fraudulent activity.
For example, The New York Times, in 2012: ``Yet, votes cast by mail are less likely to be counted, more likely to be compromised, and more likely to be contested than those cast in a voting booth.'' That is The New York Times, that bastion of rightwing conspiracy.
We know that the Carter-Baker Commission, Jimmy Carter, known rightwing conspirator from Georgia, and James Baker, again, not really known to be a rightwing activist, quote in their report, ``Absentee ballots remain the largest source of potential voter fraud.''
That is just data. It is just analyzing it. It is just fact.
Then, you go through other examples of known fraud.
Madam Speaker, 2016, at least 83 registered voters in San Pedro, California, received absentee ballots at the same small two-bedroom apartment.
In a 2018 North Carolina congressional race, a Republican operative, L. McCrae Dowless, Jr., had allegedly requested more than 1,200 absentee ballots on voters' behalf and then collected the ballots from voters' homes when they were mailed out. That was a Republican operative. I am an equal opportunity presenter of the facts here of how fraud can occur.
I can go through item after item. In 2017, an investigation of a Dallas City Council election found 700 fraudulent mail-in ballots signed by the same witness using a fake name.
There is other voter fraud in Texas. Since 2005, the Office of the Attorney General successfully prosecuted 534 incidents of fraud against 155 individuals, et cetera, et cetera.
I can go through county by county. In Medina County, Texas, four people, including an elected justice of the peace, were charged in February with 150 counts of election fraud. The charges included ballot harvesting and illegal voting. I can go example by example.
Now, were all of those examples I just gave enough to turn an election? I don't know. That is the point. We would like to know wherever that truth may lead, in whatever State and whatever county, wherever that takes us. But those are the facts.
So, when somebody comes forward and says, ``Hey, I think we ought to have voter ID. I think we ought to have voter ID or a way to attach an individual to a mail-in ballot,'' suddenly that is voter suppression? Right.
So, suddenly, Major League Baseball walks in and says: I have an idea. Let's pull out the All-Star Game from Atlanta, Georgia, where we could celebrate Hank Aaron in a 50 percent Black city, and let's go move it over to Colorado, into Denver, which is a 10 percent Black city. And let's pat ourselves on the back for being so exceptionally in tune with what is going on in the world. Let's move the All-Star Game to Colorado.
Why? The laws that were put on the books in Georgia this year, that were being voted on in Georgia, would basically make parity with what Colorado already has on the books.
This is the kind of debate we want to be able to have. Can we just, like, all agree? Let's get a whiteboard up and put the facts up of what these things are, what the bills are, what these laws are, and then at least be debating from the same sheet of music.
I may have a few more things to say. I know I have some colleagues here. I want to be mindful of their time.
I digressed there a little bit because I was hearing my colleagues on the other side of the aisle. But election integrity is so critically important right now, and I have colleagues from Texas who are completely abandoning their duty--I should say State legislature colleagues, to be clear--who are abandoning their duty to represent their constituents in the State of Texas in the legislature and have a full-throated debate about S.B. 1 and H.B. 3, the current bills in the legislative session, the special session in Texas, and have come to D.C. They are not doing their jobs.
Look, man, I generally want to flee D.C. to go back to Texas. It is rare that I see people saying I want to flee Texas to come to D.C.
But these Democratic members of the Texas Legislature have fled Austin to skip out on working in the Texas legislative session and have an open debate. They are coming to D.C. to sit down with the Vice President to go push and promote H.R. 1 or other bills to say we need to federalize elections instead of actually doing their job, which brings me to my point.
I will say a few things here, and then I will recognize my colleagues. At some point, we have to decide what it is that is actually sacred about what we are doing here as a Nation and as a body.
Our borders, right now, are wide open. Opioids are skyrocketing. Massive numbers cross the border. I will get into some of these details in a minute. We do it. I have done it before.
We have the schools that are teaching so-called antiracism.
I walked through the Austin airport today and saw the book by Ibram Kendi, the antiracism book. I can't remember the title. I saw it sitting there in the bookstore BookPeople. I didn't see a whole lot of conservative books in there, but I saw that book, sitting there in the front.
On page 19 of that book, he writes: ``If racial discrimination is defined as treating, considering, or making a distinction in favor of or against an individual based on that person's race, then racial discrimination is not inherently racist. The defining question is whether the discrimination is creating equity or inequity. If discrimination is creating equity, then it is antiracist.''
Interesting definition of discrimination. Not sure that fits within the Civil Rights Act, but I will leave that for another discussion.
But what I am saying is, we are heightening the level to which every single aspect of our lives is taken through a political lens, every single thing.
I am asking my staff to look at every hearing that this body has had since the beginning of January and tell me what percentage of the hearings has had a focus or something to do on race, on sexual orientation, or an issue in that type of framework. I guarantee you--I don't have to count them--that number is going to be massively high.
I will just go ahead and stipulate right now, without having done any counting, the percentage of hearings that this body has held, the percentage of hearings that focused on race, LGBTQ issues, sexual orientation, those issues will be extraordinarily high as a percentage.
So, the majority believes that is where our focus should be--while we just spent $6 trillion, while inflation is running through the roof, while small businesses can't hire people. My colleagues on the other side of the aisle know this because, assuredly, they have small businesses in their district, or they go to the restaurants, or they go to the places like I have gone to and they can't hire people because we are paying people more not to work than to work.
We have a principal focus on race-related issues, a complete abandonment of the responsibility of this body to secure the border of the United States. It is wide open, opioids running amuck. Cartels own it. People are pouring across it, to their detriment and ours. Ranchers are getting overrun in Texas.
Now, today, just yesterday, or, I don't know, the last few days, the Senate Armed Services Committee voted overwhelmingly to draft our daughters. Heck, we had 8 Republicans of the 13 vote for that nonsense, to draft our daughters.
Who are we? Genuine question: Who are we, as a people, as a country? Where are the sacred boundaries of being able to decide how to live and to recognize truths that man is man, that woman is woman, and that I, as a father, do not want to have my daughter get drafted?
You say, well, you can draft your son, use the power of the government to draft your son.
We can have a debate about ending the draft. Everyone comes back and says: Well, don't worry. There is not going to be a draft. There hasn't been a draft in 50 years, so don't worry about it.
{time} 2130
What do you mean don't worry about it? When my daughter turns 18 in 8 years and she has to go sign a piece of paper to register, I shouldn't be worried about my daughter getting drafted and getting sent to a foxhole in Afghanistan or Iraq or somewhere else? What do you mean don't worry about that?
Yet, that is precisely what this body is doing. The Senate Armed Services Committee voted on it; the House already has that language.
Let me be perfectly clear. I will not be honoring whatever law says it is drafting my daughter. That is the fundamental problem. The rule of law depends on it being rooted in any basic understanding of who we are as a people, where we come from, what our values are, and then actually being able to get the consent of the governed in a way that actually connects with the governed.
It doesn't just come on down from on high, from a Senate Armed Services Committee that votes, by the way, behind closed doors, not in public viewing. And by the way, none of them will go out and enforce this garbage. But somebody one day will show up and hand a form to my daughter and say, ``I am sorry, ma'am, you are going to have to register for the draft.'' And I am going to be sitting there as a dad--
and I promise you, my wife is a little more fired up about this than I am. My wife is going to be sitting there saying: ``Over my dead, dang body.''
Now, this is what we do when we rip apart our society, when we forget where those sacred boundaries are, about what the role of this institution is, or how we are supposed to govern.
I am going to pause for a few moments. I think both of my colleagues who are here wanting to speak to the issues that we are seeing unfold in Cuba, maybe a few other matters of importance to them. I certainly appreciate their time. I think they share some of the sentiments that I am sharing.
Madam Speaker, I yield to the gentleman from Texas (Mr. Babin).
Mr. BABIN. Madam Speaker, I thank the gentleman so much for having the Special Order on freedom, on liberty, on constitutionalism, and our God-given rights.
Thank you for what you have said there, Mr. Roy.
Madam Speaker, I am here tonight to highlight and amplify the miraculous events that have happened less than 100 miles from U.S. soil on the island of Cuba, news that, sadly, we haven't heard nearly enough about.
After more than 60 years of oppression, injustice, and fear under a Communist Party that enjoys opulent privileges while others struggle just to survive, Cubans took to the streets shouting: ``Liberty'' and
``Down with communism.''
And this wasn't just in Havana and the big cities. Renewed calls for freedom were all across small villages and towns in the Cuban countryside.
These brave protestors, many of them young people, knew their appeals would be met with violence. They understood that they would be putting themselves and their families at grave risk. They knew they would be labeled enemies of the state, enemies of the revolution, and they would be arrested or potentially even murdered.
Today, I would like to let each of my liberty-loving Cuban brothers and sisters out there know that we hear you. I commend your astounding courage, your thirst for freedom, and your desire for true justice in Cuba.
We, as Americans, have a moral responsibility to support these protests of Cuba's cruel Communist regime.
How can we continue to be ``the shining city upon a hill,'' as President Reagan once eloquently said, if we do not help those who are seeking the same divine right that our ancestors fought and died for in the Revolution, the same rights that our Heavenly Father intended for all people?
I think it is time for the reign of dictatorship and terror to come to an end and for freedom and for liberty to take their rightful place.
Mr. ROY. Madam Speaker, I thank the gentleman from Texas, my friend, for his words, and I am going to yield to the gentleman from California here in just a moment.
I would ask one question to the gentleman from Texas, and I will repeat that question to my friend from California.
I share your enthusiasm and commitment for wanting to help the people of Cuba who are seeking freedom and obviously have been living under the thumb of tyranny for far too long.
I was chief of staff to Senator Ted Cruz. His father is a dear friend, and he knew all too well what life was like under that murderous regime.
Our friend and our colleague, Alex Mooney, his wonderful mother, similarly, at the same rough timeframe, was subjected to the horrors of Cuba in that time in the late fifties, early sixties, and then came to the United States.
But I would ask my friend, that as we watch these individuals from Cuba seeking freedom--and God bless them; we need to support them--and/
or seeking to come to the United States seeking freedom, do you believe that our country is itself upholding and adhering to the ideals that they are seeking?
Madam Speaker, I yield to the gentleman.
Mr. BABIN. Madam Speaker, at this time, I cannot answer in the affirmative. I think our country is under grave attack, our liberties, our freedoms, our constitutional rights, the Bill of Rights, the very reasons that Samuel Adams and Dr. Joseph Warren, and all of those Founders, like John Hancock, who started the movement that culminated in the Revolutionary War and got us out from under the yoke of Great Britain.
I will say this: I think what we are seeing today is, quite frankly, a startling, unbelievable change of events that I never thought that I would see in my entire lifetime, the assault on our God-given rights that we are seeing today.
What Mr. Roy just said about drafting our daughters and what he just mentioned and listening to our friends across the aisle over there talking about the unfairness and the racism that is incumbent and inherently in our election processes, their solution would be an absolute violation of the U.S. Constitution.
I think it goes without saying that if you have to show an I.D. to get into the White House or to get a loan or to do anything, really, of any kind of nature as far as that is concerned, that we have to have the ability to ask for a photo I.D. to ascertain whether you are, indeed, that person that you are actually professing to be when you come in and cast that vote.
So we hear a lot of talk. But I will tell you, it is just talk. When you talk about freedom and liberties, we have to follow the Constitution and God's law. That is what it has to be.
Mr. ROY. Madam Speaker, I thank my friend from Texas. I will yield to my friend in California in a moment.
I couldn't agree more with respect to the current situation we find ourselves and our country in. A country where we are now talking about vaccine passports, where we are talking about diving into the private affairs of American citizens in the alleged name of health and welfare of the people, we are forgetting that fundamental, core liberty of being free from government coercion.
When you go look at the Constitution and when we talk about the President of the United States talking about going door to door--and I know it might have been a rhetorical statement, but you never really know. But when the Constitution contemplates going door to door, it does so only in a couple of contexts: the Census, and then protecting individuals against it, by, in the Third Amendment, preventing the quartering of troops in the homes of American people; by preventing, through the Fourth Amendment, unreasonable search and seizure.
That is what was on the minds of the Founders. That was why the Constitution was structured the way it was structured. It wasn't to empower government in the name of something supposedly greater, in the
``common good.'' How many hundreds of millions of people in this world have been slaughtered in the name of the common good? How many?
{time} 2140
Let's ask the people of Cuba. Let's ask the people of Cuba, seeking freedom, seeking to either come to the United States or have the kind of freedom that they believe exists in the United States, and have that in Cuba, whether we should be empowering government, supposedly in the name of the good or the common good of the people.
Our Constitution exists to protect and preserve liberty. That is what it exists for. That is what this country was founded upon; a belief in the Almighty and a belief in liberty. And we are tearing that apart by the thread. Every single day we are tearing that apart by the thread.
Even as people today right now want to have a business, be able to employ people. They can't, because they are told by some bright-eyed leftist: Don't worry, just pay them more money. Without any concept of what that does to a bottom line. Without any concept what that does to an income statement, being able to actually raise money, risk capital, put their name on the line, borrow, and then hire people to engage in the business of their dream.
Maybe they inherited it from their family, their parents, their great-grandparents. What do we do? We just say: Don't worry about it, pay them $15 an hour. Like there is some magic fairy dust that tells people what the wage ought to be.
We destroy businesses in the name of being nice to people. You know what it does? It limits the numbers of jobs, drives up the prices of goods, causes people not to have jobs, causes people not to be able to get the job, and then be able to afford whatever it is they want to buy. All because somebody said, Oh, gee, I have got a magic number, $15 an hour.
Why not $20? Why not $50? I mean, if we are going to be all generous, hell, just make it $1,000 an hour. Oh, no, Chip, that is just crazy talk.
Child tax credits, why stop at $300? Modern monetary theory, just spend whatever you want to. Why not make it $30,000? Man, then everybody would be doing great.
My colleagues don't ever want to actually sit down and actually put pen to paper and figure out what in the heck can we actually afford as a country and what are we doing to the dignity of work? What are we doing to the American family? And what are we doing to freedom and the ability of the individual to prosper according to his or her hard work and according to what he or she wants to accomplish in their faith and what they want to put in, the toil they want to put in their life?
We are ripping that apart. We are ripping it apart in the name of compassion. Just like we are ripping apart the lives of migrants in the name of compassion, who are getting absolutely decimated by cartels. We do it and we say: Oh, look at us, how nice we are; when the little 7-
year-old girl is sold into the sex trafficking trade because we put them in the hands of violent cartels along the border of Texas.
Does anybody care about the numbers? Does anybody look at what is actually happening down at the border? I know, there he goes again, there goes that crazy Chip Roy talking about the border again. Talk to my constituents. Talk to the people of Texas, who are getting absolutely crushed.
The numbers are astounding. We are not just talking about people and the problems that we are having with ranchers, and we are talking about the sex and human trafficking trade.
Right here we see the encounters by month. We have never seen anything like this. When Jeh Johnson headed up the Department of Homeland Security under President Obama, he said a thousand a month was a crisis. I was just looking at the numbers. We had a few thousand in a day just last week in the McAllen sector. We had 20,000 a week. We had a few thousand in a day in the Laredo sector, a few thousand a day in the McAllen sector.
We have had, I think--this is from memory--70 Border Patrol agents get COVID in the last month. We had 20 in Laredo.
All of this is happening in real time. All while the administration talks about unwinding title 42 and not worrying about what is happening at our southern border while telling us and preaching to us about vaccine passports. Oh, no, you better go mask up again.
Fentanyl. Right down here, fentanyl, 2021 versus 2020 fentanyl numbers. We are bringing in a thousand pounds of fentanyl in a month. A thousand pounds of fentanyl in a month. That is enough to kill millions of people. But that is happening right now. Nobody seems to care on the other side of the aisle. They say: Oh, don't worry, it is just fentanyl. No problem to see here.
Would you say that to my constituent who died with a valium laced with fentanyl recently? This is happening across the country. We are now at 92,000 or so opioid deaths in this country. I will come back to that in a minute, because I want to yield to my friend from California. But that is what we are facing.
Madam Speaker, I yield to the gentleman from California (Mr. LaMalfa).
Mr. LaMALFA. Madam Speaker, I appreciate both my colleagues from Texas and the spirited debate here.
You know, I hadn't intended to talk about the draft there, but Mr. Roy was bringing that up very vigorously. I have to agree 100 percent that our volunteer military has worked pretty well for us for approximately, I think, 40 years.
What is it that would have anybody even institute the idea of draft for men or women, incredibly, at this point? Is it because our numbers are down? Is it because we are not getting the people in or is it somehow some kind of equity?
I am not sure what the mind set is, but if you want to inspire people to be part of our military, why don't you make it inspiring instead of a bastion of political correctness and the woke racism conversations happening everywhere else where even a member of the Joint Chiefs of Staff is bringing it up and bringing this literature out that is supposed to make people feel bad about serving as brothers in arms in the military, you know, because of their race.
If you want to inspire people, don't make them feel bad about joining. Therefore, you don't even have to talk about draft, because you could get folks who want an opportunity, whether it is their dedication to completely serving their country or they see some opportunities there with the education that can be offered through the program with the military. Whatever the combination is, you inspire people to be part of it, just as if you are selling a product anywhere else in the free market in this country.
Why in the world would we do this political correctness, this continued race conversation that is driving people away? I don't understand.
Mr. ROY. Would the gentleman yield for just one second?
Mr. LaMALFA. Sure.
Mr. ROY. Would it surprise the gentleman to learn that I share his concern about the state of the United States military, given the politically correct nature of the current leadership?
I just met with a bunch of parents of the individuals that I have nominated to go to the academies, and these parents are beside themselves. They are saying, please, can you stop this? It is going to endanger my kids who are going to go serve their country at the academies because they hear the facts. They see that the U.S. Special Forces hired their first chief diversity officer; that the Department of Defense just hired a chief diversity officer; that a Space Force guardian was fired for saying the ``diversity, inclusion, and equity industry and the trainings we're receiving in the military via that industry are rooted in critical race theory which is rooted in Marxism.''
This isn't just embarrassing and un-American. It is making us weak. Our diplomats are apologizing to the Chinese Communist Party for racism when Beijing is running concentration camps. This is the reality of what we are doing to our military, where we are running ads talking about LGBTQ issues instead of actually just recruiting warriors to go defend the United States of America. I yield to the gentleman.
Mr. LaMALFA. It is a pretty clear defined mission what our military is supposed to be doing in protecting our shores. We have certainly strayed very far from that. As I mentioned, it is not inspiring the best, the brightest, the toughest to come in.
I have had some of these conversations with the parents and some of the people already in the military here. A young man just the other day, during the 4th of July, of all things, I said, ``What do you think of what is going on?'' This young man is very, very gravely concerned, because by far there are a lot of great, great young people there. They are standing up for their flag, for their country, and they are wondering what is going on with their leadership.
Indeed, if we want to be at the point of the type of readiness that is even more acute than ever right now in this world with China, China is just waiting. China is probably over there laughing at us right now with what is going on with this administration and the priorities for our military. Russia is poised to continue to do more aggression in their zones over there. And let alone an unstable place like Iran and even North Korea. What is it they can do or be capable of doing? Now with this pullout in Afghanistan, what are we unleashing there?
We have got to return to a commonsense approach that goes back to what the true military role and duty and mission is, and we are drifting far from it.
{time} 2150
What I wanted to pick up on, too, as far as when we were talking about our border, immigration, in general, and this recent topic of with Cuba.
What do we learn from 60-plus years of oppression under Castro and those who followed? Maybe everything wasn't beautiful under Batista back in 1959 or what have you, but they certainly, when they had that revolution then, I don't think the regular, normal, good people of Cuba bargained for what they have had at all for the last 60 years.
The way this administration is handling it is almost basically ignoring it. Look at the people in Cuba who are holding our flag, not unlike in Hong Kong. It is very interesting. The question the gentleman posed to my colleague, maybe he wants to pose it again here, but when we are going in the direction of where Cuba is, where the Communist Chinese Party is going, we are holding up pictures of Che Guevara. Even in this Chamber we hear the type of sympathy towards the Castro era. It is unbelievable to me how this has been allowed to happen.
Well, part of it, I guess, is the American public isn't paying enough attention. You need to demand more or demand better of who you are electing and compare this, contrast it with what hasn't worked around the world under communism for many decades.
So with Cuba, you have a situation where this administration is ignoring those who are seeking asylum from a Communist regime for years and years. We have a lot of good Cuban people who have come to this country years ago--they even trickle in now--colleagues that Mr. Roy had mentioned here that some were in this Chamber of Cuban descent. They love this country and see the opportunity here. That is why they cobble together these boats and rafts. I would like to say they are made basically made out of milk cartons. They coming toward us.
We don't see these people complaining about this country and its flag and desecrating its flag cobbling together milk carton rafts and going toward Cuba for their amazing healthcare system and their amazing education system that we hear people on other side of the aisle claiming to be the way to go. So what is it?
What is asylum? When we are granting it to people coming up illegally from Central America, they are not seeking the true definition of asylum, they are seeking economic opportunity. Do I blame them? No. They live in bad conditions down there, but they also see this giant green light at our border saying: Come on across. Even though the laws on the books say ``no'' and we have people hired to patrol the border. Instead, they are being focused more and directed more to be a welcome wagon at the border. What are we doing?
Asylum is defined: ``The protection granted by a nation to someone who has left their native country as a political refugee.''
The people who have been trying to and some successfully escaping Cuba for 60 years are the perfect definition of that. Those are the ones we should be looking at, and this administration should be looking at finding a way to help them.
Those in Central America who are coming here for jobs, we have legislation to work in that direction to have a legal workforce come here, or those who are already here illegally, find a way to get to legal status under our rules, under our laws.
But, no, this administration is leaving our border wide open, as was mentioned. The fentanyl, thousands of pounds, how far would that go? And where is it landing? The stuff we do catch is significant, but the stuff that we are not catching up with at the border, where is it going? Where is it being stockpiled? When is that going to come out? That is extremely dangerous. Extremely.
I like to think that these freedom fighters, whether it is Hong Kong or other places who are using our flag as a symbol of freedom and hope, and the one they want to emulate and get to, whether it is in their country or maybe even come here, and we are going in the other direction. It is unbelievable to me when we can't even have our Olympians respect our flag; we can't have our soccer team; when we can't have basically the singing of the National Anthem or the recitation of our flag salute in our schools.
One of the young men I talk about, now in the military, I am really proud of that young man. I don't have authorization to say his name. His first name is Grayson. What a great kid. He is going to be a real doer in our military. He fought to just have his flag salute done at his high school. It hadn't been done in 40 years, and he had to overcome a bureaucracy that said: Oh, we don't know. It might offend somebody. Oh, we haven't asked all of the teachers. We haven't asked all of the school board.
This young man took it upon himself to petition his fellow students to get this done. And I said: If they don't get it done, I will be right there with you at 8:30 in the morning. We will do it right in the front of the school. Well, they got it done. And I am so proud of him and what he is going to do. But there are many, many Americans like that all over this world, serving across the world, living here in this country that believe in that as well and take that pledge.
Spontaneously, at the baseball game, if they are not going to do the National Anthem, they spontaneously start it themselves. It is pretty amazing. At the NHL hockey playoff game in New York, those Islander fans stood up and joined in with one that was going on, and the singer, she actually stood down so she could feel that moment. Pretty amazing. This still exists in the hearts and minds of most Americans in this country.
We will not allow ourselves to be beaten down by political correctness, critical race theory, and all of these other things that aren't really who we are or what is in the hearts of the vast majority of the people of this country.
When we are talking about our border, it is a sieve, which is a giant problem. It wasn't a problem nearly as much under President Trump, who was trying to solve the issue, but also work with those countries and help solve the issue within. Instead, it was just open season on all of us, on our taxpayers, our schools, our healthcare system, and even all of the COVID business that has been manipulated to a degree that Americans really need to question how much longer they are going to have their freedoms, as was mentioned by Mr. Roy: vaccine passports being forced upon us.
In California, they are talking about you can't work in the State as a State employee unless you get the vaccine, or perhaps you can get off the hook by getting a test every single week.
Where are our liberties? If you are not concerned about our liberties and our basic freedom, you better wake up right now because you don't get them back once they have been taken. It is much more difficult to get them back than what our Founders had laid down and all of those buried in Arlington--as I drove by in town today--fought to preserve.
We have a job as Americans. I wear this tie and suit. I leave my farm every week to be a part of it, too, because we can't just sit still anymore. We all have to be part of this.
Mr. ROY. Madam Speaker, I thank the gentleman from California for his words, and I appreciate the passion and the commitment to what the gentleman just shared with not just me and with my friend from Texas, but with the American people.
I ask the Speaker how much time I have remaining?
The SPEAKER pro tempore. The gentleman from Texas has 3 minutes remaining.
Mr. ROY. Madam Speaker, I appreciate my colleagues for coming down and joining me. I would only add this: As we sit here and we hear so much negativity about what is going on, the virus, for example, and vaccines, we hear nothing from my colleagues on the other side of the aisle, but everybody is stonewalling and so forth. We have administered 188 million individuals with the vaccine in this country; 340 or so million doses. About 57 percent of the total population, about 80 percent of those over 65 have had two shots, 90 percent have had one shot.
We are well above the vast majority of the world in terms of total numbers. As a percentage, we are a little bit behind, because we are a large country. When you look at what we have actually accomplished--
remember, our colleagues on the other side of the aisle who last year were saying: This vaccine stuff, that is all fool's gold.
We know that is true. We know that is what our Vice President said, and a lot of our colleagues on the other side of the aisle said: Don't touch the vaccine. That is crazy stuff. Well, now, all of a sudden it is like: You better go get the vaccine. Run and get the vaccine. You have to get the vaccine. Get the vaccine.
Okay, I am telling my dad, a polio survivor, 78-years old: Go get the vaccine, dad. But what if you have natural immunity? Should you go get the vaccine? What if you are a kid? Should you go get the vaccine? Those are questions, and they are reasonable questions.
This government, in its infinite wisdom, shut down businesses, shut down schools, mandated masks, created all sorts of mental health issues, prohibited people from going to get cancer screenings and take care of themselves and their families, forced elderly couples who have been married for 40 or 50 years not to be able to say good-bye when one of them was passing away, all in the name of the government taking care of us.
In the infinite wisdom of the government I should just go run down and say: Oh, sure, let me run down and get the vaccine when how much money has been given to the pharmaceutical companies? How many billions of dollars are they getting, and how much do they get for the boosters?
By the way, my colleagues on the other side of the aisle were going after the profitability of the pharmaceutical companies at an oversight hearing that I was in last year, 2 years ago.
The bottom line here is: This country is a great country filled with great people, doing great things, every single day, and when this body and this government gets out of the way of the American people, they continue to do great things. The greatness and the future of our country lies with them and with the people.
Madam Speaker, I yield back the balance of my time.
____________________
SOURCE: Congressional Record Vol. 167, No. 130
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