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SELF-INFLICTED CRISES
The SPEAKER pro tempore. Under the Speaker's announced policy of January 4, 2021, the gentleman from Louisiana (Mr. Johnson) is recognized for 60 minutes as the designee of the minority leader.
General Leave
Mr. JOHNSON of Louisiana. Mr. Speaker, I ask unanimous consent that all Members have 5 legislative days to revise and extend their remarks and include extraneous material on the subject of my Special Order.
The SPEAKER pro tempore. Is there objection to the request of the gentleman from Louisiana?
There was no objection.
Mr. JOHNSON of Louisiana. Mr. Speaker, during my time tonight, my colleagues and I will address the major crises happening here at home, happening close to home, and now happening abroad. Our message tonight will cover many topics, but the theme is consistent. These crises are self-inflicted. There are the direct results of disastrous policy decisions from the Biden administration.
We have a large number of Members who want to participate tonight, so I will begin immediately by yielding to the gentleman from central Pennsylvania (Mr. Joyce), my good friend.
Mr. JOYCE of Pennsylvania. Mr. Speaker, under the leadership of the Biden administration, Americans are facing escalating challenges to our economy, to our national security and, ultimately, to our way of life. As we have heard many times, our Nation continues to jump from crisis to crisis.
On this floor, I have often raised concerns about the border crisis, and it continues to spiral out of control as we record an increasing number of migrants crossing the southern border, along with gang violence, human trafficking, and deadly illicit drugs.
Border agents seized over 900 pounds of fentanyl at our southern border last month alone. Today, we are witnessing an escalating crisis and, unlike our Vice President, the American people aren't laughing.
More than 80 days ago, President Biden tasked Vice President Harris with addressing the border crisis. Months later, she has yet to visit the border and witness the devastation firsthand.
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How many days will it take? One hundred? Two hundred? A year?
If Vice President Harris needs encouragement to get to the southwest border, then Congress can provide an incentive. I am proud to support Congresswoman Ashley Hinson's See the Crisis Act, which would defund Vice President Harris' international travel until she visits America's southwest border.
It is simple. If the Vice President wants to go to Europe, then she must go to the border first.
This is no laughing matter. At home in Pennsylvania, the border crisis is a matter of life and death. Lives are depending on border security.
The truth is clear: We can't afford the Biden border crisis. We can't afford the Biden economic crisis. We can't afford the Biden national security crisis. And we can't afford the Biden energy crisis.
This pattern is rooted in the Biden administration's broken policies. Under President Biden's watch, we are a nation in crisis.
The American people are paying attention, and they are counting on us to stop this alarming trend and restore our Nation's path to recovery.
Mr. JOHNSON of Louisiana. Mr. Speaker, I thank the gentleman. The American people are counting on us, and they deserve a President who will ensure their safety, security, and freedom, both here at home and abroad.
Mr. Speaker, I yield to the gentleman from Florida (Mr. C. Scott Franklin), who represents Florida's Fifth Congressional District.
Mr. C. SCOTT FRANKLIN of Florida. Mr. Speaker, I rise tonight because our country is facing a growing economic crisis, a crisis of the Biden administration's making.
With his massive and reckless spending programs, President Biden has mortgaged our economic security. Long after this current administration has skipped town, future generations of hardworking Americans will be stuck holding the bill.
It is human nature to like free stuff, I suppose, and as long as Uncle Sam is willing to dole out money to everyone and everything in sight, it is easy to understand why people are happily lining up for their fair share.
It is also a universal truth that there is no such thing as a free lunch. Unchecked spending doesn't just hurt us in the future. It is also destructive in the near term.
My Democrat colleagues have tried for months to convince the American people that it is only the rich who will pay for reckless spending policies, but people know better. Americans across the country are starting to feel the pinch of this unbridled spending.
They are certainly noticing it back in my home State of Florida, where drivers are paying more for gas than they have in nearly a decade. They see it when they go to the grocery store, where prices on everything from a jar of peanut butter to a gallon of milk have spiked sharply. They are feeling the pain on nearly everything they buy, with consumer costs rising at the highest rate in nearly 13 years.
This inflation President Biden has created is an immediate tax on workers, causing each hard-earned dollar to be worth less than it was before. At the same time, skyrocketing costs of materials are making it even harder for small business owners to reopen.
With high unemployment, record job openings, and spiraling inflation, it is time for the Biden administration to acknowledge that their bad medicine is hurting the patient. Congress has the authority and the responsibility to rein in this reckless spending, and the time to act is now.
Mr. JOHNSON of Louisiana. Mr. Speaker, my friend is exactly right. The people do know better, and the pain hardworking Americans are feeling is very real.
Mr. Speaker, I yield to the gentleman from Pennsylvania (Mr. Meuser), who represents Pennsylvania's Ninth Congressional District.
Mr. MEUSER. Mr. Speaker, in less than 6 months, the Biden administration's policies have disrupted the fundamentals of our economy and have caused significant inflation.
In March, congressional Democrats pushed through the $1.9 trillion American Rescue Plan, some thought after the recovery began, in a highly partisan process without one Republican vote. This level of spending was unwarranted. Even many liberal-minded economists estimated it was three times bigger than needed and warned of inflationary pressures not seen in a generation as a result.
Inflation occurs when too many dollars are chasing too few goods, and predictability, this influx of spending resulted in prices increasing 4.2 percent in April and 5 percent last month. The reality is that inflation is a tax, Mr. Speaker, on every American family who is now paying more for essential goods, such as food and gasoline and many others, and whose savings are now worth less. Again, even liberal-
minded economists called this the least responsible fiscal policy of the last 40 years.
At the same time, businesses are struggling to compete with Federal unemployment benefits. In one month, 4 million Americans walked off their jobs. Last month, there were a record 9.3 million open jobs, a level not seen since the beginning of World War II, when Americans were leaving to go fight the war. Yet, the Biden administration denies the correlation between open jobs and excessive, untargeted unemployment benefits.
Undeterred by the data, the Biden administration shows no sign of letting up, proposing a $6 trillion budget this year that will put our country on a path to record debt and that reports show will disrupt our long-term economic growth.
The Biden administration is persistent in its charade that inflation is not occurring, unemployment benefits don't deter work, and their policies won't significantly disrupt our country's strength and economic growth.
The reality is, the Biden agenda only grows government, not the private-sector economy.
This can be a great American decade if we unleash the power of American innovators and entrepreneurs, but we can't do that under the yoke of excessive and untargeted spending, increased taxes, and inflation. We must, Mr. Speaker, grow opportunity in America, which creates the American Dream. Government should only serve this purpose.
Mr. JOHNSON of Louisiana. Mr. Speaker, my friend said it so well. This administration either doesn't understand those fundamentals of the economy or doesn't care. It is very perplexing.
Mr. Speaker, I yield to the gentleman from Indiana (Mr. Baird), who represents Indiana's Fourth Congressional District.
Mr. BAIRD. Mr. Speaker, I thank my colleague from Louisiana for his allowing me to have the opportunity to be here and speak on this issue.
Today, I rise, Mr. Speaker, because our country is in crisis. Despite promises to the contrary, President Biden's policies are crushing small businesses and hurting hardworking Americans.
The simple fact is that we should be cruising into an economic recovery thanks to the Trump administration's advancements. Instead, we are drowning in Democrats' reckless spending packages that have led to a greater increase in inflation rates than we have seen since the 2008 economic crisis.
As a result, Americans are paying more for everything. Gasoline is over 50 percent more expensive today than it was 12 months ago. Transportation services are up 11 percent since last May. Food and energy prices have seen a combined price increase of nearly 4 percent, a dramatic increase that we haven't seen since 1992.
The average American simply cannot afford this, and it is time that we prioritize American paychecks over wasteful government spending.
Mr. JOHNSON of Louisiana. Mr. Speaker, ``reckless'' is a word we hear over and over tonight and as we talk to our constituents because there is no better word to describe what is happening with this administration.
Mr. Speaker, I yield to the gentleman from Florida (Mr. Gimenez), the former mayor of Miami who represents Florida's 26th Congressional District.
Mr. GIMENEZ. Mr. Speaker, many of my colleagues tonight have been sounding the alarm on the crisis our country faces at the hands of the most radical, progressive fringes of our politics. Institutionally, we are facing a grave danger right here in Congress, with a sitting Member of Congress choosing to continue her anti-Semitic and anti-American rhetoric from the halls of our government.
When a Member of Congress, who describes themselves as a starter of fires, fuels anti-Semitic violence against Jewish communities by perpetuating false stereotypes and anti-Semitic tropes; denigrates strategic allies of the United States and accuses Members of Congress of unconstitutionally pledging allegiance to a foreign sovereign because of their support of the U.S.-Israel partnership; whitewashes the September 11 terrorist attacks that resulted in the death of over 3,000 innocent Americans; draws equivalence between the United States and criminal organizations such as Hamas and the Taliban, both of which have been deemed by the Department of State as terrorist organizations, it is the absolute responsibility of Speaker Pelosi and Democratic leadership to hold their Members accountable.
Unfortunately, Speaker Pelosi has lacked the backbone to act and has chosen to cower in terror as Members of Congress in her party shred America apart from this podium.
They may call themselves a fire starter, but I have built my career as a firefighter. I cannot and will not allow this behavior to go unnoticed and be allowed to be swept under the rug.
These comments and policy stances undermine the interests of the United States abroad and weaken the effectiveness of our foreign policy, sending a dangerous signal to our allies and our adversaries alike that the United States tolerates anti-Semitism, that we no longer believe in the long-term mission of supporting free peoples and free markets, and that we no longer remain committed to combating acts of terror against the United States and our allies.
While we are encouraged that several of my colleagues across the aisle have posed their strong rebuke of these anti-American comments and policy stances, the only rebuke on this issue that will have any meaningful impact is one by the Speaker and the majority of the House of Representatives.
To turn a blind eye on this would be a ``cowardly refusal,'' as Speaker Pelosi characterizes it, to hold Members on your side of the aisle accountable and dereliction of your role as the leader of your party and as the Speaker of the House of Representatives, an institution we all so proudly and honorably serve.
Anti-Americans have no right to threaten our country without retribution. America deserves better.
Mr. JOHNSON of Louisiana. Mr. Speaker, my friend is exactly right. That language is dangerous, and our colleague that he referenced is contributing to the foreign policy crises that have developed rapidly over the last few months.
Mr. Speaker, I yield to the gentlewoman from Arizona (Mrs. Lesko).
Mrs. LESKO. Mr. Speaker, there is growing evidence that COVID-19 originated in a lab in Wuhan, China, which the liberal media and Big Tech dismissed as a conspiracy theory.
Time and time again, the Chinese Communist Party has lied and covered up the origins of COVID-19. Republicans have repeatedly called for a full, thorough investigation into this virus, but these calls have fallen on deaf ears.
It is unclear why my colleagues on the other side of the aisle have refused to hold Communist China accountable. They refuse to allocate any resources to support a full investigation or even hold a hearing. They are allowing China to get away with its deadly lies.
Over 600,000 Americans have died from COVID-19. It is time to stop pushing the America last agenda that prioritizes the Chinese Communist Party over giving the American people the answers they deserve.
Mr. JOHNSON of Louisiana. Mr. Speaker, my friend from Arizona is exactly right. This crisis with China and the Chinese Communist Party is perhaps the greatest threat that we face as a people today, and we need the White House to stand strong. I am so grateful she brought that good word.
Mr. Speaker, I yield to the gentleman from Pennsylvania (Mr. Keller), who represents Pennsylvania's 12th Congressional District.
Mr. KELLER. Mr. Speaker, when I was a kid, my brother and I would help our dad make ends meet by collecting aluminum cans on the side of the road. We didn't make much, but what we made, we used to buy food. Very early, we learned the value of a dollar.
Today, the value of that same dollar has plummeted because of wasteful, Big Government spending, like the kind President Biden has embraced with his disastrous economic policies.
One of President Biden's core campaign promises was that he would not raise taxes on any Americans making less than $400,000 a year. What he failed to mention was the hidden tax brought on by his inflationary spending. In May, the Consumer Price Index jumped to 5 percent, the fastest rate since 2008.
Every American is feeling the strain from this administration's reckless spending spree. From the gas pump and the supermarket to the clothing store and the car dealership, Americans are spending more and getting less.
While the current administration shovels trillions of taxpayer dollars into the furnace of a runaway train, it is clear that Joe Biden is intent on saddling our kids and grandkids with insurmountable debt.
It is time for Joe Biden to stop playing politics with taxpayer money and start doing what is right for our country. Let's get Americans back to work, get the government out of the way, and allow taxpayers to keep more of their own money. After all, they have earned it.
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Mr. JOHNSON of Louisiana. Mr. Speaker, Mr. Keller is correct. When we were kids, they taught us the value of a dollar. That is not what our Democrat colleagues are teaching anymore. Now they are subscribing to what we call fantasy economics, modern monetary theory and all the rest. Mr. Keller is exactly right, and I am so grateful that he brought that word tonight.
Mr. Speaker, I yield next to the gentleman from Texas (Mr. Babin), representing the 36th District.
Mr. BABIN. Mr. Speaker, I have one question for President Biden and his administration: What will it take? We are halfway through 2021 and more than 700,000 illegal aliens have already been apprehended unlawfully crossing our southern border.
Finally, as this administration begrudgingly chokes out the words
``border crisis,'' Americans and migrants alike are being raped, trafficked, kidnapped, exploited, and murdered.
Drug cartels are fully in control of the U.S.-Mexico border and in many places on both sides of the border, and they are not stopping there. They are infiltrating every community across the country--not just down at our border States--and they are hell-bent on causing us harm. Every State is now a border State.
More deadly drugs, like meth and fentanyl, are coming up through the southern border than ever before to kill over 70,000 Americans every year from overdoses. There has been over a 300 percent increase of fentanyl seized at the southern border. Even FBI Director Christopher Wray said that there was no question that cartel activity from Mexico is spilling over into the United States. And yet the Biden administration is silent. Silent.
Today marks 84 days since Vice President Kamala Harris was foolishly dubbed the border czar. Last week, when asked when she planned to actually do her job and visit the border, she had the audacity to laugh. If any American didn't show up for their job for 84 days, they would probably be fired.
Clearly, this administration has all but abandoned our border communities and all of its American citizens. What a slap in the face to the American people, the rule of law, his sworn oath of office, and to the migrants who put their lives at risk to come here because Biden told them to and encouraged them to.
So what will it take? How much worse does the worst border crisis in our history need to get before President Biden begins fulfilling his duty to defend and secure the homeland and protect us and our sovereignty? How many more children need to be thrown from 18-foot walls or abandoned to die? How many more women and girls and young boys need to be sexually assaulted, trafficked, or murdered? How many more Americans need to die from drug overdoses or have a loved one hurt by an illegal alien who shouldn't even be here?
I am speaking for the millions of Americans who have empathy for those wanting to come here but who want to do so in a legal way. I am speaking as a descendant of immigrants myself. I am speaking as a taxpaying citizen who knows that we are trillions of dollars in debt and do not have the money to pay for noncitizens who are breaking our laws. Lastly, I am speaking as an American who loves his country enough to die for it. Enough is enough.
President Biden needs to do his job, secure our border, and protect this great Nation and the oath that he swore to uphold.
Mr. JOHNSON of Louisiana. Mr. Speaker, despite the obvious magnitude of that big problem on the border that we have seen and talk about all the time, hammering home that theme, there have been zero visits to the border by the President or the border czar, the Vice President.
In fact, when Kamala Harris was asked in an interview this week if she planned on visiting the border, she laughed about it. But I tell you, those Customs and Border Patrol agents will tell her that it is no laughing matter. I am grateful that Mr. Babin brought that forward tonight.
Mr. Speaker, I yield next to the gentleman from Tennessee (Mr. Rose), my good friend, who represents the Sixth District.
Mr. ROSE. Mr. Speaker, the evidence of the Chinese Communist Party's denial, distortion, and concealment of the coronavirus pandemic from its critical beginning to the present day is overwhelming.
In January 2020, if not before, the Chinese Communist Party knew it was dealing with a fast-spreading disease in Wuhan but rejected transparency in favor of a propaganda campaign to spread disinformation.
From manipulated statistics and the prevention of an investigation by international experts to ousted journalists and whistleblowers who were silenced through intimidation and foul play, there are countless examples of how the CCP lied to the rest of the world about the origins of the pandemic.
Prominent epidemiologists and biologists have raised concerns about a possible spillover in the Wuhan lab, and CDC director Dr. Walensky said it is possible COVID could have leaked from a lab.
It was recently reported that three researchers from China's Wuhan Institute of Virology became ill with symptoms consistent with COVID-19 and sought hospital care in November of 2019. On top of that, China has not been forthright in sharing information nor have they cooperated with the U.S. or the global community.
The dishonesty of China's Communist leadership regarding the coronavirus pandemic has led to hundreds of thousands of American deaths, millions of sick Americans, and trillions of dollars of economic damage to our country.
In the face of this mounting evidence, I join 211 of my House colleagues in urging Speaker Pelosi to investigate the origins of COVID-19. But House Democrats continue to stonewall this effort.
The Biden administration and House Democrats cannot continue to turn a blind eye to the CCP's nefarious behavior. We must penalize and hold the CCP legally and financially responsible for the human and economic suffering its Communist Government has caused. Enough is enough.
Mr. JOHNSON of Louisiana. Mr. Speaker, that is such an important point. The evidence is mounting that China is indeed responsible for the COVID crisis, and we must hold them accountable.
Mr. Speaker, I yield to the gentleman from Louisiana (Mr. Higgins), who represents the Third District, and is the third Louisianan on the floor now.
Mr. HIGGINS of Louisiana. Mr. Speaker, my ancestral forefather traveled to this country 200 years ago or so. He was born a poor Irishman with no path toward prosperity that did not lead through oppressive government, indentured servitude.
He arrived in the port of New Orleans after scrapping together enough money to book passage on a sailing vessel that had been converted from carrying cargo to carrying human beings. He survived the journey, although many poor Irishmen did not.
He came to this land seeking freedom. He found it. He prospered. And through the generations the Higgins family established itself as a solid, working-class American family. Construction workers, firemen, police officers, soldiers, and sailors.
After my father passed, my mother and her sister, my Aunt Gloria, took it upon themselves to research the family tree. They discovered some of the truths that I am sharing with you tonight. This was way before the Internet and computers and iPhones. They worked in the actual archives.
One of the things they discovered was a letter written by my ancestral forefather describing the conditions on a vessel he traveled to America upon. His sleeping berth measured 2 by 2 by 5. 2 by 2 by 5. I think about that as I serve within this body.
I recognize the pain that our ancestral forefathers and foremothers endured to carve this country of greatness from the wilderness. There has never been a moment when American patriots claimed that our Nation was perfect. We have always known that we are imperfect men driven by perfect intent to create a nation where a man could breathe free, and indeed we have.
The sovereignty of America requires action from this body and from this executive, our current executive, to maintain the security and sovereignty of our Nation at the southern border. The very promise of America is threatened by the policies and weakness of action and refusal to act in response to 1.1 million criminal crossings year to date.
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The very freedoms and opportunities that our ancestral forefathers and foremothers came to this country to embrace, the blood and life and limb that has been sacrificed by generations of patriots past have preserved America.
America itself is imperiled from within. It is the duty and the sworn oath of Members of this body to ring our voices loud and clear across the land that we will not allow America to fall into decline. We will not become judicious managers of our Nation's fall. We will stand and we will fight; we will make noise and we will be heard.
I thank my colleague for allowing us to gather this evening and speak on behalf of the citizens that we serve, the Nation that we love, and the future that we will not allow to demise.
Mr. JOHNSON of Louisiana. Mr. Speaker, I thank Captain Higgins for those impassioned words. He is exactly right.
One of the things that is so heartbreaking, frustrating, unconscionable about this is we can solve this crisis at the border pretty simply. All we need the White House to do is reimplement the Trump-era policies because that increased border security, it discouraged illegal immigration and it reinstituted law and order, and we can do that, but they won't.
Mr. Speaker, I yield to the gentleman from Georgia (Mr. Carter), who represents Georgia's First Congressional District.
Mr. CARTER of Georgia. Mr. Speaker, I thank the gentleman for yielding.
Mr. Speaker, I rise today to discuss the many foreign failures President Biden and the Democrats have made putting our national security and country at risk.
When President Biden came into office, he and Vice President Harris invited people to come through our border. President Biden even stopped construction of the highly successful and necessary border wall.
The Biden border crisis was preventable, and can be fixed if President Biden and Vice President Harris would visit the border like I have.
President Biden has also been apologetic to our Nation's greatest foes. He refused for months to acknowledge the possibility that the coronavirus was man-made in the Wuhan lab. He let big tech silence those who spoke out about the evidence, despite leaked emails from Dr. Fauci that showed even he knew the lab leak theory was highly possible and likely probable.
And now President Biden wants to hand our vaccine technology over to China free of charge. Members on both sides of the aisle recognize the dangers of this. Yet President Biden would rather side with the Chinese Communist Party than American innovators and American workers.
And most recently, the Biden administration and my colleagues across the aisle won't condemn anti-Semitic comments made by Members of this Chamber.
To conflate the U.S. and Israel with Hamas and Iran is disgusting. It is wrong. And it is an insult to the men and women who fought for our country and who still defend our country against terrorism.
It is time for President Biden to put America first. President Trump did, and our country was stronger than ever before. Now it is time for President Biden to do his job and stand up for the U.S. and hardworking, patriotic Americans.
You work for Americans, not for foreign countries.
Mr. JOHNSON of Louisiana. Mr. Speaker, that is a great reminder of who the President serves, and it is confounding to us that he doesn't understand these basic truths.
Mr. Speaker, I yield to the gentleman from Tennessee (Mr. Burchett), who represents Tennessee's Second District.
Mr. BURCHETT. Thank you, Mr. Chairman, for yielding. Second Congressional District, but first in our hearts.
Mr. JOHNSON of Louisiana. Always.
Mr. BURCHETT. Mr. Speaker, 1 year ago, the average cost of gas in America was $2.17 a gallon. Today, it is $3.07 per gallon, a 41 percent increase.
But it isn't just gas prices. Costs for many goods and services Americans rely on are quickly rising. The Consumer Price Index, which tracks the cost of things, like food and energy, jumped 5 percent in May compared to 1 year ago.
This inflation is the ultimate cost of President Biden's $2 trillion Big Government spending spree back in January, Mr. Speaker. The Federal Government is printing money at a breakneck pace, decreasing the purchasing power of our dollars.
Meanwhile, businesses can't get folks to come back to work, thanks to President Biden's generous unemployment benefits. And lately in east Tennessee, I have heard stories from small business owners who can't find enough workers to keep up with their demand.
They need to tell the folks at Wright's Cafeteria, where my good friend David Wright owns his restaurant that was his mama's and daddy's, they can't get folks to come back to work. He is still too behind in the kitchen. He hasn't been open for months.
Another friend of mine, Mike Chase, owns Calhoun's, which is a world-
famous restaurant chain in the area. And, actually, in Gatlinburg, Tennessee, they have had to close down in a tourist section of our community that is heavily populated during the day by well-heeled tourists wanting to spend their money, yet he had to close down because he can't get people to work.
Another friend of mine, Charlie Peroulas, at the Pizza Palace, world-
famous onion rings. Mr. Speaker, I would literally crawl across Magnolia Avenue on glass to eat their onion rings. They are that good. And his pizzas are great as well. He has not been able to have full shifts and to serve the community as he has in the past.
Stories like these, though, aren't unique to east Tennessee, Mr. Speaker. This is happening all over the country. Businesses are raising their prices to stay alive, and those costs are passed along to the American consumers.
President Biden promised there would be no tax increase on working Americans, but inflation sure as heck isn't leaving any money in the pockets of our middle class, Mr. Speaker. His outrageous spending is causing long-term economic damage and saddling future generations with debt. And if President Biden isn't stopped in this venture, future generations will inherit a worthless American dollar, Mr. Speaker.
Mr. JOHNSON of Louisiana. Mr. Speaker, the gentleman covered a lot, and he is right, this crisis we have, the jobs and the economy was so preventable.
Mr. Speaker, I yield to the gentleman from South Carolina (Mr. Wilson), one of my heroes in the Congress.
Mr. WILSON of South Carolina. Mr. Speaker, I thank Chairman Mike Johnson for his leadership for promoting the truth tonight. It has been so refreshing to hear our colleagues bring facts to the American people that they need to know.
And thanks to the leadership of Vice President Mike Pence through Operation Warp Speed to develop the Wuhan virus vaccine, America has been able to get back to work with jobs being available.
In May of this year, the Centers for Disease Control released updated guidance saying that fully vaccinated people no longer needed to wear a mask or social distance in most cases. America should be completely open for business to create jobs.
We saw President Trump created jobs. Under his leadership, we had record low unemployment for African Americans, for Asian Americans, for Hispanics. We had record employment. The most number of jobs ever for youth and women in the United States by cutting taxes, not raising the taxes either directly or by inflation, as Mr. Biden is doing.
Unfortunately, the Biden administration does not agree with science. Even with this huge win to the American people, the administration and Democrats want to continue to have unemployed Americans be dependent on the government by incentivizing them to remain unemployed with increased benefits that pay more than a small business can provide, destroying jobs.
I commend Governor Henry McMaster for ending these increased benefits and getting South Carolina back to work. Congress should follow suit creating jobs.
I am grateful to be a cosponsor of H.R. 3104, the Get Americans Back to Work Act, sponsored by Congressman Dusty Johnson. This bill will remove the supplemental Federal self-destructive benefits by June 30 of this year.
I encourage my colleagues to pass this legislation. We must not continue to indebt future generations with reckless spending or create inflation, which destroys the retirement savings of our senior citizens and equally is crippling to small businesses that are the backbone of this country.
Jobs are uplifting, fulfilling, and meaningful for a productive life.
Mr. JOHNSON of Louisiana. Mr. Speaker, the Biden administration Democrats continue to push policies that pay people more to stay at home than go back to work, so the results are not surprising at all.
Mr. Speaker, I yield to the gentleman from Pennsylvania (Mr. Perry), who represents Pennsylvania's 10th Congressional District.
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Mr. PERRY. Mr. Speaker, I thank my good friend, Mr. Johnson, for this Special Order, talking, unfortunately, about the things that make us sad to see happening in our country.
Here, before, they were talking about the climate crisis. We sure do have a climate crisis. We have a climate of unbridled spending happening in this country without any eye toward the consequences.
Of course, we have a border crisis. We have a law-and-order crisis going on.
We have a leadership crisis in this country. We are ceding the leadership of the United States of America to thugs in Russia, China, and Iran.
We have a political crisis, where everything is politicized, where we can't even get together on things we agree with because the other side forces you to take votes that potentially destroy the fabric of our country, our neighborhoods. The things that we agree on, we can't even do that here because there has to be a political price to pay for everything.
Of course, the financial crisis--inflation is here, and it is here to stay. In May, consumer prices spiked 5 percent from the previous year. That is the biggest spike since August 2008. Remember that? The beginning of the Great Recession?
We don't have to be doing this, but I think we are going to do it again. Overall, prices jumped at a shocking 9.7 percent annualized rate from March through May. That is 10 percent. Oh, by the way, that coincides with the time that the Biden fiscal policies started coming into play. They are beginning to devastate the economy like we knew they would.
In real terms, if you are driving, you are paying 40 percent more today than you did at the start of the year.
And it is artificial, right? We closed the Keystone pipeline down. We let Russia have their pipeline, but we closed ours down. Do you think the gas isn't coming? It is still coming. We are just paying a lot more for it because they have to put it on a truck or a train. Heaven forbid, it can't go through the Keystone pipeline. Oh, we can't have that.
Guess who pays? Every single one of us. But who does it hurt the most? Do you remember the days when you were growing up and couldn't afford to fill up your gas tank? You put five bucks in and prayed you got to the end of the week? That is who it is hurting, and it is happening again.
Food prices are up 2.4 percent, and the transport cost of food, up 25 percent. Again, who does it hurt the most?
Meanwhile, the May jobs report shows 9.3 million job openings in the U.S., nearly a million increase over the numbers for April.
That is the largest increase ever since the Bureau of Labor Statistics began counting. These are indicators of bad things happening. They are also indicators and a manifestation of bad policy when we, as the government, pay more for people to stay home than they make if they would go to work.
Who can blame them? They are looking out for their economic best interests. If they can make more staying home, well, God bless them. They have to because they have to pay the higher prices from all this inflation that is ``not happening.'' I say that tongue-in-cheek because that is what the President has told us, and that is what Janet Yellen told us.
Well, we might have been born at night, Mr. Johnson, but it wasn't last night. We know it is happening. It is obvious to any Economics 101 student.
The Biden administration and Democrats in Congress have extended these benefits through September. So guess what? It is just going to keep going.
Labor is going to cost more, and everything associated with labor is going to cost more. Who is it going to hurt the most? The people working the hardest at the bottom trying to make their way out.
Families can't afford it. Do you know who else can't afford it, Mr. Johnson? My good friend. I have a friend at home. He started a business 51 years ago. He came home from fighting for his country in Vietnam, and he started a business from scratch 51 years ago. He hired hundreds of people and was known around the world for his product.
Well, guess what just happened this month?
Mr. JOHNSON of Louisiana. Mr. Speaker, out of business.
Mr. PERRY. Mr. Speaker, gotta shut her down, man. Gotta shut her down. The policies affect people's lives.
Like I said, the President and Secretary Yellen said that inflation wasn't real just a few months ago. Now they are saying it won't be permanent. If you believe what they said a couple of months ago, you might as well believe that.
While they are pursuing another $6 trillion in spending, we can't go to the bank. We are just going to print it. Guess what is going to happen? It is going to be runaway inflation, and it is actually going to threaten the continuation of this very Republic. And that spending is in addition to the $2.1 trillion budget deficit for the first 8 months of this fiscal year, the largest on record, which follows $3 trillion last year, which was another record.
We just simply can't afford these reckless policies. We love our country. We want to work with the other side. This isn't working. It is not working for the American people. It is not working for any of us.
We are at the tipping point in a lot of ways in this country. One of them is economic, and we can do something about it. But we need the President to have some fiscal restraint. We need the people in this body to have some fiscal restraint.
Mr. Speaker, I thank the gentleman for offering this Special Order tonight. We don't need to kowtow. We don't need to kneel at the altar of the green crazy people who want to drive the agenda.
We have a great country, and we could save it. We don't have to let China open a coal plant--one every week--while we hobble ourselves and shut ourselves out of the great resources that we have in this country. We don't have to do it.
Mr. JOHNSON of Louisiana. Mr. Speaker, I am very grateful for those comments.
Mr. Perry is exactly right. He mentioned Economics 101. Some of our colleagues would do well to go take a refresher course.
Mr. Speaker, I yield to the gentleman from Georgia (Mr. Clyde), who represents Georgia's Ninth District.
Mr. CLYDE. Mr. Speaker, I rise today on behalf of the people of Georgia's Ninth District to bring attention to two major issues plaguing our country as we speak, the economic crisis and the Biden border crisis, as both will affect our country for years to come.
Inflationary pressures are crippling consumer purchasing power at record rates, and our national debt is on the rise.
My constituents are eager to course-correct our Nation's fiscal ship so we can guarantee that the American Dream is attainable for future generations of Americans. Unfortunately, the Biden administration shows no signs of curtailing its spending habits any time soon, as Democrats are keying up a plan to shoehorn through Congress, the progressive American Jobs and Families Plan, which combined total $4 trillion in deficit spending.
Folks, the debt is already at $28.4 trillion. The White House has announced a budget that will leave the American people holding a stunning $39 trillion in debt by 2031. And what is truly scary? The interest payments on the debt are on track to eclipse our Nation's defense spending in just 10 years. As a military officer, that doesn't sit well with me.
The looming debt spiral will quite literally be the death of the American Dream as we know it if we don't act now. It is clear the Biden administration has no regard for Americans' pocketbooks, nor does it show any remorse for the future generations who will be left to bear the brunt of Democrat-controlled spending.
If that wasn't enough of a crisis, it has been 84 days since Vice President Harris was tapped as the border czar, yet she still has not made a trip to the U.S.-Mexico border. I have traveled to the border twice and have personally witnessed the escalation of the crisis. Why has the Vice President not gone?
The Department of Homeland Security published shocking statistics that paint a very clear picture of how the Biden administration policies are creating a devastating crisis on the border. Last month, encounters at the border exceeded 180,000. This level of apprehension has not been seen in over 21 years and is up 675 percent when compared to May of last year.
Dangerous human traffickers, gang members, and other criminals are smuggling deadly drugs over the border and into our communities at an alarming rate, refueling the opioid crisis, the very crisis former President Trump successfully subdued.
When we look at fentanyl seizures alone, Customs and Border Protection has already seized almost double the amount of fentanyl in the first 8 months of fiscal year 2021 than it did in all 12 months of fiscal year 2020.
The numbers will only continue to rise as more illicit substances come across the border through September, especially as Biden continues reversing Trump's successful border policies.
Enough is enough. We must put country over progressive politics, and I look forward to standing with my Republican colleagues to do so.
Mr. JOHNSON of Louisiana. Mr. Speaker, I thank my friend for those remarks, and I thank him for his service.
Mr. Speaker, may I inquire how much time is remaining.
The SPEAKER pro tempore. The gentleman has 13 minutes remaining.
{time} 2130
Mr. JOHNSON of Louisiana. Mr. Speaker, I yield to the gentleman from Texas (Mr. Gohmert), who represents Texas' First Congressional District.
Mr. GOHMERT. Mr. Speaker, emails--as this headline says from Wendell Husebo--emails show Anthony Fauci scrambled at the beginning of the pandemic to determine the potential U.S. role in funding coronavirus research abroad, and that was because he provided money to a firm that provided money to the Wuhan lab.
As this points out, after Fauci made that comment that we didn't do that, a couple months later, the man responsible for steering U.S. Government funding to the Wuhan Institution of Virology, Peter Daszak, the president of EcoHealth Alliance, thanked Dr. Fauci on April 18, 2020, for publicly dismissing the theory coronavirus may have leaked from that lab to which they furnished money.
Here is another story from the same person. Anthony Fauci said in released emails: Drugstore masks are not really effective.
He told us, Oh, gosh, you know, we need to be taking a mask, everybody should be wearing a mask, but that was only after he had been against it before he became for it.
And this points out and quotes him as just being one of the biggest hypocrites. And in fact, that he completely lied to the American people, because he says that ``Masks are really for infected people . .
. '' He goes on further: ``The typical mask you buy in the drugstore is not really effective . . . '' and he says, ``I do not recommend that you wear a mask, particularly since you are going to a very low risk location. Your instincts are correct, money is best spent on medical countermeasures such as diagnostics and vaccines.''
But as Fauci emails show, the U.S. scientists knew COVID looked engineered only days before insisting that the virus was natural. And that is another one of the reasons that Representative Taylor Greene filed the Fire Fauci Act, and I would encourage people to get on board.
But the virologist who told Fauci that SARS-CoV-2 potentially looked engineered--he eliminated his Twitter account. That article is June 7th.
And then we find out that ``weight-adjusted hydroxychloroquine and azithromycin boosted survival of ventilated COVID-19 patients by 200 percent,'' according to a study. We have had hundreds of thousands of Americans who have died while Fauci and others belittled a hydroxychloroquine regimen, and the good that it could do, and the good it has done for most of those who have taken it.
So we know that in the 1950s President Eisenhower said: No, we got no U-2 flights going over the Soviet Union. And they shot one down. He had to go on TV and say: I am sorry, I lied. I am very sorry, I thought I was doing the right thing by the country.
In the 1960s, President Kennedy, he went on television, and said: I am sorry. It is my fault, basically, that people died in the Bay of Pigs invasion.
But who is going to come forward and say, you know what, this was my fault? It is not going to be Fauci. We don't know if it will be President Biden, but somebody owes a big apology to the American people.
Mr. JOHNSON of Louisiana. Mr. Speaker, Mr. Gohmert is exactly right. And the scope of that tragedy is something that is hard to wrap your mind around.
Mr. Speaker, I yield to the gentleman from West Virginia (Mr. Mooney).
Mr. MOONEY. Mr. Speaker, I rise today to address an issue of great importance to all of our constituents: their economic livelihoods. It has only been 6 months since President Biden took office and already our country is moving in the wrong direction.
Under President Trump we saw unparalleled economic growth. Now under President Biden, we are faced with more and more government spending, fewer and fewer people going back to work, and skyrocketing inflation, which devalues your money. You can see here, a picture is worth a thousand words. 4.2 less percent value to your dollar today after all the spending the government has been doing here lately.
By the end of 2020, the economy was resurgent. And since the economy was crippled by the initial lock-downs in March and April of 2020, there had been an improvement in the unemployment rate each month, until this spring. After 11 months of significant job growth, the unemployment rate increased this past April for the first time since last year.
More Americans are getting vaccinated every day and COVID-19 restrictions are being lifted around the country. This should be a time when the recovery reaches new heights. There were 9.3 million jobs openings in April. That is more job openings than any other time in the last year. But those jobs may not get filled any time soon, due to President Biden and many of my Democrat colleagues' and friends' decision here in this Chamber to continue an unsustainable level of Federal unemployment benefits. Some workers can make more money on unemployment than going back to work.
Commonsense dictates that if you pay people not to work, they will take you up on it. Most people will not act against their own economic interests by working if they can make more money staying home.
The failure of the Biden administration has forced some Governors to act on their own. So far, 25 States have announced plans to wind down the extra $300 a week in Federal unemployment benefits.
Governor Jim Justice in my State of West Virginia announced that our State will join that group here this month, in June. So when Federal leadership fails, Governors must step up and make the best decisions for their States.
West Virginia has had a particular problem with worker shortages for years now. Gil White, who is our State Director of the National Federation of Independent Businesses, was asked on WV MetroNews about the worker shortage, and he responded, ``That is not a myth; it's a reality. I don't care if it's large business or small business employers. I think there is a common theme that finding workers is very challenging, to say the least.''
After a tumultuous year with government shutdowns and strict capacity limits, the last thing small businesses need is a worker shortage that leaves them unprepared to meet the demands of a reopening economy.
President Biden's solution to this problem, along with every other problem, seems to be more spending of your hard-earned taxpayer dollars. But with our budget deficit at an alarming level, and you see it here how it is just skyrocketing, our budget deficit, more spending will bring about more problems.
Our debt is currently $28 trillion, and our deficits have grown substantially larger in the past year due to spending increases in response to COVID-19. And, yet, President Biden is currently pushing for more than $4 trillion in new spending. $4 trillion.
President Biden has proposed to build hundreds of thousands of electric vehicle charging stations, retrofit buildings across America, to make them greener, and a laundry list of other progressive priorities.
Despite his sometimes moderate demeanor, President Biden's platform is far left. President Biden made a long list of promises to the left wing of his party, like when he said he would ``get rid of fossil fuels.'' It should come as no surprise that his administration is shaping up to be the most liberal in recent memory.
We should not keep borrowing money from China in order to spend money that we don't have here in America. There is a simple solution, unwind these expensive government programs, continue opening up the economy, and let people earn a living again. That is our country's path forward.
Mr. Speaker, I have a couple more comments I would like to make on a separate issue.
I rise today to address the crisis at the southern border. These images here show children being dropped over the border fence, and show migrants nearly drowning trying to cross the river on the border.
Ladies and gentlemen, dumping children across a fence like this into the wilderness is not an immigration policy. That is child abuse. That is not how we are supposed to do this. It is an outrage. If President Trump had done that, he would be attacked everywhere.
The border crisis is a humanitarian crisis. Even the President of Guatemala, Alejandro Giammattei, blamed the Biden administration's open border messaging calling it ``lukewarm'' and ``confusing.''
He explained this messaging actually increases the number of unaccompanied minors that are sent out on the journey and are subsequently trafficked by coyotes and cartels.
Data shows that Customs and Border Patrol agents stopped over 180,000 illegal border crossings in the month of May alone, the highest in over 20 years. Look, we can have our own opinions, but we are not entitled to our own facts.
This is a crisis, ladies and gentlemen. It is time for America's border czar, Vice President Kamala Harris, to do her job and address the humanitarian crisis at the border to protect to lives of these young children.
{time} 2140
Mr. JOHNSON of Louisiana. Mr. Speaker, how much time remains on the clock?
The SPEAKER pro tempore. The gentleman has 3 minutes remaining.
Mr. JOHNSON of Louisiana. Mr. Speaker, I will need to summarize, then.
I am delighted to have had so many of my colleagues here tonight to help us sound the alarms and inform the American people what is going on here.
We have a crisis here at home. We have a crisis on the southern border. And we have multiple developing crises abroad. You heard the broad spectrum of all those tonight, Mr. Speaker.
Whether it is our concern about jobs in the economy with the rising inflation, with this humanitarian crisis with young children and traffickers and drug cartels at the border, or whether we are talking about this administration's critical foreign policy blunders, you can summarize it all, Mr. Speaker.
Maybe it was summarized best tonight by the gentleman from Pennsylvania (Mr. Perry). He said in one phrase: We have a leadership crisis.
We certainly do. But I will tell you, Mr. Speaker, all these issues and everything that my colleagues talked about tonight can and should be addressed in a bipartisan way. All of us on this side of the aisle want to do that. We are anxious to do that. We should all want Americans to get back to work. We should all want to end the humanitarian crisis at the border. We should all want to achieve peace through strength on the international stage.
It is time for President Biden and it is time for our Democrat colleagues to work with Republicans for the American people.
Mr. Speaker, I yield back the balance of my time.
____________________
SOURCE: Congressional Record Vol. 167, No. 105
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