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06Imposing Tariffs on Countries Importing Venezuelan Oil: Message From the President of the United States (H. Doc. No. 119-32)
07Adjournment
1 member spoke
Daily Digest
Public Bills and Resolutions Introduced
38 public bills, H.R. 17, 2313-2349; and 8 resolutions, H. Con. Res. 21; and H. Res. 247-253 were introduced.
Pages H1271-74
Reports Filed
Reports were filed today as follows: H. Con. Res. 9, authorizing the use of the Capitol Grounds for the National Peace Officers Memorial Service and the National Honor Guard and Pipe Band Exhibition (H. Rept. 119-39); and H.R. 1526, to amend title 28, United States Code, to limit the authority of district courts to provide injunctive relief, and for other purposes, with an amendment (H. Rept. 119-40).
Page H1271
Speaker
Read a letter from the Speaker wherein he appointed Representative Bost to act as Speaker pro tempore for today.
Page H1223
Recess
The House recessed at 10:52 a.m. and reconvened at 12 p.m.
Page H1229
Library of Congress Trust Fund Board: Appointment
The Chair announced the Speaker's appointment of the following individual on the part of the House to the Library of Congress Trust Fund Board for a five-year term: Mr. Steven L. Swig of San Francisco, California.
Page H1232
Coordinating Council on Juvenile Justice and Delinquency Prevention: Appointment
The Chair announced the Speaker's appointment of the following individual on the part of the House to the Coordinating Council on Juvenile Justice and Delinquency Prevention for a two-year term: Mr. Julian Whittington of Benton, Louisiana.
Page H1232
Suspension: Proceedings Resumed
The House agreed to suspend the rules and pass the following measure. Consideration began Monday, March 24th. IMPACT Act: H.R. 1534, to strengthen and enhance the competitiveness of American industry through the research and development of advanced technologies to improve the efficiency of cement, concrete, and asphalt production, by a \2/3\ yea-and-nay vote of 350 yeas to 73 nays, Roll No. 74.
Page H1239
Defending Education Transparency and Ending Rogue Regimes Engaging in Nefarious Transactions Act
The House considered H.R. 1048, to amend the Higher Education Act of 1965 to strengthen disclosure requirements relating to foreign gifts and contracts, to prohibit contracts between institutions of higher education and certain foreign entities and countries of concern. Consideration is expected to resume Thursday, March 27th.
Pages H1241-60
Pursuant to the Rule, in lieu of the amendment in the nature of a substitute recommended by the Committee on Education and Workforce now printed in the bill, an amendment in the nature of a substitute consisting of the text of Rules Committee Print 119-1 shall be considered as adopted in the House and in the Committee of the Whole.
Pages H1247-53
Agreed to
Ogles amendment (No. 1 printed in H. Rept. 119-38) that includes any special administrative region or other territory within one of the covered nations referenced in the bill within the bill's definition of a ``foreign country of concern''; and
Pages H1253-54
Ogles amendment (No. 2 printed in H. Rept. 119-38) that amends the definition of `foreign entity of concern' to include Chinese military companies identified on the list required by section 1260H of the FY2021 NDAA (colloquially referred to as the ``Section 1260H list'').
Page H1254
Proceedings Postponed
Scott (VA) amendment (No. 3 printed in H. Rept. 119-38) that seeks to amend Section 117 to streamline foreign gift and contract reporting, aligns reporting with other federal research security compliance requirements, establishes common-sense sanctions for noncompliance and requires the Secretary of Education to conduct negotiated rulemaking to receive stakeholder feedback;
Pages H1254-57
Self amendment (No. 4 printed in H. Rept. 119-38) that seeks to amend the threshold value at which gifts must be reported from $50,000 to $1;
Pages H1257-58
Tlaib amendment (No. 5 printed in H. Rept. 119-38) that seeks to amend the definition of ``Foreign Country of Concern'' to include any country that is defending a case before the International Court of Justice relating to an alleged violation of the Geneva Conventions of 1949 or their Additional Protocols or the Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide; and to include any country the government of which includes officials that have outstanding arrest warrants issued by the International Criminal Court; and
Pages H1258-59
Tlaib amendment (No. 6 printed in H. Rept. 119-38) that seeks to amend the definition of ``Investment of Concern'' to include any entity that the Secretary of State determines consistently, knowingly, and directly facilitates and enables state violence and repression, war and occupation, or severe violations of international law and human rights.
Pages H1259-60
H. Res. 242, the rule providing for consideration of the joint resolutions (H.J. Res. 24) and (H.J. Res. 75) and the bill (H.R. 1048) was agreed to by a recorded vote of 214 ayes to 207 noes, Roll No. 76, after the previous question was ordered by a yea-and-nay vote of 215 yeas to 208 nays, Roll No. 75.
Pages H1232-38, H1239-41
Presidential Message
Received a message from the President transmitting a notification of the issuance of an Executive Order that takes additional steps with respect to the national emergency declared in Executive Order 13692 of March 8, 2015 (Blocking Property and Suspending Entry of Certain Persons Contributing to the Situation in Venezuela)--referred to the Committee on Foreign Affairs and the Committee on Ways and Means and ordered to be printed (H. Doc. 119-32).
Pages H1270-71
Senate Message
Message received from the Senate by the Clerk and subsequently presented to the House today appears on page H1231-32. Quorum Calls Votes: Two yea-and-nay votes and one recorded vote developed during the proceedings of today and appear on pages H1239, H1240, and H1240-41. Adjournment: The House met at 10 a.m. and adjourned at 5:38 p.m.
Every speech and line is the Congressional Record's own text, read from GovInfo. Speakers are matched to members by GPO's own metadata. Referandom places each turn on the Clerk's video by matching its words: 139 of 227 spoken turns were found. Turns without a time are still listed; they just can't seek.
Morning-Hour Debate
The SPEAKER pro tempore. Pursuant to the order of the House of January 3, 2025, the Chair will now recognize Members from lists submitted by the majority and minority leaders for morning-hour debate.
The Chair will alternate recognition between the parties, with time equally allocated between the parties and each Member other than the majority and minority leaders and the minority whip limited to 5 minutes, but in no event shall debate continue beyond 11:50 a.m.
Mr. Speaker, I rise today to condemn in the strongest terms possible President Trump's executive order that threatens millions of students and local public schools through the dismantling of the Department of Education.
This is an illegal and unconstitutional abuse of power straight out of the Project 2025 playbook. Congress created the Department. Only Congress can dismantle it, something I will fight every step of the way.
I note that Donald Trump and Elon Musk have likely never set forth in a public school, and they certainly do not understand what the Department of Education actually does and why it is important, but students, families, and teachers in Oregon and across the country understand.
In the past few weeks, several Oregon parents have told me they are terrified that their kids will lose access to vital educational services. One mom said she worries about sending her two kids with special needs to kindergarten next year if there are cuts to IDEA, the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act.
Unlike Secretary McMahon, I actually know what IDEA stands for and what it means for students. I have been an education advocate for decades, and no one has ever said we need less money to meet the needs of students with disabilities. It is always a plea to fully fund IDEA.
Another mom told me that her kids attend a title I school and get enough to eat because of school breakfast and lunch programs. It is a fact that high-poverty schools, about half the schools in the U.S., have greater educational needs, and that is why title I dollars provide flexibility so districts can determine how to best meet the needs of their low-income students. Cutting that funding will widen, rather than close, the achievement gap.
Nonsensically, Trump and Musk are rejoicing at the idea of returning power to States and local communities. Return what? States and local districts already have power over core functions of education, including curriculum, staffing, and budgeting. In fact, it is against the law for the Federal Government to set curriculum.
Donald Trump also makes a bogus argument that declining test scores justify abolishing the Department, but test scores don't make the case for slashing Federal investment in education. On the contrary, they show us where we need to direct resources and support to students, especially low-income students and students with disabilities.
Unfortunately, we are losing an important research tool about what students need because the Trump administration has taken a chain saw to the National Center for Education Statistics.
We know that more than 51,000 public schools serve concentrated populations of students from low-income families and receive title I funds. Almost 7.5 million students with disabilities receive a free, appropriate public education because of IDEA.
I encourage my colleagues on both sides of the aisle to speak with your local and State legislators and ask them if they have extra resources to fill these gaps.
Also, the majority of Federal funding through the Department of Education is to open doors of opportunity to higher education for students who choose to attend college but can't afford the cost. This includes Pell grants, Federal work-study, and low-interest loans to those who qualify.
I would not be where I am today without the Federal aid I got to first attend community college, then college, then law school.
Importantly, the Department of Education is a civil rights agency. The Office for Civil Rights enforces Federal laws prohibiting discrimination and harassment, investigating thousands of civil rights cases every year, primarily from students with disabilities. This work will be more difficult, if not impossible, with the Trump administration firing at least 240 employees in the Office for Civil Rights and closing more than half of its regional offices.
Donald Trump also says he wants to shut down the Department but keep its
Last month, I introduced H. Res. 94 in defense of public schools and the Department of Education, and more than 85 of my colleagues have signed on. We will fight all efforts to defund and dismantle the important work the Department does, and we won't back down.
The consequences are clear: Closing the Department of Education will harm students, families, communities, and the economy. The majority of Americans support the Department of Education, and I know public school advocates will be working tirelessly to maintain the strong and vital Federal investment in our system of public education.
Donald Trump and Elon Musk might think that this ill-conceived abuse of power will go unchecked. They are about to find out how wrong they are.
The SPEAKER pro tempore. Members are reminded to refrain from engaging in personalities toward the President.
Mr. Speaker, I rise today to congratulate the Dawson- Boyd Blackjacks on defeating the defending champs to claim their first- ever title 1A championship.
It has been 34 years since the Blackjacks have been to the State tournament, and their hard work paid off. With what felt like the entire town in Williams Arena, this game was a dream come true.
Mr. Speaker, I congratulate the Blackjacks on their victory. They have made all of their families, community, and the Seventh District proud.
Mr. Speaker, I rise to congratulate the Albany Huskies on their undefeated season, closing it out with a win over Waseca in the Class 2A championship last weekend.
These players were unshakable, even when the score was tied up. They knew their mission and executed, and they have made their families, the Albany community, and the entire Seventh District proud.
Mr. Speaker, I rise to congratulate the Alexandria Cardinals basketball team on defeating Mankato East for their first- ever 3A Boys championship title.
The senior co-captains, Sam Hagstrom and Chase Thompson, were especially excited, saying: ``It has been a fun ride,'' and, ``We ended things with a bang and left our mark,'' after their big win.
This is a closely bonded group of young men, and their teamwork certainly paid off.
Mr. Speaker, I congratulate the Cardinals on their win and for making their families, community, and the entire Seventh District proud.
Mr. Speaker, I rise to congratulate the West Central Area girls' basketball team, the Knights, on their first-ever State championship in any sport for their school.
As the fourth seed in a season full of upsets, I know this was a hard-fought victory. They should all be so proud of everything they have accomplished this year. They have certainly made their families, community, and the entire Seventh District proud.
Mr. Speaker, I rise to congratulate Ron Mergen on 37 years of service to the city of Paynesville.
A beloved and respected member of the community, unsurprisingly, last year, he was voted Boss of the Year. I know his coworkers are sad to see him go, but I also know he won't be a stranger. He has been named the grand marshal of this year's Paynesville Town and Country Days parade.
Mr. Speaker, I thank Ron so much for his service to the community and congratulate him on a well-earned retirement.
Mr. Speaker, across the country, food banks are facing an urgent crisis, and Delaware is no exception. Millions of dollars' worth of deliveries of vital food aid have been halted to food banks.
In February alone, more than 50 percent of the food that the Food Bank of Delaware distributed came from the Federal Government. Now, with shipments frozen and no clarity on whether they will be restored, they are in uncharted territory.
The Food Bank of Delaware is now uncertain whether they will receive 14 truckloads over the next 4 months. These halted deliveries represent over a quarter of the food expected to be received from the Federal Government for the rest of this fiscal year. Cathy Kanefsky, the CEO of the Food Bank of Delaware, shared with me that this would be devastating.
This is not an abstract issue. It is not a partisan issue. This is about families, working parents, seniors, veterans, and children. These are people who rely on food banks to get through the month.
One in eight Delawareans face food insecurity, and the Food Bank of Delaware has been a lifeline for thousands of families.
The truckloads in question represent over 600,000 meals that the food bank will not be able to put on the tables of Delawareans.
Yes, the Food Bank of Delaware plays a frontline role in combating hunger, but they offer more than just food. They provide dignity, hope, and a sense of community.
Food banks, which are already stretched thin, are now being asked to do even more with even less. The loss of Federal support jeopardizes their ability to serve effectively, placing additional strain on State and local resources.
At a time when grocery prices remain high and demand for assistance is great, the loss of these shipments could mean fewer meals for families in every corner of my State.
Further cuts at the hands of the administration to the USDA's local food purchasing assistance program only add to this crisis. At the direction of this administration, the USDA axed two programs that give schools and food banks assistance to buy food from local farms and ranchers. In Delaware alone, this will amount to $2 million in cuts.
Just last month, I stood on this floor to raise the alarm about $10 million in funding owed to Delaware farmers. Now, I stand here again to raise the alarm about the Trump administration taking their chain saw to another lifesaving service that supports our farmers in feeding Delaware. All of this will result in fewer customers for Delaware's farmers and higher prices at the grocery store for Delaware's families.
The Trump administration has broken their promise time and time again to the American people, ripping funding and literal food from the hands of my constituents.
The USDA must restore these shipments and funding before the consequences become dire to families across Delaware.
Mr. Speaker, I rise today to celebrate the transformation happening in Seaford, Delaware, an investment in economic growth, opportunity, and the future of western Sussex County.
Seaford is a small city rich in history. Just last week, I had the privilege of meeting with Seaford's leadership to discuss the city's progress and their vision for the future.
Over the last decade, Seaford has transformed its small but vibrant downtown through Delaware's innovative Downtown Development District program, started by our former Governor, Jack Markell. Through hard work and dedicated investment, Seaford's Main Street has gone from 90 percent vacancy to more than 90 percent occupancy.
At the center of the next phase of Seaford's revitalization effort is the Nylon Capital Center, a project that will breathe new life into a space that was once a focal point of Seaford and
With a $60 million investment, including $20 million in American Rescue Plan funds, the new Nylon Capital Center will expand access to education and workforce training with a new DelTech facility. It will make healthcare more accessible with a new TidalHealth medical site. Small businesses will have new space to grow, and a coworking center, the Mill, will foster entrepreneurship. Critically, it will remain home to the beloved Sal's Italian Restaurant.
This is a model of public and private partnership coming together to create shared prosperity. With local, State, Federal, and private investments, the future of Seaford is exactly what we should hope for in our small cities and towns across America. The leaders of Seaford, along with partners from across the State, are demonstrating what is possible when communities come together. I am proud to stand with them in this effort, and I look forward to seeing Seaford become a symbol of progress and opportunities for generations to come.
Mr. Speaker, I rise today to congratulate the East Lansing Trojans on an incredible achievement, winning the State championship with a hard-fought 66-46 victory just a couple of weeks ago.
While the Michigan State Spartans are making a deep run in the tournament in the men's college basketball tournament this month, they need to look no further than across town at the East Lansing boys' basketball team to see another championship team in East Lansing.
This championship is the result of countless hours of practice and years of hard work, and it serves as a capstone to all of the time spent perfecting their craft, playing as a team, and working under the leadership of head coach Ray Mitchell.
A sincere congratulations to each and every one of them. This is a wonderful achievement, and our city is very proud of them.
Mr. Speaker, I rise today to recognize the Fowler Eagles girls' basketball team, who captured the State championship this past weekend with a commanding 53-29 victory.
I was at the Breslin Center to watch the game with two of my daughters: Eleanora, who just finished her first season of basketball, and Gwen, who is excited to start playing next year. These young ladies on the basketball court really served as a great example for my own daughters and so many others across our State.
What we saw was more than just great basketball. We saw poise, teamwork, and excellence, especially for young girls like my daughters who could watch that in action.
I thank the Fowler Eagles for inspiring the next generation and making our community proud. Gwen, my 7-year-old, wants autographs from each team member, so I hope we can catch up with them sometime for that.
Congratulations to the team on an incredible season. Our city is so proud of them.
Mr. Speaker, I rise today in strong opposition to President Trump and Elon Musk's attacks on the safety nets that countless western New Yorkers and people across the country have earned and need. Hardworking Americans rely on the promise of a secure and dignified retirement. That promise is called Social Security, and it is a solemn promise we must keep.
Yet, from Elon Musk accessing private beneficiary data to Trump's handpicked Acting Commissioner declaring living recipients to be deceased in order to claw back their benefits, Social Security is under fire.
Starting next week, a new rule will create further barriers, requiring in-person identity verification for those who are unable to register online. This will hurt the most vulnerable people in our community: people with disabilities, limited income, inadequate access to technology or transportation, and our seniors who rely on phone- based support. At the same time, the administration is planning to close offices around the country, making it even harder for people to access these services.
These reckless actions are robbing the hardworking men and women that I represent in western New York. It is a slap in the face to every American citizen who has spent decades paying into the system, and every widow, person with a disability, and child who lost a parent too soon who deserves and needs the benefits that allows them to survive.
Social Security is not a giveaway. The program is fully funded by the people who rely on it, by the sweat and hard-earned wages of American workers. Without Social Security, nearly 22 million Americans--many of them seniors on a fixed income or people with disabilities--will be plunged into poverty overnight.
In my district alone, over 167,000 people rely on Social Security benefits to pay their bills, put food on the table, and afford their prescriptions. It has allowed seniors to stay in their homes, help widows keep the lights on, and ensure that people who have worked their whole lives don't spend their final days scraping by.
Despite the incredible progress we have made as a Nation to keep people out of poverty, President Trump and Elon Musk are rolling back the clock in order to give tax cuts to billionaires and the ultrarich. Elon Musk even called Social Security the biggest Ponzi scheme of all time. Perhaps he has this confused with his own plan to cut taxes for the richest among us, including himself, at the expense of everyone else.
Congress must reject the administration's attempt to weaken Social Security. We need to fight tooth and nail against those who want to raise the retirement age, reduce benefits, or privatize this program for the benefit of corporations and the ultrarich. Instead, we should be strengthening Social Security to protect this vital safety net and fighting for an America where working people get to retire with dignity.
President Trump needs to keep his hands off Social Security.
Mr. Speaker, I rise today to honor a true American, World War II veteran Edgar Carl Wilke, as he celebrates his 100th birthday.
A resident of West Seneca, New York, Mr. Wilke served our Nation with courage in World War II, where he was wounded in battle defending the freedoms we hold dear. After enlisting from his hometown of Buffalo, he achieved the rank of private first class while serving in the 24th Infantry Division of the 21st Regiment.
For his bravery and heroic conduct in the Pacific theater, he was awarded the Bronze Star Medal. For wounds taken during the Battle of the Philippines, he received a Purple Heart. Along with these two high honors, he has received numerous other awards, including the American Campaign Medal, the Asiatic-Pacific Campaign Medal with two bronze service stars, the World War II Victory Medal, the Combat Infantryman Badge, and the Marksman Badge with Rifle Bar.
Mr. Wilke's sacrifice is a reminder that the liberties we enjoy today were secured by the bravery of patriots like him. We owe our veterans more than gratitude. We owe them our unwavering commitment to ensuring that they receive the care, benefits, respect, and recognition that they deserve.
On behalf of the people of western New York and a grateful Nation, I wish Mr. Wilke a very happy 100th birthday. I thank him for his service, and may his century of life continue to be an inspiration to us all.
Mr. Speaker, in November, the American people sent us all here to Congress with one clear mandate: to lower costs, to make life easier for working families, and to ensure that no one in this country has to choose between putting food on the table and keeping the lights on.
I came to this floor 49 days ago with a similar poster. Now, here we are again, 81 days into this session of Congress, and I return with the exact same message. Nearly 3 months in, and what do we have to show for our work? Not one vote, not one serious effort from the Republican leadership of this House to tackle rising costs for struggling families, nothing to lower grocery prices, bring down the cost of gas or prescription drugs, help parents afford childcare, or support seniors who are worried about their retirement.
President Trump promised to lower costs on day one. He has now failed to deliver on his day-one promise for 64 consecutive days. Making matters worse, costs are anything but lower. Instead, the reality is grocery prices are rising, inflation is up, and the stock market is unstable. In fact, rather than lowering costs, the Trump administration is actively promoting policies that are poised to drive up costs even higher.
The Trump tariffs alone will increase costs for the average family by as much as $2,000 per year, simply to buy essentials like gas and groceries. God forbid your family needs a new car or a home renovation in the near future.
Making matters even worse, as prices go up, safety nets for our most vulnerable families are poised to be slashed under this reckless Republican budget. I voted ``no'' because it cuts hundreds of billions of dollars in funding for SNAP and Medicaid, which means children will go hungry, seniors will lose care, and people with disabilities will be left behind, period.
You don't have to take my word for it. The Congressional Budget Office issued a letter on March 5 where they reinforced that the math is conclusive: Major cuts are the only way to meet the requirements of the Republican House budget resolution.
The American people are tired of the political theater. They are simply asking for solutions. However, this administration and extreme Republicans have offered no real plans, no real solutions, just more empty promises with painful cuts and a whopping Federal deficit increase looming on the horizon.
That is why I have been tracking congressional inaction day after day after day on my social media, because families in Maryland and across the country cannot afford to waste any more time.
Here we are, on the House floor once again, calling on House leadership to bring real legislation to this floor that will start delivering results for our constituents.
The good news is, there is no shortage of legislative proposals that will help accomplish this. For example, I am proud to have cosponsored bills that will provide immediate relief by strengthening and modernizing the child and earned income tax credits, expanding paid leave, providing penalty-free retirement withdrawals, and giving Americans more financial flexibility in these tough times.
These aren't partisan bills. These are commonsense solutions. Yet, House leadership refuses to bring a single one forward for a vote.
Mr. Speaker, I will not stop calling for action. Families in Maryland and across the country demand it, and they deserve it. I will not stop until we do what we were sent here to do: lower costs and build a better future for every American.
Mr. Speaker, the previous administration, the Biden administration, spent most of its years forcing extreme energy mandates onto everyday appliances: our gas stoves, our water heaters, dishwashers, air conditioners, you name it.
These rules really aren't about efficiency, as the manufacturers have worked for decades to make them more efficient and meet already existing standards. No, it is more of a control situation. These drive up costs, limit the choice for consumers, and force everything onto an already overloaded power grid. Gas stoves, I know, are the preference for many people in their homes. Gas water heaters work well. It is a deal where the government wants to take away the choices.
Natural gas is, indeed, one of the most affordable, reliable energy sources we have. The previous administration was the enemy of that. They did everything they could to push it out of homes and businesses and the production of it on our open lands that have so much potential, especially in the Western States.
We have seen attempts to regulate gas stoves out of existence, and earlier this month we in the House voted to overturn one of those rules. Americans should be able to choose appliances that work best for them, not be forced into expensive, unreliable electric alternatives that they may not be able to afford that the government simply mandates.
The push to electrify everything is reckless. In my home State of California, for example, they want to take away lawnmowers, leaf blowers, even--get this--generators. Now, when the power goes off, that means the power is off, the electricity is off. What are you supposed to run a generator on, if you need to, especially for a couple days, to keep your freezer going, things like that? It doesn't make any sense.
The electric grid is already struggling to keep up. These mandates pile even more demand onto it while shutting down traditional energy sources that actually work.
Where is the electricity going to come from? In my home district in northern California, they have torn out four hydroelectric dams, and they have their sights on many others. In Mendocino County, they are looking at what is called the Scott Dam, Lake Pillsbury that generates some electricity and is also important for agriculture. It is a constant push to remove water storage.
In California, we lost one nuclear power plant due to an incredible amount of regulations to keep it going. That power plant was in San Diego, San Onofre. We are barely holding on to the one in San Luis Obispo, which represents 9 percent of the power grid. San Diego also represented 9 percent of the grid at that time. It has to be made up for with solar panels or windmills, which the solar one that they have in Ivanpah they are going to decommission pretty soon because it is not working very well. When we are forced into this electricity grid need, we will find that we are going to be running out because at the same time they mandate this, they mandate taking away the generation.
We have rolling blackouts in California, skyrocketing energy prices, and warnings--get this--not to charge electric cars that have been mandated by the State because the grid can't handle it at certain hours. Our Governor came out saying, well, we need to do this thing, and at the same time they are warning people, better not plug your electric car in.
As we know, wind and solar energy aren't enough to power the country. They are a tiny percentage of the overall pie. Wind power seems to work for a few years, and then they have to dispose of it, hauling the blades to some landfill in Utah because they don't have a way to recycle it.
Mr. Speaker, we need a reliable, balanced energy approach. That includes natural gas, which is so abundant in this country with the miracle of hydraulic fracturing. We have much that we can develop here and also be a good exporter to Europe so they don't have to rely on the Russian bear to import through their pipeline. Isn't that something.
Natural gas is affordable and efficient. It keeps costs down for families, businesses, and our economy. Instead of eliminating it, we should use it to strengthen our grid and keep energy reliable and cost- effective.
The regulations previously were nothing more than government overreaches disguised as environmental policy. They don't make life better for working Americans, for the economy, or for U.S. strength and readiness. They make it more expensive, less reliable, and less efficient.
It is time to roll these regulations back and put the power literally back
Mr. Speaker, I rise today to celebrate the Osbourn Park High School girls' basketball team's historic State championship victory.
The Yellow Jackets' swarming defense propelled them to a buzzing 27-3 season record and the first State championship in school history. Their championship win was a testament to hard work, determination, and overcoming a little bit of adversity, as well.
In fact, just before the game, Head Coach Chrissy Kelly broke her pinky toe. The flu swept through the team, keeping them away from practice. On the day of the championship, the team's bus accidentally traveled to the wrong arena. The Yellow Jackets persevered, and their victory is not just a win for the team but for our entire community.
Mr. Speaker, congratulations to our State champions, the Osbourn Park Yellow Jackets.
Mr. Speaker, I am excited for the future after having the honor of meeting some incredibly driven individuals at a local science fair.
Every student who entered the science fair in Loudoun County was a winner, but seven students from Loudoun County Public Schools who participated in this regional fair earned the opportunity to compete at the International Science and Engineering Fair in Columbus, Ohio.
These students include Taha Rawjani, Sanjay Lakshmanan, and Matthew Li from Independence High School; Yash Sreepathi from Broad Run High School; Naija Shah and Nithya Vinodh from John Champe High School; and Naitik Oza from Freedom High School.
All the projects at the fair showed that the sky is the limit for our students as they address some of the world's most pressing challenges. For example, one project conducted groundbreaking research on limiting the spread of esophageal cancer using advanced molecular techniques, while another developed a model to identify potential treatments for pancreatic cancer.
All the young scientists and researchers who participated are paving the way for breakthroughs that can transform the world we live in for the better. Their dedication showcases the promise of the next generation in tackling complex problems with creativity and determination.
Mr. Speaker, I commend the hard work of all the participants and wish them tremendous success, especially the ones who are moving on to the International Science and Engineering Fair.
Mr. Speaker, I rise today to honor the life and memory of Chandra Sekar. He was a devoted husband, loving father, and cherished friend whose presence filled every life he touched with warmth and love.
Chandra built a beautiful life in Loudoun County with his wife, Vasanthi Sekar, and his kids, Ashwin and Santhosh. They were his greatest joy and pride.
Over Chandra's prestigious 30-year career, he rose from software engineer to leading cloud architect at Amazon and Microsoft.
His family said that Chandra's kindness was boundless and his spirit radiant. He had an extraordinary ability to make everyone feel seen, loved, and strong, whether through his smile or his endless compassion. His memory will leave a lasting impact on all who had the honor of knowing him.
Mr. Speaker, I rise today to recognize Jekyll Island, Georgia, for being home to two of the South's best beach bars as highlighted by ``Southern Living.'' These beloved spots showcase Georgia's coastal charm, creating unforgettable experiences.
The Wharf is located on the historic Jekyll Pier with breathtaking marsh views. This institution offers a relaxed, open-air setting, welcoming everyone who enters. Known for serving fresh, Lowcountry seafood, classic burgers, and craft cocktails, this bar is a go-to for locals.
Tortuga Jacks is also recognized for being the only oceanfront, Tiki- style restaurant on the Georgia coastline. It brings a true island feeling to Jekyll with a laid-back, pet-friendly atmosphere. It specializes in Baha Mexican-style cuisine and often hosts live music.
These establishments highlight the essence of Jekyll Island with great food, lively entertainment, and a true coastal experience. I encourage everyone to stop by and enjoy what Jekyll Island has to offer.
Mr. Speaker, I rise today to honor the legacy of Lydia Thompson, a passionate conservationist, avid birder, and well- known artist, affectionately known as The Bird Lady.
Ms. Thompson was a passionate advocate for avian conservation, having traveled all 50 States in pursuit of her love for birding. She was also active in the Coastal Georgia Audubon Society, Georgia Shorebird Alliance, and the Georgia Coastal Artists Guild.
Ms. Thompson was dedicated to protecting shorebirds on both St. Simons Island and Jekyll Island. She founded Operation Plover Patrol to recruit, educate, train, and manage volunteers to monitor shorebirds in their nesting habitat.
In honor of Ms. Thompson, the Jekyll Island community installed two new spotting scopes behind the Jekyll Island Guest Information Center. Thanks to these new installments, Ms. Thompson's mission of appreciation, conservation, and education will continue to be part of the coastal salt marsh landscape she so dearly loved.
Mr. Speaker, I rise today to recognize the Port of Brunswick as the busiest port in the Nation for heavy equipment and auto shipments.
Mr. Speaker, 2024 was a record year for the Port of Brunswick, handling more than 2 million tons of cargo, 600,000 tons of exports, and about 900,000 tons of roll-on, roll-off units of autos and heavy equipment.
New infrastructure and strengthened partnerships contributed to the port's significant growth in many areas including upgraded storage capacity to allow for 160 percent increase in heavy equipment shipping.
Georgia's ports promise auto manufacturers world-class service and long-term gains for their business.
In addition to the growth already recorded, the Port of Brunswick is continuing to make improvements to keep up with the rise in manufacturing and growing population including an upgraded shipping channel to prepare Brunswick to handle larger vessels.
The First District of Georgia is proud to be the home of the Nation's busiest port for heavy equipment and auto shipments, and I look forward to the continued excellence of the Port of Brunswick.
Mr. Speaker, in honor of Women's History Month, I rise today to recognize Brynn Grant who recently was named Woman of the Year for Georgia by ``USA Today.''
As a child, Brynn watched her father being sworn into a State- appointed position by the late President Jimmy Carter, who was then Governor of Georgia. Brynn's career spans more than two decades at the Savannah Economic Development Authority, where she rose to the position of chief operating officer and vice president of the World Trade Center Savannah. She also served as president and CEO of the United Way of the Coastal Empire, guiding the organization through the challenges of the COVID-19 pandemic.
As the chief executive officer of the Liberty County Development Authority, Brynn highlights the link between social and economic issues, advocating for holistic community development. Brynn advocates for collaborative services, embodying the belief that real progress is achieved only when everyone benefits.
Brynn Grant's unwavering dedication and visionary leadership have deeply influenced the Coastal Georgia community, establishing a standard of excellence and compassion.
Congratulations to Brynn Grant. We are so proud of her.
This morning, I rise to talk about social security, the Nation's number one antipoverty program for the elderly and the number one antipoverty program for children.
Mr. Speaker, I know it comes as no surprise to you that Social Security has not been enhanced since 1971. Richard Nixon was President of the United States then. Congress has done nothing to improve the situation of so many people who desperately need it.
There are more than 70 million Social Security recipients in the United States, and 10,000 baby boomers a day become eligible for Social Security. Yet, Elon Musk is setting about to dismantle the Social Security Administration by cutting regional offices. Whether it is Illinois or Connecticut, we need these regional offices.
He is cutting off the phone services, getting rid of the inspectors general, doing so to the program that is most effectively administrated in the Federal Government. No other agency, public or private, provides insurance for more than 70 million people with administrative costs that are under 1 percent. It delivers and has never missed a payment, not a pension payment, not a disability payment, not a spousal payment, not a dependent child payment.
In fact, Mr. Speaker, in your district you have approximately 180,000 Social Security recipients, 130,000-plus retirees, 21,000-plus disabled, 11,800 widows, 4,500 spouses, and over 10,000 children who rely on Social Security. Mr. Musk is out to dismantle and privatize this.
Some of the American people may have been born at night but not last night, with respect to what Mr. Musk and Mr. Trump are up to: On one hand, they say they will not cut social security. In the next breath, Larry Kudlow or CNN say, no, we have to privatize these systems because that is where we are going to find the $2 trillion that Mr. Trump has asked us to find.
What a coincidence that in the Social Security trust fund, the trust fund that more than 180,000 people in your district have paid into, is $2.7 trillion, and has never missed a payment but hasn't been expanded since 1971.
Do you think those 10,000 baby boomers a day are going to call your office, my office, every Member of Congress' office? You bet they are, and they should because Congress has done nothing. In the face of this, Mr. Trump is now trying to privatize Social Security, first, by gutting it from the inside and not providing the services to the public that it desperately needs and then indicating this system doesn't work. So I guess we are going to have to grab that $2.7 trillion and privatize that.
That will be a great benefit for the private sector. That would not help out the day-to-day workforce that relies on it and needs it and is depending on you, Mr. Speaker, and me and all the Members of this body. You owe it to your constituents to look them in the eye and tell them what your plan is. We have a plan to expand Social Security.
You imagine, there are 5 million Americans, mostly women, who get below-poverty-level checks from the wealthiest States in the Nation, having paid in with the guarantee and trust from their government that they would have a pension they could retire on. Instead, they get below-poverty-level checks because of Congress' inaction. Rise up America. Contact your Members of Congress.
Mr. Speaker, please join me in recognizing the Salvation Army of Harrisonburg and Rockingham County. For over 100 years, they have remained dedicated to sharing the Gospel of Jesus Christ while providing care and support to all those in need.
Just 60 years after the founding of the international movement known as the Salvation Army, the Salvation Army of Harrisonburg and Rockingham County was established on June 27, 1925.
Since its founding, the Salvation Army of Harrisonburg and Rockingham County has partnered with the local community to efficiently and effectively assist individuals and families facing poverty. It has made a positive difference in countless lives, offering a helping hand to those caught in difficult circumstances.
Today, the organization is faithfully led by Lieutenants Douglas and Sharon Ingold, who continue the mission of serving others with compassion and integrity.
The Salvation Army of Harrisonburg and Rockingham County holds its iconic Red Kettle Campaign every year to raise funds for the organization's programs that benefit the local area. The organization remains steadfast in its commitment to offering programs and services to all those in need without discrimination.
I congratulate the Salvation Army of Harrisonburg and Rockingham County on doing the most good for 100 years.
Mr. Speaker, I rise today to congratulate the Roanoke Valley Christian Schools Eagles varsity boys' basketball team for winning the 2025 VACA State championship, securing back-to-back titles and etching their names into school history.
After graduating eight seniors last year, expectations were tempered, but led by returning seniors Logan Gutierrez, Luke Somers, Matthew Cummings, Christian Crosby, Ethan Cummings, and Cayden Wayne, along with new senior Colton Bowman, the Eagles rose to the challenge with grit and unity.
Logan and Luke each reached the 1,000-point milestone, while underclassmen like Jacob and Zach Mioduszewski, Landen Gutierrez, Jack Rakes, and Dallas Riles played vital roles in the team's depth and success. Eighth-grader Brayden Hawley rounded out the squad and made his mark, as well.
With Coach Josiah Somers at the helm and a foundation built on relentless defense and selfless play, the Eagles swept the Southwest District, South Region, and State titles.
Mr. Speaker, this team showed the heart of champions. I congratulate the RVCS Eagles.
Mr. Speaker, House Republicans are delivering on the mandate the American people gave us last November. We passed a responsible budget resolution, and now we are moving forward with a strong reconciliation package that reflects President Trump's America First agenda.
The bill secures our southern border, keeps taxes low for working families and small businesses, strengthens our economy, protects Social Security, restores American energy leadership, supports our men and women in uniform, and brings much-needed accountability to Washington.
We have taken the lead in the House. Now it is time for the Senate to do the same. When they return to Washington, the Senators should take up the House resolution, move the bill forward, and send it to the President's desk.
The American people expect results. They want a government that works for them, not against them. With this legislation, we have the chance to make real, lasting change for the American people. Let's get it done.
Mr. Speaker, I rise today to introduce the No Invading Allies Act, a bill to prevent President Trump from invading Canada, Greenland, or Panama without a vote of Congress.
It is crazy that we even have to have this conversation. These places, these nations, are our allies. They pose no threat to the United States. After thousands of brave American soldiers fought in Iraq and Afghanistan, many losing their lives, their limbs, and their loved ones, the last thing the American people want is to send our troops to any new wars, especially against countries that pose no threat to our own.
Now President Trump will not stop talking about taking over Canada, Greenland, and Panama. He is obsessed.
Listen to me when I tell you that he is not joking. When he says he wants to take over Canada, Greenland, and Panama, he means it. He even said that we will ``[expand] our territory'' in his inaugural speech. When was the last time you heard a President say something like that?
The American people do not want to take over other countries. Nobody voted in the election to take over Canada or Greenland. The President never talked about that during his campaign.
No one was thinking about taking over Canada when they went to vote last November. No. The American people want lower costs, safe streets, and peace. The last thing Americans want is unnecessary war. We cannot trust Donald Trump to keep us out of one.
That is why I am introducing a new bill, the No Invading Allies Act, to prevent the President from sending the Armed Forces to invade Canada, Panama, or Greenland without a vote of Congress.
Our country's Founders feared the possibility of a President engaging in unnecessary wars. In Article I of the Constitution, the Founders gave Congress, not the President, the power to declare war. Congress later passed the War Powers Resolution of 1973, which allows Presidents to engage in military action for up to 60 days without a vote of Congress, but Donald Trump's reckless threats to take over peaceful nations means that he cannot be trusted with this unchecked power.
Congress must reassert our role under the Constitution by passing this bill. With this bill, we send a message to our allies and adversaries alike that the United States does not support the illegal seizure of sovereign territory. Most importantly, we say to American troops and their families that they will not be sent into more unnecessary wars, not on our watch.
I urge my colleagues, whether you believe the President is serious about wanting to take over other countries or not, whether you take him at his word or not, whether you think he might involve us in unnecessary wars of conflict or not, let's not leave it up to chance.
The decision of whether to make war is perhaps the most important responsibility Congress has under the Constitution. Let's not surrender our responsibility to a President who speaks so casually about taking over other nations. Our men and women in uniform deserve better than that, and our country deserves better than that.
Mr. Speaker, for decades, Washington has poured trillions of dollars into the education system of America with actually very little to show for it.
Since the Department of Education was created by Jimmy Carter in 1979, it has spent over $3 trillion, yet student achievement hasn't actually improved. It has only gone down in that time.
After Federal taxpayers spent another $200 billion on education during the COVID era, all we have to show for it is math and reading scores that are at the lowest levels in decades. Per-pupil spending has skyrocketed by 245 percent since the 1970s, proving more money doesn't always achieve better results.
The Federal Government has only added red tape, forcing schools to waste time and resources on compliance instead of teaching. I am married to a teacher who, at the time, was frustrated by additional requirements that were coming down on trying to do her job.
The Biden administration alone added nearly $3.9 billion in regulatory costs and millions of hours of paperwork and funneled over $1 billion into grants pushing radical ideologies instead of core academics.
President Trump's executive order directing the closure of the Department of Education returns control over education to the States, parents, and local leaders. Instead of Washington bureaucrats trying to dictate how kids learn, we should have those decisions be made locally. This shift will cut waste and eliminate overreach.
Mr. Speaker, I am deeply concerned about the Trump administration's act to fire more than 1,000 EPA scientific researchers who have
I represent part of the Research Triangle Park, home to the largest EPA facility in the Nation, where researchers and scientists are solving some of our most complex environmental problems.
In North Carolina, these committed public servants are working to combat PFAS and address our air quality issues. They were on the front lines of helping our citizens during Hurricane Helene.
The Trump administration is attacking Federal research offices because they expose disastrous policies and hold polluters accountable. Eliminating the Office of Research and Development not only violates the law, it puts our people, public health, and the environment in danger.
I will fight this dangerous plan to fire Federal workers and silence scientists with everything I have.
Mr. Speaker, I rise today to honor the life of my dear friend and former colleague, Mia Love.
On Sunday, after a courageous battle with glioblastoma, Mia passed away peacefully surrounded by her loved ones. She was a woman of faith, a patriot, an extraordinary leader, and a fighter who inspired many to do great things.
Under the care of the exceptional doctors at Duke University, Mia fought alongside my wife, Patty. I am forever grateful for her enduring friendship and support throughout this journey.
I also extend my deepest thanks to the caregivers, healthcare professionals, researchers, and advocates whose tireless work brings us closer to a future without glioblastoma.
Mia's legacy of strength, resilience, and unwavering dedication to others will never be forgotten and certainly not forgotten by the Williams family. My prayers are with her family as we continue to fight and find a cure for this deadly disease.
Mr. Speaker, last month Republicans passed a budget that enables massive cuts that are going to kick people off of food assistance. Children, seniors, disabled veterans, workers--people who all rely on SNAP, the Supplemental Assistance Nutrition Program, to help purchase food when times get tough, Republicans want to rip it away, take food off the tables of hungry Americans.
This is a program that is there for all of us. If you lose your job, if your hours get cut, if you become disabled or have trouble paying bills, you can turn to SNAP to help make ends meet.
Republicans don't want to talk about how their cuts are going to hurt people. They haven't held one hearing or briefing on the program, so Democrats went around them. We are holding a hearing today at 3 p.m. to talk about their plan to steal people's food assistance so they can give tax breaks to billionaires.
We will continue to expose the corruption as we work to end hunger now.
Mr. Speaker, I am grateful for the leadership of Governor Henry McMaster, Commerce Secretary Harry Lightsey, and Ports President Barbara Melvin, who recently announced that exports from the Palmetto State have reached $38 billion, creating jobs.
The trade policies of President Donald Trump are succeeding with the announcement I heard yesterday at the White House during the Greek Independence Day program with Ambassador Ekaterini Nassika that there has been $3 trillion of investment already, fulfilling the reconciliation priorities.
South Carolina is number one in America for exported vehicles, number one in the manufacture and export of tires with Michelin of France, Bridgestone of Japan, Continental of Germany, and Giti of Singapore. I appreciate serving as the co-chair of the Congressional Tire Caucus.
In conclusion, God bless our troops as the global war on terrorism continues. Open borders for dictators put all Americans at risk of more 9/11 attacks imminent, as warned by the FBI. Trump is reinstituting existing laws to protect American families with peace through strength.
America extends its deepest sympathy and appreciation to courageous Congresswoman Mia Love.
Mr. Speaker, I rise today to congratulate the Rochester Community Players theater group on their 100th season.
As the second oldest continually operating community theater in the State of New York and a part of the Little Theatre Movement in America, their rich history dates back to 1925, with their opening performance at the Historic German House in Rochester, New York.
Today, the group performs throughout our city, providing opportunities for local professionals to share their talents on the stage and behind the scenes. We are blessed to have a vibrant and ever- growing artistic community in Rochester. The Rochester Community Players have been at the helm for an entire century, a remarkable accomplishment.
I congratulate President Michael Krickmire and Vice President Elaine Sauer on this momentous occasion and look forward to their continued work to uplift our local talent and provide high-quality entertainment for years to come.
Mr. Speaker, I rise to remember the life of Paul Jackson from Victoria, Virginia.
On March 15, Paul's life was tragically cut short while doing what he loved, flying his helicopter. Last year, Paul was asked to help with Hurricane Helene relief in North Carolina. Over the next 10 days, he flew critical supplies to North Carolina on his own dime.
Paul was President Trump's number one fan. He was a personal friend to me, and he made anyone he met want to be a better person. His daughter, Raven, described him as a true patriot and a man who loved our country.
Paul is survived by his wife, Christy; his son, Christopher; his daughter, Raven; his five grandchildren; his brother, Nelson; and many, many friends.
I hope everyone hearing this will strive to help others, just like Paul.
Mr. Speaker, I stand here today to honor the life and legacy of my friend and colleague, Congressman Raul Grijalva.
Raul was more than a public servant. He was a force for justice and a relentless champion for working families, the environment, and indigenous communities. He led with passion, conviction, and an unwavering belief that government should serve the people.
As chair of the House Natural Resources Committee, Raul never backed down from a fight. I had the privilege of serving on the committee under his leadership when I first came to Congress, and I learned so much from his example.
His commitment to environmental justice wasn't just words. It was action. Together, we worked to pass legislation on climate justice grants, urban parks, and ensuring that our
His mentorship, wisdom, and kindness I will carry with me always. Raul made a difference in Congress, his community, and in the lives of so many. While we feel his loss deeply, we also feel the responsibility to continue his fight.
My heart is with his family, his loved ones, and all who were fortunate enough to know him.
Mr. Speaker, I rise today to recognize the Ironton Fighting Tigers for winning their first football State championship in 35 years.
With an incredibly strong work ethic and a commitment to excellence, the Ironton High School football team spent all season training and working together with one goal in mind: the State title.
In the championship game, senior Shaun Terry led his team to victory with 300 all-purpose yards, including 148 receiving yards and three touchdowns. This championship win is evidence of a season full of hard work, dedication, and commitment to excellence.
Since the school's last title in 1989, the Ironton Fighting Tigers have appeared in six State title games in pursuit of a win, which made bringing home this year's trophy even sweeter.
Head Coach Trevon Pendleton and his staff poured their knowledge and experience into eager players all season long, guiding them and pushing them toward excellence on and off the field.
I also recognize each parent who supported their players and encouraged them to work hard. I congratulate each player for their hard-earned victory and new State title.
Mr. Speaker, Signalgate is real. Protecting the details of ongoing military operations is a critical and basic requirement to ensure our national security and the safety of our military personnel. I know this from my 25 years in the Army and from my work on the National Security Council.
I join my colleague, Congressman Pat Ryan, in calling for an immediate congressional investigation of Signalgate. If the messages aren't classified and contain no sensitive war plans, as the administration claims, they should be released immediately.
I am calling for the full conversation to be shared with Congress so that we can fulfill our oversight role and verify the administration's accounting of events. If the administration truly believes no lines were crossed, no war plans discussed, and no classified information shared, then they should release the messages and let Members of Congress and the American people see for themselves, as the President has done in the past, and defend those actions publicly.
The American people deserve transparency and confidence. We must verify that no laws were broken and ensure our national security isn't being used as a shield to avoid accountability. American lives are at stake.
Mr. Speaker, I rise to recognize Cadet Lieutenant Colonel Mikhail Karnaukh who was named as a recipient of the General Ira C. Eaker Award. This award is the second most prestigious honor in the Civil Air Patrol Cadet Program. Fewer than 1 percent of cadets are selected to receive it.
Mr. Speaker, I have great respect for those in the Civil Air Patrol. Their selfless commitment to duty and country deserves the highest praise from their elected leaders.
We congratulate Mikhail on this special accomplishment. He has earned it. I very much look forward to hearing more about his progress and accomplishments in the coming months and years. May God continue to bless him and his family.
Mr. Speaker, I rise today in support of our Federal judiciary and the judges who work tirelessly to uphold and defend our democracy.
The hypocrisy that we are seeing unfold among our colleagues across the aisle and in this administration is deeply concerning. The separation of powers is a cornerstone of our democracy. Each and every day Federal judges work as a check on the powers of both the legislative and executive branches, regardless of who is in charge. This is a good thing and something each and every one of us should be working to protect.
Instead, our colleagues across the aisle are seeking to impeach Federal judges, calling for unprecedented changes to our judicial system, and trampling on the most basic and fundamental tenets of our Constitution. How much more hypocritical can they be?
The Biden administration faced 133 multistate lawsuits from Republican attorneys general. Texas Attorney General Paxton alone filed over 100 lawsuits against the Biden administration. Republicans are now seeking to undermine and attack the same judiciary they used to take the Biden administration to court, and they are personally attacking judges whose decisions they disagree with.
Mr. Speaker, I urge everyone to stand against this reckless attack on our judiciary.
Mr. Speaker, I rise today to recognize the 46th anniversary of C-SPAN's coverage of the U.S. House of Representatives, a milestone in government transparency.
For nearly five decades, since March of 1979, C-SPAN has provided the American people with unfiltered gavel-to-gavel coverage of the debates and the decisions that shape our Nation. It is a service that strengthens our democracy and fosters accountability.
This incredible resource exists thanks to the commitment of American's cable and satellite providers who voluntarily fund C-SPAN as a nonprofit service.
Let's be clear. Millions of Americans are being denied access to this vital coverage because major TV streaming platforms like YouTube TV and Hulu + Live TV refuse to carry C-SPAN. At a time when trust in government is more important than ever, no company should stand in the way of public access to democracy and the inner workings of our constitutional republic.
I urge YouTube TV and Hulu + Live TV and all streaming providers to do the right thing. Carry C-SPAN. Give their customers the same access to government that cable and satellite viewers have. The American people deserve nothing less.
Providing for Consideration of H.J. RES. 24, Providing for Congressional Disapproval of the Rule Submitted by the Department of Energy Relating to "Energy Conservation Program: Energy Conservation...
Mr. Speaker, for the purpose of debate only, I yield the customary 30 minutes to the gentleman from Colorado (Mr. Neguse), pending which I yield myself such time as I may consume.
During consideration of this resolution, all time yielded is for the purpose of debate only.
Mr. Speaker, last night the Rules Committee met and produced a rule, House Resolution 242, providing for the House's consideration of several pieces of legislation: H.R. 1048, H.J. Res. 24, and H.J. Res. 75.
The rule provides for consideration of H.J. Res. 24 and H.J. Res. 75 under closed rules. The rule provides each with 1 hour of debate, equally divided and controlled by the chairman and ranking member of the Committee on Energy and Commerce, or their designees. Additionally, the rule provides each a motion to recommit.
Additionally, the rule provides for consideration of H.R. 1048 under a structured rule. The rule provides for 1 hour of debate equally divide and controlled by the chairman and ranking member of the Committee on Education and Workforce or their designees. The rule also provides for one motion to recommit.
The rule before us today provides Congress with another opportunity to take a stand for consumer choice in America and take a stand against our Nation's foreign adversaries who continue to infiltrate colleges and universities across the Nation.
The DETERRENT Act, one of the bills considered under this rule, offers a necessary injection of transparency, accountability, and clarity to foreign gift reporting requirements for colleges and universities. It offers legislative prescriptions that are long overdue.
Under current law, section 117 of the Higher Education Act, colleges and universities must adhere to reporting requirements related to foreign donations. However, many fail to do so because of how weak the current law actually is.
A 2019 Senate report found that up to 70 percent of colleges and universities fail to comply with reporting requirements outlined in section 117 of the Higher Education Act. You heard that right. Up to 70 percent of colleges and universities fail to comply.
The DETERRENT Act updates section 117 to provide the very clarity and guidance that colleges and universities need to ensure they properly disclose foreign sources of funding and remain in compliance. It also adds a set of razor-sharp teeth to current law to hold colleges and universities accountable for failing to comply with section 117. Again, the DETERRENT Act offers legislative prescriptions that are long overdue.
The other two pieces of legislation under consideration via today's rule are two separate Congressional Review Act resolutions: H.J. Res. 24 and H.J. Res. 75. These two CRAs will strike down separate rules from the Department of Energy that were finalized under the Biden administration.
H.J. Res. 24 overturns a wrongheaded midnight rule from the Department of Energy relating to conservation standards for walk-in coolers and walk-in freezers. The Department of Energy issued this final rule a mere 2 days before Christmas last year. This is yet another gift from the Biden administration that nobody asked for.
This midnight rule piles on additional costs to the shoulders of Main Street businesses, while at the very same time takes a hatchet to consumer choice.
H.J. Res. 75 will overturn yet another wrongheaded rule from the Department of Energy related to conservation standards for commercial refrigerators, freezers, and refrigerator-freezers.
Like the previous rule from the Department of Energy that was just discussed, this rule is yet another example of the regulatory barrage that the Biden administration launched against Main Street as well as consumers. Thankfully, the regulatory warfare of the past 4 years is over. Republicans are back in charge.
Mr. Speaker, regulating this country into the ground benefits absolutely no one. It does not benefit Americans and their families. It does not benefit free enterprise and entrepreneurs. It does not benefit small businesses. Nobody wins when the Federal Government goes hog wild with regulations.
These two CRAs that the House will consider under this rule will help us break out the shovels and bury the Department of Energy's rules in the grave. They won't be missed.
Mr. Speaker, I thank the gentlewoman from North Carolina, Chairwoman Foxx, for the customary 30 minutes.
Mr. Speaker, I rise today yet again to expose to the American public the misplaced priorities of the House Republican Conference and the Republican majority here in the House of Representatives.
Mr. Speaker, the Republican majority gaveled us out of session 11 days ago. Here we are back in Washington, D.C. Of course, for us, it feels a lot like ``Groundhog Day'' because, notwithstanding all the economic turmoil, the conflicts across the globe, the various ways in which this administration is making life harder for the people of Colorado, for folks across our country, notwithstanding all the challenges that our country is grappling with, House Republicans have decided to spend this week debating what? Three bills: walk-in freezers, commercial refrigerators, and giving new responsibilities to a Department, the Department of Education, that they are seeking to dismantle, that they want to abolish. That is what we are debating here today, Mr. Speaker.
I listened to every word of the chairwoman's address outlining every component of the bills that we are considering, but for folks who are watching, for those who have graced us with their presence in the gallery, please understand the three bills: one regulating commercial refrigerators; another regulating walk-in refrigerators; and the third, a bill to give new responsibilities to an agency that they are seeking to destroy. That is it. That is what we are debating this week in Washington, D.C.
If folks in the gallery stay here through the week, that is what you will hear. You will hear a debate today, a debate tomorrow, and a debate on Thursday on those three bills.
I suspect that the folks who are watching this debate, Mr. Speaker, would agree with me that there are better things for us to spend our time on here in Washington, D.C., than debating walk-in refrigerators. Seriously? I don't know, maybe for Madam Chairwoman it is really important to the people of North Carolina. She may have a lot of constituents who have walk-in refrigerators. I don't know.
For me, I can tell you I just spent a week in Colorado, in the rural communities that I represent, hosting townhalls, visiting with folks in my community, constituents, ranchers, farmers, teachers, working families, packed townhalls. At those townhalls, do you know the one subject that no one brought up? Commercial refrigerators. It never came up.
At a townhall that we held 3 days ago with over a thousand people in my community, no one at that townhall approached me and said: ``Congressman, can you please go back to Washington and pass legislation on commercial refrigerators? It is really important.'' Nobody said that.
They are really concerned about the Republicans' plan to gut Medicaid. They are pretty concerned about the Republican plans to dismantle Social Security offices across the country. They are deeply concerned about reports that this administration is going to end phone line customer service for senior citizens who are relying on Social Security. They are pretty concerned about a Secretary of Defense who apparently is sending out war plans on unencrypted messaging apps, putting our national security at risk.
Those are the topics that my constituents care about. Commercial refrigerators is not one of them.
You can tell the frustration, I suppose, Mr. Speaker, in my voice. It is the frustration borne from having to come to the floor every week and debate appliances. Can the Republicans just put all the appliance bills in for consideration for 1 week? We can just do them all and then be done with it, and we can move on to having a debate about defending Medicaid, defending healthcare for the millions of Americans who rely on it. Is that too much to ask?
I just would beg of the chairwoman, I understand this is an important priority to her. It is important to the Republican Conference. We get it. They are obsessed with appliance regulation. After this week, can we please just be done with these appliance resolutions and get back to debating the issues that the American people expect us to debate?
Mr. Speaker, I reserve the balance of my time.
The SPEAKER pro tempore. The Chair reminds Members that the rules do not allow references to persons in the gallery.
Mr. Speaker, I yield myself such time as I may consume.
Mr. Speaker, I spent time last week in my district, too, talking to people. I spend time every weekend talking to the people in my district. Do you know what they complain about the most? Unnecessary rules and regulations.
I met today with folks from the homebuilding industry. They can document that 25 percent of the rules related to homebuilding are unnecessary and drive up the costs of doing business for homes. We need new homes everywhere.
My colleagues are trying to make it look like what we are doing is frivolous. Mr. Speaker, this is far from frivolous. We in Congress are taking back our authority from unnamed, unaccountable bureaucrats who, in the dark of night, write unnecessary rules and regulations that burden the American people and drive up the cost of business and drive up the cost of products.
It is important for us to have further discussion on this critical Congressional Review Act that we are operating under. The Congressional Review Act agenda as a whole is important. My Democratic colleagues are falling into a repeated trap of copying and pasting comments these days. It is true of remarks for rule debate, as well. Every week, they come before this body to complain that we are undoing this or that regulation and that our collective time could be better spent
The Congressional Review Act provides the American people the greatest possible say over the endless tide of regulations that always stem from Democratic administrations, and it is one of the greatest keepers of Congress' Article I authority. It is also upsetting in many ways that the Democrats complain we are doing these individual rules when they opposed the Midnight Rules Relief Act, where we could have taken care of these all in one fell swoop.
Let's not forget it was a Democrat, President Clinton, who signed the Congressional Review Act into law on a bipartisan basis, but our colleagues have obviously fallen far from those past overtures of consensus and common sense.
Republicans and President Trump are constantly emphasizing common sense, which is not very common from the other side of the aisle. Many Members of Congress provide lipservice to excessive rules and regulations, but the Congressional Review Act provides Congress the ability to put our money where our mouth is.
The Competitive Enterprise Institute has tabulated that Federal regulations impose a cost of $1.9 trillion on the economy. This averages out to more than $14,000 imposed on every American household, a hidden regulatory tax that is eating up American paychecks.
The amount of rules far exceeds statutes by Congress. In 2022 alone, there were more than 3,100 rules issued by agencies compared to 247 laws passed by Congress. Yet, despite these figures, my Democratic colleagues can't seem to muster the courage to find one regulation that they believe is worthy of repeal.
The fact is that we have a very limited window under the Congressional Review Act to expunge these harmful rules, again, written by unnamed, unaccountable bureaucrats. These rules continue to drive up costs for American families and take away consumer choices.
I am so glad that we are taking up these CRA resolutions, ones that would protect consumer choice and competitive prices for freezers, refrigerators, and walk-in coolers.
To my colleagues on the other side, these may seem like small issues to you, but driving up the cost of appliances is a regressive approach that will hurt low-and middle-income Americans the most. Regulating every possible square inch of the economy in the name of your zealous green radicalism may give the coastal elites a sense of accomplishment, but it is doing real harm to Americans.
When the Congressional Review Act window is completed, we are going to be tabulating the cost of these regulations, as well as the votes to repeal them. It may seem like a little bit of cost here and there, but wait until you see the cumulative price. I hope my colleagues can heed the warning, but if the past is prologue, I won't be holding my breath.
Mr. Speaker, I yield myself such time as I may consume.
Mr. Speaker, just to be clear, I am not trying to make their legislation on commercial freezers look frivolous. It is frivolous. The American people understand that. They get it. Maybe there are a lot of people in the chairwoman's district buying commercial freezers. Again, Mr. Speaker, I can assure you it is not the top priority of the people whom I represent in northern Colorado and in western Colorado. It is far from it.
Now, I must say, I did hear with interest the chairwoman reference visiting with her constituents. I would simply say that my understanding was that the chairwoman doesn't do townhalls. I think she recently said in an interview that she doesn't do townhalls because they are an opportunity for constituents to yell at their Congressperson. So I find it of great interest.
I would just encourage the chairwoman and every member of the Republican caucus to do a townhall. They are nothing to be afraid of. It is a great opportunity to visit with our constituents. Perhaps if the gentlewoman would do that, she would come away with the same conclusion that I did, which is that the legislation we are considering today is a waste of time and grossly disproportionate to the priorities of the American people. It is simple.
Mr. Speaker, I yield 4 minutes to the distinguished gentleman from Massachusetts (Mr. McGovern), who is the ranking member of the Committee on Rules.
Mr. Speaker, today House Republicans are wasting time talking about walk-in freezers and refrigerators. That is what Republicans think is urgent, commercial freezers and refrigerators.
Do you know what I think that is?
I think that is insane. I think it is unhinged. It is not what I am hearing at my townhalls. I have done six townhalls, and thousands of people have shown up. Maybe if Republicans actually held townhalls and listened to people, they would know what the hell is going on right now. People are not worried about commercial walk-in freezers or refrigerators, Mr. Speaker. They are pissed at Elon and his unelected, un-appointed bureaucrats for blowing up the Department of Education. That is what they are worried about.
They are demanding resignations because Trump's national security team recklessly mishandled classified information on unsecured phones. They might as well have mailed a copy to the Kremlin, for God's sake.
People are mad as hell that you guys are going to try to kill Social Security.
Mr. Speaker, you can say whatever you want, but that is what Republicans want to do. They want to kill Social Security. That is a fact.
They want to raid Social Security like a piggy bank so Elon can steal people's money and give more tax breaks to billionaires.
I was at a retirement community in my district on Friday, and seniors are scared out of their minds. They are not stupid. They know what is happening. It is crystal clear. They see through all the BS, and they know Elon and Trump are trying to sabotage Social Security so they can start kicking people off.
The Social Security website crashed four times this month. Millions of Americans couldn't log into their accounts. Elon fired so many people that there is nobody to answer the phones at some Social Security offices. The lines keep ringing and ringing and ringing.
We don't even know how long wait times are because, get this, they eliminated the program to track customer satisfaction. Elon is still lying saying that millions and millions of dead people are collecting Social Security checks and calling Social Security a Ponzi scheme.
Mr. Speaker, that is a lie. It is not true, and he knows it is not true. We heard Donald Trump parrot that same propaganda in this Chamber because president Elon told him to and because they want an excuse to cut seniors off of Social Security. These guys are rich and out-of- touch billionaires who just don't get it. They are having champagne and caviar at Mar-a-Lago while senior citizens wait for hours on the phone to talk to somebody.
Trump's Commerce Secretary said that if Social Security didn't send out checks for a month, his 94-year-old mother-in-law would not complain. That is good for her, but he is a billionaire, for God's sake. It must be nice to have one in the family.
Guess what, Mr. Speaker. Most people are not so lucky.
When I talk to seniors, they tell me that one missed Social Security check means going hungry. It means falling behind on rent. It means skipping medications.
People out there can't afford groceries, but Trump's team is telling them to go buy Tesla stock. That is their retirement plan. These people are nuts, Mr. Speaker.
The bottom line is that for Republicans, Social Security is just another thing they can cut to pay for billionaire tax breaks.
Guess what, Elon. We are not letting you get your greedy, grubby, billionaire hands anywhere near Social Security. It is not a handout. It is not a giveaway. It is a benefit that 70 million Americans paid into for their entire lives expecting that it would be there when they needed it. It is a promise, and we are going to fight like hell to
The SPEAKER pro tempore. Members are reminded to refrain from engaging in personalities towards the President.
Mr. Speaker, I yield myself such time as I may consume.
Mr. Speaker, I have said it before. They are cutting and pasting and saying the same things over and over again. Fear-mongering is beneath the dignity of this body. That is not what we are here to do.
We have told our colleagues over and over, and they know this, but they refuse to acknowledge it. Nothing we have done this session has touched the sanctity of Social Security, nothing. In fact, President Trump has over and over again said that he will not touch the sanctity of Social Security. I have said that, and our colleagues have said that. We have done nothing.
Putting out false information to the American people is really unfortunate because it does frighten people. However, we have the facts on our side, Mr. Speaker, and the facts are that no bills we passed, the budget bill nor the Trump administration continuing resolution, hurt in any way Social Security, Medicaid, Medicare, or any other program that the Federal Government has a contract with the American people on. It is time for our colleagues to stop saying that.
In fact, Republicans sued over ads that were being run in certain districts last week, and the Democrats had to pull those ads because the court ruled that they were not factual. They were the same kinds of things that are being said on this floor day after day.
Nonetheless, let's get back to the bill at hand: the rule that we are discussing and the underlying bill of that rule.
We have talked in the abstract, but I would like to drill down on the actual problems this bill would address and the specific failures of disclosure that this bill addresses.
A 2019 Senate report found that up to 70 percent of all institutions, these are postsecondary institutions, failed to comply with section 117 and those that do not comply often underreport.
Investigations by the Trump administration discovered that there was $6.5 billion in previously undisclosed gifts and contributions provided to so-called elite colleges, and this money came from countries that pose serious national security threats to our country.
In 2020, the Department estimated that schools had anonymously accepted $8.4 billion in foreign money over the past decade.
Let's keep in mind that the Biden administration did not utilize section 117 authorities at all in its 4 years. You heard that correctly, Mr. Speaker. In 4 years, the Biden administration did not enforce section 117. Despite the Trump administration's uncovering and investigating, the Biden administration didn't invoke section 117 at all, not once.
Let's turn to some more recent examples.
In April 2023, the former chair of Harvard University's chemistry and chemical biology department was sentenced to prison for lying about his affiliation with and income from the Wuhan University of Technology in Wuhan, China.
In July 2024, University of Maryland, College Park paid $500,000 for failing to disclose foreign funding from the Chinese companies of three researchers who simultaneously received Federal grants.
In September 2024, the Research Foundation of the State University of New York paid $313,574 after a scientist failed to disclose Chinese support.
In December 2024, the University of Delaware paid $700,000 for not disclosing that a faculty member receiving a NASA grant taught at a Chinese university.
A 2024 joint investigation between the House Select Committee on the Chinese Communist Party and the House Committee on Education and Workforce found 21 joint U.S.-Chinese education institutes. A case study of two such institutes, UC Berkeley and Georgia Institute of Technology, revealed both a lack of proper disclosure under section 117 and research with clear military applications. Just those two schools alone totaled over $40 million in unreported contracts with China.
Clearly, Congress needs to do more to bring these unreported contracts, gifts, and funding sources of all sorts into the public eye. Taxpayer dollars are going to these universities. The public is owed the facts about where the rest of these funds are coming from.
First, I just want to note, Mr. Speaker, and perhaps it is a point of information for your purposes, you admonished the prior speaker, the ranking member, for not making personalities, or rather making personalities against the President. My understanding is the only person he referenced throughout the duration of his speech was Elon Musk. So I am not sure if that was an accident on your part or if that is intentional, and perhaps the Speaker can clarify because I don't believe he referenced President Trump, but apparently you mistook his references to Elon Musk as a reference to the President.
The SPEAKER pro tempore. The Chair is not going to issue an advisory opinion.
I would just say, Mr. Speaker, that would be an important thing to clarify in the House moving forward that references to Elon Musk will be treated as references to the President of the United States, which is apparently what the Speaker is doing, that if someone references Elon Musk, that the Chair, that the Speaker will treat it as though we are referencing the President.
The SPEAKER pro tempore. The gentleman is not correct on that point.
It is perhaps a point of clarification for a future time. I will say this, before yielding some time to the distinguished gentlewoman from New Mexico, the chairwoman made reference to supposed fear-mongering regarding Social Security. It isn't fear-mongering. It is on the front page of The Washington Post.
I will read you the quote: ``Elon Musk put a big target on the Social Security Administration in the first weeks of the Trump administration.''
So it is not fear-mongering to share on this floor the concerns that have been articulated by our constituents regarding the dismantling of the Social Security Administration that President Trump and his administration is engaged in. It happens to be the truth.
Mr. Speaker, I yield 3\1/2\ minutes to the distinguished gentlewoman from New Mexico (Ms. Leger Fernandez), who is a member of the Rules Committee.
Mr. Speaker, we are in a constitutional crisis. President Trump and his co-president Musk apparently are blatantly rejecting the role of the courts while Republicans in Congress are too scared to stand up for their constituents or the Constitution.
When we talk about Social Security, the idea I kept hearing from the other side is: We have done nothing to Social Security.
Yes, they have. Republicans have done nothing to stand up for their constituents who are worried about their Social Security check. They are appropriately worried about their Social Security check because Republicans have done nothing to complain about the executive cutting the workers at the Social Security Administration. Republicans have done nothing to complain about the closing of offices at Social Security or done nothing about the idea that a person can no longer call Social Security. Republicans have done nothing to reject Project 2025 cuts and proposals to cut Social Security.
Social Security is also important, Mr. Speaker, because we are in a cost-of-living crisis. Prices for groceries, food, and housing are rising thanks to Trump's policies and Trump's tariffs.
What are House Republicans doing in response to these crises? Bringing appliance bills, appliance bills which show how out of touch they are with their constituents. These appliance bills, by the way, have consequences. They raise costs. They raise costs so that American small businesses will pay for utilities so that big companies, those big utility companies, can continue racking up more profit.
Republicans seem to always stand with the greediest corporations and not the consumers.
For those few Republicans--not our colleague here--but those few Republicans who are willing to hold townhalls, they are hearing a lot of anger
What do they say in Iowa?
In Iowa they said that Trump and Musk are ``moving very rapidly toward a dictatorship and an oligarchy.''
This is in Iowa.
In Wyoming, farmers shared with their Representative that Trump's cuts will limit the resources they need to deal with the devastating impacts of drought.
H.R. 1048 under this rule continues Trump's and Republicans' attacks on higher education and the lifesaving and innovative research conducted at our universities. I don't know why they hate our universities so much, because we already have a law that requires disclosures of foreign gifts. However, this Republican bill will have impossible burdens of reporting to a Department that they want to eliminate.
What are we doing here with a bill that goes to a Department they want to eliminate?
This bill shows how out of touch Republicans are, once again, to Americans' concerns because a majority of Americans want to keep the Department of Education that funds programs for kids with disabilities, provides student loans, and makes sure poorer schools can hire enough teachers.
If Republicans were truly worried about national security, they would look at how this administration is destroying America's leadership abroad, from having Signal chats about our national security to everything else they are doing.
I will end with this Mr. Speaker: While Republicans' billionaire class might not need public schools for their kids, the kids in my district do.
Mr. Speaker, I yield myself such time as I may consume.
Mr. Speaker, give me a break. We are to believe that something printed on the front page of The Washington Post is always true? Mr. Speaker, only 31 percent of the American people have any faith in the print media in this country, and they are very, very wise in that assessment. That is almost as low as the 27 percent of Americans who have faith in the Democratic Party right now.
I would like to clarify something else that was said. It was said that Republicans hate universities or there is a question as to why we hate universities. Mr. Speaker, we don't hate universities. We just want the universities to be honest, and we want them to be transparent. That is one of the bills we are discussing here today that this rule covers. It is very important that we have transparency throughout our government, and that is what Republicans want.
Mr. Speaker, I yield myself such time as I may consume.
I understand the chairwoman apparently now is saying she won't believe The Washington Post articles. I wonder if she will believe the sentiments of her own colleagues? I believe it was Mr. Lawler from New York who a week ago was bemoaning online the closure of one of the Social Security offices in his own district.
What are we talking about? These offices are being closed in North Carolina, as well, I believe. This isn't some fictional, imaginary hypothetical. The Social Security Administration is closing down offices. Wait times are getting longer.
I just would urge my colleague, whom I have great respect for, to visit with her own constituents, and I suspect that they would share the same frustrations that I am articulating here on the floor.
Mr. Speaker, if we defeat the previous question, I will offer an amendment to the rule to bring up H.R. 433, the Department of Education Protection Act, which would shield the U.S. Department of Education from efforts to dismantle the agency and ensure that every student receives the education they deserve.
As my colleague Representative Leger Fernandez already articulated, it makes no sense that Republicans have pushed forward a bill today to give more responsibilities to an agency that they are trying actively to dismantle.
Nonetheless, there is a way forward to save teachers and students and rural schools across the country, including back in Colorado, and that is by ensuring that the Department of Education Protection Act receives a vote here on the House floor.
Mr. Speaker, I ask unanimous consent to insert the text of my amendment into the Record, along with any extraneous material, immediately prior to the vote on the previous question.
The SPEAKER pro tempore. Is there objection to the request of the gentleman from Colorado?
Mr. Speaker, I yield 3 minutes to the distinguished gentlewoman from Connecticut (Mrs. Hayes) to discuss this bill. Mrs. Hayes is the author and the sponsor of this legislation, a former public schoolteacher, and a National Teacher of the Year. She is someone who has spent her life serving the students, the young folks, and the working families of the people of Connecticut.
Mr. Speaker, last week, the President of the United States signed an executive order to dismantle the Department of Education.
Instead of reaffirming the integrity of the Department of Education or pursuing real plans to explain to parents how services will continue, House Republicans are again fixated on appliances. Today, we are debating eliminating two cost-saving energy regulations and legislation that could hinder research at institutions of higher education.
It is important to understand what calls for the closure of the Department of Education would mean to local communities.
The Department of Education is responsible for protecting the civil rights of students, exactly what this DETERRENT Act would do. The Department of Education would handle the enforcement. The Department of Education supports students from low-income backgrounds. They develop and prepare educators. They provide resources for English language learners. They collect statistics on enrollment, staffing, and crime in schools and manage the $1.6 trillion Federal student aid program.
Parents are concerned about disruptions to programs and services that ensure that the 7.5 million children with disabilities and the 49 million students enrolled in K-12 public education will still get the education they deserve.
My legislation, the Department of Education Protection Act, would shield the Department from efforts to dismantle the agency and ensure that every student receives the free and appropriate public education that is mandated by law.
My legislation would prohibit the use of appropriated funds to decentralize, reduce staffing levels, or alter the responsibilities, structure, authority, or functionality of the Department.
The Trump administration has not developed or articulated a clear plan to how these programs would continue their functions without disruption. They keep saying they will return it back to the States. What has been taken from the States, and what are the next steps moving forward?
We need the Department of Education to enforce Federal law and protect the civil rights of students across the country.
I thank the nearly 100 Members of Congress who have already cosponsored my legislation, and I urge my colleagues to vote ``no'' on the previous question so we can bring up my bill, the Department of Education Protection Act.
Mr. Speaker, I yield myself such time as I may consume.
Mr. Speaker, the gentleman and the gentlewoman seem to believe that the new personnel structure at the Department of Education couldn't possibly implement this bill, yet our colleagues failed to mention the fact that section 117 investigations weren't invoked a single time under the Biden administration. What were the people at the section 117 desk doing under President Biden's watch? They were collecting a check, apparently, or perhaps they were asleep at the switch, which is very fitting for the Biden era.
Mr. Speaker, President Trump has made it clear that the Department of Education will implement the laws that we pass here in Congress until such time as the full transition is made with the Department.
The number of personnel at the Department doesn't really matter if you don't have the political will to carry out the authorities. I know that the people in the Department of Education will carry out these authorities until such time as the Department does not exist, and at that time, whatever laws exist will be implemented by appropriate agencies and departments.
Whatever we do is going to be better than what was done under the Biden administration when this law was never enforced and should have been.
Mr. Speaker, I yield myself such time as I may consume.
Mr. Speaker, some of this can get lost in translation, so I will try make this very simple. The gentlewoman, who I respect, wants to abolish the Department of Education. She is unabashed about that. She has voted to close the Department of Education. She supports the President's efforts to dismantle the Department of Education. I presume she supports the President's efforts to reduce the workforce by half. Mr. Speaker, 50 percent of the personnel in the Department of Education are now gone on administrative leave.
Yet, here we are today, debating her bill to create new responsibilities, new requirements, new duties on the very department she seeks to destroy.
What are we doing here?
If they don't want the Department of Education--again, that is their view; they don't want a Federal Department of Education; they are not hiding that--why are we debating a bill to give the Department of Education more power? It is insanity, insanity.
Mr. Speaker, I yield 3 minutes to the distinguished gentlewoman from New Mexico (Ms. Stansbury).
Mr. Speaker, I think ``insanity'' is a good word for what is happening here on the House floor today. Another good word is ``bizarre.''
When I go home and I tell my constituents what happens in these Halls, they are amazed. Today is one of those days where I am wondering what the hell are these folks doing. While our economy is in crisis, while groceries and housing are at an all-time high, while our veterans and our firefighters and our teachers are being illegally fired, while Elon Musk is dismantling the U.S. Department of Education, and while the Secretary of Defense is trying to cover up the most incompetent national security leak I have ever heard of in my life, the Republicans in the House are trying to save the American people from the scourge of walk-in cooler and refrigeration efficiency standards.
That is right. We are here wasting precious debate time on the floor of the U.S. House of Representatives debating dismantling efficiency standards for walk-in refrigerators. How out of touch are Republicans with the American people? Like literally, I know Republicans are not holding townhalls and meeting with their constituents anymore, but do they think that the American people voted for them to waste our time on refrigeration standards? That is what they think they were elected to do?
Literally, how out of touch are Republicans? No American voted, no American--I don't care where you are on the ideological spectrum, you did not vote for this. This is ridiculous. It is preposterous and it is just stupid.
Yesterday, it was reported that the Secretary of Defense, the National Security Advisor, and the Vice President leaked war plans to a journalist. This is the same administration that accidentally fired nuclear scientists and engineers who maintain our nuclear stockpile. This is the same administration that is illegally firing Federal employees and dismantling Federal agencies, and they are here running a resolution on refrigerators.
Meanwhile, tomorrow, Republicans are going to hold a hearing and haul NPR and PBS in front of Congress to try to undermine the media just like they did here on this floor just a few moments ago as they are kicking the media out of the Pentagon and the White House because they don't believe in the media anymore.
Well, maybe this is exactly what the end conclusion of dismantling education and American democracy is because this is ridiculous. I will vote ``no.''
Mr. Speaker, I yield myself such time as I may consume.
Mr. Speaker, I would characterize what we are doing here today as the people's business. We are the people's House. We are here to look after the American people in the best way that we can. We are fulfilling our constitutional duties. Unnamed, unaccountable bureaucrats pass rules and regulations in this city every day that they should not be passing.
Congress gave us the ability to stop them, and my colleagues are complaining that we are wasting time, that it is slow and inefficient to implement the Congressional Review Act. It is slow and inefficient, but we passed a bill called the Midnight Rules Relief Act primarily with Republican votes that would have allowed Congress to dispense with multiple rules and regulations under one bill. That bill is currently in the Senate, and if that would pass and be signed by the President, we could all save time and be much more efficient. We are doing the people's work today.
Mr. Speaker, I yield myself such time as I may consume.
Mr. Speaker, I simply echo the sentiments that have been expressed by so many of my colleagues that the policies that Republicans are pursuing here on the House floor are not the priorities of the American people. I think we all would be far better served if we debated the actual issues of the day, such as the challenges that Representative Stansbury and so many others described so eloquently.
Mr. Speaker, there has been a lot of discussion about townhalls. I don't quite understand, and perhaps the gentlewoman would be willing to expound upon her opposition and the opposition of so many of my colleagues in the Republican Conference to doing townhalls.
I have held 100 townhalls over the course of the time that I have had the privilege of representing Colorado in the United States Congress. We have held them everywhere in my district. I represent communities and counties that voted for Donald Trump, and I have held townhalls and will continue to hold townhalls in those communities because my obligation is to represent every person in western Colorado and in northern Colorado in the district that I serve.
My job is to be accessible to my constituents regardless of their political beliefs. I understand that Republicans are scared right now to host townhalls because my colleagues on the other side of the aisle know that the policies that the majority is pursuing in Washington are deeply unpopular.
If I spent my week in Washington pushing bills on commercial freezers, I would probably be a little nervous to do a townhall back in my district, too. I get it. I understand where Republicans are coming from. However, maybe the way forward is to spend our time in Washington working on matters of substance. If we do that, I can promise Republicans that their townhalls will go just fine. They will go just fine.
Mr. Speaker, I yield 2 minutes to the distinguished gentleman from New York (Mr. Goldman).
Mr. Speaker, I thank the gentleman from Colorado (Mr. Neguse) for yielding me time.
Mr. Speaker, I rise today to express my disappointment that my commonsense amendment to the DETERRENT Act was rejected yesterday in the Rules Committee by my colleagues on the other side of the aisle.
My amendment would have distinguished between benign donations from friendly democratic countries and donations from potential adversarial, undemocratic states.
My amendment would enact strict oversight on funding from regimes seeking to manipulate students on university campuses and to spread hate, particularly anti-Semitism, on those campuses for their own agendas.
My amendment would have significantly expanded the list of countries whose donations the universities would be required to disclose, including a number of countries not included in the DETERRENT Act that have given
More importantly, my amendment would also require that universities disclose the detailed terms and conditions that they agreed to in return for the foreign donation from this expanded list of countries, critically revealing whether those foreign donations come with strings attached that can foment antidemocratic influences on campuses.
Instead, this bill hampers universities' abilities to engage in important educational programming in conjunction with our democratic allies while failing to confront the real problem of antidemocratic and anti-Semitic foreign influence.
Mr. Speaker, it is a shame that we could not work in a bipartisan way to make this bill better and to address the root issue that both sides of the aisle are trying to address, which is the potential nefarious foreign influence on college campuses from a list of countries far greater than the four countries of concern outlined in the DETERRENT Act.
Mr. Speaker, I yield myself such time as I may consume.
Mr. Speaker, being lectured to about how we feel about anti-Semitism on our side of the aisle is not something that I am used to hearing. It is the Republicans who have led the fight against anti-Semitism on our college campuses.
Mr. Speaker, we did make Democratic amendments in order in this rule. If my colleague had submitted his amendment in a more timely fashion and not just a few minutes before the Rules Committee met yesterday, we would have certainly had a chance to consider it. The deadline for submitting amendments was last Thursday, and that gives us an opportunity to review the amendments to see what can be put in.
Mr. Speaker, I urge our colleagues to follow the rules for deadlines because that is very important for all of us.
Mr. Speaker, I am not really amenable to hearing people criticize us about our response to anti-Semitism when I fight it every day of my life. I am wearing my necklace that I wear every day, which says: ``Bring Them Home.'' I am wearing my yellow ribbon. Being told that I am not sympathetic to fighting anti-Semitism is not something that I take lightly.
Mr. Speaker, I don't know if the gentleman from New York (Mr. Goldman) is still here, but I will relay the substance of the chairwoman's remarks regarding his amendment and the timing of his amendment submission.
Mr. Speaker, I am prepared to close. I have only a few minutes of debate left. As the chairwoman said, this is the people's House, a House that I have great reverence for.
Mr. Speaker, I wonder if I might, via the Speaker, make a request to the chairwoman to engage in a brief colloquy. Perhaps that could provide the viewing public a sense of real debate, as opposed to us just giving speeches.
Mr. Speaker, I yield myself the balance of my time.
Mr. Speaker, with much respect to the gentlewoman, I think that is a shame because I think the American people ought to be able to hear a fair and full exchange of views in an active debate. I think that is far more present when we actually have a colloquy as opposed to just making speeches.
I simply say that the question I was going to pose to the chairwoman is that she has made clear that these three bills, the bill to give more power to the Department of Education that she seeks to dismantle and bills on the regulation standards for refrigerant walk-in freezers and commercial refrigerators, that those bills are very important to the House Republican Conference, that they are a top priority. Interestingly enough, not a single Republican Member of Congress in the last hour that we have had allocated for debate has indulged us with their presence today to come to the floor and extol the virtues of the legislation that Republicans have pursued on commercial refrigerators. I wonder why. It is probably not an accident.
Mr. Speaker, I can't imagine that there are a lot of Republican Members of Congress who wanted to sign up to come do floor debate today on commercial refrigerators. In light of the biggest mishap on a national security front in decades and in light of all of the challenges that our country is facing, debating refrigerators apparently was not something that many of my chairwoman's colleagues wanted to do.
Nonetheless, I am grateful that we have had an opportunity to share with the American public and give them full transparency into how the Republicans have decided to spend their time and their majority here in Washington, D.C.
Mr. Speaker, I am sure we will proceed with a few more days of debate. I am sure Republicans will pass their bills on commercial freezers and walk-in refrigerators, and then we will be back next week. One can only hope that Republicans will have seen the light by then and that we won't be up for appliance week number 4, 5, 6, or whatever it is now.
Mr. Speaker, if my colleagues on the other side of the aisle would like to actually debate substantive issues, there is an easy way to do it: opposing the previous question and opposing the rule and the underlying bills so that the House can get back to doing the people's work.
Mr. Speaker, I yield myself the balance of my time.
Mr. Speaker, House Republicans are laser focused on governing and advancing legislation that addresses pertinent issues across the Nation. It is unfortunate that our colleagues do not agree that protecting Americans from unnecessary rules and regulations is not something that is important to them.
It is very important to us, and we are following regular order here. The Rules Committee is represented by me, the chair, on this important rule today. That is significant.
The three pieces of legislation that will be considered under the rule that will be debated tomorrow are part of our governing efforts and are in alignment with the mandate that Americans gave us last November.
Shielding consumer choice and combating foreign influence within higher education are issues that Americans care about. We have heard their concerns, and we are addressing them yet again this week.
Mr. Speaker, I urge my colleagues to vote ``yes'' on the previous question, ``yes'' on the rule, and then, later, ``yes'' on the bills that will be presented as a result of this rule.
The material previously referred to by Mr. Neguse is as follows:
Innovative Mitigation Partnerships for Asphalt and Concrete Technologies Act
The SPEAKER pro tempore. Pursuant to clause 8 of rule XX, the unfinished business is the vote on the motion to suspend the rules and pass the bill (H.R. 1534) to strengthen and enhance the competitiveness of American industry through the research and development of advanced technologies to improve the efficiency of cement, concrete, and asphalt production, and for other purposes, on which the yeas and nays were ordered.
The Clerk read the title of the bill.
The SPEAKER pro tempore. The question is on the motion offered by the gentleman from Texas (Mr. Babin) that the House suspend the rules and pass the bill.
The vote was taken by electronic device, and there were--yeas 350, nays 73, not voting 8, as follows:
Messrs. HIGGINS of Louisiana, OWENS, DesJARLAIS, GOLDMAN of Texas, TIMMONS, FRY, GOODEN, HARIDOPOLOS, LUTTRELL, FALLON, GUEST, STEIL, COLLINS, BEGICH, McCORMICK, Mses. LETLOW, VAN DUYNE, Messrs. WITTMAN and EZELL changed their vote from ``yea'' to ``nay.''
Messrs. LARSEN of Washington, BALDERSON, Ms. MACE, Messrs. FIELDS, PANETTA, Mses. PINGREE, LEGER FERNANDEZ, Messrs. ADERHOLT, SCHWEIKERT, Mses. GARCIA of Texas, WILSON of Florida, and Mr. VICENTE GONZALEZ of Texas changed their vote from ``nay'' to ``yea.''
So (two-thirds being in the affirmative) the rules were suspended and the bill was passed.
The result of the vote was announced as above recorded.
Providing for Consideration of H.J. RES. 24, Providing for Congressional Disapproval of the Rule Submitted by the Department of Energy Relating to "Energy Conservation Program: Energy Conservation...
The SPEAKER pro tempore. Pursuant to clause 8 of rule XX, the unfinished business is the vote on ordering the previous question on the resolution (H. Res. 242) providing for consideration of the joint resolution (H.J. Res. 24) providing for congressional disapproval under chapter 8 of title 5, United States Code, of the rule submitted by the Department of Energy relating to ``Energy Conservation Program: Energy Conservation Standards for Walk-In Coolers and Walk-In Freezers''; providing for consideration of the joint resolution (H.J. Res. 75) providing for congressional disapproval under chapter 8 of title 5, United States Code,
The Clerk read the title of the resolution.
The SPEAKER pro tempore. The question is on ordering the previous question.
This is a 5-minute vote.
The vote was taken by electronic device, and there were--yeas 215, nays 208, not voting 8, as follows:
So the previous question was ordered.
The result of the vote was announced as above recorded.
The SPEAKER pro tempore. The question is on the resolution.
The question was taken; and the Speaker pro tempore announced that the ayes appeared to have it.
Mr. Speaker, I missed the following votes, but had I been present, I would have voted: YEA on Roll Call No. 74, NAY on Roll Call No. 75, and NO on Roll Call No. 76.
Mr. Speaker, I ask unanimous consent that all Members may have 5 legislative days within which to revise and extend their remarks and include extraneous material on H.R. 1048.
The SPEAKER pro tempore. Is there objection to the request of the gentleman from Michigan?
There was no objection.
The SPEAKER pro tempore. Pursuant to House Resolution 242 and rule XVIII, the Chair declares the House in the Committee of the Whole House on the state of the Union for consideration of the bill, H.R. 1048.
The Chair appoints the gentleman from North Carolina (Mr. Harrigan) to preside over the Committee of the Whole.
Accordingly, the House resolved itself into the Committee of the Whole House on the state of the Union for the consideration of the bill (H.R. 1048) to amend the Higher Education Act of 1965 to strengthen disclosure requirements relating to foreign gifts and contracts, to prohibit contracts between institutions of higher education and certain foreign entities and countries of concern, and for other purposes, with Mr. Harrigan in the chair.
The Clerk read the title of the bill.
The CHAIR. Pursuant to the rule, the bill is considered read the first time.
General debate shall be confined to the bill and shall not exceed 1 hour equally divided and controlled by the chair and ranking minority member of the Committee on Education and Workforce or their respective designees.
The gentleman from Michigan (Mr. Walberg) and the gentleman from Virginia (Mr. Scott) each will control 30 minutes.
The Chair recognizes the gentleman from Michigan (Mr. Walberg).
Mr. Chair, I yield myself such time as I may consume.
Mr. Chair, I rise today in support of H.R. 1048.
Foreign nations, including our biggest adversaries like the Chinese Communist Party, contribute billions of dollars to American universities. The lack of transparency around foreign relationships should concern every American as we see stolen research, anti-Semitic propaganda, and academic censorship. None of these things belong inside our borders let alone on our college campuses.
By establishing footholds in American schools, bad actors gain access to valuable research and intellectual property that can be used to bolster their own military and undermine our Nation's best interests.
Under the Higher Education Act, schools are required to report foreign gifts and funding. Unfortunately, loose legislative language, the Biden-Harris administration's inaction, and colleges' refusal to adhere to the law have resulted in billions of foreign funds infiltrating our country undetected. Last year, a congressional investigation of two research universities uncovered nearly $40 million in unreported research contracts with the Chinese Communist Party. That is $40 million in unreported funds at just two universities.
Of course, this is just the tip of the iceberg. Without transparency, we have no idea the true amount or impact of foreign funds at our institutions.
This is why we need the DETERRENT Act. It closes these loopholes and has more strict reporting requirements for foreign funding and contracts. It also will hold institutions accountable by imposing fines, such as the loss of student aid funding for schools that continually fail to comply.
This bipartisan bill is a commonsense solution to an irrefutable problem, which is why it passed last Congress with bipartisan support. We should be loud and clear: No American university should be helping the hidden agendas of the Chinese Communist Party or other nations continue to threaten U.S. national security.
I thank Mr. Baumgartner for introducing this vital piece of legislation. I would also like to highlight that the DETERRENT Act includes bills from my committee colleagues Representative Harris, Representative Owens, and Representative Messmer.
Mr. Chair, I urge my colleagues to support the DETERRENT Act. Doing so will help defend against our adversaries while also holding our institutions to a higher standard. Take foreign money first, ask questions later is not the way to go.
Mr. Chair, I yield myself such time as I may consume.
Mr. Chairman, I rise in opposition to H.R. 1048, the DETERRENT Act.
Let's acknowledge, first of all, the elephant in the room. Just this month, the Secretary of Education fired one-half of the Department's staff, and last week, President Trump signed an executive order aimed at dismantling the entire Department. This administration is actively working to eliminate an agency that has long been the cornerstone of ensuring that every child in America has access to a quality education.
Today, we are discussing a bill that would add even more responsibility to the very Department that they are trying to destroy. It is almost as if they are trying to dismantle the agency, but at the same time, they recognize how critical its role is and are piling on additional duties. This is not only nonsensical but also reckless. Republicans can't argue that the Department of Education is unnecessary and then hand it more work, expecting it to function without the staff, resources, or the leadership that it needs.
This Congress has a responsibility to address the many pressing issues that students face such as closing the achievement gaps, improving college
Instead of requiring institutions to report foreign gifts or contracts large enough to exert any influence, the bill before us would require institutions to report gifts of any value from people who are not U.S. citizens if they are from a list of countries of concern, a list that is difficult to find and will be very difficult to keep track of because it is subject to change.
The Department of Education has already lost one-half of its staff, and if this bill passes, it will have to process an exponentially larger number of reports than it has to process already.
Now, how can we place these new responsibilities on an agency that is being hollowed out, and how can we expect it to manage these complex issues when the institution is being dismantled?
H.R. 1048 will also impose burdensome and unnecessary penalties on institutions for working with international scholars and organizations. Since faculty really don't know their colleagues' citizenship status, it is reasonable to believe that discrimination will follow and institutions will be disincentivized from hiring talented international faculty.
Mr. Chair, present law already requires reporting of any gift large enough to exert any influence over a university. This bill requires the reporting of gifts of any value, whether it be a cup of coffee or a doughnut, from people who are from so-called countries of concern and requires the Department of Education to process all of those reports, the same Department of Education that just lost one-half of its staff.
If the problem is millions of dollars in unreported gifts, then requiring the reporting of free doughnuts cannot be the answer.
Mr. Chair, it is an honor to be a Member of this august body, and as the son of a university professor who cares deeply about higher education and a former State Department officer who cares deeply about American national security, I am excited and proud to sponsor this bill.
Indeed, there are many wonderful things that happen on American university campuses, but there are also some nefarious and concerning issues on American campuses that deal with foreign adversaries.
Indeed, Mr. Chairman, the numbers do not lie. Foreign adversaries have poured billions into American universities, and much of it remains hidden from public view. In just two universities alone, congressional investigators have uncovered nearly $40 million in unreported research contracts tied to the Chinese Communist Party.
Nearly 30 percent of disclosed foreign funding lack even basic details like contract dates or intended purpose. Current regulations permit anonymous giving. These are not clerical errors. This is a systemic failure, one that has left our institutions wide open to foreign influence with real consequences for American society.
Let's be clear. Every dollar from an adversarial nation comes with strings attached, expectations about what gets taught, which research gets funded, and who gets hired or silenced.
We are already seeing the consequences. The committee report accompanying the DETERRENT Act highlighted research from the Network Contagion Research Institute, which analyzed foreign funding data between 2024 and 2019 and found that universities receiving undisclosed donations from Middle Eastern sources saw, on average, 300 percent more anti-Semitic incidents than other institutions.
Correlation is not causation, but one thing is certain: Secrecy allows these influences to operate unchecked and unexamined. The less we know about where this money is coming from and what it is funding, the easier it is for malign actors to push their agendas without scrutiny.
The problem is far bigger than any one country. Sixty percent of all foreign money in U.S. universities comes from just four sources, including China and Qatar, nations that oftentimes have strategic and ideological conflicts with U.S. interests. Despite this, 70 percent of universities fail to comply with foreign funding reporting requirements. Worse, universities can simply list foreign donors as anonymous, further obscuring the source of gifts.
How can we claim to protect academic integrity when billions in foreign influence remain hidden in the shadows?
This is why the DETERRENT Act is necessary. It closes reporting loopholes; it requires universities to fully disclose the source, purpose, and terms of all foreign gifts; and it imposes real consequences for noncompliance, including fines and loss of Federal funding. It also ensures transparency in private university endowments, preventing foreign adversaries from quietly shaping campuses' culture and academic research behind closed doors.
The American people want to know when foreign countries, including our adversaries, are active on our college campuses. That is what this bill is about. Universities have a choice to lead now with accountability.
Mr. Chairman, as chair emerita of the Congressional Asian Pacific American Caucus, I rise in strong opposition to the DETERRENT Act.
For now, the American university research system is the envy of the world, but the DETERRENT Act would burden our higher education institutions and Federal agencies with massive amounts of reporting of a gift of any value from foreign countries and will cast a chilling effect disproportionately on the Asian-American academic community.
From the incarceration of Japanese Americans in World War II to the racial profiling of Chinese-American scientists under Trump's failed first term China Initiative, countless Asian Americans have had their lives destroyed because our government falsely accused them of being spies.
Already, 72 percent of Asian-American academic researchers report feeling unsafe. By publicizing the private, personal information of certain faculty and staff on databases, this bill would make the problem worse, making them much easier targets for xenophobic attacks.
Safeguarding national security can be done through commonsense reforms Democrats have offered that don't come at the expense of U.S. scientific innovation, global collaboration, and the Asian-American community. As if we needed another reason to oppose this bill, it would create enormous new responsibilities for the Department of Education at the same time that Trump is attempting to illegally dismantle that very Department.
Mr. Chair, I appreciate the concerns of my colleague, but my committee has worked very closely with the Select Committee on the Strategic Competition Between the United States and the Chinese Communist Party to combat malign influence at our universities.
One type of malign influence is very different than what we are talking about here. The influence is known as transnational repression, which is efforts by the CCP to exert influence over dissidents, dissidents that could be coming here to gain a great education at our universities but are discouraged by the CCP. This legislation would encourage students seeking an education here and be able to push back against the malign influence of the CCP.
Mr. Chair, I yield 2 minutes to the gentleman from North Carolina (Mr. Harris), a cosponsor of this bill with portions of his bill in this bill, as well.
Mr. Chair, I thank Congressman Baumgartner for his work on this bill.
Mr. Chair, each year adversarial nations like China, North Korea, Iran, and Russia attempt to buy the ability to influence our next generation through donations and contracts with American colleges and universities.
The DETERRENT Act will shine light on these shady backroom deals
According to The Wall Street Journal, in the last 12 years, U.S. schools had nearly 3,000 contracts with China valued at no less than $2.32 billion. That raises an important question: Why would a country that certainly doesn't have the best interests of American students in mind pay such enormous sums to American universities?
This bill will get to the bottom of it.
The DETERRENT Act includes language from my own legislation, the No Contracts With Foreign Adversaries Act, which requires a college or university to be transparent about the reason they might want to contract with one of the four countries currently designated by our government as a ``country of concern.''
It is true that there could be an academic purpose for a partnership with a country like China, North Korea, Iran, or Russia, but these partnerships cannot come at the expense of our national security, research integrity, or our future generations.
Students, parents, and taxpayers have a right to know the financial ties of these universities.
The DETERRENT Act strengthens current law by raising the reporting standards and providing a real enforcement mechanism if schools try to hide their dealings with foreign countries.
I urge all of my colleagues to stand and support the DETERRENT Act.
Mr. Chair, I yield myself such time as I may consume.
Mr. Chair, I include in the Record a letter from the American Council on Education on behalf of the American Association of Community Colleges, American Association of State Colleges and Universities, American Council on Education, Association of American Universities, Association of Public and Land-Grant Universities, and the National Association of Independent Colleges and Universities, which says in part: `` . . . as currently proposed, the DETERRENT Act would significantly impede critical research activities; duplicate existing interagency efforts; and put in place a problematic expansion of data collection by the Department of Education without ensuring that actual national security or foreign malign influence threats, including those which espouse support for actions that run counter to American foreign policy, are addressed.''
Mr. Chair, I rise today in support of the DETERRENT Act.
This important legislation will bring vital transparency and accountability to gift reporting requirements for colleges and universities.
For decades, the Chinese Communist Party, Iran, and Russia have targeted America's college systems by pushing dangerous propaganda aimed at influencing impressionable students.
As my colleagues have pointed out, many American universities have been far too cozy with our international adversaries. They accept generous investments masked as research projects and infrastructure opportunities, which turn out to be funded by regimes that wish to do us harm.
Not only did those corrupt arrangements create dangerous environments for our students and faculty, they also put America's national security at risk.
I am pleased that my bill, the INSTRUCT Act, is included as one of the DETERRENT Act's main provisions. My legislation requires that colleges and universities disclose to American intelligence agencies any and all financial investment data so we can ensure they remain free of the exploitation of hostile foreign influences.
I urge my colleagues to pass this bill, not just because it makes sense, but because it will put our adversaries on notice that we are watching them. Most importantly, it will protect our Nation's students from foreign manipulation and provide them with the transparent and safe learning environment that they deserve.
Again, I wish to thank Chairman Walberg for his leadership on this issue.
Mr. Chair, I yield 4 minutes to the gentleman from Utah (Mr. Owens), the vice chairman of the House Education and the Workforce Committee as well as the chairman of the Higher Education and Workforce Development Subcommittee.
Mr. Chair, imagine our esteemed universities, pillars of free thought and innovation, quietly channeling millions into investments linked to the Chinese Communist Party, Russian oligarchs, or the Iranian regime. While our students learn about democracy and liberty, their tuition dollars may be funding governments that stand against these very ideals.
This isn't hypothetical. This is happening. Since 2013, U.S. colleges and universities have received over $1 billion from Chinese Communist Party-affiliated sources. In return, we have seen professors silenced, student groups threatened, and our intellectual property stolen.
At the same time, these institutions, many of which proudly divest from fossil fuels and boycott Israel, are more than willing to accept foreign funding from adversaries who seek to undermine our Nation.
The DETERRENT Act is our line in the sand. It demands transparency and accountability from higher education. If universities are entangled with foreign adversaries, the American people deserve to know. I am proud that my Reporting on Investments in Foreign Adversaries, or RIFA, Act is included in this legislation. The RIFA Act ensures private colleges and universities disclose whether they are investing their endowments in hostile nations like China, Russia, Iran, and North Korea. These financial partnerships should not be hidden from the public.
For far too long, we have allowed educational institutions to become conduits for foreign influence. Administrators on the taxpayers' dime have given repressive regimes easy access to our students, turning their backs on the very freedoms they claim to uphold. This betrayal must stop, and I must make it clear that profit over patriotism, profit over American values, and profit over American culture is traitorous betrayal.
The DETERRENT Act takes critical steps to safeguard our institutions, protect our students, and preserve American values. We must not allow profit to overshadow patriotism. It is time to reclaim our universities and secure our future. I urge my colleagues to vote ``yes'' on this legislation.
Mr. Chair, I yield myself such time as I may consume.
Mr. Chair, we received a letter from the Association of Public and Land-Grant Universities which says in part that Federal agencies since 2023 ``have significantly expanded research security efforts'' and outlines those efforts and then says: ``Rather than advance transparency and meaningfully contribute to the plethora of actions taken by Congress and the Trump and Biden administrations over the last 10 years, the DETERRENT Act will impede important international collaborations and be duplicative of other Federal research agencies' efforts to appropriately strengthen research security and foreign partnership reporting requirements.''
Then they outline some specific concerns by saying: ``The bill would inappropriately create a new and highly unusual role for the U.S. Department of Education in making determinations about the suitability of international research, education, and cultural partnerships, despite its lack of expertise in scientific research.''
It also says: ``The bill would require institutions to create new public databases for the disclosure of international gifts to faculty and staff members. This reporting would include the disclosure of non- work-related gifts from any country that grantees receive
Finally, it says: ``The bill would create duplicative disclosure requirements for foreign gift disclosures as Federal research grant applicants already must disclose all sources of support--whether foreign or domestic--for the research activities.''
Mr. Chair, I yield 3 minutes to the gentleman from California (Mr. Kiley), the subcommittee chair of the Early Childhood, Elementary, and Secondary Education Subcommittee.
Mr. Chair, America's universities have long been the place where for better or for worse cultural trends tend to begin and then spread throughout the rest of the country. Unfortunately, in recent years, it has been for worse.
An ethos of censorship took hold first in American universities before spreading to tech companies throughout our broader culture and into the government itself.
Of course we saw most vividly on university campuses the absolutely appalling scenes of anti-Semitism that sadly also became part of our broader problem for the rest of the country over the last few years and even before that.
America's adversaries, noticing this phenomenon, have decided that targeting our universities is a way to weaken the United States. Infiltrating our universities is a way to influence our broader institutions and to influence public opinion.
You see, for example, a congressional investigation found that there were nearly $40 million in contracts with the CCP or CCP-linked organizations. This is just what we know about.
Institutions have accepted billions in anonymous foreign funds without any transparency or accountability. There was even a recent study from the Institute for the Global Study of Anti-Semitism and Policy showing how this has infiltrated K-12 classrooms as well as funding from Qatar ended up at Brown University which developed anti- Israel curricula that then went to 8,000 K-12 schools throughout the entire country.
The DETERRENT Act is a much-needed, commonsense piece of legislation that simply says if you are going to accept funding from foreign countries, you need to disclose that. After all, universities are massively funded in various forms by the Federal Government, so if taxpayer dollars are going to support institutions that are taking foreign money, we should know about that.
The requirements put in place by this bill simply say that if you accept a gift of $50,000 or more, a foreign gift, then you need to report that, and it is anything of any value if it is from an adversarial nation.
The bill also closes reporting gaps, including faculty-level disclosures and imposes real penalties for noncompliance, including loss of title IV funds.
The good news, Mr. Chair, is that over the last year or so we have seen a reckoning begin in higher education in this country, and we are starting to see very positive changes. A number of university presidents have lost their jobs, and universities are increasingly committing themselves anew to protecting civil rights and promoting academic freedom.
The DETERRENT Act will be an important part of that trend. I am proud to be a cosponsor.
Mr. Chairman, I yield myself such time as I may consume.
Mr. Chairman, we received a letter from the Association of American Universities, which says, in part: `` . . . as currently proposed, sections 117a, 117b, 117c, and 117d in the bill are unhelpful to advancing the national and research security interests of the United States. Indeed, the new faculty and staff gift reporting requirement for any and all countries is excessive, will prove counterproductive, and divert important university resources away from more valuable and focused efforts to address legitimate research security risks. Additionally, the bill's contract waiver requirement will prevent U.S. researchers and students from participating in important international scientific collaborations and exchange programs, ultimately harming-- not helping--the U.S. maintain its global leadership position in critical areas of scientific research.''
Mr. Chair, I include this letter in the Record, and I reserve the balance of my time.
(1) Broad usage of waivers will restrict important international
disclosures from any country is excessive and will not protect or
(3) New requirements that duplicate existing requirements will be
Mr. Chair, I yield myself such time as I may consume. I know my good friend and colleague's concern is sincere about faculty involvement in reporting in institutions,
My colleague argued that requiring researchers to disclose foreign gifts and contracts would be invasive and unnecessary. I first remind my colleague that this requirement applies to specific researchers involved in government contracts who are at specific high research institutions. These are faculty working in crucial and sensitive research, areas our adversaries have targeted time and time again.
This is not just an abstract problem. Just in the last 2 years, prominent research faculty at Harvard, Stanford, the University of Maryland, and the University of Delaware were found to not have disclosed foreign funding from Chinese sources, just to name a few examples. Reporting in-kind support specifically for a researcher's grant is critical, but deterrent provisions also cover other ways our adversaries can influence faculty.
Democrats also continue to falsely claim that the DETERRENT Act would require reporting for everyday activities like doughnuts or coffee. The DETERRENT Act holds faculty to the same standard for monetary gifts as Members of Congress. A gift of a $5,000 purse from a foreign source rightfully needs to be scrutinized and publicized.
Regarding privacy concerns, I do want to point out that these individuals are often happy to voluntarily publish their own names, their email addresses, and their donors when it comes to their own published works. Many universities have open directories on their websites. However, the DETERRENT Act does have a commonsense privacy protection included.
The American public deserves transparency, and I urge critics of the bill to ask why relationships, including those with our worst enemies and our adversaries, should continue to lie in the shadows.
Mr. Chairman, I yield myself such time as I may consume.
Mr. Chairman, I urge my colleagues to oppose H.R. 1048 as currently drafted. The bill not only targets our Nation's educational institutions but also undermines the very Department we rely on to enforce these very complex policies.
Mr. Chair, you can't effectively dismantle an agency and then demand more from it. You can't ignore the fact that half of the Department's employees have been fired, and these cuts will make it even more difficult for the Department to carry out these increased responsibilities effectively. The contradiction is clear: How can you demand more reporting and enforcement from an agency that has half of its staff?
Furthermore, the bill does not really address any alleged problem. Present law already requires reporting of gifts large enough to exert any influence, and requiring the reporting of free doughnuts will not do anything to add to national security.
What it will do is add to a feeling of problems with researchers from other countries. The National Academy of Science did a survey of 1,300 Asian-American faculty and found that, although a majority, 89 percent, of these faculty desired to contribute to the United States' advancements in science and technology, many, 72 percent, feel unsafe in conducting research in the United States.
Instead of adding unnecessary burdens and penalties to our educational institutions and adding the feeling of ``unsafe'' and discrimination against minorities, we need to focus on meaningful reforms to protect the integrity of the education system and promote collaboration around the world.
We also need to use the limited resources left to the Department of Education to focus on things like academic achievement and achievement gaps; violence in schools, especially gun violence; access to college; and things like that. We need to safeguard the Department of Education, not destroy it.
Mr. Chair, I ask my colleagues to reject this bill and support the policies that strengthen, rather than dismantle, the systems that serve our students and workforce.
Mr. Chairman, I rise today in strong support of H.R. 1048, the DETERRENT Act.
Mr. Chair, this bill will end the influence and downright espionage of the Chinese Communist Party on our American College campuses.
Last Congress, the Select Committee on the CCP issued a remarkable report highlighting how UC Berkeley partnered with Tsinghua University and the city of Shenzen to create the Tsinghua-Berkeley-Shenzen Institute, which actively partnered with a Chinese research lab in April 2023 to improve advanced chip technology.
Why in the world should the Chinese Communist Party, which controls the city of Shenzen and Tsinghua University, have access to American research on sensitive technology with military applications?
Likewise, Alfred University recently received a grant from the Department of Defense to research hypersonic weapons. Unbelievably, the China University of Geosciences in Wuhan then partnered with Alfred University with this research.
China University of Geosciences also happened to be doing very similar weapons research for the CCP. How do we know that our research and development in our hypersonic weapons isn't going straight to the CCP? The answer is: It probably is.
Additionally, according to the FBI, the CCP is the world's principal infringer of intellectual property. We need to stop the Chinese Communist Party, the number one threat to our security and the security of the world, from taking advantage of American innovation and the openness of our university campuses.
Mr. Chair, I thank the gentleman for his comments.
Mr. Chair, I thank my colleagues who have come to speak today on such an important matter regarding not just higher education but national security.
International collaboration is not inherently bad, but foreign nations have been able to operate in the dark for far too long. When foreign adversaries give to universities, it is not out of the goodness of their hearts. It is because they want something in return. Sometimes that is extremely negative.
Each dollar that is accepted comes with strings attached, and that can influence student behavior or gain access to research. The DETERRENT Act is a crucial step toward transparency and protecting American education and students from malicious foreign influence. The current system has allowed our Nation's students to become targets for our adversaries, and that is unacceptable.
We must pass this bill.
Mr. Chairman, I yield back the balance of my time.
The Acting CHAIR. All time for general debate has expired.
Pursuant to the rule, the bill shall be considered for amendment under the 5-minute rule.
In lieu of the amendment in the nature of a substitute recommended by the Committee on Education and Workforce, printed in the bill, an amendment in the nature of a substitute consisting of the text of Rules Committee Print 119-1 shall be considered as adopted and the bill, as amended, shall be considered as read.
The text of the bill, as amended, is as follows:
The Acting CHAIR. No further amendment to the bill, as amended, shall be in order except those printed in House Report 119-38.
Each such further amendment may be offered only in the order printed in the report, by the Member designated in the report, shall be considered as read, shall be debatable for the time specified in the report equally divided and controlled by the proponent and an opponent, shall not be subject to amendment, and shall not be subject to a demand for division of the question.
The Acting CHAIR. It is now in order to consider amendment No. 1 printed in House Report 119-38.
Mr. Chair, America's enemies will stop at nothing to destroy us, and they don't care how they do it. These enemies would stoop so low as to target our young people. For years, countries like the People's Republic of China have used our own universities to advance agendas that hurt American security.
Aside from the state of Qatar, there is probably no other country in the world that finances U.S. colleges and universities more than the People's Republic of China. They use this all-access pass to steal our intellectual property, abuse our student visa programs, and prop up Communist-inspired Confucius Institutes.
This places the Chinese authorities in a real position of influence among our young people, all the more so because our own government doesn't try to hold our colleges and universities accountable to the basic disclosure standards.
A 2019 Senate report found that up to 70 percent of all institutions failed to comply with what are called section 117 disclosure requirements. Those that do not comply with section 117 substantially underreport their foreign donations and contracts.
Under current law, if gifts and contracts, either individual or combined, from an originating country meet or exceed $250,000, these donations must be reported to the Department of Education twice a year.
By failing to enforce our laws, we are signaling to our enemies, especially China, that we don't care if they use and abuse the American higher education system. As a result, we really don't have a clear idea of the extent of China's influence campaign against the youth of America.
Mr. Chairman, the intent of this amendment, as I understand it, is to ensure that special administrative regions, such as Hong Kong, are listed as a foreign country of concern if they are within a country of concern.
As I have discussed already, we don't need to fuel xenophobia by targeting citizens in foreign countries. This amendment goes further by singling out residents of certain special administrative regions and requires people to know what that means so they will know who they can accept doughnuts from.
This amendment does nothing to thoughtfully protect our national security, and, therefore, I urge my colleagues to vote ``no.''
Mr. Chairman, when mom and dad send their kids to college, they expect them to get a good education and a return on investment, not to be indoctrinated by our enemies.
The DETERRENT Act does a very valuable service by requiring proper reporting and ensuring that four countries, Iran, Russia, North Korea, and China, who actively seek to undermine our sovereignty, are designated as ``foreign countries of concern.'' Think about that list. This designation means that, for these countries, the foreign gift reporting threshold is zero.
Again, Mr. Chairman, I urge that if we know we have an adversary, we should have access to all of their influence peddling in our country that is targeting our youth so we have the full scale and scope of what they are doing.
There is no country better than China at money laundering. If we ensure that their reporting threshold is zero for the People's Republic of China, that only solves one part of the equation. What happens when the leaders of the PRC attempt to continue their malign influence through Hong Kong or Macau? It could really marginalize the admirable intent of this legislation and could only temporarily, potentially, derail the PRC when we know they are going to try to get around it. We know they are going to launder money through other means.
We have to clear this up, shore this up, and further clarify.
Mr. Chair, I yield myself such time as I may consume.
Mr. Chairman, as I read the amendment, it says: ``insert the following before the period: `[comma] including any special administrative region within such a covered nation or any other territory that the United States recognizes as being under the control of such a covered nation on or after the date of the enactment of this subsection,' '' as to who is going to be a nation of concern.
Like I said, this is a question of whether or not you have to figure out what that means so you will know whether or not you can accept a doughnut from somebody from whatever that language means they come from. I don't know how that has anything to do with national security.
Mr. Chair, I emphasize that we are talking about countries like Iran, Russia, North Korea, and China. Whether it is a bag of doughnuts or a bag of money, we know they are over here. We know they are doing it. It is not being fully reported. Mistakes are being made. They are trying to influence and brainwash our future leaders of this country.
We need to be proactive. We need to send a message that enough is enough. The reference to doughnuts, so be it. Whether it is a bag of doughnuts or a bag of money, if they are over here with malign intent, the American people have the right to know about it.
Those universities should be put on notice. If you are in bed with the enemy, you should be put on notice. If you are allowing subversion of our country on your campus, the American people should know it.
I don't see why anybody would have a problem with this. It is clear. We are talking about national security at a time when our adversaries are on the move.
I will note my sincere gratitude to both the chairman of the Education and Workforce Committee as well as the committee staff for working with my team on these amendments. This amendment ensures that special administrative regions of China, including Hong Kong and Macau, are covered under the definition of a ``foreign country of concern'' in this bill. Again, we know they are going to launder money through those areas.
It is a commonsense edit that secures American colleges and universities against the number one existential threat to our way of life: the Communist Party of China.
Mr. Chair, again, this is a no-nonsense amendment. This makes sure that we cover our flank, that we identify those areas where we know that other countries can launder money through to influence our campuses. We saw it in the spring. We saw it over this past year, the bad behavior on college campuses. We have to make sure that this money isn't getting through dark channels, back channels, and influencing our universities and our youth.
Mr. Chair, I urge adoption of my amendment, and I yield back the balance of my time.
Mr. Chair, just to say that everyone from a foreign country, even a foreign country of concern, is not here for malign purposes. Some are here to do research. The idea that people are here with malign purposes that are going to use coffee and doughnuts to advance that agenda I think is not necessary for our national defense.
Mr. Chair, I hope we defeat the amendment, and I yield back the balance of my time.
The Acting CHAIR. The question is on the amendment offered by the gentleman from Tennessee (Mr. Ogles).
The amendment was agreed to.
The Acting CHAIR. It is now in order to consider amendment No. 2 printed in House Report 119-38.
Mr. Chair, this amendment ensures that Chinese military companies are included as foreign entities of concern for the purposes of this bill, which would subject such companies to a strict zero- dollar threshold for gifts and contracts.
The section 1260H list was established in the FY 2021 National Defense Authorization Act and has since been used as a blacklist for Chinese military companies that are directly or indirectly owned, controlled, or beneficially owned by the People's Liberation Army or the Central Military Commission of the Chinese Communist Party.
Needless to say, these companies aren't here to be our friends. They hate us, and they want to harm us. They are here to steal our technology and advance China's military modernization efforts. Even so, there are going to be colleges in this country that get so captivated by a dollar figure that they would salivate at the chance to work with our enemies.
Some of America's most sensitive property is housed or developed at our universities, and if there is a whiff of partnership between the institution of higher education and a Chinese military company, the American people deserve to know the details of every last gift and contract.
Mr. Chair, the definition of a ``foreign entity of concern'' in this bill would include any company subject to the jurisdiction or direction of a government like China's. While constructive, there is still nothing in the underlying text of this bill and nothing within the definition of a ``foreign entity of concern'' that would automatically refer to the section 1260H list of Chinese military companies.
Since the section 1260H list is something that the Secretary of Defense is instructed to update, it is possible that there is a natural delay as to when Chinese military companies are designated as foreign entities of concern for the purposes of this act.
This amendment provides clarity and ensures that any U.S. college or university entering into a contract with or receiving a donation from a section 1260H list company is required to first receive a section 117A waiver from the Department of Education.
Again, the reporting threshold for foreign entities of concern is zero, meaning that a gift or contract of any size or scope has to be reported.
Mr. Chair, this is about accountability. We know that they are here to steal our secrets. We know that they want to undermine us. As we go into the next phase of warfare that is not just on the battlefield but is cyber war and its capabilities therein, we know that China is aggressive in these spaces. They are in our universities. They are on our campuses. They want to steal this information. We have to have a mechanism of accountability and reporting so that we know who is doing what and where.
It is that simple. It will require universities to pick their partners carefully and make sure they are safeguarding the very technologies that they are being entrusted to house on behalf of the U.S. Government and the U.S. people.
We don't need to enable the Chinese military through modernization, weaponization, or their attack on us, our Constitution, or our way of life. All this does is require reporting. This isn't calling every Chinese individual a bad actor but is acknowledging the fact that they are our enemy and not our friend, and they want to supplant us as the sole world power.
Mr. Chair, I urge adoption of my amendment, and I yield back the balance of my time.
Mr. Chairman, this amendment would add Chinese military companies to the definition of ``foreign entity of concern.'' It seems to me that if it is a Chinese military company, it would already be considered under the definition of an ``entity of concern'' because they are subject to the jurisdiction or direction of China, which is a foreign country of concern.
I don't know if this adds anything. I think it would be duplicative language. Therefore, I would recommend a ``no'' vote.
Mr. Chair, I yield back the balance of my time.
The Acting CHAIR. The question is on the amendment offered by the gentleman from Tennessee (Mr. Ogles).
The amendment was agreed to.
The Acting CHAIR. It is now in order to consider amendment No. 3 printed in House Report 119-38.
Mr. Chair, I am pleased to offer the Democrat amendment in the nature of a substitute to H.R. 1048.
As I have mentioned, universities collaborate with various international entities to advance complex research inquiries that contribute to the advancement of our knowledge of many issues. These international partnerships allow for a diverse range of perspectives and resources that help our Nation make significant strides in health, science, and technology.
As I have mentioned before, my Democratic colleagues and I remain committed to ensuring that universities and colleges have the resources to safeguard their work from undue foreign influence. However, I appreciate the majority's interest in addressing this important issue, but I will emphasize, again, that their proposal is far too extreme and would not promote compliance but rather deter universities from conducting collaborative research.
Specifically, with such harsh fines and limited opportunities for universities to receive guidance from the Department of Education, I am concerned that these changes to section 117 of the Higher Education Act would discourage universities from collaborating with international entities, including our strong allies, that are essential in solving important global issues.
At a time when President Trump is already illegally halting vital research across the country through disruptions to USAID and NIH funding, this international collaboration is now more essential than ever.
I am concerned that we still see language that targets individual faculty members for their collaborations with foreign entities, including their own colleagues on campus. This kind of targeting easily leads to hurtful consequences rooted in xenophobia for innocent scholars and students. We have a responsibility to strike a balance between enforcing the law and fostering safe campuses for students, scholars, and faculty.
Unlike the DETERRENT Act, our Democratic substitute takes a thoughtful approach to section 117 compliance to support universities as they evaluate and implement their research integrity and foreign influence policies.
In addition to requiring the filing of annual reports for gifts and contracts from foreign entities, our amendment would create a robust database at the Department of Education to hold these reports. It establishes commonsense sanctions for noncompliance and allows for room to help universities that need support scaling up their compliance efforts rather than punishing them by pursuing civil penalties. It establishes a single point of contact at the Department, who can't be some unverified DOGE staffer, to coordinate section 117 compliance.
The substitute also builds on the robust work done through implementation of the CHIPS and Science Act and the subsequent interagency work of the Biden administration to protect federally funded research and development from foreign influence. Our amendment would align reporting requirements to those of other Federal agencies and require the Secretary of Education to go through negotiated rulemaking to address key implementation aspects of section 117 with relevant higher education and national security stakeholders.
Mr. Chair, I urge my colleagues to support the Democratic substitute, rather than the underlying bill, to enhance the ability of our Nation's universities to protect against undue foreign influence while supporting international partnerships that enhance groundbreaking scientific research, build relationships across cultures, and increase our national competitiveness.
Mr. Chair, I reserve the balance of my time.
The Acting CHAIR. Members are reminded to refrain from engaging in personalities toward the President.
Mr. Chairman, this is essentially the same amendment that my friend and colleague, Ranking Member Scott, offered last Congress on the floor as well as this Congress during committee markup.
Sadly, the same serious problems remain, I believe. Instead of taking the threats of foreign influence seriously, this amendment is insufficient to protect our students and institutions from our worst adversaries.
The amendment, first, makes it easier for foreign sources to be undetected, doubling the threshold for contracts to $100,000 and allowing gifts under $250,000 over a 3-year span to be unreported. Bad actors will seek any possible way to avoid transparency about their attempts to harm America through their influence over American postsecondary education. A strict threshold is essential to stop that from happening.
The annual thresholds in the DETERRENT Act are simple and align with other requirements in existing law such as in the CHIPS Act and the Presidential Memorandum on United States Government-Supported Research and Development National Security Policy.
Shockingly, this amendment includes no differences for America's biggest enemies, countries of concern and entities of concern. In my Democratic colleagues' minds, it appears that gifts from Russia, China, and Iran are the exact same gifts as those from England.
I remind everyone here that the DETERRENT Act uses a tailored list of countries and individuals pulled from existing law that have a proven track record of being security threats and actively working against the United States.
The Democratic ANS also has terrible carve-outs that provide gaping loopholes for cunning adversaries. The amendment allows gifts and contracts to be rendered anonymous, with no foreign source identification, and also exempts all clinical trials. These loopholes will make it easier for foreign sources to conceal their relationships, rendering disclosures all but useless. Simple transparency is the best way to ensure partnerships are as good as institutions claim.
Finally, the Democratic proposal ensures schools have no financial risk for failing to disclose foreign funds. Under this proposal, years of flouting section 117 simply allow schools to go right back to their same financial state before accepting the gift in the first place.
It is time to take foreign influence seriously. I stand against this amendment. It is time we hold institutions accountable for accepting foreign donations and keeping them from the public. The bipartisan support we have for this bill shows the seriousness of this problem. This amendment shows that some Democrats are still willing to turn a blind eye to attempts by hostile regimes to influence students and faculty on our college campuses.
I urge my colleagues to oppose this amendment and support the underlying bill. Mr. Chair, I reserve the balance of my time.
Mr. Chair, I rise to support my amendment. I am outraged that our universities and institutions are receiving gifts or entering into contracts with foreign countries that seek to destroy or harm the United States.
H.R. 1048, the DETERRENT Act, would strengthen disclosure requirements by reducing the threshold from $250,000 to $50,000, but those provisions are not strong enough. The American people deserve to know about every
That is why I am introducing an amendment to slash the reporting threshold from $50,000 all the way down to $1; total transparency of every cent. Any foreign gift, no matter how small, can influence our democracy, and we must close any loophole that lets foreign actors purchase access or sway our institutions.
This is not about research. This is about human intelligence collection and business espionage. Having spent time in the intelligence community while I was in the military, this is a serious matter.
I urge my colleagues to support this amendment and ensure full transparency. Our constituents demand transparency today, and I say let's give them transparency. I yield back the balance of my time.
Mr. Chairman, by lowering the reporting threshold to $1, universities would be required to report every single gift from any country if the person is not a citizen of the United States. That would mean every cup of coffee, every doughnut, every ride home would have to be reported. This would create an unworkable increase in reporting requirements for universities and individual faculty members, which would undoubtedly lead to a significant backlog at the Department of Education when trying to review the reports and adhering to tight disclosure guidelines and timetables.
This doesn't have anything to do with national security. I think it is just an administrative nightmare, and therefore I would ask for a ``no'' vote.
Mr. Chair, I yield back the balance of my time.
The Acting CHAIR. The question is on the amendment offered by the gentleman from Texas (Mr. Self).
The question was taken; and the Acting Chair announced that the ayes appeared to have it.
Mr. Chair, this bill is yet another Republican attack aimed at dismantling higher education in our Nation.
Last week, we know that President Trump ordered the illegal elimination of the Department of Education, threatening the future of millions of children across every district in our country. He is using the threat of cutting off Federal funding as a negative approach, very much taking a tool right here to pressure the universities and administrations to submit to his will in violation of freedom of speech for their students.
Mr. Chair, instead of addressing any of these crises threatening our students in our education system, we are here voting today on a bill that goes after foreign scapegoats instead.
We know that President Trump is the biggest threat to our education system in America right now, not someone in North Korea or China. Please, give me a break.
I fully support financial transparency in our universities. No one is against that. No one. That is why I am introducing amendments to this bill to ensure that transparency around our universities and the relationships with so-called countries of concern include countries whose leaders have active arrest warrants issued against them by the International Criminal Court, to include countries actively on trial with the International Court of Justice for violating the Genocide Convention and the Geneva Conventions.
I am calling for transparency, Mr. Chair, around university investments in companies profiting from violations of international law, but my colleagues are not interested, of course, when it comes to that sort of transparency. My colleagues are not interested in holding countries with human rights abuses accountable. They are not interested in voting to uphold international law, Mr. Chair. They are only interested in voting to protect governments like the Israeli Government's apartheid regime.
In fact, many of my colleagues have cheered on expulsion, arrest, and deportation of university students calling for the exact type of transparency and exercising their First Amendment right, Mr. Chair, their constitutional right. You don't have to agree with them, Mr. Chair, no one does, but it is their right. It is their right to again express their disagreement with policy and decisions by a foreign government.
In fact, many of my colleagues again continue to say there is transparency for some countries in relationships with universities but not certain other countries, even if they have an investigation actively with the international court system.
This is not about transparency, as is claimed. It is truly about destroying freedom of speech and the most important American value in our country, the right to dissent.
Mr. Chairman, I rise in opposition to the amendment.
The DETERRENT Act conforms section 117 with other existing regulations, which is why the bill's definitions of countries of concern come from existing law. The four countries on the countries of concern list are rightfully in statute as unique threats to the United States. China, Russia, North Korea, and Iran represent countries that are actively hostile to the U.S. and are serious security threats. The DETERRENT Act ensures that any relationship with these countries is extremely cautious and proactively transparent.
In contrast, this amendment attempts to use the illegitimate International Criminal Court to determine what countries are threats to the United States. The people of the United States in majority do not support that. As President Trump has stated, the ICC has baselessly asserted jurisdiction over the United States--and our citizens agree-- and its allies like Israel and further abused its power by issuing frivolous arrest warrants.
There is no reason to use the ICC to define what countries are actively seeking to harm the United States. We can do that. I oppose this amendment that targets Israel and hurts American interests, and I reserve the balance of my time.
Mr. Chair, I think ``countries of concern'' is perfectly explained in my amendment. That is to say, again, I know for a fact that some of these countries killed American citizens. Some of them are literally openly killing American citizens, and the countries of concern, to explain--this is so important--that the International Court of Justice, if there is any violation, these are violations to the Geneva Convention and the Genocide Convention.
If we are specifically talking about making sure that universities are not engaging in whatever they are calling
I think it is important that if we are for transparency, let's talk about all violations of international law and human rights in all countries, again, countries of interest to include all of those folks that have active cases and arrest warrants for the people running their country.
We can go back and forth about whether or not we think the ICC is legitimate, but it exists. It exists to prevent what is actually happening right now. I think it is important that if we are going to be consistent about whether or not we are protecting American interests, what about Americans that are being killed by countries of interest that I am trying to include here? What about them? What about the folks whose rights continue to be violated when they travel to those countries?
I think it is really important and critical that if we are going to say this to universities and that we are targeting higher education, that we are consistent in what we say is a violation of international law and human rights.
I think, Mr. Chair, it is so important that we continue to protect the American interests. Right now it is very clear that this is an attack. The opposition to this is because it is an attack on the fact that many folks want the right to speak out against certain countries that are violating international law.
It is critical that we protect the right to dissent in our country. So many of my colleagues, even when I don't agree with them, I protect their right to speak up and say whatever they want, even if I disagree.
I know what this is about. This is about silencing people. If my colleagues are going to do it, they better include the folks committing genocide. I yield back the balance of my time.
Mr. Chair, again, this amendment is designed, I believe, to target Israel at a time when it is desperately seeking to defend its citizens against terrorists.
Mr. Chair, I urge my colleagues to oppose this amendment, and I yield back the balance of my time.
The Acting CHAIR. The question is on the amendment offered by the gentlewoman from Michigan (Ms. Tlaib).
The question was taken; and the Acting Chair announced that the noes appeared to have it.
Mr. Chair, this amendment is to discuss whether or not, again, our body, the United States House of Representatives, is standing and making sure that we don't undermine international law and the institutions that work to uphold it, especially the International Court of Justice and the International Criminal Court.
I think it is incredibly harmful to allow many of my colleagues to take great lengths right here to protect war criminals, apartheid regimes, folks that continue to commit war crimes in targeting civilians including tent communities, schools, and hospitals. This bill undermines the international legal system for seeking to hold various officials, again, countries that are violating crimes against humanity.
Again, it is really important. My amendment basically allows us to include countries that are currently under investigation or their leaders have been convicted or have an arrest warrant out for the fact that they have committed violation of international human rights laws.
I know when it comes to Russia or China, my colleagues like to talk about rule-based international order. When it comes to governments like the government of Israel, my colleagues are willing to throw international law in the shredder. Their actions consistently undermine the principle of equal justice under law when they protect perpetrators of the most horrific crimes against humanity.
I wish my colleagues would see what is happening. I wish they would see that, no matter their ethnicity, we should be saving the lives of the children. We shouldn't allow it to be enabled or emboldened. Their actions consistently undermine the principle of equal justice.
Of course, it is up to world leaders everywhere to affirm our commitment to international law, but let's be consistent about it. No matter who is committing it, it still is a violation of international human rights laws.
It is important to support the International Court of Justice and International Criminal Court. They were created so we can prevent genocide and so we can stop what is happening in Gaza.
Mr. Chair, the DETERRENT Act ensures section 117 is aligned with existing statute. The four countries on the countries of concern list are rightfully in statute as unique threats to the United States. That is our concern. China, Russia, North Korea, and Iran represent countries that are actively hostile to the U.S. and are serious security threats.
Endowment investments in companies controlled by our adversaries could result in dangerous support for our enemies. This is why the DETERRENT Act requires institutions to disclose any such investments of concern. It is important for our wealthiest institutions to be transparent with the public about this danger.
In contrast, this amendment attempts to use the illegitimate International Criminal Court to determine what countries are threats to the United States and targets endowment investments into those threats.
The ICC has baselessly asserted jurisdiction over the United States and its allies like Israel and further abused its power by issuing frivolous arrest warrants. There is no reason to use the ICC to define what countries are actively seeking to harm the United States and what endowment investments should be transparent.
Mr. Chair, I oppose this amendment that targets Israel and hurts American interests.
Mr. Chair, I think it is really important to understand the International Criminal Court right now is investigating right now an active case against what is happening in Sudan. Are we saying we are not caring?
I completely agree. Any country--Iran, China, Russia--any country that has an active investigation or has arrest warrants for their leadership in the International Criminal Court system and these international systems that are in place was to prevent and, again, protect the interests of the American people.
All of us support upholding international law because it protects our country, but it protects the rule of law in making sure that war crimes are not being committed.
Mr. Chair, I really urge my colleagues to understand we need to be consistent here. If you are going to say we are going to go after universities--because I know what this is really about. Is this really about China and Russia and protecting our interests, or is this really about trying to not protect certain people for speaking up in regard to what is happening in Gaza?
The attack on higher education right now and freedom of speech is incredibly dangerous. The right to dissent in our country, the freedom of speech, First Amendment--you do not have to agree. I was on my campus when I didn't agree with what people said about immigrants and what people said about other countries. I understood the American value of people having their rights and their First Amendment right to speak up.
What we are doing here is attacking and targeting universities because we don't like that their student body read about the atrocities that the Government of Israel is doing. That is what this is about. I think people need to be honest what this is about and not shy around about it.
I will say the international court system that is in place was created because of some horrific history that has happened in our world, and we are trying to prevent it. For us to now say it is illegitimate is wrong, and it is not the direction we should be going in. This is literally the place, again, that is investigating a number of other countries for egregious war crimes and egregious violence on women and children.
Now, because we don't agree that they went after one country--again, many of my colleagues disagree with me--I can tell you it takes a lot of investigation, talking to doctors, nurses, so many people on the ground, NGOs and other international organizations that led to, again, the investigation that has led into International Criminal Court.
Mr. Chair, may I inquire as to how much time is remaining.
The Acting CHAIR. The gentlewoman from Michigan has 30 seconds remaining.
Mr. Chair, in closing, I think it is important to know right now the International Court of Justice is investigating Congo, Uganda, Philippines, Venezuela, and Sudan. These are countries that have been under investigation by the International Criminal Court.
I don't have all the details, but it I think it is important to understand we can't delegitimize when it is a country that we disagree is committing these crimes. The process is there for a reason, Mr. Chair. Again, it is to make sure we uphold international human rights laws, no matter who is committing those egregious crimes.
Mr. Chair, I appreciate the concern and the passion of my colleague from Michigan. I concur that I and sponsors and cosponsors of this bill believe in First Amendment liberties and freedom of expression.
This bill is about specific concerns, not all of the countries of the world. I am not sure if my colleague was here during the debate to hear the actual statistics of the dollars that have been invested by malign actors, countries of concern, in this country that don't compare with any other that was in the list that my colleague read.
Again, this amendment on this bill, outside of the specifics of the bill, is designed to attack Israel for daring to defend itself from terrorists, which they did. This amendment has no place in the bill.
Mr. Chair, I urge my colleagues to oppose this amendment, and I yield back the balance of my time.
The Acting CHAIR. The question is on the amendment offered by the gentlewoman from Michigan (Ms. Tlaib).
The question was taken; and the Acting Chair announced that the noes appeared to have it.
Accordingly, the Committee rose; and the Speaker pro tempore (Mr. Thompson of Pennsylvania) having assumed the chair, Mr. Amodei, Acting Chair of the Committee of the Whole House on the state of the Union, reported that that Committee, having had under consideration the bill (H.R. 1048) to amend the Higher Education Act of 1965 to strengthen disclosure requirements relating to foreign gifts and contracts, to prohibit contracts between institutions of higher education and certain foreign entities and countries of concern, and for other purposes, had come to no resolution thereon.
Mr. Speaker, I rise today to celebrate Frozen Food Month and recognize the vital role that frozen foods play in American households. Frozen food is more than just a convenient option. It is a solution to food waste and a way to save families hundreds of dollars.
Studies show that frozen produce is less likely to be wasted compared to fresh produce that spoils over time, giving consumers access to affordable, nutritious food year-around.
By freezing food at its peak, we preserve both the flavor and nutrients, making it a smart choice for families looking to eat well while managing their budgets.
For millions of Americans, especially those facing time constraints, frozen food offers an affordable, easy way to enjoy balanced meals. Nearly every American household relies on frozen foods, whether it is vegetables, fruits, breakfast items, or even complete meals.
This March, let's take a moment to recognize the hard work of our Nation's frozen food producers and the critical role that frozen foods play in keeping America nourished.
Mr. Speaker, at a time when food prices are rising and it is harder for families to make ends meet, we should not be cutting food assistance programs, but that is exactly what is happening. Earlier this month the administration announced a billion-dollar cut to local purchasing for schools and food banks.
Local farms who rely on these programs for consistent purchases of their food no longer have an important market, and it means that locally grown, more nutritious food is no longer available for food banks and schools.
Just yesterday, USDA announced that it was ending part of the Farm to School Program. This program for years incentivized local food procurement for school meals. Dozens of schools in Westchester and the Bronx rely on these programs as a way to provide healthy food to students. Similarly, Feeding Westchester and City Harvest do yeoman's work to provide food for families and kids in need at the best value. If fresh food is no longer available, our community will suffer.
These cuts must be reversed and quickly. Time is of the essence when it comes to our children having enough to eat.
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 Pennsylvania?
On page H1260, March 25, 2025, in the third column, the following appeared: minutes as the designee of the minority leader.) Mr. DELUZIO. Mr. Speaker, I am
The online version has been corrected to read: minutes as the designee of the minority leader.) GENERAL LEAVE Mr. DELUZIO. 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 Pennsylvania? There was no objection. Mr. DELUZIO. Mr. Speaker, I am
honored and proud to represent the people of Pennsylvania, good,
hardworking, patriotic people who are pretty frustrated. We are not
living in normal times.This should not be a normal run-of-the-mill Special Order hour. What I
Now, don't misunderstand me. This administration and those helping them are wreaking havoc on so much of our country. We see Social Security, and Social Security Administration workers' abilities to deliver the hard-earned benefits that seniors have worked their whole lives for, under attack. We see VA employees on the chopping block, fired, contracts scrutinized and then cut. We see the promise of this country to care for veterans betrayed. We see cancer research, lifesaving medicine trials, and clinical trials interfered with, threatened, with funding on the chopping block.
The American people are mad. They should be mad. This administration's approval ratings are in free fall. The American people are rejecting much of what we see, but too many of our side of the aisle aren't giving a strong enough alternative, a bold enough alternative.
While the President's numbers may be in free fall, we also see favorability of the Democratic Party at record lows, the lowest CNN has seen since 1992. There has not been a strong enough vision from Democrats on this side of the aisle when we have something to say.
Our party needs to change, and economic populism and patriotism should be where we go, standing up for people to revive the American Dream.
Democrats should be fighting hard against corruption and the giant corporations who fund so much of that. We should be fighting against anyone else, any force, any company, you name it, that has made life a rip-off for our people.
Folks are mad and they should be. It is justifiable anger. The American Dream is gone for too many people, people who work hard, who play by the rules, and yet can't catch a break, who see life as too expensive.
People are right. The American people understand our economy has been rigged against so many. I say the American Dream hasn't slipped away; it has been ripped away.
I am 40 years old. My generation and those younger than me, the first generation in a long time, since World War II, have grown up and don't expect to be better off than their parents.
That is what the American Dream is all about. It didn't just happen on accident. There are villains here. Corporate power and corruption have been eating away at the American Dream.
Hedge funds, speculators buying up houses, jacking up the cost of that housing are becoming lousy landlords, pricing people out of what could be a nest egg for their retirement, their home.
Monopolies are jacking up prices and killing small businesses every chance they can get. Pharmacy benefit managers, or PBMs, are raising the cost of medicine and killing local pharmacies. The list goes on and on.
This President and others on the other side have capitalized on this anger and used it to get power, now lift up their efforts to let robber barons plunder this government, to attack the fundamental bargain with our seniors and veterans and so many others.
Democrats need to wake up and stop defending elites and the establishment. They have failed the American people. Across both parties, those who have been in power have failed at the fundamental task of protecting and strengthening the American Dream.
Today, a group of us are coming forward, coming to the floor, proposing a new way ahead for Democrats, a new way ahead for this country. We need a fighting spirit of economic populism. It is patriotic. We need this patriotism to be at the heart of this fight and our fight against corruption and anyone else that is in the way of our people and who has wrecked the American Dream.
What does this mean, this economic populism? In a sentence, it is fighting for a life that people can afford. It is bringing corporate power to heel. It is taking on the corruption that pervades this town, Washington.
The economy and what life costs people should never be an afterthought for anyone who serves in a chamber like this. It ought to put the people who work their butts off front and center of what our government does and who we think about every day and every action. It is fighting for a life that people can afford, and it is bringing corporate power to heel.
As we know, out-of-control corporate power leads to higher costs, it leads to worse safety, and it leads to lower quality. We see it play out across so much of our economy. It has weakened our defense industrial base, and, thus, it has weakened our military. It has hurt small businesses across Main Streets all over our districts. It has crushed workers. It has led to rising costs that we all live with. We should take on corruption no matter where we see it, no matter the party.
The last thing that we need is a bunch of wimps looking for a win-win every time. Not every fight is going to have a win-win.
There are villains in this story, in this society of ours, who have made life miserable for so many. You can call them robber barons or you can call them oligarchs, whatever you want. We have got to be willing to take them on.
This embrace of economic populism might sound and look different depending on where in the country or who the messenger is. For me, I am a Navy guy. I served at sea. I served in Iraq. To me, this is a patriotic and righteous fight.
I am from western Pennsylvania, the rust belt, a place where we saw the rich and powerful plot to strip us for parts. We are the people who made the steel that built America. We have always answered this country's call. Those efforts to strip us, to wreck our way of life, are no more.
You will hear from Members across the idealogical spectrum and Democratic side today who are united in this: The era of a spineless Democratic Party must end. Now is not the time for wimpy concessions and then call it a win-win, not when the American Dream has been killed for so many people in America.
Now is not the time to shy from a fight against corruption. Our people see it, and they know that our government has allowed the economy to be rigged against people.
Those villains, that corruption, want you to think the problem is some woke college kid or some trans kid who wants their liberty, wants their freedom. That is not why your prescription drugs are expensive. It is not why housing is expensive. It is that corruption and those villains who want you thinking that when they are the ones who made life terrible for people.
We know the real root of the problem is corruption and corporate power run amok. Too many have been pathetic at talking about corruption and showing that they are up for this fight.
Some on this side of the aisle have been complicit in helping corporations plunder this country. That should end. We have to be willing to go to the mat for an economy that works for people who work hard, who play by the rules, and who want the American Dream back.
The roots of this party, that I am proud to be a part of, go back to the New Deal. It is a working-class party at its core. Allowing somebody else to fake economic populism and win power is real and dangerous, and we are living through the cost of it right now.
Again, the people you will hear from today work hard and fight hard for their districts. They get this. They are not faking populism, and they know how to win in places where you have got to win. I am proud to start.
Mr. Speaker, I yield to the gentlewoman from Connecticut (Ms. DeLauro).
Mr. Speaker, let me just say a thank-you to my colleague from Pennsylvania, who at his roots understands the plight of working Americans, middle-class families, working families, and the vulnerable and stands tall on their behalf and wants to utilize the good offices of this institution to make sure that it does what the Founding Fathers intended it to do, and that is to provide opportunity for people in this Nation. That is what my friend, Congressman Deluzio, is all about.
One thing about this current administration is clear. They are doing nothing about the cost-of-living crisis in
I applaud, again, Representative Deluzio for hosting this Special Order about economic patriotism, taking on corporate power, as well as for all his work supporting the right to organize, creating well-paying union jobs here in America. High prices are devastating the middle class, working class, and the vulnerable.
Since my very first day in the Congress, I have been focused on lowering the cost of living for Americans who struggle to get by, and I am appalled by how many families are struggling to afford basics while corporations get bigger, richer, and more influential over our lives than ever.
President Trump, as I said, campaigned on lowering prices and pledged to bring food costs down on day one.
Instead, the opposite has happened. Food costs are rising. His own USDA, the U.S. Department of Agriculture, recently reported egg prices could rise 41 percent over the next year. Since taking office, he has done nothing to help families struggling at the grocery checkout.
As a result, big corporations are consolidating, creating monopolies, and making unbelievable profits. Cal-Maine, which controls about one- fifth of the domestic egg market and is the largest producer and distributor of shell eggs in the United States, has reported that its profits through the second quarter of the 2025 fiscal year are 342 percent higher than the same period last year.
Instead of doing anything to address this cost-of-living crisis, the President has stacked his Cabinet with billionaire after billionaire, empowering them to slash the programs American families rely on with no oversight and no disclosures about the conflicts of interest. Elon Musk, the unchecked billionaire leading the efforts to end Social Security as we know it, owes the success of his company to billions in Federal contracts and huge factories in China. Yet he refuses to answer any questions from Congress about his investments.
These issues concern every American. Democrats are standing up for them. We are standing up against the blatant corruption of this administration, the giant corporations padding their profits at the expense of the middle class and the working class. The Republican focus is to rip away programs like Social Security and Medicaid.
The fact is that American families today are living paycheck to paycheck. Some of the biggest corporations in the country are taking advantage of it, all while Americans are paying more for less due to corporate price gouging and shrinkflation while the CEOs of the Nation's largest grocery stores and supermarkets rake in record salaries.
I just came from a congressional hearing of our Democratic Steering and Policy Committee on food prices and food stamps. I listened to the stories of working Americans with families who are hard-pressed and were frightened to death of a $230 billion cut to the Food Stamp program which would end that lifeline for themselves and for their families.
Last year, the FTC identified that large grocery store chains exploited the product shortages due to the pandemic by raising prices significantly more than needed to cover their added costs, and they have continued to increase their profits.
What is the Republicans' response to this cost-of-living crisis driven by corporate consolidation and power?
Why, it is to give out even more corporate tax cuts, of course, $4.5 trillion worth of them to be precise, paid for by slashing Medicaid which serves nearly one-third of all Americans.
Enough is enough. It is time for this Congress and it is time for Democrats to act to rein in this habitual price gouging from massive, massive corporations, rein in the unchecked billionaires enriching themselves while Americans suffer, and rein in Republican spending while targeting Social Security and Medicaid.
If the Trump administration continues to prioritize tax cuts for the rich over price cuts for the middle class, then I will continue to stand with my colleagues as we call out their broken promises and fight back against their disastrous policies.
There is another path forward, one which Democrats and Republicans could take together. It is a path of economic patriotism where we take on corporate monopolies and the self-serving billionaires who are squeezing the middle class, the working class, and the vulnerable. It is a path that listens to the American people and protects programs like Medicaid and Social Security while lowering the cost of living through proven policies like the expanded child tax credit which lifted one-half of our children in this Nation out of poverty, lowered the hunger rate, and provided a path forward in economic security for millions of families in the United States.
That is the path that I am taking. It is the path that I know my colleague, Congressman Deluzio, is taking, and I hope that my colleagues on both sides of the aisle will join us in this effort.
Mr. Speaker, I thank the gentleman for organizing this effort.
Mr. Speaker, I thank the gentlewoman from Connecticut not just for joining us today but for her long commitment to dignity in work, for fighting for people, for better trade policy, and so much else.
I am honored now to welcome in a colleague from California who has strong Pennsylvania roots.
Mr. Speaker, I yield to the gentleman from California (Mr. Khanna).
Mr. Speaker, I thank Representative Deluzio for his leadership and for convening this group and focusing us on an agenda of economic patriotism.
The reality is in this country, and as you know in western Pennsylvania, we have watched industry after industry leave the country for China and Mexico.
Western Pennsylvania won us our freedom. They produced more steel than Japan and Germany combined in World War II, and yet today we have got 4 percent of the world's steel. China has 50 percent of the world's steel.
Aluminum left, paper left, and textiles left. Town after town in this country was hollowed out since 2000, and 90,000 factories have closed. That doesn't just mean jobs leaving. We have all heard the stories of people whose families were destroyed. The reality is that these factories left and people faced suicide. One of the folks in Warren, Ohio, told me 13 people, because of these plant closures, took their lives or faced severe depression. Our country has watched for 50 years. Rosa DeLauro didn't watch. She was speaking out against these bad trade deals.
However, for most of American history in the last 50 years we have watched the hollowing out of these communities, and we watched wealth pile up in districts like mine in Silicon Valley and New York. My district has $14 trillion of wealth. The income inequality in this country soared.
So one of the things this group wants to do is to renew economic revitalization in advanced manufacturing in these communities and to have a real plan for new semiconductors, new robotics, advanced steel, advanced automobiles, and have new factories and new industry come up.
Now, the President and JD Vance understood that the country was hollowed out, and they understood that people were angry, legitimately angry, and they understood that the ship of America had a huge hole in it.
The problem is they get here and their plan to solve this is to hand the reins to a number of headstrong billionaires who are libertarians. I have known these folks. I have known Elon for 15 years. I don't know what Elon knows about Johnstown, Pennsylvania, or Farrell, Pennsylvania, or Youngstown. He is going to go out and make deals with the UAE, and they are supercharging the private-sector deals. The problem is that is not going to build the communities that have been hollowed out.
We know what builds communities from Hamilton to Lincoln to FDR. We need a government that says: If you make it in America then we will buy it. That is what we did, by the way, for SpaceX. That is what we did for Intel. That is what we did in World War II. We need a government that says: If you skill the factories here we will help finance it. We need a government that
We need to say that we are going to have housing in this area to have economic revitalization. We need a national economic development strategy, and Senator Rubio and I actually coauthored a bill on that.
That is not what the White House is doing. Instead, they think that just having these billionaires cut deals with the private sector is going to help the working or middle class. It will help my district. We will make more money with AI. It will help more of the financial and technology elites.
I will tell you what it is not going to do, Mr. Speaker. It is not going to rebuild the communities that have had a raw deal in America.
What economic patriots believe, even though we have different ideologies, is that it is ordinary Americans who built this country and it is working-class Americans and middle-class Americans who built the country. The genius lies not with billionaires and technologists. It lies with hardworking Americans. We are going to build this country back from the bottom up. That is our belief.
I appreciate Representative Deluzio's leadership on this.
My friend, Fareed Zakaria, had this whole spiel on how manufacturing doesn't matter. I like Fareed usually, but on this he is dead wrong. He cited Japan and Germany as countries that did manufacturing and missed the tech boom. So he said: Well, we should do the tech boom and the finance boom, and we don't need to do manufacturing.
He did cite one country that did a bit of both, China. China did a lot of manufacturing. They took all of our manufacturing. America needs to understand if we are going to innovate, then yes, we should innovate on technology, and yes, we should innovate on finance. However, we also have to have advanced manufacturing in this country to remain the world superpower.
People say comparative advantage, but comparative advantage is you get to choose what your comparative advantage is in, Mr. Speaker. If China had just done comparative advantage, then they would have been growing rice for 30 years. That was their comparative advantage. They said: No, we want to build things.
It is time America realizes we want to be building things and realizes the value of advanced manufacturing. Representative Deluzio certainly gets it. He is one of the brightest voices in Congress.
I also want to recommend his op-ed. It is the best piece written on trade policy in the last 30 years of any that I have read.
Mr. Speaker, I appreciate the gentleman's leadership, and I appreciate his convening this.
Mr. Speaker, I thank the gentleman from California who understands deeply what we need to do on this economic patriotism. The gentleman understands what it means for manufacturing and what it means for communities who saw these jobs not leave but be taken away. They were taken away by this ideology on Wall Street and the politicians around here who helped them, which says that all that matters is chasing the cheapest labor, the weakest labor rules, and nonexistent environmental rules. They made them citizens of nowhere. They didn't care about this country or the communities and the people who worked hard to make them rich, whether they made the steel or anything else as we did in America.
It is a stain on our story in this country, and, frankly, it is not too patriotic.
Our side of the aisle and our party thinks we ought to be dominating the fight to supercharge American manufacturing and jobs, not peddling this crap of telling industrial workers to go learn to code or something. That is nonsense. Let's invest in the jobs here to make stuff. Let's have a more muscular trade and industrial policy. That is how we get back on the road of economic freedom for people.
Members on both sides of the aisle here, both parties, have long embraced this wrong-for-decades neoliberal disaster of unlimited and free trade. I think it has been a failure of government across the board. We should push back on these lousy trade deals. We trade. We trade with our friends, and we trade with others, but we do it on fair terms.
What is not fair is seeing American workers undercut by governments like Communist China that use the power of the state to dump artificially cheap products on our markets. Let's circumvent our trade rules that let the workers be exploited. We have got to beef up trade enforcement on Communist China and others like them. There have to be meaningful consequences. Let's have tariffs be part of that but let's be smart and strategic.
What we have seen this administration do has been chaotic and reckless. Businesses cannot plan. There is no certainty day to day of what the trade environment will be, and it is absent from any full strategic industrial policy that is the heart of economic patriotism. To make more stuff in America, Mr. Speaker, you have to have a full policy that is centered by workers, industrial policy.
One of my colleagues who gets this idea of economic patriotism deeply is Mr. Ryan. He is a West Point graduate. I won't hold that against him too much. He deeply understands the fight that we need and understands that our core of economic patriotism is what we are all about.
Mr. Speaker, I yield to the gentleman from New York (Mr. Ryan).
Mr. Speaker, I thank my colleague, Mr. Deluzio, for his leadership on this and for bringing this group together to remind us that as Americans who love this country, we need that strong, muscular economic patriotism to serve my constituents in my district, which is the Hudson Valley of New York State, and across this country.
Mr. Speaker, I rise today because I love this country. I believe it is the greatest country in the history of the world. I believe it is worth fighting for, and we must fight for it now.
I also believe when you see something that isn't working, Mr. Speaker, you stand up and you do everything in your power to fix it.
Our country and our party are at a crossroads. It is up to us, the people who have the incredible honor to stand on the floor of the United States House of Representatives in this Chamber, to forge the path forward.
Unlike some of my colleagues on the other side of the aisle, I won't try to deny the outcome of the election in November 2024.
Too many Americans felt Democrats had become the party of the elites and had stopped meeting people where they are, not understanding the pain that they are feeling in their lives and their families at their kitchen tables when they get up go to work and come home exhausted at night.
Democrats need to learn from their mistakes. This moment is not ideological. It is about who fights for the people and who fights for the elites.
I believe first and foremost that if you are using labels like ``moderate'' or ``progressive,'' you are missing the entire point. I gave former President Biden hell for failing to secure our border. I think that is a nonpartisan issue. That doesn't make me a moderate. I campaigned with my colleague AOC against big corporations screwing over my constituents and polluting the Hudson River in my district. That doesn't make me a progressive.
If the last election made anything clear, it is high costs and economic pain are first and foremost on our constituents' minds.
Donald Trump promised to help with that. He has not unequivocally. In fact, everything he has done in office has helped his billionaire cronies, who, by the way, gave hundreds of millions of dollars to his campaign at the expense of families like the ones that I represent in my district across the Hudson Valley.
Trump's failure to bring down costs is handing Democrats the answer on a silver platter. Our response cannot stop at Donald Trump who works for the wealthy though, which is true. It must go further.
Donald Trump works for the wealthy, and Democrats work and fight for you, the working class and middle class of this country, the economic patriots of the United States of America.
Just over a year ago, I stood on this very floor and ultimately successfully
Now, Optum, the healthcare company, which is a subsidiary of UnitedHealth Group, the single largest health insurer in our country and really one of only three companies in the United States of America that controls the entire healthcare market has been buying up medical practices across my district.
Just a few weeks ago, I launched a community inquiry. Thousands of my constituents and my neighbors and friends who have been hurt by Optum have responded detailing horrific stories of declining healthcare quality, erroneous billing, and we are continuing to gather this evidence, the voices of the people, the American people, and to ultimately hold this big corporation who has been making record- breaking profits quarter after quarter accountable.
Here is another example. For months, broadcast companies, big telecoms in New York were in a deadlock fight over streaming rights that left over a million New Yorkers, paying customers, staring at blank screens trying to watch sports games to take their mind off of all the pressures in their lives. Knicks fans and Rangers fans who paid couldn't see games. As one of those fans, I was mad as hell that I had paid and couldn't watch a game while a multibillion-dollar corporation kept raking in more profits and didn't seem to care at all about their paying customers.
Thankfully, under pressure, that blackout has ended, and we are now demanding Optimum, the telecom, the main perpetrator of this, pay back the customers who were harmed.
I have also introduced something called the Stop Sports Blackout Act so if this ever happens again, there won't be a question that a company has to pay and give customers the refunds for games they couldn't watch.
Whether in their utility bills, their healthcare bills, or just trying to watch a sports game, that is putting money back in people's pockets when pressure is so high, and that matters.
In closing, there is so much power now in the voices of our communities, but only if we, their elected Representatives, listen and act and elevate it. That is economic patriotism.
I am proud that as a Democrat our party stands with law enforcement and police officers, stands with small businesses, stands with veterans, stands with hardworking families, with nurses, teachers, and truck drivers. Democrats stand with our constituents, whether they voted for us or not, and, yes, we stand against Donald Trump and his harmful policies, but we stand for so, so much more.
A group of patriots unyielding and unwavering in their dedication to fighting for the people and against anyone who would do them harm, that is the Democratic Party that I am proud to be a part of, and that is our path out of this moment.
Mr. Speaker, I thank Mr. Deluzio for bringing us together and helping us have an important conversation about how we restore the mantle of fighting for working people.
I was born and raised in the most patriotic town in the country, Bristol, Rhode Island. We have the oldest and longest running Fourth of July celebration in the country. I learned from a young age to be patriotic, but I also learned that patriotism is not just about parades and parties and barbecues, it is about believing in a country where anything is possible for those who are willing to work hard. I know that because it is my family's story.
At the turn of the last century, my mother's family came to America from Ireland and Poland. My grandfather fought in the Pacific then came home and worked in a factory that made airplane parts. His wife, my grandmother, worked in a department store. Their jobs weren't glamorous. They weren't anything special, but they earned enough to buy a house, to raise four kids, and to build a stable, middle-class life.
My father's side of the family had a similar story. They came from Eastern Europe and settled in New York City. My great-grandfather got involved in labor organizing, and my grandfather was a bookkeeper at a company that sold fruit.
They all came of age during the New Deal era, and they voted Democrat because they knew that the Democratic Party had the backs of working people.
Then my parents met, and they started a small business together. They were successful, and now here I am in the United States Congress thanks to the hard work of the generations that came before me.
Today, in Rhode Island, I meet working people every day who remind me of my grandparents: factory workers, house cleaners, nurses, kitchen workers. They are grinding out a living, believing that if they work hard and do the right thing that better days lie ahead.
The more I hear from the working people I represent, they are frustrated with politics. They don't think either party represents them. They are working harder than ever and are having a hard time paying their bills. They certainly can't afford to save money.
They see billionaires on Wall Street and in Silicon Valley get richer while they can't afford everything on their grocery list. They see Elon Musk, the richest man in the world, gleefully cutting services for seniors and veterans while Donald Trump pushes yet another tax cut for the very rich.
They see a Republican Party hell-bent on taking away people's healthcare and a Democratic Party that means well but tries to be all things to all people and too often fails to deliver.
Our grandparents knew a Democratic Party that not only had good intentions but that knew how to get things done. The working people I represent don't want a handout, but they do expect a level playing field and a fair shot, and they want a Democratic Party with a real plan.
What does that look like? It looks like making billionaires like Elon Musk pay their fair share so that we can give tax relief to the middle class. It looks like passing the PRO Act so that workers in retail and fast food can join a union and earn a ticket to the middle class like my grandfather did in his factory. It looks like universal preschool and affordable childcare, not just because it is good for kids, but because it helps parents work and build their savings. It means passing my bill to guarantee 10 days of paid vacation for all workers because Americans work hard, and they deserve to take some time off every once in a while and enjoy their lives without losing their jobs or their income.
For too long the system in this town has been rigged for the wealthy and well-connected, but that does not have to be our future. There is a new generation rising, people who are tired of being left behind and are ready for something better.
We don't need the Democratic Party to be all things to all people. We just need to reclaim our position as the party for working people. That work begins now, and I thank my colleagues who are here tonight who get it. I thank Representative Deluzio for bringing us together. I am ready to roll up my sleeves alongside of you.
Mr. Speaker, I thank the gentleman from Rhode Island for his comments. He gets it, and this is not some hypothetical problem. We are living through the cost of losing and what it is to see the chaos and harm that comes from it. The Democratic Party has to do better.
I am honored to introduce a colleague from the other side of the country who has been a bulldog in the fight against monopolies and so much else, a former chair of the Progressive Caucus.
Mr. Speaker, I yield to the gentlewoman from Washington (Ms. Jayapal).
Mr. Speaker, I thank the gentleman for leading this conversation about how we can stand up
I want to be very clear. Our economy has been rigged by giant corporations and the wealthiest for way too long, and as these corporations consolidate more power, the rich get richer, and everyone else is just struggling to get by just on the basics. They need groceries, housing, healthcare, basic medications.
Private insurance companies are now buying up your local healthcare clinics and doctors' offices. In my home State of Washington, a handful of healthcare systems control 90 percent of hospital beds. What does that mean? It means that people are seeing their costs triple while the quality of care goes down all so that Big Pharma and corporate CEOs can pad their already overflowing pockets.
Mergers are pushing independent grocery stores out of business. Today, just a few supermarket chains control all of the grocery stores in the country. Albertsons and Kroger, two of the big grocery chains, actually tried to merge, and I was so proud to lead the amicus brief with other Members of Congress to actually oppose that merger. Thanks to Democrats and the FTC under Lina Khan, we were able to stop that merger because we know and we have seen that when these mergers happen, corporations shut down stores, they fire workers, and they raise prices.
Look at the housing market. When rents are sky high and there literally is not a single place in the country where someone can afford rent on minimum wage, private equity is coming in to buy up the apartments and colluding to drive up the rents so it is even more unaffordable to keep a roof over your head.
It wasn't always this way.
From World War II to the late 1970s, we actually rigorously enforced our antitrust laws to ensure that mom-and-pop businesses had a chance to compete against these megacompanies. Consumers had choices, and workers had good jobs. You know what? Our economy actually grew.
Starting with Republican President Ronald Reagan, that antitrust enforcement dwindled down, and large corporations took over. Today, income and wealth inequality are higher than they have been in a century.
Mr. Speaker, 2 months into the Trump administration, wages are still low, and prices are still high. It does not need to be this way. In the richest country in the world we do not suffer from scarcity, we suffer from greed, and we have to be willing to take that on. We must take on corporate power and corruption and make a meaningful difference in the everyday lives of working people.
We have to lower prices so that everyone can have a roof over their heads, put food on their table, send their kids for an education, and retire with dignity. We have to have living wages for every worker, and we have to tax the billionaires so that they just pay a little bit more of their fair share like everyone else is doing.
We can and have to break up the largest corporations so they can't keep screwing regular people. We have got to stand up and fight back against corruption, against greed, against consolidation, and for the American people to have that American Dream.
That is economic patriotism. That is what we are going to fight for, and I am so grateful to my colleague from Pennsylvania for making sure we put that out there.
Mr. Speaker, I thank the gentlewoman from Washington for her remarks. She is spot on.
I am reminded of a quote from President Franklin Roosevelt who faced the same kind of complaints from then who he called the economic royalists. We can call them robber barons, oligarchs, you name it. They complained and said that FDR was trying to overthrow the institutions of America. President Roosevelt said: ``What they really complain of is that we seek to take away their power. Our allegiance to American institutions requires the overthrow of this kind of power.'' Here we are again.
I think we can no longer allow anyone over here to play footsies with the corporate overlords and robber barons who have their heels on the necks of the American people. We need to restore competition and break the monopolies.
My colleague from the Granite State gets this, having worked in the Justice Department to take on monopolies. She has been in the trenches in the fight against this kind of corporate power run amok.
Mr. Speaker, I yield to the gentlewoman from New Hampshire (Ms. Goodlander).
Mr. Speaker, I thank my colleague from Pennsylvania (Mr. Deluzio) for bringing us together this afternoon.
Economic patriotism--we are coming from all across the country. We are coming from different backgrounds with different ideas, but we are united by things that are really powerful. We are united by a love of our country, by a belief in our country, and by a belief fundamentally in the American people.
Mr. Speaker, I was born and raised in the greatest State in the Nation, the State of New Hampshire, the State that made the Nation. We were the ninth to ratify the Constitution.
I was born and raised down the road from the family farm that my great-grandfather built when he came to this country. He was 16 years old. He didn't speak a word of English, but he believed in the American Dream. He raised my grandfather, Sam, on that farm.
My grandfather, Sam, was an economic patriot. He really believed that your word is your bond. He believed that hustle was the name of the game. He milked cows, bailed hay, and got his start as a businessman selling airplane rides at the Nashua Airport. His slogan was: ``A $1 million thrill for a $1 bill.''
He went on to become a door-to-door salesman for Electrolux vacuum cleaners. He worked hard because he believed in the American Dream. He was a lifelong Republican who loved one of our great Presidents with his whole heart, I think maybe the greatest economic patriot we have seen in the White House, President Franklin Delano Roosevelt.
I was reminded today of a great speech that President Roosevelt gave 81 years ago. ``The Economic Bill of Rights,'' it has been called. He talked about economic rights that are self-evident, but, as with all self-evident rights that we know in this great document, our Constitution, they aren't self-executing.
I want to focus for a moment on one of the rights that President Roosevelt talked about. He said that there is a right of every businessman--businesswoman, too--large and small, to trade in an atmosphere of freedom from unfair competition and domination by monopolies at home or abroad.
It has been said on the floor of this House and on the floor of the United States Senate that monopolies are inconsistent with our form of government. It is true.
The antimonopoly spirit is as old as America. It is rooted in the simple idea that power has to be checked. Just like political power, economic power has to be checked, too, but the fact is that big corporations and monopolies have too much power in America today. I see it everywhere I go.
I come to Congress having worked in the Department of Justice in the Antitrust Division. It is a division full of patriotic men and women, many of them nonpartisan, who come to this work with the basic belief in this country and in the power that must be checked by government.
What do we mean? What kind of power are we checking?
Every day on this job, as I have traveled around the State of New Hampshire, I hear about how big agricultural corporations are screwing family farmers like the family farm I grew up down the road from. I hear about big health insurers who are charging people more for less, big health insurers who are rolling up the entire industry, from providers to hospital beds and to the prescription drugs that people rely on for their lives. I hear about big tech companies that are using your valuable data for their own gain. The list goes on.
As we look across our consolidated economy, we see that corporate power has reached its apex in industries big and small, from door locks to the defense industrial base.
We have always found common ground in this country around the basic idea that, just like political
Mr. Speaker, I am so grateful to my colleague from Pennsylvania (Mr. Deluzio) for bringing us together today.
Our antitrust laws are alive and well, but they could use an update, and I look forward to working with everyone here today and in the days ahead to make that dream a reality because it is core to the American Dream.
Mr. Speaker, I thank the gentlewoman from New Hampshire (Ms. Goodlander) for her comments.
Mr. Speaker, this corporate power we feel in so much of our economy is also what we feel corrupts this place, our Nation's Capital.
We see it with the unlimited money that runs through our elections, unlimited super-PAC spending that corporations can dump in to buy the favors that they get from politicians.
The people who we represent--Democrat, Republican, Independent, you name it--hate this corruption. They see it. They smell it. They know it is crooked.
It is why you have pharmacy benefit managers extracting profits on the backs of people's medicine, killing pharmacies.
It is why you can't even fix your own stuff and why we even have to fight for the right to repair. What can be more American than the idea that you can fix your own stuff, whether it is a tractor, a car, an ice cream machine, you name it? This right to repair goes to the heart of this.
It is why you see housing costs out of control, with Wall Street buying up housing and then buying influence down here.
It is also why you see the obscene practice of people getting rich in Congress, trading stock on information that they may learn in their job serving the people in Congress. It is corrupt. We ought to end it.
Mr. Speaker, I yield now to a colleague of mine who gets this fight against corruption, who has organized workers, and who leads the Congressional Progressive Caucus, the gentleman from Texas (Mr. Casar).
Mr. Speaker, I am Greg Casar. I am proud to represent the heart of Texas in the United States Congress and to chair the Congressional Progressive Caucus.
Before all of that, I started my career as a labor organizer, and I saw up close how corporate lobbyists and corrupt politicians would trade campaign contributions for corporate tax breaks and how they would trade lower wages for workers for fatter paychecks for CEOs and their political friends.
They thought that working people could do nothing about this. They thought their workers were too divided to push back. On construction sites, guys who spoke different languages and who came from different places were pissed off, and they were willing to put their differences aside to come together and fight back, stop the corruption, and demand a fair paycheck.
We didn't win by going on bended knees and begging big corporations for better treatment. We did it by unifying working people around some central ideas that Americans deserve good pay for a full day's work and that taxpayer dollars are meant for the common good, not for corporate welfare.
Those ideas brought workers together to win historic wage increases and better benefits in the heart of Texas. This is what we need today in America. This is what we need the Democratic Party to be all about.
The central goal of the Democratic Party should be to break the unholy alliance between corporate greed and corrupt government. We can't just beg CEOs to please bring down prices. We have to break up the giant monopolies that are screwing over consumers and small businesses alike.
We can't just beg big CEOs to please be nicer to us. No. We have to get big money out of politics so that the ultrarich don't have a bigger say in this country than the everyday person.
We cannot just beg corporations to give people a raise. We have to unionize workplaces and pass laws that protect the American worker and the American worker's wages.
To get there, we have to transform the Democratic Party into a party that fights for working people first no matter what and into a party that is willing to stand up to the powerful special interests that are screwing over working people because, if we love our country, we have to be willing to fight for the people who make it work.
Mr. Speaker, I thank the gentleman from Texas (Mr. Casar) for his comments.
Mr. Speaker, if you want to respect hard work, you have to respect the people who do that hard work. That is at the core of this, and respecting the labor movement is so central.
I am from western Pennsylvania, which is sacred ground in that labor movement, where people bled for the right to organize. That fight continues.
Mr. Speaker, I yield now to a colleague from Oregon who gets this, who understands about the dignity of work and fighting for our people, the gentlewoman from Oregon (Ms. Hoyle).
Mr. Speaker, I am Val Hoyle, and I represent the central and south coasts of Oregon. I am a proud third-generation union member with a background in sales and international trade, and I came to Congress to fight for working people.
My family's path to the middle class was made possible because of the labor movement. My grandfather emigrated from Ireland and worked as a union laborer building bridges. It was hard work in unsafe conditions. Those conditions are significantly better because of the building trades unions.
My father was a firefighter and became president of his union to fight for better wages and safer working conditions. The contract that he and his team negotiated while management tried and failed to break his spirit took his members from poverty wages to a family-wage job. IAFF Local 789 is still working under that contract 40 years later.
Mr. Speaker, I grew up going to union halls and picket lines and with my father fighting to elect proworker candidates. Naturally, I became a member of UNITE HERE Local 26 as a union waitress during the AIDS crisis, where fellow union members had the dignity of healthcare and death benefits when they needed them because we belonged to a union. I am proud to say that my son is a Teamster.
I understand what is at stake for the working people of this country and my district because it is my story, too, and I came to Congress to fight for everyday people to have a fair shot, live in dignity, and make a fair wage while they work hard to provide for their families.
That is why I believe in economic populism, which is not just about talking at people. It is about listening to them and truly representing them. The fact is that workers feel left behind and that the two-party system doesn't represent them.
Republicans have tied in with billionaires and restricted the rights of workers to organize and have union representation wherever possible while they are telling them that their enemy is their neighbor.
Too many Democrats show up on a job site seemingly from a sense of noble obligation with wonky academic explanations about why everything is fine, even when everyday Americans can't make ends meet. I had an operating engineer tell me last week that he thinks that both parties are pissing on his leg and telling him that it is raining.
We have to understand that working people do not want a handout. They want a good job, a pathway to the middle class, and a comfortable retirement. Those opportunities have slipped away for too many people.
When people tell us that they are struggling to afford prescription medications, we can't turn around and tell them that they are wrong. We need to listen to them and hold Big Pharma accountable.
When people tell us that they see government as overly bureaucratic and complex, we can't dismiss that experience and say that it is all fine. We need to ensure that taxpayer dollars are spent responsibly.
Of course, addressing waste, fraud, and abuse is important. We also need to make sure that our veterans, our seniors, and the most vulnerable among us receive the benefits that they have earned and not break government under the guise of efficiency.
Democrats are the party that champion and protect the things that working people rely on, like the Affordable
We should all be fighting hard against corruption and for a real path to the middle class. Young people want to be able to work one job and afford to buy a home and raise a family, and that is not the reality for too many Americans.
That is what Democrats should stand for and be working for every day. Our party must embrace economic populism and fight to revive the American Dream, standing up for working people and giving them a chance to succeed.
Mr. Speaker, I thank the gentlewoman from Oregon (Ms. Hoyle) for her comments.
Tonight, we have heard from Members from my side of the party, Democrats from across the country representing a lot of different districts, but we are all speaking out on ways that we are fighting corruption and the excess of corporate power and the ways that the Democratic Party ought to move forward, not for Democrats but for everyone in this country.
I thank my colleagues for joining me here today to say loud and clear that things need to change. Economic populism and patriotism ought to be where we go, standing up for our people, without apology, to revive the American Dream.
Mr. Speaker, I have the honor of representing a battleground, competitive district in western Pennsylvania. In my time here in Congress, I have been dead set on lowering costs, battling corruption, and confronting corporate power. That means promoting competition and taking on monopolies, giving small businesses a shot to compete, and fighting against these lousy trade deals that stripped communities for parts. It means making more stuff in America, cracking down on junk fees and price gouging, and standing up without apology for the union way of life.
These are economic priorities to bring down costs, and they are good policies. The American people support them. We know that.
Everybody hates getting ripped off. Everybody hates working hard yet still not seeing a life that you can succeed in.
If you want American capitalism to succeed, you have to have competition in our economy. There is a tendency by some in politics to try to please everybody. You should take pride in when they get the bad guys--the villains who are screwing over your people are your enemy--it means you are doing something right.
I am sick and tired of folks in Washington or the think tanks or wherever else looking for a win-win when there is a villain hurting our people. If a railroad sends a toxic fireball into the sky over your community, you don't look for a win-win. You fight them for your people. When PBMs are killing pharmacies and jacking up drug costs, you fight them.
Sometimes, there is a bad guy. There is not a win-win because our way of life is on the line. Our safety is at risk. We have to stand up for our people. You don't cower like wimps. You don't go beg for donations from the people hurting yours.
The goal is simple and popular here. It is to make life better and less of a rip-off and to take on the corporate power and corruption that is hurting people. That is the path back to the American Dream.
This is our vision of economic patriotism and populism, and it is a winning one. It is one that can resonate from the Rust Belt to the Sun Belt and everywhere in between in this great country.
Mr. Speaker, this one is going to be a little thick, so put on your economics hat, and let's have a ride here.
On Friday, the Congressional Budget Office responded to a request I made in my capacity as chairman of the Joint Economic Committee. I was trying to get an answer to whether the economists' projections from the Joint Economic Committee are correct. You have to understand that there is actually a weird little battle going on here between the Senate and those of us in the House and those of us on Ways and Means.
A number of our brothers and sisters over in the house of lords have decided that we have current tax policy from the 2017 TCJA, the tax reform, which I was on the committee and was one of the people who helped author that, but they expire at the end of this year. They want to play this game and say that we are just going to pretend that there is no cost, that the law is not the law, that the policy is the law. This is when you hear people say, current policy baseline, just do it.
We have been trying to do the math. The Congressional Budget Office, a couple of months ago, actually did a projection saying that if we want to maximize economic growth over the next 10 years, what you do is extend those tax cuts but pay for them. The basic idea is that by paying for them, you don't have government gobbling up the capital stack that is used to finance growth, to finance business, to finance when you want to buy a truck or a new home or your business wants to expand.
We got an updated letter from the Congressional Budget Office. Apparently, it didn't make me particularly popular with a few people, which actually provides me a perverse joy. If you read it, in the 30- year window, it looks like if we do all this without an attempt to pay for, if we drive up interest rates by 1 percent, in the 30-year window, it looks like you break CBO's budgetary model because you hit 250 percent of debt to GDP.
If I am reading one of the paragraphs here correctly, they are basically saying our computer model doesn't go beyond 250 percent. The point is, you have a government that--here is our baseline. Let's see if I can make this make sense. At the end of this fiscal year, $37.2 trillion is going to be the country's debt. Over the next 10 years, we are expected to borrow an additional $22 trillion.
On top of that, if you play with these folks that say we don't really need to pay for things, just keep it going, that is about another $5 trillion, $5.5 trillion, another $1.3 trillion in interest. Then, if we were to be able to make the President's wish list without finding offsets or modernizations--and I am going to walk through a whole series of things where it is not cuts. It is modernization, legalizing the technology that disrupts the costs that makes our society better, happier, more efficient. If you were to do all those things without an attempt to pay for them, without an attempt to adopt policy to modernize the way we deliver services, in the previous 240 years, we borrowed about $28 trillion from the public. That is from investors around the world, from your pension system, from everything. It would mean, over the next 10 years, it pretty much would double. We are going to double it or come close to doubling it in the next 10 years.
That is the perversity of what you have going on around here, yet the people coming behind these microphones keep having a wish list and want more stuff and more stuff. The people walking through our hallways here are in our offices demanding more stuff. They want more carve-outs in the tax code, barriers to entry to their competition, or just another check.
I am going to walk through just how dangerous the game we are playing right now is because when you look at these charts--this is online. Just go on CBO from last Friday and read it for yourself. It is not a hard read. Why are my brothers and sisters so terrified to tell the truth to the public?
You have a country--I am going to show the charts--that in about 7.5 years, we have more deaths than births. You have a country that when we get out of the extraordinary measures--remember, right now, we are borrowing from our different funds because we are up against the debt ceiling. We may be borrowing almost $70,000 every second of every day.
For those of you who turn to me and say, ``David, I demand you balance the budget,'' I can do it tomorrow. Let's see, if I use the 2024 numbers, for every dollar we took in tax collections, we spent $1.39. Tell me the 39 cents of the government you want me to cut.
The problem with that math is, when you look at the charts, do you see what is in blue? That is everything a Member of Congress gets to vote on, defense and nondefense. Your only problem is that it is 26 percent of the spending.
If you ask a Member of Congress right now to balance the budget, we can do it. We can do it. You have to get rid of all defense, all nondefense discretionary. That is basically the Park Service, the EPA, all the agencies, and then tell me what portion--because you have to pay your interest or you blow up the world economy--tell me what portion of Social Security, Medicare, Medicaid, and other things you want to hack away at.
The reality of it is, in this fiscal year, our projection is up till the recent--now, we are starting to downgrade our growth. For every dollar we take in tax collections, we are going to spend, functionally, $1.36.
Do you understand how screwed--actually, that is a technical, economic term--we are when we don't tell the truth about the math? It is not fixable, but it is possible to stabilize. We can stabilize this. We just have to think and do things that are hard.
So often around here, the thinking part is complex, and it is hard when we have to go home and tell our constituents the truth about math.
Remember, the math will win. How many of you have heard about people out protesting? They are terrified there are going to be cuts. Okay, let's actually have a moment of truth about math.
This was baseline. Over the next 10 years, we were going to spend $86 trillion. Next 10 years, CBO baseline, we are going to spend $86 trillion. The reconciliation budget had--what?--$1.3 trillion in cuts, and if we got lucky and did everything, you might get to $2 trillion. So, we are talking about $2 trillion in cuts over 10 years on $86 trillion of spending.
That is what the left over here is losing their minds over because they need something. They have lost the working middle class. They have lost so many American voters because they no longer trust them because they have spent decades not telling them the truth about the math.
It is not hard, except the problem is 30 percent of that is borrowed. People are losing their minds that we are trying to cut $2 trillion on $86 trillion of spending. That is what this place has become. This place has become a clown show of math.
Once again, I need to disclose I have had a stunning amount of coffee today, so forgive me if I am a bit cranky.
We were trying to do projections of what our interest coverage would be this year. Let's see if I can make this make sense.
How many of you saw on Thursday or Friday that the Federal Reserve actually lowered economic growth for this year and, functionally, for the next 3 years? They lowered us down to 1.7, I think. Just that lowering, if you do the math on the back of an envelope, it is not that hard. It is just a little less than $200 billion of loss of tax receipts. If you plug that into our committed spending, it basically means what we are going to have to borrow--you may have interest this year of $1.1 trillion and a borrow this year when the economy is fairly good of $2.2 trillion. One of my folks has a number that it is up to 2.3, but let's stick with the $2.2 trillion of borrowing in a year when the economy is good.
Think about this. We are functionally going to spend about $7 trillion this fiscal year. We are going to take in about $5 trillion, and this is in a time when the economy is good. We are not in a pandemic. We are not in a war. We are not in a recession.
Understand that when you take some of these charts of interest exposure into the future--there is one of my charts that shows, in 9 budget years, interest, just interest, is over $2 trillion a year.
Why aren't we running around terrified here? I mean, if you care about your retirement--or someone that is crazy, like my wife and me, we are older parents. I have a 2\1/2\ year old and a 9-year-old. You do realize for my 2\1/2\ year old, when he turns 23, 24, or 25, every tax in the United States has to have been doubled just to maintain baseline services. This is the morality of this place.
Look, the last slide I am going to pound on, it is called interest fragility. We had Ray Dalio in one of our offices. Those of you who don't know him, please look him up. He is the Bridgewater CEO, founder. I think he has now stepped down from that. It is the biggest hedge fund in America. He happens to have 50 years of being one of the hyper- experts on interest rate markets and debt markets. He was saying: You guys are screwed. You guys have a really interesting problem.
The United States and other countries are borrowing, bingeing on debt. The United States borrows about 40 percent of all the world capital that goes into sovereign loans. His argument is: Our problem is, there are not enough savings in the world. We are consuming more money; it is us, China, Europe. Now Germany is going into the debt markets as they are raising their spending caps.
What happens in the world when there is a shortage of borrowable money? Remember, every day when we borrow at $6 billion a day that debt has to be sold. Most of it is actually financed domestically, it is in this pension, it is in this bank. And then there are the foreigners, except the foreigners have been lowering their U.S. debt because they are having to finance their own governments.
You start to look at our interest payments, and there is this concept called a term premium. When we make the bond markets nervous, we pay higher interest rates. So the clown show will go around and say: Well, let's just not pay our debts. Hey, we are up against the debt ceiling. Let's just not raise it.
Okay. Fine. I mean, enjoy your decade of world depression because when you collapse the U.S. currency, you also collapse the world. Stability is our goal. Stability is how you minimize interest rates. If you are financing $37 trillion and another $22 trillion, plus whatever else we are going to stack on top of that over the next decade, you really want the debt markets to think we are acting like adults.
In many ways, when you look at these charts and you see our interest coverage and how fragile we are, the bond market basically may be the greatest influence on this government.
However, how many people have you seen come behind these microphones and talk about debt?
Yet, the one thing we are not allowed to tell our voters, our public, our staff, each other, is the truth about what drives debt. Over the next 10 years, almost 100 percent of U.S. sovereign debt issued will be to cover interest and Medicare.
In 7\1/2\, let's call it 8 years, the Social Security trust fund is empty. That first year we have to make a decision, are we going to let the poverty of seniors double when they get a 21 percent cut in their checks? Or how much are we going to raise taxes?
Are we actually going to do something complex to fix the system and make all the adjustments and those things?
Except the moment you actually talk about saving Social Security, they have a consultant on the Democratic side writing an attack ad because they care so much more about winning the next election than the morality of not doubling senior poverty.
The brain trust runs around and says: Oh, just raise the cap. Okay. Except you just covered 38 percent of the shortfall. What do you want to do with the rest?
Mr. Speaker, 38 percent of the shortfall is our math, meaning that first year--so if the trust fund of Social Security is empty in 2033, 2034 the full year, I think $608 billion was our estimate on that first year.
Think about that. Think about that scale. Then you hold up a chart like this. This is CBO's number for the next 30 years. Nondefense and defense discretionary actually have a positive balance, meaning they grow slower than tax receipts. Medicare and Social Security create $124 trillion of debt during those 30 years.
It is not Democrat. It is not Republican. It is just demographics. We have
This place has been so busy spinning stories, though. We were listening to the Democrats a few minutes ago tell stories: There is an enemy out there. No, these things, we can fix them. We can stabilize it. However, so many care so much more about winning the next election.
The point I am trying to make is: You look at the next 10 years, okay, there is growth. Mr. Speaker, 24 percent of the growth in spending over the next 10 years is interest, 31 percent of the growth in spending over the next 10 years is Social Security and disability, 28 percent of the growth in spending over the next 10 years is Medicare, other mandatory and discretionary grows about 13 percent, but a portion of that is actually, I think, defense and other things in that. The fact of the matter is your government is an insurance company with an army.
Now, here is the other part that makes doing the math so incredibly difficult. Every year there are fewer workers, fewer working-aged people to support our older population. This really seems to upset people, but understand, look at our fertility, look at our demographic charts.
Go back to 1990, the year we started to roll over. There is a dataset out there--I don't believe it yet; I haven't had the chance to try to prove it--saying even last year we may have had more deaths than births. Okay. You want us to finance pay-as-you-go systems, which is Social Security and Medicare, at a time when we have a shortage of young people. There is a way to make it work.
Are you going to allow people like me, people who are here willing to think to be able to refine the process, to modernize?
Look, we will try to touch on this if I have time. Here is the MedPAC report from last week. A whole bunch of apparently really smart people examined Medicare and walked up and down through the growth in spending and what we could do to modernize it and use technology to stabilize the prices. On some things, particularly on Medicare Advantage, they have hundreds of billions of dollars in here that wouldn't require cutting any service, any access to healthcare. It is just using technology and modernizing.
You have got to understand, when we start to look at a chart like this, we are functionally here. Let's call it 2024. We have 2.9 in the population--there is another chart that is going to scare you even more--for every one person receiving benefits. Then you see, it gets down to 2 people in society.
I am going to bounce around just a little bit on some of these.
When you actually look at the Social Security trustees' data, something is happening out there where some of these numbers may be much worse than we expected because it turns out people actually are taking retirement earlier than we expected, meaning the participation in the labor force is actually starting to get soft on the high-skill populations, higher income population.
Actually we had a debate on this one about how upset this would make people. Here we are, we are going to start the 2026 budget year. We are actually supposed to be working on that budget. Without immigration, working-aged people will start to disappear from the labor force. You go: Huh? Huh?
Basically, 2026 is the last year where the age population is functionally stable. Then the next year you start to actually fall in your numbers of working-aged people in the population. It is demographics. It is not Republican or Democrat, it is just math.
One more chart of this, and then I am going to give you the one that scares me the most. This is Social Security and disability benefits. Here we functionally are, and let's get about to where we are. Right now if you add both those programs together, you have 2.67 workers for every beneficiary. At one point, it gets all the way down to just a little over two people working for every beneficiary.
If you actually do the big chart, which is how many people are actually in the labor force compared to how many people are receiving benefits. Remember, I am not talking about changing people's benefits. I am talking about dealing with the reality of our demographics and ways we can deal with it, particularly when we start talking about healthcare.
Let's take a look at 2023. Functionally, for every 100 people we had working in America, we probably had 36, 37 people receiving benefits. Remember, the whole concept of labor force participation. I have done presentations here about, functionally, the 7 million--that was my old number--of prime-age males that are missing from the labor force.
What do we do as a society to make it possible to encourage our brothers and sisters who are not working to actually get into the labor force? Yet, my colleagues on the left say: Oh, you are going to have work requirements. You can't do that.
If you don't do it, tell me how I make these numbers actually work.
That is some of the miserable stuff. Let's actually sort of walk through how I make it work. Okay?
I have come here and done a presentation showing that if this is our demographics, we are going to have to be willing to have a brutally honest conversation.
Let me walk through a concept. Back in the 1970s and 1980s, what was the world conflict? It was for hydrocarbons, oil. The previous decade, much of the world conflicts were for rare earth materials. I will argue, we are in a decade right now where the conflict is for smart people, people with skill sets. Yet the United States has barely shown up for the battle.
When you hear President Trump talk about the insanity that we educate people and then send them home to compete with us, the President is absolutely right.
We have a whole presentation we have done here showing a talent- based, a STEM-based immigration system that turns out to be remarkably beneficial for tax receipts, for economic growth, and for prosperity. It turns out you need that as one of an entire unified theory of things to do.
I want to walk through just a handful of quirky things. When you hear people talk about DOGE and how upset they are, one of the primary things that is being discussed is that the United States has a handful of huge databases. The problem is, they don't talk to each other.
You saw the story last week of, hey, we just looked at some of the Social Security death files. The oldest person in America is, what, 114 years old? We took people over 114 years old and then wondered how they were getting loans at the Small Business Administration.
Forgive my math. I am doing this from memory from last week. There were like 3,300 people who were over 114 years old who got SBA loans. Mr. Speaker, $300 million in loans. Can you believe not a dollar has been paid back?
What would happen if there was a way to eliminate waste and fraud without an army of auditors, without an army of bureaucrats? It turns out it is technology. You actually have to start having your data talk to each other. Is it really that scary? The government already has the data. Why can't they bounce against each other saying, hey, this person is on the death file. Maybe they are not actually applying for a Small Business Administration loan.
Mr. Speaker, some of our Democrat colleagues remark that, oh, waste and fraud doesn't really exist except for the billions of dollars we are identifying.
Let's walk through a couple of other frustrating things. We provided $42.5 billion for the Broadband Equity, Access, and Deployment program. Stick with me on this one. We have spent over $42.5 billion to get broadband to communities. Not a single community, not a single house has been connected to that broadband; but we spent $42 billion doing it.
Between Christmas and the new year, I took my little girl out on the Navajo Reservation. For those of my colleagues who are not from the Southwest, the Navajo Reservation is immense. It is bigger than many States.
We chased around, and we met with a number of people who said they were tired of waiting. They weren't going to wait another decade to get that wire or that fiber, whatever it was, to their chapter or to their community so they could get broadband. They were doing something crazy. They ordered a satellite dish, and 48 hours later they had broadband. They were sharing it with
Think about adopting technology. Is the morality that we want to spend lots of money to actually subsidize these people who should be running wire; or do we actually want these communities to have telehealth, tele-schools, and tele-monitoring of their lives to help them? Adopt the technology. Make it so it is actually useable. Instead of saying we will never get that wire out to our rural communities, put up a satellite dish.
Why does this scare people? It is because there is no good lobbyist running around here saying: Have ever thought about doing this? What we do is archaic.
Another example is millions of taxpayers call the IRS for help. Two- thirds don't reach anyone. Think of this. The auditors of the IRS last year put out a report that only 31 percent of phone calls were getting answered at the IRS.
Folks are trying to fill out a tax form and give the government money. They call and call and can't get the phone answered. There was a little pilot program done. It was an experiment. Let's actually do a chat, like a ChatGPT, that picks up the phone 24 hours a day, will stay on the phone as long as the caller needs, will help them fill out the tax forms, will actually email or text the PDF of the form, and maybe even send the YouTube video on how to fill out the form.
Why does this scare the hell out of the IRS? It is because the IRS is the second most unionized bureaucracy in the Federal Government. It turns out the union loses its mind when we start talking about technology to take care of the American people. Wouldn't we like to pick up the phone and call, whether it be the Social Security Administration or the IRS, and get the phone answered?
How do I get my brothers and sisters here to help us adopt this technology? I have a handful of articles here using AI to functionally crash parts of the cost of delivering healthcare. Here is one about actually making the environment much cleaner, much faster, much cheaper, and actually identifying bad acts with almost no bureaucracy. Here we have ability to fix our logistics.
We live in a time of miracles. When we start to say just our baseline, just a couple of the pieces of legislation we have, we think we can get $100 billion a year just using technology and healthcare.
How about another $100 billion to $150 billion to actually step into supply chains and these others? With the adoption of technology, we can crash parts of the price of this government. Is that a cut? Is that a chain saw? It is just doing things that aren't scary.
Mr. Chairman, the last one I will talk about is in the MedPAC report. The majority of Medicare recipients in America now use Medicare Advantage. For those of us in the Scottsdale-Phoenix area, we actually have a much higher penetration.
According to the report and even with the adjustment of the portion of the population that only takes the Medicare part A, which is the hospital portion, the trust fund, and which also runs out in 12 or 13 years, it is 20 percent more expensive than fee-for-service.
If we take it back to the fact that when Medicare Advantage was designed and it was supposed to come in at 95 percent of fee-for- service, do that delta. That is approaching $100 billion a year.
Mr. Speaker, what if we got together--and we have been working on this for months and months--and we said we need to align the incentives with the insurance providers, with the healthcare providers, and with the person receiving the benefits. How about if we make the profit by helping the population be healthier?
A capitated model or something of that nature, which actually I think a capitated model makes the most sense, is here is our cost; and we make more money by helping our population be healthier than what is happening today, according to this report, saying we sign the public up and then we spend lots of time and resources to score them as sicker and sicker because we get spiffs the sicker we score them.
Is that a cut? In today's world, when we know diabetes is 31 percent of all Medicare spending, let's get the incentives aligned so it cuts the cost, cuts the debt, but we end up with a healthier country.
There are solutions here. The problem is it requires doing difficult things and thinking. I beg my brothers and sisters. Let's go do the hard stuff. If you have ideas, bring them to us. We are working our hearts out right now on everything from technology to auditing the Pentagon because we had our eighth or ninth year where the Pentagon was not auditable. We are trying to design a talent-based immigration system that maximizes economic growth from tax receipts for the country.
How about saving Medicare Advantage for everyone who loves it but in a way where it also will provide hundreds of billions of dollars of savings? We can do this. We can do this. We just have to do hard things.
Mr. Speaker, I move that the House do now adjourn.
The motion was agreed to; accordingly (at 5 o'clock and 38 minutes p.m.), under its previous order, the House adjourned until tomorrow, Wednesday, March 26, 2025, at 10 a.m. for morning-hour debate.
