Providing for Consideration of H.R. Investing in A New Vision for the Environment and Surface Transportation in America Act

Floor Speech

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Mr. McCAUL. Mr. Speaker, I thank the gentleman from Georgia (Mr. Woodall) for yielding time.

We have known for years that the Chinese Communist Party has been conducting cyberattacks on the United States aimed not only at stealing vital data but also at destabilizing our economy.

Recently, the FBI and DHS discovered that the CCP has taken their cyberattacks to a new low by attempting to hack into U.S. research facilities, in an effort to steal COVID-19 vaccine research.

In other words, Mr. Speaker, at a time when scientists around the world are working together in an epic race against time to develop a lifesaving vaccine to rescue the world from the grips of the coronavirus, the CCP is trying to steal that research for their own selfish purposes.

This news comes when the evidence has shown that the Chinese Communist Party is responsible for allowing this virus to spread into a pandemic.

The House Foreign Affairs Committee Republicans spent the last several months investigating the origins of this pandemic, in the hopes of learning vital lessons that would help us prevent the next one. This report details how the CCP chose to cover up the virus and lie to the world at every turn, allowing the coronavirus to spread not only throughout their own country, Mr. Speaker, but around the world in a global pandemic.

They silenced doctors trying to sound the alarm about the virus and disappeared journalists who were reporting the truth about Wuhan. They shut down laboratories and ordered that virus samples be destroyed. They repeatedly lied about the virus spreading human to human, that it was transmitted human to human, that it was contagious. They allowed mass travel throughout China and internationally despite knowing that the virus was spreading human to human.

Mr. Speaker, this week has served as a bleak reminder of what the Chinese Communist Party really is. Last night, the CCP sham legislature passed its so-called national security law for Hong Kong, destroying their autonomy and oppressing a freedom-loving people and violating the Sino-U.K. treaty. Yesterday, the world was made aware that the CCP is using forced sterilization, forced abortion, and coercive family planning against ethnic minorities, including the Uighur Muslims.

These disturbing realizations are unfolding as the world is still grappling with the coronavirus pandemic that the CCP helped create.

Now that millions of people around the world have been infected and more than half a million have died, we learned that the CCP isn't helping to fix the pandemic they are responsible for creating. Instead, Mr. Speaker, according to the FBI and Department of Homeland Security, they are conducting cyberattacks on American scientific organizations and hospitals in an attempt to steal research being used to develop a vaccine for the virus.

In other words, they are trying to steal our research to develop a vaccine to save the world from the very pandemic that they created. This is absolutely unacceptable and must be condemned.

So, today, Mr. Speaker, I ask that you join me in opposing the previous question so we can consider the Kinzinger resolution to do just that.

My colleagues on both sides of the aisle should come together and say, in one united voice, that we condemn these attacks by the Chinese Communist Party and that we believe that those who are responsible should be held accountable.

This is the issue of our time, so let's move forward together on calling out the CCP for their continued outrageous and dangerous misbehavior.

Mr. Speaker, I urge a ``no'' vote on the previous question.

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