Uyghur Forced Labor Disclosure Act of 2020

Floor Speech

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Mr. GONZALEZ of Ohio. Mr. Speaker, I rise in opposition to H.R. 6270 before us here today.

China is the greatest existential threat that our country has faced in my lifetime. From their efforts to displace the U.S. as an international leader, to hurting our job creators and workers, to China's human rights abuses, the U.S. needs to work in a bipartisan and strategic way with our allies to fight back against the CCP.

That is why I was honored to serve on the House China Task Force that just today released our comprehensive report. From this report, we have recommended hundreds of policy proposals and ideas, over 60 percent of which are bipartisan, on the most effective ways to counter the Chinese Communist Party.

Unfortunately, this piece of legislation before us today misses the mark, though I do appreciate my colleagues' intent.

Once again, my colleagues on the other side of the aisle are attempting to use the SEC, which has no foreign policy expertise and whose mission is to, one, protect investors; two, maintain fair, orderly, and efficient markets; and, three, facilitate capital formation. This bill seeks to make that group, the SEC, an enforcer to accomplish a policy objective completely unrelated to their mission and expertise.

This responsibility is better housed in the Treasury Department, where we do have the expertise and the tools to effectively punish those who support the grotesque human rights violations that the CCP inflicts on the Uyghurs.

One final point. I would like to remind everyone that this bill never went through a markup and received zero hearings on the Financial Services Committee, primarily because, as we all know, these virtual hearings are awful, to put it kindly. The virtual hearings do not work, and they serve as a tremendous disservice to our constituents.

Since the pandemic struck, we have not held a single markup as a committee. What is the purpose of our committee if we can't even figure out how to mark up a bill?

There is so much work to be done here, and we aren't seriously taking up any of it. We can and must find a way to safely and effectively hold real hearings and real markups in a socially distanced way so that we can do the job that the American people sent us here to do.

I urge my colleagues to oppose this legislation.

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