Scalise: The American People Demand a Secure Border

Press Release

"It is great to be back. And even more importantly than that, it is great to be in remission from cancer. It's been a long battle, about six months long. But God answers prayers, and there have been a lot of prayers and thank everybody for the support and prayers along the way.

You surely don't get through this alone. But I was looking forward to coming back, and now it's great to be back. It's great to see all of you. Happy Valentine's Day to everybody. Especially Happy Valentine's Day to my wife, Jennifer. She's back home.

But I tell you what, we got right into the business of what this Congress -- and especially what this majority -- has done, and that's taken our job seriously in doing the tough work. You know, we brought back up the impeachment of Secretary Mayorkas. I want to thank [Vice Chair Blake Moore] for giving us the opportunity to reconsider the vote and him procedurally making sure we had that opportunity so that we could send a statement once again that we, this House Republican majority, care about border security.

And in a town where everybody should be concerned about what is one of the biggest crises facing our country: The fact that we've had millions of people come across our border illegally, including people on the terrorist watch list, drug dealers from Mexico, the cartels having operational control of our southern border -- our southern border -- to the point where they're bringing drugs in that are killing 150 young people in America every single day. That should matter to everybody, especially the President of the United States and especially the Secretary of Homeland Security, who as Chairman Green's committee did a methodical job of pointing out over months and months of building this case, that this secretary has failed to do his job. He's let down the American people, and the American people want a secure border.

And people have asked, you know: 'What's the point of impeaching the secretary if the Senate's just going to discard it?' I don't know what the Senate's going to do. I gave up predicting what the Senate might do.

But I will tell you this: If the Senate just discards this, like they do so many other important issues, like H.R. 2 that we sent over [nine] months ago, where we came together as a Republican majority and passed the toughest border security package that we've ever seen come out of Congress, at least since the 1980s. And the Senate won't even take that bill up.

The Senate can't even pass their own bill. And if they ignore this and just throw it in the trash can without taking it as seriously as the American people do, then there will be accountability and consequences to that action. So it's on the Senate. They have to do their job.

But the good news is this House Republican majority, as razor-thin as it is, once again, did our job. We are going to fight to secure the border.

We've got a speaker who continues to call on President Biden -- I'm sure he's going to talk about this -- to just sit down and meet to talk about this major crisis. The President cares about all these other things going on around the world, as we do, too. But if you don't care about one of the biggest crises facing our country, to the point where the president won't even sit down with the Speaker of the House to talk about ways to solve this problem, when we've laid out a number of different options -- not just laid them out, we passed them, which is not easy to do.

We're going to take this seriously, as we have for months and months, and continue to focus on those needs of the American people, even if this president and his administration refuses to.

One other issue that we're going to be bringing up this week -- and there's others, FISA is going to be a big fought-out issue tomorrow -- but on Friday, it was talked about earlier, bill on the LNG exports. When President Biden just a few weeks ago said he was going to ban LNG exports in America, all that does is embolden our enemies around the world.

You know, if he does it because the far-left extremists on the left and environmentalist groups are threatening him and saying stop supporting fossil fuels in America. I don't know if the president knows this or not, but let me tell him if it's not the first time he's heard it, I sure hope it's not the first time he's heard it: There is nobody in the world that produces energy cleaner and more efficient than the United States of America. And stop attacking American energy, Mr. President, because when we make energy, we do it better than anybody else in the world. And it allows us not only to lower prices here at home for families who are struggling, but it also allows us to send that energy to our friends around the world.

When President Biden takes that energy off of the market, that just means countries like Russia and Iran become more emboldened because those countries still need that energy. We still need that energy. And when he shuts down LNG exports, it also stifles production in America. That kills jobs here at home.

And again, the cleanest place to produce energy in the world, and it raises prices on families who are struggling. Why on God's earth would you want to do that? We have a bill to reverse that ridiculous, crazy, insane policy. And we're going to have that vote on Friday as well. So we're going to keep doing our job here in this majority."

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