Foreign Adversaries

Floor Speech

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Mr. ROY. Madam Speaker, I am glad to be here in an empty Chamber having the rigorous debate that we are so accustomed to here in the people's House, but that is, again, where we find ourselves with the level of debate at the moment.

We are left with bringing bills to the floor, having a couple of hours cut up and then moving on with whatever bill has been on the suspension calendar. That is not the kind of debate that we should have.

There is a bill that is coming before us tomorrow that I believe should have vigorous debate. I believe that it does raise consequential issues, and we should debate them here vigorously on the floor of the House.

I want to be unequivocally clear to the American people that I support it, and I support it unapologetically.

We have legislation before us that would ensure that foreign adversaries are not able to collect information on the American people and collect data on the American people and use that data to target the American people, undermine our national security, undermine our democracy, and undermine our way of life, which is precisely what is happening with the evidence we have before us.

Both classified and very publicly known information indicates very much that TikTok, which has significant ownership by the Chinese Communist Party, is targeting American citizens. There are some who are out professing that this legislation that would try to prevent that would somehow undermine our freedom.

Madam Speaker, I do not like the heavy hand of government being used, certainly not wantonly. An individual today who is fairly well-known out in the social media sphere put out and said that we had this classified briefing today and that the issue of election interference was brought up. This was a classified briefing that was not supposed to leak by the way. That is how things work in Washington. It was leaked.

Then we had the additional point here, not coincidentally, the anti- TikTok legislation. Let me clarify and stop. It is not specifically anti-TikTok legislation. It is antiforeign adversary control of American data and information legislation.

According to this individual, this ``legislation now being debated on the Hill would allow the Federal Government to force the sale of any social media platform that interferes in elections. Just so you know what is coming in 2025.''

Now, if I believe that to be true, I certainly wouldn't support the legislation. It is 12 pages long. I would note that a friend of mine who serves on the FCC, Brendan Carr, responded to this, and I happen to agree with Mr. Carr.

Mr. Carr wrote: ``It would be concerning to many if the bill allowed this.''

``This,'' being the post on X by someone this afternoon that I just recounted.

Mr. Carr says: ``It would be concerning to many if the bill allowed this. It does not. The text is definitive on this point. The bill does not apply to just any social media platform. Far from it. Here is the only and targeted application.''

Mr. Carr writes:

``One, if you are an individual user, the bill confers zero authority to the government over you.'' That is true.

``Two, the bill only applies to applications controlled by one of four foreign adversary governments previously codified in law by Congress--China, Iran, North Korea, or Russia. The bill is clear that it is not enough to merely have operations there or do business there. It must be `controlled' by one of those four governments.

Three, even then, the bill only applies if the application presents a demonstrated and significant threat to national security. Control by one of four foreign governments alone isn't even enough under the bill.''

You have got to have significant ownership by these foreign governments. You have got to have a demonstrated and significant threat to national security.

Four, and then, only after public process provided and Congress reported to with a description of the specific national security threat.

Every single one of those hoops (and more) must be cleared and met. So it is very narrow. It confers no authority to go after any other application--even if someone were to allege that it engaged in election interference.''

What is happening here is a reflexive reaction and a scaremongering tactic. Let me pause and say I do believe this legislation should have full debate. This is also why I prefer legislation to go through the Rules Committee. This is also why I prefer legislation to be amendable, amended, debated, but this bill was passed out, it is trying to be moved so that it doesn't open up for the possibility of undermining the legislation that was very narrowly crafted with a 50-0 vote out of the Energy and Commerce Committee.

Now, many of my conservative and more libertarian friends say 50-0 gives them the heebie-jeebies and I don't like it. That is my general default position in this town.

This is different. I will be very clear: This is different than what I am about to talk about in just a minute, which is the uniparty in this town that decides everything for you and is bent on whatever the defense industrial complex says and jams through spending bills and limits our ability to proceed.

This is different because it is very specific and narrowly tailored toward the end of ensuring that Americans' data and Americans' safety and security are being protected. That is it. That may not be perfect, but nothing this body ever does is perfect.

This bill was put forward to address that issue and it is a giant step forward, in my opinion, to recognize the threat against our freedom and our liberty that the Chinese Communist Party poses to us, to our children, to our grandchildren, the extent to which they are using algorithms to undermine and focus on our kids.

That is what they are doing. They are targeting our children. We know it. They are targeting our people. We know it. They are skewing the data on the results.

If you do a search for China virus--now, just the utterance of those words makes the head of my colleagues on the other side of the aisle explode--the difference between Instagram, which is hardly some paragon of rightwing reporting, the difference in the algorithm response on Instagram versus TikTok is 400-1 if you search for China virus.

If you search for Hong Kong, I think it is 180-1. If you search for Tiananmen Square, I think it is 80-1. The fact is you are getting demonstrably shaped information out of TikTok. What most people don't understand, most parents at home while their kids are out using TikTok--and this is a parental problem, not just China--China is specifically limiting the information that kids can see in China.

They are making sure that the kids in China see patriotic, pro-China engineering, all of this stuff you want to try to have your kids see in order to make them into what you want to make them.

In our country, we are allowing freedom to undermine our freedom, and that is what is actually happening here. It is the false name of freedom, to be clear, to undermine our freedom.

It is not actual freedom because the freedom that we have is being attacked by China and we are sitting back in the false name of freedom saying, oh, no, let's not touch that.

I hope that tomorrow we will crack through that. I hope tomorrow on a bipartisan basis we will send a message that the Chinese Communist Party cannot knowingly attack us and get a response that is a whimper because that is what we have been doing so far.

If you wanted to destroy America, you would set out and do exactly what China has been doing bit by bit, targeting our people, undermining our access to information or at least information that they are trying to control and target our kids with propaganda very specifically.

Yes, we have problems with Google, but I am getting tired of the ``but Google.'' Yes, we have problems with Facebook, but I am getting tired of the ``but Facebook'' because I get that a lot. You want to break up Google, let's sit down and do it. I am happy to have a bipartisan bill to talk about that. You want to deal with Facebook, I am happy to have that conversation.

You want to talk about the misuse of the power of those big companies attacking First Amendment rights, targeting people for their political beliefs, happy to have that conversation, but do you know how hard that is? Because none of us want to use the power of the government to go after companies so that the government is saying what they know is best about what that means for our freedom and our rights here in this country.

That is what we are wrestling with under our Constitution to protect our rights. But when the Chinese Communist Party is actively targeting the American citizens, I am tired of people hiding behind the flag to let China do it. That is what is happening.

People are going to do it in the false name of freedom and in the false name of, oh, let's go do this because--I don't know--a former President says so or a media personality says so.

How about we do our job here in the House Chamber to take on the Chinese Communist Party and not act like they are not doing what they are doing? I think it is important. I support the legislation. I appreciate my friend, Mike Gallagher, working on it. I cosponsor it. I will defend it tomorrow. I will defend it in the future. I am defending it now. I hope we pass it tomorrow on the floor of the House.

I want to bring something up because that brings up the question of the uniparty in this town. The fact is, we have, yet again, reverted to the mean. This town has reverted to what it does best, which is a handful of people making decisions, dropping it on the floor, and then walking away from the deliberative process.

I want to reiterate that the bill I just talked about, I think we should go through committee and I think we ought to amend it. We are walking away from our duty that we fought for 14 months ago to have amendments, to open up debate, to run through the normal regular order, but more importantly than that even, to actually stand up to the powers that be in this town that make all the decisions.

Three years ago, I stood on the floor and I pointed out that our border was in chaos already, a mere 2 months into the Biden administration.

In his first full month in office, Federal law enforcement had already encountered more than 100,000 migrants at the border. It was spiking. It was spiking rapidly, and we all knew it. Those of us who went down to the southern border in Texas sounded the alarm and we got a lot of crickets in this town.

That was the beginning of the radical progressive Democrats' efforts to reshape America with mass releases into our country. Just in December, we saw 370,000 migrant encounters alone. Three years into this crisis now, radical progressive Democrats are trying to blame the crisis on Republicans.

You heard the gentleman, Mr. McGovern from Massachusetts, on the floor of the House today, he said something in the ZIP Code of, Republicans own this crisis now--which, by the way, was a giveaway. It was a tell. It was purposeful because our radical Democratic colleagues worked to try to get a bill in the Senate so they would have something to hide behind. Unfortunately, a handful of Republicans either wittingly or unwittingly went along, but the bill died because the bill doesn't do the job.

But here is the question: We have got a situation in our country where we have got wide-open borders. I will go through some of the details in a minute. Yet, today, we passed a resolution.

I supported it. I voted for it. I went to the Rules Committee, did my job, defended it, argued for it, came to the floor, debated it, argued for it. I support it, but come on. It is a resolution. Why? You want to know why? Because we refuse to use the power of the purse to stop President Biden. That is the truth. That is what we are actually doing.

Next week, in about 8 or 9 days, this Republican Party will saddle up with that Democratic Party filled with radical progressive Democrats who want to remake America, dump people into the country through mass releases. My Republican colleagues will saddle up with Democrats to pass a funding bill that will fund all of those open borders, and then they will try to go home and campaign: But I passed a resolution. I passed a bill that was named after Laken Riley. Aren't I great? Aren't I awesome?

The answer to that question is, no, you are not. You are not great. You are not awesome. Great and awesome is when you are willing to stand up and fight for the people you said you would fight for when you came here.

We control the power of the purse and I am tired of the excuses. We had another Member of Congress resign today. So now I will be told, Chip, we only have a one-seat majority or two-seat majority. I don't even know what it is anymore.

Let me ask the question: Does it matter?

In 2018, we had the House, we had the Senate, we had the White House, and we had a bigger majority than we have today and we utterly failed to secure the border. We totally dropped the ball. We didn't do it.

Why? I remember why. They would say, Chip, we don't have 60 votes in the Senate. Let me be very clear to the American people back home. There is always an excuse for why those who campaign to come to this town fail to deliver. Always.

Here is a glimpse into what we will be funding next week. Here is a glimpse into what your Members of Congress, both sides of the aisle, led by radical progressive Democrats who, by the way, you will get more votes out of them than you do out of Republicans.

Every bill we have passed over the last 4 or 5 months of consequence have had more Democrat votes than Republican votes. Let's be very clear. That is the truth. You can't hide from the truth. You can't hide behind rules votes. You can't hide behind pointing fingers. This institution, the Republicans that run it, we are giving the ability for bills to come off this floor with more Democrat votes filled with radical progressive Democrats who want to remake America than Republican votes.

The last bill, the first half of this omnibus spending bill that spends at Nancy Pelosi's levels--I am sorry--more than Nancy Pelosi's spending levels, cracking the caps that we passed less than a year ago, that legislation passed I think with only two Democrats voting against it. Two.

Do you know who was in the Democratic Party? Two voted no. I think we had 83 Republicans vote no. You do the math. Which way do you think that bill tilts?

Here is what we are going to fund next week. We had 1,200 known got- aways recorded at the border on Sunday alone.

In this country, 1,200 people came into this country, we don't know who they are; we don't know where they came from; we don't know what they are doing, but I promise you, for at least a large block of them, they ain't up to good.

Four human smuggling loads were caught in 48 hours in Kinney County just this week, just out in San Antonio. These are friends of mine who live in that county.

Virginia authorities apprehended an illegal immigrant from Mexico in connection with the February 29 abduction of a 15-year-old unaccompanied alien child--illegal alien.

An illegal alien from Mexico was arrested for allegedly crashing into a Washington State trooper while drunk and high, killing the 27-year- old husband and father.

I have gone through and recounted all the deaths. We have talked about Laken Riley. We have talked about the 2-year-old who was killed just outside of the Nation's Capital by somebody who was released here by Joe Biden.

Meanwhile, criminals with ties to MS-13 and other gangs are selling fake green cards and Social Security cards to illegal aliens on street corners in Queens. That is happening right now. You are going to fund that.

A smuggler from Sullivan City who led Texas DPS on a high-speed chase in Hidalgo County was just recently arrested for evading, human smuggling, and DWI.

An illegal alien from Venezuela has been charged with manslaughter for a wrong-way accident in Missouri that killed a 12-year-old boy.

FBI Director Christopher Wray warned Monday the Bureau is ``very concerned'' about a human smuggling network with ties to ISIS that utilizes the southern border to gain entry into the United States.

Madam Speaker, 331 known or suspected terrorists were stopped at the border under Biden--169 in fiscal year 2023, 58 so far this year.

Members of a Mexican cartel shot at migrants who were taking Ubers to cross the southern border illegally, illegal aliens, leaving one woman dead. Nobody crosses the border without cartel permission. They have control.

Madam Speaker, 7.3 million illegal aliens crossed our borders since Biden took office. That is more than the population of 36 U.S. States.

Nearly 1.8 million known migrants escaped Border Patrol, the got- aways I was talking about before.

We have released some 4\1/2\ million of the 7.3 million illegal aliens that crossed our border. We have released 4\1/2\ million.

I want to stop there. For my radical progressive Democratic colleagues who say that nothing is wrong and they are not doing anything, they are making policy choices to release people into the United States using parole authority against the law to mass-release people, including the man who came in here affiliated with a dangerous gang in Venezuela and killed Laken Riley, not Lincoln Riley.

There are 331 on the terrorist watch list under Biden and 75,000 fentanyl deaths in 2022. The administration has paroled 1 million illegal aliens into this country, many of whom come from Haiti and Venezuela--pause--many of whom come from Haiti.

Has anybody looked at Haiti recently? There is some dude named ``Barbecue'' who is in charge of Haiti at the moment, basically running the show--a dude named ``Barbecue.''

We have people who are running like gangs and marauders and cannibals in Haiti, and now we are going to get a mass influx of people from Haiti.

In fiscal year 2023, DHS released more than 233,000 under the Cuba, Haiti, Nicaragua, and Venezuela categorical parole program--83,200 Haitians, 65,000 Venezuelans, 49,000 Cubans, 36,000 Nicaraguans. I could go on and on.

We have had more than 20,000 Chinese nationals encountered at the southern border since October 1, 2023. For context, more than 24,000 Chinese nationals were encountered across the southern border in all of fiscal year 2023. We have had 20,000 since October 1.

I could go down the list, but I want to give time to my good friend from Pennsylvania, Mr. Perry, a man who wore the uniform, who served his country with distinction, who serves his country with distinction now as a Member of Congress.

My friend from Pennsylvania, I assume that you are concerned. As someone who has defended this country around the globe, flew helicopters for the United States military, I assume it concerns you that we have 20,000 Chinese nationals that we have encountered at the southern border since October 1, 2023, and that we are poised as Republicans to vote next week to fund fully, with additional money, the government that is doing that to the American people.

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Mr. ROY. It is 7.3 million.

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Mr. ROY. Madam Speaker, I yield to the gentleman from Pennsylvania (Mr. Perry) to engage in a colloquy so the American people can understand what we are dealing with.

Next week, we are going to take up the second half of an omnibus appropriations package. There is no other way to describe it. It was an omnibus bill broken into two parts. That omnibus bill would spend approximately $1.66 trillion or, stated in plain terms, $30 billion more than Nancy Pelosi's spending levels passed a mere 15 months ago with abject opposition from the very Republicans in this Chamber who are going to vote next week to put the bow around two bills to make one omnibus spending package that will crack the bipartisan caps that we could have at least adhered to in order to limit spending.

Is that what the gentleman understands?

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Mr. ROY. About 15 months ago.

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Mr. ROY. To be clear, we are racking up an additional trillion dollars of debt every 100 days.

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Mr. ROY. We are spending now, this year, more on interest than our national defense. We will be cracking a trillion dollars of interest in 2026. We are now going to pass a package that spends $1.66 trillion, which the CBO acknowledges will continue to rack up deficits into the foreseeable future. We are going to do that after having voted for a bill last week that funded a number of things from the MILCON-VA to Energy-Water and to other issues.

This next week, though, we are going to be voting on Defense. We are going to be voting on State-Foreign Operations. We are going to be voting on the Department of Homeland Security.

A lot of these are bills we passed last year as Republicans in the House. I ask the gentleman, when we passed legislation last year, we passed legislation to push back on the radical progressive Democrat agenda. In the State-Foreign Operations bill that we will take up next week, I would remind, the United Nations is a part of it to the tune of $12.5 billion. By the way, Texas has had to spend $12.5 billion over the last 3 years to defend itself when the Federal Government won't do it.

We are going to have $12.5 billion for the United Nations that is going to be funded this next week by this body, a United Nations that-- let me see if the gentleman agrees--has the United Nations Human Rights Council, which passed condemnatory resolutions on Israel 104 times to China's zero; a United Nations Population Fund, which is complicit in China's population control programs; the World Health Organization, which is complicit in COVID-19; UNRWA--I know the gentleman is familiar with this one--UNRWA, the corrupt organization that has been exposed since October 7 in terms of its engagement in the barbaric attacks by Hamas on the people of Israel.

We are funding it. Biden says he is not funding it, but will we make that clear next week? We did last fall. We made it clear, but not clear enough. Why is that? What did the gentleman do last fall?

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Mr. ROY. It didn't pass because it didn't have unanimity among Republicans.

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Mr. ROY. Now, will we vote this week to fund UNRWA? Now, even if UNRWA is taken out, which it is possible it will be, will we continue to fund all of the so-called humanitarian relief that is still getting funneled to Hamas?

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Mr. ROY. Right.

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Mr. ROY. Will we continue to fund through the State and Foreign Operations bill the President's radical anti-life agenda?

Will we pass, instead, any of the pro-life protections, like the Mexico City policy, or no?

What will we be funding? Continuation of the radical anti-life policies of this administration.

Will we be voting to end, or will we be voting to fund all of manner of wasteful and woke international envoys: The Special Envoy for Racial Equity and Justice, the Special Envoy to Advance the Human Rights of LGBTQI Persons, the Special Envoy for International Labor, the Special Representative for Palestinian Affairs? Will we be voting to fund that next week?

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Mr. ROY. The gentleman served in the United States Army, correct?

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Mr. ROY. The gentleman flew helicopters in the United States Army?

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Mr. ROY. Does the gentleman believe that next week, we, as Republicans, should be voting to fund chief diversity officers across the Department of Defense that are destroying recruiting and turning our military into a social engineering experiment?

Should we fund the Air Force, which is reducing planned troop totals in their 2025 budget, cutting the total number of airmen in the service after missing its recruiting goals?

How about transgender surgeries at the Department of Defense being funded?

How about the Department of Defense's abortion tourism funding?

How about funding for a Department of Defense that has failed to fully reinstate members impacted by its vaccine mandates, at least 8,000? I just spoke with one of them the other night randomly at a bar/ restaurant here in the Northern Virginia area, who was upset that he got forced out of service in the United States military. Does the gentleman think we should be funding that?

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Mr. ROY. Yet will not the very same people who will stand up and say we must fund this do so on the backs of the men and women in uniform saying that we must do this for defense, we must do this to make our defense stronger? Will they not be voting for all of those policies, undermining our own Defense Department?

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Mr. ROY. On both sides of the aisle?

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Mr. ROY. How about the HHS funding that we are going to be taking up next week, including the Office of Refugee Resettlement, which lost track, as the gentleman knows, of 85,000 migrant children, according to that bastion of rightwing conspiracy, The New York Times. They are working with the NGOs to make the crisis worse, the very NGOs that are receiving funding from the United Nations.

The gentleman from Pennsylvania just acknowledged, we are going to fund the United Nations, we are going to fund through our own HHS the Office of Refugee Resettlement, which lost 85,000 children, and we are not going to demand change, as necessary. Is the gentleman concerned about that?

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Mr. ROY. Does the gentleman agree that we will be fully funding Joe Biden's student loan bailout schemes that were found to be unlawful by the United States Supreme Court? He literally stood at the microphone and said: I don't care, I am doing it anyway. Do you think we ought to be funding that?

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Mr. ROY. Should we be funding, for example, under COVID, the continued funding of the Wuhan lab or anything with respect to EcoHealth Alliance without any accountability for any of the people who sent our entire economy into a tailspin, racking up $8 trillion of debt, sending our kids back in time in terms of their ability to compete, should we be continuing to fund those entities?

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Mr. ROY. I guess now, in conclusion on this point, back to the border, an absolute tragedy that is unfolding for Americans reeling, like Laken Riley's parents, like Lizbeth's mom--by the way, you left out the fact, I understand, that she was supposed to be cheering at an event. Her mom went there to go see her daughter, and when her daughter didn't show up, she had to go home to find her daughter's lifeless body in the bathtub, killed by somebody here illegally, an illegal alien.

Again, I want to be very clear, the President of the United States, whether he knows it or not, a subject that we explored today in the Judiciary Committee, whether it is willful or not, he is certainly complicit because the buck stops with the President that they are releasing people into the United States in mass form, contrary to law, and endangering people like Laken Riley, like Lizbeth, like the 2-year- old out here in Montgomery County, like hundreds of examples, thousands of fentanyl deaths.

By the way, put all that aside, the fact is, we are destroying our country through the weight of what that means for our school districts, our prisons, our hospitals, what it means for healthcare.

We have 50 million foreign-born people in this country. My colleagues on the other side of the aisle act like somehow this is anti-immigrant or that we don't want to have immigrants in the United States when nothing could be further from the truth.

I assume that the vast majority of the people that I know working at Border Patrol, for example, who I know to be majority Hispanic, they want the law to be enforced.

I assume that we want to back the people who want the law enforced. Yet I want to be clear, we are going to fund all the things we just articulated and fund a Department of Homeland Security to continue to carry out mass releases in the form of parole, asylum, abuse of the law, undermining our security and safety.

By the way, I would point out, we are going to continue to fund the salary of Alejandro Mayorkas, who we impeached for violating his oath to the Constitution, violating the laws and endangering the American people. How does the gentleman feel about that?

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Mr. ROY. The America I know enforces the rule of law. The America I know establishes a rule of law that attracts people from the world to come to our country. That is why people come to the United States of America, because the rule of law affords them the ability to prosper.

However, we are undermining the very thing that attracts people from around the world to come here. I know it is equality, justice, and freedom, but if you don't have the rule of law, none of those things matter.

If you don't have the rule of law, you will have chaos.

If you don't have the rule of law, you have what is happening in Haiti.

If you don't have the rule of law, you don't have a country.

If you don't have sovereignty and borders, you don't have a country.

If you don't have that, then there is no America to stand side by side with Israel.

If you don't have that, there is no America to even try to come to the rescue of any country like Ukraine or anybody else.

If you don't have a country, you have nothing on this Earth to be able to organize, to be able to defend the very liberty that we say this country stands for.

I would note that this body, Republicans, passed H.R. 2 just under a year ago. That bill would demonstrably change the situation at the border. It would enforce the law. It would reestablish the rule of law. It would still allow people to come here and make claims when they need them if they are being persecuted for their religious beliefs or political beliefs, but they would do so through the normal order.

The chaos would end. America would be better off, the Western Hemisphere would be better off, the world would be better off. Most of the individuals seeking to come to this country would, frankly, be better off, so they are not being abused by cartels or being forced to run from the Darien Gap all the way up through Mexico to make the tough journey to come to America, then they get here and have difficulty.

Why do I want to bring that up? I am going to be wrapping up here reasonably shortly so we can give the floor to another colleague. So why does it matter that we passed that bill last year? Because it is a good bill. It is a bill that would do the job.

While my colleagues on the other side of the aisle are playing games trying to hide behind legislation in the Senate that never would have gotten the job done, our colleague from Massachusetts (Mr. McGovern) today gave up the game on the floor today when he said: Republicans own this issue now. It was purposeful. He gave it up. He gave away the game. They want to hide behind a bill they knew wouldn't pass.

We passed legislation that would make a difference. It would save people's lives. It would be better for migrants, better for our country.

Here is the thing: I hear a lot of my colleagues on this side of the aisle run around and say something like, well, can we just get migrant protection protocols? Can we just get remain in Mexico?

Let me be very clear. That will not fix it. If you simply pass migrant protection protocol requirements, the President can just ignore them. If you do not end the releases, if you do not force an end to the releases--which, by the way, I did in a 3-page bill--then you have no border security. You cannot implement remain in Mexico and believe that that alone will solve the problem when parole is being abused, asylum is being abused, unaccompanied children will be abused. However, that is what some of our colleagues, even on this side of the aisle, are saying will be a solution if we package it together with Ukraine or Israel to move a bill.

Let me be very clear to everybody watching, any of our colleagues sitting in their offices watching: That is not good enough. It won't work. Don't bring that to the floor. That is not the way we should go.

At the end of the day, earlier today this Chamber passed a resolution condemning the Biden administration for its failures at the border for releasing people into the United States. Every Republican voted for it. Every Republican voted for it. Fine.

What will it do? What will it actually do? I voted for it. The President should be condemned. How many of those same Republicans are going to vote next week, though, to fund fully at a higher level the very things they voted against--or condemned, I should say--in the resolution that they just passed today? What do you think, my friend from Pennsylvania?

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Mr. ROY. Madam Speaker, I will close with this. In a couple of years, this country is going to be celebrating its 250th birthday on July 2, 2026.

The question we have to ask ourselves is whether or not we are going to have a country that we pass down to our kids and grandkids. I believe we can and will.

I believe we only will if the people who campaign and go to the people saying that they are going to change this town, saying that they are going to stop the unlimited spending, saying that they are going to do something about a trillion dollars of debt racked up every 100 days, saying they are going to do something about a trillion dollars of interest in 2026--we are spending more on interest than our national debt--saying that they are going to secure the border of the United States, saying that they are going to end the woke and weaponized government targeting the American people, saying that they are going to make sure that we don't have endless wars that are making our military overstretched and overrun and making it difficult for our men and women in uniform with a woke military and undermining their ability to recruit and have a military that functions, when our colleagues go out and campaign on those things, we should deliver.

We should do something about it. We should be willing to give up the precious, to quote ``The Lord of the Rings,'' give up the precious of an election certificate if it means taking the steps necessary to fight for this country.

When the Founders gave us the power of the purse, articulated well in Federalist No. 58 by James Madison and otherwise throughout the Founding documents, that power of the purse was supposed to be used.

If you don't use it, what do you have left? An impeachment that you send over to the Senate to die in the Senate and then go campaign on it.

The balance of power matters. The separation of power matters. When a President of the United States is ignoring the law and the Supreme Court, violating all the norms of the past to undermine our sovereignty, endanger the American people, spend money we don't have, ignore the law, and make us weaker around the globe, when the President of the United States is doing those things, it is incumbent upon the House and the Senate, but particularly the House, to do something about it.

You shouldn't hide behind rules votes, thin majorities, and what the Senate has or doesn't have to say that we could use that power of the purse to force change out of a President.

I, for one, believe that on July 2, 2026, we are going to be able to stand up and say that we are doing the right thing.

I believe something is stirring in this country. I believe people are seeing what is actually happening. I believe people are seeing their country being taken away from them.

We are seeing people like Riley Gaines standing up. We are seeing people like Chloe Cole stand up against the madness, as well as Scott Smith in Loudoun County.

We are seeing the people around this country stand up and make their voices be heard, the parents who have taken their schools back, the parents who stood up in Texas and just had a strong election to try to force that State to stand up for universal school choice, to empower parents rather than bureaucrats, to stand up for our kids.

I believe that the American people are right now going through a great awakening, and it is time for the people in this body to catch up to the people.

It is time for the people in this body to stand up and do our part to make sure we restore that constitutional order and the very premise outlined in the Declaration of Independence for the pursuit of happiness so that in July 2026, we can say that our people live in a free country and that we have, in fact, kept the Republic, to quote Franklin after the Constitutional Convention.

Madam Speaker, I yield back the balance of my time.

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