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ISSUES OF THE DAY
The SPEAKER pro tempore. Under the Speaker's announced policy of January 4, 2021, the gentleman from Texas (Mr. Roy) is recognized for 60 minutes as the designee of the minority leader.
General Leave
Mr. ROY. Mr. Speaker, I ask unanimous consent that all Members have 5 legislative days in which to revise and extend their remarks.
The SPEAKER pro tempore. Is there objection to the request of the gentleman from Texas?
There was no objection.
Mr. ROY. Mr. Speaker, I yield to the distinguished gentleman from Arkansas (Mr. Hill), who, like me, served as a staffer for a Texas Senator in his career, the great John Tower.
Celebrating the Memory of Daisy Bates
Mr. HILL. Mr. Speaker, I thank my friend from Texas for yielding.
Mr. Speaker, tonight I rise in celebration of Black History Month. I rise in honor of the memory of Daisy Bates, a native Arkansan and civil rights hero.
Daisy Bates was born in south Arkansas in 1914 and moved to Little Rock in 1942. Active in the NAACP, Daisy and her husband, L.C., started the Arkansas State Press, a weekly newspaper, which they used to call attention to racial injustices.
In the face of violent threats, Mrs. Bates courageously led the movement to desegregate Little Rock Central High School, recruiting and mentoring the Little Rock Nine.
Daisy Gatson Bates became an icon in the fight to end segregation in the Jim Crow South. She was the only woman to speak at the 1963 March on Washington, led by Dr. Martin Luther King.
Daisy Bates is a hero to Arkansans and Americans, and I am proud to honor her legacy today, and I look forward to her statue joining the pantheon of American leaders highlighted in the U.S. Capitol.
NATO States Are Not Paying Their Fair Share
Mr. HILL. Mr. Speaker, on a cold Tuesday in January, an irritated President met with his National Security Council. During the meeting, the President was outspoken, and complained, We cannot continue to pay for the military protection of Europe while the NATO states are not paying their fair share and living off the fat of the land. We have been very generous to Europe, and now it is time for us to look out for ourselves.
Mr. Speaker, that quote urging Europeans to pay their fair share in their own defense by way of their responsibility to the North Atlantic Treaty Organization was not made by President Trump, it was not made by President Obama, or even George W. Bush. Mr. Speaker, that irritated President was John F. Kennedy.
We are now nearly 60 years after that meeting, and 30 years following the reunification of Germany and the collapse of the USSR. Yet, the debate continues.
Recently, NATO held a 2-day video conference with the theme of increasing NATO's funding for our core deterrence and defense activities. NATO Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg told the assembled allies that spending more together would demonstrate the strength of our commitment to Article 5, our promise to each other. And it would contribute to fairer burden sharing. Sound familiar?
When then-candidate Donald Trump became President, only three of the then 28 countries were spending the agreed upon guideline figure of 2 percent of gross domestic product on defense.
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With President Trump's urging, today, 7 countries out of the now 30 NATO allies are meeting this important benchmark. The United States is joined by its longtime allies, Great Britain and Greece. Yet the only other countries meeting the benchmark are countries that know well the risk of Soviet--and now Russian--threats or threats from external forces of terror. These are the formerly enslaved countries from behind the Iron Curtain: Bulgaria, Estonia, Poland, Latvia, Lithuania, and Romania. As Americans, we salute their partnership, and we share in their renewed sense of freedom.
Mr. Speaker, as we in the legislative branch of this government meet and confer with our parliamentary counterparts, as well as foreign ministers and finance ministers from our NATO allies, let us urge cooperation with our promise to defend each other, but, more importantly, urge the rapid adoption to achieve that fairer burden sharing, a goal so long ago argued for by President Kennedy.
Mr. ROY. Mr. Speaker, I appreciate the gentleman for his commitment in being down here on the floor. We have this Special Order reserved tonight to talk about an issue that I think is fundamentally important to what we are seeing now today. And that is what I describe as the ideological cleansing of America, the silencing of dissent--cancel culture in common parlance today. It is a sickness that lies among us. It threatens to tear apart our Republic at the seams. It undermines our economic strength, our families, our schools, our churches, our culture at all levels, and even our military strength. That sickness is indeed the ideological cleansing of America.
We have witnessed in America in just a matter of months the shaming of Americans questioning COVID. They are not questioning its existence. They are questioning our response. They are questioning the fact that we have got people who are committing suicide, who are stuck, unable to see loved ones, or can't get cancer screenings. They are questioning why hydroxychloroquine is one day okay and one day not okay, and then suddenly okay again. They are inquiring about the efficacy of masks.
Do they work or not work?
How well do they work?
Where should we wear them?
They question the removal of Americans from social media, the coordinated effort of technology companies to block companies or threaten to pull down news media outlets.
We see examples of cancel culture in society are all around us.
Ryan Anderson is a good friend of mine. His book is behind me, titled
``When Harry Became Sally,'' responding to the transgender moment. It is an important work on civil rights and transgender policy. Well, it was deplatformed by Amazon and Apple without explanation this week. It has been on for 3 years. It is a good book, whether you agree with it or don't agree with it.
Are we really into book burning?
Is that where we are?
Is that what we have become as a country that supposedly values freedom and the free exchange of ideas?
A book written by a good man, a PhD, on a topic that matters, ``When Harry Became Sally.''
Am I going to get canceled?
Is C-SPAN going to cancel this?
Is Speaker Pelosi going to cancel this because this is somehow offensive?
It is a book with ideas researched and offered. That is where we are as a country.
Gina Carano was recently canceled by Disney for tweeting a comparison of Nazi Germany rounding up Jews for the current hate doxing and targeting of fellow Americans for political views.
Now, should she make that comparison?
I don't know. But we are a free country where people are supposed to have the free exchange of ideas. And if there is anything that should bind us together, it should be a unanimous belief that standing up against tyranny and standing up against this kind of cleansing is something that this body--all 435 of us--should agree to. We see it from college campuses to religious schools, to small businesses, to corporate boardrooms.
Mr. Speaker, I am going to have more to say on this. I have some of my colleagues here who want to join. So I am going to yield first to my good friend from Texas, Michael Cloud.
Mr. CLOUD. Mr. Speaker, I appreciate the gentleman for taking this moment to speak on this. I cannot imagine a more important topic for us right now in this Nation.
Mr. Speaker, we are unique in history in that our Nation rests on the understanding that our inalienable rights to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness are not a grant from the government; they are a gift from Almighty God. And among these enshrined in our First Amendment is the freedom of speech, which is the most essential freedom, along with the freedom of religion.
The peace and tranquility of our entire Republic is based on the understanding that we have a right to have our voice heard and that we have a right to have peaceful public discourse and dissent. That is how we come up with good legislation. That is how to have good policy. That is how we avoid conflict and wars on our soil.
But we have entered a most troubling time in our Nation. This cancel culture has persisted, and it needs to stop. The unilateral march of legislation meant not to protect our liberties, but, rather, force the American people to conform to woke ideology in this House needs to stop.
Then there is big tech that canceled conservatives while allowing for liberal Members of this body to repeatedly call for unrest in our streets and raise money to bail out violent rioters, not to mention providing a platform for Communist China terrorist groups and the like. This hypocrisy is not overlooked.
Recently traveling throughout my district the last couple weeks, I came across a few immigrants in my community. I know them. They came up to me concerned about what we are in at this point in our Nation. Some of us who are so privileged to be born in this country where we have inherited these wonderful liberties might not see the signs so readily as people who have come from Ecuador, Cuba, and Iran. But these individuals came up to me because they are very concerned. They are concerned that they left this and now they are seeing it be rooted and established here in our Nation.
Ironically, the one from Iran was concerned because she was talking to me and she had liked a post about our taking out of Soleimani and she got banned from Instagram following that. She knows firsthand what is going on in Iran. She is a first-generation immigrant. I was troubled, especially when she looked at me and said: We have more freedom of speech in Iran at this moment--this is her opinion--than we do right here right now. No one is trying to cancel people, you can speak freely against the government there.
Now, I am not saying Iran is a wonderful place to live. I am thankful to be here in the United States of America, but we are heading down a troubling path.
I remember being at an event just a couple days ago. It was before the election. Some lady was there, and she was talking to me about her motivation for being involved in the public discourse. She came up to me and said: I am from Ecuador. I remember escaping.
Her parents did not make it out, but she made it out. She didn't call it ``to the United States of America.'' She called it ``to freedom country.''
She said: We cannot lose freedom country. I am here to support this, I am here to work, and I am here to do whatever I can because we cannot lose freedom country.
Mr. Speaker, I am here to stand up along with our colleagues because we cannot lose freedom country. It is extremely and essentially important that we in this House and people across the United States of America stand up in this hour at this time.
Ronald Reagan once said--and I have said this before to many people, encouraging them how important it is to get involved in the process and also to thank our veterans--``Freedom is never more than one generation away from extinction. We didn't pass it to our children in the bloodstream. It must be fought for, protected, and handed on for them to do the same.''
I thought about that quote. There is another part of it that has resonated with me even more and more in this time, and it is: ``Or one day we will spend our sunset years telling our children and our children's children what it was once like in the United States where men were free.''
God forbid that we continue down this path and reach that point where we have to tell our kids and grandkids about what it was once like to live in the beloved United States where men were free.
Mr. Speaker, I thank the gentleman for setting aside this Special Order. I cannot imagine a more important topic.
Mr. ROY. Mr. Speaker, I just want to say to my friend from Texas that I know he has a heart for immigrants who come to the United States of America. We both live in Texas. We both deal with an open border and we deal with the issue of immigration on a regular basis.
Too often when you talk about cancel culture, if I dare to say that we should have a secure border in the United States of America and that I believe that is pro-immigrant, that that undermines the power of cartels, that makes it less likely that immigrants are abused, also protects us, protects us from the dangers of fentanyl. That is the kind of canceling that we see every single day.
Oh, you want a secure border?
You hate Brown people.
It is as if my colleagues on the other side of the aisle have some sort of monopoly on being able to say things about Brown people, and here I am trying to protect our border for the betterment of the United States and the immigrants who seek to come here, and somehow I am a bigot. The very structures put in place by the Obama-Biden administration are called cages for kids.
And now what has happened?
The Biden administration is having an uh-oh moment because their absurd policies of open borders are attracting people to come across our border. Now they are saying: Oh, no, what do we do with unaccompanied children?
Well, who the heck could have seen this coming?
Yet somehow we are canceled for believing in a secure border.
The gentleman from south Texas, who I know has a heart for immigrants--
Mr. CLOUD. I certainly do.
Mr. ROY. And has a family who does as well, does the gentleman have thoughts on that?
Mr. Speaker, I yield to the gentleman from Texas (Mr. Cloud).
Mr. CLOUD. Sure. You know my family, you know my wife. I have had those comments put on me that I somehow don't like Brown people and that I am somehow racist. They fail sometimes to look at my family photo. My wife is an immigrant. I didn't marry her because she was an immigrant. I married because I loved her. I met her when she was 15. I was 17 at the time. We had a long-distance relationship. I met her back before Al Gore invented the internet.
Mr. Speaker, I can tell you what an honor it was for her to stand there in the U.S. courthouse, raise her hand and take the Pledge of Allegiance for the first time and become a citizen of this great country.
So we understand that there is a proper way to do immigration. We want a big, beautiful gate to this country. But to say that we need to secure our communities and keep out the cartel activity, I serve on the Interparliamentary Group between the U.S. and Mexico, so I have had the opportunity to talk with our colleagues in Mexico. I talk to them about how arrogant of a notion it is for us to assume that the way we heal the world's ills is to bring everybody to the United States. That notion is uniquely American arrogant.
We want people to prosper everywhere. And what we know from our unique history is that if you embrace the principles this Nation was founded upon, you can have the same sort of prosperity. You can have your people prosper everywhere.
When I said that thought, we got resounding applause from them because they understand that our wanting to secure their borders, we want their communities to thrive, we want our communities along the border to be protected, and we want migrants not to be persecuted and abused along the way.
Mr. ROY. Mr. Speaker, I agree with the gentleman. If you take that view, you are labeled a bigot. If you take the view that we want a secure border, you are labeled as someone who wants to keep people out of this country.
If you dare to say what you just said, which is that maybe we should think through how to make sure that Mexico, Guatemala, Honduras, and El Salvador are strong so that--by the way, the first lady of Guatemala was visiting and said something along the lines of: All of these caravans and all of the cartels are driving a lot of our people out of our country, and it is hurting our country.
I am told from the other side of the aisle that it is compassionate to have open borders, and then we are labeled as bigots.
I know the gentleman has somewhere to go. I appreciate the gentleman's remarks and passion for this issue. May God bless the gentleman.
Mr. Speaker, I yield to the gentlewoman from Colorado (Mrs. Boebert).
Mrs. BOEBERT. Mr. Speaker, I thank my friend and colleague from Texas, Congressman Chip Roy, for yielding.
Mr. Speaker, I have said it before and I will say it again: cancel culture has become a pillar of the left.
Today, cancel culture took on toy potatoes, but not a sitting Governor accused of sexual assault. That is where we have come to.
From Kevin Hart to Gina Carano, the woke mob will go after decades-
old comments, and in Gina's case, for simply being a Conservative. The woke mob now includes big tech, major corporations, and the Hollywood elites at Disney who fired Ms. Carano for the crime of--wait for it--
posting conservative content on social media.
They tried to come after me, too. Twitter tried to cancel me. It didn't work. The fake news at CNN and other outlets also tried to cancel me for simply walking around the Capitol with my family. That didn't work either. Mr. Speaker, it will never work because I refuse to bow to the cancel mob.
We are a nation that has always had the audacity to dream, the strength to lead, and the boldness to speak our minds. We must stand tall and kneel before God. Scripture says that every knee will bow and every tongue will confess Jesus is Lord.
Now, that is an audacious statement in America right now: Jesus is Lord.
Why is that such a controversy?
Because there is power in the name of Jesus.
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This isn't the first time Christians have been attacked for professing the Lordship of Jesus.
If you go to the Book of Acts, Peter and John were arrested. It says: Now as they spoke to the people, the priests, the captain of the temple and the Sadducees came upon them, greatly disturbed that they taught the people and preached in Jesus the resurrection from the dead. And they laid hands on them and they put them in custody until the next day for it was already evening. However, many of those who heard the word believed and the number of men came to be about 5,000.
There were 5,000 salvations because someone had the boldness to speak in the name of Jesus. It goes on.
Now, when they saw the boldness--their boldness was tangible. It was evident to the people around them. It wasn't in a prayer closet. It wasn't hidden. It was out in front. They saw the boldness of Peter and John and perceived that they were uneducated and untrained men.
That means that they didn't know the languages that they were speaking in. They were speaking in unknown languages.
They marveled and they analyzed that they had been with Jesus. Their boldness was so tangible, so intense the people around them knew that they had been in the presence of Jesus. Wow.
It goes on to say: What shall we do to these men? For, indeed that a notable miracle has been done through them. It is evident to all who dwell in Jerusalem and we cannot deny it, but so that it spreads further among the people, let us severely threaten them-- Whew, sounds like America. That sounds really familiar right now--that we would severely threaten them, that from now on, they speak to no man in this name. They wouldn't even say the name, in this name.
So they called them, and they commanded them not to speak at all, nor teach. They were not allowed to speak or teach in the name of Jesus.
But Peter and John answered and said to them, Whether it is right in the sight of God to listen to you more than God, you judge.
It goes on to say exactly what God will do if you remain bold and strong in your convictions and if you refuse to bow down to the cancel mob, to the woke culture.
Peter and John spoke out. Now, Lord, look on their threats and grant to Your servants boldness as we may speak Your word by stretching out Your hands, hands to heal, that signs and wonders may be done through the name of Your holy servant, Jesus.
This is the boldness that God is looking for right now. He said, if we cry out to Him, He will hear us, and He will heal our land.
This cancel culture isn't just to keep us quiet; it is to stop the very plan and movement of God Almighty. But I have read the end of the book and we win. Glory to God. God bless America.
Do not give up the faith and hope in God. He will turn all shame into glory.
Mr. ROY. Well, I appreciate the gentlewoman from Colorado. I will tell you, you know, as I was thinking through the times we are in right now, the Book of Acts is my favorite book in the Bible.
And when you--you know, I look at the arrows that some are taking today for standing up for their beliefs and some of the things that are happening today; and then you remember that we are not in the middle of a circle yet, getting stoned.
You remember what those men did and what they faced in the early church, and it inspires us to know, to have the strength that we need to have. And this is true of all faiths. This is true of all Americans. It is instructive to stand up in faith when you believe something in your soul and in your heart.
And we, as Americans, when Patrick Henry gave his famous speech at St. John's Church in Richmond, Virginia, in that famous speech, ``Give Me Liberty Or Give Me Death,'' that is the founding building block of this Nation.
And it is that liberty, that liberty expressed in the First Amendment of the Constitution, which is under assault today on a bill voted on the floor of this body today in the so-called Equality Act, with a direct assault on the First Amendment of the United States, a direct assault on religious liberty, a direct assault, basically. It is the tyranny over the mind of man.
I am inspired by the Book of Acts, and I assume that the gentlewoman from Colorado agrees.
Mrs. BOEBERT. Absolutely. Absolutely. It is an ongoing testimony of even the lives that we are living today. Our stories, I believe, will be recorded as there are a cloud of witnesses that are watching eagerly what we are going to do. They have been waiting for this time and this season and they are watching the sons of men. They are watching us like never before.
Jesus came here and He showed us how to live, not as God, but as men, anointed by the spirit of God, to walk in grace, not just a wishy-
washy, cover up your mistakes kind of grace, it is this boldness. It is empowerment. It is God's ability working in and through you. And I am very much inspired by the Book of Acts and many others.
Mr. ROY. I appreciate the gentlewoman from Colorado, and I appreciate our joint commitment to the Lord Almighty and liberty in this country.
And I would just say before I yield, I think, to the gentleman from Georgia next, a couple of thoughts.
You know, we are talking today about cancel culture. We are talking about the silencing of dissent, the cleansing of ideology in the public square in America. It is truly an ideological cleansing, but it is always not direct.
I alluded to it when I was talking to the gentleman from Texas (Mr. Cloud) about immigration; that if we dare stand up for secure borders, we are a bigot. It happens all the time. You hate Brown people. You are a bigot.
Today, I stood up against the Equality Act. The first thing out of the indivisible crowd in Austin and San Antonio, you're a bigot. You're transphobic.
Dare stand up for what you believe. Oh, my gosh. The gentleman from Texas says that there is a man and woman. Bigot. All right?
I mean, this is where we are today. And you know, look, if you want your child to actually be educated in a school, then despite the science, you don't care about public health and you want teachers to die. Right?
All last year, running against an opponent in Austin, it was, oh, you want people to die. You don't care about the science.
If you want to keep your business open to keep your livelihood going, you just want to survive. You are a barber in Dallas, Texas, and you just want to stay working to pay for your kids and your family, put bread on the table.
Well, you are just greedy, and you hate science.
If you think Dr. Fauci is inconsistent--I mean, I am just going to be nice and say inconsistent--if you think Dr. Fauci is inconsistent, sometimes making stuff up, maybe to be on the front cover of a magazine, and maybe we ought to hear from 20 scientists instead of one, well, suddenly, you hate science.
If you say that COVID has been politicized, as I did last year, or question any aspect of it, not that it exists, not that people are getting sick--I have had it--not that you want to protect your family--
I canceled Thanksgiving because my dad is 78 and had polio--but if you question any of it, you are calling it a hoax.
If you want to go to church, you are reckless.
If you believe men are men and women are women, you are a bigot.
If you think it is wrong to let biological boys compete against your daughter in a sports competition, or you don't want your daughter to have to share a locker room with a male, you are a bigot.
I mean, when are we going to sit down, roll our sleeves up and actually do the work of the American people, instead of sitting here firing shots across everybody and saying, well, you are a bigot.
I yield to my good friend from Georgia, Mr. Hice.
Mr. HICE of Georgia. I appreciate the gentleman's leadership on this and he's a very dear friend from Texas. And I am grateful.
Listen, I don't know that there are many issues that are much more significant, if any more significant, than what we are watching unfold in our society these days, with the cancel culture movement. And the gentleman brought up so many great examples. Everyone certainly, I believe, probably everyone on this side of the aisle has experienced this cancel culture in one degree or another, and it is, frankly, not a new thing. It started quite some time back.
But certainly, it has built to the point of enormous momentum now to the point of literally destroying lives, destroying businesses, destroying careers, and that is what is disturbing to me.
And I would just go on to say that this cancel culture--two main points that I just want to bring up, and I would love to have a bit of dialogue with the gentleman on this.
But number one is: What is underneath it? What is causing it? What is the purpose? What is the motive behind cancel culture?
I don't think we need to just deal with the results of it, but what is behind it. And I would suggest that it is a lust for power. And, as a result, there is an attempt to intimidate, an attempt to cancel, an attempt to threaten, and it is also that I am king of the hill and you are not.
There is this desire for power behind the cancel culture movement, and I believe that is a significant issue, and I would like to hear the gentleman's thoughts on that, and then I will come back to another thought that I have and bounce that off you as well
Mr. ROY. Yeah. There is no question. In my view, what we are seeing today is the assertion of power over the mind of America, right? And it is just happening as we see it.
We have got a fence with razor wire around the Capitol. We were all horrified, sitting right here, all of us here in the body who were here on January 6. We all want to protect each other.
But we also have a duty to lead. We also have a duty to have a Capitol that is open; to figure out a way to secure the body without sending signals to the world that somehow this is a military state.
You walk around the Capitol and there are people in camouflage. There is a fence. I can't even walk around D.C. We are harming business. We are telling the American people that, nope, sorry, you can't come here, all in the name of a virus or then what happened on January 6.
That is all about power. That is all about message. Okay?
I do not believe for a minute, with all due respect, that that is about actual security of this building and this complex. That is about projecting a message to the American people. That is what the magnetometers are for. That is not to keep us safe. It is not.
It is not the highest and best use of the Capitol Police to be having 20 people around this floor every day; literally having Members of Congress duly elected by the people to have to go through magnetometers. You have got to go through security to get in the building. It is all a show. And that is all a projection of power. And that is what the Equality Act was today.
And the last thing I will say is my point about immigration earlier. That whole point is: It makes no sense to be yelling about kids in cages, when any rational human being knows you are trying to figure out what to do with this child, a child that could be being abused by this guy who claims to be his or her uncle, and you are trying to keep him or her safe. You can't just let him go. You have got to do something with them.
I mean, I am sorry we don't have four-star resorts up and down the Rio Grande to put these children into, but go down and work at Border Patrol--who, by the way, are majority Hispanic--dealing with immigrants coming here through policies that attract them.
That is all about power. Kids in cages. Republicans are evil. Republicans are bigots. They hate Brown people. It is all about power.
Mr. HICE of Georgia. Absolutely. That is extremely well said and very potent in the way you presented that. And it has come to the point, even in just the last couple of days, I had a woman face to face I was speaking with about this, and she was hesitant to get involved in a relatively small way in trying to make a stand in her local community.
And her words to me, I am afraid that if I do this, the FBI is going to come knocking at my door. And she had received those kinds of threats, those kind of whatever. She didn't go into details with me, the specifics of what had brought her to that point.
But the realization to me is this cancel culture is like a cancer that is now infiltrating our society and its tentacles are reaching, they are far-reaching. And what contributes to part of this, I am afraid, we are participating in right here in this Chamber.
And a quick example, we just passed the Equality Act. And I could not help but think, while this is being passed, and even some questions I had with it, sure, we don't want discrimination for anyone. This is the land of the free. Everyone has rights.
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But the bill itself specifically says there are no religious exemptions to this, that RFRA does not apply, which means people who have deeply held religious beliefs are going to be canceled from participating in their routine life if they disagree with the premise of this bill, and if they personally have convictions otherwise, that is being forced upon them.
It is very concerning to me that we in this Chamber are actually participating in throwing gas on the fire of this whole cancel culture, even with legislation that is coming out of this body. I would like to hear your thoughts on that.
Mr. ROY. Mr. Speaker, I would ask how much time we have left in our Special Order. Sorry for surprising the Chair.
The SPEAKER pro tempore. The gentleman has 25 minutes remaining.
Mr. ROY. Mr. Speaker, I would say to the gentleman from Georgia that I could not agree more, and I have spoken a little bit about the Equality Act. The only thing I would add to it--and I said this earlier on the floor about the Equality Act--my wife and I, products of public school, K through law school, undergrad, law school, we currently send our kids to a private Christian school, not an easy thing for us to afford. We are fine, we are blessed, but it is a lot of work to make that happen. Why do we do that? It is because, unfortunately, increasingly those with beliefs and values that they want to be able to have their children experience, we are being forced into the corner.
We are being forced to kind of be shoved back away from mainstream society. I mean, forget just saying Merry Christmas. I mean, it is just hostile to our values, hostile to our beliefs, teaching our children something different than that there is one man and one woman. These are the things that are happening every day across America.
To my colleagues on the other side of the aisle, I would say whatever frustrations you have about the previous President, just understand this: President Trump represents a large number of men and women across this country who are feeling exactly what we are saying right here. They are frustrated and angry about what is happening to their country. They are scared. They believe the power of government will be used against them, and in many cases, we have seen evidence of it.
The point of this is not to just rant about it. It is that we should be having a debate and a dialogue, and we need to come together as a Congress and do our job to do what is right for the people of this country. I appreciate the gentleman from Georgia very much.
Mr. Speaker, I yield to the gentlewoman from the great State of Georgia (Mrs. Greene), your colleague.
Mrs. GREENE of Georgia. Mr. Speaker, I appreciate this conversation tonight about cancel culture. I think it is one of the most relevant topics that we should be discussing more, and I am really glad to talk about this.
I think this past year we have seen more things canceled in our American history than we have at any other time. In the past year, starting with the virus, that has been politicized. I say that, I believe that, along with millions and millions of Americans that believe it.
We saw, starting with schools got canceled, business got canceled, jobs got canceled, people had to stay home. Then things got further. Sports were canceled, prom was canceled, graduation was canceled, social life was canceled, vacations, movies, entertainment, restaurants, and the list goes on and on. Basically, the ability to pursue happiness in the United States of America got canceled due to COVID-19 and the politicization of it because it was an election year.
I can't think of anything worse. I have been privileged to be a business owner for almost two decades, and it has been a joy in my life to be able to function as a business owner, to employ people, to do business in the marketplace and have the freedom to do that. But over the past year, many small businesses have been shut down, along with many big businesses.
Dreams for people starting a business have been canceled. But even more than that, the belief that conservative opinions and thoughts and statements and just beliefs are being canceled and considered dangerous.
The fact that millions and millions of Americans support President Trump, still support President Trump, and are angered that he has been canceled is unbelievable to me.
You see, America is the greatest country in the world, and I say it over and over. We are all blessed to be Americans. We are blessed that we are equal, and we should have equal voices. We are given that with our First Amendment, with freedom of speech.
But today, it is not looked at that way. People that support President Trump are considered to be possibly domestic terrorists. How can that be? You see, we don't look at America that way. We don't look at people that we disagree with politically that way, not at all.
President Trump was canceled on Twitter. I understand what that is like. I have been suspended multiple times on Twitter. I have been in Facebook jail multiple times for stating my opinions, things I think and feel. It shouldn't be that way, where people are canceled by companies.
We are moving in an era of corporate communism to where corporations and businesses can force their views and political opinions, and force it on their customers. That is absolutely wrong. It should not be happening. But that is where we are today.
Where do we go from here? Today, we saw my Democrat colleagues here in Congress cancel gender. This is not up for debate, and it should not be shocking for us to say there is only male and female. That is not a shocking statement. It is science. There are only two sets of chromosomes. They also canceled women's rights, religious freedom, and the ability for little girls to have privacy in the bathroom.
This cancel culture has gone too far, and we have to change that. The media is addicting America to hate, and the media is addicting people to the idea that they can cancel out someone's opinion that they don't agree with.
Mr. Roy, would you like to elaborate on that?
Mr. ROY. Yes. One of the things that you made me think of is how much cancel culture is now getting rooted in government and, in fact, the institution in which we are currently standing. The gentlewoman is well aware that my colleagues on the other side of the aisle stripped you of your ability to serve and sit on committees, in an unprecedented action, for things that you said before the election, that you have addressed on the floor of this House. That is canceling.
Mrs. GREENE of Georgia. Yes.
Mr. ROY. We are in a situation right now where this body is now refusing to work. Democrats are refusing to work with Republicans. They are threatening to hold up and block their legislation because they dared to object to the electors, a proposition, by the way, that I disagreed with, on my side of the aisle. I spoke right there. I stated my disagreement with my Republican colleagues.
But it is perfectly normal speech and debate under the Constitution and the laws, under an act passed in 1887, one that my Democrat colleagues have engaged in themselves: Ms. Waters from California, for sure, Mr. Raskin from Maryland, others who have objected.
Now, Democrats in this body want to cancel my Republican colleagues. That is how bad it has gotten. Cancel culture is now in this body.
I have a couple more colleagues here, Mrs. Greene, but do you have a closing thought?
Mrs. GREENE of Georgia. Thank you, Mr. Roy. I really appreciate that. Yes, being canceled in Congress after 35 days, being stripped of my committee membership, is not something that I ever expected, and I think it is completely wrong.
Statements and things that I had said that I addressed here and with my colleagues that happened before I even campaigned for Congress, certainly not anything I did as a Member of Congress, but that cancelation is taken to an extreme, and it should not happen.
Then the fact that we did object to electoral college votes, that is something we are able to do. You disagreed with us, and here we are, having a perfectly great conversation. I wish we could have the same type of conversation with our Democrat colleagues because they have, indeed, objected to electoral college votes in the past, I think, every Presidential election for the past 20 years or so. Thank you for reminding me that, and thank you for setting this up tonight.
Mr. ROY. I am going to yield to the gentleman from Pennsylvania. I would ask the Speaker how much time we have remaining.
The SPEAKER pro tempore. The gentleman has 16 minutes remaining.
Mr. ROY. I thank the Speaker. Right before I yield to the gentleman from Pennsylvania, I want to appreciate his service, his service to the country, both in the military and now in Congress. I know he has a passion for this issue.
Mr. Speaker, I yield to my friend from Pennsylvania.
Mr. PERRY. Mr. Speaker, I appreciate Mr. Roy, my great friend from Texas. I appreciate the sacrifices that he has made on behalf of this great Nation.
If you know me, you know I am a fan of books because I think, in this transient, throwaway society, they are a record of things that happened in the past. So, like I said, if you know me, you know I love books. They never asked me, because I am not running for President, what books do you recommend? But if I were running for President and they ever deigned to ask me, this would be one. This is by a guy named Alexsandr Solzhenitsyn. It is called ``Warning to the West.'' It is hard to come by. It is a little expensive, but it is well worth the effort. I just want to read an excerpt to you where he is thinking about the West as he sits in a Russian gulag.
``We contemplate the West from what will be your future, or we look back 70 years to see our past suddenly repeating itself today. And what we see is always the same as it was then: adults deferring to the opinion of their children; the younger generation carried away by shallow, worthless ideas; professors scared of being unfashionable; journalists refusing to take responsibility for the words they squander so easily; universal sympathy for revolutionary extremists; people with serious objections unable or unwilling to voice them; the majority passively obsessed by a feeling of doom; feeble governments; societies whose defensive reactions have become paralyzed; spiritual confusion leading to political upheaval. What will happen as a result of all this lies ahead of us. But the time is near, and from bitter memory, we can easily predict what these events will be.''
Mr. ROY. Will the gentleman yield?
Mr. PERRY. I certainly will.
Mr. ROY. I also have a quote here I was going to close with from Alexsandr Solzhenitsyn because it is so on point. I am going to go ahead and do it now rather than closing with it because you just went there.
He said this in another part of that book:
What was drummed in our ears as political courses, we have now internalized. Live comfortably and all will be well ever after. We lie to ourselves to preserve our peace of mind. It is not they who should be blamed, but ourselves. One can object but cannot imagine what to do. Gags have been stuffed into our mouths. Nobody wants to listen to us, and nobody asks our opinion. How can we force them to listen to us? It is impossible to change their minds. Some will lose their jobs, but there are no loopholes for anybody who wants to be honest.
Now, that may sound like a diatribe from a conservative talk radio host today, but it wasn't. It was him.
Mr. PERRY. It was a guy who lived it, who saw it happen, who lived under the oppression of a Russian gulag, imprisoned for decades, and watched the West, watched 66 million souls exterminated on the border of Russia and Europe, and Europe did nothing about it.
We are in this Capitol today, as Chip has already said, surrounded by razor wire and fences. Free speech, they are saying: Well, you have free speech. The government is not censoring you. The government is not canceling you.
Well, in this age where Google, Facebook, these platforms have 95, 99 percent market share, whatever the heck it is, when you are taken off that, your free speech is taken away, effectively.
We are not here to talk to just each other. Free speech means you can talk to each other, everybody else. So it is not about being able to just have a conversation with yourself in a cell. Free speech is about discussing ideas, and some of them are going to be unpalatable.
There were book burnings back at this time because they wanted to destroy ideas. We are not afraid of ideas. We are afraid of the advent of communism and socialism in our country, but we are not afraid to discuss it because we know that our ideas will win.
What we are afraid of is not being able to discuss it, and that is what is happening. That is happening all across America, whether you are Project Veritas, whether you are President Trump, whether you are Marjorie Taylor Greene and you say the wrong thing. You say the wrong thing, and it is not about disagreement for the other side; it is about obliteration of your thought.
This is a very, very dangerous precipice that we stand on, and we know the outcome. Solzhenitsyn, even though he was discredited--
imagine, discredited by the Soviet Union and the Russians. But he came to America, and he tried to tell us over and over and over again.
Many people know, but my good friend from Texas talked about the concern the American people have. They are scared.
{time} 1930
They are not scared of their neighbor. They are not scared of a Democrat. They are not scared of a Republican. They are scared of their government. This is a government of and for the people, by the people. This is our government. The government doesn't own us; we own it. The government is supposed to fear us.
You know, I tell people, it didn't end or it didn't begin with gulags and slave labor work camps where people died of exposure, starvation, exhaustion. It didn't start with that. It started with what we are talking about right now, with razor wire and fences around your Capitol and the inability to say what you want to say. That is where it starts.
We don't have to ask: Well, where does it end?
We know where it ends.
I thank the good gentleman from Texas for this opportunity. You know that we will stand right with you in this crusade to keep America free and to keep speech free.
Mr. ROY. Mr. Speaker, I appreciate the gentleman from Pennsylvania. I know that is true and I know your heart for service, and I know wearing the uniform of the military of the United States meant a lot to you and that your service here means a lot.
Mr. Speaker, as I get ready to yield to my friend from West Virginia, I would add that my colleagues across the other side of the aisle are effectively canceling Congress. I mean, it is pretty extraordinary when the members of a body essentially act to cancel its own institution.
Proxy voting. Half of my Democratic colleagues are never here. About half of the time I look over there and you look at the number of people there, and they are voting from home. By the way, the rules suggest that is supposed to be directly tied to the pandemic. But do you know how many of my colleagues on the other side of the aisle--and maybe increasingly a few on my side of the aisle--have been here voting and then submit the proxy form and then fly home?
It happens.
We are turning this institution on its head. We have remote hearings that are halfway functional, where you sit there for an hour trying to hear each other. We have no regular schedule. It is come and go. It takes hours to vote. We have no regular order. We have massive bills. We have things being done in smoke-filled rooms. We never get to amend. We never get to debate. We never get to actually have an actual discussion on the floor of the House. And we have fence and razor wire around the Capitol.
Tell me how Democrats are not canceling Congress. You might as well just say Speaker Pelosi can just pass a bill by herself.
I know my friend from West Virginia is going to talk a little bit about spending, and the only thing that I will add to my point here about order is that we are going to be passing a $2 trillion monstrosity of a bill in the next week with no actual debate or amendment on the floor of this body; no real review by the members of this body. That is an absolute travesty.
Mr. Speaker, I yield to the gentleman from West Virginia (Mr. Mooney).
Sanctity of Human Life and the Unborn
Mr. MOONEY. Mr. Speaker, I will talk a little bit about some concerns and, generally, about the sanctity of human life and the unborn.
I rise today in memory of the over 60 million babies who have been killed through abortion since the Supreme Court's disastrous decision Roe v. Wade. As a nation, we have taken extraordinary steps to protect public health and save lives amid the coronavirus outbreak, but there is a huge contradiction when it comes to protecting human life in the womb.
Protecting all human life should be a bipartisan issue. Yet, today, President Biden is driving policies like taxpayer funding of abortion and naming pro-abortion extremist Xavier Becerra as the Health and Human Services Secretary.
As recently as 2012, President Biden restated his long-held view that human life begins at conception. He said: ``With regard to abortion, I accept my church's position that life begins at conception.''
Well, it is not only a religious belief, but it is also a scientific fact that human life begins at conception. Thanks to modern scientific advancements, we now can visually see and know the personhood of preborn children.
Doctors can operate on babies in the womb to save their lives. We know a preborn baby's heart starts to beat at about 6 weeks. Nails begin to form at 10 weeks, and babies have fingerprints by 13 weeks.
It is time to give a voice to the voiceless. It is time for the law to acknowledge the dignity of the preborn babies who are the most helpless among us.
I urge my fellow Members of Congress to join me in defense of all human life, standing up for all human life. I urge President Biden to actually enact his personally held views that he acknowledges that it begins at conception. I think we actually all know that. It is a scientific fact.
The reconciliation bill that is coming up, there are pro-life concerns in this bill. For starters, it fails to include the traditional what we call the high protections. That is a longstanding policy in Congress that your taxpayer dollars do not go for abortions. This bill waives that. It enables taxpayer funding of abortion.
There are more than $414 billion taxpayer dollars, supposedly intended for COVID-19 relief, that have no Hyde protections.
So we are talking a lot about the cancel culture. You have, on the one hand, a division in this country. Many of us believe it is the taking of a human life, it is killing, it is murder; and we object to that. But instead of respecting our views, you actually want to take money from us through taxes and use our actual dollars to kill children. If you are going to talk about cancel culture, at least respect the differences of opinion.
But this bill doesn't do that. This bill we are going to vote on this week doesn't do that. It gets rid of the high protections. It is taxpayer-funded abortions. It also requires taxpayers to subsidize health plans that potentially cover elective abortions.
National Debt
Mr. MOONEY. Mr. Speaker, now I am going to change topics to something that is not talked about enough in this Congress, and that is spending. We talk a lot about these bills and how much we are going to spend on this group and spend on that group, and we are going to give money to this and give money to that.
Mr. ROY. Mr. Speaker, may I ask how much time I have remaining?
The SPEAKER pro tempore. The gentleman has 5 minutes remaining.
Mr. ROY. Mr. Speaker, I yield to the gentleman from West Virginia.
Mr. MOONEY. Federal debt has increased sharply. I have this beautiful chart here starting in 1790, the first budget in our country right after the Revolutionary War, and you can see the national debt. This is done in a fair way. It is debt to the gross domestic product. So it is a percentage of the domestic product in debt.
And you can see, in 1790, the mark where it was. We just finished the Civil War. So we owed some money to the soldiers. We paid that off in the next 40 years up until the Civil War. And in the Civil War there was a little bit of debt, and it goes back down again. And you can see it is kind of steadily up and down a bit. World War II, okay. World War II, again, debt-to-gross-domestic-product. We were just trying to survive there, and the debt is back down again.
But when you get to where we are today, things have gone completely out of control. The Congressional Budget Office estimates an additional
$104 trillion will be added by 2050. The Congressional Budget Office forecasted debt would rise 200 percent. Today, as I stand here right now, we have $27.9 trillion in national debt.
$27.9 trillion, what is that to you? That is $84,000.
That is actually a little more than $84,000 of debt to every American citizen right here today.
Now, on this day 1 year ago, in 2020, the U.S. national debt was
$23.4 trillion, that was $72,309 in debt per person. We have actually borrowed $10,000 per person in 1 year. I mean, that is out of control.
And when you hear about these bills--I plan to vote against this one tomorrow; I think many of us do--they say, oh, we are going to give this and give that.
No. They are taking it from you. This is debt that your children will have to pay.
This $2 trillion--nearly $2 trillion spending package is full of liberal priorities. We are going to grow our debt to $29 trillion. That is even more debt owed per citizen.
There is a lot of misinformation about where the debt is going. The top two countries we owe the debt to are China and Japan, not actually our friends. We are at global competition with China all the time. They are holding a lot of the debt. We owe China over $1 trillion and we owe Japan over $1 trillion.
The people who are loaning us the money we have to pay back are not necessarily people who have our best interest at heart. Brazil, we owe
$258 billion. India, we owe $216 billion. And the list goes on the debt that is owed to foreign countries.
The national debt was $5.6 trillion in 2000. It increased. Under Obama, it actually doubled. Since the 8 years Obama was President, we doubled our national debt. And we are adding another--projected here--a completely out of control debt-to-GDP ratio.
So I urge my colleagues to consider the future. Don't buy into the--
the government has no money it doesn't take from you that you are going to have to pay back. We need to be judicious with these dollars, and most of this is not going to coronavirus relief anyway.
Mr. ROY. Mr. Speaker, I appreciate the gentleman from West Virginia for his remarks. And I would echo that--and I think the gentleman would agree--that I believe that, of the $2 trillion, only 9 percent is directed to COVID relief.
And I really just can't believe that my colleagues on the other side of the aisle can really market this as a COVID relief bill when, by the way, we have $1 trillion remaining from the $4 trillion last year and only 9 percent of it is directed to COVID.
Does the gentleman agree?
Mr. MOONEY. I would agree. And I would add that 27 percent of this bill, over $510 billion goes to State and local governments. So the taxpayers of my State of West Virginia and your State of Texas and other States are literally bailing out States that have failed to manage their own budgets.
West Virginia taxpayers shouldn't have to pay for New York and Illinois and California that are completely out of control in their spending. $510 billion is going to bail out these State and local governments. It is not a good use of taxpayer dollars.
Mr. ROY. Mr. Speaker, I would agree with the gentleman from West Virginia, and I appreciate his comments.
I have 1 minute left and I will simply just say this: This chart showing debt is not just about the big number. It is not just about the
$30 trillion of debt. This is about tyranny.
That money, that debt that we owe to our kids and grandkids is being used to fund an education system that teaches our kids that America is evil.
It is being used to fund an education system that won't even put teachers back to work.
It is being used to fund a DHS that won't secure the border and is turning it into a catch-and-release agency.
It is being used to fund the very institutions that are coming after our precious Bill of Rights.
And I would just say to the Speaker and my friends on the other side of the aisle: It is time that we come together and protect the rights given to us by our Creator, that are reflected and defended in the Constitution of the United States.
Mr. Speaker, I yield back the balance of my time.
____________________
SOURCE: Congressional Record Vol. 167, No. 36
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