Andy Biggs

Mr. BIGGS

Mr. BIGGS. Mr. Chair, I have an amendment at the desk.

Mr. BIGGS. Mr. Chair, I rise to speak in support of my amendment, which prohibits the use of funds to pay the salary and expenses of the DHS Under Secretary for the Office of Strategy, Policy, and Plans, Robert Silvers. Much of my argument is the same. In a court hearing, they are found to have violated the free speech rights of Americans systematically. They are going to lose in court, and we have an opportunity to hold them accountable. I feel the need to try to throw maybe a slider instead of a fastball. I am reminded of George Mason, who said many years ago something to the effect that because individuals can be punished and rewarded in Heaven but nations can't, nations need to be held accountable on Earth. I am now making an appeal that we hold individuals where we can accountable on Earth. What we have are people who systematically defied the rights of American citizens for no other reason than they didn't like what was being said about the administration. They politicized their position, and we are going to hold them accountable. I thought it was $17 million or something like that that was going to come off their overall budget. Maybe I am off on that--$19 million? I was pretty close. Let me give you another example. Somebody said recently that they will take responsibility for that, for a problem that this administration was doing. That begs the question: How did you take responsibility for it? You can't just say, ``I take responsibility. I take the full blame.'' No. What did you do? What did you do to take blame? Were you fired? Were you reprimanded? What happened? If you don't hold people accountable, they will persist. There is a theory of punishment in criminal law--and I practiced criminal law--and it was, why do you have punishment and sentencing at all? You have punishment and sentencing for public safety. That is one reason. You also have two kinds of deterrents. You have a general deterrent and a specific deterrent. If you have a specific deterrent, you are trying to teach that individual that that conduct is not acceptable and cannot happen again, so you punish them in whatever way you can that is appropriate. A general deterrent is when the entire society--in this instance, it is the Federal bureaucracy that says, if we do that, we are subject to specific deterrents--in other words, maybe even the elimination of our position, elimination of our salary, whatever it may be. If we don't hold people accountable, this action will persist because there will be no specific or general deterrents. Mr. Chair, I reserve the balance of my time.

Mr. BIGGS. Mr. Chair, may I inquire as to the time remaining.

Mr. BIGGS. Mr. Chair, I appreciate my colleague talking about the border. I wasn't going to bring up the border because that is not what my main beef is with this amendment. My beef was about the censorship of U.S. citizens, but if you want to talk border, let's talk border. I have to clear up one fact that I hear so often from my colleagues across the aisle. When they say something like 90 percent of all the fentanyl that is coming across the border is seized at ports of entry, that is a total sham statement. Ninety percent of interdictions take place at ports of entry, not 90 percent of the drugs coming across. Why do you stop 90-plus percent at the ports of entry? Because that is where the X-ray machines are, where the dogs are, where the personnel is. You have all the equipment, but do you know where you don't have equipment? How about the 62-linear miles of the Tohono O'odham Nation Reservation in southern Arizona, which is one of the busiest drug and human trafficking corridors in the world? This Under Secretary has not secured the border. That is two strikes. I want to get back to the CISA argument because we have an individual who systematically is okay with censoring United States citizens who are exercising First Amendment rights, but if we want to talk border, I will be here till hell freezes over to talk about why we need to make changes in the Homeland Security folks on the border. Mr. Chair, I yield back the balance of my time.

Mr. BIGGS. Mr. Chair, I demand a recorded vote.

Mr. BIGGS. Mr. Chair, may I inquire how much time is remaining.

Mr. BIGGS. Mr. Chairman, I would rebut a couple of things. When you quote statistics saying 94 percent of all drugs coming into the country are stopped at interior checkpoints or ports of entry, that is an inaccurate statement. It is 94 percent of drugs that are interdicted, that we catch, that is where you catch them. Why do you catch them there? I mean, this is not rocket science. You catch them there because you have personnel there. You have drug- sniffing dogs. You have X-ray machines that are looking at trucks. You have personnel there. But I will tell you what you don't have. Come with me to San Miguel Gate. I have been all over southern Texas. I have been all over southern Arizona and Southern California. Come with me to San Miguel Gate. There is nothing near the San Miguel Gate. The nearest town south of the border is Caborca; that is 2 hours away. You know what happens? You have more got-aways, known and unknown, through that sector than anywhere else in the country. Good grief. They don't want to be caught because they are the ones that are bringing in drugs and human trafficking. That is just kind of a fallacious argument. The next thing is when you say, only two people voted to increase Homeland Security funding, it was because it was an omnibus bill. You had every Christmas tree ornament in the world on that puppy, just enough to drive every Republican off but two. Yeah, if we had done 12 bills like so many of us advocate, you might have seen a different thing. You might have seen a kind of a joinder of stuff. This does not violate the Bill of Attainder provision of the Constitution. It doesn't violate a court decision. What this is is adherence to the Holman Rule? Mr. Chairman, I urge adoption, and I yield back the balance of my time.

Mr. BIGGS. Mr. Chairman, I demand a recorded vote.

Mr. BIGGS. Mr. Chair, I have an amendment at the desk.

Mr. BIGGS. Mr. Chairman, at the risk of sounding like a broken record, I rise in support of my amendment, which prohibits the use of funds to pay the salary and expenses of DHS Director of the Departmental GAO-OIG liaison office Jim Crumpacker. Director Crumpacker leads DHS's Department of OIG liaison office, an office tasked with maintaining mutually beneficial and productive relations with GAO and the OIG. That is what Mr. Crumpacker stated in testimony before the Senate several years ago. Unfortunately, under the Biden administration, that mutually beneficial and productive relationship has broken down completely. DHS continues to obstruct oversight by its own inspector general in violation of the agency's obligations under the Inspector General Act. Last year, then-Ranking Member Comer and Oversight Committee Republicans opened an investigation into reports that the Department of Homeland Security was obstructing efforts by their inspector general to conduct oversight over DHS programs and policies consistent with its obligations under the Inspector General Act. At the time the letter was sent, committee Republicans had uncovered a memo circulated to Customs and Border Protection employees, which essentially encouraged CBP employees to resist OIG's request for access to CBP systems. Think of that. You have a memo going out to CBP employees saying, Don't cooperate with the OIG. The memo falsely claimed that OIG's access to information was not unlimited, contrary to the statute, incorrectly relying on a statute that limited public disclosure of information. To be clear, the Inspector General Act contains no such limitation. DHS/OIG has a statutory mandate to have timely access to all records, reports, audits, reviews, documents, papers, recommendations, or other materials from DHS components, with only a narrow national security exemption that requires Congressional notification. Unfortunately, DHS continues to slow-walk and stonewall oversight efforts. In June, Inspector General Cuffari came to committee and testified under oath that: Since the fall of 2021, DHS/OIG has consistently reported DHS delays and denials of DHS/OIG's request for information. These are requests for information allowed under statute, and a response is mandated. These are requests for information that our more than 700 career professionals need in order to do their jobs in the OIG offices and which DHS is required to provide to DHS/OIG consistent with the statute. I remain hopeful that DHS will improve its responsiveness to our requests for information so that DHS/OIG can continue to provide Congress and the public robust and timely oversight with the words that Inspector General Cuffari said. I appreciate his optimism, but after nearly 3 years, Congress may need to start twisting some arms. This is the place, this is the individual who has put his thumb on the scale to prevent that information from going to the inspector general, information that we need, and we need the results of that OIG report. Mr. Chairman, I reserve the balance of my time.

Mr. BIGGS. Mr. Chair, may I inquire how much time is remaining.

Mr. BIGGS. Mr. Chair, let's litigate the border some more, and let's talk about how these things get funded. If that is the new deal that you throw an omnibus bill because you don't bother to do your 12 bills and you are going to say, Oh, you voted against something, then we should start talking about all of the bad programs and policies that you all voted for in that omnibus bill that has left us with $2 trillion in deficit this year. That is what you did. You added $2 trillion to the national debt. Mr. Chair, the bottom line is they have an individual here, Mr. Crumpacker, who has basically said we are not going to provide information to the DHS-OIG. What are we going to do about it? We are going to say, Oh, that is just too bad. That is too bad. Mr. Chair, we have a massive border problem. I don't even think my colleague across the aisle would disagree with that. Last Friday in the Rules Committee, the gentleman from Massachusetts said there was no border crisis. I thought that was intriguing. You got 11,000 people rolling through the Tucson sector. Those are the encounters. They don't get those kinds of groups in Tucson because they are getting the runners. But you know what, the whole border is in disarray, and that is between the ports of entry. That is your ports of entry that you are so pleased with. You have the CBP One app bringing people in by the tens of thousands. I think we need to hold Mr. Crumpacker responsible. Mr. Chair, I yield back the balance of my time.

Mr. BIGGS. Mr. Chairman, I demand a recorded vote.

Mr. BIGGS. Mr. Chair, I have an amendment at the desk.

Mr. BIGGS. Mr. Chairman, I rise to speak in support of my amendment, which prohibits the use of funds to pay the salary and expenses of DHS Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas. I want to speak about Secretary Mayorkas. I want to speak about what has happened at the border. By the time we are standing here today, you have millions and millions of people who have come through illegally into our country, and what they have done is they have surrendered. In the meantime, you have at least 2.5 million people who have not surrendered and who have escaped into the country. I have asked Secretary Mayorkas, I brought him to a Border Security Caucus. I said: Secretary, do you know what the Secure Fence Act of 2006 says? Can you tell me, do we have operational control of the border? He says: Oh, yeah, we have operational control of the border. Okay. Then how come you have set a record every month? At that point, he had set a record every month, from February 2021; every month a new record. In fact, last month we had another new record: 304,000 encounters. We brought him into the Committee on the Judiciary. He is under oath at that point. Do you know what the definition of operational control of the border is? Oh, yeah. Do we have it? Yeah, we have it. Then, Mr. Secretary, why in the world are we seeing literally tens of thousands of people, 8 to 9,000 most days, some days 10, 12, 13,000 people? That is a violation of that act. He says, Look, we have control. The last time we had him in, what, just a month, month-and-a-half ago: Mr. Secretary, hey, do you have operational control? And he says, Yeah. We bring out the poster with the statute again and said, Hey, take a look at the statute. He says, Oh, no, no. We don't have operational control with that. We have defined our own operational control. That is the kind of person that needs to be held accountable. Mr. Chairman, I yield 1 minute to the gentleman from Louisiana (Mr. Scalise), our distinguished majority leader, who we are so happy to see with us on the floor tonight.

Mr. BIGGS. Mr. Chair, I reserve the balance of my time.

Mr. BIGGS. Mr. Chair, may I inquire as to the time remaining.

Mr. BIGGS. Mr. Chair, let's talk about which side wants to get something done on the border. I keep hearing about the magnificent omni bill. How many Democrats voted for H.R. 2 in this House? Not one. Don't tell me that you care about the border. You didn't vote to secure the border with H.R. 2. When you say Americans are importing the drugs, first of all, you got it wrong again. I don't think you are listening. Ninety-two percent of the drugs they catch, that is what they catch. It is what they interdict. That is what they stop. That is who they arrest. That takes place at the ports of entry. That ain't where 92 percent of the drugs are coming through. They are coming through the places wide open where there is no fencing in Arizona. We don't have the river. We have four-strand barbed-wire fence in places. They are coming through there. It is considered the number one drug trafficking corridor in the world. Don't be telling me that we are stopping 92 percent of the drugs because we are not. Don't show me a heat map of where people are coming through in Texas. That is xenophobic. You need to spread out. Don't be so parochial. Let's go to Arizona. I will take you to Cocopah. We will stand right there. Literally hundreds of people walk on through. They are not coming from the Northern Triangle states. They are coming from Mauritania. They are coming from Mali and Togo. They are coming from all over the world. Don't say that you guys care about the border because you are not doing a damn thing to stop it. What is happening on the border is a crisis. It is the largest mass migration in the history of this entire world. It is time you join us and bring it under control because it is bringing crime. Laredo is great. Good. Do you know what they are releasing in Cochise County now? Secretary Mayorkas is calling them freedom runs. We are just going to release people into the community and call them freedom runs. Mr. Chair, it is time to do something, and I urge my colleagues to vote for my amendment. Mr. Chair, I yield back the balance of my time.

Mr. BIGGS. Mr. Chair, I have an amendment at the desk.

Mr. BIGGS. Mr. Chair, I rise to speak in support of my amendment, which prohibits the use of funds in furtherance of the public charge ground of inadmissibility rule. Section 212 of the Immigration and Nationality Act states that any alien who is likely at any time to become a public charge is inadmissible for entry or a readjustment of status. Any alien at any time who might become a public charge is inadmissible for entry or even for readjustment of status. Think about that. Someone is a public charge if they are likely to become primarily dependent on the government for subsistence, as demonstrated by either receipt of public cash assistance for income maintenance or institutionalization for long-term care at government expense. The primary factor that the DHS is supposed to look at when determining if someone is or will likely be a public charge is the likelihood that the person will be reliant on government benefits and services, such as Medicaid and SNAP. This past December, the DHS greatly reduced the number of public benefits considered when determining whether an immigrant is or will be a public charge and thus inadmissible for entry or permanent residency. The Trump administration rightly included programs such as SNAP, housing vouchers, and Medicaid in its determinations on whether an individual would be a public charge. However, President Biden and Secretary Mayorkas have decided that not only should we take in thousands of illegal aliens every day but that they should receive the same benefits that thousands of struggling Americans rely on and that those same Americans should pay for it. The American ideals of self-sufficiency and personal responsibility have always been the spirit of our immigration law. It is in this spirit that Congress decided that immigrants who are likely to become a public charge are ineligible for admittance or permanent residency. However, under this new rule, individuals who are reliant on a number of government benefits can be considered self-sufficient when applying for renewal or adjustment of status. The DHS' new rule is not only costly to the American taxpayer but also directly incentivizes hundreds of thousands of illegal aliens to cross the southern border and come into our country. It seems to me that Secretary Mayorkas is not only negligent and reckless with securing the border, but he is also negligent and reckless with the American taxpayers' hard-earned money. That is why I am calling to stop any funding for the DHS' new public charge rule until they secure our border and start acting in the best interests of the American people. Mr. Chair, I reserve the balance of my time.

Mr. BIGGS. Mr. Chair, I urge the passage of my amendment, and I yield back the balance of my time.

Mr. BIGGS. Mr. Chair, I have an amendment at the desk.

Mr. BIGGS. Mr. Chair, I rise to speak in support of my amendment. My amendment prohibits the use of funds to implement a TSA vaccine or mask mandate. For years, the Biden administration subjected millions of Americans to draconian vaccine and mask mandates, even when the science showed these mandates did very little. I remember at one point having literally meta studies and individual studies showing the inefficacy of masks, but we were nonetheless compelled to wear masks. Now, we are beginning to hear the same people and institutions suggesting again that we need to start looking at public vaccine and mask mandates due to small rises in COVID. This must be coming up on an election year or something. Specifically, there is talk about TSA mandating people who wish to fly to wear a mask or be vaccinated. These types of mandates are just another form of overreach by this power-grabbing administration, and the American people are not going to put up with it for a second time. Americans make calculated decisions about their health risks every day. You just saw the great Steve Scalise come down, with a judgment of his own health risk, so he could participate on the floor in something that is meaningful to him. We all make those types of decisions about our health risks every day. The last thing they need is for unelected bureaucrats to tell them once again when they can and cannot fly, especially since we now know the actual efficacy, or I should say ineffectiveness, of the vaccine and masks. These calls to renew vaccine and mask mandates are coming from the same people such as Anthony Fauci, who relished controlling the day-to- day lives of Americans and profited off it. Americans have had enough. This is why we must ensure that neither President Biden, Anthony Fauci, or any other bureaucrat can force Americans to get a vaccine or wear a mask just to exercise their right to travel. Mr. Chair, I reserve the balance of my time.

Mr. BIGGS. Mr. Chair, I think this does belong in this bill. TSA is in this bill, and this is an important policy. I urge the passage of my amendment to stop any funds from being used to implement a TSA vaccine or mask mandate. Mr. Chair, I yield back the balance of my time.

Mr. BIGGS

Mr. BIGGS. Mr. Chair, I have an amendment at the desk.