Sean Casten

Mr. CASTEN

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

Mr. CASTEN. I yield back the balance of my time.

Mr. CASTEN. Mr. Speaker, I rise in opposition to this amendment. This amendment would give the Secretary of Defense sweeping discretion to grant the highest level of security clearances to an unlimited number of investment professionals without any contract, mission, or defined purpose. Now, the theory, as we just heard, is that these investors would then conduct due diligence and steer Federal resources toward companies that can support our national defense. In practice, this would turn our national secrets into another way for the Trump White House to monetize their jobs, putting their friends' wealth over the national interest. Now, lest anybody accuse me of making a partisan point, let's review some recent history, tying specifically to the individuals in the Trump administration who would be making decisions about how to share our national secrets. In the weeks leading up to President Trump's military strikes on Iran, reports found that Secretary Hegseth's broker inquired about a multimillion dollar investment in major defense companies. Earlier this year, President Trump's own leadership PAC sent fundraising emails that offered his donors access to national security debriefings on threats, border security, and foreign adversaries. Don Trump, Jr.'s venture capital firm has invested in more than a dozen defense tech companies. Subsequent to his investment, those companies secured $3.2 billion in direct government business and $3.1 billion in additional future contract options. In one case, the White House directly pressured the Department of Defense to provide $620 million in financing to one of young Donald's portfolio companies. Speaking of the children, the Trump administration recently approved $1.6 billion in Federal financing for a small U.S. company to lead a major mining project in Kazakhstan. That company is not only partially owned by Donald Trump's children, but the deal was negotiated by Secretary of Commerce Lutnick's children. Hell, even Donald Trump's teleprompter operator is in on the action, having just made $100,000 by betting on Trump's speeches that only he had seen on prediction markets. Of course, just this past week, Trump Media announced plans to sell early access to the President's market-moving Truth Social posts so that Trump can make money while you front-run the stock market. To be sure, Mr. Issa's amendment does specifically say that no investor may use classified information for personal financial gain. But I would ask you: Who in the Trump White House is going to enforce that provision? Trump? Lutnick? His personal lawyer, Todd Blanche? I think we know better. What we have here is an amendment to provide investment professionals with both the means and the motive to engage in insider trading, to help the rich get richer, and to compromise the integrity of U.S. financial markets. The question that we have right now in this amendment is a really simple one: What do you stand for? If you stand for corruption, vote ``yes''. But if you stand for national security, for integrity, and for capitalism, vote ``no''. That may be a character test for some in this Chamber, but it is not a remotely close call. Mr. Chair, I reserve the balance of my time.

Mr. CASTEN. Mr. Chair, I rise in opposition to the amendment.

Mr. CASTEN

Mr. CASTEN. Happy summer. It is time to fire up the grill, fire up the air conditioner, and book some road trips, if you can afford to fuel them. Since Donald Trump's election, gasoline prices have skyrocketed. Household energy bills are up by as much as 18 percent. In response to this, the President said: ``I don't think about Americans' financial situation.'' That is more than just a psychotic lack of empathy because he also said: ``. . . when oil prices go up we make a lot of money.'' Who is ``we'' in this situation? In the words of Chris Rock: ``It ain't us.'' But it is par for the course in a White House that has always put the interests of oil and gas producers ahead of consumers. So I have got this crazy idea. What if we actually put forth an energy policy that unambiguously put consumers first, that always prioritized the most reliable, lowest cost sources of energy, even if that came at the expense of oil company profits? That is exactly what Congressman Levin and I have put forward in our Energy Bills Relief Act, which has over 158 cosponsors in the House. Your bills are too high. Our bills are too high. It is long past time for us to do something about it.

Mr. CASTEN

Mr. CASTEN. Mr. Speaker. I missed Roll Call No. 167. Had I been present, I would have voted YES on Roll Call No. 167.

Mr. CASTEN

Mr. CASTEN. Mr. Speaker, what should we say to angry men in robes? What are we going to say to men in robes who are angry about the outcome of the Civil War? What are we going to say to men in robes who are angry about Reconstruction-era amendments to our Constitution that said that anyone born in America can't have their voice or their vote suppressed, regardless of their race? What are we going to say to men in robes who are angry that Congress finally enshrined those protections into law through the 1964 and 1965 Civil Rights Acts? What are we going to say to men in robes who are angry that those laws gave voices to people whose voices had been suppressed since 1619? What are we going to say to those angry men if they believe that their robes, and their robes alone, are going to scare us into silence; that it will let them force their racist and unconstitutional wills on us? Chief Justice Roberts has said that we now live in a color-blind society, to which I would ask you all: Does your answer to those questions depend on whether that robe is white or black? Make absolutely no mistake, the agenda of this Supreme Court and the agenda of the Klan are far too similar. This court decided in Shelby that Congress couldn't supervise State elections that had a history of discrimination. They decided in Calais that it is okay to design congressional districts to suppress minority voices. They will do that all, confident that their robes are going to scare us all into silence. I ask you again: What are we going to say to all of these angry men in robes? Because we do have a voice in this body. We have the legislative authority to slash their jurisdiction, to take away their ability to decide what cases to hear. We have the power to defend this coequal branch against their encroachments, to defend the Constitution, and to defend every American who yearns for a country that is better than this. Now, some of you are no doubt going to favor silence. But the best among us in this body right now are going to lift every one of our voices and sing. We are going to sing a song that is full of the faith that all of that dark past has taught us but is rich with the hope that this present has brought us. Make no mistake, every one of us, the singers and the silent, are going to be heard.

Mr. CASTEN

Mr. CASTEN. Mr. Speaker, I thank Mr. Levin for his remarks. As we prepare to close, I want to talk a little bit about how the Energy Bills Relief Act fits into the broader conversation we are having about energy permitting right now. To do this, I want to ask you to consider that you saw someone on TV who said the reason we don't have a lot of houses in America is because of the permitting barriers to building houses out of straw. You would probably have two thoughts. The first is, who the heck wants to build a house out of straw? The second thought you might have is what little pig is behind this advocacy campaign. I tell you that because you have to look at what is happening in the energy sector right now, among those in the fossil fuel industry who are telling you that the permitting problem we have is a difficulty deploying fossil fuel assets. Let's look at some numbers. In the year 2010, the United States consumed 1.1 billion short tons per year of coal. Today, we consume about 500 million. That is a more than 50 percent drop in the amount of coal our country is consuming. In the year 2000, the United States consumed about 20 million barrels of oil per day. Today, we consume about 20 million barrels of oil per day. We drive more miles and have more people, yet we are consuming the same amount of oil. Our houses are just as well-lit, just as warm, yet we are consuming half as much coal. How did we get to that point? The reason we got to that point is because vehicles got more efficient. Given the choice between driving a car that costs you $40 to fill up and one that costs $20, people prefer $20. If the choice is $100 versus $50, people prefer $50. Heck, if you have an electric vehicle, you don't have to pay at all, especially if you have a solar panel on your roof. People like not paying for energy. The other way that that happened is that the fastest growing source of new energy in this country has been renewable energy. We now generate more power from non-hydro renewables than we do from all the coal plants in the country. That is not because we got woke. It is because we got greedy. It is because markets said they want to build the cheap stuff, and consumers wanted to benefit from that cheap stuff. Now, step back and say, okay, what do you do if you are a fossil fuel company that is selling something that is losing market share? There is a new technology coming out that is eating into your customer base. You can't sell as much. They have done two things. Number one, they have shifted to exports. In 2016, the United States basically didn't export any natural gas at all. By 2021, we were exporting 300,000 million cubic feet per year. Today, we are over 500,000 million cubic feet per year. It is as if we invented cell phones and then decided to double down on exporting rotary phone technology to the rest of the world. We are still producing a lot of oil in the United States, but oil is increasingly also an export play. If there is a permitting problem that is blocking our ability to produce and distribute oil and gas, how is it that it is so easy to get it down to the Gulf Coast and ship it out to overseas? The truth is, it ain't that hard. The reason why we are having this conversation about permitting is really, really simple. Half of the businesses in this country, by definition, are below average. A competitive market does not reward below-average businesses. Now, we find ourselves in a position where energy industry participants that historically made sure that we kept our lights on, made sure that our cars could drive, and made sure that our homes were warm built the economy that we have, and we are grateful to them. They are now losing market share, and instead of pivoting to providing people with the technologies they want, they are, number one, shifting to exports to try to go places that are not blessed with the kind of competitive capitalistic markets that we have in the United States; and, number two, they are doing everything they can to ask people in this body to please prevent capitalism from eating my lunch because I cannot compete in a competitive market. That is what is going on. The reason why we are spending this time talking so much about costs and energy is because we have this amazing opportunity right now that we can have our cake and eat it, too. When we embrace clean energy, we are embracing affordable energy. When we embrace consumers, we are embracing competition. To turn against those is to turn against capitalism. It is to turn against everything that ever truly made America great. It is to turn against the things that have kept up. Then you ask how much farther we could go. I will give you some crazy statistics. The United States' total GDP divided by the total amount of energy that the United States uses, we generate about $200 of GDP per million Btu of primary energy. The United Kingdom generates almost 350 million Btu, almost twice as much as we generate. The Danes generate over 500. Their economies are vastly more efficient at turning energy into wealth than the United States is--vastly more, like twice as efficient. Imagine if we were so bad at turning labor into wealth as our competitors. We would be having a crisis about why American labor is so uncompetitive. Imagine if you were running a business that did a terrible job at turning capital into wealth, and we were earning terrible returns on investment in the United States economy. We would be having a crisis. We should be having a crisis about the fact that we have done such a horrible job at turning energy into economic activity. We can be depressed about that, or we can be enormously optimistic at the opportunity we have in front of us. We don't have a lot of time to prevent massive ecological disaster from climate change, but we do have a way to move forward to avert that crisis and make us stupidly rich. My God, let's move forward. Mr. Speaker, thank you for allowing us the time. I thank Congressman Levin, Congresswoman Kaptur, and Congressman Subramanyam. For goodness' sake, let's move forward. I yield back the balance of my time.

Mr. CASTEN. Mr. Speaker, I yield, again, to gentleman from California (Mr. Levin).

Mr. CASTEN. Mr. Speaker, I yield to the gentlewoman from Ohio (Ms. Kaptur).

Mr. CASTEN. Mr. Speaker, I yield to the gentleman from Virginia (Mr. Subramanyam).

Mr. CASTEN. Mr. Speaker, I thank Congressman Levin. I am going to take a little bit of a personal privilege here and tell you a little bit about Mike's and my background. Mike and I both came into Congress in 2018. Prior to that, we were both in the clean energy industry. I think it is safe to say that prior to the election of Donald Trump in 2016, neither of us thought that our paths involved eventually getting to Congress or certainly being in this moment here right now. I say that because both of us spent our careers, before getting into Congress, building and deploying clean energy, building and deploying low-cost, affordable energy. If you are going to go and build one of those plants, you build the plant, you hook it up, you connect it to the grid. The person who now is controlling the dispatch of that plant never runs it unless it is cheaper than the electric grid. Every minute you own a solar panel, every minute you own a cogeneration plant, a wind turbine, all of these technologies that are out there, you are saying: Is this cheaper or more expensive than the alternative? There is a saying back in the days when I was going and doing all of that, that asking a utility for permission to interconnect to the grid is like asking a man for permission to date his wife. It doesn't matter whether you are cheaper. It doesn't matter whether that is in the national interest. You are a competitive threat, and capitalism works on competition. So fast-forward. Mike and I run for Congress. We win. Speaker Pelosi appoints us both to the Committee on Energy and Commerce, the Subcommittee on Energy, Climate, and Grid Security and charges us, along with our wonderful leader (Ms. Castor), to figure out how to take this knowledge and make sure that we can deploy cheaper, cleaner energy. That work through the 116th Congress, through the 117th Congress ultimately led to the Inflation Reduction Act. In 2022, we passed the largest climate bill in the history of this country, in the history of the world. The purpose of that bill was to make sure that your access to cheap energy was not a function of whether you had capital, whether you could hire the lawyers and the engineers to go and fight with the utility. It was to make sure that every American had access to the cheapest energy. That bill, the Inflation Reduction Act, took a significant step forward in expanding access to cleaner, more affordable energy sources to lower costs for all Americans. I was really proud of the work we did to help write that bill. Then President Trump killed it. Now, killing it didn't prevent all of those generators that got built from operating, because if you have got a solar panel on your roof, it is still cheaper than whatever anybody else is providing. It blocks new people's ability to bring those forward. Last summer, he gutted programs that were designed to boost domestic renewable energy. He slashed incentives to help households save money. He arbitrarily blocked the development of affordable energy sources, while forcing more expensive coal plants to keep running, ensuring that the fossil fuel companies can keep raking in profits at taxpayers' expense. The Energy Bills Relief Act puts an end to that. This is a consumer- focused bill. It is a bill that puts American families first. It restores the tax credits for home energy upgrades that were ended by President Trump. It incentivizes utilities to help consumers save money by funding home weatherization and energy efficiency. Wouldn't you like to spend less on your natural gas bill? Wouldn't you like your utility to be a partner in that? It provides financial assistance to make sure that families don't have their power shut off. It puts an end to price gouging because utilities shouldn't profit while you are struggling. It makes sure that places like data centers cover their own costs, and if a data center opens in your area, that doesn't mean that the costs are pushed onto your household. It gives a voice to the American people and makes sure they are consulted when new energy projects are being developed in their community. This bill was put together in a way that I wish was not so innovative. A lot of bills around here must start by saying what is politically possible. What can we do on a bipartisan basis? Well, if what is scientifically necessary exceeds what is politically possible, then we are failing in any ability to claim to be a leader. What we did in this bill is, it says: What is the energy policy that is necessary? What is the energy policy that is most helpful to American consumers? That is what we set out to do. I am proud of the legislation that Congressman Levin and I have written to do that. With that, I yield back to the great gentleman from California (Mr. Levin).

Mr. CASTEN. Mr. Speaker, families across America are struggling with ever-increasing energy prices. In the last year, electricity prices have soared, increasing by 13 percent under the Trump administration. Utility bills overall have increased at double the rate of inflation. We all know what is driving those increases. We have soaring demand from data centers and other loads, rising prices for natural gas, and much-needed repairs to the grid that have been put off for years. Those are all tangible, identifiable causes of these price increases, but at the center of it all is one really simple reason: American energy policy has always put producers first and families second. Mr. Speaker, you might think that, in a democracy, the fact that there are more consumers than producers would cause the reverse. Yet, in fact, for far too long, we have pursued an energy system with a single goal: Make sure that oil and gas and coal companies keep their profits as high as possible. We have pushed the most expensive, dirtiest forms of energy onto Americans because that is what has helped producers. The Trump administration has done everything they can to curb the rise of more competitive, renewable energy. You hear a lot about how the Trump administration hates clean energy, but that is not true. They don't hate clean energy. They hate affordable energy. Mr. Speaker, there is some good news. We have a plan to fix it, and I am here today because of the Energy Bills Relief Act, a consumer- focused, family-first approach to American energy policy. Renewable energy is the fastest, lowest-cost, most-affordable way to meet rising demand. Right now, there are bottlenecks in the system that prevent renewable energy from getting from where it is generated to where it can be used. Our Energy Bills Relief Act removes the red tape. It makes sure that we can build our domestic energy supply so that we keep your beer cold and your showers hot, and lower your bills at the same time. Mr. Speaker, to do that, we are also going to have to modernize our electric grid and increase capacity by providing much-needed, overdue upgrades using the latest technology. We are starting to fall behind other countries, which means that those costs could rise even further if we don't act, but we have time. We have time to catch up, and the Energy Bills Relief Act helps us to do it. Mr. Speaker, I yield to the gentleman from California (Mr. Levin), my good friend and partner in good trouble on this bill.

Mr. CASTEN. Mr. Speaker, I ask unanimous consent that all Members may have 5 legislative days in which to revise and extend their remarks and include extraneous material in the Record.

Mr. CASTEN

Mr. CASTEN. Mr. Speaker, I rise today to recognize Sandra LaPointe, a seventh grade teacher at Westview Hills Middle School in Willowbrook, Illinois. I recently had the pleasure of surprising Mrs. LaPointe during her social studies class to honor her with our constituent spotlight award. We started making these awards after the last election to try and uplift people who are bringing hope and joy and making us feel good about being Americans because, goodness knows, we need these voices right now. There is not a person in this Chamber who doesn't owe a debt to the great teachers they had along the way who taught them things, but more importantly, who taught them how to learn, made them excited to learn, who challenged them to ask questions about the world because as James Baldwin said: No society progresses without those kind of teachers around them. Mrs. LaPointe's nomination came from a former student who said: ``Mrs. LaPoint's class was the one I looked forward to the most each day. Her spunky personality always brought out the best in all of the students.'' From your students and from your Congressman: Thank you, Mrs. LaPointe. You make us all better.

Mr. CASTEN

Mr. CASTEN. Mr. Speaker, I rise in opposition to H.R. 2988. I am going to be honest. I cannot believe we are still engaged in this anticapitalist doublespeak; but if my Republican colleagues are going to keep bringing bills to the floor to destroy the fabric of our market-based economy, I am going to keep standing up for it. Let's be clear: ERISA already requires fiduciaries to act solely in the financial interests of plan participants and beneficiaries. H.R. 2988 does not strengthen that standard. It simply assumes that a handful of paternalistic legislators know more about the interests of America's businessowners than they do. Before coming to Congress, I was a CEO of an energy company. We raised a couple hundred million dollars to build that business, and I was understandably accountable to a board appointed by those investors. I am trying to imagine a world where I showed up at a board meeting and told the owners of the company that I was leading that they were not allowed to ask me certain questions because, in my judgment, I had determined that their questions were nonpecuniary. That is not a world where I would have been employed for very long. It also wouldn't have been good for our business because different investors have different time horizons. You have got short-term investors who are concerned about next year's cash flows, but then you can have long-term investors, like pension funds, endowments, and family offices, who are going to be concerned about longer term risks including, but not limited to, your governance, your environmental exposures, who you hire, what kind of liabilities you are taking on, and that is fine. That is how a functioning market works. But H.R. 2988 prioritizes those short-term investors by creating an arbitrary distinction between pecuniary and nonpecuniary risk factors. That requires investors to ignore financially relevant information that they, in their sole discretion, believe impact long-term performance. Why should we mandate ignorance? It is not the Federal Government's job to tell fiduciaries what categories of risk they can consider. Making investors dumber will only serve to drive capital out of U.S. markets, and that is not just theoretical. In Oklahoma, public pension officials estimated that complying with a similar blacklist policy could cost them nearly $10 million. In Arkansas, the State retirement system estimated comparable restrictions could reduce returns by $30 million to $40 million a year. In Indiana, an analysis found it could cost pension returns as much as $6.4 billion over 10 years. This legislation is not about protecting retirees. It is about protecting mediocre businesses from the vibrancy of well-informed, competitive capital markets. Maybe that satisfies some short-term, partisan political purpose, but it ain't patriotic and certainly ain't capitalism. All this will accomplish is to drive long-term investors out of U.S. equity markets. For the retirement savings of our police officers, teachers, and firefighters, and for the preservation of U.S. capital markets and capitalism that is free of the meddlesome government intervention that Republicans seem to love, I urge a ``no'' vote and oppose this legislation.

Mr. CASTEN

Mr. CASTEN. Mr. Speaker, yesterday ICE murdered an American citizen. Renee Good was a wife and a mother who has now become ICE's latest victim. To those at DHS and in this Chamber who have created and rewarded a culture of murder, I ask the same question that God asked Cain: What have you done? You have slain your sister who gave you no offense. The voice of her innocent blood cries out from the ground where it was spilled, where you try to cover and hide. But we saw what was done. What kind of monster shoots an unarmed, fleeing woman in the head? What kind of monster watches the video of that crime and chooses to lie to the American people as they defend the murderer and defame the victim? How do we prevent ourselves from descending to their monstrous depths? Mr. Speaker, I will tell my colleagues how. We prosecute the murderer with the due process he denied Renee and demand accountability up the entire chain of command. Our job is not to bear their sins. Our job is to make sure this never ever happens again.

Mr. CASTEN

Mr. CASTEN. Madam Speaker, over the weekend, two different countries experienced gun violence tragedies. In one they targeted a Hanukkah celebration, and at another they targeted students in an engineering classroom. Both of these countries were founded by Europeans who landed on a large land mass, took control from the Natives with their superior arms, and developed a cowboy culture at the heart of their national ethos. One of those countries responded by acting like an adult. Having initiated gun buyback programs after their last tragedy, they are now working to further tighten gun regulations. The other one of these countries acted like a child. Our FBI Director and President shared misinformation. The Vice President suggested that the politics of one of the victims was the real tragedy. The Republican Party remained committed to defending the rights of people who think it is fun to play with things that go bang, bang. Gun violence is still the number one cause of death among actual American children. They are dead because Members of this Chamber, who claim to be adults, keep acting like children. I would point out that the Brown University shooting was the 389th mass shooting in America this year.

Mr. CASTEN

Mr. CASTEN. Mr. Speaker, I also rise in support of H.R. 4429, the Developing and Empowering our Aspiring Leaders Act, or DEAL Act, which is a critical bill to support innovation, entrepreneurship, and capital formation. The venture capital industry provides vital funding for early-stage startups at points in their life cycle when they are generally deemed to be too risky for traditional bank financing or for raising money on the public market. This basically means that if we are going to have a growing and innovative economy, then we have to have a healthy venture capital sector. Historically, venture capital earns investor returns and frees up more capital to recycle in other companies by selling their mature portfolio companies to strategic investors or taking them public on public markets. For a variety of reasons, including public company reporting obligations, economic uncertainty, and the rise of private equity, U.S. companies today are staying private much longer, which has reduced the opportunities for venture capital firms to recycle their investment dollars. Some venture capital firms have sought to create new liquidity options through secondary acquisitions and investments in other VC funds. This is what Congresswoman Wagner was referring to, but that option right now is constrained by provisions in the Dodd-Frank Act of 2010 that limit venture capital funds' ability to invest in these so- called fund of funds to only 20 percent of their commitments. That rule was very well-intentioned when passed, and the intent was to ensure that VC firms remained focused on direct investments in early-stage startups. However, it was crafted for a very different financial market than we have today. I would also note that that constraint is irrelevant to the larger, more well-known VC funds who have the resources to shoulder the compliance burdens associated with registering with the SEC as registered investment advisers. They can already do this, but they are the big ones. They are the ones based in San Francisco and New York. That option isn't available for these emerging regional fund managers located in the middle of the country. Many of those funds increasingly depend on that fund-of-funds model. What the DEAL Act does is just provides greater flexibility to those smaller VC funds while still ensuring that investors are protected and that fund managers continue to prioritize direct funding in small businesses. It does this by revising the existing rules to raise the cap from 20 percent in fund of funds up to 49 percent but still requiring that the majority of their investments are directly in portfolio companies. In other words, the DEAL Act supports growth in the startup economy and ensures that capital reaches the communities and innovators who need it most. I thank my fellow Midwesterner and friend, Congresswoman Wagner, for her leadership on this. I am proud to lead this important legislation, and I urge all my colleagues to support it.

Mr. CASTEN

Mr. CASTEN. Mr. Speaker, my colleague just said that to vote against this bill means you haven't studied the energy industry. Mr. Speaker, I rise today as someone who spent 20 years working in the energy industry. I rise today as the son of someone who spent his entire career in the energy industry. I will take my fancy book learning or school of hard knocks learning against any of you all any day. What strikes me in listening to this debate is, it reminds me of a paperweight my dad had on his desk when I was a kid. It was a little paperweight of an oil barrel. On one side of the barrel, it said: ``Relax. The price will go down,'' if you flipped it over, it said, ``Relax. The price will go up,'' because energy consumers want the price to be cheap. Energy producers want the price to be high. If you work in the energy industry as long as I have or even if you worked there for 35 seconds, you spend time talking to consumers and producers. The debate that is going on here in this body is not what is in consumers' interest, what is in producers' interest, but what is in the national interest. The Republicans across the aisle are making a very articulate case for energy producers. It is not lost on us that most of them represent districts that are heavily dominated by producers. Over here, there is a very articulate case on behalf of consumers because most of Americans--I would hazard a guess that all Americans are consumers. Because when we export natural gas from the United States, we reduce domestic supply, which pushes up the price. That is why the Natural Gas Act since 1935, among other things, has required that gas export facilities can't be built unless they are in the national interest, not producers' interest, not the drillers' interest, not some random Chinese fertilizer manufacturers' interest, but the national interest. They go on to talk about facts. If you want to talk about people who studied this, let's talk about the Department of Energy. There is an LNG export terminal, I am sure you are aware of it, in Freeport, Texas. In June 2022, it was shut down because of a fire for about a month. That gave us real-time experiments on exactly what happens when you make a marginal shift in the export of LNG from the United States. According to the Department of Energy website, this is what happened: ``The U.S. natural gas spot price fell by 13 percent on June 9. The price continued to decline by an additional 17 percent through the end of June. Prices fell largely because the outage at Freeport decreased U.S. natural gas exports, putting downward pressure on natural gas prices.'' That is 30 percent inflation in just one month from just one facility. Supply and demand is real. This is not complicated. Mr. Speaker, understand what this bill is trying to do. By stipulating that all exports are in the national interest, you are stipulating that raising every American's monthly heating bill is in the national interest. This week, Donald Trump gave a speech where he said: ``We are looking at affordability--we are going to bring it down for everybody. . . .'' I think he meant we are going to make things more affordable, but you understand the point. If the Republicans all care about affordability, if they care about the national interest, if they just care about proving Donald Trump right for once, if they just care about doing what he tells them to do, vote ``no'' on this bill.

Mr. CASTEN

Mr. CASTEN. Mr. Speaker, I rise today to celebrate the remarkable advocacy of Sister JoAnn Persch. For over four decades, Sister JoAnn has been on the ground helping migrants and asylum seekers in Chicagoland. Sister JoAnn, along with Sister Pat Murphy, opened Su Casa Catholic Worker House, a sanctuary for survivors of torture from Central America in 1990. Sister JoAnn, Sister Pat, and several Franciscan priests all lived and worked at Su Casa. The house welcomed its first family, a widower and his three children from Guatemala as they sought asylum in Canada. Throughout the 1990's, approximately 160 women, men, and children received temporary residence at Su Casa as they coped with trauma rooted in experiences of war, torture, and political persecution in their home countries in Central America. As the flow of refugees from Central America slowed, Su Casa grew in its service to single mothers who had survived domestic violence. Su Casa committed to one-year residencies for families rebuilding their lives after domestic violence and homelessness. Since 1996, over 350 people have called Su Casa home. The Su Casa Catholic Worker House continues to welcome three to six families at a time. The families live in community with residential volunteers who are committed to simplicity, freedom from violence, and love. Fueled by the horrific family separations at the Broadview Immigration Staging Center in 2007, Sister JoAnn and Sister Pat started weekly prayer vigils on Friday mornings at the facility. They were met with resistance from inside the facility but knew they had to keep fighting to get inside to pray with the detained migrants. With the help of the Illinois Coalition for Immigrant and Refugee Rights, the two Sisters helped pass an Illinois law that mandates access to provide spiritual care for immigrants in detention. This led Sister JoAnn and Sister Pat to work with religious leaders to establish the Illinois Community of Displaced Immigrants, which helps migrants and asylum seekers with wrap-around services, including case management, transit assistance, and housing. To date, the organization has helped over 400 families. In 2022, Sister JoAnn and Sister Pat founded Catherine's Caring Cause. This organization helps asylum-seeking families pay rent and utilities for a year, offers food assistance, and provides connections to legal aid. The organization has set up eight apartments to house people in need in Chicago. Sister JoAnn continues her work on the front lines as well. She hosts weekly and Zoom prayer vigils at the Immigration and Customs Enforcement staging and processing center in Broadview. She also frequently visits families whom she has helped throughout the years. Our county greatly benefits from the incredible work Sister JoAnn does every day. Immigrants make our country better, and we're very fortunate to have heroes like Sister JoAnn fighting for human rights in our community.

Mr. CASTEN

Mr. CASTEN. Mr. Speaker, I rise in support of the bipartisan Mental Health in Aviation Act, which I introduced with my friend, Mr. Stauber, from Minnesota. I thank Congressman Stauber as well as Chairman Graves and Ranking Member Larsen for all of their support and close collaboration on this bill. Today, pilots and air traffic controllers who seek mental health care are unfairly penalized by a system that perpetuates a culture of silence. Current regulations mandate that if they seek care, then they are immediately grounded for a minimum of 6 months, and then they are still faced with delays, confusion, and overbroad regulation in the process of returning to work. This often leaves the folks who are tasked with keeping our skies safe with an absolutely terrible choice, Mr. Speaker: Get help but put your career and your paycheck on hold, or keep your career on track and just hope you will get better. It doesn't make our skies safer, but it does lead to horrible and avoidable tragedies. It hit home for me when a Chicago family told me about their son who was studying to become a pilot, and he took his own life. He knew that he needed help, but he didn't want to be grounded. That young man would still be here today but for these regulations that gave him fear when he needed care. Since working on this bill, I have heard too many nearly identical stories from pilots, students studying to be pilots, and air traffic controllers, their coworkers, and their families. As many have mentioned, in December 2023, the FAA finally recognized the need to reform those current policies and established a committee to identify barriers to mental health care for aviators to present ways for the FAA to address those challenges. Their recommendations included limiting disclosure requirements for low-risk psychotherapy and expanding the use of existing peer-support programs, but it didn't mandate those changes, nor did it provide necessary implementation resources. This bill finishes that job by requiring the FAA to implement those changes within 2 years, to regularly review and improve processes related to mental health, and to ensure the FAA can successfully implement and publicize those rules. This will destigmatize mental health care to make our pilots healthier and our skies safer. I am proud that this bipartisan legislation is widely supported in Congress and also by the aviation community, airlines, pilot unions, and air traffic controllers. Mr. Speaker, I urge my colleagues to support it.

Mr. CASTEN

Mr. CASTEN. Mr. Speaker, the convicted felon I am referring to is the guy who ran Binance and not the President, but he is seeking a Presidential pardon. Mr. Speaker, the GENIUS Act sets the stage for an exponential crisis and allows the President to continue cheapening the office for his own financial gain, and I urge a strong ``no.''

Mr. CASTEN. Mr. Speaker, I should clarify that the convicted felon I am referring to is the guy who ends up trading--

Mr. CASTEN. Mr. Speaker, if I were to describe Jeffrey Epstein as a nice family man who works in finance, you might question why I am saying that. If someone says that something that is neither a coin nor stable is a stablecoin, you might question why they are saying that because they aren't stable. Terra, which was a stablecoin, collapsed at 30 cents and wiped out $40 billion in investor value. That was an algorithmic stablecoin. More recently, as the ranking member has noted, USDC, a so-called stablecoin, fell to 88 cents and only exists today because taxpayers bailed them out. These are some of the reasons why central bankers last week issued a warning that stablecoins threaten global financial stability and need a much more restrictive regime compared to traditional finance. The GENIUS Act ignores all of those experts and, instead, ties stablecoins into our financial system but without the safeguards that are required by banks and investment companies. As the ranking member noted, this allows Big Tech companies to issue stablecoins and amass consumer data at the same time we are gutting the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, which protects consumers. It allows issuers to cherry-pick the lightest-touch regulator between the Federal Government and any of the 50 States. Rather than fixing the problems created when Silicon Valley Bank collapsed, it makes them worse by saying that you can have uninsured deposits. Yet, if there is a run on a future Silicon Valley Bank, the stablecoin issuers have a superior claim over every single person in this room who has a legitimate deposit in that bank. My colleagues have said that this has a one-to-one requirement, except that it is not audited. There is only an audit requirement for companies over $50 billion in assets, which is only two stablecoins. Donald Trump's stablecoin just has to say that they attest that there was value in there on the 30th day of the month, and we don't have an auditor. That isn't one-to-one certification. Finally, the GENIUS Act is a missed opportunity to limit foreign influence. We know that, recently, a convicted money launderer wrote the code so that the United Arab Emirates could buy $2 billion of Trump's stablecoin, which allowed President Trump to earn $30 million on the transaction. Now, this convicted felon--