Warren Davidson

Mr. DAVIDSON

Mr. DAVIDSON. Mr. Speaker, freedom surrendered is rarely reclaimed. Today, we have an opportunity to make progress. After 9/11, the PATRIOT Act passed. One Senator voted ``no.'' Sixty-three Members of the House of Representatives voted ``no.'' Both parties failed with that vote. FISA has been reauthorized, and it never gets a full, clean vote. It is little tranches. In 2020, we ended the business records surveillance program, section 215. The government didn't stop collecting business records; they just stopped doing it in conformance with section 215 of FISA. Section 702 is an important program. The Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act is supposed to stop foreign threats to our country, but there is a reason there is not a domestic surveillance act. It is because there is a Fourth Amendment to the Constitution, and that amendment does not say that if you have nothing to hide, you have nothing to fear. It says, as an American citizen, you have a right to privacy, that your records cannot be searched without probable cause and a warrant or subpoena. Due process should not be infringed. The Fourth Amendment is probably the most disregarded protection given to us by the Bill of Rights. Our right to privacy is supposed to be defended, and we have this chance today but not a complete chance. We have a bill that people will claim has 56 reforms, and it does. Of those, 45 are from the Intelligence Committee. Now, some of these were comparable to the Judiciary bill, but they are weaker and more watered down than the Judiciary bill. Three of them actually protect Members of Congress, so only two are clean from the Judiciary Committee's bill. One of the amendments we cannot cover today, one of the reasons that the rule failed, was to say that even if the warrant passes, the government can't buy your data to circumvent the need to get a warrant in the first place. That is what they are doing. They are buying data. They are structuring markets to collect the data, and they are circumventing the Fourth Amendment. We need to turn that off. There is a lot of ground to make up on the right to privacy, but I hope we take this chance today. I remind my colleagues that we don't work at a think tank; we work in a legislature. The opportunity before us today is to make progress on reclaiming this freedom that we have surrendered. I will support this bill in the final passage if we have a warrant requirement and if the Intel threats to the Fourth Amendment fail. If those expansions of warrantless spying pass, even if the warrant is there, I will vote ``no'' on final passage. I encourage all of my colleagues to do the same.

Mr. DAVIDSON

Mr. DAVIDSON. Mr. Speaker, I thank the gentleman for yielding time. Mr. Speaker, I think it is important we solve the right problem. The gentleman from New Jersey, who isn't actually opposed to the bill, seems to have identified the real issue, which is data privacy. I think it is important that we solve the correct problem. Our problem with all these companies, social media and otherwise-- your car, your phone, you name it--is surveillance. The spying that goes on of American citizens does need to be addressed, and it should be addressed by the Energy and Commerce Committee. I have long pleaded with Members of both sides of the aisle to pass H.R. 4639 to reclaim the privacy rights that are so deeply infringed in our country, and by avoiding that problem, we take away the energy and momentum to address the root issue. Frankly, the people sponsoring this bill today claim that the real issue is ownership. Nonetheless, who owns this company? It is not 100 percent owned by ByteDance. Mr. Speaker, 60 percent of it is owned by investors, including American investors; 20 percent is owned by the founders; and 20 percent is owned by employees, over 7,000 employees. The company's headquarters is not in China, it is in Singapore. The American user data isn't housed in China, it is housed in Texas controlled by a database owned by Oracle. The administration seems to believe that they can ban the export of Americans' sensitive data not just on TikTok but on all platforms because they just issued an executive order banning the export. Now, I wish this were the bill that Pramila Jayapal and I have sponsored that we were moving, the Fourth Amendment Is Not For Sale Act. It passed Judiciary, but its complement to prevent foreigners from buying it would also address the privacy concerns. So if we think we can address the privacy concerns, then what is left to address? Frankly, it is content moderation. Mr. Speaker, do you remember before Elon Musk bought the crime scene at Twitter? It was all a conspiracy theory that these algorithms were silencing and canceling people. You guys are crazy. No. When Elon Musk bought Twitter he did keep it operating with 80 percent fewer employees, but what we found is a lot of the employees were trying to do content moderation, shape who sees what and how they see it, which algorithms are used, and how does it promote certain people and filter others. So, really, Mr. Speaker, what you are saying here is that if you are not fully engaged with America's three-letter agencies in content moderation, we plan to TikTok you. Moreover, this bill isn't just limited to TikTok. It is a coercive power that can be applied to others, apps like Telegram and TUR. Things that provide privacy would be targeted by this bill--perhaps Tether, one of the things that they can't control as a monetary system. When you look at companies, Mr. Speaker, if it enables one user to see content that isn't approved, it is subject to a $500 million fine per user.

Mr. DAVIDSON. Mr. Speaker, this is meant to be able to take out anything, including email where its one user sees it. So it could target an infinite number of companies, but not an infinite number of places. So, for that, I do applaud the work that was done to back off from the dystopian RESTRICT Act, but this is essentially a downpayment on the RESTRICT Act. I encourage everyone to look up the RESTRICT Act. This is what the administration really wanted to do. What Members of Congress on both sides of the aisle wanted to do is to create a bigger surveillance state, and that is what the Intel Committee wants to do with FISA, is to make it bigger. We have to shrink it and protect our Fourth Amendment right to privacy.

Mr. DAVIDSON

Mr. DAVIDSON. Madam Speaker, I always tell people back home: Beware of bipartisanship. The most bipartisan thing in Washington, D.C., is bankrupting our country, if not financially, morally. As my colleague from Texas just highlighted, it is not just the spending; it is all the terrible policies that are attached to the spending. We can tell by the way the time is structured, but it is bipartisan. It is 50/50 Republicans and Democrats. One of the mottos in the first unit I was in in the Army was, ``Deeds Not Words.'' The words are so good. I was down at the border with the Speaker and 60 of my colleagues, and we were going to fight. We were only going to fund a border that is secure. We were going to fund the government, but only if we secure the border. We were going to make the Senate a counteroffer, but by the time we could even get back to this town, our Speaker had surrendered to a four-corners deal, the very thing we said we wouldn't do. It is the deeds that are the problem. If we were back in the minority, we would be united again. We would be opposed to this. We were just a year ago. We were opposed to it. The words were good, and the deeds were also good, but now when we have the chance to govern, it seems we have lost our resolve. Who is getting hurt by this? The American people are getting hurt by this. None of us promised to come here and do this. We promised, as Republicans, things that are in conflict with the Biden administration's promises, and the only way we are going to do that is to force the vote. By going along with this, let's be clear, we are being buried. We are being buried by debt. We are being buried by crime. We are being buried by an invasion at our border, buried by fentanyl, buried by drugs, by suicide, by endless wars, by failing schools, by corruption. Frankly, it is a fatal overdose of government. I wish I could just wake up and it not be true, but it is.

Mr. DAVIDSON

Mr. DAVIDSON. Mr. Speaker, I rise to draw attention to a situation in Honduras that threatens American investment in the region. President Castro has threatened to expropriate resources from U.S. investment in Honduras in contravention of the Dominican Republic- Central America Free Trade Agreement (CAFTA-DR). Seven of my Republican colleagues and I wrote a letter to Secretary of State Anthony Blinken and U.S. Trade Representative Katherine Tai urging the Biden Administration to enforce investor protections in U.S. trade agreements. We cannot allow U.S. trade agreements to go unenforced or leave U.S. investors defenseless. While I received a response to our letter, it did not clarify how the State Department will defend the rights of U.S. investors if the Honduran government follows through on its statements and actions, which indicate an intent to take that property. Americans invest money in Central and South America with the reasonable expectation that the U.S. will protect their investments from theft. These investments help extend economic stability to the region. In addition, China's efforts to replace the United States as a trade partner with Honduras pose a national security threat near our southern border. On September 21, 2023, the President of Honduras, Xiomara Castro, spoke at the United Nations, where she bragged that her nation had ``officially opened relations with the People's Republic of China.'' In addition, she condemned sanctions on communist countries like Cuba and Venezuela. These are troubling statements from President Castro, especially when paired with her government's actions. The PRC's influence is rapidly increasing in America's backyard. I urge the Biden Administration to reassert the principles of the Monroe Doctrine and protect American interests in the Western Hemisphere.

Mr. DAVIDSON

Mr. DAVIDSON. The working group I think is within the purview of study and research. We just want to make sure that they don't cross the line into designing and developing, and it looks like they are starting to do that. We don't want them to create something and say: See, it already exists. We didn't appropriate money for them to do that. We didn't tell them to create it. We just want to be more clear on what we want you to do. By all means, research.

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

Mr. DAVIDSON. Mr. Chairman, this amendment expands upon the base tax. The base tax says that none of these funds may be used to establish a central bank digital currency. A central bank digital currency shouldn't be established. Establishing could mean that it has already been created and waiting in the wings just in case we need it. For ``Star Wars'' fans, imagine if we let the empire build the Death Star, as long as they promise not to turn it on. Let's not do that. Let's not build this thing in the first place. We shouldn't design it or develop it. It shouldn't exist. That is the point of this amendment. Stop wasting your time on something that the American people don't want and Congress hasn't authorized. I think the base tax sort of gets at that, but I wanted to expand upon that to be clear. We don't even want it to exist. Why is this important? On March 9 of 2022, the Biden administration released an executive order outlining the administration's approach to the risks stemming from digital assets and blockchain technology. This included a directive to explore a United States central bank digital currency. On March 1, 2023, the Under Secretary for Domestic Finance Nellie Lang gave a speech focusing on the administration's efforts thus far to design and develop a central bank digital currency: `` . . . a CBDC would involve both a new form of central bank money and, potentially, a new set of payment rails. Both real time payment systems and CBDCs present opportunities to build a more efficient, competitive, and inclusive U.S. payment system.'' She announced the creation of the Treasury-led CBDC Working Group to complement the Fed's work on the U.S. CBDC. These are excerpts from her speech. Meanwhile, the Federal Reserve has made substantial steps toward developing a central bank digital currency, as well. They have done numerous research on projects on the design, but the San Francisco Fed is actually recruiting and hiring for a senior crypto architect of a central bank digital currency to develop a U.S. central bank digital currency. Article I, Section 8 of the Constitution is clear. The authority for creating money rests with this body, and we clearly aren't authorizing that. In testimony the chairman of the Federal Reserve has made it clear that they couldn't actually establish it without congressional authorization. We want them to stop building it. What is a central bank digital currency? It is a corruption of the concept of money from its proper use as a store of value and a means of exchange into a tool for coercion and control. The version that is being studied is the same version that the Chinese Communist Party is implementing in China, which is a centrally managed, centrally controlled database. Now, I am not saying the United States would automatically do the same things China is doing with it, but it would have the same features where the central government actually sees every single transaction. There is no intermediary. In fact, the central government becomes the intermediary between the person and their own property. It would have a claim on it, but their claim would rest with the Federal Government. We do not need that kind of money in the United States. We don't want that kind of money in the United States. It is Orwellian, and it is dystopian. Every dystopian future has some version of corrupted money where the money itself is used as a tool for coercion and control. In fact, the Book of Revelation, what I consider Scripture, talks about this, and in our time we are seeing the technology that could do it. In over 100 countries this kind of design and development work is underway. The United States should not partake in it. It is always depicted as evil, and we should have no part in it. Mr. Chair, I urge adoption of this amendment. To be very clear, not only do we not want it established, we do not want it to exist. Mr. Chair, I reserve the balance of my time.

Mr. DAVIDSON. Mr. Chairman, the gentleman's argument is not against the language of this text. The gentleman's argument is about studying something or researching it, and the clear language does not prohibit research or study. It does prevent designing or developing it. We don't want them to create it. Research all you like, Mr. Chairman, understand how evil it is. I assure the gentleman I am actually an expert on this field, and I am on the authorizing committee. We have as a committee passed language that prohibits the use of a central bank digital currency by the United States of America. So the appropriation is aligning with the work of our authorizing committee. This is not legislating or it wouldn't have been made in order. It is a simple prohibition of the use of funds to do certain activities. We don't want them to create this. They can research, they can come and say: We have studied this, and we think there are some really interesting ideas, and here is a proposal for something that might exist someday. Mr. Chairman, we simply don't want them to create it, and I yield back the balance of my time.

Mr. DAVIDSON. Will the gentleman yield?

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

Mr. DAVIDSON. Mr. Chairman, we rightly recognize one of the chief rivals to the United States is China. Really, more specifically, the Chinese Communist Party that has a grip on power over the people of China, and one of the key tools for their power is their currency. The amendment I am offering today would limit the Treasury's ability to go along with an organization we helped to create, the International Monetary Fund. The International Monetary Fund is supposed to support financial stability in the world. Part of the way they do that is with something called special drawing rights. This is a basket of currencies that they extend to others, and they added the Chinese RMB. In 2016, they officially joined the IMF's elite basket of currencies, which determines the value of the IMF's Special Drawing Rights. Special Drawing Rights are not only a reserve asset in central banks around the world, they also serve as a unit of account for the IMF. The IMF's decision was something of a coup for Beijing as the RMB now sits in this exclusive club with only the dollar, the euro, the pound sterling, and the yen. I believe the IMF's elevation of the RMB was premature at the time. China lacked rule of law, as it still does today. Nevertheless, the IMF thought validating Beijing anyway would somehow encourage their government to pursue reform and work within the international community. None of this has come to pass, of course. China went on to assault Hong Kong's democracy. They have increased state control of their economy. They threaten Taiwan actively. They act as a lifeline to Putin's regime in Russia, and they are actively carrying out a genocide against Uyghurs in their own country. Rather than look at these facts, the IMF chose last year to not only have the RMB in the Special Drawing Rights basket but to increase its weight from 10.92 percent to 12.28 percent, making it the third-most prominent currency in the basket behind the dollar and the euro. Even leaving aside China's aggression at home and abroad, the IMF undertook this move despite China's lack of an independent central bank and a free-floating currency, as well as China's nontransparent policies for their exchange rate management. I want to highlight this point. The CCP controls China's currency management and monetary policy, and the value and interest rates of the Special Drawing Rights are influenced by that now. In turn, the Special Drawing Rights interest rate helps determine the borrowing costs for IMF member countries, and that rate should be based on transparent economic governance, not black box deliberations of the Chinese Communist Party. Mr. Chairman, enough is enough. My amendment would prohibit the Treasury Secretary from supporting an increase in the RMB's weight in the Special Drawing Rights currency basket. A similar initiative, the Chinese Currency Accountability Act, passed the Financial Services Committee unanimously in February. This amendment aligns our appropriations with our authorizing committee. While I remain baffled as to why Treasury would have allowed the RMB to enter the Special Drawing Rights currency basket in the first place and certainly to increase its weight, we must prevent this bad situation from getting worse, and that is what this amendment does. I urge all of our colleagues to support it, and I reserve the balance of my time.

Mr. DAVIDSON. Mr. Chairman, I am pleased to receive the update that the administration doesn't anticipate changing it, but let's be clear. That doesn't prohibit them having flexibility. They can actively work to decrease the weight of the RMB. They simply can't work to increase it. Since they say that is their stated policy goal, I think it provides them exactly what they need. I reserve the balance of my time.

Mr. DAVIDSON. Mr. Chairman, this is a commonsense amendment. It checks the power and growth of the influence of the Chinese Communist Party and their currency, the RMB. It should not grow in its influence. That is what this amendment could help accomplish. I urge all our colleagues to support it, and I yield back the balance of my time.

Mr. DAVIDSON

Mr. DAVIDSON. Madam Chair, I have an amendment at the desk.

Mr. DAVIDSON. Madam Chair, this amendment will decrease funding for the Housing Opportunities for Persons With AIDS by $505 million and move it to the spending reduction account. AIDS is a horrific disease. We have lots of horrific diseases in our country, but we don't have programs for everybody that gets a disease. We don't have programs specifically for people that get cancer, for example. We have programs for AIDS because when AIDS was first spreading, people didn't understand it. They thought it would spread like a contagion, that you could get it just because you lived in the same housing development as someone else. Now that we properly understand AIDS, we don't have the same kind of denial of access to housing for people. We do have need-based housing, and there are people with AIDS who have needs, and some of them currently are even being housed under this program. The reality is they would still have access to housing if they are qualified for need-based assistance just like every other American. It doesn't eliminate the safety net but eliminates the special, favored treatment. Why is that important? Well, look. We have to cut something. Ronald Reagan famously recognized that the closest thing to eternal life we will see on this Earth is a government program. There is always a new program, but there is never a time to get rid of an old program. This program just continues on without real authorization. It just keeps getting appropriated. It is time. It is time to take it away. It is time to curb our spending. This HUD program spends almost $3 billion more than it used to spend in discretionary spending. We are going to have to turn something off. We have over $33 trillion in debt, and in the next 18 months, we are supposed to add another $3 trillion. Are we supposed to take spending seriously once we get to $50 trillion? At some point, people recognize that if something can't continue, it will eventually stop. It is not compassionate to bankrupt America. We put these programs out there, and we say they are so compassionate, but they are not because they are leading our country toward a crash site. This is going to end in financial ruin. This is the same kind of point we tried to make when they said, let's close the economy and print money. We are spending more money than anyone will even lend us. The Federal Reserve became the lender of last resort, and their balance sheet grew by $5 trillion. We knew that was going to cause inflation. That is why I created the Sound Money Caucus in July of 2020. They said it wouldn't cause inflation. We said it would. They said it wouldn't hit consumers. We said it would. They finally acknowledged, well, maybe it will be transitory. That is the phase we are in. How transitory is it? All this goes back to policy decisions. You might be able to print money, but you can't guarantee that it will keep buying the same amount of stuff. We do have to turn something off. I think this is a tragic situation when anyone has a disease, but we need to turn this program off. I reserve the balance of my time.

Mr. DAVIDSON. Madam Chair, the amendment doesn't stop people who have genuine needs as defined by our current needs-based program from receiving assistance. It maintains the same level of compassion it has for all Americans. It doesn't treat them with any special distinction. In fact, it restores equality instead of denying it. Madam Chair, I reserve the balance of my time.

Mr. DAVIDSON. Madam Chair, I reserve the balance of my time.

Mr. DAVIDSON. Madam Chairwoman, our colleague just makes the point. If Chicago needs a program, Chicago could operate a program. If the State of Illinois needs a program, Illinois could operate a program. If the State of New York needs a program, the State could operate a program. The Federal Government does not need to operate this program. It disproportionately goes to high-density populations in urban areas. It doesn't affect rural America. Frankly, it federalizes a problem that is much more localized. It is time to let something finally expire and say this need has largely been met. The health conditions are much more survivable than they were when this program was launched. I urge my colleagues to take this opportunity to finally trim something that is no longer needed. It restores equality in our social safety net rather than continuing to distort it. Please support my amendment. Madam Chairwoman, I yield back the balance of my time.

Mr. DAVIDSON

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

Mr. DAVIDSON. Mr. Chairman, this amendment would reduce the salary of Victoria Nuland to $1. She is currently the Acting U.S. Deputy Secretary of State and the Under Secretary of State for Political Affairs. Presidents have come and gone. Victoria Nuland remains at the State Department. She last served in four administrations as a pillar of the State Department. Normally, such a long period of service would be marked with gratitude, so why propose to effectively remove her? President Eisenhower cautioned us about people like Victoria Nuland who would put their own interest at odds with America's interests. We have come to call them endless wars or an ``America Last'' foreign policy, but Eisenhower called it the ``military-industrial complex.'' She is exhibit A on how America could actually get in fewer wars if we cleaned house at the State Department and had a more focused foreign policy. Officially, the State Department is supposed to promote America's interests. If anyone at the State Department has represented the neoconservative consensus that has left America less free, less safe, and more burdened by debt over this last generation, it is Secretary Nuland. She hangs the American people out to dry while escalating tensions and pushing through regime change everywhere she can find an opportunity. From 2003 to 2005, Nuland served as the principal deputy foreign policy adviser to Vice President Dick Cheney. She championed the Iraq war and created the case for regime change and nation-building, though the official threat was weapons of mass destruction and ties to terrorism. From 2005 to 2008, during President Bush's second term, Nuland served as U.S. Ambassador to NATO where she concentrated on strengthening allied support for NATO intervention in Iraq, dramatically expanding the scope of NATO. In 2011, Nuland became the State Department's spokesperson under Hillary Clinton. Yet again, she cheered for another regime change, this time in Libya. Her campaign led to toppling the government, the murder of Muammar Gaddafi and an enormous and ongoing refugee crisis, frankly one that continues out of Iraq, as well. Similar to the effects in Iraq, this intervention turned a once- stable Libya into a failed terrorist state. What was Nuland and the uniparty's response? Well, in the words of Hillary Clinton, ``We came. We saw. He died.'' They left out the part about chaos and instability. Rather than a solution to create and promote peace, they have promoted chaos and disorder. Immediately after, her newest narrative to justify, a regime change in Syria began. We still have U.S. troops in Syria, though that is a more effective way to fight ISIS than the way we fought for nation-building in Iraq. In 2013, Nuland was sworn in as Assistant Secretary of State for European and Eurasian Affairs. While she couldn't get brigades of armor deployed to Syria like she did in Iraq, she swiftly started destabilizing things in Ukraine. She used this position to meddle in Ukraine's elections, manage violent protests on the ground, facilitate a coup, and in addition, she began to campaign for NATO expansion. In 2017, Nuland played an active role in spreading actual disinformation via the Steele dossier, whose claims had no factual basis. Nuland has never been held responsible for any of these actions. Instead she has been elevated as the face of Washington's uniparty foreign policy agenda. Wherever she goes, war follows. Sadly, those wars have been in conflict with America's national security interest. She spent her time in the Biden administration as an avid supporter for regime change in Russia. In addition, she has been vocal about her desire to transform NATO into an offensive treaty that projects power around the world. Her actions have yielded disastrous results for the American people, and it is far beyond time that she is held accountable. This amendment is a great place to start. I urge my colleagues to support it, and I urge the Biden administration to part ways with Secretary Nuland. Mr. Chairman, I reserve the balance of my time.

Mr. DAVIDSON. Mr. Chair, I appreciate my colleague's comments. Frankly, I hope that is the message that is received. If you came to serve the United States Government to advance your own interests instead of the Nation's, I hope you choose not to go into the Foreign Service. That is exactly the message I want to send to Victoria Nuland and everyone else in the State Department. Frankly, I hope we go far beyond this and eliminate whole sections and floors of the current staff there. This amendment is a start, not a finish line. Mr. Chair, I urge all of my colleagues to support the amendment, and I yield back the balance of my time.

Mr. DAVIDSON

Mr. DAVIDSON. Mr. Speaker, I object to the vote on the ground that a quorum is not present and make the point of order that a quorum is not present.

Mr. DAVIDSON. Mr. Speaker, pursuant to clause 1, rule I, I demand a vote on agreeing to the Speaker's approval of the Journal.

Mr. DAVIDSON

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