Tom McClintock

Mr. McCLINTOCK

Mr. McCLINTOCK. Madam Speaker, I rise today along with my colleague, Representative LaMalfa, to recognize the decade spanning work and now retirement of Placer County Supervisor Robert Weygandt. Since his election to the Board of Supervisors in 1995, Robert has been an integral part of Placer County Government and business development; from his work to establish business centers in the community, to creating a citizen focused county government center, to work on the Lincoln Highway 65 bypass linking residents from Northern California to Interstate 80. Robert has always put the interests of his community first. Since the beginning of his public service, Robert has led the efforts to drive new business into Placer County. Working to establish the Sunset Area Plan in 1997, which would later become known as the Placer Ranch, has created a 400-acre business park including a satellite campus for California State University, various commercial and industrial developments, and residential housing units. Robert has also worked to create innovative government solutions for Placer County, helping the everyday citizen navigate the governmental process. This includes working with the Placer County government center to form a vibrant place for residents to conveniently obtain services and conduct county business. Today, the government center is home to several state-of-the-art amenities including a new Health and Human Services facility that will open in 2024. Robert has also been instrumental in developing business partnerships with the United Auburn Indian Community during their bid to develop Thunder Valley Casino in Lincoln. This partnership continues today with United Auburn committing to develop the first few miles of a bypass from Highway 65 to Highway 99 in Sutter County linking these busy corridors and benefiting many in the northern part of the state. Robert was also instrumental in gathering support for the Lincoln Bypass, a throughfare for Highway 65 that opened in 2011. The bypass, which encompasses 11.7 miles and cost $325 million to construct, moves traffic around the City of Lincoln and improves regional connections between business and residential centers. This is just another example of Robert's tireless efforts to develop Placer County. I am proud today to congratulate Robert on his numerous accomplishments and to thank him for his decade long commitment, dedication and service to the citizens of the United States and the residents of Placer County.

Mr. McCLINTOCK

Mr. McCLINTOCK. Mr. Speaker, for 2 weeks now, the long-suffering people of Iran have taken to the streets to confront the thugocracy that has oppressed them for more than 40 years. Today, America must stand with the people of Iran. H. Res. 118 has 257 cosponsors, representing both political parties, expressing its support for the Iranian resistance. I urge the leadership to bring it to the floor immediately for a vote. It is time for the United States to step forward with material support for the freedom movement. They need direct satellite access to the internet that the regime has denied them on the ground. They need us to restore economic sanctions against the regime. This time, in this hour, let the United States stand with the people of Iran and, by so doing, honor those proud words on our Liberty Bell: ``Proclaim liberty throughout all the land and unto all the inhabitants thereof.''

Mr. McCLINTOCK

Mr. McCLINTOCK. Mr. Speaker, this bill imposes $1.4 billion in new fees on large companies seeking mergers and makes it easier to block those mergers. Now, mergers only occur when they promote efficiency and productivity. They only occur when they enhance a company's ability to provide better goods and services at lower prices. Interfering in this process harms the prosperity of every American. Let's start with the simple fact that taxes and fees on businesses aren't paid by businesses. They are paid by consumers through higher prices, employees through lower wages, and investors through lower earnings. How does increasing consumer prices protect consumers? Where will these fees go? Well, they are going to go to increasingly corrupt bureaucracies like the FTC. That agency is now led by a radical leftist who has declared her intention to use the powers of government to replace consumer decisions with her own, all to advance her brand of ideological zealotry. The worst damage this does is to make the marketplace less efficient, which makes prices higher, consumer choices less satisfying, and ultimately diminishes our prosperity as a society. Markets are inherently democratic because they fundamentally are regulated by consumer choices. Consumers vote every day with every dollar they spend what the market will provide and at what prices. Consumer choices reward companies that best meet their needs and punish the companies that don't. Now, the left seeks to substitute its judgment for yours. It seeks to tell you what choices you may make to advance their political goals. For example, personally I don't care for Jeff Bezos' political views, but he has built a successful, gigantic company by satisfying his consumers. Americans have voted with their dollars every day that the services that Amazon provides are better than the many other alternatives they have to choose from. The moment they decide otherwise, Amazon will shrink and competitors will emerge and grow to fill those gaps. Substituting government's judgment for yours, as this bill does, ultimately undermines your right to decide for yourself who is best at providing for your own needs. Mr. Speaker, we need to reject not only this bill, but the poisonous, authoritarian, and destructive ideology behind it.

Mr. McCLINTOCK

Mr. McCLINTOCK. Mr. Speaker, in the summer of 2020, mobs of radical leftists burned our cities, preyed on innocent citizens, attacked our police officers, and occupied business districts during what one leftist Democrat mayor called the summer of love. At least 25 people were killed. Republicans called for law and order. Democrats called for defunding our police departments and releasing dangerous criminals onto our streets, often within hours of their arrests. In the cities they controlled, they did just that. In those cities, crime has skyrocketed, including the fastest increase in homicides ever recorded in our Nation. Ironically, the greatest victims are their own constituents, who are now turning on them. Crime doesn't concern House Democrats, but losing political support before an election, that scares them to death, so we have these bills brought hurriedly to the floor today. Let me point out the obvious. Republican communities have backed their police departments with the local funds and the moral support they need to do their jobs. Democratic cities have defunded and demonized their police departments. The Democrats' response is to take the taxes paid by the citizens who fully funded their police departments and give them to those Democratic cities that have cut them, and still virtually none of the money they propose to spend is for actual law enforcement. It is, rather, for intervention, de-escalation, training, public health, and social work training, all administered by the increasingly corrupt and politicized Department of Justice. We have watched the Democrats utterly destroy the cities that they have dominated for decades. Do we really want to let them do the same thing to our country? Americans need to ask themselves how much farther down this dismal road they are willing to go. We can restore safety to all of our communities the moment we summon the political will to do so.

Mr. McCLINTOCK

Mr. McCLINTOCK. Madam Speaker, the Electoral Count Act of 1887 asserts that Congress may vote to disqualify electoral votes. It was misused by the Democrats in 2016 and by Republicans in 2020, attempting to interfere with the constitutionally required tally of electoral votes. I believe both sides were wrong. Congress has no such power, period. Think about it. Under our Constitution, if no candidate receives a majority of electoral votes, the election immediately passes to the House and Senate. If Congress had the power to pass judgment on the validity of electoral votes, it could simply invalidate enough to place the election in its own hands, an obvious conflict of interest. That is why the Constitution clearly mandates that the vote shall be counted in the presence of the Congress. Disputes arising from the conduct of elections are the sole province of the courts. Does anyone seriously believe that a Congress of 535 intensely partisan politicians is a safe repository for the power to adjudicate the integrity of the vote? Well, neither did the Founders. This measure does narrow the grounds upon which the count can be interfered with by the Congress, but it still allows Congress to invalidate electoral votes. So it does not solve the problem, and it creates new problems by allowing a State to delay its election for up to 5 days after the rest of the Nation's vote is already known. Can you imagine the chaos and suspicions that that would create? How sad that such an important issue as the electoral count should be handled in so clumsy and partisan a bill as this.

Mr. McCLINTOCK

Mr. McCLINTOCK. Mr. Speaker, as the tensions of the Civil War reached a boiling point, President Lincoln vainly reached out to Democrats with these words: ``We are not enemies, but friends. We must not be enemies.'' The contrast with Mr. Biden's September 1 speech in Philadelphia is jarring. In it, and many remarks since, Mr. Biden clearly addresses the 74 million Americans who voted for Donald Trump as enemies who ``threaten the very foundation of our Republic.'' He condemned us as ``extremists'' who ``do not respect the Constitution,'' and who ``do not believe in the rule of law'' and who ``refuse to accept the results of a free election.'' In other forums, he has called us ``semi- fascists.'' Mr. President, we revere our Constitution and the structure of individual liberty that it was designed to protect. We do not understand how a government established under that Constitution could use the FBI to pressure social media platforms to censor and suppress free speech or to intimidate parents concerned about their school boards with threat tags or to instruct its field offices to regard anyone who displays our founding American flag as a political extremist. Mr. President, we revere the rule of law and our Nation's promise of equal justice under law. We do not understand how our immigration laws can simply be ignored as millions of foreign nationals illegally enter our country. We do not understand how a dispute over records justifies an armed raid on a former President who is also a political rival. We do not understand how public health officials can order our schools and businesses closed or suspend our fundamental rights to worship and assemble with no vote of the people's Representatives. We do not understand how obvious influence peddling by the son of a President can be ignored for years. Mr. President, of course we accept the results of a free election, but we do not understand how the safeguards to protect the integrity of our elections can be torn down to benefit one party. Replacing in- person election day voting with mail-in ballots, ballot harvesting, month-long voting, accepting ballots after election day, printing ballots on home computers--all of these changes undermine public confidence in the process that is essential to democracy. We wonder how you can call MAGA candidates a fundamental threat to our Republic while your party spends millions of dollars to nominate them when you believe it may help you in November. Mr. President, we can condemn all forms of violence and especially political violence in the strongest possible terms. The riot at the Capitol on January 6 was a disgrace and an abomination that you are right to condemn, and we join you in doing so. But we don't understand how you can at the same time turn a blind eye to prosecuting the political violence that burned our cities the year before or how you can refuse to enforce the laws that protect our Supreme Court Justices from intimidation at their own homes. Mr. President, we, too, fear for our democracy. We fear armed bureaucracies that seem increasingly disconnected from the results of our elections. We remember that the IRS singled out ordinary Americans because of their political views, yet no one was held accountable, and now we are adding 87,000 new agents to that bureaucracy. We fear arbitrary changes in our election laws calculated to skew results. We fear an executive branch that is increasingly taking over the legislative powers of Congress and judicial powers of the courts. We fear the powers of government wielded by officials who view half of our people as dangers, threats, and extremists--your words, Mr. President. Lincoln spoke of the mystic chords of memory tracing back to the founding of our Nation that must hold us together as Americans. As friends and not enemies. Yet we see these chords increasingly strained by an alien ideology that seems hostile to the flag, the principles, and the heritage of our Nation. We have only one President, Mr. President, and that is you. I didn't vote for you, and I won't vote for you again, but you are still my President. And the 74 million Americans who voted for Donald Trump are still your fellow citizens. As the person most responsible for the policies we now live with and the future that is unfolding before us, I ask you to engage us as a friend and not an enemy. We must not be enemies.

Mr. McCLINTOCK

Mr. McCLINTOCK. Madam Speaker, I rise today to recognize the groundbreaking work of the Tahoe Fire and Fuels Team in the Lake Tahoe Basin. The Tahoe Fire and Fuels Team is a group of dedicated professionals who have protected the homes and businesses of the Tahoe community for over a decade. Since its founding in 2008, they have treated over 65,000 acres in the Lake Tahoe Basin's wildland-urban interface. This includes forest thinning by both hand and machine, as well as prescribed burns. Over twelve years, they have invested $133 million into forest health community projects to reduce fuels in the forests and protect the Lake Tahoe region from wildfires. Most importantly, the Tahoe Fire and Fuels Team played an integral part on the evening of August 30, 2021, when the Caldor Fire reached the Tahoe Basin with a destruction path of 200,000 burned acres and 1,000 destroyed structures left behind it. On this day, this team sprang into action to defend the communities of Christmas Valley, Meyers, and South Lake Tahoe. Remarkably, they successfully saved all structures in South Lake Tahoe from the destruction of the fire. This was all made possible because of their prior efforts to reduce forest fuels and increase defenses around homes and community buildings. Without their past and present efforts, the totality of the destruction in these Lake Tahoe communities would be unimaginable. The Tahoe Fire and Fuels Team understands, and has demonstrated for years, the importance of proactive forest management in preventing wildfires. These efforts have protected communities in the Tahoe Basin and significantly improved the resilience of the surrounding landscape. Madam Speaker, it is impossible to overstate the necessity of fire protection or to measure the countless contributions this team has made to our community. It has been my privilege to represent such a dedicated group who continuously defends one of California's most remarkable natural treasures. I thank Tahoe Fire and Fuels Team for their extraordinary impact on the Lake Tahoe community, and the countless individuals they have protected due to their tireless efforts.

Mr. McCLINTOCK

Mr. McCLINTOCK. Mr. Speaker, the Democrats printed and spent trillions of dollars we didn't have, and they unleashed the worst inflation in 40 years. They waged war on capitalism and the energy industry and produced an economic recession. Now, they are doubling down on these foolish policies. The more that some people invest in their mistakes, the less willing they are to admit them. They are adding 87,000 new IRS agents--that is larger than the entire population of Flint, Michigan--in order to collect $200 billion in new taxes, mostly from middle-class families and shopkeepers who don't have the resources to contest expensive audits. They are adding $300 billion in new corporate taxes, which will be passed on to families as higher prices, lower wages, and lower returns. All of this is to give away three-quarters of a trillion dollars more of your earnings to their green energy cronies and other political supporters. That averages about $6,000 per household. Just as you cannot drink yourself sober, you cannot spend your way out of inflation, or tax yourself out of recession, or borrow your way out of debt. Yet, that is exactly what the Democrats claim they can do. What makes them think socialism will work any better here than everywhere else in the world that it has been tried? This bill takes our country further into this dismal future, and only more suffering and poverty will come of it.

Mr. McCLINTOCK

Mr. McCLINTOCK. Madam Chair, this is the Democratic equivalent of fiddling while our forests burn. They call it the Wildfire Response and Drought Resiliency Act, but while it spends lavishly, it accomplishes almost nothing. For 14 years in Congress, I have dealt extensively with issues of fire and water, and here is what I have learned: Excess timber will always come out of the forest. Either we will carry it out or nature will burn it out. When we carried it out by logging, we enjoyed healthy forests and a thriving economy. We stopped active forest management decades ago due to radical environmental laws that have made it impossible. Today our forests are now morbidly overgrown, and nature is again burning out the excess. This bill does nothing to reform the laws that have made active forest management impossible, and instead it consigns us to fight a losing battle that will cost us our forests for generations to come. When it comes to water, droughts are nature's fault. They happen. But water shortages are our fault. They are the choice we made when the same radical laws made new dam construction impossible. Dams save water for wet years so that we have plenty in the dry ones. We will not solve our water shortage until we build more dams, and we can't build more dams until we overhaul these same laws. Instead, this bill pours hundreds of millions of dollars into desalination. The most successful desalination plant is in Carlsbad, California. At a time when we can't guarantee enough electricity to keep your lights on, Carlsbad consumes enough electricity to power 250 homes in order to produce enough water for one home. This bill is pure folly. It will consume billions of dollars of our resources while condemning us to a dismal future of chronic forest fires and water shortages.

Mr. McCLINTOCK

Mr. McCLINTOCK. Mr. Speaker, I rise in opposition to the amendment.

Mr. McCLINTOCK. Mr. Speaker, I yield myself such time as I may consume. Mr. Speaker, this amendment allows the admission of scientists and technical experts from foreign countries to work on the national security innovation base. Without a clear provision forbidding foreign nationals from hostile regimes like China and Iran, we should strongly oppose this amendment. The Democrats' open border policies have produced the largest illegal mass migration in our Nation's history. Since they took power, including deliberate releases and got-aways, the Democrats have allowed into our country an illegal population larger than that of the entire population of West Virginia. We have apprehended at the border scores of persons on the terrorist watch list, and we have no idea how many more have come in among the 800,000 got-aways who evaded apprehension as the Border Patrol was overwhelmed processing these unprecedented numbers. The Democrats' unconditional surrender to the Taliban last year released more than 5,000 terrorists held at Bagram Air Base. Ten days later, one of those terrorists detonated the bomb that killed 10 marines at Abby Gate. We have no idea where the other 5,000-plus are today, but it is a good bet that more than a few have been among those got-aways coming across our open southern border. Obviously, the security of the United States is not high on the Democrats' list of concerns. Now, instead of addressing this national security crisis, the Democrats have pursued one measure after another to encourage still more immigration--legal and illegal--and this amendment should concern us all. Now, some of our greatest military breakthroughs have come from foreign-born scientists--the Manhattan Project comes to mind. But so too, some of our worst security breakdowns have come from foreign scientists, and I do not trust this administration to know or even care about the difference. China, for example, is so intent on using our U.S. immigration system to steal our sensitive technologies that the Trump administration had to issue a proclamation suspending entry of certain Chinese students and researchers. The Trump Administration found that ``the People's Republic of China is engaged in a wide-ranging and heavily resourced campaign to acquire sensitive U.S. technologies to bolster the modernization and capability of its military.'' The proclamation warned that ``students or researchers from the PRC studying beyond the undergraduate level are at high risk of being exploited or co-opted by the PRC.'' In fact, the Department of Homeland Security warned us in 2020 that the Chinese Government requires its nationals to ``support, assist, and cooperate with State intelligence work.'' The idea for this amendment came at least in part from the Commission on Artificial Intelligence which called for ``increasing China's brain drain.'' So clearly the green cards contemplated under this amendment would go to Chinese nationals. The last thing we should do is make it easy for the Chinese Communist Party to gain access to our national security innovation base work, Department of Defense research, or other critical technologies. I would also note that sadly our new woke Department of Defense does not have a great track record regarding immigration programs. Many of you may remember that the Department of Defense supported and encouraged the military accessions vital to the national interest--or MAVNI program--through which foreign nationals were able to enlist in the U.S. military. Once enlisted, they were eligible to nationalize. The Obama administration was forced to halt this program when it was discovered that the Department of Defense had allowed some Chinese spies to enlist in the military. Let that sink in: the Department of Defense allowed Chinese spies to enlist in the U.S. military. Add to this the Biden family's questionable financial ties to China and the ingratiation of Chinese spies with several Members of Congress, and this amendment becomes most disturbing. Accordingly, I urge the House to oppose it. Mr. Speaker, I have no further speakers, and I reserve the balance of my time.

Mr. McCLINTOCK. Mr. Speaker, I yield myself the balance of my time. The Democrats' record speaks for itself: no concern for the dire national security implications of their open borders policy; no concern for the infiltration of hostile foreign agents into our military; no concern for the ingratiation of foreign agents into our legislative and executive branches. Americans should be concerned. They should be very concerned. Until there is a sea change in the attitude of the ruling Democrats toward our national safety, our security, and our sovereignty, amendments like this should be utterly rejected. Mr. Speaker, I yield back the balance of my time.

Mr. McCLINTOCK. Mr. Speaker, on that I demand the yeas and nays.

Mr. McCLINTOCK

Mr. McCLINTOCK. Mr. Speaker, instead of treating law-abiding citizens as if they were criminals, maybe we should start treating criminals as if they were criminals. Stop the plea bargains, put gun predators behind bars until they are old and gray, and execute the murderers. Those measures worked until a generation of soft-on-crime judges, woke district attorneys, and politically correct police commissioners made a mockery of our laws. If someone is dangerously mentally ill, then, of course, they should not have access to firearms. They shouldn't have access to any kind of weapons. We once confined them so we could treat them and prevent them from doing harm during the course of their illness. We had a commitment process that respected due process. They could come before a judge to challenge the findings in open court, submit evidence on their behalf, and face their accuser, but not under the red flag laws this bill promotes. An anonymous accuser can trigger a secret proceeding against you that you don't even know is happening until the police bang on your door in the dead of night, ransack your house, and strip you of your right of self-defense. The burden then falls on you to try to restore it. This bill also targets young adults for special restrictions. We trust them to vote, to start families, to enter into legally binding agreements, but we don't trust them with firearms because of what some criminal or madman their age did? Just laws hold people accountable for their own actions; unjust laws hold them accountable for other people's actions. This is an unjust law. These atrocities will go on until we get the criminals and madmen off our streets. How many more tragedies do we need to go through before the Congress understands this self-evident truth?

Mr. McCLINTOCK

Mr. McCLINTOCK. Mr. Speaker, we all know the tale of ``The Emperor's New Clothes.'' Grifters convince an emperor that they are expert tailors who weave a cloth so fine that only the virtuous can see it. The emperor wraps himself in nothing and parades the streets as all the townspeople compete to signal their own virtue by proclaiming how beautiful the material is, even though their own common sense tells them otherwise. This scheme is successful until a little boy who knows better states the obvious. For 2 years now, we were told by the experts that they could stop COVID-19 if everyone did exactly as they commanded. I am science, as one put it. They quashed debate within the medical community and ridiculed, censored, and fired any dissenters. Looking back, we can clearly see what a self-destructive folly they produced. Study after study now confirms the obvious, that the mask mandate, school closures, home detention orders, and business closures had virtually no impact on the virus. But they did appalling damage to the economy, seriously harmed children in ways we are still cataloging, and cost untold lives due to suicides, drug and alcohol overdoses, delayed health screenings and treatments, and poverty-related deaths. This recent, tragic experience should warn us all to be much more skeptical of surrendering common sense to so-called experts and of suppressing free debate over what science actually is telling us, which brings us to the Democrats' ongoing and escalating war on fossil fuels. The road they have placed us on leads to a bleak future of unaffordable energy, rolling blackouts, empty shelves, and increasingly brutal rationing of every watt of electricity and drop of gasoline that we once took for granted. Gasoline prices are already the highest ever seen in this country as we have discouraged production. Electricity prices are skyrocketing, pushed by the crushing cost of renewables. Utilities across the county are now warning of summer blackouts because renewable mandates have destabilized the electricity grid. Joe Biden and the Democrats promised to wage war on fossil fuels, and they have succeeded. On his first day in office, he canceled the Keystone pipeline, which today should have been completed and delivering 830,000 barrels of crude oil every day into American markets. He canceled oil and gas exploration on Federal lands. Just last month, he withdrew 1 million acres of land from exploration and production in oil-rich Alaska and the Gulf of Mexico. And he blames Vladimir Putin? Under the progrowth policies of the Trump administration, America didn't need Putin's oil. We were energy independent for the first time in our lifetimes. We were producing more oil than Russia and even Saudi Arabia. The day the Democrats took office, gasoline was averaging $2.39 a gallon. Today's sky-high fuel prices are aggravating supply chain breakdowns and adding to consumer prices. Acreage once devoted to growing corn for food is now used to produce ethanol, which requires trading an entire acre of corn to produce just 550 gallons of ethanol. The irony is, at a time when these Green New Deal policies can't guarantee enough electricity to keep the lights on this summer at any price, these Democrat elitists are telling families to buy electric cars. Where do they think the electricity for their electric cars comes from? Eighty percent comes from fossil fuels that they are ruthlessly shutting down. The excuse for all of this, of course, is to stop global warming, but they cannot account for why it is that there have been periods throughout paleo history when temperatures have been much higher and also much lower than they are today. Nor do they account for the infinitely more powerful natural forces that shape our constantly changing climate. The blind reliance on handpicked experts and the suppression of dissent in our approach to COVID cost lives and destroyed the most prosperous economic expansion in our lifetimes. But its excesses pale in comparison to what the green left is now doing to our society. The pain and damage we are feeling today is just the first bitter taste of what is to come if they prevail. Of one thing we can be certain: Whether or not we destroy our Nation's prosperity by continuing the Democrats' war on fossil fuels, the Earth will continue to warm and cool, as it has for billions of years. The only question we can answer is whether ours will be a future of abundance or scarcity, prosperity or poverty, comfort or misery.

Mr. McCLINTOCK

Mr. McCLINTOCK. Madam Speaker, on February 27, 1933, the Reichstag, Germany's capitol building, was set on fire. Who was responsible remains in dispute even today. But what is undisputed is that the Nazis, barely holding on to power in a coalition government, used the attack to besmirch their political opponents, consolidate their grip on the government, arrest hundreds of political opponents, and, ultimately, rescind the due process rights and fundamental freedoms of the German people. It remains a cautionary tale, for obvious reasons. The January 6 riot at the Capitol has become the centerpiece of the Democrats' agenda. No other issue facing our country, not the worst inflation in 40 years, not the highest gasoline prices in history, not the fastest increase in homicides ever recorded, not the historically unprecedented illegal mass migration across our southern border, none of these crises has commanded prime-time congressional hearings from the Democrats. What happened here on January 6 was an affront to our Constitution and a national disgrace. Those who entered the Capitol with the intent to disrupt the counting of electoral votes deserved to be denounced by their fellow citizens and prosecuted to the fullest extent of the law. More importantly, questions involving the authority of Congress to refuse to count electoral votes, or why adequate security was not present to protect the Capitol, or whether there were conspiracies to break into the Capitol are all important to resolve to ensure that this never happens again. What is unfolding, instead, is a sick mockery of the principles of fairness and due process that this House is founded upon. It promises to discredit those proceedings and to dishonor its participants. Congress has a time-honored process to get at the truth. It guarantees the right of both sides to appoint their representatives, who then question and debate the facts, offer conflicting evidence, and hold an issue to every light. For the first time in the history of this institution, the Speaker arrogated to herself not only the selection of the majority members but the minority members as well, thus assuring only one side, her side, could be heard. Without having both sides represented, it becomes impossible to test the accuracy of facts, the truth of the narratives, and the soundness of opinions. It robs the process of the credibility that is a necessary prerequisite to legitimacy. Instead of the sober inquiry that should have been undertaken a year and a half ago, we have a Soviet-style show trial, all carefully choreographed by an ABC television producer. To add hypocrisy to outrage, some of the Speaker's representatives played a crucial role in developing and fanning the Russia collusion hoax that groundlessly challenged the legitimacy of the Trump election and Presidency. Some were themselves involved in challenging electoral votes counted after the 2016 election. Some were apologists for the violent riots that consumed this country in 2020. Some have been eerily silent as Supreme Court Justices have been intimidated in their own homes. Now, the FBI thoroughly examined the riot last year. They found no evidence that President Trump conspired with protesters to enter the Capitol, nor have the Democrats offered any now. They instead repackage and rehash the snap impeachment trial in which the President was acquitted by the Senate. Indeed, this committee knows but has deceptively suppressed the stunning fact that 4 days before the riot, President Trump offered the use of National Guard troops to keep the peace. The Democrat leadership turned it down. Do they really expect us to believe that the same guy who meticulously planned the riot also authorized the National Guard to prevent the riot? This is insane. Insurrection? The constitutional process immediately resumed once these yahoos were kicked out of this building. Do the Democrats actually expect us to believe that some lunatic wearing buffalo horns was moments away from seizing control of our government? The narrative cannot survive in open debate, and the Democrats know it. That is why they are not permitting one. Our institutions are strong because they are backed by the common sense of the American people. Our traditions of due process and fairness are too deeply ingrained in the American character to succumb to this madness. After Americans have reported their verdict in the upcoming election, perhaps we can forge a bipartisan consensus on the measures necessary to assure that the excesses of both January 6 and the January 6th Committee never threaten us again.

Mr. McCLINTOCK

Mr. McCLINTOCK. Madam Speaker, Alexis de Tocqueville said that the defining trait of socialism is ``a profound opposition to personal liberty and scorn for individual reason, a complete contempt for the individual.'' Socialists are hostile to our Bill of Rights specifically because it protects the individual against the State by guaranteeing our most fundamental rights and the means to defend them, and the guarantee that we can't be deprived of them except through due process of law. You have the right to have your day in court, to face your accuser, to present evidence on your behalf, to contest the charges brought against you. Now, if someone is adjudged to be dangerously mentally ill, of course they should not have access to firearms or to any other weapons. They shouldn't be on the street where they can do harm at all. They should be confined, during the course of their illness, so they can be treated and not endanger themselves or others. We already have commitment procedures that address this in concert with our Constitution. In that process, you appear before a judge, you can know the charges, you can face your accuser, you can plead your case, and you can present evidence on your own behalf in open court. But not under this bill. Under this bill, an anonymous accuser, including a jilted date or an ex-roommate, can trigger a secret proceeding that you don't even know is happening until the police show up at your door to strip you of your Second Amendment right to self- defense, and the burden then falls on you to try and restore it. And it won't stop here. The left has already branded speech they disagree with as dangerous. But they are right about one thing. This is an extreme risk bill. It is an extreme risk to our most fundamental individual rights as Americans.

Mr. McCLINTOCK

Mr. McCLINTOCK. Madam Speaker, the mass shootings across our country cry out for solutions that work. The good news is we know what works, and we also know what doesn't work. We have been passing gun control laws for more than 50 years. The number of American households with firearms has dropped significantly in those years. So let me ask: Are things getting better or worse? We know this from decades of experience: Gun control laws are extremely effective at disarming law-abiding citizens. They are completely ineffective at disarming criminals, madmen, and terrorists. They create a world where law-abiding citizens are defenseless and the gunman is king. The day after the Uvalde massacre, a criminal with an AR-15-style rifle shot into a crowd that was gathered for a graduation party in Charleston, West Virginia. A woman with a concealed weapon shot him dead on the spot. Nobody else was hurt. Had that occurred on a school property or other so-called gun-free zone, the death toll could easily have been counted by the dozens. The left scoffs at the notion that only a good guy with a gun can stop a bad guy with a gun. Well, do they know of any other way? There is none. The only question is how long it will take for that good guy with a gun to show up. It has often been said that the police can be there in minutes when seconds count. And what we found time and again is that even when the police get there, they don't always act. Those who are directly threatened by a gunman are those who are in the best position to stop such an attack because they are there on the spot and their lives depend on it. And yet the left won't let them. We think nothing of seeing an armed guard at a bank or a shopping mall. They are there to protect our money and our merchandise by killing bad guys with guns. Yet the left goes berserk when anyone suggests that we do the same thing to protect our children. What makes the left believe gun laws will be any more effective at keeping guns out of the hands of criminals than our drug laws have been at keeping drugs out of the hands of addicts? The difference is that drug laws don't disarm law-abiding citizens from defending themselves, their children, and their fellow citizens. Gun laws do. The President tells us that hardening our schools isn't the answer. Well, if he actually meant that, he ought to dismiss the Secret Service and open the front door of the White House and be sure to declare it a gun-free zone. Of course, hardening vulnerable venues like schools works. There is a reason why 98 percent of mass shootings occur in so-called gun-free zones: There is nobody there to shoot back, and the criminals know that. The Buffalo shooter noted precisely that in his manifesto. The good news is we know what works. Prosecuting gun criminals and putting them in prison until they are old and gray works. Yet woke district attorneys across the country refuse to do so. Executing murderers works. Yet the left has largely succeeded in all but abolishing the death penalty. And protecting the right of responsible citizens to return fire works. It stops an estimated half million to 2 million crimes in this country every year. The father of modern policing, Sir Robert Peale, often observed that the police are simply an extension of community; that, in reality, the community is the police and the police are the community. Every citizen, he said, has a right and duty to defend themselves and to uphold the law. The police are there, not to replace private citizens, but to support them. So let me ask, is the surest path out of this violent chapter of our history the quixotic quest to get 400 million guns off the streets, or is it to get the criminals who use them off the streets? That is what we once did, before social justice replaced criminal justice. We prosecuted gun criminals to the fullest measure of the law. We executed murderers. We identified the dangerously mentally ill and confined them so we could treat them. These measures worked until the left seized control of our cities and reversed them. I think it is long past time to take those streets back, get the criminals and dangerously mentally ill off of them, and protect our children with the same resolve and force as we use to protect our money.

Mr. McCLINTOCK

Mr. McCLINTOCK. Madam Speaker, this is called the Protecting Our Kids Act, but sadly it does no such thing. The one thing that we could do immediately to protect our kids is the one thing that the Democrats refuse even to consider. We think nothing of it when we see an armed guard at a bank. Well, they are there for one purpose--to stop anyone who is trying to steal our money. And, yet, when we suggest that we should use the same force and resolve to stop someone from killing our children, the left goes berserk. I simply do not understand such a screwed-up value system as that. President Biden's press secretary says that hardening our schools is not something he supports. Think about that. The most heavily guarded person in the world in the most hardened fortress in the country is telling us that we cannot protect our children and our schools as seriously as we protect our money in our banks. Of course, hardening the schools works. Listen to the sick mind that produced the massacre in Buffalo. He wrote, ``Attacking in a weapon-restricted area may decrease the chance of civilian backlash. Schools, courts, or areas where CCW are outlawed or prohibited may be good areas of attack. Areas where CCW permits are low may also fit in this category. Areas with strict gun laws are also great places of attack.'' That is the Buffalo shooter. Criminals understand that even if the Democrats in this House do not. In committee, I offered an amendment to require schools receiving Federal security funds to have at least one armed guard on every campus and to allow school officials who have met the requirements of their State to carry a concealed weapon to have it on campus to protect their students if they want to. This is something that can be implemented immediately and that could well have stopped the massacre at Uvalde. It doesn't depend on criminals obeying the law, as this bill does. It doesn't depend on someday, maybe, reducing possibly the 400 million firearms in this country. It doesn't make self-defense harder for honest and decent people. In fact, it makes self-defense easier for honest and decent people. It would make future attacks on our schools much less likely to succeed and infinitely more dangerous to those contemplating such an act. Yet, the Democrats refuse to even consider it. We know how to reduce gun violence. Harden our schools and protect our children with the same seriousness as we protect our money. Prosecute gun criminals. Send them to prison for the rest of their lives. Execute murderers. Confine the dangerously mentally ill so that we can treat them. Stop letting terrorists into the country across our southern border. Yet, woke district attorneys often refuse to prosecute gun criminals or they quickly drop gun charges to reduce their sentences. The Democrats have all but abolished the death penalty. They have released dangerous criminals from our prisons, released dangerous criminal, illegal aliens into our communities, flooded our streets with the dangerously mentally ill, and turned a blind eye as terrorists come across the border that they have left wide open. And then they wonder why we are plagued with violent criminals. Maybe it is time to get serious about removing criminals from our streets and fortifying our schools. That is something we could do today that will have an immediate effect today. Protecting Our Kids Act. It does no such thing. It is a tale told by an idiot full of sound and fury signifying nothing.

Mr. McCLINTOCK

Mr. McCLINTOCK. Mr. Speaker, I also rise to oppose the previous question on the rule so that we can immediately consider H.R. 6858 to reverse the Democratic policies that have deliberately created the highest gasoline prices ever suffered in this country. I remember the 1970s, when America was dependent on foreign oil. OPEC cut back production, and the government tried to hide the price hikes by fiat, just as the Democrats now propose. The result was mile-long lines at gas stations, odd and even rationing days, and an economic recession. Under the Republican policies of Donald Trump, America achieved something that seemed impossible in those days: American energy independence. Under Republican policies, we were producing more oil than Saudi Arabia. We were producing more oil than Russia. The average price of gas was a little over $2 a gallon. Now this time, OPEC didn't cut back on foreign production; the Democrats cut back on American production. They canceled the Keystone pipeline that today should have been pumping 830,000 barrels of oil every day into the American economy. They suspended oil and gas leasing on Federal lands. Just last week, they withdrew drilling leases covering a million acres in oil-rich Alaska and the Gulf of Mexico. Now, the left has said for years they wanted to raise gas prices to get people out of their cars and to end American fossil-fuel production. Well, good job, Democrats. Mission accomplished. The price of a gallon of gas hit an all-time record this morning of $4.52 a gallon. In the people's republic of California, it is now $6.02 a gallon, something to look forward to. Welcome to the world of scarcity, the world of Democratic socialism. The fact is, our energy crisis is self-induced, and it won't change until the zealots directly responsible for it are turned out of office. For example, watch the vote on the previous question on this rule. If it fails, Republicans will immediately bring to the floor a measure to reverse these disastrous policies. H.R. 6858 will greenlight the Keystone pipeline. It will fast-track leasing and permits to restore American production and independence. It will fast-track LNG facilities stalled under this administration. In short, it will restore the Republican policies that produced the affordable and plentiful gasoline that we took for granted just a few short years ago. But the sad fact is, we don't have the votes to bring this measure to the floor, although we will try. That is up to the American people to change. Do you want to know who the real price gougers are? They are the Democrat majority sitting on the other side of this aisle. If you voted for them, this is exactly what you voted for. If you are surprised by that, you weren't paying much attention. The good news is, you can correct that mistake this November.

Mr. McCLINTOCK

Mr. McCLINTOCK. Madam Speaker, the gentleman is absolutely right. The bill purports to assert a very important constitutional right, the right to trial by jury in civil actions. But it does so by denying everyone a very important other constitutional right, the freedom of unimpaired contract, the right of two parties to agree to exchange goods and services according to their own best judgment. Now, because of the excesses and expenses and uncertainties that have plagued our civil courts, many consumers and producers, and many employees and employers, find it advantageous to waive their right to civil jury trials in any disputes between them in favor of a simpler, cheaper, and faster arbitration. Now, proponents tell us it is an uneven playing field, and this requirement is often imposed in nonnegotiable, take-it-or-leave-it propositions. This isn't exactly true. Every employee and every consumer, no matter how weak and vulnerable, has an absolute defense against a bad agreement. It is the word ``no.'' No, the pay isn't good enough. No, the price is too high. No, I don't like the binding arbitration clause or any other terms, and I am taking my business elsewhere. Now, even when there aren't good alternatives, the fact is that every provision in a contract is a take-it-or-leave-it proposition if one side or the other insists on it. The question for each side is whether the totality of the contract is beneficial to them or not. It is every grownup's right to make that decision for themselves without somebody in government making it for them. Remember, the so-called forced arbitration provision forces the company to accept arbitration as well. For example, I am not a lawyer. I can't afford to hire one to take a big company to court. For me, binding arbitration helps level the playing field by providing me with an inexpensive alternative that the company must abide by. This bill takes that protection away from me. According to the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, through arbitration, employees prevail three times more often, recover twice as much money, and resolve their claims more quickly than they could through litigation. And in most cases, the employer pays the entire cost of arbitration. According to one study, in claims between $10,000 and $75,000, the consumer claimant was charged an average of $219. Now, you compare that to the cost of hiring an attorney and taking on an entire corporate legal department. The net result of this bill will be higher prices for products and lower wages for workers as companies factor the high cost of litigation into their business models. Madam Speaker, that is not fair.

Mr. McCLINTOCK

Mr. McCLINTOCK. Madam Speaker, setting aside the Democrats' neurotic obsession with all things Donald Trump, this measure has many provisions that would receive bipartisan support if the bill's author were so inclined. But when we speak of protecting democracy, we need to remember what democracy is. It is the process by which the sovereign people, through elections, decide who will control and direct the powers that we entrust to our government. ``The executive power shall be vested in a President of the United States of America.'' If the executive branch begins to operate independently of the President, the will of the people is thwarted and democracy is diminished. For example, the Tenure of Office Act limited the President's authority to remove Cabinet officers, a dangerous concept ultimately repealed by the Congress and repudiated by the Supreme Court. Provisions in this bill, such as those that interfere with Presidential appointments, cross that very bright constitutional line.

Mr. McCLINTOCK

Mr. McCLINTOCK. Mr. Speaker, the Caldor fire raged in the Sierra Nevada of California for 68 days last summer, consuming more than 221,000 acres of forestland, making it the 15th largest and the 16th most destructive fire in the history of California. It literally wiped out the Gold Rush-era town of Grizzly Flats, and for days threatened the city of Lake Tahoe. It destroyed nearly 800 homes, leaving hundreds of families homeless and destitute. On September 13, President Biden visited the scene. On that occasion, officials from El Dorado County and the California Governor's Office of Emergency Services apprised him of the need to assist these displaced families. He said, ``We're going to take care of them. There's a lot we can do, and it starts off being a Federal responsibility, in my view.'' The President was absolutely correct in that assessment. The fire exploded in the El Dorado National Forest that was catastrophically overgrown due to Federal environmental laws that have made removal of excess timber all but impossible. According to local officials I have spoken with, the excessive use of backfires by the Forest Service also appears to have needlessly exacerbated the fire. This fire is indeed a Federal responsibility, and the Federal government owes to every one of the fire's victims the full resources available to get them back on their feet. And yet, despite multiple appeals, the Federal Emergency Management Agency has refused to approve individual assistance for the victims of the Caldor fire. The FEMA denial is a stunning double standard when compared with assistance granted in other fires that did far less damage. For example, the California Office of Emergency Services identified nine other individual assistance grants that FEMA approved in 2021 for fires that cumulatively destroyed fewer homes than those destroyed by the Caldor fire alone. Survivors hoping to rebuild their homes face an insurance deficit of $200,000 or more. Many survivors are uninsured, and nearly all of them are underinsured due to the severity of recent wildfire seasons. Some survivors who were able to remain on their properties still lack access to potable water. Moreover, residents of Grizzly Flats--the town completely wiped out by the fire--are disproportionately low-income, elderly, and socioeconomically vulnerable. Their homes and their belongings were all they had, and now they have nothing. Even those who did not lose their businesses to the fire lost many months of income as evacuations shut everything down. The regional economy will continue to suffer if survivors are not able to rebuild. Critical infrastructure has been either damaged or completely destroyed, including schools, fire stations, and the Grizzly Flats Post Office. While local officials, residents, and organizations are doing everything they can to provide support to one another and to rebuild, they will not be able to recover without the Federal assistance that they desperately need and deserve. Last year, FEMA denied the request for individual assistance for the Creek fire in Fresno and Madera counties. When I appealed to President Trump to correct this injustice, he immediately reversed FEMA's decision and granted individual assistance to these homeowners. President Biden made a solemn promise to the victims of the Caldor fire to help them rebuild. He personally saw the damage and heartbreak caused by the fire. He has the authority to reverse FEMA's denial and fulfill his promise. I have now written three letters to him drawing this to his attention and making this request. So far, I have not even received the courtesy of a response. ``We're going to take care of them, and there's a lot we can do.'' Those were the President's words spoken to these families in September. These families have now passed their first Thanksgiving without their homes and many without their livelihoods that were taken from them by this Federal fire. They are approaching a dismal Christmas, waiting and praying for the President to fulfill his promise. I appeal to the President to use his authority to keep his promise to the victims of the Caldor fire. As President Trump did for the victims of the Creek fire, I call upon him to reverse FEMA's outrageous decision and release the funds these families are depending upon to rebuild their lives and their communities.

Mr. McCLINTOCK

Mr. McCLINTOCK. Madam Speaker, the latest estimate for the Democrats' build back broke bill is $4.9 trillion. That averages about $40,000 per family over the next decade. They say it is paid for. Well, by whom? By you, of course, through direct taxes, tax-driven price increases, and worst of all, inflation. And what do you get? Well, amnesty for 7 million illegal aliens. That is the entire population of Alaska, Wyoming, Vermont, Rhode Island, Delaware, North Dakota, South Dakota, and Montana combined. Now, explain to me how working Americans are helped by flooding the market with low-wage foreign labor. The trillions of dollars of excess spending by the Democrats has already driven the inflation rate to 6.2 percent and rising. Madam Speaker, that means if you earn $50,000 a year, the Democrats just took $3,100 of that. If you have managed to put $100,000 towards your retirement, the Democrats just took $6,200 of that. Policy matters. When Republicans reduced the tax and regulatory burdens, we delivered the lowest unemployment rate in 50 years, the lowest poverty rate in 60 years, and the fastest wage growth in 40 years. The Democrats have reversed these policies and reproduced the misery that we are suffering today. The American people know that we are on the wrong track and that this bill sends us deeper into that cold and bleak winter. Build back better? How about put things back the way they were before you broke them, Madam Speaker.

Mr. McCLINTOCK

Mr. McCLINTOCK. Madam Speaker, if the previous question is defeated, we will take up the Illegal Immigrant Payoff Prohibition Act. Last week, our Nation was stunned by the revelation that the Biden administration is about to use our tax dollars to pay thousands of illegal immigrants $450,000 apiece and up to a million dollars per family. Why? Because they were separated from their minor child when they were arrested for the crime of crossing our border illegally. Now, remember, any American citizen arrested with a child is immediately separated from that child. The adult goes to jail, the minor is taken into protective custody. That is what happened. The penalty for illegal entry is supposed to be a fine and prison. The Democrats are literally changing it into a million-dollar jackpot. This administration has already made a mockery of our immigration laws by refusing to enforce them. This has now produced the greatest illegal border incursion in our country's history. Working- and middle-class Americans are the most harmed by this because it is their wages that are depressed by flooding the market with low-wage labor. It is their classrooms that are strained with non- English-speaking students. It is their emergency rooms that are overwhelmed by illegal immigrants demanding basic services. It is their communities that are made more dangerous as gang activity increases and criminal, illegal aliens are released back into their neighborhoods. And now, to add insult to injury, the Democrats propose taking their tax dollars to make thousands of lawbreakers fabulously wealthy as an apology for President Trump actually enforcing our laws and securing our border. That is insane. The American people understand that quite clearly. Republicans will not allow this twisted travesty to go unchallenged. If there are any sane Democrats left in this House, I invite them to join us by voting ``no'' on the previous question.