Tom McClintock

Mr. McCLINTOCK

Mr. McCLINTOCK. Madam Speaker, I rise today to recognize a gentleman who defines devotion to country. Colonel Hank Adams enlisted as an infantryman during World War II then proceeded to serve this country for 41 years as a soldier in the United States Army. His steady advancement from private to sergeant major to second lieutenant and then colonel is testament to a life's work undertaking demanding and often dangerous assignments extremely well. Yet, immediately after his retirement from active duty, Col. Adams continued his work to make our armed forces the best they can be. For 34 years and counting, he has served as a U.S. Military Academy Liaison Officer relentlessly working to find and mentor the very best young men and women to lead our armed forces. Col. Adams has provided critical assistance to me and the citizens of California's Fourth Congressional District. For 12 years, he has been the presiding member of my Service Academy Nomination Panel--and the only member with a Ruptured Duck on his lapel. His wise council and collegial coordination with the other former and active duty military officers on the panel has meant over 120 of the finest from this district have gone to our academies and then proceeded to protect this nation. We must remember and honor men like Col. Adams who have made this county the freest and therefore the greatest in history. His lifetime example of putting country above self is increasingly rare. All too often, it is forgotten that the freedoms we enjoy are afforded to us by the service and heroism of men Like Col. Adams. I am proud to rise today in gratitude and recognition of Col. Hank Adams' 75 years of continuous, uninterrupted service to our country.

Mr. McCLINTOCK

Mr. McCLINTOCK. Mr. Speaker, last year, we had achieved operational control of our southern border for the first time in generations. Trespassers knew they would be turned back, so they never started the perilous journey. On his first day in office, Joe Biden canceled the border wall, ordered ICE not to faithfully execute the laws, and canceled the remain-in-Mexico policy for asylum claims. This sent a powerful message throughout the world that America's borders are wide open. So now we are 4 months into an experiment that will test how long a country without borders can survive. The numbers speak for themselves. The week of the 2020 election, scarcely 100 family units illegally crossed our border. By the week of the inauguration, 1,100 did. By the last week of March, it was over 14,000 in a week. In February, the Border Patrol encountered roughly 100,000 aliens illegally crossing our border. That is about the size of South Bend, Indiana. By March, that number had grown to over 170,000. That is about the size of Salem, Oregon. Last month, the number reached nearly 180,000, the population of Providence, Rhode Island, a 900 percent increase over April of last year. Thirty-eight percent are being released into our country. In April, ICE deportations fell to their lowest number in history. Felons that the law requires to be deported are instead deliberately being released into our neighborhoods. In the last 2 months, I joined delegations led by Congressmen Jordan and Biggs across the southern border. In the Rio Grande Valley sector, we watched one night as hundreds of aliens from Central America illegally crossed our border with impunity and entered a Disneyland- style queue. After a brief interview, groups in the company of small children were dropped off at transportation hubs to be taken anywhere in the United States they wanted to go without even being given a notice to appear in court. Unaccompanied minors were taken to a holding facility where they were placed in cattle pens. One unit designed for 33 people had over 500 in it. After a few days, they were transferred to HHS facilities. No effort is made to safely return them to their homes. Every effort is made to place them in the United States, often with family or friends who are themselves here illegally. The President just transferred $2 billion to accommodate this flood that he has created, taken from funds Congress appropriated to rebuild our emergency medical reserve and fund COVID testing. Simply stated, Americans last. In the San Diego, El Centro, and Yuma sectors, we saw the nearly completed border wall built by the Trump administration made useless because of small construction gaps that can't be filled because Mr. Biden has forbidden it. Aliens just calmly walk through them. We saw one group taken into custody from Romania. Another group of about 20 were from Cuba, Russia, and Armenia. From all over the world, people are flying into Mexico on tourist visas, making their way to border towns, and then walking through the gaps to enter the United States illegally. In California, one officer told us their orders were to process as many illegals into the country as fast as possible. From its polling, Gallup estimates there are 42 million people now living in Latin America and the Caribbean alone who intend to come to the United States if they can. And now they are. We are witnessing the beginning of a mass migration of historic proportions, one that no civilization in human history has ever survived. One Border Patrol officer warned us that every community in America is about to become a border town. Every American will feel it as classrooms are filled with non-English speaking students; as gangs proliferate; as criminal illegal aliens are released in our communities; as hospital emergency rooms are packed with illegals demanding basic medical care; and as a desperate labor market is flooded with low-wage illegal labor, meaning lower wages and fewer opportunities for working Americans. This is not accidental. This administration is pursuing a deliberate policy to fundamentally change the culture, electorate, and founding principles of our Nation. It is working, and it will continue as long as the people responsible for it remain in public office. History is littered with the ruins of nations that fail to control their borders. Whether ours soon joins them depends on Americans taking back their government before it is too late.

Mr. McCLINTOCK

Mr. McCLINTOCK. Madam Speaker, I rise today to acknowledge the remarkable life story of an American hero, Captain Paul Jacobs who passed away this past December. Captain Paul Jacobs served six combat tours in Vietnam, though it was his last tour that forever enshrined him as leading one of the U.S. Navy's greatest humanitarian efforts. As U.S. forces began withdrawing from South Vietnam in late April 1975, Captain Jacobs was then commanding the destroyer escort USS Kirk off the coast of Vietnam. To escape being captured by Communist North Vietnamese forces, South Vietnam helicopters loaded with refugees swarmed out toward the U.S. fleet. After hearing rumors that any South Vietnamese pilot captured by the North Vietnamese would be tortured, mutilated, and imprisoned, while their families would be made outcasts or worse, they fled desperately trying to escape that fate. Upon realizing this, Captain Jacobs offered his ship as a safe haven for the South Vietnamese refugees. Helicopters began arriving and all hands aboard the Kirk--including Captain Jacobs--pushed unloaded helicopters over the side to make room for incoming ones. In all, 12 helicopters, packed with refugees, had landed on one of the Navy's smallest warships. Captain Jacobs then transformed the Kirk into a humanitarian aid station, providing food, comfort, medical care, relief from a blazing sun and hope to the men, women and children they'd rescued. It is no exaggeration to credit Captain Jacobs' steadfast leadership in the face of such hardship for saving the lives of those 30,000-plus Vietnamese sailors and refugees. The United States Navy has a proud tradition of courageous, competent, indefatigable, and independent ship captains, who fear not what lies over the horizon, and who earn the respect and fidelity of their crews through their fair and steadfast leadership. Such will be Captain Paul Jacobs' legacy. In California's Fourth Congressional District and in Captain Jacob's childhood hometown in Maine, we share profound grief over his passing. And so today, I rise to bid Captain Paul Jacobs--the United States Navy's most revered humanitarian--farewell. May he always have fair winds and following seas.

Mr. McCLINTOCK

Mr. McCLINTOCK. Madam Speaker, I rise today to acknowledge the remarkable life story of an American hero, Captain Paul Jacobs who passed away this past December. Captain Paul Jacobs served six combat tours in Vietnam, though it was his last tour that forever enshrined him as leading one of the U.S. Navy's greatest humanitarian efforts. As U.S. Forces be withdrawing from South Vietnam in late April 1975, Captain Jacobs was then commanding the destroyer escort USS Kirk off the coast of Vietnam. To escape being captured by Communist North Vietnamese forces, South Vietnam helicopters loaded with refugees swarmed out toward the U.S. fleet. After hearing rumors that any South Vietnamese pilot captured by the North Vietnamese would be tortured, mutilated, and imprisoned, while their families would be made outcasts or worse, they fled desperately trying to escape that fate. Upon realizing this, Captain Jacobs offered his ship as a safe haven for the South Vietnamese refugees. Helicopters began arriving and all hands aboard the Kirk--including Captain Jacobs--pushed unloaded helicopters over the side to make room for incoming ones. In all, 12 helicopters, packed with refugees, had landed on one of the Navy's smallest warships. Captain Jacobs then transformed the Kirk into a humanitarian aid station, providing food, comfort, medical care, relief from a blazing sun and hope to the men, women and children they'd rescued. It is no exaggeration to credit Captain Jacobs' steadfast leadership in the face of such hardship for saving the lives of those 30,000-plus Vietnamese sailors and refugees. The United States Navy has a proud tradition of courageous, competent, indefatigable, and independent ship captains, who fear not what lies over the horizon, and who earn the respect and fidelity of their crews through their fair and steadfast leadership. Such will be Captain Paul Jacobs' legacy. In California's Fourth Congressional District and in Captain Jacob's childhood hometown in Maine, we share profound grief over his passing. And so today, I rise to bid Captain Paul Jacobs--the United States Navy's most revered humanitarian--farewell. May he always have fair winds and following seas.

Mr. McCLINTOCK

Mr. McCLINTOCK. Mr. Speaker, racism is the practice of according rights and privileges to an individual not based on equality under the law, but, rather, according to what race that person was born. It is antithetical to every principle our country was founded upon, from the promise of our Declaration of Independence that all men are created equal to the equal protection clause of our Constitution. It was a malignancy we fought a civil war to remove. For generations, it has been denounced by every American of goodwill for the evil that it is. Yet, this dangerous social pathology is now rampant in this House. The Judiciary Committee recently adopted a measure on a party-line vote to establish a commission with the avowed purpose of enshrining racism into law under the guise of slavery reparations. The biased composition of this commission--there is not a single Republican appointment--lays its intent bare for all to see. It is designed to reach into the dead past, revive its most malevolent conflicts, and reintroduce them into our age. I cannot imagine a more divisive, polarizing, or unjust measure than one that would use government force to require people who never owned slaves to pay reparations to people who never were slaves--based not on anything they did, but solely because of what race they were born. History offers us an inexhaustible supply of grievances and injustices that are powerful enough to stoke hatreds and resentments that can tear any society apart. That is what this movement is all about. It is evil in its effect, if not in its intent. Lincoln often pointed out that our country was born into a world where slavery was an established institution. The American Founders reviled it, and they placed principles in our founding documents that they were confident would ultimately place that wicked institution upon the course of ultimate extinction and would lead to a republic where men and women of every race and background could, together, enjoy the blessings of liberty. Equal justice under law means a colorblind society where race simply becomes irrelevant, and until recently, we had made tremendous progress toward that vision as a nation. Martin Luther King expressed the gold standard of racial harmony: that we should be judged by the content of our character and not the color of our skin. It is the equal protection of the law and the vision of a colorblind society stretching from the American Founders to Lincoln and King that is now under attack by the racist left. Yes, there are racists in our society. There are racists of all colors in every society; it is the baser side of human nature. But no nation has struggled harder to transcend that nature and isolate and marginalize its racists than have Americans. Yes, extremely damaging and foolish policies have disproportionately impacted Black communities in recent decades. Union-dominated schools that have failed to educate our children in inner cities, welfare programs that have destroyed families, and the withdrawal of police protection from crime-plagued neighborhoods are certainly among them. But these policies devastate every community where they are practiced, regardless of race. The answer is to change those policies, not to excuse them because they are ideologically pleasing to the left. The racist left is content to ignore all of these current ills. It, instead, attempts to set neighbor against neighbor and American against American on the basis of their race. They say this is healing. It is precisely the opposite. They know it. Indeed, they count on it. I think all Americans of goodwill and of every race and creed have had enough of this. We are tired of seeing our children taught to hate themselves and to hate each other. We are tired of seeing our country demonized as racist by those whose first and solitary focus is on race. We are tired of the lie that our Nation is systemically racist when it has done more to produce a civil and tolerant multiracial society than any people in the history of civilization. It is long past time that every American of every heritage denounces this evil for what it is and to extirpate from our civil discourse those race-baiters of every persuasion who have polluted our national dialogue and corrupted our national heritage.

Mr. McCLINTOCK

Mr. McCLINTOCK. Madam Speaker, this bill presents a very simple question: Should we all but strip the President of his authority to restrict travel from countries that pose a danger to the United States? Ronald Reagan and George Bush used this authority to protect our country. So, too, did Barack Obama and even Joe Biden as recently as January 25. President Trump invoked this authority against countries that were hotbeds of international terrorism and that were not cooperating with the United States in providing basic information about travelers coming from these countries. Now, the left calls it a Muslim ban. What nonsense. The President's orders affected only a tiny fraction of Muslim-majority countries and a sizable number of non-Muslim countries. The Supreme Court cited this obvious truth when it fully upheld the President's actions. In fact, when a rogue government changed its policy and cooperated with us, the restrictions were lifted. Without this authority, the President would have been powerless to take simple, prudent precautions against terrorists and criminals from entering the United States. The President's ability to protect against threats, negotiate security protocols, and, when necessary, retaliate against discriminatory actions by other countries depends on his having this power at his immediate disposal. This bill, instead, forbids the President from taking action until he can show that it is the weakest possible measure at his disposal. It requires him to get his own Secretary of State's permission, which is a constitutional absurdity, and it gives anyone who claims any harm the standing to block an order in Federal district court. So, I ask, in this world that is becoming increasingly threatening and unstable, does this bill make us more safe or less safe? The answer should be self-evident to anyone who is not completely besotted with the woke insanity of the radical left.

Mr. McCLINTOCK

Mr. McCLINTOCK. Madam Speaker, we are way beyond any question of whether we face a border crisis. The question now is whether we have a border at all. When I put that very question directly to the president of the Border Patrol, his answer was an emphatic: No, we do not. By abandoning the border wall, rescinding the remain in Mexico policy, and obstructing enforcement of court-ordered deportations, President Biden has produced a mass illegal migration of historic proportions, preying most tragically on young children and making the Mexican crime cartels billions of dollars. The only border security measure he hasn't pulled down is the ability of the CBP to stop illicit activity at our official ports of entry, where large volumes of narcotics and other contraband must pass. Judiciary Republicans recently visited our facility at Hidalgo crossing, where thousands of cars and trucks passing through the port of entry must be inspected daily to protect our country from high- volume cartel smuggling. Our officers are experts at spotting suspicious traffic hidden among the high volume of legal crossings without unduly delaying honest commerce and passage. Now, to do this, they wave the suspicious traffic to secondary inspections, where they can locate and stop contraband that is often ingeniously hidden. Now, this has been a tremendous inconvenience to the cartels. We saw millions of dollars of methamphetamines and other deadly drugs, as well as infected fruits and vegetables heading to American markets, recently seized at these secondary inspections. But H.R. 1573 would grind legitimate trade and travel to a halt by providing that anyone referred to secondary inspection can, within an hour, consult with an attorney and call other third parties. Now, there are more than 17 million secondary inspections conducted each year at our 328 ports of entry. Can you imagine the effect of this bill? It is not limited to attorneys. A smuggler pulled into secondary inspection could warn confederates behind him that their hiding places have been discovered, turn back. The officers told me they are already overwhelmed, using antiquated facilities, and suffering manpower shortages. This bill gives the CBP the Hobson's choice of curtailing inspections or routinely backing up traffic for hours on end. The inspection itself is not a criminal process. It is a screening process to assure that only legal products enter our country. Only when it becomes a criminal matter is there a right to counsel. Now, if this isn't actually written by the crime cartels, it is certainly entirely in their interest and service. It speaks volumes about the attitude of the Democrats on the security of our border, the safety of our citizens, and the sovereignty of our Nation.

Mr. McCLINTOCK

Mr. McCLINTOCK. Mr. Speaker, this bill is just the first taste of a bitter brew concocted by those who pushed through $1.9 trillion of pure deficit spending last week. Now, this measure involves our paygo rules. You remember paygo. The current version dates to 2010. In those days everyone was worried about a $1.3 trillion deficit and $13 trillion of national debt. Isn't that adorable? Paygo requires across-the-board spending cuts to offset any bill that spends money we don't have. And we just spent a lot of money we don't have. As paygo works, the first installment payment for this Biden binge is $345 billion of spending cuts every year for the next 5 years, and that includes $52 billion in paygo and BCA cuts to Medicare, which is expected to go broke in 2024 as it is. Now, that is just to pay for the party the Democrats had the other day. So it is time to pay for it. How do you deal with a bill like that? Well, it is pretty simple: Just forget about it. Just wipe it off the books and start planning the next trillion-dollar spending spree. In fairness, that is how both parties have addressed paygo since we passed it. And the net result is the deficit has nearly tripled and the debt has more than doubled in less than a decade. At least the Republican tax cuts in 2017 helped produce such a strong economic recovery that our revenues went up. They didn't go down. Now, that should have reduced our deficit, but our failure to control spending instead drove that deficit still higher. In short, it is the spending, stupid. No nation has ever spent, taxed, and borrowed its way to prosperity, but many have spent, taxed, and borrowed themselves into bankruptcy and ruin. History warns us that nations that bankrupt themselves aren't around very long, because before you can provide for the common defense and promote the general welfare, you first have to be able to pay for them. Excessive debt saps the credit of a nation that is its lifeline in times of genuine peril. It consumes the future prosperity of the nation as interest costs swell. It saps the economic vitality of our Nation by crowding out capital that would otherwise be available to consumers and home buyers and businesses. It robs the currency of its value, pilfering the Nation's savings and their pensions. It alienates capital markets until interest rates rise and interest costs balloon into a debt spiral. Once this starts, there is no way to stop it until the whole house of cards crashes down. Do you know want to know what that looks likes? It looks a lot like Venezuela. In the spring of 1945, there was serious concern whether we could continue the war into 1946. Bond sales were failing miserably, war taxes, spending, borrowing, and inflation had hollowed out our economy, and the Nation's credit was nearing exhaustion. Now consider this: we are carrying a larger percentage of debt today than we were at the very end of World War II, and I fear how we could respond to a similar sustained national threat today. When a colleague told the great economist, Adam Smith, that a British defeat would be the ruin of the nation, Smith calmly observed: ``Be assured, my young friend, that there is a great deal of ruin in a nation.'' But as I look at the unprecedented and unsustainable debt that these policies are producing, I can't avoid a sense of foreboding that our Nation is fast running out of ruin, and that a terrible day of reckoning is coming.

Mr. McCLINTOCK

Mr. McCLINTOCK. Madam Speaker, I would just point out, the last 30 seconds was on the time of the gentleman from New York. I reserve the balance of my time.

Mr. McCLINTOCK. Not this session, no.

Mr. McCLINTOCK. Will the gentleman yield?

Mr. McCLINTOCK. Madam Speaker, I yield myself the balance of my time. Just yesterday, the Secretary of Homeland Security told the Homeland Security Committee that the border is secure. The Secretary said the border is secure, despite saying only 1 day earlier that the Department of Homeland Security is on pace to encounter more individuals on the southwest border than we have in the last 20 years. He said the border is secure, despite a 590 percent increase in the number of family units crossing the border in the first 6 weeks of the Biden administration. He said the border is secure, despite Customs and Border Protection referring over 7,300 unaccompanied alien minors to the Department of Health and Human Services during the month of February. That is the highest number of referrals in any February in the history of the program. He said the border is secure despite the Biden administration's plan to use the Dallas Convention Center to house thousands of the unaccompanied minors who the cartels have smuggled across the border. No matter what Secretary Mayorkas says, the fact is the border is not secure, and it is not secure because of President Biden's dangerous immigration policies. We know that when foreign nationals think they can easily get into the U.S. and be rewarded with legal status, which is what this bill does, they flood the border. We are watching that happen before our eyes. Aliens are flooding the border in response to the President's rhetoric and policies and in response to the promises of additional rewards made through bills like this. Talk of amnesty fuels border crossings. That is a fact. This bill grants amnesty and a special path to U.S. citizenship to at least 1 million farmworkers currently in the United States. I have seen estimates that go up to 2\1/2\ million--nobody really knows--as well as to their spouses and children. This bill allows aliens to get green cards even if they illegally reentered the U.S., committed immigration fraud, voted illegally in a Federal or State election, or have two serious misdemeanor convictions. The supporters of this bill claim that illegal aliens who get green cards must work in agriculture. However, the bill includes broad waiver authority that allows those who did not complete all the work requirements because of weather conditions or COVID or if the alien was fired, among other situations, to still get a green card. Those legalized under this bill would, from the outset, compete directly for jobs with Americans. Nothing in this bill prevents those who get employment authorization during the initial process from working in nonagricultural labor sectors. And of course, once they and their family members get a green card, as provided under this legislation, they are free to work wherever they want. This bill sends a powerful message and an invitation to those who cross our borders illegally that they can expect to be rewarded with legal status and, ultimately, green cards and an expedited path to citizenship. But far worse than that, it floods our market with low-wage labor at a time when Americans are struggling to recover from the devastating lockdowns that have crushed the dreams of so many working families. I will end as I began. The people who were most helped by the economic expansion that we saw were working-class Americans because the Trump administration got control of our borders and stemmed the flow of this illegal labor. They made the greatest gains during the expansion; they have been the most harmed during the lockdowns; and this adds to their burdens and woes by ensuring that the market for their skills and labor will remain stagnant for a decade to come. Please don't do this to those good Americans in this perilous time for our country. Madam Speaker, I yield back the balance of my time.

Mr. McCLINTOCK. Madam Speaker, I yield 4 minutes to the gentleman from Wisconsin (Mr. Tiffany).

Mr. McCLINTOCK. Madam Speaker, may I inquire of my friend from California if she has any additional speakers?

Mr. McCLINTOCK. Madam Speaker, I reserve the balance of my time.

Mr. McCLINTOCK. I yield 1 minute to the gentleman from California (Mr. LaMalfa).

Mr. McCLINTOCK. Madam Speaker, I yield 2 minutes to the gentleman from Ohio (Mr. Davidson).

Mr. McCLINTOCK. Madam Speaker, I would remind this Speaker that Cesar Chavez was one of the most outspoken adversaries to illegal immigration, precisely because he knew what that did to depress the wages of the legal immigrants that he represented through the United Farm Workers. I yield 1 minute to the gentleman from Pennsylvania (Mr. Thompson), the ranking member of the Committee on Agriculture.

Mr. McCLINTOCK. Madam Speaker, reclaiming my time. This only applies to illegal aliens. If you are legally here, obeying our laws, you are out of luck with this bill. What this bill says is, if you are here illegally and can have a friend vouch for you that you worked 1,000 hours over the last 2 years in agriculture--again, that is the equivalent of 13 40-hour weeks--you get legal status. This is one of the many reasons why we are seeing this response from around the world now flooding our southern border. Madam Speaker, I am pleased to yield 3 minutes to the gentlewoman from Indiana (Mrs. Spartz).

Mr. McCLINTOCK. Madam Speaker, no one disputes that this bill is a huge windfall to big agriculture. The problem is that it comes at the expense of American workers. Madam Speaker, I reserve the balance of my time.

Mr. McCLINTOCK. Madam Speaker, I am pleased to yield 3 minutes to the gentlewoman from Minnesota (Mrs. Fischbach).

Mr. McCLINTOCK. Madam Speaker, I yield to the gentlewoman from Texas.

Mr. McCLINTOCK. Madam Speaker, I yield an additional 1 minute to the gentlewoman.

Mr. McCLINTOCK. Madam Speaker, I yield myself such time as I may consume. I can assure the gentlewoman from Texas that we are outraged by the fact that this administration's policies and pronouncements have encouraged thousands upon thousands of children to be placed on that trail of terror in the hands of Mexican criminal cartels and brought here on the expectation of admission, an expectation that this administration is fulfilling. I must also assure the gentlewoman that this certainly is an amnesty bill. It allows anyone who is here illegally, who can claim to have worked the equivalent of 13 40-hour weeks over 2 years, legal status, amnesty. The documentation can be as little as having a friend vouch for them.

Mr. McCLINTOCK

Mr. McCLINTOCK. Mr. Speaker, last year, we finally achieved operational control of our southern border for the first time in decades. The Trump administration had made it clear that our border would be enforced, and illegal immigration dropped dramatically. That all ended on January 20, when Joe Biden issued executive orders to stop deporting illegal immigrants, abandon the border wall, admit anyone claiming to be under 18, and rescinding the Remain in Mexico policy for asylum claims. That message has been heard loud and clear. The Border Patrol reported more than 100,000 encounters in February alone. Think about that. That is the entire population of South Bend, Indiana, or Green Bay, Wisconsin, in a single month, and it is getting worse. We are way beyond the debate over whether this is a border crisis. The question now is whether we have a border at all. What is the Democrats' response? This bill promises a path to citizenship not only for 700,000 DACA recipients but millions more who illegally arrived prior to January 1, were under 19 when they arrived, and have only committed two misdemeanors. How do they prove they qualify, Mr. Speaker? Under this bill, it means having a friend vouch for you. Now, we all sympathize with those illegally brought here as young children years ago, and more than 200 Republicans supported legislation in the 115th Congress to give them legal status. But it included measures that secured our border and enforced our laws to discourage another generation of young people being brought here exactly as we are seeing unfold today. Why are so many children being placed in the hands of Mexican criminal cartels and forced to suffer the 2,000-mile trail of terror to our border? Because it works. Mr. Speaker, this bill proves the Mexican crime cartels are right: You will be admitted into our country and need only wait for the next amnesty.