Tom McClintock

Mr. McCLINTOCK

Mr. McCLINTOCK. Madam Speaker, I yield myself such time as I may consume. Madam Speaker, I rise today in support of H.R. 3094, offered by our colleague from Florida (Mr. Soto). A little over 4 years ago, on June 12, 2016, the Pulse nightclub in Orlando, Florida, became the scene of the worst terrorist attack on American soil since September 11, 2001. Forty-nine Americans died and 53 were injured that terrible night at the hands of an ISIS-inspired coward who turned on the very country where his parents had sought refuge from the violence in Afghanistan. Instead of gratitude, he unleashed hatred and violence upon this country that had sheltered his family and made it possible for him to be born into a land of freedom and opportunity. The poisonous political ideology that infected and animated him in his attack--and to which he pledged allegiance just before the attack-- is a familiar nemesis to the founding principles of our country. This craven and wanton attack reminds us of the threats of Islamic extremism both at home and abroad: that they are real, that they are malignant, and that they are deadly. In the aftermath of this terrible attack on the patrons of the Pulse nightclub, its owner established a nonprofit called the onePULSE Foundation to memorialize those who died in this mass murder, known simply as ``the 49.'' The foundation worked quickly to establish a memorial in Orlando, but recently began working with Orlando's mayor to launch a design competition for a permanent memorial and museum slated to open in 2022. This bill would redesignate the Pulse Memorial in Orlando as the National Pulse Memorial. The bill makes clear that this memorial will not be a unit of the national park system, and a designation as a national memorial does not require any Federal funds to be expended. The House's action on this bill today complements the United States Senate's resolution passed on June 11 of this year honoring the victims of this outrage, as well as the State of Florida's designation of June 12 as Pulse Remembrance Day. I urge adoption of the measure, and I reserve the balance of my time.

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

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

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

Mr. McCLINTOCK. Madam Speaker, I have no further speakers on our side, and I reserve the balance of my time.

Mr. McCLINTOCK. Madam Speaker, I would inquire if the gentleman is ready to close.

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

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

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

Mr. McCLINTOCK

Mr. McCLINTOCK. Madam Speaker, 13 years ago, I partnered with California State Senate Democrats in advocating for an open records act for complaints against police officers. Five years ago, I cosponsored Hank Johnson's Stop Militarizing the Police Act. This year, I cosponsored Justin Amash's legislation to end qualified immunity for public officials. So if the majority was seeking bipartisan support for police reform, they would have had it. If they had sought consultation, compromise, and cooperation, if they had reached across the aisle, they would have found many sincere allies among Republicans. My views on law enforcement were shaped years ago when I had the honor to work for the former Los Angeles police chief, Ed Davis. His approach to law enforcement proved highly effective. While crime increased dramatically across the rest of the country during these years, in Los Angeles, under Chief Davis, it came down. He believed in the policing principles of Sir Robert Peel, that the police are simply an extension of the community. Chief Davis believed that, and he practiced it. He introduced neighborhood watch, enlisting citizens to work in partnership with the police. He introduced the Basic Car Plan that matched patrol officers with individual neighborhoods so that they would become a familiar, recognized, and trusted presence in those neighborhoods. I believe the closer we adhere to these principles, the more effective law enforcement will become and the fewer abuses we will see. Major parts of this bill move us closer to these principles, including the need to open police records of misconduct, the restriction of no-knock warrants, the restriction of transfers of military hardware to local police departments, and the encouragement of police cameras. If these provisions were presented as standalone bills, I think many would pass with significant bipartisan support. But by rolling them into a bill that imposes an ideological laundry list of operational restrictions and procedures upon every police department in the country, it makes this bill unwise, unworkable, and unsupportable. Worse, it ignores the most serious problem we face: the protection of bad cops by collective bargaining agreements that makes it all but impossible to fire them. Policing is a uniquely community-based function. New York, New York, and Auburn, California, are very different places with very different needs, challenges, and standards. Running and micromanaging every local police department is far beyond our competence or authority. So, even though there are provisions in the bill I strongly support, I cannot support the attempt to federalize local police departments, which moves us further down a slippery slope I fear we are already on. Looking at the wreckage on our streets, I feel the ultimate target of the left is not isolated abuses by law enforcement officers but, rather, law enforcement itself. As we can now plainly see, without law enforcement, there is no law. And without law, there is no civilization. Finally, I strongly condemn the sentiments expressed in so many forums that America is systemically racist. There are racists of every color in every society. It is the baser side of human nature. But no nation has struggled harder to transcend that nature and isolate and ostracize its racists than have Americans. The American Founders placed principles in the Declaration of Independence that they believed would someday produce a nation of free men and women of all races and religions, together enjoying the blessings of liberty under the equal protection of our laws. Lincoln denounced any other claim as ``having an evil tendency, if not an evil design.'' An evil tendency and an evil design are exactly what the radical left has introduced into our society, and it is tearing our country apart.

Mr. McCLINTOCK

Mr. McCLINTOCK. Mr. Speaker, just a few months ago, America enjoyed the most promising economic expansion in our lifetimes, lifting millions of Americans out of poverty, boosting wages for American workers, and producing the lowest unemployment rates in 50 years. Today, the American economy lies in rubble, with tens of millions of Americans thrown into unemployment, poverty, and despair. Now, that damage was not done by a virus. It was done by ordering entire populations into indefinite home detention, shuttering countless businesses, and desecrating the most fundamental human rights that our Constitution demands our government to protect. Now, we are told to follow the science and data. That would be nice, for a change. What does the science tell us about the severity of COVID-19? Well, we know that about 80 percent of those who get it either have no symptoms at all or experience it as a mild respiratory infection. In New York, 74 percent of those who died were over age 65 and six one- hundredths of 1 percent were under the age of 18. Three-quarters of those who died had underlying medical conditions. So how does it follow the science to close the schools where it poses the least danger while packing infected patients into nursing homes where it poses the greatest danger? Once epidemiologists began surveying general populations, they discovered the disease isn't nearly as severe as the claims that set off the global panic. Researchers at Stanford University surveyed the population of Santa Clara, California, and estimated a fatality rate of seventeen one-hundredths of 1 percent. New York serology tests revealed a fatality rate of one-half of 1 percent. So, simply stated, if you get the flu, your chance of survival is 99.9 percent; and according to these studies, if you get COVID-19, your chance of survival is better than 99.5 percent. So how does this science justify throwing nearly 40 million Americans into unemployment? Does the science support population-wide lockdowns? In 2006, based upon an Albuquerque teenager's science paper, the Bush administration proposed mass lockdowns in the event of a severe flu pandemic. Leading epidemiologists warned at the time that: ``The negative consequences of large-scale quarantine are so extreme that this mitigation measure should be eliminated from serious consideration.'' It wasn't. New York Governor Andrew Cuomo has now admitted that 84 percent of COVID-19 hospitalizations in New York are people who are either already quarantined at home or are at nursing homes. Statistical analysts, including Stanford University's Michael Levitt, Tel Aviv University's Isaac Ben-Israel, Kentucky State University's Wilfred Reilly, and Cypress Semiconductor's T. J. Rodgers, are finding no significant statistical difference in the infection curves between those jurisdictions that have destroyed their economies and those that haven't. In fact, a study by J.P. Morgan has found an inverse relationship as economies began to open back up. A study of 318 outbreaks involving 1,245 cases in China found just one outbreak that occurred outdoors, involving just two cases. Eighty percent of the outbreaks occurred in people's homes. So how does it follow the science to close outdoor venues and order people indoors? Mr. Speaker, it is high time we considered how many Americans will die because of the COVID-19 lockdowns. The Well Being Trust predicts up to 75,000 ``deaths of despair'' due to suicide and drug and alcohol abuse because of the lockdown. In March, the Epic Health Research Network warned of a 94 percent decline in breast, colon, and cervical cancer screenings. The Rape, Abuse & Incest National Network reports a 22 percent increase in children calling for help. A 2011 Columbia University study funded by the National Institutes of Health estimated that 4\1/2\ percent of all deaths in the United States are related to poverty. So how does it follow the science to destroy the livelihoods of millions of Americans, cut them off from their social networks, force them into isolation, and plunge them into poverty and despair? Now, I don't blame public health officials. They have the luxury of ignoring the effect of their policies beyond their area of expertise. The responsibility rests, rather, with public officials who failed to consider the catastrophic collateral damage that they have caused, who became so drunk with power and so besotted with self-righteousness that they lost any reference to common sense or any concern for the damage they have done.

Mr. McCLINTOCK

Mr. McCLINTOCK. Mr. Speaker, the word ``congress'' literally means the act of coming together and meeting. The Constitution calls for representatives to attend, to assemble, and to meet. Congress is a deliberative body, and by its very nature, that requires the people's representatives to interact with each other, both through formal proceedings as well as through the countless informal conversations that are the unique product of coming together and meeting. Fulfilling that duty, Congress has met throughout every war and pandemic that has come before us. We expect grocery clerks to show up at 4:00 in the morning to restock the shelves, but the House of Representatives is going to phone it in? Each of us is the proxy for our constituents. They expect us to speak and vote for them, and answer to them, not hand off that trust to someone entirely unaccountable because we are too lazy or too scared to show up for work. Good God, what are we doing to our country?

Mr. McCLINTOCK

Mr. McCLINTOCK. Mr. Speaker, $3 trillion divided by 129 million households means the average family will have to pay more than $23,000 for this single bill, either from their future taxes or from inflation robbing their savings and retirements. Now, when we passed the last bill, I warned it was no substitute for restoring our Nation's commerce immediately for a simple reason: The Federal Government does not finance the economy; the economy finances the government. Government cannot put a single dollar into the economy that it has not first taken out of that same economy. The wholesale lockdown of the American people and the deliberate decimation of their livelihoods has been the single most self- destructive folly in our Nation's history. These draconian measures have proven much less effective at stopping the virus than we were assured but have been much more effective at destroying the jobs that people rely upon to feed their families. We have had enough. Democrats, don't take away our future. Give us back our country.

Mr. McCLINTOCK

Mr. McCLINTOCK. Madam Speaker, when we passed the Paycheck Protection Program, I warned that serious flaws would deliver a windfall to businesses that did not need it at the expense of those that do. That is exactly what happened, exhausting the fund within days. Now it is imperative to replenish this program to assure that small businesses that desperately need these funds receive them. Now, this could have been done 2 weeks ago but for the Democrats' demands that wasted time and added costs. I supported the CARES Act only because I believed a better bill could not be produced given the current majority. For the same reason, I support the bill to be taken up later today, but with this grave warning: unprecedented and unconstitutional government edicts have deliberately destroyed the livelihoods of millions of Americans and have set in motion both an economic depression and government insolvencies that threaten the very survival of our Nation. They must end now.

Mr. McCLINTOCK

Mr. McCLINTOCK. Mr. Speaker, COVID-19 didn't kill our economy. Government policies, however well intentioned, did that. In just a few weeks, they have derailed the most promising and prosperous economy of our lifetimes and put us in imminent danger of permanently destroying millions of American jobs. The unprecedented spending in this bill threatens to destabilize the fiscal structure of our Federal Government and suppress future economic growth. But in order to deal with those issues, we must first arrest the damage caused by the actions that have plunged us into a recession. Temporary job losses will soon become permanent job losses, without federally guaranteed loans to preserve those jobs and a way for families to recoup their financial losses. This bill does so, although inefficiently, wastefully, and at enormous cost. Despite all its flaws, passage of this bill is, therefore, imperative. But it is no substitute for getting Americans back to work soon.

Mr. McCLINTOCK

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

Mr. McCLINTOCK. Madam Speaker, I yield such time as he may consume to the gentleman from Colorado (Mr. Tipton), the author of this measure.

Mr. McCLINTOCK. Madam Speaker, the Yucca House National Monument is a classic example of how the Antiquities Act is supposed to work. President Woodrow Wilson designated 9.6 acres as a national monument--I didn't say 9.6 million acres; I said 9.6 acres--in order to protect an ancient American Indian archaeological site, the ruins of a sprawling 600-room pueblo. That is the real purpose of the Antiquities Act. That is the way it is supposed to be used. It is there to protect small archaeological sites for study and preservation. It is not there to set aside hundreds of square miles of land just because we can. The site was donated to the United States Government by the landowner and subsequent owners who made available a small amount of additional acreage as artifacts have been discovered. H.R. 1492, by Congressman Tipton of Colorado, would make a further boundary adjustment of about 160 acres of donated land adjacent to the monument that encompasses additional sites and provides for better public access. Unlike many recent national monument designations, this one has the strong support of the local communities affected and is focused on preserving actual archaeological sites from antiquity. This bill should serve as an example for how monument designations or adjustments should be made, always with local collaboration and support. I applaud my friend for his diligent work on this legislation. I urge its adoption, and I reserve the balance of my time.

Mr. McCLINTOCK

Mr. McCLINTOCK. Madam Speaker, after the gentleman's description, I am going to resist the temptation to comment on the unique culinary traditions of my friends in Louisiana. In California, we don't want to eat them. We just want to get rid of them. That is what this bill is all about. I urge its adoption, and I yield back the balance of my time.

Mr. McCLINTOCK. Madam Speaker, I yield myself such time as I may consume. It is easy to joke about the nutria, more commonly called a ``swamp rat,'' but their proliferation in regions like California is a growing threat to water infrastructure throughout the State. Louisiana has suffered this invasive species since the 1930s; the Chesapeake since the 1940s. They are now proliferating in California, where they destroy irrigation systems, undermine dams and levees, erode riverbanks, displace native wildlife, and lay waste to aquatic vegetation. This legislation amends the Nutria Eradication and Control Act of 2003 and reauthorizes funding for the program until fiscal year 2025. Currently, Maryland and Louisiana are the only States eligible for funding, yet the problem is national. According to estimates, there could be nearly a quarter million of these destructive creatures in California within 5 years if we don't take action now. California has enough problems of its own making to deal with. It requires the same assistance as provided to other parts of the country to control this invasive infestation, and this bill broadens the eligibility nationwide to do so. During committee consideration, this measure was amended to more closely resemble the language included in my legislation, H.R. 5217, the Water Optimization for the West Act, which makes this a national program rather than an earmark. I urge adoption of the measure, and I reserve the balance of my time.

Mr. McCLINTOCK. Madam Speaker, I yield such time as he may consume to the gentleman from Louisiana (Mr. Graves).

Mr. McCLINTOCK

Mr. McCLINTOCK. Madam Speaker, I yield such time as he may consume to the gentleman from Texas (Mr. Ratcliffe).

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

Mr. McCLINTOCK

Mr. McCLINTOCK. Madam Speaker, I yield myself such time as I may consume. The statue of Chief Standing Bear can be found in this Capitol, honored by the State of Nebraska as one of its favorite sons. Chief Standing Bear led the Ponca Tribe through the crisis that began with its displacement by a flood of westward-bound settlers encouraged by the Kansas-Nebraska Act. The Tribe was pressured to abandon its most productive lands and, essentially, made wanderers by a series of broken promises by the United States Government. When they sought refuge on the Omaha Reservation, Chief Standing Bear and his surviving tribesmen were arrested and detained at Fort Omaha, with no legal recourse. The legal case that followed established, in 1879, the legal principle that American Indians were indeed American citizens protected under the Constitution and accorded all the due process rights enshrined in it. During that case, the words of Chief Standing Bear, pleading on behalf of his Tribe, moved the entire Nation and endure to this day. H.R. 2490, authored by Congressman Fortenberry, directs the Secretary of the Interior to study the feasibility of designating the Chief Standing Bear National Historic Trail. The Chief Standing Bear Trail, extending approximately 550 miles from Nebraska to Oklahoma, follows the route taken by Chief Standing Bear and the Ponca people during their forced removal. If supported by this study, any designation of the trail would require additional action from the Committee on Natural Resources and the Congress. This legislation passed the House in the 114th Congress. It is long overdue to become law. Madam Speaker, I yield such time as he may consume to the gentleman from Nebraska (Mr. Fortenberry), the author of the measure.

Mr. McCLINTOCK

Mr. McCLINTOCK. Madam Speaker, I yield myself such time as I may consume. H.R. 2427 reauthorizes appropriations at current levels for the Chesapeake Bay Initiative Act of 1998 taking us through the year 2025. Much of the early history of our country was written on the Chesapeake Bay. Eight recognized American Indian Tribes maintain ancestral homes there. It is the site of Jamestown and the early English settlements. It was a center for the great Yankee trading ships, the birthplace of George Washington, the site of Fort McHenry, and the main line of the Underground Railroad which took so many to their freedom. The Chesapeake Bay Gateways and Watertrails Network, originally authorized through the Chesapeake Bay Initiative Act of 1998, set up a network of Chesapeake Bay-related sites such as parks, wildlife refuges, and trails. The program includes 160 sites in six States and the District of Columbia. The National Park Service provides matching grants for projects that enhance public education about and access to the Chesapeake Bay. At a time when so many are losing touch with our country's proud heritage--or even denigrating that heritage--it is all the more important to keep alive the memory of those great days that set the American Nation on its path to prosperity and freedom. Madam Speaker, I yield back the balance of my time.