Brian Mast

Mr. MAST

Mr. MAST. Mr. Speaker, I yield myself the remainder of my time. In closing, I thank the gentleman from New York (Mr. Williams) for introducing this important resolution. I believe that this Chamber has to stand firmly against Russian aggression. I believe very firmly that the United States of America has to have big, giant, brass stones. If our aggressors show us that they have bigger brass stones than what we do, then we will not be the leader of the free world. I very much fear what is taking place right now. I will just say it like that. I very much fear what is taking place and is allowed to take place in this world. Mr. Speaker, I urge all Members to support this resolution, and I yield back the balance of my time.

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

Mr. MAST. Mr. Speaker, I move to suspend the rules and agree to the resolution (H. Res. 240) condemning recent actions taken by the Russian military to down a United States Air Force drone, as amended.

Mr. MAST

Mr. MAST. Mr. Speaker, I move to suspend the rules and pass the bill (H.R. 1149) to establish certain reporting and other requirements relating to telecommunications equipment and services produced or provided by certain entities, and for other purposes, as amended.

Mr. MAST. Mr. Speaker, I yield myself such time as I may consume. Mr. Speaker, I rise in support of H.R. 1149, Countering Untrusted Telecommunications Abroad Act. The Chinese Communist Party, as we all know, weaponizes every tool at its disposal, whether it is intellectual property, a balloon, or a social media app. That is why it is no surprise that CCP-controlled companies like Huawei pose risks to our national security and why it is important that we do not allow ourselves or our allies or partners to be duped by the seemingly low- cost, state-backed telecom companies like Huawei. It might seem cheap, but the fact is the cost is much higher than many realize. You pay by allowing the CCP to control all of your telecommunications data, which, as history has shown, it can and will use against you. China has made no bones about that. What does this bill do? It requires, number one, the State Department to conduct a risk assessment and report to Congress on the presence of any untrusted telecommunications equipment or vendors like Huawei in the networks of defense-allied countries. Number two, it requires the Government Accountability Office to report on Chinese and Russian telecom suppliers serving U.S. embassies overseas. Number three, finally, the bill tasks the State Department with identifying telecom infrastructure projects that would strengthen U.S. national security. Three worthy goals. The United States has to be a leader on this front. We need to help our allies and our partners end their dependence on problematic companies like Huawei that are in the pocket of our adversaries. It makes no sense whatsoever. Mr. Speaker, I thank the gentlewoman from Pennsylvania (Ms. Wild) for her leadership on this issue and for working together on this important bill, which deserves our unanimous support, in my opinion. Mr. Speaker, I reserve the balance of my time. House of Representatives, Committee on Financial Services, Washington, DC, March 14, 2023. Hon. Michael McCaul, Chairman, Committee on Foreign Affairs, House of Representatives, Washington, DC. Dear Chairman McCaul: Thank you for consulting with the Committee on Financial Services regarding H.R. 1149, the Countering Untrusted Telecommunications Abroad Act. I agree that the Committee shall be discharged from further consideration of the bill so that it may proceed expeditiously to the House Floor. The Committee takes this action with the mutual understanding that, by foregoing consideration of H.R. 1149 at this time, we do not waive any jurisdiction over the subject matter contained in this or similar legislation, and that the Committee will be appropriately consulted and involved on this or similar legislation as it moves forward. The Committee also reserves the right to see appointment of an appropriate number of conferees to any conference with the Senate involving this or similar legislation, and we request your support for any such request. Finally, as you mentioned in your letter, I ask that a copy of our exchange of letters on this bill be included in your Committee's report to accompany the legislation, as well as in the Congressional Record during floor consideration thereof. Sincerely, Patrick McHenry, Chairman, Committee on Financial Services.

Mr. MAST. Mr. Speaker, I continue to reserve the balance of my time.

Mr. MAST. Mr. Speaker, I have no further speakers, and I reserve the balance of my time.

Mr. MAST. Mr. Speaker, I yield myself the balance of my time. Mr. Speaker, telecommunications and the secure transfer of electronic data are absolutely critical. I don't think I have met somebody that disagrees with that in today's world. They are critical to our national security and to our economic well-being. We don't want to get on a website that we think is unsecure. We don't want to reply to a text that we think comes from an untrusted number. We cannot afford the vulnerability that comes from giving control of this technology to the Chinese Communist Party or other malign actors. H.R. 1149 will help us get a handle on those vulnerabilities, forcing the Department of State to formulate an effective response. Again, I thank Ms. Wild for introducing this measure. I urge unanimous support for this bill, and I yield back the balance of my time.

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

Mr. MAST

Mr. MAST. Mr. Speaker, I move to suspend the rules and pass the bill (H.R. 1151) to hold the People's Republic of China accountable for the violation of United States airspace and sovereignty with its high- altitude surveillance balloon, as amended.

Mr. MAST. Mr. Speaker, I ask unanimous consent that all Members may have 5 legislative days in which to revise and extend their remarks and include extraneous material on this measure.

Mr. MAST. Mr. Speaker, I yield myself such time as I may consume. Mr. Speaker, I have a feeling that while there is going to be agreement, myself and the comments of my colleague over there might be slightly different, but I rise in support of H.R. 1151, the Upholding Sovereignty of Airspace or USA Act. It is an important piece of legislation because of what has happened to the United States of America and to Americans. In early February, I think everybody watched this on the news for days on end. Our Nation found itself in what we thought was an impossible situation. Looking up into the sky, Americans saw a strange object floating overhead. Some wondered if it was a bird or a plane. Some wondered if it was a UFO from some distant planet. It was none of those things. It was a high-tech balloon sent by the Chinese Communist Party to spy on the United States of America and all of our people. It floated slowly across North America in the full width of the continental United States from Alaska to the South Carolina coast. In States across the country, Americans saw the balloon, but what was more concerning was what the balloon saw. It conducted surveillance, it conducted reconnaissance, and it came away with intelligence on the United States of America that we did not want China to have. Now, while the Biden administration sat on its hands, this balloon, minute after minute after minute, gained valuable information on some of our most sensitive military sites. We now know that the United States had been tracking the balloon since at least January 28, that being the day that it entered U.S. airspace, but very likely before that. The administration hasn't disclosed exactly what date it began tracking the balloon. Yet, the Biden administration didn't act. They didn't shoot it down, that is to say, until 7 days later, until it had crossed the entire breadth of the United States of America. Mr. Speaker, China is determined to topple the United States of America. Xi Jinping will stop at nothing to achieve that goal. We have known this for years, but in February, we saw the proof with our own eyes. This is not an abstract concern. We can literally watch it invade the American homeland. Congress needs to step up and send a clear message to the Chinese Communist Party. It will not be allowed to violate our sovereignty, to use American technology for its own military purposes, or to spy on American citizens. This shouldn't be an argument anywhere in the United States of America. This bipartisan legislation is an important step in sending that message and denying the CCP those abilities. This bill does three important things. It sanctions Chinese Communist Party officials who were involved in the spy balloon program. It requires the Secretary of State to develop a strategy to confront the People's Republic of China's global surveillance activities. It requires the Commerce Department to consider export controls for U.S. technologies that are being used by the People's Liberation Army for intelligence and reconnaissance purposes. Under no circumstances should Americans know that the Chinese Communist Party is spying on them across the breadth of our country and know that their government is not doing anything to respond to that. It degrades the trust that Americans have in their government, in their safety, in their defense institutions, in their intelligence agencies. That can't be what America knows about its government. This has been bipartisan legislation. I thank the ranking member of the Foreign Affairs Committee, Mr. Meeks, for introducing the bill. Along with Chairman Michael McCaul, I encourage my colleagues to join me in supporting this bill and in curbing the CCP's malign influence in the United States. Mr. Speaker, I reserve the balance of my time. House of Representatives, Committee on Armed Services, Washington, DC, April 17, 2023. Hon. Michael T. McCaul, Chairman, Committee on Foreign Affairs, Washington, DC. Dear Chairman McCaul: It has come to our attention that H.R. 1151, the ``Upholding Sovereignty of Airspace Act,'' was substantially modified following its consideration in your Committee to include language within the jurisdiction of the House Armed Services Committee. In the spirit of comity and expeditious consideration of this legislation, we will not formally consider H.R. 1151. We do so with the understanding that by waiving consideration of the bill, the Committee on Armed Services does not waive any future jurisdictional claims over the subject matters contained in the bill which fall within the Armed Services Committee's Rule X jurisdiction or create any precedent for future accommodation. Please place a copy of this letter and your response acknowledging our jurisdictional interests into the Congressional Record. Thank you for the cooperative spirit in which you have worked regarding this matter and others between our respective Committees. Sincerely, Mike D. Rogers, Chairman, House Armed Services Committee.

Mr. MAST. Mr. Speaker, I yield myself the balance of my time. Mr. Speaker, H.R. 1151 is an important step in addressing very real threats posed by the Chinese Communist Party. I again thank Ranking Member Meeks and Chairman McCaul for this bill which earned bipartisan support in the Foreign Affairs Committee, and I believe it deserves our unanimous support. Mr. Speaker, I yield back the balance of my time.

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

Mr. MAST

Mr. MAST. Mr. Speaker, I ask unanimous consent that it may be in order at any time on Thursday, April 27, 2023, for the Speaker to declare a recess, subject to the call of the Chair, for the purpose of receiving in joint meeting His Excellency Yoon Suk Yeol, President of the Republic of Korea.

Mr. MAST

Mr. MAST. Mr. Speaker, I move to suspend the rules and pass the bill (H.R. 1189) to require the development of a strategy to eliminate the availability to foreign adversaries of goods and technologies capable of supporting undersea cables, and for other purposes.

Mr. MAST. Mr. Speaker, in closing, I encourage us to look at the world in this way: Everything with China and everything with communists is competition. It is competition against America. It is competition against our democratic values, our way of life, the way that we operate, the way that we pride ourselves on freedom. I don't kick well, but I am prepared to kick their ass in anything. Mr. Speaker, I yield back the balance of my time.

Mr. MAST. Mr. Speaker, I yield myself such time as I may consume. Mr. Speaker, I rise today in support of H.R. 1189, the Undersea Cable Control Act. What is this about at a higher level? It is about this: Don't enable our adversaries. Don't allow them to become stronger than us, or to make us reliant upon them, or to catch up to us in any way whatsoever, especially China. How does this relate to the bill? Undersea cables, if you are not familiar, carry about 99 percent of transoceanic digital communications--think things like voice communications, data, internet, trillions of daily international financial transactions, things that you don't want China getting ahold of. They serve as the backbone--a framework, really--for the global internet. These cables enable consumers, businesses, governments, and the military to communicate securely with each other and to access the internet. That is pretty dadgum important. The United States derives significant benefits from its leading position in global subsea cable networks, which carry the vast majority of voice and internet traffic between continents. However, in recent years, Chinese companies--heavily subsidized, of course, by the PRC, the Communist government--have started investing heavily in owning and supplying subsea cables. I would say it in this way: Imagine if we allowed, during the Cold War, the Soviet Union to buy up radio component companies in the United States of America and other places. What would things have been like? What kind of danger would that have been? That is the way that we should look at this. The U.S. has to look at the supply, the ownership, of these cables as another front in our competition with the PRC, where their aim is to supplant, like anything, the United States of America's position. This is not just an economic issue. The Chinese will steal information. They will make it unsecure. They want our transmissions. They weaponize all forms of telecommunications that they can. They weaponize every bit of social media that they can. They try to make these capabilities fit their own nefarious ends. Do we really think for a second that they would not do the same with undersea cables? I am not going to be fooled into thinking that. That is why I have introduced the Undersea Cable Control Act. It is a bipartisan bill that will direct the President to develop a strategy to eliminate American technologies capable of supporting undersea cables from falling into the hands of our adversaries, blocking our adversaries' abilities to develop and perfect undersea cable capabilities. It is a critical step for our security. Mr. Speaker, I thank you for listening to my opinions on this issue, and I reserve the balance of my time.

Mr. MAST. Mr. Speaker, I ask unanimous consent that all Members may have 5 legislative days to revise and extend their remarks and to include extraneous material on this measure.

Mr. MAST

Mr. MAST. Madam Clerk, I rise to nominate Kevin McCarthy for Speaker of the House. I think at this point we have all heard about Kevin McCarthy at length. He is my friend, my colleague. I am very proud to say that. I know our remarks are directed toward the Clerk and the Chair, but I don't mind saying that I am directing my remarks to another part of my team. And make no mistake, we are a team. We are together. I would say this to some of my friends in Texas. I have the same fear, truly, that some of you have, that we squander this opportunity to right the wrongs that have gone on here for the last 2 and 4 years, and there are very real wrongs. I have that fear just like you do. I would say to my friend from Montana that I have the same fear you do, that America gives us this chance to change our course and that we fail. I have that fear. I would say to my friend from Arizona, I have the same fears that you do, that we don't recover from the indifference that has been shown to the honor we have to serve here, to the responsibility we have to safeguard our Constitution and the freedoms of Americans. I have that fear that it can't be recovered from. I would say to my friend, the general from Pennsylvania, that I have the same fears that he has, that we squander what our brothers and sisters in arms have sacrificed for. I stand differently because of sacrifice. My friend from Texas, Mr. Crenshaw, when he looks out at the world, he sees the world differently because of what he sacrificed for. My friend Jim Baird, when he extends a hand, he extends it differently because of what he sacrificed for during his service in Vietnam. We have so many in this body that gave so much, sacrificed so much to support and defend the Constitution of our United States. I fear that we don't live up to what some of our friends and brothers and sisters in arms have very literally given their lives for. I don't mind saying that, on occasion, that absolutely brings a tear to my eye, because it does. It is not for that. My friend from Texas, my colleague, Mr. Roy, he and I have stood on this floor together, arguing on the same team about life and death issues for the United States of America, with so few people in here that you could hear an echo. That is sad. That is not living up to our friends. I have sat in classified briefings with the general from Pennsylvania, minimally attended on both sides, with issues that absolutely matter to the safeguarding of every person within our borders and our servicemembers abroad. We can do better than that, and we will. I would say to my friends, those issues that we deal with like that, that you have spoken passionately about, I have heard your speeches. I have sat and listened to them. They can't be fixed by our friend Andy, and they can't be fixed by our friend Kevin, or our friend Jim, or our friend Byron. That comes from inside each and every one of us to change what we prioritize, to change how we choose to spend our time given this opportunity, this honor, to serve in this place. My friend, Mr. Roy, has been very proud of the number of individuals that are in here, saying that this is how the process should play out, and I totally agree with him on that. But we don't control whether individuals in here are sitting on their cell phones, scrolling through whatever social media, or whether they are actually paying attention to the issues. The Speaker can't change that. That is up to the individual. That is something that we have to look at each other and sharpen each other and make each other better. When we started this process months ago behind closed doors--as leadership for the minority was being chosen behind closed doors, leadership for the majority was being talked about and debated and chosen behind closed doors--I said to my friend, Mr. McCarthy: Please don't look at us and see me as your friend or all of us as your friends. Don't look at us and see us as your colleagues. Don't look at us and see us as individuals that are votes for Speaker of the House. Look at us as individuals that are looking out to our communities, our neighborhoods, our friends, our neighbors, and our country and telling them that we vouch for you because that is what we are doing. We are vouching for you, and I couldn't be more proud to stand here today and vouch for you, my friend. I vouch to my community that Kevin will do as he has promised. He will give us the opportunity to right the course. He will give us the opportunity to vote. He won't control how every individual votes, but he will give us the opportunity to make sure that we have smart energy policy between the Atlantic and the Pacific that makes sense for Americans; to make sure that he protects our border, protects Americans; to make sure that we don't spend what we don't have on a credit card, that we don't spend wastefully. I am vouching for my friend that he will give us that opportunity to make sure that we don't have endless terms here in the House of Representatives. I vouch that he will deliver that opportunity to us. I am proud to stand before my country and say that Kevin McCarthy is different. He is different. That is why, for those that I was speaking to earlier, the process is where it is today. He is different. He is not Paul Ryan. He is not going to tell you that you will get a term limits bill, and then you won't. He is not Mitch McConnell. He fought against the $1.7 trillion wasteful spending package that was sent to us on Christmas Eve eve. That is not him. He is different. He is not John Boehner. He didn't throw you all that disagreed with him out on your cans and say: I don't want to hear from you. I don't want to listen to you. He welcomes everybody in because he is different. If we give him the chance to be our Speaker, we will all be different. He will be different; this Congress will be different; and our country will be different. I stand before you today and say, at the direction of the Republican Conference, I advance the name of Kevin McCarthy, very proudly, as the next Speaker of the House.

Mr. MAST

Mr. MAST. Mr. Speaker, what is our job here? We are going to take an oath in a couple of weeks here really outlining our job: supporting and defending the Constitution of the United States of America against all enemies foreign and domestic. I took that oath as a member of the military; I have taken that oath numerous times as member of the U.S. House of Representatives. The U.S. House of Representatives, a bicameral body, 435 of us, are meant to do the work of protecting we the people of the United States of America who elect us, and I want to quote our colleague on the other side, Ms. Scanlon, who was talking about what we don't have time for here as our colleague, Chip Roy, was asking for amendments to ensure that we the people's religious freedom was not prohibited, that the free exercise thereof was not prohibited. Adopting an amendment by our colleague, Chip Roy, she said, would unsettle the Senate. God forbid the work that we do here in the House of Representatives unsettles the work that is done in the Senate. Our job must be to just do their bidding of what they decide in the Senate and not represent as 1 of 435. But, no, that is not the real case. Our job is to represent our constituents, we the people, not to worry about whether we unsettle or don't unsettle the Senate. Let me give you another quote from our colleague about why we don't have the time to prohibit or to prevent prohibiting the free exercise thereof. She said that this Congress is coming to a close, and we don't have time to make changes to this legislation. We don't have the time? Wait a second. In the U.S. House of Representatives, our oath is to support and defend the Constitution of the United States of America. It is our singular job here, and we don't have the time to do it? That is what the majority is telling us: We don't have time to make changes to the bill, to ensure that the free exercise thereof, of our people's religions, is not infringed upon. They are saying we don't have time. What the hell are we doing here if we don't have the time to do it? What the hell are we doing?

Mr. MAST

Mr. MAST. Madam Speaker, did I address my remarks to you?

Mr. MAST. Madam Speaker, point of order.

Mr. MAST. As all remarks are supposed to be directed to the Chair, Madam Speaker, when is a life a life? Madam Speaker, when is a life a life? I will open it up for the rest of my colleagues over there. I would wager none of my colleagues on the other side will tell us when life begins. I have a $20 bill here. It is not worth as much as it used to be worth. I will put it down here on the table. Any one of you or your colleagues wants to speak up and tell us when life begins, it is sitting here for you. Madam Speaker, when is a life a life? When does it begin? That is the most extreme idea to come out of this body, that you won't acknowledge when a life is a life.

Mr. MAST

Mr. MAST. Mr. Speaker, I rise today to honor the life of Florida Fish and Wildlife Senior Investigator Kyle Patterson. Just 5 days ago on June 9, Senior Investigator Patterson was involved in a fatal crash while on duty. Senior Investigator Patterson faithfully served the people of St. Lucie County for more than 15 years. From his first assignment at the age of 19 to time spent with the Agriculture Crimes Intelligence Unit and Marine Intelligence Unit, he was dedicated. He was a public servant, committed to the safety of our homes and our community. Senior Investigator Patterson was passionate about baseball, steer, his family, and God. He dedicated his time to numerous organizations, including the St. Lucie County Farm Bureau and Christ Fellowship, the church that we share. His memory will absolutely live on with those who knew him and loved him best: his wife, Alisha; his children, Kole and Kinsley; and his parents and sisters. Please honor the life of Special Investigator Patterson and salute him because he gave a lifetime of service, and service did take his life.