Rich McCormick

Mr. McCORMICK

Mr. McCORMICK. Mr. Speaker, I yield myself the balance of my time. Mr. Speaker, the Biden administration is failing to stop the deadly scourge of fentanyl across the open U.S.-Mexico border. In my experience as an ER physician, just a short period ago, I experienced about one to four overdoses per night, four patients from the ages of 17 to 36 who I could not revive and who died. Last year in the U.S., there were 75,000 fentanyl deaths. To address this emergency, we need a better strategy for regional law enforcement and better coordination with our neighbors. I thank the bipartisan authors of this bill, Mr. Stanton and Mr. Kean, as well as Chairman McCaul and Ranking Member Meeks for moving this bill forward. Mr. Speaker, I support this bill, and I encourage my colleagues to do the same. I yield back the balance of my time.

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

Mr. McCORMICK

Mr. McCORMICK. Mr. Speaker, I rise today to celebrate the life and legacy of Mr. Edwin Harry Clanton, a long time constituent and resident of Forsyth County, Georgia. Born in Alpharetta, Georgia in 1948, Mr. Clanton was a kind, hardworking man who lived in such a manner where he consistently prioritized the needs of others above his own. He served his country with pride during the Vietnam War as an Army Sergeant in the 1st Platoon of the Big Red One, C Company, 1st Battalion, 26th Infantry. Once he returned from service, Mr. Clanton married Mardell, who was the love of his life and together they had two daughters and many grandchildren. While no longer serving in uniform, Mr. Clanton was a bedrock in his community, serving Atlanta Street Baptist Church as a deacon for many years and always willing to lend a helping hand to whoever was in need. Mr. Clanton passed away peacefully surrounded by family on April 30, 2024. I am proud to have had him as my constituent and send my deepest condolences to his family and friends as they mourn his loss. Although he is no longer with us, his incredible legacy will never be forgotten.

Mr. McCORMICK

Mr. McCORMICK. Mr. Chair, had I been present, I would have voted Aye on Roll Call No. 227.

Mr. McCORMICK

Mr. McCORMICK. Mr. Speaker, I rise today in support of H.R. 6093, the Weather Act Reauthorization Act of 2023. The Weather Act Reauthorization Act is sensible legislation that will strengthen the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration forecasting capabilities and elevate the U.S. Weather Enterprise, greatly benefiting communities across the country. As a former helicopter pilot in the Marine Corps, I know firsthand the consideration you must give to the weather before taking to the skies. Fog, high winds, turbulence, thunderstorms, ice, and snow are all routine weather occurrences that can impact commercial and recreational flights, as well as ground crew operations and maintenance tasks. Additionally, I think every Member of Congress here and many of our constituents have experienced some type of flight delay or turbulence in the last 6 months, as weather volatility is a consistent threat to travel plans. That is why I introduced H.R. 3915, the Aviation Weather Improvement Act, which has been included in this larger legislative package. This bill will improve all aspects of aviation weather forecasting and prediction by authorizing the National Weather Service to acquire readily available commercial data and partner with the U.S. weather enterprise to deploy critical atmospheric sensors. In addition to authorizing this public-private partnership on weather data, H.R. 3915 also has an explicit focus on improving turbulence forecasting and modeling. The Aviation Weather Improvement Act codifies the inclusion of turbulence events or phenomena in the operation forecasting capabilities of the Aviation Weather Center. This will ensure that recreational and commercial pilots have a definitive and accurate source for turbulence information that can inform route-specific flight planning. Put simply, my bill will lower the over 5,000 flights per year that encounter severe turbulence, as well as make a dent in the 30 percent of annual delays caused by weather. Mr. Speaker, I thank Chairman Lucas, Ranking Member Lofgren, and my colleagues on the Science, Space, and Technology Committee for supporting the efforts of all the Members who contributed to this important Weather Act Reauthorization Act. Mr. Speaker, I urge my colleagues to support this bill.

Mr. McCORMICK

Mr. McCORMICK. Mr. Speaker, I move to suspend the rules and pass the bill (H.R. 6602) to amend the Export Control Reform Act of 2018 relating to the review of the interagency dispute resolution process, as amended.

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

Mr. McCORMICK. Mr. Speaker, I yield myself such time as I may consume. Mr. Speaker, the People's Republic of China, under the leadership of the Chinese Communist Party, is waging an all-out economic war against the United States. The CCP is using unfair and illegal means to try to dominate the market in dual-use technologies that are shaping the modern battlefield. Fortunately, the CCP still significantly relies on technologies from the United States, our allies, and our partners to develop advanced dual-use capabilities. For that reason, export controls are a critical tool for the United States to slow down and, in some cases, stop China's ability to develop certain capabilities. For this strategy to work, we have to deny Chinese licenses to use American technology. Unfortunately, based on data reviewed and released by the House Foreign Affairs Committee, those licenses are rarely denied by the Commerce Department's Bureau of Industry and Security, known as BIS. For instance, during a 6-month period spanning 2020 and 2021, BIS denied less than 2 percent of licenses and approved $100 billion worth of licenses to Huawei and SMIC. Both of those companies are considered CCP military companies by the Department of Defense and are CCP national champion technology firms. When deciding whether to approve or deny a license, BIS generally consults other agencies that make up the Operating Committee for Export Policy, the Departments of Defense, Energy, State, and Commerce. However, BIS is not required to follow those other agencies' advice. Sometimes, BIS actively ignores it. Statistics provided by BIS for fiscal years 2017 through 2019 show that there was a 60 percent increase of nonconsensus decisions by the operating committee during that time. In other words, over half the time, 60 percent of the time, they ignored everybody else's objections and went ahead and did whatever they wanted to, just one person's decision. That is not good. More than 10 percent of the time, it appears the operating committee chair, which is part of the BIS, took the position that only one other operating committee member supported--also not good. Since the Department of Commerce is both the chair and a member, this data raises concerns that Commerce may be abusing its position on the operating committee to override the considered objections of other agencies. Otherwise, why even be there? This bill provides a commonsense solution to those dangers: When a license for China comes before the operating committee, the decision to approve or deny the license should be based on a majority vote by all of its members. Each agency brings a unique view to a license and should have a voice and a vote. It makes little sense for BIS to have sole discretionary and decisional authority on those consequential issues. In fact, when dealing with satellites and hot section jet engines, the operating committee already requires a majority vote. So my bill simply puts licenses to China on the same level as licenses for certain advanced technologies. Chairman Xi has ordered his military to have the capability to invade Taiwan by 2027. This is a country that produces 100 percent of the chips in AI that we consume here in America, I might add. It makes no sense for our Department of Defense to not have a vote on what capabilities may fall into the hands of the Chinese military. I thank my colleagues on the Foreign Affairs Committee for their unanimous, bipartisan support for this important national security reform bill during the committee markup back in December. Mr. Speaker, I urge my colleagues to support H.R. 6602, and I reserve the balance of my time.

Mr. McCORMICK. Mr. Speaker, I reserve the balance of my time.

Mr. McCORMICK. Mr. Speaker, I yield myself the balance of my time. Mr. Speaker, in closing, I thank Chairman McCaul, Ranking Member Meeks, and my bipartisan colleagues on the Foreign Affairs Committee for supporting this bill before us today. The committee is made up of a five-member panel with representatives from the Departments of Commerce, Defense, State, and Energy, with the chair being the Bureau of Industry and Security representative who, per the governing statute, should act impartially when the Operating Committee for Export Policy convenes. Under current law, OCEP, which is the Operating Committee for Export Policy, may resolve these issues and disputes by a majority vote. However in practice, the chair typically issues a ruling without calling a vote and most often rules in favor of the Department of Commerce, which draws into question their adherence to the directive to be impartial. It is critical that we deny our adversaries the opportunity to access our American private sector innovation. Our innovation should not be giving a leg up to our enemies in competition. An increasingly aggressive Chinese Communist Party is posing a growing threat to American values and American interests around the world. In many cases, they are threatening us with our own technology. For that reason, we must ensure that our national security agencies have a real voice and vote in deciding what technologies can be exported to the People's Republic of China. We want to ensure that the BIS does not produce BS. Mr. Speaker, I urge support for this bill, and I yield back the balance of my time.

Mr. McCORMICK

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

Mr. McCORMICK. Mr. Chair, I rise to offer my amendment to H.R. 6276, the Utilizing Space Efficiently and Improving Technologies Act, or the USE IT Act of 2023. My amendment is simple. It would amend section 4 of the bill to make the reports required by section be made publicly available on a website operated by the General Services Administration, the GSA, with exceptions for national security-related reasons. The American people deserve transparency. Far too often, the people of this country, the ones who fund the government, the ones we represent, don't know where their money is going. Taxpayer dollars are frivolously being used to heat and cool empty and underutilized government buildings. The American people see tens of thousands of dollars go out of their paychecks every year to pay for what: A wide open southern border, rampant inflation, out-of-control national debt, and an inefficient bureaucracy. This is ridiculous. The people deserve to know their money is being used efficiently. Making these reports on office use publicly available will increase public oversight on the activities of the Federal agencies and, in turn, increase public trust and confidence in our government. Mr. Chair, I reserve the balance of my time.

Mr. McCORMICK. Mr. Chair, I yield myself the balance of my time to close. Mr. Chair, my amendment is simple, easy, and commonsense. I ask for my colleagues to support this amendment and to support the underlying bill. Mr. Chair, I yield back the balance of my time.

Mr. McCORMICK. Mr. Chair, I rise as the designee of Mr. Mills, and I have an amendment at the desk.

Mr. McCORMICK. Mr. Chair, I am here today to offer amendment No. 6 to H.R. 6276, USE IT Act, as the designee of the gentleman from Florida (Mr. Mills). I fully support the accountability advanced by the underlying bill. The continual bloating of the Federal Government's physical footprint costs American taxpayers obscene amounts of money each year. This straightforward amendment provides additional transparency to the bill to ensure that Congress and the American people have the most fulsome data about the costs associated with this bill's implementation. Specifically, this amendment requires the Government Accountability Office, the GAO, to report on the cost of establishing future methodologies and technologies to measure Federal building occupancy as required by the bill. The enactment excludes any preexisting systems in place before the date of the enactment of this act to prevent any duplicative accounting. As we strive to limit waste, fraud, and abuse in our government, this amendment ensures that we are doing so with transparency and accountability in Federal building management. This bill and the amendment to it are hardly riveting. However, good governance often requires a willingness to do the mundane administrative work to keep the ship upright and moving forward. I will take a second just to say that I wish Mr. Mills could have been here to offer this important amendment, but he is currently on his way back from Haiti, after assisting with the evacuation of American citizens as the country enters a state of complete anarchy. His commitment to America, domestic and broad, is commendable. Mr. Chair, I reserve the balance of my time.

Mr. McCORMICK. Mr. Chair, just like the last amendment, this amendment is about transparency and accountability. Once again, I ask for my colleagues' support on this amendment and on the underlying bill. I yield back the balance of my time.

Mr. McCORMICK

Mr. McCORMICK. Mr. Speaker, on rollcall No. 57, I mistakenly voted ``yea'' when I intended to vote ``nay.''

Mr. McCORMICK

Mr. McCORMICK. Mr. Speaker, today, I pay tribute to the incredible service and life of Mr. Hilbert ``Hibby'' Margol of Dunwoody, Georgia. Mr. Margol is a World War II veteran and, this month, I join his friends and family in celebrating his 100th birthday. Mr. Hilbert Margol was born on February 22, 1924, just 10 minutes before his identical twin brother, Howard. The two brothers attended the University of Florida and were drafted into the U.S. Army in 1944. They were inseparable until they were assigned to different infantry divisions. In 1942, the military instituted a policy of separating siblings when assigned to military units or ships. Their mother, Mrs. Margol, took matters into her own hands and wrote a letter to President Franklin D. Roosevelt requesting the U.S. Army make an exception for her sons to be placed together. Her plea was successful, and the brothers were back together again. The pair were assigned to the U.S. Army 42nd Infantry ``Rainbow'' Division, 392nd Field Artillery Battalion, as Howitzers gunners. Seven months after D-Day, the Margol brothers arrived in Europe. As their unit moved toward Munich, Germany, they happened upon a fence at the end of a rural two-lane road. They quickly realized they had stumbled upon a massive, almost industrial-looking complex. It was Dachau, the first Nazi Concentration Camp. As Mr. Margol searched the area, he found dozens of railroad cars loaded with piles of human remains. He documented the horrors of Dachau with a Brownie camera. These photographs are on display at the United States Holocaust Museum in Washington, D.C. After the war, the brothers earned their degrees from the University of Florida in 1948 and married their wives in the same year. Hilbert moved to Atlanta in 1987 with his wife, Betty Ann, and they have lived there ever since. Mr. Margol is a Jewish American hero and a liberator, and he turns 100 years old on February 22, 2024. May America and the great State of Georgia be forever blessed with patriots like Hilbert Margol. His service to our Nation is a debt we can never truly repay.

Mr. McCORMICK

Mr. McCORMICK. Mr. Speaker, I thank the gentleman for yielding. Mr. Speaker, it is rare in this Chamber, especially recently, that you find a bipartisan effort, especially one that is all about the people. In this case, it is about the people. You have seen several physicians and several people from different committees from all over the Nation agree on one thing: We are not doing the right thing. By cutting Medicare payments to individual practitioners, we have done the opposite of the right thing. We will consolidate healthcare. You lose the cheapest way to deliver healthcare to the most people. Right now, hospital systems employ 71 percent of all physicians, and that is going up every year. Physicians deliver healthcare at the lowest possible rate. That is a fact. By doing the Medicaid payment cuts just to physicians, not to hospital systems, just to physicians at this quantity, you are forcing more physicians to work for hospitals, which means less competition and higher prices. That is the end-all be-all to what is going to happen right now. It is not going to save more money. It is going to mean more consolidations, more monopolistic practices, higher prices, and worse access, because physicians simply won't be out there to accept you as patients. You will have people retire; you will have people go out of business. When those physicians aren't there to take care of you at the most rudimentary level, the best and more affordable level, you will have nothing but worse patient care and a worse environment for physicians. Therefore, I do recommend, just like my colleagues on both sides of the aisle, to do the right thing. If people in Congress on both sides of the aisle are demanding to do the right thing, why can't we make it happen? Mr. Speaker, I encourage all of us to stand with our fellow physicians in a bipartisan effort to pass legislation to prevent cuts to the Medicare payments to physicians.

Mr. McCORMICK

Mr. McCORMICK. Mr. Speaker, I have an amendment at the desk.

Mr. McCORMICK. Mr. Speaker, I rise to offer an amendment to H.R. 788. I thank Representative Gooden and the Judiciary Committee for crafting this crucial piece of legislation that will further our mission of holding the executive branch accountable. The underlying bill is trying to fix an important issue. The Biden administration, or any administration for that matter, should not be directing settlement funds to support their radical social agendas by financing politically favored third-party entities or programs, sometimes completely unrelated to the original litigation. This practice is just wrong. My amendment is simple. It creates transparency by requiring the annual violation audits conducted by the inspector generals in section 2(f) of this bill to be made publicly available on an accessible website. The American people deserve to know what their government is doing. If a government agency, in violation of law, is directing these settlement payments to support political agendas, the public should know. Mr. Speaker, I reserve the balance of my time.

Mr. McCORMICK. Mr. Speaker, in closing, I am glad he does not oppose it because it is transparency on a bill that is meant to create transparency. I hope nobody opposes that. Mr. Speaker, I yield back the balance of my time.

Mr. McCORMICK

Mr. McCORMICK. Mr. Speaker, I rise today in support of the conference report for the 2024 National Defense Authorization Act. I am proud to report that this conference report includes language that I authored to both rein in government-sponsored censorship and help resolve the military recruiting crisis. The 2024 NDAA will require advertising agencies placing military recruitment commercials to certify that they have not placed advertisements in news sources based on personal or institutional political preferences or biases or determinations of misinformation. This language is intended to prevent the Department of Defense from contracting with advertising agencies that utilize blacklists provided by organizations like Global Disinformation Index and NewsGuard, which have been found to be biased against conservative viewpoints. Mr. Speaker, of the five Defense Department service branches, only two, the Marine Corps and Space Force, met their Active-Duty enlisted recruiting goals for fiscal year 2023. Last year, the Army missed its recruiting goals by 25 percent. In the midst of this recruiting crisis, it makes zero sense to artificially limit the reach of our military recruitment advertisements. It is especially foolish when those limitations target the sites frequented by the people most likely to volunteer to serve. I am grateful to Chairman Rogers, Speaker Johnson, and Ranking Member Wicker for fighting to include this important revision.

Mr. McCORMICK

Mr. McCORMICK. Mr. Speaker, I rise today to honor Dr. G.B. Espy, obstetrician, gynecologist, world traveler, entrepreneur, man of God, and one of the finest men I have ever known. On January 8, Dr. Espy will turn 88 years old. Mr. Speaker, Dr. Espy has delivered over 65,000 babies; has performed at least as many surgeries; has run 40 consecutive New York marathons, including the last one at the age of 80; and he has contributed to countless scholarships, missions, and supported friends all over the world. Congratulations on a life well lived. God bless you. We love you. Semper Fidelis.

Mr. McCORMICK

Mr. McCORMICK. Mr. Speaker, I rise today to celebrate Mr. John Robert McGrath Sr.'s 100th birthday and honor his service in the U.S. Navy during World War II. Born and raised in a small town outside of Pittsburgh, Mr. McGrath made the decision to join the U.S. Navy in 1942 to fight for his country. Following the end of the war, Mr. McGrath earned a degree from the University of Pennsylvania before beginning his career as a mortgage banker. Although his service to his country came to a close, his service and generosity to his community continued throughout his life, as he was known to make soup for the elderly and care for the sick. Mr. McGrath has always been a dedicated husband and father and is beloved by his large family, with ten grandchildren and ten great-grandchildren. He currently lives in Roswell, Georgia. It is an honor to celebrate Mr. McGrath on this incredible milestone, and I am proud to be his Representative. I wish him and his family many more happy years to come.