Jamie Raskin

Mr. RASKIN

Mr. RASKIN. Mr. Speaker, I am prepared to close, and I yield myself such time as I may consume. Mr. Speaker, the multiple provisions constituting the D.C. police reform law are mainstream, commonsense reforms unanimously passed by the Council of the District of Columbia which enjoyed strong public support and are perfectly congruent not only with the George Floyd Justice in Policing Act, which passed the House in the 117th Congress, but also with police accountability laws enacted by dozens of States and localities in recent years in the wake of notorious episodes of police brutality like the murder of George Floyd. For example, since May of 2020, at least 24 States have enacted legislation to limit the use of dangerous neck restraints against citizens. Thirty-nine States have passed reforms related to officer education and training. Since May of 2020, 26 States have enacted laws to improve data collection and police transparency. At least seven States, including Arizona, Colorado, and Wisconsin, have enacted laws requiring the creation of public databases on use-of-force information. States like Colorado, South Carolina, and Maryland have mandated adoption of body-worn cameras statewide. At least 20 States have enacted laws that address State-level use-of-force standards. This joint resolution of disapproval is an attack on local decisionmaking, federalism, and the policies of oversight and accountability that Americans clearly want and that our committee as the oversight committee should be championing. This resolution would result not only in less political democracy in America but less official oversight and accountability over policing in the Capital City. It is amazing to me that our colleagues will not even have a hearing on the desire of Washington with 700,000 taxpaying but unrepresented Americans to join the Union as a State, but they will mobilize all their energy to strip from the local D.C. police chief the power to discipline cops who commit crimes. There seems to be no end to our colleagues' willingness to undermine good police work in Washington. Last month the most memorable thing they have done so far in the new Congress, Committee Republicans visited more than 20 January 6 insurrectionists living in D.C. jail-- the vast majority of whom are there because they were convicted of or charged with violently assaulting our police officers. Our colleagues liken the extremists who attacked our police officers to political prisoners--people like Nelson Mandela, Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn, and Alexei Navalny. Those are people charged with ideological offenses against authoritarian regimes. These prisoners they visited were charged with, and in many cases convicted of, violently assaulting American police officers. This month now Republicans want to overturn a local law that allows the chief of police in D.C. to keep cops who commit crimes like drug dealing or sexual assault off the force. I don't blame the people of Washington or Ms. Norton for telling them to keep their hands off D.C. Mr. Speaker, I yield 1 minute to the gentlewoman from Massachusetts (Ms. Pressley).

Mr. RASKIN. Mr. Speaker, I yield 1 minute to the gentlewoman from California (Ms. Pelosi).

Mr. RASKIN. May I inquire how much time is remaining, Mr. Speaker?

Mr. RASKIN. Mr. Speaker, I yield myself such time as I may consume. The good chairman of the committee invoked the name of Mayor Muriel Bowser, the Mayor of the District of Columbia, who sent us a letter with the chairman of the D.C. City Council, Phil Mendelson, which closes this way: ``Not only should our policy decisions not be overturned by officials not elected to represent our residents, but piecemeal interference hurts our ability to confront crime and improve public safety in the District of Columbia.'' What is this about, Mr. Speaker? H.J. Res. 42 seeks to nullify a law passed unanimously by the Council of the District of Columbia to promote accountability for police officers who use excessive force or abuse their power, a goal that the vast majority of Americans share. The D.C. law banned the use of choke holds and other dangerous neck restraints and set reasonable standards on the use of deadly force. It required the public release of body-worn camera footage and created a police officer misconduct database for officers who have been convicted of a crime or had allegations against them civilly or administratively sustained. It prohibited D.C. from hiring officers who have engaged in criminal or official misconduct. Most importantly for these purposes, Mr. Speaker, the new law empowered the chief of police to fire or discipline officers who break the law by removing police disciplinary matters from the control of arbitrators under collective bargaining. This is the provision that galvanized opposition to the bill from the police union, the key provision that has now led our colleagues to want to convert the Congress of the United States into the largest city council in the world, a 535-member city council with the job of micromanaging and superintending the work of the 13-member Council of the District of Columbia. The local police union hates this provision, which is their right, of course. Their chief has been the chief lobbyist against Washington, D.C., on this law. He was the key GOP witness in the Oversight Committee hearing on the law. His union sued when the legislation was first passed, asserting that it violated the U.S. Constitution not to subject the discipline of police officers to an outside arbitrator. They lost in the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia, they lost in the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia, and the Supreme Court did not grant cert. Still, the union is running TV ads against this law and has obviously found friends on that side of the aisle. Now, in their eagerness to kick around the more than 700,000 taxpaying American citizens who live in Washington, D.C., but have no voting representation in the House of Representatives or in the U.S. Senate, our colleagues are embracing a claim that puts them in favor of an extreme police union position on discipline that jurisdictions across America are debating and many of them are rejecting. Why? Well, D.C. is a good example. Before passage of this law that they propose to repeal, the D.C. Metropolitan Police Department had been forced by labor arbitrators to rehire a significant number of policemen and -women who had been fired for engaging in serious criminal misconduct. Here are some examples of the officers who were fired but the department was forced to reinstate by an arbitrator. One officer illegally struck a suspect multiple times in the head. The officer was criminally tried and convicted of criminal assault, sentenced to 30 days in jail, 3 years of probation, and 500 hours of community service. Despite strong opposition from the police department, he was reinstated by an arbitrator. Another officer, off duty at the time, sexually assaulted a woman and was convicted of misdemeanor sex abuse and sentenced to a 100-day suspended sentence and a year of probation. Despite strong opposition from the department, he was reinstated to the force by an arbitrator. Another off-duty police officer confessed to abusing a child. The officer was convicted of child abuse and sentenced to 5 years of probation. Despite strong opposition from the department, he was reinstated, as well. Every D.C. police chief for at least the last 25 years has expressed outrage about the old system of having to rehire bad cops after they had been fired for perpetrating serious misconduct against the people of Washington, D.C. Former D.C. Police Chief Peter Newsham openly lamented that he had to allow ``very bad police officers back onto our department.'' Former Police Chief Charles Ramsey said this: ``It is demoralizing to the rank and file who really do not want to have those kinds of people in their ranks. It causes a tremendous amount of anxiety in the public. Our credibility is shot whenever these things happen.'' The current D.C. Police Chief, Robert Contee, says that giving the police the power over discipline reduces the risk of returning poor performers to the force. Forcing police chiefs to reinstate bad cops fired for breaking the law is bad for public safety, it is bad for community morale, and it is bad for the morale of the vast majority of good cops who are doing their job. It is also bad for taxpayers. Between 2010 and 2020, The Washington Post found that D.C. paid out $91 million to resolve claims of police brutality and misconduct. The taxpayers are also on the hook for backpay that was paid out to bad cops who were fired for this misconduct when they were rehired following the ruling of an arbitrator. In a recent 5-year period, the D.C. Metropolitan Police Department was forced to rehire 36 officers. According to an Office of the D.C. Auditor report, D.C. had to pay $14.3 million in backpay to these convicted and disciplined officers. The question of whether police chiefs or arbitrators should be the ones to decide to put disciplined cops back on the force is a matter for local decisionmaking in Washington as it is in every other jurisdiction in the country. Mr. Speaker, 700,000 taxpaying American citizens have decided through their elected representatives that the chief of police, who is appointed by the Mayor of the District of Columbia, should be the one to be able to discipline bad actors within the police department. Reversing the D.C. government on this local matter is outrageous interference by Congress to impose a bad public policy on the Capital City. Mr. Speaker, I reserve the balance of my time.

Mr. RASKIN. Mr. Speaker, I yield myself such time as I may consume. Mr. Speaker, just a few points about the last contribution from the gentleman from Georgia. Georgia reported 892 murders in the last year, the fourth highest in the country. He said that Washington, D.C., is overrun by violent criminals. The only time I have seen an institution overrun by violent criminals was here in the U.S. Capitol on January 6, 2021, an event that that gentleman described as a tourist visit and has consistently likened to a tourist visit. I don't know that he is going to be the best and most reliable witness for determining when an institution is being overrun by violent criminals. The rhetoric I hear from the Freedom Caucus is about defunding the FBI and defunding the ATF. No one on our side of the aisle is talking about defunding any of them or defunding the police. On the contrary, we have advanced initiatives to increase local government funding for police and other services. Mr. Speaker, I yield 5 minutes to the gentlewoman from the District of Columbia (Ms. Norton).

Mr. RASKIN

Mr. RASKIN. Mr. Speaker, I rise today to highlight national ``Autism After 21 Day''--April 21st--as an important milestone during Autism Acceptance Month. As we use this month to recognize the many wonderful contributions of people with autism, it is also fitting for us to take a few moments to acknowledge the challenges that many people with autism face as they transition into adulthood. Each year in the United States, more than 70,000 children with autism become adults with autism. The transition to adulthood is difficult for many individuals, but it can be especially challenging for autistic young people, who too often face a formidable ``services cliff'' as they age out of the school system. Support services may drop off, and young adults with autism sometimes struggle to continue their education or find meaningful employment. Some young people in this situation experience a crushing loss of their community and can feel very isolated. In light of these major challenges, I want to recognize the extraordinary work of my constituents, JaLynn Prince and Dr. Gregory A. Prince, who founded the Madison House Autism Foundation. This remarkable organization is improving the health and wellbeing of autistic adults throughout their lifespans through employment partnerships, housing initiatives, and many other exceptional offerings. The Madison House Autism Foundation is also driving forward the Autism After 21 movement--a growing social movement that champions the expansion of attention, care and support to maximize the wellbeing of people with autism throughout their lifespan. Mr. Speaker, we must continue working to build a more inclusive and enlightened society that provides opportunities to autistic individuals of every age. I urge my colleagues to join me in recognizing April 21st as national ``Autism After 21 Day''.

Mr. RASKIN

Mr. RASKIN. Mr. Speaker, I rise to congratulate my constituent Louis Hoelman III on everything he has accomplished to date in a dazzling teaching and coaching career in Montgomery County, Maryland. Mr. Hoelman is himself a proud graduate of Montgomery County Public Schools. He attended Parkside Elementary School, Highland View Elementary School, Eastern Junior High School (as it was known at the time), and the great Montgomery Blair High School. He went on to Montgomery College and graduated from the University of Maryland with a degree in Kinesiology. Mr. Hoelman launched his career as an Athletic Director at the Silver Spring Boys and Girls Club. In 1993, he returned to Montgomery County Public Schools as a physical education teacher at Piney Branch Elementary School. In 1999, he joined the staff of Montgomery Blair High School as a physical education teacher and, in 2001, he became the head coach of Blair's varsity girls' softball team. Over the years he has also coached basketball, team handball, field hockey, and cross country. In 2022, he became the head coach of Blair's varsity co-ed golf team and led them to the final round of the State Golf Championship. In addition to his very busy teaching and coaching career, he is the founder of the renowned Takoma Sports Camp for boys and girls. By the end of Blair's 2022 softball season, Mr. Hoelman had amassed a total of 294 wins over his softball coaching career. I understand that as of today, he stands on the cusp of racking up 300 career wins. He has received numerous Coach of the Year awards, including citations from the Montgomery Gazette, the Washington Examiner, Montgomery Blair High School, and, most recently, the National Federation of State High School Associations. Beyond his remarkable record of successful coaching, Mr. Hoelman is known for his warm, inclusive and exuberantly friendly attitude towards all students. He displays great enthusiasm for ensuring that every student experiences the physical and mental health benefits of exercise. He is dedicated to helping young people develop a positive relationship with physical activity to benefit them for the rest of their lives. During remote learning at the height of the COVID-19 pandemic, Mr. Hoelman taught physical education from his living room. Under the most arduous conditions, he went all out to keep his students active and engaged--from leading them in 20-minute workouts every class to coaching them on how to improvise sports equipment using whatever materials they had at home. His dedication and creativity gave students a much-needed energetic break from the isolating and stressful circumstances of the pandemic period. Like people in thousands of families in Montgomery County, I am profoundly grateful to Mr. Hoelman for his three decades of passionate service to our community and our children, and I look forward to seeing everything he will accomplish in the years to come.

Mr. RASKIN

Mr. RASKIN. Mr. Chair, we stand with local governments against this outrageous power grab by MAGA Republicans in Washington who are supporting book banning, suppression of historical facts about slavery, Jim Crow segregation, racial violence, and favoring top-down micromanagement of our local schools across America. Is there really a problem for parents like us with finding out what is in our public school libraries? Well, before you pass a massive new Federal law and a massive new unfunded mandate for our local governments, why don't you take the time to make a phone call? That is what I did. I called up the person who runs the school libraries for Montgomery County, Maryland, which has more than a million people there. I learned from Andrea Christman, who oversees all the media centers for our county, that the entire catalogue of 2.2 million books is online, freely available, and current as of today. Anybody can go online and find it right now. If all the info is out there, as local governments want it to be, then what is this about? Well, it is about book banning, of course. Mr. Chair, 2 years ago, more than 1,600 books were banned in the United States of America. Here are three of the key books that the rightwingers have been going after. Khaled Hosseini's ``The Kite Runner,'' about the dangerous fanaticism, authoritarianism, and abuse of the Taliban, a rightwing religious fundamentalist movement all about censorship and repressing women's control over their own bodies and their own fertility. ``The Handmaid's Tale,'' Margaret Atwood's extraordinary dystopian novel about a rightwing misogynist movement which uses high technology and depraved religious ideology to control not only the minds of their followers, but their private and public lives and the fertility of women. Of course, George Orwell's, ``1984,'' because they have no sense of irony. They are always trying to censor this one.

Mr. RASKIN. Mr. Chairman, we oppose H.R. 5 because we stand with the school boards and the PTAs, the parents and the teachers, the students, and 13,000 school superintendents whose letter opposing this legislation I would ask to be included in the Record. Mr. Chair, I include in the Record a letter from The School Superintendents Association. March 22, 2023. Hon. Kevin McCarthy, Speaker, House of Representatives, Washington, DC. Hon. Hakeem Jeffries, Minority Leader, House of Representatives, Washington, DC. Dear Speaker McCarthy and Minority Leader Jeffries: AASA, The School Superintendents Association, representing 13,000 school district leaders across the United States, writes to share our view of H.R. 5, the Parents Bill of Rights. Superintendents know that parents are their children's first and most important educators, which is why effective family engagement at the state and local level is one of the key determinants of student and school success. As superintendents who serve at the pleasure of school boards selected by parents, families and community members, it is critical that every child and family who walks through our doors on a daily basis feels welcome and supported in our buildings and classrooms. We know an educational environment that connects and engages families will ensure greater success for all students. We believe that every family should have the opportunity to be an active participant in their child's educational experience and connect directly with their child's professional educators, while working in concert with school staff and administrators to maximize their child's success. As a national organization representing the CEOs of school systems, our view has always been that local control in K-12 education is not only what is best, but what is most appropriate. It is for this reason that we must oppose H.R. 5. As champions of local control, AASA has long opposed topdown, prescriptive federal education policies that dictate how districts utilize limited federal funding, pressure districts to adopt specific standards or curriculum or create national teacher or educator standards and requirements. Parents are the locus of local control in education as they provide input on local policies and practices created at school board meetings, connect directly with superintendents, principals and teachers in class and school-wide events, and have access to any and all educational materials, platforms and curriculum their children are utilizing inside and outside of school. The Parents Bill of Rights is full of district mandates without any funding for these new and burdensome requirements that will be a place a disproportionate hardship on small and rural schools. Provisions that would require a district to print out the curriculum for parental review and comment, send notices about every guest speaker that may address a class, require mental health personnel to contact parents if a student discloses any mental health concern and share a list of every professional development opportunity the district provides to educators and staff are just a few examples of extreme federal overreach in local education policy. Aside from AASA's federalism concerns and the many new unfunded mandates that H.R. 5 creates, there are also practical implementation concerns with how the legislation would disrupt learning in classrooms and make it incredibly challenging for educators to meet the significant educational needs of students. For example, giving parents the ability to opt out of the collection, disclosure, or use of personal information collected from students and commonly used education technology in the classroom would make it nearly impossible for schools to meet the educational needs of students and use a host of online diagnostic, differentiated and adaptive assessments and tools to measure a student's understanding, proficiency and growth academically. This change would leave teachers not only ill- equipped to address learning loss in a post-pandemic educational environment thereby exacerbating educational inequities, but forced to find and make use of resources, curriculum, and assessments from several decades ago. H.R. 5 would make it more challenging to ensure our schools are safe and welcoming environments for every student. The legislation would make it more challenging to direct students to appropriate mental health supports in schools thereby risking the safety of all students and educators. As an example, a counselor who suspects a child may be abused would be required to notify parents and get a signed parental opt- in before the counselor can assess the child's health, safety and well-being at home. The bill would also undermine districts' ability to collect anonymized survey data to gauge student safety and well-being in school and it would make our transgender and nonbinary students more likely to disengage or drop out of school. While we appreciate the robust discussion about student privacy and support a reauthorization of Family Educational Rights and Privacy Act and Protection of Pupil Rights Amendment that will clarify critical issues and update the law to appropriately respond to the twenty-first century learning environments in our schools, the changes to FERPA and PPRA proposed by H.R. 5 are not those AASA can support. Similarly, we welcome a conversation on how to reauthorize the Elementary and Secondary Education Act, but we do not support piecemeal changes to critical provisions in Title I of the law and urge Republicans and Democrats to come together--as they always have--to craft comprehensive ESEA policies to better our nations' schools, increase student achievement and ensure our schools are welcoming places for every child and family. Thank you for considering our views and it is our hope that we can work with both sides of the dais to find common ground this Congress on the policy and funding issues of greatest importance to school district leaders. Sincerely, Sasha Pudelski, Director of Advocacy, AASA, The School Superintendents Association.

Mr. RASKIN. Mr. Chairman, I thank the gentleman. Mr. Chair, we need more politicians reading books and fewer politicians trying to censor books in America. It is amazing to me to see politicians who oppose a universal violent criminal background check and who defend assault weapons after the massacres at Columbine; after Parkland, Florida; at Sandy Hook in Newtown, Connecticut; after Uvalde; after Santa Fe, Texas, that they are now going to keep America's children safe by banning ``The Handmaid's Tale'' and ``1984.'' Mr. Chair, we can do better for the children of America.

Mr. RASKIN

Mr. RASKIN. Mr. Speaker, I rise to congratulate Pat Lawson Muse on the occasion of her retirement after 40 remarkable years with NBC4-TV in Washington, D.C. Pat is an Emmy award-winning anchor who, together with Barbara Harrison, made broadcast history in the mid-1980s when they formed the first all-female local TV news anchor team in the Nation. The people of Maryland, Virginia and Washington, D.C. are now celebrating Pat's 40 years of excellence in broadcast journalism and service to the entire Washington region. As an anchor and general assignment reporter Pat has been a fixture on local television news, covering and reporting many of the most significant local and national stories of our time. For decades Pat has also been a familiar face on Sunday mornings hosting NBC4's community affairs programs, including Reporter's Notebook, Viewpoint and News4 Your Sunday, exploring many of the most important issues affecting people in our region, such as finances, health, education, public safety, faith and the environment. In addition, since 1984 Pat has been the leading force in NBC4's Food 4 Families campaign which has fed tens of thousands of families, veterans, senior citizens, and others in need during the Thanksgiving period. Muse, whose broadcast career began in radio, has been inducted into the National Association of Television Arts and Sciences Silver Circle. We salute Pat not only for representing the local TV broadcasting profession with such excellence but for serving the many diverse communities in and around the state of Maryland with such great integrity, dignity, and uncompromising commitment to the common good of our people.

Mr. RASKIN

Mr. RASKIN. Mr. Chairman, I thank the distinguished gentleman from New York for his excellent leadership on this bill today on the floor. The distinguished gentlewoman from Colorado posed a question that I have been hearing my Republican colleagues utter over the last several days: Who decides what is true or false? How can we know what is true or false? The gentlewoman confided her fear that the Federal Government would end up defining what is true or false. Well, my, my, my. That is an absolute assault on the Constitution of the United States because we have an entire Federal judiciary, which is based on people getting up in court and swearing an oath under God or the Constitution to tell the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth. The whole point of what Federal courts do is to determine what is true and what is false. Yet, now, we have an entire political party, which is organizing itself around this radical, moral agnosticism, claiming that there is no way we can know the difference between whether an election is on Tuesday or whether an election is on Thursday, as Vladimir Putin wants to tell us through his sinister propaganda put out by the Internet Research Agency. The whole judicial system is based on the difference between truth and lies. In fact, the administrative system, do you want to get Social Security? Either you are 65, or you are not. That is a matter of positive fact. You qualify for Medicare, or you don't. Truth or fact. Yes, our system operates on the basis of truth or fact. Don't throw up your hands and say: ``Oh, well, we can't know what the truth is. We can't know what lies are. We don't want bureaucrats telling us what that is.'' That is what democratic government is. That is how we operate, by our commitment to the truth. That is why we all swear an oath here to uphold the Constitution. That is why people go to court and swear an oath to tell the truth. Now, they take their shocking nihilism about what is true and what is false, and they convert it to this entire Congress. It all starts, of course, with January 6 and, before that, the Presidential election. It all starts with the big lie, Donald Trump's big lie. They say: ``Well, who knows? Maybe he won. Maybe he didn't. You say Joe Biden is President. We say Donald Trump is President.'' Nonsense. Mr. Chairman, 60 Federal and State courts rejected every claim of electoral fraud and corruption that they put forward. They don't have a single court that ever ruled in their favor. Donald Trump lost that election by more than 7 million votes, 306-232 in the electoral college, so then their big lie now has to stretch all the way over January 6. We have to disbelieve the evidence of our own eyes, of our own ears. We saw them come and descend upon this Chamber, this Congress, wounding and injuring 150 of our police officers, breaking people's noses, breaking people's fingers, putting people in the hospital. Already, they are back on the news with big lies, saying, ``No, no, no. It was a tourist visit,'' like these real tourists up here who have come to watch Representatives in the United States Congress say there is no difference between truth and lies, real tourists who are not beating the daylights out of our police officers. So the lie now extends to January 6. Who knows what really happened? Yes, we all saw it. We saw the Vice President of the United States getting chased out of the Chamber with people yelling, ``Hang Mike Pence, hang Mike Pence.'' We had a bipartisan committee for a year and a half with more than a thousand witnesses, a hundred subpoenaed witnesses under oath, most of them from the Trump White House and the Trump family and Republicans testifying about Trump's plan to overturn the Presidential election and get Pence just to install him in office. Yet, they are agnostic about: ``Well, the truth and lies, who knows what really happened? Who knows?'' Yes. Who knows. They have a perfect bill for you, then. We call it the Putin protection act. That is what it is, the Putin protection act. The distinguished gentleman from New York explained Putin spent millions of dollars in 2016 to pump propaganda, electoral sabotage, into our political system. He did. Every security agency in the country told us that. We got a bipartisan report from the Senate saying it. They are agnostic about it. When it comes to Putin, they see no evil, hear no evil, none of it. But we know that it happened. That is Putin's plan. Why? Putin cannot beat America politically. He can't beat us economically. He can't beat us militarily. Putin can't beat us philosophically. There is one thing he has--the internet. Why? Because we are a wide open country. He says: Let's take advantage of it. Let's go on their social media platform. We will put people who oppose Putin on the internet in jail--which they do. If you send a tweet against Putin, you are going to jail. If you put out a tweet against his filthy imperialist war, which some of them support in Ukraine, if you put out a tweet against that in Russia, you are going to jail. He says: Let's take advantage of America's openness. We will take advantage of them, and we are going to put out propaganda. We will lie about when the election is. We will say it is on Thursday when it is on Tuesday. We will tell people to go vote next week, whatever. That is the genesis of this whole thing. We have our security agencies who alert social media. They say they are putting up fraudulent information on your platform. Now they come forward and say that the Democrats are trying to-- what?--tell the truth. Not Democrats, the government, our paid Federal Government agencies, are trying to tell the social media when foreign malign actors like Russia, China, and Iran are trying to interfere in our elections. That is what this is about--Putin protection act. They want Putin and Xi to run free over our platforms, and then they want to fine Federal Government employees thousands of dollars if they alert our government to what foreign malign actors are doing. The whole justification for it is their silly obsession with Hunter Biden's laptop and this New York Post story, which was taken down by Twitter for 1 day 3 weeks before the election as an exercise of their private decisionmaking. Then Elon Musk buys Twitter, and he fires six journalists because they disagree with him. They have no problem with that because, of course, it is a private entity. They can do whatever they want. They want to fire journalists, they fire them. They want to take the story down for an hour or a day, they can do that. Then they want to turn that into the basis for handcuffing the entire Government of the United States so we can't protect ourselves against Vladimir Putin and President Xi? Give me a break.

Mr. RASKIN. Mr. Chair, I just want to echo the very important point you just made. We have a sequence of trivial amendments that have been added by the majority, and they refuse to consider what I think is the central amendment that this legislation would need in order for it not to be an utter disaster for America if this legislation were to pass. Now, they concede implicitly by their legislation that there is a problem with saying we are not going to allow any government officials to get in touch with the social media, because they create an exception for certain things: for child pornography, for human trafficking, and for drug dealing. And I agree with all of those. But are those more important and more grave than the national security interests of the United States itself? What about assaults on our elections, which go right to the heart of national security? What about assaults on our energy security structure? What about assaults on our power structure? Not only do they not build that into their bill; they will not even allow us to put it on the floor for an open vote among all of our colleagues in Congress. Why won't they do that? Well, because if there is a national security exception to their Putin protection act, at that point, the exception swallows the rule, because the rule is let's let Putin and Xi and every autocrat, theocrat, and dictator on Earth run amuck on our social media and not allow our government officials to say anything about it. That is the effect of this legislation. I thank Mr. Goldman for yielding.

Mr. RASKIN

Mr. RASKIN. Madam Speaker, I demand a recorded vote.

Mr. RASKIN. Mr. Chair, the Biden administration brought Trump's unemployment rate, which was skyrocketing, down. We went from 14.8 percent to less than 4 percent, creating 12 million new jobs. Now, President Biden is bringing down the soaring inflation rate he inherited because of the massive disruption in global supply chains caused by the lethal recklessness of the Trump administration in mismanaging the pandemic response. We are saying, let's finish the job. Just as we brought unemployment down, we are bringing inflation down. We are making the American economy work for the American people through strategic investments like the Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act, a $1.2 trillion investment in the roads, the highways, the bridges, the ports, the airports, and broadband across the country, in rural areas. President Biden is fighting for investment in the American people, and that is what the Democrats are fighting for, not a bunch of reports. We don't need this legislation. Mr. Chair, I yield back the balance of my time.

Mr. RASKIN. Mr. Chair, I rise in opposition to the amendment.

Mr. RASKIN. Mr. Chair, I thank the gentleman for introducing his amendment, which would add yet another reporting dimension to this already wasteful, bureaucratic paperwork exercise when what the American people need, deserve, and are getting from the Biden administration is real, tangible action to bring down prices in America. What are we doing? Well, here is one of the things we are doing for older people who disproportionately depend on prescription drugs and people battling illness right now: We have dramatically lowered the cost of prescription drugs in the Medicare program for millions and millions of Americans. We just heard someone on the other side of the aisle, the gentleman from Pennsylvania, call this price fixing. Well, here is an example of the price fixing that President Biden and the Democratic majority are engaged in. We fixed the price for people who were paying thousands of dollars for insulin shots. We fixed it by putting it down to $35 a month, and they oppose it. Talk about inflation? What about inflation for diabetics? They don't count? We are not interested in inflation for diabetics, just for large corporations, the people who got more than $1 trillion in a tax cut from the last President? That is who we care about? We don't care about millions of people who have diabetes in the country, who are spending thousands of dollars a year to pay for their insulin shots? Well, we cut that inflation down to $35 a month, and we get a lecture from them about how that doesn't count. The Biden administration is trying to cut hundreds of millions of dollars from people who have to pay under a staggering student loan debt today, and they are fighting us on that. They don't care about that kind of inflation. They don't care about the pocketbooks of people who are staggering under student loan debt, 43 million people. We are talking about billions of dollars. Forty-three million people will be assisted by the student loan debt executive order and initiatives taken by the Biden administration, but that doesn't count for them. We started this series of amendments by talking about the fact that they have this self-imposed political speech impediment. They can't correctly pronounce the name of our party in its adjectival form, but I thought of a solution to this because I was reading a great book by H.W. Brands about Franklin D. Roosevelt called ``Traitor to His Class.'' In the book, he has a bunch of Roosevelt's speeches. Do you know what President Roosevelt called our party? Not the Democratic Party, much less the Democrat Party. If you can't pronounce it, do what Roosevelt did. He called us the democracy. He said the ``economic royalists,'' the corporate plutocrats, say if you invest in the wealthiest people in society, some of the wealth will trickle down on everybody else, but the democracy says you invest in the great working middle class of America, and we will all rise and prosper together. That is the doctrine of the democracy. If you can't pronounce the name of our party, just call us the democracy. That is what we are today because we defend the right to vote, and we defend free and fair elections, and we stand by the results of elections. We defend not only the country and our democratic allies all over the world, as in Ukraine, but we defend this body; we defend this Chamber; we defend the Capitol of the United States; and we defend the interests of the working majority of Americans. The American people are not asking for more reports and more bureaucracy. They are asking for action, and that is what the Biden administration and Democrats in Congress are giving them. Mr. Chair, I reserve the balance of my time.

Mr. RASKIN. Mr. Chair, I thank the gentleman for his extraordinarily insightful and significant remarks. The only exception I would take is when he referred to extreme MAGA. We actually had a colloquy about this yesterday with the good gentlewoman from Colorado. I had gently suggested that perhaps our colleagues on the other side of the aisle could stop referring to ``Democrat Congresswomen'' with ``Democrat plans'' and ``Democrat bills.'' ``Democrat'' is a noun. The adjective is ``Democratic.'' So it would be the ``Democratic Congresswoman,'' the ``Democratic bill,'' and so on. I said it grates on our ears the same ways it would grate on your ears if every time we invoke the name of your party, we said the ``banana Republican Congresswoman'' or the ``banana Republican Member'' or the ``banana Republican Conference.'' That, we would consider a breach of civility and decorum, so would we prefer to go back to something else. Yet, the gentlewoman from Colorado said, if I understood her correctly, that she would continue with her deliberate mispronunciation of the name of our party in its adjectival form. By the way, she took the opportunity to raise the whole question of MAGA, which I had not mentioned. She said, and when you call me MAGA, don't call me MAGA--call me ultra-MAGA. So when the minority leader referred to the extreme MAGA element, which appears to be driving the train over there, he should have called it the ultra-MAGA element out of deference to the gentlewoman from Colorado. I certainly will be able to honor her wishes in the future as she chooses to be described as ultra-MAGA. Mr. Chair, I reserve the balance of my time.

Mr. RASKIN. Mr. Chair, may I inquire as to how much time is remaining?

Mr. RASKIN. I yield 1 minute to the gentleman from New York (Mr. Jeffries), the distinguished minority leader.

Mr. RASKIN. Mr. Chair, so I believe our colleagues are coming clean. They opposed the American Rescue Act, which was absolutely essential legislation to get the country out of the Trump economic wreckage during the last administration. We had 14.8 percent unemployment; the highest unemployment rate since the Department of Labor started keeping statistics. Today it is down to 4 percent with the creation of 12 million new jobs under the Biden administration. So they shift the subject from unemployment, which they used to talk about, to inflation. Well, they raised the debt limit themselves three times under Donald Trump who contributed 25 percent of the entire debt of the Nation between George Washington and Joe Biden. Mr. Chair, 25 percent all came from the Trump administration, but they are looking for something to try to pin on Biden. So rather than acknowledging that Putin's war in Russia and the disruption of the global supply chains caused by the coronavirus pandemic created a global inflation, and America is doing much better bringing it down than anybody else, they decide just to try to demonize and vilify Joe Biden. Why? Because the cabinet is empty. The cupboard is bare. There are no ideas over there, as the distinguished minority leader said. They are not offering any ideas--some reporting requirements, and they are doodling on that; should it be a billion or a million or hundred million. Who knows? There has been no hearing on it, so they are making it up as they go along on the floor of the House. We can do much better as we did in the 117th Congress to get America moving again. I reserve the balance of my time.

Mr. RASKIN. Mr. Chair, I am afraid I remain unilluminated as to what that amendment will do. Apparently, the purpose is to require a more detailed or technical description of the projected impact, or when an assessment required by the bill finds that there will be some inflationary effect. Again, this sounds like it is simply adding more bureaucracy, more paperwork with no return on investment for the taxpayer dollars that it would obviously take to conduct such an analysis. I mean, here we have gone for more than two centuries with apparently no economist arguing that what we really need to stop inflation is more reporting in the process of issuance of executive orders by Presidents of the United States. Suddenly, somebody had a great epiphany over there, without even a legislative hearing, that what was really needed was just for the President of the United States to append an inflationary statement to executive orders at the rate of a billion dollars, perhaps to be amended to a million dollars. Who knows if it is 50 million or 100 million, but it doesn't make any difference because there is no data behind any of it. There is no analysis. You may as well spin a wheel and pick a number at which a report is going to be compelled by the majority here for the so-called REIN IN Act, which stands for the Reduce Exacerbated Inflation Negatively Impacting the Nation Act. You could go by other titles, including the running on empty index, no new ideas, none act, since basically they are scraping the bottom to try to figure out something to say about inflation, because the administration is actually bringing inflation down. Now, we notice they don't talk about unemployment, which used to be their mantra: jobs, jobs, jobs. But when Joe Biden came back and created 12 million new jobs after the last administration destroyed millions of jobs with their lethal recklessness in the mismanagement of the coronavirus pandemic and Joe Biden turned it around in this administration, they stopped talking about it. However, they did notice that there was global inflation going on because of the disruption of the global supply chain and because of Vladimir Putin's filthy, imperialist invasion of Ukraine, which some of their Members actually are cheerleaders for, then there was a real problem with inflation. The administration has steadily been bringing it down, which is why it doesn't have quite the political salience it used to, but the world was waiting with bated breath to determine what their actual plan would be and, alas, their whole plan is a reporting requirement. Nothing to do with Congress and Congress being able to do anything, but a reporting requirement for the President when he issues executive orders. I think the public is gravely disappointed by this complete collapse of any real commitment to the one issue they thought they had organized their conference around. Mr. Chair, I reserve the balance of my time.

Mr. RASKIN. Mr. Chairman, one can only regard with amazement the gentleman's insinuation that I want to hand power to the executive branch when we have been acting here in Congress to pass the Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act and to pass the Inflation Reduction Act in the last Congress. All of the measures they oppose, we moved in order to make real economic progress in the country. Congress was doing that. They have a big opportunity today to come forward with what their anti-inflation agenda is. Their whole anti-inflation agenda is: we are going to beg the President of the United States to append some inflation numbers to an executive order, to a handful of executive orders over the course of the year. The gentleman also, I think, slipped in his opposition to our legislation, which reduces to $35 a month what diabetics have to pay for their insulin shots. He calls this price-fixing. My friend from Pennsylvania is invited to contradict me if I misunderstood him. I think he was describing all of the lowering of prescription drug prices we have done. We are saving millions of Americans across the country thousands of dollars in their Medicare prescription drug prices, and the gentleman just called that price-fixing. I assume he is opposed to it. Mr. Chair, I am happy to yield, if he would like to correct me, but otherwise I am going to go back with the conclusion that you are opposed to all of the lowering of the prescription drug prices that the Congress actually engaged in in the 117th Congress. Finally, the gentleman would like to somehow put in our court the burden of bureaucracy. Well, let's talk about the major bureaucracy that is being put in place in America today to violate the rights and the freedom of women to make their own medical decisions as they try to criminalize that. I don't know exactly where the gentleman is--perhaps he can clarify it--most of them support a national ban on abortion, taking what was a constitutional right for more than a half century and turning it into a felony criminal offense or a misdemeanor criminal offense. You want to talk about bureaucracy? You want to talk about police state? That is on you. Mr. Chairman, I yield back the balance of my time.

Mr. RASKIN. Mr. Chair, I claim the time in opposition. The Acting CHAIR: The gentleman from Maryland is recognized for 5 minutes.

Mr. RASKIN. Mr. Chairman, it is always a pleasure to hear my friend from Texas, Mr. Roy, who mentions something which sounded like a substantive suggestion about ending corporate subsidies, or perhaps I intuited or interpreted that. If he wants to work on legislation with me on ending corporate welfare and corporate subsidies in America, I would love to do that. That would be a serious step in the right direction, and I would love to work with him on that. I take it by his suggestion that we rein in spending, something that I referred to when we talked about the Republicans raising the debt limit three times under Donald Trump, they had no problem with doing it back then and creating all of this debt, and we know that the former President was spending like a drunken sailor. I take it that by not mentioning the legislation anymore, he is basically conceding that this bill will do nothing to bring down the inflation rate. It certainly will not. I don't know if they have been able to mobilize a single economist in the country who would argue that passing this legislation will bring the inflation rate down. Mr. Chair, I yield back the balance of my time.