Chip Roy

Mr. ROY

Mr. ROY. Mr. Speaker, I yield to the gentleman from Louisiana (Mr. Johnson).

Mr. ROY. Mr. Speaker, I yield to the gentleman from Texas (Mr. Arrington).

Mr. ROY. Mr. Speaker, I thank the gentleman from Texas (Mr. Arrington) for organizing this Special Order to talk about such an important topic. Mr. Speaker, I have some things that I am going to talk about as well, but I yield to the gentleman from Indiana (Mr. Baird).

Mr. ROY. Mr. Speaker, I would like to use the time that I have remaining not lamenting some of my frustrations about the floor of the House but talking about why it matters. I would like to talk about this magnificent young lady, Rebekah Wendt. I rise here tonight to remember Rebekah, who loved her country, a martyr who lost her life striving to do what we all came here to do: to make America better. Rebekah is the granddaughter of Chuck and Judy Wendt, daughter of Tim and Erika Wendt, and sister of two of my staffers, one current and one former, Jonah and Manfred Haden Wendt. On July 10, a little bit before midnight, I received a phone call from my aide, Jonah. He informed me that his sister, Rebekah, had just passed away in a car accident while working on a campaign in west Texas for a candidate she believed in to make a little extra money to buy textbooks for school. Rebekah Susanna Wendt was born on May 12, 2000, to Tim and Erika Wendt. She was baptized on August 13 of 2000 and confirmed on May 17 of 2015 at St. Paul Lutheran in Fort Worth, Texas. She was a rising sophomore at Trinity University, which I am proud to represent. On July 10, 2020, she was embraced at the pearly gates of heaven by our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ. She was greeted by those who had gone before her: Oma, Opa, Anita, Willard, and Jeff. Rebekah's story is nothing of inspirational. As a child, Rebekah struggled with language. Speaking, reading, and writing--putting her thoughts into written language--were difficult for Rebekah. Many thought she would never be able to read, but she overcame and flourished. As a child, she was able to do what most adults today cannot even do: ask for help. Rebekah had a wonderful gift for the fine arts. She danced and sang choir with poise and self-confidence. Rebekah learned to work through her difficulties and blossomed into an aspiring architect and historian. She would eventually follow her big brothers to Trinity University. Rebekah was a student of history and a lover of architecture. She loved to read about World War II, particularly the Battle of the Bulge. I thank my friend, a veteran, for coming in and holding this for me just as I am talking about the sacrifices of our wonderful World War II generation. As a self-described architecture geek, she worked hand in hand with her father to design their new home. Having just finished her freshman year at Trinity University, Rebekah was just beginning to come into her own. Her classmates at Trinity University remember her as a devoted Christian who lived out her faith every day: warm and enthusiastic, charmingly silly and unsure of herself, but brave and willing to ask for help. They will also remember her as a keenly aware friend. Her family will forever remember her as the introvert who just needed a stage to perform on; the sister who was already planning out who would host Christmas, Easter, and Thanksgiving; an apologetic history buff who would blurt out a fact only to excuse herself for being a self-described nerd; an old soul who found comfort in ``MASH,'' ``Golden Girls,'' and anything vintage; a fighter who overcame the odds and never gave up on her dreams, with a smile that lit up rooms and a roaring laugh that the whole neighborhood knew. Her mother, Erika, will fondly recall her daughter as her best friend, kitchen partner, an ally in all things gluten-free, and caretaker of her two brothers. They need some caretaking. Her father, Tim, will never forget designing the family's new house with his beloved daughter. While Rebekah may have gone to Heaven, the family house will remain here on Earth as a testament to her love and devotion for her family. Following Rebekah's service, a friend of the Wendt family noted that the funeral had reminded her of Matthew 25:21: ``Well done, my good and faithful servant.'' Well done, Rebekah. You have run the race. You have kept the faith. Rebekah's story has touched the lives of many people who she didn't even know. She passed away doing what I pledged to do when running for Congress: preserve the promise of America for our children and our grandchildren. She didn't have to be out on a campaign knocking on doors during a virus and all the chaos of 2020, but she did. In fact, Rebekah was not particularly political, but she loved her country, and she was proud of our history and all who had come before her in the name of life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. She loved America; she loved her God; she loved Jesus Christ; and she loved her German Lutheran heritage. She will be remembered as a very good German who loved her God, her family, and her country. She served as an inspiration to me and someone that I have honored, am honoring now, and will continue to honor as I serve not just in the United States Congress but the rest of my life. Thank you, Rebekah. While your time on Earth has come to an end sooner than we all would have liked, your legacy will remain long after. You are an inspiration for many and will not soon be forgotten. I thank my friend for his assistance. I thank Rebekah for her service. I thank her family for their love and support that they are offering to each other and everybody in the community. I will just say this in closing. We all have these stories. We all have people we lose. I went through a battle with cancer. We are here to make this country better. We are here to represent the people of the United States. I would just ask that we come together and let's solve those problems. Let's roll up our sleeves and do our job. That is what we were elected to do. And let's stand up for America together. Mr. Speaker, I yield back the balance of my time.

Mr. ROY

Mr. ROY. Mr. Speaker, under the advice of my physician, due to a bulging disk in my back, I could not get on a plane to return to Washington to vote on H.R. 8015, the Delivering for America Act. Had I been present, I would have voted ``nay'' on rollcall No. 179, ``nay'' on rollcall No. 180, ``yea'' on rollcall No. 181, and ``nay'' on rollcall No. 182.

Mr. ROY

Mr. ROY. Madam Speaker, I yield to the gentleman from California (Mr. Garcia).

Mr. ROY. Madam Speaker, I appreciate the gentleman from California bringing up this important topic. The news these days tend to be filled--it is not often filled with positive things that we ought to be celebrating together as Americans and the great accomplishments that we are achieving together, the great accomplishments we are achieving on a completely nonpartisan basis and advancing our continued exploration. Jim Bridenstine is a friend of mine. I am just thrilled with what he is doing with NASA. I am certainly thrilled to be seeing that we are returning to space vigorously and that we are doing so actively, and I just appreciate their service. I love the rich tradition, the connection between NASA and our military. Madam Speaker, I know that Mr. Garcia is a veteran of our United States Navy, and I thank him for his service. I appreciate him joining me here tonight. Madam Speaker, I come down here tonight for a few reasons. First of all, a few weeks ago, a young lady, a 20-year-old named Rebekah Wendt was campaigning in west Texas with another young fellow from Trinity University. I represent Trinity University in San Antonio. I got a call from my staff assistant, Jonah Wendt, that his sister had been killed an hour or two before in a car accident in west Texas. I will have more to say about Rebekah in the future, but she was a bright star and a great defender of this country, out working hard, volunteering, as many of our young folks do, on campaigns. She was a member of the Young Conservatives of Texas. She was majoring in history. She and another young fellow, again, I will talk more about, Tyler, was with her. They were out trying to make this country better. They were out trying to get someone they believed in elected. They were trying to change this country for the better by standing up for Texas, standing up for this country. I want to celebrate her life, and again, I want to do it more in the future, but her brother, Jonah, and his twin brother, Manfred, are very dear to me and worked hard on my campaign 2 years ago and continue to serve this country as well as serving in support of me. And I mention that because I do want to talk more about her another time, but I mention that because it got me to thinking about what this is all about, what we are doing. Now, for those few people at home watching on C-SPAN, I am here alone, mostly, in the Chamber with the exception of the Speaker and my friend from California. And I think about Rebekah, and I think about all of those young Americans out there working hard every day, trying to get someone elected or go fight for what they believe in. And that is what this is about. This is the people's House. This is the House of Representatives. It is really an unbelievable institution when you think about what it meant in the history of the world. I was in Independence Hall on July 2nd. I went up there because I wanted to be up there when I was watching so many of our monuments and so many of our statues under attack, and it is not the marble, it is not the mortar, it is not the bricks that matter, it was the ideals represented there. I went up to Independence Hall, and it was on July 2nd, which many will know is the day we separated from the crown, the day of the actual vote. And the folks there were very kind to me. They were closed down because of what we are dealing with with the virus. They were very kind and allowed me to go into Independence Hall. I had the great blessing of being in Independence Hall on July 2nd, 244 years to the day of the vote. Then I got to go over to the other room, which is a different room, where the first five Congresses of the United States met. Then, of course, we have a history of then moving on to different capitols, and we ended up here. And we have been in this Chamber for, I don't know the history as well as I should, but 100 years or something in this Chamber. This people's House, in my opinion, is failing the people of the United States. I am going to say that again. The people's House, the 435 Representatives that make up this half of Congress, one-half of one-third of the Federal Government is failing the American people. It is failing the American people because we literally never debate. We literally never offer amendments and have any debate here on this floor. We are ruled by a handful of folks who meet in rooms in back chambers, drop bills on the floor of the House and then demand we come down and vote on them. By the way, that is both Democrats and Republicans. The people's House is supposed to be the people's House. We are supposed to actually debate, engage. Do you want to know why things are so broken? It is because if you even dare think about offering an amendment to a bill, you have got to go to some Rules Committee to get blessed to be able to even have the ability to offer it. You will get shut down in Rules Committee, and then there is never any debate. What kind of a people's House is that? I would posit that it is not one. We have so many issues right now that are tearing our country apart. Why? Because there is no leadership coming from the Representatives sent to Washington to represent the people. None. If there were leadership, we would have actual debate. We would actually sit down here and come up with ideas, offer solutions, and then hammer them out. We would actually sit down at a table like a small business or sit down at a table like a family and balance a budget. We would have a debate about the proper policies to deal with a pandemic instead of pointing fingers and politicizing a virus. In what universe do you politicize a virus? Yet that is precisely what the leaders of this great and august country have done. Everyone in America is sitting around wondering what on Earth has happened that we are now deciding how we make policy based on polls and reactions to whatever the President says or whatever Speaker Pelosi says. It is absolutely amazing. The needle moved when President Trump said that we ought to open our schools. Simple notion: Let's open up our schools. Why might that be important? I don't know. How about for all the working-class Americans who can't afford daycare and are trying to figure out how to have their children get educated. Why aren't we having a robust debate about that instead of just pointing fingers and saying, ``Uh-oh. Be afraid''? But that is what we are doing. It is really easy for all the latte-drinking, Peloton-riding, Volvo- driving White Americans to run around going off and saying: ``Oh, I am going to go by and get my little drink, but somebody is serving me. And those people serving me, how are they going to have their kids get educated?'' It ain't going to be if we don't open our schools. Can I tell you, Madam Speaker, what they are doing in Austin, Texas? This is how genius it is in Austin, Texas. They are saying we can't open our schools until late September or some undetermined date. Oh, but don't worry. We will open the buildings, allow the YMCA to go in, hold a group forum there to watch virtual education--which now, by the way, I am seeing all sorts of stories of teachers saying: ``Well, we don't want to do the virtual education either.'' What are we doing for our children? Why aren't we debating this right now instead of having, ``Oh, President Trump said we should open our schools,'' so we are going to have a 20 percent swing in how we view opening our schools? In what universe does that statement by the President change what we should be doing as the people's House about opening our schools? Yet, that is precisely what happened. We have a current environment in the United States of America where the very rule of law, which attracts people from all over the world to come here, is being trampled upon by people--frankly, often self- identifying as Marxists--but people who are ravaging cities, literally undermining the health, security, safety, community of our cities, our States, our homes. A Federal courthouse is being targeted and burned in Portland. Now, what happens? Again, it becomes politicized. In what universe is that political? I mean, I would suggest to anybody, go look at anything I have ever said about federalism or about respecting States and respecting local powers to make decisions that are best for the people. But there is another point to all of this, which is the Constitution talks about securing the blessings of liberty. It talks about what we are supposed to do as a Nation in terms of defending the rule of law. Of course, the Federal Government should defend the Federal courthouse in Portland. To say otherwise is patently absurd. Yet, what did my Democratic colleagues do this week? What did they do when the Attorney General of the United States was here before the House Judiciary Committee but sit there and talk over him and mock him and relentlessly stand on the side of lawless Marxists who are trying to destroy a city of the United States of America instead of standing up alongside our law enforcement. What are we doing? What are we doing as a country? We are in an empty Chamber with three votes today at 6:30 tonight, two votes or three votes tomorrow, and then head home. And then what? Be gone for August while our businesses burn, literally and figuratively, while millions of Americans don't have jobs? Why are we going to adjourn? Why have we only met something like 15 out of the last 100 days, or whatever it has been? It is an absolute embarrassment what has become of the people's House. We should be ashamed. We should be ashamed that we are not here doing the work of the American people. More importantly, we should be ashamed that when we are here, we are not sitting down at a table and working through the issues of the day based on the rule of law, based on the Constitution, based on the Declaration, based on our job as Representatives to represent the people of the United States. Our police officers stand up to defend the rule of law. People come from all over the globe here. Why? Is it for what is enumerated in the Bill of Rights? Is it for what was enumerated, or laid out, in the Declaration of Independence, those unalienable rights? Yes. It is all of those things, and it is equal justice under the law, all the things that we should be fighting to strive for in order to reach those ideals that, by the way, we will never reach because we are flawed men and women. My faith teaches me that. But they are the ideals that we will constantly strive to reach. It is why, when I went to Independence Hall, I was proud to stand up and say this is a great thing that happened here. I will never back away from defending the United States of America. I stopped off where Francis Scott Key wrote our national anthem, and I did a video there. I am not going to back away from defending our national anthem and defending our history. I went from there to the Jefferson Memorial. I went to the Roosevelt monument. I went to the Lincoln Memorial. Two days ago, I took my 10-year-old son and my 9-year-old daughter to Mt. Vernon so they could see the home of the Father of our Country, George Washington, where I unapologetically taught my children about the greatness of our first President. It is important, that part. I unapologetically taught my children about the greatness of our country and of the Father of our Country. We are all flawed. We always will be because we are men and women. We are made in the image of God, but we are not God. And thank the Lord that he sent his son so that I might have eternal life because I am flawed. But we should not look at our country with shame or disregard because we have made mistakes. Yet, the other side of the aisle seems hellbent on tearing down this great country brick by brick, statue by statue, thread by thread of our flag, word by word of our anthem. It is a mockery of this House. How on Earth can you explain to a veteran who is missing limbs, who bled in the Middle East or bled at Normandy or bled in the Pacific? How can you explain to a veteran that our country is bad? Our country is not bad. Our country is great. Our country has done more for more men and more women than any other nation in the history of the world. I will debate that anywhere, anytime, with anyone who cares to actually have a debate in this so-called people's House. I will not sit here and listen to supposed representatives of this country tear her down. Right now, we have people who are hurting because of the virus, people who are hurting because they have lost jobs, people who are hurting because their businesses have gone out of business, people who are hurting because streets have been torn down or burned or because we have allowed looting to occur in the false name of social justice. What are we doing for them? Adjourning? Heading home to campaign so that people can score political points? I have had people on my own side of the aisle say perhaps they shouldn't do bills or work with certain Members on the other side of the aisle. Why? Because they don't want us to avoid the ability to score political points. I know that has happened on the other side of the aisle. How do I know that? Because Dean Phillips, a very good man, and I worked together to pass the Paycheck Protection Program Flexibility Act. And Dean, to his great credit, because he is a gentleman, deferred to me to introduce the bill because we had been working on the legislative part, and he was working on the political part. We were working together. So, I introduced the bill. We had worked to get to an agreement. It was going to move through this Chamber. Ah, but it couldn't be in the name of the Republican freshman from Texas, who, by the way, is in a district that might be on the hot list for the DCCC. Coincidence that they then took the same language and dropped it into another bill with my friend from Minnesota--no fault of his own--and put it under his name and then said, ``Great. Let's move it through''? And it passed 417-1. Yes, Madam Speaker, I am looking at Congressman Massie, with a little bit of love. Why? This is what the American people are sick and tired of. They are literally just sick of it. We can disagree, and we are going to disagree. Dean and I disagree. The Speaker pro tempore and I disagree on issues. But we also agree. I was proud to join the Speaker pro tempore in January, along with Dean and another Democrat, three Republicans and an independent. You can guess who the independent was. Why? To write an op-ed in The Washington Post saying: Hold on here. Maybe we should rethink a 20- year-old Authorization for Use of Military Force. Now, do I have all the answers to what we should do in Afghanistan, Iraq, Syria, Iran? I do not. It is okay to say that, by the way. It is okay to say you don't have all the answers. But we got together to say maybe, just maybe we should rethink 20- year-old authorizations of force when there are men and women who are now enlisting who weren't alive when we passed them. Just a couple of weeks ago, we had a 12-tour veteran, I think a marine, who killed himself. Twelve tours, Madam Speaker. What are we doing? Why aren't we having a debate about that? With all due respect to some of my friends on this side of the aisle, endless wars are not an answer. Neither is allowing bad actors to run amok around the world against our national security interests or that of our allies. So why must it always be, when we get to budget time: ``Well, we have to have more money. We are going to keep defense. We are going to keep things going. We are going to have OCO. We are going to do this. We are going to spend more money to keep the wars going, whatever DOD wants''? Why is it on the other side of the aisle too often: ``Well, an endless amount of dollars for nondefense discretionary spending, but whatever. We don't care about $26 trillion of debt. Let's just pass a bill. Let's just get it done so we can do something. And you get what you want, and you get what you want, and we spend another extra trillion dollars''? By the way, Madam Speaker, I would say to the gentleman from Arizona (Mr. Schweikert), a trillion dollars sounds kind of quaint, doesn't it? A trillion dollars sounds kind of quaint now. I don't even know where we are. Does anybody in this Chamber have the first clue what our national deficit is going to be this year? No. We don't have a clue because we are spending money hand over fist. Why? Because we are trying to deal with a pandemic that, frankly, our own public actions and public governments are causing a hell of a lot of the very damage we are trying to bail out. State and local governments are taking actions, which basically are tantamount to takings, shutting down people's livelihoods. Then, they just walk away and shake their hands, and they go, ``Well, I guess the Federal Government will bail them out.'' Governors, mayors: ``Sorry, bars, shut down. Sorry, restaurants, shut down. Sorry, barbershops, shut down. Sorry, live music venues, shut down. Sorry, artists who have to sing in the live music venue, you are shut down. Sorry, churches, you can't worship.'' Madam Speaker, I am sitting here in this Chamber, wondering what it is going to take for the House of Representatives to actually represent. We don't govern. That is not what we do in America. We represent. We each represent whatever we represent, 700,000, 800,000 people, depending on the district. We are here to share their values and beliefs and reach some point of actual responsible leadership and do our job. But I have to say something here. The President of the United States, he draws a lot of fire. The President of the United States ran in 2016 on what? Build the wall. Drain the swamp. And what does drain the swamp mean? I would tell you that, whatever you think of the President, drain the swamp means everything I am just talking about and 1,000 other things that are irritating the American people every single day about why this government, and particularly this Congress, can't do its job, why bureaucrats stand in the way of what the people want, why judges make up the law, and why Congress can't balance a budget. That is the swamp. The swamp represents the frustration of the American people who, while extremely willing to have people come to this country with open arms, also want their border to be secure. They don't want cartels running the border. They don't want 900,000 people coming to our border being apprehended and having to deal with it. They don't want cartels to abuse women and children on the journey. They don't want fentanyl pouring across our border, and that is the state of our border. If the President of the United States should dare to say we should have a secure border, what happened? Colleagues on the other side of the aisle went to the border and lied about the state of the border with respect to kids in cages and kids drinking out of toilets. I went there. My chief of staff went down there the week after claims were made about kids drinking out of toilets, and they were toilets that have water fountains attached to them. But this is the hyperbole that drives public opinion, gets out in social media, and undermines the one thing that almost all Americans understand is critically important, and that is to have border security where cartels don't run our border. That is not a controversial statement. By the way, it is not just my colleagues on the other side of the aisle. There are a whole lot of people on my side of the aisle who love to sit there at the Rio Grande and have a little sign that says ``no trespassing,'' and then they wink, wink, nod, nod, over here, and they have a ``help wanted'' sign. How about we have an honest conversation about what a secure border looks like? Why don't we sit down at a table and actually do that? I am sick and tired of Republicans who 10 years ago were saying to those of us who thought we should have a secure border because we knew what was happening, and we saw what the cartels were doing, and we saw the hordes of human trafficking, and we saw the dead bodies in deserts, and people in our own party were saying: Well, fences are a 19th century solution to a 21st century problem. Now, because it is a politically charged thing, the President is for it and it has become partisan, they say: Well, yeah, we are all for it. When are we going to do our job, Republicans and Democrats, to do that, to secure the border of the United States, not because we don't want to welcome immigrants, but because it is the responsible thing for a government to do? Why would we let the Reynosa faction of the Gulf cartel run the border in the Rio Grande Valley? That is precisely what we are doing. Why would we allow fentanyl to pour across the border? Why would we allow addicts in our country to have a constant supply coming through from Mexico, across our border, through Texas, through Arizona, through to Mexico, through California? Why would we do that? It defies all rationality. It makes no sense. Yet, that is what we do, and the American people are sick and tired of it. Giving credit where it is due, the President of the United States has tried to attack that problem, and he has met resistance from the swamp at every turn. He has met resistance from our Democratic colleagues, met resistance from bureaucrats at DHS, met resistance from bureaucrats throughout the administration when he is trying to do what the American people elected him to do. When we stand up saying that we should defend the rule of law and stand beside law enforcement, what happens? The swamp pushes back and says: No, we can't do that. Heaven forbid we have Federal law enforcement protecting a courthouse. Who would have thought? The swamp pushes back. Right now, we are facing the struggles that we are dealing with, with respect to the pandemic. I suspect that my friend from Arizona is here to talk a little bit about the data on that. I could be wrong. I think I am right. There is a lot of stuff that we should be looking at about this virus. It is a virus. It is not something you bottle up into a Tupperware container and put on the shelf. It is a virus. It is out. It is among us. It is in all 50 States. It is in every city and town. It is a virus. What are we going to do as a country to work through it? Cower in fear? Be afraid to actually look at the data? Be afraid to actually talk to doctors who might have an opposing or different view than the powers that be at the CDC or the NIH? Let me be clear. I don't know Dr. Fauci other than having interacted with him in a hearing or a setting like this. I don't know Dr. Birx other than similarly engaging as an official. But they are not the President. They are not an elected Member of Congress. They are not an elected Member of the Senate. Why aren't we having hearings with different alternative views from other health professionals, other doctors? There is a large number of doctors, not insignificant, with differing opinions: Ioannidis at Stanford University; Scott Atlas at Stanford; Oxford put out recent reports; Dr. Risch at Yale, talking about the possible efficacy and success with HCQ, hydroxychloroquine. I am not a doctor. I don't know whether HCQ works, but I would like to know. And I would like to have the right to try. Why is it, in the United States of America, a supposedly free country, a doctor cannot prescribe HCQ in certain circumstances? Or why are States preventing that? Or why are doctors at the CDC or NIH preventing that when there is evidence, studies, to the contrary, when it is sold off-the-shelf in other countries around the world because it is a malaria medicine? Why would we not have a debate about that? You have doctors going across the street at the Supreme Court of the United States, doing a press conference. I don't know them, but they are doctors, M.D.s, and they give a press conference saying how they think HCQ works as a prophylactic. What happens? It is censored by Big Tech, shut down as being potentially misleading. Does that not concern my colleagues on the other side of the aisle? That is a genuine question that I would actually like to know the answer to. But I won't know because the 200-and-some-odd colleagues are out doing whatever they are doing right now, going to dinner, doing their thing, going home, will come in tomorrow. We will rush in here, and we will have three votes. We will never actually debate it, will we? We will not actually debate it. Instead, everybody will go to Twitter. Everybody will go to the press conferences. People will point. They will call doctors crazy. They will say it is no good, and we will never know, or we won't know unless we fight through it to try to figure it out ourselves, not doing the hard work of this body to figure out whether HCQ is a good prophylactic or not. Again, I am not advocating for it. I am advocating for--it is unbelievable to have to say this--I am advocating for actually investigating it, debating it, finding the truth, and not censoring it. But that is what is happening. Why are we always saying how bad we are doing as a country right now? For the longest time: ``We are not testing. We are not testing. We are not testing.'' We have done over 50 million tests. Are they the right tests? Are we testing the right way? Maybe we should have a good, robust debate about that. But we had over 50 million tests. We are testing at a rate only surpassed by, I think, three other countries. I think we are fourth. I could be wrong. I think that is right. No, the rate, the testing, we are fourth. We have 50 million tests, more than any other country in the world. We are testing by the thousands in Texas. And all the eyes have been recently on Florida, Texas, and Arizona. Again, I am sure my friend from Arizona will have some data on this, but these States which have had, yes, an increase in the last several weeks, tragically, we are concerned. We are watching it. Our Governor is all over it. We are paying attention to it, but it has become a political football. The total numbers in all of those States still pale in comparison to New York and New Jersey, in terms of fatalities. I have no real interest in sitting here and pointing fingers at the Democratic Governor of New York or the mayor of New York, talking about how they failed versus how we succeeded or not succeeded, or whatever. Why are we doing that? Why aren't we just sitting down together and working together to try to figure out what the right policies are? Dare I talk about masks? Am I allowed to talk about masks? It is a genuine question. Am I actually allowed to talk about masks? Yet, the Speaker of the House of Representative said--by the way, putting aside our constitutional duty to represent our constituents and vote on the floor of this House--that somehow that is a breach of decorum. And oh, by the way, I am sure all the 12 viewers of this, when they take their viewers, my opponents will all say: ``Oh, he is an anti- masker.'' I have had this mask since April. My wife sewed a HEPA filter in here. It is a really good mask. It is not one of those flimsy old cotton masks that, by the way, were made fun of or said were inadequate by the NIH 5 years ago in a study. Yet, we go around, and as long as you virtue signal that you are wearing a cotton mask, everybody says: Aren't you really important? Aren't you just loving your country? Are we doing what we are supposed to do to actually make our country safer? Does anybody here know for certain? Does anybody know when I am sitting on an airplane, and the guy two rows over has a cotton mask kind of dangling down--it is just sitting there. And, oh, the flight attendant says, ``Good job. You got your mask on.'' Is that making me safer? How about when you wear an N95 mask with one of those little valves? Have we finally gotten around to the side of saying: Oh, we all raced to get those, but no, you have got the valve. It is kicking too much air out, and that is going to hurt people? Why am I saying all that? I am not saying don't wear a mask. What I am saying is, for goodness sake, this isn't the gospel handed down as to what precisely is the right way to do it when our own Dr. Fauci was questioning masks mere months ago, when our own NIH was questioning it, when there was report after report about it, when Denmark and Sweden and Finland and all of these other Nordic countries aren't wearing masks. ``Oh, no, he is talking about masks. He is an anti-masker.'' That is what it is all about now. Get on Twitter, bash somebody. They are a nutball. When are we going to look at the data and try to do the thing that we need to do to lead this country forward? Do we know what we are doing to children right now? Do we have any idea? We have our own CDC Director talking about the number of suicides outpacing the number of deaths from COVID. I love my 10-year-old son. I love my 9-year-old daughter. I would give my life for them at any given moment, but they are going back to school on August 20 because it is good for them. But there are so many children in this country who are not going to be going back to school because we have scared the bejesus out of the entire country. We are America. We cured polio. We put a man on the Moon. We beat Nazi Germany. We beat Japan. And we are cowering in the corner about a virus. Let's look at the numbers. Let's protect the elderly. Let's protect the people in nursing homes. But, for goodness' sake, let's open our schools, and don't let teachers' unions hide behind a virus to pretend they don't want something else when they do, and we know they do. The President of the United States ought to call a hearing and bring in Scott Atlas, bring in Dr. Ioannidis, bring in Dr. Rishi, bring in some of the Oxford folks, and bring in other doctors to talk about the science. Let's have a full discussion about this. Let's show the American people they can go back to work, they can go back to school, and they can do it safely. We are destroying our economy, the greatest economy in the history of the world. Forty-five percent of Black businesses have gone out of business over the last 5 months. Do you want to talk about Black lives mattering? How about those 45 percent of businesses? I guess that doesn't look good on the mound for Major League Baseball, does it? I guess that doesn't fit on the back of a jersey for the NBA, does it? It doesn't fit on one of those cute little stickers that the NFL likes to put on their helmets so they can feel good about themselves as social justice warriors. Who cares about those families that are destroyed because their businesses are gone? But that is what we are doing by our own judgment and by our own decisions. We should be ashamed. The people's House. Look at it, Madam Speaker, it is empty. I don't know who is running your C-SPAN cameras. Take a broad view. Show the American people the people's House in all its glory, cycling in your Representatives to come in like robots and vote and walk out and then vote and then walk out and spend all day voting but never actually debating or talking. By the way, 20 or 30 or 40 of them are voting from boats and voting from their homes using proxy voting. What is a proxy vote? I am glad you asked. A proxy vote is when someone isn't actually doing their constitutional duty of voting here in this Chamber. A proxy vote is someone sitting at home and telling another Member to vote for them, delegating the nondelegable. Our Constitution doesn't provide for that. In 1793, our Founding Fathers were fighting yellow fever. Five thousand people had died in Philadelphia out of 50,000--10 percent. Washington, Madison, Jefferson, and Adams found a way to meet. They were debating: How can we do this adhering to the Constitution? Heaven forbid we adhere to the Constitution. We have a duty to be in this Chamber. We have survived wars and we have survived other pandemics. This stuff isn't foreign to me. My dad is a survivor of polio. It is real. He has got a tracheostomy. He walks with a limp and he can barely get around. But he is 77 years old, and he is alive because his mom fought through being a single mom in west Texas after she lost my grandfather, who died of cancer when my dad was 7, and here is my grandmother finding out her son has polio in September of 1949. My dad comes home from the hospital to say good-bye to his dad, whom he had only known for 2 years because his dad had been in the Pacific theater. Then my grandmother runs and becomes the first woman elected county clerk in Nolan County, Texas. She helps my dad, gets up at 4 in the morning, goes and does therapy. He was the first to go on to college. I am the first to go on to graduate school, and here I am in Congress. It is the American story. It is the American story we ought to be proud to share, proud to push, and proud to champion. But instead we are sitting here in an empty Chamber running people through and voting on things that likely have no chance of becoming law. In fact, we know these appropriations bills have no chance of becoming law. We know it. Yet we are showing the American people that we are ``doing something.'' Do you want to know what the swamp is? It is that. It is a disease, Madam Speaker. Do somethingitis. We have to show the people we are doing something when you are doing literally nothing. That is what this Chamber is about. It should be about something better, more, and bigger. We can disagree violently about certain issues and policies, but why can't we come together to balance our budget? Why can't we come together to figure out how to fight a pandemic without politicizing it? Yet that is precisely what we are doing. May I ask the Speaker how much time is remaining.

Mr. ROY. Madam Speaker, it was 9 years, last night, I was in an emergency room in Austin, Texas. I had fluid on my lungs and I didn't know what was going on. I found out 2 days later, 3 days later, it was likely, and then turned out to be, stage III Hodgkin's lymphoma. It was kind of a curve ball one gets when you have got a 4-month-old daughter, 2-year-old son, and a wife scared out of her mind. I remember the prayers and I remember the calls. I remember all of it like it was yesterday. I can't believe it has been 9 years. Governor Perry, for whom I worked at the time, couldn't have been a better man or gentleman trying to help us get through it. I went down to MD Anderson and did a trial drug that is now the standard of care. I am alive today because of that and because of the great doctor I had at MD Anderson. I remember when going through that, of course, you don't know what the outcome is going to be. It wasn't until October I remember being down there with my wife when we got the news that the cancer was clear. I had to finish treatment through January of 2012. It changes your perspective. Now, everybody in this Chamber has personally dealt with something like that. I can't even imagine what my friend Andy Barr is going through in losing his lovely wife. I can't imagine what folks who have known Representative Lewis for decades are going through. I can't imagine what Chairman Nadler has been going through with his wife's battle with cancer. We could go around the room. All of us deal with these kinds of things. But I will acknowledge that, for me, that was intensely personal, getting a cancer diagnosis at age whatever I was at the time, 39. But the reason I am bringing it up here is because as I think, through this virus right now--it is a virus. I know it is bad. I know it is scary. I know there are people who have lost loved ones. But our reaction to it does not represent the greatest of this country, in my opinion. I don't mean that we are not testing enough or we are not getting enough announcements out about masks. I mean, loved ones who are dying alone. Let me be perfectly clear that if any of my loved ones get this virus, they are not dying alone. No local judge, no local mayor, no local Governor, no President, and no Member of this body is going to stop me from seeing my loved one. But that is because I am stubborn. But we are forcing that environment on a lot of people who don't know how to fight a system. Why would we allow that to happen in America? Why? But that is what we are doing. Why would we do what we are doing to children out of fear? Again, I promised myself I would lay down everything I have to defend and save this Republic for my kids and my grandkids, my now 10-year-old son and 9-year-old daughter who are with me here this week. But I would be doing them a disservice if I held them back from going to school. I know all the arguments. Well, they go to school and then the teachers will take it home to someone else. Madam Speaker, if we look at the data, look at who is likely to get hit by this virus, we should be adults about this. We are leaders. We set the tone. Fear is not the tone we should be setting as a nation. Yet that is precisely what we are doing. We should not be letting loved ones die alone. We should not be doing what we are doing to children. By the way, I talked about cancer. I was blessed that I got a diagnosis at stage III. What if I had been sick this year? What if it had gotten into my bones with stage IV? That is happening to Americans right now. Do we ever talk about that on the floor, or is everybody running around talking about 150,000 dead Americans because it is the President's fault? Why aren't we talking about the suicide rates? Why aren't we talking about the opioid addiction? Why aren't we talking about the cancer screenings that aren't occurring? Why aren't we talking about the suicide? Veteran suicides are increasing. People are feeling alone, and it is scarring our children. That is not what a great country does. Madam Speaker, we are a great country, and we should darn well start acting like it again. Let's debate on the floor here what we should be doing with our military abroad authorizations of force. Let's secure the border of the United States and not allow the swamp to stand in the way of common sense. Let's stand up for law enforcement, secure our communities, and don't let people run over streets and burn down buildings. Let's stand up in the face of a virus. Let's say we are going to defeat it, and let's damn well defeat it. It is who we are as a people. It is in our DNA. It has been since our founding. It has been there through all the wars. It has been there through previous pandemics. And it is with us here now if we will just tap into it. This should not be partisan. I look at both directions when I say that. It should not be partisan. I cannot believe we are sitting here in an environment where we have allowed a virus to become partisan, but that is precisely what we have done. Madam Speaker, I am not going to take up too much more time. I know that the gentleman from Arizona has been patiently waiting. I didn't even start to bring up my charts and talk about numbers because I could never do battle with the gentleman from Arizona when it comes to presenting that kind of information. I know he will do it well. But I do know this: We are a great country that is doing great things right now to combat this virus. I do know that my physician is a great man. Dr. Yunis grew up in Damascus, Syria. I asked Dr. Yunis: Doc, I am stage III. I have a 4-month-old, a 2- year-old, and a wife. I am 39. What am I looking at? Dr. Yunis looked at me and said: I am not going to give you a percentage. Later he gave me one because I made him give me one. He said: I am not going to give you a percentage. For you, it is zero percent or 100 percent. Choose 100 percent. When are we going to choose 100 percent? When are we as a body, when are we as the Senate, when are we as the White House, when are we together on a nonpartisan basis going to choose 100 percent behind this country, 100 percent for the rule of law, 100 percent standing alongside of our law enforcement keeping our communities safe, 100 percent that we are going to have our kids go back to school, we are going to get back to work, we are going to lift our economy up, and we are going to prove that the 21st century is going to be the greatest century that this country has ever known, not because we are cowering in fear, but because we are facing these things head-on? That is what 100 percent means. That is what being an American means. Madam Speaker, I yield back the balance of my time.

Mr. ROY

Mr. ROY. Mr. Speaker, my father is a proud west Texan, also a proud graduate of Texas Tech University, as the gentleman well knows. And I just appreciate the gentleman's passion for this country and what he is doing by giving us this time to talk in defense of the greatness of our Nation. Now, I wouldn't think I would be standing on the floor of the House of Representatives having to defend the greatness of the United States of America. We were sitting in this very Chamber, in the State of the Union address, when the President of the United States was touting the greatness of this country, and only about half of this body stood up to clap its hands to agree about the greatness of this country. I just want to say, you know, as a Member of this body, of one-435th, and one-half of one-third of the Federal Government, I believe this country is great. I am proud of this country. I am unapologetically proud to be an American. Flaws we have because we are flawed men and flawed women. We know that. It is certainly a tenet of my faith, and that is faith in the Almighty and faith in the Lord and my Savior Jesus Christ. But for Him, I would be condemned because we are flawed. But we have to remember that this country has stood for something greater. Just a few weeks ago, I went up to Independence Hall in Philadelphia on the 244th anniversary of our separation from the crown. I went into Independence Hall on that day on July 2, the actual day that we separated from the crown. It was an honor to be there. I went up there to record a video. I never thought I would have to record a video saying why this building, Independence Hall, and why these monuments are important. It is not the bricks; it is not the mortar; it is not the marble; and it is not the iron. It is the ideals they represent. It is the ideals that this country was founded upon, and it is those ideals that carry forward. We will never measure up to those ideals because we are flawed human beings, but we will always be striving to achieve the greatness that our Founders laid out for us and that our forefathers and our current brothers and sisters have died and bled for. When we go down to the World War II Memorial and see 4,000--and I can't remember the exact number--4,100 almost stars on that monument, that is one for every 100 Americans who gave their life thousands of miles away in Europe and in the Pacific, fighting for something far greater than they. It wasn't for conquest. It was to stop tyranny. It was to stop fascism. It was to stop the spread of that around the globe. That is what our country represents. We had the great clash in our Civil War a mere 80 years after our founding. Few republics in the history of mankind would have survived that. But it was because it was for the fulfillment of the Declaration. It was a fight for the fulfillment of those ideals and the greatness of this country. That greatness is exemplified by our heritage. My grandmother was a single mom in west Texas, in Sweetwater, Texas, because my grandfather died of cancer when my dad was 7 years old. Now, imagine her finding out my father had polio--a pandemic--in September 1949 while my grandfather was dying of cancer. Then he passes away in November, and my dad coming home from the hospital for a few days each week to be able to see his dad, whom he had only seen for 2 years because his dad was in the Pacific. Then my grandmother, a single mom in west Texas, runs and becomes the first woman elected county clerk in Nolan County, Texas. She raises my dad and gets him through therapy. My dad is still alive and walking today because of her hard work, taking on double jobs. He goes on to be the first to go to college, Texas Tech. I go on to be the first to go to graduate school, and now here I am in Congress. This story is not unique. Each and every one of us has one of those stories. That is the greatness of this country. Her dad, my grandmother's dad, had lost the farm in the Depression. How many stories do you know like that? He went on to be the janitor in a church in Sweetwater, Texas, for the rest of his life after he lost the farm. It was noble. It was noble because he was raising my grandmother and raising my dad, who was newly without a father. That was what we do. That is what we do as Americans. That is our greatness. I am just, frankly, not going to apologize for it. I am not. I love this country. As we sit here in the face of a pandemic, why is our leadership telling our country to cower in fear? That is not the American way. That polio that struck my father? We beat it. Mr. Speaker, 30,000 kids died and 300,000 got injured. Mitch McConnell is one of them. My dad is one of them. He walks with a hobble today. But we beat it with the Salk vaccine. We beat the Germans. We beat the Japanese. We have been fighting and standing up against the evils of totalitarianism. We took down the Soviet Union when Mr. Reagan said ``tear down that wall'' to Mr. Gorbachev. That is who we are as a country. I am just not going to apologize for it. Here is the thing: Why aren't we talking as a group together on a bipartisan basis instead of tearing each other down? Why aren't we talking about the great things that we have been achieving? Fifty million tests. Think about that. Fifty million tests--more than Russia, India, and the U.K. combined. That is an extraordinary achievement. How many ventilators? How many PPE, et cetera? I have all sorts of numbers, but we have an extraordinary production: 19 billion gloves, 775 million surgical masks, 187 million N95 respirators, 32 million face shields, and we keep pumping them out. Doctors have been working through the night, trying to figure out how to keep people alive and work through this pandemic and fight through it. Our fatality rate is going down, and it has been going down for 12 consecutive weeks. We should be applauding that and championing that. We shouldn't be backbiting about what the President says or what somebody in this body says. We should be championing the greatness of this country to overcome this pandemic because that is what we are doing. We should be making the American people confident to be able to get their kids back to school. Why? Because this virus--God, thank You-- this virus doesn't attack our kids, at least the data currently shows that. We can adapt if that changes. But that is the clear truth. Let's listen to the epidemiologists from Stanford like Dr. Ioannidis and Dr. Scott Atlas. Let's listen to the reports from Oxford and Yale, hardly some institutions of far-rightwing extremism. These are doctors who are telling us that our kids can go back to school, that we can go back to work, and that we can keep our country open. Why does that matter? Because being closed is harming our kids and harming our society. Forty-five percent of Black-owned businesses have been crippled, crushed, and closed during this. A study by Harvard said that 110,000 American small businesses would likely close their doors permanently. We have seen the jobless claims, almost 50 million jobless claims. I think we are hovering around 20 million still. These are real people, real people's lives. Next week is the 9-year anniversary since I was diagnosed with Hodgkin's lymphoma. I walked into the doctor's office, and I asked the doctor: Well, what are my chances, doc? I have stage 3. He said: Well, I am not going to tell you that number because, for you, it is zero percent or 100 percent. What are you going to choose? I chose 100 percent because I wanted to live. I wanted to see my then-4-month-old daughter grow up. I wanted to see my then-2-year-old son grow up. That is what we need for this country. Choose 100 percent. Choose the way for us to succeed as a country and march forward. When I saw that great doctor, a great man from Syria, he told me that story, and he gave me his plan for me for my treatment. It is now the treatment--it was a trial drug that is now the standard of care for Hodgkin's lymphoma patients. But I went and got a second opinion, a third opinion, and a fourth opinion. Why? Because that is what you do, and that is what we should be doing right now, listening to all the experts. This body should have hearing after hearing, calling in people for the experts. But we are not having these hearings. Why not? Why have we only met something like, ballpark, 13 of the last 90-something days? Someone explain that to me. Someone explain to me how the Founding Fathers in 1793, when 5,000 out of 50,000 Philadelphians died from yellow fever, they found a way to meet and have this body meet. Instead, what do we get? Proxy voting. Do you know what that means, American people? We have people on boats, calling in to hearings to register their votes. Think about that. That is not what the Constitution means. I am proud to be in court tomorrow, litigating that against the Speaker of the House. We will be right here in court because it is unconstitutional. But more important than that, it means we are not here leading. We are not here on the floor of the House of Representatives doing our job and projecting confidence to the American people that we can all meet and do what we are supposed to do. We should have hearing after hearing after hearing, calling epidemiology experts about what we can do to ensure that the American people go back to work confidently, go to school, go to work, create wealth, create opportunity, and get back on our feet. I am not going to use up much more of the gentleman's time, but I do want to say this: This stuff is all related. If you think the lawlessness on the streets of Portland and the dead babies--Black, White, and otherwise in Chicago, New York, and Atlanta; the 8-year-old girl who got killed with her mom; the gentleman walking across the street holding his 8-year-old daughter's hand; a Black man and a Black girl, he got gunned down in the streets of New York; a 1- year-old infant in New York; a 3-year-old Black baby boy in Chicago; a 19-year-old Black young man in a so-called autonomous zone in Seattle-- they are dead and they are gone because of lawlessness, because we are refusing to do our job to stand up for the very rule of law that sets this country apart from the rest of the world and always has. That is all related. When you shut your country down, Mr. Speaker, the mental impact of that is real. And that is not just me. There are smart doctors who believe that. John Ioannidis, whom I said was from Stanford University, asserted that extended lockdowns might not be the best approach. One of the bottom lines is that we don't know how long social distancing measures and lockdowns can be maintained without major consequences to the economy, society, and mental health. Ioannidis wrote: ``Unpredictable evolutions may ensue, including financial crisis, unrest, civil strife, war, and a meltdown of the social fabric.'' I feel extremely sad that my predictions were verified. The leaders of this body, all 435 of us, have an obligation to be here to do our job, to hold hearings, to speak the truth, to seek the truth, and to speak the truth to the American people. I don't take it cavalierly. My 77-year-old father, I didn't see him between Christmas and July Fourth to protect him. My kids are going back to school on August 20 in Austin, Texas. Do I worry about my family? Of course I do. But we are going to get back in the saddle, and we are going to get back to do our jobs and get this country moving forward. To my friend from Texas, I am sorry I took up too much time. I thank my friend for doing this. I love this country. I will never apologize for loving this country, and we are going to work together to get this country back in the saddle.

Mr. ROY

Mr. ROY. Mr. Speaker, I thank the gentleman from Georgia for yielding. I appreciate the opportunity to address this important issue and the question the gentleman from Maryland just asked. I hear the question. Yes, their District boundary lines have changed in the past, but what the majority wants to do today is fundamentally alter what Washington, D.C., is. That is what is at stake here. I would love to hear the gentleman from Maryland expound on his support and belief in our electoral college since, suddenly, my colleagues on the other side of the aisle have a newfound respect for the power of States and the importance of States. I would love to hear them expound on that. I would love to hear my colleagues on the other side of the aisle talk about what is critical about community and about respecting the ability of people to live differently in order for us to agree to disagree, to allow Texas to be Texas, California to be California. I would like love to hear my colleagues on the other side of the aisle expound on these principles. This is about power. That is what this is about. Let's make no mistake about it. D.C., I do not believe, should become a State--and I use that word importantly, should not become a State. We can talk about the constitutional infirmities with what the majority is trying to do. My colleagues are doing that, and they have laid that out. The Constitution speaks to creating the Federal city in Washington, D.C. The Founders wanted to do that for a reason. We wanted this seat to be completely unintertwined and separated from other States. We wanted it to be special and unique and not subject to the powers and the struggles that go on about the people in a certain State. That is what is at stake here. I would note that my friends, Mr. Raskin, Mr. Connolly, Mr. Hoyer, and Mr. Beyer, are the first to rattle--the very first to rattle--if we dare go down the road of potential shutdown, if we dare go down the road of limiting the size and scope of the Federal Government. Why? Because the jurisdictions they represent are wholly and heavily dependent on this Federal Government. I am a proud Texan dating back to the 1850s, but I grew up in Loudoun County, Virginia, and went to the University of Virginia. When I grew up in Loudoun County, it was 80 percent dirt roads. There was one stoplight in my entire school district. It was a rural county fully separated from Washington, D.C., and now it is the richest per capita county in the United States of America because leviathan grows. It is because leviathan continues to separate from the real Americans out there--the people throughout the entire country who are not being represented by this body. If we want to talk about representation, then let's talk about this body doing its job to represent the people, the forgotten man. The American people are tired of watching their country burning to the ground, statutes being toppled, people getting killed in the streets. And we are spending time here today on an unconstitutional effort to create a State out of a Federal city that the Constitution contemplated being separated so that it could be unique and be the power seat of this great country. Mr. Speaker, that is what this is about.

Mr. ROY

Mr. ROY. Mr. Speaker, I appreciate the remarks from the gentlewoman from the Virgin Islands. My question that I have for this body as we sit here today is: Why aren't we amending the legislation? Why aren't we offering and allowing amendments in this great body, in the people's House? A general question. When I go home, and I assume you all have the same thing, they say: What's wrong with Washington? Why don't you actually sit down around a table and try to solve problems? I think this is one of the things that is most perplexing, and we see it in the Senate as well, the so-called greatest deliberative body. Yet, we saw what happened in the Senate, where there was an offer for 20 amendments, a manager's amendment from the gentleman from South Carolina, Senator Scott, and that offer was rejected. Here, we are not even really having an opportunity to offer an amendment, have a serious debate. I don't question at all the motives that are behind my colleagues on the other side of the aisle, in terms of putting forward legislation to try to address a problem we all perceive as a problem we want to address. I look at the bill that we have here; it is a Republican bill. There is a lot of overlap. There are some policies in it that are in agreement. I just don't understand why we can't start with some nucleus of a bill and offer 20 or 30 amendments, vote on the amendments as a deliberative body, the United States Congress, the people's House. Why can't we just offer amendments and vote on them? Then, wherever the amendments take us, at the end of that, vote on a bill. That used to happen. I was a staffer in the Senate, and we had 50 amendments on different bills. My staff today, they look at that as some sort of relic of history, as this thing that we used to do because we don't do it anymore. I literally don't understand it. It is a question on both sides of the aisle, why we do not sit down and offer legislation and go through it. Start with a nucleus and then amend it. We have things here we agree on. On issues such as qualified immunity, issues such as no-knock warrants, issues that involve asset forfeiture, issues that go to the heart of liberty and the heart of the ability of an individual American not to be overwhelmed by law enforcement, there is agreement, but we would like to have conversations about those issues. There is. My friend from Michigan, now an independent, offered legislation about qualified immunity. I don't agree with it. I don't agree with a full abolition of qualified immunity. I don't. My grandfather is a chief of police. I know we have all got law enforcement in our communities, and we are worried about what that will do to our law enforcement. We are seeing it right now. We have 104 shootings in Chicago. We had 14 killings. We had a 3-year-old boy shot on the street. We have teenagers getting killed, a 324 percent increase in New York shootings. We had a guy get shot in the back of his head while changing his tire in New York. We have lawlessness occurring, and this body ought to address it. The Attorney General of the United States ought to address it. We ought to enforce the laws of the United States. We ought to have a debate here about that. We ought to have a debate here about ensuring or protecting the citizenry of the United States. It is our fundamental responsibility. It is our job. That is our duty in the Constitution, to secure the blessings of liberty. Yet we are just going to sit here and take shots across the building with a Senate bill and a House bill with no resolution, and then we are going to fly home tomorrow. In what universe does that make sense? In what universe is that the right thing to do? In what universe are the American people looking at the people's House and saying, ``Job well done, you all, well done,'' when people are dying, literally, in the streets of our country right now of all races? What were the races of the murders in Chicago this last weekend of 104? What was the race of the 3-year-old boy who was shot? These are real issues. Why don't we just sit around the table and figure it out instead of litigating this in the press and taking shots across the Capitol dome? Senator Scott is a good man offering a good bill, and the Speaker of the House says that we are trying to murder George Floyd again? Come on. It is our job to secure the blessings of liberty. What I ask of this Chamber is that we sit down and figure out legislation to actually secure that and support our law enforcement. Seventy-six million interactions of law enforcement with civilians: 99 percent of those don't result in any kind of taking them in, and 98 percent of those don't result in any harm. Mr. Speaker, let's go do our job. Let's look at the legislation. Let's work together and figure out how to actually do the job of securing the blessings of liberty.

Mr. ROY

Mr. ROY. Mr. Speaker, the gentleman is exactly right with respect to who is calling the shots and how we are operating. And we did want to offer amendments, and we would. I think, in all honesty, it is a bipartisan problem in both the Senate and the House that we need to figure out how to get back to any kind of regular order so that we can actually debate and amend. So I will just close with this, because the gentleman has been kind, and he has reserved the time. I will say that as we look at our country right now, that we need a good dose of hard work by the people that have been elected to represent it. And we are not doing that. It is just plain and simple. We are not doing our job here to represent the American people, to come here, debate, vote. We are not doing our job right now to stand up for America and to defend its institutions and to defend the rule of law and to defend law enforcement while figuring out how to hold people accountable to make sure that liberty and justice is protected. We are not doing our job to protect churches, we are not doing our job to protect our monuments, and we are not doing our job to push back on mob rule. Mr. Speaker, I thank the gentleman for giving me the time to join him. And may we all work together to preserve this great republic and secure the blessings of liberty.

Mr. ROY. Mr. Speaker, I appreciate my friend from Texas and for those kind remarks. I appreciate how much he has dedicated to spending time on the floor of the House of Representatives, which is what we should be doing as Members of this body. He does it and he does it often, and then he includes others in it. I just wish we had more. I just wish we had debate. I wish we had amendments. But we don't. And we shouldn't kid ourselves. For whoever watches this C-SPAN clip or whoever is watching it right now, the fact of the matter is, this institution known as Congress is badly broken. We don't have vigorous debate, neither in this body nor on the other side of this Capitol in the United States Senate. The Senate, where I worked as a staffer for a number of years, I can remember having bills where we would have 30, 40, 50, 60 amendments, and debate back and forth, and offer them and vote on them, and at the end of that, then decide whether we support that legislation or not. We don't do that anymore. We get a bill, like today, brought to the floor of the House of Representatives by the majority, and we are told that is the vote. The same thing in the Senate. We have a bill that is brought to the floor of the Senate, and the author of the bill, Senator Scott, offers 20 amendments to the other side, including a manager's package, and it is rejected out of hand, no debate, no discussion on amendments. And the American people are sitting at home going, What is going on? Why won't this institution--its Congress--do anything? Right now, we have three, maybe four Members of the United States Congress in this room. Tomorrow, we will have a couple of votes, and then we will fly home. And what will we have accomplished this week while our Nation is struggling with statues being toppled, people being killed, and here we sit? What is everybody in this body doing right now? Are they out having dinner? Are they out having a drink? Are they home asleep? But right now, just this last weekend, we had 104 shootings in Chicago, 14 were killed, several teenagers. A 3-year-old boy was killed this weekend. There is a 325 percent increase year over year of shootings in New York City. We had a gentleman who was washing his car's tire, had somebody come up right behind him and shoot him in the head on the streets of New York City. We have gone a long ways away from the kind of law and order, rule of law that is married to liberty that has made this country great for so long. It is incumbent upon this body and this institution to do our job. It is incumbent upon us to stand up for the rule of law so that liberty can prosper, so that we secure the blessings of liberty as the Constitution outlines as our responsibility. I have no idea what it is like to be a Black American and I will never know what it is like to be a Black American. I can only imagine. I can only talk to people. I do know what it is like to be a law enforcement person, because my grandfather was the chief of police of a small west Texas town. I worked as an assistant United States Attorney. I worked in law enforcement in the U.S. Attorney's Office. Of the 76 million interactions that we have between law enforcement and citizens in this country every year--or at least last year there were 76 million--there is a study of about 100,000 interactions that said 99 percent of those didn't result in taking anybody into custody; and of that remaining 1 percent, 98 percent of those resulted in no force that resulted in any kind of injury or anything significant. Well, of that 76 million, that leaves you about 15,000. Now, you dive into that, and there are some egregious wrongs. And we and everybody in this body want to deal with those wrongs, but today we didn't debate any of those serious issues about what we can do. We had a bill brought to the floor that literally wipes clean qualified immunity for our law enforcement officers, just gets rid of it. So after 50-something years of operating under this, this bill would just, boom, get rid of it without so much as a real debate. Why didn't we offer an amendment, for example, that would have returned to the 2009 standard before the court changed it to say, You know what? Maybe we should adjudicate every constitutional claim alongside a claim of qualified immunity. Because the court just made that up in 2009. Because you know what about qualified immunity? It is all made up by courts, because this body doesn't do its job, this body doesn't speak, because this body doesn't ever sit down and do our job and offer amendments and debate and vote. The legislature should speak on these issues. Why didn't we talk about no-knock warrants? Why didn't we offer an amendment? We can debate, vote on it, vote it up or down, and then move on. This is what this body is supposed to do. It is what is so frustrating.

Mr. ROY

Mr. ROY. Mr. Speaker, I would like to clarify the intent of some of the language in H.R. 7010, and especially the language in the Bill as to loan forgiveness. Section 3 adds new paragraph 8 (Limitation on Forgiveness) that states that: To receive loan forgiveness under this section, an eligible recipient shall use at least 60 percent of the covered loan amount for payroll costs, and may use up to 40 percent of such amount for any payment of interest on any covered mortgage obligation (which shall not include any prepayment of or payment of principal on a covered mortgage obligation), any payment on any covered rent obligation, or any covered utility payment. The intent of this provision is to reduce the portion of the forgivable amount that must be spent on payroll cost, to provide employers more flexibility to bring back and retain employees in a manner that allows compliance with state and local reopening restrictions and the business reality of individual borrowers. The SBA, as set forth in the ``Interim Final Rule 1'' issued on April 2, 2020, has determined that the forgivable portion of the loan (that which is spent during the covered period) must be allocated at least 75 percent to payroll costs. In the event a borrower is unable to spend in that ratio during the covered period, the loan is eligible for partial forgiveness. The IFR in section 2(o) states clearly that a PPP loan can ``be forgiven in whole or in part.'' o. Can my PPP loan be forgiven in whole or in part? Yes. The amount of loan forgiveness can be up to the full amount of the full principal amount of the loan and any accrued interest . . . The actual amount of loan forgiveness will depend, in part, on the total amount [of payroll and non-payroll costs] . . . over the eight-week period following the loan . . . However, not more than 25 percent of the loan forgiveness amount may be attributable to non-payroll costs[.] The overall spending of the loan is similarly limited in a 75/25 ratio. Section 2(r) states ``at least 75 percent of the PPP loan proceeds shall be used for payroll costs.'' The intent of this Bill is to retain the existing structure set forth by the SBA, but to amend the ratios in both IFR sections from 75/25 to 60/40 (along with extension of covered period, maturity date and other changes) to preserve borrower flexibility and the ability to obtain partial or proportional forgiveness of the loan if less than 60 percent of covered period expenditures are payroll costs, provided that the borrower must spend overall loan proceeds subject to the 60/40 ratio.

Mr. ROY

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

Mr. ROY

Mr. ROY. Mr. Speaker, one thing I want to point out here is that the ranking member and the chair have gone through the provisions in the bill. This is an important vote because we have to do this to help small businesses, but it is an important vote because I think it gets back to the heart of simple legislating and working together to accomplish things. Let's provide the flexibility for businesses. Let's make sure that we let America open. But let's work together to solve the problems of the American people together, like Mr. Phillips and I did. I am proud to cosponsor this with him. Mr. Speaker, I hope the Senate will take this up and move it expeditiously so that we can help businesses this week. There is no reason to delay that.

Mr. ROY. Mr. Speaker, I thank the chairwoman and the ranking member for their leadership. I really want to give a strong statement of support and thanks to my colleague, Dean Phillips, for the way in which our offices have worked together and in which he and I have worked together on this. I have nothing but positive things to say about him, and I look forward to working on other measures to get, frankly, this body back to the work of the American people and to make Congress work again, to use a phrase that might be interesting. But we need to make Congress work again for the American people. This is a simple bill. It is a seven-page bill. We need more of that, more single-subject bills that we can wrap our hands around and move through the Chamber in ways that will impact American people's lives without things being decided by a handful of people in back rooms that cost trillions of dollars and have 2,000 and 3,000 pages. That is a statement, frankly, on both sides of the aisle. We need to find a way to work together, to have simple approaches to do the work of the American people. This piece of legislation, in particular, is important to me because I represent about 2,300 restaurants and about 53,000 employees who work there in central Texas. It is the most in Texas. It has to be pretty high up nationwide. Austin, Texas, and San Antonio, Texas, both have a great number of live music venues, as they are famously known, and my wife and I have availed ourselves of them over our lives. In fact, my courtship of my wife began in a lot of these places. Our first date was at Stubb's Bar-B-Q in Austin, Texas, a great institution for a Willie Nelson concert. We were at Threadgill's for our rehearsal dinner in South Austin, Texas, with live music. I represent the Broken Spoke. I represent Luckenbach, Texas, if you remember the famous song. I represent a number of great restaurants in San Antonio. The Cortez family has a bunch of restaurants in San Antonio. Many of you, if you have been on the River Walk or have been in downtown San Antonio, would have experienced these places. They are a part of the culture of our lives, our fabric of what we do every day when we visit with our families and our communities. We need to save these great institutions and not just restaurants. I am talking about the barbershops, the hair salons, the live music venues, and the hotels that are struggling. I just talked to a hotel operator an hour ago, just before coming down here to the floor, who is struggling and said: Look, I can't make it 8 weeks. I can't stay alive. I don't have enough heads on the pillows. We are working toward reopening. These are real businesses with real employees and real lives tied up into this who are struggling. The thing is, the PPP program has been a great success in getting $650 billion out the door in a matter of weeks to help almost 4 million businesses, as has been noted on the floor, and that is awesome. That is fantastic. We should be proud of that. But as we work to get America open again, we have to be mindful of the fact that times are continuing to move on. These businesses are struggling, and they can't meet some of these restrictions and deadlines. I will note a little moment of partisanship perhaps, in that I believe the unemployment insurance provision that was adopted is actually the root of the problem because you can't pay people more not to work than to work and then expect businesses to go back and rehire people to meet the requirements we put in the bill to meet and hold people in employment in the businesses. We need to address that. I hope that as a body we will not extend that when it expires in July. This is something I think is fundamentally important.

Mr. ROY

Mr. ROY. Madam Speaker, this body should continue to meet. That letter from James Madison, the father of the Constitution, to the father of our country, George Washington, expressly lays out what he is talking about to try to protect our duty to meet as a body, the requirement of physical presence, the requirement that we meet together, to look each other in the eye to do our duty to represent our constituents. This is not about slowing down the work of this body. This is about doing our duty to uphold the Constitution and finding a way to navigate through the difficulties of the current moment. We got through yellow fever. We got through world wars. We got through the Spanish flu. We got through a Civil War. And we managed to figure out how to do our job. Our Founders got through smallpox. I would implore my colleagues on the other side of the aisle, let us not adopt this proxy voting in which we turn over our solemn duty to another Member. Let us work together to find out how to get through this in a way that respects the Constitution. That is why we are here.

Mr. ROY. Madam Speaker, I appreciate the opportunity here to visit about what we are dealing with today with respect to proxy voting with respect to the previous question. And I notice that the gentleman from Massachusetts--and, first of all, and our prayers go out for the tragedy that you are dealing with in Massachusetts, at a significant clip worse than we are in Texas, obviously, regionally very difficult. But what we are trying to deal with here right now is trying to protect the Constitution of the United States. And this is not something that is about slowing down the work of this body. I am delighted to work with my colleague, Dean Phillips from Minnesota. Right now, together, we are all working on legislation to try to improve the PPP, and I am delighted to do that as the cosponsor of that legislation. I am not here to slow down what we need to be doing to help work for the people of the United States, I can assure you. I am here because the Constitution matters. In the various staff reports that talked about the options for us to deal with this, I would remind you that our Democratic colleagues acknowledge the constitutional questions that arise from proxy voting. Let's be clear to the American people that we are not talking about remote voting. I, too, like the gentleman from Virginia, have very serious constitutional reservations about remote voting, but let's have that debate. Let's have a thorough debate about that. But we are talking about proxy voting. For those people who are watching this back at home, understand what that means. That means that a Member of this body who has been delegated to them the responsibility from their constituents to vote for them, to argue for them, to be on this body representing them, is taking that solemn duty and handing it to another, and in some cases, 5 or 10 Members handing it to another. That undermines our body. It dilutes the representation of our constituent. It dilutes those of us as Members and the power and importance that is entrusted to us to represent our constituents. This is what is at stake, and this is what we are talking about, and this is why we have filed litigation. I would rather that we address this in this body, but in talking to the Parliamentarian, I was advised there was nothing we could do, that when the House voted 10, 12 days ago----

Mr. ROY. Madam Speaker, I was advised that we could do nothing in this body to address the constitutional infirmity of literally transferring our constitutionally vested authority to represent our constituents to another. Therefore, I was told, and I believe that is the case, we have to go to the courts, the Article III courts, to express our concern that this is constitutionally infirm. This is not about setting our own rules. This is about directly opposing the structure of the Constitution in which we represent our constituents. Keep in mind that at the time of our founding in 1793, in the heat of yellow fever, 5,000 Philadelphians died out of a population of 50,000. That is 10 percent. That would be 180,000 or 160,000 today. Yet, what happened? James Madison, George Washington, and Thomas Jefferson were all working to figure out how this body could continue to meet in person. They didn't adopt proxy voting. They figured out how to work to meet. There is a letter sent from James Madison to George Washington on October 24, 1793, talking about this very issue, that in a pandemic, this body should meet.

Mr. ROY

Mr. ROY. Mr. Speaker, I thank my friend from Oklahoma for yielding. I just ask my colleagues here: What are we doing? We have 40 million Americans out of work. We have serious problems we have got to address, and we are going to pass a bill tonight that is a clear political bill filled with political promises from my colleagues on the other side of the aisle that has no chance of being passed in its current form. And why aren't we debating and doing the job of this body? We have no debate. My friend from Maryland, Chairman Raskin, we served together working to try to protect the Constitution, and he says that we have this rule in here for a quorum can be two people. I agree, that is a problem. I don't care who is in charge of this body. We shouldn't operate that way. The American people want us to do our job and debate and work. The Constitution is pretty clear about what constitutes a quorum. You can trot out various words from some professors around the country that say otherwise, but a quorum means presence. We should be here debating. It matters. It matters that we look each other in the eye. It matters that we are here talking to each other when there are 40 million Americans without jobs while we sit here in Congress and don't do ours? We are not doing our job. While truckers carry food products, while people go to grocery stores, while first responders do their job, why aren't we doing ours? I would posit that the Constitution contemplates our physically being here looking each other in the eye to do our job. If we want to have debates about committee work being remote or virtual, okay, but the actual act of voting, our solemn duty to represent hundreds of thousands of people who put their trust in us to do our job, we are supposed to be here. We are supposed to work with each other. I have got a bipartisan bill right now that would help solve the problems, the PPP Flexibility Act, with my friend Dean Phillips from Minnesota. Let's debate and vote on it. Let's offer amendments. Let's actually have a debate in this body. It is supposed to be the people's House--the people's House. It is our job, Mr. Speaker. This is not constitutional.

Mr. ROY

Mr. ROY. Madam Speaker, I have one question: Where has Congress been? Forty-three percent of American households have had a significant or total pay cut; 26 million Americans have filed for unemployment; schools are shut down, placing burdens on families; and hospitals are laying off doctors and nurses. Where has Congress been? Congress has met twice: first, to pass a $2 trillion bill that in many cases is harming the very businesses it purports to help; now, again, to spend more borrowed money without asking the important questions--no hearings, no oversight. Today, I am holding my nose voting for a bill I had no chance to shape because there are 700,000 businesses closed by the power of government on the outside looking in while Harvard qualifies for $9 million. But this is it, Madam Speaker, enough. No more half-assed legislating. No more picking winners and losers. No more asking a small restaurant to gamble, to borrow money in hopes that money will be forgiven by their government if they rehire people. They can't rehire because those same overlords are paying workers more in unemployment than to do their job. Congress must convene not just today, but every day until America is back on track. Our job is to make policies that will save lives by moving us forward with deliberation, facts, and balanced reason, not reaction, panic, and fear. Congress should be here, Madam Speaker.

Mr. ROY

Mr. ROY. Madam Speaker, I thank the gentleman from Montana for his leadership on this and my colleagues who have been working together on this important effort. Madam Speaker, things like government efficiency, accountability, and reform are things you would think we would all be able to get behind. I am certainly of the belief that the American people who are watching-- even if it is just a handful in their living rooms--are a lot more than are watching here in the Chamber. I am also interested, when you look at the C-SPAN cameras, if you pan back, nobody is here to talk about what I am about to talk about. Yet we saw last week a Senate Chamber with 100 Senators sitting there debating what? They were debating failed Articles of Impeachment. Here we are trying to figure out how to make our government accountable, make it efficient, and make it effective. Reclaiming power from elected bureaucrats, reforming government practices to curb inefficiency and waste, and reemphasizing and rewarding innovation is something I think all Americans could get behind. But I would like to talk about something that I think is critically important, which is restoring Article I and restoring the primacy of this body and the Senate in governing our Nation. We shouldn't be looking to the executive branch, no matter who is in power, to be making decisions that should be reserved to the Members of this body and the Senate. Congress ceded some of our power in 1976 with the passage of the National Emergencies Act, which pulled together a number of different powers contained in the 130 different statutes at the time giving the President unilateral authority to declare emergencies. Madam Speaker, there are currently 33 emergencies in effect, some of them dating back to the Carter administration. Now, think about that. It is an emergency. It is an emergency, and it dates back to the Carter administration. This is no way to govern. I learned this how? Well, last spring when we were having a robust debate about securing the border of the United States--by the way, a sovereign nation should not need to have a debate about ensuring that our border is secure when you have 900,000 individuals being apprehended on our southern border last fiscal year alone, 900,000--600,000 of whom were caught and released into our country. The President of the United States is working to secure our border, to put up physical barriers, to build a wall, and to build a fence which is desperately needed. And it is working where it is being implemented. The President is right to do so. He is right that there is an emergency at our southern border, and he is right that the Members of this body led by Democrats refuse to acknowledge the crisis at our southern border. He was right to defend our southern border. But the question that popped into my head is: All right, we have an emergency. Now what? This body, Article I, should do its job. It is incumbent upon Congress to act. We shouldn't allow an emergency to be declared and then operate our policies under it, even if I agree with the policy, and I do. I do agree with the policy of what the President is doing. So I implore my Democrat colleagues, who are not in the Chamber, to come have a debate about restoring Article I and about all of the different issues that may occur. I introduced H.R. 1755 which is the companion legislation to that which was offered by my friend, Senator Mike Lee of Utah, in the U.S. Senate, and that bill would take a President's emergency declaration and terminate it after 30 days unless Congress affirmatively authorizes an extension. The bill would also terminate the emergency declaration after 1 year unless a new resolution of approval is enacted. It requires the President to report to Congress on how the President is exercising emergency powers. Senator Lee's bill has been passed out of committee, but we have had nary a debate here in the body about restoring Article I. We have had a lot of speeches and a lot of complaints about the President of the United States and a lot of complaints about what is happening at our border, but not one serious debate about restoring Article I. Let's do it. Let's come together right now and let's stand up as a body in Congress and say: Do you know what? If there is an emergency, great, Mr. President, go act in the emergency; but 30 days later we can agree it is time for Congress to decide how money is going to be appropriated and how we are going to enforce and implement the laws that we think are important for this body. This is critical to government reform. This is critical to making sure we are making government more efficient and more accountable. This body is the body, this House is the people's House and most responsive to the American people. I would beg, literally, my Democratic colleagues to engage in debate, as we sit here in an empty Chamber, about the kinds of things that I know the American people would love for us to debate. Madam Speaker, I thank the gentleman from Montana for yielding to me and for organizing this activity.

Mr. ROY

Mr. ROY. Madam Speaker, I would just like to thank the gentleman. I appreciate his time and his dedication to this. Let's do this again.

Mr. ROY. Madam Speaker, by that, government and private sector bureaucracies, and State and Federal.