Chip Roy

Mr. ROY

Mr. ROY. Then, would it not require us to simply say that you can leave ObamaCare in place? That can sit there and keep doing what it is doing, but we are going to give people this option, so employers can put it in there. If you are self-employed, you can get the same tax break. It is all equal tax treatment. Nobody is treated differently. We would have a product over here that would allow for true catastrophic insurance, right--not regulated, not all sorts of complications, not telling you what you can do, not do, but a risk-based product that says: Hi, I am a healthy 24-year-old. I would like to just know that, if I am in a bad accident or if I get cancer, that I will be able to have care. I will pay $100 a month for that risk assessment, and the insurance companies can figure all that out, or $200 a month, but not $2,000 a month. Isn't that what we are talking about?

Mr. ROY. Correct.

Mr. ROY. The last point, to that point, when our Republican colleagues, in particular, and other colleagues talk about all these things--we need transparency, we need association health plans--I support that. I support transparency, right? We need to fix some particular technical thing with our existing plans, right? Whatever these little solutions are--PBMs, right? There are all these--oh, we are going to do something on PBMs. Well, sometimes, that works. Sometimes, it doesn't. Will any of that be transformative?

Mr. ROY. What will be transformative is giving individuals and patients the power to deploy the dollars in a tax-advantaged way, in a marketplace where they can go get the options that are best for them.

Mr. ROY. Correct?

Mr. ROY. Right.

Mr. ROY. Right.

Mr. ROY. Right. If you have an F-250 pickup, right, and you have a crappy, little engine in there that doesn't work, but you add four- wheel drive and leather seats, and you do all this stuff to make it a nice truck, but it has a lawnmower engine in it, would it work? Would it be effective?

Mr. ROY. That is what we are talking about. That is what Republicans do. They have fallen into the trap of saying: Please give me the leather seats on the F-250, or I really want the four-wheel drive, or I really want a good bed liner and bed cover, and, oh, give me all the options and music and speakers and, oh, it looks great, great running boards, but you have a frigging lawnmower engine. The truck is useless. We have to actually transform healthcare, and we have the opportunity to do it with proposals like yours, like mine, like a number of proposals that our colleagues have. The question is: Will we have the willpower to do what the President has laid out-- Mr. BURLISON. Yes.

Mr. ROY.--which is to stop subsidizing insurance companies, stop enriching insurance bureaucrats, and empower the American people?

Mr. ROY. I thank the gentleman for his time.

Mr. ROY. I wish him safe travel back to Missouri, and hopefully, next week, we can get busy saving the American people from a broken healthcare system. America Under Attack From Within

Mr. ROY. Mr. Speaker, I am going to take a few minutes in the time that I have remaining to talk about another issue that is critical to the State of Texas and this entire country. That is the fact that America, Texas, and Western civilization are under attack from within. The cheap labor lobby, leftwing NGOs, radical progressive Democrats, Marxists, globalist organizations, and the United Nations have mobilized a coordinated effort to subvert our security and immigration system to harm the American people. Particularly concerning is the threat posed by Islamists who are spreading sharia law into Texas, who are advancing throughout the country, and who have a stated goal of undermining American life, not assimilating into it. This is a political movement, well funded, targeted at the American people, Western civilization, our rule of law, and the Constitution. We should not be allowing more people into this country who are adherent to sharia law, period. The Muslim Brotherhood's own motto is: ``Allah is our objective. The Prophet is our leader. Koran is our law. Jihad is our way. Dying in the way of Allah is our highest hope.'' Meanwhile, Europe has fallen. London and Paris are mere shells of their former strong selves. You watch veterans who fought to defend the United Kingdom in World War II. Those still alive tear up and cry, wondering what it was that they fought for when they watch the radical extension of Islam into the streets of London and throughout the United Kingdom. In France, a majority of young French Muslims put sharia above their own national laws, and more than a third have sympathy for Islamification. French officials have warned President Macron that Islamists are infiltrating France's republican institutions and are a threat to national cohesion. The authors of the report to Macron identified the Federation of Muslims in France, FMF, as the main French emanation of the historic Muslim Brotherhood, which was founded 100 years ago to promote a return to core Islamic values. They said that the FMF controlled 139 places of worship in France and a further 68 affiliated--in all, around 7 percent of the total. The organization ran some 280 associations. Mr. Speaker, 7 out of 10 French voters would back a ban on the Islamic veil in public because of what is happening in France. In the United Kingdom, Muslims are increasingly turning to Britain's sharia courts, which are not part of the U.K. law and operate as informal bodies. The number of sharia courts in Britain has grown to 85 since they first began operating in the country in 1982. Polls have found that 41 percent of the British public believe that Muslim immigrants have had a negative impact on the United Kingdom. Nearly half think that Muslim women are pressured into wearing a hijab. Almost a third think that Islam promotes violence. Parallel legal systems are not keys to a thriving society. There must be one rule of law for all the people. All the way back in 1991--a lot of people won't know this--the Muslim Brotherhood issued a memorandum about North America, detailing a plan for the ``enablement of Islam in North America,'' establishing an effective and stable Islamic movement led by the Muslim Brotherhood, which adopts Muslims' causes domestically and globally and works to expand the observant Muslim base. It was a coordinated and specific effort to advance Islam into the United States. Our Founders did not envision a Nation that remotely resembled today's Muslim world and the radical elements of sharia. America was founded as a nation grounded in a distinctly Judeo-Christian history and understanding of human nature. It was Great Britain that led the ending of slavery. John Adams said: ``One great advantage of the Christian religion is that it brings the great principle of the law of nature and nations . . . to the knowledge, belief, and veneration of the whole people.'' Thomas Jefferson and John Adams hinted at the incompatibility of America's Republican virtues with the values of Muslim nations after meeting with the Islamic Ambassador about the Barbary States' inclination to make war upon nations that did them no wrong after they were informed it was a requirement of the Koran. In Jefferson's papers in 1786, he wrote: ``We took the liberty to make some inquiries concerning the ground of their pretensions to make war upon nations who had done them no injury, and observed that we considered all mankind as our friends who had done us no wrong, nor given us any provocation. ``The Ambassador answered us that it was founded on the laws of their prophet, that it was written in their Koran, that all nations who should not have acknowledged their authority were sinners, that it was their right and duty to make war upon them wherever they could be found and, to make slaves of all they could take as prisoners, and that every Musselman''--Muslim--``who should be slain in battle was sure to go to paradise.'' That is Jefferson, 1786. Our Founders knew that sharia law was not consistent with Western civilization and our values. Sharia law is a problem that is growing throughout the United States and certainly growing in Texas. My home State bore the brunt of a 4-year mass migration invasion under the previous administration, but there has been a quieter one of Islamists leveraging our immigration system and corporate interests to extend and use diversity visas, chain migration, and H-1B visas to flood our country with people who don't believe in it and have no intention of assimilating into it. A new Muslim community in Texas, not even a few days old, with a 150,000-square-foot Muslim community center, was opened in Houston, called EPIC City. It is in Plano, outside of Dallas-Fort Worth and it has raised all sorts of questions about their intentions to create an effectively Muslim-only community where sharia law no doubt would and will be practiced. Now they have renamed it The Meadow rather than the East Plano Islamic Center. They continue to develop and grow it even as there are almost 300 mosques in Texas and more mosques being built in Texas every day than any other State in the Union. Meanwhile, let's look at what is going on in the United States broadly. Our Nation's foreign-born population has reached 51.9 million people, comprising some 16 percent of our population. We are at the highest levels of percentage in our history. The last time we had a similar level of foreign-born population, in roughly 1920, we froze immigration. Largely for about 40 or 50 years we froze it, and then it has been exploding over the last 50 years. I have introduced legislation called the PAUSE Act to pause immigration and to pause it until we get our hands around all of the problems that are currently plaguing our immigration system: the abuse of birthright citizenship, to have profit-centered ways to create American citizens, by people coming here, coming across the Rio Grande, having children, making citizens that then can use American resources, our hospitals, our schools, our legal system, our welfare. We continue to allow a broken visa system to have extended family members be brought into the United States expansively and purposefully. The H-1B program has been exploited and abused now for years and must be abolished or massively reformed. We obviously still have a very badly broken border that is only currently being held in check by a President and by leadership in the administration who are devoted to doing it, that are empowered to do it. However, all of the ways in which Biden-Mayorkas and that entire administration allowed our border to be wide open and have 10 million people flood our country, all of those things still remain in place statutorily. Congress could fix it. We haven't. The House passed legislation 2 years ago--what it was called in that Congress was H.R. 2--to meaningfully change the law so that it can't be exploited to endanger the people. We have not brought that back up again this year. We should. We should codify these changes. Our priorities matter. The results of this are stark. Thanksgiving week we saw what happened with the West Virginia National Guard servicemembers, Specialist Sarah Beckstrom, who was 20 years old, and Staff Sergeant Andrew Wolfe, 24. They were savagely ambushed and shot blocks away from the White House. Specialist Beckstrom tragically lost her life. The attacker, Rahmanullah Lakanwal, an Afghan national who was imported through the Biden-Mayorkas illegal Operation Allies Welcome parole program, drove from Washington State to carry out this diabolical act in our Nation's Capital. According to DHS, over 5,000 Afghans brought to the United States through Operation Allies Welcome had either national security or public safety concerns. We are importing people who want to undermine and destroy our country, and both sides of the aisle have been guilty of this. This is not a debatable reality. It is literally occurring. For us to survive, we have to act. We need to pass the PAUSE Act. We need to pause immigration. We need to pass legislation like the bill that I introduced to preserve a sharia-free America that would prohibit the entry of people that are known to be adherent to sharia law, which is deeply in conflict with our values and our laws. We should take away the tax status of CAIR and other radical organizations with ties to terrorists and a vast network of well-funded organizations, using American tax dollars, United Nations' funds, wealthy donors, George Soros funding, foreign funding, nation-states all pouring into organizations, NGOs driving this agenda, the Marxist- Islamist red-green alliance that wants to destroy America as we know it. I introduced legislation to take away CAIR's tax status. Why are we giving them tax breaks to try to destroy America? That brings me to the final point which I was alluding to before on H.R. 2, that is legislation designed to codify effectively what President Trump is doing: to stop the abuse of parole, to stop the abuse of asylum, to stop the abuse of catch and release, to stop all of the abusive ways in which an exploited border can undermine our security and endanger us. We cannot rely on the administration to do it. Congress needs to act. Congress needs to codify it. Congress needs to change it. States and State leaders need to stand up and use the legislation that we did pass in January to enable suit against the Federal Government when they failed to secure the border that we included in the Laken Riley Act because States can no longer be beholden to a Federal Government that refuses to secure the border. We have a reprieve under President Trump. That reprieve will no doubt one day come to an end, and States must be empowered and have leaders who are willing to stand up and fight. States need to challenge things like Plyler v. Doe, the Supreme Court ruling that said that we must have taxpayer funding going to pay for the education of illegal alien children. If you want to choose to do it, that is for you to decide. We should not be forced to use taxpayer dollars to do that. We should challenge that Supreme Court ruling. We should stand up to defend our country. The fact is you can't win a war that you are not willing to recognize exists. It is undeniably true after the election of the mayor in New York, Mamdani, with what is going on in Dearborn, with what is going on in Minneapolis, with what we are seeing happen in Texas, in Dallas and Houston, what we saw unfold in London and Paris, that there is an attack on the Western way of life. We must stand up and defend it if we are going to be able to pass down a country to our kids and grandkids. Mr. Speaker, I yield back the balance of my time.

Mr. ROY

Mr. ROY. Mr. Speaker, I ask unanimous consent that when the House adjourns today, it adjourn to meet at noon Monday next for morning-hour debate and 2 p.m. for legislative business.

Mr. ROY

Mr. ROY. Mr. Speaker, I move to suspend the rules and pass the bill (H.R. 2159) to direct the Attorney General of the United States to submit to the Congress a report on Federal criminal offenses, and for other purposes, as amended.

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

Mr. ROY. Mr. Speaker, I yield myself such time as I may consume. Mr. Speaker, first of all, I thank the gentlewoman from Georgia for joining with me in this effort. I thank the minority leader for his past work on this bill, as well, from his position on the Judiciary Committee, like the gentlewoman from Georgia. We may come at these things from slightly different perspectives on different issues that come before us, but we are bound and joined together here in wanting some commonsense, good government to make sure that we know what we are dealing with, with respect to criminal laws. For decades, the American people, Congress, and corners of the Federal Government have tried to grasp a reliable estimate of how many criminal laws exist either in statute or in regulation. In the 1980s, the Department of Justice tried to count the number of Federal criminal laws that reside within the code and estimated there are ``about 3,000 criminal offenses.'' The American Bar Association, in the 1990s, said it was much higher than 3,000 but couldn't figure out the number. In 2019, the U.S. Code was estimated to have 5,199 Federal crimes, but again, that was uncertain. In other words, the Department of Justice, the American Bar Association, and organizations within our government are guessing. Now, to be clear, there are estimated to be thousands of criminal offenses, many buried in regulatory codes. For context, there are an estimated 300,000 Federal regulations that carry criminal offenses that could put an American citizen in prison. We can debate the merits, and we would debate the merits no doubt among the Members of this body, of any particular statute that criminalizes a certain act or any particular regulation that comes with criminal penalties associated with an action. It might be something that involves OSHA. It might be something that involves environmental regulations. It might be something else. There are thousands upon thousands of regulations and statutes, and the American people often have no idea that they might be in violation of something that would come with a penalty that might include jail time or sufficient fines, and so forth, and they potentially could become a felon. This bill is pretty simple. It just directs the Federal Government and the executive branch to count the crimes, to come up with a list of the crimes that exist, put those in order, and make sure that we know what offenses are attached to those so that we can go through this and make decisions as to whether or not these crimes are duplicative, whether they might be contradictory, and whether maybe they go too far or not far enough. We feel like the people's House, for sure--Congress in its Article I function--ought to know how many crimes there are and what penalties are associated with those crimes so that the American people can know this. Mr. Speaker, I reserve the balance of my time.

Mr. ROY. Mr. Speaker, I thank the gentlewoman from Georgia for her comments. Mr. Speaker, I would just add, in agreement with her, that, as I said before, this simply says that the Attorney General should provide to us, the people's House and this Congress, a list of all Federal crimes in statute and regulation, along with pertinent information such as potential criminal penalty, the mens rea requirement for the offense, and the DOJ prosecutorial history of the statute. I think this is the bare minimum that we should have as a body to ensure that we are protecting due process and the rights of the American people while ensuring that we have an ordered society. Mr. Speaker, I yield 5 minutes to the gentleman from Arizona (Mr. Biggs), my good friend.

Mr. ROY. Mr. Speaker, I don't have a whole lot more to add. I associate myself with the remarks of all of my colleagues who have spoken on this matter. I would only add that I think it is important to note that this legislation is supported by the Due Process Institute, R Street, Right on Crime, as well as the National District Attorneys Association and the National Association of Criminal Defense Lawyers, which I think tells you what is going on here in that everybody would like to have some clarity and some transparency so we can have a commonsense understanding of our criminal laws, the extent to which they impact--as the gentleman from Maryland, I think, wisely noted--our civil liberties, and the extent to which we are made aware of what actions we take might be criminalized. Mr. Speaker, I note as James Madison said in Federalist No. 62 on the fundamental principles of representative government and the importance of accessible and understandable laws: ``It will be of little avail to the people, that the laws are made by men of their own choice, if the laws be so voluminous that they cannot be read, or so incoherent that they cannot be understood; if they be repealed or revised before they are promulgated, or undergo such incessant changes that no man who knows what the law is today, can guess what it will be tomorrow.'' That is precisely the situation we find ourselves in, and we should fix it. We may have again, as I said before, some disagreements as to what should be criminalized or not. Previous Congresses have decided to criminalize some action that today we might take a second look at. I do believe that we need to know and have the debate, and then be able to allow the subcommittee on which my Judiciary Committee colleagues serve, be able to review these, have open debate, and then make some decisions. Maybe some of these should be sunsetted. Maybe some should be aligned. Maybe there are penalties that are out of whack. Maybe there are things that should be done to have greater notice for the American people. I come together in good faith with my colleagues across the aisle and hope that my colleagues in the Chamber will support it. Mr. Speaker, I reserve the balance of my time.

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

Mr. ROY. Mr. Speaker, I yield myself the balance of my time. Mr. Speaker, I thank the gentlewoman from Georgia for her comments. I thank the gentleman from Tennessee for his kind remarks, the gentleman from Maryland, all of my colleagues on the other side of the aisle, and my friend from Arizona. I also thank Judiciary Committee Chairman Jordan. I thank the ranking member from Maryland who we have already engaged with, and all of my colleagues who worked on this in the Judiciary Committee. This is not a long or major piece of legislation. I tend to think that speaks well of it. I think the shorter the bill, the better. I do believe that this is an important step, but I do want to remind my colleagues it is just a step. I would hope that we would get swift action out of the executive branch in following this legislation if we are to get it through the Senate and get it signed so we can make an understanding of what is happening with respect to our criminal laws and regulations, and then act on it, as a Congress, in a bipartisan fashion. Again, we will have reasoned debate over some of the matters, but let's act on it. Let's do some things. I agree with the gentleman that we need to revisit Article I. I introduced that during the first Trump administration the first time, and then we had it, obviously, during the Biden administration. I want to revisit that. It is critically important. I hope that the AUMF repeal for 2002 that was in the NDAA in the Senate will be allowed to stay in the NDAA as it is coming back over to the House. We shouldn't have a 23-year-old authorization for the use of military force continuing to be under use. I hope that we in the House will reclaim those portions of congressional authority. I think this is an important step. It is critically important for due process. I hope my colleagues in the Chamber will support it, and I urge its swift passage. Mr. Speaker, I yield back the balance of my time.

Mr. ROY

Mr. ROY. Mr. Speaker, I rise this evening to say to the American people: Well, Congress is back. Congress is back because we were finally able to do our job after 43 days of our colleagues on the other side of the aisle, our Democrat colleagues, parading around the country, acting like they were fighting for you when, in fact, they were preventing us from being able to do the work we were sent here to do. They were fighting to make worse a broken healthcare system that they have been holding you, the American people, hostage to, as they were also holding our government funding hostage. They were fighting to protect a broken healthcare system on behalf of insurance companies and regulators and to fund healthcare for illegal aliens, transgender surgeries, and abortions. Republicans said enough. We fought back, and we held the line. We funded the government through January with three appropriations bills because that is what we told you we would do. The President and the Speaker of the House deserve credit because we were able to deliver. Throughout all the headlines that this place gets, House Republicans, Senate Republicans, and the President have done a lot this year to deliver tangible results and wins for the American people. Let's just take a look at a few. On day one of his return to office, President Trump addressed many of the issues upon which he campaigned. He fought the powers of globalists, defunding UNRWA, the dollars that were going to Hamas against Israel and against our national security interests. He defunded the United Nations Human Rights Council. He defunded the World Health Organization. Each one of these were things that I had introduced legislation on and many of my Republican colleagues had introduced legislation on, but our Democrat colleagues wouldn't allow us to move. The President came in and executed on those important items to get us removed from these world bureaucrats. The President also signed a declaration declaring cartels as foreign terrorist organizations--again, a bill I introduced 5 years ago that the Democrats were blocking. The President was able to deliver. We should codify it, but we have to beat Democrats to do that. The FACE Act: The President stopped the abuses of the FACE Act against pro-life Americans and people who have the Department of Justice abusing them for carrying out their faith, and then he pardoned the pro-life activists who had been targeted and given jail time for praying and standing in defense of life. I introduced a bill to get rid of this pernicious abuse of law. The President came in, and he executed. January 6: Alongside pro-life observers, Americans who were charged and jailed, often unfairly targeted, were pardoned after the Federal Government conducted a massive sweep to openly punish thousands of Americans, including some of my constituents. Some of us had to go down to the jail to force them to release people who the President pardoned. Gender sanity: In return to normalcy, the administration removed the Gender X designation on U.S. passports, a piece of legislation I was proud to introduce that JD Vance carried in the Senate when he was there. Laken Riley Act: In March, the Laken Riley Act would ensure Federal immigration officials detain illegal aliens that commit crimes and would allow States to sue the Feds. I was proud to introduce, along with my colleague from North Carolina, Dan Bishop, the SUE for Immigration Enforcement Act, which was included in the Laken Riley Act. It will allow us to sue the government in the future when they fail to secure the border, a monumental change in allowing States to defend themselves against the abuses that we saw under Biden and Mayorkas. Speaking of the border, perhaps the most comprehensive and consequential policy achievement under President Trump has been securing our border. With the leadership of Tom Homan, Secretary Noem, Stephen Miller, the President himself, Border Patrol, ICE, all of these great law enforcement officials, despite the criticisms of leftists and Marxist mayors and cities that refused to work with them, they have brought down the flow across our border to basically zero, a 92 percent reduction from the massive flow across our border that was endangering Americans, endangering the people. Energy independence: Trump signed an executive order ending American dependence on unreliable energy sources and slashed $3 billion in bogus abuse of emergency spending that wasn't even being used for emergencies. ICE officials were given access to data for the Nation's 79 million Medicaid enrollees to be able to look at it and go find illegal aliens that were using Medicaid. The Interior Department announced today that all agency decisions related to wind and solar energy must undergo strict reviews. The Treasury Department announced today that they are taking action to ensure no tax benefits will go to illegal aliens. This year, we advanced a responsible budget, along with President Trump, to reflect our well-established goal to return to pre-COVID spending. Let's look at more. This Congress, working with the President, has held spending flat for the last 2 years, and now it is flat through January. If we honor our commitments, it will be flat through next September. By holding government spending flat and growing our economy, we are reducing the size and scope of bureaucracy. We are reducing debt as a percentage of our GDP and honoring the commitment that we gave to reduce inflation and to take our country back from the grasp of debt. We avoided a massive omnibus spending bill twice, the scourge of this town, where you have these huge omnibus bills in December, at the end of the year. We have now stopped that twice with a mix of appropriations work and continuing resolutions. We achieved major rescissions in wasteful spending. We cut IRS funding. We gutted the Commerce slush fund. We boosted immigration enforcement and deportation operations. We set the stage for additional rescissions and pocket rescissions that the OMB Director, Russ Vought, has been able to carry out, as well as impoundments. We delivered on cutting the Federal spending that went to the badly broken PBS and NPR. I would point out, for those who want to apologize, NPR didn't utter a word. In my district, in Kerrville, Texas, on the morning when the floods were underway, they were running ads trying to fight for their own funding, but the private radio stations were going out and putting out emergency alerts to help people. The President rightfully reduced their funding. If they want to survive, they can go compete, but they don't need taxpayer dollars for, effectively, leftist propaganda. We were able to pass the big, beautiful bill, which is a monumental achievement in which we reduced taxes for the American people, ensured taxes wouldn't go up. We were able to secure over $1.5 trillion in deficit reduction, five times the original projection of $300 billion. We were able to end over half of the green new scam subsidies that were enriching the Chinese and enriching massive leftist corporations at the expense of the ability of the American people to have reliable grids and affordable energy. We were able to advance welfare and Medicaid reforms, SNAP work requirements, commonsense work requirements for Medicaid. We phased down the Medicaid provider tax threshold to save money and save hundreds of billions of dollars, cracking down on States' provider tax money-laundering schemes--which were going to illegal aliens--we saved money, made the system better and going to American citizens. We were able to protect life by defunding Planned Parenthood and Medicaid. We were able to protect the Second Amendment by ending taxation for suppressors and short-barreled rifles. We were able to ensure full funding for border security, when we knew Democrats were going to shut down the government, with $150 billion set aside for continued operations for border security, as well as $150 billion for our defense, knowing that they would risk defense and border so they could try to shut down the government for political gain. We did that. We did that with the President. We were able to ensure that our men and women in uniform didn't miss a paycheck in October, because we did that. We were able to ensure that we are continuing to revamp and restore our Defense Department, our War Department now, to a fighting machine rather than a woke indoctrination machine. Now we have enlistments at record numbers, we have people wanting to go to the military academies, proud to be in the military again, and people around the world are respecting our military again. Now let's talk about this November continuing resolution: Democrats orchestrated the longest shutdown in history. They did so because they have nothing to run on, because they have nothing to sell to the American people except for hatred of President Trump and wanting to play games with your healthcare. Because they broke the healthcare system, you now can't afford either health insurance or healthcare. You can't go to the doctor of your choice. If you do get any insurance, you are told that you only have a handful of doctors and that you have a massive copay or some other kind of limitation on your ability to choose a doctor. For example, in my case, as a cancer survivor, on ObamaCare, I can't go back to M.D. Anderson, which saved my life, because ObamaCare doesn't have M.D. Anderson as an option. That is not coverage. That is fake. Democrats sold you fake coverage, and now your premiums have doubled, your copays and your deductibles have doubled or tripled, and you have fewer options for less quality care. However, we were able to defeat the Democrat-led effort to spend another trillion and a half dollars to fund healthcare for illegals, abortions, and transgender surgeries. We kept the reduction in workforce cuts that were made prior to the shutdown in order to hold and save money back for you, the American people, rather than bureaucrats who are at war with you. We affirmed the President's goal of reducing the size of the bloated Federal Government, which 90 percent of Americans share. We crafted a responsible, short-term continuing resolution through January, and now we are going to do the work to continue our job of holding spending flat. We have done a lot. We have delivered on a large number of the promises upon which the President campaigned, on tax policy, on border security, on reductions in spending, on trying to drive down inflation, on getting interest rates under control, and we are just getting started. That is the truth. The American people are going to be the beneficiaries of that. However, my message to my colleagues in this Chamber, and generally, is: We have miles to go. We have so much more to do. We have to continue to undo the damage of the last 12 of the last 16 years under Democrat control of the executive branch and policies that have been destroying the average, hardworking American family. We have had 10 months. We are going to continue to fight and to make those changes, but it takes a little time to unwind those damaging 12 years. For example, healthcare, which is almost 30 percent of our budget. Healthcare is destroying the average American family. I know businesses in Austin, I know schools in Austin that are having to increase prices and increase tuition and increase what they have to deal with simply because of covering insurance premiums, which are going into the pockets of insurance companies to provide you substandard options in healthcare. They don't provide you care. They don't. They are a middleman, a funding mechanism that gets in the way of you going to the doctor of your choice. Republicans have plans to fix that. We have put forward those plans to fix that. Democrats block it at every turn. The simple truth is we believe in patients going to doctors. We believe in being able to share costs across Medi-Share, health-sharing ministries, other options, direct primary care, and getting bureaucrats out of your way. We believe in ensuring that you will, in fact, have coverage that you can actually afford. We do that through the expansive ability for you to have the same tax treatment as corporations and the same tax treatment whether you are self-employed or employed by a business. We can do that tomorrow, literally. We can transform the healthcare system in a day if we would put the legislation on the floor and Democrats would get out of the way. That is the simple truth. The American people deserve, in a supposedly free country, to be able to go and get insurance products that work for them, doctors that are best for them, care that is best for them, and to be able to provide and take care of their families. Democrats would rather you be beholden to insurance companies, government bureaucrats, and their political priorities. They want to scare you into believing they have got plans. They tried to do it with a shutdown. We called their bluff, and now we need to deliver healthcare freedom for the American people. We have the legislation to do it, and we have got to deliver. We need to make sure that we address the price of housing. We shouldn't have corporate and foreign ownership of our housing supply. It is that simple. I don't know why foreign nationals and major corporations, BlackRock or otherwise, are buying up single-family residences. We should stop that. We should, frankly, give tax advantages to get rid of the ownership of those from corporations and foreign nationals to get them to American citizens so they can own those houses and own their ability to have a future for their kids and grandkids. There are other things we can do, but we have got to drive down the price of housing, and we can do it if American citizens are the ones who are able to get access. You can get it also if you don't flood the country with literally tens of millions of people that are illegally here or through an abused legal immigration system. Congressional stock trading: I have got to be honest, my colleagues on both sides of the aisle, stop it. When you are serving out in the private sector, God bless you, do what you want to do, but when you come here and you want to serve, why don't you just pause and let's take our investments and put them in broadly held mutual funds, do our work for 2, 4, 6, 8, 10 years, and then go home. If you want to day trade, get off the House floor because too many of my colleagues are day trading while we are voting on important issues. We could pass that tomorrow; we have just got to have the willpower to do it. The American people want us to. It is like an 85/15 issue. Education: Give it back to the States, get out of the way, empower States and parents. Expand choice, expand those options, but don't fund bureaucrats. The President is right to dismantle the Department of Education. It was started in 1979. We put a man on the Moon in 1969. Why do we need the Department of Education? We don't. Importantly, we need to codify what the President is doing on our border and go even further. We passed H.R. 2 in the last Congress, the most comprehensive border security plan we have ever had. It wasn't about future flow. It wasn't about amnesty. It was about securing the border. It was about fixing the broken asylum, the broken parole, the broken catch and release, all of the things that Biden and Mayorkas were using to abuse our system to flood our country with foreign nationals. President Trump is delivering that through execution as President. We need to codify that and prevent a future administration from abusing it ever again. We could do that. We could do it tomorrow. We passed H.R. 2 in the last Congress. Let's pass it again. Let's send it to the Senate, and let's fix our broken immigration system. I introduced legislation today to say that we should pause legal immigration except for very short-term tourist visas. Yes, pause it all. We have 51 million people in this country who are foreign born. We have massive abuses with diversity visas and chain migration in which tens of thousands of people come into our country. We have serious abuses under H-1Bs, which are not really being used for high-skilled workers. They are often for entry-level positions. We are leaving American workers behind, and we need to reform it. We need to reduce the magnets that are here. We need to end birthright citizenship as it is currently known and make it what the American people actually expect if you talk to them: that you are a citizen if you are born of an American citizen. You are not a citizen just because somebody walked across the Rio Grande. We have got to stop the Supreme Court's forcing of States from having to fund the education of illegal aliens, which brings me to my final point about legal immigration. Mr. Speaker, we have got to stop allowing people who are adherent to sharia law from coming into the United States and then trying to force sharia law into our system. It is in direct conflict with Western civilization. It is in direct conflict with the Constitution and the rule of law. If we want to see what America is going to look like across this country if we don't address it, look at Dearborn. Look at Minnesota. Look at Mamdani's election in New York. Look at London. Look at Paris. Look at Germany. Ask if that is what we want in Dallas or Houston. Ask if we want this in Charlotte, North Carolina. Ask if we want this in Atlanta, Denver, Phoenix, or anywhere else. It is happening, and it is happening in Texas. I will fight it in Texas. I will fight it here. I have introduced legislation to deal with it, but this body has got to deal with it and speak up about it. That starts with ending the importation of people who want to undo our system. They openly say it. If they are adherent to sharia law, then they have no business being here. That is just the simple truth. We have a country to save. We have the greatest country in the history of the world. We are making massive progress with a President who is bold and willing to lead. We need Congress to continue what we did with the One Big Beautiful Bill Act and continue what we did with the Laken Riley Act. We need them to continue to do what Speaker Johnson did a great job of which is hold the line against Democrats who shut our government down for political purposes. Now we need to drive forward and force Democrats in the Senate to deal with great legislation, to codify our border, make sure people can afford healthcare, make sure people can afford housing, and do the things we said we would do. Mr. Speaker, I will close with this since today is Thursday and a week from today is Thanksgiving. I know that most of the people that I represent are deeply thankful to be Americans and to be Texans. Every Thanksgiving, The Wall Street Journal runs an editorial called, ``The Desolate Wilderness.'' To the best of my knowledge, I think it has run every year since 1960 or 1961. It goes like this: ``Here beginneth the chronicle of those memorable circumstances of the year 1620, as recorded by Nathaniel Morton, keeper of the records of Plymouth Colony, based on the account of William Bradford, sometime governor thereof: ``So they left that goodly and pleasant city of Leyden, which had been their resting-place for above 11 years, but they knew they were pilgrims and strangers here below, and looked not much on these things, but lifted up their eyes to Heaven, their dearest country where God hath prepared for them a city and therein quieted their spirits. ``When they came to Delfs-Haven they found the ship and all things ready, and such of their friends as could not come with them followed after them, and sundry came from Amsterdam to see them shipt, and to take their leaves of them. One night was spent with little sleep with the most, but with friendly entertainment and Christian discourse, and other real expressions of true Christian love. ``The next day they went on board, and their friends with them, where truly doleful was the sight of that sad and mournful parting, to hear what sighs and sobs and prayers did sound amongst them; what tears did gush from every eye, and pithy speeches pierced each other's heart, that sundry of the Dutch strangers that stood on the Key as spectators could not refrain from tears. But the tide, which stays for no man, calling them away, that were thus loath to depart, their Reverend Pastor falling down on his knees, and they all with him, with watery cheeks commended them with the most fervent prayers unto the Lord and His blessings; and then with mutual embraces and many tears they took their leaves one of another, which proved to be the last leave to many of them. ``Being now passed the vast ocean and a sea of troubles before them in expectations, they had now no friends to welcome them, no inns to entertain or refresh them, no houses, or much less towns, to repair unto to seek for succor; and for the seasons it was winter, and they that know the winters of the country know them to be sharp and violent, subject to cruel and fierce storms, dangerous to travel to known places, much more to search unknown coasts. ``Besides, what could they see but a hideous and desolate wilderness, full of wild beasts and wild men? And what multitudes of them there were, they then knew not: For which way soever they turned their eyes (save upward to heaven) they could have but little solace or content in respect of any outward object; for summer being ended, all things stand in appearance with a weatherbeaten face, and the whole country, full of woods and thickets, represented a wild and savage hew. If they looked behind them, there was a mighty ocean which they had passed, and was now as a main bar or gulph to separate them from all the civil parts of the world.'' Mr. Speaker, this editorial appeared since 1961. That is what they did. They came here. Then they went into the desolate wilderness and carved into it a great country, a country that has seen its fortunes rise because of our collective recognition of our faith in the Almighty and our willingness to acknowledge it, such that the Speaker stands below the phrase ``In God We Trust'' here in this Chamber. If we dare to leave the faith that built this country, then this country will lose the blessings that have been bestowed upon it. We are ever thankful to live in a country where we are free to believe what we want, where we can think what we want, and where we can say what we want for the most part. Mr. Speaker, when it comes to setting up a country and a system of laws, they must bind us together. They must bind us together as a community, the kind of community that could pull people from the four corners of a country to sit in foxholes together, to fight the most evil forces in World War II and beyond, without question, without fail, because we were bound together as Americans. That is who we are. We must fight for it every day. We must fight to keep her. We do that here by stopping the ridiculousness and spending money we don't have to indebt our children and grandchildren. We do it here if we pass policies that will allow the American people to prosper under their own devices, to be able to afford healthcare and houses and food for their families, without interference from people here who say they know best in the false name of compassion. We do it here when we secure our communities with secure borders and security laws and to make sure criminals don't roam free on the streets but that law-abiding citizens can prosper by walking freely on the streets, knowing they will be safe. We do it mostly if we adhere to our faith in the Lord Almighty, acknowledge that faith, and fight to defend our collective belief in him. We have people who wish to undermine that way of life. It is real. We cannot win a war that we refuse to acknowledge exists. That war is here. We either fight right now to save this country for our kids and our grandkids or we lose it forever. This Thanksgiving, I will be ever thankful to be an American, to be a Texan, and to live free. I am evermore committed to double down to save this country for our kids and grandkids. It is the responsible action here on this House floor and as a responsible member of my community back home in Texas and in every step that I try to take. Mr. Speaker, I yield back the balance of my time.

Mr. ROY

Mr. ROY. Mr. Speaker, I move that the House do now adjourn.

Mr. ROY

Mr. ROY. Mr. Speaker, I thank the gentleman from Wisconsin for his leadership here and managing this bill on the floor on behalf of my friend from Georgia, who rightfully raised this issue in the Rules Committee on which he and I both serve. We both immediately raised this issue in front of the Rules Committee and for the entire body. There is nobody, to the best of my knowledge, in this body who supports this language that was inserted in the end of the funding bill that we passed last week. I don't know anybody. I have yet to meet one person who supports it. Mr. Speaker, rather than my colleagues on the other side of the aisle coming together in a bipartisan agreement that we are going to, as the House, hip-check the Senate for having put a provision in there that we disagree with, my colleagues on the other side of the aisle want to try to make this a partisan issue when, in fact, Senate Democrats were equally involved in making sure that this provision got inserted. In fact, they were very specific about only wanting a provision if it was only focused on the Senate. They didn't want it to be used, for example, to help J6ers or FACE Act individuals who were abused by the Department of Justice under President Biden. They didn't want it to be a more expansive private right of action. Instead, they wanted it to be narrow and narrow for the Senate. Rather than the House being in a bipartisan agreement, my colleagues on the other side of the aisle want to make it partisan. If we are going to make it partisan, let's be very clear: The reason we were in the position that we were in last week was that we had been shut down for 43 days. Why? Because my colleagues on the other side of the aisle have literally nothing to run on. The only thing my colleagues on the other side of the aisle can run on is shutting down the government, making up nonsense about health in which they are going to enrich insurance companies in the process, and have nothing to take to the American people other than trying to create division. The fact of the matter is, we are going to pass this legislation within days. We are going to send it to the Senate. We are going to make clear to the Senate that they need to correct this issue because the American people rightly are with us. The House of Representatives, Republican and Democrats, are rightly checking the Senate. There is one last really important piece to this which is the Arctic Frost investigation itself, which specifically targeted United States Senators in an egregious abuse of power. It was targeting those Senators for their information and their records. That is something that is an absolute affront to separation of powers and to our constitutional order to have the Department of Justice targeting those Senators. Those Senators were rightly wanting to find ways to stop Jack Smith and the abuses of the Department of Justice. We in this Chamber just simply believe that if you are going to do something like that, it should apply to all Americans and not be something specific to the United States Senate. We are correcting this now. We should pass it immediately. The Senate should take it up and pass it. Also, a little personal message to the Senate: Take this up and pass it, or you are not getting any support from this Member for any of your measures that come over to this body.

Mr. ROY

Mr. ROY. Mr. Speaker, today a united Republican Party and a bipartisan supermajority is going to pass a bill to increase transparency regarding the egregious abuses by Jeffrey Epstein, a goal that anyone of conscience desires. That is in totality an important statement to check the rich and powerful. Remember how we got here. After decades, it was President Trump's Department of Justice that indicted Jeffrey Epstein in July 2019. It was President Trump's DOJ that arrested and indicted Ms. Maxwell. It was the Republican-led Oversight Committee, through 13 subpoenas, that has released 65,000 pages of files in just 10 months. Meanwhile, my colleagues on the other side of the aisle have largely ignored this issue. It was Democrats who redacted an email to mislead the American people about the truth of a witness that exonerated President Trump. It was a Democrat, Representative Plaskett, who literally texted with Jeffrey Epstein as we questioned Michael Cohen. It was Democrats who shut down the government, resulting in the delay of swearing in of Members. As we vote to pass this legislation--and it will pass--it is impossible, however, to avoid problems with its politicization. One colleague has offensively gone so far as to say that to oppose this bill means you support pedophiles. Yet, I know good public servants, former law enforcement, and former prosecutors who never knew Epstein and never knew any visitors to his criminal enterprise who have genuine concerns about supporting this bill out of fear of creating new victims or harming existing victims or both. That is what we have reduced Congress to, inserting itself into the prosecutorial process for political motivations, driven heavily by hatred of President Trump. We should be concerned about victim privacy, risking disclosure of noncredible allegations of child sexual abuse materials, and future investigations. However, here is the deal: The leaders of this Nation must expose abuses by the rich and powerful. That is why President Trump and the House have been working for full transparency, but we should be motivated by truth and justice for all, not politics.