[Congressional Record Volume 166, Number 206 (Monday, December 7, 2020)]
[House]
[Pages H6885-H6888]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




  HONORING THE RETIREMENT OF HENDERSON COUNTY SUPERINTENDENT MARGANNA 
                                STANLEY

  The SPEAKER pro tempore (Mr. Cox of California). Under the Speaker's 
announced policy of January 3, 2019, the gentleman from Kentucky (Mr. 
Comer) is recognized for 60 minutes as the designee of the minority 
leader.
  Mr. COMER. Mr. Speaker, I am going to spend the next 30 or so minutes 
discussing some various topics and recognizing a few people in my 
congressional district for various things.
  Mr. Speaker, I rise today to recognize Marganna Stanley of Henderson 
County on her retirement after 30 years as an educator, including 
serving the last 6 years as superintendent of Henderson County Schools.
  Ms. Stanley has lived out her childhood dream of teaching and has 
maintained an unwavering love for education throughout her career. 
Through the years, she has worked in various roles in the Henderson 
County school system, including serving as a classroom teacher in the 
district office, as a principal, and eventually as superintendent.
  Although the roles have changed, her passion for educating students 
has not. Even when she wasn't in the classroom every day, she would 
regularly show up to read to classrooms and find other ways to maintain 
a close connection with students.
  I am honored to congratulate Ms. Stanley on a successful tenure as an 
educator in my congressional district. I know that she has left a 
positive impact on the lives of numerous young people over the past 30 
years, and I wish her nothing but the best in her retirement.


             Honoring the Retirement of Judge Timothy Stark

  Mr. COMER. Mr. Speaker, I rise to honor Judge Timothy Stark of Graves 
County on his upcoming retirement after 16 years of distinguished 
service as circuit court judge.
  A lifelong Graves County native, Judge Stark is well-respected in his 
community and has a knowledge of the law that is second to none. He has 
led on issues of extreme importance, including introducing a drug court 
program which has helped countless individuals get their lives back on 
track. Over the years, he has served as a mentor to many young people 
in the legal profession, including my chief of staff, Caroline Cash.
  There is no doubt that Judge Stark's leadership in the judicial arena 
will be missed. I salute him for his years of service and wish him 
nothing but the best in a well-earned retirement.


                       Recognizing Curtis Hancock

  Mr. COMER. Mr. Speaker, it is with great respect and honor that I 
rise to recognize my dear friend, Curtis Hancock, on his retirement 
from the Farm Credit Council Board of Directors and his many 
contributions to Kentucky agriculture. Curtis Hancock is a lifelong 
farmer and, today, owns and operates Hancock Family Farms growing corn, 
wheat, and soybeans in Fulton, Kentucky.
  Throughout his career, Curtis has shown great support for agriculture 
through leadership positions across the industry, and I have had the 
pleasure of seeing firsthand his tireless advocacy for farmers and 
ranchers.
  Curtis' leadership and contributions to Kentucky agriculture are 
unmatched, including as a former board member of Kentucky Small Grain 
Growers' Association, a former member of Hickman County Farm Bureau, 
the local Southern States Cooperative, and the Hickman County Farm 
Service Agency.
  Curtis has also been an advocate for Kentucky farmers within the Farm 
Credit System. Curtis was a longtime director and past board chair at 
River Valley AgCredit in Mayfield, Kentucky, which supports farmers 
throughout my district. He also serves on the board and is past chair 
at AgFirst Farm Credit Bank, which supports farmers in rural 
communities throughout the Southeast. Since 2003, Curtis has served on 
the Farm Credit Council Board of Directors, including 2 years as chair 
of the national organization.

  Curtis received a bachelor of science degree in agriculture from the 
University of Tennessee-Martin and a master

[[Page H6886]]

of science degree in agriculture economics from the University of 
Tennessee. Despite that, Curtis remains a very loyal fan of the 
University of Kentucky Wildcats.
  On behalf of the U.S. House of Representatives and the citizens of 
Kentucky's First Congressional District, I ask my colleagues to join me 
in congratulating Curtis on his retirement and thank him for his many 
years of honorable service to the farmers and ranchers of Kentucky.
  Kentucky farmers and American farmers are better off today as a 
result of Curtis Hancock's long service on their behalf. I wish Curtis 
and his wife, Mary Elizabeth, the very best in the years to come.


               Honoring the New Chair of Paducah Airport

  Mr. COMER. Mr. Speaker, I rise today to honor Jay Matheny for being 
elected chairman of the Barkley Regional Airport Authority Board.
  Mr. Matheny will oversee the ongoing construction work for the new 
terminal for the airport, which he has already been closely involved 
with. The project has been called the airport for our future, and I 
believe that Mr. Matheny is the right person to see this project 
through to its scheduled completion in 2023.
  Due to west Kentucky's proximity to the other major airports of St. 
Louis, Louisville, and Nashville, this terminal will attract more 
flights and bring numerous economic opportunities to the region. I am 
proud of the multiple entities that have worked together from the city, 
State, and Federal levels to get this project underway.
  Congratulations, once again, to Mr. Matheny for being chosen as 
chairman. I look forward to the completion of this airport terminal and 
the economic growth it will provide for Paducah and west Kentucky.

                              {time}  1600


                Honoring Gary Jones of Muhlenberg County

  Mr. COMER. Mr. Speaker, I rise to honor Gary Jones of Muhlenberg 
County on his extraordinary tenure as the director of the Muhlenberg 
Alliance for Progress.
  Gary will be retiring at the end of the month after 8 years of 
leadership with the Alliance for Progress where he has aggressively 
prioritized economic development in Western Kentucky. In this role, he 
has worked tirelessly to attract jobs to Muhlenberg County and empower 
job creators in the region.
  A fellow graduate of my alma mater of Western Kentucky University, 
his 46-year career has spanned across roles in education, the coal 
industry, local government, and the Federal Government.
  These diverse work experiences have made him keenly aware of the 
economic deeds facing rural communities. His ability to develop 
relationships with community and industry leaders has also been 
instrumental to his job-attraction efforts.
  Mr. Speaker, I thank Gary for his sincere efforts to improve economic 
development and wish him nothing but the best in a well-deserved 
retirement.


               Kentucky's Economic Failures and Lockdowns

  Mr. COMER. Mr. Speaker, I rise to bring attention to Kentucky's 
avoidable economic failures during this very serious pandemic. 
Unfortunately, COVID-19 has taken a harsh toll on the economies of all 
50 States. However, harmful policies from Democrat-run States have only 
made the problem worse. At a time when we should be encouraging the 
safe reopening of our economy, Kentucky's Governor recently issued an 
order shutting down schools and indoor dining.
  Kentucky's restaurants were already suffering from the last round of 
shutdowns, and this short-sighted order will only cause more pain and 
suffering.
  To make matters worse, our Governor is producing no data to justify 
the need to shut down businesses which have dramatically adjusted to 
the challenges presented by COVID-19. And the end of in-person learning 
will only create more challenges for students and teachers. 
Furthermore, it flies in the face of CDC recommendations that the 
safest place for our children is in school.
  Unfortunately, small business owners are not the only ones negatively 
affected by these lockdowns. Workers have been put out of a job through 
no fault of their own. And to make matters worse, Kentucky's State 
government has proven itself too incompetent to distribute unemployment 
payments in a timely manner.
  Right now, Kentucky has the second highest unemployment backlog in 
America, with just 20 percent of benefits going out 3 weeks after a 
claim is made. That is unacceptable. Our surrounding States of Indiana 
and Tennessee are more than doubling that number, getting 60 percent of 
payments out after 3 weeks. If a politician single-handedly puts people 
out of work, the least they can do is process their unemployment claims 
in a timely manner.
  Kentucky families are struggling from these lockdowns and, 
unfortunately, finding little help from their State government in 
Frankfort. The livelihoods of working families and job creators have 
been cast aside by power-hungry politicians and it is delaying our 
economic recovery. We must do better. We must safely reopen the economy 
and support our small businesses and workers.
  Mr. Speaker, with a vaccine on the horizon, the best thing we can do 
for our economy is to safely reopen. Further shutdowns are doing 
nothing but digging a further hole for our economy to get out of. In 
Kentucky, we can do better.


             Oversight and Reform Republican Investigation

  Mr. COMER. Mr. Speaker, I rise to talk about the ongoing 
investigation within the House Committee on Oversight and Reform among 
oversight Republicans.
  The minority--the Republicans--have requested several hearings, but 
unfortunately, Chairwoman Maloney and the majority House Democrats are 
uninterested or unwilling to comply. So we have taken it upon ourselves 
to inquire and pretty much open up investigations with our staff, with 
our investigators, and have taken data from our whistleblowers and 
different stakeholders with each investigation.
  We currently have caught a situation before the election, in 
California, where--with the CARES Act--there was a part called the Help 
America Vote Act that allocated funds for different States to educate 
voters on how to vote. In other words, to educate voters on where their 
precincts are and how to fill out an absentee ballot--things that are 
perfectly legal and things that the Federal Government should fund, and 
the State government should administer.
  Mr. Speaker, within the rules--something that a lot of times my 
friends on the other side of the aisle don't think apply to 
themselves--but in the rules of the Help America Vote Act, it 
specifically says what those Federal funds can and cannot be used for. 
One of the things that it specifically says the Federal funds cannot be 
used for is to get out the vote efforts.
  But in California, which was awarded $35 million in the CARES Act of 
Help America Vote Act funds, their Secretary of State Padilla took the 
$35 million. The normal process would be to advertise bids for a 
contract, but Secretary Padilla did what a lot of Democrat secretaries 
of state--and unfortunately, some Republican secretaries of state did--
they said, Oh, there is a pandemic. We can't do this the normal way. We 
have to do it a special way.
  So he awarded this contract with no bid. There were plenty of vendors 
that were interested in bidding on that contract but he awarded it to 
one. And in the Help America Vote Act it specifically says that vendors 
can't be partisan. That is common sense, right?
  This contract that he awarded, a $35 million of our Federal taxpayer 
funds in a no-bid process, the firm that received that contract was 
called SKDKnickerbocker. I invite you right now to get your phone out 
and put in ``SKDKnickerbocker,'' and look at their website.
  It will pop up, and what you will see is a picture of Joe Biden and 
Kamala Harris shaking hands. And it proudly says--on the very top of 
the website--``We want to congratulate our clients, Joe Biden and 
Kamala Harris, for changing America, and for winning.'' So this firm, 
SKDKnickerbocker was clearly a partisan firm. This firm represented the 
Biden campaign.
  Now, my question to anyone interested in this--and I think most 
taxpayers would be interested in this--obviously, the House Democrats 
on the

[[Page H6887]]

Committee on Oversight and Reform are uninterested in this, but if the 
secretary of state awards a no-bid contract to a Joe Biden partisan 
firm to get out to vote, do you really think they are going to target 
Republican voters, or do you think they are going to target Democrat 
voters? That is illegal.
  Mr. Speaker, we have sent letters to Secretary Padilla asking him 
what his intentions were and why he did not follow the law on this 
contract. He has not replied. I have made this public. I went on the 
Tucker Carlson Show a few months ago and brought this to the Nation's 
attention. As a result of this, and our messaging and our inquiries, 
the media in California has been writing about this.
  The Sacramento Bee wrote just this past week that the California 
comptroller has refused to pay the $35 million bill to SKDKnickerbocker 
because they know there is a problem with this no-bid contract awarded 
to a partisan firm that was Joe Biden's main digital firm to 
microtarget certain voters in California.
  Mr. Speaker, what I am asking for now is for the comptroller of 
California to just go ahead and do the right thing and send that $35 
million back to the Treasury. We don't want taxpayer dollars being 
spent on improper, illegal, unethical, and partisan instances. And that 
is what happened in California.
  Now, another reason this isn't going to go away--I am not an expert 
on California politics--but while I was waiting for my time to speak, I 
read several things that said Secretary of State Padilla is the 
frontrunner to fill Kamala Harris' seat for the U.S. Senate. I strongly 
encourage the secretary of state to answer House Republicans' inquiries 
on this issue, because if he doesn't answer it now and he does, in 
fact, get confirmed to the U.S. Senate, he is probably going to have to 
answer it in front of the Senate Committee on Ethics.
  Now, one thing that I pledged to do when I became ranking member of 
the House Committee on Oversight and Reform is, we weren't just going 
to identify problems. We were going to try to represent the taxpayers, 
and we weren't just going to identify instances of waste, fraud and 
abuse, like this $35 million no-bid contract in California. We were 
going to try to claw back that money--get the money back. It seems like 
forever in Congress, Members of Congress do the right thing and they 
identify wrongful spending, but nothing ever happens. No one is ever 
held accountable. Certainly, the taxpayers never get their money back. 
This is an instance we are not going to let up.
  Mr. Speaker, we are operating in a huge deficit. We have to be 
accountable for the taxpayers. That is the job of this Congress. The 
Committee on Oversight and Reform is serious. The Republicans on the 
Committee on Oversight and Reform are going in a new direction. Not 
only are we going to identify problems, but we are going to try to 
solve problems because we are going to get the backs of the American 
taxpayer.
  And I think I have clearly spelled out the problems with this 
contract. And I believe that the fact that the comptroller in 
California isn't willing to write that check for the bill, that proves 
that there was a problem there. If anything I have said today is 
incorrect, then I welcome Secretary Padilla to answer our inquiry. And 
if anything I have said that was not right, I will apologize to the 
secretary of state for that. But clearly, sitting there not responding, 
is not helping the situation and, again, it is not going to go away.
  Mr. Speaker, now another thing with this contract, I have spelled out 
the problem that the State of California, the secretary of state has 
with this $35 million no-bid contract. The next part of the problem 
with this particular investigation is our committee has sent numerous 
letters to a government agency that a lot of people probably never 
heard of, called the Election Assistance Commission.
  The Election Assistance Commission is a government agency, 
bureaucracy, entity--whatever you want to call it--that is supposed to 
be the watchdog for Federal funding pertaining to elections. They have 
an inspector general. I have written--and on those letters, they were 
signed by my colleague on the Committee on Oversight and Reform, Jody 
Hice of Georgia, and the ranking member of the House Administration 
Committee, Rodney Davis of Illinois--we have jointly written letters to 
the Inspector General of the Election Assistance Commission for the 
Inspector General to investigate this $35 million contract. We wrote 
these letters weeks in advance of the November elections. And we have 
gotten back form letters, kind of like form letters that we send out to 
people that call our office every day and ask for things that we are 
probably not going to be able to do. We always reply with nice form 
letters. That is what the ranking members of the House Committee on 
Oversight and Reform and the House Administration Committee got.
  If the Election Assistance Commission can't investigate this one 
thing in this election--and I am not even going to get into a debate 
today about whether there were irregularities or not. That is not what 
I am discussing today. I am discussing a specific irregularity that 
involved taxpayer dollars.

                              {time}  1615

  If the Election Assistance Commission inspector general cannot 
investigate that and come up with an answer and say, ``Okay, the 
Secretary the State was right,'' or, ``Okay, you were right, and the 
money should be returned,'' if they can't get us an answer on that, 
then the next step we are going to suggest, as Republican members of 
the Committee on Oversight and Reform, will be to eliminate the 
Election Assistance Commission.
  If you can't take an inquiry from Congress and investigate it, 
especially when the media in California--not exactly a bastion of 
Republican support--when they are calling the Secretary of State out on 
this contract, then I think we have a problem with this government 
agency.
  Government is too big. I have been in Washington 4 years now. There 
are a lot of buildings in this city with a lot of government employees, 
a lot of government programs. Honestly, in my opinion, we don't have 
the ability to continue to fund all of these government programs, all 
of these government agencies, and all of these government employees. If 
we can find government agencies that refuse to do their jobs, then we 
should eliminate those government agencies.
  So, my remarks today are specifically about the contract in 
California with the Secretary of State, the contract for the Help 
America Vote Act, which was in the CARES Act, which was a no-bid 
contract to a partisan firm to do illegal things, like microtarget 
voters. That is my first complaint, the $35 million.
  My second complaint is the Election Assistance Commission. With the 
one request that we made, I have been very unimpressed, disappointed, 
shocked, to the point now I am angered. Now, as a taxpayer and someone 
who wants to get the back of the taxpayer, I think it is time to look 
at this agency and say: Is this something that we need moving forward?
  Mr. Speaker, I am going to conclude my remarks, again, with reference 
to the Committee on Oversight and Reform. As a member of the committee 
for the past 4 years, I have heard a lot of Democrats complain about 
the 2016 election, imply that there were irregularities in the 
election. I have heard my friend Debbie Wasserman Schultz complain, 
probably rightfully so, about the emails being hacked at the Democratic 
National Committee. We have had discussions about that.
  I know that when Elijah Cummings became chairman of the committee, 
the first witness he had was Michael Cohen to talk about irregularities 
in the 2016 election that he saw from the Trump campaign and things 
like that. We had those committee hearings, and we have had a lot of 
those committee hearings.
  Here we are today, several weeks after the Presidential election. 
Regardless of your opinion of the election, regardless of your opinion 
of the rightful winner, regardless of your opinion of whether there 
were major irregularities or not, there are a lot of Americans who have 
a lot of questions about the election process.
  There were a lot of things in this election that were unique, not 
just the absentee voting process where the rules were changed in the 
middle of the game, but also the number of people who voted by mail and 
voted absentee.

[[Page H6888]]

  I feel like the American people deserve one committee in this Chamber 
to step up and hold a hearing and hear both sides. If I were Chairwoman 
Maloney or Jamie Raskin or Gerry Connolly or Mr. Clay, or anybody on 
the committee who hears this request, if I believed there weren't any 
irregularities, I would want to have a hearing to make the Republicans 
look bad. I am disappointed that we are not doing our job in the 
Committee on Oversight and Reform.
  But with the specific investigation that Republicans have done in 
California, without any help from the Democrats--we don't need their 
help. We don't need their help on this. We have already proven it. The 
comptroller in California knows it. We are now asking to send the money 
back.
  If you are not going to explain, Secretary Padilla, if you don't want 
to talk about it, that is fine. Send the money back, and taxpayers will 
move on.
  Mr. Speaker, I yield back the balance of my time.

                          ____________________