[Congressional Record Volume 166, Number 208 (Wednesday, December 9, 2020)]
[House]
[Pages H7049-H7050]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




                   AMERICANS NEED BILL OF RIGHTS BACK

  The SPEAKER pro tempore. The Chair recognizes the gentleman from 
California (Mr. McClintock) for 5 minutes.
  Mr. McCLINTOCK. Mr. Speaker, every American needs to see Angela 
Marsden's tearful video as she pours out her frustrations as a small 
restaurant owner in Los Angeles.
  Forced to drastically curtail her business during California's brutal 
shutdowns, she took out an $80,000 loan to meet all the expensive 
requirements to move her dining outside and salvage what was left of 
her life's work.
  Instead, authorities arbitrarily changed the rules and shut her down 
again, a death sentence for her 10-year-old restaurant. Yet, the same 
authorities permitted a film production company to offer the very same 
outdoor dining across the very same parking lot the day she had to 
close her business.
  ``I am losing everything,'' she says through her tears. ``Everything 
I own is being taken away from me.''
  In Staten Island, police hauled a restaurant owner away in handcuffs 
for desperately trying to reopen his establishment just across the 
tracks from other restaurants where dining was allowed under precisely 
the same conditions.
  When asked to explain these capricious standards, California's 
Governor Gavin Newsom smarmed: Oh, I am deeply empathetic.
  Well, that must be a load off of their minds.
  The Fifth Amendment in our Bill of Rights specifically protects 
Americans from being deprived of life, liberty, or property without due 
process of law. Where are those rights today?
  Congress is now discussing how to provide relief for the thousands of 
small business owners, their employees, and the families that depend on 
them who have been crushed by these reckless edicts.
  As usual, politicians measure their empathy by how much they are 
willing to spend of other people's money.
  But the fine point of the matter is this: Government cannot support 
the economy for any significant period of time because government does 
not finance the economy. It is the economy that finances the 
government. When you shut down the economy, you shut down the revenues 
that go to the government.
  The only genuine relief from the COVID lockdowns is to end the COVID 
lockdowns. Why is it so hard for some people to understand that? By 
now, it ought to be obvious that the lockdowns have failed to contain 
this virus.
  After 9 months of this unprecedented experiment in social 
engineering, the virus continues to spread. Common sense should tell us 
that the more infectious a virus and the deeper it has already 
penetrated into a population, the less effective mass isolation will 
be.
  The plight of Angela Marsden and countless victims of these policies 
tell us clearly what we are very effectively accomplishing. We are 
destroying our society.
  We have set in motion countless avoidable deaths by suicide, drug and 
alcohol abuse, domestic violence, deferred health treatments, deferred 
health screenings, and poverty that will stalk us for many years to 
come. We have robbed our youth of a year of their educations.
  Nearly half of American retailers say they are now in imminent danger 
of permanently closing. Forbes magazine reports: ``The number one worry 
on most small business owners' mind now is the threat of more 
government-mandated business closures.''
  Eleven million Americans who had jobs in February no longer have 
those jobs today.
  Modern science and its many breakthroughs in immunology, 
epidemiology, and virology have given us advanced treatments and 
vaccines unparalleled in human history. But science is grotesquely 
incompetent to reorder human societies or to change the laws of human 
nature, nor does it give officials the omniscience to know what is best 
for every person in every circumstance, nor does it give them the right 
to wantonly destroy people's lives and livelihoods. After all, 
medicine's most ancient command is: First, do no harm.
  We have arbitrarily and indiscriminately destroyed the life's work 
and

[[Page H7050]]

life's dreams of millions of Americans like Angela Marsden. We have 
made the most sacred right of Americans to life, liberty, and the 
pursuit of happiness into a hollow and bitter mockery.
  The American people don't need the Governor's empathy, and they don't 
need politicians' handouts. They need a government that protects their 
right to make a living and to lead their own lives according to their 
own best judgment.
  They need their Bill of Rights back, and above all, they need their 
freedom back.

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