[Congressional Record Volume 167, Number 36 (Thursday, February 25, 2021)]
[House]
[Pages H703-H710]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




                           ISSUES OF THE DAY

  The SPEAKER pro tempore. Under the Speaker's announced policy of 
January 4, 2021, the gentleman from Texas (Mr. Roy) is recognized for 
60 minutes as the designee of the minority leader.


                             General Leave

  Mr. ROY. Mr. Speaker, I ask unanimous consent that all Members have 5 
legislative days in which to revise and extend their remarks.
  The SPEAKER pro tempore. Is there objection to the request of the 
gentleman from Texas?
  There was no objection.
  Mr. ROY. Mr. Speaker, I yield to the distinguished gentleman from 
Arkansas (Mr. Hill), who, like me, served as a staffer for a Texas 
Senator in his career, the great John Tower.


                 Celebrating the Memory of Daisy Bates

  Mr. HILL. Mr. Speaker, I thank my friend from Texas for yielding.
  Mr. Speaker, tonight I rise in celebration of Black History Month. I 
rise in honor of the memory of Daisy Bates, a native Arkansan and civil 
rights hero.
  Daisy Bates was born in south Arkansas in 1914 and moved to Little 
Rock in 1942. Active in the NAACP, Daisy and her husband, L.C., started 
the Arkansas State Press, a weekly newspaper, which they used to call 
attention to racial injustices.
  In the face of violent threats, Mrs. Bates courageously led the 
movement to desegregate Little Rock Central High School, recruiting and 
mentoring the Little Rock Nine.
  Daisy Gatson Bates became an icon in the fight to end segregation in 
the Jim Crow South. She was the only woman to speak at the 1963 March 
on Washington, led by Dr. Martin Luther King.
  Daisy Bates is a hero to Arkansans and Americans, and I am proud to 
honor her legacy today, and I look forward to her statue joining the 
pantheon of American leaders highlighted in the U.S. Capitol.


              NATO States Are Not Paying Their Fair Share

  Mr. HILL. Mr. Speaker, on a cold Tuesday in January, an irritated 
President met with his National Security Council. During the meeting, 
the President was outspoken, and complained, We cannot continue to pay 
for the military protection of Europe while the NATO states are not 
paying their fair share and living off the fat of the land. We have 
been very generous to Europe, and now it is time for us to look out for 
ourselves.
  Mr. Speaker, that quote urging Europeans to pay their fair share in 
their own defense by way of their responsibility to the North Atlantic 
Treaty Organization was not made by President Trump, it was not made by 
President Obama, or even George W. Bush. Mr. Speaker, that irritated 
President was John F. Kennedy.
  We are now nearly 60 years after that meeting, and 30 years following 
the reunification of Germany and the collapse of the USSR. Yet, the 
debate continues.

[[Page H704]]

  Recently, NATO held a 2-day video conference with the theme of 
increasing NATO's funding for our core deterrence and defense 
activities. NATO Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg told the assembled 
allies that spending more together would demonstrate the strength of 
our commitment to Article 5, our promise to each other. And it would 
contribute to fairer burden sharing. Sound familiar?
  When then-candidate Donald Trump became President, only three of the 
then 28 countries were spending the agreed upon guideline figure of 2 
percent of gross domestic product on defense.

                              {time}  1845

  With President Trump's urging, today, 7 countries out of the now 30 
NATO allies are meeting this important benchmark. The United States is 
joined by its longtime allies, Great Britain and Greece. Yet the only 
other countries meeting the benchmark are countries that know well the 
risk of Soviet--and now Russian--threats or threats from external 
forces of terror. These are the formerly enslaved countries from behind 
the Iron Curtain: Bulgaria, Estonia, Poland, Latvia, Lithuania, and 
Romania. As Americans, we salute their partnership, and we share in 
their renewed sense of freedom.
  Mr. Speaker, as we in the legislative branch of this government meet 
and confer with our parliamentary counterparts, as well as foreign 
ministers and finance ministers from our NATO allies, let us urge 
cooperation with our promise to defend each other, but, more 
importantly, urge the rapid adoption to achieve that fairer burden 
sharing, a goal so long ago argued for by President Kennedy.
  Mr. ROY. Mr. Speaker, I appreciate the gentleman for his commitment 
in being down here on the floor. We have this Special Order reserved 
tonight to talk about an issue that I think is fundamentally important 
to what we are seeing now today. And that is what I describe as the 
ideological cleansing of America, the silencing of dissent--cancel 
culture in common parlance today. It is a sickness that lies among us. 
It threatens to tear apart our Republic at the seams. It undermines our 
economic strength, our families, our schools, our churches, our culture 
at all levels, and even our military strength. That sickness is indeed 
the ideological cleansing of America.
  We have witnessed in America in just a matter of months the shaming 
of Americans questioning COVID. They are not questioning its existence. 
They are questioning our response. They are questioning the fact that 
we have got people who are committing suicide, who are stuck, unable to 
see loved ones, or can't get cancer screenings. They are questioning 
why hydroxychloroquine is one day okay and one day not okay, and then 
suddenly okay again. They are inquiring about the efficacy of masks.
  Do they work or not work?
  How well do they work?
  Where should we wear them?
  They question the removal of Americans from social media, the 
coordinated effort of technology companies to block companies or 
threaten to pull down news media outlets.
  We see examples of cancel culture in society are all around us.
  Ryan Anderson is a good friend of mine. His book is behind me, titled 
``When Harry Became Sally,'' responding to the transgender moment. It 
is an important work on civil rights and transgender policy. Well, it 
was deplatformed by Amazon and Apple without explanation this week. It 
has been on for 3 years. It is a good book, whether you agree with it 
or don't agree with it.
  Are we really into book burning?
  Is that where we are?
  Is that what we have become as a country that supposedly values 
freedom and the free exchange of ideas?
  A book written by a good man, a PhD, on a topic that matters, ``When 
Harry Became Sally.''
  Am I going to get canceled?
  Is C-SPAN going to cancel this?
  Is Speaker Pelosi going to cancel this because this is somehow 
offensive?
  It is a book with ideas researched and offered. That is where we are 
as a country.
  Gina Carano was recently canceled by Disney for tweeting a comparison 
of Nazi Germany rounding up Jews for the current hate doxing and 
targeting of fellow Americans for political views.
  Now, should she make that comparison?
  I don't know. But we are a free country where people are supposed to 
have the free exchange of ideas. And if there is anything that should 
bind us together, it should be a unanimous belief that standing up 
against tyranny and standing up against this kind of cleansing is 
something that this body--all 435 of us--should agree to. We see it 
from college campuses to religious schools, to small businesses, to 
corporate boardrooms.
  Mr. Speaker, I am going to have more to say on this. I have some of 
my colleagues here who want to join. So I am going to yield first to my 
good friend from Texas,   Michael Cloud.
  Mr. CLOUD. Mr. Speaker, I appreciate the gentleman for taking this 
moment to speak on this. I cannot imagine a more important topic for us 
right now in this Nation.
  Mr. Speaker, we are unique in history in that our Nation rests on the 
understanding that our inalienable rights to life, liberty, and the 
pursuit of happiness are not a grant from the government; they are a 
gift from Almighty God. And among these enshrined in our First 
Amendment is the freedom of speech, which is the most essential 
freedom, along with the freedom of religion.
  The peace and tranquility of our entire Republic is based on the 
understanding that we have a right to have our voice heard and that we 
have a right to have peaceful public discourse and dissent. That is how 
we come up with good legislation. That is how to have good policy. That 
is how we avoid conflict and wars on our soil.
  But we have entered a most troubling time in our Nation. This cancel 
culture has persisted, and it needs to stop. The unilateral march of 
legislation meant not to protect our liberties, but, rather, force the 
American people to conform to woke ideology in this House needs to 
stop.
  Then there is big tech that canceled conservatives while allowing for 
liberal Members of this body to repeatedly call for unrest in our 
streets and raise money to bail out violent rioters, not to mention 
providing a platform for Communist China terrorist groups and the like. 
This hypocrisy is not overlooked.
  Recently traveling throughout my district the last couple weeks, I 
came across a few immigrants in my community. I know them. They came up 
to me concerned about what we are in at this point in our Nation. 
Some of us who are so privileged to be born in this country where we 
have inherited these wonderful liberties might not see the signs so 
readily as people who have come from Ecuador, Cuba, and Iran. But these 
individuals came up to me because they are very concerned. They are 
concerned that they left this and now they are seeing it be rooted and 
established here in our Nation.

  Ironically, the one from Iran was concerned because she was talking 
to me and she had liked a post about our taking out of Soleimani and 
she got banned from Instagram following that. She knows firsthand what 
is going on in Iran. She is a first-generation immigrant. I was 
troubled, especially when she looked at me and said: We have more 
freedom of speech in Iran at this moment--this is her opinion--than we 
do right here right now. No one is trying to cancel people, you can 
speak freely against the government there.
  Now, I am not saying Iran is a wonderful place to live. I am thankful 
to be here in the United States of America, but we are heading down a 
troubling path.
  I remember being at an event just a couple days ago. It was before 
the election. Some lady was there, and she was talking to me about her 
motivation for being involved in the public discourse. She came up to 
me and said: I am from Ecuador. I remember escaping.
  Her parents did not make it out, but she made it out. She didn't call 
it ``to the United States of America.'' She called it ``to freedom 
country.''
  She said: We cannot lose freedom country. I am here to support this, 
I am here to work, and I am here to do whatever I can because we cannot 
lose freedom country.
  Mr. Speaker, I am here to stand up along with our colleagues because 
we cannot lose freedom country. It is extremely and essentially 
important that

[[Page H705]]

we in this House and people across the United States of America stand 
up in this hour at this time.
  Ronald Reagan once said--and I have said this before to many people, 
encouraging them how important it is to get involved in the process and 
also to thank our veterans--``Freedom is never more than one generation 
away from extinction. We didn't pass it to our children in the 
bloodstream. It must be fought for, protected, and handed on for them 
to do the same.''
  I thought about that quote. There is another part of it that has 
resonated with me even more and more in this time, and it is: ``Or one 
day we will spend our sunset years telling our children and our 
children's children what it was once like in the United States where 
men were free.''
  God forbid that we continue down this path and reach that point where 
we have to tell our kids and grandkids about what it was once like to 
live in the beloved United States where men were free.
  Mr. Speaker, I thank the gentleman for setting aside this Special 
Order. I cannot imagine a more important topic.
  Mr. ROY. Mr. Speaker, I just want to say to my friend from Texas that 
I know he has a heart for immigrants who come to the United States of 
America. We both live in Texas. We both deal with an open border and we 
deal with the issue of immigration on a regular basis.
  Too often when you talk about cancel culture, if I dare to say that 
we should have a secure border in the United States of America and that 
I believe that is pro-immigrant, that that undermines the power of 
cartels, that makes it less likely that immigrants are abused, also 
protects us, protects us from the dangers of fentanyl. That is the kind 
of canceling that we see every single day.
  Oh, you want a secure border?
  You hate Brown people.
  It is as if my colleagues on the other side of the aisle have some 
sort of monopoly on being able to say things about Brown people, and 
here I am trying to protect our border for the betterment of the United 
States and the immigrants who seek to come here, and somehow I am a 
bigot. The very structures put in place by the Obama-Biden 
administration are called cages for kids.
  And now what has happened?
  The Biden administration is having an uh-oh moment because their 
absurd policies of open borders are attracting people to come across 
our border. Now they are saying: Oh, no, what do we do with 
unaccompanied children?
  Well, who the heck could have seen this coming?
  Yet somehow we are canceled for believing in a secure border.
  The gentleman from south Texas, who I know has a heart for 
immigrants--
  Mr. CLOUD. I certainly do.
  Mr. ROY. And has a family who does as well, does the gentleman have 
thoughts on that?
  Mr. Speaker, I yield to the gentleman from Texas (Mr. Cloud).
  Mr. CLOUD. Sure. You know my family, you know my wife. I have had 
those comments put on me that I somehow don't like Brown people and 
that I am somehow racist. They fail sometimes to look at my family 
photo. My wife is an immigrant. I didn't marry her because she was an 
immigrant. I married because I loved her. I met her when she was 15. I 
was 17 at the time. We had a long-distance relationship. I met her back 
before Al Gore invented the internet.
  Mr. Speaker, I can tell you what an honor it was for her to stand 
there in the U.S. courthouse, raise her hand and take the Pledge of 
Allegiance for the first time and become a citizen of this great 
country.
  So we understand that there is a proper way to do immigration. We 
want a big, beautiful gate to this country. But to say that we need to 
secure our communities and keep out the cartel activity, I serve on the 
Interparliamentary Group between the U.S. and Mexico, so I have had the 
opportunity to talk with our colleagues in Mexico. I talk to them about 
how arrogant of a notion it is for us to assume that the way we heal 
the world's ills is to bring everybody to the United States. That 
notion is uniquely American arrogant.
  We want people to prosper everywhere. And what we know from our 
unique history is that if you embrace the principles this Nation was 
founded upon, you can have the same sort of prosperity. You can have 
your people prosper everywhere.

  When I said that thought, we got resounding applause from them 
because they understand that our wanting to secure their borders, we 
want their communities to thrive, we want our communities along the 
border to be protected, and we want migrants not to be persecuted and 
abused along the way.
  Mr. ROY. Mr. Speaker, I agree with the gentleman. If you take that 
view, you are labeled a bigot. If you take the view that we want a 
secure border, you are labeled as someone who wants to keep people out 
of this country.
  If you dare to say what you just said, which is that maybe we should 
think through how to make sure that Mexico, Guatemala, Honduras, and El 
Salvador are strong so that--by the way, the first lady of Guatemala 
was visiting and said something along the lines of: All of these 
caravans and all of the cartels are driving a lot of our people out of 
our country, and it is hurting our country.
  I am told from the other side of the aisle that it is compassionate 
to have open borders, and then we are labeled as bigots.
  I know the gentleman has somewhere to go. I appreciate the 
gentleman's remarks and passion for this issue. May God bless the 
gentleman.
  Mr. Speaker, I yield to the gentlewoman from Colorado (Mrs. Boebert).
  Mrs. BOEBERT. Mr. Speaker, I thank my friend and colleague from 
Texas, Congressman Chip Roy, for yielding.
  Mr. Speaker, I have said it before and I will say it again: cancel 
culture has become a pillar of the left.
  Today, cancel culture took on toy potatoes, but not a sitting 
Governor accused of sexual assault. That is where we have come to.
  From Kevin Hart to Gina Carano, the woke mob will go after decades-
old comments, and in Gina's case, for simply being a Conservative. The 
woke mob now includes big tech, major corporations, and the Hollywood 
elites at Disney who fired Ms. Carano for the crime of--wait for it--
posting conservative content on social media.
  They tried to come after me, too. Twitter tried to cancel me. It 
didn't work. The fake news at CNN and other outlets also tried to 
cancel me for simply walking around the Capitol with my family. That 
didn't work either. Mr. Speaker, it will never work because I refuse to 
bow to the cancel mob.
  We are a nation that has always had the audacity to dream, the 
strength to lead, and the boldness to speak our minds. We must stand 
tall and kneel before God. Scripture says that every knee will bow and 
every tongue will confess Jesus is Lord.
  Now, that is an audacious statement in America right now: Jesus is 
Lord.
  Why is that such a controversy?
  Because there is power in the name of Jesus.

                              {time}  1900

  This isn't the first time Christians have been attacked for 
professing the Lordship of Jesus.
  If you go to the Book of Acts, Peter and John were arrested. It says: 
Now as they spoke to the people, the priests, the captain of the temple 
and the Sadducees came upon them, greatly disturbed that they taught 
the people and preached in Jesus the resurrection from the dead. And 
they laid hands on them and they put them in custody until the next day 
for it was already evening. However, many of those who heard the word 
believed and the number of men came to be about 5,000.
  There were 5,000 salvations because someone had the boldness to speak 
in the name of Jesus. It goes on.
  Now, when they saw the boldness--their boldness was tangible. It was 
evident to the people around them. It wasn't in a prayer closet. It 
wasn't hidden. It was out in front. They saw the boldness of Peter and 
John and perceived that they were uneducated and untrained men.
  That means that they didn't know the languages that they were 
speaking in. They were speaking in unknown languages.
  They marveled and they analyzed that they had been with Jesus. Their

[[Page H706]]

boldness was so tangible, so intense the people around them knew that 
they had been in the presence of Jesus. Wow.
  It goes on to say: What shall we do to these men? For, indeed that a 
notable miracle has been done through them. It is evident to all who 
dwell in Jerusalem and we cannot deny it, but so that it spreads 
further among the people, let us severely threaten them-- Whew, sounds 
like America. That sounds really familiar right now--that we would 
severely threaten them, that from now on, they speak to no man in this 
name. They wouldn't even say the name, in this name.
  So they called them, and they commanded them not to speak at all, nor 
teach. They were not allowed to speak or teach in the name of Jesus.
  But Peter and John answered and said to them, Whether it is right in 
the sight of God to listen to you more than God, you judge.
  It goes on to say exactly what God will do if you remain bold and 
strong in your convictions and if you refuse to bow down to the cancel 
mob, to the woke culture.
  Peter and John spoke out. Now, Lord, look on their threats and grant 
to Your servants boldness as we may speak Your word by stretching out 
Your hands, hands to heal, that signs and wonders may be done through 
the name of Your holy servant, Jesus.
  This is the boldness that God is looking for right now. He said, if 
we cry out to Him, He will hear us, and He will heal our land.
  This cancel culture isn't just to keep us quiet; it is to stop the 
very plan and movement of God Almighty. But I have read the end of the 
book and we win. Glory to God. God bless America.
  Do not give up the faith and hope in God. He will turn all shame into 
glory.
  Mr. ROY. Well, I appreciate the gentlewoman from Colorado. I will 
tell you, you know, as I was thinking through the times we are in right 
now, the Book of Acts is my favorite book in the Bible.
  And when you--you know, I look at the arrows that some are taking 
today for standing up for their beliefs and some of the things that are 
happening today; and then you remember that we are not in the middle of 
a circle yet, getting stoned.
  You remember what those men did and what they faced in the early 
church, and it inspires us to know, to have the strength that we need 
to have. And this is true of all faiths. This is true of all Americans. 
It is instructive to stand up in faith when you believe something in 
your soul and in your heart.
  And we, as Americans, when Patrick Henry gave his famous speech at 
St. John's Church in Richmond, Virginia, in that famous speech, ``Give 
Me Liberty Or Give Me Death,'' that is the founding building block of 
this Nation.
  And it is that liberty, that liberty expressed in the First Amendment 
of the Constitution, which is under assault today on a bill voted on 
the floor of this body today in the so-called Equality Act, with a 
direct assault on the First Amendment of the United States, a direct 
assault on religious liberty, a direct assault, basically. It is the 
tyranny over the mind of man.
  I am inspired by the Book of Acts, and I assume that the gentlewoman 
from Colorado agrees.
  Mrs. BOEBERT. Absolutely. Absolutely. It is an ongoing testimony of 
even the lives that we are living today. Our stories, I believe, will 
be recorded as there are a cloud of witnesses that are watching eagerly 
what we are going to do. They have been waiting for this time and this 
season and they are watching the sons of men. They are watching us like 
never before.
  Jesus came here and He showed us how to live, not as God, but as men, 
anointed by the spirit of God, to walk in grace, not just a wishy-
washy, cover up your mistakes kind of grace, it is this boldness. It is 
empowerment. It is God's ability working in and through you. And I am 
very much inspired by the Book of Acts and many others.
  Mr. ROY. I appreciate the gentlewoman from Colorado, and I appreciate 
our joint commitment to the Lord Almighty and liberty in this country.
  And I would just say before I yield, I think, to the gentleman from 
Georgia next, a couple of thoughts.
  You know, we are talking today about cancel culture. We are talking 
about the silencing of dissent, the cleansing of ideology in the public 
square in America. It is truly an ideological cleansing, but it is 
always not direct.
  I alluded to it when I was talking to the gentleman from Texas (Mr. 
Cloud) about immigration; that if we dare stand up for secure borders, 
we are a bigot. It happens all the time. You hate Brown people. You are 
a bigot.
  Today, I stood up against the Equality Act. The first thing out of 
the indivisible crowd in Austin and San Antonio, you're a bigot. You're 
transphobic.
  Dare stand up for what you believe. Oh, my gosh. The gentleman from 
Texas says that there is a man and woman. Bigot. All right?

  I mean, this is where we are today. And you know, look, if you want 
your child to actually be educated in a school, then despite the 
science, you don't care about public health and you want teachers to 
die. Right?
  All last year, running against an opponent in Austin, it was, oh, you 
want people to die. You don't care about the science.
  If you want to keep your business open to keep your livelihood going, 
you just want to survive. You are a barber in Dallas, Texas, and you 
just want to stay working to pay for your kids and your family, put 
bread on the table.
  Well, you are just greedy, and you hate science.
  If you think Dr. Fauci is inconsistent--I mean, I am just going to be 
nice and say inconsistent--if you think Dr. Fauci is inconsistent, 
sometimes making stuff up, maybe to be on the front cover of a 
magazine, and maybe we ought to hear from 20 scientists instead of one, 
well, suddenly, you hate science.
  If you say that COVID has been politicized, as I did last year, or 
question any aspect of it, not that it exists, not that people are 
getting sick--I have had it--not that you want to protect your family--
I canceled Thanksgiving because my dad is 78 and had polio--but if you 
question any of it, you are calling it a hoax.
  If you want to go to church, you are reckless.
  If you believe men are men and women are women, you are a bigot.
  If you think it is wrong to let biological boys compete against your 
daughter in a sports competition, or you don't want your daughter to 
have to share a locker room with a male, you are a bigot.
  I mean, when are we going to sit down, roll our sleeves up and 
actually do the work of the American people, instead of sitting here 
firing shots across everybody and saying, well, you are a bigot.
  I yield to my good friend from Georgia, Mr. Hice.
  Mr. HICE of Georgia. I appreciate the gentleman's leadership on this 
and he's a very dear friend from Texas. And I am grateful.
  Listen, I don't know that there are many issues that are much more 
significant, if any more significant, than what we are watching unfold 
in our society these days, with the cancel culture movement. And the 
gentleman brought up so many great examples. Everyone certainly, I 
believe, probably everyone on this side of the aisle has experienced 
this cancel culture in one degree or another, and it is, frankly, not a 
new thing. It started quite some time back.
  But certainly, it has built to the point of enormous momentum now to 
the point of literally destroying lives, destroying businesses, 
destroying careers, and that is what is disturbing to me.
  And I would just go on to say that this cancel culture--two main 
points that I just want to bring up, and I would love to have a bit of 
dialogue with the gentleman on this.
  But number one is: What is underneath it? What is causing it? What is 
the purpose? What is the motive behind cancel culture?
  I don't think we need to just deal with the results of it, but what 
is behind it. And I would suggest that it is a lust for power. And, as 
a result, there is an attempt to intimidate, an attempt to cancel, an 
attempt to threaten, and it is also that I am king of the hill and you 
are not.
  There is this desire for power behind the cancel culture movement, 
and I believe that is a significant issue, and I would like to hear the 
gentleman's thoughts on that, and then I will come

[[Page H707]]

back to another thought that I have and bounce that off you as well
  Mr. ROY. Yeah. There is no question. In my view, what we are seeing 
today is the assertion of power over the mind of America, right? And it 
is just happening as we see it.
  We have got a fence with razor wire around the Capitol. We were all 
horrified, sitting right here, all of us here in the body who were here 
on January 6. We all want to protect each other.
  But we also have a duty to lead. We also have a duty to have a 
Capitol that is open; to figure out a way to secure the body without 
sending signals to the world that somehow this is a military state.
  You walk around the Capitol and there are people in camouflage. There 
is a fence. I can't even walk around D.C. We are harming business. We 
are telling the American people that, nope, sorry, you can't come here, 
all in the name of a virus or then what happened on January 6.
  That is all about power. That is all about message. Okay?
  I do not believe for a minute, with all due respect, that that is 
about actual security of this building and this complex. That is about 
projecting a message to the American people. That is what the 
magnetometers are for. That is not to keep us safe. It is not.

  It is not the highest and best use of the Capitol Police to be having 
20 people around this floor every day; literally having Members of 
Congress duly elected by the people to have to go through 
magnetometers. You have got to go through security to get in the 
building. It is all a show. And that is all a projection of power. And 
that is what the Equality Act was today.
  And the last thing I will say is my point about immigration earlier. 
That whole point is: It makes no sense to be yelling about kids in 
cages, when any rational human being knows you are trying to figure out 
what to do with this child, a child that could be being abused by this 
guy who claims to be his or her uncle, and you are trying to keep him 
or her safe. You can't just let him go. You have got to do something 
with them.
  I mean, I am sorry we don't have four-star resorts up and down the 
Rio Grande to put these children into, but go down and work at Border 
Patrol--who, by the way, are majority Hispanic--dealing with immigrants 
coming here through policies that attract them.
  That is all about power. Kids in cages. Republicans are evil. 
Republicans are bigots. They hate Brown people. It is all about power.
  Mr. HICE of Georgia. Absolutely. That is extremely well said and very 
potent in the way you presented that. And it has come to the point, 
even in just the last couple of days, I had a woman face to face I was 
speaking with about this, and she was hesitant to get involved in a 
relatively small way in trying to make a stand in her local community.
  And her words to me, I am afraid that if I do this, the FBI is going 
to come knocking at my door. And she had received those kinds of 
threats, those kind of whatever. She didn't go into details with me, 
the specifics of what had brought her to that point.
  But the realization to me is this cancel culture is like a cancer 
that is now infiltrating our society and its tentacles are reaching, 
they are far-reaching. And what contributes to part of this, I am 
afraid, we are participating in right here in this Chamber.
  And a quick example, we just passed the Equality Act. And I could not 
help but think, while this is being passed, and even some questions I 
had with it, sure, we don't want discrimination for anyone. This is the 
land of the free. Everyone has rights.

                              {time}  1915

  But the bill itself specifically says there are no religious 
exemptions to this, that RFRA does not apply, which means people who 
have deeply held religious beliefs are going to be canceled from 
participating in their routine life if they disagree with the premise 
of this bill, and if they personally have convictions otherwise, that 
is being forced upon them.
  It is very concerning to me that we in this Chamber are actually 
participating in throwing gas on the fire of this whole cancel culture, 
even with legislation that is coming out of this body. I would like to 
hear your thoughts on that.
  Mr. ROY. Mr. Speaker, I would ask how much time we have left in our 
Special Order. Sorry for surprising the Chair.
  The SPEAKER pro tempore. The gentleman has 25 minutes remaining.
  Mr. ROY. Mr. Speaker, I would say to the gentleman from Georgia that 
I could not agree more, and I have spoken a little bit about the 
Equality Act. The only thing I would add to it--and I said this earlier 
on the floor about the Equality Act--my wife and I, products of public 
school, K through law school, undergrad, law school, we currently send 
our kids to a private Christian school, not an easy thing for us to 
afford. We are fine, we are blessed, but it is a lot of work to make 
that happen. Why do we do that? It is because, unfortunately, 
increasingly those with beliefs and values that they want to be able to 
have their children experience, we are being forced into the corner.
  We are being forced to kind of be shoved back away from mainstream 
society. I mean, forget just saying Merry Christmas. I mean, it is just 
hostile to our values, hostile to our beliefs, teaching our children 
something different than that there is one man and one woman. These are 
the things that are happening every day across America.
  To my colleagues on the other side of the aisle, I would say whatever 
frustrations you have about the previous President, just understand 
this: President Trump represents a large number of men and women across 
this country who are feeling exactly what we are saying right here. 
They are frustrated and angry about what is happening to their country. 
They are scared. They believe the power of government will be used 
against them, and in many cases, we have seen evidence of it.
  The point of this is not to just rant about it. It is that we should 
be having a debate and a dialogue, and we need to come together as a 
Congress and do our job to do what is right for the people of this 
country. I appreciate the gentleman from Georgia very much.
  Mr. Speaker, I yield to the gentlewoman from the great State of 
Georgia (Mrs. Greene), your colleague.
  Mrs. GREENE of Georgia. Mr. Speaker, I appreciate this conversation 
tonight about cancel culture. I think it is one of the most relevant 
topics that we should be discussing more, and I am really glad to talk 
about this.
  I think this past year we have seen more things canceled in our 
American history than we have at any other time. In the past year, 
starting with the virus, that has been politicized. I say that, I 
believe that, along with millions and millions of Americans that 
believe it.
  We saw, starting with schools got canceled, business got canceled, 
jobs got canceled, people had to stay home. Then things got further. 
Sports were canceled, prom was canceled, graduation was canceled, 
social life was canceled, vacations, movies, entertainment, 
restaurants, and the list goes on and on. Basically, the ability to 
pursue happiness in the United States of America got canceled due to 
COVID-19 and the politicization of it because it was an election year.
  I can't think of anything worse. I have been privileged to be a 
business owner for almost two decades, and it has been a joy in my life 
to be able to function as a business owner, to employ people, to do 
business in the marketplace and have the freedom to do that. But over 
the past year, many small businesses have been shut down, along with 
many big businesses.
  Dreams for people starting a business have been canceled. But even 
more than that, the belief that conservative opinions and thoughts and 
statements and just beliefs are being canceled and considered 
dangerous.
  The fact that millions and millions of Americans support President 
Trump, still support President Trump, and are angered that he has been 
canceled is unbelievable to me.
  You see, America is the greatest country in the world, and I say it 
over and over. We are all blessed to be Americans. We are blessed that 
we are equal, and we should have equal voices. We are given that with 
our First Amendment, with freedom of speech.
  But today, it is not looked at that way. People that support 
President Trump are considered to be possibly domestic terrorists. How 
can that be?

[[Page H708]]

You see, we don't look at America that way. We don't look at people 
that we disagree with politically that way, not at all.
  President Trump was canceled on Twitter. I understand what that is 
like. I have been suspended multiple times on Twitter. I have been in 
Facebook jail multiple times for stating my opinions, things I think 
and feel. It shouldn't be that way, where people are canceled by 
companies.
  We are moving in an era of corporate communism to where corporations 
and businesses can force their views and political opinions, and force 
it on their customers. That is absolutely wrong. It should not be 
happening. But that is where we are today.
  Where do we go from here? Today, we saw my Democrat colleagues here 
in Congress cancel gender. This is not up for debate, and it should not 
be shocking for us to say there is only male and female. That is not a 
shocking statement. It is science. There are only two sets of 
chromosomes. They also canceled women's rights, religious freedom, and 
the ability for little girls to have privacy in the bathroom.
  This cancel culture has gone too far, and we have to change that. The 
media is addicting America to hate, and the media is addicting people 
to the idea that they can cancel out someone's opinion that they don't 
agree with.

  Mr. Roy, would you like to elaborate on that?
  Mr. ROY. Yes. One of the things that you made me think of is how much 
cancel culture is now getting rooted in government and, in fact, the 
institution in which we are currently standing. The gentlewoman is well 
aware that my colleagues on the other side of the aisle stripped you of 
your ability to serve and sit on committees, in an unprecedented 
action, for things that you said before the election, that you have 
addressed on the floor of this House. That is canceling.
  Mrs. GREENE of Georgia. Yes.
  Mr. ROY. We are in a situation right now where this body is now 
refusing to work. Democrats are refusing to work with Republicans. They 
are threatening to hold up and block their legislation because they 
dared to object to the electors, a proposition, by the way, that I 
disagreed with, on my side of the aisle. I spoke right there. I stated 
my disagreement with my Republican colleagues.
  But it is perfectly normal speech and debate under the Constitution 
and the laws, under an act passed in 1887, one that my Democrat 
colleagues have engaged in themselves: Ms. Waters from California, for 
sure, Mr. Raskin from Maryland, others who have objected.
  Now, Democrats in this body want to cancel my Republican colleagues. 
That is how bad it has gotten. Cancel culture is now in this body.
  I have a couple more colleagues here, Mrs. Greene, but do you have a 
closing thought?
  Mrs. GREENE of Georgia. Thank you, Mr. Roy. I really appreciate that. 
Yes, being canceled in Congress after 35 days, being stripped of my 
committee membership, is not something that I ever expected, and I 
think it is completely wrong.
  Statements and things that I had said that I addressed here and with 
my colleagues that happened before I even campaigned for Congress, 
certainly not anything I did as a Member of Congress, but that 
cancelation is taken to an extreme, and it should not happen.
  Then the fact that we did object to electoral college votes, that is 
something we are able to do. You disagreed with us, and here we are, 
having a perfectly great conversation. I wish we could have the same 
type of conversation with our Democrat colleagues because they have, 
indeed, objected to electoral college votes in the past, I think, every 
Presidential election for the past 20 years or so. Thank you for 
reminding me that, and thank you for setting this up tonight.
  Mr. ROY. I am going to yield to the gentleman from Pennsylvania. I 
would ask the Speaker how much time we have remaining.
  The SPEAKER pro tempore. The gentleman has 16 minutes remaining.
  Mr. ROY. I thank the Speaker. Right before I yield to the gentleman 
from Pennsylvania, I want to appreciate his service, his service to the 
country, both in the military and now in Congress. I know he has a 
passion for this issue.
  Mr. Speaker, I yield to my friend from Pennsylvania.
  Mr. PERRY. Mr. Speaker, I appreciate Mr. Roy, my great friend from 
Texas. I appreciate the sacrifices that he has made on behalf of this 
great Nation.
  If you know me, you know I am a fan of books because I think, in this 
transient, throwaway society, they are a record of things that happened 
in the past. So, like I said, if you know me, you know I love books. 
They never asked me, because I am not running for President, what books 
do you recommend? But if I were running for President and they ever 
deigned to ask me, this would be one. This is by a guy named Alexsandr 
Solzhenitsyn. It is called ``Warning to the West.'' It is hard to come 
by. It is a little expensive, but it is well worth the effort. I just 
want to read an excerpt to you where he is thinking about the West as 
he sits in a Russian gulag.
  ``We contemplate the West from what will be your future, or we look 
back 70 years to see our past suddenly repeating itself today. And what 
we see is always the same as it was then: adults deferring to the 
opinion of their children; the younger generation carried away by 
shallow, worthless ideas; professors scared of being unfashionable; 
journalists refusing to take responsibility for the words they squander 
so easily; universal sympathy for revolutionary extremists; people with 
serious objections unable or unwilling to voice them; the majority 
passively obsessed by a feeling of doom; feeble governments; societies 
whose defensive reactions have become paralyzed; spiritual confusion 
leading to political upheaval. What will happen as a result of all this 
lies ahead of us. But the time is near, and from bitter memory, we can 
easily predict what these events will be.''
  Mr. ROY. Will the gentleman yield?
  Mr. PERRY. I certainly will.
  Mr. ROY. I also have a quote here I was going to close with from 
Alexsandr Solzhenitsyn because it is so on point. I am going to go 
ahead and do it now rather than closing with it because you just went 
there.
  He said this in another part of that book:

       What was drummed in our ears as political courses, we have 
     now internalized. Live comfortably and all will be well ever 
     after. We lie to ourselves to preserve our peace of mind. It 
     is not they who should be blamed, but ourselves. One can 
     object but cannot imagine what to do. Gags have been stuffed 
     into our mouths. Nobody wants to listen to us, and nobody 
     asks our opinion. How can we force them to listen to us? It 
     is impossible to change their minds. Some will lose their 
     jobs, but there are no loopholes for anybody who wants to be 
     honest.

  Now, that may sound like a diatribe from a conservative talk radio 
host today, but it wasn't. It was him.
  Mr. PERRY. It was a guy who lived it, who saw it happen, who lived 
under the oppression of a Russian gulag, imprisoned for decades, and 
watched the West, watched 66 million souls exterminated on the border 
of Russia and Europe, and Europe did nothing about it.
  We are in this Capitol today, as Chip has already said, surrounded by 
razor wire and fences. Free speech, they are saying: Well, you have 
free speech. The government is not censoring you. The government is not 
canceling you.

  Well, in this age where Google, Facebook, these platforms have 95, 99 
percent market share, whatever the heck it is, when you are taken off 
that, your free speech is taken away, effectively.
  We are not here to talk to just each other. Free speech means you can 
talk to each other, everybody else. So it is not about being able to 
just have a conversation with yourself in a cell. Free speech is about 
discussing ideas, and some of them are going to be unpalatable.
  There were book burnings back at this time because they wanted to 
destroy ideas. We are not afraid of ideas. We are afraid of the advent 
of communism and socialism in our country, but we are not afraid to 
discuss it because we know that our ideas will win.
  What we are afraid of is not being able to discuss it, and that is 
what is happening. That is happening all across America, whether you 
are Project Veritas, whether you are President Trump, whether you are 
Marjorie Taylor Greene and you say the wrong thing. You say the wrong 
thing, and it is not about disagreement for the other side; it is about 
obliteration of your thought.

[[Page H709]]

  This is a very, very dangerous precipice that we stand on, and we 
know the outcome. Solzhenitsyn, even though he was discredited--
imagine, discredited by the Soviet Union and the Russians. But he came 
to America, and he tried to tell us over and over and over again.
  Many people know, but my good friend from Texas talked about the 
concern the American people have. They are scared.

                              {time}  1930

  They are not scared of their neighbor. They are not scared of a 
Democrat. They are not scared of a Republican. They are scared of their 
government. This is a government of and for the people, by the people. 
This is our government. The government doesn't own us; we own it. The 
government is supposed to fear us.
  You know, I tell people, it didn't end or it didn't begin with gulags 
and slave labor work camps where people died of exposure, starvation, 
exhaustion. It didn't start with that. It started with what we are 
talking about right now, with razor wire and fences around your Capitol 
and the inability to say what you want to say. That is where it starts.
  We don't have to ask: Well, where does it end?
  We know where it ends.
  I thank the good gentleman from Texas for this opportunity. You know 
that we will stand right with you in this crusade to keep America free 
and to keep speech free.
  Mr. ROY. Mr. Speaker, I appreciate the gentleman from Pennsylvania. I 
know that is true and I know your heart for service, and I know wearing 
the uniform of the military of the United States meant a lot to you and 
that your service here means a lot.
  Mr. Speaker, as I get ready to yield to my friend from West Virginia, 
I would add that my colleagues across the other side of the aisle are 
effectively canceling Congress. I mean, it is pretty extraordinary when 
the members of a body essentially act to cancel its own institution.
  Proxy voting. Half of my Democratic colleagues are never here. About 
half of the time I look over there and you look at the number of people 
there, and they are voting from home. By the way, the rules suggest 
that is supposed to be directly tied to the pandemic. But do you know 
how many of my colleagues on the other side of the aisle--and maybe 
increasingly a few on my side of the aisle--have been here voting and 
then submit the proxy form and then fly home?
  It happens.
  We are turning this institution on its head. We have remote hearings 
that are halfway functional, where you sit there for an hour trying to 
hear each other. We have no regular schedule. It is come and go. It 
takes hours to vote. We have no regular order. We have massive bills. 
We have things being done in smoke-filled rooms. We never get to amend. 
We never get to debate. We never get to actually have an actual 
discussion on the floor of the House. And we have fence and razor wire 
around the Capitol.
  Tell me how Democrats are not canceling Congress. You might as well 
just say Speaker Pelosi can just pass a bill by herself.
  I know my friend from West Virginia is going to talk a little bit 
about spending, and the only thing that I will add to my point here 
about order is that we are going to be passing a $2 trillion 
monstrosity of a bill in the next week with no actual debate or 
amendment on the floor of this body; no real review by the members of 
this body. That is an absolute travesty.
  Mr. Speaker, I yield to the gentleman from West Virginia (Mr. 
Mooney).


                 Sanctity of Human Life and the Unborn

  Mr. MOONEY. Mr. Speaker, I will talk a little bit about some concerns 
and, generally, about the sanctity of human life and the unborn.
  I rise today in memory of the over 60 million babies who have been 
killed through abortion since the Supreme Court's disastrous decision 
Roe v. Wade. As a nation, we have taken extraordinary steps to protect 
public health and save lives amid the coronavirus outbreak, but there 
is a huge contradiction when it comes to protecting human life in the 
womb.
  Protecting all human life should be a bipartisan issue. Yet, today, 
President Biden is driving policies like taxpayer funding of abortion 
and naming pro-abortion extremist Xavier Becerra as the Health and 
Human Services Secretary.
  As recently as 2012, President Biden restated his long-held view that 
human life begins at conception. He said: ``With regard to abortion, I 
accept my church's position that life begins at conception.''
  Well, it is not only a religious belief, but it is also a scientific 
fact that human life begins at conception. Thanks to modern scientific 
advancements, we now can visually see and know the personhood of 
preborn children.
  Doctors can operate on babies in the womb to save their lives. We 
know a preborn baby's heart starts to beat at about 6 weeks. Nails 
begin to form at 10 weeks, and babies have fingerprints by 13 weeks.
  It is time to give a voice to the voiceless. It is time for the law 
to acknowledge the dignity of the preborn babies who are the most 
helpless among us.
  I urge my fellow Members of Congress to join me in defense of all 
human life, standing up for all human life. I urge President Biden to 
actually enact his personally held views that he acknowledges that it 
begins at conception. I think we actually all know that. It is a 
scientific fact.
  The reconciliation bill that is coming up, there are pro-life 
concerns in this bill. For starters, it fails to include the 
traditional what we call the high protections. That is a longstanding 
policy in Congress that your taxpayer dollars do not go for abortions. 
This bill waives that. It enables taxpayer funding of abortion.
  There are more than $414 billion taxpayer dollars, supposedly 
intended for COVID-19 relief, that have no Hyde protections.
  So we are talking a lot about the cancel culture. You have, on the 
one hand, a division in this country. Many of us believe it is the 
taking of a human life, it is killing, it is murder; and we object to 
that. But instead of respecting our views, you actually want to take 
money from us through taxes and use our actual dollars to kill 
children. If you are going to talk about cancel culture, at least 
respect the differences of opinion.
  But this bill doesn't do that. This bill we are going to vote on this 
week doesn't do that. It gets rid of the high protections. It is 
taxpayer-funded abortions. It also requires taxpayers to subsidize 
health plans that potentially cover elective abortions.


                             National Debt

  Mr. MOONEY. Mr. Speaker, now I am going to change topics to something 
that is not talked about enough in this Congress, and that is spending. 
We talk a lot about these bills and how much we are going to spend on 
this group and spend on that group, and we are going to give money to 
this and give money to that.
  Mr. ROY. Mr. Speaker, may I ask how much time I have remaining?
  The SPEAKER pro tempore. The gentleman has 5 minutes remaining.
  Mr. ROY. Mr. Speaker, I yield to the gentleman from West Virginia.
  Mr. MOONEY. Federal debt has increased sharply. I have this beautiful 
chart here starting in 1790, the first budget in our country right 
after the Revolutionary War, and you can see the national debt. This is 
done in a fair way. It is debt to the gross domestic product. So it is 
a percentage of the domestic product in debt.
  And you can see, in 1790, the mark where it was. We just finished the 
Civil War. So we owed some money to the soldiers. We paid that off in 
the next 40 years up until the Civil War. And in the Civil War there 
was a little bit of debt, and it goes back down again. And you can see 
it is kind of steadily up and down a bit. World War II, okay. World War 
II, again, debt-to-gross-domestic-product. We were just trying to 
survive there, and the debt is back down again.
  But when you get to where we are today, things have gone completely 
out of control. The Congressional Budget Office estimates an additional 
$104 trillion will be added by 2050. The Congressional Budget Office 
forecasted debt would rise 200 percent. Today, as I stand here right 
now, we have $27.9 trillion in national debt.
  $27.9 trillion, what is that to you? That is $84,000.

[[Page H710]]

  That is actually a little more than $84,000 of debt to every American 
citizen right here today.
  Now, on this day 1 year ago, in 2020, the U.S. national debt was 
$23.4 trillion, that was $72,309 in debt per person. We have actually 
borrowed $10,000 per person in 1 year. I mean, that is out of control.
  And when you hear about these bills--I plan to vote against this one 
tomorrow; I think many of us do--they say, oh, we are going to give 
this and give that.
  No. They are taking it from you. This is debt that your children will 
have to pay.
  This $2 trillion--nearly $2 trillion spending package is full of 
liberal priorities. We are going to grow our debt to $29 trillion. That 
is even more debt owed per citizen.
  There is a lot of misinformation about where the debt is going. The 
top two countries we owe the debt to are China and Japan, not actually 
our friends. We are at global competition with China all the time. They 
are holding a lot of the debt. We owe China over $1 trillion and we owe 
Japan over $1 trillion.
  The people who are loaning us the money we have to pay back are not 
necessarily people who have our best interest at heart. Brazil, we owe 
$258 billion. India, we owe $216 billion. And the list goes on the debt 
that is owed to foreign countries.
  The national debt was $5.6 trillion in 2000. It increased. Under 
Obama, it actually doubled. Since the 8 years Obama was President, we 
doubled our national debt. And we are adding another--projected here--a 
completely out of control debt-to-GDP ratio.
  So I urge my colleagues to consider the future. Don't buy into the--
the government has no money it doesn't take from you that you are going 
to have to pay back. We need to be judicious with these dollars, and 
most of this is not going to coronavirus relief anyway.
  Mr. ROY. Mr. Speaker, I appreciate the gentleman from West Virginia 
for his remarks. And I would echo that--and I think the gentleman would 
agree--that I believe that, of the $2 trillion, only 9 percent is 
directed to COVID relief.
  And I really just can't believe that my colleagues on the other side 
of the aisle can really market this as a COVID relief bill when, by the 
way, we have $1 trillion remaining from the $4 trillion last year and 
only 9 percent of it is directed to COVID.
  Does the gentleman agree?
  Mr. MOONEY. I would agree. And I would add that 27 percent of this 
bill, over $510 billion goes to State and local governments. So the 
taxpayers of my State of West Virginia and your State of Texas and 
other States are literally bailing out States that have failed to 
manage their own budgets.
  West Virginia taxpayers shouldn't have to pay for New York and 
Illinois and California that are completely out of control in their 
spending. $510 billion is going to bail out these State and local 
governments. It is not a good use of taxpayer dollars.
  Mr. ROY. Mr. Speaker, I would agree with the gentleman from West 
Virginia, and I appreciate his comments.
  I have 1 minute left and I will simply just say this: This chart 
showing debt is not just about the big number. It is not just about the 
$30 trillion of debt. This is about tyranny.
  That money, that debt that we owe to our kids and grandkids is being 
used to fund an education system that teaches our kids that America is 
evil.
  It is being used to fund an education system that won't even put 
teachers back to work.
  It is being used to fund a DHS that won't secure the border and is 
turning it into a catch-and-release agency.
  It is being used to fund the very institutions that are coming after 
our precious Bill of Rights.
  And I would just say to the Speaker and my friends on the other side 
of the aisle: It is time that we come together and protect the rights 
given to us by our Creator, that are reflected and defended in the 
Constitution of the United States.
  Mr. Speaker, I yield back the balance of my time.

                          ____________________