[Congressional Record Volume 167, Number 106 (Thursday, June 17, 2021)]
[House]
[Pages H2916-H2921]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




                           ISSUES OF THE DAY

  The SPEAKER pro tempore (Mr. Auchincloss). Under the Speaker's 
announced policy of January 4, 2021, the gentleman from Texas (Mr. 
Gohmert) is recognized for 60 minutes as the designee of the minority 
leader.
  Mr. GOHMERT. Mr. Speaker, I yield to the gentleman from Florida (Mr. 
Gaetz).

                              {time}  1215


       Remembering the Life of Lieutenant Colonel Samuel Lombardo

  Mr. GAETZ. Mr. Speaker, today I rise to commemorate the life of 
Lieutenant Colonel Samuel Lombardo.
  Sam and his family legally immigrated to the United States from 
Italy. He enlisted to serve in the Army National Guard's 28th Infantry 
Division just 1 month following the start of World War II.
  After training, he was deployed to Europe where he would serve as 
platoon leader and executive officer of I Company, 394th Infantry 
Regiment, 99th Division, and he would always remind constituents in 
northwest Florida that he fought in the Battle of the Bulge.
  During this time, Lieutenant Colonel Lombardo and his platoon created 
their own makeshift flag out of scraps of red and blue cloth. For the 
white, they used German surrender flags. They used this as their battle 
flag in victorious campaigns across the Rhine and Danube Rivers.
  Following World War II, Lieutenant Colonel Lombardo continued his 
service to our country in Korea and Vietnam.
  Throughout his service, Lieutenant Colonel Lombardo earned the Silver 
Star, the Bronze Star with ``V'' for Valor, as well as an Oak Leaf 
Cluster with Meritorious Achievement among 10 other medals.
  Mr. Speaker, please join me in honoring the late Lieutenant Colonel 
Samuel Lombardo.
  I asked Sam how he was able to be so healthy after more than 100 
years living on the planet Earth. He said that his secret was red wine 
and almonds at night. I think I will have a little of both in his honor 
this evening.
  Mr. GOHMERT. Mr. Speaker, I yield to the gentlewoman from Iowa (Mrs. 
Miller-Meeks).


                   Recognizing Muscatine High School

  Mrs. MILLER-MEEKS. Mr. Speaker, I rise today to recognize a high 
school in my district that was recently recognized for their commitment 
to student success.
  For over 15 years, Iowa has partnered with the ACT's college 
application campaign to increase the number of first-generation college 
students and students from low-income households in applying for and 
pursuing higher education.
  I am proud to announce that, in 2020, 176 Iowa schools participated 
in the college application campaign, and all together, 504 students 
completed 1,578 college applications. Of the 176 schools that 
participated, Muscatine High School in my district was awarded the 2020 
School of Excellence Award for Iowa from ACT. Muscatine was selected 
for this great award based on their commitment to student success and 
for serving as an exemplary model for Iowa's college application 
campaign.
  Congratulations to the students and faculty at Muscatine for being 
leaders in academic achievement and for serving as a great role model 
for student success in Iowa and the entire Nation.
  Mr. GOHMERT. It is wonderful to hear that about Iowa.
  Mr. Speaker, I yield to the gentleman from Arizona (Mr. Schweikert).


                        New Spending Initiatives

  Mr. SCHWEIKERT. Mr. Speaker, I thank Congressman Gohmert for yielding 
to me.
  For anyone who is not particularly familiar, we have sort of 
mechanisms. Last night, we were running late, and once we hit 10 
o'clock, we were shut off. And trying to do 21 boards in 8 minutes, I 
apologize to those who have to try to take our words down.
  But I wanted to just touch on a couple of things. One really quickly, 
we were just blessed to have Secretary Yellen in front of Ways and 
Means. I have tremendous respect for and have built a relationship with 
her when she was Federal Reserve Chair.
  I want us all to pay attention to a promise that the Secretary and 
the President have made, and that is the new spending initiatives will 
be covered by the new taxes, the new revenues. I assume that is an 
honorable way to do it. We will fight over what the spending priorities 
are, and none of these games where we are going to do 15 years of tax 
hikes to cover 10 years of spending because, let's be honest, that is a 
complete fraud on the American people.
  But the best math that is coming out from a number of groups right 
now is the tax hikes that are being proposed, the revenues, are only 
going to cover maybe, if you are being optimistic, Mr. Speaker, on the 
receipts, 50 percent of the new spending.
  Yesterday, I think it is Penn Wharton that put out their model, I 
guess last week, that the capital gains tax itself loses $33 billion 
over the first 10 years. So, it is not scored to 15 years; it is 10.
  But, Mr. Speaker, if you do what is called the basis, which is how 
much is subject to the capital gains tax even though the perversity of 
it is that a huge portion of that is actually inflation we are going to 
tax, it would raise, in their model, $133 billion. The administration, 
the Democrats, have said this will be 330. So, they are only hitting 
about one-third of the revenues that have been promised from the 
capital gains tax.
  I really want to help the Democrats keep their promise that their new 
$4 trillion proposed spending will be covered by their new receipts, 
their new revenues. They have a really interesting math problem. Either 
they are going to have to cut their spending substantially in half or 
dramatically raise taxes on the American people.
  We asked Secretary Yellen: Should we expect a value-added tax? Is a 
VAT in our future?
  The math is really ugly--we are going to talk about that in a second 
here--to cover all these new spending initiatives plus just the 
demographic curve that is already about to crush us, debtwise.
  The answer was an interesting one. It is: Well, that is not part of 
our current proposal.
  For everyone who is interested in tax policy--and I accept that maybe 
some of us are a little bit on the geek side--I am fascinated with the 
tax on Medicare financing. Keep an ear out because the only way I think 
the left is going to get these types of revenues is to actually go to 
completely new revenue-raising, new tax regimes.
  Let's talk about what I consider is the greatest fragility of our 
Nation's future. It turns out it is not Republican or Democrat policy. 
It is demographics.
  What is the fastest growing demographic in the United States? It is 
getting old. We are graying very, very fast. It is baby boomers.
  When you look at this chart--and we did this last night, but we did 
it sort of caffeinated, very fast--take the next 30 years. This is 
without all the new spending that has been proposed this year by the 
new administration. This is our baseline, $101 trillion of debt in 30 
years at today's dollars. This is inflation-adjusted dollars, 67 
percent.

  Functionally, $68 trillion of debt is just Medicare. Only about $3 
trillion is the rest of government, so it is Medicare, then Social 
Security.
  If you believe, Mr. Speaker, like I do, that we have an absolute 
moral obligation to keep our promises to those folks who have paid into 
Social Security and Medicare, then what are we going to do to keep that 
promise?
  The reality of it is that this is what buries us as a country. It is 
our demographics and the promises that are dramatically unfunded. 
Remember, Mr. Speaker, it is only maybe 4 years or so that the Medicare 
trust fund--which is only part A, which is the hospital portion--that 
trust fund is gone.
  Part B is actually seeing a doctor. Part C is managed care. That has 
its own little, in some ways, financial benefits. And D is drugs. Parts 
B and D are 100 percent out of the general fund. They don't have trust 
funds.
  This is absolutely critical. This will drive all government policy. 
If you are someone who wants money for education, if you are someone 
who wants money for the environment or our military, then the fact of 
the matter is it is Medicare that consumes us.

[[Page H2917]]

  One of my great frustrations is when you look at the math of how much 
is spending, Mr. Speaker, and then the financing of that spending, you 
get a sense that, as Republicans, we have this bad habit. We will go 
and say: Well, we will balance the budget through waste and fraud.
  Democrats will go and say: Well, we are going to balance it by 
nationalizing healthcare, Medicare for All.
  None of those are real. We are not telling the truth.
  Let's walk through just a couple of things that are in my craw right 
now. This is just one portion of the left's bill called H.R. 3. From a 
conceptual standpoint, it is an honest debate of what are we going to 
do about prescription drug costs.
  The methodology, though, Mr. Speaker, if you actually read the 
research, in a decade, it is killing people and costing more because we 
are on the cusp of a time of miracles.
  This is really important to get our heads around. We have all heard 
about this concept of mRNA. We have talked about it for 20-plus years. 
Years ago, I used to come to this mike and talk about this concept of 
bio-foundry.
  Mr. Speaker, the fact of the matter is, we can take a snippet of your 
DNA and a snippet of your cancer, your disease, or your virus, and it 
would take weeks. And for the CAR-T therapy for cancer, it was $350,000 
just to get you your shot, but it was curing people. We just moved up 
10 years in technology.
  That is one of the amazing things Operation Warp Speed. It is 
actually one of the few positive things I can say that came out of this 
pandemic is it is here.
  Look up Tesla and mRNA, Mr. Speaker. You find out that all sorts of 
very disruptive companies are investing in these little bio-foundries.
  We are on the edge of curing HIV, sickle cell anemia. We now have a 
cure for hemophilia. And we are also going to cure all sorts of 
cancers. There are some amazing things happening. The problem is they 
are expensive, Mr. Speaker. But they cure you.
  H.R. 3 does something that I think is fairly dark and fairly 
sinister, and we need our brothers and sisters on the Democrat side to 
be honest with constituents, and that is something called reference 
pricing. If a quality year is bought through a drug, but it costs more 
than, in this case, $37,000 in Great Britain, Mr. Speaker, you don't 
get it.
  H.R. 3 does this where they take a basket of some of these countries 
and say that we are going to use their cap. So, you are prepared to 
turn to your constituent and say: Oh, that drug is $40,000. Yes, it 
gives you that quality year, but it is over our cap, so we are not 
going to provide you that pharmaceutical.
  By doing that, we just destroyed small, disruptive bio-foundry pharma 
that is curing people. We are going to subject our population to say 
that the misery you have today is the misery you are going to have 
tomorrow, Mr. Speaker, because we are going to shut down the 
disruption. We are going to protect--here is the sinister thing that 
healthcare economists talk about. The Democrats' H.R. 3 actually 
protects Big Pharma because the industry now becomes you just adjust 
your current patent, and that is how you make a living, Mr. Speaker.
  But the ones that nip their heels that cure things, it is like the 
hepatitis C we cure now. Those cures don't come because we have just 
wiped out the income stream.
  We need to rethink. If Republicans and Democrats have a common goal 
that we need to look at pharmaceutical costs, then destroying the 
pipeline that cures people and that ends the misery is really dark.

  Mr. Speaker, we Republicans have our sins. How many of us will get 
behind a microphone and talk about price transparency? Price 
transparency is a really good thing, but it has almost no real effect 
on the price of healthcare. The best academic studies we have been able 
to find in our office is 0.1 to 0.7 percent.
  My point is really simple here. The ACA, ObamaCare, was a financing 
bill. It was who got subsidized and who had to pay. Our Republican 
alternative was a financing bill. It was who had to pay and who got 
subsidized. Medicare for All is a financing bill.
  When are we going to have the really tougher discussion of what we 
pay? Let's disrupt the price of healthcare through technology.
  How many of us went to Blockbuster Video last weekend? We don't 
because now we hit a button called Netflix and all sorts of other 
things. We allow disruption to happen in other parts of our healthcare, 
but we have built so many regulatory barriers and so many licensing 
barriers, crazy things that would disrupt healthcare.
  One of my grand proposals--and this one needs to be Republicans and 
Democrats coming together--that $68 trillion over the next 30 years in 
just Medicare spending, that is a substantial driver for U.S. sovereign 
debt. Thirty-one percent of it is just diabetes.
  It turns out, Mr. Speaker, if you and I can have a revolution in 
ending the misery of diabetes, it is also the single biggest initiative 
you can have to U.S. sovereign debt.
  It is time Republicans and Democrats come together and do an 
Operation Warp Speed on diabetes. Yes, there is really neat research 
that is on the cusp of almost curatives for type 1, the autoimmune 
pancreatic cells. But the political side is going to be really tough 
for all of us because we are going to have to talk about type 2, which 
has a substantial lifestyle component in it. It needs a discussion of 
what we do in nutrition support as a country and what we do in our farm 
bill as a country.
  Mr. Speaker, if we care about people, if we really are going to come 
here and give speeches about how minority communities and my Native 
American communities from Arizona had such horrible outcomes during 
COVID, are you willing to look at the comorbidities that were there 
before COVID? It is diabetes.

                              {time}  1230

  And it turns out, spending money on this management curative--and I 
really want curative--turns out to be one of the most powerful things 
you and I could ever do for U.S. sovereign debt going forward. It is 31 
percent of just Medicare spending, and the numbers we are still working 
on for Medicaid and other things.
  So part of my other proposal is there are things we could do almost 
overnight that have incredible impacts on the cost of healthcare in 
this country; and here is one that I beg of us to start getting in our 
lexicon.
  Sixteen percent of the healthcare spending this year, over half a 
trillion dollars, just this year, will be people not taking their meds 
or taking them incorrectly. You have hypertension, you don't take your 
meds, you have a stroke. You have high cholesterol, you don't take your 
meds--and those things are cheap and inexpensive. Grandma is forgetful, 
or we get busy in our lives.
  And it turns out there are things where the pill top talks to your 
phone. It talks to you. There are other ones where it dispenses the 
pharmaceuticals to you.
  It turns out the technology of getting people to take their 
pharmaceuticals properly, if we would understand its impact, that is 16 
percent of U.S. healthcare spending is just not taking our 
pharmaceuticals properly. That is a half a trillion dollars.
  Think about what you could do with a half a trillion dollars a year--
not over 10, not over 15; a year--and how much less misery you would 
have in this country by people having strokes, getting sick.
  This is not a revolution of trying to crush pharma or go after drug 
prices. It is actually taking a look and using this crazy thing we 
call, oh, yeah, math, and a calculator, and also technology.
  And, yes, it doesn't work necessarily in our political lexicon. It is 
a little harder to campaign on, but it happens to be factual.
  The other thing I am going to beg of us--and Congressman Gohmert, I 
appreciate him yielding to me. So I promise I will only do one or two 
more boards.
  I need us to think revolutionary. Before the pandemic, a Democratic 
colleague,   Mike Thompson, from California, a good guy, has worked 
with me on telemedicine. It was a piece of legislation that 
substantially was going to go nowhere because there were lots and lots 
and lots and lots of lobbyists who hated it because it disrupts the 
money.
  But when the pandemic hit, our telemedicine bill became law. It 
expires

[[Page H2918]]

when they declare the pandemic over. The expansion of reimbursement and 
access to telemedicine goes away. We need to fix that.
  But we also now need to understand what is telemedicine. Telemedicine 
is the thing you can wear on your wrist; the thing you can wear on your 
chest; the thing you blow into.
  The technology is here to crash the price of healthcare. And all the 
skeptics who attacked telemedicine before the pandemic, oh Grandma's 
not going to be able to use; they don't know how to work FaceTime; no 
one is going to want to make a phone call to a doctor or a healthcare 
professional.
  Turns out they were wrong. We have the last 18 months of proof. The 
satisfaction rates are off the chart. A, we need to continue it, but we 
need to expand the definition.
  And then the other things the pandemic has brought us is things we 
never thought of.
  How about a little home kit?
  These are available today. Actually, you can get them sent to your 
house in a day. Blow into it. It tells you if you have COVID-19.
  Well, if that exists for COVID, what would happen if I turned to you 
and said, turns out we have the technology today where you can have a 
medical lab in your medicine cabinet. You blow into it, it tells you if 
you even have cancer cells or a virus or bacteria. It exists today.
  We, as a body, need to legalize the disruptive technologies that 
allow us to disrupt the price of healthcare if we are going to save 
Medicare, save the country from the crushing debt. And, yes, we are 
going to annoy a lot of incumbent investors and a lot of incumbent 
businesses, but it is the right and moral thing to do.
  We have a society that has become a country of oligopolies, and 
Congress has become a protection racket. We protect incumbents; not 
incumbent elected officials, incumbent business models.
  Yet the disruption of the technology that is here today crushes the 
misery of so many of our brothers and sisters out there who have 
chronic conditions, that get sick.
  We can crash the price of healthcare. We can make us healthier as a 
society. We can take on, in that same breath, the crushing debt that is 
here. And it is demographic. It is coming. No matter how many speeches 
we give pretending we have a way around it, the only way around it is 
we have got to change the actual price of healthcare.
  I beg of us, we need to think differently because this place, often 
our policy sets, sort of sounds like it is still the 1990s.
  Mr. GOHMERT. Would the gentleman yield for a question?
  Mr. SCHWEIKERT. Oh, I would love to yield.
  Mr. GOHMERT. Mr. Speaker, I appreciate Mr. Schweikert's ongoing 
analyses of the way we mismanage money around Washington, D.C. And I 
was reading about proposals to go after the billionaires, the mega-
rich, and I recall what Ronald Reagan's economist, economic adviser, 
Arthur Laffer, had said. Dr. Laffer said--he told a small group of us 
years ago--if you want to produce money--of course, I am asking you 
this because I have such great respect for your monetary analyses.
  If you want to go after money, you want to produce tax revenue, the 
one place you will never get it is going after the super-rich because 
they are the only people in America who have the wherewithal to avoid 
whatever tax you put on them.

  What is your thought about that analysis?
  Mr. SCHWEIKERT. I have actually been blessed to spend lots of time 
with Professor Laffer and, actually, a couple of other folks who also 
have Nobel Prizes in economics. They tolerate me.
  Gilder, I consider a personal friend, if you really want to geek out.
  First off, you have a conceptual problem and the left doesn't--we 
have got to work with them to first admit we tax income. Property taxes 
are really the only things we tax wealth. We tax your real estate 
wealth.
  So the leaked IRS data, which is a real problem if you want 
confidence in a tax system that, once again, the IRS is back to being 
weaponized. If you want to tax wealth, that is a different tax system, 
and there are all sorts of games you can play with that.
  You could take your wealth and say, all right, here is what I am 
going to do. I am not going to take an income. I am going to borrow 
from it.
  So how do you tax it?
  You have to conceptualize very, very different.
  We also--we actually have the math, even though it may not happen in 
the fiscal year you want it to. The ultrawealthy give away most of 
their wealth. That has been a tradition in this country, particularly 
for about a century and a half.
  A tax system to work--and the gentleman and I have actually had a 
side conversation about this. You have to find what is the most--or the 
least disruptive tax that maximizes revenue, but also maximizes 
economic expansion. So we are already seeing some data that the 
Democrats' proposal on capital gains tax, actually, without changing 
the basis, actually raises substantially less revenues.
  Now how is that possible?
  It is because you stop engaging in those economic activities.
  So somewhere there is a sweet spot that maximizes revenues, but also 
then maximizes economic activity. And I have an absolute fixation that 
2018, 2019 were miracle years economically for the working poor in this 
country. It is 2 years where, actually, income inequality genuinely 
shrank; the broad based nature of the working poor getting dramatically 
less poor.
  That shouldn't be a partisan fight. It should be the bipartisan goal.
  And the rich got richer, but not as fast as the poor got less poor. 
And that is back to, in a weird way, a long answer to your question.
  We need to have an honest debate of what maximizes revenues while 
minimizing economic damage. And right now, just throwing out numbers, 
and then throwing out fake--and I am being a little brutal on that--
fake models from the administration saying we are going to raise $4 
trillion, we are going to cover all of our new spending, when all of 
the other models--and very soon joint tax will score it and we will see 
what the reality is.
  But everyone it is scoring right now, the Dems are only getting about 
half the revenues. And we have already seen the first analysis of the 
corporate tax hike. It unemploys 1 million Americans in the first 24 
months.
  Mr. GOHMERT. That would be people who would pay income tax if they 
didn't lose their jobs.
  Mr. SCHWEIKERT. That didn't lose their jobs. And the harder part of 
the scoring is--and this was one of the miracles of 2018 and 2019--the 
Democrats repeatedly attacked the tax reforms from the end of 2017 and 
the regulatory reforms.
  But there were so many people working, and there was such vitality in 
the economy that Medicare part A, the trust fund, grew in years. Social 
Security grew in years because there were so many people paying their 
payroll tax.
  They didn't really pay income tax because they were part of the 
population that had been removed from having to pay income tax because 
we changed--but it turns out, if you actually, truly believe we have a 
societal obligation to keep our promises, to keep Social Security, to 
keep Medicare vibrant, it turns out you need an incredibly vibrant 
economy for people to be working. You can do that also by a rational 
tax policy instead of a punishing one.
  Mr. GOHMERT. I know you would have----
  Mr. SCHWEIKERT. I am sorry; it is a long answer, but it actually 
has----
  Mr. GOHMERT. No, no. I appreciate my friend from Arizona, Mr. 
Schweikert's excellent analysis, because we do want to have a vibrant 
economy. As the saying goes, it lifts all boats. And I really 
appreciate the analysis on where the Medicare spending is going. That 
is something we need to deal with.
  I hear solutions of throwing money at the problem, but the real 
problem is we don't have the proper money to throw at it because the 
economy is not doing as it should.

  And then I still hear our friends talk about the need to stop climate 
change. Unfortunately, the climate has been changing since the Earth 
ever appeared. And I have got a lot of friends out there. And I say 
friends facetiously. People on the left--I am beginning to understand 
that sarcasm is a tool that is appreciated by the intelligent. So the 
left, the alt-left, they don't get it.

[[Page H2919]]

  But this is an article from Ethan Hunt back in August of 2019. It 
says: NASA admits that climate change occurs because of changes in 
Earth's solar orbit; not because of SUVs and fossil fuel.
  Well, it really can be a combination of things. But having found out 
from the former NASA Director that the Moon's orbit is slightly 
changing and the Earth's orbit is slightly changing and, as the term 
was, it is becoming more squashed, well, that would mean there are 
times when we are closer to the Sun and we are further away from the 
Sun.
  And I know there are some leftists at NASA that said: Oh, no, 
changing Earth's orbit doesn't affect our climate at all.
  And I would humbly submit that you don't have to be a rocket 
scientist to understand that if you get closer to the Sun, or if you 
get further away from the Sun, it is absolutely going to affect your 
climate; just as more solar activity, more solar flares, they are going 
to affect our climate. And there is not a lot that we can do about more 
solar flares, solar activities, solar hot spots.
  And I would sarcastically ask a question regarding the Bureau of Land 
Management and National Forest Service, since they were going to be 
spending so much time on climate change, and we had heard the Earth's 
orbit was changing slightly and the Moon's orbit was changing slightly.
  Could they do anything about that?

                              {time}  1245

  For those who thought I was really challenging BLM, the Bureau of 
Land Management and the National Forest Service, like they were going 
to do something about the Earth's orbit, the National Forest Service 
and Bureau of Land Management, they are not going to do anything about 
the Earth's orbit because they can't. That is not their job.
  Although there is some professor that thinks we might could adjust 
our orbit, I think that is still yet to be arrived at scientifically. 
It is an interesting concept, but I had no belief that it was about to 
happen by the Bureau of Land Management and National Forest Service.
  It is interesting to look back. I missed this article back in 2019. 
It goes into much more detail about not only the changing orbit but the 
changing tilt from time to time.
  Then if you do more digging, you find out that actually, going back 
millions--some say 56 million; some say billions--that the planet was 
much hotter, and the planet's orbit was closer to the Sun. It has moved 
back some, according to some, over the millions or billions, whatever 
you believe, number of years.
  I also want to mention this article from The Washington Times, June 
16, 2021, Stephen Dinan, about ``Smartphone smugglers: How social media 
is reshaping border crime.'' It is really intriguing. The author does 
an amazing job of pulling these things together.
  It is interesting. The drug cartels south of our border, apparently, 
we are informed, have workers in every city in America. Of course, we 
have heard before that the Border Patrol, ICE, the U.S. Government is 
considered to be the logistics for the multibillion-dollar drug cartels 
in Mexico because the drug cartels get them across illegally into the 
United States. And I have seen people in the middle of the night, as 
they are being processed by the Border Patrol, long lines of people. I 
have watched them comparing addresses and sometimes switching 
addresses.
  They are the addresses that the drug cartels have given them as to 
where the drug cartels want them to go work in order to earn enough 
money, either drug trafficking, sex trafficking, or human trafficking, 
to pay off the rest of their debt to the drug cartels for getting them 
into the United States illegally. Many times, it is the U.S. 
Government, which means U.S. taxpayers, that end up paying to send the 
drug cartels' employees, or indentured servants, to the cities where 
the drug cartels want them.
  It is incredible that we, as a U.S. Government, are helping the drug 
cartels in Mexico make the tens of billions of dollars that they use to 
keep different levels of government corrupt in Mexico, that keep the 
Mexican people from having the economy that would allow them to have 
across-the-board wonderful homes, have wonderful jobs, and be one of 
the top economies in the world. The corruption of the drug cartels 
keeps Mexico from having their true place in the top economies in the 
world.
  They have some of the hardest-working people in the world. They have 
incredible natural resources, a fantastic location--actually, better 
than the U.S. because they are between North and South America, and 
they are between the Pacific and the Atlantic. Incredible location, 
hardworking people, great natural resources, good ports, but the 
corruption that the American people are funding through their U.S. 
Government and through the purchase of drugs that are massively coming 
into this country--if somebody truly has compassion for the people of 
Mexico and Central America, they would demand that our southern border 
be secured, that we continue to provide visas in greater numbers than 
any country in the world, but we secure the border so that we cut the 
tens of billions of dollars from flowing to the drug cartels that then 
corrupt and destroy lives, kill Americans with fentanyl and other drugs 
that are pouring into our country. And the Mexican people would come to 
the United States on vacation to spend the significant, wonderful money 
they had earned without fear of the drug cartels and what they will do 
to them if they are not subservient.
  There was a time in Mexico when people who were wealthy knew the drug 
cartels would normally leave them alone. There was a time in Mexico 
when the drug cartels basically had a wink-and-nod agreement: Look, we 
won't have attacks in tourist attractions because we know how important 
that money is.
  Well, all of those days are gone. If we were really a compassionate 
neighbor, we would secure our border. We would stop drawing off people 
with the potential to be the best citizens that Guatemala, Mexico, 
other countries have, drawing them up here because of the corruption 
below our border that we in the U.S. Government are helping fund.
  It really needs to stop. But it is getting worse, much, much worse, 
as we are seeing numbers that no one has seen in many, many years.
  There has been so much appropriate concern about January 6 and what 
happened that day. Unfortunately, we don't know all that happened that 
day. There are some major questions that need to be answered.
  We know that the former chief of the Capitol Police testified that 
they got no intelligence from the FBI about potential violence on 
January 6. There were lots of stories about people who were here at the 
Capitol on January 6 that may have carried a Confederate flag, may have 
had red on and MAGA or Trump.
  But the Capitol Police had told me the day before: Hey, we have heard 
there are going to be people who hate Trump that are going to be trying 
to blend in, and there is going to be violence, and we are concerned 
about it.
  But the chief of the Capitol Police said they got no intel like that 
from the FBI.
  An article a few days ago from Revolver says: ``Unindicted Co-
Conspirators in the January 6 Cases Raise Disturbing Questions of 
Federal Foreknowledge.'' That is June 14. I saw my friend Tucker 
Carlson covered this last night.
  But this is really disturbing, and this is something that I know from 
my time here in Congress has disturbed Democrats and Republicans alike 
across the aisle because we don't like to see government agents 
stirring up trouble or find that there are criminal acts that would not 
likely have occurred had not the Federal Government been participating, 
whether they were actual agents or undercover agents or informants that 
were working for the Federal Government.

  But this is scary stuff. This is kind of third-world stuff. This is 
not only third-world stuff, but this is like Putin kind of activity.
  If there were Federal agents that were involved on January 6, we 
really need to know what the FBI knew and when they knew it. Not only 
that, we need to know how much participation did any of our Federal 
friends, either at DOJ, FBI, or any of the intel community, what kind 
of role were they playing.

[[Page H2920]]

  There is information that came out about the effort to kidnap the 
Michigan Governor, and it has been said that there were Federal agents 
that were involved in that. It would seem, if you have 14 people that 
are involved in a conspiracy to commit a crime, and over a third of 
them, including people in leadership, are Federal agents, undercover 
agents, or people that are working for a Federal entity, that we have 
got some serious problems, and we have not done adequate oversight.
  It disturbs me greatly that there was not more information 
forthcoming from our Federal law enforcement intelligence, DOJ, than 
was received here on Capitol Hill because, surely, if they had known 
the level of planning by a small group to actually commit violence and 
break into our U.S. Capitol, they would have been better prepared.
  I know some of us have had extreme differences with the Speaker, but 
I just feel sure if she had known the level of violence that was being 
talked about and planned and monitored by DOJ and FBI, surely she would 
not have allowed the Sergeant at Arms to turn down National Guard 
support on January 6.
  This article pulls from documents, legal documents, that have been 
filed by the Federal Government in some of these different cases. This 
article says: ``To address the matter directly in the following three 
questions: In the year leading up to January 6 and during January 6 
itself, to what extent were the three primary militia groups--the Oath 
Keepers, the Proud Boys, and the Three Percenters--that the FBI, DOJ, 
Pentagon, and network news have labeled most responsible for planning 
and executing a Capitol attack on January 6 infiltrated by agencies of 
the Federal Government, or informants of said agencies?''
  Question 2: ``Exactly how many Federal undercover agents or 
confidential informants were present at the Capitol or in the Capitol 
during the infamous `siege,' and what roles did they play--merely 
passive informants or active instigators?''
  And, third: ``Finally, of all of the unindicted co-conspirators 
referenced in the charging documents,'' the official Federal pleadings, 
``of those indicted for crimes on January 6, how many worked as a 
confidential informant or as an undercover operative for the Federal 
Government--FBI, Army Counterintelligence, et cetera?''

                              {time}  1300

  ``If the narrative about January 6 does not conform to the questions 
above, the American people will never learn the most important truth 
about what January 6 is, and what kind of country they're really living 
in.
  ``If it turns out the Federal Government did in fact have undercover 
agents or confidential informants embedded within the so-called militia 
groups indicted for conspiring to obstruct the Senate certification on 
January 6, the implications would be nothing short of seismic. 
Especially if such agents or informants enjoyed extremely senior-level 
positions within such groups.''
  And the thing is, like I said, they have got documentation, the 
Federal pleadings that the United States Government has filed in some 
of these cases, that really raised serious issues. Yeah, there is no 
question, there were radical groups there, and those three seem to be 
the most prominent. But from the pleadings from the Department of 
Justice itself, it appears that they had significant presence and 
participation in what went on.
  We do need to see the 14,000 hours of security video, seeing Ashli 
Babbitt killed by an officer standing off to the side. There were 
officers in front of the window, but then there were officers on the 
other side where Ashli was; and it appeared it was John Sullivan, a 
Trump hater, that told them if they will move out of the way they won't 
get hurt, and the officers appeared. Well, they moved out of the way, 
and these guys broke through the glass.
  And yet with all of the people that the FBI has sought information on 
and put up pictures--and it appears they were probably wearing masks, 
but there is another 14,000 hours of video. These guys were around in 
the Capitol, around the Capitol. They didn't have their masks up at all 
times. But it doesn't appear that the FBI has asked for assistance in 
identifying those people that broke through the glass or that were 
right there, at least when Ashli was shot in the neck and killed.
  And that normally means if they are not asking for help in 
identifying somebody that they know who they are--and maybe they are 
person 1, person 2, person 3, person 15--that are referred to in the 
pleadings of people that were working with the FBI or Federal 
authorities of some kind.
  But this is very unsettling stuff. It was bad enough to have our 
Capitol attacked. As a former felony judge, I would have no problem 
sending people to prison that broke into this Capitol, that literally 
broke in or that did damage or that stole things here. There is no 
place for that, and they do need to be severely punished.
  But were some of those people doing those things working for the FBI? 
Were they egged on by Federal authorities? Because it sure looks like 
from some of these legal documents they filed and the masking of names 
and referring to them as something other than their real names that we 
have a serious problem with some of the people that were involved that 
day that it appears were either working for Federal authorities or were 
informants for Federal authorities and had leadership positions in 
those groups and quite possibly, in some cases probably, helped to egg 
them on.
  This article says in many cases the unindicted co-conspirators appear 
to be much more aggressive and egregious participants in the very so-
called conspiracy, serving as the basis for charging those indicted. 
The question immediately arises as to why this is the case and forces 
us to consider whether certain individuals are being protected from 
indictment because they were involved in January 6 as undercover 
operatives or confidential informants for a Federal agency.
  So another place further on in the article it points out: ``This 
would be far worse than the already bad situation of the government 
knowing about the possibility of violence and doing nothing. Instead, 
this would imply that elements of the federal government were active 
instigators in the most egregious and spectacular aspects of January 6, 
amounting to a monumental entrapment scheme used as a pretext to 
imprison otherwise harmless protesters at the Capitol--and in a much 
larger sense used to frame the entire MAGA movement as potential 
domestic terrorists.''
  There is so much more. Let's see, further on, I guess this is page 8/
26. ``In one of the plot's climactic scenes, in the main van driving up 
to look at Governor Whitmer's vacation home''--and that is of course 
the plot to kidnap the Governor--``three out of the five people in the 
van--60 percent of the plot's senior leaders--were Federal agents and 
informants.''
  ``FBI infiltrators comprised, at the very least''--talking about 
overall in that plot--``26 percent of the plotters. That is, at least 
five FBI operatives have been disclosed, against just 14 suspects 
indicted.''
  So looking at some of the pleadings by the DOJ themselves, but just 
to give an idea of what we are dealing with, it says, ``On December 30, 
2020, Watkins and Caldwell exchanged the following text messages:
  ``Watkins: Looks like we are green light to come to D.C. on the 6th. 
The rally point still at your place?
  ``Caldwell: Not that I am aware. Have been contacted by no one. 
Typical (Person one). Here's the rub: (Person two) and I will be in a 
hotel within striking distance of the city starting on the 4th, so we 
won't even be here. There will be some stuff going on during the 5th, 
and we want to be a part of that whenever it shakes out.''
  Person one and person two were apparently working for the Federal 
authorities, some Federal agency.
  Another place it references person two, person three, person one, and 
they seem to be significant leaders in what is going on.
  Another place: Person three--emailed person three several maps along 
with the message. These maps will get you from the hotel into D.C.
  I mean, person 10 checked into the Hilton Garden Inn in Vienna.
  Person three, another reference.
  Person 15 and person 20 are referenced.
  These are people that they are covering up their names because they 
are working for the Federal authorities.

[[Page H2921]]

  If you look at some of the video on January 6, there were a lot of 
people walking around. They had no business being in the Capitol. But 
it is quite concerning that people that were extremely active at all 
should have been or were working for Federal entities such that they 
have to cover up their names because of their complicity with the 
Federal authorities during that day.
  So that is United States versus Caldwell, Crowl, and then there is 
one Government's Opposition to Defendant's Motion for Reconsideration 
of Detention.
  They are holding some of these people still. Some with 23 hours, 24 
hours a day in solitary. Some were just walking around, they did no 
damage. They should not have come into the Capitol, but it remains to 
be seen why the government has their stinger out so much for people no 
matter how mild their participation on January 6.
  And yet the biggest damage done to the United States in protests was 
last summer, and those folks aren't being treated the same way that 
others are.
  So there are some very serious questions that need to be answered. We 
do need the answers. We need to know how many Federal agents; how many 
informants had given information to Federal agencies and why in the 
world all of that information was not provided to people that needed to 
protect Capitol Hill.
  So we need an investigation. We don't need one that has an entire 
Democrat staff. It needs to be truly bipartisan to get to the bottom of 
just what happened that day and who caused it to happen.
  With that, I yield back the balance of my time.

                          ____________________