[Congressional Record Volume 168, Number 189 (Tuesday, December 6, 2022)]
[House]
[Pages H8796-H8799]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




          RECOGNIZING FIRST ANNIVERSARY OF KENTUCKY TORNADOES

  The SPEAKER pro tempore. Under the Speaker's announced policy of 
January 4, 2021, the Chair recognizes the gentleman from Kentucky (Mr. 
Comer) for 30 minutes.
  Mr. COMER. Mr. Speaker, I rise today to recognize the 1-year 
anniversary of the devastating tornadoes that struck my district.
  On December 10 and 11, 2021, communities from Fulton to Taylor County 
endured a fierce, long-track tornado that leveled numerous communities. 
The damage sustained during the relentless storm was unimaginable, and 
our prayers are still with the families who lost loved ones.
  In the aftermath of this disaster, Kentuckians across the 
Commonwealth came together to offer help, provide support, and deliver 
aid when many needed it most.
  As the communities continue to rebuild and recover, I want to 
recognize the local servant leaders and citizens who are helping get 
our communities back on their feet. As we continue to move forward, I 
am inspired by their courageous efforts to restore our local 
communities.
  Serving the people of Kentucky's First Congressional District is an 
honor, and my office remains committed to assisting their recovery 
efforts in every way.


                  Dawson Springs Tornado Relief Effort

  Mr. COMER. Mr. Speaker, I rise today to recognize the selfless 
efforts of local Kentuckians who served their community in a time of 
need.
  Todd Marshall, Larry Cavanah, Kent Workman, Zach Willett, Paulette 
Gray,

[[Page H8797]]

Brandon Godbey, Tamara Rice, Abby Garrett, and Gabe Workman answered 
the call to aid their fellow Kentuckians after the devastating tornado 
on December 10, 2021.
  With their assistance, Dawson Springs Independent school was 
transformed overnight into the Dawson Springs tornado relief center. As 
the community began to rebuild and recover, thousands walked through 
the school's front doors in need of aid.
  This group of Kentuckians dedicated their time to help sort over 
29,000 pounds of clothing, prepare warm meals each day, and provide 
families with a Christmas by converting classrooms into departments for 
women's clothing, men's clothing, baby equipment, and toys.
  On behalf of Kentucky's First Congressional District, I express my 
heartfelt thanks to this group of extraordinary administrators, staff, 
faculty, and students. Their compassion for our communities did not go 
unnoticed.


             Honoring Judge John Phelps Upon His Retirement

  Mr. COMER. Mr. Speaker, I rise to honor Judge John Phelps on his 
retirement as judge executive of Cumberland County, Kentucky.
  A native of Cumberland County, John has dedicated his life to 
bettering his local community and State. After graduating from 
Cumberland County High School, John married his high school sweetheart, 
Leslie, and raised a family of four children and four grandchildren in 
his hometown of Burkesville.
  In addition to being a dedicated family man, John served south 
central Kentucky in various ways throughout his career, including as a 
well-respected loan officer and realtor before becoming Cumberland 
County judge executive in 2011.
  For over a decade, John served his constituents with honor and 
humility. In 2020, he was elected president of the Kentucky County 
Judge/Executive Association. In this role, he led the association in 
helping judge executives work together to solve common issues and 
improve their local governments.
  I am proud to have worked with Judge John Phelps throughout his 
career and wish him the very best in a well-deserved retirement.


              Honoring Judge Wade White on His Retirement

  Mr. COMER. Mr. Speaker, today, I rise to honor Judge Wade White of 
Lyon County, Kentucky, who is retiring at the end of the year.
  Judge White's dedication to the community has not gone unnoticed. He 
was first elected to the position in 2010 and then reelected in 2014 
and 2018.
  In recognition of his service, Judge White has received multiple 
awards as Lyon County judge executive, including the Keep the Tennessee 
River Beautiful group's Kentucky Elected Official Ripple Effect award.
  He was also inducted into the Freshwater Fishing Hall of Fame in 2016 
and 2018.
  Before taking on his responsibilities as judge executive, he worked 
for 14 years in several roles for State Farm and Progressive Insurance 
companies. In fact, President Biden nominated Judge White to serve on 
the Tennessee Valley Authority board of directors in June of this year.
  Judge White has been a passionate advocate for issues impacting our 
local communities, including Land Between the Lakes, rural broadband 
access, and our effort to rid local waterways of Asian carp.
  When people say the squeaky wheel gets the grease, as the Congressman 
for Lyon County over the past 6 years, I can tell you that Judge White 
is the squeaky wheel.
  On behalf of Kentucky's First Congressional District, I thank Judge 
White for his dedicated service to improving our communities.


          Honoring Judge Hollis Alexander Upon His Retirement

  Mr. COMER. Mr. Speaker, today, I rise to honor Judge Executive Hollis 
Alexander of Trigg County, Kentucky, who is retiring at the end of the 
year.
  Judge Alexander has been a leader and public servant in Trigg County 
and Cadiz for over three decades.
  He has served in various capacities, including working for the Cadiz 
Fire and Police Departments, the Trigg County Ambulance Service and 
Sheriff's Office, and the Pennyrile Narcotics Task Force.
  Before serving in his current position, Judge Alexander was the chief 
of the Cadiz Police Department for 16 years, from 1996 to 2012. After 
being appointed Trigg County judge in 2012, he was reelected in 2014 
and 2018.

  Judge Alexander has been a vocal advocate for Land Between the Lakes 
National Recreation Area and important issues concerning rural 
Kentucky.
  On behalf of Kentucky's First Congressional District, I thank Judge 
Alexander for his commitment to and passion for improving our 
communities.


              Recognizing Bart Rowland Upon His Retirement

  Mr. COMER. Mr. Speaker, I rise to recognize my good friend, Bart 
Rowland, upon his retirement from the Kentucky House of 
Representatives.
  Bart served Monroe, Cumberland, Metcalfe, Green, Hart, and Hardin 
Counties as their voice in Frankfort for 10 years.
  Bart was a very well-respected member of the Kentucky General 
Assembly who quickly rose the ranks to become chairman of the Kentucky 
House Banking and Insurance Committee. As chairman, Bart passed many 
bills that improved the entire financial services industry in Kentucky.
  Bart was elected for the first time in 2012 during a special 
election, which happened as a result of his predecessor being elected 
Kentucky Commissioner of Agriculture. Mr. Speaker, I was Bart's 
predecessor, and I can say with confidence that the people of my home 
area never had a better State representative than Bart Rowland.
  Bart and his wife, Jerri, and their three kids reside in 
Tompkinsville, Kentucky. On behalf of everyone who Bart has represented 
so well over the past decade, I wish him and his family the very best 
in the next chapter of their lives.


              Role of House Oversight and Reform Committee

  Mr. COMER. Mr. Speaker, I would like to discuss an issue today that 
has been in the news a lot over the last few weeks, and it pertains to 
the role of the House Oversight and Reform Committee. God willing, 
January 3, I will take command as chairman of the House Oversight and 
Reform Committee.
  My goal, as I have said to just about every media outlet that has 
asked about it, I want to bring the House Oversight and Reform 
Committee back to its original intent. The intent of the House 
Oversight and Reform Committee is to eliminate waste, fraud, abuse, and 
mismanagement in the Federal Government, and I believe when we look 
around in the Federal Government, we see a whole lot of waste, fraud, 
abuse, and mismanagement.
  When asked about my priorities as the next chairman of the House 
Oversight and Reform Committee, I want to talk about my first priority, 
and that is to get the backs of the taxpayers of the United States of 
America.
  Just in the name of COVID, over the past 3 years, Mr. Speaker, so 
that spans two administrations, this body has been reckless in its 
spending in the name of COVID. When you look at all the stimulus bills, 
all the stimulus programs, all the giveaways, those dollar amounts run 
into the trillions of dollars.
  Now, we can talk about all the money and go down line by line, and we 
will see a lot of success stories. Take the PPP loan program, for 
example. There are some great success stories in there. I don't think 
anyone in this body, regardless of their ideology, regardless of 
whether we are rural, urban, suburban, whatever, wouldn't argue that, 
during COVID, there were industries that suffered far worse than other 
industries.
  For example, anything in the tourism or travel industry, obviously, 
was devastated, whether they be the airline companies, whether they be 
hotels, whether they be anything pertaining to leisure travel. The PPP 
loan program was a lifesaver for many of those businesses.
  When we had the very brief debate on the PPP loan program, the goal 
was to help businesses keep people working during the government 
shutdown by supplementing and subsidizing their payrolls, which was 
noble because if you look at it, the government was going to pay for it 
one way or the other, either in the form of PPP loans or in the form of 
unemployment insurance.

[[Page H8798]]

  So, we had to step up in this body. But, like this body does time 
after time after time, there were not sufficient guardrails on that 
program. We have stories coming in every day by various media outlets, 
by various investigative reporters, by various oversight mainly and 
almost exclusively by Republican committees in this body that will show 
that there were fraudulent businesses that didn't even exist that got 
millions and millions of dollars alone.
  We will find that there were businesses that had record years during 
COVID. They never missed a beat. They never had a layoff. They had 
record years. They got millions and millions of dollars.
  We even read just this week how many law firms in America that never 
missed a beat during COVID got huge PPP loans. We even read that Hunter 
Biden's former law firm got over $10 million in PPP loans despite never 
missing a beat.
  So, in this congressional body, in this House of Representatives, who 
in the majority has been providing oversight over the PPP loan program? 
It has not been the House Oversight and Reform Committee.

                              {time}  1945

  We have been investigating the Washington Commanders. We have been 
investigating what the world would look like if the United States 
passed the Equal Rights Amendment. We have had bills on white 
supremacy. We have had bills on abortion.
  What we haven't had bills on is oversight.
  During the prior 2 years when the House flipped the last time and the 
Democrats took the majority in the House Oversight Committee, there 
were dozens and dozens of high-level Trump cabinet secretaries and 
appointees that testified before the House Oversight Committee. Dozens 
and dozens. I want to say in the upper thirties.
  Fast forward to the last 2 years of the Biden administration. Do you 
know how many cabinet secretaries and undersecretaries have testified 
in front of the House Oversight Committee?
  Zero. Zero. That is going to change on January 3.
  Back to COVID, which is what I want to have as the first hearing of 
the Oversight Committee. We have had programs that have gone unchecked. 
We have made mistakes in this body, like this body always does, 
especially when we rush bills, and we don't read bills and we must pass 
bills.
  Then you look at the unemployment insurance extension. Most of these 
programs were administered by the States. But the States were getting 
money and mandates from the Federal Government.
  And now guess what we are learning, Mr. Speaker?
  We are learning that there were hundreds of thousands of fraudulent 
unemployment claims, maybe millions. It is estimated that as many as 25 
percent of all the extended unemployment that this body continued to 
approve went by the way of fraud; many to foreign countries.
  Who has been looking into that in the House of Representatives over 
the past year and a half?
  Not the House Oversight Committee. I haven't seen a committee in here 
that has been checking into that. So that is going to be our role.
  Then you look at the stimulus money. The hospitals. I love hospitals. 
I have 29 hospitals in my Congressional District; I would say as many 
as anybody in this body. Hospitals received a lot of money. The list 
goes on and on and on. State and local money.
  We had jurisdiction on the House Oversight Committee. $350 billion 
with no guardrails. That is what we kept saying, no guardrails on the 
State and local money.
  Who has been looking into that?
  Not the House Oversight Committee. But that is going to change on 
January 3.
  So we have a lot of challenges in our quest to get the backs of the 
American taxpayers. We want to identify waste. We want to identify 
fraud. We want to identify abuse. We want to hold people accountable 
for abuse and fraud.
  We would love to try to claw some of this money back. And in some 
instances Secret Service with some of the fraud has been able to claw 
some of the money back that was spent fraudulently in the name of 
COVID.
  So all the COVID money that was spent is going to be a priority for 
the House Oversight Committee.
  We are also going to have a huge interest in the debacle at the 
southern border, Mr. Speaker. When you look at what is going on on the 
border--and there has been no shortage of floor speeches on this side 
of the aisle in the past 2 years about that--we are concerned about 
some of the decisions that have been made at the top. We have been to 
the border, the Republicans on the House Oversight Committee, many 
times. I have several members of the committee that represent border 
States. We have heard from Border Patrol agents. And I will tell you, 
Mr. Speaker, what we have heard from Border Patrol agents is very 
concerning, especially about conversations they have had with Secretary 
Mayorkas.
  In a recent trip to the southern border, about a week or so ago, 
Leader McCarthy announced that investigating the potential wrongdoing 
at the southern border would be a priority in the next Congress and 
that Mr. Jordan and Mr. Comer would oversee the investigation. We are 
going to do that. We are going to do that on day one.
  Then we look at other hearings that have been in the news that--I 
don't think it is any secret, and I will conclude with this one, Mr. 
Speaker--we talk about the Biden family influence-pedaling 
investigation.
  Now, there are some media outlets that have done a very good job of 
reporting accurately what the purpose of this investigation is.
  And then there are a whole lot of media outlets that have blown this 
off, and they say this is the Hunter Biden laptop investigation.
  That is not true and let me be very clear. This is an investigation 
of the President of the United States to determine whether or not he 
and his administration is compromised because of the millions and 
millions of dollars that they have received from our adversaries in 
China, Russia, Ukraine, and even the Middle East.
  We look at all the decisions that this administration has made that 
we scratch our heads and say, Why would they do this? Why would they do 
that? Why would they cancel the Keystone pipeline? Why would they cut 
off drilling? Why would they make it harder to get permits? Why are 
they going to Saudi Arabia begging for more oil? Why are we trying to 
force electric vehicles on the Postal Service fleet and the government. 
And why are we doing all of this stuff?
  Then you look at some of the business dealings that the President's 
family was involved in, and the one that strikes me as the most 
concerning, Mr. Speaker, was the one with CEFC China Energy, which was 
a Chinese energy company.
  Then Hudson West, which was the company that the President's son was 
involved with, a company that the President's son also asked for keys 
to be made because of his partner coming in, which happened to be the 
current President of the United States.
  But regardless, there was a map of the United States of America on 
that laptop. It was in Chinese, and it had all these major natural gas 
suppliers listed. The objective was to help this Chinese energy company 
not only purchase American liquefied natural gas, but also, to help 
this Chinese company start taking ownership in the drillers of natural 
gas in the United States.

  Now, let's think about that. There is outrage in this body, there is 
outrage in America over China buying farmland in the Dakotas. Here we 
have an effort by the Biden family to help China take ownership of an 
American energy industry. I find that concerning, Mr. Speaker.
  We have been criticized for wanting to investigate this by many in 
the mainstream media, and I find that ironic, considering that in the 
last administration there were many investigations. In fact, they are 
still investigating the last administration.
  Now, I am not going to comment on the last administration, whether 
these investigations are warranted or not. It is not up to me to 
decide.
  What I will say is we are going to investigate any potential 
wrongdoing in this White House. And at the very least, we are going to 
let the American people know exactly what was going on within this 
family. It is not just the President's son, it is the President's

[[Page H8799]]

brothers, as well. This was a family business. They didn't manufacture 
anything. They weren't licensed to sell anything. They don't own any 
real estate. They don't have any employees.
  What was the business? I would argue it is influence pedaling. But we 
are going to investigate that and see.
  So the one challenge I have, and that we will have providing 
oversight from this side of the aisle on, is to restore confidence in 
congressional oversight, because let's just be honest, Mr. Speaker--and 
I blame both parties for this--congressional oversight doesn't have a 
lot of credibility.
  We have had a lot of high-profile hearings over the past decade that 
really haven't, unfortunately, amounted to a whole lot. There has been 
a lot of fishing, a lot of hearings, a lot of outrage, a lot of tax 
dollars spent. Some pretty good information has been recovered, but at 
the end of the day, not a lot has happened.
  I blame, again, both parties, particularly the current chairman of 
the House Intelligence Committee because many of his investigations 
were based on things that we now know, like the Steele dossier, were 
not true.
  So this investigation with the President of the United States is 
based on interviews that we have already had. This is based on 
documents that we have, many in that laptop, which by the way, The 
Washington Post has confirmed is a legitimate laptop. Then when the 
White House and the Democratic National Committee came out and said, 
oh, well, that may be the President's son's laptop, but it has been 
compromised; there has been a folder added. CBS News did a forensic 
audit and proved that that is a legitimate hard drive that has not--and 
I repeat--has not been tampered with.
  Now, we find out from Elon Musk that there were people involved in 
the President's campaign, involved in the Democratic National 
Committee, and I fear involved in high levels of the Government--we 
haven't gotten to that yet, but stay tuned--that were telling everyone, 
especially in the social media companies, oh, that is not true, that is 
Russian disinformation. Very concerning because one must ask oneself: 
Why were they doing that? What is on that computer?
  And don't tell me, Mr. Speaker, it is a bunch of pictures and videos. 
I don't care about the pictures and videos. It is the data on there 
about the Biden family influence pedaling with our adversaries across 
the globe.
  That, Mr. Speaker, is why the House Oversight Committee will 
investigate the President of the United States for any potential 
wrongdoing and try to determine whether or not this administration is 
compromised.
  Mr. Speaker, I thank you for the time today. I thank you for the 
opportunity to tell the American people a little bit about what the 
House Oversight Committee's goals and objectives are in the next 
Congress.
  We have a big job. Not only do we have trillions of dollars to try to 
account for what has been misappropriated, misspent, abused in this 
body, we also have a lot of investigations to conduct while at the same 
time trying to restore credibility for congressional investigation.
  I look forward to working with every Member of this body, Mr. 
Speaker, and I yield back the balance of my time.

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