[Congressional Record Volume 169, Number 21 (Wednesday, February 1, 2023)]
[House]
[Pages H617-H620]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




                              {time}  1745
                    WORKING FOR THE AMERICAN PEOPLE

  The SPEAKER pro tempore. Under the Speaker's announced policy of 
January 9, 2023, the gentleman from Louisiana (Mr. Johnson) is 
recognized for 60 minutes as the designee of the majority leader.


                             General Leave

  Mr. JOHNSON of Louisiana. Mr. Speaker, I ask unanimous consent that 
all Members have 5 legislative days to revise and extend their remarks 
and include extraneous material on the subject of my Special Order.
  The SPEAKER pro tempore. Is there objection to the request of the 
gentleman from Louisiana?
  There was no objection.
  Mr. JOHNSON of Louisiana. Mr. Speaker, the 118th Congress is in full 
swing now. We are here working full time again for the American people.
  I just wanted to take a few moments tonight here on the House floor 
to clarify some things about how this new Congress has begun.
  I point out, first, for scheduling purposes, of course, the State of 
the Union is next week. It is a time for the President to take stock 
and speak to the American people about where our country is today and 
where we are heading.
  I hope the President is able to make good use of the opportunity, but 
I am afraid we are going to be subjected to more spin and few solutions 
to the major challenges, even the crises facing the American people.
  Mr. Speaker, much has been made by the Democrats and the press about 
how House Republicans have kicked off the 118th Congress, but we all 
know the chatter is not an accurate representation of what is really 
going on around here.
  The cameras don't capture it all. We are delighted that the C-SPAN 
cameras are roving about the floor now. It gives a little more personal 
view of what is happening here in the Chamber, but so much of what goes 
on outside these walls is not apparent to the American people.
  Let's be plain about this. Let's put it plainly in real terms what is 
actually happening now. There are some real reforms that have been 
brought forward by the new House Republican majority.
  We now have a much more open legislative process. As I explained to 
some friends back home over the weekend, we all remember the cartoon. I 
am 51 years old. We remember the cartoon Saturday mornings, ``I am just 
a bill on Capitol Hill,'' and it explained how a bill becomes a law. I 
explained to our friends from Louisiana who were in town that that has 
not actually been the way a bill becomes a law in this Congress for 
several years now.
  We are getting back to that process. We are getting back to what we 
were taught in civics about how this is supposed to work. Bills have to 
be limited now to one single subject. We will no longer vote on a bill 
without giving Members at least 72 hours' notice to review it first. 
What a concept. You might have to actually read that legislation before 
you vote on it.
  This is an important change: Any tax increase must now meet a higher 
threshold to pass. It was a simple majority, but now it is a two-thirds 
vote. That is a really important reform for the American people, given 
the state of the economy.
  There will be no new mandatory Federal spending increases without 
equal or greater budget offsets. We have a $31.5 trillion Federal debt. 
We cannot continue on this trajectory. These reforms are really 
important for us.
  By the way, remote voting and committee work are finally ended. No 
longer will you see Members phoning in their work. They have to be 
here. They have to come to work.
  Let's contrast that with the old way of doing business. Under the 
previous leadership of former Speaker Nancy Pelosi--the Democrats had 
been in charge here for 4 years--we had bills written behind closed 
doors, sometimes literally by just a handful of people. The bills were 
loaded up with unrelated policies. These bills were unveiled, then 
brought for a remote vote before anybody could possibly read them, much 
less debate or amend the legislation.
  We all know the Democrats are obsessed with having a top-down 
approach to legislating. I mean, they have all but shouted it from the 
rooftops over the past few weeks. Sure, that might have made former 
Speaker Pelosi's job easier, but it was not good for the American 
people. It was not good for the country. It was not good for this 
revered institution.
  I suspect if you ask the American people, they would all agree. This 
is just common sense. We are restoring common sense here. We made 
commitments to America, and we are going to fulfill them.
  Here is the reality: House Republicans have started this year by 
instituting the most positive reforms to this House in a generation. 
With Republicans back in charge, the status

[[Page H618]]

quo, where there is no transparency, no accountability, outright 
disregard for regular order, is finally over, and that is a very, very 
good thing for the country.
  Mr. Speaker, this week we are voting to end the COVID pandemic 
emergency order. This is one of the topics we have taken up, we have 
committed to the American people that we would do it when we started 
the Congress, and we have.
  President Biden has said the pandemic is over. His press secretary 
says it isn't. Since the White House couldn't get its story straight, 
we voted now to put an end to the public health emergency declaration. 
Since the pandemic is over, the emergency declaration should be over as 
well.
  Mr. Speaker, this week we are also passing the SHOW UP Act. Talk 
about something that is popular with the American people. This House 
has ended remote work in this body, the Senate did it long ago across 
the hall, and now we are voting to do the same thing for the remainder 
of the Federal Government. It is beyond time to require that the 
teleworking Federal employees return to work in order to remedy 
widespread terribly poor customer service.
  Consider this: The IRS, just the IRS, they have a backlog right now 
of more than 8 million tax returns from 2021. Prior to widespread 
teleworking, the backlog was approximately just 1 million. That is an 
unacceptable thing. We have Federal employees at all these agencies who 
literally have not come to work. Well, we are going to end that. It is 
clear that these backlogs and customer service problems are due at 
least in part to ongoing teleworking policies, even as the pandemic is 
now in the rearview mirror.
  Mr. Speaker, with Republicans back in charge, I could give you many 
examples of things that are going to be improving around here. That is 
just a couple. The House is back to work, and we intend to get the rest 
of the government back to work for the American people as well, whether 
all of our colleagues like that or not.
  Mr. Speaker, I yield to the gentleman from the great State of 
California (Mr. Kiley), my new colleague on the House Judiciary 
Committee, to discuss another important issue from this week.
  Mr. KILEY. Mr. Speaker, this week the House passed the Pandemic is 
Over Act, terminating the national COVID-19 state of emergency.
  Now, of course, the pandemic is over. It has been over for some time. 
Americans are well aware of this. It seems only the government has not 
been aware of it at the national level and in certain States in this 
country.
  The House of Representatives passed this bill ending the state of 
emergency, ending the national emergency, and the President responded 
in a very interesting way. He agreed with us. He said: Yes, the 
emergency is over on May 11, which is a very interesting concept. An 
emergency that you can schedule to end in advance.
  This is a page out of Gavin Newsom's book in California where the 
state of emergency there had continued month after month, year after 
year, and as the absurdities piled up, as California last year hosted 
the Super Bowl during a state of emergency.
  As, by the way, the Governor refused to abide personally by the 
dictates issued pursuant to that emergency, eventually he was forced to 
say, okay, I will end it, and he decided to end it 6 months in advance. 
The state of emergency in California will now be lapsing on February 
28, for those keeping score at home, and the national emergency will be 
lapsing on May 11.
  This is inherently against the very concept of an emergency, to say 
that we can schedule it to end at a specific date in the future. It is 
also against the very concept of an emergency to say that it can last 
for 3 years.
  We have in this country for now almost 3 years experienced our form 
of government being turned on its head. At the national level, and in 
particular certain States, our entire separation of powers, checks and 
balances, and representative government collapsed under a one-man rule.
  Now that we have moved on from most of that--although there are still 
some remnants of the controls that were put in place still in effect--
we are in a position to assess what was the outcome of all this. Yes, 
there was some uniformity in terms of Federal policy, but there was a 
great degree of difference in terms of how different States responded.
  In my State of California, we had the highest level of government 
coercion and control throughout the entire COVID-19 experience. We had 
the most onerous business shutdowns, the longest school shutdowns, the 
worst church shutdowns. We had the most onerous mask mandates and 
vaccine mandates and vaccine passports.
  Each and every step of the way, California had the highest level of 
government coercion and control, generally done via executive orders 
without the say of the people, without the say of the legislature, 
without meaningful judicial review, with 40 million people of our State 
expected to simply comply. That was the California experience. That was 
the experience to a lesser extent of many other States.
  But then you had States like Florida that decided that citizens could 
be trusted to make decisions for themselves, that empowered local 
communities to govern themselves, that focused on disease control 
rather than population control.
  We can now look, having been through this for a few years and having 
had very different approaches, what was the result of this difference 
in policy?
  Well, economically speaking, California had basically the highest 
unemployment rate in the entire country throughout the COVID-19 state 
of emergency, whereas Florida had just about the lowest unemployment 
rate in the country throughout the state of emergency.
  California has experienced student learning loss unlike anything that 
has ever been seen before in this country. There has been a 6 percent 
decline in third graders reading at grade level over the last few 
years, a 7 percent decline for fourth graders in meeting ELA standards, 
whereas Florida achieved the highest national assessment of educational 
progress ranking in their history across math and reading for fourth 
and eighth graders in 2022.
  In California, to take another example, in L.A. our students lost an 
equivalent of 6 months of math in terms of their overall education in 
that period of time. We will be grappling with the consequences of this 
for a long, long time. California experienced an economic and 
educational calamity that States like Florida did not experience.
  What did we get in return?
  We were all told this was done for the purpose of safety. It was done 
in order to save lives. We can now assess that claim.
  When you look at the actual numbers, there was no difference. Age-
adjusted COVID mortality rates between California and Florida were a 
wash. It was the same, despite the unbelievable toll that the lockdowns 
and related policies took on the people of California.
  You can also make comparisons within our State. I represent a number 
of counties that did everything possible to take the approach that 
Florida did despite what we were dealing with at the State level.
  In Placer County, for example, we were the first county in the State 
to end the local state of emergency. We had our kids back in school 
earlier than anywhere else in California. We were among the first to 
end mask mandates and to challenge vaccine mandates, and we did 
everything possible to enable our businesses to remain open. All the 
while, we took the steps that were necessary to give vulnerable 
individuals the tools that they needed to protect themselves.

  Now, all the while, those of us who favored trusting citizens, who 
favored freedom, were attacked viciously by the likes of the Governor 
of California, who personally attacked me by name and said that I 
believed it would have been better to let Californians die.
  Again, you can look at the results in Placer County as compared to 
other parts of California. Our students did much better, our employment 
rate was roughly half the State average, and our public health outcomes 
were much better, with a COVID mortality rate about two-thirds that of 
the rest of the State.
  The evidence now is very clear as to what approach worked and what 
approach didn't. Those States that tried as much as possible to 
maintain the structure of our constitutional form of government did a 
lot better than those

[[Page H619]]

States that decided an emergency could be used to effectuate an 
indeterminate one-man rule.
  But there are some who are now saying, as a recent headline in The 
Atlantic magazine put it, that we should simply declare a pandemic 
amnesty at this point. We should move on, we should forget about all of 
the damage that was done to our kids, who may never get the education, 
may never make up for the learning loss that they experienced. We 
should forget about the damage that was done to businesses that in many 
cases have been permanently lost, 200,000 businesses throughout the 
country that were shuttered. We should simply move on and forget about 
it. Forgive and forget.
  Look, I am all for letting bygones be bygones, and I am willing to 
work with anyone who is interested in creating good policy going 
forward. But we do need to pause and consider how it is that this 
happened in our country, how did we get to a point where the appearance 
of a virus could cause our entire form of government to collapse?

                              {time}  1800

  Our Founders were not unfamiliar with emergencies. After all, they 
had just been through a war of independence and yet, they still 
believed that combining the executive, legislative, and judicial powers 
in a single set of hands, as James Madison put it, was the very 
definition of tyranny.
  So how, well over two centuries now after the founding, did we get to 
a point where our institutions were so susceptible to collapse?
  I think that is a question that merits serious scrutiny because it 
could point us in the direction of getting back to some of the founding 
principles that we have lost touch with.
  The fact is that we have seen governmental power become more and more 
centralized and consolidated in recent decades in this country, and it 
simply became all too easy to fast-forward that process to its logical 
endpoint of one-man rule.
  We have seen our political institutions become less and less 
representative, less and less self-governing institutions, and it 
became all too easy to make them not representative at all. Or we have 
seen more and more of our levers of power in government controlled by 
special interest groups, especially in California, my State, and so it 
became all too easy to let special interests completely run the show as 
it did when it came to the school shutdowns.
  So I don't believe that we can simply move on and turn the page and 
forget about what happened in this country for the last few years. I 
think we need to give serious thought as to what led us to this point 
and how we can move ahead and actually now get the pendulum swinging in 
the other direction. That is a far more in-depth conversation than my 
time today would permit, but I simply would like to offer a few ideas.
  The first is that we need to definitively end the emergency, not on 
May 11 but now, not in California on February 28, but now, and any 
other States that are retaining the altered legal forms that were put 
in place through the emergency. Along with that, we need to end all 
remaining mandates that exist.
  We took a major step in that direction yesterday in this House by 
passing legislation to end President Biden's vaccine mandate for 
healthcare workers.
  We also need to look at reforming our emergency laws, to make it so 
you cannot so easily declare an emergency that lasts for years and is 
allowed to continue indefinitely without any serious review of whether 
the conditions of the emergency continue to exist.
  In a broader sense, I think that this is a moment where we as a 
country need to look at the consolidation and centralization of 
political power in this country. Yes, at the State level but largely at 
the Federal level, and especially in bureaucracies that operate outside 
any sort of accountability on the part of voters.
  We simply have seen this happen over the course of decades in this 
country, and it has veered us farther and farther from the idea of 
self-government that was the great American innovation: the institution 
of self-government.
  Now I am seeing encouraging signs in many ways that this is beginning 
to happen. For example, I am starting to see at the school board level, 
parents are getting involved like never before. Parents are running for 
school board and changing the way that local school districts operate 
and trying to fight against mandates from the State level that tell 
them how they should run their schools.
  The beauty of this is that it gives parents a direct access point in 
terms of how their local schools are run. That is the idea of self-
government, and I think that is something to build on going forward.
  Finally, on the note of education, I do think we need to get much 
more serious in this country about civic education which used to be 
something that was not simply some addendum to one of your classes but 
was part and parcel of your entire education: what it was about, to 
prepare you for active citizenship, to be well grounded in what has 
made America such a unique country in our Nation's history, the 
greatest country in the world's history; what the Constitution is 
about; why we have institutions like freedom of speech; why the 
separation of powers and checks and balances are important.
  I think if we start to teach these things more meaningfully in our 
schools, then it would reinforce our civic institutions. It would leave 
them less vulnerable to the sort of transformation that they were put 
through over the course of the last few years. And should we ever face 
another pandemic or whatever other threat that may come our way, I 
think we will be much better prepared to get through it in the way that 
Florida did and in the way that Placer County did. And not, 
unfortunately, in the way that California and many other parts of this 
country had to suffer through with such a high cost to so many people.
  Mr. JOHNSON of Georgia. Mr. Speaker, I thank my friend from 
California. Those are some very important insights from the West Coast. 
We pray that America does not make those same decisions in the other 
States. I am grateful for principled leadership out of California here 
in the House.
  Mr. Speaker, I yield to the gentleman from Wisconsin (Mr. Grothman), 
my good friend and colleague.
  Mr. GROTHMAN. Mr. Speaker, it is unfortunate that this week things 
have--the quality of intellectual thought in this country has declined 
to the degree that we have to bring a resolution to the floor 
condemning socialism, but that is the way it is.
  Recently, polls have shown among young people, about half have a 
positive view of socialism. Now, of course these are young people whose 
opinions are largely gathered not by personal experience but by what 
their schoolteachers tell them or what they see on television, so that 
may be part of the problem, and hopefully, they will grow their way out 
of it.
  Nevertheless, I do feel it necessary to make some statements as to 
why socialism is an inferior way to govern and is completely 
incompatible with people who want to live in a free society.
  The first thing you need to know about socialism, of course, it leads 
to material goods which are not as good as those under a free market 
system. A lot of that means because the government controls everything, 
you don't have an opportunity to have competition. The poor restaurant, 
the poor manufacturer is never forced out of business, never forced to 
improve, and as a result it means a poorer society. A lot of times the 
material goods by themselves is one of the reasons throughout history 
you see people leave the Marxist, socialist sort of society and flee 
towards the free market system.
  Cubans leaving to come to the United States. When I visit the 
southern border, the Border Patrol always talks about the Cubans. There 
are a lot of Cuban doctors coming here--wealthy by Cuban standards--but 
still they can become much more wealthy in the U.S.
  In the old days of the Cold War, people left from East Germany to 
West Germany, from North Vietnam to South Vietnam to get to a country 
in which there are more goods and more quality. But I always feel it is 
a little bit wrong to overly focus on the fact that the free market 
inevitably means much better material wealth.
  It also deals with the freedom to do anything else. When you have a 
socialist society, the government in a pure

[[Page H620]]

socialist society employs everybody. And even in a partially socialist 
society, a much higher percentage of people wind up working for the 
government and have to work for the government.
  Like all Republicans, in my political career, again and again, I have 
had people come up to me and tell me things privately that they can't 
say publicly because they work for the government.
  Schoolteachers who come up to me and give a Republican perspective on 
things or things they may disagree with that the school board is doing. 
But because they work for the government, they can only talk to me 
quietly like they were in the Soviet Union or Communist China.
  When I was in Wisconsin and we changed the laws to give more 
flexibility on how we deal with public employees about 12 years ago--it 
was under Governor Walker--all Republicans knew public employees who 
quietly sided with Governor Walker, but because they worked for the 
government, the little socialist part of America, they couldn't openly 
side with Governor Walker. They had to quietly whisper like we were in 
a Communist country.
  That is what happens when you have too many people working for the 
government.
  The Department of Natural Resources is another example of that. 
Again, people are coming and saying they are doing things wrong, but 
they dare not say so publicly because they work for the government.
  Of course, in addition to employees who work for the DNR or work for 
the university, it is not just political beliefs that they may have to 
hide in the intolerance area of a very liberal political entity--I am 
thinking about Dane County, which is where Madison, Wisconsin is--
people, again, where the government is so big, they are forced not only 
to hide their political beliefs, they may have to hide their religious 
beliefs because they are afraid that when it comes to promotions, when 
it comes to hiring, when it comes to firing, it could affect them 
negatively because such a high percentage of jobs come with the 
government.
  It is not just that. In a pure socialist society, because there is a 
shortage of goods, the ability to purchase goods can also be dependent 
on toeing the party line. We know that in Russia, or previously Cuba, 
the ability to purchase things is dependent on toeing the party line. 
You can work all you want but unless you are a member of the party or 
toe the party line, you can't get the quality of goods that are there. 
That is inevitably something that happens when the government becomes 
so powerful.
  Other perks are restricted if you don't toe the party line, things 
like travel in a socialist state. Over time, you begin to have 
restrictions and maybe the opportunities to travel abroad are only 
given to people who have displayed fealty to the state.
  One of the things I am told to look out for in Cuba is--Cuba, of 
course, being an island nation--you would expect to have lots of boats 
all around the island for people to go and fish, people just to take 
advantage of the Caribbean. But in fact, there are very few boats 
because Cuba is a socialist country and they are afraid people would 
use those boats to leave the country. That is another trait that you 
have in advanced socialism.
  Other things they may stamp down on you for, they restrict your free 
speech because they don't want anybody saying anything that might be 
something the government disagrees with.
  If you look at Communist China, even though to a degree they have a 
free market, the huge government, because they are afraid of any 
dissent, anybody telling the truth, cracks down on churches. It seems 
hard to believe that you cannot openly talk about Christianity, openly 
talk about Christ in China, but I am afraid you can't.
  You hear about Falun Gong in China saying things that maybe aren't 
approved by the government and therefore people crack down on that 
organization as well.
  In any event, when young people say they are for socialism or if you 
have any children or grandchildren out there who say there is 
socialism, point out to them the inevitable lack of freedom that comes 
with it, that a high number of people have to work for the government. 
And if you have to work for the government, they can promote you or 
hire you or fire you based upon political beliefs, based upon religious 
beliefs.
  In a free market system, there are really an almost unlimited number 
of people you can work with. There are so many different businesses in 
the free market system. If you don't like to work for someone else, you 
can always start your own business. That is something that you can't do 
under socialism, or they want to make it very difficult.
  So I am glad that the United States Congress, at least later this 
week or early next week, is going to go on record saying that we don't 
like socialism. It should be completely unnecessary. And the fact that 
so many young people think socialism might be okay is really a damning 
indictment of the educational, both K-12 and university, system in this 
country.

  Mr. JOHNSON of Louisiana. Mr. Speaker, I thank my friend, the 
gentleman from Wisconsin. That is very well said. The evils of 
socialism have crept into all manner of our politics and areas of our 
culture.
  Mr. Speaker, I will end our Special Order hour by just reminding the 
American people here watching and keeping track of this, that again, as 
I said in the opening, the Republican majority is in charge. The 
Congress is now fully operational and we are back to work for the 
American people.
  Every week now, we will be passing substantive legislation that will 
send a message to the people that there is a new sheriff in town.
  Today, in our House Committee on the Judiciary, we had an hour's long 
hearing on the catastrophe at the border, hearing from those who are 
down there contending with that situation every single day. The 
hearings like that one will lead us to legislative repairs for some of 
these problems that have been created by the Biden administration and 
the Democrats in charge here the last couple of years.
  This week, we are voting to end the COVID pandemic emergency order at 
long last. We are passing the SHOW UP Act to get all these Federal 
employees back to work. And as Mr. Grothman indicated, tomorrow we will 
be voting to condemn socialism.
  There is going to be a dramatic change between the Republicans in 
charge of this House and the Democrats. We are grateful for the 
opportunity to lead. We will do that every day and we will make the 
American people proud with our policy reforms and our process reforms.
  Mr. Speaker, I yield back the balance of my time.

                          ____________________