[Congressional Record Volume 169, Number 201 (Wednesday, December 6, 2023)]
[House]
[Pages H6200-H6201]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




                           ISSUES OF THE DAY

  The SPEAKER pro tempore. Under the Speaker's announced policy of 
January 9, 2023, the gentleman from Kansas (Mr. Mann) is recognized for 
the remainder of the hour as the designee of the majority leader.
  Mr. MANN. Mr. Speaker, I yield to the gentleman from Texas (Mr. 
Babin), who represents the 36th District of Texas. Congressman Babin 
serves on the House Transportation and Infrastructure Committee with 
me. I am grateful for his presence here tonight and for his friendship.
  Mr. BABIN. Mr. Speaker, I appreciate my good friend, the gentleman 
from Kansas, for yielding and for this Special Order.
  Mr. Speaker, it is hard to imagine an administration that goes out of 
its way to increase our dependency on an adversarial nation hell-bent 
on our demise here in the United States of America. That is precisely 
what is happening--all because the left hates oil and gas and fossil 
fuels. I represent a district that is the epicenter of energy in east 
Texas in the greater Houston region.
  Communist China wishes nothing more than to see America burn to the 
ground, and Joe Biden's reckless demand for electric vehicles continues 
to give Beijing an ever-increasing advantage in seeing this quest 
through.
  Let's look at some of the facts.
  Nearly 80 percent of the world's cell manufacturing capacity for EV 
batteries is controlled by none other than Beijing, the People's 
Republic of China.
  Mr. Speaker, 75 percent of the world's lithium-ion battery 
megafactories are in the People's Republic of China.
  Mr. Speaker, 90 percent of graphite, the single largest mineral 
component of EV batteries, electric vehicle batteries, is refined in 
the People's Republic of China.
  Yet, if increased reliance on China isn't alarming enough, let's look 
at how electric vehicles are faring on the home front.
  Just a few weeks ago, in my own office, I had a number of car dealers 
from my great State of Texas visit to share the latest on EV--electric 
vehicle--sales. Given how much the Biden administration talks about 
EVs, you would think that they are selling like hotcakes. Big surprise, 
or maybe not, they are actually selling like $50,000 paperweights.
  I recently saw a great line in The Wall Street Journal: ``You can 
subsidize a buyer into the auto showroom, but you can't make him buy.''
  The truth is that dealers can't get EVs off their lots.
  Texans don't want vehicles that they can't rely on. While I am a huge 
supporter of innovation, fully electric vehicles aren't ready for prime 
time, and forcing them on the American people will not change that 
reality.
  By unilaterally mandating unrealistic emission standards for vehicles 
in an effort to shift markets, this administration has dealt serious 
damage to the entire automotive sector.
  Unfortunately, even with this information, the White House would 
still force Americans to buy electric vehicles.
  Out of concerns for our manufacturers, dealers, national security, 
and, more importantly, American families, it is time for this 
administration to return to reality. Fossil fuels are the only reliable 
energy source that we have. If we stop producing and using them, we 
will soon be bowing the knee to the demands of Communist China.
  Mr. MANN. Mr. Speaker, I thank the gentleman from Texas for his very 
true remarks.
  Mr. Speaker, I yield to the gentlewoman from Indiana (Mrs. Spartz).
  Mrs. SPARTZ. Mr. Speaker, I think we have had a lot of important 
discussions this Congress, but there is one important discussion that I 
truly believe we need to take very seriously. It is section 702 of the 
reauthorization of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act.
  I want to remind us that our main job as Representatives of the 
people is to protect people's rights to life, liberty, and property. We 
will never have equal opportunities and will always want to have equal 
outcomes, but the equality of rights is the job of Congress and the 
legislature.
  We know very well that the constitutional rights of Americans have 
been violated.
  I am going to cite some excerpts from the report that the Privacy and 
Civil Liberties Oversight Board just issued recently. That board was 
created to oversee due processes, and the issue in line was the 
reauthorization. It is actually run by Democrats, and the chair is 
appointed by President Biden.
  This is from the report: ``The board finds that section 702 poses 
significant privacy and civil liberties risks, most notably from U.S. 
person queries and batch queries. Significant privacy and civil 
liberties risks also include the scope of permissible targeting.''
  It also talks about new types of procedures that have been recently 
authorized, in 2022, and we had challenges about collection that some 
thought Congress would put a stop to. However, it says that the new 
procedures that we just authorized were used in a widespread fashion. 
It could be extraordinarily intrusive.
  It also says the board finding a risk of overboard government 
collection of communications is very real and can cause harm with no 
individualized judicial review of targeting decisions. We had an almost 
300 percent increase in surveillance since 2013, double in the last 5 
years.
  This search is very concerning since there is no specific review of 
that.
  Also, it says that a lot of things that are collected could be 
political, religious, and social advocacy. There are significant 
concerns about this program overall.
  The changes that the FBI has done, they say, have not been sufficient 
to protect privacy and civil liberties. It is also actually confirmed 
by the internal audit of a recent report--the most recent was in May 
2023 when the internal audits of the FBI was talking pretty much about 
over 90 percent of queries not having any evidence of justification for 
these queries.

  It is like the FBI is very good. They don't record and don't recall, 
so they want all the liability. It is a serious issue.
  We had some discussions, and I think the Judiciary Committee bill is 
somewhat bad. At least it requires a warrant for queries of a U.S. 
person. Still, both the bills that the Intelligence Committee and the 
Judiciary Committee are proposing lack some very serious consideration.
  There is no outside review of what data is collected, and this is 
something the board pretty much recognizes. As an agency, they collect 
information on Americans, but they cannot assess how much. At the 
least, there needs to be some sampling by a FISA court when they do 
certification to start figuring it out because, ultimately, there is a 
potential that our agencies have access to be able to collect without 
warrant and surveil many Americans. We don't know how many Americans 
they are surveilling and what the NSA is doing when they do filtering 
procedures.
  There is no ability for us to even know what is going in the review 
of that. The board brings these concerns, but also there are concerns 
with documentation.
  I think Congress should have for us--we do it in other areas, and in 
accounting, we do it, too--where, through evidence and documentation, 
we can have preventative controls in systems. When queries are run, 
there is evidence of review and evidence of approval and justification 
by the FBI as to why they are using this loophole in the law that 
potentially violates the rights of U.S. citizens and many Americans.
  I think the magnitude of this problem is significant, and the 
magnitude of violations could be very material. I think Congress needs 
to be much more serious in its consideration before we reauthorize the 
section.
  The other thing the board talks about is national security. It is an 
important section, but actually, the agency didn't prove that queries 
that they are doing actually give justification to what they are doing 
to provide them more expansion on that.

[[Page H6201]]

  I think we need to put up more guardrails, and I hope we will have 
more discussions on this issue and this bill if they are going to move 
forward in the way they are because I want to remind us that if we are 
not willing to stand up for the rights of Americans here, then I don't 
know why we are even in Congress.
  This Fourth Amendment right is a significant right, and it is a 
bipartisan issue. I hope we will take a more serious look at how we can 
improve this FISA reauthorization before it is reauthorized and have 
better legislation.

                              {time}  1930

  Mr. MANN. Mr. Speaker, I thank all the Members for participating 
tonight.
  When government grows, freedom shrinks. As conservatives in Congress, 
we must not compromise on freedom. Our sworn duty is to uphold the 
constitutional rights of all Americans, and I encourage all of my 
colleagues to remember the solemn oath that we all took to do so and 
support legislation that will aid us in that effort.
  Mr. Speaker, I yield to the gentleman from Utah (Mr. Moore), from the 
First Congressional District and the cohost of this Special Order, for 
his closing remarks.
  Mr. MOORE of Utah. Mr. Speaker, President Biden is once again 
circumventing the rule of law and leaving hardworking Americans who 
never went to college with a $559 billion bill to cover unpaid student 
loans.
  House Republicans will bring to the floor H.J. Res. 88 expressing our 
disapproval of President Biden's Saving on a Valuable Education, SAVE, 
plan which would drastically alter the Income-Driven Repayment program 
and make America's student loan program even more expensive for 
taxpayers. Let's be clear: This sets the precedent that Federal 
education loans do not need to be repaid.
  Using American tax dollars to give a blanket subsidy to those who 
earn disproportionately more money than others is government at its 
worst. For those who never went to college, for those who are 
struggling with inflation and don't need more money flooding into a 
broken system, and for those who already paid off their loans, any 
effort to wipe the slate clean is completely unfair.
  I, along with many other House Republicans, support universities 
focusing on a strong ROI to keep costs down. We support Federal student 
loan reforms. We do not support blanket student loan forgiveness for 
political pandering in an election year.
  Even though the system has plenty of room to improve, it is my job to 
highlight ways the State of Utah is getting it right. Utah has the 
lowest average student loan debt per borrower in the country and the 
lowest percentage of graduates leaving campus with student debt. The 
University of Utah's medical school and nursing program at Weber State 
University work to hold down student debt by designing instructional 
schedules to allow students to work while attending college.
  I have had to apologize multiple times to constituents in the First 
District who built businesses after paying their way through school or 
other programming and paid their taxes, only to have their hard-earned 
dollars transferred to folks who have chosen a career and a different 
approach that required carrying some debt that they planned for.
  Now, with the government saying they don't need to plan for it, we 
are teaching our children the exact wrong thing that made our country 
so great. I am deeply frustrated that I am going to have to continue to 
apologize.
  Mr. MANN. Mr. Speaker, I yield back the balance of my time.

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