[Congressional Record Volume 169, Number 205 (Wednesday, December 13, 2023)]
[House]
[Page H6871]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]





                      AMERICA MUST STAY THE COURSE

  The SPEAKER pro tempore. The Chair recognizes the gentleman from 
Maryland (Mr. Hoyer) for 5 minutes.
  Mr. HOYER. Mr. Speaker, we have less than 10 hours left until we go 
home for the holidays, less than 10 hours when we leave the field, and 
less than 10 hours before we act responsibly.
  The men and women of Ukraine will not go home for the holidays. They 
will not leave the lines in eastern Ukraine. They will not have a 
Christmas dinner without the fear that they will be bombed in Kyiv or 
assaulted in eastern Ukraine.
  Why is that?
  I ask that to both Chambers: Why are we going home and leaving our 
Ukrainian allies unarmed?
  Why do we shrink from our responsibility to confront those who would 
undermine democracy, freedom, and international law?
  Why, Mr. Speaker, do we retreat from the field while our Ukrainian 
allies are at risk?
  Mr. Speaker, we have 1 day left. We can accomplish the goal of 
passing Ukrainian dollars.
  We can achieve the goal of giving aid to our ally, Israel.
  We can achieve the goal of making Taiwan a little bit stronger.
  Or we can send a message to Mr. Putin, to Mr. Xi, to Iran, and to 
Hamas that America is unable to stay the course.
  I am told that the reason we can't do that is because it is 
absolutely essential to have border security addressed. It is. I am for 
doing that.
  Nevertheless, I want to call to the Speaker's attention, so that he 
can remember that in the 115th Congress, as a Member of Congress, he 
cosponsored a bill, H.R. 395. Some others cosponsored that bill who may 
be at least hearing me, Mr. Speaker, or maybe even on the floor. That 
bill said that it was incumbent that we ``end the practice of including 
more than one subject in a single bill by requiring that each bill 
enacted by Congress be limited to only one subject.''
  Was that situational ethics, situational principles, or just 
temporary principles to be thrown away when they are not convenient, 
perhaps?
  That bill was sponsored by Speaker Johnson; by Mr. Meadows who became 
Chief of Staff of Donald Trump; by Mr. Emmer, the majority whip; and by 
Mr. DeSantis, candidate for President. It was a temporary, perhaps just 
political, piece of rhetoric.
  Mr. Speaker, America is better than that. America needs to be a more 
reliable ally than that. America needs to create confidence, not 
undermine confidence. America needs to be reliable. America needs to 
confront the criminality, the venality, and the murderous acts of 
Vladimir Putin.
  Yet we are scheduled to go home in just a few hours.
  John Kennedy wrote a book, ``Why England Slept.'' It was about why 
they thought that Hitler was going to stop. It just involved, after 
all, the mainland, not England, and they paid a terrible price for that 
negligence, and the free world paid a terrible price for that 
negligence.
  Mr. Speaker, let us not go home, let us do our duty, and let us be 
the kind of America that we say we are.

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