[Congressional Record Volume 170, Number 44 (Tuesday, March 12, 2024)]
[House]
[Pages H1142-H1145]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




     FALSE AND MISLEADING STATEMENTS IN STATE OF THE UNION ADDRESS

  The SPEAKER pro tempore. Under the Speaker's announced policy of 
January 9, 2023, the Chair recognizes the gentleman from California 
(Mr. Kiley) for 30 minutes.
  Mr. KILEY. Madam Speaker, last week, President Biden presented his 
State of the Union Address, and the reviews from the public show it to 
be the most poorly received of any that has ever been measured, since 
the State of the Union has appeared on television. It is no secret why.
  The President's tone and his general approach to the address really 
encapsulated why a lot of people are so turned off by politics and the 
work of our government these days.
  The partisanship and the eagerness to cast blame and to scapegoat 
rather than to seek common ground and find solutions is exactly why so 
many people are so frustrated with the direction of our country.
  On top of that, the President said a lot of things that just simply 
didn't accord with reality, so today, I want to present the 10 most 
false and misleading statements from President Biden's State of the 
Union address.
  First, near the beginning of his speech, President Biden said not 
since President Lincoln and the Civil War have freedom and democracy 
been under assault here at home as they are today. I am afraid that 
President Biden has a very short memory because we all just lived 
through the COVID era.
  Starting in March 2020, the most basic freedoms and tenets of 
democracy were not just assaulted in this country, but they vanished 
entirely in many places.
  Governors like Gavin Newsom in California declared the legislative 
branch abolished and barricaded Capitol buildings--this Capitol itself 
was barricaded--ruling by executive decrees, even threatening to 
declare martial law.
  Citizens were not allowed to leave their homes. Businesses were not 
allowed to open their doors. Children were not allowed to go to school 
or play sports.
  People of faith were not allowed to worship or even gather for Bible 
study. Beaches were declared off-limits. Curfews were imposed even for 
adults having dinner with one other couple in a private residence.
  Pedestrians were tackled literally for not wearing masks while 
walking around outdoors. Employees were fired from their jobs. Kids 
were expelled from school. Consumers were banned from coffee shops over 
their personal medical decisions.
  Social media users were suspended for deviating from the government-
approved narrative, even if they happened to present true information.
  It is understandable why Biden would like to pretend that none of 
this ever happened, but we all lived through it, and the scars will be 
with our country for a very long time.
  A second related statement that the President made is that the 
pandemic no longer controls our lives. The truth is, the pandemic never 
controlled our lives. It was government actions in response to the 
pandemic that controlled our lives.
  If you look at the data now where you had different States that took 
very different approaches in dealing with COVID, what we have learned 
is that States like California, which had by far the worst lockdowns 
and restrictions on personal freedoms, where people's lives were 
controlled far more than any other State, actually had among the worst 
public health outcomes as well.
  What you see on the part of many and, in particular, the Biden 
administration is that it is very clear that this was, in many ways, 
the worst set of policy decisions our country has seen in modern times.
  Restrictions on personal liberty, damage to our economy, and damage 
to our children was done for absolutely no reason.
  There is an attempt to pretend that none of this ever even occurred, 
which is what the President's remarks in his State of the Union is an 
example of, but even more so, look at the testimony of members of this 
administration before Congress this term.
  You had Education Secretary Miguel Cardona give false testimony to 
the Education and the Workforce Committee when he claimed that he never 
encouraged States to adopt student vaccine mandates when he did 
precisely that.
  You had Health and Human Services Secretary Becerra claim in 
testimony before our committee that he never forced anyone to do 
anything and didn't impose a toddler mask mandate when, in fact, Head 
Start, which is under his jurisdiction, did have a mask mandate for 2-
year-olds and up, which flew in the face of even the policy of the 
European counterparts of the CDC and the World Health Organization. Mr. 
Becerra, by the way, could not point to one public health benefit of 
that policy.
  You also had Douglas Parker, who is the head of OSHA, in testimony 
before my subcommittee claim that the Biden administration never tried 
to do an employer vaccine mandate when, in fact, they tried to do just 
that, which would have applied to tens of millions of Americans if the 
United States Supreme Court had not struck it down.
  The third statement from President Biden was a statement that he has 
already cut the Federal deficit by over $1 trillion. This is just 
plainly numerically false.
  When President Biden took office, the national debt was $27.8 
trillion. Today, it is $34.2 trillion. In just a few years, it has gone 
from $27.8 trillion to $34.2 trillion.
  The reason is no mystery. The President went on a massive spending 
spree with bills passed that included multiple trillion-dollar 
increases in spending, which, of course, has not only increased the 
debt beyond anything that we have ever seen but is what triggered this 
inflation crisis that is still causing so many American families to 
struggle.
  That brings me to the next statement of the President during the 
State of the Union, which is that now our economy is the envy of the 
world. Far from being the envy of the world, our economy is a source of 
great dissatisfaction from the folks who live in our country.

  A recent New York Times poll asked: Do you think the economy is 
better or worse than it was 4 years ago, or is it about the same?
  Mr. Speaker, 21 percent said it is better; 63 percent said it is 
worse. Three times as many people said the economy is worse today than 
it was 4 years ago.
  The Times poll also asked: Thinking about the Nation's economy, how 
would you rate economic conditions today? Mr. Speaker, 28 percent said 
either excellent or good, and 72 percent said only fair or poor--28 
percent to 72 percent.
  A related statement from the President's State of the Union was that 
wages keep going up, and inflation keeps coming down. Both are 
demonstrably false.
  In fact, since President Biden took office, real wages and take-home 
pay have decreased in some sense because folks are not getting the same 
number of hours that they used to be getting. When it comes to 
inflation, here are just a few statistics for you. Prices today at this 
point compared to 3 years ago, the price of gasoline has gone up by 
over 33 percent, the price of hotel

[[Page H1143]]

rooms by 31 percent, the price of household energy by 29 percent, the 
price of transportation by 27 percent, the price of airfare by 23 
percent, the price of groceries by 21 percent, the price of restaurant 
meals by 20 percent, the price of used vehicles, new vehicles, housing, 
rent, overall inflation, personal care, furniture, all in the high 
teens. The list goes on.
  Here is the thing: The President's statement that inflation is coming 
down, that is not any source of great personal satisfaction or 
encouragement for folks who are having to deal with these prices.
  The Chairman of the Federal Reserve, Jerome Powell, recently noted we 
don't expect to see a decline in the overall price level. That doesn't 
tend to happen in economies.
  We don't expect to see a decline in the overall price level. It has 
not happened yet, and it is not going to happen, according to the 
Chairman of the Federal Reserve.
  The irresponsible spending policies of this administration have 
unleashed inflation and a rise in prices that is not going away for 
American families.
  In President Biden's State of the Union, he also said that to remain 
the strongest economy in the world, we need the best education system 
in the world. The problem is that this President's policies have made 
it more difficult for us to have a good education system, let alone the 
best education system in the world.
  Last week, we held a hearing in the Education and the Workforce 
Committee on charter schools, which have been shown across the board to 
produce tremendous results in expanding opportunity, lowering 
achievement gaps, and increasing student achievement across the board. 
Yet, one of the first things that the Biden administration did as soon 
as he took office is to go after charter schools and cut charter school 
grants, not to mention the school shutdowns that were enacted across 
this country in States like California. This President never came out 
and did a single thing to get Governors like Gavin Newsom to let kids 
go back to school.
  We are going to be dealing with the harms from these school shutdowns 
for a very long time. If we look at all the mistakes during COVID, 
perhaps there was no bigger one than the school shutdown that did so 
much harm to so many kids.

                              {time}  1845

  President Biden also stated: `` . . . on my first day in office, I 
introduced a comprehensive plan to fix our immigration system, secure 
the border. . . .''
  He did no such thing. He did quite the contrary on his very first day 
in office and his first days in office with dozens of executive actions 
that made the border less secure. The results were utterly predictable.
  We now have had 8 million illegal border crossings since the 
President took office.
  He set the all-time record in his first year. He broke that record in 
his second year, and he broke that record in his third year.
  For several years, going back to 2014 before he took office, there 
had only been 5 months, a handful of months, out of all of those months 
and all of those years, where there were more than 100,000 people that 
crossed the border illegally. That figure has been met each and every 
month since President Biden took office.
  You can look at exactly what he did and trace these consequences to 
that change in policy, those unilateral changes in policy, where he 
ended the migrant protection protocols, remain in Mexico; he instituted 
catch and release; he ended title 42; he ended the border emergency. He 
completely distorted and warped the parole and asylum systems to let 
tens of thousands of people into the country.
  These are the things that he did when he took office. The idea that 
he came into office and proposed fixing our system and securing the 
border could not be more out of touch with reality.
  The President also stated that he is ready to fix it, referring to 
the border. That is what he said: I am ready to fix it.
  If he was ready to fix it, he would have fixed it. He would have 
reversed the unilateral actions that he took when he became President 
that have caused this unprecedented number of people to come across the 
border.
  What is more, he could provide encouragement for the Senate to pass 
the Secure the Border Act, H.R. 2, which we passed in the House toward 
the very beginning of last year. It has been gathering dust over in the 
Senate. The President hasn't done that.
  If he was truly ready to fix it, if he was ready to fix the crisis at 
our border, he would have done so.
  The ninth false and misleading statement from the President's remarks 
are that violent crime has fallen to its lowest offense level the last 
50 years.
  In reality, violent crime still has not gone back to what it was 
before COVID. What is more, property crime has skyrocketed across the 
country, including a huge increase in vehicle thefts.
  The Judiciary Committee has held field hearings in Manhattan, in 
Chicago, right here in Washington, D.C., where we have seen the 
absolute horrifying amounts of violent crime and the number of victims 
that are being created as a result.
  We see cities in California, like Los Angeles and San Francisco and 
Oakland, where they are literally collapsing.
  In Oakland, Governor Newsom just sent in extra law enforcement 
because the crime there is so out of control.
  In Los Angeles, the police will tell you not to go outside wearing 
jewelry to avoid getting mugged.
  In Oakland, the In-and-Out just closed its first-ever restaurant 
because it wasn't safe for their customers and their consumers.
  In Oakland, Taco Bell just announced that its four restaurants are no 
longer going to have indoor dining and they are no longer going to 
accept cash.
  In San Francisco, we see more and more businesses leaving each and 
every day. Even the store that inspired ``Toy Story'' that has been 
there for decades recently closed, as well.
  Madam Speaker, the final truly misleading statement from the 
President that for many, many Americans could not be more false, is 
when he said that, ``tonight we can proudly say the state of our Union 
is strong.''
  Americans overwhelmingly disagree with that statement. They are 
overwhelmingly dissatisfied with the direction of the country.
  It is time for change. It is time for a new direction. My hope is 
that the President would have recognized that, would have acknowledged 
his mistakes when it comes to the economy, when it comes to the border, 
when it comes to public safety, and proposed a new direction, proposed 
turning the page.
  I would have been very happy to work with him if he had done that. I 
am still happy to work with him in any way possible, if it is going to 
change his approach to the economy, to immigration, to crime, and to 
several other areas.
  Unfortunately, we have not seen that yet. As someone who comes from 
California, I can tell you where we are going, because we have already 
seen it play out in California.
  This President continues to copy California's failed policies. He 
believes Gavin Newsome when Newsome says that California is a model for 
the Nation. In fact, California is losing people each and every day. It 
is very sad.
  What used to be the State where anyone can get ahead, it has now 
become the State so many can't wait to leave behind. For the fourth 
straight year, we have led the Nation in one-way U-Haul rentals.
  If Joe Biden's administration continues to copy California's 
policies, we are going to see similar results for the entire country.


                      Independent Contractor Rule

  Mr. KILEY. Madam Speaker, I think yesterday will be remembered as a 
very important and notorious day in the history of the United States 
workforce for two reasons.
  First of all, it was the 1-year anniversary of Julie Su being 
installed as Acting Secretary of Labor.
  Ms. Su was the Labor Secretary in California for Gavin Newsome. 
During her tenure, California had the worst unemployment in the 
country. Californians had the highest poverty rate and the lowest level 
of wage growth in the country. She was responsible for $31 billion in 
fraud of the State's unemployment department, and she was the architect 
of one of the worst laws in our State, or truly our country's history, 
known as AB5.

[[Page H1144]]

  Unfortunately, President Biden thought that this was a good resume to 
be the new Secretary of Labor, so he nominated her last year.
  The administration set up a war room inside of the White House to get 
her confirmed. It was a very, very aggressive campaign to convince 
Senators to confirm her. Yet, all of that, the Senate rejected her 
nomination. It was never brought to the floor for a vote. There was 
bipartisan opposition. At the end of the year, the Senate returned the 
nomination to President Biden, not having confirmed Ms. Su. Yet, she 
remains as Acting Secretary of Labor, and has just passed her 1-year 
anniversary.
  This is truly a lawless situation, an end run around the advice and 
consent process in the United States Constitution. The fact that Ms. Su 
has been there for a year despite the Senate rejecting her nomination, 
despite the White House doing everything they possibly could to get her 
confirmed, and the Senate still refusing to confirm her, is an insult 
to our Constitution, to our workers, and to the American people.
  But it just so happened that on the very day that Ms. Su marked her 
1-year anniversary as the unconfirmed Acting Secretary of Labor, the 
new rule that her department has proposed, the independent contractor 
rule which is modeled on Gavin Newsome and Julie Su's AB5 law from 
California, went into effect.
  Now, AB5 has been a complete and utter disaster for our State. It has 
caused folks in over 600 different professions to lose their 
livelihood, their ability to make a living. What the new rule does, 
like AB5, is significantly restrict one's ability to be an independent 
contractor, to work on your own terms, to be your own boss, or to be 
able to set your own schedule.
  In many industries and for many people, if you don't have that 
ability, then your entire enterprise or business model becomes 
nonviable, which is exactly what happened in California.
  Before AB5 went into effect, in late 2019, early 2020, you had all 
kinds of people that suddenly had lost their ability to earn a living.
  Now a few years later, we recently got some empirical evidence for 
this as well out of George Mason University, which studied the 
employment effects in California, specifically of AB5. What the study 
found is that it decreased self-employment by 10 percent and decreased 
overall employment by 4 percent, which might be one reason why just 
today, with the new job numbers out, California's unemployment rate has 
ticked up again. It is 5.2 percent. It is the second highest 
unemployment rate in the entire country.
  Now, Ms. Su's independent contractor rule is modeled on AB5 in 
California. President Biden cited AB5 as his model for labor relations 
nationwide. It is worth noting, by the way, that AB5 has become so 
toxic, so infamous, that when I asked Ms. Su about it in committee, she 
wouldn't even say or opine on whether it was a good law. She said she 
didn't know, had no opinion on the matter. She was the architect and 
lead enforcer of that very law.
  But the new independent contractor rule that the administration is 
proposing is also creating an extraordinary amount of uncertainty. It 
has six different factors--in fact, more than that. It places an 
extraordinary amount of discretion in the enforcers; that is, in Ms. 
Su, the very architect of AB5.
  By the way, AB5 was so bad in California that over 100 different 
professions were exempted and they are not exempted in this new 
independent contractor rule from the Department of Labor.
  So when I asked the head of the Wage and Hour Division in a recent 
hearing: Does this apply to various different professions? She could 
not give an answer to any of them.
  I asked her about realtors, a couple million realtors in this 
country: Can they be considered independent contractors? She couldn't 
say.
  This new rule is about to throw our entire workforce into chaos. 
Fortunately, it has already invited four different lawsuits that are 
proceeding in different parts of the country.
  On account of those legal challenges, I wrote a letter to Ms. Su 
yesterday saying, at the very least--obviously, she should withdraw the 
rule--but at the very least, given the pendency of this legislation, 
she ought to put the rule on hold until the matter is litigated--until 
these challenges, which are based on the process, which are based on 
statute, which are based on the Constitution and due process--until 
they can be heard, so that the affected individuals will not be in this 
whiplash, depending on what the courts do and what the Department 
decides to do from that moment forward.
  I wrote that letter to Ms. Su yesterday with it being the effective 
date of the new rule.
  But beyond that, I have also introduced legislation under the 
Congressional Review Act. The Congressional Review Act allows for a 
fast-tracked piece of legislation to nullify a rule or regulation that 
has been put out by a department or agency like this one.
  So my Congressional Review Act resolution simply nullifies and stops 
this new rule propounded by the Department of Labor.
  We already have 54 cosponsors for this legislation, and it will be 
marked up in committee very soon. I am strongly urging my colleagues on 
both sides of the aisle to join me in passing this legislation to take 
back Congress' rightful authority over this area and to prevent our 
workforce from being thrown into chaos at a time when the American 
economy simply cannot afford it.


   Amicus Brief Case of City of Grants Pass, Oregon v. Gloria Johnson

  Mr. KILEY. Madam Speaker, earlier this week I filed an amicus brief 
with the United States Supreme Court in the case of City of Grants 
Pass, Oregon v. Gloria Johnson. This is challenging a Ninth Circuit 
decision.
  It has been agreed to be heard by the Supreme Court. As a matter of 
fact, oral argument will be taking place next month, and we expect a 
decision later this year.
  Several of my colleagues here in the House who serve and represent 
districts in California and on the West Coast have joined me and signed 
onto the amicus brief.
  Madam Speaker, we are urging the Supreme Court to overturn a line of 
Ninth Circuit cases that started what is known as the Boise decision 
and that has contributed to the explosion of homelessness and crime in 
California.
  California's homelessness situation has continued to get worst and 
worst, even as homelessness has gone down in many other parts of the 
country.
  As a matter of fact, right now, about half of the unsheltered 
homeless in the United States, in the entire country, are in 
California. The Boise decision is one reason why.
  What this decision and its progeny have done is handcuffed cities and 
counties and municipalities from being able to enforce camping bands or 
otherwise clear out homeless encampments in public spaces.
  This has made it extremely difficult for cities that even want to 
take a smart and compassionate and pro-public safety approach from 
being able to do so for fear that they will immediately get sued.
  So this is an opportunity for the U.S. Supreme Court to weigh in in a 
way that will reverse a legal error that was made by the Ninth Circuit 
that has created many different social problems. I am very encouraged 
by this opportunity, because if we can re-empower local jurisdictions 
to take accountability and ownership of this issue and give them the 
tools that they need to stop this disorder from playing out in our 
public spaces, then that is going to go a long way toward fighting the 
crisis of homelessness, toward combating crime, toward getting help to 
folks who need it who are suffering or abusing drugs or who otherwise 
have issues related to mental illness, then we can get the homelessness 
problem in California under control.

                              {time}  1900

  It happens to be coming at the same time as the citizens of 
California are working to place an initiative on the ballot to 
substantially reverse what is known as Proposition 47.
  Proposition 47 decriminalized huge swaths of behavior in California 
when it came to retail theft and open drug use. By taking tools away 
from law enforcement and releasing many people from our jails and 
prisons early, it has

[[Page H1145]]

also contributed to the crises of the growing problem of homelessness 
and crime in California.
  For folks in our State who look at the growing problems that we face, 
the disorder in places especially like Oakland, San Francisco, Los 
Angeles, and far too many communities, there may be hope on the 
horizon. There may be a path to sanity.
  If the United States Supreme Court follows our advice in this amicus 
brief and if the voters pass the initiative to reverse Proposition 47, 
then we can bring some sanity back to the way we deal with these issues 
in California and improve the quality of life for people in our State.
  Madam Speaker, I yield back the balance of my time.

                          ____________________