[Congressional Record Volume 171, Number 210 (Friday, December 12, 2025)]
[House]
[Pages H5829-H5833]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]
BRINGING AMERICA BACK TO ITS ROOTS
(Under the Speaker's announced policy of January 3, 2025, Mr. Roy of
Texas was recognized for 60 minutes as the designee of the majority
leader. )
Mr. ROY. Mr. Speaker, it was great to have had the chance last night
to be at the White House with the President, his Cabinet, and my
colleagues.
Obviously, we celebrated the Christmas season and our collective
belief that this season is particularly important for the American
people in recognition of who we are as a people in a Judeo-Christian
society and celebrating the birth of our Lord and Savior, Jesus Christ.
It is not just a holiday for white lights and garland and making
merry. It is a holiday that serves as the center of who we are as a
people.
As the Speaker knows, sitting there in the Speaker's chair under ``In
God We Trust,'' it is that collective faith that we have in the Lord
Almighty and our collective belief in his Son that has served as the
core of the strength of this country from its founding. I will talk
about two things today that are related to that.
One is a policy issue. That issue is the ability of the American
people to get healthcare and care for one another. The other is
defending our Judeo-Christian heritage in Western civilization from the
onslaught of those who wish to push the Islamification of our country
into the forefront.
Mr. Speaker, I will start on the point of the healthcare policy
because I think it goes to the central problem we face as a people
right now. A lot of folks are talking about ``affordability.'' It has
become the political hot-button buzzword. It is affordability.
This is being driven intentionally by my colleagues on the other side
of the aisle because they have got virtually nothing to run on. They
made a choice to shut the government down in order to set up a fight
and to try to elevate the issue of healthcare because they believe they
can win on it politically.
Mr. Speaker, I want everyone to think about that for a minute. They
shut down the government because they want to politicize the issue of
healthcare and not actually work to solve the problem.
{time} 1200
Republicans, in my view, have avoided the issue of healthcare out of
political fear historically. I believe that this Republican Congress,
this Republican House and Senate, and this Republican-led White House
have the opportunity today to transform healthcare for the American
people so that it can be affordable, so that they can have choice and
they can go to the doctor of their choice, and to empower doctors and
patients, not insurance bureaucrats and government bureaucrats.
I want to repeat that again because I am going to engage in a
colloquy and yield to my friend from Missouri in a moment on this
important topic.
Right now, the average American family is getting crushed and is
unable to afford healthcare because Democrats broke our healthcare
system.
I want to be very clear: Democrats knowingly chose to break the
American healthcare system 15 years ago. We told the world what would
happen, and it has come true.
American families and the businesses that employ most of them are
spending about $25,000 a year for insurance premiums that give them
fewer options and restricts them on what they can do, gives them higher
copays, higher deductibles, and fundamentally makes it impossible for
them to have actual care.
[[Page H5830]]
I go back to my point about In God We Trust and celebrating the
Christmas season. As Christians, we are called to take care of those
less fortunate than we are. We are called to help those who need help.
That is why so many of our hospitals historically were nonprofits built
up from faith-centered institutions. That is why so many hospitals are
Saint Fill-in-the-Blank Hospital. It is because Christians came
together to say that we should care for those who need help, but then
came in government.
In all of its infinite wisdom, government came in and regulated
healthcare, restricted our options and socialized the payments.
Now what is the result?
It is an impossibility of the average American family to be able to
actually get healthcare from the doctor of their choice. It is the
inability for them to go get insurance that will give them comfort that
if the cancer that I got in 2011 hits them, that they will be able to
go get care because they can't afford it. They can't afford it because
we have broken it. We didn't break it, Democrats broke it.
Right now, Republicans have a choice: Go along with Democrats to
continue to socialize healthcare, continue to enrich insurance
companies and continue to take away options from the American people or
we can stand up for healthcare freedom and stand up for the ability of
an average American family to be able to go to the doctor of their
choice, get insurance, and go on health-sharing ministries such as
Medishare and be able to defray costs, rather than having constrained,
regulated, no-option, expensive health management by bureaucrats.
That is what we have.
The fact is, Mr. Speaker, there is this big debate right now about
so-called subsidies. I want to be very clear about what we are talking
about. We are talking about COVID-era pandemic cash that was thrown out
into our economy in this case for some plus-ups for some subsidies for
the broken ObamaCare system.
Now we are 5 years removed from COVID, and my Democrat colleagues are
trying to say that if we don't extend those subsidies that somehow we
are denying people healthcare. That is just flat false. It is a lie.
The fact is, ObamaCare remains in place. Its subsidy structure
remains in place for better or worse, and those subsidies that they are
talking about would literally go into the pockets of insurance
companies whose profits have gone up 1,000-plus percent over the last
decade.
It is an insurance enrichment scheme.
My Democratic colleagues broke healthcare, and now they are down here
saying: We must give more money to insurance companies.
That is what they are saying.
Any Republican who goes along with that needs to answer for doing the
same thing.
Why would we give more money to the insurance companies that saddled
up with government to enrich themselves rather than help the American
people?
Mr. Speaker, 85 percent of all Affordable Care Act revenue insurers
received comes from the Federal taxpayers. Mr. Speaker, 85 percent of
all the revenue, I should say, that the insurers receive are coming
from the Federal taxpayers. Insurers received at least $35 billion in
Federal subsidies in 2024 for people who didn't use their plan a single
time. Mr. Speaker, $35 billion went into the pockets of insurance
companies for people who didn't even use their plan.
I want to say this, and then I am going to yield to my friend from
Missouri: We have solutions. When people say that Republicans don't
have a plan, it is false. We put out plans. We have put out solutions.
We have solutions.
We believe in expanding people's access to care by empowering them
with the same tax treatment, equal tax treatment, the corporations get.
Individuals should get the same tax deductions and tax breaks to be
able to have healthcare.
Mr. Speaker, we believe in expanded health savings accounts that you
can use for direct primary care to go to a doctor, have that doctor's
cell phone number, have a relationship with that doctor and not be put
into some complicated scheme where you have to get approval for
somebody who is in network or not in network and who may or may not be
within 100 miles of your house.
We want the American people to be empowered. We want them to be able
to go defray costs and share costs in health-sharing ministries and
Medishare and all these different organizations that are, frankly, the
last lifeboat that people have right now for access to care.
We want to allow providers to own hospitals rather than be restricted
from being able to do that so that the corporate, monolithic hospitals
are not the only option.
We want 1,000 flowers to bloom and for people to have the freedom
option.
Guess what, Mr. Speaker?
You can leave ObamaCare, the Affordable Care Act, structure all in
place. Leave it all sitting there, but just provide the American family
with a freedom option. Allow them to have choice.
Shouldn't that be our right as Americans?
People talk about a right to healthcare. What they are really saying
with that is that government should be providing healthcare rather than
the individual, the family being able to have the right to get the care
of their choice.
What on Earth kind of freedom do you have in a country where you
literally can't go get healthcare and you are prohibited from it?
The government has stopped us from exercising our freedom.
We have plans. What we don't have is the backbone and the willpower
to stand up and deliver.
I say: Do it now.
I say: Stand up and fight for healthcare freedom now.
I am tired of it. I don't want another election. I don't want
another: Don't worry, we will do it next time. I want to do it now
because too many people are suffering at the hands of a bureaucracy and
the tyranny of government-run health management rather than the ability
to get care.
The current situation with respect to healthcare exists entirely by
record of vote and a record of policies because my Democrat colleagues
put forward policies that the American people are having to live under
today.
They broke the healthcare system.
My Democratic colleagues are proposing an insurance company
enrichment scheme. Literally they are printing money in the Treasury
and giving it to insurance companies.
Their solution for healthcare is enriching insurance companies. Our
solution for healthcare is empowering doctors. Our solution for
healthcare is empowering people. Our solution for healthcare is
spreading costs out among people who want to help each other out in the
American way.
It is why I started talking about Christmas.
The question for Republicans is: If not now, then when?
When are we going to stand up and deliver for the American people?
That basic right--I will say it--right to access healthcare of our
choice without government interfering, without government regulating,
and without government stealing our ability to care for our own
families and loved ones in our community.
{time} 1210
I know the gentleman from Missouri (Mr. Burlison) feels the same way.
He has done incredible work on this subject. We are aligned, I think
almost entirely, on the opportunity for Republicans to lead, the
opportunity for Republicans to stand up and deliver for the American
people on healthcare freedom for every American. Every American should
be able to do that.
Mr. Speaker, I yield to the gentleman from Missouri (Mr. Burlison).
Mr. BURLISON. Mr. Speaker, I thank the gentleman from Texas for
yielding, and I thank him for his passion and leadership on this topic
and many others.
Mr. Speaker, today, I rise to address one of the most urgent issues
facing the American family today, which is healthcare affordability.
Under the Biden administration, inflation surged to levels that we
haven't seen in decades, in generations, and healthcare costs rose
right along with it, driving premiums, deductibles.
Out-of-pocket expenses became higher and higher for families across
this country. Whether you are in an employer-sponsored plan or an
individual
[[Page H5831]]
market, it doesn't matter. The entire thing has been destroyed by the
Democratic Party and their schemes.
For years, Washington has told the American people that if we just
spend more, if we just mandate more, if we just regulate more, then
healthcare will somehow become cheaper. It will become simpler and more
humane. That promise clearly has failed in a spectacular way. We are
watching it fail and go down in flames as we speak.
The Affordable Care Act was sold as a solution. It has locked
families instead into a system where premiums keep rising and
deductibles keep climbing, networks shrink, and patients are left with
coverage that they can't even use and bills that they can't even
predict. There is no transparency in the costs of the healthcare that
they are receiving.
Let's be honest about where we are right now. Healthcare now consumes
one-fifth of our entire economy. Hospital prices have risen three times
faster than the awful inflation that we have been experiencing as a
mean.
Insurance premiums have soared, yet patients still struggle to see
their doctor. They still wait weeks, if not months, for an appointment.
They still face surprise bills even when they follow all the rules.
This didn't happen by accident. Washington inflated the demand with
subsidies and mandates while simultaneously choking off the supply
through regulation, licensing barriers, and protection of entrenched
interests. When government pours taxpayer dollars into a system that
restricts competition, prices rise, efficiency collapses, and
accountability disappears.
Through it all, the one group that was systematically excluded from
decisionmaking is the patients themselves. That is the fundamental flaw
of this current system. Americans are not allowed to control their own
healthcare dollars. Instead, those dollars are routed through insurers,
employers, and Federal agencies that never feel the pain of the cost
and never face the consequences or have to deal with the time
restraints.
Mr. Speaker, when you don't control the money, you don't control the
choices. Contrary to the claim that, as my colleague from Texas has
mentioned, we don't have any ideas, that is not at all the case. There
have been multiple bills that have been sponsored year after year by
thought leaders like the gentleman from Texas (Mr. Roy), yet they
haven't come to the floor for a vote. They haven't been given ample
opportunity.
I am glad to see that now there is an appetite for this discussion
because this House is already filled with serious, actionable reforms
that give Americans real options beyond ObamaCare.
I recently cosigned a letter by Representative Biggs that highlighted
14 distinct healthcare reform bills that are out there, all of which
present much better, more affordable solutions than the current
disaster that we are facing with ObamaCare.
That is why I am promoting a new framework that is called MAHA, Make
America Healthy Again, a patient-centered alternative that restores
choice, transparency, and affordability without expanding government
control or forcing anyone to give up their current coverage.
MAHA is built on two simple ideas.
First, MAHA accounts are modern, flexible, tax-free health accounts
that put individuals and families back in charge of their healthcare
spending. In essence, this is following through on the things that our
President has truthed. Stop giving the money to the insurance
companies. Give the money to the people.
These accounts allow for Americans to save and spend their own money
on the care that they actually choose, the insurance premiums that they
want to pay, the direct primary care, long-term care, and wellness
expenses like healthy food and fitness. Imagine encouraging Americans
to take their pretax dollars and go buy the healthy food that will
sustain their families.
The unused funds roll over. Contributions will grow tax-free within
these accounts. Families can even help a neighbor in need through
direct, tax-advantaged charitable support.
This isn't about micromanagement from Washington. It is about
restoring personal responsibility and real purchasing power.
The second part of MAHA is the insurance, which will be a new,
affordable insurance option that is paired with these accounts that
emphasize transparency, competition, and catastrophic protection,
rather than all the bloated mandates.
These plans eliminate unnecessary requirements that have been proven
to fail and drive up costs in ObamaCare. It will cap excessive provider
pricing, expand access to telehealth and workforce reforms, and
guarantee coverage without annual or lifetime limits.
Together, the MAHA accounts and MAHA insurance offer something that
the Affordable Care Act never did: a real alternative.
Let's be clear: This does not force anyone to abandon their current
coverage. If you like the crappy ACA ObamaCare plan that you currently
have, you can keep it, but Americans deserve another option, one that
treats them like an adult, not line items in a Federal spreadsheet.
Mr. Speaker, the American people are tired of being told that
confusion is inevitable, that high costs are unavoidable, and that
Washington knows better than they do. They are tired of a system that
protects insurers, institutions, and lobbyists while families struggle
to make ends meet.
Give the people control over their healthcare dollars. It is not a
radical concept. It is how markets work. It is how innovation happens.
It is how costs come down.
The choice is simple. We can continue doubling down on a failing
system that promises coverage but little care, or we can offer
Americans a new path, one grounded in freedom, responsibility, and
trust in the people that we serve.
I want to make this very clear, Mr. Speaker: The American people
don't want Republicans to do half measures or to tinker around the
edges. They don't want excuses. They want leadership, and they want
bold action. They want politicians to stop writing blank checks for a
broken system and finally deliver the kind of transformative healthcare
solutions that this country and these people deserve. Anything less
borders on political malfeasance.
I thank my colleague from Texas for allowing me this time to speak.
Mr. ROY. Mr. Speaker, I know my friend from Missouri needs to head
home, but before he heads out, I would ask him a couple of quick
questions in colloquy.
For the average viewer out there who can't necessarily follow all
this, if we distill this down simply, no matter what you call it, no
matter how you define it, what we are simply proposing is that
individual families, individuals, be able to get the same tax benefit
as currently corporations get when they are putting their dollars into
a Blue Cross, Aetna, or some other insurance plan, right?
Mr. BURLISON. Will the gentleman yield?
Mr. ROY. I yield to the gentleman from Missouri.
Mr. BURLISON. Right.
Mr. ROY. Because of a broken system created by wage controls post-
World War II, instead of employers only being able to get the tax break
when they give dollars to pay Blue Cross to provide some sort of plans
and then you have to then further subsidize that--so maybe your
employer puts in $1,800 and you put in $900, in total, it is costing
$2,700 a month.
{time} 1220
Instead, we are saying: Look, get the same tax break, employer, but
put it into a massively expanded, tax-free account, where you are able
to use it for insurance, real insurance, that you can go get, a
catastrophic coverage and/or direct primary care, all sorts of plans
out there where you have a doctor who says: Look, for $100 a month, you
can call me. I am at your call. I will do this kind of service.
Another option is health sharing, whether it is secular or faith-
based, where you have, oh, wait a minute, I don't need catastrophic
insurance for this problem. It is a broken leg, but I don't have $5,000
for the emergency room visit and all the care and whatnot, so you share
and defray that cost across people often in a faith-based organization,
but sometimes secular.
Isn't that the engine of what we are talking about?
Mr. BURLISON. Absolutely. Any kind of reform that we are looking at,
[[Page H5832]]
if it doesn't include that as the core engine, we are not getting
anywhere.
Mr. ROY. Then, would it not require us to simply say that you can
leave ObamaCare in place? That can sit there and keep doing what it is
doing, but we are going to give people this option, so employers can
put it in there.
If you are self-employed, you can get the same tax break. It is all
equal tax treatment. Nobody is treated differently. We would have a
product over here that would allow for true catastrophic insurance,
right--not regulated, not all sorts of complications, not telling you
what you can do, not do, but a risk-based product that says: Hi, I am a
healthy 24-year-old. I would like to just know that, if I am in a bad
accident or if I get cancer, that I will be able to have care. I will
pay $100 a month for that risk assessment, and the insurance companies
can figure all that out, or $200 a month, but not $2,000 a month.
Isn't that what we are talking about?
Mr. BURLISON. Absolutely. I mean, when you give the choice back to
the people, suddenly the doctors are going to start paying attention,
as well.
Mr. ROY. Correct.
Mr. BURLISON. They are going to--when people ask, what does this
cost? They are going to have to answer for it right then and there.
If they can't answer for it, guess what? When you have the choice,
you can walk away. You can go to the next doctor. You can go down the
street until people start providing the pricing. That will force
transparency.
Mr. ROY. The last point, to that point, when our Republican
colleagues, in particular, and other colleagues talk about all these
things--we need transparency, we need association health plans--I
support that. I support transparency, right? We need to fix some
particular technical thing with our existing plans, right? Whatever
these little solutions are--PBMs, right? There are all these--oh, we
are going to do something on PBMs. Well, sometimes, that works.
Sometimes, it doesn't. Will any of that be transformative?
Mr. BURLISON. No.
Mr. ROY. What will be transformative is giving individuals and
patients the power to deploy the dollars in a tax-advantaged way, in a
marketplace where they can go get the options that are best for them.
Mr. BURLISON. Yes.
Mr. ROY. Correct?
Mr. BURLISON. Correct. In fact, the swampy thing to do and what you
would expect this town to normally do is to tinker with those things--
Mr. ROY. Right.
Mr. BURLISON.--and do what the conventional thought is before. Let's
tinker with PBMs. Let's tinker with this account.
Mr. ROY. Right.
Mr. BURLISON. Right? The end result will be less choice for patients
and higher costs. Even with PBMs, it will raise premiums.
Mr. ROY. Right. If you have an F-250 pickup, right, and you have a
crappy, little engine in there that doesn't work, but you add four-
wheel drive and leather seats, and you do all this stuff to make it a
nice truck, but it has a lawnmower engine in it, would it work? Would
it be effective?
Mr. BURLISON. No.
Mr. ROY. That is what we are talking about. That is what Republicans
do. They have fallen into the trap of saying: Please give me the
leather seats on the F-250, or I really want the four-wheel drive, or I
really want a good bed liner and bed cover, and, oh, give me all the
options and music and speakers and, oh, it looks great, great running
boards, but you have a frigging lawnmower engine. The truck is useless.
We have to actually transform healthcare, and we have the opportunity
to do it with proposals like yours, like mine, like a number of
proposals that our colleagues have. The question is: Will we have the
willpower to do what the President has laid out-- Mr. BURLISON. Yes.
Mr. ROY.--which is to stop subsidizing insurance companies, stop
enriching insurance bureaucrats, and empower the American people?
Mr. BURLISON. Absolutely.
Mr. ROY. I thank the gentleman for his time.
Mr. BURLISON. Thank you for your leadership.
Mr. ROY. I wish him safe travel back to Missouri, and hopefully, next
week, we can get busy saving the American people from a broken
healthcare system.
America Under Attack From Within
Mr. ROY. Mr. Speaker, I am going to take a few minutes in the time
that I have remaining to talk about another issue that is critical to
the State of Texas and this entire country.
That is the fact that America, Texas, and Western civilization are
under attack from within. The cheap labor lobby, leftwing NGOs, radical
progressive Democrats, Marxists, globalist organizations, and the
United Nations have mobilized a coordinated effort to subvert our
security and immigration system to harm the American people.
Particularly concerning is the threat posed by Islamists who are
spreading sharia law into Texas, who are advancing throughout the
country, and who have a stated goal of undermining American life, not
assimilating into it.
This is a political movement, well funded, targeted at the American
people, Western civilization, our rule of law, and the Constitution.
We should not be allowing more people into this country who are
adherent to sharia law, period. The Muslim Brotherhood's own motto is:
``Allah is our objective. The Prophet is our leader. Koran is our law.
Jihad is our way. Dying in the way of Allah is our highest hope.''
Meanwhile, Europe has fallen. London and Paris are mere shells of
their former strong selves. You watch veterans who fought to defend the
United Kingdom in World War II. Those still alive tear up and cry,
wondering what it was that they fought for when they watch the radical
extension of Islam into the streets of London and throughout the United
Kingdom.
In France, a majority of young French Muslims put sharia above their
own national laws, and more than a third have sympathy for
Islamification. French officials have warned President Macron that
Islamists are infiltrating France's republican institutions and are a
threat to national cohesion. The authors of the report to Macron
identified the Federation of Muslims in France, FMF, as the main French
emanation of the historic Muslim Brotherhood, which was founded 100
years ago to promote a return to core Islamic values.
They said that the FMF controlled 139 places of worship in France and
a further 68 affiliated--in all, around 7 percent of the total. The
organization ran some 280 associations.
Mr. Speaker, 7 out of 10 French voters would back a ban on the
Islamic veil in public because of what is happening in France.
In the United Kingdom, Muslims are increasingly turning to Britain's
sharia courts, which are not part of the U.K. law and operate as
informal bodies. The number of sharia courts in Britain has grown to 85
since they first began operating in the country in 1982.
Polls have found that 41 percent of the British public believe that
Muslim immigrants have had a negative impact on the United Kingdom.
Nearly half think that Muslim women are pressured into wearing a hijab.
Almost a third think that Islam promotes violence.
Parallel legal systems are not keys to a thriving society. There must
be one rule of law for all the people.
All the way back in 1991--a lot of people won't know this--the Muslim
Brotherhood issued a memorandum about North America, detailing a plan
for the ``enablement of Islam in North America,'' establishing an
effective and stable Islamic movement led by the Muslim Brotherhood,
which adopts Muslims' causes domestically and globally and works to
expand the observant Muslim base. It was a coordinated and specific
effort to advance Islam into the United States.
{time} 1230
Our Founders did not envision a Nation that remotely resembled
today's Muslim world and the radical elements of sharia. America was
founded as a nation grounded in a distinctly Judeo-Christian history
and understanding of human nature.
It was Great Britain that led the ending of slavery.
John Adams said: ``One great advantage of the Christian religion is
that it brings the great principle of the law of nature and nations . .
. to the knowledge, belief, and veneration of the whole people.''
[[Page H5833]]
Thomas Jefferson and John Adams hinted at the incompatibility of
America's Republican virtues with the values of Muslim nations after
meeting with the Islamic Ambassador about the Barbary States'
inclination to make war upon nations that did them no wrong after they
were informed it was a requirement of the Koran.
In Jefferson's papers in 1786, he wrote: ``We took the liberty to
make some inquiries concerning the ground of their pretensions to make
war upon nations who had done them no injury, and observed that we
considered all mankind as our friends who had done us no wrong, nor
given us any provocation.
``The Ambassador answered us that it was founded on the laws of their
prophet, that it was written in their Koran, that all nations who
should not have acknowledged their authority were sinners, that it was
their right and duty to make war upon them wherever they could be found
and, to make slaves of all they could take as prisoners, and that every
Musselman''--Muslim--``who should be slain in battle was sure to go to
paradise.'' That is Jefferson, 1786.
Our Founders knew that sharia law was not consistent with Western
civilization and our values. Sharia law is a problem that is growing
throughout the United States and certainly growing in Texas. My home
State bore the brunt of a 4-year mass migration invasion under the
previous administration, but there has been a quieter one of Islamists
leveraging our immigration system and corporate interests to extend and
use diversity visas, chain migration, and H-1B visas to flood our
country with people who don't believe in it and have no intention of
assimilating into it.
A new Muslim community in Texas, not even a few days old, with a
150,000-square-foot Muslim community center, was opened in Houston,
called EPIC City. It is in Plano, outside of Dallas-Fort Worth and it
has raised all sorts of questions about their intentions to create an
effectively Muslim-only community where sharia law no doubt would and
will be practiced. Now they have renamed it The Meadow rather than the
East Plano Islamic Center. They continue to develop and grow it even as
there are almost 300 mosques in Texas and more mosques being built in
Texas every day than any other State in the Union.
Meanwhile, let's look at what is going on in the United States
broadly. Our Nation's foreign-born population has reached 51.9 million
people, comprising some 16 percent of our population. We are at the
highest levels of percentage in our history. The last time we had a
similar level of foreign-born population, in roughly 1920, we froze
immigration. Largely for about 40 or 50 years we froze it, and then it
has been exploding over the last 50 years.
I have introduced legislation called the PAUSE Act to pause
immigration and to pause it until we get our hands around all of the
problems that are currently plaguing our immigration system: the abuse
of birthright citizenship, to have profit-centered ways to create
American citizens, by people coming here, coming across the Rio Grande,
having children, making citizens that then can use American resources,
our hospitals, our schools, our legal system, our welfare.
We continue to allow a broken visa system to have extended family
members be brought into the United States expansively and purposefully.
The H-1B program has been exploited and abused now for years and must
be abolished or massively reformed.
We obviously still have a very badly broken border that is only
currently being held in check by a President and by leadership in the
administration who are devoted to doing it, that are empowered to do
it. However, all of the ways in which Biden-Mayorkas and that entire
administration allowed our border to be wide open and have 10 million
people flood our country, all of those things still remain in place
statutorily.
Congress could fix it. We haven't. The House passed legislation 2
years ago--what it was called in that Congress was H.R. 2--to
meaningfully change the law so that it can't be exploited to endanger
the people. We have not brought that back up again this year. We
should. We should codify these changes. Our priorities matter. The
results of this are stark.
Thanksgiving week we saw what happened with the West Virginia
National Guard servicemembers, Specialist Sarah Beckstrom, who was 20
years old, and Staff Sergeant Andrew Wolfe, 24. They were savagely
ambushed and shot blocks away from the White House. Specialist
Beckstrom tragically lost her life. The attacker, Rahmanullah Lakanwal,
an Afghan national who was imported through the Biden-Mayorkas illegal
Operation Allies Welcome parole program, drove from Washington State to
carry out this diabolical act in our Nation's Capital.
According to DHS, over 5,000 Afghans brought to the United States
through Operation Allies Welcome had either national security or public
safety concerns.
We are importing people who want to undermine and destroy our
country, and both sides of the aisle have been guilty of this. This is
not a debatable reality. It is literally occurring.
For us to survive, we have to act. We need to pass the PAUSE Act. We
need to pause immigration. We need to pass legislation like the bill
that I introduced to preserve a sharia-free America that would prohibit
the entry of people that are known to be adherent to sharia law, which
is deeply in conflict with our values and our laws.
We should take away the tax status of CAIR and other radical
organizations with ties to terrorists and a vast network of well-funded
organizations, using American tax dollars, United Nations' funds,
wealthy donors, George Soros funding, foreign funding, nation-states
all pouring into organizations, NGOs driving this agenda, the Marxist-
Islamist red-green alliance that wants to destroy America as we know
it. I introduced legislation to take away CAIR's tax status.
Why are we giving them tax breaks to try to destroy America?
That brings me to the final point which I was alluding to before on
H.R. 2, that is legislation designed to codify effectively what
President Trump is doing: to stop the abuse of parole, to stop the
abuse of asylum, to stop the abuse of catch and release, to stop all of
the abusive ways in which an exploited border can undermine our
security and endanger us.
{time} 1240
We cannot rely on the administration to do it. Congress needs to act.
Congress needs to codify it. Congress needs to change it. States and
State leaders need to stand up and use the legislation that we did pass
in January to enable suit against the Federal Government when they
failed to secure the border that we included in the Laken Riley Act
because States can no longer be beholden to a Federal Government that
refuses to secure the border.
We have a reprieve under President Trump. That reprieve will no doubt
one day come to an end, and States must be empowered and have leaders
who are willing to stand up and fight.
States need to challenge things like Plyler v. Doe, the Supreme Court
ruling that said that we must have taxpayer funding going to pay for
the education of illegal alien children. If you want to choose to do
it, that is for you to decide. We should not be forced to use taxpayer
dollars to do that. We should challenge that Supreme Court ruling. We
should stand up to defend our country.
The fact is you can't win a war that you are not willing to recognize
exists. It is undeniably true after the election of the mayor in New
York, Mamdani, with what is going on in Dearborn, with what is going on
in Minneapolis, with what we are seeing happen in Texas, in Dallas and
Houston, what we saw unfold in London and Paris, that there is an
attack on the Western way of life. We must stand up and defend it if we
are going to be able to pass down a country to our kids and grandkids.
Mr. Speaker, I yield back the balance of my time.
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