[Congressional Record (Bound Edition), Volume 163 (2017), Part 2]
[House]
[Page 2523]
[From the U.S. Government Publishing Office, www.gpo.gov]




         PRESIDENT TRUMP SHOWS WORLD WHAT A DISASTER LOOKS LIKE

  The SPEAKER pro tempore. The Chair recognizes the gentleman from 
South Carolina (Mr. Clyburn) for 5 minutes.
  Mr. CLYBURN. Mr. Speaker, standing before almost entirely White 
crowds in North Carolina, Michigan, Virginia, and Ohio, candidate 
Donald Trump painted a bleak picture of African-American life in 2016, 
full of crime, high poverty, and failing schools. He went on to say, 
``It is a disaster the way African Americans are living,'' and asked, 
``What the hell do you have to lose?''
  In just 3 short weeks, Mr. Speaker, President Trump has shown the 
world exactly what a disaster looks like. He has put a White 
supremacist in the White House as his chief political adviser. He has 
given us an Attorney General who spent the last 30-plus years working 
against civil and voting rights. He has appointed a shamefully ill-
prepared Secretary of Education whose only qualification seems to be 
her ability to contribute millions to Republic candidates in what can 
only be described as the textbook definition of pay to play.
  Candidate Trump promised to be the hero of working people, but 
President Trump is doing the exact opposite. His actions tell a lot 
more than his tweets. His Cabinet is full of millionaires, many with 
ethical challenges and conflicts of interest. He has already raised the 
cost of mortgages for many Americans. He is proposing that we abandon 
the overtime rule that would ensure bigger paychecks for working 
people. He is working to dismantle Wall Street reform and is proposing 
a border tax that would give corporations a huge tax break while 
costing working men and women more on groceries, clothes, and other 
goods.
  The policies of the Trump administration are an extension of the 
policies that Republics in the House have pushed for years. To 
candidate Trump's question what do you have to lose, for starters, your 
voice at the ballot box. A free and fair election is the hallmark of 
democratic governance, yet the Trump administration and Republics in 
Congress continue to threaten this basic pillar of democracy. They have 
promulgated blatant falsehoods about voter fraud, sowing fear and 
distrust. They have worked and are working across the country to 
prevent people of color from voting. They are refusing to investigate 
Russian interference in our elections and are currently moving 
legislation through the House of Representatives to eliminate the only 
Federal agency tasked with helping Americans vote and protecting our 
voting machines from hacking.
  As President Trump and his spokespeople continue to make demonstrably 
false claims about widespread voter fraud and cozying up to the country 
that attacked our democracy, House Republics just passed out of 
committee H.R. 634, legislation to eliminate the only Federal agency 
tasked with certifying the security of our voting machines, the 
Election Assistance Commission.
  Forty-seven out of fifty States rely on the EAC's voting machine 
certification program in some capacity. A recent report by the 
Institute for Critical Infrastructure Technology concluded, ``Voting 
machines are neither secure nor complex. In general, these stripped-
down computers utilizing outdated operating systems possess virtually 
every conceivable vulnerability that a device can have.''
  In my home State of South Carolina, we currently use voting machines 
that were rejected by the State of Ohio in 2007 for being ``buggy, 
unstable and exploitable.'' And even though machines are not supposed 
to be connected to the internet, they are well past their shelf life 
and, therefore, more likely to break down, crash, and produce errors. 
Replacing these outdated machines with updated ones will cost a 
significant amount of money, and the burden is on the States to do so.
  Mr. Speaker, if House Republics are serious about election integrity, 
they ought to stop working to prevent people of color and start 
investing in voting infrastructure.

                          ____________________