Fostering Undergraduate Talent By Unlocking Resources for Education Act

Floor Speech

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Mr. COLLINS of Georgia. Madam Speaker, I thank Representative Biggs for yielding.

Representative Biggs just highlighted, frankly, the problem, Madam Speaker, that we see in this, and it has been reiterated over and over again.

This is not about a policy. This is about a person. It is about a person, the President, who the other side, and especially this committee that I have served as ranking member on and now serve as a member of, has consistently gone after for, now, almost 19 months.

It has nothing to do with policies that at one point they did or did not believe in because, if this were true, we would have had a mass outcry in 2011 when President Obama used this authority to keep out folks because of human rights issues and other things.

So, again, the problem here is it is great to couch this in political terms; it is great to couch this in great, deep policy issues; but, for 18 months, this is all that we have heard.

I heard my chairman just a minute ago speak about how these policies that he disagrees with and doesn't like that are found under the law and that we are dealing with here today in this so-called NO BAN Act have tarnished us. Well, I will tell everybody what is tarnishing us in this country. It is acts like this and the constant back-and-forth.

There are times I have wondered--and I know my friend from Arizona has as well. We have talked about this a little bit. I have wondered why we have sort of kept the House locked down for the last 5 or 6 months, but if this is what we come back to do, maybe we should just stay away, because if this is what we are doing, it is, frankly, frustrating, because November 3 will be the chance to talk about this.

It is very policy and politically driven when we come to this floor on anything that really has to do with a political agenda, when there is a date on the calendar, as I talked about before, more than actually changing policy, because when you look at this, I will almost guarantee you that my friends currently in the majority, if they had a President of their party in the White House, they would come back on this very quickly and be very scared of messing with this power Presidentially.

This is a problem that we are seeing over and over and over and over again.

This NO BAN Act would strip the President of his ability to use the Immigration and Nationality Act to ban travel from certain countries that present national security concerns.

Ironically, as I said earlier, this is the very power that President Trump used in January to deal with the coronavirus in China. If this were in place, he may not have had the ability to actually work on what we know now as the pandemic early on to help stop the spread.

There are consequences to political legislation. This is one of them. We saved countless lives because of that, and now they want to strip the President of the authority to do that.

Now, others may say, well, we have got exceptions and we have got this. I am not taking anything from this committee on exceptions for this President. There have not been any. It is simply a partisan attack.

The Department of Homeland Security has identified several types of information that it needs in order to make a reliable decision regarding the admissibility of a foreign country's nationals to seek entry into the United States; things like: Does the country report lost or stolen identity documents, including passports, to Interpol, and how often they do so?

Does the country share information about their known or suspected terrorists or about their criminals with us?

And does the country issue modern electronic passports?

Why would we want to restrict the President, any President, from considering this information when determining whether to let a foreign national into our country?

Instead of appreciating what has been done here by this President with regard to our national security, like addressing the crisis on our border and China's increasingly hostile behavior, the Democrats have decided to move forward with this act, which we have talked about before in our committee and have pointed out many of the problems of this act. It eviscerates the ability of any administration to take nimble and decisive action to protect our homeland when cause for concern arises, like the threat of COVID-19.

What is even more ironic, and I touched on this when I first started, Madam Speaker, is that the very power that the majority wants to strip from this President was used successfully by President Barack Obama and also--as was pointed out by my friend from Arizona--by the Speaker of this House, currently, and Ronald Reagan.

When we understand this, this actually clarifies--it actually crystallizes it. So when you see every other President has used this in some form over the years, and it has only become a concern now because we do not like the current President, Donald Trump, and we have an election coming up very quickly, then we start seeing stuff like this.

In January 2017, President Trump signed an executive order to restrict travel from certain countries that were at a high risk of terrorism and were public safety concerns, based off recommendations from the Secretaries of DHS and State, along with the DNI.

It is important to understand these restrictions are not permanent. This is, again, another thing that permeates even some conversations I have heard already that we are making permanent changes. These are not permanent. They are there until the country gets it in order and are actually able to answer our security concerns, which is not going to be talked about today. We are not talking about security. We are trying to make it feel like it is something else against certain groups and ethnic groups. This is about security.

When you look at the law, and it says, when those public safety concerns are removed, they are removed from the restricted list, such as Chad was in 2018.

Let me be clear; there is no doubt the President's use of the 212(f) authority has helped us improve our security and the vetting of foreign nationals seeking entry into the U.S. Some countries restricted by this order have taken positive steps to come into compliance with the information-sharing and public safety standards and have worked to participate in protecting international security.

Is that not what we would want? Or is what is being said by the majority today that we prefer lax standards for those coming here; we prefer less safety for our people of people coming here. Is that the standard being left here?

I don't think the majority wants to go there, but it is seemingly implied by what is being said. Because this is actually working with countries to come into modern-day compliance with known safety and international safety regulations.

This bill would take authority away from the President and give it to a subordinate. Again, strange move here; taking the Presidential authority. It goes back and shows the real intent of this bill is about this President, not about the law.

It would also outrageously terminate ``all actions taken pursuant to any proclamation or executive order,'' effectively shutting down the information sharing on terrorism, criminals, and security threats that have come from these restrictions. This is dangerous, Madam Speaker, and it is a bad policy.

This bill is just another response, knee-jerk response, by the majority because they don't like the President and they don't like the decisions he makes on behalf of the country. Unfortunately, their never-ending desire to take him down comes at the expense of American security and safety if this bill were to become law.

Fortunately, we know it will not; another day of political posturing on the floor of the House, wreaking havoc on our borders, backlogging our customs process. And here is the interesting one that nobody has talked about that I have heard so far. I may have missed it, but I don't think I did.

Me and the gentleman from Arizona, we understand something. Everything coming here today has a price tag. This one does as well, $1 billion.

But then this is really where it gets concerning, Madam Speaker, because I have tried my best over the years to work with the majority, and I see some of my friends over there that we have passed legislation with that have made an impact in this country.

But here is what really bothers me. How do they pay for it? How does the majority pay for this?

The majority, Democrats, have decided to include in this bill a prescription drug measure that could have been by bipartisan, and was bipartisan, if only they had abided by the agreed-upon text negotiated by Members in both parties.

Instead, we are considering an old, partisan version of a prescription drug bill that will undermine critical innovation. We negotiated bipartisan changes to stop gaming while preserving the research that benefits patients, but the Democrats in the majority have abandoned that and, with this bill, they have abandoned any hope of showing the American people they truly want to legislate, instead of just constantly attacking this President.

But what is of deeper concern here, especially when it comes to prescription drug costs--because I don't want to hear my friends in the majority now talk about how they want to save money, and how they want to encourage innovation. When they put this into this bill, they have torn down bipartisan work that could actually save money. They have got to pay for it somehow.

I know their counsel; I know they are struggling right now. We have to pay for it somehow.

Well, then why not go back to the bipartisan process of working on prescription drugs, instead of throwing it into this NO BAN Act?

The majority's moral underpinning is severely damaged when you look at the fact that they are trying to play games with the prescription drug issue in our country on this bill; when we know, for a fact, that bipartisanship was the way forward on this, and I had worked with, and others had worked to bring a bipartisan solution. And now we throw it out the door because we are so bent on making a political statement on this floor that bipartisanship is gone. We might as well pack it up and wait for November 3. That hurts this body.

As the chairman of this committee in this House talked about just a moment ago about tarnishing the work in the world standing by what the President has done, are we really not going to have a conversation, Madam Speaker, about what is happening?

And I know--Madam Speaker, you do as well--concern about what happens here, concern about actually getting something done, concern about the very people that are lifted up by the majority and the minority, saying we are here for the American people. But when I see pay-fors like this, when I see the pay-for happening here, I know that this is not anything but another day on the campaign trail.

We are here today, making a political statement, and you know who is going to suffer? The very ones--I don't want to hear it from anybody in the majority today talking about how they want to help healthcare; how they want to bring prescription drug costs down; how they want to get at the very issues that we are dealing with. Because today you are going to go on record when you vote for this, by saying we don't care about the American people's fixing prescription drugs and getting healthy in this country. This today proves you have nothing to do.

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