The Biden Border Crisis and So-Called Infrastructure Plan

Floor Speech

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Mr. JOHNSON of Louisiana. Madam Speaker, during my Special Order tonight, my colleagues and I will address the inaction by the Biden administration and House Democrats to address this major crisis that we see on our southern border, this humanitarian crisis. And, yes, that is the right word. It is a crisis by any objective measure.

We are also going to address tonight the President's so-called infrastructure plan. That is a lot for us to talk about. So we will squeeze it into this hour.

When President Biden was inaugurated, the American people will remember, Madam Speaker, that he called for unity. He promised to work across the aisle, to work with Republicans in Congress. But so far those words have been completely empty promises.

Everyone can acknowledge and everyone can see on television that there is a real crisis at the southern border, and it is a crisis of the administration's creation.

President Biden has stopped construction of the border wall. He reimplemented the catch-and-release policy of the Obama administration. He reversed the remain in Mexico policy of the Trump administration. And he selectively is enforcing immigration laws.

The results are not surprising. Our Border Patrol is now completely overwhelmed, and the southwest border encounters have reached a 15-year high. I want you to look at these numbers, Madam Speaker. This is the border crisis. The first column here is January of this year. We had 78,323 southwest border encounters. The next month, in February, it goes up to 100,441. Last month, in March, it was 171,700. This is a crisis. We all know the numbers for April are going to be staggering.

I know that there are Members on both sides of the aisle here--I know there are Members, our Democrat colleagues, who want to join us to take action to fix this. But we can't do it without the administration.

Look, here are five simple steps that we can take that would help end the border crisis:

Number one, finish the wall;

Number two, reinstate the remain in Mexico policy;

Number three, turn away high-risk individuals at our border. These are dangerous folks, some of them, coming across, and we know that.

Number four, require negative COVID tests before releasing migrants, illegal immigrants, into the U.S.;

Number five, let's send a clear message to the whole world to discourage illegal immigration.

What a concept. These aren't difficult things. The Trump administration had it all figured out, but now politics has gotten in the way of good policy.

In addition to finally solving the border crisis, there is another item in the news that Americans desperately want us to address, and that is the need for an infrastructure package. That could be a bipartisan solution that we could all work on together. It should be nonpartisan, but because it impacts every single congressional district in every State, all of us, every American, wants this to happen.

But the plan that the White House introduced isn't really about infrastructure at all. In fact, only 6 percent of the $2.5 trillion proposal would go towards bridges, highways, and roads. The rest goes to fund Democrat Big Government priorities, like the Green New Deal, and payoffs to liberal special interest groups. What an outrage.

The facts are that the House majority is the slimmest of any House majority since World War II, and the Senate is divided 50/50. Given these facts, we just want our Democratic colleagues and President Biden to end this partisan agenda for the sake of the American people.

I look forward, Madam Speaker, to hearing from my Republican colleagues tonight about both of these issues.

Madam Speaker, I yield to the gentleman from Wisconsin (Mr. Grothman), who represents the Sixth Congressional District of Wisconsin.

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Mr. JOHNSON of Louisiana. Madam Speaker, I thank the gentleman. And he has indeed been in Washington too long.

Madam Speaker, there is a common denominator tonight. The crisis at the border and the problems with the infrastructure package were both entirely created by the Biden administration.

They were both thus completely avoidable, completely predictable, and they have done and are doing an extraordinary disservice and real damage to the American people.

We ask, again, of all of our Democrat colleagues and President Biden and his administration, please, please, for the sake of our country, put the partisanship aside. Let's govern with common sense, let's fix these problems before they become so great that we are unable to do so.

Madam Speaker, we end the Special Order, and I yield back the balance of my time.

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