Republicans Are Addressing the Major Crises

Floor Speech

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Mr. CLOUD. Mr. Speaker, I appreciate being here, and I thank the gentleman for leading this. This is such an important topic.

We have seen ourselves in the last year and a half go from the greatest economy the world has ever seen to very perilous times for the American people.

Some of it not of our choosing; some of it, unfortunately, of our choosing. About a year and a half ago I would ask in virtually every meeting I went to in my district throughout Texas, I would ask every industry: What is your biggest problem right now?

And they would tell us: We can't find enough people.

Now, the reason was very different a year and a half ago than it is today. I get the same answer, but for very different reasons. A year and a half ago the economy was doing so good. Businesses were booming. We were hiring. Wages were growing across every demographic. Now it is because we are paying people to stay home.

This is an attack against the American worker, against the American economy, against the American work ethic that took us from struggling Colonies to an amazing, amazing influence on the world stage, to the greatest economy ever in all of humanity.

Now, what is really troubling is to see the attack against the American worker that this administration has chosen to pick out, certain industries that were very strong for us, particularly the energy industry. We have seen pipelines shut down here, while pipelines are encouraged to be built in our adversarial nations. We have seen this push toward green energy so that we can buy solar panels from China, while China continues to build hundreds of coal power plants.

So this, obviously, isn't about the environment. This is about destabilizing the economy here at home, while we empower adversarial nations abroad.

Recently, I was at the border. And we funded border infrastructure in the last administration. But now we have stopped it, even though the contract is already signed, and we won't even continue the contracts enough to plug in the lights that are already built at the border.

What is going on at the border is wreaking havoc on communities throughout our States and throughout this Nation.

We talk also about China and the devastating impact they have had on the coronavirus. We need to investigate that. This administration needs to step up and investigate that. There was some talk some time ago about how Fauci had sent money to the Wuhan lab and whether or not that was funding gain-of-function research or not.

Whether or not it was, what in the world are we doing sending money to a Wuhan lab when China is the number one thief?

They steal more intellectual property than any other nation-state from us.

We can make America work. America works when we support the American worker. Let's get back to doing that.

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