Crises Facing America
Floor Speech
BREAK IN TRANSCRIPT
Mr. JOHNSON of Louisiana. Mr. Speaker, this evening we will have Republican Members from across this country to address the multiple crises that are facing our country, whether it is the economic crisis, the crime crisis, the energy crisis, the border crisis, the foreign policy crisis, or now the related issue of the staggering and ongoing crisis of fentanyl, a scourge upon this country.
BREAK IN TRANSCRIPT
Mr. JOHNSON of Louisiana. Mr. Speaker, I could not have said it better myself. I thank my friend for those comments.
Mr. Speaker, what Mr. Griffith is explaining there is the magnitude of this crisis, and I have a number of colleagues here tonight who will speak to it. Illegal drug overdoses recently became the leading cause of death for Americans age 18-45; the leading cause of death. Today in America illegal drug overdoses are killing more people at this age demographic than car accidents, obviously, than cancer, more than COVID. In my home State of Louisiana alone, opioid deaths increased in 2021 by 40 percent; 40 percent in one year; mostly driven by an increase in illicit fentanyl.
What is fentanyl? Fentanyl is this synthetic opioid that is 80 to 100 times stronger than morphine. It is created with chemicals shipped from China to Mexico. It is trafficked across our southern border. Its potency means the smallest amount, even to fit on the tip of a pencil, is considered a lethal dose, and now it is fueling one of the worst drug epidemics in American history.
Mr. Speaker, the Biden administration's response has been nothing, passivity. They have been passive about securing our border, the entry point for all these drugs coming into our communities. They have been passive about prosecuting drug offenders. Many Democrat-led jurisdictions are lowering felony offenses to misdemeanors. They have been passive about preventing drug abuse. The Democrats' American Rescue Plan, so-called, even includes a provision, as you have already heard tonight, and you will hear it more, to distribute drug paraphernalia at taxpayers' expense. It is unbelievable.
Mr. Speaker, fentanyl deaths are certain to increase unless we act with the same resolve that we have used to attack other less-deadly threats. If the Biden administration were serious about addressing this crisis, they would start by securing our turnstile at the southern border. It is time for the Democrats in charge here to wake up.
To help address this problem, we have to take immediate steps. We have to secure our border. We have to prosecute criminals again. We have to work with localities to prevent drug abuse rather than accommodate it.
Mr. Speaker, I have a number of colleagues, as I mentioned, who will address this issue in further detail. I am delighted that they have taken the time to be here. I am happy to yield to the gentleman from Florida (Mr. C. Scott Franklin).
BREAK IN TRANSCRIPT
Mr. JOHNSON of Louisiana. Mr. Speaker, I thank my friend for that compelling message. He is right, every State is a border State now, whether you are on the coast or whether you are up north or anywhere in the country, and Tennessee is no exception to that.
I yield now to the gentleman from Tennessee (Mr. Burchett), my good friend.
BREAK IN TRANSCRIPT
Mr. JOHNSON of Louisiana. Mr. Speaker, I thank my friend. It is a serious issue. Every moment of levity helps us. I tell you what, if we can't work in a bipartisan fashion to prosecute criminals and stop the cartels, there may not be a lot of hope for this institution. I hope we can get back to that soon.
Arizona is a State that certainly deals with this every moment of every day, and she has seen it up close.
BREAK IN TRANSCRIPT
Mr. JOHNSON of Louisiana. Mr. Speaker, that passion is authentic. And as we said, from Arizona you see it every day.
Mr. Speaker, I just received a text message from our colleague, Mr. Katko, and he is the lead Republican on the Homeland Security Committee, and he said make sure when we are talking about the cartels to point out they are getting magnificently enriched through this alien smuggling surge, and they are, therefore, flush with cash, and they are now developing their own ability to make fentanyl. That is a dangerous game changer for the country. This crisis gets worse and worse by the hour.
Mr. VAN DREW. Mr. Speaker, I am honored by your yielding and the work that you are doing in this area.
We are in the midst of perhaps the widest array of crises this country has ever seen.
A global pandemic, inflation, and an unstable world stage that could erupt at any moment.
Yet, COVID-19 and these uncertainties aren't the only things slowly infecting every corner of this country.
Fentanyl. Fentanyl. That word.
It takes just two milligrams of this substance, which is 100 times more potent than morphine, to kill a full-grown adult.
In fact, Border Patrol has already seized more than 2,700 pounds at the southern border this year, 2,700 pounds, enough to kill every single American twice over.
The massive inflow of this deadly substance is a direct result of our weakening southern border and policies designed to entice illegal immigrants to flow into our Nation.
Often sourced directly from China, our open-border policies have allowed the worst of humanity to sneak this drug into every community, small and large, rural, urban, or suburban across our great America.
It has become so bad, in fact, that fentanyl is now the leading cause of death, as you have heard over and over again because it is so unbelievable, of all Americans between the ages of 18 and 45. Imagine that. It is incomprehensible.
Exacerbated by the stress of mandates and lockdowns, fentanyl-related overdoses across the board increased by more than 55 percent.
I have seen it personally in my home district and across the great State of New Jersey, where thousands of families last year lost a loved one to a fentanyl overdose. It has to end. It has to stop.
We must secure our southern border. We must provide the resources to get this drug off our streets, and we must permanently make fentanyl a schedule I drug.
It is time to finish the wall, stop the relocating of illegal migrants across the country, and we must empower our law enforcement at the border to uphold the rule of law.
If not, we will lose our America that we love.
BREAK IN TRANSCRIPT
Mr. JOHNSON of Louisiana. Mr. Speaker, strong words on a very important set of issues.
I yield to the gentleman from California (Mr. LaMalfa).
BREAK IN TRANSCRIPT
Mr. JOHNSON of Louisiana. Mr. Speaker, I thank the gentleman for his remarks.
The Border Patrol agents are as frustrated as we are. Demoralized is exactly right. We have met with them and heard their stories. And the reason they are so frustrated, Mr. Speaker, is because all of this crisis is completely avoidable. These are the results of bad policy choices, and that is what is so outrageous.
BREAK IN TRANSCRIPT
Mr. JOHNSON of Louisiana. Mr. Speaker, I thank the gentleman for that forceful message.
BREAK IN TRANSCRIPT
Mr. JOHNSON of Louisiana. Mr. Speaker, I am happy to yield next to a gentleman who has been on the front lines of all this as a retired police lieutenant. He is also a former professional hockey player, and that is pretty cool, too. He is a tough guy, but he knows the issue.
BREAK IN TRANSCRIPT
Mr. JOHNSON of Louisiana. Mr. Speaker, I thank my friend. I appreciate his words and his expertise on the issue.
BREAK IN TRANSCRIPT
Mr. JOHNSON of Louisiana. Mr. Speaker, that debt is so staggering. And Dr. Babin is right, so many people don't stop to think about the magnitude of it and what we are doing to our children, our grandchildren, every future generation of Americans. We better get control of it. Thank you for that insight tonight.
BREAK IN TRANSCRIPT
Mr. JOHNSON of Louisiana. Mr. Speaker, I thank my friend for his insights there.
BREAK IN TRANSCRIPT
Mr. JOHNSON of Louisiana. Mr. Speaker, I thank my friend. I think about the same thing, our children and what we are doing to them and their future. They will have less security, less financial stability, less opportunity. They won't have the great fortune that we have because we are making bad policy decisions right now. We are adding to the debt. We are compounding the problem day by day, and we just can't get anyone here to pay any attention to it.
The Democrats in charge refuse to address the issue. In fact, they just continue to double down on bad policy, and it is just so frustrating.
BREAK IN TRANSCRIPT
Mr. JOHNSON of Louisiana. Mr. Speaker, as we have illustrated tonight with so many Members coming in from all over the country to express our concerns about all of these crises--and we genuinely could go for hours upon hours. But the hour is getting late tonight, and our Special Order hour is running out.
I just want to reiterate again some of the things we highlighted in this last hour on the floor here in the people's House tonight.
We addressed this economic crisis. It is just staggering. A $30 trillion Federal debt is a number that previous generations of Americans couldn't even have imagined.
We talked about the crime crisis and the utter lack of responsibility that Democrats in charge have shown and that the White House has shown to address this issue.
The border crisis and now the fentanyl crisis that is directly related to that. It has become the number one killer of Americans aged 18 to 45 in this country.
The energy crisis--because I come from an energy state, the State of Louisiana, I just want to conclude with a couple of remarks to put a fine point on that latter issue before we close this evening.
Mr. Speaker, the problem here is that, as with all of these crises, all this is totally avoidable. All of this is the result of policy choices. It is bad decisions, bad policy by the White House and by the Democrats in charge.
Mr. Speaker, on the energy crisis, President Biden's anti-energy agenda has caused the price of a gallon of gas to skyrocket to $3.42 nationally. Last week, oil prices hit $90 a barrel. Mr. Speaker, $90 is a 7-year high. In just the last month, oil prices have surged 37 percent. That is in 1 month, and it has been on a steady and rapid increase.
Given this agenda and the rapid rise in prices, it is not surprising that, according to a recent Gallup poll, American satisfaction with our energy policies is the lowest in two decades. That is because Americans have paid at the pump more now than they paid since the Obama-Biden administration.
U.S. households will also pay between $700 and $1,700 more for heat this winter, depending on where they live and what type of fuel they use. More than one in four Americans report now that they skipped basic expenses to pay their energy bill in the past year. One in five Americans report they could not pay their full energy bill. This is a crisis.
Let me just tell you, and break it down in layman's terms, why this is happening.
From the very beginning of the Biden administration, the first couple of weeks, as soon as he took office, he issued that slew of executive orders, a record number of executive orders. Among those early executive orders were his directions on energy policy.
He reflexively did exactly the opposite of what President Trump had done and accomplished. We were energy dominant, not just energy independent. We were energy dominant because of the Trump-era policies.
What does President Biden do? He does exactly the opposite, reflexively almost. President Trump moved us to domestic oil and gas production to increase that to make us energy dominant, to make us a net exporter. What does President Biden do? The opposite.
He shuts down and puts a moratorium on drilling and exploration on Federal lands, including offshore, off the coast of States like mine, Louisiana. That was a killer for the national economy. It is a direct contributor to driving the costs up.
He also killed the Keystone pipeline, of course. That was a big source, an artery, as it were, for domestic production and supply in our country. Here is the great irony. Ostensibly, the reason for doing all those things is he wanted to help the environment, I guess. I guess he owed it to some interest groups or something. They claim that that would be better for the environment if we moved away from fossil fuels, as we always hear.
But here is the great irony--and I will close with this. When President Biden shut down domestic production, not only did he drive up the cost of all the fuel that we need to heat our homes and to fill up our gas tanks and all the rest, not only did he increase the pain on American consumers, but here is the irony. When they shut down domestic production, the demand for fossil fuels, oil and gas, in this country didn't go down. The demand didn't change nationally just because the President decided he didn't want to supply it anymore. In fact, the demand is at least stabilized and, in some cases, has gone up.
So, what does that mean? Well, Americans have to get their supply from somewhere else. If we are not going to produce it here, the bountiful resources that God has given us beneath our own feet, if we are not going to do it here, we have to get it from somewhere else.
The Biden administration turns to OPEC. They turn to Russia, Saudi Arabia, begging for more production and begging for our supply to be met from these overseas parties.
Do you know what the greatest irony about all of this is? Ostensibly, they wanted to help the environment, but do you know what they do when we get more of our oil and gas from Russia and Saudi Arabia? We do exponentially more harm to the environment.
If you believe their metrics, this is a terrible policy solution because--guess what?--we produce oil and gas in a much cleaner fashion in the United States than they do in those other countries.
So, the great irony is not only do they drive up costs for American consumers, not only do they increase the pain for everybody; they are actually doing more harm to the world that they claim they want to help.
It is truly unbelievable, not to mention it has destabilized us and put Russia in a better position. Now, we see the results of that on a whole different crisis that we didn't even have time to address tonight.
Mr. Speaker, I am out of time. I would just close by saying that the American people cannot tolerate this for much longer, and they won't tolerate it for much longer. We cannot wait for this election cycle that comes up later this year when we get an opportunity to be returned to the majority to govern this place again and bring some sanity back to Washington.
BREAK IN TRANSCRIPT
Source