Providing for Consideration of H.R. Protecting Speech From Government Interference Act; Providing for Consideration of H.J. Res. Providing for Congressional Disapproval of A Rule Submitted By the Department of the Army, Corps of Engineers, Department of Defense and the Environmental Protection Agency; and S. Covid-19 Origin Act of 2023

Floor Speech

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Mr. MASSIE. Madam Speaker, by direction of the Committee on Rules, I call up House Resolution 199 and ask for its immediate consideration.

The Clerk read the resolution, as follows: H. Res. 199

Resolved, That at any time after adoption of this resolution the Speaker may, pursuant to clause 2(b) of rule XVIII, declare the House resolved into the Committee of the Whole House on the state of the Union for consideration of the bill (H.R. 140) to amend title 5, United States Code, to prohibit Federal employees from advocating for censorship of viewpoints in their official capacity, and for other purposes. The first reading of the bill shall be dispensed with. All points of order against consideration of the bill are waived. General debate shall be confined to the bill and shall not exceed one hour equally divided and controlled by the chair and ranking minority member of the Committee on Oversight and Accountability or their respective designees. After general debate the bill shall be considered for amendment under the five-minute rule. In lieu of the amendment in the nature of a substitute recommended by the Committee on Oversight and Accountability now printed in the bill, it shall be in order to consider as an original bill for the purpose of amendment under the five-minute rule an amendment in the nature of a substitute consisting of the text of Rules Committee Print 118-1. That amendment in the nature of a substitute shall be considered as read. All points of order against that amendment in the nature of a substitute are waived. No amendment to that amendment in the nature of a substitute shall be in order except those printed in the report of the Committee on Rules accompanying this resolution. Each such amendment may be offered only in the order printed in the report, may be offered only by a Member designated in the report, shall be considered as read, shall be debatable for the time specified in the report equally divided and controlled by the proponent and an opponent, shall not be subject to amendment, and shall not be subject to a demand for division of the question in the House or in the Committee of the Whole. All points of order against such amendments are waived. At the conclusion of consideration of the bill for amendment the Committee shall rise and report the bill to the House with such amendments as may have been adopted. Any Member may demand a separate vote in the House on any amendment adopted in the Committee of the Whole to the bill or to the amendment in the nature of a substitute made in order as original text. The previous question shall be considered as ordered on the bill and amendments thereto to final passage without intervening motion except one motion to recommit.

Sec. 2. Upon adoption of this resolution it shall be in order to consider in the House the joint resolution (H.J. Res. 27) providing for congressional disapproval under chapter 8 of title 5, United States Code, of the rule submitted by the Department of the Army, Corps of Engineers, Department of Defense and the Environmental Protection Agency relating to ``Revised Definition of `Waters of the United States' ''. All points of order against consideration of the joint resolution are waived. The joint resolution shall be considered as read. All points of order against provisions in the joint resolution are waived. The previous question shall be considered as ordered on the joint resolution and on any amendment thereto to final passage without intervening motion except: (1) one hour of debate equally divided and controlled by the chair and ranking minority member of the Committee on Transportation and Infrastructure or their respective designees; and (2) one motion to recommit.

Sec. 3. Upon adoption of this resolution it shall be in order to consider in the House the bill (S. 619) to require the Director of National Intelligence to declassify information relating to the origin of COVID-19, and for other purposes. All points of order against consideration of the bill are waived. The bill shall be considered as read. All points of order against provisions in the bill are waived. The previous question shall be considered as ordered on the bill and on any amendment thereto to final passage without intervening motion except: (1) one hour of debate equally divided and controlled by the chair and ranking minority member of the Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence or their respective designees; and (2) one motion to commit.

Sec. 4. The provisions of section 7 of the War Powers Resolution (50 U.S.C. 1546) shall not apply to a concurrent resolution introduced during the first session of the One Hundred Eighteenth Congress pursuant to section 5 of the War Powers Resolution (50 U.S.C. 1544) with respect to Syria.

Sec. 5. If a veto message is laid before the House on House Joint Resolution 30, then after the message is read and the objections of the President are spread at large upon the Journal, further consideration of the veto message and the joint resolution shall be postponed until the legislative day of March 23, 2023; and on that legislative day, the House shall proceed to the constitutional question of reconsideration and dispose of such question without intervening motion.

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Mr. MASSIE. Madam Speaker, for the purpose of debate only, I yield the customary 30 minutes to the gentleman from Massachusetts (Mr. McGovern), pending which I yield myself such time as I may consume. During consideration of this resolution, all time yielded is for the purpose of debate only. General Leave

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Mr. MASSIE. Madam Speaker, last night, the Rules Committee met and reported House Resolution 199, providing for consideration of three measures: H.R. 140, H.J. Res. 27, and S. 619.

The rule provides for H.R. 140 to be considered under a structured rule with 1 hour of debate equally divided and controlled by the chair and the ranking minority member of the Committee on Oversight and Accountability or their designees.

The rule further provides for consideration of H.J. Res. 27 under a closed rule with 1 hour of debate equally divided and controlled by the chair and ranking minority member of the Committee on Transportation and Infrastructure.

Additionally, the rule provides for consideration of S. 619, under closed rule, with 1 hour of debate equally divided and controlled by the chair and ranking minority member of the Select Committee on Intelligence.

Finally, the rule postpones the vote on a potential veto message from the President on H.J. Res. 30 until the legislative day of March 23.

Madam Speaker, I yield 2 minutes to the distinguished gentleman from Texas (Mr. Roy).

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Mr. MASSIE. Madam Speaker, I yield myself such time as I may consume.

Madam Speaker, I rise in support of this rule and in support of the underlying legislation, H.R. 140, which went through regular order, which was marked up in the Oversight and Reform Committee, where Democrats had copious opportunities to offer amendments and to change the bill, as did Republicans.

H.R. 140 is called the Protecting Speech from Government Interference Act, and would prohibit Federal employees from using their official authority to censor a private entity, including outside of normal duty hours or away from an employee's normal duty post.

Under President Biden, administration officials and Federal bureaucrats have abused their positions, authority, and influence to encourage censorship and erode Americans' First Amendment rights.

Recently released reports have uncovered efforts by the Federal Bureau of Investigation, the Centers for Disease Control, the Department of Homeland Security, and other government agencies to pressure social media companies and internet providers to censor and remove speech posted on social media platforms.

Advocates for this censorship flag certain posts and users as spreading misinformation on various topics, including COVID-19, racial justice, and the U.S. withdrawal from Afghanistan.

Executives at Facebook and Twitter have admitted that prior to the 2020 Presidential election, after a warning from the FBI, they censored the sharing of news regarding Hunter Biden's laptop leak, which has since been proven true. It was not a Russian disinformation campaign.

Even former White House Press Secretary Jen Psaki, during a July 2021 press briefing, called on Facebook to ban specific accounts from its platform.

Congress should recognize that the biggest spreader of misinformation over the last several years, whether it has been about elections or about COVID, has been the Federal Government.

The censorship must stop. Congress must restore constitutional protections enshrined in the First Amendment.

H.R. 140, and the amendments that are pending votes here as well, are critical to ensure that government officials can never again promote censorship and pressure private entities to suppress Americans' First Amendment rights.

Additionally, the rule before us provides for consideration of H.J. Res. 27, a resolution ``providing for congressional disapproval under chapter 8 of Title 5, United States Code, of the rules submitted by the Department of the Army Corps of Engineers, Department of Defense, and the Environmental Protection Agency relating to ``Revised definition of `Waters of the United States.' ''

It is Groundhog Day again in America. Every time the administration changes, this rule changes.

The Biden administration's new rule would radically redefine the term ``Waters of the United States'' to expand the Federal Government's authority in regulating bodies of water.

Specifically, Biden's EPA would expand the term to include impoundments of jurisdictional waters, tributaries, adjacent wetlands, and additional waters.

To be clear, what the Biden administration is pushing through here will heap serious burdens on farmers, small businesses, homebuilders, and rural communities across our country.

In 1972, Congress didn't tell the EPA and the Army Corps of Engineers: Do whatever you think is necessary to protect water. That is not what the bill said. Yet, that is what they have taken as their directive.

The Clean Water Act was never intended to be applied as broadly as the Biden administration is proposing. Every Member of Congress should be concerned about the EPA's attempt to expand its authority over individuals' private property and regulate farms and communities, even those which lie far away from any lakes, rivers, or streams and very far away from Washington, D.C.

Congress has the constitutional authority and responsibility to provide oversight and to review regulations issued by the executive branch. If the executive branch promulgates rules that could overstep their authority, as President Biden is doing here, it is vital that we exercise our oversight authority in Congress.

Finally, the rule before us provides for consideration of S. 619, the COVID-19 Origin Act of 2023, which would finally declassify any information relating to potential links between the Wuhan Institute of Virology and the origin of COVID-19.

In 2020, at the height of the pandemic, anyone who spoke out questioning whether COVID-19 might have come from the Wuhan lab in China was denounced as a conspiracy theorist, and their words were labeled as ``dangerous misinformation.'' People were censored online, their accounts were suspended, and their reputations were damaged for questioning the origins of COVID-19.

What is the difference between COVID-19 conspiracy theory and the truth? About 2 years. We have seen them called natural immunity conspiracy theories. We have seen people who said masks don't work called conspiracy theorists. Now, we are finding out that all of those conspiracy theories, so-called, were accurate.

Fast-forward to today. Even the government admits it. The Department of Energy and the FBI have both publicly reported their conclusions that COVID-19 likely emerged as a result of a lab leak from the Wuhan Institute of Virology, a research institute in Wuhan, China, controlled by the People's Republic of China and, ultimately, the Chinese Communist Party.

Was it funded in part by our government? Yes, it was.

This legislation is long overdue and is necessary to expose the truth about the origins of COVID-19. Americans deserve to see the information. President Biden could have released this information at any point. It could have been released a year ago. It could be released today without this resolution. But this resolution is important because the President has not released this information. The last Congress, led by Speaker Pelosi, could have voted to do what we are doing here today. But no, they wanted it to remain hidden from the American public. I fear the Federal Government has been involved in a coverup about the origins of COVID-19 because they are afraid of being exposed as culpable in the creation of the disease at the center of the pandemic.

To my colleague's point about the videos that were released on Monday, I think the other side of the aisle is out of touch and out of step with the American public on this.

A recent poll by Rasmussen showed that 81 percent of likely voters believe that all of the tapes should be released. The Democrats had 2 years to release these tapes. But 81 percent of voters believe that.

Is that just Republicans? No.

Madam Speaker, 86 percent of Republicans and 78 percent of Democrats--they are out of step with their own party--believe that these videotapes should be released because Americans deserve to know the truth and the defendants in these trials deserve to have the evidence they need to present their defense.

Madam Speaker, I urge my colleagues to support this rule, and I reserve the balance of my time.

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Mr. MASSIE. Madam Speaker, I yield 3 minutes to the gentleman from New York (Mr. Langworthy).

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Mr. MASSIE. Madam Speaker, I yield myself such time as I may consume.

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Mr. MASSIE. Madam Speaker, in this article that I have just referenced, misinformation No. 7 was that ``COVID originating from the Wuhan lab is a conspiracy theory.'' It is not. I think we are going to find that out when this resolution passes, and I expect a lot of Democrat support for the resolution. It passed by unanimous consent in the Senate.

``Google admitted to suppressing searches of `lab leak' during the pandemic. Dr. Francis Collins, head of the National Institutes of Health, claimed, and still does, he didn't believe the virus came from a lab.

``Ultimately, overwhelming circumstantial evidence points to a lab leak origin, the same origin suggested to Dr. Anthony Fauci by two very prominent virologists in a January 2020 meeting he assembled at the beginning of the pandemic. According to documents obtained by Bret Baier of FOX News, they told Fauci and Collins that the virus may have been manipulated and originated in the lab, but then suddenly changed their tune in public comments days after meeting with the NIH officials. The virologists were later awarded nearly $9 million from Fauci's agency.''

Maybe this is why we are not getting the truth yet. We will get the truth if this rule passes and the subsequent S. 619 passes here in the House. I think it is very important.

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Mr. MASSIE. Madam Speaker, I yield myself such time as I may consume.

Madam Speaker, although it is not the subject of today's resolution or any of the bills covered by this resolution, the Democrats just can't avoid talking about the release of the January 6 videos. They keep going back to it during this debate.

Madam Speaker, I would remind them that 78 percent of Democrats out in America support the release of all of these videos.

The fact that they are apoplectic about the few minutes of video that Tucker Carlson released on Monday shows that Tucker Carlson is over the target. For 2 years, they have been selectively releasing information and videos to set a narrative. In just a few minutes, the entire narrative was challenged--might I say it collapsed under the scrutiny, under the review of just a few minutes of undoctored video that came from this body.

I applaud Tucker Carlson for releasing that. The American people are right. If the Democrats are so upset that only a few of these videos were released, I would remind them that they were able to release these at any point in the past.

Moving on to something that is the subject of this resolution, I want to talk about the repeal of Joe Biden's 2023 WOTUS ruling, the waters of the U.S. ruling. Like I said before, it is ``Groundhog Day'' again.

Under President Bush, we had one set of rules that farmers, homebuilders, and landowners came to understand. They were a little hard to comply with because every division of the Army Corps of Engineers might interpret them differently, or different States would interpret them differently, or different bureaucrats at the EPA would interpret them differently.

Then, Obama came along with a rule to expand the definition of waters of the U.S., and then Trump came into office and the rules changed again. Now, Biden is here trying, once again, to change the rules on what are the waters of the U.S.

The farmers and homebuilders I talk to don't say they don't want any regulations. Nobody in this body has said no regulation is what we want.

The question is, give us clear, precise, understandable regulations we can follow that do not change. Frankly, those should be written by Congress. They shouldn't be made up by every administration that comes into power. Yet, that is what we are doing, or that is what has happened.

Today, we are talking about repealing those onerous changes and unclear changes. For instance, Susan Bodine testified in front of the Transportation and Infrastructure Committee this year on this topic, and she talked about the significant nexus test that they apply in WOTUS 2023, waters of the U.S. To support expanded jurisdiction under this rule, the agencies now claim that isolated water can affect the biological integrity of navigable water.

What does that mean? If you have a puddle of water that a bird lands in and drinks from and takes some seeds or some larvae, and when it drinks and flies to a river and deposits it in its bird droppings, or maybe as it flies over the river and it doesn't even visit the river, if there is any kind of biological connection--and as we have found, everything is biologically connected on this planet. If there is any biological connection that they can establish between a puddle of water on your property and a navigable water, then they say, this is now covered under waters of the U.S. This is ridiculous.

The only certainty that our farmers and our landowners are going to get from Biden's 2023 WOTUS rule is the certainty that if a raindrop has fallen on your property, a government agent will show up someday and tell you what you can and can't do with that property under this rule.

That is why it is important for us to repeal that, and that is why this resolution is so important.

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Mr. MASSIE. Madam Speaker, will the gentleman yield?

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Mr. MASSIE. Madam Speaker, I said that the other side could have released them.

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Mr. MASSIE. Madam Speaker, I yield myself such time as I may consume.

Madam Speaker, I surely didn't expect this to turn into a debate on the January 6 videotapes or to hear the Democrats propose that it sounds like they are in favor of all of the tapes being released instead of just some of them.

I think if the gentleman would review the transcript, and I could be wrong, but I think he will find out that I said Tucker Carlson only released a few minutes of that, and those few minutes were able to destroy the narrative that had been constructed over 2 years.

But if the gentleman cares to answer a question, then maybe we have come to some bipartisan agreement that all of the tapes should be released.

Madam Speaker, I would ask if the gentleman when he speaks next if he would speak to that topic and if he would be in favor of releasing all of the tapes instead of releasing them partially.
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Mr. MASSIE. Madam Speaker, I yield myself the balance of my time.

Madam Speaker, it is somewhat serendipitous, but in the context of this debate on a rule about other bills, it seems we have come to some agreement, it appears to me, with the American people, 81 percent of whom believe that all of the tapes should be released. It seems as if we have come to some agreement that we all would be better off if we get to the bottom of the truth and all of the truth comes out and all of the tapes come out so that no one side can distort what actually happened that day, and then let the American people decide.

So in the interest of transparency and in the interest of getting back to the subject matter at hand, which are three bills covered by this rule, I want to talk about S. 619, which is so important. It is transparency, and it is the transparency that the American people deserve. It passed by unanimous consent in the Senate. Even though it seems like there is some opposition on the other side, I suspect we are going to get a lot of votes from Democrats on S. 619.

I think it is important to go on the record for elected Representatives to say whether or not they believe their constituents are entitled to the truth which our government possesses or at least information that they possess that would help somebody come to a conclusion of what the origins of this virus were and did they come from Wuhan.

The President could do this at any time. He could have done it at any time in the past 2 years. He hasn't done it. It is time to put him on the spot and say: You either veto this or you release that information that you have withheld from the American public for 2 years, which is too long. I suspect we could overcome his veto.

Next, Madam Speaker, I want to talk about the Waters of the U.S. rule.

Why is this timely?

Because on March 20 this goes into effect. That is why it is so urgent to repeal the 2023 Waters of the U.S. rule.

These are laws.

Were they written by lawmakers?

No. Our Founding Fathers created three branches of government. We have the executive branch which enforces laws, we have the judicial branch which resolves disputes, and we have the legislative branch which is supposed to make the laws. Yet, here we sit abdicating that authority and that responsibility. You can delegate authority, but you can't delegate responsibility, Madam Speaker.

We have a responsibility to the American people to make sure that these laws are concise, that they don't change on the whim of an executive who gets in the White House, that they are not onerous, that they have their intended effect, and that they are applied uniformly across the country.

Yet we have abdicated that responsibility. But we will take that responsibility back by the passage of this rule and the subsequent legislation to repeal the WOTUS, Waters of the United States 2023, by Joe Biden. We, the American people, deserve that.

Finally, I will close by talking about H.R. 140. This is a bill that went through regular order. What a wonderful thing. We have talked about it so much. It is a bill that covers one topic only. We have talked about that so much. Here we are, and we even have a chance--even though it was amended in the committee--to amend it here on the floor to perfect it even more for Members and by Members who aren't members of that committee.

Are these amendments that are not germane?

Are these the kind of amendments that the American people hate where Members offer an amendment and then they stick something into a bill that is completely unrelated to it?

No. Every one of these amendments is germane to this bill. We have made sure of that in the Rules Committee. The gentleman serves on the Rules Committee, and he had plenty of time to voice his concerns there.

So we have a lot of amendments that are great. I think they will improve the bill. But what is most important is that people have a chance to have their point made and to get a vote on this.

Finally, I will talk about what H.R. 140 would fix. It would fix this loophole that they think they have constructed that allows the Federal Government to violate the Constitution.

Obviously, Federal agents can't take away our First Amendment rights, and, obviously, the Constitution wasn't meant to bind social media companies. It was meant to bind the administration.

What we have is a loophole where the administration leans on a social media company that they are paying money to. Millions of dollars have gone to these social media companies from the CDC and from the FBI.

So when they say:

Would you pretty please ban this user?

Or:

Would you pretty please take down these posts? There is a whole series of these posts.

The government doesn't get in line. They have a back door that they can trot to every day and submit lists of people whom they think should be banned because they don't like what they have said.

This is dangerous to our Republic. If the other side wants to call it a democracy, then it is dangerous to the democracy. But this is a republic.

Our government has built an elaborate but constitutionally unsound framework for violating these natural rights.

As we have seen with the Twitter files, they boldly work in close cooperation with private-sector actors who aren't subject to constitutional restrictions imposed on government by our Founders.

But they also claim foreign influence and national security so they can target U.S. citizens with agencies in the government under the military chain of command whose missions are ostensibly directed at foreign actors who have no constitutional rights.

Elected lawmakers be damned, legions of government lawyers create shaky legal scaffolding and ad hoc doctrine to indemnify the actors within our government who eagerly exploit these loopholes.

In this way, government actors can claim everything they do is legal. They have a bunch of lawyers to back them:

Oh, we didn't do anything illegal, it is all legal. Here, look at our doctrine. The lawyers have gone through it, it is all legal.

Here is the problem, Madam Speaker: much of what they do is unconstitutional.

So whose job is it to resolve that difference?

It is actually not the Supreme Court's job. We are entrusted with oversight. We all here swore an oath to the Constitution, and if we know that authorizations that we have made or that funding that we have appropriated has been twisted in a way to get around the Constitution or to drive through a loophole that some lawyers in the administrative branch have created, then it is our obligation--we owe it to the American people, we swore an oath to the Constitution--to fix that--not to make them go to court to get some remedy--but to fix it, to stop it in its tracks.

H.R. 140 with its pending amendments is a good down payment on that promise to the American people.

Madam Speaker, I support this rule, I urge my colleagues to vote for it.

The material previously referred to by Mr. McGovern is as follows: Amendment to House Resolution 199

At the end of the resolution, add the following:

Sec. 5. Immediately upon adoption of this resolution, the House shall proceed to the consideration in the House of the resolution (H. Res. 178) affirming the House of Representatives' commitment to protect and strengthen Social Security and Medicare. The resolution shall be considered as read. The previous question shall be considered as ordered on the resolution and preamble to adoption without intervening motion or demand for division of the question except one hour of debate equally divided and controlled by the chair and ranking minority member of the Committee on Ways and Means or their respective designees.

Sec. 6. Clause 1(c) of rule XIX shall not apply to the consideration of H. Res. 178.

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Mr. MASSIE. Madam Speaker, I yield back the balance of my time, and I move the previous question on the resolution, as amended.

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