Relating to the Consideration of H. Res. Impeaching Joseph R. Biden, Jr., President of the United States, for High Crimes and Misdemeanors
Floor Speech
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Mr. McGOVERN. Mr. Speaker, I thank the gentleman from Texas for yielding me the customary 30 minutes, and I yield myself such time as I may consume.
Oh my God, Mr. Speaker. Let's get real here. Nothing about this is serious, not the process, not the intentions of the resolution's sponsor, not the impeachment case, not a single damn thing.
Yesterday, Republicans dishonored this House and dishonored themselves by bringing to the floor a ridiculous censure resolution against Adam Schiff because Donald Trump told them to.
Today, they are dishonoring this House and dishonoring themselves by bringing to the floor a ridiculous impeachment referral resolution against Joe Biden because Donald Trump told them to.
This body has become a place where extreme, outlandish, and nutty issues get debated passionately and important ones not at all.
In short, Mr. Speaker, the Republican Party is a joke. They talk about law and order when their frontrunner for President has been indicted on Federal charges.
They talk about respecting law enforcement. Then, they come in here and downplay the rioters who came in here on January 6 and beat up cops with fire extinguishers. I don't even know how they look the Capitol Police officers in the eye when they walk into this place.
They talk about how important it is that we follow a good process. Yet, the Rules Committee was called in late last night, literally at a moment's notice, where they deployed emergency procedures so we could refer this measure to a committee--what a spectacular emergency, truly something that needed to be done immediately.
We all know the truth. The real emergency here was that the Georgia wing and the Colorado wing of the MAGA caucus got into a fight right over there on the House floor about who gets to impeach the President first.
The truth is that Speaker McCarthy has lost control of this House, and it is being run by the MAGA fringe. This is nuts.
Kids get shot in their classrooms. Nothing.
Environmental disasters destroy entire communities. Nothing.
Our air is clogged with smoke because half the Northern Hemisphere is on fire due to climate change. Nothing.
But when the MAGA wing nuts say to jump, Speaker McCarthy says: How high?
According to news reports, it sounds like this resolution's sponsor is dictating to the Speaker which committees bills should be referred to, when he should put legislation on the floor, and how he should run this House.
That is who is in charge here, the MAGA extremists.
Frankly, they can try to impeach Joe Biden all they want, but all they are doing is impeaching themselves and making a mockery of this place while they are at it.
I get it. They don't like that their cult leader, Donald Trump, will go down in history as one of the worst Presidents we have ever had. They don't like that he was impeached twice and had a bipartisan conviction vote in the Senate. They don't like that Democrats tried to hold him accountable for trying to extort President Zelenskyy, who is now trying to defend himself from Putin.
They don't like that Congress tried to hold him accountable again, this time for trying to overthrow the government on January 6.
They don't like that he had nuclear secrets in his bathroom and in his desk, and God knows where else, and waved them around like it was nothing.
You know what? They don't like themselves for having to stand by him time after time and defend his lies. I know many of my Republican colleagues say in private what they are not willing to say here in public, which is that they think this is an embarrassment.
Still, they are here on the floor defending a three-time loser, sexual abuser, ex-President that has been indicted more times than he has been elected. It is pathetic.
Instead of dealing with their own issues, Republicans are going after Joe Biden to try to distract and deflect.
H. Res. 503 claims President Biden is intentionally facilitating a complete and total invasion of the southern border. This resolution claims that foreign cartels have complete control of our border. Seriously? It is insulting to the Border Patrol agents that they claim to support, the ones that put their lives on the line every single day.
By the way, just to talk facts for a second--which I know my Republican friends hate to do--since the end of title 42 on May 11, unlawful entries along the southern border have plummeted.
As of June 6, Customs and Border Protection has reported over 70 percent fewer encounters between points of entry or unscheduled encounters per day.
Fentanyl seizures have increased under the Biden Presidency. To make that clearer for my friends across the aisle, that means that more fentanyl is getting picked up at the border before it makes it onto our streets. They are attacking Joe Biden for stopping more fentanyl. It makes no sense.
No, they would rather talk about building a stupid wall along our southern border that they know won't work or about the nonbinding resolution they put on the floor this week that demonizes migrants but does nothing to fix our immigration system.
They have a policy disagreement with President Biden and their first impulse isn't to pass an immigration bill. Their first impulse is to impeach him. Our Founding Fathers must be rolling over in their graves.
They are doing this all so they can distract from the fact that Donald Trump stole top-secret information and stored it in his bathroom and showed highly classified Iran attack plans to people and bragged about stealing classified government documents on live TV.
Trump is the legitimate national security risk. Don't come to us with this phony BS about how President Biden is the reason we have a crisis at our southern border.
Republicans can yell and scream all they want. They can rant and rave so that they get on FOX News tonight. It doesn't make them right. It is doing untold damage to this institution. They have no respect for the traditions of this House. It is grotesque. It is embarrassing. It is shameful.
We aren't debating matters that help or uplift people, rather we are debating garbage to make Trump happy. It is cowardly, and it is sickening.
What we have here is a joke, just like this Republican majority-- which is clearly going to be a temporary majority.
Mr. Speaker, that was an awful lot. I don't have enough time to respond to all the inaccuracies that were just stated.
Mr. Speaker, I want to talk about this accusation about open borders. I don't know how many times we need to say it, but the United States does not have open borders. We didn't have open borders under Trump, and we don't have open borders under Biden.
Even the conservative CATO Institute knows that. Please stop incorrectly saying that our country has open borders. We do not.
Mr. Speaker, let me read an excerpt from the article-- this is from CATO.
``Practically since his first week in office, President Joe Biden has faced repeated criticisms from Republicans and some Democrats that his border policy amounts to `open borders.' This criticism is not simply inaccurate: it is unhinged from reality in a way that distinguishes itself from normal political hyperbole. Indeed, U.S. immigration policy is effectively closed borders, and Biden's immigration policies and goals are largely the same as those of President Donald Trump.
``President Biden has not suddenly ended America's immigration prohibition and opened up U.S. borders to almost anyone who wants to come (as was largely America's immigration policy from 1776 to 1924). Instead, he has far more vigorously enforced immigration prohibition than the law requires, narrowing the few exceptions to the universal ban on legal immigration.''
Mr. Speaker, I point this out because this is crazy what is being talked about here on the House floor. This is not about a policy disagreement; if it was, maybe my friends would actually pass a bill that had an alternative policy.
The bill that they brought up on immigration this week was a bill that was a nonbinding resolution. It did nothing. It was just their opinion that expresses the sense of Congress. It was a ``nothingburger''. If they wanted to, they would legislate in a way that would change a policy, but that is not what they want to do.
This is about protecting Donald Trump. Donald Trump says to them, you know: Jump. And they ask: How high? That is what this is about. This is about covering up for the former President. It is about deflecting from the former President's criminality, the 37 felony counts that he has been indicted on, and they don't like it. Unfortunately, that is who he is.
Scanlon), a distinguished member of the Rules Committee.
Experts say no.''
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Mr. McGOVERN. Fentanyl deaths in the U.S. were rising before Biden took office, and, in fact, he is intercepting more fentanyl than the previous administration did. I think we need the Republicans to get their facts straight.
The other thing I want to point out to my friends--and maybe they need to read their history books or read the Constitution--impeachment is about high crimes and misdemeanors. It is not about policy disagreements.
Mr. Speaker, it is clear that Republicans would rather the American public pay attention to anything--literally anything--other than the latest charges that their leader has been slapped with.
Mr. Speaker, I would love to insert in the Record the entirety of the charges, but, apparently, I am told it is too long to be able to be put into the Congressional Record.
Let me say a couple of things. Trump is charged with 31 counts of violating a part of the Espionage Act that bars willful retention of national defense information by someone not authorized to have it.
He is basically charged with, among other things, conspiracy to obstruct justice, tampering with grand jury evidence, concealing evidence in a Federal investigation, and false statements.
Mr. Speaker, I get it. If I were they, I would want to talk about anything other than that, but those are the facts. No matter how you want to distract and deflect, Mr. Speaker, the American people are not going to ignore what I believe will ultimately prove to be criminality of the former President.
Mr. Speaker, let me say to the gentleman who just spoke that I know exactly why he is here. I don't think this is--and the American people know--this is not a serious effort. I know my friends don't want to talk about Trump. They want to talk about Biden. So let's talk about Joe Biden.
I want to make something clear: Not only is any talk of impeaching President Biden completely absurd--as many House Republicans know--but President Biden has been a historic success over the first 2\1/2\ years in office.
He took office in the throes of the pandemic and in the midst of the chaos caused by his predecessor trying to illegally hold on to power, but that hasn't stopped Democrats from making huge strides to improve the lives of every American.
Democrats jumped into action by enacting the American Rescue Plan in the President's first months in office. That law changed the course of the pandemic and set the course of our economic recovery to be the envy of the rest of the world. It lifted more than 5 million children out of poverty, it safely reopened our schools, and it put money back in the pockets of middle-class Americans.
Every Republican voted against those things.
President Biden signed the bipartisan infrastructure law which makes historic investments in our roads, our bridges, and our transportation networks while improving public safety and creating jobs all across the country.
We passed into law the biggest piece of gun safety legislation in decades, and we enacted the Inflation Reduction Act less than a year ago.
President Biden is now busy implementing that law which will cut prescription drug costs for our senior citizens, lower the cost of healthcare for millions of Americans, make historic investments in clean energy, and make American-made solutions to our climate crisis.
It will do all of that while lowering our deficit, unlike so many of the bills this Republican majority has brought to the floor which would do the opposite.
This isn't just me saying how great all of this is. During the Financial Services Committee hearing yesterday, Fed Chairman Jerome Powell was asked about inflation.
He said: ``Everybody has very high inflation, the E.U., the United Kingdom, and many countries within Europe.''
He made one more important point: ``Our recovery is by far the strongest of any country.''
Just look at the results more broadly. More Americans have jobs right now than at any point in American history. Over the past 2 years, more small businesses have been created than at any other period on record. More Americans have health insurance right now than ever before in our history.
I could go on and on, but let me be clear. No one is saying things are perfect. There is a lot that we need to do.
We need to do more to keep our children fed. We need to do more to ensure every child gets the education they deserve. We need to do more to make sure the richest Americans pay their fair share. We need to do more to get guns off the streets.
I would love to see this Republican majority do anything at all to reach those goals or do anything that means anything to anybody.
Instead, we are here today debating this latest attempt by the Speaker to keep the most radical members of his party behind him. Quite frankly, it is embarrassing, and it is pathetic.
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Mr. McGOVERN.
Mr. Speaker, I will say to the gentleman that we are well aware that the previous President was impeached twice and justifiably so.
The first impeachment dealt with his effort to try to extort Zelenskyy into getting dirt on Joe Biden in exchange for assistance so that they could defend themselves against Putin. I guess no one should be surprised because the President seems to have this--the former President seems to have this obsession with Putin.
Mr. Speaker, despite the former President's repeated claims that Russian interference in our 2016 election was a Democratic hoax, a bipartisan Senate investigation and report released in 2020 made clear that there were extensive communications between senior Trump officials and people with strong ties to the Kremlin.
Senator Marco Rubio--the last time I checked, he was still a Republican--said: ``We found irrefutable evidence of Russian meddling.''
The report is damning. The facts are clear. Russia interfered in an election.
The second impeachment was really in response to what happened here, and everybody saw what happened here: A violent mob broke into this Capitol.
Mr. Speaker, 140 Capitol Police officers were injured. The mob destroyed sacred property in this building. They tried to overturn a legitimate election. They attempted an insurrection.
I was in the chair, one of the last people off the House floor. I saw some of my Republican colleagues here, hiding, cowering behind Capitol Police because they were afraid of what was going on that day.
Now, they come to the floor and say nothing happened, that it was a perfectly wonderful day, a typical day of tourism at the Capitol. It is disgusting, the revisionism that we see here.
So you are damn right that he got impeached a second time. He deserved to be impeached. If that is not an impeachable offense, I don't know what is.
Mr. Speaker, the gentleman said something that I agree with: The election cannot come soon enough.
I think people are just sick and tired of my Republican friends defending a three-time loser, sexual abuser, ex-President that has been indicted more times than he has been elected. It is pathetic.
We should be working on matters that actually help people. That is why Democrats have been fighting not only for commonsense gun safety legislation and investments in job creation and environmental protection, but we have also been insisting that we get a guarantee from the majority here that they don't go after Social Security and Medicare.
Mr. Speaker, I urge that we defeat the previous question, and I will offer an amendment to the rule to provide for consideration of a resolution assuring our constituents that the people's House will protect and preserve Social Security and Medicare for our future generations and reject any cuts to these essential programs.
Mr. Speaker, I will say to my friends that while you want to distract and deflect from all of Donald Trump's legal problems, they continue to mount.
I think there will be probably more charges, I expect, in the coming weeks and the coming months. While my colleagues do not want to talk about things like Social Security and Medicare because they are the party of privatization, the party of trying to undercut Medicare, we are going to fight them on those things.
We are going to continue to be a voice for the people of this country, for our senior citizens, for those who believe that Social Security and Medicare are important. We will not be deflected or deterred by whatever this circus is that is going on here today.
Mr. Speaker, I have to say that my friends on the other side of the aisle look small and pathetic and like losers. When they lose this House, this is going to be a reason why.
Mr. Speaker, my friends keep talking about open borders. That is an insult to the men and women in our Border Patrol who are risking their lives to protect our borders. It is just not true.
I entered in the Record an article by the conservative think tank, the Cato Institute, but facts don't matter. It is what plays on FOX News and how we can distract and how people can make up things.
I will also say, Mr. Speaker, that try as they might to deflect from the former President, we can't turn our back on what he has done.
Look, Trump literally can't help himself. He has admitted multiple times on air, during interviews, and to others that he stole and shared top-secret government information. Talk about a national security threat. The call is coming from inside the house.
Mr. Speaker, I want the record to reflect that the previous President of the United States supported an insurrection to basically steal the election.
My friends think it is funny, but I will tell you this: Laugh in the face of the Capitol Police.
Mr. Speaker, 140 of them were injured. People lost their lives, and the best you can do is laugh--is laugh--about what happened that day? I mean, that is disgusting.
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