Relating to A National Emergency Declared By the President on October 2006
Floor Speech
Mr. Speaker, I rise today in support of my bill receiving consideration on the House floor that would terminate the national emergency related to the Congo.
National emergencies are supposed to be temporary by definition and limited to 6 months by law unless there is a justifiable reason for an extension. They aren't supposed to linger on for decades with no oversight from Congress or the executive branch.
Clearly, this process is broken for national emergency declarations, and it needs reform. Having been in Washington, D.C., for over 2 years now, I clearly realize nothing gets accomplished here without force.
Today, we are raising the issue of this broken system, and that should be something that Members on both sides of the aisle can all agree with. Congress needs to do its job.
By law, Congress shall meet to consider a vote on a joint resolution to determine whether a national emergency shall be terminated after 6 months. Do you hear that? Congress shall do its job. Then, they should meet again for that same consideration of each extension of any national emergency every 6 months.
Congress has been required by law to consider a joint resolution for the Congo since April 27, 2007, 16 years ago, and 31 more times since.
Shockingly, Congress has never once reviewed the national emergency related to the Congo over that 16-year timeframe, despite the clear language in section 202 of the NEA requiring review every 6 months.
Administration after administration just keeps on unilaterally rubberstamping these extensions without even providing a report or update to Congress on how much taxpayer money is actually being spent. What are they spending it on? What is the need to extend this temporary national emergency authority?
These national emergency declarations have become the deep state's favorite foreign affairs slush fund. There is literally no spending transparency whatsoever out there on the 41 national emergencies currently in place. Congress is allowing the swamp to continue to shift and funnel an unknown amount of taxpayer dollars to an overseas dark hole.
I know that some of my colleagues will argue that some of the national emergencies we are terminating today won't save that much money. If that is the case and we are only sending a couple hundred thousand dollars in aid and munitions to a particular country, then that country no longer meets the definition of a national emergency. If it is tens of millions of dollars or even hundreds of millions of dollars that we are sending to certain countries as a result of these 41 national emergency authorizations, then taxpayers have the right to know these costs, and Congress has a responsibility to provide oversight on these dollars.
The current sanctions in the Congo have also not addressed the real issue that is there, which is the Congo mineral conflict. Nearly 40,000 children are estimated to be mining cobalt with their bare hands in the Democratic Republic of the Congo right now. They are working in unsafe conditions.
This is the real humanitarian crisis taking place in the Congo. If we want to talk about sanctioning anyone for what is going on in the Congo, it should be China, which is exploiting these children and sucking up the Congo cobalt.
Mr. Speaker, I have heard scare tactics that voting for this bill to end Congo's national emergency would unfreeze the assets of Viktor Bout, an arms dealer who was accused of supplying arms to al-Qaida. I encourage everyone on both sides of the aisle to not be tricked into voting against my bill based on this false assertion.
Viktor Bout was never a citizen of the Congo or of the United States, and the current sanctions only apply to United States assets. Viktor Bout is currently living and running for political office in Russia.
If the U.S. wants to impose further sanctions against him--and I think we probably should--it can do so under the same mechanisms it has imposed more than 2,200 sanctions against Russia in the last year and a half. This is not the only way to sanction a terrorist. We have many other avenues that we can go down, as is seen in these 2,200 sanctions from just the past year and a half.
Mr. Speaker, I agree that Viktor Bout is a threat, so much so that I condemn the President's action and this administration for having traded him for a professional women's basketball player that was locked up for bringing marijuana into Russia.
Mr. Speaker, I have not yet heard a compelling argument to vote against my bill.
Mr. Speaker, I urge adoption of my bill. I urge Congress to actually roll up their sleeves and do the hard work of authorizing stuff like this or putting an end to it, exposing to the American taxpayer exactly where their tax dollars are going and what it is being spent on so we know if we are sending our tax dollars overseas to terrorists with no oversight.
Mr. Speaker, we have heard a lot about the forced termination of these emergencies as being reckless and dangerous because it would remove sanction designations from hostile foreign actors.
I agree that the people who are on this list should be sanctioned, but also I see what is reckless and dangerous is continuing to funnel hundreds of millions of dollars to foreign countries, many with bad actors, over a 20-year period with no congressional oversight of how much taxpayer money the deep state is sending out the door.
It is also irresponsible that Congress is ignoring the law and not reviewing these 41 national emergency declarations every 6 months as required by law.
It is also reckless and dangerous that Congress is allowing Joe Biden to have unilateral authority from these national emergency declarations to draft Americans without consent into Active Duty, authorize chemical and biological weapons testing on humans--including Americans--and seize private property of the United States citizens.
Joe Biden decided to release and trade Viktor Bout when he still had nearly 15 years on his sentence. We can find another way to sanction him rather than just giving him a free pass, like the other terrorists who are on this list, without going outside of the bounds of Congress' official duties.
Mr. Speaker, I urge adoption of this bill, and I yield back the balance of my time.
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Mrs. BOEBERT. Mr. Speaker, on that I demand the yeas and nays.
The yeas and nays were ordered.
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