Concern for Our Country

Floor Speech

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Mr. BIGGS. Mr. Speaker, I thank Mr. Good for engaging me in this colloquy.

I want to talk briefly about this number that has been put out there. He is asking the question: Will we rise to the occasion?

I am going to give the bad news first. This is like in ``The Matrix,'' the first version, where they give you the red pill or the blue pill. The red pill is reality. The blue pill is you can continue on in your slumber.

I am going to propose a different pill, and it is a black pill. The black pill, I would suggest to you, means that reality is the awful truth. The awful truth here is we know that we are not going to rise to the moment.

Why do we know that? Because in the context of everything you just gave us, I want to talk about that supplemental that has been proposed by the Senate.

We have already passed out of this body a $14.5 billion supplemental package for Israel. We found a way to pay for it. It goes to the Senate. They don't bother to take it up. They don't want that. In fact, one of the Republican appropriators over there said: We don't do that; we don't pay for supplementals.

Wow. You know what? That individual was correct. It had never been done before. We did it, but they don't want to do that.

Instead, they want to leverage a controversial spend of $61 billion for Ukraine funding by leveraging what Israel needs, our good friend in the Levant. That is what they want to leverage.

You know what they throw in there, as well? They throw in some money for Taiwan; they throw in some money for the border. I won't get into the border until you yield more time, but I will tell you this: That money they are talking about for the border is not to stop the 10,000 to 12,000 people per day coming into the country; it is to facilitate their entry and dispersion throughout the country.

If you think we are going to rise to the moment when we are dealing with a group of people across the way, the leadership over there, that have proposed that--and I am seeing, sadly, a momentum for that to happen right here on the floor of this Chamber--then I would tell you the black pill has been swallowed, and there is trouble and tough sledding ahead for the United States of America because the people who have been elected to fight that are acquiescing.

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Mr. BIGGS. Mr. Speaker, first of all, when the gentleman starts talking about that, he raises a point that I have been arguing vociferously about for some time, and that is Republicans manage to snatch defeat from the jaws of victory over and over again. We negotiate against ourselves. That is what is happening on the supplemental. That is what is happening on the NDAA.

We passed out of the Judiciary Committee today a bill, hugely bipartisan, 35 people voted for it, 2 against it, including massive reforms, reforms that groups across the spectrum, from right to left, Republican and Democrat, have said these are the reforms we need to see.

The leverage goes away when you give an extension into April for FISA in its current form, which is what the Speaker is acquiescing to after telling us he wasn't going to go there. That is negotiating against yourself. Why is that? What happens?

The leverage against the Senate on FISA then goes away. I was not surprised to know that Chairman Turner said he will let the Judiciary bill come to the floor. Why wouldn't he?

Because he knows that the leverage is now gone and the Senate has no incentive to take up a meaningful reform bill. That is the problem. It goes back to the border.

The border is the same way. There were 12,000 people that came across yesterday. That was an all-time single-day record. There were 12,000 people encountered. That does not include the 10,000 people that got away.

You are looking at 300,000 plus for the month of December that we can project already. That will be a record. We say, oh, let's do H.R. 2. We did H.R. 2. That was a good, solid border security package.

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Mr. BIGGS. We got it through. It went through and is languishing in the Senate. We say things like: I will tell you what, let's put the H.R. 2 bill on the supplemental. We are not going to do anything with regard to the supplemental unless you actually give us border security. It isn't policy anymore because the policy doesn't work unless you have a lawful, rule of law type of government. We don't. We flat out don't.

This administration is lawless. They are not going to follow the law. They are not following the law now. They are not following the law on FISA, which is why we have to reform FISA. They are not following the law on the border policies and the border laws. This is why we have got to say we are going to stop funding a government that is lawless and surveils American citizens and allows us to be overrun.

Did you know that in Portland, Oregon, they had more than 300 fentanyl overdose deaths in the first 3 months of this fiscal year? They are on track for over 1,200.

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Mr. BIGGS. Just in Portland. I am telling you that this is a regime that is okay with dismantling our country. It is time that we stand up and say no more. No more.

I am happy to talk about any other topic that you want.

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Mr. BIGGS. What I would tell you is that when you have--let's take Lukeville, Arizona, a small port of entry. There are people going from Phoenix and Tucson down to the Sea of Cortez and they are going to go down to Rocky Point, which is a lovely seaside village. It is a small town, and people love to go down there. It is closed now. Do you know why it is closed?

Because so many people, groups of 1,000 illegal aliens, are coming to that port of entry. There is no way to process them. There is no way to get them to Ajo or the Three Points Station or the Casa Grande station because that takes hours. They closed that down.

You can now see sitting there 1,000 individuals. If you look closely, you won't find a single woman or a child in that 1,000. They are all men ages 18 to 35 from multitudes of nations.

You say: What are we willing to do?

I am going to offer a humble suggestion.

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Mr. BIGGS. It is my suggestion and it is this: This administration is lawless and has no desire to enforce the laws already in place. What I would say is, how do you incentivize them?

Do you incentivize them by allowing them to keep the FRA spending?

Do you incentivize them when you say, okay, I will tell you what, we are going to keep your Green New Deal subsidies that you said would not cost more than $350 billion, which will now cost more than $2 trillion?

Will you do anything if we don't stop funding the things you desire?

The answer is no.

What I would say is, we know that Medicare, Medicaid, Social Security, and veterans' benefits will continue on. Why not then identify that we are going to pay for ICE, CBP, the air traffic controllers, TSA, the military men and women, and then say that is it, Mr. Biden. That is all we are going to continue funding. That is the basic minimum to make sure that Americans are safe.

We refuse to do more spending. By the way, we are having to borrow significant portions of that. We refuse to keep borrowing money and go in debt so future generations will go bankrupt themselves until you secure the border with demonstrable and measurable metrics.

I will give you one example. Yuma, Arizona. Yuma has one hospital and there are about 80,000 people in Yuma. The emergency room on most days is completely filled with illegal aliens. The local people, people who are going to have babies. If there is a woman ready to deliver, do you know where she is going?

She is driving 3 hours up to Phoenix or 3\1/2\ hours over to San Diego. The people with heart conditions that need procedures on an emergency basis, same thing, they are getting Air Evac'd up to Phoenix or San Diego.

Here is the deal. Under the last full year of Donald Trump as the President, do you know what they had?

They had a total of 8,600 encounters. That is for a year. Do you know what they are doing in a week now?

About 8,000 a week. That is under this administration.

Do you think it is not a crisis?

Go down there and talk to the planters who have had to literally plow under fields because these people come across, they go walking through the fields. These are sensitive fields. Why is that important?

Because more than 90 percent of all green vegetables provided to this country during the winter months come out of Yuma, Arizona. It is a hazard to our food supply.

This administration doesn't care if it is a hazard to food supply. They don't care if you have got 1,200 people going to die of fentanyl overdose in Portland, Oregon. They just don't care. They are not going to actually follow the law, so we have got to incentivize them.

If we do not have the courage to incentivize them, then why the hell did we come to Congress?

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Mr. BIGGS. Mr. Speaker, it is an honor to serve with the gentleman from Virginia (Mr. Good).

Let me say two things. I am more than willing to be here over the next 5 weeks if it means that we can work to get these things addressed.

Mr. Speaker, I will tell you one more reason why you should not be giving up on FISA and why you should not be extending it. It is because the authorities and warrants issued before April 10 will continue on into 2025. We will have lost, perhaps even forever, our ability to reform a program that has been weaponized against the United States of America and our beloved fellow citizens.

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