Addressing the Hack of U.S. Treasury Payment Systems

Floor Speech

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Ms. MOORE of Wisconsin. Mr. Speaker, I took the following oath my 20th year in Congress. I will read it and remind you, Mr. Speaker, of this oath of office: I do solemnly swear that I will support and defend the Constitution of the United States against all enemies, foreign and domestic; that I will bear true faith and allegiance to the same; that I take this obligation freely, without any mental reservation or purpose of evasion; and that I will well and faithfully discharge the duties of the office of which I am about to enter, so help me God.

This is an oath, Mr. Speaker, that you and I took.

Mr. Speaker, this was not an oath that they gave to the Democrats, this was not an oath that they gave just to the Republicans, this is an oath that we all took, and the insurrection continues.

The insurrection really started, I think, December 14, 2020, when all of the electors in various States had put together their scheme and the plot to overturn the government. January 6, 2021, we saw the beginning of the insurrection.

Four years later, we re-elected Donald Trump and the insurrection continues. It started with just pardoning violent criminals, people who caused the death by suicide and other means of police officers, who speared them and caused injuries to police officers and the insurrection continues.

We now have unelected billionaires who have broken into the Treasury Department and this is not a political grab for power; it is a crime what they did. It is criminal, and courts have backed this understanding up.

They have said to the Treasury Department: We want you to stop getting people's personal information. Stop getting their Social Security numbers. Stop putting your thumb drives in and taking it off to some laptop because we don't know what you are doing with this information.

Mr. Speaker, guess what?

Elon Musk and our Vice President, this is from the day's paper, have said that they should just ignore those court orders. These court orders should not matter, that they should continue to violate the law.

Mr. Speaker, for the purposes of a colloquy, I will ask the gentleman from Illinois a question.

I marched into our Speaker of the House's office to try to meet with the Treasury Secretary to ask them why they were committing crimes. Why there was unchecked authority over the Treasury data, to stop doing it? Why they needed to do this? Why they needed to surveil, penalize, or control this financial access?

The Speaker told me he had no idea what they were doing. The Speaker of the House does not know what they are doing. These are the same people who have taken the same oath of office that all of us have taken, to have these 19-year-old kids with microwave processed security clearances, if they even have that, putting thumb drives in our mainframe.

I am asking you, Mr. Casten, what does your Taxpayer Data Protection Act do to stop that?

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Ms. MOORE of Wisconsin. Let me get this clear: Have any of those conditions been met?

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Ms. MOORE of Wisconsin. Has anybody gotten the appropriate security clearances? Have they told us what they are going to do with it? What of Article I?

We are Article I of the Constitution. Americans elected us to represent them, 300 million Americans, and the President of the United States says that he does not have to--Mr. Speaker, I realize that I am not supposed to mention his name. I didn't mention his name, but Mr. Speaker, I associate myself with the words of the gentlewoman from New Mexico, this is not normal. We are not having a normal session.

Mr. Speaker, the House is on fire. The House is on fire. There is nothing legal or constitutional that is going on. We have unelected billionaires running the country. We have a President who is pardoning violent criminals. I suppose if they ignore the court orders, he will just have his daily list of people that he will pardon, so they can continue.

Mr. Speaker, the House is on fire. The insurrection is continuing, and it is affecting you whether you are a Head Start child out there who needs it, a senior in a nursing home who will get inadequate care-- you are going to be lying in your feces for 10 hours because they are cutting Medicaid--or a farmer who has not gotten your USDA funding.

The House is on fire. If you are a Social Security recipient, they have gone in and created a back door to your data. They know your bank account number.

The House is on fire, you-all. We need to stop acting like things are normal. It is not normal.

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