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CRISIS AT THE BORDER
The SPEAKER pro tempore (Ms. Leger Fernandez). Under the Speaker's announced policy of January 4, 2021, the gentleman from Texas (Mr. Roy) is recognized until 10 p.m. as the designee of the minority leader.
Mr. ROY. Madam Speaker, while the Members of the United States Congress exit the Chamber, as they often do after whatever the majority deems appropriate to have on the floor of the House--which there was obviously the important National Defense Authorization Act--
nevertheless, in my home State of Texas, the people of Texas are under siege with wide open borders.
And so right now, as we have Members of Congress, all 400 and something of my colleagues, who just left the Chamber, they are going off now to go have a steak dinner, go have a glass of wine, go hang out with some of their colleagues, meet up with some folks here in the District of Columbia.
But some 1,500 or maybe more miles away in Texas, we have a State and a people who are dealing with the consequences of an administration that fails to faithfully execute the laws of the United States and leaves Texas wide open to be harmed, endangered, and nobody in this body on the other side of the aisle seems to care in the slightest bit.
I went down to south Texas a couple weeks ago with my friend, Senator Ted Cruz. We met with ranchers in Roma, Texas. We met with leaders and ranchers and law enforcement in Uvalde, Texas. We met with the leaders of Webb County in Laredo, Texas. We went down to McAllen, Texas. All places that President Joe Biden has seemingly never been to in his 50 years of public service. Certainly hasn't been there since he has been President.
The Vice President of the United States, who is allegedly in charge of the border, hasn't found her way to any of these places that I visited a mere 2 weeks ago.
The vast majority of my colleagues on the other side of the aisle haven't found their way. Of course, one of my colleagues, the gentlewoman from New York, a couple years ago somewhat famously found her way down to the border to decry, quote, kids in cages.
Where is that colleague today? Wearing perhaps an all-white outfit with red letters on it.
Where is the concern for the little girls whose legs have been branded, burned by cartels?
Where is the concern for the 89 dead migrants, bodies found in Brooks County, Texas? 89. Where is the concern?
My colleagues on the other side of the aisle like to go around talking about how compassionate they are for those seeking to come to the United States. They suggest that those of us who believe that the border should be secure don't want Brown people in the United States. That is what they not only imply, that is basically what they say.
Meanwhile, there are a hell of a lot of Brown people in south Texas who are getting pretty ticked off at an administration that refuses to actually secure the border while their families are in danger.
There are a whole lot of Brown people who work for the Border Patrol who are feeling pretty darn unappreciated right now, when the White House press secretary lies to the American people. The White House press secretary lies on a daily basis to the American people.
Lie number one, perpetuating the lie that Border Patrol was whipping migrants. It is a lie, and it is being repeated by my colleagues on the other side of the aisle. It is a lie. The President of the United States and those in charge of the press secretary are countenancing this lie about Border Patrol.
This picture I am standing next to is a picture of Border Patrol with one of their horses, interacting with a young boy, who is one of the migrants from Haiti who is down in Del Rio.
The young fellow is having a good time with this Border Patrol agent down on his knees. The Border Patrol agent is a man, probably with a family. I don't know how old he is.
But I know a lot of Border Patrol agents because I actually go there. I don't just dismiss Border Patrol agents as some sort of callous individuals who don't care about human beings. But that is what my colleagues on the other side of the aisle do every single day, led by the President of the United States with a voice from a press secretary who lies every single day about the state of our border, who lies every single day about the actions of Border Patrol.
And then today, they had the audacity to take away horses, at least in the Del Rio sector--I haven't been able to look at the entire order--take away horses and the ability of Border Patrol to actually try to patrol the border. This coming from people who have never been to the dadgum border.
There are no navigable roads along the river. My Democrat colleagues don't care. My Democrat colleagues don't care that Border Patrol can't run along the river. You would think--at least in their politically correct nonsense they espouse every day--that they wouldn't want them to have to use automobiles, that maybe they could use horses to go down to the river.
Not one of my colleagues on the other side of the aisle goes down and meets with the ranchers, the Border Patrol agents who are dealing with the actual outcome, the actual result of an administrative policy to leave our borders wide open.
In the State of Texas, the Department of Public Safety has caught over 400 pounds of fentanyl this year, compared to 10 pounds last year. Dead Texans. Dead Texans as a direct result of this administration's refusal, flat-out refusal to faithfully execute the laws of the United States.
A Sweet'N Low packet of fentanyl in pure form would kill every member of this body in this room. Certainly a few packets would. 10,000 pounds of fentanyl has been intercepted this year. More than the last 3 years combined.
Where are my Democratic colleagues? I asked this question when I was in Laredo 2 weeks ago when I was standing next to the Hispanic county judge of Webb County. A county judge in Texas is the chief administrator of the county. I asked, Where is Joe Biden? When he got up to the podium, he said, That is a great question, Where is Joe Biden?
Well, if Joe Biden knows where he is, it would be helpful. He sure as heck is not down at the border. He is sure as heck not down in Laredo, and his policies are abandoning the people of Laredo and abandoning the people of Texas.
The policies of my colleagues on the other side of the aisle leave Texas dealing with the brunt of a wide open border, and they laugh it off. They ignore it.
The stash houses in Houston, Texas, the stash houses in Del Rio, the stash houses in Laredo, the stash houses in McAllen, the stash houses up and down the border where little girls and little boys are being put into the sex trafficking trade, my Democratic colleagues, who love to pat themselves on the back for being compassionate, are nowhere to be found. MIA.
Joe Biden, nowhere to be found while people die, while people die from opioid overdoses, almost 100,000 this year in the United States. When the cocaine problem was a big deal in the 1980s, we were talking about 10,000. Now we are talking about 100,000.
Just where in the world are my colleagues on the other side of the aisle?
I will tell you where they are, they are running around preaching about masks and telling the people of Texas that small businesses in Texas must force-vaccinate Texans if they have got more than 100 employees.
That is literally not in the Constitution, and it is fully unconstitutional, unlawful, and I very strongly encourage the people of Texas to look at the President of the United States and tell him to pound sand. Do not follow that order. Do not accept it as legitimate. It is not.
And this is a theme that the people of Texas are going to have to come to grips with more and more, that when the President of the United States impeachably refuses to faithfully execute the laws of the United States, it is incumbent upon a free people in a sovereign State to come up with the ways that they believe are important to defend their borders, secure their citizenry, and take action, irrespective of the orders of a President who fails to faithfully execute the laws of the United States.
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I do not make those statements lightly, because those statements mean something. But we are under assault in Texas, and this administration does not care. And worse yet, this administration is taking specific action and specific inaction to purposely create the situation that we are having to deal with on the frontlines in Texas.
Purposely reducing the enforcement of Title 42, which enables us to turn people away at the border during a public health emergency, pandemic environment where you can have communicable diseases like we are dealing with right now. Purposely not using the return to Mexico program, the migrant protection protocols to enables us to work with Mexico to stem the tide. Where last year we had a few hundred thousand people that we were apprehending at the border, today this year we have 1.4 million; and the year is not over yet. We will be well over 1.5 to 1.6 million people this fiscal year. Think about that. 208,000 in August. 212,000 in July before the Haitians arrived in Del Rio.
And, by the way, if we are talking about the Haitians, none of my colleagues on the other side of the aisle seem to care that along the Rio Grande are drivers licenses from Chile, passports from Brazil, because the people from Haiti who came to Del Rio weren't coming directly from Haiti. We know this. They were in South America. And then they got word because word is spreading around the globe, ladies and gentlemen, world is spreading around the globe that this administration says come to the United States, claim asylum, and walk right in.
Now the problem with that is it is the least compassionate thing you can do. You endanger them on the journey. You endanger them through the process so the cartels can abuse them. You harm the countries that they are leaving from through the drain of their resources, labor, brain drain, and you endanger the American people when you have a flood of migrants coming in to a state that then has to deal with it.
Would any of my Democratic colleagues know what to do for the most part if I airdropped them in to south Texas on a 5,000-acre ranch and they had to walk through the scrub brush of south Texas running across a rattlesnake and they go find a migrant dying out there from dehydration? The vast majority of my latte-sipping, New York living, condo-living colleagues on the other side of the aisle wouldn't have a dadgum clue what to do when you run across that situation. But I can tell you my Texan constituents and friends in south Texas are figuring out what to do with human beings on their ranches.
Would any of my colleagues on the other side of the aisle like to deal with the 89 dead bodies in Brooks county? Would they? Do they know what to do when they walk up to a body that has been picked apart by vultures and animals because that individual, that human being died on their ranch? Is this an uncomfortable conversation for my colleagues on the other side of the aisle when hundreds of human beings are dying in the hot Texas Sun and county judges have to spend $3,000 per autopsy,
$5,000 for each to then bury them? They are trying to figure out how to handle their budget when they have got COVID cases exploding.
But oh, no, my colleagues on the other side of the aisle, they go around talking about, oh, horses. Race baiting defines the party of my colleagues on the other side of the aisle. It is the entire existence of the party of my colleagues on the other side of the aisle that they would take a situation that a Democratic President has created purposefully and then dare to turn it into a race-focused situation.
I would like any of my colleagues on the other side of the aisle to stand and look in the eyes of the 70 percent of Border Patrol who are Hispanic and tell them that they are racist. Because that is what they do. My colleagues on the other side of the aisle, they go on TV and they say they are racist. Al Sharpton flies down to go have a press conference in Del Rio, Texas, trumpeting out and bringing out the race card. Maxine Waters wants to compare Border Patrol agents using horses to deal with a wide-open border and a chaos created by this administration to slavery. It is absolutely abhorrent. It is embarrassing. And the people of Texas are up to here with a Union that is not all that united around the principles upon which we were founded and that are showing precious little deference to the people of my State. They are fed up. There is a tinder box, and my colleagues on the other side of the aisle ignore it at the peril of the future of this republic.
This is a big deal what is happening. The nine migrants that were in an automobile in Boerne, Texas, two in the trunk, an American citizen driving that car who was employed by the Cartel del Noreste heading to a stash house in Houston, a young man had paid $4,000 to go pick grapes in California had a rude wake-up call that he was heading to a stash house; fortunately, law enforcement intercepted them.
This is happening every single day in our State. We know this because we go down and we look. Senator Cruz and I go down to Laredo. We sit at a checkpoint. I didn't see any of my Democratic colleagues there. With the notable exception my friend, Henry Cuellar, who is probably the lone Democrat who actually acknowledges the crisis that we have along our southern border. And we watch these trucks go through with scanners. One out of 10 trucks. And then we go down to the river, and there are 33 migrants trying to come across the river. And we are watching them cross the river. And they come out, and they swim, and they are playing cat and mouse, knowing when we leave they are going to come across. Then we get a scan on our phone from one of the scans that came through right after we left the checkpoint with a truck full of 29 migrants in the back.
Every day this is happening. And these people are endangered. But my Democratic colleagues don't care because of the crass cynicism of electoral politics. That is what this is about.
The good news is the great Hispanic Texans of south Texas have had enough. Zapata County went Republican for the first time since 1920. When I drove through Zapata County just 2 weeks ago, I stopped because I noticed a flag flying that had a certain colorful metaphor associated with the President that I will not, of course, repeat here on the floor of the House of Representatives. It may or may not be in line with a chant that has been often used in a number of settings around our country lately. In Zapata County.
In McAllen, a Republican mayor was recently elected. The fact is, when people are ignored, when people are endangered, when people are taken for granted, as Hispanic Americans every single day, and Hispanic Texans in particular are experiencing every single day, they tend to take that seriously.
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They tend to recognize that an administration that gives lip service to caring for them but lets them die and lets their businesses implode and lets their ranches get run over and lets narcotics flow into their community at will, all in the false name of compassion and pretending that one cares about somebody because of the color of their skin, they tend to take offense to that and believe that maybe there should be a better way.
When I talk to people in Texas, they ask, quite frequently: What precisely are we getting out of this deal? What does union even mean anymore? What precisely is united about the United States?
How can one say that we have ``united'' States when the President of the United States dictates unlawfully to a people that they must forcefully vaccinate their employees.
Then thousands of their employees say: Hey, I don't want to do that because I have natural immunity, and science seems to show that natural immunity may be stronger than that that comes from a vaccine.
They tend to take offense. They tend to want to tell the authoritarian to pound sand.
When the President of the United States, through his HHS Secretary, walks in and says: Oh, I am sorry, Texas. I am sorry, Florida. We are going to cut your monoclonal antibody treatments in half. We are going to limit your ability to get care. We are going to try to run a campaign against certain medicines that might actually provide care for your loved ones, and we are going to do so out of some sort of fealty to bureaucrats at CDC and NIH and, namely, Dr. Fauci.
The people are then relegated to the corner, trying to figure out how to care for themselves when a cronyistic healthcare system run by bureaucrats in government and bureaucrats in an insurance industry that is, frankly, corrupt, a healthcare system run by corporations in bed with government bureaucrats, getting taxpayer funds to enrich them and leaving small businesses and individuals in this country--Texans I represent--holding the bag, while the President of the United States limits their ability to get healthcare and then mandates they get a vaccine and then goes off to parties, like my colleagues on the other side of the aisle tend to do, maskless, while preaching wearing masks. Because it is all theater. It is all a show, except that it is very real, and it is very focused on accruing power in Washington, D.C.
My warning to my colleagues is this: Americans tend to take that sort of thing seriously. While we watch people in Australia, and we watch people in Paris, and we watch people in Canada even, and we watch people around the globe resisting the tyranny of government, the United States is filled with people who similarly are predisposed to want to resist the power of the Federal Government. And they tend to take it very seriously.
My warning to my colleagues is that if this body, the people's House, expects for this country to be united, then it needs to darn well act like it and stop trying to force the will of a Federal Government against the constitutional framework that we agreed to over the people of the State that I represent because the people of the State that I represent are not going to sit back and let that happen.
This is where we are. This is the question of our day. Are we going to agree to disagree and live peaceably together? Or are we going to force tensions and force conflict, which this Democrat-led government in the executive branch and the legislative branch is hellbent on doing and forcing the people that I represent to have to start asking questions about what we are going to do to preserve freedom for our children and our grandchildren to go to the doctor of our choice, to go to the school of our choice, to not have our children being indoctrinated with critical race theory, with dangerous principles of race-baiting, teaching our kids that America is evil, restricting the ability of our people to be able to go to a doctor because they have to go to a bureaucrat to get permission before getting healthcare, trying to restrict the ability of the American people to arm themselves while leaving our border wide open and defunding our police, and then daring to question why we want to be armed?
That is how the people of Texas are viewing the assault on their constitutional rights and the structure of government that was designed to protect liberty and to allow us to agree to disagree.
But my colleagues on the other side of the aisle refuse, on a daily basis, to allow us to agree to disagree. That is a dangerous position by my colleagues on the other side of the aisle. It is a dangerous position by this President.
It is a dangerous position by the administration because there is going to be a lot of people in at least the State that I represent, and I speculate a lot more, who are not going to sit by and allow a Federal Government to run amuck over their liberties and to tell them how to live their lives.
We are not going to sit back and allow cartels to run over our border; to have drugs pour into our communities; to have crimes committed on our streets; to have migrants dying on our ranches, fences cut, livestock loose; children in the sex trafficking trade, while my Democrat colleagues march down to Del Rio and cry racism because it is the only card they can ever pull out of an empty deck, a deck not committed to the principles of power on which this Nation was founded or the flag which sits above the dais, but rather a dedication to a leftist, socialist, Marxist way of thinking and a belief in the all-
power of the all-knowing of the authority of those in government to tell the people what to do.
But that is not the way the American people view their position in a government whose Constitution starts with three words: ``We the people.''
We have abandoned those first three words, ``we the people,'' and that the power of this government is built upon a foundation of the power coming from ``we the people'' and those Bill of Rights that are in there to protect the people from the power of government. We are abandoning those on a daily basis.
I am amazed at the extent to which my colleagues on this side of the aisle, quite frankly, are just all too often able to just go give a speech, go get on a news show, put out a press statement about how bad the border is, and then: Oh, let's move on to the next issue. Let's move on to the next topic.
When all of these headlines about the Haitians in Del Rio subside, where will everybody be? Will my colleagues, even on my side of the aisle, wake up every day like we do dealing with this in Texas and understand what is happening, understand how bad a fentanyl epidemic is in this country?
Do the people in this body have the first clue that it is our policies that are enabling China to use cartels to exploit an open border to kill Americans? And do they care? Not in the slightest bit.
Then, I watch my colleagues on both sides of the aisle, frankly--
today, we spent all day, almost 12 hours now--I guess probably 8 hours--offering amendments to the NDAA.
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Not one of those amendments that we voted on today, not one, allowed us to address and debate here on the floor of the House of Representatives the drafting of our daughters, the drafting of our mothers, the drafting of our sisters, the drafting of our wives. Not one amendment today was allowed by Democrat tyranny in the Rules Committee to allow us to have a substantive debate on the floor of the House of Representatives about an issue as important as having the United States Government conscript women.
Can you image that? Can you imagine a body that is called the people's House, having an environment in which we pass legislation as part of an $800 billion defense authorization bill that had some 400 amendments we didn't even debate on the floor of this House? We didn't even debate the drafting of women.
And more than half of my colleagues on this side of the aisle said, Oh, sure, why not? Why? Because they sit there and they say, Well, the draft will never occur. Well, don't worry, if the draft does occur, it will be because we have some real bad conflict with somebody like China. Well, which is it? You got to have the draft in order to deal with a bad conflict with China or there will never be a draft?
Oh, well, okay. There will never be a draft, but if there is, it will be a bad conflict with China. But trust us. Don't worry, your daughter won't be drafted into combat.
Really? Trust us? In what universe should I trust the Government of the United States? Why would I do that? The same government that just abandoned allies, abandoned Americans, abandoned SIVs in Afghanistan, left $85 billion worth of equipment for the Taliban to exploit, allowed China to be able to get access to Bagram Air Base, and walked away from rare earth minerals.
The same government that is completely ignoring their duty to enforce the borders, knowingly, when they have a mechanism to secure and enforce our borders. The same government, when the President's own press secretary is lying on a daily basis through her teeth about supposedly horses whipping human beings. Thoroughly debunked.
Is that the same government I am supposed to trust not to draft my 10-year-old daughter when she becomes 18 and is forced by the power of government to register for Selective Service? Who are we as a people? What happened to us? Are we such a cold, robotic people that we can't have an actual debate and discussion about the reality of life? Is that who we are?
The same doctor, with a cold stare, who looked at my dear friend and told her she should abort her little boy because of a brain scan that went a little amok. She was coming up on the term in which you can do that in the Commonwealth of Virginia, and she chose life. And now her son is my godson, and he is a healthy little boy. The same coldness with which that doctor looked at my friend, and said, you should abort, in front of her two other boys with her husband not there.
Is that what we have become, such a cold country, such a callous country, that we just blindly say that in the false name of equality or equity or whatever the word of choice is of the day, that we must draft our daughters? Let me be clear. Over my dead body will you draft my daughter. I mean that literally. Over my dead body will you draft my daughter.
And yet that is precisely what happened today with no debates, no amendment allowed. And my colleagues on both sides of the aisle, and I am particularly ashamed of my colleagues on this side of the aisle, for whispering in closed doors about, well, I would have voted against that if we would have had it on the floor. I tried to oppose it in committee, but, you know, it is the NDAA and so, you know, we have got to support the NDAA, we have got pay raises for troops, and never mind all the other garbage that is in the bill. We have got to support it. For 60 straight years, we have got to support it.
You know why the Department of Defense is a complete mess? You want to know why the brass is completely inept and unable to actually run a war, unable to actually exit a country when a President gives a ridiculous order to exit on September 11 for optics? You want to know why the Department of Defense is completely inept? Because we have been authorizing it and funding it for decades. And my colleagues on this side of the aisle are just as guilty, if not more.
And now my colleagues on this side of the aisle say, Sure, draft my daughters. And I say, as I have said to them, that a vote for this NDAA today was a vote to conscript our daughters. Let me tell each and every one of you across this country, that is precisely what it was. And do not let any Member of this body get away with hiding or running from the simple fact that today this body voted to conscript our daughters.
Imagine that one day when you are sitting in your house and the lottery number comes up for your wife and not for you. What are you going to do? Or for your daughter and not you. What are you going to do?
The President of the United States has in multiple regards engaged in what I believe to be impeachable conduct. The President of the United States has failed to faithfully execute the laws of the United States, left our borders wide open, endangered our people, endangered the people of my State.
The President of the United States has failed to carry out his duty to defend the United States abroad, has in fact aided and abetted the enemy by leaving billions of dollars of equipment for our enemies to use against us, leaving Americans behind, leaving allies behind.
The President of the United States has abused the power of his office to step over the bounds of the Constitution to order people--order people--to force their employees to get vaccinated when he has no such authority. He has no such authority, and he knows it. He knows it.
For the exact same reason that the President of the United States admitted that he didn't have the power to extend the eviction moratorium. He flat out admitted it and said he was only going to do it until such time as the courts could hear the case and make a decision. That same President knows full well that his orders are unconstitutional, but he does not care. And that is an abuse of power.
That same President knows that the borders are being exploited and wide open and the cartels are endangering the American people and the migrants who seek to come here, but he does not care. And that is faithless execution of the laws. The President of the United States knows full well.
Heck, my 12-year-old son knows full well, as he said as we were driving around, he said: Dad, why would you leave the equipment there for the bad guys to get? Well, son, maybe you should be an advisor to the President of the United States because he doesn't seem to understand that concept, and neither does the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, and neither does the Secretary of Defense.
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Because they are so focused on chief diversity officers, woke policies, and critical race theory, they don't give a rat's rear end about defending the United States of America. It is for that same reason my Democrat colleagues have gone down to the river and gone down to south Texas playing the race card and chanting racism and comparing Border Patrol agents to slaveholders.
Where is the Secretary of Homeland Security defending the people who work for him and Border Patrol while they are outmanned, exhausted, and resigning because they are not being given what they need in support from the top leaders of Homeland Security?
Secretary Mayorkas has the experience to know full well that abandoning title 42 and abandoning MPP, the migrant protection protocols, he knows full well that that endangers the people of this country, and he does not care. He is leaving the people of south Texas exposed. He is leaving the ranchers who work there endangered with fences cut down and ranchers having to figure out how to protect their families and ranchers sending their children out across the ranches armed to defend themselves. Ranchers are finding the dead bodies of migrants on ranches, hundreds of them.
That is faithless execution of the laws. That is why the Secretary of Homeland Security is acting with impeachable conduct.
The American people are getting sick of this. The people of Texas are getting sick of this.
My admonition to my colleagues on the other side of the aisle is: Be very careful of walking this perilous journey of authoritarian actions by a President, authoritarian actions by an administration, and authoritarian legislating by a Congress that is ignoring our constitutional framework, ignoring federalism, ignoring separation of powers, ignoring their duties under the Constitution, and endangering the people I represent on a daily basis because this will not turn out well.
The people of Texas are not going to simply sit back and take it. The Governor of Texas has been deploying Department of Public Safety personnel to Del Rio. We have more DPS people in Del Rio than Border Patrol. We have more assets and more aerial activity; and but for the actions of the Governor of the State of Texas moving DPS down to Del Rio, the crisis would have truly exploded.
But that is only a step. The Governor of the State of Texas and the
$3 billion that the Texas legislature appropriated and deployed, and the DPS is down there working and arresting bad actors and arresting people for trespass, the State of Texas is going to have to go further because the Federal Government is refusing to do its job.
At some point the State of Texas is going to force a constitutional showdown because it will be incumbent upon the people of Texas to do so. It will be incumbent upon the people of Texas to tell the rest of the country to get out of our doggone way so that we can defend the people of our State. This is where we are.
While my colleagues decry the fact that Texans believe that we should protect life once it has a heartbeat, while my colleagues decry the fact that we believe we should protect life, and while my colleagues allow migrants to die, Texans want to simply keep their communities safe, and Texans are going to do so.
The people's House is supposed to mean something, Madam Speaker. The people's House is supposed to be a place where we are able to come together and agree under the Constitution on how to have a more perfect Union.
But Union doesn't mean anything when the people of my State are being trampled. Union doesn't mean anything when the rights of the people I represent are not being respected, when the safety of the people that I represent is not being protected or secured. And when the blessings of liberty that are supposed to be secured under the Constitution are not being secured but being trampled upon, then it will beg questions about the efficacy of Union.
Madam Speaker, I yield back the balance of my time.
The SPEAKER pro tempore. Members are reminded to refrain from engaging in personalities toward the President.
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SOURCE: Congressional Record Vol. 167, No. 165
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