Hoyer: Let Us Do Our Duty. Let Us Be the Kind of America That We Say We Are.
“We have hours left – less than 10 – until we go home for the holidays. Less than 10 hours when we leave the field. Less than 10 hours before we act responsibly.
“The men and women of Ukraine will not go home for the holidays. They will not leave the lines in Eastern Ukraine. They will not have a Christmas dinner without the fear that they will be bombed in Kyiv or assaulted in Eastern Ukraine. Why is that? I ask that to both – why are we going home and leaving our Ukrainian allies unarmed? Why do we shrink from our responsibility to confront those who would undermine democracy, freedom, and international law? Why, Mr. Speaker, do we retreat from the field while our Ukrainian allies are at risk?
“Mr. Speaker, we have one day left. We can accomplish the goal of passing Ukrainian dollars. We can achieve the goal of giving aid to our ally, Israel. We can achieve the goal of making Taiwan a little bit stronger. Or we can send a message to Mr. Putin, to Mr. Xi, to Iran, to Hamas that America is unable to stay the course.
“Now, I'm told that the reason we can't do that is because it is absolutely essential to have border security addressed. It is. I'm for doing that. But I want to call the Speaker's attention so that he can remember that in the 115th Congress, as a Member of Congress, he co-sponsored a bill – H.R. 395. Some others co-sponsored that bill who may be at least hearing me, Mr. Speaker, or maybe even on the Floor. That bill said this, that it was incumbent that we, and I quote, ‘To end the practice of including more than one subject in a single bill by requiring that each bill enacted by Congress be limited to only one subject.’ Was that situational ethics? Situational principles? Or just temporary principles [to] be thrown away when they are not convenient? Perhaps.
“That bill was sponsored by Speaker Johnson, by Mr. Meadows – who became Chief of Staff of Donald Trump, by Mr. Emmer – the Majority Whip, and by Mr. DeSantis –candidate for president. A temporary, perhaps just political, piece of rhetoric. Mr. Speaker, America is better than that.
“America needs to be a more reliable ally than that. America needs to create confidence, not undermine confidence. America needs to be reliable. America needs to confront the criminality, the venality, and the murderous acts of Vladimir Putin. Yet, we are scheduled to go home in just a few hours.
“John Kennedy wrote a book, Why England Slept. Why England Slept. Why they thought that Hitler was going to stop. And it just involved after all the mainland, not England, and they paid a terrible price for that negligence. And the free world paid a terrible price for that negligence … Let us not go home. Let us do our duty. Let us be the kind of America that we say we are. I yield back.”