Speeches

WASHINGTON – Following yet another vote that would have curtailed Americans’ constitutional rights without adequate due process, Sen. Mike Lee (R-UT) spoke on the Senate floor Wednesday about the proper balance between security and liberty.

Good afternoon and welcome to this hearing of the Subcommittee on Antitrust, Competition Policy, and Consumer Rights. Today’s hearing is entitled, “The CREATES Act: Ending Regulatory Abuse, Protecting Consumers, and Ensuring Drug Price Competition.”

Mr. President: I rise today to discuss – and to urge my colleagues to support – amendment #4448, the Due Process Guarantee Amendment. This amendment addresses a little-known problem that I believe most Americans would be shocked to discover even exists. Under current law, the federal government has the power to detain indefinitely – without charge or trial – U.S. citizens and lawful permanent residents who are apprehended on American soil. Let that sink in for a moment.

Mr. President: reserving the right to object. What’s being proposed here today is to unleash the Export-Import Bank from the constraints it is currently under and to allow it to begin authorizing transactions above $10 million. Between 2007 and 2014, 84 percent of the Bank’s subsidy and loan-guarantee deals exceeded $10 million, and the vast majority were given to the wealthiest, most well-connected businesses that should have no problem acquiring financing on the open market.

It was almost four months ago that we gathered here, in front of this inspiring portrait, to launch the Article I Project – a new network of House and Senate conservatives working together on a new agenda of government reform and congressional rehabilitation. The starting point for that agenda is the simple observation that the federal government is broken, and congressional weakness is to blame.

Mr. President: The Affirmatively Furthering Fair Housing Rule – which my amendment would defund – is equal parts condescension and willful blindness. The condescension of the rule and its proponents is that local governments and Public Housing Authorities across America can’t figure out how to provide fair and affordable housing to their communities without the help of federal bureaucrats.

Mr. President: In a piece of legislation of this size, there is always much to praise – and, unfortunately, even more to criticize. I rise today, specifically, to correct one major mistake in this bill. As currently written, it permits the Department of Housing and Urban Development to proceed in the implementation of its radical new regulation, the insultingly misnamed “Affirmatively Furthering Fair Housing Rule,” or AFFH.

“Mr. President, I rise today to pay tribute to a man who was truly a giant in my home state of Utah and in this institution, a friend to everyone he met, and someone whose life of service to the people of Utah we celebrate at the same time that we mourn his passing: Senator Robert F. Bennett.”

But ask anyone who has ever called, written, or emailed their member of Congress what happens next: blame is shifted; fingers are pointed; scapegoats of every variety imaginable are brought forth to defend those who are charged with making the laws from the consequences of their handiwork. This is the very definition of unaccountability, and it pervades the culture of Washington, D.C., because Congress has allowed it to infect our laws and our institutions.

“Chevron deference is hardly the only problem with the administrative state, nor is it the biggest. But it may be the one with the clearest and most obvious fix.”