Mr. Speaker, I rise to oppose the previous question so that we can immediately consider the American Energy Independence from Russia Act. Mr. Speaker, last night I held a townhall with over 2,000 of my constituents. Do you know what was…

Madam Speaker, no one is above the law. We have all heard that phrase. It is a bedrock principle, and we know it is what distinguishes democracies like ours from autocracies such as Russia. Sadly, a few of the former President's closest…

That is just mind-boggling.

Banning those imports is intended to ensure that American consumers are not funding Putin's war machine.

there actually is some urgency in doing something about the importation of Russian seafood. We need to bring that same sense of urgency to the problem of how our seafood import system is actually funding the Russian war machine.

While I fully support the President's goal, I regret to inform the President and all of you that this well-intentioned ban won't work, not under current laws and policies, not under the less-than-watchful eye of the National Oceanic and…

I expect the seafood ban to go on for even longer, much longer.

Last month, President Biden issued an Executive Order banning the import of Russian seafood, one of many sanctions we have put in place in response to the unprovoked, unjustified aggression, war crimes, and atrocities of Vladimir Putin in…

Unless that fish is one of the 13 species that happened to be covered by SIMP--and we know most of them are not--the Russian origins of this seafood is untraceable, and the ban is impossible to enforce.

Sometimes we need them to do the hard stuff.

We need to be able to track seafood from when it is caught all the way through the seafood supply chain.

NOAA must immediately take steps to expand SIMP so that we can keep slave-caught, illegal, and Russian seafood out of this country and stop funding Putin's horrific war.

I think we are going to have to zero in on pollock a little more.

Because technology has advanced so far, it is not like cutters, like it used to be in the old days.

This is an important hearing, and I think we have shed some light on a subject that absolutely deserves and requires it.

There is no requirement for traceability for the remaining 60 percent of the species entering our markets, which includes most of the seafood originating in Russia--like pollock.

I think if we only asked Federal agencies to do easy things, we would have a lot less Federal agencies with much smaller budgets.

I think we just have to ask for what we want.