CHAMBERSBURG — With immigrants still pouring across the southern border between Texas and Mexico and the recent cyber attack on the Colonial Pipeline — the East Cost’s largest gasoline pipeline — a whole lot of people are looking to the Biden administration for answers.
And not getting any. Computer hackers actually shut down a major pipeline in this country — because they got in, Colonial shut the whole 5,500-mile pipeline down, affecting people from Texas to New Jersey.
And the border crisis has been ongoing for months and will likely have local effects if it hasn’t already.
Congressman John Joyce joined Pat Ryan and Michele Jansen on First News to discuss the failings of the Biden administration.
“We know that our infrastructure is incredibly vulnerable,” Joyce said. “I’m a strong proponent of securing not only our personal data, but securing the data of our infrastructure and making sure that those protections are in place to guard against bad actors. We know these bad actors can disrupt our economy, they can disrupt our security, they can cause our fuel prices to go up.”
What do we need right now?
“We need 21st century solutions,” Joyce said. “We need to protect the American people and we need to see that our critical industries, whether it’s your medical records, whether it’s your banking records, we need to make sure that this is all maintained and secured. Biden must increase his interest in our national security. And we need to address the escalating threats.”
We can’t forget about the threat at the border.
Joyce continued, “There’s no question in my mind that we need to address the crisis on the southern border. Biden and Harris haven’t done that yet. I asked them to address this crisis and they haven’t made any meaningful effort to let Americans know what they’re going to do to stop this very credible threat. A month into this crisis, what do we see? We see that Vice President Harris hasn’t even traveled to the border yet. We’re seeing the drugs continue to pour into our communities.”
Just recently, the county coroner, Jeff Conner told Joyce that fentanyl is easy to get and fast to kill. The sentence made an impact on the Congressman.
“I want President Biden to be able to address this,” Joyce said. “Yet what’s he doing? He’s ignoring the crisis on our border. He’s making our communities more vulnerable to drugs, to human trafficking, and to gang violence. It’s time for the president to join Republicans and the American people to getting serious about securing the border and protecting our nation. Protecting our cyber security, protecting our energy resources.”
In terms of the infrastructure bill that should help bolster the pieces that hold America together, a huge part of the bill is looking to fund day care.
Jansen added, “He wants to tear down highways that he says were made out of racial inequity. To restore racial equity, we actually have to tear down existing throughways that divided communities back in the 1960s. We’re going to spend billions of dollars on that, meanwhile we’re allowing this crisis to develop at the border. This is just outrageous. They’re creating new fires. They’re allowing other fires to continue to burn, meanwhile our enemies are saying this is our chance. Let’s go ahead and launch these attacks. Is congress starting to open their eyes that we are being set up for such risks and dangers?”
Congress will have a hearing to be briefed on what happened with the breach of the pipeline.
Joyce said, “The ability to have energy supplies, the energy independence that was developed by President Trump. He allowed energy prices to come down and with this current crisis, gasoline prices are inching up and that’s on Biden’s shoulders. We’re going to hold him accountable for this. We need to stop the attacks that are occurring on our energy sources. This attack on the Colonial Pipeline I think it needs to be a wake up call for Biden. I don’t know if we can get him awakened. He’s too busy woking the rest of us to understand that we are at risk.”
Joyce wants to know who is culpable for the breach.
“It’s not just our energy supplies, it’s our water supplies, it’s our information, it’s our technology that they are so capable of infiltrating,” Joyce pointed out. “We need to stop this. Biden needs to make sure that we have a plan. We’re going to hold his feet to the fire and make sure there is a plan that we can protect the American citizens and our information and energy sources.”
Ryan warned, “Everybody should pay attention right now to what else is going to be compromised here.”
Jansen said, “Let’s stop this imaginary which hunt for systemic racism and domestic white supremacist terrorists when we have real terrorists attacking our infrastructure.”
Ryan said, “….and how vulnerable are we on the electric grid?”
Joyce said, “On homeland security it was made quite clear to us that it’s the smaller systems that are more vulnerable. Biden needs to step up. I’m concerned because he’s not protecting our southern border. I’m concerned because he’s not protecting our infrastructure.”
Joyce is a co-sponsor for a bill that defines what infrastructure actually is.
“Is day care infrastructure?” He asked. “No. Infrastructure are roads and bridges and broadband and ports and railroads. This isn’t a grab bag for every social agenda that you want to push down our throats, but that’s what we’re seeing Biden’s doing with this infrastructure bill. We need to stand up to this so i am co-sponsoring legislation that defines what exactly is infrastructure. It’s not a catch all. It’s not a way of pushing this socialist agenda down America’s throats. Because I will vote against a package that does not specifically address infrastructure and what is clearly defined as infrastructure.”
