John Carter

Mr. CARTER

Mr. CARTER. Thank you. Reclaiming my time, you said something that I think is important because I'm going to tell you that I'm concerned that all this is is a media event and all this is--so I'm going to ask people to listen for some things that probably will come out of this event. I think you may hear that the President reached out a hand and the Republicans gave back a fist. I think you may hear that the Republicans continue to be the Party of No. Well, first, what's wrong with being the Party of No if it's bad policy? You got elected to come down here and represent people who expected you to stand up and say, This is bad. No. Secondly, let's get this very clear. The Republicans don't have any way to stop this bill, especially in this House. They have an overwhelming majority. It's their party they can't get the votes from. It's not the Republican votes blocking this bill; it's the Democrat votes that are blocking this bill. So this whole thing, if we're going with the same work product they've already created, then it is a sham to go over there and deal with the work product that has already been created because they know they can't pass it, and they know the American people don't want them to pass it. So let's do what he said he was going to do and let's start over.

Mr. CARTER

Mr. CARTER. That's exactly right. And reclaiming my time, once again--and I'm not going to mention who said this, but it was said at the time. And although I understand why it was said, I think it was inappropriate. A statement was made, I certainly hope this incident at Fort Hood doesn't affect the Army's diversity program. Excuse me. We had folks that had risked their lives for our country killed in their own backyard by an Islamic terrorist, and I think that it's not the time to be worrying about whether somebody's feelings may have gotten hurt because we're talking about this guy being an Islamic terrorist. He is. That's a fact. Why can't we talk about it? I understand people talking about profiling, and what they're talking about is, in its ultimate extent, what offends people is situations in our historic past where, for example, there has been a shooting on the square. It's been identified. It was an African American. Round up all African Americans because the profile is African American. And that's where the whole idea of profiling--and you can expand it to American Indian, to Hispanic, to Vietnamese--identifying a whole group as evil because one was bad. And that's bad. And the police will tell you that that is not good police work. But if the shooter is wearing a major's uniform, answers to the name of Hasan, and 200 people can identify him in a lineup for having done the shooting, then you ought to talk about what the guy looks like, where he comes from, what his background is, and what motivated him to do this, which is a radical religious belief, the bottom line. That's not being politically incorrect. That's being intelligent. I'm sorry. It's just common sense. There's one thing I tell people back in Texas--I'm sure my friend in Georgia gets frustrated with it, too, sometimes. Inside this Beltway, the thing we lack the most seems to be common sense most of the time. Average American people know this, and I think that the Members of this House know that the folks back home know that this is something the administration should have addressed. Secretary Gates ordered it, but he's part of and takes his orders from the Commander in Chief, and they should be held responsible for their yielding the truth to political correctness. It's not the right thing to do. It harms those people who fearfully today, as I am talking, are standing in harm's way on our behalf, on my behalf, on your behalf, on everybody's behalf. They're doing the hard job. There is a movie that's out that really is realistic. I'm going to quote it because I'm not trying to promote movies. But it makes you feel the stress that soldiers have to deal with when they have these explosive devices and having to deal with those explosive devices. It was so tense, my wife covered her head with a pillow because she just couldn't stand the tension of it. And then you think about it and say, You know, we eat in the mess hall at Fort Hood with these guys. They go through that every day, the stress. She covered her head with a pillow. These kids--kids--they deal with it every day. So they're not kids anymore when they go over there. They're men and women of courage and honor, and they understand what it means to be courageous. So I think it's wrong for us to avoid describing our enemy to keep from stepping on somebody's toes. I have nothing against any--and when I say all this, let me preface this or finish this up by saying this is not about a religion. It's about a criminal defendant and his ID. And that's the way we should treat it. For that reason, I have raised this issue. I will yield some more time to my friend from Georgia if he wishes to speak.

Mr. CARTER. I thank my friend for that comment, because what a heartwarming experience that would be for the families and some of the soldiers who were there and who are now in the combat zone to know that this Congress said, We recognize this was a combat situation. We acknowledge it unanimously. It is hard to get unanimous around here, but it would be nice. And I thank my friend for his participation. Well, this is all a part of the chance that I get every now and then to talk about the rule of law and doing what's right and identifying what's wrong in this country and not being afraid to speak out and to point out when things are wrong. I want to end by saying that this is a wrong that needs to be righted, and this House and the Defense Department has the ability to right this wrong, and we should do it. I want you to know that I consider Secretary Gates a friend. I have the highest respect for him. I had the highest respect for him when he was the top man at Texas A&M University when I represented that wonderful institution, and I still have the highest regard for him. But I do criticize and will continue to criticize letting political correctness interfere with making correct statements about what happened so that, if nothing else, the kids of these people in the Army who know that a major shot other people will have a good explanation as to why he did it and what the indications are as to why he did it so they're not worried about their mom or dad getting shot by another guy in uniform. That's a tragic situation. I want to thank the Speaker for allowing me to have this time. I hope that we can right this wrong, and I hope that we can let common sense and right over wrong prevail in these two bills and in letting our heroes know what the right thing to do is and that we're going to do it.

Mr. CARTER. Mr. Speaker, I hail from Central Texas, and I am very, very proud to say that I have the largest military facility in the world in my district, Fort Hood, Texas. If you are in the Army, you know where Fort Hood is. In fact, I think if you find any 20-year veteran of the Army, you will find out they have been to Fort Hood, some of them once, twice, three, four times, because it is a huge training post. And it is the great place, as they call it, in Central Texas. The great place had a great disaster happen to us on November 5 of last year, when Major Nidal Hasan attacked and killed 13 soldiers and a baby in the womb, and wounded 43 others before two courageous police officers, responding to this violence at Fort Hood, came and basically shot the man and brought him down, one of them, a young lady, getting shot in the process. They got him captured. He is now the subject of much discussion around this House of Representatives. And by the way, I don't know if anyone noticed. I was very surprised at the State of the Union to see those two officers sitting right up here with the First Lady of the United States, and I was very surprised also that they weren't introduced to the House. But if you noticed two police officers sitting by Michelle Obama, they weren't introduced at the State of the Union, but those were the two officers who responded to Major Hasan when he went on his shooting rampage. We honored them, and the President and the First Lady were honoring them as heroes of the United States, and rightfully so. But I want us to first realize what happened at Fort Hood. And everybody says, Oh, come on. I know what happened. Sure, you listened to all the reports. But today I was talking with the mayor of Belton, which is actually the county seat of Bell County. Fort Hood sits in two counties, Bell and Coryell County. Fort Hood is hundreds of thousands of acres and it straddles the county line between those two great counties. The combined population of the two counties is over 300,000 people. So this is a growing area of Texas, and much of that growth that is in the western part of Bell County and the eastern part of Coryell County is military folks that have retired and come back to live close to Fort Hood, or they are presently serving in the military in some form or fashion, or they got out and went to work for something that is related to the military in Central Texas. We are a military community. We love our soldiers. I would argue that no place on Earth does more for the families and soldiers than Fort Hood, Texas. I love to tell the story of being in a Rotary Club meeting back in 2003 or 2004, I don't remember what it was, but I know that the 4th Infantry Division was deployed overseas from Fort Hood at that time. And it was along about March, somewhere around that time, when I was going to give a talk to that Rotary Club. It is a huge club, meets in the morning. Hundreds of people were there. And one of the Rotarians got up and said, Ladies and gentlemen, I want to remind you, our soldiers are deployed. Baseball season is starting. Our coaches for our Little League, Pony, Colt, and other leagues where our kids play baseball are over fighting a war to protect our freedom, and we need coaches. So it is up to us Rotarians to stand in for those fathers and mothers who are not going to be able to coach their kids. Now, that is a community that thinks outside the box to make sure that the kids and families of these deployed soldiers can live as normal a life as they can while these soldiers are deployed. I wanted to tell you that story, Members, because it tells you the heart of the Fort Hood community in an easy story. But when I was visiting with the mayor of Belton today, you don't realize the ramifications of something like what this Major Hasan did. First, we very quickly realized after the shooting and the days and weeks that came after the shooting that you had a lot of soldiers saying to themselves: Wait, a minute. This guy wasn't in some other Army. This guy was in my Army. He was in the same uniform I wear, and he shot my brother and sister soldiers and killed them and he was targeting soldiers to kill. Now, that plays upon the psyche of soldiers. Now, let me explain to you how important this is at Fort Hood, Texas, because the Fourth Infantry Division deploys out of there, III Corps Command is at Fort Hood, and the 1st Cavalry Division, as well as various other organizations. All of these folks have been deployed multiple times. The people that are stationed at Fort Hood are war fighters, and they have been involved in this war since its inception, and they will continue to do their duty, which is a great strain upon their families and a great strain upon these individual soldiers. But they do it because it is the right thing to do and they know that. These are our great generation. These are heroes, real true heroes. And do you know what? Just doing any job that is that stressful that many times repetitively wears upon you even if you weren't getting shot at or blown up. So this is a highly stressed, highly strung-out community. When this happened at Fort Hood, first responders from all the surrounding communities headed to Fort Hood. SWAT teams headed for Fort Hood. And if you recall, if you were listening during the play-by-play as it was being developed, you heard people say there are some who say there were three shooters, and so they are looking for the other two. What I didn't realize until I was talking to the mayor of Belton--and Belton is like 26 miles from Fort Hood--he said that, because they didn't know if the other shooters had gotten out of the post and were loose in the community, they locked down all the schools where there were soldiers' children just in case this was a plan to spread out and kill family members. And so we had, from high school down to elementary school, children locked down in the schools, and we were keeping people out and their parents couldn't pick them up. And the first responders' communications systems were overwhelmed with concerned parents from two full counties, 300,000 people. So what this man did at Fort Hood that day frightened all the kids in two counties. And there are tens of thousands of kids going to those schools in those counties, multiple high schools. These are our largest high schools in Texas. They were locked down. I tell you all this because I want you to know that this was truly, not just a traumatic event for the Army, this was a traumatic event for the people who support the Army and for the families who are supported by the people who support the Army. Now, the mental health professionals came in in droves, and a lot of great work was done, and I praise everyone who did that. But when I heard that story about these little kids locked down, let's take some little sixth-grade kid or fifth-grade kid, or maybe someone smaller, a first-grade kid who had the trauma of all of a sudden the doors were locked to his school and his mama couldn't pick him up or her mama couldn't pick her up. And then they started hearing why: There has been somebody shot over at Fort Hood. Now, all these kids have soldiers at Fort Hood who are their parents. Some of them have two parents who are soldiers at Fort Hood. Now, there has got to be fear in the hearts of these little kids, and they want to know what happened. And when school is out and people are talking about it and they are watching it on television, they are trying to figure out what happened. And I am sure parents tried to sit down and explain it where they calmed the little children down. But I am going to argue with you or state to you here tonight that a recent report that was put out by a commission that was appointed by the Obama administration to tell us about the incident at Fort Hood, I would say if you read that report or you explained that report to little kids who were locked down at Fort Hood, you wouldn't even know that Mr. Major Nidal Hasan gave every indication that he was a radical Islamic Muslim terrorist, because it is not discussed in the report, and it should be. I don't know who pulled the strings on this, but I know who is responsible, and that is the administration. We learned all kinds of things the Army needs to do differently and all kinds of things they need to talk about, the chain of command, yada, yada, yada, as my college-age girl would say. But we didn't hear anything about radical Islam. We didn't hear anything about this because, I would argue, and I think there are people across this country that are arguing, that it was because of political correctness. Political correctness. Excuse me, at some point in time it is just good intelligence, good police work to look at what makes up the chances are of the next terrorist attack. And to ignore it, and to act like you can't talk about it because you might hurt somebody's feelings--I tried sitting here tonight to remember as far back as I could, and I don't know how many years ago it was that the Munich Olympics was, but that was a radical Muslim terrorist attack. And every attack since that time has been a radical Muslim terrorist attack. So why can't we talk about the fact that our enemy seems to be, good intelligence seems to tell us, is radical Islamic terrorists? Now, why in the world can you write a report about a guy who walked down a peaceable line, some of the people checking in from being at war, and some of the people checking out to go to war, doing their everyday duty of getting through that process of processing in, processing out, and this guy walks down the line shooting soldiers in uniform, shouting out, ``Allahu Akbar,'' God is great, which is a part of the declaration of that religion. And I am not attacking that religion. But you can't talk about it. If you can't talk about it, you can't figure it out. And to write a report with this many Americans killed where they should have been safe, and this many Americans wounded where they should have been safe, and not mention the profile of the guy that did the shooting, and to give me the excuse when I asked the question, well, we are afraid it will mess up their murder case. Well, let me tell you, I will state this again for the record, if you have got a law degree and you are supposed to be able to practice law and you can't prove a murder case where you got 200 eyewitnesses, you need to send your law degree back to law school and turn in your bar card because you are an ineffective lawyer. And there are at least 200 people that witnessed this guy shooting these folks. So I mean give me a break. They don't have any proof problems to prove this case. That is not a reason not to talk about who did the shooting or who is alleged to do it. And I am an old judge, use the term alleged. It is perfectly good. But they don't even talk about who is alleged to have done the shooting or what kind of person that was. What do we know about him now? I will have to give our news organizations a lot of credit. We know that he acted erratically for months before the attack. That he promoted radical Islamic views while at Walter Reed Hospital. That he exchanged emails with Anwar al-Awlaki, a Yemen cleric which we are reading about every day in the newspaper who is one of the now major promoters of terrorism. No action was taken against him when he would have debates with other members of the military, and his position was what our soldiers were doing in Iraq and Afghanistan was worse than what terrorist attacks do or the 9/11 attack. That the 9/11 attack doesn't equal America's war fighting efforts. And nobody reported him? In fact, they promoted him to get him out of their hair, to move him to another duty station so they didn't have to put up with him. And it was all about Islamic terrorism, and yet our government writes a report and just fails to mention it. And what is really amazing, really amazing to me, I mean there are a lot of people pointing a finger at me and saying that guy is a right wing wacko. That is why he is standing up there. I won't shy away from the right wing part of it. I will shy away from the wacko part. But I will tell you, who else has raised this question? Kind of interesting. Time Magazine has raised the question in an article, ``Fort Hood Report: Why No Mention of Islam?'' Now, that is certainly not a famous right wing radical group. I would call them leaning over pretty hard to the left. Here is another one. You sure wouldn't consider people at the San Francisco Chronicle to be right wing wackos, but here it is: ``Political Correctness on Fort Hood at the Pentagon.'' And it is about why didn't they talk about who this guy was. So that is one of the things I got up for. And I see I am joined by one of my dear friends, who is always there for me, Phil Gingrey from Georgia. He and I are classmates. He always has something good to say. Doc, I yield whatever time you would like to use.

Mr. CARTER. Reclaiming my time, we are going to call a terrorist a terrorist and say who he is, what he is, where he comes from, what his background is, and if religion has a part in it, what religion has a part in it. We cannot afford--it's bad police work, if nothing else--to ignore that evidence. What do you tell that kid over at the high school when his dad is deployed and he asks his mom, he said, Wasn't this guy a soldier? Well, I can't say what kind of soldier he was because we've got to be politically correct. But, yes, he was a soldier. But how do I know my dad is safe with other soldiers? How do I know?

Mr. CARTER. That is correct.

Mr. CARTER. And this guy was radicalized. And now we're hearing--only from the news sources, not from the people in the administration that should be informing the public about this, but from news sources--we're hearing just how radicalized he was by conversations he's had. In fact, a Member of this House called a relative who went to medical school in the Army and happened to know the guy in medical school and said clear back in medical school he was talking about this stuff. That means we gave him--by the way, we paid for his medical education. And the good doctor from Georgia can tell you that's no small ticket right there. But we took this man and we put him through education and we educated him all the way through university, medical school, and all of his specialty stuff. The Army paid for that. You did. The taxpayers paid for that. And even then he was talking like this. Why can't we start being honest with ourselves and talk about these people? That's the issue. You mentioned the Christmas Day bomber. Our good friend, Dr. Burgess--maybe he doesn't want me to tell you this--but he said, There's a guy that ought to be the easiest guy in the world to interrogate because this guy has just set himself on fire in his crotch area. Now his choice is to go back to Yemen and get treated over there, or be treated by the best medical community on Earth, as was pointed out. It wouldn't be hard to say, Tell us what you know and we'll get you the best doctors, the best reconstruction surgeons in America. And we are the best. And the guy would gratefully share, it would seem to me, but not after you've lawyered him up after an hour. So, once again, though, I would argue we're playing the political correctness game. We wouldn't do the same thing for a regular criminal defendant, I'll tell you that. I'll tell you that. So it's different. And I worry about the fact. And that comment about overseas contingency. If they can't identify the war on terror as the war on terror, then we've got some black-and-white-striped cats that they're welcome to come down to Texas and pet those cats, because their really skunks. If you don't want to call them a skunk, call them a pussycat and start playing with them. See what happens to you. That's the same thing that happens to terrorists. If you're not going to call them a terrorist and point out what ideology is driving their thinking, then what are you going to do to identify your enemy and defeat your enemy? If you're not even going to call them an enemy, what are we doing? I yield back.

Mr. CARTER. I thank my friend for yielding. I thank my friend for mentioning these two bills that we've got out here. I tried a whistleblower case back about the mid-nineties sometime. A very interesting case. I won't go into the details. But it involved some organizations that were major political players and major financial players in Texas and a little small accountant who made a right statement but had stepped on some good-old-boy toes and so they fired the guy when the truth was he was telling that there was a lot of money that they were losing. It showed me why we have whistleblower laws: so the little guy who discovers a wrong can be comfortable in going to right that wrong without fear of retaliation, of getting fired because he did--told about something that the big boys didn't like. Well, we've got this Military Whistleblower Protection Enhancement Act. It protects military personnel from any negative action for reporting any regulation or law violation. Proposed protections for reporting ideologically based threat or actions a servicemember reasonably believes could be counterproductive or detrimental to the United States interests or security. Basically, what we're saying to the ordinary soldier, to the soldier that was going through medical school with Mr. Hasan, to the soldier that was stationed with Mr. Hasan when he was a second lieutenant and then a first lieutenant and then a captain and as he got promoted to major, that somebody didn't have a fear that something would happen to their military career if they reported this guy was talking radical ideas to service people. He wasn't preaching religion to them. He was talking that blowing people up was good, fighting conventional war against terrorists was bad. I mean, that's the kind of way he was talking. It didn't have anything to do with the Muslim religion. It had to do with terrorism being the right way to straighten out America. Excuse me? He was educated by the United States military. It kills me to hear that. So I think it's a good bill. I hope we can get some action on it. I hope we can get it written into law. And I'm going to be working on it. I feel confident. I have a lot of folks that are cosigners to that bill. This other one is pretty simple, too, really. What we had--and I can say this almost without--and I don't know the names and background of every one of these soldiers, but I have personally talked to several of them and the general consensus is everybody that got shot had either just come back from Iraq or getting ready to deploy again to either Iraq or Afghanistan. And the reason we had mixed units that day at that center is because normally units go through as a group as they deploy, but these were the guys that were absent for some purpose. May have still been on the training range or something else. So they had to go make up by getting all the paperwork shuffled to get ready to deploy. That's why you heard it wasn't just one outfit that had all the deaths. It was multiple outfits around the Army because there are multiple outfits stationed at Fort Hood. Anyway, I would argue these were warriors either returning from the war or going to the war and an enemy soldier, terrorist, disguised in a uniform of the United States military, walked into our warriors as they were peacefully getting ready and processing paper and started killing soldiers. And I do argue that's a combat situation. Whether you're killing a soldier in Afghanistan or Iraq or whether you're killing a soldier in a center at Fort Hood, if your intent is to kill soldiers to keep them out of the war against terror, you are an enemy combatant killing our soldiers. Therefore, they should be treated with combat respect. This incident should be like we did for what happened at the Pentagon when it was attacked on 9/11. We declared that to be an incident in combat in the war on terror and the people who did heroic acts there received the appropriate medals and the appropriate benefits for being injured or killed in a combat zone. I think Fort Hood and the incident that happened with Major Hasan should be a combat zone; and I'm trying to do it by statute. But it's been done by act of the Defense Department. I think it's time for it to be done. There are a lot of Purple Hearts that ought to be awarded, at least 43 that we know of. There are a lot of folks that should get civilian medals that were civilians that were accidentally wounded in the misfires. And there are benefits that attach to being killed or injured in combat. I think these people ought to get it. Just because they just got back from another country but they got shot in our country by an enemy soldier, I would argue they still ought to be treated as if they were wounded in combat.

Mr. CARTER

Mr. CARTER. Madam Speaker, I would like to recognize Sr. SGT Mark A. Todd, Sr. of Fort Hood, Texas for his unbelievable bravery on November 5, 2009 at Fort Hood, Texas. Sr. SGT Todd, selflessly, helped put an end to the horrific massacre that took place, killing 12 soldiers and 1 civilian and wounding more than 40 others. His leadership, skill and bravery are truly heroic. We, as one Nation under God honor him today for his heroism. His actions will not be forgotten, and he will forever be recognized for his leadership and bravery. It is an honor to recognize Sr. SGT Todd, as he continues to be a true leader at Fort Hood, in Texas District 31, and the United States of America.

Mr. CARTER

Mr. CARTER. Madam Speaker, I would like to recognize SGT Kimberly D. Munley of Fort Hood, Texas for her unbelievable bravery on November 5, 2009 at Fort Hood, Texas. Kimberly, selflessly, helped put an end to the horrific massacre that took place, killing 12 soldiers and 1 civilian and wounding more than 40 others. She had the courage to defend, despite her own gunshot wounds from the shooter. Her leadership, skill and bravery are truly heroic. We, as one Nation under God honor her today for her heroism. Her actions will not be forgotten, and she will forever be recognized for her leadership and bravery. It is an honor to recognize SGT Munley, as she continues to be a true leader at Fort Hood, in Texas District 31, and The United States of America.

Mr. CARTER

Mr. CARTER. Madam Speaker, on December 9, 2009, I was unable to be present for several rollcall votes. If present, I would have voted accordingly on the following rollcall votes: Roll No. 942--``nay.'' Roll No. 943--``nay.'' Roll No. 944--``yea.''

Mr. CARTER

Mr. CARTER. Mr. Speaker, a constituent statement to Congress by Judy Brady of Texas District 31 on health care reform. I received this, and I wanted to read it to the rest of the Congress: You tell us that the government needs to control health care because the government can administer programs more cheaply and fairly than the private system. Of course, recent studies show that nearly 10 percent of all Medicare payments are fraudulent. Why should we believe that government can do a better job with the entire Nation's health care system than it already does with Medicare? We ask you to leave health care in the hands of doctors and patients and that you help drive down the costs of insurance so that more of us can be covered. Give us nationwide competition between private insurers, allow us tax deductions for insurance we purchase, and promote tort reform. Don't force us into a government system that will cost us more and cover us less.

Mr. CARTER

Mr. CARTER. Mr. Speaker, I move that the House do now adjourn.

Mr. CARTER

Mr. CARTER. I thank you for joining me and being always loyal to come up here and help me out. I do appreciate that, and I appreciate the others that do too. I think it's time to wrap up our time here today by saying that you're right. There is nothing easy about talking about your colleagues. I'm the first to say that people make mistakes. I have made mistakes, and every human being that's ever been around, I think, has made some kind of mistake, with possibly one exception. I won't go into that. But the facts are that the rule of law is such an important part of keeping America what we are. You know, we brag about the land of the free and the home of the brave. We're only free and we only have the freedom to do the things we want to do because we establish rules that we're all willing to live by. So when you go out and you try to work on something, you know there are rules that pertain, and if you follow those rules, you can go forward. The only restriction that you have on your freedom to go forward in your life is that you've agreed to certain rules under the law. And you who abide by those rules should be horribly offended when some big shot, some politician gets special treatment. I don't want to be a part of a group where somebody is accused of getting special treatment. I don't think any Member of this House really wants to be in that position. It's difficult to talk about these things, but somebody's got to do it.

Mr. CARTER. In Texas, that's against the law. I will stop. We're talking on top of each other. I'm sorry. I have learned a long time ago from court reporters that talking on top of each other is a cardinal sin for court reporters. I have worked with them now going on 30 years of my life. Seriously, that is exactly right. There is another crime in false swearing on a Federal form. And you know what, it may be a mistake. I'm not saying Mr. Geithner wasn't so busy--he is a busy man--that he forgot. He forgot? Well, it's convenient. If you read the newspaper report, when they caught him on '03, '04, he took care of it. Now he should have had a memory jolt when he got caught on '03 and '04 that he really didn't do it on '01 and '02, but he didn't have that memory jolt. He paid that and then got ready to be Secretary of the Treasury. Somebody said, Oops. Wait a minute. What about '01 and '02? Well, he went back and paid that. So I don't know. It looks like special privileges to me. Once again, just like I started off saying, this is about the rule of law. It keeps our society together. And if we start waiving it for individuals or groups or whatever, once we start down that path, who makes that decision, and what does it do to the rest of us? Do we ever want to get into a situation like that which was gotten into in Nazi Germany and in Communist Russia where, for certain people, the laws didn't apply to them at all. For certain organizations, the law didn't apply to them. Do we want to go there? You say, That's crazy. It's like that leak in that dike over there in Holland that we got that story about. Once that little trickle past the rule of law starts, where does it stop? If you don't plug that hole, what happens next? It's what happens next that Americans seem to be worried about. I will yield back to my friend from Georgia.

Mr. CARTER. Well, that is false swearing.

Mr. CARTER. This is exactly what you're talking about. At the bottom it said--this is something that Mr. Geithner signed when he got his money from--his statements and all this stuff from the International Monetary Fund. In accordance with General Administrative Order No. 5, revision so and so and so and so, I wish to apply for a tax allowance from the U.S. Federal and State income taxes and the differences between the self-employed and employed obligation of the United States Social Security, and I will pay on my Fund income. I authorize the Fund or any of the staff members designated by it for the purpose of ascertaining from the appropriate tax authorities whether tax returns were received. And he certifies that he will pay those taxes.

Mr. CARTER. I yield back.

Mr. CARTER. Reclaiming my time for a moment, that's exactly right, and I agree with my friend from Georgia. I will say this. This all started when Chairman Rangel stood at that podium right there and told us about his problems. And, actually, I took it as a very courageous-- if I had been his lawyer, it would have made me a little nervous-- statement by Mr. Rangel, that he was laying it all out in front of us. And nothing about what he said really concerned me. I thought he was trying to work through the issues and let somebody determine whether or not what he had done had been a violation of our ethic rules or the law. But he paid the taxes and he would pay penalties and interest, if assessed, and it popped into my head, There's no option. I have never ever known anybody to have an option. They're going to be assessed. You might bargain your way out of something, depending on the numbers. You might make a little bit of a deal of with them. I've never known anybody that didn't get the letter that my friend from Georgia just described that told you what the penalties are and what the interest is for what you have to pay. In fact, I think most CPAs that are doing your work for you are going to tell you, You should have paid on the 15th. You're going to owe some penalty, and you're going to owe some interest. Bottom line. When I heard that, I waited to see if that was going to occur. And when it didn't, that's how this all started. This also has an easy solution. It really does. That easy solution is: Pay the money. These are not poor people. Pay the money. Or at least show the world that due process had something to do with this and everybody has this opportunity to have this due process. I certainly think, at the minimum, when you're talking to that IRS agent who's talking to you about some taxes you failed to pay, you should very politely say, Can you explain to me how I go about getting treated the same way as Mr. Geithner and Mr. Rangel got treated by the IRS? Don't be insulting. Don't make those people mad at you. No telling what they'll do to you. Might audit you.

Mr. CARTER. That's right.

Mr. CARTER. And let me just be clear on this from what I previously said. By doing the Rangel rule, which basically says everybody else gets treated the same, it's to give you that equal protection under the law that we promise in our Constitution. I'm not saying it's the right thing to do. I'm saying the right thing to do is for Mr. Geithner to pay the penalties that everybody else pays. I'm saying the right thing to do is for Mr. Rangel to pay the interest and penalties that everybody else pays. But if that's a precedent being established by this administration at this time, then everybody ought to be treated equally. It's only fair. I will tell you it's probably a bad precedent. And I would argue that. I'll tell you that I don't expect this to pass. But I do expect us to raise the issue. And that's a way to raise the issue; to say to the American people just what the President said: There's no two sets of standards, one for the powerful and one for the ordinary guy who pays his taxes. It's exactly what this is all about. This is just as simple as those words from our President of the United States. There's no two sets of standards. If we are going to reinforce and continue to reinforce and not call into account the Secretary of the Treasury and the Chairman of the Ways and Means Committee, if we're going to continue to do that, then at some point in time these two bills that I've offered and that my friend has joined me in, that should become the law of the United States, because now we have decided that this particular offense is no longer a violation of the rule of law. So, from now on, we pay our taxes when we get around to it, and there's no punishment attached to it. Maybe that is fair. Maybe we'd all be happy with that. Probably would. But I'm not advocating that as good policy. I'm advocating good policy is everybody be treated equally. That's what I'm advocating.

Mr. CARTER. That's right.

Mr. CARTER. I'm an old history buff. I believe that you learn from history. And in recent history, in the Clinton administration and in the George W. Bush administration, there were prospective Cabinet members who it was discovered had a domestic working for them that was possibly without papers to be in the United States and it caused them not to get confirmed for that position, because why? They were violating the laws as pertaining to illegal aliens. The rule of law. The Labor Secretary under the Bush administration had a domestic that was from another country that didn't have appropriate papers and withdrew the name because the rule of law wasn't being followed in her household. Inadvertently. I'm not saying he did this to be mean, vindictive or cheat the American public. That's kind of between him and the IRS, but I'm saying it happened and he admits it happened. And yet, for some reason, the rule of law is not an interference for him being Secretary of the Treasury. And yet in two previous administrations, violating a rule of law has prevented people from becoming a Cabinet member. I think we should be concerned as we look at the Obama administration that gave us such glowing promises about nobody is going to be treated differently for their position, to start off and now have a whole year of people in positions where they violated the rule of law and they don't think it applies to them. Now I'm sure that somebody sitting out there is saying, Oh, come on, this isn't a big deal. My question is: Where do you draw the line? You back out there at home and most of the Members of Congress and their wives and children here in Washington, we know how scary the IRS can be if they're calling you and sending you letters and talking about tax liability and talking about tax liens and things like that, how scary they can be. And maybe that law doesn't scare everybody, but it sure scares me and a whole lot of people I know. Now there's other laws that are even more serious, and you would say, Well, they can never be waived. They can never not pertain. How do you know? Once you decide that there are people that are above the law in a country, how far above the law do they have to go? Can they commit embezzlement? Maybe. If they're smart, swindle somebody a little bit. I don't know. How about murder? Are you going to waive the law as to murder? Just pick a bad one--that's a pretty bad one--and say, Does this pertain to everybody in the country equally? It certainly should. But if you're willing to excuse one law at whatever level, then where do you stop excusing? Does somebody get so powerful and so important in this country when you set this kind of precedent--that somebody gets so powerful and important that we waive those other laws on their behalf? They can break our established laws, and we will waive it because they're so important to our country. We've got to have them, no matter what? I don't think so. I really don't think so. I really think that's the kind of precedent that you saw starting in one of the most law-and-order places on Earth, Germany in the 1920s. And look what happened when they excused one law and then another and then another and then another. And then if you were a certain party member, it didn't pertain to you. And if you were a certain official, it didn't pertain to you. Then, they made the laws. That's not America. We have to preserve the rule of law. I think my friend understands this seems to be going way off, but it's not way off. Once you start saying it's okay to do something that's breaking the law, then where do you draw the line at the next thing? Is not paying your taxes and not having the law apply to you here, does that mean the next step is you might take stimulus money and stick it in your pocket? Or you might do something else and we will excuse that because they're really important and they're trying do a good thing for the country, and keep going and going--and what do you have? Lawless society. I yield back to my friend from Georgia for a comment.

Mr. CARTER. This IRS Restructuring and Reform Act of 1998, section 1203, termination of employment for misconduct, IRS employees can and are terminated for just what my friend from Georgia just read to you, willful failure to file a return or willful neglect. Mr. Geithner is arguably the head of the IRS. All those beneath him, from the director of the IRS all the way down to the guy who answers the phone and helps you work on your tax return, if any of those employees do what Secretary Geithner does, by law, it says they can be and are terminated for this action. Should the Secretary of the Treasury have to comply with the same law as the regular IRS workers? Some employees appear to be more equal than others. That is, if you're the boss, you don't have to comply, and this mandatory fine doesn't pertain to you. Recently, Kevin Brady of Texas called upon the Secretary of the Treasury to resign. And on this issue, I think if there was someone besides the President, I guess the President is above the Secretary of the Treasury, but based on following the same rules that his employees follow, he would be terminated under the law, the IRS Restructuring and Reform Act of 1998. So you want to know where that rule of law is, there's the rule. And there's what happens--terminated. Except for Mr. Geithner.

Mr. CARTER. Mr. Speaker, again tonight I rise here to talk about the rule of law and the fact that there are those in our society who seem to want to circumvent the rule of law and think because of their position either in Congress or in the government that the law shouldn't pertain to them the way it pertains to other Americans, that they should be treated specially. And even though our President stated that he didn't think that that's what the American people--that he was going to fight to make sure there was no special treatment for people other than everybody get treated equally, we've still got this issue going on. And I've been talking about this, and I've been talking about Chairman Rangel and his issues with the tax folks and about how the rule of law didn't seem to apply to him, and tonight I am going to talk about Secretary Geithner, the Secretary of the Treasury. Before I start talking about this, I was thinking, as I was sitting here listening to people talk--and everybody was very informative--that there may be people who really don't understand what I say when I talk about the rule of law. The rule of law is a very basic concept. It is a prevailing concept that holds our Republic together here in the United States. But in truth and fact, the whole world seeks a system where the rule of law prevails, because it is that system which gives recourse to the ordinary person. So let me just point out some of the things that we're talking about here tonight that the rule of law is part of. When I say ``recourse,'' the average American citizen, if someone is breaking into their house, if they hear a burglar prying open the back door of their home, they call 911 and ask them to send out a police officer or a sheriff's deputy or someone to protect their home. And they know that we have procedures whereby that officer has the authority to come in and make an arrest of that person, to protect the homestead of the person that is being violated. They know that there's someone they can call who will help and that there are rules that the society they live in has established so that they get treated fairly in being protected by the law. And the person who is accused of breaking the law is also treated fairly, because they know that we have rules that we have all agreed upon. These are the rules that our society will follow. That is the rule of law. When we talk about Afghanistan--which is an issue that probably, as I am speaking, the President is speaking on some other channel about this--the issue, when you're talking about counterinsurgency cut down to its finest point, is establishing the rule of law in a war zone, if you will. We did it in Iraq. And basically we did it with a civil principle which we've used in New York City to lower the crime rate. We used it in Philadelphia to lower the crime rate. Big cities have used it from time to time everywhere, and that is community policing. That is the idea that there is somebody in your neighborhood you can turn to and say, ``Help me. I need your help.'' And really, counterinsurgency is using the military to train up the local folks in their police force and their army so that their citizens know that they can be protected by their police force and their army and their court system and their government from those who would do them harm. So they don't have to look to the strongest guy in the neighborhood--which may be the Taliban--to protect their interests; they can look to the government and the society that's been established by that government. And counterinsurgency is basically putting American forces and indigenous forces in place in neighborhoods all over Afghanistan so that the Afghan citizens realize there's someone there permanently to make sure that they are treated right and treated fairly. And so it's the beginning of the establishment of the rule of law. We in the United States have been blessed for our entire history with a rule of law. And, in fact, we don't salute a king. We don't salute a dictator. We don't salute an individual that sovereignty comes from that individual. We salute a document. When those of us who are fortunate enough to be elected to Congress and are able to serve our constituents back home here in Congress and we have the opportunity to be here in Congress, we stand up and we take an oath. And that oath is to the Constitution of the United States, that we will preserve, protect, and defend that Constitution from all enemies, foreign and domestic, because the Constitution is that set, beginning set of rules of law that we established this Republic under. So we are a very blessed Nation. We started with the rules of law. Today, in many nations around this world, there are still folks who don't have some rules that they can feel comfortable will be there to protect their society. And a lot of what happens when you create a counterinsurgency force like we're doing in Afghanistan, we're establishing that security for those people who live in that country. So that is a little bit off subject, but it gets you to the idea of how important it is that a people, whoever the people are, wherever they exist on this Earth, have some set of rules they can feel they will be treated just like their neighbor next door or the guy clear across the country. They're going to be treated fairly, they're going to be treated well, and they're going to have a source that they can get recourse for something that happens to them. It is a very simple concept, but it is the foundation concept of a civil society, of a society that functions properly. And one of the things that offends the rule of law and that has offended Americans at every stage of our history is when there are those who think, The law doesn't apply to me. It applies to you, but it doesn't apply to me. I am more important than you. I am a big shot or I am a powerful person or I am a rich person, so the law doesn't apply to me. It applies to you. And there are always going to be those misdirected people in any society who feel that way. But it is our duty when we see people who are taking that position or where a group of people is taking that position on behalf of a individual, that they are above the law, they are above being treated the same as you might be treated or that I might be treated, they are special, they should have special treatment. Let me show you what the President said about that. President Barack Obama on February 3, 2008 said, ``I campaign on changing Washington and bottom-up politics. I don't want to send a message to the American people that there are two sets of standards: one for powerful people and one for ordinary folks who are working every day and paying their taxes.'' That is what the President of the United States said about the rule of law as it pertains to what he wanted in his Presidency. There are lots of laws in the United States that pertain to all of us. Most of us don't feel pressure about most laws. The vast majority of Americans citizens are very law abiding. They do what they are supposed to do. They may speed once in a while, and occasionally they get caught and they expect to be treated like everyone else. And they may do some other minor things that they shouldn't do. But the truth is the American people, we are very law-abiding people. But there is one area that we are all affected by every day, and I would argue that many of us in this country fear, and that is the area of the Internal Revenue and our taxes. Quite frankly, our Tax Code would just about fill this giant room, and we all wonder if anybody could possibly know what is in the Tax Code; and yet we are all supposed to fill out a form and pay our taxes every year. That is why people go to CPAs to help them with their taxes, because they are worried that they might not get it right and they might be punished for not getting it right. Some of them even worry that they might go to jail for not getting it right. So Americans very diligently spend large amounts of their income every year to make sure that they get their taxes right. That goes for the ordinary guy and for the Ph.D. at the major university, the smartest guy in town. They all have to deal with the IRS and make sure that they do things right. Well, everybody makes mistakes and sometimes somebody is going to make a mistake. Some people make those mistakes unintentionally; some, they intentionally do something wrong. The Tax Code has punishments to fit those individuals. But what I want to talk about tonight is the fact that the man who is the Secretary of the Treasury of the United States, he is the man who is in charge of our money and in charge of our tax system. The IRS reports to Secretary Geithner. Secretary Geithner did not pay some taxes that he was supposed to pay. So let me talk to you a little bit about that. First, let me explain to you what happened with Mr. Geithner. Mr. Geithner has a master's in international economics from Johns Hopkins University. He is a director of policy development and review for the International Monetary Fund, a senior fellow on the Council of Foreign Relations. He is the U.S. Treasury Secretary, the head of the Internal Revenue Service. The specific tax violation he had was he failed to pay Social Security and Medicare taxes on the IMF earnings for tax years 2001, 2002, 2003, and 2004. The total liability that he owed was approximately $43,200. Now so you understand what this is, the International Monetary Fund was paying him separate and apart from what he is doing, and he has to be treated like self-employed. A self-employed person has to pay not only his share of payroll taxes, but he has to pay the employer's share of payroll taxes because you are self-employed. Self-employed people pay the employer's share of payroll taxes, which is basically Social Security and Medicare, and they pay their own share. If you look at your check, you will see your payroll taxes and how much you pay every month to the government. Well, when you are paid by the International Monetary Fund, they give you a check every month or every year, I don't know which it is. It tells you how much you make and how much income taxes they paid on your behalf, and they tell you on that document you are responsible for paying your payroll taxes. It is not like someone didn't tell you. You read it when you get your check, when you get your statement about your income. You read it and it tells you, you have to pay this. We didn't take this out. You have to pay it. Quite frankly, Mr. Geithner signed off on that document every year that told him that. And that part of the money he was being paid was for the purpose of paying these things. He has admitted that he made a shortfall in doing this. He said it was a mistake. He made a mistake. He had a signed statement. He signed a statement acknowledging that he owed the tax. He paid the taxes. His position with the IMF and his education specifically dealt with the issues of Social Security and Medicare, system integration in the world economy. He paid his taxes, but he didn't pay any--I think he paid his interest on the taxes--but he didn't pay any penalties on the taxes. But if you and I had done the same thing that Mr. Geithner did, we would have paid penalties. The United States 14th Amendment is the equal protection clause of the United States Constitution. It states, among other things: nor shall any State deprive any person of life, liberty or property without due process of law, or deny any person within its jurisdiction the equal protection of the laws. Equal protection of the laws. When we are talking about property, money is property just like land is property. Now, the IRS has lately decided to establish certain back tax penalties that you have to pay for failing to pay your taxes. And in fact they have got a program going on right now where they are saying to people who have made money offshore, if you come in and give yourself up because you earned some money offshore that you should have paid taxes on and pay those taxes, we will make you a deal and we will set out in black and white what your interest and penalties are going to be. This is about penalties. Offshore depositors amnesty offer, what they promised to give them if you turn yourself in, only 20 percent of the amount will be for penalties. Offshore depositors without amnesty would pay 50 percent penalty. The standard taxpayers' negligent disregard, that means he was negligent and disregarded what he should owe, is 20 percent. A standard taxpayer that defrauds the government, the penalties are 75 percent. So that's the rules that are supposed to apply to every American and every American entity, including corporations, partnerships, and so forth. Secretary Tim Geithner paid zero on $43,200 in taxes that he didn't paid. Chairman Rangel paid zero. It seems that some taxpayers appear to be more equal than other taxpayers. That's what President Obama told us this administration is all about. No two sets of standards, one for powerful people and one for ordinary folks. That is what we are talking about in the rule of law. That is why I come down here and talk about the rule of law because quite frankly it is supposed to pertain to every one of us. Every one of us is supposed to be treated equally. And, quite frankly, there may be individual citizens that can negotiate this out, but we have asked the questions and we don't have the answers as to why they haven't paid this. I have written letters to Chairman Rangel asking him to pay the penalties and interest. I got no reply. A good explanation would probably have prevented all of this, I don't know. The same thing for Mr. Geithner. He has been asked in committee about this, and he said they didn't assess any penalties. That is kind of like saying the boss didn't punish himself for his malfeasance. I'm sorry, that's like the judge shouldn't punish himself if he did something wrong, and that is not how we operate in this country. People in authority should not be able to give themselves a break because they have authority over the agency that regulates and should regulate their behavior when they have violated the rules. That is not what the rule of law is all about. That is not what we are trying to teach people in Iraq and Afghanistan with our military forces risking their lives to establish for them the safety and the assurance that the individual citizen in those countries will be treated fairly and will have somebody they can turn to to make sure that they are treated fairly. This body, this Congress of the United States, should be about making sure that everybody is treated fairly. We should be about maintaining the oath that we took; and that oath said we will preserve, protect, and defend the Constitution of the United States. The oath we take in Texas is not only for the Constitution of the United States, but it is also for the State of Texas and the laws pertaining thereto. And that is our job. When we see things like this, we should be upset about it. We should be concerned about it. We have introduced, or are going to introduce, a bill in the Congress that we are going to call the Geithner Penalty Waiver Act. This bill is to provide the same penalty rate for taxpayers who voluntarily disclose unreported income from offshore accounts as was afforded Timothy Geithner with respect to his failure to pay self-employment taxes with respect to his compensation from the Monetary Fund. The law pertaining to section 1401 of the Internal Revenue Code of 1986, the key word ``same penalty.'' This formally recognizes the legal precedent already established by the IRS's treatment of U.S. Treasury Secretary Tim Geithner. So what I am saying in this bill that we are going to offer is basically, to all of these tax cheats that they seem to be talking about in the IRS right now that are offshore, if they come in and voluntarily do what they said they should do, let's treat them like we treated the chief tax man of the United States, the top tax guy, treat them like him. That's only fair. If he doesn't have to pay the penalties and interest, if he gets off from those penalties, I don't think any other people should have to pay penalties. Because the truth is, we want to do what the President said. We don't want there to be one set of laws for important people in Washington and another set of laws for the rest of the people in America and those who earn income that are Americans. It's only fair. It's like the Rangel rule. If you haven't paid your taxes, you can write ``Rangel rule'' on your tax form and won't have to pay any penalty and interest--until Mr. Rangel does anyway. This is the same concept, it's the same indicator, that there are those, and they are in positions of very high power related to our tax structure, that are being treated differently from the ordinary American, the ordinary Texan that works in the oil fields or works in the computer industry and he fails to pay taxes or he is late on his taxes. He gets penalties and interest. And he pays them, just like any other taxpayer in the country. When the IRS says you owe penalty and interest, you might question them. When they show you that you owe them and show you the law that pertains to you, we pay them, even if we have to work out a payment schedule, but we pay them. We don't get, Oh, well, I forgot who you were. Oh, I'm sorry. You don't have to pay penalties because I didn't realize you were the Secretary of the Treasury. I didn't realize you were the chairman of the Ways and Means Committee, so just don't worry about it. We don't get treated that way. I don't get treated that way. And I would argue that no Member of this House gets treated that way, with certain exceptions, and those exceptions are not right. And this political correctness we got going in this country, there are things that are right and there are things that are wrong. And you have to stand up and say, That's not right. That's what we're supposed to be. That's what we're supposed to do here. That's why we're here. And I'm sure somewhere in this country today, as I'm speaking, there's some family that is almost sweating blood in their relationship with the Internal Revenue Service trying to figure out how they're going to meet the obligations. In some instances, people have messed up so bad in neglecting to pay their taxes that the penalties and interest are as much or more than the taxes that are owed. And sometimes this can be so onerous on a family, it can literally destroy that family because everything they have, or just about, is subject to a tax lien to be seized by the government and to be sold to force the payment of these things. This is serious stuff that happens to American citizens when they don't pay their taxes. And they all know that. Everybody here knows that. And everybody that might be watching this, they understand that failing to pay your taxes is serious business. It can be horrible for you and your family. I don't want anything horrible to happen to Mr. Geithner, and I don't want anything horrible to happen to Mr. Rangel. But I want them to be treated like everybody else in the United States that's out there today. I want them to have to meet their obligations to our country just like every American citizen has to meet their obligations. And I will promise you that there are probably thousands of Americans out there today that are worrying where and how they are going to keep their family under the roof with the tax burden and the penalties and interest that have fallen upon them as a result of their failure to pay taxes. It's just not fair. It's just not fair. More importantly, if you waive the rule for somebody because they're important, they have a title, they are special because you elected them or because somebody you elected appointed them to a job, this law affects every American in the country, the tax law. And so do all the other criminal laws and the other rules in this society. Are you going to let them get away with waiving those other rules, too? We have talked some about this. We have had issues right here in this Congress about the President of the United States and the White House interfering in the rule of contract, and that's making sure that certain laws don't count for certain people. And that's not right. When we had the takeover of the automobile industry, when they said the unions get their deal but the bondholders don't get their deal, they circumvented the law. Special privileges were given to special groups. That's wrong. We can't let this continue in this country. We can't continue to let the powerful dictate outside the law. Because where does it stop? I see that my friend from Georgia (Mr. Westmoreland) is here to join me, and I'm proud to have him here, so I will yield to him for comments he may have on this subject.