Ron DeSantis

Mr. DeSANTIS

Mr. DeSANTIS. Mr. Speaker, it is my privilege to honor Ms. Kathy Redman's almost 39 years of distinguished federal service. On April 1, 2017, Ms. Redman will retire as the Southeast Regional Director for U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services (USCIS). In her current role, she leads USCIS operations in nine states, Puerto Rico, and the U.S. Virgin Islands and manages nearly 1,000 employees. From her humble beginnings as an inspector at JFK airport in New York City, Ms. Redman has become a trusted USCIS employee who has served in posts from New Delhi to Detroit. Over the course of her career, she has naturalized more than 40,000 new Americans. Ms. Redman's expertise and knowledge of our nation's immigration laws have been an invaluable resource to my office. Ms. Redman and her staff have assisted countless constituents by expediting appointments in time of crisis and resolving complicated applications. On one memorable occasion, Ms. Redman helped our office expedite a Naturalization ceremony for the spouse of a deploying Air Force officer. It is always a treasured moment when a new American takes the oath of allegiance to support and defend our Constitution. I wish Ms. Redman all the best as she begins her retirement in our beautiful state of Florida.

Mr. DeSANTIS

Mr. DeSANTIS. Mr. Speaker, I rise to express my condolences to the families of the three Air Force officers who were killed in a plane crash earlier this week in New Mexico. Two of these officers had strong ties to the Sixth Congressional District in Florida, and particularly Volusia County. Captain Andrew Becker graduated from Embry-Riddle Aeronautical University in Daytona Beach in 2007. He was a great student, a real world beater. He did what many graduates of Riddle do. He served our country with honor and distinction, and we are thankful for his service to this country. We send our condolences to his wife. First Lieutenant Drew Dellecker graduated from the Air Force Academy in 2013 after growing up in Volusia County. This special guy dedicated his life to serving our country and defending our freedoms. The Volusia County community is saddened by his loss; and his parents, Bill and Karen, are in our thoughts and prayers. May God bless these fine young men, and may God bless their memory in the United States of America.

Mr. DeSANTIS

Mr. DeSANTIS. Mr. Speaker, the Founding Fathers believed that our constitutional system of checks and balances and separation of powers were the people's primary protection for their liberty, and they saw the usurpation of authority by a single branch to be dangerous to the constitutional system. Now, there has been a focus this weekend on Presidential tweets regarding the courts, and I think this deserves attention. My view is that the President's broadsides against the courts will likely hurt the government's case on appeal, and were, therefore, counterproductive. I would advise to focus on substance rather than on general broadsides. But I think it is also important to point out and to criticize the substance of the decision that was made by the Federal court in Seattle because that decision represented a departure from the judicial role. The judge in that case exercised his political will, not his legal judgment, which is the antithesis of how Alexander Hamilton described the proper role of the courts in the Federalist Papers. The judge there--if you read the opinion, it is a cursory opinion-- didn't even attempt to wrestle with the law at issue in the President's executive actions on immigration. The reason why that is important is because the law is very, very clear. This Congress has enacted a statute, section 1182(f) of the immigration laws that says that the President has the authority to suspend entry of foreign nationals when the President finds that entry would be detrimental to the interests of the U.S. And so that is what was cited. That provision of the law has not been questioned in over 60 years. The court in Seattle, though, questioned effectively the wisdom of the executive order, not really the legality. And there was a part of the oral argument before the judge issued his temporary retraining order where he said that there hasn't been any terrorism from any foreign national from any of the seven countries that were enumerated from the visa suspension. It is Iran, Iraq, Syria, Somalia, Libya, Sudan. And he said confidently that that had not happened. Well, that is not true. If you look at just recently, you had the attacker in St. Cloud, Minnesota, September 2016, who was a Somali refugee. You have the Ohio State attacker. That was just 2\1/2\ months ago. He was running people over on campus and wielding a butcher knife going after people. He was a refugee from Somalia. You had the two Iraqi refugees arrested in Bowling Green, Kentucky. They came as refugees, even though they had been active in fighting and in killing American soldiers and Marines in Iraq. You also have the case, the Federal case in Houston last year with the conviction of Omar Faraj Saeed Al Hardan. He came as a refugee from Iraq and did get a green card, but he was convicted of material support to ISIS for trying to bomb the shopping malls in Houston, Texas. So you have this judge who is ignoring the law, ignoring what Congress has enacted, ignoring the President's authority, substituting his own policy judgment, and he is not even right on the facts; doesn't even really know what he is talking about. Here's the thing, also. Whether there have been attacks or arrests from these countries really is not even relevant to the law at stake. I mean, Bush could have suspended immigration from Saudi Arabia and Egypt in January 2001. People would have been like: Why are you doing that? What's going on? Well, eventually, obviously you had foreign nationals from that country commit the 9/11 attacks. The key is, debate the wisdom of the President's policies. That is totally fine, and people are going to have their views on it. But we should not sit here and act like it is normal for a judge to exercise authority to overrule the Congress and the President, when the law is clear, and when you are dealing with an area, in terms of the entry of foreign nationals, that really centers on the national security interests that both the Congress and the President possess. So our constitutional system requires that the branches exercise the authority properly delegated to them. When the branch, any branch-- Congress, the President, or the courts--departs from their proper roles, that is something that we should acknowledge, and that is something that we should be concerned with. I have no confidence that the Ninth Circuit is going to reverse it, but I do think that this judge overstepped the judicial role and was, effectively, legislating from the bench. That, ultimately, is not good for the constitutional system and, by extension, the people's liberties.

Mr. DeSANTIS

Mr. DeSANTIS. Mr. Speaker, I rise in support of this measure. I think it is important to point out that when you talk about civilian control, General Mattis is, in fact, a civilian. He is not in command of any Marine divisions right now. I don't think prior military service should be held against him when he has the ability to offer additional service to the country. I hear this argument that: Well, he is a retired general, he is subject to the UCMJ. That is not an argument that has much merit. If that were the case, you couldn't have retired military officers serve in the Congress. If they were still considered military officers, it would violate the incompatibility clause of the Constitution. Now, this 7-year statutory restriction, I think it is understandable, but I don't think it is in any way sacrosanct. If you go back to the founding of our country, a 7-year restriction would have prevented George Washington from being the first civilian commander in chief because he had resigned his commission in 1784, he took the oath of office as our first President in 1789. Nobody was under any illusions that he was a civilian, and he was somebody who was revered. Now, it is true the Founders feared the civil being subordinate to the military, but that is because they thought Republican government could be overrun by a military junta. We don't have that danger here. We have a civilian President of the United States, a civilian Congress that is charged under the Constitution with providing and maintaining our Navy, with raising and supporting our armies, and prescribing rules for the regulation of the Armed Forces, and we will have Jim Mattis, who is a civilian, as a Secretary of Defense. This man, Jim Mattis, has been a faithful servant to our country. He is also a strategic thinker, who I think can do a great job in rebuilding our military and getting our national security policy on a firmer, stronger foundation.

Mr. DeSANTIS

Mr. DeSANTIS. Mr. Speaker, U.N. Resolution 2334 was an anti-Israel resolution that sought to erase the history of the Jewish people and their connection to their historic homeland. Under U.N. Resolution 2334, the Western Wall, which is the holiest site in Judaism and the last remnant of the Second Temple, is considered occupied territory. You can't even make this up. I think it is important to point out that the territory at issue, which we are talking about, including the West Bank, which is historic Judea and Samaria--some of the oldest Jewish lands dating back thousands of years--is disputed. It is not occupied territory. When you use that term for things like the Western Wall, you show that all you are trying to do is to harm and attack the State of Israel but not do this in an intellectually honest way. If you look at the Balfour Declaration, that entire mandate was originally for a Jewish state, including what is now Jordan. As we got into the 1920s, Britain thought that giving what was called Transjordan--what is considered to be the eastern part of Palestine-- would be a reward for the help of some of the Arabs during the First World War. That had been under Turkish control for hundreds of years before World War I. It was then under British control. You have this British mandate, and they eventually give Jordan everything east of the river; but then Jewish Palestine--this is a Jewish state, which is all of Israel proper: Jerusalem, Judea and Samaria, you name it--was what Britain wanted to do. The League of Nations in 1922, which is the last legally binding document, recognized that as well. Fast-forward past World War II and we get into the late forties. The Arabs always rejected having a state shared with Israel in that respect. Then we get to 1948 and the U.N. Partition Plan. How much measly less territory for Israel? It is really an indefensible country. There is a massive Arab state there; yet Israel accepted even these little crumbs of territory. What did the Arabs do? They rejected having a state. You had invasions against Israel from all sides, and the goal was the annihilation of the Jewish state in 1948. Between '48 and '67--we always heard about these 1967 lines. Those are not political lines. Those are armistice lines. Israel won the war for their independence. They beat back the Arab armies. You had Egypt controlling the Gaza Strip and you had Jordan controlling Judea and Samaria, what we know as the West Bank. So those were armistice lines, never internationally recognized. Jordan's occupation of the West Bank was not recognized internationally. When Arafat founded the PLO, it was in 1964, '65, when you still had these armistice lines. So the Palestine Liberation Organization, what are they trying to liberate Palestine from? He is not talking about the West Bank. He is talking about Israel proper. He wanted to push the Jews to the sea. So why would we be rewarding? Palestinian Arabs rejected a state in '48. They rejected a generous offer in 2000, 2007. Every time, they have chosen to go to war with Israel, and they are more opposed to a Jewish state than they are interested in their own state. We do have an example, though. What happens? You talk about Israel occupation. They don't occupy the Gaza Strip. What is the Gaza Strip? Is this like a nice la-la land on the Mediterranean? No. It is a terror state controlled by Hamas, and they launch incessant rocket attacks against Israel. So a Palestinian state in this area, Judea-Samaria--West Bank--would be what they call judenrein. It would be free of Jews. They would ethnically cleanse every Jew who was in anything considered earmarked for Palestinian Arabs. It is an interesting contrast, because in Israel, Arab Israelis live and prosper, and they are treated as equal citizens. So we have to get this straight. What the U.N. did was totally unacceptable. This body needs to remove funding for the U.N. until they repeal that offending resolution, and the new administration needs to move our embassy from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem in a show of solidarity with our friends in Israel.

Mr. DeSANTIS

Mr. DeSANTIS. Mr. Speaker, I condemn U.N. Security Council Resolution 2334. This is an outrageous attack against the State of Israel, the world's only Jewish state and the only democracy in the Middle East. I also condemn the Obama administration's failure to veto such a resolution, because it betrayed Israel and it harmed our national security interests. The Obama administration's actions, or lack of actions, were more than just a sin of omission in that they worked behind the scenes to move this resolution forward so that it could be voted on in the United Nations General Assembly. That is a sin of commission. Now, we have to be honest about how the two sides have acted in this in putting pressure on Israel and not on the Palestinian Authority. Remember, when you talk about a two-state solution, the Palestinian Arabs rejected a state in 1948. They tried to wipe Israel off the map. They tried to beat them in 1967. It has been a constant state of war, and they have chosen to get rid of the Jewish state as something that is more important to them than the creation of their own state, and we have to be honest about that. I will support this resolution. I view it as a good statement, but as just a first step. We need something in the coming days that has teeth to deal with the United Nations and its outrageous conduct. It has become a hotbed of anti-Israeli activity where all of these tin-pot countries get together and rail against the world's only Jewish state. They did 20 resolutions against Israel at the United Nations in 2016 and four against the rest of the world. We need to take our power of the purse and defund the U.N. until U.N. Security Council Resolution 2334 is revoked.

Mr. DeSANTIS

Mr. DeSANTIS. Mr. Speaker, I am glad that this is an amendment that my friend from California can embrace. I urge everyone to embrace it and would just urge people to support the amendment. Mr. Speaker, I yield back the balance of my time.

Mr. DeSANTIS. Mr. Speaker, my amendment is very simple. It requires that any international agreement needs to be written in plain writing as a condition to enter into the agreement. I am offering this from the perspective of people in Florida, my district, and elsewhere who are small businesses, who are small companies who can't afford to hire large legal teams simply to understand overly complex regulations. They are already beset with way too much, both in terms of the scope, but also in terms of the complexity; and when you have complex agreements or regulations imposed on them, it not only makes life difficult for them, it actually gives them a competitive disadvantage over some of the big companies that we are always hearing about. So I think writing in plain language, clear and concise, makes it easier for small businesses to comply without amassing huge amounts in legal fees and other overhead costs. Plain writing doesn't change the regulation. You can have a regulation. It just requires it to be written in a way that doesn't require you to hire $500-an-hour attorneys to interpret it for you. So I think it is a commonsense way to help small business with no taxpayer expense. I would note that the need for plain writing has been something that the Congress, on both sides of the aisle, has embraced over decades. I appreciate my friend from Missouri's bill. I intend to support it. I think this amendment will be added protection for those who are struggling to do well in an economy in which so much that comes out of Washington seems to be making it more difficult for them to succeed. Mr. Speaker, I reserve the balance of my time.

Mr. DeSANTIS. Mr. Speaker, I have an amendment at the desk.

Mr. DeSANTIS

Mr. DeSANTIS. Mr. Speaker, last week marked the death of the tyrant in Cuba, Fidel Castro. This is a man whose regime was marked by the suppression of God-given rights--the right to religion, to speech, to assemble. The people who disagreed with the regime in Castro's Cuba were jailed or tortured. People who had spent their lives building businesses, restaurants, and hotels had their property confiscated after the Cuban revolution. People were executed by the thousands who ran afoul of the regime. Now, in pre-Castro Cuba, you had economic opportunity and prosperity, but you did have a yearning for democratic reforms. It was effectively an authoritarian system, and Castro capitalized on this by pointing out that we needed to have free elections. There were people who supported Castro initially because they thought he was going to usher in democratic reforms. He duped people. Once he had the opportunity to seize power, he sided with the Soviet Union and imposed a Stalinist tyranny on the small island nation. I think it is interesting, when people look back, to see how poorly Cuba has done under his rule. Compare that with a lot of the Cuban exiles who left Castro's tyranny. These are people--many of them--who came to Florida. A lot of them didn't speak the language. They were in a new country and didn't necessarily have a whole lot of advantages; yet Cuban Americans, in our country, have excelled at all levels--in business, in government, in athletics, in entertainment. You name it. Meanwhile, you look at the people, over the last decades, in Cuba, and unless you are attached to the ruling class--the regime--to the intelligence services, or to the military, you basically have no shot to do anything to advance your life and to make the most of your God- given abilities. Of the Cuban exiles who came to Florida, a lot of them were responsible for really putting Miami on the map. I think that shows that, when you have folks fleeing from a tyranny and going to freedom, they can succeed beyond people's wildest dreams, but the people who are suffering under the tyranny just have nowhere to go. It is funny because, if you look at some of the media reports, Castro is lauded by some as an egalitarian--that this was a big deal that he was an egalitarian. Look, I have to admit that part of that was true. I mean, he was an egalitarian in the sense that he inflicted the equal suffering--equal misery--upon broad cross-sections of the Cuban people. That much is true, but it is obviously false in the sense that his thing was not egalitarianism. It was to amass power for himself. He died a billionaire. This was the avant-garde of the working class, supposedly. He was a billionaire while many Cubans struggled to even eat, and, certainly, they could not prosper. We also shouldn't forget that this was a very reckless leader. He brought the world to the brink of a nuclear confrontation in 1962 during the Cuban Missile Crisis. Once the Soviet Union expired and we had access to these files, Castro was urging Khrushchev to nuke the United States. So you had Khrushchev--this crusty, Communist, Soviet leader--having to be the voice of reason in telling Castro: no, we are not going to do that, or we will end up in a thermonuclear war. If it had been up to Fidel Castro, those nuclear bombs would have been launched. This is not a complicated legacy. This is not the George Washington of Cuba, as some have said. Washington refused power. He won a war, refused power, and could have aggrandized power for himself. He did the exact opposite. Castro wrecked Cuba and turned it into an island prison in order to amass power and wealth for himself, and that is his legacy. The most damning evidence of his failure, of his tyranny, and of his evil nature are the tens of thousands of people who perished while fleeing Cuba and going through the Straits of Florida. Those watery graves really stand as a monument to Castro's barbarity because these were people who knew that, very likely, they were not going to be able to make it as these were shark-infested waters. Yet even the small chance of their escaping freedom and Castro's tyranny was so oppressive that they were willing to do that while knowing that they would, most likely, meet their own demise. As we look forward, let's be honest about the nature of this regime. Let's commit to having policies that will actually put pressure on the regime and that will help those people who are still in Cuba and who are trying to fight the good fight for freedom, for free elections, and for democratic reforms.

Mr. DeSANTIS

Mr. DeSANTIS. I thank the chairman. I really appreciate Chairman Royce for offering this legislation, and I thank Mike Pompeo for all of his hard work. Mr. Speaker, here is the deal. We were told by people like Ben Rhodes that the Iran agreement was going to capitalize on winds of change inside Iran and that this could be a way for Iran to cease its offending conduct and become part of the community of nations. Yet here we are, over a year out from this Iran deal, and Iran is increasing its illegal proliferation procurement activities. It is increasing its missile procurement activities. This is not the action of a country that is looking to make nice with the rest of the world. They are taking the concessions that were granted to them in this Iran deal, and they are taking advantage of them, and they are expanding their influence throughout the Middle East. It is curious because the deal itself, I think, clearly, in looking back on it, has been a failure; but what the administration is doing is doubling down on that, and it is going even beyond what the deal says. It wants to give Iran indirect access to the American dollar. Then this purchasing of heavy water is not a requirement of the deal's. It, effectively, acts as a subsidy on Iran for Iran's nuclear program. We see other things like really lucrative aircraft deals that will help Iran transport weapons to its proxies in places like Syria and Lebanon. Of course, there are reports about uranium being found in Parchin, one of the military sites. We are never going to be able to inspect Parchin. That is not even in the deal. That is totally off the table. Iran is not going to permit inspections there; so you could have some of this activity continuing apace there. I think it is great that a majority of us in this House has been on the right side of this in voting against the Iran deal, in voting for a number of years to sustain very tough sanctions on Iran. And now this series of bills that we have, I think, is important, and particularly the heavy water issue, because it is an unnecessary illicit subsidy that we are sending over to Iran. If you ask the American people whether they want their tax dollars going to subsidize Iran's nuclear program, you will have overwhelming opposition to such a policy; so I am happy to be here, speaking in favor of this and of the other measures.

Mr. DeSANTIS

Mr. DeSANTIS. Mr. Chair, like a lot of these numbers, I mean, they get around-the-clock medical care and halal meals. I would be fine with curtailing that. If we could have paid that money to save those American troops, I would pay it every day, every single day. I am a little confused by this argument that we would actually reward people who were picked up in combat zones when they are not wearing uniforms. That is essentially rewarding these terrorists who are not wearing insignia and they are not following the laws of war. So to then give them a civilian trial where someone actually followed the laws of war, they would simply end up being held under Geneva III. To me, that totally skews the incentive. I think it is a good amendment, and I urge my colleagues to support it. I yield back the balance of my time.

Mr. DeSANTIS. Mr. Chair, the fact of the matter is, if you inject them into American prisons with the idea that you are going to be able to 100 percent segregate them and that they are not going to be able to radicalize any other inmates, why would you even want to run that risk? In terms of bringing them to trial, the problem is that these guys were not captured under civilian law. They were captured under the law of war. If you are expecting our troops to amass legal cases against people they are capturing in war zones, that is going to put more of our troops' lives at risk. If you are in a hot fire zone but if you need to get evidence to make sure that that could withstand a court of law, they should be held under the law of war, not under civilian laws under which Americans would be. I am sorry. I don't care if Bush released a detainee--or Obama. It is not about partisan games for me. If detainees are released in Afghanistan and they kill Americans, that is a bad thing, and I don't want to repeat that. The people who are there right now are some of the most radical detainees. These are people who have been reviewed for years, and no one would have ever thought that they should have been released. So why on Earth would you want to run the risk of putting more of these guys out into circulation given that we know Americans have already been killed? I reserve the balance of my time.

Mr. DeSANTIS. Mr. Chair, as we have seen with stark clarity recently, Islamic jihadists are on the march, not only abroad but here at home. I think, once we have individuals in our custody who we know are committed to this destructive ideology and to waging war against the United States--like we have almost 80 of them in Guantanamo Bay now-- they should remain in custody. We don't want to get into a situation in which we are transferring these detainees unwittingly simply because we are on an ideological mission to close Guantanamo Bay, and this facility is a key part of our strategy in fighting the war on terror. The Obama administration recently admitted that they were not seeking to use an executive order in order to close Gitmo's detention facility, and that is a welcome admission, because that was something that had been reported was being considered behind the scenes. Recent news reports, perhaps, shed light on why this is a nonstarter. Recent news reports have shown that at least 12 released Guantanamo detainees have attacked U.S. personnel or allied forces in Afghanistan, and they are responsible for killing at least six Americans. These are terrorists we had in our custody who were then released and who went out to kill a half dozen Americans, according to U.S. officials. This is totally unacceptable. This amendment, which I am cosponsoring with Congressman Pompeo, would ban funding to two DOD offices whose purposes are, simply, to close the detention facility at Guantanamo Bay. The facts and the reality show that their mission is unwise and unneeded. My amendment would prohibit funds for salaries or expenses for the Office of the Special Envoy for Guantanamo Detention Closure and the Principal Director of the Office of Detainee Policy. The sole mission of the Principal Director of the Office of Detainee Policy is to end detainee operations at Guantanamo Bay. That means either transferring people to the United States or overseas, where we know many of them go back to the jihad once they are released. President Obama also established the Office of the Special Envoy for Guantanamo Detention Closure, which has the same objective. This amendment will eliminate unnecessary bureaucracy and will help keep Americans safe. As President Obama himself begins to give up on his misguided campaign to close Gitmo, Americans, especially the people whom I represent, can rest assured that none of these terrorists will be brought to their States or, hopefully, will be transferred to countries that are not going to keep tabs on them. It is time we end the funding for these two offices and get back to protecting Americans and holding those hardened terrorists in a secured facility we already have that is located off our shores. I reserve the balance of my time.

Mr. DeSANTIS. Mr. Chair, as the designee of the gentleman from Kansas (Mr. Pompeo), I have an amendment at the desk.

Mr. DeSANTIS

Mr. DeSANTIS. Mr. Chair, I have an amendment at the desk.

Mr. DeSANTIS. It is interesting, Mr. Chair, people talk about the Iran deal, and what the administration has really been doing is they have even gone beyond the concessions that are in the Iran deal. If you look at getting access now to dollarized transactions, they said they weren't going to have access to the American financial system, but effectively, Iran is going to have indirect access to the American dollar. That was never called for by the Iran deal. That is a concession. Nor does the deal require us to spend American taxpayer funds to essentially inject into the Iranian regime and subsidize the nuclear program. So, Mr. Chair, I think it is a good amendment. I think our Members should vote for it. I yield back the balance of time.

Mr. DeSANTIS. Mr. Chairman, to be clear, the JCPOA requires Iran to cap its stockpile of heavy water. It does not require the U.S. to subsidize or to purchase that heavy water. This is a simple funding limitation amendment to an appropriations bill. It is similar to language used throughout the bill. It is a matter clearly related to the use of appropriated funds. I listened to this debate in the Senate, and people said: Well, we have to spend U.S. tax dollars on getting heavy water; otherwise, Iran is going to sell it to North Korea. But understand, it is already against international law to ship heavy water to North Korea. So if Iran were to decide to do that and violate those sanctions, we have a way bigger policy issue than simply heavy water purchases, and it would call into question the entire Iran deal. So instead of suppressing illicit nuclear proliferation among rogue nations, continuing purchases of Iranian heavy water would subsidize Iran's nuclear program and allow them to maintain the threshold capacity to make a dash for nuclear breakout. If we want to take heavy water, then we can take it, but we should not subsidize Iran's nuclear program. Mr. Chairman, I urge adoption of the amendment, and I reserve the balance of my time.

Mr. DeSANTIS

Mr. DeSANTIS. Mr. Speaker, Ben Rhodes from the administration said that the Iran deal would be the ObamaCare of the administration's second term. When I heard that, I thought, ``Sheesh,'' because a lot of us don't think highly of ObamaCare. We don't think it has worked out well. We didn't think the Iran deal was going to work out well. But now that actually has a deeper meaning. ObamaCare was sold to the American people on a set of deceptions: if you like your plan, you can keep it; if you like your doctor, you can keep him; you are going to pay $2,500 less per family for health insurance. Now, it turns out, so was the Iran deal. They concocted a narrative--a false narrative--that, with the election of Rouhani, a moderate who really wanted to have an opening, this was a once-in-a-generation opportunity for America to seize this day and strike a deal with Iran--even though they are the world's leading state sponsor of terrorism--and bring peace to the world. That was all false. This started before Rouhani was elected. He is not a moderate. This was a deal made in conjunction with Iran's hard- liners; and as we are seeing now with how they are behaving, it is benefitting Iran's hard-liners. ObamaCare we can fix. It will be tough. But we may not be able to recover if Iran gets a nuclear weapon.

Mr. DeSANTIS

Mr. DeSANTIS. Mr. Speaker, at the end of the Civil War, Lincoln addressed the Ohio regiment and he said that the beauty of a free government is that it gives every individual an open field and fair chance for their intelligence, enterprise, and industry to flourish. That was something that he could speak of firsthand because he had grown up in the backwater. When you start talking about places like Illinois and Kentucky, that was so far removed from the corridors of power at that time and then he ends up being the President of the United States, that would have been unheard of in a country in Europe. I think right now, when you look at our country, you have people who are born and you are supposed to be able to make the most of your God- given abilities, no matter your circumstances. Some people are born into privileged circumstances, and some people aren't. But if they have the desire to succeed, they need to be able to do that in America. Yet, what we find now is there are so many kids who grow up in communities that have really failing school systems, and I think the number one thing to be able to better yourself in our modern society is with education. Now, of course, the Federal Government doesn't have jurisdiction over K-12 education for the States, and I think that that is proper. I think, at times, the Federal Government has needled into that, and I think it has been counterproductive. We do have jurisdiction over the District of Columbia. You have some families who are really in dire straits. There is a big D.C. bureaucracy that is not performing up to expectations. So this program is a lifeline to those families. The average income is $22,000 a year, which is not a lot in any community, but in Washington that is very, very little. It gives them a lifeline to be able to have an alternative school and maybe be able to make the most of their God-given ability. Look, if the public school bureaucracy is doing well, then they can choose that. But if it is not and it is not working for them, then this gives them another option. This is something that--having done the hearing at the school like we did on the Oversight and Government Reform Committee, these are kids who are thrilled to be in these schools. I am just very happy to support this effort. I appreciate the chairman's work on this. We need to give every child the chance to succeed.

Mr. DeSANTIS

Mr. DeSANTIS. Mr. Speaker, tax day is fast approaching. If you, as a taxpayer, get audited and the IRS subpoenas documents from you, do you think you could destroy them and say: The heck with it? Could you lie to the IRS when they are asking you about your taxes and investigating you? If somehow you unintentionally provided false information to the IRS, could you decline to correct the record once you found out that what you told them was not true? If you had a duty to comply with a lawfully issued subpoena, could you just fail to take basic efforts to comply? I think every taxpayer in America instinctively knows that they would never be able to get away with the conduct I just outlined. So I think the question that we here in this body have to answer is: Should the IRS be able to get away with conduct that a taxpayer would never be able to get away with? Can we really accept that the IRS gets to live under a lower standard of conduct than the taxpayers that the agency wields so much power over? We know how this began. The IRS abused its authority. They targeted Americans based on their First Amendment beliefs. They got caught red- handed; so, Congress investigated. Now, the Department of Justice was supposedly investigating, but that was baked in the cake from the beginning. They were not interested in this case. And, of course, they did not pursue prosecutions. Ultimately, even though Lois Lerner was held in contempt, they didn't pursue that even to the grand jury. So Congress has tried to get to the truth of this, and Congress is even taking some action, like cutting funding for the IRS. Of course, when we cut funding, all they did was stop answering the phone calls. They didn't take it out of the bureaucracy. They just basically harmed the taxpayers. So we are trying to get to the truth. We subpoena documents from the IRS, we bring in the Commissioner, John Koskinen, to testify, and we are trying to get the truth on behalf of the American people. And yet, what has happened? The IRS destroyed 400 backup tapes containing as many as 24,000 of Lois Lerner's emails that were under not one, but two congressional subpoenas. Commissioner Koskinen came to the Congress and made multiple statements that are demonstrably false. He breached his duty to correct the record once it was clear that some of his statements were false, such as the fact that he said we will produce every one of her emails. Koskinen even claimed that the IRS went to great lengths to ensure that Congress was given all documents, yet the IRS failed to conduct even basic investigation, such that the inspector general found a thousand emails that were in the IRS' possession all along. It took them 2 weeks to find it. The IRS didn't look at Lerner's BlackBerry. They didn't look in other areas which were obvious that you would want to look at. Great lengths? Give me a break. As Judge David Sentelle noted today in the D.C. Circuit, it is hard to find the IRS to be an agency that we can trust. So I think the question is: What is the remedy for them frustrating the American people's inquiry into their targeting of Americans? I have argued, along with my colleagues here, that the appropriate remedy is found in the Constitution, which provides for impeachment of civil officers. You have an IRS Commissioner who breached multiple duties that he owed to the public, and he violated the public trust, which is what Alexander Hamilton said was kind of the touchstone for what an impeachment should be in the Federalist Papers. Impeachment is not a prosecution or a punishment. It is really a constitutional check. I think as you listen to some of the conduct that the IRS engaged in--my colleagues will go into more of it--obviously there is a need to get the truth, but there is also a need for this institution here to stand up for itself. It is really a question of the House's self- respect. How much longer can we, as elected officials, allow the bureaucracy to simply walk all over the Congress? We are supposed to be the people's representatives. We are supposed to be able to do justice for them when the government is not acting appropriately. Fear of a media backlash or that people in the beltway will say you shouldn't be doing it, that is no excuse for our failure to discharge our basic constitutional duties. As James Madison said: ``Ambition must be made to counteract ambition.'' No government agency is above oversight and accountability by the people's representatives. And so as it stands now, we have filed articles of impeachment that have basically been collecting dust for several months. We think they should be brought up on the Committee on the Judiciary and we should have a debate about whether this Commissioner's conduct satisfied the standards of conduct that the Founding Fathers envisioned for civil officers of the United States. I think any taxpayer who looks at what the IRS did will instinctively say, you know, it just ain't right that they are able to get away with that when they are dealing with the Congress, but I would never be able to get away with that when I am dealing with the IRS. I yield to the gentleman from Ohio (Mr. Jordan), my friend and colleague, a guy who has been really, really fearless on holding the IRS to account.

Mr. DeSANTIS. I thank the gentleman from Ohio. I now yield to the gentleman from Colorado (Mr. Lamborn).

Mr. DeSANTIS. Mr. Speaker, I thank the gentleman from Colorado. I now yield to the gentleman from Georgia (Mr. Jody B. Hice).

Mr. DeSANTIS. It is my pleasure to yield to one of my friends and colleagues from the great State of Florida (Mr. Yoho), who is really a stalwart in terms of bringing accountability to government.

Mr. DeSANTIS. I appreciate my friend from Florida. Those were very well-received comments. I would also like to just mention that Mr. Palmer from Alabama--who is serving up there--and I were discussing before he had to go up and serve in that duty--and I think it was a good point: if this were a private business and the private business had behaved this way--in the face of the IRS--the CEO would have been fired because it just would have been absolute hell for the company. And that is one reason why the American people are so frustrated with government. There are different standards that apply for people in Washington versus the rest of the American people and the taxpayers. And that is just totally intolerable in a Republican form of government. And I make one other point that I think sometimes gets lost. When you start talking about what are impeachable offenses, people tend to think of it in terms of criminal offenses. And while there are criminal offenses that would qualify as impeachable offenses, the two are not mutually exclusive. And, in fact, the Founders believed that the real reason you needed impeachment was for things that may not necessarily be criminal, but that were breaches of the public trust. Joseph Story, the preeminent Supreme Court Justice, noted that: Impeachable offenses are aptly termed political offenses growing out of personal misconduct or gross neglect or usurpation or habitual disregard for the public interest. They must be examined upon very broad and comprehensive principles of public policy and duty. I think that is tailor-made for this instance. Some of the false statements maybe do violate statues, but we don't have to get into that. We can simply say: Has he violated, has he shown a disregard for the public interest, has he been--even grossly negligent would be actionable--and I think that is clearly the case here. I echo my friend from Florida that said we need to get the dust of the impeachment resolutions, we need to get it up to Judiciary and pass it out, and then let's let the House make a decision about whether that is valid or not. Some people say: Well, the Senate may not want to do it. They will have to defend their votes then. And that is fine with me. I think most Americans want the IRS to live at least under the same standard they do. I think it should be a higher standard, given all the power they have. I appreciate my colleagues for coming and discussing this issue. The articles have not been brought up, but we are not forgetting, many of our constituents are not forgetting, and really the time to act is now. If we don't--this is absolutely true--the IRS will have gotten away with everything. That is unacceptable. Mr. Speaker, I yield back the balance of my time.