Louie Gohmert

Mr. GOHMERT

Mr. GOHMERT. Mr. Speaker, it is nice to have the United States economy starting to win again. It was a great tribute to the President's leadership that we got a tax bill done that is already reaping fantastic benefits for so many across the country. It is rather amazing to see people in some parts of the media who have taken surveys already to see if people have benefited from a tax bill that actually applies to the taxes due at the end of this year even before they get their February paycheck that will actually reflect those savings. But I guess if your goal is to undermine the President at every turn rather than to be fair and impartial media, that is the kind of thing you do in January. You do it quickly before individuals have a chance to say and know how much the tax bill will improve their lives. It is also rather amazing to hear people from this body refer to a $1,000 bonus as crumbs. One would think you would have to basically be a multimillionaire to think of $1,000 as crumbs. But for those of us who cashed out most everything we had in order to come be a servant in Congress, $1,000 is still a lot of money. It will pay a lot of bills. It is good for American families and individuals that they are able to do that. I do want to call attention to something that my friend, Mrs. Hartzler, referenced, and that is the threat of paychecks not coming to our military when they are in harm's way protecting our very freedoms that allow us to debate and push through legislation. Going back to 2011, I saw the military used as pawns in order to force--or try to force--Republicans to vote for a bad continuing resolution that broke many of our promises. I had encouraged the Speaker, at that time, that we needed to do something to make sure that our military--the military pay--was treated as our Social Security paychecks were treated where they are on automatic pilot, and even if there is a shutdown, those checks continue to go out. I know that is a surprise to some of our seniors because, in the last administration, the President and others continually told people that, if there was a shutdown, the Social Security checks would not be going out. Unfortunately, that was just a problem of ignorance, and, of course, there is no House rule that objects to our pointing out ignorance of a fact. But the fact is Social Security checks go out automatically. If someone is entitled to an increase in their Social Security check, that does not occur until after the shutdown is over. After I saw that the Republican Speaker, back in 2011, after being warned that we shouldn't use our military pay as leverage to get people to vote for a bill that they shouldn't vote for, I actually filed a bill before that CR came due that would ensure that the military was paid as Social Security. If you are entitled to a promotion or additional pay, that doesn't come until the shutdown is over. That bill has again been filed in this Congress. The name is the ASAP bill, Armed Services Always Paid. We need to go ahead and bring that bill to the floor, push the Senate to do the same thing, and put our military's pay on automatic pilot. They would never have to worry. Having served in the military, in the U.S. Army, for 4 years, I know our military is being paid better than we were back when I was on Active Duty. But even still, I know too many in our military who are barely getting by on what they are paid. The last thing they need is to be in harm's way dodging bullets or IEDs or rocket-propelled grenades and have to be worrying whether their loved ones back in the United States are going to have the check so that they can pay their car payment and their home payment. Let's pass this ASAP bill immediately.

Mr. GOHMERT

Mr. GOHMERT. My friend, former President Foxx, collegiate president and great Member of the House, made some great points. I look forward to hearing the President's State of the Union Address tomorrow as well. Mr. Speaker, there has been a great deal going on here lately in Washington, and something that has been a real threat to what I believe is the greatest law enforcement institution in the history of mankind, the Federal Bureau of Investigation. As former Speaker of the House Newt Gingrich has pointed out a number of times, had candidate Hillary Clinton won the Presidency in November of 2016, we would have no idea how badly or how significantly the Department of Justice and the FBI had been weaponized politically. I just thank God we had the opportunity to find out before it was too late and to do something about it. Today's news has been that, as The Wall Street Journal article by Aruna Viswanatha and Del Quentin Wilber today reported: FBI deputy chief steps down after Trump criticism. The article points out: ``Deputy FBI Director Andrew McCabe left his post on Monday after his bosses urged him to step aside, said people familiar with the matter, following weeks of criticism from President Donald Trump and other Republicans.'' I guess I would be one of those other Republicans. ``Mr. McCabe will take leftover vacation time until he is technically eligible to retire from the Federal Bureau of Investigation in March, the people said. ``Mr. McCabe has faced a steady string of attacks over an alleged conflict of interest stemming from his wife's previous run for Virginia State Senate as a Democrat before he became deputy director. He has denied any conflict. ``But Mr. Trump and other Republicans have cited it as part of a broader assertion of bias on the part of the FBI, Justice Department, and special counsel's office as they investigate Russian meddling in the 2016 campaign and any links between the Trump campaign and Moscow in that effort. Mr. Trump has specifically called for Mr. McCabe's ouster. ``Democrats say these assertions are an attempt to distract from the investigations and discredit them. ``FBI Director Chris Wray, addressing Mr. McCabe's departure in an email to employees, said Mr. Wray `will not be swayed by political or other pressure' in making decisions, according to a person familiar with the message.'' That is quite interesting coming this long after evidence was slapping people in the face, figuratively speaking. It appears that evidence that is overly compelling also may not actually sway Chris Wray into taking actions as the Director of the FBI that a reasonable and prudent Director of the FBI would have taken under the same or similar circumstances. ``Mr. Wray thanked Mr. McCabe for his service, adding''--I guess that includes the politicalization, the weaponizing, of the FBI in which Mr. McCabe was involved--``that Mr. McCabe said he would take leave immediately following a conversation between the two, the person said. The email was first reported by The New York Times. ``In the message, Mr. Wray also said he wouldn't comment on a pending report from the Justice Department's inspector general, or inhouse watchdog, which is expected to criticize the FBI's handling of an investigation into Hillary Clinton's email arrangement when she was Secretary of State. The report is expected to prompt some personnel changes.'' You think? ``Mr. McCabe's decision Monday was a surprise to many inside the FBI''--apparently those who had gotten used to it being weaponized and politicized. ``Officials abruptly canceled a press conference to discuss an unrelated criminal operation. . . .'' It goes on to say: ``The U.S. intelligence community, in January 2017, said it believed Russia had conducted an influence operation with the goal of hurting Mrs. Clinton and helping Mr. Trump in the 2016 Presidential election.'' Gee, okay, so this article is citing the U.S. intelligence community. I guess that would include the part of the intelligence community that made the decision in 2012, along with the State Department--that would be Secretary of State Hillary Clinton--to leave the Ambassador to Libya exposed to grave danger, and even after seeing footage of attacks, the same intelligence community that decided they were better off leaving people to die and ordering four heroes to stand down and not go protect the Ambassador and others from dying, that same intelligence community. How about that? They, apparently, according to the article, said they believed Russia conducted an influence operation. It turns out the same intelligence community that couldn't stand George W. Bush and leaked plenty of information to hurt his Presidency, and also has done a great job of leaking material to hurt President Trump's administration, if this article is correct, they helped the weaponized Department of Justice launch an investigation into potential Russian influence. It is just so amazing, when we start finding out facts that there was a dossier that Fusion GPS was involved in getting, strictly an opposition research effort that ended up having totally fabricated, really outrageously outlandish allegations, and according to the news media, what was in that dossier was so outrageous, if you were a Russian, you would think, these stupid Americans will have to be out of their minds to think that Donald Trump would have done something like this. But maybe--maybe--the now weaponized Department of Justice in America and the Obama administration when coupled with the Clinton campaign, maybe they are crazy enough to think Donald Trump would do something like this. It is going to end up making them look bad in the end, and that would certainly affect the election if the campaign were crazy enough to utilize such a totally fabricated dossier, I guess that would affect the election. I still have trouble getting over the decision to tell American heroes to stand down, don't go try to save the lives of our Ambassador and the others there with the Ambassador. Tyrone Woods, Ty, was not going to have any of it. He and the other heroes headed out there to help as they could, including willingness to lay down their lives to protect other Americans, something the CIA station chief, in collaboration with other ``U.S. intelligence community,'' apparently decided was not worthwhile. This article goes on to say: ``Mr. McCabe's abrupt departure is the latest event in a highly unusual back-and-forth between the Trump administration and a Federal law enforcement establishment that is both investigating him as it works for him and cherishes its independence.'' We know that is not true. They don't cherish their independence. Oh, yeah, the FBI, in other levels, absolutely does. But then, at the same time, they also cherish their good working relationship with other local and State law enforcement. This article further down said: ``Mr. McCabe's resignation also comes as the FBI faces fallout from thousands of text messages between an FBI agent and lawyer who were involved in the Russia investigation, including some texts harshly critical of Mr. Trump.'' How about that? The lawyer working for Mr. McCabe. Apparently, Mr. McCabe is racing the clock to retire with full benefits as the President himself tweeted out. I can't help but still go back to the former Director of the FBI, Mr. Mueller, who set up a personnel program that would ensure that the thousands and thousands of years of incredible law enforcement experience that was obtained by honorable, honest FBI supervisors--that they would be run off by Mr. Mueller. He didn't want those people hanging around. He put a personal policy in place that ran off thousands of years of incredible law enforcement experience from the FBI. I can't help but think that if Mr. Mueller had not had such a policy to get rid of people that had great experience in law enforcement from the FBI, there would have been people who could have gently nudged people like Andrew McCabe or Mr. Strzok or Lisa Page and would have warned them when they were getting close to the edge before they got into such total politicization of our important FBI and DOJ. But those people weren't there because Director Mueller put in place a policy that ran them off. I still wonder about the victims at the Boston Marathon bombing. Had we had an FBI Director that was as interested in seeking out radical Islamist killers as he was in having community outreach with the mosque that was started by a man who is now doing 23 years in Federal prison for supporting terrorism, if he had not been so interested in playing patty-cake out with his community partnership and instead gone to the mosque and been asking specific questions about the older Tsarnaev brother after we got two notices that he had been radicalized--they never asked a question, not one, about Tsarnaev; about what he has been concentrating on, what he is reading, what he is memorizing, what he is talking about, what books he has got. They didn't know what questions to ask because Director Mueller had seen to the purging of the FBI training materials so the FBI agents didn't know what questions to ask. They didn't know what they were looking for in a radicalized Islamist. The same scenario has played out time and again. Tsarnaev should have never been able to carry out that bombing, because he came into the crosshairs of the FBI investigation. Basically, from all we can find out from the hearings, they asked him if he was a terrorist. He said he wasn't. They asked his mom if he was a terrorist. She said: He is a good boy. That is an encapsulation of it. But they didn't know what to ask because of Mueller. Michele Bachmann and I reviewed material that was purged. The FBI classified it so we couldn't reveal, Mr. Speaker, to others publicly what was purged. Some of it was silly and needed to be purged. Say, for example, there were a purging of verses from the Koran. Why should anything ever be purged from the Koran if it is part of the training materials? You have to ask Mr. Mueller that. The FBI and the DOJ deserve better. We are looking forward to finding out what the IG report has to say, but it is time for games to stop. It is time for law enforcement to do their jobs at the Department of Justice and the FBI. Jeff Sessions has got his hands full. It was obvious that he felt like he could trust those who were called career DOJ employees. Hopefully he has learned some of those career employees didn't have the law enforcement long in the tooth to give them the benefit of their experience because Mueller ran them off. They got off into an area of politicization of the DOJ and the FBI. He can't trust the people he would have been able to otherwise, had the FBI not gotten so far off track. We need a second special counsel, as I advised the President back in June, and we need it now. Investigations cannot be conducted by Mueller into what Mueller did during the prior Russian investigation, along with U.S. Attorney Rod Rosenstein, and could not properly investigate his joined-at-the-hip friend, Mr. Comey. He could not properly investigate what will be in the inspector general's report, but it certainly should require further investigation. He can't do that. It needs to be totally independent. I am not talking about the godfather of one of Mr. Comey's kids, Patrick Fitzgerald, who conveniently got appointed after he talked John Ashcroft into recusing himself. I am talking about somebody totally independent. That is what we need. Where does the DOJ go to get its reputation back? It is going to be a long process and it is going to take truly independent people cleaning up the mess that has been created so that can happen. We need a reputable Department of Justice and FBI, and it is high time we got one back. Mr. Speaker, I yield back the balance of my time.

Mr. GOHMERT. Mr. Speaker, I yield to the gentlewoman from North Carolina (Ms. Foxx).

Mr. GOHMERT

Mr. GOHMERT. Mr. Speaker, we finally had a vote to ensure that the military gets the money that they need and deserve. They deserve to be paid even better, but they certainly do not deserve to have their funding cut, not holding our military hostage in demand for people who had come into the country illegally. The American public made clear that they did not want the whole country to suffer because they were being held hostage, while some folks demanded legality for people who came in illegally. Let's keep things separately. Let's keep our military going forward, and now let's go about the business of the country.

Mr. GOHMERT

Mr. GOHMERT. Mr. Speaker, we keep hearing about action that needs to be taken on the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals. I have spent a lot of time down on our Nation's southern border, and I was quite pleased, last year, when Border Patrol friends told me information indicated that, after President Trump was sworn in, the number of people coming into the United States illegally slowed to a trickle, that it was a dramatic decrease, and that continued for awhile. But, during the summer, as discussion about DACA started coming out, I was told, and, apparently, the numbers indicate, the surge began anew. What I have heard over the years is anytime anyone in Washington starts talking about amnesty, legalization of any kind for people who have come into the United States illegally, there is a fresh surge across our border. I have been told by border patrolmen, they hear people talking who have come in illegally--whether before processing, during processing, after processing, during the holding procedure, it is made very clear, since they are willing to come into the country illegally in violation of United States laws, that they want to get here before there is any legalization. And it makes sense, as I am told, that they are willing to come in in violation of U.S. law. They are also willing to say that they came in a previous time and, you know, backdate it, different identity, different date they came in, whatever is required in order to get legal status. I appreciate hearing from my constituents, I always do, and I appreciate getting the opinions and thoughts of constituents from my district, the First District of Texas. They are always welcome. In the last couple of days, I have gotten a stack of petitions in my office regarding a push to support what they are calling a clean Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals reform, but it raises some questions. The best I can tell by the words ``clean bill,'' they mean one that provides amnesty with no strings attached. However, all these petitions have been provided, actual names and addresses are only on a handful of them, many have names written in the same handwriting in ink, and there are numerous unsigned blank petitions in the stack we were provided. In addition, I want to point out that, every time DACA legalization is mentioned, we have greater surges of people into our country illegally; and every time there is a surge, there are people who die trying to get into this country illegally, bodies found. We have the reports of a dramatic number of young girls, even some boys, who are pulled into sex trafficking, drug trafficking, as a way to pay off their debt to the drug cartels that control the area of the border that they were allowed to come across by the gang that brought them across. It should be noted, every young person in America has dreams. The best way to achieve the greatest number of dreams for the greatest number of people in the United States is if we enforce the law across the board fairly. I keep being amazed, and I have asked questions at our hearings: So why did these people come into the United States illegally? Well, because there are more jobs and opportunity. No, but why did they leave where they left, where they fled? Well, there was no opportunity there. Why was there no opportunity? Why were there no jobs there? Well, there is so much corruption. They don't enforce the law fairly. So what we are being asked to do, instead of using political efforts to get these countries that people have fled to fix their political system, we are supposed to change our laws here so that those who have been working--I have helped some people 17 years trying to get into the country legally--they will be treated unfairly, because they have been trying to do things legally, in favor of people who violated the law to get here. It kind of seems like we are being asked to become the kind of country they fled, where the law is not enforced fairly across the board. It sounds like the ultimate irony. Until our border is made secure, we should not be discussing passage of any legalization bill. We should stop talking about legalization until the border is secure. When the border is secure, then we can work things out. It is so ironic to me, the very people who are demanding a big amnesty, legalization, whatever you want to call it, say, ``We don't want a wall, we don't want the border secure,'' which means we will have to come back and have this discussion in the next couple of years all over again. It was supposed to have ended in 1986. We will get border security in return for the amnesty. We got the amnesty, and we didn't get the border security. I am joined by a friend, a very dear friend, who wrote speeches for his hero, a hero of mine, Ronald Reagan, who knows very well what happened in 1986. Mr. Speaker, I yield to the gentleman from California (Mr. Rohrabacher).

Mr. GOHMERT. Mr. Speaker, the gentleman personally witnessed what happened after the amnesty of 1986. President Reagan rightly said that we can't have an amnesty unless we have proper border security. They put it in the same bill. They got the amnesty and there was no follow- up. Let's say we want to do the best to help young people, the world over. My friend here has already illustrated what happens. There are rules for radicals. You want to bring down the United States, apparently you bring as many people into being totally reliant on the government, so you bankrupt the government, destroy the government. That is how you eliminate the greatest, most representative government in the history of the world. Then what happens to young people around the world when there is no America to stand up against repressive regimes? What happens? Who is benefited by bringing down the United States by overwhelming our system, running the $20 trillion debt up much higher? Who is benefited?

Mr. GOHMERT. Mr. Speaker, the gentleman and I have been to Iraq a number of times together, to Afghanistan, to different places in the world. It seems pretty clear, after our effort to create a democratic republic in Iraq, that if a nation's people have not been properly prepared and educated to maintain a democratic republic, they won't keep it. It seems pretty clear from the places we have been together. I will never forget Christian friends that I made in west Africa, who sat me down at the end of the week and said they wanted me to understand that they were so thrilled when we elected our first Black President. But since he was elected, they said: We have seen America get weaker and weaker, and we wanted to make sure you took a message back to Washington that we are Christians, we know where we go when we die. But our only chance of having peace in this life is if America is strong. I will never forget those words. They said: Please stop getting weaker. We suffer when you are weaker. And most of the people who are pouring across the United States for a better way of life, they are not coming to weaken us. They are coming with their own hopes and aspirations. But I ask: What would be better? What better neighbor would we be to continue until so many come in, our system fails and goes bankrupt, as California is doing now? Or would we be better to say: Let's build a wall where it is necessary. Let's totally secure our border. Let's cut off the 70 to $80 billion that is flowing from the United States into the drug cartels of Mexico, that allows them to corrupt the Government of Mexico and the local governments and terrorist people and put police heads on stakes to terrorize us. Let's cut off that 70 to $80 billion, however much it is. Let's totally secure the border. And people who love their Mexican heritage are--other countries in Central and South America, they love their heritage, but they can't make it. Why don't we help cut off the corruption by cutting off the flow of money out and drugs into our country? Why don't we work on that? Wouldn't that be a better neighbor to our friends to the South? There is no reason Mexico is not one of the top 10 economies in the world. They have got the wonderful people, hardworking folks. They have got the resources. They have got a fantastic location. There is only one reason that they are not, and that is because of the corruption that their drug cartels bring from U.S. money flowing into Mexico. Maybe we would be better off helping all of those millions of people who want to come here by helping them be a country that is one of the top in the world.

Mr. GOHMERT. Mr. Speaker, I so much appreciate my friend. I don't like to use ``colleague'' with Dana Rohrabacher because he is so much more than that. He is a dear friend and a brother, and I will treasure most of the times that we have spent together in traveling, trying to do right for the United States and the world. One other thing, Mr. Speaker, I want to touch on before we finish up, and that is the issue that is coming, we are told, this week, regarding Section 702 reauthorization. We are told that the folks in the deep state have made very clear they want what they call a clean reauthorization. Nothing clean about it when you look at how 702 is spent. So just spend a couple of minutes here, based on an article entitled ``How the FBI and DOJ Intelligence Units Were Weaponized Around Congressional Oversight'' from January 8, 2018. It goes through this scenario. Sometime in early 2016, Admiral Rogers--talking about Admiral Mike Rogers, not the Mike Rogers that was here in Congress--became aware of an ongoing and intentional violation of Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act Section 702 surveillance, specifically item 17, which includes the unauthorized upstream data collection of U.S. individuals within NSA surveillance through the use of ``about inquiries,'' where they do a surveillance of someone foreign, capture American citizens, which would violate our Fourth Amendment rights, except that those names are masked and, supposedly, all kinds of efforts to protect that, so it is not a violation of the Fourth Amendment, supposedly. But this article points out that they get all of these conversations in the database, and then they can do inquiries about people, subjects, and capture that information about Americans, basically allowing them to get around the Fourth Amendment. Mr. Speaker, I commend this article. We see what occurs when we don't have proper oversight. And Section 702, as being proposed, does not give us the proper oversight, and I hope that we will look further at that. Mr. Speaker, I yield back the balance of my time.

Mr. GOHMERT

Mr. GOHMERT. Mr. Speaker, I want to thank my friend, Mr. Garrett for yielding. It is important that we discuss what has been going on in Iran. I recall I was on Active Duty in the United States Army back when President Carter stood by and basically encouraged the taking out of the Shah of Iran. No prince according to his own conduct, but he made a statement welcoming the Ayatollah Khomeini back to Iran as what he called him, I believe it was a man of peace. He could not have been more wrong. There has been less peace because the Ayatollah Khomeini took over a state government, a national government, and a powerful military than any time since World War II. They have been the largest state sponsor of terrorism. They have, we have been told, probably provided most of the IEDs that have killed and maimed Americans fighting for freedom in the Middle East, especially in Iraq. They have worked to stir up trouble all over the Middle East, north Africa, and have created massive mayhem, and they are looking to do even more. And with the $100 billion or more that President Obama sent to Iran, they have been able to make more IEDs to kill more Americans, create more havoc, and stir up more sentiment against the United States since that unconstitutional sending under a treaty that was never ratified was done by the last administration. Some have blamed President Trump for the problems in Iran. That is a bit ridiculous. The problems are the radical Islamist leadership in Iran. In fact, the same people that would like to blame President Trump are some of the same ones who hailed the $100 billion sent under a treaty that was never ratified that would be used to kill innocent people around the world, including Americans. The people of Iran are to be congratulated for saying: Enough is enough. There is a great article from Commentary magazine titled: ``What the Iran Protests Have Already Achieved.'' Sohrab Ahmari says: ``More than 1,700 arrests and at least two dozen deaths later, the Tehran regime seems to have suppressed Iran's latest mass uprising. Scattered protests and skirmishes continue nationwide, according to the citizen-journalists who, braving regime violence, continued to post footage on social media. But for now, the demonstrations don't seem to be growing in numbers or frequency. Yet outside observers tempted to write off the movement should recall that the 1979 Islamic Revolution that toppled the Shah began decades earlier. There were lulls through the years, which tempted President Carter at one point to describe the Shah's Iran as an `island of stability' in the Middle East. ``Whatever the ultimate outcome, however, the protesters have already accomplished a great deal and shattered many myths in the West. Let's review their achievements: ``First, the Iran protests showed that the people are not rallying to the regime under the press of President Trump's hawkish rhetoric.'' ``Far from being `swept up in a wave of nationalist fervor,' as The New York Times' Thomas Erdbrink reported a few weeks before the uprising, Iranians still detest their corrupt, repressive regime. As my colleague''--and this is the author, Mr. Ahmari, speaking--``Noah Rothman has noted on our podcasts, Americans have an almost religious conviction that world events revolve around the U.S. and specifically the White House. To be sure, America remains the most important Nation on the world stage. Yet the average Iranian doesn't wake up in the morning cursing Donald Trump for trying to undo the nuclear deal. More likely, he curses the fact that he can't even afford eggs to feed his children, and there are more proximate actors whom he blames for that: namely, the mullahs. ``Second, the uprising revealed, once and for all, that Iranian President Hassan Rouhani has been no moderate, and that the reformer versus hardliner distinction is meaningless. Ever since he came to power, Rouhani has been the subject of adulation among members of the Western foreign policy establishment. The media attached the `moderate' and `reformer' labels to Rouhani on the night of his first election, in June 2013, and refused to remove them even as evidence mounted that he was no such thing. There was Rouhani's leading role in the violent repression of the 1999 student uprising; his support for the post-2009 crackdown; his long record of anti-American rhetoric (`the beautiful cry of ``Death to America'' unites our nation'); his decidedly immoderate cabinet; his work overseeing Iran's campaign of assassinations targeting dissidents abroad; and much else of the kind. ``But now Iranians themselves are plainly telling the West that Rouhani is no moderate. Their slogans--`Not Gaza; Not Lebanon; My Life Only for Iran' and `Let Syria Be; Do Something for Me'--are a reminder that Tehran has continued to underwrite terror and bloodshed across the Middle East during the 4-plus years of Rouhani's Presidency. The people have also been chanting, `Reformists; Hardliners; the Whole Game is Over.' Let's hope the same realization soon dawns in Washington and Brussels. ``Third, the protesters put the lie to the Obama administration's claims about the 2015 nuclear deal. Remember when senior Obama officials reassured Americans that Iran would use the sanctions relief under Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA) to improve the lots of its people? Here is how Obama Treasury Secretary Jack Lew put it in an April 2015 address: `Many Americans, and many of our closest allies, are understandably concerned that Iran will use the money it receives as a result of sanctions relief to fund terrorism and support destabilizing proxies throughout the Middle East. We share those concerns, and we are committed to maintaining sanctions that address these activities, even after Iran takes the steps required to get relief from nuclear sanctions. But it is important to note that the connection between nuclear sanctions relief and Iran's other malign activities is complicated, and most of the money Iran receives from sanctions relief will not be used to support those activities.' '' I would interject here he had absolutely, 100 percent, no basis for making such ridiculous statements. ``Two months later, Colin Kahl, a National Security Advisor to then- Vice President Joe Biden, told the Truman Center: `It is our assessment . . . that the Iranians are not going to spend the vast majority of the money on guns. Most of it will go to butter.' '' I would insert here he had no basis whatsoever for making such statements. The article said: ``Millions of jobless and impoverished Iranians now beg to differ. It turns out that the regime was happy to spend the JCPOA''--the Iran treaty that was never ratified--``funds on Hezbollah, Hamas, the Yemeni Houthis, and other nasties, even if that meant Iranians would go hungry. And those hungry people aren't mistaken about the roots of their hunger. Iran remains the world's top state sponsor of terror, according to the U.S. State Department. Deal opponents warned of this, only to be brushed aside by Obama and his media allies. The Trump administration now has an opportunity to correct course, by walking away from Obama's bad deal. The American people are under no obligation to finance Iran's terrorist statecraft. ``The mullahs would have no one to blame but themselves. The Iranian people, defeated but unbowed, are sure to have another day.'' So, Mr. Speaker, let me just add here: God bless President Donald J. Trump for recognizing the Iranian treaty for the horrible deal it was and is to peace in our time. He paid for war, he paid for terrorism, and it is time to stop it.

Mr. GOHMERT

Mr. GOHMERT. Mr. Speaker, it has been quite a week: ups and downs and not knowing whether bills would be passed or the government would be funded, whether we would be able to help America with a much-improving economy in the new year by passing the tax cut bill. But we got it done, and it ended up being a good week, and here we are. This will be the last opportunity to speak before we are out for Christmas, and I heard some good news today about Ukraine. We have the annual Presidential Prayer Breakfast the first Thursday of February each year, except when the first Thursday is on the 1st, and then it is on the 8th, which it will be this February. We had representatives from the Ukraine Government come to our National Prayer Breakfast here, and they started one there and began to grow. Now, for the first time, Ukraine legislature has passed a bill recognizing a celebration of Christmas, the day of Jesus' birth. We celebrate Jesus' birth on that day, December 25. Apparently, from what we are told, it emanates from them coming over, being part of our Prayer Breakfast, where the President comes, and then starting one. And then now we are going to be celebrating the birth of Jesus in America--all those who care to--at the same time the Ukrainian Government will do so. So that is a big bit of news there. I was listening to the Delegate from the District of Columbia and it took me back to when I first got here as a Member of Congress and I saw the license plate saying, ``Taxation Without Representation.'' I know from studying history--never ceasing to study history that that was one of the war cries for the Revolution: Taxation without representation is tyranny. And as Benjamin Franklin once said: If we do not get to select even one of the people in Parliament, then that Parliament has no right to place any tax on us. And then upon hearing that, Puerto Rico, Guam, Mariana Islands, U.S. Virgin Islands, all of the territories where they have a Delegate or Commissioner but they don't have a full voting member, those are areas that are not required to pay any Federal income tax. In fact, when I found out, the more I looked into it, there is only one place in America where people do not elect a full voting Member of Congress, yet they have to pay Federal income tax, and that is here in the District of Columbia. For that reason, I filed a bill--because they had tried to get a full voting Member of Congress. But to do that, you have to have a constitutional amendment. Everybody knew that and agreed to that back in the late 1970s. The proponents of having a full voting Representative got it through the House, got it through the Senate, but they never did get the requisite number of States to sign on, so it failed without ever being ratified by enough States. I feel sure that would be the case if that were attempted again, but it does require an amendment. And since that doesn't appear it is going to happen anytime soon, then I believe in each of the sessions of Congress I have been, I have filed a bill that would correct that injustice, because it truly is an injustice for the people who live in the District of Columbia, and it is very simple. It just says, basically, that until when and if the District of Columbia has a full voting Representative, they are like any other U.S. territory, they will not have to pay Federal income tax. I felt like that would certainly make people appreciate that, that they were treated like those in other places that don't elect a full voting Member of the House. So far I haven't been able to get Ms. Holmes Norton to sign on as a cosponsor. I am hoping to get her to sign on at some point because it really would help those people who live here in the City of Washington not to have to pay any Federal income tax. Of course, Puerto Rico pays no Federal income tax, yet they have a higher local income tax than the Federal income tax. You know, a lot of States--I think somebody told me that Californians are paying 10 percent or so. But Puerto Rico, where, I think, over one-third or about one-third or so of the people there work for the government, then the government load is just overwhelming. Puerto Rico is so beautiful. Even after all the disaster that needs to be cleaned up and fixed, I would hope at some point they become less heavy on the government and more heavy on free-market opportunities. I could see Puerto Rico becoming the Hong Kong of the United States, where that is where people want to go, that is where businesses want to locate because it is such a great place to live. But the taxes have run people out of that area, even though they don't pay Federal income tax. I don't think that would happen here in Washington. Mr. Speaker, here we are, the last session before Christmas. It has been amazing. The most often cited book in Congress for our country's entire history has been the Bible. There is no book that comes close to the recitations from it that has the Bible. Throughout our history, we were recognized as a Christian nation. I believe President Obama was right when he said we are not a Christian nation. We were, but we are not anymore. But even the Supreme Court, when it was a much more enlightened Supreme Court well after the Civil War--in fact, 30 years after the Civil War was over--the Supreme Court looked at all of the evidence and declared in an opinion that the United States was founded as and is a Christian nation. Not that everybody has to be a Christian here. They absolutely don't. I would humbly submit that the only way any people can truly have freedom of religion is if they have a constitution that is founded on Judeo-Christian principles that recognize that all true rights: life, liberty, pursuit of happiness--you don't have a right to happiness, but a right to pursue it--those come from God, and the Founders recognized that. It is a shame to hear people deceiving young people in school, teaching them that, no, the real Founders were only deists. They didn't believe in God; Ben Franklin being the leading deist. If they would just teach the children what Ben Franklin said in June of 1787 at the Constitutional Convention. After 5 weeks of nothing but arguing back and forth, 80-year-old Ben Franklin, 2 or 3 years away from meeting his maker, got recognized. Somebody wrote that President Washington looked so relieved when Dr. Franklin sought recognition. He finally stood up. He had gout and he had terrible arthritis. He was well overweight, but he got up and gave the speech that so many Christians are aware of, where he said what no deist would ever say, despite how many teachers these days say he was a deist. His words were--we know what his words were because he sat down and wrote it down afterwards when he was asked for a copy of what he said. And he said: ``I have lived, Sir, a long time; and the longer I live, the more convincing proofs I see of this truth--God governs in the affairs of men. If a sparrow cannot fall to the ground without his notice, is it probable that an empire can rise without his aid? We have been assured, Sir, in the sacred writings, that `except the Lord build the House, they labour in vain that build it.''' He said: ``I firmly believe that.'' Mr. Speaker, which means he wasn't a deist. He said: ``I also believe that without His''--without God's-- ``concurring aid, we shall succeed in this political building no better than the Builders of Babel. We shall be divided by our little partial local interests . . . and we ourselves will become a power down through the ages.'' Mr. Speaker, it was at the conclusion of that day's session in the Constitutional Convention that Randolph from here in Virginia, or across the river in Virginia, made a motion that since here we are at the end of June, we are about to celebrate our Nation's birthday, and we all know we have not been able to accomplish anything. As Franklin said: ``We have been going for nearly 5 weeks. We have more noes than ayes on virtually every issue.'' And then Franklin went on to say: ``How has it happened, Sir, that we have not . . . thought of humbly applying to the Father of lights to illuminate our understandings?'' So Randolph's motion is, since they haven't been able to accomplish really anything, just yelling back and forth--it was all the big 6- foot-4 Washington could do to keep things under control. And, yes, I know in Chernow's biography, he said he was less than 6 foot 2, because he was standing by a guy 6 foot 2 and he was shorter, but he is just wrong on that. George Washington, 1799, when dead, flat on a slab, was measured as 6 foot 3\1/2\. Undeniable, 6 foot 4 in the height of his time, but he couldn't control things. Randolph's motion passed. His motion was that they recess the Constitutional Convention and reconvene together in one of the local churches they agreed on and worship God together and then come back and try it again. That one passed. They went to the Reformed Calvinist Church--I was sharing that with my friend Dave Brat earlier since he attends a Calvinist church-- Reverend William Rogers presiding. You can go online and find at least one of the prayers that he prayed. I have this little book from Dr. Richard G. Lee, what a great man of God, great little booklet. ``In God We Still Trust,'' it is called. It has some great stories from our history. He noted that Warren Earl Burger, Chief Justice of the United States from 1969 to 1986, delivered the Supreme Court's opinion in the 1985 case of Lynch v. Donnelly, which upheld that the city of Pawtucket, Rhode Island, did not violate the Constitution by displaying a nativity scene. Noting that Presidential orders and proclamations from Congress have designated Christmas as a national holiday in religious terms for two centuries and in the Western world for 20 centuries, he wrote: ``There is an unbroken history of official acknowledgement by all three branches of government of the role of religion in American life. The Constitution does not require a complete separation of church and state.'' In fact, I would insert here, those words, ``separation of church and state,'' unlike what many say when asked, they are not in the Constitution, they were not intended to be in the Constitution. The Founders did not want church to be separated from state. They wanted the state to stay the heck out of the church business. That is what they wanted. But Thomas Jefferson mentioned a separation of church and state, a wall of separation, but it was going to be a one-way wall where the state stayed out of people's religion, but expected religion because it was part of our founding and the Bible was so often mentioned as a source of wisdom as they tried to put together a government. Chief Justice Burger, talking about the Constitution, said: ``It affirmatively mandates accommodation, not merely tolerance, of all religions, and forbids hostility toward any. . . . Anything less would require the `callous indifference' we have said was never intended by the Establishment Clause. . . . Indeed, we have observed, such hostility would bring us into `war with our national tradition as embodied in the First Amendment's guarantee of the free exercise of religion.'' He goes on on the next page, talking about John Hancock. He said: ``To celebrate the victorious conclusion of the Revolutionary War, Governor John Hancock of Massachusetts issued a proclamation for a day of Thanksgiving on December 11, 1783.'' Just over a week ago was the anniversary of this proclamation from Governor John Hancock, the president that signed as president of the Continental Congress on the Declaration of Independence. John Hancock said: ``Whereas . . . these United States are not only happily rescued from the danger and calamities to which they have been so long exposed, but their freedom, sovereignty, and independence ultimately acknowledged. ``And whereas . . . the interposition of Divine Providence''--and they capitalized ``Divine Providence,'' another expression meaning God--``in our favor hath been most abundantly and most graciously manifested, and the citizens of these United States have every reason for praise and gratitude to the God of their salvation. ``Impressed therefore with an exalted sense of the blessings by which we are surrounded, and of our entire dependence on that Almighty Being''--``Almighty Being'' both capitalized--``from whose goodness and bounty they are derived; I do by and with the advice of the council appoint Thursday the 11th day of December next''--the day recommended by the Congress to all the States--``to be religiously observed as a day of thanksgiving and prayer; that all the people may then assemble to celebrate . . . that He''--``He'' is capitalized, meaning God-- ``hath been pleased to continue to us the light of the blessed Gospel; . . . that we also offer up fervent supplications . . . to cause pure religion and virtue to flourish . . . and to fill the world with His-- capital H--glory.'' That was John Hancock. As he pointed out, that was directed by the Congress of the United States that that day be recognized, but that was just his proclamation as Governor of Massachusetts. It seems when I mention God, mention some of our heritage, we often get a lot of calls from people who just become irate, which also testifies probably to the importance and to the genuineness of our founding and our founding reliance on God, because nothing else provokes that kind of anger and hatred. But some people say that has no place in the Capitol of the United States. And bless them; they just are a bit ignorant. Just down the hall, the original House Chamber was the largest Christian church in the Washington, D.C., area for most of the 1800s. A guy named Thomas Jefferson, that coined the expression ``separation of church and state,'' ``wall of separation,'' he put in a letter to the Danbury Baptists why we should not have, in essence, an official denomination, that that is not the government's role. Jefferson saw no problem in having Christian worship services down the hall because it was nondenominational. Every Sunday that he was in Washington during his 8 years as President, he would come. Normally, he would ride a horse, according to the Congressional Research Service. You don't have to rely on my historical interpretation. The bipartisan, objective Congressional Research Service said he usually came riding a single horse. Unlike Jefferson, Madison, who is given credit for writing much of the Constitution, when he was President for those 8 years, he normally came in a horse-drawn carriage with multiple horses drawing his carriage. Jefferson, on the other hand, came to church here in the Capitol normally on a horse by himself, before the days, obviously, of the Secret Service. Jefferson, in fact, since it was a nondenominational Christian service, saw no problem with inviting the Marine Band to come do the accompaniment many Sundays for the hymns that were to be sung. The first woman to officially address a group in the U.S. Capitol occurred in the early 1800s, a Christian evangelist, who gave the sermon just down the hall in what was then the House of Representatives Chamber. I have a book, ``Miracles in American History.'' Susie Federer did this, adapted from William J. Federer's ``American Minute.'' This is a typical story from our history and our Founders, who knew how valuable God's assistance was in getting this little bubble in time and space where, for the first time in history, Christians were not persecuted for being Christians. For the first time since Jesus came over 2,000 years ago, this America, this United States was a place where you weren't persecuted for being a Christian. Obviously, that is changing, and now we have governmental entities that are afraid of Christians as potentially a big hate group; although, anyone who professes that Christian groups need to be violent in order to accomplish our purposes can't truly be Christian and based on the Bible unless they are enacting government in so doing and acting under Romans 13. But, otherwise, they miss the whole point of Jesus' preaching. In this book from the Federers, the Battle of Cowpens was January 17, 1781. Also, January 17 happens to be my father's birthday. I won't tell the age, but he is over 90. ``The Battle of Cowpens, January 17, 1781, depicted in the movie `The Patriot,' involved American General Daniel Morgan having a line of militia fire into the British General Cornwallis' and Colonel Banastre Tarleton's dragoons, regulars, Highlanders, and loyalists. ``When the Americans hastily retreated, British Colonel Tarleton, known as `The Butcher,' gave in to the temptation to pursue, only to be surprised by American Continentals waiting over the hill, firing at point-blank range. ``In the confusion, the Americans killed 110 British and captured 830. ``The Battle of Cowpens is widely considered the tactical masterpiece and turning point of the war.'' This is talking about the Revolutionary War, of course. ``General Daniel Morgan met up with American General Nathanael Greene, and they made a hasty retreat north toward Virginia. ``Cornwallis regrouped and chased the Americans as fast as he could, burning extra equipment and supplies along the way in order to travel faster. ``Cornwallis arrived at the Catalpa River just 2 hours after the Americans had crossed, but a storm made the river impassable, delaying the British pursuit. ``Cornwallis nearly overtook them as they were getting out of the Yadkin River, but rain flooded the river. ``Now it was a race to the Dan River, but General Nathanael Greene again made it across before the British arrived. ``British Commander Henry Clinton wrote: `` `Here the royal army was again stopped by a sudden rise of the waters, which had only just fallen, almost miraculously, to let the enemy over . . .' ``In March 1781, General George Washington wrote to William Gordon: `` `We have . . . abundant reasons to thank Providence''--with a capital P; he often referred to God as Providence--`to thank Providence for its many favorable interpositions in our behalf. It has at times been my only dependence, for all other resources seemed to have failed us.' ``British General Henry Clinton then ordered General Cornwallis to move 8,000 troops to a defensive position where the York River entered the Chesapeake Bay. By this time, Ben Franklin and Marquis de Lafayette, which is the gentleman depicted in this painting right over here--it is the only full-length portrait of a foreigner in our U.S. Capitol--were finally successful in their efforts to persuade French King Louis XVI to send ships and troops to meet the Americans. French Admiral de Grasse left off fighting the British in the West Indies; sailed 24 ships to the mouth of the Chesapeake Bay where, in the Battle of the Capes, he drove off 19 British ships which were trying to evacuate Cornwallis' men. De Grasse's 3,000 French troops, and General Rochambeau's 6,000 French troops, hurriedly joined General Lafayette's division as they marched to help Washington trap Cornwallis against the sea. They joined the troops of General Benjamin Lincoln, Baron von Steuben, Mordecai Gist, Henry Knox, and John Peter Muhlenberg. All together, 17,000 French and American troops surrounded Cornwallis, and, on October 19, 1781, he surrendered. Yale President Ezra Stiles wrote on May 8, 1783: ``Who but God''--and by the way, this Yale University president, for those who are shocked that Yale had such a strident Christian leader, but actually, originally, Harvard and Yale, you couldn't even get in unless you swore that Jesus was your Lord and Savior in very stark terms. But Yale University President Ezra Stiles, in 1783, says: ``Who but God could have ordained the critical arrival of the Gallic or French fleet so as to assist in the siege of Yorktown? Should we not ascribe to a Supreme energy the wise generalship displayed by General Greene, leaving the roving Cornwallis to pursue his helter-skelter, ill-fated march into Virginia. It is God who had raised up for us a powerful ally, a chosen army, an enabled force, who sent us a Rochambeau to fight side-by-side with Washington in the Battle of Yorktown.'' ``To diffuse the general joy through every breast, the general orders''--I am sorry. This is from George Washington. George Washington wrote this. This was one of his orders. ``To diffuse the general joy through every breast, the general orders''--these are his orders. I am quoting from Washington. ``Divine service is to be performed tomorrow in the several brigades. The Commander-in-Chief earnestly recommends troops not on duty should universally attend with that gratitude of heart which the recognition of such astonishing interposition of Providence demands.'' And then the next year, on October 11, this is what the Congress passed. Congress said: ``It being the indispensable duty of all nations to offer up their supplications to Almighty God the United States in Congress assembled do hereby recommend it to the inhabitants of these States in general to observe the last Thursday of November next as a day of solemn thanksgiving to God for his mercies.'' September 3, 1783, the Revolutionary War was officially ended with the Treaty of Paris, signed by Ben Franklin, John Adams, John Jay, and David Hartley. And I was surprised, I was going through the State Department with my wife and my pastor, David Dykes, and his wife, Cindy, and we were going through, and there was a copy, an original copy of the Treaty of Paris. I looked at the big letters that started it, and I was shocked. I said: ``Did you know it started that way?'' Because David is quite a historian himself. He has written a lot of great books. But he didn't know. We didn't know how it started. But then it made sense. If you are going to get the British to sign a document swearing that the United States has the right to be free and independent of the most powerful country in the world, the most powerful army, the most powerful navy, which I agree with Washington, it was the grace of God, we were able to defeat. Without the grace of God, there is no defeat. We are not an independent country. So what do you start that with to make the British swear under that would be something they would not want to break the oath to? This is how it starts. These were the big letters, huge print, ``In the name of the Most Holy and Undivided Trinity,'' then smaller letters for the rest of the document, ``It having pleased the Divine Providence'' or God ``to dispose the hearts of the most serene and most potent Prince George III, by the grace of God, King of Great Britain . . . and of the United States of America, to forget all past misunderstandings and differences.'' Anyway, it was signed: ``Done at Paris, this third day of September, in the year of our Lord, 1783.'' And, of course, our Constitution is dated the same way, in the year of our Lord, 1787. But those were Founders. Those were things that got us started. Mr. Speaker, I yield to the gentleman from Texas (Mr. Arrington). Celebrating the Borden County Coyotes Division 1, 1A Six-Man Football State Championship

Mr. GOHMERT. Mr. Speaker, I am always happy to share time with my friend from west Texas. We are on opposite sides of the State but same sides of the heart caring for this country. We have got a lot to be thankful for in this country, and I am thankful that we are going to have 11 months for people to realize that all the gloom and doom that was preached in this room about what the tax bill was going to do. The tax cuts, the reforms, it wasn't made as simple as I would hope, just a flat tax across the board. But there will be more people who don't pay tax, and most everybody should pay less tax. It is just amazing the things that have been said. One person even said this is the worst bill ever, the tax bill, when--wow, I would have thought those bills that were really punishing slaves and allowing the continuance of slavery, those might have been, well, in my opinion, just nowhere near the same category. But according to at least one source here across the aisle, this tax bill was worse than all of those, the worst bill ever. But people are going to have 11 months to see that, even though the stock market was doing better, people weren't really doing better. Incomes had been pretty well flat-lined. I think there is going to be a great deal to be grateful for. Now it is not just going to be the stock market going up, it is going to be Americans having more money in their own pockets. There are going to be more jobs. There are going to be people making more than they have in the past. There will be a chance for many in the upcoming generation to experience what many of us did coming out of school, but most of them haven't, and that is having multiple firms, companies, employers, wanting them. It is just going to be a new experience for so many. And I hope when it happens, they will do as our Founders did and know where to give the proper credit. John Adams, in the fall of 1798, to the officers of the First Brigade--he was President at the time, having succeeded Washington. President Adams said: ``We have no government armed with power, capable of contending with human passions, unbridled by morality and religion. Avarice, ambition, revenge, gallantry would break the strongest cords of our Constitution as a whale goes through a net. Our Constitution was made only for a moral and religious people.'' It is wholly inadequate to the government of any other. John Adams, on December 25, 1813, what we call Christmas Day, wrote to his new friend. They had been friends, then when Jefferson had been greatly unfair in the election, defeated Adams, they had nothing to do with each other for many years. Then at Benjamin Rush's recommendation, Adams wrote Thomas Jefferson, and they rekindled a great friendship. December 25 of 1813, former President John Adams wrote to former President Thomas Jefferson, and said: ``I have examined all religions as well as my narrow sphere, my straightened means, and my busy life would allow; and the result is that the Bible is the best Book in the world. It contains more philosophy than all the libraries I have seen.'' Thomas Jefferson. This is inscribed in his monument. Mr. Speaker, I share this as we leave session the last time before Christmas, because I find that so many people get upset when we mention God or mention the Bible here in Congress, when actually that is the most oft-cited thing in our whole history of Congress. People have been mis-educated, and this is the one chance to thank God, Mr. Speaker, and help people realize how we came to be as we are. Thomas Jefferson said: ``God who gave us life gave us liberty.'' ``And can the liberties of a nation be thought secure when we have removed their only firm basis, a conviction in the minds of the people that these liberties are of the gift of God? That they are not to be violated, but with His wrath? Indeed, I tremble for my country when I reflect that God is just: that His justice cannot sleep forever.'' Mr. Speaker, this was a time when people had turned from God, and it was scaring Jefferson because he knew, as Adams did, if we were not a religious and moral people, the Constitution would cease to serve the needed purpose. Madison has such great pronouncements. As Madison himself said in 1815: ``No people ought to feel greater obligations to celebrate the goodness of the Great Disposer of events and of the Destiny of nations than the people of the United States. To the same divine author of every good and perfect gift, we are indebted for all those privileges and advantages, religious as well as civil, which are so richly enjoyed in this favored land.'' He also referred to our Heavenly Benefactor. Monroe, same type of messages. John Quincy Adams, he wrote his son, 1811: `` . . . so great is my veneration for the Bible, and so strong my belief, that when duly read and meditated on, it is of all books in the world, that which contributes most to make men wise and happy--that the earlier my children begin to read it, the more steadily they pursue the practice of reading it throughout their lives, the more lively and confident will be my hopes that they will prove useful citizens to their country, respectable members of society. . . . `' Abraham Lincoln said this, and it was official. This was his proclamation. Those that think it is inappropriate for government to say these things, this was Abraham Lincoln, who knew wherein our hopes lie. Lincoln said in his official proclamation: `` . . . it is the duty of nations, as well as of men, to own their dependence upon the overruling power of God, to confess their sins and transgressions in humble sorrow, yet with assured hope, that genuine repentance will lead to mercy and pardon, and to recognize the sublime truth, announced in the Holy Scriptures and proven by all history, that those nations are only blessed whose God is the Lord.'' In his second inaugural, just 45 days before he was struck down by an assassin's bullet, Abraham Lincoln was trying to make sense of such a bloody, horrific war between the North and South, and it is inscribed on the inside wall of the Lincoln Memorial on the north side. Thank God, literally, thank God no one has required that those beautiful words be removed. But he was trying to reconcile how there could be something so bloody and awful if there were a good and just God. Obviously, he had done a lot of theological wrestling with that issue, and in talking about the North and South, Abraham Lincoln said: ``Both''--North and South--``read the same Bible and pray to the same God.'' ``The prayers of both could not be answered. The prayers of neither has been answered fully. The Almighty has his own purpose.'' But then he quotes Scripture: ``Whoa unto the world because of offenses.'' Lincoln continues on: ``Yet, if God will that it continue until all the wealth piled by the bondsman's 250 years of unrequited toil shall be sunk, and every drop of blood drawn with the lash shall be paid by another drawn with a sword, as was said 3,000 years ago, so it must be said.'' And again quoting the Bible: ``The judgements of the Lord are true and righteous altogether.'' All Presidents have had these types of proclamations. I like the proclamation Grover Cleveland had in November 1885. Official U.S. Government proclamation. He said: ``The American people have always abundant cause to be thankful to Almighty God, whose watchful care and guiding hand have been manifested in every stage of their national life, guarding and protecting them in time of peril and safely leading them in the hour of darkness and of danger. ``It is fitting and proper that a nation thus favored should on one day every year, for that purpose especially appointed, publicly acknowledge the goodness of God and return thanks to Him for all His gracious gifts.'' Moving to Franklin Roosevelt, Franklin Roosevelt delivered this Christmas Eve message just weeks after we were attacked at Pearl Harbor. Franklin Roosevelt said: ``Sincere and faithful men and women are asking themselves this Christmas: How can we light our trees? How can we give our gifts? How can we meet and worship with love and with uplifted spirit and heart in a world at war, a world of fighting and suffering and death? How can we pause, even for a day, even for Christmas Day, in our urgent labor of arming a decent humanity against the enemies which beset it? How can we put the world aside, as men and women put the world aside in peaceful years, to rejoice in the birth of Christ?'' Franklin Roosevelt went on to say: ``Looking into the days to come, I have set aside a day of prayer, and in that proclamation, I have said: The year 1941 has brought upon our Nation a war of aggression by powers dominated by arrogant rulers whose selfish purpose is to destroy free institutions. They would thereby take from the freedom-loving peoples of the Earth the hard-won liberties gained over many centuries. The new year of 1942 calls for the courage. Our strength, as the strength of all men everywhere, is of greater avail as God upholds us. ``Therefore, I''--this is Franklin Roosevelt--``do hereby appoint the first day of the year 1942 as a day of prayer, of asking forgiveness for our shortcomings of the past, of consecration to the task of the present, of asking God's help in days to come. We need His guidance that this people may be humbled in spirit, but strong in the conviction of the right. Steadfast to endure sacrifice, and brave to achieve a victory of liberty and peace. Our strongest weapon in this war is that conviction of the dignity and brotherhood of man, which Christmas Day signifies. Against enemies who preach the principles of hate and practice them, we set our faith in human love and in God's care for us and all men everywhere.'' He had so many beautiful, beautiful messages. One ended like this: ``It is significant that tomorrow, Christmas Day, our plants and factories will be stilled. That is not true of the other holidays we have long been accustomed to celebrate. On all other holidays, work goes on, gladly, for the winning of the war. So Christmas becomes the only holiday in all the year. I like to think this is because Christmas is a holy day. May all it stands for live and grow throughout the years.'' Harry Truman, who succeeded him after his death, finished one of his Christmas proclamations this way: ``Our thoughts and aspirations and the hopes of future years turn to a little town in the hills of Judea where, on a winter's night 2,000 years ago, the prophecy of Isaiah was fulfilled. ``Shepherds keeping the watch by night over their flock heard the glad tidings of great joy from the angels of the Lord singing: `Glory to God in the highest, and on Earth, peace, good will toward men.' '' It is not just from the Bible. This is the President of the United States' official proclamation, government proclamation. Truman said: ``The message of Bethlehem best sums up our hopes tonight. If we as a nation, and the other nations of the world, will accept it, the star of faith will guide us into the place of peace as it did the shepherds on that day of Christ's birth long ago. ``We shall find strength and courage at this Christmastime because so brave a beginning has been made. So with faith and courage we shall work to hasten the day when the sword is replaced by the plowshare and nations do not `learn war anymore.' ``Selfishness and greed, individual or national, cause most of our troubles.'' ``He whose birth we celebrate tonight was the world's greatest teacher. He said: `Therefore all things whatsoever ye would that men would do to you, do ye even so to them; for this is the law and the prophets.' Through all the centuries since He spoke, history has vindicated His teaching. ``In this great country of ours has been demonstrated the fundamental unity of Christianity and democracy. Under our heritage of freedom for everyone on equal terms, we also share the responsibilities of government. Our support of individual freedom--free speech, free schools, free press, and a free conscience--transcends all our differences. Although we may not hope for a New Heaven and a New Earth in our day and generation; we may strive with undaunted faith and courage to achieve in the present some measure of that unity with which the Nation's sons and the sons of our allies went forth to win the war. ``We have this glorious land not because of a particular religious faith, not because our ancestors sailed from a particular foreign port. We have our unique national heritage because of a common aspiration to be free and because of our purpose to achieve for ourselves and for our children the good things of life which the Christ declared He came to give to all mankind. ``We have made a good start toward peace in the world. Ahead of us lies the larger task of making the peace secure. The progress we made gives hope that in the coming year we shall reach our goal. May 1947 entitle us to the benediction of the Master.'' ``Master'' is capitalized. He is talking about Jesus. He quotes Jesus saying: `` `Blessed are the peacemakers, for they shall be called the children of God.' Because of what we have achieved for peace, because of all the promise our future holds, I say to all my countrymen: Merry Christmas. Merry Christmas, and may God bless you all.'' I just want to conclude, Mr. Speaker, with this best message, Ronald Reagan's 1988 official Christmas message. He said: ``The themes of Christmas and of coming home for the holidays have long been intertwined in song and story. There is a profound irony and a lesson in this because Christmas celebrates the coming of a Savior who was born without a home. ``There was no room at the inn for the Holy Family. Weary of travel, a young Mary, close to childbirth, and her carpenter husband, Joseph, found but the rude shelter of a stable. There born the King of Kings, the Prince of Peace--an event on which all history would turn. ``Jesus would again be without home, and more than once; on the flight to Egypt and during His public ministry when He said: `The foxes have holes, and the birds of the air have nests, but the Son of Man hath nowhere to lay his head.' ``From His very infancy, on, our Redeemer was reminding us that, from then on we would never lack a home in Him. Like the shepherds to whom the angel of the Lord appeared on the first Christmas Day, we could always say: `Let us now go even unto Bethlehem and see this thing which is come to pass, which the Lord hath made known unto us.' ``As we come home with gladness to family and friends this Christmas, let us also remember our neighbors who cannot go home themselves. Our compassion and concern this Christmas and all year long will mean much to the hospitalized, the homeless, the convalescent, the orphaned--and will surely lead us on our way to the joy and peace of Bethlehem and the Christ Child who bids us come. For it is only in finding and living the eternal meaning of the Nativity that we can be truly happy, truly at peace, truly home. ``Merry Christmas, and God bless you.'' Official proclamation of the United States Government by the President of the United States, words well to remember. Mr. Speaker, I yield back the balance of my time.

Mr. GOHMERT

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

Mr. GOHMERT

Mr. GOHMERT. Mr. Speaker, I enjoyed hearing my friend from Illinois first talking about the great State of Illinois. It truly is. We appreciate all the doctors who have been sent down to Texas after we did tort reform and Illinois continues to have significant problems. We had had problems keeping doctors in Texas until the great State of Illinois ran into greater and greater malpractice lawsuit problems. Texas did tort reform, and we started having doctors coming from places like Illinois to Texas, and we are doing much better. The problem is, with health insurance, I heard my friend talk about 13 million who won't have insurance, and I think, to be fair there, are so many millions right now who are forced to do the unthinkable. It is unconstitutional. The Supreme Court simply chose to become political in their decisionmaking rather than constitutional. You could pick nine people off the street at random and probably six or seven out of the nine, after they heard the dispute and read the Constitution, would find contrary to the Supreme Court. We put so much magic, supposedly, in those black robes. Somehow, they are given more credibility than they ought to be. Thomas Jefferson thought that the judicial system would be the weakest of the three branches, but now it pretty much controls everything. Under ObamaCare, people are forced to buy a product. For the first time in American history, you can be forced to buy a product. If you didn't, you would be fined, punished, taxed. The Court said, on one hand, it wasn't a tax. Therefore, the Court had jurisdiction. Forty- some pages later, it said it is a tax, so it is constitutional. In any event, people have been forced to buy a product and they have paid for as cheap a policy as they could get away with, but the deductibles were so high. I have heard this over and over hundreds of times in my own district. They were buying insurance they will never be able to use. The deductibles are so high, they don't have that kind of money. So what the repeal of the individual mandate is going to mean is that people can still buy the insurance if they want to. They are not going to be penalized if they don't buy it. But in order for ObamaCare to work, it is stealing from Peter to pay Paul. In other words, young people, for example, were having to buy insurance they would never use because they would have the deductible. But they did the calculation: Do I pay more if I pay for the insurance or do I pay more if I pay the extra income tax? Then they make that decision. What the repeal of the individual mandate means is that we will help the Supreme Court in their ridiculous ruling and the mental gymnastics that went into not calling it a tax at page 13 or so, and then 40 pages later calling it a tax. It is really pretty absurd, but it was a political decision. John Roberts was intimidated into believing that, if they struck down this unconstitutional bill, he would be deemed to be Chief Justice over the most political Court. As a result of what he did, he goes down in history as having the most political Court since Dred Scott. It wasn't quite as bad as the Dred Scott decision. That has got to be the worst. We know from history that sometimes they just get it wrong. We will do the right thing by the American people, and we will repeal the individual mandate. Unfortunately, it is not going to start for a year. I also heard my friend mention--and I have heard others say--that this bill will end up putting most of the income in the hands of the top 1 percent. One of the great things about being in Congress is you get to learn so much if you are paying attention. My friends can go back and look at YouTube and find President Obama, after being in office for a number of years, admitting that, for the first time in American history, 95 percent of the Nation's income went to the top 1 percent income earners. It never happened before. But under the policies that do as President Obama said he was going to do before he got elected--and that is spread the wealth around-- every time somebody tries to spread the wealth around--it is a socialist idea, a communist. But when you try to spread the wealth around, it never seems to fail that the richest, most powerful get richer and more powerful. You can go to the Soviet Union. There were a handful of people making a lot of money, even over there now, under Putin. Of course, Putin gets richer. But there were a handful of people who get rich and most of the people don't. Most of the people bring in about the same amount of income, but they don't have access to the same benefits. Anyway, we are going to move in a direction away from what President Obama's policies established, and that was, as a fact, 95 percent of the Nation's income is going to the top 1 percent. We want to get away from that. Reforming the Tax Code and getting away from the punishing days of President Obama's policies will allow the working class to do better for the first time in years. They have been flat-lined or less when adjusted for inflation. It is time they did better. The tax bill we should take up tomorrow will end up doing that. It will get money into the hands of the working poor, the middle class. We saw the middle class shrink under President Obama; the poor got poorer, the ultrarich got ultraricher, and the middle class shrunk. More people--over 50 million, as I recall--signed up for food stamps. That has already dropped significantly under the policies of the current President. We are hoping that the policies that we will push through together with the President will continue to have that effect. People will do better. There will be more jobs. With all of the ridicule of lowering the corporate tax, if people will just be realistic and honest about it, corporations don't pay corporate taxes. They have to pass that on as a cost of doing business to their customers, their clients, those who purchase their goods or services. They pass that 35 percent tax on. I know that before the President got elected, the current President, he had talked about maybe putting a tariff on Chinese goods. The fact is we have been putting on a 35 percent tariff, the highest tariff anybody puts on its own goods and services of all the industrialized nations. It is the biggest. If we knock that 35 percent down, then it means our goods will be more competitive around the world. It means more jobs. It is going to be a great thing for America. It really is. As much as some people despise the President, like it or not, it is going to help make America great again. Lower the corporate tax. I wish we could have kept it at 15 percent. Apparently, the powers of the leaders of the House and Senate, by a margin of two-to-one against the President wanting it at 15 percent, but at least we are getting it lowered. That is going to mean more goods can be competitive abroad. It means more jobs here. It means more manufacturing back here. For those who have got their nose in the air and think we shouldn't have manufacturing in America, you go around the world and see manufacturing in other places and you see it here. It is about as clean a manufacturing company as you can have. This is the best place for those jobs because we do have to breathe the air that China and India pollutes, which we are cleaning up, but not near fast enough because they are polluting it so much. Fortunately, the President withdrew from the so-called climate accord. The reason all these other countries wanted the United States in is because we were the ones that were going to send checks to all the other countries. We were going to pay guilt money. We have no guilt to pay for. In fact, this is the country that is helping clean up the air and water, unlike other large nations in the world. They owe us a check, if somebody is going to be owing checks for the amount of pollution. It should mean a better economy. There is one other thing that severely hurt our country under the past administration. I am not normally a big fan of Politico's articles, but this is a fascinating one that calls itself: ``The Secret Backstory of How Obama Let Hezbollah Off the Hook.'' Hezbollah is recognized as a terrorist organization. This is entitled: ``The Secret Backstory of How Obama Let Hezbollah Off the Hook.'' Part one starts with a ``Global Threat Emerges. How Hezbollah turned to trafficking cocaine and laundering money through used cars to finance its expansion. ``In its determination to secure a nuclear deal with Iran, the Obama administration derailed an ambitious law enforcement campaign targeting drug trafficking by the Iranian-backed terrorist group Hezbollah, even as it was funneling cocaine into the United States, according to a Politico investigation. ``The campaign, dubbed Project Cassandra, was launched in 2008 after the Drug Enforcement Administration amassed evidence that Hezbollah had transformed itself from a Middle East-focused military and political organization into an international crime syndicate that some investigators believed was collecting $1 billion a year from drug and weapons trafficking, money laundering, and other criminal activities.'' So, that was 2008, during the Bush administration, with Robert Mueller as head of the FBI. This points out: ``Over the next 8 years''--that would be as we went into the Obama administration, 2009--agents working out of a top-secret DEA facility in Chantilly, Virginia, used wiretaps, undercover operations, and informants to map Hezbollah's illicit networks, with the help of 30 U.S. and foreign security agencies. ``They followed cocaine shipments, some from Latin America to West Africa and on to Europe and the Middle East, and others through Venezuela and Mexico to the United States. They tracked the river of dirty cash as it was laundered by, among other tactics, buying American used cars and shipping them to Africa. And with the help of some key cooperating witnesses, the agents traced the conspiracy, they believed, to the innermost circle of Hezbollah and its state sponsors in Iran.'' It is rather ironic. I got in the car a moment ago and heard my good friend, Mark Levin. Apparently, he had read part of this story on the air and had a call from a person they didn't fully identify who was one of these agents who was helping track what Hezbollah was doing. The article says: ``But as Project Cassandra reached higher into the hierarchy of conspiracy, Obama administration officials threw an increasingly insurmountable series of roadblocks in its way.'' Parenthetically here, so the Obama administration had found that Hezbollah was massively producing and getting into the United States drugs that were addicting American young people--well, of all ages, but especially our young, our future--making a billion dollars or so, and they were dying as they got hooked on worse and worse drugs. The answer of the Obama administration, according to this article, was throwing an increasingly unsurmountable series of roadblocks in the way of those investigating Hezbollah and the evil infliction of harm they were doing to America. The article goes on: `` . . . according to interviews with dozens of participants, who, in many cases, spoke for the first time about events shrouded in secrecy, and a review of government documents and court records. When Project Cassandra leaders sought approval for some significant investigations, prosecutions, arrests, and financial sanctions, officials at the Justice and Treasury Departments delayed, hindered, or rejected their requests.'' That would be Bob Mueller at the FBI. He had already purged the FBI training materials so that FBI agents, as they came in, would not know what questions to ask. So when they went out to interview Tsarnaev, after we got a heads up that he was a terrorist--he had been radicalized--those FBI agents didn't know what to ask. Why? Because Bob Mueller purged the training material. So they didn't know what to ask. They didn't know what to look for in a radical Islamist. They went and asked his mother, and she said: No, he is a good boy. He is not a terrorist. There were people who died because of Bob Mueller purging the FBI training materials; so they didn't even know what they were looking for. And when I was cross-examining him before our committee, I said: ``You didn't even go out to the mosque where they attended to investigate them.'' He indicated that they did go out to the mosque in their outreach program, where they sit down and play ``Pat-a-Cake,'' share a meal, and the last thing they do would be to inquire about one of the mosque attendees being radicalized. They didn't bother to do that. They were too busy making merry in their outreach program. He also testified on one occasion that the Islamic community is like every other religious community in America; and they had this wonderful outreach program with them, and it is working so well. So I asked a question: ``Well, you said the Islamic community is like every other community in America, and you have this wonderful outreach program with them, so let me ask you: How is your outreach program going with the Buddhists, and the Jewish, and the Baptists, and all of these other communities?'' Well, they don't have an outreach program to any except the Islamic community. So that told me then: this isn't just like every other community. They don't have outreach communities through every other religious community in America because they are not worried about them blowing up innocent people, to the extent they apparently were before Mueller came along. In any event, back to this article: ``The Justice Department declined requests by Project Cassandra and other authorities to file criminal charges against major players such as Hezbollah's high-profile envoy to Iran, a Lebanese bank that allegedly laundered billions in alleged drug profits, and a central player in a U.S.-based cell of the Iranian paramilitary Quds Force. And the State Department rejected requests to lure high-value targets to countries where they could be arrested.'' So the Justice Department--during that period, of course--would have been Eric Holder. I believe I saw him in the news recently. He had forgotten how he was in contempt of Congress, how he covered up-- obfuscated--crimes that appeared to be occurring under his watch. And now we find out, just days after his high-profile blasting of what was going on here, trying to get to the truth, it turns out he was obfuscating, just like we found he was doing, hindering and obstructing justice. We really needed a special counsel to investigate him. But, of course, he was not going to have a special counsel investigate himself, nor was Loretta Lynch going to allow a special counsel to investigate Eric Holder and Loretta Lynch. We still need one to investigate both of them. And the more we find out, the more it points to this desperate need. It has this in the article from December 15, 2011: ``Hezbollah is linked to a $483,142,568 laundering scheme. The money, allegedly laundered through the Lebanese Canadian Bank and two exchange houses, involved approximately 30 U.S. car buyers.'' Then it goes on and shows in the article, from the Southern District of New York, U.S. Attorney's Office: ``Manhattan U.S. Attorney Files Civil Money Laundering and Forfeiture Suit Seeking More Than $480 Million From Entities Including Lebanese Financial Institutions That Facilitated a Hezbollah-Related Money Laundering Scheme'' `` `This was a policy decision, it was a systematic decision,' said David Asher, who helped establish and oversee Project Cassandra as a Defense Department illicit finance analyst. `They serially ripped apart this entire effort that was very well supported and resourced, and it was done from the top down.' '' That would be from President Obama, it would be from Eric Holder, and it would be from Bob Mueller. Bob Mueller should have been honest and sincere enough when he was asked to be special counsel, and should have said: I am probably going to be investigated myself. I am not in a position to be the investigator. Because he certainly should be investigated. And this is one more story. ``The untold story of Project Cassandra illustrates the immense difficulty in mapping and countering illicit networks in an age where global terrorism, drug trafficking, and organized crime have merged, but also the extent to which competing agendas among government agencies--and shifting priorities at the highest levels--can set back years of progress.'' And that is exactly what happened under Bob Mueller and President Obama's administration. And this 56-page article appears very well documented, and it actually appears well done. It has John Brennan in here creating problems for the investigation into the drugging and laundering of money to help finance terrorist operations. And one part of this is they killed this investigation. They were afraid it would prevent the Iran agreement from going forward. Well, it didn't go forward. It was never constitutionally ratified. The Corker bill was just that: it was a bill. It could not turn the Constitution upside down, as it attempted to do. The Constitution makes clear that it takes two-thirds of the Senate to ratify a treaty. It doesn't matter what the bill says; it will only take one-third to ratify a treaty. It doesn't work that way. If you want that to be the law, it takes a constitutional amendment to do that. We didn't have one. Therefore, it took two-thirds to ratify, and the Iranian agreement is still not ratified. But, nonetheless, though it wasn't ratified, it didn't keep the President from sending $100 billion or so in dollars over to Iran. We know Iran is the largest producer of IEDs in Iraq. As I sat at the funeral of this precious, young 20-year-old gentleman, who went to my daughter's high school, Alex Missildine, killed by an IED, I just sat there going: I wonder if the money President Obama sent paid for the production of the IED that killed our precious Alex? It has been paid. It is paying for something. We know that Iran is using it--Certainly part of their military operations are continuing to kill Americans in other places. Yet you had Project Cassandra that was closing in on Hezbollah, closing in on the drug production, drug sales, the laundering of money through the used car, shipping used cars around. And then, lo and behold, a reminder of what has happened right here on Capitol Hill that Luke Rosiak has been pursuing. Here is an article from February 20, 2017, from the Daily Caller, entitled: ``House Dem IT Guys In Security Probe Secretly Took $100,000 in Iraqi Money,'' from a Hezbollah tie. The article says: ``Rogue congressional staffers took $100,000 from an Iraqi politician while they had administrator-level access to the House of Representatives' computer network, according to court documents examined by The Daily Caller News Foundation's Investigative Group. ``The money was a loan from Dr. Ali al-Attar, an Iraqi political figure, and was funneled through a company with `impossible'-to- decipher financial transactions that the congressional information technology, IT, staffers controlled. ``Imran Awan, ringleader of the group that includes his brothers Abid and Jamal, has provided IT services since 2005 for Florida Democrat Representative Debbie Wasserman Schultz, the former Democratic National Committee, DNC, chairwoman. The brothers are from Pakistan. ``The trio also worked for dozens of other House Democrats, including members of the Intelligence, Foreign Affairs, and Homeland Security Committees. Those positions likely gave them access to congressional emails and other sensitive documents. ``The brothers, whose access to House IT networks has been terminated, are under criminal investigation by the U.S. Capitol Police.'' ``Investigators found that congressional information was being copied to an off-site server and they suspect the brothers of improperly accessing information and stealing congressional property. Chiefs of staff for the employing Democrats were notified February 2. ``Soon after Imran began working for Members of Congress, Imran's and Abid's wives--Hina Alvi and Natalia Sova--also began receiving congressional paychecks, the DCNF found. Imran's employers included two members of the Intelligence Committee. . . . ``By 2009, the family was simultaneously managing a full-time car dealership in Virginia, with Abid running day-to-day operations after contributing $250,000 in startup cash. It was called Cars International A, LLC, referred to as ``CIA'' in court documents.'' Cars International A, referred to as CIA. Isn't it clever. ``Imran boasted unusual clout among House Democrats, and was even pictured conversing with former President Bill Clinton. After Rao Abbas, who was owed money by the dealership, threatened to sue amid allegations of deception and theft, Abbas appeared on the congressional payroll and received $250,000 in taxpayer payments.'' Incredible. You owe somebody for an illicit car dealership, and you can't pay. Just put them on the House employee system; and they will be on the congressional payroll, and you can pay off $250,000. That must have been a heck of a percentage, though. They borrowed $100,000 from this guy with Hezbollah contact, and they have to pay him back $250,000. Of course, in their case, they were very fortunate, because they did it with the House payroll. There is no evidence that Mr. Abbas ever lifted a finger to do any work, and for good reason. We wouldn't want him involved in all of the inner workings of our computer systems on the Hill. Who knows. Maybe he did. Maybe that was part of the payoff as well. ``Abid had `100 percent' of the dealership, a one-time business partner said in court documents, in addition to his $165,000-a-year job working full-time for multiple representatives. . . .'' Mr. Speaker, this story Politico has run seems to have a lot of parallels to what was going on right here in the House that needs further investigation. Mr. Speaker, I yield back the balance of my time.

Mr. GOHMERT

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

Mr. GOHMERT

Mr. GOHMERT. Mr. Speaker, I heard my colleagues across the aisle discussing the issue of Special Counsel Mueller. Since there are one or two possibilities about some of the things they said regarding Republicans, especially on a committee, either Mr. Cohen's memory is terrible or he is falsely, intentionally misrepresenting things. I am not saying that is the case. I am saying it is one or the other, and I will get to that momentarily. The hearing we had this week in the Judiciary Committee with Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein was deeply troubling to those who want the Department of Justice to be about justice; those who want to see the FBI be that great arbiter, that great entity that will ensure that justice is done. We need an entity like that. The ATF, their reputation was sorely soiled back during the attack by the ATF on Waco at the facility where some folks had been sucked into basically a cult. It didn't have to happen. And as we found out, local law enforcement said that they knew that David Koresh went to Sam's Club right there on Belle Meade--I think they said Tuesday. And if the ATF had told us they wanted to arrest him, we could have helped them arrange to pick him up as he walked out of Sam's Club with grocery sacks in his arms. There would have been no incident. No lives would have been lost, no children burned up in a fire, no people killed. It was so unnecessary, but the ATF apparently wanted to make a point and wanted to have a big show. Actually, there were constitutional issues there. I read in the paper that a gentleman who served with me at Fort Benning in Georgia, during my time in the Army, had advised the post commander out at Fort Bliss that he should not allow the U.S. Army tanks or equipment to be used, in violation of the posse comitatus, unless he had a direct order from the President himself. As we found out after the fact, the President made clear that: Oh, that was Reno's deal. You have to talk to her about that. So, clearly, he did not order the U.S. military to use equipment and allow their equipment to be used against civilian American citizens. So there were all kinds of terrible things that came out and it really made the ATF look bad. I was a fan of the ATF, the Federal ATF. I knew them to have done some great things, and I had some very dear friends, and still do have some very dear and very great friends, who are in the ATF. But the point is that such horrendous judgment in the ATF set up what they knew or should have known would probably result in losses of lives, including severe injuries to ATF themselves. I don't think they lost anybody, but they certainly were severely wounded and treated there in Waco. But that kind of outrageous judgment that puts political and news interests ahead of just doing the job and seeing justice done ends up being such a terrible blot on the reputation of any entity that it is hard to work back from that. I still hear people who refer to that incident nearly 25 years ago, and still it is such a blot on the ATF that it is hard for people to consider the ATF without thinking how terribly, just inappropriate, the ATF acted at times and caused people to wonder: Is that the general rule, or was that an exception? People, after some other episodes, began to think it is the rule with the ATF. Some claim: Let's get rid of it. What has gone on now and is currently going on now with the Deputy Attorney General taking all three positions that he sees no evil, he hears no evil--he doesn't know of any evil going on. He thinks everything is like the poet said: ``God's in His Heaven, all's right with the world.'' I believe the author had a little girl saying that. But it is not right with the world. It is terribly wrong. America and the world sit in a position of Western civilization where potentially the most incredible and amazing strides in healthcare, in energy, and all kinds of areas of life on this Earth have been made better exponentially, and the United States of America is at the very heart of those great developments. A majority in the United States throughout our history would always say: We call those blessings from God. Now, maybe it is and maybe it isn't a majority, but we are ever getting closer to a position where this grand experiment in self- judgment is potentially on the verge of being lost. History is not being taught as zealously as it once was. Places like Hillsdale College or Liberty or Regent, there are some places where it is being taught. I had fantastic history teachers, which is what I majored in at Texas A&M because I knew I was going to do 4 years in the Army, at least, and if we were at war when my 4 years were up, I would have continued to serve. But our students don't know history anymore. Why? Because President Carter decided that the Federal Government intervention into education, even though it is not an enumerated power under the Constitution, and it is, therefore, a power that is reserved to the States and the people and not the Federal Government, we have been acting extra- constitutionally, that means outside the Constitution, for quite some time going back to the late seventies under President Carter. Our students have suffered as a result. They don't know history. Someone had advised me that even though history is not an important part of the federally mandated test, there are things that in different subjects are mandated by the Federal Government. Here is an element that students should know about the subject. I was advised that the one area that the federally mandated test, the only area historically that students were required to know, is that when the United States dropped two atomic bombs, one on Hiroshima and one on Nagasaki, it raised serious questions about the United States' morality, which is absolutely fictitious unless the ignorance of the authors requiring such a thing did not allow them to know the truth. The truth is that Truman was advised that because the Emperor of Japan had ordered the Japanese people to fight for their homes to the death, then the Allied Forces would have to land in Japan. They would have had to move across the country, and it was considered a very fair and possibly quite conservative estimate that there could be 10 million people losing their lives if Allied Forces had to land and were fighting the Japanese people home to home to home. So the morality of the issue is: Would we morally be better off in this absolute war that the Japanese started against the United States, would we be better off losing the horrible tragedy of 300,000 or so lives, or would we be better off having 5 or so million Japanese people killed and 5 or so million Allied Forces being lost? The morally correct decision was that a Democrat, a man who apparently really wrestled with the issue from a moral standpoint, decided to put the American bombers at risk, those flying the planes and taking the atomic bombs, and to put 200,000 or 300,000 or so people at risk in an effort to avoid losing 5 million or so Japanese and an equal number or more of the Allied Forces. I think he made the correct moral decision. So that doesn't raise moral issues about the United States. It raises ignorance issues about the federally mandated test. We would be so much better off if we got back to allowing local school boards to decide and States to decide--as they had been for many decades--deciding what their students should learn. That was the beauty of a federalist situation where States would have so much power. But as is often the case when the Federal Government takes over an area like education, then it gets worse. I was on the board of directors of the Texas A&M Association of Former Students, and I can recall the president advising us that the official SAT had to change the scoring system for the SAT because students across the board were doing so much worse than they did when classes around my era, in the 1970s, had done, that we had done, overall, so much better than the students who came through after the Federal Government took over education. So I don't know if it was accurate, but I had educators back at that time say that there is a formula; so it is hard to say. But if you scored, say, 1,400 out of 1,600 on the SAT in the seventies, then under the new scoring system it would probably be scored closer to 1,600, 1,500 to 1,600, maybe a couple hundred points that they had to add to the system, because after we had a Federal Department of Education, then students started doing worse. So to keep it from looking like the Department of Education here in Washington made education as poor as it helped to do, we had to raise the SAT scores basically on an arbitrary basis. We know that the students coming through in the eighties, nineties, and then this new millennium have the potential to do better than we ever did, but because the Federal Government got involved, I don't think it is just a great irony when the Federal Government took over education under President Carter that, wow, ironically, isn't it amazing, at the same time students were doing worse and worse. So that is what often happens when the Federal Government gets involved. We saw that with Waco. If they had gotten the help of the local law enforcement, there would have been no loss of life, in all reality, but the ATF was going to bust in and make a big show out of it, and it cost an awful lot of lives. You would like to think that, when the FBI comes in, you don't have to worry, they are going to do the right thing. I know so many incredible, outstanding FBI agents. But for Mr. Cohen to continue to say, even after he has been advised and reminded that I have been raising Cain about Robert Mueller for over a decade, I guess, he came in, sworn in in January of `07, as I understand it. Initially, when I questioned Robert Mueller as FBI Director when I first got to Congress, I was carrying that image of the great FBI, the image that so many of the agents still carry, thousands of them still carry, but with more and more difficulty because of the cesspools that have developed here in Washington and the way in which it has been used, as we saw with the IRS, during the Obama administration, weaponized and used as a political instrument. Now, how do we know that? We didn't know near as much as we continue to find out, but Robert Mueller ran off thousands of years of experience, and I contend it was because he wanted nothing but yes people. He didn't want the experienced people around the country who might try to point out to the director when he made one of his many mistakes as FBI Director or chose software programs, chose law enforcement programs that created problems because they had more experience than he did, he did not really want people around the country to have more experience than he did because they might question something that he ordered inappropriately, and he just wanted people to salute him, salute the flag, figuratively speaking, and drive forward. That means when Mueller wanted somebody to bust down the door in the middle of the night, even though there was no threat of the individual fleeing, no threat of the individual hiding evidence, it was done, as we are now seeing the Mueller special counsel group, team, SWAT unit, unofficial SWAT, of course, but we are seeing them use these types of tactics. Now, I don't really know Paul Manafort. He doesn't seem like a fellow that I would enjoy getting along with. Nonetheless, it certainly appeared that he was very materially mistreated because Mueller wanted to make sure he got his point, and he knocked down the door, or at least went in in the middle of the night, however they got in. We have heard this before, this heavy-handed Federal Government, and there was no reason for that other than bullying, mean, Federal agents at the top wanting to bully people around. We saw that kind of conduct with Mike Flynn as he was set up. He had been, as part of the transition team, talking to people at the FBI about different issues, and now we know Strzok was part of that, this man that absolutely loathed President-elect Trump, he loathed everything about Trump and those he was going to be bringing into office. We didn't know how badly they despised or loathed the President and Republicans supporting him until we got more information. But these kind of things are things that Robert Mueller should have known. He should have known the Department of Justice's reputation and hope for being considered righteous was all riding on him and what he did. Yet he rode in with his black hat--figuratively, for those in the mainstream media who don't understand those type of references--and he began to overreach. We heard yesterday from the guy that appointed Mueller, Rod Rosenstein, that, to have a special counsel, you have to believe that a crime was committed. So it would seem to reason that Mueller was appointed to investigate something that they had reason to believe that possibly a crime had been committed. Yet because of whether it is incompetence or zeal in wanting Mueller to go on a witch hunt, to just keep searching until you find something, even if it is a poor guy like Scooter Libby who devoted his life to helping his country, we need somebody's scalp. It doesn't look like Donald J. Trump was colluding with the Russians, so we have got to have somebody's scalp. Let's intimidate some people. Let's bully our way into homes in the middle of the night. Let's do whatever we have got to do and maybe we will scare somebody into admitting something. Like many are saying, Michael Flynn didn't lie. To be a lie, you have to have intent to deceive. But whether they are right or wrong about that, the word is he was bankrupted by an overzealous bully. All my friends on the left are talking about bullying. I was small for my age. In my class, I was bullied. I had a black eye, a bloody nose. A fifth grade teacher, after a big bully took my football and I tried to get it back and ended up with a bloody nose and a black eye-- our teacher loved the bully back then--pulled me in front of class while I was trying to get my nose to stop bleeding and told the class: This is what happens when little boys try to play with big boys. I know something about being bullied and I recognize it in a government group when I see it. The Mueller team has been bullies, but that is what Mueller wanted. Why do you think he went and hired Weissmann, who destroyed thousands and thousands of employees' lives who worked for Arthur Andersen in a joust at windmills that cost these people their livelihoods, caused more pain and suffering than imaginable, for what the Supreme Court said, 9-0: You are a fool. This was not a crime. You made this up? That is who Mueller wanted on his team. This is the same Robert Mueller, as I have been pointing out for years, who has been grossly unfair in running off the thousands of years of experience that he did so he could have great people, wonderful people. Not only were they new and young, but he was eliminating the older folks who had the experience that could bring them along, because Mueller wanted them created in his image and to get rid of all the wisdom of the ages that could be found throughout the FBI before he took over. I am sure there are a bunch of people that needed to go, but you don't destroy an entire entity like the Federal Bureau of Investigation just because you want a bunch of yes men. That is what Bob Mueller did. That man shouldn't have been close to being a special counsel. He couldn't stand Trump. As the Washingtonian magazine was glorifying James Comey--I believe it was in a 2013 issue where they said, basically, in essence, if the world were burning down, James Comey knew that the one person who would be standing with him would be Bob Mueller--Comey is the very guy who admitted leaking information out in order to try to get a special counsel appointed. As I covered with Mr. Rosenstein yesterday, this is part of an FBI typical employment agreement. Everybody is supposed to sign this thing and swear to it: ``All information acquired by me in connection with my official duties with the FBI and all official material to which I have access remain the property of the United States of America. I will surrender upon demand by the FBI, or upon my separation from the FBI, all materials containing FBI information in my possession.'' If a man like Comey goes to a meeting in his official capacity of FBI Director with the President of the United States and he comes out of this and types up a memo, even though it appears it was a pretty less than unbiased memo trying to make President Trump look bad, so he commemorates it with a memo, that memo, as I discussed with Mr. Rosenstein yesterday, is probably government property. That is government information, government property. And the question is: Did he commit a crime when he leaked that information? There is a decent chance it is, yes. So where is the FBI in its investigation of James Comey's potential crime? When you look at the record and you go back, now we know from that one incident this is the person to whom he leaked, and then that got to The New York Times. Well, here is another meeting where he was the principal character there, the most likely person to have leaked. Well, lo and behold, his same conduit for leaking information that he has admitted to ends up being in place in this story. There may be at least six other places where he has leaked information, and some of them will be crimes, but because the special counsel was all about trying to strip the winner of a Presidential election, we are not going after Comey. We are not going after any of these other people. They are trying to find something. As we know from the text messages of FBI Agent Strzok, they wanted an insurance policy so that, in case Trump won, they could still get rid of him. Poor Strzok believed that no one in this country should vote-- not a single person, not even Donald Trump's family--should vote for him. It ought to be 100 million to zero. But, Mr. Speaker, it is so clear, in my days of trying cases in Federal court and State court, where you are asking questions of a jury panel to see who would be fair enough to sit on a jury, we can see that these people who were working and have been--and some still are--for the FBI, for the Department of Justice, have no business getting close to this investigation unless they are a target of investigation. Andrew Weissmann should never have been a part of the special counsel team. Peter Strzok, this is only some of the text message he sent, but he says: He asked me who I'd would vote for, guessed Kasich. It goes on: God Trump is a loathsome human. Yet he may win. Good for Hillary. It is. Would he be a worse President than Cruz? Trump? Yes, I think so. This, of course, is an exchange between Peter Strzok, or PS, and his mistress, Lisa Page, who is also working for the FBI. These people had done irreparable damage to the FBI. But worse than that, they have made a mockery of justice in the United States. What really gets me is I know how upset I was in the Bush administration when I saw somebody doing wrong. I didn't care if he was appointed by a Republican or a Democrat. I didn't care that President Bush had appointed a man or a woman to a position. What I cared about was them being righteous and doing the right thing. Now, where is my Democratic friend who will stand up and say this isn't right? We know Alan Dershowitz, a great Democrat, brilliant intellect, has done it. But where are people across the aisle who would do what I did during the Bush Presidency, pick up the phone and say: This is an outrage. What has happened under this Attorney General should never have happened. He has got to go? Where is the Democrat who has a sense of moral outrage when the justice system is just shaken to its core by people who want to take out a President because they didn't support him, they didn't want him to be there, they didn't think any American should vote for him, and they are destroying the sense of justice and our justice system? It is time for Americans to wake up. It is time to clean house, get rid of Mueller, and get some fair people in there to investigate. Mr. Speaker, I yield back the balance of my time.

Mr. GOHMERT

Mr. GOHMERT. Mr. Speaker, I do appreciate the concerns of my friends here in Congress because this is just incredible. You know, many of us have read, understood what happened during Watergate, and we thought surely there have been enough things put in as checks to prevent an administration from totally co-oping the Department of Justice. No one President should be able to have an administration that is powerful enough that it could be a self- sustaining party where all of the powers, whether it is the IRS that has people in key places that prevent people from guilt giving, for example, proper tax status to opponents of an administration so that they stand a better chance of being defeated in running for a second election. It happened in the Obama administration. And to the great embarrassment or what should be embarrassment of the Obama administration, of the IRS, and of the United States Congress, nothing was done. It appears crimes were committed. Nothing was done. We are just aghast. How could this happen? Surely the DOJ would jump into the IRS and correct this and stop this so that the IRS could not be weaponized as a political tool. I mean, Nixon may have dreamed of that at some point, but we are not aware of it. I mean, it is just hard to believe that anybody would anticipate using the powers of government in such a flagrant form as we are finding out almost every day now. New allegations, not just--not allegations; new facts show that corruption and political animus and anything but justice was being conducted for a number of years in the Department of Justice. You know, as an assistant district attorney in east Texas, as a judge getting to know and hearing so many different Federal agents testify, most people felt like, gosh, if the FBI comes in, these are the guys in the white hats. But much of America has seen what can only be styled as real corruption that has turned those white hats into a stinking brown for some of the top people. We heard Christopher Wray, the FBI Director, saying: You know, I think of the FBI and I think about these thousands of great Federal agents across the country who care about their country and protecting people's lives and protecting the law. Well, yeah, I think about that, too, until my mind comes back here to Washington, and not just a swamp, but areas that have become a cesspool. It is unbelievable to think--I mean, I saw ``All the President's Men'' the other night about Watergate and Deep Throat. And as I watched, oh, my gosh, you mean somebody in the White House may have had contact with somebody that may have had funds that could be used? I mean, you look at what is coming out in the news every day and it makes that look like Keystone Cops--nothing compared to the extent that this administration used the Justice Department. And going back to the IRS, what did Rosenstein or all these other great Justice Department officials do for us in cleaning up the mess at the IRS? Nothing, nothing, nothing. What did Eric Holder and Loretta Lynch do to clean things up? Well, they just kept dumping more and more dirt in that washing machine. Just when you thought it couldn't get any worse, then you find that a reporter sees the husband of someone being investigated in a clandestine meeting, in an area they thought nobody would notice. And what do they want to do at the Justice Department? We find out they want to go after that reporter. They want to go after that reporter because this reporter actually was reporting some things that might help get some things cleaned up. They say: We don't want things cleaned up. We want to keep our little cesspool tight and friendly, where we know all the players and all the swamp rats. We have got to have a massive clean out of what has been happening, but it is not happening. Then we find out, gee, there was this investigation regarding Russia trying to violate the law, pay bribes, pay payoffs, anything they could do to corner the market on uranium and get United States uranium in their own control. And, gee, who ends up having their fingerprints on that? A guy named Rosenstein. In fact, then you see one of the people involved in the investigation of corruption and uranium and payoffs, well, there is Rod Rosenstein's name. Now, he has an assistant sign for him asking the judge to seal the records so we can't know exactly what all was done by the FBI. It is kind of like we find out there is someone, the undercover agent that the FBI was using, that the Justice Department was using, and they get an agreement, a nondisclosure agreement. I mean, the only reason I can think of they would want a nondisclosure agreement at the FBI is so that the informant wouldn't turn around and talk about how dirty they have been. I mean, why would they get a nondisclosure agreement? I might expect the guy who was the informant demanding a nondisclosure agreement from the FBI and from the Justice Department: You can't talk about what all I did; you can't talk about the things I did because the people I was working undercover for you on, they might try to kill me, so I demand a nondisclosure agreement from the Justice Department, from the FBI, so you won't disclose things that will get me killed. But, no, that is not what happened. Under the Obama administration, Loretta Lynch ``Injustice Department,'' we have a nondisclosure agreement that the person who risked his life couldn't disclose what was going on. Sounds like somebody, to me, at the FBI and the Justice Department had a pretty dirty conscience and they didn't want to be outed. And at every turn: Oh, well, that was sealed. Oh, well, that is a nondisclosure agreement. Oh, you can't have access to that. The FBI and the Justice Department and people that we have been questioning have really kind of gotten themselves in a position where they are above the law. They are above Congress. And in this country, the branch that the Founders thought would have the least control ever--that was the judiciary; they are small; they don't really have any power--they are legislating and running the executive branch from under their robes. At the same time, you have got the executive branch and the Department of Justice that has become a new playground for people who want to write like Kafka, ginning up charges, knocking down doors in the wee hours of the morning: Oh, were they a threat? Well, no, not really, but we just need to intimidate them. It is what we do in the Justice Department nowadays. We are the Department of intimidation. I am telling you, Mr. Speaker, there has got to be a material change. There has got to be. There are too many people currently in the Justice Department and the top of the FBI--not these fine young agents across the country who have given everything they had, even though Mueller removed their ability to have wise counsel because he got rid of the long-toothed people that had the experience and the wisdom to know how to bring these agents along. He purged the training materials so FBI agents could not know how to discern if somebody had been radicalized. There is just so much, that almost needs to start from scratch; and we are having to deal with the players like Rosenstein who have been in that system as they were part of the process while it was corroding and, really, infecting. I thank my friends for caring enough about what is going on to stand up and raise Cain. But, like I said, you know, just when you think, well, that has got to be the final shoe dropping, then we have this story that the wife of the demoted DOJ official actually worked for the firm that put together, was behind, the anti-Trump dossier that we believe may very likely have been used in order to surveil the Trump campaign, in order to use the DOJ, working in collusion with not only Russia, but also the Hillary Clinton campaign, in order to elect a candidate who had no chance otherwise. Well, a funny thing happened on the way to using the DOJ and Fusion GPS and the Russians in order to get Hillary Clinton elected--she didn't get elected. But that certainly doesn't owe anything to Nellie Ohr or Bruce Ohr or these people who have been occupying the Department of Justice as it tainted and turned from, what Christopher Wray says, an F that stood for ``fidelity'' to, now, an I that stands for ``infidelity.'' Let's get back to fidelity in the Justice Department. Let's get back to an incorruptible Justice Department. I am hoping and praying we are heading that direction, but I am just not seeing it yet.

Mr. GOHMERT

Mr. GOHMERT. Mr. Speaker, there are a lot of big things going on. More things will be coming out. We have had an interesting day of it today. Hopefully, the House and Senate--I think we are going to get a tax cut bill done. I think it is unfair to just call it a tax reform because it doesn't explain. We did tax cuts for everybody. We didn't change the percentage on the wealthiest Americans. And I understand the thinking. Look, if we, as Republicans, change, we lower all the tax rates, then the Democrats will say: See, you're doing a big tax cut for the wealthy. So I get it. But as the old saying in Washington goes: No matter how cynical you get, it's never enough to catch up; not in Washington. Okay, so we didn't change the top percentage rate of tax on the wealthiest Americans. That is the only one we didn't change. And so what has happened? Our friends across the aisle have said: See, this is a tax cut to help the rich. That is the one tax rate we didn't change, so it wouldn't have mattered. I would love to have just seen--all right, we are getting rid of all of these tax rates. We are going to have one tax rate, and I would love it to be the tax rate that the Bible suggests in the synagogue or church; and that is 10 percent of your firstfruits. And why not 10 percent to the government after 10 percent of the firstfruits to the church or synagogue, if those are your religious beliefs? Let's see. I forget which candidate, one of the candidates used to say: Hey, if 10 percent is good enough for God, why shouldn't it be good enough for the government? But anyway, it was a nice thought. But we are still doing a little bit of social engineering by trying, apparently, in the tax bill, to give a lot of help to the folks who need it. There are some things that I hope will return. I have heard from folks in my district, some accountants who have clients that, they do pay enough in medical expenses. If they don't get to deduct that, they are going to be bankrupt so, hopefully, that will be something that comes back and gets put in our version. The last people we need to harm are the people who have got no other place to go. They are on Social Security, they are heading toward the end of life on this planet, and then the government stabs them in the back. I mean, that is what Bill Clinton did back in 1993. Not only did he put a tax on their Social Security in 1993, he made it retroactive. So it wasn't just taxing Social Security for the future, it made it retroactive, and that was terribly tragic. I wish we were making our tax cuts retroactive so that the working poor would get the help much quicker. But everybody in America is going to get some help with reduction, massive reduction of the largest tariff that any industrialized nation puts on its own goods when they are produced. It is called the corporate tax. They make you think, oh, these greedy corporations, they are paying that tax. They don't pay that tax. Just like Warren Barnett--Warren Buffett. Warren Barnett was a great trial lawyer. I don't know if he is still alive or not. I have heard him; he is an amazing guy, Democrat, amazing lawyer, really amazing trial lawyer. But Warren Buffett, although he keeps saying publicly he wouldn't mind paying more taxes, his actions seem to indicate that they are paying massive amounts of money to lawyers to keep his company from paying the billions of dollars that I am told is owed. But anyway, we will see what happens there. I am very hopeful that we are going to get a tax deal done, and we are going to bring it to the floor of this House, and we are going to pass it, and we will sing God bless Kevin Brady and the Ways and Means Committee, at least those who made it possible, made it happen. Paul Ryan has been very helpful in moving that direction on the tax bill, so that will be a great thing if we can get it done. I am also grateful to the chairman of the Judiciary Committee today for the hearing that he required that we have. We had the FBI Director, Director Wray, come over and testify in front of us, and I am optimistic, with Director Wray. Of course, I was optimistic with Director Comey when I first got to question him because I saw Comey, oh, this is great. Finally, we have gotten rid of Mueller and all the damage he has done to the FBI. As I pointed out to Director Wray today, he took over a very weakened FBI from the one that he took over as FBI Director under Bush, because when Director Mueller took over as FBI Director--I have tried to figure out why he would do this, and the only thing I can figure is he wanted a bunch of young, ``yes people'' working for him; because it goes pretty common sense that people with the most experience are going to be in a position to tell you, as the new FBI Director, when you are choosing to go down a road that is going to create problems; because FBI agents who have been there for 25 years, like so many of ours were, had been, they are an oddity now, but that was because Mueller wanted young, fresh, saluting ``yes men'' who would salute the flag, salute him, and not be in a position to say: Well, Director, could I make a suggestion, sir? You know, we did exactly what you were suggesting back in 1996, or 1993, or 1988, or 1986. We did that back then, and here is what happened. So if you would allow me, sir, I would recommend that we look at this, that, or the other. Apparently, Director Mueller didn't want those kind of people in the FBI, so he started a 5-year, up-or-out program. So our thousands of FBI agents across the country, in the hundreds of offices that are apparently around--the 5-year, up-or-out program is basically this: if you are in a supervisory position anywhere in the world for 5 years, at the end of the 5 years, you either must get out of the FBI, or, the way it was interpreted by so many FBI agents, you are going to have to come ride a cubicle up here in Washington. People all over the country and world who were working for the FBI said: I'm not taking my family to Washington, D.C., and, with all my training and experience, going to ride a cubicle somewhere. I need to be out protecting people, helping people. As The Wall Street Journal pointed out in an article that wasn't-- didn't seem like it was all that far into his 10 years--actually, it turned into 12, I believe, Director Mueller had, in devastating the FBI. He made some huge mistakes, cost millions of dollars. Whether it was a software program, this program, that program, he had all these ideas, and there were plenty of people who had had enough experience in the different areas that, if he hadn't run them off, could have said: This is not a good idea, sir, if I could suggest-- He didn't want to hear from those people. He ran them off; thousands and thousands of years of law enforcement experience. He ran them off. It would be interesting to see what the average age of the FBI agents were when he left, compared to when he started. And I realize, there are so many old goats that get long in the tooth, but you don't run them off because they are older. Those are some of the most valuable people you could have. The only reason you should run anybody off is if they have just been so cantankerous that it is a problem, they are not doing their job. But he ran them off because they had been in a supervisory position for 5 years. So you would see offices that had an agent in charge, 20, 25, 26 years of experience, and they would finish their 5 years and say: I'm getting out. I didn't want to get out. I wanted to serve my country, even though I make a lot less in the FBI. But you are forcing me out, so I will go make a whole lot more money. Wish I could still be here. But FBI Director Mueller had other ideas. Director Mueller severely hampered the FBI. There was a lot of damage that was done. And perhaps if he hadn't run off so many good, experienced people, all those thousands and thousands of years of experience, perhaps there would have been more elder statesmen in the FBI when he was allowing FBI agents to manufacture, fabricate evidence, hide evidence, and just fabricate a case out of whole cloth against Senator Ted Stevens. I have met him. He was kind of short with me, but that is no reason to prosecute somebody. But it was for the FBI, as Director Mueller created it, the way he wanted it. But there was, apparently, nobody who would step up. The people who had enough experience and enough confidence in their positions to say: Director Mueller, you have got a grave injustice going on here. You are creating a case where there was none. You hammered this guy. You took all his evidence. You took his computer, all his documents. You raided his bank, got his bank records. You got all his records. He has got nothing except what you allow him to have back. You took everything. And all of the evidence is pretty clear. He overpaid by hundreds of thousands of dollars for the improvement. There is no case here for saying he got $600,000, $700,000 improvements, whatever it was, to his home for free. He overpaid dramatically more than the improvements were worth or cost anybody else. Supposedly, there was even a message that the contractor said: You are overpaying. And the Senator made clear: They watch me like a hawk. Just cash the check. I'd rather overpay than have them come after me someday. And what happened? You had an FBI that had run off too much experience--well, Director Mueller did--and there was nobody before the verdict that would step up and say: The FBI is doing the wrong thing here. This is injustice. We have rogue FBI agents that have got to be reined in. At least one. Fortunately, there were FBI agents with consciences, unlike the lead agent that Mueller allowed to stay on, even after he got rid of the whistleblower. Mueller didn't want a whistleblower around; not somebody that would be honest, not somebody that would step forward and say: You created a case against a U.S. Senator when there was no case. He had done nothing wrong, and you tried it the week before his election, and he lost by, what, 1,000 or so votes? And he would have won but for the FBI, under Director Mueller, destroying a man and robbing him of his finances, destroying his reputation, and Director Mueller, as FBI Director, got this man fired for nothing. Because the truth was he overpaid. He should have gotten adoration for what he did. But not in Mueller's FBI. I haven't seen anything to indicate the prosecutors knew of the fabrication and the fraud by the lead FBI agent. If that ever materializes, then I would want to find out where those prosecutors are and make sure the world knows of the injustice that they participated in--actually, crime. It is a crime when you fraudulently charge and convict somebody of a crime and you know there is no crime. You know you fabricated the case, but such was Director Mueller's FBI. I had great hope for James Comey coming in. Some things were asked today in our hearing about: Well, did President Trump ask for a loyalty oath from you? Something like that. I mean, there is nothing wrong with a President saying to a person that he has the power to remove or put in office: Now, I expect you to be loyal to me. What that would mean for a normal person is I expect you to come tell me if there is a problem. And I expect you to be loyal to me so that if there is some problem I am creating, you come tell me, and you don't go do a memo and twist the memo around to try to make it look like I did something wrong. I expect you to be loyal to me and not do anything to me different than you would any other President; that you would serve your country and the President with distinction and just not go leaking things to try to hurt me. You know, just be loyal. That is not asking for anybody to commit a crime. It is not asking for anybody to obstruct justice. It is asking that you just be fair to me as your boss. Will you do that? It makes sense to ask a question like that when you have already seen so much injustice done to you by the Justice Department. We didn't even know when President Trump took office just how horrendous the injustices were that were lurking behind the closed doors at the Justice Department because it wasn't a Justice Department. It was a ``Just Us'' department. The way it sounds like it was going is: We will protect the people who we think will be in the next administration, and heaven help the people if they knock our chosen out of the executive office at 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue, because we will perform a coup, we will get them out. We will use the Justice Department because, let's face it, after all, there is just a very thin veneer at the top of political appointments. We are just under that level. We will still really control things. That is kind of the way it sounds like it was going. When you have got a guy like Andrew McCabe--you know, the Bible says, when you are married, the two become one--his wife running for office, getting hundreds of thousands of dollars, according to what we understand from Donna Brazile, you know, Hillary Clinton basically took over the Democratic National Committee. So if the DNC was giving money to McCabe's wife, they all knew who to thank. Let's face it, they knew Hillary Clinton deserved a thank-you note. And the one who owed the thank-you note to Hillary Clinton has a husband who is going to prosecute her? Probably not. Probably not. Those are the kinds of things we are finding. Today, in our hearing, FBI Director Wray was asked a series of questions about Peter Strzok. I thought about asking some questions about Strzok, but I figured so many people would have questions, I would go a different direction. But Strzok was a former number two for counterintelligence. He was removed from Mueller's investigation team this summer after an inspector general discovered he was exchanging politically charged messages with a mistress, Lisa Page, who is an FBI Attorney in the Office of the General Counsel. We heard from Director Wray today that: Though many of us think of the FBI and think of ``Federal Bureau of Investigation,'' that many FBI agents think the F doesn't stand for ``Federal,'' but stands for ``fidelity.'' But apparently in the case of the number two person in counterintelligence, Peter Strzok, that fidelity was not an F; it was an I, ``infidelity,'' because he was being unfaithful. He was engaged in infidelity and not fidelity. Nobody is selling that to us. He was engaged in infidelity and was enjoying, in the course of his infidelity, being disloyal to the man who would be and ultimately was his boss, the President of the United States, Donald Trump. But instead of being fired for his improprieties, for his bias that was clearly affecting his job, Director Mueller, the man who did so much damage, ran off thousands of years of experience that could step forward and guide younger agents away from pitfalls. He ran them off. You are going to have younger agents without the proper guidance from the white hairs or no hairs. He ran them off. He didn't want people with too much experience and might question something that he ordered. And when there is no accountability, there is nobody with more experience that can come alongside and say: Look, I have been here. I have seen a lot of things. Let me tell you, I see how you are going in this direction. Let me encourage you. Don't go there. I have seen too many people go that way. No. Mueller made sure the consciences of the FBI, at least as many as he could run off, were gone. So instead of being fired, though, when they found out that Strzok hated President Trump's guts and worshipped Hillary Clinton and skewed the case--I mean, Strzok knew that if FBI Director Comey went out and said that Hillary Clinton had been grossly negligent, then he would have been stating on the record that Hillary Clinton had committed a crime. And since he wanted to protect Hillary Clinton so she could be President, he changed the language. So that Director Comey would not implicate Hillary Clinton in committing a crime, he changed the words ``grossly negligent'' to ``excessively careless,'' as I understand it, and that wasn't necessarily a crime. He was covering up. The man should have been gone. So what do they do? Well, he was reassigned to the FBI's HR department. It is unclear what Strzok's job duties were in his new position, but when he was asked about the nature of that move today, Director Wray stated that he did not consider it to be a demotion. It wasn't a disciplinary action. Director Wray did not want to discipline the guy for covering up for Hillary Clinton, for skewing the case, for mishandling the case to make sure that Hillary Clinton wasn't implicated. No, no, no. Clearly, he has a bias. Clearly, he hates Donald Trump before and after he is President, but that is no problem. We sure don't want to lose a guy just because he hates Donald Trump and loves Hillary Clinton and excuses the Justice Department to suit his love for Hillary Clinton and his hate for Donald Trump. No, let's not demote him, let's not fire him. Let's just have a move here, maybe even make his life easier, I guess. But in quoting from the response of Director Wray to a question posed by my friend Andy Biggs from Arizona, Mr. Biggs said: ``Okay. Mr. Strzok was reassigned. It seems it was an odd lateral move. Are you saying that was a lateral move for him?'' Director Wray said: ``Reassigned away from the special counsel investigation to the human resources department. I understand that may sound to some of you like a demotion, but I can assure you that in a 37,000-person organization with a $9 billion budget and offices all around the country and in 80 countries around the world, that I think our human resources department is extremely important, and a lot of what they do is cutting edge, best practice stuff. So it is a very different kind of assignment, certainly, but that is why I don't consider it disciplinary or a demotion.'' So based on what Director Wray said, Peter Strzok was neither punished nor demoted after the IG discovered him engaging in politically biased conduct during the course of a key investigation that was of a political nature. Look, nobody is demanding that our FBI agents not go vote on election day. They have that right. In some cases, they have an obligation because they know so much about what is going on. It is just very unfortunate when they know so much of what is going on and they know the people they are voting for appear to have committed crimes so we have got to change language and cover for them. Not only was he not punished nor fired, but Peter Strzok was put into a position that Director Wray described as extremely important. Strzok was sending these messages to a fellow FBI agent that he was having an extramarital affair with. Why on Earth would you give someone who was caught sleeping around on his wife with a fellow employee an extremely important position? Why would you give them an extremely important position in the human resources department if you are Director of the FBI? Mr. Speaker, I want to start fresh with a great FBI Director, but I am a little concerned here. Do you think it is a good qualification when someone is caught being engaged in infidelity--not the fidelity you talked about the F in FBI standing for, but engaged in infidelity. They broke their marriage oath, their marriage vow, and that is who you want handling your human resources? Because that is an extremely important position. So we need the guy who was skewing justice, that is who we need? It is kind of ridiculous. Strzok wasn't punished. Mr. Speaker, I appreciate your indulgence. I yield back the balance of my time.

Mr. GOHMERT

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

Mr. GOHMERT

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

Mr. GOHMERT

Mr. GOHMERT. Mr. Speaker, I appreciate my colleague pointing out that we have done something good here. When people talk about the tax bill that was passed, it is not everything everybody wanted, that is for sure. It is not everything Republicans wanted, but it is going to do good for most every American. I would love to have seen just an across-the-board tax cut. I would like to have seen a tax cut that brought everybody to pay the same exact percentage. You make more, you pay more; you make less, you pay less. For those who believe in a tithe, that kind of always worked well for the Lord. Everybody pays the same percentage, whether it is a widow's mite or hundreds of billions of dollars or the billions that Warren Buffett refuses to have his company pay even though he says he would love to pay for taxes. He ought to tell his lawyers that. In any event, there are people who were paying 10 percent who are now not going to pay any taxes. I don't see how anybody across the aisle could keep saying it is going to be worse for the poor, because those who were paying 10 percent tax are not going to pay any tax. It is good for them. It is great for them. I would love to see everybody have something that they pay in-- something--so that they have some investment in the income tax system. It seems to help focus people's attention on government when they see how much they are paying into the Federal Government when it is a real percentage. The bill cuts completely any income tax for those who were paying 10 percent. For those who were paying 25 percent, they are being cut to 12 percent. It is a tremendous tax advantage for them. In fact, you see that all the way through the tax bill, the creation of which was led by Kevin Brady, chairman of the Ways and Means Committee. He did an incredible job bringing all the different interests together to get a great bill. At the upper end, the 39.6 percent tax was not changed. I guess the reason the committee decided they wanted to leave the 39.6 for the wealthiest Americans in place is because that way the Democrats could not come in--I know this was the thinking: If the only tax rate we don't lower is for the wealthiest Americans, we leave that where it is, then they can't come in and say we are cutting taxes for the wealthiest Americans and putting it on the backs of the poorest Americans. Well, they have come in and said it anyway. We might as well have given everybody a fair tax break instead of leaving the wealthiest taxes right where they were, 39.6 percent, because they still came in and said it. Schumer is still saying it in the Senate. The truth is, when you look at the tax rates that people will pay and the exemptions being doubled, it is going to be much better for most people. There were some things in the Senate bill I liked. I didn't realize, but I heard from people back home, we do have some seniors who do pay so much in medical expense that takes such a tremendous amount of the small income they have that they do have enough to take deductions for their medical expenses. If they are not allowed to take those medical expenses as deductions, accountants tell me many of their clients will end up being bankrupt. The Senate left that provision in, and I am hopeful that that will be in the final bill. We don't need to be hurting our seniors who are paying so much in medical expenses even though they were assured ObamaCare would cure all ills when it came to healthcare. If you like your insurance, you can keep it. Well, that turned out to be a lie. If you like your doctor, you could keep your doctor. That turned out to be a lie. If you liked the medicine you were taking, you could keep taking that medicine. It turned out to be a lie. In fact, there were actual incentives in ObamaCare for the insurance companies not to bring in the best cancer treaters, the best heart facilities, because that means people with cancer and heart problems would sign up for those policies, and they might have to pay too much. So it was really deviously inventive by the architect of ObamaCare to create a system that is going to be so bad it is going to fail at some point. The hope was that, when that day came, people would throw up their hands say: This is awful. I never thought I would say this, but maybe we are better off just letting the government take over every bit of healthcare. Well, the government was already close to taking over all healthcare under ObamaCare, but as Senator Obama told people on video, it is basically government running all phases of healthcare. They give it a deceptive name: single-payer. But we can't get there in one step. It will take a couple of steps. Well, ObamaCare was step one, and a complete government takeover of people's healthcare was step two. Fortunately, if we can add to the House bill what was added into the Senate bill, a complete repeal of the individual mandate, then we will be on our way to bringing down premiums, to having people choose the health insurance policies they want. Ultimately, we have got to encourage people to put their own money not in the pocket of the government, not in the pocket of the insurance company, but into their own health savings accounts and build that up. That is the hope for the future for young people: to have enough money in their account down the road that, by the time they become senior citizens, not only will they not want government intrusion, they won't need it. Those that are chronically ill, chronically poor, and cannot work, we have got to reform welfare and return the requirements that were put in place that caused single moms for the first time in 30 years to start making much more than they had, when their income had been flat for 30 years when adjusted for inflation. I was surprised to see that on a chart--on a graph at Harvard, at a seminar up there; but sure enough, the facts spoke for themselves. There are things we can do to help people return to work, to take care of themselves, make their own decisions, and I think this tax bill will help do that, especially if we put in the repeal of the individual mandate, as surprised as I am to keep hearing about how this tax bill is going to hurt the poor in America. When the people who are paying 10 percent tax don't pay any tax, the people who were paying 25 percent start paying 12 percent tax, it is just really hard to accept someone saying that they are going to be paying more tax to help the rich when the rich did not get a tax reduction from the 39.6 percent. I do want to take up a critically important decision by the Supreme Court of the United States. There is an article from Ian Mason today: ``President Donald Trump's travel ban is once again to largely go back into effect after the Supreme Court of the United States stayed two lower courts' injunctions Monday. ``The orders come in response to filings by the Department of Justice Friday, asking the Supreme Court to stay the preliminary injunctions in the two main travel ban cases, Hawaii v. Trump in the Ninth Circuit and International Refugee Assistance Project v. Trump in the Fourth Circuit. These cases have been proceeding up and down the Federal court system for months.'' I do think, in the Judiciary Committee, it is time that we start bringing in some of these renegade judges who were not content to wear black robes and be judges, but took on the role of being legislators and being elected executives. They took all three branches into themselves, because basically what power the President didn't have to fully invoke the travel ban, Congress had given him any extra that he needed. He had full authority to do what he did. Anybody can see that people could come in from countries where radical Islam was destroying the countries, and there were messages from the leaders of those radical Islamic groups who said: We are getting our soldiers into these groups of refugees that are going into Western civilization so that we can destroy them. I mean, they weren't even hiding what they were doing, although they didn't tell us which individuals were their soldiers. We had heard previously about vetting of individuals. We heard testimony in our committee that at least people coming from Iraq, when they applied to be refugees, they had some background we could compare and contrast what they were saying about their reasons to come in. We even had fingerprints on IDs. We had their criminal records from Iraq. We had their government records from Iraq. But as they came from Syria, some other countries, when Yemen was in chaos, we did not have the government records. We didn't have fingerprints. We didn't have anything. We were told by those charged with the obligation of vetting these individuals: We will vet them, but we have got absolutely nothing to vet them with, so they will end up coming in, because we have got nothing to say that what they are saying is not true, even when they are radical Islamists who want to kill Americans and destroy our way of life. What President Trump did was exceedingly reasonable, yet we had a Deputy Attorney General, Sally Yates, step forward and say: I am going to take on the role of President and justice and legislator and tell you I am not going to defend this law because I have judged it not to be up to my standards. Well, she was wrong. She was wrong then and she is wrong today as she talks about issues even after her judgment is shown to be so flawed, as the Supreme Court has. I know the travel ban was changed somewhat, but still, from what the Supreme Court has indicated, the President had the power to do what he did to protect Americans, despite what ``Justice'' Sally Yates said, without her black robe on, when she defied orders and defied the Constitution and refused to carry out her duties. So that is a bit of good news. Sarah Carter has another great story today that she got out. It can be found on hannity.com: ``FBI Supervisor Booted From Mueller Probe Interviewed Mike Flynn.'' The article says: ``A supervisory special agent who is now under scrutiny after being removed from Robert Mueller's special counsel's office for alleged bias against President Trump also oversaw the Bureau's interviews of embattled former National Security Advisor Michael Flynn, this reporter has learned. Flynn recently pled guilty to one count of lying to the FBI last week. ``FBI agent Peter Strzok was one of two FBI agents who interviewed Flynn, which took place on January 24 at the White House, said several sources. The other FBI special agent who interviewed Flynn is described by sources as a field supervisor in the `Russian Squad, at the FBI's Washington field office,' according to a former intelligence official with knowledge of the interview. ``Strzok was removed from his role in the special counsel's office after it was discovered he had made disparaging comments about President Trump in text messages between him and his alleged lover, FBI attorney Lisa Page, according to The New York Times and Washington Post, which first reported the stories. Strzok is also under investigation by the Department of Justice Inspector General for his role in Hillary Clinton's email server and the ongoing investigation into Russia's election meddling. On Saturday, the House Intelligence Committee's chairman, Devin Nunes, chided the Justice Department and the FBI for not disclosing why Strzok had been removed from the special counsel 3 months ago, according to a statement given by the chairman. ``The former U.S. intelligence official told this reporter, `with the recent revelation that Strzok was removed from the special counsel investigation for making anti-Trump text messages, it seems likely that the accuracy and veracity of the 302 of Flynn's interview as a whole should be reviewed and called into question.' '' Now, the 302 is the section 302 report summary by the FBI agent of what was said by the witness. So we have a biased witness at the FBI who is not recording what Mike Flynn said word for word. He is writing down in his notes his biased, skewed opinion of what Mike Flynn said. We know it is biased, it is skewed. Since Mike Flynn worked faithfully for so many years under--and survived--the purges over and over of Commander in Chief Obama and very, very briefly worked for Donald Trump, it would appear that Mike Flynn should have had more credibility than this Strzok character who hated Donald Trump so much. I have heard talk that Mike Flynn could have fought this, but he basically had been bankrupted by the Department of Justice. He could not afford the attorney's fees anymore and, as sometimes happens, they threatened to go after his son. So he agreed to plea on this one count, since apparently the biased, prejudiced, partisan FBI agent Strzok had something different in his notes, his summary of what Mike Flynn said than what Mike Flynn said he said. So he pled out from under the terrible legal fees and this task force that seems to have unlimited authority, that doesn't seem to be reined in by Mr. Rosenstein that appointed Mueller. Then we found out, well, heck no, of course not, because Rosenstein and Mueller were involved in getting files sealed; the facts of which, from what we understand, should have prevented the sale of American uranium from ever going forward. So it only makes sense, gee, to convince Jeff Sessions to recuse himself. He says he talked to the career guys, like Rosenstein. He considered Rosenstein a career guy. Then he appoints his buddy who helped him in the Russian investigation over a number of years, which established that Russia was trying to corner the market, that they were bribing and they were committing crimes trying to get American uranium. For heaven's sake, if all of that came out, then Hillary Clinton wouldn't have been able to get her buddies to approve that sale so that Russia could end up with so much of our uranium. Of course, if Russia didn't end up with so much of our uranium, do you really think $145 million from Uranium One--from the stockholders who ended up with the uranium and all the money that flowed with it, do you really think they would have given that to the Clinton Foundation? Because let's face it, they haven't given a dime since. If they were all that charged up with all the good the Clinton Foundation was doing, doesn't it make sense they would have kept giving after Hillary Clinton was no longer the Secretary of State and when there was still hope of her being President? Even though that is gone, gee, wouldn't they have still contributed if it was all about the good the Clinton Foundation was doing? Instead of a quid pro quo, if you get us this uranium, we will make you rich. You will hit the Russian lottery, the megamillions lottery for the Clintons. And hit the Russian lottery they did. ``A former FBI agent said the investigation into Strzok and the reported text messages between him and Page shows a `bias that cannot be ignored particularly if he had anything to do with Flynn's interview and his role in it.' ``The former U.S. intelligence official questioned, `how logical is it that Flynn is being charged for lying to an agent whose character and neutrality was called into question by the special counsel.' ``According to an anonymous source in The Washington Post, Strzok and Page had exchanged a number of texts that `expressed anti-Trump sentiments and other comments that appeared to favor Clinton.''' That was apparently between Strzok and his lover. So it is not because he is a man full of hate; apparently, he is a man full of love. ``McCabe told Flynn: `Some agents were heading over to the White House, but Flynn thought it was part of the routine work the FBI had been doing and said they would be cleared at the gate,' the source said. ``'It wasn't until after they were already in Flynn's office that he realized he was being formally interviewed. He didn't have an attorney with him,' they added.'' ``According to another source with direct knowledge of the January 24 interview, McCabe had contacted Flynn by phone directly at the White House. White House officials had spent the `earlier part of the week with the FBI overseeing training and security measures associated with their roles so it was no surprise to Flynn that McCabe had called.''' Snuck up on him. Apparently that is supposed to be a lesson: the FBI calls, you never know if it is somebody who hates you and hates the people you work for. An article by Daniel Flynn of Breitbart: ``The former Assistant Director of the FBI wonders who investigates the investigators in the wake of former Trump administration National Security Advisor Michael Flynn pleading guilty to lying to the FBI and agreeing to cooperate with special counsel Robert Mueller's probe. ``'Bob Mueller should have never been offered nor accepted the job as special counsel as he has a huge conflict of interest,' Jim Kallstrom tells Breitbart News. `He should have recused himself.''' It sounds like what I have been saying for many months now. ``Not only do observers describe Mueller and the man he recommended to replace him as FBI Director, James Comey, as close or even best friends, but the special counsel pursues an investigation heavily involving the Bureau he once led. How one maintains detachment in leading a team that includes numerous anti-Trump partisans in a probe involving one's close friend and the former Bureau for which Mueller served as Director goes unexplained. ``Other problems Kallstrom sees include the means by which investigators obtained information and what constituted probable cause to obtain it. ``'The Obama administration apparently had the advantage of using electronic surveillance, collecting information on the Trump campaign,' Kallstrom explains. `That collection, in my view, may be found to be unlawful.' ``At the very least, one administration conducting surveillance on the opposition party looking to replace it strikes as unusual if not unprecedented. In 1972, for instance, President Richard Nixon's political team relied on former agents of the FBI and CIA to gather intelligence on the Democratic Party. ``If the surveillance and investigatory methods prove unlawful, Kallstrom notes that this puts Mueller in an awkward position of looking into its close friend and perhaps the Bureau that both men once led. ``'If they used the phony dossier as the predicate for the FISA order they obtained, that could be a huge problem,' Kallstrom tells Breitbart News. `If they knew the information was phony, that is a felony. If they did not know it was phony, they were incompetent.' ``The `dossier,' which Americans belatedly discovered as an opposition research investigation funded by Hillary Clinton's campaign and other partisan sources, served as a justification in the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act court to obtain a wiretap to Trump campaign adviser Carter Page. Christopher Steele, the former British intelligence officer who compiled the opposition research dubbed an intelligence dossier in the media, admits that he neither traveled to Russia nor spoke to many of the sources for the anti-Trump document that the Clinton campaign funded and the FBI used in its investigation. ``'This whole matter with the dossier and the investigations that ensued, including FISA surveillance and the unmasking of hundreds of names, in my view, will prove to be violations of the rules set down by the Congress for unmasking, or worse, will be found to be violations of Federal law,' Kallstrom concludes. `The Justice Department should find out if the FBI paid for this phony dossier and should inspect the affidavit that was given to FISA court to determine the accuracy of their probable cause.''' Hopefully, that is what is being done at this time, but, as I understand it, the pro-Hillary Clinton people still at the Justice Department have not been forthcoming with the information. That remains to be seen. Other articles are talking about the anti-Trump text messages showing a pattern of bias on Mueller's team, by Chuck Ross today in the Daily Caller. Jonathan Easley with The Hill: ``FreedomWatch Sues to Remove Mueller.'' Thank goodness for FreedomWatch doing so. The article says: ``A conservative group filed suit on Monday seeking to remove special counsel Robert Mueller from the Justice Department's investigation into Russian meddling. ``Conservative lawyer Larry Klayman, the founder of the watchdog group FreedomWatch, filed a complaint in U.S. District Court that seeks to force the Justice Department to investigate leaks from the special counsel, as well as `the obvious conflicts of interest among staff.' ``The complaint against Attorney General Jeff Sessions and FBI Director Christopher Wray states that `it is a criminal offense to leak grand jury information' and seeks Mueller's removal. ``'Robert Mueller is not a ``man of integrity'' as the Washington, D.C., Democrat and Republican political establishment like to spin,' Klayman said in a statement. `He is just another pol who is representing his establishment benefactors in both political parties who want to see the Presidency of Donald Trump destroyed.' ``There is deep anger at Mueller on the right and growing calls for him to recuse himself from the special counsel investigation into whether Trump campaign officials had improper contacts with Moscow during the 2016 election. ``Klayman is hanging his legal effort on the notion that Mueller is too close to former FBI Director James Comey and allegations that his team has leaked damaging stories about those he's investigating to the press. The complaint also argues that Mueller has politicized the probe by hiring Democrats for his investigative team. ``Conservatives have also argued that Mueller's probe has extended beyond his mandate of investigating Russian meddling. ``More recently, conservative media and others on the right have drawn attention to Mueller's time as FBI Director, questioning why he didn't alert regulators that a subsidiary of a foreign uranium mining company was under investigation before a controversial deal for the sale of the company to a Russia-owned firm was approved. ``'He must be held accountable to the law and should not be able to do as he pleases to further his and his friends', like former FBI Director James Comey's, political agenda,' Klayman said. `We are hopeful that the court will order Justice to do its job and conduct an expeditious and impartial investigation and then order Mueller to step down as special counsel. There are others, perhaps who practice outside of the Washington, D.C., swamp, who could step in and do an honest and conflict-free investigation of so-called Russian collusion.''' Quite interesting, but this article today from Samantha Schmidt, Washington Post, is quite ironic. ``James Comey, Sally Yates and Eric Holder Defend FBI After Trump's Twitter Attack.'' Now, this is the same Eric Holder who lied to us repeatedly in our Judiciary Committee hearings. He obfuscated, concealed evidence, refused to disclose evidence, was found in contempt, but he still has the unmitigated gall to step forward as if he is a paragon of virtue and can stand up for Mueller's character, I guess. Comey also has taken to tweeting out Bible verses. I think that is wonderful. I applaud him reading the Bible. I wish he had been relying on the Bible a little more when he was FBI Director before he started preparing the statement that would indicate there was nothing to prosecute Hillary Clinton over before she was actually investigated and before he gave immunity to people, before he let her lawyer, who was a witness, sit in on conversations before he was part of exonerating her, even though the evidence that he recited made clear an offense had been committed. There were stories that the only reason he came out before the election and said he was reopening the investigation was so that he could keep FBI agents who had found all these tens of thousands of emails on Anthony Weiner's computer, Huma Abedin's--they said that this surely justifies because here are emails that she said didn't exist. So he goes public and says they reopened. If that is true, they kept those FBI agents from coming forward, resigning, or saying that he was doing what it appears now, with more evidence, that he was apparently doing, exonerating Hillary Clinton, though evidence was there to go further. I remember telling some media back then, well, we will know whether this is a serious reopening of the investigation, words like that. If he comes back in a week and says, ``Oh, no,'' before the election, ``nothing here,'' then clearly he would not have had enough time to go through all the emails. And they hadn't, but he came forward and exonerated her anyway. The New York Post had an article yesterday, the editorial board: ``Another Anti-Trump `Smoking Gun' Turns Out to Be Nothing.'' ``Once again, a supposed big break in the drive to destroy President Trump over `collusion' with the Russians during the 2016 campaign stands exposed as nothing more than bad reporting. Plus, the professionalism of the FBI looks compromised by anti-Trump bias.'' As it does by the comments by people like Yates, Holder, and Comey. It says: ``The media went berserk Friday on news that former Trump confidante Mike Flynn had copped a plea deal with special counsel Bob Mueller. All the usual suspects launched an orgy of speculation on what beans Flynn `must' have spilled. ``It all went into overdrive as ABC's Brian Ross reported that Flynn had been instructed to reach out to Moscow during the campaign: This seemed to be the long-awaited proof of collusion with Vladimir Putin against Hillary Clinton. ``Except that Ross retracted the claim hours later: The reach-out was only after election day, when any President-elect is expected to start connecting with other world leaders, U.S.-friendly or not.'' That is the whole sad thing about Mike Flynn. It was not a crime for him to reach out to the Russians after the election. The claim was that there was some big collusion to bring down Hillary Clinton, when it appears we really don't know who hacked into the DNC server. It certainly could have been an inside job involving the Awan brothers, or at least Imran Awan. Pretty sad days. The Hill reports dismissed FBI agent changed Comey's language on Clinton emails to ``extremely careless.'' Olivia Beavers, today, reported: ``The former FBI official, who was recently fired from special counsel Robert Mueller's Russia team over messages critical of President Trump, reportedly edited a key phrase that removed possible legal implications in former FBI Director James Comey's statement about his decision on the Hillary Clinton email investigation. ``Peter Strzok, who served as a counterintelligence expert at the Bureau, changed the description of Clinton's actions in Comey's statement, CNN reported Monday, citing U.S. officials familiar with the matter. ``One source told the news outlet that electronic records reveal that Strzok changed the language from `grossly negligent' to `extremely careless,' scrubbing a key word that could have had legal ramifications for Clinton. An individual who mishandled classified material could be prosecuted under Federal law for `gross negligence.' '' Pretty tragic. The article goes on to say: ``Strzok, who served as the No. 2 official leading the probe into the Clinton email server, has been thrust into the center of controversy after news of his dismissal from Comey's team. ``A group of people were part of the drafting process, using a red pen on Comey's statement before he publicly came forward, another U.S. official familiar with the matter told CNN. ``Senate Judiciary Chairman Chuck Grassley questioned the revised language change after receiving FBI records last month before CNN reported Strzok's edits. ``Mueller and his team are broadly investigating Russian interference in the 2016 election, including whether Trump campaign aides colluded with the Russians.'' And, boy, ``broadly investigating'' is an understatement. ``In July 2016, Comey said that Clinton's use of a private email server while Secretary of State was `extremely careless,' but he added that `no reasonable prosecutor' would charge her.'' Mr. Speaker--I want to finish on this note--Salem, Oregon; FOX News; Jonathan Easley reporting: ``A Mexican man, who was deported from the United States more than a dozen times was sentenced Friday in Oregon to 35 years in prison after pleading guilty to sodomy, kidnapping, sex abuse, and other charges in separate attacks on two women. ``Sergio Jose Martinez told victims' relatives he would see them in hell after sentence was pronounced Friday in a Portland courtroom.'' And I would interject, there is a decent chance they may not be at the same place he is in the next life. ``Just a day earlier, another man who had also been deported multiple times for being in America illegally, Jose Ines Garcia Zarate, was found not guilty by a jury in San Francisco in the shooting death of a woman. That case that touched off a national immigration debate.'' I just want to finish by saying that there is a lot of talk about amnesty, DACA, all these different things, but, Mr. Speaker, the truth is: until the border is secured, we should not even be talking about amnesty, about any kind of legality for people who are here illegally, because it creates another swarm across our border. And if we are going to do this, we are going to have to keep doing it every few years because the people are going to keep coming. We must build a wall where it is needed, and we must secure the border. When that is done, we can work these other things out. But until the border is secured, we should not even be talking about it. People, like these criminals, these rapists, shouldn't even have been in this country. People are dead who should be alive. People have had their lives murderously tortured through horrendous sexual assaults. So many lives have been harmed or ended. Let's secure the border, let's do what it takes, and then we can work the other things out. Mr. Speaker, I yield back the balance of my time.

Mr. GOHMERT

Mr. GOHMERT. Mr. Speaker, as folks head back to their districts--and I will be doing so shortly--it is important to take a look at some things that have been rather important here in our country. The Department of Justice does need an investigation into the matters that have been raised and clearly were not handled properly regarding the Russian Uranium One program and the sale of a significant percentage of United States uranium, ultimately, to Russia. There appears to be collusion, for sure. It is still staggering to think that the person who accepted the role as special prosecutor, Robert Mueller, would accept that, knowing that he and the person that selected him as special prosecutor, Mr. Rosenstein, were involved in the Russian investigation that went on for a number of years and involved a person working undercover and clearly established for Director Mueller, as head of the FBI, and for Mr. Rosenstein, the U.S. Attorney, that Russia was trying to corner the market by acquiring American uranium. Yet, while you had a man like Jeff Sessions trying to go out of his way to ensure that nobody could say he acted inappropriately--I think it was done prematurely, but he recused himself--not wanting to be a burden to the President. As much as Attorney General Jeff Sessions was trying to be fair and avoid even the appearance of questions about him handling the Russian investigation, you had Robert Mueller and the Deputy Attorney General acting--or appeared to be--even more inappropriately than Jeff Sessions was acting, beyond the pale of honor, as they are two people involved in the investigation of Russia acquiring American uranium, even though it wasn't just Hillary Clinton that signed off on it. It was also Eric Holder and some others. All that needed to be investigated, but not by the people who covered up the prior Russia investigation and saw to the sealing of many of the documents involving that investigation. In fact, Mr. Rosenstein's name was actually on the motion to seal matters involved in that investigation. It seemed pretty clear that if you are going to go to the trouble of sealing an investigation like that, and the extraordinary measure of getting the person who is acting undercover, force him, threaten him, get him to sign a nondisclosure agreement under threat, seems to me that wasn't an arm's-length transaction. That was done under coercion by the most powerful law enforcement people in the country at the time, threatening to bring down the full weight of the United States Government on the man who was working for them, helping them find the evidence that showed how Russia was acting so inappropriately and illegally trying to get hold of our uranium. Just when you think, ``Well, just can't be much more in the way of surprises,'' The Daily Caller's Richard Pollock has a story on November 30: ``DOD Inspector General Opens Probe Into Alleged Retaliation by Obama Holdover.'' It says: ``The Pentagon's Inspector General has launched a preliminary investigation into charges that James H. Baker, the Director of the Defense Department's Office of Net Assessment, ONA, is retaliating against a whistleblower who warned of `rigged' contracts to outside consultants, The Daily Caller News Foundation has confirmed. ``The DCNF verified through two independent sources that the Acting IG, Glenn A. Fine, initiated a formal `Whistleblower Reprisal Investigation' September 28 to look into allegations that Baker unleashed various reprisals against Adam Lovinger, a senior ONA official. Lovinger warned about potential sweetheart deals to politically connected outside contractors, including one with a woman Chelsea Clinton has referred to as her `best friend.' ``The IG is investigating Baker's actions under Presidential Policy Directive-19, an October 2012 directive designed to protect members of the intelligence community who report waste, fraud, and abuse. The directive pointedly states that it `prohibits retaliation against employees for reporting waste, fraud, and abuse.' ``Baker is an Obama holdover appointed by Secretary Ashton Carter in May 2015, who remains the ONA Director 11 months into the Trump administration.'' I might insert here: This has got to be so frustrating to the President of the United States as the Senate Democrats continue to hold up efforts to get nominations confirmed so that he can start implementing the policies that he was elected to carry out. They are thwarting him by continuing to have Obama holdovers, even though that term apparently, we are told, offends our National Security Advisor McMaster--a guy who apparently can't stand the President and is thwarting his efforts at every turn he can. But the guy is an Obama holdover. He should not be making calls, yet he is staying around, according to this information, to carry out vendettas against someone who was a whistleblower complaining of sweetheart deals to people, including Ms. Clinton's best friend. Richard Pollock from The Daily Caller goes on to say: ``Lovinger specifically protested $11.2 million in ONA contracts awarded over a decade to the Long Term Strategic Group, a company owned by Jacqueline Newmyer, a childhood friend of Chelsea Clinton. Clinton and Newmyer first met each other while attending Sidwell Friends School, an exclusive private Quaker school in the Nation's Capital. They were in each others' weddings, and, in 2011, Chelsea referred to Newmyer as her best friend. ``Lovinger's attorney, Sean M. Bigley, accuses Baker of continuing the . . . contract''--with Chelsea Clinton's friend--``in the hopes it could help him in a Clinton Presidency. `` `We submit that Baker's interest was his awareness of the LTSG- Clinton connection; his presumptive desire to exploit that to his advantage in the event of a Clinton election win; and the fact that contractors like LTSG served as a lucrative landing pad for ONA retirees,' Bigley charged in a September 13 letter to Rear Admiral Kevin Sweeney, chief of staff for Defense Secretary James Mattis. ``The IG's decision to launch a preliminary investigation occurred as former high-profile national security officials are beginning to publicly weigh in about Baker's allegedly retaliatory actions. ``Richard Perle, Ronald Reagan's former Assistant Secretary of Defense, told the DCNF of Lovinger, `He has been treated so badly. It's a disgrace.' '' He is talking about the whistleblower who pointed out this unseemly relationship and unfair awarding of contracts to the Clinton friend. Richard Pollock from The Daily Caller goes on to say: ``Perle called Baker `a shallow and manipulative character that should have gone with the change in administration.' '' Baker being the Obama holdover. In any event, it is just incredible when you think there surely can't be any more shoes to drop about improprieties from the last administration. They just keep coming. But as a former prosecutor, former judge, former chief justice, what occurred in a decision by the jury in the Kate Steinle homicide is really extraordinary. You know, when I was handling cases as a felony judge, I know sometimes juries surprised me. But in this case, for a jury to find that he wasn't--this person, this illegal alien who had been deported five times and who should have been deported the sixth, except San Francisco was protecting him, to the detriment of its residents, the jury comes back and says he wasn't even negligent in firing the gun that killed Kate Steinle. I mean, that is just staggering beyond words. But when a verdict is seen that just goes against what the evidence shows clearly, I mean, it could have easily found that, yes, they don't find him to be credible; but, of course, you had the judge--number one, you had the judge protecting him, going way beyond what would seem normal to many judges in order to protect this guy. His story was apparently that--well, actually he had several stories. So anytime a jury is presented with several different stories about how something happened coming from the same individual who is on trial, normally, is my experience in noticing, that if a jury finds that you lied to them about one thing, they seem to find it easier to find you guilty of what you are charged with. That often happens. Even sometimes when I might have been surprised that they could find someone guilty of the more serious charge, when there is a lesser included, like there was in this case--but it went back to where the jury felt like he had lied to us on this, so he is probably guilty of the crime. I mean, I am just talking from a practicality standpoint the way sometimes jurors look at things. But in this case, it didn't bother the judge. And from what the jury was allowed to hear, that the judge didn't obstruct, it should have been clear this was not an honest individual and that there is likely a very good chance he would lie to avoid a murder conviction, and that is why the different stories about how he came to shoot Kate Steinle as she walked along arm-in-arm with her father. Just incredible. This story from John Diaz of the San Francisco Chronicle says: ``As they awaited the verdict in the trial of Kate Steinle's accused killer, her parents and brother had one overriding wish. It had nothing to do with the severity of the defendant's conviction. ``Above all, they wanted it to mark the end of a public profile they neither sought nor enjoyed. Each media interview, each exploitation of Kate's name for political gain, each still shot of her smile on television only amplified the anguish of their loss. Yet they also wanted to convey their appreciation for the many strangers who, having heard their story, offered solace and assistance. `` `We just want to get this over with and move on with our lives and think about Kate on our terms. Nothing's been on our terms. It's been on everyone else's terms,' said Jim Steinle, who was strolling with his 32-year-old daughter on a crowded San Francisco pier when she was shot and killed July 1, 2015. He, his wife, Liz Sullivan, and their son, Brad Steinle, sat down with the Chronicle recently at their longtime East Bay home for an exclusive interview they planned to be their last. `` `We have never had a second of anger--not a moment,' Jim said. `Frustration, maybe, and sadness for sure, but no anger and no retaliation or vindictiveness or anything like that. We're not that kind of people. Even if this guy gets 100 years in prison, it doesn't solve anything; it doesn't help anything. We would just like people to know . . . that's the Steinles' feelings.' ``They had decided not to attend court to hear the jury's decision. ``On Thursday, the verdict arrived: Jose Ines Garcia Zarate was acquitted of all murder and manslaughter charges. He was convicted merely of being a felon in possession of a firearm. `` `We're just shocked--saddened and shocked . . . that's about it,' Jim said. `There's no other way you can coin it. Justice was rendered, but it was not served.' ``Brad said he was `not surprised,' considering the `epic failure' that led Garcia Zarate to be released on the streets and end up with a loaded handgun on the pier that day.'' ``I'm stunned that they couldn't even get him on using the weapon,'' Brad said. It really is staggering. The jury could not find him guilty of even a negligent-type homicide. Okay, you could have reasonable doubt, apparently. I don't think most people would. But, in San Francisco, all they hear about from the media and elected officials is how the illegal aliens are the victims and not so much someone like Kate Steinle as a true victim. That sets a jury up to make an inappropriate finding. The Washington Examiner reports today, Anna Giaritelli: ``Thousands of Twitter users on Friday were urging people to #boycottsanfrancisco after a jury there decided Jose Ines Garcia Zarate, a five-time deported Mexican man charged with shooting and killing Kate Steinle, was not guilty. ``The Boycott San Francisco hashtag began trending on Twitter Friday morning as people vowed not to travel there or buy goods or services produced in the city.'' Mr. Speaker, I don't normally advocate any type of boycott, and I really don't here. My thought is that people need to consider their own safety. When they are in dangerous places in the world, our State Department will issue a travel warning to Americans: Be careful. Try to avoid this area. It is not safe. It is dangerous. And I think that the Nation should have gotten a picture that in San Francisco they are far more concerned about making sure that illegal alien felons have a place for a hangout--a hideout. The Hole-in-the- Wall Gang would have been, apparently, very welcome there if they had only been illegal aliens, instead of simple outlaws. It is as if they want a monument in the Bay with a sign reading: Give us your outlaws, so long as they come in illegally. I have an article, also in the Washington Examiner by Anna Giaritelli. The headline is: ``Trump: Kate Steinle verdict more reason to `Build the Wall!' '' The President is exactly right; he is exactly right. I go back to the case of the gentleman who was, obviously, in the country illegally. I recall he had had nine DWIs. On a third DWI in Texas, it can be raised up to a felony. That is how he ended up in my court, but not on the third DWI. He had had many DWIs. It was not brought to the DA's attention, because we had a terrific DA, but it just wasn't brought to his attention that this guy already had so many DWIs. The immigration authorities hadn't done anything, until, finally, he was driving drunk, hit another car, and did serious injury to people in the car. They were very loving, caring people. But he was clearly an alcoholic. So I sent him to prison, considering the safety of people in Texas. This guy was out there driving drunk that many times. It was a wonder he hadn't killed somebody. He certainly would kill somebody if he was not stopped. And, since he had not been deported, I felt, considering the need for deterrence, for punishment, for public safety, all that dictated that I needed to send him to prison; so I did. I was shocked that, within about 6 months, he was in my court again. I recognized him, and I asked him what he was doing back in my court. He said that he was charged with another DWI as a felony. I said: But I ordered him to prison. How does he end up, just in a matter of a few months, being back in my court for another felony? And he explained that, about 3 months after I sent him to prison, he was picked up by the immigration authorities at the prison, taken to the border, ordered to walk across the border, and he did. And he said that he waited until they drove away, and then he walked back across the border and ended up back in Smith County, Texas. So, on that occasion, I thought: Man, they are going to only deport the man if I send him to prison. And we don't have a wall. President Clinton certainly was not enforcing the border sufficiently during those years, so I thought: I still have to protect people here; so I will send him to a lockdown felony substance abuse facility where he is in a lockdown, he can't go anywhere, a confined place, with others who are either drug addicts or alcoholics. I got a report 3 or 4 months after he went into the felony punishment for substance abuse defendants that the immigration authorities at the time picked him up and took him to the border. And if it happened the way that he was deported the time before, as he told me, they told him to walk across the border, he did, he waited until the border officials, the immigration officials, left, and then he came right back across the border immediately. The only thing I don't know is where he ended up, if he continued to follow the trend and continued coming back into the country. A law enforcement officer said: Well, one thing for sure, he knows he doesn't want to come back to your court because he is going to get locked up one way or another. So, in all likelihood, after the immigration officials drove away, he probably came back and went to somebody else's county where he heard they didn't have a judge like me who would enforce the law. But it put people at risk, and Americans have known that. And Candidate Trump promised to do something about it, and he sure is trying, but he needs Congress' help. I still don't have any doubt that, at some point, we are going to get concessions from Mexico that will pay for the wall, but it needs to be done for our own safety, our own benefit. And even though there are those who say that is an outrageous thing to do to Mexico, it actually is the kindest, best thing we could ever do for Mexico. Those who have been there--my wife and I honeymooned in Mexico--it is a beautiful, beautiful place, a wonderful place. We have vacationed there, certainly not in recent years. But it is incredible, the beauty that lies in different places in Mexico. And we know--from people there and from people who have come from Mexico into the United States: many of them I have gotten to know and love, people I went t church with, people who came legally--these are hardworking, God-fearing folks. And although it might be an over generalization, still the fact is that most of the people who emigrate to the United States from Mexico whom I have ever gotten to know--and it is a lot--they love God, they love their family, and they are hardworking. I also have to think an abundance of those three feelings are what made America the greatest, freest, most opportune country in the history of the world. I was reading again last night about Solomon's reign in Israel. Israel didn't even have the individual assets during that incredible wise man's reign--well, wise until he started having so many wives. That will take anybody's wisdom away from them. But an incredible place to have lived, with all of the advantages that were found in Israel, back during Solomon's reign. But they didn't have individual opportunity, individual assets, individual freedoms, like we have in America. And some people get to thinking--because they don't know the history of the world--they get to thinking that: Gee, even if things don't work out and we lose our freedom here in America, another America will pop up somewhere: a country that loves freedom to the extent that its own citizens will travel to other places in the world and fight and die for other people's freedom. I mean, there has just never been a place like the United States of America. And I have mentioned him before, and I will mention him again. The gentleman from west Africa named Ebenezer, an older gentleman, who, with other west Africans, met with me before I left. My wife had been there with Mercy Ships. And, ultimately, at the end of our reception together, he pointed out and said: America has been getting weak, and we were excited when you elected your first Black President, but we have seen America get weaker and weaker. And you need to know and tell people in Washington that when America gets weak, we suffer. He said: You know, we are Christians. We all know where we are going when we die. But our only chance of having peace in this life is if America is strong. There has not been another country, that I can find, in the history of the world that fought for, not imperialism, as some ignorant of history have said about the United States. Obviously--it should be obvious--not imperialism, because people in Germany and France speak German and they speak French, and people in Japan speak Japanese. I mean, we were not out for imperialism, we were out for freedom. We liberated Kuwait under George H. W. Bush. We didn't demand that they become colonies of the United States. They are an independent nation. In Bosnia, in so many places, we have spilled American blood for the freedom and benefit of others. There has never been a nation like this that had so many individual assets and opportunities. But whether or not they will continue has a lot to do with what this body does. A wall between us and Mexico--where it is appropriate, where it is needed--would be the best thing that we could do for Mexico because they have the natural resources, they have a better location for trade than the United States. They have hardworking, God-fearing people. So why are they not one of the top ten economies in the world? It is clear the answer is corruption. Why is there so much corruption in Mexico? Because of the drug cartels and the drug money, the tens or hundreds of billions of dollars--billions, with a B, of dollars--that has gone to the drug cartels through the purchases of drugs, and, of course, they have gotten into bringing people across the border illegally. Border patrolmen have told me on many occasions I have been down there during the night that there is not an inch of the border between Mexico and the United States that is not under the auspices of some drug cartel. Some drug cartels, I was told, allow some Mexican gangs to carry out their jurisdiction and enforce their jurisdiction on that part of the border they control, but what the border patrolmen would tell me is that there is no one who comes across the border illegally in that drug cartel's sector who does not pay or does not do something to get the permission of the drug cartel to come in; because they are all told, when they are brought in illegally, that for those who still owe money and have agreed to work in the city where you are ordered to go by the drug cartel, if you fail to keep paying the drug cartels the money you owe them, you keep selling drugs to repay the money or engage in prostitution to repay the money, if you fail to do that: We have people all over the U.S. They will come and they will kill you. This stuff is going on in the United States. When Woodrow Wilson was President, certainly not my favorite President, but even Woodrow Wilson, after a Mexican gang led by Pancho Villa came across the U.S. border one time too many and killed a bunch of American families, Woodrow Wilson said enough is enough. They didn't have the wherewithal to build a wall where they needed it back then, so he sent American troops. Something new called the National Guard was also utilized. I have asked for the official number of U.S. troops that Woodrow Wilson, as President, sent to the border to enforce the border, and I have gotten anywhere from 15,000 to 150,000. I continue to get different figures. It may have been 75,000. Regardless, Woodrow Wilson sent American troops to stop people from illegally entering the country. He also sent a general after Pancho Villa. In the last administration, I have heard it said that no one has done more than the Obama administration to protect our border. I know no one said that intentionally misleading. They just were not aware that Woodrow Wilson sent potentially tens of thousands of American troops to the border so that nobody came across into the United States illegally to kill Americans the way Pancho Villa had done that invoked President Wilson into sending the troops. President Trump doesn't want to have to send so many precious American lives to stand around the border protecting us. Why should they, when, in so many places, all we need is to build a wall and have it enforced the way Israel enforces its wall. The irony about the Israeli wall, as I have visited and been shown around their so-called wall, 75 percent of the Israeli wall that has saved an abundance of children's lives who were being killed by Palestinian radical Islamists--they could walk across, right into a basketball court or a schoolyard, blow themselves up, killing as many children as they could; walk into a restaurant where innocent people were sitting, having pleasant times together, many families, and blow themselves up to kill as many Israelis as possible. They did a remarkable job of cutting the violence by building a wall, 75 percent of which is a fence. The difference is, though, that their fence is monitored 24/7, and nobody comes across without them noticing and having people on the spot before the person can actually get across. We could do that. If Israel can do that, we could do that. Although there are Mexican leaders who have appeared to have been outraged, they have to know deep in their heart that, if we build a wall and stop the flow of American money, billions of American dollars into Mexico's drug cartels, they can't fund the corruption; they can't keep killing any police official that gets in their way, putting their heads on pikes to set an example for others that you don't mess with the drug cartels in Mexico. If we bring that flow of billions of dollars to a tiny trickle, then Mexico can begin to experience the kind of success that they should be experiencing. We could be the best neighbor Mexico could ever have if we just help them by building a wall, stopping anything from crossing the border illegally, including drugs, and you would have people wanting to go to Mexico and live permanently from America if they could trust the law enforcement situation there, which they really can't right now. I know there are plenty of Americans who have bought property there, but the restrictions on Americans buying property in Mexico is so significant, if we applied the same terms on Mexicans seeking to buy property in America, the whole of Mexico would be absolutely outraged that we were treating them the way they treat us. As this article in the Washington Examiner points out that President Trump said it, and he is accurate in saying it, the Kate Steinle verdict is one more reason to build the wall. I hope and I pray we won't have to wait until more people are killed, as is occurring regularly, by illegal aliens. It doesn't even have to be deaths. I mean, constituents of mine have been harmed by people who come into this country illegally, driving without a driver's license or driving without insurance, hitting cars, whether they do injury to the occupant or not. I mentioned before, a girl weeping. She is in high school. She has to work. An illegal alien rammed her car, had no insurance, and she and her mom, single mom, could only afford the insurance for others, liability insurance; they couldn't afford the insurance to cover themselves, so she couldn't replace her car. If she can't replace her car, she cries that: I can't work, and my mother and I can't live. How can you let people come in illegally and do such harm to Americans and wreck our lives? He even drove away in his car without a license, without insurance. He drove away in his car after he totaled hers. It is time that we did the job we took an oath to do. If we enforce the Constitution, the laws of the land, then Americans will be protected and we become stronger. Because of the idealistic nature of this Nation, it has assured the freedom of more and more people: first the people in our own Nation-- the Constitution eventually came to represent what it said, all people were to be treated equally--and now to the point that, for 100 years, we have been in wars off and on that ensured freedom for others as well. It is time to build the wall. In the meantime, hopefully, we are about to have a major tax reform bill. I would like to have seen a flat tax across the board. You make more, you pay more. The more you make, the more you pay. That is not what we have done, but it is a reform. It will mean that even more poorer Americans pay no income tax, and the poorer working poor, fewer of them will pay any income tax, and people will pay less tax. The only rate that is not lowered in the tax proposal the House and Senate had was the wealthiest Americans. That was left at 39.6 percent. Some of us think we should have had a smooth, even percentage cut across the board for everybody. How could you argue that that was not fairness? Republican leaders thought: No. We will leave the highest rate on the wealthiest Americans. We will leave that percentage right where it is so we can't be accused of taxing the poor to help the rich. Now, some will take the actual numbers of the amount of money that will be saved and say: See, people who are making more are saving more. Well, yeah. People who pay a lot more in income tax will save a little bit, but not nearly the percentage that people who are the working poor will save percentagewise. The best thing for the American economy will be the cut in corporate taxes. The corporate tax has been a gimmick by both parties for so many years, telling people: Oh, no. These rich, greedy corporations, we will make them pay. Well, that is hiding the ball, because the fact is no corporation can stay in business unless they pass on the cost of the corporate tax to their customers, their clients, for their goods and services. They have to pass on that cost or they can't stay in business. They just can't. We have the highest corporate tax of any industrialized nation in the world. China is a little less than half of our 35 percent. That is why President Trump was pushing so hard, as were many of us: Let's at least take it to 15 percent. Whatever the percentage is, unless it is zero, it is a tariff on Americans' goods and services. How insane for a country to put a tariff on its own goods and services so that it makes us less competitive in the world market. If you took away the 35 percent tariff called the corporate tax on American-made goods, we could compete globally; but because we put such a huge tariff on our own goods, 35 percent, then our goods are far too often not competitive in the world market. If we make our own products competitive anywhere, people around the world, if American prices were more competitive, they would love to buy American products. When some of us went to China, talked to CEOs about why they moved there, I heard the number one answer being the corporate tax. I loved hearing them say: Now, our best quality control was in America. We have got better quality control. We have got better quality of workers. I love hearing that around the world. Yeah, the best workers are in America, best quality control for our products is in America, lowest margin of error among our plants is in America. We make good stuff. Those who take pride in what they do, that is an American way. People would love to buy them, but not when our 35 percent tariff we put on our own corporate-made goods are not able to compete as they would if we removed it. But at least at the 15 percent the President and some of us were pushing for--we would have undercut China's income tax for corporations, and just even a point or two undercutting China's income tax or corporate income tax would have brought so many manufacturing jobs back to America. I know there are elitists in America who say: Well, yeah, but those manufacturing jobs, those are not for classy countries like America. No, we have evolved upward into a service economy. We provide elegant services. We are not into manufacturing goods. We leave that to more developing nations. But the historical fact is clear: any powerful nation that cannot manufacture what it needs in a time of war will not be a powerful nation past the next war. Just as Jesus assured there will always be wars and rumors of war, we have to be aware. As long as we are in this world, we have to protect our country, protect ourselves, and it doesn't matter if you are a Christian or not a Christian. Those who are Christian sometimes say: Oh, yeah, but Jesus said we have got to love our neighbors as ourselves. Blessed are the meek, his Sermon on the Mount and all. That is absolutely the way Christians are supposed to live, but when they are acting as the government, we are to be mindful of Romans, Romans 13. The government is to be an encourager of good conduct. We are not supposed to design programs to lure people away from their productivity, lure them away from their potential and that wonderful, awesome feeling of multiple employers wanting you to come work for them. Too many young people have never experienced that. I really believe, with a major tax cut like we have passed in the House, there will be more and more young people that will know that feeling. It is such a gratifying feeling when multiple firms want you to work for them. You can decide whether you want to be on your own, start your own business, or go to work for someone. It is just an awesome feeling. The economy has struggled so, never hit 3 percent growth in any year in the last 8 years, and now we have had 2 months back-to-back where we hit over 3 percent growth. If we can do that, we are going to bring in more Federal revenue, even with the lower taxes. It is going to be great for America. People are going to see what it is like to have more companies wanting you. We do need to come to grips with the number of people we are allowing in this country, both illegally and legally. No country in the world allows a million people to come into its country legally like the United States does. We allow that many legally. I happen to be helping a fellow Texan who emigrated from Mexico, has been here on visas legally for 15 years. She is trying to get her citizenship. She has done everything she can legally, but it gets really frustrating for someone from Mexico who is following the rules, following the law, doing everything according to American law. That is the kind of person we want to come here, someone who has respect for the law. We are helping her try to get her citizenship, but, unfortunately, that part of our government is only now looking at applications from September of last year. Hoping not to have to get yet another visa, surely this greatest Nation in the world could move faster on applications for citizenship and visas. Surely we could at least work as fast as Third World nations that don't have computers. Apparently, in some cases, we don't. We owe it to all of those who have sought to come into America legally and to all of those who were born here, at least born here and are American citizens. The children of diplomats who are born in the United States are not U.S. citizens. Originally, when the 14th Amendment passed--and you can go back and look at the debate, back at the time--the advocates for the 14th Amendment were saying obviously there will be people who have children born in America whose children will not be citizens. They contemplated that would be diplomats from foreign countries who are in this country legally as diplomats of foreign countries. Their children would not be citizens, and they are not. They also contemplated that, if you snuck into this country illegally, certainly your children would not be citizens. That would be insane. Yet what they thought would be insane is the way things have been interpreted for far too long. We ought to be able to say who can come into the country legally and approve anybody who comes in, whether legally or illegally, for citizenship on our own terms. That is the way it needs to be if we are going to perpetuate this amazing blessing of a country. I didn't deserve to be born here, but I was. And if we are going to continue to be a light on the hill that so many hundreds of millions of people around the world want to come to, then we can't let hundreds of millions of people come here or it would overwhelm the country and it would no longer be a place anybody wanted to come. At that point, the greatest hope for peace in the world, the United States, would cease to be the United States we have come to know and love. Mr. Speaker, I yield back the balance of my time.

Mr. GOHMERT

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

Mr. GOHMERT

Mr. GOHMERT. Mr. Speaker, we had a lot to be thankful for this Thanksgiving. Anybody who was in America, in the United States, has a lot to be thankful for. People are counting on us across the country to make sure we don't mess the country up because we have done a great deal of damage from Washington, much of it done by bureaucrats. But the only way they can do it is when Congress relegates and delegates obligations that we should have to bureaucrats, especially unaccountable bureaucrats like those at the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau. It is time to get power back to where there is accountability. And there is a better chance of having accountability right here in Congress than there is in some agency, some bureau that thumbs its nose at the executive, legislative, and judicial branches and says: We are above the Constitution. We are above everything else in the country. We do what we want to, and nobody can say otherwise. Well, they are finding out at the CFPB that that is not the case. Everybody in America has some accountability somewhere. It makes me smile to hear friends from across the aisle talking about running up a deficit because I remember that talk in 2006, and we were properly excoriated on the Republican side of the aisle for running up a deficit of around $160 billion more than we brought in. We were castigated. We were beat up in all kinds of ways, and Democrats were right. Who would have ever dreamed that the people who were belittling Republicans for allowing a $160 billion deficit would soon be so very proud since they had the majority in the House, the Senate, the Presidency, just a couple of short years later, they would have a $1.5 trillion to $1.6 trillion deficit? We would be treated to the first 4 and the first 8 years in our Nation's history under a President during which the economy never grew up to 3 percent. It never grew up to 3 percent. It did not, the whole time the Democrats had the majority in the House and the Senate, those 4 years they had the majority in the House and Senate. That time when they had the House, the Senate, and the White House, they managed to run up the debt higher than anyone has ever come close to before. But the good news for those who have forgotten that the talk of $160 billion deficit being so outrageous before they ran up a $1.5 trillion to $1.6 trillion deficit, those who don't remember those days can be reminded of those now as we begin to hear the rhetoric about the current proposed appropriation. We passed all 12 appropriations here in the House. We did our work. It is time the Senate did their work. Now we are being told: Oh, well, you have got to get over all that stuff you did. All of that hard work, all the cuts to Planned Parenthood, all the things you did standing on principle down there in the House, you have got to forget about that because we don't work like that down in the Senate. We are just going to be lucky to fund the projects we are interested in. We have no interest in taking up the hard work that the House of Representatives did. But it is time the Senate tried that. I think if they will look into the appropriation bills the House passed, they will find out we actually did some very good, solid, amazing work. For some reason, before we ensure that the Second Amendment applies everywhere across the country that the Constitution meant for it to apply, we are going to take up a background check bill tomorrow. The abbreviation is NICS, which gathers information on people's backgrounds who want to buy a gun. Despite all of the inaccurate information that is often touted about the lack of background checks, of how you can order online or at gun shows, these kind of things, there are background checks when you order online. It is really unfair to the gun stores who didn't actually make the sale, but anybody who orders a gun online still has to have the background check, and they still have to go in and pick it up at a store and meet the requirements of the law and the background check. We have heard many times about how the background checks have prevented 3 million Americans who should not have guns from getting guns, but that is not true nor accurate. Apparently, the last year that the Obama administration decided to bless us with actual information about background checks, they reported that about 73,000 Americans were prevented from getting a gun on the first check under the law as it exists. There are five different checks. And because the first check does not take all of the information that someone buying a gun has to fill out, not the date of birth, not Social Security number, not any of the information that is replete on the document being filled out, none of that is used. They take a phonetic--well, the pronunciation of the name and use the phonetic pronunciation to do a background check. That is why they have so many millions of hits since this has been going on is because if someone's name just sounds a bit like somebody else's, it comes up as a hit and an initial denial. But then at each stage, each one of those five checks, more and more are found to not be the person who should be prevented from having a gun. In the last year--we have data--I was talking to John Lott about this earlier this afternoon, but in 2010, there were 73,000 denials, approximately, of the ability to buy a gun. As they went through each of those five checks, they found out that so many actually were not the person who should have been blocked from buying a gun. When the Obama administration got down to the bare facts, they found that out of about 73,000 initial denials, there were only 42 cases that were referred to be prosecuted for potential prosecution. If I recall correctly, the Obama administration only prosecuted about a fourth of what the Bush administration prosecuted. So out of the 42-- and I don't mean 42,000 out of 73,000, I mean 42.0 out of 73,000--the Obama administration only decided to get 13 convictions. Mr. Speaker, there were 73,000 initial denials. It tells you the system doesn't work very well at all. It doesn't make sense that we would have a system that would use all of the information that somebody provides to look for hits of somebody who should not be able to buy a gun. Use the date of birth. Use the Social Security number. Use the information there to check to see if someone is ineligible to buy a gun. Then we can get serious about better gun enforcement, especially since we now have a Department of Justice--except for the special prosecutor that is interested in just them, just us kind of justice-- except for that special prosecutor's group, we do have a Department of Justice that truly is interested in doing justice. So when it comes to background checks, yes, we will continue to have them, but I hope we make some needed changes in the law, and I also hope that we are able to pass a bill this week out of committee, get it to the floor, pass it out of here, and hopefully the Senate will do their job on it. But that would allow reciprocity for people who are allowed to carry a gun in one jurisdiction to be able to carry that gun across the country. It is something we are working on. Mr. Speaker, I was so greatly encouraged seeing an article about Poland. Those people have always been such an independent-minded people, even though they have been yanked to and fro. Whether it is Russia, Prussia, Germany, they have had a difficult time--Austria. They have had a tough time. But they have always been independent-minded. As President Reagan and as the former Polish Pope noted, and as President Trump has noted, Poland, generally speaking, understands what people who go through the 12-step program understand. There is a higher power. But by the grace of God, we would not have this incredible little experiment in self-government. We would never have lasted as long as we have. There are miracles where the divine hand of God truly stepped in during the Revolutionary War, during the early days as a nation when we could have, and probably should have, fallen, one after another. As the Founders would say, divine providence protected this little experiment, and it is in trouble right now. There are so many people who have been taught across the country that America is an embarrassment and owes the world an apology. Bill Ayers and all of those who were hippies--not all of them, but so many of them who were hippies--found that, as terrorists like Bill Ayers was, they didn't get the results they were seeking by blowing up things or people. They got a lot more done by moving into universities, becoming tenured professors, and teaching future teachers an improper history and an inaccurate history of these United States so that now we have, we are told, half the people coming out of college thinking socialism would be a better way of living. They don't understand. They have never thought it through. They don't look at what has really happened because they haven't been taught true history. They don't understand. They don't know that every time socialism--progressivism if you would rather call it that as so many in this body do--always failed and always will fail to the end of the age as long as there is jealousy, greed, avarice, and even common sense. As I have mentioned here on the floor, the Russian farmer who said, ``I make the same number of rubles here in the shade, if I am in the shade here or if I am out there in the sun, so I am in the shade,'' that explained why socialism does not, will not, and cannot ever work. It always fails. The only way you can have it is where people share across from those according to their ability to those according to their need. What a lie. It didn't come from those according to their ability. Once socialism sets in, so does malaise. There is no incentive to work harder and harder except if you can get politically entrenched sufficiently, then those in political power. As a Russian college student told me back when I was a college student over there in the Soviet Union: In America, you can advance yourself by making more money and working harder. Here in the Soviet Union, we can only advance ourselves by stepping on others and trying to get political power by stepping on others. This is a better system, even with all its flaws. Churchill said that capitalism is the worst form of government except for all the others. But it allows people to succeed or fail as they are driven to do. It is called freedom. We have had it. We have been losing it. When the Democratic House and majority set up the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, they set up an agency, a bureau, that didn't have to answer to Congress. They could violate the Constitution's Fourth Amendment and Fifth Amendment. They didn't care. They are all powerful. In fact, they are so full of themselves that they think no one can hold them accountable and they can do whatever they want. They don't need money from Congress. They get it from the Federal Reserve. They are a perpetual bureau that is not answerable to the President, to the Congress--not to anybody. They are finding out today that is not the case, but they sure thought it was. When I was a felony judge, if the government wanted someone's bank records, they had to either get that person's permission or they had to come to a judge like me; and with either live or affidavit testimony sworn under oath, they had to prove that a crime was probably committed, that this particular person probably committed the crime, and that these bank records were needed because of the probable cause that existed from the evidence. I would consider the evidence and then decide if probable cause existed. If it did, I would sign the warrant, and the government only then could get the bank records. Not so with the CFPB. They are in the protection racket. It is right there in their name, Consumer Financial Protection Bureau. It is a protection racket like the mob used to be in. They got their money from the Federal Reserve, and they are here to protect us all. So they gather up people's banking records and debit and credit card activities. Why? Because they are there to protect us from greedy, evil banks. Some have said: Wait a minute, though. How about you just leave my privacy alone, and if a bank messes me around, then I will come tell you? You don't need to get all of my private records. But since the CFPB has the unmitigated gall and arrogance to think they are totally unaccountable, they don't care what the Constitution says or what some court says. They don't need a warrant. They get whatever records they want to. Why? Because they are in the protection racket, out to protect us. You do what they say or they ruin you. What a racket, not accountable to anybody. That has got to change. The President is doing what he can to change that. Thank God and thank President Trump, both. We have got a chance of reining in an unconstitutionally acting body. Fortunately, there is at least one judge who recognized that, and hopefully there will be more. Those in Poland are amazing. As I continue to meet people who have lived in areas like Poland under the Soviet boot or who were alive during the ravages of World War II, those people here in the United States seem to understand more what is at stake right now than most any natural-born American. They know what it is like not to have freedom. They know what it is like to have a government watch every move and tell you what you can or you cannot do and sometimes punish on a whim just to keep citizens terrified of the totalitarian government, a totalitarian government that has to exist in order for socialism, communism, and progressivism to exist. In fact, when I was in college, I was doing research and saw back in the days, I believe it was around 1960, `61, in that time, that the Premier of the Soviet Union, Khruschchev, understood that, under the idea of communism or progressivism, everyone would share and share alike; and the ultimate form of that progressivism or communism or socialism would be, when there was no need for government, everyone just shared and shared alike from those according to their ability, according to their need. Everyone shared. Of course, in the Soviet Union in 1960, `61, under Premier Khruschchev, it was indeed a very totalitarian country, not as bad as it had been under Stalin, but those millions and millions of Ukrainians who lost their lives when Stalin saw to their starvation, those who lost loved ones during that period of starvation at the hands of Stalin, they understand what freedom is and what it isn't. They understand the only way a progressive or communist or socialist can exist is you have got to have that totalitarian government forcing or taking money or goods away from those who earn them and work for them-- created them--and giving them to those who did not. So Khruschchev realized that, in the ultimate form of communism and progressivism, there is no government. So he appointed a committee or commission to study the issue and figure out how we eventually achieve that perfect state where there is no government and everyone is sharing and sharing alike. How do we get to that place? They were always big on having 5-year plans in the former Soviet Union, so he thought perhaps this commission, this group of learned people, could set up the plan for how they could move forward each year until there was that state of perfection, there was no government, but just people sharing and working, working together, sharing together, sharing with those who had not and could not. But as I learned from studying, Khruschchev eventually had to disband the commission. They realized there is no way you ever reach that perfect state of progressivism or socialism or communism. You can't ever achieve that in this world. There will always have to be a totalitarian government that has taken away people's freedom and tells them what they are allowed to do. That has been the direction of this government for years now: Let's lure people in to total dependence on the government, and then we get to tell them where they will live and what they will do. Do you think that is a stretch? Look at what happened when the Democratic House and Senate voted to take over all college loans. That is a lot of power. When the Federal Government takes over all college loans, it enables the Federal Government to get into an area of governance that the Soviet Union did. The friends I came to know that summer I was there, the government told them whether they were going to be allowed to go to college. They told them what they would study in college. They told them where they were going to go work when they finish college. They told them what they were going to do in that place that the government directed them to go. Heck, there were 15 states in the former Soviet Union. You couldn't even cross the states without having a visa to go between the states. I was shocked by that. But if you are going to have progressivism or socialism or communism, the share-and-share-alike mentality, spreading the wealth--as our former President liked to say: If you are going to take from the sweat of someone else's brow and give it to someone who did not earn it, you are going to have to have a totalitarian government. When the Federal Government here in the United States took over all college loans, it put itself in a position of being able to say: Okay. We know, historically, what the Soviet Union did, and we like that kind of power, so here is what we are going to do. You do this job or that job or go to this place and we will start forgiving that huge amount of debt you owe for your college loans that we are in charge of. That is power. When the Federal Government takes over flood insurance, it gives the Federal Government the power to tell people where they can or can't live. Thank goodness we finally were allowed to reform the flood insurance. That is why--probably, the biggest reason--some of us didn't vote for the second swath of money for the disasters this fall. There were no reforms that we were promised that would be there, like for the lady who said she had to rebuild her home in the same place 21 different times. There were so many homes the Federal Government has paid for since we took over flood insurance because, apparently, you had to build where your home flooded, even though you wanted to move elsewhere so your home wouldn't flood again. If you wanted the money, you had to rebuild right there. That is what one lady was explaining. She didn't want to still be there, but she couldn't sell her lot with a destroyed, flooded home on it for enough money to build anywhere else. So she had to keep rebuilding where her home kept flooding. We needed a reform so people could move and we wouldn't have to keep paying for people's homes over and over again in the same place. If they want to pay for private insurance and live in the same place, fine. The Federal Government shouldn't be forcing people to build in the same place and keep them there as financial prisoners. At least in the House, we finally passed some reforms recently. That was a good thing, and I am grateful we did. Through all of these decades, for the last 100 years, the people of Poland understood what freedom is and they understood when they didn't have it. I can recall back in the seventies being on a train coming--I believe it was--from Gradna, on the border between Poland and the Soviet Union, coming across Poland, which was considered to be one of the satellite nations over Soviet domination. An American made the mistake of saying in the presence of a Polish gentleman: This land looks just the way it had for the last couple of days. The man became outraged. He said: No, no. In the Soviet Union there are huge farms and you can't tell what is cultivated and what isn't because they are not farmed very well. You look out here at the farms in Poland and they are much smaller because we own our own farms and work our own farms. He got very upset. I thought it was kind of a beautiful thing, how proud he was of his country, and the difference between a progressive or socialist-style government that rewards sluggishness. He pointed there in Poland to a place where their hard work actually showed. We keep heading in the direction of the countries that have failed as they have tried this progressivism that always fails. It doesn't make sense to keep trying it. It never works. It didn't work in the New Testament. It didn't work for the pilgrims. It will work in Heaven, in a perfect world, in paradise, with no jealousy and everyone pulling the same direction, loving, caring. But in this world, it will not ever work. In Poland--I was reading yesterday--their government leaders have come to the conclusion that life was better when they followed a Biblical example and had 1 day of the week where people rested and they were with their families. They went to church and they worshipped God. They found that is not a bad idea. Now there are people in Poland in leadership positions who are saying: We have had 7-day workweeks, but families have suffered significantly. Maybe we should look back at that Biblical example of having 1 day of rest, 1 day together to worship; a day to be with family, a day to rest, and to love each other. It seems like sometimes we get moving so fast that we forget the best things in life. It looks like that is what some of the Polish leaders are now saying. They have also made clear to the EU that, just as President Trump has here, as leaders of a nation, a leader owes to that nation the protection that they were elected or hired to provide and survive. Survival is supposed to be what the leaders are ensuring. Flourishing. As a result of the policies we have seen change in the last 11 months, we now have had 2 months--1 month was a record for the last 8 years--but now we have had 2 months, as I understand it, where growth has gone over 3.4 percent in the economy. We can keep that up and continue to grow. We are going to have plenty of money to pay this country's bills. In fact, the only way we will ever get out from under the massive debt we are about to leave and impart to our children and grandchildren is if we grow the economy sufficiently to grow our way out of that indebtedness. I believe the Laffer Curve is true. It is a truth economically. If you tax up to a certain point, then at some point, the more you tax, the more you overburden the work, and there gets to be less and the economy is brought down, you end up yielding less as a percentage of what you were bringing in. As Arthur Laffer explained to President Reagan and his aids, if the goal is to maximize Federal revenue, you want to hit that percentage of tax that encourages work and growth to the greatest extent, and then you will bring even more money in. The trouble is, like in Ireland, when they dropped their corporate tax rate so low--apparently, in the eighties, tax rates were dropped-- revenue starts flowing in better and better and Congress started spending. They did the same thing in Ireland. Record revenue comes in, even bigger record spending took place. We can't be doing that. There is an article here today in The Washington Times by Dave Boyer: ``Pence, commemorating Israel's birth, says Trump `actively' seeks to move U.S. Embassy to Jerusalem.'' We have had Presidents saying for years that they would move the embassy to the true capital of Israel. It has been the capital of Israel since King David moved it there about 3,000 years ago. I know that there are some that are very upset and say: No, no, you cannot move the Israeli capital from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem. Well, Jerusalem is the capital. But perhaps a compromise might be that, since we know when King David became ruler over all of Israel, he first went to Hebron--I have been there a few times. I have stood there at what is strongly believed to be the tomb of King David's father, Jesse. They think they found the small synagogue he created. It looks like that is what it was. Hebron is where Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob are all buried. In fact, Abraham made a big deal. He wanted to pay for the land where he and his family would be buried so that there would never be any question that it was their land where they were buried. The town of Hebron is where King David first went and ruled over Israel for 7 years and 6 months. After 7\1/2\ years, he then moved the capital to Jerusalem. So I would be fine if we wanted to compromise and say: Okay, you need time to get used to the idea, then let's move the capital from Tel Aviv to Hebron and make that the capital of Israel for 7\1/2\ years, like King David did. Then, following King David's example, after 7\1/2\ years with Hebron as the capital, move it to Jerusalem. That would give people time to get used to the idea. I do want to make a comment. The Senate--at least some, but not all Senators--is dragging its feet on getting something passed in the way of tax reform. I was totally shocked to hear that some Senators were saying they wanted to have the corporate tax rate cut, put off, for a year. That seems crazy. As someone who has been to China and met with different CEOs and asking, ``Why did you move all these manufacturing jobs from America to China,'' I thought the answer would be labor unions, it would be over regulation. Well, those were all problems for them, they said. But I loved hearing repeatedly corporate leaders saying: Our best quality control, our best workers were in America. I loved hearing that. They seemed sincere. The reason we moved to China is because of the corporate tax rate being about half of what it is in China as compared to what it is in the United States. They said: So we have saved so much money by more than cutting our tax rate in half. What a corporate tax is, as Steve Moore said, which is such a great way to explain what it is: We like to say we are making the greedy corporations pay. No. Actually, you are making their customers and clients pay. If a corporation does not, whether it is subchapter S or a C corporation, pass those taxes on to their customers, their clients, they can't stay in business. So it is a part of the price of their goods and services. I have advocated doing away with it. You will have so much more people working, so many more people making so much more money. The income taxes from the individuals will make up for it. It will be a beautiful thing. It is not a zero sum game. Everybody can do better and better and better. It would be a beautiful thing to see the economy expand like that, and it could. We could get those jobs back. But a corporate tax, the corporate tax here in America is the highest tariff any nation puts on its own goods or services, anything made in corporate America. It is a tariff on our own goods. Why do we do that? We could be so much more competitive around the world if the government didn't put this burden on corporations. I was hoping that President Trump's figure of 15 percent that undercuts the Chinese at least a little bit would be even more incentive to bring back manufacturing jobs to America, because any nation, any powerful nation that does not produce what they need in a time of war--because there will always be wars--is not going to remain a powerful nation beyond the next war. We need to be producing steel and rubber and all the things we need. We need to produce them right here in the United States. There is no reason we can't, but we drive those jobs away because of the corporate income tax. President Trump had the right idea, 15 percent. He compromised, so it is at 20 percent. Thank goodness he didn't let them work him up any beyond that, but there are some in the Senate trying to work beyond that--huge mistake. This economy can explode. It is already the top 3 percent, and it can keep climbing. Dr. Laffer tells me that after the final part of the 30 percent tax cut kicked in, in 1983, they hit over 7 percent growth in the economy. That is just unheard of. There were people saying, in the Obama administration, you know, we will probably never ever hit 3 percent again. It may just be an impossibility. No, it is not. You get rid of the corporate tax or at least get it down to where we are not putting such an enormous tariff on our own goods and services, and that economy can grow like that again, and we can get our manufacturing jobs back. An article here, Todd Starnes--he and I were both honored recently with an award that people like Tom Landry, Cal Thomas, and others have received for being Christians and speaking up for our faith, our beliefs. Todd Starnes, today, has this story: ``Thank you, Mr. Trump, for bringing `Merry Christmas' back to the White House,'' and I certainly echo those feelings. It is amazing, this story from Maxim Lott, FOX News: ``Media twist tax plan studies to claim it hammers middle class.'' I have been hearing people here on this floor talking about how the tax proposal that we passed here in the House was going to hammer the middle class. Actually, the corporate tax cut alone will get the economy going so strong everybody is going to benefit. But I wish we had just had an across-the-board flat tax created: you make more, you pay more; you make less, you pay less. That is where I wanted to go. That is true reform. But politics being what it is, because the Republican leadership did not want to have to fight a battle that, ``Oh, we're just helping the rich,'' the highest tax rate is the only one we didn't change. The idea was, well, if the only tax rate we don't bring down is the 39.6 percent tax rate that the richest Americans have to pay, then the Democrats won't be beating us up. They won't be able to beat us up for raising taxes on the poor and middle class to help the rich. Well, they were wrong. Despite the fact that there will be more people now under the Republican tax plan that has passed here in the House--the Senate will just adopt it--there will be more people who will not be paying taxes. I kind of wish all of us, every American, had a little skin in the game. If they are making money, then they pay something. That is where a flat tax comes in. If you just make $10, you only pay $1. If you make $100, you pay $10. If you make $1 million, you pay $100,000. That is fair. But anyway, we passed our bill. It gives a tax break to the poorest Americans. It is going to help the economy grow, but we have got to get it done. I am hoping and literally praying that the Senate keeps their elimination of the individual mandate from ObamaCare so that people have the freedom to get policies that are best for them and not something forced on them by the government. And, yes, we know there will be unfair media that will do nothing but complain about millions who no longer have health insurance. Well, I can tell you, there are millions who are paying taxes now to the government because they can't afford an insurance policy that won't ever pay them because the deductible is too high, and they don't want to keep paying our income tax because they can't afford the ObamaCare policies. There are people who are paying for ObamaCare policies where the deductibles are so high, they will never get any benefit. Yes, there is apparently a segment, a small minority who--maybe as much as 20, 25 percent--who, like in the Soviet Union, are getting their money from where somebody else has earned it, having that money pay for their insurance, some of that coming from people who can't even afford their own insurance. So they are paying higher income tax so this other group of Americans take their money from those working poor and pay for their insurance. What is fair about that? Forcing the working poor in America to pay higher income tax or pay for policies where they will never get anything back because the deductible is too high; also, that some people who will vote Democrat will get their insurance for free, that is not the way America became the greatest Nation that it was and can be again. And, yes, North Korea fired an ICBM today in the last 24 hours, and I am very grateful to President Trump for taking it seriously. I am so glad he is there. I am glad we don't have the same people who gave North Korea the ability to have nuclear bombs during the Clinton administration. How foolish was it to basically say: Oh, look, North Korea, we will give you what you need to make nuclear weapons if you will just agree not to ever use those materials for nuclear weapons. And, of course, the North Korean leader said: Sure, you do all that, all I got to do is sign. Sure, you give me all I need for nuclear weapons, I will sign saying I will never create nuclear weapons. And what do they do? They make nuclear weapons because that is what they do. That is what those leaders do. The people of North Korea deserve better. And Iran is the same way. They can't be trusted. So we need a firm leader who understands enough is enough, and I am glad President Trump is that leader. Mr. Speaker, I yield back the balance of my time.

Mr. GOHMERT

Mr. GOHMERT. Mr. Speaker, this has been a big day. There are so many people who have suffered in this country, especially since the passing of ObamaCare. It is difficult to call it the Affordable Care Act. There is a small percentage that supposedly has done better. Usually, when my friends across the aisle and most of the media talk about how much better off Americans are under ObamaCare, they ignore the real results, and, instead, they point and say: There are so many people--millions of people now--who have insurance now that didn't have it before. Well, the reason they could say that was because ObamaCare forced people to buy insurance. We went through this with some family members, helping them make the calculation: should they pay the penalty through additional income tax, or should they buy insurance that they will never, ever be able to use? On some occasions, you are better off paying the extra tax, which means the government wanted your money a lot worse--well, not worse than the individual--but the government has the power to steal from people and call it legal, and then it is legal. There was a massive amount of legalized stealing under ObamaCare that took place. This bill we passed today would end so much of the stealing from individuals that the government has been doing legally since ObamaCare passed. But, yes, there will be millions of people, I would suspect, that when we legally end the individual mandate, they are not going to continue to pay for insurance, huge amounts every month that they can't afford--people making $25,000, $30,000, or so, who couldn't afford to pay for health insurance who were required to do that. Do you want to pay higher income tax? Are you going to pay for health insurance that you are never going to be able to use? The premiums cost you more than you can afford, the deductible is so high. Clearly, you are young. You are never going to use it. The odds are 99.99 percent you will never use it. But the government forced them to pay more taxes or pay more for insurance they couldn't use. The good news for those people is that now you will be able to--well, once this becomes the law, and it does need to pass the Senate. The Senate has a little different version, and there are a few things in the Senate version I like better than ours, but there are a lot of things in our bill that I like better than the Senate. If the Senate will go ahead and do their job like they did not do on repealing at least part of ObamaCare, they will do their job on this, the American people are going to benefit. We are going to see the economy take a big jolt forward and upward, more jobs coming to America. Nobody gets everything they want. I believe what the President really wanted was going to be best for the country. If we could hold to a 15 percent corporate tax, I wanted to see that across the board for S corporations, C corporations. But as the President knew--I know he knew because we talked about it more than once--that 15 percent would undercut the corporate tax that China has. If we undercut the corporate tax that China has, then it means we were going to be getting manufacturing jobs back to America. We have had so many manufacturing plants pick up and move to other places--mainly China, Mexico, other places. We need to be manufacturing here. I know there are those elitists who have been educated with degrees far beyond their intellectual capacity to absorb. They got the degrees, but they didn't get the wisdom. And some have ventured to say: No, we don't need to be a manufacturing country. We have evolved above being these lowly manufacturers. That is for developing countries, not a wonderful country like ours is. Obviously, they spent too much time in other places than studying history. This is something else I have talked about with the President--he knows it just from his business acumen; I know it from studying history--that any nation that is a powerful nation in the world that cannot manufacture the things that that country needs in a time of war will cease to be a great nation after the next war. And be assured, there will be wars. Jesus, the wisest to ever walk this planet, said there will always be wars and rumors of war. And that is true because this planet has evil: people who will do evil, countries that will do evil, people who get jealous when some other country has more freedom, more assets. And there is going to be evil in this world as long as this world exists. We saw that down in Sutherland Springs. Some lunatics--again, many of them educated well beyond their ability to be wise--had popped off and said, well, if prayer worked, those people would never have been shot in a church where they were praying and worshipping. As long as people are in this world, there is going to be evil--not that God wants evil to prevail. He doesn't. He doesn't want that any should stumble. But as a parent knows, you could force your child to say, ``I love you'' or to throw their little arms around your neck, hug you, and say, ``I love you.'' You could force them to do that. It doesn't mean a whole lot. But when you give people the free will to choose to love you, to choose to follow your rules, it is overwhelming to a parent when a child freely chooses to do that. So we have freedom of choice. Some choose to do evil. Some want governments to be all powerful because, in their lack of wisdom, they think that the government needs to be in control of everything and everybody. The late Justice Scalia, who could make me laugh--he loved good jokes and stories like I do. There have been a lot of unpleasant memories, a lot of unpleasant fights, a lot of fights that I haven't won, but I stood up for what I believed was right. When I would get around Justice Scalia, having lunch together or breakfast together, we would get to telling stories and jokes, and he was so clever. It was often hard to find a joke or a story he had not heard, but it was just fun to be around him. But in one of those, I think it was a lunch that time, he said: You know, back when I was working for the Attorney General--and I don't remember which Attorney General it was back in the 1970s--he said: We had a weekly meeting, and one morning the Attorney General came in, and he said: Well, I was at a cocktail party last night, and for the first time I heard a definition that explained the difference between Democrats and Republicans. He said: I actually think it is pretty good. I think it is very descriptive. He said: What I learned was Democrats are people who want to control everybody and everything, and Republicans are people who don't want them to. Well, I found that rather amusing. Actually, that is pretty accurate. Some people on the Republican side of the aisle go: Why don't we plot and plan as well as the Democrats do? They are always trying to figure out how they get power, how they get over on this and that, and we just want people to live and let live. We want as little government as necessary to keep order but allow people to succeed with no ceiling, no limit. But to succeed, you also have to have the opportunity to fail, just like Edison did. In the hundreds of things he tried, finding a filament, the element that would heat up and not burn in two to make a light bulb, he knew it would work. Somebody asked him about all those failures, and he said, no, each time he tried something that didn't work, it wasn't a failure. He just learned that that is one less thing that might work. But Fisher, who came up with the space pen--I love those space pens. The email still goes around that says that Americans spent $4 million to develop a pen that would work in outer space, government money. Russians just use pencils. Not a dime of government money was used. With an intellect like Fisher, he knew there had to be a way that you could develop a pen that would write in gravity and with no gravity, underwater, above the air--or above the Earth's atmosphere, so he came up with it. But he knew he was going to have to pressurize a pen, and this is such a cartridge. So he sealed it, put about 30 pounds of pressure. But the trick was finding an ink that didn't explode out when you put 30 pounds of pressure on it or that was not so thick that it wouldn't work when you tried to write. Eventually, he was able to do that. Lots of failures, but you have got to allow people a chance to fail if they are going to have a chance to succeed. If the government puts its thumb on the scales, it is not real success, it is not real failure, and, eventually, those cards are going to come falling down. Well, what we have done today with our tax bill, it is a huge step because I know, Mr. Speaker, most folks here are well aware, it is hard to get a majority agreement on much of anything, but we did today. We had a significant majority that agreed. It isn't perfect. Nothing any human ever does will be, but it moves the ball down the road. One of the things I love about my friend from Texas, Kevin Brady, is I would hear from people back home--and talk to Kevin. He is open to talking not just to Texans. He will talk to everybody. And I found that with so many members on the Ways and Means Committee. My friend David Schweikert was always available to answer questions, and he was doing his homework thoroughly. One of the things that has deeply troubled many Americans, and especially seniors, either seniors in poor health or younger Americans who had severe health problems, is, in the ObamaCare bill that was so unaffordable, it changed the deductibility of medical expenses. Before, it was, if you had medical expenses, you had a really bad time of it, then our hearts go out to you and we want your life to be a little easier when you are going through so much difficulty with bad health, so the deductibles were any medical expense over 5 percent of your adjusted gross income. In order to come up with the billions and billions of dollars that ObamaCare, I would submit, wasted, they had to cut out some of the deductions like that, so they ended up raising the threshold from 5 percent to 7\1/2\, 10 percent. So it has been 10 percent. You had to have more than 10 percent of your adjusted gross income in order to deduct it, but we still had a lot of, especially, seniors who had more than that. I had accountants from home send me information about seniors, particularly seniors who had been paying a great deal of medical expense because, no, Medicare didn't take care of them. And of course we know AARP jumped on the bandwagon for ObamaCare--not because it was going to be good for the seniors. In fact, it was extremely violent to the finances of seniors and to their health, as well. But AARP was more interested in the massive amount of money they could add to their coffers, even though they are considered a nonprofit. So they jumped on board, and, of course, companies that sold other policies had to pay a 2 percent tax on each policy. AARP got the sweetheart deal. Their policy they embraced didn't have to pay the 2 percent tax. And I haven't seen the provision, but I am told there was a provision that exempted their executive so they didn't have the normal cap on their executive income. So the people at the top of AARP, they did great. Seniors really got harmed, losing $716 billion in cuts to Medicare. But for all those seniors who got harmed, couldn't get the surgery, couldn't get the medical help they need, just keep in mind, AARP was able to sell a lot more policies and make a lot more money even though it did a lot of harm to some seniors. Just remember, AARP came out great out of that. But nonetheless, for those of us who were very sympathetic to seniors having hundreds of billions of dollars cut from Medicare, they heard the President say: Now, this isn't going to affect you seniors at all. It is only going to cut some of the profits from healthcare providers-- basically, what was said. But many of my seniors in east Texas figured out: Wait a minute. If you are not going to pay the healthcare provider for my medicine, for my surgery, for what I need, then I am not going to be able to get the procedure, the surgery, the healthcare that I need if it is not going to be paid for. So I have had many seniors talk to me about surgeries being delayed or that they couldn't get the same thing they had before ObamaCare passed. So we haven't repealed ObamaCare, but in this bill, we repealed the ObamaCare mandate, the individual mandate. That means that some people who were forced to pay a higher income tax--they didn't get one of these ridiculous insurance policies--they are going to have that much money in their own pocket. If they were paying for a policy that they knew was never going to help them out, they won't have to buy that. And, of course, the Democrats, for all the Main Street media, will say, ``Oh, look at how many people don't have insurance,'' when the truth is so many of those people chose not to buy insurance because they knew it was a terrible deal. I still want to see a reform of healthcare, a real reform of healthcare, but that would mean getting away from either insurance companies or the government being between us and our doctors, our healthcare providers. The way you do that is that you make it so attractive to put money in your own health savings account--and I expect us to pass something to make it much easier and much more attractive. It is not in this bill. This was a tax bill--but I am still hopeful that we are going to do a reform of healthcare and repeal, at least most of ObamaCare. I had that hope. And I hoped that today was a start, not only toward getting tax reform and getting tax relief for Americans and seeing the economy get going again, but also put back in motion true repeal of ObamaCare and getting healthcare laws in place that will be good for Americans. But how can you have competitive prices in healthcare if nobody knows what these procedures or medicines cost? You see, you get a notice from the healthcare provider--your insurance company--that something costs $12,000, but you don't know that the insurance company satisfied that $12,000 payment demand with an $800 or $900 payment. But if you knew that if you were paying cash out of your health savings account, a $12,000 procedure would only cost $800, you wouldn't be so big on paying $2,000 a month to a health insurance company. And these health insurance companies still don't see that, under ObamaCare, their days are numbered. It was designed to fail. And America gets so mad at health insurance companies because it was built into ObamaCare. Not only were they going to have record profits, like some of them did last year, but they were going to get bailouts on top of their record profits. It was going to make America so mad at the insurance companies that even conservatives would say: Well, I never thought I would say this, but anything has to be better than what we have with these insurance companies. Why don't we have the government just take over everything? Then, voila, we then have VA healthcare for all Americans, except much worst than the VA provides, because everybody is forced to be in it. I was amazed, as an exchange student in the Soviet Union, to see the type of medical care that was in the Soviet Union in the seventies. I just thanked God that we didn't have that kind of socialized medicine, and we were so much more advanced. But it was clear that physicians, back in the Soviet Union in the seventies--I am sure there were some that were really dedicated, but, for most, it was an 8-to-4-, 9-to-5-type job--the fewer people they could see, the better they liked it. But that meant a lot of people waited in long lines, didn't get seen, had to come back and come back, and they didn't get the procedures that they needed. Or, like in Canada, a fellow, named Tyler, told me that his dad died of a heart attack after he had been on the list to get bypass surgery for 2 years. I said: Two years? It really took that long? He said: Well, they kept moving people in front of him. I said: Well, now wait a minute. I understand it is a crime to pay or do anything to get yourself moved up the list. He said: Oh, yeah, that is the way I understand it, too. But we had a board that would pick and choose among the American citizens who would go in front, and they kept putting people in front of my dad, who finally had the heart attack and died because the board kept putting people in front of him. That goes back to what Sarah Palin said. She called it a death panel. She was speaking with hyperbole, but the truth is--whether you want to call it a death panel or not--they were making decisions over who would get what; that would mean they lived or died in some occasions, or it meant whether they were going to live in pain or live in comfort. These were government boards making these decisions, just like they used to do in the Soviet Union before it fell. So I see this tax bill today as not only a step in the right direction to get people more money in their own pockets they can use to make the economy grow, but I see it also as a step in the right direction toward reforming healthcare again because we eliminate the individual mandate. I still would like to see these further reforms, like I am talking about. I put in a bill, I filed years ago, that healthcare providers would have to post, at least at their facility, but certainly online, if they were online--and now it ought to be a requirement--post exactly what you charge an individual paying cash, an individual with Blue Cross, or Aetna, or whatever it is. Let people know exactly what things cost. Don't send a $15,000 bill for going into the hospital that you know you are going to accept $1,000 as payment in full from an insurance company. If you are going to accept $1,000 for a $15,000 bill, then say it costs $1,000. If we could require everybody to post exactly what things cost, they wouldn't be in such an all-fired hurry to make sure that they had insurance, other than catastrophic, really catastrophic insurance. Because instead of paying $2,000 a month to an insurance company-- $24,000 a year--well, they would be better off paying $1,500 as payment in full for $15,000 in charges. We still have a good ways to go, but you don't get anywhere until you take that first step, and today was a giant step, in my opinion. I didn't realize, until I saw this notice from the Farm Bureau, but the headline says: ``House Poised to Take up Farm Bureau-Supported Tax Bill.'' It was good to see that. Another article from Heritage Action: ``House tax plan propels reform forward.'' FOX News has an article, by Newt Gingrich: ``House and Senate tax plans have more in common than you think.'' That makes some excellent points. It is good news all the way around. It is a step in the right direction. I am hopeful that some of the things we disagree on, we are going to be able to work out with the Senate. One of those things, like I mentioned, the Senate, as I understand it, their bill currently has an allowance for deductions of medical expense beyond 10 percent. Hopefully, we can eventually do better than that and get it back from where ObamaCare put it, maybe back to 5 percent, at some point. But we have seniors on fixed incomes, and Medicare doesn't cover what they are needing in the way of healthcare, and they are being overwhelmed by medical expense. Once again, I think if we can get some reforms in--it doesn't have to be a total reform of healthcare, but just get some things in there--even if we can't get the total repeal because of the Senate's recalcitrance, at least let's get some reforms to get people the help they need. I would also like to address the issue of the Roy Moore allegations. Having prosecuted sexual assault crimes, I have even been forced against my will--but you get an order, and you follow the order to defend sexual assault crimes--in one case finding that a trumped-up case against my African-American client was totally bogus, trumped-up, and we were able to prove irrefutably as such. But sexual assault allegations are a very dangerous thing. We have in America what we call statute of limitations on most crimes. The reason we have statute of limitations on most crimes is because if you are going to be accused of something, it needs to be made in a timely manner, so that if you are going to accuse somebody of committing a crime, they have a chance to find witnesses. One of the very reasons that there are statutes of limitations on crimes like sexual assault is that if you wait 38 years to accuse somebody of a sexual assault, it is almost impossible to prove exactly where you were. And I have heard some people in the Senate say: Oh, well, there are just so much specifics coming out that it just seems irrefutable. Well, usually people's memories wane over the period of three to four decades on times and exact places. And I know, from my days as a judge, sent many rapists and sexual assaulters to prison for many years, including life, I was particularly hard on people who committed sexual assault crimes because they violate so much more than just a physical violation. It is an abominable crime. But we have limitations. So if somebody makes an allegation against you that you did such and such at 2 in the afternoon on such and such afternoon, and it was at this particular location, and these people were not around, I mean, if you put a bunch of specifics in there, within a year, then the individual being charged can go back to his calendar, or her calendar, and see: Okay, on that day, oh, I wasn't even in that city, I was over here in this city, I was in court across town, I was not even where that happened. So I can bring in and show-- not just raise a reasonable doubt--but show absolutely for sure that never happened. That is why we have limitations. I would just encourage people that when they hear alleged factual allegations that occurred decades previously, no matter how many specifics are thrown in, reserve judgment, and give it a chance to get all of the facts in. That is why, in every single case I have tried as a judge--and there were thousands of felony cases that came before my court--but in every single case I tried, after the prosecution finished, I then turned to the defense for their chance to submit evidence. It is why, after every witness testified for the prosecution, I turned to the defense attorney and gave them a chance to cross examine. And there were times I heard charges that, in my mind, were so outrageous, but I knew we have a system in place to protect innocent people from spurious allegations, and we have to go through the process, including an appeal, after the trial. And I have reviewed many appeals as an appellate chief justice. You have got to let the process play out. And any time somebody comes running in and wants somebody tried in the court of public opinion, and they are only going to give them 3 or 4 weeks, then immediately that should be suspect. Not that it can't be proved out as true, but it should immediately be suspect because these people tried to game the system. They didn't want to give enough time for the ones allegedly committing an offense to prepare a defense. They didn't want to give adequate time to investigate, even after 38 years. How do you go back 38 years later and say: Gee, where was I? I don't have a calendar that goes back that far. I don't know if I was in town, if I was out of the country. I don't know where I was. Gee, it seems like around that time. Maybe I was here or there. I don't know. The odds of being able to mount a proper defense three or four decades after something allegedly happened is just almost impossible. So all you can do to defend yourself--and I am speaking hypothetically. If somebody, hypothetically, made outrageous allegations against you, and, you know, I know I never did that, how do I prove it? Well, you are not going to be able to find witnesses to say where you were at that specific moment in time because you don't even remember where you were. How will you find a witness that will back you up? And if you do find a witness who can say, ``Oh, I remember that very second,'' 38 years later, ``this is where he was,'' then that witness becomes suspect because you just don't remember like that. So I hope, Mr. Speaker, that people will allow an election to go forward with the parties the people have chosen and give time for all the facts to come out. I like Roy Moore, and I appreciate the man of faith that he is. I think the election needs to go forward just as it is. I think we should not intervene in Congress, and we should let the people of Alabama decide, based on proven facts, not on some last-minute attack. We should give time for all of the facts to come out, not just the facts that have been set up over the last several months, in all likelihood, in preparation for being able to blindside a candidate, so you have all the facts and you can keep slipping stuff out day after day; because it could very well end up just like Ted Stevens' case, where at least one FBI agent and a prosecutor created a case that not only had reasonable doubt about it, but it was absolutely false. Senator Ted Stevens was not the most lovable guy. He was kind of a crotchety guy when I was around him. It wasn't very often. They accused him of not filing notice about a hundreds-of-thousands-of-dollars gift improvement onto a home he had. The FBI--at least some in the FBI, as was borne out by the affidavit by an FBI officer who actually had a conscience, not like his superior FBI agent lead investigator. They fabricated evidence. They hid evidence. The evidence that they had gotten when they served warrants, went to his home, took every piece of paper, every bank record, everything he had, computers, all this, raided the bank, got all their information, got any notes and things, he didn't have the evidence to defend himself because the FBI got it all. A guy named Robert Mueller was the head of the FBI. This was probably the biggest case that went through the FBI while he was Director, at least one of them. He saw to it that the FBI agent that blew the whistle and pointed out that they have evidence that shows that Ted Stevens not only did not get a free hundreds-of-thousands-of-dollars, $600,000-, $700,000-addition to his house, that he paid hundreds of thousands of dollars more than that. Apparently, there was some communication between the contractor and Senator Stevens saying: You are overpaying. Quit overpaying. Senator Stevens said: No. No. I am strong-willed in the Senate, so I have always got people looking to try to make something up, so I have to overpay. The man overpaid. The FBI, under Mueller, fabricated a case. They tried it the week before the election, and there was a reason for that. They tried it the week before the election. They got a conviction. He lost the election, I think it was by 1,200 votes or so. After he had lost the election, there was no way to rewind that clock. He was out of the Senate. The Democrats got the seat. They sure didn't care that they won the seat based on a lie, a fraudulent case brought by the U.S. Government. They didn't care. They were glad to have the seat. It is kind of like Senator Harry Reid said after he made false accusations against Mitt Romney that he hadn't paid any taxes, and when he was asked about it later after Mr. Romney lost the election, his response was basically: Well, it worked, didn't it? He had no remorse for destroying a man's reputation falsely without any evidence or with manufactured evidence, lies. No remorse, just: It worked, because we got the seat. And I have a feeling that, when the smoke clears and we find all of the evidence that is left after 38 years, we are going to find that there was a problem not as much with Roy Moore as there was with the accusers, but we need to wait and see. Nobody needs to be rushed to trial. We have a system of government that prevents somebody from being punished by the government, but the fact is the government is being used to try to punish Roy Moore. Let's say, hypothetically, you were an establishment leader in the Senate and you have been pushing for amnesty. You didn't want illegal immigration stopped, because there are donors that give a lot of money that want illegal immigration to continue. You wanted amnesty, and you know in the Attorney General's Office you have a guy there, regardless of things you disagree on, who has really cracked down on illegal immigration. You know you have got a guy that just won the primary in a State, and you spent tens of millions of dollars trying to destroy the guy in the primary and it didn't work. He won. So it looks like he is about to win the election, the general election, even though you are in his same party. I am just thinking hypothetically. Certainly none of this would be true, surely, but, wow, what a great deal if somebody made accusations, true or not true, against the guy that you tried to destroy with millions of dollars, that, you know, if he is elected, he is going to come in. He is not going to be your best frien because you called him everything in the book; you tried to destroy him. So, wow, even though he is in your own party, maybe you would be better off if you had a Democrat you feel like you could work with that was more establishment than the guy that you tried to destroy, that, if he would have gotten along with you--probably not now because you went after him so strongly--what if you could have that guy taken out with allegations, whether true or not, and then you could kill a number of birds. You know that Steve Bannon has said he is going to war after you. Wow. And Bannon went all in to support this guy in his primary and this election, so if his candidate gets destroyed, you have just destroyed his ability to raise money. And then on top of that, if you could talk the unsuspecting President into talking his Attorney General into leaving that post to try to go to the Senate, wow, you get rid of the guy that has gotten tough on illegal immigration, you get rid of the guy that has been raising money and going against the establishment, and you get rid of the guy that you tried to destroy with tens of millions of dollars even though he was in your own party--I am just saying, hypothetically. Maybe it would make for a good fiction novel someday, and maybe there is somebody out there writing that novel, but I am just saying, what if. Wow. What a novel piece of fiction that might be some day. Maybe we would see it in a movie someday. Maybe the Senator would even be from the South. I also know, having been a district judge, I signed everything original. I know there are some judges that don't sign their orders; they just let somebody stamp. I made clear the day I became a district judge that nobody is stamping my signature on anything; if it is a stamp, it is going to be clear that it is a stamp, that anything that has got to be originally signed, I am going to sign it. Now, as I understand it, Judge Moore signed things originally, but on other things, on copies--we would put a stamped signature and note that it was a copy. But his, they either stamped or his assistant wrote his signature, and because the assistant's name had initials D.A., put ``D.A.'' out beside his name to denote that he didn't originally sign this. This was the assistant on his behalf. So litigants would normally get a copy and not the original, of course, unless you make multiple originals. I wondered when I saw in the yearbook the picture of the signature, I thought: DA? I didn't think he was ever a DA. Well, he wasn't. He was assistant DA. He was a district judge. He was a chief justice of the supreme court there in Alabama. He was never the DA. It is interesting, if someone believed that a guy molested their minor daughter and that person later had a divorce pending in that guy's court, I know I would certainly ask for a different court. There is no way I would let a judge who molested my child have any jurisdiction over my divorce. If I had never brought out about the alleged molestation before, I would certainly do it then. People would need to know that the judge in that court, and particularly the judge on my divorce, was a child molester. They would need to know. If you don't let people know at that point, you are basically an accomplice. You are allowing this assaulter out there to continue whatever he may be doing to others. You need to come forward and report it. It is not a crime not to report it, but it needs to be reported, and certainly if that person goes on the bench. It must have been quite a realization for Judge Moore when he saw that ``D.A.'' and realized: Somebody has forged what they thought was my signature, when it was really my assistant, and that is why the assistant put ``D.A.'' out there, to denote that I didn't sign that. Wow. That must have been quite a feeling for the judge. There is a story from Joel Pollak on November 16, ``Gloria Allred's Blunder on Roy Moore's Yearbook Challenge,'' that talks about that. There is another story by John Nolte, also November 16, ``Journalist Leann Tweeden Accuses Senator Al Franken of Fondling, Kissing Her Without Consent.'' I don't know where that is going to lead. I don't know whether the same people will demand his ouster or not. Maybe we need to wait and see if the photograph is forged or if it was photoshopped, something like that. There is just so much going on, but the bottom line is, today, we have taken a big step toward making America great again. It is not the 15 percent tax I had hoped it would be. In fact, people have got to understand that my friend, Steve Moore, who used to be the senior economics editor for The Wall Street Journal, helped President Trump as an economic adviser. Steve told me a number of times that he likes my definition of corporate tax better than any. But my definition describes what a corporate tax really is, especially the U.S. corporate tax: 35 percent. It is the largest tariff any modern country has ever put on its own goods or services, because, let's face it, when we put a corporate tax on a company, and 35 percent, they are going to have to put that on their products. If they don't collect that tax on top of the cost of the product, they are going to go out of business. That has got to be added to the cost of the goods or services. When you look at all the businesses and all the huge manufacturing plants in America that have closed down, and you look at what they were doing before they closed down and you deduct that 35 percent corporate tax or, I would submit, tariff, they could have been selling their product competitively not just in America, but probably in places all over the world. Instead of having to close their doors, they could have kept producing and expanding, but for that huge tariff that was put on their own goods. Most countries are smart enough not to put a tariff on what their own companies make before they ship them out. But we have been doing that. So why have we been doing that? Because it was a great way, people in Congress thought, to raise revenue. You tell people this mean, evil corporation was paying this tax. We really put it over on this corporation. We made them pay all this tax. No. What you did was add 35 percent to the cost of their products that they had to figure in somehow to cover that, in addition to what it cost to manufacture; and you have made them noncompetitive, here or abroad, and that is why they had to close. That is why I love the idea of either eliminating the tariff or at least getting it down to 15 percent so we undercut the 17 or so percent that China has. If we undercut their tariff on their own goods, goods produced in China, then those manufacturers are coming back. I have been amazed that reporters have asked, when I would talk about this publicly: But how are you going to make up for all of that lost income? They didn't understand, yeah, you are not collecting it as corporate tax, but now you are collecting directly from the people. So it is not a hidden, insidious tax. There are more jobs, and they are paying more money, and the economy is growing and hiring more people. There are more jobs, more income, and more income tax, and it is better for everybody. But the forces of greed around this country and around this town like to try to convince people they are really sticking it to somebody else, when the truth is that the individuals are going to end up paying it, wherever it is, or the company is not going to stay in business. I would rather them stay in business, add jobs, and give raises. Mr. Speaker, may I inquire how much time I have remaining?

Mr. GOHMERT

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