Louie Gohmert

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, it is with great joy that I welcome Dr. Glynn Stone to the House of Representatives today to serve as our guest chaplain. Dr. Stone serves at Mobberly Baptist Church in Longview as senior pastor, where he takes part in influencing others for Christ. He is husband to wife, Angie, and together, they have the joy of raising three awesome sons. Dr. Stone's call to ministry began when he was 16 years old, serving in churches throughout the Tennessee Valley. Under Dr. Stone's influence at Mobberly Baptist, several churches have been planted across the country as well as numerous mission trips across the world. Apart from his pastoral services, Dr. Stone has had the privilege of teaching at several colleges and universities, including Southwestern Seminary, Dallas Baptist University, and Shorter College. Knowing Dr. Stone as a friend and as a confidant is an honor and a privilege. His dedication to the church of Jesus Christ is something to be greatly admired, just as the vast number of our Founders did. He is a blessing to the multitude of people whom God has touched through him and his years of service to our Lord.

Mr. GOHMERT

Mr. GOHMERT. Mr. Speaker, I just want to start out echoing what my friend, Congressman Rick Nolan, was saying: We should not be about the rich getting richer. There are different strategies to try to accomplish fairness in a free country. If it is truly free, people are going to have to have the opportunity to fail as well as succeed. The only other alternative is the government kills any incentives to be more productive and just says: We are going to flatline everybody across the board, no matter how much you produce. We have seen, over and over throughout history, that never works. Income redistribution never works. You kill the incentives. And, as I was told back in the summer of 1973, in an exchange program at the Soviet Union, by a bunch of farmers who were sitting in the shade mid- morning in the middle of the summer, I asked--and I tried to use my best Russian: When do you work out in the field? I couldn't tell what was cultivated and what wasn't. It all looked terrible. They all laughed. I thought maybe I had translated something wrong. But one of the farmers, in Russian, said: I make the same number of rubles if I am out there in the field, or in the Sun, or here in the shade, so I am here in the shade. That is why socialism doesn't work. So there have been many different strategies that have been utilized throughout this Nation's history, and throughout the history of the world, to try to create--sometimes it is not an effort to create fairness in this country. It has normally been, thank God. But under the Obama administration's efforts to redistribute income, it brought about, for the first time in our Nation's history, that the top 1 percent of our Nation made 95 percent of the income. I just was staggered. But that happened under the Obama administration. And, obviously, that tells us that the strategy for encouraging success, financial success, was an abysmal failure. Under the 8 years of Commander in Chief Obama, as he commanded over the economy, he made sure--I don't think it was intentional--but his efforts made sure that the very richest in the country became much richer and the rest of the country suffered. And those on food stamps skyrocketed to the highest level ever. I think over 50 million. We had 95 million Americans, for the first time in our history, who got so tired of applying for jobs, unsuccessfully, they quit even applying. And so how does the Obama administration respond? They responded by not counting those 95 million in the unemployed numbers because they were no longer looking for jobs. The economy, it really hasn't recovered. People have been flatlined, or less, when adjusted for the little inflation we have had. So it is time to try something different than the Obama efforts that put 95 percent of the Nation's income in the top 1 percent's pockets. We are already seeing that change, and I am hoping that our efforts, especially in creating tax cuts, will cause the economy to just skyrocket, the way it did after the 30 percent tax cut kicked in under President Reagan by 1983. I do want to touch on something that came out in the last week. This article from The Hill says: ``Early Comey draft accused Clinton of gross negligence on emails.'' It turns out--we find out now--that FBI Director Comey started drafting months before Hillary Clinton was interviewed, and months before discussion with Cheryl Mills and the other potential targets of the criminal investigation over the destruction of Hillary Clinton's emails. It should have been obstruction of justice. That is not gross negligence when you tell somebody to go destroy your phone with a hammer, and you have them use BleachBit to take out everything in your phone or in your computer. That is not gross negligence, that is intentional obstruction of justice, when you know that there is a subpoena after the things you are destroying. But FBI Director Comey decided to play politics instead of law and order. Maybe that would make a good new series on television or Netflix--not ``House of Cards,'' but ``House of Injustice''--where we play politics with justice, instead of trying to do justice, trying to fulfill the oath to pursue justice. In any event, he had ``gross negligence,'' as the term he attributed to Hillary Clinton, in that first draft. But, apparently, when he realized that gross negligence would be a crime, he eliminated what would clearly have been a complete accusation of a crime having been committed by Hillary Clinton. So, interesting, just more information coming out about why James Comey should not--well, he should be considered someone worthy of investigation himself. He admitted to leaking information in order to manipulate the Justice Department, not by being up front and recommending a special counsel--oh, no. He wanted to create a special counsel, just like he did when he told John Ashcroft to recuse himself. Ashcroft, obviously, not knowing what Comey had in mind, but he was going to appoint his child's godfather to be special counsel--Patrick Fitzgerald--and let him go on a witch hunt trying to get Karl Rove or Vice President Cheney--unsuccessful. So he manipulates and creates a case against Scooter Libby, so he could at least have a scalp to show for the millions and millions of dollars that were wasted. But from Comey's standpoint, his child's godfather made a lot of money, and Comey got to lash out at the Bush administration, so probably from their standpoint it worked out real well. But it also points to the fact that since James Comey has been involved up to his eyeballs in what is going on as FBI Director, whoever were to be special counsel, if anyone, they would need to be someone who is not close friends with James Comey. And, as Comey apparently pointed out to the Washingtonian, when they were doing a big article on him back in 2013, basically, Bob Mueller--if the world were on fire, Bob Mueller would be the one standing there with him to defend him at the end. So, clearly, Mueller, if he were interested in ethics, would have refused--and actually interested in following the law himself--he would have refused to be appointed special counsel. But we now know that since Mueller, as FBI Director, was involved in the investigation of Russia's efforts to gain United States uranium, to try to corner the market on uranium, and they were apparently committing crimes in their efforts paying bribes, whatever is necessary, to try to acquire United States uranium, the investigation went on apparently for 3 or 4 years, as an undercover person. Well, Mueller and the U.S. attorney in charge of the investigation, named Rod Rosenstein, actually the guy who appointed Mueller to be special counsel, they ended up ensuring that the records of that long- term investigation would be sealed, and they even went to court and got a court order to seal it. And whose name was on the motion to seal those documents? Rod Rosenstein. He did have a deputy sign on his behalf, but Rod Rosenstein was sealing the records so people couldn't know that Russia was committing crimes while they were trying to acquire U.S. uranium. If people saw that the FBI and the Justice Department knew that Russia was committing crimes, paying bribes trying to acquire U.S. uranium, then they would have been complicit with the effort to approve the sale of uranium to a country that was committing crimes to get it. If they had not approved that, then it is doubtful that the Clintons would have struck the megamillions Russian lottery the way they did, and their foundation. So the last two people in the country that should have been involved in an investigation into potential Russian collusion should be a person named Rod Rosenstein and another person named Robert Mueller. I have great respect for his valiant service to our country in Vietnam. This isn't about Vietnam. This is about manipulating the justice system. It is about sealing an ongoing investigation that showed crimes being committed to put our national security at risk, and not speaking up against the sale of 20, 25 percent or so of America's uranium to an entity that would provide it to Russia. We now know that that uranium did not stay in the United States, as some had said. Well, when you are going to sell uranium to people who have been paying bribes, acting illegally, is it any surprise that if they are willing to violate the law, that they would be willing to violate the terms of an agreement or other laws regarding that uranium? So I am still hoping--and, yes, I believe in prayer, so I am hoping and praying that justice will be done, that those who should not be investigating will step out of the picture or be forced to step out of the picture, and we can have a fair investigation into potential crimes. Another very important piece of information that has come out about the shooter in the Sutherland Springs massacre has been this scream, this cry for more gun control, and that is immediately after we had a radical Islamist terrorist screaming ``Allahu Akbar.'' Even on FOX they said that means ``praise be to God.'' No. It means ``praise be to Allah.'' If you want to look for ``praise be to God,'' you can look for somebody to actually say in English, ``Praise be to God;'' or you could look on top of the Washington Monument, where American leaders had inscriptions on all four sides of the metal capstone on top of the Washington Monument; but on the side facing the U.S. Capitol, they had inscribed in Latin, ``Laus Deo,'' meaning ``praise be to God;'' not ``praise be to Allah,'' but ``praise be to God.'' The reason they had ``Praise be to God'' facing the Capitol is that this is east of the Washington Monument, and what they aspired to have was the first rays of God's sun every morning striking ``Praise be to God,'' enlightening those words before anything else in our Nation's Capital was lit; ``Praise be to God,'' then the rest of the Capital City would be lit. That is why it is there. It turns out that the New York killer, the radical Islamist, he came to the U.S. under the diversity visa lottery program that was started because apparently some Senators and a few Democratic House Members believed that we were having too many Hispanics come in and we were not having enough Irish come in. So they created this program so immigrants like Irish, who were not being properly represented in the numbers, could have a chance to come into the U.S. the way so many Hispanics were. Well, I didn't think we cared about national origin that we needed a special program to give some other countries a chance that Hispanic countries would not have, but apparently some thought that was going to be appropriate. It is high time to get rid of the program. We have known for years terrorists have been trying to win the lottery, and terrorists have won the lottery. My friend, the chairman of the Judiciary Committee, Bob Goodlatte, had a terrific op-ed in The Hill, entitled: ``Visa lottery program is too much of a gamble for our nation and needs to end.'' Republicans in the House voted to end the diversity visa lottery back in 2005. The Senate wouldn't take it up. Senators were still there that helped start the program, like Senator Schumer. Then Democrats had the majority for the next 4 years after 2006. They certainly weren't going to end the diversity visa lottery program. They are the ones who wanted it. Then, in 2012, in the session after we got the majority back, we voted again to end the lottery, but the Senate, again, wouldn't take it up. In the last session, we didn't get it voted out, but I am grateful to the chairman of the Judiciary Committee, Bob Goodlatte, for pushing, as he has, and I am hoping we can get that bill to the floor that will allow us to end it. In that op-ed, Chairman Goodlatte says: ``The visa lottery, which was enacted 10 years prior to 9/11, is foolish in the age in which we live. Those in the world who wish us harm can easily engage in this statistical gamble with nothing to lose. The Office of the Inspector General at the State Department has found that it poses significant national security risks. In fact, Saipov``--the New York City radical Islamic terrorist--'' is the fifth person who has been accused or convicted in connection with terrorism plots to have come here through the visa lottery. ``In another instance, Hesham Hadayet, an Egyptian terrorist who killed two and wounded several others at Los Angeles International Airport on July 4, 2002, was a lawful permanent resident who received his green card through the program''--the diversity visa lottery program--``since his wife was a visa lottery winner.'' So this Egyptian terrorist was a lottery winner, or his wife was, and the two people who he killed in L.A. Airport and those he wounded were the losers of that lottery. Chairman Goodlatte goes on to say: ``Additionally, in August of 2002, Pakistan national Imran Mandhai pleaded guilty to conspiring to wage jihad by plotting to destroy electrical power stations, the Israeli consulate, and other south Florida targets. He entered the United States with his parents, who had won the visa lottery, in 1998. ``Similarly, in August 2002, two diversity lottery winners from Morocco--Ahmed Hannan and Karim Koubriti--were indicted as members of an alleged terrorist `sleeper' cell in Michigan. In June 2003, a jury convicted Koubriti of conspiring to provide material support or resources to terrorists, and Hannan of possessing false documents.'' So visa lottery applicants, some of them--many of them submit several applications under different names in order to increase their chances of winning the visa lottery. Chairman Goodlatte continues: ``And marriage fraud is rampant in the program. `Pop-up' spouses often appear in between the time that the applicant registers for the lottery and the time when the applicant is interviewed by the State Department. These `spouses' pay the applicant in order to be part of the applicant's green card winnings.'' Winnings from the visa lottery. Chairman Goodlatte continues: ``The United States has the most generous immigration system in the world, admitting more than 1 million legal immigrants each year.'' There is no country in the world that allows that many people to come into their country legally. We are far from being the largest country either geographically or population-wise, yet we are the most generous country in the world in allowing people into our country legally. Chairman Goodlatte goes on: ``Eliminating the visa lottery does not negate our Nation's generosity, but makes our immigration system smarter and safer for the age in which we live. Our immigration policy should be based primarily on our national needs, security, and economics, as opposed to an arbitrary system. The visa lottery is too much of a gamble for our Nation to make with today's ongoing threat of terrorism and must come to an end.'' There is no other country in the world that is so stupid regarding its own national security and national interests that it allows a lottery to determine who would get a visa to come into their country. It, hopefully, will be ending soon. That is why there was this article in The Daily Caller: ``GOP Senators Distance Themselves from Diversity Visa Program They Helped Create.'' There are some who helped create the diversity visa lottery program in the Senate who are saying: You know what? Maybe it is time to get rid of it. I hope we will. Yesterday, though, in the House Judiciary Committee, we did have a bill come up. It is being urged by law enforcement, Federal law enforcement, by the Justice Department, FBI, the National Security Administration, CIA, our intelligence folks. They are saying: We have got to have this 702 program reauthorized that will end on December 31 of this year. Well, we know that the system has been abused. We were assured when I was here early on in Congress that: Gee, just reauthorize this, because there are no Americans who are going to be harmed by allowing these warrantless wiretapping situations. The only way an American could be caught up in this wiretapping would be if they are talking to a known foreign terrorist or a member of a known foreign terrorist organization. So that gave me some security. And back then--some years back when we were authorizing the program, I said to my friends that were against the program because they were afraid an American would be caught up: Well, if they are afraid of being caught up in this wiretapping or this tapping into phone calls, then just make sure that their foreign terrorist friends call them on somebody else's phone. That was glibly said. Little did I know that it is not just known foreign terrorists and it is not members of known terrorist organizations; it has gotten so far afield that even if a Member of Congress has an innocent visit with a diplomat or an ambassador from a foreign country, that can be--and apparently, we are told, has been-- used to listen in and monitor conversations. But we were assured there is a great safeguard, because if an American is picked up under this monitoring of foreign terrorists, then the American name will be masked so nobody will know who it was. So through the Fourth Amendment, we will protect them from having a warrantless search of a conversation without a warrant from a judge, which requires that they are proving probable cause to believe that the individual is involved in a crime, has committed a crime. And then with that probable cause being proved--as a judge, I signed felony warrants for searches, for seizures, for arrests, but you had to have probable cause. But you had to have probable cause. This allows them to grab those conversations without probable cause. So with all that we have begun to learn, and especially when we found out how liberal the Obama administration was with unmasking American names and that we had people who have shown themselves to be extremely political in their decisions and activities, even being willing to go on Sunday morning television shows six times in 1 day and lie intentionally to the American public about the Benghazi matter, that that same political person would be unmasking American names right and left, and although I know there is one Republican who said, ``Oh, I talked to her, and I'm convinced that she's fine,'' well, I am not. We need that being thoroughly investigated, as well as the other unmaskings being properly and thoroughly investigated by people who are not so gullible. This is serious stuff. When we in Congress allowed this loophole around the Fourth Amendment requirement for warrants in order to seize or obtain evidence, we anticipated that it would be carefully and strictly adhered to. And then we see the unmasking has been so liberally done, and there certainly seems to be a prima facie indication, when you look at who unmasked and the people who were unmasked, that you have one political party in power investigating their political opponent for political gain. And, once again, thank God it didn't end up the way they hoped. But this is still quite serious, and that is why I applauded my friend, another fellow felony judge in our background. Former Judge Ted Poe and Zoe Lofgren from California, Democrat, had a good amendment in my opinion, and it was going to require that before law enforcement-- once they obtained these American names and numbers, well, law enforcement, apparently, once they have obtained these American names and numbers and phone numbers and conversations, and obtained them without probable cause in compliance with the Fourth Amendment, there are countless numbers of queries being made into the database on that individual or on the phone number just doing phishing expeditions, and then, if they find something, seeing if they can use that information to help prosecute them on another matter. Those are truly phishing expeditions. They should not be allowed without a warrant. Okay. We will say you obtained the information legally, even though you did it in violation of the Fourth Amendment. But if you are going to go back and research that database, you should have probable cause before you start being allowed to basically listen in on conversations or follow up on all kinds of activity that was gathered without any probable cause. This is what the government does that the Founders were afraid of. They didn't know that there would be cell phones some day or the highly technically proficient ability to communicate we have now. But they knew that mankind would not change. It has not changed. There has always been evil. There will always be evil in this world, and we have to guard against becoming part of the problem when we are in the government. The Founders' safeguards, all of those amendments, basically, were safeguards, whether it was the First, Second, Fourth, Fifth, Eighth, Tenth, I mean, those are critically important--Sixth Amendment. Those are all important to preserving our rights. So I was saddened that that amendment failed: 12 voting for it, 21 voting against it. I appreciate the chairman and the ranking member, Mr. Conyers, agreeing to an amendment that Mr. Cicilline made, my Democratic friend. And, in fact, I had an identical amendment I was going to make, except mine added two other safeguards, two other laws. My friend and neighbor--office neighbor, that is--agreed to accept my friendly amendment, to add those other two laws, to ensure that when the U.S. Government went after and examined and queried this 702 material--the warrantless wiretapping, as The Hill calls it--that these laws would apply to those queries to hopefully increase the concern by those making the queries that they could be punished. But this article goes on and says: ``The current law allows Federal investigators to search collected data belonging to American citizens, an authority critics say circumvents Fourth Amendment protections against unlawful search and seizure. ``The Liberty Act would require criminal investigators to obtain a court order before viewing the content of any American's communications collected under the NSA program--but would not require a warrant to search the database in the first place.'' So the Liberty Act it is referring to actually was used as the amendment to that bill. Anyway, I know Mr. Conyers is quoted in the article, saying: ``We have been assured in explicit terms that if we adopt this amendment today''--talking about the Poe-Lofgren amendment--``leadership will not permit this bill to proceed to the House floor.'' And that was also a concern mentioned by our friend from New York, Jerry Nadler. But I would submit that we should not be afraid of Republican leadership doing the wrong thing. At least, it doesn't hurt, I guess, to have a healthy fear because that certainly has happened. But we still ought to be pushing to do everything we can to ensure that the U.S. Constitution is properly followed and we don't continue to have loopholes around it. So that is an ongoing fight, and the Senate has got to take it up. But there are concerns that the Senate is just going to rubberstamp what the NSA wants. They are not going to have any of the safeguards that we put in the bill as it is already, which I still don't feel is enough, and that is why I voted against it, as did the man who sits next to me in the Judiciary Committee, Jim Jordan. Andy Biggs voted against it as well. So there were a number of us who voted against the bill because the proper protections, in our opinion, are not there. We have just got to continue to advocate for that. I also want to mention a bit of fake news that came from the Huffington Post. I have met Ms. Huffington. She could not have been more congenial. When I was at ABC, going to be on the Stephanopoulos show Sunday morning, she was a delight to talk to, but the stuff coming out of her publication sometimes is rather astounding. We had a debate in the Natural Resources Committee. We were voting on some bills, and a comment I made that was not necessarily central to the discussion but I thought might be interesting--I mean, if they would look at my full comments and comments I have made and continue to make, as I have said before, British Petroleum should never have been allowed to keep operating their drilling platform in the Gulf of Mexico called Deepwater Horizon. They had hundreds of egregious safety violations when other companies had one or two. The only reason we can find that the Obama administration allowed British Petroleum to continue to drill with such egregious safety violations, with such complete, utter disregard for the safety and well-being of those on the platform and of wildlife in the Gulf of Mexico and those bordering the Gulf of Mexico, all we can find is they were about to come out and endorse the President's cap-and-trade program, something that Speaker Pelosi desperately wanted. I had read an article that indicated they even had BP representatives in the office of Senator John Kerry trying to work out when they would do the big rollout of this big oil company that was going to support cap-and-trade. Basically, they would have an inside deal and would have made billions of dollars that other oil companies would not have made because they didn't have the inside track like the Obama administration was going to give BP. But that is when the Deepwater Horizon blew, from what I understood, and so that is why the Obama administration was so slow to respond. They kept hoping this was going to go away and it wasn't going to be as serious, because BP was assuring them: Oh, it's not that bad. We have got it under control. They didn't have it under control. They should never have been allowed to have been drilling when that blowout occurred. It did have an adverse effect on the Gulf. It did have a very adverse effect on so many things. But the comment that the Huffington Post wanted to create some fake news, latched onto, is I was really upset and concerned about the damage that BP had caused. I have to go back and look. It wasn't that long after this happened, but I drove hundreds of miles along the beach, and I kept getting out with my high-def camera expecting to be able to find a lot of oil on the beaches. I know I had read and seen there was a spot south of New Orleans, and, apparently, I didn't start close enough to that. I understood it was really ruining the beaches of Florida, and I went along the Miracle Coast and along the Mississippi and Alabama coast there. Everywhere I went, I would maybe find a few drops of oil like we have on our Texas beaches quite often, but it is just a drop or two here or there. I was going: Where's all the oil? Everybody said: Well, it is, like, 5, 10 miles up the coast. So I kept going up, looking for this big oil spill on the beach. And I knew there were people who were undertaking heroic efforts, you know. I had seen those on the news. I had talked to people who were doing it. Kevin Costner had a great idea, it appeared, for sopping up the oil to keep it from getting to the coast. So there were Herculean efforts being made to stop the oil. But there should have been more oil on the beach. So they want to make it sound like I am just oblivious to any oil ever coming ashore because I did say what is absolutely true, that it is amazing the way nature seems to take care of problems, and we know that because there is ongoing oil seepage every day. I don't want oil on our beaches. I hate oil on the beaches. Really, it is infuriating when you are walking along the beach and you step on an oil bubble and then you have to spend a bunch of time trying to get that oil off your foot, even a small drop. But you could go to southern California, off the coast, and find drops of oil here and there from natural seepage. The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, you can go to their website, and they talk about natural oil seeps. They said: ``A 2003 report from the National Research Council estimates that, on average, approximately 160,000 tonnes''--and it is spelled t-o-n-n-e-s; apparently metric tons--``of petroleum enter North American waters through natural seeps each year.'' Apparently, 1 ton is about 7.33 barrels per ton, or 307.86 U.S. gallons per metric ton. So if you multiplied 307--or 308, if you want to round it; multiply 160,000 tons by 308, then you could get an idea of how many gallons of oil seep out just through cracks in the Earth's surface and come up through the waters. They are hard to find, although sometimes you can see them from satellites or from aircraft. You can see the oil shimmering on top of the water since it is lighter than water. It floats up through the seawater and comes to the surface. Anyway, just more fake news trying to create a big deal where there wasn't any. But you can go online to Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution. They have a good article on the natural oil seeps. It says: ``As much as one-half of the oil that enters the coastal environment comes from natural seeps of oil and natural gas. These geologic features are known to occur in clusters around the world, such as off the southern coast of California and in the Gulf of Mexico, but are still relatively unstudied. In recent years, advances in remote sensing have enabled more accurate detection and estimates of natural oil flows into the ocean. ``In locations where seeps are found, oil flows slowly up through networks of cracks, forming springs of hydrocarbon similar to the La Brae tar pits on land. Lighter compounds rise buoyantly to the water's surface and evaporate or become entrained in ocean currents; others fall the seafloor and collect over hundreds or thousands of years.'' So if you multiply 308 times 160 tons, and then multiply that times thousands of years, you will get an idea as to how much natural seepage there has been of crude oil into the ocean. But at least the Huffington Post article points out that--and this was from the Deepwater Horizon blowout--``About 24 percent is believed to have evaporated or dissolved. The remaining 35 percent was `naturally dispersed' or persisted in the environment.'' And it says only ``41 percent was directly or chemically recovered, burned or skimmed.'' So they only got 41 percent. That is pretty good. It is not good enough. We need to be better at doing that. But it really is amazing how nature seems to respond to catastrophes, but we are supposed to tend the garden, and that means we do the best we can to keep the garden clean. Mr. Speaker, I want to return to the issue about the shooting down in Sutherland Springs. The President, I think, appropriately pointed out when he was asked about it. He said: I think that mental health is your problem here. People are screaming for more gun control. Yet every time it seems that more gun control is pled for, our people that mean well stand up and scream: Oh, you got to do something. I don't care if it is wrong. Just do something. Well, it may be well-intended, but that is extremely foolish. You can do more harm by doing something even if it is wrong. It is often tragedies that lead to the worst legislation because people in Congress feel like we have got to do something. We have got to do something quick, even if it is wrong, so that the American people think we are dealing with it. Jefferson was not at the Constitutional Convention, but I understand he suggested that potentially a good amendment would be that you could not pass a bill here in Congress until it had been on file for a year. Obviously, that has never made its way into the law, but some of our worst legislation comes too quick as an overreaction to some tragedy, some failure when we don't have adequate time to see what would be the best thing to do. As it turns out in the Texas shooting, the gun laws were entirely adequate to prevent that from happening, but for those who put their faith in the government keeping us protected, which our Founders did not do--that is why we have a Second Amendment--you have to look no further than this tragic massacre to understand the government is not likely going to be there to protect you. It turns out the shooter, a man full of evil, was convicted of a crime that should have prevented him from even having a gun. Yet the Air Force failed to get the conviction into the databank so that when searches were done, background checks didn't pick it up. So when the government fails, the Founders expected that by having a Second Amendment where, not the military of the United States, but actually militia groups that form up, they would be able to have weapons. Those were rank and file citizens who were not hired by the government. They were simple citizens of the United States who would respond to suppress any outrage that the government might try to impose. That is what happened when Patrick Henry got 5,000 people to come out when the British Government, that was the law of the land, started going through their homes and taking whatever they wanted. They responded with guns, citizens coming out of their homes. No, I am not advocating for those who want to create more fake news. I am not advocating for a revolution. We have, fortunately, a Constitution in place that they didn't have in 1775, that allows us to fix things without having to have a revolution. But the answer is not more gun control laws. This guy was full of evil. He had mental health problems. The system should have prevented him from having a gun. The laws that were in place should have prevented that, and I am grateful that the State of Texas did its part. He applied for a concealed carry permit, and even though the Air Force conviction wasn't there, there was enough evidence to prevent him from getting a concealed carry permit in the State of Texas. But the other laws, where the Federal Government is supposed to protect us, failed to work because the government often fails to do its job. The thing that really, to me, became an outrage--and it is something that our Founders feared perhaps more than anything else when they were trying to set up a good governing document--was persecution of Christians. That is why so many people came to this country in its earliest days. Christians were being persecuted, as has happened for over 2,000 years. They thought if they came to America and they could have a country where they could be free to practice their Christian beliefs without government prosecuting and persecuting them, that it would be just a little slice of heaven on Earth, as much as you could get while there is still so much evil in the world. Now, as this country, led by its Supreme Court, others like the ACLU, and Freedom From Religion groups, they--we have already been told, you can't mention God. You can't pray. You can't mention your religion. Well, that is certainly not what was the feeling of those who were the predominant Founders and those who made the best improvements in America. It was a Great Awakening, a huge revival in America. Before the mid- 1700s, so much of the country turned to God, had Christian beliefs, Biblical beliefs, and their children--children like Sam Adams--grew up having such profound faith in God, profound faith in the Bible. I was looking down the hall in what is right below the rotunda and one of the signs up there mentioned Sam Adams. Sam Adams was called the Father of the American Revolution. He was a product of the Great Awakening in the 1700s. He was so moral. I guess many people knew that he knew how to make good beer. But he also had profound belief in the Bible, in God, in nature's God, and that is what drove him to push for a country where there could be equality; where people could practice their religious beliefs, whether they were atheists, Buddhists, Confucianists, Orthodox Jews, Muslim, only so long as they did not believe that their religion should overtake and supplant the U.S. Constitution, which is what radical Islamists believe. We have now come to a place where Christians are being so vilified and belittled and besmirched that this country is beginning to look like the places that the Christians that fled to America had to leave to avoid persecution. So we get these Twitter comments that say--an article from the Huffington Post, naturally--playing up the ridicule of Christians. One tweet from Rosanne Cash says: ``They were in a church that was full of prayers. They need a government that will enable commonsense gun laws.'' Karen Tulmulty said: ``Thoughts and prayers for people who were mowed down in a church sounds especially hollow.'' Michael McKean said: ``They were in church. They had the prayers shot right out of them. Maybe try something else.'' Keith Olbermann said: `` `Thoughts and prayers' again . . . idiot? These people were in CHURCH. They WERE praying.'' Katie Mack said: ``At this point, `thoughts and prayers' just means `shut up and take it.''' Wil Wheaton said: ``The murdered victims were in a church. If prayers did anything, they would still be alive, you worthless sack of'' S-dot- dot-dot. Chris Evangelista: ``They were already in a church . . . it's almost like prayers do absolutely nothing and actual reform is needed.'' Marina Sirtis said: ``To all those asking for thoughts and prayers for the victims . . . it seems that your direct line to God is not working.'' Josh Gad: ``Terror attack that kills six gets travel bans same day. Deadliest mass shooting and deadliest church shooting ever get prayers and too soon to talk.'' Roxane Gay: ``After a mass shooting in a church, the phrase `thoughts and prayers' from the mouths of useless politicians becomes even more asinine.'' Robert McNamara: ``We need more than prayers. . . . Today's victims were at church praying. We need sensible gun regulation and a ban on AR-15 weapons.'' By the way, if there were a ban on AR-15s, then the shooter would have been allowed to continue shooting, and he probably would have killed everybody in the church because the guy that stopped him, thank God, had an AR-15 that he used to shoot him and get the carnage to stop. Sara Bonaccori says: ``Clearly your prayers aren't working if a mass shooting can take place in a church. Maybe we can try a legislative solution now?'' Mr. Speaker, it just goes on and on belittling Christians and belittling people who believe in the power of prayer. Then we had an article from The Hill today. Representative Jared Huffman in a news interview says that he thinks there is too much religion in politics. Huffman told The Washington Post that he has for years not answered questionnaires that ask him about religious beliefs instead putting: unspecified or none of your business. I don't believe in religious tests. I don't either. Although if somebody says they are a Christian and they come before our committee and they keep making a big deal about how I am a Christian, then, as we know even in court, credibility is always an issue. If you say under oath you are one thing and it turns out you are not, then you are not really a Christian, you don't have Christian beliefs, and that is worth knowing. You say you are a Christian? What does that mean? I will not hesitate to ask that if it is going to reflect not on their religious beliefs. I am not going to hold those against anybody. But if you say you are one thing and you are lying, that is important to find out. Anyway, more of the same. There is a great article in National Review by David French, dated November 6: ``In the Face of Evil, Prayer Is the Most Rational and Effective Response.'' He points out that: ``While I disagree with atheists, my quarrel right now isn't with their disbelief, it's with their choosing this moment to not only mock Christians but to also display their ignorance of basic Christian theology. ``You see, the presence of evil--especially the increasing presence of evil--demands a prayerful response. Scripture is full of examples of God's people crying out to Him in great distress. Jesus cried out to God in His great distress. Time and again God responds in ways that bring healing and restoration to broken people and broken nations. He always responds in some way--often not the way we ask or demand.'' If He were to intervene and stop all evil, then it means we become robots; we don't have free choice. We become basically robots. As any parent knows, you can order your child to love you or to hug you, but there is nothing that means more to your heart and soul than a sweet, little child running up to you voluntarily, throwing their arms around you, and saying, ``I love you, Daddy'' from the heart. If we have a Heavenly parent, doesn't it make sense that that Heavenly parent would want us free to choose to love the Heavenly parent? The article says: ``Progressives always respond to mass shootings with a series of proposals that wouldn't have stopped the mass shooting.'' Mr. Speaker, it is happening again. It is happening again. This shooter in Sutherland Springs, Texas, could not have lawfully possessed his weapons, but he ignored existing gun laws. So who follows the laws if you pass laws to take away guns? The honest people, the ones who are victims in a shooting like this. That is who follows. There are laws in Texas that enable a church to be a gun-free zone, and apparently too many people assume every church is gun-free. If someone had had a gun in that church, there would not have been 25 people killed. So, Mr. Speaker, my thoughts and prayers are with the country, and I hope and pray others will join. Mr. Speaker, I yield back the balance of my time.

Mr. GOHMERT

Mr. GOHMERT. Mr. Speaker, I thank my friend, Mr. Biggs. I appreciate your hosting this hour because this is critical stuff here. This is the kind of thing that makes or breaks an experiment in self-government because there is an attempted coup taking place. We have heard over and over about, oh, gee, Mr. Mueller will come to a fair and just conclusion. Well, the only fair and just conclusion that Bob Mueller could come to would be that he should never have accepted the position of special counsel, that he had conflicts so deep that accepting the role of special counsel could not be ethical and appropriate. You wonder, why would he take it? Well, when you find out that, as FBI Director, he and U.S. Attorney Rod Rosenstein were involved in the deep cover investigation into Russia's effort to corner the market using American uranium, and that Hillary Clinton and Eric Holder and others in the administration approved the sale to a group, the stockholders of which donated, as I understand, $145 million or so to the Clinton Foundation, in effect, the Clintons hit the Russian megalottery--the megamillions lottery from Russia. As I understand, $145 million or so to the Clinton Foundation, in effect, the Clintons hit the Russian mega lottery; the megamillions lottery from Russia, and just a little tease was the half-a-million- dollar fee for just giving one little, short speech by Bill Clinton. But if we look back at what has gone on, just look at some of the facts, it was shocking that FBI Director Comey did not have Cheryl Mills interviewed. She was Clinton's former Chief of Staff at the State Department. Now we are finding out, well, I guess, gee, if Comey was going to draft a statement saying that there was not sufficient evidence to prosecute Hillary Clinton before he ever talked to Cheryl Mills or talked to Hillary Clinton or followed up on the most critical evidence, then clearly it makes sense why Director Comey would not want to make Cheryl Mills' interview recorded, and would make an agreement with Cheryl Mills and the other potential defendants in the case that, gee, if they just got a look at their laptops, they promised they wouldn't use anything in the laptop to prosecute them, and the FBI would then, under Comey's direction, would actually participate in the obstruction and destruction of evidence so that nobody could ever use it against any of them. Now, originally, we thought that might only be Hillary Clinton. But as we find out, gee, Mr. Mueller, Mr. Comey, and Mr. Rosenstein were in this up to their eyeballs when it came to the Russian investigation regarding uranium. If they were doing their jobs, they should never, ever have allowed that sale of American uranium to go to a company that they knew would end up in Russian hands. So if you look at Cheryl Mills, Heather Samuelson, John Bentel, Bryan Pagliano, and Paul Combetta, these are people who were potential targets. And what does Director Comey do? He makes sure that they walk. Because if they were properly interviewed, like good prosecutors or good investigators normally do, you start there and you say: You help us with what happened and what you were told by the person above you, and then we won't prosecute you to the full extent of the law. That is how deals are made. That is how you get to a Mr. Big in a racketeer organized confederation. Mr. Comey and the FBI apparently relied on the Fusion GPS investigation knowing where it came from and knowing who paid for it. This is incredible. If you go back to the Washingtonian article of 2013, it makes pretty clear that Comey and Mueller were basically joined at the hip. In fact, a quote back in 2013 says: ``The stressed Comey had few people he could turn to for advice; almost no one was allowed to know the program existed, and disclosing the program's existence to someone outside that circle could send him to prison. In fact, there was only one person in government whom he could confide in and trust: Bob Mueller.'' ``Comey thought, `A freight train is heading down the tracks, about to derail me, my family, and my career.' He glanced to his left at his fellow passenger, thinking, `At least Bob Mueller will be standing on the tracks with me.' '' ``The crisis over, Comey and Mueller shared a dark laugh.'' Well, it is not quite so amusing when you look at the stakes and whether or not this little experiment in self-government will continue. For example, we know that Comey admitted in testimony before Congress before the Senate that he had leaked information in order to get a special counsel appointed. That was his dear friend who would stand beside him through thick and thin, Bob Mueller. This brought memories of when Mr. Comey urged his boss, John Ashcroft, to recuse himself and let them appoint a special counsel. So Ashcroft trusted Comey. He probably shouldn't have, but he did. Then Comey saw to it that his child's godfather, Patrick Fitzgerald, would be the prosecutor. Much like Mueller, he got massive amounts of money and a great powerful staff so they could go after Karl Rove and Vice President Cheney. They were embarrassed there was no case there, so they made up one on Scooter Libby, and he became the fall guy. But we know from the leak that Comey admitted that he used an ex-U.S. Attorney, identified as Columbia University professor Daniel Richman, to leak to The New York Times the contents of the memo Comey wrote. If you look at the FBI contract with agents and with people employed by the FBI, it makes it very clear that memo that Comey prepared about his conversation with the President was not supposed to ever be provided to the press. That is FBI property, and he violated the law in leaking it. But if you look, then-professor Daniel Richman got that to The New York Times author Michael Schmidt, who later wrote the Comey memo story in which Comey told Congress he directed Richman to leak. Well, if you go back through and you start looking for this common thread, Michael Schmidt writing stories for The New York Times about leaks, then you find a number of cases where it appears likely. Whether it is March 1, March 4, March 5, March 6, it appears likely that this was James Comey leaking again. The only question is: Did he commit a crime in one or all of those events? The answer is: We will never know as long as Bob Mueller is special counsel. He needs to have the decency to say that it was a mistake for me to take this on, it was a mistake when Comey testified there was no evidence of any collusion between Donald Trump and the Russians, it was a mistake for him to leak out that night that now he is investigating the President for obstruction of justice. Why would he do that? So he wouldn't get fired, because there was no purpose in his investigation. Why would he indict people when he did? Because even The Wall Street Journal and others around this town began to say: Do you know what? Mueller really should resign. He had to get those indictments out quick so people would not keep calling for his resignation. Well, some of us are. We have got to clean this town up, and it will start with the resignation of Mr. Mueller and a proper investigation of all of this underlying case involving Comey, Lynch, the Clintons, Russia, and Rod Rosenstein who oversaw the Russia case before he decided to seal it.

Mr. GOHMERT

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

Mr. GOHMERT

Mr. GOHMERT. Madam Speaker, it is certainly an honor and pleasure to follow my dear friend from Iowa with whom I got to share a little time last weekend, be out in God's nature and just enjoy the best Iowa has to offer, and Steve King is one of those best things. Well, we have heard a great deal about the New York terrorist, although I believe Governor Cuomo told us there are no terrorist ties initially, before he had any time to know anything, really. But that seems to be kind of the way most mayors where these terrorist attacks occur respond. They immediately declare, ``This is not terrorist. No terrorist ties.'' And then, lo and behold, we find out, eventually, there certainly are. One of the problems that has been created during the last 8 years and a little bit during the last part of the Bush administration is the development discussion of countering violent extremism. But I do want to touch on something about the diversity visa lottery program. My first year in Congress, in 2005, we eliminated the diversity visa lottery program--at least voted in the House to eliminate it--but the Senate would not take it up, wouldn't take it up. We had a Republican majority in the House and Senate, and the Senate wouldn't take it up. Then, in November of 2006, we lost the majority in both Houses. And, of course, the Democratic majority in both Houses loved the diversity visa lottery program. In fact, I have a floor speech from Senator Chuck Schumer where he extols the virtues of the diversity visa lottery program. Here are some highlights. Senator Schumer said--this is May 24, 2006: ``As a Member of the House, I helped create this program, which my colleague, Senator Kennedy, created in the Senate in 1990.'' He said: ``In fact, my city of New York has dramatically benefited from this program, and diverse countries such as Ireland, Poland, and Nigeria have had large numbers of immigrants to be able to come, set roots, and help the diversity of New York and of America. ``So this is an excellent program. Nobody has said it has done a bad job.'' Those were his comments in 2006. Well, I am here to say it has done a bad job. So now nobody can say that nobody has said it has done a bad job, because I am saying it has done a bad job. No matter how noble the original idea was, you should never trust the country's security to a lottery. That is insanity. Of course, in a speech back in 2006, then Congressman Schumer, now Senator Schumer, said--or, actually, he was a Senator in 2006. But Senator Schumer said: ``I think America should admit many more of those people but not at the expense of this small, successful program that guarantees that other countries, such as the Irelands, the Polands, and the Nigerias that are unable to have immigrants come in for family reasons, can get people to come into this country.'' Senator Schumer also said, about the diversity visa lottery program: ``But one of the things great about America is, again, we allow people from all over the world to come here. ``So I plead with my colleagues, keep the diversity visa program.'' He said: ``As I ride my bike around New York City on the weekends, I see what immigrants do for America. This program has dramatically helped. Neighborhoods such as Woodlawn and Greenpoint have been revitalized by new Irish and Polish immigrants. Neighborhoods such as East Flatbush and Harlem have been revitalized by West African immigrants. We don't have to stop this program.'' Well, again, it is insanity to trust our national security to a lottery, and that is what the diversity visa lottery program does. We have had terrorists, and we have known it for a number of years, that have been getting their names into the lottery so that hopefully they would win the lottery and come to America to kill Americans. I understand that there was a stepped-up effort in the last couple of years to vet people a little better, but the trouble here is, as then- Director Comey of the FBI testified before our Judiciary Committee, we have got nothing to vet these people against, so many of them, from Syria, from Yemen. He said in Iraq, we had all of the government records. It turns out, even with all the government records, they let in two terrorists. We had fingerprints of theirs on IEDs that killed Americans, and they let them in, and eventually realized they had made a mistake. So they said we are going to step up our vetting after they realized they had admitted known terrorists into the United States that created IEDs to kill and maim Americans. They could say we were stepping up the vetting program, but when there is no information--this is what Comey said. With Iraq, we had the government records, we had fingerprints, we took fingerprints off IEDs. Syria, Yemen, we have got nothing. The government there doesn't give us their records. We have nothing to work from. In Syria, for a while, ISIS had taken over one of the printing facilities where they could print the passports. So we had no information to work from. We didn't know what was true and what wasn't. So, once again, we were trusting our national security and the lives of Americans to a fatal game of Russian roulette, but it was from the Middle East, it was from Uzbekistan, it was from places where people have been radicalized. I have got the numbers here. In fact, let's see, diversity visa program statistics, as I understand, the New York terrorist, the ISIS supporter who killed eight people, wounded so many others, in 2011, we had 5,091 from Uzbekistan. There were none from Poland, and in the top ten, there were certainly none from Ireland. We had, in 2012, 4,800 from Uzbekistan; and even better news, we had 4,453 from Iran. For those who are not keeping track, the Iranian Government has not given us information that we can count on about people in Iran who want to come to America, and we know Iran is the largest national supporter of terrorism in the world. So we don't have much of anything to vet these people on, but, you know, Senator Schumer said it is a great program, and nobody said anything against it as he rides his bicycle around. Well, fortunately he wasn't riding his bicycle around in front of the terrorist that was allowed in on the program he thinks was so grand. And, frankly, I am grateful he was not on his bicycle in front of that terrorist killer that his program let in. In 2013, Uzbekistan, we had 5,101 come in from Uzbekistan. We did have 2,038 come from Poland that year. In 2014, another 6,027 that we could not adequately vet coming from Iran. Some of them we could with relatives, but many of those people simply could not be vetted. We don't know if they were sent here by the Iranian Government to kill Americans or not. In 2015, we have another 4,992 from Iran; Uzbekistan, we had another 4,368. So we don't have the numbers from 2016 yet, unfortunately, but hopefully that gives some idea of what we are dealing with. We also need to understand that government officials tell us: You know, we had no indication this guy was a terrorist. There were even people from the government, the Feds, who were saying: Gee, you know, this was not a known person. This New York terrorist, not a known person to the Federal authorities. Well, it turns out, in 2015, they interviewed him. He had terrorist ties. The thing people need to understand is--and I have been saying this for years, I have grilled Director Mueller on this issue. I was contacted by one media outlet that says: Why are you just bringing this up now about the purge of training materials? My goodness. I have been talking about this for years, I have been made fun of about this for years, but I have been right about it for years, Michele Bachmann and I. It should not have been classified what they took out of the FBI materials, but they classified it so we couldn't show America how stupid some of their purging was, how senseless, how, as some of our agents told me, we are blinding ourselves of the ability to see our enemy. So I grilled Mueller some years ago over the fact that they got a heads-up twice that the older Tsarnaev brother was radicalized, he was a terrorist, he was a threat to American lives. They didn't do anything; the CIA didn't do anything. The FBI finally sends some agents out. They interviewed the older Tsarnaev, but they didn't know what to ask. They don't know what the signs are of someone who is radicalized, because they have had beat down their throats for so long, and this was the Obama administration, they had the FBI's Guiding Principles document on training. And this was the document that the FBI used to say: Oh, no. We have got to be politically correct. We can't teach people about how to find and spot a radical Islamist. So there was a purge of FBI training materials. There is a fantastic Judicial Watch special report, it can be found on their website, dated December 5 of 2013, ``U.S. Government Purges of Law Enforcement Training Material Deemed `Offensive' to Muslims.'' Who was complaining? Well, the Council on American-Islamic Relations, the Islamic Society of North America, and they just happened to have known contacts who were named as coconspirators supporting terrorism in the Holy Land Foundation prosecution. What did Mueller's FBI do under Mueller's specific direction? They created an outreach program. They called them their community outreach partner for these people who judges said: No. There is plenty of evidence to show that these people have ties supporting terrorism. No. We are not going to eliminate their names. The Dallas Federal Court said that; the Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals in New Orleans said that. It didn't make it to the Supreme Court, but two courts said: Yeah, there is plenty of evidence to see there are plenty of ties here, evidence of their ties to known terrorists. So it wasn't until 2008, after years of having this evidence, that Director Mueller sent kind of an apologetic letter to CAIR, Council on American-Islamic Relations, saying: You know, we better suspend our community partnership for a while. It is just unbelievable, but it was the political correctness during the Obama administration that has gotten people killed, because they purged our training material. And God bless Ken Jensen, FBI agent. He had prepared the 700-page training materials that Mueller ordered destroyed. Somebody needed to study that material before they went out and talked to Tsarnaev. If they had, they would have recognized this guy has probably radicalized, and we better be on the alert. They could have saved lives at the Boston Marathon if Mueller had not prevented them from knowing how to do their job. And he is special counsel. By the way, Madam Speaker, the former Director of the FBI who blinded the FBI of their ability to see terrorists, why do we think he came out with the indictments exactly when he did? Well, I can tell you why, because he is as easy to read as anybody in the world. He came out with those indictments when he did because he had people starting to call for his resignation, starting to demand that he be removed, demanding that he recuse himself. Even The Wall Street Journal, that has been very sympathetic, they pointed out it was time for him to go. What did he do? He immediately comes out with indictments to show: No, no, no. You can't demand that I go. I am too relevant. You look at those indictments, and I am for punishing anybody who has committed a crime, but there was no need for a special counsel to come up with what he did. The FBI could have done that. The Department of Justice could have done that. We didn't need Mueller and 20 lawyers, all of these Hillary Clinton sycophants, in there to come up with this. The DOJ could have done this. It was just a ridiculous couple of indictments to be spending all these millions of dollars for. We also know that same kind of conduct occurred when Comey came to the Hill and testified there is no trace of evidence of collusion between President Trump and the Russians. Well, Mueller had to be puckering up, because he knew: Uh-oh. Now there is testimony from the FBI Director that there is no basis for me to be special counsel and to have hired all these people. Wow. So the President could be in line to fire me, because now we have testimony from the FBI Director there is no basis for this investigation. Shut her down. So that night, they leak out he is investigating President Trump for obstruction of justice. Excuse me? We all know what that so-called evidence was. They will never, ever get a conviction, because it was not obstruction of justice. Obstruction of justice is when you do what Comey and Loretta Lynch did to prevent a proper investigation, and you make an agreement with potential defendants that if they will just give you their laptops and let you look at them, you will destroy all that you find, and you will never use any of that information to prosecute them, and you give them immunity from prosecution. That is not what you do if you are going to prosecute a case. No. You get them in a bind and then you tell them: Here are the charges you are looking at unless you come clean and identify the person above you with whom you were working and what they did. Then you work up the chain to the big fish, which is how organized criminal organizations have been prosecuted over the years. It would work in this case, but Director Comey was so busy figuring out how to explain how Hillary Clinton should not be prosecuted, though the evidence was basically for a slam dunk case of conviction, that he overlooked properly pursuing the case. We don't need Director Mueller. We need him gone, and we need a special prosecutor to get into this, clearly, since Jeff Sessions recused himself on anything involving Hillary Clinton and Russia. And we can't have Rod Rosenstein, for heaven's sake, now that we know that he and Mueller should not be involved in this special counsel situation, because they both were engaged in the coverup of the initial Russian investigation that revealed Russia was trying to corner the market on uranium, and they had to seal that, because if they hadn't sealed that and covered up that evidence and that investigation, then Hillary Clinton would not have been able to hit the Russian megamillions lottery by authorizing the sale of uranium to Uranium One that ends up in Russian hands. Bill Clinton wouldn't have gotten $500,000. He didn't hit the megamillions, except for the 145 or so that went into the Clinton Foundation. Mueller cannot possibly investigate this. He is in it up to his eyeballs, and so is Rosenstein. They both ought to do the decent thing. I know it is not characteristic, but they ought to do the decent thing and resign and let somebody that is not completely submerged in the original coverup investigate this whole matter. Madam Speaker, I yield back the balance of my time.

Mr. GOHMERT

Mr. GOHMERT. Mr. Chairman, it is great to be able to speak on this. I am grateful to Mr. Westerman. We share a great deal of interests, and Mr. Thompson. As far as the endangered species, I remember hearing about how this little spotted owl only could mate in virgin forests, and then it turns out some pair were reported to have mated in a Kmart sign. But endangered species will do best in managed forests where we clear underbrush and where we make fire lanes--where we manage the forests. The forests do better, and you stop the wildfires. If you want to just leave it to nature, nature will destroy massive numbers of acres of land. So we have a responsibility. Even in the Garden of Eden when things were perfect, God said to tend the garden. So I appreciate the time, and I also appreciate the chairman's willingness to address the issue of the stewardship program so counties don't get messed over.

Mr. GOHMERT

Mr. GOHMERT. Mr. Speaker, it is interesting, when I am watching the news or looking at a newspaper, I can see what kind of pictures are there in the news story, and having been at press conferences where print media that is extremely slanted will come up, the photographer from such media source will come up and get right in front and then start taking pictures and have their camera on nonstop, just click, click, click, second after second. So you know they have got 100, 200 pictures. It is easy to know what they are doing. They are taking as many pictures as fast as they can. And you know that they are going to go through and they are going to take the picture in which your mouth is in the most contorted position, or where it looks like you are saying a word that would be inappropriate for an elected official to say. You know that is the picture they are going to put up, trying to make you look as stupid as possible before you ever read the article. For some of us, it is not difficult to make us look stupid. We can't help our looks. But you just know before you ever read the article, when you look at the picture, whether it is going to be a fair and objective article, or whether it is going to be totally skewed and totally subjective. I notice that, too, sometimes when friends across the aisle come with blown-up pictures. I can look at the pictures and tell whether it is going to be a fair and objective dissertation I am going to hear from my fellow Representatives across the aisle. But it is true of Republicans as well. I just don't see those type of skewed pictures very often at all, if at all, from the Republicans. But, anyway, it seems to be a good rule of thumb. You look at the pictures and you can tell whether it is going to be fair or it is going to be a total hit piece. I have been very interested, though, to watch during the course of this last 9, 10 months as we come through 2017, the story nonstop from Representatives across the aisle has been about Russia, Russia, Russia. It sounds a bit like Sean Hannity, Russia, Russia, Russia, yes, but I don't mind sounding like somebody I greatly admire. But isn't it interesting that in the revelations that have been coming out in the last few days, our friends across the aisle have not been as anxious to run down and talk about Russia? But somebody needs to talk about it. I have been talking about it for quite some time, and for most of this year I have been pointing out that we actually need a special prosecutor, a special counsel to investigate former FBI Director Comey and to investigate the Clinton ties to Russia and the over $100 million in contributions that came from stakeholders, apparently, of Uranium One. It is just absolutely incredible. What is amazing, though, there are bound to be so many fingers going out emanating from that deal that we have not seen or heard of. We didn't know what was going on, and now we know that the FBI headed by Director Robert Mueller, at the same time that he was purging the FBI training materials of anything that offended radical Islamists that want to kill us, at the same time he was not investigating properly tips about the older Tsarnaev being radicalized that he was going to kill people. Let's face it, when we get a tip that somebody has been radicalized as an Islamist, it means they are likely going to commit a terrorist act and try to take innocent lives, as Tsarnaev and his brother did. The FBI didn't properly investigate. They didn't know what to ask. They didn't know how to investigate whether or not somebody had been radicalized because Robert Mueller had purged the training materials so they couldn't know what to ask, how to know if somebody has been radicalized, or they are a peace-loving Muslim, or they are radical Islamist. Mueller prevented that from happening because he was so taken up with the idea of being friendly and neighborly, he called it his outreach program. He even testified before our Judiciary Committee years ago after I was there about--he kept wanting to make the point that the Muslim community is exactly like every other community. Again, the Muslim community is just like every other community. He kept making that point over and over as Democrats asked him questions. And then he talked about his lovely outreach program with CAIR--the Council on American-Islamic Relations--that has ties that were named as codefendants supporting terrorism with those who were actually convicted of supporting terrorism. Yet, even though the FBI had the evidence that convicted these supporting terrorists, and even though there was plenty of evidence that the people who he was trying to be friends with had radical terrorist ties, he continued his so-called outreach program as people were plotting to kill Americans among those that he was trying to have meals with and be friendly with. But I asked him the question: You keep saying that the Muslim community here in America is just like every other community, and you keep bragging about your outreach program with the Muslim community. So I would like to ask you, Director Mueller, how was your outreach program going with Jews, Catholics, Baptists, and other religious groups? How is that outreach going? How is your outreach going with the Buddhists and the Confucianists? Anyway, that was the basic question I asked. Of course, he was taken aback and he couldn't explain because eventually we got the truth. There is no outreach program like that that the FBI had with any other religious group. So it is kind of disingenuous, if not to say dishonest, to say that a group that requires special attention and coddling is somehow exactly like every other group in America. No, they require special attention, at least that is what Robert Mueller thought. I don't think any religious group that believes in our Constitution and supports our Constitution requires any such special attention, as Robert Mueller was giving the outreach partner CAIR that has done so much damage to America and continues to undermine evidence to find, arrest, and convict radical Islamists. It is normally like clockwork. As soon as a radical Islamist has committed a terrorist act, it really is like clockwork. You can count on CAIR--C-A-I-R; not the kind that actually helps people around the world, but CAIR--to be out there with the news conference saying: This guy was not one of us. But at some point, I hope that people who are Muslims will quit listening to CAIR and will listen to the words of a much wiser individual, President el-Sisi in Egypt, who stood in a room with imams and told them: We have got to get our religion back away from the radicals, or they are going to destroy it. That is a courageous man, and I don't find that kind of courage among the people who have these press conferences to deflect instead of helping us find and capture the radical Islamists before they kill too many people. They are out there trying to make it appear that they are not really radical Islamists; that they are something else. No, they are radical Islamists. They clearly are. I was kind of saddened that General Kelly ended up being the chief of staff for President Trump because I thought he was starting out to do a superb job as Secretary of Homeland Security. It turns out, as some of us had warned, that during the Obama administration, all of this blather about countering violent extremism, CVE, that found its way into legislation that this body passed: Oh, let's don't call it ``fighting radical Islamists.'' Call it, ``countering violent extremism.'' Well, some of us had figured out the game, and Michele Bachmann was one of those people. Yes, it is not countering violent extremism. It is fighting radical Islam. Thank God President Trump is now occupying the Oval Office. He understood that ISIS was not just a JV team. They are people who are radical Islamists and they would love to kill as many Americans as possible. They didn't need to have their groups denigrated. They needed to have their groups destroyed. These were not people who were going to be rehabilitated. They were radical extremists that actually believe with all of their heart that they win a place in paradise by killing innocent people. If you really want to go back to why there is an English translation copy of the Koran in the Library of Congress that was purchased, owned by Thomas Jefferson, it was because he was negotiating with the radical Islamists, the Barbary pirates in North Africa. He was so well- educated, so well-read, he couldn't understand why the Barbary pirates, who were radical Islamists, kept attacking American ships. As he indicated: We are not a threat to you. We don't even have a Navy to speak of. We are not your enemy. We don't understand why you keep attacking American ships. And he was told that, under their belief system, those Islamists believed they went to paradise if they died killing what we would consider innocent people and they consider people worthy of death; they would go to paradise. Jefferson, as well-read as he was, he couldn't believe that there was any religion anywhere in the world that believed you could go to Heaven or paradise if you are killed while you are killing innocent, unsuspecting people who are not military. They are not a threat to the radical Islamists's life, yet they thought they were going to go to paradise and have 70-some-odd virgins or so waiting for them. He couldn't believe it. So that is when he got his own copy of the Koran, because he just couldn't believe there was a religion that believed you could go to paradise if you are killing innocent people. Hopefully that will set the record straight with some folks who thought it showed how open-minded Thomas Jefferson was. Actually, he was quite open-minded. Some have tried to denigrate him because he had slaves. The man made plenty of mistakes, and one of them was an egregious wrong he did upon John Adams. They had been friends for years. It was Adams who asked him to do the first draft of the Declaration of Independence. Jefferson was wise enough that, when he did the first draft of the Declaration of Independence, if you look at the different grievances that he set out as to why they should be independent from England, the longest paragraph of the grievance was about how King George allowed slavery to ever start in America. At the time, Virginia had a law making it illegal to free your own slaves, so he was law-abiding. But he believed that one of the worst things that ever happened to America was King George's allowing slavery to start and exist in this country and that it was going to cause massive problems that would be very difficult to cure. He was exactly right on all fronts. There are some even claiming that George Washington should have his name removed from schools or public places when the fact is there would be no free America without George Washington having lived at the time he did. I believe with all my heart that George Washington was the man for such a time as that. There has never been a man in all of history who led a military in a revolution, won the revolution, and then tendered his resignation, as we see down the Hall, his outreached hand. I think it is the most important scene in all of the Capitol. It is a massive mural. He is handing in his resignation. He sought no further power. He could have been king of America or an emperor. There were a couple of coups they tried to involve him in. He stopped them. Anybody else in the world we know from history would not have done what he did. He was reluctant to take any power, yet because of his humility and his focus on creating a free and independent land, we have a free and independent land. Yes, he had slaves, but he was dealing with a Virginia where there was a law against freeing the slaves. But even so, he put in his will that their slaves would be free upon the death of his wife. Certainly, there are better ways to have done that. He was trying to abide by the law. We have such an incredible history with people like Washington. Some of us were attending an address by an author who had researched and done a biography on Benjamin Franklin, over at the Library of Congress, we were hearing. Someone asked him: Is there anybody you can think of in modern America who reminds you of Ben Franklin? He said: Actually, we have got many people who are witty, clever, and very inventive. Yes, Ben Franklin was an absolutely incredible man. Of course, I am paraphrasing. But he said: It wasn't like he was George Washington. There was only one of those, just only one of those. We had the director of The Society of the Cincinnati speak at the Library of Congress on one occasion. He was asked--since most biographers, the more they dig into the background of an individual, and he had studied Washington every year of his adult life--did he come to a point where he had less respect for Washington because of all of the details he discerned about Washington's life. He indicated that he could honestly say that, in addition to knowing more about Washington every year of his adult life, that he had more respect, admiration, and awe of George Washington with each passing year, with every bit of information he learned. That is the kind of incredible history we have, the kind of selflessness. People say, oh, yeah, but Washington, look at the big payoff he got. He didn't take a salary, but, boy, did he take a lot of money after the Revolution. Actually, he didn't take a salary. He didn't take a payoff. He was reimbursed some of his out-of-pocket expenses. He had been paying for spies to work for the country. He had paid so much out of his own pocket, and he was only seeking part of what had come out of pocket knowing that, if the Revolution failed, not only would he have been killed, but, obviously, his family would not have had all that money he spent. So I think that kind of puts in perspective, when we start looking at people who are willing to sell off America's national security for millions of dollars--well, you have to admire their appreciation for large amounts of money, but not at the price of selling our safety. So, for all this year, I have been saying that Robert Mueller should never have accepted the role of special counsel because we knew that James Comey was such a close and dear friend of his, and Comey was a witness central to this investigation. He could not be a fair arbiter, a fair investigator. If he had been properly morally inclined, he should have said: I can't be the special counsel because I am too close--especially to Comey--to these people. Comey, himself, testified that, before he testified up here at Congress, he talked to Mueller. There is a 2013 Washingtonian article that was just a long, glowing piece on Comey that, in effect, if the world were burning down, the one person Comey would know would be right there with him would be Robert Mueller standing with him. These guys were so close. He looked at Mueller as a mentor. They were really tight. The question in my mind, because of that tightness, since we know Comey leaked in order to, as he said, try to get a special counsel, that Mueller encouraged him to do that: Was Mueller behind this setup to get a special counsel so he could be appointed and start making massive amounts of money and hire all of these Republican-hating Democrats, contributors to Hillary Clinton, some of them? Wow, what a great setup for a guy who obviously held grudges against some Republicans. This is somebody who should not have been appointed, even though he was appointed to be Director of the FBI by George W. Bush. Obviously, George W. Bush was trying hard to pick the right people and taking other advice like his father's mistake in appointing David Souter. Wow, what a disaster that appointment turned out to be. He turned out to be a wolf in sheep's clothing, appearing to act as one thing when we saw his teeth as he went to the Supreme Court. Edith Jones and David Souter came under consideration. I have been told they were both sitting in the White House as President H.W. Bush tried to figure out which one to appoint. If he had appointed Edith Jones, history would be totally different, and we would not have either Justice Kagan or Justice Sotomayor because whom he appointed would never have resigned during President Obama's Presidency. So those kinds of mistakes have long-reaching effects. But President Bush appointed Mueller. And the more I find out, unlike the director of The Society of the Cincinnati finding out about Washington and growing in awe and admiration, the more I find out about Robert Mueller, the more concerned I am. The disclosures this week about what this man knew, what this man was involved in, and what he did--I thought he was accepting the role of special counsel because of some possible revenge motive: he had a dislike for some Republicans, loved the idea of doing what Patrick Fitzgerald did, who happened to be not just a friend of James Comey; he was the godfather of a Comey child. Of course, we found out later that Comey recommended to Attorney General Ashcroft he should recuse himself so that he could appoint the godfather of his child, Patrick Fitzgerald, to be the special counsel. We found out this year, well, Comey leaked information--which may or may not have been a crime; it needs to be investigated--in order to get a special counsel appointed. So he is using the same type of manipulative behavior as he did to get the godfather of his child appointed special counsel in order to get the one guy who would be with him through thick and thin, no matter how bad things got, Robert Mueller, get him appointed special counsel. I had no idea that Robert Mueller had been involved and been Director of the FBI as they investigated Russia's efforts to corner the market on uranium and to spend millions and millions of dollars to acquire United States uranium. He is Director of the FBI. They are investigating this. Even knowing that, it appears that he and now-Deputy Attorney General Rosenstein actually covered up their investigation so that people would not get upset with Secretary Hillary Clinton for being an approver of the deal of selling America's uranium to an enemy of the United States. According to all the Democrats, for all this year, Russia, Russia, Russia is this big horrible enemy, and how dare anybody do business with them. It turns out that, actually, they were the ones who were involved in this terribly sordid business of selling our national security to the Russians. The FBI had investigated. They had all of this information, and they even had an FBI informant, as Mueller knew as Director of the FBI. The informant had been working with the Russians. It was an undercover operation, perhaps the most important one the FBI had going on at that time. They did have the operation going on under Director Mueller of creating a fictitious case against Senator Ted Stevens, Republican from Alaska, in which they created evidence. They conspired to hide evidence that completely didn't just exonerate Ted Stevens; it showed that he was law abiding. They hid that evidence, and they manufactured a case that would cost him his Senate seat. The loss of his Senate seat ended up putting him on a small plane that crashed, and he lost his life. As far as I know, there were no ties of the plane crash to Mueller, but Mueller was the FBI Director. Thank God that there was an FBI agent involved in that investigation and that, after Ted Stevens was convicted, he couldn't stand it. His conscience would not allow him to sit quietly by after the FBI and the U.S. Attorney--but this FBI lead agent, under Director Mueller as Director, just fabricated a case. It turns out not only did Ted Stevens not accept hundreds of thousands of dollars of improvements to his home without paying for them, he paid more, hundreds of thousands more, than the improvements were worth. Apparently, there was even evidence that they covered up where the contractor is saying: Look, Ted, you are paying more than we are charging you. Stevens would say: Look, I am constantly being watched. People don't like my political positions, so I have got to be so far above and beyond ethical and moral that I have got to pay more. Just accept the checks for overpayment. The guy is overpaying, and yet they came after him knowing that this was an innocent man. They prosecuted him and convicted him. So after the whistleblower FBI agent comes forward under Director Mueller's leadership, what happened? The informant was ordered to be kept from investigating any criminal cases, which meant he had no job at the FBI. He went ahead and did as he was being pushed to do. He went ahead and resigned. Thank God for a man with a conscience like that. His affidavit made clear that the lead agent had manufactured evidence and hid evidence from the defense counsel, because they had come in with warrants and taken everything: computer drives, thumb drives, documentary evidence, and gone to the bank and gotten his documents. He did not have any evidence to show you how innocent he was, because the FBI had taken it. I know FBI agents who are the most honest people I have ever met. We have thousands of them in this country. Thank God for them. But what happened under Director Mueller's leadership? Well, the whistleblower that exposed the fraudulent misconduct gets run out of the FBI, under Director Mueller. And what happened to the one who fabricated the evidence, fabricated the case, hid evidence that showed Ted Stevens' innocence? When Mueller is Director, that FBI agent continued to get accolades and be moved on to investigate some of the most important cases the FBI had. That was Director Mueller. He also had a policy he created called the 5-year up-or-out policy, which an article in The Wall Street Journal pointed out years ago. It ended up destroying or running off thousands and thousands of years of experience from the FBI, weakening this incredible investigative body that, until Mueller got there, was the best investigative body in all of America. But after running off thousands of thousands of years of experienced FBI agents so that he could have less experienced agents--agents who would not have the experience to say: But, Mr. Director, that would be a mistake, which was done in 1985 or 1992, and it didn't work out--no, he had people with no experience. I know from being a prosecutor that right out of law school you are ready to put the bad guys away. You are going to push the line to the limit. You are going to do your job, salute the flag, and it always helps to have experienced people around to say: Look, I know you mean well. That is not a good idea. Mueller liked to run those people off. He spent millions of dollars that some agents pointed out was being wasted on programs that were wasteful and ineffective. Now that we know what is coming out this week, I am surprised how naive I continue to be. I thought Mueller accepted the job of special counsel to investigate the Russia-Trump alleged relationship because it would be a great job and he could carry out vendettas that he might have. That was so naive. Now we know that he had an investigation of Russia. He had an undercover informant for years working on the case and that he covered up that investigation, along with Rod Rosenstein, so that Hillary Clinton could make this deal, approve the deal. And yes, there were other people who approved the deal. I believe that Attorney General Eric Holder also approved the deal and also helped covered up the investigation to show the investigation would show, from all the indications, that Russia was committing crimes in America to get ahold of our uranium. Knowing that, if that investigation were made public, there is no way Hillary Clinton and Eric Holder could have approved the deal that was selling off 20, 25 percent of America's uranium to Russia. She could never have done that. If she hadn't done that, there is not any doubt in some of our minds that the investors, the stockholders, ultimately, of Uranium One certainly would not have contributed over $100 million to the Clinton Foundation, and Russia would not have been paying half a million dollars for one short speech--remarkably, it is hard to believe from the State of the Union Addresses he gave, but he actually could give a short speech and get half a million dollars for one short speech. He didn't get paid that much for other speeches. What was so special? Could it be that Hillary Clinton was so critical in persuading others to sign onto allowing Uranium One to get so much of our uranium? Gee, perhaps that is why Russia was so emboldened? Then we find out there is more than that. The Democratic National Committee, we are told, were helping pay for this dossier that just created the most lurid, ridiculous allegations against Donald Trump as a candidate, trying to destroy his Presidency. Not only that, the DNC was involved, and the Clinton campaign may have been involved, and the FBI gets involved with that, and it appears they may have used the DNC to pay for manufactured evidence that was absolutely false and that could be used to get the FBI, under Mueller's control and the U.S. Attorney's Office, under Rosenstein's control, to go after the Trump campaign and possibly get wiretaps, based on the DNC Fusion GPS manufactured evidence. So going back to Mueller accepting the appointment as special counsel and Comey possibly committing a crime the way he went about leaking private information to The New York Times, it appears, if you look at his contacts and who reported what from The New York Times and what could have only been known by James Comey--it is possible he did it six other times--it is possible James Comey committed crimes in one or all of those six other leaking occasions, if he was the source, as it appears he may very well have been. Now, it becomes more clear in my naivety in thinking Mueller had personal motivation, including getting paid for a job he would love to do to go after people he didn't like in the Republican Party, including Donald Trump. But now it is becoming more clear. Comey needed Mueller to be a special counsel, and he admitted it in testimony here. He leaked information, which may have been a crime, in order to get a special counsel that he had to have known was going to be Robert Mueller, his friend joined at the hip, and that his other friend, Robert Rosenstein, would certainly appoint Mueller, because Rosenstein and Mueller were involved in covering up the FBI's investigation of Russia and their efforts to get uranium. If Mueller and Rosenstein hadn't covered up that and helped seal that information and gotten the informant to agree to a nondisclosure agreement, then Hillary Clinton and the Clinton Foundation would be short megamillions that they received as a result--it certainly appears--of the uranium transfer from the U.S. to Russia. So, Mueller and Rosenstein and Comey all needed Mueller to be appointed, and Mueller needed to accept appointment as special counsel, because he had to cover up the cover-up that he and Rosenstein had been involved in years earlier in order to facilitate the deal that was made to sell off our national security. President Trump had this great plank in his platform as he ran for President that we need to bring in money that Americans have earned overseas back into the United States. Well, it has never been here, but bring it into the United States. But these American citizens and American companies have had to leave it in foreign banks and in foreign businesses in foreign countries because, in some countries, they pay 50, 60, 70 percent tax on it. If they bring it into the United States, they will be required to pay probably 40 percent, plus penalty and interest. So 35, 39 percent, plus penalty and interest. They can't afford to do that or they would be paying more tax than the money they earned. So they had to leave it in foreign countries and in foreign banks. Former FDIC Chairman Isaacs came to the Hill back when this doofus named Henry Paulson was telling us we had to give him $700 billion so he could buy mortgage-backed securities and save our economy. In our private conference call--I will never forget--he said: I have got to have $700 billion to buy these mortgage-backed securities because nobody knows what they are worth and only the government has the wherewithal to buy those. Hold them until they get value back, and that will save all these banks and keep them from going under, which would destroy the United States economy and take us back to a day worse than September of 1929. So you have got to give me $700 billion to buy these mortgage-backed securities. When we were allowed to punch in and ask a question, somebody in my party beat me to the question, and it was this: Secretary Paulson, if nobody knows what these mortgage-backed securities are worth, how do you know you need $700 billion to buy them? I will never forget his answer: ``We just needed a really big number.'' When I heard that, I knew that this bozo did not need $700 billion. We shouldn't have trusted him as Secretary of Treasury. But he got his $700 billion. Between him and Geithner, they bailed out their friends, they bailed out the big banks while the community banks were being punished. They had to borrow money at regular rate, and they made sure that their friends, the investment banks that brought us to the brink of ruin, got money for nothing. In fact, they got big bailouts. That was a bad day in American history. Isaacs had the idea that you don't need to take taxpayer money. If you will just say the United States Congress should pass a bill that says anything we declare to be a troubled company or a troubled asset, if that is invested in by American companies, American individuals who have earned money overseas, never brought it into the country, if they will bring that money from those foreign countries and invest it in what Congress labels as troubled, they will pay no tax on bringing that money into the country. Then we will probably have a trillion dollars come in. You won't need the $700 billion in taxpayer money or borrowed money from China to bail out the banks. You will have Americans who will invest in those with money they earned overseas. You don't need TARP. It won't be the government getting into bed with the big banks and the terrible precedent that will set. That was a great idea. But Paulson was so determined to let his enemies like Lehman Brothers go bankrupt without help and to allow his company Goldman Sachs to be the big dog, that he didn't want to do Isaacs' idea, and he convinced enough Members of the House, both Republican and Democrat, to give him $700 billion, because he needed a really big number. Well, President Trump had that similar idea: let's allow American money to come into America that is earned overseas, and that will get our economy going. Americans will bring this money in, and it will be great for the economy. That is what we need to get the economy going. Well, little did we know that, years before, candidate Donald Trump had the idea of bringing in American-earned money from foreign countries to get our economy going. Yet Hillary Clinton had the idea of selling off our national security to get megamillions to go to the Clinton Foundation, her and her husband's bank account, to get the economy going in America. Wow, that was a great idea, wasn't it? We sell off some of our national security to bring in foreign money, specifically, Russian money to get our economy going. And if she had been elected President, then the cover up that Mueller and Rosenstein did of the original investigation into Russia's efforts to corruptly buy American uranium and corner the market, that would continue to be covered up. Wow, what a great deal. Even though Hillary Clinton did not win the election, Donald Trump did. And they got Donald Trump's Attorney General to recuse himself so that Rosenstein, a guy that participated in covering up the original FBI investigation, could appoint someone else who helped cover up that original uranium investigation with the Russians and make him special counsel so that not only would he make a lot of money and get to work with lots of people he liked that hated Trump and loved Hillary, but he could also cover up the prior coverup, even though Hillary didn't get elected. Amazing the kind of stuff that is coming out now. The work that John Solomon and The Hill have done has been extraordinary. I have got an article from October 25: ``FBI informant in Obama-era Russian nuclear bribery was cleared to testify before Congress.'' That is great news. Despite Mueller and Rosenstein's efforts to keep their prior Russian investigation that they covered up so that the Russia uranium deal could go through, wow, we may actually get to find out about that now that the FBI informant has been cleared under the current Justice Department, under Jeff Sessions. We will get to find out more about that Russia effort to corner the market using U.S. uranium. An article from FOX News: ``Gag order lifted: DOJ says informant can speak to Congress on Uranium One, Russia bribery case with Clinton links.'' And then I was glad to see a friend down the hall, Chuck Grassley, a senator there from Iowa. He is calling for special counsel in the Uranium One scandal. Of course, that is appropriate. The FOX News article: ``Clinton mum on Fusion GPS scandal as Dems' dossier denials pile up.'' That is from October 26. So now there are indications the Democrat National Committee, a Member actually paid for this fictitious dossier that could be used to get warrants to investigate political opponents in a Presidential race. This is incredible. Absolutely incredible. Even going back to Tammany Hall, as far as I can recall, they didn't have an FBI Director and an Attorney General or Deputy Attorney General that had helped cover up a prior investigation so that their friends could make millions of dollars. Let's see. There is an article in The New York Times from Jo Becker and Don Van Natta, Jr. This goes back January 31 of 2008. It indicates: ``Late on September 6, 2005, a private plane carrying the Canadian mining financier, Frank Giustra, touched down in Almaty, a ruggedly picturesque city in southeast Kazakhstan. Several hundred miles to the west, a fortune awaited: highly coveted deposits of uranium that could fuel nuclear reactors around the world. And Mr. Giustra was in hot pursuit of an exclusive deal to tap them. ``Unlike more established competitors, Mr. Giustra''--I will just say ``Mr. G''--``was a newcomer to uranium mining in Kazakhstan, a former Soviet republic. But what his fledgling company lacked in experience, it made up for in connections. Accompanying Mr. G on his luxuriously appointed MD-87 jet that day was a former President of the United States, Bill Clinton. ``Upon landing on the first stop of the three-country philanthropic tour, the two men were whisked off to share a sumptuous midnight banquet with Kazakhstan's President . . . whose 19-year stranglehold on the country had all but quashed political dissent.'' Another man ``walked away from the table with a propaganda coup after Mr. Clinton expressed enthusiastic support for the Kazakh leader's bid to head an international organization that monitors elections and supports democracy. Mr. Clinton's public declaration undercut both American foreign policy and sharp criticism of Kazakhstan's poor human rights record by, among others, Mr. Clinton's wife, Senator Hillary Rodham Clinton of New York. ``Within 2 days, corporate records show that Mr. G also came up with a winner when his company signed preliminary agreements giving it the right to buy into three uranium projects controlled by Kazakhstan's state-owned uranium agency. . . . `' So it is just incredible. The deeper you get in this stuff, the more it smells. A Wall Street Journal article written by Holman Jenkins, Jr.: ``The FBI's Political Meddling.'' Interesting story. I like the way it starts because it starts referencing a movie, I believe. ``Let's give plausible accounts of the known facts, then explain why demands that Robert Mueller recuse himself from the Russia investigation may not be the fanciful partisan grandstanding you imagine. ``Here's a story consistent with what has been reported in the press--how reliably reported is uncertain. Democratic political opponents of Donald Trump financed a British former spook who spread money among contacts in Russia, who, in turn, over drinks, solicited stories from their supposedly `connected' sources in Moscow. If these people were really connected in any meaningful sense, then they made sure the stories they spun were consistent with the interests of the regime, if not actually scripted by the regime. ``The resulting Trump dossier then became a factor in Obama administration decisions to launch an FBI counterintelligence investigation of the Trump campaign, and after the election to trumpet suspicions of Trump collusion with Russia. ``We know of a second, possibly even more consequential way the FBI was effectively a vehicle for Russian meddling in U.S. politics. Authoritative news reports say FBI Chief James Comey's intervention in the Hillary Clinton email matter was prompted by a Russian intelligence document that his colleagues suspected was a Russian plant. ``Okay, Mr. Mueller was a former close colleague and leader but no longer part of the FBI when these events occurred. This may or may not make him a questionable person to lead a Russian-meddling investigation in which the FBI's own actions are necessarily a concern. ``But now we come to the Rosatom disclosures last week in The Hill. . . . ``Here's another story as plausible as we can make it based on credible reporting. After the Cold War, in its own interest, the U.S. wanted to build bridges to the Russian nuclear establishment. The Putin government, for national or commercial purposes, agreed and sought to expand its nuclear business in the U.S. ``The purchase and consolidation of certain assets were facilitated by Canadian entrepreneurs who gave large sums to''--drum roll--``the Clinton Foundation, and perhaps arranged a Bill Clinton speech in Moscow for $500,000. A key transaction had to be approved by Hillary Clinton's State Department.'' How about that? ``Now we learn that, before and during these transactions, the FBI had uncovered a bribery and kickback scheme involving Russia's nuclear business, and also received reports of Russian officials seeking to curry favor through donations to the Clinton Foundation. ``This criminal activity was apparently not disclosed to agencies vetting the 2010 transfer of U.S. commercial nuclear assets to Russia.'' That is why, Mr. Speaker, I refer to the original FBI and DOJ coverup involving Mr. Rosenstein and Mr. Mueller, which was going to be able to be covered up. That is, so we understand the plot here, Mueller as FBI Director, and Rosenstein working as U.S. Attorney or deputy U.S. Attorney, whatever he was at the time. It is interesting, I hear a rumor that he may have even signed on part of this sealing documents to help cover up the original investigation. It would be interesting to see if he did that. Wow. If it turns out he signed off to get the FBI investigation document sealed, and Mueller, as FBI Director, was charting the course to get this thing sealed, covered up, well, the guys that did the coverup are in charge of the investigation, which would allow them to cover up their prior coverup, which would look bad since they covered it up to allow the Hillary Clinton approved deal selling United States security via our uranium to Russia. I didn't realize how bad Russia was until my friends across the aisle and Secretary Clinton--candidate Clinton--defeated candidate Clinton kept talking about how bad Russia was. Well, they about convinced me. But this article says: ``The criminal activity was apparently not disclosed to agencies vetting the 2010 transfer of U.S. commercial nuclear assets to Russia. The FBI made no move to break up the scheme until long after the transaction closed. Only 5 years later, the Justice Department, in 2015, disclosed a plea deal with the Russian perpetrator so quietly that its significance was missed until The Hill reported on the FBI investigation last week.'' They almost, if not for the good work of Mr. Solomon and I think somebody else at The Hill, might have been missed entirely. So good work. There are some potential Woodwards and Bernsteins out there, in addition to the hardworking news investigators with places like The Daily Caller and Judicial Watch, Conservative Review, and others. The article goes on to say: ``The agency, when Mr. Mueller headed it, soft-pedaled an investigation highly embarrassing to Mrs. Clinton as well as the Obama Russia reset policy.'' Mr. Speaker, I yield back the balance of my time.

Mr. GOHMERT

Mr. GOHMERT. Mr. Speaker, I do greatly appreciate my friend across the aisle. Mr. Garamendi made some good points. For example, the people speak, and we are thankful they do. And that is why, when the Democratic House Members and Democratic Senate Members voted to pass something known as ObamaCare--it is hard to call it the Affordable Care Act because it has come at the cost of some people's lives, their doctors, their insurance policies, their medicines they needed--but the American people did speak, and they said, ``Not again,'' and they put Democrats out of the majority as a result of that bill. As I explained to some of my colleagues in the Republican Conference who were saying that the Speaker is the one who got us the majority back, I pointed out in conference, if you look at the polls, it is very clear. No one person got us the majority back in November 2010. The Democrats got the Republicans the majority back. The polls back then showed that we were not trusted any more than we had been so much in the past, as they were, the voters were just upset with the Democrats passing a bill they didn't want, that the Democrats had not read, and didn't know what it said, and they were going to have to pass it to find out what was in it. And they were lied to repeatedly. You can keep your insurance if you like it. If you like your doctor, you can keep your doctor, and all those. Turns out they knew in advance--not all of the people here, but the people in the Obama administration who kept saying it, they knew they were lying because they knew people would not keep their insurance whether they liked it or not; they would not keep their doctors if they liked them as they may well not be in the network and probably wouldn't be in many networks. So it is so true that the people speak, and thank goodness they do. And then they have returned, not only Republicans to majorities in the House, repeatedly, on the promise of repealing ObamaCare, but also gave the Senate the majority twice now on the promise to repeal ObamaCare and, unfortunately, the Senate has not delivered. We passed a bill here in the House, it was after much wailing and gnashing of teeth, and a terrible bill at first that would have allowed premiums to continue to go up. Some say, yeah, but you should have voted for it; it would give the President some wind at his back. But when the American people found out that premiums were going to continue to go up, their deductibles would continue to go up, the insurance companies would continue to get bailouts after record profit years, they were not going to be returning Republicans to the majority. So it is still very critical that we keep our promises and we take a lesson from the actual planks of the platform that got our great President elected: number one, build a wall and secure the border; number two, repeal ObamaCare; number three, we would have tax reform. Those seem to be the three biggest promises that most all of us made on our side of the aisle. The reason ObamaCare was not, at least the majority of it, repealed was because the Senate could not bring itself to act because there were some Senators who decided that, after winning their election, promising in the primary and general election that if you elect me, I will be the one who can get ObamaCare repealed, they decided to break that pledge, break that repeated promise. So the thing I am grateful to the President--well, actually a number of things, but one is that he continues to say: We are not done. We are not through. We are going to repeal at least most of ObamaCare. We have got to. People have got to have relief. They have got to. They cannot continue on like they are. Obviously, we can see now, in hindsight, ObamaCare was designed to fail. Unfortunately, the insurance companies did not realize that when they signed on to ObamaCare, they were signing on to their death warrants; that the designers were counting on insurance companies to have people at the top who were so overwhelmed with greed they would not see the end coming as it came barreling toward them. They would be busy making record profits, getting bailouts, until the American people said we can't stand it anymore. The insurance companies had record profits and still got bailed out. We never thought we would say this, but surely the government would be better than these greedy insurance companies; and that would be the end of the insurance companies. And sure, some of the insurance executives would have taken their golden parachute and their millions after record profits and dropped out before the industry that made them rich ceased to exist, but that day is still coming if we don't act; and the American people would then be resolved to have much worse healthcare than the VA because the government would be the only game in town. I know, from talking to one legislator in England, I was surprised. I thought everybody was mandated to be part of the government healthcare there. And it was true, but he said that his wife had had cancer, and, fortunately for them, they could afford to pay the private insurance above the ridiculously wasteful insurance the Britons have. I remember looking at the numbers back in 2010, when we were debating ObamaCare, and seeing at that time that someone who was diagnosed with breast cancer at a similar time in the staging of cancer, breast cancer, as someone in the U.S., as someone in England, that the American had a 20 percent better chance of surviving than the British citizen under British healthcare did. That is terrifying to some of us. We don't want the kind of healthcare England has. So if you have a wife and three daughters, like I do, the chances are much better that you will lose one of them if you have British-type healthcare. I have one guy from Tyler, who lives in Tyler, was from Canada originally, said, his father was put on the list to have bypass surgery in Canada, and after 2 years of waiting, he died. It kind of sounds like the VA and the problems that have been experienced by some of our veterans. But I would submit, if those who have laid down much of their lives for their country in our armed services are treated the way many of our veterans have been treated, then you can't expect that American citizens that have never offered to lay down their life for their country would be treated much better. We need to get off the track we are on. We need to return healthcare back to the control of a patient and a doctor, and get the insurance companies and the government out from between the patient and the doctor. We can do that with the kind of thing the President has been talking about, health savings accounts. Instead of paying $1,000 a month to an insurance company, put $800 or $900 in a health savings account; start building this huge healthcare, health savings account. And sure, there will be some people who are chronically ill or chronically poor. Those who don't have to be chronically poor, that could work, as we found out when welfare reform took place in the mid-nineties by the first Republican majority in many decades; as they found out, statistics showed, and there is a graph I saw at a conference in Harvard, for the first time since welfare began, 1995, after the work requirement kicked in for welfare, up through 2005, single moms' income, when adjusted for inflation, for the first time since welfare began, had an increase--that was incredible--when the government encouraged individuals to reach their potential, instead of luring them away from their potential with welfare when they could have had a job, that people do a lot better. It is terribly unfortunate, though, that the lessons learned in the mid-nineties, including getting to balanced budgets, over the objections of the Clinton administration. President Clinton didn't want balanced budgets, but, eventually, the Republican Congress forced him when they had enough to override his veto, so he signed them. And now, all these years later, when people don't remember, President Clinton likes to take credit for having the first balanced budget in years. Well, the Republicans took him, figuratively, kicking and screaming and, obviously, now, he is proud that they did, though they don't get the credit for it. Well, we need to encourage people to reach their potential--that is the job of government--not luring them away from their potential. We should be encouraging the best healthcare that could be had. We don't need insurance companies managing all our healthcare. We don't need the government managing all our healthcare. We need individuals managing their own healthcare. If somebody wants to volunteer and say, ``Here's all my income for the rest of my life. Government, you manage, tell me what I can have and not have in the way of surgeries or healthcare or medicine,'' well, we ought to make a place for them to do that. But for the rest of us who would rather make our own decisions about our healthcare, we could do that. But one of the things, and I put it in the bill that I filed back in 2009--I was encouraged by former Speaker Newt Gingrich, and he said: You have got to put your ideas into a bill, get it scored. CBO refused to score it for many months. Former Speaker Gingrich thought if I had gotten it scored, that it could have changed the debate on healthcare. But CBO dutifully did the bidding of Speaker Pelosi, scored their bills, refused to score mine, and so we didn't have the score. And let's face it. CBO, on ObamaCare scoring, their margin of error apparently is somewhere, plus or minus, 250 to 400 percent; so why should they score anything anyway? But that is another matter. But if the health insurance companies and the government don't manage all our healthcare, who would do that? Well, we would do that. If somebody's chronically poor and cannot provide for themselves, we can help them. But for those who can, they should. If you put that kind of money in a health savings account, where it can never be used for anything but healthcare, not like retirement, where you can pull it out and pay a 40 percent tax, leave it in there. It can only be used for healthcare. Give the individual a debit card that is coded that will only pay for medical expenses, medicine, crutches, doctors' appointments. Then most people would have enough built up in their health savings account by the time they are 65 or 70, they not only would not want government participation in decisions about their healthcare, but they wouldn't need it, and we could make our own decisions, after consulting with physicians. That saves healthcare. The last 100 years of healthcare, some medical historians say, have been the only 100 years in American history where people had a better chance of getting well after seeing a doctor than of getting worse. Even just over 200 years ago, the man without whom there would be no free America, George Washington, he was bled to death. The last bleeder was his very good friend, Dr. Craik, who had been with him through so many things. He thought he was helping him, and he was bleeding him to death, preventing him from getting well. But here, 200 years later, doctors are actually curing disease, curing things we thought were incurable. We had the best healthcare that could ever been found at any time in history anywhere in the world, and we have done a great deal to destroy it since the passing of ObamaCare. People have found out they lost their insurance. They are paying more than they ever dreamed they would pay. And, yes, there are some who are paying minimal amounts, and some are getting subsidies, but the President had to make up some law in order to pay out some of the things he did. Because of all of the distraction with ObamaCare, perhaps that is why the Obama administration dropped the ball on following through regarding Russia's efforts to sidetrack American politics. This article from John Solomon and Alison Spann, October 22, in The Hill: ``FBI Watched, Then Acted As Russian Spy Moved Closer to Hillary Clinton.'' It says: ``As Hillary Clinton was beginning her job as President Obama's chief diplomat, Federal agents observed as multiple arms of Vladimir Putin's machine unleashed an influence campaign designed to win access to the new Secretary of State, her husband, Bill Clinton, and members of their inner circle, according to interviews and once- sealed FBI records. ``Some of the activities FBI agents gathered evidence about in 2009 and 2010 were covert and illegal. ``A female Russian spy posing as an American accountant, for instance, used a false identity to burrow her way into the employ of a major Democratic donor in hopes of gaining intelligence on Hillary Clinton's Department, records show. The spy was arrested and deported as she moved closer to getting inside State, agents said. ``Other activities were perfectly legal and sitting in plain view, such as when a subsidiary of Russia's state-controlled nuclear energy company hired a Washington firm to lobby the Obama administration. At the time it was hired, the firm was providing hundreds of thousands of dollars a year in pro bono support to Bill Clinton's global charitable initiative, and it legally helped the Russian company secure Federal decisions that led to billions in new U.S. commercial nuclear business, records show. ``Agents were surprised by the timing and size of a $500,000 check that a Kremlin-linked bank provided Bill Clinton''--that is the former President, and although none of the mainstream media would ever say this, Democrat Bill Clinton--``with for a single speech in the summer of 2010. The payday came just weeks after Hillary Clinton helped arrange for American executives to travel to Moscow to support Putin's efforts to build his own country's version of Silicon Valley, agents said. ``There is no evidence in any of the public records that the FBI believed that the Clintons or anyone close to them did anything illegal.'' Yeah, that is pretty understandable that The Hill would say that and that the FBI would make sure those records were not available. The article goes on. It says: ``But there's definitive evidence the Russians were seeking their influence with a specific eye on the State Department. `` `There is not one shred of doubt from the evidence that we had that the Russians had set their sights on Hillary Clinton's circle, because she was the quarterback of the Obama-Russia reset strategy and the assumed successor to Obama as President,' said a source familiar with the FBI's evidence at the time. . . .'' ``That source pointed to an October 2009 communication intercepted by the FBI in which Russian handlers instructed two of their spies specifically to gather nonpublic information on the State Department. `` `Send more info on current international affairs vital for R., highlight U.S. approach,' part of the message to the spies read, using the country's first initial to refer to Russia. ` . . . Try to single out tidbits unknown publicly but revealed in private by sources closer to State Department, government, major think tanks.' '' This isn't in the article, but that might also mean, if the State Department Secretary had a server through which classified information was sent and it is not very well protected, gee, grab all of the information from that server that you can. Shouldn't be hard to hack them. That had to have been part of the thinking of the Russians. They surely figured out that Secretary of State Clinton was using different sources for her emails. The article goes on: ``The Clintons, by that time, had set up several new vehicles that included a multimillion-dollar speechmaking business, the family foundation, and a global charitable initiative, all of which proved attractive to the Russians as Hillary Clinton took over State. `` `In the end, some of this just comes down to what it always does in Washington: donations, lobbying, contracts, and influence--even for Russia,' said Frank Figliuzzi, former FBI assistant director for counterintelligence. ``Figliuzzi supervised the post-arrest declassification and release of records from a 10-year operation that unmasked a major Russian spy ring in 2010. It was one of the most important U.S. counterintelligence victories against Russia in history, and famous for nabbing the glamorous spy-turned-model Anna Chapman. ``While Chapman dominated the headlines surrounding that spy ring, another Russian woman posing as a mundane New Jersey accountant named Cynthia Murphy was closing in on accessing Secretary Clinton's Department, according to records and interviews. ``For most of the 10 years, the ring of Russian spies that included Chapman and Murphy acted as sleepers, spending a `great deal of time collecting information and passing it on' to their handlers inside Russia's SVR spy agency, FBI record state.'' Inserting parenthetically here, also, we now know, due to the great investigating work of Luke Rosiak with The Daily Caller, who apparently has done much more investigation into Imran Awan, the Awan family, and IT or computer workers, some of whom apparently didn't do any work but who were making the maximum amount of money that anybody can make working on the Hill for Congress, as I believe Luke testified or indicated in a prior meeting, he indicated that actually every time one of the Awan family added enough part-time work for Members of Congress with their computers, they would add another family member to start getting part-time until they built up to the $160,000 or so level. But in any event, we now know that, apparently, Imran Awan copied dozens of Democratic Members of Congress' servers into one place so that all of those servers could easily be accessed by someone who did not have permission to access those Congress Members' computer systems and servers. It is interesting that that was occurring for him as a Pakistani native. He became a citizen but, at the time he began working on Capitol Hill, was here by visa working for Members, Democratic Members of Congress. But how interesting that the Russians were doing everything they could to get any information, not just classified, but any inside information, stuff like you would find in emails, for example. And now we are finding all of this out about the Awan brothers, and his wife and a couple of people, one of whom quit because he was doing too much of the work and not getting as much pay as the others. But it is incredible that it was after President Obama left office we started hearing all of this screaming about how the Russians were trying to affect elections. And who knew about that? Well, Robert Mueller, former FBI Director knew all about it because he was the FBI as this stuff was being investigated. Wouldn't it be nice if he had said something about that previously? But if he had talked about it previously, he might not--and I am sure, in fact, would not--have gotten an appointment to be special counsel to investigate potential ties by the U.S. Government with Russia, specifically, the Trump campaign, or the Trump support ring, those who were supporting Donald Trump as a candidate. Wow. But then again, Deputy Attorney General Rosenstein might have appointed Mueller, because it turns out he was involved in the investigation back then. Wouldn't it have been nice if Rosenstein or Mueller had had the moral fiber and the ethical fiber to say: ``You know what? The AG has recused himself, but, actually, I was involved in this stuff back under the Obama administration investigating all this, and I had developed opinions, made statements back in those days-- weren't public.'' And if Mueller had done the same thing: ``I was head of the FBI. We were investigating ties to Hillary Clinton, efforts to get in touch with and utilize the Clinton Foundation, Hillary Clinton.'' Wouldn't it have been nice if that information had come from Robert Mueller or Deputy Attorney General Rosenstein before Rosenstein appointed Mueller, because those two people would not even be involved at all, I don't believe, had we known the extent of their involvement in the investigation into Russia before, when they were with the Obama administration. But they didn't disclose that. And I think it is a little insidious, myself, on the very day that James Comey testified on Capitol Hill that there were no known ties between President Trump and the Russians, the collusion that was talked about, there were no ties, no evidence of that, it was the same day it was leaked, apparently by Mueller or his staff, that now they were investigating obstruction by the Trump administration. Now, why would that get leaked the very night that James Comey testified there were no known ties, no evidence of any collusion between President Trump and the Russians? Well, because if there was no evidence to support what Mueller had been appointed to investigate, then President Trump would have had every right and it would have made sense to say: ``Okay, Mr. Mueller, it sure would have been nice if you had disclosed the reasons that you should have been disqualified to accept this special counsel job. But even though you didn't, there is no reason for you to be special counsel because there is no evidence, according to this FBI Director, so we don't need you anymore.'' But by Mueller or his clan leaking out that now we are investigating President Trump for obstruction of justice, that set him up in a position that President Trump could not afford to fire him, or else it would look like Nixon's Saturday Night Massacre before they had a chance to come after him. So, clearly, former FBI Director Mueller who, in my opinion, did more damage to the structure of the FBI than anyone since J. Edgar Hoover, ran off thousands of years of experience from the FBI and spent millions of dollars on programs that didn't work out. Apparently he got rid of a lot of people that would not say yes to him all the time. He also--let's give him credit--he did purge the FBI training materials of anything that offended radical Islamists. I would submit there is a reason why when an FBI agent was finally sent out to talk to the older Tsarnaev brother after Russia had reported twice--actually doing America a favor--hey, this guy has been radicalized. Do they look at where he had been to see that he had been in areas that were very radical and what he was like? No. They sent out an FBI agent to talk to him. According to Director Mueller, in essence, he indicated he was not a terrorist, so that was good enough for them. But they went the extra mile and asked his mother if he was a terrorist, and, in essence, she indicated he was a good boy and not a terrorist. That was good enough for the new Mueller FBI that had purged itself of the ability to know what a radical Islamist looked like. When I asked about their going out to the mosque to investigate whether Tsarnaev had been radicalized, of course, again, they purged their training materials, they didn't know what to ask. They didn't know whether to ask if he had been memorizing verses of the Koran, what verses those were. Kim Jensen, who had a 700-page program to teach FBI agents about what to look for in radical Islamists, under Mueller, was ordered to destroy all of those. Fortunately, there was an extra copy. As I understand it, the FBI is now trying to teach some of the higher- level agents exactly what a radical Islamist is. But if Mr. McMaster has his way, that won't last much longer. But, nonetheless, Director Mueller, as head of the FBI, as one intelligence official told me, they were blinded of the ability to see the enemy--the enemy being radical Islamists who want to destroy our Nation, destroy our freedom, and kill us. They don't know what to look for, thanks to Director Mueller. Of course, as the Washingtonian article pointed out in 2013, basically Mueller and Comey were joined at the hip, that if the world was on fire, Mueller would be the last one standing beside Comey, protecting him, with him, supporting him, whatever. Which, by the way, is another reason, if Mr. Mueller had been as ethical and moral as he should have been, he should have disclosed immediately: I can't accept this special counsel role because James Comey is a friend. He sees me as a mentor. We talked, including about his testimony he was going to give before Congress. We are just too close, and he is a central witness to all of this. I can't do it. Unfortunately, Director Mueller did not take that position not feeling that he needed to do that, because, after all, it is a great job. It pays a lot of money. He can hire anybody he wants to and hire good Democratic supporters, as he has. For people who hate Republicans, this will be a great job. Apparently it is. He just basically makes up whatever he wants to investigate anytime he sees fit, and Deputy Attorney General Rosenstein should have been disqualified and not been able to appoint special counsel had the Attorney General known what all he had been involved in previously. He certainly is not going to fire Mueller, as he should. Going over to a different article, this is from National Review by Andrew McCarthy, October 21. Andrew McCarthy is the former prosecutor of The Blind Sheikh that masterminded the first World Trade Center attack in 1993 during Democrat Bill Clinton's Presidency. Andrew McCarthy says: ``Not only the Clintons are implicated in a uranium deal with the Russians that compromised national security interests. Let's put the Uranium One scandal in perspective: the cool half-million bucks the Putin regime funneled to Bill Clinton was five times the amount it spent on those Facebook ads--the ones the media- Democrat complex ludicrously suggests swung the 2016 Presidential election to Donald Trump. The Facebook-ad buy, which started in June 2015--before Donald Trump entered the race--was more leftwing agitprop, ads pushing hysteria on racism, immigration, guns, et cetera, than electioneering. The Clintons' own longtime political strategist Mark Penn estimates that just $6,500 went to actual electioneering. You read that right: $6,500. By contrast, the staggering $500,000 payday from a Kremlin-tied Russian bank for a single speech was part of a multimillion-dollar influence-peddling scheme to enrich the former President and his wife, then-Secretary of State Hillary Clinton. At the time, Russia was plotting--successfully--to secure U.S. Government approval for its acquisition of Uranium One, and with it, tens of billions of dollars in U.S. uranium reserves. ``Here is the kicker: the Uranium One scandal is not only, or even principally, a Clinton scandal. It is an Obama administration scandal. The Clintons were just doing what the Clintons do: cashing in on their `public service.' The Obama administration, with Secretary Clinton at the forefront but hardly alone, was knowingly compromising American national security interests. The administration green-lighted the transfer of control over one-fifth of American uranium mining capacity to Russia, a hostile regime--and specifically to Russia's state-controlled nuclear-energy conglomerate, Rosatom. Worse, at the time the administration approved the transfer, it knew that Rosatom's American subsidiary was engaged in a lucrative racketeering enterprise that had already committed felony extortion, fraud, and money-laundering offenses.'' It is not in the article, but it does raise the question: Gee, I wonder if the Obama administration or Director Mueller of the FBI, knowing all these things apparently, did anybody bother to tell Secretary Clinto about the situation and that the entity that they were being courted by was actually tied to felony extortion, fraud, and money-laundering offenses? I thought the Obama administration was pretty close-knit. It seemed like they would have surely told Secretary of State Clinton who had access to classified information. We know because she put it on her server that wasn't classified. But it looks like somebody would have told the Secretary of State: Hey, this outfit that is courting you has ties to the people paying your husband half a million dollars for one speech, paying $145 million or so to the Clinton Foundation, these folks are bad folks. Surely somebody in the Obama administration would have told them. Well, we don't know, and, certainly, Director Muller is not going to investigate any inappropriate actions that he or James Comey or Deputy Attorney General Rosenstein took or didn't take. The article goes on to say: ``The Obama administration also knew that congressional Republicans were trying to stop the transfer. Consequently, the Justice Department concealed what it knew.'' That being from congressional Republicans who were trying to stop the transfer. In fact, ``the DOJ allowed the racketeering enterprise to continue compromising the American uranium industry rather than commencing a prosecution that would have scotched the transfer. Prosecutors waited 4 years before quietly pleading the case out for a song, in violation of Justice Department charging guidelines. Meanwhile, the administration stonewalled Congress, reportedly threatening an informant who wanted to go public. ``Obama's `reset,' to understand what happened here, we need to go back to the beginning. The first-tier military arsenal of Putin's Russia belies its status as a third-rate economic power. For well over a decade, the regime has thus sought to develop and exploit its capacity as a nuclear-energy producer. Naively viewing Russia as a `strategic partner' rather than a malevolent competitor, the Bush administration made a nuclear-cooperation agreement with the Kremlin in May of 2008. ``That blunder, however, was tabled before Congress could consider it. That is because Russia, being Russia, invaded Georgia. In 2009, notwithstanding this aggression, which continues to this day with Russia's occupation of Abkhazia and South Ossetia, President Obama and Secretary of State Clinton signaled the new administration's determination to `reset' relations with Moscow. In this reset, renewed cooperation and commerce in nuclear energy would be central. There had been such cooperation and commerce since the Soviet Union imploded. In 1992, the administration of President George H. W. Bush agreed with the nascent Russian Federation that U.S. nuclear providers would be permitted to purchase uranium from Russia's disassembled nuclear warheads, after it had been down-blended from its highly enriched weapons-grade level. ``The Russian commercial agent responsible for the sale and transportation of this uranium to the U.S. is the Kremlin-controlled company `Tenex,' formally, JSC Techsnabexport. Tenex is a subsidiary of Rosatom. Tenex, and by extension, Rosatom, have an American arm called `Tenam USA.' Tenam is based in Bethesda, Maryland. Around the time President Obama came to power, the Russian official in charge of Tenam was Vadim Mikerin. The Obama administration reportedly issued a visa for Mikerin in 2010, but a racketeering investigation led by the FBI determined that he was already operating here in 2009. The racketeering scheme as Tenam's general director, Mikerin was responsible for arranging and managing Rosatom/Tenex's contracts with American uranium purchasers. ``This gave him tremendous leverage over the U.S. companies. With the assistance of several confederates, Mikerin used this leverage to extort and defraud the U.S. contractors into paying inflated prices for uranium. They then laundered the proceeds through shell companies and secret bank accounts in Latvia, Cyprus, Switzerland, and the Seychelle Islands--though sometimes transactions were handled in cash, with the skim divided into envelopes stuffed with thousands of dollars in cash. The inflated payments served two purposes: they enriched Kremlin- connected energy officials in the U.S. and in Russia to the tune of millions of dollars; and they compromised the American companies that paid the bribes, rendering players in U.S. nuclear energy--a sector critical to national security--vulnerable to blackmail by Moscow. But Mikerin had a problem. ``To further the Kremlin's push for nuclear-energy expansion, he had been seeking to retain a lobbyist--from whom he planned to extort kickbacks, just as he did with the U.S. energy companies. With the help of an associate connected to Russian organized-crime groups, Mikerin found his lobbyist. The man's name has not been disclosed, but we know he is now represented by Victoria Toensing, a well-respected Washington lawyer, formerly a Federal prosecutor and counsel to the Senate Intelligence Committee. ``When Mikerin solicited him in 2009, the lobbyist was uncomfortable, worried that the proposal would land him on the wrong side of the law. So he contacted the FBI to reveal what he knew. From then on, the Bureau and Justice Department permitted him to participate in the Russian racketeering scheme as a `confidential source'--and he is thus known as `CS-1' in affidavits the government, years later, presented to Federal court in order to obtain search and arrest warrants. At the time this unidentified man became an informant, the FBI was led by Director Robert Mueller, who is now the special counsel investigating whether Trump colluded with Russia,'' which we keep hearing there is no evidence of. ``The investigation was centered in Maryland, Tenam's home base. There, the U.S. Attorney was Obama appointee Rod Rosenstein--now President Trump's Deputy Attorney General, and the man who appointed Mueller as special counsel to investigate Trump. ``Because of CS-1, the FBI was able to understand and monitor the racketeering enterprise almost from the start. By mid-May 2010, it could already prove the scheme and three separate extortionate payments Mikerin had squeezed out of the informant. ``Equally important: According to reporting by John Solomon and Alison Spann in The Hill''--which we were just speaking about--``the informant learned through conversations with Mikerin and others that Russian nuclear officials were trying to ingratiate themselves with the Clintons.'' It goes on and on, Mr. Speaker, but it is clear this definitely needs investigation. It needs investigation as to the propriety of the actions of Robert Mueller, FBI Director. It needs investigation into the propriety of the actions by Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein. We need a special counsel. If the current Attorney General considers himself recused, there is only one person who has the power to make that appointment, and that is the President of the United States, from whom the Attorney General and Deputy Attorney General Rosenstein derive their power to appoint special counsel. The President needs to appoint somebody to investigate this mess, because I guess former Secretary Clinton knew with authority when she said the Russians were clearly trying to hack and to influence this election. Yes, they sure were. It appears they were doing more to influence the Clintons and the Obama administration than they were even the American people: $500,000 to Bill Clinton himself and only $6,500 to the ads to try to affect the American people. So this really does need to be investigated. I know Congress really hasn't gotten into it in any depth, but if Congress is to do that, it has got to take a page out of Judicial Watch's notebook, and that is you have got to be willing to go to court and demand people produce evidence, produce people. We can't just continue to be obstructed the way we have allowed the IRS Director to do after he has obfuscated, lied to Congress, and I believe perjured himself, after Lois Lerner appears certainly to have committed crimes, to me, and we have let her get away with such apparent criminal activity. But in the few minutes I have left, in addition to this scourge upon the United States that we find out was going on during the Obama administration, there is a tremendous irony that is playing out, and it is reflected in the article by J.E. Dyer, October 10. The article is titled: ``NFL meltdown blows the dam on MSM's centralized media model.'' I thought about this. I did not realize, but Colin Kaepernick first began to kneel down after he apparently has also supported a group that wants to kill cops and thinks cops should be killed, the people who are protecting us and allowing us to continue safely in our way of life and our freedom. He doesn't have that respect. He knelt. He had nothing but contempt for America's police and for those protecting America. He did not appreciate America, which was bringing him millions of dollars. Just contempt. Apparently, his belief is there is racism in America, though he was adopted by, as I understand it, a White family. But he started this, and the American people didn't like it. After 9/ 11 particularly, they realized: You know what? We owe so much to first responders and to law enforcement that have been willing to lay down their lives for us against enemies, foreign and domestic. And they continue, as police around the country, law enforcement, continue to be willing to lay down their lives for Americans and our way of life, our freedom. We appreciated that after 9/11. After my 4 years in the Army, when we were sometimes ordered not to wear our uniform because of hatred for people in uniform after Vietnam, I didn't think we would ever come to a day when people would again appreciate our military. But that also came out in amazing ways after 9/11. As evil and hateful as the actions were that day in an effort to kill as many innocent people as these radical Islamists could, we saw the good in Americans. We saw the good in first responders. We saw the good in our military. We saw men and women willing to evidence the greatest love, as Jesus said, willing to lay down their lives for their fellow Americans. Yet, during the last administration, somehow the President normally took the wrong side. He spoke up before the evidence was in and often derided the wrong people. I just can't believe that our President for those last 8 years set us back so many years in race relations. It is incredible. I thought we were beyond that, but we got set back many years. Huge numbers of Americans didn't appreciate the way the Obama administration set us back in race relations. For the first time, we had a President and First Lady who had not normally been proud as Americans. The First Lady said she was finally proud of America. I have been proud of America all my life. I was not proud of the activities of some Americans. Americans have been a force for good in the world since it came into existence. This article points out that, actually, that started something, because then other NFL players, as we have heard, didn't even realize what Colin Kaepernick was actually kneeling for. It is interesting to hear their explanations. They are not sure. They just have contempt for something, so they kneel during the national anthem. It has so affected many Americans that many of us are not watching the NFL like we used to. It used to be a priority. I was always glad to get home from church and turn on the NFL, maybe see the Dallas Cowboys. I haven't been doing that. It hasn't been a priority. Colin Kaepernick started that. Now, as this article points out, the one thing that allowed the mainstream media to bundle all kinds of programming that they forced cable companies or dish companies to take was the NFL. It was the big breadwinner that forced cable companies and satellite companies to take programming they really didn't want. But if you wanted the NFL, you had to take what the networks were bundling. Now that the NFL is not turning into the cash cow it once was, and viewership and attendance drops, and, therefore, advertising dollars are plummeting, it may just be that that act of taking a knee back when it first started ends up leading to the liberal mainstream media not force-feeding Americans liberal pablum that they have been able to do for years. Wouldn't that be an ironic result of one player taking a knee? 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, a different variety of thunder rolled across Williamsport, Pennsylvania in late August, which provided some respite from the devastating storms which were battering Texas . . . the ``Thundering 13'' from Angelina County, Texas captured the attention of millions and the title of a lifetime when they emerged victorious as the U.S. National Champions in the 2017 Little League World Series tournament. The Lufkin All-Stars gained its distinctive nickname of ``Thundering 13'' during grueling two-a-day practices and games leading up to the tournament, when the young men pounded so many home runs that spectators said it sounded like thunder. A single loss during the national tournament motivated the team even further, resulting in a rematch where they ultimately emerged victorious against the only team that challenged their bid for the national title. With the strength of their camaraderie uniting them, and the unwavering support of their family, friends, and fans, this talented, resolute, and relentless national championship team never lost sight of the dream. This remarkable accomplishment cannot be possible without the determination and hard work of every team member, along with the skill and experience of dedicated Head Coach and Manager Bud Maddux, along with Assistant Coaches Malcolm Deason and Ryan Deaton. My most enthusiastic praise and congratulations goes to national champions Chip Buchanan, Malcolm Deason, Jr., Charlie Deaton, Hunter Ditsworth, Kolby Kovar, Lance Modisette, Christian Mumphery, Zach Phipps, Mark Requena, Collin Ross, Chandler Spencer, Blake Slaga, and Clayton Wigley. The path to a championship title can be long and arduous, but the Lufkin All-Stars met the challenge sustained by the solid and enthusiastic encouragement of a fiercely loyal network of community support which provided the foundation upon which a national championship emerged. These young men bear witness to the fact that anything is achievable though focus, hard work and determination. These are guiding life principles that lead to success not only on the field, but will undoubtedly resonate through every endeavor these valiant championship players undertake in their entire lifetimes. May God continue to bless these young people, along with their families, friends and neighbors in east Texas and beyond. It is an extraordinary privilege to recognize the Lufkin All-Stars, 2017 Little League World Series U.S. National Champions.

Mr. GOHMERT

Mr. GOHMERT. Madam Speaker, it has been an interesting number of days here this week. We continue to have hearings and fight for good legislation, and we continue to hear from people back home that we simply must at least work on our promises to repeal ObamaCare and bring their health insurance into a realm that is affordable. They realize they were lied to. They will never get the insurance they liked back. They would like to try to get their doctors back. One of the interesting things about the design of the devious architect of ObamaCare is the guy who bragged later: Yeah, we knew you couldn't keep your insurance, you couldn't keep your doctor, but we had to say that to sell it. They actually incentivized the handful of remaining insurance companies not to put the best cancer healthcare providers in their network. ObamaCare actually incentivizes insurance companies not putting the best heart healthcare providers or, in fact, any chronic, expensive disease that the insurance companies, because of the design of ObamaCare--and I think it was intentional--basically were penalized if they put the very best cancer treaters, heart treaters in their network. So there actually are indications that insurance companies, they could see what the administration was encouraging them to do. For example, I had read that MD Anderson was not in those networks as a cancer provider. Some would argue it is the best cancer treatment facility. That certainly can be debated. I think it still comes down to the effort to get to the point where government is completely in charge of every American's healthcare. ObamaCare was a good start, but obviously if you design a system so that the insurance companies, they just get down to a handful of monopolies and they are having record years, and that same bill even allows those insurance companies to get what are called bailouts after they have had record profits, well, most people are going to end up hating the insurance companies. And we have seen that. What would happen, of course, is eventually people get so outraged with premiums going up, whether it is 10 percent or 70 percent--I have heard of it being doubled, being tripled since the last 7 years. I have heard all kinds of horror stories from people in east Texas. Around other places I have visited, it is the same thing happening. They can't afford their policy, yet they can't afford to pay an extra tax for not having a policy that the government says they have to have; and yet if they pay for their policy, the deductible is so high, they are still not going to get any benefit out of it. So it is easy to see, when you start looking at the way in which ObamaCare was created, the rules in place for it, the day would come when people got so outraged at how expensive their health insurance was that they would scream: Look, I just can't stand it anymore. I never wanted the government to be in charge of my personal life, but anything's got to be better than the current system. Just let the government take it over. Then, there you are, government controlling everybody's body, everybody's personal life. Of course, we have got this Consumer Financial Protection Bureau out there created during the Obama years by the Democrats. We were not helpful in that. We thought, sure, we want to help people who are being taken advantage of by unscrupulous lenders, but we don't need a Bureau to monitor everybody's debit and credit card transactions. There were those who argued: Yeah, but this way, they can monitor and they can tell if somebody's being taken advantage of. There was a time, as a felony judge in Texas, that, if someone wanted your bank records, under the Fourth Amendment of the Constitution, we are supposed to be protected from unreasonable searches and seizures, and that includes anyone's bank records. So people would come to me as a judge, they would have affidavits, and they hoped that would prove under oath probable cause that a crime had been committed and that this person committed it, and if so, I could sign the warrant that allowed them to go get bank records. We used to care about the Fourth Amendment. I know my friends across the aisle, our Democratic friends, they cared greatly, because I have heard over and over in Judiciary Committee arguments about the protections against unreasonable searches, and yet they set up a Bureau that violates that, says: Just give us all your information. Well, sure, if somebody is being taken advantage of by an unscrupulous lender, then the remedy is they go complain to the appropriate government law enforcement or the SEC, whoever it is, and then they come to a judge like I was, get the warrant, get the records, and then make the determination if there is probable cause. We just lost so much of our privacy. Several years ago, we said, well, since ObamaCare is going to allow the mass gathering of people's medical records and our Democratic friends set up this consumer protection racket here in Washington, we could conceivably have a day--and if we don't do something about ObamaCare and the CFPB, then it is closer than I imagined--when you get your mail, Madam Speaker, and you see: Oh, I have got a letter from the government here. And you open it, and it says: We noticed, when you were at Brookshire's grocery store the other day, that you bought a pound of bacon; and we also noticed, from your healthcare records, that your cholesterol rate is at this certain level, and so, therefore, since we control your healthcare now and we monitor your debit and credit purchases, here is the deal: you are either going to join a health club and start working out once a week and stop buying bacon, or we are going to have to raise the amount you pay in each month. I mean, this is where it goes when you have the Orwellian Big Brother that was advanced more through ObamaCare than anything that has ever occurred in U.S. history. It has got to be repealed. I want to applaud and thank President Trump for taking steps today through executive order. He shouldn't have had to do that. I am very, very grateful he did. God bless him for doing it. But we should have already taken care of that stuff. That is our job. What do we do here in the House? It was contentious. The first bill was a disaster, but we got it to where it actually was going to bring premiums down for the middle class in America. It was going to make their premiums cheaper. It was going to make their deductibles lower. Then we had people in the Senate who got elected on the promise of repealing ObamaCare that voted ``no.'' We still have to do something. I loved seeing the President's interview with our good friend, Sean Hannity, last night. I love this about President Trump. I think it is why he got elected. When Sean asked him about, basically, is this over, he gets this smile and says: No. We are not giving up, not giving up. The truth is we cannot give up. People are counting on us. They don't know what to do. There are small-business employers like the one in Tyler who told me that a few years ago he was paying $50,000 for his employees' health insurance. He has the same number of employees, and this year it is $153,000, and he is going to have to start letting people go or drop their insurance. It just cannot continue. People are already taking losses. It can't continue. Well, with the proper President in place, and here in Congress we have taken some steps to ameliorate some of the damage to jobs in America, things seem to be turning around some. But we actually have to keep our promise, and I think we do that by putting a lot more heat on the Senate as the House body, House Republicans. We have got to put pressure on the Senate. Like the President said, this fight cannot be over. Normally, I have been told since my freshman term, you can't do big things in an election year. But I am beginning to wonder, if America makes it clear to the Republicans in the Senate that you either will keep your promise on ObamaCare, you will keep your promise on tax reform or you will not be back in the Senate, then I think we could buck tradition in this place. The idea was that we were told back in 2006, in January: Okay. Well, we didn't keep any of our promises last year as the Republican majority, but now, you veterans know we are into an even-numbered year. That means it is an election year, so we can't do any of those big things, because everybody knows you just can't do big things in an election year or you might lose. Well, it would have been a lot better if we had already done those things, if we had repealed ObamaCare and put a system in place that was affordable, that gave people the healthcare they needed and with actual insurance and encouraged, instead of spending $700, $800, $900, sending it to the insurance company, how about putting $700, $800 in your own medical health savings account you control, debit-card coded where it can only be spent on healthcare, whether it is crutches, medicine, doctor visits, hospital stays, whatever, and you could have a high deductible. We could have a day where $700 goes to your account, $200 goes for catastrophic coverage. That is the kind of thing that we should have been pushing for and gone to, but, instead, we are pouring that money into health insurance companies. Just in case, Madam Speaker, there are those who are already wondering, ``Maybe we should just let the government take over everything; that has got to be better,'' I heard on the news again today another horror story. Just when you thought the VA was being cleaned up, here comes another horror story. Some doctor at the VA was allowed to do 80-some-odd surgeries that were unnecessary, inappropriate, or terribly done, even surgeries not even needed at all, on the wrong person, but it had been covered up for some time. Well, when the government is in charge of your healthcare, you can't expect any more than the lowest common denominator in the government. I am very, very grateful we do have some good doctors, some good nurses in the VA, but I have also talked to good doctors and nurses in the VA who are so frustrated with such an albatross of a system. Why not just let people--if you want to go to the VA clinic, here is your card, you go. We thought we were doing a good thing, and I think it was a step in the right direction when we were going to allow veterans to go to a civilian clinic, hospital, healthcare provider if there was not one within a minimum number of miles. I believe it was 40, but I have heard horror stories about how people have been jerked around and not been allowed to utilize the program as it was designed. Here, again, we come back to what you get when the government is in charge. We have got to do that. Stuart Varney was asking today again about tax reform. We promised it. We have got to deliver on that. These rumors I hear emanating from people at the Senate side of this building that: Yeah, well, the House can do the reform. They did their ObamaCare repeal and we didn't pass that, so maybe we won't do their tax reform package like we are working on. It takes a lot of work to pass a major reform like we did on ObamaCare. It takes even more work, perhaps, to do a significant tax reform package where it becomes simplified, people pay less tax, the economy explodes. You would think it would be a no-brainer, but apparently there are too many people up here with no brains and it is not getting done. We do have to do that. We promised we would. We have got to do it for the sake of the economy that will make people's lives so much better. But in the meantime, if we are going to be an effective Congress, we have got to make sure that we maintain proper systems in place that we can do our business without inappropriate outside influence, whether it is coming from Russia or Pakistan. Wherever it is coming from, we need to know and we need to protect ourselves. That is why this Taxed Enough Already Caucus meeting we had, we invited people in the tradition of my friend Tim Huelskamp, the former chair of that caucus from Kansas. Just a great guy, a great American. It was great to talk to him recently. Tim started with this caucus having representatives of outside groups with important information we should share coming in and having Members of Congress come in and share information, figure out how we can help get the Nation's business done. We have been concerned about articles we continue to read, especially by Luke Rosiak of The Daily Caller. No one has done more investigation on the issue of the Awan family cohorts that were working here on Capitol Hill for House Members. They happened to be Democratic House Members. I think the same thing could happen where one Republican could say, ``Oh, these folks are great,'' and before you know it, you have dozens of people having the same IT computer workers working part time. People are allowed to do that, hire somebody part time so it doesn't overwhelm your budget. Others can hire them part time, but under no circumstances can anybody working on the Hill make more than around $160,000. We found out this week from the lead investigator, oh, not law enforcement, oh, no. FBI, apparently they are not getting anything done, and I will explain why in a moment. But as he has gone around and investigated and asked witnesses questions that have direct information about what is going on, Luke Rosiak would also ask: Has anyone from the FBI talked to you, or has any law enforcement talked to you? He said 80 percent of the time the answer is no. No one from the FBI has talked to me. No one from any law enforcement has talked to me. Staggering. I hear rumors that there are people from the FBI telling the Department of Justice: Yeah, we have looked into it. There is nothing there. Yeah, just the way the FBI looked into the notice from Russia that the Tsarnaev older brother had been radicalized. What do they do? I know because I have asked Director Mueller after he had run off thousands of years of our best experienced FBI agents, done more damage to the FBI than anybody since Hoover. He has got plenty of young aggressive people without enough experience to call him out when he was making mistakes, as he made many. They send out an FBI agent to talk to the older Tsarnaev after the second notice from Russian agents that this guy has been radicalized. He is going to be a threat. But because Director Mueller--now Special Counsel Mueller, who is hiring lawyers and investigators right and left--built up a beautiful, comfortable nest for himself, that same Mueller, as Director of the FBI, had the FBI training materials on radical Islamists purged of anything that might offend radical Islamists. Yes, he was more concerned about the little lunches and dinners he had with CAIR--or the Council of American-Islamic Relations--than he was about people being killed in Boston, because if he had, he would have made sure that the Tsarnaev brothers were properly investigated after they got two heads-up. If they had bothered to look, they would have seen where the older Tsarnaev went and would have known he went to a hotbed of radicalism. They would have known to investigate: What has he been reading? What scriptures from the Koran has he been reading? What has he talked about? Is he doing more memorization? What is his appearance looking like now? Who is he hanging out with? But no. Because he was too concerned about what he called the outreach program to Islamic Americans, he didn't want to offend anybody. He was more worried about offending somebody than saving the lives and limbs of Bostonians. He created a massive problem at the Federal Bureau of Investigation, and now we are turning special counsel over to this man? We heard from Mr. Comey himself that he talked to Mueller even before his testimony before Congress. We heard from he himself that he leaked information that was clearly FBI information that should not have been leaked. So there is a question of did he commit a crime, or did he just commit a breach of FBI ethics? What action should be taken? Oh, no. We have got FBI Director Mueller on the case, and if you go back and look at the Washingtonian back in 2013, they did a big expose on how wonderful Mr. Comey was; and they point out in there that, gee, basically if the whole world were on fire, Comey knew there would be one person that would still be standing with him there to protect him, Mr. Mueller; the same guy that is protecting him instead of investigating the leaks that have come from the FBI that appear to have gone through the exact same person through whom he leaked what he admitted. But, no, we have got Mueller, the same man who is going to be there through thick and thin to protect Comey; he is the one investigating. If Jeff Sessions as Attorney General cannot investigate Mr. Comey and his violations, potential breaches of the law, then we need another special counsel, and it sure ain't going to come from Mr. Rosenstein, that is for sure. We need a special counsel. I think the Attorney General could do it, but I am not sure the extent to which he has recused himself. But this has to be investigated. Unfortunately, because of the damage done to the FBI, I still have questions arise on things they investigate because I know the damage that Mueller did to their training materials, to their ability. As one of our intelligence agents explained, we have blinded ourselves of the ability to see our enemies. But don't worry, the guy that was the biggest blinder is now the special counsel growing his little bureaucracy. And I am sure, knowing how vengeful he is, when he hears what I have had to say, then he probably will open an investigation on me. That is just how vengeful this man has been. But the truth is the truth. He damaged the FBI, running off thousands of years of experienced people. He purged the training materials that would have--and Michele Bachmann and I went through these, and another Congressman from Georgia went through some, and there were some things, sure; cartoon stuff, sure; take them out, fine. But there were some things in there very clearly that every FBI agent needs to know to help them spot a radical Islamist, and Mueller blinded them of the opportunity to do that. I will never forget, at one of our hearings, after it was so clear that he was more concerned about offending CAIR than he was of protecting Boston, and he was so defensive, I said: You didn't even go to the mosque where Tsarnaev went to see if he had been radicalized. After fumbling around, I finally got him to tell me how he thought that was wrong, and he said: We did go to the mosque. And I didn't hear it at first. Unfortunately, I didn't hear it until I had it played on the video. He said: We did go to that mosque in our outreach program. Oh, the outreach program. Yeah, you didn't go to investigate Tsarnaev to find out if he had been radicalized by asking questions in the mosque where he worshipped to find out if he was now acting like a radical. And there are clear indications. That is why we don't have to worry about most Muslims, but you sure need to know what you are looking for. For those that want to call people like me an Islamophobe, well, it is another lie. But there are plenty of lies around Washington. I have got enough Muslim friends in the Middle East and Afghanistan and other countries. They know they don't want radicals. I am so proud of the President of Egypt, el-Sisi, a man who would stand before imams and tell them: We have got to get our religion back from the radicals. That is a courageous great man. We owe him a lot of help. So what do we have here on Capitol Hill? We had guys that apparently never had a background search. And as we found out from the investigator for The Daily Caller, there were actually three or more months of the year when Imran Awan would be in Pakistan doing his job, supposedly making sure Capitol Hill computers were secured. We find out that there was suspicion when they saw this Imran Awan clan. His wife got involved. As we heard, when they would get up to the maximum amount one person could make on Capitol Hill, they would add another family member, and then they would get up to $160,000; add another family member, get them up; add another family member. And apparently all of these people didn't work. The people that had a lot of experience working at McDonalds probably didn't have that much experience on computers, but he was still making $160,000 or so a year and, we find out--I had no idea, just this week found out--they were able to gain $6 million to $7 million from the House of Representatives' budget. And we find out, gee, one of them, had gotten $100,000 from an individual with known ties to Hezbollah, and we don't know for what reason, but clearly never came to Capitol Hill. He was put on the payroll of the U.S. House of Representatives, the guy that was owed $100,000 with ties to Hezbollah, and made over $200,000 or so before he was taken off the payroll. That is a good way to pay back a loan, isn't it? So we had Imran Awan; Hina Alvi, his wife; Abid Awan; Jamal Awan; Rao Abbas; and possibly a couple of others we found out--just incredible that this kind of thing could happen. But the suspicion grew when he was supposed to be working on the computer system of Congressman, now attorney general in California, Becerra. No indication Becerra knew anything was wrong, but people here on the Hill watching this saw there have been 5,700 accesses to his computer system and 5,400, at least, were not from people who should have been getting into his computer system. Then we find out, actually, he downloaded other Members of Congress' servers completely onto Becerra's server, and, actually, he had 2 terabytes of information that he said was for their child's homework--a little child's homework taking 2 terabytes. But we also know, apparently, from what came out this week, he was downloading dozens of Members' computers onto one server so that anybody he wanted to could access any of that information. Now, there is no indication that classified information was revealed through the access to all these computer systems by people who were not hired by that Member of Congress. But we also know--I mean, General Petraeus, I read somewhere that it was actually a calendar that he gave to the lady who was to do a book, that he was having an affair with, that had some stuff that was considered classified. Well, on every Member's computer system, you get their calendar, you get all their email, you get all their appointments, things that are going on in the office, you get reactions to people who come in over different bills, you get reaction to different things that have been learned in the intelligence community. There are all kinds of things that people would pay a lot of money for. Then we find out, you had a bankruptcy in the Awan history, you had domestic violence in the history, and now we find out this week, newly reported, that his wife is now upset. We can maybe get some answers now that she is upset because, now, she has found out that not only was he being corrupt to the banks here in the United States and on Capitol Hill, but he also, without his wife's knowledge, married another lady. So that may help bring his first wife around to giving us more information about just how bad things got. But the report was, this week, investigators with the IG's office here on Capitol Hill have been quietly tracking the five IT workers-- that is, the Awan group--their digital footprints for months. They were alarmed by what they saw. The employees, the Awans, appeared to be accessing congressional servers without authorization, an indication that they ``could be reading and/or removing information,'' according to the documents distributed at the previously unreported private briefings. So I know that there are people who have reported here on Capitol Hill, well, it is being looked into, but there is no evidence of crime. Really? Because we have also learned that there may have been hundreds of vouchers filed falsely for, say, an $800 iPad. But if you say that it is under $500, then it doesn't go in the inventory, and it is easier to steal and sell, for example, hypothetically, in Pakistan, where there are reports that he sent technological systems and sold them to make extra money. We know that he was not truthful and honest in his financial disclosures. That can be a crime. But just one voucher where you claim something only cost $490 and the server system cost $310 when you know that item actually cost $800 and should go into the inventory, that could be a crime. It appears that happened countless times, but we need to be trying to count anyway. We know that there were many pieces of computer equipment found at his home after FBI agents said his wife appeared to be fleeing, to not come back, even though she had a trip back. We don't know what representations have been made to get her to come back, but we know that the tenants who leased the house where they fled from had been threatened by Imran Awan's lawyer for allowing law enforcement to have access to that computer equipment that was there at his house. Hard drives appeared to be destroyed so they could not be properly investigated. We got a report that one of the group appeared to be home most of the time and was not here in Washington, D.C. But what a great gig, when you can make $160,000 a year for servicing computer equipment. And it appears all of these five, six, seven people in this group didn't have competence to do computer or IT work, yet they were sure making a good living doing it. But for those who continue to say ``we just don't think there is much there,'' all that should tell you is the report by Luke Rosiak, of all the witnesses to this whole sordid matter, only about 20 percent of them have ever been interviewed by FBI or law enforcement. It tells you somebody around here in this town, this Hill, somebody does not want to get to the bottom of this. If law enforcement wants to get to the bottom of this, they will get to the bottom of it. Kind of like Benghazi, if we really wanted to get to the bottom of it, we would do like Judicial Watch and be relentless till we got to the bottom of it. We haven't gotten there yet So, Mr. Speaker, there is a lot that needs to be investigated, a lot that needs to be done. We need--somebody, sounds like, needs to be investigating Mr. Mueller, but certainly needs to be investigating the various leaks that appear to have come from Mr. Comey through the same sources as the one he admitted. That has got to be investigated. And Mueller can't do it and, apparently, the current Attorney General can't. We have got to have somebody appointed to get to the bottom of what was happening at the DOJ during last year when an election was going on. We need to have an investigation to thoroughly get into this matter of having a U.N.--our representative to the U.N. is unmasking American information. We were assured that kind of thing would not happen if we would just reauthorize that program: Oh, no, no. If there are Americans who happen to be incidentally picked up by the monitors, the wiretap, by listening in on conversations, look, if there is an American, we mask the name. You can't just get that. You are protected. It is minimized. Well, we find out that wasn't true, that anybody that wants to go skipping and looking into any political opponents can do that if you are corrupt enough. And if you are corrupt enough and you have corrupted other people, then it won't be investigated. Maybe there are things other people around here don't want found out, but it is time we cleaned up the mess that has been left here, we clean up the wiretapping capability. It is coming up for reauthorization here. It has got to be done before the end of December, and I still need a lot of answers before I could even consider doing that. In the meantime, Mr. Speaker, we have got to help the American people by keeping our promises. I yield back the balance of my time.

Mr. GOHMERT

Mr. GOHMERT. Mr. Speaker, we had some interesting days here, but, over the weekend, being back in Texas, I am hearing the cries from people all over east Texas. There is a small number that say: Hey, I am not making much, and I am getting a subsidy from the government, so I am okay on my healthcare, I am young, I have no health problems, and that is fine. But over and over, there is a cry going out around America that says: We elected Republicans in the majority in the House and the majority in the Senate to help us with our healthcare--with really health insurance. Everybody can get healthcare. You can just go to the emergency room, whether you have money or not. This is really more about health insurance. Some of us have not wanted health insurance to make our major decisions for us on our own healthcare. We haven't wanted the government to make major decisions on our healthcare, but both are making those decisions for people across the country today. Unfortunately, there are people telling me they are paying $8,000, $10,000, $12,000. I heard one for $20,000 yesterday from Texas, $20,000 for the family's insurance, and they have a $12,000 deductible, and they can't afford either one. They expected help. President Trump is not the Congress. He has pushed, shoved, cajoled, done everything he could to try to get Congress moving in the House after a back and forth, wailing, gnashing of teeth. We got a bill. It wasn't perfect by any stretch. But at least it would have given people relief from high premiums, most Americans. Hopefully, Republicans won't misrepresent the truth, as some did. Actually, we know some people just flat lied about ObamaCare. People who said, ``If you like your insurance, you can keep it,'' they knew it was a lie. If you like your doctor, you can keep your doctor. They knew that was a lie. And now the people are suffering the consequences of trusting people in government who lied to them. They were deceived. But even with all the deception, most of the time it appeared that a clear majority of Americans did not want what was fraudulently called the Affordable Care Act. There was nothing affordable about it, unless you didn't have any healthcare problems at all. People who are carrying the weight of the taxes in this country have needed help. They counted on us to provide legislative changes, repeal of ObamaCare, let's put a system in place where people can make their own healthcare decisions, and we sent the bill to the Senate, and I still believe we should have been demanding more of the Senate every day. I know there are a lot of people who say: Well, Republicans can't lose the majority in the Senate because there are a bunch more Democrats whose seats are up this time instead of Republicans. Yes, we can lose the majority, even when there are more Democratic seats up for election. That is what happens when people are sorely disappointed. Many stay home, and the wrong people will get elected when too many people stay home. But the adage is, still true, democracy ensures people are governed no better than they deserve. So whether anybody liked or disliked President Obama as our President--and, by the way, for those who like to throw out the term ``hater,'' I don't hate anybody, but I can certainly disapprove of conduct. For 8 years, America deserved Barack Hussein Obama. Before that, whether you like him or not, I like him, America deserved George W. Bush. Before that, America deserved 8 years of William Clinton--I forget his middle name. Before that, 4 years of George H. W. Bush. Before that, 8 years of Ronald Reagan. And I am very pleased that America deserved Donald Trump over Hillary Clinton last November. It is interesting, though, being in hearings today and hear people clambering that they demand action from this department, that department, it is taking too long, while, at that very moment, Democratic Senators at the other end of this building are doing everything they can to prevent confirmation of President Trump's appointees to those departments so they can start getting things done. It is amazing when one party like that can hold the ability, because of the filibuster rule, because of the requirement for 60 votes, apparently, they are able to hold up these appointees. To me, that is all the reason to go ahead and say: Do you know what, you are demanding action from people who you have not confirmed yet, so we are not going to let you play that game anymore. You have people saying, ``Oh, my goodness, these departments aren't getting decisions made, aren't getting their work done,'' and all the while you are holding them back from being able to do it by not confirming the people who need to be doing that work. The Senate ought to just say: We are not playing that game, we are not letting you play that game, we are going to call the game off, we are going to get serious about America's problems, and we are going to confirm President Trump's nominees with 51 votes, not just judges, we are going to confirm his nominees with 51 votes. We cannot tolerate people--really it is fraudulent activity to hold back the nominees from being confirmed and then vilify the administration for not getting the work done that those nominees who hadn't been confirmed will have to do. The Senate needs to respond. The Senate did not respond to the bill we sent to them. That was quite interesting. In my 12 years here, I have never seen a situation like that, Mr. Speaker, where some of us got calls from people in the Senate who don't normally get calls, and that included people from the Tuesday Group, the Freedom Caucus, the Republican Study Committee, and the Republican leadership. They all were asking the same question: Okay, would you please promise us that if we pass this healthcare bill in the Senate that you will not take it up and pass it in the House? Because it is only if you guys promise us, the Republicans promise us, you won't pass the bill that we have down here--apparently, it was so bad--that we will let it go to committee, or you will amend it, but you just promise us you won't pass the bill if we pass it. Well, as far as I know, everybody I talked to gave reassurance to the Senators who called them and said: No, we promise, we won't pass your bill, it is terrible, we won't, we can assure you. Even with those assurances, just the effort to get something passed so that we can come together in a conference between House conferees and Senate conferees, just to come together for the chance--this bill that the Senate was taking up to have some skinny repeal, they called it, of ObamaCare, and at least some measure of change to the suffering that people are enduring right now, and they still couldn't get 51 votes, which is all they needed under the reconciliation process. Even when they were assured: We promise you, we won't pass this bill, you will get another chance to vote, just help the process, let's get it to conference, so we can get some relief to the American people who are suffering, suffering so much that they would go so far as to give us the majority in the Senate after they have given us the majority in the House, and give us the White House as a Republican Party-- incredible. But the American people are still suffering. And the budget apparently does not provide for ObamaCare to be repealed and replaced under reconciliation for the next 12 months. So unless the Senate feels enough heat from the American people--the Republicans that is--they are not going to do anything about ObamaCare that they promise to repeal and replace. Apparently, it is going to have to get pretty hot in the kitchen down in the Senate to get people down there worked up enough to finally give the American people the relief that the Senate Republicans promised. Now, I don't like talking about this, despite what some may think. It is much nicer to get along and go along, but people are suffering because we haven't kept our promise. The Senate couldn't pass anything that would get the American people some relief from all the suffering from ObamaCare. For those who are not aware, yes, there were bailouts for the monopoly insurance companies. Some made record profits, and yet they are still, under ObamaCare, the way it was written, supposed to get bailouts. So it appears pretty clear the design of ObamaCare was to make it fail. Apparently, people at the top of some of these insurance companies have not been smart enough to figure out that they signed their own death warrants when they embraced ObamaCare, but it appears it was designed to make people angry at the greedy, allegedly corrupt health insurance companies. I don't think they are corrupt, but there sure was a lot of greed there between some of the pharmaceutical companies and the health insurance companies signing on. Some of them tried to say: Well, oh, but we needed to be at the table. We are going: Not if you are on the menu you didn't want to be at the table. I am sure the executives that have their golden parachutes leave the health insurance companies after 5, 6, 7 years with their incomes. The design was the health insurance companies make a fortune, people's premiums kept going through the roof, deductibles kept going through the roof, bailouts were provided to insurance companies that had record profits, and then the design ultimately would be the American people getting so angry that they would lash out and say: Enough already. I never thought I would say this, but anything has got to be better than these insurance companies, the handful that are left, so let's just let the government take care of everything. Then we get a system that is twice as bad as the VA for all Americans, so all Americans can suffer fairly, equally, instead of getting what used to be some of the best healthcare ever in the history of the world. We have another issue I want to touch on. Our Taxed Enough Already Caucus had a meeting yesterday and heard from Luke Rosiak, who has done more investigation on the IT scandal here on Capitol Hill, apparently done more investigation than anybody at the FBI. We keep hearing rumors that the FBI is reporting there is nothing to this, kind of like the Clinton scandal, the money that the Clinton Foundation got from the stockholders of Uranium One--she approves the sale of 20, 25 percent of America's uranium production; it ends up going to the Russians--the email scandal, that obviously there were efforts to destroy and obfuscate evidence that was being sought, and Comey went out of his way to protect Ms. Clinton. There is just so much there that needs to be investigated. The Attorney General apparently can't investigate because of his own recusal. Mr. Rosenstein is sure not going to investigate it and thinks Mueller will do it. Mueller is disqualified from doing it. Although he is such a problem, he will not disqualify himself. Comey is a material witness--should be--in the investigation. As the Washingtonian reported back in 2013 in this long expose they did on glorifying Mr. Comey and Mr. Mueller's relationship, that Comey knows that basically, in essence, if the world were on fire, the one person who would be there with him, protecting him, standing with him, would be Mr. Mueller. Mueller cannot investigate anything in which Comey is a witness. He can't. So what does he do? Comey goes and hires more lawyers. He has already had more lawyers than anybody I am aware of--ever. He is already exceeding the very general charge he got, going back years before he needed to. I mean, this is just incredible. They were a problem 10 years ago. The Obama administration had 8 years to get into it. Mueller, as FBI Director, had plenty of time to get into it. So there is only one thing we can be looking at, and that is a vendetta by Robert Mueller after some people. He is clearly disqualified. Comey is in it up to his eyeballs. We have got to have a special prosecutor that will look into the matters that should be investigated. Then we have this issue on Capitol Hill. We need to know how compromised our computer system, our IT system on the Hill has been. We had a guy named Imran Awan working on Capitol Hill, started working with Democrats' computer systems 12 years or so ago. He was not even an American citizen at the time. Apparently, if there has ever been a background check on Imran Awan, it certainly was not adequate, because in the Imran Awan family and cohorts, you have got bankruptcy; you have got massive indebtedness; there was money received by one of the team, $100,000 or so, from a known consort with Hezbollah. Then we find out yesterday--or I did; I had not heard of this before--that Imran Awan, for parts of the year, would not even be here in Washington. He would be in Pakistan servicing up to dozens of our Democratic colleagues' computer systems from Pakistan, making the maximum that somebody working on Capitol Hill could by working for different Members of Congress, and then you add the partial salaries together until you get around $160,000. We heard yesterday that as he would get one person up to $160,000 working for different offices, then they would add another to the payroll and get them up to $160,000. One of the group owed another individual $100,000. So with no indication that that individual who was owed $100,000 ever even came to Capitol Hill or did any work here, he got put on the House payroll and made a couple hundred thousand dollars in return for the hundred thousand that he had loaned to one of the Awan team. It is just almost inconceivable that we would have someone working with some of the highest privileged material. It seems to me the courts made it clear the speech or debate privilege to protect constituent information, information that people provide to us as whistleblowers, that that is probably more constitutionally protected than the attorney-client privilege. It is that important. Yet knowing there are countries, there are companies that would pay large amounts of money to know some Members of Congress' schedule, have access to all their emails, see what they are saying about different bills, what they want to do, that is some valuable stuff. And yet, in some years, we were told yesterday, that Imran Awan was servicing Capitol Hill computers from Pakistan. Now, I don't know how secure the Pakistani internet systems are, but it is kind of hard to believe that the American interests would be as protected in Pakistan and the Capitol congressional computer system would be protected as it is going through the Pakistani internet to be serviced. We also heard that Imran Awan, from some of the emails that WikiLeaks put out--we don't know if he worked for the Democratic National Committee when they were hacked, but we know there were emails where someone was saying: We need to get into the chairwoman's laptop. We need her password. Oh, well, Imran Awan has all of her passwords, so check with him. So we don't know the extent that he could have compromised things, with all the indebtedness he had and the car dealership that he never reported. Anybody that makes over $120,000 from Capitol Hill has to report any outside income. He never reported those things. In fact, it appears to be a crime when he failed to even report that he had his wife on the payroll making money on Capitol Hill in those financial disclosures he filed. We also know that he had some history of violence complaints. His step-mother complained of being kidnapped by him and forced to sign documents that would turn over money and property that Imran's father supposedly had coming. We know that he has now been indicted simply on a bank fraud charge for lying in order to get a bank loan, the money from which was sent overseas. We also learned that they were sending technological equipment over to Pakistan. They were fraudulently filing vouchers showing that $800 iPads only cost under $500 so they wouldn't have to be listed on inventory. That obviously makes things more easy to steal. There were reports, in fact, by the person who rented his house when he and his wife appeared to flee--he was trying to flee when he was stopped at the airport. There were hard drives, all kinds of things. We know that he and possibly some of those working--maybe they didn't work. We don't know. But $6 million to $7 million was paid to him and his family and his cohorts during the time they were working here, and yet he was downloading from Members of Congress' clouds or from their own servers all of their information into a spot where people who weren't authorized could access those Members of Congress' accounts. This has got to be investigated more thoroughly than it has been. Mr. Speaker, I yield back the balance of my time.

Mr. GOHMERT. Mr. Speaker, I yield to my good friend, Mr. Higgins from Louisiana. The Plight of the Citizens of Louisiana Impacted by Hurricane Harvey

Mr. GOHMERT

Mr. GOHMERT. Mr. Speaker, I yield to the gentleman from Louisiana (Mr. Higgins), my friend.

Mr. GOHMERT. Mr. Speaker, I did know that rule. But this was the Treaty of Paris, 1783, and John Adams was there. But this is where we were negotiating with England, the most powerful country in the world, imploring them to recognize this little upstart country of 13 States as an independent country, independent and free of the shackles that were there as Colonies by England. Here they have got the biggest navy. They have an impressive military, most powerful nation, and we are asking them to swear on a document that we in the United States have the right to be free and independent. So as I contemplated that, well, these first words that are in much bigger letters than the rest of the document, began to make sense. What would you have asked somebody swear under, at the beginning of our Nation, asking the most powerful nation in the world to swear that they recognize, something important enough they would not want to break that oath, even with the anger and the despising attitude that many in England had at that time? Well, the words they chose for those big, tall letters, were these, and this is a copy of the copy. ``In the name of the Most Holy and Undivided Trinity.'' Well, some say we were started with the Declaration of Independence, recognizing that we are free and, of right, ought to be free because we are endowed by our Creator with these unalienable rights. And then we have this document where England swears in the name of the Most Holy and Undivided Trinity that they recognize our independence. That came after the Great Awakening, in the 1700s, where pulpits were on fire with the glory of God and the recognition of what God had given us and of the importance of the Bible. No, everybody wasn't a Christian back then, but of the signers of the Declaration, you had over a third of them were--may have been over half were actually ordained Christian ministers. There were secularists that supported the end of slavery, but the churches drove that. The churches provided the Underground Railroad, most often, to try to help Africans to be free Americans. It was an ordained Christian minister who went on to help bring about the full meaning of the Constitution, that this should mean what it said, an ordained Christian minister named Martin Luther King, Jr. So, Mr. Speaker, Abraham Lincoln, he started life early as, bragging to his law partner, he was an infidel. Going from that, as Steve Mansfield discusses, I believe the book is entitled ``Lincoln's Struggle With God.'' By the time he became President, he knew there was a God. And just like Benjamin Franklin said: ``I have lived, sir, a long time. The longer I live, the more convincing proofs I see of this truth--God governs in the affairs of men. And 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 labor in vain that build it.''' He said: ``I firmly believe this. I also firmly believe that without His concurring aid, we shall succeed in our political building no better than the builders of Babel.'' So this man, kind of homely looking--I thought Daniel Day-Lewis captured his essence so well. When I met Doris Kearns Goodwin over at the Library of Congress, I said: You've got to tell me, you do such fabulous research--and, yes, she is a more liberal Democrat, I know, but she does fabulous research. And in her book, ``Team of Rivals,'' she has well documented he didn't have a pleasant voice, kind of high, raspy. Daniel Day-Lewis nailed it. But Lincoln came to know what Ben Franklin testified to in 1787 at the Constitutional Convention. He lost a son. He and his wife lost a son in 1861. There are indications he totally blamed himself because he thought he hadn't done quickly enough what God meant for him to do: end slavery. I don't know if that is true or not. But in March of 1863, this was Abraham Lincoln's declaration, and I will finish with this, Mr. Speaker. Abraham Lincoln's words were: ``But we have forgotten God. We have forgotten the gracious hand which preserved us in peace, and multiplied and enriched and strengthened us; and we have vainly imagined, in the deceitfulness of our hearts, that all the blessings were produced by some superior wisdom and virtue of our own.'' Lincoln goes on and says: ``Intoxicated with unbroken success, we have become too self-sufficient to feel the necessity of redeeming and preserving grace, too proud to pray to the God that made us. It behooves us then, to humble ourselves before the offended Power, to confess our national sins, and to pray for clemency and forgiveness''-- Abraham Lincoln. Mr. Speaker, I believe this was not the act of God punishing Americans for being country music fans or being conservatives. This was not the act of God punishing Americans for turning away. This was from a man with evil in his heart in a country where God has been driven out of the schoolhouse, driven out of government buildings by a majority of Supreme Court Justices who have no clue how far from the original intent of the Constitution they have wandered. It is the result of years of teaching people that there are those among our what we deem innocent in society who just should not be allowed to live. That is not the teaching of Jesus. It is not the teaching in the Bible, and it is not what this country grew so great believing. I yield back the balance of my time.

Mr. GOHMERT. Mr. Speaker, when someone with the service of my friend from Louisiana, Mr. Higgins, pays tribute, you know it is somebody worthy, because my friend from Louisiana served with distinction in the United States Army, wearing the uniform of this country. He served as a law enforcement officer. He knows about serving, protecting others, and a willingness to lay down his life for others. It has been deeply touching to have seen accounts of what is going on in Las Vegas. To understand what I have seen in my years as a prosecutor, judge, and chief justice, when everyone is running away from the sound of a gun, first responders and law officers are running into harm's way to help and protect others. It was Jesus who said, ``Greater love has no one than this, that a man lay down his life for his friends.'' Those who wear the uniform, as my friend has, of law officer and in the military, they know what that means. My 4 years in Active Duty in the Army, we were not in combat, but Jesus was right. There were so many there in Las Vegas that put their own lives on the line for the sake of the lives of others. There are others that couldn't wait to rush to a microphone to demand: Gun control, gun control. I am waiting for them to rush to the mic and scream: Knife control, knife control. Or after a van is used as the weapon: Van control, van control. What is clear is we need to look at the real causation, whether it is machetes being used to torture and kill 800,000 precious humans in Africa, whether it is knives, whether it is ammonium nitrate. People with evil in their hearts are going to find a way to wreak havoc. We know that without a gun being used, the biggest--worst tragedy and loss of life attack was on 9/11 in 2001. I don't believe there was a gun used in the whole process, yet it was a worse loss of American life than at Pearl Harbor. You have got to look at what is in the heart, what's causing it. If they are going to use knives, if they are going to use planes, if they are going to use vehicles, yeah, we need to protect ourselves, but we need to look at what is in the heart. I know the sheriff said the shooter may have been radicalized. We don't know yet. We know there was a trip to the Philippines I am very proud to have met out in the jungles of the southern Philippines with some of our special forces. Amazing. Some of the best America has to offer, and they were out in the jungles teaching the Filipino soldiers, the best that the Philippines had, how to go after the radicalized Islamists in the southern Philippines. But we don't know if this man with evil in his heart had been radicalized. Others say there were no indications. But one thing was certain, he looked down on that crowd of people enjoying life, enjoying their families, enjoying their loved ones, and all he could see was worthless people that needed to be eliminated. Why did he have that in his heart? Where do people get those ideas? I mean, we argue and disagree here on the House floor. When I was a judge, I watched argument. At times it seemed like they wanted to come to blows, but it was part of a civil process in a bastion where we come and we disagree and we don't use physical violence, but we are still supposed to have respect for each other and each other's position. To hear some comedian say, ``Just do something,'' would have been viewed by those who gave us the documents that have allowed us to be the greatest Nation--I think greater than Solomon's Israel, more assets per person, the only country in the history that I'm aware of where the number one health problem for the Nation's poor is obesity, and it is a serious issue. But how did we get here? Obviously, for the Japanese at Pearl Harbor, it was easier for them because they weren't looking in the eyes of people. It was easier for this guy 32 floors up because he was not looking at the eyes of these people, his people he wanted to kill that he didn't think were worth allowing to live, despite the love they were sharing with each other and the joy. Where do people get those ideas that somebody is that worthless? Is it from hearing people with whom someone disagrees is deplorable, that they simply cannot be made worthy of living? Here is a statement from this October 2 article. Some CBS executive said she was not even sympathetic for the victims of the shooting at a country music festival. She said: ``I am actually not even sympathetic because country music fans often are Republican gun toters.'' Scott Pelley has questioned whether the shooting was ``foreseeable, predictable and, to some degree, self-inflicted.'' But for someone who appears to know right from wrong, not suffering from mental disease or defect, to inflict that kind of death on people who are just innocent, just having a good time, there has to be so much evil and hate in his heart. So we have a Supreme Court that has been saying for years: You have got to get prayer out of schools. Never mind the fact that prayer got this country started, that prayer and worship and honoring God have been behind the greatest developments in this country's history that got us to this place, to this plateau, as a nation. Although some would argue we have hit the height of freedom, some surveys don't have us anywhere near the top of being one of the freest countries in the world anymore. It is continuing to be, after tragedies, after people with evil in their heart do evil things, that more cry out: We need to lose more freedom. We need to lose more freedom. That is not the answer. Let's look at what is in people's hearts and what would be good to have in their hearts. I know where we came from, but even I was surprised when my pastor, David Dykes, and I and his wife, Cindy, my wife, Kathy, we were going through the State Department. I had not done a tour of the State Department before because it is mostly boring, but we came to a glass case that had a document in it, and it said it was a duplicate. We know that many of our most important documents, including the Declaration of Independence, were made in duplicate, so I don't know if this was one that was actually signed or it was a duplicate. It appeared to be of the era. I said to Dr. Dykes: Did you know the Treaty of Paris began like that? I didn't know. I study history most every day.

Mr. GOHMERT

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

Mr. GOHMERT

Mr. GOHMERT. Mr. Speaker, I thank the gentleman from Virginia for yielding. Mr. Speaker, it is indeed an honor to speak on behalf of a person I have come to know and love. In fact, the First District of Texas has been blessed to be the home of many remarkable individuals who have gone above and beyond to serve others in Texas and throughout the world. It is indeed a privilege to honor a woman from Longview, Texas, who has dedicated her life to serving and providing comfort for our Nation's veterans, particularly our prisoners of war. Her name is Helen Smith, and October 5 of this year marks her 91st birthday. Helen's caring for our Nation's POWs began with her husband, Gordon Smith, a survivor of the Bataan Death March in 1942 and a POW until the end of World War II. Throughout her long and happy marriage to Gordon, Helen gained a personal understanding of the struggles many of our veterans and former POWs endure; but armed with the knowledge of what our veterans and former POWs face on a daily basis, Helen set out into the world to help as many of our veterans as she possibly could. She spent countless hours in VA facilities ensuring veterans, young and old, got the care they so desperately needed and deserved. Helen has walked the Halls of Congress advocating for our veterans and former POWs throughout her life. She is a driving force and was behind Public Law 97-37, which improved VA benefit programs for former POWs. Helen is not slowing down even at her age. At 90, Helen would head over to the Longview Community Based Outpatient Clinic every morning at sunrise. She would make a pot of coffee and spend her day talking to veterans, giving them a sympathetic ear and helping them through the VA process. It is a distinct privilege to recognize such a remarkable woman, to thank her for her tireless service to our veterans and former POWs, and to wish her a very happy 91st birthday. Her accomplishments are recorded in the Congressional Record, which will endure as long as there is a United States of America. I do thank my friend from Virginia for yielding.

Mr. GOHMERT

Mr. GOHMERT. Mr. Speaker, this has been a day that answered a lot of our prayers seeing our good friend Steve Scalise here, and it brings to mind part of the story of that tragic morning that I haven't heard told anywhere else. One of our Members, Georgia Congressman Barry Loudermilk, was there, and he was--the shooter started from behind the third base dugout and hit Steve Scalise right away. It was so deeply touching to hear Steve's words today. It is just rather emotional seeing so many of our prayers answered, seeing Steve return to the House. That morning, Barry was saying that he was behind a little closet area, and as the shooter was moving toward the first base side continuing to shoot, Matt Mika had already been shot and was down, and Barry realized that he had no place to go. He looked for places to run, and there was no place to run. The shooting had been going on for a while, perhaps 9 or 10 minutes at that point. Capitol Police Officer Griner was there. She and David Bailey, the other Capitol Police officer, were using their suburban for cover and shooting at the shooter--the hate-filled leftist who felt like it was a good idea to kill as many Republicans in Congress as he could. It was gratifying to hear that admission from our friend from Maryland, former majority leader Hoyer, that it was hateful. He was full of hate. He was a leftist who had supported Bernie Sanders. It is not Bernie's Sanders' fault. You don't hear Republicans blaming a party or a candidate that a hate-filled person supported, but he was going to kill people. He was doing what he could. Barry had no place to go, and he was working his way to where he was about--Barry was going to be in the open and could see there was no place to go, and he said a prayer. He saw that Officer Griner had been shot in the ankle, and she was trying to return fire but under tremendous amount of pain. Just when it looked hopeless, David Bailey stepped out, completely uncovering himself. He had no cover at that point, and yelled twice: ``Drop your weapon. Drop your weapon.'' And as he said those words, the shooter fired twice at him. And as soon as he finished saying, ``Drop your weapon'' the second time, he fired twice and took the shooter down. Incredible courage. When I saw David Bailey out at the hospital a few days after the shooting, I said: ``Barry Loudermilk said that when it looked pretty hopeless for him, you stepped out from behind the suburban completely uncovered, that you made yourself a target taking all the attention toward yourself. Did you do that?'' And David Bailey, a hero in every sense of the word, with his normal casual way of speaking, just said: ``It hit me all of a sudden. I had to make it him or me. I had to make it him or me. That is when I stepped out. And, fortunately, it was him.'' That kind of courage--when a shooter is about to get to a position to take out a bunch of defenseless people, some lying on the ground in the dugout, if he had made it just a little further, there would have been a lot of people killed that day. Crystal Griner shooting as she could and David Bailey stepping away from any cover, and he just instinctively knew, ``I have to make it him or me,'' thank God and thank David Bailey he is still here today and the hate-filled shooter is not So it was touch and go. The hate that filled this leftist shooter almost did in a couple of people who day. But by the grace of God, the great work of the doctors--but as the doctor said out there that night after the shooting, telling me, the President, Melania, and my staff member Andrew Keyes, it was--he said he would be on pins and needles that night because he just didn't know. To see Steve Scalise, our dear friend, standing right here earlier today, is just an answer to prayer, and I can't wait to cook ribs again for my friend Steve Scalise very soon. It is also a good day for America, despite the House passing a bill that would have helped Americans by at least repealing part of ObamaCare, as we had promised, and despite the immense suffering by millions around this country who actually became victims of the lie that if you like your insurance, you can keep it; if you like your doctor, you can keep him or her--well, it turns out those were lies when they were spoken, and the people who spoke them knew they were lies when they spoke them. It was discussed that that would not be the case, they wouldn't be able to keep their insurance, and people haven't. It is a bit disingenuous when some of the alt-left media boasts that so many millions of people have gotten insurance that didn't have it, because there are an awful lot of people in my district that had insurance and, because of ObamaCare, they lost it, and then they were put on Medicaid--not even Medicare, but Medicaid. So they lost their doctor, they lost the hospital that was no longer in the network for Medicaid that they had before. ObamaCare took their insurance. The people who have talked to me in east Texas and as I go around in other parts of the country, they were desperate. They have been desperate. They are still desperate. They say: Please, you got to give us some help. It is tragic when you have some millionaires in the Senate who can get whatever healthcare they want, turning a cold shoulder to those suffering around the country because the countless promises they made to repeal ObamaCare are being broken every day we are in session and the Senate does not pass at least some kind of repeal of ObamaCare. I mean, what kind of person promises over and over, ``You elect me, I will repeal ObamaCare, I will get it repealed,'' knowing that there will be a smug and proud vote against any effort to repeal, even partially repeal ObamaCare? You make promises like that knowing that, without those promises, you would not get elected. People count on your promises because they really are hurting, they need the medicine that they are not getting under the new Medicaid, they don't have the doctor that was providing so much help under their insurance before ObamaCare took it away. And an almost cheerful breaking of those promises, it really is tragic. It is simply tragic. It is really unfortunate that they don't have the millions, like some Senators, to get whatever healthcare they want, that they make--they could suffer less, perhaps be cured if Republican Senators all kept their promises. It is just tragic. But despite that, this has been a week where the House has done what we can under reconciliation. We sent a bill to the Senate. They didn't have to pass that bill, just something so that we could have a conference bill to give Americans the help they needed. We have done what we can there, so we are taking up tax reform. And if we do the right thing by Americans, they will have more money in their pockets. If we pass the bill that has just been proposed--I don't have all the details--the framework certainly looks like something we can really work with that will put a lot more money in middle class pockets. It is interesting. I hear some people, especially at the other end of the hall in the opposite party, opposing party, who make efforts to tax the poor in order to reward Republican rich friends. We saw back in 2008, there were apparently a whole lot more rich people on Wall Street that supported Barack Obama than supported the unfortunate losing candidate of the Republican Party that year. Yeah, the rich people on Wall Street, more of them supported Barack Obama. That kind of goes against what is thought to be conventional wisdom that the Republicans are rich and the Democrats are poor when the reports we have to file annually indicate that some of us came here without anything and we sacrificed virtually everything we had to run, to try to make a difference in this country, and we haven't become rich by being here; whereas, there are an awful lot of millionaire Democrats here in the House and in the Senate. But if you look at what has been proposed, the lowest tax rate in America right now is 10 percent. And it appears, we are told, it should be everybody paying 10 percent right now should end up paying no tax. Well, personally, I would rather see us have everybody pay something in the way of income tax, pay something, the lowest rate possible--whether it is 6, 7, or 8 percent, maybe 7 percent, something--so that every single American pays an income tax so they understand how important it is to have a frugal government and not just constantly be handing out welfare, especially in cases that involve fraud. I had a lady that was telling me there in Tyler, Texas, that she used to, every spring, work for H&R Block in helping people prepare their tax returns. She said she finally had to give it up. People would come in and they wouldn't have Social Security numbers. They would have tax ID numbers. Now, why would they have tax ID numbers? Well, even though the law says that you are not supposed to be filing tax returns because you are not supposed to be working if you don't have a Social Security number, the IRS assumed--and we know what that means, they assumed--that, gee, if we give people a tax ID number, then they will pay income tax, and that will bring in more money to the coffers. But, according to this lady, the reason she couldn't do it anymore was she was becoming a nervous wreck because so many people were coming in with tax identification numbers, not Social Security numbers, and they would have a list of things that they would want her to put in their tax return. And they always had, she said, a number of children listed that they wanted to claim that would ensure that they got more money back from an earned income tax credit than they even paid in. Since she was a senior citizen on a fixed income, the little extra help that she made helping people prepare tax returns, she gave it up. It was driving her a bit crazy to help people get back more money than they paid in over and over and over again when she understood the law. That is not supposed to be what happened. So a lot of people say, hey, folks that are illegally in the country--and we are not talking about any particular place, just people illegally here from wherever they are--when they file a tax return and get more back than they paid in, then that is not quite as some represent, oh, gee, they pay so much money in income tax, they are good for the country. Well, we know an awful lot of hard workers who we have seen--illegal aliens. I hear contractors say: I found out one of my best workers is not here legally. But it brings us back to the point: Why are such hardworking people especially coming from south of the border into the United States? Well, obviously, for those type of folks--they came in and they are hardworking--they came to get jobs. But that begs the question: Why are they having to come to the United States to get jobs? They are hardworking. Why wouldn't they find jobs in Mexico or El Salvador or Guatemala? Why wouldn't they find jobs in these other Central American countries or Mexico? The answer is obviously very clear: it is because of all of the corruption. Even though I understand the President of Mexico recently claimed there were no drug cartel murders going on at the very time when there were an enormous number that happened within the few days of him saying that, we know there is murder, there is corruption, and it is from the drug cartels. And the gangs and the coyotes that bring people into the United States illegally, they answer to the drug cartels. It is the Border Patrol that told me over and over, every inch of the U.S.-Mexico border is spoken for by some drug cartel; and if you cross into the United States without paying an appropriate price or dues to that drug cartel, then you are not going to last very long because they feel they have to make an example of you. I saw one estimate of $70 billion or $80 billion, somewhere around there, estimated to have gone from the United States into Mexico, to the drug cartels, for illegal drugs. Well, if we build a wall where it is appropriate and we totally secure our border 100 percent, then that $70 billion, $80 billion that is used for the drug cartels in their corruption of the Mexican cities and federal government and state government, that dries up to nothing. And if we could help dry up the $70 billion to $80 billion to $70,000 or $80,000 for illegal drugs, then, finally, we would help Mexico--as the best neighbor Mexico could ever dream of having--to become one of the very top economies in the world. They ought to be one of the top 10 economies now, maybe top 5. All the massive natural resources that Mexico has, they are actually in a better location for trade than the United States. They are between two continents, North and South America. They are between two oceans like we are, the Pacific and the Atlantic, with, of course, the Gulf of Mexico in between. They ought to be a top 10 economy, but they are not because of corruption from the drug money that illegally crosses the U.S. border into Mexico. We cut that off. And then you have all these hardworking people who just want to help their families. They don't want to have to flee the country they love to find a job. The jobs would be abounding all over Mexico. Isn't that what a friendly, caring neighbor would do for a neighbor? Shouldn't we want to help Mexico stop the corruption? Of course. And any Mexican-elected official who says that there is no corruption, that there is no drug cartel influence, or that there is nobody being killed by the drug cartels, well, a statement by a Mexican-elected official that those things are not going on is an indication that that elected official is either completely ignorant of what is going on in his or her country or they are, as one would suspect, under the finger of the drug cartels themselves. So I am hopeful we are going to be able to get a wall where we need it. President Trump and Attorney General Sessions are both doing everything they can to help secure the border. We need a Secretary of Homeland Security, and I am sure that will be coming quickly. The Democrats will probably try to block whoever it is for as long as they can, but we need a Secretary of Homeland Security; and we need our border secured not merely to help us, but as being the best possible thing we could do as a caring neighbor of Mexico. Our Republican Conference we had in the House yesterday seemed very productive. We had a good discussion about the proposed tax reform, and, as I was mentioning earlier, you will have people who have been paying 10 percent will go to paying nothing. Some that are paying much higher taxes will be cut down to 12 percent, and brackets indicating that there is going to be an awful lot more money in the pockets of people who are working, that will be fantastic, because when we leave more money in the pockets of those who have actually earned it, it gets the economy going. People, whom I have immense respect for, like Dr. Arthur Laffer, Stephen Moore, Larry Kudlow, it is very clear to them, when they run the numbers, we could never adequately tax our way out of bankruptcy the direction we are headed. We couldn't. We cannot tax enough. If you put on too much tax, then people quit working. But the way to make Social Security solvent and to make Medicare solvent is if we get the economy growing not at the 1.8 percent--I believe that was the average for the Obama administration--but for the good of everybody. People keep the money in their pockets. That allows them to spend it, and it causes the economy to grow. I know, during the Obama administration, they saw 3 percent growth in the economy as just being virtually impossible; and I can understand, because their idea was tax, tax, tax, and that kills an economy. Whereas, if you allow people to have more of their own money, they spend more of their money. That allows more jobs to be created, and there are more people paying taxes. They begin making more, so they are paying higher taxes, even though it is at a lower rate. That helps stimulate the economy. I was really hoping that President Trump's number of 15 percent corporate tax would work out to be our number for corporate tax. I was hoping that would be for regular C corporations, as well as a pass- through subchapter S corporation, because President Trump and I and others know that if it is a 15 percent corporate tax, then we would get back most of the manufacturing jobs, which fled America because of our massive 35 percent tax. Actually, by the time you add in all the others, it is well over 40 to 50 percent tax on corporations. The reason some of us say the corporate tax is one of the most insidious taxes there is is because the government defrauds Americans into thinking they are not paying the corporate tax. These evil, rich corporations are paying those taxes. They are saying: ``We are not paying them. Make the evil corporations.'' Whereas, anybody that is going to really be honest about it would have to say: ``Well, the truth is, yeah, it is actually a pass-through from the customer, because if the corporation doesn't pass on that massive tax they are paying, they go out of business.'' So it is actually an additional tax on the little guy. So the middle class, lower-income folks are paying the big corporate tax. It is not the wealthy. It is the customers that are paying all that extra corporate tax. So if you got the tax rate for corporations down to 15 percent, those companies start coming back, the manufacturing jobs come back. As I mentioned to the President one time: ``Mr. President, you understand it because of your great business acumen, and I understand it from studying history, but any major nation that cannot manufacture what they need in a time of war will not be a major nation after the next war.'' The President wants those jobs back. It is not 15 percent being proposed. It is 20 percent. But that will bring back jobs. Not as many as if we had a 15 percent corporate tax, but it will bring back jobs. I know there are those who say: Oh, we have evolved in America. We are more of a service economy. We don't want to be a manufacturing economy with those dirty jobs. Yes, we do. We need to have those manufacturing jobs. Those are good jobs. We have requirements that you have to be concerned about the health of Americans. And by doing that, we bring back the jobs, we help our economy, and we actually save Social Security and Medicare. I see my friend, Dr. Harris, is here. Mr. Speaker, I yield back the balance of my time.

Mr. GOHMERT

Mr. GOHMERT. Mr. Speaker, it is always an honor to be here on the House floor. We passed appropriations bills. It is a rare thing to hear it coming from me, but the Appropriations Committee for the Republican majority here in the House of Representatives has actually done an extraordinary job this year. It hasn't been easy. They have spent a tremendous amount of hours taking votes, during which it was made particularly partisan. It is just a shame when people will take votes just along party lines and not even reach out in the areas where there is mutual interest. But, as with any bill, there are things that could have been better. But our appropriators took some tough votes, and some of them tough politically, but, overall, they did a remarkable job and they are to be commended for the work they did. We actually got our 12 appropriations bills passed in the House. I look forward to the day--it may be years away, months away, weeks away, days away--when the Senate is capable of passing 12 appropriations bills. It is very important, too, that we note the agreement that President Trump reached. Widely reported, the President made a deal with Nancy Pelosi and Chuck Schumer. But whether it is one of the worst votes I have taken or not, I knew, number one--Texas had been going through Hurricane Harvey, but Texas had planned for the future. And God bless the Texas Legislature. Governor Greg Abbott has been a dear friend since we started as district judges together back in January of 1993. And I think the world of Governor Greg Abbott. He is doing a superb job through the emergency situation that Hurricane Harvey has created in Texas. Also, Lieutenant Governor Dan Patrick is a very good friend. I think the world of him. He has done a remarkable job leading there in Texas from the standpoint of being the head of the Senate. He's a very conservative man of principle. It is just a pleasure to have such able, competent, not just conservatives, but very smart people who are people of principle. They created a rainy day fund. It has billions of dollars in it. Obviously, Harvey was definitely a rainy day. But when we took this vote on getting money into the emergency, the FEMA, our emergency system, we were assured by people that I believed to be very honest that they really were out of money for FEMA. That vote had to be taken to get money into our emergency system so they could help Florida prepare as Hurricane Irma approached. Like I said, Texas had prepared for a rainy day as far beyond the extent of their preparation. But I knew we could haggle over emergency funding, we could haggle over the debt ceiling, we could haggle over a CR coming up, and Texas would be okay while we were debating for 2, 3, 4 weeks, whatever it took until we got agreement. But Florida did not have a rainy day fund. They needed help. Irma was approaching. But the other thing that struck me about the need to get that vote done, give the President 90 days, was that we still have not changed the law to give Americans the help that so many tens or hundreds of millions needed. We have got over 300 million here in the country and, of course, there was bragging about the millions that got healthcare under ObamaCare. Well, that is a misnomer. It is a misstatement because the truth is that some people got health insurance, but there were millions of people that got--well, they lost the insurance. So all the statements about, ``If you like your insurance, you can keep it,'' those were lies. Those people making those statements have been now shown they knew they were lies at the time they were being made. The architect of ObamaCare knew that people would lose their insurance they liked; knew that they would lose doctors they liked. The way ObamaCare was designed, it even gave huge incentives, financially, to the remaining big monopoly health insurance companies not to bring into their network hospitals like MD Anderson or Cleveland Clinic. There were actually incentives built in ObamaCare to have health insurance companies not put chronic care facilities like cancer and heart disease in their network because that meant people that had those conditions would get that insurance because they had things like MD Anderson or Cleveland Clinic or Mayo, whatever it was, in network, and they didn't want them because that would be costly. So it was a very subtle way ObamaCare was designed in order to encourage insurance companies to actually avoid giving people the doctors they had had before, the facilities they had had before and, in many cases, lifesaving and life-lengthening facilities. So there are just so many people hurting. In August, as I went all over east Texas--from the very southeast end down in Sabine County to the very north end, up in northwest end, up in Wood County, to the northeast end, up in Harrison County, down to the southwest corner of my district, down below Diboll in Angelina County--people are hurting, and they are begging for Congress to keep its word. We said: If you gave us the majority in the House and Senate, we would repeal ObamaCare. And, by golly, the American public gave us the majority in the House and Senate. Yes, President Obama was in the White House, but we got the majority in the House and Senate. And, holy smoke, we were able to get--it wasn't a total repeal, but, under reconciliation procedures, we were able to repeal most of ObamaCare in the House and in the Senate, and send it to the President's desk, where he vetoed it. Well, that wasn't a big surprise. So Republicans were saying: Okay. You give us the House, the Senate majority, and the White House, then it is a no-brainer because then we have a President who will sign the bill that we passed when Obama was President, and this time the Republican President will surely sign it. Well, not only do we know we have a Republican in the White House, but President Trump--God bless him--made clear: If you just send me that bill that you passed in the last Congress that Obama vetoed, I will sign it, and then we can work on a healthcare system where people can get the care they need. Now, what has not been talked about in the alt-left media--some people call them the mainstream media. But the alt-left, mainstream media, whatever you want to call them, they have talked about all the millions of people that now have health insurance. No. Most of those--it may be a few, but most of them have got Medicaid. That is not the most desirable insurance you can have. And another thing that needs to be made clear: health insurance is not healthcare. Anyone in America here legally, illegally, criminal, non criminal, it doesn't matter, if you are in the United States and you have a problem, you can go to the emergency room. I have been in emergency rooms with my immediate family members, including kids, in-laws. I mean, I have been there. And we wait in line behind people that may have a cold or a cut or a minor this or that. They have got healthcare. And most of those people aren't going to pay anything, and they got the healthcare they needed. Now, they don't have health insurance, apparently, most of them that I have been in line behind, because you could hear the discussion as they go through filling out the forms with the hospital people. It would be far better if we had a better system of clinics for people like that so they didn't have to go tie up the most expensive healthcare there is in the emergency room. They could go to a clinic and get the things they need. I was yanking a hook out of a catfish that my youngest daughter had caught some years back, and it is kind of embarrassing, a Member of Congress, and the hook had not set until it was well down in the catfish, so I was having a lot of trouble getting it out. And I got a long needle-nose pliers and I was pulling it out, and I just strained as hard as I could and, lo and behold, pulled the hook out and embedded it very deeply in my hand down at the base of the thumb. People started freaking out. It was no big deal. I mean, I just had a hook buried about three-quarters of an inch or so in my thumb. I went down for an emergency. I didn't want to. Somebody said: Look, we will take care of your daughter. You need to get a tetanus shot. When I found out the line was going to be about 2 hours before they could get around to messing with the hook that was embedded in my thumb, well, I went home and ended up using ice, and I eventually got it out myself. But I know, even without one of my kids or relatives, just by myself, I have been there. I have sat there. I have listened to conversations. There is no question, health insurance is not healthcare. People are still hurting, and they relied on our promise; and if we don't get the big part of ObamaCare repealed, at least at a minimum, and get a system in place that gets people back toward the kind of healthcare they once knew and loved--if we weren't part of the government, as an old judge, I know those lawsuits would be brought. The allegation in the pleadings would be that a promise was made which lured someone in to act to their detriment based on those promises. The doctrine, legally, is called promissory estoppel. The judge could issue an order, if you win the case, and prevent someone from going back on their word after they made a promise on which another party relied to their detriment. Unfortunately for the American public, when it is Congress, or, in particular, the Senate, and in particular a Republican Senator, or more, who makes an absolute repeated promise over and over that they are going to do something if you elect them or reelect them and people rely on that, they vote them in and it turns out it is to their detriment because that Senator was not being honest in running for office, well, it is kind of a shame that you can't get a judge to come in and say: ``I am issuing an order under the doctrine of promissory estoppel. You will not be allowed to back down off of your promise. You will make good on your promise.'' When it is the government, you can't sue them and force that, because promissory estoppel does not apply in a government situation, not normally. So what are we left with? Well, people can say, well, you know, wait until the next election. We will have to replace people. No. This is it. This is the chance. This is a generational chance. We promised people certain things we would do, and I was fully supportive of the promises that President Donald J. Trump made that helped him get elected. Particularly, he promised to repeal and replace ObamaCare. For heaven's sake, we ought to be helping him in that. I am very grateful. We had some difficult times there between some of us, particularly the House Freedom Caucus and the House leadership, but Paul Ryan, Kevin McCarthy, Steve Scalise, they came through. We worked together and we got an agreement that repealed most of ObamaCare, and we got it down to the Senate. I have my friend from West Virginia, and I would be glad to yield to him. Expressing First Amendment Rights

Mr. GOHMERT. I have been to my friend's home, beautiful as it is in a beautiful part of the country, and I appreciate the gentleman's recognition. It sounds like it is well deserved. Regarding what has to be done about healthcare, clearly, the Senate is not going to get to 60 votes on anything to do with repealing, replacing ObamaCare. We have this reconciliation procedure that we went through all the hoops, dotted the I's, crossed the T's, and we passed the budget, got the rule set for reconciliation so the Senate can pass a bill in reconciliation with 51 votes instead of 60. Of course, the majority leader could say: You know what? This is such a critical promise we made about healthcare that, just like the Reid rule, when it is really, really important, we will set aside the 60- vote cloture rule so that we can get something done, whether it is a confirmation, whatever it is, that saves lives, helps Americans. Well, if there was ever a bill that fit that situation, it would be one that helped save lives through repealing at least the biggest, worst parts of ObamaCare. Nonetheless, under that reconciliation procedure, we have until September 30 to get it done with 51 votes. I have got to say, earlier this summer--I have been here 12\1/2\ years. I have never seen a situation where the majority party in the Senate was calling those in the majority party in the House, including the Speaker and the leadership team, and calling those of us in the House Freedom Caucus, calling those in the Tuesday Group, and their one big question--I have never heard of this happening in American history--their big question was: Would you please promise us that, if we pass this bill in the Senate, you promise us you will not take up our bill and pass it as it is, because the only chance we have, we are told, of passing this bill in the Senate is if we know for sure it won't become law. I have never heard of that happening before, but that is what happened this summer. From our Speaker on down, our different groups: Yes, we promise you we won't let that bad bill you're voting on become law. We will make sure it goes to conference, and we will get something a lot better than that that we send to the House and Senate to vote on. It didn't get passed, and we have until September 30 to keep from being about as big a bunch of liars as has ever been in Congress. That is it. I am very grateful--again, here, I appreciate the Appropriations Committee, and I will express appreciation here, now, for Speaker Paul Ryan, because he has agreed with me and some others about the kind of pressure we are going to put on when we get back the last week of September if the Senate has not passed their ObamaCare repeal bill. They have got to pass something or we can't get it to conference. We can't get the American public what they need. Now, some of you have said: Well, if you had just passed that first bill the Republican leaders had put together. Well, I am not sure who put it together. It may have been the remaining health insurance companies and Big Pharma, from what I could tell, but it was not going to do anybody any good except the insurance companies and Big Pharma. It was not going to help rank-and-file Americans the way we promised them we would help them. There are some that say: Yeah, but, Louie, if you guys had just voted ``yes'' immediately on that bill, it would have gotten wind in the sails of the President and we would already have tax reform. Well, I am here to tell you, Mr. Speaker, if we had passed that first bill, and when people saw their premiums continuing to shoot up and their deductibles continuing to shoot up and just these overwhelming prices, it would not have been wind in the sails of President Trump. It would have meant that people would have been so angry, a lot of Republicans would have stayed home and a lot of Democrats who voted for Donald Trump and Members of the Republican House and Senate, they would stay home or they would go out and vote for someone else, and the first order of business in January 2019 would probably have been, when we lost the majority, the impeachment of President Trump. It shouldn't be. It is not appropriate, but that is probably what would have happened if we had just jumped on that first bad bill. We have got a good bill. We have still got a chance. We have got to get this done for the good of America. If we can't get this done, we have no business being in the majority. It just brings you to just throw up your hands: My goodness, what good is this? I will also say, Mr. Speaker, the old adage is true: democracy ensures a people are governed no better than they deserve. We have got too many Americans across this country that are not paying attention. They are like some friends I had in high school that said: Well, Louie, I don't care what the government does as long as they stay out of my business. Well, they have come to find out, if you don't care what the government does, they are not going to stay out of your business; they are going to take it over--your life, your business, everything. People have got to get reengaged, pay attention, get out and vote, and we have got a chance to get it fixed. It is absolutely essential before September 30, at midnight, that we get something done to help the American people. I am looking forward, if the Senate doesn't get a decent bill done, I want us to pass a sense of the House bill right here in the House that says it is the sense of the House that the Senate absolutely must pass a bill to give the American public the help they need with healthcare by repealing the worst parts of ObamaCare, at a minimum. And then follow the Speaker out here on the steps, and every one of us point to the Senate, and keep putting the pressure on. Keep on putting the pressure on until, hopefully, they do something. But it may be that they get it done. We don't have to get into a battle of words and wits like that. The American public is expecting it. We promised it. We have got to get that done. In the meantime, I know there is a lot of discussion, a lot of calls today about, oh, gee, the President is talking about DACA this, and DACA that. I have spent so many hours, so many nights, down on the border all night long, and I always heard the same things from my friends in the Border Patrol. Every time anybody in Congress, or in the administration, starts talking about, well, we are working out a deal for amnesty for this, or to legalize that, then we get a huge surge in people coming across our southern border. So I will continue to refuse to make statements about what I think about--should we agree to this; should we compromise on this legalization, this amnesty? Because every time we do, people get lured into the United States. When that happens, there are always some that get drawn into sex slavery. Some get drawn into being mules and drug dealers for the drug cartels; and some--we have seen the video, we have seen the evidence-- they die trying to get in. We should not be luring people in. We need to secure the border. That includes building a wall where we need it. We don't need one in Big Bend National Park, in my opinion. If you can get across Big Bend National Park carrying all of the water you are going to need to get clear across there, then I want you in America, and I want you in our military. You are an extraordinary person. We don't need a wall through Big Bend National Park, most of it, anyway, but there are places we do. We have got to secure the border. If you go down there, south of McAllen, the river is wide, flowing fast. If you just have people along the river--I have been there, I know. The coyotes will not bring people across if they see there is law enforcement that will stop them. The trouble was, during the Obama administration, they didn't stop them. They didn't even process them when they got across. I have seen it. Why wouldn't you stop them? Why wouldn't you say: No, you are not coming on to U.S. land. Go back. Come in legally. We want you, but you have got to come in legally. It is time to secure the border. President Trump is making great strides in that area. General Kelly--God bless him--he was making great strides when he was head of Homeland Security. I was so thrilled he was there. I knew about the things he was doing, and I sure hope it continues, whoever replaces him. But we have got to secure our border, build a wall where it is needed. We have got to repeal ObamaCare--the worst parts of it, anyway--and get people the help they need. We have also got to give them the tax reform they need. As Art Laffer told me--he was asking me: Louie, you know, once we got that 30 percent tax cut in 1983, the third year of the President Reagan administration, do you know what the rate of growth was? Here we have been talking about 1.92 percent. It was 8 percent or over when they had the big tax cut. People got jobs. They made more money than ever. It was incredible. It is time to get back to that kind of growth. It is time to get back to a healthcare system where we are not slaves to a health insurance company, and we are not slaves to the U.S. Government, where we have control of our doctor-patient relationship, and America can heal; it can grow; it can prosper. We can bring back manufacturing jobs, which are so critical to this Nation, but we have got to get it done, and it has got to start this month. 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. Chairman, as the designee of the gentleman from Florida (Mr. Posey), I have an amendment at the desk.

Mr. GOHMERT. Mr. Chairman, I rise to offer an amendment to H.R. 3354. Originally this was offered by my friend from Florida (Mr. Posey), who is currently helping his constituents recover from Hurricane Irma, so I rise on behalf of Mr. Posey. Mr. Chairman, this amendment would strike the IRS' Operations Support account by $165,300 and transfer that amount to the Spending Reduction account. The effect would be to eliminate the salary of IRS Commissioner John Koskinen's salary, in fact, and would finally begin a tiny amount of accountability that American taxpayers have deserved for quite some time. Not only did Commissioner Koskinen fail to hold the IRS accountable for wrongfully targeting groups based on their lawful political beliefs, but he obstructed the congressional investigations into the scandal. When Congress requested the testimony of Lois Lerner, who was head of the Exempt Organization Division at the IRS, she took the Fifth Amendment and refused to cooperate. Instead of providing these records, as required, Mr. Koskinen chose to--in his words--``recycle'' the Lerner email records. By recycle, Mr. Koskinen meant, obviously by his actions, destroy evidence that was part of a congressional investigation, which was in direct conflict with his duties as a public servant and, in particular, as head of the Internal Revenue Service. After obstructing a congressional investigation, Mr. Koskinen then lied about it under oath on several occasions before Congress. In other words, he repeatedly and contemptuously perjured himself before Congress. Now, on June 20, 2014, for example, Mr. Koskinen testified in a Ways and Means Committee hearing that since the targeting investigation started, every email had been preserved and nothing was lost. At that very same hearing, Mr. Koskinen said that the backup files no longer existed. He then went on to say that the IRS had ``gone to great lengths to spend a significant amount of money trying to make sure that there were no emails that were required that has not been produced.'' That, as we found out, was a blatant lie. Mr. Koskinen and his staff had gone to no lengths to get these emails. They had done nothing. In fact, the Treasury Inspector General for Tax Administration said that the IRS under Koskinen--his direction--simply did not look for the emails at all. Later, more than 1,000 emails were recovered from backup tapes that the IRS had attempted to destroy knowing they were being sought by Congress. A year later, on June 20, 2015, Mr. Koskinen again falsely testified--also known as perjuring himself--that all of the Lerner emails had been preserved--not lost--but the IRS had destroyed the emails, in fact, and tried to destroy the backup tapes as well. That was well after the investigation had started and the emails were being sought. Koskinen's dishonesty and obstructionist actions were not limited to congressional business. His actions directly affected American taxpayers. Under his tenure, IRS customer service for the 2015 filing season was nothing short of abysmal. Taxpayers were forced to wait hours to speak to an IRS agent, even after Congress gave him more money than he had had before for that assistance, but under his control and direction, it was squandered in other ways. The terrible customer service was a direct result of Mr. Koskinen's IRS directing funds meant for taxpayer services toward other priorities. At his confirmation hearing, Commissioner Koskinen promised that he would be transparent. That was a lie. This man's salary should be reduced. Mr. Chairman, I reserve the balance of my time.