Louie Gohmert

Mr. GOHMERT

Mr. GOHMERT. Madam Speaker, I might say it is great seeing you in the chair. You are a natural fit. Maybe we can do something about that at some point. It is an honor to speak in this hallowed Hall. There has been much ado made about contrived misrepresentations about what has gone on with President Trump's executive order regarding seven countries that the Obama administration designated as being problems when it comes to refugees coming from those countries. It has been absolutely incredible. And I think some of us were talking that it really exemplifies why networks like CNN--that was the one, the only 24-hour cable news network--have lost so much to other networks. MSNBC, CNBC, and even Fox News got caught up in some of the misrepresentations, and I couldn't believe that they were spending the kind of time talking about a contrived issue. Now, there was a problem in some innocent people being delayed and improperly handled, people who didn't deserve that. I am familiar with how that feels because I deal, like most of us do in this body, with TSA on virtually a weekly or even sometimes more often basis. There is a great article here by John Hayward from January 29. Mr. Hayward says: ``The sober and logical reasons for President Donald Trump's executive order on refugees and visitors are rising above the noise after an evening of hysterical over-reactions and emotional meltdowns on the Nation's TV networks. ``Advocates of sane, secure immigration policy have long noted that it's almost impossible to have a reasonable discussion of the refugee and immigration issues, because it's been sentimentalized and politicized beyond the realm of rational thought. ``This weekend brings them another superb example of media-magnified shrieking about fascism, bleating about `white nationalists,' howling about `religious persecution,' false invocations of the Constitution, and theatrical sobbing on behalf of the Statue of Liberty.'' We do have that water coming off the Statute of Liberty being analyzed, so that we can determine whether or not it is tears or something else. ``For readers who want to wallow in the emotion, examples can be found in this handy dossier of hysteria compiled by the Washington Post. But clear-eyed adults prefer to examine plain facts about Trump's executive order: ``1. It is NOT a `Muslim ban.' '' I have the executive order here. Unlike those in the Senate and those in the media, who were just excoriating President Trump and anyone involved in this executive order, I actually read it, unlike those people. I read the executive order. And because I read the executive order, I understood there was no ban against Muslims, no ban against Islam. It was very straightforward. And Hayward's article points that out. He said: ``You will search the executive order in vain for mentions of Islam, or any other religion. By Sunday morning, the media began suffering acute attacks of honesty and writing headlines such as `Trump's Latest Executive Order: Banning People From 7 Countries and More.'' And that was from CNN. And, Madam Speaker, I am very pleased that CNN finally got around to having a more truthful headline. ``Granted, CNN still slips in the phrase `Muslim-majority countries' into every article about the order, including the post in which they reprinted its text in full, but CNN used the word `Muslim,' not Trump. The order applies to all citizens of Iraq, Iran, Syria, Libya, Somalia, Sudan and Yemen. It does not specify Muslims. The indefinite hold on Syrian refugees will affect Christians and Muslims alike,'' not to mention people of every other religion and people of no religion. ``As Tim Carney at the Washington Examiner points out, the largest Muslim-majority countries in the world are not named in the Executive Order. ``More countries may be added to the moratorium in the days to come, as the Secretary of Homeland Security has been instructed to complete a 30-day review of nations that don't provide adequate information for vetting applicants. ``It is also noteworthy that the ban is not absolute. Exceptions for `foreign nationals traveling on diplomatic visas, North Atlantic Treaty Organization visas, C-2 visas for travel to the United Nations, and G- 1, G-2, G-3 and G-4 visas' are expressly made in the order. The Departments of State and Homeland Security can also grant exceptions on a `case-by-case basis' ''--that is all in the executive order--``and `when in the national interest, issue visas or other immigration benefits to nationals of countries for which visas and benefits are otherwise blocked.' ``There is a provision in the Executive Order that says applications based on religious persecution will be prioritized `provided that the religion of the individual is a minority religion in the individual's country of nationality.' '' And so it is important to note here, I think from the executive order, that it says applications based on religious persecution. That means that people that have applied for visas or immigration benefits to come into the United States who, themselves, raise their religion as a reason to let them into the United States, those need to be prioritized based on whether or not their religion is actually being persecuted, those holding those religious beliefs are actually being persecuted. And I think that is a rather intelligent way to approach things. But in those cases, it would be the applicant that would raise the issue of religion, not the Trump administration, not the State Department, not Homeland Security. It would be the foreign applicant trying to come into the United States who would be the one to raise that issue. Now, the article goes on: ``This has been denounced as a `stealth Muslim ban' by some of the very same people who were conspicuously silent when the Obama administration pushed Christians--who are the most savagely persecuted minority in the Middle East, with only the Yazidis offering real competition--to the back of the migration line.'' So it is important to note that, for years, this administration has been part of the discrimination and persecution against Christians in the world against whom there has been a genocide in progress. So when the head of the U.N. was in charge of the refugee program and was asked why is there not a similar percentage of Christians coming in as refugees to other countries to the percentage that Christians make up in that nation they come from, basically, the man who is now head of United Nations said, well, it is important to leave them where they have this historical presence, basically. So in other words, yes, there is a genocide going on. They want to kill off every Christian in those areas, every Christian in the Middle East, and so the U.N. now Secretary General says let's leave them in the area where they are being wiped off the map, brutally killed. Let's leave them there until we can say this place where they were historically has now shown there are none there. They have all been brutally murdered as the U.N. watched and didn't help. It is outrageous how uncivilized this United Nations has become. I filed a bill, and I still think we should bring it to the floor, that would require a complete defunding by the United States of the United Nations until such time as they withdraw the resolution of the Security Council that condemned Israel. I mean, it is like a teacher of mine in the fifth grade after I got beat up by a bully who had been held back two grades, was about 18 inches taller. She pointed to the class and said: This is what happens when little boys try to play with the big boys. Well, that is basically what the Obama administration had been doing. It is basically what the U.N. had been doing. They took the side of the mean bullies that had been devastating the Christians in the area. Having talked to so many Christians who were living in Syria and who the mainstream press say, oh, yeah, they are big Assad fans--no, they were not big Assad fans. They knew that he could be quite brutal, but their only point that the mainstream media in the United States and most of the world was missing is that Assad prevented Christians from being the victims of a genocide; and as Assad was weakened, the assaults and the murders and the rapes of Christians increased exponentially. I do think that the United States may still be held to account in the ledger of world history--what I would submit is God's ledger--for having the power and the moral right to stop a genocide of Christians in the Middle East and we participated in leaving them where they were, as did the U.N., so that they could be brutally murdered. I am going back to Mr. Hayward's article. ``2. The order''--talking about the executive order of Donald Trump. ``The order is based on security reviews conducted by President Barack Obama's deputies.'' And, Madam Speaker, for those in the mainstream media, I think it is important to repeat that line. President Trump's executive order that didn't ban Muslims but that ordered a temporary pause on people from certain countries from whom we had no information or inadequate information to vet the people that were coming in, it was based on security reviews conducted by President Barack Obama's deputies. ``As White House counselor Kellyanne Conway pointed out on `Fox News Sunday,' the seven nations named in Trump's executive order are drawn from the Terrorist Prevention Act of 2015. The 2015 `Visa Waiver Program Improvement and Terrorist Travel Prevention Act of 2015' named Iraq, Iran, Sudan, and Syria, while its 2016 update added Libya, Somalia, and Yemen. `` `These are countries that have a history of training, harboring, exporting terrorists. We can't keep pretending and look the other way,' said Conway. ``3. The moratorium is largely temporary. Citizens of the seven countries''--and by the way, in this executive order that President Trump signed, there is no mention of the countries. It refers to what President Obama signed declaring, first, the four countries, and then the three countries. It just refers to that that President Obama signed. He doesn't single out or name the countries; and I can't help but think, as intelligent as some of the people are that are assisting President Trump, that they showed a massive amount of naivete because it appears that they thought, if in the executive order President Trump refers to documents that President Obama signed designating these countries as countries where we didn't have adequate information, then even the mainstream media would have to go back to President Trump's and look above his signature and see that these are places that President Obama said were threats. And then they would--having some semblance of a conscience--have to point out that actually Trump is just putting in an executive order of what basically Obama signed off on but didn't go ahead and carry out what needed to be done based on that law. But, as I say, these folks were rather naive. And as the saying goes in Washington, no matter how cynical you get, it is never enough to catch up in this town. And so the Trump administration, the Trump advisers have a lot of growing to do to understand just how unfair the media can be. It is a valid presumption that if you don't name the countries, you make the mainstream media go back and look at what President Obama signed that they will understand, oh, this is what President Obama proclaimed that he is basing this on, so we can't be so mean to President Trump. Well, it didn't turn out that way, and they are learning that just because it would make great sense, be common sense in most areas of the country--that is areas that are not the fringe that voted for Hillary Clinton, but most of the country would say it is common sense. It isn't common within the original 10-by-10 mile boundaries of the District of Columbia, which are no longer 10 by 10 after ceding the land west of the Potomac to Virginia back in the 1840s. But number four in this Hayward article: ``Obama banned immigration from Iraq, and Carter banned it from Iran. `` `Fact-checking' website PolitiFact twists itself into knots to avoid giving a `true' rating to the absolutely true fact that Jimmy Carter banned Iranian immigration in 1980, unless applicants could prove they were enemies of the Khomenei theocracy. ``One of PolitiFact's phony talking points states that Carter `acted against Iranian nationals, not an entire religion.' As noted above, Trump's Executive Order is precisely the same--it does not act against an `entire religion,' it names seven countries.'' But, you know, I had some personal experience with PolitiFact. I used the word earlier today, ``hack,'' ``political hack,'' in an interview, and that is what I think of PolitiFact. They shouldn't be called PolitiFact. They ought to be called ``PolitiHack.'' I know I was speaking here on the House floor--I think it was last year--and I made a statement based on data received by the Senate on the percentage of American citizens and the percentage of noncitizens-- non-American citizens--who were in Federal prison for possession of a controlled substance. The reason I singled out possession was because President Obama has tried to make it appear that people in Federal prison have gotten such a bad rap because they really--just simple possession--they didn't deserve to be in prison so long. There is this whole intimation that, gee, there are people in Federal prison for possession of controlled substances who should have been let out a long time ago, and that is why we needed to have our laws changed. Well, since the President had mentioned people in Federal prison for possession, I singularly pointed out that the huge majority of people in Federal prison for simple possession were not American citizens. I'm going from my memory, but, apparently, PolitiFact wanted to do as they normally do and cover for the Democrats and try to do a hatchet job on a Republican since they are not political fact, they are political hack. So my communications person gets an email from ``PolitiHack'' that uses the name PolitiFact and wanted to know the source of my information because they were going to rate my statement. She provided the facts as provided by this administration to the Senate. Clearly what I had said was exactly true. I had quoted specifically from the data from the Obama administration, and it was 100 percent accurate. So then they come back--they thought they would catch me in not having proper information, and they come back to my communications person and said: Well, we have got information from the Bureau of Prisons that showed that if you look at all offenses that involved controlled substances, the percentage of noncitizens is not nearly that high. So why would he use just possession? The point was because President Obama had used simple possession to try to make it look as if people in Federal prison were not there for very serious crimes, and there is certainly a smaller number of people in Federal prison for possession than for dealing drugs and other charges. So in the end, after all the back and forth, they basically perpetuated a fraud upon the American people, PolitiFact--a bunch of political hacks--by not being willing to say that my statement was 100 percent true because they, in some contorted manner, did not want to point out that my statement was exactly true. They refer basically to, oh, that the number wasn't near that high of people involved in controlled substance. I didn't mention everybody with controlled substance. So that is just a parenthetical in Hayward's article for me because I know personally PolitiFact is a political joke if what they were doing was not so serious in harming the American people by misrepresenting the true facts of what is going on. I hope that at some point being still remaining an entrepreneurial country for a little longer--at least we have got nearly 4 years to go that we can be assured of as an entrepreneurial country--at least in that time perhaps we will have an entrepreneurial group that will rise up and start scoring PolitiFact to show just how unfair they are, and, on occasion, when they are actually fair, show that as well so the American public can actually score the illegitimate scorers. But going back to this article, it says: ``As for Barack Obama, he did indeed ban immigration from Iraq, for much longer than Trump's order bans it from the seven listed nations, and none of the people melting down today uttered a peep of protest. Richard Grenell summed it up perfectly in a Tweet: `Obama took 6 months to review screening for 1 country. Trump will take 3 months for 7 countries. . . . ' '' This article goes on: ``5. Trump's refugee caps are comparable to Obama's pre-2016 practices: David French, who was touted as a spoiler candidate to keep Donald Trump out of the White House during the presidential campaign--in other words, not a big Trump fan--wrote a lengthy and clear-headed analysis of the Executive Order for National Review. He noted that after the moratorium ends in 120 days''--and that is one section. It ends in 120 days, the other section is 90 days, another part says they will have 30 days to produce a report. But it goes on to say: ``Trump caps refugee admissions at 50,000 per year . . . which is roughly the same as President Obama's admissions in 2011 and 2012, and not far below the 70,000 per year cap in place from 2013 to 2015. ``Obama had fairly low caps on refugees during the worst years of the Syrian civil war. He didn't throw open the doors to mass refugee admissions until his final year in office. Depending on how Trump's review of Syrian refugee policy turns out, he's doing little more than returning admissions to normal levels after a four-month pause for security reviews. ``6. The Executive Order is legal: Those invoking the Constitution to attack Trump's order are simply embarrassing themselves. The President has clear statutory authority to take these actions. As noted, his predecessors did so, without much controversy. ``Most of the legal arguments against Trump's order summarized by USA Today are entirely specious, such as attacking him for `banning an entire religion,' which the order manifestly does not do. Critics of the order have a political opinion that it will in effect `ban Muslims,' but that's not what it says. Designating specific nations as trouble spots and ordering a pause is entirely within the President's authority, and there is ample precedent to prove it. ``It should be possible to argue with the reasoning behind the order, or argue that it will have negative unintended consequences, without advancing hollow legal arguments. Of course, this is America 2017, so a wave of lawsuits will soon be sloshing through the courts. ``7. This Executive Order is a security measure, not an arbitrary expression of supposed xenophobia. Conway stressed the need to enhance immigration security from trouble spots in her `Fox News Sunday' interview. French also addressed the subject in his post: ``When we know our enemy is seeking to strike America and its allies through the refugee population, when we know they've succeeded in Europe, and when the administration has doubts about our ability to adequately vet the refugees we admit into this nation, a pause is again not just prudent but arguably necessary. It is important that we provide sufficient aid and protection to keep refugees safe and healthy in place, but it is not necessary to bring Syrians to the United States to fulfill our vital moral obligations.'' The article goes on. It is well written, points are well made, and I would humbly submit, Madam Speaker, that we had the statistics last year that showed that for the cost of bringing one Syrian refugee to the United States for 1 year, we could help take care of 12 Syrian refugees in place in a safe zone over near their home. Now, I am very encouraged that even though President Obama simply would not ever agree or strive to have a safe zone in areas near the refugees' homes so we can take care of 12 times more than we can possibly bring to our country for the same cost, and he is working on that, and he has got some agreements, and it looks like that may be a possibility. We give air cover, help create safe zones in areas there in the Middle East so the refugees can live without being killed and horribly brutally murdered and abused. That makes more sense. It appears that the President has worked with or talked with the Saudi authorities and perhaps will be able to get something like that worked out. There were people just quite emotional over the fact that Saudi Arabia was not mentioned and Egypt was not mentioned. Actually, the order did not mention any nations by name. The Trump executive order simply referred to what President Obama signed off on which included seven countries. These are seven countries where it shouldn't even be arguable among people of common sense that we do not have, have not received, and cannot get adequate information from which to determine whether people wanting to come into the United States are actually refugees or if they are part of al Qaeda, al Nusra, and ISIS, and they want to come kill Americans and end our freedoms and our way of life. That is why such an executive order was entirely appropriate. Although I supported a different candidate for President for over a year, I applaud President Trump in caring so deeply about the American public that he would take the honorable and appropriate steps to protect Americans that the last administration would not take. A great article in Townhall from Matt Vespa is entitled: ``Friendly Reminder: Obama Selected The List Of Seven Countries in Trump's Executive Order.'' That certainly should be noted yet again. Another great article here by Seth Frantzman says: ``Obama's Administration Made the `Muslim Ban' Possible and the Media Won't Tell You.'' It is a good article there. I think this article from John Hayward from January 27 on Breitbart may give us insight as to why there is so much howling by CAIR and CAIR associates because there were implications of people involved with CAIR in the Holy Land Foundation trial. One just merely need to go look at the pleadings. Here in Congress, since Eric Holder and Loretta Lynch went through their entire terms as Attorneys General and continued to refuse to provide the discovery documents in the Holy Land Foundation trial that were provided in pretrial to the convicted terrorist supporters, it is pretty incomprehensible for some of us. On one occasion, when Attorney General Holder pointed out that, well, there may be some classified issues involved, I pointed out to him-- apparently, it went right over his head and he couldn't discern--the fact that the Justice Department gave the documents I am requesting to people that were then convicted of supporting terrorism. If Justice could give them to the terrorists without concern about being classified, surely they could give them to Members of Congress. Although some of us may argue in such ways that it terrifies some people, we are not terrorists and we are authorized to receive classified information. We should have been authorized in Congress to receive the same documents that the Justice Department provided to the terrorist supporters who were convicted. This article from John Hayward, January 27, points out that: ``According to Reuters, a `factional' debate is under way within the Trump administration over adding the Muslim Brotherhood to the State Department and Treasury lists of foreign terrorist organizations. ``This is a measure often called for by critics of the Brotherhood as Center for Security Policy President Frank Gaffney, who once again recommended an official terrorist designation on Wednesday's edition of Breitbart News Daily. ``A source in the Trump transition team told Reuters the effort to so designate the Muslim Brotherhood is led by National Security Adviser Michael Flynn. The source was personally in agreement with Flynn. ``In Congress, a bill to add the Muslim Brotherhood to the official terrorist list was introduced this month by Senator Ted Cruz and Representative Mario Diaz-Balart of Florida. Secretary of State nominee Rex Tillerson denounced the Muslim Brotherhood as an `agent of radical Islam' during his confirmation hearings, but he has not made public statements regarding adding them to the foreign terrorist organization list. However, other Trump advisers, and members of the intelligence and law-enforcement communities, argue the Brotherhood has `evolved peacefully in some countries,' Reuters claims. ``They also expressed the pragmatic concern that going hard on the Muslim Brotherhood could complicate diplomatic relations with nations such as Turkey. It would unquestionably, however, please such U.S. allies as Egypt, the United Arab Emirates, and Saudi Arabia, although there have been signs the Saudis might be softening on the Brotherhood as they search for allies against ISIS in Iran. ``One official familiar with the State Department's deliberations conceded that the Muslim Brotherhood's ideology has influenced such terrorist groups as Hamas, but since it is a large, loose organization spread over several nations, it could be legally difficult to apply the terrorist designation. Allied nations such as Britain have also expressed suspicions about the Brotherhood's influence, while stopping short of a formal terrorist designation.'' So this is important to note. It is a good article. But I can't help but wonder if the Council on American-Islamic Relations, or CAIR, may be getting quite concerned about the potential for designating their friends in the Muslim Brotherhood. There may be a mutual relationship there. There may be people that are part of both groups. No doubt, CAIR is getting quite concerned about heightened talk about naming the Muslim Brotherhood as the terrorist organization they are. It is just that they don't use terrorist tactics, as some of them have indicated before, when they are making great progress without terrorism, but knowing that eventually, after they get as far as they can with peaceful methods, they will ultimately be resorting to terrorism to bring the United States and other Western civilizations, countries into the international caliphate, wherein we are ruled by a caliph. So it is interesting times. Here, tonight, in perhaps an hour and a half or so, our new President will name the nominee to fill the Honorable Antonin Scalia's spot on the Supreme Court. He is still greatly missed. He was a great man. He was a great jurist. He was a great patriot and he was great for America and our freedoms. So we will look forward to hearing that. Mr. Speaker, I yield to the gentleman from South Carolina (Mr. Sanford). Privacy Protection

Mr. GOHMERT. I thank the gentleman from South Carolina not merely for the bill, but this gentleman's bills, just like the reasoned argument made here in this Chamber, well reasoned, well thought out. Having sat and listened to so many lawyers during my years on the bench, both trial bench and appellate bench, I would have welcomed the opportunity to hear from my friend from South Carolina in any courtroom where I was sitting. Well reasoned, a lot of good research in trying to solve problems. I look forward to a lot of us reading that bill and finding out because there is no doubt it involved just as good reasons as were used in your argument here today. Also, we heard from another colleague of ours, the Honorable Don Young from Alaska. I am actually optimistic about so many things with this President in the Oval Office now, and one of them is that our friend, Don Young from Alaska, may finally get some help. President Carter had identified an area that really didn't have any wildlife to speak of. Yes, it was part of the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge, but it was an area that really didn't have wildlife to speak of. As I understand it, there are some caribou that may walk across there from time to time, but they can't stay because there is not enough to sustain them. But President Carter, as anticarbon energy as he was, realized that is an area that we can agree ought to be drilled for the production of oil and gas, and it has been fought over and over. Who stands to gain? Well, actually, the American public. But since so much oil has now been found out in my friend Mike Conaway's district in west Texas, up in the Dakotas, we are not as needful of that as we were. But the people who will really benefit are the people of Alaska, and then additional beneficiaries will be the people of the United States and the people who want to get out from under the iron fist of Russia rising. We will be able to help them with that by not only becoming energy independent; but after energy independent, exporting oil and gas to other nations so they don't feel the pinch that nations like China and Russia are putting on them. I thank my friend, Mr. Young from Alaska, and my friend, the former Governor of South Carolina, Mr. Sanford. Madam 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, my friend makes such a great point. I think the way this country has, in recent years, been so discriminatory as has been the United Nations against Christian refugees, I am afraid that this United States of America could be called to account for the slaughter of so many Christians who we could have helped. And as we know from the numbers, there are a lot of excuses by the U.N. as to why they are not helping an equal percentage of Christians to the percentage of makeup of those countries they are coming from. There have been all kinds of excuses. But even our Secretary of State, under the last administration, John Kerry, admitted there was a genocide going on of Christians in the Middle East. Now, there is not a genocide going on of Muslims in these countries. There are Sunni versus Shia and vice versa, and there are clashes within the Islamic religion, but there is not a genocide of all Muslims in any of these countries. And yet there is clearly a genocide clear enough for John Kerry to note. So one of the most heinous and outrageous answers that I have heard a U.N. general secretary make was--well, I didn't hear it, I read--that the U.N. general secretary was asked about a year and a half or so ago, when he was in charge of the United Nations' refugee program, and this issue of the U.N. not helping the same percentage, in fact, just helping a fraction of the percentage of Christians who exist in these countries, his response was basically that it was important to leave these Christians in the areas where they are being killed because they have historical precedence in those areas. So we are going to bring Muslims out, according to the U.N. general secretary, because they didn't have as much historical significance, whereas the Christians who are being wiped out--throats cut, heads cut off, crucified, women raped, and just the most heinous of crimes committed against individuals are taking place--our U.N. general secretary and, apparently under our past President, the State Department felt like it was important to leave Christians there in larger percentages than existed among the refugees of Muslim because, hey, they have been there a long while, so let's leave them there, which ultimately means they will all be slaughtered. It is quite distressing. But here is a point made by George Rasley today in an article, ``President Trump Stops Suicidal Immigration Policy . . . ,'' where he points out that: ``Had President Trump's policy been in place participants in many Muslim terrorist incidents would have been prevented from entering our country, for example the Ohio State University attack by Somali `refugee' Abdul Razak Ali Artan, the September 2016 stabbing attack in a mall in St. Cloud, Minnesota, and two foiled bomb plots--one in Portland, Oregon, in 2010 and one in Columbus, Ohio, in 2000. ``Indeed, some 74 terrorist incidents have been attributed to Somali Muslims alone. And while the Obama administration did its best to cover-up the immigration status of the perpetrators we know that at least 13 of them were admitted to the U.S. as `refugees.' ``Fourteen were legal permanent residents at the time of their radical activity, and 10 were naturalized citizens.'' So it is quite disturbing. And by the way, as a result of the Kentucky case where we had two refugees who had been brought in from Iraq, it was reported, in 2013, that in 2009, two al Qaeda Iraq terrorists were living as refugees in Bowling Green, Kentucky. Anyway, because of that discovery, the Obama State Department stopped processing Iraq refugees for 6 months in 2011. So I do think it is important, as people keep screaming around here, what I believe as a Christian, Jesus said: The greatest commandment is to love God, and the second, he said, is to love each other. But he had also stated: Love thy neighbor as thy self. And what some have not realized, if you don't like America, if you don't like Americans, if you don't like our own country, and you don't love yourself, it is a bit hard to love your neighbor as yourself if you don't love yourself. I think it is time Americans stood up and thanked God for--and/or thank whatever force they may be, some would say, or agnostic, whatever--just thank your lucky stars, but be thankful we have had the opportunities to live in the greatest country in the history of the world. And the only one who has truly given lives and treasure, not for imperialist sake but simply for freedom sake, for liberty sake, for people we didn't know, but we wanted them to share in freedom and liberty. That is a rare country. It has been a blessed and blessed country. And I think it is important that if we are going to continue or get back to being that city on a hill, glowing that draws people to it, that would draw people to the Statue of Liberty, you have to be a nation of laws, you have to protect the people in the country, otherwise we go back to the Dark Ages, and we become a country that no one wants to come risk their lives to get to because there is nothing special. We squandered our opportunities and refused to take up our responsibilities to protect this Nation against all enemies, foreign and domestic. Mr. Speaker, I am grateful for a friend like Mr. Matt Gaetz from Florida, as articulate and intelligent as he is, and I look forward to working with him and with the Speaker in the days ahead. God has blessed America. Let's keep asking for God to bless America. If we ask, we are told: you will be given. Mr. Speaker, I yield back the balance of my time.

Mr. GOHMERT. Mr. Speaker, we are off to a fast start this year under the Trump administration. It is difficult, apparently, for some of the press to keep up with how quickly some of the things are going. I did want to make clear something that has been completely muddled by the mainstream media. They keep wondering why they continue to lose out to news channels like FOX News and why some of the conservative news sources online do so well compared to the leftwing sources. It is because a majority of people really are seeking truth, really are seeking answers. I realize that is not true for everywhere. The areas that Hillary Clinton won are basically relegated to the edges, the fringes of the country: around the coasts and southern valley, Chicago, Detroit, and some of those areas. It is really the fringe party. After someone--anyone with the least amount of even a small modicum of fairness--looks at the actual executive order that Donald Trump issued, it seems eminently reasonable. When looking at it, for example, compared to orders signed by a President named Obama, a President named Carter--I couldn't find any CNN, MSNBC, or anything like CNBC, and I could have missed that somebody did break through all the misrepresentations of those networks and actually point out, because sometimes I am going by and I don't have the sound on and I will be reading the subtext, but you would think that someone in one of those networks would make a big deal out of the fact that Muslims were not banned under the Trump executive order. Yet people all over the world and all over this country are still under the mistaken impression they can trust certain networks. They still haven't figured out that they can't. They see that, my gosh, the President has banned Muslims. I actually have the executive order here because, just as I read ObamaCare before I voted against it, I have read the President's executive order. I made highlights in bold on some things. I saw that there is no reference-- not one--to Muslims, to Islam. It is just not there. So it is a total misrepresentation. Now, to try to cover for the way the executive order news is being spun, some of them, to try to grasp back just a small portion of something resembling fairness, would say the words ``Muslim-majority country banned,'' try to bring it back so they can work in the word ``Muslim'' when it wasn't about religion at all. It is about the safety of the United States, the people we are sworn to protect, the Constitution that we raise our right hand and we swear to protect. We just took that oath earlier this month, and already it is forgotten. The refugee program that President Trump has paused is the same one that ISIS terrorists have repeatedly vowed that they are infiltrating, and they are intending to use it to kill Americans. The President is acting temporarily and prudently to give his administration and this Congress the time it needs to properly evaluate the refugee program and reform it to ensure that we help legitimate refugees and ensure the safety, as much as is possible, of the American people. When an FBI Director warns that they have no information from a country with which to compare identity information that refugees have or present or even orally convey, then I would think at some point we would take that information seriously from the sworn testimony. Now, I realize that the past administration has played fast and loose when you keep telling the American people and the Members of Congress that the attack in Benghazi was all about a video, and you even try to cover that by encouraging the producer of the video to be arrested and put in jail to help with this misrepresentation of the truth. Then I guess, under those circumstances, you don't take testimony from the prior administration Cabinet members all that seriously because you know that they have been out there and misrepresented the truth before. I don't know if Klein's book about, I think it was, the blood feud between the Obamas and the Clintons was right, but there had to be a reason that Hillary Clinton did not come out on the Sunday shows after Benghazi and make this claim that was adverse to what she emailed her daughter and what she emailed to the President of Libya, saying that it was an attack. She didn't mention a video because it wasn't about a video. She knew that. I realize that, between the concussion, the problems, she may not remember that, but she knew it at the time. According to that book, she called and talked to former President Bill Clinton; and she was encouraged not to go public and say it was about a video, that, in essence, that was indefensible. Nobody in their right mind was going to believe that, so she couldn't be out there. There were thoughts being entertained of maybe resigning rather than going out and trying to defend that story, but, gee, they realized that if she was going to run for President in 2016 and she resigned right before the election in 2012, it would have likely cost President Obama a second term, and then Democrats would not be very kind and forgiving even though that would have been a stance based on truth and honor. If it cost the Presidency in 2016, it was just not something that could be done. Apparently, according to the book and his sources that he says are close friends of the people involved, they decided the best way was not to resign and cost the President the reelection in 2012, but refuse under all circumstances to go on the Sunday shows and try to tell America six times that the attack at Benghazi was not planned; it was just instantaneous that arose from a protest over the video, but just don't go make that representation. Make that clear to the administration you are not going to do that, and then let the chips fall where they may. Because we haven't been able to figure out outside that representation in the book, why in the world did Susan Rice come out and say all that? That should have been Hillary Clinton's role. So he provides the excuse or the reasoning. So Susan Rice goes out and over and over on Sunday shows, it was all about a video. Well, I know from my days as a judge hearing of incidents where someone perhaps in a company that was not being honestly run would keep somebody in the dark so they could go out and make certain representations. The person really didn't want to know what the real truth was so they could come out and say with a clear conscience, here is what happened, and that wasn't it. So it may well be Susan Rice just did not know that her statements were lies. And if she didn't know, then they are not lies; they are just falsehoods she didn't know were false. We don't know, but it is an interesting representation. And it still brings us back to the fact that in certain countries in the world, we don't have adequate information to check individuals coming in against. No matter how much the credibility of the FBI Director may have been harmed last summer when he came out and made a totally political move of outlining that Hillary Clinton basically committed a crime, but no reasonable prosecutor would pursue this, that is my interpretation of what he said basically, and those who have prosecuted--I have prosecuted. You know, there are a lot of prosecutors who would take that. But he made the statement. So I figured that was pretty political. Despite that, when he says, you know, look, we had some information from some of these countries we got from their governments so that when we see their passport, we see some of this information, we could say, all right, we can check it against their government's records: What do you have on this person? But we had heard from Syria, for example, that they had actually taken over facilities that could print official passports. So they could print a totally fictitious passport because they have the means to do it. They have captured that. Not only do we not have a cooperating government, but we have no information. We don't have fingerprints off IEDs like we did from Iraq, and most of the time we had cooperation so we could compare this information. But we had nothing in some of these countries that could give us the assurance that the leaders of radical Islamist groups were not doing exactly what they said they were, and that is infiltrating the refugees with people who were going to come in and kill Americans. They said they were doing that in Europe. At some point we need to take these things seriously. I am thrilled to death to have a President--fortunately it is nice being thrilled to death instead of being beaten or knifed or hit with a truck. But I am thrilled to have a President who is taking seriously the things that the Obama administration found should be taken seriously. Let's be clear, no one is being discriminated against in the President's executive order based on religion. Christians, Jews, Muslims, any religious group, agnostics, atheists from the countries designated for a pause--it is not a ban; it is a pause so we can look better at what we need to do. I am thrilled to be joined by one of our sharpest new freshmen.

Mr. GOHMERT. Mr. Speaker, as I told my friend from Florida, I am honored anytime he comes to the floor to speak because he knows what he is talking about. When I was a judge back in Texas, a young prosecutor also shared his first name, and he is now the DA. He is as sincere and intelligent. Anyway, it is just an honor to serve with Mr. Gaetz. I wondered if he might yield for a question. The Attorney General--I am sorry, this is the acting Attorney General because the Senate is dragging its feet on one of its own, Jeff Sessions, but this came out today in The Hill that ``Acting Attorney General Sally Yates sent a letter Monday ordering the Justice Department not to defend President Trump's executive order . . .'' even though it is an order that basically has been done by the Obama administration--except President Obama had done it one country that is included in the seven for 6 months instead of 3--and also by President Carter. I don't think he was a Republican. Anyway, these things have been done before, and the letter says we are not going to defend it. This story from Lydia Wheeler today says: ``Yates's''--the acting Attorney General--``decision suggests she does not want to put the credibility of the Justice Department behind the order. . . .'' I wanted to ask the gentleman from Florida, does he have concerns that, if the Justice Department were to defend this executive order, it would hurt the credibility of the Justice Department when acting under its Democratic leadership?

Mr. GOHMERT. Mr. Speaker, I thank the gentleman. Great points. And I wish I were as articulate. I have been critical of the majority leader in the Senate, Senator McConnell, but this story is from CNS News. Majority Leader McConnell says: ``Well, I think it's a good idea to tighten the vetting process.'' And he went on to say: ``I don't want to criticize them''--the Trump administration--``for improving vetting.'' And I applaud the majority leader for not running for the hills when all of the media does their typical thing and just goes freaking out. But, we found this story goes also, I think, to illustrate the point Mr. Gaetz was making. This is from Daniel Horowitz's article today. It turns out that 17 sitting Democrats in the House and Senate voted to ban visas from some Muslim countries and that law still exists today. Of course, this was back in 2002. And back at that time, you had some quite conservative Democrats in the House and Senate, people like Senator Ted Kennedy and Senator Dianne Feinstein, you know, real bulwarks of conservatism, who voted to ban visas from these type countries, of the Muslim majority countries, as CNN would like to call them. Gee, names like Cardin, Markey, Menendez, Murray, Nelson of Florida, Reed of Rhode Island, Sanders of Vermont. Wow, there is another conservative, Sanders of Vermont. Schumer, another strong hearted conservative. Stabenow, Wyden, Durbin, Feinstein, Leahy, and Udall. So it kind of begs the question: If this is only a temporary ban from countries until we can ascertain better vetting, how much worse is it for these 73 sitting Democrats to have voted for a permanent ban? That is rather shocking. And it is notable that President Obama, not exactly consistent with former President George W. Bush who went 8 years without coming out and making formal criticisms--well, President Obama has said he is very heartened by all of the anti-Trump protests. We even have Democrats here in the House who said: `` . . . as we've heard before, the President fundamentally disagrees with the notion of discriminating against individuals because of their faith or religion.'' Because I know my friend here in the House would not misrepresent the truth. So it just shows, obviously, he hasn't read this executive order that makes very clear it is not banning a religion or a faith, it is countries where we don't have enough information. And I just find it interesting that we are standing on the side of 73 Democrats--Markey, Bernie Sanders, Feinstein, people like that--who thought it was a good idea when they were closer to 9/11.

Mr. GOHMERT. I yield to the gentleman from Florida.

Mr. GOHMERT

Mr. GOHMERT. Mr. Speaker, I am so grateful that Representative Chris Smith is a Member of the United States Congress because of his leadership, because of his enormous heart, and his enormous caring. It is amazing--those of us who believe in God--the way our lives develop. I was a guy that grew up; I never liked to hug anybody. But when we had three beautiful incredible girls added to my wife's and my life, I became a hugger. Fox has a show named ``Outnumbered,'' but that has been my life for years now. I know there are so many people that say you are a man and you have no right to speak about this. I guess, when I was a judge, there were those who thought, since I was not a person that had been on both sides of a civil lawsuit or had been a defendant in a case, maybe I should not be able to say anything about or pass sentence. But we have laws, and laws are there to protect people. I do believe, as our Founders did, in nature's God, that we have a Creator who provided us inalienable rights. But in this world, you have to fight for any inheritance, including your inalienable rights. It does appear that nature gave a greater percentage of women a nurturing greater sense of loving and caring than most men. That gets changed for some of us when you have a house full of girls. But I could identify with the doctor who had performed, I think he said, over 1,000 abortions, who came before our Judiciary Committee and testified about how it was just a procedure, how it was nothing to him, and how he would go into the uterus. Of course, the pregnant mom was not dilated and not going to be able to deliver a baby that had begun forming, had a heartbeat. But that is why he would go in with his instrument, feel around with his clamps for something that felt long, and when he found it, he knew that it was either a leg or an arm, and he would grab it and pull it out from the baby's body, and continue till he did that four times, and then reach in and find something that felt bulbous, and he would--he knew the head could not come out in a bulbous form, and so he would crush it and pull out the baby's head. And that was the way he went about beginning the abortion of a child that had begun developing like that. He never thought a thing about it until his daughter died, and then he became nauseated, and he was never able to do another abortion like that, and it became such a burden that he had done what he had done. I know from my years on the bench as a judge, I know from my years as an attorney helping people, if something is built on a lie, the chances are that the outcome will not be good for a majority of people. I also know that if someone encourages and perpetuates a lie within some other person's life, they are not that person's friend. So I would like to quickly reference an article published by WND called ``The Real `Jane Roe' '' and just hit some of the highlights about the real Jane Roe, the woman. I was talking with my friend, Chris Smith, about Norma McCorvey. He is quite familiar with her, and I believe he said he had talked to her and had come to know her. Being the Christian that Chris Smith is, he cares deeply about people, and that included Norma McCorvey. But this article says: ``At the age of 21, McCorvey was pregnant with her third child. She had given her other two children up for adoption and McCorvey did not want to say good-bye to her offspring a third time. So she decided to have an illegal abortion, but the Dallas clinic she went to had been recently raided and shut down. So McCorvey made up a story--she had been raped, she told her doctor and two lawyers. She signed an affidavit on condition of anonymity, and the lawsuit began.'' And she told WorldNetDaily: `` `I considered abortion and, because of this, I was put in touch with two attorneys, Sarah Weddington and Linda Coffee. They had just recently graduated from law school and were interested in challenging the Texas abortion statute.' '' She says: `` `Plain and simple, I was used.' '' This is Norma McCorvey. `` `I was a nobody to them. They only needed a pregnant woman to use for their case, and that's it. They cared, not about me, but only about legalizing abortion. Even after the case, I was never respected--probably because I was not an ivy-league educated, liberal feminist like they were.' '' But she goes on and says--well, this was from a New York Times interview: ``McCorvey describes her meeting the two young attorneys. . . . `` `Sarah Weddington sat right across the table from me at Columbo's pizza parlor, and I didn't know then that she had had an abortion herself. When I told her then how desperately I needed one, she could have told me where to go for it. But she wouldn't because she needed me to be pregnant for her case. I set Sarah Weddington up on a pedestal like a rose petal. But when it came to my turn, well, Sarah saw these cuts on my wrists, my swollen eyes from crying, the miserable person sitting across from her, and she knew she had a patsy. She knew I wouldn't go outside of the realm of her and Linda. I was too scared. It was one of the most hideous times of my life.' '' She says: `` `My experience with pro-abortion leaders is that they are snobs. They claim they care about women and their rights but, in my experience, they care for nothing, not even themselves in a way,' '' McCorvey said. ``McCorvey said in a 1990 New York Times interview that the rape lie caused her to be `terribly depressed.' '' `` `I was brought up not to lie and, because of this story, I had to lie all the time. And the depression periods got deeper and longer until the night I cut my wrists.' '' Well, it is one of the difficulties that attorneys have: when you represent someone and you are sworn to do the best job you can, it should be more than simply about getting the legal result that a lawyer wants. It ought to be about helping the client. You can't always do that. But it is rather tragic that Jane Roe, Norma McCorvey, now looks back on that as the most hideous time of her life, and that she was taken advantage of by people that didn't care about her. They had an agenda. I heard someone here on the floor talking about the Women's March and how that was for all women, except the hypocrisy of that march was it was not about all women because there were pro-life women that tried to march. It was about women that think exactly like they do, and nobody else gets to participate. It is the same kind of mentality that would--when in the majority here in this body say: We want everybody to participate in debate, except we are going to have a record-setting number of closed rules so nobody can debate. We don't want your input on ObamaCare. We don't care that you support what we do on preexisting conditions and on kids living with their parents. Heck, some of us said 30 would be a better number than 26. They didn't care. They could pass it without our votes. They didn't want our input. So then to hear people who treated us like that say we care about open debate, knowing that some of those same people came down here and grabbed microphones and, for the first time we can find in congressional hearing, prevented the majority from starting into session; and then they want to lecture us on openness and kindness and open debate? Really? Let's go back to the Norma McCorveys of the world. Let's minister to them individually, as my church, as a number of ministries with which I am greatly familiar do. Let's help the real person. Let's help that child so that that little boy or that little girl doesn't have its arms and legs jerked out of the uterus. Let's help that child have a life that will be so full they will never think about slitting their wrists, as Norma McCorvey did. Let's vote for life.

Mr. GOHMERT

Mr. GOHMERT. Mr. Speaker, I am very grateful to Mr. Lance for his great leadership on this issue. And I appreciate the comments of my friend across the aisle, Mr. Doyle. This did pass by voice vote. One can't help but wonder: How many times has this played out that we don't know about? How many times has there been a child that tried to dial 911? How many times has a panicked adult dialed 911 not knowing? And I was in a hotel the other day where you had to dial 7 to get out. How many times has somebody been killed trying to dial 911? We don't know. There is no way to know. But we do know that this is the right thing to do. And the only reason this came forward is after the tragic loss of Kari. Her death occurred over several minutes. Normally in a town like Marshall, especially in a town like that, the police are going to be there within a minute or two when something goes on this long. It was a beating; it was a stabbing; her daughter was trying to dial. After Kari had left this world, her daughter was sitting in Hank Hunt's lap. She was crying saying: I did all I could. I kept dialing 911 and it wouldn't go through. Hank was torn up about it and got to investigating. That is when this was brought to light. When Hank brought it to my attention, we got to investigating. And we do have limits here in Congress. We are not supposed to go meddling, according to the 10th Amendment, in State and local affairs; but this is a matter of interstate communications. This is a matter for the Congress. This goes across State lines constantly. It is in the public domain across the country. If we don't do it when it involves interstate commerce, then nobody else has the authority to go across State lines. I also thank the FCC Commissioner Pai, who I understand will soon be the chairman, for all his efforts because he truly participated. We found out that there is really no cost. If we pass this law such as it is, then the companies that produce these phones would just set the default position so that when someone dials 911, it goes straight to an emergency operator without having to dial a prefix, whether it is 7, 9, 3, whatever. So there is no cost in that. It is just telling them how to do the default. What about existing lines? And then we found from people that have installed these multiphone lines that, actually, if somebody calls and says, ``Hey, we need to get our phone system reset so you can dial 911 and it goes straight through,'' everyone that we have talked to that was in that business said, ``Oh, we will come make that switch for free.'' So we knew we had a bill here, we had a law--it goes across party lines, it goes across bicameral lines--we had an opportunity to pass a bill. I am grateful to Senator Klobuchar in the Senate and all the bipartisan support there. As my friend, Mr. Doyle, pointed out, there is another push. Let's identify exactly where someone is within that multiline system. That will cost money. There are some that have said: Look, if there is somebody that is making a secret call, they don't want the bad guys figuring out where the call is coming from. So there are other issues involved here, but we have a bill that will save lives and it is agreeable across the aisle. It passed this manner in the past Congress. It will pass this way again today. So I urge not only our friends here in the House, but also my friends in the Senate, please pass this bill that we all agree on, save lives, and then let's have a full and thorough debate on the part that will cost money. We have some mom and pop hotels that say: If you make us buy a new phone system, the one we have won't be able to identify which room is making the call. You make us add to that, we are already in trouble. We are barely getting by. Please don't add more costs to what we are struggling to pay as it is. Let's have that debate in a separate bill. Go in and pass this noncontroversial one for Kari's sake and for the sake of all of those that would come into the same situation. Let's just pass this bill. Kari, as her father and her daughters have said, will then not have died for nothing. Her loss of life will save lives in the future. Again, I thank my friend, Mr. Lance. What a great American, the way he pursues matters of conscience. I appreciate again my friend across the aisle, Mr. Doyle. I urge passage of this bill now, today.

Mr. GOHMERT

Mr. GOHMERT. Mr. Speaker, it is Thursday evening in the House of Representatives, and I continue to hear friends, fellow Members of the House, and reporters in anguish over the issue of a potential wall between the United States and Mexico; so I thought it was worth looking at some information about Mexico--our closest neighbor to the south. The data should be recent. They have got nearly 120 million people in Mexico. The gross domestic product is around 2.1 trillion in pesos. They have 2.1 percent growth-- terrible. It is about like the Obama economy. The average income is around $17,000 per capita. Inflation is 4.0 percent. Yet, you look at the economics of Mexico in the world, and you think, wow. You look at their resources--extraordinary resources, just extraordinary resources. We know they have got hardworking people because we know, from the people of Mexico who have come to the United States, that people constantly indicate, gee, they are the best workers we have, these hardworking folks from Mexico. So you have got hardworking people in the nation of Mexico, and you have got incredible natural resources that have never been tapped--or not adequately tapped. We don't even know the full potential--oil, gas, copper. There are all of these different minerals that Mexico is supposed to have. You look at what people have done over the thousands of years--I mean, advanced civilizations. Why is Mexico not one of the top 10 or even top five economies in the world? It is listed 62nd in the world. They have got plenty of land. I can personally testify that they have some of the most beautiful terrain in the world--beautiful beaches, mountains, farming regions; just magnificent land, minerals, and hardworking people. Why is it 62nd in the world as an economy? That is an interesting question. It would seem to be because--from hearing people who have looked at Mexico and who have either tried to start a business there or who have looked at it to start a business there, to start manufacturing there-- of course, there are many who have set up manufacturing shops down there, but they are easily persuaded out of it if they can find a more suitable place. The reason it is often easy to persuade people to set up shop somewhere else is because of the drug cartels, the corruption that the drug cartels bring to Mexico. What is it the drug cartels are making billions of dollars off of that allow them to corrupt police departments? city governments? the Mexican border patrol? the Mexican military? Obviously, the people in all of the Mexican Government are not corrupt. I have met too many who want desperately to make the nation of Mexico one of the greatest in the world, and it is possible that could happen but not so long as the drug cartels are, potentially, the most powerful entities in Mexico. I mean, they are right next to the United States. They really should be one of the top, at least 10--if not the top five or the top three or four--economies in the world, but they are nowhere close. Drug cartels, we have found--and we know--make money, particularly off shipping illegal drugs into the United States. They have made a fortune off of it. I have heard from friends of mine in Texas who are in the drug enforcement business, both Federal and State. When the U.S. Congress took action to make it more difficult to get SUDAFED, which is used in the cooking of substances that are put together in order to create methamphetamine, that meth lab became much more rare, especially in east Texas, where I live, where we have got lots of trees, woods-- terrain where people can easily hide out, set up a lab, cook some methamphetamine, especially as developed during my time on the felony bench, where people in Texas learned how to cook methamphetamine, create methamphetamine with a cold cooking process that didn't subject them to quite the danger and didn't create quite the nasty smell that often got meth labs reported to the authorities. By drying up so many of the meth labs, we were told it is going to be a great day for America. We dry up the meth labs by making it tougher to get Sudafed because you have to ask, give your driver's license, and you are restricted to a very limited amount of Sudafed. We were told that is going to dry up drugs. Methamphetamine is going to be a thing of the past. We will cut it to next to nothing. Well, it is true. It is not as widespread as it used to be, but I am told that more pure drugs with much more devastating results and much more addictive are coming up from Mexico in greater numbers, greater quantities. It is even worse than it was when methamphetamine was being cooked because of the purity of the substances and the addictive nature. Also, as a result of drying up so much in the way of methamphetamine, we have much more of the heroin epidemic crossing America. Additional drugs have come from Mexico across our porous border that seems to have grown during the Obama administration dramatically. Why? Because our border has really not particularly been all that enforced. It turns out that it is not just other drugs that are coming across our border. Since we have been able to eliminate so many meth labs, especially in Texas, we see stories like this one from Bob Price, January 5, ``Feds Seize Nearly $7M in Meth At Texas Border.'' That is a story about the seizure of methamphetamine at two international border bridges in south Texas in 1 week. The Customs and Border Protection, CBP, that was assigned to the World Trade Center International Bridge in Laredo, this article reports how they had caught two drug traffickers with 200 pounds of crystal meth in one vehicle, and that was December 22, 2016. We also know that the border security under this administration has become just almost nonexistent. We had an article from January 12, today, from McAllen, from Fox News, entitled, ``Cartels, Smugglers Exploit Border Wall Fears Ahead of Trump Presidency.'' So apparently they are using this time before President Trump is sworn in next week to scare people into coming now. Bring your drugs now. Come illegally now into the U.S. before Trump becomes President. I guess it is a bit akin to Iran. After holding American hostages for over a year under Commander in Chief Jimmy Carter, became so scared of a tough, independent-minded Ronald Reagan coming into office, they let those hostages go on the very day he was sworn in. So they didn't risk him taking military action against them. This is another story from Jessica Vaughan, January 2017, that reports that ``ICE Deportations Hit 10-Year Low.'' This is January 2017. DHS has hit a 10-year low in deportations. We see stories about how border control is almost nonexistent on our southern border, stories that expectation of amnesty is attracting immigrants to our U.S. border. Here is another story from January 10 by Brittany Hughes, ``Border Agents Catch Another Wave of Illegal Aliens From Cuba Amid Escalating Spike.'' I have been told, when I am down there, they are seeing more and more Cubans coming across the Mexican border of all places. So the insecurity--not mentally--of the United States, but the actual insecurity of the United States because of our vulnerability to people that hate us and drug cartels that want to make billions of dollars by hooking people on drugs that they will deliver, has reached insane levels. That is probably part of the reason that Donald Trump was elected President by an avalanche in the electoral college. If you look at the counties that voted for Hillary Clinton and you look at the counties that voted for Donald Trump, it becomes very clear that the Democratic Party in the United States has basically become a fringe party. They won the fringes: West Coast, East Coast, part of Florida, part of the northeast, Chicago, Detroit, some of the northern cities, the southern valley of Texas. I mean, it is a fringe party. There are a few exceptions inside the country, but basically the rock- solid interior that the American people make up--in what some refer to as fly-over country in America--voted rather solidly for Donald Trump. Here are numbers from the CIA World Factbook on Mexico: Crude oil exports, a 2015 estimate, had 1.199 million barrels per day. Country comparison to the world, 13. Crude oil imports, 11,110 barrels a day. Crude oil, proved reserves, 9.7 billion barrels, and that is just proven reserves. If you look at natural gas from a 2014 estimate, 44.37 billion cubic meters. That is supposed to be 19th in the world, but when you consider how productive they could become once they began fracking, using more advanced technology, then you find out that, wow, this is a nation--the nation of Mexico--that really should be one of the top 10 economies in the world. What is the excuse that it is not? It has hardworking people, natural resources that most of the world could only envy. Why is it not one of the top 10? We keep coming back to the drug cartels and the corruption that they have brought to Mexico and the billions of dollars that are generated by the drug cartels. As we have talked about here in the House, the border patrolmen tell me--I have been there all night--there is not a single inch of the U.S.-Mexico border that is not controlled by one of the drug cartels and that nobody should cross the border unless they have paid the drug cartels, have the drug cartels' permission. I have seen firsthand how it works. They will send a group across the river with coyotes in rafts when they are down on the Rio Grande. That keeps the Border Patrol busy. At another place, they send people with drugs. I have been there and seen their lookouts, climbed up on perches where they can watch. When the Border Patrol goes by, they know they won't be back for a while, so they get surprised when I drive by in the middle of the night. They are all over the place around our southern border. They are making billions of dollars. Whoever came up with the business model for the drug cartels that you could make such massive amounts of money bringing drugs illegally into the United States, it was really a business genius. But it would take a business fool in the United States to allow the kind of model that Mexico has set up for its drug business to even get a foothold in the United States. As I have mentioned, one of the Border Patrol told me that the drug cartels call the Department of Homeland Security their logistics. They bring their drug dealers. They bring their drug traffickers. They bring their prostitutes. Unfortunately, girls are being forced, often, into drug trafficking or human trafficking, and they are going to be used as prostitutes to make money for the drug cartels. They send them across. As a border patrolman said, they send them across, and then DHS here in America becomes their logistics. We ship them wherever they want them to go in the United States. All they have to do oftentimes is just have--I have seen them--a Xerox copy of the address where they are supposed to go, and DHS puts them on the bus--sometimes flies them, but usually buses--and ships them off to a city where the drug cartels want them to set up shop. I have been there in the middle of the night when border patrolmen will ask how much they paid to be brought in illegally to the U.S. Some of the Spanish speakers in our Border Patrol are really incredible as they drill down and get answers to their questions that are not always on the list that DHS tells them to get. ``How much money did you pay?'' They would say, ``Well, you didn't have $6,000, $7,000, $8,000. Where did you get that money?'' ``Well, I was able to get $1,000 from somebody in the U.S., $1,000 from somebody in Mexico or Guatemala.'' ``Well, what about the rest?'' ``They are going to let me pay that out after I am in the United States.'' It becomes clear very quickly that, once again, this business model that the drug cartels have includes getting people in rafts where the Rio Grande River requires a raft, or just getting them across in unguarded areas, or areas where we need a wall and don't have one, getting them across, and then getting DHS to send them to the city where they want to set up shop as drug traffickers, human traffickers. What a business model. You get the Federal Government of the United States to help you set up your business machine, your business model in the United States. They are shipping your employees around the country to different cities. Yes, it is normally under the guise of: I have a relative there, here is the relative's address. They are going to take care of me. Perhaps you get delayed and have to wait for an immigration judge that was appointed by Eric Holder to give you a notice to appear for a hearing 4 years later, a year, 2 years later, and then you can go on to the city where the drug cartels want you to finish paying off what you owe them for getting you into the United States. So to have a business model that requires your workers to pay you is extraordinary, but that is what drug cartels are able to do when you have a willing Obama administration here in the United States that will help you set up your drug cartel mechanism here in the United States. That is what has been going on. In the meantime, back in Mexico, you generate so much money by having your workers pay you to work for you, and getting billions of dollars from the drugs that are sent into the United States, hooking people here in America, making them reliant on and addicted to drugs that destroy their lives. So basically the drug cartels get a two-for. They destroy the human infrastructure of the United States with poison that some would say, well, that is another name for illegal drugs. And then, in the meantime, you have got all of that money coming to you, and you use that money to buy off police. Thank God there are some stand-up police in Mexico that can't be bought. But if they go too strongly head to head with the drug cartels--we have seen the pictures--they can end up with their head on a pike as a message. We have had chiefs of police that were killed when they refused to kowtow to the drug cartels, and so the message becomes pretty clear. It seems to me that the biggest reason that Mexico--with extraordinary people and extraordinary natural resources, a beautiful, fantastic country, a location that is just incredibly advantageous because they have got shipping that can go out on the West Coast like we do to the Pacific, shipping on the East Coast into the Caribbean, the Gulf of Mexico, ready access to North American markets, ready access to South American market, what an opportunistic location for Mexico. Yet, they struggle so far behind most nations, or so many nations in the world. Dozens and dozens, 60 or so, are before them because drug cartels have such a powerful part in Mexico itself. So there are many Americans, especially friends of mine across the aisle here, who think it is an absolute outrage to talk about building a wall between the United States and Mexico. There are some Mexican officials that think it is an outrage to talk about building a wall between the United States and Mexico. Now, some of those Mexican officials think it is an outrage because they haven't thought through the magnificence that may arise in Mexico once we have secured the border between Mexico and the United States and we can slow the drug trafficking to a trickle. So the drug cartels will not be looking at billions of U.S. dollars; they will be looking at thousands; and if they are extremely powerful, maybe millions. But if we get that down to thousands, then the Mexican people will be able to have control without corruption, without massive pockets of corruption, without a drug cartel that can buy soldiers, buy police, buy chiefs of police, and buy mayors. Again, thank God it is only a small part of Mexico, but it keeps Mexico suppressed from the great economic power that it could be. And the potential is all there. You build a wall, then you shut down the drug cartels. And when they only have thousands of dollars to bribe police instead of millions or billions of dollars, then law and order will prevail and the drug cartels will not, and we will have the most extraordinary neighbor to our south all because we followed the example in Mending Wall, and we had a wall between us that we kept up, we took care of, we shut down, helped Mexico shut down the drug cartels by being a good neighbor, enforcing the border, and the standard of living in Mexico spirals upwards through the sky. The power Mexico would have as a nation in any international organization will be extraordinary, and the United States will reach an unparalleled relationship as a neighbor. That is worth building a wall for. Mr. Speaker, I yield back the balance of my time.

Mr. GOHMERT

Mr. GOHMERT. Mr. Speaker, it is always an honor to be here and, especially, to look out and see some people for whom I have eminent respect in this body. That is a nice thing, being in a body where I actually have respect for the people in the body, a good thing. We know that elections, as President Obama told us quite succinctly 8 years ago, have consequences. Elections do have consequences, and we have a new team coming to town. One of the things that has concerned me greatly, and I know it has concerned many in this body, is that we as a Nation have had the ability to give protection basically to this idea of freedom that our Founders had, cultivated, and gave their lives to create. As I have mentioned from this podium previously, as I was told by some west African Christians in Togo, they said: We were so excited when you elected your first Black President, but since your President has been there, we have seen America get weaker and weaker. We all are Christians and we know where we are going when we die, but we also know our only chance for peace in this world is if America is strong. So please go back to Washington and please tell the other Members of Congress to stop getting weaker. We suffer when you get weaker. I seen this article from Melissa Mullins after a study was done. It said, ``Christians Most Persecuted Religious Group in the World.'' And that is while America is supposed to be the strongest nation in the world. Mr. Speaker, I see a friend is here on the floor, and I now yield to the gentleman from West Virginia (Mr. Mooney).

Mr. GOHMERT. Mr. Speaker, I appreciate so much my friend Mr. Mooney's points. Well made. This administration hasn't turned around health care in America, hasn't seen more choices, people keeping their doctors, keeping their insurance policies they liked. They have seen deductibles skyrocket, such that so many people across America have had $5-, $6-, $7-, $8,000 deductibles. We never had deductibles that high before. What that effectively meant was they weren't going to get any health insurance help. They were totally on their own, that every single payment that they made, even if they got subsidies from the Federal Government, was for nothing. They got no help. They could never come up with enough money in 1 year to meet the deductible so that the insurance would start paying in. What is even more egregious is that apparently we found out that much of this was known would happen before people had ObamaCare forced onto them. Then, in the last week we have had this story from Stephen Dinan, from The Washington Times, finding out that the IRS prioritized their role in ObamaCare over taxpayer customer service. That is what their own inspector general report said. You would think that an administration that says their number one concern was America's health care, that they would not drive so many people off of the insurance they had, they loved, that they could afford, that had the doctor in the system they could use, had the medicine in the policy covered that they could use. Millions have been driven off of their policies to Medicaid, which so many doctors don't even take, and this administration has called that a great victory. Yet, in the midst of all of this, we knew--it was talked about back in 2010 when this bill was being passed--that there could be 18,000, 17-, 18,000 new IRS agents that would force ObamaCare upon the country. And as so many people have reported, when you get notice from the Internal Revenue Service that they are coming after you, it does not do anything to enhance your health. KLTV, in my hometown, contacted me here today, wanting to know more about what was happening with the IRS. It has been outrageous what they have been doing across the country in their local taxpayer service assistance offices. It was reported to us that a sign was put up by one of the IRS employees that, basically, if you don't like the long line and the bad service, then contact your Member of Congress--and fortunately, many did, so we became acutely aware of it. And what was worse, I mean, we had an office in Longview. Some people are able to go--are required to go get documentation from the IRS in order to do what they need, whether it is with insurance, with their employer, and they couldn't get into the IRS office. The IRS office closed in Longview, making it so much more difficult for Americans in east Texas to get the customer service they needed. Well, this article from The Washington Times points out that the IRS has made things much more painful for taxpayers than it should have been, and that is according to the IRS' inspector general. That was in a report Thursday that accused the agency of cutting money for customer service and ignoring phone calls while moving the money over to keep ObamaCare and other administration priorities on track. Well, what that means is the IRS would be there to bully people who had concerns about or problems with ObamaCare, which certainly would not help their health at all. But one reporter had told me that previously they were told by the IRS that Congress cut funding and, you know, that is why customer service was cut. Yet, when we presented the actual facts of what had happened, yes, in the past 6 years, the House of Representatives--not the Senate, for heaven's sake. They haven't cut anything in their own House of Congress. But the House of Representatives cut our own budgets about 22 percent over a 3-year period, and that is pretty dramatic. Anybody that has ever had to cut their budget by a fourth understands. Americans have had to do that across the country. We did it right here in the House of Representatives, and it has been very difficult for some of our offices to provide the care for constituents. So many areas, we are it. We are the ones that can help them stand up against the bureaucracy and demand that they get what the government is required to provide, and yet we were able to do it. On the other hand, the IRS wasn't cut 22 percent like the House cut ourselves down to the bone. In fact, they had a substantially smaller cut over 2 years, I believe it was. In this past year, we increased the amount of money the IRS got by millions and millions of dollars. What the IRS chose to do is not help taxpayer service, which could also help the IRS from increasing their punitive work against taxpayers that make mistakes because they didn't get proper advice or service from the IRS assistance. But no, they moved the money. The massive increase we gave to the IRS, they moved it over to be a bigger bully regarding ObamaCare and cut out offices, like the one in Longview, and fell more into the stereotype than I have ever seen for the IRS, this as ``IRS employees ignored more than 30 million phone calls from desperate taxpayers seeking help in the run-up to the 2015 filing deadline--and those who did get through often waited a half hour before getting help. ``The IRS apologized publicly for the poor service and blamed Congress, saying lawmakers needed to pony up more money if they wanted better results. ``But Inspector General J. Russell George said the IRS cut its own funding by eliminating nearly $150 million from customer service, slashing more than 2,000 staff positions''--and that is so they could go after more enforcement of ObamaCare, as if ObamaCare wasn't doing enough damage to people's health as it was. As my friend, House Ways and Means Committee Chairman Kevin Brady pointed out: ``The IRS is running out of excuses for its abysmal customer service record and poor management decisions.'' This new report is even more proof the IRS is failing the very people it was created to serve--American taxpayers. Congress did add more money for the agency last year, just as I was saying, Mr. Speaker. This article also echoes the same thing. The IRS doubled the number of calls it was able to answer, but the agency has promised to maintain a level of service for next year. But let's face it, the IRS has shown they will target people because of their political beliefs. They will allow themselves--not just allow themselves. They insert themselves and have allowed themselves to be political weapons. Certainly saw that occurred from what has come out from 2012. Did they affect the election? It is hard to say. But they certainly prevented many conservative groups from being able to organize. I have heard some who are liberal, not that smart, asking questions: Well, I don't see how that would hurt conservative groups just because the IRS did not recognize them. They could still have gone ahead and organized and done their thing. Again, apparently they pay too much attention to the mainstream media and don't think for themselves, because when one begins to understand the power of the Internal Revenue Code in the United States, you put a group together and you pool your money into one pool to start spending as a group, somebody's going to be in trouble and going to be accounting for that money as income. I mean, there may be creative ways to handle it, but the way you are supposed to handle it is to get recognition from the Internal Revenue Service that you have a group that can come together, put your money together, and work together toward a common goal. Liberal groups have not had much problem getting that kind of approval, but conservative groups really were targeted by the IRS. And there is a law--we didn't need to pass a new one--that, according to the facts that have come out regarding Lois Lerner and others at the IRS, it certainly appears that there is probable cause to believe crimes were committed and should have been pursued. Yet nothing was done. Why? Because they were groups that were persecuted, not allowed to organize, that did not support this administration; therefore, according to the Justice Department that became more of ``just us department,'' they weren't going to pursue anything like that. And in the further category of further de-Americanization of America, this report from Paul Bedard that U.N. shipped 6 of 10 refugees to the United States, even more this year. Then there is a list from the United Nations refugee resettlement referrals. This report just came out in the last week, less than a week. The U.N. reports that of the 134,044 refugees settled in 2015, gee, 82,491 of the 134,000 were sent to the United States, that despite the fact information came out, study done, that actually we can support 12 refugees in place in the Middle East for the same price of bringing 1 refugee to the United States. In fact, this administration didn't have to use the term redline. This administration could have simply said: we are going to make sure there is a safe zone in which people can live in the Middle East in a certain area and the U.N. will assist them with food--hopefully, without raping the women and girls, because they have in some areas. We will provide them a safe zone, and their needs will be cared for there. We can handle 12 times as many for the same price as bringing 1 into the United States. I think voters understood that, when they voted Donald Trump as President, there are so many of these refugees that simply cannot be vetted. We know this administration has made mistake after mistake, not only with people that we have no information to use to determine whether or not they are a threat because we have no background information on so many of these, but also, once they are here, we don't know where they are, we don't know where they go. We don't know even the threat. Then, on top of that, we find out hundreds, maybe thousands--we know hundreds--of people were supposed to be deported that this administration accidentally--instead of deporting them and getting them out of the country so they were no longer a threat, this administration accidentally granted them citizenship. There are some things that this government could do and you would say: well, it is easy to understand. That is an easy mistake. Instead of a 1, they put an 11. Or, instead of a 0, they put a 3. Instead of deporting people and getting them out of our country, this administration accidentally gives them citizenship and has made clear that they are not capable of protecting us from the threats that we are seeing all over Europe and other areas of the world. A point of personal privilege, really, I would like, Mr. Speaker, a shout out to the TSA, which is underneath our Department of Homeland Security. It was such an honor to be singled out last Friday for the two molestations. Apparently, I am attractive when it comes to TSA agents. They want to feel up and down, make sure all the parts are actually attached. They did a very good job of that both times on Friday evening when I was flying back to Texas. So my thanks to the TSA. Job well done. It delayed me 30 minutes or so. I kept thinking the TSA agent was going to lie back and have a cigarette or something, but that never happened. Anyway, due regards for the TSA. I am really and truly hoping that we can change substantially management of the TSA in this coming year. At airport after airport, we see two, three, four times longer lines for the TSA PreCheck than there is for the general boarding. Yet, TSA continues to encourage people to go ahead and apply. We can streamline your getting through the inspection. And yes, that does mean when you are in PreCheck, you will enjoy having hands laid on you, not in a Christian kind of sense. Over and over, there are good TSA agents, I am finding, all over the country, but the management is atrocious. How long would any security agency stay in business if every day they had longer lines in one area that was the least threat to our security as they do in the general boarding lines that need to be more carefully monitored, we are told? Well, you would fire them. You would hire another security agency. I haven't seen a study done on this, but, as I recall--I was watching back during my days as a judge and chief justice, and I will have to go back and look--there were so many screams from Congress, especially the Senate, especially on the other side of the aisle, that we have got to have the Federal Government take over security at the airports. We have got to. We are in such danger. We have to have that happen. Has security been enhanced by adding tens of thousands of people to the government unions? No, it hasn't. It really hasn't. So, what I want to go back and look at, it seems like I remember back years ago, after the Democrats were able to prevail over Republicans who were in the majority and get them to agree to federalize the security at airports so that they could get them in the government unions, I was thinking, I don't know that that is really going to help. Are we going to see a better quality of TSA agent than we had in private security? I would like to see an official number. Maybe if somebody in Homeland Security is listening, Mr. Speaker, they could, in their time between looking the other way as people come into the country illegally, they might just look up how many private security airport personnel were not hired by TSA. The reason for federalizing the security was so that we will get a better quality of security. It seems like there was a lawsuit back there by a couple hundred people, maybe. We are the only ones not hired by TSA. Out of the thousands and thousands, we are the only ones that weren't hired. It seems like there was a problem in response that yeah, we really needed people that could read and had finished high school. If you couldn't read or hadn't finished high school, we really needed that level. So, basically, it seems what happened is one group here in Congress-- and it wasn't the Republicans--had their way. The security at airports was federalized. We are not seeing an increased percentage of capturing items that are coming in, but I have got to say they do a good job of feeling up and down my person. I am not really a threat, though Homeland Security would assume that. Well, I was in the Army for 4 years. I am a strong Christian. I believe in the Bible, and I believe in the United States Constitution as the greatest governing document that was ever promulgated. Apparently, according to the minds at the top of this Homeland Security Department, that makes me more of a threat than most anybody in the country. I was even told back in London, coming back, I believe that was from another trip to Egypt or maybe Israel, and I had to go out from security and come back through. I was told by one of the security guys: Sir, I know who you are and your position, but your Homeland Security Department tells us we have to thoroughly inspect your baggage and you personally. I got it from the British security folks as well. Apparently, if you believe in the Constitution, you believe in the Bible, you have served your country in the United States Army, and you are a Christian then you are a big-time threat. It will be so nice to have an administration that doesn't see the world the way this administration has seen it. We had a lecture from the Secretary of State. The President of the United States said amen and hallelujah when he condemned Israel over and over and over. We stabbed our friend, Israel, in the back. There are reports in some sectors that not only did we abstain but we encouraged the resolution to be brought forward so that Israel could be condemned. It apparently generated this article from Victor Davis Hanson from National Review. He said: ``Secretary of State John Kerry, echoing other policymakers in the Obama administration, blasted Israel last week in a 70-minute rant about its supposedly self-destructive policies. Why does the world, including now the U.S.''--I would submit, Mr. Speaker, not for much longer--``single out liberal and lawful Israel but refrain from chastising truly illiberal countries? Kerry has never sermonized for so long about his plan to solve the Syrian crisis that has led to some 500,000 deaths or the vast migrant crisis that has nearly wrecked the European Union. No one in this administration has shown as much anger about the many thousands who have been killed and jailed in the Castro brothers' Cuba, much less about the current Stone Age conditions in Venezuela or the nightmarish government of President Rodrigo Duterte in the Philippines, an ally nation. ``President Obama did not champion the cause of the oppressed during the Green Revolution of 2009 in Iran. Did Kerry and Obama become so outraged after Russia occupied South Ossetia, Crimea, and eastern Ukraine? ``Ambassador to the United Nations Samantha Power was never so impassioned over the borders of Chinese-occupied Tibet, or over Turkish-occupied Northern Cyprus. ``In terms of harkening back to the Palestinian `refugee' crisis that started in the late 1940s, no one talks today in similar fashion about the Jews who survived the Holocaust and walked home, only to find that their houses in Eastern Europe were gone or occupied by others. Much less do we recall the 11 million German civilians who were ethnically cleansed from Eastern Europe in 1945 by the Soviets and their imposed Communist governments. Certainly, there are not still `refugee' camps outside Dresden for those persons displaced from East Prussia 70 years ago. ``More recently, few nations at the U.N. faulted the Kuwaiti government for the expulsion of 200,000 Palestinians after the liberation of Kuwait by coalition forces in 1991. Yet on nearly every issue--from `settlements' to human rights to the status of women--U.N. members that routinely violate human rights target a liberal Israel.'' ``When President Obama entered office, among his first acts were to give an interview with the Saudi-owned news outlet Al Arabiya championing his outreach to the most nondemocratic Islamic world and to blast democratic Israel on `settlements.' ``Partly, the reason for such inordinate criticism of Israel''--well, the article says ``sheer cowardice,'' but that might be inappropriate for a Member to say about the President, so I am not even going to read that part. ``If Israel had 100 million people and was geographically large, the world would not so readily play the bully. ``Instead, the United Nations and Europe would likely leave it alone--just as they give a pass to human-rights offenders such as Pakistan and Indonesia. If Israel were as big as Iran, and Iran as small as Israel, then the Obama administration would have not reached out to Iran and would have left Israel alone. ``Israel's supposed Western friends sort out Israel's enemies by their relative natural resources, geography, and population--and conclude that supporting Israel is a bad deal in cost/benefit terms. ``Partly, the criticism of Israel is explained by oil--an issue that is changing daily as both the U.S. and Israel cease to be oil importers. ``Still, about 40 percent of the world's oil is sold by Persian Gulf nations.'' And I might add parenthetically, when we have a new President, that will drop even further because the United States will begin to produce more of the energy that we have been blessed with. There will be more nations in the world that will not have to go begging to Russia, which supposedly those on the left are so concerned about these days. Well, if they are so concerned, let us produce more west Texas oil, more east Texas natural gas, more oil and gas from around the country, and, boy, we will be energy independent. And as smart people have pointed out for a long time, it is a whole lot easier to take on terrorists who are throwing rocks than terrorists who are launching nuclear weapons. Back to this point being made here in National Review: ``Partly, the criticism of Israel is explained by oil--an issue that is changing daily as both the U.S. and Israel cease to be oil importers. ``Still, about 40 percent of the world's oil is sold by Persian Gulf nations. Influential nations in Europe and China continue to count on oil imports from the Middle East--and make political adjustments accordingly. ``Partly, anti-Israel rhetoric is due to herd politics. The Palestinians--illiberal and reactionary on cherished Western issues like gender equality, homosexuality, religious tolerance, and diversity--have grafted their cause to the popular campus agendas of race/class/gender victimization. ``Western nations in general do not worry much about assorted non- Western crimes such as genocides, mass cleansings, or politically induced famines. Instead, they prefer sermons to other Westerners as a sort of virtue-signaling, without any worries over offending politically correct groups. ``Partly, the piling on Israel is due to American leverage over Israel as a recipient of U.S. aid. As a benefactor, the Obama administration expects that Israel must match U.S. generosity with obeisance. Yet the U.S. rarely gives similar `how dare you' lectures to less liberal recipients of American aid, such as the Palestinians,'' for example, ``for their lack of free elections,'' not to mention their lack of paying, encouraging, immortalizing people who are suicide bombers who are successful in killing innocent victims. The article says: ``Partly, the cause of global hostility toward Israel is jealousy. If Israel were mired in Venezuela-like chaos, few nations would care. Instead, the image of a proud, successful, Westernized nation as an atoll in a sea of self-inflicted misery is grating to many. And the astounding success of Israel bothers so many failed states that the entire world takes notice. ``But partly, the source of anti-Israelism is ancient anti-Semitism. ``If Israelis were Egyptians administering Gaza or Jordanians running the West Bank'' as they did for 20 years or so, ``no one would care. The world's problem is that Israelis are Jews. Thus, Israel earns negative scrutiny that is never extended commensurately to others. ``Obama and his diplomatic team should have known all this. Perhaps they do, but they simply do not care.'' Then we find out this administration, we see what happens when there is yet another terrorist attack in Israel. What does this administration do after such a powerful chastising of our dear friend Israel? Nothing. But ``a Palestinian who may be linked to ISIS rammed his speeding truck into a group of Israeli soldiers in Jerusalem Sunday, killing four people and wounding 15 others before being shot dead in one of the deadliest attacks in a year-long campaign of violence.'' Now, even that, from friends at FOX News, is not as accurate as it could be. Yes, they were soldiers that were killed. They were on a sight-seeing tour, and apparently the insidious radical Islamist sat parked and waited for them to be in a vulnerable position, not in a position to use weapons, not fighting. They were sightseeing. As this radical Islamist saw these people getting off the bus, that is when he moved and became the murdering, blood-thirsty, radical Islamist that he was. Mr. Speaker, might I inquire how much time remains?

Mr. GOHMERT. Mr. Speaker, I wanted to finish talking about this issue that has been raised about the Russians being such a big threat to our elections. Some of us have been screaming here on Capitol Hill that we need to have security of the Internet. And as part of that, one of the last things we needed to do was give control over Web site determinations to the international community. That was created as an American entity, the Internet. We had control over ICANN, the organization controlling the Web sites, and this President did irreparable damage to our security. Oh, I know he thinks he didn't, so I am not accusing anything untoward, but irreparable damage was done by giving over that power to the so-called international community. This article from John Fund, who had a great book about election fraud, points out, and he quotes from a former colleague, Rahm Emanuel: ```You never want a serious crisis to go to waste,' Rahm Emanuel, Obama's just-named chief of staff, told a Wall Street Journal conference of top CEOs in November 2008 while his boss was still President-elect. Since then a slew of constitutionally dubious executive orders, presidential emergencies, and rushed legislation have characterized the Obama presidency. Now he is leaving office by issuing a blizzard of `midnight regulations' and edicts. ``One of the most troublesome came last Friday and gave the federal government the power to begin centralizing our election systems. The Constitution explicitly gives states the power to set the `times, manner and places of holding elections.' ``But Homeland Security Secretary Jeh Johnson used the excuse of Friday's release of a report on Russian hacking of the Democratic National Committee to declare that state and local voting systems will be designated as `pieces of critical infrastructure' so that the U.S. Department of Homeland Security can protect them from hackers. ``His move--coming just 15 days before President Obama leaves office--led many experts to question both its wisdom and its constitutionality. `While the Federal Government has the general power to protect the nation's cyber infrastructure, it cannot intrude into areas of state sovereignty without clear constitutional mandate,' John Yoo, a law professor at UC Berkeley, told CNSNews.com. ```There is no federal power to control or secure elections. Each state administers its own elections, restricted only by constitutional protections for voting rights,' agreed Illya Shapiro, senior fellow in constitutional studies at the Cato Institute. `It may make sense for states to request federal support here, but it would set a dangerous precedent for a federal agency to unilaterally take over state electoral processes. ``Secretary Johnson's decision sparked outrage among many of those who are most knowledgeable about our election system--the 50 secretaries of state who, along with local officials, run the election process. Even Johnson admitted that `many of them are opposed to this designation.' ``Secretary of State Brian Kemp of Georgia, told me in an interview that Johnson's action `uses security as an excuse to subvert the Constitution and establish the basis for Federal encroachment into election systems.''' Now, Mr. Speaker, I think it is important to pause and look at what happened in this last election. Now, there have been some people saying, as I heard down at the Senate in the Kennedy Room at Jeff Sessions' hearing this morning, there were 17 intelligence agencies that agreed about the Russian hacking. Well, I am not sure. They must have seen something I didn't, but I had understood there was, like, three, and that we have been told actually they had these conclusions, but people have admitted--no, actually, they didn't hack our election system. They didn't hack any voting machines. Clapper even admitted that. Of course, he has said: I have testified very falsely. He has admitted under oath that he has not been truthful under oath to the Senate before. So as a law professor once asked: If you have admitted lying, well-- he would say--are you lying now or were you lying then? If you admit you are lying, which one is really the lie? We don't know. Is he lying now or lying then? You have said--you have told us you are a liar. Which one is it? What we find among smart juries, once they found you lied to them, is that they are not going to trust you about anything else. I think that contributed to the voting results we had. But Conservative HQ had an article: ``Russian Hacking Story A Twofer For Obama And the Left.'' Say, gee, they get to blame the Russians and they get to take control of the voting system. Well, all that has come out is somebody hacked John Podesta's emails--most likely an unprotected server like Hillary Clinton was using--and we lost secrets we may never know. But it was unprotected. Podesta's was at least protected. And people saw published what Democratic people participating in the Hillary Clinton campaign had said about Christians, Catholics, the duplicity of trying to bring down Bernie Sanders, the duplicity at debates, the if it is not illegal, the certainly rule-violating strategies of revealing questions before a debate. Shockingly, when the truth was revealed and certain people in the Hillary Clinton administration, or in their campaign, were exposed as lying about so many things, those people are now saying: Hey, when America found out we were lying, they voted against Hillary. They hurt our election. They affected our election because we were exposed as liars and it cost us votes. That is grossly unfair. The American people should never have known the truth that we were lying about so many things, that we were conspiring to bring down Bernie Sanders and defeat him unfairly. The American people weren't supposed to find those things out and, doggone it, those Russians need to be punished. Well, I don't know where it came from. And I also know, as a fact, that some intelligence personnel have lied to the chairman of our Intel Committee in the last Congress. I know it is a fact. I don't know who it was, but they did. When you have Clapper say, Yeah, I came in here and testified about a bunch of stuff that wasn't true, you wonder wouldn't it be a good idea to take those incredible individuals in our intelligence agencies that have been faithful to our country, served our country, not their political agenda, and done great things for America, let's get them in the positions of authority in the intelligence agencies. And since they have been working there, they will know what to do; they will know who to trust, who not to trust. As you find out, if you ever sit on the bench as a felony judge very long, it doesn't matter what area of life you are in, there are people that are not honest. Fortunately, in law enforcement, intelligence agencies, homeland security, places like that, in my opinion, there is a much higher number of good, honorable, honest people that care about providing for the safety of the American people. That is where we need to go. Find those people in those departments and put them in positions of leadership. We have a great opportunity now before us, and if you are agnostic or atheist, you should believe it was all a roll of the dice. This kind of stuff happens. Hey, even a pragmatist agnostic would probably say: Well, if I am honest, somebody--Julian Assange said it wasn't the Russians. Indications were it may well have been an unhappy Democratic operative in the party that provided. But wherever they came from, information was provided to the American public showing the terribly unfair and untruthful things that have been said or done, and they voted against the party that had apparently done the unfair, untruthful things. So I think we need to look, as Shakespeare would say, not to our stars, but in ourselves. Personally, I think we were mercifully given another chance to give back to the American people the power that this Congress and the executive branch has used for far too long and let America be America, not the evil parts--the KKK, the lynchings, the horrid things that mar our history--but the goodness, the part of America that would say, ``I don't care about the KKK. I am going to take you into my home. I am going to protect you''; the parts of America that said, ``I don't care what color your skin is. We are fellow human beings and we have got some good ideas and we are going to work together and we are going to raise this Nation to heights it has never seen before.'' I am hoping and praying that is where we are headed. 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, it is an honor to be here tonight at the beginning of this new year. It has been great being in east Texas this weekend, last weekend, hearing all of the hope that has arisen as we have entered this new year, 2017. I think it is going to be a good year. I am told that just on the basis of a new President coming in who is promising to throttle back, remove so much of the heavy, iron boot off of the throat of the economy that firms are starting to hire again. Businesses are making plans to expand and grow. And then we are seeing reports of plants that are deciding to stay in the United States instead of going elsewhere. There is a lot of optimism out there. There are young people that are asking what was it like back when you came out of college and had multiple job opportunities for most of the people coming out of college instead of opportunities to live with your parents or your grandparents or a parent or the other parent. They actually had multiple job opportunities, and that optimism has arisen. As we entered this year, also, it is very sad to see a form of racism and negativity that arises. I have said before publicly, and I think it is still true, we need go back no further than the confirmation hearing for Clarence Thomas to the Supreme Court. But the more you look, the more you find that the most persecuted person to be in America these days is a conservative African American. If you are Black and you are conservative, you can expect slings and arrows and hate from all over the country--vicious, mean. And it was yet another slap, as if the high-tech lynching of the Senate confirmation hearing, as grossly unfair as it was, that woman that withheld any complaints whatsoever, followed a man from job to job, never raised a complaint until he gets ready to be confirmed to the United States Supreme Court, raised allegations that can't possibly be denied or supplemented, verified--not effectively. You raise them 20-plus years. That is why we have laws on the books to protect from allegations too many years after the fact. We have statutes of limitations. If you sit on something and don't tell people for years and years, and then all of a sudden, for political reasons, you raise up allegations against someone who is basically defenseless--the thing is Clarence Thomas was not defenseless. There were like 15 people, 15 women, who came forward and said: Look, I was there around Anita Hill when these things were going on. Those things never happened. Clarence Thomas is a brilliant, fine man, over and over. Does any of that come up when HBO talks about him? Of course not because they were out to slander him, libel him, make him appear to be some crazy guy. The guy is brilliant, absolutely brilliant. Some say: well, yeah, of course the only way he got into Harvard--which, at the time, was too conservative, he thought, for him, law school after Holy Cross, and then it was too conservative, and he ends up applying to Yale and going there, one he didn't think quite as conservative. But he began to notice, as he points out in his book, that the liberals would talk to him about sports and oppression of Black people in America, and that is all they wanted to talk about. But he began to notice that two or three other conservatives, the few that there were in Yale at the time, Yale Law School, basically would talk to him about anything, and I have had a conversation, in prior years, with him about that at Yale. But it is interesting. You know, the liberals say: oh, yeah, we are the ones that care. Now you are only here because we pushed for affirmative action. You couldn't possibly be smart enough to be in a place where I am, the liberals think. So yeah, it is because of us liberals you are here. No, the guy is brilliant; he deserved to be there on his own merit, on his own intellect. He deserves to be a member of the United States Supreme Court. He deserves the acclaim that he has never properly gotten. But people who have clerked at that Court know the integrity, the intellect, the consistency of Clarence Thomas. He was maligned. They thought, basically, it was an effort to ``Bork,'' as it has come to become, or become a verb, what was done to Justice Bork, accuse him of outrageous offenses, derail his confirmation, so that this conservative, principled, qualified individual doesn't make it to the Supreme Court. Well, the effort worked on assassinating so grossly unfairly the character of Justice Bork, but it didn't work on Clarence Thomas because he is a man of steadfast faith, integrity, and not just the brilliant intellect. And it is really heartbreaking. I mean, I thought--even though I didn't support President Obama because I didn't want him taking us down a socialist road, a socialist health care road. He talked about these things. The videos were out there. He wanted to get us to where the government controlled health care, single-payer, in other words, socialized medicine, where the government gets to decide whether you get health care or whether it is any good or not and, of course, it ends up not being, most of the time, once the government has total unfettered control. I didn't want to go those places he wanted to go, but, I think the good thing is, it shows that America is above racism, and this is a man who can bind up this Nation as never before. And yet, he has spent right at 8 years now creating more division in this country than we have had since the sixties. And who was stirring it up back then? Well, he was in the middle of groups that were stirring it up back then, protege of Bill Ayers. First fundraiser he had in the home of someone who felt like it was a good idea to kill police, at least try to. I hear constant allegations that are so unfair. Those who know Jeff Sessions make some very fair observations. I noted the great fairness of someone with whom I disagree often, but Senator Susan Collins. This article from CNN Politics says: `` . . . a moderate Republican elected to the Senate the same year as Sessions in 1996, admits that she and Sessions `don't agree on a host of issues,' but she was happy to accept his''--Jeff Sessions--``request to introduce him at his confirmation hearing alongside senior Alabama Sen. Richard Shelby.'' `` `He's a decent, honorable, patriotic individual,' Collins said in an interview in her Senate office. `I felt bad he was not getting a fair shake from those who were denigrating him.' '' ``The Maine lawmaker''--Susan Collins--``is referring to allegations of racial insensitivity--the same Democrats used to block Sessions from moving through committee thirty years ago.'' ``Collins explained that she is basing her endorsement of Sessions' character on her own experience working with him over the past 20 years.'' Well, isn't that a good thing, Mr. Speaker? You have a Senator that says: You know what? I'm not going to listen to the slings and arrows. I'm going to go based on the evidence that I have seen, heard, and known for myself. You can denigrate someone all you want, but we are going based on what is real, what is factual; and God bless her for doing so. ``I don't know what happened more than 30 years ago, when Jeff was nominated to be a district court judge, and his nomination failed,' she said. `But I do know the Jeff Sessions that I have worked with in the past 20 years. And he is a good person, and I believe that he will perform very well as attorney general.'' ``Another Republican colleague who went out of his way to get to know Sessions is Sen. Tim Scott, the only African-American GOP Senator. In December, Scott invited Sessions to visit his home state of South Carolina, where the two lawmakers met with criminal justice professionals in Charleston.'' And, you know, I have such great regard for my colleagues across the aisle, but I am heartbroken that 30 years after the denial of Jeff Sessions a judicial bench, when the Jeff Sessions that I have come to know in the 12 years I have been in Congress--I have come to know him, I feel like, pretty well. He is a good, decent, fair man. He tries to follow the teachings of Jesus Christ. He tries to treat people fairly and equally. I saw this quote from assistant--he was Assistant District Attorney Thomas Harrison, who had started in helping prosecute regarding the lynching of a 19-year-old--just horrific--19-year-old African American, Michael Donald in Alabama. And the Assistant District Attorney Harrison, at the time, who prosecuted the case in State Court, he was quoted as saying: ``Sessions asked what we needed''--because Sessions was U.S. Attorney, what they needed, in other words, to go after the culprits that would do such a horrendous criminal act. And he says: `` . . . I said, in order to get a capital murder conviction, we need these things, and he''--talking about Jeff Sessions--``said that in that regard whatever the federal agents did or the FBI did he would make those things available. He did in fact do that.'' I don't know, that is the kind of Jeff Sessions I have gotten to know over the years, and it is a little heartbreaking to hear allegations about a guy. I really like him. And then to hear allegations that I have heard made about me in a grossly unfair manner. And I can't explain all of the allegations about--that are so grossly unfair about Jeff Sessions. But I can address some of the things that have been alleged to make him unfit to be Attorney General that I know are ridiculous. One of the points that was made was regarding his concern or opposition to the new Voting Rights Act extension, I guess that is what they were talking about, and I know a great deal about that. That comes through the Judiciary Committee, and I know my friend, fellow Republican, Jim Sensenbrenner, had reached an agreement with Democrat John Conyers and others, and they weren't letting amendments get through. I was trying to make the point clear, if you want to save the Voting Rights Act, you can't keep punishing a State because they did something wrong 50 years ago. That is not constitutional. And if you insist on continuing to put these punitive positions in the Voting Rights Act that will continue to punish southern States that have recorded these days, and it was pretty well true across the South, they had less racial disparity than places in the North, in Wisconsin, in Massachusetts, in California. Yet, people from these other States, because they made a majority, said: we don't care that they are--there is less racial disparateness in those southern states. There was harm 50 years ago, and there was, and it needed to be cleaned up. It desperately needed to be cleaned up, and we needed a Voting Rights Act in order to help cure the evils. But what was pushed through in a voting rights extension, with my opposition--and I don't know what Jeff's arguments were, but I know how wrong it was. And I came down here, and my friend--and I mean that--my friend, John Conyers, was sitting right there, and it was toward the end of the year. And I said: Look, I have talked to liberal law deans from different parts of the country, New York, California, Texas; and when we discuss what you have put in the Voting Rights Act, you are still treating States punitively that are now doing better than California, New York, Massachusetts, at least some districts in those States. Wisconsin had a district with a huge problem. You can't do that. It is going to be ruled unconstitutional. And I still cannot support it, but why don't we do a joint amendment and fix this? And my friend, John Conyers, he is a very honorable man, and he said: Let me talk to some of our folks. And when I talked to him before the end of the year, he said: We think it is okay, and the people I talked to think it is okay. We don't need to amend it. We are going to leave it just like it is. Well, it is wrong. Whether it is in a Voting Rights Act, whether it is in a criminal bill, a civil bill, if you are punishing people for the sins of their grandfathers or fathers, it is wrong. It is un- American. And I don't know if Jeff Sessions has called something like that un-American, but I will. When you try to punish an individual for something their father or grandfather did, that is un-American. That is wrong. And lo and behold, the liberal law professors and deans that I have talked to across the country, before I begged--well, I begged Jim Sensenbrenner. He was sitting at the back right back there. He said: Nope, we are not touching that bill. They were happy to let it go to the Supreme Court one day just the way it was. Just as I explained to John Conyers right here, just as I explained to Jim Sensenbrenner right back there, this should be struck down if the U.S. Supreme Court is going to be fair and partial and follow the Constitution. You can't keep punishing people for something their fathers or grandfathers did when they are doing better than people in your own State and you vote to punish them. Why? Because you can. Their fathers or grandfathers committed a wrong many years ago. A grievous wrong it was, and it needed correction. There are some places where it still does, but you don't keep punishing people 50 years after they bring up their problem. So I hear people say Jeff Sessions is not fit because he opposed the Voting Rights Act. I tried to clean it up. It had an un-American provision in there. I just can't believe anybody on either side of the aisle would continue to support the idea that we should punish children or grandchildren for something their father or grandfather did many years ago. This child has become an adult and they have made sure there is fairness abounding. Well, there is always going to be injustice. One of the great problems in this Justice Department is that it was always quick to take up for someone who had been shot by policemen-- before they knew any of the facts--and demonize the local police. Sometimes--in rare cases, but every now and then--they did deserve demonizing. But the Department of Justice should not demonize them before we find out the facts. In most of those cases, when we find out the facts, whether it is Baltimore or other places, most of the time people or even a professor of some kind, like the President, said he acted stupidly, talking about the policeman. It turned out the policeman conducted himself very reasonably. We never did hear whether the President apologized to the policeman or not, but the point is that the President and the Justice Department have spent 8 years dividing us in ways I did not believe were possible 8 years ago. So I hear my friends come in here and start condemning a man as not being fit to serve because of things like opposing an unconstitutional, un-American provision in the Voting Rights Act. It was then, it is today. If somebody tries to pass a punishment of some group of people for something their grandparents did, it is wrong, it is un-American. I will say it to the day I die. Now, it is very unfair. I saw it as a felony judge. It broke my heart. In chambers, but never in the courtroom itself, it would bring me to tears. I would break down when I saw the suffering of children because of the sins of their parents. But the government should not be in the business of punishing people intentionally. There was a provision in the Voting Rights Act that did just that. I also heard an allegation about Jeff Sessions either opposing a hate crime extension or hate crime bill. I can tell you from conversations I had years past, back when we were talking about hate crimes bills, we did not need hate crime laws. What was the fake news that was trotted out here in Washington, trotted out around the country? Remember what happened down in south Texas? It wasn't in my district, but I am familiar with what happened down there. There were three White guys that took a poor, decent African American, used a chain, tied him to their truck, and drug him until he was dead. It was in print and publicly. I would personally have no problem with a jury ordering a sentence, if we could put it in the law, so that the family of that victim could decide what they were going to use to drag the defendants and the terrain they would drag those White defendants over, but that is not the law. The law in Texas is that our juries can find you guilty and sentence you. Well, the juries don't actually sentence death. That is left to the judge. The juries answer three questions. I know. I have put it to juries three times. On one occasion the jury came back locked up, so I sentenced that defendant to life. On two occasions of three capital murder cases I tried to completion, the jury found unanimously, number one, he committed the murder and he knew that a murder was going to be committed; number two, that he is a future danger to society; and number three, there was no evidence that mitigated against the imposition of the death penalty. The jury comes back with yes, yes, and no; and it is left to a judge like me to look a man in the eyes and tell him that I sentence him to death. There is nothing that goes to your soul like looking someone in the eye and saying: You are going to be taken to the Texas Department of Criminal Justice and you are going to be put to death for the crimes you have committed. I believe in the death penalty, but I believe with all my heart you have to make sure due process occurs. I could care less about race. I hear these allegations about Jeff Sessions. I know Jeff and I know this is ridiculous. As I was listening to some of these broad statements just taking a swat at Jeff Sessions, a really fine, decent man, it took me right back to 20 years or so ago when I was that felony district judge in Texas and I tried capital murder cases, murder cases. Never mind the fact that I was court-appointed to appeal the capital murder conviction of an African American man and I did everything I possibly could ethically and within the law for my client, who I believed was wrongly convicted in this case. His case was overturned after my argument. I was the only one arguing for our side. I was the one that solely did the brief. Even though the family paid thousands of dollars to somebody from another State, I did the whole thing. I did it all. I didn't have a clerk do it. I did it all. His capital murder conviction was reversed. His mother used to bring me wonderful food. I loved her. I went to her funeral. She was just an incredible Christian woman and her funeral did her justice. Of course, then her daughter ran against me for Congress three times, but that is another story. Nonetheless, I can remember back when I was a felony judge and I got served with a subpoena by a defense lawyer. They had taken the position in a pleading in another court that, because I had allegedly appointed a disparate number of White people to be grand jury foremen over African Americans, I must be bigoted. Therefore, convictions in Smith County should be overturned. I think they subpoenaed another district judge or two. We had three. I knew that lawyer. He knew I wasn't a racist. He subpoenaed me and made allegations in print before he even knew who had been on my grand juries during those years I was a felony district judge, but he made the broad-based allegation that I must be racist and we have got to throw out these cases. Before I came to testify, he actually got the list of my grand jurors. I didn't get to choose the grand jurors. Those were chosen by grand jury commissioners. The commissioners chose the grand jury members. I got to choose the grand jury foremen. I didn't care about race. I didn't care about gender. I appointed people because, when I looked at the background, the little bios we had on each of the grand jury members, I wanted somebody that was going to be a leader on that grand jury. I didn't care about race. When the criminal defense lawyers did their homework after they made allegations, they notified me that I would not be called as a witness because I appointed too many African American grand jury foremen. Therefore, it was a disparate number of African Americans. It was too many. Therefore, I would hurt their case because I would show that maybe I was more biased for African Americans than against them. I didn't care about race. I can remember a couple of grand jury foremen. One of them was, I think, an assistant school superintendent. I knew the guy. He was a solid citizen. I had seen him in action. He was a real leader in the community. He was an honest, fair man. I thought he would be great as a grand jury foreman. And he was. Probably the best grand jury foreman I ever appointed--she was a saint--was Ms. Glass. I knew enough about her when I saw she was on the grand jury, I knew she would be the foreman. That woman was a saint. She was organized and she called things like they were. You couldn't help but fall in love with Ms. Glass if you were around her for any length of time at all. Those memories of getting a subpoena alleging that I am a racist until they actually did their homework and found out, oops, he may be too pro-African American, we don't want him to testify, I got that same feeling when I was hearing those allegations against Jeff Sessions. It is not based on facts. It is: Oh, we just had the feeling that maybe he was being unfair. I think somebody mentioned the Southern Poverty Law Center or something. I know that the Southern Poverty Law Center, in my opinion, after they incited hatred against the Family Research Council, incited hatred against other people. The Southern Poverty Law Center was supposed to be the antithesis of hate. Yet, they stirred up a guy so much that he would go into their lobby and try to kill people at the Family Research Council. It is more of this craziness. The Bible warns of us a day when up will be down, right will be wrong. I keep wondering, Are we there? We hear from people at the civil rights commission that maybe Christians are the big hate group in the country. Really? It is the only religion that is truly based on love because to be a Christian, you have to believe God so loved the world that He gave His only Son, that whoever believed in His Son would not perish but have everlasting life. And then His Son so loved the world that He laid down His life for people, even as they called Him names and mocked Him. It is a religion of love. It is not a religion of hate. Yet, right is wrong, up is down, let's call somebody that wants justice and fairness a racist. Really, is that fair? So, supposedly, Jeff Sessions--I think this was alleged at him at one point--is not fit to serve as Attorney General because he is for vouchers. Mr. Speaker, when you hear from African Americans here in Washington, D.C., about how their children have suffered under horrendous gang conditions in a school, and then for this Camelot-type moment they got vouchers--they won the lottery--that Republicans pushed for, they got to go to great schools. These kids that had been oppressed and shoved in either being in gangs or dealing with gangs, they got to go get a good education because they got a voucher. When you have an African American mom cry before you and say: My other kids, are they going to have to go face the gangs? Why can't they go be a doctor or an engineer? I don't think it is hate. I don't think it is prejudice that has your heart ache for a mom like that and says: Yeah, yeah, why don't we give moms and dads or whoever is taking care of the kids money. You go to the school. It is not an indictment of public schools. We didn't have kindergarten. All 12 years of mine were in public schools. I had fantastic teachers, incredible, inspiring. I was going to major in history at A&M on an Army scholarship, so it didn't matter much what I majored in. I knew I was going in the Army for 4 years. I hoped to go to law school some day if we weren't at war. But my math teachers in public schools--7th grade, Ms. Edwards. In high school I had fantastic math teachers. Although some students didn't like them, I loved them. They were great. College algebra, we had a professor who let us either turn in our homework that we had to do for every--it was a Monday, Wednesday, Friday class--turn in the homework or he would give you one question at the beginning of each class. If you didn't want to do the homework, you had to take that one question. If you answered it wrong, you got a zero for the day. I didn't open my book until 15 minutes before the final and never did the homework because my 7th grade teacher, Ms. Edwards, and all my math teachers in high school were so good. I had the foundation. It was there. Of course, I enjoyed math, but I made an A. It was easy because of the public school training I got, but not every public school has that advantage. I had the advantage of having an 8th grade English teacher for a mother, and she was in public school until the brain tumor took her. That is a burden. You come home after football practice: ``I am going to go lay down. I am exhausted, Mom.'' ``Oh, what are you going to lay when you get there?'' ``Okay. All right. I am going to lie down. Are you happy? Just cut me some slack. I am going to go lie down.'' Well, that is living with a public schoolteacher. I miss her and love her. But because I think--or if Jeff Sessions feels the same way--I think he may--heck, if schools are not teaching children to read and write so they can excel and become president of their company or President of the country, then let them go to a school. I think public schools will end up winning out. They have got the wherewithal to have the best schools. They just don't have any incentives. That was the purpose of vouchers, to provide incentive. I have heard the allegation that Trump, you know, was a birther. I haven't had a lot of conversations with Trump. I have had a number of them. But my impression was that he never said that--maybe he did, I just didn't hear him say Obama was not born in America. But I know I have heard people say repeatedly that, I, Louie Gohmert, am a birther. Which is a lie. I have never, ever, ever said that. Yet, it became such a credo of the left, some guy on FOX News one night--I think he was on Megyn Kelly, a Democratic consultant. She says, Tell me somebody that hates--Well, Louie Gohmert is a birther, he said. And if I recall correctly--I am pretty sure I do--he later wrote an article: Okay, okay, Gohmert never actually said that Barack Obama was not an American citizen, but he did support the birther bill, therefore, he is a birther. Well, that takes me back to August--I guess it was July of 2009; I believe it was--and my friend Bill Posey from Florida had a little 2- page bill. It may have been 2 and just a hair at the top of the third page. I think it was a little bit at the top of the third page, just over 2 pages. And it was a good bill. I read the bill. I try to do that before I will ever agree to support a bill. And I read the bill. I recall that The New York Times and The Washington Post, I think around January of 2008, raised the issue of whether or not John McCain was qualified under the Constitution to be President of the United States because, apparently, he was born in the Panama Canal Zone. Gee, is that being a natural citizen, born in the Canal Zone? His dad was in the Navy, military. So, yeah, maybe so. The New York Times and The Washington Post raised the issue. I was in Israel during August when I got word that I was being accused of being a birther. I can recall out here in the Speaker's lobby a whole slew of reporters wanting to know about my being a birther. One of them, at the time, was with The Washington Post. I knew she was a good reporter. That is why she is not there now. I couldn't believe it. It was kind of: Et tu, Brute? Really, you think I am a birther? Well, I understand from the White House that you signed on the bill, and, if I recall the words correctly, it was to delegitimize the President and have him thrown out of office. I said, wow. I think those were the words. It was something like that, but it was exactly the words that every reporter who approached me was using: You are trying to delegitimize the President and have him thrown out of office? I think Doonesbury used words like that. So when, privately, this one reporter caught me in another place and said: I understand you are a birther; you are on the birther bill? I said: Are you talking about Bill Posey's bill? She said: Yeah, the birther bill. I said: Have you read it? She said: Well, no, but I know it is trying to delegitimize the President and have him thrown out of office. I said: Tell you what, I haven't been giving statements to these ridiculous allegations. I think I gave a written one I dictated from Israel, but when I was here, it was just absurd. I said: I tell you what, you read the Posey bill. It is just barely over 2 pages. You read that bill, and if you still want a statement from me, I will give you as long a statement as you want. The next time I saw her, I said: Did you read the Posey bill? She said: Yeah. It didn't do anything they said it was going to do. Exactly. It was a very well-conceived bill. It was not a birther bill. But in the mind of Rahm Emanuel, he saw it as an opportunity to allege that someone was racist, a birther, accusing the President of not being an American citizen. Because my thought was: Well, if he is born to an American mother, what difference does it make? Is it really-- But I do still find it interesting that the President wouldn't come forward, as anybody else in America would, and say: Here is my birth certificate. It took Donald Trump making a demand for him to finally come forward. Who knows if that is the right one or not. But I never had any issue with Barack Obama being an American citizen. I didn't have any question. I do think he should have come forward and shut down the noise much sooner, but I think he and Rahm Emanuel liked using that and liked to call people like me a birther even though it was an absolute lie. I never believed the President was not an American citizen. Yes, I signed on to that Bill Posey bill. What Bill Posey's bill has been for, what, 11 years now--well, no, I am sorry, 8 years now it has been called a birther bill. All it did--anybody can go read Posey's bill from back in 2009--it said, before a candidate for his or her party's nomination, or pursues his or her party's nomination for President, the party must make a determination that that individual meets the qualifications of the Constitution. And it would not kick in until 2012. So the crud these reporters were getting from somebody in the White House--maybe Rahm Emanuel. Who knows? It sounded like Rahm. But whoever sent them the information, whoever sent Garry Trudeau the false lies that he used for a strip never bothered to read the bill and see that the allegations of birtherism--whatever that is--was just a lie. It said beginning in 2012. Nobody was trying to get anybody thrown out of office, but that made perfect sense. So the next time The Washington Post and The New York Times raised an issue of whether or not somebody like John McCain was really qualified to be President, you would get it resolved long before that person got elected President. I couldn't imagine a worse horror for America than to have someone elected President and then get thrown out after they are elected. We are talking about massive riots. We are talking about destroying this country, just dividing it even worse than this administration has been able to do on its own. I didn't want to yank a President out of office, but I thought Bill Posey thought of a very fair way to deal with it. By the way, those who were concerned about my friend Ted Cruz being appropriate to be President, meeting the constitutional requirements, I thought, well, gosh, if the left hadn't so demonized Bill Posey's bill, he had the framework that would get this all out of the way long before you ever got to a party nomination so that the party had it all resolved, and you couldn't come in at the last minute after the nomination, saying: Nope, you didn't go to the--it would take care of it. I had a Supreme Court Justice say years ago: Gee, if there is no legislation that sets up a foundation or an enabling process, then don't come running to the Supreme Court. If you are not going to do your job and set it up or have enabling legislation come out of Congress, don't come running to us to fix what you are not doing. And he wasn't talking about anything specific, but I thought about those comments. Well, great, the Posey bill would be terrific enabling legislation. And if the White House wasn't so freaked out over Bill Posey's legitimate bill, the Ted Cruz issue would not have been an issue at all. It would have been long determined long before we got into a heated race in the primary, because before a party chair could accept the application to become a candidate, it had to determine whether or not that candidate met the constitutional requirements. And if somebody wanted to challenge, then they would need to come forward and do it at that point, and you get it all worked out. It was a good bill. But poor Bill Posey has been so vilified for coming up with a good idea that was branded as a racist birther. It was a really legitimate bill. And I keep coming back to this. It reminds me of what I am hearing being said about Jeff Sessions--a very decent man. I don't try to push my religious beliefs on others, but it is a part of who I am as a Christian. I try to forgive others, and I have been amazed by the grace of God how I have been able to forgive people who have really jerked me around and even work with people that have really stabbed me in the back before. But I have been amazed. Jeff Sessions was called all kinds of things in 1986, yet 10 years later he is elected to the Senate. He never sought any kind of revenge against those who did him so unfairly and unjustly because he cared about justice and doing the right thing. This country needs to heal. If people are going to keep screaming racism when it appears the biggest source of racism may have been all those people who told me, well, I wanted to vote for the first Black American in our history and I really didn't know much about politics, you mean you voted for someone because of the color of their skin? Yes, I wanted to be able to tell future generations I voted for the first Black President. I wanted to do that, too. That is why I voted for Alan Keyes in 1996. Sorry, Phil Gramm; I know you are from my State, but I just really thought a lot of the intellect and integrity of Alan Keyes, and I still do. That is why his son works for me. He is brilliant, fair, smart, and pretty doggone funny too. But I don't care about race, and we need to quit throwing this ``racist'' term about. Enough already. Let's give Jeff Sessions a fair hearing. Let's look at what his record really is. And if he, like I did, opposed an unconstitutional punishment of a future generation who had done no wrong for something grandparents had done, then he is right. That is unconstitutional. It is un-American. I am grateful that Donald Trump has nominated a man like Jeff Sessions for the Senate. God bless Jeff Sessions. I yield back the balance of my time.

Mr. GOHMERT

Mr. GOHMERT. Mr. Speaker, today we took up what was intended to be a very noble action on H. Res. 11 to rein in the out-of-control and outrageous actions of so many despots that occupy positions of authority in the United Nations. The United Nations, whether you go back to Libya being in charge of human rights, you have U.N. troops molesting so many females. There are all kinds of problems that have been wrought, and yet the U.N. has the gall to continually show how bigoted it is and how anti-Jewish and anti-Israeli that it is. It is easy to find, if anyone bothers to check, that the United Nations never asked once for any other country to pony up land, much less demand that other countries like Jordan, who is a good friend of the United States, but the U.N. never said: Look, you are occupying this land that they call Palestine, so you have to give it up. They never did until it was controlled by the Israeli people, thus making clear this is really a bigoted move by the U.N. to constantly slander and slam the nation of Israel. Also, if one wants to conduct another test to check to see how bigoted, if it is, the U.N. is, you could check on the condemnations by the U.N. for activities of Israel. Compare the facts of those activities and self-defense efforts by Israel and compare them to acts of other nations--the genocide, for example, that even Secretary Kerry, as tough as it was for him to finally admit that there was a genocide of Christians going on in the Middle East. Is there any outrage by the U.N.? No. In fact, the U.N. head of the refugees who is now the U.N. General Secretary made clear about over a year and a half ago or so that the reason that they weren't helping Christians to the extent that they were helping Muslim refugees is because of the historic importance Christians have in staying where they were--that means where they are being murdered, where they are having their throats slashed, being crucified, tortured, raped, incinerated. The U.N. General Secretary, when he was in charge of the refugee program, thought it was very important to leave Christians in the Middle East so they can be murdered in some of the most heinous and egregious fashions imaginable. So it was just and proper, to borrow from history, that we condemn the United Nations Resolution 2334 as being an obstacle to peace in Israel. Palestinians have made clear they don't want peace with Israel. They want it eliminated from the map. They name holidays, squares, and all kinds of things for people who go out and kill innocent Jewish children and others just for being Jewish. They reward the families of those who go and blow themselves up, killing, in atrocious fashions, innocent Israeli people. The United Nations turns a blind eye to it since the U.N. has become so racist, so bigoted, and so anti-Israel, the most antiterrorist country in all of the Middle East, including north Africa--although Egypt is of great help in that regard these days, and there are those in Libya who would like to. But after President Obama helped turn Libya into absolute anarchy and chaos, then Egypt is having their problems even coming from Libya. What has the U.N. had to say about all that? Not really anything because if the Muslim Brotherhood supports it, so does, basically, the U.N., and far too often so has the Obama administration. That is why, I guess, Israel got the lecture from Secretary John Kerry. Secretary Kerry, even in the days when he talked about the heinous acts of Genghis Khan, never bothered to mention the plight of the poor Palestinians before 1967 when they were under control of the most non-Israeli people you could imagine. There has been no discussion about that, only leveling really bigoted allegations at Israel. So we have H. Res. 11 today, and I was thrilled because it meant that I was going to be able to come to the floor and vote to condemn the U.N. passage of U.N. Security Council Resolution 2334. Unfortunately, as some of my friends here in Congress have pointed out, I am a bit anal at times. I actually want to read the things that we are going to vote on. So I got my copy of H. Res. 11, immediately noting that, in the very first whereas, it says the United States has long supported a two-state solution. It does say ``sustainable two- state solution.'' It says: ``Whereas since 1993, the United States has facilitated direct, bilateral negotiations between both parties toward achieving a two-state solution . . . .'' Well, it is the truth that President Clinton twisted the arm of the Israeli Prime Minister and convinced him to basically give Arafat almost everything he wanted. Now, if you believe what Scripture says about Moses going and pleading to Pharaoh to let the Jewish people, the children of Israel, go, we are told that God hardens Pharaoh's heart so that He could make a big demonstration of His power and glory down the road. Although there was suffering that came--great suffering--ultimately, incredible miracles were performed as a result of his hardened heart. I think it is likely that when Arafat got everything he wanted-- almost everything he wanted--in the offer from Israel, I thank God that Arafat turned him down. For anybody that has been in the military and goes to Israel, you can see readily, if Arafat had accepted what the Prime Minister of Israel had been willing, finally, to offer, it would have virtually made Israel indefensible unless they were using nuclear weapons or the threat of nuclear weapons. Israel needs to be able to defend itself. King David was ruling from Hebron in the year around 1020 B.C. to around 1012 B.C. Then he moved, and he was ruling over Israel. What is now called the West Bank was actually called Israel--I mean, it was part of the nation of Israel. Solomon had control, but he did so from the City of David because that is where, up to Jerusalem, that David had moved the capital from Hebron, which is also where Abraham and Sarah are buried. I have also visited the tomb of David's father, Jesse, that is there in Hebron. To be told: Oh, no, this needs to be Palestinian lands. The reason some of us think that Hebron, Judea, and Samaria should be Palestinian lands is because 1,600 years after David ruled from Hebron and then Jerusalem, Mohammed came along. Some say it was a vision, some say a dream. Some say he actually, during one night, was taken by a winged horse or donkey and flown to Jerusalem. Some say he actually got there and back to bed before morning. Whatever the case, 1,600 years before that did or didn't happen, David was ruling over that whole country. There is no one alive today descended from any occupants of the Promised Land, the land of Israel, descended from people who lived in that land predating King David and King Saul before him, King Solomon after him--nobody. Nobody alive today has a prior claim. There is nobody, no country, from whom the United Nations has demanded a secession of land back to people that attacked that country and the land was taken back in a defensive mode in protection from the attack. So at page 3 of our H. Res. 11, it points out that the U.N. resolution is a major obstacle to the achievement of the two-state solution. At the bottom of page 5, it says: ``A durable and sustainable peace agreement between Israel and the Palestinians will come only through direct bilateral negotiations between the parties resulting in a Jewish, democratic state living side-by-side next to a demilitarized Palestinian state in peace and security.'' Mr. Speaker, there cannot be peace and security in the Middle East when a people are allowed to occupy an area, and those people continue, with the encouragement of the United Nations, with John Kerry and this President, to conduct intensive terrorism on the people of Israel and we continue to condemn the victims of that terrorism. You can't have peace in a land where the most powerful nation-- possibly the most powerful nation up to now. We were at one time. Our Navy is down, I think, to pre-World War I standards, and our troops are down below pre-World War II. But at one time, we were the most powerful nation. The most powerful or near most powerful nation is taking up for the victims and encouraging that the victims give away more of the land that they have already given so much of to those who are inflicting terror upon them. It is like my friends on the far left, constantly complaining about bullies, who never had been bullied like I was as a small child because I was very small in elementary school. I got beat up a lot, and I defended myself, but it didn't matter. When people are coming after you that are a foot and a half taller than you are and they flunked two grades, you are not going to come out well. My fifth grade teacher, after I got beat up trying to get back my football I got for Christmas, took me up in front of the class. My nose is still bleeding, dripping down my shirt. She said: I want everybody to see what happens when the little boys try to play with the big boys. She always took up for the bullies. And that is what this administration has been doing and this is what this United Nations has been doing: taking up for the terrorist bullies. I am amazed that the nation of Israel has held back all hell breaking loose on the Gaza Strip because of the continued assaults day after day, sending rockets into Israel, Israel spending millions of dollars to protect themselves against the constant attack from the Gaza Strip. And what happens? They try to protect themselves with a legitimate blockade to make sure nobody is taking rockets in, and the U.N. and world opinion goes nuts over that. Page 6 of our resolution we voted on today goes on to say that the House of Representatives calls for United Nations Security Council 2334 to be repealed or fundamentally altered so that it is no longer one- sided and anti-Israel. Here is my problem again. B, it allows all final status issues toward a two-state solution be resolved and have direct negotiations between the parties. Nobody at the U.N., if we are a part of it, and nobody in the United States administration should even mention the little phrase ``two-state solution.'' This body should not even mention in a resolution that we are in any way endorsing a two-state solution. I know there are a lot of Christians that aren't as familiar with the Bible, perhaps, as they will be one day, but my friend, Joel Rosenberg, pointed out numerous times in the book of Joel, chapter 3: For look. In those days and at that time I will return the exiles to Judah and Jerusalem. Then I will gather all the nations. I will bring them down to the Valley of Jehoshaphat. I will enter into judgment against them there concerning my people Israel, who are my inheritance, whom they scattered among the nations. Then it lists the number one grievance that the God of the Bible, the God I believe in, had against those nations he is going to rain down only hell judgment on. The number one grievance is: they partitioned my land. They divided my land, the promised land. When the United States Congress embraces, demands that Israel be divided into separate states instead of being able to live in, peacefully, the land that was occupied and promised over 3,000 years ago, I think we are making a big mistake. That is why I had to vote ``no'' on the resolution. Now just as our leadership rushed this resolution to the floor, I am hopeful they will rush H. Res. 311 to the floor. I filed it today, this afternoon. H. Res. 311 is very basic. It says: ``To withhold United States assessed and voluntary contributions to the United Nations, and for other purposes. ``Be it enacted by the Senate and House of Representatives of the United States of America in Congress assembled, ``Section 1. Short title. ``This Act may be cited as the `Refusing to Assist Paying for United Nations Actions Against Israel Act' ''. United States assessed involuntary contributions to the United Nations. That is section 2. And the operative wording says: ``No funds are authorized to be appropriated or otherwise made available for assessed or voluntary contributions of the United States to the United Nations or to any organ, specialized agency, commission, treaty or treaty body, or other affiliated body of the United Nations . . . `' It goes on: `` . . . until such time as United Nations Security Council Resolution 2334, regarding Israel's Settlements in the West Bank and East Jerusalem, is repealed in its entirety.'' Then, section 3 says: ``No funds are authorized to be appropriated or otherwise made available to pay interest on assessed or voluntary contributions that are withheld under this Act.'' So the purpose of that is I am hoping and praying that this body will not just pay lip service to a U.N. resolution, and actually embrace, as John Kerry, apparently, was saying that day, not much difference between AIPAC's position in supporting this resolution. He may not have mentioned they would support the resolution, but AIPAC's position and John Kerry's position. If you look at what is in the resolution, he may have something there. This would actually put some teeth into it. This is something that would send a message to the United Nations and the nations around the world that if you are going to continue to be so anti-Israel, so bigoted, so racist, so anti-Jewish, then the United States is not going to continue to fund your outrageous, bigoted activities, your lush, lavish lifestyle. I would think if we could pass this, the United Nations delayed in withdrawing that resolution or rescinding it, then that should ultimately lead to our denial of any visas to diplomats of the United Nations. Then, once that occurs, apparently under the deed to the United Nations, it was only for such time as the headquarters in New York--is the main headquarters of the United Nations. So if they can't get diplomats there, they will have to move the headquarters elsewhere and that land would be ceded back to the foundation. Hopefully, if we will go ahead and do something that has teeth in it and not embrace language that will be fatal to this nation of Israel, we can make a difference. That can bring peace in the world. Terrorists only understand power, and sometimes power is conveyed in the way of money. We should not be funding a United Nations that is so bigoted and so hateful to the nation of Israel. Mr. Speaker, I yield back the balance of my time.

Mr. GOHMERT

Mr. GOHMERT. ``The Vice President of the United States shall be President of the Senate, but shall have no vote, unless they be equally divided. ``The Senate shall chuse their other officers, and also a President pro tempore, in the absence of the Vice President, or when he shall exercise the office of President of the United States.''

Mr. GOHMERT

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

Mr. GOHMERT

Mr. GOHMERT. Mr. Speaker, we are going to be taking up a resolution that is designed to reflect our discontent with the resolution of the United Nations. I am totally in favor of expressing our discontent. I think we ought to cut our funds to the U.N. until such time as Resolution 2334 is repealed. But the resolution today, at four different places, refers to our push in the United States for a two-state solution in Israel. Look, Hebron is in what was the promised land. David ruled from there for the first 7 years he was King over Israel. Hebron is part of the two-state solution going to the Palestinians. How did the Palestinians deserve the land that was given as the promised land 1,600 years before Muhammad even existed? I can't vote for the resolution when we are advocating what Joel 3 says will bring judgment down upon our Nation for trying to partition Israel--can't do it.

Mr. GOHMERT

Mr. GOHMERT. Mr. Speaker, it is an honor to get to come into this hallowed Hall and to have a chance to address our peers. It was a rather enjoyable day yesterday, even with all the vitriol, but I was reminded and couldn't help but reminisce a bit and walk a bit down memory lane yesterday as we heard from Members of the House on the other side of the aisle expressing repeatedly a desire to have open debate and not shut off debate. The reminiscing took me back to a time last year when, as far as we could find, the only time in American history one party in the United States Congress physically prevented another party from coming to the floor and going into session and trying to begin debate and trying to discuss the business of the day. We can't find that any party ever staged such a sit-in. We know there are House rules about not eating on the House floor and about not having things to drink on the House floor other than water, and yet our friends across the aisle were eating and drinking. It is actually a violation of the House rules to sing on the House floor. Every now and then, people look the other way from the violation, but certainly not to take pictures and broadcast. I approached the Sergeant at Arms and asked him why this wasn't stopped. I was told: Well, they won't stop; we have told them repeatedly. I said: Well, you won't let Republicans get away with this kind of conduct. They are preventing debate. They are preventing a session from starting timely. This has been going on for hours. I was told: Well, Congressman, when we tell you Republicans that you are violating a rule, you stop and you follow the rules. We have told them repeatedly, and they will not stop violating the rules. They will not stop preventing you from going into session, so we don't know what else to do. Mr. Speaker, I had issues like that when I was a felony judge, and they didn't last long because we had bailiffs who would drag people out to stop such inappropriate conduct. It just seemed that, in this potentially last bastion of civility where we can use words and debate issues, it is rather ironic, to say the least, to be preached to repeatedly about the desire for open debate and the desire to not be shut down from speaking when that is exactly what happened last year by the very people who were standing up, and some of them were reading a script pointing out how offended they were by being prevented by the rules under which we have been proceeding from going forward and debating. So it is rather ironic and rather incredible actually. I also recall back when we were debating ObamaCare and some of us wanted to get amendments into ObamaCare. Of course, some of us remember the fact that John Dingell was chairman of the Committee on Energy and Commerce that had jurisdiction over the healthcare debate and the healthcare bill. He has been working for a healthcare bill, something like what passed, for all of his time, as I am aware of, in the House. I was told by someone that his father may have worked for the same bill for years. So that was something that was going to be a crowning glory for an incredibly honorable man. We see differently on many issues, but I know him to be an honest and honorable man. His word has always been good. When he has given it, it was always the way it is. I have great respect for him. Anyway, he understood that the cap-and-trade bill that was being pushed here in the House by then-Speaker Pelosi was going to unduly harm the Nation's poor more than anybody else in the country. If you are very rich, if you are on Wall Street, you are friends of the Obama administration, and you have gotten $656 million in grants to open a non-carbon-based energy facility, you are not worried about the price of anything because your friends in the Obama administration were giving you millions and billions of dollars that you could fritter away as you wished. But for our Nation's middle class, lower middle class, and poor that don't have the ability to absorb increasing energy costs, the cap-and- trade bill would have been devastating. That is why, when John Dingell was asked about the cap-and-trade bill, he responded something to the effect that it is not only a tax, it is a great big tax, it will unfairly hit the poor, and he was not going to bring that bill out of committee. So Speaker Pelosi, at that time, took whatever actions were required to remove him as chair and replace him with Henry Waxman. Chairman Waxman made clear: We don't need your votes; we don't want your input; so we don't care what you want in the healthcare bill. Joe Barton, the longest serving Texan in the House right now, had indicated, as a former chair of that same committee, that it is interesting if John Dingell--the consummate professional and honorable man that he is--had been allowed to remain as chairman of that committee, he would have instinctively gotten Republican input into that bill and included things in the bill that Republicans would have had a hard time voting against. If he had been allowed to remain as chairman of the Energy and Commerce Committee, John Dingell would have probably been able to get a bill through that would not even be taken up by this body to be repealed and ripped out by its roots. Hopefully that is what we are going to be able to do with the extremely partisan bill. There were groups that were telling Republicans: Look, of course we are negotiating with the Obama administration. We have got to have a seat at the table. I would tell them: Not when you are on the menu. But there were groups like the Big Pharma, like the American Hospital Association, the AMA, and some of the health insurance businesses that ended up getting behind it. Of course, AARP totally sold out retired folks because they were going to make hundreds of millions--billions perhaps--more than they would have without ObamaCare being passed. They had no interest in supporting a bill like I proposed that would have ended any need for a senior citizen to ever have to pay for supplemental insurance on top of Medicare; they would have been totally covered. But I didn't realize, at the time I asked them to support it in 2009, that the year before they had made, I think, over $400 million or so in profit as a nonprofit organization on getting their members to buy their insurance that they had sponsored and put their mark of approval on. So anyway, there were people that were going to make a lot of money. But I could see that in the end it would probably spell the doom of the pharmaceutical industry. Yes, it would be years down the road; yes, there would be executives at pharmaceutical companies who would see massive billions of dollars come in more than would have otherwise; and, yes, they would likely take their golden parachutes and their millions in severance in retirement and be gone before they were relegated to perhaps producing medications without getting reimbursement for research and development. This is the way this whole ObamaCare thing would have eventually played out, and still they got on board with ObamaCare because they were going to make short-term extra billions of dollars. So having all of that in mind, as it has all appeared to me, it had just been astounding to be here yesterday and hear all the comments about the inability to have open debate. I have talked to numerous friends across the aisle who were greatly troubled over the last 6 years. Actually, the Office of Congressional Ethics was started by Speaker Pelosi. You are allowed to file complaints without anybody knowing who filed the complaint. The OCE is then able to go after a Member of Congress and start demanding things that they could not possibly be entitled to under the Constitution if a Member of Congress were getting due process. I haven't been run through the ringer like so many have. But when you set up a process like that, and you have the Office of Congressional Ethics set up, they have no one at all to whom they are accountable--no one--and they are encouraged, even if they filed the complaints themselves, to enable them to continue to grow from the little office they had over here in the Longworth Building. I am told they have a massive amount of space in one of the big Federal buildings now, and they continue to grow. So apparently, they were offended that their budget was cut and they were put under the Ethics Committee so that they would have some accountability. There were an awful lot of great people--good friends--across the country that did not know about how unconstitutionally they had been acting--I mean more abusive even than the IRS at times from the reports of some of my colleagues to me of what they have been through. I stand here, Mr. Speaker, as a judge who has had to look people in the eye and sentence them to death--something that is never taken lightly. I may be the only person here in Congress who has ever looked someone in the eye and sentenced them to death and been appointed as counsel against my wishes to represent an indigent defendant on appeal from a capital murder conviction under sentence of death and was able, appropriately, to have his case reversed and to save his life as the law should have been. So I feel rather strongly that, yes, people should be accountable, but they must have due process, and that is not what is provided for by the OCE. Wonderful people, including our incoming President, were not aware of just how crazy the abuses have been. One of the Members was telling me yesterday that he was out about half a million dollars in attorney's fees responding to ridiculous demands and still never got to know who the accuser was. You don't get to necessarily even see what the specific complaint is. So we didn't do a good job of educating people of how grossly unfair the OCE process was, could be, but everybody in Congress, the judiciary, and executive branch needs someone to whom they are accountable, and that would include the OCE. We have got to do something about this, but we do need to go about it in an appropriate way to make sure that, once again, justice is done. But when you hear ``ethics watchdog group,'' then immediately you think, Gee, they are going to stop an ethics watchdog group? That is outrageous. That is what I would think if I didn't know all the background. So it made for an interesting day yesterday, but I have been amazed, though, that some who have told me that they wanted to eliminate the OCE who stand up on the other side of the aisle and preach about ethics, apparently referring to the effort to place OCE and make them accountable under somebody for a change--in this case, under the Ethics Committee--and would demagogue the issue, in essence, when they have been mistreated by the OCE, according to what I have been told by them in the past. So I think if we can just set the politics aside and work together for appropriate due process, we can have a bipartisan group that could work out something that would create due process and would make people accountable so that when you have somebody with $90,000 of cold, hard cash in their freezer, there is accountability. In that case, it was a crime and it needed to be addressed. So there does need to be accountability. I know we have friends here. I saw my friend, Steve King, at the back just a moment ago. We feel strongly that when a Federal judge intentionally refuses to go along with what they know the Constitution says, that ought to be an impeachable offense. They are not keeping their oath, and that is as offensive as anything is when it comes from a judge. They ought to be able to impeach a judge like that. I don't think we have done enough removal, impeachment of judges who have violated their oath. Yes, we were removing a judge who had committed sexual assault. Well, that should have been a no-brainer, but that took literally an act of Congress to eventually get that done. For another judge, it was not until we actually impeached him for his terribly inappropriate actions of suppressing information when he was being investigated for being a Federal judge, but from his days as a State judge. Apparently, as a State judge, he didn't have a problem, if tuition was due for his son, to just send the secretary or somebody to one of the law offices which he often appoints and then have them fill up the envelope with a bunch of cash and use that to pay his son's tuition. That didn't seem to be a problem for that judge. Those are all things that should have been appropriately taken into account before he was ever made a Federal judge. I see my friend here on the floor. I yield to the gentleman from California (Mr. LaMalfa).

Mr. GOHMERT. I recall being told when that was going on and after it happened that Republicans should not respond, and that we were assured that people who violated the rules back then would be punished. Well, adopting rules now, specific penalties, don't really punish people that violated those very rules last year. So I am surprised that there is any complaint at all since basically it means people who violated the rule with such abandon would complain about inserting a specific penalty now, meaning they got a free one. They didn't even get probation. They got nothing. They got pardoned, basically. Perhaps it is not too late for those that feel like putting a penalty in place now is unfair. I don't think it is too late. It is not unusual to have punishment assessed in a felony case 6 months or more after an event. Perhaps if they think it is unfair, then we ought to have ethics hearings on what happened back then. I haven't heard of the OCE, by the way, taking any action on such widespread abuse that didn't require investigation. All you needed was footage that was being streamed out from the very violators of the rules. So it should have been an easy thing to pursue, if OCE were really that interested in making sure our rules were not violated. I yield to my friend.

Mr. GOHMERT. I thank my friend, Mr. LaMalfa for great insights. Such truth. I also was just advised this afternoon that the EPA, apparently in accordance with some frenzied effort to have this administration put as problematic regulations in place to stifle the economy, stifle and skyrocket further costs of energy, has apparently given notice to all gas operators that they have 60 days to comply. One such operator in Texas was saying the date on the notice says it was received December 15, but he was out of the country. Somebody in the building accepted it. The date for the 60-day compliance kicks in January 18, 2 days before President-elect Donald Trump would be able to strike such an arbitrary and capricious regulation down. Apparently, they must have backdated the 60-day compliance before they ever got notice saying you have got until January 18 to comply. So what we have heard from so many small-business owners, they get notices like this: You have all of a sudden got to comply. You have got to give us all these records, those records. It has cost them a fortune. It has stifled their ability to expand their business and hire more people and give more people opportunity and give more people opportunity to make more money than they had been making. Those have been so completely stifled by this administration. I understand there was a political article glorifying the great efforts of the Obama administration in helping the economy, and to justify that, took one quarter out of, I guess--four times eight--32 quarters and said, ``Look what they did in this one quarter,'' when actually, as I understood, if you take the whole term that we have numbers on and adjust the growth for inflation, President Obama's administration, his policies, his crony capitalism, helping people with no-bid contracts like IBM, giving $1.6 billion to this company to create mirrors to heat water and however much it was, hundreds of millions for Solyndra--there are just so many companies. They have squandered so much money. And yet, with all the money squandered, the economy grew, when adjusted for inflation, at about half the growth rate during the Jimmy Carter administration. Now, I understand this administration is extremely proud of what they accomplished, but I would humbly submit, Mr. Speaker, if your policies cause the economy to grow at half the rate of the Jimmy Carter administration, you have done more damage to the American people and the American economy than you have done good, and that is for sure. And that is at a time when, scientifically, we were having such breakthroughs that we found out we could actually be totally energy independent if this administration had not been spending so much money on too expensive of sources of energy and all the other things this administration supported. We had a hearing in Chairman Rob Bishop's Committee on Natural Resources in our Subcommittee on Oversight and Investigations, a hearing on some of the abuses. I know there are legitimate groups and businesses that have invested in this idea of having this fantastic carbon-free energy production out in California, and, yes, it took a massive amount of acreage. I believe it was Federal land that they were allowed to use. I believe. I am not certain. I was intrigued, they were going to create all these mirrors that would reflect the Sun's light in concentrated amounts towards three different towers, and the towers would then be superheated, superheat the water, turn the water to steam. The steam would turn turbines that would produce electricity. If I recall correctly, they got $1.6 billion in government loan; and to help them make their loan payment, they got over $600 million in grants. When I asked over this period of time that they have been operating how much of their $1.6 billion in government loan was paid back, I believe he said $6 million had been paid back from, it may have been, $656 million that they had given to them by this administration. But we also came to find out that apparently there have been problems. One of the towers got super-superheated and was totaled, was destroyed because of the massive sunlight reflected and damaged to where it wouldn't function. Because, apparently, they had squandered so much of their money, they had to find a cheap source, an extremely cheap source of energy because they had contracts to supply a certain amount of electricity. With the third tower not in operation, they were not able to supply over 30 percent of the energy they had contracted to provide. They very quickly, cheaply, efficiently built a natural gas electricity production plant, and, wow, apparently it is working great. Of course, anybody that studies natural gas understands, if they know what they are doing, that natural gas is an amazingly clean form of energy. Anyway, now about a third of the energy is being produced using natural gas, when the whole purpose of the massive $1.6 billion in the government-backed loan and the $656 million or so that was given to them was because it was not going to be carbon based at all. But it is not just the one problem, apparently, of the tower. This is out in an arid area where there is not much water. Well, they didn't need much water other than what they had in the towers, really; but what they didn't anticipate was something that I am told operators, others in the area refer to as flamers. Flamers, as I was given to understand, those are birds, perhaps some of them endangered species, that make the mistake of flying through the superheated beam of sunlight and immediately explode or burst into flame. Apparently, if you are a bird that gets superheated and explodes, bursts into flame, then masses of fluid keep covering the mirrors, which need to be kept clean. Normally, you would figure out in a desert or an arid area, you are not going to need to clean those mirrors very often, so you are not going to need much water. But then when it turns out you have got all these flamers that supercoat the mirrors so they are constantly having to be recleaned, those poor birds that our nature-loving friends are exploding, it is running up the water bill as well because, gee, it is just not healthy to be exploding birds that fly through this superheated beam of sunlight. So 8 years of misguided policies have made, probably, a lot of Democratic millionaires, but the American public has suffered; and when adjusted for inflation, the American people are, on average, worse off. I was surprised to see a video where the President actually admitted, he had actually acknowledged, that in his administration, for the first time we are aware of in the history of the United States, 95 percent of the income in America went to the top 1 percent of the income earners. I have read articles since then about, actually, even that 1 percent that was making 95 percent of the Nation's income, they still weren't making, many of them, quite as much as they had before, because that is what happens when you hurt and throttle down an economy, as has happened. We haven't really adjusted. Of course, we have had the Fed that has had interest rates down to basically nothing, and it was clear they were doing everything they could to try to help the Obama administration's economy look better than it was. Now that people have started having hope because we have President-elect Trump and the policies are going to change dramatically, we are going to hopefully be completely rid of, or as completely as possible, the crony capitalism. I know my colleagues here in the House, actually on both sides of the aisle, have made clear we want to stop crony capitalism, and I am looking forward to that stopping once we get out from under this administration. So the economy is showing great signs. I have got people back home telling me they are starting to hire again just based on the hope and the promise. President Obama was supposed to bring hope and change, but all my constituents tell me so many of them are left with, after he has been President, a little change left from what they had when he took office. But there is real hope, and people are gearing up to grow, and the economy should take off, and we should get energy independent. I expect President-elect Trump to keep his promises. He assured me personally he was going to. So I am expecting great things. But just on that, the economy has started going up, on the assurance that President Obama would not be around any longer than January 20, and as a result now, the Fed finally has started increasing interest rates because they don't have to artificially try to protect President Obama's reputation and his poor economy. So just the fact that the EPA would send out regulations in such a capricious manner as they have, demanding that well operators start monitoring all their emissions, something to that effect, I am looking forward to getting into it and just seeing how abusive the EPA has been as these oligarchs. Not to give a chance for true input into an arbitrary and capricious rule, not to give businesses a chance to get ready and to adjust, I mean, this is the kind of thing that has stifled so much growth and has sent so many high school and college graduates to their parents' home. I think there are a lot of people who voted for President Obama and were excited. I think it is unfortunate that so many people expressed that they voted for a President because of his skin color--and I am not talking about Donald Trump--that they made a racist vote to vote for a man who was not White so they could feel good about voting for someone who was not White, where some of us--and it is one of the things for which I love Alveda King, Martin Luther King's niece. I mean, she believes in his dream, and the Americans that voted for Donald Trump, they believe that skin color should not matter. It is racist to vote for a candidate because of what his race is. Let's look at the character. Let's look at the qualifications. What have you built that you actually built that someone else didn't build for you? Let's look at those things and then make a determination rather than voting for someone just because of his race. Let's do as Martin Luther King, Jr., was so profound in saying in looking forward to the day when people were judged by the content of their character rather than the color of their skin. I am looking forward to that day. That day has been set back tremendously. It was a highlight for me back at the end of the fall to go back to my hometown of Mount Pleasant, Texas. I had mentioned to a reporter sometime back, though I didn't vote for President Obama, I had hopes that he would do for America what Coach Willie Williams did for our football team. Actually, I didn't say ``football team.'' I said ``our team.'' Liberals immediately put up an article saying that I said my basketball coach, my favorite coach, was African American. Apparently, liberals think, if you are African American, you must be a coach of basketball because of your race. When actually, it was the year before I went to the varsity, I was on the junior varsity, and I enjoyed playing for Coach Williams more than any coach I had ever played for. And unfortunately, Coach Williams' memory is still intact. I haven't seen him in decades. But I was asked to come give a motivational talk for the team I played for--the Mount Pleasant Tigers. It was such a treat being with those players that morning. It had a rough year to that point. I got to be with them on the field during the game. It was such a treat. Those young people were just inspirational. They fought hard, and some say it was the best game of the year. They won singlehandedly against a team from a bigger town than Mount Pleasant. They even gave me the game ball. And as much as that meant to me, the real highlight was, as we went into halftime, somebody told me that my old coach, back from over 40 years ago, was up in the press box, and I got to go up. I was so thrilled to see him. We hugged and smiled big as ever. I was so elated in seeing him and talking to him. Somebody said when I got back here-- when I said: I finally got to see Coach Williams after all these years. It was wonderful. Well, did you get a picture? I didn't even think about a picture. That is not a very good politician. But I didn't think about a picture. But it is a shame. His memory is so good because he remembered. We didn't have a lot of talent on that team. We didn't. He made us so cohesive. We played well together. We didn't have any outstanding talent, but we had a winning season. And it was a fun season because Coach Williams made it that way. He inspired us together. Everybody got treated just the same. Nobody got special treatment. Nobody got treated more harshly than anybody else. And we came together as a team. He remembered. He said: Yeah, you guys didn't have much talent on your team, but you played so well together. Well, that was because of him. He brought us together. And I so hoped that President Obama would do that for America. I didn't vote for him, but I thought it will be awesome if he can bring us even closer together. And now at the end of his administration, it is so grievous that America seems more divided than ever. I see an article here about more police officers again being shot in our U.S. cities. I heard the former police chief, I believe, in Chicago this week saying that Black Lives Matter was supposedly organized to try to stop killings of Black, especially young, men. And yet, what Black Lives Matter has done is actually increase the number of people being shot. I was absolutely astounded to hear a quote from the President. A speech, apparently, he was making. I heard it on the radio. Maybe he was giving an interview. But he was saying that we know that cities that have more gun control laws just have less violence. That is called gaslighting. That is called creating a fiction and trying to push it across and make somebody who knows the truth think that they are crazy and that this alternate truth is really what is going on. The fact is that cities with the most gun control laws, like Chicago, for heaven's sakes--I mean, the hundreds of precious Black lives that have been taken, been killed, the massive gun control laws have not helped Chicago. They have got a massive number of gun control laws there than we do in any city in east Texas, and yet nowhere in east Texas has that kind of violence at that percentage rate. It is insane. It is time to quit trying to gaslight the American people, convince them they are going crazy, and that what they know to be true is fiction. It is time to just have a truthful assessment of where we are. We need to follow the law. We need to have enforcement of our borders. We will continue to be the most generous Nation in the world, not just in giving funds to help others, not just in giving lives of our citizens to help freedom for other countries like nowhere else in history, but also most generous in the number of visas and the number of people that we allow to come into the United States and visit. Yet, that generosity has been abused. As the border patrol has said, every time we hear somebody in the government in Washington say anything about legalizing anything, or anybody that is here illegally, it is like a shiny object that draws even greater numbers illegally through our borders. And what is our border patrol ordered to do? Don't turn them back and prevent them from entering the United States. Oh, no. Let them step foot on American soil, then in-process them, and we will ship them around different places. Although, I saw an article last week where there were some aliens illegally here who were just dropped off at a bus stop. I have an article from Julia Edwards Ainsley, January 3, from Reuters: ``Trump Team Seeks Agency Records on Border Barriers Surveillance.'' It is fantastic. I mean, here they are trying to gear up, yet they want to know information. They don't want to be gaslighted. They want to know what is the truth so that they can start making hard preparations for taking office on January 20. An article, December 30, from Paul Bedard from the Washington Examiner says that the Department of Homeland Security says 94 percent of deportations are people illegally here, terror threats, or gang bangers. The CBP--border patrol--reports assaults on border agents have skyrocketed 231 percent in 2017. So not only has this President's rules of engagement gotten about four times more Americans killed, our military members killed in Afghanistan, in the same amount of time as Commander in Chief George W. Bush had, in addition to the rules of engagement getting our people killed four times faster than under Commander in Chief Bush, but also the assaults on our own agents have gone up 231 percent just in this year--in 1 year. We are getting our border patrol harmed. Another article by Chris Tomlinson in Breitbart: ``600 `Underage' Migrants Turn Out to Be Adults.'' I mean, I have seen that in the middle of the night down on the border. People coming in, switching off Xeroxed indications they were going to use for their identification: This is who I am. For whatever reason, they would look at their thing and switch out as to who was going to be who. They weren't able to vet those people, but they were still ordered to in-process them anyway. This article from Michael Patrick Leahy, December 7, reported that Somalia refugees were arriving in the United States at the highest rate ever in the first two months of fiscal year 2017, which would be October and November. So just astounding when America was making very clear we need to protect American citizens. It is not just the people in this room, as we did yesterday, who take that oath, but the President takes that oath. You have got cabinet members that take the oath, yet they are not doing their jobs. People are getting killed. 85,000 refugees under Obama, but less than 10 to the District of Columbia. So, apparently, let's put those refugees in your backyard. We certainly don't want them in Washington, D.C.'s backyard, apparently, according to this administration. Then it is pretty amazing, but just 10 States resettled more than half of recent refugees to the United States. Naturally, way more than anywhere else was California and Texas. The Daily Caller reported that the ``State Department claims no one used sham visas from fake embassy.'' Yet, we have seen hundreds and hundreds of people that--the report showed--had been given citizenship by mistake when they were supposed to have been deported. It doesn't seem like a very innocent mistake when it is that egregious. Back in December, The Washington Times reported that the ``Obama administration fails to check immigrants against FBI databases, approves citizenship'' anyway. The Afghan refugee program has not been totally successful. A report here, Afghan refugee in December was arrested for rape and murder of a top EU official's daughter. So, apparently, that was not working out so well. But that was in the country of Germany where you have a like- minded leader in Angela Merkel, who wants to defeat terrorism, as our President does, with love and compassion. Well, love is a stronger emotion than hate. Love can overcome evil. But when people are religiously dedicated to wiping another group of people off the planet for what they deem to be their holy god, those are people that have to be defeated. They are at war with you. You defeat them militarily. That puts radical Islam back in a box until some other well-meaning fool like former President Carter--a fine man, just a foolish President--not demeaning his character, but he was just very foolish--in citing the Ayatollah Khomeini as a man of peace, as he was so welcoming in the Ayatollah Khomeini taking over Iran. That released radical Islam out of the box, gave them control of a major country, major country military, and thousands and thousands and thousands of people continue to die because of that mistake. We know going back to the early days of the United States when so much of the Federal Treasury was used to pay ransom to get our sailors back who were being captured by radical Islamists in North Africa, and Jefferson couldn't understand why they kept attacking American boats. He asked the Islamist whom he was negotiating with why they kept attacking American ships. We are not a threat to you. We don't even have a Navy. Reportedly, the response was, in essence: Look, if we die, in attacking someone like you, we go straight to paradise. Jefferson was amazed. He couldn't believe there was a world religion--or even people's interpretation of a world religion--that advocated that you could go to paradise for killing innocent people. Of course, they maintained they are not innocent because they don't believe exactly like the radical Islamists believe. President Obama basically did the same thing with Libya. Qadhafi was not a good man; but, since 2003, the reports were clear, as others in North Africa and the Middle East reported, that he was about the best friend that the United States had in helping to fight terrorism in that area; yet this administration took him out. There were times on this floor that I and others were begging the administration not to take out Qadhafi, not to keep helping the rebels, not to keep bombing Qadhafi's troops until we knew how extensive al Qaeda was. We knew that at least a part of the people fighting were radical Islamists, but the administration went on and turned the country into chaos. Thank God America is going to have a new administration before we completely go to chaos ourselves. Mr. Speaker, I yield back the balance of my time.

Mr. GOHMERT

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

Mr. GOHMERT

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