Louie Gohmert

Mr. GOHMERT

Mr. GOHMERT. Mr. Speaker, well, it has been quite an interesting couple of days coming back from Thanksgiving, and this morning, there was an interesting conference, what to do about a President who, for a number of years, a couple dozen of times or so, has made very clear he is not a king, he is not an emperor, he would rather not have to deal with Congress, Congress is a messy thing to deal with, but he can't just do what he wants regarding immigration without following the Constitution and that means, under the Constitution, article I, section 8, Congress has sole authority when it comes to issues like naturalization and immigration. Prior Congresses have passed laws and made it clear what it takes to become a United States citizen. Now, those laws need fixing. There is no question about that, and despite all of the rhetoric, our friends on the other side of the aisle, when they controlled the majority in the House, majority in the Senate, with President Obama in the White House, chose to absolutely do nothing about correcting immigration problems, securing the border--not even amnesty. Why? Because they know, they see the polls, and the polls make very clear that the American public did not want any type of amnesty. The President knew were he and the Democrats in the House and Senate, when they had the majority during their 2 years, to have done something like an amnesty bill like the bill the President passed without going through Congress, then they would have surely lost the majority, and the President would definitely not have been reelected in 2012. And they did not think it was worth risking the majority over an amnesty when the vast majority of Americans did not want it. Why? Because the vast majority of Americans have to comply with the law, and fortunately those same vast number of Americans think everybody else should as well. Now, we still see emails saying, you know, if we could ever get Congress under Social Security, Congress living under the same laws as everybody else did, then a lot of our problems will be fixed, and that forgets the fact that actually Members of Congress have been paying into Social Security for years. No Member of Congress has a benefit that every other Federal employee doesn't already have. One of the promises that Republicans made, that they said they would do if they got the majority in November of 1994, is to make sure that Republicans have and Democrats in Congress have to live under the same laws everybody else does. Now, I was told when I was prevented from continuing to cook ribs that my friends across the aisle, Democrats, and Republicans love-- everybody that is not a vegetarian tells me they loved my ribs; and my dear friend Louise Slaughter had told me that her late husband, before he passed, as a vegetarian had even eaten two ribs of mine she brought home. So my ribs were a big hit with everybody but the Architect of the Capitol. He told me I couldn't continue to cook because of a violation of the fire code, and that was something Republicans actually changed to make sure that we in Congress had to live under the same laws everybody else does. So we do. We are supposed to live under the laws everybody else does, but then it comes to amnesty, and some here in the minority think it is just fine for a President to legislate since they are not able to do that while they are in the minority. Didn't do it when they were in the majority. The President didn't do it before his reelection in 2012. So it is a bit of a conundrum when the President of the United States asserts, as an alleged former constitutional professor, apparently an instructor, all these years he cannot do anything about the immigration problem because the Constitution doesn't allow it. Then, immediately before the grand jury acted in Missouri, the President acts, knowing what was about to happen in Missouri, Ferguson, and knowing Thanksgiving was coming up and a lot of people would take their eye off of what was happening with regard to amnesty, and then the President speaks a new law into existence. The law is very clear: if you are not legally in the United States, you can't legally hold a job. The President changed that law with a pronouncement and a stroke of his pen, but that is not a legal law. So we have got to stand up for the Constitution. For a President to avoid taking such action before an election because he knew it would cost him a second term, it would cost his party dramatically in the Senate and House, then to wait and do it immediately after the election and right before Thanksgiving when he thinks people will lose interest, well, Americans are not losing interest. They are still concerned. Now that the President has taken this unconstitutional action, America is looking at Republicans: You said you were against it. You ran and we elected you to the majority in the House and Senate, and you were saying you would not abide such an unconstitutional action. So what are you going to do about it? Well, one of the things being proposed is my dear friend Ted Yoho-- sometimes people say ``dear friend'' around this body and they say it a bit tongue in cheek, but that is not true of Ted Yoho. He is a great American, and I am very, very proud he is my friend. But in H.R. 5759, titled, Preventing Executive Overreach on Immigration Act, my friend Congressman Yoho has a bill that declares that the President does not have the authority to exempt categories of persons unlawfully present in the United States from removal. Any executive action seeking to exempt these categories of person is a violation of the law and has no legal effect. The bill goes on to make clear this is a permanent solution that will apply to executive actions that attempt to circumvent the law. Further, this does not affect any appropriation, so it does not risk any government funding or shutdown issues. It is a constitutional separation of powers issue. So any reform or change to the law must come from congressional legislation, not executive fiat, and basically makes clear an executive fix of the law is unconstitutional, temporary, and establishes a dangerous precedent that could be abused by Presidents of both parties for any area of the law they disagree with. So that is a great first step, but the problem is, if we do not eliminate the funding for the President's unconstitutional action, then it may be carried out anyway. There is some talk about extending funding to next March. Well, by March people will already have been provided work permits that the law says may not legally have work permits, and it is not likely anything would be done at that point to stop it. Now is the time to stop unconstitutional action. As the President keeps saying, Congress didn't do anything. It shows that he is getting terrible advice. We had a knock-down, drag-out session the last week of July in this Chamber, and two floors below this Chamber, in the House office buildings, we were fighting it out because, as the President has said, dealing with Congress can be messy. That is the way the Founders intended it. They wanted it to be difficult to pass laws. And Jefferson, thinking it would be a good idea--though he wasn't there at the Constitutional Convention, so he didn't get this in. It would be a good idea if laws had to be on file for a year before they could even be brought up for a vote. Things done in haste in this body or the Senate are not a good idea. Yet we must do something to stop the unconstitutional action. The President wants a border bill. We passed one in the House. Somebody needs to advise President Obama's advisers that we passed a good bill. It was not a good bill on Thursday, but by Friday at 10 p.m. or so when we passed it, it was a good bill. Still had more to do. There is much more we can and should do. There is a lot of reforms that must be done, but until the border is secure, then we are just going to have to keep reforming immigration, reforming immigration, giving amnesty, giving amnesty, until the country is not the country people wanted to come to. How ironic that people have to leave countries--they believe--because there is graft, corruption, violence, because the rule of law is not enforced fairly across the board, and they want to come to America because, with all the down economy, over 92 million people having given up hope of finding a job, not even looking anymore, this is still one of the greatest economies in the world because we still pretty much try to enforce the law across the board. So people come from countries where the rule of law is not observed, not enforced fairly across the board--too many friends or people with particular interests of the leaders, they get special privileges, they get exempted from the law. So they come here where we are not supposed to do that, and once here, say, ``Look, now that we are here, having come illegally, we want you, United States, to just forget about the law, ignore your Constitution, ignore the laws on immigration, and just waive them and forget about them,'' when, in so doing, we would become like the country they felt they had to leave because we don't enforce the law fairly across the board anymore. The old saying, capital is a coward, talking about money to be invested, it is a coward. It goes to areas where it feels safest, where the laws will be most fairly applied so that there is something that can be counted on, that laws mean things. So we have had a lot of investment in the United States of people from China, from Russia, Africa, South America. People around the world have been willing to invest in the United States because we have been a country where capital could be comfortable. But when mass amnesty is applied, which will ultimately throw however many people are given illegal work permits to work legally, you are going to throw that many million people out of jobs. You will depress the working wage rate. Mr. Speaker, it can't be overemphasized that what happened since this President has been in office or in power is what we normally say about monarchs, but what has happened for the first time in American history never happened under any prior President. But this President's policies, as he talked about the fat cats on Wall Street, though he received more donations from them than Republicans did; as he bad-mouthed the oil companies, but he had friends that were doing favors for him; as he bad-mouthed capital cronyism as capital cronyism was exactly what was occurring in this country and from this administration, actually for the first time in our history, 95 percent of all income in America went to the top 1 percent of income earners. It has never happened before. I know--I know--this administration, everybody in it talks about the fat cats and going after the rich, and yet, amazingly, as they talk about going after the rich, it is as if there is a wink and a nod: We are going to talk bad about you, call you fat cats, but you are going to get richer than you have ever been. Just don't forget us when it comes to political contributions. Oh, yeah, we will trash the Koch Brothers, but they can't hold a candle to the fat-cat Democratic contributors. But when you try to get your head around 95 percent of the income going to the top 1 percent in America, it is extraordinary. The President himself acknowledged, September a year ago, that this was happening on his watch. Again, people can talk about the middle class getting bigger and wages being suppressed. Their solution is to bring in 5 million new workers willing to work a lot cheaper, without health insurance, to compete with Americans that need a little more in order to live and that need health insurance. And the solution is to bring in 5 million people more? Do you really want to see minority unemployment go even higher than its current skyrocketing position? That is not fair to Americans. Our oath is to this country and the people in it, and the way we do that is by defending the Constitution against all enemies, foreign and domestic. It is time the poor and the middle class in America were helped by having a better wage, by not continuing to leave the borders open, by not winking and nodding and unconstitutionally allowing 5 million people to work illegally but with the stamp of approval from the White House. It is time to stop it before we lose the Constitution altogether. Here is an article from Steven Camarota and Karen Ziegler. The headline, ``Immigrant Families Benefit Significantly from ObamaCare,'' and the subheadline, ``Immigrant Families Accounted for 42 Percent of Medicaid Growth Since 2011.'' The article says: A key part of the Affordable Care Act is Medicaid expansion for those with low incomes. A new analysis of government data by the Center for Immigration Studies shows that immigrants and their U.S.-born children, under age 18, have been among the primary beneficiaries of Medicaid growth. The data show that immigrants and their children accounted for 42 percent of the growth in Medicaid enrollment from 2011 to 2013. Immigrants benefited more from Medicaid expansion than natives because a much larger share of immigrants are poor and uninsured. It seems almost certain that immigrants and their children will continue to benefit disproportionately from ObamaCare, as they remain much more likely than natives to be uninsured or poor. The available evidence indicates that Medicaid growth associated with immigrants is largely among those legally in the country. Nonetheless, immigrants, this points out: The number of immigrants and their U.S.-born children on Medicaid grew twice as fast as the number of natives and their children on Medicaid from 2011 to 2013. Immigrants and their children accounted for 42 percent of Medicaid enrollment growth from 2011 to 2013, even though they accounted for only 17 percent of the Nation's total population and 23 percent of overall U.S. population growth in the same time period. About two-thirds of the growth in Medicaid associated with immigrants was among immigrants themselves, rather than U.S.- born children of immigrants. It is an interesting issue because when my friend Steve King and I were in England in recent years, we were told there that the law is very clear. They know that their country would fail if they just say everybody that comes in is immediately entitled to every Federal subsidy the British Government offers, so they have a requirement in England that you are not entitled to any benefit, we were told, until you have paid into the British system for at least 5 years. Well, that kind of makes sense, and having just been over there and had a chance to address members from the House of Commons and House of Lords, having spoken at Cambridge and Oxford, they are trying to save their country over there, but there was a great deal of welfare that is hurting the system and their economics. Even so, they have a law that says you can't even get these kind of benefits until you have paid into their system for 5 years. Why isn't there something like that in the President's new law that he spoke into being? Perhaps that ought to be the first reform that both Houses take up. You can't receive any kind of benefit from the U.S. Government unless you have paid into the U.S. Government for at least 5 years, and that does not include getting more money back year after year than you pay in. An article yesterday indicated one woman in Virginia had been largely using people that were illegally in the country to file for child tax credits so they can get back $4,000, $7,000, $1,500 more than they paid in, and it was a scam. If one woman in Virginia can be accountable for $7,000 in child tax credits being paid out more than people paid in, how many people are there across the United States that are doing that same thing, while we have workers across the country, like in my district, that have said that because ObamaCare changed the definition of part-time work, it forced them into a situation of having to work two part-time jobs, not having health insurance anymore, and just struggling just to survive, just to live; yet when it comes to people that have not paid a dime into the system, all of a sudden, we are just going to bend over backwards and violate the Constitution for them. There is an article in Breitbart today from Tony Lee that said: One in three illegal immigrants over the age of 25 in America do not even have a high school education, according to a New Migration Policy Institute report. The Migration Policy Institute estimates there are 8.512 million illegal immigrant adults 25 years of age or older. The study found that while 49 percent of illegal immigrants 25 years or older have at least a high school diploma or a GED, 17 percent have some high school education, while 33 percent do not have any high school education. Of course, we have got people of all races, national origins, and both genders trying to get into this country. They have been trying for years and years to do so legally. They could fill needed specialized positions to help our economy grow; yet they can't get a visa. They are not about to get amnesty. We have got things completely backwards. We know, of course, when the President talks about amnesty and legal status--along with other people here in Washington--our border patrolmen make clear over and over that that increases the number of people coming across our border. Thank God Texas has stepped up. The State of Texas has been paying tremendous amounts of money to have additional people on the border. At night, you can see their profile--DPS troopers, Texas Rangers, game wardens--where they can call people in speedboats that Texas has paid for to rush up and try to catch the coyotes bringing people across illegally. The coyotes don't want to be caught. The people do. They want to turn themselves in as quick as they can. The coyotes don't want to be caught, so they are not going to come across if they think they are going to get caught before they can get across with their raft. One of the other things that ought to scare law enforcement dramatically is the fact that I have heard a number of people say, as they were questioned by our border patrolmen out in the middle of the night, and they are asked--it's not on the standard questions, but they have been asked many times by our border patrolmen, ``How much did you have to pay the gangs or the drug cartels to bring you across?'' Sometimes, it is $5,000, $6,000, $7,000, or $8,000. Sometimes, a followup question is asked, ``Where did you get that kind of money in El Salvador, Guatemala, Honduras, or wherever you came from?'' Often, the answer was, ``Well, some of the friends or family in the U.S. sent money. We have been trying to collect money in our home country.'' Every now and then, you get a response that scares me and is probably at the bottom of many of the people's payments to come and be brought in illegally by drug cartels and gangs. They have confided, ``They are going to let us work some of the rest of it off.'' Well, what does that mean? It means when Health and Human Services picks people up and transmits them across the country--with scabies, as we have seen happen, and whatever disease they may bring in--as some have pointed out, that means every State is a border State, thanks to Health and Human Services shipping them around the country. As they build up their numbers in different cities around the country and they owe the drug cartels that are ruthless, unscrupulous, and don't mind torturing and killing, we hear more and more about Mexican drug cartel activities around the country and our cities, how horrendous it is that the United States Department of Homeland Security and the United States Department of Health and Human Services being complicit in helping ship agents for the drug cartels and gangs around the country that can be intimidated and reminded, ``Remember, you still owe us $3,000, $4,000, $5,000, and here's how you will work it off.'' Is it sex trade? Is it drugs that are poisoning more of our American teenagers and young adults with the Mexican drugs being brought in? If the drug cartels are getting promises from people coming into the United States illegally that they will work off the rest of the money, then you can bet the drug cartels are going to see that they do. I have been told by border patrolmen that you don't cross the U.S. border without some drug cartel, some gang, some organized crime being in charge of the area of the border where you crossed, and you dare not cross across Mexico into the United States without the permission of whatever organized criminal group is in charge. They say they will come after them. We are bringing in agents of drug cartels and shipping them around the country where they can work for the drug cartels. It is what they have said there on the border. ``Yeah, they are going to let me work this off.'' Well, in talking to the border patrolmen there in the middle of the night down on the border, they tell you some interesting things. As I have been told by the border patrolmen, ``You know what the drug cartels call us Federal agents here in the U.S.? They borrow from a commercial on television and say, `We're the logistics.' '' The United States Federal employees are the drug cartels' logistics. All they have to do is get their agents that are going to work for the drug cartels into the United States, and then the United States Government ships them around the country for the drug cartels. All they have to do is say, ``This is where I've got somebody--a family member, a loved one--and that's where I need to go,'' and we ship them free of charge. The U.S. Government makes it free of charge at least to the immigrant coming in illegally. Of course, there is no free lunch, as Phil Graham used to repeatedly say. Somebody is paying for it, and to a limited extent, it is American taxpayers. To another extent, it is our children and grandchildren who are incurring the debts that will be paid with income they have never even figured out what job they will be deriving the income from. It is immoral. Here is an article from Politico saying, the DHS chief, short-term funding a very bad idea. So it turns out Homeland Security Secretary Jeh Johnson warned Tuesday that a short-term funding measure for his agency will be ``a very bad idea,'' telling Congress such a bill would hold up everything from hiring Secret Service agents to paying for border security. Well, we still have people that are saying, though, you know, in a CR and an omnibus, we really can't put restrictions on the Federal Government in there. And yet, here is a report regarding the last omnibus highlights where there were 17 different restrictions on agencies' use of fees in the last fiscal year. This was done with the help of the Congressional Research Service that reviewed the previous spending omnibus. And Senator Jeff Sessions, dear friend, great guy, he has been able to identify 17 separate restrictions. One was a restriction in section 543 on the United States Citizenship and Immigration Services that said, notwithstanding section 1356(n), title VIII, U.S. Code, of the funds deposited into the immigration examinations fee account, $7,500,000 may be allocated by U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services fiscal year 2014 for the purpose of providing an immigrant integration grants program. There is one for the Department of Agriculture, Department of Justice, Transportation Security Administration, Nuclear Regulatory Commission, Federal Communications Commission, Security and Exchange Commission, Bureau of Ocean Energy Management, Office of Surface Mining Reclamation Enforcement, Copyright Office, Export-Import Bank of the United States. So we know it can be done. It has been done. The restrictions have been made in past omnibuses, even just last year. So we can do that, and we should do that. If we don't do that, then the President's unconstitutional act is going to be a harbinger of terrible things to come. Once you no longer have a Constitution that means anything, then Presidents can pretty much do as they wish. That is what happens in Third World countries. That is why we have lasted over 200 years, because the Constitution meant something. It took a civil war to make the Constitution more enforcing of what it said. It took someone like Dr. King giving his life to ensure civil rights for everyone, as the Constitution guaranteed. But once we have moved into this post-constitutional era, where the Constitution no longer is enforced, it is just a document, then there is no skeleton on which to hang muscle and the might that makes a strong country, and we become, figuratively speaking, a blob of a nation without structure that can't defend itself adequately, that has drug cartel agents throughout the country, that continues to have people sending wives in to have children in the United States free of charge and leaving to go back home with, actually, a U.S. passport as an American citizen. I think that is how Anwar al-Awlaki, whom the President was so concerned about he blew him up with a drone strike--he was an American citizen. His parents came over from Yemen on visas, and he was born here, but taken back, grew up learning to hate America. The deputy leader of Hamas, Mousa Abu Marzook, his wife came to the U.S., had a child that, no doubt, is being taught to hate America. Palestinian Islamic jihad leader Sami Al-Arian, his wife came to the United States, had a child, American citizen. Abdul Rahman al-Amoudi, who is doing 23 years in prison for supporting terrorism, financing terrorism, his wife had a child here in the United States, an American citizen. Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, the 9/11 mastermind, even has confessed to that in his own written pleadings and said, if our act of terror created terror in your heart, then praise be to Allah. Basically, in his six-page pleading, he said, you had it coming. I think there is possibly a chance he would raise a child to hate America. And then the Muslim Brother President of Egypt, Mohamed Morsi, his wife came to America. Irony of ironies, he thought he was being very clever to have an American citizen daughter, yet the Egyptian people didn't think it was so clever. They didn't like the idea. When he became such an unconstitutional actor as a President that he could no longer be tolerated, be allowed to be left in office, 20 million Egyptians were reported in the streets of Egypt demanding his removal, followed by another demonstration of 30 million to 33 million Egyptians, moderate Muslims, Christians, Jews, secularists, out in the streets demanding, we don't want a radical Islamist in control of our country, Egypt. Amazing. Such a huge event in the realm of human history in Egypt. God bless the Egyptians. We need to pray for them, we need to help them. But not this administration. This administration says, oh, so you ousted the Muslim Brother, part of the organization that wants to bring down America, and you ousted him? Well, if you don't put him back in power we are not going to send you the Apache helicopters you are using to keep the Suez Canal open. We are not going to send you what you need to deweaponize the Sinai that Morsi saw weaponized. No, we are going to hold back any weapons that will help you clean up the radicalization in Egypt and Sinai that Morsi oversaw, which is why some of the moderate Muslim leaders in the Middle East and North Africa continue to ask, why do you keep helping your enemies? Do you not understand that the Muslim Brothers are your enemy? Do you not understand that the Muslim Brothers want the United States as part of a caliphate? Well, the Department of Homeland Security and this administration and mainstream media belittled me for the last couple of years or so as I continued to point out that they had an adviser on their top Homeland Security Advisory Council who had used his classification that Janet Napolitano gave him in an inappropriate way; that he had spoken--he was listed as a speaker paying tribute to the Ayatollah Khomeini as a man of vision; that he defended the Holy Land Foundation principals who were convicted of supporting terrorism; failed to properly file the tax forms that would allow his foundation to remain a 501(c)(3). Didn't file them. And yet, he is a top adviser. Well, even the Obama administration had to finally let him go and, yes, go ahead and accept the resignation when he tweeted out that the international caliphate is inevitable so we need to get used to it. Even the Obama administration had to let him go after that. So he has resigned. He is no longer a top member advising this administration. But it is time for Americans to wake up. Ignoring the Constitution is not helpful. After over two-dozen statements by this President that he doesn't have the power to, in effect, do what he just now did right before Thanksgiving, demands congressional action. We must stand up and defund the illegal activity of this President. Mr. Speaker, I think it is also important to note that our Republican leaders got duped in July of 2011. I tried to warn. I told people back then, told our whole conference, this supercommittee will not be allowed to reach an agreement by the Democrats. I was assured, oh, sure they will because it cuts a whole bunch of money from Medicaid and an automatic sequestration if the supercommittee doesn't reach an agreement. So the hundreds of billions, the gutting of our military will never happen because the supercommittee will reach an agreement because they don't want the cuts to Medicare. Well, it seemed very clear to me, and as I told my Republican friends, no, they are going to prevent the supercommittee from reaching agreement if we pass this bill because they want the cuts to Medicare because they cut over $700 billion of Medicare funding in ObamaCare without a single Republican vote. So the only way, in 2012, they will be able to run commercials saying, we love our rich friends more than we love seniors, is if they prevent the supercommittee from reaching an agreement. The cuts to Medicare are only a fraction of what ObamaCare did but, nonetheless, cuts to Medicare will happen. And the President has never cared much for the military anyway, and this allows him, basically, to gut our military to pre-World War II levels. So it is a win, win, win all the way around for the administration if we pass that bill creating a supercommittee. Well, we did, and the President got the military gutted, Defense Department gutted. The sequestration happened. And now I am concerned, if we say, all right, we are not going to fund Homeland Security unless you agree, you sign a bill that defunds your illegal activity in providing amnesty to 5 million people, I think we need to be careful about that, Mr. Speaker, because it just may be that the President would like to blame Republicans and say, you know what? Well, I would like to have Border Patrol securing the border, but the Republicans cut off the funding, and so, gee, there is no Border Patrol on the border. It is all the Republicans' fault because they wouldn't fund it. I think we need to be rather careful about saying we are going to bank on not funding Homeland Security, only fund them for a short time, and then threaten the President, if you don't sign off on a bill defunding your illegal activity, then Homeland Security won't be funded. As one of my Republican friends pointed out, kind of like the old adage, if you are going to take a hostage, you need to take somebody that the other side doesn't want to see killed. And there is some concern that if we take hostage, figuratively speaking, the Homeland Security Department in order to defund the illegal activity of this President's amnesty, it just may be that the President, figuratively again speaking, will say, go ahead, take out your hostage; completely defund Homeland Security. That is okay with me. No, that is not the way you negotiate. If we are going to stop the President's unconstitutional amnesty, it is going to require funding everything that needs funding, but to go after something the President really wants but doesn't need. Good grief. When we are spending the trillions of dollars we are, we can certainly afford, for example, to do away with the czars, to do away with the, say, public transportation to golf outings. We can save millions of dollars just on that alone. This is what you do in negotiation. For those of us who have negotiated multimillion- dollar deals and multimillion-dollar settlements, that is what you do. You have to find something that is very important to the other side, but that is really not necessary, so that the other side, when you are negotiating, knows you mean business. I don't think Homeland Security is the place to threaten. We have got to defund the illegal activity, or of those who fought to defend the Constitution, who picked up the Stars and Stripes in representing our Nation--our constitutional Republic--and carried it as fellow soldiers were killed and who advanced freedom here in America, their blood will be on our hands because we wouldn't even stand for the Constitution when there were no bullets being fired. We have got to stand up for America and for our Constitution. Mr. Speaker, I yield back the balance of my time.

Mr. GOHMERT

Mr. GOHMERT. I thank Mr. Jeffries, my colleague and friend. I knew that words that were going to be spoken were from the heart, and I am glad to be able to facilitate that. Thank you. And it does take me back again. I was just a little kid, a little bitty kid, when Martin Luther King, Jr., was standing up for civil rights for all people. We have heard over and over: Well, he did wonderful things for African Americans. But I happen to know as a little White Christian boy growing up in east Texas that the work he did and the life he gave actually enabled me as a little White boy to treat my brothers and sisters like brothers and sisters. That is the ultimate goal, as Dr. King said: we judge each other by the content of the character and not by the color of the skin. That is a goal to shoot for. It also meant that when I was quarterback and captain for the JV, junior varsity, team in our high school, it meant I got to have Coach Williams as my head coach. I just loved Coach Williams. But it was tough when he put both hands on your shoulder pads and got right in your face. You knew you were in for a lesson. But he was imminently fair. We had no race problems. He was just a fair man. Although I didn't vote for President Obama and certainly might have had other people in mind for Attorney General, I had hoped that there would be a piece that would come out with Eric Holder as Attorney General the way I experienced with Coach Williams, an African American, but great coach, very winning season, and he made football fun--a great leader, a great teacher. I just loved having him for a coach. I had hoped that that might be true across the country, but we have seen so many people hurt around Jefferson. I was reading about minority business owners who had their businesses burned. I so hope that the words that my friend Ms. Jackson Lee was saying will ultimately come through where protests will be nonviolent so people don't lose their stores and lose their homes or lose their lives. Just before coming over, I was hearing about a Bosnian man that was beat to death with a hammer. It is senseless, just senseless. I don't even know the cause of his being killed there in Missouri. Peaceful protests are what Dr. King knew would do the greatest good for the greatest number of people, and he certainly did a great deal of good. But basically most people what they want is to make sure that they get fair treatment. That is it: be treated fairly. Now, we do have some that want to engage in crony capitalism and want to have all kinds of advantages. We saw that with TARP. People wanted to have their cake, and then when they finish with that have your cake, too. That was very unfortunate. But overall, most Americans just want to be treated fairly. They want everyone to be treated equally and fairly under the law, which brings me to the subject I wanted to take up tonight. We know that the President, before Thanksgiving, announced that since Congress hadn't passed or hadn't changed the law as he wanted them to, he indicated he waited long enough. He waited for Congress to change the law, and since Congress had not changed the law, he decided to do it for Congress. The trouble is that is not equal and fair under the law. Some have said, well, they don't think there is a way that Congress can defund this illegal executive order that provides amnesty. And actually, the law is clear. I mean, if you are illegally in the country, you are not allowed to work in the country; and the President, regardless of whether or not he has the power to provide amnesty or a pardon in a single case, there is no law, there is no authority, constitutional or legislative, that allows a President to provide benefits across the board that are illegal and not authorized under the law. You just can't do that. So what do we do about that? Some have said we can't defund the President's illegal actions. An article here in Breitbart by Matthew Boyle, 26 November, and this is a quote to start the article: ``In light of Congress's constitutional power over the purse, the Supreme Court has recognized that `Congress may always circumscribe agency discretion to allocate resources by putting restrictions in the operative statutes,' '' the CRS, a legislative authority on Capitol Hill, wrote in a report sent to incoming Senate Budget Committee Chairman Senator Jeff Sessions of Alabama. ``Where Congress has done so, `an agency is not free simply to disregard statutory responsibilities.' Therefore, if a statute were enacted which prohibited appropriated funds from being used for some specified purposes, then the relevant funds would be unavailable to be obligated or expended for those purposes.'' Sessions' team provided the CRS report--which is not made public unless Members of Congress who request such reports decide to make them so--exclusively to Breitbart News. Rogers, last week-- And apparently it is talking about House Appropriations Committee Chairman Representative Rogers. Rogers, last week, argued that Congress could not block funding for Obama's executive amnesty because the agency that will be printing the work authorization and other documents for illegal aliens--U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services (USCIS)--operates primarily on fees it collects rather than from tax revenue collected by the Federal Government. So, as I understand it, the Appropriations Committee was concerned that since the Citizenship and Immigration Services, or CIS, gets a great deal of their funds from fees, perhaps we couldn't defund them. But the CIS report goes on to say this: A fee-funded agency or activity typically refers to one in which the amounts appropriated by Congress for that agency or activity are derived from fees collected from some external source. Importantly, amounts received as fees by Federal agencies must still be appropriated by Congress to that agency in order to be available for obligation or expenditure by the agency. In some cases, this appropriation is provided through the annual appropriations process. In other instances, it is an appropriation that has been enacted independently of the annual appropriations process, such as a permanent appropriation in an authorizing act. In either case, the funds available to the agency through fee collections would be subject to the same potential restrictions imposed by Congress on the use of its appropriations as any other type of appropriated funds. Now, Mr. Speaker, I know that is a long quote from CRS, but the bottom line is right there at the end: It doesn't matter whether revenue is generated through fees or whether it is a direct appropriation. Congress has the authority to restrict how that money is spent. Anyway, that is a very helpful CRS opinion, and Matthew Boyle did a good job of covering that. But I also noticed an article by the Twitchy Staff--that would be my dear friend Michelle Malkin. She has a series of tweets that people have sent out in response to the amnesty that this President is going to provide and the illegal right to work that is going to be legalized by fiat by the President. This is from November 20. One tweet says: Excellent point made on @TalkRadio1210. Will all the immigrants who came here legally get a refund from Obama for the fees they had to pay? Of course, the Labor Secretary Tom Perez, previously with the Justice Department when we saw racial relations deteriorate dramatically, but Tom Perez said in his tweet: This is a moral imperative, a national security imperative and an economic imperative. He is talking about the need for the President to act like a king and just dictate new law and allow people who are not allowed to work here legally to work here legally, though it is against the law. Tony Pelz says: @LaborSec are you going to refund all the money I spent doing it legally? Huh? Huh? Ben Shapiro says: Our nanny is from Guatemala. She arrived legally 5 years ago. Tomorrow, she takes her citizenship oath. Boy, did she waste her time. Shar Viloria says: Hey @BarackObama I want a refund of all my legal fees plus 10 years' worth of interest. I have all the receipts. I came here legally. Another tweet says: My family has paid fees to the U.S. immigration system and followed the law. I'd like a refund, please. Another says: So, who's gonna refund the $18,000 I spent to bring my wife here legally? @BarackObama? @NancyPelosi? There is another invoice apparently. They are seeking a refund for all the money they were out. Another says: Hey, you gonna chip in for my refund, for doing it legally? Another said: Lots of dollars for husband to immigrate to U.S. legally: attorney, mounds of paperwork, interview, et cetera. Do we get a refund now? Another said: So 5 million illegal immigrants get shortcut visas. Do I get a refund of the $50,000 I spent over 14 years legally becoming a citizen? A different person tweets: My wife came here legally. If #ObamaAmnesty happens, can we get a refund for all the money we spent on her green card application? Another says: Does this act refund all the filing fees of those legally at this time? Does it relieve us sponsors of our legal obligations? There are a lot of people that are upset about this--and understandably--because they went about becoming citizens the right way. My office continues to help people. One worked for 7 years in order to get admitted legally. We have had people work for 10 years to get here legally and be authorized legally. And the message that is sent when a President just by speaking new law into existence because he is not happy that Congress didn't do what he told them to, that sends a message to those who abide by the law, just as these tweets indicate, that America, which has tried to be fair across the board, fought against the worst blot on American history--slavery--fought for civil rights, and now we are fighting to have the law completely disregarded so that it is an encouragement to people coming illegally. The word I was getting today from law enforcement friends on the border in Texas who are seeing the numbers and the President's promise of an illegal amnesty is, once again, creating a lure to people to come rushing illegally into the United States. And I know there are those that say, ``No, we have got to make sure you have been here 5 years.'' How about that? Isn't that amazing? The message of the President basically is, if you are really good at violating the law and you have been doing it over 5 years, so you are a pro at violating our immigration law, we want you to stay. We want you to work. You are good at violating the law. On the other hand, if you are new at violating the law, we don't want you here working. So the question arises: If someone is willing to break United States law to come here illegally for whatever reason, whether it is a desire for a job, a desire for benefits, a desire to come here and hurt us, whatever their desire they are willing to break the U.S. law to come for, does anybody seriously think that people that would break the law--at least some of them--would not be willing to sign a paper that says they have been here for 5 years when they haven't, if they are told, ``You sign this paper whether you know what is on it or not.'' Some don't speak English. I have been out there, as you know, Mr. Speaker, all hours of the day and night on our border around the Rio Grande. I have seen people come across and look at the Xerox copy with some mention of a country they are from. They look at each other and say, ``Oh, here,'' and they switch papers. They don't come with identification cards. They don't come with a government driver's license. They come with no legitimate identification. So as someone pointed out there in a holding facility near the border, ``Gee, that guy says he's a teenager,'' but you rarely see beards that well developed on somebody that is 15. So they can lie about their age and there is no question--some of them have--because they have got no identification. Of course, why would this administration want to require any kind of real identification to come into the U.S.? We have the right to vote. This administration has been fighting tooth and nail, spending massive amounts of money to fight any State that wanted to just make sure that people were voting legally, lawfully, and they were the person that they were representing they were. And some say, ``Well, it's just ridiculous to think there's any fraud,'' and then you find out there are still people in Louisiana telling Democrats to go out and vote again. And that is why I have, somewhat tongue-in-cheek, urged my Republican friends that there is no group, no matter that they vote traditionally well over 90 percent for Democrats, we can't just assume they should always vote Democrats. We need to be going after the deceased vote. Just because dead people may vote Republican, they shouldn't always vote Democrat after they pass away. Republicans should have a share of those. I know that people don't always get sarcasm around this town, but the fact is there are plenty of people that cheat the system, whether it is at voting, whether it is at legalization, and that is certainly going to happen when people have nothing but their word to say that they have been here for 5 years so that the President, under the new law he spoke into existence, can feel comforted that: Gee, they've been here 5 years. I'm comfortable they're good at violating the law, so I want them to stay. There is an article written by Bryan Preston. It recommends watching a clip from President Obama's State of the Union address in 2009. He says Representative Joe Wilson was finally vindicated. But he points out: Secretary of Health and Human Services Secretary Sylvia Mathews Burwell held an online chat with Latino bloggers on November 11, 2014. The bloggers asked Burwell about ObamaCare benefits for ``mixed families''--families in which some are present in the United States legally, while others are not. Burwell said that so-called ``DREAMers,'' people brought to the United States illegally when they were children, are not eligible, but she indicated that she and President Obama would like to change that. Surely another executive order cannot be far off. But then she said ``mixed families should come . . . Everyone should come on, and folks should not be scared. No questions will be asked, and it is not about an immigration issue.'' So if you come to get medical benefits, the Secretary of Health and Human Services is saying ``no questions will be asked.'' How in the world are they going to avoid violating the law by providing medical care? Not medical care--that is required for anybody legally or illegally here--but insurance that the rest of America is paying for. This article points out that, despite Secretary Burwell saying that: ``No questions will be asked, and it is not about an immigration issue.'' It is an immigration issue, and it's a fiscal issue, it's a rule of law issue and a constitutional order issue, but deeper than that, it is an honesty issue. American taxpayers, a majority of whom never supported ObamaCare in the first place, will now be forced to subsidize health care for millions who are not even in the country legally. As part of my alternative health care proposal I offered before ObamaCare ever passed and became law, one of the requirements would be to provide temporary work visas when we need temporary workers to harvest crops, whatever, but that doesn't mean that the rest of America should subsidize their health care. In other words, if someone wants to bring in people temporarily under a temporary work visa, they ought to be required to make sure that they have health care. So either the employer buys an umbrella health insurance policy for those while they are temporarily here or the individuals have to. Some nations have started requiring that before you can get a visa to come in their country, since they are not wealthy countries and they can't afford to be providing everybody in the world free health care, if you want to come into their country on a visa, you have to show that you will be covered by health insurance so they don't have to pick up the tab. That continues to be a problem here, however. An article from National Review Online, November 26, Peter Kirsanow, says: You've been working hard to support your family, paying taxes--including Social Security and Medicare taxes--for nearly 20 years. Now you find out that 5 million illegal aliens the President legalized with a stroke of a pen will be eligible for Social Security, Medicare, and disability benefits--you know, the programs you've been supporting with your tax dollars your entire working life. The plant you've been working at most of your career is considering layoffs and benefit cuts due to the cost of new regulations imposed by bureaucrats who've never run so much as a pop stand, and who know absolutely nothing about your business. So your employer is forced to hire cheaper labor and is interviewing formerly illegal aliens to replace some of your coworkers, and maybe you, because the company won't have to pay the $3,000 ObamaCare penalty on such illegal aliens for not providing health care coverage. So, to keep your job, you try to make yourself more valuable to the company by getting additional training and skills at the nearby college. But the school, supported by your tax dollars, rejects your application in favor of an illegal alien under the admission office's affirmative action program that makes it 170 times more likely a preferred minority will be admitted over you. He'll even get in-state tuition rates, as well as a grant funded, in part, by your tax dollars. And so what if that may be unconstitutional? Indeed, you feel a bit chastened when one of the school's professors suggests you might be racist for thinking this is all somewhat unfair. You thought that, if push came to shove, you could always get a job at your brother-in-law's tool and die shop over on West Plymouth. But it got burned down when the elected officials--to whom you've remitted tens of thousands in tax dollars to protect property, as well as dictate your toilet's water flow, failed to deploy sufficient law enforcement personnel to control the rioters the very same elected officials elected to inflame. Well, no worries. You're pretty sure that, much like your preternaturally serene neighbor Julia, who never seems to have worked a job in her entire life, you'll be able to access a variety of social benefits to keep your family afloat. At least for a while. Admittedly, you became a little nervous upon learning that the newly ``legal'' immigrants could drain the Treasury of nearly $2 trillion. But hey, all the smart people in academia, Hollywood, and Washington say this is all good for America. The fundamentally transformed States of America. Happy Thanksgiving. And it is quite an interesting point that my friends, my colleagues here have been talking about the tremendous problems in Missouri. I have talked to too many minorities that have had a tough time finding a job, a tough time finding employment that will pay them so they can live, help a family live, and now they are going to be competing with 5 million people who didn't even come into the country legally. But the national Chamber of Commerce wanted this. The superrich in the country who, at least in the first 5 years of this administration-- we haven't seen the number for the 6 years--for the first 5 years of this President's administration set a record. Never before in the history of the country has 95 percent of all income in America gone to the top 1 percent. Under President Obama and his policies, that happened. People in this administration can talk about the disparity between the poor and the rich and the unfairness to the middle class. There just can't be much more unfair to the middle class, more devastating to the middle class, more devastating to the Nation's poor than to suddenly announce, you are now going to compete with 5 million people that are here illegally, that are going to take jobs cheaper than you would be willing to. It is not that there are that many jobs Americans won't do, as we are told. Under a free market system, it costs the market whatever it takes to get the legal workers to come work for a living wage. You wouldn't have to have legislation about minimum wage if you weren't bringing in millions of people illegally and causing them to compete with people that are trying desperately to find jobs, doing everything they can to find jobs. But we also know that for the first time since President Carter, over 92 million people who could work, who are over 16, could work, they have totally given up working. They are not looking anymore. With this new 5 million people that the President has, all of a sudden, with the stroke of his wand, taken from illegal status to legal status, and here are your work papers--all that is illegal, but he has done it, which should ultimately drive another 5 million people out of work, and either onto food stamps, onto welfare. So if the President has been upset about being tied so much of this year with Jimmy Carter's numbers, over 92 million people that are not even looking for work anymore, they have given up hope, he won't have to worry about that. He will be in a league all his own once he puts an additional 5 million working Americans out of work as they are displaced by people that are illegally here willing to work cheaper. Very, very tragic. An article from Victor Davis Hanson: ``For Obama, inconvenient law is irrelevant law.'' He says: There is a humane, transparent, truthful, and constitutional way to address illegal immigration. Unfortunately, President Obama's unilateral plan to exempt millions of residents from Federal immigration law is none of those things. President Obama has said he had to move now because of a dawdling Congress. He forgot to mention that there were Democratic majorities in Congress in 2009 and 2010, yet he did nothing, in fear of punishment at the polls. Nor did Obama push amnesty in 2011 or 2012, afraid of hurting his own reelection chances. Worries over sabotaging Democratic chances in the 2014 midterm explain his inaction from 2012 until now. He certainly wouldn't have waited until 2015 to act because Republicans will then control Congress. Given that he has no more elections and can claim no more lasting achievements, Obama now sees amnesty as his last desperate chance at establishing some sort of legacy. Obama cited empathy for undocumented immigrants. Well, I have got that. I mean, most of us do: But he expressed no such worry about the hundreds of thousands of applicants who wait for years in line, rather than simply illegally crossing the border. Any would-be immigrant would have been wiser to have broken rather than abided by Federal laws. Citizens who knowingly offer false information on Federal affidavits or provide false Social Security numbers would not receive the sort of amnesties likely to be given to undocumented immigrants. Obama has downplayed Americans' worries about social costs and competition for jobs, but studies show illegal immigration has depressed the wages of entry-level American workers while making social services costly for States and burdensome for U.S. citizens. Obama says he has the legal authority to rewrite immigration law without working with Congress, yet, on more than 20 occasions when it was politically inexpedient to grant amnesties, Obama insisted he would not, or that such a move was prohibited by the Constitution. President Obama not long ago warned us about the dangers of granting amnesties by fiat. This is President Obama: ``The problem is that I am President of the United States. I am not the emperor of the United States.'' On another occasion, he lamented: ``Believe me, the idea of doing things on my own is very tempting, but that is not how our system works. That is not how our democracy functions. That is not how our Constitution is written.'' By setting aside settled immigration policy and ignoring statutes he finds inconvenient, President Obama has set a new precedent that a President can arbitrarily declare what is valid and what is not valid immigration law. Should his successors make up their own versions of any Federal statutes that they choose, in areas ranging from abortion and gun control to drug enforcement, environmental protection? And I would also add, heck, why not throw in income tax? Just declare that all the people that are going to vote for you don't have to pay income tax. Why not? All you have to do is say, I waited and waited and Congress wouldn't allow my supporters to get away with not paying income tax, so I waited long enough. Here is the new law. My supporters don't pay income tax. Then here's another article from Steve Dinan, in The Washington Times from November 25: Under the President's new amnesty, businesses will have a $3,000-per-employee incentive to hire illegal aliens over native-born workers because of a quirk of ObamaCare. President Obama's temporary amnesty, which lasts 3 years, declares up to 5 million illegal immigrants to be lawfully in the country and eligible for work permits, but it still deems them ineligible for public benefits such as buying insurance on ObamaCare's health care exchanges. Under the Affordable Care Act, that means businesses who hire them won't have to pay a penalty for not providing them health coverage, making them $3,000 more attractive than a similar, native-born worker, whom the business, by law, would have to cover. The loophole was confirmed by congressional aides and drew condemnation from those who said it put illegal immigrants ahead of Americans in the job market. ``If it is true that the President's actions give employers a $3,000 incentive to hire those who came here illegally, he has added insult to injury.'' That is a quote from Representative Lamar Smith. ``The President's actions would have just moved those who came here illegally to the front of the line, ahead of unemployed and underemployed Americans.'' A Department of Homeland Security official confirmed that the newly legalized immigrants won't have access to ObamaCare, which opens up the loophole for employers looking to avoid that penalty. Then Breitbart has an article regarding Robert Rector, our friend at Heritage Foundation. ``Amnestied Illegal Immigrants Could Cost Taxpayers $2 Trillion Over Their Lifetime.'' It is dated 24 November. Well, we do have this report from CRS, Congressional Research Service, and it looks like Congress should be able, without any problem, to pass a law that defunds any actions carrying out the President's illegal fiat that he dictated. I pulled language here--I have got a great staff, very helpful--I got them to pull this language from the law in 1974. This was in the bill that limited the funds that kept military in Vietnam, and this was on a continuing resolution. This was kind of what we are doing right here. But in 1974, the post-Watergate, Democratic majority in both houses just decided, you know what? We are going to stop Vietnam on a dime. Never mind that there are people who have been our allies that will be murdered as soon as we pulled out. Time to pull out. No plan for a slow withdrawal. No plan about leaving a stable government. We are just pulling out all of a sudden, and a million, 2 million people, it is estimated, died. This is how they do it. Section 108 of this continuing resolution, in 1974, simply said: Not withstanding any other provision of law on or after August 15, 1973, no funds herein or heretofore appropriated may be obligated or expended to finance, directly or indirectly, combat activities by United States military forces in or over, or from off the shores of North Vietnam, South Vietnam, Laos, and Cambodia. Boom, that stopped Vietnam. We can do the same thing with the President's illegal law that he pronounced into being. And then, in 1984, we had a Democratic-controlled House and Senate. They just decided they didn't want anybody providing funds to the Contras that were fighting Communists just south of the United States in Nicaragua, so here is the language, and I am quoting. This was in the bill that was signed October 12, 1984: During fiscal year 1985, no funds available to the Central Intelligence Agency, Department of Defense, or any other agency or entity of the United States involved in intelligence activities may be obligated or expended for the purpose which would have the effect of supporting, directly or indirectly, military or paramilitary operations in Nicaragua by any nation, group, organization, movement, or individual. So we just take our language directly from what the Democratic House and Senate did in 1974, what they did in 1985, and do that to address what the President has done, otherwise, fund things I wouldn't normally at all be in favor of funding. But I think this is such an important principle to saving this little experiment in a democratic Republic, it is worth doing. Then I couldn't help but note Kenric Ward's article, November 25: More than a year after Watchdog reported the IRS sent thousands of refunds to the tiny town of Parksley, Virginia, a woman has pleaded guilty to conspiracy and mail fraud. Linda Avila admitted to obtaining more than $7.2 million in refunds by exploiting the Federal Government's child tax credit program. Avila filed more than 1,700 tax returns with stolen identifications used by illegal immigrants, mainly from Mexico. The Virginian-Pilot reported that Avila, 50, operated a landscaping and cleaning business in Parksley. Investigators found copies of refund checks in amounts from $4,000 to more than $7,000. The tax returns frequently cited foreign dependents, which increased the refund amounts. Avila had the refunds mailed to various post office boxes on the Eastern Shore and in Delaware, according to court records. The workers cashed the checks, turned over most of the money to Avila, keeping a small fee for themselves. Avila, who remains free pending sentencing in U.S. District Court on February 17, could not be reached for comment. There is a good chance that has been going on in more than one place. Then there is this article from Neil Munro, today, December 1, entitled, ``Obama: Fund My Amnesty or I'll Shut Down the Government.'' It basically talks about that that is, indeed, what the President is threatening to do, ``You fund my illegal action when I spoke new law into being and overrode laws that were duly passed by the House and Senate and passed by the Congress and sent to the President.'' The President signed it. He overrode it just by himself. In essence, he is saying, ``If you don't give me every dime I want, along with funding my illegal actions, I am going to shut down the government.'' We have heard Mitch McConnell say it and John Boehner say it. They don't want a shutdown. We don't want a shutdown. We also don't want to fund illegal activity. We hope that the President is not going to throw a hissy fit and shut down the government because this is about the Constitution. It is about fairness under the law. It is about fairness to people who came legally. It is about fairness to the minorities who have an unemployment rate through the roof, and now, we are adding 5 million people who are going to get to compete with people who can't find jobs or who are underemployed as it is. It is up to Congress to do the moral, the legal thing, and force this President to work with Congress instead of dictating to it. Mr. Speaker, I yield back the balance of my time.

Mr. GOHMERT. Mr. Speaker, there are some Members who wanted to be heard from the prior Special Order, and they didn't have a chance, and I am glad to yield to my friend, Mr. Jeffries, so they may conclude. Congressional Black Caucus

Mr. GOHMERT

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

Mr. GOHMERT

Mr. GOHMERT. I have been on the border many nights, all hours of the night, and I have seen people just as they have finished crossing. The first time I went, I expected I would see people crossing in droves, not realizing the coyotes--the paid employees of the gangs, drug cartels that bring people across--they don't want to get caught because if a drug cartel or gang employee gets caught by one of the Texas boats running up and down--I say Texas boats because our administration has not provided any Federal boats in the area most crossed down south of McAllen. There are no Federal boats down there. It is an area where Texas has stepped up and provided a number of boats that are zipping up and down the river, and you can hear them coming. The coyotes don't want to be caught. They know if the Texas DPS catches them, they will destroy the raft, and that will put the coyote in very deep trouble for getting caught, so they don't want you to see them crossing. As the State of Texas has placed DPS officers, Texas Rangers, game wardens up on the high bank--even in the dark, with just the least bit of light at all, you can see their silhouettes--and coyotes won't cross, again, if they think they are about to get caught. Once across, groups anywhere from eight to 90 will immediately look for someone to surrender to unless, of course, they are like the people I have seen fleeing down there, who apparently had drugs or something they didn't want to be caught with. It is an open border, far too open, and now, before the border is secured, with talk of amnesty and legal status that our Border Patrolmen have assured over and over again causes a massive surge, a massive influx of people trying to get to the United States, just the President or anyone in Washington talking about amnesty or any type of legal status helps lure Central Americans and others to their demise, girls to being raped, sold into sex trafficking. Many make it across; some don't. I would think the most compassionate thing that the government of the United States could do is, number one, secure the border so that families are not tempted to send their little children, little girls up with other people, paying gang members to bring them up, who frequently rape them as they come to the U.S. A good neighbor would not only secure their border, but then we would help Mexico and Central American countries, as we did Colombia, to overcome the drug cartels. Colombia had made great strides I think, largely in part, because they had a President like President Uribe whose parents had both been assassinated. As one of our Federal agents in Colombia told me some years back, the toughest job they had back then was keeping Uribe alive because he was so courageous and so determined to defeat the drug cartels. Well, they kept him alive. With our help, some British help and some other help, the drug cartels were placed on the run. Coca fields were eliminated. It is still an ongoing battle they face constantly. If Mexico elects the right leader, then the United States Government should be a friend that helps them create an environment where people want to stay and work because many of the people come and they would love to remain in their country if it wasn't so dangerous and there was work. We can't take every person who resides in Mexico, Guatemala, El Salvador, or Honduras. We can't take every person without destroying the country that is the magnet, that is the shining light on the hill. As a very precious, wise, and elderly West African told me when I was over there: We were so excited when you elected your first black President, but ever since he has been President, we have seen America get weaker and weaker. At least from what we see, it appears you are getting weaker and weaker. We need you to spread around in Washington that you have got to stop getting weaker because it doesn't just affect you. We are Christians, and we know where we are going when we die, but we have no hope of a secure life and a safe life unless America is strong and is an intimidating force to the forces of evil around the world. Forces of evil will not go away. They will be with us until the end of time, and America makes a difference when we stand strong. We don't even have to send people, just the threat, as a former Ambassador from Israel said: America is not a serious threat to take out Iran's nuclear capability, and, in fact, quite the opposite. Everybody realizes America now is no threat to Iran. And since America is no threat to Iran, and Iran knows it, the world knows it, then Israel is more at risk than ever before. It is true in West Africa as Boko Haram gets more powerful, radical Islamists that want to take out Americans--and America is the Great Satan. It is true in North Africa, it is true in the Middle East, in Asia, in Russia, and in Europe: we need a strong America. And instead, though the official unemployment numbers have been shown to come down, when you cook the books by not including the massive millions of Americans who are adults, who could work, who are not institutionalized, and they have given up hope of finding a job. They have tried so long they are not counted in the unemployed. They are unemployed, but they are not counted as unemployed because they have given up looking. They have lost hope. That is absolutely tragic. I mentioned an article from September previously, but this report from CNS News on September 5 says that a record 92,269,000 Americans 16 and older did not participate in the labor force in August as the labor force participation rate matched a 36-year low of 62.8 percent, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics. Well, the article goes on to mention that that has happened six times in the past year, and, again, that matches the all-time high of nonparticipation, matching that set during the malaise days of the Carter administration. Back then, there was double-digit inflation, double-digit unemployment officially, and double-digit interest rates. People were hurting in America. Now people are still hurting. They are hurting across the country. That is why people are so desperate for sales. No telling what Thursday, Thanksgiving, the day after will look like. People are so desperate for sales because the data indicates on average people are taking home less than they did when compared with the rate of inflation. So we have a President whose administration has tied the Carter administration for the highest number of American adults who have given up hope of finding a job. Just as we get this news that the Obama administration continues this year to tie the Carter administration for the all-time high of Americans who have given up hope of finding a job, we get the story today, an article from The Daily Caller, that Obama's amnesty will add as many foreign workers as jobs since 2009. Because, Mr. Speaker, think about it: over 92 million Americans have given up hope of finding a job. That has tied the Carter administration. When this President in this economy says to people who have come illegally into this country, I am going to grant you 5 million or so permits to work, then it will put this President in a category all by himself. He will no longer be tied with the Carter administration as presiding over the highest number of Americans giving up hope of finding work. It will propel him into a league all of his own because it only makes sense that if you are giving 5 million legal work permits to people who are here illegally, they will then be able to offer their services cheaper than union workers and other workers who are here getting a proper wage, and it will displace millions more Americans from the jobs they currently hold. You can anticipate that, not immediately, but in the months ahead if the President does this unconstitutional act because he is tired of waiting on Congress to change the law the way he has dictated, and he has decided to dictate new law to America. Well, that is unconstitutional, and it is illegal. But the good news for the President is it will propel him out of the tie with the Carter administration for the most Americans giving up hope of finding employment and get him to the all-time high that will likely remain for as long as there is an America. Well, this article from The Daily Caller today points out that: President Barack Obama's unilateral amnesty will quickly add as many foreign workers to the Nation's legal labor force as the total number of new jobs created by his economy since 2009. The plan, expected to be announced late November 20, will distribute 5 million work permits to illegal immigrants and also create a new inflow of foreign college graduates for prestigious salaried jobs, according to press reports. Obama has already provided or promised almost 1 million extra work permits to foreigners, while his economy has only added 6 million jobs since 2009. Under the President's new amnesty plan, ``up to 4 million undocumented immigrants who have lived in the United States for at least 5 years can apply. An additional 1 million people will get protection from deportation through other parts of the President's plan,'' according to a November 19 report in The New York Times. The 5 million total was attributed to ``people briefed on his plans,'' the Times reports. The 5 million work permits will add to Obama's prior giveaways, which have provided work permits to almost 1 million foreigners. Since 2009, the U.S. economy has added only 6 million jobs, according to the International Monetary Fund. Further, it says: Not all the 5 million illegal immigrants who get permits will work, and many are already working under fake names or for cash. However, their new work permits will allow them to compete for jobs now held or sought by blue-collar Americans, including the many African American and Latinos who voted for Obama in 2008 and 2012. It would seem to me, Mr. Speaker, that if the President wants to do something about the massively unfair high unemployment rate for African Americans who are legal citizens that the thing to do would not be to give 5 million work permits to people that are illegally here so that they can knock more African Americans and more Hispanics out of the jobs they legally currently hold because they will work cheaper, probably without requirement for health benefits. My dear friend, Steve King, had invited me to Iowa, and I was visiting with a businessman there about their meatpacking plant where they had felt like, gee, they had to have illegal aliens doing the work because they were just jobs that Americans wouldn't do. And after a raid on their plant and illegal aliens were arrested, he reported that it turned out those were jobs that Americans just would not do at that price. But by raising the wages a couple of dollars and providing health care benefits, amazingly, they could find Americans who would do that job. So it seems that as this story is replicated around the country, there are not so many jobs that Americans won't do; it is that there are jobs that Americans won't do at the market rate. So that is why you see so many millionaires and billionaires, many of them massive Democratic donors, who are--and some Republican donors, including the National Chamber of Commerce; my local chambers aren't pushing like this--but they say we want and we need this massive influx of unskilled laborers to do these jobs Americans won't do. They don't finish the sentence and say ``these jobs Americans won't do at what we would like to pay them.'' They require more in order to be hired, which skews the living wage that workers in America are getting paid and skews it downward. So that under the Obama administration, Americans have really been hurt, and that was reflected in the results of the election. I know there are many Democratic friends who said they don't understand why Americans that came out and voted didn't feel better about the economy. Well, try talking to them because they make it very clear, they haven't had a raise in years. They have lost health care benefits because of ObamaCare. They have had deductibles. Some have told me: Mine went from a $500 deductible, which was really tough, to $5,000, which I just can't ever meet because I can't spend $5,000 extra to cover the deductible of my new ObamaCare policy. So, yeah, the old joke was always, Well, I am from the government, and I am here to help you. It is one of the most frightening lines in America. It is no longer a joke. It is quite scary when you look at what the government has done to people. And then as this article points out, for the Obama administration to, using their terminology, create 6 million jobs--because as we know the President and also Hillary Clinton have said, you businesses, you didn't create those jobs. Oh, no, you weren't the one that put your capital at risk, that took out a loan, that is paying more in taxes for the police and for the roads than anybody else. No, you didn't build that company that you risked your sacred honor and everything you hold dear on. You didn't create that; the government did that. We did that for you. Well, that is the way socialists generally start talking. Having been an exchange student to the Soviet Union back when it was the Soviet Union, I saw what happens to a country that has to live under that for decades. So even in the 1970s, I could see, wow, I don't want their health care. Thank goodness we have free market health care. Of course, that was back before insurance companies and the government skewed the cost of health care. So when I was being told this week by a parent that the bill they got for their child having stitches in a medical facility was $4,500, well, I did enough work with and for health insurance companies and people who had claims with health insurance companies that I know good and well that the top health insurance companies, they wouldn't pay $4,500. You get a bill for $4,500, they probably don't pay $500 for that bill. So why shouldn't an American who can't afford an insurance policy under ObamaCare, why shouldn't that American be able to pay $500 cash instead of being hit with a $4,500 bill, and then the health institution says hey, since you are going to pay cash, we will cut you a real deal, we will knock off 20 percent. So yes, we will save you a bunch of money. And you will still pay several times more than what the insurance company would pay. The bill I proposed, even though there are those in ignorance who say Republicans didn't have any solutions, one of the parts of my health care bill would require every health care facility and provider to post the costs. And if you are giving a different rate to the insurance company than you do to an American paying cash, you have to post it and let everybody see, because only then would you ever get back to having some competition. The doctors that we used to go to in my hometown have passed away now, but my late mother, a very, very smart lady, was always looking for a bargain. I remember one time I asked: Why are we going to this doctor instead of the one we went to last time? Well, he raised his rates, and you know good and well this doctor is as good as the other one. When is the last time somebody said that? I'm going to a different doctor because the other one raised his rates. People don't even know what doctors charge because it has been so skewed. You want to fix the health care system, one thing that should be required is that there actually be truth in the charges of health care. We don't have that now. You don't know what the insurance company pays specifically. Government rates are posted, but that is also why many physicians and health care providers, like hospitals, they have gotten out of the business. Doctors have told me that they have, and I have seen that they have. We lost our second hospital in my district this past week, they announced at least. If we want to help Americans, it is not by more government takeover. The question keeps coming to me: I don't understand why my insurance is so much more. My deductible went way up. I am covering things like maternity care I will never use, and my premiums went up. I don't get it. I don't understand why it is more expensive. Well, one thing that is very basic as part of that answer is, if you are going to hire with health care dollars 1,800 new IRS agents, if you are going to hire millions more people for the government that will never so much as put a bandaid or Bactine or anything on a cut or help anybody with a real problem, then your health care costs will go up because you have added huge amounts of government that have nothing to do with getting you treatment. They are government. They may make you sick to your stomach, they may cause you to get ill, they may scare you, but they are not going to fix your problem. They are government workers. And thank you very much, I was in the Army for 4 years, and I know there were some good doctors there. I was friends with some. But, wow, we did have some quacks. The last thing I want is to be forced back into a hospital where the government has total control. But that is part of the price you pay by being in the military. Well, thank goodness, Congress has stepped up enough to provide our military with really the best health care when it comes to traumatic injuries. But as some have found around here, if you have a problem with your gall bladder, you better go to a private hospital. If you have a traumatic injury, sure, our military doctors and facilities are awesome, but I will take my private facilities for anything else. Well, this article from The Daily Caller points out: Each year, the Nation accepts 1 million new immigrants, or roughly 5 million new immigrants since 2009. That total includes roughly 3.5 million working-age immigrants, which is slightly less than the number of Americans--4.3 million--who turn 18 each year. Also, companies annually hire roughly 450,000 blue-collar guest workers and roughly 200,000 white-collar guest workers. Most of these guest workers stay for less than a year, but many stay for 6 years. That current population of roughly 600,000 foreign graduates is expected to increase, if, as reported, Obama's plan allows American universities to offer green cards to foreign tuition-paying students. Each year, roughly 4.3 million Americans join the workforce in search of good jobs. That total includes roughly 800,000 Americans with expensive degrees in business, engineering, medicine, technology, and architecture. At least 9 million Americans are unemployed, and at least 7 million have given up looking for work. Employment rates among African Americans and Latinos are lower than rates for Whites and Asians. Since 2000, the number of native-born Americans with jobs has stalled, despite a growing population of working-age native-born Americans. The surplus of domestic and foreign job seekers also helps ensure that U.S. median wages have flatlined since 2000. Economists--including Obama's top economic adviser--say that wages stall when the labor supply is larger than the supply of new jobs. Down further: Obama has already provided or promised about 1 million work permits to foreigners since 2011. Since June 2012, Obama used the legally questionable Deferred Action For Childhood Arrivals program to give work permits to almost 600,000 illegal immigrants. That DACA number may go above 1.5 million. In May 2014, Obama's deputies announced they would provide work permits to 100,000 spouses of university-trained guest workers used by brand name companies. In October 2014, his deputies announced they would accelerate the paperwork for 110,000 would-be Haitian immigrants, allowing them to begin working in the United States long before they were due to get green cards. This is bad news for American workers. It is really bad news for American workers, and you would think it would come at a tremendous cost to the Democratic Party, which gets the huge majority of African Americans and a lesser majority of Hispanic and Latino voters. So this action to provide legal work permits to as many as 5 million people who are illegally here is a slap in the face, as hard a slap as you could give to Hispanics and to African Americans, whose unemployment rate is dramatically higher than it should be because this action that the President is about to take unconstitutionally and illegally for political purposes is basically saying to the masses, the millions of African Americans and Hispanic voters who are out of work: Look, we know you are going to always vote for us no matter how much damage we do to your lives, your employment, your ability to pay your bills. We know you are still going to vote for us no matter what because you haven't figured out that Republicans, they want you to have a job. They want you to be able to provide for yourself. They want you to learn English so you can be president of the company and not just a manual laborer for the company. We want you to live and achieve the American dream while the President is pushing a program that is going to push millions more, many of them African Americans and Hispanics, out of the jobs they have and bring in cheaper labor and make it even tougher. Why? We keep hearing it is a political move. Of course it is a political move. Well, the only way it is a political move is if the Democrats take the African American and Latino votes for granted. You are going to vote for us no matter how bad we mess up your lives, so this will allow us to eventually pick up the votes of people who have come in illegally because they will want to reward those of us who helped them. Well, I tell you, my office helps so many Hispanic families try to go through the legal route of getting family members here, or people who are trying to get a loved one here, a fiancee here. We help with those things. And, of course, there is no charge. And I have had a lot of people say: I don't know why we are working so hard and for all of these years to bring this person in legally when I would have been better off just saying, come on across, you will get amnesty some day and we will have saved all of this frustration--because we were trying to do what we thought was the American way, the legal way, when the President is about to reward lawbreakers by being a lawbreaker himself. The New York Times reports today: Officials of the Republican-led House Appropriations Committee have concluded that the government agency most responsible for implementing any new executive order, Citizenship and Immigration Services, would not be hindered if government funds are cut off. It operates entirely on revenue it generates through immigration applications. In short, lawmakers have no fiscal leverage over the agency, which could keep operating even if the rest of the government were shut down. We understand that. CIS, Citizenship and Immigration Services, they operate with fees they generate. Who allows them to do that? Congress does. Who created CIS? Congress did. Who has the authority to prevent CIS from implementing any illegal dictate that comes from the White House? Congress does. So even though CIS is funded by fees, we have the ability to do what Democratic Congresses have done post-Watergate. You want people out of Vietnam immediately who are Americans? Then no matter where the Federal money comes from, you make it a crime to spend any Federal revenue, no matter where it comes from, to have people in Vietnam. You want to prevent Americans from helping the contras keep communism off our southern border and out of Central America? They pass a law. It is easy to do. You pass a law saying it is a crime to use any Federal funds no matter where they come from for this purpose. That is one thing we can and should do. I deeply regret that our Members were told we are done until after Thanksgiving when the President is about to announce this lawlessness, and then we are hearing secondhand from leadership of the Republican Party, ``There is not much we can do. Gee, they get their own funds.'' Yeah, there is plenty we can do. We ought to be here right now passing a resolution that authorizes a lawsuit, an injunction. I have signed plenty of injunctions. There is a standard you have to meet, but it can be done. If you have a President acting lawlessly, just like if you have a mayor that is acting lawlessly or a county judge or a commissioner or a Governor, somebody that is adversely affected--ought to have standing, bring a lawsuit, bring an injunction--to keep them from violating the law when they are supposed to be enforcing the law. It makes sense that as an administration acts more and more lawlessly, you have the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau that was created, we were told, by the Democrats--by an all-Democrat House--and Senate majority, signed by President Obama, created this entity that was supposed to protect Americans from unscrupulous banking practices. It turns out now that is being used to gather debit card and credit card activity on Americans. The government shouldn't be able to get that information without a warrant or without permission from that American. We don't need a Federal agency that goes snooping, getting material that should require a warrant, and only after the government has shown probable cause that that American has committed a crime. Officers would come to me--I have signed orders ordering the disclosure of bank records like that, but the government had to establish probable cause, or I wasn't going to sign the warrant. Yet we create this monstrosity that, in the name of helping us poor stupid ignorant Americans, they will just monitor every bit of our financial activity while the NSA is watching over our emails and we are having our phone calls, all the logs from them go into the government. I mean, for heaven's sake, is it any wonder that we get a report this week. There is an article from the Washington Examiner that reports: ``Under Obama, U.S. Personal Freedom Ranking Slips Below France.'' For heaven's sake, we ought to be the freest country in the history of the world, and we have been previously. As Peter Sellers used to say, as the Pink Panther, ``Not anymore.'' How sad is this? The United States in the personal freedom rankings for 2014 is number 21. Well, is that any surprise that our freedom is under such attack and our freedoms are diminishing and going away when the government is looking at every private aspect? You look at the control that was taken by ObamaCare over all aspects of our life. It allowed the Federal Government to have all of your most personal secrets that should be only between you and your doctor. How many times have we heard that from liberals? Yet they passed ObamaCare without a single Republican vote that puts the government, not only in their bedroom, as they have previously objected to--the government is in your bedroom, your bathroom, your garage; they are in your dining room, your refrigerator, they are on machines you buy food from. They are everywhere now. As I have said before, the ObamaCare bill was not so much about health care, it was about GRE. ObamaCare was about the ``government running everything.'' Holy cow, are they actually doing that. Anyway, quite interesting, as our government is going to put another 4 or 5 million hardworking Americans out of work and turn those jobs over to people who came in illegally displacing--I guarantee you, when the smoke clears, there will be a disproportionate number of African Americans and Hispanics who have lost their jobs because of this action the President is going to take. New Zealand, Norway, Australia, Iceland, Canada, Sweden, Netherlands, Uruguay, Denmark, United Kingdom, Ireland, Switzerland, Belgium, Germany, Costa Rica, Finland, France, Austria, Malta, Portugal, those are all ahead of us in the personal freedom rankings for 2014, and there we are down below Portugal. Well, tonight, it is also reported in The Washington Post, that the President's announcement coincides with the Latin Grammy Awards. The article points out that the 15th annual Latin Grammys, which begins at 7 p.m. Thursday on Spanish TV network Univision, they are going to take a break for the President's announcement. Clearly, it is political. Clearly, it will make points with those who are rewarded by legal work permits for coming in illegally. It is going to be a disaster for many Latinos, for many African Americans, to keep their job. They are going to have to start making less than a living wage than they had before. We need to be about the business of stopping this. We can, we have the will, but it is kind of tough, as we approach Thanksgiving, for many Americans to be thankful. This is still the greatest country in the world, but we are losing what we have had, losing freedoms, losing revenue, losing control of our lives to the government. It was George Washington, along with every single President since, who have said, ``This time of year for all we have, for all we have been given, those that do believe the Bible know all good gifts come from God and to God be the glory.'' I yield back the balance of my time.

Mr. GOHMERT. Mr. Speaker, my dear friend from Pennsylvania (Mr. Kelly) is exactly right. We haven't heard the last of Ebola. It will continue to mutate. It will continue to be a threat. As this President is sending around 3,000 or so of our military members to west Africa--and they have been told they are going to be given gloves and masks and are urged to wash their hands and feet several times a day--basically, what that says is the men and women who have sworn and pledged their lives to protect ours are not going to be adequately protected by this administration. The rules of engagement already put our military at risk, and now, we are going to send them to Ebola-infested countries. The initial report said, initially, our military will not be seeing Ebola patients, but they are certainly going to come into contact with people who have had exposure to Ebola. I recall our President George W. Bush--a good man, a smart man, a witty, clever gentleman, despite what some might say--but he asked after 9/11, in essence, who would have ever dreamed someone would fly a plane into a building like a bomb? My thought immediately was, ``Well, actually, Tom Clancy wrote about that several years ago.'' It was not a radical Islamist as had happened on 9/11/2001. The late Tom Clancy had quite an imagination, but he did his homework in amazing fashion. Some have said his books had too much detail in them, but one of his latter books had research going on in Africa with the strain of monkeys that is the one strain that is believed and has support for having been transferred through the air instead of through liquid body fluids. In the fiction novel, Clancy had somebody working to develop that strain into a mutated strain, since it mutates constantly into one that people could pass through the air, and then it was used to infect our military or expose our military and many Americans. Basically, in his fiction novel, that allowed radical Islamists to take over much of the Middle East, while our military had been exposed to Ebola and much of it was quarantined. There are many things Tom Clancy has written about that I hope and pray never happen. That is one of them, but since some things that Tom Clancy's mind dreamed up as a fiction writer novel actually came to fruition, we shouldn't think for a minute that if Clancy could dream it up, our enemies could as well. Immigration

Mr. GOHMERT

Mr. GOHMERT. Mr. Speaker, we got word earlier this afternoon that President Obama intends to issue an oral decree followed by a written decree--as any good monarch would--indicating that he has decided to change the law regarding immigration. An article here from The Washington Post has a quote from Secretary Jeh Johnson, the Secretary of Homeland Security, which he says: ``Legislative action is always preferable,'' Johnson said, ``but we have waited for Congress to act, and the Congress has not acted. The President has waited.'' That is what leaders in places like Venezuela--many places historically where that statement has been made, we have waited for parliament or the legislature or Congress to change the law. They didn't do as we dictated to Congress they had to do, and therefore, we have decided to change the law. This President is creating a constitutional crisis, and it happens when a President is allowed to continue pushing the envelope and pushing the envelope and exceeding the envelope, and you have an incorrigible opinion written--as the majority for the Supreme Court did on ObamaCare--that is the height of hypocrisy. How the Supreme Court majority could say, on page 14 and 15, that the mandated penalty in ObamaCare was not a tax--the Supreme Court said if it were a tax, of course, under the anti-injunction statute many decades old, we would not have jurisdiction--plaintiffs wouldn't have standing. But since clearly the penalty is just that--it is a penalty--then it is not a tax because, if it were a tax, we wouldn't have jurisdiction, plaintiffs wouldn't have standing, and we would all be out of luck, and we wouldn't be able to issue an opinion, but since it is not a tax, it is a penalty, then we will go forward and be able to issue an opinion. Then you get over about 40 pages, and the opinion says, since it is a tax after all--even though 40 pages or so ago it wasn't--now, we found that it is, therefore, it is constitutional. So we have had all three branches help create a constitutional crisis. The President on one hand, by continuing to overstep the boundaries of the Constitution as he usurps more and more power; the Supreme Court by issuing decisions that are nonsensical; and Congress, if we continue not to use the powers of the purse to stop the lawlessness by this administration. The Supreme Court has had opportunities to stop it--they have stopped it on many occasions--set a record for numbers of Supreme Court opinions ruling against an administration unanimously, so the President does have that part of his legacy going, but apparently, the legacy continues to be stretched to the bounds of absurdity. The Washington Post said--this was from today: President Obama will announce Thursday that he will use his executive authority to expand temporary protections to millions of undocumented immigrants, according to several individuals who have been briefed on the decision. Obama will travel to Las Vegas on the heels of that announcement to rally support for his initiative on Friday. It shouldn't be a surprise. While the President slept and four heros--including one ambassador--in Benghazi were killed, he got up and headed for Las Vegas. Now, he is going to announce this constitutional crisis he is creating by deciding to legislate and then take off for Las Vegas again, gambling with the jobs of Americans as he goes. Getting back to the article again, it says: Congress will receive official details on the move Thursday, according to a senior Democratic Party official. Even before final confirmation of the President's plans, outside advocates began readying events to promote the administration's immigration policy. ``We hear there will be a primetime Thursday evening announcement, to preview, and full unveiling in Vegas on Friday,'' immigration advocate Dawn Le wrote in an email to other activists, which was later inadvertently sent to a group of reporters Wednesday morning. ``Can folks begin to work and plan watch parties for Thursday and/or Friday? Unclear whether Thursday night content will be what is `celebratory,' but Friday will be where we need a lot of energy guaranteed.'' That is, of course, while the President is in Las Vegas, gambling away American jobs. The article goes on: Obama launched his push for immigration reform in January 2013 in Las Vegas, outlining a plan that would allow many of the Nation's 11 million undocumented immigrants to earn citizenship. Now, it is important to note the article goes on to say: Johnson said the administration has concluded it has ``wide latitude'' to take action. ``It can't be that we are not allowed to lift a finger to fix our broken immigration system,'' he said. ``And we will.'' That is what creates the constitutional crisis, Mr. Speaker. Jefferson once recommended that we shouldn't bring up a bill for a vote until it has had a year on file for people to review. That would eliminate all these legislating-by-crises situations, but we have seen crises generated. We know the former Chief of Staff for the President of the United States once quipped that you never want to let a good emergency go to waste; obviously, there is a feeling that this would be the time to usurp congressional authority. Now, the sad thing is the crisis is not as bad right now as it has been in the past. Any time the President talked about amnesty or legal status, Border Patrolmen--some on the record, some in articles--have pointed out any time the President--or anybody in Washington, but especially the President--talks about amnesty or legal status, the numbers of people coming in illegally, the number of people dying trying to get in, increases. The number of people wishing to get lost in the masses from Central America and Mexico coming in from countries where radical Islamic activities abound are coming in, in greater numbers. Interestingly, the White House has shown it has the ability to foment a crisis unilaterally, and then by fomenting the crisis unilaterally, justify the crisis they created to usurp congressional authority granted to Congress and no one else in the Constitution. There is an article from my dear friend, Senator Ted Cruz. ``The Constitution designs a system of checks and balances for our Nation, and executive amnesty for illegal immigrants unilaterally decreed by the White House would seriously undermine the rule of law. ``Our Founders repeatedly warned about the dangers of unlimited power within the executive branch. Congress should heed those words as the President threatens to grant amnesty to millions of people who have come to our country illegally. ``To be clear, the dispute over executive amnesty is not between President Obama and Republicans in Congress; it is a dispute between President Obama and the American people. The Democrats suffered historic losses in the midterm elections largely over the prospects of the President's executive amnesty. President Obama was correct: his policies were on the ballot across the Nation in 2014. The elections were a referendum on amnesty, and the voters soundly rejected it. There was no ambiguity. ``Undeterred, President Obama appears to be going forward. It is lawless. It is unconstitutional. He is defiant and angry at the American people. If he acts by executive diktat, President Obama will not be acting as a President, he will be acting as a monarch. ``Thankfully, the Framers of our Constitution, wary of the dangers of monarchy, gave the Congress tools to rein in abuses of power. They believed if the President wants to change the law, he cannot act alone; he must work with Congress. ``He may not get everything he wants, but the Constitution requires compromise between the branches. ``A monarch, however, does not compromise. As Alexander Hamilton explains in Federalist 69, a monarch decrees, dictates, and rules through fiat power, which''--as Ted Cruz points out--``is what President Obama is attempting. When the President embraces the tactics of a monarch, it becomes incumbent on Congress to wield the constitutional power it has to stop it.'' He goes on to make good points. It is important that someone speak for the tens of millions of American citizens who had a dream, who hoped to have work, who hoped to provide for their families, who hoped to have enough to pay back student loans, who hoped to buy their children bicycles for Christmas, but they are out of work. They lost work. Oh, I know the books have gotten cooked, and we are told that the unemployment rate is dramatically better, but a big reason that the American voters did not indicate that at the polls is they don't feel it, and the reason they don't feel that the employment numbers are better is because they personally know they are not. They are not better. In fact, this article is from September 5 from CNS News: A record 92,269 million Americans 16 and older did not participate in the labor force in August, as the labor force participation rate matched a 36-year low of 62.8 percent, according to the Bureau of Labor and Statistics. The labor force participation rate has been as low as 62.8 percent in 6 of the last 12 months, but prior to last October had not fallen that low since 1978, which, hypothetically or parenthetically, was during the august--I say sarcastically for those on the left that don't know sarcasm--days of the American economy during President Carter's glorious years as President. This article goes on: BLS employment statistics are based on the civilian noninstitutional population, which consists of all people 16 or older who are not in the military or an institution such as a prison, mental hospital, or nursing home. In August, the civilian noninstitutional population was 248,229 million, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics. Of that 248 million, 155,959 million, or 62.8 percent, participate in the labor force, meaning they either had a job or had actively sought one in the past 4 weeks. The 92,269 million who did not participate in the labor force are those in the civilian noninstitutional population who did not have a job and did not actively seek one in the last 4 weeks. Because they did not seek a job, then the administration did not count them as unemployed. Mr. Speaker, as the President intends to announce tomorrow--and party in Las Vegas--going into more detail about how many Americans are going to be displaced from their jobs by people the President is going to provide amnesty to, somebody needs to be speaking up for that union member that would love to pay union dues if he just had a job, or for the single moms that have approached me in tears, saying they got forced into part-time work because of ObamaCare and the change in the law that was entailed in the ObamaCare bill. There are people hurting across America that are American citizens that once had a dream. Maybe we should label the President's unconstitutional actions as the American citizen dream killer, instead of any type of DREAMer act. We have seen statistics that indicate that possibly less than 10 percent of people who have come into this country illegally are actually working, so the President provides amnesty for millions of people who are illegally here. I hope that he will also provide an apology to the Hispanics and people from different places around the world that my office is trying to help achieve visas, achieve citizenship legally, some taking years. I am sure the President is not going to feel like apologizing. Apparently, the indication is he wants to celebrate the unconstitutional actions he is going to announce in Las Vegas, but somebody with the government needs to apologize to the American people that 92 million-plus Americans are not even looking for a job any more when they are eligible for jobs, they could have jobs, most of them would like to have jobs, but they have given up. They have lost their dreams under this administration. As the President announces making millions of more people who have come illegally eligible to take American citizens' jobs in the next 2 days, I hope that our Congress on both sides of the aisle will do what is right and say, ``Wait a minute. Secure the border, Mr. President. That is what is exclusively within your control.'' The Supreme Court has said States and local authorities can't secure the border. It is up to the administration, and the mere fact is that this administration has turned their back on protecting Americans from the illegal aliens that have come in and killed Americans, raped Americans. Thank God most of them don't do those things. But for the millions of people who have been the victims of crimes by people who have come in illegally, those crimes would never have occurred if we had had an administration that secured the border so people who came across with criminal records in their past in the countries they came from would not be allowed in here, and those crimes they committed in America would not have been committed. Those that have been deported and come back in after they committed crimes here and commit more crimes, as I personally saw as a judge happen in Smith County, Texas, those wouldn't be happening if we had an administration that would properly secure the border. The Clinton administration didn't do it. The Bush administration didn't do it. And now, this administration has set records for how poorly they have prevented people from coming in illegally, the damage that has been done to American citizens, crushing dreams, taking dreams. I hope and pray the President will remember his oath, that this precursor that was released today about the damage the President wants to do to American citizens who are trying to find jobs, that he will have second thoughts and not do it. Mr. Speaker, I hope the American people who spoke very loudly and clearly when they came out to vote will let the President know, in person, through email, through phone calls, that American citizens still need jobs. Why don't you help the economy get going stronger so that we need more people to come in and have those jobs? Our oath is to the American people, and when you have nearly a third of the United States, or getting close to half of people eligible to work that have even completely given up on looking for jobs, the economy is not good. Americans are suffering. Now the President wants to bring in, just provide amnesty to people who will then be able to compete and put American citizens out of work. It really is heartbreaking. Now, if you stay aboard, say, an Air Force One and you only go to rallies or golf courses where everybody is doing great, wealthy, you only talk to high-tech industry people that are just knocking down billions of dollars, it is easy to start feeling like things are going great. But if you go to Sabine County, Texas; San Augustine, Texas; Shelby County, Texas; Angelina County; Nacogdoches County; Rusk County; Panola County; Harrison County; Gregg County; Smith County; Wood County; Upshur County--those are counties all within my district. And in some of those counties, people are really getting desperate. They don't need to compete with 5 million more people for jobs. They would just like a job themselves. If the Obama administration will take the foot off of the throat of this economy, will help us roll back and repeal ObamaCare. I got notice again of another hospital in my district this week, there in Gilmer where my nephew was born. Gilmer hospital, where my nephew was born, is now going to be closed. They are not going to be able to handle the continued cuts that ObamaCare has created. There are numerous reasons, but that is a death knell. Hospitals are closing. People are hurting. So for the 92, between 92 and 93 million people that have given up hope, how sad, because the Obama administration will not secure our borders. I want immigrants coming in. I love the fact that we allow more legal immigrants in than anybody. I love that. That is wonderful. But when you don't have secure borders and millions come in, millions upon millions, then you are moving toward a day when nobody is going to want to come in because you didn't have a logical immigration process. They overwhelmed the system. They broke the system, and now that shining light on a hill has gone out. We are moving in that direction: the military becoming too small to adequately protect us, people around the world in hostile environments deciding that America can be pushed around, radical Islamists deciding this is the time to move, Iran figuring out that they have an administration that can be duped over and over again until they have the atomic weapons and the ability to carry them, which they have already got. They can do it with ships, enough to take out the Great Satan, which is the United States, according to them, and the Little Satan, Israel. And this President is going to have a good time out in Las Vegas. Las Vegas can be fun, but not when the President says he is going to sign a law--wouldn't it be ironic if he decided to sign it at Caesars Palace, because the real Caesar's palace used to see that kind of thing on a regular basis, you know, a dictator, or Caesar just signing a law as he saw fit. But in this case, you would think a Caesar would not sign a law that would provide the ability to displace millions of Americans who have jobs and force them into the eventuality where 92 million Americans are. They have given up hope. They have given up on their dreams. If you believe the Bible, as I do, it makes clear that the government is here to protect people, to protect against evil, to encourage good conduct. That means following the law. You provide a protected environment in which people can be peacemakers and be meek and loving and kind and turn the other cheek. But that is not for the government. The government's role is to enforce the law as it is. And may God plant the seeds of wisdom in the right people in this administration so they will quit harming Americans who just want a job. 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. In recent years, after this administration blindly supported what it called--and others in North Africa and the Middle East called--an Arab Spring, we have come to find out what many of us suspected even at the time and said was likely to be even more of a devastating winter than an Arab Spring. It has seen the fall of the government in Libya. It has seen the chaos arise in many parts of Libya. It has seen terrorists take control of parts of Libya. It has seen the fall of the governments in Algeria, Tunisia, and the takeover of radical Islam. I was amazed at the ignorance of many in the mainstream media when I said back at the time that what radical Islamists--what the Muslim Brotherhood--were seeking to re-create was the beginning of the Ottoman Empire and that, in its ignorance, our executive branch--this administration here in the U.S.--actually helped jump-start what the Muslim Brothers are hoping will be the new Ottoman Empire. I was surprised how many reporters asked what did I mean by ``Ottoman Empire.'' They had not had the kind of education that I was fortunate to have had in public schools in east Texas and in public school by way of Texas A&M University and then law school at Baylor. So they didn't know what the Ottoman Empire was. Hopefully, they did some research. Many of us did not realize that the date 9/11--when the worst attack on America occurred--also marked the anniversary of the worst defeat that the Islamic caliphate ever suffered in history. That was the devastating defeat to the caliphate. The radical Islamist caliphate had made it all the way to Vienna. It laid siege upon Vienna, and on 9/11 of 1683, the radical Islamic caliphate suffered its worst defeat in history. Amazingly, that was the date that Osama bin Laden and the mastermind, Khalid Sheikh Mohammed--currently in Guantanamo, who hopefully will stay there until his death--chose to inflict the worst attack in American history. To many people, dates mean things. My anniversary means a lot. I have never forgotten one. Our birthdays mean a lot to most Westerners. Some of us begin to try to forget them, but major dates in caliphate history mean a great deal to radical Islamists. There was an article today written by Dr. Sebastian Gorka, and I would like to read this in for the Record. He does a good job of incapsulating this issue today. Dr. Gorka says: One hundred years ago today, the last caliph, or emperor of Islam, declared the last jihad against the infidel, and today is the first time ever that the National Cathedral in the Nation's Capital will host Muslim prayers. Most Americans will have no idea that, as part of World War I, the then-caliph of the Ottoman Empire declared a holy war against infidels as was his right within shari'a law and Islamic theology. You can read the full fatwa. In that fatwa, there actually was a typo in the original. It was provided on this day in 1914, but they had a typo saying it was 1915. The article says: That statement by the last sitting head of what was the theocratic empire of Islam was the catalyst which led to the religiously fueled genocide against Christian Armenians and Assyrians. That is what is pictured. It actually represents a photograph that was taken of young Armenian Christian girls who were kidnapped, stripped naked, raped, and then crucified on crosses as far as the eye could see. This article points out: The Episcopal church leaders who agreed to host Muslim prayers inside the Washington cathedral probably have no idea what happened a century ago in Asia Minor or that there even was a caliph in office at the beginning of the 20th century. However, we can rest assured that the co-organizers do, for they include the Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR), The Islamic Society of North America (ISNA), the Muslim Public Affairs Council (MPAC), and the All Dulles Area Muslims Society (ADAMS) Center. Both CAIR and ISNA will be fully aware of the significance of November 14th, seeing as both organizations were declared by a Federal court to be unindicted coconspirators of Hamas, the Muslim Brotherhood terror group, in the largest terrorist financing trial in U.S. history. Those Muslims who have a supremacist understanding of their religion, such as members of al Qaeda and the Muslim Brotherhood, which was recently declared an illegal terrorist organization in the country of its founding, Egypt, have a special regard for historic dates and anniversaries. It is, of course, no accident that the 9/11 attacks--the worst terror attacks in world history--occurred exactly to the day in 1683 when the Islamic Ottoman forces were defeated outside the city walls of Vienna, the deepest the Islamic caliphate's forces made it into the heart of the Christian West. There is nothing inherently wrong about interfaith initiatives as long as they start from the same place: a mutual respect for the belief system of the other and their inherent dignity as humans created by God. When one party acts in bad faith based upon its ideological commitment to see other faiths destroyed or subjected, then the event runs the risk of becoming a propaganda coup for the extremists and their followers. The fact that this event is occurring just as ancient Christian communities are being destroyed in the Middle East and ``nonbelievers'' are being actually crucified by ISIS jihadists makes it all the more egregious. We know that the Episcopal church is in trouble with more conservative believers leaving in great numbers and the remaining adherents not exactly outdoing their Catholic cousins in terms of reproducing the next generation of believers. The author goes on to say: But I doubt they also understand the finer points of jihadist doctrine, one of which is that if a place of worship is used by Muslims for their prayers that territory subsequently becomes part of Dar al Islam, sacred Muslim land, forever. That author was Sebastian Gorka, Ph.D., and he is the Major General Matthew C. Horner Distinguished Chair of Military Theory at the Marine Corps University and is the national security and foreign affairs editor at Breitbart.com. Mr. Speaker, it is an important day. The prosecution referred to in this article was actually the Holy Land Foundation criminal trial in the United States Federal District Court in Dallas, Texas. I have done a great deal of reading and looking into the issues involved in that case, and am aware of the massive number of counts of conviction, and also have read some of the pleadings in this case in which the Islamic Society of North America and the Council on American-Islamic Relations--CAIR and ISNA--were named as coconspirators in that prosecution, in which they were contributors and part of funding terrorism. They were not named as indicted coconspirators, but they were named as coconspirators. And CAIR and ISNA were among parties that filed pleadings in Federal District Court, demanding that their names be eliminated from the pleadings. Yet after the Federal judge in Dallas reviewed all of the information, the evidence before him, he declared that actually there was plenty of evidence to support the fact that CAIR and ISNA--which have such cozy relations with this administration now--that there is plenty of evidence to support that those two entities are coconspirators in supplying and financing terrorism. Well, those convictions occurred in late 2008. And from some who have been involved in that effort, their understanding was that if the Bush administration Justice Department, after years of investigation and effort of prosecution, if they got convictions, then the intention was to come back--and especially since the courts had said that there is plenty of evidence to support that these named coconspirators were coconspirators, then they would come back and actually indict them, prosecute them. And those parties were not satisfied, though, with the judgment of the Dallas Federal court. So they appealed the ruling that there was plenty of evidence to support CAIR and ISNA being coconspirators, and Imam Majid, who is their part of the prayer effort at National Cathedral today--they wanted their names eliminated. The Federal judge in Dallas would not do that. So they appealed to the Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals. And after the Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals reviewed the record, all the information, then they stated even more plainly and more directly than the Federal District Court did that, yes, there really was plenty of evidence to support that they were coconspirators and that the names should not be struck. They should not be kept private. And the thinking was that, you know, gee, any administration, of course, will understand that once a Federal District Court and a Court of Appeals find there is plenty of evidence to support that CAIR and ISNA are coconspirators in helping terrorism around the world that surely they would not end up being cozy with any American administration. That would be the common sense, you would think. There is plenty of common sense back where I come from. But you get to Washington, and it is not common sense. It is just sense. And it is rather a shame that organizations who were said by a Federal court system to have plenty of evidence to show that they are coconspirators and had radical Islamic efforts at terrorism, that they would have such an open ear at the White House. In recent years, there was a 2-day seminar that was going to take place out at Langley. And I know one of the instructors very well. He has made a career out of studying radical Islam. He used to provide briefings, do research, provide advice to the Joint Chiefs of Staff of our military about radical Islam. Well, he was one of them. Well, that rather upset what the Federal courts have said the evidence indicates were front groups for the Muslim Brotherhood, were suppliers, helpers in terrorism. They got upset that he was going to be out there and be a part of the teaching of the seminar. So they burned up the phone line to the White House. The White House canceled the seminar. And it was CAIR that had an ongoing partnership that they developed with the United States Federal Bureau of Investigation. And I was surprised that it took so long after the FBI had spent a couple of decades investigating what, ultimately, we understood was the Muslim Brotherhood. It was surprising, with Federal courts saying that there is plenty of evidence to show that they are complicit in supplying terrorism funding, helping with terrorism. I was surprised that the FBI decided, with all that evidence they furnished the prosecutors, that they ended up turning around and making CAIR their partner. So I was surprised that the letter took so long from the FBI eventually to the leaders of CAIR, saying that, in view of evidence in essence there in the Holy Land Foundation trial, we need to suspend our partnership in the outreach program that the FBI had to them. When I was questioning the immediate previous director of the FBI, Director Mueller, about the Tsarnaevs and the lack of investigation into their backgrounds, even after the Russians warned this administration twice--after the first time, apparently the Russians were surprised that we didn't do anything with the knowledge they had provided, that Tsarnaev had been radicalized and would likely kill people here. They warned a second time and had to be totally shocked-- and, to the best I understand, basically the investigation included talking to Tsarnaev, himself, and to his mom. There may have been some other peripheral things. But as I questioned the director of the FBI, saying, you guys didn't even go out to their mosque to ask questions to help you determine whether Tsarnaev had been radicalized. And, in essence, he ended up saying, we did go to the mosque. When he gave the answer, I didn't hear the little add-on he gave until my staff replayed it with the little add-on he gave after: We did go out to those mosques, but he added, ``in our outreach program.'' So just as I suspected, the FBI didn't go out and investigate. Michele Bachmann, Lynn Westmoreland reviewed some materials. Trent Franks looked at some of the materials. But we were concerned because CAIR, this named coconspirator in supplying and helping terrorism, as a front group for the Muslim Brotherhood, we were surprised that CAIR had such powerful inroads into the FBI, enough to the point that they could demand to have the training materials for the FBI reviewed and had them purged of things that they, as apparently a front group for the Muslim Brotherhood, found offensive. As named coconspirators in funding terrorism, they were offended. So a massive number of pages that radical Islamists might find offensive, that people who wanted to kill Americans might be offended by, were purged from our training materials. The State Department apparently purged materials. The intelligence community purged materials. And, as one intelligence officer told me, we have blinded ourselves of the ability to see our enemy. So, Mr. Speaker, it breaks my heart, grieves me deeply when innocent Muslims are maltreated, killed, tortured. It is a grievous violation of human rights. But in the same way, the things that have been done and are growing and spreading in numbers never before seen in human history, of Christians being persecuted around the world, as America basically remains silent. But today, being the 100th anniversary of the caliph's public fatwa, demanding the murder, killing of Christians in 1914 by the last Islamic caliph, also is the first day in our history when the National Cathedral, run by the Presbyterian church, conceded to the named coconspirators in funding terrorism, their demands to have prayers today on this 100th anniversary of the fatwa that caused the deaths of countless Christians, especially Armenian Christians, as depicted in this blown-up photograph from the newspaper, as depicted in this drawing that we have blurred, depicting what was actually seen along the road as massive numbers of young Christian girls were raped and crucified. We don't want a holy war. No Christian should ever go to some kind of holy war. But for heaven's sake, when there is an international group about which moderate Muslim leaders in the Middle East have said to me: The Muslim Brotherhood is your enemy; they have been behind every attack that has occurred onto America and Americans; they have been behind the killing of Americans all over the Middle East and the world--why do you keep helping the Muslim Brotherhood? When the largest uprising in the history of the world occurred over a year ago in Egypt, when moderate Muslims, Christians, even the Coptic Christian Pope, secularists, over 30 million came to the streets of Egypt and said, we don't want radical Islam controlling our country, it was a day of historic proportions. Never before had there been a crowd of that size gathered. Even when 20 million came out or when the estimated 33 million came out, they demanded the same thing. It was not a military coup, as CNN and this administration tried to paint. It was the largest uprising in the history of the world, in Egypt. And the Egyptians, instead of being called stupid, foolish by this administration and some media, they should have been congratulated. We should have rushed to their assistance. And, instead, this administration said, Unless you put Muslim Brother Morsi back in power, then we are not going to help you. The Apache helicopters that were coming, that you use to keep the Suez Canal open, that you use to fight terrorism in the Sinai, that help Israel, we are not going to send them. You are not going to be able to keep the Suez Canal and the Sinai terrorism down until you put the Muslim Brothers back in charge. Many in the media made a big deal about the Christian churches being burned and about Jews and Christians being persecuted, tortured, and killed, and, for some unbelievable reason, tried to blame it on those who ousted the Muslim Brothers. And anybody that will do any modicum of research in Egypt will understand, it was the Muslim Brothers that burned the churches, that killed Christians and Jews there. It was not the government. It was not the military. The military, under General el-Sisi, was doing everything it could to stop it. I talked to a former CIA operative in the Middle East last year who said that he had talked to a guy who said, Morsi, President Morsi, had tried to contract through him to have General el-Sisi murdered. I asked our Embassy personnel if they had heard of anything like that. They said they had not. In our meeting with General el-Sisi, I asked him directly, ``Did you have evidence when you arrested President Morsi that he was trying to hire someone to kill you?'' He beat around the bush twice and ultimately answered, ``Yes, we did.'' Yet we even had even Republicans go to Cairo and say, ``Put back the Muslim Brothers.'' And I met the brilliant gentleman--Muslim, seemed to be a very fine man--that was put in charge of the committee to draft a new constitution because the constitution the United States helped and this administration helped Egypt to get that led to the Muslim Brotherhood control of the country had no provision for impeachment. So as Muslim Brother President Morsi began to usurp power, kind of in the same vein, and Noriega and other dictators who get elected and then start grabbing power, he was doing it in Egypt. There was no provision for impeachment. There was nothing they could do except what they did, go to the street in the tens of millions, demand his removal and, in the largest uprising, cause the removal of an unconstitutionally acting President, and he was removed, thank goodness. I was thrilled earlier this year when I think it was over 90 percent of the Egyptian voters voted to ratify the new constitution for Egypt. I really wished that all of the American media could have grasped the significance of what happened. That constitution actually included provisions that required the Egyptian Government under the constitution to rebuild and replace the churches or synagogues that had been damaged or destroyed by the Muslim Brotherhood. They felt so badly for what the Muslim Brotherhood had done to the Christians and Jews that they put it in their constitution that they had to be repaired and replaced. That should have been a big day for freedom, and most of the American media missed it entirely. Well, they are also missing today. As the left often wants to do-- maybe they want to vilify me. You can try to rewrite history, but you can't change what has happened in the past, and what happened 100 years ago today, the first day, November 14, that the National Cathedral, run by the Presbyterian Church, has allowed Muslim prayers by named coconspirators in the terrorist funding trial to come lead prayers in this Christian cathedral. I thank God that the massive majority of Muslims, including some of my Muslim friends in the Northern Alliance in Afghanistan, they don't want radical Islamists controlling anything. They don't want to be at war with Americans. They don't want to kill Americans. Thank God for that. But it is sheer lunacy not to recognize how important anniversaries are to radical Islamists, to the Muslim Brotherhood, to those who would kill and persecute and wipe out Jews and, as they say, wipe the Great Satan America off the map and the Little Satan Israel off the map. It is lunacy not to recognize the way these radical Islamists feel. We can live at peace with moderate Muslims. When I visited Nigeria not long ago to mourn with the Africans--23 mothers who had had their daughters kidnapped, brutalized every day still in Boko Haram, radical Islamist controlled, it was a beautiful thing. Nigeria, until the radicals got involved, had Muslims and Christians living peacefully together. Meeting a government official, a devout Christian, who had in his wedding party one of his best friends in the world who was a Muslim, it is a thing of beauty to see people with different backgrounds and beliefs living at peace together. But until the American media, until a majority of Americans realize there really are radical Islamists that think that the fatwa that was declared by the last Islamic caliph of the Ottoman Empire 100 years ago today was a great thing, then this country remains at great risk. It is bad enough that we have enemies publicly saying they want to wipe us off the map, destroy our freedom of worship, free speech, the freedoms we hold dear and love, but to be blind that they want to destroy us is negligence, reckless indifference that can cost a country's freedom. Mr. Speaker, today is a big day. I hope Americans will wake up and understand the Muslim Brotherhood is not our friend. They want us all to be living, if we live at all, as Muslims or to pay the fine that acknowledges that we are subjugating ourselves to radical Islam. People have got to wake up. This country is at risk. Mr. Speaker, with prayerful regard to the masses of young Christians who were kidnapped, raped, crucified as a result of that fatwa issued 100 years ago today, I hope that we will not be so blind that we could allow this movement to continue to grow as it has grown and grown. Some say a good way to avoid destructive forces overtaking civilized society is to watch Israel--that Israel could be looked at as the world's miner's canary, as miners used to take canaries into mine shafts. They knew canaries were more sensitive to poison gas, so if they saw a canary getting in trouble, falling, then they knew they better get out of the mine because it was very, very dangerous. When we see Israel being attacked, our best friend in the Middle East being attacked, when we see anti-Semitism, hatred for Jews, hatred for Israelis growing in Europe, of all places--I never thought that would happen again after Hitler--but it is growing again around Europe. It is growing on American campuses. These young, wonderful, brilliant students who have been miseducated to think that they need to get involved in anti-Semitism on their campuses in America will hopefully wake up and realize they have been played by people that are not about freedom. It is time for America to wake up. Because today, as an anniversary of what happened 100 years ago, is a really big deal for those who want to destroy our way of life and our lives if we are Christians. With that, Mr. Speaker, I yield back the balance of my time.

Mr. GOHMERT. Mr. Speaker, this is an important day for a number of reasons. It is an important day in that we passed the Cassidy bill here in the House that will open the door to the Keystone XL pipeline being built. Since this administration has dallied so, the Chinese have entered the picture and are desirous of having a pipeline going to the west coast of Canada so that, apparently, when this administration does, finally, get around to deciding what is best for Americans instead of what is best for his political situation, then we will have to compete with the Chinese, who will be seeking the oil to go in their pipeline as opposed to the United States' getting it to come through our pipeline. We understand that our friend Ms. Landrieu, Senator Landrieu, will have a bill in her name come to the Senate floor for a vote. I am really proud Bill Cassidy is a friend. I am proud that we had a chance to vote on the Bill Cassidy bill, and I am proud that it passed. I think it is such a shame that Mary Landrieu will not be able to likely get her colleagues to vote for the Keystone pipeline and pass it as Bill Cassidy has been able to do here in the House. Make no mistake. Since I live in east Texas and the pipeline will come through part of my district and come across private land, nobody who has private land wants a pipeline coming across their land. Anybody who has ever had one knows it is no fun. You don't like having an easement across for a pipeline like that. So it will require great diligence to make sure that it is properly maintained and that damage is avoided, and if damage occurs, then I will certainly want to fight for our landowners to make sure they are properly addressed and taken care of and compensated. That is one thing today, but it really pales in comparison, Mr. Speaker, to what happened 100 years ago today. The New Ottoman Empire

Mr. GOHMERT

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

Mr. GOHMERT

Mr. GOHMERT. It is amazing, a man who has given so much of his life, as Howard Coble has, to this institution, to working to make the country better, safer, efforts to make it more free, to help free up the economy so that it can achieve the high plateaus that it could reach if the government would release the boot from off the neck of the economy. Whether you agreed with Howard Coble or not, his honesty stands in stark contrast to what we have learned about recently with respect to the man Jonathan Gruber, who was not elected but was selected by the United States President. President Obama had gotten him basically to be what they call the architect of the ObamaCare bill. The name on the bill was the Affordable Care Act. Actually, the real name of the bill involved being a one-time tax deduction for first-time home buyers who were veterans and for other purposes. But the Senate took that bill, they stripped out every single word of the bill that would have helped veterans, and, instead, after deleting every word of the bill to help veterans, substituted therein about 2,500 pages of something that people now call ObamaCare. And we find out, most of us having seen the video of the ObamaCare architect, Jonathan Gruber, saying: This bill was written in a tortured way to make sure CBO did not score the mandate as taxes. If CBO scored the mandate as taxes, the bill dies. Okay, so it's written to do that. In terms of risk-rated subsidies, if you had a law which said that healthy people are going to pay in, you made explicit healthy people pay in and sick people get money, it would not have passed. Lack of transparency is a huge political advantage. And basically, call it the stupidity of the American voter or whatever, but basically, that was really, really critical for the thing to pass. Look, I wish Mark was right, that we could make it all transparent, but I'd rather have this law than not. Staggering. The man who designed ObamaCare admitting that if the American public, or even the Democrats in Congress, had known what was in ObamaCare, the Democrats alone would never have passed it. It was not transparent, as the President had promised. It was a travesty forced upon the American people without a single Republican vote, not one single Republican vote. And I still hear people say, Well, you know, nobody read it. I read it. And I knew how bad it was going to be. It should never have passed. And if the Obama administration and our Democrat friends have been honest, then it would not have passed. I will now yield to a very dear friend from Texas, Lamar Smith. I think the world of his opinion.

Mr. GOHMERT. I thank my friend from San Antonio. You know, it is ironic. There are so many people here. And a lot of new people have gotten elected. Three were sworn in here tonight. And the ones I have come to know, they appreciate honesty. And I know I was in the national media not long ago with Dennis Kucinich, and people were surprised. Well, even though you and Dennis Kucinich disagreed, you seemed very friendly, like you were friends. Dennis Kucinich and I are friends. And the big reason is--even though I think he is wrong on a lot of issues--the man has never lied to me. He has always been honest. Honesty in this body is such an important commodity. And certainly Howard Coble is one of the most honorable, honest men that have ever served. And that stands just in such stark contrast with the statements that have been discovered by the ObamaCare architect, Jonathan Gruber. There is another story from foxnews.com. And they found this. Of course he had been commenting, Oh, well, that was just off the cuff and, you know, just kind of kidding around. And then another videotape was found of him talking: Referring to the so-called ``Cadillac tax'' on high-end health plans, he said: ``They proposed it, and that passed because the American people are too stupid to understand the difference.'' The article says: He suggested that taxing individuals would have been politically unpalatable, but taxing the companies worked because Americans didn't understand the difference. Gruber said the ``lack of transparency'' in the way the law was crafted was critical. ``Basically, call it the stupidity of the American voter or whatever, but basically that was really, really critical for the thing to pass.'' Then Gruber went on MSNBC to express regret: On Tuesday, he said, ``I was speaking off the cuff, and I basically spoke inappropriately, and I regret having made those comments.'' Well, it is interesting. He never says that he regrets having those opinions. After that video, a second video came to light, where the designer, the architect of ObamaCare, called the American people stupid, too stupid to realize how bad ObamaCare was. His apology is not that he is sorry that he thought the American people were stupid or that he didn't really think they were stupid or that he is sorry there wasn't more transparency or that he is sorry that the Democrats in Congress were the only ones that voted for the bill in the House or Senate or that the American people were snookered. He makes no apologies for deceiving the American people, deceiving the Democrats in the House and the Senate into voting for a bill through their dishonest shenanigans. No regrets for that. He only regrets that he said these things so they were caught on video. If the man were cut out of the same cloth as a Howard Coble, a man of honest candor, then he would come before the American people, and he would say, yes, I was the architect of this bill, ObamaCare. It wasn't right to trick the American people and to trick the Democrats into voting for a bill they hadn't read when some of us knew how bad it was going to be. That was wrong, and I apologize for tricking the American people, for lying to the American people, and for not having transparency. I think real nobility would require someone who helped with ObamaCare--even the President--to say, do you know what? Back in 2008, when I was Senator Obama, I was running for President, and I promised the American people, if you give me the Presidency, we will have a debate on C-SPAN. We will do it all transparently. We will have it out there for everyone to see and everyone to hear who is taking what sides, because that is the way the health care debate should be, completely transparent. After he became President, he puts Jonathan Gruber in charge, and we get a bill that Gruber has admitted tricked the American people and was nontransparent. I just want to mention back again what he brought up, the Cadillac tax, when he said that the American people are too stupid to understand the difference. Actually, that Cadillac tax, it is not really going to be a Cadillac tax, but in the original bill, they were clever enough to put that 40 percent tax into place after the 2016 election, so that Democrats can run for President in 2016 and say, no, no, it is all right, it is going to be okay, when they know good and well that under the massive 40 percent tax--as if the middle class and the poor haven't been slammed enough with this terrible economy, with the lower wages, and with the part-time work, if they are fortunate enough to find an employer who gets them any kind of decent health care plan, any amount the health care plan costs over $10,200--even if they pay for it--it is going to be 40 percent tax on all above $10,200 for an individual health insurance policy. So if say, for example, the policy costs $15,200, $5,000 over the amount for an individual policy, then that poor, middle class, hardworking union member--because the union members will have policies that are worth more than $10,200--so that poor union member that is just already soaked to the gills with taxes, charges, and fees will pay another 40 percent tax on the $5,000 extra that is spent by his employer for that policy. In other words, a guy that is just getting a barely decent health insurance policy is going to add another $2,000 that that middle class individual is going to have to pay to have insurance that may give him a massive, several thousand, 5,000 deductible. I have heard from so many people. Only a few that we have heard from are paying less. Most everybody my office has heard from is paying massive amounts more for their health insurance, and some report our deductible went from $500 that we could barely afford to cover, that $500 deductible went up to 5,000, and our premiums went up. What is affordable about ObamaCare? We can't afford it. We can't afford to pay $5,000 in health care before the insurance even kicks in, and then we still have a copay and all kinds of other requirements. I heard one female couple that was in their sixties saying, gee, the last thing they ought to have to pay for is maternity care. Well, they are right, but under ObamaCare, it doesn't matter if you are 80 years old, you are still going to pay for maternity care if you buy insurance. So the best we could do is return individual Americans control of their own health care back into their hands, and there are many of us, Republicans, that have had proposals for health care bills. I had a bill, and I could never get CBO to score it, and to just remind, Mr. Speaker, our Members that may be listening, it was CBO, the Congressional Budget Office, that does official scoring. And they actually scored ObamaCare as costing over $1 trillion--$1.1 trillion, I believe--and the President was upset because he promised the American people it would actually be lower than $1 trillion. So the head of the Congressional Budget Office, Mr. Doug Elmendorf, got called over to the Oval Office, and magically, after a meeting with the President, they came back and redid their numbers and said it was actually only $800 billion. The President said, whoopee, see, I told you it was going to be less than 1 trillion. Then after it passed, CBO came back and said, do you know what? Actually, it is going to be over 1 trillion, and then later came back and said, oh, it may be more like 1.7 or 1.8 trillion. And then we have other entities saying, no, it looks like it could be even $4 trillion it is going to cost. As I said before and will continue to say, if the scoring entity's margin of error is plus or minus 400 percent, it is time for a new scoring entity, and I think we could do that. I talked with Arthur Laffer about it a number of times, Reagan's chief architect of his economic proposals, and unlike Mr. Gruber, Arthur Laffer is a very honorable, honest--great sense of humor--but a brilliant man. Despite his Ivy League education and his background, he is a brilliant guy. There are proposals that we have that would not even cost $1 trillion that would return the control back to the patient. But Mr. Gruber has finally been caught, he said it over a year ago, but he has finally been caught admitting that the only way they got ObamaCare passed was the American people were too stupid. What he was talking about on the Cadillac tax is he was saying that if we let the American people know that they were ultimately going to pay that 40 percent tax on everything over $10,200 for an individual policy, they would never have gone along with it. But instead of saying that the individual is going to pay for it, we said, oh, the corporation is going to pay for it, and therefore, it won't cost the individual anything. Well, that is about as dishonest and insane as people in the administration telling our senior citizens, oh, don't worry about the fact that ObamaCare cut Medicare by $716 billion. Don't worry about that because that only goes to the doctors, the hospitals, and the people that provide the knees and the things like that, but it won't affect you at all. Well, I think we saw, in this election, the seniors are a lot smarter than Mr. Gruber gave them credit for. Yes, many of them were fooled when they were lied to by the administration, but now, they figured out, wait a minute, you said that $716 billion in cuts to Medicare that ObamaCare did wouldn't affect me, and now, I can't get my knee surgery, I can't get my back surgery, I can't get my pacemaker, I can't get the things I need. Apparently, that was a lie as well. It did affect seniors. It is affecting seniors, and it will affect seniors until the day it is finally repealed. I know there are people out there, Mr. Speaker, that have said, well, there were a couple things that were good. We ought to just leave the good things in it. Generally, they point to two things, number one, a young person who is living at home and is under 26 years of age can share their family insurance with their parents, and that neglects to recognize the fact that when the Democrats controlled the House, they controlled the Senate, and they controlled the White House with President Obama, we offered repeatedly, look, guys, let us have a little say in this bill. In fact, why don't we just pass a freestanding bill? And I know the Democrats said they wanted to cut off at 26 years of age, but there were a lot of us that said, look, if the economy is bad and a young person is living at home, they are 26, 27, I don't really care, if you are living at home with your parents and they have got health insurance, and you are willing to pay the little extra the insurance company charges to add another family member, then let them be on their family's insurance. We were okay with passing that. Republicans were. We welcomed that. We were never, ever given the chance. We were told, we have the votes to pass it, we don't need your help, we don't need your input. As a former chief justice, judge, and civil trial attorney in prior lives, I have seen a lot of insurance litigation, and I have seen cases where insurance companies acted very unfairly in canceling people's policies when it was wrong and it was unfair because they said, oh, well, you had a preexisting condition they already knew about. Republicans offered to work with our Democratic friends that were in the majority to fashion a bill that would deal with the issue of unfairness and, at times, even fraud by an insurance company, dealing with insureds unfairly and using the gimmick of a preexisting condition claim to deny coverage. We were willing to work with them on a bill like that. Fortunately, most insurance companies don't act like that; and, fortunately, in most situations, even those that do occasionally don't all the time and, in fact, don't most of the time. But we were okay with the bill that would address those issues, but it should have only applied to policies that went across State lines because, otherwise, it is a State issue. And I know in Texas we have a State insurance commissioner, commission, there are people that are watching over these issues, and it is a whole lot easier to file a complaint in your State capital, even if you are a State as big as Texas or Alaska, than it is to have to file a complaint and deal with the morass right here in Washington, D.C. Well, on the heels of all the admissions of lies that were told to pass ObamaCare that have now come out, an article Monday by Elise Viebeck, and the title is ``HHS''--that is Health and Human Services-- ``lowers ObamaCare enrollment expectations.'' It says: Officials at the Department of Health and Human Services on Monday projected that up to 9.9 million people would be enrolled in ObamaCare in 2015, millions fewer than Congressional Budget Office estimates. Federal health officials are projecting that ObamaCare enrollment will include at least 3.1 million fewer people next year than Congressional Budget analysts thought. Well, there goes the Congressional Budget analysts once again being off in the nature of 30 percent. That is a plus-or-minus margin of error of 30 percent. It is not really so good. We need another vehicle for competition for scoring that would be less expensive and would be more accurate, and then the only way you could really get it accurate is if you have competition, and then you begin to score the scorers, because what CBO did in ObamaCare and what they have done on these enrollment expectations, I mean they are just outrageous. Anyway, there are plenty of articles about the American people being too stupid according to the man who designed the ObamaCare bill. It is unfortunate that people in this administration thought that the American people were too stupid and too gullible. Unfortunately, since there are honest people in government, the people like Mr. Gruber that were so dishonest to pass a massive bill that took away patients' health care rights and the things that would prolong their lives, the things that would make their lives more comfortable, it is just a tragedy, but there are honest people in government. Now, people will have to be even more cynical than they already were of government. This interesting survey was done by Kellyanne Conway, this article from November 7 of this year, the survey in the article points out that a majority of respondents, 76 percent, consider laws that require voters to present a photo ID before casting a ballot to be ``mostly fair,'' and a total of 69 percent of Americans consider it ``not a burden at all.'' Amazing. Another point mentions, when asked, ``Do you agree or disagree that President Obama should, through executive action, allow illegal immigrants to remain in the United States?'' 63 percent disagree. That is 53 percent strongly, 10 percent somewhat. Only 30 percent agree. Another point of the survey, corruption in the Federal Government continues to be a serious concern among voters, with 92 percent now saying they consider it a serious problem. That is 92 percent of Americans consider corruption a serious problem. Well, perhaps the fact that Mr. Gruber was getting paid and had a motivation, a pecuniary, a financial motivation for being out there selling ObamaCare as being such a great thing, and as he says now lying about it so much and obscuring the truth as much as he did, that kind of helps contribute to the 92 percent of Americans, or rather of voters, saying that they had serious concerns about corruption in Federal Government. The survey also indicated a full 80 percent said that the Federal Government has become ``less transparent'' or ``stayed about the same'' over the past 6 years. When asked about ballot integrity and voter fraud, 74 percent consider it a problem. So much for those who say it isn't a problem. It is a problem. I think because of photo IDs being used, for example in Texas this time, we had better election integrity. I know the Indiana law was upheld that required photo IDs, and Texas largely modeled their law after Indiana. It is a matter of protecting ballot integrity. I have been over to the Department of Justice, and I find it interesting that the Attorney General who is outgoing right now requires you cannot get in to see the Attorney General unless you can produce a photo ID. Apparently, the incoming or the nominated candidate for Attorney General thinks photo IDs for elections are a problem, and it will be interesting to see if she changes the policy if she gets confirmed. The Senate needs to make a thorough investigation. They need to take their time and do it right. But we will see if this stands as a policy that photo IDs should be required to see the AGs but not to vote. With that, I yield back the balance of my time.

Mr. GOHMERT. Mr. Speaker, I just wanted to also express my love and appreciation for Howard Coble. There is not a more honorable, noble, humble, able man in all of Congress, and it has been a great opportunity and a great blessing to me in my life to be a friend of Howard Coble and to pray with him, to worship with him, to study with him, to discuss with him. And I will always be grateful to the most eligible bachelor in all of Congress. I don't know who will fill that role when Howard Coble is gone. But thank you. You will be missed.

Mr. GOHMERT

Mr. GOHMERT. Mr. Speaker, my late mother used to say maybe I should be a college professor because I really do enjoy educating people, and nothing gives me more thrill than to help educate people here on the floor. My friend says that Republicans deny what is happening to millions of people. No. Actually, there are 11 million people who are not working today who were working when President Obama took office and who are not retired. They just gave up looking for jobs. We care deeply about those people. When it comes to climate change, my friend says the Republicans continue to deny its existence. Climate change is real. It is a fact. Where I live it happens four times a year. It is real. We acknowledge that. It is a real thing. Now, under this bill, my friend says that coal would be completely unregulated. He is right if he is talking about China, but here in the United States, where we are talking about real jobs, cheaper energy, and helping families who are struggling to make ends meet, we are talking about helping Americans, not the Chinese to whom we lose so many jobs. My friend says bills don't have support in the Senate. He is right if he is talking about Harry Reid, but if Harry Reid will bring these bills to the floor, my friend is going to see Democrats either vote for them or lose their seats. They know they have to support them, because it helps real Americans. Now, what our President and others on the other side of the aisle don't acknowledge is the fact that the policies they have supported help Big Oil. They help their friends in the crony capitalist Big Business. They help the Solyndras and those kinds of folks, but the fact is, even when President Obama proposed what he called a ``jobs bill,'' it gutted independent oil companies and gas companies in America. Big oil companies only operate about 5 percent of the oil and gas wells in America, and 95 percent are drilled and operated by independent oil companies. They are regulated. If we really want to help America, we need to pass this bill and force Harry Reid to either deal with it or lose his position as majority leader. My friend had previously talked about wilderness areas. National parks are suffering. Why? Because this administration and my friends across the aisle and Harry Reid want to blow money on solar companies that won't work, yet, actually, if this administration were not reducing the number of permits by 40 to 60 percent from what they were under President Clinton, then we would have all the money we would need to have the most wonderful wilderness areas and national parks that you can imagine.

Mr. GOHMERT. We are pro-people. They are pro-government, pro- regulation. Let's get back to helping the people, like the 80-year-old lady who lives outside of Carthage who told me she was born with only a wooden stove in her home. She may die with it if we don't stop gutting the energy that we can produce.

Mr. GOHMERT

Mr. GOHMERT. Mr. Speaker, an article today by Andrew McCarthy that I want to read in part: Meanwhile, back in Afghanistan . . . Bill Roggio reports that jihadists have killed four American soldiers. Three were killed in a suicide bombing in Kabul and the Taliban have claimed responsibility. A fourth was killed in a so-called ``green-on-blue'' assassination. He was an American there to train ``moderate Islamist allies'' at a military base in western Afghanistan, and one of these Afghans shot him dead and wounded two others before finally being killed. It was the fourth green-on-blue attack this year. The last one, in August, claimed the life of Major General Harold Greene, the highest ranking American officer since the Vietnam war to be killed in combat--being murdered by a jihadist in an Afghan military base while training moderate Islamists . . . Roggio observes the Taliban ``have devoted significant efforts to stepping up attempts to kill'' U.S. and allied forces. Mr. Speaker, this is outrageous. We don't need to be helping the so- called moderate jihadists. And with that, I will insert the full article into the Record. [From the National Review Online, Sept. 18, 2014] Training `Moderate Islamists'--Four More Americans Killed in Afghanistan (By Andrew C. McCarthy) Meanwhile back in Afghanistan . . . the Long War Journal's Bill Roggio reports that jihadists have killed four American soldiers. Three were killed in a suicide bombing in Kabul for which the Taliban have claimed responsibility. A fourth was killed in a so-called ``green-on-blue'' assassination--i.e., he was an American there to train our ``moderate Islamist allies'' at a military base (in Western Afghanistan), and one of these Afghans shot him dead and wounded two others before finally being killed. It was the fourth green-on-blue attack this year. I wrote here about the last one, in August, which claimed the life of Major General Harold Greene, the highest ranking American officer since the Vietnam War to be killed in combat--being murdered by a jihadist in an Afghan military base while training moderate Islamists is quite appropriately considered combat (although being murdered at an American base while preparing to deploy for combat against jihadists is considered ``workplace violence''). As Bill explains, green- on-blue attacks are down, from a high of 44 in 2012, mostly because of the U.S. draw-down and reduced ``partnering'' with the ``moderate'' Afghan forces (because doing so has proven perilous). Nevertheless, Bill observes that the Taliban ``have devoted significant efforts to stepping up attempts to kill'' U.S. and allied forces. Mullah Omar has bragged that the Taliban ``cleverly infiltrated the ranks of the enemy'' in accordance with a plan hatched in 2011. As I've noted before, the Taliban knows our forces are leaving and wants to make it appear that they are chasing us out of the country. Although the Taliban has never stopped conducting jihadist terror attacks against our forces, President Obama released five Taliban commanders from Guantanamo Bay in May, enabling their return to the anti-American jihad. And now, as American forces retreat from Afghanistan, our soldiers will be assigned to train more ``moderate Islamists'' in Syria--which apparently will not be a combat mission . . . unless the trainees go green-on-blue.

Mr. GOHMERT

Mr. GOHMERT. Mr. Speaker, I do appreciate all the time and energy that our House Republican leaders have put into this issue, trying to work with the President, but the truth is that, if you look back under this President as Commander in Chief, we trained people in Libya. We provided weapons to Libya that were then used against us in Benghazi. There are Americans dead because this administration felt compelled to go in and take out Qadhafi. Sure, it was under the guise of NATO, but we did it. This administration saw to the bombing of Qadhafi. It refused to allow him to leave peacefully, and it has cost us. Because Libya fell, so did Algeria and Tunisia, and it jump-started, as I have said before, the new Ottoman Empire, the new caliphate that the Muslim brothers and so many of the radicals are saying they are going for. One of the big problems, too, when we go in and train, as this President wants to do for the Syrians, they learn our tradecraft. They use it against us, as they did at Benghazi. Al Qaeda today has indicated that all jihadists must combine together. That pressure is going to get greater and greater. Also, today, the Muslim Brotherhood cleric who had been kicked out of Qatar--I believe he is now in Turkey--is calling for an all-out Muslim Brotherhood opposition to the United States. Yusuf al-Qaradawi, the head of the Muslim Brotherhood, is likewise begging jihadists to combine together in their fight against the United States. Where is Qaradawi? He is in Turkey. Yes, that is the Turkey that this President says we are going to count on as one of our allies, and yet Turkey has announced last week that they will not allow the U.S. to conduct air strikes against ISIS from Turkish air bases. We are in big trouble here. Our action will unify radicals against us. It has already been announced that Colonel Riad al-Asaad, the leader of the Free Syrian Army, has said it would not join the alliance against the Islamic State unless it receives assurances on toppling the Syrian regime. That was reported by Anadolu, the Turkish news agency, just in the last few days. This is serious stuff. We are uniting the jihadists of the world to come against us. Why? Because there is nothing lower to these jihadists than infidels that help invade what they consider to be a Muslim country. We are about to ask for more than this administration knows. Why? Because it continues to purge our training material. They are not allowed to understand what it is we are up against. When you lose The New York Times, as this administration has, you are in big trouble if you are President Obama.

Mr. GOHMERT

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

Mr. GOHMERT

Mr. GOHMERT. Mr. Speaker, I was in agreement with the President going after IS but not with people we can't trust. Andy McCarthy has a great article here entitled, ``But They Were Really Moderate Beheadings,'' pointing out that the people the President wants to support actually are guilty of beheadings themselves. But apparently they are moderate beheadings. It is also important to note that Hezbollah has released a statement saying that President Obama is not determined enough to confront IS. And they said: ``Those who delve deeper into the American stance will notice that Americans accept IS in our region while trying to prevent it from spreading to their country.'' This is not the way to go. These people cannot be trusted. It is time for us to either help the Kurds--since Turkey is not willing to face this crisis by putting boots on the ground and actually fighting IS for us, then arm the Kurds. I know the Turks are afraid of that. But we are more concerned about IS. Help the Kurds. And let's wipe out IS but not with free Syrians we can't trust.

Mr. GOHMERT

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

Mr. GOHMERT

Mr. GOHMERT. Mr. Speaker, the President had made a speech last Thursday night, and it is amazing that he is ready to go after ISIS or ISIL and that the Islamic State is not Islamic as they say they are. It is amazing because, from what I have seen in the beheadings, those who were doing the beheadings always think that they are being religious; so, apparently, the President and his advisers are the only ones that think otherwise because they certainly believe it is a religion. I wanted to hit some key facts very quickly here. President Obama talks about this great coalition. After all those criticisms of President George W. Bush and the 48 countries or so that actually did participate in the war in Iraq, President Obama's coalition of the unwilling is a better way to talk about his coalition. NATO ally Turkey announced last week they will not allow the U.S. to conduct air strikes against ISIS from Turkish air bases. So much for their real cooperation. Germany said it is not going to join U.S. air strikes against ISIS. The United Kingdom has their Foreign Minister announce they will not join air strikes only to be later contradicted by Prime Minister Cameron. Ten Arab countries signed a communique last week in Jeddah agreeing to qualified cooperation with the U.S. but without any specifics. The State Department claims the Arab nations will conduct air strikes against ISIS but refuses to identify which Arab nations will participate. Top Islamic cleric Yusuf al-Qaradawi has criticized U.S. attacks on ISIS, and the Syrian Muslim Brotherhood refuses to back any U.S. anti- ISIS efforts because it might circumvent Islamist-dominated structures of the Syrian National Council. It is also important to note that this administration has admitted they are using back channels to cooperate with Iran. Gee, that would have been like, say, maybe Roosevelt saying we are working with Hitler because Japan attacked us when they all want to kill us. Vetted moderates are losing U.S. weapons. It is important that people know, September 2013, The Wall Street Journal reported that ISIS raided a Free Syrian Army weapons depot taking small arms ammunition that the CIA provided. In December 2013, the Free Syrian Army weapon warehouses in Bab al- Hawa--that is near the Syria-Turkey border--was seized by the Islamic Front, prompting the U.S. and the U.K. to stop weapons shipments to the FSA. In April, the Syrian rebel groups began using heavy weapons including TOW antitank missiles provided by the United States. It is a good thing our southern border is not porous, or they might be bringing them to our border. June of 2014, the Syrian Military Council official expresses concern that the U.S. is providing weapons directly to the FSA, potentially creating Afghan-Somali-style warlords. September, we see more reports. For heaven's sake, Mr. Speaker, this is no time to be helping people who want to cooperate with ISIS to help us take out ISIS. We need better than that. I yield back the balance of my time.

Mr. GOHMERT

Mr. GOHMERT. I think it is worth pointing out what concerns many others in the world, and that is the judgment of this administration. As we travel around the world, we have allies who talk to us privately, leaders in countries in the Middle East, moderate Muslims, people in Israel, and they keep asking about the judgment of this country, of the national leaders. Everybody knows that this President agreed to release five Taliban terrorists complicit with murder, and the statement has come out on August 27--this is after the release of five Taliban murderers by this administration. This statement has gone out, and it is in their language. The translation says, in part, ``We consider ISIS and every other Mujahedin group as our brothers.'' That is kind of important to understand when he released the Taliban Five--who don't have a problem with cutting people's heads off or friends cutting people's heads off, they support ISIS--and the President did so in violation of the law. It required that there not be one dime of American money spent to release somebody from Guantanamo unless the law was complied with, and the law required a notice of 30 days to people in Congress, and that didn't happen. He broke the law in order to help the lawbreakers. So people around the world see that, and they are puzzled, and I happened to be standing here on the House floor with one of the two other people that went to the FBI disclosure. They classified it, which I thought was ridiculous. We wanted to see the documents that the FBI and their advisers on Islam had purged from the FBI training materials. Now, these are the materials that train FBI agents--the kind of people that have to go talk to Tsarnaev and his mother and people at the mosque and friends-- who have to know the questions and what to look for that might indicate that this person has been radicalized. Now, since they classified those materials they purged, we went through them, but we don't get to disclose what is in them. But I can say I was shocked at how ridiculous some of the purging was. Some things were purely from--well, some of them were so clearly important, that people trying to learn about radical Islam, it is important that they know and understand. So, once you understand that there has been that kind of purging of material, then you begin to understand how this administration could get two--not one, two--heads-up from a country like Russia that Tsarnaev was radicalized, he could kill people, you better watch him, you better check on him, he is dangerous, he is going to hurt people, and they do nothing meaningful about it. As we found out through a hearing in Judiciary, at first Mueller said, We did go to those mosques. But it turns out he said it was on their outreach program. They never went out there to see whether they were radicalized. And then, we knew at the time--Mr. Speaker, I hold here the articles from the Commonwealth of Massachusetts, articles of organization for the Islamic Society of Boston, and the Islamic Society of Boston is the one that organized the two mosques. And the organizing official is a man named al-Amoudi, which was familiar to the FBI Director because, on his watch, although he had helped the Clinton administration hire what were thought to be moderate Muslims in the Clinton administration and he had originally had an agreement to be of assistance to the Bush administration, the Bush administration ultimately finds out he is supporting terrorism. They have him arrested out here at Dulles Airport, and he's now doing 23 years in prison for supporting terrorism. He's the one that organized the Islamic Society of Boston that created the two mosques where the Tsarnaevs went. The FBI didn't even know that a guy they helped convict of supporting terrorism started the mosque that has created terrorists out of more than one person. There are others that we find out that have had relations with that mosque that may be a threat. One other thing I want to mention before I yield to my friend. We have a chart--I have had a blowup of this used before, but it points out how many times, as this points out, terminology is important in defining our goals. The 9/11 Commission identifies Islamist terrorism as the threat. The Muslim Public Affairs Council recommends that the U.S. Government find other terminology. So, in the 9/11 Commission Report, bipartisan, bicameral people trying to take an objective look, they used the term 322 times in the 9/11 Commission Report. However, the last FBI Counterterrorism Lexicon does not include the word ``Islam.'' The National Intelligence Strategy of 2009 does not include the word ``Islam.'' In the 9/11 Commission Report, it used the word ``Muslim'' 145 times, but since then, under this administration, the FBI Counterterrorism Lexicon doesn't use the word ``Muslim.'' It doesn't use the word ``jihad.'' It doesn't use the word ``enemy.'' Now, it does use the words ``violent extremism'' 29 times. In the 9/11 Commission Report, it uses the word ``religious,'' and it is normally referencing these radical Islamists. It uses that word ``religious'' 65 times; whereas, the FBI Counterterrorism Lexicon only uses it three times. Then the President, basically the only time he used it last night was to say that people that called themselves Islamists are not religious. The people who have had their heads cut off by these people in the name of Islam are looking at what we are doing, I believe, and wondering: How can you say that was not, in their minds, a religious act to cut off my head? I think, as a Christian, there are references in the Bible. I think people know what goes on here. We know from Scripture that there is rejoicing in Heaven over one soul being saved. Well, how could they rejoice unless they know what is going on? So I think people that have had their heads cut off would have to be wondering about the President's assessment. ``Al Qaeda'' was used 36 times in the 9/11 Commission Report, but in the FBI Counterterrorism Lexicon, not used at all. In the National Intelligence Strategy of 2009 under this administration, it is used once. ``Caliph,'' that is not used at all by this administration in their FBI Counterterrorism Lexicon; National Intelligence Strategy of 2009, the 9/11 Commission Report used it seven times. And it is a little more understandable, too, when you find out that one of the advisers on the Homeland Security Advisory Council that Janet Napolitano put there and gave a secret clearance is named Mohamed Elibiary. There is an article from Adam Kredo, and he quotes a tweet sent out by the Homeland Security Advisory Council member, and the tweet says: The caliphate will return; that is inevitable. Well, we know now that the Homeland Security Advisory Council member's tweet has been used by ISIS in recruiting, that even this President's close adviser on Homeland Security that he has secret access to our databases given by this administration, that he is out there saying the caliphate is inevitable. So it is being used to recruit people to kill Americans. The Homeland Security Advisory Council has people helping with recruiting for terrorists to kill Americans. I yield to the gentleman from Georgia (Mr. Westmoreland).

Mr. GOHMERT. Mr. Speaker, I have another article that accentuates what my friend from Georgia was saying about our allies not being sure what we are going to do. Unfortunately, our enemies seem to know very well what we are going to do. It is an article published by Al Bawaba, published today. It says--we've identified Hezbollah as a terrorist organization. Well, the deputy leader of Hezbollah, Sheikh Naim Qassem, has said: ``The flurry of international activity, which is sponsored by the U.S., is not serious in ending the takfiri threat . . . He said Obama spoke of `containing' the threat and not `stopping' it.'' I am quoting from him. ``Comments made by Barack Obama are clear. The word `contain' means to identify risks and disable some of its objectives while maintaining this terrorist organization's role to frighten certain countries in this region and to keep this risk as a scarecrow in appropriate places to make political gains, particularly in Iraq and Syria.'' Our enemies know that this President's speech last night indicated he's not serious. We have got to get serious. With that, I yield back the balance of my time.

Mr. GOHMERT. I would like to ask the gentleman a question, if he has time for one, because I am struggling a little bit. Byron York has a good article out, published last night at 11:46, where he points out that there are some real potential problems. He says ``five things that could go horribly wrong with Obama's action in Iraq.'' One of them, he mentions the lack of a status of forces agreement. We all know that President Bush had been working on a status of forces agreement. He thought he would leave it to the President to accomplish that great task and have instant international credibility for signing a document immediately like that coming into office, but for whatever reason--we hear a lot of different stories--but it blew up, but the President says that we couldn't leave troops there without a status of forces agreement because you can't have troops in a country where you don't have, for example, an immunity agreement, so that American soldiers, American contractors that are there to help protect Iraq from harm--sometimes, bombs go off in the wrong place. Sometimes, somebody gets killed that wasn't meant to because it becomes a war zone. As the President pointed out before, we couldn't leave troops there because we have no immunity agreement. Well, I haven't heard that there is any immunity agreement with Iraq, and yet he announced last night that he has already got several hundred American sneakers on the ground over there and is going to add 475 more troops--apparently wearing sneakers because there are not boots on the ground. So I am needing some help here. Why is it safe to send in American troops now without the promise, the agreement of immunity from Iraq when it was not safe to do so when he took office? I am struggling here.