Louie Gohmert

Mr. GOHMERT

Mr. GOHMERT. I thank my friend from Nebraska. A wonderful point. I know that there are people on both sides of the aisle who are motivated, again, by doing the right thing. But when you know that you have a tyrant on one side in charge of the country and you know that now perhaps it would have been different if we'd gotten in earlier, but at this point al Qaeda or the most radical Islamists, brutal killers, are driving the rebels, there is no good reason for this country to expend any blood nor any treasure to get in the middle of that conflict, and I appreciate so much my friend pointing that out. It points to the problem in the Middle East with regard to the American position. This President had his administration help the rebels in Libya when we knew--hey, people were saying it right here--we know there are al Qaeda supporting the rebels. We're not sure how extensive it is, so let's get to the bottom of it before you just launch in and eliminate Qadhafi. Because Qadhafi was giving us more information on terrorist elements in the world than most anybody but our best friend, Israel. He was being helpful. And though he had blood on his hands for which he should have paid, you have to choose between the lesser of two evils. As Secretary Gates said at the time, there is absolutely no United States national security interest at stake in this Libya crisis, in the rebellion, and yet this President went headlong. And when you know, as one Egyptian paper reported, bragging, they have six Muslim Brotherhood members that advise this administration--and there are a lot more people sympathetic to Muslim Brotherhood that advise this administration than that. When you know that that is going on, then it makes sense, they're going to make stupid decisions. They're going to always, like they did in Egypt, say, well, let's rush in and help, even though it allows the Muslim Brotherhood to take over Egypt. I've heard so many people say they've talked to people from Egypt who have said we don't want the radical Islamists in charge, we don't want the Muslim Brotherhood. We don't want them in charge. We want a moderate Muslim government so that we can live in peace and not tyranny, like Afghanistan did under the Taliban. And now, to the disgrace of this Nation--this, the greatest Nation in the history of the world--this administration is about to leave Afghanistan--which we should have done probably in 2002, but now we're about to leave it in the hands of the Taliban. If we had left in 2002, the Taliban had been totally destroyed. They were gone. The people that were members were in such disarray they did not have any real presence in Afghanistan. Why was that? It wasn't because tens of thousands of American troops went into Afghanistan and wiped out the Taliban. No. It was because of the heroic sacrifices of those within the tribal groups called the Northern Alliance at that time. General Dostum led those troops, and the United States provided less than 500 special ops intelligence people in Afghanistan and provided them air cover, gave them some weapons. And they routed the Taliban within a matter of 3 or 4 months. In the last famous battle with General Dostum leading, these Northern Alliance tribesmen, on horseback, with weapons, riding uphill into the strong area where the Taliban was located, with bullets, RPGs flying all around them, killing many on horseback, but they never stopped. They went up there to the fortress and they defeated the Taliban. Now this administration says, as a result of how forceful those Northern Alliance were in defeating the Taliban, well, those are war criminals. No, they know how to fight the Taliban. Clearly, we don't because the Taliban has come back. I would submit that this administration releasing Taliban leaders to go back and be in charge is not a good thing. Because we had four Americans that were killed at the same time this administration was pleading, oh, please, please, come talk to us. You don't have to have any preconditions, just talk to us. We look weak because this administration gives every appearance of being weak because it's getting terrible advice. In that part of the world, they don't understand turn the other cheek. As Christians individually--individuals of us here that are--you are to turn the other cheek. But as a government official, you provide for the common defense. And you make sure if others do evil to people in this country or threaten this country, that they are punished because the government is not given the sword in vain. People misunderstand that and think, oh, if we will apologize enough for all of the Americans who have laid down their lives--not for some great empire, but for other nations to continue to speak their language, to continue to have their own identity, and to continue to have freedom that was taken away. This country has sacrificed for freedom like no one in the history of the world. In the past, there were some selfish, very selfish motivations. Our selfish motivation has normally been that we want these people to be freer so that we can be friends and freedom will be catching. But as we've seen, if you are not educated in how to sustain a democratic republic where you actually could govern yourself, if you don't understand how to do that, you will lose it. We've watched in Turkey, which, after Ataturk made those great changes to the government--yes, Islam is the most widespread religion in Turkey, but it was a secular government where other people could also worship. We see that being removed little by little in Turkey. And I hear from Turkish friends who are frightened of what's happening. Now our government seems to be on the wrong side in each of these disputes. We're out there trying to work with the Taliban while they're killing Americans. Shouldn't that at least be one precondition? Would you stop killing our American soldiers that are training your farmers, training your government officials, could you stop killing them long enough for us to have our talk? Because what needs to be done is you kill an American, we're going to wipe out a whole bunch of your folks because we are about protecting ourselves. I still feel guilty for 1979, being in the United States Army when we were attacked. It was an act of war against our embassy in Tehran and we looked weak to the world. And it's still used as a recruiting tool. Forget Abu Ghraib--the best recruiting tool is the way we left Vietnam, the way we did nothing to avenge or even to truly get our people out of Tehran after that act of war. I love the leadership of Ronald Reagan, but in 1983 he had a Democratic Congress. People that worked with him, when I blamed him for withdrawing from Beirut after attack, that showed weakness, they said the Democrats made clear he didn't have a whole lot of choice. But that gave a sign of weakness. USS Cole, we basically did nothing. Nobody paid as they should have. If we're going to protect this Nation, we have to take care of things at home. Stop all the waste, fraud and abuse so that people who truly need help get it, and those who can work have the opportunity to work, not with some do-nothing government program but with a real job where you make real money and you accomplish real things. Because one other thing that ObamaCare is doing is a disaster to our American friends. I've been told by people, look, I used to work full time at McDonald's, and now, because of ObamaCare, they cut me to part time. So now I don't have the benefits I had before, and I have to go back and forth between Burger King or Arby's and McDonald's because everybody's cutting to part time because of ObamaCare. Regardless of the incentives for passing the bill, regardless of all the desire people express about giving people better health care, they're having worse lives. It's the slowest recovery, the worst recovery in American history--other than from the Great Depression. And like Morganthau, the Secretary of the Treasury, said in 1940 in his own handwriting, he said, we have spent more money than anyone in history trying to end the Depression, and we created nothing but debt. No better off, they were no better off. It was not until World War II began and we got drawn into that by Pearl Harbor being bombed and seeing liberty under attack through our European friends, we got drawn into it. And then the government started doing their number one job--provide for the common defense--and lo and behold we came out of the Depression. The government did the most important thing for it to do: provide freedom, protect Americans so they can grow the economies, so they can be entrepreneurs. When the government does the most important job--provide for the common defense--it ended the Great Depression. Now we have people in government that think, though they may not have ever been successful in business, that they can tell people who have been and who are how to run their business so much better, and it's hurting this economy. Oh, not with companies like General Electric, those who have gotten plenty of crony capitalist help. I would also advise those who don't want to see reform of welfare-- that I think can only occur when we get all public assistance in one appropriation, in one committee, then we can get real reform. And we will save so many billions and billions and billions--heck, maybe trillions of dollars over a 10-year period. We will save so much money that they will be able to throw it away on many more thousands of Solyndras. They can have all kinds of crony capitalism with the money we can save by providing incentives to get back to work, by providing incentives to finish high school and to go to college if you need to. But not everyone needs to go to college. You don't have to get a college degree to learn how to weld. I was over in Marshall, at the TSTA facility, the institution there. They're teaching welders, and they're making great money when they leave. And it's true of other institutions that teach those kinds of vocational training. But instead, we now have more people on food stamps than ever in history. What has happened to this country when those of us who want to get the country back running by reforming welfare are vilified and accused of wanting to take food out of the mouths of children? How wrong that is. We want more children with more food. The same way I've been vilified for saying children need to be taught English. Even if they're just newly arrived from Mexico, teach them in English. Maybe they need some beginner courses to get them there. But don't teach them in Spanish, help them move into English. Why? Not because I or people like me hate those Hispanic children, it's because we love them. And we know that if you teach them in English, as my friend, Commissioner Ramirez, former City Councilman Ramirez, said, his parents from Mexico said they couldn't speak Spanish at home. His father said you can be anything in America you want to be but you've got to speak good English. It was true. And I am thrilled to death that Gus' new restaurant in Tyler is working out so well. But he wasn't allowed to speak Spanish at home, and the sky is the limit. For someone born in this country, they can be President of the country. Instead of being a manual laborer speaking Spanish, they can be president of the company. So who really cares more about people? Those who rail against us who want to reform the entitlements we're told they are, that were supposed to be a hand up, not bait to be lured into a rut they could not get out of. That is immoral. I know for some people--Star Parker, and there are others--who talk about how they have pulled themselves up, they're an inspiration. But there are too many that did not have the ability to pull themselves up or the wherewithal, and shame on us for luring them into a rut they couldn't get out of. It is time to reform that. But I can also say, as the attacks on the Christian religion have grown and grown exponentially, this country is in deeper and deeper trouble and will continue to be. The assault and the intolerance upon Christianity is incredible. People came to this country in the early days, Founders, Columbus when he discovered--he didn't know he was in a new country or a new continent. He thought he found a new way to Asia. But he claimed the land for his king and queen and also his Lord and Savior, Jesus Christ. He wrote in his own journal it was the Lord that put it into his mind that he could sail west and get to the east, and it was the Holy Spirit that comforted him all the way. And you look at George Washington's writing, the father of this country, without whom there would be no country today as we know it, a noble, honorable, honest man. Faults, yes. This country didn't begin to start really reaching its potential until we dealt with the blight of slavery and the horror that was in America. There has not been any kind of blight on our soul like slavery in American history until we started killing babies. Slavery had to go. After we did away with slavery and more people were encouraged to be entrepreneurs and we came into the 1900s, we still needed a civil rights movement to set things straight. And Christian leaders like Martin Luther King, Jr., who had studied the Bible and wrote touching things like those letters from the Birmingham jail, they knew Christ was their salvation and they knew they were supposed to ensure that brothers and sisters treated brothers and sisters as such. There were vile Christians, but I would submit those weren't really Christians. They didn't understand Jesus' teachings. But it was the church that was behind the revolutionary movement. It was the church that was strongest behind the abolition movement. It was Christian leaders who were strongest behind the civil rights movement. Now this Nation, our government at least, seems to be at war with Christianity. We can have a little group complain that, Oh, we didn't feel comfortable in the military because of the prayers that were said or crosses worn or things that were said about Christianity. We have examples of someone being told you can't give someone a Bible when they need one because you may be prosecuted or thrown out of the military. Under the rule some are trying to push through, if you have a dying friend that asks you, ``Is there a God?'' under the order some would have, you couldn't even tell them what you know with all your heart. It's gotten to be a problem. I love Ronald Reagan's quote back in 1984. He said: The frustrating thing is that those who are attacking religion claim they are doing it in the name of tolerance. Question: Isn't the real truth that they are intolerant of religion? They refuse to tolerate its importance in our lives. The teachings of Jesus would allow people to make whatever choices they wish--choose not to believe in God; choose to be an atheist; choose to be an agnostic and say, ``I just don't think there's enough evidence''; choose to be a Buddhist; choose to be a Muslim--because all children are acceptable in God's eyes. I believe God's will is not for any to stumble, that they will all come to eternal life. But the war that has been declared, as it appears to be, the gloves are off against Catholicism as a form of Christianity, all these different religious beliefs against abortion, those who have beliefs religiously against birth control, those who have beliefs about marriage being what it has been for most of the world's history and without which marriage between men and women we would not have had the future generations that even exist today. You say, ``I support that traditional marriage,'' and now you are to be drummed out of your job, drummed out of having friends, eliminated from the public sector. Ronald Reagan was right: the real intolerance, the real hatred is from those who choose to impose their beliefs and force them onto others. Mr. Speaker, today still, nonetheless, was a good day. We made a big move toward what will one day, if we are faithful, allow us to take some of the burden that we have been putting on future generations and the $50,000 or so we have already humped onto the backs, shoulders of children that don't have jobs yet. We made a first step toward the day when we can reform them; we can start encouraging people to their God- given potential instead of luring them into ruts. Mr. Speaker, I yield back the balance of my time.

Mr. GOHMERT

Mr. GOHMERT. Objection.

Mr. GOHMERT. Mr. Speaker, I object. I can't agree to a unanimous consent that this increases hunger in America.

Mr. GOHMERT

Mr. GOHMERT. I object.

Mr. GOHMERT. I object.

Mr. GOHMERT. I object.

Mr. GOHMERT

Mr. GOHMERT. I appreciate my friend from Minnesota yielding. It is pretty overwhelming. It's not just Texas. There's a 2010 Rasmussen poll that says 68 percent of likely voters think that securing the border is more important than granting amnesty to illegals. So this is nothing new. Yet the President himself has promised that he would secure the U.S. border with Mexico. But then again, he also made a speech in May of this year in Mexico condemning the sale of guns in the U.S. that have gone to Mexico. And of course we know his administration required that to be done. So you can't just go by what's being said. The President promised to secure the border. It hasn't. The American people are sick of promises not being kept, and they want the border secure. I know that none of us want the border closed. We appreciate immigration as wonderful fresh water coming into this great lake, but it's going to sink the boat if it comes too fast. Anyway, I'm mixing my metaphors. But the 1986 Immigration Reform and Control Act promised it would secure the border. Not only that, it said that ``it would prevent and deter the illegal entry of aliens in the United States and the violation of the terms of their entry.'' That has not happened. In 27 years that has not happened. The American people are not stupid. Lincoln pointed out ``you can fool some of the people some of the time'' or ``some of the people all of the time.'' But regardless, here it's like this administration thinks they're going to fool enough of the people enough of the time to continue to pass things that hurt America. It is interesting, though, the immigration bill that was passed previously and then in 2006, we had another bill that was supposed to actually get enforcement done, and it didn't happen. I'm not sure if my friend from Louisiana was here at the time, but we were told there would be a fence, virtual fence, walls where needed, all this would be taken care of, and this was under the Bush administration, and there were billions of dollars appropriated for that. And if my friends will recall, it wasn't all that long ago, the Secretary of Homeland Security just out of the blue announced, I've decided not to do the virtual fence. So we're just going to blow that off. The money had been appropriated. It's in the law. Here's what you do. And this administration just decided, we don't care it's in the law; we don't care there's money there to do it. We're not going to do it.

Mr. GOHMERT. If the gentlelady will yield, we do have one metric from the Government Accountability Office. They have certified or indicated in their recent report that of the approximate 2,000-mile border between the U.S. and Mexico that 129 miles are under full control, to use their words; 129 miles out of 2,000 are under full control, and this administration is saying, Let's just go ahead and provide amnesty to everybody that's here and then we'll eventually secure the border. We are going to have to keep doing this kind of amnesty bill every couple of years--or maybe we wait 10 years and do it in lumps every 10 years--unless we do what the law already requires: secure the border. I would like to see us adopt a resolution that just says basically until the United States' southern border is secured as confirmed, not by Janet Napolitano because we know we can't trust that, but as confirmed by the Governors and the legislatures in the four southern border States, the House of Representatives shall not bring any legislation, including any conference report, regarding immigration before the House for a vote. I think that's what we ought to do. We've got Americans upset and concerned about the IRS, upset and concerned about Benghazi, upset about this administration snooping. Of course, we have to say, though, as Matt Salmon said, the people finally have a President who will listen to them, or at least his administration listening to these things. But anyway, there are all these other issues that need to be taken up, and I think our position ought to be very clear to the White House: you do your job and then we'll get an immigration bill. And one other thing on the comprehensive, since the gentlelady mentioned that, since I got elected in November of 2004, it's my experience that when somebody in either the House or the Senate down here says we want a comprehensive bill on anything, that is code meaning--you break down the code--we've got a lot of really bad stuff that we want to get passed and nobody will ever vote for it if it stands up and people see what it is. So we need such a massive bill that we can hide the bad stuff in there we want passed so people won't see it until long after the bill has been passed. That's what ``comprehensive'' has come to mean.

Mr. GOHMERT

Mr. GOHMERT. Thank you. I too want to follow up on something Dr. Fleming was referring to. The Senate bill was considered some great panacea. It's going to solve all the problems. We are finally going to get border security, we are told. But I can think of at least a couple of times when this President has said, if the Congress doesn't change the law, I will. Basically he said, if they don't act by changing the law, then I'll act. We've seen him do that. When he didn't like the law on immigration, he changed the law just by his own decree. We've seen with regard to even ObamaCare--his signature bill from his first administration--it's not going well. He wouldn't come ask Congress, uh-oh, it's not going well so let's change the law. So he just gave ``so as I speak so shall it be,'' which is not reminiscent of normal Presidential conduct. It is important that a President enforce the law, advocate for changes in the law, but under no circumstances is the President supposed to change the law to fit his own desires. I mean, you advocate, but the checks and balances which are the real genius behind the Constitution that do create gridlock, that create tensions between the different branches are what keeps this place from becoming a monarchy. This President, when he says, If Congress doesn't act to change the law, then I will take care of it, well, we've seen that with gun control. He didn't like the fact that Congress was not changing the law when we were demanding that he enforce the laws that are there. All of these killers that have just been a plague on society, they violated plenty of laws. But this administration may be the worst at enforcing the gun laws. Certainly this administration has really been wanting in the area of enforcing the gun laws; and instead they come around and say, we want new gun laws. Well, that's not the way to do it. I know that Republicans say, look, look, it's important we get this off the table, let's just get it off the table so let's pass something and that will get it off the table and then we can get on to the other things. I have already mentioned I think the thing to do is say, Resolved: the House is not going to take up an immigration bill until the President, the executive branch, Homeland Security, secures the border. Woodrow Wilson--and I'm not a fan of his historically--but in 1916 when Americans were threatened by rage across the border and Americans killed, that President secured the border, pure and simple. He secured the border, and he didn't go run around demanding that a new immigration bill be passed and we give amnesty to people. There is a great article that National Review had from Fred Bauer. He said: Any argument that says the GOP should support such a measure to remove immigration as a political issue should be treated with immediate suspicion. Millions would be left as illegal immigrants under the Senate plan and most other legalization plans a million more illegal immigrants, according to the Congressional Budget Office, would arrive over the next 10 years. Many provisions of the Senate bill, from the law wait time for citizenship to the status of guest workers, provide plenty of opportunities for the left to demagog this issue. Any changes to U.S. immigration law also change the future composition of the body politic. Immigration as a national policy question has not been ``off the table'' since 1789. Don't expect the latest link of congressional sausage to change that. I think that's well said. This is not going to be off the table. The way that we should deal with it responsibly is hold the administration accountable. You enforce the law and then we'll get an immigration bill done very quickly after that. I know we will. All my colleagues here know there are parts of the immigration law that need to be fixed. But until the border is secure, not closed, but secured, we are wasting our time talking about a comprehensive immigration bill, or even good bills like Trey Gowdy or other bills that people have had; we shouldn't even be talking about them. Let the immigration secure the border and then we can work these things out very quickly. It's like a huge flood in your basement. If you run down and start with a mop while the water is still pouring in, you're making a mistake. You first stop the flood, and then you can clean up the problems after that.

Mr. GOHMERT

Mr. GOHMERT. Thank you, Mr. Flores. Colonel Clark was a great American. He was a great Aggie. He was just a great man. And I appreciate that tribute to him. Now, my friend from Texas from the Houston area wished to do a 1- minute, so I will yield to my friend from Texas (Ms. Jackson Lee) for such time as she may consume. Voting Rights Act

Mr. GOHMERT. Mr. Speaker, I thank my friend from Texas, and I was quite impressed and pleased to work with Ms. Jackson Lee in our effort in helping one of our servicemen. Some people around the country say, Why can't people get along on both sides of the aisle? When we disagree on issues, we say that. But when we work together, because of our common goal to make the country better and to help those who have been unfairly treated, we work together. It's a pleasure to do so. So I thank my friend from Texas (Ms. Jackson Lee). I would like to comment today on the good that the Voting Rights Act did. Back in the 1960s there was racial disparity. There were far too many African Americans who percentagewise were not voting when compared with the majority of Euro White Americans, and something needed to be done. The Supreme Court said, because there has been such impropriety, then we will allow this punitive measure to try to force things into being right to where there's not racial disparity, racial discrimination in preventing people of minority races from getting to the polls and being able to vote. Over 45 years later, it has worked. As the Supreme Court pointed out, of the original six States, five of those States have less racial disparity in voting than the whole rest of the country. That's great progress. But over those four to five decades of time, things change. The Voting Rights Act, as I pointed out to my friend and fellow Republican, the chairman of the Judiciary Committee at the time, Mr. Sensenbrenner, who had worked so hard to have it extended previously and was working on the reauthorization or the reextension--and to my friend across the aisle that I have great respect for--we have wonderful conversations-- Mr. John Conyers--as I pointed out, you have a problem with equal protection in this extension. You are punishing States who have cleaned up their act. Now, I don't know of anybody--anybody--in any of those States who was forced under the 40-plus-year-old formula to be punished who had anybody in their government who was there when racial inequality and discrimination was going on, who's still there. So this act that's done great good refused to acknowledge that good had been done. And even though things had changed and we had gone from Southern States having racial discrimination to now having those Southern States that had less racial disparity, and in fact in numerous cases had more African American turnout than they had white turnout percentage-wise, so things had corrected themselves. I would submit that it won't totally be corrected until we have a much higher percentage of all Americans who are eligible to vote coming out and voting. That's what's supposed to happen. Anyway, things have changed, and now the most discriminatory State in the Union, ironically, has become Massachusetts. Even Wisconsin has a district with significant racial disparity, indicating a potential for discrimination in that area; and perhaps Massachusetts should be an area that we focus on for trying to eliminate the racial discrimination there. Let's look at the numbers and see where racial disparity exists, determine what the reason is. And if there's racial discrimination, we need to address that because as we've seen, the Voting Rights Act has actually done a great good. So it's a work in progress. I don't know how many of the two Senators and Representatives from Massachusetts would be willing to join with me to put--to agree to put Massachusetts under the punitive section 5, but I'm certainly willing to go along and do that so that Massachusetts can benefit and get rid of racial discrimination and work toward the day when their racial disparity is back in line with where it should be. It's normally been a forward-thinking State, so it's very sad that it's regressed in that regard. But certainly we can work together on helping improve Massachusetts to the point that, say, Texas is now. I know they would like to be. I know that there are people in Massachusetts that do not want to be the most racially discriminating State, so I'm sure it shouldn't be that difficult a thing to accomplish. So there should be a tribute to the Voting Rights Act. I happen to represent east Texas. Nacogdoches paper, after the vote on the Voting Rights Act, had unfairly said I was a throwback to Democrats in the fifties because they had not bothered to read my floor speeches to see my own Gohmert amendment that would have required a formula that would apply across the country so the act would apply to everywhere in the country. That was the fair thing to do. I would have voted for the amendment if we had been able to get the Gohmert amendment in, but it was not accepted. So I knew the act would have to go down. Anyway, the great thing about being in east Texas, most people there are quite fair. And when it was pointed out to the Nacogdoches paper back then, my speech and my amendment, then they did a retraction and corrected themselves. That's the great thing about America. Now, I'm not expecting the AP to do a correction and the misrepresentation of things I said this week. In fact, I'm quite tickled that after the AP experienced the full force of the executive branch coming after them, grabbing their records, grabbing phone records from up here in the area in which the reporters work and make calls to Congressmen and other things, what a violation, what an atrocious violation of the AP's rights. And I'm glad the AP doesn't feel like they owe me any obligation in being more accurate in their reporting of me. This is America. The AP is totally free to mess up stories as they wish, totally free to slant stories as they want to. That's their prerogative. That's the great thing about America. But I hope that they'll start being a little more vigilant about the abuses by this administration since now they've been the victim of such abuses. We'll see. But, hopefully, they won't continue to be so defensive for the administration and be a little more objective in their reporting. I did want to address the Windsor decision regarding the Defense of Marriage Act because as a former prosecutor, a former judge--I've been a litigator and a former chief justice--I read these opinions with interest and look for the reasoning, look for the consistency in the citation of the facts, the recitation to prior law, prior precedent, and the reasoning of the Court. And as I read through this Windsor decision regarding Defense of Marriage Act, I was very concerned as I read through, they go through here in the majority opinion, Justice Kennedy wrote, and they've got about 12 pages here where they're talking about, most of the discussion is about standing, because under this case, the administration refused to do their job. They refused to have the Department of Justice defend the law, and it shouldn't be any surprise. We have the President goes out, including here recently, and says: I don't like the law that Congress passed and prior Presidents have signed, so here's the new law. As recently as the last few days, he didn't like the law as it stands on carbon issues. So as any good monarch would do, he just came up with a new law and espoused that. Unfortunately, it's not appropriate and the Constitution has the wherewithal to stop this kind of overreach and unconstitutional activity by a President that just refuses to enforce laws in being, creates new laws out of whole cloth while ignoring the laws that are in place. That's a problem. The Founders recognize that it's possible some day, some President, some administration could do that; and if they do, then the Congress has the powers of the purse, and they can step up and say you're abusing the Constitution, you're abusing people's rights. And, therefore, we as a House and Senate refuse to fund any department that is acting extra-constitutionally. We have the power to do that. I have people here in my party, the majority party in the House say: You know, we've no leverage. Are you kidding? There is nobody in this entire government in the whole executive branch that can get paid, that can have any money to do their job unless we vote to allow them to have money from the Treasury. They can't get it. We have that authority. And if we wanted to take a hard line when the Justice Department is refusing to investigate matters properly, they're covering up matters, they come to Congress and misrepresent things, we have the power to stop them from continuing such abuses. When they, potentially, commit a fraud on the Court and say somebody is a criminal, like James Rosen, and they swear to that before a judge, and swear that he's a flight risk, when apparently they knew all along he wasn't, and now they say, no, no, no, they were never going to prosecute, we have the power to stop that kind of stuff. We have the power to stop the abuses of going after the AP or Rosen, or any reporters inappropriately abusing and breaching the freedom of the press. I saw my friend, Mr. Nadler, walk across the back. We have disagreed on so many things, but I have come to appreciate very much his position on the need to hold every administration accountable, and I'm hoping that we're going to be able to work out some legislation that reins in the abuses. Yes, I know that an administration needs to monitor some things, but I'm quite concerned about the extent to which this administration has moved even farther than the prior administration in monitoring people. I mean, basically, in such an incredibly Orwellian fashion, it's a little scary to those of us that have watched this happen. So I'm hoping we'll be able to work together. But when you look at this opinion and you see, well, gee, the administration is refusing to defend a law that was duly passed, signed into law by President Clinton, it's a problem. Somebody has to defend the law. And I was grateful that the Supreme Court, after they analyzed this and got over around page 12 or so, and say, that similarly, with respect to the legislative power--this is on page 12 of the majority opinion--when Congress has passed a statute and a President has signed it, it poses grave challenges to the separation of powers for the executive, at a particular moment, to be able to nullify Congress' enactment, solely on its own initiative, and without any determination from a court. Of course, then they go through and say, on page 13, they refer to the bilateral legislative group that decided to defend the Defense of Marriage Act when the administration refused to do the job that was required constitutionally, they refused to defend it, as they have other laws that have been duly passed and signed. But the Court says, in part--which is one of immediate importance to the Federal Government and to hundreds of thousands of persons--well, they have no basis in fact to make that reference; but, as we've seen, particularly in recent years, the Court has strayed off into areas where they do not have facts to justify their opinions, and they make bad decisions, as they did in the horrendous Dred Scott case. It happens, when the Court becomes the fact-finder, the, basically, judge, jury and executioner. I mean, they just seem to want to do it all and make references to facts that are not before the Court. And, in fact, they say these circumstances support the Court's decision to proceed on the merits. So the Court's saying, okay, the administration refuses to do their constitutional job to defend duly passed and signed legislation, so the Members of Congress that passed this law, that pushed it through and voted for it, in essence, they will have standing to defend it. So it took them a long time to get here, clear over to 13, but they eventually say, okay, we will recognize that, since these people passed the law, they pushed it through, it's their group that got it passed and made it into a law. We'll recognize that they have a legitimate standing to come before this Court and defend the law. And now, basically, the Court says, now that we've found that the people that passed this law have a right to defend it, significant enough that they have standing, that gives us jurisdiction, as a Supreme Court; and so now we will proceed on the merits. So then they go through and they analyze, and I had some trouble with some of their representations. You know, King Solomon, many, including me, believe, was the wisest man who ever lived. Of course, then he had too many wives, and that always messes up anybody's wisdom, but he was wise at the time he said there is nothing new under the Sun. Well, the Supreme Court, apparently, at least the new holy quintet, believes they're wiser than Solomon, even though they show some ignorance. They say here, page 13, for marriage between a man and a woman, no doubt had been thought of by most people as essential to the very definition of that term and to its role and function throughout the history of civilization. Now, parenthetically, I'd like to insert that shows some wisdom that they would make that comment. And throughout the history of mankind, though many won't acknowledge it, marriage between a man and a woman coming together, or as the Bible says, a man will leave his mother and a woman leave her home and the two will come together and be one person, one flesh, that's been recognized as a good, healthy building block for a society. And that's been recognized throughout the history of the United States as a good, healthy building block. And what some seem to not recognize, even though they acknowledge they believe in evolution and how a species evolves by having better and more adaptable offspring, and the strongest produce more and better offspring that evolve the species to a higher level, interestingly, throughout the history of mankind, it, apparently, was not the joinder of a man and a man or a woman and a woman that was able to produce a better and more evolved species. From best we can tell, you still need a sperm from a man, an egg from a woman. Even if you say, well, yeah, we can clone, if you don't have something that was created by the joinder of something from a man and something from a woman, then you have nothing to clone. So as smart as we think we are, it still comes back to what the Bible says as the two people becoming one person, one flesh. Anyway, the Court says, and I quote: That belief for many who long have held it, became even more urgent, more cherished when challenged. For others, however, came the beginnings of a new perspective, a new insight. There is nothing new under the Sun. This kind of assertion has been made, and it's often found toward the end of great civilizations. It doesn't bring about the end of the civilization; but it's often found at the end of a great civilization as, basically, a mile marker that a civilization passes on the way to the dustbin of history. No nation lasts forever. None does. This country won't. But it's my hope and prayer that we can at least double the length of the short time that this country has existed, since 1775, when the war started, the Declaration of Independence in 1776, the Treaty of Paris in 1783. So, anyway, the Supreme Court says, talks about this new perspective and new insight. And then they say this: The limitation of lawful marriage to heterosexual couples which, for centuries, had been deemed both necessary and fundamental, came to be seen in New York and certain other States as an unjust exclusion. And they go on and they mention, you know, there are 11 States that had adopted this. There are not 11 States that have had the entire State vote to recognize marriage between two men or two women. But once you move marriage beyond the scope of a man and a woman, you really don't end up with a good place to put a limit, because now that the Court has pushed this boundary out there and eliminated it, then--I think polygamy is wrong, bigamy is wrong. And it's a crime in many places. But how will that be justifiable, even though I believe it's wrong, how will that be justifiable, now that the Court has removed this? There's some that believe polygamy is the way to go. I do not think it's healthy, overall, for a society, and I certainly don't think it helped Solomon. I think it helped him lose his wisdom. But the Court goes on and says this at page 16. And its operation is directed to a class of persons that the laws of New York and 11 other States have sought to protect. Again, that's not 11 or 12 States that have had the entire State vote on what marriage is. Most of those have been legislatures. And in some States where legislatures have said one thing, the people have come from the whole State and said, You're not representing out interests, and we're a government of the people, by the people, and for the people, and therefore we're correcting you and fixing the law. The Court said, at page 17: The definition of marriage is the foundation of the States' broader authority to regulate the subject of domestic relations with respect to the protection of offspring, property interests, and the enforcement of marital responsibilities. The States, at the time of the adoption of the Constitution, possessed full power over the subject of marriage and divorce, and the Constitution delegated no authority to the Government of the United States on the subject of marriage and divorce. So if you've read plenty of opinions and you read that at page 17, you realize this Court is about to do what, for many of us, is unthinkable--become a holy quintet, the five Justices--and basically try to rewrite the laws of nature and nature's God, as most of the Founders believed. But as I read that--and I had not read the Proposition 8 case from the Supreme Court regarding California's law--I thought, well, I don't like where this is going, but based on this reasoning, I know the Supreme Court will have to be intellectually honest and consistent enough that since they've said Members of Congress that passed a law have standing to defend that law, when the Attorney General and the executive branch doesn't, they'll have to uphold the standing of the group in California who pushed through and voted for and passed--just as Congress does the laws here--through referendum, the law in California, saying that marriage was between a man and a woman. And when I read this, I said, Oh, this doesn't sound good for the Defense of Marriage Act by the Federal Congress because they're saying it's only the States that can decide what marriage is. And these 11, 12 States have decided for themselves what it is, and so the Federal Government doesn't have any power to say what it is. I still contend the Federal Government does have a nexus and power to say what it is for purposes of certain Federal benefits, but the Court, as the new holy quintet, saw otherwise. They go on to say in this opinion that which shows that the holy quintet was either totally dishonest or totally inconsistent--totally ignorant, actually--when they make this statement. This is page 22. ``The principal purpose''--talking about the Defense of Marriage Act--``is to impose inequality, not for other reasons like governmental efficiency.'' And that's a lie. And anybody who will be intellectually honest will have to understand that is a lie by the new holy quintet at the Supreme Court. The principal purpose was to protect the greatest foundational building block of any society since the dawn of mankind: the home, where a mother and father are there; a home, where the species has offspring and they're nurtured by a mother and father. Now, certainly, I saw it in the Soviet Union back in the seventies when I was there as an exchange student. I was shocked. I was actually mortified, because at these day care centers they were saying, yes, the children are the government's. They're the state's. Seems like I saw that on MSNBC recently. They're the state's. And the parents are only the brief caregivers, so long as the state allows them to take care of the state's children. But if they ever say anything inappropriate that the state finds out about, they'll yank the children out and put them with somebody more deserving. I was mortified because, even in the seventies, I realized as a young person that, wow, the family is so important. Some of our greatest people have come from single-parent homes, and that will also continue. Thank God, since we've now passed over 40 percent, heading towards 50 percent, of individuals being born today to a single-parent home. But that's not, statistically, the most secure and the best home, generally speaking, for a child to grow up in. Obviously, there are exceptions. You have abusive parents. You have parents that I sent to prison who were an aberration. That can happen in anybody's home. So I sent them to prison for committing crimes. Well, obviously, a two-parent home, where one of them is committing crimes, is not healthy to a child. But overall, for the history of this country, the States, Members of Congress, the original Founders, they would never have dreamed we would get to a point where the judiciary, the unelected branch--the only unelected branch--would say, We're going to rewrite the laws of nature and nature's God. But that's, in essence, what they say. At page 25, the Court says that: The Federal statute is invalid, for no legitimate purpose overcomes the purpose and effect to disparage and injure those whom the State, by its marriage laws, sought to protect in personhood and dignity. That's a tragic decision, and it's heartbreaking that it will help to generate society as we move forward with fewer and fewer people paying income tax, as this society becomes more and more narcissistic, more focused on ourselves. How else can you explain one generation saying this generation is so valuable that we are going to force future generations, some who have not even been born, to pay for our narcissism and to be engorging ourselves on the money of future generations? We're the first in American history that's ever been so self- absorbed, and it's heartbreaking. We've got to change this. All the generations before had a majority of that generation that would sacrifice whatever we have to so that our children will have a better Nation than we have. I've been the beneficiary of that, and I will work until I take my dying breath to try to change the direction we're headed, toward national bankruptcy, both financially and morally. But this is a disingenuous opinion, and either the Court realizes it, which makes it dishonest, or they don't realize it, and it makes them very ignorant. So, nonetheless, when I finished reading that majority opinion, I knew that surely, as bad as that opinion is, incorporating things that simply aren't true, disingenuous, when they take up the Proposition 8 case from California, number one, they'll have to say that the people that pushed through the law and passed it have standing to defend the law that they pushed through and passed and voted for themselves by referendum, just as the Members of Congress were allowed to have standing to defend the bill. In California's case, the executive branch, their attorney general, refused to defend the law that was passed by a majority of the Californians. And so I thought, okay, that will be an easy one for the Supreme Court. They can just reference the Windsor case, as these people have the right, they have standing; therefore, we have jurisdiction to take up the merits of the case. They could cite Windsor, the DOMA case, for the proposition, as they say in the DOMA case, that the States have a right to determine what marriage will be in their State. Here's the amazing part: for people, many of whom have educations from Ivy League institutions--I'm not sure, they may all come from Ivy League institutions--sounds like we need some diversity on the Court, though, if that's the case. They hold that the people that passed the law in California, voted for the law in California do not have standing to defend the law, so we're not even going to take up the issue that we said clearly, in the case we just decided on DOMA, that only the States have a right to decide what marriage is within their States. So they kick it back to a lower court to dismiss. It is tragic when people who are supposed to be our best educated have such false reasoning based on a fiction that the law saying marriage is a man and a woman has no other purpose--the primary purpose at least being to create inequality. That is tragic. It does not bode well for this Nation when the only unelected branch decides that they will rewrite the laws of nature and nature's God. And why do I mention that is because those are terms that the Founders used. When my pastor, David Dykes, was up here with his wife, Cindy, it was the first time I had gone over to the State Department. I mean, I majored in history; I loved history. I owed the Army 4 years for my scholarship at A&M, and I enjoyed history so I majored in it. I knew all about the Revolution, the Treaty of Paris, but I never actually looked at the Treaty of Paris or a copy of it. Under glass in the State Department building they have an incredible copy of the original Treaty of Paris of 1783. And I was shocked by the big bold letters that start the Treaty of Paris. I had to think about why would they start with those words. Then you put yourself back in the place of the Founders, those who were negotiating with the British Government in Paris to force them to recognize that the United States of America was a free and independent country, totally free of Great Britain, and totally independent to do what it wished as its own sovereign Nation. So they had to get representatives from Great Britain to sign that. Well, what would keep them from just breaking their oath? I mean, we see it here among politicians. They'll swear one thing and then they'll go do something else. What would keep the representatives of Great Britain from doing the same thing? And the Founders wanted something so profound under which they would make the Great Britain diplomats sign that they would be afraid to ever break that oath. So I thought about it. Well, what in the world would I put in the document to make them sign under? I don't think having a notary is going to quite do the trick, especially if it's an American notary. They'd say, well, it wasn't a British notary. So what would you do? What would you put in the document to make them swear under? That's where they came up with the first words of the Treaty of Paris that for the first time truly recognized the independence of the United States by Great Britain. France had already recognized us, but this was the one we had been in revolts with and war with. So the first words, the biggest, boldest words in all the Treaty of Paris were these: In the Name of the Most Holy and Undivided Trinity. Now, they knew, both the British and the Americans, that the Trinity represented the Father, Son and the Holy Ghost. They put that as the biggest words in there: In the Name of the most Holy and undivided Trinity. They figured if the British will sign this document with those in big bold letters, they will not want to face their Judge some day if they break that oath. It's the very reason that John Quincy Adams--a great advocate for abolition, the only man in American history who had been elected President, 1824, defeated in 1828, he decides God's calling him to bring an end to slavery, like William Wilberforce was trying to do in England. So he did the unthinkable. After he was President, he ran to be a Representative in the House of Representatives of the U.S. Congress and was elected. And he indicated to someone that he was prouder being elected to Congress after being President than he was being elected President, which seems a little strange. But if you think about it, it means after he was elected President, his neighbors still liked him. So that was a big deal. But over and over he preached sermons on the evils of slavery just down the Hall here. But in the Amistad case that came before the Supreme Court, down in what we call the Old Supreme Court Chamber downstairs, he argued before the Supreme Court--and you can find his whole argument online. Fortunately, they didn't put two-plus days of oral argument in the movie Amistad--Anthony Hopkins, a good Longview; Texas guy named Matthew McConaughey, he argued the case. And you find at the end of his argument--and I don't have it committed verbatim, but basically he goes through asking, Where is Justice so-and-so and Chief Justice John Marshall? Where is the solicitor who last argued the case against me when I was here before? Even the judge that started this case, he had died one night during the days of oral arguments. He ends up concluding, basically, they've gone to meet their Judge. And the most important question that they were asked is will they hear: Well done, good and faithful servant? Now, if I had had a lawyer argue that before me in the court of appeals or the district bench, I mean, I had gotten the message, you got a lawyer there saying if you don't decide for me, you're going to have to face God Almighty some day, and he's going to judge you and he's going to come down on you if you don't do the right thing in this case. I might not have appreciated it, but the Court found appropriately for John Quincy Adams' side of the case. And those free Africans were allowed to leave as free Africans, as they should have been. So back then, the lead abolitionist, he knew, he believed with all his heart some day people are going to meet their maker, He's going to be their Judge. I might have enjoyed if John Quincy Adams were able to come back as Lazarus did, when Jesus raised him, and go before the Supreme Court and say, let me tell you, I've been there. You are going to go before your Judge some day. And you better not pretend to be God himself because you're going to meet God himself some day. But this Supreme Court did not have that benefit, so the holy quintet decided to rewrite the law. Now, I want to touch on briefly a law that was just passed down in the Senate. I really appreciated my good friend Senator Ted Cruz's statement down the Hall. I'm quoting from his statement: Unfortunately, all of the concerns that have been repeatedly raised about this bill remain; it repeats the mistakes of the 1986 immigration bill; it grants amnesty first; it won't secure the border; and it doesn't fix our broken legal immigration system. This bill doesn't solve the problems because the process it went through was fatally flawed--it was written behind closed doors with special interests; in the Judiciary Committee, the Gang of Eight Democrats blocked all substantive amendments because of a previously cooked deal; and on the Senate floor, the majority blocked any attempts to fix the bill. Further, in conjunction with ObamaCare, the Gang of Eight bill creates a tax penalty on employers--effectively, up to $5,000--for hiring U.S. citizens or legal immigrants. But that penalty does not apply to those with RPI--which is registered provisional immigrant-- status, giving a powerful incentive for job creators to hire illegal immigrants instead of U.S. citizens or legal immigrants. That is indefensible. Ted says: I filed an amendment to fix this defect but was blocked by Senate Democrats from receiving a vote on that solution. Sadly, this bill won't fix the problem with our immigration system and will only encourage more illegal immigration and human suffering. Quite tragic. Quite tragic. Senator Cruz explains it well. Dr. Tom Coburn, a good friend--hopefully, he would acknowledge that-- from Oklahoma, Senator Tom Coburn said this--I won't read the whole statement, there's not adequate time, but a wonderful statement he summarizes very well. He said: It is a $48 billion border stimulus package that grants amnesty to politicians who want to say they are securing the border when, in fact, they are not. Further he quotes Reagan. He said Reagan said: It was a tall, proud city built on rocks stronger than oceans, windswept, God-blessed, and teeming with people of all kinds living in harmony and peace; a city with free ports that hummed with commerce and creativity. And if there had to be city walls, the walls had doors and the doors were open to anyone with the will and the heart to get here. ``Walls with doors'' is an immigration policy that can unite our Nation. But today, Democrats sound like they want only doors; Republicans want only walls. The truth is we have neither. We have chaos. Well said. But the Republicans I know want doors. We want immigration. We want the fresh water flowing into this incredible lake. It's a healthy good thing. I love the fact that, generally speaking, most Hispanics I know have a faith in God, a devotion to their family, and a hard work ethic. That's what I think made America great. It's a great thing. We need more of that. That's a good thing. But it has to be done legally, and it is heartbreaking that this got pushed through the Senate to what many of us believe will be the detriment of this country. In The Weekly Standard, John McCormack wrote an article that five Senators who support the immigration bill don't know the answer to a key question about it. A great article there in The Weekly Standard. There are plenty of good articles if our friends down the hall had bothered to read them. Eagle Forum has a great article, a great newsletter, on the Gang of Eight and what they've done to America. What my friend Ted Cruz was pointing out, under ObamaCare, there is a penalty that could be $3,000 per employee. For those over 50 you deduct 30. It's a formula. But basically, in most cases it's a $2,000 penalty for any employer that has over 50 employees that does not provide the level of health care that is required under ObamaCare. So Ted Cruz makes a point I haven't heard anybody else make--it's an excellent point: that under ObamaCare, if you're an employer and you've got 1,000 people working for you, certainly you're under ObamaCare, so you're going to pay a tax of $2,000 per person on your employees if you don't give them the highest level required of health insurance, so they will end up being under ObamaCare. Well, businesses compete to stay in business. If someone else has a lower overhead, then they have to try to get down to that level of overhead. Under the Senate bill, they create these registered provisional immigrants. By that law, the registered provisional immigrants are not under ObamaCare. So if an employer that has, say, 1,000 employees wants to save $200,000 or so, that employer can fire all of the American citizens and all the legal immigrants that he has working in that manufacturing plant and hire the RPIs, the registered provisional immigrants. Then that employer doesn't have to provide them health care, and he doesn't have to pay the $2,000 fine per employee and save a couple hundred thousand. If you have 10,000 employees, then you would save a couple million dollars. It is really profound the detrimental effect it will have on legal immigrants and American citizens. I see that my dear friend from Minnesota (Mrs. Bachmann) is here. Mr. Speaker, how much time do I have remaining?

Mr. GOHMERT. Thank you, Mr. Speaker. At this time, I would like to yield as much time as he may consume to my good friend from Texas (Mr. Flores). Honoring Lieutenant Colonel Todd Clark

Mr. GOHMERT. Mr. Speaker, I yield the balance of my time to the gentlewoman from Minnesota (Mrs. Bachmann).

Mr. GOHMERT

Mr. GOHMERT. Mr. Speaker, pursuant to Senate Concurrent Resolution 19, 113th Congress, I move that the House do now adjourn.

Mr. GOHMERT

Mr. GOHMERT. Mr. Speaker, my friends across the aisle obviously are concerned about section 4 of the Voting Rights Act being struck down. We debated the extension of the Voting Rights Act in the Judiciary Committee, and I have great respect for then-Chairman John Conyers. And as I mentioned to him privately, as well, there's no way it's going to avoid being violative of equal protection when you have, as was determined in 2009, five of the six original States that now have less racial disparity than the rest of the country and the worst racial disparity is in Massachusetts. You can't just cram a punishment down on States just because you have a majority when great work has been done by the Voting Rights Act. It has done a good thing, and it was time for a new formula so we could capture the States that showed such racial disparity. I look forward to working with my friends across the aisle to subjecting Massachusetts and any other violators--I know there aren't any others that bad--to section 5, and I'm sure we can get that done.

Mr. GOHMERT

Mr. GOHMERT. Mr. Speaker, today we did vote on the farm bill, as it's been referred to, the Federal Agriculture Reform and Risk Management Act. But as some of us have pointed out--and I attempted to establish through an amendment--this was not a farm bill. Eighty percent was about food stamps. It was a very brilliant move by Members of Congress back when the Democrats controlled the majority--the seventies, the eighties--in fact, after Vietnam, the post-Watergate era, the most liberal Congress until Speaker Pelosi took the gavel. They did a brilliant thing. They were able to take so much in the form of welfare, public assistance of all kinds, and put it into so many different budgets under the jurisdiction of different committees so that if at any one time someone went after one area that was multiplicitous, it was simply a duplication of other agencies' funds, then they could be marginalized and demeaned and have it said, you don't care about women or veterans or children or the poor, or whatever. It's worked well, in fact, to the point that we now obviously have about $17 trillion in debt more than we've had revenue coming in. Basically, we would be, perhaps, Greece or Cyprus, other countries that are basically on the verge of bankruptcy except that we produce our own money. And the dollar is the international currency, so it's allowed all this reckless overspending. So I think it's time--and I know there are many others that agree-- that we reform Congress to the point where all public assistance comes in one single committee, one area where all public assistance can be located. It will be easy to see all the duplications, all the waste, so much easier to see areas where fraud is running rampant when you put all of those public assistance measures in the same bill. I actually proposed an amendment that would strike title IV--which was the food stamp program, although it's been cleverly renamed the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program, SNAP--has a real snap to it. But the goal was not to do away with that program. In fact, my friend across the aisle, Mr. McGovern, asked me: Are you wanting to do away entirely with the food stamp or the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program? And I replied before the Rules Committee, on the record, before a television camera, into a microphone, no, I didn't want to do away with that program. But I did feel it needed to have its own time, its own discussion, and not be 80 percent of a farm bill. But what is really heartbreaking is not that children are not going to have food in America--because whether we bring a farm bill back that separates out the food stamp program so we can deal with that separately--not do away with it, but deal with it separately--or whether it comes back and we're into the rut of continuing to extend and extend, children will not be allowed to go hungry. But I think back about the Presidential campaign last year and about how much the politics around here has degenerated, such that when a Republican like Mitt Romney--or John McCain, back in 2008--says I disagree with my friend, my opponent, but I know he's a good man and he has a good heart. He wants to do good things for the country, we just disagree with how to get there. And yet what we have coming back, as Mitt Romney saw, was Mitt Romney, after saying he's a good man, a good family man, but I think he's wrong on these issues, what came back from the drones--the human drones that were speaking on behalf of the President--was, gee, he wants to push people off a cliff; he wants people to die of cancer; he wants them to get cancer. He's obviously painted as a very evil man. That came back to mind today during some of the discussions. I heard our friend from Maryland, minority whip here, talking about the farm bill, blaming Republicans for not being bipartisan when three-fourths of the Republicans had voted for the farm bill. Yet our friends across the aisle did make it a very partisan measure, and not only made it partisan in the rhetoric condemning Republicans for not reaching out, things were said in the subsequent discussions when my friend from Texas had been here on the House floor, but comments from friends across the aisle like children were crying out here for food and Republicans, in essence, not only voted down their help but wanted to slap them down. I would never say that about a friend across the aisle. I think they're wrong in the way they want to spend so much more money than we have coming in it's bankrupting the country. I would never think for a moment that one of my friends from across the aisle wanted to slap down children. I just wouldn't bring myself to say that because I know it's not true. I think they're very wrongheaded on so many issues. But comments like taking not only food, but their utensils or table and just leave them with the floor, how could we do such a thing? Yet, when we look at the food stamp bill that had 20 percent farm in it that did not pass today, it certainly wasn't for a lack of work by the chairman of the Agriculture Committee, Frank Lucas. Chairman Lucas and I don't always agree on things, but I know that man and he is a good man, and I did appreciate hearing Mr. Hoyer commenting as much. Frank Lucas worked very, very hard on this bill and he actually got reforms in here. There were actually amendments passed that some didn't like, but it was a bipartisan bill. There were some Democrats that voted for this bill. That makes it bipartisan. Not like ObamaCare that was rammed down the throats of Americans and the Republicans, without having input, without having any opportunity for amendment really, just forced upon Republicans in the country. In fact, there's never been a Congress that has been as closed to amendment, as closed to input from the other side, as we witnessed when the Democrats took the majority in January of 2007 until they lost the majority in November of 2010. Those years saw more closed rules, no amendments possible. It was unbelievable the way our friends across the aisle were so abusive with the process and preventing almost half of the country from having any voice in anything that went on. When I hear our friends across the aisle talk about a lack of bipartisanship, it's a little difficult. What really is a bit heartbreaking is to hear people across the aisle speak so eloquently as I sat here listening today, hearing people speak with such incredibly persuasive words and expressions and with such venom and passion that, if I did not know the truth, I actually would be believing how horrible and evil and nasty and child hating Republicans really are. However, I know people on this side of the aisle as well. There is not anybody that has been elected to Congress--there's no other way to get to the House. There is nobody that's been elected on either side of the aisle that wants to see a child suffer because of anything we do. It is very offensive to have people on one side of the aisle attribute those kinds of feelings that we wanted to hurt children. Really? It sounds so real and so true. How can we ever have legitimate debate in this House of Representatives when anybody can stand and attribute such evil motivation on the side of the other and make it sound so real? Do we have any chance of saving this country when people can come to the floor and make such ridiculous allegations sound so persuasive and true? You can't have debate like that. On the other hand, I have looked in the eyes of constituents of mine. As I go all over my district, down to a wonderful little community, it brought us recently for a town hall. I go all over the district. One of the things that really makes me proud is to be introduced as having been to some community more than any other Member of Congress. They thought, Oh, well, he is from Tyler. He wouldn't care about us here. I care about the whole district. I know all of the people that are elected, they do care about their district. But when I look into the eyes of constituents who want to provide for their children, they want them to have the best that they can provide for them, and they talk about standing in line--I've heard this story so many times from people who are brokenhearted about it and sometimes get angry just thinking about what they've seen and what they've heard. But standing in line at a grocery store behind people with a food stamp card, and they look in their basket--as one individual said, I love crab legs, you know, the big king crab legs. I love those. But we haven't been able to have them in our house since who knows when. But I'm standing behind a guy who has those in his basket and I'm looking longingly, like, When can I ever make enough again where our family can have something like that, and then sees the food stamp card pulled out and provided. He looks at the king crab legs and looks at his ground meat and realizes, because he does pay income tax, he doesn't get more back than he pays in, he is actually helping pay for the king crab legs when he can't pay for them for himself. People across the aisle want to condemn anyone who is working and scraping and can't save any money and is trying to decide how in the world do we ever get ahead, can we ever get ahead. They're cutting back my hours at work. We're doing the best we can, and yet I stand in line and see multiple people paying with food stamp cards for things I cannot afford. How can you begrudge somebody who feels that way? How can you begrudge anyone who steps up on behalf of constituents who feel that way? We don't want anyone to go hungry. And from the amount of obesity in this country by people we are told do not have enough to eat, it does seem like we could have a debate about this issue without allegations about wanting to slap down or starve children. Because when I think of children, I think about those also who are growing up right now. They have no say in the amount of money we're spending in this Chamber right here, billions and billions and billions, with so much waste, fraud, and abuse. Yet those very little children who have no voice in what we're doing are going to have to pay for our extravagance and our waste and our fraud and abuse. What kind of parent would want that? I don't know of anybody on either side of the aisle who would want that, but it is what we are producing. I didn't vote for the farm bill--because it's not a farm bill. I believe we need to have a debate where we bring all the public assistance into one place so we see what's there and so we can cut out as much waste, fraud and abuse as possible, where we can make those cuts, because when we're spending the billions and billions and billions we are for food supplement, whatever you want to call it, and when there is story after story of people who are caught selling interest in their food stamp cards or what they buy with their food stamp cards, can we really not come and have a discussion about how we can quit putting a heavier and heavier burden on children who have no voice in this Congress? Can we not have a debate and a discussion without demonizing people who say, Look, I care about the children who are growing up and who are going to be born and who shouldn't have to pay for the extravagance and the narcissism within this generation? Can't we have that discussion without demonizing one another? I would hope that we could get to that point. One comment about Tea Party extremism killing the farm bill. When a small reform is made to the food stamp program and when this additional requirement is added that, for those who are able to work, they will need to work, is that evil and mean and just so totally in disregard of those who are ``getting'' from everyone else? We heard this when Congress wasn't a blip on my radar. We heard this over and over as Newt Gingrich and the new Republican majority after 40 years or so came into this body as the majority, and they said, We are going to reform welfare--and they did. President Clinton didn't want it. He fought it tooth and nail. Just like the balanced budgets, he fought it, he fought it--and he used his veto more than once--but finally, it's signed into law. When it's clear to President Clinton that there are votes here in a bipartisan way to override his veto, he might as well sign it. Now, today, how wonderful it is when he extols the virtues of his two terms as President--the virtues of what the Republican majority did when they finally reined things in. Now, I was told as a freshman and as a very staunch conservative, don't even bother to go to the Harvard orientation for new Members of Congress because it's just so liberal. They vilify those of us who think like we do in that we need to be more conservative in our spending, but I went anyway as I enjoy a good debate, and we had several. I was struck, even at the liberal Harvard Law School, where they've totally forgotten the reason for their founding and of what was required of students in those early days as they prepared them to live a life in total submission to their savior Jesus Christ. It's amazing when you go back and read the things that the students were taught and what they had to take an oath to believe, but they're at Harvard. We had a dean come in with charts, who explained, ever since the Great Society legislation in the sixties--I know some think maybe it was born out of less than noble ideas, but I believe it was born out of the best of intentions. They saw people needing help, so let's give them money, let's give them help. Gee, there were deadbeat dads around the country, so let's give the single moms a check for every child they have out of wedlock. Back then, when there was between 6 and 7 percent single moms who were struggling to get by, over the years, we have paid for more and more children out of wedlock. As philosophers have said, if you pay for some activity, you're going to get more of that activity. Now in this country we are getting what we've paid for. We are past 40 percent single moms and are on our way to 50 percent, in large part, I think, because this Congress decided--well- intentioned--to try to help single moms instead of trying to help them reach their God-given potential. Maybe help them with daycare. Get back in high school. Finish high school. You can earn so much more if you finish high school than if you never do. Get a little college, and you'll make more. That's what the statistics tell us. If we care about the people, why wouldn't we want to push them? These charts from this dean at Harvard showed that, since the Great Society legislation, a single mom's income when adjusted for inflation for about 30 years was a flat line. Single moms on average did not ever improve their situations. Then along came what was portrayed as being these evil Republican Congressmen and Senators who said, We're going to reform welfare. We're going to require people to work who can. They pushed people out of being on the dole of the Federal Government, and they pushed them into starting to pursue their God-given potential and what they could do for themselves and to feel good about themselves because they're providing for themselves. He pulled out a chart to show a single mother's income when adjusted for inflation and after welfare reform--when people were forced to work, they could--and wow. For the first time in about 30 years, a single mom's income went up when adjusted for inflation. So who cared more--those who said, You Republicans are evil for trying to make people work who are getting child support from the government or are getting welfare? How evil you are. Are they in the more virtuous position? Or those who say, I know this will work. I know every human being has potential that God put there, and we want them to move toward that. We do not want to pay them to be a couch potato and to pay them to keep having children out of wedlock and to pay them for not pursuing what they're capable of pursuing for themselves and that wonderful feeling when you accomplish something for yourself? Who is more virtuous in that situation? I can tell you, from the rhetoric, that my friends on the Democratic side were the virtuous ones and that the Republicans were the evil, mean-spirited, self-involved people because they wanted single moms to reach their potential and make more money--and it happened just like that. So then President Obama comes in, and what does he do? Right off the bat, he wants to eliminate the work requirement. I think he was motivated out of good intentions, but we're back to where we were. We want for the people who have been getting food stamps, if they can work, to work. Let's push people toward reaching their potential. That's not evil. That's a good thing. People are also free to worship whoever, whatever or no one if they wish in America, but there are those who say, Well, gee, you're a Christian. The Christian thing is to give people money if they need it. In Romans 13, it talks about the government is supposed to be an encourager of good conduct. An encourager, it would seem, to reach your potential, not to kill your potential. To encourage people to reach for the stars, not kill a NASA program and force people to teach to a test. If we want to keep having a country that is worthy of so many places around the world trying any way they can to get into this country, then we must protect this country. That's what our oath involves: protect the country so it's not overwhelmed. Prevent this country from becoming one massive welfare state, but encourage the greatness in people. We're not going to help that when we see a leader of a country like Syria, an Assad, who has killed so many people, who we would not want to support to stay in that position, but he's being challenged by people who we know are involved with al Qaeda and al Qaeda-type groups and who want to subjugate other Muslims and Christians or kill Coptic Christians, as we've seen in some places, kill others, Jews, Christians, with whom they disagree. Do we really want to help either one of those? Back before they had to teach to the test, people learned a little bit about history, and they had to learn before World War I. You don't find enough people that can talk intelligently about World War I any more. In fact, we see the polls that say there are more people that can name the Three Stooges than can name the three branches of government because the tests they've been teaching to have the same requirements for everyone. We were doing better when they were local requirements. The local people knew best. But back when people were learning history, they found out and we were tested on and taught that World War I came about because of what we were told were entangling alliances. What do we see around Syria? Well, Iran is propping up Assad. Russia says we are going to send in the best anti-aircraft defense if you start a no-fly zone there. Yet this President, without the support of Congress, just like he did not have when he went into Libya--and we know how that's turned out. At least four people are dead that wouldn't be otherwise. But giving money to Syria, really? A billion dollars is what I was reading today. How about taking that billion dollars that's going to cause all kinds of death and that will probably in some way, some day end up causing the deaths of Americans and Israelis, allies of ours, Coptic children, Jewish friends, they're going to kill people that were never intended because it's not well enough thought out of this administration rushing into Syria. Well, we didn't rush in. That's for sure. Perhaps if the President had decided early on to go in, then it wouldn't have been so massive an al Qaeda movement within the rebels. But we know they're there. This is not the thing to do, to get involved in a country where the United States national interests will not be served if Assad stays in power, and they will not be served if the al Qaeda rebels take over. So why are we spending a billion dollars? Why are we sending help to either side in that scenario? Let's help people at home. Let's use that money to secure our borders. Because when it comes to immigration, if we really want to care, it's time to secure the borders so legal people coming in do so legally and then we'll get an immigration bill passed in no time flat. With that, Mr. Speaker, I yield back the balance of my time.

Mr. GOHMERT

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

Mr. GOHMERT

Mr. GOHMERT. Mr. Speaker, I realize that there are many in schools that are not taught as much history as they should now because they're teaching to this ridiculous test, but it is important we learn from history. Right now in Syria, we have rebels that are backed by al Qaeda. And this administration, and even some in this building, want to rush to the aid of the al Qaeda-backed rebels, while there are others that say, well, maybe we'd be better off if Assad stayed in power. It's a lose- lose situation for the United States, and when that's the case, it's time to stay out. Maybe early on, before al Qaeda got so powerful, it would have been time to do something; but when it is a national security risk, when we get involved in an entangling situation like that, it's time to look back. What caused World War I? Entangling alliances. Does entangling alliances involving Russia and so many other countries in Syria ring bells? It's time the bells rang and we stayed out.

Mr. GOHMERT

Mr. GOHMERT. Thank you, Mr. Speaker. We are living in interesting times--it's purported to be a Chinese curse to live in interesting times--but when you see what is confronting this country, what is taking our liberties, what is threatening our way of life, it's clear we are on the front lines of either winning back or losing for all times the greatest freedoms ever given and secured for one group of people. This is an extraordinary country, and it is because, just as our Founders pointed out repeatedly, they recognized that our rights are provided by our Creator; but just as any inheritance can be taken by those who are evil, greedy, power hungry, it must be defended or you lose it. We have people who make no bones about the fact that they want to destroy our way of life, that they think the freedom afforded the American people leads to debauchery, leads to ways of life that are evil and wrong, and therefore they must destroy the freedoms which have provided people the chance to make wrong choices. Our Founders would prefer the freedoms and so would the people here. Unfortunately, there are good people who believe that they are so much smarter and know better than everyone else, that, gee, since we're in Congress, we should tell people what they can do, how they can live, how they can make a living, whether they can make a living, or that we may just pay you to do nothing and to never reach your God-given potential. Then, as we heard today, we had an amendment made by our friend on the Democratic side, Mr. Polis, that would have required a new addition to the chaplain corps of every branch of the military. It would be a new addition to the chaplain corps for those who are nontheistic--or atheistic--for those who believe there is no God. I had no idea that people who do not believe that there is a God needed help and encouragement and support for their unbelief. Astounding. If people truly are atheistic, why would they need help in remaining so? Could it possibly be that, the more people look around, the more they see things like Ben Franklin did--80 years old--and, yes, he enjoyed what some people would call ``pleasures'' of different types when he represented us in France and represented us in England. He was a brilliant man, and the massive painting outside these halls shows him sitting front and center at the Constitutional Convention. It was there at that Convention when he finally got recognized after they'd been there nearly 5 weeks. Some across the country are still mis-educating children, unfortunately, by telling them he was a deist, someone who believes there is something--some force, some thing, some deity--that created nature, that created all of mankind and all of the things in the universe, and if such deity or thing still exists, it, he, she never interferes with the ways of men. Obviously, you see Ben Franklin's own words, and you know that's not what he believed. When he was 80 years old--2 years or so away from meeting his Maker--he finally got recognized after all the yelling back and forth that was done there at the Convention, and someone noted that Washington looked relieved when Mr. Franklin sought attention or, as some at the Convention called him, ``Dr. Franklin.'' He pointed out during his remarks--and we know exactly what he pointed out because he wrote it in his own handwriting. People wanted a copy of what he said. Madison made notes, but Franklin wrote it out. Among other things, he said: I have lived, sir, a long time, and the longer I live, the more convincing proofs I see of this truth--that God governs in the affairs of men. And if a sparrow cannot fall to the ground without His notice, is it probable that an empire can rise without His aid? We have been assured, sir, in the sacred writings-- He called it ``sacred'' by the way-- that except the Lord build the house, they labor in vain that build it. He encouraged those at the Convention that he also believed, in his words, that without His concurring aid--he was talking about the same God, the same Lord he had just referenced--we shall succeed in our political building no better than the builders of Babel. We will be confounded by our local partial interests, and we, ourselves, shall become a byword down through the ages. That was in 1787 that Franklin said those words, late June. Now here we are, all these years later since 1787, and we have a motion to create chaplains in the military to help people not believe in what Ben Franklin said was the God who governs in the affairs of men, generically speaking. But it is important that people have the freedom to choose what they believe. As the Founders believed that God gave us freedom of choice, that He--our Creator--gave us those rights, they also believed that people should have the chance to choose right or wrong as well. As an exchange student in the Soviet Union back in the seventies, I saw people and became very good friends with some college students who didn't have our rights, who envied our rights, who would love to have shared the rights that we have. Ultimately, we saw that play out a couple of decades later when many across the former Soviet Union demanded those rights. Of the 15 states that made up this socialist republic, some have gone back to those ways. I was intrigued that some are scared when they're given that much freedom to choose where they work. Do you mean I've got to find a job? But I've never had to look for a job. It's a little scary. As so many Americans, particularly over the last 5 years, have found it can be very difficult to find a job. So the idea that the government may just tell you what your job is, tell you whether you get a chance to go to college or not, that sounds good. I don't have to think about those decisions. Let the government do it for us. It's shocking, but there have grown to be many in America who like the idea of the government telling them what they can do, when they can do it, and how they can do it. It takes away the need to really wrestle with those things or, as so many of the signers of the Declaration believed, to have to pray about it and to struggle with the decision and try to find out, as many of them did, what is God's will for our lives. We have a statue of Peter Muehlenberg from Pennsylvania that was just down the hall. But when the visitor center opened, he was moved. He is the Christian pastor who is depicted in the statue of taking off his ministerial robe as he preached from Ecclesiastes, There is a time for every purpose under Heaven. He also told his congregation, There is a time for peace and there is a time for war and now is the time for war. And he led men from his congregation to join the military and to fight for freedom. His brother, Frederick, who also has a statue here, was the first Speaker of the House under our new Constitution. He had not actually immediately been in favor of the Revolution, but after his church was burned down by the British, he kind of thought maybe it was a decent idea for ministers to be involved in a revolution and for ministers to be involved in government where there was self-government of a people. So that brings us to today, from the Revolutionary years, to the Constitution after the Articles of Confederation fell apart. Now, there was debate on Ben Franklin's proposal, because under the Continental Congress, they had had prayer every day to start their sessions. But the only way they could do that with the diverse Christian denominations, including the Quakers, was to agree on a minister that they believed would not offend the others and pay him to be the chaplain. But as they pointed out during the debate over Franklin's proposal, We don't have money. We're not getting paid. We're here for a constitutional convention, but we don't have money like we did in the Continental Congress. We can't hire a chaplain. But once the Constitution was passed and ratified, from the time of the first Congress, that first day--actually, when George Washington was sworn in at the Federal building in New York, made his way down to the chapel that is still there--the only building that was unaffected at Ground Zero as the towers fell--they had a prayer session for the Nation. Then each Congress ever since, House and Senate, began each day with prayer before they ever begin their session. It's still true today. But, again today, we have the feeling that those who believe there's no God are insecure enough that they need somebody to encourage them in their unbelief. One of the dangers, though, we have come to face and come to realize is that many in our Nation are choosing political correctness over safety. Yes, we all in this body, all of the Armed Forces when I was in the Army 4 years and we took that oath, we were supposed to support and protect the Constitution. Everybody I knew was prepared to die for it and to die for their country if necessary. Those people are still serving. We found out, though, that if you get too involved in political correctness--and it's politically correct to look the other way when people are talking about hatred for America and wanting America to have the Constitution subordinated to shari'a law--that, gee, it's just politically correct not to face the facts that those people exist and that some of them are in the military. So they pass a man up the system so that he is there to counsel Christians, atheists, and others who need counseling. With the people I've talked to in the military, especially in Afghanistan and when we were in Iraq, when you have a Commander in Chief who on his watch does not allow you to fire at people who may be firing at you, unless you can be sure you won't hit a civilian--at least that fear is put into those individuals. And I have asked for an official response from the Department of Defense, to put in writing exactly what our rules of engagement are that our soldiers are fighting under. We were told, That's classified and it can't be provided in answer to your question. Well, somebody has passed it on to the military in harm's way, just like in August of 2011 when we had SEAL team members where a target was put on their backs by this administration when, first of all, the Vice President of the country violates the classified information laws and sets out in his speech who the commander was who brought down Osama bin Laden and about his great SEAL team. Yes, he was paying them compliments, but he put a target on their back. I know our Vice President did not intend to do that. He was just so excited, just as he was when he revealed where the undisclosed location was. He didn't mean to breach national security. He was just happy and whatever he was to reveal those kind of things. But he put peoples's lives in danger. One SEAL team member's father told me that right after the Vice President's speech, his daughter-in-law looked out the window. She had a marine guard out front. Karen and Billy Vaughn, they talk about how Aaron called them part of SEAL Team Six after they were outed. And it's been printed in the media that Leon Panetta, as a Cabinet member, was meeting with people who could receive the classified information. But this administration wanted all the kudos they could get before the election, of course, and so they had producers of what I thought was a pretty good movie, ``Zero Dark Thirty,'' and gave them classified information and told them who took out Osama bin Laden. But in August of 2011, our SEAL team members paid the ultimate price of this administration's carelessness. They paid with their lives. It would be nice to have it out where we could talk about it as a Nation, just exactly what the rules of engagement are that our military are dying under. Because there was a C-130 gun ship there--and this was not from some classified source. I got it because it was information that was given to the family members, although the military may not have known what they gave. There's testimony from the C-130 gun ship, a pilot and others, that they saw this group moving like a military group. They were not allowed to take them out. They even saw them shoot down our Chinook and kill our Americans, but there was a chance they might have hit civilians if they had killed the people that took down our SEAL Team Six members. So they couldn't even kill them after they killed our people. We need to know what the rules of engagement are. We need to address the political correctness that is blinding our agencies and blinding our military of its ability to see who the enemy is, because it's getting people killed in harm's way. When you refuse to acknowledge that the Afghans you're training may be willing to turn the guns you've trained them on and kill you, just as an Aggie friend had happen here recently in Afghanistan, what they call a ``green on blue killing,'' until we recognize that and recognize who our enemy is, and that our enemy may be among us and that our enemy can be in uniforms that we're supposed to be friendly with, then more Americans are going to be killed needlessly. And when the political correctness of the FBI and the Justice Department and the State Department, intelligence department, for that matter, is that you've got to leave mosques alone where people are being radicalized, and even though there were sting operations that identified people who were radicalizing Americans before this administration changed the policy and they had to get friendly and reach out and partner, as the FBI said it originally did with CAIR, the Council on American-Islamic Relations, even though they've said they're not partnering with them, anytime CAIR says this offends us, then the FBI says, oh, gee, we better change it. When you've had the Fifth Circuit of the United States Court of Appeals confirm that, yes, the evidence shows that CAIR and Islamic Society of North America, those are front organizations for the Muslim Brotherhood. They want shari'a law to be the law of the land, not our Constitution. And that is what we did not take an oath to allow to happen. We took an oath to the Constitution, and that means no law shall be above our Constitution. And so that brings me also to the conversation, the question and answer with the FBI Director this week. I have a great deal of respect for him. He has been a patriot. He fought in Vietnam. He's a warrior. He cares about the country, but he has done great damage to the FBI. He instituted an administrative policy that has caused thousands and thousands of years of experience to leave the FBI and say, Under the new policy, I have to leave. So you have very willing, able young FBI people who are in charge, but they have not benefited from the years of experience that others who had to leave had. I think that contributes to some of the problems that we see with our rights being protected, that we see with poor investigations. They just have not been the beneficiary of enough years of experience, and they've been taught by a lexicon, a language that does not allow them to talk about or see our enemy. I've been making the point for months that the Boston massacre had clear potential to be completely avoided. And then we find out Russia gave our administration information to say the older Tsarnaev brother has been radicalized and he's going to kill people; you better look into it. Then all we've heard since the Russian bombing from this administration is the Russians should have given us more information. Now, I grew to know a little bit about the way they think, and I don't entirely appreciate some of it, but I appreciate this: if they give information that says this person is going to kill Americans, understand we really don't care whether they kill Americans, but we would like for you to recognize that these are the kinds of people that will take out your government and will take out our government, and we'd like you to look into it. There's a mutual concern. And when they put our government on notice and the reaction of our government is, well, we did some interviews. We looked into it. We didn't find anything. The Russians: Are you kidding us? We hand you somebody who is going to kill Americans, and you can't find anything? What's wrong with you? There's a great article, and I used it in questioning our FBI Director. It is entitled, ``Obama's Snooping Excludes Mosques, Missed Boston Bombers.'' It says: Since October 2011, mosques have been off-limits to FBI agents. No more surveillance or undercover sting operations without high-level approval from a special oversight body at the Justice Department dubbed the Sensitive Operations Review Committee. Who makes up this body, and how do they decide requests? Nobody knows; the names of chairman, members and staff are kept secret. The FBI Director did not want to provide those as well. So the FBI Director, as I pointed out to him here before I asked the question, I pointed out that according to this article, the Bureau did not even contact mosque leaders for help in identifying the Boston bombers' images after those images were captured on closed-circuit TV cameras and cell phones. The FBI Director attempted to correct me. He said, You said facts that aren't true. In fact, he said, Your facts are not all together--and I understood him to say not true, and so I demanded that he point out specifically what facts were wrong. And he said, We went to the mosque prior to Boston. We said we went to the mosque prior to the Boston happening. We were in that mosque talking to imams several months beforehand. I couldn't during the questioning hear what he said at the end. What he said at the end, It was part of our outreach efforts. If I'd heard that, I would have known and could have followed up and said, Wait a minute, that was part of your outreach effort to a Muslim mosque? It was not to follow up on the Tsarnaevs. And then, knowing that he had not properly followed up, knowing the FBI did not properly follow up with the mosque, I then asked about the mosque that was started, there are a couple of them, started by the Islamic Society of Boston, and were you aware that a founder was al Amoudi, because our Director knows who al Amoudi is. The FBI arrested him in 2003 or 2004 at Dulles Airport, as they could have done with al-Awlaki, who was killed by a drone bomb, as ordered by our President, that caused a lot of folks on both sides of the aisle to say, wait a minute, is that a good idea to kill American citizens without a trial? And why is he an American citizen? Well, he's an American citizen because we have a policy, and a misinterpretation I would submit of the 14th Amendment, that if someone comes here on a visa and has a baby, then they're American citizens. So al-Awlaki's family was free to come in on a visa for college and then take him back to Yemen and radicalize him so that he hated America, and then he could come back here, and as he did, lead prayers here on Capitol Hill with congressional Muslim staffers and also have contact with people in the administration. But I guess we won't ever know who all he had contact with because they blew him up while he was in Yemen. But he was free to come and go and radicalize people in America because he was an American citizen because his father and mother got a visa to come in here where he was born. Al Amoudi was free to come and go here in the United States; that was until he was arrested at Dulles Airport and was tried and convicted and is doing over 20 years in Federal prison for supporting terrorism. And our FBI Director said at the hearing, he kind of had his head down and said it quietly, but he said it, no, he was not even aware that al Amoudi in prison for supporting terrorism was one of the founders. In fact, he is the one listed on the articles of organization for Massachusetts for the Islamic Society of Boston that started this. He didn't even know that. Until we get past this political correctness so that we can see our enemies, see those who want to destroy our way of life and subjugate our Constitution to their ideas, then we are not protected, and we've got to get over that. How about that? When Director Mueller testified before, he said, Oh, yeah, we have these great outreach programs to the Muslims. So apparently this is a part of it. I asked how is the outreach program going for groups like Christians and Catholics, Jewish, Buddhists, I forget who all I named. But anyway, it was interesting, there's no such outreach group specifically for them, but there is a specific outreach group that didn't want to offend people who are radicalizing and being radicalized. So it is pretty clear, we need to protect our borders from people who want to come in to destroy us, all avenues of entry. We need to deport those who overstay their visas. We need to reform our immigration service and our immigration process so that it is more effective, more efficient, and gives people proper answers more quickly. We must stop allowing members of terrorist groups to consult with this President or his administration. We must stop discarding our allies who have fought with us and for us and throwing them under figurative buses. We've got to stop rewarding our enemies so that when they say they want to destroy us, that we're our enemy, we don't send them $1.3 billion and tanks and jet planes. And then, also, we have got to educate our Federal protection agencies on whom the enemy truly is. Mr. Speaker, I yield back the balance of my time.

Mr. GOHMERT

Mr. GOHMERT. Thank you. This is the anniversary of D-Day. So many Americans died on the beaches at Normandy. So many free countries gave the last full measure of devotion there on those beaches. It wasn't Normandy but rather another beach where one of my constituents, who has since passed away, said that when they were landing at Anzio, they were doing it so early in the morning, there was no sunlight. But the Axis powers had such powerful lights that you could read a book in their landing craft. And they'd been taught that when the landing ramp went down when they got to shore, they were to all run out at the same time. And as they got closer, they heard the machine gun bullets going back and forth across the front of the ramp. He said, We were all so scared. We know when that ramp went down, we were all going to die. And one of the guys--Paul Stanley recalled his name, I do not--but he exemplified the spirit of America. He finally looked around and said, Guys, we all know if we run out of this landing craft the way we've been trained, we're all dead. So here's what we're going to do. I'm going to go first. Everybody is going to put your weapon in your right hand and grab the belt of the man in front of you and we're going to run out single file. Some of us won't make it. But that way some of you have a chance. Paul Stanley said he was third. The two in front of him were killed and everybody else made it. That's the spirit of America that landed on the beaches of Normandy to take on the Axis powers who sought to take freedom from free people. It was on this day in 1944 that Franklin Roosevelt said this prayer on national radio. Today, he would probably be excoriated because of some of the terminology. He said: My fellow Americans, last night, when I spoke with you about the fall of Rome, I knew at that moment that troops of the United States and our allies were crossing the Channel in another and greater operation. It has come to pass with success thus far. And so, in this poignant hour, I ask you to join with me in prayer. Almighty God, our sons, pride of our Nation, this day have set upon a mighty endeavor, a struggle to preserve our Republic, our religion, and our civilization, and to set free a suffering humanity. Lead them straight and true; give strength to their arms, stoutness to their hearts, steadfastness in their faith. They will need Thy blessings. Their road will be long and hard. For the enemy is strong. He may hurl back our forces. Success may not come with rushing speed, but we shall return again and again, and we know that by Thy grace, and by the righteousness of our cause, our sons will triumph. They will be sore tried, by night and day, without rest until the victory is won. The darkness will be rent by noise and flame. Men's souls will be shaken even with the violences of war. For these men are lately drawn from the ways of peace. They fight not just for the lust of conquest. They fight to end conquest. They fight to liberate. They fight to let justice arise, and tolerance and good will among all Thy people. They yearn but for the end of battle, for their return to the haven of home. Some will never return. Embrace these, Father, and receive them, Thy heroic servants, into Thy kingdom. And for us at home--fathers, mothers, children, wives, sisters, and brothers of brave men overseas--whose thoughts and prayers are ever with them, help us, almighty God, to rededicate ourselves in renewed faith in Thee in this great hour of great sacrifice. Many people have urged that I call the Nation into a single day of special prayer. But because the road is long and the desire is great, I ask that our people devote themselves in a continuance of prayer. As we rise to each new day, and again when each day is spent, let words of prayer be on our lips, invoking Thy help in our efforts. Give us strength, too-- strength in our daily tasks, to redouble the contributions we make in the physical and the material support of our Armed Forces. And let our hearts be stout, to wait out the long travail; to bear sorrows that may come, to impart our courage unto our sons wheresoever they may be. And, O Lord, give us faith. Give us faith in Thee, faith in our sons, faith in each other, faith in our united crusade. Let not the keenness of our spirit ever be dulled. Let not the impacts of temporary events, of temporal matters of but fleeting moment, let not these deter us in our unconquerable purpose. With Thy blessing, we shall prevail over the unholy forces of our enemy. Help us to conquer the apostles of greed and racial arrogances. Lead us to the saving of our country, and with our sister nations into a world unity that will spell a sure peace, a peace invulnerable to schemings of unworthy men. And a peace that will let all men live in freedom, reaping the just rewards of their honest toil. Thy will be done, Almighty God. Amen. Franklin Roosevelt, on this day in 1944. Mr. Speaker, I yield back the balance of my time.

Mr. GOHMERT. Thank you, Mr. Speaker. Today is a very important day, the day of the anniversary of the invasion on D-day during World War II. There is also another important aspect about today, because we learned about the administration's collecting of massive information, private information, about every Verizon customer's phone numbers, all the calls they made, outside the country and within the country. Staggering. It makes one think, well, gee, if this administration was gathering information and got a court order, a secret court order, to get all this information from Verizon, then most likely they did from the other carriers as well. And as a Verizon representative has pointed out, look, when we get a court order demanding that we turn over information, then we have to turn it over. And that is what we do in a country where we believe in the rule of law, we are supposed to follow the law. But what is staggering for those of us who have debated over the FISA courts, where you have a real, legitimate, nominated and confirmed Federal judge, presides over information that is considered so secret that the disclosure of even the request for information would create dangers to national security. We've debated that in the Judiciary Committee. That included my friend, Ms. Jackson Lee. We've had these debates over these issues. I was talking with my friend with whom I often disagree in Judiciary, a Congressman from New York, Jerry Nadler, and actually I recall him indicating during debates that if we didn't rein in the power of the Federal Government, these were the types of things that could happen. And I have to admit today that for any predictions or concern on the part of Jerry Nadler that if we gave the power under article 215 or section 215--basically, the PATRIOT Act, the FISA courts--that it could and would be abused, Mr. Nadler was right. We are now seeing affirmation of that. But I do think it is important that we understand what we're talking about with regard to these phone records, and as a preface I think it's important to look at the order from the United States Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court, Washington, D.C. It's entitled, Mr. Speaker, In Re Application of the Federal Bureau of Investigation for an Order Requiring the Production of Tangible Things from Verizon Business Network Services, Inc. on behalf of MCI Communication Services, Inc. d/b/a Verizon Business Services. It cites for its authority in this the law at volume 50 of the United States Code, section 1861. In this order that is granting the request of this Justice Department under this Attorney General, who is under fire for other issues, it says, ``The court having found that the application of the Federal Bureau of Investigation''--which is under the auspices of the Attorney General, the Justice Department--``for an order requiring the production of tangible things from Verizon Business,'' et cetera, the court finds that it satisfies the requirements of 50 U.S.C., section 1861. It goes on to say that accordingly, these things are ordered, and it orders, and I'm quoting now: An electronic copy of the following tangible things: all call detail records or ``telephony metadata'' created by Verizon for communications (i) between the United States and abroad; or (ii) wholly within the United States, including local telephone calls. Further down, it says: Telephony metadata includes comprehensive communications routing information, including but not limited to session identifying information (e.g., originating and terminating telephone number, International Mobile Subscriber Identity (IMSI) number, International Mobile station Equipment Identity (IMEI) number), trunk identifier, telephone calling card numbers, and time and duration of call. Telephony metadata does not include the substantive content of any communication, as defined by 18 U.S.C., section 2510(8), or the name, address, or financial information of a subscriber or customer. Now, this comes on the heels of information about just how invasive this administration had gotten when they went after the records of the Associated Press, the phone information of many, many phone numbers, and some of them coming from right up here in the area where the reporters use. This is in the United States Capitol. Many times these phones up here are used by reporters to call Members of Congress, who have another constitutional privilege under the Constitution that provides privilege for the information that is provided for or to a Member of Congress. It's not unlimited. But that's on top of the freedom of the press that's also granted in the Second Amendment. It is amazing when our Attorney General said, gee, in essence, this was like the most egregious or one of the most egregious national security leaks I had ever heard about. It was so serious, we had to go after this material, and then we find out there were only a handful of people in the entire administration who knew the information that got leaked. And instead of just going without a warrant--they don't need a warrant to get their own administration phone call data. They didn't even need a court for that. It's their data. They could have gone to the handful of individuals that knew the information that got leaked and checked their phone logs to see who they called. But instead of doing that, they decide to go on a fishing expedition for all of this telephone information about the Associated Press. They apparently wanted to know who the AP talks to, what they do, what they know, who they know. Let's get all of this information. They didn't need that for their pursuit of the leaker. They didn't need it at all. They could have gone straight to their own sources and got what they needed from there; and then once they have a subject within the AP, if anyone, then they could go for that information. And as a former judge, if somebody came and said we have found the source of the leak, here's one of the five-or-so people that knew the information, he called this reporter at this number, and so we have probable cause to believe that the leak was made to this reporter, and put other information in there that raises it to the level of probable cause to allow the judge to let them take a look at that one reporter's single phone logs. But, no, they didn't do that. They went on an incredibly vast and very chilling fishing expedition. And then we have the Attorney General testify before our Judiciary Committee, and I know my friends mentioned this before I got up, my friends on the other side of the aisle. They were talking about how he is such a great Attorney General, in essence, and certainly never perjured himself. But I heard what he said. I've heard it replayed over and over; and when he says he wasn't aware of, he had not heard of, he never participated in--he didn't think it was a good idea was the basics of what he said--of ever prosecuting a reporter. And then within a week or so we find out, actually, he approved of an affidavit that went before a judge with the request for a warrant from the court against James Rosen with Fox News. Now, I've had people wake me up at all hours of the day and night. I've had people call when I was awakened at 2 or 3 in the morning and say, Judge, we need to come by your house. This is really serious. And they'd come by; and if they had enough data in their affidavits that established probable cause, then I would grant a limited warrant. But there were times I would get upset with a law officer that bothered me with an affidavit and a request that clearly didn't have probable cause. We aren't going to grant that. If you're not sure if you have probable cause, talk to the DA's office, run it by them before you bring something in that clearly does not establish probable cause. Fortunately, the law officers were so good that we normally dealt with that normally that was not a problem, but sometimes it was. And any responsible judge takes that very seriously. And sometimes you would get a request for a warrant for information; and you go, okay, you've established probable cause in your affidavit, but your request is so global and broad, or so ambiguous, I can't sign the order you've prepared. Sometimes I would interlineate in the order and make it more specific. Sometimes they would know that I was going to be restrictive, and they would leave blanks for that. But then to find out that the court granted this administration's demand, with an affidavit supporting it, under oath, that they needed all the records that Verizon had on phone calls inside the United States and to places outside the United States, and the judge just grants it. And now, following on the heels of learning that the IRS targeted political enemies, political opponents, people in Tea Parties, people that were very pro-Israel, other groups, a group that was very pro- marriage between a man and a woman, like has been the tradition in this country for the entire history of the country, until now, when it's come into question, and some think that nature totally failed when it created, biologically, a mating between a man and a woman, that it screwed up, it should have been a man and a man. Well, that's a difference of opinion. But under this administration, they felt like it was worth going after and preventing a group like National Organization for Marriage from stepping up and standing on the traditional marriage and being able to deliver that message. Now, it didn't prevent them from quickly granting legal status to groups that felt otherwise, or if somebody was related to somebody in the administration. We've seen those examples. But, gee, they also knew within the IRS that if they granted or denied a request, well, a denial could be immediately appealed. And so in order to prevent justice from being done, prevent people from having the opportunity to politically express themselves as a group, they just sat on them, 1, 2, 3 years, to prevent them from being able to go public as a group. I was shocked that a reporter asked the question, well, you groups, you were coming begging to the IRS. You're the ones that asked for legal status. And I'm sure this is a very fine reporter, but it just showed the ignorance--and there's nothing wrong. We're all ignorant of different areas--but showed the ignorance of where we have gotten to in this country where the Internal Revenue Code is so oppressive, if you, as an individual go out and say look, I don't have much money, I'm a working man, I'm just barely getting by. You're a working woman, you're just barely getting by, but if we pool our money, we might be able to express ourselves politically, maybe buy a commercial, or maybe send out flyers, or maybe buy a billboard, but something. If we pool together, maybe we can have an impact in politics on an issue like marriage. And if you pool your money like that, and you don't have permission from the IRS, then they're going to come after you because you've got to have a legal status to do things like that now in America. And it is further indication as to why this infernal Internal Revenue Code and the incredibly huge number of regulations that were never passed by any elected representative, they're just generated day after day after day by some bureaucrat somewhere, I used to say in a cubicle, but apparently we find out they've got some pretty luxurious offices and they spend millions on their conferences they go to. Apparently they haven't spent enough on learning to line dance because I wasn't very impressed with their line dancing, but that's not part of their job, so maybe they need to get into a different area or a different profession. But they have to obtain legal status if they're going to do anything politically, or the IRS can come after them for not doing so. So we have forced groups into getting government approval before they can ever express themselves politically. It's astounding. And when you find out this administration has used so many aspects of its power to chill or prevent political opposition to their positions, to their re-election, then it really gets scary when you find out they're just out there wanting everybody's information on everybody they called in the country and out of the country. And we had some pretty significant debates in Judiciary under FISA and under the PATRIOT Act; and we were assured, no, the law makes very clear you can only get information from an American citizen if they're in a foreign country and the foreign law allows that and they call a known or suspected terrorist. But under these laws, we can't just go get information about an American citizen's personal records. We can't do that without probable cause they've committed a crime. But under these incredible powers of the PATRIOT Act and the ability to go to the FISA court, as they did here, and get a secret order, we were told and we debated and some felt like even if an American citizen is in a foreign country, we don't think you ought to be able to get that American citizen's phone data, even if you just pull it out of the air. We don't think you should be able to get that. So there was debate about those things. Well, what if they're calling a known terrorist, and we've got American intelligence agencies gathering in a foreign country and we can get that without a warrant? It's out there floating around in the air. We can get that. And this was debated--Yeah, but they're an American citizen. You ought to leave them alone. And some of us felt if they're an American citizen in a foreign country and our intelligence agencies can get intelligence data without violating the foreign law, then you need to know as an American citizen when you go into a foreign country, you may have our own intelligence agencies getting information about your telephone calls as long as they're not violating the law of the country they're in. And that's the way I felt. But we were always assured that unless there was probable cause to believe an American citizen was calling a known or suspected terrorist or a hostile foreign government, that kind of thing, then no, we don't go after American citizens' information. And especially not if there's a call from an American citizen to another American citizen. That's none of our business, unless there's probable cause to believe a crime is being committed. Then we find out they have actually found a judge that signed off on this thing, and they got all this information. Now I know there's some--even Republicans--who would say, Gee, I don't care if the government has my phone number. They've gotten it so they can go after terrorists. Well, unless you're a terrorist, the American government has no business monitoring what all you're doing and who you're calling, especially this administration, with all the abuses we've already seen. It's wrong. It should not be occurring. But they've done so. There was a tweet today by Ace of Spades. The tweet was: We've all got an Obama phone now. Well, apparently we do. Because this administration is following every call being made by every phone in America--at least the ones on Verizon. So that leads you to believe they've probably gotten it from other information, too. And I do appreciate my colleagues' on the other side concern that enough good things about ObamaCare are not coming out because some of us are concerned about the Attorney General's perjury. And I would submit, humbly, that a major reason not enough good things are coming out about ObamaCare is because there are not a bunch of good things coming out. People are losing their insurance. They're getting in trouble. And that is a big problem. Mr. Speaker, how much time do I have remaining?

Mr. GOHMERT

Mr. GOHMERT. Thank you very much. It is an important issue. We have a report here indicating the currently countless numbers, trying to get a count of groups that were targeted. We've seen reports that groups, Jewish and Christian groups, that were very supportive of Israel got heightened scrutiny by the IRS. They were deemed, apparently, not to be supportive of the President, as the IRS, apparently, at least their leaders, wanted them to be. And, obviously, that was after consulting with the union boss, the IRS employees. Let me just say I know many IRS employees, and there are those who are afraid to comment because of concern over their repercussions; but they're outraged because they came into the IRS and they were taught and they were trained you cannot have any conflict of interest. You cannot make any decisions based on political bias. You cannot have ever owed the IRS any money if you're going to work for us. In fact, there was outrage among some that were afraid to speak up because they were not allowed. They were told that you cannot underpay through withholding what you will ultimately owe on your income tax. Or if you file an amended return where you failed to initially include income, you may be fired from the IRS. So the first thing that this President does is go out and hire a guy who swore, I believe it was three or four years in a row, he swore to his employer that he would pay the taxes that were due and owing. If they would just give him all the money, he would see that the taxes on that money was paid. And lo and behold, those taxes were not paid, as he swore he would. And not only was he not barred from working for the IRS; he was made the boss over the IRS, the boss over the entire Treasury Department. But the Greater Phoenix Tea Party in Arizona filed for a 501(c)(4) in October of 2010 and, after waiting 2 years, received a letter demanding an inordinate amount of information. And so far, even now, this Internal Revenue Service has refused to give them an answer on their 501(c)(4), effectively keeping them out of the political process for the 2012 election cycle, and now working, apparently, even now, to keep them out of the 2014 election cycle. Amazing how effective the IRS can be when one administration can use them to further their goals. The Mississippi Tea Party filed for a 501(c)4 status in 2009. On September 28, 2010, the group received a letter from the IRS wanting additional information, including what their relationship was with the Tea Party Patriots. But their analysis got rather abusive. The Portage County Tea Party in Ohio applied for tax exempt status and they received incredibly onerous questions, harassing questions, and they answered them, gave them information that no one should have to provide. Four years later, they're still waiting on an answer. The Mississippi Tea Party. They're still waiting. The Portage County Tea Party. They're still waiting. Anyway, it's just incredible. The Alabama Tea Party we already mentioned. Really abusive requests were made by the IRS, harassing them. The Texas Patriots Tea Party filed for a 501(c)(4) status in June of 2012. They received numerous followup questions and have not heard back from the IRS about their status. So they were effectively kept out of the 2012 political process. Again, apparently there are reporters that are so far removed from how the political process has been forced to work. You've got to have IRS approval or they will come after you individually when you try to engage in any type of group effort. It used to be there was a freedom of assembly. You could gather people, assemble people as you want. You could pay for their bus fare. Unions do it all the time. But they have a very special status, obviously, with this administration. One of the great scenes in video history was my old friend, Andrew Breitbart, coming out of the Coliseum and seeing all these protesters. He starts asking them about their signs, what they mean, can they give specific examples about when Glenn Beck lied or things they had on their signs. They couldn't. And it was amazing. I didn't see it in the beginning of the video but Andrew saw it immediately. These people were plants. They were handed these signs by their union. They were told to stand there and talk about people lying, and just demean individuals and organizations, as instructed by their union leaders. When he got to the bottom of it, there was a note somewhere that it was produced by the union. So he got to the bottom of it. He had a camera that followed him as he would ask questions very pointedly. It became very clear they didn't know what they were there about, they couldn't give individual examples. They were told to go out there and be a protester. And the unions took care of it. And when the cameras were making them look bad, they were ordered to get back on the union bus and leave the area by the union bosses. Andrew had that gift. He could see right through all the baloney. It's a shame he's no longer with us. But what he has left is an organization that's doing even more amazing things. You had the Ottawa County Patriots from Michigan file for 501(c)(3) status August 22, 2011. They're still waiting for a ``specialist'' to approve their application, despite numerous attempts to get clarification from the IRS. So they were totally kept out of the 2012 political process because of the partisan IRS leadership that would not even give a ruling on these things. It wasn't a problem for organizations that were supportive of the administration, apparently. There were groups like the Louisa, Virginia, Tea Party in Virginia that decided not to apply after they heard from other Tea Party groups just how abusive the IRS was being. And their leaders didn't want to go through individually what other Tea Party leaders were having to go through. So the Louisa VA Tea Party never got their lawful status from the IRS. All of those people were effectively kept out of the 2012 political cycle by this partisan IRS work and effort. The DeLAND 912 organization from Florida also heard about the horror stories of how abusive the IRS became if you applied for legal status as a Tea Party, so they didn't apply. Once again, the IRS was successful in their political endeavors in silencing another group of people from Florida during that political cycle. Goose Creek 912 Project from South Carolina, they were preparing to file for a 501(c)(3) status or 501(c)(4) but after they heard about all of the harassment of other Tea Party groups, they voted unanimously not to file. The IRS partisan efforts worked. Another group of Americans were silenced because of the partisan political work of the IRS. The McLean Tea Party in Illinois, another case where they decided not to apply after they got word of all the horror stories about the IRS abuses of individual Tea Party leaders and the individual Tea Party constituents themselves of the intrusive, abusive questions and information that was being demanded by the IRS. The Lanier Tea Party Patriots from Georgia also heard about the widespread, massive abuse of Tea Parties that applied for legal status. So yet another group of people was silenced by the partisan, abusive Internal Revenue Service. As I said, I know numerous employees of the IRS that would never think of being abusive like this. It is completely an anomaly to their way of thinking. It is counterintuitive to everything they have been taught and trained. But somehow this administration comes in and all of a sudden they see the IRS as the greatest political gift any partisan group could ever have and they use and abuse it after consulting, as ordered, by the President of the United States. They are ordered to have secret meetings with union bosses before they make decisions, which we now know occurred before they made decisions to go after the Tea Parties. So the President of the United States signs Executive Order 13522 and orders an agency that is supposed to be completely nonpartisan, nonpolitical, to meet with an extremely political, extremely partisan boss before they make decisions. It is staggering. So we know there's some that ask, Did the President know, did he not know? When you see that the President of the United States ordered meetings with partisan union bosses before decisions could be made by administrative heads at the IRS, it doesn't seem to me to matter much whether the President knew that they specifically targeted the Tea Parties. He ordered them to meet and to take in consideration what the union bosses said. If he ordered that those be completely confidential and beyond the scope of Freedom of Information Act requests, then there has to be some responsibility taken where the buck ultimately stops. The Rowan County Tea Party in Tennessee--hopefully I'm saying that correctly--the good folks there filed for 501(c)(4) status in February of 2010. They received demands for excessive amounts of information, some of which is not required by law whatsoever. Just 2 weeks ago, after over 3 years, and being kept out of the 2012 election cycle, having any input--not just on the President's race, but on issues--they didn't care about political candidates; they cared about issues. They knew if they could form these political Tea Parties, they could have an effect. Whether it was a Democrat, Republican, a Libertarian or an Independent that came forward, they knew that if they were a group as a Tea Party, they could get powerful enough and have their voices heard loudly, as they spoke loudly enough as a group, that somebody--Republican, Democrat, Libertarian, Independent--somebody would step forward and say I support what you believe, and I'm with you on the issues. They were not about a party. They spent a lot of time being mad at the Republican Party, like I do. They weren't about a party; they were about the process. They wanted a constitutional country and a government that acted within the confines of the Constitution. And the IRS was determined to subjugate them, to punish them, to abuse them, and abuse the process of the IRS to make them pay for having the audacity to speak up or try to speak up, as did our Founders. I can't help but note, I was tickled, some left-wing drone organization--drone basically being unmanned; they're not using their brains; they're just doing as they're directed--came after me for saying here on the floor, gee, the IRS might have shot the original Tea Party participants. Well, obviously that's hyperbole. But I found in Washington if you use sarcasm, you speak metaphorically, allegorically, use hyperbole, that it's often lost here. We were having a discussion, for example, about endangered species. And I mentioned, gee, I understood--wasn't sure if it was true--but I understood there had been a pair of spotted owls that we were told for years couldn't mate anywhere but virgin woods, untouched by human hands, that may have been seen mating in a Kmart sign. In sheer sarcasm, in irony, I said, you know, a lot of Kmarts have been out of business. Maybe we need to see if that's really true and, if so, maybe get Kmart signs and see if they ought to be declared endangered and maybe have a Kmart sign forest where these little owls could mate like crazy out there in the Kmart sign. And I look over at people and reporters, folks sitting there, and you could see people looking at each other: Do you think he's serious? Anyway, it's an interesting place to--not live, but work here in Washington, D.C. You have the Rochester Tea Party Patriots in Minnesota. They filed for 501(c)(3) status in August 2010. The group finally received their 501(c)(4) status 2 years later in 2012, but not soon enough to have the kind of effect that they could have to make nominees, potential nominees, accountable for abiding by the rule of law and following the Constitution, as they wanted to do. The Chattanooga Tea Party in Tennessee, they filed for 501(c)(4) status in November of 2009. The group received a letter from the Cincinnati IRS office in July 2010 with extensive, intrusive, abusive questions and demands. After 4 years, they received notification that they were approved. Apparently, as this scandal was about to break, the IRS realized, gee, well, we got what we wanted; we kept them out of the 12 election cycle so they could not have any influence whatsoever there. And we're about to get in trouble, so why don't we start giving approval to some of these folks. And we're seeing that happen. The San Angelo Tea Party--the town that my parents lived in briefly right after they got married, San Angelo Tea Party back in Texas--they filed for tax-exempt status. But after receiving the intrusive, abusive, mean-spirited demand for information that the IRS had no business inquiring after, they withdrew their application. Once again, the IRS didn't have a chilling effect; they had a freezing effect. Froze them out and kept them from being able to participate as a group in the 2012 election cycle. The San Fernando Valley Patriots in California filed for 501(c)(4) status in the fall of 2010. The group heard nothing from the IRS until February of 2012, when they received a packet from the IRS in the mail giving the group a 20-day time period to respond. After the abuse, the demands, the intrusiveness, the outrageous activity of the IRS, the San Fernando Valley Patriots in California finally, in August of 2012, felt like they had no choice but to crater under the abusive weight and power of a partisan, mean-spirited IRS leadership; and they pulled their application in order to protect their members from this kind of abuse. So you've got to say, the executive order in 2009 by the President of the United States--current President--ordering the extremely partisan union bosses to be consulted on decisions by the IRS, find out that the union boss met with the President right before the decision was made as well. I guess when you're the President, you don't have to sign an executive order requiring that you have secret, confidential meetings with union bosses before you make decisions. You just do it, appears to be the case. Then we find out, gee--and this is a brand-new story, this one by David French dated May 22, yesterday afternoon--that it wasn't just Tea Parties; it wasn't just constitutional groups; it wasn't just pro- Israel groups. The article title is ``IRS Morality: Defend Planned Parenthood, Deluge Adoptive Families With Audits.'' In the article, skimming on down, it says: During the 2012 filing season, 90 percent of the returns that claimed a refundable adoption credit were subject to additional review to determine if an examination was necessary. The most common reasons were income and a lack of documentation. It notes that: Sixty-nine percent of all adoption credit claims during the 2012 filing season were selected for audit. Of the completed adoption tax credit audits, over 55 percent ended with no change in the tax owed or refund due in fiscal year 2012. The median refund amount involved in these audits was over $15,000 and the median adjusted gross income of the taxpayers involved is about $64,000. These would be considered middle class Americans. The average adoption credit correspondence audit currently takes 126 days, causing a lengthy delay for taxpayers waiting for refunds. It's interesting because we get word--as the article said--that the IRS has harassed a number of pro-life groups, including at least one alleged demand that a pro-life group not picket Planned Parenthood in order to have or keep their tax exempt status. It points out this statistic: In 2012, the IRS requested additional information from 90 percent of returns claiming the adoption tax credit and went on to actually audit 69 percent. And that more details can be obtained from the Taxpayer Advocate Service. It's really outrageous. And it's pretty clear to anybody familiar with the political process here in Washington that most people that are very supportive of adoption are not in favor of abortion. So if you want to go against--as the IRS, if you want to go after the opponents of Planned Parenthood, you want to go after the opponents of killing babies in utero, then if you go after parents that adopt children--a very, very costly process--you can have a very chilling or freezing effect on those parents who just want to adopt a child, adopt children, give them a loving home. And this IRS' morality--as the article points out, because of the current leadership that is now under scrutiny--go after these middle- income folks that are not supportive of abortion and want to adopt, we'll teach them a lesson. It's very clear, it just screams from the statistics and information that we get from the IRS. It's also worth noting--as prior articles have--that people have claimed, not the adoptive tax credit, but the child tax credit has been claimed--as has been shown many times--by people who did not legally come into the country. And there have been articles about that. Of course, I guess, everybody knows they'll never get a Pulitzer Prize for incredible investigative reporting on the billions of dollars that may be obtained by people who come into the country illegally and then have learned you can claim a tax credit and get more money back than you put in. Oh, no, even if you don't have a Social Security number--as the law currently requires--to get that child tax credit, the IRS thought: Hey, we've got a good idea, we don't care that Congress said you've got to have a Social Security number, hey, we want to get all the tax income in we can, and we hear from some of the folks in Congress that there are people somewhere out there in the shadows, so we'll just give them a taxpayer number, even if they don't have a Social Security number, and let them get that child tax credit from there. So there are plenty of people that have come out of the so-called shadows to claim a child tax credit. That's why Robert Rector, in talking with him this week, he says the projection probably that if people who are here undocumented, illegally, whatever you want to call it, are given legal status, then it will likely cost the country around $10 billion that these individuals will be able to get back in child tax credit once they're legally here and that many are getting even now. An estimated $1 billion--one estimate I read was $4 billion--that we're currently paying out from the Treasury to people that are getting more back than they paid in who are not legally here, don't have a Social Security number. So they're not going after those folks. Not auditing, not going in and demanding to know where are all these children you claim to get all this money back--$20,000, $30,000 you're getting back from the government for a child tax credit--where are all the children? Oh, no, they're not going after them. No. They much prefer to go after what some of these partisan political leaders in the IRS see as their political enemies. When you have people like that heading up the IRS, you don't have to have an enemies list, like Richard Nixon had. You've got your friends at the IRS that are doing it for you. So when we hear claims of outrage and we see that these people have suffered absolutely no consequences from this President--the boss--as a result of their outrageous, illegal, unconstitutional activity, then it seems that maybe the outrage is not as loud as we were being told that it originally has been. And then when you find out that the AP--certainly hasn't helped me any, but that doesn't matter, we're supposed to have a free press--if they want to go after a guy that's conservative that has a southern accent, that's their prerogative. But we find out that the White House--the Justice Department at least--the Justice Department went after the AP, just like they did Rosen at Fox News, they go after the AP and get hundreds of phone numbers because they say they're after this egregious leak. The Attorney General told our committee last week, Gee, it's one of the most egregious leaks--not the most egregious, one of the most egregious leaks--he had ever seen. Turns out all of the leaks that allow him to go after a conservative group or to intimidate a group like the AP, to them they're egregious. When we find out, Mr. Speaker, he could have just looked at the records of a handful of people in the administration--he chose not to do that, it might have embarrassed the administration--he abuses the freedom of the press. It's time that people who are responsible are made accountable. With that, Mr. Speaker, I yield back the balance of my time.

Mr. GOHMERT. Reclaiming the time momentarily, it's interesting, you know, we find out, as people have been digging deeper over the last few days, that the President of the United States met with the anti-Tea Party IRS union chief the day before the agency targeted the Tea Party. National Treasury Employees Union President Colleen Kelley commented on the relationship between the anti-Tea Party IRS union and the Obama White House, and made this statement: For me, it's about collaboration. So it is also important to note, and I didn't know if my dear friend was familiar with Executive Order 13522, I wasn't until just the last couple of days, but redstate.com had done a job of finding this. This was an executive order that the President ordered, beginning in 2009, requiring that government agencies collaborate, consult in pre- decisional discussions with union bosses that would have to be off the record, unrecorded, and private, beyond the reach of anyone seeking to get information about the conversations. And, in fact, this administration said pre-decisional discussions, by their nature, should be conducted confidentially among the parties to the discussions. This confidentiality is an essential ingredient in building the environment of mutual trust and respect necessary for the honest exchange of views and collaboration. Well, this is the President that was going to have the most transparent administration in American history; yet, I didn't know, in 2009, he ordered these agencies that ought to be completely transparent, ordered them, his employees, to have meetings before they make important decisions with union bosses. So that tells us something too about the atmosphere that was being created, when a union boss gets to have secret conversations with government officials that cannot be retrieved by any of us wanting the administration to be transparent. And we know that those unions were anti-Tea Party. They wanted them eliminated, and they get to go talk to the IRS officials that are making decisions about targeting the Tea Parties. Something seems awry. I yield to my friend for a comment.

Mr. GOHMERT. Well, apparently, after 2 years of waiting, they got a multipage letter from the IRS asking for really extensive, intrusive information that it sounds like the IRS should never have had to inquire about. But here again, it sounds like another case where the IRS knew if they ruled on whether or not they would have 501(c)(4) status, they could have appealed and probably had a good case based on what the IRS has been doing. They wouldn't give them an answer.

Mr. GOHMERT. Thank you, and I would like to yield to the gentleman for a question. It's my understanding that the Albuquerque Tea Party was one that filed for 501(c)(4) status 3 years ago. I don't know if the gentleman is familiar with the Albuquerque Tea Party.