Louie Gohmert

Mr. GOHMERT

Mr. GOHMERT. Well, thank you. And what an anomaly to have a country that believes in freedom and liberty and human life and human value, and yet at the same time we demean it--whether it's giving money to entities that take unborn lives or whether it's giving money to brutal dictators who certainly don't believe in freedom of religion but are willing to take the lives of people because of their religion or who repressively say, We told you you could have one child, so we're going to kill your other children. It is just a mind-boggling thing, as Bo Pilgrim used to say. I'm sure he still does. But it's mind-boggling. How do we think that we're helping the world when we give massive amounts of money to people that are the very antithesis of the things that Americans have given their last full measure of devotion to preserve and protect? I yield to my friend.

Mr. GOHMERT. It is certainly an honor to serve with you. And I don't know if you are aware, our friend Ted Poe, our colleague, has a bill that is trying to force all foreign aid to come to a vote country by country. That would give us the chance to discuss these very things on each country, on whether or not we should give them assistance. Isn't that wonderful? So I look forward to that in the time to come. Mr. Speaker, we appreciate the time to discuss this very important issue, and especially now that money is so critically needed and that we should not be wasting it to help those who repress others.

Mr. GOHMERT. Mr. Speaker, I am grateful to my dear friend Dan Burton. He is a patriotic American. He stands for what he believes in. And if we had a lot more Dan Burtons in Washington, the country would be that much better off. So we're grateful to him and his service. It is an honor to serve in this body. It's been rather frustrating lately, and one of the things I wanted to mention was that another good friend, former fellow judge as I was, a district judge--I lost credibility as far as some of the district judges believed when I became chief justice of the Court of Appeals--but my friend Ted Poe from Houston is pushing a bill that I'm sure glad to cosponsor with him. I'm glad he's doing it. It goes a bit hand-in-hand with a bill that I've been pushing ever since I've been here. But Congressman Poe's bill would allow an up-or-down vote on all the different countries that we provide foreign assistance. It's a good idea. I mean, for all of the years that I've been here in each Congress, three times we have filed a U.N. voting accountability bill, and my friend Ted Poe has been on that bill cosponsoring with us, and I'm glad to support his bill. My bill simply says any country that votes against us more than half the time gets no foreign assistance the following year. We know there's sometimes when there are emergencies, there are things we need to do, and so there's an exception for that in the event of an international emergency, but otherwise, we're not going to tell foreign countries how they vote in the U.N., but you can tell a lot about who is your friend and who isn't by who stands with you during difficult times and on difficult issues, and you're able to discern who has the same moral beliefs as you do. For example, there are countries where sharia law is the rule of the land, and life does not have the value that we in America believe that God gave life to have. So it's okay. In fact, you can find your way to paradise, some believe, and not all Muslims believe this, but there are those who believe that you can find your way to paradise and differing number of virgins waiting for you if you die while you're killing infidels, people that don't believe in the same things you do. Well, that's fine, but if you believe in torturing, killing, taking a life, taking innocent lives for nothing, or just because of someone's religious beliefs, then we should not be financing that. It's deeply troubling to see that in Egypt, one account said that President--or king, whatever you want to call him--Mubarak had $70 billion in the bank. Another account said he had $7 billion in the account. Either way, can't help but wonder if that couldn't be a whole lot of U.S. taxpayer dollars back when we weren't having to borrow to give away money like we are now. We were giving $2 billion or so a year, and it wouldn't be surprising if most of that money were United States dollars that had been given to Egypt. On the other hand, we know that there are despots, there are dictators, there are corrupt leaders of countries around the world who believe that it's fine to even force women to have abortions. As my friend and I both believe, abortion is wrong. It is wrong. It is taking innocent life. Yet, we are just handing money out around the world hand over fist, and people taking innocent lives, the unborn of others. We know that there was about to be a hanging of a man who converted from Islam to Christianity over in Afghanistan, and we're still just pouring money into Karzai's regime. There are issues about him and his brother, whether or not there is corruption there, and we're just pouring money in there that we don't have. And we're having to pay, 40, 42 cents in interest of every $1 on loans because we don't have the money to do that. In any event, my friend Chris Smith is here, and I would be happy to yield to him.

Mr. GOHMERT

Mr. GOHMERT. Mr. Speaker, I do echo the comments of my friend from Ohio (Ms. Kaptur). Our hearts do go out, our prayers do go out for the people in Japan, difficult time there. At the same time, there are so many people struggling in this country. There are so many people out of work; and although in the last week gas prices have come down some, sadly in the wake of the Japan tragedy, there is no doubt speculation will eventually go back up unless this administration stops, ceases, desists in putting our natural resources off limits for our use to help our economy to create jobs for our citizens. You know, certainly other countries welcome the pigheadedness of those in charge of this administration who are determined to keep us from using our own resources. We had a hearing today in the Natural Resources Committee, and the chairman of the Railroad Commission, the regulating body in Texas, Ms. Elizabeth Jones, had indicated--and I was not aware of what exactly she had said--but, apparently, this administration is making a big deal of reopening and granting a permit that actually was not a new permit. This is something that had been pending that was a re-release and was not a new permit. And how ironic, the ultimate irony, that this administration's first supposed new permit would be to a drilling project in which British Petroleum, BP, would be the major investor. How about that? This administration simply cannot get away from trying to help their buddies at BP. It was interesting to hear our friend across the aisle from Massachusetts in our hearing today indicate that in the European waters, off their coasts, they have the same driller, the same international companies; and yet, the safety records over there are much better than they are in the Gulf of Mexico. Quite interesting because the only difference is, in this country, the administration is run by those who help out President Obama, and they have sadly looked the other way while BP racked up safety violation after safety violation, after dozens of safety violations. In the meantime, the other major drillers had one, two violations over the same period. BP racked up dozens of violations and then hundreds of violations until they had reached around 800 safety violations. But did this administration rein them in? No. And then we later read that actually when this administration could not bring itself to really come down on BP after the disastrous blowout of the Deepwater Horizon, that BP executives were negotiating and working out the day, the time, the place that they would come out in support of President Obama's and our Democratic colleagues' great pride and joy called the cap-and-trade bill. I don't want to offend people by calling it the crap-and-trade bill, so we will call it the cap-and- trade bill instead of what I really think it is. But they were negotiating to come out and be the administration's one big international energy company that embraced this whole cap-and-trade bill. Why? Because they had special perks they were getting out of it with regard to carbon sales, and so they were coming onboard. Well, of course this administration did not want to come down on BP when they were going to be the big energy company that came out saying, Yes, we're for this cap-and-trade bill. Yes, we think it's good. Why? Because we're going to get rich off of it even though Americans are going to be paying out the nose for energy once this thing kicks in. Americans will be losing their jobs right and left; but, boy, we will make a lot of money because we're cronies with the administration. So they were going to come out in support. The administration didn't want to shut them down. They were hoping that what BP was telling them about it not really being that big of a deal would be true. So of course the President didn't fly down there immediately, like he had said about President Bush that he should have after Katrina. This President waited and waited, really didn't want to come down on BP because these were his buddies that were going to help him get across the finish line the cap-and-trade bill. They were the guys that had safety violation after safety violation. So it gets a little difficult to hear friends across the aisle talk about cronyism when we know that when you really examine the facts where the cronyism lies. We have heard people talk about how offensive it was that there were offshore leases that had language removed from the pricing from which royalties were paid that cost the United States Treasury billions of dollars in royalties that rightfully would have been the U.S. Treasury's, except that our hearings indicated that there was actually at least one or two people in the Clinton administration who had it pointed out, Hey, we need this language in here that allows us to get the amount of royalties we should. But they were instructed, We are leaving it out here. When we had a hearing with a friend of the Clinton administration, a former appointee of the Clinton administration who had done his research, I asked him why he had not questioned those people who had ordered that that language be kept out. He said, Well, they left the administration, so we really can't question them. They are in the private sector now. Well, you do a little further research, and you find out that the private sector, these people that cost the United States Government billions of dollars and made billions of dollars for the cronies of the Democrats in the Big Oil, they actually had gone to work for British Petroleum. How about that. So to have heard the former Clinton appointee who did the investigations say, Well, I couldn't possibly question these people because they left, and they were in the private sector, I was surprised because if someone intentionally and knowingly defrauds the government, it's a crime. And the FBI doesn't have any trouble normally going after folks, subpoenaing records. They know how to do it. They do it quite well. But they didn't go after these individuals because--well, they had left government service, and this one in particular had gone to work for British Petroleum. How about that. So imagine our surprise in 2009 when we find out that the person who was most knowledgeable about the language being taken out that cost us billions of dollars and had gone to work for British Petroleum had now been brought on to the Obama administration to supervise these offshore leases. How about that. Or to quote our friends from Saturday Night Live: ``What's up with that?'' It cost the country billions of dollars, went to work for British Petroleum, and then you bring them back on and put them in charge of the offshore leases? Then we find out that those who worked for the Interior Department, the offshore rig inspectors who stand between this country and disastrous problems off the coast that are man-made, were the ones within the Bureau of Land Management that were allowed to unionize. Well, that sounds kind of strange because, you know, union negotiations--normally, if you go back to the inception of unions, it was to overcome issues of corporate greed. It didn't seem to fit here because here were people that were supposed to stand between our Nation and man-made disasters off our coast. And they were allowed to unionize because we know unions, they'll negotiate--oops, these folks can't work too many hours, can't work too many hours in succession. You have got to do this. You can't go--you know, there are all kinds of things negotiated. It would be like negotiating a union contract on behalf of the military soldiers. You can't overwork them. You can't expect them to work too late into the evening, travel too much. When people are standing between us and disaster, it just is not appropriate to have contracts negotiated in a union manner, because they stand between us and disaster. It's not appropriate for people in the military, and it's not appropriate for our offshore rig inspectors. If they have to work extra hours, if they have to travel extra, if they have to do some task to ensure that our country does not get devastated because of man-made negligence, a disaster off our coast, they will have to do that job; and if you don't like it, go to work for the private sector. That is the way it was supposed to be, not to have unions organize people who stand between us and disaster. Because if you go back to the founding, the Founders anticipated--and some of them wrote in their letters, in their diaries that we had within our grasp, they indicated, the chance to do what philosophers had only dreamed about, to govern ourselves. We can understand the need for union collective bargaining, to overcome corporate greed in cases where it's occurred; but to need unions to extort things from the government that is supposed to be ``We, the people,'' in a democratic Republic? Offshore inspectors standing between us and disaster, and they get to have a bargaining session where, Gee, we don't want them to work too many hours even if it meant saving America, saving thousands of jobs. Well, in the hearing where we heard from the director of the Bureau of Land Management who was over that whole system, when I asked, What are the checks and balances? Since you have these offshore inspectors unionized, what are the checks and balances that protect us from disaster? It should be these offshore inspectors. So how do you ensure that the allegations that we read and have been hearing that some of the administration's offshore inspectors had been bribed, have been given perks to look the other way with safety violations, and they had done so--we've read allegations of that kind of thing. So what is it that protects us and ensures there are checks and balances to make sure offshore inspectors are not bribed, are not given things to make them look the other way? And the director indicated they do have a solid system of checks and balances for such offshore inspectors. They send them out in teams of two people at a time. That way, we can rest assured that if one inspector were subjected to some type of bribe or perk, something to look the other way, the other inspector would report them, would refuse to accept the bribe or the perk to look the other way, so that we could rest assured that we were protected. Apparently, she was not aware that I was aware that the last two- person team of inspectors that went out, sent by this administration out to the Deepwater Horizon before the disastrous blowout, was a father and son unionized inspection team. That's who was sent to stand between us and disaster. Now, there are some disasters, like earthquakes, like tsunamis, that insurance companies call acts of God. I still do, too. I don't believe that God causes those things to happen to punish people. I think He has the power to do so. But we do have the power to build and to inspect and to prepare for disasters so that we can mitigate and minimize damages after such things occur. But you can't very well mitigate and minimize when you're allowing the kind of abuses that have gone on from this administration with the cronies in Big Oil like British Petroleum. And it's interesting to have heard, today, friends across the aisle trying to wrap British Petroleum around Republicans' necks as an albatross when, actually, the group that has protected British Petroleum over and over has allowed them to continue to drill, and when this administration finally got around to granting a new permit that really wasn't new after all, it happens to be to their cronies, their buddies--good old crony capitalism--where BP is the major investor. How about that? Another ``and what's up with that?'' BP gets the latest right to drill in the gulf when others have lost thousands of jobs, families have been left destitute. And that means not just that the workers who work on those oil rigs have been hurt, their families have been hurt, and then all the places where they did business have been hurt. The restaurants, clothing stores, everybody who did business with those have been suffering because this administration did not punish the company responsible for nearly 800 safety violations. It punished all those who were not their cronies. And how ironic that the biggest financial supporter of this administration and Democratic politics, in George Soros, had as his biggest individual investment in Brazilian drilling, oil and gas. How ironic that when this administration granted a $2 billion loan from the United States of money--we don't have over 40 cents of every dollar of that $2 billion that we have to borrow and pay interest on-- we loaned it to Brazil to do offshore drilling that we won't allow here. Oh, but by the way, that helps the Democrats' biggest supporter financially, George Soros, with his biggest individual investment; so, therefore, it's okay to drill off the coast of Brazil with money borrowed from America at low interest rates that we have to borrow from other countries at a different interest rate. That's just astounding. And then we have calls to eliminate the method that has produced over 100 years, perhaps 200 years, of natural gas reserves. We've been provided information that indicates that if all of the 18-wheelers in America started utilizing natural gas instead of gasoline or diesel, then we would cut our dependency on those who hate us by 50 percent. But no, we're not going to do that. In fact, there are measures being pushed by this administration and the EPA to eliminate our ability to utilize over 100, 200 years of natural gas that could provide our electricity, even cutting the need for more nuclear power plants. It could be of tremendous assistance in cutting our reliance on foreign oil. And this administration wants to eliminate that ability. It makes no sense. Our hearts still go out to Japan for the decimation that's occurred, for the loss of life and the livelihoods, and this administration has expressed that so eloquently. But not so for this administration's actual activities to help the lives and livelihoods in the gulf coast area of those who this administration didn't save their job. They cost them their job. They cost them their livelihood. They caused gasoline prices to go up because we will not help ourselves. We were told when gasoline reached $4 a gallon that probably 25 percent or more of that was speculation. Well, when speculators see that we're doing nothing to help ourselves with our own energy needs and, in fact, we're making it more and more difficult to produce our own oil, gas, natural resources to take care of ourselves and instead are going deeper and deeper in debt to countries that don't like us-- thank goodness we're friends with Canada, and they're helpful in our energy needs. But we're funding some of the very terrorism we're concerned about in the Middle East because we refuse to use our own natural resources. I was told by a Chinese gentleman that he thought he had figured out what our energy policy was, because often the Chinese, they look farsighted. They look down the road. They try to examine issues and policies in a farsighted manner generations down the road, when we here in America sometimes have a hard time looking at what we're going to do tonight. Certainly, tomorrow is a stretch. But, anyway, this Chinese gentleman had said, I think we figured out what you are doing. You continue constantly to put your own natural resources off limits, and that forces the rest of the world to use all of their natural resources. And then eventually everyone will have used their natural resources but you, and then you'll be the only one with natural resources. You'll still be the superpower, and you'll still be the superdominant country in the world because everyone else lost their resources. They're used up, and you still have yours. And I told him, I wish I could take credit and say you caught us; that's our plan. Everybody else used up their natural resources. But we haven't been that strategic in our thinking. No, we're just having people say it may devastate the economy. Obviously, it is. It does when you put your natural resources off limits. But they claim that will save the environment, not understanding that when you devastate an economy and people are losing their jobs and they can't pay their bills, they're not concerned about the environment. They're concerned about getting by and just living. And it's only when you have a vibrant economy, like we did have, that you have a country where we're concerned about pollution of air and water, and we rein it in. Instead, policies of this administration are sending more and more jobs overseas where they pollute four to ten times more than we do doing the same job, and yet that pollution goes into the same atmosphere and often floats over into our country. Mercury, toxic materials come floating up because we ran those manufacturers off in thinking we were doing some good for the economy and for the environment, and we were hurting both. That's not the way it works when you have natural resources, when you have been so richly blessed, as we have been in this country, with so many resources. You're expected to be good stewards, to use those resources wisely, but don't be an idiot and not use them. We've been blessed with them. Use them. Help the environment, help the economy, and you help the world. As I mentioned here before--but I've not forgotten--a West African told me last year when I was over in West Africa that they were all excited when we elected an African American as President; but they have seen this President's policies weakening America, and he asked me to make sure people here understood that, when we weaken or allow America to grow weaker, we hurt the peace-loving people around the world, particularly Christians, who want to live in peace. He said, When you allow the United States to get weaker, we don't have hope of anyone coming to our rescue when people come after us. You're our hope in this world. Please tell your friends in Congress and in the administration, Don't keep weakening your country. You're hurting those who hope and want peace around the world. We owe it to ourselves. We owe it to all of those who want peace around the world and who count on us to act responsibly. I know the Obama administration and those in the Interior Department have said, Gee, we're not going to be allowing these risky ventures out in the Gulf of Mexico. Yet they turn around and let the most unconscionable violator of safety regulations be the major investor in the permit they just released. And what about these major oil companies that keep being demonized? A moratorium in the gulf has caused many of them to move rigs to other countries. They won't be back for a number of years, if at all. We're costing ourselves thousands of jobs, and we're forcing ourselves to send more money to countries that hate our guts. And what about those who are unable to just move because they're international, big companies--the independent oil companies--of which we have numerous in Texas and in Louisiana and in other Gulf States? Well, they can't just take off and go to Brazil or go to other countries. They go out of business. They've got nowhere else to go because this administration is putting them and those they hire and those they buy from out of business. It makes no sense to keep shooting ourselves in the foot and hurting those who rely on us. Now, we've had a temporary cessation in the explosion in gas prices. There is a chance here that the administration will take advantage of it and will quit running off more jobs with more regulations and continuing an actual moratorium, in fact, on offshore drilling. There is a chance that the administration will take advantage of this time- out to say, You know what? We've seen the light. We've heard the human cry from across America about expensive gas prices. We've heard the human cry about 100-plus years of natural gas, so we're going to encourage cars or 18-wheelers to start utilizing natural gas for their fuel. It does not produce carbon monoxide, which truly is poisonous and dangerous to human life. So it's a good idea. My friend across the aisle, Dan Boren, has a great bill. I'm hoping that the House will move it, that the Senate will take it up and that the President will sign it, and we can help ourselves get off such an incredible reliance on foreign oil. It's time to start helping ourselves. It's time for people to stop helping those simply because they've helped them get elected. It's time for people here in Washington to follow our oath, to protect our country, and that includes helping to create a strong economy. That means, like doctors who have taken the oath to do no harm, we should take the same oath: First, do no harm. Quit trying to force people out of business because you don't like them. Once we do that, we'll be on the road to a greater economy than this Nation has ever experienced. Now I want to finish up. I was given a book of an historical nature. It's called, ``Mr. Jones, Meet the Master.'' It has sermons and prayers of Peter Marshall during his time as Chaplain of the United States Senate during the 1940s. It has got some wonderful material in here, and I would just like to finish my time by reading a prayer by the Chaplain of the U.S. Senate as he prayed it in the U.S. Senate. Senate Chaplain Peter Marshall prayed these words in the U.S. Senate: ``Our Father in Heaven, give us the long view of our work and our world. ``Help us to see that it is better to fail in a cause that will ultimately succeed than to succeed in a cause that will ultimately fail. ``May Thy will be done here, and may Thy program be carried out, above party and personality, beyond time and circumstance, for the good of America and the peace of the world. Through Jesus Christ Our Lord, amen.'' That was the prayer of Chaplain Peter Marshall during his time as Chaplain of the United States Senate. With that, Mr. Speaker, I yield back the balance of my time.

Mr. GOHMERT

Mr. GOHMERT. Tomorrow, we're going to take up another short-term continuing resolution. In the meantime, today, tomorrow, the next day, we will be borrowing $4 billion a day that we don't have to pay the deficit that this administration is running. We're going to debate tomorrow about $6 billion here. Well, that's a day and a half of deficit. We're going to bring in around $2.1 trillion for this year, and we're going to spend $3.6 trillion. It is irresponsible. It is reprehensible. For years, we've heard: For the good of the children. It is for the good of the children that this body man up across the aisles and quit spending money that our children don't even have. Let's vote ``no'' until we can do some real saving.

Mr. GOHMERT

Mr. GOHMERT. Mr. Speaker, these are trying times. Charles Dickens said ``the best of times and the worst of times.'' More freedoms than any nation has ever enjoyed in the history of the world are right here in this country. We have been blessed so richly. And lest we begin to think we've been blessed because of something that we did to deserve to be born in America, for all those wonderful people who have immigrated to America, we didn't deserve to be born here or immigrate here. So why did we end up being in the country with the greatest freedoms in the history of the world, since it wasn't because of something we did to deserve to be here? The answer is very clear. We've been blessed as a nation because of the actions of those who went before us. For those who believe in the Bible, it's full of one incident after another, historically, where it was shown that generations ended up being blessed because of the faithfulness of one generation. One of the things that was difficult for me to come to grips with as a judge is how often children pay for the sins of the parents. And that's bringing me to where we are today. We are a nation that has done the unthinkable, a nation that has brought in around $2.1 trillion for the last couple of years and yet has spent 3.6, 3.5, $3.6 trillion. How irresponsible could that be? And the problem is future generations will have to pay and pay and pay for the self-indulgence, the arrogance and the self-centeredness of this generation. And it's heartbreaking when you step back and take a good look at what's going on. Polls indicate that 70 percent or more of American adults believe that this will be the first generation--my generation will be the first in American history that does not leave the country to our children better than we found it. It's why I'm here. We can do better than that, but we'd better hurry. Because if we have 2, 3, 4 more years of what the President proposed, $1.65 trillion in deficit spending, there's not going to be a country. I don't care how much smarter we think we are in this country, how much more intellectual some of the liberals may be here, you can't outrun history. There are lessons that are established. And if you commit this act, then in the laws of nature and history, you're going to get this result. If you spend too much money you don't have for long enough, you're going to lose your country. It's happened over and over. It doesn't matter how smart you are. It doesn't matter how many letters you have after your name. It doesn't matter if you commit certain acts; you're going to get certain results, just as sure as if it's a scientific experiment that's been proven over and over. Well, it has been proven. If you spend too much, you're going to lose the country. Now the Germans, after World War I, thought perhaps they could print the money fast enough so that they could pay the massive indebtedness they had after World War I and that could get them on solid footing. Some remember the cartoons from history books. There are people alive today that remember, themselves, wheelbarrows with cash being carried to buy bread. That was a cartoon I saw in my history book. And, ultimately, as the country's economy collapsed, they became so desperate that they were willing to elect a little guy with a mustache who began to blame those of Jewish origin, leading to the worst holocaust in the history of mankind. Nothing we can be proud of. What led to it? What opened the door for this barbarian to take over such a proud country and lead them into this unthinkable, horrible crime against humanity, over 6 million Jewish people were killed, exterminated? Economic problems, spending too much, owing too much and trying to print money to make it up didn't work. So they got desperate. Look at the Soviet Union. Most historians give credit to President Reagan because he was unflinching even when some described a defense shield as Star Wars as some fictional, ridiculous thing that we might try to do. On the other hand, President Reagan could see clearly that the truth was that to have a doctrine called ``mutual assured destruction,'' properly called MAD, then that was truly mad. You're going to have two countries racing to make nuclear weapons. The only defense is that you both agreed you'll never put up a defense. So if one country launches its nukes at the other, then the other will certainly launch theirs, and both will be mutually assured that they will both be destroyed. And that's the defense? President Reagan saw that as no defense. It was not a proper defense. And some called him a nitwit and ignorant. I can identify. I'm accused of those things on blogs every day. Maybe I am. But I know history. And the history and the truth is that by his moving forward with a way to actually defend the people of the United States with a defense shield that would stop incoming nuclear weapons, then the Russians had no choice. They had to try to keep up. They couldn't keep up financially, and they went broke. I learned a great deal during the summer I spent in the Soviet Union as an exchange student in college. That was when it was truly the Soviet Union. I saw socialized health care up close and personal. I saw it. I went through a medical school, I went through hospitals, I went through clinics and I needed some help at one point. But I knew one thing: I sure didn't want to ever go to socialized medicine. That was for sure. Because the doctors, I was surprised to find out, really weren't respected over there unless it was some national doctor nationally known, otherwise these doctors were like poorly paid plumbers. Plumbers got a lot more respect. It was a 9-to-5 type job. They'd show up. They didn't care if they hadn't seen you before. They'd see you; it didn't matter whether you got that well or not. That was largely the case. You'd run into somebody that tried to do a good job every now and then, from what the Russian students would tell me; but, basically, you might as well try to heal yourself and be your own physician. Because when you go to socialized medicine, just as Dr. Berwick has indicated before President Obama put him in charge of our health care, when you go to socialized medicine and you put the government in charge, whether you want it or not, whether you will admit it or not, historically, if you go to socialized medicine, if you go to government-controlled medicine, then you're going to have rationing. Dr. Berwick made that clear. It's not a matter of if. It's a matter of when and how much. So unless ObamaCare is repealed, we will get rationed care. Our President told people on that side of the aisle the day they were going to vote on and pass ObamaCare that he had some good news: if they would just vote for it, then things would be different. Whereas in the past-- and these are his words--in the past you go to the doctor and get five tests; now you'll go to the doctor and get one test. Well, for those of us that have experience, I know that if my mother had been given one test, they would never have found her brain tumor. It took 6 days. It prolonged her life for 15 years; and she made invaluable contributions to mankind, to east Texas, Texas and the country during that period and was an invaluable teacher of students, of children in the eighth grade. One test, she would have been dead. Six days of tests, they found it. Well, Mother would have been dead. I have a lady in my district who contacted me when this whole debate started and said: You need to know my experience. I immigrated from England. My mother got cancer over there and died. The sole reason my mother died of breast cancer was because she was in England. And in England, you have to be put on a list. You're on a list to get a mammography. You're on a list to be treated. You're on a list to get radiation or any other kind of chemotherapy. You're on a list, and that is the way you deal with government-controlled health care, because ultimately government-controlled health care does not break the bank because you ultimately, unless the nation just completely goes broke. They say, You know what? We have this much money. And, therefore, we can only give out this many tests. We can only do this many transfusions, this many transplants. We only have this much chemo, radiation. And let's see, sir or ma'am, we don't think you're productive enough, and so you're not getting it. We, as your government, overseeing your health care, have to make a call. Somebody has got to. That's where government-controlled health care goes. It's where it has to go or it bankrupts the country. But the good news is, for those who worry about health care bankrupting the country, we may not have to get that far unless we take responsible steps that any right-thinking group of leaders should take, then we could finish out with a whimper. Every country meets its demise at some point. No nation lasts forever, and anyone who thinks so has never studied history appropriately. And this Nation will be no exception. The only question is are we going to be a generation that takes such responsible steps and follows the rules of history, many of which Jesus laid out. You want to be a generation that is blessed and have your children blessed, here are the rules. Well, we need to follow the rules if our children and our grandchildren are going to be blessed, because the track we are on right now, and all those left-wing blogs that like to take shots at us who are conservatives, they will one day be looked at as such blatant fools because that's the way it goes. A country, toward the end of its demise, the liberals who say there can be no end to this wonderful, hedonistic society, they are the most popular because they are playing to people's hopes. There will be no end to this society. Sure, there will be no end. It will go on. Forget these naysayers. Well, I'm not a naysayer; I'm a yeasayer. And I would like this generation to say yea to blessing at least the next couple of generations. But it's in our hands. But once the naysayers who are truly the naysayers who say nay, nay, you people who want to be responsible, spend within your means, who want to provide for the common defense, you guys, you're crazy. You're nuts. I've been called nuts for pointing out the fact that we have actually had people, men, associated with known terrorist groups send over their wives to have children in this country. Then the wife comes back with a baby with an American passport and an American citizenship. You can go online. China provides birthright citizenship. You pay a fee and we will get you an American visa. Come into the United States. There is a Muslim-owned hotel in New York City, and they were upset online, it seemed like, because people were not giving them credit for being the first group to come up with birthright citizenship. You pay a big fee to this hotel in upper New York, and they would put you up for a month. If you are pregnant, they get you a doctor to help deliver your baby, one of the best in New York, and they had the mechanism in place to help you get that American passport. And then the most precious gift that anybody could be given, a child, a blessing, not a terror, a gift of a child is born with an American passport, and it is taken back. And in some cases, I hope and pray it is not many, but I know it is happening, they are taken back, and until they are adult, they are trained to hate Americans. And that the greatest thing they could ever do for eternity is help destroy the American way of life. They look at our way of life and they see rape and crimes occurring in America and they say: See, that is what happens when you don't have a totalitarian, religious sharia law existing where we tell everybody what they can and can't do. We don't allow that kind of freedom because it leads to debauchery. I happen to think that God gave us that much freedom and the freedom to choose; and, unfortunately, some choose wrong. Eventually, every country has too many who choose wrong, and that's when they lose their country. So it made sense, if you're interested in providing for the common defense, that we would take a look at those who are trying to destroy us. And, by the way, the State Department is not going to take a look at that. I made an official inquiry of the State Department, my office did, and asked: Tell us how many times women have come into this country and had babies when their husband was known to be on the terrorist watch list or associated with a terrorist group. The State Department came back and told us: We can't tell you because we don't check. The husband's name is on any woman's application for a visa, but we don't inquire if there is going to be hospitalization. You wouldn't want it to be specific as to one gender, but you could inquire. And to help keep immigrants from bankrupting our country, it would seem like the State Department would inquire: Are you anticipating hospitalization when you come into this country? And of course I have a bill on health care that says any immigrant, in order to get a visa, is going to have to show that they have already purchased health insurance for any health care they will need in the United States. We are willing to let people in. We let in more people on visas than any nation in the world. We are willing to let you in, but you've got to pay for your health care while you're here. Well, we don't do that. One lady had said, The great thing about my daughter coming in and having a baby--and yes, her husband was a member of a terrorist group in the Middle East, on our terrorist watch list--but the good news is she doesn't even have to pay for anything. She can leave with an American passport, and she doesn't have to pay for anything. The Americans pay for it. We have to stop that. It's nuts. The State Department doesn't inquire if you anticipate hospitalization. And even though the spouse's name is on the visa application, they say, as a rule, we don't bother to check to see if the spouse is a terrorist. You have groups out here who are condemning Justices on the Supreme Court because their spouse may be politically active. They show themselves to be blatantly extremely partisan, like Common Cause, because they have never raised that issue with a former leader of the ACLU whose husband, late husband, apparently a fine man, but he did have political interests and they were affected by decisions of the Court, and those groups never complained about that. But they only come after conservatives on the Court, like Justice Scalia, Justice Thomas, who believe that the words on the page of the Constitution, the pages, mean what they say. They don't change over time; otherwise, you can have no consistency as a nation. So it would only make sense that somebody up here in Congress who has taken an oath to provide for the common defense would say: You know, we've noticed that every one of these terrorists in the last--well, since 1991 who have really wanted to do anything to destroy our way of life as a whole, that they seem to have a connection that they are not Muslim; they are radical Muslims. They are radical Islamic jihadists. So wouldn't it make sense to take a look? We know the largest percentage of Muslims in America are peace- loving. They don't believe that ``jihad'' means you go kill your neighbor. They believe it's an internal jihad, where you change your life and leave the old behind; but there are disagreements over what percentage of Muslims are these radical Islamic jihadists who want to destroy our way of life. Wouldn't it make sense that we'd make inquiry into that? It sure seems to me that we should. Yet Pete King, the chairman of the appropriate committee, wanted to do just that, and he has been under death threats ever since it first came up. Now, for some of us, we say, Gee, in order to keep my commitment to my oath to provide a defense for this country, I think we need to look at this issue of radical Islam when you have a Major Hasan at Fort Hood who kills American soldiers in their place of refuge while yelling ``Allah Akbar.'' Perhaps we should look at that issue. This is despite the fact that the Defense Department didn't even want to mention the word ``jihad'' or the word ``terrorist,'' did not want to point out the fact that they had made him the imam for Fort Hood or the fact that he had apparently told many people, If I get orders to deploy to the Middle East, I cannot risk spiritually having to kill a Muslim for one of the reasons besides the three for which I'm allowed to kill another Muslim, one being converting to Christianity. I can't risk that spiritually, so I'll have to go on a rampage and kill people here if I get orders to deploy. Amazingly, he got orders to deploy, and he killed American soldiers-- but none of that was brought up in the record. It's extraordinary that it's not even mentioned in the report. How blind do we have to be? So we have one responsible committee chairman who says--well, there are plenty of responsible people here. He is the committee chair with jurisdiction. He is going to have a hearing, and he gets blasted in death threats. So, to my way of thinking, when someone announces ``you know what? I'm going to have a hearing, and we're going to look into whether radical Islam is violent'' and if the radical Islamists respond by saying ``we're going to kill you and kill your family,'' I think they kind of help make Pete King's case. If he says he just wants to have a peaceful hearing and you say ``we're going to kill you for it,'' well, that seems to me they're making his case. The peace-loving Muslims are not the problem, but there is an element of radical Islam in this country and in this world that wants to destroy our way of life. There will be books that will ultimately, someday, belittle those people who are accusing Pete King of all kinds of impropriety--racism, bigotry, xenophobia--all those things a lot of us are accused of because they don't know us and because they don't know our hearts. Someday, books will point out: Look how silly these people were. They had people saying, We're going to kill you; and they said, Uh-oh, we'd better not make them mad and try to defend ourselves and figure out how to do that. Let's just try to placate them. History shows, when you try to placate radical Islamists, particularly since 700-800 AD, you're going to not only not placate them; you're going to grow more contempt because, not only do they see you as an infidel, but they see you as a stupid infidel who is trying to pay off the people who want to kill them. So we know that, in the hearing, our friend across the aisle, Mr. Ellison, testified. He brought up the case of Mohammed Salman Hamdani-- and my apologies if I mispronounce that--who was a Pakistani-born Muslim American. As Mr. Ellison pointed out, Hamdani rushed to Lower Manhattan on the morning of September 11, 2001, to assist in rescue efforts, and died in the collapse at the World Trade Center. Mr. Ellison was thinking--and I'm sure, absolutely, there was no intent to mislead and that he actually believed what he was saying. But he said, after the tragedy, some people tried to smear his character solely because of his Islamic faith. They spread false rumors and speculated he was in league with the attackers, all because he was Muslim. So I'm proud to be able to point this out, and I hope that it's a comfort to my friend Mr. Ellison; but in fact, as Matthew Shaffer pointed out in this National Review article last night, he said that, in fact, 6 weeks after the September 11 attacks, before Hamdani's remains were identified, Congress did sign the Patriot Act into law with this line included--and this is in the Patriot Act: `` `Many Arab Americans and Muslim Americans have acted heroically during the attacks on the United States, including Mohammed Salman Hamdani, a 23-year-old New Yorker of Pakistani descent, who is believed to have gone to the World Trade Center to offer rescue assistance and is now missing.' '' The article goes on. It reads: ``That is, Hamdani was actually singled out for particular high honors among the thousands of victims of the September 11 attacks. There is little evidence,'' if any, ``of the `rumors' that he did otherwise. You can go to Google and search for Mohammed Salman Hamdani's name, using various time frames from before today's hearings.'' That was yesterday. ``You'll discover two discordant sets of returns, none for sites and news reports accusing Hamdani of being a terrorist and many thousands of pages honoring him as a hero while claiming that he was `widely accused' of being a terrorist.'' They can't find the allegation of his being a terrorist, only those saying he was widely accused and what a hero he was. ``Web pages that do source that claim that Hamdani was `widely accused' of being a terrorist typically trace back to a single report from the New York Post, dated October 12, 2001, and titled `Missing--or Hiding? Mystery of NYPD Cadet from Pakistan.' The piece has been taken offline, but its content is preserved elsewhere. ``His family distributed missing person flyers in the fear that the 23-year-old, who is trained as an EMT, went instead to the World Trade Center to help and was killed. But investigators for the FBI and NYPD have since questioned the family about which Internet chat rooms he visited and if he was political. ``Hamdani, a graduate of Queens College, with a biochemistry degree, had been in the NYPD cadet program for 3 years. He became `inactive' because he needed to work full time, his mother said. Police sources said he hadn't been to work at the NYPD since April, but he still carried official identification. ``One source told the Post: `That tells me they're not looking for this guy at the bottom of the rubble. The thing that bothers me is, if he is up to some tricks, he can walk past anybody using the I.D. card.' ``Hamdani's mother, who has been in the United States for two decades, denied her son was political or a religious fundamentalist. Cops at the Midtown Tunnel reported spotting someone who looked like Hamdani yesterday morning. ``So the Post reported (1) that Hamdani's family believed he died in the World Trade Center attacks; (2) that the FBI asked Hamdani's mother a few background questions after a mistaken sighting; and (3) that an unnamed source felt such questioning implied guilt. No doubt, that was hard on the grieving mother; but frankly, this--a mistaken sighting and very preliminary investigations of many people, most of whom turn out to be innocent--is the kind of thing that inevitably happens after a major terrorist attack.'' So the article points out that Mr. Hamdani has been singled out by this Congress and by people in New York for being the hero that he apparently was. There is no allegation by this Congress, of which I'm aware, of blanket smearing, saying that all Muslims are evil. They're not. The disagreement is over what percentage. Is it 1 percent or 10 percent that is being radicalized and wants to destroy our way of life? It's a question worth looking into. Because there were actual witnesses at the hearing that pointed out that their young children had been taken--I say young, a teenager to me is young these days--and had been turned against the United States through a mosque, taken to a foreign country and radicalized to finish the process. Why wouldn't we want to look into that? It only makes sense. Because if you bury your head in the sand, even though you don't see any danger your rear end is hanging out there to some pretty significant danger, and we shouldn't be in that posture as a country. Now we also know that the Muslim Brotherhood has been active in foreign countries. We've seen what happened in Tunisia, Egypt, Libya, other countries around the Middle East. But I would humbly submit that the thing that ought to scare Americans the most about our stature in the world, about the way our allies and friends look at this Nation and about how they perceive whether or not we will be able to--and will-- help in a crisis, came when we saw that King Abdullah, King of Jordan, had made an appointment to apparently work out some kind of deal with a madman named Ahmadinejad. Abdullah, I've met him before, he's a brilliant man, we've visited a couple of times, he's a brilliant man, he has a different world view, but this country in the past has appreciated his ability to keep order and keep peace in his country. When an ally like King Abdullah makes an appointment with a madman-- possibly to cut his own deal for protection--it ought to send off alarms all over this Nation that we're in trouble. The world perceives us as weak. Our friends have seen we don't stand with our friends. We'll snub Israel. We'll leave them hanging until the last second on whether or not we'll even veto a resolution Lebanon brings to the U.N.--which is what this administration did. We'll snub their prime minister when he comes early on, as this administration did. Oh, sure, the administration tried to warm up to him right before the election and tried to jockey for political help back in the fall of 2010, but our allies and our enemies are not as stupid as some in this town think. They see the way we treat our friends, our allies, those who have stood with this country through thick and thin, and they've seen the way we've turned on them. They see what we've done with enemies of ours, as Qadhafi has been in the past, as Ahmadinejad has been, as Kim Jong Il in North Korea has been, and they say, gee, if we go strongly against this country, the Obama administration will come rush to see what they can give us to try to make us friends--obviously they won't make us friends, but we'll take whatever they've got to give. In fact, in the case of North Korea and the Clinton administration running over there and saying, look, we'll build you a nuclear power plant if you will just quit trying to make a nuclear weapon. You'll give us a nuclear power plant? Doesn't that have nuclear fuel? Yes, it does. We might be able to take that fuel and make a nuclear weapon? Sure, yeah, I mean, it's possible. But if you'll just promise us you won't do that, we'll give you the nuclear material, the facility, we'll show you how to do it. Well, sure. Okay. Yeah, we'll give you that promise. And of course we provided them what they needed to go nuclear and build nuclear weapons. It makes no sense. We ought to be smarter than that. But we didn't learn our lesson with North Korea that you can't placate a terrorist leader, so this administration has talked about sanctions. And we've had some sanctions against Iran, and I really think that they're going to work by 2015 or 2020, but unfortunately by then, Iran will have nuclear weapons, and they will have the ability to say you either withdraw your sanctions or we're going to use the nukes that we've now sent on yachts and are outside major places you care about to blow your major cities up. It's a crazy way to defend the country, to placate your enemies. I've had this bill--I've filed it three Congresses and I'm hoping now that we're in the majority we'll get it passed; it seems like I pick up more supporters every time--called the U.N. Voting Accountability Act. It simply says that any nation--you know, they're sovereign nations, they can do what they want as long as they don't come after us, don't commit crimes against humanity, but they're sovereign nations, so basically what it says is any nation that votes against a U.S. position more than half the time in the U.N. will receive no financial assistance of any kind from the United States in the subsequent year. As I've said before, you don't have to pay people to hate you, they'll do it for free. We can save the money, we need to save the money. We heard that President Mubarak--really a king, but called President Mubarak--one report said he had $70 billion in a bank, now there's only $7 billion. Where do you think he got that money? We've been giving him somewhere around $2 billion a year for years. We have propped up so many evil people in countries where they devastate their own people, we shouldn't be giving them money for that. Let charitable groups go in and give aid directly to the people. They do a great job of that, better than the government because we as a government usually have to give it to the government, and then the government uses it to go in their bank accounts and to do what they will with their people. It doesn't make sense. I was also a little surprised to find out how much we help Lebanon because they were short on some of their weaponry, and the U.S. was of some assistance to help them rearm last year. And I was trying to remember, oh, yes, why was Lebanon a little short on weaponry? That's right. They were killing Israelis--our friends and allies--back 5 years ago. That's why they were short on weaponry. But not to worry, U.S. to the aid; we'll provide military weapons to our enemies, to the enemies of those who are dear, devoted friends like Israel. Yeah, we'll equip your enemies. We'll sell jets to countries that won't recognize Israel. Three billion dollars for a friend in kind of an oasis in the middle of a lot of hostility is a small price to pay, but unfortunately when you pay billions to Israel's enemies $3 billion is not enough. So why, instead of running up the tab, why don't we as a nation quit funding Israel's enemies, quit helping their enemies, quit helping to put in place--as President Carter did by pulling the rug out from under the shah--apparently not a nice man what he did to his people--but by President Carter pulling the rug out from him, he fell. And of course President Carter welcomed Khomeini as a man of peace, and then we shortly found he created a terrorist state like none before in history. Good job. We've got to stop doing those kind of good jobs. We've got to get back to the basics of providing for the common defense, quit condemning those who are not xenophobes--they're not phobes of any kind--but they see the world through a clear window, the window of history, and see that if you help your enemies, they will destroy you. You help your friends, they remain your friends, and they remain vital and helpful to you in the world picture. One other thing we did to Israel last year--I believe it was in May I read that this administration for the first time voted with all of Israel's enemies to require them to disclose any and all nuclear weaponry. Because people in leadership in the appropriate places here in America apparently have not read the Old Testament. They have not read history. You can go back and find where Hezekiah was the king. And I know there are some journalists who think that Jews came from Poland, but actually there's archaeological evidence to show that they were actually in Israel 3,000 years ago and that King David was King of Israel around 1000 or so B.C. And of course we know Mohammed lived 600 or so A.D. So 1,600 to 1,700 years before there was a Mohammed, there was a King David ruling over Jews in Israel. They have a history in the land. We voted with Israel's enemies. And the lesson from Hezekiah was, as you can read from the Old Testament, Isaiah was sent to Hezekiah. He knew what he had done. Pardon the Texas paraphrase, but he said, in essence, What have you done? He said, Oh, these great Babylonian leaders came over, and so I showed them all our treasure, and I showed them our defenses. And Isaiah, in essence, said, You fool. Because you've done this, you'll lose the country. You don't placate your enemies and think they're going to be your friend if you give them things, you show them all your great defenses, because they'll figure a way around them and you will lose your country. Every country meets its demise and heads to the dustbin of history at some point. We've got to rein in the ridiculous deficit spending. We've got to quit hurting our friends abroad and quit helping our enemies and be about the oath that we all took in this body. And if we will do that, if we will follow the precepts that history--and even FDR said, Follow the teachings in the Bible. People have found it a help for ages--if we do those things, future generations will be blessed because of us, and not condemned.

Mr. GOHMERT

Mr. GOHMERT. Madam Speaker, I wish to be heard on the point of order.

Mr. GOHMERT. Madam Speaker, the point of order began with the words ``whether or not.'' No point of order can begin with the words ``whether or not.''

Mr. GOHMERT

Mr. GOHMERT. Mr. Speaker, these are serious times in which we are living. Supposedly there is a Chinese curse that says may you live in interesting times. We certainly do. I have really been shocked that the mainstream media has not done more in the way of stories on the Americans, the four Americans, on a boat that were hijacked and then killed. Of course it made some news on February 22 when it happened, but it appears it didn't survive much of a 24-hour cycle. This was an act of war against America. This was an act of war against four peace-loving people who apparently had the gall to travel around and offer Bibles to different places and apparently were spending American blood and treasure in places like Afghanistan and Iraq, only to find out that they were persecuting Christians in a manner that is reminiscent of why people came to Europe and tried to create a country in which Christians could worship freely without being persecuted, tortured, imprisoned, or killed simply for their religious beliefs. In this case, though, it was a matter of Barbary pirates. I know that most people apparently in Washington have not learned enough from history, but there are so many history lessons that make very clear what Ronald Reagan used to say when he said no country ends up being attacked because they are too strong. What Barbary pirates have seen and what people around the world have seen, including those in Libya, Turkey, Lebanon, and Iran, is that we have been promoting weakness in the United States and promoting a very weak vision of ourselves around the world. This story from February 22 indicates that the pirates fired a rocket-propelled grenade at a U.S. Navy destroyer that was following the hijacked yacht with four Americans on board. Then gunfire erupted, and four Americans who had been taken hostage were fatally wounded. They were killed. I don't know what this administration needs to see in the way of current events or why this administration will not learn from the myriad of lessons from history that when you're dealing with pirates, when you're dealing with religious fanatics--people who want to destroy you and who could care nothing about your life, your pursuit of happiness--you don't placate them; you don't try to negotiate with them; you don't show that, gee, we don't know what to do--or what you will get is more piracy, more terrorism. There is only one way to respond, which is the way that the United States did in its early days, in the early 1800s, with Thomas Jefferson as President. Some don't go back that far and learn history. All they want to do is look at a fictional approach to U.S. history that says, in essence, gee, we're mean; we're colonialists; we have subjugated people all around the world to our imperialist whims. Unfortunately, despite all the hyperbole and the rhetoric, what we have done is expend American blood and American treasure in the name of freedom, not just American freedom but the freedom of Iraqis, the freedom of Muslims in Eastern Europe, the freedom of people all across Europe--in France, Germany, Belgium, Holland, Poland. All across, Americans have given their lives in the name of freedom. All across the Pacific, they have given their lives, their last full measure of devotion, for freedom. With no racist view but absolutely, as Jesus said, ``Greater love has no one than this, that he lay down his life for his friends.'' In the case of Americans, we've lain down lives for people we didn't even know because the concept of freedom was so important. In our earliest days, Washington, of course, was quite concerned that, in having won the Revolution, we were still not strong enough to survive. So often you'll see in a new government's trying to arise in a country that it overcommits to other obligations with regard to military, and they lose their young nation. Washington was afraid of that. Through the 1790s, we had Barbary pirates. We had pirates off the coast of North Africa who were capturing American ships and taking American sailors hostage. They would either kill them or they would torture them, but they would ransom them if they had not killed them. At one point, I'd read that as much as 18 percent of the American budget was being spent to pay ransom to get American sailors back. At one point, Thomas Jefferson was the one who was sent over on behalf of the United States to negotiate with these Muslims about why they were attacking American ships. The discussion apparently included the question: Why would you attack American ships? We've not harmed you in any way. We're no threat to you. We're not threatening you. One history lesson indicates that Jefferson was told: Well, under our religion, if we are killed while we are taking action against an infidel, like Americans, then we go straight to paradise, and we're rewarded. Jefferson was shocked because, as a man who was so well-read, he couldn't believe that any world religion would encourage the killing of innocent people and that the killing of innocent people would gain you a trip to paradise. So he got his own English copy of the Koran, which is still over in the Library of Congress. He couldn't believe it. He wanted to find out for himself. American history students will know that we finally created the United States Marines. Those who are not familiar with the history may still be familiar with the Marines' Hymn that says, ``From the Halls of Montezuma to the shores of Tripoli . . . '' Well, it was the shores of Tripoli to which the marines were sent with the message: We can't continue to pay ransom to bloodthirsty religious zealots, and so we are at war with you until you stop. It was only then when Americans showed strength that they could not be pushed around, that they would not be taken hostage without a response, and that there would be American blood and treasure spent in the name of freedom to anyone who tries to threaten the freedom of Americans on the high seas or on American soil. Because the marines fought so valiantly and fiercely and fearlessly, those pirates, the Muslim pirates, learned a valuable lesson of, gee, maybe we ought to leave these people alone for a while--and they did for a long time. Yet in 1979, after the Carter administration had welcomed back the Ayatollah Khomenei as a man of peace, as one who would bring great peace to the region, the Carter administration had snubbed its nose and abandoned a man who didn't seem to be a very nice man--the Shah of Iran--and rather put all our eggs in one basket with this wonderful man of peace, the Ayatollah Khomenei, who it turns out would also like to see the United States destroyed, and viewed Americans as infidels as well as the original Barbary pirates did. I was in the Army at Fort Benning when the hostages were taken. No one at Fort Benning that I knew of was dying to go to Iran, but most everybody I knew at Fort Benning was willing to go and thought we should go because an act of war had been committed against the United States. Under everyone's interpretation of international law, when a United States Embassy or a United States compound is attacked in any nation, it is an attack on that nation's own soil. It is an act of war. This is under everyone's interpretation of international law. If you go back and if you review the television footage of the day-- and I'm relying on my memory of those days because we were certainly paying attention--we didn't know who might be sent. It turns out none of us were sent from Fort Benning because the Carter administration, as eloquent as President Carter was and as peace-loving and as well- meaning as he was, felt surely these people in Iran will see how much I care. They'll see how much I really love them, and we'll negotiate. They'll be impressed by our words. They'll be impressed by our negotiations, and they'll let our people go. But that's not the way those folks who view us as infidels and who need to be killed work. In fact, if you go back to your own experience--back to a schoolyard--if a bully is picking on you or especially if a smaller person is picking on a bigger person and you don't defend yourself but instead say ``let me pay you money if you'll leave me alone,'' not only does that smaller person not have respect for the bigger person, but the smaller person will have nothing but hatred, and now you've added contempt because he can't believe somebody is such a coward and so weak when he appears to be so big and strong that he would pay someone who hates him to leave him alone. So you get hatred, you get contempt, and you get more violence. And that is what we've seen. We have continued to this day to pay the price for the message that was sent in 1979 and 1980 for appearing to be so weak and helpless in the face of Iranians--we were told initially students--who committed an act of war and then gave our hostages to the Iranian Government. Now as I watched all this unfold, it appeared to me, as a young man in the Army, that--you know, the Ayatollah's spokesman kept coming out and talking about the students--the students attacked, the students have the hostages. That seemed to me, as an inexperienced person in the way of foreign policy but someone who had studied a great deal of world history, that that was their back door for Iran, that was their way of saying, look, we don't know if the United States is going to be the powerful country we're afraid they might be or if they're really the toothless tiger that we saw tuck their tail between their legs and run out of Vietnam. So let's just test. Let's talk about the students taking the hostages. Let's talk about the students committing the atrocity of invading the embassy. And if America steps up and says you either get our hostages back from the students within 48 or 72 hours or we're coming in and we're addressing this act of war against the United States of America and we're getting our hostages back, and if you kill them, we will be at war with anybody who condoned that action, and that would include the Iranian Government that allowed this to happen and did not intercede when they could have. That's what you have to do and that's what we didn't do. So it appeared, as it all unfolded, that after 2 or 3 days the Ayatollah realized America is as weak as we hoped they were. This President Carter, he thinks he's a man of peace, we see him as a man of nothing but weakness, as the poorest leader the Americans could offer. So they quit talking about the students have the hostages, the students attacked the embassy, and they started talking about we have the hostages because they gave us time to show whether or not we would react with strength and they saw we reacted with weakness. You can't negotiate with people like that. You instill more contempt on top of the hatred. And of course I filed, in all three Congresses I've been a part of-- and this Congress will be no different--my U.N. voting accountability bill that basically says if you vote against the United States more than half the time in the U.N. in any year, you will receive not one dime of financial assistance from the U.S. in the subsequent year. Now some say, gee, that seems so heartless. Well, the fact is we have been paying money to prop up regimes like Mubarak's. Is it any wonder that the report is he has billions of dollars in the bank when we've been paying Egypt billions of dollars that doesn't appear to have really gotten to the people and helped them? We're doing it all over the world. We're paying tyrants who hate us and would like to see our way of life destroyed with American treasure. It doesn't buy love, it doesn't buy happiness, it buys contempt. And as I've said repeatedly, you don't have to pay people to hate you, they'll do it for free. In a time when the United States is struggling so with economic issues of just staying afloat, why should we be paying tyrants that hate us and paying people who have not helped their people? I mean, you look at the money that we poured into the Palestinian group and see how much of the money we paid in to help the homeless Palestinians has been paid toward building homes. It should be a no-brainer. Palestinians, so many of them, hate the Israelis because they have no homes. So they're told, well, blame the Israelis. So they do, and they grow up hating them. Well, why not, with the billions and billions of dollars we've paid out of this country to the Palestinians, why have they not used it to build homes so those people won't continue to hate Israelis and hate Americans? It's no secret, we're not buying affection with the billions of dollars we're spending overseas. It makes no sense to these countries who hate us that we keep giving them money, but they figure if we're that stupid, sure, they'll take our money, and all the while the dollar gets weaker and weaker and you have more and more claims from people we're giving money to to get rid of the dollar as a reserve currency. And when that happens--if it ever happens--then our economy is in for just the fastest spiral down anyone could possibly imagine. Dollars are required to buy much of the oil in the world. We keep showing this kind of stupidity in our foreign policies and there will be consequences. There were consequences for four Americans who were hijacked and then killed. As a former judge and State Chief Justice of a Court of Appeals, when I hear stories, I'm constantly looking for evidence so that I can find out, is there any substance to the story that's been heard? Now we see that there was a naval destroyer following, shadowing the hijacked boat of these Americans who were simply going out trying to help people in the world. They were not a threat to anyone, they were providing Bibles and hope from what we can find out. Well, how does that compare to the incident of the captain of the Bainbridge being taken hostage by three pirates and how it concluded? There were conservative talk show hosts that said, hey, we disagree with so much that President Obama has been doing to this country and in our name, but it looks like he got this one right. Well, a story was circulating--and I was curious whether it had truth to it--that when the SEAL team was deployed, the order was a little different than normal, where instead of the order saying go rescue their hostages and they put together their own game plan for how you go about achieving the goal that's ordered, that this order was a little different, it just said go to the ship and receive further orders there, a little different for a SEAL team, that's what we were hearing, and that they did the drop at night. They had the SEAL team there, and for basically 3 days they had a bead on all three of the pirates in the boat with the captain they had taken hostage, and that at any moment they could have taken out all three pirates for that 3-day period. But the story went, what was circulating, was that the President's order said do not use deadly force under any circumstances unless the life of the captain is in imminent danger of immediately be taken. Only under those circumstances are you to use deadly force. Well, when a pirate group attacks a ship, it is an act of war by those pirates. And this administration's response here is just to have a Navy destroyer tag along and try to negotiate. And they were in the process of trying to negotiate, apparently, when the rocket-propelled grenade was fired at the Navy destroyer and then the four hostages were killed. Well, the story was the administration didn't want to take any action against the pirates. We'll just negotiate our way through this. And it's one of the problems with being one of the most gifted orators in American history, if you're that gifted of an orator, the temptation arises for you to think you can talk people into anything. People that hate your country, when they see that you really sympathize with them and not your own hostages as much--certainly there's sympathy for the hostages--but if they perceive that there is sympathy for the pirates or for those attacking Americans, then, sure, they're willing to negotiate, but it appears to be weakness. And, obviously, these pirates in February were not impressed with America when they took the Americans hostage, committed an act of war, and even had a naval destroyer behind because they perceived we were weak. Well, the story about the captain of the Bainbridge that was going around was that for basically 3 days, the SEALs were not allowed to take out the pirates, that they could have at any time. And then we heard on the news during that that the captain, while the pirates may have been falling asleep, was able to get out of the boat, get into the water. As soon as I heard that, I thought, Wow, he was trying to give the SEALs clear shots at the pirates. He must have figured, as I did, that they surely would have taken an open shot if they knew they wouldn't jeopardize the American captain. And so by his jumping out of the boat, it gave them a clear shot to take the pirates out without jeopardizing the captain; but no shots were fired. That surely had to perplex him. It sure did me and many others. Why didn't they just take out the pirates before they drug him back in the boat? But our American SEALs did nothing. Not because they couldn't or wouldn't; but the story was they were doing that because the President had issued an order that they were not to use deadly force. And the story was going that the captain, when he went out of the boat and these guys came to their senses, that they put their guns down to grab him and put him back into the boat and therefore he was not under immediate threat of death so the SEALs were not allowed to kill him. It must have perplexed the captain that nothing was done when he got out. But nothing was done. The story went that these SEALs were following orders. And then came an occasion when one of the pirates that had a gun on his arm or over his shoulder waved his weapon in the direction of the captain and that that's when the SEAL team commander realized he's waving his weapon at the captain, we cannot take a chance. The order to shoot was given--that could have been given anytime for 3 days and ended that terrible ordeal--was given not by the President but by the commander on the scene. And our well-trained SEALs did a remarkable job in taking out two of the pirates and rescuing the captain. The story went it could have happened anytime, but the order of the President restrained them from doing that because he was convinced they could just surely know how good and loving and peaceful we were and they would eventually let these folks go. Because this administration apparently had not learned the lesson that Thomas Jefferson had to learn. You can't deal with peaceful negotiating efforts or even paying people money or snubbing your allies and friends to try to convince them that you're really a great person they ought to love. Those things don't work. You have to go to war against them and let them know when they attack Americans, when they attack America that we are coming after them. We don't have to be at war with a country. We don't have to be at war with an entire race or group of people. There's no need in that. But you go to war with the people that are at war with you, and this administration has not done that. We have four Americans who are dead. Obviously, this administration didn't want Americans to die. Of course they didn't. That's a terrible thing. And they didn't want it--would loved to have avoided it, certainly. But it's not enough to intend good consequences. You have to study your history lessons and do so objectively, learn from history so you don't repeat the mistakes of the past. And that's what we've been doing. And as much as I respected and think Ronald Reagan was one of our greatest Presidents, in 1983 when our Marine barracks was blown up and we withdrew from Beirut, it appeared to be further evidence of weakness. And I can't help but believe from people I've talked to that were part of the administration that if he had to do it all over, he would do it in a different manner. But he had advisers telling him accurately we're in Lebanon on a peacekeeping mission. We have finished the mission. There is no need to keep staying there. Let's go ahead and get out. There's no reason. We've finished our job. Let's get out before any other Americans get killed. The problem was when we did, it appeared to be follow-up weakness added to what President Carter had shown on behalf of this country. And now we see it on the high seas. We have a naval destroyer. We have SEAL teams. We have Army, Navy, Marines, Coast Guard, we have Air Force that can achieve things nobody in any prior service could have ever dreamed could be accomplished. We have a better military than I ever dreamed we could have had back when we had just gone to an all-volunteer Army and I was concerned about our national safety. Amazing military. Smart, motivated. And yet despite that, we're showing weakness. Now, the story that was going around was that the captain that ordered the fire got a hot call from the White House saying--really chewing him out, that the SEAL team around didn't know what was being said but they knew that their commander was getting chewed out royally. And supposedly the story that was circulating was that he eventually said, That's fine, sir, and that apparently wasn't the President but said, You can tell the President that if he wants to continue this rear-chewing of me and my team, we're going to arrive at Andrews Air Force base, wherever they came in, at a certain time and the media knows, and you can dress them down there. Or you might want a good photo op and you could be there--told the President he could be there to congratulate them. And of course there was a wonderful photo op, and these great heroes were welcomed by the President as he should have. That was the story going around back after the attack on the Bainbridge. And so ever since then, I've been looking--I'd heard this story. I was wondering is there any evidence of similar activity that might give substance to that story. And how we handled these four Americans, these loving, caring Americans being killed on the high seas seems to be that kind of evidence, that this is our mode of operation. You commit an act of war against Americans, you commit an act of war against our ships, and we're going to send a Navy ship to follow you and try to offer you bribes to leave us alone and leave the people alone, but you don't have to worry much. But after the rocket-propelled grenade was fired, it all went bad and four Americans are dead. It's shocking. We need to show strength. And I was a year ago in April in West Africa with a group called Mercy Ships that brings healing. The lame walk, the blind see. They bring a ship into a port of a country that needs health care and they provide treatment to thousands of people. And I had gone to see this for myself. And before I left the ship after the days there over the Easter break, some of the West Africans wanted to visit with me. And the oldest, a wonderful, wonderful man, I don't know how much education, but a smart man, great wisdom, he said, in essence, we wanted to make sure you understood as Africans we were excited when you elected a black President. We were excited. We thought it was wonderful. But since he has been President, we've become very concerned and a bit afraid because we see him showing weakness for America. And we need you to please convey in Washington that America is the hope for people, Christians like him. People who want peace around the world, we're their hope. And if you show weakness, and if you weaken America, we don't have hope in this world. As Christians, they knew where they would go in the next life. But they also knew that America stood for hope in this world. And when we show weakness, as we have been doing, then it signals the tyrants to have their way. And we've got to stop that. Now, may I inquire how much time is remaining?

Mr. GOHMERT. I wanted to shift gears because we have been doing so much talking about the continuing resolution, which is just an ongoing funding of the way things are going, except for amendments that have been adopted to the CR. And we have talked so much about health care and the President's bill that many call ObamaCare. And in the CR that was debated for over 90 hours, with an open rule until a unanimous consent agreement was reached, you know, 80 hours or so into the debate, it was the first open rule we have had like that in years. Certainly we didn't have such an open debate and an open rule during the last 2 years during the Democrats' control of the majority in both the House and the Senate. We didn't have an open rule here. And we were advised that it was the first time in America's history that there was not an open rule where you could bring, anybody could bring amendments to the floor and offer them to a bill. Now, it's not a pretty thing to watch, all that debate going back and forth. And I know I hear some people say, you know, you guys shouldn't bicker so much back and forth, but they show a lack of knowledge about what the Founders intended. And Justice Scalia put it so well to a group when one asked do we have more freedom in America because we have the best Bill of Rights in history. And Scalia, as only he could do, abruptly said, basically, well, no, even the Soviet Union had a better Bill of Rights than we do. And I had forgotten, but back in college, during one of my history and world courses, I had written a paper on the Soviet Government and their Constitution, their Bill of Rights. And Justice Scalia was exactly right, they had more promises in their Bill of Rights than we do. But as Justice Scalia so aptly pointed out, the reason we have more freedoms in America than any country in history is because the Founders did not trust government, so they put as many impediments in the path of creating laws as they could. Because they knew if they made it too easy to pass laws, then it would be too easy to subjugate Americans and take away their freedom and have government get bigger and bigger until they basically took away people's freedom and their way of life to which they had become accustomed. They knew that. They had seen that. They learned that from their vast reading of history. They had such great knowledge of the writings of the philosophers and historians. They understood all that. They did not trust government. So they were not going to be satisfied to have one House as a representative body because it might be too easy for one body, one group to take over control of that one House and then ramrod through all types of oppressive legislation like ObamaCare, for example. So they were so worried about that they created a second House of Representatives, ended up being called the Senate. And they were selected a different way, by the State legislators, so that they would be responsible to the State legislators so that they wouldn't end up taking away States' rights, and certainly wouldn't allow the House of Representatives to take away a State's rights. So they thought, gee, two Houses. But even that wasn't good enough because they realized, you know, we could do like as has been done before and have a Prime Minister elected by the legislative body, and he would be the top executive. It's not good enough. It's not enough of an impediment or an obstacle to passing laws. We still want to make it harder to pass laws. So let's create a separate executive branch and have the Executive, the top Executive, the President elected by the entire country, and at least elected by the entire country's Representatives. But that was going to be a different format. And then they set up the judiciary branch. And both the President could veto and even the judiciary, as it turned out, was going to be able to veto things if it got through the House and Senate and yet took away some constitutional right. They thought they created a good enough system that wouldn't be as abused as the entire system was in the last few years. They could not have imagined that a 2,900-page bill, ObamaCare, could have been crammed down the throats of American citizens that poll after poll showed did not want it. They would never have imagined that the Senate would not be independent enough and would be so taken over by one political extremist group that they would pass through such an oppressive bill that would force a government takeover and government control of everybody's health care, that would force every American to have their medical records sent to a central repository that supposedly General Electric would handle because they are good cronies with this administration; and they would take care of every American's records because the Federal Government would have control of all of that. And not only that, they would take control over all the health care insurance companies. They would take control over ordering what would be allowable under health care, what would not be allowable under health care, all in this massive bill that would provide for supposedly hundreds of thousands of regulations that would follow to interpret those 2,900 pages. They could never have imagined that it would get that bad in this country that the system they created to throw obstacles in the path of government creating laws that the American people did not want, and certainly not that a majority of Americans didn't want, and by golly, they got it through. They rammed it through. They used carrots. They dangled benefits. They added all kinds of pork to bills. They threw in something for the big pharmaceuticals. They threw something in for the trial lawyers. They threw something in for the AMA. They certainly threw a big juicy bone in there for AARP--well, a bunch of juicy bones, actually. They threw all these things in for all these interest groups except for the one who poll after poll said we don't want it. Don't do this. You promised us you would negotiate a health care bill on C-SPAN and we would be able to see who was out for the people. So all the people could assume was that because none of that was done on C-SPAN, other than a dog and pony show after it was basically done and about to be crammed down the Republicans' throats anyway, we had a little summit and it got crammed down our throats anyway and Americans didn't want it. Well, I did go through the original 1,000-page bill. I went through the 2,000-page bill. I put off going through the 2,900-page bill because who knew if there would be a fourth or a fifth on top of that. I didn't want to end up going through yet another bill that wasn't going to be the one that really was the one that was seriously going to be made law, so I put it off. And when I got around to going through and reading the 2,900-page bill, you know, I will admit, I was wanting to look at what the sections did, their effect. And so I was struck by finding, really, ingenious or insidious language and drafting provisions, depending on your viewpoint, for example, with abortion. There was a section there saying, you know, you couldn't have Federal funds for abortion, but over in the section that was going to allow it, instead of mentioning the word ``abortion,'' it just referred to the section. So if you went online and did a word search for the word ``abortion,'' you wouldn't see all of the provisions that allowed for abortion in Federal funding; you would only find a restricted group, that kind of really clever hiding what was going on. I passed over a lot of the numbers that were utilized. So it was a bit surprising to find out here recently, and going back through, and Ernie Istook, a former Member here I served with, now with the Heritage Foundation, yesterday provided me with copies of specific pages of the bill. Again, this is public law 111-148 and 111-152. But if you looked at, let's see, consolidated print -26, here it says down here: Hereby appropriated to the Secretary out of any funds in the Treasury, not otherwise appropriated, $30 million for the first fiscal year. And it goes on, and another page says: There are hereby appropriated to the trust fund, the following, and it appropriated 10 million for this, 50 million for that, 150 million for that, another 150 million, another 150 million. And you go through these, and it's staggering how much money was actually not authorized, but they used appropriating language. Because, as many people know, and I am finding more and more that are watching C-SPAN, but they know, gee, normally you have a budget. Well, there was no budget last year. The majority didn't want people to see exactly how the money would be budgeted, so they didn't bother with one in election year. First time in decades, as I understand it. But we didn't have a budget. And then we had this, beginning of this continuing resolution stuff. But normally you will have a budget. You will have an authorization for expenditure, but then it had to be followed up with an appropriation. Well, ObamaCare went straight to it and appropriated vast amounts of money. In fact, in this first year of 2011, fiscal year 2011, there is $4.951 billion appropriated in the bill. They apparently not only overran all the obstacles and hurdles that the Founders put in our way to come up with so that we would not come up with legislation that Americans did not want, they overcame that. Then, just to make sure that it would be difficult to ever stop this by unfunding it, they actually didn't just authorize, they appropriated $105.464 billion in this ObamaCare bill, over $105 billion from 2011 through 2019, $105 billion. Now, the rules get a little complicated around here, and any amendment that seeks to rescind a prior appropriation is going to be subject to a point of order objection and not be allowed because it legislates in an appropriating bill, and under our rules you can't legislate in an appropriating bill. So the only way--and these people that put this language in here, they knew it. When they were telling America we know we are broke; we have got to rein in spending, all the while they were sticking in $105 billion of spending in one bill, not authorizing, not saying, gee, you may not be able to afford this 5 or 6 or 7 years from now. So, instead, they just said we are appropriating it and you can't do anything about it, because under the House rules you try to bring up an amendment to rescind that, it's subject to a point of order objection and we can keep it from coming out. The only way that I understand that this $105 billion that's now been appropriated by the last Congress, the only way that can be taken out is to have a provision in the original bill from the appropriators, not an amendment, a provision that rescinds this $105 billion of appropriations in this prior law from last year, and it's in the original bill. And then the Rules Committee waives any point of order objections to that rescission being in the appropriating bill. My understanding is that's the only way we can get it done. The amendments we were trying to do and that we got done apparently are not going to accomplish that. We are going to have it in an original committee bill rescinding all of this massive amount of money. Right now, we will be borrowing 42 cents of every dollar of that $105 billion. It's irresponsible. It's almost inconceivable, except here it is in black and white in front of us. America deserves better than this. I told some folks back home, I have mentioned before, it strikes me that this government in this last not just 4 years, but even going back into the last few years and especially the TARP bailout that was such a disaster and should never have been passed, that this government became like a parent who had an overwhelming desire to spend and could not control their own spending. So the parent goes to the bank and says, You have got to loan me massive amounts of money. And the bank says, How are you going to pay it back? You are not going to live long enough to ever pay this back. And the parent says, No, but I have got my children here, and they are going to have children and those children will have children. So my children, my grandchildren, my great-grandchildren, I am pledging they are going to pay back all of this self-centered massive amounts of money I am throwing upon me and my friends, and I am pledging and promising my children will be indentured servants for the rest of their lives because I can't stop spending. Now, in a case like that, you would probably have the Child Protective Service come swooping in and say you are an unfit parent. You have no business having children when you are selling your children's future for your own use of money now. How irresponsible that is. Do you care nothing about the children that you can't quit lavishing all that money and paying your friends for doing nothing? You can't control your spending, so that your children, grandchildren and great-grandchildren can have freedom like you had it? You can't control that? You're an irresponsible parent, and you shouldn't even have these children if you're going to do that. I've heard the Child Protective Services in Texas come in on a lot weaker claims to take children away from parents than that. It's irresponsible what we're doing. And to pass a bill that was against the vast majority will of the American people and to stick in $105 billion of spending is just irresponsible. It's got to stop. On one final note before my time concludes, having been a judge and a State chief justice, I'm sensitive when I hear judges threatened. And especially in the wake of the Gabrielle Giffords shooting and the loss of life in Arizona, we really should not be provoking actions to the point of violence or threatening actions. And I have certainly had my share of death threats as a judge. But it was usually only when they included my family that it got serious. And we have a group that's held itself out for years now, Common Cause, as this wonderful nonpartisan group. And yet you see over and over, like you did here recently with the rally they held in California with Van Jones--such an impassioned socialist--speaking and stirring people up against Justice Thomas and Justice Scalia. Justice Thomas himself, after one of the most embarrassing episodes in American history, the way he was treated as he went through the hearings for confirmation to the Supreme Court, he said himself, it's a modern day lynching, high-tech lynching. And in his book, ``My Grandfather's Son,'' where he describes coming out of poverty, severe poverty, and making it on nothing but hard work and his brilliant intellect he achieved the great heights he has. And I have heard him say himself, he started out in college as an angry black man and left- wing extremist who came to realize more oppressive government is not the answer. But he also came to see firsthand, as he has described it, that if you're an African American and you spout the words that the liberal left tells you to say, then they love you. But if you dare--as he points out, otherwise I wouldn't use these words--but he says if you dare to step off the plantation and think for yourself, then here comes all the groups that come after you. And we have seen that with this attack from Common Cause that they are using to fundraise this attack after Justices Thomas and Scalia. And, again, I look for evidence, are they nonpartisan? Well, it seems like they only come after conservatives, mainstream Americans, but they encourage left-wing extremism on a wholesale basis. But to be attacking Justices Thomas and Scalia and stir up sentiment, they sent out the e- mails urging people to come, they sent out the notices of what they were doing, urging people to come. They knew who they were sending those to. They urged these people to come. And what they got was the friends that they had invited saying that they wanted to string up, basically lynch, one of the most honorable people in the America, Clarence Thomas, that came from the most oppressive background and fought and worked his way up, as he would tell you, with the help of loving grandparents to the status that he has, and they want to do a high-tech lynching of him now. Except the people that they stirred up aren't going to be satisfied with high tech. They want to lynch him, and they want to lynch his wife. And when you look for evidence, well, have they been saying this all along about other incidences that were similar? Well, when we got a national leader of the ACLU, they never mentioned one word about perhaps she should recuse herself from things that involve the ACLU, and our sympathies go out any time anyone loses a spouse, but when people on the Supreme Court who came from leftist backgrounds had spouses that had direct interests that were affected, Common Cause was silent. Oh, no, they raised their money on going after people that are mainstream conservatives and believe in the Constitution meaning what it says. And after bringing this up at a press conference this afternoon, we get word that Common Cause has come out and said, we apologize. We never meant for them to say that. No, actually, that's not what they said. They came out and said--this is laughable--they didn't come out and condemn people that want to lynch a Supreme Court justice or justices and their spouses, family and torture them and do these terrible things. No, it didn't say anything about that. It just said this is laughable because they are still raising money. And it is time the Justice Department started being fair about justice and not ``just us'' at their Justice Department but look into Common Cause and look at whether they really deserve to be called ``not for profit'' and ``nonpartisan'' because what they are doing to stir up Americans against honorable Americans is intolerable. America deserves better. The adage is, Democracy ensures--America, any country--Democracy ensures that people are governed no better than they deserve. My hope and prayer is we deserve better in the next election.

Mr. GOHMERT

Mr. GOHMERT. I thank my friend from Iowa. I've been listening to your well-thought-out comments. This is a serious time, not just in American history but in world history; and it's a little difficult to get beat up from our friends from the other side of the aisle over what's going on right now over a continuing resolution when there is one reason we're doing any continuing resolution--they didn't do their job last year. This was supposed to have been done last year. They didn't do it. Why? I guess they were concerned if people saw exactly a budget that's required by law, but that wasn't done last year--they just ignored that--just like the President is now going to ignore the Defense of Marriage Act. I didn't know Presidents could pick and choose the laws that were duly passed and signed into law and just say, We don't choose to defend that anymore. But to get beat up by people across the aisle over what's going on is a little tough to take, because they didn't do their job, and now we're having to do it. And then to further get beat up over spending issues because we're trying to cut spending. I know my friend from Iowa, as I did, voted ``no'' on the CR today because it didn't continue the hard-fought battle that was won in H.R. 1, where we were defunding ObamaCare. But I recall in 2005, 2006, my first term in Congress, getting beat up--figuratively speaking--by my friends across the aisle because they said, rightfully, we were spending too much money and that we were going to run $100 billion to $200 billion in deficit over the amount we were going to receive in, and that that was irresponsible. Well, they were right. We shouldn't have been spending $100 to $200 billion more than we were getting in in 2005 and 2006. They said we were spending too much, they were right. And what happened in November of 2006? They promised they would get the spending under control if they were given the majority, they got the majority, and they immediately started spending more than we had spent. And so here we are after a Democratic President gets elected promising hope and change, and people didn't realize that the change was going to be the few pennies left in their pockets after this government was spending so much and leaving little that banks can loan for new businesses and small businesses to hire people. So the economy is struggling. I mean, this government has sucked up all the capital that there is to create jobs and to get the economy going. So one of the things that has troubled me is hearing people complaining about wanting to cut hundreds of billions of dollars--in fact, trying to cut $1.5 trillion of the President's proposed $3.65 trillion budget, $3.7 trillion. We're only supposed to get in about $2.16 trillion total of all Federal revenue, and this President's proposing a budget that's $1.65 trillion more than that. So I keep wondering, since our Democratic friends across the aisle were beating up on us in 2006 for spending too much money, what would be wrong with saying not cut $100 billion, but cut $1.65 trillion, and let's get back to where we were in 2006. That was only $200 billion over what we were receiving. The Democrats were right: Republicans were spending too much money in 2005 and 2006. What would be wrong with going back to that budget? And yet here there's all this rancor over just cutting $100 billion. And the President's talking $1.65 trillion more than we received in? I don't know if my friend from Iowa noticed, but 2 weeks ago when the President came out with his absolutely irresponsible budget that was going to spend $1.65 trillion more than we brought in--not the $160 billion more that we got beat up for spending more than, but 10 times that, $1.65 trillion--I noticed in the paper the next day that the Chinese were selling off some of their U.S. bonds, some of the debt from our country. Well, it immediately came to my mind, if I were China and I were holding our debt, and I saw that the President of the United States, despite making almost daily speeches about how we're getting spending under control--it would be irresponsible, he says, not to get spending under control--and then he reveals his budget and it's spending $150 billion more than he did last year, I'd start selling off our debt too. I would be thinking these people are so crazy. I mean, the dollar is the reserve currency of the world. Nations around the world have been advising us as friends, look, you don't realize what you're doing, but people are getting ready to dump the dollar as a reserve currency for one reason--well, two reasons: One, a lot of them are jealous, but number two, we're being irresponsible with our economy and with our spending. And so I couldn't help but vote ``no'' today on the CR with my friend from Iowa. I also heard a lady yesterday talking about 30 people had lost their jobs because of ObamaCare and what this administration is doing. I've heard from people who are extremely upset back in Texas who have lost their health care just because ObamaCare has been passed. I've talked to doctors who have said, I'm done, I can't play these games anymore. I have not saved as much money as I had hoped before I retire, but I'm done. And they're giving up the medical practice. I talked to a doctor just this morning who said the very same thing. It just keeps bringing back: If you care about people, if you care about them having jobs, if you care about their self-respect that comes when they have a meaningful job, earn their own keep instead of having the government luring them into indentured servitude status where they are servants of the government and just running around wherever they can find a government that will hand them a check and demanding checks, America deserves better. There are people that have given that last full measure of devotion to make sure that freedom existed around here, not freedom to go begging the government for a check, not freedom to go begging the government for health care, to pass some law that we're going to take someone's money that they earned, they don't want to give up, and force them to spend on people who don't want to work. We owe them better than we've been doing. And so when we hear our friends talking about how we shouldn't even have to go through this process, I couldn't agree more. If they had done their job, if they had cut spending instead of putting the dollar in jeopardy, putting our economy in jeopardy, then they're right, we shouldn't have to be going through this. But we have got to defund ObamaCare before too many more people lose their health care and end up having rationed care. I heard about more doctors today who are no longer taking Medicare or Medicaid. We owe all of the people across this country better than what they've gotten in the last 6 years, and what they've sure been getting the last 2 years. These are dire circumstances, and we just can't keep this going. I mean, we are really in serious trouble. And I know my friend knows that or he wouldn't be spending his time here when he could be doing so many other things. But I appreciate my friend from Iowa more than he could possibly know. I appreciate his courageous stands, and I look forward-- I can't really say that. I don't look forward to the battles ahead, but I look forward to having a friend as we go through them.

Mr. GOHMERT

Mr. GOHMERT. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. We hear about a cozy relationship, and that's interesting because when you go back and look at the worst oil spill in American history from British Petroleum, BP, and why it took this administration so long to come down on them, we find out that BP was the one oil company that was willing to support and endorse the administration's crap and trade bill. They were ready to come out and make a big deal out of it. And that's why--you talk about cozy relationships. Oh, yeah. That's not enough. This administration hired to help oversee these leases the person who was responsible under the Clinton administration for costing this country billions by taking out language that would have gotten us the royalties we should have had. But one of the problems we should never lose sight of, no matter how cozy the relationship was with the Clinton administration and BP and this administration and BP and the 800 hazardous safety violations they overlooked, was that this country's history has been one of integrity. You go back to the War of 1812. Banks in England had loaned this country's businesses money. And we had the War of 1812. It went on for a couple of years. After that war, we were struggling, but people that owed banks in England paid them anyway. The world took notice and said this is a country that can be trusted. When they give you their word, it means something. Now this administration and this provision would say, Hey, if we make a contract with you and maybe because of this administration's cozy relationship is too good for you, we'll just come back, cancel the deal, punish you because we were able to lure you into a deal. There's been more damage done to the gulf States by this President's moratorium. You want to help with jobs. Give them their jobs back. Open up the provisions. Get alternative energy by using the proceeds from the drilling that this group has cut off.

Mr. GOHMERT

Mr. GOHMERT. Mr. Chairman, we heard Minority Leader Pelosi saying earlier that we were here as Republicans siding with the insurance companies. Revisionist history is great, but if you go back and look at who was supporting the ObamaCare efforts, you had the insurance companies lined up all out there, supportive. You had the big pharmaceutical companies all out there supportive. You saw the American Hospital Association out there supportive. You saw the AMA out there supportive. You saw AARP. They were seen out there encouraging all of the ObamaCare stuff. Naturally they stand to gain with UnitedHealth more than anybody. They are the biggest sellers of Medigap insurance. So if you really want to look at history, who was it that was not supportive? Well, folks, we heard from them in November. It was the American people. That's why we are here. We are with small business. They will create the jobs. We are with the American people. That's why we are doing this.

Mr. GOHMERT

Mr. GOHMERT. Madam Chair, I move to strike the last word.

Mr. GOHMERT. I rise in support of the Pence amendment, and I am aware of some very helpful work that Planned Parenthood has done to help some women with some difficult medical issues. But we have heard discussion here about a bill of attainder. And Article I, Section 9, paragraph 3 says: No bill of attainder or ex post facto law will be passed. That is the Constitution. A bill of attainder, according to William Rehnquist, is: a legislative act that singled out one or more persons and imposed punishment on them, without benefit of trial. No one is being found guilty of a crime here. I know about those things. I have found people guilty of crimes after a trial. That is not what is happening here any more than it was what was happening when people decided to defund Guantanamo Bay or defund ACORN because they were complicit in encouraging prostitution. To come in here and say that when this body finds that one entity does not deserve to be receiving more money that was pried out of taxpayers' hands is somehow a bill of attainder, then it means we can never withdraw money from someone to whom it was given previously. That is not a bill of attainder. In fact, to take it away, one would first have to assume that this money was the property of this entity before they ever received it. Now, that would be like saying that the taxpayers that earned the money and the taxpayers that had to give it up because we stole it, but we legalized the theft because we can do that, we can say, You earned it. It is yours, but we have the power to legalize taking it away from you against your will. We have done that. We have taken it away. But we have a responsibility to be frugal and to be wise. No, I will not yield. I didn't ask to be yielded to when I was being upset by the explanation inappropriately of a bill of attainder. But I know the gentleman is one of the smartest people I know, but this is not a bill of attainder. The F-35, we voted on a second engine. Well, there had been money appropriated, supposedly, before. They could come in and say it is a bill of attainder to take it away. It is not. It is not their money. This body has an obligation to investigate and to look carefully as to where we should most appropriately spend the taxpayers' money that we have taken, or the 42 cents out of the dollar now we are borrowing from China, or whoever will give us the money. But it was never the intention of the founders that we could not be responsible as a body and say this shouldn't go to this place; it would be better served going somewhere else. That is our job, and we have an obligation. One other thing, and to those who say, and I know well meaning, because I know the people who are saying it and I know their hearts and I know they really believed what they were saying. But I have got Part 1 of the act to amend the Internal Revenue Code of 1986 to modify the first-time homebuyers credit in the case of members of the Armed Forces and certain other Federal employees, and for other purposes, which is ObamaCare, because the Senate stripped out every word of the bill, including the title, and substituted, therefore, ObamaCare. This is the first half of the bill. And if you turn over, if you turn over to page 119, (B) subsection; says it: Abortions for which public funding is prohibited. But if you go to subsection (ii), it has this title: Abortions for which public funding is allowed. That's not all. Legal clinics are financed and are required to be financed under this bill, and there is no prohibition either by the Hyde amendment or any provision in this bill or the Executive order that legally prevents Federal funding for allowing abortions in some of those medical clinics that are established and will happen. Also, if you flip over here--and you wouldn't find this in a word search for ``abortion'' because it was too cleverly put back. But if you look at 122, it is required to have insurance plans, and there will be Federal funding involved to make this happen, that there be ``at least one such plan that provides coverage of services described in clauses (i) and (ii) of subsection (B).'' That is abortion, folks. There is money for it here.

Mr. GOHMERT

Mr. GOHMERT. Mr. Speaker, I reserve the right to object because just to sit here and listen, after having spent the last 4 years dealing with the most closed Congress--the last Congress, in fact, had more closed rules than any Congress in American history--and then to be lectured about what is a travesty is itself a travesty. That's the real travesty. That many closed rules, and you come down here and want to tell us what is awful? Try standing here for the last 4 years and dealing with closed rule, closed rule, closed rule, no amendments. We're not going to let you represent your people because we're going to cram everything down. That's a travesty. Let's get on with the democratic process because that's what it is when you get to hear from both sides. We heard from one side. We heard ``travesty'' several times, and now we'll get back to the democratic process. And with that, I withdraw my reservation of objection.

Mr. GOHMERT

Mr. GOHMERT. Mr. Chairman, I think for over an hour we've been hearing people say, I rise in support of this amendment, over and over, speaker after speaker. My parliamentary inquiry is: Is there an amendment before the floor right now?

Mr. GOHMERT. Mr. Chairman, I have a parliamentary inquiry.

Mr. GOHMERT

Mr. GOHMERT. Mr. Speaker, there have been some great questions raised about these provisions in the Patriot Act; but it's hard to believe that for all of last year, when Democrats had the majority in this body, that if those same arguments had been made to Speaker Pelosi and to Chairman Conyers, that they would have just continued to deny for an entire year the chance to have a hearing on these things. Either, surely, they were not asked for the hearings on those things when they had the majority and could have done it, or they did ask. But if they did ask, why would they elect the same Speaker to be their leader going into this term if she was so entirely nonresponsive to their pleas like they've made on the floor this year? Now, look, going back to 2005, for that first extension, we had some very heated debates, as Chairman Sensenbrenner will remember, in private over what we should do. And there were a couple of us that fought hard in private to have sunsets on those provisions. And my friend, Mr. Lungren, happened to have the amendment there that would allow the sunsets on these. And some of those concerns are the very concerns that have been brought up by my Democratic friends here. We want to make sure the abuses are not occurring, but so far we have not gotten the information from this administration to tell us what they have been doing. And one of the reasons we have sunsets on there is so that we can force them to be accountable as they have not for the last 2 years. I want those hearings. You have been assured we will have those hearings that you couldn't get from your own party last year. We are going to have them. We are going to find out if there are any abuses, and then we will be able to know what should be done. But please know, under the Fourth Amendment, of course, a person has the reasonable expectation of privacy in their own person, house, or place. And that does not apply here. This is not to an expectation of privacy in somebody else's property. That's not what the Fourth Amendment addresses. But I want to find out how this has been used. Please know that last year in the extension, all the things that my friends across the aisle are screaming about, we didn't have a chance to amend; we didn't have a chance to recommit. You have got that on this bill. And as far as the vote on Monday, it was under suspension, had to be two thirds. I think it was stupid to bring it under suspension, because if they had brought it under a rule it passed because the vote was 277- 148. Now they are doing what they should have done the other day. They are new at leadership. They are living and learning; hopefully, they are not just living. But we will have the hearings. We will address these matters, and we will find out if it should be done for more than 1 year. But in the meantime, we appreciate the concern and hope you will express it this year.

Mr. GOHMERT

Mr. GOHMERT. Thank you, my friend from California. At Fort Benning, Georgia, in 1978-1980, we saw the military being cut, demoralized and marginalized. Our U.S. embassy in Iran was attacked and our diplomats taken hostage, while the sad administration wrung its hands and begged Iran to let them go. The U.S. seemed pathetic in the face of a vicious enemy. Interest rates were rising from 12 percent up to 20 percent as my wife and I purchased our first home. Inflation and unemployment were both in double digits. The Carter administration decided to deal with an over-reliance on foreign oil by asking people to wear sweaters at home and leave the heat turned down lower. Then, as now, the President waged a private war against producing our own energy, so then, as now, the price of gasoline skyrocketed. We in the U.S. Army could not publicly express our dismay over our dismal leadership because it is a military crime to be disrespectful of the Commander in Chief. Then in 1980, a new day dawned with the election of Ronald Reagan. Our hostages were released when President Reagan took office, and we had a newfound respect from other countries. As Reagan's tax-cutting policies took over, double-digit inflation, unemployment, and interest rates all came down. Our military began to be respected again and feared again, which provided much needed protection for America. The Bible says, ``Joy comes in the morning.'' It truly was morning in America. Thank God for the life and the gift of Ronald Reagan.

Mr. GOHMERT

Mr. GOHMERT. Thank you. I appreciate your yielding. And not only do you not have anything wrong, but the Clean Air Act that the EPA is supposedly acting under, but they're actually violating, stipulates that pollution control is ``the primary responsibility of States and local government.'' While the national EPA office is supposed to set the overall priorities, States are supposed to have, under this bill that they are supposedly acting under, the States have considerable leeway in their ``implementation plans.'' That's what the States are supposed to do. And for all these years, when the EPA all of a sudden changes their instructions, States are normally given 3 years. Because what we're talking about is when the EPA says now shut down, you are talking about jobs. And I realize this is all part of the President's war on jobs. And it's working well. First, the moratorium in the Gulf of Mexico has really decimated Louisiana and many of the Gulf States as he has declared this war on jobs and eliminated so many jobs there in the Gulf region. But what is happening here, as you freeze out refineries, as you declare war on drilling and activity in the Gulf of Mexico, we are now starting to see that effect on everybody else. And it's one thing to stand up and say, and I am sure we'll hear tomorrow night about how the President cares so much about the working poor in America, and that's who he's out for. But the trouble is, don't watch what is said, watch what's done. And as we watch the price of gasoline continue to go up, and up, and up, the people that are most devastated by that are not the massive companies that can pass these costs on, they're the people that are trying to get to those jobs that have jobs left. So those that hadn't already lost their jobs are going to have to deal with this problem. The EPA, the regulation chief, Gina McCarthy, just a couple of weeks ago sent notice to Texas saying she had no choice but to seize control of the permitting. I mean this is the Federal Government just deciding that even though the bill under which she is acting says the States and local government have primary control, she's decided to seize control. This is the Federal Government at its worst, at its most dictatorial, doing what democracy says you will not do, because they couldn't pass the bill, and now they're coming on and doing this with a totalitarian dictatorship. Now, might as well put ``czar'' beside Gina McCarthy's name. She's the latest czar. Just hadn't called her that because the name's become unpopular. But now she has seized control of the State and local permitting under the act. She noted ``statements in the media'' by Texas officials and their legal challenges to EPA's greenhouse gases, but she cited no legal basis for the takeover. And what's more just really offensive is the fact that what in essence they're saying is in 1992, according to this Wall Street Journal article, in 1992, before there was ever any regulation of this horrible carbon dioxide, carbon emission, and unfortunately Gina McCarthy, as she says anything, she's a pollutant, she's a polluter, we need to shut down polluters like folks that are breathing out carbon dioxide. You know, it used to be a joke, Judge, that the government has gotten so overreaching that the next thing they're going to regulate the air you breathe. And now we're here. And that's what's happening. But in 1992 there were no carbon dioxide concerns. And now they're using the fact that in 1992 Texas was not regulating carbon dioxide as a reason to take over what the Clean Air Act says must be done by the States and local governments. So it's pretty ridiculous. The Wall Street Journal says these words: ``The takeover was sufficiently egregious that the D.C. Circuit Court of Appeals issued an emergency stay on Thursday suspending the rules pending judicial review. One particular item in need of legal scrutiny is the permitting takeover as an interim final rule that is not open to the normal and Clean Air Act- mandated process of public notice and comment.'' As the article says, so much for transparency in government. But I guess when you declare a war on jobs, you declare a moratorium on drilling activity, you devastate the hardworking folks in America that are trying to produce energy, and what that didn't kill then you turn right around and take over control of State environmental responsibilities so that you can finish going through with your war on jobs.

Mr. GOHMERT. Well, my friend indicates it's unfair for Texas. But as former chairman of Energy, Joe Barton, notes, with about two-thirds of the refining capacity for the whole country being in Texas, what this means is regardless how anybody feels about Texas, I know there are a lot of people that don't care for the State, but regardless of how people feel about it, when two-thirds of the refining for the gasoline they put in their cars is coming from the State of Texas, and the EPA has declared war against Texas, violating the laws of this land in order to politically stick it to Texas, the price that will be paid is by rank and file folks across the country. And, as we've seen, manufacturers--we had colleagues across the aisle talking about jobs, jobs, jobs--the things that this administration are doing are killing jobs. They were going to create all these jobs and create all these jobs, and then they did such a terrible job of creating jobs, in fact, we were going in the wrong direction. So then they went to saying, well, we are saving jobs, when the fact is they are driving jobs overseas. We're losing manufacturing jobs constantly. And this very thing we are talking about tonight is one of the reasons. There is so much uncertainty with regard to business in this country. Now if you want certainty, you could be a friend of this administration, as George Soros is, so his biggest single investment is a drilling company down in South America, and so we loaned them $2 billion--that's with a B, billion dollars--to drill offshore off Brazil, but in the meantime, we've got a war declared on those who make their living in the gulf coast area, a drilling moratorium. People are still not able to drill, and that has affected so many jobs. But when the price of gasoline continues to go shooting up because this administration is doing everything they can to increase the price of energy and make it harder for people to get cheaper gasoline, people are going to make their voices heard. And what I don't think the administration understands is the timing of all this is going to be such that it's going to be coming around in 2012 and really adversely affecting people's pocketbooks and jobs. Employers can't count on the price of fuel being where they need it, and a lot of businesses are saying, this is something we can't do business with, the EPA, the uncertainty of the requirements. And what it reminds me, too, is in our Natural Resources Committee with the Democrats in control they were always able to bring more witnesses. That's just the way procedure works around here. Whichever party is in the majority, they get to bring more witnesses that will say what their position is. They brought a witness to the Natural Resources Committee to testify that, gee, we really need to stop drilling off the coast and basically everywhere. But he said there were over 200 million families in the world that make their living from fishing, and if we allow this drilling off the coast to continue, it's going to destroy fishing for all those 200 million families. Well at my turn, I pointed out, you'll be glad to know that we heard those things in Texas, I did growing up, that if you allow platforms off our coast, then it's just going to kill off all the fishing off the coast of Texas and in the gulf. It turns out, I told the witness, he would be glad to know, that those platforms become an artificial reef. Fish proliferate around those areas. So when you want to go fishing now, they take you out to platforms because it's done so much good for fishing. And I said, as far as you're concerned about the oil that was leaked after Katrina, not one barrel came from any of those platforms, some of which were totaled. They came from onshore tanks which really were the place where tankers bringing oil from overseas came in and unloaded it. Some of that was hit by the hurricane and leaked. And he said, well, look, and this is in a nutshell what he said, I guess the real problem is this: If you produce oil or gas onshore, offshore, wherever it is, at some point it's going to be burned, and it may be it's in an engine, wherever, that produces carbon, the carbon goes into the air, and eventually the rain brings it down either into the ocean or on the land, and it's washed into the ocean. That puts more carbon in the ocean, and as you have more carbon in the ocean, eventually the pH increases, and eventually if you keep doing that long enough, the pH will increase enough, everything dies in all the oceans, and so that's when people can't fish. That's what this administration is basing all of their opposition to drilling and production of fossil fuels on. We all agree we ought to be moving off of fossil fuels; but if we would allow drilling on Federal offshore areas, Federal onshore areas and designate a percentage of the proceeds of our Federal royalty to go toward development of alternative fuel, we don't run the jobs off, we don't run the poor folks that are just trying to make it into bankruptcy because they can't afford gasoline, and everybody wins. It doesn't have to be an everybody-lose solution.

Mr. GOHMERT

Mr. GOHMERT. Mr. Speaker, lest we forget, this is the disaster that we are told would be repugnant to repeal. It started out as an act to amend the Internal Revenue Code of 1986 to modify first-time homebuyers' credit in the case of members of the Armed Forces. We took a bill that was designed to help veterans and the Senate stripped it all out and stuck in this disaster of a health care bill. Just as we heard in the late 1990s that you can't pass welfare reform, you will leave women without anything, you heartless, mean people, it was because people here had hearts and wanted to see single women with children doing better that welfare reform had to be done. It was sent to the President; he wouldn't sign it. It was re-sent to the President; he wouldn't sign it. He finally signed it, and for the first time since the Great Society legislation came about, after 30 years of flat line, when adjusted for inflation single women with children, after welfare reform, began to have increases in income. We heard all the naysayers then; we are hearing them now. It's because we want people to have the best health care. It's because we don't want what the President said when he told the Democratic Caucus, before it passed. Gee, you go to the doctor now and have five tests, after this bill you will go and get one test. My mother had to have six days of tests to find her tumor. I don't want rationed care. I want health care to be legislated the way the President promised it would be. And once we get this disaster out of the way, no matter how many times we have to send it, it will be time to pass a bill that gets real health care reform.

Mr. GOHMERT

Mr. GOHMERT. Madam Speaker, Gabrielle Giffords is always a bright spot in this rather dull, moody, self-absorbed body called Congress. She is easy to work with no matter on which side of the aisle we happen to be. We all find ourselves being criticized, but few of us have been able to respond with the grace and class with which Gabby has. Today, we mourn the loss of all those killed during the evil shooting spree in Tucson. I know we are praying for the victims' families, that somehow, through their devastating loss and heartbreak, they may still find that peace that passes all understanding. For those who have survived the assault, may they find healing in the shadow of the Almighty. Hearing so much these days about the need for congenial discourse, we might look at Gabby Giffords as a living example of how we go about discerning the roadmap to get to the desired decorum. I'm sure both sides of the aisle wish the other side worked with others as well as Gabby does. She makes people here in Congress smile just by showing up. Her flights to and from Washington, D.C., often had us on the same flight to and from the Dallas/Fort Worth airport hub. Gabby knows I love chocolate, so when she sees me on her flight, she always lights up and says something like: Louie, I was hoping you would be on my flight. I need some chocolate. Gabby always finds something for which she can look forward. Our prayers remain with her. This is no time for assigning blame to anyone but the gunman. This is a time to note the positive influences from those who were harmed. This is a time to note and perpetuate the good in their lives so that they live on whether their heart beats or not. This is a time to learn from Gabby, who has a heart that both still beats and still inspires. We can learn from her attributes and her ability to smile even at those of us with whom we disagree as we pray for the opportunity for her smile to regain its vitality so she can go back to spreading her sunshine to all the places that need it. May God bless Gabby Giffords and all of those who are suffering because of this heinous attack as only He knows their most specific needs. May God further provide the comfort and peace that only comes from the embrace of His loving arms. Let me just close by saying that when I see her again, I'm going to have plenty of chocolate just for her.

Mr. GOHMERT of Texas

Mr. GOHMERT of Texas. Mr. Speaker, if I may ask unanimous consent to address the gentleman from Virginia.