Louie Gohmert

Mr. GOHMERT

Mr. GOHMERT. Will the gentleman yield for a question?

Mr. GOHMERT. I love having a new Congressman here who's so good at math. The question is: We have heard repeatedly that the majority wants to have a green economy like that in Spain. Now we've heard from Spain, and it turns out they're having to abandon their green effort at a green economy because they have determined that, every time they created one green job, they lost two regular jobs in the economy. I was just wondering if the gentleman from Georgia would make a calculation and figure out how long it would take us to get to the 4 percent unemployment rate if we were to lose two jobs for every one job the majority were to create under their green plan.

Mr. GOHMERT. I appreciate my new friend for yielding. And going back to a comment from good Dr. Gingrey from Georgia about the $862 billion stimulus package, because I know he recalls and others recall that CBO told us that it was a $787 billion stimulus package. And lo and behold, we get here a year later, and they say, Oh, you know what? We blew it by about 15 percent. We just blew it. Most statistical analysts say, you know, it's within the margin of error, 2 to 4 percent. Not with CBO here. You know, maybe we can blow it 25 percent, in this case, 15 percent or so. Whoops. In a year's time, we were $100 billion off the mark. Really, to be fair, $80 billion off the mark. But still, that points out just how irresponsible things have gotten. And when you look at the numbers, too, you find out that CBO really has been a bit of a willing ally, an accomplice, complicit in what's been going on. They told the country, okay, this ridiculous health care bill that's going to bankrupt the country, we're already finding, they're already starting to tell people we're going to have to ration your care. And, by the way, it's going to cost about $250 billion more than we thought it would. We just misplaced some numbers somehow, because if we had found them before the bill came for a vote, people had said they wouldn't vote for it if it was more than $1 trillion. Well, what difference does another $250 billion make when you're putting us in debt $1 trillion? But the CBO just magically forgot, misplaced, you know, 200, $250 billion or so until after it passed, and then within a matter of a couple of months they found it. We're in trouble here and we need to get rid of CBO. We need to get some kind of independent group, whether it's Moody's or some other, that can do an adequate statistical analysis. But the games that are being played with jobs would be comical if it weren't representing real people hurting, real people hurting. And I proposed a year and a half ago that instead of spending $1 trillion, and we were told that we may be spending $3 to $9 trillion just to try to get the economy going. Hey, spend $1.21 trillion and you would let everybody in America forego paying any income tax for the year. You let people keep their own money and they would jump-start this economy. Yet, what our friends across the aisle are saying, ``No, no, no. Our friends across the aisle want to give tax cuts and allow the lower rates only to go to the wealthy.'' Because the way they identify it, the 53 percent of adult Americans that will pay all of the income tax this year they consider to be the wealthy. And so what they're, in effect, saying is the Republicans want to give tax relief to the only people paying the taxes. ``We, on our side of the aisle, we want to give tax relief to all the people that aren't paying any tax.'' Well, there's another name for that. It's called redistribution of the wealth. It means those who have not been able to earn anything will have money taken away from those that earned it and given to those who didn't. We need to help those that can't help themselves, no question. But we do not need to become a government that did what I saw as a judge, where the government lures people into a rut they can never get out of and gives them no hope, no way out, just still feeding them a little unemployment check, feeding them a little check here and there just to keep them in a rut with no help getting out. It's time to blow the lid off this thing and get an economy going where small businesses create the jobs. Yes, the small businesses are the ones that need the tax cuts. They certainly don't need the biggest tax increase in American history that's coming in January. They're the ones that are going to provide the hope for creating the jobs. And so I hope and pray we'll be able to help the small businesses create the jobs instead of just doling out these little temporary census worker jobs, which, as my friends know, was all that happened in June. 411,000 out of 431,000 jobs created in America were temporary census jobs. I yield back to my friend from Georgia.

Mr. GOHMERT. It should be noted in all those little areas, you talk about all the new parts of government that are created and brought together in this--it's not a health care bill. It's a GRE--government running everything--bill. But they all have little references to the specific areas within the law that created them and created the relationship. That's one thing. Another thing is, you know, all of the records, the medical records that people consider so personal and so dear will be in the Federal Government control. I think they are contracting out to their dear benefactors and contributors at General Electric, but they will have all that information, and the IRS could have access to your most personal information. Can you imagine the debt collectors of America being able to have your most personal medical records? Well, that's what will occur here, and there's a great quote from Patrick Henry. People remember, ``Is life so dear and peace so sweet as to be purchased at the price of chains and slavery?'' He had one quote where he said, ``The Constitution is not an instrument for the government to restrain the people; it is an instrument for the people to restrain the government--lest it come to dominate our lives and interests.'' When I look at that board and I look at all the new government that is just going to be overwhelming people, they don't need the doctor after they start dealing with all this stuff. Is that quote ever more appropriate that the Constitution should restrain the government lest it come to dominate our lives and interests? Will it ever?

Mr. GOHMERT

Mr. GOHMERT. On my honor, I will do my best, to do my duty to God and my country, and to obey the Scout Law; to help other people at all times; to keep myself physically strong, mentally awake, and morally straight. Two.

Mr. GOHMERT. Mr. Speaker, with that we yield back.

Mr. GOHMERT. Mr. Speaker, I do appreciate my friends from Georgia and the wonderful contributions that they have made to enlightenment with regard to these issues. There is an issue that we want to recognize and take up tonight, and it's a wonderful topic, the 100th anniversary of the Boy Scouts of America here in the United States. The Boy Scouts of America were incorporated on February 8, 1910 and chartered by Congress in 1916. The mission statement of Boy Scouts was to prepare young people to make ethical and moral choices over their lifetimes by instilling in them the values of the scout oath and the scout law. It's interesting, doctors say that often our short-term memory is the first to go and our long-term memory seems to last longer, but I still do recall the scout law, that a scout is supposed to be trustworthy, loyal, helpful, friendly, courteous, kind, obedient, cheerful, thrifty, brave, clean and reverent. Those are good things to live by. The Boy Scouts have continued to live by that and produced incredible Americans over the years. Right now we celebrate this fact because there is the National 2010 Boy Scout Jamboree going on at AP Hill--not terribly far from here--and so we've had thousands of Boy Scout visitors come through Washington, come through the Capitol. It's been an honor to take many through the Capitol and through this area, and we have many more coming. I know my district has 85 in one group that will be coming through on August 4 when they leave the AP Hill area and others have been helping as staff members. But the jamboree is worth noting. There are 45,000 attendees that will include 37,000 Boy Scouts from all 50 States, 8,000 scout leaders and staff. A whopping 275,000 visitors will join the celebration over the course of 10 days to partake in the festivities. This 76,000-acre area has been hosting the National Scout Jamboree since 1981. The Boy Scouts use approximately 3,000 acres of this land to support a city of over 50,000 inhabitants. One of my daughters asked years back, after having found out that one of the parents of one of her friends had been at Woodstock, asked me, Daddy, did you go to Woodstock, she said. I said, Well, no I didn't. She said, Do you remember where you were during Woodstock? I said, I certainly do. Well, where were you? I was outside of Coeur d'Alene, Idaho, at the 1969 National Boy Scout Jamboree. And we had rest rooms that worked, we didn't commit immoral acts, we didn't have illegal drugs, and we didn't need the National Guard to come in and rescue us from ourselves as happened at Woodstock. Today there are those who are proud to proclaim that they had the morals of Woodstock--some continue to, they continue to attack the Boy Scouts. Of course we know the Speaker and 10 other people had pointed out in 2000 that the Boy Scouts had an ``intolerant policy'' of excluding people who practice homosexuality from leadership, so they were demanding that President Clinton step down as honorary chairman. He did not do that. And President Obama right now is Honorary Chair of the Boy Scouts of America and has spoken to them by video, and I know the scouts appreciate that. Scouting has meant so much to so many. It prepares you for the future. It prepares you to save lives. I never thought I would have an opportunity to use any CPR training that I had gotten through all my years as a Boy Scout, going up to becoming an Eagle Scout; but when the day occurs, there is no substitute for having been through that. I get a big hug from a dear friend at church every time and he says, This is the guy that saved my life. Actually, it was the Boy Scouts that did it through all those years of training. I've been joined by a dear friend, also a Boy Scout--I believe an Eagle Scout as well--and I would certainly be glad to yield to a fellow Eagle Scout.

Mr. GOHMERT. If the gentleman will yield back for a moment, I owed the Army 4 years from an Army scholarship to Texas A&M. From the years of being a Boy Scout, I was good at orienteering, which is the process of taking a map and a compass and finding your way from point A to point B and getting back. Those were things that were important to know when you were in the Army. There is no question that I was quite good at it in the Army because I'd had fantastic training in the Boy Scouts. It was the same way when learning to fire a .22 out on the range as a very young Boy Scout. The first day was the camping, the cooking. It was all about this planet and the things that occupy the planet--this amazing creation that God provided to us, which we learned and studied and had to spend a great deal of time becoming so acquainted with as Boy Scouts. It may seem silly, but when my wife and I were helping with some decorations before a big dance there in Tyler, there were some ladies on a big scissor lift, helping put up heavy 10-, 15-pound decorations to suspend from the ceiling. They had a 50-pound fishing line, but they couldn't get any knot to hold to keep those things up. So they yelled down, Does anybody know of a knot that would hold? Well, I was an Eagle Scout. Of course I do. So they brought the scissor lift down. I got on. I got somebody to come up and help. I would yield to my friend: If you had somebody yelling, ``Does anybody know a knot that would hold?'' what would my friend seek to use?

Mr. GOHMERT. That's exactly what I did, a bowline, and that thing doesn't give. You can even do it with one hand.

Mr. GOHMERT. Thank you. I would ask my friend to stay with me one more moment as we have been paying tribute to Boy Scouts of America, the organization, what they've done. I know that as an Eagle Scout, as a Scoutmaster, my friend, Mr. Thompson has many Courts of Honor stood and asked all of those Boy Scouts and Eagle Scouts to stand and say the scout oath together. I wondered if my friend might join me, as I yield time to him, as we might conclude tonight.

Mr. GOHMERT. Thank you, Mr. Speaker. And I yield again to my friend from Pennsylvania (Mr. Thompson).

Mr. GOHMERT. Well, to follow up on some of the numbers that my friend, Mr. Thompson, was quoting: Total youth served in the hundred years of scouting here in the United States, 114,304,329; adult volunteers, 33,364,261; total number of merit badges, over 117 million. And those merit badges don't just represent little pieces of fabric with stitching on them. They represent a great deal of work, skills attained, knowledge attained, things that will help throughout life in the issues that come in the future. Now, I do feel we need to touch on this briefly because Boy Scouting has been under attack. There have been groups that have been trying to eliminate and have successfully eliminated, like in San Francisco. For years, there have been efforts to restrict scouting from enjoying the parks that other groups might enjoy. There are efforts in Congress on a regular basis to try to hurt the scouting effort. And it all boils down to this one thing about scouting. Despite the oath that scouts take, the Scout Law, scouting has chosen to stay faithful to religious tenets that man represented as the only full face of all the greatest lawgivers in this room. Every one of them has a side profile except the one in the middle who's considered to be the greatest lawgiver of all time. That's Moses. And one of the laws that Moses said were given to him that he gave was thou shalt not commit adultery. In other words, you shall not have sex, sexual relations, outside the marriage of a man and a woman. Scouting, through all these years, has chosen to honor that Commandment, honor the Ten Commandments in all it did. And obviously, all sin, all fail, fall short, but scouting, at least, has tried to exemplify the best of humanity that most of us in this country believe come out when we try to live by those Ten Commandments. So scouting has upheld that they preferred adult leaders who were not open adulterers. And I know, in our society today, so many believe that it's no big deal, there's nothing wrong with it. Adultery is no big deal, regardless of the sexual gender of the people participating. It's just fine. Boy Scouting has chosen to say, we believe the Commandments given by Moses that he believed and we believe came to him from God are worth observing and trying to follow. Scouting has and, ironically, it has produced such great ire among so many who now want to kill the program because Boy Scouts say, We just believe those Ten Commandments are a good thing, including that one about adultery, not having sexual relations outside of marriage between a man and a woman. And as a result, there's a number of corporate sponsors who used to give huge sums, six, seven figures even, to the Boy Scouts to assist them, who've chosen to say that because Boy Scouts have persisted in believing that avoiding adultery is a good thing, then they're not going to help the Boy Scouts. And in the process, they have robbed so many, many minorities, people who would love to be Scouts. And I know in our east Texas area there are so many young minorities without fathers who we've met with and talked with and talked to their moms about starting Scout troops. And they're so excited. And some have started, and it's such a help. And it would be so wonderful if those corporate sponsors were not blaming Scouts for thinking the Ten Commandments were a good thing, and therefore withholding contributions, choosing to give them to groups who think that just blatantly violating the Ten Commandments are the best thing that we could do in America. So they're giving to those who demean those who think morality is a good thing and in the process hurting so many who could be Eagle Scouts, who could be great Scouts. But the contributions are dropping, and the involvement has been dropping some. I think that we're seeing things turn in this Nation in such a way that we're going to have a reawakening, we're going to have a great awakening, and people are going to come back to the fact that the real truth is this Nation has been blessed by God because this Nation has lived up to the blessed tenets that God said to live by. And as we return to those--certainly don't want to give up on the progress that this, the greatest Nation in the history of mankind has made. But in the moral area, where we've fallen apart and Boy Scouting has stayed so steadfast, I think we'll see people come back to the basics on morality, and we'll see even greater accomplishments. And so it should be observed that 50 percent of all the NASA astronauts were Boy Scouts. More than 30 percent of all graduates from the military, Air Force, and naval academies were involved in Scouting in their youth, and five of our Presidents have been Boy Scouts. And even within this Congress, 199 of our current Members once participated in Scouting. And 22 in Congress, are, as my friend G.T. and I, Eagle Scouts. I had somebody try and say I was a former Eagle Scout. But it's kind of like being an Aggie: once you are, you are for the rest of your life. And so that's why in my district office something wonderful my wife did, I believe it was Father's Day, she had a shadow box, unknown to me, put together with my Eagle award and so many of the things I traded for and had earned during my time in Scouting in that shadow box. And I am so proud of that. That's in my office back in east Texas. But Scouting has done so much to contribute not merely to making boys far better than they could have been otherwise, but by making this Nation so much greater than it ever would have been without Boy Scouts of America. I yield to my friend Mr. Thompson.

Mr. GOHMERT. That's what went through my mind.

Mr. GOHMERT

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

Mr. GOHMERT

Mr. GOHMERT. If I could reclaim my time on that point, apparently, my friends across the aisle do not want to recall, but the truth is that the rebate that was $40 billion of the stimulus package, of the Democratic Congress stimulus package of January 2008, which I did not support and was totally against. It was $40 billion out of $160 billion, and it was going as so-called ``rebates'' to people who didn't pay any taxes. Yes, President Bush was in office, but the Democratic majority in the House and Senate passed that stimulus bill with my fussing about it and complaining about it. In fact, after President Bush's State of the Union Address, he was coming up the aisle over here, and I asked him a question. I didn't realize the microphone was picking my question up, but I asked: By the way, Mr. President, how do you give a rebate to people who didn't put any ``bate'' in? The question still stands. How do you give a rebate to somebody who didn't put something in to begin with? It's not a rebate. It's a giveaway. You are redistributing wealth from people who have worked hard, who have earned it and who have paid taxes on it so that people here in our majority party could give it away to others who they wanted to give it to. That does not encourage job growth. It does something that encouraged me to leave the bench and run for Congress, and that is because this Congress was incentivizing people to never achieve their God-given potential, and Congress should never be in that business. We should incentivize people to do their best and to become all they can be. I know my friend Ms. Foxx, having been president of a university, has spent a lifetime working to try to help people reach their potential. That's what we all ought to be doing. You know, when you have 30, 40 percent of high school students dropping out and never finishing high school, those kids are going to be condemned to never reaching the potential that they have. Why wouldn't you want to give vouchers to kids and say, ``Go get the very best education you can possibly get''? ``We don't care how poor the neighborhood is that you're growing up in. If you want to go where the rich Democrats' children go to school, here is a voucher. Go there. Get as good an education as they have. Don't let people try to push you down as they did Clarence Thomas when he was growing up. Let's help you reach your God-given potential. Go where you can get the best education.'' What happens when you do that? Schools know they've got to get better because, if they don't get better, no one is going to choose to go to their schools. So they have to be more picky about the teachers they hire. They have to be really good teachers or nobody is going to want to have those teachers. That's kind of the American way, and that is kind of the way America became the greatest nation in the history of the world. We are in danger of losing that. It is a dangerous time. My friends across the aisle have continued to say that Republicans hope President Obama fails. I hope President Obama succeeds. I would love it if he became the most successful President in helping people reach the great American dream of any President in our history, but if he continues to try to have the government take over all of the private sector, if he continues to take over health care so that his czar, who is unaccountable to the Congress, can tell people which person lives and which person dies, I sure don't want that to succeed. I want him to succeed as a great President. There are the words of George Washington when he resigned his commission. It was the only time in history anybody has ever led a revolution as the head of the military, has ever won the revolution as the head of the military, and has resigned and gone home. He sent this beautiful resignation letter. In it, at the end, he says, ``I now make it my earnest prayer that God would have you and the state over which you preside in his holy protection.'' He goes down toward the end and says, in talking about God, ``And finally, that He would most graciously be pleased to dispose us all to do justice, to love mercy and to demean ourselves with that charity, humility, and specific temper of mind which were the characteristics of the Divine Author of our blessed religion, and without a humble imitation of whose example in these things we can never hope to be a happy nation.'' George Washington says, if President Obama wants to have a happy nation, he needs to inspire this nation to have the characteristics of the ``Divine Author'' of our blessed religion and without a humble imitation of whose example in these things we can never hope to be a happy nation. We are in trouble. We are in big trouble in this country, and it does not help when the government takes over health care. There is an article here, dated July 24, in the New York Times: ``Britain Plans to Decentralize Health Care.'' It talks about the aim now is clear ``to shift control of England's $160 billion annual health budget from a centralized bureaucracy to doctors at the local level.'' Do you want to talk about Republicans not being in support of education? I am not in support of this educational bureaucracy. Think about what individual school districts in America could do if you took the billions of dollars that this Education Department has lavished on itself over the years and if you put that money to work hiring good teachers, not administrators who are simply going to have to respond to all of the bureaucratic redtape put out by the Federal Government, which requires bureaucratic redtape and bureaucratic jobs in each State capital, which require bureaucratic redtape and new administrators in every school district. It is time for the madness to stop. It is time to put the money where it will do the most good and to quit spending the rest of it. I have a bill, the U.N. Voting Accountability bill, that I will bring to the floor with a discharge petition in September, when we come back. I am hoping my friends on the other side of the aisle, as well as friends on this side of the aisle, will sign on. It is very simple. It will end what has happened as to our apparently having given, according to the recent reports, billions of dollars to Pakistan, billions of dollars which have found their way into helping the people who are killing American soldiers. We're paying people indirectly to kill American soldiers. As I've said repeatedly, you don't have to pay people to hate you. They'll do it for free. My U.N. Voting Accountability Act says any nation that votes against the U.S. position on a contested vote more than half the time will receive no financial assistance from the United States the following year. Very simple. It eliminates those problems, because Pakistan's made very clear in the U.N. they're going to fight us and oppose everything we believe and hold dear. I don't hope President Obama fails. I hope he will reach the stage of enlightenment that will allow him to see that every government that's tried these socialized efforts to take over car industries, manufacturing, banking, health care, always results in failure. And it's time to get back to what George Washington described as the characteristic of the divine author of our blessed religion, without a humble imitation of whose example in these things we can never hope to be a happy nation.

Mr. GOHMERT. I appreciate the point of the gentlewoman. I would submit that it appeared that after the Republicans not only had Congress, as they took over in January of 2005, but then also had the White House beginning January of 2001, that there apparently is a giddiness from controlling both Houses of Congress and the White House. Because when there was a Democratic President, Bill Clinton, the economy was going to Hades in a hand basket, and that's when the Republicans took the majority, November in 1994. So Republicans took over, and they fought tooth and nail against the Clinton administration. They succeeded, despite the best efforts of the Clinton administration, in balancing the budget and bringing us to the point where things were balanced despite the President's desire to spend out of control. But then once the White House was obtained, January 2001, the Republican Congress quit being as diligent. It was as if the Republicans did not want to tell the President ``no.'' From the other standpoint, the Bush administration didn't want to say ``no'' to Democrats or Republicans so there were no vetoes for, I think, at least 6 years or more of President Bush's two terms. But what we have seen since our friends across the aisle had the House, the Senate and the White House, is giddiness, dizziness beyond anything anybody could have ever have imagined. Where we got beat up where it was $160 billion deficit in a year, our friends think nothing of having 10 times that deficit in a year. I am just shocked because I remember so vividly people on the other side of the aisle complaining, appropriately, about not having a balanced budget, that I am shocked that they could stand up and act like they haven't created the biggest deficits in American history in a year and a half, and going back the 2 years before that. It shocked me that once our friends across the aisle took the majority November of 2006, that their runaway budgets and deficits were far more than anything we had done in our first 2 years here in 2005 and 2006, and I am talking about my friend, Ms. Foxx, having both been elected in 2004. So I don't want to return to the same overspending from 2001 through 2006, but I absolutely know we have got to stop the craziness from the last 3\1/2\ years of spending with our Democrat friends in charge. I would just have to submit, with the runaway spending, and the damage that was done to our energy programs, beginning in 2007 and 2008, as the Democrats took control, to our economy, to our private sector, the additional requirements that were rammed down from this Congress down the private sector's throat, when they took over in January of 2007 and, again, in 2008, that I would submit to you that either our Democratic friends who took the majority in January of 2007 need to stand up and take credit for what they did in 2007 and 2008, or they need to admit that they were the most incompetent Congress in the history of the country. Because you can't have it any way but one of those two ways. Either you intentionally cause what you did in 2007 and 2008, or you were just so incompetent you need to be put out of your misery, let out of the majority, so that we can go on and try to straighten things up. But to sit here, and having heard friends across the aisle say, gee-- and I believe this is the quote--Republicans don't want to reduce dependency on foreign oil, it just flies all over me. How could anybody have ears and think that. All the people I know on this side of the aisle want to end dependency on foreign oil. We want to end dependency on our enemies. And let me just add, I'm tired of paying our enemies, not only through oil purchases--heck, the New England area just made a 20-year contract this year with Yemen to provide liquefied natural gas that will come rolling up in Boston Harbor. And they're hoping--and I imagine there are a few people praying--that there will not be a stowaway from Yemen, one of those terrorists that they were able to get released from Guantanamo that went back to terrorism in Yemen. They're hoping they won't be onboard that ship to blow it up and take half the city with it. Now, that does not make sense. I want to end any dependency on foreign oil because I know, having been a member of the military, having had years of military history, having been in the military 4 years, I know if you cannot produce, as a country, everything you need in war, and especially energy, you can't win a serious war, you can't. Some people are not aware of how dangerous the Battle of the Bulge was at the end of World War II. Some think it was all over. That was not true. Many historians believe, and there is evidence to support it, that if the Germans had had enough gasoline, the Battle of the Bulge, the bulge that was being pushed to the west through the American front--good old Montgomery said, I've got the back back here. I'll stay in the rear in case they break through. It would have been too late if they had gotten Montgomery, but they ran out of gas. My personal belief, those incidences when the German Army got so close to American supplies of gasoline and through different flukes did not go ahead and take the supply depots I think were acts of God. As a result, they didn't have the gasoline they needed. Patton was able to move in, others were able to move in, and they stopped the bulge. But the intent was working to drive Americans back to the Atlantic Ocean, and they ran out of gasoline. Now we're to the point where we are so dependent on foreign oil, if we had a major war we had to win, we would need steel. We would need energy, gasoline, things to power our jets, the ability to make jets like we used to. You would need wood products. You would be amazed at how much the military requires in the way of wood product. But all of those things you need to produce yourself--the plastics, all those things--in order to sustain an attack against your own soil, and we're not in a very good position right now. It also was so infuriating to hear a colleague across the aisle say Republicans are constantly voting against efforts to build back manufacturing jobs in this country. I know that so many of my friends across the aisle never met a tax they didn't like, but some of us, in a bipartisan group, went across to China some years back, and one of the purposes was to talk to manufacturers about, Why did you pick up your industry and move it to China? I figured, in advance, the number one answer we would probably get was the labor was so much cheaper, you don't have to deal with labor unions, that kind of thing. That was an attraction, as was fewer regulations, but the number one reason we heard why whole industries left, took manufacturing jobs from the United States and went to China, was how much cheaper the corporate tax was, less than half of what we have here. I talked to major injuries--industries--they have been injured--about what would happen if we cut our corporate tax down to 17 percent like China. I've heard repeatedly, We would be back in America in no time. And yet, what do our friends across the aisle talk about? Let's heap more and more and more tax on these mean, nasty corporations. There are corporations like BP who have done wrong and deserve to suffer the consequences, but corporations provide jobs, small businesses provide jobs. Small businesses, so many of them are subchapter S corporations, and yet we hear from both the majority and from the President that they want to hammer those people with higher taxes. Those are the people that create the jobs. And the insidious thing about corporate tax-- apparently it's a secret that the other side does not want people to know--is no corporation stays in business if they cannot pass that corporate tax onto their customers or clients, no corporation. So it's an insidious tax because it's paid by the folks we're trying to help, who are the working folks, the working poor in America who are getting those prices heaped higher and higher on them. And they're told, Oh, don't worry, we'll make the corporations pay. And the corporations, to stay in business, have to keep passing it down to those poor folks that can't pay anymore. And so in talking to folks, some people across the aisle say let's erect trade barriers, and yet that would trigger so many problems internationally in trade, so many punitive measures against the United States, when what we could do is eliminate corporate taxes, and nobody in the world could compete with how cheap our prices would be produced. That would explode the economy upward. And as Art Laffer, Ronald Reagan's economic advisor--boy, I sure wish he were advising this President. As he pointed out, you can only increase the percentage of taxes so far, and each increase, to a certain extent, will increase the revenues in the Federal Treasury. But if you increase it too far, then you start hurting the economy, which then, in turn, starts decreasing the revenues into the Federal Treasury. So if you want to maximize the tax dollars coming into the government so our friends across the aisle can continue to buy safe havens in China for rare dogs and cats, continue to buy safe havens for cranes in foreign countries, continue to pay billions to Pakistan so they can turn around and reward the Taliban that we had pretty much defeated but they're on the rise again, if we want to keep paying enemies of our friends, like the enemies of Israel, all this money, then we need to have higher revenues by the Federal Treasury. And that's going to require not raising taxes--we're too high already--but lowering. And I know this is going to offend some of my friends across the aisle, but you're going to have to lower taxes on the people that are actually paying them. I know that's an affront to some people. They think, well, the people that are paying taxes must be wealthy or they wouldn't be paying taxes, so they should not be entitled to tax cuts. We should give the tax cuts to people that aren't paying them. So I know it's serious. I know it's an affront to some of my friends, but you have to lower taxes on the people paying the taxes or the tax cuts don't explode the economy and create new jobs. I yield to my friend, Ms. Foxx.

Mr. GOHMERT. Mr. Speaker, it's always an honor to be on this floor. But at times it gets very difficult hearing positions put as being mine which were not mine. I would like to point out, for example, about student loans. I have student loans. We gave up--well, I won't even get into that. The only asset my wife and I have left is our home so that we could have the honor of being public servants. We've got a lot of student loans, and I cannot imagine a worse scenario than having to come begging to an administration that we already see punishes Republican States, Republican communities, and beg the administration for a student loan, because there is no one else that makes student loans besides the government. There were people that fought a revolution to avoid having the government, the King, make all the calls on who got to be educated, well-educated, that is, and who got to be property owners, who got to be well-to-do. They fought a revolution so that we would have the chance, the opportunity to at least succeed ourselves without having a government pick the winners and losers. That was the last thing they wanted. Patrick Henry talked about that. Is life so dear and peace so sweet that it can be purchased at the price of chains and slavery? Forbid it, Almighty God. They did not want the government to tell them what they could have and not have, what they could do and not do, who could have their children educated and who couldn't. And we have grown into a government that tells everybody everything they have to do. And now, though some of us read those disastrous health care bills, others are just now finding out the things we tried to warn about: that it was not about health care, it was about the GRE, the Government Running Everything. So now we find out in the news what some of us already knew. Gee, people are surprised to find out the government, under that disastrous health care bill, so-called, will keep everybody's records. And then people were surprised to find out that the health care czar says we may require everyone to have a body mass index, so we know who all is fat in this country and who isn't, who's more fat than others. That's the government's business? It wasn't after the revolution. They didn't want the government to say who could eat what and who couldn't eat this and that. My gracious. They got upset over a tea tax. If they could only see what's happened now. But, my friends are honorable people. So are they all, all honorable people. Come not to praise this country. Apparently, we're coming to bury it and to start with a new country where the government controls everything. Boy, Shakespeare could have a day with what's going on now. The government, our friend the government, is going to tell us who gets health care. We tried to warn people that if this health care bill passed, it would mean rationing. It passes, signed into law, all kinds of joyous occasions, and then we find out the President puts in charge the ration king. It shouldn't have surprised anybody. The President himself said to that dear lady at the White House, tea party precedent, whatever they tried to bill it as, when she said, what about my mother? She had a pacemaker put in, and she's had all these additional years of really quality life. And the President ends up, after stammering around for a while saying, maybe we'd been better off to just tell your mom to take a pain pill. Those were his words. Maybe we'd have been better off telling her to take a pain pill. I don't want the government to have that kind of power. Your mom lives, your mom dies. You live, you die. Was the revolution for nothing but 200 years? And now we've left all personal responsibility. We don't want personal responsibility. We're going to let the government tell us who can have a college-educated child and who can't. We've seen what happened under this majority with the African Americans who had come begging in this city saying, please don't end the voucher program that was started under the Republicans. We weren't sure about it. One dear lady was talking about her children, how one had been brutalized, but others had been able to go to a good school, a private school because they got a voucher, and it allowed them the freedom to have their child as educated as any rich Democrat in this city. But apparently, as Clarence Thomas points out, and I can't do his book justice, ``My Grandfather's Son,'' he talked about being raised in a poor, poor African American community by loving grandparents who had very little. And he talked about his grandfather pointing out that some snakes, you don't have to worry so much about because you see them. They make a big deal if they're going to try to bite you from the front. But you have to worry about those that will sneak up on you, act like they're no big deal, just kind of blend in, and all of a sudden they bite you. And that's what he talks about, as I understood him to talk about this soft form of discrimination. You know, we're going to help you. We're going to provide for you. We're going to take care of you. But don't have a thought of your own because if you dare, as a minority, to have a thought of your own and try to rise above your circumstances on your own, we're going to slap you down. And that, as he talks about in his book, is the kind of discrimination that can hurt worse than any kind. The liberals who would talk to him, and you could tell they only wanted to talk about sports, or how he had been mistreated as a poor black growing up in America; whereas others, he began to notice, as a radical liberal himself, Clarence Thomas in the early days, bitter about what he had been through, began to notice that conservatives would talk to him and wanted to know his opinion about a lot of different things, including politics. And he began to see that soft discrimination from liberals. Yeah, we'll help you. We'll provide for you, but you've got to do what we tell you, because if you dare to have a thought of your own, if you dare to think for yourself, if you dare to try to rise above your circumstances, we'll slap you down. As he said during those hearings, it was an electronic lynching that he got. And what's tragic through it all, when you go back and review his incredible school record, growing up with the poverty he did, the man had and has a brilliant intellect, but you wouldn't know it from the liberals. They were out to slap him down. And here you have African American mothers coming to Congress saying, Please, don't let the voucher program go. Allow us not to have our kids educated where they can be shot and be part of gangs, but where they can go and have a uniform and get a great education and end up being very wealthy or very powerful down the road, much like the President himself did. Why wouldn't you want that for every child. Regardless of the race, creed, color, nationality, why wouldn't you want that for the child? Give them a voucher. Let them chose what school they can go to so they don't have to worry about their child being shot, killed, brutalized by gangs. You want to talk about what this majority did? They struck that program down and condemned minorities in this city back to the poor schools from which they came. Don't you dare try to rise above your circumstances. We want you back in the poor schools where you will have to rely totally on us. Why not let them reach their God-given potential? Slapping them down. And our friends across the aisle want to come in here and trash-mouth Republicans because we had concerns about the government taking over all of the student loan business. Yes, I do, and I always will. The government gets to tell us who's going to get a loan, whose child gets a college education? Yes, I've got a problem with that. One of our friends across the aisle says it's like a car wobbling down the aisle or the street, he said. And people on our side of the aisle, he says, don't even want to try to fix it. Well, guess who set it to wobbling? Our friends across the aisle. And guess what? I am so sick and tired about hearing all of this trash mouth of the last 2 years of the Bush Presidency and how terrible the last year of the Bush Presidency was and how bad the last 2 years of the Bush Presidency was, because guess who was in charge? It sure wasn't George W. Bush. He was over there in the executive branch. But the Constitution makes clear that the people who run the country will be the Congress. That the President down at the other end of Pennsylvania Avenue, right down that way, he can't appropriate one dime for any program. It has to come from the Congress. So what happened? Our friends across the aisle appropriately complained that during the Bush early years the Republicans got giddy and began spending too much, began to have a $160 billion annual deficit in their budget. And so our friends across the aisle said, Throw them out. Put us in. They're overspending. We'll fix things. And so the voters appropriately said, Republicans, you have been overspending. We loved you in 1995, 1996, 1997, 1998, 1999, 2000, when you, not President Clinton--he was in the office. He fought the Republican Congress kicking and screaming. But when they would have enough votes over here, he couldn't stop them, vetoed a few things. When he couldn't stop the Congress, they had folks across the aisle that realized they wouldn't get reelected if they didn't vote for balanced budgets, then the Republican Congress brought President Clinton around. And that's why I love the comment from my colleague across the aisle about the Clinton administration. He said, There were problems except for the blip during the Clinton administration. That's right. There was 4 years of Democrat control in this House as they brought our financial situation closer and closer to the day we are now. And as my Democratic colleague pointed out, there was a blip during the Clinton administration after the Contract with America when Republicans took over, and they balanced the budget. The President can't do that. This Congress has to do that. And what do we have to show this year? No budget. As one of our Democratic colleagues said back in 2006, If you can't put together a budget, you can't govern. This year, they didn't put together a budget. So according to our Democratic friend, they cannot govern. I'm proud to be joined by my friend, Congresswoman Virginia Foxx, and I'll be proud to yield to her such time that she needs.

Mr. GOHMERT. If I could reclaim my time, going to the June employment numbers, I have an article here. I call him a friend. I hope he would. Mallory Factor had written an article entitled, ``The Truth About June Employment Numbers,'' and Mallory talks about the spin that our friends across the aisle are creating, trying to make it sound great about the unemployment numbers. And as he says, ``All this spin is supposed to make us respond positively: `Wow! Happy days are here again. The recovery must be really gaining steam.' And we are supposed to conclude that maybe we don't need to throw out the Democrats in the midterm elections after all.'' Mallory goes on and says, ``The June jobs numbers show unemployment falling .2 percent to 9.5 percent. This may sound, or this may seem, like an improvement until you realize that this decrease is almost all caused by an additional 611,000 Americans giving up on finding jobs last month. When people stop looking for work, unemployment percentages go down even though the economy has not improved and may have even gotten worse.'' He goes on and says, ``Not only is unemployment the lowest in the government sector of all industry sectors in America, Federal civilian employees make a stunning 30 to 40 percent more in total compensation than similarly skilled private workers, according to the Heritage Foundation.'' Now, further, he says, basically, at the end of 2007, ``The Federal Government's civilian payroll has actually increased by 240,000 to 2.2 million workers, excluding Census and postal workers.'' We know last month, in June, there was all this hoop-de-do about 431,000 new jobs; and that would ordinarily be fantastic, except that 411,000 of them were temporary Census workers. Anyway, Mallory goes on and says, ``This leaves a smaller private sector supporting an ever larger public sector. And that can't be good for the recovery.'' I yield to the gentlewoman.

Mr. GOHMERT

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

Mr. GOHMERT

Mr. GOHMERT. I thank my friend from Virginia, truly a conscience in this body, for those profound words of challenge, bringing us back to the roots from which this great Nation has grown. And I realize the time grows late, and it is the last hour that we will be in session this week. And if the gentleman would indulge me, I know that we have a President who has said we're not a Christian Nation, and I will not debate that. But it is so critical to look at our roots. And so I would like to direct, Mr. Speaker, back to the words of Roger Williams when he said: ``That forced worship stinks in God's nostrils, that it denies Christ Jesus yet to come; that in these flames about religion, there is no other prudent, Christian way of preserving peace in the world, but by permission of different consciences.'' These are the words of our Founders that set this Nation in motion, that pointed us in the direction of religious tolerance. 1701, William Penn drafted the Charter of Privileges and said: ``First because no people can truly be happy, though under the greatest enjoyment of civil liberties, if abridged of the freedom of their consciences, as to their religious profession and worship: And Almighty God being the only Lord of Conscience, Father of Lights and Spirits, and the Author as well as Object of all divine knowledge, faith and worship, who only can enlighten the mind, and persuade and convince the understandings of people, I do hereby grant and declare that no person or persons inhabiting this province or territories, shall confess and acknowledge one Almighty God, the Creator, upholder and ruler of the world; and profess him or themselves obliged to live quietly under the civil government, shall be in any case molested or prejudiced in his or their person or estate, because of his or their conscientious persuasion or practice.'' Going back to our heritage, that this country was based on these principles, taught in the Bible, discussed by our Founders, and made the basis of our beliefs in religious freedom, Thomas Jefferson said: ``God who gave us life gave us liberty. And can the liberties of a nation be thought secure when we have removed their only firm basis, a conviction in the minds of the people that these liberties are a gift of God? That they are not to be violated, but with His wrath? Indeed, I tremble for my country when I reflect that God is just, that His justice cannot sleep forever.'' And it ought to cause every American to tremble when they think of the injustice we're allowing to be perpetuated on our citizens around the world. It ought to break the hearts and minds and consciences of everyone. A United States President said these words, referred to a Mr. Levi, a Galveston, Texas lawyer and a president of the National B'nai Brith, drafted President Theodore Roosevelt a telegram denouncing a Russian pogrom in 1903. The Czar of Russia was so stung by Roosevelt's message that he formally refused to accept it. Some Americans complained that Roosevelt had gone too far. He replied that there were crimes so monstrous that the American conscience had to assert itself. And there still are. ``No one is a better witness to the transience of tyranny than the children of Abraham. Forty centuries ago, the Jewish people were entrusted with a truth more enduring than any power of man. In the words of the prophet Isaiah, `This shall be my covenant with them, said the Lord: My spirit which is upon you, and the words which I have placed in your mouth, shall not be absent from your mouth, nor from the mouth of your children, nor from the mouth of your children's children, said the Lord from now for all time.' ``It is not an accident that freedom of religion is one of the central freedoms in our Bill of Rights. It is the first freedom of the human soul: the right to speak the words that God places in our mouths. We must stand for that freedom in our country. We must speak for that freedom in the world.'' Could the current administration and President dare to do any less than this President that is so reviled in this administration, President George W. Bush? I would like to just finish with one other thought, and that was what was related to have happened in Iraq after United States troops liberated Iraq, not for any purpose other than to liberate and to free the people there, and to assure us that they would not be a threat to their neighbors or the rest of the world. President Bush appointed a retired general named Jay Garner. I had heard the story relayed before and I called him this evening to ask if I could retell it here. He was in charge of looking about, talking to people all around Iraq, and seeing what kind of government would be best suited for Iraq so that we could help the Iraqi people establish a nation of strength and a representative, hopefully, a representative government. And he talked to people around the country. And over and over, people kept referring him to this huge man, a Shiia, a cleric, who wore the black turban, the black robes, and was a descendant, apparently, of Mohammed. And everyone kept telling him he had to talk to this man because everyone looked to him for insight, for words of wisdom. And so eventually General Garner went, made an appointment, visited with him. He had a number of people with him, including a reporter. He was often a freelance report, but at this point a reporter for Time magazine. And apparently this cleric spoke very good English, but he said he'd like to tell in his own language what should be done. And he talked for quite some time in his language. Everything was recorded. And then he said, let me tell you in a nutshell what I've said. We need a constitutional process, perhaps like yours in the United States, where we create a constitution. But it must be written by Iraqis. The government must be of Iraqis. And it must be based on the lessons of Jesus Christ and bring all the nation together. General Garner said when he left that interview with the people in the entourage, he asked the others, did everybody hear what I just think I heard? And they said, yes. Could you believe he said you needed a constitution based on the teachings of Jesus Christ? And he asked the reporter from Time, are you going to put that in the story? He said, no one would believe that. But when you think about the wisdom of this great Shiia cleric, apparently, Shari'ah law does not allow for freedom of religion and worship when it's considered in context too often. That's the way it's interpreted. It's only the teachings of Jesus that allow for a constitution that allow for freedom of worship. Whether you're Muslim, whether you're following the teachings of Mohammed or Jesus or Moses, it's only those teachings that give us the kind of Constitution we have. But since we have that Constitution, and we have been given the foresight by our Founders of what is required to do justice, to love mercy, we can do nothing less than what my friend from Virginia has indicated. We must stand for those who seek to worship as the directives of their heart lead them. And I thank my friend so much for the very touching time he has spent here on the floor. And I hope and pray that this administration will take those words to heart. I thank my friend.

Mr. GOHMERT

Mr. GOHMERT. Mr. Speaker, I was hearing my friend across the aisle. He was yelling about things not being paid for when, actually, what happened was, in my first 2 years here, in 2005 and 2006, our friends across the aisle pointed out to voters, These guys are running a $100 billion, $200 billion budget, so elect us, put us in the majority, and we will stop the insane deficit spending. We will make sure every bill is paid for. So the voters took them up on that. They gave our friends across the aisle, Mr. Speaker, the majority, and said, Okay, you guys say you won't deficit spend like the Republicans had started doing. The Republicans balanced the budget in the late 1990s, but they got away from it and got giddy when President Bush got elected. So, in January 2007, it was the Democrats' job to do what they had promised the voters they would do. That promise has not been kept. PAYGO was passed as a rule, but then that promise was not kept. I voted for PAYGO previously but not this last time because I found out it was a joke, that it was not intended to do what it said because, every time a bill comes along that they want to pass, they just do a rule that goes around it. There was no sense in that. This could be easily paid for. For all of those people whose eyes we look into who have lost their jobs--we see them at job fairs, and we see them around, looking for jobs--we've got to tell them that we have all of these little pet projects that we don't want to give up the money for. So, therefore, you're going to stay out of work because we're not going to let the private sector have the capital they need to create jobs. Yes, we're going to provide the unemployment benefits. That would be fine. But don't force other people not to have jobs because we don't create the capital by stopping the insane deficit spending. You hurt people. Yes, you help people by giving them unemployment benefits further, but you hurt people because they can't go get jobs because the jobs can't be created because we won't give up the little pet projects.

Mr. GOHMERT

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

Mr. GOHMERT

Mr. GOHMERT. Thank you, Mr. Speaker. Now, as always, it is a great honor to speak on this floor where so many have given so much trying to get the country in the right direction. I do need to address some things that have come up. For one thing, I would like to read an article from The Washington Examiner, June 9, 2010, written by Timothy Carney. ``As BP's Deepwater Horizon oil rig was sinking on April 22, Senator John Kerry, D-Mass, was on the phone with allies in his push for climate legislation, telling them he would soon roll out the Senate climate bill with the support of the utility industry and three oil companies--including BP, according to the Washington Post. ``Kerry never got to have his photo op with BP chief executive Tony Hayward and other regulation-friendly corporate chieftains. Within days, Republican cosponsor Lindsey Graham, R-S.C, repudiated the bill following a spat about immigration, and Democrats went back to the drawing board. ``But the Kerry-BP alliance for an energy bill that included a cap- and-trade scheme for greenhouse gases pokes a hole in a favorite claim of President Obama and his allies in the media--that BP's lobbyists have fought fiercely to be left alone. Lobbying records show that BP is no free-market crusader, but instead a close friend of big government whenever it serves the company's bottom line.'' It goes on to point out that British Petroleum has lobbied for tax hikes, greenhouse gas restraints, for the stimulus bill, the Wall Street bailout and for subsidies for things like oil pipelines, solar panels, natural gas and biofuels. ``Now that BP's oil rig''--this is the article written by Timothy Carney, ``Now that BP's oil rig has caused the biggest environmental disaster in American history, the Left is pulling the same bogus trick it did with Enron and AIG: Whenever a company earns universal ire, declare it the poster boy for the free market. ``As Democrats fight to advance climate change policies, they are resorting to the misleading tactics they used in their health care and finance efforts: posing as the scourges of the special interests and tarring `reform' opponents as the stooges of big business. Expect BP to be public enemy No. 1 in the climate debate.'' Again, this is the article by Timothy Carney, June 9 of this year. Carney goes on, ``There's a problem: BP was a founding member of the U.S. Climate Action Partnership (USCAP), a lobby dedicated to passing a cap-and-trade bill. As the Nation's largest producer of natural gas, BP saw many ways to profit from climate legislation, notably by persuading Congress to provide subsidies to coal-fired plants that switched to gas.'' Well, it goes on, it talks more. It mentions that ``BP signed off on Kerry's Senate climate bill, which was hardly a capitalist concoction. One provision BP explicitly backed, according to Congressional Quarterly and other media reports: a higher gas tax. The money would be earmarked for building more highways, thus inducing more driving and more gasoline consumption. ``Elsewhere in the green arena, BP has lobbied for and profited from subsidies for biofuels and solar energy, two products that cannot break even without government support. Lobbying records show the company backing solar subsidies, including Federal funding for solar research. The U.S. Export-Import Bank, a Federal agency, is currently financing a BP solar energy project in Argentina. ``Ex-Im has also put up taxpayer cash to finance construction of the 1,094 Baku-Tbilisi-Ceyhan pipeline carrying oil from the Caspian Sea to Ceyhan, Turkey--again profiting BP. ``Lobbying records also show BP lobbying on Obama's stimulus bill and Bush's Wall Street bailout. You can guess the oil giant wasn't in league with the Cato Institute or Ron Paul on those. ``BP has more Democratic lobbyists than Republicans. It employs the Podesta Group, cofounded by John Podesta, Obama's transition director and confidant. Other BP troops on K Street include Michael Berman, a former top aid to Vice President Walter Mondale, Steven Champlin, former executive director of the House Democratic Caucus, and Matthew LaRocco, who worked in Bill Clinton's Interior Department and whose father was a Democratic Congressman.'' ``Two patterns have emerged during Obama's presidency: (1) Big business increasingly seeks profits through more government, and (2) Obama nonetheless paints opponents of his intervention as industry shills. BP is just the latest example of this tawdry sleight of hand. ``Once a government pet, BP now a capitalist tool.'' Again, this is from The Washington Examiner's lobbying editor, Timothy P. Carney. Interesting. Some of my friends come to the floor and talk about, make it sound like the Republicans and BP are really tight. You look at the lobbying records for BP, you look at the contribution records for the Wall Street firms that benefited so dramatically from the ridiculous bailout, yes, it was a Republican President, should have known better. You don't set aside free market principles to save the free market, because if only socialism works in a crisis, we got no business going back to free market in the good times. But the trouble is it was no free market. In this world in which people are not perfect and you have some greedy people, you have some people that lust for power, you have got to have a government intervention to make sure everyone is playing fairly; not that everyone has equal assets but that people have an equal opportunity. That's what a free market is supposed to be about in this world. In the next, we won't need a government. God will reign. But in this one, we need a government, and it needs not to be a player on the field and also the referee. We've had enough of that, got that going on in the flood insurance program. We now have been told in this last year and a half that, gee, we need the Federal Government playing in the health care field just to give an option. That's what we heard in the flood insurance program, and now the Federal Government is the only flood insurance program because nobody can compete with a government that gets to run in the red all the time. So I appreciate my friends trying to lay BP at the feet of the Republicans, but the fact is that the reason, apparently, that it took so long for this administration to finally turn on BP was--they did have to turn on them because they were together, working together on the crap-and-trade bill because BP was right there with them, supporting that crap-and-trade bill. And then you had Senator Kerry, the administration, I mean, BP was their buddy. They were helping them on the stimulus package, of all things. Most of the true free market people that don't want the government taking over everything were not supportive of the stimulus bill because they knew exactly what has happened would happen. That's what people knew, that when the government starts sucking all the capital out of the country for its own uses and its own devices, then the great job creator, small business, private business across the country, cannot get loans. And I so agree with my friend Mr. Schauer when he talks about how difficult it is for people to get loans in this country; it is just so difficult. We've got regulators breathing down their throats requiring them to hold more in reserve than the law requires, requiring them not to lend money to people that have been with them 20 and 30 years as great banking clients, threatening the full vengeance of the Federal Government if they were to make loans that some regulators told them not to make so that people can't get capital. The Federal Government is sucking it up, and it is a terrible, terrible shame. And I appreciated my friends across the aisle pointing out that, as Mr. Schauer said, I think it's 600,000, 700,000 jobs were lost the last 5 months of the Bush administration, and then he went on and pointed out that over the last 5 months the average has been 170,000 jobs a month that have been added. My friend from Florida came in and didn't realize he had said that. Her figure was 125,000 jobs per month. But we won't haggle over 50,000 jobs average per month. We would love to have those jobs. But unfortunately, to get to an average, whether it's 125,000 or 170,000, you have to have things like we did in June. 430,000 jobs created in the month of June. Great news. 431,000, actually. Unfortunately, 411,000 of those were temporary census workers. Oh, yeah, the economy is just booming, isn't it? It gets so tiresome hearing my friends across the aisle talk about that last year that Bush was in office and the damage he did to the economy. It's deeply troublesome because the fact is, in November of 2006, our Democratic friends took the majority by promising America that Republicans would not control spending but they would. They promised that we will get rid of this ridiculous $100 billion, $200 billion deficit for 1 year of spending by the Republicans who controlled Congress because, as anybody who has had any decent education in this country knows, the President and the executive branch can only spend money that is appropriated by the Congress. So we also know, then, for the last 2 years of the Bush Presidency, every stinking bill that passed only did so because the majority wanted it to pass. There was nothing Republicans could do in 2007 and 2008 to stop any bill in Congress that our friends across the aisle wanted to have passed. We tried. We made points of order, objections when we could see that the rules were not being followed and then would be ruled down from the Chair in order for us to appeal the ruling, which was voted down every single time that we appealed the ruling of the Chair because they had the votes to do so, not because it was a violation of the rule. So we come to the point a fair analysis has to indicate that if the spending was out of control in 2007 and 2008, obviously it wasn't because of the Bush administration. They can't appropriate anything to themselves. And if the policies of spending caused this great loss of jobs in the fall of 2008, then it was either the responsibility of the majority party, the majority party either caused the massive problems in 2008 to our economy, or the majority party was the most incompetent ever to be in the majority in this House. I don't think they were that incompetent. I think they passed exactly what was intended. We heard talk about the wonderful health care bill. It got pretty tiresome over the last year and a half hearing friends across the aisle accuse me and others of misrepresenting the real facts. How could we not understand what the bill was about? Well, the truth is, for those of us that read the ridiculous bills that were brought forth that were not about health care but were about the GRE--``government running everything''--we knew problems that were going to be forthcoming. Some of us came to this very podium and other podiums here and talked about what was in the bill because we were reading these provisions that deeply troubled us. And I note, General Electric is a big backer of this administration, been so excited about the health care bill because they were going to get to have the contract for bringing together all of the health care records in the country, that the Federal Government was going to be the repository, the depository for every health care record in America. The personal, private, biological situations of every person in America would be within the control of the Federal Government. You know, there are people who have made incredible deals happen, who have made the economy purr, and though they knew they were dying, others didn't know. The Federal Government didn't know, and so they made things happen because their biological lives were their own lives. Their lives were their own business. As a result of the ObamaCare bill that needs desperately to be repealed, if it is not, every man's most private, personal lives will be under the electronic control of the Federal Government. We have noticed that, when someone stands up against this administration, private information seems to surface from out of nowhere about that person. So anyone who stands up against them is liable to have the full power of the Democratic government come down on them. We know that in the days preceding the impeachment vote, or the vote to remove President Clinton from office, the White House was found to have over 1,000 FBI files in the White House. In the possession of every one of those files was a felony, meaning years in prison to anyone who possessed them, to anyone who was complicit in having them brought over from the FBI, because they had to be physically brought into the White House. They were, and you had to know there were a lot of people involved. Yet not one person was prosecuted. They could have certainly made the case against the person who had them. I believe it was 2 years in prison--it could have been 4--and I'm sure there are different ways to charge it so you could lump on different Federal charges, but at least 2,000 years in prison minimum for having those files. Any good prosecutor knows how you work that. You go to the guy who has the files, and you say, You're looking at 2,000 years in prison. You'll never get out, but you know what? If you'll help us successfully prosecute those who have caused you to get those 1,000 FBI files--because we know you can't do it on your own--and if you help us to know who it was who told you to get these files, who went through these private FBI files--if you help us with all of that, we can work a deal. Maybe you'll do 4 years. That's the way prosecutions normally work, and you work up the food chain until you find the highest person who was involved in bringing those files to the White House. None of that happened. None of it. For most prosecutors, they would see that as lay-down cases that are just so easy. You know, you've got them dead to rights. Now it's just a question of how far up the food chain you get to send people to prison. It didn't happen, and that was with the physical possession of FBI files. Now we're talking about a private company overseeing this operation. We're talking about the Federal Government's having control over all of these records. I know I've heard people ask, Well, what makes you think that anybody could ever get access to these private medical records of each individual in America? How could anybody be so naive when you see the kind of things that have already happened in this country and the disclosure of secret information? Do you think that if this Federal Government cannot keep secret the identity of our most secret agents that they will be able to keep secret the medical records of someone who has become an enemy of the reigning party in the White House or in Congress? There are always leaks these days, it seems. There are always leaks. We've found out, in the past few days, that the government, apparently, is going to require everybody in America to have a body mass index because the Federal Government wants to know how fat everybody in America is, and it doesn't take an Einstein to figure out that, once the Federal Government knows what your body mass index is, then they will be able to make decisions based on that information. Now, I've been belittled; I've had blogs take all kinds of shots at me; I've had people on the other side of the aisle belittle this comment I'm about to make that I've made over the last year and a half; but, boy, is it turning out that I was right and that the naysayers simply hadn't read the bill and could not see what was going to be allowed unto the Federal Government. Here is what I would say: Think about it. The Federal Government has all of your personal medical records. We've been told that the Federal Government has the capability of monitoring every credit card purchase, every debit card purchase that anyone in America makes. We are also told it doesn't do that, but that it has the capability. But once the Federal Government, through tax dollars, is paying for people's health care, then it will proclaim the right to know what you're spending your money on. For example, if you have too high of a cholesterol rate and if you have too high of a body mass index, then it's quite conceivable at some point that you'll get an email or you'll get a letter from your Federal Government, saying, We noticed your cholesterol was 160, and we noticed that you bought bacon at the grocery store this weekend. Accordingly, since you were on a Federal program, we are going to have to increase the amount that you pay to participate in the Federal ObamaCare program in which you're found. Well, now, as we hear these things come out, now that we are a few months past the bill's becoming law, things for which I was belittled are now appearing to be quite accurate in their projections. I heard my friends across the aisle talking about Social Security. If people are going to represent what I believe and what I have pushed for my 5\1/2\ years here in Congress, I would wish that they would get it right, because it wasn't. What I pushed with my Republican colleagues the year I got here in 2005, what I continue to push today and what I will continue to push next year, whether or not Republicans are in the majority or not, is this: Social Security tax dollars should go into the Social Security trust fund. Statements I made back in 2005 are easy to find. I pointed out back then that I had my staff do an experiment, which was to contact the Texas Employment Retirement System, the Galveston retirement system and the Social Security system and to pose this hypothetical: Suppose somebody had worked for 30 years, averaging $30,000 a year. What would be a person's retirement income per month? I talked about this in 2005, in 2006, 2007, 2008, 2009, this year. I spoke of it recently back home in East Texas. Well, what we got from Social Security was, well, you say average. A lot will depend on how many years, it was at what level, how you ended, all these other factors. So the best we can give you is somewhere between $600 a month and $900 a month. Tragic. Six hundred dollars to $900 a month. After someone has spent a lifetime paying into Social Security that's all you get? My goodness, the prescription drugs can eat that up in a heartbeat. And if you hadn't had your home already paid for, you are in big trouble. Six hundred dollars a month in your senior years, when you ought to be a glory to your family? No, you become a drag, because this government did not do what it said it would do--put that money in a Social Security trust fund. You look at some societies throughout history, and they point out that when you pay tribute to your seniors because of their wisdom, because of what they've learned through the years, and one society they always made, at any gathering, the oldest person the center of attention. It gave people a reason to continue to live longer, so people there did live longer. It's not what we do here, and it's tragic. We relegate our seniors, who are our greatest source of wisdom and experience and knowledge, to $600 a month for Social Security. Well, on the other hand, checking with the Texas Employment Retirement System, they came back and said, well, because it's a hypothetical and we don't have the exact years and how much was at the end and all that, the best we can say is somewhere $2,700 to $2,800 per month in retirement income. Wow. Several times the amount you would get from Social Security in the same scenario. What's the difference? The main difference is Social Security, since its inception in the 1930s, has never had a dime go into the Social Security trust fund. I thought it had until I got here. Come to find out this has been going on from the beginning. I thought it was a more recent development, maybe since the Great Society. Not true. Since the 1930s, never a dime of Social Security tax money going into the trust fund. How about that for a start? That's what I have been advocating. Try to lay a privatizing label on me. I have been advocating this for 5\1/ 2\ years. Put Social Security tax money into the trust fund. Now, we've got people on our side of the aisle too, a tiny minority that say uh- oh, if you were to do that it would make the government own too much in the way of bonds. But some of them also voted for the Wall Street bailout, so apparently they got beyond that concern in the 3 intervening years since they opposed my proposal. But there are just not a lot of people in the majority, it doesn't appear, who want to put Social Security tax dollars in the Social Security trust fund so that we can ensure that it will be there for years to come and it will draw interest. And we could do so much better by the seniors, who are the Greatest Generation, the seniors who have laid the groundwork, the foundation for this greatest advancement in human history. And now we're treating them so poorly by giving them $600 a month after all they've done because we won't put money in a trust fund so it can grow and they could get more in their senior years so that they don't have to worry whether they'll have to eat or get their drugs. We owe them so much better. And if my friends in the majority would want to do that we could do it like that. And the President wouldn't have a choice. He'd have to sign it because you would have more than two-thirds in both Houses that would vote for that. What a great day for seniors that would be. What a great day for people moving toward their senior years to know, finally, money's going into the trust fund that will start growing. First time in American history. That's the kind of thing we need to be doing. Now, we keep hearing about this financial reform bill. It's a financial deform bill, pure and simple. It still continues this ridiculous notion of a systemic risk panel, so that the government gets to pick and choose which companies will live and which will die. Because the way it's set up, that's what's going to happen. We already saw that with Goldman Sachs and AIG, two companies that had historically given contributions four to one to the Democratic Party over Republicans. But boy didn't George W. Bush do them a favor? He let Hank Paulson talk him into bailing out his buddies, all these big Democratic donors, to the tune of billions of dollars when they got their own cart in the ditch. Some of us realize it's nice when you help somebody get their cart out of the ditch, but you sure shouldn't let them run over you with it once they do. And that's what's happened. Goldman Sachs had their biggest profiting year in their history. So you can bet they'll be able to donate lots and lots of money this year to keep their friends that have done them the most good in office. And it won't be Republicans. Another problem in this financial deform act is that it creates a system of bailouts as far into the future as anybody living today can see. When anyone says that a company or a bank is too big to fail, then it is absolutely essential that they be allowed to go through bankruptcy, be declared a failure, reorganized, sell off some of their attractive assets, and reorganize so never again will they be so big that they will pose a risk to our economy. That's not what happened with the Wall Street bailout. It's not what has continued to happen. And one of the things that has grieved so many of us, that we could not believe that any White House, Republican or Democrat, could appoint a task force, a bunch of czars, and they make decisions about who lives and who dies in the automotive industry. They picked the winners and losers. They take property from people without due process of law. They force dealers, who owe money to the banks for buying the dealerships, into losing their dealership, take it away from them without any due process of law, without a chance to go to the bankruptcy court and say we have an alternative plan. Without a chance to come to the courts and say, you know what, you're not going to sell more cars by having so many less dealers. They didn't have a chance to come to the bankruptcy courts or to the courts of America and say why in the world would you have some idiot proclaim that in a terrible recession we're going to close down tens of thousands of jobs and put them out of business, put them out of their jobs, put their families out wanting and begging because we felt like it? We wanted our friends to be in business, didn't want our enemies to be in business. Well, the Founders were scared to death that a government might ever have that kind of power, so they took pains, they fought for, they died for the chance to have a government with not just one House in Congress but two. So if one got too far afield, the other could rein them in, keep them from doing something stupid. And if both of them did something stupid, then the executive branch, the President, could stop them with a simple veto. And if both of them got out of hand, you had a judicial branch, and they could cancel out what the others did. And if the executive branch gets too far afield and appoints an auto task force that's going to violate the Constitution by taking property without due process of law and they're going to just run roughshod over the laws passed by the Congress that says this is the way bankruptcy proceedings go and you don't violate that, that if an executive branch ran roughshod over both the law and the Constitution, then the Congress would be upset and they would say, Wait a minute. The Congress passed those bankruptcy laws. We don't care if you did get a bankruptcy judge who wants to be reaffirmed as a judge in a few years or be a district judge down the road. We don't care if you got them to sign that bill. We're going to cut off funding for all of these czars, all of these task forces you've appointed who have no accountability to us. We're going to cut off your money. We'll cut off your task force at the knees. We'll cut off your czars at the knees because we're going to defund them. That power was given to Congress to make sure that you don't let an executive branch appoint a bunch of czars without the consent of the Senate and then make rules and decide who loses their property without any accountability to anybody. The Founders knew that with people in Congress in numbers in the House and Senate, they would never let the laws they passed be run over in such a fashion. They would stop the executive branch from doing that. But, unfortunately, it didn't happen. Congress let the executive branch, through the auto task force, disregard the Constitution, disregard the law, disregard creditors' rights in the law, disregard the rights of secured creditors, promote unsecured creditors and make them owners, put secured creditors down to getting pennies and tell the secured creditors, if you say anything about it, you'll have the full force of the Federal Government executive branch come on you and you will be done in business for good. Don't you dare stand in our way. There were threats that we heard were made. And so they couldn't fight. Their only hope was that Congress would protect the power that it was entrusted with to keep the executive branch from running over the Constitution. Congress let it happen. But the Founders were so clever. They knew they didn't trust government, so they had this third branch, the court. And of course the Supreme Court was the only court actually created in the Constitution. Every other court in America owes its existence to this body. But the Supreme Court, thank goodness the Founders had the foresight to create that third branch. They'll stop the auto task force from disregarding the Constitution and disregarding the laws passed by Congress. Even though Congress didn't, they will. And God bless Ruth Bader Ginsburg, to her credit, put a 24-hour hold on that whole deal. But the executive branch scared the Supreme Court sufficiently into thinking that if they extended that 24-hour hold any further, then apparently they made the Supreme Court believe that they would be responsible for the loss of every job related to the auto industry and all of those lost jobs would be on the Supreme Court's head. Why else would they let the Constitution be trampled on in such a fashion? Why else would they allow the laws to be trampled on in such a fashion? None of the safeguards worked and people lost their businesses. And then we get this article, July 19, from Bloomberg of all sources, and I'll read: ``The Obama administration's push to accelerate General Motors Co. and Chrysler Group LLC's dealership closings aimed at helping the companies compete may not have been necessary and added to unemployment, a U.S. watchdog said. ``The Treasury Department should have considered whether speeding up the closings was worth the potential loss of tens of thousands of jobs, according to a report released yesterday by Neil Barofsky, special inspector general of the Troubled Asset Relief Program.'' TARP, of course. The article goes on, ``The U.S. had rejected reorganization plans from the carmakers in March 2009, in part citing a `slow pace' for GM to scale back its dealer network. `` `Such dramatic and accelerated dealership closings may not have been necessary and underscores the need for Treasury to tread very carefully when considering such decisions in the future,' Barofsky concluded. ``The report made prompt congressional criticism of the administration's handling of the automaker bailouts. Lawmakers have already complained about the job losses in their districts from dealership closings and the process by which retailers were selected for shutdowns. `` `This sobering report should serve as a wake-up call as to the implications of politically orchestrated bailouts,' Representative Darrell Issa, a California Republican and ranking member on the House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform, said yesterday in a statement. ``Obama's Treasury Department, which has spent $80.7 billion on auto assistance under the TARP program, criticized the inspector's audit and said without government aid both companies faced failure and possible liquidation. ``The Department's auto task force in early 2009 found Detroit-based GM's plan for closing 1,650 dealers by 2014 too slow, according to Barofsky's report. In response, GM identified 1,454 dealerships to be shut down by October, Barofsky said. ``Auburn Hills, Michigan-based Chrysler, which planned to shut almost 1,200 dealerships by 2014, instead decided to immediately close 789 in bankruptcy after Treasury's urgings, according to the report. ``The Treasury Department, using advice received from industry experts, had encouraged smaller dealership networks to help the carmakers boost sales and better compete with Japan's Toyota Motor Corp. and Honda Motor Co., according to the report. ``GM, which later moved to trim the closers by about half, said in a statement that events described in the report `have since been overtaken by a new GM and a stronger dealer network to match,'. The statement added, `The new GM is also moving forward to improve dealer relations and has already reinstated several hundred.' '' Reinstated several hundred? After the executive branch forced these people to lose their property without due process of law? Continuing on with the article. ``General Motors Co. was formed last year out of bankruptcy from the best-performing assets of General Motors Corp. while a group led by Fiat S.p.A. purchased most of the bankrupt Chrysler LLC assets, forming Chrysler Group LLC. Taxpayer aid made the reorganizations possible.'' Not bad enough to put tens of thousands of people out of business and take millions and millions of dollars without due process, we also took taxpayer money. This administration and this majority let it happen. ``Dealer complaints about closures prompted lawmakers, including Senator Jay Rockefeller, a West Virginia Democrat, to ask Barofsky to investigate. `` `There is substantial confusion, even among dealers themselves, as to how GM and Chrysler selected dealerships for termination,' Rockefeller, chairman of the Commerce, Science and Transportation Committee, said in a letter to Barofsky. ``The report found that Chrysler, which made decisions on a case-by- case basis, followed the criteria for targeting dealers for termination. GM was inconsistent and retained more than 1,300 dealers who would have been shut based on sales, consumer satisfaction and profitability, according to the report.'' `` `The fact that Treasury was acting in part as an investor in GM and Chrysler does not insulate Treasury from its responsibility to the broader economy,' Barofsky said. `Treasury should have taken special care given that the auto team's determinations had the potential to contribute to job losses.' Herbert Allison, assistant Treasury secretary for financial stability''--isn't that a misnomer. Anyway, he ``said in a letter included in the report that the restructuring process `was not easy' and required `deep and painful sacrifices' from all parties. `` `We strongly disagree with many of your statements, your conclusions and the lessons learned,' Allison told Barofsky. ``President Barack Obama signed a law in December that required the automakers to offer binding arbitration to dealers whose outlets were being closed. GM said in March it planned to reinstate 661 dealers after the company began reevaluating the closing of 1,100 retailers.'' And who's going to pay them back for all the property that was stolen from them by this administration? But I have to add stolen legally because Congress didn't stop them; the Supreme Court didn't stop them. So, accordingly, it must have been legal. They weren't stopped by the people that could have. Well, back to the article: ``Chrysler said that same month it was offering new franchises to 50 dealers who applied for arbitration, in addition to 36 previous offers or new agreements. Chrysler terminated 789 dealers last year and said in January that 409 had applied for arbitration.'' I tell you what, we've heard from dealers who were some of the most profitable, who were doing well, and this administration took them away from them and got a bankruptcy judge to sign off, to his shame. Should be eternal shame, the damage that judge and those auto task force people caused. Shameless. And yet when the House and Senate asked for information, notes from their meetings, they said, We're not accountable to you. We're a rogue government, is basically what they, in essence, were saying. We're a rogue government; we're czars. We do what we want. You can't touch us. Only the President who put us in these positions can get rid of us, and he likes what we've done. That's the message in essence. When I hear my friends across the aisle talk about the importance of PAYGO, I was a Republican that voted for that in the previous term because I supported that, and then I come to find out it was a joke. It didn't mean what they were talking about with PAYGO, because every time there's a big bill, including extending the unemployment benefits, they have no intention of paying for that, just creating an exception over and over. Here it comes with a rule. Well, PAYGO suspended, we're not going to apply here. Well, what good was it ever passing it in the first place? I learned my lesson. I thought that I could believe my friends across the aisle: yeah, we need to vote for PAYGO. People on this side of the aisle said don't believe them. I said, no, they're pushing this PAYGO bill; I'm going to vote for it. I did, and boy, did I learn. There was no seriousness about following through on that. And it still blows my mind to hear people say over and over that tax breaks for the wealthiest Americans are wrong. They're right. If you do nothing but have tax breaks for the wealthiest Americans, it is wrong, should not happen. But how about when you have a tax break for the people paying taxes? That's fair. When it's an across-the-board tax cut, evenly cut across the board, that's fair. Unfortunately, we are quickly approaching the point where 50 percent or more of Americans will not pay income tax. Historians have warned about this point, that it is the point of no return. It is the line of demarcation. Once you pass it, you can't get back. Only with a miracle from God can a Nation be saved once a representative government has more than 50 percent of its voters not paying the taxes that run the government. When you get past that point, you're done. It's one of the reasons I came here. It's one of the reasons I don't sleep much, keep working away, trying to figure out ways to hold this place together until we can have a fair deal for everybody. Heck, I'm the guy that came up with the tax holiday idea. When the Bush administration and Obama administration were talking about, you know, really trillions of dollars to get the economy going, heck, I found out you're talking about trillions, Federal Reserve, trillions, to get the economy going. $1.21 trillion was all that was expected to be paid in personal income tax for year 2008. That's when it hit me, wow, we'd be a whole lot better off if we just said no income tax for 2008. It'd be a lot cheaper than all these bailout programs, and the American public would get their own money, and they would get to decide what car to buy. They would get out of trouble on their mortgages. But now, this administration--and they can only do it with this Congress getting it done because Congress passes the money bills. This administration, this majority have spent trillions and trillions of dollars; and we are so obligated, there's no way to have a tax holiday right now. We've got us so deeply in debt we can't do that now. It sure would have spurred the economy a whole lot more cheaply than what we've done. I want to finish tonight by taking, Mr. Speaker, one back to 1755. We know that there are those, including the President, who have said this is not a Christian Nation, and I will not debate that point whether we are or not now, but I know where we came from. In 1755, George Washington was in his early 20s, 6-foot, three and a half, at least that's what he was measured when he died. Some books say six-two, six-four, six three and a half at his death, big, strapping guy, full of emotion, powerful man, athletic man. He was riding a horse, leading 100 American militiamen. They were accompanying 1,300 British Red Coats in the French and Indian War. They were heading up to Fort Duquesne in Pennsylvania. And the British generals--there were 82 officers including Washington on horseback. The British generals had decided to go take the path of least resistance, through the woods, through this low area, sort of a ravine, passing through that area. Well, Washington got concerned they could be walking into an ambush. So he asked the general, Let me send some of the men ahead that know this area, make sure we're not walking into a trap. He was belittled by the general. You think you know more about military than I do? This was a guy that was described as self-taught, described himself that way, George Washington. So they didn't send Washington's men. They had to check, they walked into an ambush. The Indians, the French opened up, for 2 hours, firefight. After 2 hours, over 713 British redcoats were dead, they had gone shoulder to shoulder, back to back. They were getting wiped out. The Americans, none were killed, some were wounded, but they had immediately taken cover. Washington, at the end of 2 hours, was the only officer still on horseback, still fighting. He had had one shot out from under him, at least one. He is still on horseback fighting. Brave, he is fighting, he is calling out orders, incredible man. All his men were amazed at this gallant, brave, courageous 20- something year old. After 2 hours, he could see the rest of the British were going to be wiped out if they didn't retreat. They retreated. Two days later he wrote to his mother and brother, he hadn't met Martha yet. He said, in essence, when we got to a place of safety and camped for the night, I took off my hat, shook out my hair. Bullet fragments flew everywhere, had not a scratch on my head. Took off my jacket, I had bullet holes through and through, had not a scratch on me. Truly, divine providence. God protected me. Fifteen years later, George Washington, he became a hero out of that, because word spread from all the Americans about how courageous and brave this young man was, big, tall, strong, strapping guy, how brave he was, what a fighter he was. He never lost his head. He kept his cool, kept fighting, calling out orders, just a leader of leaders, a man who was quoted as saying, men unused to restraint must be led; they will not be drove. Fifteen years later, he was going with a friend, Larry Craig, up through that same area. Dr. Craig was with him when he died, unfortunately, but he was going to show him the area that was so famous where this occurred. They got up there where there were Indians there that wanted to sit down and meet with him. The Indian chief, the lead chief, said, we were in these woods 15 years ago, you and I were here. I ordered my men to fire at you before they fired at anyone else, and they did that. We came all this way to meet the man that God would not let die. It used to be in history books and every American history book until 1910 and began to disappear. I won't debate whether we are a Christian nation now, but Washington knew what we knew, knew what we were.

Mr. GOHMERT

Mr. GOHMERT. Mr. Speaker, well, I keep hearing our friends across the aisle end up talking about George W. Bush. They keep forgetting that got them the majority in November of 2006. My friends across the aisle have been in charge ever since 2006. It's time to do something besides blame people who are not in office. Take responsibility, that's a good thing. And then we just hear this weekend, our administration, our friends, want to give $500 million more to Pakistan because we are not worried enough about folks here. We already gave them maybe a billion bucks. I have the new results from last year. They voted against us in the U.N. 87.5 percent of the time. You don't have to pay people to hate you; they'll do it for free. Let's get the money where it will do us some good instead of helping our enemies cause us problems.

Mr. GOHMERT

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