Louie Gohmert

Mr. GOHMERT

Mr. GOHMERT. Thank you, Mr. Speaker. There are three different issues that I am compelled to bring up and to discuss. One, first of all, is with what is going on in the Gulf of Mexico. Being from Texas, we are particularly sensitive to what happens there. There have been so many days on the Gulf of Mexico coast, on the Texas coast--Louisiana, Alabama, Mississippi, Florida--in all of those areas, and to see what is happening is heartbreaking. Two things need to be done. One is to immediately do everything we can to stop additional oil from flowing into the area. At the same time, we must clean up the area before we do any more devastation. Then the other thing is we need to find out what caused the spill and what could have been done better to prevent this kind of thing from ever happening. You know, we find out that British Petroleum had been cited 750 times, apparently, on rigs for safety violations. Compare that to others. I believe Exxon and Shell may have had one during the same period. So I mean there were indicators that perhaps BP was hurrying, that perhaps there was a test that didn't work out. Well, we've heard those rumors. Yet they still continued. There is the rumor of someone's yelling on the phone after the explosion: I told you, I told you. Are you happy? I told you. It's something to that effect. There are indications that perhaps people at BP knew that they were moving too fast and got careless. There was no reason for this. There was no reason for this. Proper measures had been taken. One of the problems we find in America is when the government decides to get involved and to do everything itself rather than to have the supervisory, the regulatory role, that it is supposed to have. In other words, what the Federal Government is supposed to do is to make sure that everybody plays fair and to then let them play. If you have a company that is playing in Federal ocean areas, you've got to make sure they're not breaking the rules and jeopardizing your homeland. When asking Director Birnbaum of the Minerals Management Service why the testing had not been disclosed, she said, Well, it's under investigation. So those reports are being utilized in the investigation. I publicly asked in our hearing for a copy of the reports because we know experts as well who can look at the reports and say, Well, it says right here that the test didn't work, that there were problems that arose. We don't need to wait months. Let's find out what the problem was so that we can see if we need to fix that on other BP rigs. In the meantime, because of the problems there, thousands and thousands of American workers are being punished by this administration with the overreaction. We're not just stopping BP and double checking their work. We're going after everybody. The President said there would be a 6-month moratorium. He's going to hurt everybody because of what BP may have done or not done. That's no way to act. In the middle of a crisis, in the middle of a recession, you put other people out of work? You know, we heard from the families here on Capitol Hill. Bless their hearts. They've been through so much with the loss of life out there on that rig. It's my understanding that, even since the hearing, they're not demanding that drilling stop. They've got too many friends who will be out of work. We need to find those who are responsible. Yet, in the meantime, what could be done? We have heard the President very nobly say, I'm in control. The administration says they've been in control from day one. Yet we see this week, according to this article by Loren Steffy, in the Houston Chronicle, posted on June 8, at 10:13 p.m.: ``Three days after the explosion of the Deepwater Horizon in the Gulf of Mexico, the Dutch Government offered to help. It was willing to provide ships outfitted with oil-skimming booms, and it proposed a plan for building sand barriers to protect sensitive marshlands. ``The response from the Obama administration and British Petroleum, BP, which are coordinating the cleanup, is, `The Embassy got a nice letter from the administration that said, ``Thanks, but no thanks,'' said Geert Visser, consul general for the Netherlands in Houston.'' ' Well, wasn't that nice. The administration has been in control, we are told, from day one. We heard that before a lot of the people covering the event even noticed that this administration was down there in charge. Apparently, within 3 days, their answer was to say we don't want help. These people are from the Netherlands. What do they know about dikes and sand barriers and dealing with ocean water? Oh, yeah. Their country has been reclaimed from the ocean, a good deal of it. Why would we want their help? These guys are experts on dealing with ocean water problems. They've been turned away. They were turned away. What sense does that make? Oh, we're in charge. We're in control. We're running things. Yet, in the response to the Dutch, who had the capability to come in and to immediately take action to protect the wildlife, the estuaries, these important marshlands, the beaches--and 3 days after the oil began gushing into the gulf--this administration basically put British Petroleum in charge. It said you take care of it. You know, we don't have your expertise. You take care of it. We heard from Mr. Gibbs, who nicely said--or I believe it was, maybe, Secretary Salazar, but the administration was pointing out that we have our boot on their throat. In a hearing in our Natural Resources Committee, I asked, What does that mean? The Deputy Secretary of the Interior under Salazar and others there, I didn't really feel, gave appropriate answers. I don't know. I still don't know what that means. We've got our boot on their throat. You know, I'd rather you boot me down there to Louisiana and to Florida and make sure that the oil is not getting to the shore, but when in our hearing they were asked about Louisiana's wanting to set up little barrier islands out there so the oil wouldn't get into the sensitive areas and kill the wildlife and kill off the livings of so many thousands of people, we were told in that hearing, We have that under discussion. Oil was gushing and still is, and this administration has those things under discussion. He went on to elaborate and explain. You see, we think it's possible that, if they build these sand islands out there, it may actually draw more oil into the areas they are trying to protect. So we're still talking about it. Good grief. How about checking with the Dutch? They offered to help 3 days after the explosion. Well, this article goes on. It says: ``Now, almost 7 weeks later, as the oil spewing from the battered well spreads across the gulf and soils pristine beaches and coastline, BP and our government have reconsidered. U.S. ships are being outfitted this week with four pairs of skimming booms airlifted from the Netherlands and should be deployed within days. Each pair can process 5 million gallons of water a day, removing 20,000 tons of oil and sludge. At that rate, how much more oil could have been removed from the gulf during the past month?'' But we know who is in charge. They've made it clear from day one. They didn't want the Dutch help for 7 weeks, and now the administration says, You know what? Maybe we'll outfit our own ships and do what you offered to do when this first started. The article says: ``The uncoordinated response to an offer of assistance has become characteristic of this disaster's response. Too often, BP and the government don't seem to know what the other is doing, and the response has seemed too slow and too confused. Federal law has also hampered the assistance. The Jones Act, the maritime law that requires all goods be carried in U.S. waters by U.S.-flagged ships, has prevented Dutch ships with spill-fighting equipment from entering U.S. coastal areas. `` `What's wrong with accepting outside help?' Visser asked.'' Again, Visser is the consul general for the Netherlands, who offered the assistance. Visser said, `` `If there's a country that's experienced with building dikes and managing water, it's the Netherlands.' ``Even if, 3 days after the rig exploded, it seemed as if the Dutch equipment and expertise wasn't needed, wouldn't it have been better to accept it, to err on the side of having too many resources available rather than not enough? ``BP has been inundated with well-intentioned cleanup suggestions, but the Dutch offer was different. It came through official channels from a government offering to share its demonstrated expertise. ``Many in the U.S., including the President, have expressed frustration with the handling of the cleanup. In the Netherlands, the response would have been different, Visser said. ``There, the government owns the cleanup equipment, including the skimmers now being deployed in the gulf. ``If there's a spill in the Netherlands, we give the oil companies 12 hours to react, he said. ``If the response is inadequate or the companies are unprepared, the government takes over and sends the companies the bill. ``While the skimmers should soon be in use, the plan for building sand barriers remains more uncertain.'' That is as was mentioned in our hearing. We were told in our hearing that weeks after the explosion and the oil started gushing forward, Well, we have that under discussion. We're concerned that, if we build these little barrier islands that prevent the oil from getting into these sensitive areas, they could actually cause more oil to come into the sensitive areas. So we are still having it under discussion. Excuse me? You've got people losing their livelihoods probably for the rest of their lives, and you want to come in and say, You know, we're discussing it. Well, Louisiana Governor Bobby Jindal supports the idea, and the Coast Guard has tentatively approved the project. One of the proposals being considered was developed by the Dutch marine contractor Van Oord and Deltares, a Dutch research institute that specializes in environmental issues in deltas, coastal areas and rivers. They have a strategy to begin building 60-mile-long sand dikes within 3 weeks. That proposal, like the offer for skimmers, was rebuffed but then later accepted by the government. BP has begun paying about $360 million to cover the cost. Once again, though, the Jones Act may be getting in the way. American dredging companies, which lack the dike building expertise of the Dutch want to do the work themselves, Visser said. We don't want to take over, but we have the equipment, he said. The Dutch have the equipment. They've offered it. While he battles the bureaucracy, the people of Louisiana suffer, their livelihoods in jeopardy from the onslaught of oil. Let's forget about politics. Let's get it done, was Visser's last comment in the article. It makes no sense if somebody's going to be in charge and vote ``present.'' You can't vote ``present.'' We'll think about it. We'll talk about it. We don't want to commit, in an emergency. Err on the side of additional help. But, here again, we've got the Jones Act from the 1920s that stands in the way. It's interesting, another posting on June 8. This is apparently in American Leadership. It mentions within days of the oil spill, several European nations and 13 countries in total apparently offered the Obama administration ships to assist in the cleanup of the gulf. When asked about this, a State Department press spokesman refused to identify any offers of assistance. Wouldn't want to identify who's offering to assist because some reporter might actually go ask them, What were you suggesting? What were you wanting to do? Then that might put pressure on the administration and might bring to light the fact that the administration had turned down help that would have saved the livelihoods and jobs for thousands and thousands of Americans. Because we've heard over and over, this administration wants to save jobs. Not doing much to create them other than, as we heard, 411,000 of the 431,000 last month were created as temporary census workers. We can create new government jobs, but this would have saved jobs, and yet the response was dilatory. According to one newspaper, European firms could complete the task in 4 months rather than an estimated 9 months if done by the United States. Working with the U.S., the cleanup could be accomplished in 3 months. The Belgium firm DEME contends it can clean up the oil with accuracy at a depth of 2,000 meters. Another European firm with capabilities is the Dutch firm Jan De Nul Group. Pardon me if I mispronounce it. The Dutch and Belgians are long-time NATO allies and, as such, partners in international security cooperation. To close the door on them while they're offering a helping hand in a time of national emergency simply makes no sense. According to the article, no U.S. companies had the ships which can accomplish the task, because those ships would cost twice as much to build in the U.S. as they do outside the country. This is one adverse impact of the Jones Act which Congress passed in the 1920s. This piece of protectionism has only hampered an anemic American maritime industry. It also has prevented a quicker response to the oil spill. European firms do have the expertise to clean up the spill. And again, this is from the posting in American Leadership on June 8 by James Dean. If other nations have the technologies to address this oil spill, then the administration does have the ability to accept their help. The point's made in this article that in response to Hurricane Katrina, for example, Department of Homeland Security, Michael Chertoff, temporarily waived the Jones Act in order to facilitate much needed transport of oil throughout the country. The Jones Act, which is supposedly about protecting jobs, is actually killing jobs. The jobs of fishermen, people working in tourism, and others who live along the gulf coast and earn a living there are being severely impacted. Those are also additional private-sector jobs which are not being created in the United States since the Jones Act effectively prices U.S.-based companies out of the ability to be competitive in the competitive global market. The article says, as we strive to develop new technologies for a cleaner environment at sea, the Jones Act continues to hobble our own capabilities, sometimes with devastating results. The Jones Act needs to be waived now, in light of this catastrophe, and permit those whom we have helped and cooperated with in the past to assist us in our need. After waiving the Jones Act for the gulf cleanup effort, Congress and the administration should repeal it altogether. And that was coauthored by Claude Berube, and I was reading directly from that posting. It sure makes sense. We say we want to help folks. Why not let people wanting to help us help us clean the mess up? It would not be that difficult. But one of the other things we noticed in questioning Director Birnbaum, we find out, well, we're going to fix the problem of the Minerals Management Service. We're going to divide it into three parts. When I asked if she was aware that the only entity within MMS that was unionized was the offshore inspectors, she seemed surprised, wasn't sure if that was true. When I asked if the union contract for offshore inspectors did as many union contracts do and limited travel, limited hours that someone could work, she didn't know. Nobody there at the hearing could help me, nobody could tell me whether our offshore inspectors that stand between our homeland and disaster by making people producing energy to help us play by the rules so we don't have an oil spill like this. They play by the rules. We do right. We make sure the testing's done accurately. We don't have a problem. That's why we hadn't had one like that in that area. That's why most of the oil spills are by tankers bringing in foreign oil, because, in the past, we made people like British Petroleum play by the rules, make sure things were working properly. But that didn't happen here. But we couldn't get the information from the MMS. But it seems to me that allowing offshore inspectors that stand between disaster in our homeland to have a unionized contract, if it limits travel or limits the hours worked, would be like--and I guess this is where we're going next, based on what he saw a couple of weeks ago. The next move will be, That's right. We want the military to unionize as well. It makes as much sense. You've got people standing between disaster in our homeland. Why not let the military unionize, and then we can have a limit on their travel and their hours. And so they'll be able to say, Well, Sergeant, I'd like to attack that hill, I'd like to take that bunker out for you, but I've already worked all the hours I can work today. You're going to have to go find somebody else. I can't do it. Now, the reason the military has never been unionized is that it would be disastrous to our national security. The reason that offshore inspectors should not be unionized is because it has been disastrous to our national security. When we lose oil, cut off drilling that will produce oil at the same time that oil wells are playing out across the country and there's still the moratorium on so many areas to drill, and we had Secretary Salazar, when he took office, return the checks for leases in other areas where drilling could commence in that 500-square mile area, as I understand it, including some of Colorado, Utah, and Wyoming, Secretary Salazar, if you recall, a year and a half ago, said, Well, these leases were let at the midnight hour. We've returned the checks. We're not going to let something the Bush administration did at the midnight hour take place. So this administration has already hurt us dramatically and our ability to become energy free of countries that don't care for us. And when you get behind Secretary Salazar's position that this was a midnight-hour lease, well, that's when the checks were accepted. It turns out it was a 7-year process; 7 years the oil companies have been working on examining the possibility, the potential for production so they could make their bids. You don't just come and make a bid at the midnight hour without having a chance to examine what it is you're bidding on. You don't write a check for something you've never examined, I guess, unless you're the government. But it was a 7-year process. It's a bit disingenuous to say that it was a midnight-hour lease. So we hurt the country there. And now we've got a moratorium because of two things, apparently: British Petroleum didn't do their job. They should have had their feet held to the fire where they played by the rules and we wouldn't have had the problem. And then second, we had a government whose feet were so busy being on the neck of British Petroleum, it didn't paddle its feet on down to the gulf and deal with the issue and let countries like the Netherlands help us that had the expertise to do it. Now, I've got an entity, a fellow in my district, he's one of many that have offered help, offered solutions. And in east Texas, we have skimmers that are able to take in water, process the oil out here, process the freshwater out the other side. So you separate the oil from the water, but it's on such a small scale, it's not something that would be helpful in the gulf unless you do as this gentleman apparently did. He sent a friend to talk to me, to tell me about the problems he's run into with this administration since they've given British Petroleum and somehow, vaguely, their own selves control. This guy has basically built a barge that will do, on a big scale, what the small-scale skimmers, separators do in east Texas. However, he sent word, wanted me to know he's got this barge ready to process thousands of gallons of oil, separate out thousands of gallons of oil a day. It's not as much as the Netherlands had offered. But from the message he sent to me, apparently the Coast Guard has indicated they want to be sure that his barge is actually worthy to be out on the seas, because they're concerned, you know, that even though there are people losing their jobs, losing their livelihoods, birds, animals, water life is being killed off, just like the gentleman from the administration testifying before our committee is under discussions about whether or not to build barrier islands, apparently they're trying to decide if this barge should be allowed out on the water so that it can suck up and take out of the water thousands of gallons of oil a day. It's just a mind-boggling thing. As Bo Pilgrim used to say, it's a mind-boggling thing to see what is being called an emergency effort. Now, if this were some Internet game, well, it would be interesting, and we would see clearly which group was not very good at emergency management. But it's not a game. Eleven lives were lost. Aquatic life, waterfowl, life in these estuaries is being destroyed as I speak. Now, it would be easy to say, ``Well, you guys are just talking about it.'' But the thing is, and as I have talked about with my wife, should we continue to sacrifice from a personal family standpoint for me to stay in Congress? She said, ``You know, it may be that one of the last places where there really is freedom of speech, other than calling somebody a liar, is on the House floor. You have got to stay there because you keep hammering the truth day after day, and eventually you may see something done about it.'' And that's why I'm here. Some people wonder, why does anybody go to the trouble of talking on the House floor, Mr. Speaker? But the truth is, it is a way of getting a message out from here so that eventually people begin to notice. Well, one other thing about the MMS splitting into three entities. I asked, well, are these three entities of the MMS, that MMS will be divided into, are they going to unionize? Apparently, they are talking about it. Well, if you let the most critical part of MMS, the offshore inspectors, unionize, then why not? We heard 2 weeks ago people exulting and applauding because we were told we are actually providing civil rights to our military. Well, if you haven't been in the military, I am sure that makes sense, to some anyway. But if you have been in the military, you know the military doesn't have the civil rights that every other American does. You don't have freedom of speech; you can't. When your sergeant, your superior commissioned officer gives you an order, you don't have the freedom to speak your mind. And, in fact, when I was at Fort Benning, there were a lot of us that were very upset with our Commander in Chief at the time, a man named President Carter. But if any of us said anything derogatory about President Carter, it was a crime for which we could be jailed, could have pay taken away, could be given extra duty, restrictions. You could not badmouth your Commander in Chief; you don't have that freedom of speech. And as much as I have wanted to badmouth people, and especially when I was in the Army and had a commander that didn't seem to know what he should, you have got to have that discipline for the good order of the military. Because the military is not supposed to be a socially engineered experiment. It can't be. It is about protecting our homeland against all enemies, foreign and domestic. Of course, domestic, you got to make sure you don't violate Posse Comitatus, but that is another issue. The fact is, the military is whom we owe so much for having the liberties protected we do. Yes, the Declaration of Independence says we are endowed by our Creator with certain inalienable rights. The question comes, if we are endowed by our Creator with certain inalienable rights, then why doesn't everybody have them? It's because everywhere people have not accepted the inheritance from our Creator, our Heavenly Father, from whom we inherited these inalienable rights. When you do accept your inheritance, as this Nation did back in the 1770s--and, for many, it was an ongoing process through the 1800s and even up through the valiant work of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., a Christian minister. But this country has claimed those inherited rights. But that is not enough. As any parent knows, if you leave an inheritance to your children and they don't accept it, then they won't have it. If they accept it and they are not willing to fight for it, to keep that inheritance with which they have been endowed, they won't keep it. Because there are evil people in this world that are glad to take away anything you have. And as I pointed out 2 nights ago here on the floor, you know, we have the administration--for the first time in the modern history of Israel, this Nation has now turned on Israel and said, we want you to disclose all of the weaponry you have because of the nuclear proliferation thing we are pushing. Well, if you go back to when King Hezekiah was king in the same location, same area Israel is now, because they did pre-date Mohammed by several centuries, but Hezekiah thought it would be a nice gesture to show all that he had to the Babylonians. It's stupid to show enemies all of your armaments, all of your armory, and to show them the treasury they could get if they successfully attack you. It is a stupid thing to do. And this country has done some of that. In the effort to be gracious and kind to people that hate us and want to see us wiped off the map and have said so, we show them what we have. With a big superpower, you can get away with it for a while. But when you are a small country like Israel, your closest and strongest ally should never force you to show the defenses that you have, because then your enemies know how they can overcome you. And just as Hezekiah was told by Isaiah--I mean, Isaiah knew he was a fool for doing it. And after Hezekiah admitted to Isaiah--Isaiah already knew; God had told him. But once Isaiah had it admitted from Hezekiah, ``I showed him all our treasury, I showed him all of our armory, our armaments,'' and he said, ``Everything you have shown them will be carried away.'' And it was. That's what happens. The old saying is, those who refuse to learn from history are destined to repeat it. It's very true. Of course, there is a corollary that says, those that do learn from history will find new ways to screw up. I think that's true, too. But why repeat the same mistakes for thousands of years that have been committed when you can learn from their mistakes and not commit them? And one of the other great dangers that we are creating in turning on our friend Israel--and, you know, basically, this country is still Israel's strongest ally. A family has disagreements within itself, but it gets very protective if attacked from the outside. But the problem is, when you get outside Chicago and you are playing in the international arena and you want to get cute and kind of snub your close friends, their enemies are watching. They see that. And the message to them is, if we are ever going to attack, now is the time, when there is a strain and a problem between Israel and their strongest ally; let's go now. That is the way it appeared to North Korea after Secretary Acheson said, you know, basically, Korea is outside our sphere of influence. They had already been massing soldiers to the border. And, obviously, it seems like a good time to attack your enemy when their closest, strongest ally says, we won't protect them. You can't send those messages out there. You can't vote ``present'' when it comes to international dilemmas and the existence of an entire nation and all the people that have known genocide before and are fearful of having it repeat itself. Massive mistake. I will come back to Israel again, but one of the issues that has arisen, as I understand it, Neil Armstrong, first man to put his foot on the moon, has said that if we abandon our manned space program it will be devastating to national security. Wouldn't it be a good idea to listen to people who have more experience in some areas than we do? Neil Armstrong can see the national security implications of us basically giving up what has taken us 50 years to develop: supremacy in space. It has been very confusing to hear this administration, with the assistance of people in Congress, in saying, in this time of monetary problems, financial crises, this is a time to start cutting budgets, so we really can't afford to keep pursuing these ideas with NASA that have brought us more advancements not just in space--I mean, I take Sudafed. It is the only thing that clears me up when I get clogged up, not that ridiculous Sudafed PE. It was developed by the space program. They were going to give it to astronauts. And when my doctor, when I was a kid, said, ``There has been this wonderful decongestant developed called Sudafed; give it a try,'' it worked. Velcro--I mean, those are just tiny little things. The advancement that has brought this country and kept this country to the forefront in technology has been from the space-type ventures. The Internet, it was a Department of Defense effort. And, lo and behold, look at where it has taken us in the private sector now. But we cannot afford to give up the advances made through our space exploration to the rest of the world and let them take control. Those are the mistakes of a country on its way to the dustbin of history. The thing is, when you know they are mistakes and you see they are mistakes and you see through history the things that have been done to avoid becoming an asterisk in international history, then why wouldn't you do them? Why wouldn't you take the steps to preserve your nation? Instead, what we get is more cronyism. How could that be? How could that be? We were told that in this time of financial crisis NASA needs its budget cut. And yet, if you look at the appropriations, the budget increases. More money will be spent for space, but we are not going to give it to NASA. Well, if we are not giving it to NASA, then why wouldn't the NASA budget reflect that it is being cut, as the administration said? Well, apparently it's because billions of dollars are intended for a private company that has never done this kind of space exploration. Nobody in our country has, because it's been the Federal Government and NASA. I understand in meetings that it has been disclosed that, of course, we are giving all these billions of dollars to SpaceX to, kind of, take over the space program for us, a private company. And I feel sure it has nothing to do with how much money they donate to Democrats over Republicans. I am sure it has no relationship to the fact that they do. But, nonetheless, SpaceX--and apparently they have been critical of Senator Kay Bailey Hutchison down the hall, who has pointed out the problems to our country and our national security by gutting NASA and giving their jobs over to a private company that has never done these jobs. It will make some people very, very wealthy who give heavily to Democrats. But that is not the point. Senator Hutchison was criticized by SpaceX, apparently back in Texas, saying, you know, ``Somebody needs to let the Senator know she is criticizing a Texas company.'' Well, on further checking, it turns out they have about 100 jobs in Texas, and they have already committed to someone else that they are going to move those jobs from Texas to where it is more politically convenient. We are going to turn jobs over to them that are a matter, as Neil Armstrong said, of national security? Not a good idea. Not a good idea. As someone mentioned in private meetings, let's face it, though, if SpaceX ends up having problems in being able to effectuate space flight, there's no question it will be so devastating that we'll have to bail them out. We're already setting up private companies that don't--have never done what they are going to take away from a government entity that's been the most successful in all of mankind, NASA, this effort, give it to this private company and already know that if they have a problem and they can't get the space flight going, they'll go broke and we'll have to bail them out. We know that going in. Is that smart? My goodness, the things we're doing at the worst possible time make no sense. It just makes no sense. But as time runs out as allocated, I want to finish with one other thing going back to Israel. The world needs to know, make no mistake about it, Israel is a close ally. They believe in the same type of human rights that we do in this country. And so why wouldn't you be an ally with a country that believes in the rights of women, believes in the rights that we hold dear here, believes that there's no such thing as an honor-killing of women who've been raped, that has the same kind of beliefs, Judeo- Christian beliefs, and the value of mankind that this country has always held so dear. For that reason and because there's been snubs by the administration overtly that are being misread around the world, we are not going to abandon our friend, Israel. There are too many people on both sides of the aisle that will not stand for that. And I've been working privately behind the scenes. I've been told by people that I respect, the most knowledgeable people, I think, on Israeli affairs, that it's time to start pushing this publicly so people will publicly get on board. So I've got a letter now, and it will be going out to all of my colleagues. And it will ask them to get on board because I would like them to sign on to a letter to Leader Reid down the Hall--because both the House and Senate have to do this--and the letter simply says, Mr. Speaker, this letter is to simply state the obvious need for the Prime Minister of our dear friend Israel to address a joint session of Congress. He's been here in Washington on numerous occasions but has not addressed a joint session of Congress since 1996. In our Nation's history, we have invited over a hundred leaders of 50 different countries to speak before joint sessions of Congress. At this time with the enemies of America and Israel looking for weaknesses in our close relationship, we can show them that Israel is our friend and will be our friend and that we want to hear from its leader, Prime Minister Netanyahu. With the magnitude of international events and the tensions swirling in recent years and the threat of nuclear proliferation in the Middle East, it is desperately important that we show the world the importance of our relationship with Israel by inviting Prime Minister Netanyahu to come address this body. The sooner we extend such an invitation, the more stabilizing it will be. And then signature lines from Members of Congress. I've got over 40. But we need most of this body to sign on. We need to send that message. The letter to colleagues basically highlights the same things. And with regard to the flotilla, it points out in this letter that we'll send the ``dear colleague'' letter asking them to sign on the letter requesting Majority Leader Reid and Speaker Pelosi invite Prime Minister Netanyahu, this letter says--and let me preface this by saying it was entirely predictable that there would be an effort to test our commitment to our ally Israel. It was entirely predictable. When you show that separation between your strongest ally to your enemies, then your enemies are going to think about testing to see if this may be a good time to attack. And that's what the flotillas were doing. They were a test. And what they saw was the United States, through this administration, being reluctant to jump out there and make it clear how inappropriate it was to send people to intentionally run the blockade when all Israel was trying to do was protect themselves. So, Mr. Speaker, I'm hoping that people will encourage their Members of Congress to sign on so we can get the Prime Minister here as quickly as possible so that the world will see both sides of the aisle standing and applauding this great leader of this great nation. And then there is a resolution. People keep talking sanctions, and it is beyond time to talk about sanctions. According to IAEA, Iran already has enough enriched uranium for two nuclear weapons. How many do you think it would take to wipe out the small nation of Israel? And they made clear, Ahmadinejad's made clear, we're not going to stop with wiping out Israel. We want to wipe out the little Satan, Israel, and then the big Satan, the United States. And we saw on 9/11 how vulnerable we can be, and you begin to realize, man, you set off a nuclear weapon in New York, Houston, L.A., Chicago, other points that are critical to our protection, and with a handful of nuclear weapons, you could debilitate this country to an enormous extent. And then we're told a greater risk is if you can get an EMP, electromagnetic pulse, generated from a nuclear weapon a few hundred miles above the middle of the United States, it would fry every computer chip in the country. The power would go out indefinitely. Wal*Mart says they wouldn't be able to function if all of their computers are fried. It's time to act. We cannot wait. And this resolution goes through, points out quotes from Ahmadinejad, quotes from our great President in saying that as he said that bond is much more than a strategic alliance between us and Israel. We have got to act, and I hope people will sign on this resolution when we come back next week because we've got to get this done. We need to show our support for Israel. We need to quit playing games with this critical ally in such a difficult area. You want to talk about peace? Like Patrick Henry said, People talk peace, but there is no peace. And I can tell you there will not be peace in the Middle East of any nature until people know that this Nation, America, will go to war against anyone that breaches the peace or attempts to breach the peace as this flotilla did. So, Mr. Speaker, I see the indication my time is expiring. And I appreciate the opportunity to be here and discuss these important issues. And with that, I yield back my time.

Mr. GOHMERT

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

Mr. GOHMERT

Mr. GOHMERT. I really appreciate that point. Of course, it's the problem we have right now. When the Federal Government is moving toward a 1.3 to $1.6 trillion deficit in 1 year, they are sucking the capital from every corner of the world, printing some, and there is not money for the private sector. We have had meetings with the Federal Reserve people, including Chairman Bernanke. We have had meetings with people in the OCC, Office of the Comptroller of the Currency, and from the FDIC. In the last couple of years we have had a number of meetings, and what we hear from people who are trying to borrow money to stay in business, people that have had lines of credit at their local bank for 20 years are now being told we are not going to continue your line of credit. And when they asked, have I ever been late, have I missed a payment, what is the problem? Well, our banking regulators have told us that they are going to, you know, be all over our bank and we can't handle the pressure if we keep loaning you money, extending your line of credit. We broached that subject with Chairman Bernanke, that some of the regulators are requiring more capital and more money in reserve than is required under the law, and they are putting pressure on the bank not to make loans that they made for years, and it's loans that make banks most of their money. If you don't allow them to loan money, then they are not going to make money, and they are going to go under. Then heaven help us, the FDIC insurance account will be hit more, and we will have to bail out more banks and what-not, all because we had some silly regulators who were concerned that a bank they were supervising might some day go under and it might look bad for their career advancement, and so they put too much heat on a local bank. Now, there is greed, there is avarice that has gone on in some places; but most of that was in the investment banks, not in the local community banks, which were doing okay until ``Chicken Little'' Paulson started running around screaming the financial sky was falling. And the next month we went from selling more homes than any time in 5 years to selling no homes. We went from people buying cars to people not buying any cars, and it put us in a terrible funk. It was all because this so-called financial genius that was chairman, and his protege is now running Treasury now, wasn't smart enough or educated enough in the ways of the world that when you go out and say we are going to have a depression, banks are going to fail one after another. When you create panic yourself, it is a self-fulfilling prophecy. That's why, when they went out, and he talked, bless his heart, he talked President Bush into going out and joining ranks with him and getting on the chicken little brigade, that the financial sky was falling and scared America. When you go out and the President and Secretary of the Treasury are saying that if they don't pass this particular bill, whatever, it wouldn't matter--if they don't pass this bill on Monday in the House, then the market is going to crash a lot worse than 1929. It's a self-fulfilling prophecy. It fell 777 points; people panicked. Many Republicans got talked into voting for the bill and joining most of the Democrats that voted for the TARP bailout bill. It should have been ended long ago; it was a big mistake. But, boy, everybody needs to feel good, though. Goldman Sachs had their biggest profit year in their history last year. So their jobs are secure; they are doing good. But for the rest of America, there is a problem with capital; there is a problem with too little regulation over the investment banks, no reform over Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, none. It is not even in this so-called financial reform that's really a financial deform bill, because it has a systemic risk council that allowed the Federal Government, in complete abrogation of what my friends were talking about in the prior hour about the 10th Amendment, and the power reserved of the States and people, just a complete ignoring of all of that. They are going to pick and choose winners and losers. Your company is too big too fail; we will never let it fail. So that means they can run in the red; they can run their competition out of business. They will be the last business standing in that particular area because our systemic risk council from Washington, their lofty Mount Zion realm, said we picked this one to be the systemic risk. The government was never supposed to have that kind of power. This country never got to be the greatest country in the history of the world by having Washington pick and choose winners and losers, and that's what that financial deform bill does, and I hope that it doesn't come with many of the provisions that are in there now, but it looks like that's what is going to happen. But, anyway, we're sucking the capital out, we are preventing the private sector from creating the jobs. And then they saw this health care bill, they saw it passed. As our Speaker pointed out, we had to pass the bill so we could find out what's in it. Some of us actually read most of it, so we had a good idea what was coming and that's why we fought so hard against it. There are going to be more jobs lost. There have already been jobs lost because of that bill. There's going to be more jobs lost. When I hear people who didn't read the bill and didn't know what all it did, but they just took the word of people pushing it, they really believed when they said here on the floor, it's going to help the working poor. It's going to help those hardworking folks that don't have enough money. If you read the bill, you find out that actually if you don't make enough money to buy as good a policy as the government is mandating, we know you are working poor, we know you are struggling. If you had the money, you would buy better health insurance. But since you don't, we are going to pop you with another additional income tax. We are going to add a couple of percent to your income tax. Merry Christmas. You don't have enough money to buy the insurance, we tell you, bless your heart, you are working poor, you are going to be poorer because of this health care bill. During the job fair last week, I was talking to an employer who was saying, you know, we have got a number of jobs that are entry level so they are making minimum wage, but it's a good entry-level place and we provide some good health insurance. So it's minimum wage, but we provide them health insurance. It's a great place for somebody young just starting out, get their foot in the door, get experience and be able to advance up from there. Well, guess what, under the health care bill that was passed and signed into law this spring, he can't do that for people that make 133 percent or less of the poverty level. So those people who would go take that job because even though it's minimum wage, provides health insurance, bad news. Under the bill, they are going to have to go on to Medicaid, not Medicare, but Medicaid. Now, some States have increased some of the reimbursement rates under Medicaid. Well, that's coming to an end real quick because of all the additional unfunded mandates on the States that's going to add billions to what they have to come up with. They are not going to be able to do that. We already saw there was polling, New England Journal of Medicine and others, doctor polling that indicates 35 percent, some as much as 55 percent of the current physicians, when this kicks into law, will retire and quit practicing medicine. Oh, well, that's great, that's really going to be good for the working poor and how about the President's own words when he said on the day before the bill passed here, his own words: where as in the past you went to the doctor and you got five tests, now you will go to the doctor and you will get one test. Well, wasn't that good news? Some of us know that's not a good idea. In some cases, there are tests that are given, purely from doctors practicing defensive medicine because of lawsuits that are threatened and that they worry about. But on the other hand, there are doctors who conduct tests because they know there is something there. They know there is something there. And one test doesn't show up, well, let's try this, because I know there's something there. That's what was the case with my mother in 1976. It took them 6 days to find her brain tumor. Our local doctor, one of the local doctors where I grew up, had told my dad that if she gets much worse you may just end up needing to commit her. Well, it was very tough for a woman as brilliant as my late mother to think that she was going crazy. But that's what the local doctor thought because he was a general practitioner; he didn't have the expertise of terrific experts. But after 5 or 6 days of testing, they found she had a little brain tumor. She wasn't going crazy; she had a little brain tumor that was causing her problems. Because they found it when they did, we got to keep my mother for 15 more years. So I would kind of have hated for my mother to have had one test, like that's some kind of good news. That means she may well have been committed to an insane asylum on the recommendation of a general practitioner. But if you look at what the health care bill does, it pushes people more and more to general practitioners and thank God for them. Some of my closest friends are general practitioners. They do an incredible job. They have to know so much about so many different areas of medicine. Then they are able to figure out, ah, you have got that problem, let's get you over to the specialist. Then the specialist can home in for their whole career on a specific problem. Under this health care bill, that's not going to be the case. But I got off on this from the job situation. Well, you don't have to worry about your health care; we are going to fix it to where we cut $500 billion out of Medicare. You don't think that's going to help pay or that's going to be funded partially by what the President promised? In the past, you go to the doctor and get five tests and now you go and get one test. Okay. Then how about the $500 billion in new taxes? Well, I have talked to employers. Last week, we were not in session. I talked to employers that say, there is so much being stacked on top of my head, and I can't get my line of credit extended. You know, there is no sense in me continuing this. This is nuts. I am not hiring. Then because of the provision in the bill, in the health care bill, which starts popping a tax above a certain level of employees, lots of employers that I have talked to are going to start making sure they don't go over that. They could use more people, but they are not going to go over the limit because they don't want to start paying that $2,000 per employee tax that you get popped with once you have too many employees. You know, and it--I just wonder, do we not notice what kinds of incentives we are putting in place? We are putting incentives in place to hire fewer people. We are eliminating capital, making it, that would have made it easier for the private sector to hire people than for Congress and for the Federal Government. But these Census jobs, as this headline in The Wall Street Journal says, Census jobs end all too soon, and they will, and it's going to be tough when they do, 411,000 temporary workers hired last month by the Census. We are going in the wrong direction. This is not a good thing. We are doing more damage. And even before Republicans lost the majority in 2006, there were so many of us that were pleading, Look, we're in a hole. It's time to stop digging. And in November of 2006, because Republicans had the audacity to run up a $100 billion, $200 billion deficit in 1 year, it was outrageous, and Democrats rightfully won the majority because Republicans had not been as conscientious about making sure we didn't run this government into a ditch ourselves. And with the promise that their majority would see there were no more deficits, we would get this country on track, we would stop the craziness that the Republicans had in this deficit spending, we now find this year a projection of a $1.3 to $1.6 trillion deficit in 1 year. It's just hard to get my mind around--not that I have much of a mind to get around anything, but that is such an extraordinary amount of money to be in the hole in 1 year. I read an article somewhere where around the world people are starting to say, Well, one thing we know for sure, since the United States is willing to run up over a $1 trillion deficit in 1 year, then clearly they're not serious about paying their debts. Well, some people can't remember what happens when a government spends so much money that it doesn't have that no one will loan them money again. And we've also forgotten a lesson from history of what happens if you try to print your way out of debt by printing money. Germany tried that, and it just created such runaway inflation--remember the cartoons, the wheelbarrow full of money to go buy a loaf of bread? Well, we're printing money at record rates. We are running a deficit at never even comprehended rates. For those who can remember, basically, the Soviet leader had to stand up and say--this was basically the essence--We can't borrow enough money anymore to stay in business. We can't print enough money to stay in business. We're out of business. States are each on their own now. Well, there are some in this country that think that might be a good idea. But this Nation got to be the greatest in history because we were together as a Nation, all 50 States, fussing and disagreeing among ourselves as family, but never before in history have we come so close to voluntarily going over a cliff. I mean, World War II, record amounts of money were being spent. We were fighting for our very lives, for liberty and for freedom. Some don't remember. There were Germans that came ashore. One American citizen was with them, and of course they were captured. They were going to commit war crimes here in the United States. They were captured, tried--by military commission, by the way--but under the rules of law, you can hang on to them as long as there's a war going on. That's a whole other issue, but it's a way in which we're not learning from history. We're thinking that when people are at war with you, you can treat them better than our own soldiers are being treated in courts martial, give them more rights than our own soldiers have. It's because people don't understand the Constitution. They don't understand the Constitution embraces the congressionally passed Uniform Code of Military Justice that embraces, as the Supreme Court pronounced, the Military Commission Act of 2006, as amended last year. Of course, the amendment mainly required us to quit calling them ``enemy combatants'' and now, under the new law last year, we call them ``unprivileged alien enemy belligerents,'' not ``combatants.'' We're not learning the lessons of history. And when nations fail to do that, it becomes clear, eventually, that they are well on their way to the dustbin of history. We don't have to do that. This country could last 200 more years, 400 more years, but we have to learn the lessons and the mistakes of the past and grow and learn from them. We haven't done that. We are not going to see private sector jobs created as long as the Federal Government is sucking up all the money, sucking up all the capital. There's not much left to loan. And the private sector can do so much more creating jobs than the Federal Government does because obviously--you know, the Federal Government itself is a giant Ponzi scheme. You know, adding 411,000 workers in 1 month, you can't keep doing that and still pay for it. The Ponzi scheme known as the Soviet Union went out of business. That's what will happen to us as well. So, anyway, one of the things that we have failed to learn from history--I wanted to talk about jobs a little bit and then spend the remaining time talking about another area in which people just don't seem to be learning here in Washington from history. It's not hard to find. It's more accessible than it has ever been in the history of mankind. We've got the Internet. You can find all kinds of credible information. You want to go back and read John Quincy Adams' incredible closing arguments that went on for over 2 days in the Amistad case? You can get it. You want to read Ben Franklin's entire speech before the Constitutional Convention, 1787, where he said, If a sparrow cannot fall to the ground without His notice, is it possible an empire can rise without His--the Lord's--aid? He said, We are told in the sacred writing that unless the Lord build the house, they labor in vain that build it. And he said, I also firmly believe that without His--God's-- concurring aid, we shall succeed in this political building no better than the builders of Babel. We shall be confounded by our local partial interests, and we, ourselves, shall become a byword down through the ages. He went on. But you can find that whole speech, you can find all that material. You can find the lessons that have been learned through history. If you don't have a Bible and you wonder what was the most quoted book here in the House of Representatives for the first 100-plus years of our history, it may have been 150 years, the most quoted book here on the House floor was the Bible. I have one right here, the most quoted book in the House of Representatives for most of its history. If you wanted a bill to be passed, then you better find some wisdom in Scripture and share it with people so they understand. Well, we had something last week. It was called by some a ``peace flotilla,'' but it was quite clear that there was a lot more to it than that, that this was a contrived plan. This was an effort to embarrass Israel, because the proponents knew that Israel would have to defend itself, there was no question about that. They have been hit with so many thousands of rockets from the Gaza Strip, they had to eventually defend themselves. And lest we forget, the Gaza Strip was controlled as part of Israel until Israel's leaders thought, You know what? It's not part of any treaty. It's not part of any demand, but what if we gave the Gaza Strip to the Palestinians? What if we just gave that unilaterally, not asking anything in return? I mean, what an incredible show of good faith that would be. That would surely provoke our adversaries into realizing we do want peace, so let's give away the Gaza Strip. Now, they hadn't learned a whole lot from the fact that you could give away a part of what was part of Israel at the time, controlled by Israel, give that to southern Lebanon and they will know that we are really interested in peace and things should really go well, continuing not to get the message that every time it seems that Israel gives away land, even going back to its early inception centuries and centuries and centuries before there was Muhammad, there was Islam, Israel, if they gave away land, it was normally used as a staging area later to attack them because they had given away something that was under their control. And I wondered about the mentality--do you guys not get it? You give away land. You get attacked from it every time you seem to give it away--until I made a couple of trips over and you begin to realize the mentality: after years and years of suicide bombs, family members just having coffee at this restaurant, alive one minute, laughing with kids, with their children, dead the next minute; a suicide bomber walking down into an area of school children so he can blow himself up and kill children; when you see and you understand there have been so many rockets flying into Israel and you find out the mentality apparently for so many Israelis has been, Look, we just want to be left alone. We just want to be left alone. We will give you land, unilaterally give it away, not demand, just please leave us alone. I was reminded of the routine Bill Cosby talked about where--and I think out of the first six albums I ever had, three of them were Bill Cosby. He had a way of taking life and helping you to look at yourself and laugh. But he talked about as a parent, the youngest one screaming and hollering, and he said, Hey, stop. And the little girl screams, Well, I want this. And the other kids saying, It's ours. It's ours. And he says, I don't care. Let her have it. You've got to stop the screaming. She's got a lot of my stuff, too. Just let her have it so she will quit screaming. And I thought about Bill Cosby's comment because I get that impression, you know, the Israelis were so tired of the death and the suicide bombs and rockets and grenades, they said, Look, we'll just give you land if you will leave us alone. Let us live in peace. So I understand better the mentality that says, Here, we will unilaterally give away land that actually makes it harder for us to protect ourselves, because they're thinking that that will bring about acts of kindness on the other side, not realizing when you're dealing with people who, because of religious zealotry, have made clear that they want to see your nation wiped completely off the map, they're not really going to get all touchy-feely over some gift that you make. That's what has happened with Gaza. They acted out of such wonderful intentions, Let's give this land to the Palestinians. And after you've seen what was there--there were greenhouses. There were ways that people could make a living there, and there were ways that people could produce their own food there. Instead, once they gave the land away, the greenhouses were destroyed. So many were plundered, just acts of violence. Well, it was the Israelis, so destroy it. These were ways they could have lived and eaten and made a good living, and they destroyed it. So, hopefully, people in Israel are beginning to understand you've got to defend yourself and that acts of peacefulness are not going to be met with acts of peace in response. They are going to be met with flotillas, with Kazan rockets, and with death in your own country. Because the idea is not to get a strip of land here at Gaza; it is not to get a strip of land here in the northern part of Israel; it is not to get the Golan Heights. You know, it is not to get the West Bank and to enlarge that. No, not at all. It is to wipe Israel off the map. It's interesting how and it grieves me much, actually, to know that there are well-educated people who have gone through life thinking that the Israelis, the Jewish people, had no history prior to the Palestinians in that area, that their history was more in Germany and in Poland and in America. America didn't even have any idea that Israel existed, other than the Native Americans. A tragic thing happened here just recently. For the first time in United States history, the United States decided to ignore thousands of years of lessons and to demand, with Israel's enemies, that they let the world know exactly what weaponry they have, what nuclear weaponry they have. Let everybody know exactly what you've got. It was well- intentioned, I'm sure, on the part of this administration, but what a disastrous mistake. I thought about Hezekiah, King of Israel, long before the days of Mohammad, when Israel was a nation in the land where they now are. King Hezekiah was the son of Ahaz.

Mr. GOHMERT. Mr. Speaker, interesting news came out Friday about jobs. There was a good Wall Street Journal article June 4. It talked about this wonderful news that we heard from Washington that last month the job total increased by 431,000. That is fantastic news, just wonderful. But there's a little problem in it. The U.S. Department of Labor released statistics saying, yes, there were 431,000 jobs created last month and that's fantastic and all, but unfortunately, 411,000 of them were temporary census worker jobs. Well, it's just hard to feel really good about the economy when out of 431,000 new jobs, according to the U.S. Department of Labor last month, 411,000 of them were government jobs. Not just government, temporary government jobs. I've talked to some census workers. We had a job fair in my district in Marshall, Texas, at the East Texas Baptist University. They're very cooperative and helpful. We had one previously at Laterno University. Texas Workforce Commission does such a great job. We've partnered together with them and Laterno and Longview and many other partners to have a job fair previously. We've had one in Lufkin, partnered with Angelina College and the Texas Workforce Commission, and this one was in Marshall. On one hand, anytime you throw a party and a lot of people show up, you're thrilled; this worked out great. But on a very human basis, you know that every one of the people that come seeking jobs have broken hearts. Most of them have families who need them to get jobs. So many of them, you know, long-time employees somewhere, and we have not done them any favors by the work that's been done here in Congress going back to failing to reform Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac which really put us to the brink of economic collapse. Complete failure to do that, to reform them. Then in September, October of 2008, as a potential meltdown began, many people don't know but there were more homes sold in September of 2008 than in any month in the last 5 years before that. But of course, once the Secretary of Treasury went out and said unless Congress gives me $700 billion, there's going to be a total meltdown, but give me $700 billion in a slush fund and I'll pay off my buddies on Wall Street and I'll get everything going good, and you know, basically inferring that--and I think he legitimately believed, if all the people that he had worked with and knew so well on Wall Street maintained their wealth, continued to get rich or richer, didn't go bankrupt, then it surely would be good for the rest of America. Little did he know that that was not the case. We bailed out folks, and you know, it's interesting. It also said something about the morality in America because there was a time in America if you got greedy, a little hasty, and drove your cart off in a ditch and your neighbors helped you get your cart out of that ditch, then you felt a little guilty. It was a moral thing. You had a conscience and you felt guilty because your neighbors helped you get your cart out of the ditch, and they did not contribute at all in you getting it there. It was your own negligence, your own greed. And so nowadays we've gotten to the point where AIG, Goldman Sachs, Wall Street, some of them at least--they let Lehman Brothers go because they were a competitor of Goldman Sachs--but anyway, they got greedy, extremely greedy, careless, and ran their cart into a ditch, and there was no way they were going to get out. They should have been forced to go into bankruptcy and reorganize like every other entity but they didn't. America, most of us didn't like the idea. We didn't support it. We were totally against it, but nonetheless we were forced to get Goldman Sachs' cart out of the ditch. And what has happened since? Well, they've gotten in their cart, motorized it, and run over the rest of us. So that didn't work out so well, and in January of 2009, when we heard that Timothy Geithner was going to be appointed to be Secretary of the Treasury, well, what we heard from folks down the other end of the hall was, well, we need to confirm him as Treasury Secretary because he worked with Paulson on the plan. To my way of thinking, this meant this guy should not get near the Treasury Department, but that's not what happened. So we've continued to have the Federal Government continue to take over more and more authority, usurp more of individuals' moneys, their credit, the potential capital out there to create private jobs, just sucked it up in Washington, and in the meantime, the Federal Reserve apparently is printing lots of money. And so we're just doing all kinds of good things, and it is continuing to drive us toward a cliff. And for anybody to stand up and try to make it sound like great news, 431,000 new jobs last month, that's the most in a number of years, it's fantastic, it's great, and not realize or not be forthcoming enough to point out that nearly all those jobs, the vast majority of them, were temporary census jobs is just not right, and it's not doing right by America. So in this article, The Wall Street Journal points out some of the problems. This says, because the temporary workforce is more productive, the bureau is closing some offices earlier than planned. So it goes on to talk about the Census Bureau. Really tragic. That's the best we've got. That's the best we can offer to America. I yield to my friend from Utah.

Mr. GOHMERT

Mr. GOHMERT. As kind of a supplemental discussion from my friend from Utah--and I would love to have had one of the gentleman's classes in Utah. We would love to have had you teach in Texas. You are such a good teacher. Supplementing the teaching that you've already provided, I'd just like to take people, Mr. Speaker, to Article V of the Constitution. It's a great document. I want to encourage people to read that, as my friends have already mentioned. Some have said you would never want to have an amendment convention because it might be full of people who would come up with crazy amendments that would destroy the country, and so you would never want to do that. Some have said these guys that wrote the Constitution did such a perfect job, we should never allow an Amendment Constitution provided under Article V because that might mess it up. But then on the other hand, if these guys did such a perfect job on the Constitution, then they must have put Article V in here for a reason. Article V simply says, ``The Congress, whenever two-thirds of both Houses shall deem it necessary, shall propose amendments to this Constitution, or, on the application of the legislatures of two-thirds of the several States, shall call a convention for proposing amendments, which, in either case, shall be valid to all intents and purposes, as part of this Constitution, when ratified by the legislatures of three-fourths of the several States, or by conventions in three-fourths thereof, as the one or the other mode of ratification may be proposed by the Congress.'' Now, some have said, well, if you allowed the second part, the part that has never been utilized in the whole history of the United States, it would be destructive to the country. My point is, if we don't do something radical--and I'm not talking violence, that's completely unnecessary--but something radical from a congressional standpoint, from a national standpoint, we see where this is all going. Just as my friends have been talking about, the excesses and the abuses are bringing this country to an incredible cliff. You know, we just read that China has now bought enough that it is approaching $1 trillion that it owns of the United States' debt. Well, that makes it a little tougher, doesn't it, to use leverage against China when we owe them that much money. Growing up, I had Sunday school lessons about the Bible teaching whoever you borrow money from becomes your master, and we've done that because we can't control the spending. So we need something that is a little out of the ordinary to bring this thing in, and what better method than the one that the constitutional founders, the drafters, put in there, approved, and the States ratified, and that is to say, you know what, it's time for an amendment convention. We have usurped so much power from the States--and this latest health care debacle, the health care deform bill that was passed and signed into law now, has the potential to bankrupt States that were having a hard enough time as it is. Well, those States have power under our Constitution, and as we know, up until the 17th amendment, when those in Washington--and this was apparently pushed by Woodrow Wilson. He liked the idea of the Federal Government running everything, and he would have been really proud of the health care bill because it was all about the GRE, the government running everything. So this 17th amendment was an effective way of taking away any check or balances that the States were provided under the Constitution because, under the Constitution, the State legislatures selected the U.S. Senators. Most students were never taught that. But the founders felt like there had to be a way that the Federal Government could be prevented from just usurping all the power from the States and the people as the tenth amendment talks about, and this would be it, because you would never send a Senator up here from your State, if you're a State legislature, if he's going to add unfunded mandates to your responsibilities in the States and take away your power at the same time. There were Senators that were recalled. So, from the day after the health care bill was passed here in the House, I've been talking about an Article V amendment convention that would allow the States to come together and propose amendments. Now, there's difference of opinion. I had a wonderful conversation with former Attorney General Ed Meese about this. He has some good ideas as well. But we have got to do something. And I am not in favor of repealing the 17th amendment, have never been in favor of repealing the 17th amendment, but there are some wonderful ways of reining in the Federal Government, maybe giving the States the right to veto legislation. So, there are a number of things, and as we saw back when the States were gathering momentum to have an amendment convention, Congress got scared that that would really happen so they rushed in and voted to repeal prohibition, proposed that of course as a constitutional amendment and it passed. So maybe the States need to start that gathering storm, and we could get Congress to do what it needs and, that is, give the States some power like they originally had. I appreciate so much my friend from Utah yielding.

Mr. GOHMERT

Mr. GOHMERT. Mr. Speaker, it has been quite a week. We've heard friends across the aisle get up and talk about how we've ``expanded civil rights in the military.'' And I appreciate the fact that friends believe they did a wonderfully noble thing for the military, just as they would probably think they did a wonderfully noble thing to expand civil rights in courts martial that occur in the military. But the fact is, under our United States Constitution, that so many people want to keep referring to when it's convenient, it anticipates that there will be different rights afforded in different areas, one of which is in our United States military. The purpose of the military is not to be some socially engineered experiment. It is to do one thing, and that is to protect our homeland, protect our way of life. For that reason, the Constitution anticipated that Congress, under its authority to create courts, could set up military commissions, could set up and pass the Uniform Code of Military Justice, which gave the military an entirely different type of structure when it comes to processing their rights and adjudicating different aspects of military life. Because to do otherwise, to give everyone in the military, as I was for 4 years, the same rights that are afforded in a civilian court means that you can destroy the function of the military because so often the military doesn't have time to do all of the same things a civilian court does. That's why the UCMJ was created, that's why it's constitutional, and that's why we needed some forum like that for our military. It is always an honor to get to speak in this hallowed Hall, but hopefully we can cast some light on what it means to be in the military because, for example, if you are suspected and there is probable cause to believe that a military member has committed a crime, then it can be pursued as an article 15, nonjudicial punishment. And as we saw with the outrageous pursuit of an article 15 against three valiant servicemembers, they had the right to choose not to accept the nonjudicial punishment that could have forced them into restriction, extra duty, taken away pay, dropped them in rank. Instead of having that forced on them, they were afforded their right, under the UCMJ, to say I'm not going to accept this; I want to go to trial in a court martial. That's what occurred, and all three were acquitted-- fortunately and appropriately. But that's one of the ways. Another way is the commander, at different levels of command, can order a court martial be convened. A court will be convened, and a military judge is appointed. And if it is the commanding general of a facility, he can order a general court martial, the highest level court martial under the UCMJ. And at that general court martial, you can have a dishonorable discharge--and it depends on the crime as to how serious the punishment could be--but it could be as serious as a dishonorable discharge and even life in prison. So it's a very serious matter. But whereas during the days when I was a prosecutor, an attorney, a judge, a chief justice, when there was a jury selection in a civil court, you randomly sent out notices and randomly brought people in, and then you went through a jury qualification with all of those and called out those who did not meet the requirements of the law to be a juror in a particular case. And then once the jury panel was qualified, they were brought before the parties of a particular case and they went through what we in Texas call voir dire, but most of the country calls voir dire--it's just the way we talk in Texas. But during voir dire, the attorneys have the opportunity to ask questions of the jury panel so that they can determine whether or not there are people who can be struck for cause, and to also allow them to exercise what are called peremptory strikes so they can go through--and in Texas, you can have as many as 10 strikes in the right cases--to strike them for any reason as long as it was not prohibited by the Constitution, strike people for no reason. In the military, if a commanding general convenes a court martial, it means he has signed off ordering that that servicemember be prosecuted. So he's the convening authority for the court martial. He has ordered that this person be prosecuted, so he is satisfied in his mind, he thinks this guy ought to be prosecuted, brought to justice. And then that same authority gets to pick the people who will be on the jury. And the attorney for the defendant in the military will have no rights to peremptory challenges as you would in the civilian court. They would have no right to try to determine who he would like to strike for peremptory reasons. It's a very difficult process for a defendant or defense attorney. There are cases in which someone can get life in prison in the military and may only have five members handpicked by the commanding general to be on the jury. Now, why would that be allowed? That probably just really infuriates some who are so concerned about civil rights and they will say, well, that's not fair. But what they don't understand is, in the military, you can't go through all the processes that we have so luxuriously been bestowed with in the civilian sector and still be able to fight wars and protect us against all these enemies, foreign and domestic. There has to be a difference in the rights that are afforded those in the military and those in the civilian sector, or the military cannot function. If they are out on the battlefield, they don't have time to go through a full civil trial and afford all the civil rights because, if they did, they would lose every battle. You can't do that to them and expect them to defend us. So there are different rights for those in the military than those in American society, and it has to be so to have the strongest military that mankind and the world and history has ever known and ever seen, and that is exactly what we have today. But our military was made promises earlier this year from the White House through the leadership here in Congress. They were promised that we're looking at changing the policy of Don't Ask, Don't Tell, which will allow those who practice homosexuality to do so openly and overtly. For most of the history of our Nation, the military has made sodomy a crime for which you could go to prison. So we've made a dramatic turn in more recent years so that people could feel comfortable that they are afforded all the civil rights. We're moving to giving our military all the civil rights that we all have in the civilian sector, not realizing a military can't function like that, not realizing that the military has to have different rights, to some extent, in order to function properly. Because those in the military and most who have served in the military--obviously not all--out of the millions and millions and millions--our colleagues across the aisle keep talking about 13,000--but of the millions and millions and millions who have served in our military, most understand that when you are in harm's way and you have people firing at you and you're hunkered down in a bunker or you're in a foxhole, you're in an untenable position and lives are at risk, that one of the strongest tendencies in the human body, the sexual urge, needs to be one that is not an issue. So whether it is those who cannot control their urges of heterosexuality or homosexuality, it absolutely should not be an issue when it comes to combat. And because those in the military have been scared to death of what kind of transformative change the repeal of Don't Ask, Don't Tell would have, what it would mean, what it would do to their functioning, their ability to function as a military and protecting us, they ask, At least let us submit our opinions, let us give you our input. We're the ones out here willing to lay down our lives for you in Congress, for you in America, for you in the ACLU. We're the ones out here willing to lay down our lives for you, let us have some input, let us tell you how it is in the military because we're not sure you understand it has to be different in the military for the military to function. And our White House and our majority leaders in Congress said, We hear you and we'll listen to you. We're going to do a study, and it's due December 1 of this year. And we will get your input because you're out there willing to lay down your lives for us, so we'll get your input and we'll have a study on exactly what kind of transformation this will make in the military. Will there have to be separate quarters for heterosexual males and homosexual males and heterosexual females and homosexual females? I mean, what is this going to look like in the military? What are we going to need to do in the way of facilities to accommodate the different types of sexual attraction? It's going to be an interesting question, and I think it's very important to get that study. We need to know what it's going to do. How much is it going to cost our military in the way of time and transformation at the very time they're losing their lives in Afghanistan? We still lose some in Iraq. And what many people don't know and what broke my heart in peacetime was to attend funerals of military friends during peacetime, because people die even in peacetime in the military. What is it going to do to the military trying to adapt to another potential war? What if Iran gets their nuclear weapons because all we're doing is playing footsie talking about sanctions at a time that Iran's centrifuges continue to spin, they're spinning, they're continuing to enrich uranium, they're getting closer every day to not having the small amount they've got, but moving toward full enrichment and the full bomb that could take out Israel. And if you read the quotes from Ahmadinejad, he makes it very clear--even though reporters in America have been scared to ask him anything other than ridiculous questions and not get to his claims that he is going to destroy the ``Great Satan'' America--he has made clear that our way of life needs to be wiped off the planet, as does that in Israel. He has made it very clear. And in furtherance of that goal, he has made clear they're continuing to move toward nuclear weapons, and we are not going to stop them. And we talk about sanctions. Now, China, to their credit, has been honest. They say, we don't want to go along with sanctions. I've been very concerned that China will come along and say, you know what? We'll agree to sanctions, just like Germany, France and Russia did against Iraq during the Oil-for-Food sanctions. And then we found out later after we went into Iraq that Germany, France and Russia had been cheating and had made billions and billions of dollars. They loved having the sanctions because it meant they had no competition because everyone else was observing the sanctions. So, it is to China's credit that they have at least been honest enough to say they don't think the idea of sanctions is a good idea because, if they did and if China said, Okay. Okay. We'll do sanctions, and then they started cheating, not only have we not done anything with sanctions, but we've enriched people who wouldn't mind seeing us leave this Earth as the greatest Nation in history. So we need our military to be able to function as well as it is now. We have heard testimonials from those who have said, I had a friend who couldn't stand to keep his homosexual feelings private. He had to go overt. He had to go public. He wanted everybody in the military to know. Yet, even though the vast majority of the military says that creates a real problem for us, our majority voted yesterday: Not only are we going to force you to have a different system than you've ever had before, but we don't care what you think. Now, we've heard today that--let's see. I believe the term ``political grandstanding'' was used. The fact is I've been heartbroken for my friends in the military. People I know so well are heartbroken over what we've done. We've betrayed our promise to the military. When I say ``we,'' I mean this body. We are part of it. We have betrayed our promise to the military that we would hear them out. Why would we rush in and pass the elimination of Don't Ask, Don't Tell right now? We told them we'd wait for the study, and people yesterday were saying, Well, we're going to wait for the study. We're just going to pass it now that we're going to eliminate it, regardless of what they say, and then we'll get the study at the end of the year and use that. Well, the headlines already hit the paper--last night and this morning. The military reads the news. Although, they can't complain about things that their Commander in Chief orders because that would be punishable by court-martial. They read the news. They know when they are about to be adversely affected, and they know when they've been made promises that haven't been kept by the very people sending them out to potentially lay down their lives, and they know the headlines in the papers all read that the House voted yesterday to repeal Don't Ask, Don't Tell. Is it so much to ask in the military that you keep your sexual desires private so that we all concentrate on our military missions? Wouldn't that be a good idea? You know, I've known people to be kicked out of the military for having affairs because it has adversely affected the morale and the well-being of the military. You can't put up with that. When it hurts its well-being and the morale of the military, it needs to be dealt with or you'll lose your military. We've had a policy since 1993 that President Clinton put in place, which said, Look. Just keep your sexual attractions private, and we welcome you to serve in the military; but our number one function in the military is to provide for the common defense, and anything that distracts from that is not appropriate. We heard the civil libertarians, who were so proud last night, clapping and cheering over the fact that we've betrayed our promise to the military, clapping and rejoicing that the huge, vast majority of the military was begging them not to do this, but they wouldn't wait for the official report. I still am heartbroken. For the charge of political grandstanding on our side of the aisle, I come back to the question again: Why was it so important to betray our promise to the military that we would wait and get their input on what was going to have such a profound effect on the way they protect us and on the way they live every day? Because it isn't like living in the civilian sector. I can assure you that. Could it have been that the political left was getting upset that the majority had not done enough for them and their view and that, if they didn't rush and do something big to show them they really cared about the far left, they would not be there for them in the fall for November's election? Could it be that the majority wanted to stay in the majority and that they didn't want to lose such an important part of their base, albeit the far left end? Could that have been the reason that we had to rush in here and pass this law yesterday and betray our promise to this Nation's military? I am at a loss, particularly as we recess to go home for Memorial Day to pay tribute to those who have made the ultimate sacrifice for this Nation. As John 15:13 said, ``Greater love has no one than this, that he lay down his life for his friends.'' We are to pay tribute to them at the same time we've betrayed the promise we made to them, dramatically altering their future. One other point. Then I have a friend from Minnesota here, and I want to yield to her. On the very day after we betrayed our promise to the military and basically said, We don't care what you think. We're going to change your way of life, and we're going to change the way everything works in the military, particularly while we're in two battlefields, we took up today an amendment to H.R. 5116. In that amendment, all it was asking was that our disabled veterans be given the same special consideration that minorities are given under this bill, those who are trying to get an education in a college or in a university. Most of us over here on this side did not think that was such an untenable position. Our disabled vets, those who have lost part of their lives and their ability to function physically, we can't even give them the same consideration that a minority gets who attends a college or a university? I figured it would be virtually unanimous. Yet the amendment failed. The majority brought down the amendment and said, You know what? Disabled veterans, on the day after we betrayed our promise to the military, we're not even going to give you the same status as a minority in America to help you further your education. We don't want you to have that special consideration. So, if you listen to the beautiful prose that is spoken here on the floor, you would believe that every single Member of this House wants to do absolutely everything they can for our veterans, but if you look at what was done, we've betrayed our military, the promise we made to them. Then, the next day, we said, We don't consider you, disabled veterans, to be as important as minorities in America. Why wouldn't they be? I am at a loss. I yield to my friend from Minnesota.

Mr. GOHMERT. Reclaiming my time, the White House has stonewalled, as the gentlelady has pointed out. But it has been also intriguing to me that you have a former admiral in the United States Navy who brought this up, and he has refused to give full details and make sure that the full truth about all of this was known himself. I am deeply intrigued by that, because I understand that our colleague was a graduate in 1974 of the Naval Academy of the United States, and the academies have an honor code. And when I was in school at Texas A&M, we had an honor code as well. Aggies do not lie, cheat, or steal, or tolerate those who do. The Naval Academy's honor code that is supposed to be kept by Naval Academy students and graduates says, ``They stand for that which is right, they tell the truth, and ensure that the full truth is known.'' That is part of the honor code for midshipmen for the Naval Academy. So I am looking forward to both the White House and our colleague stepping up and giving the full truth, so we can get this behind us and move on, for heaven's sake. It shouldn't have gone on this long without having a complete answer. There is no purpose to that. We also heard this week from our colleagues how proud they were that they successfully passed within the last couple or three hours what is called the ``doc fix,'' because doctors were going to be cut 20 percent in their reimbursement under Medicare. I have seen documentation that makes clear that for some doctors, some treatment, when you cut them any more than they are already, they lose substantial amounts of money. So why would they even undergo to help someone with a physical problem on Medicare, particularly Medicaid that pays even less, when they are receiving less compensation than it costs them just to conduct the activity with the patient? What has not been talked about here on the floor by those who are so proud that they passed the ``doc fix'' and did not cut the doctors 20 percent more this year was that, originally, there was supposed to be a fix in the reimbursement to physicians that would last at least 3\1/2\ years, and then at the end it would begin being cut 20 percent again. Well, what was inserted and actually came to the floor was a fix for not 3\1/2\ years, but 19 months, and at the end of the 19 months, instead of going back to a 20 percent cut again, it moved and advanced to a 33 percent cut. Even though we had colleagues across the aisle so proud that they helped our doctors continue to be able to see patients, it turns out that not just the AMA--I don't really trust their endorsements after seeing what they did on the health care fiasco that would cut care to seniors by $500 billion and would dramatically change their professions forever--but looking further, every physician organization that weighed in said this is a disaster. Don't pass this. Yet it was passed anyway, and the majority stands up after it passes it and basically says, ``You're welcome.'' You're welcome? They haven't really said thank you, because they were begging them not to pass it. That is kind of what we have seen with the military as well. When we get into this area of special rights, as we have heard people clamor around the country for special rights in the military and special constitutional rights for those who are trying to kill and destroy us, if you go back, and I know everybody hasn't been fortunate enough to have a legal education. I am very blessed with a legal education at Baylor University. Serving in the Army for 4 years, you learn probably more than you ever wanted to. But, anyway, terrorists, people who are part of a group who have said they are at war with this Nation, they are not entitled to the same rights under the Constitution that we are. Just like people in the military are not entitled to the same rights as people in the civilian sector, people at war with this country, going back to the Quirin case in 1942, they were called enemy combatants. If they abided by the Geneva Convention, if they wore a uniform, if they abided by the rules of law, then they were entitled to be treated as prisoners of war under the Geneva Convention. We treat the enemy combatants who are not entitled to anything under the Geneva Convention better than the Geneva Convention affords them. And throughout the history of mankind, for people who have studied war, and if you are an officer in the military you have been required to study military history, you know that if a nation was a civilized nation and they captured people who were at war with them, part of a group or a country who said they were at war, then you held them until their friends or country said, we are no longer at war. At that point, and it may be 10 or 20 years down the line, but at that point, when the friends finally admitted we are no longer at war, then you would release those enemy combatants and let them return home on the promise not to be at war anymore. And if they were suspected or there was probable cause to believe they had committed a war crime, then you didn't even release them to go back home, even if they served 20 years in a POW camp. You tried them before a military commission for war crimes. And, again, the Constitution of the United States anticipated that in those situations, when they were tried, it would be before a military commission, and the Constitution specifically gives the Congress the power to set up military commissions to do that. But because people don't realize our way of life is at risk, and the Constitution, drafted by our Founders, who realized you have to have a different set of rights for those at war against you, they have pushed and said no, no, no; let's give these extra rights and treat these enemy combatants as extra special. That is why in the Military Commissions Act of 2006, which has been upheld by the U.S. Supreme Court, they were referred to as enemy combatants, going back to the Quirin case of 1942. Well, once our friends across the aisle took the majority, they could not live with this horrible language of calling these people that want to kill us, destroy our way of life, destroy our families, our children, everything we hold dear, they didn't like them being called enemy combatants. It sounded offensive. So an amendment to the Military Commissions Act of 2006 was passed calling it the Military Commissions Act of 2009 in which we struck the language ``enemy combatant.'' It is no longer appropriate under the law of this Congress to call someone an enemy combatant who wants to kill us and destroy our way of life. Now we call them, and the term is quoted, ``unprivileged alien enemy belligerent,'' hoping that will be less offensive to those who want to kill us, destroy us, wipe out our families and take all we have.

Mr. GOHMERT. I'm concerned, my friend keeps using the term ``terrorist,'' and I'm worried that she may not realize that that might offend somebody that wants to kill her.

Mr. GOHMERT. Well, as long as you don't say that somebody lied, then we're okay. But I know that there are people who are concerned that if we are just nice enough to those folks who want to kill us and destroy our way of life, that they'll come around and see how wonderful and nice they are. Unfortunately, they don't realize, to those who want to destroy our way of life and kill us, it appears to be weakness; and a weakness to them means we are worthy to be destroyed because we have no business being on the planet. But I know there are still those that say let's help those, do everything we can for them. And I come back to this article. There's a former CIA operative, Wayne Simmons, terrorist analyst, who was amazed at the medical treatment that was provided to those who want to kill and destroy us. Having been to Guantanamo a couple of times myself, seeing the extraordinary court set-up that was ready to start trying terrorists back over a year ago when the President, the Commander-in-Chief, put the stop on it, they were about to go to trial and the first five to go to trial had already said they were going to plead guilty. But once they were told they were coming to New York and were going to get a civilian trial, well, obviously they made clear, well, we're going to be proud of what we did but we're not going to plead guilty. We're looking forward to that wonderful format in New York. Again, for those who are worried that, you know, if we would just treat these folks nicely, they'll love us instead of wanting to destroy our way of life, well, I would give them humbly the example of Abdullah Massoud. Abdullah Massoud, a/k/a Said Mohammed Ali Shah, was released from Guantanamo. But because, during his attempts to destroy American lives, he had lost his leg below his knee, well, we fitted him with a prosthesis that cost between 50 and $75,000. So those who were worried about if we just are nicer to these folks, well, we were nice to Mr. Massoud, gave him a prosthesis to help him, even though he lost his leg in trying to kill us. Well, we tried to help him and did and gave him that wonderful prosthesis, American ingenuity at its best, creating a prosthesis like that that would help him walk, help him be a participant in society. So knowing that he would surely have to love us after we had helped restore his leg that he lost trying to be violent against us, he was released. And he, according to Pakistani officials, directed a homicide attack that killed 31 people in Pakistan, and then 2 months later, when he was about to be captured by Pakistani forces, he blew himself up, including the $75,000 prosthesis. Apparently, it didn't mean a whole lot, how nice we were to him in Guantanamo. On my first trip to Guantanamo, it was interesting. At one point there were a couple of us that were in one of the detention areas. We had been warned, now, when we go through this door, do not talk because you won't be able to hear their interaction between each other if they know a voice that they're not familiar with is somewhere around here. And so we listened. There was laughing. I didn't understand what they were saying, kidding around, a lot of banter back and forth between the different units where they were being held. And as we stood at the end of the hallway, someone with us said something that was heard by those on that hallway, and immediately, the banter, the cheerfulness turned into, ``Help, I'm being tortured. Help.'' And we were treated to cries for help. They didn't realize that we had been hearing them kidding around, laughing and joking with each other until they heard that a new voice was on the floor. And we were told, that's because they know that there are different groups that come, Amnesty International, different ones that come to check on them, and so that's why as soon as they hear a voice that they don't hear every day, they want to make sure that they get lots of sympathy. It's what they're trained to do. It was just amazing to observe that firsthand. It was really interesting and amazing. But also, we know that no one who is a guard is allowed to assault or even speak in a negative way toward anyone being held at Guantanamo. The only assaults now for some years that have gone on at Guantanamo occur when the inmates there figure out new and exciting ways to throw urine or feces on our guards. There's been only one guard that reacted hostily by yelling an insult, a verbal insult at the one who threw feces on him. And he was punished for that, what was deemed to be, by our military, overreaction. Though he did not strike, he spoke angrily and insultingly and, therefore, he was punished. You might wonder, Mr. Speaker, what happens to those that keep throwing urine and feces? Well, in a normal prison, and I've been through many of those, if you will not quit assaulting the guards, then ultimately you're put in an isolation cell where you can't possibly do it anymore. But because of all the complaints about what a horrible place Guantanamo is, though the people there are treated better than most any maximum security prison I've ever seen or heard about, we don't put them in isolation because Amnesty International, some of these groups, would just go nuts. And so they say it's easier just to punish them by taking away a couple of their hours that they're allowed to watch movies each day. And if it's bad enough, they may take some of their time away of the hours that they're allowed to be outdoors. That's their punishment--losing some movie time. In view of some of the movies out now, they're not missing that much. But that's how they're punished for throwing urine or feces on our guards. I realize that some in this body, some around the country, want to help the terrorists and they believe if we'll just be nice to them, everything will work out fine. That's not the case. It is absolutely not the case. It is religious zealotry. And I thank God that it is only a very small percentage of Islamic believers who believe in this type of violent jihad. The vast majority of Islamic believers don't believe jihad means the violent physical event that these jihadist extremists that we've come to know and see kill people do. So, thank goodness for that. But for those jihadist extremists who believe, as Ahmadinejad said, that he can usher in the coming of the Mahdi, the Grand Mahdi that will rule over the caliphate, that he can usher that in by using nuclear weapons to blow us up, Israel up, this is serious. He believes it to his core, even though some of the American interviewers were either scared to ask, Why do you want to blow us up and destroy us? And do you really believe that you'll bring about the return of the Mahdi to rule the world if you use nuclear weapons? Nobody had the nerve to ask those. That's what he has said repeatedly. And as the lesson should have been learned from Hitler, when you have a nut that's claiming he's going to kill people and destroy countries and destroy societies and commit genocide, and he achieves the weaponry to do that, you'd better take him seriously. But we haven't done that. It's been a very interesting week. Earlier I was mentioning the bill, H.R. 5116, the COMPETES Act, it's called. This would have amended section 702, persons with disabilities, to include veterans with disabilities in achieving the same type of special consideration. That's all it says, special consideration that other groups designated as minorities under this do. How unfortunate, the same week we betray our promise to our military. Well, as we anticipate heading home this weekend, which I do each weekend, and we think about Memorial Day and those who have laid down their lives for us, having attended the funeral of Sergeant Kenneth B. May, Jr., 26 years old, of Kilgore, Texas, in the last 10 days, our hearts and our tributes go out to those who served this Nation. May they forgive us for what we've done to them this week.

Mr. GOHMERT

Mr. GOHMERT. Mr. Speaker, pursuant to House Concurrent Resolution 282, 111th Congress, I move that the House do now adjourn.

Mr. GOHMERT

Mr. GOHMERT. Mr. Speaker, there was an agreement with the military to do a study on what to do about the Don't Ask, Don't Tell policy. That was the agreement, and the study is due at the end of the year. What this rule says, by bringing this amendment to the floor, is, while we send men and women out in harm's way to lay down their lives for us, we don't care what you think. We don't care what word you were given by your leaders that we do care what you think and will incorporate that and will work with that. We're saying we're shoving this down your throat. We don't care. And think about the policy. Now, look, I have represented people in the Army who practiced homosexuality, and heterosexuality, and sexual assault victims. I understand this issue perhaps more than many of those on the floor here. And I'm telling you, the military is not a social experiment. We are sending them out there with a mission to protect this country. And if someone has to be overt about their sexuality, whether it's in a bunker where they're confined under fire, then it's a problem. And that's what repeal of Don't Ask, Don't Tell does. It says, I have to be overt. I don't care. I want this to be a social experiment. Our men and women in the military deserve better. Let's hear from them at the end of the year with a complete study, and then the leaders keep their word when we send our military out to die for this country. We owe them better than this. This shouldn't have been part of the rule. It shouldn't be part of the vote. Let's keep our word for a change.

Mr. GOHMERT

Mr. GOHMERT. I was shocked to hear the majority leader bring up the Americans with Disability Act. It was a wonderful thing that this Congress did in making all areas accessible to those with disability. But to bring it up in this debate next brings the question, will this majority not stop meddling with the military, and next we expect an extension of the ADA so that the military will next be required to put those who are disabled on the front lines to defend the Nation? It's time to stop meddling. Let the military do the job for which they were assigned and for which they volunteered. Put the military in charge.

Mr. GOHMERT. Mr. Chairman, we heard our colleague across the aisle talking about the Don't Ask, Don't Tell. Obviously, this is supposed to be about a block of amendments, and I don't have objection to those, so I would like to use this time to address that issue. This body, leaders in this body, the White House, from the President to the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs and the Secretary of Defense, have promised our men and women who wear the uniform that their opinion will be considered. A survey and study are being done. Now, we've heard about individual cases where this person ended up getting out. As we heard, he couldn't keep his sexual urges private, and so he had to make them overt and therefore he was out-processed. The policy has been, as long as the sexuality is a private matter, then it doesn't damage the mission of the military. But when it becomes overt, whether it's an officer having a heterosexual affair, or whether it's overt homosexuality, through the history of the military, it has been a problem to the ongoing morale of the military and accomplishment of the mission. Anything that detracts from the mission should be eliminated. So the message here is, the hundreds of people that have urged me, please fight for us and what we believe in, because I've heard from so many, if you push this through, we're out. We're done. We hear some isolated cases, but please, let's don't do damage to the military and break our promise to them, let's wait till the study is completed.

Mr. GOHMERT

Mr. GOHMERT. Thank you, Mr. Speaker. There are certain requirements of this body that the Constitution sets forth. This is the body that controls the purse strings of the country. This body has an obligation to make sure that we act cautiously and carefully in spending the money that we legally steal from those who produce it. It would be theft except we are authorized to pass laws to make it legal theft when we take it from people who produce that money in this country, but it should come home to folks around this body that we have an obligation to those people to be conscientious in the things we do; and, accordingly, it is the obligation of this body to prepare a budget in order to have control over our appropriations. The people who I serve with, who have been here for years, say this is the first year they recall ever not voting on a budget in the House of Representatives. There is no budget. When politics is more important than actually protecting the country that we are sworn to protect, then from a political viewpoint, it's easy to see why someone might want to do this for the first time in so many years and avoid putting forth a budget. Because if a budget were brought forth in this election year with so many people already upset--with tea parties so angry at the vast overspending--they would be able to see exactly how off the charts this body's spending has been and is projected to be with that money that we legally steal from people who produce it in the country. So we haven't had time or the political fortitude to step up in this body and to prepare a budget as is required. We have an obligation to protect private property; but as we have seen with the gulf coast, that hasn't happened. We heard this week from the Minerals Management Service and from those with the Department of the Interior that they have been on guard since day one, since this bill happened. Well, why wouldn't they have been on guard since day one when drilling commenced? We know from the records and from the hearings we've had that, when the Deepwater Horizon platform was put in place back in 2001, for the first 40 months it was in place, every month, as is supposed to occur, there were offshore inspections done. From there, it gets very fuzzy. We find out that MMS can't tell us exactly how many inspections there have been since then of the Deepwater Horizon platform and of their drilling operations. We did hear in our hearing and during the question-and-answer time-- it was part of the public record yesterday in Natural Resources--that they're not really sure how many times the inspections occurred, but what some of us, through some digging, had found out is that there is one entity, and one alone, in the Minerals Management Service that is allowed to be unionized, and that is the offshore inspectors. Now, that struck some of us as strange because the offshore inspectors seem a bit like our Armed Forces. You know, they stand between our homeland and bad things that could destroy or harm our homeland. So who would have thought that something, some entity, with obligations similar to our uniformed services, which are to stand between our homeland and harm, would have union contracts? Well, we couldn't find out from DOI, the Department of the Interior, or from the MMS yesterday in our hearing exactly what is in those union contracts. Normally, union contracts would have limits on travel, limits on the number of hours that could be worked, limits on all kinds of things. You put limits on how much those standing between us and harm can serve and can travel to get between us and harm? Yet we've done nothing about that. No. In fact, what has happened is we've now learned that the Department of the Interior, Secretary Salazar, has decided and this administration has decided that MMS has not been functioning very well, so we're going to divide it into three separate entities. I don't care that it's not a new problem and that it goes back a number of administrations. The fact is it's a problem now, and unionizing people who stand between us and harm allows there to be limits on just what kind of service we can expect from those standing between us and vast amounts of harm. It should never happen. That shouldn't be allowed to take place. What we heard yesterday was, actually, that we are going to possibly let unions take hold in all three of these entities. We don't really know right now. We may let everybody in all three of these things unionize. But what kept coming to mind for me, having grown up in east Texas, is that I've been around stagnant ponds that stunk to high heaven, that became so stagnant, nonmoving, with no water coming in. They just stunk so bad you could hardly stay around them. It seems that MMS has been a bit that way. The things that have gone on in MMS stink to high heaven. They are repugnant to anybody with any type of moral fiber: the investigations going on, the bribes that have occurred, nobody's knowing when or if they actually did the inspections they were supposed to, whether they observed or not testing that was supposedly done. We found out literally there may have been inspectors who were in bed with people they were supposed to be inspecting, that there were favors, perks, gifts potentially given, bribes to look the other way. We don't know what all happened on Deepwater Horizon. The investigation, we're told, is ongoing; but we really haven't done a lot about that yet. Here we have this stagnant cesspool where so much has not been done that was supposed to have been and where so much may have been done that was illegal. Rather than deal with the issues, it sounds like this body is just going to go along and divide it up into three. Well, now I know, having seen stagnant, stinking cesspools, that if you divide them up, they still stink; they're still repugnant. If you just completely clean them out and put fresh water in, then you've got something to start from, but we're not doing that. We're dividing it up into three groups, and we're going to add to the stagnant cesspool, but we're not going to clean them out. Not only that, we're going to allow the situation to even grow bigger with the potential unionization of people so they can have their travel and hours and things limited so you can't expect as much from them as you would from somebody who is standing between us and great harm. So we are not doing our job in so many of these areas. You look further at the kind of money that has been appropriated and you find out that we are appropriating billions of dollars to countries that don't like us. We provided, I believe, $100 million to Somalia. We know just in the last couple of days there is a potential threat that is arising from Somalia, we have been told. We have given them $100 million. We have given Yemen $100 million, $200 million, I am not sure exactly of the number. There has been a big deal made here that $3 billion was given to Israel, but when you look at all the money added up we have given to the enemies of Israel, it is appears that it is more than that. So I have a bill that we call the U.N. Voting Accountability Act. I am sure it will not see the light of day in this Congress. But it simply says countries that vote against the United States more than half the time do not receive any financial assistance the following year. The report comes out each March 31st. We have got the report from last year that came out March 31st of this year, and we see that the vast majority, most of the countries in the U.N. that we give money to, billions of dollars total, they voted against us the vast majority of the time. Some of them voted against us 90-95 percent of the time, and we are just lavishing money upon them. What occurs to me repeatedly is, you don't have to pay countries to hate you. They will hate you for free. And yet this body just keeps throwing money at that. We have thrown money at Wall Street. I had begged people on this floor, in private conference, around this Hill, read the bill, read the bill. I begged people. I have implored people. Because if they read the TARP bill, they would have seen that Wall Street was going to have a slush fund, and that has been continued by the current Secretary of the Treasury, a slush fund, bail out your buddies. Goldman Sachs had the biggest year they have had in history. We can't find out how much of their billions of dollars they made last year came from the United States Government, the U.S. taxpayers, or money we borrowed from China that our great-grandchildren will eventually pay so that people could engorge themselves right now on Wall Street. We are not really taking care of that issue. We are looking the other way, because we find out, gee, Wall Street is donating four-to-one to the Democrats, so why should we really clean up? We will call them fat cats, we will talk about how rotten they are, but when push comes to shove, we have a financial so-called reform bill that is more of a financial deform bill that is going to empower the very people that are being objected to in ways some of us can't imagine. We are going to have people in the government pick winners and losers. We are going to say, you are a systemic risk as a bank or a company, which means we won't let you fail. You can run your competition out of business, but we are not going to let you fail. So we are picking winners and losers, and that is in that financial deform bill. We are not doing our job around here. But we can come in here today and we can go meddling with the greatest military that mankind has ever seen. The men and women of our uniformed services are unrivaled up to now. No, we haven't had time this year to do a budget, and we apparently are not going to do one. No, we haven't really done much of anything to protect private property. No, we haven't done anything, absolutely zero, to bring down the price of energy. In fact, we are going to skyrocket that. But one thing we are all so proud of is when it comes to health care and the seniors that were counting on Medicare, we are cutting $500 billion out of Medicare. And as the President himself said, and this is a basic quote, whereas in the past when you went to the doctor and got five tests, now you will go to the doctor and get one test. Well, it took several tests, many tests, to find my mother's brain tumor, and by virtue of their finding it we had 15 extra years with my mother, and I cherished them all. But no, we are not going to do that for the future, because, you see, some seniors, they just cost too much. So we are going to cut $500 billion, and we are going to call it waste, fraud and abuse. But we are not really doing anything in the bill to clean up the waste, fraud and abuse. That is going to be ongoing. But we are going to cut that money. Then we have got our willing lackeys over in CBO. They will score anything that this administration and this majority sends over. I was told last summer, the CBO will not score anything that is not in final bill form. Then we find out, well, that is if it comes from a Republican. Because if somebody in the Democratic Party just sends over a few notes, oh, they will score it, and they will give them the score they need. And if it doesn't work out, well, we will have a meeting at the White House or here at the Capitol, and then before you know it, if the majority leadership says it is going to be under $1 trillion, they will ignore this amount of money, $250 billion here, they will ignore $150 billion here and wait and suddenly find that 30 days after the bill passes. Their willing lackeys will help them. We have to do away with the CBO. They are not fair. I am sure, talking to Director Elmendorf, I really believe he means well. I believe he is trying to do the right thing. But the fact is they are funded by the majority in Congress, and they know that. You are not going to ever get an appropriate score, and that is the reason you have over 600 bills from the majority scored by CBO and just barely over 100 scored that were Republican. Over 600 scored, and only about 100 were Republican. A former speaker told me when I described my health care alternative plan, he said, you got to get that scored. That could absolutely transform the debate over health care because it would save money and give control to patients. Medicare patients would have control over their own health care, yet it would be financed by the taxpayers. They have the best of both worlds. And yet it would be cheaper than what we are spending now. I could not for a year now, nearly a year now, have not been able to get CBO to score it. It is a travesty. But, oh, yes, we come back again to the military. We don't have time to do the jobs that the Constitution requires this body to do, but, boy, we sure are going to meddle with the greatest military mankind has ever seen or heard of. It is phenomenal. When I compare the state of the military right now to the way it was when I was in the Army after Vietnam, there is no comparison. This military today is phenomenal. They are incredible. And yet we found something that wasn't broken, and we decided to mess with it and see what we could do, not intentionally, of course, but this majority decided they were going to fix something that wasn't broken. ``Don't Ask, Don't Tell'' it was called. And what it meant when President Clinton instituted that program was that whatever you are drawn to sexually, you keep it private, you don't let it get out and become open with regard to your military service, and we want you in the military. That is what it comes down to. But that hasn't been good enough. We have too many people in here that did not have good history teachers. They don't know the lessons from history, and so we are destined to repeat them. And that is what we are doing now, we are repeating the lessons of history. Historians would have a hard time going back and finding any great nation, even to the earliest city states, that achieved greatness, and then toward the end of their existence they forced homosexuality to be accepted in areas like the military. Why have we not learned this? Why couldn't we let the military do their jobs? Frankly, with as much respect as I have for our majority leader, I was shocked in the debate over Don't Ask, Don't Tell to hear the Americans with Disabilities Act brought up, because I think most everybody on this floor agrees that the Americans with Disabilities Act that made this Nation accessible to so many wonderful people who just happened to have disabilities was a good thing. It really was a wonderful thing. It makes you feel good to know the accessibility that there is, and there continues to be, and there will be until the Nation is gone. So, why would we want to hasten the demise of this great Nation? Why would we want to mess with the entity that stands between those who want to destroy us and our homes? Well, we haven't had time to do a budget. We haven't had time to protect our homeland adequately by doing adequate oversight over the Minerals Management Service, or the Immigration Service, or Homeland Security or the Federal Reserve. No, no, no. We just let them run themselves basically. But, boy, we have found time to work on social engineering to please a political left in an election year, just so some people have their base happy when they come to November. We're following the footsteps of nations that have walked to the dust heap of history. Now, I know people think this is such a grand and glorious job in Congress. They have no idea. But it is an honor and it is a privilege to get to serve in these hallowed Halls, and we owe our predecessors so much better than what we've done. We've had time to make sure that we continue to allow the unborn to be killed. We've had time to make sure that Federal tax dollars can be taken from taxpayers who believe that it's murder to kill a helpless, unborn child and put that into a health care bill and call it health care. We've had time to cut $500 billion from the health care for seniors. But we've learned nothing, apparently, about preserving liberty. As Chuck Colson said a little over a year ago in a Bible study: you have morality, you've got economic stability, and you've got liberty. And when you lose morality, you lose economic stability and you get economic chaos. Well, folks, we've lost economic stability because we've accepted the loss of morality. We've looked the other way when you had the Madoffs engorging themselves. We've looked the other way when the Paulsens and Geithners were seeing that their friends on Wall Street were enriched and engorged. We've looked the other way. We've looked the other way when the bankruptcy laws were just completely disregarded that required secured creditors to be protected and unsecured creditors to be on the short end of the stick, flipped the laws upside down because the unsecured creditors included the unions. So we give the unions ownership interest in the auto companies. We take a big ownership interest, and we violate some of the very principles on which this Nation was founded. And it doesn't matter whether it's a Democrat or a Republican President that says we're going to make money for the taxpayers. It's not their job; it's not the job of this Congress. It's the job of taxpayers to make money with their money, not this body and not the White House. And it was a shame on the Supreme Court when they allowed that auto task force, illegal, unconstitutional order to go through. Ruth Bader Ginsburg, to her credit, stayed it for 24 hours, and then the Court looked the other way and allowed that illegal, unconstitutional bill to go through, because, apparently, the White House convinced them that if they didn't let this illegal, unconstitutional bill go through, people in the auto industry would all lose their jobs. Hogwash. They would have been forced into reorganization. The union contracts would have had to have been renegotiated. It would have all gone through a reorganization process. It would have come out leaner, meaner, more efficient. But we couldn't allow that because there were political paybacks to those that helped the majority and the President get elected. There are some who've said maybe it's a good thing for us Republicans that the health care bill got passed because it was so harmful and detrimental to America that, gee, it'll help us get back in the majority. As I've said on this floor before, I'd rather stay in the minority than see a bill that devastating to America, to the principles of private property and of sanctity of life just be frittered away. I'd rather stay in the minority than have my party helped by such a devastating bill. Didn't have time to do the right thing and all that. Didn't have time to read the stimulus bill--$787 billion. Didn't have time to read that. The ``crap and trade'' bill, didn't have time to really read that. We had 300 pages of amendments that were added in the wee hours of the morning when we were to vote on it; and even when we voted on it, as I pointed out, the Clerk hadn't even got the whole 300 pages enmeshed and included with the bill so you could read it and know what it really meant. But we had to pass it. We didn't have time to wait. We didn't have time for any of these important bills that will devastate America. But, boy, we have time to meddle with the United States military. We heard some isolated cases of someone who ended up having to leave the military because they couldn't control their sexual hormones to the point that they could keep their sexual orientation private. But what about the thousands and hundreds of thousands of people in the military who have now been betrayed? They were promised we're going to have a study, and we're going to make sure that we don't do anything to harm the military. But a little problem came up in this body keeping its promise to the military. That problem is the November election's coming up. And the problem is that some of the solid base, left wing of the majority were not happy. They didn't feel like enough had been done to suit them, and so we had to break our word to the military, rush this bill in here and eliminate Don't Ask, Don't Tell. But, oh, no, we heard from people that, gee, we're going to roll back Don't Ask, Don't Tell. Sure, of course we are. But we're going to wait until we find out what the study says about how devastating it'll be to the military. Yes, the Secretary of Defense and Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff both said they would follow the order of their superior officer, the Commander in Chief. But those who were not politically appointed by the Commander in Chief sure didn't go along with it. They didn't agree to it. You'd find a commander every now and then that would. But we have hundreds of thousands and millions of people who have served, who hope to serve, who are serving now that we have betrayed. And it breaks my heart. I'm so sorry that this body broke its word for political gain. Now, under the scenario this majority and this administration have pursued, we're in trouble. The one thing you find historically after Nations on their way to the dust heap of history take after passing things like we just did today, you see a great deal of cockiness arise to belittle those who have studied history and know where this all goes. And we seek to destroy them. When this Nation was founded, one of the most popular slogans, some quote Cicero, some quote Voltaire, but the same slogan, ``I disagree with what you say, but I will defend to the death your right to say it.'' We have obliterated that as a hallmark of this Nation's founding and its existence today so that now the slogan is more truthfully, I disagree with what you say, and I am going to destroy you. I am going to get you fired. I am hoping I can get you put in jail. We have passed laws in this body that will help do that and have already allowed arrests of some, even though, as was pointed out, well, they dropped the charges. Putting people in jail because we disagree with what they say. So we don't defend to the death any longer their right to say it. We want to destroy them. And the people in power will make sure that happens. You disagree politically with the party in power, you have a right to be concerned. We didn't have time to do a budget; we didn't have time to read these big bills that we have run through and voted on, but we have had time to take over the student loan business. That's right. If you need student loans for your children, Mr. Speaker, those in America to get their kids through college, as my wife and I have because we gave up the private sector and went into public service, we needed student loans and we took them. Thank God I got our kids through college, was at graduation of my youngest Saturday with my wife, a proud moment. Thank goodness we got her graduated before the only source for a student loan was to come begging to the government to let me have a loan for my child to go to college. You think politics could ever come into play in who gets a student loan and who doesn't? Gee, it sure came into play in who got to keep their car dealership. Gee, it sure came to play as to which States get more government facilities taken away and which have more facilities added. It's certainly come into play in all kinds of things. So why wouldn't it come into play eventually in who gets a student loan? Now we have taken over Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac. You would think if it were somebody serious in leadership about reforming the financial sector that we would first reform the two entities that brought this Nation to the brink of ruin, Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac. But instead, we are not going to reform them. Goodness no. We are going to make matters worse because we are going to give the government even more power and more control over everyone's financial situation. Certainly part of the health care bill. Yes, sir, we get to now tell you what private products you buy and can't buy. This is a time of tragedy. I realize that we have been less than moral as a Nation and we are paying a price. I realize that when you begin to kill 10 million, 20 million, 30 million, 40 million, 50 million sweet little innocent babies--I know our first was prematurely born, and she held onto my finger for hours as the doctor said, ``She's drawing life, she's drawing support from you.'' Those sweet little innocent children. We have supported their being killed. And as I was at the Lincoln Memorial a couple of weeks ago again--I try to go regularly. I find it inspirational. Reading those words on the inside north wall of the Lincoln Memorial and think about the unborn being killed, the sweet, innocent children doing anything they could to cling to life. My baby could not see, as the doctor said, but she knew enough to hang on. She wanted to live. She struggled to live. And I love her dearly, and I am proud she is my daughter. And as I read those words on the north wall, I thought about all the shed blood through the death of innocent children. And the words of Abraham Lincoln were these as he tried to make sense of the destruction and the almost complete destruction of this grand experiment in democracy, and how families could fight families and kill family members, how a Nation could turn against itself. But they had been allowing the unthinkable. They had been allowing slavery. They had been allowing brothers and sisters to treat others by putting them in chains and bondage and outrageous treatment. And as Lincoln sought to make theological sense of it and he thought about the North and South and the destruction of each other, he said, you know, ``Both read the same Bible, both pray to the same God, and each invokes his aid against the other. It may seem strange that any men should dare to ask a just God's assistance in wringing their bread from the sweat of other men's faces, but let us judge not that we be not judged. The prayers of both could not be answered--that of neither has been fully answered. The Almighty has his own purposes.'' Lincoln adds as a quote from Scripture, quote, ``Woe unto the world because of offenses; for it must needs be that offenses come, but woe to that man by whom the offense cometh.'' Lincoln went on, ``If we shall suppose that American slavery,'' or nowadays American abortion, ``is one of those offenses which, in the providence of God, must needs come, but which, having continued through His appointed time, He now wills to remove, and that He gives to both North and South this terrible war as the woe due to those by whom the offense came, shall we discern therein any departure from those divine attributes which the believers in a living God always ascribe to him? Fondly do we hope, fervently do we pray, that this mighty scourge of war,'' and I would pray abortion, ``may speedily pass away. Yet, if God wills that it continue until all the wealth piled by the bondsman's 250 years of unrequited toil shall be sunk, and every drop of blood drawn with the lash shall be paid by another drawn with the sword, as was said 3,000 years ago, so still it must be said `the judgments of the Lord are true and righteous altogether.' ``With malice toward none; with charity for all; with firmness in the right, as God gives us to see the right, let us strive on to finish the work we are in; to bind up the Nation's wounds; to care for him who shall have borne the battle, and for his widow, and his orphan--to do all which may achieve and cherish a just and lasting peace among ourselves, and with all Nations.'' Lincoln knew about sacrifice. He lost a son. He believed it was punishment for not ending slavery more quickly. I don't know what the future holds, but I know what has happened to Nations when they have pursued the exact course that we have in the last 20 years in this Nation. We need to get on track because, as Coulson said, When you lose morality, you get economic chaos. And when you get economic chaos, you get those who are always willing to sacrifice liberty to get economic stability. No greater example than Germany in the 1920s and 1930s. They had a little guy with a mustache who was evil who promised economic stability. And he delivered it at the price of their liberty. It is time to stop the madness. It's time to stop passing bills that have not been read. It's time to stop meddling with the greatest military that the world has ever known and trying to disrupt it by our own social engineering. I couldn't believe I heard the majority leader bring up the Americans With Disabilities Act in the context of talking about open homosexuality in the military. So immediately I am thinking, what does that mean? We did a wonderful thing when Congress passed the Americans With Disabilities Act, but does that mean next this body is going to force the military to accept the disabled on the front lines? We're going to have to make--as a former prisoner of war said, What, are we going to make our ejection seats wheelchairs so that they roll when they hit? The military has one purpose, and we need able-bodied people to do it. And we need nothing that detracts from their military mission. It's not a place for social engineering. It's a place for people with single-mindedness, single focus, to be on the military mission, to prevent those who would destroy this country and our freedoms from being successful. And if someone can't control their sexual hormones, then that's a distraction to the military no matter what gender, what sexual orientation. It's a problem. Don't destroy the military that has been the greatest its ever been. This still has to pass the Senate, but we haven't seen a great deal of courage on this issue down the hall, and there may be those down there who believe that it will help with the next election. I'm telling you again I'd rather stay in the minority than have things like this that hurt our country and hurt the chances of its survival. Let's do the right thing. We didn't do it today. And it breaks my heart to hear the applause over the fact that we broke our word to the military who trusted us. So it is with a very deep, broken heart, Mr. Speaker, I yield back the balance of my time.

Mr. GOHMERT

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

Mr. GOHMERT

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

Mr. GOHMERT

Mr. GOHMERT. Mr. Speaker, as we've had hearings regarding the oil spill out in the gulf, there have been some staggering things come forward, and the media is not grabbing it like they should and letting everyone know. Who knew that the inspectors inspecting the offshore rigs were unionized? So they had union limits on how many hours and travel and this kind of thing. These guys are like the military. They're out there to protect the environment, and we're going to put limits on them? They've got to be out there protecting us. And then yesterday, Director Birnbaum, when asked what kind of checks and balances did you have, she said, We sent them out in pairs of two. And then I asked, Well, then was it a good idea that the last inspection team of two was a unionized father-and-son team that went out there to carefully watch each other to make sure each other did the right thing? This is outrageous. And then we had the investigation going on as to what gifts may have been given to the people doing the inspections. This thing stinks, and it needs to be cleaned up.

Mr. GOHMERT

Mr. GOHMERT. Well, I do appreciate so much the comments of my friend from Iowa, and we do appreciate the comments of our colleagues in the hour previous to this, about the wonderful Jewish heritage in this country. It is Jewish Heritage Month, and it does mean so much to this Nation when you look at the contributions of the Jewish immigrants into this country. This country has benefited so immeasurably from immigration, but it has to be legal, and there are a number of different aspects. First of all, we've got, basically, a Third World immigration service. It needs to be cleaned out from top to bottom and from side to side. It needs to be streamlined and made more efficient, more effective. That has got to be done. It wasn't done effectively in the previous administration. It has got to be done. It is not being done now by this administration, and it has got to be done. It has grieved me much, in my 5\1/2\ years here, to hear people come down to the floor who talk about laws, who are spouting off things as facts, which are wrong, because they haven't read the bills. My friend knows that, in our Republican Conferences, nobody had been more loud and emphatic than I in begging my colleagues, when we were going through the TARP bailout, to read the bill. If you'll just read the bill, you'll see we don't do this in America. We don't give one person $700 billion. We didn't have enough people read the bill. They didn't realize how much we were giving away the farm when the TARP bailout passed. Likewise, we have people, including down Pennsylvania Avenue here, who have talked about this Arizona bill. I've got it here. It's 19 pages. That's with the amendments. It includes the amendments that were passed to make clear their position. I've gone through and, you know, I've highlighted different parts. It's what I do. I am not technically challenged. I love doing things on the Internet, finding things and doing good research on the Internet, but there is something about having a hard copy which I can go through and highlight, and that's what I've done here. This is not rocket science. If you have read the law as it has come down from the Supreme Court and as passed by this Congress, you'll find out that this Arizona law is actually not as tough, as stringent as existing Federal law. You'll find out what this Arizona bill talks about in terms of what a law officer will do because it reads: For any lawful contact stop, detention or arrest made by a law enforcement official--well, a ``lawful contact stop'' means a law officer cannot stop you unless it is authorized under State or Federal law. In fact, if he were to violate someone's civil rights by unlawfully stopping someone, he has got a lawsuit. We've got a Federal law that allows you to go sue Arizona or the local law enforcement if they were to abuse their power. That's why the civil rights laws are there. Any lawful contact. There is a type of arrest that has been known since 1966 as a Terry Stop, and there is probably not a certified law officer in Iowa, in Texas, or in the country who has not had a class on what a lawful stop, a Terry Stop, is because under Terry vs. Ohio 1966, the Supreme Court discussed this. They said that you've got to have a reasonable suspicion that there has been some crime committed in order to have a detention stop. You can't just, you know, willy-nilly stop people. Also, it could be a lawful stop if you see that somebody is violating the traffic laws. Sometimes officers will have a lawful stop, and they'll give you a warning. They could have given you a full ticket because they saw that you had violated a law or that maybe you had a taillight out or something, but it's a lawful stop. They stop you and wonder, perhaps, you know, are you carrying illegal drugs or something. Well, they're authorized to stop you for violating the traffic laws, and they're not bound to put on blinders when they do in order to see if you've violated something else while you're there, but not unreasonably. If they've lawfully stopped a person for some purpose other than immigration and if they have a reasonable suspicion that the person is an alien, that a person is not lawfully present in the country, then this law allows them to make, as it says here, a reasonable attempt, when practicable, to determine the immigration status of the person. Now, what Terry vs. Ohio made clear is a ``reasonable suspicion'' means you can't just say, Well, I suspected something. That's not good enough. In law school, when we studied Terry vs. Ohio, there was some terminology I had to practice saying before I got to class so that I could say it without, you know, stumbling and looking more ignorant than I might otherwise already look. The word was ``articulable.'' It rolls off pretty easily nowadays, but you can't just suspect. Well, I just had this suspicion. That's not good enough. It has to be a reasonable suspicion based upon articulable facts. If you cannot articulate facts that justify your suspicion, it's not reasonable. It's an unlawful stop, and it's probably a civil rights violation that's going to get the community or the State of Arizona sued successfully. The Federal law allows even further stopping just to check to see if somebody may be legally present in the country. Federal law officers have the ability to do that if they think it appropriate. Arizona is just trying to deal with the fact that they have so many criminals in Arizona. My friend mentioned a kidnapping. It is intolerable that one of our 50 States of these United States would have a beautiful, wonderful city like Phoenix and that that United States' city, here in the continental United States, would be the second most prolific kidnapping capital in the world. This isn't a Third World country where we have coups d'etat constantly and governments constantly changing hands so that you don't know who is going to enforce the law. This is the United States of America. Arizona is not some Wild West territory. To have Phoenix have the second most kidnappings in the world is intolerable, and it is an embarrassment for which this Federal Government owes an apology to border States like Arizona for allowing this kind of thing to go unstopped, unchecked. This law is very reasonable. You know, basically, there is just one page--if people would bother to go check. On page 5, it talks about lawfully stopping someone who is operating a vehicle if he has a reasonable suspicion to believe the person is in violation of any civil traffic law. I mean, this is not an unreasonable law, but it does say repeatedly that a law enforcement official or agency of this State, county, city, town or other political subdivision may not consider race, color, or national origin in the enforcement of this section except to the extent permitted by the United States or Arizona Constitution. Well, the Arizona Constitution cannot allow it if it is forbidden by the United States Constitution. So this is not some horrific bill as the President and others, including our President, have made it sound. That's why it is a little bit irritating to have the President of Mexico come into this body as an invited guest, as a guest in this House, and say: I strongly disagree with the recently adopted law in Arizona. It is a law that not only ignores a reality, that cannot be erased by decree but that also introduces a terrible idea, using racial profiling as a basis for law enforcement. That is why I agree with President Obama, who said the new law ``carries a great amount of risk when core values that we all care about are breached.'' He comes in here as an invited guest and completely misrepresents the facts, and tells the world here in this body to our faces that the Arizona law ignores a reality that cannot be erased by decree, and introduces a terrible idea that racial profiling is a basis for law enforcement? I am sure that he does not lie, but that statement is a lie; that is not true. He just needed to read the bill, and apparently no one, I don't know if the Attorney General has read it yet, he hadn't read it when he came before our Judiciary Committee. Secretary Napolitano, she owed the State of Arizona better than she gave it, and she had not read the bill, and she is out there condemning it. And then to have our invited guest come in here and condemn a law that he clearly had not read--I would be glad to give him a copy. It is not hard to get. But to come in here, that is just so outrageous. But then he comes in and says, ``Because of your global leadership, we will need your support,'' this is President Calderon, ``to make the meeting in Cancun next November a success.'' And that is because he has come in and touted global warming. For those that can't understand the politicalese that is used in here, what that statement means, and what all these 100 and some countries around the world have said, when they said we have got to have the United States' global leadership come into this global warming conference, what they mean is, if the United States doesn't come in as the patsy who is willing to pay all these other countries out of some guilt complex, then nobody else in the world is going to come in and start redistributing the wealth from America into all those other countries. I appreciate President Calderon saying that, but the trouble is we are distributing plenty of wealth to Mexico. He mentioned it himself. The Merida Initiative, as I recall. This body passed a bill to give them $500 million, as I recall, to use to buy law enforcement equipment to help enforce their laws. We are pouring plenty of money into Mexico, so he doesn't need to try to go to some global warming meeting and try to construct some method of extorting more money out of the United States. We are giving them plenty.

Mr. GOHMERT. I just want to say, the President said he would fundamentally transform America. And when the executive branch charged with enforcing the laws of the country won't read them, won't follow them, and won't enforce them, that's a fundamental transformation. Our friend, Cynthia Lummis from Wyoming, prepared this chart. One final note on fundamental transformation: This chart, when you have the blue line, the private job sector hiring, shooting down like this and the red line, the public government hiring, shooting up like that, you have fundamentally transformed America. With that, I yield.

Mr. GOHMERT. This resignation he did not, but, of course, we know that most things were signed in the year of our Lord, including our Constitution. So I find it remarkable when some people around here have said, well, it would be unconstitutional to sign things around here in the year of our Lord. I pointed out how can it be unconstitutional to sign things in the year of our Lord, whatever the year number is, when that is exactly how the Constitution itself is signed and dated.

Mr. GOHMERT. Thank you. Some say, well, if you are a caring Nation then you ought to just welcome anybody that wants to come. The problem is because this Nation has been so richly blessed, and because we have been a Nation that believed in the rule of law and enforced it more fairly across the board than any nation in the history of the world, then opportunities have abounded here. And so it has been a draw. And I know my friend from Iowa was chairman of the Immigration Subcommittee on which I was privileged to serve, and so I know he is aware of these statistics, but it's estimated that between out of the over 6 billion people in the world that 1 billion to 1.5 billion people in the world would like to come to America. And as most folks know, we have over 300 million in this country now. But if we were to just say there are no borders, you want to come, come on, we are just giving up on our obligation to protect the economy and the people and the way of life in this country, so come on. One billion to 1.5 billion people would overwhelm this Nation. It could no longer be the greatest Nation in the world because you couldn't have an organized, sustained society with a government that functioned. It would be overwhelmed. So in order to continue to be that light on the hill, that beacon that Reagan talked about, we have to make sure that we have managed immigration, that we continue to be a beacon so people want to come here, but that we control the immigration so it doesn't overwhelm the economy so that this becomes a matter of regret for those who have come here. Now, I know, as my friend from Iowa has done, and I guess most of us, assist people who have immigration problems. And so we have some wonderful dear Hispanic friends, constituents whom we are helping to try to legally get in family because they want to abide by the law. They want to do the right thing because they know the law is important. And some people that I love very dearly are Hispanic immigrants. And, you know, having been invited to come to family functions and back when I was a judge, one of the great honors of my time as a judge was to marry a couple. And her parents were immigrants. And it was just so moving. It brought tears to my eyes. But I look around at this Hispanic group of family, and what comes to my mind when I am with them, when I see them is they believe in the things that made America great. This family, these dear friends, they believe in God, they have a love of family that's unrivaled, and they have a hard-work ethic like virtually nobody else can even aspire to. It's a beautiful thing. And I have great hopes that those three things that you find generally so often in Hispanic communities are what's going to reinvigorate this country and get us back on track and get us back to the very things George Washington prayed for this country when he resigned as commander in chief of the Revolutionary military. Those are good things. But we owe it to all of the people, those who have immigrated legally, those who have been here, grandchildren, great grandchildren of immigrants, people that are Native Americans, we owe it to all of them to keep this country strong so it continues to be a land of opportunity. I come back to that prayer that George Washington had when he wrote, himself, that was at the end of his resignation, and of course, it was the only time in human history where someone led a revolutionary military, won the revolution, and then resigned and went home. Never happened before, never happened since. At the end, Washington's words were these, I now make it my earnest prayer that God would have you in the state over which you preside in his holy protection. I know my friend had people, as an employer, providing paychecks, you probably had people resign. You may not have had people put prayers like this on the end of their resignation, but Washington goes on that he, God, would incline the hearts of the citizens to cultivate a spirit of subordination and, get this, and obedience to government. To entertain a brotherly affection and love for one another, for their fellow citizens of the United States, and particularly for the brethren who have served in the field, and, finally, that he would most graciously be pleased to dispose us all to do justice. That's part of the prayer. How can you do justice? You follow the law. You are just. To the rich and the poor you are just to everyone. Race, creed, color, nationality, religion, prayer, that was part of Washington's prayer. Then he goes on to love mercy, you can't have mercy unless you have justice in the first place. Washington goes on: And to demean ourselves with a charity, humility, and pacific timbre of mind which were the characteristics of the divine author of our blessed religion, and without an humble limitation of whose example in these things, we can never hope to be a happy Nation. He signed it, I have the honor to be, with great respect and esteem, your Excellency's most obedient and very humble servant, George Washington. Now, that's a resignation, that's a prayer.

Mr. GOHMERT. Thank you. And the point is quite salient. And it brings to a point something I think my friend from Iowa and I can agree with part of the quote from our President that was quoted by President Calderon. And to give you the exact quote again, President Calderon, in talking about the Arizona law said that ``it introduces a terrible idea using racial profiling as a basis for law enforcement.'' Now, that is just blatantly not true, absolutely not true. Using racial profiling as a basis for law enforcement. That is, it flies in the face of the facts and the facts of this bill. But then he goes on, and here's the part where I believe my friend would agree with me in congratulating the President, not on the first part of the quote, because he's applying this to the Arizona law, but he says the new law ``carries a great amount of risk when core values that we all care about are breached.'' But the part that is in there is so important to us in the United States, and that is that there is ``a great amount of risk when core values that we all care about are breached.'' Now, I grew up with my mother and dad telling me if I ever have an emergency, if I'm ever in trouble, look for someone in uniform because I can trust them. That's the way I grew up in Mount Pleasant, Texas, and that's the way I have taught our three girls growing up their whole lives, growing up in Tyler, Texas, that if there's a problem, even if you're worried you might have done something wrong, you go to somebody in uniform. You can trust them. And I've taught them the same thing. You know, if somebody were ever kidnapped, no matter what the note said or whatever, you call the FBI. You can trust them. And I know so many FBI agents, and I do trust them. They're some wonderful agents. And I know they would lay down their lives in a second. But what about when we come to the point when the Federal law enforcement is told by their commander in the White House that enforcing the law is a bad idea? That's problematic. And then that spills over until you have somebody who is charged and his whole job is enforcing the immigration laws, and he says, if Arizona sends somebody that they have detained because they're illegally in the country, he may not even enforce the law. See, that flies in the face, just like the President's quote says. There's a great amount of risk when the core values that we've taught our children, that we all care about, are breached. And I'm telling you, when you have someone in the Federal Government charged with enforcing the law and they're being taught, and it's coming top down, ignore the law, don't enforce it, they're violating all the core values that we've tried to instill in our children and the things that we grew up believing, and this country is not the country we hoped for, that we dreamed for. It becomes like the country that so many immigrants flee illegally, because they're not based, their country does not have the rule of law that's in force. Too much graft and corruption. You come to this country, don't ask us to ignore the rule of law. Some of us, like 4 years I had in the Army, time as a prosecutor, as a judge, as a chief justice, 5\1/2\ years in Congress, taking that oath that was given by the Speaker to the new Congressman Djou from Hawaii, I mean, we took an oath to follow the law and we're supposed to support and defend the Constitution. This flies in the face of all those oaths when you say ignore the law, it means nothing; we'll get around to enforcing it some day down the road. It means I've spent most of my adult life for nothing because the rule of law means nothing. So I would implore people, do not come to this country and ask me to say that my adult life has been for nothing, because the rule of law means something. It means nothing to them. It does mean something. It's meant something to me, and it always will, because I know, and I know my friend from Iowa knows, I know the Speaker knows, if we don't have the rule of law that's applied across the board, and I think better in this country than in any country in the history of the world, then we devolve into the ashes from which we rose, and we are just a historic memory and nothing more. I yield back to my friend from Iowa.

Mr. GOHMERT. The gentleman needs to understand that ``lawful contact stop'' means you can't stop them unless you have a reasonable suspicion.

Mr. GOHMERT

Mr. GOHMERT. Well, I appreciate you yielding, and I appreciate the gentlelady mentioning the Minerals Management Service. I know she was present for hearings today that the Director of the MMS was testifying. We had the Secretary of the Interior for a while testifying and his Deputy Secretary testifying. We had a Coast Guard admiral testifying. But I'll tell you what, after hearing the testimony about MMS, I'm very concerned that adding more jobs there is just creating more problems. There is so much mismanagement, so much impropriety, it sounds like, that that would be a disastrous mistake to add to the MMS. But let me point out, as the Director of the MMS testified, they have decided that the MMS would be better nonexistent, so now they're dividing it into three different groups. And you talk about Texas, back home, if you have a pond that has become stagnant and it has begun to stink and become rancid, it doesn't matter how many ways you divide that pond, it still stinks. And they're not going to address the management problems. They're not going to address the fact that--and get this, the only entity within the Minerals Management Service that is unionized--and if we were out somewhere else I might expect a drumroll--but it is the offshore inspectors, the only entity within MMS that's unionized. And we come to find out that as critical as those offshore inspectors were to protecting our country, to protecting our environment, to protecting all of those thousands and thousands and thousands of livings that were gained off of the coast area, the protection was an appropriate offshore inspector. And yet when I asked the Director of MMS was there a good way to have a check or balance so that somebody ensured the offshore inspector was adequately doing their job and making sure that when they finally bothered to go out and watch a blowout preventer be tested that somebody made sure they were really doing their job because, as I'm sure you all know, there's an investigation currently going on about some of the gifts and perks and things that were provided by peopl being inspected to those doing the inspection. Well, how do you guard against improprieties? The director said, Well, we had a system that fixed that. We had two offshore inspectors who would go out at the same time to an offshore rig. That way, they could kind of watch over each other's shoulders and make sure they were doing the right thing. So my question was then, Would it have been a good idea that the last inspectors that you sent out--a union team that went out to the Deepwater Horizon rig, who were ordered to watch each other and to carefully make sure that they did their jobs--were a father and son union team? She was not able to comment because that was under investigation. Folks, we've unionized people, which means there are going to be restrictions on how much travel they can do and on how many hours they can spend, and that's normally part of the union contract. There are some areas in the country where we need unions to make sure that things are done fairly; but we're talking about the government, our United States Government that is supposed to protect us. I mean, these guys out there are protecting our lands, our livelihoods. It's almost like the military. They're on a mission. Can you imagine if the military were unionized and if they said, We'll only work so many hours a day, and we're going to restrict the amount of travel we're going to be able to do. What kind of union contract would you get for the military? The offshore inspectors and the MMS are supposed to be protecting us and our country. I yield back.

Mr. GOHMERT. I understand he has been there, but as some of our friends from Louisiana have pointed out--and Governor Jindal has been fighting the President through the MMS and through his responders--they gave full authority to British Petroleum to make all the calls. So the Louisiana folks, the people along the gulf, who are wanting to mitigate and who are trying to get protection and protect themselves, had to get permission from British Petroleum, which was not giving it. We heard in the hearing today that there were people in Louisiana, along the gulf, who wanted to build barriers to this oil coming in. Yet all we heard from the administration's representatives was, Well, we're still discussing those to see--we're worried that could end up creating more problems than it solves because when they build the little barriers to the oil coming into those marshes, it might actually pull more oil in. They're discussing it. The oil is in the marshes. It's killing animals and killing wildlife right now, and we heard today in the hearing that they're just discussing it, and they're trying to figure out if they may do more good than harm or if they may do more harm than good. It's outrageous what's going on. The President does need to take charge. It is a disaster of massive proportion. British Petroleum is at the helm, but the White House should not have given them the authority to just make all the calls. It's unbelievable the disaster that occurred and now the disaster that is being created by the failure to respond. I asked the admiral in charge of the Coast Guard, you know, How many ships have you moved into the area in the last 37 days? They've moved four major boats into the area. That's it. That's it. We could have moved the Navy. We could have had all kinds of response. The President has all kinds of resources, and he is just basically letting all this happen. Now, British Petroleum needs to be made to pay, and it shouldn't be limited to $75 million--absolutely not--but we've got to have a better response. People are losing their livelihoods. They've already lost their lives. It has got to come to an end. I yield to my friend.