Louie Gohmert

Mr. GOHMERT

Mr. GOHMERT. Mr. Speaker, a leading Scottish businesswoman and board member of the global charity Mercy Ships, Ann Gloag is being honored by the National Council of Women of the United States this evening at the United Nations as the inaugural recipient of the Susan B. Anthony Humanitarian Award in recognition of her humanitarian service in Africa. The reason someone from east Texas would take note of this philanthropic humanitarian from Scotland is because she has done so much for Mercy Ships. It may surprise some that such an oceangoing charitable enterprise would have an international headquarters in my east Texas district, but it does, due to its founders. Mercy Ships uses hospital ships to deliver free, world class health services to those without access in the developing world. Founded in 1978 by Don and Deyon Stephens, Mercy Ships has worked in more than 70 countries, providing life-saving and life-enhancing services to more than 2.16 million direct beneficiaries. More than 1,200 crew work worldwide, representing more than 40 nations. They're joined each year by 2,000 short-term volunteers. Professionals, including surgeons, dentists, nurses, health care trainers, teachers, cooks, seamen, engineers, and agriculturists donate their time and skill to that effort. I've seen the results of the enormous charitable work this institution does, and it is gloriously moving. As for the devoted Ms. Gloag, she has supported various charitable organizations, providing much needed medical care, housing, and education in Africa for over 30 years. In addition to establishing the Balcraig Foundation, the Gloag Foundation, and the Freedom from Fistula Foundation, Ms. Gloag has worked with Mercy Ships, including the funding of the Africa Mercy Ship, the world's largest nongovernmental hospital ship providing free medical and humanitarian aid to the people of Africa. Through partnerships in Liberia, Sierra Leone, and Kenya, the Freedom from Fistula Foundation alone is providing free surgeries to more than 1,500 women this year. In her home of Scotland, Ms. Gloag has already been honored for her work with Mercy Ships and has worked with the Scottish Government to promote its international development work in Malawi, where Ms. Gloag has also helped to establish a hospital. Named for the American civil rights activist who helped form the National Council of Women of the United States, the Susan B. Anthony Humanitarian Award will be conferred annually on individuals dedicated to making a difference in people's lives, communities, or state of the world. Don Stephens, founder and president of Mercy Ships, comments, ``Mercy Ships champions the selection of Scotland's Ann Gloag as the inaugural recipient of the Susan B. Anthony Humanitarian Award by the National Council of Women of the United States. Ann exemplifies a modern example of Andrew Carnegie, J.P. Morgan, and John D. Rockefeller, who almost delighted to use their wealth to assist the world's poorest. On board our new hospital ship Africa Mercy, I have personally observed Ann demonstrating her compassion for others at the bedsides of women and children who received a free surgery on the ship that she helped fund. In parts of Africa, health care infrastructure and delivery is nonexistent. Ann enabled Mercy Ships to bring hope and healing where it is otherwise often not available. Ann has found a powerful way to share her blessings.'' We must congratulate Ms. Gloag for caring so deeply and acting so generously, responsibly, and personally to make such a difference in the world. May God bless Ann Gloag as she has so richly blessed others around the world.

Mr. GOHMERT

Mr. GOHMERT. Mr. Speaker, earlier this afternoon we heard the chairman of the Education Committee really fiery and passionate, fussing, looking over at this side talking about Republicans playing politics and how this side over here had been playing politics with the water bill. There is nothing in playing politics when you are talking about tens of thousands of people being out of work and an important part of the country not being able to produce. What would be playing politics is when the chairman of the committee finds out that someone opposing the water bill from California has a motion to recognize the University of California, Irvine, for winning the NCAA national championship in men's volleyball and pulls the bill because he opposes the chairman's bill. My friends, that's playing politics, and it is outrageous. Let's stop the games and get to the work of the people.

Mr. GOHMERT

Mr. GOHMERT. Mr. Speaker, I'm pleased that this bill will apparently benefit people in the San Francisco Bay Area with water. As I understand it, I think we have some leadership on the majority side that is from that area. And that's wonderful that they'll benefit with water, but it is deeply troubling to hear people come to this floor and start trying to blame the past administration for water problems in California. At what point are people going to acknowledge, you know what? The Democratic majority, we're in the majority as Democrats. We took control over 2\1/2\ years ago, and we're responsible here. We have had an opportunity to do something about this for over 2 years, and we have not done anything because the majority leadership has chosen not to do anything. My friend Devin Nunes recruited me over 2 years ago. He had me look at this, and I saw how the smelt were being protected, and that's fine. But the smelt, the 2-inch minnow, while people are starving, the land is starving, the people are starving, they're losing their jobs. When Devin brought this to my attention, it smelt badly back then. It smelt badly a year ago. It's smelt badly all this year, and now, my friends, it stinks. It's time to have open rules that allow us to bring water to everyone who needs it.

Mr. GOHMERT

Mr. GOHMERT. Thank you for yielding. Let me just tell you about some of the problems with the rules that we in the minority have encountered here this year. It is amazing just how grossly unfair and closed and partisan the rule usage has been in this body. Now, for example, CBO, the Congressional Budget Office, has been hailed for years and years as one of the most fair and suprapartisan-- they're above being partisan--entities that there is in Washington, D.C. And many people will recall, I'm sure, that after a tough thumping that H.R. 3200 got as just how costly it was going to be, as CBO had estimated, the head of CBO was called over to the White House, to the White House woodshed, apparently. Behind closed doors and lots of guards, there was a discussion we weren't privy to. But lo and behold, CBO seems to be much more lenient now in looking the other way on some things and coming out with scoring that we wouldn't have thought was possible. But if you go back to early in the summer, as my friends here know, I have had a health care plan that is an alternative. It's a solution. It came from listening, you know, hundreds and hundreds of hours to people that knew exactly what they were talking about and putting it together in a plan. Then we were trying to get the plan into bill form. We were told that I was not on the committee of jurisdiction, and therefore there just wasn't much chance of getting that done. But we were also told you cannot get a bill scored unless it has been put in bill form by Legislative Counsel's office. And the Legislative Counsel's office is the one that said, Look, we've got so many submittals, there is no way we're going to get to that any time soon. So we kept pushing and pushing because we had to get it in bill form because we were told that unless you get your plan in bill form--not a concept like the Senate has done. How ridiculous is that? A concept. You vote on a concept? Excuse me. There needs to be language that you fight over. You can't have a staffer come in at the last minute or some--maybe ACORN is going to help them with that, too, but you can't do that. So, anyway, we fought for a couple of months. We finally, with the help of Ranking Member Joe Barton and others in our party saying please get this into a bill form, the last week of July the Legislative Counsel's office was able to get it in bill form. We were able to get it worked on and then get it filed on July 31st. Well, in August, we started requesting that, now that it was in bill form, please, CBO, would you score our bill because we were told you couldn't get it scored until it was a bill, so we got it into bill form. And then we were told, Well, you know what? You're not on the committee of jurisdiction, so we may not be able to get to that. So again Ranking Member Joe Barton made a request, and we were told it was in the queue back in August. Then in September I was told, Well, you don't have a request from the Joint Tax Committee. Our ranking member on that is Dave Camp, so I talked to Dave. Wonderful guy. Dave made the request as the ranking member of the Joint Tax Committee, so then we got that request in in September. So imagine my surprise when Senator Baucus comes up with a concept-- not a bill, a concept--and lo and behold they're able to score his concept even though there is no language there, and they go through these mock hearings over a concept without having the actual language and vote on a concept. It's my understanding that the definitive language is still not there yet. So, anyway, we know that CBO, the way they've been able to phrase it, the media has been able to come out and say, Wow, this is going to cost hundreds of billions of dollars, but it's really not going to hurt us financially. Man, that woodshedding at the White House must have really done a lot of good for the White House. That's all I can figure. But let me also say this to anyone who has ears. Anyone who comes to this House floor and says, The Republicans, we've reached out to them, but they have no solutions, they have no proposal, is either a very, very ignorant person who will not avail themselves of the vast amount of information around on our proposals and our solutions or they are misrepresenting the truth. That's just the way it is. And we hear that over and over. Gee, we have reached out to the Republicans. They've got no solutions. They've got no proposals. The President himself said that on Monday before he came in here to this joint session. He said, You've heard all the lies, and what are their proposals, what are their plans? I'll tell you, they don't have any. Well, he was either being very ignorant or he was misrepresenting the facts. And it may be that he really didn't know, that whoever put that information in the teleprompter, he was just dutifully reading it and he really didn't know one way or the other. So I want to be fair about that. In any event, when we hear all of this stuff about the fairness and reaching out, it was my understanding that the President has not invited a Republican since March to come to the White House and talk about health care. If that's different, I would love to know the facts. I know the President stood right up here and said, you know, If you have solutions, my door is open. And apparently, you know, I don't have any way to dispel that. I'm sure he was being honest, if that is true, his door is open, but the problem is they have so many massive gates and so many heavily armed guards between us and that open door at the Oval Office that we can't get to the open door, and so that makes it problematic. But anyway, these are some of the frustrations we've been dealing with lately. And I'm hoping maybe CBO will end up being able to score my bill sometime before the end of the session, a year and a half from now. It's just hard to know. But it is amazing how they were able to find time to score something that wasn't even a bill after I was told we can't score it unless it is. But anyway, apparently there's a lot of flexibility there after you go to the woodshed at the White House. And with that, I will yield back to my friend.

Mr. GOHMERT

Mr. GOHMERT. Well, we've done it. Today was a landmark day. This body took the body of our military and attached to that body, as they were fighting, a gay rights agenda. I say ``gay rights agenda'' about this hate crimes bill because there is already a hate crimes bill. It was part of the 1968 Civil Rights Act. It included things like race, creed, color, national origin. So that was there already. So what we have done indicates this body has no shame. You know, we will take our military fighting for us, and attach a gay rights agenda to get it accomplished. You know, what's next? Where else do we go? What shame is there left? I guess there's more to be seen.

Mr. GOHMERT

Mr. GOHMERT. Mr. Speaker, I do appreciate our dear chairman from Missouri, Chairman Skelton. He commented that we are at war, this is deadly serious, and he is right. Our troops need our support, and having been in the Army at Fort Benning at a time when we were being cut in the late 1970s, I am very sensitive to that. But our troops are fighting for freedom as well. Bringing a hate crimes bill that is based on two false premises and putting it on the backs of our soldiers is wrong. It should not be done. We have heard from a majority Member that if we vote this down, the hate crimes will be pulled off, and then we can vote for the pay raise that these people justly deserve. There is no escalation in hate crime numbers. The FBI statistics show they have been continually going down. This would not change the outcome of the Matthew Shepard case. They got life; the maximum here is life. In the James Byrd case, the two most culpable got the death penalty; the maximum here is life. All this would do is bring that penalty down. This is based on false assumptions. It should not be added to our soldiers' backs. Let's get a clean bill.

Mr. GOHMERT

Mr. GOHMERT. Madam Speaker, today we had a conference report after just voting to send the matter to conference last night on the Defense authorization bill. This authorizes what is being done in the military. On the backs of our soldiers is put the hate crimes bill. That is unbelievable. As if our soldiers don't have enough to do, we are going to put social bills like that on their shoulders and say, If you don't pass this to help the soldiers, then we are going to say, gee, you're against the soldiers. It's outrageous. They deserve better treatment. They deserve a straight-up vote on the Defense authorization without a hate crimes bill that will be, when coupled with 18 U.S.C. 2(a), the mechanism to muzzle ministers. I stood with dozens of African American ministers out here who knew they would be muzzled under this bill. It's not the right thing to do.

Mr. GOHMERT

Mr. GOHMERT. If my friend would yield, this is such an important point. Through the economic downturn over the last year or so, a lot of people across America have confused community banks and investment banks. They have just lumped them all in together, and there is a major difference. You have community banks who have to have complete transparency. They have Federal regulators who come in and check every dot and tittle. They have to make sure that everything is just the way the Federal regulators want it. Some of us have been concerned that over-aggressiveness by Federal regulators in the most stable of our financial institutions, the community banks, has helped dry up a great deal of the credit. So imagine the hypocrisy to have Federal regulators just swarm in like locusts to community banks which are the most stable and have been the most careful in Federal banking, and they are being regulated by people who will not open their books to this Congress. That in itself is such an outrage that it alone ought to be a basis for getting Ron Paul's bill here to the floor, get it passed, and let's open them up. I love what Newt Gingrich said: If transparency is good enough for the CIA, it really ought to be good enough for the Federal Reserve.

Mr. GOHMERT. It goes back to the issue of transparency. Everybody needs to be accountable under the same rules no matter who it is. And actually, this weekend, I had a number of people commenting on how unfair it was of Congress to be judged by one standard, and specifically mentioning the chairman of the Ways and Means, and the rest of America to be judged by another standard. It is difficult for the American people to understand. If that were me, I couldn't do this. I would have had to pay the penalty and interest. I mentioned to my friend previously about my constituent, Mr. de le Torre, and he was very proud of his Hispanic descent. He said de le Torre meant ``of the tower.'' Apparently he had some royalty back in Spain some centuries ago. But here he had four permanent employees, four part-time employees, and he had a sheet metal business, and he had no problem with me mentioning his name and his own situation. And with the downturn in the economy, he wanted to protect his employees. He did not want to let them go. He knew they were struggling, and he certainly was struggling. And, of course, he is the last one to get paid. He didn't have any money. And yet the quarterly payment had to be made for the portions of Social Security and the Federal tax on that payroll, and he did not have the money. And because of the additional pressures being brought to bear by the Federal Reserve, who will not be transparent against community banks, which are doing everything they can and have been transparent, he wasn't able to get a loan. He could not get a loan or a line of credit to make his payment, his quarterly payment to the government. So he notified them, filed how much he owed, but said, I don't have any cash. I don't want to fire any of my employees, and I can't get a loan or a line of credit to make my quarterly payment. They let him know you owe penalty and interest. We are coming after you. He was telling me that he has since been notified that they are going to start seizing his accounts and his assets, sell them off if necessary, but seize his assets if he does not make his penalty and interest payment. So it is kind of hard for a guy like that who is being loyal to these people, the eight people who work with him and for him, how a guy that is chairman of the committee that writes the tax laws can do far worse and not be open, not just be completely transparent in what has happened. The chairman of the committee doesn't have to pay penalty or interest, and yet this poor man does. It is hard for him to understand, and it is hard for rank-and-file Americans to understand. It is not the standard that this Congress should be establishing. I so hope that we can get back to being a Congress that leads by example. You know, I think about the words of George Washington. He was a man who had incredible bravery. We would not have the Nation as we know it if it were not for his humility, his willingness to resign and go home after winning a revolution. His words, his exact words were, ``A people unused to restraint must be led; they will not be drove.'' And that was okay English back in those days. I look at what we are doing now. We are dealing with a country that is not used to restraint, and yet the financial taxation laws are restraining Americans like never before, not so much because of the percentage but because of the actual effect on Americans. And we are not leading as Washington implored. We are trying to drive Americans to do what this Congress has not done and should be doing, and that is lead by example. And we were promised by the Speaker that this would be the most transparent and open and accountable Congress. That simply has not happened. In fact, to the contrary. I don't know that there has ever been one that has been more closed and protective of its own, and that really has to change. I yield back to my friend.

Mr. GOHMERT. If the gentleman might yield on that point.

Mr. GOHMERT. On the Cash For Clunkers program we know that there are many foreign vehicles that are manufactured here in the United States, and the American workers do a fantastic job. But it is worth noting that in this program that was rushed through so quickly without going through the proper order, without getting the proper scrutiny through committees and through proper chance for amendment here on the floor, where you can take a law that may have some problems and make it better, we're not allowed any of that opportunity. And so what we got was a Cash For Clunkers program in which four of the five top vehicles that were purchased were foreign vehicles. Now, some of those were made in America, but most of them were made in foreign countries. In other words, the Cash For Clunkers vehicles helped foreign governments and foreign companies more than it helped American companies. And they want to run my health care. My goodness. Is that sad? If it weren't so tragic, how much we help foreign companies over our own U.S. companies, it would be a comedy. It's just outrageous.

Mr. GOHMERT. Thank you. And the point about having time to read the bill could not be illustrated more clearly than on the stimulus bill that was basically crammed down this body's throat. We were promised by the President back when he was running for office that he was going to have, what is it, 4 or 5 days it would be up on the Internet, where all America could read these bills for days before we voted on them. But it gets a little hard to take the administration, the President, leaders of this body seriously when they all parroted that stuff and how they were going to do that. And then on the stimulus bill we were told over and over, we didn't have time to read the bill. We just didn't. It was filed, I think, after midnight. We're voting on it, over 1,000 pages. There was no time for anybody to read it. We were told that there were thousands of people losing their jobs every day. It had to become law immediately. There's no time to read it; just do it. Just do it. Just vote on it. Well, some of us still wanted to see what was in it. We voted against it, and yet it passed on that Friday, and so because it was such an emergency, they said, and we didn't have time to read the bill, we passed it on Friday, and then Saturday came and went, and Sunday came and went, and Monday came and went, and Tuesday, when the photo op was set up in Colorado for the President to sign the bill, he finally got around to signing the bill. Why couldn't we have had those 3 days and voted on it on Monday if it was such an important bill and if the President had been serious and the leadership of this House had been serious about the importance of reading bills? Why couldn't we have had Friday, Saturday, Sunday, and then debated on Monday? But we were denied that, even though the President never had any intention of signing that bill for 4 days after it was signed. So it gets a little hard to take some of the acrimony on the floor seriously, as in that case, when we were just ridiculed for not being willing to sign it immediately and for wanting to read it when there just was no time to waste. Four days later, the President signed it.

Mr. GOHMERT. With regard to the czars, we've seen over and over examples of people who have been placed in these positions, and it doesn't do me any good or anybody in America any good to say, well, you know, prior presidents have used czars. Not to this extent. Not ever, and I never really cared for them, no matter who the President was. I didn't like the bailout last year. I thought, until this administration, it was possibly the worst domestic action that's been taken in the last 50 or 60 years. That is, until this administration just left $700 billion in the sand as it blew through more and more money. But then, to have this massive spending spree that's, while we've got people appointed by the White House, not properly vetted, and the more we find out about these people, the more we're concerned they should never have been in those positions in the first place. And as we know, we've already had one recently step down, he should have never been there in the first place, whereas, if you went through regular order there and had advice and consent of the Senate, it doesn't mean they're going to be perfect. Nobody is. No process is. But there was real ingenuity in the process that was set up by the Founders, and the advice and consent is an important issue. But the whole reason our Founders set up a President outside the main stream of Congress, unlike the parliament that elects a prime minister from this body, it was going to be from outside this body so that there would be more checks and balances, and the czars have done nothing but create Scars upon Thars--with all deference to Dr. Seuss--scars across America, as they have been unaccountable to the Congress, to the courts, to America. And that really has to be changed. We need the sunlight. We need transparency. We don't need czars.

Mr. GOHMERT. I appreciate my friend yielding. This is a very important issue, and actually if you go back to the original bailout bill a year ago, as I read through it, and I did, I didn't read the extra pages that were added for pork at the end, but one of the things that caught my eye was here was a bill for $700 billion for bailout, basically a slush fund for the Treasury Secretary; but in the bill it raised the debt ceiling $1.3 trillion. Now that caught my eyes, because I know $700 billion is less than $1.3 trillion. So I went back through reading again for any loopholes that might allow for the expenditure of more than $700 billion. Well, we know that before the bill finally passed, there was about $100 billion in pork added in order to get enough votes so that it would pass. That still leaves half a trillion dollars between what the debt ceiling was raised and how much was appropriated in that bill. So I went back through, and one of the things that intrigued me was a provision that allowed the Secretary of the Treasury to hire, utilize whatever personnel was necessary in order to carry out the intentions of the bill. Well, I was impressed and went to one of the Treasury people privately and asked, what does that mean? Are we going to have a new department of asset management? Are we going to set up a whole new bureaucracy here in Washington? Is there going to be $500 billion spent setting up this kind of extra bureaucracy? And the answer I got was basically, and it was unofficial and informal, but was basically, look, we will hire some people, but ultimately this is going to be so much work we'll have to outsource it. Well, I don't know if my friend from Texas noticed, but it turns out that the favorite firm of the former Secretary Paulson and the current Secretary Geithner had its biggest profit in the history of Goldman Sachs in the second quarter of this year. So when my friend talks about transparency, wouldn't it be nice to know how much of that $3.44 billion in clear profit that Goldman Sachs made came from taxpayers, came from the United States Government? But do you know what? There is only one way we really get to know exactly where all that money came from and how much went from the Federal Government. Sure, Goldman Sachs will have to file reports and whatnot, but it would really be nice to see from the government's own reports just how much Federal money is going Goldman Sachs' way, and how much money is being funneled from here in Washington to Wall Street. That would be important to know. I think one of the things that we have seen, especially in the last several months, is that just because it's good for a Wall Street firm doesn't mean it's good for the stock market and it doesn't mean it's good for rank-and-file Americans who are paying their taxes to keep this government running who also were called upon as they saved and scrimped and tried to meet the demands of the day to be called on to bail out the Wall Street firms. And so it would be nice if maybe they would share a little more than what we are able to see. I also want to point out the subject of transparency is so important. There is not much that is more cleansing than sunshine. Sunshine, you get enough of it, the mold and mildew just dries up and dies. You get enough sunshine, and things clean up, you get rid of all the mold and nastiness. And yet what we get around here is people are left in the dark and fed lots of manure. Well, that will grow plenty of mushrooms, but that is not what we are supposed to be about here in Congress. So the rules of the House, the rules of the Federal Reserve it seems like right now, they are just being played fast and loose, which parenthetically that gives rise to a situation we have right here tonight this week where we played fast and loose with the rules so you have a Defense appropriation, a defense authorization bill where you bring in a hate crimes bill, and I know there's a lot of agreement over what its effect will be; but clearly, one of the effects will be that it will make homosexuality and transgender a protected class. The elderly were rejected. We weren't going to give them any added protection. Of course, some of us fought for the elderly. If you're going to give anybody protection, how about the elderly? They are commonly sought out. But, no, they weren't protected. And they certainly hadn't been protected in this administration's proposals for Medicare cuts, half a billion--I'm sorry--half a trillion basically in Medicare cuts. So I guess the thinking is we're not going to protect the elderly as much as homosexuals, transgender or even pedophiles. We tried to have an amendment that would exclude pedophiles from a protected class under the hate crimes bill, and that was rejected along party lines basically. So anyway we are not going to protect elderly as much as these sexuality lifestyle groups. And then we turn around and we tack that hate crimes bill on to the military or Defense appropriation or Defense authorization. We've got soldiers out in the field needing this bill, and we're going to play fast and loose with the rules. We will not be allowed to amend this on the floor; we will not be allowed to change anything about this. It's take it or leave it. And I just think it is so outrageous while we have soldiers in the field to use this Defense authorization bill that's going to help our soldiers protect us, it's going to protect them while they protect us, and you tack on a hate crimes bill to the Defense authorization? Just how much disrespect can somebody have for the rules of this body and for procedure to do that kind of thing? It is just outrageous. But then as you see these kinds of things coming into play, you see the lack of what really is strong morality in our financial laws, in our transparency. And it was Chuck I heard earlier this year was pointing out that when you lose morality, you're going to have economic chaos; you're going to have economic instability. And when you lose economic stability, people--and this is so tragic--but people throughout history, when they have economic chaos are always willing to give up liberties to gain economic stability. You lose morality in the Federal Reserve, in the Treasury of the United States, and in ACORN and all the voting laws and the procedure of this body. You lose what is just right. You lose that, and it contributes to economic instability, and then that gives rise to economic chaos. And people always give up their liberties trying to get economic stability. So I think we get back to that sense of morality when you start having transparency, when you're able to see what's going on, when it's not behind closed doors, when it's not some private group with an agenda out there drafting the Employment Non-Discrimination Act who has their own lifestyle agenda, when it's not some group behind closed doors saying let's push through this stimulus bill, it may not stimulate America, it won't spend money, most of it for 2 years, it really won't do what we are saying is stimulus, but, boy, will it enrich our friends. We have to get away from that or we are going to lose this country. We cannot continue down this road with a lack of candor, with a lack of openness and honesty. We have got to return to transparency. That will help address the issues of this country. Sunlight always has a way of doing that.

Mr. GOHMERT. If I might, on one other point. Unforeseen consequences too. Because we didn't have a chance to go through the proper channels and really look at this legislation, the Cash For Clunkers bill, one of the effects has been that the working poor in America have been the hardest-hit, because they were not able to come in and buy a brand new car with this attractive program because they didn't have the money to make the payments after that. So it really didn't help the working poor in the United States. And, in fact, it hurt them because what happened under this Cash For Clunkers program is thousands of vehicles, used vehicles that would be sold cheaply to the working poor in America, cars they could afford, were just fixed to where they could not be run, could not be operated, could not be sold. That drives up the price of the used vehicles that the working poor in America really need to get to and from their jobs. So it hurt those who needed help in America the most and helped foreign companies over domestic companies. Now that's a government program that we're going to use, I'm sure, to model health care after.

Mr. GOHMERT

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

Mr. GOHMERT

Mr. GOHMERT. Mr. Speaker, I do appreciate my friend from Massachusetts comparing the national parks bill to our national defense bill. But I see a real distinction in holding our soldiers' well-being hostage to this sociological attack on what used to be the morals of America. And for those who say this is critical, and I heard my friend from Georgia talking about how these crimes have increased, actually, the crimes, according to the FBI, have decreased regarding hate. So there are no statistics that demand this bill be attached and that our soldiers be held hostage for this bill. And then we have the name of the bill, the Matthew Shepard and James Byrd Hate Crimes Prevention Act. Those were horrible murders, and the people who perpetrated them deserve, in my opinion, to get the death penalty all. But this bill does not provide a death penalty. In fact, this bill will not change the outcome of those cases one iota. In the Texas case, James Byrd, it would be fine with me if we passed a bill that said when you do what was done to James Byrd, then the victim's family gets to choose the vehicle and the rope or chains by which they are going to drag the defendant to his death. But this doesn't do that. In the Matthew Shepard case, the defendants now say it was a robbery gone bad. Regardless, they got life sentences, a couple of life sentences. This bill wouldn't have changed that whatsoever at all either. Now, there are those who say it will not affect religious speech; but when we have debated this bill and people have looked at it carefully, you see that this situation can arise: a preacher preaching from the Bible, a rabbi preaching from the Tanach, or an imam teaching from the Koran says in his opinion homosexuality is wrong. Some nut hears him, goes out and commits an act of violence, and when arrested says, well, I was induced to do this by the preacher, the imam or the rabbi. Well, under 18 U.S.C. 2(a), it says that anyone who induces another to commit a crime is just as guilty as the one who committed it. That's where the preacher, the imam, or the rabbi could be arrested. And I appreciate in prior debate my friend from Massachusetts pointed to the folks in Philadelphia and said, well, they were arrested but the charges were dropped. Arresting and detaining has a chilling effect. There's no two ways around it.

Mr. GOHMERT. Mr. Speaker, we had one friend across the aisle cite the 2007 statistics. The trouble is you go back 10 years, 20 years and you see that the crimes being conducted, taking place based on any type of hatred, are diminishing, so that is not a valid argument. There are no limitations on the definitions. There should have been. In committees, we tried to get them so pedophiles would be included. But we had another friend say, this is only about acts of violence. And as my friend here from Virginia pointed out, there is an ``unless'' there. And that's where the law principles, 18 U.S.C. 18(a), comes into play. If you induce someone to commit a crime, that's the government interest; it will be used, and that's why you heard a national anchorperson say about the Matthew Shepherd crimes, Gee, I wonder if people like James Dobson induced that crime. This is not where we need to go in defense of this country.

Mr. GOHMERT

Mr. GOHMERT. Thank you, Mr. Speaker. I have listened to most of the last hour with great interest. I was owed the Army 4 years from a scholarship I had at Texas A&M. Most people my age can tell you exactly what their draft number was. I can't. I didn't care. I was going into the Army. I expected to go into Texas A&M and finish my 4 years, come out as a second lieutenant and end up in Vietnam, as many of my friends did. But Vietnam ended before I graduated. I spent 4 years in the Army. I asked on my dream sheet to be sent to Germany. So the Army sent me to Georgia, to Fort Benning. Pretty close. It begins with G-E. We've heard many examples here of people saying, Well, gee, if gays are not allowed, they might not reenlist. If you listen to the current commanders of our U.S. military, you listen to the vast majority of the military, then they're concerned not about gays in the military but about openly gay individuals in the military. This isn't a debate. When we talk about Don't Ask, Don't Tell, it's not a debate about whether or not there will be people who practice homosexuality in the Army, Navy, Marines, Air Force, Coast Guard. That's not the issue at all. There are people who practice homosexuality who are in the service, as my friends have already indicated. The issue is, will they be allowed to be very openly practicing such things. The current policy is, if it's not where it's openly offensive to people who think it's inappropriate, then certainly we welcome your service in the military. It's just amazing where we are right now in America. You know, going back to last September, early October, we crammed a bailout bill down America that most Members hadn't had a chance to read. I read it. Then we come through with these stimulus bills, land omnibus bills, all this stuff that's coming down. And you just go, where have we gotten to in America? The military is not a social experiment. It's not. I think my friends know that. I heard one of the gentlemen across the aisle mention, Anything that distracts from the goals of the military should not be in the military. Whether it is heterosexual open acts or homosexual open acts, indications are it's a distraction. So this isn't an issue about whether there will be gays in the military. It's about whether or not there will be people who are openly gay in the military. And still the commanders in the field seem to fairly uniformly indicate that it will be a problem for them completing their missions at maximum efficiency. That is what needs to be known. For every example of any individual saying, Gee, if gays are not allowed to be open in the military, I may not reenlist or I won't reenlist or I didn't, you have no idea how many people apparently have indicated, If the Don't Ask, Don't Tell is eliminated, I'm not joining. I'm not reenlisting. I'm about done with the social experimentation in the military. It's no place for it. But, actually, it seems like this hour tonight follows, interestingly, just as a hate crimes bill has been added to the Defense authorization bill. Here we've got soldiers in harm's way needing us to authorize the money that they need to have the equipment and all that they need to protect us and to protect themselves, and we're playing games with them, attaching a hate crimes bill on a Defense authorization. Most people would say, Defense authorization is a must- pass piece of legislation, and therefore, people will be afraid to vote against it, especially conservatives, moderates. So you add a hate crimes bill to the Defense authorization? Are there no bounds to which this Congress will not stoop? We can't just say to our military members, Here is what you need. Oh, no. We're going to go beyond Don't Ask, Don't Tell. We're going to stick a hate crimes bill on this bill and hold our soldiers, who are in the field trying to protect us, hostage unless you are willing to pass this hate crimes bill with what the soldiers need. It's just mind- boggling that people in positions of authority in this Congress would be willing to do that. It's just unbelievable. Now, we have fought over this hate crimes bill in committee and on the floor and over and over. We made amendments, offered amendments because we could see that the definition of sexual orientation is wide open to all kinds of interpretation. And someday some court somewhere will say, You know what, sexual orientation means exactly what those words mean. If you're oriented--I hope it doesn't offend. But this is part of the law. It's laws in most States or it has been certainly in many States. If you're oriented toward animals, bestiality, then that is not something that could be held against you or any bias could be held against you for that, which means you would have to strike any laws against bestiality. If you're oriented toward corpses, toward children, there are all kinds of perversions--what most of us would call perversions. Some would say it sounds like fun, but most would say were perversions, and there have been laws against them. This bill says whatever you are oriented towards sexually, that cannot be a source of bias against someone. Well, that's interesting. Someone said, well, surely they didn't mean to include pedophiles or necrophiliacs or what most of us would say are perverse sexual orientations. But the trouble is we made amendments to eliminate pedophiles from being included in the definition. In fact, we made an amendment to use the definition in another part of Federal law that would have restricted sexual orientation to only talking about heterosexuality and homosexuality. We were willing to agree to that. But that also was voted down. The majority who is in control of Congress today made it very clear in committee, through rules, through the floor here, that they did not want any limits on sexual orientation on that definition. ``Gender identity,'' who knows what that will some day be interpreted to mean. There is no definition for that. It's whatever anybody wants to think it means. All of this stuff is just unbelievable. We even went so far as to say, you know what? If you're going to try to protect transgender or homosexual individuals more than other people in society, then at least give the elderly that same protection. That amendment was voted down. We're not going to give the elderly the same heightened protection we would give transgender individuals, even though elderly are frequently picked out, targeted, because they're older and considered less able to protect themselves. If anybody deserved to be in that protected class, certainly the elderly would be. But this isn't about that. This is about forcing some type of sexual practices on those who are bothered by them on the country. It's obviously not about run-away crime regarding hate crime that's just growing and growing. In the debate earlier today on this floor, the most we heard were statistics cited from 2007, and the reason for that is that the FBI statistics show that the numbers of hate crimes have been reduced over the last 20 and 10 years. They're going down. The laws in effect are carrying out their purpose. Also, it should be noted that there is no act of violence that the Federal hate crimes bill covers that is not already a crime in every State in the Union. It makes no sense to hold our soldiers hostage to this hate crimes bill being added on there. Now, when you look at the status of hate in America, there is hate in America. There is. And I don't know of anybody in this congressional body that likes the idea of hatred of one for another. It's not appropriate. Those of us who are Christians believe we are to love one another. In fact, when Jesus was asked what's the most important commandment, he said love God. The other is like it: Love each other. On these two commandments hang all the law and the prophets: Love God and love each other. That's what a Christian is supposed to do. Certainly, though, some people struggle with how anyone can love and care deeply about someone when they disagree strongly with the lifestyle that person is in. All I can suggest is that if someone is a true Christian, it's easier than you might imagine to love someone and totally object to a lifestyle. But I keep hearing about how it's all about racial hatred. There is some racial hatred in this country. There's no question that there still is. But thank God that has been diminished tremendously over the years. I am aware back in the 1980s, well over 20 years ago, I had some new neighbors move in. My wife and I and our three children, we had some neighbors move in. And we were excited because we had a doctor moving in next door. And I realized back in those days there still apparently is some feeling among some people of, gee, if somebody's of darker skin than I am, maybe I don't want them in our neighborhood. That became apparent one night when I got a call from a neighbor who said, Did you know that our new neighbors who are living right next door to you are black? And I said, You know, we had them over here for dinner last night and I kept sitting there through dinner thinking, you know, there's something different about these people, and you know what? I think that's it. I believe you're right. I think they must be black. Well, I was being sarcastic, for those who don't know sarcasm. As I told that neighbor, Look, I don't care what color he is. These are wonderful people. They're obviously going to be great neighbors, and I have a feeling someday he may save one of my kids. Who knows. Well, it turned out Larry Irvin did. One night, my 5-year-old's fever spiked. I was not there. My wife was frantic, and she called Larry. He rushed over, got her in a tub of ice, got her temperature down. We didn't lose her. And I'll always be grateful that I had a neighbor, never mind that he happened to be African American. He was a wonderful person. I say ``was'' because we lost him. But a good man. But I realized from that phone call there are some people that still have these issues of race out there. I've heard some people say that if you question our President because he happens to be black that you must be a racist. Well, that's kind of tough for me because I voted for Alan Keyes back in 1996. I never told Senator Gramm, but I liked the way Alan Keyes was able to articulate things that I believed in. I thought he was a fantastic candidate and would have made a great President back at that time. And so it would never have crossed my mind to think that those who countered Alan Keyes in 1996 must be racists. That didn't cross my mind. So I'm very saddened when I hear somebody these days say if you're against our President, you must be a racist. That's ridiculous. Does that mean that everybody that disagreed with George W. Bush who is black was being a racist? I don't think so. So I hate to hear especially colleagues in here drag that up as being a motivation and we have to end racial hatred in America and this bill will be the way to do it. I was very privileged to stand with dozens of African American Christian brothers and sisters who'd also been ordained, and they were so much more articulate than I am and could ever hope to be, but they were pointing out that it seems that the gay rights agenda attached its wagon, basically, to the racial movement, and now that they have arrived here in Washington, now the gay rights movement is attempting to tell them, as these African American ministers pointed out, they can't teach about what they believe and they believe the Bible teaches is sexual immorality. Now, we have heard people on the floor here today say that this hate crimes bill is not about anything but violent acts, which I am sure they believe what they say, but it's simply not true. Not true at all. Now, one good example, yes, it pertains to violent acts, and it does have a provision that some people stuck in here that says basically that nothing could be used that burdens a person's exercise of religion, speech, expression, or association--but unfortunately there's not a period there. There is an ``unless.'' Well, that's what makes this worth little more than the paper it's written on unless the government demonstrates an application burden to the person is in furtherance of a compelling government interest. Now, that's the key here--unless it is in furtherance of the compelling government interest--because you see, 18 U.S. Code 2 is the law of principles in the Federal law. Most States have a similar ``law of principles,'' it's usually called, which means they're not really accomplices. Anybody that aids, abets, induces--that verb is in the Federal law--induces someone to commit a crime is just as guilty as if they perpetrated the crime. That's where this bill does so much damage to religious free speech. And I brought this up because this has been debated in past Congresses, and I brought this up previously. What if a preacher preaching from a Bible, a rabbi teaching from the Tanach, or an imam preaching from the Koran were to say that homosexuality is just wrong in God's eyes and that such conduct merits punishment in God's eyes? Well, if some nut were to hear that and go out and commit an act of violence and he says, Well, you know, I heard these sermons or the teachings of the preacher, the rabbi, or the imam, that's what induced me into doing it, would the preacher be protected or the rabbi? And the answer is no, they would not be protected. And you can bet that under the right prosecutor that those individuals would have DVDs, CDs, sermon notes, anything that a prosecutor could get his hands on would certainly be shown to be in furtherance of a compelling government interest, that being whether or not he induced or incited the criminal act. So that would be a very chilling effect on anyone who teaches or preaches such things in such religious formats. It's not protected. It's not protected. And so imagine the incredible irony of having a Defense Authorization Bill to give our valiant defenders in harm's way what they need to protect us, and we add on a bill that will limit religious moral teaching. Just amazing. Just amazing. Now, as an example of exactly how 18 U.S.C. 2A could be applied here. I wanted to give this example. Say the preacher specifically went to Romans 1, verse--well, let's see--let's start with 18. And this is the New King James version. And say a preacher were to stand up and just do nothing but read straight from the Bible, and this is verse 18, For the wrath of God is revealed from heaven against all the ungodliness and unrighteousness of men who suppress the truth in unrighteousness, because what may be known of God is manifest in them, for God has shown it to them. For since the creation of the world, His invisible attributes are clearly seen, being understood by the things that are made. Even as eternal power and Godhead, so that they are without excuse, because although they knew God, they did not glorify him as God, nor were thankful but became futile in their thoughts and their foolish hearts were darkened. Professing to be wise, they became fools. I love that part. Professing to be wise, they became fools, and changed the glory of the incorruptible God into an image made like corruptible man and birds and four-footed animals and creeping things. Therefore, God also gave them up to uncleanness in the lust of their hearts to dishonor their bodies among themselves, who exchanged the truth of God for the lie and worshipped and served the creature rather than the Creator who is blessed forever. Amen. This is verse 26: For this reason God gave them up to vile passions. For even their women exchanged the natural use for what is against nature. Likewise also the men, leaving the natural use of the woman, burned in their lust for one another, men with men committing what is shameful and receiving in themselves the penalty of their error which was due. Now, suppose a preacher is preaching from those verses and just reads those verses actually, and some nut hears them. Even though the preacher didn't advocate violence, some nut hears that and goes out and commits an act of violence. Says, Well, it was that reading straight from the Bible of Romans 1 that the preacher did, that's what induced me to do this. Well, you can bet this language will not protect that preacher. We also know that there are many who believe and teach that--the Koran teaches that the penalty for homosexual conduct is death, of all things. And we know that in Iran, Ahmadinejad I believe had said they didn't have any people practicing homosexuality in Iran. Well, apparently not. I mean, they may kill them, for all we know. But this is the United States of America, and we do--or used to-- believe in religious freedom and the freedom to teach religious morality as it has been taught in the greatest book ever written. But this hate crimes bill is going to take care of that for us. And how ironic that a movement that would allow a certain conduct to be of a more heightened protected class than even the elderly is going to be attached to the Defense Authorization Bill. It's just mind-boggling that we have stooped this far. It's just unbelievable. Now, with regard to the hate crimes bill, it should also not be lost that when we talk about protected classes--I think the defense authorization did add the military as a protected class--but just the ability to go into a church and forcefully get a preacher's notes, DVDs, it's going to have a chilling effect. There's no question about it. And in every country where Federal law has adopted laws like this, this has an extremely chilling effect. And I go back to what our friend Chuck Colson had pointed out earlier this year, and that is when you lose morality in a Nation, you create economic instability leading to economic chaos. And when you have economic chaos, it is tragic, but people have always been willing to give up their liberties, their freedoms, in order to gain economic stability. It happened in 1920s and 1930s Germany. They gave up their liberties to gain economic stability, and they got a little guy with a mustache who was the ultimate hate-monger. And this is scary stuff we are doing here when we take away what has traditionally been an important aspect of moral teaching in America. Now, some of the same people are all upset about the plaque I was trying to have added to Statuary Hall here. We filed a bill called the Church Act, and we had research done by the Congressional Research Service so there would be no question that it wasn't slanted one way or another, that it was all accurate according to the Congressional Research Service. It would simply educate people who do not understand that the term ``separation of church and State'' is not in the Constitution. It was in a letter that was written by Thomas Jefferson. But anyway, this is the language that's proposed in the bill to be on the plaque: ``The first Christian church services in the Capitol''-- that is the U.S. Capitol and again this is all researched by CRS, all accurate, but ``The first Christian church services in the Capitol were held when the government moved to Washington in the fall of 1800. They were conducted in the Hall of the House in the north wing of the building. In 1801, the House moved the church services to temporary quarters in the south wing, called the `Oven,' which it vacated in 1804, returning services to the north wing for 3 years. During church services, the Speaker's podium was used as the preacher's pulpit. ``Within a year of his inauguration, President Thomas Jefferson began attending church services in the Chamber of the House of Representatives. Throughout his administration, which was 1801 to 1809, Thomas Jefferson permitted and encouraged church services in the executive branch buildings. Sermons regarding the Old and New Testaments of the Bible were even conducted in the Supreme Court Chambers while the judicial branch was located in the old north wing of the Capitol. ``The term `separation of church and State,' not found in the Constitution, was rather first used by Thomas Jefferson in a letter to the Danbury Baptists. Though Jefferson saw no problem about having nondenominational Christian services in government buildings, he affirmed that the government should not choose an official Christian denomination. The worship services in the government-owned House Chamber--a practice that continued until after the Civil War--were acceptable to Jefferson because they were nondiscriminatory and voluntary. ``President James Madison, the recognized author of the Constitution, followed Jefferson's example. In keeping with Madison's understanding of the First Amendment, church services were permitted in the Halls of State on Sundays during his administration. That was 1809 to 1817. However, unlike Jefferson, who rode on horseback to attend church in the Capitol, Madison traveled in a coach pulled by four horses. The services were interrupted in 1814 after the interior was burned by the British and had to be repaired. ``Preachers of every Christian denomination preached Christian doctrine in this Chamber. On January 8, 1826, Bishop John England of Charleston, South Carolina, became the first Catholic clergyman to preach in the House of Representatives. The first woman to preach before the House, and likely the first woman to speak officially in Congress under any circumstances, was the English evangelist, Dorothy Ripley, who conducted a service on January 12, 1806.'' So that is a history of the Christian movement, the Christian church being very much a part of the early founding of this country and the early days. And we could have quote after quote. History is replete with them, of the role of the Judeo-Christian beliefs and the founding of this country. And, in fact, through the 1800s, most of the time, somebody proposed a bill, they liked the idea of having a Scripture to back it up. They thought that would help win the support of the other Members here. And if you look at the signing of the Declaration of Independence, the 56 signers who pledged their lives, their fortunes and their sacred honor, between one-third and one-half of those signers were ordained Christian ministers. And they helped give us this great start. The first Speaker of the House, Mr. Speaker, was a Christian minister, was Frederick Muhlenberg, originally from Pennsylvania, as was his brother, Peter, also a minister. But those were the early days. So it was troubling that the Constitution, that incredible document that was not first established in 1783, that was Articles of Confederation, but then 1787 we get to the Constitutional Convention during which Benjamin Franklin was there. But all 13 colonies had made clear, we are only coming back if George Washington presides. He is the only one we trust. They talked Washington into coming back to the Constitutional Convention to preside. How much that says about an individual, that the 13 colonies would only trust this person. Washington came back. He presided. We got the Constitution. But even then, after nearly 5 weeks, they had accomplished basically nothing. And that is when Benjamin Franklin stood up, was recognized by President Washington, president of the Constitutional Convention, and basically said, we've been going for nearly 5 weeks and we have accomplished virtually nothing. We have more ``noes'' than ``ayes'' on these votes. He said, When we met in this room during war with Great Britain, we had daily prayer in this room. How is it, sir, that we have not once called upon the Father of Lights to illuminate our understanding? He went on to say that if a sparrow cannot fall to the ground without God taking notice, is it possible that an empire could rise without his aid? He said, We are told in the sacred writing that unless the Lord builds the house, they labor in vain that build it. Firmly he said he believed that, not only that, but that without God's concurring aid, they would fare no better than the builders of Babel. He went on, spoke some more and ultimately made a motion that henceforth, every day of the Congress of the United States start with a prayer. From that day in 1787 until this very day, every session starts with prayer. So that was very much a vital part of that. But we had a Constitution that was the most incredible founding document of any country in the history of the world. It is tragic, also, that it did not come to mean the same thing that all people truly were equal for over 100 years, actually, until 18--well until the Civil War. And Lincoln was a devout Christian. He was a phenomenal theological thinker as evidenced by his second inaugural address that is etched in the north wall of the Lincoln Memorial. That's why he came forth with the Emancipation Proclamation. That's why if you go back to his two brief years in the House of Representatives, Lincoln was supposedly asked after he was President, Did you ever remember anything occurring memorable during your brief time in the House of Representatives? And he had said nothing other than this; and, of course, history records that we had one President, after he was President, run for the House of Representatives, John Quincy Adams. He believed God was calling him to bring an end to slavery in the United States as a Christian in England had done who got elected in 1785, fought 20 years and finally had the repeal of the slave trade, that was William Wilberforce, the slave trade in 1805, then he fought for 28 more years and in 1833 slavery was outlawed completely in England. John Quincy Adams felt that was his calling. That was something he felt he was supposed to do here in the United States, what Wilberforce was doing and had done in England. And so after he was defeated by Andrew Jackson in 1828, he ran for the House of Representatives; 1830 he got elected. For 17 years that man preached on the evils of slavery, basically asking how could God bless America, continue to bless America when we are mistreating our brothers and sisters by putting them in chains and bondage. That was the church. The church was all involved in the Underground Railroad in trying to protect slaves who were getting away because the churches recognized, and those who were really devout truly understood, they recognized them as being brothers and sisters and treated them accordingly. And then you come even up to the civil rights movement in the 1960s, Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., he was an ordained Christian minister. And there are many who believe in this country that all of his work, all of his effort, his peaceful protests, actually did one thing and that was get us closer to the day when people were judged by the content of their character rather than the color of their skin. But many think what he did was have African Americans in an atmosphere where they are treated more evenly. But he did something more. For white people who are Christians, he helped free them to be true Christians and treat every man and woman as brothers and sisters. He helped people across all races. But he did believe in the Bible. He was quite the Christian evangelist preacher. So this movement has been throughout. And now all of these years later we come to the point where there is going to be legislation. It has already been attached to the Defense Authorization bill. I guess that is to give people in the Senate protection who are afraid to vote because people back home may actually figure out that this is going to have a detrimental effect on the freedom to discuss immorality as the Bible teaches particularly, but certainly the Koran and the Tanach. And if you want to get right down to it, the term ``sodomy'' does come from the city of Sodom. But this bill, the hate crimes bill, it will affect the ability of preachers to preach sexual immorality, as I have just read earlier from Romans 1, or to talk about, and both in the Koran and in what we call the Old Testament, the Tanach, the Torah, books in what we call the Old Testament and the Koran both talk about Sodom. Both talk about Gomorrah. Both talk about Lot and his family being there in Sodom. And both talk about the attraction of men for men, and that when the angels came there to Lot in Sodom, the men did not want Lot's daughters for sexual pleasure, they wanted the angels, and that was too much for God for those who believe the account as written out in the Old Testament. But if this bill passes on the back of a Defense Authorization, a bill that is going to equip our soldiers to defend our freedoms and then take away religious freedom at the same time, it is amazing. Something Chuck Colson said years ago was you cannot demand the morality of Woodstock and not expect a Columbine. If the morality of the country is if it feels good do it, at some point some warped soul is going to wonder about what it feels like to kill people and what it feels like to do other things. What is really offensive to me, this hate crimes bill, on committee, on the floor, could have been amended, but the majority would not allow us to restrict the definition even of what sexual orientations were protected. They wanted it left. They wouldn't even restrict pedophilia, wouldn't restrict necrophilia, wouldn't restrict the other definitions of sexual orientation. They wanted it wide open. And for that, you are going to hook this on the backs of our soldiers and they don't get what they need in the field unless we pass this hate crimes bill into law. How far have we come? How far have we come? There was a reason Jeremiah cried when he fell for his country. We were promised the most open and fair, procedurally fair Congress in history before the 2006 election. What we have seen is the most closed, fewer amendments allowed. Even when the Republicans took the majority in 1995, in the 1994 election and then were sworn in in 1995, they allowed open rules on their points of the Contract with America. It was openly debated, and yet this has been the most closed Congress. So the only chance we have to discuss this is not in an amendment process, not on the bill itself that may be jointly in a conference report with nothing but the hate crimes bill. Oh, no, it is on the back of our soldiers and their money and supplies they need in their Defense Authorization. This is not an open Congress. This is not what was promised. This is not what was on the Speaker's Web site for so long that would occur in this House. It is just sad.

Mr. GOHMERT

Mr. GOHMERT. Mr. Speaker, we know that in the 1960s and 1970s we committed our troops to Vietnam. But we found out at the end of the war, after 2 weeks of constant carpet bombing of Hanoi when Sam Johnson was leaving the Hanoi Hilton, he was told, You silly Americans, if you'd kept bombing us for 1 more week like that, we would have had to surrender unconditionally. The message of Vietnam should be either commit 100 percent or get out. Don't leave people out there to die without full commitment. Now we have people on the left saying, get out of Afghanistan now. We have people on the right saying, do whatever it takes to win. And I'm here to say, Mr. Speaker, the President should not keep going on talk shows and going around the world while he has a report suggesting what to do. He needs to commit 100 percent to the war in Afghanistan, give them everything they need, or get out now.

Mr. GOHMERT

Mr. GOHMERT. Let me just say he also said, as the gentlewoman had mentioned, that his plan would save all this money and nearly pay for the whole plan by eliminating waste, fraud, and abuse; and yet we're not going to eliminate the waste, fraud, and abuse unless we pass his bill. But, now, in the days of my being a judge, what we saw was if you knew that fraud was going on and you allowed it to continue and you had a duty or an obligation to do something about the fraud and you did nothing, you were an accomplice to that fraud. So it just staggers the imagination that somebody would know where the waste, fraud, and abuse is, know exactly the amount of waste, fraud, and abuse or potentially very close to the amount of waste, fraud, and abuse and we're not going to do anything until we pass his bill? That's a little tough to swallow.

Mr. GOHMERT. It's on page 99 of the bill. This is section 205, entitled, Outreach and Enrollment of Exchange-Eligible Individuals and Employers in Exchange-Participating Health Benefits Plan. That is on page 95. Well, we get over here to Consumer Assistance with Choice: To provide assistance, to exchange eligible individuals and employers, the commissioner shall--not ``may,'' but ``shall''--and it includes things like assist exchange-eligible individuals in selecting exchange- participating health benefits plans and obtaining benefits through such plans. So that's one of the things that the commissioner shall do. You go down to subsection 3, two-thirds of the way down page 100, Use of Other Entities. In carrying out this subsection, the commissioner may work with other appropriate entities to facilitate the dissemination of information under this subsection and to provide assistance as described in paragraph 2, which included assisting exchange-eligible individuals in selecting exchange-participating health benefit plans and obtaining the benefits in those plans. Well, if you recognize this language, this is the kind of language that has normally been used to hire ACORN to go out and do the work. This is what it says: You may work with other appropriate entities to facilitate the dissemination of information and to sign these people up to the Federal health plan. So that is a potential source--like my friend Mrs. Bachmann was pointing out--of not millions or hundreds of millions, but potentially billions of dollars for these people who obviously have been engaged in political efforts, but to go and evangelize the world, or at least this Nation, for the Democratic health care plan. That is there, and I don't see how you deny that is another source of revenue for ACORN.

Mr. GOHMERT. In answer to the gentleman's question about the language, having seen some of the videos of the propositions that were put literally to ACORN workers in different cities about bringing in illegal immigrants under-age for prostitution, I have to say that this language on page 100 would fit. They were assisting them in obtaining benefits, and ``obtaining benefits'' is the language in this bill, but just, unfortunately, we are assisting them in obtaining benefits for activity that was illegal and immoral. I mean, to have under-age kids engaged in prostitution, the damage that that does to those young kids is just deplorable. But this is language that specifically would allow them to assist and to obtain benefits through these plans. So it fits right into their efforts.

Mr. GOHMERT. I appreciate my friend from Iowa and my friend Mrs. Bachmann. I was able to listen to some of the argument that you've been providing and debate that's been put forth. I know you were discussing health care earlier and now ACORN. I would like to tie the two things together, actually, because I haven't heard a lot of people point this out. Despite the President, during his joint session of Congress as an invited guest in this House, coming in and saying that we have not-- those critics of the Democratic plan, he said we are not engaged in honest debate, that we were using scare tactics, that we have been using bogus claims, wild claims, demagoguery, distortion, acrimony, cynical and irresponsible, facts and reason are thrown overboard, that we're robbing the country of opportunity, killing the President's good bill. Then he actually used the ``L'' word and said something that was a lie, plain and simple. But it's hard for me to appreciate that because the only bill we had to go from was H.R. 3200. And as my friends here have been doing, you take the bill--and this is just the first half of it--and you read from the bill. It's kind of hard to distort or not engage in honest debate when you are reading from the bill. But I would like to direct you to page 99, the subsection, Consumer Assistance with Choice.

Mr. GOHMERT

Mr. GOHMERT. President Obama has indicated before that, basically, Israel needs to not be occupying land that was acquired during war. Yesterday, to the U.N. he said that a big part of the goal is this: a viable, independent Palestinian state with contiguous territory that ends the occupation that began in 1967 and realizes the potential of the Palestinian people. Well, he has also indicated this Nation, the United States, will not be hypocritical any longer around the world. Terrible news this is for California--all of California, Arizona, Utah, Nevada, most of New Mexico, Colorado, and Wyoming, because it means you're about to be given back to Mexico, territory that we acquired in 1848 as a result of a war.