Dana Rohrabacher

Mr. ROHRABACHER

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

Mr. ROHRABACHER

Mr. ROHRABACHER. Mr. Speaker, before I get into the substance of my remarks, I would like to mention a little story. When I used to work for Ronald Reagan years ago, he also said: Well, Dana always start off with a little funny story. So I thought I would share one that Ronald Reagan loved with all of you and the Congressional Record and those watching us tonight on C-SPAN. What it deals with is a man who was struggling, struggling to get by. He lived in an area that had very little farmland left. My relatives all came from dirt-poor farms in North Dakota. They didn't have very good land up there. They were homesteaders, and it was rough going. But they did make a go out of it. They made a living out of it. This story is about a fellow in Kentucky, a guy who wanted to be a farmer but couldn't even find any land as good as my parents ended up with when they homesteaded. One day he found a piece of land that he knew was very fertile. What it was was an old riverbed. He decided he could plant that riverbed, and it was such good soil that he would have a great crop. Well, the trouble with it was that the riverbed was filled with tree stumps and rocks and all sorts of weeds and horrible obstructions to get anything done. He spent a year of his life cleaning out that riverbed. Every day after work, he would go and blow up the rocks, haul them out. He would get a mule team and pull the tree stumps out. He would take a machete and cut down all the weeds. The briars would scratch his body. It was a monstrous job, but he got it done and he planted a garden. When that garden started to come in, it was so beautiful that he had to tell somebody, he had to brag to somebody. He went to the person in his little town who he respected the most. It was the preacher. He said: Preacher, I want you to come out and see this. The preacher came out, and the preacher said: This is a miracle. Praise be to God. Look at that corn. I have never seen corn so big as that. And that watermelon, my gosh, and the berries. My goodness, I have never seen such a wonderful garden. Praise be to God. He went through this, kept going: Thank God for this, thank God for that. Finally, the young farmer said to him: You know, Preacher, you should have seen this when God was doing it all by himself. Well, today, there is a lot of stuff going on in Washington, D.C. People are very active. Don't think that there is not a lot of activity. You may not be able to see it, but we in this new Congress, we are scurrying around. There are all sorts of people working on healthcare reform, tax reform. We have got the fiscal year `17 and fiscal year `18 appropriations. We have got border bills. We have got security problems and issues that are the highest order. We are working here. I believe that with the Republican Party under President Trump, we are going to accomplish great things. These are things that we are asking the help of God, but we are not waiting for God to do it. I would like to discuss tonight a few of the creative proposals that I have made which I believe could impact and have a very positive impact on the United States of America and the American people. First of all, I would like to talk about border security. And an issue, of course, in border security that is the number one issue that has been plaguing us for so long, so let's understand, there has been a massive flow of illegal immigrants into our country at least for the past 30 or 40 years. I trace it back, unfortunately, to the time I was in the White House. I trace it back to Ronald Reagan's amnesty of 1987. Ronald Reagan was told that there would be 3 million people who would then be granted citizenship, would be brought into the core of American activity, and be made U.S. citizens. He also was promised that there would be border control if he signed on to giving amnesty to 3 million people, that no jobs would be permitted to be given to illegals from then on, and that there would be some sort of situation where we could control it so that not only illegals weren't going to be further coming across the border, but they certainly wouldn't be given benefits by our government to encourage them to cross the border. Well, what happened? Yes, Ronald Reagan had pity for these poor folks who came here, 3 million of them, who he was going to agree to grant citizenship to, and he did. He signed an amnesty law. And instead of 3 million, it turned out to be 11 million. And from that moment on, those 11 million, there were none of these restrictions on jobs. We could be E-Verifying all jobs right now and cut that off. We could have done it long ago. We could have done it in the next year after that amnesty that Reagan signed. No. There hasn't been a huge effort to make sure that we control our borders. Just the opposite. We have had administrations that undercut the border guards that control our borders. So what have we had since 1987, especially when the word got out that we actually will provide benefits? We will actually provide health care? And we will actually provide jobs? And education for children? Anybody who could just get here, even if they are here illegally? Well, what we have had is a huge flow into our country that has been threatening, and is threatening, to change the basic fiber of our country in the long run. But even in the short run, it has had a horrendous impact. It has had a horrible impact, for example, on the wages that ordinary Americans have. They have come in, and the middle class and lower middle class working Americans have had their wages bid down by tens of millions of people who have come in and bid down the wages of the American working people. Now, don't anybody try to tell me, as you have heard--everyone has heard this: There are 11 million illegals in this country. They have been saying that for 20 years. Be honest with yourself, everybody. Let's talk about it. There are probably 30 million illegals in this country. What has that caused? How has that impacted on us? What have we seen? We have seen an education system that has been drained of its resources so those very same working class Americans, who depended on us to make sure their children had a decent education, now have an education that is nowhere near good because the money has been drained away to take care of millions of young kids who have come here illegally. Well, where is our allegiance? What about the healthcare dollars that are being consumed? Average working people know that illegal immigration to our country has hurt, yes, the education and the healthcare benefits to their own families. Plus, we have destroyed the security of so many middle class neighborhoods where now we have--again, of course, some people don't even want to deport illegal aliens who happen to be criminals. They are talking about let's have a city in which they will not abide by the law, even to deport criminals who are here, violent criminals against our own citizens. No, these aren't sanctuary cities that we are talking about. These are outlaw cities that don't care about the American people as much as they do about people who come here illegally. Well, those have been some of the really negative aspects that we face. We know that. The reason that we understand, and people have recognized this, is Donald Trump was elected President of the United States because of this issue. We know that. The American people understand that their wages are going down, quality of life is going down, safety in their neighborhoods is going down, education for their children is going down, and health care is being torn apart. And a lot of it goes right back to a massive flow of illegals into our country. Thus, when Donald Trump shook up the system by saying, We are going to build a wall, and we are going to prevent this massive flow of illegals into our country from continuing, that is why Donald Trump was elected. So this out-of-control illegal immigration has got to stop. And that is one of the things that now with Donald Trump as President, and with a Republican majority, we are committed to doing. And the first step, at least the most important step, maybe not the first one, is fulfilling Donald Trump's pledge that we are going to build a wall across our southern border that will be both symbolic and will be practical in stopping this large and massive out-of-control flow across the border. I have a proposal that I think will go a long way in helping President Trump build that wall. My proposal called the Border Security and Immigration Enforcement Financing Act of 2017--that is the name of the bill. Again, I will say it. Border Security and Immigration Enforcement Financing Act of 2017. I am currently drafting that bill, which will be submitted as either an amendment or it will be submitted as a separate bill. This goes a long way that will permit President Trump to keep his promise to us. Now, why wouldn't he keep his promise to us? Everybody has been saying: He will never find the money necessary to build that wall, so he has fed a false promise to us. No. There are resources that are available if we use our creativity. Ted Cruz, over in the Senate, proposed the $14 billion that we have confiscated from a Mexican cartel leader, who we now have in custody, let's use those $14 billion as a down payment. I think Ted Cruz has got a great idea there, and I think that is one idea. My idea, which I am encompassing my legislation, is based on the idea that we have, and most people know this, 1 million legal immigrants coming into our country every year. Let me make clear what I just said. One million legal immigrants. Republicans are not against immigrants. We are portrayed that all of the time. We support 1 million legal immigrants coming into our country every year, which happens to be more legal immigrants migrating into our country than all of the other countries of the world combined. Nobody comes even anywhere close to us in our generosity, and Republicans are in favor of that legal immigration. Because we will choose who is coming, they will benefit and help our society as a whole, and they will not especially undermine our poor and working class Americans. Well, what does that have to do with the wall? Well, my legislation, which I am now in the middle of writing, says this: Of that million, it recognizes there are 50,000 people who are permitted to come into our country legally every year. And how are they selected? The rest are very carefully selected. These are people who are selected by a lottery. That is right, a lottery. We are having a choice, just by happenstance, who we pick, of 50,000 people coming into our country. We may need them. They may be able to contribute. They may not. But we are leaving that up to a lottery. My proposal is eliminate that 50,000. But we are not going to lower the number of legal immigrants coming into our society. We support legal immigration. In fact, those people who claim Republicans are anti-immigrant, they are the bigots. They are the ones who are proposing that we lump legal and illegal together. So don't let anybody kid you. That is a political ploy. So when you hear someone say, Republicans are anti-immigrant, just remember, we are prolegal immigrant. And with them trying to combine illegals with legals makes them the negative force against people who have come here from other countries legally. So what is my proposal? My proposal is you take the 50,000 slots that now are selected by some kind of lottery, and you say: We are going to start a pool of money. It is going to be an account that is a protected account. It can only be used for upgrading the border security of the United States, of both the border, Border Patrol, immigrations coming in, and making sure our homeland is more secure, especially on our borders. So we take that money in the pot. Now, where is the money coming from of that 50,000 a year? I am proposing that we charge anyone in the world, who is not a criminal or some kind of a terrorist. That basically we permit them to put $1 million into that fund. And they will immediately be guaranteed legal status, a green card in the country, but they will be guaranteed within 2 years that they will become a U.S. citizen. Are there 50,000 people in the world who would do that? There sure are. We know at least that. But there may be a lot more than that. But that would be enough for President Trump to build his wall and to make sure that we stem the flow, this massive flow of illegals into our country, and to secure our borders from these drug cartels, et cetera, and to strengthen our Border Patrol, and to make sure that when people are coming into the country we can vet them, we have some sort of technology devices that can help us secure that radical Islamic terrorists aren't coming into our country. Yeah, we can do that if we have the resources. President Trump wants to do it. Our country has been thwarted in the past by politicians who don't want to do it. But President Trump is committed. We need to get behind him. My proposal would at least give us the resources to accomplish that mission. Unfortunately, of course, there are people here, power brokers here in the United States House and throughout our government, who would like to get their hands on that money and spend it on other projects, special projects that they have in mind. Right now, the Republican Party needs to unify. We need to hear from our base. No. The number one priority for any of the money that would be derived from offering a citizenship to people from overseas, that money should be used to control our borders and create the security of our country. Now, by the way, why haven't we acted before? Why is it that from 1987 on that we have had this flow and we haven't been able to stop the flow, or do what I am doing right now should have been done 10, 20 years ago? Because we have people in this country who wanted that massive flow of illegals. There are probably 30 million illegals in our country. That is not some kind of happenstance that just happened. That wasn't an accident. No. We have had, and, unfortunately, on the Republican side of the argument, we have had Big Business who wants cheap labor, and that has prevented the Republicans from doing what we want. And on the liberal side, on the leftwing side, on the Democratic aisle, you have ultra-left liberals who want what? Who want to make sure that we have masses of people that they can use to try to socialize our country. Change the fundamental nature of our country because they don't like the fundamental nature of our country. So we have a political motive and an economic motive on both sides, manipulating these poor people from around the world and threatening the well-being of those working people and those lower middle-income people in our own country who are just struggling by. We could have solved this a long time ago. But that is what Donald Trump was all about. Donald Trump spoke to those people in Wisconsin and working class people in Pennsylvania and elsewhere and said: We are going to watch out for you. We are watching out for you from now on. Now, we need to join Donald Trump. The people have spoken. We need to build that wall, build it. I was very proud during the Reagan years that I participated. I was one of Ronald Reagan's principal speech writers, and we all remember what his most important line was. What did he do that really changed the world? He had a policy that stood firm against the Soviet Union without sending our troops into military action; and he stood, and he was strong, and he stated and he argued our case aggressively to the world. Ronald Reagan, when he went to the Berlin Wall and he said, ``Tear down this wall,'' it changed history and made our country safe for decades ahead. I did not write those remarks, but I am very proud that I helped smuggle those remarks to the President of the United States so that he had the option of saying it. And of course, once he read those remarks, he was bound to say it, even though his senior staff tried to prevent him from doing so. Well, I am saying this: Donald Trump, listen in. Build that wall. We are behind you. The American people are behind you. You should be as aggressive on this issue as Ronald Reagan was in ``Tear down this wall.'' Because he, too, was villainized for--they claimed he was some kind of a warmonger for even being so tough with the Soviet Union; and, of course, what he did is lead to the disintegration of the Soviet Union. So that is my first idea. Mr. Speaker, I have another project that I have been working on, and I know this sounds perhaps a little bit disconcerting for people because people have the idea that everyone here is left and right, and they have stereotypes of who is on the left and who is on the right. So let me just suggest that my next proposal is something that is usually associated with the liberal left, and that is I happen to believe that we have had a tremendous waste of our resources. It has had a horrible impact on our country that we have tried to regulate adults using marijuana, and especially our efforts to stamp out any use of marijuana, which is what the policy has been for decades, in a way that has prevented us from developing the medical uses of cannabis, marijuana. Cannabis is a plant that has enormous potential for our economy. We can't even import it now. It was used to make all of our rope. The Constitution is written on cannabis paper. There are so many uses. Our farmers aren't even permitted to grow it. And on top of that, no one has been permitted the means necessary to see if there are some medical purposes. And just now, after a few decades, we have found there are significant medical uses for marijuana. Now, it took me a long time to get to the point where I found out where we could work, a coalition could work on both sides of the aisle to try to just look at this issue with a realistic eye. What is going on? What is this incredible hysteria over some adult smoking marijuana in his backyard that we have to waste the resources of our police forces? The police should be out protecting people down the street, but instead they are going into the guy's backyard to make sure that he is not smoking marijuana. And then how about the jailer? How about the judge? How about the penal system? How about all of those? How about the loss of income of that individual? Trying to control people's personal lives, especially their consumption of cannabis, has been a horrendous failure because it has not prevented people's use, and it has been dramatically costly. And then, of course, there is the side effect of what? There is the side effect that we are financing drug cartels throughout the world who are actually putting democracy in those countries in jeopardy, and we are financing it. The issue isn't whether or not people should smoke marijuana or have cannabis. The issues are: If you are going to have that cannabis, shouldn't the person selling that be accountable so that they only sell it to adults? Shouldn't it have a label on it so that you know it is not filled with opium or poisons? Shouldn't it be a situation where a businessman has a bank account and is taxed and regulated and is treated like any other business, responsible business? Or we can let the drug cartels have the billions of dollars that that endeavor will be bringing in every year, and which it does. So we have financed the drug cartels overseas. We have gangs here, domestically, all tied to the fact that we are trying to control people's private behavior for their own benefit. It is time to unshackle people. An adult in the United States has every right to make his own decision about whether or not he will consume cannabis, and that is especially true of doctors and patients. We believe, supposedly, Republicans believe in the doctor-patient relationship. We have talked about it with ObamaCare, et cetera. Well, guess what? The doctor-patient relationship if we are saying, ``Yeah, you can do this, but you can't do anything with cannabis,'' that is not recognizing the doctor-patient relationship. So don't tell me about limited government. Don't tell me about individual freedom. Don't tell me about the doctor-patient relationship. Don't tell me about those things if you believe that adults should not be able to use cannabis, especially for medical purposes. And the worst part is there are some medical reasons for it. We have already seen that Israel has, by the way, legalized marijuana, and they have done great research just in recent years on the medical uses of cannabis, of marijuana. They have found that epilepsy, children's epilepsy in particular, this will stop seizures. Yet we are denying our own people the use of this. How insane. Yes, we need to make sure that we watch out for our people, but we do not control their lives because we know better. This is not a nanny state, but some people, interestingly enough, on the other side of the aisle, who believe in the nanny state, are the ones who believe mostly in allowing people to use medical marijuana if that will help them. I just will say this: we have an epidemic of opiates in this country. And one of the reasons we have that is because we have our veterans who have been given these opiates at the VA. I just had a call yesterday from a friend whose son came back from the war, and he was in convulsions on the floor, and they couldn't help him. They took him to the VA, and they put him on opiates, and it still didn't help. Finally, after a year, the doctors pulled him aside and said: Come to my office off the campus. They gave him a prescription for medical marijuana, and the man's son hasn't had a seizure since. So what does that mean? So he doesn't have a seizure. You have a veteran who has been filled with opiates. So now I got a call just yesterday. This poor young man who is smoking that marijuana does not have seizures, but they have filled him with opiates. He is trying to get off the opiates, but the process they have got him going through is he has to be dry of everything, including marijuana. And as soon as that level goes down, he begins having seizures again. And then he went a few days ago--maybe a couple of weeks ago he was at the VA hospital. They were trying to get him off these opiates. He is going to feel a seizure. He went to the car to smoke a marijuana joint and was arrested because the people at the veterans hospital who run the parking lots are Federal employees. It is Federal property. We have had votes right here in Congress saying that if a State legalizes the use of medical marijuana, the VA in that State is permitted to let their people utilize medical marijuana, and it failed. That vote failed. I challenge my Republican colleagues to join with the Democratic colleagues who supported that resolution last time. If you really care about these people--yes, we have an opiate, an opium-based horrendous surge going on in our country, and it is bringing down our people, our veterans in particular. Let's not eliminate if the doctor believes that medical marijuana will have an impact. Let us not outlaw that doctor from doing this. Let us also remember that we know that it can end seizures. This poor guy who called me the other day, his son, once the medical marijuana is going down--and they won't let him do this on the campus of the VA hospital--he ends up going back into seizures. This is a type of catch-22 when you are trying to control people's private lives. It doesn't work. It is not right. It is not right for our veterans. It is not right for our senior citizens who are sitting in the senior citizens' homes. If they would like to take a gummy that is filled with a little cannabis, so what? So what? Let them enjoy themselves a little bit, for Pete's sake, in a way that is not harmful; bring back their appetite, or whatever. No, we are trying to control people's lives, and it is having a harmful effect on the people themselves. And think about one last note of it. Who is most hurt by this is we have people in the poorest neighborhoods of our country who end up being arrested and being frisked to see if they have got any marijuana on them. We have armed groups who look like Army personnel coming into our cities for drug raids. The Founding Fathers never meant criminal justice to be handled at the Federal level--they never did--but now we have the equivalent of SWAT squads going in and breaking people's doors down for providing medical marijuana. This is ridiculous. And those poor people in the Black areas and the Chicano areas get arrested. They are arrested, and that follows them for the rest of their life. I have a bill that says that it is up to the States. And I would ask all of my colleagues and the people listening tonight to support the States' rights to make this decision. This is a State issue. And I have a bill that basically says that the Federal Government shall respect State marijuana laws. And when we do that, that will be left up to the people of those States to make these decisions. That is what our Founding Fathers wanted, and that is why things didn't go haywire back in the old days. We left it up to the States. We especially left that issue of drug enforcement, but also law enforcement, at the local level for local police. Mr. Speaker, so those are two ideas that I thought I would share with my colleagues tonight, that I think would save billions of dollars on the wall, and trying to change our attitude, trying to stop the waste that we are wasting lives, and billions of dollars, and creating drug cartels. When it comes to marijuana, we need to change that law and leave it up to the States. And we can then--if people need help, we are going to give it to them. But if they are adults and Americans, they have a right to run their own lives. Mr. Speaker, I yield back the balance of my time.

Mr. ROHRABACHER

Mr. ROHRABACHER. Mr. Speaker, let me just note that today I am paying close attention to the healthcare issue. I don't want anybody to think when they look at me giving this speech on the floor of the House that this is evidence that there is arm-twisting going on here in the Capitol about trying to get people's vote on the healthcare issue. No, it is just humorous. This is a shoulder replacement. I had this one replaced, actually, 4 or 5 months ago, and it is doing fine now. This one was a week ago. The cause of this, of course, has been excessive surfing. When I was older, I should have understood that you cannot surf as much as you can when you are younger without eliminating the cartilage that is there, then the cartilage is gone, and the bones grind on each other. Well, that is just one example, however, of a healthcare issue that is going to be with us much more frequently now as the population of this country is growing older. The older people get, there will be other infirmities that really were not suffered on such a scale when we died off at a younger age. So what we need to do is to make sure that we set down policies and a system that will provide the American people with the greatest and the most effective care that is possible within the budget that we have to deal with. Today I thought I would talk about that, of course--health care. But there are a few other issues I would like to discuss. Tax reform, of course, is something that is being focused on today as well--tax reform for fiscal year `17. And, of course, fiscal year `18, the appropriations bill. Border security, of course, has to be on this list. These are issues that we are every day talking about here on Capitol Hill. The work is intense, people are serious, and there is a job for us to do. President Trump is in the White House, and he is working hard as well. This is not the time for the other side to be politicizing every issue that comes up, but, instead, to admit that Republicans now have legitimately won the election for President and legitimately won a majority in both Houses of Congress. Thus, we should put in place policies that are, yes, fair, honest, and effective. But, also, we have to realize that it is fair, honest, and effective based on what those people who are elected by the people to make the decision believe is fair and effective. Unfortunately, what we have now, and we see this across the country, are people who--and I don't even know if they understand the system at all, but they are arrogantly trying to be engaged with disrupting the system because they did not win. That cannot be tolerated for long. I would hope that people have a change of heart and work with us. We are willing to work with Members of the other party, the Democratic Party, to make sure we come up with both health care and tax reform that the American people will accept and applaud. First, let's take a look at health care. Tonight I would like to discuss with whoever is listening and whoever is reading the Congressional Record an idea that I am proposing for the healthcare industry. And for the bill that is being put together, as we speak, where people are negotiating and compromising out, I have thrown this idea into the mix. And that is that we are--and we have to recognize-- making progress toward replacement of ObamaCare. I am asking my colleagues to give serious consideration to this simple amendment that I believe will revolutionize health care in America by protecting the formation and operation of healthcare cooperatives. Now, let's get back to that. I am trying to suggest that a small change could actually bring about a revolution in the way health care is delivered to the American people today. Let's first admit that our healthcare system today seems to be run by the insurance companies. Yes, insurance companies have almost more influence than doctors do on the policies that we have on health insurance. That is not something that we need to put up with much longer if there is an alternative. What that should mean to Americans is that we need to open up the system of health care. We need to make sure that health care is being looked at as a target for a multiapproach that will come to grips with those challenges, both financial and technical, et cetera, and that we need to open it up, rather than just having such a major influence by those people who are the money changers--the insurance companies. My amendment which I am proposing would go a long way towards opening up a whole new avenue. Now, when I say free enterprise--and I believe in free enterprise. When I say free enterprise, I don't just mean--and this is where, unfortunately, a lot of people have made a mistake in thinking that free enterprise approaches are simply the approaches that are based on greed and are based on profit motive. And instead of other things and motivations that are available, they believe that that is what free enterprise means, whether it is health care or whatever. Well, I would submit that free enterprise means a lot more than just depending on the profit motive and competition and greed but instead, also, includes, and should include--but we have excluded this avenue-- cooperation; cooperation among free people for their own benefit and the benefit of their families. We need it not only just in health care, but that is what we are discussing today, to make sure that Americans can cooperate together for their own benefits and the benefits of their family. Now, how do I get this? How do I get this consciousness? My mom and dad were both born on very small farms in North Dakota. In North Dakota where we have homesteaders and others who are relatively poor, in North Dakota, the farmers may have been given the land--by a Republican President, I might add. Abraham Lincoln is the one who initiated the Homestead Act. But they didn't have the money for the equipment, maybe even the money to buy seed. And what they did is, they formed farmers' collectives. What they called them, farmers' cooperatives. In Russia, they might have called them collectives, but they had the iron hand of evil in Russia, the iron hand of despotism, and a political control. But the cooperation in the United States was based on people gathering together, voluntarily working together to create a better situation. And you had cooperatives that would buy--farm cooperatives that would buy the machinery that was necessary for a small farm to succeed. Well, that worked. I noticed that when I would go up to work on the farm when I was younger, and I noticed these farm cooperatives around. And that is totally consistent with free enterprise, the cooperation among people to share with each other the burden of buying that type of equipment. Well, the amendment that I am proposing, in terms of our health care, falls right into that category. The amendment I am proposing stipulates that no provision in current law, or the underlying act, which we are amending, may restrict cooperative arrangements between individuals or organizations to jointly cover healthcare related expenses. The provision would further stipulate that such cooperative arrangements shall not be subject to any of the requirements, bureaucratic rules and regulations, that currently apply to healthcare industry companies. In addition, my amendment would stipulate that participation in such a cooperative arrangement shall be deemed as the equivalent of being covered by health insurance. If I might describe what I am talking about so people will understand. We are talking about now, the reason why a lot of people won't buy health insurance is that if they put it in, and they are healthy, that insurance money then goes to the insurance company, even though they have not used it at all. And so you are going to be hesitant to give that money and to buy that insurance, and the insurance companies, of course, are very happy to have that money available to speculate on the stock market, et cetera, in order to make a profit. I am not against profit, but I want to make sure that profit and greed are not the driving forces for what most people would hope for is they can cooperate together and not be subject to someone else's greed and profit motive. So what I am talking about, if this would be put into the healthcare bill, this small provision that I just read to you, making sure that cooperative efforts are covered and are not going to be controlled by the Federal Government, that they are free to do so without the many restrictions that would be on another company providing health insurance, that these cooperative efforts could--for example, you could have a co-op among people who worked at a certain school, or an industry, or you could have the same as we have now. I think that the pathway has been certainly explored when it comes to credit unions where, again, people in a nonprofit situation are working together in order to establish something that benefits all of those people. We could have a cooperative effort for health care, even run by some of the credit unions if they wanted to do so. They could have an app on their telephone or something where people would then put their money forward. If they didn't get sick, that money would still be part of what they have as their pot of money, their account with whoever it is. It is either an account or whatever, but the account will be returned. Thus, people will then take money out of the account to handle their own small medical needs, but they will also know that if they have a catastrophic condition--that is why everybody is banding together in this cooperative program--that they will be taken care of in terms of some catastrophic illness that might become them. So what we have in this proposal is an alternative, a very simple change in our healthcare law, which will permit people to work together and make it profitable for them to do so and take them away from the control of other corporations in the health insurance industry that may be thinking more profit than of what their interests are. So with that said, I have asked my colleagues to consider that proposal, and those who are reading this tonight or tomorrow in the Congressional Record, I hope they would call their Congressman to say that they are really interested in seeing that the cooperative alternative to health care is permitted in the bill. Now, the second piece of legislation that I would like to talk about tonight also deals with a vitally important issue, vitally important to the well-being of the American people, and that is border security. Let me just say, I have been aware that a massive influx of illegals into our country was a threat to the well-being of the American people, and I have known that in the almost 28 years that I have been a Member of Congress. But it has been discouraging to me that we have, over and over again, made attempts to try to do something that would draw the line and say we are not going to have any more illegals coming into our country. Now, by the way, that is illegals. I didn't say immigration, immigrants. I am talking about people coming here illegally, a massive flow of illegal immigration. In fact, the United States permits 1 million legal immigrants to come into our country every year. How big is that? That happens to be more than all of the other countries of the world combined. And we are supposed to apologize about having that kind of an open system? But no, we have been attacked, over and over again, for trying to get control of this. And what happens when you get out-of-control illegal immigration? You get jobs for ordinary Americans; the value of their work is bid down. And if you want to know why some people can't get good jobs today, and those jobs actually paid a lot more in the past, is because we have flooded the market. Basically, the Democratic Party has been deeply involved with opposing any of the efforts, and many Republicans have opposed the effort to get control of this flow of illegals. Why? Well, I guess we might be able to take a look at some motives and say: there are a lot of Republicans who could have done something on this, but they didn't want to stem the flow of illegal immigrants because Big Business wants--what do they want? Cheap labor. That is a betrayal of the American people, just as much as it is a betrayal of the American people for the other party to try to keep the flow of illegal immigrants into our country, hoping they will give them a victory at the ballot box and, thus, give them political power that they wouldn't otherwise have. Well, it is time to draw the line, and the American people did that in the last Presidential election. And I am very proud that the American people stood up to the most massive propaganda campaign against any Presidential candidate that I have seen in my lifetime, and that was against President Donald Trump. I just heard the other night, even the bankers up in Massachusetts and New York overwhelmingly were giving money to Hillary's campaign. But Donald Trump got a pittance. The establishment was out to destroy Donald Trump, because Donald Trump said that he was going to stop the flow of illegals, he was going to be watching out for the benefit of America's working people, and that would be the top priority. Well, one of the things we remember, he wanted to make it real. It wasn't just a bunch of rhetoric. He kept talking about how he would build a huge wall. Now, we all know that ``a huge'' wasn't around before Donald Trump. I don't remember people using that phraseology. And what we have got now is Donald Trump is moving forward. The President of the United States is moving forward to fulfill his promise. We should not have a situation where politics get in the way by people who lost the election and are now trying to stop and interfere with those people who won the election. That is what the democratic process is all about. And the proposal that I am making when it comes to border security is that--and I was very honored to be asked into the Oval Office by President Trump and to give him some ideas that might be good ideas on how to handle some of these problems. What I suggested to him is, any wall that he has suggested will be built along our southern border will cost tens of billions of dollars. Well, I had a proposal that I made to him, and I have made to the leadership here in the House, and I hope that they do not ignore this because it is vitally important if we are serious about stopping this massive flow of illegal immigrants into our country. We have to be building that wall, if nothing else, as symbolism that this is a sovereign country, and we demand that our border laws be respected. Well, what I am proposing is a change from a currently existing immigration law. And that is, we bring in 1 million legal immigrants every year. But guess what? Of that 1 million legal immigrants that we permit in--which I applaud--but among that 1 million legal immigrants, there are 50,000 of them coming in who are selected. What? They are not selected by a process where you study who is what, who we need here, what kind of skills we need. They are selected by a lottery. They are selected by a lottery, just pulling them out of nowhere. Yes, they are vetted all right, but they are not in any way rationally designed, them coming here, in a way that would help the American people. Well, what I am suggesting is that 50,000 people--we do not want to decrease the number of legal immigration. We don't want to decrease legal immigration. So we have a 50,000 slot. If we eliminated that stupid lottery that we don't even decide who is coming in, that it is left up to chance, well, we eliminate that, and then we set up a special fund. And the fund is a dedicated fund that whoever puts in $1 million into that dedicated fund will do so in exchange for immediate residency and U.S. citizenship within 2 years. In other words, foreign people who are successful in whatever they have done in order to accumulate wealth, and we are not going to bring in criminals, it is going to be vetted just like every other legal immigrant will be vetted to make sure they are not criminals or terrorists or anything, but people who are overseas who would love to become U.S. citizens, that they will be given guaranteed U.S. citizenship within 2 years. Now, that would mean $1 million per person, and perhaps we might want to say that individuals could bring in their immediate family, minors, for $500,000. But whatever that is, the revenue raised from this program could be put into that special account managed by the Secretary of Homeland Security for the purpose of carrying out border security and immigration enforcement activities. In other words, the President of the United States does not have to have the burden of raising taxes in order to pay for that Southern border wall. He does not have to pass it off on further generations by increasing the debt by that level. We have a method in this to bring in a better quality of people who we need coming into our country rather than selecting at random and paying for a wall that will reestablish the security of the people of this country and will go a long way to establish a mindset around the world that no longer are our borders open. No longer, whoever can get over here, are we going to take in and then give them free education and free health care and let them commit crimes and not even be kicked out of the country for it. No. Those days are over, and this wall will symbolize that. What I have suggested, having these foreign wealthy people pay for that wall, makes it a real possibility. If people would be interested in talking to their Member of Congress, they can call or write, but they should call and say the idea of letting rich foreigners build that wall is the answer. Let's get going on it. Let's not wait for 5 years. Build the wall and let the others pay for it. That is a plan that will work. I would like to also discuss another issue that I have been involved in. But let me just note that, on the tax bill, I have also asked for an amendment that would increase the well-being. And, how do you say, right now our wealth is becoming so centralized in just a few hands. What we have now in the United States is a vision that the poor are getting poorer and the rich are getting richer. There is a problem with this concentration of wealth. Now, the reason we have that concentration of wealth is because there are a few people in our country that own capital, own the companies that produce the wealth. And over the years, that has been focused on fewer and fewer hands, and the working people are being shut out of a system that is something that they are essential players in. So with that said, I am certainly not against profit motive and I am certainly not against competition. I am certainly for the private sector and not for big bureaucracy. But if we just passed an incentive into our system, that incentive would be this: I am proposing that when an employer provides stock for his employees, it has to be an equal distribution to all the employees. Those employees don't have to pay income tax on it. And if those employees keep that stock for over 10 years, the employees don't have to pay capital gains tax on it. So what we have got--if a company is successful and we have got a large increase in the value of that company, it is being shared with the workers in the company. It is not being held up in the one percent of the elite management. What we need to do is to make sure that we deal with this concentration of wealth because the American people, that is what it was all about. It wasn't about having some elite. That was what the Homestead Act was all about that helped my grandparents. We need a Homestead Act for people who are working in the various industries in our country. And tweaking the system with a little tax incentive like I am talking about, this would be an ESOP, which are already in existence but have very complicated structure associated with them, an expensive structure associated with them, that this would be like ESOPs on steroids. We will have working people thinking in terms of partnership with their employer instead of being on an adversarial relationship. People with startup companies will be able to get the top-quality people knowing if their company is successful, the capital gains tax will be zero for them who came onboard early on. This is another proposal that I am making, and I would hope that people will look at that again and ask their Congressman to consider Congressman Rohrabacher's Employee Ownership Bill, Expanding Employee Ownership. Finally, I would like to talk about one last issue that is something that is very controversial, I know, and I have never stepped away from being controversial. But what we have got here today is a major change in public attitude towards something that has been wrong for a long time but the public was not aware of it. I would hope that we do not pass up the chance again of legalizing the medical use of marijuana. And the fact is, 44 States have taken many restrictions off the use of medical marijuana. I have legislation that says respect State marijuana laws. This should be left up to the States. This should be left up to the people who decide for themselves whether or not they believe medical marijuana should be available to seniors, to veterans, and to other people. And we should stop paying money to the drug cartels by making sure that this medicine that we now know is possible with marijuana that we don't want to have the source being the drug cartels around the world. So I would ask my colleagues to join me in supporting the medical marijuana initiative, what I have, which says we will respect medical marijuana laws and the United States. I would hope that my colleagues get the message. These are four very important issues. These are issues I spent a lot of time on, but I am doing that because I understand these are fundamental. We have to start doing more. If we are going to drain the swamp, as the President says, we have got to be working on the fundamentals that are wrong with the system rather than just trying to create some image of progress and image of activity here. We can do it. We have got good leadership here in the House. We have got a willingness to cooperate with the other side of the aisle. We have got a President who wants to work with us. Congress is here. We are in action, and we have got some great new creative ideas. Now the American people are welcome to participate. Mr. Speaker, I yield back the balance of my time.

Mr. ROHRABACHER

Mr. ROHRABACHER. Mr. Speaker, I rise tonight to ask my colleagues to join me in the legislation that I have submitted today, which is the Respect State Marijuana Laws Act. For too long, Washington's decisionmakers have pursued the same policies over a whole range of issues without regard for whether those policies are actually beneficial to the American people. In fact, they continue to support policies that have utterly failed--many of these things--because the intent sounds so good. So, over and over again, we see failed policies remain in place, wasting money. Rather than evaluating the reason for the policy failures and ultimately deciding to change course in Washington, the habit has been simply doubling down on regulations, personnel, and tax dollars spent, believing that that will have and bring a different outcome. Last November, the American people registered their dissatisfaction with this way of thinking by electing Donald Trump to the Presidency. President Trump's statements on the campaign trail loudly and aggressively challenged the status quo. We haven't had someone here shaking up the status quo for a long time, but he did so by promising to revisit a whole host of failed Federal policies that have been crying out for attention for years and, in some cases, decades. Once such failed policy has been the U.S. Government spending billions of dollars and wasting the time of Federal employees--hundreds of thousands, if not maybe tens of thousands of Federal employees--in order to prevent adults from smoking a weed, marijuana. Candidate Trump told the voters this was an issue to be left up to the States, especially when it comes to medical marijuana. At a 2015 rally in Sparks, Nevada, then-Candidate Trump said: ``Marijuana is such a big thing. I think medical should happen-- right? Don't we agree? I think so. And then I really believe we should leave it up to the states.'' It should be a State situation, I think. ``In terms of marijuana and legalization, I think that should be a state issue, state-by-state.'' I could not agree more with the President. Indeed, it is the very approach that I have advocated for several years. In this vein, I have reintroduced today, as I said, the Respect State Marijuana Laws Act earlier today, along with Republican colleagues Tom McClintock, Ted Yoho, Don Young, Duncan Hunter, Justin Amash, and Tom Massie, as well as Democratic colleagues Steve Cohen, Mark Pocan, Earl Blumenauer, Dina Titus, Jared Polis, and Barbara Lee. My bill, which has not received a designation yet but is entitled the ``Respect State Marijuana Laws Act,'' will permit residents to participate within the confines of a State's medical and recreational marijuana program without running afoul of Federal law. Admittedly, my personal preference would be to lift the Federal Government's prohibition on marijuana entirely. However, I understand that this approach would be a nonstarter for many of my colleagues, which is why I have promoted an approach that simply gives the States and their residents the room they need to take a different approach to this issue, should they choose to take that different approach. Under my proposal, if a resident or business acts outside the boundaries set by a particular State, or if a State has chosen not to allow medical or recreational use of marijuana by their residents, the Federal Government would still be empowered to enforce Federal law in those instances. If that is what the people of the State want--it to be legal--the Federal Government can still get involved. Of course, the number of States that have resisted the shift in national opinion on this issue is small. To date, 44 States, including D.C., Guam, and Puerto Rico, have enacted laws that allow, to a varying degree, the cultivation, sale, and use of marijuana for medical or recreational purposes. For those States and territories that have discarded strict marijuana prohibition, my bill would align Federal policy accordingly. This is to those States and the people of those States who have decided they don't want the marijuana prohibition. My bill would then make sure that Federal law is aligned with the States' and the people in those States' desires so that the residents and businesses wouldn't have to worry about Federal prosecution. For those few States that have thus far maintained a policy of strict prohibition, my bill would change nothing. I think that this is a reasonable compromise that places the primary responsibility of police powers back in the States and the local communities that are most directly affected. Over the past few years, the disparity between State and Federal marijuana policies has confused and stifled banking, proper taxation, research, natural resources development, law enforcement, and related activities. A plethora of bills, many of which I have happily cosponsored, have been introduced in the House to tackle these problems on an issue-by-issue basis. However, my bill is the only one that would solve all these problems in one fell swoop. My bill is short, straightforward, and easy to understand. It amends the Controlled Substances Act to add a new rule that reads as follows: ``Notwithstanding any other provision of law, the provisions of this subchapter related to marijuana shall not apply to any person acting in compliance with State laws relating to the production, possession, distribution, dispensation, or administration or delivery of marijuana.'' The major difficulties that landlords, dispensaries, banks, and others find themselves in in those States where the majority of people--maybe the vast majority of people--have voted to make marijuana legal in their borders stems from the fact that the Federal Government law considers that activity still illegal. By explicitly stating that as long as these folks are following the State law, their actions are, by definition, not illegal to the Federal Government, if we do that, many of these obstacles, many of these confusions that people have to deal with in those States, in the States where people have voted to make sure they don't want marijuana illegal, well, their problems and the complications, the banking rules and everything else would be solved immediately. Now that we have established President Trump's policy preference as it relates to this issue, which is he believes it should be left up to the States, as well as my legislative proposal, let us turn to the reasons why Federal policy ought to change. First, as a matter of philosophy, I, as a constitutional conservative, have great faith in the ideals articulated by our Founding Fathers. Their experience with the British monarchy, an all- powerful, centralized British Government in which people had little representation and no right to control their own lives and liberty, led them to establish--meaning, led our Founding Fathers to establish--a decentralized system of government, totally different from that of the British, that their government was meant to protect the freedoms of the citizenry. One of the most important tenets of this system of government was the idea that nearly all police power should be reserved to and exercised by the State and local governments. Yet today, Congress continues to fund an enormous Federal bureaucracy that is built around the idea that we--meaning, the Federal Government--can and should regulate what people may or may not choose to consume and has justified the Federal Government's establishing a Federal police force and justified Federal police actions directly on the citizens throughout our country. This is totally contrary to what our Founding Fathers meant. There was never an intent to have criminal law being taken care of by the Federal Government. All of our Founding Fathers would have opposed it and today would be supporting my legislation by bringing things back to the ideals which they had in mind of limited government, especially limiting the Federal Government's control directly over our lives. Tragically, these laws, the laws which have been implemented and the laws that have been encouraged by the Federal Government, these laws concerning marijuana, disproportionately impact on the poorest communities in our country. There is an incorrect perception that poor people, particularly people of color, disproportionately break Federal marijuana laws, leading to their disproportionate representation in Federal prisons. However, as I indicated, that is an incorrect perception. Statistics show that affluent citizens are just as likely to grow, sell, and use marijuana illegally as poor citizens. The sad difference between these two, however, is that the poorest among us are somehow unable to avoid prison time for similar offenses. There is much that can be said about why this is. Some may respond to this unfairness with the idea that we should just lock up more of the affluent young people and older people as frequently as we lock up their poor counterparts. Well, I happen to believe that the Federal Government shouldn't be locking up anyone for making a decision of what he or she should privately consume, whether that person is rich or poor, and we should never be giving people the excuse, especially Federal authorities, that they have a right to stop people or intrude into their lives in order to prevent them and prevent others from smoking a weed, consuming something they personally want to consume. We have been down this path before, of course. In the 1920s, a coalition of progressives and evangelical Christians thought it would be a good idea to institute a national prohibition on alcohol, which was something else that people can do in excess--and do in excess-- which hurts them when they do it in excess or when they do it when they are not totally in control, and they hurt their lives. People do hurt their lives on alcohol, no doubt about it, just like in all these other drugs and just as some people do on sugar, for example. But the motives of the movement, no matter how well intended, indeed, certainly they wanted to help the people that they were going to stop from drinking. But like most efforts to limit freedom, the freedom of Americans, they ultimately succeeded in convincing--they did convince--the country to enact an amendment to the Constitution that actually prohibited the production and sale of alcohol in the United States. What happened? Well, predictably, the policy failed at achieving its intended goal, which is trying to prevent people from consuming a liquid intoxicant, alcohol; and instead of just achieving that goal, instead it resulted in a torrent of collateral damage that harmed everybody in this country and created problems that we still have today. The rise of organized crime, the death of people consuming booze that was contaminated or otherwise deadly, that is what was going on during Prohibition. The mobster scene first arrived in America. We had organized crime. We had people who were consuming alcohol from stills, and they had no idea what company or what people were making this stuff that they were consuming. They ended up dying in great numbers, and we ended up with the Mob. Does that sound familiar? Fortunately, for future generations, the country wised up and repealed the Prohibition amendment just about a decade after it was put into place. Today, the scourge of marijuana prohibition has fueled organized crime here and south of our border and in our inner cities and throughout the world. We now have organized crime on steroids, and there is little that we can do to stop that because we keep feeding them with money by having outlawed drugs that people want to consume, and especially that drug that we are looking at tonight, which is marijuana. Yet despite the well-documented death and destruction permeated by organized crime, the two groups who are most tragically harmed by the Federal Government's intransigence--it is not necessarily the groups that they are trying to save, but, in reality, they are trying to save these people. They are putting them in jail. They are destroying people's lives in that way, but they are also victimizing American seniors and our veterans--yes, our veterans. The Federal Government remains so fixated on the need to restrict marijuana use that it has effectively promoted an opioid addiction. The possibility that marijuana might be a viable alternative to the management of pain and certain chronic disorders has been ignored and, yes, suppressed. Thus, we have senior citizens who are in their senior citizens homes, people over 70 and 80 years old, and they are being prohibited from using marijuana that might make their day a little bit easier or might bring back their appetite. Marijuana is now, instead, designated as a schedule I substance and has prevented any meaningful use that might be, as I say, for our senior citizens. It has also prevented a robust research of the drug to find out exactly what it could be used for in a positive way. Last year, to the credit of the Obama administration, at the insistence of myself and others here in Congress, the Drug Enforcement Administration announced a policy change to expand the number of DEA-registered marijuana manufacturers. That meant that they were able to expand that number. Historically, only the University of Mississippi had been registered with the DEA to produce marijuana for research purposes. Well, what we have had in the past has limited the research supply of marijuana both in quantity and in quality, making access particularly difficult to legitimate scientists and practitioners. Thus, we have made it very difficult, if not impossible, for us to get a full understanding: If there are dangers, what are they? If there are some potential positive uses of marijuana, what are they? Through the policy that we have had, it has been a negative impact on those people who are suffering who, needlessly, don't need to suffer. They do not need to suffer, whether they are our veterans coming home or whether it is our people who are basically older or are suffering from other types of diseases. The policy change that we have made is a positive step in the right direction so that now there can be more research into marijuana to find out what the dangers are and what the benefits can be. We now can expect that research to pick up to some degree, although barriers remain. It is unfortunate that barriers remain because a plethora of anecdotal evidence suggests that this plant and its constituent parts may offer relief from ailments such as post-traumatic stress disorder, cancer, chronic pain, epilepsy, glaucoma, and multiple sclerosis; and, yes, we know that in some cases they have noted childhood problems where people go into seizures, and it has been effective in that. Why have we held marijuana back and not researched it even? This paranoia has had severe negative consequences on the American people, and that is not even considering the number of people whose lives have been affected. You arrest some person who doesn't have the money for a lawyer and they can't get it expunged from their record, for the rest of their lives they have lower pay and they have trouble getting jobs. We have trapped people in our poorer areas because we have put this stigma on them when what we are talking about is the consumption of a weed--not hurting somebody else, the personal consumption. I can't think of anything that our Founding Fathers thought that some people have a right to control their lives, especially what they consume. I, of course, don't agree that we should outlaw cups bigger than this because some people might drink more soda pop if we have bigger cups, no. People need to be responsible for their own lives. That is what freedom is all about, and that is when people will start being more careful about what they do. Yes, we also know that marijuana can adversely affect the mental development of an adolescent brain. As such, it is vitally important to discourage our youth from chronic use. Right now the youth won't even believe what we are talking about half the time when it comes to marijuana. So now we need to establish our credibility that we are not being paranoid, we are being responsible, and we are being realistic. We need to discuss with our young people and discourage the chronic consumption of marijuana, just like we do when we discourage them from the chronic consumption of alcohol use, which also is bad for young people's brains. But the fact is we do not know more, and we need to know more, about the use of medical marijuana and the use of marijuana, period--both positive impacts and negative impacts. The fact that we don't know what it can be used for positively or what the negative impact is because we haven't done the research, that is a travesty. That is a travesty. It is a crime against older people who sit there and are being denied the use of something when they are over 70 or 80 years old that might enlighten their day and might bring back their appetite after they have had some sickness. It is a travesty when our veterans come home and they are given opiates instead of maybe something they can derive from marijuana. We need to research that. And our veterans end up killing themselves because now they are addicted to an opiate. The Federal Government should not stand in the way of the scientific community in learning more about marijuana. Many who oppose the change in course for Federal marijuana policy will cite any number of excuses: Oh, but it is dangerous if people use marijuana and then get behind the wheel of a car. Well, that is something that needs to be worked out. We need to make sure that we understand there are other challenges we have to face once marijuana is legal and how we are going to protect people from being in a situation. Well, I happen to believe that there will be no more people smoking marijuana and driving a car if it was legal than they are today. However, that may be an issue we need to look at. What we need to do is find ways to discourage young people from driving while drinking. Let's have drug testing in our schools not aimed at putting young people in jail, not aimed at saying: Oh, you have tested positive for marijuana, you are going to get arrested. By the way, you can't do that because you can't force these kids to testify against themselves by giving them a blood sample or a drug test. But you can do it in order to say: If you test positive for drugs, we are going to talk to your parents about it. If you test positive for drugs and you are in school, you are going to have to take a class to show you what you are doing to your brain. Ultimately, this is all about freedom. It is all about whether adults, not children, can use their decisionmaking process. This is the land of the free and the home of the brave. Too many people get so wrapped up in micromanaging our lives for our own benefit--of course, it is always for our own benefit--that sometimes they end up causing great harm to the people that they want to control for their own benefit. Well, many of my Republican colleagues have joined me in letting the States do this. That is right. I understand it. I respect them. I hope more will go along with the constitutional provision that those things not enumerated in the Constitution are powers that should be granted to the States. I hope that my Republican colleagues will join me in recognizing that, when we talk about individual freedom, this is what individual freedom is. It also includes individual responsibility on the other side of the coin. When we talk about limited government, we want limited government and we want government that is closest to the people, the State marijuana laws in the name of helping people. So that they won't consume a weed by their own choice, we are destroying all of those principles which we claimed as Republicans. I believe in those principles. I think my fellow Republicans do as well. That is why we need to talk about it and have this type of discussion that I am opening up tonight on the floor of the House. In fact, if someone says they believe in the Tenth Amendment to the Constitution--we have heard it, and we will hear it in this body over and over again--let's send that back to the States. That is supposed to be a State rule of who is going to control the environment, who is going to control the gun laws or marriage laws, et cetera. We are going to hear that. But if someone really believes in the Tenth Amendment, they will respect the State marijuana laws, and let the States decide, and the people therein decide, what the laws should be. Remember, as we discuss people's health care, Republicans over and over again say: You shouldn't get in between a doctor and his patient. We believe in the doctor-patient relationship. That is true for medical marijuana as well. Do we believe in these principles? I say the Republican Party does believe in those principles. We need to have a discussion and we need to make sure that the American people understand that we are not just down here saying that we can control their life when we think it is best. No. We are down here because we do believe in liberty, we do believe in freedom, we do believe what our Founding Fathers had in mind when they decided not to follow the dictates of the king, not to permit the British government to establish control over their lives here in the United States that they had in Great Britain where they had fled from to get away from that type of authority. We do not want to have Federal police--no matter what they call them, DEA or anything else--down in our cities and our towns conducting law enforcement operations. That is not what our Founding Fathers had in mind. They had in mind also that people would be responsible for themselves. Yes, when people are free, some of them are going to make wrong decisions in their lives. We need to make sure that we understand that when we legalize medical marijuana, or even recreational use of marijuana, some people will hurt themselves, just like with alcohol. It is up to us not to try to put them in jail, not to try to hurt them, not to try to force them to do what we want, but to try to reach out to them, to help people who are in need, help people make the right decision in our churches and our schools. This is the way to conduct when you have a problem that threatens to bring down the society, not establishing a Federal Gestapo to go and enforce laws that are going to make everybody just prim and proper. I am sorry. What we need is to reassert what our Founding Fathers had in mind for America: limited government, personal responsibility, individual freedom, and, yes, the Tenth Amendment. I would ask my Republican colleagues to join me in supporting the Respect State Marijuana Laws Act. It presents us with a unique opportunity to support legislation that responds to our constituent demands because across America, people are understanding the reality of this. They don't want to put people in jail, they don't want to have Federal law strike forces in their community just to prevent adults from consuming a weed in their backyard. It makes no sense at all. They know that people, once they are arrested for just smoking a weed that is not hurting anybody else, their lives are damaged and it is harder for them to become a decent citizen. Americans are concerned about each other, and we know we can't just leave it up to the government to control our lives. With that said, I hope that my colleagues support this legislation and support Congressman Blumenauer and myself and others in the Cannabis Caucus that is being established in order to be consistent with the goals and ideals of American liberty to make sure that we have limited government and unlimited freedom in this country. That is what America was supposed to be all about. Mr. Speaker, I yield back the balance of my time.

Mr. ROHRABACHER

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

Mr. ROHRABACHER

Mr. ROHRABACHER. Mr. Speaker, I will speak after the gentleman completes, but I would also just like to note that I agree with everything that he has been talking about for the last 20 minutes. I hope the American people start paying attention. The fact is, the two of us are in a very small cadre of patriots that have been here in Washington for the last 20 years trying to stop this massive flow of illegal immigrants into our country, realizing that this doesn't only mean that people's wages would go down because we have people bidding down the wages of our people, not only is the crime in our area worse, not only is the money being drained from our health systems and schools--money that should be going to our own citizens are going to illegals--as we have always realized, with a flood of illegals into our country, some of the people riding that wave of illegals are terrorists who mean to destroy the American way of life and would kill our people in order to terrorize our Nation into retreat from involvement in the world. I have been very honored to stand with the gentleman from Texas in these battles over these last 20 years. I would hope that the election of President Donald Trump reflects the fact that the American people are waking up to the significance of this issue. We see people on the Senate side shedding tears for a temporary halt in immigration from areas where terrorism is known to exist and radical Islamic terrorism exists there. But they are shedding tears that a couple of hundred people, yes, were put in a bad situation. A couple of other lives were disrupted. They were innocent people. But in order to save American lives, we are not going to put foreigners who are trying to come here at some kind of discomfort? Well, I think Donald Trump has demonstrated his primary objective is to secure the safety of the people of the United States of America. I have been so proud to stand with the gentleman from Texas in getting behind Mr. Trump on this very important goal.

Mr. ROHRABACHER

Mr. ROHRABACHER. Mr. Speaker, Americans should remember what makes us a great and free country. It isn't a gift. It is earned by those conscientious individuals who get involved, donate their time, and do their share. Millions of them, from the first generation of Americans until the present time. Louise Epting was one of these. She was a beloved mother, daughter, sister and grandmother. Born in New York City, the former bobbysoxer and Frank Sinatra devotee became a nurse before settling down to raise her three children with her then-husband. Following their divorce in the 1970s, Louise continued to work hard to support her children and ensure their needs were met. Later in life, Louise followed her children to California in order to be closer to them and her future grandchildren. Louise embraced her role as the family's matriarch. Known by her nickname ``Sugar,'' Louise was also a dedicated volunteer for many Republican causes. She worked tirelessly for everything she believed in, dedicating time and energy to a wide variety of candidates and issues. Working to better her community, she spent countless hours volunteering at the schools her grandchildren attended in Huntington Beach, California. A fiercely proud American, Louise ``Sugar'' Epting represents true patriotism, and is among the best our country has produced. A devout Catholic, she departs this world to enter the realm of heaven where we know she joins so many of her loved ones. Compassionate, caring, and cherished by many, Louise leaves behind a lasting legacy of love for her faith, family, friends, and country.

Mr. ROHRABACHER

Mr. ROHRABACHER. Mr. Speaker, today, I will reintroduce legislation entitled, Save the Christians From Genocide Act. The bill declares Christians and Yazidis in Iraq, Syria, Pakistan, Iran, and Libya as targets of genocide, and thus gives them a priority for immigrant and refugee visas. Importantly, this bill does not circumvent or change current vetting processes, but rather simply ensures that these targets of genocide are placed at the front of the line for immigration and refugee visa processing. The Save the Christians From Genocide Act was submitted but not brought to the floor for a vote in the last Congress. During that time, thousands of Christians have been killed and often turned into helpless and hopeless refugees on the run from radical Islamic terrorism. The Save the Christians From Genocide Act will give Middle East Christians a safe haven. Christians are being slaughtered. As we speak today, Christians are being slaughtered in the Middle East. We must save them if we can.

Mr. ROHRABACHER

Mr. ROHRABACHER. Mr. Speaker, I rise today to praise Senator Jeff Sessions, President-elect Trump's nominee for Attorney General. Senator Sessions, I am praising him today for his inspiring testimony before the Senate Judiciary Committee yesterday. During his confirmation hearings, Senator Sessions was questioned on a wide variety of issues that will be under his purview as our Attorney General. Included in the numerous topics covered were questions about his intentions to enforce Federal law as it pertains to marijuana policy. Senator Sessions is a patriot. He is a constitutionalist. He is a man of the highest moral integrity, and I have complete confidence that if confirmed as Attorney General, he will faithfully enforce our laws--not just those he agrees with, but all the laws duly enacted by Congress. As it pertains to marijuana policy, Senator Sessions promised to do the same, to follow the law. During his exchanges on that topic of medical marijuana policy, being questioned by both Senators Leahy and Lee, Senator Sessions stated his intention to follow Federal law. At one point he indicated that if Congress no longer desired to make possession and distribution of marijuana an illegal act, ``Congress should pass a law to change the rules.'' At this time, I feel compelled to point out that Federal law has been changed and currently prohibits the Department of Justice from spending appropriated funds to prosecute individuals who are acting in compliance with their State's medical marijuana laws. In fact, a provision has been in the law since December 2014, when Congress passed and President Obama signed into law the Consolidated Further Continuing Appropriations Act. The act included a provision passed on the floor of the House as an amendment earlier that year by a vote of 219-189. The following year, a similar provision was passed by a wider margin of 242-186. That provision, offered by myself and cosponsored by my colleague, Sam Farr, restricts the Federal Government from superseding State law when it comes to the use of medical marijuana. This law will remain in effect through April 28 of this year, although I expect with the House and the Senate, both on record on this, that this provision will be renewed. I am especially confident of that when realizing that President-elect Trump is on the record, as he stated in the last campaign, that this issue should be left to the States. Thus, I am confident that this legal provision, which says that the Federal Government shall not supersede State law when it comes to medical marijuana, will be renewed. Importantly, in August of last year, the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals ruled in U.S. v. McIntosh that Federal funds cannot be used to prosecute those in compliance with their State's medical marijuana laws. This provision will be part of American law as long as it is renewed and Congress makes it part of the law. I am confident that if Congress does that, Attorney General Jeff Sessions, my friend, a person I admire greatly, will abide by the provisions and, thus, respect State medical marijuana laws, as dictated by Congress and enforced by the judiciary. As he rightfully pointed out in his testimony yesterday, Senator Sessions said it will be his duty to see to it that the laws under his purview as Attorney General are faithfully executed, and this includes the Rohrabacher-Farr limitations that no funding shall be used to prosecute those throughout our country who are in compliance with our States' medical marijuana laws. All of this comes down to a constitutional theory and a constitutional commitment to what we call the 10th Amendment, and that is the States have a right to make determinations in all of those areas that the Federal Government should not be involved in. This should definitely be left to the States.

Mr. ROHRABACHER

Mr. ROHRABACHER. Mr. Speaker, Ambassador Kairat Umarov of Kazakhstan has faithfully served in Washington, D.C. for the past four years. His steady leadership and commitment to building the relationship between our two countries has resulted in stronger ties and raised the profile of Kazakhstan and President Nazarbayev in the West. As he now prepares to complete his time as Ambassador, I wish to mark the occasion by recognizing his many achievements and extending my personal thanks to him. The United States and Kazakhstan share a strategic partnership and a shared interest in preventing nuclear proliferation. Ambassador Umarov has fostered a close working relationship between our government and the Kazakh Embassy which has been a key ingredient for many positive steps. Although he will soon depart Washington, I must mention the Ambassador's significant contributions to the EXPO 2017 event which will take place later this year in Kazakhstan. Over the course of Ambassador Umarov's time in Washington, I can attest that he is the consummate diplomat, always gracious, even in trying circumstances. While I am sad that his term in our nation's capital has finished he leaves behind a record of improved relations, not only between governments, but between the people of Kazakhstan and the United States. Lastly, the Ambassador will celebrate his birthday on January 12th and I wish him the very happiest of celebrations.

Mr. ROHRABACHER

Mr. ROHRABACHER. Mr. Speaker, I rise in support of H. Res. 11. Contrary to the U.N. resolution that we are condemning today, which condemns the settlements that are taking place in Israel, the new settlements that the Israelis find themselves permitting are not undermining the cause of peace. Let's get this straight. This is what we just hear over and over again that the settlements are undermining peace. What undermines peace is when the Palestinian people continue with their policies of terrorism, both attacking with missiles and rockets, as well as stabbings, as well as the Palestinian people and their leaders unwilling to stand up and recognize that Israel exists. They don't have a right to flood into that country with a right of return. That is what undermines the peace. The settlements wouldn't be taking place, except the Israelis and the United Nations and the supporters of the Palestinians have made a mockery of the deal that was made. The Israelis withdrew from control of the territory. They withdrew, and they permitted the Palestinians to establish authority there with two promises: number one, they wouldn't use the territory to attack Israel; and number two, they would recognize Israel's right to exist, and this right of return permitting them to flood into Israel and eliminate it that way did not exist. The Palestinians have given up nothing. The Israelis have given up territory and made themselves vulnerable to the type of attack that leaves Israelis dead every day from terrorist attacks. No, the U.N. has it wrong. That resolution by the U.N. makes peace less likely.

Mr. ROHRABACHER

Mr. ROHRABACHER. Mr. Speaker, I would like to call to the attention of my colleagues an analysis of our recent government actions toward intellectual property rights titled ``Assaulting Property Rights to One's Inventions,'' which shows how we are undermining our position as the world leader in innovation and preventing the creation of new wealth. For a country with a momentous beginning, whose intellectual- property-rights approach produced the most iconic inventors and inventions in the world, recent changes to America's patent system should be alarming. Mark Twain wrote, ``[A] country without a patent office and good patent laws was just a crab and couldn't travel any way but sideways or backwards.'' America made writing ``good patent laws'' that secure intellectual property rights a high priority. The Founders enumerated the Patent Clause in Article I, Section 8 of our Constitution--the only individual right named in the Constitution itself. The Founders moved quickly to implement this property right. The Patent Act of 1790 was the third law enacted by the first Congress. What did the Founders regard as ``good patent law?'' Deeding newly created property to its creator. One that democratized the property right to one's inventions. The 1790 law achieved this by awarding a patent to the ``first and true inventor.'' But lately, Congress, the courts and the administrative branch have diverted America toward the way of the crab. Our own government has whittled away at our patent system, degraded patent rights, devalued patents and IP and diminished inherent property rights. What would inventors like Thomas Edison, the Wright Brothers and Alexander Graham Bell think about this new direction? Or Founders such as James Madison? In recent years, Congress has shifted patent terms to 20 years from when a patent is applied for, though the average patent application pendency is 36 months--far longer for sophisticated inventions. Congress changed the law to require virtually all patent applications to be published 18 months after filing, even if no patent has issued. That's a problem because it gives IP thieves a head start by providing them an invention's blueprints early. If a patent doesn't issue, disclosure makes the invention ``prior art'' and unpatentable. Congress enacted the antiproperty-rights ``America Invents Act.'' AIA denies inventors de novo judicial review if the patent office invalidates a patent. AIA also lets patent infringers off the hook if they used someone's patented invention for a year before a patent was filed. It seriously disrupts the one-year grace period, when inventors could discuss their ideas with investors and partners, improve their details and make a stronger patent application. The AIA allows third parties to anonymously submit ``prior art'' while a patent application is being considered. Use of an invention anywhere in the world now makes an invention subject to being invalidated here. AIA changed from a first-to-invent to a first-to-file basis for winning the patent. This runs counter to the American principle of a property right to one's ideas AIA also put the post-grant challenge process, started in 1999, on steroids. Now anyone, with or without standing, may ask the Patent Trial and Appeal Board to invalidate an issued patent, with a low burden of proof. Infringers, hedge fund sharks or anyone can bring patent holders into double-jeopardy-like patent reexamination in this quasi-judicial administrative setting. Judge Randal Rader has called the PTAB a ``patent death squad'' because it revokes patents 80 percent of the time. Courts are making it harder to secure a patent, in rulings like KSR v. Teleflex, Bilski v. Kappos and Mayo v. Prometheus. Judicial rulings have also raised the bar for patent owners to win infringement, in such cases as Global-Tech Appliances v. SEB, Abbott Labs v. Sandoz and Quanta Computer v. LG. Even if an inventor gets a patent, then proves someone is infringing the patent, courts have put permanent injunction against infringers out of reach under eBay v. MercExchange. A patent is supposed to ensure exclusive rights, but if you can't stop infringers from making, using or selling your invention even when you've proven IP theft, where is the private property right to exclusivity? Agencies like the Federal Trade Commission, myopically fixated on antitrust and unproven theories of patent litigation abuse, miss the core constitutional goal of patents, namely to vest in individual inventors enforceable property rights, which include the right to sell or license that intellectual property. The FTC's recent ``study'' of certain patent assertion entities, or PAEs, paints with such a broad brush; it sheds little light on this area of patent litigation. The FTC lacks sufficient data to draw conclusions, especially with an unrepresentative sample of 22 firms and no data on the potentially abusive practices of large infringers. Making sweeping policy recommendations on such a thin foundation only picks sides in a manner that hurts inventors who have no interest in setting up manufacturing plants and threatens property rights, including the right to buy or license IP. Meanwhile, countries like China, South Korea and Taiwan take advantage of the FTC's and U.S. Justice Department's efforts to weaken the rights and remedies of American patent owners. These foreign governments enable their countries' businesses' theft of U.S. IP. How? By depriving American firms of due process, equating exclusive patent rights with ``anticompetitiveness,'' and running judicial proceedings based on predetermined outcomes favoring domestic players, rather than the rule of law. In Federalist 43, Madison explained that the right to inventions belongs to their inventors, and ``the claims of individuals'' to their IP rights ``fully [coincide]'' with the ``public good.'' The exclusive property right benefits society while inventors enjoy the fruits of their creativity. It worked exceptionally well for about 200 years. But today, our property rights-centered patent regime is shifting. These changes to America's once-world-class patent system must be reversed and our course righted if we are to continue as the world leader in invention and creation of new wealth.

Mr. ROHRABACHER

Mr. ROHRABACHER. Mr. Speaker, on December 16th the people of Kazakhstan will celebrate 25 years of their independence. From the collapse of the Soviet Union to the present day, Kazakhstan has become a valued member in the international community and is a respected voice as a nonpermanent member of the United Nations Security Council. For the United States, the first country to recognize Kazakhstan's independence, this moment not only symbolizes Kazakhstan's remarkable development, but also marks 25 years of cooperation and friendship between our two nations. Our strategic partnership was founded on a shared interest in nuclear nonproliferation and security. When the Soviet Union dissolved, Kazakhstan inherited the fourth largest nuclear stockpile in the world. Rather than using those resources in unproductive ways, through President Nursultan Nazarbayev's leadership this nuclear arsenal was decommissioned and Kazakhstan has continued to cooperate in these efforts. Over the 25 years the economic relationship between Kazakhstan and the United States has greatly expanded as well. The Kazakh economy is dynamic and open to the world. From 1993 to 2013 American firms invested more than $42 billion in Kazakhstan, and trade between our nations is measured in the billions of dollars per year. The government and the people of Kazakhstan have made great strides in building an economically diverse, multi-ethnic and prosperous country. Kazakhstan exemplifies a country of religious diversity and shows the world how people of various faiths can live together in peace. I congratulate them on that achievement. In the coming years, I hope to see the cooperation between the United States and Kazakhstan continue to grow as future leaders build on the successful foundation that has already been laid.

Mr. ROHRABACHER

Mr. ROHRABACHER. Mr. Speaker, I rise today to speak about the disastrous undoing of democracy in Turkey and, specifically, the targeting and incarceration of those opposed to Turkish President Erdogan's ruling clique, especially anyone with any association to the Gulen movement as well as ethnic Kurdish leaders. Since an upheaval in July, President Erdogan has used emergency powers to arrest over 37,000 people and dismiss 100,000 other people from their government jobs. Lawmakers, Supreme Court judges, mayors, journalists, and approximately 14,000 doctors and teachers have been arrested or dismissed--many without due process. Newspapers and television channels critical of the Turkish Government have been shut down. Twitter and Facebook are filtered, while Internet connections are systematically interrupted. Human rights in Turkey are under severe attack, and the enemy is the Turkish people's own government. President Erdogan's administration is currently brutally oppressing anyone representing the Kurdish people in that country, including the Turkish political party HDP, which is involved in the democratic process. Perhaps the most bizarre is the repression of the Gulen movement in Turkey, and I would suggest that those people dedicated to education, benevolence, and respect for others should not be oppressed but should be looked at as friends of freedom everywhere.

Mr. ROHRABACHER

Mr. ROHRABACHER. Mr. Speaker, entrepreneurship and employee ownership as well. I rise in support of H.R. 5719, the Empowering Employees through Stock Ownership Act, a bill that will allow certain employee recipients of employer stock to defer paying income tax on the stock until they are able to liquidate a portion of the stock to pay those taxes or once 7 years have passed, whichever comes first. This is a modest but meaningful step in the right direction. It is a modest and meaningful step toward transforming our economy into an ownership society where employees are empowered with a direct and enduring stake in the well-being of their company. I applaud Representative Paulsen for offering this legislation and Chairman Brady for shepherding it through his committee and onto the floor. As you may know, Mr. Speaker, I have a bill that was crafted in the same spirit as this bill that we are considering today. It is a bill that, in my view, should be this body's next step, after this step forward, toward creating an ownership society. My bill, the Expanding Employee Ownership Act of 2016, which is H.R. 4577, would permanently exempt from income tax liability any stock that was received by employees as part of a broad-based distribution to all employees, so long as the employees held on to the stock for 5 years. If the employee holds the stock for 10 years or more, after that, a mechanism is triggered that allows the employees to sell their stock free of capital gains tax. So by giving the employee a pass on income tax for their stock or capital gains tax for their stock, we will greatly expand the number of working people in our country who own part of the company and maybe own a majority of the companies owned by employees throughout this country. As we know, employee ownership has many positive attributes, and this bill takes us a step toward that. Studies show that employees who own a share in their company are more productive and prudent. Studies further show that employee-owned companies are generally more profitable and have a lower turnout rate. You have a solidarity between management and labor when the people working for a company own part of the company that they work for. It is more of a partnership. Free enterprise doesn't just mean profit motive for the capitalists. It means profit motive--not only just profit motive, but it means freedom for everyone to participate in a system where ownership is so important to standard of living. What has been really very disturbing in our society for these last 30, 40 years is we see the income disparity that exists in our society. Much of it is because working class people have been kept out of capital ownership, and that small, small number of Americans who own the capital have now vast amounts of wealth. Well, I am not against people being wealthy, but I think that we should make sure our system is designed as our Founding Fathers meant it to be, where you have a maximum amount of people enjoying the freedom and liberty and rights of all the rest of the citizens. This bill today and my proposal would just take us down a path in which employees and ordinary working people would not only have a stake in their own company, but probably would have a stake in owning capital, which would bring down this disparity between working people and people of wealth. So today I ask my colleagues to join me in supporting this legislation.

Mr. ROHRABACHER

Mr. ROHRABACHER. Mr. Speaker, as we stand here today, let us remember that the slaughter of Christians in the Middle East continues. The slaughter by radical Islamic terrorists continues as we do our business as usual. We have a President who is even unable to use the words ``radical Islamic terrorists,'' which could have something to do with the fact that we have had policies that have failed to stop this historic slaughter of Christians in the Middle East. This group has declared jihad on the West and has begun their gruesome bloodletting by targeting Christians in the Middle East for genocide. Again, this administration has failed to do anything to stop the slaughter. Those people who have been permitted into our country from that part of the world, overwhelmingly, have been Muslims and not Christians. It is time for Congress to act. We have not done our job. We have failed as well. We need to pass legislation. I have submitted such legislation that says that, from now on, in that part of the world where Christians have been targeted for genocide, they will be given preference for any refugee status or immigration status into the United States. At the very least, we can do this to stop this slaughter of Christians in the Middle East.

Mr. ROHRABACHER

Mr. ROHRABACHER. Mr. Chairman, how much time do I have remaining?

Mr. ROHRABACHER. Mr. Chair, I have an amendment at the desk.

Mr. ROHRABACHER. Mr. Chairman, I thank the ranking member and the chairman for all of the hard work they are putting into this very important piece of legislation. It is part of the job that we must do in Congress. My amendment prohibits funds in the bill from being used to provide assistance to Pakistan. Since 9/11, we have given Pakistan well over $30 billion, the majority of which goes to military and security services of Pakistan. And Pakistan has used those services to murder and oppress their people, people like the heroic Baloch people or the Sindhis, who are struggling for freedom under Pakistani oppression. It is a grotesque charade for us to suggest that our aid is buying Pakistani cooperation in the war on radical Islamic terrorism or in anything else. The Pakistani Government is neither our friend nor shares a common interest with our country. They are hardcore, two-faced enemies of our country. If you don't believe that, then take a close look at what has happened to Dr. Afridi, a Pakistani medical doctor who helped pinpoint the location of Osama bin Laden and continues to languish in a Pakistani prison. This is because Dr. Afridi helped us bring to justice Osama bin Laden for the slaughter of 3,000 Americans on 9/11. Last year, I came here to speak on this same issue, and this has been something we have been calling on. If the Pakistanis wanted to show a sign of good faith that they really were our friends, they would have released Dr. Afridi a long time ago. While Dr. Afridi continues to remain in prison, we continue to provide weapons and cash to his tormenters. Arresting him and now keeping him in prison is a slap in the face to Americans and an insult to the families of those who died on 9/11. Given the miserable human rights track record of the Pakistani Government--as well as the ongoing struggle of the people of Pakistan, who are seeking their own self-determination and freedom, such as the Baloch and Sindhi minorities--this is morally wrong for us to continue to give weapons and assistance to this dictatorial and corrupt government. Unless my amendment passes, our aid will continue to strengthen and bolster a government that has committed crimes against their own people, and we will be then basically giving money to a government that not only represses its own people but, through its support of terrorism and terrorist organizations, threatens the people of the United States as well as those peoples elsewhere. I would ask my colleagues to vote for this amendment. Mr. Chairman, I reserve the balance of my time.

Mr. ROHRABACHER. Let me just note I respect the chairman's leadership and the hard work he is putting in on this as well as the ranking member. This is a needed piece of legislation, and I respect that. Our primary job is to watch out for the security of our country, and this bill is supposed to address that. That is one reason why I have decided that unless the Pakistanis prove to us that I am wrong by simply releasing Dr. Afridi, basically they are insulting us, they are insulting the victims and the families of 9/11, and the fact is they can't even do this. If they can't even do this, how do we expect them not to be supporting terrorism behind the scenes, which many of us believe the Pakistanis are guilty of? I suggest that what more can they do--who will trust us around the world if we let our friends like Dr. Afridi linger and let them sit there in a dungeon? Here is the man who helped us get Osama bin Laden, and the Pakistanis won't even let him out of jail. He is an American hero, for God's sake. What more can they do to us before we cut them off from all the billions of dollars of aid we have given them? I ask my colleagues to join me in supporting this resolution, this moral resolution. I yield back the balance of my time.

Mr. ROHRABACHER. Mr. Chairman, I demand a recorded vote.

Mr. ROHRABACHER

Mr. ROHRABACHER. Mr. Speaker, the right of self-determination is today manifested by unhappy ethnic and national groups in almost every corner of the world--Scotland, Catalonia, Baluchistan, Biafra, or Kashmir. Current national establishments, as well as international organizations and alliances, however, fear changing the map, terrified by any proposal to dissolve the legal, political, and economic bonds between peoples that creates two countries where there is now one. Self-determination and secession are, in the global establishment's mind, synonymous with instability, chaos and bloodshed. And, yes, that is what has happened all too often when a dominant ethnic group has refused to recognize rights of a minority to a vote on sticking with the status quo or governing themselves in a new or different country. But chaos need not be the outcome of people exercising their right of self-determination. Ten years ago this week, voters in Montenegro went to the polls in a referendum that posed the question, do you want Montenegro to be an independent state? When the votes were counted, 55.5 percent chose to peacefully dissolve their union with Serbia. Shortly thereafter, all five members of the United Nations Security Council recognized the newest country in the world. In a region not known for a peaceful resolution of disputes, the peoples of Serbia and Montenegro have written a praiseworthy chapter in the history of democratic government and self-determination. So what made it work so well this time? First and foremost, credit needs to be given to the Serbian government that permitted this referendum to occur. By doing so, made force and violence unnecessary and even counterproductive in the cause of Montenegrin independence. Belgrade, which has made its share of bad decisions, should be praised for making the right decision--right for the people of Serbia and Montenegro. There are only a few examples of such an amiable separation. The Czech and Slovak split into two countries is certainly one example. We remember elections in Scotland and Quebec, where voters did not choose to be a new nation. Clearly it is better to let the future be determined by ballots, not bullets, and in such a democratic environment, fewer people will want to vote for a split. If a minority decides to go for it, it will not result in a far-reaching trauma and decades of dissolution and animosity. Today, for example, Montenegro is poised for a better future. It is advancing toward Euro-Atlantic integration, increasing its ability to fight organized crime and corruption, and strengthening its civil society and democratic structures. Yes, there are vexing problems, but with independence, the people of Montenegro know they themselves will determine if Montenegro is to be on the right track. With such a dynamic in play, there is every reason for confidence that problems will be solved and the building of a better country will get done. As the chairman of the Europe, Eurasia, and Emerging Threats Subcommittee, I have followed the volatile situation in those areas that are under pressure from such nationalistic movements. Economic stagnation and corruption feed the desire for self-determination and continue to be the biggest hurdle to developing countries like Montenegro, even now when the people there are free to control their own destiny. Forging new standards for transparency and accountability should cut down and make all the difference in situations like this. Montenegro's success in achieving membership in the EU and NATO depends on it. The government of Montenegro now points to its macroeconomic predictability, educated workforce, and openness to incentivized tax structures to lure direct foreign investment and serve as fuel for economic progress. Their future is in their hands. Thus, they know they must act--or they lose. So after decades of being a backwater country, literally and figuratively, Montenegro is on the move. Stratex Group, for example, is now the largest American investor in Montenegro. The CEO was one of many Jewish families that fled Soviet Communism and settled in the United States. As Montenegro develops, more international and domestic entrepreneurs, like Stratex, can be expected to take advantage of opportunities in this beautiful, free and independent country, opportunities brought on by the triumph of self-determination, sidelining conflict and corruption. The more success stories there are in the wake of amicable separation, the more peaceful independent movements can be expected to emerge. New nations like Montenegro can be expected, and once in control of their own destiny, people in these new independent countries can be expected to prioritize critical reforms and educate their new generations about corruption, free enterprise, and democratic government in the 21st century. I congratulate Montenegro on ten years of independence, and recommend others look to its experience as an example of gaining freedom and prosperity through self-determination.

Mr. ROHRABACHER

Mr. ROHRABACHER. Mr. Chairman, I very much appreciate Chairman Thornberry's acceptance of my amendments No. 100 and No. 125. The first recognizes the heroic efforts of the Pakistani doctor, Dr. Afridi, who helped us bring to justice Osama bin Laden, the prime mover in the massacre of 3,000 Americans on 9/11. Dr. Afridi is a courageous hero who enabled us to destroy this terrorist monster. He continues to languish in a Pakistani dungeon. This amendment was adopted by the House during consideration of past defense authorization acts but was stripped out during conference negotiations with the Senate. This is a shameful slap in the face to Dr. Afridi and other heroic friends around the world who put themselves at risk to stand up with us. Who will trust us? Who will stand with us if we betray our friends like this? It is time to end this irrational support that we give to Pakistan. It is only prudent that we increase--which is another one of the amendments I talk about today--certification required to release American military or economic aid to Pakistan. It behooves us not to finance Pakistan's brutal suppression of ethnic groups and religious minorities like the Baloch and the Sindhis who are under attack today simply for seeking their political and religious freedom. I would ask my colleagues to join with me and to stand also with the people around the world. Send a message: If you stand with the United States, we will not forget you; we will stand with you. The people of the United States and the United States Congress stand tall with you and appreciate that you have risked your lives in a way that saved American lives.

Mr. ROHRABACHER

Mr. ROHRABACHER. Mr. Speaker, on the eve of Kazakhstan's President Nursultan Nazarbayev's visit to Washington, DC to participate in the Nuclear Security Summit, we see that the basics of water and energy in Central Asia need attention. In order to obtain electric power for the industrial development, Tajikistan and Kyrgyzstan for several years have been trying to build hydroelectric dams on their mountain rivers. Uzbekistan sees this as a threat to their agriculture in the Fergana Valley and has made clear its adamant opposition. The only winners, if this conflict results, will be the armed extremist armies that will gather new supporters on every side of the battle. Nuclear energy is a safe, sustainable, and affordable energy source. Kazakhstan, together with the International Atomic Energy Agency and other outside partners, established the world's first Low-Enriched Uranium (LEU) Fuel Bank. This Fuel Bank, which Kazakhstan has committed to support through facilities and resources as the host nation, provides a secondary market for LEU to guarantee that all nations have an energy source for peaceful civilian nuclear power. Affordable energy remains a prerequisite for modernization of the economies of the countries of Central Asia. More importantly, radical groups will have less impact on the region since the threat of a water crisis is not a major concern. Kazakhstan is a suitable location for the international energy center. President Nursultan Nazarbayev is a proven leader having the respect of all of Kazakhstan's neighbors. The southernmost region of Kazakhstan is close to Uzbekistan, Kyrgyzstan and Tajikistan. Additionally, Kazakhstan is not involved in water disputes; therefore, it can guarantee the supply of electricity to all the countries. The absence of conflicts with the neighbors and international authority of Kazakhstan make it an ideal electric energy hub for the region. Kazakhstan has a great opportunity to take a lead in transforming the whole Central Asian region into a more stable and prosperous place. I applaud President Nazarbayev and the Kazakh people for their continued commitment to civilian nuclear energy and Central Asia's development.

Mr. ROHRABACHER

Mr. ROHRABACHER. Mr. Speaker, the Government of Kazakhstan has been tireless in its commitment to nuclear non-proliferation. The steadfastness their government has shown in this area is a key part of our bilateral relationship and a clear example of Kazakhstan's leadership to the global community. This issue is particularly timely as the President of Kazakhstan; Nursultan Nazarbayev will be participating in the upcoming Nuclear Security Summit in Washington, DC on March 31st and April 1st. President Nazarbayev's efforts to lead Kazakhstan to unilaterally surrender its nuclear stockpile under the Cooperative Threat Reduction Program were historic and helped to create today's non-proliferation framework. More recently, Kazakhstan together with the International Atomic Energy Agency and other outside partners established the world's first Low-Enriched Uranium (LEU) Fuel Bank. This Fuel Bank, which Kazakhstan has committed to support through facilities and resources as the host nation, provides a secondary market for LEU to guarantee that all nations have an energy source for peaceful civilian nuclear power-- and as importantly--have no reason to develop nuclear enrichment technologies of their own. Additionally, Kazakhstan is preparing to host an international exposition in the city of Astana next year titled, Expo 2017. The theme will be ``future energy'' and include contributions from national governments, non-governmental organizations and private companies on how mankind can provide the power to support ever increasing levels of human development. Lastly, this year we celebrate the 25th anniversary of Kazakhstan's independence after the Soviet Union and the start of bilateral relations with the United States. We mark this occasion in celebration of what has been achieved and note the areas where will can seek progress. The U.S. commitment to Kazakhstan and the region will continue to endure and taking steps such as repealing the outdated Jackson-Vanik restrictions will help to maintain the strong relationship. As we mark this occasion I look forward to a bright future.