Jamie Raskin

Mr. RASKIN

Mr. RASKIN. Further parliamentary inquiry then, Mr. Speaker. What exactly is an advisory opinion? Because this relates, not to a hypothetical situation, but to an actual situation before the House of Representatives.

Mr. RASKIN

Mr. RASKIN. Mr. Speaker, I have a parliamentary inquiry.

Mr. RASKIN. Even if it relates to current events?

Mr. RASKIN. Mr. Speaker, does the chairman of the House Intelligence Committee have the authority to transmit a classified document under House rule X, clause 11(g) that was never approved for release by a vote of the committee?

Mr. RASKIN

Mr. RASKIN. Mr. Speaker, I represent 88,000 Federal workers in the Eighth Congressional District of Maryland who want to do their jobs for the American people. They are DREAMers, too, and they are doers. They work at NIH, NOAA, the National Cancer Institute, the Food and Drug Administration, the Department of Defense, and the State Department. My constituents and the people across the country who depend on them are in limbo because of the irresponsibility, the indolence, and the incompetence of President Trump, who called on his tweet machine for a ``good shutdown'' of the American Government that he barely opened up in the first place. They worked overtime to get all of the Republicans behind their obscene tax break for the richest 1 percent of the country and foreign investors in Saudi Arabia, China, and the Cayman Islands, but they could not be bothered to pass a budget for the American people, which is our central constitutional function. They don't mind shutting down the government for the fifth time in 30 years, as long as their big campaign donors get the huge legislative payoff they are waiting for. Let's do our job, and let's pass a real budget for the American people.

Mr. RASKIN

Mr. RASKIN. Mr. Speaker, a century ago, William Butler Yeats wrote a poem called ``The Second Coming,'' in which he said: ``Things fall apart; the centre will not hold; mere anarchy is loosed upon the world.'' But in America, that is not our destiny. We can make sure things don't fall apart. We can make sure that the center will hold. Let's move beyond the blame game, and let's identify the moral center and common ground for reopening the government and moving America forward. Commanding majorities in Congress and in the public want to reauthorize and fund the CHIP program and guarantee healthcare for our kids. We should do this for a 10-year period and save $6 billion over a mere short-term extension. Commanding majorities in Congress and the public favor reauthorization and funding of the community health centers which are indispensable for both children's and adult health. Commanding majorities in the public and in Congress favor passing a clean Dream Act for 800,000 DREAMers who are contributing to our communities and in school and serving our country. And all of us must favor a return to regular order and a fair and transparent budget process that allows all of our agencies, from NIH and NOAA to the DOD, to plan for the effective delivery of public services. Mr. Speaker, I ask unanimous consent now to bring up H.R. 4872, the End the Shutdown Act of 2018, a continuing resolution that would immediately reopen the government through Tuesday while negotiations continue on a budget agreement that adheres to parity and addresses the other critical issues facing the country.

Mr. RASKIN

Mr. RASKIN. Mr. Speaker, I rise today to recognize my constituent and friend, Judge Chung Pak, for his extraordinary career in public service and his exemplary commitment to serving his community and the great State of Maryland. Judge Pak is retiring after 31 years of splendid government service. For more than 23 years, Judge Pak served as an Administrative Patent Judge with the U.S. Patent Trial and Appeal Board (PTAB), where he adjudicated more than 6,000 patent cases and personally issued over 2,000 opinions. Judge Pak has also served on the PTAB New Judge Training Committee, the PTAB Publication Committee, the Board of Patent Appeals, the Patent Academy Course Review Committee, and the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office Diversity Council. Judge Pak embodies the spirit of the American Dream and the immigrant success story. In 1971, he immigrated with his family from South Korea to Alabama, where he worked at the local Kentucky Fried Chicken restaurant. In high school, he played nose guard on the football team, but it was his extraordinary skill on the tennis court that ultimately earned him a scholarship to Auburn University. After earning a degree in chemical engineering, Chung attended the Columbus School of Law at the Catholic University of America, where he became a moot court champion. Prior to his appointment to the Patent Trial and Appeal Board, Pak was an intellectual property counsel at Praxair, Inc. and Union Carbide Corporation, where he worked on a wide range of issues including domestic and foreign patent procurement, litigation, trade secrets, antitrust, and licensing. He also served as a Primary Patent Examiner and an Assistant Patent Examiner at the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office for more than eight years. Judge Pak is a widely-respected community leader who has volunteered his time and invested his energy in a number of state and local causes. He has served as Co-Chair of the NAACP Montgomery County's Multicultural Partnership Committee, Board Member of the Senior Executive Association, member of Germantown Police Advisory Committee, member of the Maryland Attorney General's Advisory Council, and as a Maryland Higher Education Commissioner. In recognition of his passionate commitment to public service, Judge Pak has received the President's Volunteer Service Award, the Maryland Governor's Volunteer Service Award, Progressive Maryland's Progressive Leader Award, and the Montgomery County Police Department's Award of Appreciation. He was also inducted into the Montgomery County Human Rights Hall of Fame. Mr. Speaker, I ask my colleagues to join me in thanking Judge Chung Pak for a long and distinguished career in public service and in celebrating his dedication to his community and our country.

Mr. RASKIN

Mr. RASKIN. Mr. Speaker, I rise today in strong opposition to the proposal put forward by my Republican colleagues that is misleadingly titled the ``Tax Cuts and Jobs Act.'' I voted against the GOP Tax Scam when it was brought up in the House of Representatives a few weeks ago, and I did again this week when Republicans bypassed ``regular order'' to pass a partisan, highway robbery and power grab bill that will give massive tax cuts to corporations experiencing record profits and explode our national debt, while pulling the rug out from beneath the American Working Class and Middle Class. As the elected representatives of the American people, Congress should be passing legislation that helps every American, not serving as a rubber-stamp for tax cuts advanced by a President who bankrupted four companies, his high-flying billionaire cabinet, and his wealthy corporate donors demanding a big Christmas bonus for the one-percent. Yet that is precisely what the Republicans in Congress have done. Let's be clear: this bill will not ``stimulate the economy'' or ``create more jobs''--in fact, more than 30 distinguished economists have invalidated these claims. This bill will not help middle-class Americans today and it will not help future generations of Americans tomorrow--in fact, these claims have also been proved false by the analysis of nonpartisan tax experts and government entities. Maryland's middle class, seniors, students, working families, and everyone else who is not a gigantic corporation, one of the richest of the rich in this country, or anyone without their own lobbyist will be made worse- off under this proposal. Our children and grandchildren will be footing the bill for this irresponsible and reckless corporate giveaway for decades to come. Both the House and Senate tax bills are bad deals for my constituents, Marylanders, and ninety-nine-percent of Americans. There were virtually no hearings and no Democratic input in the process, while special interest lobbyists inserted absurd provisions (such as eliminating the deductions for state and local taxes and medical expenses, and opening-up oil drilling in Alaska). A recent analysis from the Joint Committee on Taxation found that many Americans, including many of my constituents, will receive a substantial tax hike under the Republican plan. Also, according to both the non-partisan Joint Committee on Taxation and the Congressional Budget Office, by 2027, those earning $40,000 to $50,000 would pay a combined $5.3 billion more in taxes, while the group earning $1 million or more would get a $5.8 billion tax cut. Apparently the Republican version of the new American Dream is to raise taxes on the Middle Class while showering millionaires with tax breaks. Congressional Republicans are also dismissing concerns over the debt, reversing years of deficit-hawk rhetoric so fast they are walking around with neck braces from the ideological whiplash. Suddenly the GOP is calling trillions of dollars of debt ``a drop in the bucket''--which will of course, be true, only until Republicans decide that we need deep painful cuts to Medicaid, Medicare and Social Security to pay for the magnificent tax cuts they have already bestowed upon the nation's wealthiest one-percent. If this legislation is such a boon for America's small businesses, why are the small businesses in my state so upset about the plan? Maryland's small businesses may be in favor of long-overdue tax reform, but this is not it. They wanted public hearings, where provisions like pass-through businesses could have been openly discussed and debated. Instead, we're looking at a bill which pretends to provide for small business but most pass-through income goes to the top one-percent of American earners. This is hardly helping America's Middle Class as the Republican leadership claims, but it certainly helps the GOP's gilded Donor Class. My constituents are not fools and they are not suckers. They are not holding buckets waiting for the Koch Brothers' private jet maintenance exemptions to magically ``trickle down'' and benefit them. No credible research has demonstrated that corporate tax breaks will create millions of new American jobs. In fact, documented history shows that just the opposite occurs. Foreign corporations are probably cheering along the GOP Tax Scam, knowing that America is only days away from creating millions of new jobs overseas. Trickle-down economics is a fraud. The only kind of economics that works for Americans is bubble-up economics where we invest in infrastructure, health care and education--we invest in the Middle Class and prosperity bubbles up everywhere. Furthermore, I often hear from my overseas constituents, who have their own profound concerns about our tax system. As someone who has lived abroad, I appreciate their concerns. Americans abroad are being treated unfairly--taxed first by their local tax authority, and again by the United States. No other countries tax their citizens abroad, with the exceptions of North Korea and Eritrea. Yet Congressional Republicans have chosen to ignore the nine million voices of red, white and blue American citizens seeking help and relief. The GOP is callously ignoring our citizens overseas, refusing to help millions of constituents abroad who desperately want and deserve expat tax reform. Congress should act immediately, so that U.S. citizens living abroad are not forced to choose between two terrible outcomes: draining their life savings to pay their taxes or renouncing their citizenship to escape this outrageous double taxation. There has been some important progress in this regard though. I'm pleased that my colleague from North Carolina, Representative George Holding, readily acknowledged the problem of expat taxation during the House Floor debate on H.R. 1, but frankly, it is shocking that the House Ways and Means Committee failed entirely to provide any tax reform relief whatsoever to millions of Americans living abroad. My constituents did not send me to Congress to vote for a bill which adds more than $1 trillion to our national debt; sends American jobs overseas; eliminates tax assistance provisions for the sick, seniors, college students, teachers, families with special needs children, working families, and middle-class families; and puts more into the pockets of people like President Trump. The Tax Cuts and Jobs Act is a hoax. Republicans boast that this bill provides ``tax cuts for everybody,'' but millions of Americans will see their taxes increased under this proposal. Don't just take my word for it, check out the latest analysis from the official revenue referee of Congress, the Joint Committee on Taxation. In closing, Mr. Speaker, this tax bill is a bad deal for Maryland, and indeed, nearly every American whose last name isn't Trump or Koch or Mercer or Adelson. I am proud to have taken a stand for Marylanders and America's Middle Class by voting against the GOP Tax Scam.

Mr. RASKIN

Mr. RASKIN. Mr. Speaker, I thank Mr. Ted Lieu for his excellent presentation. I would ask one question, and I hope that the law professor in me isn't showing too much, but I wanted to ask Mr. Ted Lieu about one thing he said at the beginning. Mr. Ted Lieu made the point very well that Mr. Mueller is a distinguished law enforcement officer, who is also Republican, and he was appointed by a Republican. Mr. Rosenstein is another distinguished and well-respected law enforcement official, who himself had been appointed by Attorney General Sessions, who is a Republican. All of that is true. But then Mr. Lieu said this is not a Democratic investigation, which certainly it is not. It is a Republican investigation. But wouldn't it be more appropriate to say it is a law enforcement investigation? And if you want to be searching for some kind of partisan tilt, you are going to find that these are Republicans, not Democrats.

Mr. RASKIN. Mr. Speaker, I thank Mr. Lieu for all of his excellent work and leadership both in the Judiciary Committee and the Foreign Affairs Committee. Mr. Speaker, I yield to the gentleman from Illinois (Mr. Schneider), another distinguished colleague on the House Judiciary Committee, who is also a member of my class, of sorts. He has been in Congress several different times and he makes a great contribution for his people whenever he is here.

Mr. RASKIN. Mr. Speaker, I thank the gentleman for that excellent and indispensable discussion about what is really at stake here, which is democracy itself. If we can't rely on the integrity of our elections and the authenticity of the results, then democracy is in danger, in deep peril. I thank the gentleman for his leadership and for his outspokenness. Mr. Speaker, to recap, we are here in this Special Order hour to defend Robert Mueller, because, in America, we live and die by the rule of law under democracy. The rule of law is the revolutionary idea, the one that our forebears fought for in the 18th century, that the most powerful officials in the land will be governed just like everybody else: by constitutional and statutory boundaries fixed in writing in the law in order to protect democracy and the rights of the people. Ever since he whipped up chants of ``Lock her up'' in the 2016 campaign, Donald Trump has displayed complete ignorance of the difference between a constitutional democracy and a banana republic, a complete ignorance of the role of judges and the Justice Department. The men and women who work at the Department of Justice for us, they inhabit a world of law, facts, and evidence. They cannot be forced to execute the President's personal vendettas or prosecute his enemies, real or imagined, or provide support for his propaganda and delusional alternative facts. President Trump has been on a collision course with the rule of law for a long time. Remember during the campaign, Mr. Speaker, when he attacked Judge Curiel for being Mexican American, implying that his ethnic identity somehow disqualified him from being a competent judge with integrity. In February, he trashed Federal judges hearing arguments about his Muslim ban order. He has questioned the separation of powers, which he says is somehow obsolete. He has railed continuously against the free press and the media, which he describes as the enemy of the people. He has continued, in direct violation of the Foreign Emoluments Clause in Article I, section 9, clause 8, to collect money from foreign governments at the Trump Hotel, at the Trump Tower, at the Trump golf courses without obtaining congressional consent first, which is what the Constitution requires. The critical flash point for President Trump's hostility to the rule of law recently has been his stubborn and baffling refusal to accept the reality of the Russian campaign to interfere in our election last year, and then his seemingly determination to undermine the investigation into what actually happened. Most Americans have regarded this campaign of cyber espionage and cyber sabotage of our election as a frightful danger to democratic sovereignty in our country and a reason to dramatically improve election security across the land, as Congressman Schneider just argued; but Donald Trump keeps denying that the autocrat Vladimir Putin, the former director of the KGB, did anything wrong in our election. He tried to convince then-FBI Director James Comey to drop his investigation into Trump's National Security Advisor Michael Flynn and to swear a personal loyalty oath to the President. When Comey refused these orders, when he refused this entreaty to change the course of the criminal investigation, when he refused to override his oath to the Constitution of the United States by swearing a personal oath to the President, something that we had never heard of before, Trump fired him. This was about as naked a case of obstruction of justice as you can imagine. Now we hear from President Trump's personal lawyer that the President cannot be guilty of obstruction of justice. They say, by definition, the President cannot be guilty of obstruction of justice because the President is the chief law enforcement officer in the land. This is analogous to the old monarchical dogma that the king can do no wrong, the king cannot commit a crime, the king is above the law; if the king does it, it can't be illegal. Well, our friends seem to have forgotten this is the United States of America. We have got a Constitution here. We have got a Bill of Rights here. We have no kings here. We have no queens here. We have no royalty. We have just we the people, a government of laws, not of men. We have got a Bill of Rights and popular government. Our friends across the aisle once understood that nobody was above the law. They brought impeachment charges against President Bill Clinton--two charges. One of the charges was obstruction of justice. They moved to impeach President Clinton for obstructing justice, which is now an offense that our friends say a President can't even be guilty of. They brought a case against President Clinton, Clinton v. Jones, which established that a President can even be sued while he is in office and can be deposed and so on. They understood that at one point. They understand, when a Democrat is President, that nobody's above the law. But now, suddenly, Mr. Speaker, this President is above the law and he gets to determine the course of criminal investigations in the United States of America. That is not constitutional democracy. That is a banana republic, when the President dictates to law enforcement, dictates to prosecutors what they are going to do, who they are going to investigate, and who will be prosecuted. So now the race is on, Mr. Speaker, to smear the FBI. The race is on to smear Mr. Mueller, the very man who was praised by Senator McConnell, who was praised by Speaker Ryan, who was described by all of our colleagues as beyond reproach, unimpeachable, the former Director of the FBI, former U.S. Attorney for Massachusetts and California, a decorated veteran of the Vietnam war. Now, suddenly, they cry havoc. They set loose the dogs of war on Mr. Mueller. Why? Because he is doing his job. Because we have two guilty pleas: one by the President's former National Security Advisor, Mr. Flynn; and one by Mr. Papadopoulos for lying to government agents. We have got 12-count indictments that have been handed down against Mr. Manafort and Mr. Gates, and they are afraid that investigation might be closing in on the very highest levels of government. So what do they do? They attack the prosecution. That is what we have been seeing in Washington over the last couple of weeks, a truly extraordinary display of contempt for the rule of law, for the Justice Department, and honest prosecution and law enforcement in the United States of America. Now, the first effort revolved around an FBI agent who Robert Mueller removed from the investigation in the summertime. He removed him because there were text messages revealed in which he was trashing a lot of political figures, not just President Trump. He was trashing Bernie Sanders, who he called an idiot. He also called President Trump an idiot. He had unkind words for Eric Holder, and he had very harsh words for my friend and the former Governor of Maryland, Martin O'Malley. He was an equal opportunity insulter. But our friends, seeing the progress of the Trump-Russia investigation of this special counsel's work, now suddenly decided: We found a villain. We have got our villain. His name is Peter Strzok, and he wrote all these texts, so let's go back to a guy who was removed from the investigation in the summertime. Let's leak all these texts out in the most mysterious and suspicious way, because this was the middle of an inspector general investigation, and they leaked out thousands of texts. When I asked Mr. Rosenstein about it, he said it had been approved by the inspector general. But the inspector general released a statement the next day which professed that they had not been contacted about it, so there is a whole mystery there. But, clearly, somebody wanted to get these texts out there. They wanted to create a thick fog of propaganda and confusion. And all that we heard from our colleagues was: Did you see what he said in this text to his friend? Did you see what he said in this text to his friend? Nobody claimed that the guilty pleas by Flynn or Papadopoulos were legally flawed in any way. They didn't say there were any legal problems with anything that the special counsel had done--no illegal searches, no illegal seizures. They didn't say anything was wrong with the indictment. But they find some text messages by a guy who was removed from the investigation, and then this becomes the big propaganda smoke screen, this guy who insulted, to my count, a lot more Democrats than he insulted Republicans. Regardless, he showed unprofessionalism. He was removed quickly by Mr. Mueller--unlike, for example, what President Trump did when he learned that General Flynn, his National Security Advisor, was a serial liar, was lying to Federal agents, was lying to Federal officers, was lying to the Cabinet about his dealings with Russia and foreign governments. It took President Trump 18 days before he removed him from office in the most begrudging way, and then, even then, after learning that he had been lying about his contacts with foreign agents, he tried to get Mr. Comey, the then-FBI Director, to cancel out the investigation of Michael Flynn, asserting that he is a good guy. Let it go. Let the whole thing go, he said. But, no, that is not what Mr. Mueller did, the special counsel. When he learned that there were these text messages going out attacking various public figures, he said: We don't need that kind of stuff on this investigative team. And he got rid of them, end of story. Except this: It is an opportunity to create an irrelevant distraction from what is going on, to put up a big propaganda smoke screen. And that wouldn't even be such a big deal in itself. Their arguments are transparently silly. We have colleagues who are saying this is a fruit of the poisonous tree, they intoned. It is all fruit of the poisonous tree. Except it has nothing to do with fruit of the poisonous tree. That is a Fourth Amendment document which says that, if there is an illegal search or seizure by the government, the government may not use that unlawfully obtained evidence against someone in court. At that point, the exclusionary rule operates; the exclusionary rule is activated. We asked our colleagues, and I asked Mr. Rosenstein: Was there an illegal search? No. Was there an illegal seizure? No. There was no illegality. You had an agent who sent some text messages trashing a bunch of politicians in the middle of a Presidential campaign, which is what millions of people were doing. It was irresponsible. He got removed, end of story. That didn't work so well. That was the first time that they were throwing spaghetti with tomato sauce on it all over the walls. They threw it up and it slipped off. Nobody bought it. So the next day, or a day later, they came back with another claim about asserting that the GSA had improperly released emails of the Trump Presidential transition team. Well, there are a few problems with that. One is everybody was told from the beginning that all of those are government property. They were turned over by Trump's GSA, voluntarily. And Mr. Mueller released a one-sentence statement saying that all of the information that we have received was either voluntarily given or was lawfully obtained, end of story. That didn't work so well either. Threw some more spaghetti against the wall in this smear campaign, and it slides off. It leaves a tomato sauce stain all over the wall, but it doesn't really stick. Now they are going after Mr. McCabe, the number two person at the FBI. And I haven't been told exactly what their complaint is, but we are going to have a closed-door hearing about it tomorrow in the House Judiciary Committee. From published reports, all I understand is that he has committed the great sin and crime of being married to a woman who is active in Democratic Party politics. Look, let's get something straight here. This is the United States of America, and law enforcement officers have a right to be registered as a Democrat, as an Independent, as a Republican, as a Green Party member, as a Libertarian. They can register however they want. And consistent with the Hatch Act, they can be involved in politics and members of their family can be involved in politics. There is nothing wrong that. There is nothing wrong with the fact that Mr. Mueller, who is now the target of all of their venom, is a registered Republican or that he got appointed by another Republican, Mr. Rosenstein, or that he got appointed by a Republican, Attorney General Sessions, or that he got appointed by a Republican, President Trump; right? All those people are Republicans. They have a right to be Republicans, but they have got to do their public duty. The irony, of course, is that the Republicans are attacking Republicans in office for being partisan against Republicans. It is completely incoherent; it is fantastical; and it shows the desperation of this smear campaign. It just doesn't make sense to anyone. So we will see if they are able to smear another good, qualified, competent law enforcement official, which is what they want to do with the number two person at the FBI. And what is interesting is that the people who are attacking their fellow Republicans for somehow being partisan just for doing their jobs never have anything to say about what we know was the real political corruption and contamination of the FBI back in the days of J. Edgar Hoover, when he used the resources of the FBI to go after Martin Luther King, Jr., and the civil rights movement, or the days of COINTELPRO, where the FBI actively tried to disrupt the civil rights movement and the antiwar movement and so on. They don't say anything about that. It would strengthen their argument, of course, that their fellow Republican partisans somehow might be capable of political bias, but they don't even have the historical context to do that, and they don't believe in it. The fact is that the FBI used to have a real problem with being a tool of political prosecution, and it has gotten over that. It has gotten beyond it today, in 2017. Now, suddenly, all of their fire is trained on Mr. Mueller. It is trained on the special counsel: discredit and undermine him. And it wouldn't be such a big deal if they were just exercising their First Amendment rights, which they have every right to do. If they were just exercising their rights under the Speech and Debate Clause, which they have every right to do, to use their place in this body in order to denounce the FBI, to attack Mr. Mueller, to try to discredit law enforcement, they have got the right to do it. But what everyone is afraid of now is that they are trying to set the stage for the removal of Robert Mueller. Now, that is no simple thing. The President can't simply fire Mr. Mueller. He would have to get Mr. Rosenstein to do it. And he can't be fired for any reason at all. He can only be fired for misconduct, for conflict of interest, or for some other good cause or incapacity. So there has got to be a reason why. And when we asked Mr. Rosenstein whether he saw any reason to remove Mr. Mueller now, he said, no, that he is totally satisfied with the conduct of the investigation. So what trumped-up alibi could they produce? What trumped-up justification could they find for the removal of Mr. Mueller? It would create a serious constitutional emergency and crisis in America. And, of course, when we say a constitutional crisis, it is not the Constitution that is in crisis; it is us. They would be creating a political crisis that would require a resort to extraordinary constitutional mechanisms. This would be a clearly impeachable offense for the President to use his power in order to thwart a criminal investigation that implicates the President. That is the very definition of obstruction of justice. It would just be an expansion and a refinement of what the President was doing when he fired Mr. Comey way back in the beginning of the administration for refusing to lay off Michael Flynn and for refusing to swear a personal loyalty oath to the President of the United States instead of to the Constitution and the people of the country. So that is where we are. The people need to know. The people need to know what is going on, that there is an organized campaign being orchestrated at the highest levels of government to discredit Mr. Mueller and the special counsel investigation--not for not doing their job, but for doing their job. That is why they are being attacked today. Mr. Speaker, I close with a thought just about the rule of law. The rule of law is the idea that even the people who occupy the highest office in the land are subject to the Constitution, are subject to the laws of the people, because here the people govern. We have no kings here. That is what we rebelled against. Our Founders believed, with Madison, that the very definition of tyranny is the collapse of all powers into one, where someone says: I have got all the power; I am the boss. Our Founders said: No, we are going to divide powers up: Article I, we will vest the lawmaking power in the representatives of the people in the House and the Senate; Article II, we will create a President who will take care that the laws be faithfully executed; And then Article III, we will vest the judicial power in the Supreme Court and the Federal judiciary to sort out actual cases or controversies about what the law means. But notice what comes first there, Article I. The people's representatives come first. The President works for us. The President works for a Congress, which works for the people. The President implements the laws that we pass here. The President is not above the law. The President is subject to the law, and the President has the honor of enforcing the laws that we adopt. So let's get that straight. No one is above the law. Anybody can be found guilty of obstructing justice if one thing can be shown: if they obstruct justice. And it looks like they are setting the stage for a further obstruction of justice with this outrageous smear campaign being leveled this week against Robert Mueller, against Mr. Rosenstein, against Mr. McCabe, and against the men and women of the FBI. That is what is taking place in Washington today. Mr. Speaker, the people need to know, and we in Congress have got to do our constitutional duty, too. I yield back the balance of my time.

Mr. RASKIN. Mr. Speaker, I am delighted to be organizing this special hour on behalf of the minority. We are going to be talking tonight about the growing smear campaign against Robert Mueller, the special counsel investigating contacts between Russians interfering in our Presidential election in 2016 and Americans. What we have seen over the last several weeks is a rising tide of criticism of Mr. Mueller in attempts to undermine and sabotage the special counsel investigation. We are going to be talking about all the different components of this attack, and we are going to be asking the question: Why? Why suddenly is Mr. Mueller, who was once a hero to our friends across the aisle, a decorated Vietnam war veteran, former Director of the FBI, former U.S. Attorney for the Commonwealth of Massachusetts and the State of California, a celebrated law enforcement figure, and a registered Republican--why suddenly has he come under withering attack by everyone from our colleagues across the aisle in the House, to Republicans in the Senate, to people in the White House, to FOX News? Why has the whole rightwing propaganda machine turned on Mr. Mueller in the special counsel investigation suddenly? And what is it that we can do to try to prevent an assault on the special counsel in an effort to dismantle the special counsel investigation? To begin tonight, I am going to call on a colleague from Florida (Mrs. Demings), who is an extraordinary freshman class Member in the House of Representatives representing the people of Florida. She was the chief of police in Orlando, Florida, before she came to Congress; so she has exceptional law enforcement experience and a whole career in law enforcement. Mr. Speaker, I yield to the gentlewoman from Florida (Mrs. Demings.)

Mr. RASKIN. Mr. Speaker, I thank Mrs. Demings for her passion and her leadership. I am delighted to learn today that she will be joining the House Judiciary Committee as a new colleague next week, and I am thrilled about that.

Mr. RASKIN. It is a critical point because, up until all of this started, basically the President respected the independence of the Department of Justice and we didn't go around searching in people's garbage cans trying to find out whether their wife was a registered Democrat or whether they voted Republican. Rather, we assumed that prosecutors and FBI agents and police officers can have a partisan registration and they can vote and participate as long as they do their jobs. Mr. Lieu's point here is they are doing their job. Nobody is making any complaint about any of the guilty pleas or any of the prosecutions. They are complaining about a bunch of irrelevant stuff.

Mr. RASKIN. Mr. Speaker, Mrs. Demings focused our attention on the rule of law and the startling disdain for the rule of law that is being shown in Washington right now, and the President's basic confusion about the proper role for the Department of Justice. One of my revered colleagues on the House Committee on the Judiciary from California (Mr. Ted Lieu), who also serves on the Committee on Foreign Affairs, has had a front row seat to everything that has happened over the course of this year. He saw the Speaker of the House praise Mr. Mueller's appointment; he saw Senator McConnell praise Mr. Mueller's appointment as special counsel; he saw Mr. Mueller's nonpartisanship and professionalism being widely heralded by our colleagues on the Republican side; and now he is watching every day as they do everything in their power to destroy the reputation and the credibility of Mr. Mueller and his excellent team at the special counsel's office. I have invited Mr. Ted Lieu to come up and speak and tell us what he thinks is going on and what is behind this smear campaign.

Mr. RASKIN

Mr. RASKIN. Mr. Speaker, the whole point is to cement into place an oligarchy, a plutocracy. One of the reasons that the Founders of America were so opposed to the intergenerational transmission of wealth is because they said that is going to increase idleness, laziness, presumptuousness, and entitlement in new generations. At a certain point, if you buy enough houses, if you buy enough horses, if you buy enough yachts, if you buy enough jewels, what do you want? Well, you want a governorship. You want a Senate seat. That is not democracy. That is plutocracy. So we can't let this system of wealth discrimination and separation devour our basic democratic values.

Mr. RASKIN. Mr. Speaker, I thank the gentleman, once again, for this opportunity and for his leadership. Mr. Speaker, the gentleman makes a superb point. We are at a point of record corporate profits. The corporations are swimming in profits and in cash, and if they wanted to be employing more people, they could be employing more people now.

Mr. RASKIN. Mr. Speaker, or raising wages. They could do it right now. All that we are doing is bestowing more of a bonus on them so they can give more money away to the CEOs. In the stock dividends and in the stock buybacks, it is cash gains within the corporations, so they are going to get wealthier. There is no reason to begrudge that. It is a large part of a lot of people's dreams to make a lot of money, but let's not press a good joke too far. They are making tons of money right now, and we have got serious needs in the country. We have got an infrastructure crisis. Our roads and our highways and our metro systems and our water systems are suffering--our schools, our universities, our community colleges. Why not invest in some common things that bring us together as a society, rather than having highway robbery from above against the rest of the country? It is just incomprehensible to me. I have got to believe this is something to do with the corruption of our campaign finance regime. People are talking about: Well, we are waiting for the contributions to come in, and that they are telling us on the phone they don't want to give us contributions until we pass the tax bill. So give them hundreds of billions, drive us into trillions of dollars in debt, and then they will give us back hundreds of thousands of dollars in campaign contributions. It is a bad deal. That is why a lot of parts of the country are moving to public financing now, because it is remarkable how much damage you could do to the country on the cheap with a relatively small investment. After the Supreme Court's decision in 2010, in the Citizens United case, redefining corporations as political citizens, now the CEOs can take money directly out of the corporate treasury and put it into politics.

Mr. RASKIN. Mr. Speaker, I am delighted to join this evening. I thank the gentleman for putting together a discussion, a Special Order on this critical piece of legislation, which is now hurdling through Congress today. I was reflecting, Mr. Speaker, that I had never seen a riot before, and I wonder how many people have been to a riot. And then as I was watching this bill being rammed through Congress, I realized that we were observing up close a riot, a ruling class riot, a trickle-down riot, special interest riot, a 1 percent riot against the rest of the country, the 1 percent that will get 83 percent of the tax cuts, the 1 percent that is overseeing an explosion in our deficit, adding somewhere between $1\1/2\ trillion to $2.3 trillion to our deficit that we are passing on to our children and our grandchildren. My constituents in Maryland are saying to me: Hey, if we are going to go into an extra $1\1/2\ trillion into deficits and debt, why don't we put that into an infrastructure plan for America? Why not rebuild our transportation system, the roads, the highways, the bridges, the Metro systems, the port authorities, the water systems, and cybersecurity? They are collapsing in front of our very eyes. So if we have got $1\1/ 2\ trillion that we are going to put on the Federal tab, let's direct it into infrastructure. But what do they bring us instead? Old-fashioned, shopworn, and historically discredited trickle-down economics. It never works. It never works to cut taxes on the wealthy and big corporations and hope that the profits will just magically, mysteriously rain down on the middle class and working people. It has just never worked like that. The only thing that does work is bubble-up middle class economics that gives opportunity to everybody-- the poor working people, the middle class--and the money will flow up. The rich will get richer. We have proven it. That when you actually invest in education and you invest in infrastructure and you invest in healthcare, everybody does better. And then, because everybody is doing better, everybody does better, including the wealthy. We don't need to have top-down class warfare, trickle-down economics in America. But, hey, it is hard to stop a riot once it gets going, and we are in the middle of a riot here. They said Malcolm X could stop a riot if he wanted to. Well, Paul Ryan could stop this riot if he wanted to. The GOP could stop this riot. Maybe even President Trump could stop this riot. But the American oligarchs, the ones who are friends with the Russian oligarchs, the American oligarchs can taste victory already. They are carting off their TVs. They are checking out their gorgeous new yachts. They are measuring the drapes at Mar-a-Lago. They are polling for the Senate seats that they plan to buy with all of the new campaign contributions that come rolling in from the Mercers and the Koch brothers and the other plutocrats who are going to make out like bandits with this highway robbery. In a riot, there is no time for hearings, no time for facts, no time for economic analysis, no time for experts, no time for discussion or democracy. There is no time for us even to read the lousy bills that their lobbyists write for them. They are too busy looting the Treasury in the middle of the night, ransacking Medicare and Medicaid, and trashing the neighborhoods of the beleaguered American middle class by raising taxes on 86 million families over the next decade. They are too busy trashing the State and local tax deduction, imposing double taxes on our people, something that has not occurred since we developed the tax system back in 1862, when they imposed the first revenue act. In the middle of the Civil War, they exempted State and local taxes. Abraham Lincoln and the Republicans said then, ``That is double taxation; we won't do it in the middle of the Civil War,'' when they needed to raise money. And here we are, in a time of record corporate profits, amazing prosperity that comes out of the Obama administration, amazing economic expansion and growth, and what do they want to do? They want to impose double taxation on what they say is the blue States because now America has got to be divided. It is their States and our States, so the blue States are going to just pay more. That is the way that they are pursuing their tax policy in the United States Congress. You could almost understand and appreciate this trickle-down mob mentality if it were just our own rich people who were wilding against American democracy. After all, the top 1 percent in America today owns only as much wealth as the bottom 90 percent combined. There is still the remnants of the middle class to destroy, and it is hard to keep up with the lifestyle of the rich and famous in Trump's billionaire Cabinet. So they need to drive 13 million Americans off of their health insurance. They need to make tens of millions of Americans pay more in taxes. But here is the thing: one-third of the corporate windfall in their gigantic corporate tax break, which is the heart of their bill, hundreds of billions of dollars, one-third of the money will go to foreign investors in Saudi Arabia, in China, in Russia. The one-third of the American stock that is owned by foreign investors is going to just sail outside of the country immediately when we do this. And that huge sucking sound of hundreds of billions of dollars flowing to other people's oligarchs will be followed by billions more in investments and millions more in jobs because of another little trick that got tucked into this bag of tricks on the American people and treats for our plutocrats. Their bill changes our tax policy to a territorial system. Well, what does that mean? It means, if you are an American businessman and you are setting up your new business, the American businessman or businesswoman, you are setting up your business on Main Street, you are going to pay 100 percent of your taxes due. Your rate is going to go way down under this bill, but you will pay 100 percent. If you ship your business and your jobs overseas to Mexico or Indonesia or Switzerland or Vietnam, you are going to pay zero percent of what you would owe. Now, I think they put in some tiny, little fix about that saying: Well, if it gets too extreme, if you press the joke too far, you will pay something, maybe 10 percent. Again, that was written in the middle of the night, so I haven't seen that. That is just a talking point. But let me just close with this: like a riot, this tax scam has little to recommend it. Its only redeeming feature is that it will wake a horrified country up to the depravity and greed that have overtaken our politics and, I am sad to say, a once great political party in the United States of America. And when we wake up to the fiscal damage and the political hangover, then they will be coming with their meat cleavers towards Social Security and Medicare and Medicaid. And when the American people bounce out the people who rioted today, when they bounce them out of office, well, it is going to be okay for them because they can go and work for the lobbyists and the big companies that made out like bandits today. So the joke is on us if this actually goes through. But don't forget that what we saw today was a riot from above.

Mr. RASKIN. Mr. Speaker, yes, I did say that.

Mr. RASKIN. Mr. Speaker, I was shocked to read so many prominent elected officials and political operatives on the GOP side saying that the whole reason for doing this is that their donors were effectively going on a strike and the donors were saying: If you don't get the tax bill through, don't expect contributions from us. We couldn't have a more vivid demonstration of plutocracy in the country.

Mr. RASKIN

Mr. RASKIN. Mr. Speaker, I ask unanimous consent that all Members may have 5 legislative days within which to revise and extend their remarks and to include any extraneous material on the subject of this Special Order.

Mr. RASKIN. Mr. Speaker, I yield back the balance of my time.

Mr. RASKIN. Mr. Speaker, I thank the gentleman for his leadership. I thank him for invoking the critical Watergate analogy, the Saturday Night Massacre with the firing of Archibald Cox and other Department of Justice officials who refused to cover up for the President's crimes and misdeeds. I thank him for his legislation that would try to empower the special counsel not to be fired without a court's say-so at least, to build another check and balance. I thank him, also, for invoking what is also taking place in Washington right now, which is this massive assault on the American middle class through this so-called tax cut bill, this tax scam, which would actually raise taxes for tens of millions of Americans while transmitting billions of dollars up the income and wealth ladder. Ever since we have arrived here, the whole government has felt like a money-making operation for a person, a family, a small group of billionaires in the Cabinet, a handful of people in the country like the Koch brothers and the Mercers. We cannot allow either this assault on the basic middle class economics of the country to go through or this assault on the Constitution and the rule of law, which we witnessed so vividly yesterday in the House Judiciary Committee. I want to thank the gentleman for his service and for being one of the first to blow the whistle about what is taking place here. General Leave

Mr. RASKIN. Mr. Speaker, I thank the gentleman from Maryland (Mr. Hoyer) very much for his kind words and for his patriotism. I thank him for also pointing out the critical importance of civic equality to this discussion because civic equality implies that none of us is above the law. Of the many dangerous things I have heard uttered over the last couple of weeks with respect to this investigation, perhaps none is more sinister or disturbing than the suggestion that the President cannot be guilty of obstruction of justice because the President himself oversees the whole government. Well, at that point, we may as well hang it all up and go back to monarchy because the governing principle of our Constitution is we have no kings here. We have no kings here. So I thank Mr. Hoyer for that. James Madison wrote that the very definition of ``tyranny'' is the collapse of all powers into one. We are trying to defend the separation of powers and we are trying to defend the rule of law against all of it being drowned in a political agenda. Mr. Speaker, I am joined now by my very distinguished colleague on the House Judiciary Committee. I yield to the gentleman from Tennessee (Mr. Cohen).