[Congressional Record Volume 155, Number 90 (Tuesday, June 16, 2009)]
[House]
[Page H6820]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




                       WHERE'S THE TRANSPARENCY?

  The SPEAKER pro tempore. The Chair recognizes the gentleman from 
Texas (Mr. Gohmert) for 5 minutes.
  Mr. GOHMERT. Madam Speaker, I do appreciate this opportunity.
  You know, there's so many people out of work around this country. We 
know since President Obama took office 2 million more people have lost 
jobs. It's staggering and quite sobering.
  I recently met with many people who are unemployed in a north Lufkin 
church, and I guess virtually all were African Americans. These were 
people that were ready to go to work, willing to go to work, good, 
strong work ethic, have families, deeply caring about their community 
and their families. And so it got me to looking and thinking what can I 
do to use my position to try to help people get jobs.
  There's the Texas Workforce Commission that does a good job trying to 
have job fairs. It turned out by using my position, partnering with 
other groups, the Chamber, different groups, we were able to have 50 
employers with over 1,000 jobs to offer, but even that doesn't satisfy 
all of the need for all of the jobs people are needing that are out of 
work.
  But it did sensitize me to the fact, look around for job 
opportunities. Where is this Nation spending money that might go to 
help people who are unemployed? Where could they get jobs? We've got 
another job fair coming up in Longview in a couple of weeks, and we're 
hoping it will be as successful.
  But as I look around and I see the millions of dollars being spent 
and I hear from constituents, and having a heart, wanting to help them, 
I'm brought to the question after we hear about the Uyghurs, four of 
them going to Bermuda--although we were promised great transparency--
and that was one of the things that appealed to the voters of the 
United States, that if we elect this administration we will have 
complete transparency, everything will be transparent, we'll know what 
they're spending money on, we will know what they're doing. Well, we 
don't know. They won't tell us what money has been sent to Bermuda to 
take four Uyghurs, but some are estimating $12 million apiece. They 
don't think it's very much, maybe $12 million apiece or so. We know 
that supposedly other Uyghurs are going from Guantanamo to Palau.
  One report I read estimated that over the last 14 years, going back 
to the middle of the Clinton administration, we paid Palau about $852 
million just for aid. And so there's some question that we're going to 
pay them more millions to take these, or since their 15-year agreement 
is up, are they willing to take these?
  The bottom line is millions and millions of dollars are being paid to 
take 17 Uyghurs, and for those that don't know, those are people in 
China who, because of their religious belief, are adverse to China. And 
we know that these 17 were captured in terrorist camps in Afghanistan. 
Some say, well, they weren't being trained to terrorize us, but they 
were in terrorist camps in Afghanistan.
  So the question many are asking now is, for those 2 million of us who 
have lost our jobs since January of this year, what terrorist camp can 
we go to to train so that maybe we could spend the rest of our lives at 
U.S. expense on the beaches of Bermuda? We saw the people, the pictures 
of the four Uyghurs in Bermuda. They really seemed to be enjoying 
themselves, laughing, cutting up, out there on the beach, the waves 
crashing. Those Uyghurs who have gone to Palau, how many millions have 
been paid we don't know. But I have got a bunch of constituents who are 
willing to go train in terrorist camps, in Afghanistan if necessary, if 
our government will pay millions of dollars to send them to the 
beaches.
  Also, one other point, we know there's been no transparency with the 
auto task force. We don't know what they're being paid. We just know 
that this group that has never run anything in the car business is 
running the car businesses and dictating what will happen. Well, I've 
got lots of people that are every bit as unqualified to run the car 
business in my district who are unemployed. They want that job. Where 
do they apply to run the car businesses of America and get on the auto 
task force? We want to know because they'd like that job.

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