[Congressional Record Volume 156, Number 94 (Tuesday, June 22, 2010)]
[House]
[Pages H4669-H4674]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




                       THE EMPEROR'S NEW CLOTHES

  The SPEAKER pro tempore. Under the Speaker's announced policy of 
January 6, 2009, the gentleman from Texas (Mr. Gohmert) is recognized 
for 60 minutes.
  Mr. GOHMERT. Mr. Speaker, it's always an honor to be here and to be 
speaking on the floor where so many who have served this country so 
honorably and well have done the same

[[Page H4670]]

thing. I never lose sight of that fact. It gets a little discouraging 
at times.
  It's interesting to hear the stimulus is working because that's what 
George W. Bush was doing. And as I recall, in 2006, the Republicans 
lost the majority because Democrats convinced them that it was the 
wrong thing to do. And you know what? The Democrats were right. They 
appropriately won the majority because, as they said, we should not be 
deficit spending, you're killing the country, you're killing the 
economy by running up this kind of debt, and they won the majority in 
2006 because they were right. We should not have been deficit spending 
like that. But that went on.

                              {time}  2130

  So it's interesting to hear, just 4 short years later, that it turns 
out that what President Bush was doing and was encouraging to be done 
is actually the good thing. Though, I still tend to go back and think 
of those of us on the Republican side who agreed that we needed to get 
out from under the deficit spending and that we needed to get spending 
under control. Having compassion and spending money to a deficit level 
is not the same thing. It's the Federal Government, like a parent, who 
is just throwing money at their kids, thinking that's going to make 
them happy and that everybody will be loving and caring.
  I happen to agree with my friend Jim Dobson, who knows a lot about 
raising children. He said, You show me a child whose parent never said 
``no,'' and I'll show you one messed up kid.
  More and more, we keep seeing people run to Washington. ``Give us 
money. Give us money. Yeah, let's don't deficit spend, but give us 
money.'' It has got to stop. It has got to stop. When the Democrats 
promised they would stop the deficit spending if they were given the 
majority in November of 2006, they diagnosed the problem correctly, but 
then they didn't use the treatment they promised when they took over 
the majority.
  It's interesting. I went back, and I found an article and speeches 
from early 2007 when we were talking about how well the economy was 
going at that point. Yet, at that time, those who promised to stop the 
deficit spending instead dramatically increased the deficit spending. 
It is amazing to see how the economy took a nosedive once the Democrats 
took the majority.
  So I didn't plan to talk about the stimulus this evening, but I've 
heard from enough people who have been begging for us to, please, stop 
the deficit spending. When the Federal Government runs up such an 
enormous deficit, they suck up all the capital in the world, and the 
businesses that would like to hire people can't keep their lines of 
credit open anymore. You have got this administration's regulators 
telling banks, Now, you'd better not keep extending that line of credit 
to that business because, even though it's still hiring people and 
seems to be doing well and has never missed a payment, we're concerned 
that maybe someday it will, and you don't want your bank to be under 
the heightened scrutiny that we will put on it if you keep extending 
lines of credit to this company.
  So companies lose their lines of credit. They can't borrow money, and 
they can't grow their businesses. As we have often seen, if you're not 
growing, then you're usually dying. So it's just interesting. It's 
interesting.
  I've heard my friends on the other side of the aisle yelling and 
fussing about, you know, a $100-$200 billion deficit in 1 year--that 
it's just outrageous, that it's unconscionable, and how could we do 
those kinds of things. They're right. We shouldn't have been deficit 
spending, but I really expected them to stop. This year, it is expected 
we'll have a $1.3 to $1.6 trillion deficit by the Federal Government in 
1 year. Who would have ever dreamed that the same people who said just 
some short years ago that a $160 billion deficit was reprehensible 
would today be saying that 10 times that much of a deficit is really a 
good thing and that the country is doing better?
  I don't think there is any better indication of just how well things 
are going in the private sector than last month, because we got good 
news. There were 431,000 new jobs created last month. That was great 
news. 411,000 of the 431,000 jobs were temporary of census workers. I'm 
not sure that's news that's quite as good as we originally thought.
  So we have an administration and a majority who are ecstatic in 
thinking that the emperor, though naked, has regal clothes on and that 
the economy is doing great and that the stimulus is working so very 
well because we created 411,000 jobs last month for temporary census 
workers. That emperor has no clothes on. It's not a great economy. Now, 
it should be. It's trying to be. It's trying to come back. Yet, as the 
private sector tries to do better, boom, we hit them with a health care 
bill that is going to cost them so much more money than it had cost 
them before.
  It's telling businesses, if you've got over 50 employees, then you're 
going to get hammered with a $2,000-per-employee tax. So, you know, 
we're hearing people say, Well, we had 56. We had to let them go. We 
had to let people go. We can't be over that cap. We have people being 
let go because the health care costs are now going to be so much, and 
the added taxes are hitting. We have people who are selling homes and 
who are seeing there are going to be added taxes for them.
  This was supposed to be a health care bill that helped the working 
poor. Yet, a few weeks ago, when I was at a jobs fair in Marshall, 
Texas, I had one gentleman tell me, Look, we're giving, you know, 
entry-level jobs, but we're giving them really good health insurance. 
Well, unfortunately, once the full extent of this health care bill 
kicks in, under the bill, he won't be able to do that anymore. They'll 
have to go on Medicaid.
  If you make 133 percent of the poverty level or less, under that 
wonderful bill, you'll get forced into Medicaid, like it or not, even 
if you've got an employer who is willing to provide you health care. 
Oh, by the way, if you're above 133 percent of the poverty level and 
you can't afford the great health insurance policy that is dictated by 
this Zeus of a Congress and President, then bad news. You're going to 
pay extra income tax. You can't afford the health care insurance we've 
mandated? You get an extra income tax. Good news. Good news all the way 
around.
  I did want to address something that has caused me a great deal of 
concern. All of this actually does, but this hit me as I was seeing 
more information about the 9/11 conspirators. I use that term because 
they had filed documents indicating that they were 9/11 conspirators.
  This is an article I saw on Sunday. The headline from Politico, which 
is a newspaper here in Washington, reads, ``Chances dim for swift 9/11 
decision.'' This was by Mr. Josh Gerstein on 6/20/2010.
  It reads, ``Attorney General Eric Holder said the decision over where 
to hold the trial for alleged 9/11 plotter Khalid Sheikh Mohammad was 
`weeks away' 3 months ago.
  ``Now advocates on both sides of the issue say they expect the Obama 
administration to punt the decision until after the November midterm 
elections--when the controversial plan could do less damage to the 
political fortunes of endangered Democrats and might face less 
resistance on Capitol Hill.
  ``Holder, last week, explicitly denied the midterms had anything to 
do with the timing but would only say discussions are continuing. The 
White House had no comment.''
  So the article goes on, and it discusses at quite some length the 9/
11 trial and its problems and about figuring out what to do about it.
  Then, while I was looking this weekend, I saw some great news. This 
is from The New York Times. This is exactly quoting from The New York 
Times' article:
  ``Five charged in 9/11 attacks seek to plead guilty.''
  So they are going to plead guilty.
  ``Guantanamo Bay, Cuba: The five Guantanamo detainees charged with 
coordinating the September 11 attacks told a military judge on Monday 
that they wanted to confess in full--a move that seemed to challenge 
the government to put them to death.''
  Man, that's great news because we had this article on Sunday, saying 
the Attorney General and this administration can't decide what to do 
about the trials. It's great news. They're going to plead guilty.

[[Page H4671]]

                              {time}  2140

  Another quote from the article said that at the start of what had 
been listed as routine proceedings Monday, Judge Henley said he had 
received a written statement from the five men charged, saying they had 
planned to stop filing legal motions and to ``announce our confessions 
to plea in full.'' Great news. They're agreeing to plead guilty to 
confess everything. Awesome news. Awesome news.
  The trouble is, the date of this New York Times story was December 9, 
2008. The 9/11 conspirators, as they are self-confessed, agreed to 
plead guilty to the atrocities regarding 9/11. They were not going to 
file any more pleadings. They were throwing in the towel. They were 
ready to be sentenced to death. And if you go back and look at this 
article, Mr. Speaker, it talks about how they're ready to accept 
martyrdom. Isn't that something? They told a military judge they wanted 
to confess in full. They were ready to be put to death for their 
crimes. Isn't that something? It said they planned to stop filing legal 
motions and to announce our confessions to plea in full.
  But a strange thing happened on the way to the five 9/11 charged 
conspirators for plotting and carrying out--seeing that it was carried 
out, at least--the 9/11 atrocities. This administration took office a 
month after that story and said, You know what? Basically, in essence, 
You guys, don't plead guilty. We want to bring this to New York and 
create a circus out of it. Put the island of Manhattan in great danger. 
Probably cost them--one estimate was a hundred million dollars they 
don't have. They're trying to figure out where to come up with the 
money for their own budget right now. Yes, they're going to bring them 
to New York and put on a circus.
  So the guys withdrew their indication they were going to plead 
guilty. They were ready for the big show. And now we're told that there 
probably won't be a decision until after the November elections. They 
were ready to plead guilty, and now we have to wait 2 years because 
this administration wanted to jump in and make a circus out of justice. 
You don't do that. It's not justice when you attempt to make a circus 
out of it.
  I had a rule in my courtroom. I would allow one camera remain in 
place, could not be moved, and the moment I saw one juror look over at 
the camera, the camera was out. Everybody knew the rules. It had to be 
a pooled camera. So all networks pooled from that one camera. And the 
first one to file the motion to bring the camera or use the camera were 
the ones that got to put the stationary camera in there and everybody 
else pulled footage from those. Because when you're talking about 
justice, when you're talking about court proceedings, you cannot talk 
about making a big show out of the trial. It's no longer justice. It's 
now a circus.
  And, in the meantime, we have over 3,000 people who lost their lives 
in the 9/11 attacks, who see justice frittering away yet one more time. 
It's heartbreaking. Heartbreaking. These guys were ready to plead 
guilty, as announced in this article December 9, 2008, in The New York 
Times. And now we're talking 2 years later before we ever even think 
about, figure out what we're going to do. They were ready to plead 
guilty but for this administration's meddling with the third branch.
  And for those that think that the Congress does not have the 
authority to create military commissions, I understand their 
ignorance--there's a lot of it out there, but that's been going on for 
years--called the Uniform Code of Military Justice. Because under the 
Constitution, this body had the authority to create the UCMJ, which we 
did, long before I was here, of course. But they did. And that's why.
  Now when the Bush administration tried to create a military 
commission without coming through Congress, that was not 
constitutional. That's not the President's job. It's the Congress's job 
under the Constitution. So when the Congress came back in 2006, created 
the Military Commissions Act, then it was certainly upheld, because it 
was appropriate. Of course, in that bill it referred to those who are 
at war with America as enemy combatants, a term that's been around for 
at least 70 years. But that got changed last year. We had an amendment 
to the Military Commissions Act of 2006. The term ``enemy combatant'' 
has now been changed officially in the act that President Obama signed. 
We wouldn't want to offend these poor enemy combatants that want to 
kill us and destroy our way of life. So they're now referred to under 
the bill as unprivileged alien enemy belligerents. Four words now.
  Anyway, that's where we are with regard to the 9/11 attackers, the 9/
11 plotters; and if you go back and read the pleading filed by Khalid 
Sheikh Mohammed on behalf of himself and the four others charged that 
should have pled guilty in January of 2009, but for the intervention by 
the executive branch through the Department of Justice and the White 
House, but for their meddling, these guys may well have already been 
put to death, since that's what they were willing to accept. And I just 
know that they have a very rude awakening awaiting them in the next 
life. But, unfortunately, that will not be experienced by them for some 
time still to come. Really tragic.
  And then we see not only has there been that interference with the 9/
11 plotters and the intervention of the White House and the Department 
of Justice. And, I don't know, maybe the name should be changed from 
Department of Justice to Department of Procrastinated Justice, because 
it should have happened by now, but for this group intervening. Then we 
see what's happened down in the Gulf Coast, what continues to go on. 
We've got video every second reminding us of that. And the more you 
read, the more disconcerting it gets.
  Now we've heard one of the all-time experts on global warming finally 
admit early this year that, well, actually, there's no evidence of the 
planet warming since 1995. And, yes, in the last few years it's 
probably been cooling; and, yes, the Middle Ages were a lot warmer in 
the Northern Hemisphere than it is here now. Of course, I'm sure it's 
easy to remember from history the Middle Ages, the Nords, all those 
folks. They had some pretty high-powered automobiles which are creating 
all the global warming back in those days. But, apparently, it was such 
a wonderful thing to this administration and to our friends across the 
aisle that British Petroleum was onboard with global warming and they 
were going to, apparently, make a lot of money in the carbon credit 
business. They were excited about it. And they were the Big Oil 
advocate teamed up with the Democrats in the Senate and with this 
administration.
  And so people wondered why this administration didn't come out much 
more quickly and condemn British Petroleum. Well, they were still 
hoping they were going to salvage their crap-and-trade bill. But they 
also knew if their big ally, British Petroleum, was not onboard, then 
it might be more difficult to convince others that it was going to be 
such a good thing for the energy business. So they really didn't want, 
apparently, to condemn British Petroleum too roundly too quickly 
because they were still hoping they could salvage a passage of the 
crap-and-trade bill.
  And they really at the time thought they needed their ally--their 
very, very close ally--British Petroleum. And there was an article 
indicating that in fact Senator Kerry on April 22, when the Deepwater 
Horizon blew, that Senator Kerry was communicating with British 
Petroleum about trying to get that global warming bill passed.

                              {time}  2150

  Things got put on hold, obviously, after that explosion took place. 
And yet still over 60 days later, the Jones Act has not been suspended, 
so the Netherlands could come in, as they had offered. They have got 
some amazing machinery that would help with the separation. They could 
build island barriers, save so much of the pristine beaches, and still, 
no Jones Act suspension. Obviously that was a bill to give 
protectionism to unions, and certainly the unions did not want to see 
that bill suspended.
  But for all the criticism of President Bush, within 3 days of 
Hurricane Katrina occurring--August 29 was when it occurred, September 
1 is when President Bush had signed an order suspending the Jones Act 
so that foreign vessels could come in and assist us in our time of need 
after Hurricane Katrina. Over 60 days later, this administration still 
has not done it.
  So I hear all the talk about, We're doing absolutely everything we 
can.

[[Page H4672]]

How about putting a signature on the suspension of the Jones Act? Just 
do it 19 days like President Bush did, and you'll be able to have all 
this outside assistance come in.
  One of the things that I've seen--and it's been hard for me over the 
years, when somebody wants to come help me after I've had some family 
tragedy or something, is, I just don't like to accept--I don't want 
anybody to put themselves out. But what you find out is, if you've done 
something for somebody else, it blesses their heart when they get to do 
something nice for you.
  You know, we have done some very nice things for so many countries, 
as is reflected in the cemeteries all over Europe, in American soldiers 
that have been buried around the world, where they gave their lives--
not so that we could be an imperialist nation, because if we were, 
France would be speaking English, the Netherlands would be speaking 
English, Germany would be speaking English. But that was never our 
goal. Japan would be speaking English. That was never our goal. It was 
a goal to bring liberty and freedom, bring the very gift that we have 
in this country to others. It's such a wonderful inheritance. But the 
problem is, though we are endowed by our Creator with certain 
unalienable rights, among them are life, liberty and the pursuit of 
happiness, like any inheritance, any gift, if you don't fight for it, 
then mean, evil people will take it away.
  So the Jones Act has not been suspended, and we have a fund that was 
created with--you know, British Petroleum said, We were going to do it 
anyway. And it sure sounds like, from what we've been hearing, British 
Petroleum deserves to pay a great deal more than that. But one of the 
great things the Founders did was create three branches of government 
so that when a responsible party has done something wrong, you don't 
have the Congress or the President come in and say, Here's your fine. 
Here's your fee. This is what you've got to pay. We don't have that. We 
have hearings and trials in court. And if you want to avoid having a 
long drawn-out trial process, then you can come in and work out a 
settlement agreement.
  Some companies have found out, after they've done wrong and harmed 
people, that they actually end up better off creating a fund on their 
own, something that is acceptable to others so that they can be 
compensated for the harm that's been done without protracted 
litigation. That's all a very noble thing. Having a fund supplied by 
British Petroleum, that's a very good thing. But when you take it out 
of context, of the three branches of government--and this is more a 
judiciary issue--and you allow either the legislative or the executive 
branch to just say, Here's what you owe. Put up the money, and we'll 
appoint our pet person here to dictate who gets what, then you have 
broken down the Constitution. That's not supposed to happen.
  Because the same President and Attorney General who sit down with 
somebody at the very time that they are investigating criminal 
charges--and they've made a big deal in the media about investigating 
criminal charges. They said, By the way, we're investigating you. I 
mean, it goes without saying. They've said it all in the media, We're 
investigating you for criminal charges. We think you need to put this 
money up. The same executive branch that can dictate creating a fund 
like that--no matter how willing the perpetrator is to put up the 
fund--that same executive branch can also say, And by the way, why 
don't you just take the blame for everything? Why don't you just take 
the blame for everything? Let's don't even get into what the government 
might have done wrong, what our administration didn't do, what our 
Department of Interior didn't do, what our Minerals Management Service 
didn't do, or the fact that we just made a big splash in June of 2009 
about our deputy assistant secretary coming in to this department who 
worked for British Petroleum ever since she left the Clinton 
administration in January of 2001, and never mind that she knows more, 
according to the previous Inspector General, about why that price 
adjustment language was cut out of the 1998 and 1999 offshore leases 
that made--I thought originally hundreds of millions, now apparently 
it's billions of dollars for her employer, Big Oil. But it cost the 
Federal Treasury billions of dollars that went to big oil. Let's just 
avoid all of that discussion about the cozy relationship between this 
administration's regulators and British Petroleum. Let's just avoid all 
of that, and you just take all the responsibility.
  There's a reason that an executive branch is not supposed to do that, 
because it opens the door to abuse. And, in fact, there are Federal 
laws--just like I'm familiar with State laws in Texas--that say, 
basically it's a crime for a prosecutor in Texas to call in a defendant 
and say, I will not indict you, or I will drop the indictment if you 
will put x number of dollars into the fund that I dictate. Well, that's 
a crime. You can't do that. There's a reason that we have three 
branches of government.
  I heard someone ask once of the brilliant Justice Antonin Scalia, 
Don't you think the reason we've had more liberty in this country than 
any other country in the world is because of our Bill of Rights? And I 
just love Justice Scalia. He is so brilliant and yet so forthright. He 
said, no. And I'm sure my answer will not do justice to his. But my 
recollection is, basically, no. The Soviets had a much better Bill of 
Rights than we have. And it hit me. I remembered. I studied the 
Soviets' Bill of Rights, and they actually did. It was a great Bill of 
Rights. But he said, No. The reason you've got more liberty in America 
is because the Founders did not trust government, so they wanted to 
make it as hard as they could for government to pass any laws, to force 
anybody into anything.

                              {time}  2200

  You set up three branches as the Founders so that you couldn't just 
quickly pass a law. And even if you did, you have an executive branch 
that is elected outside of Congress. So it's not like a prime minister, 
where we elect one of our own in here to be the leader, similar to a 
President. We've got an executive branch.
  And that's not enough. We set up a judicial branch that's appointed 
in the Federal system so that all of these things would help create 
gridlock. Today you hear people say, I'm tired of gridlock. The 
Founders thought it was the best gift they could ever give is a way to 
clog up the government so they wouldn't rush in and make laws unless 
they were absolutely necessary. We've gotten away from that. It's 
gotten too easy.
  As we saw when the Republicans in 2001 had the White House, House, 
and the Senate, spending started like it hadn't before. Compassion was 
equated with giving away money. Whereas, if you go back to 1995, when 
Republicans took Congress as the majority, finally you started having a 
balanced budget, because this body creates the budget and the Senate 
eventually, hopefully, agrees. And then you've got a way to control 
spending.
  We had a balanced budget once the Republicans took the majority, and 
things went great. And it's amazing to me--well, it's humorous, 
actually, to hear President Clinton taking credit for a balanced 
budget. He didn't do it. The Congress did. And in some cases, he was 
brought in kicking and screaming, but the Republican Congress balanced 
the budget.
  It wasn't until they got giddy by having their own party in the White 
House that the brakes came off and spending increased so that we had 
$100 billion, $200 billion in deficit in 1 year. And that was so 
outrageous until this last year, when it was over a trillion, and this 
year maybe as much as $1.6 trillion in 1 year. It's unbelievable. It's 
really irresponsible.
  And now we read today in the paper that our majority leader is saying 
they are giving up all hope of passing a budget, too politically 
difficult. And as we heard one of the Democratic leaders say in 2006 
before they won the majority, if you can't provide a budget, you can't 
govern. There's a lot of truth in that.
  So we need to get away from the executive branch being the Congress, 
being the executive branch and the judicial branch. We saw that with 
the auto task force. This body created the bankruptcy laws. Bankruptcy 
is something provided for in the Constitution. But it wasn't created 
until the early 1800s, where the courts actually set up the system of 
bankruptcy.
  And it was set up because the Founders believed that apparently 
nobody, no

[[Page H4673]]

business or body should ever be too big to fail. Because if you are 
failing, you can go through bankruptcy. And, in fact, if you are too 
big to fail, it is absolutely essential that you go through bankruptcy 
and reorganize and downsize so you will never put this country at that 
kind of risk again because you are still too big to fail and, in fact, 
have gotten even bigger. And that's what we've seen with Goldman Sachs. 
They've gotten even bigger. They should have been allowed to fail 
previously.
  Well, I tell you, there is a brilliant man named Thomas Sowell. And I 
didn't vote for Barack Obama in 2008, but I sure would have voted for 
Thomas Sowell. His article says quite a lot. His editorial says here, 
and it's just been posted this week, but he says, ``When Adolf Hitler 
was building up the Nazi movement in the 1920s,'' and I am quoting from 
Thomas Sowell in his editorial, ``leading up to his taking power in the 
1930s, he deliberately sought to activate people who did not normally 
pay much attention to politics. Such people were a valuable addition to 
his political base, since they were particularly susceptible to 
Hitler's rhetoric and had far less basis for questioning his 
assumptions or his conclusions. `Useful idiots' was the term supposedly 
coined by V.I. Lenin to describe similarly unthinking supporters of his 
dictatorship in the Soviet Union.''
  And this isn't in the article, this is my comment, but we do have 
useful idiots today who are heard to say, Wow, what we really need is 
for the President to be a dictator for a little while. They know not 
what they say.
  Anyway, back to quoting Thomas Sowell. ``Put differently, a democracy 
needs informed citizens if it is to thrive or, ultimately, even 
survive. In our times, American democracy is being dismantled, piece by 
piece, before our very eyes by the current administration in 
Washington, and few people seem to be concerned about it. The 
President's poll numbers are going down because increasing numbers of 
people disagree with particular policies of his, but the damage being 
done to the fundamental structure of this Nation goes far beyond 
particular counterproductive policies.
  ``Just where in the Constitution of the United States does it say 
that a President has the authority to extract vast sums of money from a 
private enterprise and distribute it as he sees fit to whomever he 
deems worthy of compensation? Nowhere. And yet that is precisely what's 
happening,'' and he goes on.
  And I will tell you, there is a reason we have to rely on the justice 
system, because if we didn't have that branch of government that could 
be the final arbiter of disagreements between groups, then there would 
be people like me who have seen the damage that rushing through, taking 
the cheaper way to drill in such a difficult area, seen the damage, the 
loss of lives, those whose lives are still in jeopardy because of their 
grave injuries, the damage to the environment--and I just drove from 
New Orleans to Panama City. And there is anticipation of doom and gloom 
coming to many places, yet those people, the beaches are beautiful. 
From Panama City through Alabama through Mississippi, they are 
beautiful. But people aren't showing up to the beaches. They could at 
least come and enjoy them.
  But BP just did an unconscionable thing. And if we did not have a 
justice system, if we were back to the days, as Israel once was, of 
just having a judge and I were the judge, you know, the tendency would 
be some people would be horsewhipped that cut corners and did all this 
damage. But there's a reason we don't have a judicial dictatorship so 
one man can't say you ought to be horsewhipped for what you have done.
  What they've done is outrageous. And you can't help but think, 
because they had such good friends in the administration and in the 
majority, they thought they were bulletproof. They thought they could 
do whatever they wanted. And the President, their big buddy, Senator 
Kerry, the majority, especially in the Senate, they would cover for 
them. They would take care of them. They didn't know that when they did 
something this outrageous they would be thrown under the bus. But we 
should not have one branch that does that kind of dictation. It's not 
good. It's not good at all.
  And then we have the problem with Israel being accosted by its 
enemies, and we are siding with the wrong people. I had a teacher in 
elementary school. She always took up for the bullies when they beat up 
the little guys. I know because I was a little guy in elementary 
school, and she always sided with the big bullies that had flunked a 
couple of grades and were bigger than the rest of us.

                              {time}  2210

  I will never forget those guys took my brand-new football I got for 
Christmas, and I went to get it back and my nose was bloodied, my face 
was pulverized, but then, as now, I don't run from a fight. And when 
the teacher was told by other students I was trying to get my nose to 
stop bleeding, she came into the boy's restroom, grabbed me, took me 
down to the classroom, marched me in front of the class and said, See, 
now, class, this is what happens when the little boys try to play with 
the big boys,
  Well, that's kind of what's going on here. We've got bullies trying 
to bully Israel. We're siding with the wrong guys. There will be a 
price to pay if this continues. Israel's our friend. They have great 
value for human life, like we do in this country. If they were not in 
the Middle East, we would spend trillions of dollars trying to protect 
ourselves in that area from the things that are growing right now. We 
owe them more than a thank you, and yet the U.S. voted to force them to 
disclose their nuclear weaponry, if any. You don't do that to friends. 
It's what Hezekiah did. He showed Babylonians all his armaments, his 
treasury and Isaiah told him, as a result, it is all going to be taken 
away. You don't show your enemies all of your defenses because they 
will figure out a way to overcome them.
  I was just downstairs, in fact, in a little supper with Shaun 
Alexander, played football for Alabama, and was MVP with Seattle in the 
Super Bowl, just a great guy. But he mentioned four verses of scripture 
that really meant so much to him, and one of those was, he said, 
Deuteronomy 30:19, and I'm quoting from the most quoted book in this 
history of the Congress. In fact, our first 150 years, oftentimes our 
legislators were afraid to file a bill without having some scriptural 
basis to back it up. But Shaun quoted from Deuteronomy 30:19, I call 
Heaven and Earth to witness against you today that I've set before you 
life and death, the blessing and the curse. So choose life in order 
that you may live, you and your descendants.
  Verse 20 goes on: By loving the Lord, your God, by obeying His voice 
and by holding fast to Him, for this is your life and the length of 
your days, that you may live in the land that your Lord swore to your 
fathers, Abraham, Isaac and Jacob to give to them.
  He also quoted from Matthew 5:24, No one can serve two masters, for 
either he will hate the one and love the other or he will hold to one 
and despise the other.
  You cannot serve God and man. You know, these days, some want to 
serve a constituent and they get pulled away because they're torn. 
They'd like to serve a tremendous power in this country, torn between 
constituent service and power. And then in some cases, as we see here, 
apparently George Soros has made more money probably than anybody in 
this country because of British Petroleum and the moratorium and what 
all has happened there. Of course, this country apparently is standing 
for $2 billion to help Brazil do deep exploration, and that will make 
hundreds of millions for Mr. Soros. I'm happy for anybody who make lots 
of money, but sometimes people in this body are torn between their 
constituent service or being a part of a powerful team.
  It's why people in here are often gotten to move their vote one way 
or the other. I was told that before I got here. One of the hardest 
things is not when people come to you and say, yes, you're going to do 
this, you're going to vote this way, because most in this body are 
stubborn enough to say, no, I'm not going to do that. But where they 
get you is they say, come on, we thought you were a team player, we 
want you on our team, we want you one of the good guys on our team. And 
they hit you up on the team player thing.

[[Page H4674]]

  And so good people in this body, in the Senate, even in the judiciary 
apparently when they allowed the auto task force, taking without due 
process in violation of the Constitution, turned bankruptcy upside 
down. They even convinced the judiciary to even look the other way and 
let the Constitution and the bankruptcy laws be turned upside down. So 
there are people who want to be part of the team, you know, and they 
forget the Constitution; and when that happens we break down what so 
many have fought and died for to give us this gift.
  I heard my colleagues in the prior hour talking about how well the 
stimulus is going. I keep coming back, and Mark Levin quoted this in 
his book, ``Liberty and Tyranny,'' and it ought to be a textbook, it's 
so good. But he quotes from Henry Morgenthau, the Secretary of the 
Treasury under Franklin D. Roosevelt. In 1939 Secretary Morgenthau was 
testifying--well, actually he wrote this. He said, We have tried 
spending money. We have spent more money than we have ever spent 
before, and now after 8 years, we have an unemployment rate that is 
just as high today as it was when we started, and we have an enormous 
debt to boot.
  Human nature has not changed much since the 1930s. When the 
government starts spending money, then ultimately you're going to have 
a choice. You're going to have to keep borrowing or printing, and then 
ultimately you get in a position the Soviet Union was in. You can't 
print it fast enough to pay your debts, you can't borrow it fast 
enough, nobody will loan it to you anymore. So you have to go up and 
announce you're bankrupt as a nation and out of business.
  By the way, one other thing I wanted to mention, and this happens 
when you refuse to enforce the laws. We had a President who just 
decided he was going to impose a drilling moratorium; and so the 
judiciary came in, considered the Constitution, considered the action 
after it viewed all the excuses and everything for imposing it, said 
this is arbitrary and capricious, you can't do this, there's no basis 
for a moratorium of all of these.
  If you want to go after BP--he didn't say this, I'm saying it--you 
want to go after BP, say they're suspended until you make sure they're 
not cutting corners on other rigs, because we know they cut them--it 
sure looks like they cut them at least on Deepwater Horizon, that's one 
thing. But to do it on all the rigs when indications that we saw 
somewhere there were 750 safety violations for BP and in the same 
period I think Exxon, maybe Shell, had one? There's a reason maybe you 
could justify doing that with a BP rig but not all of them.
  So the judge struck it down, and here already today the Secretary of 
the Interior says he's appealing it. Apparently, he likes the idea of 
having one branch of government run everything. Big mistake.
  Then, not only that, a lot of folks may not know, Mr. Speaker, but 
there is, as I understand it, under Federal law the right of the Border 
Patrol to come into private landowners' land up to 25 miles from the 
border, anywhere, any of our borders to enforce our border. Everywhere 
around the border, they have that right up to 25 miles to come into 
private property if they need to to enforce our border.
  Well, lo and behold, there is one place they can't, and that's on 
federally owned property like the national park in Arizona. There is 
apparently about 32 miles of border with Mexico that's a park that has 
now been announced to be closed to American citizens because there are 
too many illegals going across that land and tearing it up, and some 
have gotten violent and killed even law enforcement people in that 
area.

                              {time}  2220

  We can go on private property to protect our border, but we can't go 
on Federal land? That's outrageous. Rob Bishop has a bill to deal with 
that, and so do I. Rob has really done great research on this, he has 
really been the leader in the area of bringing this stuff out. We've 
got to do something; that is outrageous. We need defense, and we need 
to give a 25-mile, at least, area to the border patrol to patrol and 
just say that's not going to be national park wilderness area because 
our border means too much. We've got people wanting to come in here and 
destroy our way of life.
  But I see my time is running shorter now. There were a lot of things 
I wanted to cover. But there are just so many people who do not 
understand, Mr. Speaker, where we came from and why there needs to be a 
firm foundation under this country. President Harry Truman--some may 
recall he was a Democrat--he said this: ``The fundamental basis of this 
Nation's laws was given to Moses on the Mount.'' The fundamental basis 
of our Bill of Rights comes from the teachings we get from Exodus and 
St. Matthew, from Isaiah and St. Paul. I don't think we emphasize that 
enough these days. If we don't have a proper fundamental moral 
background, we will finally end up with a totalitarian government which 
does not believe in rights for anybody except the State. Boy, was he 
prophetic.
  James Madison, given credit for writing the most in the Constitution, 
he said this on November 20, 1825: ``The belief in a God all powerful, 
wise and good, is so essential to the moral order of the world and to 
the happiness of man that arguments which enforce it cannot be drawn 
from too many sources nor adapted with too much solicitude to the 
different characters and capacities to be impressed with.''
  Franklin D. Roosevelt said, ``The skeptics and the cynics of 
Washington's day did not believe that ordinary men and women had the 
capacity for freedom and self-government. They said that liberty and 
equality were idle dreams that could not come true. You know, they are 
like the people who carp at the Ten Commandments because some people 
are in the habit of breaking one or more of them.'' A lot of truth 
then.
  Patrick Henry said this: ``Bad men cannot make good citizens. It is 
impossible that a nation of infidels and idolaters should be a nation 
of free men. It is when a people forget God that tyrants forge their 
chains.''
  So much, so much truth in our heritage. And I just want to conclude 
with this, Thomas Jefferson's own words: ``God who gave us life gave us 
liberty. And can the liberties of a nation be thought secure when we 
have removed their only firm basis, a conviction in the minds of the 
people that these liberties are the gift of God, that they are not to 
be violated but with his wrath. Indeed, I tremble for my country when I 
reflect that God is just, and his justice cannot sleep forever.''
  This government is not God, and the only protection from those who 
think they might begin to be is the enforcement of the three branches 
of government and their separate powers, and we've got to get back to 
that to save this Nation.
  With that, Mr. Speaker, I yield back the balance of my time.

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