[Congressional Record Volume 158, Number 48 (Thursday, March 22, 2012)]
[House]
[Pages H1539-H1540]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




                         PRESERVING OUR RIGHTS

  The SPEAKER pro tempore. Under the Speaker's announced policy of 
January 5, 2011, the Chair recognizes the gentleman from Texas (Mr. 
Gohmert) for 30 minutes.
  Mr. GOHMERT. Mr. Speaker, a couple of issues I want to address. I 
appreciate so much my friend, Dr. Fleming, who has the adjoining 
district to mine, across the Sabine River over in Louisiana. He makes 
great points. We need to get the Federal Government out of the business 
of controlling people's health care. We need to get them back in the 
business of being a referee, making sure insurance companies and health 
care providers do the right thing, butt out of the business of 
dictating and controlling health care.
  Very clear from ObamaCare, the IPAB, we got a board of 15 people 
going to dictate people's medical decisions for them, and, of course, 
all of the pandering back during the debate on ObamaCare how you can, 
as my friend Dr. Fleming pointed out, the President, all those who 
mirror his comments, all those that read from the same teleprompter and 
say, oh no, you like your health care, you can keep it. You like your 
doctor, you can keep it. Well, we knew they were wrong. They were 
wrong.
  So most people have already lost their health care exactly as they 
had it before if they liked it, and if they haven't yet, they will. 
That's why it was a good idea, not only to repeal the provision on that 
board that will dictate people's lives, what health care they can have, 
what they can't have. That was a good idea.
  We need to repeal the whole bill. It is unconstitutional, and of 
course the President did us a wonderful favor by showing what many of 
us knew, that if ObamaCare is considered constitutional--it's not, but 
if the courts considered it that way--then it is very clear, the 
President believes, and I think, under the bill, he has the authority 
to step on, suppress, override people's individual liberties and 
freedoms.
  We were assured by our Founders that we were endowed by our Creator 
with certain unalienable rights, among those, life, liberty, and the 
pursuit of happiness. Well, ObamaCare modifies that to the extent that 
you can have life, liberty, and pursuit of happiness only if it meets 
with the approval of the administration in power and the people they've 
put on IPAB, and what they have to say about whether you're too old to 
have a treatment, whether, or, like the President said in one of his 
town halls to a lady that said, will you at least consider the quality 
of life on people like my mother and whether she could get a pacemaker 
since she'd lived for 10 years with the pacemaker. And he said, 
ultimately, you know, maybe we're just better off telling your mother 
just take a pain pill. The part that he didn't say is take the pain 
pill and die. Don't live 10 years, because that's what ObamaCare will 
do for us.
  So, hopefully, the Supreme Court Justices that will take this up and 
consider it will also realize that since ObamaCare gives the President 
the power to override the Constitution and prohibit the free exercise 
of religion--I'm Baptist, but, obviously, it does clearly restrict the 
free exercise of individual Catholics, of Catholic institutions, and 
that's because the President says so, because ObamaCare gives him the 
power to do that.
  I hope that the Supreme Court Justices will take note of that. They 
could take judicial notice of what has been publicly done and by order, 
and take note of the fact that since our freedom of religion is clearly 
expressed in the first part of the First Amendment, and it's there in 
black and white, the government's not to prohibit the free exercise of 
religion.
  And since the ``privacy rights,'' as the Supreme Court has come to 
call them, are not written in the Constitution, they were somehow found 
in the shadow of a penumbra somewhere and, gee, if ObamaCare gives the 
President the power to override people's constitutional rights, for 
rights that are put in stated words in the Constitution, then it's 
certainly going to give some redneck President down the road the right 
to just say, you know what, the privacy rights aren't even there, and 
so we're setting those aside too. Just like I set aside Catholics and 
other religious beliefs, now we have the power to set aside a right 
that's not even mentioned in the Constitution.
  And it ought to scare every thinking liberal--we won't get the ones 
that don't think--but every thinking liberal ought to have that go to 
their core and give them goose bumps.
  Oh, my goodness. I didn't think about some redneck person possibly 
getting--becoming--President because at some point the American people 
are going to get so fed up with having Washington dictate all of their 
individual decisions that they may just elect the biggest redneck they 
can get.
  And because the Supreme Court, if it were to do the unthinkable and 
rule ObamaCare as constitutional, then the administration will have not 
only a right, they will have a duty to dictate to people how they can 
live, because if the Federal Government has the right, under the 
Constitution, to control all our health care, putting some providers 
out of business, picking winners and losers, telling who gets a pain 
pill, who gets a pacemaker, if they have the right to do that, the 
government has a duty to tell every person how they can live.
  We're told that the Federal Government, if it wanted to, could look 
at every debit purchase, every credit card purchase. I mean, I got in 
this discussion with some government attorneys back before I ever got 
to Congress; and they were saying, look, if banks have the right to 
review all of your banking records, why shouldn't the government? I 
explained because the government can put us in jail and a bank can't. 
That's why there are protections against the government.
  But ObamaCare will give the government control of our health care; 
and, therefore, at some point it will only make sense that they live up 
to their duty to say, you know what? Of course, under ObamaCare the 
Federal Government will have every person's health care records. It 
becomes the repository for everyone's most private information about 
their lives.

                              {time}  1550

  There's nothing in mine I'm worried about, but it is quite bothersome 
to think that there is nothing that can be private from the Federal 
Government once they have all of everybody's health care records.
  Well, if they've got everybody's health care records, wouldn't it 
make sense at some point down the road to say: You know what? You're 
costing us too much money. You're not living properly. And we noted 
that in your health care records, you've got a 280 cholesterol level, 
and then we noticed you went to the grocery store and bought a pound of 
bacon this weekend, so we're going to have to change your health care, 
change the charges.
  Folks, that is a reasonable conclusion of where ObamaCare has to take 
us if it's ruled constitutional. It's got to stop.
  One other thing I want to mention, Mr. Speaker. It's been reported 
today in a couple of places, one in my friend Breitbart's online news 
blurb from A.W.R. Hawkins; another is from The Washington Post. Two 
different ends of the spectrum, perhaps. They're both reporting the 
same thing: that this administration, through Secretary Hillary 
Clinton, is going to announce that

[[Page H1540]]

it could care less what Congress has ordered about helping the enemies 
of Israel, about helping those who are terrorizing and persecuting 
Christians in Egypt and destroying churches and eliminating freedom of 
religion, and are saying they want to rethink their peace accord with 
Israel and setting themselves up to be the enemy of Israel. And now 
this administration, knowing that Congress passed a law that says you 
can't give people money in Egypt unless you can certify to certain 
facts--and they cannot, not honestly. If they do so now with what we 
know publicly, we know they will not be honest in doing so, and they're 
going to give $1.5 billion, not in humanitarian aid, according to this 
story, not food--military aid.
  So forget all of those speeches that this President gave at AIPAC: 
Oh, gosh. We're Israel's best friend. We're going to help them. 
Because, oh, no, we're going to give people who have the power to 
destroy Israel, on the border with Israel, military aid, as they are 
planning--many there make it clear they hate Israel, they hate us, and 
I've said over and over: We don't have to pay people to hate us. 
They'll do it for free.
  We have to quit funding the enemy of us and the enemy of our friends. 
This is insane. And I hope somewhere in this administration is a cooler 
head that will say, Mr. President, Madam Secretary, Israel is our 
friend. Remember the speeches you've both given about what a friend 
they are? And it's time that we do not provide military aid, abetting, 
and assistance to people that want to destroy Christians, that want to 
destroy Israelis, and that want to put the world in turmoil and have 
everyone living exactly as they dictate. We want to keep some freedoms 
here and in Israel, and the way to do that is not to fund and provide 
military assistance to anyone unless we know they are our friend, 
they're Israel's friend, they're the friends of our friends.
  To do otherwise will bring calamity on this country like they will 
not realize until it's too late.
  With that, Mr. Speaker, I yield back the balance of my time.

                          ____________________