[Congressional Record Volume 159, Number 140 (Wednesday, October 9, 2013)]
[House]
[Pages H6450-H6452]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]
INSIDE THE OBAMA ADMINISTRATION
The SPEAKER pro tempore (Mr. Hudson). Under the Speaker's announced
policy of January 3, 2013, the Chair recognizes the gentleman from
Texas (Mr. Gohmert) for 30 minutes.
Mr. GOHMERT. Mr. Speaker, for a government that shuts down, there
sure seems to be a great deal going on. Down here on the Mall, somehow
the National Park Service, which has been, parenthetically speaking
here, presiding over a park service, beginning with the Franklin D.
Roosevelt memorial, has not had God mentioned in any memorial since
that time. We don't have time or a place for mentioning God, as our
memorials have in some way in the past, but, by golly, we have got time
during a shutdown to approve a permit to allow people who want to
demand that--though they are here in this country illegally--they have
a right to demand rights. This administration, just as it did with the
Occupy Washington movement, facilitates that.
We know with the Occupy Washington movement there was all kinds of
lewd, lascivious stuff going on in public. The Park Service didn't seem
to be bothered by that. But let veterans show up to the World War II
memorial, and they have got barricades. Let World War II veterans, who
fought their way to the top of Mt. Suribachi, try to get to the
monument that commemorates climbing to the top of Suribachi, they put
up big obstacles to our veterans getting there.
So the message from this administration very clearly is that if you
are illegally in the country, we will bend over backwards to let you
commit all kinds of acts on the Mall; we will send Capitol Police down
to pick up your garbage; and if you just want to illegally occupy a
public area, we will let you do that. We will let you use the basest
services in public. All kinds of lewd and lascivious things were going
on there with the Occupy Washington movement, and that was allowed to
continue on and on and on.
{time} 1545
However, if you have served your country in the United States
military, then we're going to try to make life miserable for you. It
just might be those people that have hung on to their God and their
guns and love America and love the Constitution, so this Homeland
Security thing is sure a threat. Which is quite interesting.
You know, with all the things that are going on, we have seen that
this administration has not had a problem with some things that some of
us felt were a problem, such as, like I've mentioned in the last couple
of years, one of the members of what was originally the Countering
Violent Extremism Working Group named Elibiary from Texas, who was
placed on there. And then he got a promotion from Secretary Janet
Napolitano up to the Homeland Security Advisory Council, and, gee, now
we're finding out that he's continuing to defend one of the principals
of the Holy Land Foundation.
We're finding out that he is still defending, he still considers them
to be unjustly prosecuted even though Federal courts have found that
crimes were committed and that terrorism was supported by the Holy Land
Foundation. The Dallas Federal court, along with the U.S. Court of
Appeals in New Orleans, found that groups like CAIR, which has now
changed its name to WTF, and ISNA, groups like that were the largest
front group for the Muslim Brotherhood in America.
So it's rather interesting, because this administration has made life
so difficult for our veterans just trying to get here and enjoy the
memorials. I've been down to the memorials I think every day until
today, and it's amazing. I've been down there different days, all hours
of the day and night. You're lucky if you see one park ranger in the
area of the World War II Memorial, and yet now they've got them very
strategically placed.
They will stand there with the barricades closed most of the time. If
some group comes up and explains that they're a World War II veterans
group, then they'll open and let them through, but they stand there
intimidating. Sometimes an officer comes by with a canine, which is a
bit more intimidating to most people. So unless Members of Congress are
standing there, we see people come up and get intimidated and walk
away, unless a Member of Congress goes up and says, Please, come in.
You are welcome.
Fortunately, veterans of Vietnam and Korea are just going around the
barricades and fortunately are not being stopped. At the Lincoln
Memorial, though, when a couple of Members of Congress encouraged
people to come on up, like they do at the World War II Memorial, they
said that it appeared that the park SWAT team--I mean, officers came in
from all over, threatening arrests. Get out of here.
It's just amazing how far this administration will go to hurt
Americans that love America, that have served this country.
And then we find out about Americans killed in Afghanistan. There
should have been no problem whatsoever with the Defense Department
cutting the $100,000 checks to these families. There should not have
been. And if there was any doubt, then the bill we passed before the
shutdown began should have taken care of that. There was plenty of
prerogative to do that. But we had to come back today and pass another
bill just to say get a check to the families of those who lost a loved
one serving this country, because the administration is playing
hardball and has gotten policies in place that are hurting as many
Americans as possible. But when you look at who's advising this
country's top leaders, is it any surprise?
Here's a story from October 6 from The Daily Caller:
Senior adviser to the Department of Homeland Security is an
old friend of an activist who was convicted in 2008 of
financing the terrorist organization Hamas.
In an interview with The Daily Caller, Mohamed Elibiary, a
member of the Homeland Security Advisory Council, reiterated
claims he made this summer that former Holy Land Foundation
President and CEO Shukri Abu Baker is innocent and a victim
of political persecution.
Elibiary, who in his position on the council also has
regular access to classified information, said the United
States insults Muslim dignity and compared the Muslim
Brotherhood to American evangelicals.
Elibiary confirmed to journalist Ryan Mauro of the Clarion
Project in August that he is a longtime friend of Baker. The
Mauro interview can be read at the Center for Security
Policy.
Baker and four other officials of the closed Holy Land
Foundation for Relief and Development were convicted of using
the charity to finance Hamas in 2008. It was the largest
terrorism financing trial in U.S. history. Federal
prosecutors described the foundation, which was closed by the
U.S. Government in 2001, as an entity of the U.S. Muslim
Brotherhood.
Elibiary first disclosed the relationship in a 2007 article
in The Dallas Morning News. He met Baker as a teenager and
was so moved by the terrorist funder's explanation of alleged
Israeli persecution of Palestinians that he says he began
donating monthly to Baker's foundation until it closed in
2001. The friendship continued, with Elibiary meeting with
Baker for coffee the day before he was convicted.
Elibiary maintains that Baker is innocent. And in 2010, he
wrote that the U.S. Government was ``using the law to force
compliance with unjust foreign policies.'' He reiterated his
belief that the U.S. should not have prosecuted the Holy Land
Foundation.
The Muslim activist has never disguised his support for
Muslim Brotherhood extremism. In a 2006 letter to the Morning
News, he defended the fanatically anti-American
[[Page H6451]]
early Brotherhood leader and theorist Sayyid Qutb stating,
``I'd recommend everyone read Qutb, but read him with an eye
to improving America not just to be jealous with malice in
our hearts.''
Let me insert here, Qutb wrote, in Egypt, a book called
``Milestones,'' where a guy named Osama bin Laden gives a great deal of
credit for radicalizing him. And here we have someone that Janet
Napolitano handpicked to be at the highest advisory council level, have
access to classified material, somebody that thinks the guy that
radicalized Osama bin Laden is somebody we all should read with an eye
toward improving America.
``Elibiary has been honored by the FBI's Society of Former Special
Agents,'' the article says. And again, parenthetically here--it's not
in the article, but we also know that the FBI continued a relationship
with CAIR, even knowing that they had gathered evidence that showed
that CAIR was a large Muslim Brotherhood front organization which was
supportive of the Holy Land Foundation. Even knowing those things, even
knowing that it was implicated as a named coconspirator in that trial,
amazingly, it took until 2008 and 2009 for the FBI to suspend their
partnership with CAIR. And we know that CAIR continued until they
changed their name here recently in the last few weeks to WTF.
They continued to complain. They have instant access to anyone in
this administration. They helped get the FBI material, training
materials purged of anything that might be offensive to someone who was
a radical Islamist.
The article says:
In September, Elibiary was promoted to senior adviser at
the advisory council, a title held only by select members.
Other council members include William Bratton, the revered
former New York police commissioner and Los Angeles chief of
police; former CIA Director Bill Webster; and L.A. County
Sheriff Lee Baca.
And we have this, which has been tweeted out:
I'm honored to be reappointed to the Secretary of Homeland
Security's Advisory Council and promoted to senior fellow
position.
That's Mohamed Elibiary. This article says:
``If you've ever wondered why the Obama administration
believes that the Muslim Brotherhood is a moderate force for
good and partners with known U.S. Muslim Brotherhood
entities, this interview with Mr. Elibiary helps us find an
answer,'' Mauro said.
Elibiary received national attention in June 2012 when Minnesota
Republican Michele Bachmann and four other Members of Congress--one
including me--wrote a letter to the Department of Homeland Security,
naming him as one of three advisers with extensive ties to the Muslim
Brotherhood and other Islamist organizations and causes.
Anyway, it's just amazing. And it is also amazing, when I confronted
Secretary Napolitano in a hearing about the fact that Mr. Elibiary had
accessed classified material and I was told by the director of the
Department of Public Safety, Steve McCraw, in Texas, he had spoken with
her chief of staff. He had confirmed that he had briefed her totally on
what Mr. Elibiary had done, and they would be looking into it. When I
asked her about it the next day after her chief of staff had said she
had been totally briefed, she looked me in the eye and said she didn't
know anything about it. But she did say she would investigate.
We now know from a Freedom of Information answer from the Department
of Homeland Security, they never investigated. Even when you had a
writer, a journalist, Patrick Poole, wrote a story stating that Mr.
Elibiary had actually shot two documents that they knew he had
downloaded from the classified Web site, he had shopped it to a
national media, and Mr. Poole confirmed to me that they have never once
asked him about his sources. And we then had it confirmed from the FOIA
request that actually they never did an investigation. Instead, they
just promoted him. It is incredible. But then again, when you look at
what this administration is doing to those who don't necessarily
worship Allah but worship God and believe in God and have served the
country, this administration is making it tough.
One of our most revered monuments, Mount Rushmore. Well, I was quoted
accurately in the media over a week ago saying, After shutting down
these open-air monuments, just sidewalks where you can roll around in
disabled veterans' wheelchairs, what are they going to do next, put
drapery over Mount Rushmore? Well, it turned out what they did--I guess
I shouldn't have said anything because maybe it was the power of
suggestion.
Oh, there's a way we can make people miserable. Even though it's a
State road, built by the State of South Dakota, maintained by the State
of South Dakota, patrolled by the State of South Dakota, we had Federal
authorities go put cones and barricades to prevent people from being
able to pull off to the side of the road to even take pictures of Mount
Rushmore. Somebody, while the government was shut down, sent enough
park rangers out to put up massive numbers of cones to try to make life
as difficult as possible simply for people who loved America, who just
wanted to pull over and get a view of Mount Rushmore.
{time} 1600
They weren't going to patrol it. South Dakota does that.
When South Dakota, our dear friend, Kristi Noem, she said when South
Dakota had pointed out, hey, this is State road, the Federal authority
said, oh, no, but this is on Federal land, and we're not letting
anybody pull over.
So this is what you get. This is the way Americans are treated unless
you're going to be illegally in the country and have a protest, then we
will give you permits, whatever you want.
I was gratified to hear our friend, Representative Noem, point out to
us that, though sad that South Dakota had 4 feet of snow in some
places, unfortunately, that covered all the barricades and cones,
strictly in the interest of safety, South Dakota had to send their
snowplows and wipe all the snow, and there was no way to sort out the
cones and barricades, so apparently they were in some ditch somewhere.
But for safety purposes, because they were just trying to help those
South Dakotans and Americans that wanted to see Mount Rushmore get
through that road, that State-built road.
So, anyway, another chance to make Americans miserable, but Mother
Nature came through, followed by South Dakota, making things safer.
Here is one. This is out by the Moore Farm that hasn't gotten a dime
of Federal money since 1980. Former Park Director, National Park
Service employee as director, been a director for 32 years, they barely
make it, but they have lost $15,000 to $20,000 just by being closed
down.
They rented barricades to take out there and close down a colonial
farm from the 1700s and, as a result of this mean-spirited action by an
administration, this farm may close down for good. They are running out
of money.
But I have a dear friend that has arrived on the floor, and I would
certainly yield to the gentleman from California (Mr. LaMalfa) for such
time as he may consume.
Mr. LaMALFA. I appreciate my colleague, Mr. Gohmert, here on pointing
out really the hypocrisy of what's going on with the public's lands,
the public's parks, the way this is being used as leverage by the folks
higher up in this administration to try and extract from the American
people, from those of us in this House, perhaps, what they want.
He mentioned the thing in South Dakota there. Now, there is a lot of
suffering going on in South Dakota where a lot of ranchers have lost a
lot of livestock. And if anything, if your government has the ability
to do something, it should be finding ways to help people, instead of
putting up cones where they aren't supposed to be on a State highway
they claim is on Federal land.
So if all those cones are in the bottom of the canyon that they may
have had to rent or what have you, similar to the barricades they are
putting up around the monuments and memorials here in this town, where
they have to go out and rent barricades on company time with furloughed
employees even to set them up and put sandbags in place, this an insult
to the American people. It is an insult to all of our Honor Flight
folks that have been coming in to town, anybody that would use what
would normally be 24-hour memorials, 24-hour monuments.
So what gives? I don't understand.
[[Page H6452]]
You know, getting to the bottom of this here, we have this impasse in
the Congress here in Washington. Mr. Speaker, it is about time this is
ended because we are hurting the American people by the actions of this
White House, by the impasse, the Senate.
We have sent over various, either all-inclusive CRs, or the bits and
pieces we are doing to try and fund things as a priority, one at a
time, that are very important to the American people. Funding our
veterans, funding the basic ability when we have had fallen soldiers
come home here in this recent news story, that their families can't
even go pick them up because of an unyielding-ness by this
administration, by those in the various bureaucracies to instead work
to help American people in a time of fiscal straits that we are in, to
help as much as possible, they are looking for ways to instead hurt
them as much as possible.
What is with this?
We can even go back to previous impasses where, at least, President
Clinton would sit down with the Republican House or Republican Senate
or, after a while, it was a Republican House and Democrat-controlled
Senate. There has been a mixture, over time, of putting aside the
bitter partisanship and figuring out how we are going to hammer this
out.
If we can do it with President Clinton, we can do it in previous
Presidencies. This isn't the first time there has been this kind of
impasse or this type of slowdown or shutdown. Yet this time seems to be
unique in the meanness and the bitterness that's coming down from the
intractability at the White House level and over on the Senate side as
we have put forward solution after solution.
Mr. GOHMERT. Reclaiming my time just momentarily, it is also worth
noting that here in the House we have actually had numerous Democrats
vote with us. So the only really bipartisan thing that has been going
on in this whole Capitol are our bills to fund certain parts of the
government.
I yield to my friend.
Mr. LaMALFA. Yes, thank you. Yes, we have had unanimous votes go off
this floor with nearly 200 Democrats joining us on two of the pieces of
legislation, and anywhere from 25 to 35 to 40 on many of the other
pieces that have gone out. So it has been a bipartisan effort. I think
both sides of the aisle see this is really a nonpartisan issue on these
issues we are working on.
And so why do they have to rest on Senator Reid's desk over on the
Senate side?
Why do we get threats of vetoes from the White House when we find
agreement?
We would find agreement on almost the entire CR if we got that one
provision there, where even some of the Senators themselves, and now we
are seeing it in the press where, I think you mentioned Wolf Blitzer
has now joined with Senator Manchin as well as Senator Baucus in
thinking the Obama health care take over is a train wreck, that we are
seeing a pretty diverse group of people saying, you know, a 1-year
delay would not be an unreasonable thing.
As we have seen the exchanges rolling out, they are not working very
well. And people, when they are looking finally to find out what the
prices are, what it is going to cost them, maybe people thought they
were going to get it for free. They were going to get a rebate; they
were going to get a lower price. A lot of Americans, especially the
youth, are going to see higher prices. They are not going to see the
savings.
And if you look at the track record of the government operating
things, government generally doesn't do things cheaper, and we are
going to learn this in a very detrimental way to our economy, to the
health care for the people of this country as this Obama health care
takeover continues to roll out.
Mr. GOHMERT. And I am sure that Mr. LaMalfa has had people ask, as I
have had, now, why in the world is ObamaCare costing so dramatically
much more than the health insurance we had before?
And then we get notified we are actually getting less health care.
And my friend mentioned Wolf Blitzer, this article in National Review
online quoted him as saying if they weren't fully ready, talking about
the Web sites, ObamaCare Web sites, they should accept the advice that
a lot of Republicans are giving them, delay it another year, get it
ready, make sure it works.
They know how to do it; but if they didn't get it ready on time, then
maybe fix the problem and make sure people don't have to worry about
it.
But we come back, it is a disaster. It is more expensive than
people's health care was before. They are getting less health care;
they are not keeping their doctor. And most--it sounds like an awful
lot of Americans are not keeping the policy they have. So why is it
costing so much more?
And what people that don't know need to understand, when you hire
thousands and thousands of people who don't provide health care to be
navigators through the health care system, and you hire 18,000-or-so
more IRS officers to go through every detail of people's personal
financial and personal life, and they don't provide any health care,
they may cause some health problems, but they don't provide any health
care--you add all this bureaucracy--it is going to cost more and you
are going to get less treatment, and it is not going to be as good a
treatment.
I yield back to Mr. LaMalfa.
Mr. LaMALFA. Exactly. Now, who are the navigators?
Weren't they supposed to be vetted as to who they are, go through
security?
And as well, look at the track record of the IRS. Do the American
people really want 18,000 or so IRS individuals helping with their
important personal health data?
I mean, there have been laws passed to make sure that that is a very
secure thing. Sometimes even inconvenient to the patient, where you
might be at the doctor and say, well, don't you already have this
information from my other doctor?
There are very strict guidelines in how your information is traded
around. Now it is going to be in the hands of navigators that are
unvetted and with IRS agents that have some very huge security issues
already with the way that is being used against certain organizations.
Mr. GOHMERT. And there is a story today from the Daily Caller about
the White House IRS exchanged confidential taxpayer information by
Patrick Howley. So if you think your personal information is secure
with the IRS, or with the Federal Government, it is already showing you
should not be comfortable with it happening.
I yield to my friend.
Mr. LaMALFA. The most outrageous thing for most folks, though, is
that the waivers, many individuals in this country are asked for and
got to be outside of this as it was coming together; and more and more
are asking for it, some are being turned down.
But especially, I guess, buying off Members of Congress through the
OPM, allowing Congress and Capitol Hill to be exempt from this. If it
is such a great program, if it is going to work so well, why would we
be subject to a waiver?
Why are they talking about there would be a brain drain on Capitol
Hill because everybody would be leaving because they can't afford the
health insurance?
How does that work?
Mr. GOHMERT. Well, apparently, our time is expiring. I appreciate so
much my friend, Mr. LaMalfa, helping me. And we should not be treated
any differently. The President and his family need to sign up.
But, Mr. Speaker, I think it is worth noting that when I went out to
the U.S. Marine Corps War Memorial, the Iwo Jima Memorial, this
administration had tried to prevent World War II veterans from getting
to the symbol of Mount Suribachi, and there were three busloads of
World War II vets up there at the memorial, and the barricade was in
pieces.
God bless our World War II veterans.
Mr. Speaker, I yield back the balance of my time.
____________________