[Congressional Record Volume 160, Number 55 (Friday, April 4, 2014)]
[House]
[Pages H2952-H2957]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




  LET'S DO FOR THE NEXT GENERATION WHAT THE LAST GENERATION DID FOR US

  The SPEAKER pro tempore. Under the Speaker's announced policy of 
January 3, 2013, the gentleman from Texas (Mr. Gohmert) is recognized 
for 60 minutes as the designee of the majority leader.
  Mr. GOHMERT. Mr. Speaker, I just want to chime in in agreement with 
the last thing that my colleague across the aisle said. He said let's 
do for the next generation what the last generation did for us.
  Mr. Speaker, I think that is incredibly important. What a great thing 
my Democratic friend said, because every generation before ours has 
tried to live within its means.

                              {time}  1500

  This generation that is in power in this Congress is the first 
generation that continues to spend not only children's money, but 
grandchildren's and great-grandchildren's money.
  We have accumulated such debt that our children are not only not 
going to rise up and call us blessed, they are going to rise up and 
swear at our names. Because this is the generation that has felt that 
it was so incredibly important that we needed to put our children, 
grandchildren, and great-grandchildren in hock just so we would not 
have to quit spending money so irresponsibly.
  I could not agree more with that last statement. Let's do for the 
next generation what the last generation did for us. Thank goodness I 
have a friend on the other side saying that. He pointed out the verse 
of Scripture:

       To whom much is given, much is required.

  We have been given much. We have been blessed more than any nation in 
the history of the world. We have got more freedoms than Solomon's 
Israel could have ever dreamed of and more individual assets than any 
nation in history could have dreamed of. We have been given much.
  As a result, this generation has become so self-centered, so 
narcicisstic, so self-indulgent, so obese that we want to engorge 
ourselves at the expense of future generations.
  Let me just say I haven't decided what I am going to do about the 
Ryan budget. I am still going through it. Paul Ryan and I have had some 
very severe disagreements during my 9-plus years here, but I know this: 
he does not want to hurt future generations. He wants to do for the 
next generation what the last generation did for us.
  And we will not--we cannot--do that if we are spending money so 
irresponsibly that generations to follow us will be paying the debts 
and the interest on those debts without getting a dime of the benefits 
that we engorged ourselves with in this generation. So it is time to be 
responsible.
  I disagree with something my colleague said when he said, basically, 
the Ryan bill destroys Medicare as we know it. I don't know if I like 
what Paul Ryan has been able to do about Medicare. I would have handled 
it differently. It is one of the things I am struggling with.
  What he is trying to do is what Democrats should have done for 40 
years before the Republicans took office. They had the majority before 
the 1994 election. They put us on a course to destroying Social 
Security. Since the sixties, after Medicare was passed, we have been on 
a course to bankrupt Medicare so our children and grandchildren will 
have nothing for themselves because we spent it all on ourselves.
  So I don't know if it was the best way to do it, but I know what Paul 
Ryan was trying to do. He is trying to make sure that we protect our 
seniors and we make sure that we can have future generations have some 
of the same protections. And from what I was reading, he is trying to 
do that. Some changes would come in Social Security, from what I am 
reading, but not for anybody 56 or older.
  Anyway, I am still making up my mind on the bill, but I know what 
Paul Ryan was trying to do. He was trying to do an honorable thing for 
future generations, just like my colleague said he felt we should be 
doing.
  I also want to get to another topic today that has been so much on 
the minds and hearts of people all over the country this week as 
Killeen, Fort Hood, Texas, has had another mass shooting.
  The first one was in the civilian sector in a cafeteria. That caused 
Texas to rise up and pass a concealed-carry permit law, which was 
driven by a woman whose parents were killed there. She had to put her 
gun in the glove compartment and couldn't take it in. She could have 
saved her parents had we had a concealed-carry permit law in place at 
the time of that mass shooting.
  I have had people ask, as I know my friend from Georgia has: What 
have you guys in Congress done since the last shooting at Fort Hood to 
protect our soldiers? What has the Commander in Chief done to protect 
the military members under his command?
  Under this Commander in Chief, we saw in Afghanistan that in half the 
time he had twice as many fatalities--even more than that in injuries--
of our military members in Afghanistan. That is half the time of the 
Bush administration and about twice as many fatalities.
  We have seen what happened there. But what about right here?
  After the first Fort Hood shooting, it was an outrage--as it should 
be to every military member and everybody that understands anything 
about the military--when this Commander in Chief allowed the incident 
to be called workplace violence when, clearly, Nidal Hasan, according 
to all the witnesses, stood up, made the universal cry that a radical 
Islamist terrorist makes, claiming, in essence, that he is going to 
kill innocent people on behalf of a god who likes people like him to 
kill innocent people, just as they think there is a god that liked 
planes being flown into buildings to kill thousands of innocent men, 
women, and children. That is a god I don't know, and I know that is a 
god I will never meet.
  But I want to talk at this time about what we should be doing for our 
soldiers.
  I have got a bill that legislative counsel is working on right now. 
We will be filing it early next week. We anticipate calling it the Save 
Our Soldiers bill, or SOS. They have been crying ``SOS.'' It is just 
that nobody in their highest chain of command has listened.
  Well, Congress is listening and we are going to get something done, 
if there are enough people down the hall in the Senate who worry about 
their election next November that they will actually take this bill up 
and do something to protect our soldiers, other than lip service. Lip 
service doesn't really protect you against an incoming round.
  At this point, I would yield to my dear friend from South Carolina 
(Mr. Duncan).
  Mr. DUNCAN of South Carolina. I want to thank the gentleman from 
Texas.

[[Page H2953]]

  There was a tragedy this week at Fort Hood, Texas. The folks in South 
Carolina once again stand with the people in Texas.
  The President's former Chief of Staff, and now the mayor of Chicago, 
Rahm Emanuel, infamously said:

       Never let a crisis go to waste.

  That is what we are seeing going on today with Harry Reid looking to 
use the recent Fort Hood tragedy to pursue his agenda of control. Harry 
Reid said this week that the recent shooting should renew discussion 
about gun control, and then went on to talk about background checks and 
mental health issues.
  Mr. Speaker, these comments have nothing to do with the facts at 
hand. However, Harry Reid wants to use this as a way to restrict 
Americans' Second Amendment rights. I don't agree with his motives, but 
I do agree with his suggestion that we need to revive a discussion on 
the Second Amendment. It should reawaken our discussions about 
Americans' constitutionally affirmed rights to keep and bear arms to 
defend ourselves, to defend our families, to defend our property, and, 
ultimately, to defend this great Nation.
  With regard to our military, the gentleman from Texas and I had a 
conversation earlier. I fully understand that when you join the 
military, you give up some rights. You give up the right to speak 
unless you are spoken to or it is appropriate. You give up the right to 
assemble peacefully. You assemble when they tell you to on the parade 
ground, I have been told, but you don't have the right to assemble. You 
don't have a right to trial by jury. We set the jury of court-martial 
for the military. I get that.

  Yet we trust these soldiers with both high-tech and low-tech weapon 
systems that they use to defend this great Nation, but then we turn 
around and create these gun-free zones on their bases, which have 
resulted in two incidents. Gun-free zones have resulted in two 
incidents at Fort Hood and the killing of unarmed and law-abiding 
citizens.
  I will mention, as the gentleman from Texas did, that the President 
wants to call this an episode of workplace violence. Well, nothing 
could be further from the truth. Major Hasan was an Islamist jihadist 
intent on doing harm in the war against America that we see raging all 
over the world in places like Afghanistan and Iraq.
  The folks that were wounded there and the soldiers that were killed 
at Fort Hood deserve the medals that they have earned, and it is time 
to call this for what it was. It was an episode of terrorism, and the 
original Fort Hood shooting incident requires, I believe, that those 
victims receive the medals. That is something I renew the call on.
  I raised this issue about the travesty this week and the gun-free 
zones to my constituents via Twitter and Facebook. These are some of 
the things they had to say.
  A lady named Carolyn Chandler says:

       Our own soldiers, without guns, shot down on our own base 
     in our own country. A ban on guns gives the criminals free 
     targets. The criminals will have the guns. Criminals do not 
     obey laws.

  Steve Carey says:

       The victims at Fort Hood are not dangerous. The politicians 
     who have disarmed the soldiers at a military base are 
     dangerous.

  Ken Crowe says:

       We don't need more gun laws; we need fewer gun-free zones.

  I agree with him on that.
  It is time for America to wake up. The only lawbreakers in Fort Hood, 
Texas, in both of these tragic events were the killers themselves who 
took a firearm into a gun-free zone.
  I am reminded of an old adage that says, when seconds count, the 
police that can protect you in these gun-free zones are just minutes 
away.
  When seconds count, the police are just minutes away. Think about 
that, America. It is time to let our soldiers and law-abiding Americans 
defend themselves and reaffirm our Second Amendment and constitutional 
rights in this country
  I appreciate the gentleman bringing forth the SOS law. I look forward 
to cosponsoring that. Let's allow law-abiding Americans, soldiers, 
sailors, airmen, and marines to defend themselves. SOS sends a warning 
signal. It is an alarm. It is put on the beach when someone needs to be 
rescued. Well, guess what? The people in gun-free zones need to be 
rescued as well by having the ability to defend themselves.
  So I thank the gentleman from Texas for giving me the time to talk 
about this important are issue. May God bless him, may God bless the 
Republic of Texas, and may God bless the United States of America.
  Mr. GOHMERT. The gentleman from South Carolina has just made clear 
why I am such a big fan of his.
  And, yes, I was in the Army. By naming the bill ``Save our 
Soldiers,'' I am not saying the Army is more important, because it is, 
generically speaking, inclusive of our soldiers, sailors, marines, 
Coast Guard, and everybody that is in the uniformed military. That is 
who it pertains to.

                              {time}  1515

  But we wanted a title that people would remember and think of all of 
our soldiers, sailors, airmen, marines, Coast Guard, people that are 
protecting us.
  The greatest irony still comes back to this: we have military members 
who are qualified to fire tank weapons. We have got military members--I 
think the largest thing I fired in the Army was a 105 Howitzer. But we 
have a massive number of weapons, rocket-propelled grenades of 
different kinds, SAM missiles. We have got all kinds of things that our 
military are able to utilize.
  We have got airmen who operate airplanes that drop thousands and 
thousands of pounds of bombs, and yet for too long political 
correctness has said, even though they may fire 105 Howitzers or some 
of the most modern weapons we have, tanks, drop thousands of pounds of 
bombs, we probably can't trust them to carry a little pistol. Yeah, 
they may be on a ship. They may fire rounds that are bigger than I am, 
but, gee, we might not better trust them with a pistol.
  And what we have seen over and over in the tragedies here in the 
United States, the norm is for a criminal who wants to shoot and hurt 
and kill people to go to a gun-free area. That is why the shooter in 
the theater in Colorado could have gone to much closer theaters, but 
those theaters did not restrict the right to have weapons in them, so 
they probably would have had someone who could have pulled a gun very 
quickly and ended the rampage.
  From the reports of what happened this week at Fort Hood, when the 
hero, female military member pulled her weapon, he took his own life 
rather than risk ending up in a wheelchair or worse. He wasn't going to 
take chances on firing at anyone else once someone had a weapon leveled 
on him.
  We have lost enough lives in gun-free zones. It is time to allow the 
law-abiding, the qualified, to protect themselves, to save our 
military.
  I hope that our leadership will allow the bill to be brought to the 
floor here because I know good and well, if we bring it to the floor 
here--I am open to amendments, suggestions--we get a bill like that 
passed here, then the pressure will be on the Senate.
  Yes, I know Senator Reid protects his Democratic Members all he can. 
If there is a bill that his Members would get defeated for voting 
against, then he just doesn't bring it to the floor for a vote. 
Protecting his Members from having to cast a vote for a bill that is a 
good bill or against a bill that would get them defeated because it was 
a good bill, he just keeps it from going to the floor. We have seen 
that in so many of the bills we have passed here from the House that 
would have an immediate helpful effect on our economy. It would have 
had an immediate helpful effect on our government.
  For heaven's sake, I know the mainstream media will never get this 
right. Even our own Speaker didn't understand what happened that day, 
apparently. But last fall, our House of Representatives--a majority, at 
least--believed that ObamaCare was very detrimental to this Nation, to 
its economy, to people's health. So what did we do? We did what we 
believed, and we voted to completely defund ObamaCare. That is what we 
believed. That was the vote we did first.
  But understanding that in Washington you have to have two Houses pass 
a bill, we passed a compromise measure that simply said, look, 
obviously ObamaCare is not ready for prime time. You have had going on 
4 years to get ready, and it is not ready

[[Page H2954]]

for prime time, so we are offering you a gift, Democrats in the Senate 
and Democrats in the House. We are offering a gift. Our compromise is 
this: we passed the bill. It said let's suspend ObamaCare for a year. 
Clearly, it is not ready. Many people will be hurt.
  That was an incredible gift of a compromise to the Senate Democrats 
and the House Democrats and even to the President himself. But our 
Democratic friends down the hall had bought in to the mainstream 
conventional wisdom that if the Democrats could cause a shutdown, the 
mainstream media would protect them by blaming Republicans, and then 
that would help them win the majority in the House in the next 
election. So Harry Reid refused to even bring that gift that 
Republicans in the House offered to the Senate Democrats, the 
President, and House Democrats. He wouldn't accept it.
  I bet there are times that their Democrats in the House and Senate 
really wish they had accepted our offer of compromise and said: Okay. 
All right. We don't want to do it; but, okay, we will suspend ObamaCare 
for a year.
  There were some in our party that felt like, gosh, if we suspend it 
for a year, who knows what will happen in a year from now. Maybe we are 
better off letting America find out how bad it is so then we can get it 
repealed outright. But we knew the suffering that would ensue once that 
bill fully kicked in, and how could we want people to suffer like we 
knew they would once ObamaCare kicked in?
  But Harry Reid wouldn't bring that to the floor. I didn't think it 
was wise when they rejected a clear offer of compromise down the hall 
by refusing to even bring it to the floor for a vote. We funded 
everything Harry Reid wanted. We just had a 1-year suspension on 
ObamaCare.
  So then we came back and said, okay, the President has 
unconstitutionally signed an executive order that put off the business 
mandate for a year, so we will offer what was an incredible compromise. 
We will agree to postpone the individual mandate in a legal manner--not 
unconstitutional, but a legal manner--and we will go ahead and put in 
writing that the business mandate would be suspended for a year, and 
that would protect the President's order.
  Harry Reid wouldn't bring it to the floor for a vote. He knew good 
and well if he brought either one of our compromise bills to the floor 
that there would be Democrats that would either have to vote for the 
bill or, for sure, lose their Senate seat come November--Democrats in 
the Senate, that is. So he protected them and didn't allow that to come 
to the floor. And his Members seemed quite happy to just sit back and 
let Harry Reid try to protect them by not allowing them to vote.
  Then, at 1:10 a.m. on October 1, when it was clear to us here in the 
House that Harry Reid was not going to even accept a gift of a 1-year 
suspension or the following compromise offered gift of a year 
suspension of the individual mandate and a year suspension of the 
business mandate, then we did what was almost unthinkable--bid against 
ourselves for the third time. We voted to approve conferees from the 
House. These are people who would have reached an agreement if the 
Senate had bothered to even appoint conferees or negotiators.
  It was understood here, if Harry Reid will go ahead and appoint 
Senate conferees, they can start immediately, and before even anybody 
is required to be at work at 8 a.m., we could probably have a deal 
worked out, get it passed, and people would have never known there was 
a shutdown for 8 hours. But Harry Reid was so determined to follow 
through on what was the mainstream conventional wisdom: Harry, if you 
can just cause a shutdown, the Republicans will be blamed--they didn't 
even know the Speaker would accept the blame because he didn't know 
what we did that day--but they will be assessed the blame by the 
mainstream media, and then you can get the majority back.
  So he forced a shutdown. Actually, he tried to do that a few years 
ago, and our leadership and the Republican side capitulated at 10:30 
the night that the shutdown was going to begin at 12 midnight. 
Probably, if the truth be known, the Democratic Leader, Harry Reid, may 
have hoped that he would have a shutdown at midnight that night because 
he consistently said: It is my way or nothing, my way or nothing, no 
compromise whatsoever. Of course, our leadership came back and said: 
Well, we actually cut $26 billion. And it turned out we did no such 
thing. But, anyway, we came so close to a shutdown that night.
  But some of us still have enough faith in the American people that we 
believe a majority will ferret out the truth, come to the truth, 
regardless of what the mainstream media says, regardless of what 
anybody on television who gets a thrill up their leg when they see 
certain Democrats, no matter what they say, eventually the majority of 
the American people will eventually come to the truth and that will 
save our Nation.
  So, clearly, there are areas in which we agree, as my Democrat friend 
indicated when he said let's do for the next generation what the last 
generation did for us. That is all I want to try to do. Let's give our 
children and grandchildren a nation where they have the freedoms that 
we have enjoyed, where they have the privacy that we used to enjoy, 
where they don't have $20 trillion of debt from the prior generation 
because the prior generation was so selfish, so self-centered that they 
didn't even care to clean up the waste, fraud, and abuse in the 
government.
  I read an article that talked in terms of the massive amount of fraud 
just at the State Department. Here is an article, April 4, today, from 
The Fiscal Times, Brianna Ehley:

       The State Department has no idea what happened to $6 
     billion used to pay its contractors. In a special 
     ``management alert'' made public Thursday, the State 
     Department's inspector general, Steve Linick, warned 
     ``significant financial risk and a lack of internal control 
     at the Department has led to billions,'' that is with a b, 
     ``billions of unaccounted dollars over the last six years.''

  Mr. Speaker, by the way, that is while this President was in office.
  The unaccountability is dramatic. Future generations will have to pay 
for the waste, fraud, and abuse that not only will we not clean up, but 
we borrowed money in our children and grandchildren's name to lavish on 
massive, wasteful, fraudulent government, abusive government, because 
we couldn't control ourselves.

                              {time}  1530

  There is going to be a price to pay for the irresponsibility of this 
government in the decades ahead. If we do not get this country turned 
around and back on a responsible track, then there will be books 
written about the rise and fall of the United States of America. And 
our generation will be blamed, and the line of my Democratic friend 
will be at the forefront in that book, that this generation refused to 
do for the next generation what was done for us.
  Mr. Speaker, I had hoped--that is why I am still here. That is why I 
have run again. I have hoped that we are going to get back on track, 
that we will be able to rein in the government, that at some point, 
Harry Reid will be willing to bring bills to the floor that we have 
sent down there passed by a majority here in the House that do things 
like get the economy going, that allow businesses to start hiring again 
without worry about just irresponsibility and overregulation.
  We need to be providing privacy for Americans that began 
deteriorating in prior administrations before this but that this 
administration has taken to an all-time high with regard to individual 
privacy information taken away and held onto by the government.
  People want to know, gee, well just what does the government have 
that would be invasive of our privacy? Well, for one thing, we now know 
the NSA has logs of every call that every American makes. That is 
outrageous. It is unnecessary. And we can't go into classified 
briefings. But, Mr. Speaker, I stand here to tell you that even though 
there are some in our intelligence that have said, gee, if we had not 
gathered every log of every phone call ever made, we may not have 
stopped a subway bombing, like we did. And from the evidence that we 
know from the public arena, it was clear--it sure seemed to me, as a 
former prosecutor and judge and chief justice--that there was plenty of 
evidence for an officer of the law--Federal, State, or local--to go 
before a judge and swear this information and get a warrant from the 
judge

[[Page H2955]]

and go after an individual that was about to try to set off a bomb. It 
looked like, to me, from just what is available in the public, that 
there was plenty of information that would have allowed a judge to sign 
a warrant. So not only are they getting every log of every phone call 
made, but we are not quite sure, even now, whether some are right to 
say, well, actually, they could pull the actual discussions of the 
conversation, or whether they couldn't.
  But we also know that under ObamaCare, the Federal Government gets 
every record of everyone's most personal and private health insurance. 
And for so long in this body, I have heard my friends on this side of 
the aisle complain about, we don't want government in the bedroom. And 
then without a single Republican vote, they passed the ObamaCare bill 
that not only put the government in your bedroom, but it is in your 
bathroom, your kitchen, your living room, your garage. It is with your 
Realtor. It is just everywhere you can imagine. The government is 
there. That is with the health care law and the other bills that the 
Democrats have passed while they were in the majority.
  So if it is not enough that the Federal Government--and, of course, 
we have to give credit to General Electric, because I understand they 
have got the contract to gather this information. So it is not just the 
government. It is cronies of this administration in private business 
that also have this information.
  Anyway, the government has got your most private secrets, health 
care-wise. They know everybody you are calling. There is information in 
the public press that says they can comb through every email you send.
  And then we find out that one of the bills that the Democrat majority 
in the House and Senate passed was involving the Consumer Financial 
Protection Bureau. That group has apparently decided that in order to 
protect us, they need to gather everybody's credit card, debit card 
information just so they can protect us.
  So there we go. The Federal Government has got all of your medical 
information. They have got all of your credit card and debit card 
information, purchases, loans, all of those kinds of things. You have 
got regulators, Federal regulators going into banks, checking on your 
loans and things like that. I mean, is there anything left in the way 
of privacy that this Federal Government has not already co-opted and 
gotten access to without a warrant?
  I mean, I was very serious, and the judges I knew were very serious 
about making sure there was probable cause because that is the 
constitutional requirement. You have to have probable cause before you 
get a warrant. And there were times when law officers would come to me 
in my judge's chambers or on the bench during a recess or at my home at 
2 or 3 a.m., and I would read the affidavit and the officer would swear 
to the information. But if it wasn't adequate, I, along with other 
judges I know would say, I am sorry. Probable cause is not here. There 
are not enough facts provided to justify going after somebody's private 
property or private information. I can't sign the warrant. And there 
were times where officers would say, give us another chance, a little 
more time. We see your point. We will be back. And they would come back 
later, and then you go, okay, well, yes, this is probable cause. 
Certainly this raises probable cause. Sometimes they wouldn't be able 
to get it. But that was the constitutional standard by which law 
officers and courts are supposed to live.
  And now, in the name of a little security, we have to stand there--I 
can't even count the number of times I have had to stand there with my 
arms open and be groped by Federal agents. Sometimes you can tell they 
have got a little bit of a grudge. And we giving that away because we 
want security.
  Okay. We want health care, so let's let the government know every one 
of our most intimate private secrets in our health care records. And, 
you know, we want to make sure that some bank doesn't take advantage of 
us. Heaven forbid the investment banks take any more advantage of us. 
Man, the investments banks brought us to the brink of ruin.
  And by the way, for those who don't know, Mr. Speaker, Wall Street 
executives and their spouses donate four-to-one for Democrats over 
Republicans. I know people think it is the Republicans that have all 
the rich people on their side. People are beginning to find out, it is 
middle class. And actually, poor people in America are coming to the 
conclusion, wait a minute. We have one party that keeps us dependent 
upon the government for the little crumbs it throws out. We have got 
another party over here that wants us to be president of the company, 
president of the country. They want us to have the best education 
possible. And they want us to be able to speak the language of this 
country that gets you to be president of the country, of the 
corporation, of the business, English. And gee, they want us to have a 
job. They don't want us to be beholden and having to beg the government 
all the time. They want us to be able to have independence and have our 
own money and make our own decisions. Gee, maybe, as a poor person, I 
would be better off supporting the Republican Party.
  As I taught a combined sociology class at Texas College not that long 
ago--Texas College started as an African American college and is still 
prominently African American. But I am telling you, the African 
Americans in that class had some good ideas about how we straighten up 
welfare, how we get people more independent, how we get our government 
on track. Those are folks that had some good ideas. And some of the 
things that they proposed, like a work requirement, well, that was put 
on when Republicans took the majority back in January of '95. And then 
this President stripped that out--I would say unconstitutionally. He 
did it with an executive order. He changed a law that was duly passed 
and signed into law by Bill Clinton. And it ended up being one of his 
most proud accomplishments because what we saw after the requirement 
for work for welfare was, for the first time in 30 years, single moms' 
incomes, when adjusted for inflation, started going up. It had been 
flatlined for about 30 years, since aid to dependent children had 
started, since welfare had started, single moms' incomes, adjusted for 
inflation, had been flatlined for about 30 years.
  And once the Gingrich-led Republican revolution took hold and a work 
requirement was put on for the first time in 30 years, single moms had 
more take-home money. They had more freedom. They had more autonomy 
away from the government, where they didn't have to be dependent on the 
government. They could make their own decisions without some law being 
passed by Congress to send them another crumb. It gave them money, more 
than they had ever had, and it gave them independence.
  That is what the people I know want for women, for African Americans, 
for everyone in America, for Hispanic Americans, for anyone, Asian 
Americans. It is what we want for Americans.
  One of the things that meant so much to me on 9/12/2001, as we stood 
out there, hundreds--maybe thousands of people in our town of Tyler--
and I know it was going on in Longview. And actually, all over east 
Texas it was going on. People came out to the town square, and they 
prayed together. And no court would have had the nerve to tell America 
on 9/12, you have no right to pray in public. They wouldn't have had 
the right to say that on 9/12/2001. So we were praying together as 
citizens out there.
  We sang hymns. We sang ``Amazing Grace'' and ``God Bless America.'' 
What is ``God Bless America''? It is a prayer asking for God's blessing 
to continue on this country. We held hands as we sang ``God Bless 
America.'' People by the millions did this all over America on 9/12/
2001.
  And as I looked around among all of those people, my American 
friends, there was not a hyphenated American in the group. We had all 
national religions, races, genders. I mean, we had all kinds of groups 
represented, but we were Americans. There were no Euro Americans, 
African Americans, Asian Americans, Irish Americans, Hispanic 
Americans. There were Americans. And we stood together. We prayed 
together. We sang together. And there was no mess out there. We were 
together, one people.
  As that great speech given by Senator Barack Obama pointed out, there 
shouldn't be a red America and a blue America; a white America and a 
black

[[Page H2956]]

America. There ought to be one America. But we have gotten into the 
politics of division. That is why the Senate refused to take up our 
repeated efforts at compromise to avoid shutting down the government.
  The politics of division, that is why the World War II memorial was 
barricaded and massive man- and woman-hours were utilized to try to 
keep veterans out of the Iwo Jima Memorial for Marines, the World War 
II Memorial. I couldn't believe they had the nerve to put up a barrier 
to the Martin Luther King, Jr., Memorial.
  And I, along with my friend from Mississippi, opened up the streets, 
opened up the barriers there at the World War II Memorial. I clipped 
the yellow ribbon, the crime scene tape. I moved one barricade. He 
moved the other. The World War II vets came in.

                              {time}  1545

  Steve King, a few others, and I went out to the marine memorial, and 
we opened up that memorial. We checked out their other days and made 
sure that that was accessible. One day, it turned out there was a bus 
of World War II veterans that had come out there. There was a big, 
plastic barricade shaped like the concrete barricades. This was 
plastic, and it was filled with water, a wooden barricade there. And 
that bus of World War II veterans--many of them that had fought in the 
Philippines, that had been to the top of the mountain and seen that 
flag be planted up there--their bus ran over that barricade.
  I was so proud of them. I ran up there, and I got up there, they were 
already out there enjoying the memorial. These people that saw that 
flag that was planted there now were enjoying the memorial to them.
  When we came back by, we were going to stop at the Reverend Martin 
Luther King, Jr. Memorial. They had barricades up all up there. And I 
was so proud that there were a slew of Americans. Most were African 
Americans. I was so proud of them. They didn't let the barricades stop 
them. They climbed right over and went in to that wonderful memorial. 
And I didn't even have to stop to open that up. They had already taken 
care it.
  That is the politics of division: try to make people suffer and blame 
it on the other party. We need to be back to being Americans, not 
hyphenated, not Republican Americans, Democrat Americans, Tea Party 
Americans. For Heaven's sake, the Tea Party, all it means and all it is 
is a group who have been Taxed Enough Already. They are tired of the 
waste, fraud, and abuse in government. They want a responsible 
government so that we can do, as my Democratic friend said just a while 
ago that he wanted for us to do, for the next generation what the last 
generation did for us. That is all the Tea Party wants. They are not 
racist. They got all races in the meetings I go to. They just want us 
to be responsible and do for the next generation what the last one did 
for us.
  So, Mr. Speaker, I hope that we will be able to bring Save Our 
Soldiers to the floor. I know back 3 years ago, when I was concerned 
that our military was going to be used as a pawn to try to get people 
to vote for a bad continuing resolution under the threat that, gee, if 
you don't vote for this bad continuing resolution, our military members 
won't be paid, so shame on you. Well, I was furious that our military 
members had to even have it cross their minds that they might not get 
paid. So I filed a bill that would ensure that if there were a 
government shutdown that our military members' pay would be treated 
like Social Security is. I know there is a lot of fear mongering about 
that. But if there is a shutdown, the law is and continues to be and 
was 3 years ago, that it is basically on automatic pilot. If there is a 
shutdown, then the Social Security checks continue to go out. If 
someone is entitled to more Social Security during the shutdown, they 
don't get the increase until after the shutdown is over, and then they 
would get it. But that is what the bill would do for the military.
  I am grateful--even though our Speaker did not let that bill come to 
the floor, I was grateful that so many millions of Americans came on to 
some Web site set up for that purpose to say put our military pay on 
automatic pilot just like Social Security is so if there is a shutdown, 
people that have their lives in harm's way don't have to worry about 
their loved ones getting paid.
  Even last fall, we saw military members whose families--when they 
were dying in harm's way for us, this administration wasn't even going 
to let them get paid. It was really outrageous. We even passed a bill 
last fall to make sure that finally the military wouldn't have to worry 
about it, and the Defense Department and this administration 
interpreted it in such a way to inflict as much harm on survivors of 
our military heroes as this administration could. It was wrong. But 
they did it. It is the politics of division.
  It is going to be important, Mr. Speaker, that we let people know who 
the real heroes are for this country. Heroes would include those who 
are willing to lay down their lives for others.
  John 15:13:

       Greater love knows no man than this, that a man lays down 
     his life for his friends.

  That includes generically men and women, anyone willing to lay down 
their lives, not to kill innocent people, but to save lives. That is 
what we have always attributed as a hero here in America. And yet we 
find out--I didn't know until I read an article by my friend, Andy 
McCarthy, about this on the President's Web site, but whitehouse.gov 
regularly profiles young, left-wing radicals that it calls ``Champions 
of Change.''
  I am quoting from the article of Andrew McCarthy. It is dated today:

       Now, in a space of just a few days, two of the President's 
     champions have made news.
       One is Linda Sarsour, described by the White House as a 
     ``community activist'' who specializes in ``community 
     organizing'' and ``immigrants' rights advocacy,'' and who 
     ``conducts training nationally on the importance of civic 
     engagement in the Arab and Muslim American community.'' 
     Evidently, civic engagement need not be civil engagement. Ms. 
     Sarsour has joined her voice to that of CAIR.

  CAIR is the Council on American-Islamic Relations that two Federal 
courts have declared is a front organization for the Muslim 
Brotherhood, which has appropriately been declared as a terrorist 
organization by Egypt, and others are looking at doing the same, 
including even Great Britain. But not here. No. We take our lead from 
whatever CAIR says in this administration.
  But this so-called Champion of Change, according to the White House 
Web site, has reacted to the widely viewed acclaimed film ``Honor 
Diaries,'' a film about the brutalization and systematic inequality 
faced by women in Muslim majority society. And this is what Ms. Sarsour 
had said:

       How many times do we have to tell white women that we do 
     not need to be saved by them? Is there code language I need 
     to use to get through?

  As Mr. McCarthy notes, he said:

       I would note that the executive producer of ``Honor 
     Diaries'' is the heroic Somali human rights activist Ayaan 
     Hirsi Ali. It features several courageous Muslim women, 
     including Pakistani-born Qanta Ahmed, a medical doctor who 
     has an important column about the film and the campaign to 
     suppress it at NRO today.

  He also points to Bonnie Youn as a Champion of Change as so named by 
the White House. And Matt Boyle with Breitbart has a column that says:

       An amnesty advocate that President Obama's White House 
     publicly promoted as part of its Champion of Change series 
     has been indicted in Federal Court on charges of fraud.

  And it goes on down. Part of it reads:

       The second indictment count alleges that Youn violated a 
     Federal immigration law that prohibits bringing illegal 
     aliens into the United States and harboring them, alleging 
     she did so ``for the purpose of commercial advantage and 
     private financial gain.''

  So, apparently, a Champion of Change is someone who there is probable 
cause to believe is engaged in human trafficking.
  Mr. Speaker, this country has to reawaken. If we are going to do for 
the next generation what the last generation did for us, we have got to 
stop the indebtedness that is growing every second of every day. And we 
keep adding to the debt and the interest that mounts on top of that. We 
have got to get more responsible in protecting privacy and not allowing 
this administration to further go into people's bedrooms, bathrooms, 
credit card records, phone calls, and emails. We have got to stop the 
insanity, or not only will the

[[Page H2957]]

next generation rise up and not call us blessed, they will curse our 
names.
  I am here because I have hope. We are going to turn things around. We 
have just got to keep fighting. With that, Mr. Speaker, I yield back 
the balance of my time.

                          ____________________