[Congressional Record Volume 160, Number 143 (Thursday, November 20, 2014)]
[House]
[Pages H8150-H8154]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]
EBOLA
The SPEAKER pro tempore. Under the Speaker's announced policy of
January 3, 2013, the gentleman from Texas (Mr. Gohmert) is recognized
for the remainder of the hour as the designee of the majority leader.
Mr. GOHMERT. Mr. Speaker, my dear friend from Pennsylvania (Mr.
Kelly) is exactly right. We haven't heard the last of Ebola. It will
continue to mutate. It will continue to be a threat.
As this President is sending around 3,000 or so of our military
members to west Africa--and they have been told they are going to be
given gloves and masks and are urged to wash their hands and feet
several times a day--basically, what that says is the men and women who
have sworn and pledged their lives to protect ours are not going to be
adequately protected by this administration. The rules of engagement
already put our military at risk, and now, we are going to send them to
Ebola-infested countries.
The initial report said, initially, our military will not be seeing
Ebola patients, but they are certainly going to come into contact with
people who have had exposure to Ebola.
I recall our President George W. Bush--a good man, a smart man, a
witty, clever gentleman, despite what some might say--but he asked
after 9/11, in essence, who would have ever dreamed someone would fly a
plane into a building like a bomb? My thought immediately was, ``Well,
actually, Tom Clancy wrote about that several years ago.'' It was not a
radical Islamist as had happened on 9/11/2001.
The late Tom Clancy had quite an imagination, but he did his homework
in amazing fashion. Some have said his books had too much detail in
them, but one of his latter books had research going on in Africa with
the strain of monkeys that is the one strain that is believed and has
support for having been transferred through the air instead of through
liquid body fluids.
In the fiction novel, Clancy had somebody working to develop that
strain into a mutated strain, since it mutates constantly into one that
people could pass through the air, and then it was used to infect our
military or expose our military and many Americans.
Basically, in his fiction novel, that allowed radical Islamists to
take over much of the Middle East, while our military had been exposed
to Ebola and much of it was quarantined.
There are many things Tom Clancy has written about that I hope and
pray never happen. That is one of them, but since some things that Tom
Clancy's mind dreamed up as a fiction writer novel actually came to
fruition, we shouldn't think for a minute that if Clancy could dream it
up, our enemies could as well.
Immigration
Mr. GOHMERT. I have been on the border many nights, all hours of the
night, and I have seen people just as they have finished crossing. The
first time I went, I expected I would see people crossing in droves,
not realizing the coyotes--the paid employees of the gangs, drug
cartels that bring people across--they don't want to get caught because
if a drug cartel or gang employee gets caught by one of the Texas boats
running up and down--I say Texas boats because our administration has
not provided any Federal boats in the area most crossed down south of
McAllen.
There are no Federal boats down there. It is an area where Texas has
stepped up and provided a number of boats that are zipping up and down
the river, and you can hear them coming.
The coyotes don't want to be caught. They know if the Texas DPS
catches them, they will destroy the raft, and that will put the coyote
in very deep trouble for getting caught, so they don't want you to see
them crossing.
As the State of Texas has placed DPS officers, Texas Rangers, game
wardens up on the high bank--even in the dark, with just the least bit
of light at all, you can see their silhouettes--and coyotes won't
cross, again, if they think they are about to get caught.
Once across, groups anywhere from eight to 90 will immediately look
for someone to surrender to unless, of course, they are like the people
I have seen fleeing down there, who apparently had drugs or something
they didn't want to be caught with.
It is an open border, far too open, and now, before the border is
secured, with talk of amnesty and legal status that our Border
Patrolmen have assured over and over again causes a massive surge, a
massive influx of people trying to get to the United States, just the
President or anyone in Washington talking about amnesty or any type of
legal status helps lure Central Americans and others to their demise,
girls to being raped, sold into sex trafficking. Many make it across;
some don't.
I would think the most compassionate thing that the government of the
United States could do is, number one, secure the border so that
families are not tempted to send their little children, little girls up
with other people, paying gang members to bring
[[Page H8151]]
them up, who frequently rape them as they come to the U.S.
A good neighbor would not only secure their border, but then we would
help Mexico and Central American countries, as we did Colombia, to
overcome the drug cartels.
Colombia had made great strides I think, largely in part, because
they had a President like President Uribe whose parents had both been
assassinated. As one of our Federal agents in Colombia told me some
years back, the toughest job they had back then was keeping Uribe alive
because he was so courageous and so determined to defeat the drug
cartels.
Well, they kept him alive. With our help, some British help and some
other help, the drug cartels were placed on the run. Coca fields were
eliminated. It is still an ongoing battle they face constantly.
If Mexico elects the right leader, then the United States Government
should be a friend that helps them create an environment where people
want to stay and work because many of the people come and they would
love to remain in their country if it wasn't so dangerous and there was
work.
We can't take every person who resides in Mexico, Guatemala, El
Salvador, or Honduras. We can't take every person without destroying
the country that is the magnet, that is the shining light on the hill.
{time} 1145
As a very precious, wise, and elderly West African told me when I was
over there:
We were so excited when you elected your first black
President, but ever since he has been President, we have seen
America get weaker and weaker. At least from what we see, it
appears you are getting weaker and weaker. We need you to
spread around in Washington that you have got to stop getting
weaker because it doesn't just affect you. We are Christians,
and we know where we are going when we die, but we have no
hope of a secure life and a safe life unless America is
strong and is an intimidating force to the forces of evil
around the world.
Forces of evil will not go away. They will be with us until the end
of time, and America makes a difference when we stand strong. We don't
even have to send people, just the threat, as a former Ambassador from
Israel said:
America is not a serious threat to take out Iran's nuclear
capability, and, in fact, quite the opposite. Everybody
realizes America now is no threat to Iran. And since America
is no threat to Iran, and Iran knows it, the world knows it,
then Israel is more at risk than ever before.
It is true in West Africa as Boko Haram gets more powerful, radical
Islamists that want to take out Americans--and America is the Great
Satan. It is true in North Africa, it is true in the Middle East, in
Asia, in Russia, and in Europe: we need a strong America.
And instead, though the official unemployment numbers have been shown
to come down, when you cook the books by not including the massive
millions of Americans who are adults, who could work, who are not
institutionalized, and they have given up hope of finding a job. They
have tried so long they are not counted in the unemployed. They are
unemployed, but they are not counted as unemployed because they have
given up looking. They have lost hope. That is absolutely tragic.
I mentioned an article from September previously, but this report
from CNS News on September 5 says that a record 92,269,000 Americans 16
and older did not participate in the labor force in August as the labor
force participation rate matched a 36-year low of 62.8 percent,
according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics. Well, the article goes on
to mention that that has happened six times in the past year, and,
again, that matches the all-time high of nonparticipation, matching
that set during the malaise days of the Carter administration. Back
then, there was double-digit inflation, double-digit unemployment
officially, and double-digit interest rates. People were hurting in
America.
Now people are still hurting. They are hurting across the country.
That is why people are so desperate for sales. No telling what
Thursday, Thanksgiving, the day after will look like. People are so
desperate for sales because the data indicates on average people are
taking home less than they did when compared with the rate of
inflation.
So we have a President whose administration has tied the Carter
administration for the highest number of American adults who have given
up hope of finding a job.
Just as we get this news that the Obama administration continues this
year to tie the Carter administration for the all-time high of
Americans who have given up hope of finding a job, we get the story
today, an article from The Daily Caller, that Obama's amnesty will add
as many foreign workers as jobs since 2009. Because, Mr. Speaker, think
about it: over 92 million Americans have given up hope of finding a
job. That has tied the Carter administration. When this President in
this economy says to people who have come illegally into this country,
I am going to grant you 5 million or so permits to work, then it will
put this President in a category all by himself. He will no longer be
tied with the Carter administration as presiding over the highest
number of Americans giving up hope of finding work. It will propel him
into a league all of his own because it only makes sense that if you
are giving 5 million legal work permits to people who are here
illegally, they will then be able to offer their services cheaper than
union workers and other workers who are here getting a proper wage, and
it will displace millions more Americans from the jobs they currently
hold.
You can anticipate that, not immediately, but in the months ahead if
the President does this unconstitutional act because he is tired of
waiting on Congress to change the law the way he has dictated, and he
has decided to dictate new law to America. Well, that is
unconstitutional, and it is illegal. But the good news for the
President is it will propel him out of the tie with the Carter
administration for the most Americans giving up hope of finding
employment and get him to the all-time high that will likely remain for
as long as there is an America.
Well, this article from The Daily Caller today points out that:
President Barack Obama's unilateral amnesty will quickly
add as many foreign workers to the Nation's legal labor force
as the total number of new jobs created by his economy since
2009.
The plan, expected to be announced late November 20, will
distribute 5 million work permits to illegal immigrants and
also create a new inflow of foreign college graduates for
prestigious salaried jobs, according to press reports.
Obama has already provided or promised almost 1 million
extra work permits to foreigners, while his economy has only
added 6 million jobs since 2009.
Under the President's new amnesty plan, ``up to 4 million
undocumented immigrants who have lived in the United States
for at least 5 years can apply. An additional 1 million
people will get protection from deportation through other
parts of the President's plan,'' according to a November 19
report in The New York Times.
The 5 million total was attributed to ``people briefed on
his plans,'' the Times reports.
The 5 million work permits will add to Obama's prior
giveaways, which have provided work permits to almost 1
million foreigners.
Since 2009, the U.S. economy has added only 6 million jobs,
according to the International Monetary Fund.
Further, it says:
Not all the 5 million illegal immigrants who get permits
will work, and many are already working under fake names or
for cash. However, their new work permits will allow them to
compete for jobs now held or sought by blue-collar Americans,
including the many African American and Latinos who voted for
Obama in 2008 and 2012.
It would seem to me, Mr. Speaker, that if the President wants to do
something about the massively unfair high unemployment rate for African
Americans who are legal citizens that the thing to do would not be to
give 5 million work permits to people that are illegally here so that
they can knock more African Americans and more Hispanics out of the
jobs they legally currently hold because they will work cheaper,
probably without requirement for health benefits.
My dear friend, Steve King, had invited me to Iowa, and I was
visiting with a businessman there about their meatpacking plant where
they had felt like, gee, they had to have illegal aliens doing the work
because they were just jobs that Americans wouldn't do. And after a
raid on their plant and illegal aliens were arrested, he reported that
it turned out those were jobs that Americans just would not do at that
price. But by raising the wages a couple of dollars and providing
health care benefits, amazingly, they could
[[Page H8152]]
find Americans who would do that job. So it seems that as this story is
replicated around the country, there are not so many jobs that
Americans won't do; it is that there are jobs that Americans won't do
at the market rate. So that is why you see so many millionaires and
billionaires, many of them massive Democratic donors, who are--and some
Republican donors, including the National Chamber of Commerce; my local
chambers aren't pushing like this--but they say we want and we need
this massive influx of unskilled laborers to do these jobs Americans
won't do. They don't finish the sentence and say ``these jobs Americans
won't do at what we would like to pay them.'' They require more in
order to be hired, which skews the living wage that workers in America
are getting paid and skews it downward.
So that under the Obama administration, Americans have really been
hurt, and that was reflected in the results of the election. I know
there are many Democratic friends who said they don't understand why
Americans that came out and voted didn't feel better about the economy.
Well, try talking to them because they make it very clear, they haven't
had a raise in years. They have lost health care benefits because of
ObamaCare. They have had deductibles. Some have told me: Mine went from
a $500 deductible, which was really tough, to $5,000, which I just
can't ever meet because I can't spend $5,000 extra to cover the
deductible of my new ObamaCare policy.
So, yeah, the old joke was always, Well, I am from the government,
and I am here to help you. It is one of the most frightening lines in
America. It is no longer a joke. It is quite scary when you look at
what the government has done to people. And then as this article points
out, for the Obama administration to, using their terminology, create 6
million jobs--because as we know the President and also Hillary Clinton
have said, you businesses, you didn't create those jobs. Oh, no, you
weren't the one that put your capital at risk, that took out a loan,
that is paying more in taxes for the police and for the roads than
anybody else. No, you didn't build that company that you risked your
sacred honor and everything you hold dear on. You didn't create that;
the government did that. We did that for you.
Well, that is the way socialists generally start talking.
{time} 1200
Having been an exchange student to the Soviet Union back when it was
the Soviet Union, I saw what happens to a country that has to live
under that for decades. So even in the 1970s, I could see, wow, I don't
want their health care. Thank goodness we have free market health care.
Of course, that was back before insurance companies and the government
skewed the cost of health care.
So when I was being told this week by a parent that the bill they got
for their child having stitches in a medical facility was $4,500, well,
I did enough work with and for health insurance companies and people
who had claims with health insurance companies that I know good and
well that the top health insurance companies, they wouldn't pay $4,500.
You get a bill for $4,500, they probably don't pay $500 for that bill.
So why shouldn't an American who can't afford an insurance policy
under ObamaCare, why shouldn't that American be able to pay $500 cash
instead of being hit with a $4,500 bill, and then the health
institution says hey, since you are going to pay cash, we will cut you
a real deal, we will knock off 20 percent. So yes, we will save you a
bunch of money. And you will still pay several times more than what the
insurance company would pay.
The bill I proposed, even though there are those in ignorance who say
Republicans didn't have any solutions, one of the parts of my health
care bill would require every health care facility and provider to post
the costs. And if you are giving a different rate to the insurance
company than you do to an American paying cash, you have to post it and
let everybody see, because only then would you ever get back to having
some competition.
The doctors that we used to go to in my hometown have passed away
now, but my late mother, a very, very smart lady, was always looking
for a bargain. I remember one time I asked: Why are we going to this
doctor instead of the one we went to last time?
Well, he raised his rates, and you know good and well this doctor is
as good as the other one.
When is the last time somebody said that? I'm going to a different
doctor because the other one raised his rates. People don't even know
what doctors charge because it has been so skewed.
You want to fix the health care system, one thing that should be
required is that there actually be truth in the charges of health care.
We don't have that now. You don't know what the insurance company pays
specifically. Government rates are posted, but that is also why many
physicians and health care providers, like hospitals, they have gotten
out of the business. Doctors have told me that they have, and I have
seen that they have. We lost our second hospital in my district this
past week, they announced at least.
If we want to help Americans, it is not by more government takeover.
The question keeps coming to me: I don't understand why my insurance is
so much more. My deductible went way up. I am covering things like
maternity care I will never use, and my premiums went up. I don't get
it. I don't understand why it is more expensive.
Well, one thing that is very basic as part of that answer is, if you
are going to hire with health care dollars 1,800 new IRS agents, if you
are going to hire millions more people for the government that will
never so much as put a bandaid or Bactine or anything on a cut or help
anybody with a real problem, then your health care costs will go up
because you have added huge amounts of government that have nothing to
do with getting you treatment. They are government. They may make you
sick to your stomach, they may cause you to get ill, they may scare
you, but they are not going to fix your problem. They are government
workers.
And thank you very much, I was in the Army for 4 years, and I know
there were some good doctors there. I was friends with some. But, wow,
we did have some quacks. The last thing I want is to be forced back
into a hospital where the government has total control. But that is
part of the price you pay by being in the military.
Well, thank goodness, Congress has stepped up enough to provide our
military with really the best health care when it comes to traumatic
injuries. But as some have found around here, if you have a problem
with your gall bladder, you better go to a private hospital. If you
have a traumatic injury, sure, our military doctors and facilities are
awesome, but I will take my private facilities for anything else.
Well, this article from The Daily Caller points out:
Each year, the Nation accepts 1 million new immigrants, or
roughly 5 million new immigrants since 2009. That total
includes roughly 3.5 million working-age immigrants, which is
slightly less than the number of Americans--4.3 million--who
turn 18 each year.
Also, companies annually hire roughly 450,000 blue-collar
guest workers and roughly 200,000 white-collar guest workers.
Most of these guest workers stay for less than a year, but
many stay for 6 years.
That current population of roughly 600,000 foreign
graduates is expected to increase, if, as reported, Obama's
plan allows American universities to offer green cards to
foreign tuition-paying students.
Each year, roughly 4.3 million Americans join the workforce
in search of good jobs. That total includes roughly 800,000
Americans with expensive degrees in business, engineering,
medicine, technology, and architecture.
At least 9 million Americans are unemployed, and at least 7
million have given up looking for work. Employment rates
among African Americans and Latinos are lower than rates for
Whites and Asians.
Since 2000, the number of native-born Americans with jobs
has stalled, despite a growing population of working-age
native-born Americans.
The surplus of domestic and foreign job seekers also helps
ensure that U.S. median wages have flatlined since 2000.
Economists--including Obama's top economic adviser--say that
wages stall when the labor supply is larger than the supply
of new jobs.
Down further:
Obama has already provided or promised about 1 million work
permits to foreigners since 2011.
Since June 2012, Obama used the legally questionable
Deferred Action For Childhood Arrivals program to give work
permits to almost 600,000 illegal immigrants. That DACA
number may go above 1.5 million.
In May 2014, Obama's deputies announced they would provide
work permits to 100,000 spouses of university-trained guest
workers used by brand name companies.
[[Page H8153]]
In October 2014, his deputies announced they would
accelerate the paperwork for 110,000 would-be Haitian
immigrants, allowing them to begin working in the United
States long before they were due to get green cards.
This is bad news for American workers. It is really bad news for
American workers, and you would think it would come at a tremendous
cost to the Democratic Party, which gets the huge majority of African
Americans and a lesser majority of Hispanic and Latino voters. So this
action to provide legal work permits to as many as 5 million people who
are illegally here is a slap in the face, as hard a slap as you could
give to Hispanics and to African Americans, whose unemployment rate is
dramatically higher than it should be because this action that the
President is about to take unconstitutionally and illegally for
political purposes is basically saying to the masses, the millions of
African Americans and Hispanic voters who are out of work: Look, we
know you are going to always vote for us no matter how much damage we
do to your lives, your employment, your ability to pay your bills. We
know you are still going to vote for us no matter what because you
haven't figured out that Republicans, they want you to have a job. They
want you to be able to provide for yourself. They want you to learn
English so you can be president of the company and not just a manual
laborer for the company. We want you to live and achieve the American
dream while the President is pushing a program that is going to push
millions more, many of them African Americans and Hispanics, out of the
jobs they have and bring in cheaper labor and make it even tougher.
Why? We keep hearing it is a political move. Of course it is a
political move. Well, the only way it is a political move is if the
Democrats take the African American and Latino votes for granted. You
are going to vote for us no matter how bad we mess up your lives, so
this will allow us to eventually pick up the votes of people who have
come in illegally because they will want to reward those of us who
helped them.
Well, I tell you, my office helps so many Hispanic families try to go
through the legal route of getting family members here, or people who
are trying to get a loved one here, a fiancee here. We help with those
things. And, of course, there is no charge. And I have had a lot of
people say: I don't know why we are working so hard and for all of
these years to bring this person in legally when I would have been
better off just saying, come on across, you will get amnesty some day
and we will have saved all of this frustration--because we were trying
to do what we thought was the American way, the legal way, when the
President is about to reward lawbreakers by being a lawbreaker himself.
The New York Times reports today:
Officials of the Republican-led House Appropriations
Committee have concluded that the government agency most
responsible for implementing any new executive order,
Citizenship and Immigration Services, would not be hindered
if government funds are cut off. It operates entirely on
revenue it generates through immigration applications. In
short, lawmakers have no fiscal leverage over the agency,
which could keep operating even if the rest of the government
were shut down.
We understand that. CIS, Citizenship and Immigration Services, they
operate with fees they generate. Who allows them to do that? Congress
does. Who created CIS? Congress did. Who has the authority to prevent
CIS from implementing any illegal dictate that comes from the White
House? Congress does.
So even though CIS is funded by fees, we have the ability to do what
Democratic Congresses have done post-Watergate. You want people out of
Vietnam immediately who are Americans? Then no matter where the Federal
money comes from, you make it a crime to spend any Federal revenue, no
matter where it comes from, to have people in Vietnam.
You want to prevent Americans from helping the contras keep communism
off our southern border and out of Central America? They pass a law. It
is easy to do. You pass a law saying it is a crime to use any Federal
funds no matter where they come from for this purpose.
{time} 1215
That is one thing we can and should do. I deeply regret that our
Members were told we are done until after Thanksgiving when the
President is about to announce this lawlessness, and then we are
hearing secondhand from leadership of the Republican Party, ``There is
not much we can do. Gee, they get their own funds.'' Yeah, there is
plenty we can do.
We ought to be here right now passing a resolution that authorizes a
lawsuit, an injunction. I have signed plenty of injunctions. There is a
standard you have to meet, but it can be done.
If you have a President acting lawlessly, just like if you have a
mayor that is acting lawlessly or a county judge or a commissioner or a
Governor, somebody that is adversely affected--ought to have standing,
bring a lawsuit, bring an injunction--to keep them from violating the
law when they are supposed to be enforcing the law.
It makes sense that as an administration acts more and more
lawlessly, you have the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau that was
created, we were told, by the Democrats--by an all-Democrat House--and
Senate majority, signed by President Obama, created this entity that
was supposed to protect Americans from unscrupulous banking practices.
It turns out now that is being used to gather debit card and credit
card activity on Americans.
The government shouldn't be able to get that information without a
warrant or without permission from that American. We don't need a
Federal agency that goes snooping, getting material that should require
a warrant, and only after the government has shown probable cause that
that American has committed a crime. Officers would come to me--I have
signed orders ordering the disclosure of bank records like that, but
the government had to establish probable cause, or I wasn't going to
sign the warrant.
Yet we create this monstrosity that, in the name of helping us poor
stupid ignorant Americans, they will just monitor every bit of our
financial activity while the NSA is watching over our emails and we are
having our phone calls, all the logs from them go into the government.
I mean, for heaven's sake, is it any wonder that we get a report this
week. There is an article from the Washington Examiner that reports:
``Under Obama, U.S. Personal Freedom Ranking Slips Below France.''
For heaven's sake, we ought to be the freest country in the history
of the world, and we have been previously. As Peter Sellers used to
say, as the Pink Panther, ``Not anymore.''
How sad is this? The United States in the personal freedom rankings
for 2014 is number 21. Well, is that any surprise that our freedom is
under such attack and our freedoms are diminishing and going away when
the government is looking at every private aspect?
You look at the control that was taken by ObamaCare over all aspects
of our life. It allowed the Federal Government to have all of your most
personal secrets that should be only between you and your doctor. How
many times have we heard that from liberals?
Yet they passed ObamaCare without a single Republican vote that puts
the government, not only in their bedroom, as they have previously
objected to--the government is in your bedroom, your bathroom, your
garage; they are in your dining room, your refrigerator, they are on
machines you buy food from. They are everywhere now.
As I have said before, the ObamaCare bill was not so much about
health care, it was about GRE. ObamaCare was about the ``government
running everything.'' Holy cow, are they actually doing that.
Anyway, quite interesting, as our government is going to put another
4 or 5 million hardworking Americans out of work and turn those jobs
over to people who came in illegally displacing--I guarantee you, when
the smoke clears, there will be a disproportionate number of African
Americans and Hispanics who have lost their jobs because of this action
the President is going to take.
New Zealand, Norway, Australia, Iceland, Canada, Sweden, Netherlands,
Uruguay, Denmark, United Kingdom, Ireland, Switzerland, Belgium,
Germany, Costa Rica, Finland, France, Austria, Malta, Portugal, those
are all ahead of us in the personal freedom rankings for 2014, and
there we are down below Portugal.
[[Page H8154]]
Well, tonight, it is also reported in The Washington Post, that the
President's announcement coincides with the Latin Grammy Awards. The
article points out that the 15th annual Latin Grammys, which begins at
7 p.m. Thursday on Spanish TV network Univision, they are going to take
a break for the President's announcement.
Clearly, it is political. Clearly, it will make points with those who
are rewarded by legal work permits for coming in illegally. It is going
to be a disaster for many Latinos, for many African Americans, to keep
their job. They are going to have to start making less than a living
wage than they had before.
We need to be about the business of stopping this. We can, we have
the will, but it is kind of tough, as we approach Thanksgiving, for
many Americans to be thankful. This is still the greatest country in
the world, but we are losing what we have had, losing freedoms, losing
revenue, losing control of our lives to the government.
It was George Washington, along with every single President since,
who have said, ``This time of year for all we have, for all we have
been given, those that do believe the Bible know all good gifts come
from God and to God be the glory.''
I yield back the balance of my time.
____________________