[Congressional Record Volume 161, Number 18 (Tuesday, February 3, 2015)]
[House]
[Pages H749-H753]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




                 THE EFFECTS OF THE PRESIDENT'S ECONOMY

  The SPEAKER pro tempore. Under the Speaker's announced policy of 
January 6, 2015, the gentleman from Texas (Mr. Gohmert) is recognized 
for 60 minutes as the designee of the majority leader.
  Mr. GOHMERT. Thank you, Madam Speaker.
  I do appreciate my friend's discussion today. In fact, there is an 
article I would like to move right into regarding the President's 
proposal to help middle America by going after corporations.

                              {time}  1815

  This is an article of Money News from Newsmax, by Peter Morici. This 
points out:

       Posturing as champion of needed public investments and 
     fairness, President Barack Obama wants new taxes on the 
     overseas earnings of American businesses. That would kill 
     jobs and punish retired Americans. Although special deals 
     permit some corporations to pay low taxes, most pay a heavy 
     burden. The estimated effective U.S. corporate tax rate is 
     about 27 percent and is well above the 20 percent imposed by 
     other industrialized countries.
       The United States is virtually alone by taxing the overseas 
     profits of its multinationals when those are repatriated. 
     This has encouraged U.S. firms to invest nearly $2.1 trillion 
     of their earnings abroad instead of bringing some of that 
     money home to create jobs in America. Now the President wants 
     an immediate 14 percent tax levy on those assets to raise 
     about $500 billion and to impose a 19 percent tax on future 
     earnings to finance infrastructure investments.

  Madam Speaker, we have heard this before, this mantra about how we 
are going to build infrastructure. If you will just give us, as it was 
the last time, $900 billion, we are going to rebuild the infrastructure 
of America.
  What happened?
  We got Solyndra, and some Democratic friends got lots and lots of 
money and grants and all kinds of benefits, and we didn't get the 
infrastructure we were promised. Every time the President wants to trot 
out a new program, he throws that in because it worked. Seriously, it 
worked 6 years ago. Americans bought into it, and the majority here 
bought into it. Let's give him the money so we can build 
infrastructure, and we saw that that was a word that was not kept.
  There is the point that many have made about the President's new 
proposals that he brought up in the State of the Union Address to help 
the middle class, to help the Nation's poor, and we have seen how the 
middle class has been helped under this President--the middle class has 
gotten smaller. The gap between the ultra rich and the poor has gotten 
wider, and we have more poor. We have got more people on food stamps 
than ever in history, more than anybody could have ever imagined when 
that program was started, and it continues to be a massive problem for 
much of America.
  There is trouble getting a job. Oh, I know we keep being told that 
the Cook numbers work well. Gee, the economy is doing so well. But 
across America, people understand ``I am not doing well.'' If they have 
been able to keep their jobs, they have not seen their wages keep up 
like they should have. At the same time, the administration is trying 
to convince the middle class and the Nation's poor: ``I am taking care 
of you.''
  What is actually happening behind the scenes?
  We know for at least the first 5, 6 years of this administration and 
for the first time in our Nation's history, 95 percent of the Nation's 
income went to the top 1 percent. Before this administration, the Obama 
administration, that had never, ever happened.
  It is tragic when you see the effect that it has on families. It is 
tragic when you see that people had such hope for this President's 
helping the poor, not adding to the poor. They had hope for climbing up 
through the middle class and maybe, one day, having a shot at being 
wealthy. Unless you are a President or a former President, it is kind 
of tough to make that kind of move because not everybody gets paid a 
million bucks or even $100,000 for giving a speech. So most of America 
that was suffering before is still suffering. In many cases, it is much 
worse.
  The people who really understand money management are pointing out: 
wait a minute. If you break down what the President is proposing in 
order to help, supposedly, the middle class, and if he is going to tax 
these evil corporations on money they have earned overseas when they 
have a corporate presence here and there, some of us have been 
proposing: if you will just eliminate any penalty, then they will bring 
that money into the United States; they will use that capital here in 
the United States; jobs will be created, and plants will be expanded; 
and there will be more people able to join unions of non-government 
working people because those are the kinds of jobs that would come 
back. If you lowered the tax on corporations down to where China has 
it, you would see companies come flooding back into the United States 
that built their plants in China.
  As our good friend Arthur Laffer has pointed out, the rich are the 
people you are not really able to tax because they will move on you. 
They will move, and they will change the way they make income. I know 
people like Democrat Warren Buffett like to say: ``Oh, gee. I am 
willing to pay more taxes.'' It is one thing to say it. It is another 
to write the check, and that hasn't happened. If he wanted to pay the 
same income tax rate that his secretary pays, then he could pay that. 
Write the check. You don't have to keep it all. It is okay. You can 
send it to the government if you want to. Unfortunately, when you tax 
corporations as much as we do in the United States, and when that tax 
gets passed on to the consumers--because, if it doesn't, they don't 
stay in business--then it is back to the middle class paying those 
taxes.

[[Page H750]]

  If you start taxing these multinational corporations for money they 
have earned in another country and they have paid taxes on in another 
country--and if you are going to tax it to bring it into the United 
States--then they are not going to bring it in. If you are going to tax 
them for even having a presence here, then you will find the presence 
will go. The jobs that are here in the United States will go. You are 
going to have trouble ever taxing the multinational corporations, like 
the richest people in the world, because they will move. They will 
change the way they do business to avoid that tax. It is the middle 
class and those amongst the poor who actually pay tax--income tax, that 
is--who end up taking the biggest hit.
  If you want to make taxes fair, let's go to a flat tax across the 
board. If you make more, you pay more. If you make less, you pay less. 
I like a deduction for the home mortgage interest, and I like 
charitable deductions. But, otherwise, let's just drop all of them. If 
you make more, you pay more. That would be fair.

  Instead, if you want to look around to what has really done massive 
damage to the ability of the middle class and the Nation's poor, 
particularly African Americans, there has been a tremendous problem 
getting employed, staying employed, and having higher wages because 
this administration keeps bringing in people, giving them work 
permits--people who have come in illegally. Now we know that the big 
corporations are even given a $3,000 bonus if they will hire someone 
who came here illegally, one of the 5 million.
  Now, Texas has created most of the jobs that the President stood 
right here and took credit for. It was rather interesting. I know 
people in this administration like to make jokes about Texas, but it 
would have been nice if, when he took credit for creating jobs, that he 
would have thanked Texas for being the place that really bailed him out 
and kept him from having to stand up and report a net loss of jobs. So 
we are glad to help out, not because we are helping the President but 
because we are helping real people in America.
  If he really wants to help the Nation's poor, the working poor, those 
few who are left in the middle class, he would quit giving people who 
have come in illegally work permits, which actually incentivizes more 
people to come in illegally, and then there wouldn't be any need for 
him to come in and say we have got to raise the minimum wage, because 
we know--there is no question--when you raise the minimum wage, people 
who are trying to break into the working of America don't have jobs. 
People lose their jobs.
  For businesses that are barely getting by at a profit, when you force 
a higher minimum wage, then those people who are brought in at the 
entry level naturally don't produce as much as people who have been 
there a while because it takes a learning curve. But the minimum wage 
is the entry level if it is even at minimum wage. Most businesses I 
talk to around east Texas will pay more than the minimum wage even for 
startup employment. But once you raise the minimum wage, they are going 
to have to lay somebody off, and somebody is going to have to work 
harder because they cannot afford, like the government, to be operating 
in the red--they would go broke--because they don't get to print their 
own money and create their own monetary system.
  I see here another article today. This is from Neil Munro of The 
Daily Caller: ``Obama Quietly Adds 5.46 Million Foreigners to 
Economy.''
  That should be great news for the economy, but since there haven't 
been 5.46 million jobs created in this administration, that means that 
they are going to take over jobs and that Americans who emigrated 
legally are going to lose their jobs. When you tack on that you get a 
$3,000 bonus under ObamaCare if you hire somebody who came illegally 
and got one of these work permits--they are not required to have 
ObamaCare, and so they don't have to provide health insurance; 
therefore, the companies don't have to pay the $3,000 penalty--it gives 
incentives to hire people who came illegally and got the work permits.
  Now, we had before our Judiciary Committee today some witnesses, and 
I greatly appreciated Chairman Goodlatte for calling the hearing. It 
was very enlightening. We had a sheriff, a law professor, a couple of 
people who work on the immigration issue. I didn't realize until the 
testimony that, when released, about 50 percent of those people who 
have come here illegally and who have committed a crime commit another 
crime. I had somebody else explain it to me after the hearing.
  If you come here and if you have no respect for the law in the United 
States, is it any mystery that you are going to be more likely to 
disregard the criminal laws as you have the immigration laws? 
Fortunately, everybody doesn't see it that way who emigrates here 
illegally, but it is a problem.

                              {time}  1830

  If you are a 21-year-old store clerk that is just trying to make it, 
you are not making that much money, but you are trying to make it, you 
are working tough hours in a thankless job, and unbeknownst to you as a 
21-year-old store clerk, the Obama administration--Homeland Security 
has followed the lead of the President. They have not been deporting 
people that came illegally, committed crimes, like they should be. So 
unknown to you, the 21-year-old store clerk, that man who has committed 
crimes before and has not been deported because this administration is 
not following up to the oath that was taken, you are about to have your 
life taken away from you by someone that should not even be in the 
country.
  I was with another Member of Congress today when staff came and 
notified him that one of their staff had been hit by another car. It 
was the fault of the other car, and the people in the other car got 
out, walked around, and then by the time the officer got there, they 
complained one of their group couldn't walk, couldn't use their legs. 
So here comes the ambulance. Who knows. Maybe they have figured out our 
system well enough to know you just file a lawsuit even though you were 
at fault for the wreck, file a claim against the insurance company.
  But there are people who are here in this country illegally who would 
like to be here legally, and we ought to help and encourage them to do 
just that: Come legally; follow the law; make application.
  There are those of us whose offices help those who come legally. We 
have been helping people who have immigrated legally to try to get 
their spouse into the country, and we find out that actually this 
administration, by the executive amnesties and decrees, has apparently 
used the fees that were paid by people who came legally, trying to 
bring in others legally, trying to do everything right, some paid a 
higher fee to try to speed up the time with which they could get their 
spouse or loved one in the country, and with the stroke of the pen this 
President apparently put those on hold, said: We are going to take 
those fees that people who were acting legally and within the law paid 
to get their loved one in, we are going to put their applications on 
hold because I have got a whole bunch of people over here who entered 
illegally that I want to come in. I am sure they will vote Democrat 
when they get the chance, but I need them beholden to the Federal 
Government, so we are going to bring in these people that didn't 
believe in following the law, give them amnesty and a work permit, 
allow a $3,000 bonus under ObamaCare to businesses that hire them, get 
rid of their American workers, their legal immigrants, and hire people 
that came in illegally.
  The question arises, and it is a very important question because it 
has criminal consequences, if anyone within the United States 
Government, executive branch particularly, takes money that was ordered 
for one purpose under the law and converts that money's use to another 
without getting the permission of Congress, without jumping through the 
hoops that are required to use that money for another purpose and use 
it for a purpose such as getting a lease in Crystal City so that you 
can set up your amnesty mill, you have got a problem, and so do we 
because you may have violated the law, and it may be a crime.
  I am hopeful that we are at the early stages of getting to the bottom 
of that so we can find out whether somebody

[[Page H751]]

broke the law. We know that there are criminal statutes regarding 
government workers if they use their position, particularly at the IRS, 
and yet Lois Lerner basically got caught redhanded, took the Fifth 
Amendment. Even still, the President, the executive branch didn't want 
to get rid of her, so paid her to stay home for a while. But nobody has 
been prosecuted, nobody has been pursued out of those laws that were 
broken in the Internal Revenue Service to go after conservative groups.
  No question. We don't know the full extent, but no question, it had 
to have helped the President in the election of 2012. All you have got 
to do is keep your opponents from being able to form groups like the 
Democrats have. Of course, a lot of the Democrats' funding comes from 
government money that goes through unions and ends up helping 
Democrats, but these are groups that were raising their own money that 
they had earned. It wasn't money received from the government. People 
who actually did build that, they did earn that, and they were wanting 
to pool their money for political purposes, but the IRS put them on 
hold for long enough, some of them for years, so that they could not 
play any role in the 2012 election.
  This administration was able to use the laws or the Tax Code and use 
the IRS in ways Richard Nixon could have only dreamed of. He had an 
enemies list, but he was not able to carry out the vendetta like some 
in the IRS appear to have done. So that is here in this country as 
people are suffering, workers struggling, especially African American 
minority workers, their unemployment rate so dramatically higher.
  I have had people ask me--and I am not really sure of the answer--if 
President Obama actually should get all the credit for the jobs that 
have been created in the United States, then why in the world was he 
creating them all in Texas, most of them in Texas? That just seems a 
little strange. But I would think his supporters would certainly fall 
away from supporting someone in the Democratic Party that creates jobs 
mainly in a very red State. But if that is true and he gets the credit 
for creating all the jobs in Texas, over a million, then he is to be 
congratulated on the bipartisan nature of that effort, although the 
Senate would wonder whether or not he actually participated in that.
  At this point, Mr. Speaker, I would like to turn to one of the more 
horrendous acts that man has inflicted on man. The Islamic State--and 
that first word is ``Islamic''--released a video that shows, or 
purports to show, Jordanian pilot al-Kaseasbeh prior to being burned 
alive. The video released today appears to show him being burned alive.
  Some say: How could they do such a thing? It seems to me that if one 
human being can take a dull knife and jaggedly cut off the head of 
another human being, he is probably pretty capable of burning another 
human being alive.

  There is evil in this world. Adolf Hitler manifested pure evil. It is 
the only way he could have been responsible for the mass killings of 6 
million Jews in Europe.
  It is unbelievable, but when the United States fails to lead, fails 
to point out the horrors and the ideology behind it and goes to war 
against those who invoke this kind of evil and push it and use it 
against human beings, at a time when the United States is called the 
lone superpower, then the vacuum in the world of power is filled by the 
most evil among us, and that is what is happening.
  It is unbelievable, and yet this is who these radical Islamists are. 
One story after another in the news about that pilot being burned 
alive, and yet we come to the story of the President addressing this 
today, this one entitled, ``Obama Comments on Jordanian Pilot Burned 
Alive, Doesn't Know What `Ideology' Islamic State Follows.'' The 
President is quoted as saying:

       I just got word of the video that had been released. Should 
     in fact this video be authentic, it is just one more 
     indication of the viciousness and barbarity of this 
     organization.

  He wouldn't even call the organization the Islamic State, which is 
what they call themselves. The President says:

       It, I think, will redouble the vigilance and determination 
     on the part of a global coalition to make sure that they are 
     degraded and ultimately defeated.

  It is interesting. The President doesn't say we are going to defeat 
this radical ideology, this Islamic State, we will defeat them, we will 
stop them. It brings to mind the response of Winston Churchill. He was 
making sure everyone knew that Britain was not going to let evil win, 
that they were going to fight them on the beaches, fight them on the 
land, fight them in the air, fight them wherever they found them.
  Our leader in this current world crisis here in the United States, 
the position some say is the most powerful leader's position in the 
world, says:

       And it, I think, will redouble the vigilance and 
     determination on the part of the global coalition to make 
     sure that they are degraded and ultimately defeated.

  But it doesn't stop there. Our President goes on to say:

       It also indicates the degree to which whatever ideology 
     they are operating off of, it is bankrupt.

  ``Whatever ideology they are operating off of''? It is called the 
Islamic State.
  I have seen amazing prosecutors at work trying to pull together a 
case. I have seen incredible law enforcement minds at work as they try 
to put together pieces of the puzzle to figure out some law enforcement 
mystery, figure out the source of some crime. But I don't think it 
would take the more brilliant law enforcement officers in our country--
so many that I have met and come to appreciate their intellect. I don't 
think it takes them to figure out what ideology they are out of, 
because the first piece of the puzzle when we are looking to determine 
what ideology these evil men are working out of, let's see, what do 
they call themselves?

                              {time}  1845

  We will start with that clue. They call themselves the Islamic State. 
Well, that would seem to indicate that perhaps the ideology they are 
out of would be an Islamic ideology. Since these people get real upset 
if anybody draws a cartoon--for example, about the prophet Muhammad, as 
they call him--then perhaps it is that people that hold Muhammad as a 
prophet is another unifying clue to the ideology.
  Perhaps since they are willing to kill people, as they did in 
Afghanistan when Korans were found being burned because they had been 
defaced by Muslims using them to pass messages--and the proper remedy 
for defaced Korans is to destroy them like that--but nonetheless, they 
killed people because they didn't like Americans--people they consider 
infidels--burning the Korans that were defaced by Muslims.
  These seem to be clues that keep bringing us back to the fact that 
the most evil people in our world today appear to claim radical Islam 
as their ideology, and I know there are Muslim Brothers who have made 
clear they want a caliphate.
  One of the top advisers in the Homeland Security Department here 
tweeted out back last August, I believe it was, that the caliphate is 
inevitable, so people just need to get used to the idea. In fact, as I 
understand it, he put together a long message in recent days that went 
on a tear after Christians and, as I understand, basically pointing out 
that maybe the Islamists should be called evangelical Islamists.
  Well, that has a different meaning, and I am sure Mr. Elibiary 
doesn't quite understand the term ``evangelical'' because evangelical 
Christian means you bring peace to the world and you introduce them to 
knowledge of Jesus Christ. You bring them knowledge of Jesus Christ as 
a man of peace, and you don't kill them if they don't accept Jesus as 
their savior.
  There have been Christians during different historic times in the 
world that were barbarians and deserved to be put to death for being so 
barbaric, but the current state of the world is that the most evil 
people right now are not Christians.
  One of my Republican friends and I were talking earlier today. I am a 
Baptist. When a Baptist church, Westboro or any other, does things that 
are really despicable, we call them out. My friend was Catholic. He 
said that if the Catholic church does something improper, he calls them 
out.
  We also understand that there is a reluctance among moderate Muslims 
to

[[Page H752]]

stand up and condemn the ideology of radical Islam that is so barbaric 
because they know that if they do that, they shoot to the top of the 
hit list of people to be taken out. They understand that.
  They become horrific apostates in the eyes of radical Islamists and 
should be taken out, in the minds that are so marred by this evil 
radical Islamic thinking that would allow someone to have their head 
jaggedly cut off or to be put in a cage and set on fire.
  To whom much is given, of them much is required. For those who 
believe the teaching of the Bible, we believe that.
  We are going to have the President's National Prayer Breakfast 
Thursday morning. There should be people from over 140 or 150 countries 
there, and that is one time I am greatly appreciative of the 
President's espoused faith. We can put politics aside. We are supposed 
to. We did last year while I was cochair. Janice Hahn was cochair.
  We can thank God. Radical Islamists can't put aside their evil 
ideology because they want to force it upon everyone, and they are not 
going to rest until they are dead and they take as many of what they 
call infidels with them as possible.
  So it shouldn't have been a big surprise to see this story from 
Breitbart:

       ISIS members marched into a Syrian town Friday demanding 
     that all crosses be removed from the churches or have the 
     buildings be completely destroyed.

  That is according to the Assyrian Patriotic Party.

       Two trucks carrying 20 armed ISIS members stormed into the 
     predominantly Assyrian town of Tel Hormizd in Hassakeh and 
     forced the residents to remove the cross from the main church 
     tower. Hassakeh, an area made up of five Assyrian villages, 
     is located on the Khabur River.

  That is radical Islamic ideology, Mr. Speaker, for those in this town 
who are not aware; but I guess if you are part of this administration, 
you shouldn't consider that to be all that radical because this 
administration, under their watch, with Commander in Chief Barack 
Obama, had orders given to remove crosses from the chapels on our 
military installations.
  So maybe--is it possible--radical Islamists could just be following 
the example that was set by the top commander in our United States 
military that we want the crosses removed from our chapels?
  Well, unfortunately, the radical Islamists in the Middle East go 
further. They want all Americans dead. They want all Jews dead. They 
want Israel wiped off the map. They want the United States, as the 
great Satan, to become a caliphate, paying homage to their choice of 
leaders, not ours.
  That is an affront to the Constitution, and anyone who has taken an 
oath to support and defend the Constitution should fight shari'a law 
supplanting our Constitution.
  I was also talking today with someone who works with victims in 
Nigeria. Boko Haram remains not only unapologetic for the death, 
torture, and suffering that they have caused to Christians in Nigeria, 
but they are emboldened. No one from the United States with power to 
stop them has lifted a finger, other than to tweet: ``Bring back our 
girls.''
  Having been over there, talking to victims' families--I had it 
reaffirmed today--the Twitter campaign that was started by this 
administration against Boko Haram has not been effective. Again, they 
have been emboldened.
  I was advised that there are Christian children in northeast Nigeria 
who haven't been to school for 2 years because they know that if they 
do, they will be killed. If they are boys, they will be killed. If they 
are girls, they will normally be made sex slaves or sold into sex 
slavery or made into wives who are basically slaves. They are told to 
convert or be killed.

  In meeting with parents, whose hearts are broken, they have heard 
that the United States is the most powerful country in the world, but 
they don't know that because they can't understand, if the United 
States is so powerful--and if it was powerful and good and not evil 
like Boko Haram--then why wouldn't we lend something more than a tweet 
to stop the evil.
  I also did note that there is a story of French planes helping with 
intelligence on the Nigerian border. That is encouraging.
  The United States does not have to send boots on the ground to 
Nigeria in order to help defeat Boko Haram. Yes, I understand from 
people I know and respect in Nigeria that Boko Haram has infiltrated 
the main government, so it is hard to do anything effectively as the 
Nigerian Government, with Boko Haram becoming more and more powerful 
each week.
  But because this country has been given so much, if we don't lend a 
helping hand to stop the most evil entities and people in the world, 
there will be American lives lost in big numbers in this country, and 
it is not going to be in the distant future.
  In Africa, if Boko Haram takes over Nigeria, as they are well on 
their way toward pushing to do, then no Christian and no Jew in all of 
Africa is safe. In fact, they will seek to help establish that 
caliphate that the Obama adviser in Homeland Security had tweeted out 
last summer was inevitable.
  Well, if Boko Haram is not stopped, they will be inevitable in 
Africa. Radical Islam--that ideology the President is not familiar 
with--that radical Islamism will take over Africa.
  God bless the Egyptians. They stood up against the Muslim Brothers. 
The Muslim Brotherhood, by the way, has been labeled as a terrorist 
organization.

                              {time}  1900

  CAIR is part of the Muslim Brotherhood. Some countries consider CAIR 
to be a radical Islamic terrorist organization, but not here in America 
because the President relies on them for advice.
  The Muslim Brotherhood, in the United States, has not been labeled a 
terrorist organization, like it has in our ally, the UAE, Egypt, other 
places because, here in the United States, the Muslim Brothers' leaders 
are sought for advice by this administration.
  If we don't stand up against radical Islam--as President Bush talked 
about, I would rather stop it over there than have to stop it here. 
Well, it is here. There are cells here. There are people who have been 
radicalized here.
  There are people who have been born here, like al-Awlaki, who have 
their American citizen passport, and they have grown up hating America 
from wherever they were raised, and they have free access in and out of 
the United States because their parents, or at least their mother, came 
here.
  I thought a few years ago it would be years before we saw that kind 
of effect here. But we know al-Awlaki, whom the President blew up with 
a drone in Yemen, was helpful in radicalizing people here.
  Although the President is not familiar with the ideology that was at 
work at Fort Hood in that act of war at Fort Hood, the act of war in 
killing a military recruiter in Arkansas, the acts of war that have 
been taking place as they did in Boston, it is radical Islam.
  And yes, you don't have to qualify that. We understand that most 
Muslims do not believe in radical Islam. We got that. We don't need the 
qualifier every time something is said about radical Islam. We get it. 
But radical Islam should be identified for what it is.
  It breaks my heart to say it, but it is a fact. If we don't do more 
to stop radical Islam in the world, there are large numbers of 
Americans that are going to die that don't have to. It doesn't have to 
happen.
  But we have to have an administration wake up to the danger that 
faces the world's Christians and Jews, and people who believe in 
democracy and who believe in representative government, and not shari'a 
law; because if we don't act as leaders on the world stage and 
positively point out, that is radical Islam, and we are going to stop 
radical Islam--and the moderates of the world understand we are not 
talking about them. They understand radical Islam is a threat to them 
and their lives if they stand up against it. They get that.
  But I have met moderate Muslims around the world who are willing to 
lay down their lives because they don't want radical Islamists 
controlling their country, and they hope, and they do pray, that the 
United States will wake up and recognize what ideology the President 
knows not of, and finally see it is radical Islam, and we are going to 
stop it.
  Mr. Speaker, I yield back the balance of my time.

[[Page H753]]



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