[Congressional Record Volume 161, Number 156 (Friday, October 23, 2015)]
[House]
[Pages H7170-H7172]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




               CRITICAL ISSUES FACING THE AMERICAN PEOPLE

  The SPEAKER pro tempore. Under the Speaker's announced policy of 
January 6, 2015, the Chair recognizes the gentleman from Texas (Mr. 
Gohmert) for 30 minutes.
  Mr. GOHMERT. Mr. Speaker, it has been an interesting day and an 
interesting week. I was in here listening to the colloquy between 
Majority Leader McCarthy and the minority whip.
  I had heard my good friend, a very intelligent, clever, witty friend 
from Maryland, Mr. Hoyer, indicate that Republicans bring us to the 
brink time and time again, talking about, I guess, the debt ceiling.
  Sometimes it is just good to stop from the rhetoric here and the 
lines like ``bringing us to the brink,'' and it is really good to look 
at what the history of the situation is.

                              {time}  1300

  Until Newt Gingrich led with the Contract With America, Republicans 
recaptured the majority in the House and Senate, for the first time in 
40 years, the Democrats kept bringing us to the brink. It didn't matter 
who was in the White House. The Democratic Congress kept bringing us to 
the brink, spending more and more money.
  We thought it was a great deal of money. They kept bringing us to the 
brink. It seemed so irresponsible not to be interested in trying to 
have a more balanced budget. There would be people like Phil Gramm, 
with the Gramm-Rudman law, that tried to force a balancing.
  In fact, I know the President will probably in weeks to come continue 
the mistaken rhetoric. He is such a nice guy, but he is so often 
mistaken or whoever puts those mistakes in his teleprompter.
  But the fact is that, repeatedly, this requirement that Congress 
raise the debt ceiling if more debt is to be incurred has been used as 
a vehicle to get laws passed that tried to rein in the irresponsible 
spending that has been going on for many decades.
  I believe it was Morgenthau, Franklin Roosevelt's Secretary of 
Treasury, who wrote in 1940: After 8 years, we have spent more money 
than anyone ever in history, and we have nothing to show for it but 
more debt. That was quite an admission, that the New Deal was a total 
failure, and it actually was.
  It wasn't until World War II actually ended the Depression in America 
that we came out of the Great Depression. It was certainly none of the 
socialist policies that the United States began engaging in.
  I know just since I have been here in January of 2005, in 2006, as I 
recall, we were having debate. Republicans were in the majority. My 
friends, Mr. Speaker, on the Democratic side of the room over here were 
repeatedly making the point about how irresponsible it was for 
Republicans to be spending--I think at the time it was around $160 
billion--more than we were bringing in to the Federal Treasury.
  I agreed. Actually, we should have balanced the budget back in 2005 
and 2006. We were only $160 billion, at one point, away from doing 
that.
  I think that was part of the reason the Democrats continued beating 
up on Republicans for overspending what was coming in, $160 billion or 
so.
  Little would I ever dream that, after being pummeled verbally by my 
Democratic friends, as a Republican spending $160 billion more or so 
than we had coming in, that those same friends would do the unthinkable 
and increase that debt in one year more than 10 times the $160 billion.
  You would have thought that perhaps they would remember some of those 
things they used to say with such vitriol right here on the House floor 
about how spending more than $160 billion more than we were taking in 
was so irresponsible.
  You would have thought they might have remembered some of those 
because, when you say one thing one year and then you get the majority 
and you are 10 times worse than what you accused the other side of--
more than 10 times worse--some people feel a little sensitive.
  We have to be careful because we certainly don't want to violate the 
House rules on what we say here. But, you know, some people feel guilty 
when they accuse somebody else of doing something they are 10 times 
more guilty of.
  But, apparently, that guilt didn't exist. If it did, it was short 
lived and didn't prevent even my friend from Maryland from coming to 
the floor today and again launching the inappropriate statement that it 
is Republicans that keep bringing us to the brink.
  I realize that it was our own Speaker that went on the Jay Leno show 
and said that Republicans shut down the government, but, you know, 
sometimes he is engaged in activity that keeps him from realizing 
exactly what is going on.
  But if you go back and look at the actual Record, September 29, 
September 30 of 2013, the record is very clear. There was one party in 
Congress that was trying to be responsible, that was trying to rein in 
spending, that was trying not to shut the government down, was 
compromising against ourselves repeatedly, and it was the Republican 
Party.
  We didn't get a lot of help across the aisle. In fact, what we had 
from the other end of the hall here, from Majority Leader Reid, was an 
all-out effort to shut down the government. And that is a fact as to 
who shut down the government. If anyone bothers to go look, yes, you 
will see we had a spending bill that gave Harry Reid everything he and 
the President wanted plus some.
  It was hard for a guy like me to vote for that. But, yes, in the 
initial bill, we defunded ObamaCare. Why wouldn't we? We know. We hear 
from constituents how bad that is, how they have lost their insurance, 
lost their doctor, they can't get the medicine they did before. Instead 
of paying $105 now they are paying $100 for prescriptions. We are 
hearing all those things. So why wouldn't we vote to do what we believe 
is best for our constituents? We did.
  We voted to fund everything they wanted plus some, but defund 
ObamaCare. Yes, that is what we passed first. Harry Reid would not 
bring it to the floor for a vote. So we compromised against ourselves 
because there was no negotiating.
  I believe--and, Mr. Speaker, this is just my thought--it sure seemed 
there was plenty of evidence to show that Harry Reid believed the 
conventional wisdom here in Washington, that if

[[Page H7171]]

there were a shutdown of the government, no matter who did it, no 
matter that the Democrats themselves did everything they could to shut 
the government down, it wouldn't matter because their friends in the 
mainstream media would blame the Republicans.
  Who knew we would have a Republican Speaker that didn't know the fact 
and would say, yeah, Republicans shut it down, but they knew the 
mainstream media would blame Republicans. And they needed a shutdown 
because the conventional wisdom here in Washington at the time--still 
is--if there is a shutdown, then mainstream media blames Republicans 
and then the Democrats get the majority back in the House or, if they 
didn't have it, as they don't have it now, they get it back in the 
Senate. So they have been wanting a shutdown.
  You can go back to, I think, March of 2011. Harry Reid would not 
yield at all when we got down to a midnight deadline, and our Speaker 
came in and basically caved just a few months after we took the 
majority in March of 2011 and said we have got to avoid a shutdown at 
all costs.
  So around 10:30, 11:00, Republicans completely caved and gave Harry 
Reid what he wanted because he wanted a shutdown. You could say that is 
bringing us to the brink for political purposes. That is exactly what 
it is.
  So we came back, and we bet against ourselves. We passed a bill that 
gave Harry Reid everything he and the President wanted plus some, but 
we put in a provision, not the complete defunding of ObamaCare, but 
just suspending it for a year.
  I frankly thought that, because there were Democrats on the ropes in 
the Senate, if they wouldn't even vote on that or voted against it, 
they would lose their seats.
  I bet you could find some Senators who lost their seats in that next 
election that wish they had taken that vote and voted to postpone 
ObamaCare for a year. They probably would have kept their seats. But 
they didn't. They didn't even get to vote on that bill on the Senate 
floor.

  I thought it was unwise. Having negotiated big deals back in Texas, I 
thought it was unwise to bet against ourselves yet again when the 
Senate would not even engage in any kind of compromise. They wanted a 
shutdown. But, no, we had another vote.
  We said: Okay, Harry Reid. We will give you everything you want, 
President Obama everything he wants, plus a little bit. But since the 
President suspended the employer mandate illegally, unconstitutionally, 
for a year, how about if we suspend the individual mandate for a year? 
That was not allowed to come to the floor for a vote.
  Even though we were doing everything we could to keep the government 
going, Harry Reid wanted a shutdown, would not allow a vote. I thought, 
at 1:10 a.m., when our leadership came here to the floor on October 1 
and asked us to vote for folks to be conferees that would work all 
night and avoid a shutdown by 8 a.m., capitulate where they have to, 
but get a deal done, that it was really capitulation and that Harry 
Reid would be crazy not to go ahead and appoint Senate conferees so 
they could have a deal by 8 a.m., the country would never realize there 
was even an 8-hour shutdown. But Harry Reid would not even allow the 
Senate to vote to have conferees to work out a deal by 8 a.m. He 
didn't.
  So Harry Reid forced the shutdown, no doubt with encouragement of the 
President. Sure enough, the mainstream media blamed Republicans. That 
cost Republicans tremendously in the election the following year. Oh, 
wait. No, it didn't, actually.
  The American people actually, I think, ended up appreciating that 
Republicans were standing for the idea that we are on the brink because 
of all the decades of overspending, except for that little interlude in 
the 1990s when the Republicans took the majority here in Congress.
  As part of their Contract With America, they became very responsible, 
and they pushed through budgets that Bill Clinton didn't want to sign, 
but eventually took credit for, that actually brought the budget into 
alignment. Other than that, Democrats have brought us to the brink 
repeatedly, and Harry Reid and President Obama continue to do that.
  So who would have ever dreamed in 2006 that here in 2015 we would 
have Democrats crowing over the fact that: Gee, we may get our deficit 
in 1 year down to $400 billion, $500 billion. Wow, won't that be great? 
Because, once again, their memories have not allowed them to accuse 
themselves back during those days when they were blaming Republicans 
for running up a $160 billion or so deficit in one year.
  Now, my friend from Maryland also pointed out that Dave Camp had a 
tax reform bill, and in his words it was dismissed out of hand because 
it was not paid for. My friend, Mr. Hoyer, is such a smart guy. I 
admire him. I love talking to him. He has got a great sense of humor. 
But he is wrong on that. It happens. He is wrong.
  It was not dismissed out of hand because it was not paid for. It was 
dismissed out of hand because it was not a significant enough reform in 
the right direction of what we need: a complete simplification of the 
Tax Code that so many of us are asking for.
  I like a flat tax. Others like a fair tax. I sure can see their 
point. It has got some good points. But let's have that debate. Throw 
out the Internal Revenue Code. Throw out the tens of thousands of pages 
that have been added in interpretation and regulation. Let's have 
something that Americans can simply fill out easily where they don't 
even need an accountant, something like a flat tax: the more you make, 
the more you pay.
  Dave Camp's tax reform bill--and I just love the guy. He is a fine 
American. We were so thrilled when he was able to beat back the cancer 
that overtook him. He is a great guy. He worked hard.
  But, in my estimation, his problem on his tax reform bill was he 
tried to placate too many Democrats, which kept it from being as good 
as I and many others thought it should be.

                              {time}  1315

  So I appreciate the points being made here on the floor, but I 
thought it called out for a little elaboration and correction.
  Now, we also had a hearing yesterday that went on for a number of 
hours. It was an important hearing, and I know there were people that 
kept talking about, gee, there have been seven hearings or eight 
hearings or whatever there have been, or seven or eight investigations. 
None of them had the documentation that is now only starting to be 
obtained from a recalcitrant State Department and Obama administration.
  Yeah, it is easy to get an okay when you don't turn over the 
documents that show lie after lie, misrepresentation. Yeah, it is easy. 
All you do is just not let anybody see the documentation for the 
misrepresentation that came.
  Now, my staff says you have got to read this article, and it uses the 
L word a number of times--the L word being ``lie.'' It uses that a 
number of times. But I don't want to even come close to getting in 
trouble for violating any rule here on the House floor because the 
content is too important. So we will just say, instead of lies, we will 
just call them unfortunate wrong statements, so with that substitution.
  Then I find out, gee, it is my friend, Ben Shapiro, that wrote this. 
I hope that doesn't hurt Ben that I mentioned we are friends.
  But anyway, ``Hillary Clinton's 5 Biggest Unfortunate Mistaken 
Representations in Her Benghazi Testimony,'' in the article, it points 
out:
  ``Hillary, as always, is the poor, put-upon victim of a vast right-
wing conspiracy.''
  Mr. Speaker, I know you will remember back in the nineties when her 
husband was accused of doing things that it turned out he really did; 
instead of making clear her husband had made mistakes--and she had made 
it clear there would be no more--she went after the women. She had a 
war on women and went after any women who actually accused her husband 
of impropriety, and even used and coined that phrase, ``this vast 
rightwing conspiracy'' during her war on women who just tried to point 
out what her husband had done to them.
  But the article says:
  ``She set up a private email server and deleted relevant emails from 
it for purely political reasons; she pressed for a pointless invasion 
of Libya for political reasons, chortled at its conquest for political 
reasons, watched it descend into chaos while doing nothing

[[Page H7172]]

for political reasons, and then allowed her ambassador to twist in the 
Libyan tornado without proper security for political reasons; finally, 
she covered up that disaster by lying about its causes for political 
reasons. But those who ask questions about such matters are partisan 
politicians.''
  The article goes on further down:
  ``Hillary kept claiming that she cared deeply about her good friend 
Chris Stevens. At one point, she whipped out her pre-planned righteous 
indignation to complain, `I would imagine I've thought more about what 
happened than all of you put together. I've lost more sleep than all of 
you put together.' This was salt in the wound, the equivalent of Johnny 
Cochran lamenting his worries over the fate of Nicole Brown Simpson.''
  I have got to inject at this point, I was there for a good bit of the 
hearing because a friend, a real patriot, she served in the Navy, that 
is where she met a guy named Ty Woods, one of the greatest American 
patriots this country could ever hope to have as a son. She married Ty. 
They had even had another child right before--not just months before--
he found himself in Benghazi.
  And another former Navy SEAL, like Ty, that cared more about his 
country and serving others than his own self-interests came and joined 
him, as I understand, when Ty was getting ready to go to the roof to 
try to protect those people. He knew David Ubben, with the State 
Department, was formerly an Army Ranger, and David went with him, 
grabbed an M4. They went to the roof to protect the Americans that were 
in the building beneath them.
  I will never forget reading the name of the first Navy SEAL that this 
administration released, and the story--obviously, this language had to 
come from this administration--it struck me as such a slap in the face 
to this former Navy SEAL, because I have known so many Navy SEALs and 
former Navy SEALs. I am proud of every one I have known--well, maybe 
except for a former Governor, who is creating chaos for Chris Kyle's 
widow.
  But when I read the words, after Glen Doherty, a former Navy SEAL, 
contractor, and it said, from the information released from this 
administration, that he died while taking cover.
  Now, I didn't know anything about Benghazi at that point, about the 
specifics, but I knew enough Navy SEALs to know, if he died, it wasn't 
taking cover. It was probably giving cover or maybe moving to get a 
better vantage from which to defend other people. Those are the Navy 
SEALs I know, generally speaking.
  Then we find out he didn't die taking cover. Ty Woods didn't die 
taking cover. I don't know if that was the State Department's release 
to try to minimize how heroic those people were because they violated 
orders and said: We are going to help those people that are penned down 
in Benghazi. Those are heroes.
  I know my friend, Duncan Hunter, had moved to try to get a 
Congressional Medal of Honor. I think it is time we take those back up. 
Though they weren't in the military, they deserve the highest honor 
this body could give them posthumously.
  And David Ubben, I never brought it up during the months that he had 
asked me not to after I met him on one of my visits out to Bethesda, or 
Walter Reed combined with it now. But he was up there on the roof. 
There were three mortars that came in. The first one missed.
  Having been in the Army 4 years, I know they used to teach us, if 
there are three mortars or three artillery rounds coming in, then you 
better move before the fourth one hits, because they will use those 
three to triangulate your position, and the fourth one will be on top 
of your head.
  So when I heard David said there had been three mortars come in, I 
said: Oh, so they bracketed you. He said: Oh, no, no, no. I don't want 
you to get the wrong idea. We knew as soon as the first one missed, 
they knew exactly where our position was. It was short, but there was 
no question, they knew exactly at what angle to put that mortar so that 
it would come down on our heads. And that's what the second and third 
mortar did.
  There was no bracketing. They knew their position. Pre-planned 
attack. They had the coordination perfectly, exactly where that mortar 
needed to be.
  The first one was short, as he said, but the second and third were 
right on top of their targets. And that is what killed Glen and Ty as 
they were giving cover--not taking cover, giving cover.
  In fact, I heard yesterday--it wasn't in the hearing, wasn't said in 
the hearing, but I heard from somebody who had talked to a Delta Force 
individual. When he heard the name Ty Woods, he said: You know, that 
guy, he and Glen took on a whole city.
  They didn't care. They were going to protect the United States civil 
servants that were in the building that they went to the roof of, and 
they gave their lives giving them cover.

  David Ubben lost much of his right leg, but, after many surgeries, 
hopefully it is near the point now of being usable. He is a hero. This 
administration didn't even want to give him the right credit.
  And then to have them--and Ben Shapiro points it out here. They used 
this video, and even to say to any one of the survivors, as Mrs. 
Clinton did: We will get the guy that did the video.
  They didn't care about the video. I have talked to many of the family 
members of those who were killed. They didn't care about the guy that 
did the video. They cared about the people that killed their loved one.
  Dorothy Woods is a hero. So, for Mrs. Clinton to sit there and 
arrogantly, condescendingly say to the panel, ``I've lost more sleep 
than all of you put together,'' with Dorothy Woods sitting right there, 
was just another dagger to her heart because she still loses sleep.
  Let's go back to that night. We still don't know what Hillary Clinton 
and our President did specifically after they found out. Either the 
President was preparing for his fundraiser in Las Vegas the next day, 
or he just went to bed, with his personal Ambassador to Libya missing. 
Either they went to bed or did something far more embarrassing for them 
not to be willing to tell us what they did that night.
  I mean, I was only in the Army 4 years, but I cannot imagine what 
kind of mind will allow itself to go to sleep or just blow things off 
and move on to another project when somebody working directly for you 
has either been killed, you know people have been killed, and the 
Ambassador is missing in a hostile area that, turns out, begged for 
security, additional security 600 times.
  This is disgraceful, just disgraceful. They had nothing to do with 
the video.
  My friend Jim Jordan said: You tell the American people one thing; 
you tell your family an entirely different story.
  And, in fact, she told the Egyptian Prime Minister the day after the 
attacks: We know the attack in Libya had nothing to do with the film. 
It was a planned attack, not a protest.
  As I recall, not only was that simply not true, she took State 
Department funds, as I understand it, and spent tens of thousands of 
dollars on a commercial to facilitate and to perpetuate this lie, and 
spent that in foreign Muslim countries, running it on their televisions 
to say we had nothing to do with the video.
  Mr. Speaker, I meant to get into the fact that I haven't changed my 
vote for Speaker. I am still for Dan Webster.
  I yield back the balance of my time.

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