[Congressional Record Volume 162, Number 8 (Wednesday, January 13, 2016)]
[House]
[Pages H359-H361]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]
STATE OF THE UNION ADDRESS
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, having been the location for the State of
the Union Address last night, we agree that we care deeply about this
country, but there were some things that were said here from this
lectern right here, where national and international leaders speak when
they are invited to speak here in the House, that I felt needed some
deliberation.
It is noteworthy. My late mother, English teacher that she was--if I
had given this speech, the first thing she would have harassed me about
was that you start the first five paragraphs--and this is the content:
I have come, I know, I also, I hope, I will keep, I don't, I want, I
want.
My mother would have made big red circles around there and said:
Eliminate the first person. It tells people that you care more about
yourself. Get rid of that. Quit having so much first person.
Of course, she would have done the same thing toward the end of the
speech when we have: I hold, I know, I intend, I can't, I am asking, I
see, I will be, I can, I travel, I see, I see, I know, I see, I see, I
see, I see, I see, I see, I know, I believe, I stand.
No doubt my late mother would have taken a red pen and said: Son, if
you want to give a great speech, quit talking about the first person
``I'' all the time. You have got to eliminate it if you want to give a
great speech.
So, Mr. Speaker, since we care deeply about each other in this
country, those who are in elected positions, I thought maybe, since the
door is not always open to me at the White House--I know that going
back to the ObamaCare days when the President said: If you have got
better ideas, my door is always open.
I know my office kept trying to get me into that open door. I am sure
the President was telling the truth. I am sure his door was open. But
there were so many Secret Service agents and staff members between me
and that open door, I was not allowed to come present my better ideas
on health care.
{time} 1230
I still have them. Hopefully, we will get a chance to work those in.
Some of the things, Paul Ryan and I have been on the same page for
years; some of them are a little different. Tom Price has had some
great proposals, Mike Burgess. We have a lot of doctors here that have
had some great ideas on how to fix it. From that experience, I know
that the door is not always open, so this is the format in which I have
to point these things out.
When the President said, ``second, how do we make technology work for
us and not against us,'' what immediately comes to mind is what many
Republicans have been concerned about and some of my Democrat friends
have been very concerned about. Don't seem quite as concerned under a
Democratic President as they were under President Bush, but,
nonetheless, still concerned that the President asked, perhaps
rhetorically, how do we make technology work for us.
Mr. Speaker, I would humbly submit that the President has got
technology working for the administration pretty well. You have got NSA
that has been amazing in their ability to use algorithms and sort
through emails. You have got the Federal Government, as we found after
the Snowden revelations, after we had been told by both Bush and Obama
administration officials that we are not checking people's phone calls,
we are not getting that information.
It turned out that, in the FISA court, both administrations had been
seeking and getting blanket orders not consistent with the
Constitution, which requires specificity. You have to specifically name
what it is being searched for and specifically the reason you have for
searching it. There is no specificity. They just said: We want every
list of everybody's phone call in your phone company. The judge said:
Oh, sure, that is specific enough--every single phone call without any
reason, just need the information. So you have got emails, you have got
phone calls.
Then, of course, under ObamaCare, the Federal Government is going to
get to have everybody's medical records. It sounds like crony
capitalism involved in having a deal with a private entity to gather
everybody's medical records. So you will have the Federal Government
and a private company gathering everybody's medical records.
Then we have the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau that, under the
guise of trying to protect people from unscrupulous banks, you have the
Consumer Financial Protection Bureau say: We want every debit and
credit card record of everybody. That way we can watch for unscrupulous
banking practices and banks.
Well, that is not the way the Constitution requires things be done.
As a judge, if you wanted somebody's bank records, you had to come to a
judge like me in a felony case and you had to have probable cause
established under oath that there is probable cause to believe a crime
was committed, this person committed it, and only then would I sign an
order allowing them to get someone's bank records. Not under the CFPB.
Under the guise of helping people, they are gathering people's bank
records, whether they want them to have them or not. That needs to
stop.
The President said: ``We have done all this while cutting our
deficits by almost three-quarters.'' The trouble is I remember back in
2006 when Democrats were rightfully and righteously pointing out that
with a Republican President, President George W. Bush, and Republicans
in control of the House and Senate, they felt it was outrageous that we
were going to have a $160 billion deficit, that we would bring in $160
billion less than we would spend.
They were right. We should have had a balanced budget then. We were
trying to get there. We were pushing for cuts trying to get there. But
they convinced the American public Republicans can't be trusted; they
have got you a $160 billion deficit. You put us in charge, and we will
cut that to get a balanced budget.
Then we got a Democratic President, a Democratic House, and a
Democratic Senate, and what happened? The budget that they gave us
created about a $1.6 trillion deficit. So much for the $160 billion
that we were lambasted for allowing. They 10-times that right up to
$1.6 trillion or so.
People need to understand, when the President says we have cut the
deficit by almost three-quarters, when you still haven't gotten back to
that $160 billion deficit that we were lambasted for back in 2006, you
still have not done an adequate job. We wish that the President and
Democrats in the Senate would work better with us so that we can get
back more to the kind of budget the Democrats promised Americans back
in the fall of 2006.
Then the President said: ``More and more wealth and income is
concentrated at the very top.'' I want to applaud the President, Mr.
Speaker, for stating the truth. Under his watch, more and more wealth
and income has been concentrated at the top. The President has actually
admitted on the record a couple years or so ago that it is true that
for the first time in American history--it has never happened before
under any other President--the first time in American history, under
President Obama's watch, 95 percent of all income in America has been
reported went to the top 1 percent of income earners in America.
Ninety-five percent of the country's income went to the top 1 percent.
It never happened before, not under a Republican, not under a Democrat,
not under anybody. That has never happened before.
[[Page H360]]
In fact, we feel the middle class shrinking, and it is not in a good
way where they are moving up to the rich. They are moving down to the
poor, and the poor are getting poorer. It is not because a free market
system doesn't work. It is because the government, under this
President, blew past the 73- or 74,000-page-per-year record that
President Bush finally reached and now is pushing toward 80,000 new
pages of regulations every year that business has to live under.
The only chance you have is to be a big investment bank that got us
into trouble, that nearly brought down the country, because the
regulations of this administration and the push that this
administration has had against community banks that did not get us in
trouble is about to bring them under. We are losing them constantly,
and the big banks are getting bigger and more powerful instead of
getting lower to a point where they would not bring down the country as
they nearly did previously.
The President says: ``The bipartisan reform of No Child Left Behind
was an important start.'' My understanding was he was promising that he
would get rid of that. I thought when he got elected, okay, look for
the silver lining. He is going to get rid of No Child Left Behind.
Hallelujah, that is a good thing. Let's get the control back to the
States and the people as the 10th Amendment requires, because education
is not an enumerated power. It is reserved to the States and people.
Before the Federal Government got involved, I know in Texas--I have
seen the stats--it was nearly 75 percent of all education employees
were teachers in Texas. Makes sense. Then that year President Carter
started the Department of Education. Now everybody has got to have a
massive number of bureaucrats at the State level and at the local
level.
You have got to have people at the local school district providing
all the data that is being demanded at the State capitol because it is
being demanded here in Washington. So we are now about 50 percent of
our employees in Texas--about--are teachers. Why 70 to 75 percent down
to 50? Because we have a Federal Department of Education. The emphasis
is on being bureaucrats, not on education, and we need to get back to
that. I sure wish that had been a promise the President had kept.
There are numerous promises and statements made. I am just
highlighting some here, Mr. Speaker. But when the President says,
``Nearly 18 million people have gained coverage so far,'' I am not sure
where that number is coming from. It may come from the same source that
the President used to say: ``Surveys show our standing around the world
is higher than when I was elected to this office.''
In both cases, I haven't been able to find any basis whatsoever for
either of those statements and would welcome hard, factual evidence,
not something they create and make up--it is easy to make things up--
but an actual survey. Because I have seen surveys that show that, even
though this President was raised as a child in a Muslim country back in
Indonesia--he thought that that would get him more respect in Muslim
countries--the surveys I have seen show he has less respect in Muslim
countries than President Bush did, and that was bad enough. But at
least the countries had more respect for President George W. Bush. They
knew he was serious and meant business.
Unfortunately, Muslim countries actually believe that they could
take--say, just hypothetically, Mr. Speaker--they could take 10 of the
U.S. Navy sailors, just take them into custody, and this administration
would do nothing, nothing to retaliate or respond. As President Reagan
made clear and history showed, you get peace through strength. If you
don't get peace through strength, then the only way you get peace is
total subjugation to a tyrant.
The President said: ``America is about giving everybody willing to
work a chance, a hand up.'' Yet this is the very President that, with
executive orders, changed--this administration at least--and violated
the existing welfare reform laws because it was a requirement. If you
could work, you had to work.
I was thrilled to see a graph that a professor at Harvard had at a
seminar up there at Harvard back in 2005. He showed that for 30 years
of the welfare system, '65 or '66 to '95 or '96, that single moms'
income, when adjusted for inflation, was just flat-lined. Single moms'
income was flat-lined. No increase over 30 years and spending trillions
of dollars, they were no better off.
Yet, after the welfare reform, after the Republican revolution under
Speaker Newt Gingrich, welfare reform required working, if people
could. They had a graph that showed that, for the first time since we
started having welfare, from '96 through 2005 or through 2004, single
moms' income had a sharp increase over that period and was still headed
up.
I am not sure if it was still headed up when this President took that
requirement away, which no doubt put them back on a flat line again,
making them worse off. I am sure it is not intentional that he would
make single moms worse off; but when you have the data to show what
happens, it is very unfortunate he put single moms back on a path to
low income that never increases after adjusted for inflation.
The President said: ``I think there are outdated regulations that
need to be changed and there is red tape that needs to be cut. But,
after years now of record corporate profits''--that is a problem.
Outdated regulations--I am asking rhetorically, Mr. Speaker. Is that
the reason that he has set records with nearly 80,000 pages of new
regulations where you have got the founders of some of the biggest
businesses in the country saying: With all these regulations pouring
out of Washington every year, I could never found the company that I
have today. I could never get started today because of these massive,
bloated regulations?
{time} 1245
Here again, he takes a shot at big banks or Big Oil.
It is interesting, Mr. Speaker, if you look back at the President's
proposal on his American Jobs Act--my American Jobs Act that I filed
before his was a lot better, it would have stimulated the economy
better--he said he was going to punish Big Oil.
But if you look at the deductions he was eliminating, they were
basically deductions that only the smaller, independent oil producers
could take, which kept them in business, and that Exxon--the big
companies--didn't even take the deductions. They were not eligible to
take those that the President was going to eliminate.
Therefore, it was going to put out of business the independent oil
and gas producers, which would be a boon to the Big Oil that the
President said he didn't like.
He has talked about and railed against the big banks and the fat cats
on Wall Street, but it is as if there is a wink and a nod there: I am
going to call you names, but I am going to let you make more money than
you have ever made in your lives while the rest of those in the country
make less money than they have ever made--because, under this
President's policies and regulations, that is what happened.
He says that immigrants aren't the reason that wages haven't gone up
enough. I hope that we will have a chance to show him the accurate data
that show, yes, that is the biggest reason that wages haven't gone up.
For all of the jobs that have been created, it looks like the number
indicates it is the same number of immigrants that have taken jobs
during that time.
The President said that he plans to lift up the many businesses. Mr.
Speaker, that is the problem. This President thinks he is the one who
lifts businesses or puts them down. It is true that he can destroy
businesses, as he has done, but the fact that anyone thinks the
government is the one that lifts businesses is at the heart of the
problem with this administration, one of many.
The President says that, over the past 7 years, we have nurtured that
spirit. He is talking about discoveries in DNA. Yet, with the 70,000 to
80,000 pages of new regulations every year, there is not much spirit
there to nurture.
He said that we have protected an open Internet, but he failed to
mention that the government took over the Internet. The FCC had said
that they were not going to take it over. Then he gave a speech, saying
that we were
[[Page H361]]
going to take it over. The next thing you know, they have taken it
over.
He says that he is putting Joe in charge of mission control. He is
talking about curing cancer. I love the idea that we are going to cure
cancer. That would be fantastic. A lot of loved ones I have lost have
died of cancer.
Then I heard he was going to put Joe in charge. Then I remembered,
Mr. Speaker, wasn't it he that was going to stamp out all waste, fraud,
and abuse in the Federal Government, so he was going to put Joe in
charge, and we knew it could happen? It seems like he says he is going
to put Joe in charge when he may not really be serious about doing
anything or having any results. So we will see.
In any event, there are a lot of problems that he failed to address
and the fact that he was being mocked by Iran as he was speaking about
the higher respect that other countries have. Go back to President
Reagan. The radical Islamists had so much more respect for President
Reagan. They didn't like him, but they had respect and fear.
Proverbs said: ``Fear of the Lord is the beginning of wisdom.'' There
is a component of fear within respect. They had no fear of Carter, but
they had so much fear and respect for Reagan that they released our
hostages the day he was sworn in. I am hoping and praying that we get a
leader elected who takes office a year from now who has that kind of
respect.
He says that, when it comes to every important international issue,
people of the world do not look to Beijing or to Moscow to lead--they
call us.
I wish the President got more briefings or was able to attend more or
got better information if he is not getting this, but we have had a
real problem under his Presidency. People have been shocked, including
some here in this body--I was not really shocked--when Egypt and some
of our Muslim ally nations have done airstrikes.
The big news was they didn't consult Washington, and people in the
administration were upset: Why didn't they check with us? I have met
with those people. They said: We can't tell this administration,
because they will leak it to our enemies. We can't trust them.
For heaven's sake, this administration has declassified information
on nuclear weapons, trying to embarrass and harass Israel. They have
taken steps to try to prevent Israel from defending themselves.
Is it any wonder that Egyptian President el-Sisi--whom I have
tremendous respect for--and other leaders, including Iran and other
leaders in the Middle East, when they have got a problem, they don't
talk to Washington except for the largest supporter of terrorism, Iran?
Iran knows they can push President Obama around and his
administration, John Kerry. They can push them around, and they do.
They can take our sailors and not have any consequences. But when they
have got a real problem, they go to Moscow, because they know Putin is
a man who means business. I don't think he can be trusted. I think he
is one of those with whom anything should be verified and that he
should be carefully watched.
Some people in this administration think Putin is an anathema and a
mystery. They can't figure him out. He is one of the most transparent
leaders in the world today. Those of us who know Russian history know
you can read him like a book. You can anticipate what he is going to
do. He is very transparent.
The President says that, as we focus on destroying ISIL, we don't
have a plan. We don't have strategic orders for our military to take
out ISIL, but, somehow, he is focused on them. In having been all over
north Iraq myself and in having met with Iraqi leaders, especially
Kurdish leaders--because they are the military leaders we can trust--I
know what they say.
In having just heard another report in September again, we have U.S.
military planes flying. They see trucks that are loaded with weapons
and supplies for ISIL. We know they are going to ISIL as those are
about the only people using some of these roads, with the big trucks.
One of our A-10 pilots said his rules of engagement allowed him to
neither crater the road and stop the supplies to ISIL and stop the
weapons going to ISIL, nor did he have the authority to take out one of
the trucks unless one of the trucks fired at him, and only then could
they fire at that truck only. ISIL knows that, so they don't fire at A-
10s or at any of our helicopters or aircraft. That is why most of the
planes that go out with ordnance come back with most of their ordnance.
It is because of this President's rules of engagement.
How else can you explain that, after 7\1/4\ years under Commander in
Chief and President George W. Bush, we lost right around 500 precious
American military lives in Afghanistan; and then, basically, when we
were told the war was over, for 7 years now under Commander in Chief
Obama, we have lost three to four times that many people and the peace?
When I talk to people privately--you won't get this in a public
meeting but in private meetings with our military--they indicate that
it is our rules of engagement: We have to be worried that, if we defend
ourselves and live, we will go to Leavenworth for 20 years; so a lot of
us would rather die as somewhat of a hero than go home and go to
Leavenworth for defending ourselves.
So we have lost three to four times as many under President Obama--in
3 months less time when the war was supposedly over--than we lost
during the actual war in Afghanistan. The President says that our
foreign policy must be focused on the threat from ISIL and al Qaeda. I
agree it must be, but, unfortunately, it isn't at this time.
I will just finish with this, Mr. Speaker. He points out that we also
can't try to take over and rebuild every country that falls into
crisis. That is not leadership. That is a recipe for a quagmire,
spilling American blood and treasure. Ultimately, it weakens us. It is
the lesson of Vietnam and of Iraq that we should have learned by now.
Mr. Speaker, Sam Johnson--after 7 years in the Hanoi Hilton as a
prisoner of war in North Vietnam--was beaten and tortured. If you
remember the scenario, Nixon had promised in 1972 to get us out of
Vietnam. He calls for the Paris peace negotiations. They start. North
Vietnam makes this show about storming out. So Nixon ordered the carpet
bombing of Hanoi and North Vietnam for 2 weeks. After 2 weeks of
bombing, North Vietnam rushed back to the negotiating table and said:
Let's get this done. And there was a peace deal.
As Sam Johnson and others were being taken to the bus to be taken to
the military plane to leave North Vietnam, he said one of the meanest
officers or higher officials there at the prison was laughing and said:
You stupid Americans, if you had just bombed us for 1 more week, we
would have had to surrender unconditionally.
Mr. Speaker, the lesson of Vietnam is this: If you are going to send
American military men and women into harm's way, give them everything
they need to win. Let them win, and then bring them home.
That is the lesson of Vietnam that this administration and many
others have not learned. That is why, instead of 500 military heroes
losing their lives in 7 years in Afghanistan, we have had three to four
times that many lose their lives under President Obama. It is because
this lesson of Vietnam has not been learned. Give our military what
they need to win, and give them rules of engagement and orders to win,
and then bring them home.
I hope and pray somebody gets that message in this administration so
that we have no more needless loss of life in foreign countries by the
heroic, patriotic men and women of our military.
Mr. Speaker, I yield back the balance of my time.
____________________