[Congressional Record Volume 162, Number 45 (Tuesday, March 22, 2016)]
[House]
[Pages H1549-H1550]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




                           ISSUES OF THE DAY

  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, I want to thank my friends, Congressman 
Blum and the future Senator DeSantis, for great words and great 
insights.
  Mr. Speaker, I first want to answer a couple of questions that people 
have had about a couple of votes that my friends, Justin Amash and 
Thomas Massie, and I had.
  One is on H.R. 4742. It is described to authorize the National 
Science Foundation to support entrepreneurial programs for women.
  Since my wife and I have been blessed with three beautiful daughters, 
inside and out, all three of them absolutely brilliant--these type of 
things are important to me--but I note that it says, ``studies have 
shown that technology and commercialization ventures are successful 
when women are in top management positions.''
  It also puts into law that the requirement that, under the Science 
and Engineering Equal Opportunities Act, it is required that the 
National Science Foundation encourage its entrepreneurial programs to 
recruit and support women to extend their focus beyond the laboratory 
and into the commercial world.
  Now, it just seems like--and I know these are incredibly well 
intended. Both H.R. 4742 and H.R. 4745 are very, very well intended. 
Wonderful people put them forward. I understand that.
  But just from my experience and from the common sense I hear as I get 
all over east Texas, it just seems like Washington is always a step 
behind or--an old saying--a day late and a dollar short.
  Now we are $19 trillion short. But we want to take time from our $19 
trillion in debt to demand that the National Science Foundation 
discriminate based on gender.
  There may be some young boy who needs encouragement from a tough 
family situation, but this program is designed to discriminate against 
that young, poverty-stricken boy and to encourage the girl. Forget the 
boy. Encourage the girl.
  It just seems that, if we are ever going to get to the dream of 
Martin Luther King, Jr., that he spoke just down the Mall, he wanted 
people to be judged by the content of their character and not by the 
color of their skin.
  I know after race has been an issue that needed attention, then 
gender appropriately got attention, because the whole Constitution of 
the United States, when it is properly read verbatim, means men, women, 
race, creed, color, national origin, and gender.
  Those things are not supposed to matter. It just seems like, when we 
come in and we say that it is important that for a while we 
discriminate, we end up getting behind.
  And then probably 25 years from now boys are going to have fallen 
behind in numbers, and then we are going to need to come in and say: 
Actually, when we passed that bill forcing encouragement of girls and 
not encouraging of little boys, we were getting behind the eight ball. 
We didn't see that we were going to be leaving little boys in the 
ditch, and now we need to start doing programs to encourage little 
boys.
  We are always going to be behind until we get around to saying from 
this House floor that we don't care where you are from, we don't care 
what your gender is, and we don't care what you like look. You may be 
as homely as Abraham Lincoln. We don't care what you look like.
  We don't care about the color of your hair or the lack of hair. We 
don't care. We want you not to have an equal outcome, but to have an 
equal opportunity to excel, and then let the best person do the best 
job and excel. That is what has made free market systems work so well.

                              {time}  1745

  I was reminded to check out a lady that is known as Madame Curie, 
Marie Sklowdowska Curie, Madame Curie. It says she was born in Warsaw, 
then the Kingdom of Poland.
  Her achievements included the development of the theory of 
radioactive isotopes and the discovery of two elements: polonium and 
radium. Under her direction, the world's first studies were conducted 
into the treatment of neoplasms, using radioactive isotopes; she 
founded the Curie Institutes in Paris and in Warsaw; and she won the 
Nobel Peace Prize for her work in radiation.
  So as I think about it, it has got to be millions and millions of 
lives that this brilliant woman, Madame Curie, has saved because of her 
work. She died early at 66 because of her work in the laboratory--she 
had aplastic anemia, apparently from her work with radioactive 
isotopes--but the lives that woman saved by her work in the laboratory.
  However, if our bill, H.R. 4742, had been in law back in Poland or 
France as she tried to move forward, the Science Foundation there would 
have been required to tell Madame Curie: Do you know what? You are 
pretty good in the laboratory, but under this law from the wisdom of 
Congress, we are supposed to tell you to go into commercial enterprise 
and make a whole bunch more money because you are better off not being 
in the laboratory but being out in the commercial world because you 
will be a better businessperson than men. You need to get out there.
  I thank God that there wasn't a program like this that distracted 
her. This brilliant, caring woman basically gave her life to save many, 
many millions by the phenomenal work she did in the laboratory.
  But according to the bill that we passed today, we are requiring the 
Science Foundation to encourage entrepreneurial programs to recruit and 
support women to extend their focus beyond the laboratory and into the 
commercial world. Thank God that is not what Madame Curie did.
  We did have another bill. Part of the program is good for boys and 
girls, but then there is a part, Aspire to Inspire, that engages young 
girls to present science, technology, engineering, and mathematics 
career opportunities, et cetera.
  And on the next one, provide an opportunity for female middle school 
students. We don't want to provide an opportunity under this bill for 
boys. Let the boys fight, let them get into gangs; but the women, the 
young girls, that is who we want to encourage.
  In section 3, NASA shall--not just may, but shall--encourage women 
and girls to study science, technology, and engineering.
  I was inspired in a little town in Mount Pleasant, Texas, growing up 
by people who encouraged boys and girls equally. We had some very, very 
smart girls and we had some smart guys. Our teachers really didn't care 
whether we were boys or girls. They wanted us to work hard and they 
wanted us to excel. They were incredibly good teachers, and I learned 
so much. I learned so much in math that in college algebra at Texas 
A&M, I didn't have to open my book but for 15 minutes for the final. 
That is all I had to do for the

[[Page H1550]]

whole semester because of the incredible bases I got in math from my 
seventh grade teacher, Ms. Edwards, and my high school math teachers 
were terrific.
  But, anyway, I hope that we can get beyond pandering and try to get 
to the point where we, as a Congress, will say: We don't care what you 
look like. The things you can't help, how you look, your gender, we 
don't care about those. We want you to have an equal opportunity with 
everybody else.
  I hope and pray that is the direction we go.
  I also hope and pray that those who are suffering in Europe, in 
Brussels, after the horrendous attacks by radical Islamists, will be 
comforted by friends and by God himself. For those who have lost loved 
ones, we need to reach out to the families and be for them, with them, 
and encourage them. But the best legacy we could provide would be to 
stop the insane efforts to win over radical Islamists by trying to be 
this phenomenal friend to them.
  An article today by Greg Botelho from CNN says, and these are the 
highlights: ``A U.S. official speculates ISIS is `trying to make an 
international statement' by attacking the home of NATO, the EU.''
  He also points out: ``Two explosions rock the Brussels airport, 
another rips through a subway station in the Belgian capital.''
  This article from CNN, unfortunately, says: ``While jarring, the 
carnage wasn't altogether surprising. Belgium has been going after 
terrorist threats for months, as illustrated by last week's capture of 
Europe's most wanted man, Salah Abdeslam, in a bloody raid in 
Brussels.''
  Apparently if you stand up against radical Islam to stop these people 
who would take us back to the Dark Ages of despotism, book burning, and 
horrors of basic slavery if you don't believe as you are told, we will 
be better off if we can be nice to them.
  We have an administration that said Iran is the biggest supporter of 
terrorism in the world, so we think maybe if we cut a deal where we 
release to them $100 billion to $150 billion, that they will surely 
start being nice to us.
  And those Castros, Fidel and Raul Castro, down in Cuba, they have 
been dictators. They have tortured, they have been horrendous in the 
harm that they have brought to the people of Cuba.
  How do we know, even though people like Sean Penn and others have 
told us how wonderful it is, they have the best health care in the 
world?
  Well, it turns out, actually, they are really wanting to get to the 
United States. It turns out they are wanting to come in droves to the 
United States because it is not so good living under a dictator like 
the Castros.
  What the President has done, unknowingly, is put his stamp of 
approval on a dictatorship that has been incredibly brutal, just as 
this administration did to the terrorists in charge in Iran. People 
will further suffer, just as they have in the last few days while 
the President visited Cuba.

  The administration in charge in Cuba, the dictators, were brutalizing 
people who had the gall to come out and want to act as if they had 
freedom of speech and freedom of assembly. One poor woman was beaten, 
stripped naked, and dragged off to jail. Apparently that is okay under 
the new approach of the U.S. administration if we are trying to 
outreach to them and they are wanting our outreach to go better.
  The fact is it is one thing to have relations commercially with 
another country, but when we, as the United States, the freest country 
that has ever existed until we began to lose our freedoms here more 
recently, when we yield to dictators, to terrorist leaders like in 
Iran, the world suffers. We have been given a massive responsibility by 
being the freest and, up until recently, possibly the most powerful 
country in the world.
  China has come on strong. Others have nuclear weapons that will use 
them and want to use them. Our position is in jeopardy. To whom much is 
given of them, much will be required. We should be more faithful so 
that when a country like Nigeria begs help to deal with radical Islam 
and Boko Haram, we should not have to hear from a Catholic bishop in 
Nigeria that the Obama administration is demanding that they change 
their laws to embrace same-sex marriage against their religious 
beliefs, appropriate for abortion even when it violates their religious 
beliefs, chide the leader of Kenya or other countries to give up their 
religious beliefs, and follow the amoral teaching of whoever happens to 
be in charge in America.
  There are consequences for using the power of the United States to 
bully other countries and to allow them to suffer immeasurably while we 
act haute as if, because of their Christian beliefs, they are not as 
worthy as those in the United States that do not follow Christian 
beliefs.
  More Christians are suffering and being persecuted, but Jesus said: 
You will suffer for my sake.
  As we see also in Israel in the latest attack there, people are 
suffering and being killed. FOX News had this article regarding the 
Peninsula Group based in Tel Aviv. There is massive suffering at the 
hands of radical Islam.
  As Europe suffers dreadfully at the hands of radical Islam and at the 
hands of people who have poured into their countries illegally due to 
their naive but permissive policies, the last thing they need to hear 
is from the United States President that they need to be careful, not 
to be biased or prejudiced against the radical Islamists that want to 
kill them and have killed their family members, because according to 
this administration, the far bigger danger is bias against those who 
want to kill us and eliminate our civilized way of life. God help us 
all.
  I yield back the balance of my time.

                          ____________________