[Congressional Record Volume 162, Number 173 (Friday, December 2, 2016)]
[House]
[Pages H7137-H7142]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




                             WEEK IN REVIEW

  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. Mr. Speaker, it is an honor to be here, and, even after 
the voters have spoken, it is an honor to find when you and your 
positions actually don't make you special, they just make you 
completely in accord with over 70 percent of your constituents, not 
including newspapers.
  The people have spoken, and, as President Obama referenced a number 
of times, elections do have consequences. What he failed to remember 
was, yes, but we had elections to Congress that also should have 
consequences. When we are accountable every 2 years, the President is 
only accountable every 4 years.
  At this time, I yield to the gentleman from Louisiana (Mr. Graves), 
my friend.


                       Louisiana's Tragic Floods

  Mr. GRAVES of Louisiana. Mr. Speaker, I want to thank the gentleman 
from Texas (Mr. Gohmert) for yielding to me.
  Mr. Speaker, I have had the opportunity to come on the House floor a 
number of times and give an update to this body about the profound 
impacts of the flood we had in August of this year in south Louisiana. 
Just to remind you of a few statistics, this was believed to be a 
1,000-year storm. There were trillions of gallons of water that fell in 
Louisiana. It was estimated to be about 31 inches of rain in about 36 
hours in some areas of south Louisiana. That is more rain in 36 hours 
than the average American gets in a year's time. If that were a 
snowstorm, Mr. Speaker, that would have been 25 feet of snow.
  We have been working now for months, working to try and make sure 
that we have an efficient recovery, make sure that these people can get 
back on their own two feet, that they can recover from this absolute 
tragedy that happened in south Louisiana, this once-in-a-lifetime 
event.
  Starting out, Mr. Speaker, we saw unbelievable recovery, response, 
rescue

[[Page H7138]]

activities, but it wasn't by government. That was the amazing thing. 
This was the community coming together, rescuing themselves, cooking 
for one another, sheltering one another, clothing one another. This 
wasn't government that came in and saved the day. While there were 
great first responders from our police departments and fire departments 
and others that came and helped out, the reality is, well over 90 
percent of the response and rescue activities were done by other 
members of the community. They weren't trained. They weren't asked to 
do it. They just did it. So you saw a great spirit of recovery 
happening.
  Then what happened is the Federal Government stepped in and began 
taking over some of the sheltering, began taking over the recovery 
activities, and we have seen a complete stop. Here we are, over 100 
days after this flood event, and FEMA is telling people that they may 
get a trailer unit in January or February. Mr. Speaker, it is 
wintertime. People are living in tents. I heard about a veteran over 
the weekend who is living in a car wash. We have people who are living 
in their stripped and gutted uninsulated homes, and they can't get 
trailers.
  Mr. Speaker, there is a guy by the name of Darrell Whitehead who 
lives in Denham Springs, Louisiana. Mr. Whitehead has had a trailer 
sitting in his front yard for 5 weeks, a trailer that FEMA brought, and 
they couldn't let him move in. He has stared at this thing for 5 weeks. 
I made phone calls, my chief of staff made phone calls, and we had 
other caseworkers in the office who made phone calls trying to get FEMA 
to simply get this guy in his trailer.

                              {time}  1215

  Mr. Whitehead, already a victim of the flood, has been revictimized 
by FEMA by having a trailer sitting in his yard, not giving him a place 
to go for 5 weeks, and just having to sit there and be tortured because 
they needed a sink installed.
  Mr. Speaker, this is ridiculous. And this isn't an isolated case. I 
can tell you case after case after case where this is the way FEMA has 
revictimized people flooded from this disaster.
  Another example is Sheriff Jason Ard in Livingston Parish. Sheriff 
Ard was very concerned about the high percentage of sheriff's deputies 
that were flooded. He came in and he simply said: Look, we have got to 
get these deputies and their families in a safe, stable situation so 
they can focus not on having to figure out where their family is 
sleeping at night or what they are eating, but focus on law 
enforcement, focus on safety and security of the community that has 
been devastated by this flood.
  So he came to FEMA and he said: Hey, look, I have got a plan. I have 
got a trailer dealer who is willing to give us trailers--and don't 
quote me on the numbers, but I am within the ball park--for $36,000. I 
will buy them back from you for $27,000 a year and you can find a piece 
of land. You can put all these trailers out. You can have a sheriff's 
deputy group housing area.
  Instead, FEMA says: No. What we are going to do is get these deputies 
trailers not for a net of $10,000, roughly, as I explained, but for 
$100,000. That is how much FEMA is paying for these trailer units to 
buy them, store them, transport them--$100,000 versus the scenario that 
Sheriff Ard found for $10,000.
  I have spoken to the Secretary of Homeland Security, the Deputy 
Secretary, Assistant Secretary, Regional Administrator of FEMA. Nobody 
can figure out how to do this and they are all telling him no.
  So we have displaced deputies. We don't have the proper law 
enforcement focus in the community because the deputies, appropriately, 
are worried about their family and where they are going to sleep and 
eat. We have got FEMA spending 10 times the amount of money that 
Sheriff Ard has found a solution for. What is happening is absolutely 
ridiculous.
  So, lastly, Mr. Speaker, in September of this year we did appropriate 
a down payment of money to help with the recovery efforts; and 
certainly it is a step in the right direction. As I have said several 
times, it is not anywhere near the level of funding that should be put 
forth for a cost-efficient recovery effort. We are going to end up 
spending more money by lowballing these numbers and having FEMA 
revictimize people for months here than if we had just appropriated the 
right amount to begin with.
  Right now we are negotiating a second tranche, a second payment. 
Under HUD rules, they are requiring that the funds focus upon low- and 
moderate-income only. I want to be clear: low- and moderate-income 
folks need help in recovering.
  What about the middle class? What about the upper class? What about 
the job creators? What about the businesses?
  Focusing only on low- and moderate-income begins a partial 
restoration. Flood waters didn't recognize only one socioeconomic 
class, only one race. It flooded everybody. The recovery should treat 
everyone the same. We shouldn't be splitting this up and only 
recovering certain folks. It is inappropriate.
  The State of Louisiana's plan, in complying with the National 
Environmental Policy Act and overhead and administrative costs, is 
saying it is going to cost 30 percent of the money just to deliver this 
program. Complying with all these crazy rules, 30 percent of the money 
gets eaten up. That is crazy. These people are rebuilding homes that 
were right there, in many cases, within the same four walls that are 
there now.
  Why are we spending $100 million on environmental compliance? Who 
comes up with this stuff?
  It is further delaying people getting back into their homes. This is 
crazy, Mr. Speaker. We have got to have a more commonsense, appropriate 
process to recovery.
  Mr. Speaker, in closing, I just want to say that I have heard a lot 
of people in this country talk about how surprised they were with the 
outcome of the recent elections that we had. It is not a surprise to me 
that people are frustrated. What we are experiencing in south Louisiana 
today, being revictimized by FEMA, revictimized by the SBA in our 
recovery efforts, it is cause for extraordinary frustration. This is 
not what anybody in America wants--having to deal with a bureaucracy 
wasting money and taking months and spending 10 times to do what the 
local officials or our community could do for a fraction of the cost at 
a fraction of the time.
  People want government to be responsive to them. People want 
government to be efficient. We can do better than this. The election 
results didn't surprise me. I ran because I was frustrated; and I 
understand the sentiment, unfortunately, more so than most right now, 
because watching the Federal Government absolutely screw up this 
recovery effort is revictimizing folks in south Louisiana.
  Mr. GOHMERT. Mr. Speaker, I certainly appreciate my friend, Mr. 
Graves, bringing up a real problem. We have seen it in Louisiana--and 
not just in southern Louisiana, but other parts of Louisiana--with 
massive flooding. I am not even talking about Katrina, but there was a 
massive amount of waste in Hurricane Katrina that also affected my 
district in east Texas. I have a 120-mile border that I share with 
Louisiana, and we have seen the same problems.
  We have had a massive flood of Caddo Lake, one time the largest 
freshwater natural lake besides the Great Lakes. A natural dam 
apparently was exploded years ago. It still is one of the great 
treasures of the State and our country. It had a massive flood.
  I was visiting in Karnack, Texas, last week with some of the local 
emergency people that are trying to take care of the issue. The local 
folks there in Harrison County are acting very responsibly, the local 
government is acting responsibly, but you have outrageous things like 
my friend, Mr. Graves, was talking about.
  One family got a loan to buy a new mobile home that wasn't destroyed 
like the last one. With the flood, it had too much water. So they got a 
new mobile home and got the loan. Well, as we have heard with FEMA, in 
this case there were requirements that the mobile home be lifted up 
much higher. The elevation had to be much higher where it was. In the 
process of lifting it up, the mobile home fell and was completely 
destroyed. They still have to make payments on their mobile home for 
the loan, and they have no home. They were doing everything within

[[Page H7139]]

their power to comply with the governmental requirements.
  There are other bureaucratic nightmares.
  I was hearing stories about how some of the churches in east Texas 
banded together. The Baptist men came in and did amazing work. Yes, I 
understand women, too. I think they call themselves the Baptist men. 
Anyway, they came in and did extraordinary work. When people didn't 
have any plumbing, they had nothing, they brought in portable showers 
and restrooms and provided the help long before FEMA could get there 
and do what was needed.
  You hear people who were so affected by massive floods say: If we 
ever have another disaster like that, before we call FEMA, we are going 
to call the Baptist men. They come in and they get stuff done. They 
help people where it is, and they don't care who you are, all of your 
background information. They see who is hurting and they help them.

  Well, that is the way it used to be, but then we became too reliant 
on letting the government fix everything. There were people in the 
Federal Government that realized that if we can make the Federal 
Government the ultimate insurer of everything--your school loans, your 
home, your flood insurance--we will start small, but we will work up 
until maybe one day we can even have the government behind everyone's 
health insurance.
  If you really want to take away people's freedom and you really want 
to have Big Brother government dictating every aspect of your life, the 
way to do it is to have the government ensure all those aspects of your 
life. Once someone has the right to pay in the event that you are 
harmed, then they have the right to tell you how to avoid them having 
to pay, and there goes your freedom. So the power of more insurance has 
come to the Federal Government.
  Many of us thought we could give up our liberty just for a little 
more security, but Benjamin Franklin, with all the wisdom that man had, 
understood back then that basically those who are willing to give up 
liberty for security deserve neither.
  For too long in this country, people have been giving up their 
liberty in order to get security only to find that they are not even 
secure, just like Mr. Graves was talking about. We thought, Gee, if we 
set up a Federal Emergency Management Agency to help take care of 
emergencies, it will be fantastic. If we set up a Corps of Engineers to 
help with our water projects, it will be fantastic. If we set up an 
EPA, or Environmental Protection Agency, to protect the world, the 
environment, it will be a great thing. But the longer these agencies 
exist, the less sensitive they are to what they were supposed to do.
  We found it right here in the Capitol. About 7 years ago, the 
Architect of the Capitol, who works for the House and Senate, had 
decided that we all work for him and he started making demands, one of 
which was that I could not cook ribs and share them with other Members 
of Congress, as I had been doing once a quarter. Most of the networks 
wanted to do stories on my cooking ribs and I said: No, we are not 
going to do a TV thing on this. This is just between the Members.
  Well, I am grateful that Steve Scalise got involved and I got Paul 
Ryan to help. The Speaker was able to persuade the bureaucracies here 
on Capitol Hill that we can make this work and have it safe if we work 
with each other and are able to get people to work together.
  Many of my colleagues tell me it is the best meat they have ever 
tasted. Some say they are the best ribs they have ever tasted. I have 
enough of my late mother in me that I enjoy cooking and enjoy people 
enjoying what I cook. It is probably the only time here on Capitol Hill 
when I actually leave a good taste in people's mouths instead of a 
bitter taste.
  As we continue to see abuses by the Federal Government and we see 
abuses going on across the country, you think, Well, in the Federal 
Government, even though it has badly abused its authority, isn't it 
supposed to protect us from other abuses?
  The answer is: yes, if they are federally related.
  Well, when you have the electoral college and electors elected as 
part of that system, it is critical that that be a protected system of 
voting, just as the Constitution would require and as the law actually 
requires.
  This story by Hans von Spakovsky and Jennifer Matthes says: ``Before 
Donald Trump's stunning victory on November 8, liberals called for 
acceptance of election results. But since the election didn't go as 
they'd planned, some have taken to harassing and intimidating electors 
in an attempt to change the election results. Some of these threats may 
actually violate Federal law, yet the Justice Department acts strangely 
uninterested in investigating.''
  This takes us back to having people armed with billy clubs standing 
and trying to intimidate voters at their place of voting, and the 
``Department of Just Us,'' which was supposed to be ``Justice,'' said: 
No, no, no, that is fine for them to do it. There are no problems with 
them doing that.

                              {time}  1230

  If anybody else were to do that, yeah, we would probably go after 
them; but these are the New Black Panther Party, or such as that, so, 
yeah, it is fine if they do it.
  We have got to get back to being a nation where the laws are enforced 
evenly across the board. If the laws don't make sense, like our own 
rules here on Capitol Hill, if things do not accommodate people fairly 
and equally, they are just arbitrary decisions like we got from the 
Architect of the Capitol when the Visitor Center was being built, or 
when people are just wanting to have a life up here, we should be 
stopping the bureaucrats and getting rules that apply across the board, 
fairly across the board.
  Yes, here we make the rules, and we should have rules that apply to 
everybody; but when you have an arbitrary dictator, they don't get 
applied quite so evenly.
  Here we have the Justice Department, and this report of electors that 
are going to be voting very soon in the electoral college to elect the 
President, and their very lives are being threatened. Some of them have 
had to move their families.
  This Justice Department is not interested in protecting the integrity 
of the election. That is the problem we have been suffering for quite 
some time around the country. They were not interested in enforcing the 
law fairly across the board, so we end up all the worse off for it.
  This article goes on to say, in Georgia and Idaho, the threats have 
become so extreme that the secretaries of state both released 
statements calling for the harassment to end.
  I absolutely know, without doubt, that if Hillary Clinton had won the 
election, as the rules set it up, with a republican form of 
government--little R. Not the Republican Party, but a republican form 
of government, just as Ben Franklin said when he was asked after the 
Constitution finally came together with what most of the members of the 
Constitutional Convention said was divine providence, or the finger of 
God. Without the finger of God being involved, they could never have 
come up with that Constitution. Franklin says: A republic, madam, if 
you can keep it.
  So we had found, and our Founders had wisely, so many of them, sought 
truth in Scripture, a Bible that they used to argue positions; and they 
realized probably a complete, perfect democracy is not best for 
governing people because, if it is a true democracy, then the law gets 
changed on whims. If someone becomes the object of scorn and it is a 
true democracy, they are not governed by laws that we currently have in 
our Constitution which indicate you can't have ex post facto laws. You 
can't make a law criminalizing things after the act has already 
occurred. Our Constitution guarantees against that.
  Well, in a perfect democracy, there is no such ex post facto law. A 
majority can make a decision to criminalize conduct that previously 
occurred so that, when the person committed the act, they were not 
violating the law. They were acting in accordance with the law, and it 
was later changed.
  Of course we have had people violate the ex post facto law, like 
President Clinton shoved through, in 1993, taxes on Social Security, 
taxes on money that had already been earned under different rules of 
taxation. That was a

[[Page H7140]]

violation of the Constitution that was not thrown out, but it was 
clearly a violation of the Constitution. So those things do happen, 
even in a republic.
  But with a republic as the Founders gave us, this idea of liberty 
could take hold. It wasn't just might makes right, somebody powerful 
intimidate the rest into voting to string you up or to throw you out of 
the community. No, you had to abide by existing laws; and your conduct, 
if appropriate under the law at the time, could not be changed to 
punish you for something that happened before it was a crime.
  So much wisdom in the Constitution, and that wisdom is being cast 
aside. But that wisdom gave us the electoral college, without which you 
would never see the Presidential candidates going to all the different 
States. They would never go to all the different cities that they have 
because the elections would be decided by the big urban areas. And you 
can look on the map that shows, most of them have red for Republican, 
blue for Democrats. Years ago it was the other way around. Red depicted 
Democrats. But since so many of them were becoming socialists, they 
were offended that the red made it look like they are red Communists. 
So somewhere along the way--I can't find who decided to make the color 
change--but more started making red Republican and blue Democrat. 
Colors don't matter.
  But if you look at the counties that voted for Hillary Clinton, you 
quickly see that she was a fringe candidate. She was fringe on the West 
Coast, the big cities on the West Coast; a fringe candidate on the East 
Coast, the big cities on the fringe of the Nation; fringe up in the 
very north, the big cities in the very north; fringe along the southern 
border, and basically just a fringe candidate, which I guess would make 
the Democratic Party, when you look at who voted for the Democratic 
candidate, you would have to say this is now a fringe party in the 
United States.
  You have the Republican Party that, apparently, according to the 
votes of the majority, represents over 90 percent of the geographical 
United States, and you have this other party, this fringe party, that 
represents the fringes around the edge of the country, basically. There 
are a few larger in the middle, but they are a bit of an anomaly, 
because mostly what we see is a fringe candidate and a fringe party. So 
it will be interesting to see where we go from here.
  Obviously, we have a Justice Department that is not interested in 
protecting our Constitution, protecting the election process as they 
are mandated to do; and, frankly, when you have a Department of Justice 
that selectively enforces the law and so totally disregards other parts 
of the law, then they are really not a Department of Justice. If this 
administration had continued on, then we would seriously need to look 
to provide a more appropriate name for the Department of Justice 
because this is not--it has not been--a Department of Justice.
  When you look at what appear to have been crimes committed by IRS 
personnel, like Lois Lerner, perjury committed before Congress, crimes 
across America, as my friend, John Fund, wrote in his book about 
illegal voting, one of the--as I have heard John Fund say, perhaps the 
biggest fraud in America about our elections is the fraud that has been 
telling people that there is no illegal voting going on. There is 
certainly illegal voting going on, and many have chosen to look the 
other way.
  But a majority of the geographic and a majority of the electoral 
college, elected electors, indicate they want the law applied across 
the country fairly. Section 11(b) of the Voting Rights Act makes it a 
crime for anyone to ``intimidate, threaten, or coerce, or attempt to 
intimidate, threaten, or coerce any person for voting or attempting to 
vote.''
  While this has been applied in the past to ordinary, everyday voters 
in Federal elections, the language does not limit it only to such 
voters. Electors who are casting their votes for President and Vice 
President are also protected by section 11(b), since the electoral 
college is an essential part of the Federal voting process.

  This is supported by section 14(c) of the Voting Rights Act, which 
says that ``voting includes all action necessary to make a vote 
effective in any primary, special, or general election.''
  Obviously, the votes cast by Americans on November 8 will not be 
effective if the electors they chose are intimidated from casting their 
votes in the electoral college.
  Federal law, which is 3 U.S.C., section 7, requires electors to cast 
their votes on the first Monday after the second Wednesday of December, 
which this year is December 19. These are recorded as certificates of 
votes, signed, sealed, and delivered by December 28 to the President of 
the Senate and the Archivist of the United States. Congress is required 
to meet on January 6 in joint session to count the electoral college 
votes.
  As we know from so much of the lame stream media, like CNN, MSNBC, 
there was outrage when Donald Trump said he wasn't sure. He couldn't 
say beforehand that he wouldn't have questions about the outcome of the 
election if there were indications of massive fraud in the election. 
But as we heard from the lame stream media, oh, that would threaten the 
very foundation of this country. It would destroy the basis for this 
country. It was just such a threat to our very existence.
  Well, now those same people that said those things are, according to 
they, themselves, risking this country. They are putting the very 
foundation of our country at risk.
  And we all know now--some raised this during the election, but it was 
not clear until a recount began to be demanded by a third-party 
candidate--we can now say, clearly, the evidence is in. I used to try 
felony cases as a judge, and before that, years before that, as a 
prosecutor. We can now rest our case.
  Jill Stein was nothing more than a sham candidate to help Hillary 
Clinton, to try to pull votes away from others to help Hillary Clinton 
win the election. Clearly, that is what she was. Some suspected that. 
Some raised that issue. And now, obviously, she has no chance of 
winning anything in a recount--nothing. She has no chance of winning 
anything after a recount. So, clearly, the only reason she is doing it 
is to continue her effort to help Hillary Clinton become President, 
despite the will of the American people, through the electoral college, 
through the law as it was designed and set up.
  Electors across the country should not be getting threatened. The 
Justice Department should be outraged, but they are not. They are not 
bothered in the least that the lives of the electors who will decide 
the Presidency are being threatened and that a constitutional crisis is 
at hand. And it shows, yet again, why over 90 percent of the--except 
for the fringes--Americans have said we want a change. We want an 
America that can actually move toward Dr. King's dream of people being 
judged not by the color of their skin, but by the content of their 
character. I hope and continue to pray that we will get there.

                              {time}  1245

  This quote in the article: ``The U.S. Justice Department, which is 
charged with protecting all voters, should act to quash this outrage 
immediately.''
  Obviously, they are not interested in quashing an outrage. They have 
done more to stir up racial disharmony in this country. They have done 
more to supplant and subvert the intent of the Constitution and the 
clear meaning in the Constitution, and I cannot wait to have an 
administration that will at least make an overt effort to enforce the 
law as it exists.
  The President, in his first term, told people over 20 times: I can't 
just do amnesty; that has to be done by Congress.
  Somebody figured out--after his first term it appears to be when it 
really kicked up heavily--look, who will stop you? Sure, it is against 
the law. Sure, it is against the Constitution for you to do amnesty and 
to do executive orders that take away or rewrite laws that were passed 
by the House and Senate and signed by another President. You can just 
write them like any good monarch would. Who is going to stop you?
  Somebody figured out to present that to the President. It had to be 
what happened because he had said so many times that he didn't have the 
power to do what he ultimately started doing.
  You realize, gee, that is right. The soon-to-be-leaving Harry Reid 
will

[[Page H7141]]

surely protect President Obama from the Senate allowing anything that 
follows the law coming out of the House to enforce the law, the Senate 
will be able to stop it. So if Congress wants to cut off funding for 
what the President is doing illegally, the Senate Democrats will 
protect the President and protect his illegal conduct. So you won't 
have to worry; you can do whatever you want.
  Amnesty was often granted by not even an executive order. It was 
granted by a series of memos by the Secretary of Homeland Security, Jeh 
Johnson. He rewrote the law with memos. So it will be nice to get back 
to having enforcement of the law because this article yesterday from 
Paul Bedard says: ``A United Nations mix of illegal immigrants are now 
flooding through the U.S.-Mexico border, especially from Haiti and 
Pakistan, raising concerns of terrorism costing Americans billions, 
according to a new report and Senate testimony.''
  They have a quote here from my friend, Representative Henry Cuellar 
from Texas, a Democrat, but a great man. He said: ``It is because 
people from different parts of the world, Africa, Middle East, other 
parts of the world are now realizing that all you have to do is get to 
the southern border of the United States and there's a process there 
you can claim a legal defense and you just get to come in. I mean, 
people, the smuggling organizations know exactly what they're doing.''
  As the border patrolmen have told me during late hours and early 
mornings talking to them out on the border, the drug cartels control 
every inch of the Mexico-U.S. border. They do so from the Mexico side, 
but they control what happens on the U.S. side under this 
administration.
  We saw routinely that there were groups that came across who were not 
threats criminally, but they either wanted jobs or they wanted U.S. 
welfare, and they knew that under this administration we would not turn 
them back and say: No, you cannot come in illegally.
  They would not interdict and enforce the law. They would say: Come on 
in. We have some questions to ask you before we give you a slip of 
paper, send you on your way or house you or, as some of the border 
patrolmen said, We end up sending them wherever they want to go in the 
United States.
  They call the Border Patrol logistics. They get them to our side of 
the border, and we ship them anywhere they want to go.
  So it is no wonder that we would have a request for this 
administration asking for billions more money to process folks. Another 
$2.2 billion was mentioned. I saw another article where it lists the 
different components that the administration wanted to do. If you add 
up all the different requests and different ways that this 
administration wants to use the money from American taxpayers, and it 
is to take money away from Americans who are here legally who are 
working and who are struggling to provide for themselves and their 
family, take their money away and give that to people who are coming in 
illegally.
  There was a law I found out about in England visiting with some of 
their social security-type folks in their government. They have a law 
that you are supposed to be there for 5 years contributing to that 
social security-type system for 5 years before you can ever make a 
claim for a dime of it. Now, I hear there are abuses of that system 
because they may not have the best control over it, but it is a system 
that we have in this country and some other countries. You are taking 
money from people that earned it and giving it to people who are 
breaking the law.
  If you do that long enough, that place that at one time was a shining 
light on the hill goes broke. The light goes out. Once that happens in 
America, as friends from other parts of the world have said: If you 
lose your freedom in America, the rest of the world has no chance.
  You will realize historically a United States of America where people 
will go fight for freedom, they will create strength, a strong economy 
in their own country, strong enough because they enforce the rule of 
law across the board and become strong enough economically that they 
will go shed their blood and spend their money to get freedom for 
people who are suffering under the forces of evil.
  Every now and then you have a President like Jimmy Carter who will 
say: Let's get rid of the Shah. Then he welcomes the Ayatollah Khomeini 
who was, as he said, a man of peace which opened Pandora's box. Radical 
Islamists had been put in a box for many decades, but President Carter 
was complicit in helping because he is a well-intentioned man, a good 
man and well intentioned--yeah, maybe a little anti-Israel, but he 
wanted to help folks. Out of his ignorance on radical Islam, he, for 
the first time in many decades, placed radical Islamists in charge of a 
massive military and a whole country. Since then, the world has been 
paying a very heavy price for what happened.
  So we have a job to do. We took an oath in this body to support and 
defend the Constitution of the United States. As Donald Trump was 
saying yesterday in Ohio: our devotion and our oath is to one country. 
We say a pledge to a flag. That used to be true. It used to be that 
people learned enough history.
  I love history. People like coach Sam Parker inspired me to love 
history. We learned it, and we knew what it took to keep a republic, 
madam, if we could. Because of Federal intervention in education, we 
have not helped our kids in suffering schools. We have made them 
subjects to this master Federal Government: You do what we say or we 
don't send you any of the money you sent to us. We will fix up our 
offices, we will fix up a massive bureaucracy, and we will dictate to 
you from on high what we want done regardless of what Congress says.
  They are not as bad as the Corps of Engineers, the EPA, and the FDA 
have been recently; but they have really not helped. As I said to 
President Bush's Secretary of Education--a very nice person. She had 
helped, I think, Texas schools when she was in Austin, but then she 
came here and disregarded the 10th Amendment and the Constitution that 
did not enumerate education as a Federal power. It was reserved to the 
States and the people. She began acting unconstitutionally.

  As I explained to her, you ought to come to Gladewater, Texas. There 
is an amazing school there that helps between 120 and 130 special needs 
kids. One of them, if he touches something shiny, he has had a big day, 
and you mandate that they have to do a test for that child. They had a 
child at the Saint Louis School in Tyler. They told her she needed to 
come visit because they had a goal that by the end of the year this 
young man would be able to stick a fork in a piece of food and get it 
to his mouth. The goal they believed was reachable, but because the 
Federal Government was involved and they say, You don't get any of the 
money you sent us from Texas unless you do exactly what we say, that 
was not allowed. They allowed an alternative test that if he could 
point to a sticker that had a picture of food on it by the end of the 
year, then he would pass the test and that school would get back money 
from the Federal Government that those Texas taxpayers had sent to it 
to siphon off for whatever they wanted. So by the end of this year, 
that special needs young man--severe special needs--was able to point 
to a sticker that had a picture of food, but he could not feed himself.
  That is the kind of insanity that has only gotten worse over the last 
8 years. I thought a silver lining to President Obama being elected 
President was at least he is going to end the No Child Left Behind Act 
because that would mean returning the power to the States and the 
people that knew what they were doing.
  A few years ago we were far higher in the studies of the capabilities 
of schoolchildren. We have dropped. We are not doing so well. There may 
be improvement in one year over another, but if you really want to 
leave no child behind, then you need to stop coddling the teachers' 
unions and coddle the teachers by letting them do what they know is 
best, subject to local control. If they are not doing their job, you 
don't have to go begging to Washington or a teachers' union, you can go 
to the school board. If the school board won't do the right thing, you 
can run against them, get elected, and then fix it yourself.

                              {time}  1300

  When Sonny Bono in California ran up against a city manager that was 
so

[[Page H7142]]

bigoted he would not let Sonny have the license to open his restaurant, 
that is how he got involved in politics. He found out who hired and 
fired the city manager--it was the mayor--so he ran for mayor, and the 
first thing he did was fire the abusive city manager. That is how a 
Republic system is supposed to work. It is a form of democracy, not a 
pure democracy, so that we can have ex post facto laws, and we can keep 
people from having their conduct criminalized after they committed it.
  But we have got to hit the ground running at the first of the year 
and start the process of trying to heal America. President Obama did 
not make the school system better; he made matters worst.
  We had a voucher program here in D.C. that minority kids--actually, 
it is the minorities are a majority here; minority elsewhere. These 
poor kids were suffering from a broken school system that had more than 
enough money to properly educate the kids, but kids were the victims of 
the bureaucracy.
  What else has this Justice Department done? Well, they have gone 
around and started up racial tensions where there shouldn't have been. 
They stirred up rumors that, for example, if you are a Black young man 
in America, you are 20 times more likely to be shot than if you are a 
White person in America of that same age, which is simply not true.
  We saw in different parts of the country when we had a Black mayor or 
a Black police chief, he was not a racist, was not out to harm Blacks 
in America, but try to do justice by them. They ultimately found in 
most cases that had been brought, actually, the police were justified 
in what they were doing.
  Since police are composed of human beings, there are going to be some 
rotten apples. When I was a judge, I saw one every now and then--very, 
very rarely. But every now and then you did. And I would contend, from 
my experience handling thousands of felony cases, that the law 
enforcement officers I dealt with have a much tinier percentage of 
problems than the general population of America. When we find a police 
officer who is abusive, who is problematic, he or she should be 
punished.
  But after 9/11, America was jarred awake for the first time in 
decades and really began again to appreciate the job law enforcement 
officers have done for us to keep the peace, to allow us not to be beat 
up by a bigger bully on our block, but allow the law to be enforced 
more equally and fairly. It is never perfect. There is always room for 
improvement.
  People began to appreciate our first responders without contempt 
because they were stopping traffic. And they began to appreciate our 
military more because it was willing to go lay down their lives for 
their friends, for the people in this country, which Jesus said was the 
greatest love. And he absolutely knew. He laid down his life for us.
  But in the last 8 years, we have become so racially divided.
  The regret I have from going back to Mount Pleasant is how choked up 
I got going back to my old high school that was so good to me, did such 
a great job--public-school educating me, my brothers, my sister. I 
loved Coach Willie Williams, and I saw him after so long and got a hug 
that just touched deeply. Somebody said: Did you take a picture?
  I didn't even think about a picture. I wasn't thinking picture. Here 
was a man that coached me, who would not put up with anybody using 
race. It didn't matter to Coach Williams. He expected us to perform. I 
wish I had gotten a picture. I have got to do that. What a great man.
  Well, unfortunately, we have other information. There was a damning 
Department of Homeland Security report that exposed the 
administration's claim that as many as 81 percent of people attempting 
to cross the border illegally were apprehended from the port. We found 
out that actually it is not anything like 81 percent. It may be more 
like 54 percent.
  Shockingly, the report's authors find that the estimated apprehension 
rate between ports of entry in 2005 was only 36 percent--and that was 
2005. It has not gotten better, even though tricks of adjusting the 
statistics have gotten more multiplied.
  We have got to defend our Nation, we have got to enforce the law, we 
have got to get this country back to being a shining light on the hill, 
instead of one overwhelmed by people who want to violate our law. They 
don't want to do it, but failing to enforce our borders will eliminate 
our ability to be the most generous country when it comes to visas and 
legal entry.
  No other countries are massively larger in size--geographically in 
size or populationwise. No one awards more visas than we do--over 1 
million. Yet, that will end up coming to an end with the failure to 
enforce the law. Particularly, there were problems in the Bush 
administration, the Clinton administration, the Bush administration 
before that, but it has just gone exponentially crazy over this 
administration, and we have got to get it under control.
  One other thing: I continue to hear some in America say the days of 
the United States being a manufacturing powerhouse are over. Well, I 
know from history--and apparently Donald Trump knows from just his 
business instincts--that if a strong country cannot produce the things 
it needs to defend itself and defend freedom, it will cease being a 
free country after the next significant conflict. It is just a fact.
  The Battle of the Bulge, so many don't realize, even as late as that 
occurred in World War II, it had a good shot of prevailing and driving 
the Allied forces from the bulge in the middle out to the water's edge. 
But one of the most fundamental problems was they ran out of fuel.
  Well, east Texas was the largest known reserve when it was 
discovered, and it provided plenty of oil. Our tanks had fuel, but, as 
we became more dependent on other countries, that became a problem. 
American ingenuity has allowed us to find more natural gas and more 
oil. Now we find out in west Texas natural gas is far cleaner, and I 
hope and pray, under Donald Trump, we will move to use more of that.
  If we don't get back the factories--and we didn't just lose them from 
the Rust Belt. I lost a lot of steel plants like Lufkin Industries. It 
got bought up by GE. They didn't care about Lufkin. They weren't going 
to sponsor any little-league teams. They didn't care. They just bought 
them up, took their patents. They told me their headquarters for that 
operation was in Italy, over in the Mediterranean. This is a company 
that doesn't pay us taxes, but the head of it is close friends with the 
President.
  Well, it is time we got back to manufacturing steel in America, steel 
pipe in America, manufacturing what we need to make tanks, planes, 
cars, and buses. Do that here. It is time we got back jobs to make 
paper. We have renewable resources here we quit using. They are not 
sequoias. They are not redwoods. They are pine trees. They grow back 
every 20 years. You can find pictures of places in east Texas where 
there were no trees, and yet, after the timber industry came in, they 
became forested again.
  We can become great again, but we have got to be more responsible. We 
have got to protect our borders from those who want to do us harm and 
violate our laws. If we would do that, a 10-year-old little girl in my 
county would be alive today.
  Mr. Speaker, I yield back the balance of my time.

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