[Congressional Record Volume 163, Number 5 (Monday, January 9, 2017)]
[House]
[Pages H227-H232]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




                            HOPE IN AMERICA

  The SPEAKER pro tempore. Under the Speaker's announced policy of 
January 3, 2017, 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 tonight at the 
beginning of this new year. It has been great being in east Texas this 
weekend, last weekend, hearing all of the hope that has arisen as we 
have entered this new year, 2017. I think it is going to be a good 
year.
  I am told that just on the basis of a new President coming in who is 
promising to throttle back, remove so much of the heavy, iron boot off 
of the throat of the economy that firms are starting to hire again. 
Businesses are making plans to expand and grow. And then we are seeing 
reports of plants that are deciding to stay in the United States 
instead of going elsewhere. There is a lot of optimism out there.
  There are young people that are asking what was it like back when you 
came out of college and had multiple job opportunities for most of the 
people coming out of college instead of opportunities to live with your 
parents or your grandparents or a parent or the other parent. They 
actually had multiple job opportunities, and that optimism has arisen.
  As we entered this year, also, it is very sad to see a form of racism 
and negativity that arises. I have said before publicly, and I think it 
is still true, we need go back no further than the confirmation hearing 
for Clarence Thomas to the Supreme Court. But the more you look, the 
more you find that the most persecuted person to be in America these 
days is a conservative African American. If you are Black and you are 
conservative, you can expect

[[Page H228]]

slings and arrows and hate from all over the country--vicious, mean.
  And it was yet another slap, as if the high-tech lynching of the 
Senate confirmation hearing, as grossly unfair as it was, that woman 
that withheld any complaints whatsoever, followed a man from job to 
job, never raised a complaint until he gets ready to be confirmed to 
the United States Supreme Court, raised allegations that can't possibly 
be denied or supplemented, verified--not effectively.

                              {time}  2030

  You raise them 20-plus years. That is why we have laws on the books 
to protect from allegations too many years after the fact. We have 
statutes of limitations.
  If you sit on something and don't tell people for years and years, 
and then all of a sudden, for political reasons, you raise up 
allegations against someone who is basically defenseless--the thing is 
Clarence Thomas was not defenseless. There were like 15 people, 15 
women, who came forward and said: Look, I was there around Anita Hill 
when these things were going on. Those things never happened. Clarence 
Thomas is a brilliant, fine man, over and over.
  Does any of that come up when HBO talks about him? Of course not 
because they were out to slander him, libel him, make him appear to be 
some crazy guy.
  The guy is brilliant, absolutely brilliant. Some say: well, yeah, of 
course the only way he got into Harvard--which, at the time, was too 
conservative, he thought, for him, law school after Holy Cross, and 
then it was too conservative, and he ends up applying to Yale and going 
there, one he didn't think quite as conservative.
  But he began to notice, as he points out in his book, that the 
liberals would talk to him about sports and oppression of Black people 
in America, and that is all they wanted to talk about. But he began to 
notice that two or three other conservatives, the few that there were 
in Yale at the time, Yale Law School, basically would talk to him about 
anything, and I have had a conversation, in prior years, with him about 
that at Yale.
  But it is interesting. You know, the liberals say: oh, yeah, we are 
the ones that care. Now you are only here because we pushed for 
affirmative action. You couldn't possibly be smart enough to be in a 
place where I am, the liberals think. So yeah, it is because of us 
liberals you are here.
  No, the guy is brilliant; he deserved to be there on his own merit, 
on his own intellect. He deserves to be a member of the United States 
Supreme Court. He deserves the acclaim that he has never properly 
gotten. But people who have clerked at that Court know the integrity, 
the intellect, the consistency of Clarence Thomas.
  He was maligned. They thought, basically, it was an effort to 
``Bork,'' as it has come to become, or become a verb, what was done to 
Justice Bork, accuse him of outrageous offenses, derail his 
confirmation, so that this conservative, principled, qualified 
individual doesn't make it to the Supreme Court.
  Well, the effort worked on assassinating so grossly unfairly the 
character of Justice Bork, but it didn't work on Clarence Thomas 
because he is a man of steadfast faith, integrity, and not just the 
brilliant intellect.
  And it is really heartbreaking. I mean, I thought--even though I 
didn't support President Obama because I didn't want him taking us down 
a socialist road, a socialist health care road. He talked about these 
things. The videos were out there. He wanted to get us to where the 
government controlled health care, single-payer, in other words, 
socialized medicine, where the government gets to decide whether you 
get health care or whether it is any good or not and, of course, it 
ends up not being, most of the time, once the government has total 
unfettered control.
  I didn't want to go those places he wanted to go, but, I think the 
good thing is, it shows that America is above racism, and this is a man 
who can bind up this Nation as never before.
  And yet, he has spent right at 8 years now creating more division in 
this country than we have had since the sixties. And who was stirring 
it up back then? Well, he was in the middle of groups that were 
stirring it up back then, protege of Bill Ayers. First fundraiser he 
had in the home of someone who felt like it was a good idea to kill 
police, at least try to.
  I hear constant allegations that are so unfair. Those who know Jeff 
Sessions make some very fair observations. I noted the great fairness 
of someone with whom I disagree often, but Senator Susan Collins.
  This article from CNN Politics says: `` . . . a moderate Republican 
elected to the Senate the same year as Sessions in 1996, admits that 
she and Sessions `don't agree on a host of issues,' but she was happy 
to accept his''--Jeff Sessions--``request to introduce him at his 
confirmation hearing alongside senior Alabama Sen. Richard Shelby.''
  `` `He's a decent, honorable, patriotic individual,' Collins said in 
an interview in her Senate office. `I felt bad he was not getting a 
fair shake from those who were denigrating him.' ''
  ``The Maine lawmaker''--Susan Collins--``is referring to allegations 
of racial insensitivity--the same Democrats used to block Sessions from 
moving through committee thirty years ago.''
  ``Collins explained that she is basing her endorsement of Sessions' 
character on her own experience working with him over the past 20 
years.''
  Well, isn't that a good thing, Mr. Speaker? You have a Senator that 
says: You know what? I'm not going to listen to the slings and arrows. 
I'm going to go based on the evidence that I have seen, heard, and 
known for myself.
  You can denigrate someone all you want, but we are going based on 
what is real, what is factual; and God bless her for doing so.
  ``I don't know what happened more than 30 years ago, when Jeff was 
nominated to be a district court judge, and his nomination failed,' she 
said. `But I do know the Jeff Sessions that I have worked with in the 
past 20 years. And he is a good person, and I believe that he will 
perform very well as attorney general.''
  ``Another Republican colleague who went out of his way to get to know 
Sessions is Sen. Tim Scott, the only African-American GOP Senator. In 
December, Scott invited Sessions to visit his home state of South 
Carolina, where the two lawmakers met with criminal justice 
professionals in Charleston.''
  And, you know, I have such great regard for my colleagues across the 
aisle, but I am heartbroken that 30 years after the denial of Jeff 
Sessions a judicial bench, when the Jeff Sessions that I have come to 
know in the 12 years I have been in Congress--I have come to know him, 
I feel like, pretty well. He is a good, decent, fair man. He tries to 
follow the teachings of Jesus Christ. He tries to treat people fairly 
and equally.

  I saw this quote from assistant--he was Assistant District Attorney 
Thomas Harrison, who had started in helping prosecute regarding the 
lynching of a 19-year-old--just horrific--19-year-old African American, 
Michael Donald in Alabama. And the Assistant District Attorney 
Harrison, at the time, who prosecuted the case in State Court, he was 
quoted as saying: ``Sessions asked what we needed''--because Sessions 
was U.S. Attorney, what they needed, in other words, to go after the 
culprits that would do such a horrendous criminal act. And he says: `` 
. . . I said, in order to get a capital murder conviction, we need 
these things, and he''--talking about Jeff Sessions--``said that in 
that regard whatever the federal agents did or the FBI did he would 
make those things available. He did in fact do that.''
  I don't know, that is the kind of Jeff Sessions I have gotten to know 
over the years, and it is a little heartbreaking to hear allegations 
about a guy. I really like him.
  And then to hear allegations that I have heard made about me in a 
grossly unfair manner. And I can't explain all of the allegations 
about--that are so grossly unfair about Jeff Sessions. But I can 
address some of the things that have been alleged to make him unfit to 
be Attorney General that I know are ridiculous.
  One of the points that was made was regarding his concern or 
opposition to the new Voting Rights Act extension, I guess that is what 
they were talking about, and I know a great deal about that. That comes 
through the Judiciary Committee, and I know my friend,

[[Page H229]]

fellow Republican, Jim Sensenbrenner, had reached an agreement with 
Democrat John Conyers and others, and they weren't letting amendments 
get through.
  I was trying to make the point clear, if you want to save the Voting 
Rights Act, you can't keep punishing a State because they did something 
wrong 50 years ago. That is not constitutional. And if you insist on 
continuing to put these punitive positions in the Voting Rights Act 
that will continue to punish southern States that have recorded these 
days, and it was pretty well true across the South, they had less 
racial disparity than places in the North, in Wisconsin, in 
Massachusetts, in California.
  Yet, people from these other States, because they made a majority, 
said: we don't care that they are--there is less racial disparateness 
in those southern states. There was harm 50 years ago, and there was, 
and it needed to be cleaned up. It desperately needed to be cleaned up, 
and we needed a Voting Rights Act in order to help cure the evils.
  But what was pushed through in a voting rights extension, with my 
opposition--and I don't know what Jeff's arguments were, but I know how 
wrong it was. And I came down here, and my friend--and I mean that--my 
friend, John Conyers, was sitting right there, and it was toward the 
end of the year. And I said: Look, I have talked to liberal law deans 
from different parts of the country, New York, California, Texas; and 
when we discuss what you have put in the Voting Rights Act, you are 
still treating States punitively that are now doing better than 
California, New York, Massachusetts, at least some districts in those 
States. Wisconsin had a district with a huge problem.
  You can't do that. It is going to be ruled unconstitutional. And I 
still cannot support it, but why don't we do a joint amendment and fix 
this?
  And my friend, John Conyers, he is a very honorable man, and he said: 
Let me talk to some of our folks. And when I talked to him before the 
end of the year, he said: We think it is okay, and the people I talked 
to think it is okay. We don't need to amend it. We are going to leave 
it just like it is.
  Well, it is wrong. Whether it is in a Voting Rights Act, whether it 
is in a criminal bill, a civil bill, if you are punishing people for 
the sins of their grandfathers or fathers, it is wrong. It is un-
American. And I don't know if Jeff Sessions has called something like 
that un-American, but I will.
  When you try to punish an individual for something their father or 
grandfather did, that is un-American. That is wrong.
  And lo and behold, the liberal law professors and deans that I have 
talked to across the country, before I begged--well, I begged Jim 
Sensenbrenner. He was sitting at the back right back there.

                              {time}  2045

  He said: Nope, we are not touching that bill.
  They were happy to let it go to the Supreme Court one day just the 
way it was. Just as I explained to John Conyers right here, just as I 
explained to Jim Sensenbrenner right back there, this should be struck 
down if the U.S. Supreme Court is going to be fair and partial and 
follow the Constitution.
  You can't keep punishing people for something their fathers or 
grandfathers did when they are doing better than people in your own 
State and you vote to punish them. Why? Because you can. Their fathers 
or grandfathers committed a wrong many years ago. A grievous wrong it 
was, and it needed correction. There are some places where it still 
does, but you don't keep punishing people 50 years after they bring up 
their problem.
  So I hear people say Jeff Sessions is not fit because he opposed the 
Voting Rights Act. I tried to clean it up. It had an un-American 
provision in there.
  I just can't believe anybody on either side of the aisle would 
continue to support the idea that we should punish children or 
grandchildren for something their father or grandfather did many years 
ago. This child has become an adult and they have made sure there is 
fairness abounding. Well, there is always going to be injustice.
  One of the great problems in this Justice Department is that it was 
always quick to take up for someone who had been shot by policemen--
before they knew any of the facts--and demonize the local police. 
Sometimes--in rare cases, but every now and then--they did deserve 
demonizing. But the Department of Justice should not demonize them 
before we find out the facts.
  In most of those cases, when we find out the facts, whether it is 
Baltimore or other places, most of the time people or even a professor 
of some kind, like the President, said he acted stupidly, talking about 
the policeman. It turned out the policeman conducted himself very 
reasonably. We never did hear whether the President apologized to the 
policeman or not, but the point is that the President and the Justice 
Department have spent 8 years dividing us in ways I did not believe 
were possible 8 years ago.
  So I hear my friends come in here and start condemning a man as not 
being fit to serve because of things like opposing an unconstitutional, 
un-American provision in the Voting Rights Act. It was then, it is 
today. If somebody tries to pass a punishment of some group of people 
for something their grandparents did, it is wrong, it is un-American. I 
will say it to the day I die.
  Now, it is very unfair. I saw it as a felony judge. It broke my 
heart. In chambers, but never in the courtroom itself, it would bring 
me to tears. I would break down when I saw the suffering of children 
because of the sins of their parents. But the government should not be 
in the business of punishing people intentionally. There was a 
provision in the Voting Rights Act that did just that.
  I also heard an allegation about Jeff Sessions either opposing a hate 
crime extension or hate crime bill. I can tell you from conversations I 
had years past, back when we were talking about hate crimes bills, we 
did not need hate crime laws.
  What was the fake news that was trotted out here in Washington, 
trotted out around the country?
  Remember what happened down in south Texas?
  It wasn't in my district, but I am familiar with what happened down 
there. There were three White guys that took a poor, decent African 
American, used a chain, tied him to their truck, and drug him until he 
was dead. It was in print and publicly.
  I would personally have no problem with a jury ordering a sentence, 
if we could put it in the law, so that the family of that victim could 
decide what they were going to use to drag the defendants and the 
terrain they would drag those White defendants over, but that is not 
the law.
  The law in Texas is that our juries can find you guilty and sentence 
you. Well, the juries don't actually sentence death. That is left to 
the judge. The juries answer three questions. I know. I have put it to 
juries three times.
  On one occasion the jury came back locked up, so I sentenced that 
defendant to life. On two occasions of three capital murder cases I 
tried to completion, the jury found unanimously, number one, he 
committed the murder and he knew that a murder was going to be 
committed; number two, that he is a future danger to society; and 
number three, there was no evidence that mitigated against the 
imposition of the death penalty.
  The jury comes back with yes, yes, and no; and it is left to a judge 
like me to look a man in the eyes and tell him that I sentence him to 
death. There is nothing that goes to your soul like looking someone in 
the eye and saying: You are going to be taken to the Texas Department 
of Criminal Justice and you are going to be put to death for the crimes 
you have committed.
  I believe in the death penalty, but I believe with all my heart you 
have to make sure due process occurs. I could care less about race.
  I hear these allegations about Jeff Sessions. I know Jeff and I know 
this is ridiculous. As I was listening to some of these broad 
statements just taking a swat at Jeff Sessions, a really fine, decent 
man, it took me right back to 20 years or so ago when I was that felony 
district judge in Texas and I tried capital murder cases, murder cases. 
Never mind the fact that I was court-appointed to appeal the capital 
murder conviction of an African American man and I did everything I 
possibly could ethically and within the

[[Page H230]]

law for my client, who I believed was wrongly convicted in this case.
  His case was overturned after my argument. I was the only one arguing 
for our side. I was the one that solely did the brief. Even though the 
family paid thousands of dollars to somebody from another State, I did 
the whole thing. I did it all. I didn't have a clerk do it. I did it 
all.
  His capital murder conviction was reversed. His mother used to bring 
me wonderful food. I loved her. I went to her funeral. She was just an 
incredible Christian woman and her funeral did her justice. Of course, 
then her daughter ran against me for Congress three times, but that is 
another story.

  Nonetheless, I can remember back when I was a felony judge and I got 
served with a subpoena by a defense lawyer. They had taken the position 
in a pleading in another court that, because I had allegedly appointed 
a disparate number of White people to be grand jury foremen over 
African Americans, I must be bigoted. Therefore, convictions in Smith 
County should be overturned. I think they subpoenaed another district 
judge or two. We had three.
  I knew that lawyer. He knew I wasn't a racist. He subpoenaed me and 
made allegations in print before he even knew who had been on my grand 
juries during those years I was a felony district judge, but he made 
the broad-based allegation that I must be racist and we have got to 
throw out these cases.
  Before I came to testify, he actually got the list of my grand 
jurors. I didn't get to choose the grand jurors. Those were chosen by 
grand jury commissioners. The commissioners chose the grand jury 
members. I got to choose the grand jury foremen. I didn't care about 
race. I didn't care about gender. I appointed people because, when I 
looked at the background, the little bios we had on each of the grand 
jury members, I wanted somebody that was going to be a leader on that 
grand jury. I didn't care about race.
  When the criminal defense lawyers did their homework after they made 
allegations, they notified me that I would not be called as a witness 
because I appointed too many African American grand jury foremen. 
Therefore, it was a disparate number of African Americans. It was too 
many. Therefore, I would hurt their case because I would show that 
maybe I was more biased for African Americans than against them. I 
didn't care about race.
  I can remember a couple of grand jury foremen. One of them was, I 
think, an assistant school superintendent. I knew the guy. He was a 
solid citizen. I had seen him in action. He was a real leader in the 
community. He was an honest, fair man. I thought he would be great as a 
grand jury foreman. And he was.
  Probably the best grand jury foreman I ever appointed--she was a 
saint--was Ms. Glass. I knew enough about her when I saw she was on the 
grand jury, I knew she would be the foreman. That woman was a saint. 
She was organized and she called things like they were. You couldn't 
help but fall in love with Ms. Glass if you were around her for any 
length of time at all.
  Those memories of getting a subpoena alleging that I am a racist 
until they actually did their homework and found out, oops, he may be 
too pro-African American, we don't want him to testify, I got that same 
feeling when I was hearing those allegations against Jeff Sessions. It 
is not based on facts. It is: Oh, we just had the feeling that maybe he 
was being unfair.
  I think somebody mentioned the Southern Poverty Law Center or 
something. I know that the Southern Poverty Law Center, in my opinion, 
after they incited hatred against the Family Research Council, incited 
hatred against other people. The Southern Poverty Law Center was 
supposed to be the antithesis of hate. Yet, they stirred up a guy so 
much that he would go into their lobby and try to kill people at the 
Family Research Council. It is more of this craziness.
  The Bible warns of us a day when up will be down, right will be 
wrong. I keep wondering, Are we there?
  We hear from people at the civil rights commission that maybe 
Christians are the big hate group in the country. Really?

                              {time}  2100

  It is the only religion that is truly based on love because to be a 
Christian, you have to believe God so loved the world that He gave His 
only Son, that whoever believed in His Son would not perish but have 
everlasting life. And then His Son so loved the world that He laid down 
His life for people, even as they called Him names and mocked Him. It 
is a religion of love. It is not a religion of hate. Yet, right is 
wrong, up is down, let's call somebody that wants justice and fairness 
a racist.
  Really, is that fair?
  So, supposedly, Jeff Sessions--I think this was alleged at him at one 
point--is not fit to serve as Attorney General because he is for 
vouchers. Mr. Speaker, when you hear from African Americans here in 
Washington, D.C., about how their children have suffered under 
horrendous gang conditions in a school, and then for this Camelot-type 
moment they got vouchers--they won the lottery--that Republicans pushed 
for, they got to go to great schools. These kids that had been 
oppressed and shoved in either being in gangs or dealing with gangs, 
they got to go get a good education because they got a voucher.
  When you have an African American mom cry before you and say: My 
other kids, are they going to have to go face the gangs? Why can't they 
go be a doctor or an engineer?
  I don't think it is hate. I don't think it is prejudice that has your 
heart ache for a mom like that and says: Yeah, yeah, why don't we give 
moms and dads or whoever is taking care of the kids money.
  You go to the school. It is not an indictment of public schools. We 
didn't have kindergarten. All 12 years of mine were in public schools. 
I had fantastic teachers, incredible, inspiring.
  I was going to major in history at A&M on an Army scholarship, so it 
didn't matter much what I majored in. I knew I was going in the Army 
for 4 years. I hoped to go to law school some day if we weren't at war. 
But my math teachers in public schools--7th grade, Ms. Edwards. In high 
school I had fantastic math teachers. Although some students didn't 
like them, I loved them. They were great.
  College algebra, we had a professor who let us either turn in our 
homework that we had to do for every--it was a Monday, Wednesday, 
Friday class--turn in the homework or he would give you one question at 
the beginning of each class. If you didn't want to do the homework, you 
had to take that one question. If you answered it wrong, you got a zero 
for the day. I didn't open my book until 15 minutes before the final 
and never did the homework because my 7th grade teacher, Ms. Edwards, 
and all my math teachers in high school were so good. I had the 
foundation. It was there. Of course, I enjoyed math, but I made an A. 
It was easy because of the public school training I got, but not every 
public school has that advantage.
  I had the advantage of having an 8th grade English teacher for a 
mother, and she was in public school until the brain tumor took her. 
That is a burden. You come home after football practice: ``I am going 
to go lay down. I am exhausted, Mom.''
  ``Oh, what are you going to lay when you get there?''
  ``Okay. All right. I am going to lie down. Are you happy? Just cut me 
some slack. I am going to go lie down.''
  Well, that is living with a public schoolteacher. I miss her and love 
her.
  But because I think--or if Jeff Sessions feels the same way--I think 
he may--heck, if schools are not teaching children to read and write so 
they can excel and become president of their company or President of 
the country, then let them go to a school. I think public schools will 
end up winning out. They have got the wherewithal to have the best 
schools. They just don't have any incentives. That was the purpose of 
vouchers, to provide incentive.
  I have heard the allegation that Trump, you know, was a birther. I 
haven't had a lot of conversations with Trump. I have had a number of 
them. But my impression was that he never said that--maybe he did, I 
just didn't hear him say Obama was not born in America. But I know I 
have heard people say repeatedly that, I, Louie Gohmert, am a birther. 
Which is a lie. I have never, ever, ever said that. Yet, it became such 
a credo of the left, some

[[Page H231]]

guy on FOX News one night--I think he was on Megyn Kelly, a Democratic 
consultant. She says, Tell me somebody that hates--Well, Louie Gohmert 
is a birther, he said. And if I recall correctly--I am pretty sure I 
do--he later wrote an article: Okay, okay, Gohmert never actually said 
that Barack Obama was not an American citizen, but he did support the 
birther bill, therefore, he is a birther.
  Well, that takes me back to August--I guess it was July of 2009; I 
believe it was--and my friend Bill Posey from Florida had a little 2-
page bill. It may have been 2 and just a hair at the top of the third 
page. I think it was a little bit at the top of the third page, just 
over 2 pages. And it was a good bill. I read the bill. I try to do that 
before I will ever agree to support a bill. And I read the bill.
  I recall that The New York Times and The Washington Post, I think 
around January of 2008, raised the issue of whether or not John McCain 
was qualified under the Constitution to be President of the United 
States because, apparently, he was born in the Panama Canal Zone.
  Gee, is that being a natural citizen, born in the Canal Zone?
  His dad was in the Navy, military. So, yeah, maybe so. The New York 
Times and The Washington Post raised the issue.
  I was in Israel during August when I got word that I was being 
accused of being a birther. I can recall out here in the Speaker's 
lobby a whole slew of reporters wanting to know about my being a 
birther. One of them, at the time, was with The Washington Post. I knew 
she was a good reporter. That is why she is not there now. I couldn't 
believe it. It was kind of: Et tu, Brute? Really, you think I am a 
birther?
  Well, I understand from the White House that you signed on the bill, 
and, if I recall the words correctly, it was to delegitimize the 
President and have him thrown out of office.
  I said, wow. I think those were the words. It was something like 
that, but it was exactly the words that every reporter who approached 
me was using: You are trying to delegitimize the President and have him 
thrown out of office?
  I think Doonesbury used words like that.
  So when, privately, this one reporter caught me in another place and 
said: I understand you are a birther; you are on the birther bill?
  I said: Are you talking about Bill Posey's bill?
  She said: Yeah, the birther bill.
  I said: Have you read it?
  She said: Well, no, but I know it is trying to delegitimize the 
President and have him thrown out of office.
  I said: Tell you what, I haven't been giving statements to these 
ridiculous allegations. I think I gave a written one I dictated from 
Israel, but when I was here, it was just absurd.
  I said: I tell you what, you read the Posey bill. It is just barely 
over 2 pages. You read that bill, and if you still want a statement 
from me, I will give you as long a statement as you want.
  The next time I saw her, I said: Did you read the Posey bill?
  She said: Yeah. It didn't do anything they said it was going to do.
  Exactly. It was a very well-conceived bill. It was not a birther 
bill. But in the mind of Rahm Emanuel, he saw it as an opportunity to 
allege that someone was racist, a birther, accusing the President of 
not being an American citizen. Because my thought was: Well, if he is 
born to an American mother, what difference does it make? Is it 
really--
  But I do still find it interesting that the President wouldn't come 
forward, as anybody else in America would, and say: Here is my birth 
certificate.
  It took Donald Trump making a demand for him to finally come forward. 
Who knows if that is the right one or not. But I never had any issue 
with Barack Obama being an American citizen. I didn't have any 
question. I do think he should have come forward and shut down the 
noise much sooner, but I think he and Rahm Emanuel liked using that and 
liked to call people like me a birther even though it was an absolute 
lie. I never believed the President was not an American citizen.
  Yes, I signed on to that Bill Posey bill. What Bill Posey's bill has 
been for, what, 11 years now--well, no, I am sorry, 8 years now it has 
been called a birther bill. All it did--anybody can go read Posey's 
bill from back in 2009--it said, before a candidate for his or her 
party's nomination, or pursues his or her party's nomination for 
President, the party must make a determination that that individual 
meets the qualifications of the Constitution. And it would not kick in 
until 2012.
  So the crud these reporters were getting from somebody in the White 
House--maybe Rahm Emanuel. Who knows? It sounded like Rahm. But whoever 
sent them the information, whoever sent Garry Trudeau the false lies 
that he used for a strip never bothered to read the bill and see that 
the allegations of birtherism--whatever that is--was just a lie. It 
said beginning in 2012. Nobody was trying to get anybody thrown out of 
office, but that made perfect sense. So the next time The Washington 
Post and The New York Times raised an issue of whether or not somebody 
like John McCain was really qualified to be President, you would get it 
resolved long before that person got elected President.
  I couldn't imagine a worse horror for America than to have someone 
elected President and then get thrown out after they are elected. We 
are talking about massive riots. We are talking about destroying this 
country, just dividing it even worse than this administration has been 
able to do on its own. I didn't want to yank a President out of office, 
but I thought Bill Posey thought of a very fair way to deal with it.
  By the way, those who were concerned about my friend Ted Cruz being 
appropriate to be President, meeting the constitutional requirements, I 
thought, well, gosh, if the left hadn't so demonized Bill Posey's bill, 
he had the framework that would get this all out of the way long before 
you ever got to a party nomination so that the party had it all 
resolved, and you couldn't come in at the last minute after the 
nomination, saying: Nope, you didn't go to the--it would take care of 
it.
  I had a Supreme Court Justice say years ago: Gee, if there is no 
legislation that sets up a foundation or an enabling process, then 
don't come running to the Supreme Court. If you are not going to do 
your job and set it up or have enabling legislation come out of 
Congress, don't come running to us to fix what you are not doing.

                              {time}  2115

  And he wasn't talking about anything specific, but I thought about 
those comments. Well, great, the Posey bill would be terrific enabling 
legislation. And if the White House wasn't so freaked out over Bill 
Posey's legitimate bill, the Ted Cruz issue would not have been an 
issue at all. It would have been long determined long before we got 
into a heated race in the primary, because before a party chair could 
accept the application to become a candidate, it had to determine 
whether or not that candidate met the constitutional requirements. And 
if somebody wanted to challenge, then they would need to come forward 
and do it at that point, and you get it all worked out. It was a good 
bill.
  But poor Bill Posey has been so vilified for coming up with a good 
idea that was branded as a racist birther. It was a really legitimate 
bill. And I keep coming back to this. It reminds me of what I am 
hearing being said about Jeff Sessions--a very decent man.
  I don't try to push my religious beliefs on others, but it is a part 
of who I am as a Christian. I try to forgive others, and I have been 
amazed by the grace of God how I have been able to forgive people who 
have really jerked me around and even work with people that have really 
stabbed me in the back before. But I have been amazed.
  Jeff Sessions was called all kinds of things in 1986, yet 10 years 
later he is elected to the Senate. He never sought any kind of revenge 
against those who did him so unfairly and unjustly because he cared 
about justice and doing the right thing.
  This country needs to heal. If people are going to keep screaming 
racism when it appears the biggest source of racism may have been all 
those people who told me, well, I wanted to vote for the first Black 
American in our history and I really didn't know much about politics, 
you mean you voted for someone because of the color of their skin? Yes, 
I wanted to be able to tell future generations I voted for the first 
Black President.

[[Page H232]]

  I wanted to do that, too. That is why I voted for Alan Keyes in 1996. 
Sorry, Phil Gramm; I know you are from my State, but I just really 
thought a lot of the intellect and integrity of Alan Keyes, and I still 
do. That is why his son works for me. He is brilliant, fair, smart, and 
pretty doggone funny too.
  But I don't care about race, and we need to quit throwing this 
``racist'' term about. Enough already. Let's give Jeff Sessions a fair 
hearing. Let's look at what his record really is. And if he, like I 
did, opposed an unconstitutional punishment of a future generation who 
had done no wrong for something grandparents had done, then he is 
right. That is unconstitutional. It is un-American. I am grateful that 
Donald Trump has nominated a man like Jeff Sessions for the Senate. God 
bless Jeff Sessions.
  I yield back the balance of my time.

                          ____________________