[Congressional Record Volume 163, Number 47 (Friday, March 17, 2017)]
[House]
[Pages H2175-H2180]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




                               MUSLIM BAN

  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, happy St. Patrick's Day.
  March 17 is St. Patrick's Day--a day that, for so many, has become a 
reason for frivolity and joy and fun. Some think it is a day just for 
drinking, but St. Patrick is remembered not because he drank, not 
because of frivolity, but because he was a dedicated Christian 
committed to serving the Lord. I think it is good on St. Patrick's Day 
to remember why he was a saint.

                              {time}  1245

  Now going 180 degrees from talking about saints, Mr. Speaker, I think 
it is worth discussing the decision made by a Federal judge in Hawaii, 
also in Maryland. We have judges who have become dictators. We have 
judges who have ceased to abide by the Constitution. They have widely 
applied themselves as politicians, though they do not run for office.
  A true judge, a conscientious and ethical judge, would review a 
document such as the President's executive order for what it is, what 
it says, what it does. Intent is not an issue. What does it do?
  The President of the United States, Donald J. Trump, was seeking and 
is seeking to protect Americans, but we have judges who are not 
interested in protecting Americans so much as they are patronizing and 
sucking up to the liberals in the country: those in the media, those in 
entertainment, those in their highbrow circles. They are not interested 
in following the Constitution or the law.
  We had a hearing in the Committee on the Judiciary on the Ninth 
Circuit this week. The Ninth Circuit apparently is the most overturned 
circuit in the country. It has a massive number more cases filed in 
their circuit than any other circuit. In fact, I have now filed a bill 
that would divide the Ninth Circuit so that the Ninth Circuit would be 
comprised of California only, and then all the other States--Arizona, 
Nevada, Utah, Wyoming I believe is in, Montana, Oregon, Washington, 
Alaska, Hawaii, and territories--I may have missed a State, but all of 
the other States and territories would be in a new 12th Circuit. The 
judges who are currently on the 12th Circuit Court in my bill--who are 
currently part of the Ninth Circuit would remain with the Ninth 
Circuit. We would have a new circuit, and the judges would be appointed 
by the current President.
  I know there are a lot of people in California who have great 
sympathy for that, have been begging for years to be carved out of the 
Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals because their destructive, 
unconstitutional decisions are doing great harm to those who believe in 
the Constitution as written, not as some liberal judge thought it might 
should be as he tries or she tries to play up to friends at their get-
togethers. They would be hailed as being so wise, but the truth is, as 
Scripture talks about, these are people who are wise in their own eyes, 
but they are doing great harm to the United States of America.
  When anyone in any kind of leadership position loses their common 
sense, they are educated beyond common sense--they educate common sense 
completely out of some folks in the United States now--we have 
problems. And anytime people are educated and taught to believe that 
what instinctively they knew or were taught was not the right thing to 
think, and those people become leaders in the country, that country 
speeds up in its travel down the road to the dustbin of history.
  No nation has ever lasted forever. No nation ever will in this world. 
It is not going to happen. So the question is, from its founding, how 
long does it go? It depends on how long the leaders of that nation can 
keep good sense within their consideration in making decisions. That is 
not happening. Good sense is not being used by judges who have assumed 
powers they never had, were never given.
  Under the Constitution, the powers regarding refugees, immigration, 
those decisions are left to the President. Some judge may say, oh, you 
can't consider religion, but indeed any judge that so says is 
completely wrong. Thank God religion has been considered many times, as 
when Jews were being persecuted and killed, it was appropriate to say 
that we want to welcome Jews out of those horrors as refugees, bring 
them in. But this Nation is being put at risk by judges who are wise in 
their own eyes.
  Now, there is an article here about the Hawaii judge. It is in The 
Guardian. It was written by Les Carpenter, Oliver Laughland, and Liz 
Barney. It was written apparently before the decision was made.
  ``U.S. district judge Derrick Watson is one of several judges hearing 
arguments over the ban in the final hours before its implementation. He 
said on Wednesday afternoon after hearing oral arguments that he would 
issue a written ruling before 6pm Hawaii time. Hawaii was the first 
state to challenge the second version of Trump's travel ban, after the 
first was halted by court order.
  ``The state has argued that the ban is unconstitutional, and that it 
will suffer damage to its local economy and to various educational and 
religious institutions. It also argued that some Hawaiians will be 
prevented from reuniting with family members swept up in the ban.''
  That is heart rending, but the fact is none of those are a basis for 
reversing a Presidential executive order that Congress and the 
Constitution together gave the President to issue.
  We also find from comments that the courts didn't look to the four 
corners of the document and look what the document says because many of 
us know that as long as the Constitution is the foundational bedrock 
for the

[[Page H2176]]

country, we have a solid foundation. But when we have judges like this 
Derrick Watson or the judge from Maryland or James Robart, who issued a 
ban in the first travel order, when they don't pay attention to the 
Constitution but pay more attention to what they hear from their 
liberal friends who are disgusted by the elected President of the 
United States, and they know they will be heroes, and they long for the 
accolades of the intelligentsia, which actually isn't the intelligent--
educated, yes; intelligent, no.
  The Constitution gives certain powers to certain parts of the 
government. Congress has the power to make decisions on immigration, 
migration, naturalization, but it has the power to delegate those 
responsibilities as it sees fit to the President, and it has done so. 
The President has certain powers of his own office, of his own right to 
protect the United States of America. But these judges think that you 
should not consider the fact that one of the most educated people in 
the world on what Islam is and what it isn't says the Islamic State 
is Islam. He has a Ph.D. in Islamic studies from the University of 
Baghdad, as I recall, and he happens to be the head of the Islamic 
State.

  But the judge would have us disregard the fact that a man who spent 
his life studying Islam, Koran, the Holy Koran because the Koran that 
is brought around to some of our offices, they take out verses that 
have to do with violence against those who are not Muslims, but the 
Holy Koran he spent his life studying, but these judges would say, oh, 
no, no, you can't consider the fact that these radical Islamists claim 
to be Muslim or Islamists, you can't consider that.
  One article out this week pointed out that somebody should tell these 
judges that the terrorists coming in from the nations designated by the 
President are Muslim. They are not Christians. They are not Jews. They 
are not secularists. They are radical Islamists. It is ridiculous to 
have to continually state the obvious that we all know, that all 
Muslims are not a threat to the United States, but it is absurd not to 
understand that those who in the name of Allah are killing, beheading, 
torturing, trying to destroy a free society in the name of Allah, they 
should not be allowed into the United States. If they are U.S. citizens 
and their goal is to supplant the U.S. Constitution with sharia law, 
that is treasonous.
  That is why I was so pleased with President Sisi, as a Muslim leader, 
telling a room full of imams: We have got to stand up to the radicals 
who have hijacked our religion. President Obama didn't know that. He 
kept continuing to say that, oh, no, the Islamic State, it is not 
Islamic, these Islamic terrorists are not Islamic, when actually wise 
Muslim leaders like President Sisi, they understand, yes, these people 
are Islamic. They claim it in the name of Allah. They claim it in the 
name of the Holy Koran, but they have hijacked our religion, and it is 
time to stand up to them. As long as we have world leaders who are, 
metaphorically speaking, without clothes, and nobody has the nerve 
among the world leaders to say: you are naked, put on some clothes. 
Again, for those who are educated beyond their intellectual level, that 
means you have got to call it like it is and don't just go along to 
play to the crowd, the media, the Hollywood types. Stand up and call it 
like it is. We have a President who is trying to do that.

                              {time}  1300

  There is no doubt, as Justice Scalia said about one of the ill-
advised decisions previously made by the Supreme Court, this will end 
up costing American lives. These decisions, if they are allowed to 
stand, by these unconstitutional judges will cost American lives, and 
the blood will be on the judges' hands in their pursuit of accolades 
and popularity among the neo-intellectual elite. They left common sense 
behind and put our Nation at risk. It is tragic.
  I have the two decisions from the courts--one from the District of 
Hawaii and one from the District of Maryland. But it is interesting. In 
this article I was reading, Mr. Speaker, it says the judge, within just 
a matter of brief hours, was going to have this 42- or 43-page decision 
made. Let's see. This is the Hawaii decision, 43 pages. It seems to me 
somebody must have been working on that before oral arguments. The 
decision must have been worked on before that to have a 43-page 
decision just within a matter of a few hours.
  But let's face it, the litigant surely knew before they ever had a 
hearing what the judge surely knew before the hearing--that he was 
biased, prejudiced, and was in no way going to have a fair hearing. He 
was going to end up ridiculing the President of the United States, and 
unwittingly, witlessly, putting America at risk.
  We have testimony here from the FBI Director saying: We will vet 
these people, but we have nothing against which we can check the 
information they give us. Yeah, we will vet them, but we got nothing to 
check their information against.
  As Director Comey pointed out: At least in Iraq, we had government 
records from Iraq, we had the criminal records. But in Syria, since the 
Obama administration was so diametrically opposed to the Assad 
administration in Syria, well, the official government certainly wasn't 
sharing information. And since this administration said we were going 
to stop the Islamic State--even though we did nothing from the 
administration decisions, at least, but help the Islamic State grow 
bigger and strong, and kept sending weapons, material to what the Obama 
administration thought or said were our friends and allies, but 
actually ended up repeatedly allowing the weaponry, the heavy artillery 
tanks, to fall into the hands of the Islamic State--well, the Islamic 
State was not sharing the information they had about the people of 
Syria.
  And, in fact, Mr. Baghdadi made clear that they were going to get 
some of their best warriors mixed in with refugees, and they surely 
have. When you have judges who close their eyes, wet their finger, and 
hold it up for liberal friends to blow on so they know which direction 
they should move, well, we get bad decisions that put the Nation at 
risk.
  For those of us who spent much of our lives studying history, it is 
very clear. Since you know no nation lasts forever, then you look at 
important milestones along the rise and along the demise, and these are 
the kind of decisions that lead to a country's demise. When you refuse 
to recognize what your enemies say--that they are your enemies, they 
are going to destroy your way of life, they are going to get refugees 
who are terrorists into your country--because you are so stupid you 
don't know how to defend yourself, you want to pat yourselves on the 
back for being so open-minded and open-doored that you allow your 
killer to come in and kill you, just like the proverbial song and tale 
taking in a snake, warming it, bringing it back to life, and it bites 
the rescuer; or the tale of the tortoise carrying the scorpion across 
the water and then getting stung. When people tell you they despise 
your way of life, they are going to bring your way of life down. When 
their documents tell you that they believe that you are infidels and 
need to be destroyed, there has to be somebody at the top of the 
country's leadership that understands the risk and stands up to protect 
the country.
  And when people like these judges take the Constitution into their 
own hands, rip it up, and say, ``I don't care what restrictions we have 
on us, I don't have any restrictions, I am a Federal judge for life,'' 
well, that is only so long as the judge has good behavior. And these 
judges have not had good behavior. They have taken powers under 
themselves--their name might as well be Chavez or Morsi--taking power 
into their own hands that they were never supposed to have.
  But at least in the case of Chavez and, possibly, Morsi, they won 
elections. There was a great deal of fraud involved in Morsi's 
election. It was questionable whether he actually won. The threats 
eliminated any contest to the election results. But the 30 million or 
so that went to the streets and demanded his ouster in Egypt, the 
greatest public step in world history, demanded the removal of an 
unconstitutional leader in world history. There has never been 30 
million people go to the streets peaceably. It wasn't all peace. But 
the part that wasn't peace was caused by the Muslim Brotherhood. That 
is why they have been labeled as a terrorist organization, and that is 
why the United States should label them as a terrorist organization.
  Regardless of what anybody thinks about President Trump, his order 
was

[[Page H2177]]

an attempt to protect Americans against judges who think they are 
unaccountable because we haven't impeached near enough and who become 
dictators and seize power that was never given to them.
  I have got a bill we are preparing that would eliminate any 
jurisdiction for any Federal court other than the Supreme Court to take 
up an issue involving immigration of refugees, other than immigration 
courts, but not on a constitutional level, not to issue an injunction 
to stop a congressional action or a Presidential action. That would 
have to come from the Supreme Court, and that is the way it ought to 
be.
  When the Constitution was written, there was only one Federal court 
provided for. That was the United States Supreme Court. Any other court 
that is Federal in this country owes its life, its jurisdiction, to the 
U.S. Congress. As some have said in other applications, ``We brought 
them into the world and we can take them out,'' as far as their courts 
are concerned; and we need to do that. We need to take their courts out 
of the business of making decisions that overrule congressional and 
Presidential action on refugees and our national security when it is 
involved with those refugees.

  At a hearing that Dr. Alid Perez and Steve King, my friend from Iowa, 
set up and held yesterday, there were very touching stories of 
Christians, Yazidis, the persecution of Jews in the Middle East. We 
heard from people that know what it is to be persecuted by radical 
Islamists. They see how stupid the policies have been in this country.
  We heard from one of the people in the Homeland Security Department 
that with the massive millions of dollars that Congress appropriated to 
be used in countering violent extremism, an inarticulate euphemism, 
that we have spent millions on things like teaching young school choirs 
Muslim songs. Now, that is one of the contributing factors to the 
senseless Orlando killings, the San Bernardino killings, the Boston 
marathon killings--choirs. A contributing factor is that we have wasted 
millions of dollars, maybe billions, on outreach programs that should 
not necessarily be the role of some parts of our law enforcement.
  I challenged FBI Director Mueller that they had not even gone to the 
mosque where Tsarnaev went to find out if his pattern had changed, if 
his behavior had changed, you know, if he was memorizing more and more 
scripture than he ever had.
  We often hear after these shootings, these killings, or these 
bombings take place: Well, he was becoming more and more religious.
  Well, that can be an indication that somebody has become radicalized. 
There are a number of factors.
  Kim Jensen from the FBI, who prepared 700 pages or so on training 
people how to spot radical Islamists, well, he had his 700 pages purged 
from training materials for a long period of time. Finally, they 
realized somebody really needs to know what radical Islam is. They 
allowed some of the training materials to be used again--maybe all of 
them--but only for a limited number of FBI agents, as I understand it. 
We had material that was removed during the purge of our State 
Department, Homeland Security Department, intelligence departments, 
agencies, during the purge of their training materials, removed what 
our Federal agents need to know in order to be able to spot if somebody 
is no longer a peace-loving Muslim but now has been radicalized and 
wants to kill American infidels.
  There are things that can be spotted if you know what to look for. We 
have people that know how to train for those things. Phil Haney with 
Homeland Security knew. With this scientific methodology of finding the 
connections between radical Islamists, as we have heard publicly, he 
had identified 800 who may have terrorist ties--reviewed 400, where 
nearly every one of them ended up being named on the terrorist watch 
list, but the other 400 were not ever analyzed.

                              {time}  1315

  No telling how many of those potential terrorist individuals may 
actually kill people, kill Americans some day, if they haven't already.
  Although Secretary Napolitano said we get pinged and we connect the 
dots, yet she was Secretary when somebody high--maybe her, but probably 
someone else--was eliminating the dots, thousands of pages of dots, 
dots representing terrorist ties. They wiped them out. They erased 
them.
  Phil Haney saw it as it was happening, was able to capture much that 
was being deleted, that would allow us to know who in the United States 
has terrorist ties. Under President Obama, our ability to identify our 
enemy was greatly weakened, and now we have judges that will put us 
even further at risk.
  But you see it repeatedly through history. When a nation's leaders 
begin to think they are so wise, so above the fray that they refuse to 
recognize a direct threat to the nation, then the nation is--it speeds 
up its trip to that dustbin of history. My continued hope and prayer is 
that this administration will reverse that slide.
  I know there are many that say that you have a cycle--whether it was 
ancient Greece, Rome, other societies--where they pursue freedom, they 
have some freedom, they begin to lose freedom, they fall under a 
dictatorship, a totalitarian regime, and then the cycle goes on. But my 
reading of history leads me to believe perhaps it is more like, can be 
like, bell-shaped curves where you can go up, create more and more 
freedoms, have periods where you lose freedoms, but if you have a 
generation or two that stands up and recaptures those freedoms, you 
could have another bell-shaped curve. It doesn't have to be a cycle 
where you completely lose your freedom. But the way we are headed, this 
will happen.
  I was hearing from my friend Secretary Tom Price yesterday that there 
are 76,000 employees in Health and Human Services, and we are not 
talking about people that even put Band-Aids on those who need medical 
care. We are talking mainly about bureaucrats. That is one of the 
things that contributed so mightily to the increased cost of health 
care: so many more bureaucrats were being hired, had to be hired, more 
and more regulations.
  You had IRS agents, by the thousands, that had to be hired in order 
to implement ObamaCare. They weren't going to help anybody's health. 
They might actually cause problems with people's health--ulcers, at 
least.
  But this Nation is at risk. We have gotten a reprieve, a chance to 
catch our breath, restore freedom.
  As I have said before, for those who have read ``Nineteen Eighty-
Four'' by George Orwell, the main thing that Orwell got wrong was the 
date, because we now have eyes in our homes wherever we are that are 
staring at us, allow the government to stare at us through our own 
computers, through our own smartphones. When watching the movie of 
``1984,'' it actually is an eye like a picture, but what it really is 
these days, they are computer screens, smartphone screens. The 
government can watch any time it wants.
  We were assured that the government would not be watching like that 
unless they followed the law or got a FISA court warrant, but Edward 
Snowden showed that--those of us who heard testimony and heard 
statements from people in authority about what they would do and not 
do--has been proven to be false.
  That became clear to me when I saw the affidavit seeking a warrant 
for all of Verizon's data on all of their customers, all of their 
calls, all of the information, because the Fourth Amendment says it has 
to be with particularity. You have got to be specific, what it is you 
are seeking, make sure there is probable cause to believe a crime is 
being committed and this person committed it, and that there is 
evidence to show that that is being sought, and then you get the 
warrant.
  That is the way I reviewed applications for warrants repeatedly when 
I was a judge, but not anymore. No, no. A guy comes in, swears to a 
FISA court judge that at one time I had great trust in because we were 
assured, hey, these are appointed--nominated, at least--confirmed 
Federal judges. They would never violate the Constitution. Well, we 
found out that is just not true. They became a rubber stamp.
  So the particularity in the affidavit we saw was: We need all the 
information on all the customers Verizon has. The FISA judge, 
supposedly out there to protect Americans' private information, said: 
Oh, well, that is particular enough. You want everything, all of the 
numbers, all of the information.

[[Page H2178]]

Okay, here is the order. Here is the warrant. Verizon, turn over 
everything you have got on all the numbers you have.
  Well, so much for protection of our rights by the FISA court. We now 
know we are not protected by the FISA court. We can't trust the FISA 
court.
  As I said in our hearing last week--well, I have said it publicly--
unless our intelligence agencies produce the culprits who violated the 
law and did not follow the law in masking the name, minimizing the 
transcripts, unless our intelligence agencies can root out the people 
that have been violating the law, I will vote against a reauthorization 
of 702.
  I know they say: Well, we need all of this power to keep us safe. But 
we have competing interests here. On the one hand, we have a government 
that yearns to be bigger and bigger and know more and more until it 
knows everything about everybody; and on the other hand, we have got 
people wanting to be safe and wanting their government to protect them. 
So there has to be a balance.
  But when government officials can get every bit of information about 
your private life, then why do we even need a Congress? You have got 
bureaucrats making your decisions, know all about you. Might as well 
let them make the rest of your personal decisions. They know everything 
else you know.
  So we are living in a dangerous time, but the judges have got to be 
reined in. I hope that my colleagues will join us in restricting the 
ability of a district or circuit court, any Federal court other than 
the Supreme Court, taking up these types of national security 
issues involving refugees or immigrants, because it looks like that is 
the best thing we can do at this time.

  In the meantime, I do intend to review more information about these 
two judges from Hawaii and Maryland--any others that may join hands as 
they jump off the cliff--and see if their conduct seems to be 
sufficiently bad conduct to require their removal from office.
  I know this will be looked at as a political thing, but it is not. We 
are talking about the freedoms of every Democrat, every Republican, 
everybody that is not identified with a party--every American. The 
judges have overtaken the Constitution.
  In the name of political correctness, we have ended up, apparently, 
according to the information that is coming out, allowing people who 
happen to be Muslim to have total access to our congressional computer 
systems. This article from March 15 in the Conservative Review by Luke 
Rosiak--and apparently, he has done a great deal of digging on this 
story. He seems to have more stories about it.
  Well, let me touch on the one from March 13:
  ``Congressional IT staffers who are the subject of a criminal 
investigation into misusing their positions had full access to Members' 
`correspondence, emails, confidential files,' and there was almost no 
tracking of what they did, a former House technology worker said.
  ``Imran Awan bullied central IT to bend the rules for him so there 
wouldn't be a paper trail about the unusually high permissions he was 
requesting. And their actions were not logged, so Members have no way 
of knowing what information they may have taken, the central IT 
employee said.
  ``Awan ran technology for multiple House Democrats, and soon four of 
his relatives--including brothers Abid and Jamal--appeared on the 
payroll of dozens of other Members''--of Congress--``collecting $4 
million in taxpayer funds since 2010.
  ``U.S. Capitol Police named him and his relatives as subjects of a 
criminal probe on February 2, and banned them from the complex's 
computer networks. But Members of Congress for whom they worked have 
downplayed their access or publicly ignored the issue.''
  And, of course, the reason is no one wants to be seen as a racist. 
Islam, being Muslim, is not a race; it is a religion. And for some, it 
is not only a religion, it is a form of government that some--
fortunately, a minority--think should replace our own Constitution.
  Anyway, the article goes on: `` `They had access to everything. 
Correspondence, emails, confidential files--if it was stored on the 
Member's system, they had access to it,' the former House Information 
Resources technology worker with first-hand knowledge of Imran's 
privileges told The Daily Caller News Foundation.
  ``Technology employees who work for Members must initially get 
authority from HIR, a component of the House's chief administrative 
officer, which maintains campus-wide technology systems.
  ``There were some things--like access to the House email system that 
were totally controlled by the technicians at HIR. In order for certain 
permissions to be granted, a form was required to ensure that there was 
a paper trail for the requested changes. Imran was constantly 
complaining that he had to go through this process and trying to get 
people to process his access requests without the proper forms. Some of 
the permissions he wanted would give him total access to the Members' 
stuff.''
  And again, he used the threat of calling someone bigoted because he 
was Muslim if he was not given the total access that this person now 
being investigated as a criminal said he needed.
  And it is amazing how many people gave him the full access he wanted 
without the proper credentials, without the proper background 
investigation, because no one wanted to be called bigoted since he was 
Muslim.

                              {time}  1330

  `` `IT staff at HIR can be tracked for every keystroke they make,' 
the worker said. But by comparison, `when these guys were granted 
access to the Member's computer systems there is no oversight or 
tracking of what they may be doing on the Member's system. For example 
they could make a copy of anything on the Member's computer system to a 
thumb drive or have it sent to a private server that they had set up 
and no one would know.'
  ``That raises questions about why Members are so quick to brush off 
the seriousness of the investigation.''
  Mr. Speaker, as you know, we are not hearing a lot of people talk 
about it. We are not seeing a bunch of stories about it. But this is 
critical to the ongoing of Congress' actions. You can't have privileged 
communications that allow us to know what is going on in the 
departments, agencies, over which we have oversight--you can't have 
access to that kind of information.
  The wrong people know everybody we talk to, everything that is said. 
They know how to fend off and best come after America. They know how to 
manipulate us and do so so much easier and better. You don't have to be 
Russian, apparently, to get access to the Democratic National 
Committee's emails.
  I am still really interested to know if any of these five who didn't 
have proper background investigations, that worked on so many of our 
Democratic friends' computer systems, if they possibly helped set up 
the Democratic National Committee's computer system.
  `` `After being notified by the House Administration Committee, Abid 
was removed from our payroll.' '' This is a quote. `` `We are confident 
that everything in our office is secure,' Hilarie Chambers, chief of 
staff for Democratic Representative Sander Levin of Michigan, told 
TheDCNF.
  ``Multiple House IT workers said it is impossible for Members' 
offices to make that judgment, and that Capitol Police--who are running 
an investigation that involves cybercrimes and current and potential 
international fugitives, despite their primary duties being providing 
physical security--aren't capable of determining what actually occurred 
either.
  ``The Capitol Police web page listing their authority, scope of work, 
and expertise does not mention the word `computers.'
  ``A Fairfax County, Virginia, police report shows that the brothers' 
stepmother called the police on them in January, and a relative said 
Imran has been out of the country attempting to access assets stored in 
Pakistan in his deceased father's name. The relative said they forced 
her to sign power of attorney documents against her will.
  ``After naming them as suspects in a criminal investigation, the 
Capitol Police have not taken their passports or arrested them. The 
brothers previously took a $100,000 loan from a fugitive wanted by U.S. 
authorities, Dr. Ali Al-Attar, who has fled to Iraq and been linked to 
Hezbollah.''

[[Page H2179]]

  Just gives you a warm, fuzzy feeling, Mr. Speaker, that we have got 
people with ties owing money to known associates of the Hezbollah 
terrorist organization and their having full access to Members' 
computers.
  This says: ``Imran ran technology for Florida Rep. Debbie Wasserman 
Schultz--who resigned as head of the Democratic National Committee 
after a disastrous email hack that was blamed on Russians--and had the 
password to an iPad used for DNC business.
  ``Politico described the investigation this way: `Five House staffers 
are accused of stealing equipment from Members' offices without their 
knowledge and committing serious, potentially illegal, violations on 
the House IT network.'
  ``But it later said Hill staffers were downplaying the information 
security component, writing, `Sources close to the House investigation 
said the former staffers, while able to view some Member data, did not 
have access to any classified information.'
  ``That description rankled multiple House IT workers, who told 
TheDCNF those semantics misleadingly made it seem like they didn't have 
access to extremely sensitive information.
  `` `Classified' is a terminology used by spy agencies and other 
executive branch agencies, not generally Congress, with the exception 
of the Intelligence Committee. The full email correspondence and hard 
drives of Members of Congress are nonetheless sensitive, extremely 
private, and likely to contain privileged information of the utmost 
import.
  ``And an email need not deal with national security to open that 
Member to blackmail or extortion. All a rogue IT staffer would need to 
do was threaten to release emails that were politically embarrassing.
  ``The central IT staffer said any suggestion that the brothers' 
access didn't span the full gamut of congressional intrigue was silly 
because they were the ones giving out permissions.
  `` `When a new Member begins, they guide them on everything from 
which computer system to purchase to which constituent management 
system to go with and all other related hardware purchases. Then they 
install everything and set up all the accounts and grant all the 
required permissions and restrictions,' the staffer said.
  `` `In effect, they are given administrative control of the Members' 
computer operations. They then set up a remote access so they can 
connect from wherever they are and have full access to everything on 
the Member's system.'
  ``Numerous Members of Congress who employed the suspects wouldn't say 
whether they've been fired or what steps they've taken to examine 
whether their information is safe.''
  Spokesmen for a number of Members of Congress ``all ignored requests 
or refused to say.
  ``The central IT worker said they were ignoring the problem in the 
hopes that it will go away, but that their apathy speaks to the 
problem.
  `` `Unfortunately, as the recent election has shown, security of 
computer systems on the Hill is not really taken seriously.' ''
  So we are told now, this article from March 15, says that the Capitol 
Police are getting outside help. We will see.
  Might I inquire how much time I have?
  The SPEAKER pro tempore. The gentleman from Texas has 5 minutes 
remaining.
  Mr. GOHMERT. Mr. Speaker, in my remaining time, I want to address the 
question of ObamaCare.
  Two years ago when Joe Biden was Vice President, making him President 
of the Senate, there was a compromise. Instead of doing complete and 
full repeal of ObamaCare as Republicans have been promising for years, 
there was a compromise: All right. We will take out all but the 
regulatory authority, those things that actually caused the greatest 
increase and expense.
  But it didn't change the fact, Mr. Speaker, that we had made a pledge 
to America that I didn't help write but our leaders of the Republican 
Party in the House did, and it said: Because the new healthcare law 
kills jobs, raises taxes, increases the cost of health care, we will 
immediately take action to repeal this law. Then it goes into some 
detail about that.
  Then we know we had A Better Way, Speaker Ryan, our leadership, 
current leadership's Better Way. And this was from June 22 of 2016.
  The plan begins by laying out five principles. It begins by repealing 
ObamaCare. That is all of it as its first principle. And the last 
sentence of the paragraph says: ``We need a clean start in order to 
pursue the patient-centered reforms the American people deserve.''
  That is exactly right, and I was glad that our leadership of our 
party put that in there because we needed a full repeal.
  But 2 years ago, it wasn't a complete repeal. More so than what is 
being done now, in what we are being told is the new bill. It was more 
repeal then. But even then we wanted to do a full repeal, but we were 
told because Joe Biden could come over from the White House, come down 
Pennsylvania Avenue and take the presiding officer's seat straight down 
the hall, that he would likely rule that other part was not in 
compliance with the Byrd rule.
  In essence, the Byrd rule basically means, if something is merely 
incidental in its effect on the budget instead of a direct effect on 
the budget, then it may not be considered under the procedure that was 
being used, and that procedure only requires 51 votes.
  So the thing that everybody knew back then is, if it were a 
Republican in the presiding officer's seat, of course, would say all of 
this, especially the part that was taken out, would survive the Byrd 
rule because it is not just an incidental effect on the budget. It is 
the most dramatic effect on the budget of most any bill that Congress 
has ever taken up--dramatic and not incidental, dramatic.
  And so now we are told: Look, everybody needs to get on board with 
this new bill that doesn't go as far as the one 2 years ago, and it 
leaves all these regulations and things, all that power. 1,400 times it 
says the Secretary will make the rules, regulations to implement the 
bill. But we are being told it is okay; you don't have to knock those 
out because now we have Secretary Price that can do that.
  Well, for one thing, if he could, then that would mean when the next 
Secretary of Health and Human Services comes along and it is a 
Democrat, you can put them all back. We hadn't done anything. We didn't 
accomplish anything. We just had a little breather.
  But we are also told the prices will likely continue up. There may be 
a 10 percent drop of the two to four times the healthcare costs, health 
insurance costs, at least, are increasing.
  But since we know it will be a Republican in the chair, then the 
Republican in the chair in the Senate will be free to do the right 
thing and say, honestly, truthfully, absolutely, the repeal of all this 
regulatory massive mess is dramatically going to affect the budget, not 
incidentally. So it survives the Byrd rule. It stays in.
  There are things that are in the new bill that probably won't survive 
that analysis that have been added.
  Why don't we do what we promised for 7 long years, repeal all of 
ObamaCare? But we are told there is a second bucket, a second stage, 
where Secretary Tom Price--in whom I have got great faith because he 
knows health care, he knows healthcare law--can change those 
regulations.
  Well, we also know that this is going to be taken to court very 
quickly. And even I, as the conservative appellate chief justice that I 
was at one time, would probably look at that and say wait a minute.
  The law gives you the power to create regulations to implement the 
bill; it doesn't give you the power to make regulations that will 
destroy the bill. So it won't have to be a liberal judge that can knock 
down regulations.
  I remember my late friend Justice Scalia not talking about a 
particular case, but talking about the issue of when Congress doesn't 
do something and has a lawsuit to do it instead, Justice Scalia said: 
If you guys in Congress don't have the guts to stop something you have 
the power to stop, don't come running over to the Supreme Court to 
demand we do it. You do your job. That is not our job.

                              {time}  1345

  And this is the case with ObamaCare. It needs to be repealed--as 
Mitch McConnell said, root and branch. And it survives the Byrd Rule, 
and then we really help America.
  Mr. Speaker, I yield back the balance of my time.

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