[Congressional Record Volume 163, Number 71 (Wednesday, April 26, 2017)]
[House]
[Pages H2887-H2891]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




                           ISSUES OF THE DAY

  The SPEAKER pro tempore. Under the Speaker's announced policy of 
January 3, 2017, the gentleman from Texas (Mr. Gohmert) is recognized 
for 60 minutes as the designee of the majority leader.
  Mr. GOHMERT. Mr. Speaker, President Trump recently signed an 
executive order that made abundant sense for those who are in the world 
of common sense where good sense is common, which at least is not the 
case in the Federal courthouse in San Francisco.
  Our friend, Andrew McCarthy, has written an op-ed for National Review 
regarding the decision of the oligarch masquerading in the Federal 
courthouse in San Francisco. Judge William H. Orrick III is amazing. In 
fact, his arrogance is only exceeded by his ignorance.
  It is an excellent article. Normally I wouldn't read an entire 
article, it is not that long, but this is so well written by the 
prosecutor of The Blind Sheikh that it bears hearing the words from 
Andrew McCarthy.
  He said: ``A showboating Federal judge in San Francisco has issued an 
injunction against President Trump's executive order cutting off 
Federal funds from so-called sanctuary cities. The ruling distorts the 
E.O. beyond recognition, accusing the President of usurping legislative 
authority despite the order's express adherence to `existing law.' 
Moreover, undeterred by the inconvenience that the order has not been 
enforced, the activist court--better to say, the fantasist court--
dreams up harms that might befall San Francisco and Santa Clara, the 
sanctuary jurisdictions behind the suit, if it were enforced. The court 
thus flouts the standing doctrine, which limits judicial authority to 
actual controversies involving concrete, nonspeculative harms.
  ``Although he vents for 49 pages, Judge William H. Orrick III gives 
away the game early, on page 4. There, the Obama appointee explains 
that his ruling is about . . . nothing.
  ``That is, Orrick acknowledges that he is adopting the construction 
of the E.O. urged by the Trump Justice Department, which maintains that 
the order does nothing more than call for the enforcement of already 
existing law. Although that construction is completely consistent with 
the E.O. as written, Judge Orrick implausibly describes it as 
`implausible.' ''
  I would interject at this point, Mr. Speaker, that upon hearing 
President Trump's executive order requiring sanctuary cities such as 
San Francisco, where their heart is so calloused on the side 
figuratively facing people like Kate Steinle, innocent people who are 
just trying to live freely their own lives, and is greatly softened on 
the side of those criminals who have come into the United States 
illegally who would tend to shoot lovely, law-abiding daughters like 
Kate.
  So it seemed eminently reasonable what I had read was in the order. I 
didn't read the whole order originally, but it made eminent sense, of 
course, the President of the United States saying that he is authorized 
by the Constitution in carrying out enforcement and by Congress in 
carrying out enforcement, saying we are not sending Federal money to 
sanctuary cities--to any cities--that are refusing to use the money for 
the purpose for which it is intended. That makes eminent sense, because 
if you are not going to follow Federal law, if it is made clear to the 
whole world that you would rather see people like Kate Steinle shot and 
killed dead so that you can have criminals committing the worst kinds 
of violence on law-abiding citizens. That makes sense to these people 
who are ruling in San Francisco. One ruler is Judge Orrick who we 
reference here.
  There was a time in America when people in power thought it was a 
good idea for everyone to follow the law. But we have devolved in some 
areas of the country where we are no longer a nation of laws, where at 
least at one time there was a goal of pursuing absolute fairness where 
everyone could live under the same laws following the same laws. There 
was that time.
  Yet we have people who are educated far beyond their mental ability 
to absorb education since it has used up all the gigabytes that might 
have otherwise been used for wisdom for cluttered knowledge that has 
prevented this judge and others from being able to use common sense to 
follow the law to protect people who are counting on the courts and law 
enforcement officers to follow and enforce the law themselves.
  There was that time when Manifest Destiny was being pursued, people 
were moving West. The areas West were not actual States within the 
United States. There was a lawlessness. People were yearning in those 
territories to be States so that they could count on the Federal 
Government to provide fairness--ultimate fairness--and provide a life 
that would be lived under the United States Constitution. They felt, in 
those days, if we could just get the Federal Government to have a 
Federal marshal here and a Federal Court here, wow, life would be so 
much better. Now we have seen it has lived beyond the usefulness it 
once had and has become quite a burden to overcome in reaching fairness 
and constitutionality.

  So, Mr. Speaker, before I continue with Andy McCarthy's piece, I want 
to point out we are in preparation of a bill that would eliminate any 
Federal district court or circuit court from having jurisdiction over 
matters regarding immigration. Certainly, we had that power. In fact, 
we have the power to eliminate the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals 
altogether. We have a bill that would, in fact, limit the Ninth Circuit 
Court of Appeals to California, and all of the other States that 
comprise the Ninth Circuit would be part of a new 12th Circuit. In that 
new 12th Circuit, whoever the current President is when the law is 
passed would appoint the entire banc of judges for the 12th Circuit 
Court of Appeals.
  Following the Reid rule in the Senate, if we were to get that passed 
through the House and Senate, I feel sure President Trump would sign it 
into law, and then President Trump would have an entire circuit where 
he appoints the judges, where people would know they would have judges 
of the quality of Judge Gorsuch--at least the quality he is supposed to 
represent--and people would know they weren't going to get oligarchs as 
judges, they were going to get people who at least maintain some 
semblance of trying to follow the Constitution and trying to live up to 
the oath that they took to defend the Constitution--just support the 
Constitution for goodness' sake.
  McCarthy goes on. He says: ``Since Orrick ultimately agrees with the 
Trump Justice Department, and since no enforcement action has been 
taken based on the E.O., why not just dismiss the case? Why the 
judicial theatrics?
  ``There appear to be two reasons.
  ``The first is Orrick's patent desire to embarrass the White House, 
which rolled out the E.O. with great fanfare. The court wants it 
understood that Trump is a pretender: For all the hullaballoo, the E.O. 
effectively did nothing. Indeed, Orrick rationalizes his repeated 
misreadings of what the order actually says by feigning disbelief that 
what it says could possibly be what it means. Were that the case, he 
suggests, there would have been no reason to issue the order in the 
first place.
  ``Thus, taking a page from the activist leftwing judges who 
invalidated

[[Page H2888]]

Trump's `travel ban' orders, Orrick harps on stump speeches by Trump 
and other administration officials. One wonders how well Barack `If you 
like your plan, you can keep your plan' Obama would have fared under 
the judiciary's new Trump doctrine: The extravagant political rhetoric 
by which the incumbent President customarily sells his policies 
relieves a court of the obligation to grapple with the inevitably more 
modest legal text of the directives that follow.
  ``Of course, the peer branches of government are supposed to presume 
each other's good faith in the absence of a patent violation of the 
law. But let's put aside the unseemliness of Orrick's barely concealed 
contempt for a moment, because he is also wrong. The proper purpose of 
an executive order is to direct the operations of the executive branch 
within the proper bounds of the law. There is, therefore, nothing 
untoward about an E.O. that directs the President's subordinates to 
take enforcement action within the confines of congressional statutes. 
In fact, it is welcome.
  ``It is the President's burden to set Federal law enforcement 
priorities. After years of Obama's lax enforcement of immigration law 
and apathy regarding sanctuary jurisdictions, an E.O. openly 
manifesting an intent to execute the laws vigorously can have a 
salutary effect. And indeed, indications are that the cumulative effect 
of Trump's more zealous approach to enforcement, of which the 
sanctuary-city E.O. is just one component, has been a significant 
reduction in the number of aliens seeking to enter the U.S. 
illegally.''

                              {time}  1715

  ``In any event, 8 years of Obama's phone and pen have made it easy to 
forget that the President is not supposed to make the law, and thus 
that we should celebrate, not condemn, an E.O. that does not break new 
legal ground. Orrick, by contrast, proceeds from the flawed premise 
that if a President is issuing an E.O., it simply must be his purpose 
to usurp congressional authority. Then he censures Trump for a 
purported usurpation that is nothing more than a figment of his own 
very active imagination.''
  He is talking about the judge here. What an imagination.
  ``Orrick's second reason for issuing his Ruling About Nothing is to 
rationalize what is essentially an advisory opinion. It holds--I know 
you'll be shocked to hear this--that if Trump ever did try to cut off 
funds from sanctuary cities, it would be an epic violation of the 
Constitution. Given that courts are supposed to refrain from issuing 
advisory opinions, the Constitution is actually more aggrieved by 
Orrick than by Trump.
  ``In a nutshell, the court claims that the E.O. is Presidential 
legislation, an unconstitutional violation of the separation of powers. 
Orrick insists that the E.O. directs the Attorney General and the 
Secretary of Homeland Security to cut off any Federal funds that would 
otherwise go to States and municipalities if they `willfully refuse to 
comply' with Federal law that calls for State and local cooperation in 
enforcing immigration law.
  ``According to Judge Orrick, Trump's E.O. is heedless of whether 
Congress has approved any terminations of State funding from Federal 
programs it has enacted. In one of the opinion's most disingenuous 
passages, Orrick asserts that the E.O. `directs the Attorney General 
and the Homeland Security Secretary to ensure that ``sanctuary 
jurisdictions'' are ``not eligible to receive'' Federal grants.'
  ``But this is just not true.''
  In other words, Judge Orrick lied in his opinion.
  ``Orrick has omitted key context from the relevant passage, which 
actually states that `the Attorney General and the Secretary, in their 
discretion and to the extent consistent with law, shall ensure that 
jurisdictions that willfully refuse to comply with 8 U.S.C. 1373 are 
not eligible to receive Federal grants.'
  ``In plain English, the President has expressly restricted his 
subordinates to the limits that Congress has enacted. Under Trump's 
order, there can be no suspension or denial of funding from a Federal 
program unless congressional statutes authorize it. The President is 
not engaged in an Obama-esque rewrite of Federal law; he explicitly 
ordered his subordinates to follow Federal law.
  ``It is not enough to say Orrick mulishly ignores the clear text of 
the executive order. Again and again, Justice Department lawyers 
emphasized to the court that Trump's order explicitly reaffirmed 
existing law. Orrick refused to listen because, well, what fun would 
that be? If the President is simply directing that the law be followed, 
there is no basis for a progressive judge''--like Orrick--``to accuse 
him of violating the law. Were he to concede that, how would Orrick 
then win this month's Social Justice Warrior in a Robe Award for 
Telling Donald Trump What for?
  ``Orrick can't confine himself to merely inventing a violation, 
either, because there is no basis for a lawsuit unless a violation 
results in real damages. So, the judge also has to fabricate some harm. 
This takes some doing since, in addition to merely directing that the 
law be enforced, the Trump administration has not actually taken any 
action against any sanctuary jurisdiction to this point.
  ``No problem: Orrick theorizes that because San Francisco and Santa 
Clara receive lots of government funding, Trump's order afflicts them 
with `pre-enforcement' anxiety. They quake in fear that their safety-
net and service budgets will be slashed.''
  Mr. Speaker, I would inject that it appears that Judge Orrick and 
leaders in San Francisco must be deeply in need of a safe space where 
they can go sit in the dark, suck their thumbs, hold their blankets, 
and feel comforted somehow because of the illusions that they have 
generated of all these bugaboos that are threatening in their wild 
imaginations.
  Mr. McCarthy goes on:
  ``Sanctuary cities? Maybe we should call them snowflake cities.
  ``As noted above, there is a transparent agenda behind Orrick's 
sleight of hand. The judge is keen to warn the President that, if ever 
his administration were to deny funds to sanctuary cities, it would 
violate the Constitution. It is in connection with this advisory 
opinion that the judge makes the only point worthy of consideration--
albeit not in the case before him.
  ``Here, it is useful to recall the Supreme Court's first ObamaCare 
ruling. While conservatives inveighed against Chief Justice Roberts' 
upholding of the individual mandate, the decision had a silver lining: 
The majority invalidated ObamaCare's Medicaid mandate, which required 
the States, as a condition of qualifying for Federal Medicaid funding, 
to enforce the Federal Government's generous new Medicaid 
qualifications.
  ``In our system, the States are sovereign--the Federal Government may 
not dictate to them in areas of traditional State regulation, nor may 
it conscript them to enforce Federal law. The Supremes, therefore, 
explained that State agreements to accept Federal funding in return for 
adopting Federal standards, e.g., to accept highway funding in exchange 
for adopting the Federally prescribed 55-mile-per-hour speed limit, are 
like contracts. The State must agree to the Federal Government's terms. 
Once such an agreement is reached, the Feds may not unilaterally make 
material changes in the terms, nor may they use their superior 
bargaining position to extort a State into acceding to onerous new 
terms in order to get the Federal money on which it has come to depend. 
Whether a particular case involves such an extortion, as opposed to a 
permissible nudge, depends on the facts. If the Feds are too heavy-
handed, they run the risk of violating the 10th Amendment's 
Federalist division of powers.

  ``Who knew Federal judges in ur-statist San Francisco had become such 
Federalists?
  ``Orrick contends that if Trump were to cut off funds from sanctuary 
cities for failure to assist Federal immigration-enforcing officials, 
it would offend the 10th Amendment. This is highly unlikely. First, 
let's remember--though Orrick studiously forgets--that Trump's order 
endorses only such stripping of funds as Congress has already approved. 
Thus, sanctuary jurisdictions would be ill-suited to claim that they'd 
been sandbagged. Second, the money likely to be at issue would surely 
be nothing close to Medicaid funding. Finally, Trump would not be

[[Page H2889]]

unilaterally rewriting an existing Federal-State contract; he'd be 
calling for the States to follow Federal laws that, A, were on the 
books when the States started taking Federal money and, B, pertain to 
immigration, a legal realm in which the courts have held the Federal 
Government is supreme and the States subordinate.
  ``Still, all that said, whether any Trump-administration effort to 
cut off funding would run afoul of the 10th Amendment would depend on 
such considerations as how much funding was actually cut; whether 
Congress had authorized the cut in designing the funding program; 
whether the funding was tightly related or unrelated to immigration 
enforcement; and how big a burden it would be for States to comply with 
Federal demands. Those matters will be impossible to evaluate unless 
and until the administration actually directs a slashing of funds to a 
sanctuary jurisdiction.
  ``If that happens, there will almost certainly be no legal infirmity 
as long as Trump's E.O. means what it says--namely, that any funding 
cuts must be consistent with existing Federal law. But it hasn't 
happened.''
  And for our poor, miseducated Judge Orrick sitting on the bench with 
his head crammed full of mush, but none of it entangled with the U.S. 
Constitution, he fails to understand that Federal courts are not 
allowed to issue advisory opinions. There is no standing. There is no 
jurisdiction of the court. But don't let the Constitution nor Federal 
law get in the way of Judge Orrick's ego.
  McCarthy points out:
  ``If that happens . . . any funding cuts must be consistent with 
Federal law. But it hasn't happened. And as long as it hasn't happened, 
there is no basis for a court to involve itself, much less issue an 
anticipatory ruling.
  ``Such niceties only matter if you are practicing law, though. Judge 
Orrick is practicing politics.''
  Mr. Speaker, this is exactly the kind of judge that really should be 
removed from office. He is allowed to sit as long as he exhibits good 
conduct, but this is not the conduct that is good, when he takes an 
oath to be judicious, follow the law, and defend the Constitution. It 
is certainly unbecoming to a judge.
  Yes, here in Congress we debate and go back and forth. Before the 
courts, lawyers go back and forth. But the judge is supposed to be 
judicious and follow the law.
  It is time for us to take away all authority of any Federal district 
court, any Federal magistrate, any Federal judge of any kind other than 
the Supreme Court when it comes to issues such as this.
  We have created immigration courts, but when it comes to appeals and 
to lawsuits filed regarding immigration and naturalization, I think, 
Mr. Speaker, we should restrict that to the one and only Federal court 
that, as Professor Gwen used to say in constitutional law at Baylor, 
only one court in the United States Federal system that owes its 
existence to the Constitution.

                              {time}  1730

  All other Federal courts of any kind owe their existence and their 
jurisdiction to the United States Congress. So the Congress giveth when 
it comes to courts, and the Congress can taketh away. It is time to 
start removing authority from some of these courts that Congress has 
created that have now created more problems than they have solved.
  An article here by Stephen Dinan and Andrea Noble in The Washington 
Times basically says what so many of the news media did that a Federal 
judge, Judge Orrick, says Trump is wrong to tie Federal funding to 
sanctuary status and blocks the executive order. But really it turns 
out, when you get the actual order and you find out what really 
happened, there was no such order because there was no violation. There 
was no harm. The plaintiffs had no standing. The court had no 
jurisdiction. This is a zero in the effect in this country other than 
the politics that this Federal judge was playing.
  Unfortunately, when a Federal judge acquires a lifetime appointment 
and he starts running for an office he already holds when there is no 
opponent, he is acting outside the realm of the Constitution, and we 
really should have debates over what good conduct means. It doesn't 
matter whether or not a judge voted Republican, Socialist, Libertarian, 
it doesn't matter. If he or she is not acting within the confines of 
their oath, they need to be removed from the bench.
  I do hope, Mr. Speaker, we will take up--I know my friend Darrell 
Issa and others have filed bills about the Ninth Circuit Court that has 
more cases filed in it because lawyers know it is more likely to gut 
the U.S. Constitution and ignore the Constitution, so anybody who has a 
claim that is not particularly meritorious under the Constitution, as 
written, wants to be in the Ninth Circuit because there they have got a 
shot that the oligarchs out there will do what a judge basically is 
quoted as saying before, that, gee, we know we don't follow the 
Constitution or we don't care about precedent, don't care what the 
Supreme Court says, but that is why we come out with so many decisions. 
We know the Supreme Court can't reverse them all.
  That is a court that really ought to be disbanded. When you have a 
court that is ignoring their oath, ignoring the Constitution, it is 
just really time to get rid of it.
  We have a report, too, Mr. Speaker, after the great work of the two 
main leaders--and I do mean that in every good sense of the term 
``leaders''--Mark Meadows and Jim Jordan, especially Mark Meadows, 
working in the last couple weeks, working to try to have a solution 
even though, apparently, according to one of my colleagues who is not a 
part of the Freedom Caucus, he was hoping that we would stay here until 
we got an agreement on a healthcare bill but was told, no, we want the 
Freedom Caucus to go home and let their constituents yell at them, and 
then they will be ready to sign or vote for whatever we put in front of 
them.
  Actually, most of us, it sounds like from our discussions, have been 
reaffirmed and encouraged by our constituents. In my case, it certainly 
felt like, as I traveled throughout east Texas, apparently not being at 
the places where the Democrats who call themselves Indivisible were 
appearing, but going to veterans' groups, chambers of commerce, 
banquets, meeting with many constituents, but hearing about three-
fourths of the time, which was my percentage, basically, with which I 
won the last general election, people are saying: Hang in there. Don't 
give up.
  So with the encouragement of constituents that most of us in the 
Freedom Caucus have had, we came back still willing to negotiate, still 
trying to work. Mark Meadows has done some good work.
  I still have trouble understanding why we didn't just go ahead and 
bring to the floor, bring out of committee--it has been through 
committee before--the bill 2 years ago. I mean, it had hearings, passed 
out of the House and Senate. It repealed most of ObamaCare, not all of 
it, but more than the current bill being taken up in this Congress. Why 
not just bring that to the floor? Then we pass that, and we could take 
other steps. One that is absolutely critical--and I do applaud Speaker 
Ryan for bringing it to the floor. It was a very critical step in 
getting competition in health insurance, not to be confused with health 
care.
  For too long, going back to 1993 when Hillary Rodham Clinton was 
talking about everybody deserves health care, she was using ``health 
care'' and ``health insurance'' as if they were synonymous. Those terms 
are not synonymous. People can get health care without health 
insurance. I know because, after ObamaCare was passed, Congress was 
mandated to have ObamaCare, and then President Obama, Harry Reid, and 
John Boehner, as Speaker--come to think of it, all three people who are 
no longer in positions of power--came together, and they agreed to act 
as if the Affordable Care Act, ObamaCare, did not say that Members of 
Congress could no longer receive the subsidy that every Federal 
employee in America gets to help pay for healthcare insurance. So they 
just ignored the law, made very clear. Even though every other Federal 
employee gets that assistance--and with my wife and me paying off kids' 
student loans, because if I had never run for elected office, they had 
money set aside, that we had set aside, would have paid for every year 
of their college. We didn't think that they should have to have big 
student loan debt because their father felt

[[Page H2890]]

the calling to be a public servant. So we are paying off student loans, 
and this will be the first year that I will be able to file a financial 
disclosure that doesn't have student loan debt listed because when it 
falls below $10,000, you don't have to list it. So we have made 
progress.
  But because of that, we were not in a position to pay the massive 
amount that the insurance was going to cost, so I went without 
insurance up here in Congress. I know what it is to have health care 
and not have health insurance. I still don't have government-funded or 
healthcare insurance here. I have insurance now, but it is not through 
the Federal Government. So I understand the difference between 
insurance and health care.
  I look forward to the day when we keep blurring that line because, 
when the line is totally blurred, then Americans are more easily duped 
into allowing the Federal Government to turn the best health care in 
the world's history into VA-styled problems of treating people. Most of 
us don't want that. Most Americans don't want that. They didn't want it 
in 2010. They don't want it now.

  But the bill Speaker Ryan brought to the floor had over 400 votes, 
and it is an important bill. We are going to bring down the costs, have 
real competition in health care and in health insurance; and what that 
bill did was eliminate the exemption from antitrust laws that health 
insurance companies have had since the McCarran-Ferguson bill passed in 
1945. Although people have talked more about buying insurance across 
State lines, the fact is, if we don't end the exemption from antitrust 
laws of health insurance companies and we do allow people to buy their 
insurance across State lines, then instead of having 30 to 50 
monopolies as we may have now in the health insurance business, we will 
end up with one monopoly in the whole country; because, if you don't 
have to follow antitrust laws, if you don't have to avoid taking 
actions to create monopolies and to force others out of business using 
antitrust tactics, then you can become the monopoly, and you will 
become the monopoly.
  If it is legal for an insurance company that is the biggest insurance 
company in a town, State, or country to go to a hospital or go to a 
healthcare network and say, you know, we have got most all of the 
health insurance business in the country and we want to put you in our 
network, but you are going to have to agree to let us pay you a 
fraction of what you normally would get, and if you ever allow any of 
these new entrepreneurial health insurance companies to have you in 
their network, then we will cut you out of our network.
  Well, hospitals, networks in their right minds would say, we can't 
turn these people down, we will go out of business because they are the 
big company. If we are not in their network, then we will go out of 
business. But, unfortunately, that would also mean all these other 
brilliant entrepreneurial-type insurance ideas, whether it is Medi-
Share, Christians coming together and sharing expenses, whatever it is, 
the big monopoly health insurance company can run them out of business, 
and that needs to be prevented.
  I applaud the Republican leadership for bringing that bill to the 
floor. I applaud the leadership, people like Paul Gosar, Dr. Gosar, and 
Austin Scott. They have done a good job, and I would like to think I 
have been pretty vocal on that issue as well. We had a vote on that, 
and over 400 people voted to end the exemption from antitrust laws of 
health insurance companies.
  I know good and well, if the Senate brings that same bill to the 
Senate floor, it will also have a huge--I don't know if it would be 
unanimous, but it would certainly be a huge victory. It would certainly 
be bipartisan to pass it. I think that is the kind of thing Americans 
are wanting to see.
  But as I talk to people around east Texas, most people have never 
heard of that because the newspapers around east Texas are more 
interested usually in talking about this Democratic group that calls 
itself Indivisible, as if everybody doesn't know that they are 
basically Democrats.

                              {time}  1745

  I think a meeting that called itself a townhall over in Longview got 
all kinds of good press. It was sponsored, as I understand it, by 
Democratic Women of Gregg County and Stonewall, a Democratic group. It 
wasn't a local group, the Stonewall group. Anyway, I would be busy 
around the rest of the district at Chamber banquets, meetings, and 
things like that.
  But it has been refreshing to talk to real Americans, people that are 
just trying to make a living, people that are just trying to pay their 
bills. I know some people talk in bold terms about how we are on 
vacation. But it is fantastic when Members of Congress go home and hear 
from their constituents. And I do. I hear those, Mr. Speaker, that are 
part of the 26 percent that want to keep ObamaCare. But I sure have my 
heart set on keeping our promises.
  In my district, the 74 percent said: ``We need ObamaCare repealed. We 
need the Federal Government to get out of our private lives. We need 
better jobs. We need the economy going much stronger.''
  I am excited about President Trump's proposal that he rolled out 
today. Having talked to my friend Kevin Brady, a good friend from 
Texas, the plan they are rolling out, I have come to have very grave 
concerns about the border adjustment tax.
  But if we do as President Trump proposed, bring our corporate tax 
down to 15 percent, as the President proposed today, manufacturing jobs 
will come rushing back to America. They will.
  I know there are the pseudointellectual elites that like to tell 
themselves that we have evolved somehow into this service society where 
we don't denigrate ourselves to the point that a lot of us have been 
throughout our lives, and so no problem, and that is doing hard labor, 
producing products, and manufacturing. It is a good thing.
  America needs manufacturing jobs back. It is a good thing to have a 
job. I know there are those that are quite cynical, those who are 
atheist, agnostic, and other religions. But for those who believe the 
teaching in the Bible, when God created the world and there was a 
Garden of Eden, everything was perfect. And even in a perfect Garden of 
Eden, God felt like it was good for people to have a job. So he gave 
Adam and Eve a job. He said: Your job is tending the garden. And in 
some form or other, Mr. Speaker, that is the job we have--tending the 
magnificent garden.
  We can use the resources, we can continue to make the world better--
cleaner air and cleaner water. Nobody wants dirty water and dirty air. 
And it is continuing to be clean in Texas, whether there were a Federal 
EPA or not. Our agencies in Texas are doing a good job.
  Our Federal Government needs to allow the brilliance, the 
creativeness, and the entrepreneurial spirit of Americans to bloom. If 
we drop the largest tariff that any nation in the industrialized world 
places on its own products, if we get rid of that, or at least drop 
that down to 15 percent, manufacturing jobs will return to America and 
our economy will explode for the better.
  Some of these young people that have come out of school--high school, 
college, graduate studies--so many have no idea what it is to have 
countering offers for their employment. They don't know. They had to 
move home and live at home for awhile. But it is exciting when you are 
wanted by more than one employer, and money is offered, and it is good 
money. It makes you feel good about yourself. Mr. Speaker, I am ready, 
like most Americans, to see that happening in America again so our 
young people can have that feeling of self-worth because there are so 
many jobs.
  One of the first steps was to repeal ObamaCare and allow health care 
that would be affordable--insurance that would be affordable. Well, the 
bill we are taking up is not going to do that. But I have advised the 
House leadership, Republican leadership, and the President and Vice 
President that I will vote for the bill in its current form. It is not 
what I wanted.
  It is not a full repeal, but it does enough now that it will bring 
down premiums. And it won't be 10 years under the law the way it is 
written right now.
  It protects those who have preexisting conditions.
  It allows people 26 years of age and younger--I wouldn't mind it 
being 50,

[[Page H2891]]

but it is 26--be on their parents' insurance as dependents. That is not 
being touched. That is there.
  But some of the mandates are being repealed the way it sits now. I am 
not thrilled with it. But I have talked to enough people that have just 
got to have help on the premiums. The bill, the way it was, was not 
going to help them. We have got the bill to a point where it will help 
much more quickly with premium assistance.
  I am looking forward to getting that behind us, moving on to dropping 
the corporate tax rate to 15 percent so we can return manufacturing 
jobs in droves, and seeing this economy explode.
  There is reason to be optimistic. Not everybody is as mindless as 
Judge Orrick, so there is reason for optimism.
  Mr. Speaker, I yield back the balance of my time.

                          ____________________