[Congressional Record Volume 163, Number 123 (Thursday, July 20, 2017)]
[House]
[Pages H6137-H6142]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




                           ISSUES OF THE DAY

  The SPEAKER pro tempore (Mr. Comer). 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, I want to follow up on what my friend from 
Florida, Congressman Ron DeSantis, was saying: Under ObamaCare--that 
passed without a single Republican vote--Congress was expressly put 
under all of the conditions of ObamaCare, and it expressly took us out 
from the insurance that we liked, the insurance plans we had and liked, 
and 180 degrees contrary to what President Obama said and so many of 
our friends across the aisle.
  Even though we liked our insurance and we wanted to keep it, it turns 
out that was not true what they had been saying for so many months. We 
didn't get to keep our insurance. I know emails keep circulating that 
Members of Congress have some special ``pie in the sky'' health 
insurance, but, actually, it is exactly the same insurance options that 
every single Federal employee from--well, I started to say

[[Page H6138]]

from the President down, but, actually, the President does have his own 
special healthcare. But I guess that is why ObamaCare seemed so 
appealing. It wouldn't affect the President and his family, or he might 
have looked at it a little bit differently. But since he has his 24/7 
physician, it seemed okay to him to force the rest of the country under 
it.
  Every Federal employee before ObamaCare had the same options we did. 
The major change in congressional healthcare came since the provision 
was put in there. Although every single Federal employee had employer--
which means Federal Government, which means taxpayer--assistance in 
paying the premiums for their health insurance, we had to pay part and 
the Federal Government paid part--taxpayers, in other words, paid part. 
That was pretty common across the country.
  But in ObamaCare, for some reason, Speaker Pelosi and Majority Leader 
Harry Reid thought it was a good idea to stick it to Members of 
Congress that were not in leadership so that there would be no Federal 
supplement. No Federal employer was going to pay part of the cost of 
the insurance, health insurance, for Members of Congress. That is in 
the bill.
  Originally, we thought that meant every single Member of Congress 
would not get the employer part paid by the Federal Government. But it 
turns out the Speaker and certain of the leadership and leadership 
staff who must have helped draft the bill, that the way it was worded 
did not include the funds they were paid for them so they would 
continue to get the Federal portion paid by the government and 
taxpayers as that is.
  But then Speaker Boehner, Majority Leader Reid, and President Obama 
got together, and they worked out a deal. Like my friend, Congressman 
DeSantis from Florida, pointed out, they made a deal to completely 
ignore what was in black and white print in ObamaCare that Members of 
Congress, other than the leadership, would not have the Federal 
Government paying any part of theirs. All the rest of the Federal 
employees in the country, yes, they would still have the Federal 
Government pay part of their insurance, only Members of Congress 
wouldn't.
  They made a deal to specifically ignore what our Democratic friends 
put in the law, in black and white expressly there, and so we had 
gotten so many calls and so much information.
  Going all over east Texas, I've heard from so many people who have 
lost their insurance who now could not afford their insurance and now 
were forced into a network that did not have the doctor who was saving 
their lives or the medication that was saving their lives, didn't have 
Mayo Clinic and didn't have the certain cancer facility that they had 
been using to keep their lives going.

  I had heard so many of those horror stories from constituents I just 
could not--I mean, I went and talked to the personnel here that are 
supposed to help us sign up for healthcare, and I just could not bring 
myself to sign up for ObamaCare that was being illegally interpreted. 
It is not even an interpretation; it is very clear. We didn't get the 
Federal subsidy, yet they agreed to do it despite what they put in the 
law and agreed to in the law. So I went without insurance at all for a 
few years and then have to pay extra to have insurance through my 
wife's employer.
  Ron DeSantis made a great point. If we went ahead and enforced 
ObamaCare exactly the way it is written, the Speaker and the leaders 
would be taken care of in the House and Senate, but the rank-and-file 
Members of the House and Senate, I think, would more quickly have come 
to the conclusion: we have got to have a change, and we have got to 
have it quick.
  Perhaps that is what President Obama was thinking when he agreed to 
have the taxpayers fund the huge part of the congressional health 
insurance that, gee, if he did that, then they wouldn't be as quick to 
want to overturn it.
  I think it is very important as we hear friends across the aisle talk 
about how devastating it will be if we repeal ObamaCare. Yeah, what 
happens? Think about it. What happens if we repeal ObamaCare? We would 
go back to the way it was before ObamaCare passed. I didn't remember it 
being quite this high, but one of our friends mentioned this week, I 
remember the polls were saying 75 percent of Americans were satisfied 
with their health insurance before ObamaCare was shoved down every 
Americans' throat. So if we repealed ObamaCare, what would happen is we 
would go back to a health insurance--or a healthcare situation--where 
75 percent of Americans were satisfied.
  What many of us were saying, as we were in the minority on this side, 
we were begging our friends across the aisle, look, don't just throw 
out the entire healthcare system the way it is even though you have got 
people in the health insurance business and the big pharmaceuticals 
helping you write ObamaCare so they are going to make billions and 
billions more than they have ever made--yes, it is true, a lot of 
health insurers have gone out of business, but the big ones that helped 
write ObamaCare and sign on to it--happy to endorse it and embrace it--
made record profits. So much for opposing crony capitalism. We see it 
at its best in ObamaCare.
  So Americans should be a bit skeptical when they see some of the 
people who helped write ObamaCare and made billions and billions 
saying: oh, no, let's not throw it out.
  Well, just remember, if we did that, if we just voted to end 
ObamaCare and have our system exist as if ObamaCare had never passed, 
it would immediately put us into a situation where the vast majority of 
Americans were satisfied with their health insurance and with the 
healthcare they got.

                              {time}  1300

  I have noted over the years that one of the things that has helped 
with the acceptance by the minority that has accepted ObamaCare as 
being a good thing has been that politicians here in Washington have 
skewed the difference between health insurance and healthcare.
  I know people have said: Oh, gosh, people were dying on the 
sidewalks.
  Actually, if you are on the sidewalk and you have got a health 
problem, you do as people that I have seen in the emergency rooms have 
done: they go to the emergency room. I am standing in line behind them, 
waiting to get care for one of my children.
  So it wasn't a matter of not getting that healthcare. Those people 
did not have health insurance.
  What good is ObamaCare insurance when your deductible is $7,000, 
$8,000, and you are paying $10,000, $12,000 a year for your insurance 
and you don't have enough to put aside in savings to even pay $1,000 to 
$2,000 of your deductible?
  Yes, you have health insurance, but you sure don't have healthcare 
because now, because of ObamaCare, you cannot afford it.
  Yes, from time to time I hear people say: Yeah, but the subsidy is 
working out so well, I am able to have insurance.
  Well, what is your deductible?
  Well, it is pretty high, but I am satisfied with it.
  You know what we keep finding?
  They are satisfied with it because they have got cheap health 
insurance and it works out fine until they have something catastrophic 
happen and they find out they don't have the money to cover what they 
have got to cover.
  We have got to do something. I submit it wouldn't be so bad to go 
back to a system that a majority of Americans said they were satisfied 
with and then work from there.
  Don't throw out the whole system again and make the Federal 
Government, Big Brother, have its fingers in every aspect of your 
supposed care. When the Federal Government has that role, whether you 
want to call them death panels or not, there are bureaucrats who will 
make decisions to decide what they are going to allow you to have and 
be paid for. That should never, ever be the role of the government.
  Some say to go to a single-payer system. I despise that term because 
it masks just how evil the system is. It is socialized medicine, which 
is also another way of saying you have rationed care. Everybody is not 
going to get what they need, and the government will decide who they 
think has a life valuable enough to get a new knee or to get a new hip 
or to have back surgery or to have lifesaving surgery. The government 
will decide that.

[[Page H6139]]

  That is the same reason I have heard from numerous seniors now. 
Before ObamaCare passed, they had Medicare as supplemental coverage. 
But even so, after ObamaCare passed, which cut $716 billion out of 
Medicare, they could not get timely surgeries that they needed before 
ObamaCare.
  If we don't repeal ObamaCare, it will continue with those wait times 
that many seniors are now experiencing. Whereas, it used to be: When do 
you want to do this? Tomorrow? Next week? When do you want to do it?
  Now it is: I know you need it now, but it is going to be 2 or 3 
months before we can work you in.
  It is rationed care. That is what ObamaCare causes. There is going to 
be more and more of that unless we get ObamaCare repealed. I just don't 
think that is an option. A majority of Americans did not want 
ObamaCare, and, after it passed, still didn't want ObamaCare. They gave 
us the majority in the House, now in the Senate, and now the Presidency 
on a promise that we would get rid of ObamaCare.
  So we start from the premise that healthcare will be better and more 
affordable once ObamaCare is repealed. There needs to be reforms, but 
you have got to start from the premise that you have to get rid of the 
system that is skewing and basically destroying the greatest healthcare 
system ever produced in the history of the world.
  Medical historians, as I noted before, have indicated there was 
probably some point in the early 1900s--it can be debated when that 
point may have occurred; some say around the protocols in the early 
1900s, around World War I--or whenever it was, around 100 years ago, 
for the first time in human history, someone who needed healthcare had 
a better chance of getting better if they didn't go see a doctor. That 
point was in the early 1900s. After that point, you started having a 
better chance of getting well if you went to see a doctor.
  So you look at that time, whether it is 100 years, 120 years, and to 
think that just in the thousands of years of recorded history in our 
lifetimes, you have not only had a chance of getting well after seeing 
a doctor, but you have a great chance of being cured.
  Think of all the diseases and conditions that we found cures for. We 
have so many yet to go. There will always be something else that needs 
to be researched and cured, because that is the state of this world. 
But we had a system here in America that produced more lifesaving 
medications and treatments and surgeries, more lifesaving and enhancing 
procedures of all kinds because, for one thing, we had competition, we 
had a free market system.
  Our Founders so wisely put in the Constitution provisions for 
rewarding people, because of original thoughts or inventions, 
copyrights and patents. Congress has done a lot of damage to that 
system in recent years, but it still provides an incentive to create 
something that is lifesaving or life-enhancing.
  We simply cannot build a healthcare system that helps people based on 
the foundation of ObamaCare. More and more--until it is complete, 
socialized medicine will be, if we leave ObamaCare in place, there will 
be more and more rationed care, which means less and less care for 
individuals.
  For 6 years, Republicans have been united in our support for fully 
repealing ObamaCare. Congress has voted--at least the House has--more 
than 60 times to repeal ObamaCare. So it is not the time to get timid. 
Now is the time to support the President's efforts to get rid of 
ObamaCare.

  If what we have to do is bring forth the bill that we passed in the 
last Congress and put it on the desk of the President to get rid of the 
thing that has, at least informally, President Obama's name and that he 
says he is proud of--people are getting hurt, people can't afford what 
they have got. More and more are losing insurance. We are losing more 
and more insurance companies.
  I still continue to be quite concerned to just say there is a great 
panacea in buying insurance across State lines because, unless we end 
the exemption from the monopoly laws, the antitrust laws, then we could 
very easily end up with only one or two insurance companies in the 
whole country instead of having only one in 30 or 40 States.
  Far better it is to just end the exemption from antitrust laws, end 
the ability for a health insurance company to monopolize and have 
monopolistic tactics that keep entrepreneurs from developing new 
insurance companies, different ways of paying for healthcare. We have 
got to end that so that people that come up with new ways and better 
ways to provide healthcare end up doing well because of their great 
idea to provide more affordable healthcare.
  One thing in my mind that is absolutely certain: if we can just get 
rid of ObamaCare, then one of the steps we have got to take is to get 
back to a system that we had 50 years ago or so, when I was growing up 
in Mount Pleasant in east Texas, and you knew what things cost.
  All the different times I had to be taken in for stitches because I 
got involved in activity that was going to get somebody hurt--and I was 
often the one--all those times I went in for stitches, my parents 
always knew what it was going to cost when the doctor put stitches in 
my head or above and below my eye. All the different places I have got 
them, they knew.
  Of course, on one occasion--he can't get in trouble now because he is 
gone--a dear friend of the family that was a family physician at the 
time let my mother, since she was such a good seamstress, put in maybe 
three of my five stitches. Mother said: That is just basic sewing; I 
can do that. He said: You sure could. I have seen you sew. That is all 
it is.
  I don't encourage that kind of thing, but mother did a nice job, and 
he closed it up. She knew she was still going to pay the fee. Even 
though she put a couple of stitches in, she knew she was going to pay 
the fee. Anyway, he was shorthanded on nurses that day, and mother was 
the nurse because it was a weekend and he came in special.
  Anyway, you don't see people anymore, like they did when I was young, 
who say: I am going to a different doctor because the other doctor 
raised his prices and that one is just as good. You don't see that.
  Nobody knows actually what the doctors are getting paid. I have asked 
for answers from wonderful healthcare providers that are really trying 
to take care of people: How much is this? How much is that?
  Well, Louie, I can't really tell you. It depends.
  Is it Medicare, Medicaid, cash, Blue Cross, Anthem, an HMO? You have 
got to tell me. And what is the diagnosis?
  Sometimes it is a different charge, depending on what the disease is.
  Why is that?
  Because the government has put different payment schemes on these 
things.
  We have got to get rid of a system where nobody knows what anything 
costs. You can't have competition and spur healthcare and healthcare 
providers on to the very best they can possibly do to innovate new ways 
and better ways to treat people and to provide healthcare if we don't 
have actual competition and people knowing what they are paying for. 
That is one of the things we have got to get back to.
  I know there are some physicians who have said: Well, my contract 
with the insurance company doesn't have that provision.
  I have heard some do, but some have told me: Yes, my contract as a 
doctor with that insurance company said I specifically cannot let 
somebody who is paying cash pay as low an amount as I am taking as full 
payment from this insurance company.
  Well, that shouldn't be the case. But as long as an insurance company 
can monopolize, violate antitrust laws, then they will be able to do 
that kind of thing to keep people from being able to pay cash as 
readily as they could if they were one of the major insurance 
companies.

                              {time}  1315

  We ought to get out of that.
  How do you get out of that?
  Well, the first thing is you never ever will as long as ObamaCare 
continues to be the law of the land.
  So I am so proud we have a President that continues to push the idea 
of getting rid of ObamaCare so that we can have a better system 
providing healthcare. And I do use the word ``healthcare'' and not 
``health insurance.''
  And it bothers the heck out of me that the CBO makes this grandiose

[[Page H6140]]

claim of how many people will lose their insurance, because they are 
too ignorant, under the models they create, to distinguish the 
difference between somebody who chooses not to buy a policy that costs 
them a fortune, has a huge deductible, and is going to not help them 
when they need it, and someone who says: Gee, I want to keep this 
insurance, but I can't afford it.
  The CBO has made themselves--put themselves in such a blind position, 
they can't tell the difference. The CBO says, ``Well, if somebody says, 
I am not paying for this insurance policy. The deductible is too high. 
The premiums are too high. I am going to put my money in a savings 
account, and I will have, in 3 years, $40,000 to cover healthcare 
problems, if I have some in the future, and that will keep growing,'' 
well, they will say that poor person that now has a huge growing health 
savings account is like a poor homeless individual, and the government 
yanked away their insurance.
  No. They just chose to quit rewarding a health insurance company for 
not providing them insurance that they need. There is a difference 
between losing insurance and just refusing to buy insurance that is 
worthless.
  I am hoping that we are moving closer to the day when we can get rid 
of this Democrat Congress contrived group called the Congressional 
Budget Office, CBO. I have been convinced for a number of years that we 
will never be able to get this country on sound footing with a driving 
economy, all boats being lifted, getting the country out of debt as 
long as the CBO is the official scorer for the bills in this building.
  It seems clear to me. Yes, I understand. They have come to my office 
a couple of times. I understand. I get it. You create models, and then 
you feed this information in that you think is important to the models 
you created that hardly ever rely on actual historical performance. And 
then you just dutifully report what the model says the cost is and what 
is going to happen as a result.
  Try living with history and using absolute historical evidence of 
what happens instead of creating some goofy model that, as best it 
appears now, when they--well, first, I think $1.2 trillion, they 
estimated ObamaCare. And then after President Obama woodshedded 
Elmendorf, the director--and I know he doesn't like that term--but 
whatever you want to call it, he called him over to the Oval Office, 
met with him; Elmendorf comes out, redoes his numbers--Oh, it was under 
a trillion dollars. $800 billion, just like President Obama said. How 
about that?
  And then as soon as it passes, shortly thereafter, well, you know, it 
is actually probably more like 1.7, 1.9. And now more modern estimates 
say it is not $800 billion; it is now 1.2. It is at least $2 trillion, 
maybe $4 trillion, maybe $4\1/2\ trillion. It is just through the roof.
  So I don't think it is unrealistic to say that the CBO's margin of 
error on ObamaCare wasn't plus or minus 2 or 3 percent. It was plus or 
minus 200 to 400 or so percent. No entity that cannot have a better 
margin of error than 200 percent has any business scoring anything 
considered official in this building.
  And I know Dr. Arthur Laffer got a private grant to figure out a way 
to have competitive scoring of bills in the House and Senate so that 
these scorers could have a score on their accuracy, their success rate 
for accurate scoring of bills.
  So as you go along, this Republican idea of competition being a good 
thing--you have competitive scoring instead of one official group that 
will never allow this country to get on a proper footing because it was 
set up in 1974 as Nixon was going out. And the Democrats were having a 
heyday, and they got a little giddy and left 2 million people in 
southeast Asia to die instead of having an orderly transition, and, at 
home, were wreaking havoc with the way we pass laws in this building.
  I will continue to urge the President of the United States, as we 
take up a tax reform bill, not to give in to the pressure from people 
in Congress toward the top to go more to a 20 or 21 percent corporate 
tax because the corporate tax really is about the most insidious--one 
of the most insidious taxes because it is based on a lie.
  We tell the American people, ``Oh, you don't have to worry. We are 
going to sock it to these evil corporations and make them pay all this 
big tax,'' when the fact is that corporations don't exist, don't 
continue to exist if they don't have the customers pay that corporate 
tax. That charge is ultimately paid by Americans across the country. It 
is another way of sticking it to the little guy when you have a high 
corporate tax.
  And I am fully aware there are people in this country that think it 
is a great thing that they think we are evolving from a manufacturing 
country to more of a service economy where we just provide services and 
don't get engaged in this lowlife manufacturing.
  Well, guess what, that lowlife manufacturing is how a country 
survives for centuries. Any nation that is considered to have power in 
the world loses that power after the next war if they cannot produce 
the things that they need to defend themselves from hateful, evil 
leaders in the world.
  Some people didn't seem to mind when we were losing the tire 
manufacturing, steel manufacturing, steel product manufacturing, losing 
all that to China. They didn't seem to care. Oh, Louie, don't worry 
about it. We are a service economy.
  Well, as a historian, I am telling you, if we don't get back to 
manufacturing the things that we have to have to defend ourselves 
successfully against evil tyrants--whether in Iran, North Korea, 
totalitarian in Russia, wherever, if we don't manufacture what we need 
to defend ourselves and our freedoms, we won't have them past the next 
war. And be sure of this. Don't believe me. You know, Jesus said there 
will always be wars and rumors of wars. They are going to exist.

  But Reagan was right. You know, the best way to avoid a war is to 
have so much strength that people will not attack you. They don't want 
to challenge you because they know you can take them out.
  Unfortunately, we have had the ability to take out evil empires and 
evil tyrant leaders for a long time. But just as occurred when I was in 
the United States Army, Active Duty for 4 years, was at Fort Benning, 
and our embassy was attacked in Tehran, hostages were taken. We had a 
President--well, he had hailed the Ayatollah Khomeini as a man of peace 
when he took power, so it was kind of tough on him to turn around and 
attack him.
  But the Iranians said the students did it. But it became very clear 
very soon, they stopped saying the students had the hostages, and 
started saying, ``We have the hostages.'' It was a government-
orchestrated attack. They could have and should have protected our 
embassy, and Carter should have made it clear: You either get our 
people out unharmed or we are bringing the full power of the United 
States military to Iran. And it wouldn't be a bluff. I think they would 
have let them go.
  That is why they spent at least 3 days talking about the students 
having them. That was a way out. If Carter had said, ``We are coming if 
you don't get those folks out,'' I think that they would have let them 
go. But you can't bluff in a situation like that. But we should have 
made it clear that we are not tolerating attacks on United States 
land--and that is what an embassy is.
  And because we didn't defend ourselves there, the stories started: 
Well, they ran from Vietnam. You know, didn't do anything, the paper 
tiger.
  One after another we got hit and didn't properly respond. And I 
understand President Reagan acknowledged that he let the Congress 
intimidate him into pulling our forces out of Beirut after 300 marines 
or so precious lives were lost to a terrorist attack.
  So the story built and continued: The United States is a paper tiger. 
They won't defend themselves.
  And it became attractive to be attacked.
  So we need a 15 percent corporate tax. Meeting with different CEOs in 
years past over in China: Why did you leave America?
  I thought they would say: Because of all the regulations. Yeah, those 
were problems. And sometimes unions are too--demand too much, and we 
can't stay in business, so we move.
  But no. The number one answer over and over is: You know, we got a 
deal cut, and now we are at an effective rate between 15, 20 percent 
corporate tax.

[[Page H6141]]

And in America, you know, they say, cumulatively, corporations are 
probably paying around 40 percent for corporate tax.
  It is time to undercut the tax that China pays. Bring back our steel 
industry. Let's get back to having Detroit--after so many of the great 
Midwestern States had cities that were model cities, and people were 
working, and there weren't the big slums because things were going 
great, that day can come back. But it will not come back to the extent 
it could with a 20 or 21 percent corporate tax.
  But, oh, my goodness, if we cut our corporate tax to 15 percent, this 
United States economy will explode. This less than 2 percent that we 
had growth under President Obama, lowest for any 8 years in our 
history, that would end overnight.
  Mr. Speaker, if I might ask how much time I have left?
  The SPEAKER pro tempore. The gentleman from Texas has 23 minutes.
  Mr. GOHMERT. Mr. Speaker, I want to direct attention to this ongoing 
narrative about collusion with Russia. We still desperately need an 
independent counsel to investigate the Mueller-Comey-Lynch-Clinton 
relationships.
  It appears Mueller is on a tear and he is going to do everything he 
can to divert attention from his collusion with James Comey. They were 
buddies. They colluded about so much.
  Comey is trying to get an independent counsel appointed. He was 
able--by leaking illegally, pulling these shenanigans, he consulted 
with Mueller even on his testimony. And Mueller is the guy who is 
supposed to judge the testimony. And under current Federal regulations, 
Mueller should have recused himself.
  We got to have somebody investigate Mueller. It is getting out of 
hand.

                              {time}  1330

  In the meantime, the new developments seem to make clear to some of 
us that Donald Trump, Jr., seems like a nice guy, but he appears to 
have been the target of a Democratic action to try to take down the 
Trump campaign.
  They point to this meeting between Donald Trump and Natalia 
Veselnitskaya, a Moscow attorney. Some of this is in an article written 
by Scott McKay, July 14, The American Spectator. She was trying to meet 
with Donald Trump, Jr., and when they actually had the meeting, she 
didn't have anything to give him. She brought up about the bill that 
was passed that helped some extremely wealthy Russians who were buddies 
with Putin, but, as this article points out, the evidence of collusion 
between Trump, Jr., and the Russians seems to be based on a timeline 
which included the WikiLeaks disclosures of hacked Democratic National 
Committee emails and Trump's request that the Russians make public the 
30,000 emails of Clinton supposedly that she deleted from her illegal 
private server. But it is a smoking gun that Trump was the beneficiary 
of this Putin regime intelligence arm hacking the 2016 elections, so 
our friends across the aisle seem to say, but that doesn't make sense. 
He got nothing out of the meeting.
  At some point, everybody in this room had to run for election, and if 
they had an opponent, if somebody said, ``Hey, you need to know this 
about your opponent,'' you know, at some time or another, everybody in 
this room has listened to something, and many times it is just garbage, 
and you say, ``I don't want anything to do with that.''
  And essentially that is what Donald Trump, Jr., did after he got 
lured into a meeting.
  But when you think, wait a minute, what was this Moscow attorney even 
doing in this country? This article points out that her presence in the 
United States alone ought to be the source of suspicion, that not only 
is the Trump-Russian collusion narrative suspect, but the real inquiry 
ought to be whether the encounter was a small part of a larger attempt 
to trap the Trump campaign.
  The Russian lawyer wasn't even supposed to be in the United States. 
She had been denied a visa for entry into the United States in late 
2015, but given a rather extraordinary parole by the Obama 
administration to assist preparation for a client subject to an asset 
forfeiture by the Justice Department.
  She could not be in the United States unless someone who answered 
directly to the President of the United States said: We are going to 
let her in. She is working on something special, so we are going to let 
her in. Even though we knew previously she is not somebody we should 
let in, she is doing something special right now. We want her in.
  And the story is that Loretta Lynch had to approve her coming in.
  So the client, Prevezon Holdings, that this Russian attorney was 
allowed to come in to help, was suspected of having paid some portion 
of $230 million stolen by Russian mobsters. When Sergei Magnitsky, a 
Russian lawyer representing a company that had been the victim of the 
theft, reported it to authorities in Moscow, he was promptly jailed and 
beaten to death by the Russians.
  The American response to this atrocity was the 2012 Magnitsky Act, 
which sanctioned several individuals connected to human rights abuses. 
The Russian Government retaliated by preventing American adoptions of 
Russian children. Who did that hurt? The Russian children, but Putin 
didn't care. Why would he care? He is making billions, he has got 
people like this Russian lawyer who Loretta Lynch let in.
  So then we find out in June the Russian lawyer was permitted to fly 
back to the U.S. to have the meeting with Trump, Jr., at Trump Tower, 
no less, and then ends up in the front row for a congressional hearing. 
She was sitting right there behind the Obama Ambassador.
  In my experience, all the hearings I have seen, when you have 
somebody from the administration of the caliber of an ambassador, they 
are very careful to make sure people behind him are those who can hand 
a note to help him answer a question. That is what is normal. Yet there 
she is, right behind Obama's Ambassador to Russia.
  Then she turns up at a D.C. showing of a documentary film on the 
negative effects of the Magnitsky Act and later appeared at a dinner 
involving another couple of representatives, and she is now a lobbyist 
for the Russians overtly. Maybe she was then. The repeal of that 
legislation is a priority item for the Russians and a personal 
objective for Veselnitskaya, the Russian attorney.
  So rather than any Clinton dirt, as was reportedly the primary 
subject brought forth at the meeting with Donald Trump, it appears she 
was here with the approval of Loretta Lynch, with the approval of the 
Obama Department of Homeland Security.
  They knew what she was about, just like they knew what the member of 
a terrorist organization was about when they approved him coming to the 
White House and Janet Napolitano lied at our hearing, said that that 
wasn't happening.
  So she did all of this without a visa. She did not file a Foreign 
Agents Registration document, which is required, and the Obama 
administration gave her a pass on those things: Sure, let her in. She 
is doing important work. We are not giving her a visa; we are just 
letting her in. We are not going to pick her up, because she is doing 
important work.
  Really? She is setting Donald Trump, Jr., up, and the Obama 
administration considered that important enough to let this person who 
they previously realized should not be allowed in the country to come 
in to do that kind of important work, set up Donald Trump?
  Well, anyway, turns out Veselnitskaya was connected to Fusion GPS. 
That is the Democrat opposition research firm, which employed a former 
British spy who used Russian contacts to produce the infamous and now 
debunked ``urinary dossier'' smearing Trump. Veselnitskaya hired Fusion 
GPS head, Glenn Simpson, to work on behalf of Prevezon, the company she 
was allowed into the country to represent. Fusion then hired 
Christopher Steele, the British spy who drew on Russian sources to 
produce his dossier, and then they made him available for 
private briefings on the dossier with left-leaning media sources such 
as Mother Jones, The New York Times, The Washington Post, Yahoo, The 
New Yorker, CNN.

  And, by the way, there is Veselnitskaya's social media account, which 
is decidedly more aligned with the Fusion GPS side of the equation

[[Page H6142]]

than with Trump. She was no friend of the Trumps. Every indication was 
she wanted the Trumps taken down.
  Trump, Jr., met with her. It appears to be a setup.
  I was guest hosting Patriot Tonight the other night. Some people say: 
Why do you do this media?
  One of my jobs is to not only be aware of what is going on here, try 
to vote properly, argue the right way on different bills, but it is 
also to make sure that people in America know what is going on. And a 
guy called in, very interesting, but he seemed to have a pretty good 
grip on all of this. It is just amazing how many American citizens 
across the country--they are not confused by the smokescreen that we 
get from the mainstream media.
  So if timelines are interesting to you, there is this: reportedly the 
Obama administration sought permission to electronically monitor Trump 
Tower in early June, and the FISA court refused to grant it, but in 
October, they allowed it. Isn't that something?
  Once they set up Donald Trump, Jr., with this friend of the Obama 
administration, this Russian attorney who was using the Democrats' own 
opposition research firm, she was helping them, they then convinced a 
judge: Go ahead and let us monitor everything going on in Trump Tower. 
When the judge initially refused to do that.
  The article said: ``So if you'd like to don your tinfoil hat and play 
the collusion game, try this on for size--when the Obama administration 
couldn't get permission from the FISA court to surveil Trump, they 
allowed Veselnitskaya back in the country to take part in those 
Washington activities''--meeting up with Donald Trump.
  `` . . . and in the meantime''--she used--``the administration's pals 
at Fusion''--GPS--``with attempting to hook Trump, Jr.''--into a basis 
for them getting a warrant.
  There was nothing to that meeting, yet they used it, got a warrant to 
further monitor everything going on in the Trump Tower in October.
  It just keeps pointing back to the fact we have got to get an 
independent counsel to investigate Mueller and his ties to Comey and 
Lynch and the Clintons, and get to the bottom of this mess. Yes, I want 
an investigation, because this is looking pretty lurid right now.
  Just in the time left, I do need to mention, this continuing push by 
friends across the aisle and the Obama holdovers in our executive 
branch, they think net neutrality is something we have got to have. 
Maureen Collins in The Federalist has a great article on July 19, and 
she points out regarding net neutrality:
  ``The debate over net neutrality can easily turn into techie-jargon 
that no one understands. Here is the basic gist: the internet is made 
up of bits. Proponents of net neutrality want to make sure these bits 
are all treated equally, meaning all web content appears on your 
computer at the same speed and with the same quality.
  ``That sounds like a good thing, right? Supporters say that net 
neutrality would make all content equal by ensuring that internet 
providers cannot buy faster or higher quality content. The free market, 
they say, is inherently unfair and only a third party--the government--
can determine how content should be treated. But that sounds exactly 
like textbook New-Deal progressivism.
  ``You see, this is not a question of whether or not internet content 
should be equally available. Rather, it is the much older question of 
who should determine that content is equally available: consumers, or 
the government?''
  ``Even the background of net neutrality is straight out of the New 
Deal playbook. Like many administrative programs, the fight for net 
neutrality began when similar provisions failed in Congress. After 
legislative failures, what is a good progressive to do?''
  ``Progressive,'' that term bothers me, kind of like ``single payer.'' 
Single payer means socialized medicine, government-run and rationed 
healthcare. What does progressive mean? Well, it actually is a 
throwback. It is socialism. Some socialists are even hardcore 
communists, not all are, but they want an Orwellian government where 
they watch and know everything going on, and they know better than 
Americans do. Let the government decide your future.

                              {time}  1345

  ``The Bush FCC adopted principles for `preserving internet freedom' 
in 2005, but did not go through a formal rulemaking process. In 2008, 
the FCC went after Comcast for going against these principles, only to 
get struck down by the D.C. Circuit, where bad administrative law goes 
to die.
  ``The entire process repeated itself under the Obama administration. 
In 2010, the FCC adopted an `Open Internet Order.' Verizon Wireless 
sued the commission and, again, the commission lost at the D.C. 
Circuit.
  ``By now, it may seem that there must be something legally wrong with 
the FCC's net neutrality regulations.''
  And that is exactly right.
  ``Under the U.S. Constitution, only Congress can give a specific 
power to an executive agency, like the FCC--usually through statute. 
Here's the kicker: the FCC claimed Congress gave them the power to 
regulate the internet through the Communications Act of 1934. The 
observant reader will notice this law was passed a long time before the 
internet even existed, though the act did give the FCC power to 
regulate `common carriers' like radio, wire communication, and 
telephone companies.''
  But not the internet.
  ``Not only does net neutrality follow the New Deal's progressive 
formula, it literally derives its power from a New Deal-era law. Right 
before the 2016 Presidential election, the Obama FCC created a third 
set of net neutrality rules.''
  The bottom line is, if there is net neutrality, the government will 
decide what you get to see and hear on your internet. When I had family 
living in China, I knew what it was to be censured and have the 
government deciding. You can't learn anything negative about the 
government.
  We cannot allow this pleasant sounding net neutrality to become a 
reality because, though it goes along perfectly with ObamaCare, with 
the government controlling our healthcare, why shouldn't they control 
what we get to see and hear on the internet?
  And the bottom line is, this is the United States of America and it 
was created to control government, not to let the government control 
our free choices.
  Mr. Speaker, I yield back the balance of my time.

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