[Congressional Record Volume 164, Number 182 (Friday, November 16, 2018)]
[House]
[Pages H9554-H9557]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




                            THE RULING CLASS

  The SPEAKER pro tempore. Under the Speaker's announced policy of 
January 3, 2017, the Chair recognizes the gentleman from Texas (Mr. 
Gohmert) for 30 minutes.
  Mr. GOHMERT. Mr. Speaker, we are living in interesting times. As 
Dickens said, it is the best of times and the worst of times.
  There has never been a country in the history of the world with the 
amount of opportunity and freedom for individuals that has been found 
in the United States. Even in Solomon's Israel--great wealth there--
there was not the opportunity and the individual assets that we have 
here in the United States of America.
  It is incredible that even for the Nation's poor, obesity is a major 
health issue. That is just unheard of in world history.
  It is deeply grieving to hear that so many of our Nation's college 
students and college graduates have been indoctrinated with the notion 
that socialism is so much better. Communism, really, is what we are 
talking about. They call it progressivism and socialism, what they are 
proposing, that that would be a superior form of government to what we 
have. What those students have not been taught--and it is an enormous 
gap

[[Page H9555]]

in education; it is an enormous area of ignorance for those students--
is that you can't have socialism or communism without giving up a 
tremendous amount freedom.
  That was one of the things that scared some people in the Soviet 
Union, when the Soviet Union came to exist no more. They had given up 
so much liberty, the idea that they were now free to find whatever job 
they wanted, and they didn't have to just take what the government told 
them to take. They could find whatever job they wanted. They could be 
entrepreneurs.
  I talked to some. They were scared because with liberty and with 
freedom comes uncertainty.
  But the Founders felt that government had always been a threat to 
people's freedom, to their liberty. They felt liberty, freedom, was far 
superior to security. It is often attributed to Franklin that those who 
would give up liberty for security or safety deserve neither.
  When you really break down a socialist, communist system, you don't 
have a middle class. You have a ruling class, and you have a ruled 
class. That is what we are headed for.
  I believe we saw the beginnings of that in this last election when 
billionaires poured hundreds of millions of dollars into this election 
like never before, because unlike many of our college students now, 
they know what happens in a socialist, communist system. You have the 
ruling class, and you have the ruled class.
  Yes, it is true. It is so wonderful that the ruled class basically 
has the same amount of money. They get paid similar amounts. But I kind 
of like the idea of physicians being paid more than most people, 
because that means you draw the best and brightest into that 
profession. I found that not to be the case as an exchange student in 
the Soviet Union back when it was the Soviet Union. I got a glimpse of 
their socialized medicine, and thanked God, literally, that I lived in 
the United States and didn't have to be part of a socialized medicine 
system where the doctors were paid the same amount whether they saw one 
or two people or they saw the 40, 50 people who were waiting to see 
them. They didn't care. They were going to make the same amount every 
day.
  Exactly that was what the farmers said at a collective farm when I 
asked in the middle of the morning when they worked out in the field, 
because it was midmorning. I have worked on farms and ranches. In the 
middle of July, like this was, you would normally start at sunup, so 
you could finish by midafternoon before the sun got too hot. Here these 
farmers were sitting in the shade.

  I couldn't tell what was cultivated. There were thousands and 
thousands of acres out there. I couldn't tell what was cultivated and 
what wasn't.
  I tried to use my best Russian to ask: When do you work out in the 
field?
  I pointed. They laughed. I thought maybe I had said it wrong, but one 
of the farmers said: I make the same number of rubles if I am out there 
in the sun as I do here in the shade, so I am here in the shade.
  That basically explains why the Soviet Union could never come 
anywhere close to being as productive with wheat and with crops as we 
were in the United States.
  People, going back to the Pilgrims after the first winter, loved the 
idea of bringing all into the common storehouse. Everybody was sharing 
and sharing alike until after that first winter when so many Pilgrims 
died. They found that the idea of private property where people could 
keep what they produced was just fantastic. They were so much more 
productive. They worked harder, and it was better for the overall 
community.
  But we seem to be slipping into a time when the concept of freedom 
will be forsaken for bigger and bigger government, and more and more 
government intrusion. You have to have, though, a totalitarian 
government for socialism or communism, either one, to succeed. That is 
how you eliminate the middle class. You have the ruled class, and you 
have the rich class and the powerful class.
  Sometimes they may not have as much money as they do power, but I 
think the reason we see billionaires pushing us in the direction of 
socialism is because they see themselves in the ruling class and see 
themselves as being so much wiser, and they see what they perceive 
should be the ruled class as not being nearly as smart and as inventive 
as they are.
  So things will be just paradise. It will be utopian, once you have 
the billionaires--and I think some people who want to push us in that 
direction who are not billionaires still have to consider they know so 
much better than individuals across the country, and we would profit so 
much more from having this intelligentsia be the ruling class and all 
the rest of us be minions and do what we are told. We never have to 
decide what job we have.
  We have been moving in that direction. That is why I think you saw 
under the Obama administration the takeover of student loans. Then you 
will see, I think, in the next couple years a move toward more and more 
control over college students. You will see an effort to say: Look, 
there is so much student debt, why don't we tell these students that if 
you go to the location we tell you, if you go take the job we tell you, 
then we will start forgiving your debt, as long as you do what we tell 
you?
  There again, we are on the road to giving up a middle class and to 
giving up our liberty and freedom, letting there be a ruling class that 
we will call the government.
  When I was studying history at Texas A&M, I did a research paper on 
the Soviet government. I was intrigued that Khrushchev, as Premier of 
the Soviet Union, understood that true communism theoretically did not 
have a government in existence. True communism means from those 
according to their ability, to those according to their need. People 
shared and shared alike. Regardless of how hard they worked, everybody 
shared equally. But in true communism, there is no government.
  The Premier, Khrushchev, set up a commission to come up--they loved 
their 5-year plan for their economy--with a plan of how they could move 
to ultimate communism when there was no government. There would just be 
the people existing--loving, living together, and sharing together--
without a government.
  It didn't take too long--I can't remember, a year or 2--until the 
commission and Khrushchev realized that, in this world, you can never 
have communism or socialism without a totalitarian government. He 
disbanded the commission. They never achieved their plan of how they 
could move into ultimate communism with no government, and so they 
moved forward with a totalitarian government.
  Of course, those who actually study real history know that no truly 
socialist or communist government has ever succeeded. They always fail. 
Margaret Thatcher said that they fail when they run out of other 
people's money to spend.
  But we seem to be moving there. It wasn't lost on some that, during 
the Obama administration, we had millions more added to poverty and in 
need of government assistance. We had so many moved out of the middle 
class into poverty. At the same time, President Obama himself 
admitted--it is on video, and it is the only time it has ever happened 
in the history of the United States of America. Under President Obama's 
administration, for the first time in American history, 95 percent of 
the American income went to the top 1 percent income earners.

                              {time}  1145

  It had never happened before. I hope and pray it doesn't happen 
again. It has been fantastic in the last 2 years, or since President 
Trump has taken office, that we have seen the economy surge. We heard 
from President Obama that it is unlikely we would ever hit 3 percent 
growth again and that those days were behind us.
  So the middle class shrunk. The ruling class got more and more power. 
People were standing in line saying: Oh, please, master government, 
give me more of this, give me more of that. And it has been so 
refreshing to see millions no longer needing government assistance in 
different areas and that they are getting better jobs.
  But that shouldn't have been a revelation, because if you look at 
single-mom income when adjusted for inflation from 1965, when welfare 
began, to 1995, when a work requirement was

[[Page H9556]]

added by the brand-new Republican majority under Speaker Newt Gingrich, 
that single-mom income adjusted for inflation for those 30 years 
flatlined. Single moms had no increase in income adjusted for inflation 
for 30 years.
  When the Republican majority in 1995 added a work requirement that 
you couldn't get welfare unless you worked, if you were able to work, 
for the first time single-mom income, when adjusted for inflation, 
started taking off.
  I saw a graph by a dean at Harvard when I was there for a seminar. I 
was amazed, for one thing, that they would show that, reveal that at 
Harvard. But it was amazing.
  So, on the one hand, you had people that say: We care more about 
single moms, so we are going to give them more money for every child 
they can have out of wedlock. What it did was pull them into a rut they 
could not get out of.
  When I was a felony judge in Texas, one of the things that really 
began to deeply trouble me is seeing more women coming before me--
single moms--for welfare fraud as a felony. I never sent any of those 
women to prison. I always gave them probation. But the stories were 
normally very, very similar. There were a number of different races. 
That wasn't the issue.
  But the big point that seemed to be repeated over and over was often 
they were bored in high school. Someone would say: If you have a baby, 
you don't have to finish high school. The government will start sending 
you a check. And then they would have a baby out of wedlock. The 
government would send them a check, and then they find out you can't 
live very well like that.
  So the ones that came before me--I know it is not a blanket case--but 
the ones that came before me, most of them would have another child, 
thinking maybe if I can get another check, I can get out of this hole. 
And they would get in a deeper and longer rut they could not extricate 
themselves from.
  I have had great conversations with Star Parker, who can testify 
about the trouble with that. I have spoken to sociology classes at 
Texas college, a traditionally Black college, as well as Wiley College 
and Jarvis College in my district. They have done an amazing job of 
educating, so often it is the first person in a family to have ever 
gone to college. What is amazing is that once that first child gets to 
college, then their children end up going to major universities. It is 
just a wonderful, great step to help pull people out of poverty.
  I heard from students--the most vocal were single moms in their late 
twenties, some in their thirties--who realized that I am not going to 
have a good life if I stay in poverty. They set about to improve 
themselves through education. It was amazing to hear some of them, just 
adamant, you have got to have a mandatory work requirement, and another 
saying you have got to drug test people who are on welfare.
  These are all African American single moms. One of them was saying: 
Nobody ever drug-tested me, so I can take government money and spend it 
on drugs. They were asserting that we should do things that this 
Congress has never ventured out to do. But they were adamant, because 
they have been lulled into, enticed into a hole, a rut that they were 
almost not able to get out of.
  A government should not be about luring people into holes or ruts 
from which they cannot extricate themselves. We ought to be about 
pushing, encouraging people to reach their greatest potential. That can 
not, will not, does not, has not ever happened in a socialist or 
communist system. If you get rid of the middle class, you have a ruling 
class, and you have a ruled class.
  If you wanted to call it sort of a middle class in the Soviet Union, 
they didn't make more money than the rest in the ruled class, but if 
people had a little bit of power or a lot, then people that were part 
of the ruled class that had a shoe store or a grocery store or some 
other kind of place where goods or services could be purchased--but 
especially goods--the storekeeper would reserve things in the back to 
give to people that might have a little power that could help them.
  But I will never forget when, one morning, in a youth hostel in 
Moscow, a Ukrainian friend was staying in our room with me and two 
others--there were 8 Americans in the Soviet Union that summer--and a 
cleaning lady came in and she saw the Ukrainian and screamed and ran 
out of the room.
  I said: Why did she scream? Why is she going?
  He said: In your country, you are able to elevate yourself by working 
harder, making more money. You can elevate yourself. In my country, the 
only way you can elevate yourself is to step on other people. So she is 
going to run down and tell people I shouldn't be here. She will step on 
me. It will elevate her a little bit. That is what we do in our country 
to get ahead. We step on each other, trying to get ahead.
  I said: That makes no sense. What has she got to gain by running down 
and saying that you are here?
  He said: She will be elevated for ratting me out.
  We are looking at major changes in this country. We are looking at a 
couple of years where there will be some socialist notions that will be 
brought here to the floor. But as we saw during the Obama 
administration, the economy doesn't do well, people don't do well, 
people don't see right.

  We were moving dramatically in a socialist direction. ObamaCare was 
the first step toward total socialized medicine. But as I have told 
some of the Big Pharma lobbyists back when it passed and some of the 
big insurance people and AARP, who sold their souls to endorse the 
program, yes, you are going to make more money than you ever made in 
the short term. But by endorsing this program, you may well have signed 
your own death warrant. Down the road, maybe it is 15 years, but at 
some point you will cease to exist or you will be making next to 
nothing.
  But unfortunately, some of the big rich folks and some of the top 
corporate positions knew that if they made extra billions for their 
industry in the short term, they would have a golden parachute and they 
would be gone before their industry was destroyed by socialized 
medicine. And they didn't seem to care. Of course, AARP sold out to 
seniors, because ObamaCare had a $716 billion cut to Medicare and the 
seniors are feeling it now.
  But we had a new group of voters come out. They don't understand what 
happens in either socialized medicine or in a socialized system and 
they think it is going to be wonderful. Well, if you like less freedom, 
less assets, less opportunity, then socialism, progressivism, 
communism, whatever phase you want to call it, you will love a 
socialistic system.
  We have seen also the courts moving us in that direction. They have 
taken over more and more. Though the Founders saw the judiciary as 
being the least threat to liberty of the three branches, we have 
allowed the judiciary to basically become oligarchs and run America. 
Presidents are no longer allowed to make decisions as the Constitution 
and the Congress both have directed, when it comes to immigration, 
refugees. So, it is not just voters. We have seen the courts do their 
share in moving us toward a socialized system.
  But here again, like the billionaires, some of these judges--not all; 
I have been there, I have been a judge, been a chief justice--but some 
of these Federal judges see themselves one day alongside the 
billionaires as being part of the ruling class as we get rid of the 
middle class and have the ruling class and the ruled class.
  My hope, my prayer, the reason I am still here in Congress--I ran 
again--is to try to get us off this track. I deeply regret that we 
wasted September, haven't done a whole lot this week, but I think the 
best Christmas present that this Congress, this current Republican 
majority could give America is--obviously, we are out now today until 
Thanksgiving--but stay in session through Christmas Day if we have to, 
through January 1, if we have to, and work out some of these issues, 
including money to build a wall where it is needed.
  That is not only good for America. It will help reduce the 70,000-
plus Americans who are killed from drug poisons coming from Mexico drug 
cartels, but it also would be the best thing we could ever do for our 
neighbors in Mexico. They ought to be a top 10 economy in

[[Page H9557]]

the world. The only reason they are not is because of corruption from 
the drug cartels.
  Look historically at what they have got. They have got more natural 
resources than most countries in the world. They have got a better 
location than even the United States. They are between two continents, 
between two oceans. They have got it all going on. And they have some 
of the hardest working people in the whole world.
  Why are they not a top 10 economy? Because of the drug cartel's 
corruption, the control they have over government.

                              {time}  1200

  We cut anywhere from 80 billion--some estimates say they made that 
much last year on drugs sent into the U.S. Some say they may be making 
as much from human trafficking, getting people into the United States.
  Heck, they have people pay them to get them into the United States so 
they can be sent by DHS to a city where the drug cartels need them to 
sell drugs or be engaged in sex trafficking, human trafficking, and 
that is what has been going on all through the Obama years.
  That is why Border Patrol said the drug cartels call us, the DHS, 
their logistics. They get them into our country illegally, and then we 
ship them wherever the drug cartels want them to go. They give them the 
address; our people would send them there.
  That is being changed under this President, but it may not change for 
long with the new Congress. We will see.
  We owe America better than we gave them the last almost 2 years, and 
I hope and pray we are going to come back and not just snap the ball 
and fall on it, but do some good that we should have done long before 
now in the next couple of months.
  Madam Speaker, I yield back the balance of my time.

                          ____________________