[Congressional Record Volume 164, Number 189 (Friday, November 30, 2018)]
[House]
[Pages H9753-H9756]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




                      CAMPAIGN CONTRIBUTION REFORM

  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, I was hoping we would be able to get more 
accomplished this week that would help the American workers. It is 
amazing a party that calls itself the friend of the working class in 
America has spent much of the last 10, 12 years doing everything they 
can to encourage people to come into the United States illegally so 
that they can take the jobs from those hardworking Americans and those 
who wanted to work. It has clearly driven down wages for many years 
now.
  I think that had a lot to do with President Trump's getting a higher 
percentage of African Americans and Hispanics than was ever predicted 
or that other Republicans have done. I have African American friends in 
different places who say that it is pretty clear the party that counts 
on getting 90 percent of our vote or so, most places, they haven't done 
us any good.
  Under 8 years of the Obama administration, especially after the early 
part of the administration when the Democrats had the House, the 
Senate, and the White House, they got anything they wanted done.
  Did they want to fix immigration or the border? No. It was not a 
priority at all.
  They are more interested in driving us into socialized medicine, 
which has made record profits for the big pharmaceuticals, made record 
profits for the big insurance companies, and driven the little guys out 
of the market.
  So we also know, and we have seen in this last election, the part 
that the multimillionaires, the megamillionaires, and the billionaires 
have played as they poured hundreds of millions of dollars into the 
election to try to drive into office people who call themselves 
Socialists, Communists, and progressives.
  It doesn't take a lot of research to figure out why they would do 
that. We saw the policies of the Obama administration and the 
Democratic Party have a profound effect on the economy. President Obama 
himself--you can find it on video--he finally had to admit that, for 
the first time in American history--it was on his watch; it was under 
his policies--95 percent of all the income made in America went to the 
top 1 percent.
  So we can talk about the party that cares deeply about the working 
class, but let's look at whom they pandered to in order to get hundreds 
of millions of dollars to help in races where we had Republican Members 
of Congress who were outspent 10-to-1, 20-to-1, and 30-to-1. It was 
dramatic.
  Talking to Ted Cruz, he said that they had 18 full-time employees, 
which is understandable you would have a lot, because it is the big 
State of Texas. You need more than two or three. He had 18 full-time 
employees at the time of the election. He said that then he learned 
that his opponent, Robert Francis O'Rourke, had over 800 full-time 
employees.
  What you normally use full-time employees in your campaign for, you 
don't have them necessarily go out and do the door knocking and do the 
calls, but usually it is your full-time employees who contact others 
and solicit volunteers who then go do the block walking, the phone 
calls, and all that kind of thing.

[[Page H9754]]

  So to have outraised and outspent Ted Cruz so dramatically that you 
can have not just 18 employees but really a whole army--platoons and 
platoons, 20 platoons or so of full-time employees--it tells you that 
that money was not coming from the country's poor in order to drive up 
the contributions.
  One of the things that I feel really needs to be done--and I haven't 
heard anybody mention it in the Democratic Party, and there is probably 
a good reason--but one of the things we saw in 2008 when President 
Obama, then-candidate Senator Obama ran--we saw little glimpses of it 
in the Clinton election years, but we saw it with Robert Francis 
O'Rourke--that is contributions that came in under the amount that 
required the filing of the name and information about the contributor.
  So it is a loophole. Obviously, if you have a loophole, somebody is 
going to come along and take advantage. But when you have millions and 
millions of dollars contributed in $40, $50 amounts so that you just 
list the amount, you don't have to list who the credit card holder was, 
so we don't know if there was one credit card that paid for millions of 
dollars of $50 contributions. We don't know where that money came from. 
We don't even know if it came from the United States or Iran.
  When you have that kind of a loophole, heck, you could even have--and 
I am just saying it is possible. When you don't have to report where 
the money came from, you can say, hypothetically, that we will send 
$150 billion to you and your country if you will be sure and send me 
millions back for the campaigns I want to help.

                              {time}  1130

  I am not saying that happened. I am just saying that is the kind of 
thing that is possible, and that loophole needs to be closed. It is 
inconvenient to have to report every contributor, but because it is a 
loophole that can allow violations of the law without allowing a proper 
audit and determination whether the law was violated, that loophole 
needs to be closed.
  We need to stick in a provision before we leave the majority that 
requires the contributor of every dollar to be listed meeting the 
Federal requirements: who they are, where they are, and that 
information. It needs to be filed.
  For heaven's sake, if somebody is doing it with a credit card, it 
isn't hard to do that filing. You can get a program that will just do 
it on automatic pilot for you.
  But in the same way, we know that the Democratic Party has battled 
tooth and nail. We have courts, I would say all over the country, but 
they are very careful where they file so they can have the most liberal 
judges, even though this is an area of complete ignorance of Chief 
Justice Roberts, who said there is no such thing as an Obama judge, a 
Bush judge. Well, he is right about that.
  Really, to say somebody is a Bush judge, that is really not to define 
who they are. We have seen appointments under H.W. Bush. I understand 
President George H.W. Bush has acknowledged nominating David Souter for 
the Supreme Court. I understood that it had come down to Edith Jones, 
who is a wonderful, America-loving, brilliant jurist, former chief 
judge of the Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals in New Orleans, but it came 
down to Edith Jones and David Souter.
  I was told by one of Edith's close friends that she was asked to fly 
to Washington and actually was at the White House with David Souter 
while President George H.W. Bush was trying to make up his mind. Edith 
and Souter were both waiting to find out who was going to be tapped to 
go out into the Rose Garden, wherever they did it, to make the 
announcement of who was going to be the nominee.
  Supposedly--I was told, but haven't confirmed--it apparently was John 
Sununu who said: I am sure Judge Jones is a great jurist, would be a 
great jurist. I don't really know her. But I know David Souter would be 
a terrific Supreme Court Justice.
  So they said: Go get Souter. And he comes out.
  To say that Souter was a Bush appointment doesn't define who he is. 
It doesn't tell you anything about who he is.
  On the other hand, we have Justice Roberts. And it is nothing against 
him from an intentional point. It is simply that he is totally 
ignorant, apparently, of the fact that, when someone says this judge or 
justice was an Obama justice or judge, then it does define who they 
are. They are rock-ribbed liberal. They don't care what the 
Constitution says. They fit in nicely at the Ninth Circuit, where one 
justice said something years back about: Well, we don't care what the 
Constitution says. We figure if we come out with enough opinions, the 
Supreme Court can't reverse them all.
  To me, it is a bit treasonous. It is unconstitutional. It should be a 
basis for impeaching any such judge. But we haven't done that. I was 
hoping that our Judiciary Committee would begin to bring in justices 
who had shown contempt for the Constitution in violation of their oath. 
But because of what I believe was the lack of keeping our promises, we 
didn't get enough people out in the last election, and we lost the 
majority in the House.
  I know we had House Republican leaders whose mantra was, ``When there 
is no drama, we win,'' but it seemed very clear. The Senate won. They 
picked up a couple of seats because they fought and there was drama, 
and they stood up against the outrageous attacks on an honorable man 
named Kavanaugh, kind of like Judge Bork. There probably was nobody 
more qualified like Judge Bork when he was nominated, but he was a bit 
arrogant, so they got the folks to bring him down.
  You had Senator Ted Kennedy, who did an amazing job of character 
assassination. He was effective in the lies he made up about Bork, and 
that kept him from being confirmed. Of course, there was a big 
celebration not for the truth, but for the fact that, regardless of the 
truth, they were able to block Judge Bork.
  The term ``Obama judge'' or ``Obama justice'' is quite definitive. He 
was very careful not to appoint anyone who believed in following the 
strict language of the Constitution. These are people who had no 
problem in doing what I left the bench to do, and that is to legislate. 
They have no problem with taking over legislative duties.
  Now we have seen we have Obama judges who have no problem taking over 
the executive function. Can any judge say that a President cannot put 
restrictions and even prevent a reporter from coming and asking 
questions when they violate what has been instructed and when the 
person in charge, the President, says, ``I have answered your 
questions,'' and he doesn't allow a filibuster and the reporter still 
will not be obedient? The President needs to be able to say: ``You are 
not going to come back and ask any more questions. That is the way it 
is.''
  It seems to me to be perfectly equivalent, if the President were to 
issue an order saying that no Federal judge could go back--or could 
limit oral argument, that it is a violation of an attorney's freedom of 
speech, but to put a time limit on oral argument.
  In the early days of this country, there were no time limits on 
arguments before the Supreme Court. I understand Daniel Webster argued 
one case for about 3 days. In the Amistad case, John Quincy Adams, one 
of my heroes, even though he was a very ineffective President--some say 
the best educated, perhaps the most intelligent--but he was determined 
to bring an end to slavery.
  He was talked into handling the oral argument in the Amistad case 
before the Supreme Court when they were meeting downstairs. His 
argument spilled into a third day. Since it was multiple days, one of 
the nine Justices even died during that time.
  That kind of crimps your argument a little bit if you lose a Justice.
  They didn't have time limits. You could argue the case as long as you 
wanted. In fact, if you go down to the Old Supreme Court Chamber 
downstairs, they have two red couches. They are called fainting couches 
because lawyers could argue a case as long as they felt like they 
should, and sometimes they might grow faint. They had a place to land 
if they argued too long and became faint.
  If the courts are going to say the President cannot have any 
restrictions and put any restrictions on reporters who want to 
filibuster a press conference and they can't limit their questions as 
long as the reporter wants to talk, then maybe the President should 
issue an executive order that no Federal judge can limit the time of 
oral argument of any lawyer before the court.

[[Page H9755]]

  Now, if that had been the law, that I could not limit oral argument 
in a case either during my time as a trial judge, my time as a court of 
appeals chief justice, I could not have survived on the bench. You have 
got to be able to put a limit on how long argument is going to go on.
  But if the courts are going to say the President can't limit a 
reporter, it violates his freedom of speech, it sure seems like it is a 
violation of a lawyer's freedom of speech for a justice to say: I am 
putting a limit of 10 minutes, an hour, 40 minutes, whatever they do. 
It seems like that would be a violation as well.
  It is just really outrageous, and you would expect either an Obama or 
Clinton judge to be the one who would issue such a ridiculous ruling. 
Certainly, reporters have freedom of speech, but they do not have a 
right to be anywhere they want to be to utilize that speech.
  The President can restrict all kinds of areas. As we know, President 
Obama did. He shut down tours of the White House for a prolonged period 
of time. We had a harder time allowing constituents--I am talking about 
Democratic constituents, because we don't care what party anybody is 
affiliated with. No party, some party, if they want our help to get a 
ticket to tour the White House, we help them. We don't ask them what 
party they are a part of.
  Apparently, party meant a great deal during the Obama years, and they 
had no problems with doing things like violating the law that says you 
can't spend more to shut down a Federal site during a government 
shutdown than it takes to leave it open.
  They spent a lot of money shutting down facilities that didn't 
require any money to keep them open. They wanted to make the veterans 
suffer and keep them out of their memorials. For some of them, it was 
their only chance to see the memorials in their whole life.
  The Obama administration didn't care. They shut them down and then 
said it is all the Republicans' fault. Even though we passed four 
bills, doing everything we could to prevent a government shutdown, the 
Senate was hell-bent on having a shutdown, and with the help of John 
Boehner saying Republicans did it, it was ridiculous. Maybe he had had 
too much to drink that night. I don't know.
  We passed four bills in those preceding days, even up until 1 a.m. 
The last one was appointing conferees. They didn't include me. They 
were people who were ready to get an agreement struck within the hour, 
and the Senate would not appoint conferees because they wanted a 
shutdown.
  I was just heartbroken. I was the one who cut the tape. I hollered at 
Steve Palazzo from Mississippi. He had three busloads of veterans out 
there. The majority, I think, were in wheelchairs. They couldn't get 
in. I came with scissors, cut the tape. I called Steve over. There were 
two big barricades. I said: Steve, when I cut the tape, don't hesitate. 
You open the left side, I will open the right side, and we will get 
this open for our veterans.
  I had asked Steve King before we did that to go over and tell the 
Park Police closest to us which ones were Members of Congress so they 
didn't arrest us and then later say: Oh, we didn't know they were 
Members of Congress. We had a right to be there, and we had a right to 
inspect the facilities. So, Steve took care of that detail for us.
  Once he had done that, then I cut the ribbon. And he opened the left 
one; I opened the right one. I didn't even notice there was a bagpipe 
player who had worked his way up right behind me and Steve. So when we 
opened those barricades, the first guy through behind us was the 
bagpipe player. It was awesome to see all those veterans rolling in in 
wheelchairs right behind the bagpipe player. It was a beautiful sight. 
But it was tragic to see the way the Obama administration wanted to 
punish our veterans.
  After I left there to go try to help open the Iwo Jima Monument 
access, I came by and could see the Martin Luther King Jr. Memorial. I 
couldn't believe they had barricaded that. It is a walk-through 
memorial.

                              {time}  1145

  Yes, they wanted to blame Republicans, but they spent a lot of money 
to blockade a facility that you walk through. It is a moving memorial 
to most of us, but they blocked people out of that.
  So when you couple that kind of callousness toward the middle-class 
patriots of this country who risked life and limb--some of them lost 
limbs--and you want to punish them to make a political point, it was 
outrageous.
  Then, when you see that the economic policies of an administration, 
the Obama administration, which claimed to be looking out for the 
little guy, where basically they kept holding out--luring people into 
the United States illegally by their failure and refusal to protect our 
borders.
  It is clear they drove down wages. People had not had a wage 
increase, when adjusted for inflation, for a very long time.
  When anybody really studies socialism--and I am not talking about the 
games that are played in so many universities now about this glorious 
thing called socialism, progressivism, communism.
  When you really look historically at what that means, in socialism 
there is no middle class. You have the ruling class, and you have the 
ruled class. Now, someday in heaven, then everybody will share and 
share alike and do so joyfully. But in this world, where no human being 
is perfect, there is always going to be jealousy.
  You are always going to have circumstances like I found as an 
exchange student in the Soviet Union when I asked a bunch of farmers 
sitting in the shade in the middle of the morning: When do you work out 
in the fields?
  They looked terrible. You couldn't even tell what they had cultivated 
and what they hadn't. And they laughed, and I thought I had said 
something wrong in Russian.
  One of them responded: 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 explains why socialism, communism, it never, ever works in this 
world. It never, ever will. You are left with a ruling class that gets 
all kinds of privilege--that doesn't have to worry about money, they 
get everything they want--and then the ruled class.
  And their healthcare stinks. Being over in the Soviet Union for that 
summer and being exposed to their socialized medicine, I literally 
thanked God that I was American and never had to worry about socialized 
medicine. It just seemed like they were 20, 30 years behind where we 
were. And I lived in the small town of Mount Pleasant. We had a lot 
better healthcare than they had over there at some of the larger 
cities. It was amazing.
  But, if you are going to use socialism and you are going to pay a 
physician the same amount of money whether they see 5 people or 100 
people, then the physicians have no incentive to take care of as many 
people as they physically can. They have an incentive to see as few as 
they can. And, in a socialized medicine situation, the physicians don't 
get paid all that much.
  Now, the big pharmaceuticals, Big Pharma, the big insurance 
companies--not the little ones, the big ones--and pharmaceuticals that 
signed on to support ObamaCare, they could tell, and I could tell from 
reading the bill, that they were going to make billions and billions 
more than they have ever made in their history.
  As I told some of their lobbyists, you guys signed your own death 
warrant. Yeah, you are going to make billions and billions more, maybe 
15 years; but then, eventually, you are going to be capped. And you are 
not going to be able to collect for research and development. You are 
going to be unable to keep creating lifesaving, life-enhancing 
medications, and you are going to be like a Third World pharmaceutical.
  They didn't care, because these guys had golden parachutes. They knew 
they would make billions more because of what Obama did for them. And 
they did, and they have, and they still are.
  Yes, we have lost a lot of insurance companies, but the big 
companies, they are doing great. They are doing real well. In fact, I 
was shocked; I missed it when I read the bill, but these biggest 
insurance companies could even get bailouts in years they made record 
profits.
  We were able to stop some of that while we had the majority, but I 
guess

[[Page H9756]]

those kind of things won't be stopped next year. The Democrats that 
passed ObamaCare are probably not going to be restricting the big money 
coming to the big insurance companies because I am sure a lot of that 
will come back in the way of political contributions.
  So, there is a lot that needs to be done. We have not been faithful, 
as a party, to keep our promises. The number one issue, I think, that 
got President Trump elected was that he was going to secure the border: 
We are going to get a wall built where we need it.
  And I really do believe what he said, that if he had the cooperation 
of Congress, he was going to be able to make Mexico pay for it. And I 
felt like he eventually would.
  But if there is no wall built--not in all places do we need it. We 
don't need 2,000 miles of it, but there are some places where we 
definitely need it. But these invasions--whether you want to call them 
caravans, they are really invasions. Even though the alt-left media 
like CNN and MSNBC were saying it is all big lies about these caravans, 
there are no invasions, there are no caravans, it is all a political 
hoax--well, it was not a political hoax. They were either intentionally 
lying, or they were just ignorant. Either way, they were wrong.
  Then we see yesterday information about at least a third of those who 
are wanting to crash into our country, invade our country, have serious 
healthcare issues. And they are going to make a lot of Americans sick 
if they come in.
  Now, there is no country in the history of the world that has been 
more generous, more philanthropic, has done more good for other 
countries, other peoples all over the world. But, in order to maintain 
that, you have to have a vibrant economy. And, actually, to do that, to 
care for the environment, you have got to have a vibrant economy.
  So we should be doing reconciliation, get the money for the 
President's wall, and do it now before we turn over the majority. 
Anything else is a betrayal of our promises.
  Mr. Speaker, I yield back the balance of my time

                          ____________________