[Congressional Record Volume 165, Number 109 (Thursday, June 27, 2019)]
[House]
[Pages H5252-H5254]
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, 2019, the gentleman from Texas (Mr. Gohmert) is recognized 
for 60 minutes as the designee of the minority leader.
  Mr. GOHMERT. Madam Speaker, so we just took up the humanitarian 
crisis that is going on at our border and passed the Senate bill, so 
there will be a tremendous amount of money that will be going to 
provide more beds, shelter, food, transportation, whatever is needed. 
The one thing that the Senate bill is especially void of is money to 
secure our border.
  It is something to say that, with all of the problems in the Senate 
bill, the things that were not addressed in the Senate bill, the fact 
that it was so much better than the House bill says an awful lot about 
the House bill and its shortcomings.
  We have, still, and will after this bill is signed into law and money 
is put into use, a crisis on our southern border.
  As was pointed out to me after some of us visited Normandy with the 
Speaker on the 75th anniversary of D-Day, on D-Day, we had 150,000 or 
so Allied troops that invaded Normandy, over 150,000, a tremendous 
number, landing craft, parachuting. Yet just in the month of May, that 
is about how many invaded our southern border--that we caught. We don't 
know how many didn't get caught.
  Some think that for every one we actually catch and in-process, there 
is one that gets away. We don't know.
  We know that there are a great number of people who are not caught 
because they are picked up on cameras

[[Page H5253]]

and with other information that is gleaned on the border.
  But it will continue to be a problem after this money is spent, and 
there is some concern--it is legitimate--that when you have what the 
civil litigation would indicate is an attractive nuisance--that is the 
terminology in a lawsuit--and you don't put up a fence, a wall, 
something to impede people from coming into property illegally, then, 
if they hurt themselves--and the example most people think of is a 
swimming pool or a pool or a pond.

                              {time}  1745

  If you have that water on your property, and you don't bother to put 
up a fence or a wall, and someone comes onto your property and drowns, 
you are going to end up paying a tremendous amount of money, normally, 
to the family of whoever drowned coming onto your property when it was 
not properly secured with a fence or a wall.
  That is not to say it has to be electrified or some kind of really 
intense structure. But you need to have something that would impede 
somebody from coming in and drowning in your water.
  Now, the moment of silence earlier, most of us were deeply moved by 
the picture, horrendously tragic, of a child, who seemed to be so 
close, even sharing the father's shirt, with her little arm around his 
neck.
  Having had girls growing up, that is an emotional picture for some of 
us especially.
  But we have what most would say is the highest-evolved justice 
system, judicial system, litigation system in history. It has come 
through thousands of years of different types of laws, be them looking 
up at the bust of Hammurabi, the Code of Hammurabi, the Justinian Code. 
We have a Napoleonic Code.
  We have had thousands of years of laws, and the civil litigation in 
this country is perhaps at the most perfected--a long way from being 
perfect, but as perfected as it has ever been anywhere.
  That is where this concept of attractive nuisance has evolved and 
arisen from. There is a responsibility when you know there is something 
so attractive that people will be tempted to break the law and enter 
that property illegally, potentially, to their own detriment.
  What are you supposed to do if you are a caring individual in charge 
of property? You put up a fence or wall, just like our former President 
Obama did.
  I understand he built a 10-foot wall around his home. That is a good, 
responsible thing to do. It was good enough for the President when he 
was in the White House to raise the height of the fence and wall around 
the White House, and it is good enough for the former President as he 
built a wall around his private residence.
  It is a good, responsible thing to do by a responsible person in 
charge of property, not only to provide privacy, but also to keep 
people from being lured to their own detriment.
  It is high time we address that on our southern border. There are 
very few people in this body, on either side of the aisle, who have not 
at some point said that we need to secure our border, that we can't 
keep having people pour into this country illegally.
  But something strange has happened as our friends have taken over the 
majority and Republicans have moved into the minority. Some people have 
realized: Wait a minute. If these people keep flooding into our country 
from other countries illegally, and they see us as the party that keeps 
the border porous and open for them to keep pouring in, they will 
surely reward us with their votes, so we will be able to develop a 
permanent majority.
  The only trouble with that is that when that happens, we are 
destroying the goose that had been laying golden eggs of opportunity, 
freedom, incredible liberty like the world had never seen before, the 
United States of America and our Constitution, followed with the Bill 
of Rights.
  Yes, it has taken a while to get them continuing to evolve toward 
greater perfection. But we have to do something, because if we don't, 
if we continue to have people pouring into the United States--when you 
look at the example of Normandy with 150,000 or so, we had that many 
illegally invading America in 1 month.
  We have to do something because the people pouring in have not been 
educated on the responsibilities of maintaining self-government. They 
will end up forcing this country--not intentionally but because they do 
not understand the responsibility involved in continuing this little 
experiment in self-government that has lasted 230 years. They will 
unintentionally give way to either communism or progressivism, if you 
prefer that these days, or a pure dictatorship.
  It is very disconcerting that, in this country, there is more and 
more rising emotion between different political thought.
  Look at the difference between the American Revolution, the 8 years 
that it took to win our independence, 1775 to 1783, and toward the end 
of the year when the Treaty of Paris was signed. It started, ``In the 
Name of the Most Holy and Undivided Trinity.'' The British signed that. 
They thought that would be an oath that they would have to take so 
seriously in England that they would not breach that oath taken in the 
name of the ``Most Holy and Undivided Trinity.''
  Historians know, normally, a government doesn't last more than 200 
years, and they are lucky if they last 200 years. We have gone 230.
  People look at the 10 years of the French Revolution, from about 
1789, when our Constitution was ratified and when the Bastille was 
stormed, to 1799. What was the result of the French Revolution? It was 
an Emperor named Napoleon.
  Some historians say that they think the big difference between the 
U.S. Revolution resulting in liberty and the French Revolution 
resulting in hundreds of thousands of heads being cut off was our 
Revolution was about liberty.
  The Founding Fathers were not out there to cut off heads. They were 
out there to grab and preserve liberty, whereas in the French 
Revolution, there was so much sentiment of getting revenge that it 
ended up culminating in an Emperor named Napoleon.
  We now seem to have so much animus and so much anger. There is some, 
from time to time, in this body. But some of the most vocal people 
pushing for impeachment, like my friend Al Green, he, literally, is a 
friend. He is a Christian brother. I disagree with him strongly on the 
need for impeachment, but I like the guy. He is my brother. I know he 
would not be saying what he does unless he really believes it.
  I would never wish harm on somebody that I cared about like that. We 
can disagree without being mean. Yet, too often now, that is being 
lost.
  We have to preserve this place. We are about to recognize our 
anniversary, the Fourth of July, when the Declaration of Independence 
was made public. This needs to be a time of serious reflection.
  It ought to include John Adams' encouragement to celebrate, have 
parades, enjoy families, enjoy the country. Of course, he says the 
firing of guns. We try not to do that. Instead, they use fireworks.
  He knew there ought to be a celebration to remind us of the 
sacrifice, what was gained through that great sacrifice, and the 
responsibility that ensued, along with the liberty.
  We should also remember the way they got to the Constitution was when 
Randolph, from Virginia, proposed that, after 5 weeks of yelling and 
fussing, that even though they didn't have money to hire a chaplain, 
why don't they take a few days off and gather together, on our Nation's 
Independence Day, at a local church there in Philadelphia. They ended 
up settling on the Reformed Calvinist Church, with the Right Reverend 
William Rogers presiding, and they worshipped God together. They were 
led in prayer by Reverend Rogers. They came back after that and gave us 
the most extraordinary founding document in the history of the world 
that we still use 232 years later. It was a time of reflection.
  Unless we secure our border though, we will not be a shining light on 
a hill. We will be a transit station for people around the world to 
pass through, hoping for something great but, instead, only seeing a 
once-great country whose experiment in self-government was destroyed by 
too many people coming in too quickly, who did not know, as they hadn't 
been educated, how to go about preserving self-government.

[[Page H5254]]

  My hope and prayer for this Independence Day is that we will return 
to an appreciation for the God from whom all blessings, all good 
things, flow. If we do that, we can preserve this place for generations 
to come.
  Madam Speaker, I yield back the balance of my time.

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