[Congressional Record Volume 166, Number 40 (Friday, February 28, 2020)]
[House]
[Pages H1409-H1415]
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 Iowa (Mr. King) is recognized for 
60 minutes as the designee of the minority leader.
  Mr. KING of Iowa. Madam Speaker, it is my honor to be recognized by 
you to address you here on the floor of the United States House of 
Representatives. Recognizing the centuries of debate that have taken 
place before our Speakers over the years, every time that anyone has 
this privilege to address you and be heard by the Members of this House 
of Representatives and by, today, with our technology, all the people 
of the United States of America, it is an honor. And it is an honor 
that goes along with the vote card and with the endorsement of a 
majority of our constituents back in our various districts.
  I would say, Madam Speaker, that too often we don't think about how 
this mix works out; how our Founding Fathers had so much wisdom to put 
this together when it was 13 original colonies and there were far fewer 
seats in this House of Representatives than there are today; and yet, 
to put the mix together here so it is a voice from every corner of 
America.
  We started out with 13 original colonies--and I should have probably 
memorized how many House seats there were in the beginning--but it grew 
to 435 and then they capped it, because as the country got bigger if we 
had used that population balance, we would have many more seats here in 
the House of Representatives.
  Some would say that 435 is unmanageable; in fact, all of us would 
have said that on one day or another.
  But the wisdom of it, the beauty of it, the genius of it is this: 
That 435 Congressional districts in America, every corner of America is 
represented here, Madam Speaker, in front of you in the House of 
Representatives.
  Whether you go up to Alaska and you hear from the dean of the 
delegation, in fact, the dean of the House,   Don Young, who has been 
here longer than anybody else, and the wisdom that he brings from way 
up in the northwest country; or whether you go down into the southern 
tip of Florida, or up into Maine, or down into, let's say, San Diego, 
right across the border from Tijuana, or out to Hawaii, or even Guam, 
for that matter, and the Marianas, you hear the voice of America here.
  I have listened to the debate here on this floor and in our 
committees for a long time; and what I hear, when I hear that debate 
come, you will hear geographical identifications going on. People will 
stand up for--a lot of times it is ``ag'' products that you can 
determine. We don't do too many pineapples in Iowa. When I hear about 
that, I think, well, are we talking Hawaii? Yes, usually.
  When we are talking about cotton, that is the South. When it is corn, 
that is the Corn Belt. That is the ``ag'' side of this.
  But also, we have different weather circumstances. If you want to do 
a little research, or if you want to find out what is going on in 
America, you walk down here on the floor, Madam Speaker, and go find 
somebody that represents the area that is affected.
  Whether it is weather; whether it is crops; whether it is current 
events; whether it is a natural disaster or a human-caused disaster, we 
get straight to it here. The quickest way you can find an expert is 
here in the House of Representatives.
  So I congratulate all of my colleagues for doing that job; for 
bringing the values of their constituents here and putting together 
that jigsaw puzzle of 435 voices with many, many, many more ideas than 
those voices.
  But I came here this afternoon, Madam Speaker, to address a couple of 
topics; and one of them I want to address is the life and the 
contribution of Philip Haney. Philip Haney was a friend of mine. He was 
a friend of Mr. Gohmert and others.
  Philip Haney was one of the originals to be hired on for the 
Department of Homeland Security. He became an analyst. He taught 
himself the Arabic language, and he began tracking the flow of people 
into the United States out of those countries that, from which came 
those 19 who bombed us on September 11 of 2001.
  Philip Haney's expertise built a database. That database tracks 
something--this is by my memory, Madam Speaker, so that is my 
disclaimer--about 800 individuals who were at least on the suspect list 
of those who might be positioning themselves to bring forth another 
attack on America.
  If we can remember what that was like in 2001, and think what it was 
like for Phil Haney, stepping up in a way that he had to educate 
himself in the Arabic language; he had to understand the culture; he 
had to understand the history; and then he had to track logistics and 
other characteristics.
  He built a database, a database that was an indicator database on 
whether and if there might be another attack that was rooted in the 
ideology that took down the Twin Towers, and bombed the Pentagon, and 
put the plane down in Pennsylvania. Phil Haney was a patriot.

  When I first met Phil Haney, it was in a quiet, careful room over 
here just off the Capitol a little ways. I knew a little about his 
story, but when I first heard his story, he was concerned then that he 
would be a target by people. And he had a thumb drive with a lot of 
data on it--I don't know how many gigs it was--hanging on a lanyard 
around his neck. He kept that with him.
  I understood that that information was also deposited in a remote 
location or two or more, so there was a redundancy. If anything 
happened to Phil Haney, that data would be accessible to the people 
whom he trusted, I imagine, the most. So that was his insurance policy 
that he wouldn't be killed.
  Then, over the years, Phil Haney--and I am going to say 7 or 8 years 
of this very active--Phil Haney wrote a book called, ``See Something, 
Say Nothing.'' Those were the orders he got out of the administration 
at the time, Madam Speaker.
  Yet, Phil Haney had developed the research and the database that he 
said, in the last few years of his life, might have, could have--and I 
will say, those were the words he used--might have and could have 
prevented the mass killings, the one in San Bernardino and the one in 
Orlando that were perpetrated by, I will say, Islamic radical hatred.
  But that information was scrubbed. It was scrubbed from the 
Department of Homeland Security by order from on high; how high up in 
the administration, at this point I don't know that we do know. We do 
know that the former director of the FBI, Robert Mueller, ordered that 
also to be the case for all of the documents in the FBI, so that there 
was nothing derogatory about Islam anywhere in all those research 
documents.
  That is part of the work that Phil Haney was doing. Phil Haney was 
then tracking people with his access to the database, but also his 
ability to track credit card numbers, phone calls, and those things, so 
that he could see who was talking to whom; where they were traveling; 
where they were gathering; and that data informed him. But the order 
came down, scrub all of that out of your database.
  He never said publicly that he downloaded that information before the 
scrub came down, but he didn't deny it either. He was a directly honest 
man, and whatever Phil Haney said, you could always believe.
  But the administration came in, his bosses, and essentially, took 
over his computer and scrubbed the hard drive of the records that they 
said he should not be following, because, I guess, it is under a 
presumption that if you follow people that are, I will say, associated 
with criminals, that somehow that reflects a prejudice against their 
religion.
  We know that the people that bombed the Twin Towers, and the 
Pentagon, and put that plane down in Pennsylvania were all of the same 
religion. But they were a sect of the religion. They were radical 
Islamists, and Phil Haney was the bulwark against that.
  Madam Speaker, I say this because a week ago today, Phil Haney died. 
He was found dead along the road out in a rural area in California, 
with a gunshot wound in his chest which, I imagine, was very close to 
where that thumb drive hung from the lanyard around his neck. That was 
how he kept that data with him at all times.

[[Page H1410]]

  Phil Haney did carry for his own defense. When there were people that 
would come and talk to him just one-on-one, he often said to them, you 
are taking a risk talking to me because you could become a target too.
  He had said to friends as recently as 2 weeks before his death, if 
there is an announcement, if I am dead and there is a suicide letter, 
it will be a fake. And he often said, I would never commit suicide.
  I think the law enforcement people regret that within the first 24 
hours the story came out that it was a suicide. That has been retracted 
since then. And I am talking with people that are in direct contact 
with the investigators, and that includes the FBI and local sheriff's 
department.
  They tell me that the investigation and the death of our friend, Phil 
Haney, our patriotic friend, that investigation, Madam Speaker, starts 
with the presumption that it is a homicide and works its way through 
looking for everything. And it will be a very deep and careful 
investigation, forensics of all kinds.
  I wrote a whole series of questions down, and the response I got back 
was, you will have answers to all of these and many more. Well, I 
expect those answers. We insist that we get those answers and I do 
expect that we will get them.
  But I can't be convinced that Phil Haney committed suicide. I knew 
him too well. I have talked to at least a dozen of his close friends 
since that period of time that also said the same thing. The instant 
the news hit them, they knew that Phil had already--he had already 
prepared us to know that he would never commit suicide.
  He was a very deep and devoted Christian man. He had lost his wife a 
little over a year ago, found a new love, and was scheduled--I call it 
scheduled--to be married in April of this year, just a little over a 
month from now.
  He had everything to live for. He was finishing another book. The 
information, the data didn't get a complete dump at all in his first 
book, which I said was ``See Something, Say Nothing.'' And the second 
book was close to being finished.
  He was preparing for his wedding. He had joy in his heart. He had 
energy. He had ambition. And even those that speculated that he might 
have gotten a health notice that was discouraging, Phil Haney would 
have used--if he had a terminal notice, if the doctor had said you have 
got 2 weeks to live, or a month to live, or 6 months to live, or a day 
to live, Phil Haney would have used every moment he could to complete 
his work, and finish the book, and make sure that all of that 
information and data was in the right hands, and that the people that 
had it in their hands would know what it meant and what to do with it, 
and who would best put their eyes on it to continue the work that he 
had dedicated and, I believe, now gave his life for.

                              {time}  1245

  I want to, while I am standing here on the floor, Madam Speaker, say 
that I don't believe Phil Haney committed suicide.
  I expect we are going to get a thorough investigation. The evidence 
that is coming to me indicates that he was murdered. We don't know that 
yet. But the next step along the way is, if so, we need to find his 
killer.
  So I honor Phil Haney and his life. He was a noble, noble patriot. He 
knew that he was using the days of his life--he didn't know if it was 
going to be the last days, but he was concerned it would be, and it 
turned out to be the last days of his life--stepping up to defend 
America, to defend the rule of law, to protect our 330 million people 
here. And that is what cost him his life, in my view, Madam Speaker.
  So I honor Phil Haney. And to honor his memory, we also need to 
follow through on a full and thorough investigation, and then if the 
evidence warrants it, and I expect it will, the investigation that 
turns up the killer or killers.
  My prayers are for the family of Phil Haney, for his daughter, for 
his fiancee, and for all of those who loved a man who was a noble 
individual, a noble, patriotic American.
  Speaking of those folks who really do step up and make a difference 
in the world--Phil Haney is one of them that is on my heart this week. 
There is another one who stepped up to make a great big difference that 
is on my mind this week also, and that is Nigel Farage of the United 
Kingdom.
  He joined us for a breakfast yesterday morning at the Conservative 
Opportunity Society. I host that breakfast usually every Wednesday 
morning at 8 o'clock over in the Capitol Hill Club.
  It is off the record, Madam Speaker, so I am going to be careful 
about what I say. I will only repeat the things that I have already 
heard Nigel Farage say out publicly, but there is nothing that he would 
be embarrassed about at all. It was a terrific delivery.
  But the background of Nigel Farage is this: He started out in the 
trading business--I will say commodities trading business--worked his 
way through there for a number of years. He got involved in politics, 
and he was elected to go to the European Parliament. He went there with 
the belief that the United Kingdom needed to pull out of the European 
Union.
  He formed a party called the UKIP. The UKIP party was the most 
conservative party over in the United Kingdom, and their objective was 
to pull the United Kingdom out of the European Union.
  Some of the discussions that we had was what percentage of the GDP of 
the United Kingdom went to the European Union and how much say they had 
in the laws that were being passed.
  What it comes down to is, the European Union will pass a law, impose 
it back on its member states, the U.K. being one of them, one of the 
lead member states, and they don't have the ability to ever repeal 
that.
  Once they are subjected to the rule of Brussels, they are stuck with 
the rule of Brussels. The only way out of that is to pull out of the EU 
altogether, the way I understand this.
  So I have in front of me here my notes from almost 5 years ago when I 
invited Nigel Farage to come before the Conservative Opportunity 
Society. That was July 15, 2015.
  He gave a tremendous presentation. I was already convinced, which was 
why I invited him, but I believe everybody around that table was 
convinced that it is in the best interests of the United Kingdom, the 
best interests of the United States, for the United Kingdom to pull out 
of the European Union.
  Some of the frustrations I have had in trying to negotiate in trade 
with the European Union come up against the barriers that they have. 
Most of those barriers do have to do with agriculture, Madam Speaker.
  For example, we have come a long way with our technology and the 
genetically modified organisms that we have. We have, for years and 
years, raised Roundup Ready soybeans. When I grew up, we had walking 
beans, and we would try to put a little water at each end of the field 
and go through there and pull the weeds most of the time. Sometimes we 
cut them with a hook, but most of the time, we pulled them. So we went 
down, and we would weed our rows to one end, pivot around, weed the 
rows back to the other end.
  About every young kid that was there, all the way up to whoever could 
walk, was in the field pulling weeds out of the beans until a Ph.D. 
scientist discovered that there was a genetic characteristic that was 
resistant to Roundup, and Roundup being a better--I will say an 
environmentally better product to kill weeds with than the 2,4-D that 
we had been using at the time.
  So they spliced this gene from another plant into the soybean plant 
and came up with a plant called Roundup Ready soybeans. That meant that 
you could plant your beans across the field, your soybeans, and go 
through and spray a light dusting of Roundup across that.
  It would kill all the weeds, and the beans would thrive. You would 
see vast fields without a single weed in them, and nobody had to walk 
and pull those weeds.
  They got a little more sophisticated, I might add. After a while, 
when they got tired of walking, they put a bar across in the front of 
the tractor with seats on it, and then--my wife has done a lot of 
this--sat there in the Sun with a spray gun and just spray each weed 
that comes along in the rows that you are responsible for. That was 
another way.
  Well, we know they got a lot of spray on their feet and on their 
legs. And it seems to be healthy enough in my

[[Page H1411]]

neighborhood, but it never was really comfortable with that.
  In any case, that all went away when we came up with a genetically 
modified organism, Roundup Ready soybeans. Now, that has gone into 
other crops as well.
  Well, the folks in the European Union think that somehow that could 
be a carcinogen. I have argued with them over there, over and over 
again, show me your evidence on how it could be a carcinogen; show me 
some science; explain to me, at least your theory, on how it could be a 
carcinogen. And they say: Well, you have to prove to us it is not.

  How do you prove a negative? That is one of those age-old questions 
that philosophers have kicked back and forth for a long time: How to 
you prove a negative?
  I put that pressure back on them, and I said: Well, you have to have 
60 years of humans, and they have to be controlled specimens so that 
the only variable is one set of humans are eating Roundup Ready 
soybeans and the other set are not. And otherwise, their diets, their 
exercise, their environment are all the same. After 60 years of that, 
we can evaluate their medical records, see who is dead, who is alive, 
who has cancer, and who doesn't. Then, we can determine if it is safe--
60 years.
  That is an unwinnable argument, with that standard put up, and I said 
so. This was a 4.5-hour debate with a Dutch scientist, by the way. Then 
I said: There has to be a better way, another way. You are locking our 
product out of your countries, the entire European Union, 500 million 
people locking our agriculture products out and locking them out from 
the rest of the world, too, with trade protectionism.
  His answer was: Well, just label it, then, so that everybody knows 
what is there.
  I said: I am happy. Let's label it. We have a deal.
  He said: No, we will label it. We will label it for you.
  I said: I know your label. It is skull and crossbones. You want to 
label it as something that nobody should eat.
  We have been consuming this product for a long, long time, and I 
don't know that we could feed the world if we didn't use the science.
  I have long had a couple of ears of corn in my man cave. One of them 
is an ear of corn that came from an 1848 open-pollinated variety that 
came over across the prairie in a covered wagon that was planted there. 
No sophisticated hybrid of any kind; it was the old corn. And that ear 
is pretty nice. It is about that long, and it has 24 rows of kernels 
around it. The next ear that is stabbed above it is one from the 2015 
crop that has 18 rows of kernels around it.
  The old one, from 1848, that looks even better than the one from 
2015, yielded only between 15 and 25 bushels to the acre. The newer ear 
of corn, stabbed above it, yielded 232 bushels to the acre, 10 times 
the production because of the science that we brought to this.
  It isn't just the genetics. It is the technology, the mechanical 
technology, too, and it is management. But you put that all together--
and, of course, fertilization as well and weed control--we have gone 10 
times--we have multiplied the corn yield by a factor of 10.
  Science has been a great big part of that, and the European Union is 
locking out a lot of the science that is feeding a lot of the rest of 
the world.
  So, I want into that marketplace. I want to tear down those trade 
protection barriers and let our American producers market into the 
European Union. That is one of the biggest reasons that I have been a 
strong supporter of Brexit. I promoted it wherever I could go, dropped 
into the U.K. a few times to do so as well.
  Another one of the barriers is geographic indicators, like parmesan 
cheese. We are not supposed to label anything parmesan cheese because 
there is a place in Italy called Parma where they started making cheese 
that is or is similar to that which we call parmesan cheese. That is 
one of the geographic indicators. There are many, all put up, in my 
view, to protect the producers in the European Union from the trade 
competition outside.
  Nigel Farage sees that. He has seen that for a long time, not so much 
for the interest in our agriculture, but the interest of the 
constraints that come down on the member states of the European Union 
and how their sovereignty is sacrificed to Brussels and how Brussels 
then lords it over the members of the European Union. Nigel Farage 
started that effort, and he has been at it nearly 30 years.
  When he came to the United States and gave the speech on July 15, 
2015, he made some excellent and strong points. He is far more versed 
on it than I am, and he always will be.
  But here is just a current piece of it then in 2015. We have a 
referendum in 18 months. He says that UKIP has completely changed the 
debate. UKIP will either be--this is just so important, I think, to 
contemplate, Madam Speaker. He said UKIP--meaning the vote, the Brexit 
vote--will either be a footnote in history, or we will have done 
something the schoolchildren will read about.
  I wrote that down in red ink in that time nearly 5 years ago: We will 
have done something that will either be a footnote in history, or we 
will have done something that the schoolchildren will read about.
  Something happened that the schoolchildren will read about. That is 
certain. That was the Brexit vote that took place 3.5 years ago on June 
23, 2016.
  I happened to be in London at that time. I didn't go there for that 
purpose. It was happenstance. I actually had a meeting scheduled on 
June 24 with Theresa May, who was then Home Secretary. I went into that 
meeting with her. It lasted probably 30 minutes or a little more.
  They had just gotten the vote in, actually, at 3 o'clock in the 
morning, June 24, which is the time that they concluded that the Brexit 
vote was all in, all done, and the British had voted to pull themselves 
out of the European Union. I am there maybe 12 hours later, maybe a 
little less.
  Theresa May was a very nice lady, but I will say she seemed a little 
distracted. She didn't know that she was a candidate or was going to be 
a candidate for Prime Minister. She didn't know in about 3 weeks she 
would be the Prime Minister.
  But we talked about trade. We talked about the things of common 
interest. We went to the agenda that I came there to talk about, and I 
walked out of there thinking I knew that she had a chance to become the 
Prime Minister. I was very impressed with her. I know that I said to 
people at the time: I hope she can become another Margaret Thatcher.

  I tried to help. I also know, Madam Speaker, that then-President 
Barack Obama at that time, on, say, June 24, 2016, had said that prior 
to the Brexit vote--and I believe in an attempt to alter the results 
that may otherwise come--said if the British vote to pull out of the 
EU, if they vote Brexit, they will go to the back of the queue in trade 
negotiations.
  That day, June 24, 2016, I said to Theresa May: You voted to pull out 
of EU. I want to see you go to the front of the queue on trade 
negotiations.
  She agreed with me. At that point--you know, often you talk to 
people, and you think maybe they are not listening or something more 
important replaces that piece in their memory. The following February, 
then-Prime Minister Theresa May came to the United States, and I 
believe we met in Philadelphia. She walked across the room over to me 
and reminded me of what I had said that day, the day after the Brexit 
vote--actually, technically, the day of the Brexit conclusion. She 
said: Do you remember what you said to me?
  I said: Yes. I said that I want to see the United Kingdom go to the 
front of the queue on trade negotiations, not the back of the queue.
  She said: Yes, and we want to go to the front of the queue.
  Well, the 2016 election had taken place by then. Donald Trump had 
been inaugurated as President just the month before, so we were able to 
start that discussion but not able to have formal trade negotiations 
because the U.K. was still in that constellation of European Union 
nation-states.
  They didn't formally get themselves out. It was just a vote that said 
to get out. I don't believe that Theresa May ever believed that it was 
the right thing to do, for the U.K. to pull out of the EU.

[[Page H1412]]

  Three years went by, more than 3 years went by, 3.5 years went by. 
Through that period of time, it looked like Nigel Farage had won at the 
beginning, when the vote came down. They more or less just packaged up 
the UKIP party, because it had served its function.
  Wouldn't that be a great thing to see here in the United States? We 
have these nongovernment organizations that came to work here to get 
certain things done, and once they accomplished them, if they would 
just sack up their bats and go home and say we got done what we came 
here to do? They tend to find another mission in order to keep 
themselves viable.
  Nigel Farage didn't do that. He said: Okay, we are going home. We got 
the job done. We voted; we won the election; and we are coming out of 
the European Union.

                              {time}  1300

  But it didn't work that way because Theresa May kept trying to bring 
a proposal for a conclusion that satisfied all of the parties involved. 
That meant you had to satisfy Jean-Paul Jonker; you had to satisfy the 
majority vote in the European Union Parliament; and you had to satisfy 
a majority of the people in the United Kingdom.
  They got kicked back and forth, back and forth, several proposals, 
and they were rejected time and again; but, in the end, the frustration 
grew, and Nigel Farage concluded that he had to go back to work again.
  So he went back to work and, this time, formed another party, and 
that is called the Brexit Party. They elected people again to office in 
the United Kingdom and brought the votes up to the point where they 
could be successful, and they swept in and they were successful. Nigel 
Farage put his support behind Boris Johnson because Boris' commitment 
was to complete the departure of the U.K. from the EU.
  So, with all of that, it actually did happen, Madam Speaker, and it 
happened on the last day of January this year. So it is just about a 
month ago today that the U.K. was formally severed from the European 
Union.
  And I will say that, just observing this, Nigel Farage was the key 
player in actually removing two British Prime Ministers from office. 
The second one, of course, was Theresa May, whom I personally like but 
I just don't believe was committed enough or strong enough to 
accomplish that which Boris Johnson did accomplish just about a month 
ago today.
  So now we are at a place where we can get serious about trade 
negotiations with the United Kingdom. I am one who favors a strong 
trade agreement with them that perhaps has benefits that are leaning 
toward the United Kingdom so that they can get a good jump start in the 
severing that has taken place in their relationship with Brussels and 
something that would phase down, perhaps, over 5 years.
  And whenever there is a trade agreement, like any business 
transaction, it has to be beneficial to both parties. If we trade 
dollars, Madam Speaker, I would hope that you would have a reason to do 
that that pleases and benefits you, and I would have a reason to do 
that that pleases and benefits me. That is business. And if it is 
billions of dollars, if it is even trillions of dollars, those 
exchanges need to be profitable to both parties.
  But I am happy if we can help the United Kingdom have a smooth glide 
path out of the European Union and ascend in a successful economy.
  I just cannot congratulate Nigel Farage enough for the personal 
accomplishment that he has led. And he has said carefully and, I will 
say, repetitively: But you are only leading is all you are doing. You 
have got to have the people. You got to have the workers. You have got 
to have the volunteers.
  And they came to the streets of the United Kingdom, and they walked 
the streets, and they put door hangers on, and they made phone calls, 
and they mobilized that country. In mobilizing the country, they were 
able to bring forth the vote that separated the United Kingdom.
  So when I look at extraordinary figures in history, extraordinary 
figures like, let's say, Winston Churchill or Franklin Delano 
Roosevelt, who was a terrific wartime President, and then also Dwight 
Eisenhower, who was also a terrific wartime general--we could go 
through Patton. We could go on and on about the leaders.
  But how many people in civilian life start on a mission because they 
have a conviction, and that conviction drives them through three 
decades, three decades of being humiliated or being joked about, being 
snickered about behind his back, but standing up always and delivering 
the clarity of the facts and the patriotism that is necessary for that 
success with the departure from the EU by the U.K.?
  Nigel Farage is an extraordinary individual in history. I have had 
the privilege of meeting some extraordinary individuals in history, and 
Margaret Thatcher is among them. I am extraordinarily impressed with 
her, Ronald Reagan, Pope John Paul, and, to a lesser degree, Gorbachev. 
But that network brought about the fall of the wall, and this is the 
beginning of how a rearrangement across Europe is taking place.
  I will say, also, it is tough for Poland to be under the yoke of the 
European Union. It is tough for Hungary to be under the yoke of the 
European Union. It is tough for Italy. It is tough for Greece to try to 
match up and be compatible with Germany, for example.
  When I see these small countries that need a trade agreement and they 
have to get all the other countries to agree on that trade agreement 
and the mentality is ``we are going to have protectionism,'' then you 
are not going to get to a trade agreement if you have protectionism.
  Also, a couple of days ago, I sat down with just an extraordinary 
group of conservative leaders within the European Parliament, scattered 
across eight or nine or so of the countries out of the European Union, 
and I see the vision that they see, and it is a vision that moves 
toward they want governments that represent we, the people.
  They are tired of elitists. They are tired of globalists. They are 
tired of being constrained by regulators and taxers that are just, I 
will say, taking care of expanding their empires. They want we, the 
people to have the say, and they want government to benefit we, the 
people. And, boy, does that fit with me, Madam Speaker.
  I am quite pleased that we get to celebrate a tremendous victory for 
an individual that, for over the course of three decades, kept the 
ideal in place and, when they got to the vote 3\1/2\ years ago and they 
more or less moth-balled the part of the UKIP party because they 
accomplished what they set about doing, then they found out afterwards, 
a year-and-a-half or so later, came to the conclusion that it wasn't 
going to happen under Theresa May, started up a new party, the Brexit 
Party, won the elections necessary there, and threw the support behind 
Boris Johnson because Boris Johnson said, months ago: I will get the 
U.K. out by January 31 of 2020.
  He followed through on his word. Nigel Farage followed through on his 
word. And I would say that we have brethren now across the Atlantic 
Ocean that have raised their head up now for freedom and for the voice 
of we, the people.
  And I remarked in our private conversation, as we were talking about 
Winston Churchill, the breadth around the world that the English 
language has gone.
  Madam Speaker, years and years ago, when I read Winston Churchill's 
book, ``A History of the English-Speaking Peoples,'' I read through 
that book carefully, kind of forward and back and studied it, and I 
would think about what I had read the night before at my work during 
the day.
  You have to understand, I had a job that wasn't intellectually 
stimulating at the time. So I would digest what Churchill had written 
and thought about what it meant.
  But when I finally finished the book, I remember laying it on my 
chest and looking up at the ceiling and thinking--Churchill didn't 
write this in ``A History of the English-Speaking Peoples,'' but the 
conclusion is clearly there if you think about it when you read though 
the book.
  The English language traveled all around the world, and wherever the 
English language went, it was accompanied by freedom. And it was also 
accompanied by free enterprise and a structure of government and a rule 
of

[[Page H1413]]

law; and with all of that came an organization that brought about a 
work ethic.
  The British were able to take their language around the world and 
bring with it the values that came out of that island that has 
contributed so much to the well-being of this planet. We are the little 
brothers, so to speak, of that.
  And so, because America was founded on those values, founded on that 
language and founded on free enterprise capitalism, Judeo-Christian 
values, the rule of law, old English common law, it was like a giant 
petri dish just laid here waiting to spring forth this God-given 
liberty that we enjoy in this country today.
  When I go down to Jamestown and walk into that church right on the 
shore where they landed there in 1607, you walk inside that old 
church--it is actually built a little bit outside of the original 
foundation that was put in place then--there is a sign, a plaque on the 
wall. If you stand and look at that wall, you are looking out--if there 
had been a window instead of a plaque, you would be looking across the 
Atlantic Ocean toward England. And it says: Here, on this land, in 
1607, English common law came to the New World.
  That common law exists within our country today. That foundation of 
common law is not only rooted in our Constitution and our Declaration, 
it is traceable back to England. It is traceable back to the Magna 
Carta. It is traceable back to Rome and traced back to Greece, and it 
is traced back to Moses himself.
  That is the legacy that was brought to this country: Judeo-Christian 
values rooted in the rule of law. And, in fact, some of that that came 
out of Roman law is the right to face your accusers and the principle 
that you are innocent until proven guilty.
  And there is another principle, too. If they don't have a law to 
prosecute you under, then you have made no violation. They must cite 
the law. And, in some of my Biblical readings, I reflect upon that.
  When Jesus stood before Caiaphas, the high priest, and he was asked: 
Did you really say these things--I will paraphrase here a little bit, 
Madam Speaker. Did you say these things? Did you preach these things?
  And Jesus said: I taught openly in the synagogue. Everybody was 
there. All they had to do was listen to me. Ask them. They were there. 
They can tell you.
  And he pointed over at the Jews who were accusing him. And when that 
happened, the guards struck Jesus, and Jesus said--well, first, when he 
pointed over to the Jews, that was Jesus asserting his right to face 
his accusers.
  We all have that right in this country today to face our accusers. 
There is no anonymous accuser out there that has any validity, unless, 
of course, you are a hidden whistleblower that is lined up to try to 
remove the President of the United States.
  And there are a few other, I will say, unknown accusers. Some of them 
didn't come forward very well when they were making accusations against 
Brett Kavanaugh.
  But, in the end, we have a principle in this country: Bring those 
people forward. If you can't stand up and, under oath, make an 
assertion, an allegation that is credible, that is supported by 
evidence, there is no charge that can be brought against an individual 
based on an anonymous assertion.
  Jesus had a right to face his accusers. He asserted that right. And 
when he did, the guards struck Jesus because they believed his response 
was insulant, disrespectful. And Jesus said: If I have spoken wrongly, 
you must prove the wrong. But if I have spoken rightly, why do you 
punish me? Why do you strike me?
  That was Jesus asserting his right that he is innocent until proven 
guilty: If I have spoken wrongly, you must prove the wrong.
  That is America, too. The legacy goes back all the way from, 
actually, before Jesus into Roman law and all the way up to our times 
today, through English common law that landed just down the coastline 
here in 1607 with the pioneers that came in at that time, with the 
settlers that came in at that time.
  That is two of the principles.
  And the third one is the requirement that a violation must be cited 
in law, and that was St. Paul. He stood before Festus, the governor, 
and said: If I have offended thee for any reason for which I should be 
put to death, tell me what that is. Show me your rule. Show me your 
law. And if you have no law, you have no way to punish me for some law 
that doesn't exist.
  Those principles are in our law today. They are not, Madam Speaker, 
necessarily in the rules of the Republican Conference, I can tell you 
that, as none of those things were allowed for me. I wasn't presented 
any right to face my accusers. In fact, I don't have an accuser, not 
one out of 330 million people. And there is no rule that I have been 
cited as violating or even thinking about circumventing, let alone 
violate a law.
  It turns out that there have been four Members of Congress in all of 
history since 1789 that have been removed from their committees. Three 
of them are convicted Federal felons, and then there is me--no rule.

                              {time}  1315

  Simply, it was an orchestrated media firestorm that got the political 
lynch mobs' blood up, and they decided the best way to do that was to 
do what they did. And it has got to be rectified, Madam Speaker. We 
cannot have a standard in this country that says that one person in 
leadership, or even if that one person can demagogue the rest of them, 
can diminish or deny the representation of a duly-elected member of 
Congress. But that is what has happened, and it must be rectified, and 
it must be rectified soon.
  Madam Speaker, I honor the life of Phil Haney. I honor the 
accomplishments and the continuing life of Nigel Farage. I honor the 
rule of law, the history, and the legacy that we are as a country, and 
the values that must be protected, preserved, and maintained. It is so 
important that we identify, recognize, and refurbish the pillars of 
American exceptionalism, the legacy that comes from Western 
civilization rooted clear back to Moses and Mosaic Law through the 
Greeks and their age of reason and their rationale that laid the 
foundation for science and ultimately for technology.
  I thank the Romans, as I said, for their rule of law but also the 
Republican form of government, which is guaranteed in our Constitution, 
that representative form of government because we the people can't all 
get into one gathering like a Greek city-state and argue this out. We 
have to have people that speak for us. And the wisdom of this 
construction of our Constitution puts this all together in the best 
balance that can be contrived.
  They always knew that there would be tension between the three 
branches of government, but they wrote that in such a way that that 
gray area would be struggled over, and if the executive branch got too 
powerful, then the House of Representatives starts all spending bills, 
so we constrain the executive branch through the appropriation process.
  Then if we are too hot-blooded here in the House, which that hot-
bloodedness is one of the reasons I am here today, the Senate with 6-
year terms cools that in that saucer. So that wisdom is there.
  And if the judicial branch gets out of hand, then the confirmation 
process in the United States Senate slowly ratchets that back.
  They had that balance put together in a beautiful way knowing that we 
are human beings and we are not always going to honor the intention 
that is in the Constitution, because we each have our political and our 
personal desires that distort that gray area in between the three 
branches of government.
  By the way, they didn't see the judicial branch of government as the 
most powerful branch of government; they saw it as the weakest of the 
three branches of government. And now has asserted itself--and this 
Congress has allowed them and so has the executive, to a degree, to be 
stronger than they were designed to be.
  But in the end, in these difficulties, when there is tension between 
these three branches of government between the executive and the 
legislative and the judicial branch of government, our Founding Fathers 
constructed it in such a way that the election changes things. The 
election changes we the people, and we the people change the course.
  For example, if the President gets out of hand, the executive branch 
gets

[[Page H1414]]

out of hand, the House of Representatives reacts quickly. When they 
passed ObamaCare through the House of Representatives and through the 
Senate, and some of it was admitted, even by those who voted for it, as 
by hook, crook, and legislative shenanigans, but when that happened, 
the American people rose up. And in that 2010 election, they removed 62 
seats over here and put 62 new seats over here with a new majority and 
a mandate to repeal ObamaCare. And the first steps that needed to be 
taken were to cut off all funding to implement or enforce ObamaCare. I 
led on that. I advocated for that. I fought for that for a decade, and 
now it is back before the court, the remnants of what is left.
  I offered, Madam Speaker, the full repeal of ObamaCare almost 
immediately. I was writing that repeal while Barack Obama was signing 
the bill, and I brought the discharge petition nearly immediately as 
well, and we got almost every Republican to sign on it in 2010. Since 
that time, at least four times, the full 100 percent rip-it-out-by-the-
roots repeal of ObamaCare has passed the House of Representatives. And 
some 80 to 84 times parts of ObamaCare that are part of the bill that I 
drafted has passed the House of Representatives. Multiple times it has 
been passed through the Senate and signed by the President that has 
gotten rid of the individual mandate, for example, and a number of 
other components of a bad bill.
  The American people rose up. They changed the majorities here in the 
House of Representatives. They gave the authority to put the brakes on 
ObamaCare over here to the House. We didn't put the brakes on it well 
enough. We should have shut off all funding to implement or enforce 
ObamaCare and done that in January or February of 2011, and when we 
didn't, people began to wonder if we were really serious about 
repealing ObamaCare.
  Over time there were struggles and, I will say, plenty of them. We 
had a government shutdown in October of 2013 that was also rooted in 
trying to shut off the funding to implement or enforce ObamaCare. That 
failed. Subsequent to that, we had Speaker Ryan write a bill that was a 
replacement for ObamaCare and a partial repeal, which was advertised as 
a full repeal of ObamaCare. Repeal and replace. It was a tactical error 
in my view, Madam Speaker. We should have simply repealed ObamaCare as 
a standalone piece of legislation and then went to work to put the 
fixes in, not with a complicated bill that today nobody can explain 
from memory. I mean, nobody. Not even the author can explain it from 
memory without having to go back to the paperwork and get boned up on 
it. But we needed to bring those changes in healthcare and health 
insurance policy that were logical, that were clear, that were like 
rifle shots.
  For example, sell insurance across State lines. Make those amendments 
to the McCarran-Ferguson Act so that the States would not be able to 
set up quasi-monopolies with insurance companies at the behest of those 
companies within their own States. So that in Iowa I could buy a health 
insurance policy from Arizona, or Kentucky, or Mississippi, or wherever 
it might be. Insurance across State lines.

  The reimportation of prescription drugs, Madam Speaker, to cut the 
cost of drugs by simply bringing them back into the United States at 
the prices that they are being sold for in our neighboring Canada, for 
example. That is two things.
  The third one is full, 100 percent deductibility of everybody's 
health insurance premium. That is an essential piece. When we had the 
mandate in place, there were 20.9 million people in this country that 
were compelled to buy health insurance by law with after-tax dollars, 
which is roughly double the cost of what you are going to pay with 
before-tax dollars.
  And so employers could write off the health insurance policies. If 
you are a corporation, you can write that off. If you are a sole 
proprietorship and you hadn't incorporated, you were buying your health 
insurance with after-tax dollars.
  So let's say you make $100,000 a year, and you pay your taxes, and 
now you have got $50,000 left. That adds sales tax, property tax, gas 
tax, and income tax, State and Federal. Those kind of taxes and more 
adds up to roughly 50 percent. So you make $100,000 a year, you have 
got $50,000 left over, and you have got a $24,000 premium that you have 
to pay on your health insurance mandated in the past by ObamaCare. So 
there is $24,000 gone. And we know what is left if you are doing the 
math, Madam Speaker. You have $26,000 left to feed your family, send 
your kids to college, buy a new car, pay the mortgage, and all of the 
bills that come in. That took too much money out of people's pocket. 
They needed to be able to deduct that so that it could be a business 
expense to them as it is to the competition that the sole 
proprietorships had.
  So the family farm, the mom-and-pop operations, the little restaurant 
run by mom, dad, and the kids, they were punished. And if you look back 
over the last decade or a little more, we are hard-pressed to go find 
those little mom-and-pop restaurants anymore, those little gas stations 
anymore, those family farms. The acres have grown, the numbers of farms 
have shrunk, and the mom and dad that are on the farm working together 
as a family and raising their kids with a work ethic and a faith ethic 
and a family unity ethic don't exist very much either, because one of 
those two almost has to go to town and get a job where the health 
insurance for the family is provided. They can't afford to pay it out 
of the proceeds sitting out on the farm because it is not deductible. 
The premiums are not deductible under normal business structure unless 
you incorporate and become a chapter S or a C corporation.
  So those are some of the things that went wrong here. But the drive 
to get it right is set up for the balance between the three branches of 
government. The House of Representatives didn't get as far as we should 
have gone, but the American people gave us a mandate to do that. We 
didn't do all that they called upon us to do. And so they called some 
of us back home again, replaced those seats, and set the majority back 
over here.
  Now we are in the second year of that majority. We will find out in 
November of this year how pleased the American people are with the 
progress that either has or hasn't been made, depending upon your 
opinion. It goes back and forth in the House of Representatives. It 
goes back and forth in the Senate.
  If the Supreme Court gets out of line, the Senate can shut down and 
change and refuse to confirm appointments to all the Federal courts, 
but also to the Supreme Court of the United States. And it is possible, 
although I believe it has never happened, that if the House has reached 
a very high level of disagreement with the Supreme Court, the House 
could shut funding down in the Supreme Court.
  In fact, I had this discussion, Madam Speaker, with Justice Scalia 
during the vigorous times of his glorious life, and I said to him, As I 
read the Constitution, since the Constitution requires there be a 
Supreme Court, the Congress can reduce the Supreme Court down to the 
Chief Justice at his own card table with his own candle, no staff. And 
when I presented that to Justice Scalia in a Conservative Opportunity 
breakfast of about 40 people, and I did that more or less to tweak him 
a little bit and see how the glint in his eye would work. And his 
response back to my constitutional analysis was, I would argue that you 
could do all of that, but you could only reduce it down to three 
justices, not one, because otherwise there wouldn't be any reason for a 
Chief Justice. And my answer was, Well, there has always been too many 
chiefs and not enough Indians. The man had a tremendous sense of humor, 
a robust way of living life, and he wrote his opinions in a delightful, 
entertaining way for the very purpose that law students would read them 
and remember them. He has impacted our jurisprudence and will, I think, 
for centuries. I love the man, Justice Scalia.
  But in the end, Congress does have that authority whether to reduce 
that Supreme Court down, and so if we did that, it would send a signal, 
and if you coupled that with appointments to the court, you can see how 
the judicial branch of government would be turned around, not by the 
House of Representatives or the United States Senate, but in the end, 
as our Founding Fathers envisioned it, by we the people.
  We the people make the final decisions in this. We the people will go 
to

[[Page H1415]]

the polls and the primaries coming out. We the people, we will hear 
very quickly from South Carolina and then on Super Tuesday we the 
people will send a directive on who is most likely to be the nominee in 
each of the parties.
  Then as we get to November after the conventions and the formal 
nominations of our Presidential candidates and after the primaries in 
the States so the nominees for each of the seats, all of them up here 
in the House of Representatives and the one-third of them that are up 
over there in the United States Senate, Madam Speaker, go to the polls 
in November and make that selection. And please believe, that selection 
is the voice of we the people. And when we the people have spoken, we 
have a right to demand that this Congress follow through on the 
mandates as we perceive them. They aren't always clear is why I say, 
``as we perceive them.''

  But it was really clear that our job was to repeal ObamaCare. We 
didn't get that done. And part of that is a disappointment that brought 
about the change of majority in the House of Representatives.
  So I have great reverence for the pillars of American exceptionalism. 
Most of them are within the Bill of Rights.
  Think of it this way, Madam Speaker: Ronald Reagan spoke about the 
shining city on the Hill, and as he spoke about that, I could never 
quite get that image in my mind. It didn't quite settle. How do you 
build a shining city on the Hill? It became a mountain, as I looked at 
it in my mind's eye. It is tough to do the construction of that and 
build a city out there with all those variables involved. So I have 
instead constructed in my mind and my imagination a shining city built 
on the pillars of American exceptionalism. And those pillars of 
American exceptionalism, most of them are already in the Bill of 
Rights.
  Think of a city out there that is built on these pillars, driven down 
to bedrock, the bedrock of human nature and by the hand of God. Freedom 
of speech is a pillar. Freedom of religion is a pillar. Freedom of the 
press is another pillar. Freedom of assembly is another pillar. Those 
things frame the circle around the outside edge of this shining city 
built upon the pillars of American exceptionalism. No double jeopardy. 
Face a jury of your peers. The rule of law. Face a jury of your peers. 
And then the protection against unreasonable search and seizure, that 
is there. Property rights that are built within it. The Fifth 
Amendment, nor shall private property be taken for public use without 
just compensation, another pillar of American exceptionalism.

                              {time}  1330

  You can put all of these together, and then you have a series of 
pillars around the perimeter. But one central pillar needs to be the 
rule of law. Another central pillar needs to be free enterprise 
capitalism.
  I have described the foundation that made America great. That 
foundation is under attack every day in our universities. For example, 
our universities are teaching socialism, which is a nice word for 
communism, Marxism, Maoism. That is being taught in universities across 
this country every day to our young children, impressionable, going off 
with the idea that they were going to get this profound education, and 
they are educated in something that is anathema to the history of the 
United States or to the success of the United States of America.
  I want to see the universities teach freedom, free enterprise, the 
rule of law, the pillars of American exceptionalism, the foundations of 
Western civilization that have built the First World.
  Lest there be any mistake about it, there is nothing about anything I 
said here that has anything to do with race.
  I have said this over and over again, Madam Speaker. It is not about 
race; it has never been about race.
  It is about culture. It is about civilization. And we have to 
understand that there are things that we share in our history, a common 
history, a common effort, maybe a common enemy, but a common cause that 
pulls us together, a common language that ties us together.
  The most powerful unifying force known to all humanity throughout all 
history is the ability to speak in the same language and communicate 
with each other. That pulls us together. It doesn't divide us apart. It 
pulls us together.
  It is good when we have more people who can speak multiple languages 
because we want to communicate with the maximum number of people and 
understand them, but you can do it quickly with common language, and 
that is a powerful force.
  A common defense, a common geography, a common history, a common 
cause, a common set of likes and dislikes, a common set of even diets 
and clothing and the things we like about music and play, all the 
things that have to do with our culture and our movies and our sports, 
all of those things pull us together. And they are reflective of the 
American civilization, and they are precious. They are precious to us, 
and the rest of the world wants to grasp them and retain them and hold 
them as well.
  It is not about race. It has never been about race. It is about 
culture. It is about civilization. It is about enhancing this Western 
civilization, for which the United States of America is the flagship, 
is today the flagship for Western civilization.
  We can welcome all peoples into this belief system that we have, and 
any baby that could be born and put into a crib in any place in the 
world can be lifted out of that crib, brought here, raised in America 
as an American, and they are as American as anybody else.
  I went over to do a naturalization ceremony with Emilio Gonzalez a 
number of years ago, who was a naturalized citizen from Cuba, and he 
was also the director at USCIS at the time. I gave a speech to about 70 
to 90 new Americans. He gave one, too.
  I liked his better than mine because there in the Old Executive 
Office Building, it was in the summertime and the windows were open, 
and he said: When this service is over, I want you to walk over to that 
window and look out that window, which looks out on the White House 
itself, the South Lawn and the west side of the White House.
  And he said: Look at that house next door and know that, from this 
day forward, the person who lives in that house next door is no more 
American than you are.
  That is the spirit of the America that we are. Those are the values 
that we are built upon.
  There is a greatness ahead of us, but we have to stop bickering and 
stop dividing each other and pull ourselves together and understand 
this Constitution is a beautiful document. If properly executed, it 
will take good people as far as good people could ever go.
  We are setting the pace for the First World, and we would like to see 
the rest of the world come together and also become First World.
  We know the standards. We need to be proud of them, protect them, and 
refurbish the pillars of American exceptionalism.
  I will close with this, Madam Speaker. This is by memory, not in my 
notes. But I remember Nigel Farage saying: We have to have the courage 
to define and defend our civilization.
  Madam Speaker, I yield back the balance of my time.

                          ____________________