[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.
____________________