[Congressional Record Volume 167, Number 106 (Thursday, June 17, 2021)]
[House]
[Pages H2916-H2921]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]
ISSUES OF THE DAY
The SPEAKER pro tempore (Mr. Auchincloss). Under the Speaker's
announced policy of January 4, 2021, the gentleman from Texas (Mr.
Gohmert) is recognized for 60 minutes as the designee of the minority
leader.
Mr. GOHMERT. Mr. Speaker, I yield to the gentleman from Florida (Mr.
Gaetz).
{time} 1215
Remembering the Life of Lieutenant Colonel Samuel Lombardo
Mr. GAETZ. Mr. Speaker, today I rise to commemorate the life of
Lieutenant Colonel Samuel Lombardo.
Sam and his family legally immigrated to the United States from
Italy. He enlisted to serve in the Army National Guard's 28th Infantry
Division just 1 month following the start of World War II.
After training, he was deployed to Europe where he would serve as
platoon leader and executive officer of I Company, 394th Infantry
Regiment, 99th Division, and he would always remind constituents in
northwest Florida that he fought in the Battle of the Bulge.
During this time, Lieutenant Colonel Lombardo and his platoon created
their own makeshift flag out of scraps of red and blue cloth. For the
white, they used German surrender flags. They used this as their battle
flag in victorious campaigns across the Rhine and Danube Rivers.
Following World War II, Lieutenant Colonel Lombardo continued his
service to our country in Korea and Vietnam.
Throughout his service, Lieutenant Colonel Lombardo earned the Silver
Star, the Bronze Star with ``V'' for Valor, as well as an Oak Leaf
Cluster with Meritorious Achievement among 10 other medals.
Mr. Speaker, please join me in honoring the late Lieutenant Colonel
Samuel Lombardo.
I asked Sam how he was able to be so healthy after more than 100
years living on the planet Earth. He said that his secret was red wine
and almonds at night. I think I will have a little of both in his honor
this evening.
Mr. GOHMERT. Mr. Speaker, I yield to the gentlewoman from Iowa (Mrs.
Miller-Meeks).
Recognizing Muscatine High School
Mrs. MILLER-MEEKS. Mr. Speaker, I rise today to recognize a high
school in my district that was recently recognized for their commitment
to student success.
For over 15 years, Iowa has partnered with the ACT's college
application campaign to increase the number of first-generation college
students and students from low-income households in applying for and
pursuing higher education.
I am proud to announce that, in 2020, 176 Iowa schools participated
in the college application campaign, and all together, 504 students
completed 1,578 college applications. Of the 176 schools that
participated, Muscatine High School in my district was awarded the 2020
School of Excellence Award for Iowa from ACT. Muscatine was selected
for this great award based on their commitment to student success and
for serving as an exemplary model for Iowa's college application
campaign.
Congratulations to the students and faculty at Muscatine for being
leaders in academic achievement and for serving as a great role model
for student success in Iowa and the entire Nation.
Mr. GOHMERT. It is wonderful to hear that about Iowa.
Mr. Speaker, I yield to the gentleman from Arizona (Mr. Schweikert).
New Spending Initiatives
Mr. SCHWEIKERT. Mr. Speaker, I thank Congressman Gohmert for yielding
to me.
For anyone who is not particularly familiar, we have sort of
mechanisms. Last night, we were running late, and once we hit 10
o'clock, we were shut off. And trying to do 21 boards in 8 minutes, I
apologize to those who have to try to take our words down.
But I wanted to just touch on a couple of things. One really quickly,
we were just blessed to have Secretary Yellen in front of Ways and
Means. I have tremendous respect for and have built a relationship with
her when she was Federal Reserve Chair.
I want us all to pay attention to a promise that the Secretary and
the President have made, and that is the new spending initiatives will
be covered by the new taxes, the new revenues. I assume that is an
honorable way to do it. We will fight over what the spending priorities
are, and none of these games where we are going to do 15 years of tax
hikes to cover 10 years of spending because, let's be honest, that is a
complete fraud on the American people.
But the best math that is coming out from a number of groups right
now is the tax hikes that are being proposed, the revenues, are only
going to cover maybe, if you are being optimistic, Mr. Speaker, on the
receipts, 50 percent of the new spending.
Yesterday, I think it is Penn Wharton that put out their model, I
guess last week, that the capital gains tax itself loses $33 billion
over the first 10 years. So, it is not scored to 15 years; it is 10.
But, Mr. Speaker, if you do what is called the basis, which is how
much is subject to the capital gains tax even though the perversity of
it is that a huge portion of that is actually inflation we are going to
tax, it would raise, in their model, $133 billion. The administration,
the Democrats, have said this will be 330. So, they are only hitting
about one-third of the revenues that have been promised from the
capital gains tax.
I really want to help the Democrats keep their promise that their new
$4 trillion proposed spending will be covered by their new receipts,
their new revenues. They have a really interesting math problem. Either
they are going to have to cut their spending substantially in half or
dramatically raise taxes on the American people.
We asked Secretary Yellen: Should we expect a value-added tax? Is a
VAT in our future?
The math is really ugly--we are going to talk about that in a second
here--to cover all these new spending initiatives plus just the
demographic curve that is already about to crush us, debtwise.
The answer was an interesting one. It is: Well, that is not part of
our current proposal.
For everyone who is interested in tax policy--and I accept that maybe
some of us are a little bit on the geek side--I am fascinated with the
tax on Medicare financing. Keep an ear out because the only way I think
the left is going to get these types of revenues is to actually go to
completely new revenue-raising, new tax regimes.
Let's talk about what I consider is the greatest fragility of our
Nation's future. It turns out it is not Republican or Democrat policy.
It is demographics.
What is the fastest growing demographic in the United States? It is
getting old. We are graying very, very fast. It is baby boomers.
When you look at this chart--and we did this last night, but we did
it sort of caffeinated, very fast--take the next 30 years. This is
without all the new spending that has been proposed this year by the
new administration. This is our baseline, $101 trillion of debt in 30
years at today's dollars. This is inflation-adjusted dollars, 67
percent.
Functionally, $68 trillion of debt is just Medicare. Only about $3
trillion is the rest of government, so it is Medicare, then Social
Security.
If you believe, Mr. Speaker, like I do, that we have an absolute
moral obligation to keep our promises to those folks who have paid into
Social Security and Medicare, then what are we going to do to keep that
promise?
The reality of it is that this is what buries us as a country. It is
our demographics and the promises that are dramatically unfunded.
Remember, Mr. Speaker, it is only maybe 4 years or so that the Medicare
trust fund--which is only part A, which is the hospital portion--that
trust fund is gone.
Part B is actually seeing a doctor. Part C is managed care. That has
its own little, in some ways, financial benefits. And D is drugs. Parts
B and D are 100 percent out of the general fund. They don't have trust
funds.
This is absolutely critical. This will drive all government policy.
If you are someone who wants money for education, if you are someone
who wants money for the environment or our military, then the fact of
the matter is it is Medicare that consumes us.
[[Page H2917]]
One of my great frustrations is when you look at the math of how much
is spending, Mr. Speaker, and then the financing of that spending, you
get a sense that, as Republicans, we have this bad habit. We will go
and say: Well, we will balance the budget through waste and fraud.
Democrats will go and say: Well, we are going to balance it by
nationalizing healthcare, Medicare for All.
None of those are real. We are not telling the truth.
Let's walk through just a couple of things that are in my craw right
now. This is just one portion of the left's bill called H.R. 3. From a
conceptual standpoint, it is an honest debate of what are we going to
do about prescription drug costs.
The methodology, though, Mr. Speaker, if you actually read the
research, in a decade, it is killing people and costing more because we
are on the cusp of a time of miracles.
This is really important to get our heads around. We have all heard
about this concept of mRNA. We have talked about it for 20-plus years.
Years ago, I used to come to this mike and talk about this concept of
bio-foundry.
Mr. Speaker, the fact of the matter is, we can take a snippet of your
DNA and a snippet of your cancer, your disease, or your virus, and it
would take weeks. And for the CAR-T therapy for cancer, it was $350,000
just to get you your shot, but it was curing people. We just moved up
10 years in technology.
That is one of the amazing things Operation Warp Speed. It is
actually one of the few positive things I can say that came out of this
pandemic is it is here.
Look up Tesla and mRNA, Mr. Speaker. You find out that all sorts of
very disruptive companies are investing in these little bio-foundries.
We are on the edge of curing HIV, sickle cell anemia. We now have a
cure for hemophilia. And we are also going to cure all sorts of
cancers. There are some amazing things happening. The problem is they
are expensive, Mr. Speaker. But they cure you.
H.R. 3 does something that I think is fairly dark and fairly
sinister, and we need our brothers and sisters on the Democrat side to
be honest with constituents, and that is something called reference
pricing. If a quality year is bought through a drug, but it costs more
than, in this case, $37,000 in Great Britain, Mr. Speaker, you don't
get it.
H.R. 3 does this where they take a basket of some of these countries
and say that we are going to use their cap. So, you are prepared to
turn to your constituent and say: Oh, that drug is $40,000. Yes, it
gives you that quality year, but it is over our cap, so we are not
going to provide you that pharmaceutical.
By doing that, we just destroyed small, disruptive bio-foundry pharma
that is curing people. We are going to subject our population to say
that the misery you have today is the misery you are going to have
tomorrow, Mr. Speaker, because we are going to shut down the
disruption. We are going to protect--here is the sinister thing that
healthcare economists talk about. The Democrats' H.R. 3 actually
protects Big Pharma because the industry now becomes you just adjust
your current patent, and that is how you make a living, Mr. Speaker.
But the ones that nip their heels that cure things, it is like the
hepatitis C we cure now. Those cures don't come because we have just
wiped out the income stream.
We need to rethink. If Republicans and Democrats have a common goal
that we need to look at pharmaceutical costs, then destroying the
pipeline that cures people and that ends the misery is really dark.
Mr. Speaker, we Republicans have our sins. How many of us will get
behind a microphone and talk about price transparency? Price
transparency is a really good thing, but it has almost no real effect
on the price of healthcare. The best academic studies we have been able
to find in our office is 0.1 to 0.7 percent.
My point is really simple here. The ACA, ObamaCare, was a financing
bill. It was who got subsidized and who had to pay. Our Republican
alternative was a financing bill. It was who had to pay and who got
subsidized. Medicare for All is a financing bill.
When are we going to have the really tougher discussion of what we
pay? Let's disrupt the price of healthcare through technology.
How many of us went to Blockbuster Video last weekend? We don't
because now we hit a button called Netflix and all sorts of other
things. We allow disruption to happen in other parts of our healthcare,
but we have built so many regulatory barriers and so many licensing
barriers, crazy things that would disrupt healthcare.
One of my grand proposals--and this one needs to be Republicans and
Democrats coming together--that $68 trillion over the next 30 years in
just Medicare spending, that is a substantial driver for U.S. sovereign
debt. Thirty-one percent of it is just diabetes.
It turns out, Mr. Speaker, if you and I can have a revolution in
ending the misery of diabetes, it is also the single biggest initiative
you can have to U.S. sovereign debt.
It is time Republicans and Democrats come together and do an
Operation Warp Speed on diabetes. Yes, there is really neat research
that is on the cusp of almost curatives for type 1, the autoimmune
pancreatic cells. But the political side is going to be really tough
for all of us because we are going to have to talk about type 2, which
has a substantial lifestyle component in it. It needs a discussion of
what we do in nutrition support as a country and what we do in our farm
bill as a country.
Mr. Speaker, if we care about people, if we really are going to come
here and give speeches about how minority communities and my Native
American communities from Arizona had such horrible outcomes during
COVID, are you willing to look at the comorbidities that were there
before COVID? It is diabetes.
{time} 1230
And it turns out, spending money on this management curative--and I
really want curative--turns out to be one of the most powerful things
you and I could ever do for U.S. sovereign debt going forward. It is 31
percent of just Medicare spending, and the numbers we are still working
on for Medicaid and other things.
So part of my other proposal is there are things we could do almost
overnight that have incredible impacts on the cost of healthcare in
this country; and here is one that I beg of us to start getting in our
lexicon.
Sixteen percent of the healthcare spending this year, over half a
trillion dollars, just this year, will be people not taking their meds
or taking them incorrectly. You have hypertension, you don't take your
meds, you have a stroke. You have high cholesterol, you don't take your
meds--and those things are cheap and inexpensive. Grandma is forgetful,
or we get busy in our lives.
And it turns out there are things where the pill top talks to your
phone. It talks to you. There are other ones where it dispenses the
pharmaceuticals to you.
It turns out the technology of getting people to take their
pharmaceuticals properly, if we would understand its impact, that is 16
percent of U.S. healthcare spending is just not taking our
pharmaceuticals properly. That is a half a trillion dollars.
Think about what you could do with a half a trillion dollars a year--
not over 10, not over 15; a year--and how much less misery you would
have in this country by people having strokes, getting sick.
This is not a revolution of trying to crush pharma or go after drug
prices. It is actually taking a look and using this crazy thing we
call, oh, yeah, math, and a calculator, and also technology.
And, yes, it doesn't work necessarily in our political lexicon. It is
a little harder to campaign on, but it happens to be factual.
The other thing I am going to beg of us--and Congressman Gohmert, I
appreciate him yielding to me. So I promise I will only do one or two
more boards.
I need us to think revolutionary. Before the pandemic, a Democratic
colleague, Mike Thompson, from California, a good guy, has worked
with me on telemedicine. It was a piece of legislation that
substantially was going to go nowhere because there were lots and lots
and lots and lots of lobbyists who hated it because it disrupts the
money.
But when the pandemic hit, our telemedicine bill became law. It
expires
[[Page H2918]]
when they declare the pandemic over. The expansion of reimbursement and
access to telemedicine goes away. We need to fix that.
But we also now need to understand what is telemedicine. Telemedicine
is the thing you can wear on your wrist; the thing you can wear on your
chest; the thing you blow into.
The technology is here to crash the price of healthcare. And all the
skeptics who attacked telemedicine before the pandemic, oh Grandma's
not going to be able to use; they don't know how to work FaceTime; no
one is going to want to make a phone call to a doctor or a healthcare
professional.
Turns out they were wrong. We have the last 18 months of proof. The
satisfaction rates are off the chart. A, we need to continue it, but we
need to expand the definition.
And then the other things the pandemic has brought us is things we
never thought of.
How about a little home kit?
These are available today. Actually, you can get them sent to your
house in a day. Blow into it. It tells you if you have COVID-19.
Well, if that exists for COVID, what would happen if I turned to you
and said, turns out we have the technology today where you can have a
medical lab in your medicine cabinet. You blow into it, it tells you if
you even have cancer cells or a virus or bacteria. It exists today.
We, as a body, need to legalize the disruptive technologies that
allow us to disrupt the price of healthcare if we are going to save
Medicare, save the country from the crushing debt. And, yes, we are
going to annoy a lot of incumbent investors and a lot of incumbent
businesses, but it is the right and moral thing to do.
We have a society that has become a country of oligopolies, and
Congress has become a protection racket. We protect incumbents; not
incumbent elected officials, incumbent business models.
Yet the disruption of the technology that is here today crushes the
misery of so many of our brothers and sisters out there who have
chronic conditions, that get sick.
We can crash the price of healthcare. We can make us healthier as a
society. We can take on, in that same breath, the crushing debt that is
here. And it is demographic. It is coming. No matter how many speeches
we give pretending we have a way around it, the only way around it is
we have got to change the actual price of healthcare.
I beg of us, we need to think differently because this place, often
our policy sets, sort of sounds like it is still the 1990s.
Mr. GOHMERT. Would the gentleman yield for a question?
Mr. SCHWEIKERT. Oh, I would love to yield.
Mr. GOHMERT. Mr. Speaker, I appreciate Mr. Schweikert's ongoing
analyses of the way we mismanage money around Washington, D.C. And I
was reading about proposals to go after the billionaires, the mega-
rich, and I recall what Ronald Reagan's economist, economic adviser,
Arthur Laffer, had said. Dr. Laffer said--he told a small group of us
years ago--if you want to produce money--of course, I am asking you
this because I have such great respect for your monetary analyses.
If you want to go after money, you want to produce tax revenue, the
one place you will never get it is going after the super-rich because
they are the only people in America who have the wherewithal to avoid
whatever tax you put on them.
What is your thought about that analysis?
Mr. SCHWEIKERT. I have actually been blessed to spend lots of time
with Professor Laffer and, actually, a couple of other folks who also
have Nobel Prizes in economics. They tolerate me.
Gilder, I consider a personal friend, if you really want to geek out.
First off, you have a conceptual problem and the left doesn't--we
have got to work with them to first admit we tax income. Property taxes
are really the only things we tax wealth. We tax your real estate
wealth.
So the leaked IRS data, which is a real problem if you want
confidence in a tax system that, once again, the IRS is back to being
weaponized. If you want to tax wealth, that is a different tax system,
and there are all sorts of games you can play with that.
You could take your wealth and say, all right, here is what I am
going to do. I am not going to take an income. I am going to borrow
from it.
So how do you tax it?
You have to conceptualize very, very different.
We also--we actually have the math, even though it may not happen in
the fiscal year you want it to. The ultrawealthy give away most of
their wealth. That has been a tradition in this country, particularly
for about a century and a half.
A tax system to work--and the gentleman and I have actually had a
side conversation about this. You have to find what is the most--or the
least disruptive tax that maximizes revenue, but also maximizes
economic expansion. So we are already seeing some data that the
Democrats' proposal on capital gains tax, actually, without changing
the basis, actually raises substantially less revenues.
Now how is that possible?
It is because you stop engaging in those economic activities.
So somewhere there is a sweet spot that maximizes revenues, but also
then maximizes economic activity. And I have an absolute fixation that
2018, 2019 were miracle years economically for the working poor in this
country. It is 2 years where, actually, income inequality genuinely
shrank; the broad based nature of the working poor getting dramatically
less poor.
That shouldn't be a partisan fight. It should be the bipartisan goal.
And the rich got richer, but not as fast as the poor got less poor.
And that is back to, in a weird way, a long answer to your question.
We need to have an honest debate of what maximizes revenues while
minimizing economic damage. And right now, just throwing out numbers,
and then throwing out fake--and I am being a little brutal on that--
fake models from the administration saying we are going to raise $4
trillion, we are going to cover all of our new spending, when all of
the other models--and very soon joint tax will score it and we will see
what the reality is.
But everyone it is scoring right now, the Dems are only getting about
half the revenues. And we have already seen the first analysis of the
corporate tax hike. It unemploys 1 million Americans in the first 24
months.
Mr. GOHMERT. That would be people who would pay income tax if they
didn't lose their jobs.
Mr. SCHWEIKERT. That didn't lose their jobs. And the harder part of
the scoring is--and this was one of the miracles of 2018 and 2019--the
Democrats repeatedly attacked the tax reforms from the end of 2017 and
the regulatory reforms.
But there were so many people working, and there was such vitality in
the economy that Medicare part A, the trust fund, grew in years. Social
Security grew in years because there were so many people paying their
payroll tax.
They didn't really pay income tax because they were part of the
population that had been removed from having to pay income tax because
we changed--but it turns out, if you actually, truly believe we have a
societal obligation to keep our promises, to keep Social Security, to
keep Medicare vibrant, it turns out you need an incredibly vibrant
economy for people to be working. You can do that also by a rational
tax policy instead of a punishing one.
Mr. GOHMERT. I know you would have----
Mr. SCHWEIKERT. I am sorry; it is a long answer, but it actually
has----
Mr. GOHMERT. No, no. I appreciate my friend from Arizona, Mr.
Schweikert's excellent analysis, because we do want to have a vibrant
economy. As the saying goes, it lifts all boats. And I really
appreciate the analysis on where the Medicare spending is going. That
is something we need to deal with.
I hear solutions of throwing money at the problem, but the real
problem is we don't have the proper money to throw at it because the
economy is not doing as it should.
And then I still hear our friends talk about the need to stop climate
change. Unfortunately, the climate has been changing since the Earth
ever appeared. And I have got a lot of friends out there. And I say
friends facetiously. People on the left--I am beginning to understand
that sarcasm is a tool that is appreciated by the intelligent. So the
left, the alt-left, they don't get it.
[[Page H2919]]
But this is an article from Ethan Hunt back in August of 2019. It
says: NASA admits that climate change occurs because of changes in
Earth's solar orbit; not because of SUVs and fossil fuel.
Well, it really can be a combination of things. But having found out
from the former NASA Director that the Moon's orbit is slightly
changing and the Earth's orbit is slightly changing and, as the term
was, it is becoming more squashed, well, that would mean there are
times when we are closer to the Sun and we are further away from the
Sun.
And I know there are some leftists at NASA that said: Oh, no,
changing Earth's orbit doesn't affect our climate at all.
And I would humbly submit that you don't have to be a rocket
scientist to understand that if you get closer to the Sun, or if you
get further away from the Sun, it is absolutely going to affect your
climate; just as more solar activity, more solar flares, they are going
to affect our climate. And there is not a lot that we can do about more
solar flares, solar activities, solar hot spots.
And I would sarcastically ask a question regarding the Bureau of Land
Management and National Forest Service, since they were going to be
spending so much time on climate change, and we had heard the Earth's
orbit was changing slightly and the Moon's orbit was changing slightly.
Could they do anything about that?
{time} 1245
For those who thought I was really challenging BLM, the Bureau of
Land Management and the National Forest Service, like they were going
to do something about the Earth's orbit, the National Forest Service
and Bureau of Land Management, they are not going to do anything about
the Earth's orbit because they can't. That is not their job.
Although there is some professor that thinks we might could adjust
our orbit, I think that is still yet to be arrived at scientifically.
It is an interesting concept, but I had no belief that it was about to
happen by the Bureau of Land Management and National Forest Service.
It is interesting to look back. I missed this article back in 2019.
It goes into much more detail about not only the changing orbit but the
changing tilt from time to time.
Then if you do more digging, you find out that actually, going back
millions--some say 56 million; some say billions--that the planet was
much hotter, and the planet's orbit was closer to the Sun. It has moved
back some, according to some, over the millions or billions, whatever
you believe, number of years.
I also want to mention this article from The Washington Times, June
16, 2021, Stephen Dinan, about ``Smartphone smugglers: How social media
is reshaping border crime.'' It is really intriguing. The author does
an amazing job of pulling these things together.
It is interesting. The drug cartels south of our border, apparently,
we are informed, have workers in every city in America. Of course, we
have heard before that the Border Patrol, ICE, the U.S. Government is
considered to be the logistics for the multibillion-dollar drug cartels
in Mexico because the drug cartels get them across illegally into the
United States. And I have seen people in the middle of the night, as
they are being processed by the Border Patrol, long lines of people. I
have watched them comparing addresses and sometimes switching
addresses.
They are the addresses that the drug cartels have given them as to
where the drug cartels want them to go work in order to earn enough
money, either drug trafficking, sex trafficking, or human trafficking,
to pay off the rest of their debt to the drug cartels for getting them
into the United States illegally. Many times, it is the U.S.
Government, which means U.S. taxpayers, that end up paying to send the
drug cartels' employees, or indentured servants, to the cities where
the drug cartels want them.
It is incredible that we, as a U.S. Government, are helping the drug
cartels in Mexico make the tens of billions of dollars that they use to
keep different levels of government corrupt in Mexico, that keep the
Mexican people from having the economy that would allow them to have
across-the-board wonderful homes, have wonderful jobs, and be one of
the top economies in the world. The corruption of the drug cartels
keeps Mexico from having their true place in the top economies in the
world.
They have some of the hardest-working people in the world. They have
incredible natural resources, a fantastic location--actually, better
than the U.S. because they are between North and South America, and
they are between the Pacific and the Atlantic. Incredible location,
hardworking people, great natural resources, good ports, but the
corruption that the American people are funding through their U.S.
Government and through the purchase of drugs that are massively coming
into this country--if somebody truly has compassion for the people of
Mexico and Central America, they would demand that our southern border
be secured, that we continue to provide visas in greater numbers than
any country in the world, but we secure the border so that we cut the
tens of billions of dollars from flowing to the drug cartels that then
corrupt and destroy lives, kill Americans with fentanyl and other drugs
that are pouring into our country. And the Mexican people would come to
the United States on vacation to spend the significant, wonderful money
they had earned without fear of the drug cartels and what they will do
to them if they are not subservient.
There was a time in Mexico when people who were wealthy knew the drug
cartels would normally leave them alone. There was a time in Mexico
when the drug cartels basically had a wink-and-nod agreement: Look, we
won't have attacks in tourist attractions because we know how important
that money is.
Well, all of those days are gone. If we were really a compassionate
neighbor, we would secure our border. We would stop drawing off people
with the potential to be the best citizens that Guatemala, Mexico,
other countries have, drawing them up here because of the corruption
below our border that we in the U.S. Government are helping fund.
It really needs to stop. But it is getting worse, much, much worse,
as we are seeing numbers that no one has seen in many, many years.
There has been so much appropriate concern about January 6 and what
happened that day. Unfortunately, we don't know all that happened that
day. There are some major questions that need to be answered.
We know that the former chief of the Capitol Police testified that
they got no intelligence from the FBI about potential violence on
January 6. There were lots of stories about people who were here at the
Capitol on January 6 that may have carried a Confederate flag, may have
had red on and MAGA or Trump.
But the Capitol Police had told me the day before: Hey, we have heard
there are going to be people who hate Trump that are going to be trying
to blend in, and there is going to be violence, and we are concerned
about it.
But the chief of the Capitol Police said they got no intel like that
from the FBI.
An article a few days ago from Revolver says: ``Unindicted Co-
Conspirators in the January 6 Cases Raise Disturbing Questions of
Federal Foreknowledge.'' That is June 14. I saw my friend Tucker
Carlson covered this last night.
But this is really disturbing, and this is something that I know from
my time here in Congress has disturbed Democrats and Republicans alike
across the aisle because we don't like to see government agents
stirring up trouble or find that there are criminal acts that would not
likely have occurred had not the Federal Government been participating,
whether they were actual agents or undercover agents or informants that
were working for the Federal Government.
But this is scary stuff. This is kind of third-world stuff. This is
not only third-world stuff, but this is like Putin kind of activity.
If there were Federal agents that were involved on January 6, we
really need to know what the FBI knew and when they knew it. Not only
that, we need to know how much participation did any of our Federal
friends, either at DOJ, FBI, or any of the intel community, what kind
of role were they playing.
[[Page H2920]]
There is information that came out about the effort to kidnap the
Michigan Governor, and it has been said that there were Federal agents
that were involved in that. It would seem, if you have 14 people that
are involved in a conspiracy to commit a crime, and over a third of
them, including people in leadership, are Federal agents, undercover
agents, or people that are working for a Federal entity, that we have
got some serious problems, and we have not done adequate oversight.
It disturbs me greatly that there was not more information
forthcoming from our Federal law enforcement intelligence, DOJ, than
was received here on Capitol Hill because, surely, if they had known
the level of planning by a small group to actually commit violence and
break into our U.S. Capitol, they would have been better prepared.
I know some of us have had extreme differences with the Speaker, but
I just feel sure if she had known the level of violence that was being
talked about and planned and monitored by DOJ and FBI, surely she would
not have allowed the Sergeant at Arms to turn down National Guard
support on January 6.
This article pulls from documents, legal documents, that have been
filed by the Federal Government in some of these different cases. This
article says: ``To address the matter directly in the following three
questions: In the year leading up to January 6 and during January 6
itself, to what extent were the three primary militia groups--the Oath
Keepers, the Proud Boys, and the Three Percenters--that the FBI, DOJ,
Pentagon, and network news have labeled most responsible for planning
and executing a Capitol attack on January 6 infiltrated by agencies of
the Federal Government, or informants of said agencies?''
Question 2: ``Exactly how many Federal undercover agents or
confidential informants were present at the Capitol or in the Capitol
during the infamous `siege,' and what roles did they play--merely
passive informants or active instigators?''
And, third: ``Finally, of all of the unindicted co-conspirators
referenced in the charging documents,'' the official Federal pleadings,
``of those indicted for crimes on January 6, how many worked as a
confidential informant or as an undercover operative for the Federal
Government--FBI, Army Counterintelligence, et cetera?''
{time} 1300
``If the narrative about January 6 does not conform to the questions
above, the American people will never learn the most important truth
about what January 6 is, and what kind of country they're really living
in.
``If it turns out the Federal Government did in fact have undercover
agents or confidential informants embedded within the so-called militia
groups indicted for conspiring to obstruct the Senate certification on
January 6, the implications would be nothing short of seismic.
Especially if such agents or informants enjoyed extremely senior-level
positions within such groups.''
And the thing is, like I said, they have got documentation, the
Federal pleadings that the United States Government has filed in some
of these cases, that really raised serious issues. Yeah, there is no
question, there were radical groups there, and those three seem to be
the most prominent. But from the pleadings from the Department of
Justice itself, it appears that they had significant presence and
participation in what went on.
We do need to see the 14,000 hours of security video, seeing Ashli
Babbitt killed by an officer standing off to the side. There were
officers in front of the window, but then there were officers on the
other side where Ashli was; and it appeared it was John Sullivan, a
Trump hater, that told them if they will move out of the way they won't
get hurt, and the officers appeared. Well, they moved out of the way,
and these guys broke through the glass.
And yet with all of the people that the FBI has sought information on
and put up pictures--and it appears they were probably wearing masks,
but there is another 14,000 hours of video. These guys were around in
the Capitol, around the Capitol. They didn't have their masks up at all
times. But it doesn't appear that the FBI has asked for assistance in
identifying those people that broke through the glass or that were
right there, at least when Ashli was shot in the neck and killed.
And that normally means if they are not asking for help in
identifying somebody that they know who they are--and maybe they are
person 1, person 2, person 3, person 15--that are referred to in the
pleadings of people that were working with the FBI or Federal
authorities of some kind.
But this is very unsettling stuff. It was bad enough to have our
Capitol attacked. As a former felony judge, I would have no problem
sending people to prison that broke into this Capitol, that literally
broke in or that did damage or that stole things here. There is no
place for that, and they do need to be severely punished.
But were some of those people doing those things working for the FBI?
Were they egged on by Federal authorities? Because it sure looks like
from some of these legal documents they filed and the masking of names
and referring to them as something other than their real names that we
have a serious problem with some of the people that were involved that
day that it appears were either working for Federal authorities or were
informants for Federal authorities and had leadership positions in
those groups and quite possibly, in some cases probably, helped to egg
them on.
This article says in many cases the unindicted co-conspirators appear
to be much more aggressive and egregious participants in the very so-
called conspiracy, serving as the basis for charging those indicted.
The question immediately arises as to why this is the case and forces
us to consider whether certain individuals are being protected from
indictment because they were involved in January 6 as undercover
operatives or confidential informants for a Federal agency.
So another place further on in the article it points out: ``This
would be far worse than the already bad situation of the government
knowing about the possibility of violence and doing nothing. Instead,
this would imply that elements of the federal government were active
instigators in the most egregious and spectacular aspects of January 6,
amounting to a monumental entrapment scheme used as a pretext to
imprison otherwise harmless protesters at the Capitol--and in a much
larger sense used to frame the entire MAGA movement as potential
domestic terrorists.''
There is so much more. Let's see, further on, I guess this is page 8/
26. ``In one of the plot's climactic scenes, in the main van driving up
to look at Governor Whitmer's vacation home''--and that is of course
the plot to kidnap the Governor--``three out of the five people in the
van--60 percent of the plot's senior leaders--were Federal agents and
informants.''
``FBI infiltrators comprised, at the very least''--talking about
overall in that plot--``26 percent of the plotters. That is, at least
five FBI operatives have been disclosed, against just 14 suspects
indicted.''
So looking at some of the pleadings by the DOJ themselves, but just
to give an idea of what we are dealing with, it says, ``On December 30,
2020, Watkins and Caldwell exchanged the following text messages:
``Watkins: Looks like we are green light to come to D.C. on the 6th.
The rally point still at your place?
``Caldwell: Not that I am aware. Have been contacted by no one.
Typical (Person one). Here's the rub: (Person two) and I will be in a
hotel within striking distance of the city starting on the 4th, so we
won't even be here. There will be some stuff going on during the 5th,
and we want to be a part of that whenever it shakes out.''
Person one and person two were apparently working for the Federal
authorities, some Federal agency.
Another place it references person two, person three, person one, and
they seem to be significant leaders in what is going on.
Another place: Person three--emailed person three several maps along
with the message. These maps will get you from the hotel into D.C.
I mean, person 10 checked into the Hilton Garden Inn in Vienna.
Person three, another reference.
Person 15 and person 20 are referenced.
These are people that they are covering up their names because they
are working for the Federal authorities.
[[Page H2921]]
If you look at some of the video on January 6, there were a lot of
people walking around. They had no business being in the Capitol. But
it is quite concerning that people that were extremely active at all
should have been or were working for Federal entities such that they
have to cover up their names because of their complicity with the
Federal authorities during that day.
So that is United States versus Caldwell, Crowl, and then there is
one Government's Opposition to Defendant's Motion for Reconsideration
of Detention.
They are holding some of these people still. Some with 23 hours, 24
hours a day in solitary. Some were just walking around, they did no
damage. They should not have come into the Capitol, but it remains to
be seen why the government has their stinger out so much for people no
matter how mild their participation on January 6.
And yet the biggest damage done to the United States in protests was
last summer, and those folks aren't being treated the same way that
others are.
So there are some very serious questions that need to be answered. We
do need the answers. We need to know how many Federal agents; how many
informants had given information to Federal agencies and why in the
world all of that information was not provided to people that needed to
protect Capitol Hill.
So we need an investigation. We don't need one that has an entire
Democrat staff. It needs to be truly bipartisan to get to the bottom of
just what happened that day and who caused it to happen.
With that, I yield back the balance of my time.
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