[Congressional Record (Bound Edition), Volume 151 (2005), Part 6]
[House]
[Pages 8344-8350]
[From the U.S. Government Publishing Office, www.gpo.gov]




                          KEEPING COURTS SAFE

  The SPEAKER pro tempore (Miss McMorris). Under the Speaker's 
announced policy of January 4, 2005, the gentleman from Texas (Mr. 
Gohmert) is recognized for 60 minutes.
  Mr. GOHMERT. Madam Speaker, I want to thank the gentleman from Texas 
(Mr. Poe). That was very inspirational. I was not sure rice farming

[[Page 8345]]

could be that inspirational; but after the gentleman from Texas talked 
about it, I feel better already.
  Madam Speaker, it is a pleasure to be before this body tonight and to 
address a number of things on a number of different issues. I have got 
to say, for those who have never been on this floor, it is a humbling 
experience. And I know that when on January 4, I sat right over there 
in that chair on the aisle and when the Speaker, the gentleman from 
Illinois (Mr. Hastert), said, ``Raise your right hand,'' and he 
repeated the oath that we were going to take, and I raised my right 
hand, for some reason, though I have been in here a few times before, I 
had never looked above the Speaker's head. And as I looked above his 
head, it kind of choked me up. Because above the Speaker's head are the 
words ``In God We Trust.'' And that goes back to the beginning of this 
Nation and to the fact that God has truly blessed America.
  Now, in that context I have a number of things I want to talk about, 
a number of things that people within my district there in east Texas, 
the first district of Texas, the historical district where the great 
American Sam Rayburn was Congressman, later Speaker. I realize that 
nowadays that will not happen to this Congressman from the First 
District of Texas, but it is humbling to follow those great footsteps 
of a great American.
  Wright Patman was my Congressman. He served in the first district. He 
was followed by a number of folks, like Sam Hall. He became a Federal 
judge after serving in Congress, just a great American. He made 
Marshall, Texas and all of us in east Texas proud.
  So as I began about filling this time as Congressman, these 2 years 
that the voters have so graciously allowed me, there are a number of 
things that we have undertaken and one of the things I want to mention 
is the bill that we filed last week. It is entitled The Secure Access 
to Justice and Court Protection Act of 2005.
  It does a number of things. We had looked around, and with my 
background of having been a district judge, having been a chief justice 
of a court of appeals, I have a great deal of sensitivity. And as we 
saw that the Federal judge's husband and mother in Illinois were killed 
as a result of her efforts and her duties as a judge, we realized 
something needed to be done, that it was rather tragic. As we saw what 
happened in Atlanta, Georgia, as we saw what happened in Tyler, Texas 
around the Smith County Courthouse where I served so many years as a 
judge. We realized something has to be done to make people realize that 
they can not be threatening the system that has come to mean so much. 
It is one of the few things that other countries do not have and that 
is a fair, equitable justice system.
  Madam Speaker, you have heard me, I am sure, get after the Supreme 
Court. I have been rather upset about some of the things and some of 
the reasoning that they have used in arriving at some of their 
decisions.

                              {time}  2200

  I will criticize judges with whom I disagree. I will criticize the 
Supreme Court. It is our American right to do that. Many have fought 
and died to give us that right, to secure that right, but when it comes 
to threats or violence, they have no place whatsoever in this country.
  Our justice system needs to be, if nothing else, the last bastion of 
civility, where people can come together. No matter what has occurred 
outside the courthouse, they can come together and know that we will 
take turns. We will sit down. We will talk in order. We will not talk 
over each other. We will give people the opportunity to have a fair 
trial, to have due process fulfilled. We will give people the right to 
have a speedy trial.
  All of these things are so critical, and that is why I am proud to 
have filed this bill, and we even had people talking about bipartisan 
support. I have the gentleman from New York (Mr. Weiner), a bipartisan 
cosponsor, staunch Democrat, but I am proud to have him as a cosponsor 
on this bill because this is serious, and there are a number of things 
that this bill does, and I wanted to briefly touch on some of those.
  For one thing, it creates stiffer penalties for individuals who harm 
or threaten to physically harm a Federal judge, their families, jurors, 
witnesses, victims or informants. And to give you an illustration of 
what we are looking at, currently if you were to assault or threaten 
someone who was a Federal judge, for example, you would be looking at 
zero years to 8 years prison time. Now, if it is a simple assault, it 
would be a maximum of 1 year, a misdemeanor; but assault resulting in 
any bodily injury at all would get you 5 years in prison or up to 20 
years in prison. Assault with a dangerous weapon, this is serious 
stuff, that could be anywhere, currently, zero to 20 years. However, if 
it was a dangerous weapon, under the bill that we filed, it would mean 
a minimum of 15 years in prison, a minimum of 15 years.
  I know there are some people that are against mandatory minimums. I 
never cared much for the Federal guidelines when they were imposed. 
They do have some purpose, but whatever the crime is, we have always 
had minimum punishments. We have always had maximum punishments. If it 
is a misdemeanor, the minimum would be a zero or the maximum up to a 
year, but we go from there and we try to set a range based on the 
severity of the penalty. This is what this bill does.
  If you threaten any of the items I have mentioned, then you would be 
looking currently at a maximum of 10 years. Well, now, you would be 
looking, if you threaten kidnapping, with a minimum of 30 years. If it 
is some other type of threat, then you would be looking at 5 to 20 
years, but we need to get the message out.
  One of the things I ran into as a judge was sometimes you have people 
in the State penitentiary who thought it might be a cute idea to 
threaten a judge or make some threat through the mail, which would 
invoke Federal jurisdiction, and therefore, maybe they could get moved 
from a State prison. They did not like to be in a Federal facility.
  Having been there, done that, knowing how some of those folks think, 
we want to address that, and that is addressed in this bill. Because if 
there is a threat and you were in prison at the time you make such a 
threat, you do not get moved immediately to a Federal facility. Nope, 
that is not the way it works.
  The way it works is, you will be tried, and if convicted, you will 
get a sentence, and it will be mandatorily stacked on top of the State 
sentence. It will not begin to run until the State sentence is 
complete. That is fair.
  We got a good suggestion from one of the Federal judge friends of 
mine with whom I consulted recently. He said one of the problems is 
people do not always know the consequences of what they are doing. He 
made the suggestion that if this bill passes, as I hope and urge my 
colleagues to help me do, if it passes, then he suggested we ought to 
put warnings in the State penitentiaries so that they understand, if 
they send out a letter that has got a threat in it, it is going to be 
stacked. There are so many urban legends that float around our State 
penitentiaries, and we need to get that straight by warning them 
exactly what will be the consequences of what they do.
  One of the problems we have had in this country, and I addressed it 
as a judge and I hope that this body will be more consistent in what it 
does, what it recommends and what it passes. But we have had trouble 
convincing people we are going to keep our word. If a person or a body 
has no word, has no integrity, then you have got nothing, there is no 
believability. And I have already experienced it. There are just a tiny 
few people here in this body who have no credibility with their peers. 
That is tragic. That is tragic. A good name is critical.
  So I think this, if it is passed, would let criminals know these are 
the consequences, and then we follow up and make sure that, by golly, 
they are the consequences.
  There are some other things that are addressed in here as well. We 
would have protection for Federal judges and

[[Page 8346]]

Federal attorneys, participants in Federal proceedings, from the filing 
of false and fictitious liens. In Texas, we had a problem with that. A 
number of us, some of my close friends, our State Supreme Court chief 
justice had liens that were filed.
  We had a renegade group there who set up a storefront operation, and 
they manufactured their own summons, their own type of court system. 
They claimed that Texas was still an independent Nation, that they were 
not truly a State, and therefore, they were claiming jurisdiction. So 
they would send out some notice that you were being sued in their 
court, and obviously, people would not show up. So they would secure a 
default judgment for millions of dollars, take this actually fair-
looking judgment down and file it with the county clerk. Well, now, it 
has asserted a lien, a cloud upon the title of anyone such as the chief 
justice there in Texas.
  So the good legislators in Texas addressed that, and the way they did 
it was by making it a crime to file a false or fictitious lien. That 
needs to be done in the Federal system. We have Federal judges who are 
now having that very thing done to them, and it needs to be addressed, 
and this bill will do that.
  We would also make it a Federal crime to publicly distribute certain 
Federal officials' personal information over the Internet. There are 
apparently Web sites that encourage the killing of judges, the killing 
of court officials, the killing of lawyers. This is just 
unconscionable, and as Americans and as Members of Congress, we should 
not give in or look the other way. We need to take it head-on and let 
people know this will not stand; we will fight it.
  It also ensures the coordination, on a continuing basis, between the 
U.S. Marshal Service and the Administrative Office of the United States 
Courts regarding the judicial branch's security requirements. There 
have been problems, and we need to have better coordination between 
some U.S. marshals. We have got a very good U.S. marshal in the eastern 
district. John Moore is doing a good job. He coordinates with the 
Federal courts, but that needs to be done better around the country, 
and this bill will require that.
  Another problem that has never been addressed, and it has come to 
light as a result of the Oklahoma City bombing, of 9/11, there was no 
provision that would allow, in the event of an emergency, a Federal 
judge to transfer venue based on just an emergency, and so that needs 
to be addressed. We have addressed it in this bill. In the event of an 
emergency situation, rather than having an Oklahoma City bombing stop 
all trials because they cannot be moved beyond the jurisdiction, or a 
New York City bombing where the city perhaps it could have been where 
they were under a greater threat still, so much unknown, would allow 
judges to move to another district, even another State if necessary, 
whatever is necessary in order to secure a fair and impartial 
conclusion to the trial that is before the court. So this would also 
address that as well.
  There was a provision that was added at the request of others 
regarding the appointment of U.S. marshals. I am getting a lot of flack 
from the Sheriffs Association, and we may need to look at that, but we 
will do that and we will take a look.
  We have had a hearing on this already. We should be looking at a 
markup next week. So things are looking good, and I appreciate the 
leadership allowing us to do that.


                   United Nations Accountability Act

  Mr. GOHMERT. Madam Speaker, I do have another bill that has not yet 
been filed. We are in the process of gathering sponsors for this bill, 
and I have simply entitled it the United Nations Accountability Act. It 
is high time we did have some accountability from the U.N.
  So what this bill does, it just simply says, and I can just read the 
first prohibition. It says simply, United States assistance may not be 
provided to a country that opposed the position of the United States in 
the United Nations. It goes on to define that as meaning that, opposed 
the position of the United States means that the country's votes in the 
United Nations General Assembly during the most recent session of the 
General Assembly, and in the case of a country which is a member of the 
United Nations Security Council, the country's votes in the Security 
Council during the most recent session were the same as the position of 
the United States less than 50 percent of the time, using for this 
purpose the overall percentage of voting coincidences set forth in the 
annual report submitted to Congress pursuant to section 406 of the 
Foreign Relations Authorization Act, fiscal years 1990 and 1991. That 
is just the date of the act.
  Each year, on March 31, there is a requirement for a new report to be 
filed, and in that report, it sets out the votes of all the member 
nations. And from that, Madam Speaker, you would be shocked, I imagine, 
to know but from that we have gleaned the following information. We 
have also gone through and pulled information, most recent we could 
find, as to how much U.S. aid is being given to other country.
  I want to make this clear. I believe with all my heart every nation 
is a sovereign nation. Every nation has the right to make its own 
decisions. In the event a nation becomes a threat and threatens those 
around it, as Nazi Germany did, as Mussolini's Italy did, as Saddam 
Hussein's Iraq did, then it becomes necessary for self-defense. In 
Texas, it is just plain old self-defense. In the event it is reasonably 
necessary to protect yourself, it is self-defense. We have defended 
this world and our country, and we have done it well, and that is a 
different matter.
  Barring the situation like that, every country gets to make their own 
decisions. However, this is the United States of America. We do not 
have to pay people to hate us. We do not have to pay people to vote 
against us at every turn in the U.N. They want to do that; that is 
fine. What this bill says is you want to vote against us all the time 
in the U.N., you want to be a constant burr in our saddle, you want to 
cause trouble for this country, fine, but we do not have to pay you to 
do it.
  Running down some of the countries, do you know, Madam Speaker, the 
nation of Egypt, great rich history in that nation, Egypt; apparently 
U.S. aid is around $1.86 billion and the percentage of the time that 
Egypt has voted with the United States in this last session that we 
just got the report from in March, 8.5 percent of the time. They are 
voting against us 91.5 percent of the time and we are paying them $1.86 
billion.
  Let me mention also before I go through some of the other highlights 
of nations that were on this list, another thing about this assistance 
is defined in my bill. The term ``United States assistance'' means 
assistance under chapter 4 of part II of the Foreign Assistance Act of 
1961 that relates to the Economic Support Fund. Under chapter 5 of part 
II of that act, it relates to international military education and 
training and also the foreign military financing program account under 
section 23 of the Arms Export Control Act.
  In other words, we are not going to send you money, we are not going 
to take your people and teach them how to fight and how to fight us 
while you are voting against us and actually showing yourself to be a 
threat to the very things that we hold dear.

                              {time}  2215

  You want to be just a pain, you want to be a threat, that is your 
business, but we are not going to pay you to do that. We are not going 
to train your military people, we are not going to train your pilots, 
you are just going to get cut off.
  Now, I also want to point out that under this bill, if it were passed 
and signed into law as is, it would not take effect until after the 
March 31, 2006, report comes out from the U.N. By that, it would give 
countries plenty of time to understand the consequences of their acts. 
Just as I talked about in the prior bill, there are consequences to our 
actions. There need to be. And people need to know what those 
consequences are. So with this bill, we will give them plenty of time. 
They are going to know every time they take a vote that it is going to 
cost them. It is their choice, but we do not have to pay

[[Page 8347]]

them to be disruptive to what we believe in.
  Colombia, for example, they get $574 million. They voted with us 10.6 
percent of the time in the U.N. in this last year. Jordan, $559 million 
we have sent to them. They are much more supportive than Colombia. They 
voted with us 16 percent of the time in the last session. Sudan, $435 
million. Actually closer to $346 million. They voted with us 13.3 
percent of the time. We have Pakistan. They vote with us less than 10 
percent of the time, and we have provided $400 million in aid, just in 
financial assistance alone. Ethiopia, $354 million. They vote with us 
13.8 percent of the time. Liberia. We give them $224 million, and 13.6 
percent of the time they vote with us. Uganda, $182 million.
  I mean, this really testifies to the generosity of the soul of 
America. Generosity is one thing, and I am proud we live in a generous 
Nation; but stupidity when coupled with generosity is not necessarily a 
real asset. In fact, I was struck. The dean of one of the schools at 
Yale, just a delightful, brilliant man, was telling about being in a 
cab, I believe it was in Chicago, and the cab driver was a foreigner. 
And they got to talking, and since this dean was not originally from 
the United States they got to talking about the attributes of America 
or the problems in America. And as they discussed America's strengths 
and weaknesses, the cab driver made this comment, and I love it, and I 
hope that my fellow Members will remember this. It is a great 
observation from someone from another country. He said, America is 
particularly lacking in the singular vice of jealousy.
  We are a generous country, but we are not a jealous country. Is that 
not a great observation from someone who is not from this country? When 
you really get to know the heart and soul of America, we are not a 
jealous country. When we see another country do well, when we see 
another country obtaining freedom and stretching their wings to fly, 
this country rushes to their support. We applaud them. We help them 
however we can. And it makes me so proud to be a part of a Nation that 
is like that, a Nation that is particularly lacking in the singular 
vice of jealousy. That is America.
  Even so, though we are not a jealous Nation, we do not have to pay 
people to hate us. We are paying people to do that very thing. Madam 
Speaker, one of the things I ran on and one of the things that drove me 
off the bench was that I got sick and tired of seeing case after case 
where we were paying people to do what was bad for the country. On the 
other hand, we were penalizing people for doing what was good for the 
country.
  A good example: the marriage penalty. I have heard people talk for so 
long about we need to fix the marriage penalty. Well, you know what, it 
is real easy. You want to fix the marriage penalties? Even under the 
existing code, all you would have to do is say if you are married and 
both are working, instead of having thousands of dollars in penalties 
because you did the wonderful thing of becoming married, you can file 
married jointly or you can file as two single individuals. And in that 
case, hey, it is whichever one is better for you. Boom, there goes the 
marriage penalty; it is not a problem any more. We do not have to keep 
adjusting formulas, it is just fixed, and we no longer penalize people 
for doing the right thing.
  I have heard elderly couples talk before about they wish they could 
get married. They always felt like it was living in sin to be living 
together and not married, but they could not afford to get married 
because the government would cut some of their Social Security if they 
ended up coming together as husband and wife. Well, how tragic is that? 
We are paying people to violate their own sense of morals, and this 
country should not be about doing that. Likewise, we should not be 
about paying countries to do what hurts us.
  Going down the list a little more. Peru. We give Peru $180 million-
plus. They vote with us 25 percent of the time. We have Bolivia here, 
$155 million-plus. They vote with us 23 percent of the time. And if 
somebody is listening and I touch on one of your favorite countries, or 
maybe your homeland, and you think, gee, I do not like the way he is 
talking about my country, it is like Sergeant Friday used to say, ``It 
is just the facts, ma'am. Just the facts.''
  We have Kenya. We give them $142 million. They vote with us 12.5 
percent of the time. Serbia, Montenegro, $134 million. Now, they do 
much better. They are with us, looks like 42.6 percent of the time. 
Haiti. We have sent our troops, we have sent people to fight on their 
behalf, we have given them money, $132 million most recently; and they 
vote with us 18 percent of the time. They really appreciate all we have 
done for them, obviously.
  India, $128 million, 20 percent of the time. And this is just the 
U.S. aid. This is just the direct aid. There are probably all other 
kinds of other sources we would have to look into. This is just the 
direct financial aid that my staff has been able to dig up. And I do 
appreciate Mike and Ashley and Brian doing such hard work on this.
  We have Indonesia, $125, right at $126 million. Boy, they appreciate 
so much our generosity. They vote with us 8.3 percent of the time in 
the U.N. We have Ukraine. I really think the world of Ukraine. These 
are independent-minded people. When I was on an exchange program over 
in Ukraine back in 1973, they struck me a lot like being Texans. They 
are very independent-minded. They just had a can-do attitude. We can 
make things happen. Ukraine, I am shocked to say, this great nation of 
Ukraine, it voted with us 28.6 percent of the time and we gave them 
$113 million.
  Now, at this point I would like to point out there is an exception in 
here in this bill, because we know a country can have a change of 
regime. And if they have a change of regime, and the new regime is 
friendly to us, then we ought to be able to help them at that point. So 
there is a provision here that says that if the Secretary of State 
determines that since the beginning of the most recent session of the 
General Assembly there has been a fundamental change in the leadership 
and the policies of the government of a country to which the 
prohibition in section A applies, and the Secretary believes that 
because of that change the government of that country will no longer 
oppose the position of the United States in the U.N., then the 
Secretary may exempt that country from the prohibition that is in this 
act.
  So that song Santana did, ``You Have Got to Change Your Evil Ways,'' 
of course it talked about ``Jean and Joan and who knows who,'' but this 
is talking about these countries. They have to change their evil ways. 
And if they do, then we will start helping them again. We see a regime 
change, the Secretary of State certifies that they are going to be on 
our side now, we want to help them all we can. The fact is, we want to 
help all these countries. All these countries should be great to help, 
but as long as they are doing what they can to undermine all the good, 
the truth, the liberty, the freedom, the things that we hold dear, as 
long as they are trying to undermine those things, we should not be 
paying the billions of dollars that we are to help them do that, to 
undermine our great ideas of freedom and democracy.
  I do not know if you can see, but, Madam Speaker, this is a two-page 
list, fine print going down here of all the people we are giving money 
to that vote with us less than 50 percent of the time. You have the 
Philippines, $111 million, 13 percent of the time they vote with us.
  Russia, $107 million we have given them. And some people think Russia 
is the whole big former Soviet Union. Russia was one of 15 states. I 
was intrigued when I was in the former Soviet Union back in 1973. Most 
people in America knew so little about the Soviet Union. They knew all 
about us, and that was most interesting. They knew we had 50 States; 
they could talk about George Washington. You talk to Americans, they 
did not know much of anything about the Soviet Union.
  We also have South Africa. Most folks felt like South Africa was now 
on our side. Freedom-loving people in

[[Page 8348]]

America went to bat for South Africa. It was so unfair with the 
disparity and the treatment between the races. Under God's plan, as the 
Declaration of Independence said, under the Creator's plan all people 
should be equal. They were created that way, and by his grace should be 
that way. But, unfortunately, in this world of sorrow, it requires 
people fighting and dying to secure that right that God gave us. But 
here is South Africa. We give them nearly $100 million. They vote with 
us 11.4 percent of the time.
  Bangladesh. Of course, we remember how generous not just the American 
Government was in times of suffering, of flood, our people poured out 
their hearts, they poured out their finances. And Bangladesh, they vote 
with us 8.6 percent of the time.
  Angola, $91.75 million in aid we have given to Angola, and they vote 
with us 17 percent of the time.
  I realize if there is anybody left watching C-SPAN that they maybe 
dozed off. I have been a very restful thing for them to have happen 
tonight, and I am pleased I could do that. The trouble is, this is 
serious stuff. This is our hard-earned tax dollars that are getting 
poured down the drain, because some of these countries have shown their 
contempt for freedom, for liberty, again for the things we hold dear. 
They are taking our money and pouring it down the drain, and feeding 
the egos of dictators and people that should not even be touching the 
money. Our taxpayers deserve this money. It is their money, and they 
should not have their money paid to countries that are going to stick 
it in our face.
  So, Madam Speaker, if you do not mind, I am just going to continue 
down this list. We have Georgia, the great state of Georgia. I remember 
when I was in Ukraine, somebody told me about the fellow walking along 
the street in Georgia. And the Georgians like to use their hands all 
the time when they talk. So this guy was walking along carrying a 
watermelon, and a tourist came up to the Georgian, and this is in the 
Asian Georgia, not our U.S. Georgia, but he came up to the fellow 
carrying the watermelon and asked him, can you tell me how to get to 
the town square?

                              {time}  2230

  The Georgian said, ``Will you hold my watermelon?''
  The tourist said, ``Sure.''
  He gave the watermelon to the tourist and said, ``I do not know.'' He 
takes his watermelon and goes on. They like to use their hands. They 
have a great sense of humor. We have given them $90 million at least in 
aid. They have done a little better. They voted with us 36.7 percent of 
the time. Under this bill if it is passed, they will have to do a 
little better. If they want to keep having us contribute, because it is 
what it is. It is a contribution to a country that has nothing but 
disdain for us.
  I am not talking about the people. I admire the people in the former 
Soviet Union, but you cannot admire or feed a government that does not 
believe in freedom and only believes in taking the freedoms of its 
people. Now Georgia has made great strides, but there is more to be 
done. We do not have to contribute to a government that can not stand 
us.
  Zambia, we have given them huge amounts of aid, and 12.7 percent of 
the time they vote with us.
  Nigeria, $80 million, and they vote with us 14.9 percent of the time.
  Armenia, $79 million, nearly $80 million just in direct foreign aid, 
26.9 percent of the time they vote with us.
  Mozambique, right at $80 million, and 10 percent of the time they 
vote with us.
  Tanzania, $77 million, 11.9 percent of the time they vote with us.
  Eritrea, $72 million, 10.6 percent of the time is all they vote with 
us.
  Here is a shocker. Here is a real shocker. We hear so much talk about 
our friends, our neighbors, that we should be supporting each other and 
helping each other and I agree with that, we should be good neighbors; 
but that neighbor thing is a two-sided thing when it comes to national 
policy. I believe in the teachings of Jesus, the golden rule is 
critical. We should be loving our neighbor, but I love my children. I 
love my three daughters, Katy, Caroline and Sarah with all my heart. 
But when they acted up, I was not going to reward that, I was not going 
to give positive reinforcement to negative activity. That is just 
ridiculous. Simply loving and caring about your neighbor does not 
necessarily mean you contribute to their delinquency.
  Here the shocker: We give in direct financial aid alone, no telling 
how much else, Mexico, $76.8 million and they vote with us 23 percent 
of the time in the United Nations. Unbelievable.
  According to the most recent report from the U.N., 23 percent of the 
time is all that Mexico sees fit to support our positions for freedom, 
for liberty, to avoiding suppression, supporting human rights, 23 
percent of the time. It is incredible, just amazing. And the thing is 
many of us know many Mexican citizens. These are good people. They love 
families.
  I was recently near where a Hispanic family reunion was taking place 
and it was under a big park pavilion, and I thought this is the way 
America used to be, families came together for family reunions. I see 
great hope for America with Hispanics in America with strong religious 
convictions. These things bode well for America, but it does not matter 
when you are looking at a country that votes against us so much. That 
is not a very friendly thing to do.
  The Congo, $71 million, they vote against us 27 percent of the time.
  Here with Bosnia we have done so much. So many of our American 
soldiers under the Clinton administration went over there to help out. 
We are still giving them millions of dollars in financial aid. Bosnia, 
they see fit to vote with us 42 percent of the time.
  For the record, I have my laptop sitting here and I have not used it 
for the entire time I have been speaking.
  Ghana, $59 million and they voted with us 14.5 percent of the time.
  Ecuador, $55 million, they voted with us 15.7 percent of the time.
  Cambodia, $53 million, 11.8 percent of the time they vote with us.
  Honduras, $50 million, they voted with us 23.9 percent of the time.
  Turkey, we did such a favor for Turkey of eliminating such a threat 
on their southern border, they would not allow us to utilize their 
facilities to come in from the north. Our friends in Turkey, we still 
give them millions of dollars in direct financial assistance, they vote 
with us 34.8 percent of the time.
  Guatemala, $50 million plus, they vote with us 23.9 percent of the 
time.
  Rwanda, $50 million plus, and they vote with us 11.3 percent of the 
time.
  Macedonia, $49.67 million, and they vote with us 42.4 percent of the 
time.
  Azerbaijan, $49 million plus, they vote with us 11.5 percent of the 
time.
  Here is an amazing statistic. With all of the sacrifices that we have 
made, DPR of Korea, $45.7 million we are still giving in direct 
financial aid, they vote with us 3.3 percent of the time. And we are 
still giving them $45.7 million. This is DPR of Korea, but still, we 
are giving them $45 million to vote with us 3 percent of the time.
  Nepal, $45.31 million, they vote with us 12.7 percent of the time.
  Nicaragua, $45 million and they vote with us 26 percent of the time.
  El Salvador, $44 million, they vote with us 24.3 percent of the time.
  Let me see. We have Mali, $43 million, and 14 percent of the time 
they vote with us.
  We do a little better with Bulgaria and Romania. We give them each 
over $42 million, and they vote with us 44.1 percent of the time. They 
can step that up if they want to continue, if we can get this bill 
passed.
  Kazakhstan, nearly $42 million, and they vote with us 10.9 percent of 
the time.
  Cyprus, we give them millions, and 40 percent of the time they vote 
with us.
  Uzbekistan, $38-plus million, and 12.5 percent of the time they vote 
with us.
  Lebanon, $36.7 million, and they vote with us 8.7 percent of the 
time.
  Madagascar, nearly $36 million, they vote with us 12.7 percent of the 
time.
  Poland, we have had such camaraderie with Poland. We were so proud of 
their efforts, once again going back to

[[Page 8349]]

what the foreign cab driver said, never an ounce of jealousy. We were 
so proud of what they accomplished, the way they threw off the shackles 
that bound them and grabbed onto freedom. Poland, we are still 
contributing direct financial aid, $35 million, basically, and 45.7 
percent of the time they vote with us.
  Senegal, $44.3 million, and they vote with us 13.3 percent of the 
time.
  The Dominican Republic, we give them $34 million in direct aid, and 
they vote with us 23.5 percent of the time.
  Yemen, $33 million, and they vote with us 8.6 percent of the time.
  Brazil, $28 million, they vote with us 14.9 percent of the time.
  Republic of Moldova, $27.65 million, they vote with us 36.7 percent 
of the time.
  Namibia, right at $27 million, 15.1 percent of the time they vote 
with us.
  Burundi, $26 million, 9.8 percent of the time they vote with us.
  Oman, $26 million we give them, and they vote with us 9.9 percent of 
the time.
  Sri Lanka, $26 million, they vote with us 12.9 percent of the time.
  Croatia, $25.7 million in direct financial aid, they vote with us 
42.6 percent of the time.
  Skipping down, Jamaica, $24 million we give them in direct aid, 12.5 
percent.
  Some people go that is not that much, $24 million, $25 million, we 
are talking about taxpayer after taxpayer, hard working hours, factory 
workers, people working outside and earning a living by the sweat of 
their brow. We are talking about so many of those type people having 
their entire taxation going to a nation that cannot stand us and what 
we stand for.
  Vietnam, we are still giving them $22 million, and they vote with us 
6 percent of the time.
  Ireland. This was surprising to me, good friend, but they only vote 
with us 42.1 percent of the time.
  Cuba, apparently we are somehow giving $21.37 million to Cuba. They 
vote with us 7.4 percent of the time.
  Chad, $21 million, and they vote with us 22.7 percent of the time.
  Morocco, right at $21 million, and they vote with us 11.4 percent of 
the time.
  Panama, $18 million, and they vote with us 23 percent of the time.
  Zimbabwe, $15 million, and they vote with us 7.2 percent of the time.
  Down to Mongolia, $14 million, they vote with us 14.5 percent of the 
time.
  The old Burma, we give $13 million and they vote with us 11.8 percent 
of the time.
  Paraguay, $12 million, they vote with us 24.7 percent of the time.
  Tunisia, $12 million, and they vote with us 10 percent of the time.
  Botswana, $11.66 million, and they vote with us 12.5 percent of the 
time.
  You know, I hold in my heart nothing but hope that these countries 
will support the same ideals and the same abstract notions of love and 
freedom and liberty and help for others that the United States does, 
but I am telling Members, we do not need to pay them to be a thorn in 
our side and disrupt the things that we hold so dear. It has been such 
a great privilege to serve in this Chamber and to learn a little more 
about this Capitol Building as I have been here. So many people come up 
from back home, whether it is Marshall or Hallsville or Gilmer or 
Jefferson or Center, Carthage, Hemphill, we have had them come from all 
over my district. St. Augustine, Henderson, and from all of the towns 
around those, Nacogdoches, folks have been up here in numbers. It has 
been great and it has been wonderful taking them around this great 
Capitol of ours.
  But I have learned a lot of things, Madam Speaker. I have learned 
just a little more about how wonderfully God has blessed this country, 
this Nation from its beginning. Going through the Capitol, I was 
reading this in National Geographic and some other sources.

                              {time}  2245

  I knew about the War of 1812, learned about it from great teachers I 
had back in Mount Pleasant, Texas. And I just assumed that at some 
point our forces rallied together and drove the British troops out back 
in 1814 after they had taken the Capitol.
  As it turned out, in the War of 1812, when British troops came in 
here, there is one story about troops coming up the spiral staircase 
and coming into the House Chamber and the commander coming to the 
Speaker's chair. Obviously, Madam Speaker, it was not this chair, but 
it was back in Statuary Hall, what we call Statuary Hall now. Back at 
that time it was not Statuary Hall. It was the House of Representatives 
Chamber.
  Legend had it he got up there and said, What shall we do with this 
den of Yankee democracy? And the British soldiers screamed, Burn it. So 
they pulled the chairs and the desks into the middle of the floor. They 
set them on fire. They did so at the other end of the Capitol in the 
Senate Chamber, and they burned. But as the information that I had 
gleaned indicated, all of the public buildings, virtually all of them, 
had been burned except for one, and that later became the temporary 
House of Congress while they were rebuilding.
  But the only reason that what is now Statuary Hall and the other side 
of the rotunda where the Senate met did not burn and collapse like most 
of the buildings had was because a rainstorm came up that night and it 
put out the fire.
  Like I said, I assumed that American forces eventually regathered 
their strength, came through Washington, and drove out the British 
troops. But according to the history that I could find since I have 
been here, indication was that the day after the rain, a huge windstorm 
came like nobody there had experienced before. It was blowing British 
cannon off their mounts. It was given credit for killing as many as 30 
British soldiers. There was an explosion of the British gunpowder 
stored. The British fled Washington, D.C. of their own.
  Insurance companies these days have a provision in their policies 
that would say these types of things were probably acts of God, and I 
would have to agree. It was by these acts of God that the British 
troops were driven from Washington, D.C. It was because of these acts 
of God that we secured this Capitol, we rebuilt it and made it even 
better.
  I love the Capitol dome. That was not the original design. The dome 
designed before, I think, was not nearly as beautiful. It was lower. It 
was not nearly as artful as this one. It is a design that now has 
really become the symbol of freedom and democracy around the world, and 
I am proud to be part of that.
  It is interesting that in the center, in the rotunda, that area was 
originally wood, as I understood it; and the wood part had burned. 
Apparently, fortunately for me and fortunately for my colleagues if 
they like the new dome, the wooden part burned and they had to 
reconstruct that. And when they did that after that fire in 1814, there 
were those who wanted to do like some of the European buildings and 
have a great icon of grace and dignity for that country buried in the 
middle, have their remains in the middle. They wanted to do that with 
George Washington's remains. He had been buried at Mt. Vernon. That was 
in his will. They wanted to finish with a hole in the floor out there 
in the middle of the Capitol so people could file by and look down 
below and see where the remains of George Washington were. But as it 
turned out, they eventually supposedly convinced Martha Washington to 
let them move his remains but she passed away before his remains were 
moved, and so a great nephew that took over as administrator said, 
George Washington said in his will he wanted to be buried in Mt. 
Vernon; you are not moving him. They eventually filled in the floor, 
and so George Washington's remains are not buried there. We have a 
solid floor across the center of the Capitol.
  George Washington, what a man he was. I heard a speaker recently, a 
college professor, say so many of the third world countries really are 
right where we were in the early days of this Nation. And I asked him 
to show me their George Washingtons, to show me the men who had power 
that were willing to walk away from it for the sake of liberty of the 
whole Nation. Some, like South Africa, had such leaders. Most

[[Page 8350]]

have not. That is what has separated this Nation and made it great.
  George Washington did not really want to leave the Army. He really 
did not want to preside over the Constitutional Convention. Each time 
he was convinced to do that because he was the man for such a time as 
that. And had he not been there and not served and not sacrificed, then 
we would not have had this Nation.
  He really did not want to be President, but his fellow citizens pled 
with him. He served as President. But there is a picture in the rotunda 
of him giving up his commission, giving up the power. That just did not 
happen back in the 1700s. A man who led the military and won a great 
military battle turns in his saber, turns in the power, and walks away 
and goes back to being a farmer. It is extraordinary when we think 
about it for the time. Too many have come to accept such grace.
  When we think about the selflessness during those times of other 
people like Governor Thomas Nelson, Governor of the great State of 
Virginia, he had a beautiful estate, a mansion there in Yorktown. The 
war took its toll on his health and his estate. In the final battle 
there at Yorktown, high-ranking enemy officers were staying in his 
mansion, and he noticed that his soldiers were firing at Yorktown, but 
they were avoiding his mansion. And he asked them, Why are you avoiding 
firing at the mansion? You know there are enemy troops there in my 
home.
  They said, Sir, it is out of respect for you basically. It is your 
home. We did not want to do that.
  He said, There are enemy troops in there. Fire on my home.
  They did. They killed many of the enemy. It helped them win the 
battle. But that is the kind of selflessness that has allowed us to win 
our independence and gain the Nation that we all have come to know and 
love.
  As I go through some of the people in my life that taught me, like 
B.J. McDowell, who was a high school teacher, I built a pole barn with 
him one summer. A great American who had been a Marine in the Pacific. 
At one point he had shrapnel that ripped off his entire calf, and I saw 
the scar where they later sewed it back on. But he is a brilliant man, 
tough as a bulldog. He went out and the hospital ship was out in the 
water, and they were taking boatloads of people. But when he saw how 
terribly wounded others were, he could not take a position, he said, on 
those boats to go to the hospital ship. Even though he was in the 
horrible pain, he just waded out in the water so the flies would stay 
off. He had the rest of his calf in his hand, and he waited until all 
of the more serious people had been taken. The guy loved his fellow 
man. He loved America. He was a great American.
  There was a guy from Winedale, Texas, who was telling me about 
landing at Sicily in the early morning hours. The lights were bright; 
he could have read a book if he had one in his landing craft. And as 
they got closer to the shore, bullets started bouncing back and forth 
across the front of the landing craft ramp. And all the men looked at 
each other because they figured, when the ramp goes down, we all die. 
They had been trained to come out, run abreast toward the beach as 
quickly as possible. The guy in the front of the landing craft said, 
Look guys, it sounds like from the way those bullets are going across 
here, if we run out abreast, we are all dead men. So why do we not try 
something different. Every man line up behind the man in front of him, 
grab the belt of the man in front of him, let us try going out single 
file, and I will go out first.
  He went first. He was killed. But most of the men in his landing 
craft made it. That is the kind of selflessness that people exhibited 
to make this country great.
  One of my classmates, Eddie Johnson, a singing cadet there at Texas 
A&M, a great guy, he was flying a jet down in the panhandle of Florida. 
His plane malfunctioned. He was told to eject, to punch out, save 
himself. He said, If I do, this plane is going to kill a lot of 
civilians down below me. I am going to try to get this plane to the 
beach.
  He did. He saved a lot of lives but lost his own. That kind of 
selflessness, again, is what made America great.
  On September 11, Madam Speaker, there was an act of mean hatred by 
people possessed with evil intentions. But I am telling my colleagues 
there is one thing that is stronger than that evil hatred for so many 
innocent people, and that is love. That is love. And Americans have had 
it. We have had love for our fellow man. We want to help those who need 
help, and it is an honor and a privilege to have built on that.
  Madam Speaker, it has been an honor and privilege to be here and to 
speak about these things.

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