[Congressional Record (Bound Edition), Volume 154 (2008), Part 2]
[House]
[Pages 2201-2202]
[From the U.S. Government Publishing Office, www.gpo.gov]




                        THE MILITARY FREEDOM ACT

  The SPEAKER pro tempore. Under a previous order of the House, the 
gentleman from Texas (Mr. Gohmert) is recognized for 5 minutes.
  Mr. GOHMERT. Mr. Speaker, it is a privilege to follow my friend, a 
former judge also, from Texas, Mr. Poe; and he nailed it on the head. 
And I tell you, following up on that is another travesty going on this 
week, and that's why I just filed a bill in the last 15 minutes called 
the Military Freedom Act.
  We are endowed by our creator with liberty. But like any inheritance, 
we only get to keep it if we are willing to fight for it. That is 
precisely why so many of our uniformed military members have laid down 
their lives. And the plain fact is that there is no more important 
purpose for the Federal Government than to provide for the common 
defense.
  In order to do that, there's got to be a military. But we have all of 
the rights of freedom of speech. Even those rights have limits, such as 
when you can't yell ``fire'' in a crowded theater. There is, however, 
no right to trespass, there is no right to obstruct lawful ingress and 
egress into a military recruiter's office. The City of Berkeley, 
California, chose not to protect the Marines' lawful right to ingress 
and egress. They instead chose to aid and abet lawbreakers by 
encouraging them and passing an ordinance to make it easier to violate 
the Marines' rights.
  The restricting of funding that is proposed and put forward in the 
bill I have just filed has been done previously in matters such as the 
speed limits of States or to encourage States to limit drinking and 
driving. So it's nothing new.
  It has been deemed appropriate to encourage political entities in 
areas in which the Federal Government has a vested interest, and it has 
no more vested interest than what we have in providing for the common 
defense.
  But Berkeley and any other city has the right to rule over its own 
city as they wish, and they're welcome to do that. But the Federal 
Government should not reward a city that chooses

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to obstruct and prevent the obtaining of military members who provide 
the very freedoms and the umbrella of freedom under which that city 
acts. They have a right to use freedom of speech, but they have no 
right to take United States taxpayers' dollars to aid and abet hurting 
our military readiness.
  We took an oath in this body, in this room, to defend this Nation 
against all enemies, foreign and domestic; and those who prevent the 
United States from attaining military members are not the Nation's 
friends. Though such a city may deserve punishment, all we are trying 
to do with this bill is just not reward them for hurting our national 
defense.
  Other city leaders, such as those in San Francisco, Toledo, Ohio, 
like the mayor there, have snubbed or restricted our military. They 
need to be aware that when they begin to prevent the military from 
having enough troops to protect us and being militarily ready, they 
should not expect Federal subsidies to assist them.
  It is true that the actions addressed in the Military Freedom Act are 
mainly actions or omissions by community leaders and not all of their 
citizens. We understand that. There are good citizens in each of those 
towns. But the choice of the citizens is either to replace the hurtful 
leaders or bear the consequences or move. The old adage is democracy 
ensures the people are governed no better than they deserve. Therefore, 
those cities either deserve to have better leaders who don't hurt our 
national defense, or they deserve not to have funds to award their 
harmful conduct.
  Cities like Berkeley should take stock of how many of their very own 
first responders in the business in their cities of saving lives were 
trained in the military.
  I would remind you also, and I remember vividly because I was about 
to go on active duty about the time Vietnam was ended, our heroes came 
back from Vietnam and were spit on. Some of the hippies that did the 
spitting cut their hair, got into positions in cities and have found, 
figuratively, new, effective ways of spitting on our military.
  But everyone should understand, Mr. Speaker, this is not taking away 
money for expressing free speech. It's simply not rewarding the 
obstruction of providing for the common defense. Since it will cost 
additional money to overcome the obstruction to our military readiness, 
the Military Freedom Act takes money from the appropriate place to do 
that.
  This is the ultimate PAYGO bill for military readiness and national 
security.
  In any event, I hope and I encourage the leaders, the majority 
leaders, the Democratic majority leaders of this body to bring this 
bill to a vote and let the cities know that we don't reward those who 
prevent our providing for the common defense.

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