[Congressional Record (Bound Edition), Volume 155 (2009), Part 13]
[House]
[Pages 17319-17320]
[From the U.S. Government Publishing Office, www.gpo.gov]




                     DEMOCRATS ABUSE RULES PROCESS

  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, I want to follow up on what my friend from 
Georgia was saying, about tyranny in this House. We were promised the 
most open government in the Nation's history. That's what we were 
promised.
  There is the Speaker's Web site that even talks about how open it is 
going to be. Well, it isn't. And as a result, the Nation is being 
punished because some of the things that our friends across the aisle 
said before they were elected to the majority to control this city and 
this country were true.

                              {time}  2045

  You do better when you have open government and open amendments and 
can debate these ideas. But that's not what we've gotten. Oh, no. We've 
had an abuse of the rule process. Why? Because they can.
  I was asked, as I was around the district this last week, Why do you 
let them get away with all these things that are going on? And I said, 
Well, you're not following what's going on. Every time we make a 
privileged motion, we try to enforce the rules, it's tabled every time, 
so it's not going anywhere. So no one is held to account for abuses. 
Why? Because they can--and they didn't want an open government.
  You know, the founding of this country tells so much. Those guys were 
so brilliant. They were so much better read than most of the people in 
this body now. They knew what government led to. They knew what the 
abuse of power led to. And so they weren't content to have one body 
elected, they said, let's have two. And not only should we have two 
bodies, let's make them at odds with each other. We need friction so 
that there is not this abuse.
  And not only that, we don't want to do like we've seen some 
parliaments do where they elect their executive. No, no, no, no. We 
want the people to elect an executive, and then he will be at odds with 
those two houses and he will be able to veto what they do. That will 
give us some protection--because you can't have enough protection from 
government--but that's not enough. We want another branch. We will have 
a judicial branch, and then they can veto things that are inappropriate 
and outside the Constitution. They saw all this coming, and they knew 
it could be abused if they didn't have these safeguards in the way.
  But what's happened? Well, we can have an executive that the Congress 
just says, well, whatever you want. Oh, you wanted an Auto Task Force 
that will meet behind closed doors, be accountable to nobody? Put 
together a

[[Page 17320]]

bill, a plan that is signed by a lazy bankruptcy judge because he 
doesn't want to have all the hearings the law requires, and it puts 
people out of business. It's a constitutional taking, but where is the 
Supreme Court? They start to stop the process and then they say, Go 
ahead, we'll let you be unconstitutional, we won't stop it.
  And what has the Congress done? Well, look, Mr. President, if you'll 
let us keep abusing and running this country into the dust heap of 
history then we will let you keep doing what you want. It's abusing the 
process.
  That's why we had a bill this evening that should have been clean, it 
should have given money to a friend, a good friend like Israel, but, 
oh, no, we've got to put all this baloney in there that ends up doing 
more harm to the purposes for which this Nation was founded than good. 
So I couldn't vote for it in the end.
  The stimulus. We couldn't do anything with that--presented at the 
last minute where no one could amend it. I tried to tell the President 
and friends in here, look, how about a tax holiday for the people that 
earn the money? How about that? You let them have it, then you'll see 
stimulation. And what happened? The President liked the idea. And I 
heard him on the radio talking about, We're going to leave money in 
your check--except he said if you jump through all the obstacles, then 
you could have $65, maybe, in your check. I was talking about $6,000, 
not $65. Then you would have seen stimulation of the economy. But the 
process won't let us do that.
  With the ``crap and trade'' bill, we're driving jobs out of America. 
We're sending manufacturers to countries that pollute four to 10 times 
more than we do. How does that help the environment? It doesn't.
  And a health care bill that's being written behind closed doors so 
that we will not be able to get the best ideas in there. I'm trying to 
get a bill put through. Leg counsel said, Well, the Democratic 
leadership is taking all our time, we can't put yours in a form to 
bring to the floor. So we're having to try to go around behind other 
ways to get it done.
  There are Nation-ending things that are happening, and the Founders 
put in place ways to stop it. We need to start following those ways.

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