[Congressional Record (Bound Edition), Volume 155 (2009), Part 22]
[House]
[Pages 29282-29288]
[From the U.S. Government Publishing Office, www.gpo.gov]




                           THE YEAR IN REVIEW

  The SPEAKER pro tempore (Mr. Kissell). Under the Speaker's announced 
policy of January 6, 2009, the gentleman from Texas (Mr. Gohmert) is 
recognized for 60 minutes.
  Mr. GOHMERT. I do appreciate this so much, and I appreciated the 
informative information that was provided by my friends and colleagues 
here. A lot of very helpful information. I do find it interesting.
  We were promised back in the first of the year by the administration 
that if we did not pass that $800 billion stimulus bill, then we could 
see 8.5 percent unemployment. We had to pass that stimulus bill. We 
could not wait, because people were losing their jobs by the thousands 
every day. It could not wait.

                              {time}  1715

  People did not have time, we were told, to read the bill. It was too 
important to just pass it, because otherwise the unemployment rate, we 
were told, could get as high as 8\1/2\ percent if we did not pass it. 
Well, 8\1/2\ percent by not passing the stimulus bill sounds very good 
at this point. From last month, unemployment, 10.2 percent. We're 
hearing that there will be additional jobs that will have been lost 
come Friday when a potential announcement will be made.
  It is so frustrating to have had people on this floor come into this 
Chamber where there has been so much powerful legislation, lifesaving, 
life-enhancing legislation, and then be told, as we were earlier this 
year, there's no time to read the bills, you just have to pass them, 
because thousands and thousands of people are losing their jobs every 
day, and it could go to 8\1/2\ percent unemployment unless we pass it 
right now.
  And so we passed it and the President took 4 days to get the right 
photo op in Colorado to sign the bill. We could have used those 4 days 
to actually debate and amend the bill and make it actually into a jobs 
bill instead of a reward to people who had been faithful to the 
Democratic Party, because that sure appears to have been what it 
became, what it was, because it certainly wasn't a jobs bill.
  And if you go back to that stimulus bill at the first of the year and 
you look for people who saw it clearly for what it was, this was not a 
jobs bill, this was not a stimulus bill. Over half of it would not be 
spent for 2 years. It was around 7 percent was all that was going to be 
spent on infrastructure. It was sold to a lot of people in this body on 
the basis that we were going to enhance transportation and 
infrastructure. We had to build all these things, anyway, so why not do 
that to create jobs. And then 7 percent went to that.
  Less than 1 percent went to small business, SBA loans, programs. Less 
than 1 percent went for that. Yet we know that 70 percent of the new 
jobs are created by small business. It was clear that was not a jobs 
bill.
  So you would think that as we approach the end of this year, more and 
more people begin to see that really wasn't a jobs bill. Now who was it 
that was right about that bill? Who was it that read as much as they 
could in the limited time they had and was able to discern what kind of 
bill that was and how much damage would be done, that it wasn't going 
to help the economy, it was going to hurt it. That was clear to so many 
of us.
  You would think at this point as people start to talk about, okay, 
well, that sure failed, what we tried earlier this year, although we 
did put a lot of extra debt on future generations, because if you think 
about it, between the $800 billion stimulus, so-called, package and the 
$400 billion land omnibus bill that was passed right on its heels, you 
have about $1.2 trillion. That also happens to be, when you divide the 
number of

[[Page 29283]]

households in America, it's about $10,000 per household that we just 
laid on in debt to every household on average in America.
  I mean, who in America can afford another $10,000 being added to 
their debt that at some point is going to have to be collected as debt, 
as taxes, or we will go the way of the Soviet Union and have to someday 
announce, you know what, we didn't listen to China when they laughed at 
us because we said we were controlling our deficit and we did not; we 
didn't listen to some of the European nations because they had never 
been very good at controlling their spending, and when they told us we 
should control ours, we didn't listen. We laughed at them when they 
laughed at us.
  But now it turns out they're not buying any more of our debt. 
Fortunately, they still are so we haven't had to do what the Soviet 
Union did yet and announce that we're bankrupt and we can't print 
enough money fast enough like Germany did in the 1920s that brought 
about that horrible dictator with the mustache that killed so many 
millions of people, innocent people.
  We haven't been listening as a nation, as a nation's leaders. But 
America is getting it. They're seeing. And that's being reflected by 
what's going on around this country. It is immoral what we are doing to 
future generations. What we did in here this very day, passing this 
extra death tax. There's going to be no death tax in 2010, that was 
going to be the case; and now this bill that passed the House, if it 
passes the Senate and gets signed into law, well, it will go to 45 
percent.
  But we're told, well, gee, even though those people paid income tax 
at the highest rate in the country and even though there may be 40 to 
44 percent, the way we're moving, who will pay no income tax, we're 
going to take away about half of what they've been able to accumulate 
in their lives, their family farms, their business.
  And those that are in small business know what I'm talking about, Mr. 
Speaker, because so many of them have known what it is to have the 
person that started the business, got them involved, pass away, and 
then there's a 55 percent tax for so many years.
  We were able to pass a bill, and it's a shame on the Republicans that 
we didn't permanently end the death tax. But we didn't have 60 votes in 
the Senate. It was passed out of the House to permanently end the death 
tax, and it didn't get but 56 votes in the Senate, so it didn't pass. 
Shame on the Republicans for not getting that done. But now shame on 
Democrats who are in charge and are going to go with a 45 percent tax.
  Mr. Speaker, I know you heard people during debate today in response 
to my pointing out that, as a judge, I have sentenced people who stole 
from deceased persons. We consider that reprehensible, despicable, for 
someone to steal from a dead person. And yet in this body we have the 
power to just pass a law and say, well, it may be immoral, but we have 
the power to take people's money when they die, so we're going to do 
it, anyway.
  We have the power, we passed a bill today, despite the objections of 
so many of us, but we do not have the moral authority to be taking 
other people's money that they accumulated after paying maximum amounts 
of income tax and redistribute what they earned with the sweat of their 
brow and their ingenuity and their risk.
  That's not right. That's not the way America became the greatest 
country in the history of the world. It's really immoral to be doing 
that kind of thing. And if we were not the Congress, we would be 
sentenced to go to jail for stealing from dead people the proceeds from 
a life's work. It isn't right.
  When you look at the response, it is to push a health care bill. 
We're going to add this additional tax and, by the way, that goes to 
those who generate the jobs, the small businesses. People like Warren 
Buffett, I don't know his personal situation, but the people that I 
have been aware of who are megawealthy had good estate planners and the 
ones I was aware of were able to put together estate plans that created 
life insurance situations that were paid for where they were going to 
be fine, their families were going to be fine when they passed on and 
left their inheritance because they had figured out innovative ways to 
address the death tax.
  The megawealthy, they're not the ones who will be hurt. The ones who 
have been hurt are those whose family built a business, and then the 
one who built it passes away, leaves it to the heirs and they don't 
have a lot of money. They own machines. They own property. They own the 
business. And now they've got to come up with a 55 percent tax--under 
the bill we passed today if it becomes law, big whoopie, it will be a 
45 percent tax--on money that they paid personal income tax on, 
corporate income tax on if they were a corporation, individually if it 
was through a subchapter S.
  They paid lots of taxes, and then to take 45 percent now, 55 in the 
past, of their business meant that lots of families had to go borrow 
money against the business or sell part of the business to some 
outsider because they had to get the money in order to pay the tax.
  I mentioned my great aunt's situation. Some have wondered, but it was 
a very real situation. In 1986 when my great aunt died, her husband had 
predeceased her. It was July of 1986 she passed away, back in Texas. 
Over more than a hundred years, generations had accumulated around 
2,500 acres, farm, ranch, raising corn, raising cattle. They had a good 
small business and employed people to help them run things.
  My aunt, my great aunt, Lilly, was a very good businesswoman. She was 
very astute, very careful, and she lived a very minimalist life. She 
was not extravagant. She didn't have a lot of cash. She would acquire 
nice things. She had some nice crystal glasses, some nice china, 
silverware. There were things that she had made clear she was leaving 
to certain family members.
  When she passed away, there were comparable sales in the area of 
around $2,000 an acre; but before the estate could be finalized and 
settled, there was a lot of FDIC or RTC land that was dumped and prices 
of the land fell to around $600, $700 an acre. Now the IRS was nice, 
they gave them a couple of years' extensions, hoping the land value 
would come back; but after a couple of years the IRS said, That's it, 
no more extensions, it's all got to be sold. It was a nearly $5 million 
evaluated estate, and when the land values fell to $700, I believe they 
got nearly to $800, if I recall correctly, that paid the tax. It didn't 
even quite do that.
  That's why the IRS ordered the land sold and then had an auction of 
all her personal assets. All of us in the extended family were 
encouraged to come out to the auction and try to keep as many of the 
family heirlooms in the family as we could. We didn't keep them all. 
There were some from the community, some who came from other places who 
decided they wanted some of my great aunt's property and they were able 
to bid higher, so we didn't protect all of the family heirlooms, family 
treasures. Not so much huge value, like over $500, but of great 
sentimental value. And we couldn't keep it because this nearly $5 
million estate, valued when she died, was all taken.

                              {time}  1730

  The family begged and pleaded with the IRS to at least, instead of 
taking the entire estate, how about just taking 55 percent of 
everything that existed? Take 55 percent of the land. That would seem 
fair. Oh, no, because, the IRS said, Congress had made clear that, oh, 
no, we take 55 percent of everything at the time of death, and if it's 
mainly land and it's not worth as much when it sells, we're taking it 
all.
  All the land was sold. It was a tragic situation.
  But I've heard people come down here and try to say all this talk 
about hurting family farms and small business, there's really nobody 
that's ever been hurt in a family farm or small business from the death 
tax. It's simply not true. People are hurt and have been hurt so often 
in small business and family farms because of the death tax.
  One of the things I did purchase at the auction was we got some of 
Aunt

[[Page 29284]]

Lilly's crystal, and we wanted to let the closer family members who 
were told you will get this and this when I'm gone, we wanted to let 
them get the bid and get the things that were theirs; so there was 
reluctance to bid on things that were designated for someone else. But 
it was just a long, sad day. And I bought a little music box, a church, 
and you could wind it up, and the cross on top of the church turned as 
it played ``Amazing Grace.''
  Well, God's grace is amazing, but that's certainly not true of the 
United States Government. There is no grace when it comes to the United 
States Government, which brings me back to the issue of health care.
  Mr. Speaker, I've got a box here. It's got the bill that we passed 
here in the House, and there's some great stuff in here. We had people 
come to the floor and say, for example, we didn't need to pass the Bart 
Stupak amendment, no, because there's no money in here for abortions. 
But if you open the bill to page 110, something apparently people who 
said there was no money for abortions had not done, but at page 110, 
subparagraph B, entitled ``Abortions for Which Public Funding is 
Allowed,'' it says ``The services described in this subparagraph are 
abortions for which the expenditure of Federal funds appropriated for 
the Department of Health and Human Services is permitted.''
  Well, how about that? We were told there wasn't any money in there 
for abortions from Federal tax dollars.
  So how about the thought of someone not only taking someone's 
proceeds and property, money that they accumulated over the course of 
their life, paid the highest income tax rate on throughout their lives, 
and then they die, and throughout their lives they knew in their heart, 
they believed with all their being, that life begins when it's created, 
and that is not just when a baby is born but in utero, and this person 
who has passed away knew in their heart it's really murder when you 
kill this innocent helpless child who cannot defend themselves. They 
try. You see the hands and their trying to get away from having their 
brain sucked out, whatever method of abortion is being utilized. You 
see them fighting against it. But they're helpless. They can't fight 
against those trying to kill.
  Yet the Federal Government not only does the reprehensible thing of 
taking this deceased person's money that they accumulated from their 
own work, their own effort, paid tax on, and then uses those tax 
dollars, puts it in the general fund and uses some of the general fund 
to go out and pay to kill those innocent babies.
  We were told right here in this House, right here in this body, in a 
joint session, that basically if you like your insurance, you could 
keep it. We heard that said over and over. But if you look at page 91, 
that's section 202, ``Protecting the Choice to Keep Current Coverage,'' 
subsection (a) right under that, all capital letters, ``GRANDFATHERED 
HEALTH INSURANCE COVERAGE DEFINED,'' and this is where it defines 
whether you get to keep it or not. So it says ``the term `grandfathered 
health insurance coverage' means individual health insurance coverage 
that is offered and in force and effect before the first day of Y1 if 
the following conditions are met:
  ``Condition No. 1, `the individual health insurance issuer offering 
such coverage does not enroll any individual in such coverage.'''
  I had a person back in East Texas that I represent when I was talking 
about health care say, You know what? I know a lot of people are really 
concerned about it. I don't want to seem callous, but I'm not worried 
about it, because I retired. And I said what company, one of the bigger 
companies in the country. And he said, We have a great union that 
negotiated us great health insurance, and I've got great insurance. The 
President said if I like it, I can keep it. I'm not worried about 
everybody else. I'm in good shape.
  And I said, Well, is there any chance that anybody else will ever 
retire from your big company and be added to the insurance health 
insurance coverage that you have?
  He said, Oh, yes. People are retiring all the time.
  I said, Oh, bad news, because under subsection (a)(1)(A) if the 
individual health issuer offering such coverage enrolls any individual 
in the coverage after the date this bill goes into effect, you lose 
your insurance. Everybody that has it loses it, and you get kicked over 
into the Federal exchange program.
  But at No. 2, here at the bottom of page 91, it says, ``the issuer 
does not change any of its terms or conditions, including benefits and 
cost-sharing, from those in effect as of the day before the first day 
of Y1.''
  So, very clearly, if the insurance terms and conditions change at 
all, if the benefits change at all, copayments change, any of the cost-
sharing, premiums, whatever, if they change, tragic. You lose your 
insurance. You do not get to keep it. The government gets to tell you 
about your health care under the Federal exchange.
  And, yes, we've heard a lot about the panel that said, gee, if you're 
under 50, you don't really need a mammogram. If you're over I think 75, 
78, something like that, then you don't really need a mammogram. That's 
the government telling you. I don't care what others say. You go read 
this bill, and it seems pretty clear that those panels are the ones 
that will determine under the plans what services are provided. So here 
at page 167, it says, ``The Commissioner shall specify the benefits to 
be made available under Exchange-participating health benefits plans.'' 
So the Commissioner will decide all of the conditions of the health 
insurance policies that are offered. Everybody has to offer the same 
insurance in each service area.
  And you go down to the middle of the page, ``Required Offering of 
Basic Plan,'' the entity offers one, and only one, basic plan for such 
service area. Then the next provision says, ``If and only if the entity 
offers a basic plan for such service area, the entity may offer one 
enhanced plan for such area.'' If you offer the enhanced plan, you may 
offer one premium plan. And then also if you do all that, you could 
offer a premium-plus plan. You have to get to the premium-plus plan 
before the panels dictate whether or not you can get a mammogram before 
you're age 50, or whatever panel the panel happens to indicate. Maybe 
if there's enough outcry, the panel withdraws and says, okay, we were 
just kidding; so we'll change that. But our experience is once the 
government is comfortable in its role of regulating, it gets to where 
it really doesn't care what the outcry is. It doesn't matter because 
they run things.
  Just as with the flood insurance when the Federal Government, if it 
sounds familiar, said, You know what? We think private insurance 
companies are charging too much for flood insurance. Well, it might 
have something to do with people who keep rebuilding homes on the coast 
where they get wiped out. Well, the Federal Government apparently 
decided we need to provide cheaper insurance than what can be provided 
in the private sector. So the Federal Government got involved. They 
didn't charge enough in premiums to stay in the black, so they went 
into the red.
  Well, private companies cannot compete with the government because 
they can't exist in the red unless the government takes them over, 
which I guess you could talk to GM about or some of the banks or some 
of Wall Street. But anyway, they ran the private insurance companies 
out of the flood insurance business, so nobody sells flood insurance 
anymore because they could not compete with the Federal Government, and 
that's going to be true of this as well. This will be a disaster.
  It's one thing to experiment with a novel--what really is a socialist 
idea here, the Federal Government's socializing medicine. It's not 
total socialism; it's just a socialist program because the government 
takes over a private-sector business, a massive amount of the economy, 
and controls it. But it doesn't stop there because if the Federal 
Government is paying for all your health care, shouldn't they have a 
right to tell you how to live?

[[Page 29285]]

  Oh, yes, of course, in this bill the Federal Government becomes the 
repository for everybody's medical records. Isn't that special? So the 
Federal Government will have records of your most private, personal, 
secret physical situation. The government will have those records.
  Now, you can be assured that if the Federal Government has them, the 
wrong people will never be able to get them, especially people in the 
government who may want to manipulate you.
  Oh, yes, there was that problem in the 1990s when 1,000 FBI files 
were found in the White House, which was a crime for which Chuck Colson 
went to prison for just having one. There were around 1,000, as I 
recall, in the White House, people's most personal, private information 
in FBI files. But the White House had it. They didn't have any 
incentive to try to use any of that information even though there were 
some Members of Congress whose files were there. Gee, wasn't that 
interesting? Maybe if they needed a vote?
  I know before this administration under the prior administration when 
the TARP bailout was about to be passed, I got an email from the White 
House liaison saying, Is there anything that can be added to the 
existing package that will get your vote? Well, apparently some people 
answered otherwise than I did. I was livid, furious with the question. 
My first response to the email was, There's nothing that can be added. 
Removing the biggest socialization of private assets in Western 
Hemisphere history would be a good start to get my vote. But apparently 
there were others who answered otherwise, so there was another $100 
billion added to that bill.
  But think about it. If the Federal Government has all of your 
personal medical records. And you know the Internal Revenue Service is 
the enforcement arm. They'll collect the fees. They'll make sure you're 
doing right. They'll make sure the Federal programs are paid for. So, 
gee, they know what your cholesterol count is. Well, you think maybe 
they would need to know if you're buying bacon or things high in 
cholesterol if your cholesterol count is too high? Maybe they need to 
adjust your insurance rate up and tell you what you can and can't eat. 
Well, that seems almost ridiculous, doesn't it?

                              {time}  1745

  It can happen. That is where we are headed.
  If you go over to page 1510--and you wonder why would you need 1,990 
pages, another 40 or so of the manager's amendment. If you go to page 
1510, section 2572, Nutritional labeling of standard menu items at 
chain restaurants and of articles of food sold from vending machines. 
And as you go through and read these pages, it is really interesting 
reading because a restaurant or similar retail food establishment shall 
place adjacent to each food offered a sign that lists calories for 
displayed food item or per serving.
  It talks about in vending machines, if you cannot read the food 
labeling information, then they have to post that on the machine. It 
will cost millions and millions of dollars, and if people know how the 
vending business works, there are a lot of people who own vending 
machines. They make their living doing that. They go around and keep 
them supplied. They make money from filling the machines. I had friends 
in college whose parents put them through college doing just that. They 
don't have the money to get these machines reconfigured and do all of 
this work on them so they meet these new requirements. Somebody is 
going to go out of work, be relieved of their ability to make money. 
And if there were plenty of jobs out there, that wouldn't be so bad, 
but that means they will go into the job pool with all of the other 
people who are out of work right now.
  And then we passed the crap-and-trade bill in here the last week of 
July, as I recall. And we had people come down here to the well of the 
House, some people stood back here at these microphones, and people 
said people aren't going to lose their jobs because of this bill. They 
are going to have jobs created. Good, wonderful, green jobs will be 
created.
  Well, they hadn't read that bill either, apparently. On page 900-
something, if you actually read the bill, as I was trying to do on a 
very short time because we got the 300 pages that was added around 
3:08, 3:09 a.m. and we didn't even have a complete copy of the bill 
assimilated with the amendments that were added in the wee hours. I was 
trying to read as much as I could as quick as I could, but page 900 or 
so, I believe it was, there was a fund. I believe it was called the 
climate change fund that was created to pay people, it said in the 
bill, who lost their job as a result of that bill. So whoever's staffer 
or special interest group wrote that bill, they knew people were going 
to lose their jobs and that is why they put that in the bill. There was 
even money in there to create a fund to pay people a relocation 
allowance in case they could be paid to go where the job was moving. 
But unfortunately, that didn't provide money to send them to China, 
Argentina, or India, the places where those jobs were really going to 
go, where there is four to 10 times more pollution put into the 
atmosphere for creating the same products. No, they wouldn't get money 
for that.
  But I still think the good news there is if that bill becomes law--
and I know when Americans find out what all is in that horrible bill, 
they are going to fire a lot of Members of Congress that pushed that 
through without knowing what was in it and knowing what was going to be 
done to Americans and put more people out of work. But the good news is 
the people fired here in Congress who lose their job as a result of the 
crap-and-trade bill, they might be entitled to some relocation 
allowance under the bill because they lost their job as a result of the 
bill. And they will be with so many other Americans who lose their job 
for the same reason.
  This is micromanaging in this health care bill to an unbelievable 
degree.
  On the other hand, I have a health care bill here that really is 
about health care. It is not about control, and control and 
micromanaging American lives like this huge, 2,000-page bill is. It is 
pretty basic. And it is interesting, I did have a nice conversation 
with Doug Elmendorf. The Congressional Budget Office has been sitting 
on this bill since the request was made August 19 to get it scored. And 
the reason we didn't get the request in until then was because we were 
told back in June, Congressional Budget Office, we don't score things 
that aren't bills. You have to have it in bill form. We had to push and 
push. We eventually got it through legislative counsel and got the bill 
drafted and filed so it could be scored.
  The bill was submitted to the Congressional Budget Office. We said 
officially, please give us a score because this should work. This 
should save money and not only not cost a trillion to $2 trillion like 
the bill on the table that passed the House, but this should actually 
save the U.S. Government money while, at the same time, for the first 
time since we have had Medicare and Medicaid, actually give seniors 
complete coverage and complete control of their own health care.
  Now, I am sure most people deal with someone in the health insurance 
business, and you know there is a lot of good people in the health 
insurance business, but they are not really in the health insurance 
business. They are in the health care management business, and that's 
what business the government is in with Medicare, Medicaid, and SCHIP.
  I don't want the government in the business of managing my health 
care. I don't want the insurance companies in the business of managing 
and making my personal health care decisions. I want to make those 
after consulting with my doctors. That is the way it should be. That is 
the way it used to be, and my bill would allow people to do that.
  It would provide the incentives to push people, young people, 
everyone actually, toward a health savings account with no limits on 
how much you can put in pretax. The employer pays in, and it is 
certainly a business deduction for him. It is a straight offset. And 
the health insurance policy under my

[[Page 29286]]

bill would be owned by the individual employee. Since it would be owned 
by the individual employee, that means wherever they go, it is their 
policy. You don't need COBRA. I dealt with that when I left the bench 
to run for Congress. It was too expensive for a guy who was running for 
Congress who had cashed out all of his assets except his home and cars 
to run for Congress full time because I knew that we needed to make 
changes here.
  So even though it has been reported that out of, I think, 32 Members 
of Congress from Texas, I had the least assets of any Member from 
Texas, I think I am the richest guy in the world because of the friends 
and the people I get to represent and the people with whom I deal in 
east Texas. But it is not going to be so good. We are in hard times, 
but it is going to be worse. It is not even going to be this good if 
this massive drain on the economy, a government takeover of this much 
of the economy kicks in at the worst possible time.
  On the other hand, coming back to my bill, for seniors, we are 
getting scored what it would cost if all seniors elected and went to 
having the government put cash money in a health savings account that 
they control and then buying the catastrophic care policy above that. 
It is their policy. They control it. If they don't spend all of the HSA 
money, then it rolls over and they get to keep 10 percent of the money 
to encourage them to save. For many seniors, that won't be possible. 
They will go through the $3,500. That will be controlled with a debit 
card that they control. It will be coded so it will only pay for health 
care items. Then they will have catastrophic coverage to cover above 
that. They have control, and they have coverage.
  We know that the younger Americans in their twenties and thirties, if 
they start doing this, the vast majority of them should have so much in 
their health savings account by the time they hit retirement age, not 
only will they not want the government then stepping in and controlling 
their health care, they will not need it, because they will have enough 
money in their HSAs to make their own decisions even then and continue 
to buy their insurance and control the catastrophic care from there. 
And, under the bill, anything that is left in the health savings 
account can be left to the kids. If you want to gift some of your HSA 
out to someone else, whether you are related or not, as long as it 
stays health savings account money, it can go from one to another.
  Another problem we have in this country that we are not dealing with, 
nobody seems to be talking about a whole lot, is that we authorize 
people to come into this country, and even though it is intentional, 
come into this country, get free health care and not charge them as 
they leave. Well, that doesn't happen under my bill, because in order 
to get a visa, whether a travel visa, a migrant worker visa, any kind 
of visa we may create in the future, in order to get a visa to come to 
this country, you will have to establish that you have health care 
coverage, the insurance, the HSA, you have coverage so it won't cost 
the U.S. Government taxpayers any money. That will be the price of 
coming into America.
  So if you are going to live with somebody in the country, you can be 
under their health insurance. If you are going to be a migrant worker, 
your employer can buy the catastrophic care and provide a health 
savings account for the whole group. Those kinds of things can be done 
because we have to get off this course of bankrupting this country. It 
is not unlimited when you go spending money, spending money, spending 
money. The Soviet Union tried that. Apparently they were trying to get 
a $100 billion loan from the United States and from others back at the 
time when the Soviet Union was in so much financial trouble. There have 
been articles written, information provided that seems to indicate that 
the U.S. may have told the Soviet Union, you know, we know in the past 
when these insurrections have occurred, uprisings have occurred in 
Poland, Czechoslovakia, Latvia, Estonia, when they have occurred 
before, you roll in the tanks and you crush them. But if you do that, 
we are probably not going to be able to loan you that $100 billion to 
keep you afloat.
  That is what happens when foreign countries are owed massive amounts 
of money by another country, they get to dictate to you whether or not 
you will preserve and protect your union. Everyone in this body took an 
oath to do that, to follow the Constitution. We are supposed to protect 
this country from all enemies, foreign and domestic, and yet we are 
going out and begging the Chinese to keep buying our debt. There are 
indications that the Federal Reserve, although they have said they are 
not monetizing the debt, they have some third party buying debt that we 
put up for auction, and then the Federal Reserve buying that debt from 
the third party intermediary. So it is the same thing. We are 
monetizing the debt. That is the way it sure looks. That eventually 
causes inflation.
  But in the meantime, for countries around the world, they can begin 
to tell us what we can do in our country and what we can't because they 
determine whether we have to declare, as the Soviet Union did, we are 
bankrupt. We can't borrow enough money any more to take care of our 
obligations and we can't print it fast enough to pay for them, so we 
are out of business. The states are on their own. That is basically 
what the Soviet Union did. So the 15 states that comprised the Soviet 
Union became independent countries.
  You think about all of the blood that has been shed over the course 
of this country to get the opportunity to create a Constitution, to get 
the opportunity to govern ourselves.
  You go back to the letter that John Adams wrote to his wife, Abigail, 
after the Declaration of Independence was made public on July 4. He 
wrote that marvelous letter, and I don't have it down verbatim, but 
basically saying we have within our grasp the chance to do what great 
philosophers and thinkers have only dreamed of, to govern ourselves and 
not have this big, massive government that controls all of the areas of 
our lives. We will be free to make our own decisions about our lives. 
This is a day that should be celebrated with parades and picnics.

                              {time}  1800

  Of course, he advocated the firing of guns. We do that with fireworks 
now instead of bullets, which I think is a better practice. But he 
recognized how incredible a gift God, our Creator, nature's God, all 
those references that were made in our founding documents. We were 
being blessed with something like never before in the history of 
mankind.
  I was a little surprised to see after I came to Congress over at the 
State Department the original copy of the treaty of 1783, the Treaty of 
Paris. Of course, hopefully, people know, Mr. Speaker, that it was the 
surrender at Yorktown which ended the hostilities, but not until the 
Treaty of Paris of 1783 did England actually sign on agreeing to 
recognize the United States as a separate, independent country. This 
was an incredibly important document.
  And I did not know, history major that I was, I didn't know until I 
saw in big, bold letters how the Treaty of Paris started. It starts 
out, the big, bold letters say this: ``In the name of the most holy and 
undivided Trinity.'' That struck me strange. Why would they start the 
Treaty of Paris with ``In the name of the most holy and undivided 
Trinity?'' It is an interesting way to start the document where the 
enemy during the war was going to recognize our independence.
  But then you think about it. They needed to start that treaty with 
something so important to both sides that neither would dare break 
their oath. So they started with ``In the name of the holy and 
undivided Trinity.'' That is how the Treaty of Paris of 1783 started.
  We have come a long way. Now you can't even pray in public schools. 
Chuck Colson said it well, When you have the morals of Woodstock, you 
will have to expect some Columbines. If you think about that, when the 
morality of the country is basically ``if it feels good, do it,'' 
you're going to have some irresponsible people, some anti-social 
personalities just decide, I wonder how it feels to steal other 
people's money, I

[[Page 29287]]

wonder how it feels to go shoot some people in my school. When that's 
the morality of the day, we have got so far from our morality.
  As we said, I personally think it is immoral for a government to go 
in and do what anyone else doing would be a crime, and that is, to pry 
cash from the cold, dead hands of a deceased on which he has paid taxes 
his whole life, and we take that money away through the death tax.
  One of the things that maybe was the most important in driving me 
from the bench to run for Congress was along these lines of morality of 
the Federal Government. Because I noticed it seemed like I was seeing 
more and more women coming before me to be sentenced for committing 
felonies back in Texas. The stories they would tell there in court were 
so often the same.
  The story I heard most often was, well, I was bored with high school. 
Sometimes it was a friend, sometimes, tragically, a family member, 
sometimes even more tragically, a mother said, well, heck, if you're 
bored with school, just drop out, and have a baby. The government will 
send you a check. You don't have to work. Just have a baby, and they 
will send you money.
  So they drop out of high school, have a baby, the government would 
send them money. But it was not enough to really provide for a decent 
way of living for the mother and child. So the story I would hear, it 
was repeated often, was, gee, maybe if I have another baby, get another 
check, I can live easier on that. And it didn't work. And another baby. 
One lady I had sentenced had 15 kids, didn't even know where they all 
were.
  How would that come about? Why would the Federal Government get into 
the business of providing incentives to lure young women into ruts from 
which they were given no hope of getting out? Well, it came about 
because of a well-intended Congress back in the 1960s. They saw a 
problem with single women who had deadbeat dads who were not helping 
financially to take care of the kids that they had helped procreate. 
And so out of a feeling of compassion and wanting to help, they said, 
you know what, let's just give them a check. Let's be sympathetic. You 
mean-spirited people who don't want to just give these poor women a 
check, how dare you. So Congress voted to give them a check for every 
child they could have out of wedlock. And over 40 years later we have 
gotten what we paid for. You pay people to have babies out of wedlock, 
you're going to have a lot of babies.
  And this is something that cuts across party lines. Both parties are 
guilty of participating in being accessories to what has happened and 
the incentives to do the wrong thing for the well-being of this 
country. We shouldn't have provided incentives to lure young women into 
a rut from which they could not pull themselves out and from which they 
would never reach their God-given potential.
  Since the government knew if they finished high school they had a 
much better chance of making more money, the statistics were clear, 
they were able to go to college, they would make even more money, on 
average overall, so why not provide incentives to finish high school? 
Help them do that? Don't just give a check for every baby you can have 
out of wedlock. Why not incentives to finish school? That would have 
been more appropriate.
  This week we took up and passed a bill out of committee. I did not 
vote for it. The intention, once again, is very good. I know the hearts 
of the people that are pushing it. They are good people. They mean so 
well. They want to help. They said, let's throw a billion dollars at 
trying to keep kids from committing crimes. It is so well intended. I 
know their hearts. They mean well. But it is another program that won't 
deal with the bottom line issue that when this government got in the 
business of breaking up homes and providing incentives for people to 
have single-parent homes instead of having a married couple in a home, 
we started doing terrible damage to the moral fabric of this country 
and this society. And it's ongoing. And we want to have studies done. 
Well, gee, why do you think these kids commit crimes?
  I kept my own separate survey for a number of months there; and I 
picked, I guess arbitrarily, 5 years of age, and it was well over 80 
percent of the people I sentenced for felonies had no relationship with 
the father after age 5. I'm not sure what it was. Most of them had had 
no relationship, really, with the father. And that seemed to be the 
greatest common denominator in the people that I sentenced.
  So why was there a deadbeat father in so many situations? Well, the 
government had been paying people to create deadbeat dads that didn't 
help out. This Congress did that, well intentioned, but, oh, the havoc 
that has been wreaked and reaped here, because that is what has been 
sowed.
  Now, we come around here also, well intentioned, having met the 
President a couple of times, I believe he wants to do what he believes 
is good for the country, just like those people in the 1960s did, just 
like people this week in our Judiciary Committee did. They mean well.
  Look at history. It is very clear. When you pay people to do an 
activity, you're going to get more of it. If you penalize people, as we 
have for years, with a marriage penalty, you're going to get less of 
it. If you penalize an activity, you're going to get less of it. That 
is the normal course of things. And both parties are also guilty of 
saying, oh, we are going to fix the marriage penalty. Both have done 
this. I got sick of listening to it over the years. Before I got to 
Congress, I hadn't really talked about it much. Some of us keep 
bringing it up. Nothing is happening.
  Hopefully sometime it will, because it's a real easy fix. If you want 
to take care of the real marriage penalty in income tax, you say, do 
you know what? If you're married, it's your choice. You can file 
married filing jointly if that's better for you, or you can file as an 
individual so that there is no penalty for being married. Because when 
you combine two spouses' incomes, so often it kicks them up into a 
higher percentage category and they pay a lot of extra money just 
because they're married.
  I've seen it with a lot of teachers. The teacher's income combined 
with a spouse's income is enough to kick them up, and they have to pay 
more for the privilege of being married. That's not the way it should 
be. That's not what studies indicate it should be.
  I know the President and the Attorney General think they are doing a 
good thing for this country. If we are going to show the world how 
hospitable we are by bringing terrorists to our own soil because we are 
good and we want the whole world to see how good and noble we are, we 
will take people that have admitted killing innocent people, over 
3,000, and we will give them more rights than they have ever been given 
in history. That is destructive. It puts our soldiers in harm's way. It 
is going to cause them to have to start becoming forensic experts while 
they are being shot at, in some situations they will also be expected 
to gather fingerprints, DNA evidence, this kind of thing. This was not 
well thought through.
  Down in Guantanamo, I cannot imagine issuing an order to close that 
without even visiting that, but that is what has happened. And I 
visited the courtroom proceeding where the trial was going on for some 
terrorists. And they were interrupted by the Attorney General and the 
President. They just called a halt in the middle of the trial. That 
facility there, that courtroom, the facilities around it had so much. 
There is not another place like that anywhere in the continental, 
anywhere in the United States. That is an ideal place to try the 
terrorists.
  And all those people who I know they were so torn up about what 
happened on 9/11. They really are very sincere when they say, I want to 
look them in the eye, I want to be the juror that says, You're 
sentenced to death. Well, I have done that. It doesn't bring the 
pleasure you might think.
  But what it will bring when people say that's what I want to do, it 
will bring about a change of venue if the defendants, which they 
probably will, request it, because that will delay it further. It will 
give them further platforms to spread their poison that is so

[[Page 29288]]

toxic. I know these things were intended well, but they can bring about 
the demise of a country. They have before. They have brought about the 
demise of civilization.
  And you would have thought that when the stimulus package didn't do 
everything that it was supposed to have done--it didn't create any 
jobs. It created some hundreds of thousands, well, we have lost 
millions and millions--you would think that the people that had enough 
insight to see it wasn't going to do what was said that it would do, 
that the people that pushed that would come back and say, you were 
right. But that hasn't happened. I hope and pray it will.
  Mr. Speaker, you brought down the gavel indicating my time has 
expired, so I recognize that and appreciate your indulgence.

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