[Congressional Record (Bound Edition), Volume 156 (2010), Part 12]
[House]
[Pages 16959-16964]
[From the U.S. Government Publishing Office, www.gpo.gov]




  POSSIBLE LEGISLATION FOR CONSIDERATION DURING LAME DUCK SESSION OF 
                                CONGRESS

  The SPEAKER pro tempore. Under the Speaker's announced policy of 
January 6, 2009, the gentleman from Texas (Mr. Gohmert) is recognized 
for 60 minutes as the designee of the minority leader.
  Mr. GOHMERT. Mr. Speaker, it is always an honor to be here. We have 
had quite a day of different suspension bills. It has been an 
interesting day all the way around. Also I was honored to have a visit 
from the new president of Baylor University, a man named President Ken 
Starr. I think he will do a great deal of good for Baylor University. 
In fact, I am wearing a green and gold tie in his honor and in honor of 
the school where I got my law degree.
  A lot has been going on. We haven't had time to take up the issue of 
extending the current tax rates for another year so businesses could be 
sure about what is going to be happening, so they could go ahead and 
make plans, go ahead and make those additional hires, take those folks 
off the unemployment rolls because they would finally know what the 
future holds in the way of taxes. But that was not to be. No, instead 
we have taken up 85, reduced by one, 84 suspension bills, all done 
today in a bipartisan manner. And it does bring to the fore the 
question as to why couldn't we do the same thing in a bipartisan way to 
help the economy?
  We are hearing over and over from business people, there is so much 
uncertainty. If we are really going to have this massive tax increase 
come January 1, we have got to hunker down and get ready. We may have 
to let some more people go so we can pay the additional tax burden that 
the Federal Government is going to lay on us.
  They made clear if we are going to pass what the well-respected on 
both sides of the aisle former chairman of Energy and Commerce, Mr. 
Dingell, called not just a tax, but a great big tax, the crap-and-trade 
bill, if that is still looming out there, then that is a potential 
albatross around the neck of employers. They need to move forward. But 
Mr. Dingell is exactly right; it is a great big tax. It is still 
looming out there. It is still a threat to be taken up in a lame duck 
session.
  In fact, the lame duck session, after the election in November, could 
be devastating to our economy, as if we haven't already done enough. We 
have got not only the crap-and-trade bill looming and being threatened 
as a potential lame duck session bill in which Members of Congress 
would be asked to vote who had already lost their jobs on election day, 
but we got other bills hanging out there that some have said they would 
like to see come up during a lame duck session.
  One such bill is on the other side of the aisle affectionately known 
as ``card check,'' which is really intriguing. Card check is quite a 
misnomer, because it would provide for the elimination of secret 
ballots in union elections, in deciding whether a group were to go 
union or not.
  I was intrigued. In the last Congress we were voting on card check, 
and the majority leader of the House of Representatives, the Honorable 
Steny Hoyer, came down this aisle right over here. And I was standing 
over there,

[[Page 16960]]

and I said, ``Leader?'' He turned around and said, ``Yes?''
  I said, ``The rumor is you are going to vote against your party, and 
you are going to vote against card check.'' He said, ``Well, the odds 
of that happening are infinitesimal.'' He has a great sense of humor.
  I pointed out, ``Well, it is just that everybody on the floor knows 
that if it were not for the secret ballot, John Murtha would have been 
elected majority leader.'' And he just laughs, ``Oh, you are so 
funny.'' He moved on.
  But the truth is, the Speaker of the House, she said she wanted John 
Murtha to be the majority leader. And we have already seen that this 
Speaker of the House is amazing at the wielding of power. She has been 
far more effective at the wielding of power, both with carrots and 
sticks, to get things done than our Speaker was my first 2 years here, 
in 2005-2006. She knows how to wield power.
  She said she wanted John Murtha to be majority leader, and yet Steny 
Hoyer of Maryland won the election. Why? Because there was a secret 
ballot, and the will of the Democratic Party here in the House was that 
Steny Hoyer be the majority leader. So because of the secret ballot, 
because there had been no card check bill that had been rammed through 
to change the rules in the House of Representatives, here in the House 
of Representatives there was still a secret ballot.
  Now, when I was growing up in Mount Pleasant, Texas, I went through 
public schools, and I am pretty sure most of my teachers I had voted in 
the Democratic primary, voted for Democratic candidates. And I had some 
wonderful teachers. They inspired me. They instilled in me that the 
secret ballot is such a foundational block of any society that wants to 
have free elections that to withdraw that would bring the whole 
political building down, would subject you to a tyranny.
  So it is absolutely staggering that people who would come in here and 
be protected with secret ballots in their own party elections would not 
grant that same right. Actually, they don't have the power to grant the 
rights; those are given by God. But they have the power to prevent 
people from enjoying the rights that were bestowed on us through our 
Constitution and with the grace of almighty God.
  We are endowed by our Creator with certain inalienable rights. 
Apparently the President left out the Creator. It is understandable. 
When you rely heavily on teleprompters, as our President does, it is 
understandable that sometimes you just read past things, and certainly 
the person who fills in his teleprompter with the information would not 
have left that important part of the Declaration of Independence out.

                              {time}  2300

  We are endowed by our Creator, because if it were otherwise, if we 
were endowed by the government with inalienable rights, then the 
government could certainly take them away anytime they wished.
  Yet, we go back to the founding of this country, to the time when 
those people gathered together and gave us the foundation of what we 
have grown from and grown into as this fantastic Republic, the greatest 
country in the history of the world. As Tony Blair recently said and as 
another member of Parliament said this week: this is an extraordinary 
country like no other in history, and we have so much to be proud of.
  I know there are those who have only recently been proud of America, 
but when you study its accurate and true history so thoroughly, there 
is so much to be proud of, and the Founders could see that. They had 
the vision. Proverbs tells us: Where there is no vision, the people 
perish. Yet those Founders had vision for the future. They stood firmly 
on eternal truths.
  One example is Peter Muhlenberg. Now, since the 1950s, Lyndon Johnson 
had gotten a tag into the Internal Revenue Code, which for the first 
time since our country's inception said, If you're a terrible 
institution as designated by the Internal Revenue Code, you cannot get 
involved in politics.
  That was new and different because, for over 170 years, it was the 
churches that were behind the most important movements, one of which 
was the Declaration of Independence. Before that, you had the Virginian 
Commonwealth laws that were put together. You later had the Northeast 
Ordinances. There was so much that the churches pushed forward.
  Peter Muhlenberg was a minister, a Christian minister, and he had 
already talked to Washington. Washington had made him a colonel, 
unbeknownst to Muhlenberg's congregation there in Pennsylvania. He was 
preaching that Sunday, in his black ministerial robe, and he was 
preaching from Ecclesiastes 3: ``There is a time to every purpose under 
Heaven.'' When he got down to verse 8, he recited the words in the last 
half of Ecclesiastes 3:8: ``There is a time for war and a time for 
peace.''
  That is when Muhlenberg took off his black ministerial robe, as he is 
depicted doing in the statue here in the Capitol. Underneath, he had on 
a Revolutionary officer's uniform, including the saber. He had been 
carrying that saber around, wearing that and the uniform underneath his 
robe. Then he said, in essence: ``Ladies and gentlemen, now is the time 
for war,'' because they believed they were endowed by their Creator 
with certain inalienable rights, and those were things worth fighting 
for.
  When you read those Founders' letters and their diaries and journals, 
when you read their speeches and their writings, you find out they knew 
they were on to something that would be something new, a new order of 
things, a new order of the ages. That's why the great seal has ``Novus 
Ordo Seclorum'' at the bottom, underneath the one side. In fact, it's 
on the back of everyone's dollar bills. This was a new order of the 
ages, a new order of things--not a new world order. This was a new 
order of the ages, a new order of things where people would get to 
govern themselves. For so long, this country has borne out the old 
adage that democracy ensures people are governed no better than they 
deserve.
  That was one of the hardest things for me to come to grips with in 
the 1990s. As a Nation, like it or not, we had what we deserved as a 
Nation. In fact, in every election, from the beginning of this country, 
whether we have liked it or not, regardless of which party has been in 
power, we have gotten what we deserved.
  I do not seek to ever use my position to force my religious beliefs 
on others; but when I was a judge, I was required to discern whether or 
not the people who claimed disqualifications had legitimate 
disqualifications from jury duty. I was struck over and over because I 
had Christians who would come up and say, I cannot sit on jury duty. 
I'm disqualified because I'm a Christian.
  I would explain to them, I'm not seeking to change your religious 
beliefs, but I need to find out exactly whether or not you're 
disqualified for religious reasons or whether this is just a personal 
preference. So I would have to inquire, Does this mean you believe what 
is in the Old and New Testaments?
  Well, Of course, I would be told.
  Well, does that mean you believe it to be true when Jesus said, in 
Matthew, if you say ``rock eye'' to your brother, you'll answer to the 
courts?
  Now, the verse was mainly about answering to the Father in Heaven for 
what's in your heart, but Jesus knew that, in an orderly society, there 
would have to be some form of government which would hold people 
accountable.
  They would say, generally, Yes, I believe that.
  You know, over in Romans 13, it makes it clear that, if you believe 
the Romans is supposed to be part of the New Testament and if you said 
you're a Christian, do you believe that Romans is and that Romans 13 is 
valid as part of your belief system?
  They would normally say, Well, yes, of course.
  Well, then, you have to believe that in Romans 13 God has basically 
ordained any government for good or bad and that in Romans 13:4 it 
points out: ``If you do evil, be afraid,'' because God does not give 
the sword to the government in vain.

[[Page 16961]]

  The government is God's minister to avenge evil, to reward good 
deeds, and of course, in our Constitution, it is to provide for the 
common defense. But I would ask the people who would come forward as 
Christians if those were their beliefs, if they believed those things 
in Romans, so I could try to make the judgment as to whether or not 
they were disqualified as jurors.
  The response was normally, Of course.
  I was in a position to point out, Then if you understand our history, 
you believe, then you understand, as a called juror, you've been given 
the sword. If you believe Romans 13, then when you're called for jury 
duty, that sword has been placed in your hand, and you're expected to 
come forth and administer and to make sure that people who have not 
done evil don't get punished and to make sure that those who have done 
evil are to be afraid, because they will be punished as they, as the 
jurors called forward, are the government.
  In fact, the Founders believed that the people would be the 
government and that every so often there would be a day in which the 
people, as the government, would come forward. They would say, We are 
going to hire new folks to carry out our will. We the people, as the 
government, will hire people to do what we tell them for the next 1, 2, 
4, 6 years. Over the years, we've been told even still that the most 
widespread religion in America which people in polling data indicate is 
Christianity.

                              {time}  2310

  If they believe the Founders and they truly believe the Old and New 
Testament, they have to understand they're the government. They have 
been given--in fact, we all as American citizens have been given--the 
source.
  Now, all of those in this body are hired public servants. We get 
hired every other year. The government, we the people, the government 
have the right to fire us every other year. And as the government, if 
you truly believe the responsibility is to carry out your duties as the 
government in the most effective and efficient manner possible, well, 
that would require coming out on hiring and firing day to see that the 
best people got elected, because when people stay home, they get what 
they deserve on hiring day. When people come out and vote, they get 
what they deserve on hiring and firing day. And when people don't 
bother to educate themselves on who all has applied to be the public 
servant to get hired on hiring day, then they're not carrying out their 
duties as a proper government.
  When people know that they would be a better candidate and be a 
better public servant, then it's their obligation under our founding 
documents, under the concepts on which this Nation was based, to step 
forward and run for office or to help others as they run for office, if 
they know they would be the best person to fill the job of public 
servant. But we have forgotten what role who plays. The people are the 
government. We're the public servants. And all too often that gets 
forgotten.
  Of course, Peter Muhlenberg, Peter Muhlenberg's brother Frederick, 
there are stories that he was not very pleased that his brother Peter 
had recruited from his church, because he recruited from the church. He 
got people there in his congregation to join the Army with him and 
recruited from the town, and they all came to the Army together. And 
there were stories Frederick wasn't that pleased with what Peter did 
from the pulpit.
  There were other stories that when Frederick's church was burned 
down, that he did likewise. He recruited. He joined the revolutionary 
forces and helped defeat the British, and, in fact, the Christian 
minister named Frederick Muhlenberg was the first Speaker of the House 
of Representatives.
  We also know that behind the abolitionist movement was the churches. 
There were many right-thinking people, but the primary groups were the 
churches; because when they really studied New Testament principle, 
they worried and feared that how could God continue to bless America 
when we're putting our brothers and sisters in chains and bondage, and 
they fought it. And Abraham Lincoln, so troubled by that battle, and, 
in fact, after he was defeated for a second term in the House of 
Representatives in 1848, new person took office early 1849, stories 
were that he did not plan to ever run again.
  But stories that John Quincy Adams had told and sermons basically 
that John Quincy Adams preached just down the hall on the evils of 
slavery and pleading with his colleagues to end the blight against 
America called slavery, those fell not on deaf ears but on a young 
freshman's ears, Abraham Lincoln, between the time he was sworn in in 
early 1847 to the time his successor was sworn in in early 1849.
  1850 brought about the compromise of 1850. Other States were going to 
be coming in. They were going to be allowed to have slavery. This ate 
away at Lincoln because he knew, and those sermons John Quincy Adams 
preached on the floor of the House just ate away at him. We could not 
continue to go forward without stopping this terrible sin called 
slavery in America. He knew that was no way to treat brothers and 
sisters.
  And eventually he got back into politics, ran again as we know. Of 
course, got defeated by Stephen Douglas for the Senate but later 
elected in 1860 to be President. There's some historians who say that 
when Lincoln's son died, he believed it was God blaming him; because he 
knew when he got elected President that was ordained by God so that he 
could bring an end to slavery, and he waited too long to do that. 
There's always different versions of different historians, but that is 
one version of history, that Lincoln blamed himself when his son died, 
that he should have immediately sought to end slavery. But as the 
States started seceding from the Union, he felt, Okay, I will hold the 
Union together, and then I will end slavery.
  But he carried a heavy heart as President of the United States, as a 
Christian, and his second inaugural address that's inscribed on the 
north inside wall of the Lincoln Memorial is so profound, and it is an 
intellectual giant dealing with theology and this issue of how could a 
just God allow so much injustice and so much hate and war. And he goes 
through, deals with the issue, and ultimately says we have to proclaim 
God is righteous all together.
  We have an extraordinary history. Who was it that inspired Dr. Martin 
Luther King, Junior, to push for civil rights for everyone? Some people 
think, well, all he did was make sure that African Americans were 
treated like others, like everybody else, that he fought for 
minorities. But the truth is his theology as a Christian minister was 
so deep, he understood that in bringing about a society where people 
were judged by the content of their character, rather than the color of 
their skin, that he was also freeing Anglos who were Christians, many 
for the first time, to treat people the way a Christian brother and 
sister is supposed to treat another Christian brother and sister.
  But that was in the 1960s, and the change of the law in the 1950s for 
the first time in our history saying churches could not be involved in 
politics had a profound effect. And then in the early 1960s, 1963, we 
have the Supreme Court say, you know, we're not real sure. We don't 
think that you should be having prayers in public schools.
  And yet, it was Ben Franklin that broke the logjam after 5 weeks in 
the Constitutional Convention of 1787 by being recognized. He was 80 at 
the time. He was 2 or 3 years away from meeting his Maker. He was 
suffering apparently from gout, had to have help getting in and out of 
Independence Hall for the Constitutional Convention, but he got 
recognized. And he pointed out they'd been meeting for nearly 5 weeks 
and had accomplished basically nothing.
  How does it happen, sir, he said, that we have not once thought of 
applying to the Father of lights to illuminate our understanding? In 
the beginning contest with Great Britain, when we were sensible of 
danger, we had daily prayer in this room. Our prayers, sir, were heard 
and they were graciously answered.
  Franklin went on, and then he came to the point, we're told, that a 
sparrow

[[Page 16962]]

cannot fall to the ground without His notice. Is it possible an empire 
could rise without His aid?

                              {time}  2320

  We've been assured in the sacred writing that unless the Lord build 
the house, they labor in vain that build it. ``Firmly believe this,'' 
Franklin said. Then he said, ``I also firmly believe that without his 
concurring aid, we shall succeed in our political building no better 
than the builders of Babel.'' And he knew. This 80-year-old man in pain 
and suffering had a mind and wit as sharp as ever, though his body was 
deteriorating.
  He ultimately moved that we would begin each day with prayer, led by 
a local minister. And from then until now, today when we start, we have 
a minister start with prayer. So it was staggering, in the 1960s, that 
the Supreme Court, as they continue to do, say, Yeah, we don't think 
prayer is appropriate. Well, thank goodness I had a great legal 
education at Baylor University, and we learned about the Constitution. 
We learned about the Constitution's history, and it doesn't take much 
digging to find exactly where it came from.
  One of the things that the Founders pointed out was that ``we don't 
trust government.'' The people, as the government, in this new 
creation, this Republic, ``if we can keep it,'' as Franklin said, was 
going to rely on people being diligent and coming to the polls on 
election day, on hiring day, and making sure they hired good people to 
carry out the will of the government, the people. And over the years, 
we've lost that.
  Of course they wanted, not just one legislative body, a huge House of 
Representatives, big for that time. And then also, that was not enough, 
not some just elite or social elite in another body like, a House of 
Lords. They wanted a group they would call the Senate, and they would 
have the power to nix anything that the guys in the House of 
Representatives did. That's what the Founders thought: We want to make 
it as hard as we possibly can to pass laws because when it's too easy, 
then you have tyranny. And that's what we've seen a great deal of 
lately.
  We saw with the automobile bailout an auto task force. We had all 
these czars. We have an auto task force, unelected, unaccountable--
certainly to Congress. They wouldn't tell us what went on. They 
wouldn't give anybody any information about the conversations that took 
place, who said what. And yet they come out with a bankruptcy plan that 
turned the bankruptcy laws upside down.
  I mean, the law is supposed to mean something. There are businesses 
and individuals that have had to file bankruptcy, and they were forced 
to always play by the rules. And yet here were these automakers who got 
to just thumb their noses at the law. Why? Because the safeguards that 
were put in place by the Founders were just ignored. Well, there were 
checks and balances. You can't just have a czar or some task force 
that's unaccountable, just ignore laws and come forth with a bankruptcy 
plan that doesn't allow for any motions. It doesn't allow for any other 
alternative plans, does not allow the secured creditors to be treated 
as secured creditors but instead, flips them upside down so the secured 
creditors are treated as unsecured and the unsecured union is treated 
as secured.
  Nobody could get away with turning the law upside down like that. We 
have too many other checks and balances, we thought. But not here in 
Washington now, we don't. And that's why this body and the Senate 
allowed a terribly illegal bankruptcy plan to go forward. It wasn't 
hard apparently to find a bankruptcy judge that would welcome the 
chance to avoid ever having to have months and months or years of 
hearings. He would just simply sign off on that because, as we know, 
bankruptcy judges are subject to reappointment on a regular basis. And 
we also know many bankruptcy judges want to be district judges and 
other things. So it apparently wasn't too hard to find a bankruptcy 
judge to sign that order, giving it color of law. This body should have 
struck it down. We had the power. We turned our heads. There was one 
hope left. That was the Supreme Court, another wonderful check and 
balance put in place by the Founders. Ruth Bader Ginsburg, to her 
credit, put a 24-hour hold on the deal that was born out of these 
private, secret meetings unaccountable, unelected people were having 
when they turned the law and the Constitution upside down.
  There were takings of dealerships born out of these private, secret 
seedy discussions. They took property rights away from these people. 
Some of them still owe money at the bank today, yet their dealerships 
were taken away. Their security was taken away. The banks that had 
loaned money to buy dealerships were harmed when the dealer's 
dealership was taken away by this anarchy group.
  But the Supreme Court let the 24 hours go, and an illegal, 
unconstitutional bankruptcy plan went through unimpeded. And lots of 
people suffered. I understand their claims, the claims being made 
currently, it sounds like, to me, legitimately by dealers who had a 
Federal taking without due process and without remuneration. It sounds 
like they're doing the right thing. And yet we've heard from people on 
the other side about how terrible the economy was that the Democrats 
inherited from President Bush.
  When if you go back to January 3, 2007, that was the day that the 
Democratic majority took over the Senate and the Congress. We can just 
visit that day. January 3, 2007, the Dow Jones closed at 12,474.52. The 
GDP for the fourth quarter of 2006, we found out after election day, 
had grown 3 percent higher than in the third quarter. The unemployment 
rate was 4.5 percent. Bush's economic policies had led to 40 straight 
months of job creation, more jobs than were being lost. January 3, 
2007, was also the day that Barney Frank took over as chairman of the 
House Financial Services Committee and Chris Dodd, as Senator, took 
over the Senate Banking Committee as chairman.
  Over and over, the Bush administration had asked Congress to stop 
Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, to rein it in, and to Republicans' dismay 
and dishonor, it was not done. It should have been. And certainly the 
Democratic friends across the aisle were objecting. The man who became 
chairman, Barney Frank, was objecting. Of course we've seen the speech 
where he said, No, they were fine, in essence. They were fine. They 
were not fine. They were in big trouble, and nothing was done. It 
should have been.
  If we look back, we will find that Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, they 
weren't sitting dormantly on the side. Oh, no. They were actively 
involved in politics. And if you look at the period, as Open Secrets 
did, from 1989 to 2008 to find out who gained the most in political 
contributions during that period from Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac as 
they sought to try to entrench their futures, well the second-highest 
amount of contributions from Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac went to a 
Senator named Barack Obama.

                              {time}  2330

  Things changed, didn't they? And now we have the book come out from 
Mr. Woodward. Who is to know exactly what is absolute truth and what is 
affected by unartful memory?
  As a judge, we would hear well-meaning witnesses all try to give 
their version of what they saw with their own eyes, and it was amazing. 
Eyewitnesses so often varied on details that occurred.
  But Mr. Woodward has a book out. I was deeply saddened to see what he 
had said about President Obama's discussion with Secretary Gates, that 
he could either endorse the President's idea of 25 percent fewer new 
troops going to Afghanistan, 25 percent fewer than the military had 
asked for in McChrystal's report, or the President could go with what 
he described to Gates as a ``hope for the best'' plan of 10,000 
trainers, under which Afghanistan would almost certainly be lost to the 
Taliban.
  Woodward quotes President Obama as saying, Can you support this? And 
then he is quoted as saying, Because if the answer is no, I understand 
it, and I

[[Page 16963]]

will be happy it just authorize another 10,000 troops and we can 
continue to go as we are and train the Afghan national force and just 
hope for the best.
  Woodward's comment was ``hope for the best.'' The condescending words 
hung in the air. Well, there were accounts, reports that supposedly, 
possibly, that McChrystal had originally orally said, We probably need 
80,000 troops in Afghanistan to have as much effect as the surge in 
Iraq had had and to get things under control.
  I am not sure if those were true, but one account was that the 
President, or the White House, had asked, Let's cut that down from 80 
to 40 because that's more reasonable, something more doable.
  But nonetheless, the request was in writing for 40,000. And the 
report made very clear that time was of the essence. And if we delay 
doing this, the whole outcome of Afghanistan could hinge within the 
next 12 months. And it was shocking to wait for 90 days. Thirty days, 
nothing happened. The President said he had been busy, been running 
around congratulating people all over the country. Kind of like in 
here. We don't have time to help the economy by assuring people and 
businesses we will keep the same tax rate for at least the next year or 
so. Oh, no. We had to do 84 suspension bills on various things today. 
No time to help the economy, though, by assuring businesses and people 
their taxes will not have the biggest increase in American history, 
which looms as of January 1.
  But anyway, 30,000 troops were authorized. And it's a shame if that 
ends up being true, that President Obama told Gates, either go along 
with the 30,000, 25 percent less than McChrystal said were absolutely 
essential to having a chance, the best chance to defeat the Taliban, 
and to win in Afghanistan.
  But the trouble is, my friend, Dana Rohrabacher, had let me know this 
past summer that there were some members of the northern alliance that 
we called upon, some call them warlords, tribal groups, who we had 
allied ourselves with when we first went into Afghanistan. We let them 
do most of the fighting, and they were able to defeat the Taliban. We 
provided weaponry and consultants, trainers, and they were able to 
defeat the Taliban.
  But then, as Afghanistan languished, the Taliban has made a 
resurgence. And there were stories that these people with the northern 
alliance, these leaders had heard that the United States was indirectly 
negotiating with Pakistan and with Karzai, as the leader of 
Afghanistan, and indirectly with the Taliban, basically, if you'll just 
let us out next summer and not make a fuss, you can have the country. 
You guys can work it out. That was what the northern alliance people 
were hearing.
  And what I didn't know until we met with a number of those leaders, 
these are brave warriors. These are brave fighters. But they were 
concerned for themselves and more so for their families and for those 
who looked to them for leadership, because what I didn't know was that 
after they had defeated the Taliban to help us, we demanded that they 
disarm and basically said, you know, you can count on us. You know, the 
Taliban's been defeated. You can disarm now. That's the only way to 
peace. And don't worry, we are around to make sure that the Taliban 
won't be back. They won't be bothering you. You defeated them. We are 
here. We will see that nothing bad happens.
  So they disarmed. And they said they really did. They trusted the 
United States, their ally.
  And now, the Taliban making this resurgence, because McChrystal 
didn't get the soldiers he asked for, and although the President said 
that is the war, that's where Bush is messing up, he didn't make that 
the central war. This President has not done any better and, instead, 
has announced to our enemies, not in so many words, but it's something 
any enemy would get. When you say we're going to pull out next summer, 
it tells the enemy, if you can just hang on until next year, then you 
win.
  And lest we forget, the Taliban was behind the training and the 
planning of 9/11 and the killing of 3,000 Americans. How quickly we 
have forgotten. Have you forgotten? Have we forgotten?
  They killed 3,000 people, and now we are going to let them--we are 
going to walk away from Afghanistan and let them have a stronghold 
there. And the northern alliance knows what that means. It means that 
they and their families are dead. Our allies will be dead.
  It isn't hard to figure out, if you're out there in the world, and 
United States representatives say, you can trust us, be our ally, you'd 
want to say, well, no, no thank you very much. I have seen what you 
have done to your allies. I have seen what your best friend, Israel, 
has had happen to them and the pressure you have put on them not to 
defend themselves, to give away part of their country; to keep giving 
away unilaterally, when there is nothing being brought to the 
bargaining table by the other side. Yeah, we have seen what you have 
done to your allies.
  We saw how you voted to demand Israel show off their weaponry, just 
like Hezekiah did as king of Israel when he showed the weaponry to 
Babylonian leaders. And for that, Isaiah said, in essence, you fool. 
Because you have done this you will lose it all.
  You don't show your enemies all of your defenses. You don't do that. 
And you don't make your friends do that either. You don't make your 
friends give away their ability to conventionally defend themselves 
like we have been putting pressure on Israel to do.
  And now, with Afghanistan. I don't know what the answers are. But I 
would have hoped that from Vietnam we learned, not that we couldn't 
win, because we find out from the true history, Vietnam was winnable, 
but we didn't have the will. Washington could have decided to win the 
Vietnam war whenever it got ready, but, instead, we kept sending people 
over there piecemeal to die.
  The message ought to be clear. If you are going to send American men 
and women into harm's way, you send with them everything they need to 
win, and you don't tie their hands behind them. You let them fight.
  And the rules of engagement in Afghanistan are causing losses of life 
because we are so tying our own hands that it puts our people at risk.

                              {time}  2340

  Is there any wonder people are hesitant to be our allies? The 
Northern Alliance could tell them, watch out. I hope and pray that the 
Northern Alliance leaders were wrong, that our administration here is 
not indirectly sending messages to the Taliban: If you just hang in 
there, you guys can divide things up. Because it does mean our allies 
in Afghanistan will be dead.
  It is rather hard to hear people in this administration say that the 
Republican Party has no leaders when they took one of my ideas. And I 
did tell them, I don't care who gets the credit. But that was back in 
January of 2009--actually, November of 2008, when I pushed forward the 
tax holiday idea. It is a great idea. People would leave the money in 
their own checks.
  I emailed the idea to Newt Gingrich. He fired back: This is 
brilliant. I will push it.
  I don't get a lot of emails saying something I proposed is brilliant. 
Art Laffer had said more recently that would have been the best thing 
to do, a tax holiday.
  The trouble is the majority right now believes that the money being 
earned by people doesn't belong to them, it belongs to us, and we will 
decide what of this government's money they get to keep. That is not 
way it is supposed to work.
  And we have been told we are supposed to be for something. We have 
got all kinds of fantastic plans, but the majority has a choke hold on 
CBO so that they will come forward; if the President needs a CBO score 
to be under $900 billion, they get it under there and then conveniently 
find out later on that they missed it by a quarter of a trillion 
dollars. If the administration needs a scoring to be done in the time 
that the rest of us are told by CBO they can't score something in that 
amount of time or with what little is given, if this administration or 
this majority wants it, they get it done. I don't see how that is 
bipartisan.

[[Page 16964]]

  When you look at over 700 bills that they have scored and you find 
just barely over 100 Republican bills, including what Newt Gingrich had 
told me: You have got to get your health care bill scored. It could 
change the debate. It ought to have a good score. Well, CBO has shut 
out that possibility, as if they were the most partisan of all 
partisans, because they know by preventing alternative bills from 
getting scored, then they prevent a viable alternative from being 
debated here on the floor. Shame on CBO.
  There have been some great ideas, and they are so basic. Do you want 
to get the economy going? Let people keep their own money. You wouldn't 
have needed an automobile bailout if you had let people keep their own 
money for 2 or 3 months.
  People say: You guys on this side of the aisle are only out to help 
the rich. I am not. We are not. But what we want to do is focus tax 
relief only to the limited people who are paying the taxes, and we have 
the unmitigated gall to think that we should not engage in class 
warfare. That is divisive. Or maybe I should say divisive, derisive, 
dismissive. Tax relief should go to those who are paying taxes, pure 
and simple. And it is not a tax rebate if people didn't put any 
``bait'' in in the first place.
  Art Laffer also says, as an economist that helped Reagan get the cart 
out of the ditch for this country: Quit buying all this stuff. Start 
selling off things. Yet every month that goes by, this government buys 
more and more lands, which takes the land off of the tax rolls for the 
local government and the schools. We do so much damage taking away tax 
dollars from schools, and we take away areas where we have got natural 
resources that could be mined or produced.
  I want alternative energy sources, and it would be easy. Instead of 
having the crap-and-trade bill that does so much more damage to the 
economy, heck, just start drilling what we have, making sure it is done 
safely. And that does not mean as it was being done when Deepwater 
Horizon blew up, where the part of MMS that was allowed to unionize was 
the offshore inspectors.
  And when I asked the question, ``What kinds of checks and balances do 
you have to make sure those offshore inspectors who are unionized and 
had a union contract to limit what they could be required to do, what 
kind of checks and balances do you have to make sure that they do the 
right thing?'' they said, ``Oh, the checks and balances? That is that 
we send them out in pairs so they are watching each other, and they 
will report each other if they don't do exactly what they are supposed 
to.''
  Yet the last two people who were sent as offshore inspectors, 
unionized, to inspect the Deepwater Horizon were a father-and-son team. 
That is this administration and the union's idea of a good check and 
balance.
  We have apparently hundreds of billions, and now it is estimated even 
over $1 trillion, of Americans' money in foreign banks that was earned 
overseas, and it has been left there, and this government will never 
have a chance to tax that at all. So here we are in economic crisis.
  This was proposed in September of 2008 by some leading economists 
here: Instead of a TARP giveaway slush fund, don't get the government 
involved in the socialist action of buying into business, buying into 
Wall Street, engorging Goldman Sachs and AIG. Let them go through 
reorganization like everybody else does.
  But what you could do is say, okay, for you American people, 
companies that have money in foreign banks that has never come into 
American banks, here is the deal. You come in and purchase things that 
will get the economy going.
  And we could direct that. There will be no tax consequences, no 
penalties. So you, with private money, can get things going. And then, 
of course, once that money is here, it does get the economy going; and, 
once it is in this country, then it is taxable for the future. Or we 
could start selling off some of the land. You know, we have got to 
start thinking outside the box.
  One of the great things that happened under Abraham Lincoln was the 
Morrill Act. The Morrill Act allowed universities to be started with 
land grants. We have people on welfare. And I know there are some that 
just don't want to work, but there are some that do. How about if, 
instead of the welfare, we give them an alternative: We will give you 
so many acres that can provide land where you can live off of it and 
make a living. And we will give you seed money to start, but you have 
to sign an agreement you will never accept welfare again. How about 
that? We have got plenty of land.
  How about using the energy sources we have and taking 25 or even 50 
percent of the royalty and designating that to go for research for 
alternative energy sources, so that it happens without the government 
taxing and destroying the American economy?
  And, how about dropping the corporate tax down to 15 percent, 2 
percentage points below China? I am told by CEOs that have moved 
manufacturing industries to China that if we lowered our corporate tax 
rate to 17, 15, 12 percent, they would be building new plants back in 
the United States. Those jobs would return. We need to do that.

                              {time}  2350

  We need to do that.
  We need a zero baseline budget, no automatic increases. I have that 
bill. I filed it each of the three times that I have been here, each of 
the three terms.
  I have got a U.N. voting accountability bill that simply says any 
nation, since they are sovereign they can do what they want to in the 
U.N., how they vote. They can applaud Ahmadinejad's crazy speeches, but 
for any country that votes against our position in the U.N. more than 
half the time, they get no financial assistance from the United States 
of any kind in the subsequent year. It is their choice. I said it 
before: you don't have to pay people to hate you. They will do it for 
free.
  There are so many things we could do to get out of the economic 
malaise we are in. We need a balanced budget amendment. That would 
help.
  I honestly believe we have got to pass a bill on Social Security that 
would shore it up. And, no, we didn't do it my first 2 years.
  I proposed it to some of our leaders back then, our leading thinkers. 
They said it was a bad idea, but I still say it is a good idea, and 
that is for the first time since the inception of Social Security, you 
require Social Security tax money to go into the Social Security trust 
fund, real money in there to draw real interest. We could create 
instruments that would not create risk, that would allow us to draw 
interest without affecting the bond markets. There are so many things 
we can do.
  We have been blessed so richly. I have said this before, but, Mr. 
Speaker, I want to conclude with it tonight, because people have been 
frustrated, I have been frustrated.
  But the message is clear. John Adams wrote to Abigail after the 
signing of the Declaration of Independence. He was so excited, and he 
talked about the celebrations, and he finished his letter with this:
  You will think me transported with enthusiasm, but I am not. I am 
well aware of the toil and blood and treasure it will cost us to 
maintain this Declaration and to support and defend these States. Yet 
through all the gloom I can see the rays of ravishing light and glory. 
I can see that the end is more than worth all the means, and that 
posterity will triumph in that day's transaction, even though we should 
rue it, which I trust in God we shall not.
  With that, Mr. Speaker, I yield back.

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