[Congressional Record (Bound Edition), Volume 157 (2011), Part 13]
[House]
[Pages 18725-18727]
[From the U.S. Government Publishing Office, www.gpo.gov]




                      BUDGETARY AND OTHER CONCERNS

  The SPEAKER pro tempore. Under the Speaker's announced policy of 
January 5, 2011, the gentleman from Texas (Mr. Gohmert) is recognized 
for 30 minutes.
  Mr. GOHMERT. Thank you, Mr. Speaker.
  We're in a time of massive overspending, a time when some want to 
raise taxes, creating more of an economic problem. But it's been 
shocking that after the biggest wave election since the 1930s, 80-plus 
brand-new Republican conservative Members coming into this House, it's 
been nearly a year, and we really haven't cut much of anything. There's 
plenty of places to do it. It should be done. It can be done.
  We ought to just say we're going back to the last Speaker Pelosi 
budget before the big bailouts and stimulus all started occurring. I 
don't remember governmental entities around the country, Federal 
Government entities, in 2007 and 2008 with Speaker Pelosi at the helm 
of things, complaining that they weren't getting enough Federal money. 
Yet, if we went back there and just said, you know what, forget the 
stimuluses and the bailouts, obviously those haven't worked. Let's just 
go back to the '07 or '08 budget. They didn't pass a budget; they 
passed appropriations--but let's go back to those numbers. Instantly, a 
trillion dollars trimmed off.
  What we've had is a President of the United States coming into office 
jumping up the Federal spending by a trillion to a trillion and a half 
dollars and then saying we're not cutting any of that extra trillion 
dollars we've added on. We just need now to raise taxes to get up to 
all of this giveaway spending that we've done.
  There are many good examples of that, but none better than in the 
solar energy area--a place like Solyndra getting between five and $600 
million that's been completely wasted.
  We've been told by Secretary Napolitano that the country just can't 
afford to build a fence on our southern border where our problems now 
are not Latin American citizens coming up here. We have what are 
sometimes labeled OTMs, ``other than Mexicans,'' coming in; and many of 
them are coming in and they're not coming in to do us any favors, and 
they're not coming here to get jobs.
  We have an obligation to provide for the common defense. Our oath 
requires us to do that, and we're not doing it.
  But good grief, if you took the money that this administration 
squandered giving away to Solyndra, take the $700 million or so that 
was squandered, given away to a solar plant in Nevada--actually they 
had about $35 billion to give away, they literally have been doing--and 
according to the information from this administration--some of us think 
it shouldn't cost nearly this much--but if you took just $1 billion to 
$2 billion of that $35 billion that had been squandered by this Energy 
Department and said we're committed to providing for the common 
defense, and in providing for the common defense we're going to build a 
fence, it would cost a fraction of what this administration has 
squandered on solar energy giveaway programs. What a waste.
  Then we have ObamaCare. You want to save a trillion dollars? Just 
stop it. Repeal ObamaCare. The vast majority of American people sent a 
new majority into the House to try to get that done. Turns out, we've 
got to have help in the Senate we don't have down there so that we can 
do the will of the majority of the American public and repeal 
ObamaCare. There's a trillion dollars in savings, actually more than 
that.
  We've got $105 billion being spent right now, in the process of being 
spent, to make sure that the mechanisms are in place so that by 2013, 
2014, ObamaCare is going to be the law of the land whether the Supreme 
Court strikes it down or not, because all of these mechanisms will be 
in place. It's time to repeal it. It's time to get rid of it and have 
serious health care reform.
  And you can't have serious health care reform until you know what the 
cost of health care is. You can't go into any doctor's office or any 
hospital, any health care provider's office and say how much does it 
cost for this procedure, that procedure if it is something that's 
covered by insurance or Medicare or Medicaid because they can't tell 
you. It depends, they'll tell you. What kind of insurance you got? Are 
you on Medicare? Medicaid? Are you paying cash?
  Ironically, in a society where paying cash should normally get you 
the lesser price, in health care, because of some of the insurance 
agreements, they are not allowed contractually to charge as little to 
the cash-paying people as those who have insurance get charged to their 
insurance companies.

                              {time}  1450

  Well, that's not the free market. That's not competition. So that's 
something that has to be dealt with. We need transparency there.

[[Page 18726]]

  When we look at the figures, for example, on Medicare for the 
calendar year of 2010, it has been estimated that $522.8 billion was 
spent on Medicare. When you divide the number of households in the 
United States that have been estimated to have one or more people on 
Medicare, you'll find out we're apparently spending between $20,000 and 
$30,000 a household for Medicare. You can buy some really great private 
health insurance, especially if you have a high deductible, for a lot 
less than $20,000 a year.
  That's why the proposal I had--some have called it bipartisan--has 
clearly become a partisan entity. After being called to the woodshed by 
this current President, they were able to strike about $200 billion or 
$300 billion from their estimated costs of ObamaCare only to find, once 
it passed, it got put back in. Well, if CBO has a margin of error of 
$300 billion out of every $1 trillion they estimate, then it's probably 
not something we ought to keep. It's kind of like the Energy 
Department. When they're that bad at what they do, it's time to get rid 
of them and do something new.
  But you can't blame the folks who are there. Their hands were tied 
with rules that were put in place in 1974 up until the last 5 or 6 
years with the most liberal Congress in our history, the same Congress 
that said we weren't going to stay with our commitments to allies in 
Southeast Asia. We left, some estimate, 2 million people to be killed 
when we fled Southeast Asia. Now this President seems to be following 
the same trends that we saw with Jimmy Carter: turning on our allies, 
hurting our friends, helping our enemies--and there's always a price to 
be paid for that.
  So we've got ObamaCare put in place. Over $1 trillion could be saved. 
Just repeal the thing, and let's start with real reform.
  Even though CBO refused to score it, Newt Gingrich told me, if I 
could get that bill scored, it might revolutionize the discussion on 
health care. So, naturally, CBO wouldn't score something like that even 
after they were requested by the ranking Republican on Energy and 
Commerce--the committee of jurisdiction--and by the ranking Republican 
on the Joint Committee on Taxation. They both requested it be scored, 
but CBO didn't score it. It might have interfered with ObamaCare being 
passed. The bottom line was it would have given seniors a choice.
  Do you want to keep being on Medicare and have the Federal Government 
tell you what you can or can't have, and have to go out and, with the 
precious few dollars you have from Social Security, have to pay AARP or 
somebody else's Medigap insurance or wraparound insurance or 
supplemental insurance? Do you want to have to keep paying precious 
dollars?
  Or would you like the alternative of having the Federal Government 
buy you basically the best private insurance you could have with a high 
deductible--of $3,500, $5,000, whatever we want to say, whatever ends 
up being the most cost-effective--and we would give you cash in a 
health savings account that you'd control with your own debit card, 
where you'd make the decisions? The only restriction is it would have 
to be for health care. You couldn't use that money for anything else. 
Give people a choice. Let them decide if they want to quit buying 
Medigap insurance.
  I know, as wonderful as AARP is, 2 years ago, I think, they cleared 
over $400 million in clear profit from their supplemental Medicare 
insurance. So you hate to cut in on a charitable institution like 
AARP's massive profits like that off people who can't afford to buy the 
product. But gee, let's give seniors a choice.
  Then, of course, we would need to give incentives to young people. 
Put your own money into a health savings account. It would be your 
money, but it could only be used for health care. You can't pull it out 
for something that's not health care. You can gift it to other people's 
health savings accounts. When you pass away, if you've got money in 
there, you can pass that on and have someone inherit that from you into 
that person's HSA, but once it's committed as health savings account 
money, it has to be spent on health care.
  Yet we've been told if that happens, then the vast majority of young 
people in their twenties and thirties would have so much massive 
amounts of money built up by the time they'd be eligible for Medicare, 
not only would they not want Medicare, they wouldn't need it. They'd 
have plenty of money to do what they wished.
  Now, that would get us off this road to the dustbin of history, 
because we have bankrupted ourselves on entitlement programs. At the 
same time, what an incredible deal--you'd get better health care; you'd 
get more control; you'd put patients back in control; you'd put 
patients and doctors back making the decisions.
  I'm a big supporter of health insurance, but the trouble is for a 
number of years now we haven't had health insurance in America; we've 
had health management. I'm very concerned that, unless health insurance 
companies get back in the business of health insurance instead of 
health management, then there will be some bill that ends up running 
them out of business.
  It, of course, will be ObamaCare if it's not repealed. Then it will 
be the government controlling things--a massive takeover.
  As I've said before, ObamaCare is kind of like the cap-and-trade 
bill. They're all about the same thing. It's all about the GRE--the 
Government Running Everything. That's what it's about.
  We could save money and return freedom to people who have not had it 
in the area of health care, and they would control their destinies. But 
there are some people here in Washington who genuinely, honestly 
believe they need to be making the personal decisions for people across 
America because, gee, they're smarter, and they would make better 
personal decisions for people who haven't done so well on their own.
  Thinking like that caused the original Revolution. They didn't want 
some king who thought he knew more about what they should do with their 
lives making the decisions about their personal lives. Some have drawn 
the parallel that there is a correlation between the American 
Revolution and the French Revolution when compared to the Tea Party 
movement and the Occupy Wall Street movement, because the American 
Revolution was about one thing: It was about liberty.
  There were people who signed and pledged their lives, their fortunes, 
their sacred honor. They were all at stake. And many who signed, 
pledging their lives, their fortunes, their sacred honor, lost their 
lives and their fortunes--but their sacred honor was intact when they 
died.
  The Declaration of Independence says we are endowed by our Creator 
with certain unalienable rights and that among those are life, liberty, 
and the pursuit of happiness.
  Nobody is guaranteed happiness. Yet the Founders knew that we were 
endowed by our Creator with these rights. But like any endowment, like 
any inheritance that's passed on from a loving father, if you're not 
willing to fight for it to the death, if necessary, you will not keep 
your inheritance. If you make stupid decisions with your endowment, 
with your inheritance, you're going to lose it; you won't keep it.
  Many countries have suspected they were endowed by their Creator with 
unalienable rights, but they didn't fight to preserve them. They never 
fought to grasp them to begin with, and they've never had them.

                              {time}  1500

  Some have had them and squandered them. We have been given such a 
gift by our Creator and by those who were willing to defend our 
inheritance so that we could enjoy that incredible endowment. Of 
course, we find out that there are some people in the Occupy movement 
who have big trust funds, massive amounts of money to keep them going, 
and they're out there complaining about people with money, got their 
laptops or their iPads, don't appear to be hurting too much. It appears 
some of them were born on third base and have gone through life 
thinking

[[Page 18727]]

they hit a triple. Well, they haven't, and they need to be grateful for 
the people that got them to third base, but they're not.
  We can get spending under control, but we've got to get back to a 
moral Nation. As the Founders said, this government was never intended 
to work as a government for immoral people, for a people who did not 
grasp and understand the gift from their Creator, and that they had a 
Creator.
  We know that there are those who, in this country, are atheists 
because they have the freedom to do that, and that's fine. They have 
the freedom of religion, but the late Bob Murphy from Nacogdoches, 
Texas, used to say, you know, I used to feel sorry for atheists, he 
said. I do, I feel sorry for atheists because they have to tell the 
world, while they're trying to act like intellectuals, they have to try 
to tell the world that they believe the equation nobody plus nothing 
equals everything.
  As Bob used to say, how embarrassing, to act like an intellectual and 
say I believe the equation, nobody plus nothing equals everything. 
Because the truth is, we were endowed by our Creator. It didn't just 
happen. These incredible gifts didn't just appear. We are endowed by a 
loving Creator.
  I learned a lot about the nature of God as a father who loved his 
children. I learned even more about the nature of God as a judge and 
chief justice, how you don't want to punish people. You got a taste of 
that as a father. But there has to be laws, there has to be 
enforcement, there has to be equal enforcement and people not be above 
the law.
  Well, when you get people in positions of authority who think they're 
above the law, that they should be in a position, as was King George 
III, to decide legislative, judicial and executive decisions, we're in 
trouble.
  In North Dakota, there has been the largest oil find since the 
discoveries in Alaska. Some think the shale finds of oil in North 
Dakota may even exceed Prudhoe Bay. It's big.
  We, those of us who believe in God, should be thanking God for the 
endowment of all the natural resources in this country. We have been 
richly blessed, and yet we have got an administration that says hands 
off: this might make us energy independent, this might move us down the 
road to stop sending money to countries that hate us, to stop sending 
money to countries who are funneling money to terrorism.
  This energy resource blessing that we've been given, if we used it, 
would create jobs; but we're not going to allow it because we want to 
use something they call alternative energy. The reason, as someone 
recently said, it is called alternative energy is because it isn't real 
energy. You use more energy getting the energy out than you actually 
get back.
  That's been seen with wind energy; and we know that these massive 
windmills, though producing some small amount of electricity, they've 
chopped up a lot of birds in the process.
  And yet what has been this administration's position in response to 
the biggest oil find in modern history in North Dakota, Slawson 
Exploration Co. of Wichita, Kansas, was charged under the Migratory 
Bird Treaty Act for killing 12 birds that--these aren't endangered 
species, they're migratory birds, like mallard ducks--after landing, 
allegedly landing in oil waste pits in western North Dakota.
  So our Justice Department, which abandoned prosecution of funding of 
terrorism around the world against the United States and our friend 
Israel, it has abandoned that responsibility, they are purging their 
training records of any reference to radical Islam. They are refusing 
to go after the people that want to bring down this country. They're 
appointing people on the Homeland Security Advisory Council who have 
glowingly talked about Ayatollah Khomeini, or the Holy Land Foundation, 
that funneled money to terrorism, they're putting people like that on 
the Homeland Security Advisory Council, giving them secret clearance 
and letting them peruse our classified documents. That's what this 
administration has been doing.
  But these energy resources could make us energy independent, and what 
are they doing? They're putting their foot on the throat of anybody 
that tries to produce them to the point that they will ignore the tens 
of thousands of birds that have been killed by windmills and go after 
the biggest oil find in modern history in America and charge them 
criminally because maybe there were 12 ducks that got into some of 
their oil.
  It's incredible what this administration is doing--they think to help 
America. But, clearly, just as clearly in retrospect as President 
Carter hurt this country, hurt those who love liberty by recognizing 
the Ayatollah Khomeini as a man of peace, proudly proclaiming his 
coming back to Iran, and thousands and thousands and thousands of 
people have died because such a man was encouraged to come to power.
  Just like this administration did in Egypt, like this administration 
has done in Libya, without really knowing who we were helping, and now 
the Muslim Brotherhood that is devout in pursuing an international 
caliphate that would put the lovers of liberty in this country under 
the shackles of following sharia law, it's a disgrace.
  There is so much damage that this administration has been doing; the 
Justice Department going after people because they believe there is a 
God.
  I will just close with what Ben Franklin said in the Constitutional 
Convention, 1787, toward the end of June:

       How has it happened that we have not once thought of humbly 
     applying to the Father of lights to illuminate our 
     understanding? In the beginning of the 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.

  He ultimately said:

       If a sparrow cannot fall to the ground without His notice, 
     is it probable that an empire can rise without His aid? We've 
     been assured, sir, in the sacred writings that ``unless the 
     Lord build the house, they labor in vain that build it.'' I 
     firmly believe this.

  He also said:

       I firmly believe that without his concurring aid, we shall 
     succeed in our political building no better than the builders 
     of Babel.

  He was right. We've had over 200 years of blessing as a result. It's 
time to acknowledge the result of our blessing and the source of our 
blessings.
  With that, I yield back the balance of my time.

                          ____________________