[Congressional Record (Bound Edition), Volume 158 (2012), Part 11]
[House]
[Pages 14718-14723]
[From the U.S. Government Publishing Office, www.gpo.gov]




                              PERSPECTIVE

  The SPEAKER pro tempore. Under the Speaker's announced policy of 
January 5, 2011, the gentleman from Texas (Mr. Gohmert) is recognized 
for 60 minutes as the designee of the majority leader.
  Mr. GOHMERT. Mr. Speaker, well, my head is spinning a bit after 
hearing my friends across the aisle. I heard our former Speaker ask 
about whether we're better off now than we were 4 years ago, and 
actually ask how can people who perpetuated this economic disaster ask 
that question. And it was amazing, because former Speaker Pelosi and I 
were on exactly the same wavelength. She was asking: Are we better off 
now than we were 4 years ago? And I was thinking the same thing that 
she was: How could people who perpetuated this economic disaster ask 
that question? But she asked it anyway.
  You heard our friends talk about the economic disaster. Some of us 
remember back into the early point of the 21st century when there was 
an effort by first-term President Bush, George W. Bush, calling for 
reform of Fannie and Freddie, and I seem to recall my friend from 
Massachusetts who resisted such reform. In fact, there were people here 
on the Democratic side of the aisle that resisted such reform; they 
prevented such reform. There were Members on the Republican side--not 
all of them, but there were Members who were calling for reform of 
Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, but it didn't happen. In fact, our friends 
across the aisle were in control of the House and Senate for 4 years.
  In 2005 and 2006, as a freshman, I often heard our colleagues across 
the aisle asking how we could do such a terrible, terrible thing of 
spending $100 billion to $200 billion more than we had coming in. And 
they were right, they were right: we should not have been spending $160 
billion more than we had coming in. The Democrats were right. And 
because Republicans did not stay true to what we had promised--our 
leadership just wouldn't dig in and stop it, even though we had a 
Republican President, you know, well, we've got a Republican President, 
don't want to hurt his feelings--we spent $160 billion more than we had 
coming in.
  So, the American public sounded like they weren't thrilled with what 
they heard from the Democrats, but they figured they'd give them a 
chance. So, November 2006, Democrats--who had promised to end the 
deficit spending--took over and the deficit spending, rather than 
coming under control, went out of sight.

                              {time}  1330

  They passed the Dodd-Frank bill. It has historic overregulation of 
community banks.
  Now, why would a group who is so upset with Wall Street pass 
legislation that devastates community banks that are closest to the 
community, know the borrowers the best, that have been the real 
foundation of this country? Why would they strangle out community banks 
with this massive overregulation that really doesn't hurt the massive, 
big banks?
  Well, someone said years ago, follow the money. And if you look at 
the money that has been contributed to campaigns for many years, you 
find out that the Wall Street executives and their immediate family 
normally donate about four times more to Democrats than they do to 
Republicans.
  Now, the Wall Street executives have to endure being called fat cats 
by a Democratic President, but they know, perhaps it's a wink and a 
nod, I'll call you fat cats, but I'm going to destroy your competition. 
We'll get rid of community banks. We'll strangle them with 
overregulation. They can't make loans. We'll threaten them through the 
FDIC and the regulators to prevent them from making loans that they 
know are to good, reliable people who have never missed a payment. 
We'll threaten them not to do that, and we'll choke them out. And the 
only people to be left are the big investment banks on Wall Street that 
got us into the big mess in the first place.
  So if you follow the money and you follow the contributions, you find 
out, gee, Democrats talk about Wall Street as if they're Republicans, 
but there are four times more Democrats on Wall Street as executives 
than there are Republicans. What a shock. Because they talk a good 
game, I thought for so long that Wall Street executives must be 
Republicans, the way the Democrats talk. Not so. President Obama got 
four times more contributions from executives and their immediate 
family than did a guy named John McCain.
  So, we look on further. What about jobs?
  How about when we have a disaster, by British Petroleum, who has been 
allowed to operate in the gulf coast with 800 or so egregious safety 
violations, but that's okay. According to the Obama administration, 
they didn't want to step in.
  I read an account that at the very time Deepwater Horizon had blown 
out, and this administration, Obama administration, should have been 
all over them, the executives of British Petroleum were negotiating 
with the Democrats to be the one big oil company that rolled out 
support in favor of cap-and-trade.
  I said I wouldn't use the term ``crap-and-trade'' anymore, so I'll 
avoid saying that.

[[Page 14719]]

  But they had a big oil company that was willing to come out and 
support cap-and-trade. So certainly this administration and the 
Democrats in the House and Senate wouldn't want to do anything too 
detrimental to British Petroleum because they're going to come out on 
our side. That meant that they ended up actually believing BP when they 
said, Oh, we'll get it under control.
  Well, they didn't get it under control.
  So then there was this bipartisan group of experts peer-reviewing 
what was going on in the gulf coast, and they came back with a report 
that made recommendations of what should be done. One of those 
recommendations was not to have a moratorium on drilling, not only of 
the deep water, but also the very shallow water. They didn't recommend 
it. And yet this administration goes through and changes the report the 
way it's printed and put out so that it makes it sound like these 
experts recommended a moratorium. They did not. But that's the way this 
administration wanted to manipulate what the American public believed 
so that the President could sign off on a moratorium.
  Other than those precious lives that were lost and those who were 
harmed out there on the Deepwater Horizon rig because this 
administration had allowed them to continue to operate, the biggest 
damage to the people in the gulf area was from the President's 
moratorium.
  There were people who were making $75,000 in salary working on rigs--
and that was the minimum, basically, from what I was told by people 
that worked on rigs--and that income stopped, and those families had 
nothing because this President perverted a report into making people 
believe that it said we should cut off drilling in the gulf coast, and 
it devastated so many in the gulf coast region.
  If you want to look at what the President really thinks about big oil 
companies, it's very similar to what is said and done about Wall 
Street. They call the Wall Street executives all kinds of names--wink, 
wink, nod, nod. We're going to pass legislation that eliminates your 
competition, and then you'll be in charge, and then maybe you can make 
eight times as many contributions to Democrats as you do to Republicans 
in both Wall Street and among Big Oil.
  How would that happen?
  Well, if you read the bill that President Obama put together--and it 
was the second American Jobs Act that was filed, because I filed the 
first one, because he ran around the country for weeks saying, Pass the 
American Jobs Act. There wasn't one filed. I figure if he's going to 
run around America saying, Pass the American Jobs Act, there ought to 
be one. So I put a two-page bill together that would have eliminated 
the 35 percent tariff we put on every American-made good by any company 
in America.
  If we eliminate that 35 percent tariff, also called a corporate tax, 
you would see companies flocking into America. You would see people 
with jobs. They wouldn't be standing in line trying to get food stamps, 
standing in line trying to get more government help. They would have a 
job and all the pride that comes from that, of doing a good job and 
making your own money and making your own way.
  But we have a group in this Congress, in both ends. They're in the 
majority down in the Senate, in the minority down here; and it's 
certainly not all of my Democratic friends, but they think the best way 
to help a country is just to give away more of other people's money.
  If you look at the President's proposal in his so-called American 
Jobs Act, he told people, I'm going to just really take after Big Oil.
  Well, I was one who actually read all 135 or 138 pages, whatever it 
was, and in the last part is where he got around to Big Oil, except it 
doesn't hurt Big Oil. It absolutely devastates and would eliminate all 
the small independent oil companies operating in America. And those 
small independent oil companies happen to drill and operate nearly 95 
percent of all the oil and gas wells in America.
  He takes away deductions of the normal cost of doing business that 
anybody in business is allowed to take as a deduction. Why not? It's 
the cost of doing business. It's not profit. That way, you only tax the 
profit. And it eliminates deductions that actually do not help big oil 
companies. They can't take those deductions. Only the small companies 
can take that deduction.
  So the President's plan, when you really look at it, instead of 
looking at what he says, look at what he did. What he did was provide 
the elimination of the independent oil and gas companies in America.
  And you don't have to have been to an Ivy League school. In fact, 
you're better off maybe in figuring this out if you didn't, because he 
had a Harvard economic advisor at the time. And of course, Art Laffer, 
I think the world of him. I think he's maybe the best economic advisor 
any President's ever had, despite his Harvard education. But you don't 
have to have an Ivy League education to understand that if this 
President had been successful in eliminating every independent oil and 
gas company, as his bill would have done, not only will you eliminate 
millions of jobs, including those who derive jobs from the independent 
oil and gas business as well as the business itself, not only would you 
do that, you would eliminate most of the production in America.
  What does that do? That drives the price of oil and gasoline way up, 
dramatically up. Natural gas, oil, all of that goes dramatically up, 
because the major oil companies in the world are not interested in 
coming in and operating smaller wells. They go for the big ones.

                              {time}  1340

  That means there is no competition to the massive oil and gas 
companies in the world. I was shocked to find out in our Natural 
Resources Committee that, if you look at all of the big oil companies 
in the world and if you see them listed just by how much they've got in 
reserves, the American companies like Exxon are way down the list. The 
biggest oil companies are those operating as single companies in OPEC 
nations.
  And what would this President do?
  He would do what he has done repeatedly--he would help foreign 
countries. He would help the bigger folks, the bigger oil companies. 
I'm sure it would have benefited the fat cats, as he calls them, on 
Wall Street, but it would have put out of business 94, 95 percent of 
the oil and gas wells in America. That meant everybody's price went up. 
How sad is it that one of the few promises that he kept--I don't know, 
it may be the main promise--was to drive up the cost of energy in 
America. Boy, has he done that.
  Now, I love having quotes from people who talk about the Congress 
being the worst Congress that they can recall, especially Republicans, 
when the body at the other end of the Hall has not fulfilled the 
obligation that they are required by law to do, and that's to pass a 
budget. Not in over 3 years. So how are we going to get anything done 
in Congress?
  We've got a Senate down there, controlled by Democrats, who say, 
We're not going to do our job, and we're going to leave over and over 
on recess, and we're never going to do our job because, if people saw 
what our budget really is, they'd get mad at us, so we don't want a 
budget. We just want to keep spending at these ridiculously high 
levels. If we work through a budget, we might have to do like the House 
did when they worked through a budget, and we may actually have to cut 
some things.
  How incredibly disingenuous for anyone in America to stand up and 
say, Gee, we really want to bring down our spending, and yet everything 
they propose, except for the military, creates more spending. How 
disingenuous for anybody in America who stands up and says, These 
Republicans want to cut Medicare; they're going to destroy Medicare, if 
they've been awake during any of the actual bills that have been passed 
by the Democrats, especially during that whole long ordeal when the 
Democrats had the House and they had the Senate and they had the White 
House, and when America made it clear

[[Page 14720]]

we do not want ObamaCare. They said, We don't care. We want it. It's 
going to be more government control.
  It really was about the GRE, the government running everything, not 
just health care. By the passage of ObamaCare without one single 
Republican vote--not a one; it was completely done with Democratic 
votes, this $716 billion in cuts to Medicare--the Democrats voted that 
in. The Democratic President signed it in. It devastates Medicare more 
than anything that has ever been done to Medicare, and it was without 
one single Republican vote.
  So how in the world could somebody come in here or anywhere and blame 
Republicans for wanting to cut Medicare? Now, I blame my leadership. 
Anybody who is around can find it.
  We should never have agreed with the Democrats to that stupid 
supercommittee, deficit ceiling bill. We should not have. I was 
assured, No, no, no. They don't want $300 billion or $400 billion-$500 
billion in cuts in Medicare, which would be a sequester. They will come 
together, and we'll reach an agreement. I pointed out that these are 
the same people who cut $716 billion out of Medicare in ObamaCare. So, 
of course. I pointed out, if they don't have this supercommittee 
structure and refuse to let there be any agreement, then there is no 
one in the country who can be blamed for cutting Medicare except the 
Democrats.
  But if they get this bill passed on the deficit-raising bill and if 
it requires a supercommittee to reach an agreement--if they can get 
that through and get us to go along with it, thinking that they're 
going to actually reach an agreement--then they can stonewall and not 
reach an agreement no matter what we offer, and then they get a twofer. 
They get hundreds of billions in cuts to our national security at a 
time when our national security has not been in this kind of jeopardy 
since 9/11. Actually, on 9/11 it wasn't in the kind of jeopardy we are 
in right now, today.
  Under this administration, we have seen a win in Iraq turned into a 
loss because of just the total abandonment of what we created in the 
way of a friend in Iraq. Maliki--now, he's no friend of mine. He says I 
can't come back in the country. Yet if I put myself in Maliki's 
situation, who is the leader of Iraq--and I know Obama has said we're 
leaving and we're not leaving anybody or anything; we're leaving--and 
if you see America is pulling out and if you see all this radical stuff 
going on across the border in Iran, well, you realize America is not 
going to be around to keep any stability, and I'm going to have to 
start doing what Iran says.
  So what did we do?
  We created a country. We had a victory. Even though President Obama, 
as a Senator, was against the surge, everybody said it worked, that 
we'd won. Then he pulled us out in such a way that he snatched defeat 
out of the jaws of victory. Now you've got Iraq that is under heavy 
influence by Iran. Thank you, President Obama. We've got Syria that is 
run by a tyrant. Perhaps Syria was the only place we should have 
intervened, and this President still hasn't gone in and helped there--
oh, no. Because the 57 States that make up the Organization of the 
Islamic Conference were all for us going into Egypt and going into 
Libya and taking out two people with whom this administration had 
agreements. They loved the idea of America taking out and helping take 
out people that were allies of ours. They loved that.
  Some of us in this body were saying, Don't do this. We don't know 
who's going to take over. These could be some radicals who will even 
empower the radicals more. I mean, you look across at Tunisia and Libya 
and Egypt and Iraq and Iran and Syria and Lebanon. You look at these 
countries and come on over to Afghanistan--that this President is 
losing as we speak--and Pakistan, which has been harming us all they 
could while still taking our money. Thank you, Secretary of State 
Clinton and President Obama. You look, and you go, oh, my gosh. This is 
the makings. This is the massive beginning of a new Ottoman Empire that 
President Obama can take great credit for. Yes, we're in big trouble 
here in America, but, wow, look what he has helped do in the Middle 
East. It's a new Ottoman Empire. Thank you, President Barack Hussein 
Obama. This will be quite a legacy for you.
  I'm not one of those who says he is not a Christian. All I know is 
that's between him and God. What I do know is he has helped jump-start 
a new Ottoman Empire and left our friend and ally Israel so vulnerable 
in this sea of radicalism that he has helped bring to the surface.
  How could any of us who were around in '79 not be reminded of 
President Carter? He has got to be happy--thank you. Now I'm not the 
worst President in the world. But at the time, he thought we'll just 
turn our backs on the Shah--not a nice guy, but he was creating some 
form of stability. When he was gone, President Carter called Ayatollah 
Khomeini a man of peace.
  What a welcome thing.
  He came in, and he was the supreme leader when our Embassy was 
attacked, which is an act of war--just as it was in Libya, just like it 
is in Cairo. It's an act of war. Any commander would make it clear, 
except President Carter and President Obama, that you've attacked 
American soil. You've attacked us. Under everybody's form of 
international law, you either straighten it out, or we're coming in 
because we have a right under international law to protect ourselves, 
and if it means taking your government out because of what you've done 
or have allowed to be done or have helped foment, then we do it.

                              {time}  1350

  In Egypt, this administration helped bring about what they thought 
would be a great thing, an Arab Spring. It's turned into an American 
winter. At the same time, this administration was blessing and loving 
the Occupy Wall Street movement, even though they were clearly a bunch 
of Democrats, a bunch of kids with iPads, iPhones out there. There was 
rape, drugs, all kinds of illegality and immorality out there 
abounding. This administration is saying this is a good thing.
  You see the signs all over the place. Let me show you. At the Occupy 
movement, you would see signs like this: ACAB, all cops are--some 
people said ``bad,'' but I've been corrected. The B stands for 
something to do with fatherless children. ACAB, that's at the Occupy 
Oakland movement. You can look at pictures and see all these Occupy 
movements and see ACAB everywhere.
  Well, I was a little shocked when my staff points out, Look at that. 
This was on a wall in Egypt, and I need somebody to explain how, among 
all this Arabic writing by the radicals that have charged our Embassy 
in Egypt, how in the middle of all this Arabic do we get ACAB? Who's 
doing that? There were rumors of some type of collusion, but who among 
those radicals in Egypt is writing ACAB, which is what you see at all 
the Occupy movements in America? Somebody has got some explaining to 
do, I would think, but not to this administration, because this 
administration thinks both the Occupy movement and the Arab Spring are 
a great thing, even though it's brought to power radicals who want to 
destroy America, who want to destroy Israel. How frustrating for our 
friend Israel.
  When we had friends come in here in the last hour, they were talking 
about Fannie and Freddie. On a personal basis, I like Barney Frank. He 
is a brilliant guy. But it's not that hard to go back and find quotes 
from him about the wonderful condition that Fannie and Freddie were in, 
and it's not hard to find people here on Capitol Hill that can explain 
how he stood in the way of the reforms that some here on Capitol Hill 
wanted to do.
  We also heard from him that in 2010, that there was a bunch elected 
that don't understand Congress and a free society. They were called 
``extremists.'' These freshmen that came in saying, You know what? 
Everybody should pay their fair share. It shouldn't be 51 percent of 
Americans paying for everybody else just because Democrats want to keep 
people beholden to them so they'll keep voting for them. Once they get 
more than half of all the voters who are getting more than they're 
putting in, we've lost the country. It

[[Page 14721]]

will be in complete demise. It may be 10 years or so, but once we get 
to that point, historically, you do not get that country back. We would 
not either, absent a miracle of God.
  We were told during the conventions that the Republicans do not have 
a franchise on God. Everybody at the Democratic convention was saying, 
We love God; we worship God; we love Israel; we like Jerusalem as a 
capital. We heard all this stuff until there was a vote, and, holy cow, 
we saw plain and clear that everybody in the Democratic convention does 
not want God mentioned. They don't want to hear about God. They don't 
want to hear about Jerusalem being the capital of Israel. They don't 
want it. They apparently side more with the Palestinians than they do 
those who were possessing and in that land 1,600 years before there was 
a man ever talked about named Muhammad is all you can figure. King 
David was there in Hebron, which now we're told, Oh, do the Israelis 
have history in this land? It's where David ruled for 7 years, about 16 
to 17 centuries before anybody had ever heard of Muhammad. How would 
they not have a history in that land?
  I was talking to Prime Minister Netanyahu about the history in the 
land. He mentioned the story of Ben-Gurion, who led the ragtag forces 
to fight their way back to Jerusalem after overwhelming forces had 
driven them out. The story was--and this was the first I had heard it, 
was when the Prime Minister mentioned it to me, but I've heard it a 
number of times since. He said Ben Gurion was challenged with, What is 
your voucher for claiming this land? And Prime Minister Netanyahu used 
the word, ``Bible.'' I'm sure it was a Torah. He said that Ben Gurion 
held up a Bible and yelled, This is my voucher.
  Do they have a history in the land? How blind do you have to be to 
not see it?
  With cap-and-trade legislation, thankfully, we had just a handful of 
enough friends on the Democratic side of the aisle that we were able to 
stop that, or it would have tripled or quadrupled the price of 
gasoline. It would have devastated industry. Industry would have had to 
leave in even bigger numbers from this country.
  We were told about the Bush stimulus, that they got bipartisan votes 
on the Bush stimulus. I guess so. Any time either party talks about 
giving away other people's money, we're going to get a bunch of 
Democrats to go along with the Republicans that mistakenly agree to 
that.
  While standing right here in this aisle as he came by, I asked 
President Bush a question. We had found out that $40 billion of the 
$160 billion Bush stimulus was going to go to people as rebates, even 
though they didn't pay an income tax. Standing right up there, that's 
when I asked the question: Mr. President, how do you give a rebate to 
somebody that didn't put any bait in? It's not a rebate. It's welfare. 
Call it what it is.
  My friends across the aisle in the last hour said they couldn't even 
get 100 votes to support President Bush's effort to save the economy. 
He's talking about TARP. I would have supported President Bush's 
efforts to save the economy, but unfortunately that really good man, 
smarter than most people around here give him credit for, witty, 
clever, just a joy to be around, but the problem there was he listened 
to Hank Paulson and his cronies who were going to bail out their 
buddies who give four to one to Democrats over Republicans. That's what 
happened.
  Paulson did get his way, but we didn't have 100 people on the 
Republican side of the aisle vote for that because there was a former 
FDIC Chair named Isaac. He and a bunch of economists had some 
recommendations. These were free market recommendations. The projection 
was even then that we have at least $700 billion in banks overseas that 
American companies and American individuals had earned overseas. They 
know that if they bring it into the U.S. they'll have to pay 40 to 50 
percent tax with all of the interest and penalties, so they just leave 
it in banks overseas. They'd love to bring it in here, but we're the 
only country that double taxes because we don't let people bring in 
money without hammering the heck out of them, even though they've done 
a favor, done a good thing and earned money overseas that they'd like 
to bring here into America.
  Proposal-wise, all you have to do is say that instead of borrowing 41 
cents to 42 cents out of every dollar and coming up with $700 billion 
to give away to Hank Paulson so he can enrich his friends under that 
bill--I read it. It was a disaster. I couldn't vote for that, because I 
read it. It would let him give money to anybody he wants to, loan money 
to whoever he wants to, pay more than fair market value if, in his mind 
somehow, some way, some day, it might have some possible way of helping 
our economy.
  We don't do that in America, and that bill did it. That's why you 
didn't have 100 votes on this Republican side of the aisle for it. Our 
leadership made a mistake in supporting it on that Friday. I just call 
them like I see them. That was a mistake, but that's where we are.

                              {time}  1400

  We heard, in the last hour, about Republicans who say my way or the 
highway. Are you kidding me? We reached across the aisle during 
ObamaCare, saying, look, there's a bunch of these things we can agree 
on, insurance for people in your household under 26. We could do it for 
insurance across State lines. There were a number of things we could 
agree on.
  Insurance companies shouldn't be able to punish people for having a 
preexisting condition when the insured has acted in good faith all 
along the way and the insurer messes them around. We were willing to 
work things out. They said, we've got the votes. We don't need your 
votes, we don't want them.
  Well, the truth is we want Democratic votes on the Republican side, 
but we don't want to keep taking other people's money to give it away. 
I have heard in here so many times, well, you know, Jesus talked about 
helping other people, the orphans and widows. Well, a lot of us belong 
to churches, and we believe in doing that, that that is what Jesus said 
to do.
  But I can't find anywhere in the Bible where it says, go ye, 
therefore, take somebody else's money--because you don't want to do 
your own--take somebody else's money and help the widows and orphans 
and other people. He said you do it, you help them. When you do that, I 
can personally tell you, when you do that you're individually blessed. 
That's why Jesus said he knew it would bless the giver more even than 
the one who received the gift.
  In fact, you want a real example, what did Zacchaeus do after he met 
Jesus? He went and cut taxes. We don't even have to get into the fact 
that he was going to give a 4-1 rebate, did, to the people that he had 
wronged. You don't hear that around here.
  To continue to hear our friends talk about ending Medicare as we know 
it, that disastrous ObamaCare bill will end Medicare forever when you 
cut $716 billion. When you create this ObamaCare monstrosity, it's a 
government takeover of so many things, and it's disastrous.
  Yes, we're having to leave here, and I'm not happy about it. I didn't 
want another CR passed. We should have demanded that this Democratic 
majority at the other end of the hall stick around until they got a 
budget as the law requires them to do and don't leave until you do it, 
and let's stay here and get it.
  I can promise my friends across the aisle that all we have to hear is 
any inclination that the Democrats, controlled by Harry Reid in the 
Senate, as dictated by President Obama down Pennsylvania Avenue, if 
they want to work a budget out together, and we can work these things 
out together, we will come back in a heartbeat. We will be ready to go.
  We saw with that supercommittee, just as I predicted in July of last 
year, they didn't want an agreement. Apparently my friends who were 
talking in the last hour didn't know, but Pat Toomey and some others 
made a proposal that would have caused more

[[Page 14722]]

taxes to have to be paid by the wealthiest in the Nation. The top 1 
percent paid 39 percent of the taxes. Well, if they get 39 percent of 
the income they should, but they only get 13 percent of the income.
  They wanted them to pay more. There was a proposal in good faith by 
Republicans, we'll raise revenue, and it was reported here locally 
that, gee, some of the Democrats said, you know, this may do the trick. 
We may get to an agreement now. This is great. Thanks for doing this. 
Since you're willing to raise revenue on the rich, we can reach an 
agreement.
  Then they go away, and they must have talked to Harry Reid and 
President Obama, and you can see the game playing. You have got to go 
back and tell them we're not going to reach an agreement because our 
best hope for winning the Presidency again and having control in the 
Senate is if we tell America the Republicans won't reach an agreement, 
they are a do-nothing group. I hope and pray people will look beyond 
that and see who really is the do-nothing.
  We have got jobs bills down the hall. This ought to be a day of 
renaissance. This ought to be a day when the economy is booming. We now 
know we could be exporters of energy. We could be energy independent 
and export energy. But this President has a war against all of the 
below--that means all of the energy below the ground--that we could be 
using and exporting. He has got a war against it. All he is in favor 
of--as he said, he is for all of the above--that means wind and solar.
  Well, guess what? The sun doesn't always shine, the wind doesn't 
always blow. So if that's what you want for energy it means you are 
going to have a coal plant, a natural gas plant, something, a 
hydroelectric plant, and then you are going to have two or three times 
as many transmission lines.
  When you mandate wind and solar, and they don't provide energy all 
the time, they can't, then you are going to have a source from 
somewhere. Now we are doubling and tripling and going to force the 
price of energy to go up because we're going to demand Solyndras and 
that kind of thing so this administration can reward their cronies.
  We're at trouble within and without. I just want to remind my 
friends, this was reported in The New York Times, December 9, 2008, ``5 
Charged in 9/11 Attacks Seek to Plead Guilty'':

       At the start of what had been listed as routine proceedings 
     Monday, Judge Henley said he had received a written statement 
     from the five men dated November 4 saying they planned to 
     stop filing legal motions and ``to announce our confessions 
     to plea in full.''

  They were pleading guilty. We got the transcript. Khalid Sheikh 
Mohammed admitted guilt. He admitted. He confessed to all kinds of 
heinous kinds.
  Then this administration, President Obama and Eric Holder announced 
they want a New York City show trial that would have endangered New 
York yet again, as if they hadn't had enough trauma, and would have put 
a trial in there. Immediately these guys withdraw their plea. We're not 
going to plead guilty, we can get a show trial in New York. These guys 
who are running things here don't know what they're doing. What a 
disaster that would have been.
  As far as the great contribution, the great work that's being done in 
Afghanistan, we took a war where we were making progress, and here are 
the actual DOD numbers. You see that under Commander in Chief Bush 
there were 625 Americans, our precious, priceless men and women, who 
were killed from October of 2001 to the end of 2008, 625 precious 
lives.
  Bush goes out, President Obama comes in, January of 2009, and by the 
end of August there had been a subtotal of 1,474 additional American 
men and women killed under Commander Obama. Not only that, 14,817 
people had been wounded, Americans had been wounded, lose arms, lose 
legs, disastrous disabilities, under Commander Obama as compared to the 
2,638 terrible wounds that were inflicted on Americans under Commander 
Bush.
  Our President has been in command of 70 percent of the deaths in 
Afghanistan, though he has been commanding half the time, and has 84 
percent of the wounds.
  The parents of one of the SEAL Team 6 that was killed on the Chinook 
August 6 of 2011, they were in the briefing. They have said this 
publicly, that's why I will say it again. One of the parents asked, 
``If this was so terrible, this was such a hotbed, you knew it was a 
hotbed, a lot of aircraft, American aircraft have been fired on 
recently, why would you allow this Chinook to go in? Why wouldn't you 
send in a drone?''
  The answer from the general who was doing the briefing, they said 
was, because we're trying to win the hearts and minds in Afghanistan. 
You're letting our SEAL team be killed when you are trying to win the 
hearts and minds? That's not the job of the military. The military's 
job is to go in, defeat an enemy, and come out, and we've got to get 
back to that.
  This President has presided over 70 percent of the deaths in 
Afghanistan, a disastrous job. It's time to bring the President home, 
as well as bringing our military home. We could just say what President 
Bush did in October of 2001. We are going to provide embedded troops. 
We are going to let the enemy of our enemy be our friend. Not to this 
administration; they are the enemy. The enemy of our enemy is our enemy 
to Obama. But I have met with them a couple of times this year. They 
are our friends.

                              {time}  1410

  They're Muslim. They're our friends. They don't want to live under 
the tyrannical rule of the Taliban. And they're willing to fight, as 
they have, and die with Americans for that freedom. And so we don't let 
a renegade group like the Taliban that wants to destroy America be out.
  Make no mistake, the Blind Sheik was the object of release by a 
candidate named Morsi in Egypt. He said, I want the Blind Sheik 
released. When I'm elected president, I'm going to demand and I'm going 
to get it.
  Just a day before 9/11 this year, last week, you had the brother of 
the al Qaeda leader, Zawahiri, saying he was ready to broker a deal 
that would prevent lots of violence. He also knew the day before that 
there was an obscure video nobody had ever seen and wasn't going to 
inflame anybody, but he knew that his buddies, the Muslim Brotherhood, 
the Egyptian Government, the Egyptian television stations would convert 
that, translate that into a language that they would inflame people 
that they would do violence in the Middle East. And they did. The 
second day of that broadcasting here is Zawahiri saying, Hey, I can 
broker a deal. Just release the Blind Sheik, some other murdering 
thugs, and we'll work a deal out.
  This administration has offered to release other murdering thugs of 
the Taliban and to buy them an office in Qatar if they'll just sit down 
and talk. That's not the way you do foreign diplomacy. You reward our 
friends so others want to be our friends and you punish our enemies so 
they don't want to be our enemies. This President has it backwards. He 
said, They'll look at me different because I'm the first President to 
have ever grown up in a Muslim country--the years he spent in 
Indonesia. Well, I wonder if that might be true. Maybe they will. Maybe 
they'll want to be friends.
  Well, the proof is in. The approval rating of the United States in 
those Muslim countries where we've been was 33 percent--which was 
terrible--under President Bush in 2008. And now under this President we 
see a report it's now 15 percent, under this guy who was going to be 
our President and the Muslim countries would love us. They don't. 
Because in Muslim countries the real people, the people that we really 
need to reach out to, not the leaders that hate us and want to destroy 
us but the real people, they respect a country who understands who's 
their enemy and who's their friend. They have no respect for a country 
that tries to do what would be the equivalent of a child--and I've been 
there on the schoolyard, picked on by bullies. I was little growing up. 
But I can tell you, I had my nose bloodied many a time. You don't win 
respect nor love from a bully by giving him your lunch money or begging 
him to be nice to you. Not only do they not love you, not respect you; 
they gain even more contempt for

[[Page 14723]]

you. And that's what we're seeing happen.
  This President is trying to buy affection from people who were 
bullies, who are radical Islamists that want to destroy us. You're not 
going to get love and affection. You get contempt. It helps other 
people join in the fight against us. This President is doing great 
damage to us. And it's time to bring his Presidency to a peaceful, law-
abiding end with the election.
  Things look tragic around the world unless we have a new Commander in 
Chief and a new leader who wants to rein in the spending. And one thing 
I'll promise my colleagues across the aisle, if you want to go back to 
that runaway spending that was too much in 2008, that Speaker Pelosi 
presided over and Harry Reid had in the Senate and that ended in the 
last day of September, you want to go right back to that total amount 
being spent, I'm with you. I'll vote. I'll do it bipartisan and I'll 
bring a bunch of people with us and we'll bring down a trillion dollars 
a year in spending. How about that? That's pretty bipartisan, isn't it? 
Go back to a Democratic budget of 2008. Well, I offer that. Let's see 
how many Democrats are bipartisan enough to take us up on it.
  I yield back the balance of my time.

                          ____________________