[Congressional Record (Bound Edition), Volume 159 (2013), Part 11]
[House]
[Pages 15518-15521]
[From the U.S. Government Publishing Office, www.gpo.gov]




                    INSIDE THE OBAMA ADMINISTRATION

  The SPEAKER pro tempore (Mr. Hudson). Under the Speaker's announced 
policy of January 3, 2013, the Chair recognizes the gentleman from 
Texas (Mr. Gohmert) for 30 minutes.
  Mr. GOHMERT. Mr. Speaker, for a government that shuts down, there 
sure seems to be a great deal going on. Down here on the Mall, somehow 
the National Park Service, which has been, parenthetically speaking 
here, presiding over a park service, beginning with the Franklin D. 
Roosevelt memorial, has not had God mentioned in any memorial since 
that time. We don't have time or a place for mentioning God, as our 
memorials have in some way in the past, but, by golly, we have got time 
during a shutdown to approve a permit to allow people who want to 
demand that--though they are here in this country illegally--they have 
a right to demand rights. This administration, just as it did with the 
Occupy Washington movement, facilitates that.
  We know with the Occupy Washington movement there was all kinds of 
lewd, lascivious stuff going on in public. The Park Service didn't seem 
to be bothered by that. But let veterans show up to the World War II 
memorial, and they have got barricades. Let World War II veterans, who 
fought their way to the top of Mt. Suribachi, try to get to the 
monument that commemorates climbing to the top of Suribachi, they put 
up big obstacles to our veterans getting there.
  So the message from this administration very clearly is that if you 
are illegally in the country, we will bend over backwards to let you 
commit all kinds of acts on the Mall; we will send Capitol Police down 
to pick up your garbage; and if you just want to illegally occupy a 
public area, we will let you do that. We will let you use the basest 
services in public. All kinds of lewd and lascivious things were going 
on there with the Occupy Washington movement, and that was allowed to 
continue on and on and on.

                              {time}  1545

  However, if you have served your country in the United States 
military, then we're going to try to make life miserable for you. It 
just might be those people that have hung on to their God and their 
guns and love America and love the Constitution, so this Homeland 
Security thing is sure a threat. Which is quite interesting.
  You know, with all the things that are going on, we have seen that 
this administration has not had a problem with some things that some of 
us felt were a problem, such as, like I've mentioned in the last couple 
of years, one of the members of what was originally the Countering 
Violent Extremism Working Group named Elibiary from Texas, who was 
placed on there. And then he got a promotion from Secretary Janet 
Napolitano up to the Homeland Security Advisory Council,

[[Page 15519]]

and, gee, now we're finding out that he's continuing to defend one of 
the principals of the Holy Land Foundation.
  We're finding out that he is still defending, he still considers them 
to be unjustly prosecuted even though Federal courts have found that 
crimes were committed and that terrorism was supported by the Holy Land 
Foundation. The Dallas Federal court, along with the U.S. Court of 
Appeals in New Orleans, found that groups like CAIR, which has now 
changed its name to WTF, and ISNA, groups like that were the largest 
front group for the Muslim Brotherhood in America.
  So it's rather interesting, because this administration has made life 
so difficult for our veterans just trying to get here and enjoy the 
memorials. I've been down to the memorials I think every day until 
today, and it's amazing. I've been down there different days, all hours 
of the day and night. You're lucky if you see one park ranger in the 
area of the World War II Memorial, and yet now they've got them very 
strategically placed.
  They will stand there with the barricades closed most of the time. If 
some group comes up and explains that they're a World War II veterans 
group, then they'll open and let them through, but they stand there 
intimidating. Sometimes an officer comes by with a canine, which is a 
bit more intimidating to most people. So unless Members of Congress are 
standing there, we see people come up and get intimidated and walk 
away, unless a Member of Congress goes up and says, Please, come in. 
You are welcome.
  Fortunately, veterans of Vietnam and Korea are just going around the 
barricades and fortunately are not being stopped. At the Lincoln 
Memorial, though, when a couple of Members of Congress encouraged 
people to come on up, like they do at the World War II Memorial, they 
said that it appeared that the park SWAT team--I mean, officers came in 
from all over, threatening arrests. Get out of here.
  It's just amazing how far this administration will go to hurt 
Americans that love America, that have served this country.
  And then we find out about Americans killed in Afghanistan. There 
should have been no problem whatsoever with the Defense Department 
cutting the $100,000 checks to these families. There should not have 
been. And if there was any doubt, then the bill we passed before the 
shutdown began should have taken care of that. There was plenty of 
prerogative to do that. But we had to come back today and pass another 
bill just to say get a check to the families of those who lost a loved 
one serving this country, because the administration is playing 
hardball and has gotten policies in place that are hurting as many 
Americans as possible. But when you look at who's advising this 
country's top leaders, is it any surprise?
  Here's a story from October 6 from The Daily Caller:

       Senior adviser to the Department of Homeland Security is an 
     old friend of an activist who was convicted in 2008 of 
     financing the terrorist organization Hamas.
       In an interview with The Daily Caller, Mohamed Elibiary, a 
     member of the Homeland Security Advisory Council, reiterated 
     claims he made this summer that former Holy Land Foundation 
     President and CEO Shukri Abu Baker is innocent and a victim 
     of political persecution.
       Elibiary, who in his position on the council also has 
     regular access to classified information, said the United 
     States insults Muslim dignity and compared the Muslim 
     Brotherhood to American evangelicals.
       Elibiary confirmed to journalist Ryan Mauro of the Clarion 
     Project in August that he is a longtime friend of Baker. The 
     Mauro interview can be read at the Center for Security 
     Policy.
       Baker and four other officials of the closed Holy Land 
     Foundation for Relief and Development were convicted of using 
     the charity to finance Hamas in 2008. It was the largest 
     terrorism financing trial in U.S. history. Federal 
     prosecutors described the foundation, which was closed by the 
     U.S. Government in 2001, as an entity of the U.S. Muslim 
     Brotherhood.
       Elibiary first disclosed the relationship in a 2007 article 
     in The Dallas Morning News. He met Baker as a teenager and 
     was so moved by the terrorist funder's explanation of alleged 
     Israeli persecution of Palestinians that he says he began 
     donating monthly to Baker's foundation until it closed in 
     2001. The friendship continued, with Elibiary meeting with 
     Baker for coffee the day before he was convicted.
       Elibiary maintains that Baker is innocent. And in 2010, he 
     wrote that the U.S. Government was ``using the law to force 
     compliance with unjust foreign policies.'' He reiterated his 
     belief that the U.S. should not have prosecuted the Holy Land 
     Foundation.
       The Muslim activist has never disguised his support for 
     Muslim Brotherhood extremism. In a 2006 letter to the Morning 
     News, he defended the fanatically anti-American early 
     Brotherhood leader and theorist Sayyid Qutb stating, ``I'd 
     recommend everyone read Qutb, but read him with an eye to 
     improving America not just to be jealous with malice in our 
     hearts.''

  Let me insert here, Qutb wrote, in Egypt, a book called 
``Milestones,'' where a guy named Osama bin Laden gives a great deal of 
credit for radicalizing him. And here we have someone that Janet 
Napolitano handpicked to be at the highest advisory council level, have 
access to classified material, somebody that thinks the guy that 
radicalized Osama bin Laden is somebody we all should read with an eye 
toward improving America.
  ``Elibiary has been honored by the FBI's Society of Former Special 
Agents,'' the article says. And again, parenthetically here--it's not 
in the article, but we also know that the FBI continued a relationship 
with CAIR, even knowing that they had gathered evidence that showed 
that CAIR was a large Muslim Brotherhood front organization which was 
supportive of the Holy Land Foundation. Even knowing those things, even 
knowing that it was implicated as a named coconspirator in that trial, 
amazingly, it took until 2008 and 2009 for the FBI to suspend their 
partnership with CAIR. And we know that CAIR continued until they 
changed their name here recently in the last few weeks to WTF.
  They continued to complain. They have instant access to anyone in 
this administration. They helped get the FBI material, training 
materials purged of anything that might be offensive to someone who was 
a radical Islamist.
  The article says:

       In September, Elibiary was promoted to senior adviser at 
     the advisory council, a title held only by select members. 
     Other council members include William Bratton, the revered 
     former New York police commissioner and Los Angeles chief of 
     police; former CIA Director Bill Webster; and L.A. County 
     Sheriff Lee Baca.

  And we have this, which has been tweeted out:

       I'm honored to be reappointed to the Secretary of Homeland 
     Security's Advisory Council and promoted to senior fellow 
     position.

  That's Mohamed Elibiary. This article says:

       ``If you've ever wondered why the Obama administration 
     believes that the Muslim Brotherhood is a moderate force for 
     good and partners with known U.S. Muslim Brotherhood 
     entities, this interview with Mr. Elibiary helps us find an 
     answer,'' Mauro said.

  Elibiary received national attention in June 2012 when Minnesota 
Republican Michele Bachmann and four other Members of Congress--one 
including me--wrote a letter to the Department of Homeland Security, 
naming him as one of three advisers with extensive ties to the Muslim 
Brotherhood and other Islamist organizations and causes.
  Anyway, it's just amazing. And it is also amazing, when I confronted 
Secretary Napolitano in a hearing about the fact that Mr. Elibiary had 
accessed classified material and I was told by the director of the 
Department of Public Safety, Steve McCraw, in Texas, he had spoken with 
her chief of staff. He had confirmed that he had briefed her totally on 
what Mr. Elibiary had done, and they would be looking into it. When I 
asked her about it the next day after her chief of staff had said she 
had been totally briefed, she looked me in the eye and said she didn't 
know anything about it. But she did say she would investigate.
  We now know from a Freedom of Information answer from the Department 
of Homeland Security, they never investigated. Even when you had a 
writer, a journalist, Patrick Poole, wrote a story stating that Mr. 
Elibiary had actually shot two documents that they knew he had 
downloaded from the classified Web site, he had shopped it to a

[[Page 15520]]

national media, and Mr. Poole confirmed to me that they have never once 
asked him about his sources. And we then had it confirmed from the FOIA 
request that actually they never did an investigation. Instead, they 
just promoted him. It is incredible. But then again, when you look at 
what this administration is doing to those who don't necessarily 
worship Allah but worship God and believe in God and have served the 
country, this administration is making it tough.
  One of our most revered monuments, Mount Rushmore. Well, I was quoted 
accurately in the media over a week ago saying, After shutting down 
these open-air monuments, just sidewalks where you can roll around in 
disabled veterans' wheelchairs, what are they going to do next, put 
drapery over Mount Rushmore? Well, it turned out what they did--I guess 
I shouldn't have said anything because maybe it was the power of 
suggestion.
  Oh, there's a way we can make people miserable. Even though it's a 
State road, built by the State of South Dakota, maintained by the State 
of South Dakota, patrolled by the State of South Dakota, we had Federal 
authorities go put cones and barricades to prevent people from being 
able to pull off to the side of the road to even take pictures of Mount 
Rushmore. Somebody, while the government was shut down, sent enough 
park rangers out to put up massive numbers of cones to try to make life 
as difficult as possible simply for people who loved America, who just 
wanted to pull over and get a view of Mount Rushmore.

                              {time}  1600

  They weren't going to patrol it. South Dakota does that.
  When South Dakota, our dear friend, Kristi Noem, she said when South 
Dakota had pointed out, hey, this is State road, the Federal authority 
said, oh, no, but this is on Federal land, and we're not letting 
anybody pull over.
  So this is what you get. This is the way Americans are treated unless 
you're going to be illegally in the country and have a protest, then we 
will give you permits, whatever you want.
  I was gratified to hear our friend, Representative Noem, point out to 
us that, though sad that South Dakota had 4 feet of snow in some 
places, unfortunately, that covered all the barricades and cones, 
strictly in the interest of safety, South Dakota had to send their 
snowplows and wipe all the snow, and there was no way to sort out the 
cones and barricades, so apparently they were in some ditch somewhere.
  But for safety purposes, because they were just trying to help those 
South Dakotans and Americans that wanted to see Mount Rushmore get 
through that road, that State-built road.
  So, anyway, another chance to make Americans miserable, but Mother 
Nature came through, followed by South Dakota, making things safer.
  Here is one. This is out by the Moore Farm that hasn't gotten a dime 
of Federal money since 1980. Former Park Director, National Park 
Service employee as director, been a director for 32 years, they barely 
make it, but they have lost $15,000 to $20,000 just by being closed 
down.
  They rented barricades to take out there and close down a colonial 
farm from the 1700s and, as a result of this mean-spirited action by an 
administration, this farm may close down for good. They are running out 
of money.
  But I have a dear friend that has arrived on the floor, and I would 
certainly yield to the gentleman from California (Mr. LaMalfa) for such 
time as he may consume.
  Mr. LaMALFA. I appreciate my colleague, Mr. Gohmert, here on pointing 
out really the hypocrisy of what's going on with the public's lands, 
the public's parks, the way this is being used as leverage by the folks 
higher up in this administration to try and extract from the American 
people, from those of us in this House, perhaps, what they want.
  He mentioned the thing in South Dakota there. Now, there is a lot of 
suffering going on in South Dakota where a lot of ranchers have lost a 
lot of livestock. And if anything, if your government has the ability 
to do something, it should be finding ways to help people, instead of 
putting up cones where they aren't supposed to be on a State highway 
they claim is on Federal land.
  So if all those cones are in the bottom of the canyon that they may 
have had to rent or what have you, similar to the barricades they are 
putting up around the monuments and memorials here in this town, where 
they have to go out and rent barricades on company time with furloughed 
employees even to set them up and put sandbags in place, this an insult 
to the American people. It is an insult to all of our Honor Flight 
folks that have been coming in to town, anybody that would use what 
would normally be 24-hour memorials, 24-hour monuments.
  So what gives? I don't understand.
  You know, getting to the bottom of this here, we have this impasse in 
the Congress here in Washington. Mr. Speaker, it is about time this is 
ended because we are hurting the American people by the actions of this 
White House, by the impasse, the Senate.
  We have sent over various, either all-inclusive CRs, or the bits and 
pieces we are doing to try and fund things as a priority, one at a 
time, that are very important to the American people. Funding our 
veterans, funding the basic ability when we have had fallen soldiers 
come home here in this recent news story, that their families can't 
even go pick them up because of an unyielding-ness by this 
administration, by those in the various bureaucracies to instead work 
to help American people in a time of fiscal straits that we are in, to 
help as much as possible, they are looking for ways to instead hurt 
them as much as possible.
  What is with this?
  We can even go back to previous impasses where, at least, President 
Clinton would sit down with the Republican House or Republican Senate 
or, after a while, it was a Republican House and Democrat-controlled 
Senate. There has been a mixture, over time, of putting aside the 
bitter partisanship and figuring out how we are going to hammer this 
out.
  If we can do it with President Clinton, we can do it in previous 
Presidencies. This isn't the first time there has been this kind of 
impasse or this type of slowdown or shutdown. Yet this time seems to be 
unique in the meanness and the bitterness that's coming down from the 
intractability at the White House level and over on the Senate side as 
we have put forward solution after solution.
  Mr. GOHMERT. Reclaiming my time just momentarily, it is also worth 
noting that here in the House we have actually had numerous Democrats 
vote with us. So the only really bipartisan thing that has been going 
on in this whole Capitol are our bills to fund certain parts of the 
government.
  I yield to my friend.
  Mr. LaMALFA. Yes, thank you. Yes, we have had unanimous votes go off 
this floor with nearly 200 Democrats joining us on two of the pieces of 
legislation, and anywhere from 25 to 35 to 40 on many of the other 
pieces that have gone out. So it has been a bipartisan effort. I think 
both sides of the aisle see this is really a nonpartisan issue on these 
issues we are working on.
  And so why do they have to rest on Senator Reid's desk over on the 
Senate side?
  Why do we get threats of vetoes from the White House when we find 
agreement?
  We would find agreement on almost the entire CR if we got that one 
provision there, where even some of the Senators themselves, and now we 
are seeing it in the press where, I think you mentioned Wolf Blitzer 
has now joined with Senator Manchin as well as Senator Baucus in 
thinking the Obama health care take over is a train wreck, that we are 
seeing a pretty diverse group of people saying, you know, a 1-year 
delay would not be an unreasonable thing.
  As we have seen the exchanges rolling out, they are not working very 
well. And people, when they are looking finally to find out what the 
prices are, what it is going to cost them, maybe people thought they 
were going to get it for free. They were going to get a rebate; they 
were going to get a

[[Page 15521]]

lower price. A lot of Americans, especially the youth, are going to see 
higher prices. They are not going to see the savings.
  And if you look at the track record of the government operating 
things, government generally doesn't do things cheaper, and we are 
going to learn this in a very detrimental way to our economy, to the 
health care for the people of this country as this Obama health care 
takeover continues to roll out.
  Mr. GOHMERT. And I am sure that Mr. LaMalfa has had people ask, as I 
have had, now, why in the world is ObamaCare costing so dramatically 
much more than the health insurance we had before?
  And then we get notified we are actually getting less health care.
  And my friend mentioned Wolf Blitzer, this article in National Review 
online quoted him as saying if they weren't fully ready, talking about 
the Web sites, ObamaCare Web sites, they should accept the advice that 
a lot of Republicans are giving them, delay it another year, get it 
ready, make sure it works.
  They know how to do it; but if they didn't get it ready on time, then 
maybe fix the problem and make sure people don't have to worry about 
it.
  But we come back, it is a disaster. It is more expensive than 
people's health care was before. They are getting less health care; 
they are not keeping their doctor. And most--it sounds like an awful 
lot of Americans are not keeping the policy they have. So why is it 
costing so much more?
  And what people that don't know need to understand, when you hire 
thousands and thousands of people who don't provide health care to be 
navigators through the health care system, and you hire 18,000-or-so 
more IRS officers to go through every detail of people's personal 
financial and personal life, and they don't provide any health care, 
they may cause some health problems, but they don't provide any health 
care--you add all this bureaucracy--it is going to cost more and you 
are going to get less treatment, and it is not going to be as good a 
treatment.
  I yield back to Mr. LaMalfa.
  Mr. LaMALFA. Exactly. Now, who are the navigators?
  Weren't they supposed to be vetted as to who they are, go through 
security?
  And as well, look at the track record of the IRS. Do the American 
people really want 18,000 or so IRS individuals helping with their 
important personal health data?
  I mean, there have been laws passed to make sure that that is a very 
secure thing. Sometimes even inconvenient to the patient, where you 
might be at the doctor and say, well, don't you already have this 
information from my other doctor?
  There are very strict guidelines in how your information is traded 
around. Now it is going to be in the hands of navigators that are 
unvetted and with IRS agents that have some very huge security issues 
already with the way that is being used against certain organizations.
  Mr. GOHMERT. And there is a story today from the Daily Caller about 
the White House IRS exchanged confidential taxpayer information by 
Patrick Howley. So if you think your personal information is secure 
with the IRS, or with the Federal Government, it is already showing you 
should not be comfortable with it happening.
  I yield to my friend.
  Mr. LaMALFA. The most outrageous thing for most folks, though, is 
that the waivers, many individuals in this country are asked for and 
got to be outside of this as it was coming together; and more and more 
are asking for it, some are being turned down.
  But especially, I guess, buying off Members of Congress through the 
OPM, allowing Congress and Capitol Hill to be exempt from this. If it 
is such a great program, if it is going to work so well, why would we 
be subject to a waiver?
  Why are they talking about there would be a brain drain on Capitol 
Hill because everybody would be leaving because they can't afford the 
health insurance?
  How does that work?
  Mr. GOHMERT. Well, apparently, our time is expiring. I appreciate so 
much my friend, Mr. LaMalfa, helping me. And we should not be treated 
any differently. The President and his family need to sign up.
  But, Mr. Speaker, I think it is worth noting that when I went out to 
the U.S. Marine Corps War Memorial, the Iwo Jima Memorial, this 
administration had tried to prevent World War II veterans from getting 
to the symbol of Mount Suribachi, and there were three busloads of 
World War II vets up there at the memorial, and the barricade was in 
pieces.
  God bless our World War II veterans.
  Mr. Speaker, I yield back the balance of my time.


  

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