[Congressional Record (Bound Edition), Volume 159 (2013), Part 12]
[House]
[Pages 17799-17805]
[From the U.S. Government Publishing Office, www.gpo.gov]




                               OBAMACARE

  The SPEAKER pro tempore. Under the Speaker's announced policy of 
January 3, 2013, the gentleman from Texas (Mr. GOHMERT) is recognized 
for 60 minutes as the designee of the majority leader.
  Mr. GOHMERT. Mr. Speaker, first of all, it is my honor to yield to a 
good friend whom I have tremendous respect for, from the State of 
Florida, my friend, Ron DeSantis.
  Mr. DeSANTIS. I thank the gentleman from Texas.
  Mr. Speaker, I am struck by having been here to witness something 
that I think is pretty neat. We had a newly sworn in Member take the 
oath of office to become a Member of this body. Part of it is neat 
because he got endorsed by Duck Dynasty, which I know a lot of people 
like; but it was neat because I think it reminds us what our duties are 
here. He was asked to take an oath of office right here in the well of 
the House. That oath was very simple. It charged him with the duty to 
support and defend the Constitution of the United States against all 
enemies, foreign and domestic.
  I think we need to have more of a reminder that that is our duty 
here. I am struck by reading the Constitution and how the Founding 
Fathers laid out separation of powers and checks and balances.
  For example, article I states clearly:

       All legislative powers shall be vested in a Congress of the 
     United States.

  Article II prescribes authority for the President and imposes a duty 
on him to take care that the laws be faithfully executed.
  I think that going back on those constitutional foundations and 
looking at how this particular President has made claims of his 
authority to essentially put aside the law or change the law should 
cause us great concern.
  For example, with this employer mandate aspect of ObamaCare, the 
statute said very clearly it shall take effect this January 2014.
  Well, that, obviously, would have been disastrous had they 
implemented that. We in the House were willing to delay it by statute. 
The President chose to do it by executive fiat.

                              {time}  1245

  And then most recently with the idea that ObamaCare was causing 
people to lose their plans, a lot of people in this body said, Look, we 
ought to grandfather these plans in; let people keep their plans. The 
President threatened to veto that, and then he issued, essentially, an 
executive order saying he is going to extend the grandfather clause and 
not enforce the ObamaCare mandate that is causing the cancelations.
  So, on the one hand, ObamaCare is a holy writ that people in Congress 
are not allowed to touch in any way with our Article I power, but the 
President can essentially pick and choose which parts to enforce, which 
parts to delay, and who to grant waivers to. That ultimately is not 
sustainable, and it conflicts with the basic structure of American 
Government.
  The American Revolution, if you read the Declaration of Independence, 
it was a revolt against executive power and the British King. Jefferson 
lists all the abuses that they were revolting against. One of the 
things that he mentioned was that King George III, what King George III 
had done wrong was for abolishing our most valuable laws and altering, 
fundamentally, the form of government.
  Students in school throughout America are taught, Congress passes the 
law and the President can sign or veto the law, and the President has 
the duty to enforce the law. Now, there is certainly prosecutorial 
discretion that comes with that. If the President has a good-faith 
belief that a law is unconstitutional, of course they have to prefer 
the Constitution to the statute. But here, this President has not made 
any claim that ObamaCare is unconstitutional; and, indeed, he can't, 
because it is his signature piece of legislation.
  I think the key thing to think about is the Founding Fathers did not 
create separation of powers, checks and balances because they thought 
that students would need something to study in civics class. They did 
it because, ultimately, that structure of government was the surest way 
to protect the individual liberty of the American people and to 
preserve and maintain the rule of law.
  I think disputes that we have regarding what this particular 
President may do should not even be about him, per se, because that 
just gets lost in partisanship back and forth. I think when we see any 
President taking steps that may not comport with how the structure of 
the government was intended to operate, we have to think about what 
precedent that sets, not just tomorrow, but 50 years from now. And so I 
have introduced a resolution that enumerates some of the instances in 
which the President has gone beyond using executive discretion and is 
essentially rewriting the law, either by failing to enforce entirely or 
suspending affirmatively different provisions of the law.
  Much has been said recently about the failure of this core promise 
with respect to ObamaCare, that if you like your plan, you can keep it 
can. Obviously, we are seeing that is not true. We are going to 
continue to see that. People are going to lose doctors, and it really 
is a deception on a massive scale.
  So I was thinking, you like your plan, you keep your plan; that 
obviously didn't work. Maybe we should get everyone in Congress and the 
White House to agree with this simple proposition: if you take an oath 
to the Constitution, you should keep your oath to the Constitution.
  I thank the gentleman from Texas for yielding to me, and I know you 
will be someone who will take that oath seriously.
  Mr. GOHMERT. I thank the gentleman from Florida. What a profound 
novel idea: if you take the oath, you should keep it. And that doesn't 
even mean if you like it. It is just, if you take the oath, you should 
keep it.
  As my friend, Mr. DeSantis was pointing out, there are so many 
problems with the ObamaCare bill. And I know the President referred to 
the bill as ``ObamaCare'' many times and said he was proud to do so, 
and so I certainly don't mean any disrespect or anything like that. On 
the other hand, it is extremely difficult to call it the ``Affordable 
Care Act'' when you know it is not affordable.
  And a great indication of just how affordable it is came from a lady 
named Jessica Sanford. I heard the President at a press conference read 
the letter from Jessica Sanford from Washington State. And when I heard 
it, I thought, well, good. At least somebody has been able to find 
something good from ObamaCare, because in my office we have heard from 
so many people who

[[Page 17800]]

have already been adversely affected. So I thought, well, great. Three 
hundred-plus million people in the United States, he found one person 
that had a letter he could read from Jessica Sanford. Then it turns 
out, this article from the Daily Caller on November 19:

       Jessica Sanford received a major shout-out last month when 
     President Barack Obama mentioned her fan letter lauding her 
     cheap, new ObamaCare coverage. But the Washington State 
     business owner has now been informed that she can't even 
     afford the cheapest ObamaCare exchange plan in her State. 
     ``I'm really terribly embarrassed,'' Sanford told the 
     Washington State Wire. ``It has completely turned around on 
     me. I mean, completely.''
       The Washington State exchange Web site Washington 
     Healthplanfinder originally gave Sanford a quote for coverage 
     that would insure both her and her son for $169 per month.

  But after a series of corrections--and she was one of the few people 
who was able to get through on the Web site--she gets a quote, and it 
turns out that it was entirely wrong. It makes you wonder how many 
people got the wrong quote and won't find out and won't realize they 
did and will end up January 1 without insurance thinking they signed 
up, thinking they bought a policy they can afford only to find out they 
couldn't afford it.
  In this case, it says the ObamaCare exchange Web site originally 
calculated Sanford would be eligible for a Federal ObamaCare tax credit 
that would lower her monthly premium total by $452 per month, prompting 
the effusive letter that Obama read out loud during a White House 
speech.

       I am a single mom, no child support, self-employed, and I 
     haven't had health insurance for 15 years because it is too 
     expensive. I was crying the other day when I signed up, so 
     much stress lifted.

  So the President was quick to share Ms. Sanford's gratitude and said:

       Sanford's experience is what the Affordable Care Act is all 
     about.

  He went on:

       The essence of the law, the health insurance that is 
     available to people, is working just fine. In some cases, it 
     actually is exceeding expectations. The prices are lower than 
     we expected; the choice is greater than we expected.

  But this article points out that Sanford was one of 8,000 people to 
be affected by 4,600 policies sold on the Washington exchange that had 
been quoted premium rates that were too low.
  Ms. Sanford said:

       I was dumbfounded. I thought this was a total mistake; 
     they're going to correct this. This isn't true.

  Now she says she can't even afford the cheapest Bronze ObamaCare 
plan. ``I was like, forget that. I'm not going to pay.'' So she is 
going uninsured. Sanford now says of ObamaCare:

       You are stuck on this big treadmill of bureaucracy. And, 
     you know, it feels very out of control.

  This article from today--this afternoon, actually--from Steven 
Ertelt, entitled, ``ObamaCare Denies Hospital Choice for Blind Child 
With Rare Bone Disease,'' says:

       As The Washington Post reports, a number of the Nation's 
     top hospitals--including the Mayo Clinic in Minnesota, 
     Cedars-Sinai in Los Angeles, and children's hospitals in 
     Seattle, Houston, and St. Louis--are cut out of most plans 
     sold on the exchange. In most cases, the decision was about 
     the cost of care.
       Here is how ObamaCare is hurting one family:
       In Seattle, the region's predominant insurer, Premera Blue 
     Cross, decided not to include the children's hospital as an 
     in-network provider except in cases where the service sought 
     cannot be obtained anywhere else. ``Children's nonunique 
     services were too expensive given the goal of providing 
     affordable coverage for consumers,'' spokesman Eric Earling 
     said in an email.

  That brings up the point, the President wanted to provide everybody 
health insurance; and some of us, like me, were more concerned about 
getting them quality health care that was affordable. All this talk 
about insurance, insurance, insurance, the bigger, more important 
question should have been can we get them health care they can afford.
  One of the biggest promises was it will lower most everybody's cost, 
and it turns out that was not true at all either. There are some in 
States, in a State like New York, where it was overpriced previously 
where it has come down some. But overall, when you add 18,000 new IRS 
agents that will not ever even apply a Band-Aid, they may cause a bunch 
of ulcers, but they will never provide any health care. And they are 
not from the U.S. Government to help you. They are there to go through 
all of your most important and most personal decisions with you--the 
IRS. Go figure.
  This institution, the IRS, this agency that we find out got 
weaponized by the Obama administration to go after people they 
disagreed with. Richard Nixon had an enemy's list, but he never could 
do much with it. This administration has an enemy's list, and they have 
really gone after people and made them suffer for having a different 
political opinion than this administration.
  This article points out:

       For example, a pediatric appendectomy at Children's costs 
     about $23,000. At another community hospital, the cost is 
     closer to $14,000. Melzer said his hospital often bills more 
     than community hospitals for comparable procedures because 
     the children it treats are often gravely ill, so even a 
     routine tonsillectomy may be more complicated.
       But as a result, families like Jeffrey Blank's, which has 
     relied on Seattle Children's since his daughter, Zoe, 
     received a rare diagnosis of a rare bone disorder, face 
     difficult decisions. Under some of the new law's health 
     plans, the family would no longer be able to take Zoe to 
     Children's for her routine checkups, or it could count as an 
     ``out-of-network'' visit, saddling the family with huge 
     bills.
       As the pro-life movement warned during its adoption in 
     Congress, health care will be rationed and health care access 
     will be limited when the government gets involved. These 
     lessons have been seen for decades in nations like Canada and 
     England, and the United States is now following suit.

  It makes such a great point, because when you add 18,000 IRS agents 
to be even more intrusive and get into your most private decisions 
about health care and your own health, they not only may cause you 
ulcers or create problems, they don't help at all. And I have no idea 
what the average IRS salary will be. I would imagine the IRS' average 
salary will be a lot higher than $56,000. But if you just take $56,000 
as the average for the 18,000 IRS agents, it means that a billion 
dollars next year will go for IRS agents to harass you, that will come 
out of money that should be going to health care, and it is not going 
to help you a bit.
  In fact, they are playing for the other team. They are out after you, 
not out to help you. And then when you add in all of these millions of 
navigators and you add in all the tens of thousands, maybe some make 
over $100,000, and I am sure some of them will that are involved in 
this whole navigator process, not the lowest level but some surely 
will, and you think about all the billions of dollars over the next 
years that will be spent for navigators that, as we heard here in 
testimony from Kathleen Sebelius herself, yes, they can be convicted of 
a felony and we won't catch it because we are not checking on that kind 
of thing.

                              {time}  1300

  As a former judge who sentenced people to prison--for example, I 
never sent a woman to prison for felony welfare fraud when her crime 
was getting a job to try to get out of the hole the government lured 
her into by promising checks for every child she could have out of 
wedlock. I do believe in holding people accountable. I would sentence 
them, give them probation, and then do things like either max them out 
or come close to maxing out 800 hours of community service, but then 
make very clear as an incentive that if you get your GED or high school 
diploma, then I'll knock out 750 hours, to urge them to go forward and 
help themselves, which ultimately helps society. That is the kind of 
thing government is supposed to do.
  Instead, this government, for too long, going back to the Great 
Society days, has incentivized things that lured people away from their 
God-given potential. It hasn't helped them; it has lured them away from 
their potential. Here we are now with ObamaCare not just luring people 
away from their health care, it has put a wall up between them and 
their health care.
  I knew when I would hear our friends across the aisle here in the 
House and in the Senate talk about how health insurance is a right,--
well, it is not in

[[Page 17801]]

the Constitution as a right. I was more concerned about ``health care'' 
than ``health insurance.'' There are ways to make it affordable.
  When we see disparities of $23,000 to $14,000 for the same 
tonsillectomy, it should be very clear that we need competition, and 
when you have the government running everything, there is no 
competition. The government screws that up royally. It prevents the 
thing that made America so great: entrepreneurialism, competitive 
advantages that people have that work hard. It destroys those kinds of 
incentives, and now we are seeing it destroy lives.
  Here is an article from November 19. ``HHS Secretary Sebelius Visits 
South Florida to Meet With Health Care Navigators.'' Gee, wouldn't it 
be nice if we weren't paying billions of dollars for government workers 
that will make your health care decisions more miserable instead of 
giving you more freedom?
  Here is an article from yesterday on foxnews.com: Second Wave of 
Health Plan Cancelations Looms. It says:
  A new and independent analysis of ObamaCare warns of a ticking 
timebomb, predicting a second wave of 50 million to 100 million 
insurance policy cancelations next fall--right before the mid-term 
elections. The next round of cancelations and premium hikes is expected 
to hit employees, particularly of small businesses.
  It goes on to say:

       As reported by AEI's Scott Gottlieb, some businesses got 
     around this by renewing their policies before the end of 
     2013. But the relief is temporary, and they are expected to 
     have to offer in-compliance plans for 2015. According to 
     Gottlieb, that means beginning in October 2014 the 
     cancelation notices will start to go out.

  So the millions of cancelations that have gone out now--people make 
the mistake of saying 5 million people. That is 5 million policies. 
That is the information I have got. There are million policies 
approximately so far. That is a lot more than 5 million people. That 
could be 15 million, 20 million people.
  This article is exactly right. AEI is exactly right that come next 
year, a lot of people--we have heard this, Mr. Speaker, that a lot of 
people have been renewing their policies now before the end of the year 
so that they don't completely lose it until next year around this time. 
Next fall, there will be millions and millions and millions more who 
will get those notices of cancelations.
  As a result, this article from Marguerite Bowling points out, Obama's 
legacy will be more Americans than ever reject government enrolled 
health care. It then points out the way it has gone from 64 percent and 
even up to 69 percent wanting government to be responsible for their 
health care to now dropping to 42 percent of Americans because people 
have begun to see what so many of us have been talking about for a 
number of years: the best solution is not more government. The best 
solution is not having navigators and IRS agents taking away money that 
could be spent on health care.
  I have this article from David Martosko that points out that our 
President had claimed that more than 100 million Americans have 
enrolled. Obviously, that was just a mistake in the teleprompter. It is 
not his fault. Here is an article from the Heritage Foundation's 
Morning Bell:

       The American people rose up to repeal a health care law 
     once before. They can do it again.

  It goes back and points out about the bill that had been passed under 
a man that I greatly revere, a great President, Ronald Reagan, and he 
thought he was providing America with a great gift of catastrophic care 
for seniors, but it didn't take but a couple of years for people to see 
this is a disaster, this isn't a good thing. So in 1989, they stepped 
up and got it repealed.
  An interesting CBS poll from yesterday points out that 84 percent of 
Democrats want ObamaCare changed or repealed. I had not seen that 
before, that article.
  So it is important to understand just what is at stake with 
ObamaCare. These things are kind of worn. I have been through them so 
much, and I had gone through and read the bill so I would know what was 
in it before I voted, which is why I voted against it. There are things 
in here--and I will just hit a few since people are now waking up as 
this thing has become a reality. People are starting to wake up and 
realize that, wait a minute, this was not such a good idea.
  When there were some who were concerned here in this room about the 
President representing that abortions would not be paid for under 
ObamaCare, some of us had read the bill--I think at that point it was 
the 1,000-page bill, and then the one that came out of the committee, 
and then somehow it magically became around 2,000 pages, and then we 
end up with my copy, which is just under 2,500.
  At page 119, this was a comfort to some people when they read:

       The services described in this clause are abortions for 
     which the expenditure of Federal funds appropriated for the 
     Department of Health and Human Services is not permitted 
     based on the laws in effect at the date that is 6 months 
     before the beginning of the plan year.

  But then it does have a provision that abortions with public funding 
are allowed.
  Then the next section:

       Prohibition on Federal Funds for Abortion. Services in 
     Community Health Insurance Option.

  That is the last I can find of abortion specifically being mentioned.
  What gets really clever, since we now are of the Information Age 
where you can go online and see bills and you can do an electronic word 
search, if you go online and do an electronic word search for the word 
``abortion''--I didn't see it. What you have to be aware of is these 
are really clever people. They were clever enough as they wrote this to 
make sure that the Speaker's office and certain staffs would be 
exempted. It was really intriguing how clever some of these things 
were.
  To avoid a word search picking this stuff up, like over here at page 
122, it says, ``Assured availability of varied coverage through 
exchanges,'' and it says:
  ``The Secretary''--talking about Secretary Sebelius right now--
``shall assure that with respect to qualified health plans offered in 
any exchange established pursuant to this title--(I) there is at least 
one such plan that provides coverage of services described in clauses 
(i) and (ii) of subparagraph B.''
  Well, that surely couldn't be abortion, unless you flip back and see 
what (i) and (ii) of B is. Guess what? That is the abortion referenced 
over on page 119. That is the way you get around people picking up 
those things; of course she is going to have provisions in here about 
that, and of course people shouldn't forget that the provision at page 
429--it was a special adjustment to FMAP, determination for certain 
States recovering from a major disaster. This was put in there to buy 
the votes from Louisiana. That is why some have called it the 
``Louisiana Purchase.'' So we have got special consideration in there 
for that.
  There are all kinds of things I used to go through. Of course, AARP 
got special dispensation.
  Also, this administration saw that Medicare Advantage was really 
helping some people out. Their costs were lower. There were a lot of 
people that were telling me they liked Medicare Advantage. So as 
ObamaCare would do it, it would try to destroy anything that people 
liked and was helpful and mandate that you couldn't have those 
provisions in your policy. They knew all along by putting this kind of 
thing in this bill, like at page 904, that people that liked their 
Medicare Advantage were not going to get to keep it. They sure weren't 
going to like it after this bill got through with them. At 904, it goes 
after Medicare Advantage and says: ``Nothing in this section shall be 
construed as requiring the Secretary to accept any or every bid 
submitted by an MA organization under this subsection.''
  Then the next capital C, subparagraph (ii):

       Authority to deny bids that propose significant increases 
     in cost-sharing or decreases in benefits.

  Because as the government keeps mandating more and more things, like

[[Page 17802]]

maternity care for men that are single and may be beyond their 
childbearing years--well, a single man that is 70 years old may think, 
gee, I am beyond childbearing years. I probably won't get pregnant any 
time soon. Maybe I don't need maternity care. Well, maybe Secretary 
Sebelius thinks you do. So you are going to pay for it anyway. That is 
the way people end up paying more than what they really need.
  That was in the second volume.
  I never could understand it. I keep asking questions, and nobody will 
give an explanation as to why, at page 1,312 in the health care bill, 
to make sure that everybody got the health care they needed that we had 
to create the Commissioned Corps and Ready Reserve Corps for service in 
time of national emergency over on page 1,314. It talks about national 
emergencies and public health crises. It gets ``health'' in there for 
part of it, but not under national emergencies.
  Above that, it is talking about the purpose to ``meet both routine 
public health and''--that is conjunctive, not disjunctive--``emergency 
response missions.''
  Well, I wish they would put ``health'' in here, and we would be more 
assured that this isn't creating some kind of Presidential brownshirts 
or something, but we can't get an answer on who these people are, what 
they are being trained with, what they are being trained on. Are they 
being trained with weapons? Are they being trained with medical 
equipment? What are they being trained on?
  One thing that I have learned, as both a judge and a chief justice, 
and now in Congress, is that if words are not specific, somebody is 
going to figure out to just use their plain meaning. So when something 
says ``national emergencies,'' like this bill, there will be times it 
will be called in for national emergencies rather than just health 
emergencies.

                              {time}  1315

  And the next section talks about public health emergencies, both 
foreign and domestic, but we have already learned that they didn't put 
the word ``health'' in the national emergency. And so it is strange.
  These are commissioned officers of the Ready Reserve Corps. They will 
be appointed by the President. Commissioned officers of the regular 
Corps shall be appointed by the President, and it is subject to advice 
and consent of the Senate; but that is for the actual appointment.
  But it makes clear over here that they are subject--it says that the 
Corps will be available and ready for involuntary calls to Active Duty 
during national emergencies and public health crises. And then below 
the health crisis, foreign and domestic. So that is some more.
  I have insurance that has a health savings account attached to it. I 
think Aetna could have done better, and I was looking forward to 
improving my policy, except that ObamaCare came in and made sure that 
anybody that had a policy with a high deductible and a health savings 
account they liked were probably not going to be able to keep it 
because they took shots and terrifically restricted what you could use 
a health savings account for.
  The goal is to get rid of them because if people get that much 
control over their own health savings account or, as the bill I filed 
back before ObamaCare ever passed, nearly a year before it passed, I 
say give seniors a choice. Let them choose Medicare. Let people choose 
Medicaid.
  Or it would be cheaper for us if we just say, look, we will buy you a 
Cadillac, not a bronze, we will buy you the best coverage, great 
coverage, and it will have a high deductible now, maybe $5,000, 
something like that for a deductible, and we will give you the cash in 
a health savings account.
  You get control back of your health care. You can handle it yourself. 
Your debit card will be coded where you can only use it for health 
care, but then let you make the decisions.
  But this won't even let you go get your own medicine or drug unless 
it is prescribed. This kind of stuff is running up the costs and trying 
to get rid of HSAs. It is very clear.
  Oh, and I love--they have got a provision in here for States, this, 
back 2,300 or so, they have got a provision in here that, gee, we have 
given out grants, but if your State has bothered to do malpractice 
reform, like the Federal Government hasn't done, then if you put caps 
on pain and suffering, for example, then you are not going to be 
getting the grants that other States are.
  Well, there are a lot of problems with ObamaCare; and I hope that, by 
the end, before the election next year, people will realize that what 
some of us have been saying for years is true. It is in America's best 
interest to have health care reform, but that is not it. It is not it.
  There is another issue--there are two other things I want to address 
very quickly. One is about Guantanamo Bay.
  I had the television on when I was working at my desk in the wee 
hours of the morning this morning, I can't remember, maybe, 1, 2, 3 
a.m., something like that, but a show where some psychologist had been, 
basically, corrupted by being used at Guantanamo Bay for psychological 
warfare. Totally false story.
  I mean, there are still a lot of people walking around that don't 
know that no one has ever been waterboarded at Guantanamo Bay.
  Having been there two or three times, you get the picture. Amnesty 
International comes regularly. These groups come regularly; and when 
you find out what is really going on there, it is really the guards 
that are put through all kinds of Hades. They have excrement and urine 
thrown on them, and they are not allowed to even get angry back.
  Last time I was there, they said there had been one soldier who had 
responded angrily, and he was punished for it. Their instructions are 
when you have urine or feces thrown on you by one of the detainees at 
Guantanamo Bay, you just don't react. And then you get the day off so 
you can go clean up, change clothes.
  So the inmates are constantly coming up with innovative ways to get 
feces and urine on our guards. That was last time. Hopefully, they have 
dealt with it better.
  The punishment, when I was there before, they would take away some of 
the movie-watching time that the detainees got to have; and if it was 
really egregious enough, they might cut into their outdoor time a 
little bit.
  But I was told that Amnesty International gets real upset about that, 
so they don't like to cut out their outdoor time, so they are more 
restrictive on the movie-watching time that our detainees at Guantanamo 
may get.
  And this--what a juxtaposition. What an amazing thing.
  The New York Times used to bill itself--and it is arguable that it 
really was accurate as the newspaper of record, but they have so 
corrupted their standards that they could say about an overt lie, 
someone misspoke.
  This is not a newspaper of record. It is really just a sad day for 
America regarding the New York Times. But every now and then they get a 
story right.
  But, unfortunately, now we have to sometimes go to England or other 
countries whose media is not overwhelmed with bias for or against a 
particular administration so we can get proper reporting.
  But this story is from Russia Today. I mean, I was in the Soviet 
Union in 1973. I could read a little bit of Russian, speak a little 
Russian back then. I haven't had any reason to for over 30 years, so I 
don't remember much of anything but how to get to the bathroom.
  But from Russia Today they report, and this was the first I saw, and 
then started looking for more information: U.S. Senate is seemingly 
deadlocked when dealing with the Guantanamo Bay detention facility, 
voting down dueling measures which would have either loosened or 
tightened restrictions on transferring detainees.
  And then we found one, 2014, NDAA, now in the Senate, could finally 
mean the end of Guantanamo. More than half of Guantanamo Bay's 164 
detainees have been cleared to transfer to other

[[Page 17803]]

nations, MSNBC reports, but have remained at the prison due to 
congressional measures complicating the transfer protocol.
  Yes, some of us are concerned that since we keep transferring people 
out, releasing them, and they keep killing Americans, so many of them, 
after they are released, I would say one is too many, but one is not 
near as many as have been reported going back and continuing to kill 
Americans.
  This talks about even a good Republican who is reportedly aiding the 
Guantanamo Bay win for President Obama, but White House, top Senate 
Democrats successfully defended provisions in the National Defense 
Authorization Act that would loosen restrictions on transferring 
detainees out of Guantanamo Bay, advancing President Obama's goal of 
closing the facility by a margin of 55-43.
  Yeah, they can vote like that because they have got enough people 
that aren't up for re-election next year. So they can take a vote like 
that.
  So that caused me to go look at the law being discussed and voted on, 
and find this provision in there, section 1032, the authority to 
temporarily transfer individuals detained at United States Naval 
Station Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, to the United States for emergency or 
critical medical treatment.
  So, okay, they say, yeah, see, we have got to get them out of there 
sometimes for medical treatment. They have got incredibly good medical 
treatment at Guantanamo Bay.
  This says, status while in the United States, an individual who is 
temporarily transferred under the authority in subsection (a) while in 
the United States shall be considered to be paroled into the United 
States temporarily pursuant to a provision of the Immigration and 
Nationality Act.
  But then it goes on, under section 1033, to say that transfer for 
detention and trial, the Secretary of Defense may transfer a detainee 
described in subsection (a) to the United States for detention and 
trial if the Secretary determines that the transfer is in the national 
security interest of the United States.
  And it does provide that Congress should be notified not later than 
30 days before the date of proposed transfer. But if the President, 
with a wave of his hand, can wave off mandatory language in a bill that 
was passed without a single Republican vote, if they can wave off 
provisions of the immigration bill and just flat out change the law, 
unilaterally, as the Chief Executive, then it sure wouldn't be very 
hard to say, oh, whoops, we didn't give Congress notice; those people 
are in the United States because once they are in the United States, 
things take a big turn.
  I remember my friend from across the aisle, Anthony Weiner, was so 
upset. He actually said he wanted these detainees brought to New York 
City and put on trial and executed there in New York City.
  Well, having been a prosecutor, judge and chief justice, I knew he 
would be exhibit A for why, if they brought the detainees to New York 
City, they shouldn't get a trial there. They would have to transfer 
them somewhere else because you had people like Anthony Weiner who were 
not particularly capital punishment supporters, but wanted them to be 
executed. So that would have been exhibit A in why you couldn't get a 
fair trial if they were brought to New York.
  Some of our friends get very confused and demand, we want these 
people at Guantanamo Bay to have the same rights under the Constitution 
that everybody else does.
  Well, everybody doesn't have the same rights under the Constitution. 
When I was in the Army for 4 years, I didn't have the rights everybody 
else did. I wasn't free to assemble where I wanted. I wasn't free to 
say what I wanted to about the President.
  I wasn't happy with Jimmy Carter. We saw Fort Benning going down and 
down and down. We saw our Nation attacked by an act of war in Tehran, 
and there was no response.
  That is still being used today to recruit people to al Qaeda, to 
terrorism, because of how weak our response was then, how weak the 
response was when we were attacked in 1983 at Beirut and, certainly, 
the ongoing weak responses after the World Trade Center bombing in 
1993, the USS Cole, the embassy attacks.
  And I know there are people that would say to such embassy attacks in 
the 1990s, well, what difference does it make at this point?
  Well, perhaps if it had made a difference to the Clinton 
administration, we would have been better prepared and people wouldn't 
have died in Benghazi.
  But this is a disaster. Under the Constitution, nobody is promised a 
trial in a U.S. District Court. And people need to understand that, 
because in the Constitution there is no U.S. District Court.
  As my old constitutional law professor at Baylor used to say, there 
is only one Court created in the Constitution. Every other court in 
America, Federal court, that is, owes its existence and continued 
existence and jurisdiction to the United States Congress. That is it.
  So if are you an immigrant, our Constitution says you get due process 
at an immigration court. If you are in the military, the Constitution 
ensures you will get due process in a military court. And I can tell 
you, that is kind of tough.
  When a soldier stands in front of a military jury, all wearing 
uniform, all appointed by the commanding officer to whom they account 
after that trial is over, it is a little different than a jury that you 
would get just picked at random from your peers.

                              {time}  1330

  They are not picked at random. The commanding officers, from platoon 
on up through company and all the way up to the installation, they send 
recommendations, and they eventually funnel their way up to the 
commanding general for a general court-martial. And then they are 
handpicked by the general. These are the people who will be on the 
jury.
  Well, that is constitutional. It has been upheld many times. So I 
have a little trouble, having served in the military, understanding why 
someone who wants to destroy our country and kill all the Americans 
they can, why are they entitled to more rights under the Constitution 
than somebody that is giving their lives in our U.S. military? They are 
not. They are not given more rights than our U.S. military.
  And, in fact, under international law, the way it has existed, going 
back as far as it has been recorded, when someone was part of a country 
or group that declared war on another country or group and they were 
captured, they were held until their group or country said they were no 
longer at war. Then we let go of the ones that promised not to be at 
war after the war was over and punished those who were guilty of war 
crimes.
  And I also, Mr. Speaker, want to make sure people understand what we 
have at Guantanamo. Khalid Sheikh Mohammed was the leader--people call 
him the mastermind--of 9/11/2001. Very unrepentant. Not only is he 
unrepentant, he, in 2008, in December, agreed to plead guilty and went 
through, I believe, at least two hearings where, through in-depth 
questioning by the judge, he admitted to his role in killing Americans.
  We know he filed this pleading, of which I have a copy here, that was 
released by Military Judge Colonel Henley, declassified so we could see 
what Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, the 9/11 mastermind--he, himself, talked 
about his planning it. And he had some resources where he could 
translate his language into English so that he could write this whole 
thing. There are some idioms, perhaps, that may be misused, but anyway, 
he is a brilliant man. He just hates Americans and loves to kill them.
  But in his pleading, he says:

       In God's book, he ordered us to fight you everywhere we 
     find you, even if you were inside the holiest of all holy 
     cities, the mosque in Mecca, and the holy city of Mecca, and 
     even during sacred months.

  In other words, it would be perfectly fine for him or one of his 
buddies to kill Americans in the mosque in

[[Page 17804]]

Mecca, but heaven help the person that causes any damage at all to the 
same mosque.
  He said, ``In God's book''--and this is as if he had legal training. 
He does this quite well. He states a premise, and he follows it up with 
a provision from the law of the Koran. I mean, the Koran is a book, 
basically, of law.

       In God's book, verse 9, Al-Tawbah: ``Then fight and slay 
     the pagans wherever you find them, and seize them, and 
     besiege them and lie in wait for them in each and every 
     ambush.''

  Further down, he says:

       We do not possess your military might, not your nuclear 
     weapons.

  Of course, this President may be presiding over the United States--
unless Israel protects itself, this President may be the one that sees, 
for the first time, a radical Islamic terrorist regime get a nuclear 
weapon, and that will change the world forever. We can't afford for 
that to happen.
  But he points out, at the time he wrote this:

       We do not possess your nuclear weapons. Nevertheless, we 
     fight you with the Almighty God. So, if our act of jihad and 
     our fighting with you caused fear and terror, then many 
     thanks to God, because it is him that has thrown fear into 
     your hearts, which resulted in your infidelity, paganism, and 
     your statement that God had a son and your trinity beliefs.

  And then the provision he follows that up with, from the Koran:

       Soon shall we cast terror into the hearts of the 
     unbelievers, for that they joined companies with Allah, for 
     which he has sent no authority. Their place will be the fire; 
     and evil is the home of the wrongdoers.
       And he misspelled ``their.'' When he said ``their place,'' 
     he used T-H-E-R-E. But, I mean, this is amazing stuff. He is 
     admitting: we want to destroy you.

  And if you think for a moment that Khalid Sheikh Mohammed or 
Ahmadinejad or Khamenei would not mind using a nuke to destroy what 
some of them believe were people descended from apes and pigs, as some 
in the Muslim Brotherhood say, well, you have got another thing coming. 
These people are not stupid, but they are insanely crazy in their 
desire to kill innocent people.
  He went on at the end of his pleading on page 6, and says:

       You will be greatly defeated in Afghanistan and Iraq, and 
     America will fall, politically, militarily, and economically. 
     Your end is very near, and your fall will be just as the fall 
     of the towers on the blessed 9/11 day. We will raise from the 
     ruins, God willing. We will leave this imprisonment with our 
     noses raised high in dignity, as the lion emerges from his 
     den. We shall pass over the blades of the sword into the 
     gates of heaven.
       So we ask from God to accept our contributions to the great 
     attack, the great attack on America, and to place our 19 
     martyred brethren among the highest peaks in paradise.

  This is a guy that some people want to bring to the United States. 
They have no idea how desperately wrong that would be. He is being held 
constitutionally right where he is, and under no circumstances should 
he be allowed to be brought into the United States itself.
  They have the perfect courtroom set up down in Guantanamo for 
conducting terrorist trials. Enough bulletproof material in the middle 
of an area where a bombing would not do the damage that it would in 
Manhattan.
  Israel understands the threat. They understand the danger. And it 
absolutely breaks my heart to find out that Israel is having to seek 
another ally that understands the threat of radical Islam to them and 
to the United States.
  Now, it was Prime Minister Netanyahu who asked me, after I apologized 
for America putting them in a position where they have to defend not 
only themselves but the United States, because some people here do not 
understand the threat, he said, I just ask that you remind your 
President, the people in America, that it was your President who said 
the words, ``Israel must defend itself by itself.''
  I didn't remember President Obama saying that. I had to go back and 
do a word search. It turns out, that was slipped in in a bunch of other 
glowing comments about what a wonderful ally and we are not going to 
let Iran get nukes and all this stuff. And then he slides that little 
sentence in there that is profound. But ``Israel must defend itself by 
itself.'' That is why I wasn't the only one that didn't pick up on 
that, because of the way in which he contextualized it.
  But here is an article from The Blaze today, from Sharona Schwartz, 
``How Bad Are Things Between Israel and the U.S.? Israeli Foreign 
Minister Says It's Time to Find New Allies.''

       Israel's foreign policy for many years went in one 
     direction toward Washington, but my policy has more 
     directions.

  This is Foreign Minister Avigdor Lieberman who said this. He said:

       There are enough countries that we can be a help to, and, 
     therefore, our foreign policy must be to search for allies. 
     The Americans have a lot of problems and challenges around 
     the world that they need to solve and they have problems at 
     home. We need to understand them and our place in the global 
     arena.
       We need to stop demanding, complaining, moaning and, 
     instead, seek countries that are not dependent on money from 
     the Arab or Islamic world and who want to cooperate with us 
     in the field of innovation.

  I mean, Israel has been a leading innovator in intellectual 
technology. They need to be our friends. They believe in the value of 
life, as we do. They do not name streets and holidays for people who 
kill innocent women, children, innocent victims, men who never saw it 
coming; whereas, even in Palestine, as it is called now--it was never 
called that before in recent history. But it is time that we realize 
what a friend we have in Israel and that we could never spend enough 
money to create the defense system we have in Israel if we will just be 
supportive.
  One other thing I want to address before I conclude today. There are 
some people that are calling attention to the President's omission of 
the words ``under God'' from the Gettysburg Address when he did the 
entire Gettysburg Address on camera. I don't know whose decision it was 
to leave that out. I don't know if he was just reading it, and whoever 
gave it to him to read in the teleprompter took it out and he didn't 
realize. I don't know what happened. But, Mr. Speaker, it is important 
that people understand, yes, there are five existing copies of the 
Gettysburg Address. There is only one that Abraham Lincoln signed, the 
Bliss copy, unless the President has removed it, like he did Winston 
Churchill's bust from the White House. Unless it has been removed, it 
is up there in the Lincoln Bedroom. This is the Bliss copy, it is 
called.
  And actually, at the Gettysburg Foundation Web site, they have an 
explanation of those five copies--the Nicolay copy, the Hay copy. So 
you had a couple of them there. And you can see what actually was in 
the copy. But the Everett copy--Senator Everett was the Speaker that 
went 2 hours or so, and he asked for a copy, so Abraham Lincoln made 
sure he got a copy.
  And I was talking to a brilliant historian, Stephen Mansfield, this 
week. He was pointing out these things, that it was thought that 
Lincoln had provided his secretary with his notes. And since he had 
interlineated, as I see people on both sides of the aisle do all the 
time here--making notes, scratching stuff, putting stuff in--he had 
interlineated ``under God.'' So when he gave the speech, ``under God'' 
was part of it. I don't know about anybody on this floor that wants the 
Congressional Record to carry a copy of their speech before they made 
all the changes in it, just as Lincoln did.
  But the last three copies, the Everett copy that Lincoln personally 
gave to Senator Everett, it says ``that this Nation, under God, shall 
have a new birth of freedom.'' And then the Bancroft copy, that was one 
that also was requested by historian George Bancroft, and that has 
``that this Nation, under God, shall have a new birth of freedom.''
  And then the last copy, the Bliss copy that is most often used, is 
considered to be the most authoritative copy of what was said at 
Gettysburg, because this is the only copy that Abraham Lincoln signed. 
He didn't sign any of the others. He signed this one. And it went to 
Colonel Bliss, who was going to use it to auction and use the money to 
help wounded warriors.
  This is a Nation under God. It had a new birth of freedom. And I hope 
and

[[Page 17805]]

pray that God will give us wisdom to avoid destroying that freedom.
  With that, I yield back the balance of my time.

                          ____________________