[Congressional Record (Bound Edition), Volume 159 (2013), Part 13]
[House]
[Pages 18439-18444]
[From the U.S. Government Publishing Office, www.gpo.gov]




               A LESSON IN HOW FAR THIS COUNTRY HAS MOVED

  The SPEAKER pro tempore (Mr. Stewart). 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, I was grateful to hear from my dear 
friend--and I do mean dear friend. I think greatly of Ms. Kaptur. I was 
glad to hear somebody has gotten a good report on the so-called 
Affordable Care Act.
  We are continuing to hear sad story after sad story of people 
continuing to be laid off, people continuing to be cut from full-time 
to part-time and people being forced onto food stamps because they just 
can't make it with the loss of income going from full-time to part-
time, the loss of their insurance.
  And as people have now realized across the country, though we were 
told there were 30 million without insurance, it looks like by next 
fall, November of next year, there will probably be many more than that 
that lost their insurance even though they liked it and wanted to keep 
it. Because, as we know, if you like your insurance, there is a good 
chance you won't be able to keep it.
  There is a story from December 11, ``Four in Ten Would Rather Pay 
Fine Than Buy Insurance.''
  I am sure there are people like me. You take a look at how much the 
insurance is going to cost, how much it has skyrocketed several times 
more than what I have been paying if I were going to keep insurance 
with the deductible now skyrocketing and dramatically increasing under 
the potential policies, higher than what I have now, and when I look at 
the costs several times higher than what I have now, and since I am not 
accepting the subsidy and I am not paying into the attending physician 
for that care, I will be going without insurance.
  It has been amazing to me how many in the liberal media--and I say 
``media'' loosely, because they are really in the business of trying to 
protect this administration and twist stories any way they can to make 
anyone who objects to something this administration has done look bad, 
so I will loosely refer to them as ``media''--how they have been aghast 
that anyone would even consider going without insurance. And it really 
is a lesson in how far this country has moved, in so many ways.

                              {time}  1645

  I know, in the early sixties, there was no such thing as Aid to 
Dependent Children, that program born out of the best of intentions 
because deadbeat dads were not a small minority of Americans. Different 
races, different backgrounds--some even well-off--were just not 
assisting financially the children they had fathered, and so the 
government wanted to help.
  So, in the mid-sixties, here came the Great Society. We want to help 
these people--these poor moms--who had to deal with deadbeat dads who 
wouldn't help. They said, We will help. We will give them a check for 
every child they can have out of wedlock. As people who study 
governments and government assistance, it is well documented: when you 
pay for an activity, you get more of that activity. We went from 6 to 7 
percent of children in America being born without a father in the home 
to now over 40 percent, and it still seems to be heading upwards toward 
50 percent. The United States Government in the 1960s, not by what it 
said but by where it put its money, decided we would be a lot better 
off with more fatherless homes. Nobody was saying that, and I don't 
believe anybody intended that result, but it is what they got. In the 
act of paying people for an activity, you get more of that activity. So 
we had more children growing up in fatherless homes.
  Also, back in those days, health care was so much cheaper. It wasn't 
at the extraordinary level that it is now. It wasn't nearly as 
expensive. Even though I was a small child, I didn't know people who 
had health insurance because, for so long, nobody had health insurance. 
If you had a problem, you went to the doctor, and they assessed you a 
charge after your visit, after they saw what the doctor did. He would 
write something down on your chart. We went to a few different doctors 
there in my small hometown of Mount Pleasant--a great town. I still 
love it. There are still great doctors there--but back in those days, 
people in my hometown in east Texas knew what doctors were charging 
what for what. I mean, you could actually compare apples and apples 
when it came to health care. If you found out some doctor said he was 
going up on his prices and another doctor had not gone up on his 
prices, then you went to the doctor who was cheaper unless you felt 
like he wasn't as good, but we had a number of really excellent 
doctors, and they cared about their patients.
  Then, eventually, you heard of somebody having health insurance, and 
it was true insurance. A small premium was paid either monthly, 
quarterly, semiannually or annually, but it was a small premium to 
insure against a catastrophe--a dramatic illness, a car wreck--
something that you could not foresee. You paid a small premium to 
insure against this unforeseen event just in case it happened down the 
road because, during those days, Americans were very independent. 
Americans did not want to go on welfare. Most Americans did not want to 
receive government handouts--they felt like it was a matter of pride--
and they certainly did not want an insurance company telling them what 
doctor they could go to, what hospitals they could go to or which 
hospitals they couldn't go to, which doctors they couldn't go to, which 
medicines they could not get if the doctor prescribed them. They didn't 
want an insurance company telling them, if they needed to go to this 
doctor because he was an expert on this type of treatment, that you 
couldn't go there because it wasn't in your plan. What plan? I am the 
only one who is planning for my life. No insurance company is going to 
tell me where I can or can't go. I mean, that was the type of 
independent thought that there was in America.

[[Page 18440]]

  There were a lot of problems in those days, and I thank God for 
Martin Luther King, Jr., because, through his actions and his life and 
his efforts, through peaceful protest--some around him got upset and 
didn't always abide by peace, but the man proclaimed everything needed 
to be done in peace because he was an ordained Christian minister, and 
he knew those were the teachings of Jesus. Because he did what he did, 
some people say that what he did for America was he allowed African 
Americans to be treated as equals. I would submit to you, since I was 
very young, what he did was allow me to grow up and mature in an 
America in which as a young, white Christian I could treat brothers and 
sisters like they were brothers and sisters. It didn't have to matter 
what color anybody's skin was. They could be judged by the content of 
their character and not by the color of their skin. That was a great 
thing for America.
  As we progressed toward making America a greater place with more 
liberties, more equality, more freedom, at the same time--really 
unrelated--there was this effort of let's start giving money from the 
government to individuals or to individual programs that, though 
unintended, would make them more dependent upon the government for 
their lives and their livelihoods. People quit thinking as 
independently. Oh, well. The government is giving me money, so maybe 
they would do good to tell me what I can or can't do with a few things. 
Then, eventually, more and more employers had employees saying, Hey, I 
know this other company. Their employer is buying health insurance for 
their employees. That would be helpful because then I wouldn't have to 
ever worry about having a terrible accident or some cancer or some 
terrible disease that would bankrupt my family. So more employers 
started adding health insurance to their benefits. Unfortunately, it 
created a system in which the employer owned the insurance policy 
instead of the employee. The employer was paying for it, so the 
employer owned it.
  One of the reforms that many of us were proposing, instead of the 
catastrophe known as the so-called Affordable Care Act, was that we 
wanted employees to own their insurance policies. Fine and dandy if an 
employer wanted to pay for insurance, but the employees should own them 
so that, if the employees go somewhere else, they are still their 
policies. They are portable, and they go with them. They still pay the 
same rates, and they aren't jacked up through a COBRA plan or something 
like that. Somehow, along the way, we grew more and more dependent on 
insurance companies to manage our own health care, and at the same 
time, as things like Medicare were created to help those seniors who 
needed help, more and more dependence grew upon the government, itself. 
The problem with an insurance company or with a government managing 
someone's health care is that they get to say what you get and what you 
don't get in the way of treatment.
  So it has been quite an evolution to the point at which we are now 
where your religious beliefs, under the United States Constitution, 
have been so weakened and so nullified that now the United States 
Government can pass a law like the so-called Affordable Care Act--it is 
hard for me to just call it the ``Affordable Care Act'' because it is 
so disastrously expensive and unaffordable for so many people, 
including for me now.
  The government could say, You may believe with all of your heart 
because of your religious conviction that abortion is the murder of a 
life and being, but we, the government, now control your health care, 
and you don't have that religious choice anymore. Oh, it may be a 
matter of conscience. It may be that, without regard for religion, you 
believe that killing a life and being that could live on its own 
outside the womb would be murder, but we, the government, now say you 
have to help pay for that type of murder. Even 20 years ago, nobody 
would have believed that we would get to the point where the government 
could order an American to pay for the killing of another, albeit an 
unborn child.
  I guess it really comes home to me because of our first child being 
born 8 to 10 weeks prematurely and holding her in two hands. I could 
have held her in one hand, and I kind of did from time to time, but 
usually, in those early days, I used two just because she was so 
fragile, and I just did not want to risk someone I loved so much being 
harmed. The doctor there at the hospital in Shreveport, where our child 
was taken--she was very fragile--said, Look, talk to your child. She 
knows your voice. Her eyes don't work very well, but she knows your 
voice because she could hear your voice when she was in the womb. It is 
very comforting, and it really gives her a feeling of security to hear 
your voice. If you just caress her little arm or her little forehead 
while you talk to her, it is such a comfort. She knows you. She can't 
see you, and she doesn't know what you look like, but this child has 
known you from long before she was born, so talk to her and touch her.
  I put my finger down by her hand. So many people have had this 
happen, but when it happens to you, it is so special. This tiny, little 
hand would wrap around the end of my finger and just hang on and not 
let go. She wanted to live. She knew me, as the doctor said, before she 
was ever born. The doctor pointed out later as he came by--as we 
noticed on the monitors--her breathing was still extremely shallow as 
her lungs were not quite developed, and her heart rate was still 
escalated, but they stabilized as long as she was holding on. He said, 
She draws security. She draws life. She draws your love. So, in my 
heart, in my mind, in my soul, I know that child knew me before she was 
born, and I was a comfort to her. My wife had to stay in the hospital 
in Tyler for a few days. It was really emotionally difficult, as well 
as physically, what she had been through.
  But now the government would say, Though it may absolutely devastate 
you and break your heart to know of some young girl who wants an 
abortion, you are going to have to help pay for it--pay for the 
abortion.

                              {time}  1700

  Even 20 years ago, that would have seemed inconceivable that anybody 
in the United States, any governmental entity--whether it is executive, 
legislative or judicial--would say even though they support abortion 
they are going to make somebody who had religious beliefs fervently 
against it pay for it. But under ObamaCare, under the so-called 
Affordable Care Act, that has happened.
  Some of us told the President we have solutions; we have sent word to 
the White House many times we have solutions. We have been told--and we 
heard the President say it again here recently in the last few days--
that they don't have any solutions. I remember him saying those same 
things back 4 years ago when, obviously, it was spoken out of 
ignorance. I know he didn't intend to deceive anybody. He apparently 
did not know that there were people who had great alternatives.
  For my part, the bill I proposed, the solution I proposed, would 
return control of people's health care to themselves. If you like 
Medicare and you are a senior, great, stay on Medicare; but if you 
would like a Cadillac policy, not a bronze but a gold-plated, platinum-
plated policy, then we will pay for that. Say $5,000 now might be an 
appropriate--of course, some of the policies I was looking at, a 
$5,000-$6,000 deductible, policies like that makes them a lot cheaper 
for seniors--and then give the seniors the cash for the whole 
deductible so they wouldn't be out a dime.
  I proposed that to representatives of the AARP. They were so 
gracious, came to my office, I explained it: this would be so awesome 
for seniors because it means they will never have to buy another 
supplemental policy; they will never have to buy another wrap-around 
insurance policy. And seniors' money is so tight on Social Security. It 
is really tight. I know a family that struggled, but they bought the 
supplemental policy.
  Now, won't that be great? I know AARP cares so much about seniors. 
This would be great. Well, we will have

[[Page 18441]]

to look at it, look at it closely, give us some more information and we 
will look at it. Stupid me, I was just too naive. I didn't know AARP 
made many more times off selling supplemental insurance than they did 
off membership dues or anything like that, that it was just a cash cow 
for AARP to sell supplemental insurance.
  So, of course, they couldn't afford to say that a policy that just 
really was a wonderful thing for seniors--no more out-of-pocket for 
deductible, co-pay, this just took care of them, and they made their 
own choices, and they had a debit card to pay for their health care all 
the way through their deductible amount. How could I expect AARP when 
they are making hundreds of millions of dollars clear profit off of 
supplemental policies say, oh, let's forego the supplemental policies 
for the good of seniors. So, obviously, they didn't.
  But we can and do have alternatives for health care reforms that are 
true reforms that get competition back in health care. How can you have 
a free market system working in health care if nobody knows what any 
procedure, anything really costs? If it is medicine, they know their 
co-pay.
  We have got to get back to the point where people know what things 
cost and they have more direct control. If we get to a place where we 
are truly helping those who cannot help themselves and we make it 
advantageous for those to put in a health savings account money so that 
they can take care of their own deductible if they are under 65, they 
are not on Medicare and bill to that point, and then it becomes very 
clear that most people when they start at an early age will have so 
much money in their health savings account built up that they hadn't 
spent over the years that they not only will not want the government 
telling them what kind of health care they can have, they won't need 
it.
  And then for those who are young and chronically ill that will never 
build up an HSA, those who are actually unable to help themselves, we 
help them. There is a very small percentage that would be; but under 
the Affordable Care Act, as it is called, unjustly, the government gets 
control. As I have said, it is all about the GRE, the government 
running everything. They get to run your lives because when they can 
control health care, they can control everything.
  They control not only what is in your bedroom--I have heard so many 
folks on the other side of the aisle say, we don't want the government 
in the bedroom. Well, I don't either; but now by the bill they passed, 
ObamaCare basically puts the government in every room in your house. 
They tell you--well, it is just so invasive.
  But if we can get back to the day where insurance companies and the 
government did not tell people what they could or couldn't have for 
their well-being, if we restored the independence to Americans by 
helping the economy just bring about a new economic renaissance--I have 
talked to so many people. They are in business and they are so afraid. 
They are afraid to hire anybody because of ObamaCare. They are afraid 
because of the EPA or the intrusiveness of the Justice Department, 
OSHA, all of these governmental agencies that come out of nowhere when 
you are trying to stay in business and keep your employees paid.
  If they didn't have to worry so much about a government that is so 
invasive, this economy would take off. People would be making so many 
times more than what they are in so many places. We would end up being 
energy independent. What we thought we never could be 9 years ago when 
I first got here, we can be that. We use natural gas that we have got 
hundreds of years of. Just what we know, for goodness sake. Then we 
could be not only energy independent; that would mean we were not 
funding any country's terrorism where some of their energy money goes 
for terrorism. We would see an economic renaissance; we would see the 
economy explode, and people would have enough money.
  With all the money they would be getting paid, they would be able to 
say, look, Doctor, I want to know how much you are charging and how 
much you are charging because you are both very good doctors. But if 
one of you is charging $6,000 for an MRI and one of you is charging 
$400 for an MRI--and I have been challenged on that and actually I am 
familiar with what some insurance companies have paid for MRIs over the 
years, because as an attorney when you help somebody who has been in a 
car wreck or been injured by the negligence of another, if you have a 
settlement or you win a court case, then you are required under Texas 
law to put that money in an escrow account and you cannot distribute it 
until such time as the medical has been paid. So you had to make sure 
everybody had been paid.
  When they were paid in full, then you checked if there was a health 
insurance company. Okay, everybody says they have been paid in full; I 
have got documentation from all the health care providers you have paid 
them in full under their agreement with you. So now all I need to know 
is how much you paid for these charges, and then I reimburse you, and 
then I can disburse what is in escrow.
  There were companies that had paid less than $400 for an MRI, much 
less. So anyway, our CAT scans, it is amazing how little--and I have 
seen bills recently $6,000 being charged for an MRI. Well, they are not 
getting paid $6,000. But then, on the other hand, if you come in and 
say, I need an MRI, but I don't have insurance, then normally they will 
cut you a deal. Okay, you are paying cash, we may cut you a deal. Say 
they had a 50 percent off sale: we will only charge you $3,000. Well, 
for heaven's sake, why couldn't you just pay what Blue Cross paid? Why 
couldn't you pay what Aetna paid?
  That is the kind of thing a real reform would get us back to. You 
don't get a bill for $6,000 or nobody goes to them anymore. You have to 
know what is being charged, and we have got to get control back to the 
individual.
  Anyway, when you are looking at how much things cost, I can identify 
with people in America. We have three daughters; they finished their 
college. We had set money aside years ago when I was in private 
practice making more money--actually, in municipal bonds, and when they 
got in college it was going to more than take care of each year. But 
after I had a huge cut in pay to go become a State district judge--I 
felt like it was something of a calling, something to help my 
community, a way to give back, even though you really put a lid on what 
you can make financially--we ended up going through that money.
  I was determined that my three girls would not have to pay college 
loans that they wouldn't have had to pay if their father had not gone 
into public service. This was my contribution to the community, to 
Texas, to the country. I shouldn't force a contribution onto my 
children when their college should have been taken care of. So my wife 
and I are paying the college loans for our children.
  So when you start adding up the expenses and you see the amount of 
the loans and what has to be paid and then you see you have health 
insurance here that is now skyrocketing, deductible going dramatically 
up, wow. I know some have written, gee, what if you are in the hospital 
for a few days and run up $180,000 or so in health care costs? Well, 
the answer is easy. If I or my wife ran up $180,000 in health care 
costs and I don't have insurance, then I would go to the health care 
providers--as I have done back in the days when I was an attorney--what 
kind of deal can we cut here, because I pretty well know what the 
insurance companies are paying you and I expect to get the same kind of 
deal or we will go to another hospital that will do this kind of cash 
deal for us? Maybe you take out a note for $18,000 and pay everybody 
off.
  I have been surprised, even conservatives in the media have not 
really been aware of how little health care actually costs. They see a 
bill, like one in the media that said, hey, my father had heart 
surgery, he could never have paid that $150,000 in expenses, but 
Medicare took care of it. And as I told him, if you think that costs 
$150,000, you are not near as smart as I used to think you were. But 
you negotiate and you work it out and you take out a note and you pay 
that off.

[[Page 18442]]

  I know that there are people running around the country saying, oh, 
no, oh, no, what if you don't have insurance? Well, nobody in America 
had insurance at all not that long ago. I don't want to go back to 
those days. We have made so much progress. But why not build to the 
point where those who can build a health savings account do that?
  I am encouraging our leadership: let's don't wait until ObamaCare 
comes crashing down and the world gets so angry that they demand a 
repeal and it does get repealed. Let's go ahead and start having 
hearings now on how good real reform would be, where we have 
competition, where people get to make their decisions, where people are 
encouraged to, and do, build a health savings account where they get to 
decide who they see, that there is no doctor that is out of the plan.
  We need to restore liberty to Americans while giving them a safety 
net, not a trap net from which you can never arise. It ought to be a 
safety net where you can come out of; but it is more like we are 
capturing Americans with a net thrown over them and the government now 
has that net over you and you can never get out from under. We control 
everything about you.
  And now we have added 18,000, or we are in the process of adding 
18,000 IRS agents. If you think a proctologist looks closely into your 
situation, wait until the IRS agents get hold of you.

                              {time}  1715

  I mean it should not be that way. We have got to restore freedom in 
America. This article says, ``4 in 10, we would rather pay the fine 
than buy insurance.'' People in the media are freaking out, how stupid, 
how crazy. Well, actually, it doesn't help the survival of ObamaCare or 
the Affordable Care Act, as it is improperly named.
  My staff has given me this. We just had someone else report that here 
is another constituent whose policy expires July 2014, but they stand 
to lose $40,000 if they try to keep it. They can't get definitive 
information, but they had to make a decision by December 7, and they 
don't know what to do. And they are sure not getting that help from the 
Web site.
  Here is an article, ``Oregon signs up just 44 people for ObamaCare 
despite spending $300 million.'' Well, there was a great investment. 
Well, probably as good as investing it in Solyndra and all the other 
solar companies. ``Paper Application Missing From Healthcare
.gov,'' another great article, Jeryl Bier from the Weekly Standard. 
``ObamaCare sign-ups rise, but 800,000 short of their goal.'' All of 
these are really harbingers of the complete failure of ObamaCare.
  I don't mean anything derogatory by using the term ``ObamaCare.'' I 
am sure that President Obama didn't mean anything derogatory by calling 
health care in Massachusetts ``RomneyCare.'' So just as I am absolutely 
certain the President never meant--and Democrats never meant--anything 
offensive by using the term ``RomneyCare,'' we don't mean anything 
offensive or derogatory by using the term ``ObamaCare.'' The President 
embraced it one time.
  Anyway, it requires looking at more closely the reforms that need to 
be made. I would rather have insurance. I wasn't crazy about my 
insurance, but I liked it okay. We had health savings accounts. We have 
got to work out what do we do with the money we built up in our health 
savings account. Hopefully, Aetna is not going to screw us over and not 
let us have the money we built up.
  There were certainly some reforms that needed to be made to the 
health savings account law so that we do have more flexibility. You 
could put unlimited amounts in there, but once it is in there, it has 
to be used for health care. You can't pay a penalty and fine and take 
some out. So that you build some up, you could give some of your HSA 
out to, say, a Salvation Army HSA.
  I know there is not one out there right now, but those kind of 
things. You could gift some of your HSA to your children without tax 
implications. You have money in your HSA when you pass away, then you 
could leave it to your heirs or to a charity HSA. I mean, there are all 
kinds of great things that we could do if we passed proper laws to make 
this work better.
  But the goal would ultimately be to have health care affordable. The 
President and so many keep saying, you know, interchangeably, health 
care and health insurance. They are not the same thing. You can get 
health care without having any health insurance. I know that because I 
have waited hours behind people in the emergency room with children or 
with family, seniors. I have known that people ahead of us, that didn't 
have any money, didn't have any insurance, they got health care just 
like I did, at the emergency room. That was when I had insurance and my 
in-laws had insurance, Medicare, but everybody was getting the same 
kind of care.
  So health insurance and health care for my liberal friends in the 
media, Mr. Speaker, they are not the same thing. They are not the same 
thing at all.


                                 Syria

  Mr. GOHMERT. Mr. Speaker, I also want to comment before we're done 
here today about what is going on in Syria, because there is so much 
false information going on. There are many really fine people, 
including friends in the Senate who are smart people but are just 
actually ignorant of the facts on the ground there.
  This administration had decided that we should support the Syrian 
rebels. There are indications that this administration, because 
Congress has not specifically appropriated in so long, the 
administration figuratively has got sacks of money and so they decided, 
Oh, we will support the rebels in Syria.
  Now, 2 to 3 years ago, it might well have been Syrians who were not 
radical Islamists, who wanted freedom, but this government didn't step 
in until the rebels were infused with and really governed by more 
radical Islamists.
  The stories that are going on in Syria, just like others in the 
Middle East, the horrors of what the Muslim Brotherhood, the radical 
Islamists were doing in Egypt, especially after Morsi got arrested--
this administration blamed the military when actually, as the Egyptian 
pope told me, this was not a coup. This was the Egyptian people rising 
up, wanting to be free of radical Islamists leading.
  These were moderate Muslims, secularists, Christians, hand in hand, 
arm in arm, protesting, demanding Morsi be forced out by the military. 
It was an uprising of greater numbers than participated in the American 
Revolution. The Egyptians rose up in greater numbers than they ever 
have in the world. They were seeking both moderate Muslims, Christians, 
Jews, secularists, other religions. They were just wanting not to be 
ruled by radical Islam.
  Instead, this administration and some Senators, including from my 
party, felt like we ought to be helping the rebels that were just 
really infused and overtaken by radical Islamists.
  As moderate Muslims told a few of us in Congress back in September: 
What do you guys not understand? I mean, it was the Muslim Brotherhood 
that really was behind the attack on 9/11/2001. It was technically the 
Taliban, but basically it is Muslim Brotherhood you were at war with in 
Afghanistan. It is Muslim Brotherhood that you have now helped in 
Libya, helped in Egypt, now helping in Syria. What do you not 
understand? These are the guys that have been at war with you. We are 
moderate Muslims. We don't want them taking over things.
  For some reason, it sure seems to be because of the advice this 
administration is getting from people that Egyptian media had indicated 
were Muslim brothers at the highest levels of advice that this 
administration gets. But as a result, this administration thinks we 
need to keep helping these radical Islamist-infused rebels that are 
absolute terrorists. They are doing the most unthinkable, unimaginable 
acts to Christians, especially Christians. And as a report in Britain 
has indicated recently, Christians are the most persecuted group in the 
world right now. This administration is choosing to help the people 
over and over, help the people, help the groups that are most radically 
brutalizing Christians.

[[Page 18443]]

  Here is an article from The New York Times, ``Brutality of Syrian 
Rebels, Posing Dilemma in West.'' It talks about just the horror and 
the disgusting nature of the killings that were going on against 
unarmed civilians, and yet we are supporting the rebels?
  Here is one, ``Media urge Syrian rebels to stop kidnappings.'' Hmm, 
well, fortunately that was written a long time ago.
  Here is one, ``2 Bishops, Priest, 12 Nuns Still Missing After Being 
Kidnapped By Syrian Rebels,'' by Lee Keath of the AP. It talks about 
the horrible nature of those kidnappings.
  I had the honor of having a visit today by Mother Agnes.
  Some in the left-wing media who were so overwhelmed with trying to 
protect this administration, they don't want to look facts in the face. 
They want to try to destroy the reputation of anyone with whom they 
disagree. They have taken Voltaire's attributed line, ``I disagree with 
what you say, but will defend to the death your right to say that,'' 
and kind of disintegrated it into ``I disagree with what you say, and I 
want to destroy you for doing so.''
  I have read a number of terrible things about Mother Agnes in the 
last couple of days, but I met with her. Some had written that she is 
just the basic primary defender of the Assad regime. She told me she is 
not defending Assad; he is a bad man. But, as she said with a little 
twinkle in her eye, the media is getting out in the open everything 
that seems to be done wrong by the Assad regime. Anything brutal, 
anything inappropriate the media is getting that out there. I am just 
trying to get the full story out.
  Yes, Assad is not a good man, but the people that are trying to take 
over now are worse. She knew these nuns who had been kidnapped. She 
knew these people who had been persecuted and brutalized. She knew of 
people personally of having unthinkable acts done to them by these 
Syrian rebels that this administration has been choosing to help.
  Well, we get finally to a story that says that the administration was 
going to cut off--I thought I had it here--but a story about the 
administration would suspend assistance to the rebels because of the 
horrors and the brutality of what they were doing. That is nice, but 
these stories have been coming out for years, for at least a couple of 
years. Stories even here from The New York Times, ``Brutality of Syrian 
Rebels Posing Dilemma in West,'' that story was September 5. And around 
those same times there were stories about this administration sending 
hundreds of tons of weapons to these people who were brutalizing 
Christians.
  How long does it take? I realize there are all kinds of things that 
demand people's time when you are a leader of a great Nation like the 
United States. You have to stop and do a selfie from time to time. 
There are all kinds of things that disrupt your time. But at some 
point, somebody should have gotten information and said, Look, you 
know, you want to help the radicalist Islamist rebels in Syria. Really, 
some of the brutality on Christians has really gotten kind of rough 
even for us. Maybe we ought to suspend that. That should have gone on 
months ago. And yet this administration was determined to help.
  ``Syrian Rebels Attack Christian Village, Behead Priest,'' Katie 
Pavlich. Whew, man.

                              {time}  1730

       Rebels have attacked a Christian village in the war-torn 
     country of Syria, beheading priests, brutally killing others. 
     Not surprisingly, the rebels have ties to al Qaeda.

  This is from townhall.com:

       The rebels launched the assault on the ancient Christian 
     village of Maaloula--which is on a UNESCO list of tentative 
     World Heritage sites. The village, about 40 miles, 60 
     kilometers, northeast of Damascus, is home to about 2,000 
     residents, some of whom still speak a version of Aramaic, the 
     ancient language of biblical times believed to have been 
     spoken by Jesus.
       Heavy clashes between President Bashar Assad's troops and 
     Nusra Front fighters persisted in surrounding mountains 
     Thursday, according to the Observatory, which collects 
     information from a network of anti-regime activists.
       Speaking by phone from a convent in the village, a nun told 
     The Associated Press that the rebels left a mountaintop hotel 
     Thursday after capturing it a day earlier. The nun said the 
     frightened residents expect the Islamic militants to return 
     to the Safir hotel and resume shelling of the community.
       ``It's their home now,'' the nun said.
       Al Qaeda-led rebel force groups have also reportedly vowed 
     to continue their attacks on Christians as soon as the United 
     States ``liberates'' the country from its President Bashir 
     al-Assad.
       Yesterday, Republican Senator John McCain inserted an 
     amendment into a resolution approving military force in Syria 
     with a goal of shifting the power on the battlefield from the 
     Assad regime and to rebel forces.

  On September 4, 2013, John McCain said:

       My amendment calling for changing momentum on the 
     battlefield in Syria passed SFRC by voice vote, a significant 
     measure.
       Meanwhile in Egypt, Coptic Christians continue to be 
     slaughtered and nearly 100 churches have been burned to the 
     ground.
       President Obama and Secretary of State John Kerry haven't 
     commented on the brutality against Christians in Syria and 
     have done very little to protect Christians living in Egypt 
     from violence being waged by the Muslim Brotherhood.

  An objective look at what happened in Egypt is very clear. After the 
masses, the millions of Egyptians rose up and said, Enough. President 
Morsi has been usurping powers that don't belong to him under our 
Constitution. And under the Egyptian Constitution, there is no power of 
impeachment. So we demand that the military remove this 
unconstitutionally acting leader so that we can set up new elections.
  I am urging the people in Egypt to go ahead and get those elections 
done so you get back to having a more democratic process, having a more 
republican form of government. I don't mean republican like the 
Republican Party. I am talking about Republic as Ben Franklin when the 
lady asked what have you given us, and he said, ``A Republic, Madam, if 
you can keep it.''
  It was clear that Morsi was not going to allow the Egyptian people to 
keep their republic. The people rose up and demanded that they be able 
to keep their republic by having the military remove Morsi. They did 
remove him. I still can't find anyone in the media that is reporting 
what General al-Sisi said to me in the presence of our acting U.S. 
Ambassador to Egypt, in the presence of Democrat and Republican Members 
of Congress that, yes, they had evidence that Morsi was trying to 
contract to have General al-Sisi murdered before he was arrested.
  Yet this administration, not only was very supportive of Muslim 
Brother Morsi, but when he was removed, they threatened to cut off aid 
if they didn't get him back. And after they refused to get him back, 
then this President cuts off all aid to Egypt. It is amazing because, 
as this article points out, it was not until Morsi was arrested that 
the Muslim Brotherhood started staging these violent acts--burning 
churches, killing Christians. They were persecuting anyone who 
disagreed with them. The military did a very good thing. They cracked 
down on the Muslim Brotherhood, they stopped the burning of churches, 
they stopped the killing of Christians. As the Egyptian Pope has told 
me:

       They did a good thing. We are not threatened like we were 
     before they stopped it all. Please, tell your government that 
     the military has stopped the burning of churches and killing 
     of people. It is a good thing.

  How did this administration respond to the Egyptian people ensuring 
that the burning of churches and the killing of Christians stopped? It 
rewarded those noble efforts by cutting off aid.
  As we keep hearing from allies in the Middle East, Muslim, other 
religious beliefs, you guys keep helping the wrong people. How can you 
not understand you are helping the people that hate you. Now they are 
cutting a deal with Iran, led by Wendy Sherman, who was the policy 
director for North Korea when President Clinton and Madeleine Albright 
made that atrocious deal to give them nuclear power plants, nuclear 
help, and in return all they had to do was promise not to develop 
nuclear weapons, which they readily did. In return, the Clinton 
administration agreed not to inspect their nuclear facilities for what 
amounted to about 5 years. It gave them plenty of time to develop 
nukes.

[[Page 18444]]

  If someone is evil enough to behead, to brutalize, to persecute 
innocent people, to somehow think it is a noble thing to terrorize and 
kill innocent people, how do you not understand that they are also 
capable of lying, as well? You want to trust people that want to kill 
you and have said so many times? I think it is time we wake up. The 
world is less safe because of some of the actions that we have taken. 
We need to be wise about what we do because just as Jesus said, To whom 
much is given, of him much will be required.
  We have been given much. We have been blessed more than any nation in 
the world. We have more freedoms. We have more assets. We have been 
blessed more than any nation in history. Much is required, and part of 
that requirement is that we use wisdom and discernment in choosing 
those whom we wish to help; and we should not be helping people who 
choose to kill or brutalize, persecute people because of their 
religious beliefs, because of their tribe, because of their skin color, 
because of their national origin. That is un-American, and it is time 
we stopped helping people who are acting in ways contrary to what we 
hold dear.
  Mr. Speaker, I yield back the balance of my time.

                          ____________________