[Congressional Record (Bound Edition), Volume 159 (2013), Part 4]
[House]
[Pages 5085-5088]
[From the U.S. Government Publishing Office, www.gpo.gov]




                        ADMINISTRATION IN REVIEW

  The SPEAKER pro tempore (Mr. Stewart). 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, I know the intention of my friends on the 
other side of the aisle. We all want the country to run at maximum peak 
performance so that people have jobs. But it's interesting the ways we 
have going about trying to see that that happens.
  Interesting, in fact, we got the President's budget yesterday--of 
course it took 2 months or so beyond what the law says that the 
President must do. We also know that when it comes to people being in 
the country illegally, the President decided that he didn't like the 
laws that were passed by Congresses of the past, both Democrat and 
Republican, signed into law by Presidents, both Democrat and 
Republican, and so President Obama got up and did what you don't 
normally find in a country with representative government, he just 
announced: I don't like the law the way it is, so here's the new law, 
and basically pronounced new law into being with regard to who will be 
allowed to have amnesty in the country, and that program has already 
started.
  In the past, the Founders' intent was well carried out because I've 
been advised by people who worked here in Democratic majorities as 
Democratic leaders and Republican leaders of the past who said, yes, in 
the past, if you had a President stand up and say, I'm choosing to 
ignore the law that has been passed by prior Congresses, signed into 
being by their Presidents; I'm going to ignore those and just pronounce 
new law: So as I say it, so shall it be--if you had a President that 
acted like that, then both Democratic and Republican leaders would get 
together and they would head down Pennsylvania Avenue, that way. They 
would announce themselves and let the President know that either he 
would begin to comply with the law and stop doing what is solely the 
responsibility of Congress, or they would cut off all funding to 
everything he cared about. And that would take care of it.

                              {time}  1630

  Unfortunately, these days the President, those in power in the White 
House and executive branch, have noted that since the Democratic Party 
is the majority in the Senate, then even when there are enough people 
in the Republican Party in the House who have the nerve to stand up and 
say we will no longer allow violations of the law or creations of law 
out of whole cloth without following the Constitution, the Senate would 
stop those actions because they're not going to let anything like that 
pass the Senate. And, therefore, we have bureaucrats who begin to 
announce to elected Members of this government that they really don't 
care what we have to say, that we're not going to stop them from doing 
whatever they want, because the Senate will block anything we try to do 
here at the House.
  Because this is a divided Capitol building with the Senate in the 
majority of Democratic hands and the House in Republican majority 
control, it is very important that we note what the other branch, the 
Presidency, is pronouncing. Under the President's proposed budget, 
there is an article here dated April 10 from CNS News that says:

       The OMB's historical tables also reveal that the White 
     House does not expect this administration to ever run an 
     annual deficit as low as $458.5 billion, which was the 
     deficit the government ran in fiscal 2008, the last fiscal 
     year completed before Obama took office.

  It's also important to note that in 2006, the last year Republicans 
were in control of the House, we were properly ridiculed by Democrats 
on this side of the aisle because we ran $160 billion-or-so budget 
spending over the amount that was coming in, that we had $160 billion 
in deficit spending. And the Democrats were correct: we should not have 
had $160 billion in deficit spending.
  Having no idea that the promises from the friends on this side of the 
aisle who said, If you will just put us in the majority, we'll cut that 
$160 billion

[[Page 5086]]

deficit spending the Republicans have done and we will get a balanced 
budget, we won't deficit spend, who would have believed that when they 
took over as a majority, that within 2 years they would have tripled--
basically tripled--the amount of deficit spending. So much for the 
promise that we're going to cut deficit spending. So the $160 billion 
or so went to $458.5 billion, about tripled the deficit.
  And then who could have possibly imagined that during President 
Obama's first year in office, when Democratic control was both the 
House and the Senate, that they would have the nerve to not run $160 
billion deficit, as they said they would never do, or the $458 billion 
deficit, nearly three times as much as 2008, but that they would go 10 
times that amount of $160 billion and hit about $1.6 trillion in 
deficit spending.
  There are several markers being laid down in this country that make 
it very clear that this country is on a crash course. There are no seat 
belts, there are no harnesses, there are no air bags. We are barreling 
down this road to a definite end unless we get this thing under 
control.
  And for the President to propose for the first time in American 
history that before he leaves office in 2017, under the President's 
proposed budget he will preside over the spending of $4.0898 trillion 
in fiscal year 2016, it's unbelievable. We've got somewhere between 
$2.3 trillion and $2.5 trillion that is expected to be coming in to the 
Treasury this year, and the President is proposing $3.8 trillion in 
spending. It is outrageous.
  And at the same time, the President has closed down tours. There's no 
indication that there has actually been even $18,000 or $74,000 or 
$78,000 in savings from not having White House tours. So you begin to 
wonder, now, wait a minute, you said it was to save all this money is 
the reason you cut out White House tours, that it wasn't just a temper 
tantrum to make people suffer. So, let's see, where is the savings? If 
there are no Secret Service being furloughed, there are no Secret 
Service being laid off, it would appear there's no savings.
  So what then could have possibly been the purpose for saying no more 
White House tours? Some have said, well, Congress is just mad because 
it complicates their job. People saying those types of things really 
have no clue what's going on in Washington, because the fact is a 
Member of Congress' life, be it Democrat or Republican, is actually 
less complicated when you don't have to arrange for White House tours.
  It's something that Members of Congress had taken on voluntarily in 
order to help the White House. So we would make the arrangements, 
people would call and come through our office, then we would have to 
write requests, beg the White House, can you find enough tickets for 
these individuals to allow them to go through the White House, and then 
we would get word back. There for a while it was unpleasant when the 
President first started, because we had trouble getting tickets for 
anybody the first year or so, which meant that the President got to 
have people furious with Members of Congress because they blamed 
Members of Congress for not being able to go through the White House on 
a tour, when actually we would just get notice and only be able to pass 
that on.
  So it actually makes Members of Congress' life far less complicated 
when we don't have to arrange for White House tours. But the Members of 
Congress I know, on both the Democratic side and the Republican side, 
really want to enhance visits for their constituents to Washington, 
D.C., and so we are willing to spend part of our budget to have 
somebody help arrange those tours for constituents coming to 
Washington. We help the White House by doing that.
  Even though our offices, every congressional budget has been cut 
about 20 percent over the last 3 years, we haven't cut out those 
constituent services. We have one person less in my office we just 
didn't replace by attrition. We've had to make adjustments. And I'm 
grateful to have a staff that is willing to work hard and long hours. 
They don't get paid overtime, but they're willing to do that because 
they realize this is a servant's job. I am a servant. People who work 
in my office are servants. We serve the public and serve at their will.
  Apparently, that is not something that all bureaucrats have been able 
to understand and take to heart. Then we also see big news today that a 
gun bill has cleared the Senate hurdle as the filibuster falls short. 
This is a FoxNews.com story that was released today.

                              {time}  1640

  There is another story here that indicates Senator Lee says, 
``Background Checks Could Allow Holder''--the attorney general--``to 
Create Gun Registry Using Regulations.''
  In fact, ``On Wednesday,'' it says, ``Senator Mike Lee, Republican 
from Utah''--the fantastic Senator that he is; that's a parenthetical 
insertion--``took to the Senate floor and warned that universal 
background checks could lead to a national registry system for guns.''
  A quote from my friend, Senator Lee, is:

       ``Some of the proposals, like, for example, universal 
     background checks, would allow the Federal Government to 
     surveil law-abiding citizens who exercise their 
     constitutional rights. One of the provisions we expect to see 
     in the bill, based on what we saw in the Judiciary Committee 
     on which I sit, would allow the attorney general of the 
     United States, Eric Holder, to promulgate regulations that 
     could lead to a national registry system for guns, something 
     my constituents in Utah are very concerned about, and 
     understandably so.''

  Lee also said that the government had no place monitoring the legal 
exercise of any constitutional right a citizen chooses to exercise:

       ``You see, the Federal Government has no business 
     monitoring when or how often you go to church, what books and 
     newspapers you read, who you vote for, your health 
     conditions--''

  And actually, I have to differ with Senator Lee on health conditions. 
ObamaCare means the government gets to monitor all your health 
conditions and actually will have all of your health care records, as 
well.
  Senator Lee goes on:

       --``what you eat for breakfast and the details of your 
     private life, including the lawful exercise of your rights 
     protected by the Second Amendment and other provisions of the 
     Bill of Rights.''

  Important quotes by Senator Mike Lee.
  With regard to the gun bill that's been rushed through the Senate, it 
is worth noting again that when bills are rushed through without being 
given proper scrutiny, we create bad laws, we make mistakes, and the 
country and the Constitution suffer. It's part of our oath that we will 
protect and defend the Constitution of the United States; and I would 
humbly submit we don't do that job when we rush through bills that 
people have not had a chance to read, to participate in.
  As my friends know, I have, on this very floor, read quotes from 
Minority Leader John Boehner who, in essence, told Major Garrett that:

       If we get back the majority, a Speaker John Boehner will 
     bring bills through regular order. I'm not going to rush them 
     to the floor like Speaker Pelosi has done.

  And I've had to remind my own leadership of those promises because we 
keep rushing through bills as Republicans that people do not have 
enough time to read. And I'm hoping and praying and arguing and 
cajoling to try to make sure we stop that process and that we return to 
regular order.
  There are some bad bills that come out of regular order to be sure; 
but when we have full debate at a subcommittee level over a proposed 
bill and any member of that subcommittee--this is called regular 
order--any member of that subcommittee can bring an amendment to any 
provision in that bill, you get some scrutiny of the bill in its 
entirety.
  Then when we have a markup at the full committee level and any 
member--Republican or Democrat. It doesn't matter. It doesn't matter if 
they're on or not on any of the subcommittees. At the full committee, 
any member of the full committee can bring an amendment to that bill.

[[Page 5087]]

  We took most of the day today marking up a pretty simple bill, I 
thought, on the issue of reining in overregulation and getting Congress 
to take a look at the tens of thousands of pages of regulations that 
come out so regularly from bureaucrats that never catch the eye of 
elected officials. It was a pretty simple bill. It took hours and hours 
to go through that because there were so many proposed amendments. And 
each amendment that gets made has a chance for the proponent to argue 
for at least 5 minutes in favor of his amendment; and then under the 
rules, any member of the committee can spend up to 5 minutes on each 
amendment. It's not a pretty process, it's not pleasant to sit through, 
but we get better bills when we go through that process.
  Then it comes to the Rules Committee. And I prefer if the Rules 
Committee allows for a fully open debate. We have an open amendment 
process. It's not pretty either, but it gives people across America a 
chance to see who is advocating for what amendment, what language. And 
you have had all this time, from the subcommittee to the committee to 
the House floor; and every Member of the House, no matter who you are 
or no matter whether you're in disfavor with the leadership like some 
of us may be, you can bring amendments in an open process under regular 
order, and you have a chance to debate those and America has a chance 
to see who's standing for what positions. It gives them a chance at the 
next election to better select who they want better representing them 
by virtue of what positions they're taking.
  But when it goes through the process it just did through the Senate, 
there's not proper scrutiny and things come to the floor and we're not 
sure what the impact is. It can get so ridiculous that you can even 
have a Speaker of the House say, ``But we have to pass the bill so that 
you can find out what is in it.'' That's not the way we're supposed to 
govern. We have an obligation to do better than that.
  Now, we've also gotten word that from the sequester that hit here 
just recently--this is an article by Elizabeth Harrington, dated April 
9 of this week, ``Safe from Sequester: $704,198 for Gardening at NATO 
Ambassador's Home.''
  Well, that should be a nice garden. I like to work in the yard around 
our house. I don't have as much chance as I used to, nor does my wife, 
but I'm pretty sure that the gorgeous yard we have didn't cost $704,198 
on our property. So you would have thought that perhaps if people were 
going to help the President that are in the President's administration, 
they'd go, Hey, I can make do on $200,000 for my yard work this year. 
So you can get another half million back right there.
  Gee, just think of all the White House tours that would fund, even 
though it doesn't look like the cutting of the tours actually saved 
anything.
  Then we have some very salient points made by Investors.com, titled, 
``Six Ways Obama's Budget Is Worse Than Everyone Thinks.'' It's posted 
4/10/2013:

       Fiscal policy: Shorn of its accounting gimmicks, the 
     President's budget isn't a balanced plan to get the debt 
     crisis under control. It's a monument to fiscal 
     irresponsibility.
       With much fanfare and a lot of media hype, President Obama 
     unveiled his latest budget plan--2 months late. An IBD review 
     of Obama's budget finds that, among other things, it:
       Boosts spending and deficits over the next 2 years. Obama's 
     own budget numbers show that he wants to hike spending over 
     the next 2 years by $247 billion compared with the 
     ``baseline,'' which even after his proposed new tax hikes 
     would mean $157 billion in additional red ink.

  And it's important to understand, and I insert this parenthetically 
here, when we talk about a baseline--yes, the bill I've been pushing 
for 8 years, a zero-baseline budget where no Federal department has 
automatic increases, did pass the House a year ago. And I'm very 
grateful to Rob Woodall and Paul Ryan and to the Speaker keeping his 
word and bringing it to the floor. We passed it in the House. But the 
Senate, under Senator Reid, made clear, no, we want every department in 
the Federal bureaucracy having an automatic increase in their budget 
every year. We want their budgets going up every year.

                              {time}  1650

  Now, Social Security, they may not get an automatic increase. 
Medicare, they may be cut by $700 billion as they were under ObamaCare; 
but when it comes to every Federal bureaucracy, Senator Reid made clear 
they were not going to pass a zero-baseline budget, that they were not 
going to do away with the automatic increases. They were going to push 
forward and make sure the government bloat--the government obesity as a 
bureaucracy--would continue and that there would be automatic increases 
in every single Federal budget.
  So, when this article points out that the President adds to the 
baseline, it means the President is already adding to what has been an 
automatic increase in their budgets for every department already. It 
may take another election to get people who are thinking correctly in 
the Senate, Democrat or Republican, who will finally stand up and say, 
You know what? There isn't an individual, there's not a family, there's 
not a charity, there's not a business anywhere in America that has an 
automatic increase every year in their budget, so we're stopping it for 
the government. If an agency or a department wants an increase, they're 
going to have to come in and justify it.
  Now, some of us wouldn't mind starting every year with a zero sum, 
and you'd have to justify anything that you'd get at all; but all the 
zero baseline does is say we are willing to start where we were last 
year, and if you need an increase, we'll increase. That way, when those 
of us conservatives who advocate for a decrease in the increase are 
actually still allowing for an increase, we aren't vilified for making 
draconian cuts, because the increases are still there. If we can get to 
a zero baseline, then you will actually be able to have honest and 
accurate criticism because, at that point, a cut would actually be a 
cut; it would not be a decrease in the automatic increase. But 
President Obama, not content with the overspending and the waste, 
fraud, and abuse that's going on, is adding even above the automatic 
increases with his budget.
  This article from Investors.com says:

       Vastly exaggerates spending cuts: The press has widely 
     reported that Obama's budget would cut spending a total of 
     $1.2 trillion over the next decade, but Obama's own budget 
     shows that he actually cuts spending a mere $186 billion. 
     (The relevant tables can be found at http://
www.whitehouse.gov/sites/default/files/omb/budget/fy2014/
assets/tables.pdf.)
       Obama inflates his claimed savings by first cancelling the 
     automatic sequester spending cuts he previously signed into 
     law, then reclaiming them as new savings, and by adding in 
     cuts in interest payments on the debt.

  I didn't realize that that went on, actually.
  The article says:

       Relies almost entirely on tax hikes: Obama's budget shows 
     his plan would increase revenues by $1.14 trillion over the 
     next decade. That means his budget proposes $6 in new taxes 
     for every $1 in spending cuts.
       Cuts the deficit less than claimed: ``My budget will reduce 
     our deficits by nearly another $2 trillion,'' Obama said 
     Wednesday. But his budget shows total deficit reduction over 
     the next decade would be just $1.4 trillion. Plus, deficits 
     start rising again after 2018.

  It should be noted that CBO does not have a good grasp on reality. 
I've met with Director Elmendorf. I've talked to him more than once. I 
appreciate the job they're trying to do, but when they estimate the 
cost of ObamaCare at $800 billion, and then after it passes say, 
Whoops, maybe $1.1 trillion, and then after it's almost coming into 
effect say, You know what? It could be $1.6 trillion or $1.8 trillion, 
and then others more accurately say, You know what? It may be $2.8 
trillion, that means, if they originally estimate $800 billion and it 
ends up being $2.8 trillion, then they've got a margin of error rate of 
plus or minus, not 1, 2, 3, or 4 percent, but more like 300 to 400 
percent.
  Why are we even considering CBO projections when they're projecting 
costs with a margin of error of 300 to 400 percent? I think you'd have 
better luck just bringing somebody right out of college in here and 
saying, You give us your guess. Surely, your margin of error would be 
closer than 300 or 400 percent.

[[Page 5088]]

  Anyway, Investors.com points out that Obama's budget ``creates a new 
entitlement without a reliable means to pay for it.''

       Obama claims he can finance a new $76 billion ``preschool 
     for all'' program by raising tobacco taxes again; but after 
     an initial spike, tobacco tax revenues will start trending 
     downward year after year as more people quit smoking while 
     the costs of this new program will keep climbing. The last 
     time Obama hiked tobacco taxes--to pay for an expansion of 
     Medicaid--revenues came in $2.2 billion less than expected.

  So, apparently, if the President wants more revenue from smoking, 
he's going to need to start doing a campaign to encourage people to 
smoke more so that he can get more taxes in and bring down the massive 
deficit that he is wanting to create.
  This report points out from Investors.com:

       The President boosts taxes on the middle class: Obama 
     proposes to change the government's consumer price index in a 
     way that will lower the official inflation rate. He's selling 
     it as a way to cut Social Security annual cost of living 
     adjustments, which are based on the CPI; but because his 
     chained CPI would also apply to annual tax bracket 
     adjustments, it will end up hiking taxes on the middle class 
     $124 billion.

  The American people deserve better, and I hope and pray the Senate 
will wake up, come to their senses and stop trying to ram legislation 
through that America does not deserve.
  With that, I yield back the balance of my time.

                          ____________________