[Congressional Record (Bound Edition), Volume 160 (2014), Part 10]
[House]
[Pages 14425-14426]
[From the U.S. Government Publishing Office, www.gpo.gov]




                              {time}  1745
                        ISSUES FACING THE NATION

  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, I do appreciate my colleagues across the 
aisle talking about the economy and pushing for a raise in minimum wage 
because that is what a party does after their party has totally 
devastated the economy. It is what you do after your party's President, 
with help from the majority in the Senate led by Harry Reid, are able 
to just wreak havoc with an economy that should be doing really well.
  This economy is ready to take off. ObamaCare, as we have said for 
over 4 years, is going to harm the economy. It is going to knock people 
out of work. It is going to put people from full time to part time. 
Republicans have been explaining this ever since not one of us voted 
for that bill. We also explained there were $716 billion in cuts to 
Medicare.
  A lot of seniors that vote Democrat voted for this President, voted 
for a Democratic majority in the Senate. They have now been shocked 
this year as they are not getting the health care they once did. Why? 
Because of ObamaCare--seniors are getting mistreated.
  When we want to talk about the economy, the most staggering numbers I 
can imagine have come out in the last year, and the President has even 
acknowledged it was true. He complains we are not doing enough for the 
middle class.
  Well, we agree with that. We certainly agree with that. We need to 
help those that are not making enough money. Then quit knocking them 
out of their jobs, Mr. President, Harry Reid. We have got over 360 
bills down at the Senate. Passage of just 10 of them would help this 
economy, but they won't bring them up.
  So the devastating, most incredible numbers are these: since Barack 
Obama has been President of the United States, for the first time in 
our Nation's history--it has never ever happened before in any 
President's tenure, whether it was 4 years or 8 years or shortened by 
tragedy, no President before Barack Obama has ever presided over an 
economy in the United States in which 95 percent of all the income in 
the United States went to the top 1 percent, never ever.
  Only under the leadership of President Barack Obama, of all the 
Presidents, only this President has brought us to the place where 95 
percent of all of the income in America goes to the top 1 percent.
  People wonder why there is so much money that flooded into the Obama 
campaign in 2008. Not as much flooded into his campaign in 2012 because 
there was some people losing money. The economy wasn't doing as well as 
expected.
  Is there anything more devastating than a President acknowledging the 
fact that 95 percent of all income has gone to the top 1 percent? Then 
he gives speeches and talks to people like he can't understand how the 
Republicans could allow this big growth between the poor and the rich. 
Well, we need the President to tell us how he has done it, but the 
trouble is we know how he has done it.
  He talks about fat cats and then makes sure that they are the ones 
that get rewarded. He talks about going after Big Oil and proposes a 
bill that would do nothing to hurt Big Oil, but would absolutely have 
devastated independent oil producers who actually drill and produce 
around 95 percent or so of the United States' oil and gas wells.
  Because of this President's ObamaCare, because of his overregulation, 
because of his top-down demands from the EPA wanting to usurp all 
authority for people that couldn't find their rears with both hands, 
they are the ones that are telling industry how to run their 
industries.
  This President has created a mess. He demonizes companies for trying 
to survive by moving to a country that has a corporate income tax rate 
that is a fraction of the rate we have.
  We now have the largest--the highest corporate tax in the world, and 
this President thinks the answer is more taxes. He has never been 
educated by people who know how an economy really works, people like 
Arthur Laffer that helped Ronald Reagan get the economy going after 
President Carter nearly killed it.
  He has never sat down at the feet of people really who understand 
economies and what makes them work, what makes them fail. So he doesn't 
understand that when government uses its heavy, heavy hand, they hurt 
economies.
  When the President pronounces laws out of his mouth that have never 
passed Congress and makes that the newly enforced law, then it creates 
havoc in the economy because capital goes where it feels safest.
  When you have a President, like a dictator, that just pronounces new 
laws because he doesn't like what Congress has passed and prior 
Presidents have signed, then companies are not going to be able to 
survive very well in that environment, so they move on and go somewhere 
where they can survive better.
  The answer to getting people better jobs and higher wages is not to 
mandate further regulation. The answer is to lower the corporate tax, 
draw more companies back here, so that people can have better jobs, 
people can have more jobs.
  I know at some point--because there is so much intelligence in the 
African American community, I know at some point a majority are going 
to figure out that the Democrats have done massive damage to the 
African American communities and that the answer is not making them 
more dependent on the Federal Government, but in pushing them to reach 
their potential, to reach for the sky, not with Federal handouts, but 
with good-paying jobs.

[[Page 14426]]

  I was in Marshall, Texas, just in the last few weeks. There was a 
young African American who has been out of school for a while. He was 
so excited because he had been able to go through the 5-week truck 
driving school there, was getting his commercial driver's license, and 
for the first time in his life, he was going to get a good job paying 
$40,000 to $42,000. It excited me seeing him so excited. He is just a 
huggable guy that was so thrilled.
  So now that he had a job promise that was coming up in a couple of 
weeks when he finished and he knew how much he was going to make and 
that, in 3 years, he had the chance of making $100,000, that he has now 
gotten engaged--because he wanted to wait until he had a job and he 
could take care of his wife and they could take care of each other.
  He didn't want to be on the Federal dole. He wanted to provide for 
himself. This man had all kinds of capability, and now, he is going to 
be able to meet it, not because of this President or the 
overregulation, but because he took a 5-week training program and was 
going to get a good job.
  That is where you help people, not in the handouts, but in the hand 
helping to rise up to the potential that God has given them.
  Some have claimed Republicans have a war on women, that women only 
make 70 percent of what the men have. There are so many false 
statistics that are quoted. We know it is very unfortunate. We are very 
sorry that the White House penalizes women and rewards men because the 
men make a lot more in the same top positions than the women do. So 
apparently, that does happen some places, and we hope the President 
will address it in his own White House lawn, in his own house and yard.
  The fact is if across the country everybody was paying women only 70 
percent of what they paid men for the same job--people are smarter than 
the President realizes--they would be hiring nothing but women because 
they work for so much cheaper.
  That is one of the problems that the African American community has. 
When huge businesses combined with the Democratic Party to bring in and 
lure as many illegal aliens into this country as they can and start 
giving massive numbers of amnesty, then they are not going to have as 
many job opportunities, and they are not going to make as much money.
  People are beginning to see that in the African American community. 
That is why their unemployment rate is so much higher than that in 
other ethnic communities and the overall unemployment rate--such damage 
to such wonderful people.
  Just like that young man in Marshall, Texas, another--he was a much 
older guy, big guy, African American, just thrilled for the man because 
he is graduating, he has got a job coming up, he has been out of work 
so long.
  You don't help people by saying, ``We are going to pay you for a year 
not to work.'' You help create an environment where there are jobs 
where you can reach your potential.
  Mr. Speaker, the question that my friends ought to be asking is, 
``Why is one job no longer enough for so many Americans?'' If we get to 
the bottom of it, you will find out. ObamaCare is a problem, 
overregulation is a problem, stifling America becoming energy 
independent by propping up forms of energy that do not create a profit 
unless they are propped up by taxpayer dollars--let this economy run. 
Let people reach their potential.
  One other thing: I know the President is going to be making a speech 
on Syria. I literally thank God that the President was not able to do a 
bombing campaign like he wanted to do a year ago, in which he literally 
would have done so much damage to--not a good man, but the leader in 
Syria, Assad, that it would have allowed ISIS to be in charge now. 
People across America have figured out ISIS is a threat to all of us.
  I will wait to see what the President has to say, but when you know 
that the President was wrong about Egypt, about the Muslim Brotherhood 
taking over in Egypt, was wrong when he was pushing to keep the Muslim 
Brotherhood and a tyrant like Morsi in charge in Egypt, when over a 
third of the population in Egypt came to the streets and said, ``We 
don't want radical Islam; and you, America, under Barack Obama, you 
helped us with a constitution that doesn't even include impeachment, it 
is shari'a law''--and they have now passed a constitution that requires 
the Christian churches and Jewish synagogues be rebuilt with government 
money, and this administration continues to be heavy-handed against 
them because they didn't want radical Islamists in charge.

                              {time}  1800

  In Libya, as moderate Muslims in the Middle East have told me in 
visits over there: None of us really liked Qadhafi, but he was helping 
you and helping us against terrorism and you helped al Qaeda-backed 
rebels take him out.
  But for America's bombing, the radical Islamists would not have 
control of Libya, Algeria, or Tunisia today. Thank God for the 
Egyptians rising up and saying, as moderate Muslims, as secularists: We 
stand with the Jews and the Christians, and we don't want radical 
Islamists running our country.
  I hope this country--our country's leadership, at least, under the 
President--will wake up. Stop hurting the freedom-loving Egyptians that 
don't want the radical Islamists you supported in Egypt back in charge 
of Egypt. Don't help ISIS in Syria. Don't help them in Iraq. And if he 
had just signed the Status of Forces Agreement that President Bush had 
all but had ready to sign, getting cute with that so it fell apart, 
then we wouldn't be having all these problems today in Iraq and Syria 
that we are.
  He is getting horrible advice, and it is time the President took a 
hard look at who he really gets advice from, because the moderate 
Muslims in the world don't want radical Islam taking over and they 
don't, as they have told me privately, like the people that this 
President has advising him.
  The economy is ready to take off, if this President will get out of 
the way, and people can make money and get back to where one job is 
enough for a person to make it and do well. And if we cut down on the 
massive expenses ObamaCare is causing, we can get rid of that and get 
back to real health care reform. Because even if you save $100, $200 a 
month, that would get you a vacation that people have not gotten this 
year.
  There is so much we can do for America if the government of this 
country, the people at the top of the government, will just finally 
realize the American people have more answers than we do, and then they 
will show us.
  With that, Mr. Speaker, I yield back the balance of my time.

                          ____________________