[Congressional Record (Bound Edition), Volume 160 (2014), Part 9]
[House]
[Page 13383]
[From the U.S. Government Publishing Office, www.gpo.gov]




               WHAT HAVE REPUBLICANS DONE FOR YOU LATELY?

  The SPEAKER pro tempore. The Chair recognizes the gentleman from 
Georgia (Mr. Johnson) for 5 minutes.
  Mr. JOHNSON of Georgia. Mr. Speaker, I rise this morning to talk 
about the issue of impeachment; and in connection with that topic, I 
would use as my text the song some of us may remember by Janet Jackson, 
``What Have You Done for Me Lately?''
  That is what we should ask the House Republicans: What have you done 
for me lately?
  Well, I will tell you what Congress has been doing. Congress has been 
wasting your time and your tax dollars. At a time when Congress should 
be working on the issues that matter most to the pockets and 
pocketbooks of America's citizens, instead we have, for the last 3 
weeks, been wasting taxpayer time and money.
  During that 3-week period, over $800 billion in tax cuts have been 
awarded to the rich people of this country. And guess what. The 
Republicans have once again violated their own rule and failed to find 
an offset in the budget to pay for this gift to the wealthy. This means 
that Republicans have just added--just like that--almost $1 trillion to 
the Nation's debt.
  What have you done for me lately?
  This session of Congress, the 113th Congress, which threatens to go 
down in history as the least productive Congress in the history of this 
great Nation, this Congress has produced a government shutdown, which 
cost the American people $24-plus billion. And we have spent in this 
House of Representatives $79-plus million shuffling paper and voting 50 
times to repeal the Affordable Care Act.
  And how much is it going to cost the American taxpayers when the 
Republicans embark upon this effort to impeach President Obama? How 
much will it cost? Well, they won't let you know that. I will tell you, 
shutting down the government and repealing ObamaCare did not work, so 
we just wasted money. The Republicans came up empty-handed.
  So what are they doing now? In fact, working people should ask their 
Representatives during this upcoming 5-week August recess which we have 
worked so hard to earn, you should ask your Representative: What have 
you done for me lately?
  Congress has spent the last 3 weeks preparing to impeach President 
Obama. You see, over the past 3 weeks, the Republicans in the House 
have been talking up and taking legislative action, at the same time 
mounting a FOX TV and hate-radio campaign in support of their effort to 
file a lawsuit against the President of the United States. Now, is this 
lawsuit simply an attempt to mollify and pacify those Republicans who 
have turned up the volume on the drumbeat towards impeachment, or, more 
cynically, is this lawsuit a precursor to the filing of articles of 
impeachment so they can remove this twice-elected President from office 
prior to the end of his term?
  Either way, it does not look good for America if, in November, voters 
put Republicans in control of both Houses of Congress. Just like the 
government shutdown, cooler heads will not prevail. Ted Cruz and the 
other Tea Party Republicans who were so willing to drive America off 
the fiscal cliff will not hesitate to do what has never been done 
throughout the course of our history, and that is to pull off a coup.
  So the lawsuit against President Obama should be looked upon as being 
synonymous with impeachment.

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