[Congressional Record (Bound Edition), Volume 160 (2014), Part 9]
[House]
[Page 13384]
[From the U.S. Government Publishing Office, www.gpo.gov]




                      HOUSE REPUBLICAN SUBTERFUGE

  The SPEAKER pro tempore. The Chair recognizes the gentleman from 
South Carolina (Mr. Clyburn) for 5 minutes.
  Mr. CLYBURN. Mr. Speaker, I rise this morning to denounce the 
unprecedented political attack House Republicans are bringing to the 
floor of this House. This week, this body will consider a measure to 
bring a lawsuit against the President of the United States for doing 
the job that the people of this country elected him to do.
  This highly partisan lawsuit is a subterfuge. It is a subterfuge by 
House Republicans aimed at achieving their political goals that they 
were not able to achieve at the ballot box. Make no mistake about it. 
This is not a frivolous matter. Nothing could be more serious than 
House Republicans attempting to get the taxpayers of this country to 
finance their misuse and abuse of the legal system. The ultimate goal 
of this exercise is to try to discover some peg upon which they can 
hang an impeachment resolution.
  This is very simple. Republicans could not defeat this President in 
back-to-back elections, and now they are looking for other means to 
their ends. This wasteful Republican lawsuit is their prelude to 
impeachment. It is a vendetta, a direct attack on the heart of our 
democratic form of self-government launched by House Republicans who 
got over a million less votes from the American people in the last 
national elections than their Democratic counterparts. Nothing could be 
more serious.
  This lawsuit is a measure by House Republicans to use taxpayer money 
to further their partisan attempts to besmirch and destroy a President 
they couldn't beat in the elections. It is unfair to the American 
people, it is undemocratic, it is un-American.
  Mr. Speaker, the American people need to know what is going on here. 
Rather than focusing on creating jobs, fixing our broken immigration 
system, rebuilding our crumbling infrastructure, and other sensible 
measures that can help hardworking families struggling to make ends 
meet, House Republicans are obsessed with political gamesmanship on a 
historic scale. Nothing could be more serious.

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