[Congressional Record (Bound Edition), Volume 161 (2015), Part 7]
[House]
[Page 9606]
[From the U.S. Government Publishing Office, www.gpo.gov]




                             ABOVE THE LAW

  The SPEAKER pro tempore. The Chair recognizes the gentleman from 
Texas (Mr. Gohmert) for 5 minutes.
  Mr. GOHMERT. Mr. Speaker, I appreciate so much the comments of my 
friend Mr. Russell, a neighbor from an adjoining State. He is right. 
The American people have made clear that they did not want the TPA 
passed. They certainly don't want the TAA passed.
  How ironic that we are told that TPA's passage will create a massive 
number of jobs; yet the people who have really looked at it on the 
Democratic side say, ``Huh-uh, this is going to cost a lot of jobs so 
that we have got to have more unemployment benefits and more government 
help for people who are going to lose their jobs,'' which is what the 
TAA basically does, ``or we can't vote for the TPA''--how ironic.
  Also how ironic that President Obama seems to have worked harder on 
this bill than he has on anything since ObamaCare--he has come to the 
Hill; he went to the baseball game. He is really pushing people to join 
him. It is rather ironic because it is just hard to believe that he 
would be working this hard to limit his own powers. He has never done 
that before. He has never worked to limit his own powers.
  It also strikes me as a bit interesting that some of the same people 
who pushed so hard to pass TARP, the Wall Street bailout, are also 
pushing for this. There was a former FDIC Chairman named Isaac, who 
came to the Hill with the support of many economists, saying: ``Please, 
don't get into this socialist activity where government partners with 
private business. Don't do that and certainly not for $700 billion. 
There is no justification.''
  Look, we clearly have more than that, that American individuals and 
American businesses have overseas in banks that they will never bring 
into the United States. They have already paid a massive amount of tax 
on it overseas.
  A far better, free market approach would be to just pass a bill and 
say, ``If you want to shore up any asset or any entity, like Goldman 
Sachs''--you could have saved Lehman Brothers, AIG, Chrysler, GM; you 
could have saved any of them if you had just said: ``Bring that money 
in from overseas, no tax.''
  We could have made it very attractive to do that, and then we 
wouldn't have had to have given the government $700 billion with 
basically no limits on how the Secretary of the Treasury could spend 
his money.
  He couldn't prop up a central bank of a foreign government, but I 
read the bill. I couldn't believe we were going to give that kind of 
power to one person. We have not done that since the Constitution 
passed.
  It also should be noted, I think, that, if we had not passed that 
$700 billion Wall Street bailout--that giveaway--then President Obama 
would never have gotten $900 billion. He would never have been able to 
push so much more for bigger government and had gotten it.
  We would have been able to have stood stronger against that, which 
could have prevented ObamaCare from even coming up or passing. It had 
terribly damaging effects. Some of the same people who wanted TARP are 
now wanting TPA and TAA. It is a bad idea.
  I just want to just finish, Mr. Speaker, by noting that we have the 
Supreme Court taking up an issue--it is supposedly going to come out 
with an opinion before the end of the month--and ruling in a case 
involving same-sex marriage.
  Neither the Constitution nor the Bill of Rights provides any power 
for the Federal Government to get involved in the issue of marriage. 
That has always been a State issue. It should be under the 10th 
Amendment; yet we have the Supreme Court potentially going to weigh in 
and take over that power.
  We also know that the law is very clear: 28 U.S. Code, section 455, 
says that any justice, judge, or magistrate judge of the United States 
shall disqualify himself in any proceeding in which his impartiality 
might reasonably be questioned.
  Two Justices have made clear how they feel. They have presided over 
same-sex marriage ceremonies. If they do not disqualify themselves and 
if they rule on this case, they have shown a total contempt for the 
law. That should lead to impeachment, but America would have to rise up 
to make that known.
  We will see here, in the 800th year anniversary of the Magna Carta, 
when it was made clear that nobody, not even the King, is above the 
law, if the Supreme Court will say, 800 years later: ``We are the 
Supreme Court, and we are above the law, and there is nothing you can 
do about it.''
  I hope and pray they are not that arrogant in trying to bring down 
this constitutional Republic. We will see.

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