[Congressional Record (Bound Edition), Volume 162 (2016), Part 3]
[House]
[Pages 3476-3477]
[From the U.S. Government Publishing Office, www.gpo.gov]




                              {time}  1215
                 AMERICANS BEING UNJUSTLY HELD IN IRAN

  The SPEAKER pro tempore. The Chair recognizes the gentleman from 
California (Mr. Issa) for 5 minutes.
  Mr. ISSA. Mr. Speaker, these faces are not household names, faces; no 
one knows who these unknown Americans are. And that is because they 
have been held in Iran for so long.
  September 18, 2015, and also detained in 2015.
  Of course they were not detained the 444 days that Iran, a 
totalitarian dictatorship and theocracy, held 52 American diplomats, 
and the world is not watching the same as they did then. That is how 
this President could make a deal with Iran and not include these 
victims of this dictatorship.
  So today, Mr. Speaker, I come to the floor to remind people that in 
the years, the decades, since I was a young lieutenant in 1979, when 
the Ayatollah Khomeini blamed students for somehow doing something--not 
his government--and continued to blame them and blames them in many 
ways until today, the Iranian Government, today, would still hold our 
Embassy hostage. It still is a shell waiting for a return, a return 
that I fear this President wants to do by executive order. He has 
already thrown aside so much of what was working to stop this regime 
from spreading terrorism.
  Mr. Speaker, as we speak today, these people are held hostage, and 
the American people are being held hostage by a President who chooses 
to use the pen and the phone over the democratic means at his side.
  Mr. Speaker, I will continue coming to the floor and pointing out 
that Iran continues to be a dictatorship spreading violence throughout 
the region; continues to fund Hamas and Hezbollah; continues to, in 
fact, destabilize countries in the region, and now does so with 140 
billion more dollars.
  Mr. Speaker, it is extremely important that we stand firm in this 
House that this cannot be tolerated; that, ultimately, this body must 
stand and do what it is obligated to do, which is, in fact, to demand 
freedom for Americans held involuntarily and illegally around the 
world, and particularly in Iran.


               President Obama's Supreme Court Nomination

  Mr. ISSA. Mr. Speaker, I will close by commenting on the Democratic 
Whip's statements. He is demanding that the Senate do its job.
  At a time in which the political season is well underway and 
politicians are campaigning around America for President, at a time in 
which two sides have two different visions of the Constitution--one is 
that the original intent of the Constitution be adhered to and changed 
only by the will of the people, as it has been 27 times; or, that it be 
simply cast aside the way the current nominee for the Supreme Court 
would do with the Second Amendment and others--I respect the minority 
leader's right to an opinion; but, of course, we all, on this floor, 
have a right to be wrong from time to time. Mr. Speaker, he clearly was 
when he went on for more than 10 minutes, telling us that we have to 
confirm a Supreme Court Justice in the middle of a political season.
  I wish he had joined me in saying that this President should not make 
agreements that circumvent the Constitution, that circumvent this body 
and leave Americans stranded abroad.

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