Floor Statements

Mr. Speaker, I rise today to draw attention to the American people to information that is being kept from them. So often the good will and good-heartedness of the American people is manipulated to achieve goals that sometimes are detrimental to our people and detrimental to our country as well.

Today, the American people are being told that there are young people who are here illegally, brought by their parents at an early age--they call them DREAMers--and that we must be concerned about them, as we are. Of course, we are concerned about them. Our sympathy is with young people anywhere who want a better life.

But what the American people are not being told is that there are 850,000 of these young people. That is being left out of the discussion. They are looking to be legalized. When they are legalized, that means they can apply for family reunification, which means that they then will receive government benefits and even more people will come in under their platform.

I suggest that we take a look to see what 850,000 more young people and the millions more who will come will do to the American people.

Mr. Speaker, it is my honor to participate in this message to the Iranian people tonight and also a message that we will deliver to the American people as well. To those brave souls who are now in the streets to oppose the mullah dictatorship that now governs Iran, we send you this message: We are with you. We are thinking of you. You are within our vision. We are siding with you against tyranny. Do not think you are alone. The American people, our hearts and our souls, are with you; and, yes, we are proud of our President for making sure the world knows that we are officially on the side of those people who are struggling in the streets of Tehran, as we speak, to make sure that the mullah dictatorship is overthrown and replaced by a democratic government.

These people have a right to democratic government just the same as anyone else. We talked about it in our Declaration of Independence. We talked about rights that are given by God to every individual, and that government only has those powers that are granted to it by the consent of the governed.

Yes, we had our own revolution. Remember, the French helped us in that revolution. The French helped us win our freedom. We owe that to people who have helped us win our freedom to side with people who are struggling in Iran today and against other radical Islamic dictatorships today to help them create a more democratic society.

In fact, as I look around in this Hall tonight, I see that there are only two pictures on the floor of the House. One is George Washington, and one is Marquis de Lafayette. Look into Lafayette's eyes. This is a picture of a man who came to us 50 years after our revolution and was the ultimate American hero for helping us win our freedom. Are there tears in his eyes tonight? No. But there were tears in his eyes in the picture of Lafayette when we sided with the mullah regime during the last administration when we actually cut a deal with the mullahs keeping them in power, not giving any support to those who were struggling for democracy in order to give them $1 billion to get them to go along and sign up for a bogus arms treaty.

Now, this President of the United States today has left those policies behind. We are proud of this President for what he is doing, and we send this message to the American people: We will stand for freedom, and we will be safe. If we cower and we don't support those people struggling for freedom throughout the world, we will not be safe.

Nowhere is that more evident than in the streets of Tehran tonight.

People of Iran, we are with you, just as the French were with us when we won our freedom. We will make this a better world, we will make it a safer world for all people who believe in any type of democratic, open government.

The mullah regime must be overthrown but by its own people, and we must be true to those patriots who established our own country by supporting those who are struggling for freedom in Iran.

Mr. Speaker, I thank the gentleman for yielding. I also want to thank Mr. Gohmert for the great courage that he has had on this issue, the fact that he has been willing to speak up for something that the establishment in this country is trying to shut us up about, trying to put blinders on the American people about what is going on and how we are losing our country.

I was there with Ronald Reagan, and, yes, he was sold a bill of goods in 1986. He was told there were 3 million illegals in the country; and that is what we are going to do, we are going to legalize their status. He had a good heart, Reagan had a wonderful heart, and he saw these people were being exploited and living in the shadows. Three million people, you could take care of that, but the agreement has to be that we are now going to control our borders.

Of course, back then, there was never even any question about whether someone who is here illegally should be getting a government benefit or be able to be treated just like a U.S. citizen, that wasn't even in the works, but Ronald Reagan said: Okay. We will secure the border, and then we will make sure that we take these 3 million people and save them.

Instead, how did it end up? The border security was done not even halfheartedly. We ended up, when all was said and done, with not 3 million people, but 11 million people who eventually came here based on that amnesty program.

Well, today, it is a lot worse what we are facing. Today, the American people are being told a lie. Maybe someone is not just lying directly to them, but they are feeding them a false image of what the issue is today.

How many people have heard about the DREAMers, these wonderful young people, yes, who came here at an early age? The American people are not being told what we are talking about when we talk about the DREAMers. Most Americans think we are talking about 25,000 or 30,000 kids at the most. That is what most Americans think we are talking about.

What we are talking about is 850,000 young people, who, yes, have dreams, and most of them are fine young people, I am sure, but they are here illegally, they have been brought here illegally by their parents, and they want their status legalized.

What will that do? 850,000 young people, not 25,000, almost a million young people, and all right, what will happen when they are legalized? Well, what we are not being told is, as soon as they are legalized, they then have the rights of everybody else, as anyone who is residing here legally should, and, thus, they are eligible for family reunification, and their families that are now being brought in from other countries then have the right to bring in their families. So we have a family reunification that creates a snowball effect and millions and millions more.

Then, of course, we also have, with the legalization, the eligibility for government benefits, which, as I say, during Reagan's time, there wasn't any question you are not going to give benefits to illegal immigrants. Well, now we find illegal immigrants receiving education and healthcare benefits just as if they were American citizens.

In California, they have even treated criminals as if they are citizens, setting up sanctuary cities and sanctuary States.

Let me note that, with free education and free healthcare, there is no limit to the number of people around the world who will want to come here. By the way, there is no securing the border as long as we are giving education and

healthcare benefits to people who have come here illegally.

In fact, what we are talking about now is basically opening up major, major expenditures in our budget, that right now we can't afford even to take care of our own people, yet we are going to have an obligation not just for these 850,000 young people, but all of the people whom they will bring in as well, not to mention the millions of other young people throughout the world who will say: My gosh, if I could get there.

And mothers and fathers throughout the world: We have got to get our child there so they can get the education and healthcare that is being provided to young people even when they come there illegally.

Now, let us note, for funds for our education system, our own young people are suffering from a lack of funds for their education; we lack money to have a very good healthcare plan for our people, yet the millions of other people who have come here illegally, we are going to let them drain that money and invite millions more people to come here from overseas.

This is the most dishonest debate that we have had. That whole concept of having millions and millions more coming in because of DACA, the DREAMers? No, no. This is being kept out of the debate; this isn't going to be part of America's vision of what is going on.

The idea that we now have veterans whom we cannot afford to take care of, we have children of our own people whom we cannot afford to educate, we have seniors whom we are trying to take care of, all of these are expenses that we have, and we are already in the hole, yet we are going to take care of millions of other people who have come here illegally, starting with the DREAMers?

There are not just 10 million, by the way, 11 million people here illegally. Let me be clear. We have got, I am guesstimating, 20 million, but I bet there are other people who are much more sophisticated in their analysis than I am on this who say it is even more than 20 million people who have come here illegally.

So what happens? We are draining our resources for people who have come here illegally.

What does that mean? We don't care enough about our own people. That is what we are really saying. Those people are more important than our own people.

Then, of course, you have the fact that people are coming here, and, yes, they are able-bodied, yet they still get education and healthcare, but they get jobs, and, yes, they bid down the wages of people at the lowest end of our spectrum.

I used to be an ice cream scooper at Marineland snack bar. That is what I did when I was in high school. I scooped ice cream.

You know what, those jobs now, what we have got are people who have gone into those jobs so that in order to get people to work for them, they haven't had to increase the wages of the people at that level. And if they have increased wages, they haven't increased the wages as much as they would have had to had they not had groups of people there who say: I will do that work at half the price.

Something else I was, I was a janitor in college. I was a janitor, and I cleaned toilets. There is nothing wrong with anybody, whatever work they have got. We know that we respect every working person in this country.

Yes, I cleaned toilets, and guess what? I looked back a few years ago and found that the salary, the wages, of people who clean toilets has not gone up, the janitors are not making more money.

Now, why is that? Are we saying that people who work at lowly jobs aren't worthy of having a pay raise, they shouldn't benefit? The income of our Nation now is three or four times higher than it was, yet those people in the lower scale have not been going up with that. The main reason is those lowly jobs that they get, they have been bid down, the salaries have been bid down by this massive flow of illegals.

Now, if we care about our people, we have to ask: What is America? America is not one race, not one religion, not one ethnic group. America is a country in which we believe in freedom and we have come from every ethnic group and race in the world.

What makes us Americans, then, is that we have to care for each other. We are an American family, but that being an American family means we must take care of those people who are less fortunate in our country before we spend and even borrow more money in order to take care of the needs of people who have come here illegally.

Let us just note the worst part of this whole debate is that Republicans and others who are concerned about this are being labeled like we are anti-immigrant. Well, in fact, we know that immigration is an important part of our country.

But this is the greatest lie of all because we believe that our country has been prospered by having a legal immigration system. We, in fact, take in a million legal immigrants a year. So anyone who is thinking about this should think about it. That represents more legal immigration into our country than all the other countries of the world combined, allowing people to immigrate into their country, all the other countries of the world.

Yet, because we don't want to destroy this system, we don't want it to go out of control, we are being labeled as anti-immigrant, even though we sing praises for those people who have come here legally.

In fact, the people who are the most anti-immigrant are the ones who mix the title ``illegal'' and ``legal'' together. And what we have got now is the worst possible outcome in that we have limited resources being drained away from our own people of every race, religion, and ethnic group, and jobs that are being bid down by illegals; and everyone, including legal immigrants, are being hurt.

But what we have now is a recognition that we cannot even enforce the law. We have sanctuary cities in which criminals are being kept from being arrested by Federal agents.

What is that all about? Who do we care for?

Now we are saying our police can't even protect our families; and that if there is some criminal gang from another country that comes here, that we are going to have a sanctuary State or a sanctuary city for these people.

This is absolutely ridiculous. It is a horror story, and it is up to us to alert the American people that we are losing our country. We are losing our country. And when I say ``our country,'' us, United States is us, every race, every religion, every ethnic group.

Let us care for each other. Let anybody who is saying we care more about someone who is coming here illegally from another country, I don't care how old they are, their children, yes, are less important than our children. Those people's well-being, yes, are less important than the well-being of all Americans, whatever their status in this society. We need to make sure we make that clear.

And DACA, if we bring in 850,000 young people and encourage millions more to come in by doing that, we have betrayed the interests of our own people, and they are looking to us to protect them.

Mr. Speaker, I believe that there are people who, with sinister motives, are trying to destroy the United States of America. They are

there. There are people out there who hate us for what we stand for. They have always hated America. We have been what stood between the forces of evil on this planet for 200 years now.

If it wasn't for our guys--my mom and dad left North Dakota, these small farms--out to fight in World War II, we saved the world from Nazism and from Japanese militarism.

And then during the Cold War, we stood firm until communism--that evil that wanted to create atheistic dictatorships throughout the world, thinking that that is going to cleanse us from our profit motive, the idea that we are going to change human nature but we are going to establish dictators and dictatorships and murder millions and millions of people, we defeated that evil. We held firm until it had a chance to collapse on its own.

Now we face radical Islam, which is not a force, by the way, that--it is a powerful force. There are Muslims who hate us. There are Muslims who love us as well. But there are Muslims who hate us, who have lots of money and lots of oil. We cut deals with them, so they have lots of money and resources.

And what did they do?

They have financed terrorism to try to terrorize us into retreat. They hate America. They hate America. These are forces. And there are still forces in the world today that hate us, and that group is applauding when we lose control of our borders.

And you know darn well the terrorists of this world have seen those open borders to the South, and the terrorists are among us.

But we also have lost control of what you are talking about; that loss of control will destroy our chance to have an economic activity that succeeds in establishing a currency and a system in which prosperity and a good life for ordinary people can exist.

No, it is going to go down unless we stop this massive flow. And the massive flow is already gone, but it will become a flood of people if we send the message: Kids who get here get free education, free healthcare, legalized status, and they will bring their parents in.

We will have tens of millions of more people flooding our country. I can't agree to that.

Mr. Speaker, establishing the rule of law here will not only protect our own people, will not only make sure that our own less fortunate people are bid into low-paying jobs so that people who work as janitors, as I did, and as decent people are doing now, that their wages aren't bid down; they can live a decent life so their families can live with some security here. So by doing that, we will also take away this major instability that we are creating throughout the world by not obeying the rule of law.

Mr. Speaker, I rise today to pay tribute to surf legend and filmmaker Bruce Brown, who, at 80 years of age, died this week.

Bruce Brown challenged a generation of Americans to follow our dream and to find our perfect wave. He reached out to introduce us to the magic experience of being propelled by the power of nature on an ocean wave. Adventure and a rush of excitement was only as far away as a local beach.

Bruce Brown made movies about surfing. ``Endless Summer'' was his best known. But his films were more than entertainment. He spoke to our soul and our spirit of adventure. He inspired us to go for it, to take on towering waves, just as other Americans scaled the tallest mountain peaks and even journeyed to the Moon.

Isn't that what America was all about? Isn't that what America is all about?

My first surfboard was a large, single-fin Velzy. Dale Velzy owned a surf shop in San Clemente and financed Bruce Brown's first film, ``Slippery When Wet.''

The surf culture Bruce Brown helped get born is still here. Outsiders are intrigued by it. You know when you are part of it.

Bruce Brown showed us the way. A few days ago, he passed on and is paddling into the distant sunset. He followed his dream, he found his perfect wave, and he rode it as far as it would take him.

Mr. Speaker, I rise in support of this resolution, and I compliment both our chairman and our ranking member for how they have ensured that our committee remains a bulwark of support for human rights throughout the world.

It has been 16 years since 3,000 Americans were slaughtered before our eyes by a global terrorist movement, using Islam as an excuse for the cowardly murder of innocent people, people of every faith who were butchered in order to terrorize the rest of us in the world into submission to their fanaticism.

Crucial to our ability to defeat this evil force has been our commitment to

ensure that the battle did not evolve into a war between Islam itself and the rest of us, which would then, of course, pit Muslims against all Christians as well as people of other faiths.

George W. Bush, President of the United States, reached out at that moment after 9/11 to ensure that the plot by these radical terrorists did not succeed in polarizing the world as such. Our greatest success has been preventing that polarization that would have put all the people of the world against Islam and all Muslims against all the rest of the people of the world.

That battle to make sure that does not happen must continue. It is essential to keep open the ties with those people in the Muslim world who are appalled by the terror and brutality of these fanatics who commit such monstrous crimes.

It is vital for our own security that we aggressively condemn terrorism and human rights abuses when it is against Muslim people. The Muslim people are the victims, and they need to know that we are on their side, just as we expect good Muslim people to be on our side when we confront this terrorism in the world. We did that, of course, when the Serbian Christians were killing, ethnically cleansing, Muslim people in Kosovo.

Today we reaffirm to the Muslim people of the world and to ourselves that we loudly proclaim that we are condemning the slaughter of the Rohingya people who reside in the southern states of Burma. If these attacks by the Burmese military continue, we must follow this strong condemnation today with sanctions.

In the meantime, not one bullet or weapon should ever be made available to the Burmese military. And, in the meantime, the Burmese military officers and the government officials who are engaged in this particular policy of genocide against the Rohingya people must know they will be held accountable for their crimes against the Rohingyas, because it is not a crime just against Rohingyas, it is a crime against humanity.

So, again, I commend the leadership of our committee, both the ranking member and the chairman, for making this an important issue for this Congress.

Mr. Speaker, on his recent trip to Asia, President Trump reminded us and our international trading partners that our commercial agreements must be honest, fair, and reciprocal. With this admonition, he called on our Asian friends to build automobile plants that would employ American workers. Three cheers for him for doing that.

The United States already has experienced the benefits and the liabilities of foreign-controlled multinational automobile companies manufacturing in our country. These companies have provided good jobs for America's working people, but having these foreign companies here hasn't always worked.

A few years ago, we discovered that one of the world's preeminent car manufacturers, Volkswagen Group of America, had engaged in an illegal and clandestine strategy to circumvent U.S. emissions laws.

Volkswagen has a longstanding relationship with the American people. Like so many young people in my generation, my first car was a Volkswagen Beetle, so Volkswagen enjoyed an enormous goodwill in our country. Despite that, Volkswagen Group of America intentionally did us wrong. Volkswagen intentionally violated our emissions regulations and, by many accounts, they even engineered their systems to falsely indicate that they were complying with the emissions standards.

This was nothing more than pure arrogance and a hostile intent and an egregious violation of our best legislative efforts to regulate our way to clean air. Unfortunately, this issue with Volkswagen has not been totally dealt with and put behind us.

The deal with the German Government that got them off the hook remains cloaked in mystery and left many questions unanswered. We do not know yet, for example, whether Volkswagen will compensate Americans in a full and just manner. Those uncompensated Americans may include the owners of the bogusly engineered cars, as well as auto importers, as well as, perhaps, service stations who officially were authorized to repair Volkswagens.

Mr. Speaker, the VW deal between the Obama administration and the Merkel government needs to be revisited with a full airing of the details. We need to know if Volkswagen has complied fully and if the settlement was demonstrably fair to Americans who relied on their good faith.

Wolfgang Porsche, the family who owns 52 percent of Volkswagen, he was the chairman during this time of the emissions scandal; as well as Matthias Mueller, the CEO of Volkswagen Group, they need to be put on the record about what the details of this subterfuge of American law was all about.

We need to send a message also. By putting them on the record, we need to send a message to all the multinational corporation executives who, when they do business in the United States of America, have to play by our rules.

I applaud the President for trying to encourage people to invest in building factories here, but that means all of us must make sure that that works out for the best for the American people.

Mr. Speaker, our American way of life and our Judeo- Christian values are under attack as never before. People understand that there is the threat out there, but perhaps the magnitude keeps coming home of how bad and what a great threat it really is.

Radical Islamic terrorists with a backward, evil, 7th century view of the world are out to destroy and kill us. They seek to terrorize Western countries and Americans, in particular, into retreat.

Well, instead, we must stand tall. We must have the courage to do what is necessary because it does depend on us, as it always has been. As when Nazism and Japanese militarism threatened the world, it was the United States that carried the day for the decent people of the world.

When communism threatened to establish atheistic dictatorships throughout the world and was on the march, yes, it was the American people who stood strong and had those policies necessary to hold off the communist menace until it collapsed, basically, of its own inconsistencies and its own evil nature.

Well, we had great leadership at those other battles, and I say, thank goodness that today we now have a President who actually can speak the words against and condemn this horrible force that threatens our country and the people of the world.

Yes, we have a President who can actually say those words, ``radical Islamic terrorism.'' For 8 years, we had a President who couldn't use those words, much less do those things that were necessary to defeat this threat and to make sure our people were secure.

Some, if not many, of our leaders have been afraid to confront the basic nature of those who have made repeated terrorist attacks and assaults. Anyone who is not signing on to their fanatical religious agenda becomes a terrorist target, not only Christians, but Jews and other Muslims.

President Trump is, at long last, providing the courageous leadership in this historic battle. Congress needs to support our President. We need to stand with him and to stand united against this evil, and yes, defend ourselves. We must not be afraid, and we must not only defend ourselves but also do what is necessary to defeat and extinguish this ghoulish adversary and end his bloody assault on Western civilization, and yes, on moderate Islam.

Words are not enough. Our homeland is under attack; people are in danger; our families, our country, and our way of life are under attack. These attackers come from many countries, both men and women. But in common--these people who have been murdering people and the mayhem they have been creating throughout the Western world, whether it is in France or in the United States or elsewhere, these men and women who participate in these evil acts of terrorism have something that they have in common. They all pledge allegiance to radical Islam.

That is our enemy, not Islam, not Islam itself, but the radical fanaticism that terrorists and the Islamic psychopaths that are out there murdering in the worst possible and ghoulish ways, people, in order to--yes, in order to have--to shock us and in order to intimidate the West into retreat.

This week, a 29-year-old Uzbek immigrant plowed a truck into people walking and cycling in a New York City pathway. He killed 8 people, and he proclaimed that he was inspired by Islam. In fact, he said he was proud of what he had done and even requested the display of his Islamic state flag in his hospital room.

We need to ask ourselves: Why are we allowing Islamic terrorists like this into our country in the first place? How much longer will we close our eyes and bury our heads in the sand?

We have even witnessed horrendous terrorist attacks even in my home State. We know that. We have seen it. On December 2, 2015, in San Bernardino, 14 innocent and wonderful people were brutally slaughtered and 22 seriously injured by an immigrant from Pakistan--a hotbed of radicalism. And yes, his motive was his fanatic belief in what he considers to be Islam. It was truly one of the most evil attacks in our State's history.

In Orlando, on June 12, 2016, 49 nightclubbers out having a good time, enjoying themselves as Americans--life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness--they were having a good time, and 49 of these nightclubbers were brutally murdered and mowed down.

All of these innocent lives were slaughtered. Americans who were blown apart at the Boston marathon is no different.

We have American victims staring us in the face saying: What are you going to do to bring justice and to protect the Americans that we left behind, our families? These horrific crimes of cowards mirrors what has happened to innocent people throughout the world.

Yes, we Americans are suffering. And as I say, we have seen it in France, we have seen it in Europe, we have seen it in Muslim countries where these fanatics take Christians out and behead them. But they also, of course, attack moderate Muslims. They are out to try to topple the government of el-Sisi and Egypt and all the other governments there that are not committed to the fanatic view of Islam that they hold.

The most recent attacks in New York should, at least, open our eyes to things that we can do here. Maybe we can't stop it all over the world, but the least we can do is to take steps to protect our own citizens from this type of fanatical threat that hangs over us.

Well, we need to take specific steps that can and should be done to help deal with this danger. I have, in fact, discussed a plan with the President--and this is a few months ago--and we have had a lot of work and a lot of things under the bridge since then, but his commitment to border security includes placing a wall on the Southern border.

Yes, making sure that we have border security, and yes, if it takes a wall on our Southern border, the President is right on target. A wall and beefing up our border will, of course, be expensive. That is why I laid out a plan to the President and have since offered legislation that would pay for President Trump's proposed border wall.

The car attack in New York has altered many Americans and alerted many Americans to something they didn't know about before, and that is that we have an immigration system, an immigration law that permits 50,000 people to immigrate into our country every year--50,000 people who are chosen by lottery, not by some really looking at them, some examination of their credentials, seeing what they could contribute, no. A lottery.

And, of course, Senator Schumer in the Senate, I guess, was the man who actually insisted on this. Well, I am sure he was well-intended, but what we have now are people--instead of bringing in the people who can most contribute to our country, he has insisted we leave 50,000 of them up to a lottery system.

This is insanity. It is forced onto us and has been forced into policy by liberal left politicians who would flood our country with illegals, which is something they are doing besides just this threat that we are talking about, because these people who win the lottery, of course, are not coming here illegally.

At the same time, the same people who are pushing that type of system are pushing for policies that would flood our country with illegals and has flooded our country with illegals, that has brought down our healthcare system, our education system. We brought criminals into our country, and we have had an uncontrolled border.

Yes, the people who are responsible for that have also been responsible for policy that just permitted 50,000 people legally to come here; and those 50,000 people are people not selected by a rational process but instead by a lottery.

The terrorist murderers in New York, of course, were here. That terrorist murderer, and maybe murderers, they were here on the lottery visa. They weren't here because they had been selected. In fact, the lottery selected this Uzbeki fanatic Muslim, and he didn't have the skills and the education necessary to live a decent life, and he ended up killing a lot of people in New York. Surprise, surprise.

We should know about these people who are coming into our country, period, whether those people are coming illegally. We have had millions of people pouring into our country illegally, and then what do our liberal left politicians on the other side say? ``Oh, we need sanctuary cities to protect them, the ones who are here illegally and have come here illegally,'' which, of course, does nothing but encourage more people to come here illegally. And the more who are here illegally are people who we don't know what they are all about.

Do you think the fanatic Islamic terrorists that I am referring to today didn't notice that our border was porous and that people were pouring across our border from our Southern border?

Well, we should know about everybody who is coming into the country, and we should choose the very best people who can contribute to our country. I have no problem with a very robust legal immigration into our country, no problem at all, and neither do the Republicans that I know.

What we have a problem with is a flood of illegals coming in, bidding down the wages of our own citizens, some of them criminals attacking and killing the citizens like we saw in San Francisco--a young lady who was killed by an illegal who had been sent home. But also, even within the system that is legal immigrants, we need to know who those people are and select the very best people to come here.

The plan that I offered the President, which will make it easier for him to accomplish this mission, is a plan that would take that slot in our lottery, 50,000 people who now come in under a lottery like the guy who just killed those people in New York, instead, let's use that slot, those 50,000 places in our legal immigration system and offer it to foreigners who are very wealthy, who can be given the privilege of paying $1 million each to come here and eventually become a citizen.

If we can do that, that $1 million and those 50,000 slots will give us all the money we need to build that wall, and it is fitting that we build that wall and we secure our borders and beef up our system of immigration to protect our citizens, and that we actually have people who want to come here and immigrate here pay for that reform.

We need to implement immigration policies that serve the American people. That is what should be first and foremost, not some crazy notion that we are going to, oh, build--get some kind of better spirit by opening up the immigration into our country to anybody who can get here, and let's let a lottery decide, let's not do it rationally. No.

We need to make sure everybody who comes here is going to contribute, and they are good people. Unless we can all stand together--and the most important thing is they are coming here because they want to be Americans, like almost all the legal immigrants who come here, people who want to be Americans, and we will open our arms, as we have, and as Republicans who are opposed to illegal immigration have said over and over again.

Well, I have proposed H.R. 2724, and I call on President Trump to pay attention to this. I call all of my colleagues to pay attention to this. I urge my colleagues to take a look at that legislation. That will offer us the financial resources we need to bolster our borders, to make sure that there is a wall, but, also, to make sure that we are not bringing into this country people who are associated with radical Islamic fanaticism that would do us harm.

I am asking my colleagues to look at that legislation. I am asking anyone who is reading the Congressional Record or listening to this, perhaps, to talk to their Congressman on this issue.

Now, in the past 2 weeks, we have been provided information on another issue that I would like to bring up. Mr. Speaker, may I ask how much time I have left.

Mr. Speaker, I will try to bring up something that we have heard, and we need to discuss this as Americans, because it also is about a very major flaw in our system that is apparent, things that have been not right for the last 2 years.

In the past 2 weeks, however, information has been provided to the American people that has exposed the hypocrisy and misinformation, forced down our throats, for months concerning the allegation that President Trump colluded with the Russians in order to steal the last election. Over and over again, fake news filled the airwaves and, of course, the newspapers, suggesting that there was a sinister plot that kept Hillary from becoming President of the United States.

The core accusation was the Russians had hacked into the Democratic National Committee computers. Emails between the Democratic leaders were taken and handed over to Julian Assange, who is the head of WikiLeaks, and that they were released to the public by WikiLeaks.

The skulduggery of the Democrat leadership and the Clinton campaign was, thus, exposed by these emails. Yes, that exposure to this skulduggery and this unconscionable activity between the Clinton leadership, and also the Democratic Party leadership, these emails, yes, did have an impact on the election, as many Democrats who supported Bernie Sanders felt that they had been cheated by their own party because the proof was being offered to them by these WikiLeaks emails that had been taken from the Democratic National Committee.

Now, we heard over and over again that Trump stole the election because he was in collusion with the Russians. The lib-left media, which is most of them, found every which way, any little thing that any member of the Trump team did, as sinister proof that there was collusion with the Russians, thus, they stole the election. Well, it was pounded into our heads month after month, even after the election was over.

But Hillary didn't lose that. That is what we are being told. Hillary lost the election. She didn't want us to believe that it was because she was a rotten candidate running on a miserable track record and a platform that undermined her own candidacy, but, instead, she lost because the GOP had subterfuge and treachery in which they were working with Russians, who helped them out to accomplish this horrible crime of stealing the election.

Well, this negative media barrage and this continued attack on President Trump did not stop when the election was over. It went on for months and months. Everybody should remember that. Month after month after the election, in what appeared to be, in my point of view, an effort to disrupt our new President's authority and to exercise powers granted to him by the American voters, that was going to be disrupted, so he could not become a regular President of the United States, as our election process had determined. Talk about not being loyal to the American way of life.

After months of these obstructionist tactics, the American people are now learning the whole truth. They are learning that the attack on Trump was

a total fraud, a power grab by those who lost the election, and an attempt to distract the American people from this wrongdoing.

First and foremost, let's make it clear: the Russians did not hack into and steal the Democratic National Committee's emails. In terms of the collusion with the Russians, it is now coming to light there are far worse things. But the stealing of those emails and then making them public--and, by the way, they were just making public honest emails. We are not talking about giving the public false information. We are talking about giving them information the Democrats didn't want them to have.

But in terms of collusion with the Russians, what is coming to light is that the Clinton Foundation--so these other charges that we have heard about President Trump may be something to distract us about something that was being done that was wrong and, of a similar light, that was wrong and being done by Hillary Clinton and her family.

In terms of collusion with the Russians, it has come to light that the Clinton Foundation collected more than or around $150 million from Russian oligarchs that Clinton felt was deposited right into the Clinton Foundation coffers. These oligarchs then deposited $500,000 right into the Clinton family's pockets for a speech. Yeah, they are going to give them a speaker's fee of $500,000 for one speech. All of this was happening when Hillary was Secretary of State. It was also happening when our government was making a decision as to whether they should sell 20 percent of America's uranium reserves to Russia. Why we would never seriously consider that, I don't know.

But in my research, I have found evidence that, because that did not seem right, the FBI had an informant watching all of this go down, close up, right there in Russia--an informant. Instead of charging Hillary with a crime, which was not done by the FBI, a gag order was placed on this witness who was working as an informer for the FBI.

That gag order at the time, who put it on this witness?

Well, it was the head of the FBI.

Who was the head of the FBI?

Robert Mueller. That gag order was kept on by Mueller, the gag order on the informant that had this information about the negotiations for contributions to the Clinton fund of $150 million. This guy was kept, and a gag order, all of this time, even while Mueller was head of the FBI. This is the same Mueller who is now the special prosecutor trying to find anything to charge Trump with collusion with the Russians.

That gag order over the witness implicating Hillary was not lifted until last week, when some of us stepped up and said: We have to have a public hearing on this and we need to make sure--not a public hearing on any type of negative or, let's say, illegal collusion with the Russian Government by any American politician, which would have included Hillary, of course, and will include Hillary and anybody else who colluded with them.

Yes, I know, that I have advanced the idea of cooperating with the Russians, so this may seem out of place. But I have always felt whatever we do with the Russians needs to be what is in the interest of the people of the United States. Certainly giving away 20 percent of America's uranium reserves, and then gagging one of the witnesses to the discussions that were taking place at the time when, at the same time, oligarchs in Russia were providing the Clintons with $150 million donation to their foundation, and a $500,000 donation right into the personal pockets of Bill Clinton.

Now, we need to move forward on this. As we know, the special prosecutor, Mr. Mueller, who kept the gag order on this witness, who didn't charge Hillary in the beginning, now has found someone to indict. Paul Manafort has been indicted.

Isn't this interesting?

Our special prosecutor was tasked with trying to see if there was Russian collusion in the last election between the Trump people and the Russians in order to steal the election. And what did he come up with?

Basically, tax evasion by Paul Manafort, who is a longtime politico in this city.

And guess what. The tax evasion he is being charged with happened long before Paul Manafort had anything to do with Donald Trump. That is wrong. That is wrong. There is something really wrong there. We need to get a new special prosecutor or whatever. We need to have these hearings. Our Republicans need to get tough and we need to make sure that we are seeking out this information and documenting it.

For example, putting the people under oath. There were a group of people--policymakers--who made the decision of whether or not to sell that uranium to the Russians. They need to be put under oath and asked whether or not anyone representing the Clintons ever talked to them during that process and encouraged them for this deal of selling the Russians this uranium.

There are all kinds of avenues that we need to follow through on. Instead, Mr. Mueller ends up with some kind of a tax violation by one of the players that happened long before he was even associated with Donald Trump.

Something has gone haywire here. The American people need to see it. Especially when we understand now there is also evidence that during that election, the Clinton campaign paid Russian sources--it went through an intermediary. He was an English intelligence officer--paid millions of dollars to the Russians to get a scurrilous false report and video, or tape, or whatever it was, of President Trump in some type of compromising situation.

But we know now that was false and that Hillary Clinton's campaign and these people talking about collusion with the Russians were paying, essentially, the Russians to give them this information.

Now, I would hope that this comes out and this becomes something that is explained and the American people understand. When they see this attack on our President by people who have a totally different view of how we should be in the world--remember, our last President could not say the words ``radical Islamic terrorist.'' He had a different approach than Hillary, the Secretary of State. We know what happened in Benghazi and elsewhere. We have a totally different approach to these challenges America faces overseas. It is all right.

President Obama was elected. Hillary was not elected. President Trump was elected. These efforts to undermine his authority are the worst kind of repudiation of the American way of life and the American system of government. We Americans must stand firm against radical Islam. We must stand firm and offer an alternative of strength and courage, as compared to the cowardice and nonsense that we have seen in the policies of the last 8 years.

Mr. Speaker, I yield back the balance of my time.

Mr. Speaker, I move that the House do now adjourn.

The motion was agreed to; accordingly (at 8 o'clock and 12 minutes p.m.), the House adjourned until tomorrow, Friday, November 3, 2017, at 9 a.m.

Mr. Speaker, you can say that again.

Mr. Speaker, I am very pleased to be here with Ranking Member Engel and Chairman Royce. I want to congratulate both of them on the great work that they are doing on especially Middle East issues. Over and over again, they have been on top of the situation and making sure that America's position and the moral position of the world is declared by this Congress. Today we have four bills that are in keeping with that tradition and the great job that they have already been doing.

First of all, let us just note that this human shield legislation, whatever way Hezbollah acts, it is worth us saying: Look how horrible it is. Look at the horrible tactics they are using. It is worth us having a resolution to draw people's attention to it, but let's just be fair.

What this is today is we are calling for peace in the Middle East. We are pleading with those people who have degenerated to the point that they are using innocent people as shields, where their bodies will be cut apart by shrapnel or by enemy fire. This is how far down those people who would destroy Israel have gone. So it is just and right for us today.

Yes, they point out the human shields, but this is part of a bigger problem. That is, that you have the leadership in the Islamic world, in that part of the world anyway, in the Middle East. The Islamic leaders in that part of the world refuse to recognize Israel and its right to exist. Whether they are using their people as human shields and innocent people as human shields to accomplish their mission, whether they are allied with the mullah regime who chants ``death to Israel,'' no; when those people--and whether it is Iran or Hezbollah or their allies throughout the Middle East--recognize that Israel has a right to exist, a major step forward would happen.

Instead, they play games about the right of return. So how would Israel ever be able to accept the fact that their country is going to be inundated with other people and taken over the minute they make some kind of an agreement to let them do so?

What we are calling out for today is--yes, we are pointing our fingers at the immorality of Hezbollah and their association with both the mullahs and the tyrannical Assad regime in Syria. We point that out, but what we are really asking for is not just a condemnation. We are asking for peace. We are asking for these people to take a look at moral arguments. America is standing for these moral arguments. Please, we are pleading with you through these condemnations of immoral activity, we are pleading with you to reach a peace agreement with Israel and to reach a peace agreement with the other peoples of that region.

I am very proud to stand with Mr. Royce and Mr. Engel, as all of us are, in the bipartisan effort to make sure America stands for truth, justice, and morality.

Mr. Speaker, let me just note I believe that our President is doing a terrific job. I think that the last Presidents of the United States have left us an incredibly dangerous situation, and this President is trying to deal with it with strength and purpose, and, yes, being a forceful leader.

For example, during the Clinton administration, we provided $4 billion to $5 billion to North Korea, the same way the last administration tried to provide funds for Iran.

What do we have now?

A crisis with possible nuclear weapons and missiles in North Korea. That is called kicking the can down the road. They sure kicked it down to us, and now the people want to kick the can down the road with the Iranians. No, let's not do that again and leave future generations to face the music that we left them.

Our President wants to make sure that Iran does not become a nuclear power as long as it is controlled by radical, fanatic mullahs who don't even represent their own people. In fact, if Iran was more peaceful and actually more democratic, then we wouldn't have to worry about that because they wouldn't want to have a wasteful program of nuclear weapons.

Those are the type of issues we face today. We face a lot of uncertainties at home and abroad, and it behooves us to look for explanations for the shifts in power, the dangers, and the influence that are taking place in the world today.

Europe, along with the United States, for five decades, seemed to be the center of world order and progress. NATO, the European Union, and the common market all seemed to be the epitome of sophisticated and proper governance needed to offset humankind's destructive and combative inclinations. World Wars I and II had undercut, if not destroyed, the expansion of classical liberalism that was in the process of retiring royalist and imperialist domination of the world, which, of course, is where the world was at the turn and the beginning of the 20th century as classical liberalism began to replace imperialism and monarchy.

Yes, the two World Wars that we experienced were traumas that still impact our lives. The Treaty of Versailles that ended World War I was the last gasp of European colonialism.

Maps drawn at that international gathering brought on World War II. Some of those other lines that they drew on that map plague us to this day.

Those national borders mandated by the Versailles Treaty made the world temporarily tranquil. Maybe we just heard about that a few moments ago, how we have got to overcome the tragedy right now, like we did in Korea, by not having confrontations with those people who were engaged in hostile activity.

Yes, the Treaty of Versailles gave the world temporary tranquility, but doomed following generations to instability and conflict. Such future challenges were left to the League of Nations. When that failed, the baton was passed to the United Nations.

Humanity, obviously, hoped that global government, in one form or the other, would solve everything. The EU, the common market, NATO, and other multinational bureaucracies would demonstrate how nation-states can cooperate and achieve a collective peace, freedom, and prosperity.

Well, just as things changed dramatically after the 19th century turned into the 20th century, and it became a different world, so, too, is our world changing. We must make sure that we have turned from the 20th century into the 21st.

The 20th century was dominated by the wars and by the defeat of the Soviet Union. Yet we are plagued with conflicts and upheavals that can be traced back to border and sovereign decisions made long ago by people who are now dead, not only from the 20th century, but, as I said, from the end of World War I.

Many of the confrontations between various nationalities that we face today could be solved and the greatest threats of violence, insurrection, and war itself could be defused if our world would again recognize the right of self-determination.

It seems to have been forgotten that the United States was not only founded on the principles of liberty and independence, but also of the right of people to demand their rights, and, yes, that right of independence. They had a right to declare their independence.

This was the revolutionary idea that people have a right to select their government. This was the revolutionary idea that gave our Founding Fathers and Mothers the moral high ground to free themselves from the British Empire. Without this, they probably would not have won, if it were just a battle between powermongers.

No. This was what the fundamental beliefs were: life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness, but also the right of people to declare themselves free and independent to create a country based on shared beliefs and shared ideals and values.

This is what we hope--those shared values and beliefs in liberty and justice--are the things that unite us today. That is what united had our Founding Fathers and Mothers and that is what made us a nation. After all, we don't have one race or one religion or one ethnic group to identify us as being Americans and create that unity.

But that said, there are many other countries of the world whose nationalism and patriotism are based on the fact that they have an identity with other people that share their cultural and racial identities. This is what unites them as a people. They are ethnically the same, they are culturally the same, and they have the same type of national and racial roots in their past.

Yes, this is what most countries are like. That is what defines a nationality. Recognizing that people of similar values and culture do not want to live in the subjugation of others has been ignored and/or rejected by the powers that be throughout the world.

So we live in a world where this idea of just recognizing that people want to be like people with similar people. For example, you have differences between Catholics and Protestants in many areas of the world.

Yes, they like to have people who maybe speak their same language and have the same culture, enjoy the same music. There is nothing wrong with people identifying others as being part of their national family. We should promote that as a positive, rather than as a negative. We should encourage people to work together.

There are many, for example, Jewish charities, which is wonderful that Jewish people now, because they have gone through a certain amount of oppression throughout the world, take care of each other in Jewish charities. We have that. We have Catholic schools and different things.

Yes, it is meant because people do share certain values that they can work together on. That is a good thing. However, the idea that people like that might want to be in their own country, which is what our Founding Fathers said, because it was only shared values, it wasn't specific that we wanted freedom of religion for all people.

Well, today the world is threatened by people who want to be independent of domination of others who don't share their same values and their nationality. The reason why it is being rejected is basically by the power brokers throughout the world because it threatens those in power with losing authority over people who don't want to live under their domination.

That is what self-determination is all about: letting people decide their own fate. If a majority of people in an area want to be independent of a country, that is what they should be, according to our Declaration of Independence. And this is something that brings a

more peaceful world, rather than trying to have subjugation of one people by another.

There has been a major cause of conflict in the world today when people don't recognize that, yes, there are others who feel that they are being oppressed by being forced under the jurisdiction of a particular government. They would like to have their own independence.

This, of course, has been especially true where people, since the end of the Cold War, have started looking at their own self-identification. When the right of self-determination is recognized, disputes are usually settled peacefully, as happened when, for example, after the fall of communism, the Czechs and the Slovaks, who had one country before, under the Treaty of Versailles, Czechoslovakia became the Czech Republic and the Slovak Republic. Well, that is fine. It is a good thing that they were able to separate. Now they can be friends.

But when they were one country, if the Czechs and Slovaks felt like they were being oppressed, they weren't satisfied. It was a good thing to permit them right off the bat: If you don't want to be part of the country with us, yes, you can be a separate country. Otherwise, there would have been turmoil at one level or another.

We also saw a peaceful solution in countries like Slovenia. Yugoslavia was breaking up, Tito was dead, the Cold War was over, and guess what. Slovenia and a bunch of other republics within Yugoslavia wanted to be independent, and they were able to do it.

Well, perhaps they were able to do it because the Serbs had already launched attacks on the Croatians and the Kosovars and other people in Yugoslavia that now was splitting apart because these people wanted to be independent and free, but the Serbs attacked them.

They didn't attack Slovenia, because I think by that time they realized that they could not succeed going to war with all of these various groups. Had the Kosovars and the Croatians been free to go and separate and become independent countries--as Croatia is today, and as the Kosovars would like to be, and as we are trying to help them to be--that would have been better for Serbia. It would have been better for everybody. There would have probably been by now an agreement for some kind of free trade zone.

Instead, when the Serbs used force to keep those people under its jurisdiction, we had violence throughout the Balkans that has lasted for several decades. That is a tragedy. We should be working today in the Balkans.

Let me just note that the Serbs today are an example of people who are reaching out, for example, to the Kosovars and others to try to find peaceful solutions and trying to come to some agreements that will make peace more likely.

But, again, if you would have had people who were under their thumb, nobody would be talking to them because they would be afraid of them. No. People who treat other people as equals and have rights as people in the world, they are more likely to reach understandings that are of mutual cooperation that will bring peace to the world.

I am not trying to say you have to submit yourself to some other group of people. The former Soviet Union, Ukraine, and other of the so- called Soviet republics were actually permitted at the end of the Cold War to, basically, peacefully establish their own independence. I know it is not as simple as that, but it happened in a peaceful way in which thousands of lives were not lost trying to force groups of people who do not want to be under Moscow's control.

Those people, whether Ukraine or elsewhere in the Baltics or the Balkans, had the right--and also in Central Asia--and people were permitted to have, basically, an independent government free from being only suppressed by Moscow and have to follow its orders.

That happened relatively peacefully. Had that not happened, there probably would be conflict throughout that part of the world today. There certainly would have been, as communism faltered in Russia itself.

So it took a lot of prodding for us to make sure that the Russians in the Soviet Union, in Moscow, understood that they could not keep people under their thumb. It was the Cold War.

Thank God, we ended the Cold War peacefully, because that was the great gift that Ronald Reagan gave to us. I am very proud to have served with Ronald Reagan for 7 years in the White House as a senior speechwriter to the President for 7\1/2\ years, as well as being a Special Assistant to the President and very involved with his efforts to try to move peace in the world. A lot of it was peace by recognizing people's right to independence.

Look back, for example--Ronald Reagan was an Irish American--at the needless violence that the British perpetrated and what happened in Ireland because the British insisted that the Irish be kept under British rule for so long, when it was clear that the Irish people wanted to be independent of Great Britain.

Look at what happened, in contrast, in Singapore and Malaysia, where the British just peacefully permitted those countries that were basically under the domination--they were part of Great Britain and the British Empire--to leave and establish their independence peacefully. Then Malaysia and Singapore separated from Great Britain, and then separated from each other, peacefully.

But in any one of these cases, if somebody demanded that these people stay in this particular status within this particular government, there would have been a lot more violence.

When self-determination is respected, peace is more likely. When a people are subjugated to the orders of a government in a country they don't want to be part of, violence is more likely.

How easy is that?

Special interests and power elites throughout the world are not so inclined to this obvious reason.

Why?

Because it is not in their interest to let people just go when they have them right there under their control.

So let's look at a few examples where self-determination has manifest itself in conflict.

Today, one of the greatest conflict areas of the world is the Middle East. Again, many of the conflicts that we have seen, if not a majority, can be traced right back to the Treaty of Versailles, right back to World War I, and the decisions of colonialists and imperialists and royalists to draw borders in the Middle East, just as they did in Africa and elsewhere, which made no sense.

Yes, we ended up separating whole nations. For example, one nation of people that we are aware of today are the Kurds. The Kurds were separated into various countries in the Treaty of Versailles by these British and French colonialists.

And we are supposed to just abide by their decision of what the borders should be today, 100 years later?

No, I don't think so.

The Kurds, of course, were not living just subjugating themselves to what they had been dictated. No, the Kurds have been our greatest ally in the fight against radical Islamic terrorism, and what they are doing today and what they just voted on recently was they had a vote to determine if their people wanted self-determination and wanted to be an independent country from Iraq.

Yes, that was a good thing, and we should recognize that. They won overwhelmingly, and we should look at the map of--we should say a map of the Middle East needs to be changed so you can have a Kurdistan that flows all the way from Turkey and Iraq and Iran and Syria. There are more, for example, Kurds in Iran than there are in Iraq. In Turkey, there are more Kurds, and, of course, in Syria.

This should be a modern country. Why are we letting this turmoil go on when our greatest allies are looking for their own self- determination and these other countries are becoming or are already our enemies? Yes, it will behoove the United States to support the independence of Kurdistan and all the Kurds. We should support in bringing together these Kurdish people as a nation, because that is what they are. They are a nation without a state. Let them have their country.

There has been so much bloodshed in trying to repress the Kurds from the Iranians, from the mullah regime, but also the Shah before him. The Kurds were oppressed by Saddam Hussein,

and right now, what we have is a repression of people even in Iran where the mullah regime is oppressing not only the rest of its people, not only the other people who make up Iran, but the Kurds, in particular.

Look at what is going on with the Baloch, for example. Now, a small group--there are groups of people. There is an area in Iran where the vast majority of people are of the Baloch extraction. They would like their independence. They deserve their right to self-determination, and they are not suffering from the oppression of Iran.

By the way, if we are going to try to deal with Iran, let's not ratchet up our military and threaten to attack them that way. Let's ratchet up our support for people like the Kurds and the Baloch and the Azaris and other people who live in Iran who don't like the oppression of the mullahs, and we can even be supportive of the Persian people who hate the mullah regime.

These are not our enemies in Iran. It is the mullah regime, the fanatics that would drop a bomb on us and not even think twice because they think they are doing God's work. They are the enemy. So we need to be supporting, for example, the Baloch, when I talk about in Iran. The Baloch are also persecuted, mainly persecuted by the Pakistanis who have them under their thumb, and they murder people constantly. They pick these young people up and they murder them, and then they drop their bodies in little villages just to show people what is going to happen to them if they try to resist Pakistani authority.

This is the history of Pakistan. Right now they are doing it to the Baloch, to the Sindhis, to the Singhs, you name it. You have got just a group of people--except for, of course, the Punjabis and then others, the Pashtuns who control that Government in Pakistan.

Well, remember what happened before. We have seen it before. When the people of Bangladesh wanted to be a little independent of the Pakistani Government, have some way to, you know, control their own lives and control their own government, they were brutally repressed by the Pakistani Government, and that is what led to, basically, the uprising of the people in Bangladesh when they freed themselves.

Remember, that same type of oppression is continuing not only on the Baloch, but, for example, the populations that came over from India, after India and Pakistan split. A lot of them went to Karachi. Those people in Karachi now, there are people who want to have Karachi--it is like a Singapore of that part of the world, an independent. That is what they want to do because they have a right of self-determination.

They don't want to be subjugated by this corrupt, militaristic, proterrorist Government in Pakistan. We should be siding with people like that who want their independence and believe in these same values that we believe in.

Another example of that, of course, is what we see in Spain today. Today, of course, now there are groups of people who live in Catalonia. Catalonia is a province with a long history in Spain. People identify themselves as Catalonians. Yes, Spanish, but also Catalonians. They should have a right to vote on whether or not they want to remain part of Spain, whether or not they give up their sovereignty to a central government in Madrid or do they want to have a government of Catalonia that they can have their own government, and yes, their own sovereignty.

Well, the Spanish overreaction to the efforts of the Catalonians just to have a poll--basically it was a vote on independence, but it was-- you know, basically it had to be recognized for it to have effect. But instead of letting them do this and just saying, ``Well, it has no legal effect,'' instead, the Spanish Government came down with brute force and conducted violence, as you would think violence coming from terrorists would exert on a group of people in Spain. It was their own government that was exercising violence and force and intimidation against the people of Catalonia.

Now, of course, the people of Catalonia are united because they know the brutality and subjugation of what is going on with Madrid.

Now, the British knew how to do it. Unlike Madrid and Spain, the British permitted their people in Scotland to have a vote, and that was a wonderful thing. The Scots had their vote, there was no interference, and if they didn't want to be part of Great Britain, they didn't have to be, and that was a wonderful example to the world of how you should do this.

Now, the Scots decided to stay part of England, part of Great Britain. That is fine, but they had their chance. The people in Spain weren't given that chance. No, instead their government came down and beat them up when they tried to go to the polls. And let's say also, the British seemed also to be demonstrating, they believe, in self- determination.

They are exiting--they are taking the Brexit issue of whether or not you should have Britain as part of the EU and the common market. That vote that they allowed their people to decide, it wasn't decided by an elite. The Brexit vote let all the people of Britain decide whether or not they were going to be basically part of a subjugated people in Europe or whether they were going to be an independent force and a nation, which is their history as a people of Great Britain.

I am proud that they permitted Scotland to vote, and I am also proud that they voted not to subjugate themselves to the EU and to the common market, et cetera.

We need to make sure that we stay true to our principles and have a vision about what this world will be. If you are just looking at things of what we can do every day, Ronald Reagan succeeded because he had a vision of a peaceful world based on those individual rights and those concepts of freedom and democracy that were at the heart of the American experience, but also an America that encompassed people from all over the world.

Reagan had a vision, and it wasn't to get into a war with the Soviet Union and destroy communism. Reagan's vision was let's have--yes, we have to have strength in our military in order to defeat this enemy of Soviet communism, because it was threatening the world peace. It was taking over countries and overthrowing governments and replacing them with atheist dictatorships. Reagan knew we had to stop that.

Just like today, our primary enemy today is no longer the Soviet Union because Reagan helped eliminate the Soviet Union, the communist threat. The threat today is radical Islamic terrorists who will murder our people and are murdering people all over the world and murdering people in their own countries in order to terrorize them into submission.

Well, the bottom line is, Ronald Reagan's vision succeeded with Russia because, at that time, it was the Soviet Union, and now we have a Russia that we have so much more potential.

Now, there are a lot of flaws. There are a lot of flaws in the Russian Government, and there are things that we have to make sure that we are taking care of and standing firm on, but, by and large, we have to understand that they, today, are being attacked and murdered by radical Islamic terrorists as well. They know that, and they know the dangers that we face because they face a common danger.

We need to work to build a new alliance because what is happening is, Islam is making such inroads into the stupidity of our western European allies that the western Europe that we know--here again, time is going on, 19th century into the 20th century. Now we are in the 21st century. The 21st century will see that Europe becomes a whole different place than what it has been for the last 150 or 200 years.

There will be Islamic countries in Europe, and they will be, then, either part of or they will not fight against a radical Islamic terrorist threat that today threatens the peace of the world just as the Soviet Union did that 10 years, or I should say, 10 decades ago.

So with that, we need a vision, and one vision that we should have is, number one, a vision of self-determination that we all agree on.

Number two, let's make sure that we ally ourselves in a positive way with people who are not going to be weakened by the onslaught of Islam. I would suggest that America will be a more peaceful place and our country will be more secure and the world will be more peaceful and secure if we establish a new relationship in which we are

watching out for each other with four countries. The United States, of course; the other one is India, and I will soon be going to India. In fact, I will be going to India tomorrow. And number three, Japan; and number four, Russia.

Now, there is some work that needs to be done to make a coalition like that real, but a coalition of those countries working together, not mandated that we have to do this and we have to subjugate ourselves to decisions of what the four say, but, instead, seeking out cooperation with those countries where there is mutual benefit to do, we can make this a better world. We can secure our prosperity and secure the peace of our own country and the security of our own country.

So with a vision and with a recognition of fundamental things like the right of self-determination and the right of life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness that our Founding Fathers talked about, and limited government where they said government only derives its just powers from the consent of the governed, let us champion these values and these ideals.

Let us have a vision for the future, as Ronald Reagan did, and we can make this a more peaceful world as we side with people all over the world who want to control their own destiny by having their own nation rather than being subjected to someone else.

Mr. Speaker, with that, I yield back the balance of my time.

Mr. Speaker, I move that the House do now adjourn.

The motion was agreed to; accordingly (at 6 o'clock and 27 minutes p.m.), under its previous order, the House adjourned until Monday, October 16, 2017, at 10 a.m.

Mr. Chairman, I rise in support of this amendment.

Asset forfeiture is a crime against the American people, committed by their own government. This is absolutely opposite of what our people who wrote the Constitution of the United States had in mind.

For the government to take away someone's property and then say, ``You have to prove you are innocent to get it back,'' that is totally in contrast to the limited government, individual responsibility, individual freedom, and property rights concepts that our Founding Fathers had in mind.

If we believe in freedom and if we believe in liberty, let's not open up the government to be able to steal our property and then we have to go to court. We have lost all of our due process. It is now our obligation to prove that we are innocent until proven guilty. That is ridiculous. Vote for this amendment and protect the freedom of our people.

Mr. Chair, I rise as a proud co-sponsor in strong support of the Amash-Sanford-Labrador-Rohrabacher Amendment.

Civil asset forfeiture is a widely abused law enforcement tactic in which federal, state and local law enforcement agencies seize property, often with little or no evidence that a crime has been committed. The person whose property has been seized then has to hire an attorney and prove their innocence in order to try to get their property back.

Police departments have a strong incentive to abuse civil asset forfeiture because they get to keep these ill-gotten gains for their own use. Even when state legislatures have enacted important safeguards against abuse, the Justice Department has helped local police departments to circumvent such restrictions by ``adopting'' seizures that would be illegal under state law, and then sharing the proceeds with local law enforcement.

In January 2015, under the Obama Administration, the Justice Department issued two crucial orders to stop this circumvention of state, raw. Unfortunately, the current Justice Department has reversed those orders, and Congress must now take action.

This amendment will prohibit the Justice Department from using any money in this bill to engage in activities not allowed by the 2015 orders. I ask my colleagues to stop the assaults against law-abiding citizens by the people who are supposed to protect them. Vote for the Amash-Sanford-Labrador-Rohrabacher Amendment.

Mr. Speaker, we have heard a lot about DREAMers today, and we will continue to hear that.

Let us note that we are talking about inviting millions of people to send their children to the United States, millions from around this hemisphere who live in poverty and oppression, and we are saying: If you can get your kids to the United States, they are going to be taken care of.

We have limited resources here, limited in the Federal Government. Our people of every race and every religion and every ethnic group that make up the American family deserve to know that we are caring about them--I am sorry--rather than the children in other countries that come here illegally.

We can expect a flood of new young people if we legalize this, and they will be consuming the healthcare dollars. They will be consuming the education dollars that should go to American children.

This is not being selfish by saying take care of your family first. The American family deserves our attention and our support. We should not be extracting resources, bidding down their wages, extracting the resources of education and healthcare for people who have come here illegally and invite more people to flood into our country.

No, the DREAMers concept is a nightmare for American young people.

Mr. Speaker, I thank you very much for providing me this time. I rise in opposition to this rule, which prohibits a vote of the House of Representatives on an amendment that would prevent the Department of Justice from using its power and resources to supersede all State laws that have legalized the medical use of cannabis.

For 3 years, States have been shielded from having the will of their voters and their people by a prohibition on the Department of Justice that would prevent the Department of Justice from thwarting the will of the people of the States by superceding those State laws when they have determined in the States that the medical use of marijuana should be permitted with their citizens.

The Rules Committee has, thus, been basically--it will be changing the law of the land for 3 years where the 50 States have been permitted, if they so chose, to have the medical use of marijuana.

After this vote, because of this rule, we have been prevented from again providing that prohibition that passed this House on a number of occasions that would prohibit the Department of Justice from superceding State law. In short, a vote for this rule is anti-States' rights. A vote for this rule is against permitting the people of your State to legalize the medical use of marijuana if the Federal Government, if the DOJ, decides.

A vote for this rule will, thus, prevent medical use of cannabis by our doctors in States that would like to permit their people to benefit from illegal use of medical marijuana. Instead, those doctors now will, as they have been, prescribing opiates. That is right, opiates. Our people have ended up being prescribed opiates because marijuana has not been an option.

It is a vote to cut off our veterans, and our seniors with arthritis, those people who have children who are plagued with seizures, all of these things now are permitted in the States where they have legalized the medical use of marijuana. These people are provided an avenue to at least try this as a method of dealing with these horrible maladies that they have to deal with in their lives, whether they are seizures, or whether they are people who have arthritis, or whether they are our veterans who are coming back.

We need to make sure that the billions of dollars that right now are being invested in medical marijuana businesses and clinics throughout our country, those billions of dollars will go to the benefit of our people. Instead, this rule prevents us from standing in the way of the Justice Department from obliterating those rights in the States.

Mr. Speaker, so a vote against this rule is a vote to permit those States to make that decision. The rule, as it is now, prevents us from getting in the way of the Justice Department's obliteration of these rights.

But one of the most important things, whether it is States' rights, or whether it is trying to listen to the seniors who are begging for us to give them some relief from some of their suffering and let them at least try this if the doctors so prescribe, but let us just remember this: that billions of dollars, $3 billion or $4 billion have been invested in this industry to provide honest businessmen and doctors the right to try medical marijuana on some of these maladies.

Those $3 billion will immediately be transferred to the drug cartels in Mexico if this rule goes through. That is what it means. Now, I would suggest that whether it is opiates, or the drug lords down in Mexico, we need to side with the States' rights to make this determination and decide--and to make our determination to let the people decide in those States and let them have the choice there.

Mr. Speaker, I oppose this rule for those reasons.

Mr. Speaker, before I get into a rather elongated discussion about one fundamental issue that we are having to decide in the next few days, I would like to just mention that we have just heard severe criticism of our President.

Let me just note about President Trump and his rhetoric supposedly making things worse in Korea. The rhetoric of our President has not made the situation worse in Korea.

What made the situation in Korea a major threat to our country and to our people and to the world was that, during the Clinton administration, President Clinton pushed through this Congress a package of aid for North Korea. Yes, we gave billions of dollars of aid in the form of energy and other types of issues and things that they needed. We gave them billions of dollars of aid under the agreement that North Korea would not be developing their nuclear weapons.

At that time, Chris Cox, a Member of the House of Representatives at the time, and myself fought aggressively against that deal. The North Koreans ended up being the recipient of billions of dollars of aid, even though they were the most antidemocratic institution, the greatest threat, and the greatest tyrants in that part of the world.

Yes, they knew that they didn't have to worry about the United States of America. That is when they, again, slowly but surely, after receiving billions of dollars from us, pushed through by President Clinton, that is how they have gotten to this point now where they are exploding weapons and launching rockets.

They are blaming that on our President, who just recently became President, and they are blaming it on his rhetoric rather than his policy? It is ridiculous.

The other thing we have heard about our President again is how heartless he is because he is not permitting young people who have been designated as DREAMers to stay here in the United States, even though they are in this country illegally, and they were brought here illegally.

Now, what is the impact? What will be the impact to those young people, who are probably wonderful young people? Most of them, I am sure, are wonderful young people. But the bottom line is, our interests and our moral obligation must be to the well-being of American young people. That includes American young people who are of every race and every religion and every ethnic group.

Approving the people who have come here illegally will hurt American young people, especially American-Hispanic young people. The DREAMers will be competing with their jobs and, yes, bidding down the wages of our own young people and our other people who are trying to struggle right now to get by. No, what the President has done is watch out for the right young people: Americans.

Yes, we have had millions of people--in fact, for the last few years, over a million people--legally immigrate into our country. We have nothing to be ashamed of, nothing to apologize for. We are the most generous when it comes to legal immigration into our society of any country in the world. In fact, at times recently, the amount of legal immigration we have been allowing into our country represents more than all the other countries of the world in what they have permitted to legally immigrate into their society.

We all feel for young people throughout the world who deserve a better life. But if we permit people to come here as young people illegally, and then legalize their status, every parent in the world will see that decision. Every parent in the world will say: Oh, my gosh, that young person who comes from Guatemala, or wherever it is, made it to America. He went in illegally, and now he is going to a junior college. He has had some health problems. The American taxpayers have paid for it. Why can't I bring my children there?

Well, it will dawn on them that millions of people--hundreds of millions, perhaps--that if they are going to come to the United States illegally, you better bring the kids, because Americans think more of those kids than they do their own kids.

I applaud the President for what he has done to slow down this betrayal of American young people by allowing young people to come in here illegally and thus expect that they are going to get legal status by wearing us down and appealing to our emotions.

One thing we have to note, in closing on this issue, those young people, if they are legalized, that is not the end of the game. At that point, when they are legalized, they have a right to make applications so that their parents can have their status legalized. They can bring in family that they left back in their home countries. Now they can apply to have them come in under family reunification.

This isn't just about a group of young people who came in. Even to legalize their status would be wrong. Otherwise, millions of other people will come here. Remember the trainloads of young people who were put on trains headed to the United States? Yes, we can expect more of that. Why not? If you love your children and you live anywhere else than the United States and you are living a poor life, of course you want to bring your kids here.

We should not be encouraging that, and we should not be attacking the President of the United States for standing up for our own young people, rather than trying to bring a massive flood of illegal immigrant children into our society and pay for their education and their healthcare, et cetera.

With that said, the issue that I am hoping to discuss in detail tonight is something on a totally different level, in terms of issue. This is an issue, whether you are Republican or Democrat, you go across the board; whether

liberal or conservative, there should be a close look at what is happening right now in the House of Representatives.

A decision will soon be made by the House Rules Committee--they are meeting tonight and tomorrow--that will have a dramatic and direct impact on the lives of millions of Americans. Although the issue will have such severe consequences on so many people, Members of Congress may or may not have had the opportunity and may not have the opportunity in the future to vote on the provision that is being discussed tonight.

What I am talking about at issue is an amendment submitted to the Rules Committee. For those who don't know, the Rules Committee is a committee here in Congress that decides what will come to the floor for a vote--what bills--and what will be included; what amendments will be permitted, what amendments won't, and if there will be any.

That is their job. They do a good job of it, but it is important that they do a job that reflects the American people and the interests of the American people.

So what we have is an amendment that has been submitted to the Rules Committee for consideration with this week's appropriations bill. What I am talking about is an amendment which prohibits any of the money or resources in the appropriations bill for the Department of Justice; it prevents that money or the resources that come from the Department of Justice, purchased by that revenue; it says that the Department of Justice can't use that money that is being given to them in the appropriations bill to supersede a State law when that State has legalized the medical use of marijuana.

Now, that is my amendment. That amendment has been around. As many of my colleagues know, this amendment has a long history. The House has considered this issue numerous times since former Representative Maurice Hinchey of New York introduced the first amendment of this nature in 2001. I joined him and supported that provision.

Eventually, I became the lead sponsor of the amendment when Mr. Hinchey left. That year, in 2012, my amendment failed in the House by a vote of 162-262.

So, in 2012, my amendment, which would have legalized medical marijuana--basically, saying that you can't have the Federal Government supersede States when they have legalized medical marijuana--lost by 162-262.

Two years later, I teamed up with Representative Sam Farr, who is also now retired, and saw the amendment pass--the very same amendment we were able to reach out to our colleagues and say that we do not want any of the money that is being allocated for the Department of Justice to be used to supercede States' rights. That cannot supersede a State that has legalized the medical use of marijuana.

The passage of the amendment in 2004 led to the inclusion of this provision in last year's omnibus appropriations bill, which was signed into law December 2014. The following year, the amendment passed by an even larger margin. Let me note that the last time it came here for a vote on the floor, it passed by 242-186.

What we are talking about is that the people of the United States, over these years, over and over again, have expressed themselves to the Federal Government by passing laws in their own States to legalize the medical use of marijuana.

And now we have a move to try to prevent those reforms that we put into place for the last 6 years that insisted that the Federal Government respect the State laws that have been changed so that the State laws that have given their own people permission to use medical marijuana for medical purposes, now what we see is an effort to try to prevent that from happening.

In other words, the status quo for 4 years has been the Federal Government will not interfere because the Department of Justice is not permitted to use its resources to supersede a State that has legalized the medical use of marijuana. And the States, in these 4 years, over and over and over again, have reaffirmed and have sometimes put in place brand-new law that permits their people to use medical marijuana.

Changing the status quo here by not adding that amendment that has been in the bill for the last 4 years, we are changing the status quo in a way that undermines the rights of the States and the people therein to make their policy, a right that we had acknowledged for the last 4 years.

Since it was first enacted into law, the provision has been updated and extended through a series of continuing resolutions. That is the bill that says we will respect State marijuana laws and omnibus appropriations bills, the last of which was signed into law by President Trump on April 5.

So, on April 5, we signed the omnibus bill. In that bill was the amendment that said the Justice Department will not use its resources to supersede State law. And since the first vote in 2014, the Senate Appropriations Committee has taken up the issue and has adopted this amendment on a bipartisan basis every year for the last few years.

As a result of this provision, the Federal Government has been prohibited from arresting or attacking those providing cannabis for medical purposes in the States that have passed such laws through their State legislature or through a direct vote of their own people.

So, to date, what are we talking about? We are talking about 46 States that have legalized some form of cannabis for medical purposes.

Yet we see, today, this Republican Congress is seriously considering what? Superseding those States, 46 States that have actually said: We will determine what is good for our people, and our people have voted overwhelmingly to permit medical marijuana to be used by the people of this State.

We are considering changing the status quo tonight by not permitting the amendment that always gave the rights to the States to make that decision.

With this movement by the States, we have witnessed the emergence of a new and a major industry in America. Billions of dollars now are being invested in the exploding cannabis industry, an industry where now marijuana is being grown to provide clinics, which then they work on the cannabis itself. They put it into and they catalog it in terms of strength and in terms of dosage, and they work with doctors to make sure that this can be used for helping people with their maladies.

Those involved, all who are doing this, the ones who are providing the cannabis, the guys who are processing it, the people who are selling it, the people who want to make sure that everything is designated right, the strength and the character of what is being sold, and, of course, a bookkeeping system that makes sure everybody knows, total, who is doing what, all those involved in this new industry, billions of dollars' worth of industry, are respectable businessmen and -women.

Yes, they are seeking profit, but these are men and women who are eager to be, yes, seeking profit and to be responsible and transparent; and just like any other member of the business community, they want to do a business efficiently, and they want to be held accountable for what they are doing.

Money should be accounted for, yes. Ingredients of products must be verified and labeled. Standard business practices ought to be applied, and, of course, taxes and regulations are part of that equation.

Well, throughout the country, this industry is taking the public away from gangsters, away from criminal drug dealers. Now, who is being helped? But first let me note on that.

If we eliminate this right of the States to basically legalize the medical use of marijuana and put it in the hands of those people whom I have just described, honest businessmen who are going to be held accountable and held with transparent types of operations, no, they will be replaced by whom? They will be replaced by drug dealers. They will be replaced by the Mexican drug cartel. That is who is being helped if we eliminate this provision that has been part of the appropriations bill for the Department of Justice for the last 3 years.

So why are we thinking about helping, not only just superseding what the people locally have voted for--why aren't we thinking about that?-- but worse than that, why are we thinking

about transferring those billions of dollars now in this industry directly into the pockets of the drug cartels? That is what the vote is.

The vote is not, oh, we are going to stop anybody from using marijuana because marijuana is bad. That is not the vote. That is not the result of the vote. The result of the vote will be billions of dollars immediately transferred into the pockets of the drug cartel. That is what will happen.

So I implore my colleagues to look closely with this vote. I hope that the Rules Committee will see the error of its ways and permit a vote on the floor on this issue. If not, I will be calling on my colleagues to join me in opposing the rule that is coming to the floor that prohibits us from voting on this issue.

If we vote on the issue, let's all vote on the issue and let the voters hold us accountable for our vote, but don't just let nobody have a vote on it and hide behind anonymity. No, let's let the people know what side we are on.

Do we want to have drug cartels being handed billions of dollars? That is what this is about.

Oh, yes, we are going to say, well, fewer people will use marijuana. No, I do not believe that for an instant. And especially people who are using it for medical purposes, there won't be fewer of them. Those people still need medical marijuana, and they have arthritis and all kinds--the Vietnam--actually, not Vietnam vets, but the vets coming back from the Gulf. The veterans are coming back, and they know that this can help them.

We are now turning off the supply of medical marijuana to people who can be helped, and then what are we doing? We are giving the money that is being made by honest businessmen now in a transparent way, trying to run something where taxes are paid and everybody is held accountable, anything they sell is labeled--no, no. All of that is out the window because someone thinks marijuana, itself, is evil.

Children, especially those who are afflicted by seizures, have been treated through the use of CBD oils. That is a derivative of cannabis, and it appears to be effective.

Senior citizens are both physically and psychologically assisted in dealing with some of the challenges that often come with old age. Alzheimer's, arthritis, chronic pain, these are things that our seniors, when they are sitting in old folks homes or wherever, they suffer, and we say: No, you can't try marijuana; no, we are not going to let you legally be able to obtain that as something that might help you with your suffering. How ridiculous is that?

All Americans who suffer from diseases ranging from Crohn's disease to cancer, the potential to receive medical benefit from cannabis is clear.

And the wounded American soldiers coming home from the Middle East, they have come to our offices. They have been in my office, and I am sure they have been in other people's offices to explain the positive effects of cannabis in dealing with PTSD.

In fact, the American Legion, an organization chartered in the aftermath of World War I to represent veterans, adopted a resolution last month urging the Federal Government to allow VA physicians to discuss and to recommend the use of medical marijuana in accordance with State laws.

My goodness, I will just have to say that for us to turn our back on these seniors, to say that these people who have young children who had seizures and they couldn't stop them and to turn our back on those people, to turn our back on our veterans, that is what this vote is all about.

This isn't about, oh, well, somebody can just go smoke marijuana.

And, by the way, if an adult is smoking marijuana in their backyard, yes, I don't think that we should waste police resources and billions of dollars of law enforcement money to try to stop an adult from using marijuana in his backyard.

But that is not the issue. The issue is whether States that have legalized the medical use of it should be superseded by us here, by the vote that we are going to have here in the next few days.

Let me tell you something about how I didn't know how the public would respond to the fact that I am one of the leaders in this whole effort to legalize the medical use of cannabis.

You know, I was Ronald Reagan's speechwriter, and I have been a Republican all my life. I get the top score on conservative groups that, you know, are giving you a score of how you voted and everything. I have received very high marks in all of those groups, and I have been a conservative voter. I have a conservative, libertarian background. I was Ronald Reagan's speechwriter for 7\1/2\ years in the White House.

I got elected in 1988, the last year of Reagan's term in the White House, and I sort of slipped into this issue because it is a principled issue to me. The principle is freedom, liberty, justice, and if you are not hurting somebody else; but especially we should let people who are suffering, at the very least give them some leeway when it comes to medical uses.

Well, I knew that I was getting a lot of publicity on this, and a fellow came into my office to talk to me about a totally different issue, about an aerospace issue. I am one of the senior members of the Science Committee, and I said--now, this guy represents, to me, my typical voter, my conservative voter in Canton, California.

The conservative voter was a guy who has been a commander or a captain in the U.S. Navy, a pilot. He was now in aerospace, and I am sure he always voted Republican. And so I asked him, I said: Look, what do you think about the fact that the guy you have been voting for all this time is now the leader in the fight to legalize medical marijuana for the people of this State and this country?

He looked at me, and he said: Dana, you really don't know me very well.

I said: Well, I know you are a former pilot in the Navy and you are now in aerospace and you are a conservative vote.

And he says: Yeah, but you don't know that I have three sons--three sons--and the day after 9/11, they all marched off and joined the military. And then what you don't know also is, a few years later, two of them came back, but the third one who came back wasn't my son anymore. The third one that came back was on the floor in seizures because he had been in some kind of an explosion that had rattled his brain, and he was on the floor over these seizures and they wouldn't stop. How would you feel about your child on the floor having seizures that you cannot stop?

And now when I tell these people: We don't care about that; you are not going to get to try medical marijuana--well, this guy said he tried everything. He took him to the VA, and it didn't help. After about a year, this guy said one of the guys at the VA hospital pulled him aside and said: Hey, you want to help your son? See me off campus.

They saw him in his office off the VA hospital, and the guy said: Look, your son needs marijuana. Here is the prescription. Here is how to use it. Go do it.

And do you know what the guy said to me there in my office? He said: My son hasn't had a seizure since that day. You wonder what I want to do about you being the point man on legalizing medical marijuana? I want to go over and give you a big hug.

That is what he said.

Now, I hope that my colleagues take this seriously because there are children on the floor having these seizures. There are veterans waiting there in seizures. There are old folks who are having arthritis and they can't move their hands, or they have lost their appetites in these senior citizen homes.

There is nothing wrong with us using cannabis to help alleviate their pain. We have been doing that for 3 years, and now the Rules Committee may not even permit us to have a vote on it, and they will take it out of this bill. We will be taking this away, without even having our people have to vote on it or not.

Well, I say if you disagree with me, that is fine. If you don't think the drug cartels will be enriched, fine. Come up and make your arguments.

When I lost this vote on a number of occasions, before we won 3 or 4 years ago, I lived with it. I said: Fine; I lost the vote. I respect those people's opinion, and they beat me.

Well, I expect that is what a democracy is supposed to be all about. That is what it is supposed to be all about.

Let people be held accountable for this. Don't take it out of the bill. If they take it out of the judiciary appropriations bill, I am asking my colleagues to stand up and vote against a rule that is shielding us from accountability, shielding us from having to have, basically, responsibility for handing billions of dollars over to the drug cartels.

Now the argument, of course, is: Oh, there is an opiate--you know, some kind of, what do they call it, an epidemic. An epidemic that is crossing America is opiates. Well, yes, there is.

When young people, or old people, are given opiates by their doctors, that is what happens: they get addicted to the opiates. If their doctors have no alternative, like cannabis, to provide their patients with something that might help them with their challenge, well, then you are going to get opiates, and that is what has happened. Our doctors have been passing out opiates as if they are candy.

It is the legalization of medical marijuana that makes it more likely that we will defeat the opiate epidemic and get our people back to a point where they can actually control their own lives. No one has ever died from an overdose of marijuana.

Now, I can tell you this. I understand that people really want to help young people, and others, not to get addicted to drugs. And I will say, no one has ever overdosed on cannabis. Yes, there are some serious concerns of why you don't want young people, in particular, using cannabis.

But to make it illegal, to put people in jail for using this, for basically leaving the distribution of marijuana in the hands of criminals, is far worse in what happens than any of the things that happen if young people--or, well, if anybody--start smoking a joint.

And let me just say, I think young people, we need to talk to them seriously. When we tell them we don't even think marijuana should be used for medical purposes, they tune out. But if we say, we know there are some legitimate uses for this, but when you are 20 years old, it is going to hurt your mind development, do not use marijuana until at least you are over 20 years old, and we are only making it legal now in this bill, or if you have some medical problems.

Well, the fact is that young people can understand that. That is one of the reasons why we have got to have research into cannabis, other than just leaving these opiates as the easy answer for doctors. In fact, one of the greatest sins, I believe, committed against the American people in the last 100 years has been really a lack of research into cannabis as a potential healthcare device or, shall I say, entity so that, instead of doing research into cannabis for the last 100 years, research has been suppressed.

There could be some really wonderful things, and we are learning about them now. A few years ago, for example, Israel had to lead the way on this and introduce a major research effort into cannabis, and their results have been spectacular.

Why does that happen in Israel and not here? Don't we care about whether those things that they discovered there that affects their people will help our people as well? No, no. We couldn't do that because we have people who are still living in the 1960s when to them cannabis--marijuana--means everybody growing their hair long, smoking dope in the park, and fornicating in the park, and failing in life, becoming hippies, and all of that.

The bottom line is that image is destroying the well-being of millions of Americans today. We have got to get over that image because that is not what medical cannabis is all about.

And as I say, young people under 20 years of age, I have no problem outlawing it for them and having some kind of severe penalty for people selling that to them. We need to protect them because it does impact negatively on kids who are under 20 years of age, or in that age group.

But let me also note: those kids shouldn't be drinking as well. The same studies that show that marijuana will really hurt the development of their brains and affect their electrical system also says that when they overdrink at an early age it has that same type of impact.

So those trying to protect us Americans from ourselves are well- intentioned. They certainly understand these negative impacts, and there are negative impacts of everything. There are negative impacts of too much sugar; there are negative impacts of eating the wrong things, or not getting any exercise, or sitting down in front of your computer, or only sitting and watching TV.

But if we go down the road and we let the government just protect us from ourselves, and that we are saying the government needs to just control our lives for us, no, that is not going to happen. That is not what our Founding Fathers were all about, and that is not what this country is all about.

Yes, there are things that we don't want young people to be involved with when it comes to cannabis. It is true with so many other things. And, also, we can't control that if we leave the drug cartels as the major player.

Perhaps the most serious downside of using cannabis over the last 50 years has been the financing of these drug cartels in Mexico and developing countries. But now, with the continued enactment of Rohrabacher-Farr, the vast majority of States have charted another course, rather than what we have had before, before our things passed. Well, the billions of dollars, this multibillion-dollar industry has been taking shape, and it is taking a huge market share away from the cartels and the gangs.

Number one, it is important that we make sure young people, veterans, older people, people who need this, people who are infirmed and need this help with cannabis and it can help them, first and foremost, let's let the States decide whether or not that is going to be a right for people to try to treat themselves with cannabis in those States. Okay, that is number one.

But, number two, let's make sure that the money that is now being spent and organized to try to provide those people with their supply, and doing it in a very professional way with how much and what strength they are getting, et cetera, and people held accountable, let's not turn that off and eliminate that and just send these people to the drug cartels. It is ridiculous.

And, finally, for me and many of my conservative colleagues, this has always been an issue of federalism and freedom. This has always been an issue that goes right back to the fundamentals.

Our Founding Fathers did not expect that the Federal Government would assume such a prominent role when it comes to policing our lives. Rather, they intended the States to take the lead when exercising police powers.

The 46 States have, thus far, sought a different course when it comes to medical cannabis. These States should not be stymied by an all- powerful Federal Government dictating what we, and the citizens of this country, shall do in our private lives. The States, and the people therein, should be left to make these decisions and to regulate these activities, or not regulate them, as they see fit.

What has happened now, because we have gotten away from this idea that Federalism will decide, the issue of Federalism, the 10th Amendment, what we have now are situations where we have different armies, like the DEA and others, who have had raids taking place throughout our country. This was not what our Founding Fathers had in mind.

This effort to try to put in jail anybody who is even using marijuana for anything, what we have done is in the Black and Chicano communities, in particular, minority communities who have less money, they have suffered the most because if their children--let's say a 20- year-old young man gets arrested in the ghetto, well, he is not going to have a lawyer like that, like people who live in more affluent areas. So that record will stick with him for the rest of his life.

We have wasted billions of dollars of their lives that they could be having better jobs 10 years down the road by hanging this on their back. We wonder why people can't get jobs. Well, somebody from a more affluent home, there is a lawyer waiting for them at the police station if he is ever caught with a baggy of marijuana.

Well, that is not good to have that young man in the ghetto, or anywhere else, or even in the affluent communities, to have to have a criminal record for something that, yes, might

have a negative impact on him. We should instead--let me just offer this as a solution. Let's go forward with some positive programs, rather than superseding State law with a heavy-handed, iron-fisted enforcement of laws controlling people's private behavior and their private consumption of what they want to consume. Let's put our effort into offering a positive alternative.

For example, in high schools and colleges, and even in grade schools, we can have drug testing. In our military, we can have drug testing. But it is not drug testing to put someone in jail. If you do it that way, you can't do that legally. You can't force someone to testify against themselves. But if you say: We want to see if you have a problem, and you are not going to get a driver's license if you don't pass drug free; and you can be given a drug test in high school at any time, and if your test comes back negative, you talk to the family of a young person who has been tested and has been using some kind of drug.

We can do those types of things. We can do those things that aren't aimed at obliterating someone's future by giving them a felony conviction for having a little bit of marijuana on them. That is ridiculous.

And we don't need to give the drug cartels all the money in making sure that people in the old folks' home down the street don't get to smoke marijuana to take care of their arthritis. That is all ridiculous.

Now we are facing this challenge here. This will be a vote this week. I would ask my colleagues: Please, let us have the amendment that we have had for 3 years, keep the status quo of letting the States handle this issue, let the States do that. This is a States' rights issue. Thomas Jefferson would be for us.

At the same time, if we do not get a vote on this and they try to hide behind it--we are not even going to get a chance to vote on it, thus we are not going to be held accountable for eliminating this freedom that we have and this federalism that we have--if we don't get that vote, I am asking my colleagues, especially my Republican colleagues--and I ask the public to pay attention to how people vote--a vote for the rule if this amendment, if the Rohrabacher-Blumenauer amendment is not permitted, then a vote for the rule is a vote for giving money to the drug cartels, it is a vote for eliminating the law as it is today, which is leaving it up to the States and bringing the Federal Government back to our local and State areas in an enforcement mode. We don't need that.

If we don't get this, if my amendment, the Rohrabacher amendment, is not permitted, I would hope that my colleagues would join me in voting against the rule, which sends that bill back to the committee, to the Rules Committee, where they will then either add it or not, but at least gives us a chance to have a direct vote on it again if we defeat it the first time.

So I say strike a blow for freedom, make sure we have reaffirmed the idea of federalism, personal responsibility, not government controls over our lives, let's do what our Founding Fathers did, let's strike a blow for liberty.

That is what this is about: liberty. And it is not about having power in the hands of the Federal Government to come down and tell us how to run our lives and centralizing power in Washington, D.C.

So I ask my colleagues to join me in voting for my amendment if it is permitted on the floor and, if it is not, to vote against the rule on the appropriations bill for the Justice Department.

Mr. Speaker, I yield back the balance of my time.