Floor Statements

Mr. Chair, I rise in support of this en bloc package. I especially want to thank the chairman for including my amendment as part of the other very positive amendments that he has included in this en bloc package.

My amendment would condition the allocation of certain funds to Pakistan upon a certification from the Secretary of Defense that Pakistan is not using its military or its funds or equipment provided by the United States to repress minority groups, and to make sure that they do not repress these minority groups who are seeking their own political or religious freedom.

At a time of high budgets, we should reserve our aid for friends and allies, and end assistance to Pakistan in particular, which does not meet the standards of decency and freedom that the American people believe have to be part of any decision that we make here.

Pakistan has acted as an adversary not only to the United States, but has been aiding our enemies and repressing its own people. Let us not forget that Pakistan harbored Osama bin Laden. This is the prime mover, the man who organized the slaughter of 3,000 Americans.

We are fools if we continue to support a regime like that in Pakistan today that represses its own people and is using what we give them to actually do things that make us less safe as a people and put us in jeopardy with the terrorists around the world.

Mr. Chair, I thank the chairman for including my amendment to the en bloc package.

Would the gentleman yield for a question?

Would the other gentleman yield for a question?

Mr. Speaker, I am sorry that my two colleagues refused to yield any time when they are talking, especially when they are using phrases like naked partisanship. That is very interesting, isn't it? We could have had a nice dialog here. I was asking for a chance to go into a dialogue so the American people could understand what was being said rather than this incredible naked partisanship of people who disagree, but I won't yield my time to have a dialogue about it.

I am afraid that doesn't cut it. This is yet another example of what we have seen of people using sinister-sounding descriptions in order to basically distract us from some of the corruption and, I might add, questionable activities of their own Presidential candidate in the last election who was defeated because the American people did not trust that candidate.

By the way, I would like to have asked--I am sorry that my friends have left and wouldn't yield any time for a question--whether or not they believe that Hillary Clinton's activities in Russia while she was a government official, was she involved in money raising from Russian oligarchs to the tune of millions--tens of millions--of dollars?

Was her husband involved in raising this money while she was Secretary of State or while she was a candidate for President of the United States over in Russia, millions of dollars to the Clinton Foundation? I understand even hundreds of thousands of dollars were put in her husband's pocket for a speech that he gave in Russia.

These things need to be looked at. Instead, what we are hearing about is sinister-sounding words about a meeting where someone said they had some information that would help, yes, the campaign, but the reason it would help the campaign is there was supposedly information that showed that Hillary Clinton was involved in some activity that was contrary to the interests of the United States or contrary to the law.

Yes, if someone says to you that they want to give you information, there is nothing wrong with that. In fact, I would hope that my colleagues who just said what is happening on our side of the aisle is naked partisanship, I wonder if the Democratic Party and my other colleagues in this body are calling for Hillary to release all of her emails and to make sure that we have under oath an explanation of these transactions to the Clinton Foundation. Instead, we are hearing all sorts of sinister descriptions of a meeting that was going to give information.

I will tell you right now, everybody in this body, if they think that there could be information that is important for our country to know from any foreigner, we should talk to them and find out what it is. It is not illegal to receive information from someone, especially if you are engaged in an activity that is aimed at trying to secure understanding for policies that you plan to implement as a leader in the United States as an elected leader. There absolutely is nothing wrong.

By the way, I am the chairman of the Europe, Eurasia and Emerging Threats Subcommittee. Russia is in my jurisdiction. Should I ever turn down a chance to talk to somebody who has information for me, negative or positive, about Russia?

No, I shouldn't. And neither should the Trump campaign have ignored any community to receive more information about what was being done by Hillary, perhaps, and the raising of the millions of dollars for the foundation.

So that was a legitimate thing to ask. Then you determine: Is the information accurate or is it not accurate? If it is not accurate, you don't want to touch it.

But many people were disturbed that there had been a release of emails during the campaign, and a lot of the questions about this whole Russia issue is whether Russia or somebody else actually hacked into the system and released those emails.

I think what is important is only whether truth was revealed. If someone was talking about releasing negative and false information, the public should be upset about that. But they should not be upset if they are being given a chance to see more information that is accurate information on this issue.

I would hope and trust that the American people are smart enough to see a diversionary tactic using sinister words over and over again to describe something that is perfectly legal. In some cases, as I say, talking to anybody to get more information to help you make your decisions is a good thing and not a bad thing.

Mr. Speaker, I yield to the gentleman from Texas (Mr. Gohmert).

Mr. Speaker, it seems to me that that is what is being said: because those people are so sinister, you don't listen to them; or, the whole act is sinister, it may be legal.

In reality, we are talking about one person meeting with another who may have information. We in Congress and anyone running for public office should be listening and seeing if there is information that is imparted that is important for our country to know.

Mr. Speaker, well, we know now people are trying to frighten us and others not to meet with people and not to talk to people. I wonder why.

As far as I am concerned, I don't have just a blind trust in whatever our intelligence agencies give us. Let me note that many of the things that are being quoted aren't even being quoted from our intelligence agencies during this whole national discussion on what Russia's interaction with us has been for the last couple of years.

The fact is that these intelligence reports are filled with weasel words. A weasel word is making it sound like you are saying something, but you put a phrase in that actually doesn't commit you to defending that particular position as being factual.

With that said, I would hope that the American people pay close attention to the sinister words, but also the weasel words, and pay attention to the basic nonsense in telling us that: Oh, a horrible crime has been committed now, because someone in the Trump campaign-- whoever it was; I don't care if it was Donald Trump's relatives or his son or whoever it was, anybody in the campaign whatsoever--wants to talk to anybody in the world to get information, I think that is a good thing.

Whether or not at that point it has to be determined whether it is accurate information, to move forward with accurate information is wrong, but your job, too, is to verify what somebody is telling you before you let it influence your policymaking or the decisions that you are making at that moment.

With that said, I would like to change the subject at this point, because I had another issue that I really would like to talk about today.

Bitcoin

Mr. Chairman, I am the chairman, as I mentioned, of the Subcommittee on Europe, Eurasia, and Emerging Threats. I am a senior member also of the Science, Space, and Technology Committee. I am here, basically, to discuss emerging technology that is unleashing a new economic dynamic, but it could also be negatively impacting on our national security.

I have long considered myself a proponent of freedom. Instead of government controls, I have trusted free people and free markets with optimism that technology and innovation would deal with the perplexing challenges to our security and our prosperity.

In recent years, one of the more exciting innovations helping reshape the way we live is the introduction of digital currency here and globally.

Thanks to this leap in technology, times are changing right before our eyes. Americans have new ways of fighting inflation and handling their personal business obligations. People with bitcoins living under despotic regimes throughout the world now have the opportunity to protect their assets from abusive and corrupt government. Indeed, the security of the blockchain technology will enable a new wave of societal advances that should invigorate our markets and improve lives.

However, with all that potential benefit of digital currency, there is also danger. It empowers the good people of the world, but it also can be used by those who have goals that are malevolent and evil.

Radical Islamic terrorism is now a horrendous threat that hangs over all the free people in the world, in the United States, and elsewhere. Law enforcement throughout the world is now aware that bitcoin is available for use for terrorists in accomplishing their gruesome missions.

What makes it a good deal for terrorists?

It is anonymous. They can transfer funds using a digital currency platform without any of the usual safeguards that thwart terrorists and criminal activity.

Anti-money laundering and know-your-customer standards have worked to deal with criminals in recent decades, but now that approach can be technologically undermined by the use of the bitcoin instead of traditional currency.

Since digital currencies such as the bitcoin offer a free ability to transfer funds, some of our neighbors, such as Sweden, Thailand, Vietnam, and India, have banned their use.

Mr. Speaker, I do not believe that that is a necessary or practical response. Banning digital currencies will not prevent terrorists from using them any more than banning guns will prevent criminals from using them.

Instead of banning all the digital currencies because some lack standards, I believe we should encourage digital currencies to implement full anti-money laundering and know-your-customer standards.

These protections should empower both our law enforcement and national security professionals to keep terrorist and criminal financing under control while preserving for the rest of us the freedom to use digital currencies.

Thus, with the proper type of regulatory look and seeing what options are available to us, we can prevent terrorists and criminals under control from financing their operations with bitcoins, but the rest of us will still be free to use these new digital currencies and enable America to keep the lead in

the world in this enthusiastic technological advance.

In light of my chairmanship of the Subcommittee on Europe, Eurasia, and Emerging Threats, and my experience in the Science, Space, and Technology Committee, I look forward to joining with my colleagues on both sides of the aisle to encourage economic innovation brought by the bitcoins, but also to see to it that digital currencies will have strong standards that will thwart the exploration of this new economic function by terrorists and criminals and other evil forces in the world.

So I look forward to working with my colleagues. I think this is a bipartisan issue. I won't try to make it sound sinister at all, because this is something we can work on, and we must keep America always in the forefront of technological development.

We know with each step forward in technology, there is a potential harm that can be done, but we need to make sure that is taken into consideration, while at the same time that we do not thwart Americans from using the ultimate technologies of the day to secure prosperity and secure freedom and to secure our national security with these new technologies.

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

Mr. Chairman, I rise in support of H.R. 23.

Today we have seen pictures, horrible pictures of some of the best agricultural land in the world that has been totally destroyed by the policies of people who are now claiming that they like the environment too much and that that should have, perhaps, something more to do with their decisionmaking than what benefits people. Well, what happened is we have turned one of the most productive food-producing areas of the world into a catastrophe, a desert that produces nothing.

And who has been in charge of this? Who has been in charge of seeing this total destruction of what could be a garden for the people of the world? It has been, yes, the Obama administration appointees for the last year and, yes, in California, where we have had a leftwing liberal Democratic administration appointing radical environmentalists the same way Obama appointed radical environmentalists to determine policy.

And what does that mean to us? It means there is less food being produced. It means we have turned productive land into a horrible desert that even animals can't exist upon.

No, it makes a lot of sense right now. What makes sense is that now we have gone through this drought and seen this destruction that didn't need to happen. What we need to do is build dams. What we need to do is to make sure that the water that we now have is being stored properly so that the people of our State don't suffer, so that wealth that can be grown from the land in central California, which used to be the world's breadbasket, that that wealth doesn't just disappear from the face of the planet.

No, you can't really love nature unless you also love people, and right now the people of California deserve to have some planning done about storing water when we have it rather than suffering and having this type of destruction during our droughts.

Mr. Chair, I rise in support of a very important part of this en bloc proposal, which is filled with important parts.

Dr. Afridi is a Pakistani doctor who risked his life to help our special forces identify the hiding place of Osama bin Laden, the planner and commander of the slaughter of 3,000 Americans on 9/11.

Dr. Afridi, clearly an American hero, has languished in a Pakistani dungeon for the past 6 years and has been sentenced to spend another two decades in captivity.

Dr. Afridi is a courageous hero. He is not forgotten. His plight is not ignored.

Tonight, I am pleading that this language be retained in the final version of this en bloc amendment. This man is suffering for us.

Making my amendment in order acknowledges Dr. Afridi's sacrifice and demands Pakistani authorities release him immediately.

If we turn our backs on such a noble friend as Dr. Afridi, shame on us.

And I thank the Members who put this bill together for including this very moral statement.

Mr. Speaker, I rise in support of H.R. 3003. This is a very positive first step toward coming to grips with an issue that has divided this country because it is causing great damage to so many Americans.

What we are talking about is not immigrant hysteria. That type of mixing legal immigrants with illegal immigrants, that is the true racism because it hurts those people who have come here legally. Now, what we have got here are legal immigrants who are being cast into the same pot as illegals, with the opposition to this bill.

People who are here legally understand that we need protection for people who are here in this country against, especially, criminals who come from overseas and illegal aliens who are criminals, at that.

Working Americans of every race, religion, and ethnic group have seen that their families are less secure, and they are even sometimes being murdered by the insane lack of action on the part of our government to protect our citizens.

Our number one responsibility is to make sure our own people, legal immigrants, and all Americans of every race, creed, and color are protected.

And what do they see?

This massive flood of illegals coming into our country, taking jobs, bidding down wages, lowering the education standards and the healthcare that most Americans rely upon.

No wonder the American people want action. But then, when they are faced with a city saying even criminals who have committed acts of aggression, murder, et cetera, upon our citizens, that we are going to let them just stay, and that there is going to be a block.

Whose side are you on is what this amendment is all about. Are we on the side of the American people? Are we on the side of those victims who work hard every day and try to raise their families; or are we on the side of a massive flow of people, many of whom, and most of whom, are good people?

Most of the people who come here, most of the people flooding here, even the illegals, are basically wonderful people. But that doesn't mean that we can bring in more than that, 1 million--

By the way, we need to understand, don't condemn America on its immigration policy. We let a million legal immigrants into our country every year, and that is more than the rest of the world combined. We can be proud of that.

But, at the same time, we have to make sure that our people are protected, that they don't lose their jobs, or they don't have to accept less money for the same work because you have got somebody here who will work for nothing.

We want to make sure when they need their healthcare, they get their healthcare. That will bankrupt our system. Are we going to have a sanctuary healthcare system, too, so anybody in the world can come here and use up our scarce health dollars?

No, it is time for us to strike a blow for the protection of Americans and legal immigrants of every race and religion and ethnic background, not to show these things. Immigrant hysteria; shame, shame, shame.

Mr. Chair, I thank my colleague from California for supporting this very important legislation.

We all, all of us in California, have experienced what happens when you have radical environmentalist nonsense determining policy. We have just gone through one of the worst droughts in our history, yet during that drought, those wonderful California environmental planners saw to it that billions of gallons of freshwater were dumped into the ocean instead of being redirected towards producing food crops in our Central Valley area or providing water to drink or providing water so that people could afford to have water throughout our State. Instead, it was dumped into the ocean.

Now, what we needed and what we need now that the drought is over is more water storage because we are in favor of people, not some grandiose concepts of what a better view counts--now, without people in it, that is, of course.

Now we need to think about what our policies will impact on average people. And what we have in this radical environmental approach is opposition to storing water, now that we have some extra water, right after a drought.

Now, whose side are you on?

You can't tell me you are on the side of ordinary people, because when water prices go up and there is not enough water for the crops, the price of food goes up and the price of water goes up.

Who is the worst hurt?

America's lowest income people are the ones who are hurt the most, the ones who can't afford to pay the little extra for food that it costs when it costs more money to grow crops in the middle of a drought.

So with that said, I dramatically support doing something for the people, not some environmental theory--nonsensical theories in most cases--that we are facing doom if we store water.

If we store water, that is going to be bad for the environment? I mean, I am sorry. That makes no sense to me.

And it doesn't make sense to ordinary people either that after a drought, that in some way it is against the environment to make it easier for us to store water so we don't have to have the same destruction and the same lowering of the standard of living of our poorer people when the next drought comes around.

This act by Mr. Tom McClintock, H.R. 1654, will make it easier and quicker for us to build these dams. By the way, if we don't do this, many of those dams will probably be built, only we are talking about the evaporation not of water, but of money. After you have to go through years and years of paperwork, what evaporates is the money that should be going into education and transportation programs.

No. It is wrong all the way around not to permit people to go as fast as we can rationally and engineeringwise to build storage for our water supply today so when the next drought comes around, ordinary people won't be hurt.

Mr. Speaker, over the 25 years of Kazakhstan's independence, that country has become a valued member of the international community. Its commitment to building a relationship with the United States has resulted in stronger ties and a strategic partnership rooted in shared interests.

After the Soviet Union dissolved, Kazakhstan inherited the fourth largest nuclear stockpile in the world. Through President Nursultan Nazarbayev's leadership, this nuclear arsenal was decommissioned and the steadfastness of their government in this matter has become a key part of our bilateral relations.

Today, I would like to call my colleagues' attention to the international Expo 2017 which recently opened in the capital city of Astana. This unique event is focused on addressing the challenging issues of our time, especially the need for improved energy solutions. Expo 2017 is expected to draw nearly five million visitors over just a few months.

I congratulate the leaders and the people of Kazakhstan on the opening of Expo 2017 and wish them success as public audiences visit the exposition and the nation of Kazakhstan.

Madam Speaker, today a lot of people are looking at Washington more perplexed than ever, thinking that nothing is getting done here. It is easy for them to think that because, when they turn on their televisions or listen to their radios and listen to news commentators, all they seem to be talking about is some very obscure idea. But something that dominates all the communication, or a great deal of communication, is that Russia in some way altered the outcome of the last election, perhaps--what they have been telling us--the Russians hacked into the system. This is the image we are being given.

All those emails that came out during the election from the Democratic

National Committee and the Hillary campaign, those emails were, in some way, a product of a Russian conspiracy with the Trump campaign. Over and over and over again, even though all of the experts who we have seen from the intelligence communities on down the line have said that that is bogus; that did not happen; there is no proof that that happened. And many people who are looking into this don't think that the Russians were involved with that hacking at all, much less their involvement in our campaigns in a way that differentiated from every other government in the world, including our own, being involved in trying to impact other people's elections in a light-handed way.

In this situation, the Russian Government has not--again, has not-- been proven or even the evidence seems to indicate that they were not involved in a way that actually affected the outcome of our last election. Yet that is all we hear about. That is the massive news coverage, and the American people's attention is being focused on that, or they are being told: Oh, but over in Washington, the Congress is so tied up because of this crisis. We have not been tied up. We have been doing great things here in the Nation's capital, and the Trump administration has been doing great things. We have not been frozen by this unrelenting attack trying to give the American people the idea that the last election was invalid.

This effort to distract us is a disgrace. And I do believe the American people see, when they hear this over and over repeated but there is no substance being told us that indicates the specific crime, the specific hacking incident that happened. No, we have no incidences where any type of Russian interference, in some way, determined the outcome of the last election.

But, of course, the distraction that is taking place is basically covering the fact that we have a group of people who lost the last election who have been disrupting, who have a plan, a program of resistance and disruption of those who did win the election. If there is anything more anti-American than that, I don't know what is. Talk about destroying democracy.

So with that said, what are we doing if we aren't tied up in this Russian problem? And let me note, there has been, even to the point after all the hearings that we had and there is no evidence of it, now some Republicans have gone along with this effort, and we have appointed what was called an independent or a special prosecutor. And now what we can expect is another 3 or 4 months of the headlines on all of the news media except one or two trying to divert our attention. Well, I would ask that the independent counsel and the special prosecutor, they are going to look into Russia, let them not just look into, did our Attorney General have two conversations or three conversations with the Ambassador from Russia to the United States in passing meetings, I might add, other people engaged, instead of asking questions like that and trying to find some way to charge our Attorney General with some sort of crime that he would have committed and maybe perjury even because he forgot about one conversation with someone over a year's time period where there were thousands of conversations with thousands of people, nobody hope--if they can go into detail like that, let us hope that the Clinton Foundation becomes a target of that investigation.

They want to find out what effect the Russians had on our elections. Let's find out what the millions of dollars that went into the Clinton Foundation did that might have helped Hillary's chances of being elected. Let's find out that. And let's find out how much money was actually put into the Clinton family's pockets when former President Clinton, speaking again before Russian oligarchs, was able to receive certain payments, exorbitant payments, from what I understand, we need to know exactly what they were, into his own pocket at the same time Russian oligarchs were putting millions, maybe tens of millions, into the Clinton Foundation.

So, okay, that needs to be looked at. But I would suggest that the American people need to go beyond this made-up crisis. The American people need to take a look at what we have been accomplishing here, and we have been accomplishing. A healthcare bill passed. And, yes, it is not a perfect healthcare bill, but now we have actually got a bill that is in the system. The Senate is going to have their bill. The system is now working, and there is a healthcare bill going through the system to improve our situation now instead of being stuck with ObamaCare that was so poorly written that people were being priced out of the market of having insurance. And we end up with millions of people who can't afford the health insurance because ObamaCare did what? ObamaCare basically said anybody with a preexisting condition, that risk will be paid for by other health insurance policyholders. And, thus, everybody else's health insurance went way up, and the amount of coverage they got went way down. Surprise. Surprise. No, that was not a good way to go, and the Republicans are trying to find a better method.

Let me just note that I have personally been involved with promoting another concept of how we should be dealing with preexisting conditions, and there is a bill circulating now, and hopefully it will be seriously considered. And as the healthcare bill goes through the House and the Senate, maybe we can get this in there, and that is you look at preexisting conditions and you say: okay, that person has a preexisting condition, and right now that preexisting condition puts them into the mix with all the other policyholders. And then everybody else, including that person, picks up the cost of insuring for that preexisting condition, which then prices everybody out. More people end up without insurance, or insurance that they can't cover, or what they are getting for their money is decreased.

My daughter, for example, had leukemia a few years ago. She is 9 years old. And thank God that we got through that and she is now free of leukemia. But I am sure that somewhere along the line what we are going to have is an insurance company saying: Well, you had leukemia, you had a preexisting condition, thus we are going to charge you more money for health insurance. Maybe 10 years down the road this will happen to her, maybe 20. But the fact is that we don't need to have people around our country that are in that situation. My daughter is now cancer free. And if she has a preexisting condition, or anybody else in the country has a preexisting condition, what I am proposing-- and there is a bill making its way around, people are considering this as an alternative, and I hope they take it seriously, but we will see, at least we are trying, and the idea is the Federal Government will document all preexisting conditions. My daughter's leukemia would be on that list. And at any time from then on that someone with a preexisting condition has that preexisting condition, if leukemia comes back to her or anyone else who has a preexisting condition that is documented, it will be paid for by Medicare. Just as simple as that. That condition only. All the rest of her health insurance, however, need not be covered by the Federal Government or anybody else.

Now that the preexisting conditions have not put their amount way up in the cost to buy an insurance, now they will be charged just the same as anybody else who is healthy. But if they break their arm, they are in a car accident, if they have another disease that comes on, they now are insured from that, but they are not having to pay extra insurance because of that preexisting condition, and you just leave that to Medicare. It is a simple answer. It is not going to cost the taxpayers any more money by doing it any other way. Just let the government take care of those preexisting conditions. All the rest of their healthcare, however, will have to be paid for by that individual. Just the preexisting condition is covered.

So that is a type of reform that we can put into place, and people are talking about these ideas now here. That is why, when the Republican bill passed, it was launching a discussion, an honest discussion, of what we should do. The Senate is going to send us back something, and we will, this year, have a healthcare bill because we will have gone through all of these types of alternatives like the one I just suggested.

We also passed a financial reform bill. It was called the CHOICE Act. It was a financial reform bill that one of

the main parts of it actually repealed the Dodd-Frank bill which was so dramatically hard for our economy and was basically making it very difficult for businesses to function in our country, was a terrible burden, and was actually bringing our economy down. So we passed the elimination of the Dodd-Frank Act, and we have reformed our financial community, and that has passed the House. It is now over to the Senate.

We have passed dozens of notable bills, yet the impression we are given, of course, is the only thing happening here is the Russians were, in some way, engaged in the last election, and we must focus totally on that, even though all the committees that investigated this, all the people who came from the various intelligence agencies, no one said, here is the proof that they were colluding with the Trump campaign to defeat the Democratic candidate in the last election.

So people are only getting that story, but there are all kinds of bills that are being passed, legislation being passed here. Like, for example, there was a weather bill that passed. I mean, this is one example. Suzanne Bonamici was someone who had a bill that was attached to the weather bill. It was aimed specifically at trying to have a warning system for tsunami waves that might be created and come not only towards the United States but towards Japan and any other coastal area. That bill passed, and, as I say, it is part of the weather bill now.

And Suzanne Bonamici, of course, is a Democrat, and I am a Republican.

The other lie is that Republicans and Democrats can't work together. Well, that is just wrong. People are creating a false image, and I am glad to see, by the elections last night, that the American people aren't falling for the baloney they are being fed.

So was that a good bill, the tsunami bill? I think it was, and it has made it through.

We have other environmentally aimed bills that are making up for the excesses of the last administration that was basically pushing a radical, environmental, globalist approach to environment issues. I think it is a great thing that the President of the United States has withdrawn us from the Paris Agreement, which would have cost us billions of dollars that we would send to other countries and would put us under the jurisdiction of decisions made by international bodies, not by American-elected officials but by international bodies. That was a terrific move on the part of the President.

In fact, Trump has done a number of wonderful things that he is not getting credit for. Because all the media wants to talk about is how many conversations anybody associated with Trump had with any Russians in the last 2 years. Sorry. A lot of other things that are happening are important. Those people who are trying to distract us are not succeeding. The fact is that President Donald Trump had a triumphant trip overseas. His first visit was to the Middle East.

I am a former speech writer for President Reagan. I didn't write the speech, but I was there when he gave that speech in Berlin telling Gorbachev to ``tear down this wall,'' a speech that made history, not just reflected it but is now seen as a pivotal moment in changing the direction of what was going on with the Cold War.

I might say, I didn't write it, but I did make sure that I was one of the people who smuggled that speech into the President's hands. After the President was given that speech and said he was going to say that, all of his senior advisers tried to convince him not to say, ``tear down this wall.'' And ``Mr. Gorbachev, tear down this wall,'' was a phrase in history that made history. And Ronald Reagan stood up against all of the people on the left who were attacking him and even all of his own advisers. That made a huge difference in the world that we live in.

Now, let me just note this. We have a President now, President Donald Trump, who went to Saudi Arabia and went to a meeting with the leaders of that part of the world. He talked to them--and these were Muslims, of course. And he said to the Muslim world that, if there is going to be peace with the United States, drive the terrorists out of your mosque; drive the terrorists out of your country.

I haven't been as proud of any President since I was with Ronald Reagan when he said ``tear down this wall'' than I was proud of our President, President Donald Trump, for telling the Islamic world that they have got to disassociate themselves, they have got to drive the terrorists out of their families and out of their relationships with good and decent Muslims, who are the vast majority of the Muslims in the world.

So, with that said, I think there is a lot going on that is good. There are good things. This is a good report. I hope the American people pay attention.

There are a lot of creative ideas that are going on. These I just told you about, healthcare and finance reform, these are really important things. And the fact that we are not putting everything in the hands of the United Nations or some unelected government to tell us what we have to do in the name of the environment, that is good, too.

Well, I have got a few creative ideas that I have actually presented. I thought I would just let my colleagues know, let my constituents know, and let the rest of the country know, these are some issues on the table that I have personally put on.

I think I have a good chance, for example, of getting into the tax bill a provision that is now written out in H.R. 1792, the Expanding Employee Ownership Act.

What my bill suggests is that we should have more involvement by working people in their own companies. Let them own part of their companies so that the bosses and the laborers work together as a team rather than looking at each other as adversaries.

My bill, H.R. 1792, is being considered for the tax bill that we are putting together. What it says, very simply, is that, if an employer gives to his employees--it has to be a general distribution--stock in that company, the employees don't have to pay income tax on it. And if they keep that stock for 10 years, they don't have to pay capital gains tax.

So what we have now is a major boost of people keeping their good employees, a better working relationship, more productivity, and management more concerned about their laborers because now their laborers own stock in the company--maybe even 10 or 20 percent of the stock at some point. What we have is a bill that has a chance, and it is being considered. That is the type of thing that is going on here.

People are talking about new ideas. For example, I talked about the idea of a new healthcare reform bill and my approach and what I am doing to promote that price for people with preexisting conditions. That is another example, ideas that are being discussed, legislation that is going through, and people are trying to mold it. That is part of the legislative process.

Also, when you talk about Republicans and Democrats working together, we are being told we don't work together. Well, we do. Republicans and Democrats work together, just like I did on the tsunami bill. We actually have a good relationship--many of us do.

Nowhere is that more evident than in my leadership of H.R. 975, which is a bill that is entitled, Respect State Marijuana Laws. What this bill does is--over the years, in the last 6 years, I have been joined with a Democrat. It is Mr. Blumenauer now, and it used to be Congressman Farr when he was with us. We were able to put into the appropriations bill for the Department of Justice a provision, an amendment to the bill that said: No money in this bill can be used by the Department of Justice to supersede the State laws on medical marijuana in those States that have legalized the use of medical marijuana.

So, for the last 5 and 6 years, that has been a totally bipartisan effort. I am a Republican, obviously, and I have been joined by Mr. Farr and, now, Mr. Blumenauer. We have actually created a situation where we now have people who are getting involved in researching medical marijuana.

By the way, did you know that Israel now, finally, has stepped forward and has done research in the last 10 years? We haven't. The United States hasn't. In fact, for 100 years, when we should

have been trying to find the medical uses of marijuana, it has been virtually outlawed. And now Israel has found wonderful applications for medical marijuana.

They also, by the way, when they were studying the effects of marijuana, have legalized it for personal use, for adult use of marijuana, as well as medical marijuana.

Well, what does that tell you? That tells you that some of the people who have been telling us, ``oh, we can't do this because it is going to have a serious impact,'' Israel studies this closely, especially when it might have a military implication. This would not destroy their military; otherwise, they would not have passed this major reform in their country.

Now, why is it that marijuana is an important issue and it brings Republicans and Democrats together? We have limited resources here. The idea that we are going to spend billions of dollars not on protecting Americans from terrorists, not from trying to get bad guys--rapists and murderers--in our local area; no, we are going to spend billions of dollars on police, on jailers, on lawyers, on judges, and on prisons. And then we are going to take people out of the workforce. We are spending billions of dollars so somebody will not smoke a weed in their backyard.

And what is even worse, we are telling them we are going to spend billions of dollars to prevent you. If you find that there is a medical use for marijuana, like for senior citizens who have lost their appetites after a major operation--which happened to my mother, by the way. I did not give her marijuana, but I knew when I was feeding her that she had lost her appetite after a major operation. I said to myself: Why can't she have cannabis here? Well, now people know about that.

There is no reason for us to prevent our seniors from having some euphoria when they are 85 years old in a senior citizens home, especially if it brings back their appetite and they feel better because of it rather than drinking. Do they want to have them all drinking?

Well, this is not just for seniors. This is for people who have medical problems. It has been documented to have important uses. And again, no one has ever overdosed with marijuana, ever.

In terms of what we need to do and what we need to focus on are drugs that are harmful. We have an opioid addiction problem now. Doctors have been giving prescriptions for this. We need to confront that and confront other challenges in crime rather than billions of dollars to try to prevent someone from hurting themselves.

If an adult wants to consume cannabis--an adult--it is their business. For the government to intrude, especially the Federal Government, after a State has legalized it, this is tyranny. Our Founding Fathers did not believe that we should have police forces and criminal justice operating at the State--they believed it should happen at the State and local level, not the Federal level.

These current restrictions that we have, we have people, unfortunately, again, that are living in the past. All they can remember is the sixties when hippies were smoking dope, and it was just literally a counterculture--counter our culture. And I say ``our culture'' because I have more of a conservative family background.

Although I lived a life in my past and I had too much to drink at times, and maybe even when I was younger, maybe I tried cannabis a couple of times, but I have had an adulthood since I was 23 that I think meets the approval of my parents and, in particular, my dad, who was a lieutenant colonel in the Marines.

So with that said, had I been arrested, let's say, where some of my friends or something were consuming marijuana when I was around, what would have happened to my life? And what is happening to the lives of all of these people, especially in our less affluent areas, who can't afford the legal protections of hiring a lawyer right away?

It is destroying their ability to function in our society. We should not be taking people who are involved in an activity like consuming a weed. Adults should be able to make that decision for themselves. Sending police for someone like that or expending billions of dollars or ruining the life of that young person who can't afford, whether Black, Chicano, or Caucasian, who can't afford a lawyer to get them off and expunge their record, it is going to affect them the rest of their life. We can't be doing that. It is a waste of money.

We have a chance now, with bipartisan support, to pass this amendment again, perhaps. We are trying to get that onto the appropriations bill for the Department of Justice, which would then keep in place those restrictions on the Federal Government.

But I have a bill, again, with bipartisan support, that would make that across the board. It just says that every State that has legalized the use of marijuana, that none of the departments and agencies of the Federal Government should supersede. They should be treated just like someone selling alcohol or whatever. And, in fact, if they do, they will be asking for ID cards from people to make sure that they are not selling to juniors, to people who are minors, rather than to adults, just like beer.

Unfortunately, when it is illegal, it is easier to get marijuana than it is--for someone who is not 18 or 21, it is easier for them to get marijuana than beer because they don't have to show their ID card at the liquor store.

So with that said, there is bipartisan support for my bill. I am hoping that we can get it passed this year or next year, at least in this session of Congress.

And then, finally, we have lots of things going on here. I just discussed several creative things that are being discussed around town. And we have got a President of the United States who is opening the door which was guarded by basically a very far-leftwing philosophy for the last 8 years. The door of government in this country now is open to working people, where this President has committed himself to trade policies and others that are aimed at creating jobs for the American people, ordinary jobs.

One of the things that he has promised us to protect the American people and our American workers is to stop the massive flow of illegals into our country. The massive flow of illegals into our country is bringing down the standard of living of working people.

There is one idea that I have presented. When he wants to build a wall, we have the means to provide the resources to build that wall in a very creative way. It wouldn't cost the American people anything.

So I would hope that those who are listening who like some of these ideas don't get depressed about what they are hearing in the news. Good things are happening in Washington, and a lot of new creative ideas are being discussed.

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

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

The motion was agreed to; accordingly (at 6 o'clock and 44 minutes p.m.), under its previous order, the House adjourned until tomorrow, Thursday, June 22, 2017, at 10 a.m. for morning-hour debate.

Mr. Speaker, it is a great honor today to introduce to the House our guest chaplain, Becky Tirabassi, co-pastor of the Viewpoint Church in Newport Beach, California.

Becky became a licensed pastor in 2014, when she and her husband, Dr. Roger Tirabassi, founded the Viewpoint Church. Today, she and her husband give spiritual guidance and personal counseling to members of the Viewpoint Church, but also to people throughout Orange County needing personal and spiritual encouragement.

Becky was helping others even before she became a pastor. She is best known as an author of over 15 books, including the best-selling books, ``Change Your Life'' and ``Little Changes Big Results for Crazy, Busy Couples.'' She has appeared many times on national television and radio, and for over three decades has spoken before groups in nearly all 50 States, as well as internationally. In addition to her co- pastorate, she is president of the Becky Tirabassi Change Your Life, Incorporated.

Becky and Roger have one married son, who is a grown man, and he has just completed a tour as a missionary in Uganda. For that safe return, we are all grateful.

Mr. Speaker, I ask my colleagues to join me in welcoming Pastor Becky Tirabassi, and thank her for offering today's opening prayer in the U.S. House of Representatives.

Mr. Speaker, before I get into the substance of my remarks, I would like to mention a little story.

When I used to work for Ronald Reagan years ago, he also said: Well, Dana always start off with a little funny story. So I thought I would share one that Ronald Reagan loved with all of you and the Congressional Record and those watching us tonight on C-SPAN.

What it deals with is a man who was struggling, struggling to get by. He lived in an area that had very little farmland left. My relatives all came from dirt-poor farms in North Dakota. They didn't have very good land up there. They were homesteaders, and it was rough going. But they did make a go out of it. They made a living out of it. This story is about a fellow in Kentucky, a guy who wanted to be a farmer but couldn't even find any land as good as my parents ended up with when they homesteaded.

One day he found a piece of land that he knew was very fertile. What it was was an old riverbed. He decided he could plant that riverbed, and it was such good soil that he would have a great crop. Well, the trouble with it was that the riverbed was filled with tree stumps and rocks and all sorts of weeds and horrible obstructions to get anything done. He spent a year of his life cleaning out that riverbed. Every day after work, he would go and blow up the rocks, haul them out. He would get a mule team and pull the tree stumps out. He would take a machete and cut down all the weeds. The briars would scratch his body. It was a monstrous job, but he got it done and he planted a garden.

When that garden started to come in, it was so beautiful that he had to tell somebody, he had to brag to somebody. He went to the person in his little town who he respected the most. It was the preacher. He said: Preacher, I want you to come out and see this.

The preacher came out, and the preacher said: This is a miracle. Praise be to God. Look at that corn. I have never seen corn so big as that. And that watermelon, my gosh, and the berries. My goodness, I have never seen such a wonderful garden. Praise be to God.

He went through this, kept going: Thank God for this, thank God for that.

Finally, the young farmer said to him: You know, Preacher, you should have seen this when God was doing it all by himself.

Well, today, there is a lot of stuff going on in Washington, D.C. People are very active. Don't think that there is not a lot of activity. You may not be able to see it, but we in this new Congress, we are scurrying around. There are all sorts of people working on healthcare reform, tax reform. We have got the fiscal year `17 and fiscal year `18 appropriations. We have got border bills. We have got security problems and issues that are the highest order. We are working here. I believe that with the Republican Party under President Trump, we are going to accomplish great things. These are things that we are asking the help of God, but we are not waiting for God to do it.

I would like to discuss tonight a few of the creative proposals that I have made which I believe could impact and have a very positive impact on the United States of America and the American people.

First of all, I would like to talk about border security. And an issue, of course, in border security that is the number one issue that has been plaguing us for so long, so let's understand, there has been a massive flow of illegal immigrants into our country at least for the past 30 or 40 years. I trace it back, unfortunately, to the time I was in the White House. I trace it back to Ronald Reagan's amnesty of 1987.

Ronald Reagan was told that there would be 3 million people who would

then be granted citizenship, would be brought into the core of American activity, and be made U.S. citizens. He also was promised that there would be border control if he signed on to giving amnesty to 3 million people, that no jobs would be permitted to be given to illegals from then on, and that there would be some sort of situation where we could control it so that not only illegals weren't going to be further coming across the border, but they certainly wouldn't be given benefits by our government to encourage them to cross the border.

Well, what happened?

Yes, Ronald Reagan had pity for these poor folks who came here, 3 million of them, who he was going to agree to grant citizenship to, and he did. He signed an amnesty law. And instead of 3 million, it turned out to be 11 million.

And from that moment on, those 11 million, there were none of these restrictions on jobs. We could be E-Verifying all jobs right now and cut that off. We could have done it long ago. We could have done it in the next year after that amnesty that Reagan signed. No.

There hasn't been a huge effort to make sure that we control our borders. Just the opposite. We have had administrations that undercut the border guards that control our borders.

So what have we had since 1987, especially when the word got out that we actually will provide benefits? We will actually provide health care? And we will actually provide jobs? And education for children? Anybody who could just get here, even if they are here illegally?

Well, what we have had is a huge flow into our country that has been threatening, and is threatening, to change the basic fiber of our country in the long run. But even in the short run, it has had a horrendous impact. It has had a horrible impact, for example, on the wages that ordinary Americans have. They have come in, and the middle class and lower middle class working Americans have had their wages bid down by tens of millions of people who have come in and bid down the wages of the American working people.

Now, don't anybody try to tell me, as you have heard--everyone has heard this: There are 11 million illegals in this country. They have been saying that for 20 years. Be honest with yourself, everybody. Let's talk about it. There are probably 30 million illegals in this country.

What has that caused? How has that impacted on us?

What have we seen?

We have seen an education system that has been drained of its resources so those very same working class Americans, who depended on us to make sure their children had a decent education, now have an education that is nowhere near good because the money has been drained away to take care of millions of young kids who have come here illegally.

Well, where is our allegiance?

What about the healthcare dollars that are being consumed?

Average working people know that illegal immigration to our country has hurt, yes, the education and the healthcare benefits to their own families.

Plus, we have destroyed the security of so many middle class neighborhoods where now we have--again, of course, some people don't even want to deport illegal aliens who happen to be criminals. They are talking about let's have a city in which they will not abide by the law, even to deport criminals who are here, violent criminals against our own citizens.

No, these aren't sanctuary cities that we are talking about. These are outlaw cities that don't care about the American people as much as they do about people who come here illegally.

Well, those have been some of the really negative aspects that we face. We know that.

The reason that we understand, and people have recognized this, is Donald Trump was elected President of the United States because of this issue. We know that.

The American people understand that their wages are going down, quality of life is going down, safety in their neighborhoods is going down, education for their children is going down, and health care is being torn apart. And a lot of it goes right back to a massive flow of illegals into our country.

Thus, when Donald Trump shook up the system by saying, We are going to build a wall, and we are going to prevent this massive flow of illegals into our country from continuing, that is why Donald Trump was elected.

So this out-of-control illegal immigration has got to stop. And that is one of the things that now with Donald Trump as President, and with a Republican majority, we are committed to doing.

And the first step, at least the most important step, maybe not the first one, is fulfilling Donald Trump's pledge that we are going to build a wall across our southern border that will be both symbolic and will be practical in stopping this large and massive out-of-control flow across the border.

I have a proposal that I think will go a long way in helping President Trump build that wall. My proposal called the Border Security and Immigration Enforcement Financing Act of 2017--that is the name of the bill. Again, I will say it. Border Security and Immigration Enforcement Financing Act of 2017. I am currently drafting that bill, which will be submitted as either an amendment or it will be submitted as a separate bill.

This goes a long way that will permit President Trump to keep his promise to us.

Now, why wouldn't he keep his promise to us?

Everybody has been saying: He will never find the money necessary to build that wall, so he has fed a false promise to us.

No. There are resources that are available if we use our creativity.

Ted Cruz, over in the Senate, proposed the $14 billion that we have confiscated from a Mexican cartel leader, who we now have in custody, let's use those $14 billion as a down payment. I think Ted Cruz has got a great idea there, and I think that is one idea.

My idea, which I am encompassing my legislation, is based on the idea that we have, and most people know this, 1 million legal immigrants coming into our country every year. Let me make clear what I just said. One million legal immigrants.

Republicans are not against immigrants. We are portrayed that all of the time. We support 1 million legal immigrants coming into our country every year, which happens to be more legal immigrants migrating into our country than all of the other countries of the world combined. Nobody comes even anywhere close to us in our generosity, and Republicans are in favor of that legal immigration. Because we will choose who is coming, they will benefit and help our society as a whole, and they will not especially undermine our poor and working class Americans.

Well, what does that have to do with the wall?

Well, my legislation, which I am now in the middle of writing, says this: Of that million, it recognizes there are 50,000 people who are permitted to come into our country legally every year.

And how are they selected? The rest are very carefully selected.

These are people who are selected by a lottery. That is right, a lottery. We are having a choice, just by happenstance, who we pick, of 50,000 people coming into our country. We may need them. They may be able to contribute. They may not. But we are leaving that up to a lottery.

My proposal is eliminate that 50,000. But we are not going to lower the number of legal immigrants coming into our society. We support legal immigration. In fact, those people who claim Republicans are anti-immigrant, they are the bigots. They are the ones who are proposing that we lump legal and illegal together.

So don't let anybody kid you. That is a political ploy.

So when you hear someone say, Republicans are anti-immigrant, just remember, we are prolegal immigrant. And with them trying to combine illegals with legals makes them the negative force against people who have come here from other countries legally.

So what is my proposal?

My proposal is you take the 50,000 slots that now are selected by some kind of lottery, and you say: We are going to start a pool of money. It is going to be an account that is a protected account. It can only be used for upgrading the border security of the

United States, of both the border, Border Patrol, immigrations coming in, and making sure our homeland is more secure, especially on our borders.

So we take that money in the pot.

Now, where is the money coming from of that 50,000 a year?

I am proposing that we charge anyone in the world, who is not a criminal or some kind of a terrorist. That basically we permit them to put $1 million into that fund. And they will immediately be guaranteed legal status, a green card in the country, but they will be guaranteed within 2 years that they will become a U.S. citizen.

Are there 50,000 people in the world who would do that?

There sure are. We know at least that. But there may be a lot more than that.

But that would be enough for President Trump to build his wall and to make sure that we stem the flow, this massive flow of illegals into our country, and to secure our borders from these drug cartels, et cetera, and to strengthen our Border Patrol, and to make sure that when people are coming into the country we can vet them, we have some sort of technology devices that can help us secure that radical Islamic terrorists aren't coming into our country. Yeah, we can do that if we have the resources.

President Trump wants to do it. Our country has been thwarted in the past by politicians who don't want to do it. But President Trump is committed. We need to get behind him.

My proposal would at least give us the resources to accomplish that mission. Unfortunately, of course, there are people here, power brokers here in the United States House and throughout our government, who would like to get their hands on that money and spend it on other projects, special projects that they have in mind.

Right now, the Republican Party needs to unify. We need to hear from our base.

No. The number one priority for any of the money that would be derived from offering a citizenship to people from overseas, that money should be used to control our borders and create the security of our country.

Now, by the way, why haven't we acted before?

Why is it that from 1987 on that we have had this flow and we haven't been able to stop the flow, or do what I am doing right now should have been done 10, 20 years ago? Because we have people in this country who wanted that massive flow of illegals.

There are probably 30 million illegals in our country. That is not some kind of happenstance that just happened. That wasn't an accident.

No. We have had, and, unfortunately, on the Republican side of the argument, we have had Big Business who wants cheap labor, and that has prevented the Republicans from doing what we want.

And on the liberal side, on the leftwing side, on the Democratic aisle, you have ultra-left liberals who want what? Who want to make sure that we have masses of people that they can use to try to socialize our country. Change the fundamental nature of our country because they don't like the fundamental nature of our country.

So we have a political motive and an economic motive on both sides, manipulating these poor people from around the world and threatening the well-being of those working people and those lower middle-income people in our own country who are just struggling by. We could have solved this a long time ago.

But that is what Donald Trump was all about. Donald Trump spoke to those people in Wisconsin and working class people in Pennsylvania and elsewhere and said: We are going to watch out for you. We are watching out for you from now on.

Now, we need to join Donald Trump. The people have spoken. We need to build that wall, build it.

I was very proud during the Reagan years that I participated. I was one of Ronald Reagan's principal speech writers, and we all remember what his most important line was. What did he do that really changed the world? He had a policy that stood firm against the Soviet Union without sending our troops into military action; and he stood, and he was strong, and he stated and he argued our case aggressively to the world.

Ronald Reagan, when he went to the Berlin Wall and he said, ``Tear down this wall,'' it changed history and made our country safe for decades ahead. I did not write those remarks, but I am very proud that I helped smuggle those remarks to the President of the United States so that he had the option of saying it. And of course, once he read those remarks, he was bound to say it, even though his senior staff tried to prevent him from doing so.

Well, I am saying this: Donald Trump, listen in. Build that wall. We are behind you. The American people are behind you. You should be as aggressive on this issue as Ronald Reagan was in ``Tear down this wall.'' Because he, too, was villainized for--they claimed he was some kind of a warmonger for even being so tough with the Soviet Union; and, of course, what he did is lead to the disintegration of the Soviet Union.

So that is my first idea.

Mr. Speaker, I have another project that I have been working on, and I know this sounds perhaps a little bit disconcerting for people because people have the idea that everyone here is left and right, and they have stereotypes of who is on the left and who is on the right.

So let me just suggest that my next proposal is something that is usually associated with the liberal left, and that is I happen to believe that we have had a tremendous waste of our resources. It has had a horrible impact on our country that we have tried to regulate adults using marijuana, and especially our efforts to stamp out any use of marijuana, which is what the policy has been for decades, in a way that has prevented us from developing the medical uses of cannabis, marijuana.

Cannabis is a plant that has enormous potential for our economy. We can't even import it now. It was used to make all of our rope. The Constitution is written on cannabis paper. There are so many uses. Our farmers aren't even permitted to grow it. And on top of that, no one has been permitted the means necessary to see if there are some medical purposes. And just now, after a few decades, we have found there are significant medical uses for marijuana.

Now, it took me a long time to get to the point where I found out where we could work, a coalition could work on both sides of the aisle to try to just look at this issue with a realistic eye.

What is going on? What is this incredible hysteria over some adult smoking marijuana in his backyard that we have to waste the resources of our police forces?

The police should be out protecting people down the street, but instead they are going into the guy's backyard to make sure that he is not smoking marijuana. And then how about the jailer? How about the judge? How about the penal system? How about all of those? How about the loss of income of that individual?

Trying to control people's personal lives, especially their consumption of cannabis, has been a horrendous failure because it has not prevented people's use, and it has been dramatically costly.

And then, of course, there is the side effect of what? There is the side effect that we are financing drug cartels throughout the world who are actually putting democracy in those countries in jeopardy, and we are financing it.

The issue isn't whether or not people should smoke marijuana or have cannabis. The issues are:

If you are going to have that cannabis, shouldn't the person selling that be accountable so that they only sell it to adults?

Shouldn't it have a label on it so that you know it is not filled with opium or poisons?

Shouldn't it be a situation where a businessman has a bank account and is taxed and regulated and is treated like any other business, responsible business? Or we can let the drug cartels have the billions of dollars that that endeavor will be bringing in every year, and which it does.

So we have financed the drug cartels overseas. We have gangs here, domestically, all tied to the fact that we are trying to control people's private behavior for their own benefit.

It is time to unshackle people. An adult in the United States has every

right to make his own decision about whether or not he will consume cannabis, and that is especially true of doctors and patients. We believe, supposedly, Republicans believe in the doctor-patient relationship. We have talked about it with ObamaCare, et cetera.

Well, guess what? The doctor-patient relationship if we are saying, ``Yeah, you can do this, but you can't do anything with cannabis,'' that is not recognizing the doctor-patient relationship. So don't tell me about limited government. Don't tell me about individual freedom. Don't tell me about the doctor-patient relationship. Don't tell me about those things if you believe that adults should not be able to use cannabis, especially for medical purposes.

And the worst part is there are some medical reasons for it. We have already seen that Israel has, by the way, legalized marijuana, and they have done great research just in recent years on the medical uses of cannabis, of marijuana.

They have found that epilepsy, children's epilepsy in particular, this will stop seizures. Yet we are denying our own people the use of this. How insane.

Yes, we need to make sure that we watch out for our people, but we do not control their lives because we know better.

This is not a nanny state, but some people, interestingly enough, on the other side of the aisle, who believe in the nanny state, are the ones who believe mostly in allowing people to use medical marijuana if that will help them.

I just will say this: we have an epidemic of opiates in this country. And one of the reasons we have that is because we have our veterans who have been given these opiates at the VA.

I just had a call yesterday from a friend whose son came back from the war, and he was in convulsions on the floor, and they couldn't help him. They took him to the VA, and they put him on opiates, and it still didn't help. Finally, after a year, the doctors pulled him aside and said: Come to my office off the campus. They gave him a prescription for medical marijuana, and the man's son hasn't had a seizure since.

So what does that mean?

So he doesn't have a seizure. You have a veteran who has been filled with opiates. So now I got a call just yesterday. This poor young man who is smoking that marijuana does not have seizures, but they have filled him with opiates. He is trying to get off the opiates, but the process they have got him going through is he has to be dry of everything, including marijuana. And as soon as that level goes down, he begins having seizures again.

And then he went a few days ago--maybe a couple of weeks ago he was at the VA hospital. They were trying to get him off these opiates. He is going to feel a seizure. He went to the car to smoke a marijuana joint and was arrested because the people at the veterans hospital who run the parking lots are Federal employees. It is Federal property.

We have had votes right here in Congress saying that if a State legalizes the use of medical marijuana, the VA in that State is permitted to let their people utilize medical marijuana, and it failed. That vote failed.

I challenge my Republican colleagues to join with the Democratic colleagues who supported that resolution last time. If you really care about these people--yes, we have an opiate, an opium-based horrendous surge going on in our country, and it is bringing down our people, our veterans in particular. Let's not eliminate if the doctor believes that medical marijuana will have an impact. Let us not outlaw that doctor from doing this. Let us also remember that we know that it can end seizures.

This poor guy who called me the other day, his son, once the medical marijuana is going down--and they won't let him do this on the campus of the VA hospital--he ends up going back into seizures.

This is a type of catch-22 when you are trying to control people's private lives. It doesn't work. It is not right. It is not right for our veterans. It is not right for our senior citizens who are sitting in the senior citizens' homes. If they would like to take a gummy that is filled with a little cannabis, so what? So what? Let them enjoy themselves a little bit, for Pete's sake, in a way that is not harmful; bring back their appetite, or whatever.

No, we are trying to control people's lives, and it is having a harmful effect on the people themselves. And think about one last note of it. Who is most hurt by this is we have people in the poorest neighborhoods of our country who end up being arrested and being frisked to see if they have got any marijuana on them.

We have armed groups who look like Army personnel coming into our cities for drug raids. The Founding Fathers never meant criminal justice to be handled at the Federal level--they never did--but now we have the equivalent of SWAT squads going in and breaking people's doors down for providing medical marijuana. This is ridiculous. And those poor people in the Black areas and the Chicano areas get arrested. They are arrested, and that follows them for the rest of their life.

I have a bill that says that it is up to the States. And I would ask all of my colleagues and the people listening tonight to support the States' rights to make this decision. This is a State issue. And I have a bill that basically says that the Federal Government shall respect State marijuana laws. And when we do that, that will be left up to the people of those States to make these decisions.

That is what our Founding Fathers wanted, and that is why things didn't go haywire back in the old days. We left it up to the States. We especially left that issue of drug enforcement, but also law enforcement, at the local level for local police.

Mr. Speaker, so those are two ideas that I thought I would share with my colleagues tonight, that I think would save billions of dollars on the wall, and trying to change our attitude, trying to stop the waste that we are wasting lives, and billions of dollars, and creating drug cartels.

When it comes to marijuana, we need to change that law and leave it up to the States. And we can then--if people need help, we are going to give it to them. But if they are adults and Americans, they have a right to run their own lives.

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 7 o'clock and 58 minutes

p.m.), under its previous order, the House adjourned until tomorrow, Wednesday, May 3, 2017, at 10 a.m. for morning-hour debate.

Mr. Speaker, let me just note that today I am paying close attention to the healthcare issue. I don't want anybody to think when they look at me giving this speech on the floor of the House that this is evidence that there is arm-twisting going on here in the Capitol about trying to get people's vote on the healthcare issue. No, it is just humorous.

This is a shoulder replacement. I had this one replaced, actually, 4 or 5 months ago, and it is doing fine now. This one was a week ago. The cause of this, of course, has been excessive surfing. When I was older, I should have understood that you cannot surf as much as you can when you are younger without eliminating the cartilage that is there, then the cartilage is gone, and the bones grind on each other.

Well, that is just one example, however, of a healthcare issue that is going to be with us much more frequently now as the population of this country is growing older. The older people get, there will be other infirmities that really were not suffered on such a scale when we died off at a younger age.

So what we need to do is to make sure that we set down policies and a system that will provide the American people with the greatest and the most effective care that is possible within the budget that we have to deal with.

Today I thought I would talk about that, of course--health care. But there are a few other issues I would like to discuss.

Tax reform, of course, is something that is being focused on today as well--tax reform for fiscal year `17. And, of course, fiscal year `18, the appropriations bill. Border security, of course, has to be on this list.

These are issues that we are every day talking about here on Capitol Hill. The work is intense, people are serious, and there is a job for us to do. President Trump is in the White House, and he is working hard as well.

This is not the time for the other side to be politicizing every issue that comes up, but, instead, to admit that Republicans now have legitimately won the election for President and legitimately won a majority in both Houses of Congress.

Thus, we should put in place policies that are, yes, fair, honest, and effective. But, also, we have to realize that it is fair, honest, and effective based on what those people who are elected by the people to make the decision believe is fair and effective.

Unfortunately, what we have now, and we see this across the country, are people who--and I don't even know if they understand the system at all, but they are arrogantly trying to be engaged with disrupting the system because they did not win. That cannot be tolerated for long. I would hope that people have a change of heart and work with us. We are willing to work with Members of the other party, the Democratic Party, to make sure we come up with both health care and tax reform that the American people will accept and applaud.

First, let's take a look at health care. Tonight I would like to discuss with whoever is listening and whoever is reading the Congressional Record an idea that I am proposing for the healthcare industry. And for the bill that is being put together, as we speak, where people are negotiating and compromising out, I have thrown this idea into the mix. And that is that we are--and we have to recognize-- making progress toward replacement of ObamaCare.

I am asking my colleagues to give serious consideration to this simple amendment that I believe will revolutionize health care in America by protecting the formation and operation of healthcare cooperatives.

Now, let's get back to that. I am trying to suggest that a small change could actually bring about a revolution in the way health care is delivered to the American people today.

Let's first admit that our healthcare system today seems to be run by the insurance companies. Yes, insurance companies have almost more influence than doctors do on the policies that we have on health insurance. That is not something that we need to put up with much longer if there is an alternative.

What that should mean to Americans is that we need to open up the system of health care. We need to make sure that health care is being looked at as a target for a multiapproach that will come to grips with those challenges, both financial and technical, et cetera, and that we need to open it up, rather than just having such a major influence by those people who are the money changers--the insurance companies.

My amendment which I am proposing would go a long way towards opening up a whole new avenue. Now, when I say free enterprise--and I believe in free enterprise. When I say free enterprise, I don't just mean--and this is where, unfortunately, a lot of people have made a mistake in thinking that free enterprise approaches are simply the approaches that are based on greed and are based on profit motive. And instead of other things and motivations that are available, they believe that that is what free enterprise means, whether it is health care or whatever.

Well, I would submit that free enterprise means a lot more than just depending on the profit motive and competition and greed but instead, also, includes, and should include--but we have excluded this avenue-- cooperation; cooperation among free people for their own benefit and the benefit of their families. We need it not only just in health care, but that is what we are discussing today, to make sure that Americans can cooperate together for their own benefits and the benefits of their family.

Now, how do I get this? How do I get this consciousness? My mom and dad were both born on very small farms in North Dakota. In North Dakota where we have homesteaders and others who are relatively poor, in North Dakota, the farmers may have been given the land--by a Republican President, I might add. Abraham Lincoln is the one who initiated the Homestead Act.

But they didn't have the money for the equipment, maybe even the money to buy seed. And what they did is, they formed farmers' collectives. What they called them, farmers' cooperatives. In Russia, they might have called them collectives, but they had the iron hand of evil in Russia, the iron hand of despotism, and a political control. But the cooperation in the United States was based on people gathering together, voluntarily working together to create a better situation. And you had cooperatives that would buy--farm cooperatives that would buy the machinery that was necessary for a small farm to succeed.

Well, that worked. I noticed that when I would go up to work on the farm when I was younger, and I noticed these farm cooperatives around. And that is totally consistent with free enterprise, the cooperation among people to share with each other the burden of buying that type of equipment.

Well, the amendment that I am proposing, in terms of our health care, falls right into that category. The amendment I am proposing stipulates that no provision in current law, or the underlying act, which we are amending, may restrict cooperative arrangements between individuals or organizations to jointly cover healthcare related expenses. The provision would further stipulate that such cooperative arrangements shall not be subject to any of the requirements, bureaucratic

rules and regulations, that currently apply to healthcare industry companies.

In addition, my amendment would stipulate that participation in such a cooperative arrangement shall be deemed as the equivalent of being covered by health insurance. If I might describe what I am talking about so people will understand. We are talking about now, the reason why a lot of people won't buy health insurance is that if they put it in, and they are healthy, that insurance money then goes to the insurance company, even though they have not used it at all.

And so you are going to be hesitant to give that money and to buy that insurance, and the insurance companies, of course, are very happy to have that money available to speculate on the stock market, et cetera, in order to make a profit. I am not against profit, but I want to make sure that profit and greed are not the driving forces for what most people would hope for is they can cooperate together and not be subject to someone else's greed and profit motive.

So what I am talking about, if this would be put into the healthcare bill, this small provision that I just read to you, making sure that cooperative efforts are covered and are not going to be controlled by the Federal Government, that they are free to do so without the many restrictions that would be on another company providing health insurance, that these cooperative efforts could--for example, you could have a co-op among people who worked at a certain school, or an industry, or you could have the same as we have now.

I think that the pathway has been certainly explored when it comes to credit unions where, again, people in a nonprofit situation are working together in order to establish something that benefits all of those people.

We could have a cooperative effort for health care, even run by some of the credit unions if they wanted to do so. They could have an app on their telephone or something where people would then put their money forward. If they didn't get sick, that money would still be part of what they have as their pot of money, their account with whoever it is. It is either an account or whatever, but the account will be returned. Thus, people will then take money out of the account to handle their own small medical needs, but they will also know that if they have a catastrophic condition--that is why everybody is banding together in this cooperative program--that they will be taken care of in terms of some catastrophic illness that might become them.

So what we have in this proposal is an alternative, a very simple change in our healthcare law, which will permit people to work together and make it profitable for them to do so and take them away from the control of other corporations in the health insurance industry that may be thinking more profit than of what their interests are.

So with that said, I have asked my colleagues to consider that proposal, and those who are reading this tonight or tomorrow in the Congressional Record, I hope they would call their Congressman to say that they are really interested in seeing that the cooperative alternative to health care is permitted in the bill.

Now, the second piece of legislation that I would like to talk about tonight also deals with a vitally important issue, vitally important to the well-being of the American people, and that is border security. Let me just say, I have been aware that a massive influx of illegals into our country was a threat to the well-being of the American people, and I have known that in the almost 28 years that I have been a Member of Congress.

But it has been discouraging to me that we have, over and over again, made attempts to try to do something that would draw the line and say we are not going to have any more illegals coming into our country. Now, by the way, that is illegals. I didn't say immigration, immigrants. I am talking about people coming here illegally, a massive flow of illegal immigration.

In fact, the United States permits 1 million legal immigrants to come into our country every year. How big is that? That happens to be more than all of the other countries of the world combined. And we are supposed to apologize about having that kind of an open system? But no, we have been attacked, over and over again, for trying to get control of this. And what happens when you get out-of-control illegal immigration? You get jobs for ordinary Americans; the value of their work is bid down. And if you want to know why some people can't get good jobs today, and those jobs actually paid a lot more in the past, is because we have flooded the market.

Basically, the Democratic Party has been deeply involved with opposing any of the efforts, and many Republicans have opposed the effort to get control of this flow of illegals. Why? Well, I guess we might be able to take a look at some motives and say: there are a lot of Republicans who could have done something on this, but they didn't want to stem the flow of illegal immigrants because Big Business wants--what do they want? Cheap labor.

That is a betrayal of the American people, just as much as it is a betrayal of the American people for the other party to try to keep the flow of illegal immigrants into our country, hoping they will give them a victory at the ballot box and, thus, give them political power that they wouldn't otherwise have.

Well, it is time to draw the line, and the American people did that in the last Presidential election. And I am very proud that the American people stood up to the most massive propaganda campaign against any Presidential candidate that I have seen in my lifetime, and that was against President Donald Trump.

I just heard the other night, even the bankers up in Massachusetts and New York overwhelmingly were giving money to Hillary's campaign. But Donald Trump got a pittance. The establishment was out to destroy Donald Trump, because Donald Trump said that he was going to stop the flow of illegals, he was going to be watching out for the benefit of America's working people, and that would be the top priority.

Well, one of the things we remember, he wanted to make it real. It wasn't just a bunch of rhetoric. He kept talking about how he would build a huge wall. Now, we all know that ``a huge'' wasn't around before Donald Trump. I don't remember people using that phraseology. And what we have got now is Donald Trump is moving forward. The President of the United States is moving forward to fulfill his promise.

We should not have a situation where politics get in the way by people who lost the election and are now trying to stop and interfere with those people who won the election. That is what the democratic process is all about. And the proposal that I am making when it comes to border security is that--and I was very honored to be asked into the Oval Office by President Trump and to give him some ideas that might be good ideas on how to handle some of these problems.

What I suggested to him is, any wall that he has suggested will be built along our southern border will cost tens of billions of dollars. Well, I had a proposal that I made to him, and I have made to the leadership here in the House, and I hope that they do not ignore this because it is vitally important if we are serious about stopping this massive flow of illegal immigrants into our country. We have to be building that wall, if nothing else, as symbolism that this is a sovereign country, and we demand that our border laws be respected.

Well, what I am proposing is a change from a currently existing immigration law. And that is, we bring in 1 million legal immigrants every year. But guess what? Of that 1 million legal immigrants that we permit in--which I applaud--but among that 1 million legal immigrants, there are 50,000 of them coming in who are selected. What?

They are not selected by a process where you study who is what, who we need here, what kind of skills we need. They are selected by a lottery. They are selected by a lottery, just pulling them out of nowhere. Yes, they are vetted all right, but they are not in any way rationally designed, them coming here, in a way that would help the American people.

Well, what I am suggesting is that 50,000 people--we do not want to decrease the number of legal immigration. We don't want to decrease legal

immigration. So we have a 50,000 slot. If we eliminated that stupid lottery that we don't even decide who is coming in, that it is left up to chance, well, we eliminate that, and then we set up a special fund. And the fund is a dedicated fund that whoever puts in $1 million into that dedicated fund will do so in exchange for immediate residency and U.S. citizenship within 2 years.

In other words, foreign people who are successful in whatever they have done in order to accumulate wealth, and we are not going to bring in criminals, it is going to be vetted just like every other legal immigrant will be vetted to make sure they are not criminals or terrorists or anything, but people who are overseas who would love to become U.S. citizens, that they will be given guaranteed U.S. citizenship within 2 years.

Now, that would mean $1 million per person, and perhaps we might want to say that individuals could bring in their immediate family, minors, for $500,000. But whatever that is, the revenue raised from this program could be put into that special account managed by the Secretary of Homeland Security for the purpose of carrying out border security and immigration enforcement activities.

In other words, the President of the United States does not have to have the burden of raising taxes in order to pay for that Southern border wall. He does not have to pass it off on further generations by increasing the debt by that level.

We have a method in this to bring in a better quality of people who we need coming into our country rather than selecting at random and paying for a wall that will reestablish the security of the people of this country and will go a long way to establish a mindset around the world that no longer are our borders open. No longer, whoever can get over here, are we going to take in and then give them free education and free health care and let them commit crimes and not even be kicked out of the country for it. No. Those days are over, and this wall will symbolize that.

What I have suggested, having these foreign wealthy people pay for that wall, makes it a real possibility. If people would be interested in talking to their Member of Congress, they can call or write, but they should call and say the idea of letting rich foreigners build that wall is the answer. Let's get going on it. Let's not wait for 5 years. Build the wall and let the others pay for it. That is a plan that will work.

I would like to also discuss another issue that I have been involved in. But let me just note that, on the tax bill, I have also asked for an amendment that would increase the well-being. And, how do you say, right now our wealth is becoming so centralized in just a few hands.

What we have now in the United States is a vision that the poor are getting poorer and the rich are getting richer. There is a problem with this concentration of wealth.

Now, the reason we have that concentration of wealth is because there are a few people in our country that own capital, own the companies that produce the wealth. And over the years, that has been focused on fewer and fewer hands, and the working people are being shut out of a system that is something that they are essential players in.

So with that said, I am certainly not against profit motive and I am certainly not against competition. I am certainly for the private sector and not for big bureaucracy. But if we just passed an incentive into our system, that incentive would be this: I am proposing that when an employer provides stock for his employees, it has to be an equal distribution to all the employees. Those employees don't have to pay income tax on it. And if those employees keep that stock for over 10 years, the employees don't have to pay capital gains tax on it.

So what we have got--if a company is successful and we have got a large increase in the value of that company, it is being shared with the workers in the company. It is not being held up in the one percent of the elite management. What we need to do is to make sure that we deal with this concentration of wealth because the American people, that is what it was all about. It wasn't about having some elite. That was what the Homestead Act was all about that helped my grandparents. We need a Homestead Act for people who are working in the various industries in our country. And tweaking the system with a little tax incentive like I am talking about, this would be an ESOP, which are already in existence but have very complicated structure associated with them, an expensive structure associated with them, that this would be like ESOPs on steroids. We will have working people thinking in terms of partnership with their employer instead of being on an adversarial relationship. People with startup companies will be able to get the top-quality people knowing if their company is successful, the capital gains tax will be zero for them who came onboard early on.

This is another proposal that I am making, and I would hope that people will look at that again and ask their Congressman to consider Congressman Rohrabacher's Employee Ownership Bill, Expanding Employee Ownership.

Finally, I would like to talk about one last issue that is something that is very controversial, I know, and I have never stepped away from being controversial. But what we have got here today is a major change in public attitude towards something that has been wrong for a long time but the public was not aware of it.

I would hope that we do not pass up the chance again of legalizing the medical use of marijuana. And the fact is, 44 States have taken many restrictions off the use of medical marijuana.

I have legislation that says respect State marijuana laws. This should be left up to the States. This should be left up to the people who decide for themselves whether or not they believe medical marijuana should be available to seniors, to veterans, and to other people. And we should stop paying money to the drug cartels by making sure that this medicine that we now know is possible with marijuana that we don't want to have the source being the drug cartels around the world.

So I would ask my colleagues to join me in supporting the medical marijuana initiative, what I have, which says we will respect medical marijuana laws and the United States.

I would hope that my colleagues get the message. These are four very important issues. These are issues I spent a lot of time on, but I am doing that because I understand these are fundamental. We have to start doing more. If we are going to drain the swamp, as the President says, we have got to be working on the fundamentals that are wrong with the system rather than just trying to create some image of progress and image of activity here.

We can do it. We have got good leadership here in the House. We have got a willingness to cooperate with the other side of the aisle. We have got a President who wants to work with us. Congress is here. We are in action, and we have got some great new creative ideas. Now the American people are welcome to participate.

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

Mr. Speaker, I will speak after the gentleman completes, but I would also just like to note that I agree with everything that he has been talking about for the last 20 minutes. I hope the American people start paying attention.

The fact is, the two of us are in a very small cadre of patriots that have been here in Washington for the last 20 years trying to stop this massive flow of illegal immigrants into our country, realizing that this doesn't only mean that people's wages would go down because we have people bidding down the wages of our people, not only is the crime in our area worse, not only is the money being drained from our health systems and schools--money that should be going to our own citizens are going to illegals--as we have always realized, with a flood of illegals into our country, some of the people riding that wave of illegals are terrorists who mean to destroy the American way of life and would kill our people in order to terrorize our Nation into retreat from involvement in the world.

I have been very honored to stand with the gentleman from Texas in these battles over these last 20 years. I would hope that the election of President Donald Trump reflects the fact that the American people are waking up to the significance of this issue.

We see people on the Senate side shedding tears for a temporary halt in immigration from areas where terrorism is known to exist and radical Islamic terrorism exists there. But they are shedding tears that a couple of hundred people, yes, were put in a bad situation. A couple of other lives were disrupted. They were innocent people.

But in order to save American lives, we are not going to put foreigners who are trying to come here at some kind of discomfort? Well, I think Donald Trump has demonstrated his primary objective is to secure the safety of the people of the United States of America.

I have been so proud to stand with the gentleman from Texas in getting behind Mr. Trump on this very important goal.