Floor Statements

Mr. Speaker, the Democrats refuse to open the government. They won't provide more than a dollar. The Speaker said she would give a dollar for a border barrier. That is outrageous.

How many people in this body have walls around their homes and live in gated communities. How many people in this body at night check to make sure their door is locked, not because a burglar can't get around it, but because they love the people in their home and they don't want burglars having it too easy getting in, even though they could, but it slows people down. That is what a border barrier does.

And for the little girl that was killed by an illegal alien in my district and thrown in a well, this is not a charade. This is life or death for many people.

Let's put a barrier where we need it, and then we can have everybody getting paid.

Madam Speaker, in 2007 there was a vote in this body about whether or not we provide a barrier, a wall, a fence, and we had Democratic leaders who voted for it back then, both here and in the Senate. Seventy-nine Senators voted for it back then.

The problem is not better on our border, and, in fact, the drugs coming across are worse. There was enough fentanyl coming across in the past year to kill every American adult. The problem is worse.

Folks here were for a wall, a barrier. It seems the only difference is now there is a President that some in here absolutely despise.

Mr. Speaker, I thank the gentleman for yielding.

One of the highlights of my being in Congress was getting a call from Ed Meese, asking if I would work with him on criminal justice reform. I was glad to do that.

It was amazing, having the ACLU and Heritage working together and groups working together, but more of our focus was on requiring intent to be proven before you could lock up people, take away their freedom, things like the 5,000 or so Federal crimes that allow violations of regulations that no elected official has ever participated in to be the basis for somebody losing their freedom. Those were important.

But that is not what this criminal justice reform bill is about. That is why some call it a jailbreak bill.

Under the bill, there are some good things, improvements on rehabilitation. I am glad that Ted Cruz' amendment passed in the Senate, so that violent carjackers are not going to be allowed to have a chance to have their time cut.

But there are 1,466 offenders relating to coercion, enticement of children into sex crimes, who will be eligible. There are 5,934 offenders relating to bank robbery involving violence or risk of death, and they will be eligible. There are others involving violence on officers, law enforcement officers.

Look, on behalf of the sheriffs, the prosecutors, people like me--I was a State felony judge--we worked very hard to come together on a proper sentence. Plea agreements were made for a lesser sentence.

The National Sheriffs' Association says it ``stands firmly opposed to this very dangerous bill.''

Crime rates will go up within 2 years, if this bill passes, which apparently it will, but somebody needed to state what is coming when we do this.

Mr. Speaker, we hear references to an ``immoral'' wall. We have heard ``wall'' demonized. Yet, I read yesterday that President Obama, in his new house, has constructed a 10-foot wall around his property. Now, either the walls work or they don't.

And if we are going to have Democrats continue to say they don't work, then you need to stand up and say: Mr. Obama, tear down your wall.

Mr. Speaker, I just want to applaud my friend's efforts on behalf of people who have counted on us. The 2 weeks he spent over there have been invaluable to the people who were counting on us. Some of that time was spent with a dear friend named Dave Eubanks.

Mr. Speaker, how much time is remaining?

Mr. Speaker, I want to thank my friend, Tom Garrett, for arranging this Special Order. He is on his way out, and he cares so deeply about this country and this country's allies that he would put his life at risk and go and spend time with another American hero.

In fact, Dave Eubanks is a hero, and he is someone who has dedicated his life as a Christian, as an American, trying to make the lives of others in the world better, and I thank my friend, Congressman Garrett, for spending that time with him. We shouldn't turn our back on our friends.

Sometimes it seems that Mr. Erdogan is not our friend, but we certainly have had a tremendous amount of friendship and lives lost in the Kurdish community, standing up for us, with us, in defense of freedom.

That is important. And I also want to address the issue of the wall on our southern border. It appears clear, since we lost over 70,000 American lives last year--that is more than all of the precious American lives we lost in the whole time of the Vietnam war--and we lost those in 1 year from drugs.

Most of those drugs coming across our southern border in the form of opiates and other hallucinogens, including fentanyl, are coming from Mexico. So if you want to see another 70,000 Americans die again next year, you don't want a wall. Let's not build a wall.

If you would like to have illegal aliens continue to pour into this country in the hopes that they will be able to vote illegally, you don't want a wall, even though you supported one in the past. You don't want one now because you may get those votes if you can stop a wall from being built.

If you want Mexico to remain as a country with so much incredible potential whose people are suffering and keep the people of Central America suffering at the hands of the drug cartels, you don't want a wall. Because if we build a wall where we need it, we build a fence where we need it, we totally secure the border, what happens? The money, by the tens of billions, pouring into the drug cartels south of the border dries up.

That means the corruption in Mexico and south of there dries up. That means Mexico, with its incredible national resources--the natural resources of that Nation are incredible. Its location, actually, for commerce is even better than the United States.

It sits between two continents. It sits between two oceans. Its potential is unlimited. But what limits it is the corruption from the drug cartels that America is continuing to fund.

So do you want that to continue?

Yeah, you don't want a wall.

Our elected leaders in the House and the Senate--the Republican elected leaders in the House and Senate--were not in favor of a wall or total border security in the last election in 2016. It was unfortunate.

The President knew and heard the voice of the American people, and he echoed it. But that is why back in September of this year at our conference--and I know it wasn't popular and people didn't like me saying it--but I had to make clear, it was clear to me, if we don't get money for a wall, then the people, the voters that put President Trump in the White House will not come out in the same numbers, and we will not likely remain in the majority. I said it 2 weeks in a row, and the response was to cancel that last week of votes before the election.

We didn't fund the wall. We said: Oh, let's wait until December.

My comment then was: This will be my 14th December in Congress, and I have lived through 13 where we were told we will fight in December.

We have yet to fight in December.

Now is the time. I know people want to go home. I want to go home. But this is our chance to protect America for our future. Let's help the President keep our promise. Let's help him keep our promise.

I know the Speaker and the majority leader were not big on this 2 years ago, but most of America heard commercials from our majority leaders saying: Help Kevin McCarthy and President Trump build the wall.

Well, now we need Americans to help remind our Republican leaders to help our President build the wall like we said. If that doesn't happen, I don't think the Senate can count on being back in the majority. They won't be. It is that serious.

I have heard that the feeling in the Senate among Republicans now is, let's not do reconciliation so we only have to pass the money for a wall with 51 votes. We don't want to do that.

If you don't do that, get money passed for the wall, then you are not coming back in the majority. Maybe you would enjoy the minority. Get used to it. That is where you are heading in 2 years.

It doesn't have to be that way. We can still have the White House in 2020. We can still have a majority in the Senate in 2020. We can get the majority back in the House in 2020. But if we drop the ball on this biggest campaign promise, then we are not going to have the majority in either the House or the White House.

And that, to quote my friend from Houston, my fellow former judge, that is just the way it is.

Mr. Speaker, I was hoping we would be able to get more accomplished this week that would help the American workers. It is amazing a party that calls itself the friend of the working class in America has spent much of the last 10, 12 years doing everything they can to encourage people to come into the United States illegally so that they can take the jobs from those hardworking Americans and those who wanted to work. It has clearly driven down wages for many years now.

I think that had a lot to do with President Trump's getting a higher percentage of African Americans and Hispanics than was ever predicted or that other Republicans have done. I have African American friends in different places who say that it is pretty clear the party that counts on getting 90 percent of our vote or so, most places, they haven't done us any good.

Under 8 years of the Obama administration, especially after the early part of the administration when the Democrats had the House, the Senate, and the White House, they got anything they wanted done.

Did they want to fix immigration or the border? No. It was not a priority at all.

They are more interested in driving us into socialized medicine, which has made record profits for the big pharmaceuticals, made record profits for the big insurance companies, and driven the little guys out of the market.

So we also know, and we have seen in this last election, the part that the multimillionaires, the megamillionaires, and the billionaires have played as they poured hundreds of millions of dollars into the election to try to drive into office people who call themselves Socialists, Communists, and progressives.

It doesn't take a lot of research to figure out why they would do that. We saw the policies of the Obama administration and the Democratic Party have a profound effect on the economy. President Obama himself--you can find it on video--he finally had to admit that, for the first time in American history--it was on his watch; it was under his policies--95 percent of all the income made in America went to the top 1 percent.

So we can talk about the party that cares deeply about the working class, but let's look at whom they pandered to in order to get hundreds of millions of dollars to help in races where we had Republican Members of Congress who were outspent 10-to-1, 20-to-1, and 30-to-1. It was dramatic.

Talking to Ted Cruz, he said that they had 18 full-time employees, which is understandable you would have a lot, because it is the big State of Texas. You need more than two or three. He had 18 full-time employees at the time of the election. He said that then he learned that his opponent, Robert Francis O'Rourke, had over 800 full-time employees.

What you normally use full-time employees in your campaign for, you don't have them necessarily go out and do the door knocking and do the calls, but usually it is your full-time employees who contact others and solicit volunteers who then go do the block walking, the phone calls, and all that kind of thing.

So to have outraised and outspent Ted Cruz so dramatically that you can have not just 18 employees but really a whole army--platoons and platoons, 20 platoons or so of full-time employees--it tells you that that money was not coming from the country's poor in order to drive up the contributions.

One of the things that I feel really needs to be done--and I haven't heard anybody mention it in the Democratic Party, and there is probably a good reason--but one of the things we saw in 2008 when President Obama, then-candidate Senator Obama ran--we saw little glimpses of it in the Clinton election years, but we saw it with Robert Francis O'Rourke--that is contributions that came in under the amount that required the filing of the name and information about the contributor.

So it is a loophole. Obviously, if you have a loophole, somebody is going to come along and take advantage. But when you have millions and millions of dollars contributed in $40, $50 amounts so that you just list the amount, you don't have to list who the credit card holder was, so we don't know if there was one credit card that paid for millions of dollars of $50 contributions. We don't know where that money came from. We don't even know if it came from the United States or Iran.

When you have that kind of a loophole, heck, you could even have--and I am just saying it is possible. When you don't have to report where the money came from, you can say, hypothetically, that we will send $150 billion to you and your country if you will be sure and send me millions back for the campaigns I want to help.

I am not saying that happened. I am just saying that is the kind of thing that is possible, and that loophole needs to be closed. It is inconvenient to have to report every contributor, but because it is a loophole that can allow violations of the law without allowing a proper audit and determination whether the law was violated, that loophole needs to be closed.

We need to stick in a provision before we leave the majority that requires the contributor of every dollar to be listed meeting the Federal requirements: who they are, where they are, and that information. It needs to be filed.

For heaven's sake, if somebody is doing it with a credit card, it isn't hard to do that filing. You can get a program that will just do it on automatic pilot for you.

But in the same way, we know that the Democratic Party has battled tooth and nail. We have courts, I would say all over the country, but they are very careful where they file so they can have the most liberal judges, even though this is an area of complete ignorance of Chief Justice Roberts, who said there is no such thing as an Obama judge, a Bush judge. Well, he is right about that.

Really, to say somebody is a Bush judge, that is really not to define who they are. We have seen appointments under H.W. Bush. I understand President George H.W. Bush has acknowledged nominating David Souter for the Supreme Court. I understood that it had come down to Edith Jones, who is a wonderful, America-loving, brilliant jurist, former chief judge of the Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals in New Orleans, but it came down to Edith Jones and David Souter.

I was told by one of Edith's close friends that she was asked to fly to Washington and actually was at the White House with David Souter while President George H.W. Bush was trying to make up his mind. Edith and Souter were both waiting to find out who was going to be tapped to go out into the Rose Garden, wherever they did it, to make the announcement of who was going to be the nominee.

Supposedly--I was told, but haven't confirmed--it apparently was John Sununu who said: I am sure Judge Jones is a great jurist, would be a great jurist. I don't really know her. But I know David Souter would be a terrific Supreme Court Justice.

So they said: Go get Souter. And he comes out.

To say that Souter was a Bush appointment doesn't define who he is. It doesn't tell you anything about who he is.

On the other hand, we have Justice Roberts. And it is nothing against him from an intentional point. It is simply that he is totally ignorant, apparently, of the fact that, when someone says this judge or justice was an Obama justice or judge, then it does define who they are. They are rock-ribbed liberal. They don't care what the Constitution says. They fit in nicely at the Ninth Circuit, where one justice said something years back about: Well, we don't care what the Constitution says. We figure if we come out with enough opinions, the Supreme Court can't reverse them all.

To me, it is a bit treasonous. It is unconstitutional. It should be a basis for impeaching any such judge. But we haven't done that. I was hoping that our Judiciary Committee would begin to bring in justices who had shown contempt for the Constitution in violation of their oath. But because of what I believe was the lack of keeping our promises, we didn't get enough people out in the last election, and we lost the majority in the House.

I know we had House Republican leaders whose mantra was, ``When there is no drama, we win,'' but it seemed very clear. The Senate won. They picked up a couple of seats because they fought and there was drama, and they stood up against the outrageous attacks on an honorable man named Kavanaugh, kind of like Judge Bork. There probably was nobody more qualified like Judge Bork when he was nominated, but he was a bit arrogant, so they got the folks to bring him down.

You had Senator Ted Kennedy, who did an amazing job of character assassination. He was effective in the lies he made up about Bork, and that kept him from being confirmed. Of course, there was a big celebration not for the truth, but for the fact that, regardless of the truth, they were able to block Judge Bork.

The term ``Obama judge'' or ``Obama justice'' is quite definitive. He was very careful not to appoint anyone who believed in following the strict language of the Constitution. These are people who had no problem in doing what I left the bench to do, and that is to legislate. They have no problem with taking over legislative duties.

Now we have seen we have Obama judges who have no problem taking over the executive function. Can any judge say that a President cannot put restrictions and even prevent a reporter from coming and asking questions when they violate what has been instructed and when the person in charge, the President, says, ``I have answered your questions,'' and he doesn't allow a filibuster and the reporter still will not be obedient? The President needs to be able to say: ``You are not going to come back and ask any more questions. That is the way it is.''

It seems to me to be perfectly equivalent, if the President were to issue an order saying that no Federal judge could go back--or could limit oral argument, that it is a violation of an attorney's freedom of speech, but to put a time limit on oral argument.

In the early days of this country, there were no time limits on arguments before the Supreme Court. I understand Daniel Webster argued one case for about 3 days. In the Amistad case, John Quincy Adams, one of my heroes, even though he was a very ineffective President--some say the best educated, perhaps the most intelligent--but he was determined to bring an end to slavery.

He was talked into handling the oral argument in the Amistad case before the Supreme Court when they were meeting downstairs. His argument spilled into a third day. Since it was multiple days, one of the nine Justices even died during that time.

That kind of crimps your argument a little bit if you lose a Justice.

They didn't have time limits. You could argue the case as long as you wanted. In fact, if you go down to the Old Supreme Court Chamber downstairs, they have two red couches. They are called fainting couches because lawyers could argue a case as long as they felt like they should, and sometimes they might grow faint. They had a place to land if they argued too long and became faint.

If the courts are going to say the President cannot have any restrictions and put any restrictions on reporters who want to filibuster a press conference and they can't limit their questions as long as the reporter wants to talk, then maybe the President should issue an executive order that no Federal judge can limit the time of oral argument of any lawyer before the court.

Now, if that had been the law, that I could not limit oral argument in a case either during my time as a trial judge, my time as a court of appeals chief justice, I could not have survived on the bench. You have got to be able to put a limit on how long argument is going to go on.

But if the courts are going to say the President can't limit a reporter, it violates his freedom of speech, it sure seems like it is a violation of a lawyer's freedom of speech for a justice to say: I am putting a limit of 10 minutes, an hour, 40 minutes, whatever they do. It seems like that would be a violation as well.

It is just really outrageous, and you would expect either an Obama or Clinton judge to be the one who would issue such a ridiculous ruling. Certainly, reporters have freedom of speech, but they do not have a right to be anywhere they want to be to utilize that speech.

The President can restrict all kinds of areas. As we know, President Obama did. He shut down tours of the White House for a prolonged period of time. We had a harder time allowing constituents--I am talking about Democratic constituents, because we don't care what party anybody is affiliated with. No party, some party, if they want our help to get a ticket to tour the White House, we help them. We don't ask them what party they are a part of.

Apparently, party meant a great deal during the Obama years, and they had no problems with doing things like violating the law that says you can't spend more to shut down a Federal site during a government shutdown than it takes to leave it open.

They spent a lot of money shutting down facilities that didn't require any money to keep them open. They wanted to make the veterans suffer and keep them out of their memorials. For some of them, it was their only chance to see the memorials in their whole life.

The Obama administration didn't care. They shut them down and then said it is all the Republicans' fault. Even though we passed four bills, doing everything we could to prevent a government shutdown, the Senate was hell-bent on having a shutdown, and with the help of John Boehner saying Republicans did it, it was ridiculous. Maybe he had had too much to drink that night. I don't know.

We passed four bills in those preceding days, even up until 1 a.m. The last one was appointing conferees. They didn't include me. They were people who were ready to get an agreement struck within the hour, and the Senate would not appoint conferees because they wanted a shutdown.

I was just heartbroken. I was the one who cut the tape. I hollered at Steve Palazzo from Mississippi. He had three busloads of veterans out there. The majority, I think, were in wheelchairs. They couldn't get in. I came with scissors, cut the tape. I called Steve over. There were two big barricades. I said: Steve, when I cut the tape, don't hesitate. You open the left side, I will open the right side, and we will get this open for our veterans.

I had asked Steve King before we did that to go over and tell the Park Police closest to us which ones were Members of Congress so they didn't arrest us and then later say: Oh, we didn't know they were Members of Congress. We had a right to be there, and we had a right to inspect the facilities. So, Steve took care of that detail for us.

Once he had done that, then I cut the ribbon. And he opened the left one; I opened the right one. I didn't even notice there was a bagpipe player who had worked his way up right behind me and Steve. So when we opened those barricades, the first guy through behind us was the bagpipe player. It was awesome to see all those veterans rolling in in wheelchairs right behind the bagpipe player. It was a beautiful sight. But it was tragic to see the way the Obama administration wanted to punish our veterans.

After I left there to go try to help open the Iwo Jima Monument access, I came by and could see the Martin Luther King Jr. Memorial. I couldn't believe they had barricaded that. It is a walk-through memorial.

Yes, they wanted to blame Republicans, but they spent a lot of money to blockade a facility that you walk through. It is a moving memorial to most of us, but they blocked people out of that.

So when you couple that kind of callousness toward the middle-class patriots of this country who risked life and limb--some of them lost limbs--and you want to punish them to make a political point, it was outrageous.

Then, when you see that the economic policies of an administration, the Obama administration, which claimed to be looking out for the little guy, where basically they kept holding out--luring people into the United States illegally by their failure and refusal to protect our borders.

It is clear they drove down wages. People had not had a wage increase, when adjusted for inflation, for a very long time.

When anybody really studies socialism--and I am not talking about the games that are played in so many universities now about this glorious thing called socialism, progressivism, communism.

When you really look historically at what that means, in socialism there is no middle class. You have the ruling class, and you have the ruled class. Now, someday in heaven, then everybody will share and share alike and do so joyfully. But in this world, where no human being is perfect, there is always going to be jealousy.

You are always going to have circumstances like I found as an exchange student in the Soviet Union when I asked a bunch of farmers sitting in the shade in the middle of the morning: When do you work out in the fields?

They looked terrible. You couldn't even tell what they had cultivated and what they hadn't. And they laughed, and I thought I had said something wrong in Russian.

One of them responded: I make the same number of rubles if I am out there in the sun as I do here in the shade, so I am here in the shade.

That explains why socialism, communism, it never, ever works in this world. It never, ever will. You are left with a ruling class that gets all kinds of privilege--that doesn't have to worry about money, they get everything they want--and then the ruled class.

And their healthcare stinks. Being over in the Soviet Union for that summer and being exposed to their socialized medicine, I literally thanked God that I was American and never had to worry about socialized medicine. It just seemed like they were 20, 30 years behind where we were. And I lived in the small town of Mount Pleasant. We had a lot better healthcare than they had over there at some of the larger cities. It was amazing.

But, if you are going to use socialism and you are going to pay a physician the same amount of money whether they see 5 people or 100 people, then the physicians have no incentive to take care of as many people as they physically can. They have an incentive to see as few as they can. And, in a socialized medicine situation, the physicians don't get paid all that much.

Now, the big pharmaceuticals, Big Pharma, the big insurance companies--not the little ones, the big ones--and pharmaceuticals that signed on to support ObamaCare, they could tell, and I could tell from reading the bill, that they were going to make billions and billions more than they have ever made in their history.

As I told some of their lobbyists, you guys signed your own death warrant. Yeah, you are going to make billions and billions more, maybe 15 years; but then, eventually, you are going to be capped. And you are not going to be able to collect for research and development. You are going to be unable to keep creating lifesaving, life-enhancing medications, and you are going to be like a Third World pharmaceutical.

They didn't care, because these guys had golden parachutes. They knew they would make billions more because of what Obama did for them. And they did, and they have, and they still are.

Yes, we have lost a lot of insurance companies, but the big companies, they are doing great. They are doing real well. In fact, I was shocked; I missed it when I read the bill, but these biggest insurance companies could even get bailouts in years they made record profits.

We were able to stop some of that while we had the majority, but I guess

those kind of things won't be stopped next year. The Democrats that passed ObamaCare are probably not going to be restricting the big money coming to the big insurance companies because I am sure a lot of that will come back in the way of political contributions.

So, there is a lot that needs to be done. We have not been faithful, as a party, to keep our promises. The number one issue, I think, that got President Trump elected was that he was going to secure the border: We are going to get a wall built where we need it.

And I really do believe what he said, that if he had the cooperation of Congress, he was going to be able to make Mexico pay for it. And I felt like he eventually would.

But if there is no wall built--not in all places do we need it. We don't need 2,000 miles of it, but there are some places where we definitely need it. But these invasions--whether you want to call them caravans, they are really invasions. Even though the alt-left media like CNN and MSNBC were saying it is all big lies about these caravans, there are no invasions, there are no caravans, it is all a political hoax--well, it was not a political hoax. They were either intentionally lying, or they were just ignorant. Either way, they were wrong.

Then we see yesterday information about at least a third of those who are wanting to crash into our country, invade our country, have serious healthcare issues. And they are going to make a lot of Americans sick if they come in.

Now, there is no country in the history of the world that has been more generous, more philanthropic, has done more good for other countries, other peoples all over the world. But, in order to maintain that, you have to have a vibrant economy. And, actually, to do that, to care for the environment, you have got to have a vibrant economy.

So we should be doing reconciliation, get the money for the President's wall, and do it now before we turn over the majority. Anything else is a betrayal of our promises.

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 11 o'clock and 53 minutes a.m.), under its previous order, the House adjourned until Tuesday, December 4, 2018, at noon for morning-hour debate.

Mr. Speaker, I do appreciate the efforts of my friend from the district that adjoins mine in Texas. He has done a yeoman's work, much of which he hasn't gotten adequate credit for. Hopefully not only the Senate, but the House will respect the work that has been done--including on flood insurance--and stop putting off what Financial Services has done to reform flood insurance.

We have extension after extension when the people whose homes are protected are begging for reforms so they can take their insurance money and build somewhere else instead of being forced to build where their house was destroyed.

Or how about people who have $50,000 homes having to pay enough in insurance so they insure the multimillion-dollar castles that have been built? They want to make the poor folks pay for the rich folks, and it seems like today most rich folks are Democrats when you look at contributions in recent years. Regardless of what party they are a part of, it is not fair. There are just so many reforms.

Or how about if the Federal Government insurance program pays for the same house three times after it is destroyed, then they get their own insurance, not government?

There are so many brilliant, yet seem pretty basic, reforms that Chairman Hensarling and his committee have pushed forward. None of them was my idea, but you can read them and go: Oh, that is a really good idea. It is a basic idea.

For some reason, we don't have the gumption to just go ahead and do the necessary reforms that saved a country whose spending is in trouble. Spending is putting the Nation at risk.

There is a very important purpose for government in the United States. It is not supposed to be a government that subdues its people or has the Orwellian job of monitoring them, as we hear China expects to have total monitoring of its citizens by 2020. That is not the job of the government in a free country.

The Revolution was about freedom. And I know Jefferson has taken a lot of flack for having slaves. He and Washington had hoped to free their slaves, but as I understand it, there were provisions that didn't allow what they wanted to do. But if you look at the original draft of the Declaration of Independence, the original draft that Jefferson did, probably the biggest paragraph that listed one of the many grievances that in Jefferson's mind justified a war for independence and a Declaration of Independence was that King George III allowed slavery to ever get started in America.

That came from Jefferson's heart. He saw the problems that were creating the inequities, and he blamed King George for ever allowing it to get started. That ended up being struck from the final draft, but that was part of Jefferson's original heart.

The job of government does not include spying on its law-abiding people who have committed no crimes. It is not supposed to include telling its people where they have to live and what they have to do for a living or not do. It is supposed to be about freedom.

In fact, Dennis Miller made an amusing comment that, if the Founders were willing to go to war and risk or sacrifice their lives in a war over a little tax on their breakfast drink, then think how upset they would be today.

Yet we see the problems and we discuss the problems here, but when the going gets tough, apparently the tough get going by heading home.

We have until January 3, apparently, when the new Congress is sworn in, to get things done with a Republican majority in the House and a Republican majority in the Senate. We passed a tax bill. There have been other good bills passed, as Chairman Hensarling was talking about. But when it comes to bills that have to do with whether or not this little experiment in self-government continues, we ought to be taking those up.

It has been interesting. There have been many times since I have been here when we saw Republicans and some Democrats who were defeated in a November election and some of them threw up their hands and said: Why should I even come back? I am going to have to have a new job, come January. I have sacrificed so much time being away from my family. What is the use of my coming back in November and December?

But I was greatly gratified at our Conference yesterday to hear people, some who are coming back because they were reelected and some, surprisingly, based on past history, who have been defeated and have said, as Dana Rohrabacher said: Look, I am not going to be back in January, but I would like to have Christmas Day with my family. But other than Christmas Day, I am willing to come back every day if we can help America protect their future.

There are some very noble people here who understand that the burden of Congress, the House and Senate, is not to impose our will on the American people. It is to protect them. We are

not supposed to be the referee, the coach, the player. The American people should really be the participants. The government is supposed to be the referee. And, yes, we have got to have criminal justice so that when the referee makes a call, it can be enforced.

As a former judge who sent no telling how many people to prison over a 10-year period, I agonized over every one of those cases when I was going to look somebody in the eye and pronounce their sentence. Sometimes juries did it, but there were far more that didn't request a jury trial. Maybe they pled guilty and sought sentencing. Sometimes there were plea agreements. It was up to the judge whether you go along with the plea agreement. Sometimes I didn't.

One of the bills that is being talked about, which is criminal justice reform, which we badly need, desperately need, is actually going to be a slap in the face of every Federal judge who has ever agonized over what is an appropriate sentence.

I think it is fine to tell judges what the rules are when they go into a sentencing so they know what kind of sentence this is really going to be, in terms of real years. But to come back after judges have already agonized, they have had the hearings, considered every possible thing, and say: You know what? We are going to change the rules. We haven't read about the cases you judges agonized over and came to a conclusion on, but we are going to change them anyway.

They don't consider the fact that in so many prosecutions, in the very few Federal cases that are simple possession, it normally has to be a pretty big deal, and that is based on my own experience. I have been a prosecutor. I have been appointed to defend criminal cases in Federal court, State court. I actually was appointed to appeal a capital murder conviction, which was successfully overturned at the highest court in Texas. So I have seen it from all angles: prosecutor, judge, and chief justice reviewing on appeal.

You don't change the rules after they are made. That is why there is a provision in the Constitution that says Congress is not supposed to enact any ex post facto laws. And, yes, that is not specifically pertaining to going back and changing sentences after the fact, but when I read that, under the bill being considered, sex offenders will be released early--or can be--there are many people that will likely be released early, including those--and it is not even considered that some really bad guys, evil people who cut a deal to rat out on people that were even more evil, if they got a deal cut under the Federal system, you can't just agree to a term of years and recommend to the judge like you can in State courts like Texas, but they agree on charges. Okay. We won't pursue the fact that you had a gun at the time and you were trying to use it. We will waive that if you help us with that. And that will make you look like a much more innocent guy. Or, we will let you plead to simple possession and we won't even bring up all this myriad of other charges. We will just let you plead to this one and let all these others go.

Those things go into the consideration of the court and of the prosecutors when they make recommendations. They will come back after the fact and say: We are going to reform criminal justice, but not the way you, Louie, have been wanting to, you in the ACLU and The Heritage Foundation, and others have agreed on in the past, where we would require a mens rea, an intent, a guilty-mind process for most crimes.

Or, perhaps another one that is a pet peeve of mine, supposedly we have, maybe, 5,000 criminal laws in the Federal system and so many of them say it's punishable by X number of years in prison, such and such fine for any violation hereunder or any regulation hereunder, which allows bureaucrats who have never been elected; who are not necessarily carrying out the will of any American public, just their own personal feelings; that have not been ever voted on, and they pass regulations.

You have regulations, like you have the poor guy that checked the box ground only as the way he was mailing it, and he didn't know some bureaucrat had passed a regulation, put one through that says, you have got to put a stamp on it that has an airplane with a red line through the airplane. So he was hauled off to another State and had never violated the law at all.

There are so many injustices in our Federal system, so many things that need fixing. Some have pointed out the inequity in years, like, back in the eighties when laws were passed that actually made it tougher on sentencing for having crack cocaine than having real powder cocaine--I was a member on the Judiciary Committee when this debate came up--and how it was really a racist law that made it a tougher penalty for having crack cocaine, which more African Americans had, than the powdered cocaine, which was worse, which was more often possessed by Anglo Americans.

Dan corrected the record and I went back and did some digging and found out, wow, he is right. That there were people, like Charlie Rangel and others, who were members of the Congressional Black Caucus who had said anybody that didn't vote for a tougher penalty on crack cocaine than on powder cocaine was a racist, because crack cocaine was destroying African American communities and we needed tougher laws.

But over a 30-year period, or so, people forgot why the punishment for powder cocaine was not as tough a punishment as for crack cocaine. It was passed, as Dan pointed out. People didn't want to be called racists and they were told by some in the Congressional Black Caucus that you would be a racist if you don't make it a tougher penalty on crack cocaine. They didn't want to be called racist, so they voted and agreed to make it tougher penalties for having crack cocaine.

There is a lot of criminal justice that needs reform and there really shouldn't have been a difference between crack cocaine and powder cocaine. These are things we can debate, we can work out well, and not have a reform shoved through that is going to release people prematurely that should not be released. There is time to work that out.

Some of us were surprised to see the ACLU, the Heritage Foundation, Bobby Scott, and Louie Gohmert working together to try to work on reform. There are things we can work together, even when Republicans lose the majority in January.

So that is not as critical to get that done right now. When we do criminal justice reform, let's make sure we get it right and don't get people killed because we rushed through something that sounded good, but when you got down to the finer points, it created problems.

I was pleased to hear that Jared Kushner was interested in talking to people and talked to some friends of mine about problems they had with that bill. Well, we need to work those out. We don't need to spend time here rushing a bill like that through.

But the President won his election in 2016, and the most memorable promise that he made, he knew he was going to need the help of Congress, and he has been begging for the help of Congress, and he has been told over and over for the last, nearly, 2 years: Okay. We will get to that. We will get to that. We can't get it in this bill, but we will get to that.

As I have told our Conference more than once, the voters are going to come out in 2020, those who voted for Donald Trump, and probably mostly all of them will vote for him again, because he really has been trying to do what he said.

We said we were going to help, and we haven't helped him. The number one most memorable thing voters recall is the promise for a wall. As President Trump has said, we don't need 2,000 miles of wall, but there are places where we desperately need it. We are told: Well, it's just too hard to get the votes in the Senate. You would have to have 60 votes.

Well, I have had some good ideas over the years. Sometimes I have asked colleagues to be the lead sponsor on legislation I have come up with that was part of the committee of jurisdiction so they have a better chance of getting it through. Regardless, I know a good bill when I see it. And Brad Byrne has a good bill, H.R. 7073--and I love its title--the 50 Votes for the Wall Act. It eliminates the need for the 60 votes in the Senate. I know we have some House leadership that think it is just going to be too hard to get those votes in the Senate, so why even waste the House's time.

Well, it is because we have a chance to fix something that is terribly broken that exposes Americans to loss of life, loss of property, all kinds of losses, including the loss of a free United States of America. It is that desperate of a situation.

And the Border Patrol, most of the ones I know and have talked to, say: If you allow some of this big--whether you call it a caravan or call it what it really is, an attempted invasion, there are going to be bigger and bigger caravans and invasions. Some of them will end up being so big, you will not be able to stop them, not with troops. It would require all-out war.

The time to stop it is now.

We have seen the photographs of some walled fences where people want to thumb their noses at United States sovereignty. We take an oath. We are supposed to protect the Constitution.

Our number one obligation is to protect the American people. Going back to, metaphorically, the referee-coach-player situation, we are supposed to make sure that the players have a venue where they can safely pursue the free enjoyment of their activity.

And we know--we have heard it from the Mexican officials--there are hundreds of known criminals. Just in the invasive caravan they have seen so far, we know there is MS-13. We know there are people who are going to do terrible damage, cause loss of life, limb, and property.

If we are going to carry out our obligation to the American people, we need to protect them. We need to make sure people come in orderly.

People can slam the American people and raise issues about: Oh, gosh, you guys are such xenophobes and, oh, you have so much hate.

No. We have a love for the American people.

If a parent sees somebody trying to break into their home who is suffering from an illness that will likely be caught by others who are lawfully in the home, that parent would have an obligation, morally, legally. You are supposed to protect your children. Some go to jail for not protecting their children.

In that scenario, which we know there are people with illnesses trying to barge into America, and obviously there are people who have come into America with illnesses we thought we had gotten rid of in the United States, they are bringing them back in.

That is why there was an Ellis Island. That is why democratic presidents and Congresses had gone to such extremes to make sure people were properly vetted, so that the people to whom they answered could live more safely, freely, without fear of an invasion.

We have that obligation to make sure the American people are protected.

Brad Byrne's bill gets around the 60-vote requirement in the Senate. We have one of the smartest Speakers we have ever had in Paul Ryan. He has been former chair of the Budget Committee. He knows exactly how to go about getting a reconciliation effort accomplished.

Under the process known as reconciliation, all that they would need to do is bring up a 2019 budget resolution that would alter reconciliation instructions. Under Brad's bill, it would provide $25 billion for a border wall that would be placed in mandatory spending, and that would be as instructed by the Homeland Security Committee.

It is a majority vote to make that budget change. It is a budget resolution. That is what it would take. Once that is done, then the money could be placed into this trust account that is being set up under the Byrne bill.

I know, back a year and a half ago, we heard all kinds of threats: Oh, we can't really repeal ObamaCare because of the Byrd rule. Can't do it under reconciliation. Oh, the Byrd rule. Oh, we can't.

We had Republican leaders in the House and Senate telling us: Well, no, the Byrd rule won't let that happen. Sorry. It won't let it happen.

Nobody bothered to go check with the Parliamentarian. The Parliamentarian is not even the last word. Parliamentarians--I am very sorry to say this, but it is true--sometimes are wrong.

I don't know of a time when our current Parliamentarian was wrong, but I certainly know of a prior occasion when a predecessor, since I have been here, was totally wrong.

The Parliamentarian doesn't make decisions. The Parliamentarian gives advice. The decision comes from the Chair.

So, Mike Lee, Senator Lee, went and asked the Parliamentarian: Do you think this will violate the Byrd rule?

Well, I can't give a preliminary opinion, but I don't see anything there that would violate the Byrd rule. No, I don't think it would be a problem.

Wow.

We had been told for a month that we couldn't do that, that we couldn't repeal ObamaCare, because the Byrd rule wouldn't let it happen under reconciliation. Turned out, nobody checked, and they were wrong. It could have been done. It should have been done.

The first bill, thank God we didn't pass that, but we passed the second one. As I was talking with some colleagues today, if the Senate had joined us, it would have materially helped the American people.

I know there are those who say: Look, the Senate doesn't have the votes.

Well, they could get 50 votes, because we could pass it with 50 votes. I know Mike Pence, our Vice President, would help support President Trump and break a tie.

We could get this done. But the Senate will have no pressure until this body passes a budget resolution with reconciliation instructions. And the Senate will need to do that, but they are not going to feel any pressure until we do it here.

There are House Members, Republican House Members, some returning, some not returning next year, and they are willing to do the work to try to save American lives in this little experiment in self- government.

We have had so many people that have been miseducated to think that: You know, gee, socialism is a good way to go. It would be great for America.

We are seeing the polls reflect that more and more often. Well, let me make clear, anybody that will study history knows socialism, number one, always fails. Number two, you can't have socialism or communism or progressivism, whichever one you want to call it, unless you have a very powerful, totalitarian type government that takes from people who don't want to give it up and gives it to people who do want to give it up.

You don't have a middle class. That was one thing Karl Marx did not foresee, the strong middle class that would grow in America that set us apart from most anywhere else. That is why we did not become communist back when there were communists trying to push us there, because we had a strong middle class.

But in socialism, communism, progressivism, you will have a ruling class, and that is why there are so many billionaires now pushing to try to get us to socialism. They know, or at least they believe, people are too stupid to know how to live, so us ultra-rich billionaires, we will fund socialist-type candidates, because we know, if we get to socialism, you have a ruling class and you have a ruled class, and there is no middle class. You give up so much of your freedom.

It has to stop, and it is going to be stopped only if we will go ahead and push through a reconciliation bill that allows us to give the money to President Trump so we can get a wall built where we need it and secure the American people.

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

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

The motion was agreed to; accordingly (at 8 o'clock and 55 minutes p.m.), the House adjourned until tomorrow, Friday, November 30, 2018, at 9 a.m.

Mr. Speaker, I thank my friend very much. We have been friends a long time and brothers in Christ during all of that time.

It is important to give proper recognition where that recognition is due and, actually, the words of John Adams, our first Vice President under our Constitution, who wrote to Thomas Jefferson on Christmas Day 1813 and said: ``I have examined all, as well as my narrow sphere, my straitened means, and my busy life would allow me; and the result is that the Bible is the best book in the world. It contains more of my little philosophy than all the libraries I have seen; and such parts of it as I cannot reconcile to my little philosophy, I postpone for future investigation.''

It also should be noted that it was the first thing that was published. It was in 1782, the United States Congress authorized the printing and said that: ``Whereupon, Resolved, That the United States in Congress assembled highly approve the pious and laudable undertaking of Mr. Aitkin, as subservient to the interest of religion as well as an instance of the progress of arts in this country, and being satisfied from the above report, of his care and accuracy in the execution of the work, they recommend this edition of the Bible to the inhabitants of the United States, and hereby authorize him to publish this recommendation. . . . `'

That was the Bible. And even a letter from George Washington, wishing that that had been published in time that he could have made a gift to every one of the soldiers in the Revolution.

But this is a statement--this is my uncle's little New Testament. On the front, in metal, it says: ``May the Lord be with you.'' It was given to the members of the military in World War II. And inside it says: ``The White House, Washington. As Commander in Chief, I take pleasure in commending the reading of the Bible to all who serve in the Armed Forces of the United States. Throughout the centuries, men of many faiths and diverse origins have

found in the Sacred Book words of wisdom, counsel, and inspiration. It is a fountain of strength and now, as always, an aid in attaining the highest aspirations of the human soul.'' Signed, President Franklin D. Roosevelt.

It was an inspiration then. It is an inspiration now. As C.S. Lewis said: This is our messages from our home headquarters while we are behind what he called rebel-occupied territory in this world where the prince of darkness is too often found.

It has been the most quoted book in the history of Congress, and I would hope and pray that will continue.

Mr. Speaker, I yield myself such time as I may consume.

It is important, I think, to note, so you get a sense of what the gray wolves have done, that 1987 was when a plan was finalized to restore them to the Northern Rockies by transplanting the wolves from Canada into central Idaho, Yellowstone National Park.

In 1995 and 1996, 66 Canadian wolves were transplanted, with a goal of establishing 10 breeding pairs in each of three recovery zones in Idaho, Montana, and Wyoming for three consecutive years.

Well, guess what, Mr. Speaker?

Those 66 Canadian wolves have done pretty well. In fact--and I think this is largely why the scientists with the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, with whom I have had many disagreements--but in this, these folks have come out and said: You know what? The U.S. population of 5,500 wolves have done real well since being transplanted from Canada. They are not the original U.S. wolves, but from Canada. They are bigger, more aggressive. But there are 3,800 just in the upper Great Lakes, 8,000 to 11,000 in Alaska, and now 60,000 in Canada. As their numbers increase, so do the massive problems.

I appreciated the anecdotal information about seeing more elk and moose. I would suggest, based on the rapidly escalating number of attacks, that you are going to see more and more elk and moose want to come hang around the cars so they don't get eaten by wolves. So you will have more and more tourists seeing elk and moose, but their populations are diminishing.

In fact, it is rather dramatic. Wolves eat 20 pounds of meat a day and elk comprise 92 percent of the wolf kills during the winter. Other prey include moose, caribou, deer, beaver, hares, and livestock.

In 1995, there were 19,000 elk in the northern Yellowstone herd. By 2008, there were 5,000. That is down from 19,000. The moose herd in the area also dropped from more than 1,000 to somewhere around 100 to 300. I am sure they will get to hanging out with tourists more and more just to keep from getting eaten.

Mr. Speaker, I yield such time as he may consume to the gentleman from Wisconsin (Mr. Gallagher).

Mr. Speaker, I reserve the balance of my time.

Mr. Speaker, I yield myself 1 minute.

Mr. Speaker, I know there is a contention that gray wolves, though they have dramatically exploded from those 66 original wolves being introduced to thousands and thousands now, are not

a threat to people; but I would suggest to you that, not only have the liberals in the U.S. Government seen a need year after year to delist the gray wolves, but a college student named Kenton Carnegie's family members would suggest that, when Kenton was killed by gray wolves, the gray wolves were a threat to mankind; and Candice Berner, a teacher in Alaska who was killed while jogging, her surviving family members would suggest gray wolves are a threat to people.

Mr. Speaker, I reserve the balance of my time, and I ask unanimous consent that time be managed by the gentleman from Arkansas (Mr. Westerman).

Mr. Speaker, we are living in interesting times. As Dickens said, it is the best of times and the worst of times.

There has never been a country in the history of the world with the amount of opportunity and freedom for individuals that has been found in the United States. Even in Solomon's Israel--great wealth there-- there was not the opportunity and the individual assets that we have here in the United States of America.

It is incredible that even for the Nation's poor, obesity is a major health issue. That is just unheard of in world history.

It is deeply grieving to hear that so many of our Nation's college students and college graduates have been indoctrinated with the notion that socialism is so much better. Communism, really, is what we are talking about. They call it progressivism and socialism, what they are proposing, that that would be a superior form of government to what we have. What those students have not been taught--and it is an enormous gap

in education; it is an enormous area of ignorance for those students-- is that you can't have socialism or communism without giving up a tremendous amount freedom.

That was one of the things that scared some people in the Soviet Union, when the Soviet Union came to exist no more. They had given up so much liberty, the idea that they were now free to find whatever job they wanted, and they didn't have to just take what the government told them to take. They could find whatever job they wanted. They could be entrepreneurs.

I talked to some. They were scared because with liberty and with freedom comes uncertainty.

But the Founders felt that government had always been a threat to people's freedom, to their liberty. They felt liberty, freedom, was far superior to security. It is often attributed to Franklin that those who would give up liberty for security or safety deserve neither.

When you really break down a socialist, communist system, you don't have a middle class. You have a ruling class, and you have a ruled class. That is what we are headed for.

I believe we saw the beginnings of that in this last election when billionaires poured hundreds of millions of dollars into this election like never before, because unlike many of our college students now, they know what happens in a socialist, communist system. You have the ruling class, and you have the ruled class.

Yes, it is true. It is so wonderful that the ruled class basically has the same amount of money. They get paid similar amounts. But I kind of like the idea of physicians being paid more than most people, because that means you draw the best and brightest into that profession. I found that not to be the case as an exchange student in the Soviet Union back when it was the Soviet Union. I got a glimpse of their socialized medicine, and thanked God, literally, that I lived in the United States and didn't have to be part of a socialized medicine system where the doctors were paid the same amount whether they saw one or two people or they saw the 40, 50 people who were waiting to see them. They didn't care. They were going to make the same amount every day.

Exactly that was what the farmers said at a collective farm when I asked in the middle of the morning when they worked out in the field, because it was midmorning. I have worked on farms and ranches. In the middle of July, like this was, you would normally start at sunup, so you could finish by midafternoon before the sun got too hot. Here these farmers were sitting in the shade.

I couldn't tell what was cultivated. There were thousands and thousands of acres out there. I couldn't tell what was cultivated and what wasn't.

I tried to use my best Russian to ask: When do you work out in the field?

I pointed. They laughed. I thought maybe I had said it wrong, but one of the farmers said: I make the same number of rubles if I am out there in the sun as I do here in the shade, so I am here in the shade.

That basically explains why the Soviet Union could never come anywhere close to being as productive with wheat and with crops as we were in the United States.

People, going back to the Pilgrims after the first winter, loved the idea of bringing all into the common storehouse. Everybody was sharing and sharing alike until after that first winter when so many Pilgrims died. They found that the idea of private property where people could keep what they produced was just fantastic. They were so much more productive. They worked harder, and it was better for the overall community.

But we seem to be slipping into a time when the concept of freedom will be forsaken for bigger and bigger government, and more and more government intrusion. You have to have, though, a totalitarian government for socialism or communism, either one, to succeed. That is how you eliminate the middle class. You have the ruled class, and you have the rich class and the powerful class.

Sometimes they may not have as much money as they do power, but I think the reason we see billionaires pushing us in the direction of socialism is because they see themselves in the ruling class and see themselves as being so much wiser, and they see what they perceive should be the ruled class as not being nearly as smart and as inventive as they are.

So things will be just paradise. It will be utopian, once you have the billionaires--and I think some people who want to push us in that direction who are not billionaires still have to consider they know so much better than individuals across the country, and we would profit so much more from having this intelligentsia be the ruling class and all the rest of us be minions and do what we are told. We never have to decide what job we have.

We have been moving in that direction. That is why I think you saw under the Obama administration the takeover of student loans. Then you will see, I think, in the next couple years a move toward more and more control over college students. You will see an effort to say: Look, there is so much student debt, why don't we tell these students that if you go to the location we tell you, if you go take the job we tell you, then we will start forgiving your debt, as long as you do what we tell you?

There again, we are on the road to giving up a middle class and to giving up our liberty and freedom, letting there be a ruling class that we will call the government.

When I was studying history at Texas A&M, I did a research paper on the Soviet government. I was intrigued that Khrushchev, as Premier of the Soviet Union, understood that true communism theoretically did not have a government in existence. True communism means from those according to their ability, to those according to their need. People shared and shared alike. Regardless of how hard they worked, everybody shared equally. But in true communism, there is no government.

The Premier, Khrushchev, set up a commission to come up--they loved their 5-year plan for their economy--with a plan of how they could move to ultimate communism when there was no government. There would just be the people existing--loving, living together, and sharing together-- without a government.

It didn't take too long--I can't remember, a year or 2--until the commission and Khrushchev realized that, in this world, you can never have communism or socialism without a totalitarian government. He disbanded the commission. They never achieved their plan of how they could move into ultimate communism with no government, and so they moved forward with a totalitarian government.

Of course, those who actually study real history know that no truly socialist or communist government has ever succeeded. They always fail. Margaret Thatcher said that they fail when they run out of other people's money to spend.

But we seem to be moving there. It wasn't lost on some that, during the Obama administration, we had millions more added to poverty and in need of government assistance. We had so many moved out of the middle class into poverty. At the same time, President Obama himself admitted--it is on video, and it is the only time it has ever happened in the history of the United States of America. Under President Obama's administration, for the first time in American history, 95 percent of the American income went to the top 1 percent income earners.

It had never happened before. I hope and pray it doesn't happen again. It has been fantastic in the last 2 years, or since President Trump has taken office, that we have seen the economy surge. We heard from President Obama that it is unlikely we would ever hit 3 percent growth again and that those days were behind us.

So the middle class shrunk. The ruling class got more and more power. People were standing in line saying: Oh, please, master government, give me more of this, give me more of that. And it has been so refreshing to see millions no longer needing government assistance in different areas and that they are getting better jobs.

But that shouldn't have been a revelation, because if you look at single-mom income when adjusted for inflation from 1965, when welfare began, to 1995, when a work requirement was

added by the brand-new Republican majority under Speaker Newt Gingrich, that single-mom income adjusted for inflation for those 30 years flatlined. Single moms had no increase in income adjusted for inflation for 30 years.

When the Republican majority in 1995 added a work requirement that you couldn't get welfare unless you worked, if you were able to work, for the first time single-mom income, when adjusted for inflation, started taking off.

I saw a graph by a dean at Harvard when I was there for a seminar. I was amazed, for one thing, that they would show that, reveal that at Harvard. But it was amazing.

So, on the one hand, you had people that say: We care more about single moms, so we are going to give them more money for every child they can have out of wedlock. What it did was pull them into a rut they could not get out of.

When I was a felony judge in Texas, one of the things that really began to deeply trouble me is seeing more women coming before me-- single moms--for welfare fraud as a felony. I never sent any of those women to prison. I always gave them probation. But the stories were normally very, very similar. There were a number of different races. That wasn't the issue.

But the big point that seemed to be repeated over and over was often they were bored in high school. Someone would say: If you have a baby, you don't have to finish high school. The government will start sending you a check. And then they would have a baby out of wedlock. The government would send them a check, and then they find out you can't live very well like that.

So the ones that came before me--I know it is not a blanket case--but the ones that came before me, most of them would have another child, thinking maybe if I can get another check, I can get out of this hole. And they would get in a deeper and longer rut they could not extricate themselves from.

I have had great conversations with Star Parker, who can testify about the trouble with that. I have spoken to sociology classes at Texas college, a traditionally Black college, as well as Wiley College and Jarvis College in my district. They have done an amazing job of educating, so often it is the first person in a family to have ever gone to college. What is amazing is that once that first child gets to college, then their children end up going to major universities. It is just a wonderful, great step to help pull people out of poverty.

I heard from students--the most vocal were single moms in their late twenties, some in their thirties--who realized that I am not going to have a good life if I stay in poverty. They set about to improve themselves through education. It was amazing to hear some of them, just adamant, you have got to have a mandatory work requirement, and another saying you have got to drug test people who are on welfare.

These are all African American single moms. One of them was saying: Nobody ever drug-tested me, so I can take government money and spend it on drugs. They were asserting that we should do things that this Congress has never ventured out to do. But they were adamant, because they have been lulled into, enticed into a hole, a rut that they were almost not able to get out of.

A government should not be about luring people into holes or ruts from which they cannot extricate themselves. We ought to be about pushing, encouraging people to reach their greatest potential. That can not, will not, does not, has not ever happened in a socialist or communist system. If you get rid of the middle class, you have a ruling class, and you have a ruled class.

If you wanted to call it sort of a middle class in the Soviet Union, they didn't make more money than the rest in the ruled class, but if people had a little bit of power or a lot, then people that were part of the ruled class that had a shoe store or a grocery store or some other kind of place where goods or services could be purchased--but especially goods--the storekeeper would reserve things in the back to give to people that might have a little power that could help them.

But I will never forget when, one morning, in a youth hostel in Moscow, a Ukrainian friend was staying in our room with me and two others--there were 8 Americans in the Soviet Union that summer--and a cleaning lady came in and she saw the Ukrainian and screamed and ran out of the room.

I said: Why did she scream? Why is she going?

He said: In your country, you are able to elevate yourself by working harder, making more money. You can elevate yourself. In my country, the only way you can elevate yourself is to step on other people. So she is going to run down and tell people I shouldn't be here. She will step on me. It will elevate her a little bit. That is what we do in our country to get ahead. We step on each other, trying to get ahead.

I said: That makes no sense. What has she got to gain by running down and saying that you are here?

He said: She will be elevated for ratting me out.

We are looking at major changes in this country. We are looking at a couple of years where there will be some socialist notions that will be brought here to the floor. But as we saw during the Obama administration, the economy doesn't do well, people don't do well, people don't see right.

We were moving dramatically in a socialist direction. ObamaCare was the first step toward total socialized medicine. But as I have told some of the Big Pharma lobbyists back when it passed and some of the big insurance people and AARP, who sold their souls to endorse the program, yes, you are going to make more money than you ever made in the short term. But by endorsing this program, you may well have signed your own death warrant. Down the road, maybe it is 15 years, but at some point you will cease to exist or you will be making next to nothing.

But unfortunately, some of the big rich folks and some of the top corporate positions knew that if they made extra billions for their industry in the short term, they would have a golden parachute and they would be gone before their industry was destroyed by socialized medicine. And they didn't seem to care. Of course, AARP sold out to seniors, because ObamaCare had a $716 billion cut to Medicare and the seniors are feeling it now.

But we had a new group of voters come out. They don't understand what happens in either socialized medicine or in a socialized system and they think it is going to be wonderful. Well, if you like less freedom, less assets, less opportunity, then socialism, progressivism, communism, whatever phase you want to call it, you will love a socialistic system.

We have seen also the courts moving us in that direction. They have taken over more and more. Though the Founders saw the judiciary as being the least threat to liberty of the three branches, we have allowed the judiciary to basically become oligarchs and run America. Presidents are no longer allowed to make decisions as the Constitution and the Congress both have directed, when it comes to immigration, refugees. So, it is not just voters. We have seen the courts do their share in moving us toward a socialized system.

But here again, like the billionaires, some of these judges--not all; I have been there, I have been a judge, been a chief justice--but some of these Federal judges see themselves one day alongside the billionaires as being part of the ruling class as we get rid of the middle class and have the ruling class and the ruled class.

My hope, my prayer, the reason I am still here in Congress--I ran again--is to try to get us off this track. I deeply regret that we wasted September, haven't done a whole lot this week, but I think the best Christmas present that this Congress, this current Republican majority could give America is--obviously, we are out now today until Thanksgiving--but stay in session through Christmas Day if we have to, through January 1, if we have to, and work out some of these issues, including money to build a wall where it is needed.

That is not only good for America. It will help reduce the 70,000- plus Americans who are killed from drug poisons coming from Mexico drug cartels, but it also would be the best thing we could ever do for our neighbors in Mexico. They ought to be a top 10 economy in

the world. The only reason they are not is because of corruption from the drug cartels.

Look historically at what they have got. They have got more natural resources than most countries in the world. They have got a better location than even the United States. They are between two continents, between two oceans. They have got it all going on. And they have some of the hardest working people in the whole world.

Why are they not a top 10 economy? Because of the drug cartel's corruption, the control they have over government.

We cut anywhere from 80 billion--some estimates say they made that much last year on drugs sent into the U.S. Some say they may be making as much from human trafficking, getting people into the United States.

Heck, they have people pay them to get them into the United States so they can be sent by DHS to a city where the drug cartels need them to sell drugs or be engaged in sex trafficking, human trafficking, and that is what has been going on all through the Obama years.

That is why Border Patrol said the drug cartels call us, the DHS, their logistics. They get them into our country illegally, and then we ship them wherever the drug cartels want them to go. They give them the address; our people would send them there.

That is being changed under this President, but it may not change for long with the new Congress. We will see.

We owe America better than we gave them the last almost 2 years, and I hope and pray we are going to come back and not just snap the ball and fall on it, but do some good that we should have done long before now in the next couple of months.

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 12 o'clock and 1 minute p.m.), under its previous order, the House adjourned until Tuesday, November 20, 2018, at 10:30 a.m.

Mr. Speaker, Texas is blessed to have had some absolutely extraordinary, inspirational people who have accomplished some manifestly phenomenal things. One of those extraordinary, inspirational individuals who has already inspired a nation is London Hibbs of Tyler, Texas who, as Miss Texas' Outstanding Teen, recently captured the prestigious title of Miss America's Outstanding Teen 2019 in Orlando, Florida.

London will have the remarkable opportunity to speak to audiences nationwide about her personal platform, ``Check Yes 4 Life,'' which encourages teen organ donation registration.

The little sister program to Miss America, the Miss America's Outstanding Teen Organization is, one of the nation's leading achievement programs encouraging and nurturing scholastic achievement, creative accomplishment, healthy living, and community involvement of our nation's youth.

London's academic and creative endeavors already reflect an unusual maturity, embodying the drive, dedication, and desire that marks exceptionally successful adults. She is an Honor Roll student, member of Mensa, gifted vocal soloist who has performed in Carnegie Hall, enthusiastic community volunteer, accomplished actress, and is highly respected as a leader among her peers.

As a result of London's prestigious accomplishment, she has been awarded more than $30,000 in scholarships, after securing preliminary wins in both the Talent and the Evening Wear/Onstage Question portions of the competition. Every aspect of her life and her persona reflect well on all who have assisted her along the way.

As she travels the country this year, all of us can look forward to the significant impact London will make on the thousands upon thousands of people she will meet as she inspires them to reach for their dreams.

It will be a great pleasure to watch her pursue and achieve her aspirations beyond the opportunities afforded her during this year of service as well, just as it has been a great honor for me personally to know, respect, and admire the entire Hibbs family.

It is truly a distinct privilege to honor this exceptional young lady, our reigning Miss America's Outstanding Teen 2019 London Hibbs, whose landmark accomplishments will endure as long as there is a United States of America.

Mr. Speaker, the following certificate of congressional recognition is presented to the Stone Fort Chapter, Daughters of the Republic of Texas October 2, 2018:

Upon the dedication of the monument to honor Trammel's

Trace, the First Road to Texas, upon whose path, such notable

Texans as Sam Houston, Jim Bowie and Davy Crockett traveled

into Nacogdoches and on to the battles of the Revolution; and

in further recognition of its historic significance as a

route which brought many to settle this great and untamed

territory along the Red and Sabine Rivers, all while

promoting trade and commerce along its well-travelled path,

thereby paving the way for the establishment of the Great

Republic of Texas.

Presented on this 2nd day of October in the year of our

Lord 2018.