Floor Statements

Mr. Speaker, we are blessed, in the First District of Texas, to have been home to a multitude of extraordinary individuals who have made significant impacts upon not only the State of Texas and our nation, but the entire world. Today, we honor one of these extraordinary individuals from east Texas, the late Dr. Mildred Fay Jefferson.

Dr. Jefferson was a young prodigy, raised in the town of Carthage, Texas. Her early education was completed before she reached the age of fifteen, graduating from Carthage Colored High School--later known as Turner High School--in 1943.

The determined young woman obtained a Bachelor's degree in Medicine from Texas College at the age of eighteen, and in 1947, she completed her Master's degree in Biology from Tufts University. Dr. Jefferson then conquered the odds and became the first African American woman to graduate with a Ph.D. from Harvard Medical School, in 1951.

After becoming a medical doctor, Dr. Jefferson continued to make history with a long string of ``firsts'' for women--including being the first woman to serve on staff at Boston City Hospital, the first woman to be granted membership in the Boston Surgical Society, and the first female Surgeon General at Boston University Medical Center.

Dr. Jefferson married former Navy Lieutenant Shane Cunningham in 1961. After their divorce in 1978, Dr. Jefferson turned her life to activism, by establishing the Massachusetts Citizens for Life Council.

It was a decision made by the American Medical Association in 1970, however, that ignited Dr. Jefferson's passion to defend life. It was at this time that the American Medical Association decided that they would allow member physicians, who performed abortions in states where this procedure was already allowed, to perform abortions and view them ethically. Viewing this decision as the abandonment of the Hippocratic Oath to ``do no harm,'' Dr. Jefferson began a nationwide outcry against abortion.

Dr. Jefferson helped form the Value of Life Committee which was one of the organizations that initiated the national ``right-to-life'' movement which endures to this day. She quickly became one of the most sought after and fervent spokespersons in the nation to represent the pro-life stance. In 1981, Dr. Jefferson testified before Congress as a result of the historic 1973 Supreme Court case, Roe v. Wade.

Dr. Jefferson was quoted as saying, ``I became a physician in order to save lives, not to destroy them.'' She also said, ``I am not willing to stand aside and allow this concept of expendable human lives to turn this great land of ours into just another exclusive reservation where only the perfect, the privileged, and the planned have the right to live.''

The National Right to Life Committee (NRLC) was co-founded by Dr. Jefferson in 1973. She then entered the world of politics, running for the U.S. Senate from Massachusetts in 1982, 1990, and 1994.

Dr. Jefferson was honored with twenty-eight honorary degrees from numerous universities and colleges. Although Dr. Jefferson passed away at the age of eighty-four on October 15, 2010, her life's mission continues today. She will be forever remembered as one of the most notable and unwavering crusaders for the rights of unborn children.

It is truly a distinct privilege to honor this remarkable woman, whose exceptional life, steadfast devotion, and landmark accomplishments are included in the Record, which will endure as long as there is a United States of America.

Mr. Speaker, I certainly thank my new friend, Mr. Leonard Lance, from New Jersey for his great help in marshaling this bill, and I appreciate the bipartisan support. I understand there is another element regarding location and there is some disagreement. I see the merit. I understand some have concerns.

But what we found out, just to go back, people have talked about how Kari Hunt was viscously attacked by her estranged husband, and her little 9-year-old daughter calling 911. The way that was learned was-- and by the way, she was not only stabbed 21 times, she was repeatedly struck. This is an attack that went on over several minutes.

Her brutal, mean-spirited estranged husband now says from prison: Well, I don't think it would have mattered if a 911 call had went through.

He was attacking her for several minutes. The police could get there in Marshall in a couple of minutes. It would have made all the difference.

But the way it was learned was that Hank had his little 9-year-old granddaughter in his lap after Kari was pronounced dead and was trying to console

her. She was weeping and said to her grandfather:

I don't know what happened. I kept dialing 911 and nothing ever happened. I would hang up, and I would dial 911, and nothing happened.

That is when Hank began to look into it and found out the situation. Then, after he brought it to my attention, we got to looking into it. The hotel associations and the other groups have been very helpful.

It turns out that it is not an expense. All it takes is the government directing to make sure these phones are programmed so that when you dial 911, it goes straight out. It won't cost anything. The programmers themselves have said: Hey, if you have a problem, let us know. We will come out and fix that for free.

So all it takes is this government saying: Just do it, so when a child or adult or anyone dials 911 it goes out.

I thank my friend, Marsha Blackburn; I thank Senator Klobuchar for her work; and my staff, Caralee Conklin and Andrew Keyes, particularly, for working on this.

Tomorrow, Kari would have turned 36. I believe that this will prevent any other Karis in the future from having their birthday celebrated after they are deceased. This will be a legacy for Kari and for Hank, who are the family, and for her daughter.

I thank everyone involved in making this happen, and I thank my Democrat friend for working with us.

Mr. Speaker, I thank the gentleman from Iowa (Mr. King), my dear friend, for all of his work in this area; not just his work, but his leadership.

I know his heart beats with a desire to make sure that any heart beating is protected.

I heard a comedian on television this last night saying something about, ``Yeah, so many years ago I had an abortion because it is my choice,'' something of that order. The audience cheered and clapped. I thought, ``A comedian?'' My heart wasn't angry. My heart just broke for that child.

As my friend knows, my wife and I, our first child came 8 to 10 weeks early. They tried for 3 days to stop the contractions, and after 3 days it was clear our daughter was coming. Back then, it was far enough back that we really didn't know if we were going to be able to keep her.

The first day she was there in Tyler, we were losing her. I had had malpractice cases as a judge that involved the condition. I know for preemies they don't like to give too much extra oxygen because you get to 100 percent and it may cause blindness. It is a condition called retrolental fibroplasia. The retina has not matured enough, and in the presence of oxygen, the blood vessels constrict and cause little fibers to come out and separate from the back of the wall. I knew all of that. I knew all about what was going on.

When the pediatrician came in and tried to intubate our child, tried to get that tube in--he didn't intubate a lot of children. He was just a wonderful, caring doctor. They lost her three times. The monitors went off. They got her going again, tried to get the tube in so they could get more oxygen to her little, undeveloped lungs. He didn't know I was sitting there in the nursing station watching. It was like a horror movie. I was sorry I ever started watching it, but I could not leave until I found out how it came out.

Also, they were praying for my child and the doctor's hands and what he was doing. But he finally got her intubated and came out sweating profusely because he had that little child's life in his hands. I had already held our child. I could hold her in one hand. I was careful and preferred to use two.

But anyway, he made clear we needed to take her either to Dallas or Shreveport. At that time--now all kids, if they have to go somewhere, they go to Dallas, instate, from Tyler.

But at that time, I said: Well, which is more successful?

He said: It seems like the survival rate in Shreveport right now is a little better.

I don't know what it is now.

But I said: Let's get her to Shreveport.

So I wasn't sure. Kathy had to stay in the hospital there in Tyler, but I followed the ambulance and made sure she was checked in.

When I got over there, the doctor, I could understand why they had such a good survival rate. His name is Dr. Tsing. He, with one of the nurses, got me over to our daughter's isolette. It is open-air. They had the monitors hooked up. They had the halo around her head piping in extra oxygen.

He said: Please sit down here on this stool.

He said: Now, you are probably aware that her eyes are not functioning properly. She can't recognize you when she opens her eyes and tries to see, but she knows your voice. She has been listening to your voice for months. She knows you, and she is comforted by your voice because she knows you. So you sit here, and you talk to her, and you caress her little arms and face and talk to her, and you will do some good for her.

They said: We have a 2-hour limit on how long you can sit here, and then you have to take a break for a couple hours and you can come back.

The last thing Kathy had asked was that I do anything I could to help our little girl. So there I sat, and I caressed her little face.

The danger of a child born prematurely, the number one danger is the lungs not being properly developed to get enough air in to actually keep the child alive. So her breathing from the first moment of birth was very, very shallow, and her heart rate was erratic, very fast. You could see it on the monitors, very shallow, very fast, and very erratic breathing and heartbeat. But she had a heartbeat.

As the gentleman from Iowa has said many times, my friend, and Janet said many times: Gee, you walk in a room. You see a body not moving. You check to see if there is a heartbeat; and if there is a heartbeat, you know you have to call an ambulance. You have to do everything you can to try to keep that person living, which is, again, the principle behind the Heartbeat bill.

Her heart was beating just so very fast and erratically, but when I was playing with her little hand, she took her whole hand, it wrapped around the end of my finger, and she held on tight. It was a tight grip. This was a child whose lungs are not working so well, eyes aren't working that great, but she was holding on and holding tight.

I was there for 3 or 4 hours before Dr. Tsing came back. When he came back, he said: Have you looked up at the monitors?

I had not for a couple of hours or so. I looked up, and the breathing was very shallow, but it was no longer erratic. It had a regular beat, a regular rhythm to it. The heartbeat was still very fast, but it was not erratic. It was a regular heartbeat with a regular pattern.

Dr. Tsing said: She is drawing strength from you. She is drawing life from you.

I can tell you, when you know this little child is drawing life from you and strength from you, you don't want to leave. Finally, after 8 hours, the nurses and the doctor came over.

They said: You have to leave. It has been 8 hours.

I said: I don't want to leave. The monitors show she has a regular heartbeat, regular breathing. I don't want to leave.

They said: You were supposed to leave 6 hours ago. You have to leave now. Go somewhere.

I did leave and went to McDonald's. My heart was up there with our daughter, and so I rear-ended a lady right there by McDonald's. The policeman was very nice, and the lady that lived there in Shreveport was extremely nice, but I couldn't wait to get back to our child.

She is extraordinary, absolutely extraordinary in every way, one of the top artists in the world. She was chosen to be one of the first 12 artists that Swatch Art Peace Hotel dedicated to the arts in Shanghai, one of the first 12 they selected to live there as artist-in-residence from all over the world. She was one of the first 12--amazing talent.

I think about the talent of so many, 60 million children. Every one of them had some kind of gift, and they are gone.

I have appreciated the National Right to Life when I was in college, when I was out of college, and when I was a prosecutor after law school. When I was a practicing lawyer, local businessman, my own firm, I was elected a judge, I never wavered in my appreciation of the National Right to Life.

I want to make sure that people understand, we also have a Texas Right to Life. It is not National Right to Life. It is its own organization.

I have talked to the Grahams. The Grahams that head up the Texas Right to Life, God bless them. They have done incredible work, but they make clear, we don't care whose bill it is, we don't care who came up with the idea; if there is any bill that will prevent even one precious life from being aborted, that life being saved and allowed a chance to be loved and to love and to not be aborted, then they are on board.

That is the way everybody I knew who is pro-choice, meaning you choose

to live, that is the way I thought everybody was. So it has been quite an awakening to be here in Washington and to have any groups, especially one that I put up on a pedestal for so many years, for decades now, that says: Our board doesn't support a bill.

We have a bill, the pain-capable bill, heck, any bill--pain-capable? Yes, sign me on--that saves 5 to 15 percent of abortions, count me in; I am there.

Then, National Right to Life may save 80, 90 percent of the children who are being killed; count me in. I am in.

I thought that is where everybody would be. I don't know. I really don't understand. If it is a turf battle, it wasn't our idea. Why is it that any group doesn't support saving an additional life?

I do read the Bible every day. I made that promise I would read the Bible, and I do that. I have just gone, again, through some of the Old Testament books, and when I read the prophets talk about how evil a society was, they said that this king did right in the eyes of the Lord, and this king did evil in the eyes of the Lord. When the writer wants to really illustrate the point that a society had become so evil that it was an abomination to God, they would point out that they sacrificed their children on the altar of an idol.

I remember reading that as a kid, and I thought: What could be worse than that? I just cannot imagine a parent being willing to sacrifice their child. I can imagine my parents, lots of parents, fighting to the death to protect their child, but I just couldn't imagine how that could happen in these Old Testament days.

Then I came to realize we have been doing that since the seventies. We have been sacrificing these children who could survive on their own on the altar of individual choice: I am too busy to do other things. I don't have time for a child when there are parents begging for children to adopt.

So I just appreciate so much my friend speaking up on behalf of the unborn. We have heard from our Democratic friends so many times that a society is judged by the way they protect those who cannot protect themselves and help those who cannot protect themselves. Clearly, there is nobody more innocent and more in need of protection than a child not quite born that someone wants to kill.

So I appreciate my friend's illumination of what is going on. I thank him for his efforts not just tonight, but every day.

Mr. Speaker, it is nice to have the United States economy starting to win again. It was a great tribute to the President's leadership that we got a tax bill done that is already reaping fantastic benefits for so many across the country.

It is rather amazing to see people in some parts of the media who have taken surveys already to see if people have benefited from a tax bill that actually applies to the taxes due at the end of this year even before they get their February paycheck that will actually reflect those savings. But I guess if your goal is to undermine the President at every turn rather than to be fair and impartial media, that is the kind of thing you do in January. You do it quickly before individuals have a chance to say and know how much the tax bill will improve their lives.

It is also rather amazing to hear people from this body refer to a $1,000 bonus as crumbs. One would think you would have to basically be a multimillionaire to think of $1,000 as crumbs. But for those of us who cashed out most everything we had in order to come be a servant in Congress, $1,000 is still a lot of money. It will pay a lot of bills. It is good for American families and individuals that they are able to do that.

I do want to call attention to something that my friend, Mrs. Hartzler, referenced, and that is the threat of paychecks not coming to our military when they are in harm's way protecting our very freedoms that allow us to debate and push through legislation.

Going back to 2011, I saw the military used as pawns in order to force--or try to force--Republicans to vote for a bad continuing resolution that broke many of our promises. I had encouraged the Speaker, at that time, that we needed to do something to make sure that our military--the military pay--was treated as our Social Security paychecks were treated where they are on automatic pilot, and even if there is a shutdown, those checks continue to go out.

I know that is a surprise to some of our seniors because, in the last administration, the President and others continually told people that, if there was a shutdown, the Social Security checks would not be going out. Unfortunately, that was just a problem of ignorance, and, of course, there is no House rule that objects to our pointing out ignorance of a fact. But the fact is Social Security checks go out automatically. If someone is entitled to an increase in their Social Security check, that does not occur until after the shutdown is over.

After I saw that the Republican Speaker, back in 2011, after being warned that we shouldn't use our military pay as leverage to get people to vote for a bill that they shouldn't vote for, I actually filed a bill before that CR came due that would ensure that the military was paid as Social Security. If you are entitled to a promotion or additional pay, that doesn't come until the shutdown is over.

That bill has again been filed in this Congress. The name is the ASAP bill, Armed Services Always Paid. We need to go ahead and bring that bill to the floor, push the Senate to do the same thing, and put our military's pay on automatic pilot. They would never have to worry.

Having served in the military, in the U.S. Army, for 4 years, I know our military is being paid better than we were back when I was on Active Duty. But even still, I know too many in our military who are barely getting by on what they are paid. The last thing they need is to be in harm's way dodging bullets or IEDs or rocket-propelled grenades and have to be worrying whether their loved ones back in the United States are going to have the check so that they can pay their car payment and their home payment.

Let's pass this ASAP bill immediately.

Mr. Speaker, I yield to the gentlewoman from North Carolina (Ms. Foxx).

My friend, former President Foxx, collegiate president and great Member of the House, made some great points. I look forward to hearing the President's State of the Union Address tomorrow as well.

Mr. Speaker, there has been a great deal going on here lately in Washington, and something that has been a real threat to what I believe is the greatest law enforcement institution in the history of mankind, the Federal Bureau of Investigation. As former Speaker of the House Newt Gingrich has pointed out a number of times, had candidate Hillary Clinton won the Presidency in November of 2016, we would have no idea how badly or how significantly the Department of Justice and the FBI had been weaponized politically. I just thank God we had the opportunity to find out before it was too late and to do something about it.

Today's news has been that, as The Wall Street Journal article by Aruna Viswanatha and Del Quentin Wilber today reported: FBI deputy chief steps down after Trump criticism.

The article points out: ``Deputy FBI Director Andrew McCabe left his post on Monday after his bosses urged him to step aside, said people familiar with the matter, following weeks of criticism from President Donald Trump and other Republicans.''

I guess I would be one of those other Republicans.

``Mr. McCabe will take leftover vacation time until he is technically eligible to retire from the Federal Bureau of Investigation in March, the people said.

``Mr. McCabe has faced a steady string of attacks over an alleged conflict of interest stemming from his wife's previous run for Virginia State Senate as a Democrat before he became deputy director. He has denied any conflict.

``But Mr. Trump and other Republicans have cited it as part of a broader assertion of bias on the part of the FBI, Justice Department, and special counsel's office as they investigate Russian meddling in the 2016 campaign and any links between the Trump campaign and Moscow in that effort. Mr. Trump has specifically called for Mr. McCabe's ouster.

``Democrats say these assertions are an attempt to distract from the investigations and discredit them.

``FBI Director Chris Wray, addressing Mr. McCabe's departure in an email to employees, said Mr. Wray `will not be swayed by political or other pressure' in making decisions, according to a person familiar with the message.''

That is quite interesting coming this long after evidence was slapping people in the face, figuratively speaking. It appears that evidence that is overly compelling also may not actually sway Chris Wray into taking actions as the Director of the FBI that a reasonable and prudent Director of the FBI would have taken under the same or similar circumstances.

``Mr. Wray thanked Mr. McCabe for his service, adding''--I guess that includes the politicalization, the weaponizing, of the FBI in which Mr. McCabe was involved--``that Mr. McCabe said he would take leave immediately following a conversation between the two, the person said. The email was first reported by The New York Times.

``In the message, Mr. Wray also said he wouldn't comment on a pending report from the Justice Department's inspector general, or inhouse watchdog, which is expected to criticize the FBI's handling of an investigation into Hillary Clinton's email arrangement when she was Secretary of State. The report is expected to prompt some personnel changes.''

You think?

``Mr. McCabe's decision Monday was a surprise to many inside the FBI''--apparently those who had gotten used to it being weaponized and politicized.

``Officials abruptly canceled a press conference to discuss an unrelated criminal operation. . . .''

It goes on to say: ``The U.S. intelligence community, in January 2017, said it believed Russia had conducted an influence operation with the goal of hurting Mrs. Clinton and helping Mr. Trump in the 2016 Presidential election.''

Gee, okay, so this article is citing the U.S. intelligence community. I guess that would include the part of the intelligence community that made the decision in 2012, along with the State Department--that would be Secretary of State Hillary Clinton--to leave the Ambassador to Libya exposed to grave danger, and even after seeing footage of attacks, the same intelligence community that decided they were better off leaving people to die and ordering four heroes to stand down and not go protect the Ambassador and others from dying, that same intelligence community. How about that?

They, apparently, according to the article, said they believed Russia conducted an influence operation. It turns out the same intelligence community that couldn't stand George W. Bush and leaked plenty of information to hurt his Presidency, and also has done a great job of leaking material to hurt President Trump's administration, if this article is correct, they helped the weaponized Department of Justice launch an investigation into potential Russian influence.

It is just so amazing, when we start finding out facts that there was a dossier that Fusion GPS was involved in getting, strictly an opposition research effort that ended up having totally fabricated, really outrageously outlandish allegations, and according to the news media, what was in that dossier was so outrageous, if you were a Russian, you would think, these stupid Americans will have to be out of their minds to think that Donald Trump would have done something like this. But maybe--maybe--the now weaponized Department of Justice in America and the Obama administration when coupled

with the Clinton campaign, maybe they are crazy enough to think Donald Trump would do something like this. It is going to end up making them look bad in the end, and that would certainly affect the election if the campaign were crazy enough to utilize such a totally fabricated dossier, I guess that would affect the election.

I still have trouble getting over the decision to tell American heroes to stand down, don't go try to save the lives of our Ambassador and the others there with the Ambassador. Tyrone Woods, Ty, was not going to have any of it. He and the other heroes headed out there to help as they could, including willingness to lay down their lives to protect other Americans, something the CIA station chief, in collaboration with other ``U.S. intelligence community,'' apparently decided was not worthwhile.

This article goes on to say: ``Mr. McCabe's abrupt departure is the latest event in a highly unusual back-and-forth between the Trump administration and a Federal law enforcement establishment that is both investigating him as it works for him and cherishes its independence.''

We know that is not true. They don't cherish their independence. Oh, yeah, the FBI, in other levels, absolutely does. But then, at the same time, they also cherish their good working relationship with other local and State law enforcement.

This article further down said: ``Mr. McCabe's resignation also comes as the FBI faces fallout from thousands of text messages between an FBI agent and lawyer who were involved in the Russia investigation, including some texts harshly critical of Mr. Trump.''

How about that? The lawyer working for Mr. McCabe.

Apparently, Mr. McCabe is racing the clock to retire with full benefits as the President himself tweeted out. I can't help but still go back to the former Director of the FBI, Mr. Mueller, who set up a personnel program that would ensure that the thousands and thousands of years of incredible law enforcement experience that was obtained by honorable, honest FBI supervisors--that they would be run off by Mr. Mueller. He didn't want those people hanging around.

He put a personal policy in place that ran off thousands of years of incredible law enforcement experience from the FBI.

I can't help but think that if Mr. Mueller had not had such a policy to get rid of people that had great experience in law enforcement from the FBI, there would have been people who could have gently nudged people like Andrew McCabe or Mr. Strzok or Lisa Page and would have warned them when they were getting close to the edge before they got into such total politicization of our important FBI and DOJ. But those people weren't there because Director Mueller put in place a policy that ran them off.

I still wonder about the victims at the Boston Marathon bombing. Had we had an FBI Director that was as interested in seeking out radical Islamist killers as he was in having community outreach with the mosque that was started by a man who is now doing 23 years in Federal prison for supporting terrorism, if he had not been so interested in playing patty-cake out with his community partnership and instead gone to the mosque and been asking specific questions about the older Tsarnaev brother after we got two notices that he had been radicalized--they never asked a question, not one, about Tsarnaev; about what he has been concentrating on, what he is reading, what he is memorizing, what he is talking about, what books he has got. They didn't know what questions to ask because Director Mueller had seen to the purging of the FBI training materials so the FBI agents didn't know what questions to ask. They didn't know what they were looking for in a radicalized Islamist.

The same scenario has played out time and again. Tsarnaev should have never been able to carry out that bombing, because he came into the crosshairs of the FBI investigation. Basically, from all we can find out from the hearings, they asked him if he was a terrorist. He said he wasn't. They asked his mom if he was a terrorist. She said: He is a good boy.

That is an encapsulation of it. But they didn't know what to ask because of Mueller.

Michele Bachmann and I reviewed material that was purged. The FBI classified it so we couldn't reveal, Mr. Speaker, to others publicly what was purged. Some of it was silly and needed to be purged.

Say, for example, there were a purging of verses from the Koran. Why should anything ever be purged from the Koran if it is part of the training materials?

You have to ask Mr. Mueller that.

The FBI and the DOJ deserve better. We are looking forward to finding out what the IG report has to say, but it is time for games to stop. It is time for law enforcement to do their jobs at the Department of Justice and the FBI. Jeff Sessions has got his hands full. It was obvious that he felt like he could trust those who were called career DOJ employees. Hopefully he has learned some of those career employees didn't have the law enforcement long in the tooth to give them the benefit of their experience because Mueller ran them off. They got off into an area of politicization of the DOJ and the FBI. He can't trust the people he would have been able to otherwise, had the FBI not gotten so far off track.

We need a second special counsel, as I advised the President back in June, and we need it now. Investigations cannot be conducted by Mueller into what Mueller did during the prior Russian investigation, along with U.S. Attorney Rod Rosenstein, and could not properly investigate his joined-at-the-hip friend, Mr. Comey.

He could not properly investigate what will be in the inspector general's report, but it certainly should require further investigation. He can't do that. It needs to be totally independent. I am not talking about the godfather of one of Mr. Comey's kids, Patrick Fitzgerald, who conveniently got appointed after he talked John Ashcroft into recusing himself. I am talking about somebody totally independent. That is what we need.

Where does the DOJ go to get its reputation back?

It is going to be a long process and it is going to take truly independent people cleaning up the mess that has been created so that can happen. We need a reputable Department of Justice and FBI, and it is high time we got one back.

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

Mr. Speaker, we finally had a vote to ensure that the

military gets the money that they need and deserve. They deserve to be paid even better, but they certainly do not deserve to have their funding cut, not holding our military hostage in demand for people who had come into the country illegally.

The American public made clear that they did not want the whole country to suffer because they were being held hostage, while some folks demanded legality for people who came in illegally. Let's keep things separately. Let's keep our military going forward, and now let's go about the business of the country.

Mr. Speaker, I want to thank my friend, Mr. Garrett for yielding.

It is important that we discuss what has been going on in Iran. I recall I was on Active Duty in the United States Army back when President Carter stood by and basically encouraged the taking out of the Shah of Iran. No prince according to his own conduct, but he made a statement welcoming the Ayatollah Khomeini back to Iran as what he called him, I believe it was a man of peace. He could not have been more wrong.

There has been less peace because the Ayatollah Khomeini took over a state government, a national government, and a powerful military than any time since World War II. They have been the largest state sponsor of terrorism. They have, we have been told, probably provided most of the IEDs that have killed and maimed Americans fighting for freedom in the Middle East, especially in Iraq.

They have worked to stir up trouble all over the Middle East, north Africa, and have created massive mayhem, and they are looking to do even more. And with the $100 billion or more that President Obama sent to Iran, they have been able to make more IEDs to kill more Americans, create more havoc, and stir up more sentiment against the United States since that unconstitutional sending under a treaty that was never ratified was done by the last administration.

Some have blamed President Trump for the problems in Iran. That is a bit ridiculous. The problems are the radical Islamist leadership in Iran. In fact, the same people that would like to blame President Trump are some of the same ones who hailed the $100 billion sent under a treaty that was never ratified that would be used to kill innocent people around the world, including Americans.

The people of Iran are to be congratulated for saying: Enough is enough.

There is a great article from Commentary magazine titled: ``What the Iran Protests Have Already Achieved.''

Sohrab Ahmari says: ``More than 1,700 arrests and at least two dozen deaths later, the Tehran regime seems to have suppressed Iran's latest mass uprising. Scattered protests and skirmishes continue nationwide, according to the citizen-journalists who, braving regime violence, continued to post footage on social media. But for now, the demonstrations don't seem to be growing in numbers or frequency. Yet outside observers tempted to write off the movement should recall that the 1979 Islamic Revolution that toppled the Shah began decades earlier. There were lulls through the years, which tempted President Carter at one point to describe the Shah's Iran as an `island of stability' in the Middle East.

``Whatever the ultimate outcome, however, the protesters have already accomplished a great deal and shattered many myths in the West. Let's review their achievements:

``First, the Iran protests showed that the people are not rallying to the regime under the press of President Trump's hawkish rhetoric.''

``Far from being `swept up in a wave of nationalist fervor,' as The New York Times' Thomas Erdbrink reported a few weeks before the uprising, Iranians still detest their corrupt, repressive regime. As my colleague''--and this is the author, Mr. Ahmari, speaking--``Noah Rothman has noted on our podcasts, Americans have an almost religious conviction that world events revolve around the U.S. and specifically the White House. To be sure, America remains the most important Nation on the world stage. Yet the average Iranian doesn't wake up in the morning cursing Donald Trump for trying to undo the nuclear deal. More likely, he curses the fact that he can't even afford eggs to feed his children, and there are more proximate actors whom he blames for that: namely, the mullahs.

``Second, the uprising revealed, once and for all, that Iranian President Hassan Rouhani has been no moderate, and that the reformer versus hardliner distinction is meaningless. Ever since he came to power, Rouhani has been the subject of adulation among members of the Western foreign policy establishment. The media attached the `moderate' and `reformer' labels to Rouhani on the night of his first election, in June 2013, and refused to remove them even as evidence mounted that he was no such thing. There was Rouhani's leading role in the violent repression of the 1999 student uprising; his support for the post-2009 crackdown; his long record of anti-American rhetoric (`the

beautiful cry of ``Death to America'' unites our nation'); his decidedly immoderate cabinet; his work overseeing Iran's campaign of assassinations targeting dissidents abroad; and much else of the kind.

``But now Iranians themselves are plainly telling the West that Rouhani is no moderate. Their slogans--`Not Gaza; Not Lebanon; My Life Only for Iran' and `Let Syria Be; Do Something for Me'--are a reminder that Tehran has continued to underwrite terror and bloodshed across the Middle East during the 4-plus years of Rouhani's Presidency. The people have also been chanting, `Reformists; Hardliners; the Whole Game is Over.' Let's hope the same realization soon dawns in Washington and Brussels.

``Third, the protesters put the lie to the Obama administration's claims about the 2015 nuclear deal. Remember when senior Obama officials reassured Americans that Iran would use the sanctions relief under Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA) to improve the lots of its people? Here is how Obama Treasury Secretary Jack Lew put it in an April 2015 address: `Many Americans, and many of our closest allies, are understandably concerned that Iran will use the money it receives as a result of sanctions relief to fund terrorism and support destabilizing proxies throughout the Middle East. We share those concerns, and we are committed to maintaining sanctions that address these activities, even after Iran takes the steps required to get relief from nuclear sanctions. But it is important to note that the connection between nuclear sanctions relief and Iran's other malign activities is complicated, and most of the money Iran receives from sanctions relief will not be used to support those activities.' ''

I would interject here he had absolutely, 100 percent, no basis for making such ridiculous statements.

``Two months later, Colin Kahl, a National Security Advisor to then- Vice President Joe Biden, told the Truman Center: `It is our assessment . . . that the Iranians are not going to spend the vast majority of the money on guns. Most of it will go to butter.' ''

I would insert here he had no basis whatsoever for making such statements.

The article said: ``Millions of jobless and impoverished Iranians now beg to differ. It turns out that the regime was happy to spend the JCPOA''--the Iran treaty that was never ratified--``funds on Hezbollah, Hamas, the Yemeni Houthis, and other nasties, even if that meant Iranians would go hungry. And those hungry people aren't mistaken about the roots of their hunger. Iran remains the world's top state sponsor of terror, according to the U.S. State Department. Deal opponents warned of this, only to be brushed aside by Obama and his media allies. The Trump administration now has an opportunity to correct course, by walking away from Obama's bad deal. The American people are under no obligation to finance Iran's terrorist statecraft.

``The mullahs would have no one to blame but themselves. The Iranian people, defeated but unbowed, are sure to have another day.''

So, Mr. Speaker, let me just add here: God bless President Donald J. Trump for recognizing the Iranian treaty for the horrible deal it was and is to peace in our time. He paid for war, he paid for terrorism, and it is time to stop it.

Mr. Speaker, we keep hearing about action that needs

to be taken on the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals. I have spent a lot of time down on our Nation's southern border, and I was quite pleased, last year, when Border Patrol friends told me information indicated that, after President Trump was sworn in, the number of people coming into the United States illegally slowed to a trickle, that it was a dramatic decrease, and that continued for awhile. But, during the summer, as discussion about DACA started coming out, I was told, and, apparently, the numbers indicate, the surge began anew.

What I have heard over the years is anytime anyone in Washington starts talking about amnesty, legalization of any kind for people who have come into the United States illegally, there is a fresh surge across our border.

I have been told by border patrolmen, they hear people talking who have come in illegally--whether before processing, during processing, after processing, during the holding procedure, it is made very clear, since they are willing to come into the country illegally in violation of United States laws, that they want to get here before there is any legalization. And it makes sense, as I am told, that they are willing to come in in violation of U.S. law. They are also willing to say that they came in a previous time and, you know, backdate it, different identity, different date they came in, whatever is required in order to get legal status.

I appreciate hearing from my constituents, I always do, and I appreciate getting the opinions and thoughts of constituents from my district, the First District of Texas. They are always welcome.

In the last couple of days, I have gotten a stack of petitions in my office regarding a push to support what they are calling a clean Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals reform, but it raises some questions. The best I can tell by the words ``clean bill,'' they mean one that provides amnesty with no strings attached. However, all these petitions have been provided, actual names and addresses are only on a handful of them, many have names written in the same handwriting in ink, and there are numerous unsigned blank petitions in the stack we were provided.

In addition, I want to point out that, every time DACA legalization is mentioned, we have greater surges of people into our country illegally; and every time there is a surge, there are people who die trying to get into this country illegally, bodies found. We have the reports of a dramatic number of young girls, even some boys, who are pulled into sex trafficking, drug trafficking, as a way to pay off their debt to the drug cartels that control the area of the border that they were allowed to come across by the gang that brought them across.

It should be noted, every young person in America has dreams. The best way to achieve the greatest number of dreams for the greatest number of people in the United States is if we enforce the law across the board fairly.

I keep being amazed, and I have asked questions at our hearings:

So why did these people come into the United States illegally?

Well, because there are more jobs and opportunity.

No, but why did they leave where they left, where they fled?

Well, there was no opportunity there.

Why was there no opportunity? Why were there no jobs there?

Well, there is so much corruption. They don't enforce the law fairly.

So what we are being asked to do, instead of using political efforts to get these countries that people have fled to fix their political system, we are supposed to change our laws here so that those who have been working--I have helped some people 17 years trying to get into the country legally--they will be treated unfairly, because they have been trying to do things legally, in favor of people who violated the law to get here.

It kind of seems like we are being asked to become the kind of country they fled, where the law is not enforced fairly across the board. It sounds like the ultimate irony.

Until our border is made secure, we should not be discussing passage of any legalization bill. We should stop talking about legalization until the border is secure. When the border is secure, then we can work things out.

It is so ironic to me, the very people who are demanding a big amnesty, legalization, whatever you want to call it, say, ``We don't want a wall, we don't want the border secure,'' which means we will have to come back and have this discussion in the next couple of years all over again.

It was supposed to have ended in 1986. We will get border security in return for the amnesty. We got the amnesty, and we didn't get the border security.

I am joined by a friend, a very dear friend, who wrote speeches for his hero, a hero of mine, Ronald Reagan, who knows very well what happened in 1986.

Mr. Speaker, I yield to the gentleman from California (Mr. Rohrabacher).

Mr. Speaker, the gentleman personally witnessed what happened after the amnesty of 1986. President Reagan rightly said that we can't have an amnesty unless we have proper border security. They put it in the same bill. They got the amnesty and there was no follow- up.

Let's say we want to do the best to help young people, the world over. My friend here has already illustrated what happens. There are rules for radicals. You want to bring down the United States, apparently you bring as many people into being totally reliant on the government, so you bankrupt the government, destroy the government. That is how you eliminate the greatest, most representative government in the history of the world.

Then what happens to young people around the world when there is no America to stand up against repressive regimes? What happens?

Who is benefited by bringing down the United States by overwhelming our system, running the $20 trillion debt up much higher? Who is benefited?

Mr. Speaker, the gentleman and I have been to Iraq a number of times together, to Afghanistan, to different places in the world. It seems pretty clear, after our effort to create a democratic republic in Iraq, that if a nation's people have not been properly prepared and educated to maintain a democratic republic, they won't keep it. It seems pretty clear from the places we have been together.

I will never forget Christian friends that I made in west Africa, who sat me down at the end of the week and said they wanted me to understand that they were so thrilled when we elected our first Black President. But since he was elected, they said: We have seen America get weaker and weaker, and we wanted to make sure you took a message back to Washington that we are Christians, we know where we go when we die. But our only chance of having peace in this life is if America is strong.

I will never forget those words.

They said: Please stop getting weaker. We suffer when you are weaker.

And most of the people who are pouring across the United States for a better way of life, they are not coming to weaken us. They are coming with their own hopes and aspirations.

But I ask: What would be better? What better neighbor would we be to continue until so many come in, our system fails and goes bankrupt, as California is doing now?

Or would we be better to say: Let's build a wall where it is necessary. Let's totally secure our border. Let's cut off the 70 to $80 billion that is flowing from the United States into the drug cartels of Mexico, that allows them to corrupt the Government of Mexico and the local governments and terrorist people and put police heads on stakes to terrorize us. Let's cut off that 70 to $80 billion, however much it is.

Let's totally secure the border. And people who love their Mexican heritage are--other countries in Central and South America, they love their heritage, but they can't make it.

Why don't we help cut off the corruption by cutting off the flow of money out and drugs into our country? Why don't we work on that? Wouldn't that be a better neighbor to our friends to the South?

There is no reason Mexico is not one of the top 10 economies in the world. They have got the wonderful people, hardworking folks. They have got the resources. They have got a fantastic location. There is only one reason that they are not, and that is because of the corruption that their drug cartels bring from U.S. money flowing into Mexico.

Maybe we would be better off helping all of those millions of people who want to come here by helping them be a country that is one of the top in the world.

Mr. Speaker, I so much appreciate my friend. I don't like to use ``colleague'' with Dana Rohrabacher because he is so much more than that. He is a dear friend and a brother, and I will treasure most of the times that we have spent together in traveling, trying to do right for the United States and the world.

One other thing, Mr. Speaker, I want to touch on before we finish up, and that is the issue that is coming, we are told, this week, regarding Section 702 reauthorization.

We are told that the folks in the deep state have made very clear they want what they call a clean reauthorization. Nothing clean about it when you look at how 702 is spent.

So just spend a couple of minutes here, based on an article entitled ``How the FBI and DOJ Intelligence Units Were Weaponized Around Congressional Oversight'' from January 8, 2018. It goes through this scenario.

Sometime in early 2016, Admiral Rogers--talking about Admiral Mike Rogers, not the Mike Rogers that was here in Congress--became aware of an ongoing and intentional violation of Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act Section 702 surveillance, specifically item 17, which includes the unauthorized upstream data collection of U.S. individuals within NSA surveillance through the use of ``about inquiries,'' where they do a surveillance of someone foreign, capture American citizens, which would violate our Fourth Amendment rights, except that those names are masked and, supposedly, all kinds of efforts to protect that, so it is not a violation of the Fourth Amendment, supposedly.

But this article points out that they get all of these conversations in the database, and then they can do inquiries about people, subjects, and capture that information about Americans, basically allowing them to get around the Fourth Amendment.

Mr. Speaker, I commend this article. We see what occurs when we don't have proper oversight. And Section 702, as being proposed, does not give us the proper oversight, and I hope that we will look further at that.

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

Mr. Speaker, it has been quite a week: ups and downs and not knowing whether bills would be passed or the government would be funded, whether we would be able to help America with a much-improving economy in the new year by passing the tax cut bill. But we got it done, and it ended up being a good week, and here we are.

This will be the last opportunity to speak before we are out for Christmas, and I heard some good news today about Ukraine. We have the annual Presidential Prayer Breakfast the first Thursday of February each year, except when the first Thursday is on the 1st, and then it is on the 8th, which it will be this February.

We had representatives from the Ukraine Government come to our National Prayer Breakfast here, and they started one there and began to grow. Now, for the first time, Ukraine legislature has passed a bill recognizing a celebration of Christmas, the day of Jesus' birth. We celebrate Jesus' birth on that day, December 25.

Apparently, from what we are told, it emanates from them coming over, being part of our Prayer Breakfast, where the President comes, and then starting one. And then now we are going to be celebrating the birth of Jesus in America--all those who care to--at the same time the Ukrainian Government will do so. So that is a big bit of news there.

I was listening to the Delegate from the District of Columbia and it took me back to when I first got here as a Member of Congress and I saw the license plate saying, ``Taxation Without Representation.'' I know from studying history--never ceasing to study history that that was one of the war cries for the Revolution: Taxation without representation is tyranny.

And as Benjamin Franklin once said: If we do not get to select even one of the people in Parliament, then that Parliament has no right to place any tax on us.

And then upon hearing that, Puerto Rico, Guam, Mariana Islands, U.S. Virgin Islands, all of the territories where they have a Delegate or Commissioner but they don't have a full voting member, those are areas that are not required to pay any Federal income tax. In fact, when I found out, the more I looked into it, there is only one place in America where people do not elect a full voting Member of Congress, yet they have to pay Federal income tax, and that is here in the District of Columbia.

For that reason, I filed a bill--because they had tried to get a full voting Member of Congress. But to do that, you have to have a constitutional amendment. Everybody knew that and agreed to that back in the late 1970s. The proponents of having a full voting Representative got it through the House, got it through the Senate, but they never did get the requisite number of States to sign on, so it failed without ever being ratified by enough States.

I feel sure that would be the case if that were attempted again, but it does require an amendment. And since that doesn't appear it is going to happen anytime soon, then I believe in each of the sessions of Congress I have been, I have filed a bill that would correct that injustice, because it truly is an injustice for the people who live in the District of Columbia, and it is very simple. It just says, basically, that until when and if the District of Columbia has a full voting Representative, they are like any other U.S. territory, they will not have to pay Federal income tax.

I felt like that would certainly make people appreciate that, that they were treated like those in other places that don't elect a full voting Member of the House. So far I haven't been able to get Ms. Holmes Norton to sign on as a cosponsor. I am hoping to get her to sign on at some point because it really would help those people who live here in the City of Washington not to have to pay any Federal income tax.

Of course, Puerto Rico pays no Federal income tax, yet they have a higher local income tax than the Federal income tax. You know, a lot of States--I think somebody told me that Californians are paying 10 percent or so. But Puerto Rico, where, I think, over one-third or about one-third or so of the people there work for the government, then the government load is just overwhelming.

Puerto Rico is so beautiful. Even after all the disaster that needs to be cleaned up and fixed, I would hope at some point they become less heavy on the government and more heavy on free-market opportunities. I could see Puerto Rico becoming the Hong Kong of the United States, where that is where people want to go, that is where businesses want to locate because it is such a great place to live. But the taxes have run people out of that area, even though they don't pay Federal income tax. I don't think that would happen here in Washington.

Mr. Speaker, here we are, the last session before Christmas. It has been amazing. The most often cited book in Congress for our country's entire history has been the Bible. There is no book that comes close to the recitations from it that has the Bible.

Throughout our history, we were recognized as a Christian nation. I believe President Obama was right when he said we are not a Christian nation. We were, but we are not anymore. But even the Supreme Court, when it was a much more enlightened Supreme Court well after the Civil War--in fact, 30 years after the Civil War was over--the Supreme Court looked at all of the evidence and declared in an opinion that the United States was founded as and is a Christian nation.

Not that everybody has to be a Christian here. They absolutely don't. I would humbly submit that the only way any people can truly have freedom of religion is if they have a constitution that is founded on Judeo-Christian principles that recognize that all true rights: life, liberty, pursuit of happiness--you don't have a right to happiness, but a right to pursue it--those come from God, and the Founders recognized that.

It is a shame to hear people deceiving young people in school, teaching them that, no, the real Founders were only deists. They didn't believe in God; Ben Franklin being the leading deist. If they would just teach the children what Ben Franklin said in June of 1787 at the Constitutional Convention. After 5 weeks of nothing but arguing back and forth, 80-year-old Ben Franklin, 2 or 3 years away from meeting his maker, got recognized.

Somebody wrote that President Washington looked so relieved when Dr. Franklin sought recognition. He finally stood up. He had gout and he had terrible arthritis. He was well overweight, but he got up and gave the speech that so many Christians are aware of, where he said what no deist would ever say, despite how many teachers these days say he was a deist. His words were--we know what his words were because he sat down and wrote it down afterwards when he was asked for a copy of what he said.

And he said: ``I have lived, Sir, a long time; and the longer I live, the more convincing proofs I see of this truth--God governs in the affairs of men. If a sparrow cannot fall to the ground without his notice, is it probable that an empire can rise without his aid? We have been assured, Sir, in the sacred writings, that `except the Lord build the House, they labour in vain that build it.'''

He said: ``I firmly believe that.''

Mr. Speaker, which means he wasn't a deist.

He said: ``I also believe that without His''--without God's-- ``concurring aid, we shall succeed in this political building no better than the Builders of Babel. We shall be divided by our little partial local interests . . . and we ourselves will become a power down through the ages.''

Mr. Speaker, it was at the conclusion of that day's session in the Constitutional Convention that Randolph from here in Virginia, or across the river in Virginia, made a motion that since here we are at the end of June, we are about to celebrate our Nation's birthday, and we all know we have not been able to accomplish anything.

As Franklin said: ``We have been going for nearly 5 weeks. We have more noes than ayes on virtually every issue.''

And then Franklin went on to say: ``How has it happened, Sir, that we

have not . . . thought of humbly applying to the Father of lights to illuminate our understandings?''

So Randolph's motion is, since they haven't been able to accomplish really anything, just yelling back and forth--it was all the big 6- foot-4 Washington could do to keep things under control. And, yes, I know in Chernow's biography, he said he was less than 6 foot 2, because he was standing by a guy 6 foot 2 and he was shorter, but he is just wrong on that. George Washington, 1799, when dead, flat on a slab, was measured as 6 foot 3\1/2\. Undeniable, 6 foot 4 in the height of his time, but he couldn't control things.

Randolph's motion passed. His motion was that they recess the Constitutional Convention and reconvene together in one of the local churches they agreed on and worship God together and then come back and try it again. That one passed.

They went to the Reformed Calvinist Church--I was sharing that with my friend Dave Brat earlier since he attends a Calvinist church-- Reverend William Rogers presiding. You can go online and find at least one of the prayers that he prayed.

I have this little book from Dr. Richard G. Lee, what a great man of God, great little booklet. ``In God We Still Trust,'' it is called. It has some great stories from our history.

He noted that Warren Earl Burger, Chief Justice of the United States from 1969 to 1986, delivered the Supreme Court's opinion in the 1985 case of Lynch v. Donnelly, which upheld that the city of Pawtucket, Rhode Island, did not violate the Constitution by displaying a nativity scene. Noting that Presidential orders and proclamations from Congress have designated Christmas as a national holiday in religious terms for two centuries and in the Western world for 20 centuries, he wrote:

``There is an unbroken history of official acknowledgement by all three branches of government of the role of religion in American life. The Constitution does not require a complete separation of church and state.''

In fact, I would insert here, those words, ``separation of church and state,'' unlike what many say when asked, they are not in the Constitution, they were not intended to be in the Constitution. The Founders did not want church to be separated from state. They wanted the state to stay the heck out of the church business. That is what they wanted.

But Thomas Jefferson mentioned a separation of church and state, a wall of separation, but it was going to be a one-way wall where the state stayed out of people's religion, but expected religion because it was part of our founding and the Bible was so often mentioned as a source of wisdom as they tried to put together a government.

Chief Justice Burger, talking about the Constitution, said:

``It affirmatively mandates accommodation, not merely tolerance, of all religions, and forbids hostility toward any. . . . Anything less would require the `callous indifference' we have said was never intended by the Establishment Clause. . . . Indeed, we have observed, such hostility would bring us into `war with our national tradition as embodied in the First Amendment's guarantee of the free exercise of religion.''

He goes on on the next page, talking about John Hancock. He said: ``To celebrate the victorious conclusion of the Revolutionary War, Governor John Hancock of Massachusetts issued a proclamation for a day of Thanksgiving on December 11, 1783.''

Just over a week ago was the anniversary of this proclamation from Governor John Hancock, the president that signed as president of the Continental Congress on the Declaration of Independence.

John Hancock said: ``Whereas . . . these United States are not only happily rescued from the danger and calamities to which they have been so long exposed, but their freedom, sovereignty, and independence ultimately acknowledged.

``And whereas . . . the interposition of Divine Providence''--and they capitalized ``Divine Providence,'' another expression meaning God--``in our favor hath been most abundantly and most graciously manifested, and the citizens of these United States have every reason for praise and gratitude to the God of their salvation.

``Impressed therefore with an exalted sense of the blessings by which we are surrounded, and of our entire dependence on that Almighty Being''--``Almighty Being'' both capitalized--``from whose goodness and bounty they are derived; I do by and with the advice of the council appoint Thursday the 11th day of December next''--the day recommended by the Congress to all the States--``to be religiously observed as a day of thanksgiving and prayer; that all the people may then assemble to celebrate . . . that He''--``He'' is capitalized, meaning God-- ``hath been pleased to continue to us the light of the blessed Gospel; . . . that we also offer up fervent supplications . . . to cause pure religion and virtue to flourish . . . and to fill the world with His-- capital H--glory.''

That was John Hancock. As he pointed out, that was directed by the Congress of the United States that that day be recognized, but that was just his proclamation as Governor of Massachusetts.

It seems when I mention God, mention some of our heritage, we often get a lot of calls from people who just become irate, which also testifies probably to the importance and to the genuineness of our founding and our founding reliance on God, because nothing else provokes that kind of anger and hatred. But some people say that has no place in the Capitol of the United States. And bless them; they just are a bit ignorant.

Just down the hall, the original House Chamber was the largest Christian church in the Washington, D.C., area for most of the 1800s. A guy named Thomas Jefferson, that coined the expression ``separation of church and state,'' ``wall of separation,'' he put in a letter to the Danbury Baptists why we should not have, in essence, an official denomination, that that is not the government's role. Jefferson saw no problem in having Christian worship services down the hall because it was nondenominational. Every Sunday that he was in Washington during his 8 years as President, he would come.

Normally, he would ride a horse, according to the Congressional Research Service. You don't have to rely on my historical interpretation. The bipartisan, objective Congressional Research Service said he usually came riding a single horse.

Unlike Jefferson, Madison, who is given credit for writing much of the Constitution, when he was President for those 8 years, he normally came in a horse-drawn carriage with multiple horses drawing his carriage. Jefferson, on the other hand, came to church here in the Capitol normally on a horse by himself, before the days, obviously, of the Secret Service.

Jefferson, in fact, since it was a nondenominational Christian service, saw no problem with inviting the Marine Band to come do the accompaniment many Sundays for the hymns that were to be sung.

The first woman to officially address a group in the U.S. Capitol occurred in the early 1800s, a Christian evangelist, who gave the sermon just down the hall in what was then the House of Representatives Chamber.

I have a book, ``Miracles in American History.'' Susie Federer did this, adapted from William J. Federer's ``American Minute.'' This is a typical story from our history and our Founders, who knew how valuable God's assistance was in getting this little bubble in time and space where, for the first time in history, Christians were not persecuted for being Christians. For the first time since Jesus came over 2,000 years ago, this America, this United States was a place where you weren't persecuted for being a Christian.

Obviously, that is changing, and now we have governmental entities that are afraid of Christians as potentially a big hate group; although, anyone who professes that Christian groups need to be violent in order to accomplish our purposes can't truly be Christian and based on the Bible unless they are enacting government in so doing and acting under Romans 13. But, otherwise, they miss the whole point of Jesus' preaching.

In this book from the Federers, the Battle of Cowpens was January 17, 1781.

Also, January 17 happens to be my father's birthday. I won't tell the age, but he is over 90.

``The Battle of Cowpens, January 17, 1781, depicted in the movie `The Patriot,' involved American General Daniel Morgan having a line of militia fire into the British General Cornwallis' and Colonel Banastre Tarleton's dragoons, regulars, Highlanders, and loyalists.

``When the Americans hastily retreated, British Colonel Tarleton, known as `The Butcher,' gave in to the temptation to pursue, only to be surprised by American Continentals waiting over the hill, firing at point-blank range.

``In the confusion, the Americans killed 110 British and captured 830.

``The Battle of Cowpens is widely considered the tactical masterpiece and turning point of the war.''

This is talking about the Revolutionary War, of course.

``General Daniel Morgan met up with American General Nathanael Greene, and they made a hasty retreat north toward Virginia.

``Cornwallis regrouped and chased the Americans as fast as he could, burning extra equipment and supplies along the way in order to travel faster.

``Cornwallis arrived at the Catalpa River just 2 hours after the Americans had crossed, but a storm made the river impassable, delaying the British pursuit.

``Cornwallis nearly overtook them as they were getting out of the Yadkin River, but rain flooded the river.

``Now it was a race to the Dan River, but General Nathanael Greene again made it across before the British arrived.

``British Commander Henry Clinton wrote:

`` `Here the royal army was again stopped by a sudden rise of the waters, which had only just fallen, almost miraculously, to let the enemy over . . .'

``In March 1781, General George Washington wrote to William Gordon:

`` `We have . . . abundant reasons to thank Providence''--with a capital P; he often referred to God as Providence--`to thank Providence for its many favorable interpositions in our behalf. It has at times been my only dependence, for all other resources seemed to have failed us.'

``British General Henry Clinton then ordered General Cornwallis to move 8,000 troops to a defensive position where the York River entered the Chesapeake Bay.

By this time, Ben Franklin and Marquis de Lafayette, which is the gentleman depicted in this painting right over here--it is the only full-length portrait of a foreigner in our U.S. Capitol--were finally successful in their efforts to persuade French King Louis XVI to send ships and troops to meet the Americans.

French Admiral de Grasse left off fighting the British in the West Indies; sailed 24 ships to the mouth of the Chesapeake Bay where, in the Battle of the Capes, he drove off 19 British ships which were trying to evacuate Cornwallis' men.

De Grasse's 3,000 French troops, and General Rochambeau's 6,000 French troops, hurriedly joined General Lafayette's division as they marched to help Washington trap Cornwallis against the sea. They joined the troops of General Benjamin Lincoln, Baron von Steuben, Mordecai Gist, Henry Knox, and John Peter Muhlenberg. All together, 17,000 French and American troops surrounded Cornwallis, and, on October 19, 1781, he surrendered.

Yale President Ezra Stiles wrote on May 8, 1783: ``Who but God''--and by the way, this Yale University president, for those who are shocked that Yale had such a strident Christian leader, but actually, originally, Harvard and Yale, you couldn't even get in unless you swore that Jesus was your Lord and Savior in very stark terms.

But Yale University President Ezra Stiles, in 1783, says:

``Who but God could have ordained the critical arrival of the Gallic or French fleet so as to assist in the siege of Yorktown? Should we not ascribe to a Supreme energy the wise generalship displayed by General Greene, leaving the roving Cornwallis to pursue his helter-skelter, ill-fated march into Virginia. It is God who had raised up for us a powerful ally, a chosen army, an enabled force, who sent us a Rochambeau to fight side-by-side with Washington in the Battle of Yorktown.''

``To diffuse the general joy through every breast, the general orders''--I am sorry. This is from George Washington. George Washington wrote this. This was one of his orders.

``To diffuse the general joy through every breast, the general orders''--these are his orders. I am quoting from Washington. ``Divine service is to be performed tomorrow in the several brigades. The Commander-in-Chief earnestly recommends troops not on duty should universally attend with that gratitude of heart which the recognition of such astonishing interposition of Providence demands.''

And then the next year, on October 11, this is what the Congress passed. Congress said: ``It being the indispensable duty of all nations to offer up their supplications to Almighty God the United States in Congress assembled do hereby recommend it to the inhabitants of these States in general to observe the last Thursday of November next as a day of solemn thanksgiving to God for his mercies.''

September 3, 1783, the Revolutionary War was officially ended with the Treaty of Paris, signed by Ben Franklin, John Adams, John Jay, and David Hartley. And I was surprised, I was going through the State Department with my wife and my pastor, David Dykes, and his wife, Cindy, and we were going through, and there was a copy, an original copy of the Treaty of Paris.

I looked at the big letters that started it, and I was shocked. I said: ``Did you know it started that way?'' Because David is quite a historian himself. He has written a lot of great books. But he didn't know. We didn't know how it started.

But then it made sense. If you are going to get the British to sign a document swearing that the United States has the right to be free and independent of the most powerful country in the world, the most powerful army, the most powerful navy, which I agree with Washington, it was the grace of God, we were able to defeat. Without the grace of God, there is no defeat. We are not an independent country.

So what do you start that with to make the British swear under that would be something they would not want to break the oath to?

This is how it starts. These were the big letters, huge print, ``In the name of the Most Holy and Undivided Trinity,'' then smaller letters for the rest of the document, ``It having pleased the Divine Providence'' or God ``to dispose the hearts of the most serene and most potent Prince George III, by the grace of God, King of Great Britain . . . and of the United States of America, to forget all past misunderstandings and differences.''

Anyway, it was signed: ``Done at Paris, this third day of September, in the year of our Lord, 1783.''

And, of course, our Constitution is dated the same way, in the year of our Lord, 1787.

But those were Founders. Those were things that got us started.

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

Celebrating the Borden County Coyotes Division 1, 1A Six-Man Football

State Championship

Mr. Speaker, I am always happy to share time with my friend from west Texas. We are on opposite sides of the State but same sides of the heart caring for this country.

We have got a lot to be thankful for in this country, and I am thankful that we are going to have 11 months for people to realize that all the gloom and doom that was preached in this room about what the tax bill was going to do. The tax cuts, the reforms, it wasn't made as simple as I would hope, just a flat tax across the board. But there will be more people who don't pay tax, and most everybody should pay less tax.

It is just amazing the things that have been said. One person even said this is the worst bill ever, the tax bill, when--wow, I would have thought those bills that were really punishing slaves and allowing the continuance of slavery, those might have been, well, in my opinion, just nowhere near the same category. But according to at least one source here across the aisle, this tax bill was worse than all of those, the worst bill ever.

But people are going to have 11 months to see that, even though the stock market was doing better, people weren't really doing better. Incomes had been pretty well flat-lined.

I think there is going to be a great deal to be grateful for. Now it is not just going to be the stock market going up, it is going to be Americans having more money in their own pockets. There are going to be more jobs. There are going to be people making more than they have in the past.

There will be a chance for many in the upcoming generation to experience what many of us did coming out of school, but most of them haven't, and that is having multiple firms, companies, employers, wanting them. It is just going to be a new experience for so many. And I hope when it happens, they will do as our Founders did and know where to give the proper credit.

John Adams, in the fall of 1798, to the officers of the First Brigade--he was President at the time, having succeeded Washington. President Adams said: ``We have no government armed with power, capable of contending with human passions, unbridled by morality and religion. Avarice, ambition, revenge, gallantry would break the strongest cords of our Constitution as a whale goes through a net. Our Constitution was made only for a moral and religious people.''

It is wholly inadequate to the government of any other.

John Adams, on December 25, 1813, what we call Christmas Day, wrote to his new friend. They had been friends, then when Jefferson had been greatly unfair in the election, defeated Adams, they had nothing to do with each other for many years. Then at Benjamin Rush's recommendation, Adams wrote Thomas Jefferson, and they rekindled a great friendship.

December 25 of 1813, former President John Adams wrote to former President Thomas Jefferson, and said:

``I have examined all religions as well as my narrow sphere, my straightened means, and my busy life would allow; and the result is that the Bible is the best Book in the world. It contains more philosophy than all the libraries I have seen.''

Thomas Jefferson. This is inscribed in his monument.

Mr. Speaker, I share this as we leave session the last time before Christmas, because I find that so many people get upset when we mention God or mention the Bible here in Congress, when actually that is the most oft-cited thing in our whole history of Congress.

People have been mis-educated, and this is the one chance to thank God, Mr. Speaker, and help people realize how we came to be as we are.

Thomas Jefferson said:

``God who gave us life gave us liberty.''

``And can the liberties of a nation be thought secure when we have removed their only firm basis, a conviction in the minds of the people that these liberties are of the gift of God? That they are not to be violated, but with His wrath? Indeed, I tremble for my country when I reflect that God is just: that His justice cannot sleep forever.''

Mr. Speaker, this was a time when people had turned from God, and it was scaring Jefferson because he knew, as Adams did, if we were not a religious and moral people, the Constitution would cease to serve the needed purpose.

Madison has such great pronouncements. As Madison himself said in 1815:

``No people ought to feel greater obligations to celebrate the goodness of the Great Disposer of events and of the Destiny of nations than the people of the United States. To the same divine author of every good and perfect gift, we are indebted for all those privileges and advantages, religious as well as civil, which are so richly enjoyed in this favored land.''

He also referred to our Heavenly Benefactor.

Monroe, same type of messages.

John Quincy Adams, he wrote his son, 1811:

`` . . . so great is my veneration for the Bible, and so strong my belief, that when duly read and meditated on, it is of all books in the world, that which contributes most to make men wise and happy--that the earlier my children begin to read it, the more steadily they pursue the practice of reading it throughout their lives, the more lively and confident will be my hopes that they will prove useful citizens to their country, respectable members of society. . . . `'

Abraham Lincoln said this, and it was official. This was his proclamation. Those that think it is inappropriate for government to say these things, this was Abraham Lincoln, who knew wherein our hopes lie.

Lincoln said in his official proclamation:

`` . . . it is the duty of nations, as well as of men, to own their dependence upon the overruling power of God, to confess their sins and transgressions in humble sorrow, yet with assured hope, that genuine repentance will lead to mercy and pardon, and to recognize the sublime truth, announced in the Holy Scriptures and proven by all history, that those nations are only blessed whose God is the Lord.''

In his second inaugural, just 45 days before he was struck down by an assassin's bullet, Abraham Lincoln was trying to make sense of such a bloody, horrific war between the North and South, and it is inscribed on the inside wall of the Lincoln Memorial on the north side. Thank God, literally, thank God no one has required that those beautiful words be removed.

But he was trying to reconcile how there could be something so bloody and

awful if there were a good and just God. Obviously, he had done a lot of theological wrestling with that issue, and in talking about the North and South, Abraham Lincoln said:

``Both''--North and South--``read the same Bible and pray to the same God.''

``The prayers of both could not be answered. The prayers of neither has been answered fully. The Almighty has his own purpose.''

But then he quotes Scripture: ``Whoa unto the world because of offenses.''

Lincoln continues on:

``Yet, if God will that it continue until all the wealth piled by the bondsman's 250 years of unrequited toil shall be sunk, and every drop of blood drawn with the lash shall be paid by another drawn with a sword, as was said 3,000 years ago, so it must be said.''

And again quoting the Bible: ``The judgements of the Lord are true and righteous altogether.''

All Presidents have had these types of proclamations.

I like the proclamation Grover Cleveland had in November 1885. Official U.S. Government proclamation. He said:

``The American people have always abundant cause to be thankful to Almighty God, whose watchful care and guiding hand have been manifested in every stage of their national life, guarding and protecting them in time of peril and safely leading them in the hour of darkness and of danger.

``It is fitting and proper that a nation thus favored should on one day every year, for that purpose especially appointed, publicly acknowledge the goodness of God and return thanks to Him for all His gracious gifts.''

Moving to Franklin Roosevelt, Franklin Roosevelt delivered this Christmas Eve message just weeks after we were attacked at Pearl Harbor.

Franklin Roosevelt said:

``Sincere and faithful men and women are asking themselves this Christmas: How can we light our trees? How can we give our gifts? How can we meet and worship with love and with uplifted spirit and heart in a world at war, a world of fighting and suffering and death? How can we pause, even for a day, even for Christmas Day, in our urgent labor of arming a decent humanity against the enemies which beset it? How can we put the world aside, as men and women put the world aside in peaceful years, to rejoice in the birth of Christ?''

Franklin Roosevelt went on to say:

``Looking into the days to come, I have set aside a day of prayer, and in that proclamation, I have said: The year 1941 has brought upon our Nation a war of aggression by powers dominated by arrogant rulers whose selfish purpose is to destroy free institutions. They would thereby take from the freedom-loving peoples of the Earth the hard-won liberties gained over many centuries. The new year of 1942 calls for the courage. Our strength, as the strength of all men everywhere, is of greater avail as God upholds us.

``Therefore, I''--this is Franklin Roosevelt--``do hereby appoint the first day of the year 1942 as a day of prayer, of asking forgiveness for our shortcomings of the past, of consecration to the task of the present, of asking God's help in days to come. We need His guidance that this people may be humbled in spirit, but strong in the conviction of the right. Steadfast to endure sacrifice, and brave to achieve a victory of liberty and peace. Our strongest weapon in this war is that conviction of the dignity and brotherhood of man, which Christmas Day signifies. Against enemies who preach the principles of hate and practice them, we set our faith in human love and in God's care for us and all men everywhere.''

He had so many beautiful, beautiful messages.

One ended like this:

``It is significant that tomorrow, Christmas Day, our plants and factories will be stilled. That is not true of the other holidays we have long been accustomed to celebrate. On all other holidays, work goes on, gladly, for the winning of the war. So Christmas becomes the only holiday in all the year. I like to think this is because Christmas is a holy day. May all it stands for live and grow throughout the years.''

Harry Truman, who succeeded him after his death, finished one of his Christmas proclamations this way:

``Our thoughts and aspirations and the hopes of future years turn to a little town in the hills of Judea where, on a winter's night 2,000 years ago, the prophecy of Isaiah was fulfilled.

``Shepherds keeping the watch by night over their flock heard the glad tidings of great joy from the angels of the Lord singing: `Glory to God in the highest, and on Earth, peace, good will toward men.' ''

It is not just from the Bible. This is the President of the United States' official proclamation, government proclamation.

Truman said:

``The message of Bethlehem best sums up our hopes tonight. If we as a nation, and the other nations of the world, will accept it, the star of faith will guide us into the place of peace as it did the shepherds on that day of Christ's birth long ago.

``We shall find strength and courage at this Christmastime because so brave a beginning has been made. So with faith and courage we shall work to hasten the day when the sword is replaced by the plowshare and nations do not `learn war anymore.'

``Selfishness and greed, individual or national, cause most of our troubles.''

``He whose birth we celebrate tonight was the world's greatest teacher. He said: `Therefore all things whatsoever ye would that men would do to you, do ye even so to them; for this is the law and the prophets.' Through all the centuries since He spoke, history has vindicated His teaching.

``In this great country of ours has been demonstrated the fundamental unity of Christianity and democracy. Under our heritage of freedom for everyone on equal terms, we also share the responsibilities of government. Our support of individual freedom--free speech, free schools, free press, and a free conscience--transcends all our differences. Although we may not hope for a New Heaven and a New Earth in our day and generation; we may strive with undaunted faith and courage to achieve in the present some measure of that unity with which the Nation's sons and the sons of our allies went forth to win the war.

``We have this glorious land not because of a particular religious faith, not because our ancestors sailed from a particular foreign port. We have our unique national heritage because of a common aspiration to be free and because of our purpose to achieve for ourselves and for our children the good things of life which the Christ declared He came to give to all mankind.

``We have made a good start toward peace in the world. Ahead of us lies the larger task of making the peace secure. The progress we made gives hope that in the coming year we shall reach our goal. May 1947 entitle us to the benediction of the Master.''

``Master'' is capitalized. He is talking about Jesus.

He quotes Jesus saying: `` `Blessed are the peacemakers, for they shall be called the children of God.' Because of what we have achieved for peace, because of all the promise our future holds, I say to all my countrymen: Merry Christmas. Merry Christmas, and may God bless you all.''

I just want to conclude, Mr. Speaker, with this best message, Ronald Reagan's 1988 official Christmas message. He said: ``The themes of Christmas and of coming home for the holidays have long been intertwined in song and story. There is a profound irony and a lesson in this because Christmas celebrates the coming of a Savior who was born without a home.

``There was no room at the inn for the Holy Family. Weary of travel, a young Mary, close to childbirth, and her carpenter husband, Joseph, found but the rude shelter of a stable. There born the King of Kings, the Prince of Peace--an event on which all history would turn.

``Jesus would again be without home, and more than once; on the flight to Egypt and during His public ministry when He said: `The foxes have holes, and the birds of the air have nests, but the Son of Man hath nowhere to lay his head.'

``From His very infancy, on, our Redeemer was reminding us that, from then on we would never lack a home in Him. Like the shepherds to whom the angel of the Lord appeared on the first Christmas Day, we could always say: `Let us now go even unto Bethlehem

and see this thing which is come to pass, which the Lord hath made known unto us.'

``As we come home with gladness to family and friends this Christmas, let us also remember our neighbors who cannot go home themselves. Our compassion and concern this Christmas and all year long will mean much to the hospitalized, the homeless, the convalescent, the orphaned--and will surely lead us on our way to the joy and peace of Bethlehem and the Christ Child who bids us come. For it is only in finding and living the eternal meaning of the Nativity that we can be truly happy, truly at peace, truly home.

``Merry Christmas, and God bless you.''

Official proclamation of the United States Government by the President of the United States, words well to remember.

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 19 minutes p.m.), under its previous order, the House adjourned until tomorrow, Friday, December 22, 2017, at 2 p.m.

Mr. Speaker, I enjoyed hearing my friend from Illinois first talking about the great State of Illinois. It truly is. We appreciate all the doctors who have been sent down to Texas after we did tort reform and Illinois continues to have significant problems.

We had had problems keeping doctors in Texas until the great State of Illinois ran into greater and greater malpractice lawsuit problems. Texas did tort reform, and we started having doctors coming from places like Illinois to Texas, and we are doing much better.

The problem is, with health insurance, I heard my friend talk about 13 million who won't have insurance, and I think, to be fair there, are so many millions right now who are forced to do the unthinkable.

It is unconstitutional. The Supreme Court simply chose to become political in their decisionmaking rather than constitutional. You could pick nine people off the street at random and probably six or seven out of the nine, after they heard the dispute and read the Constitution, would find contrary to the Supreme Court.

We put so much magic, supposedly, in those black robes. Somehow, they are given more credibility than they ought to be. Thomas Jefferson thought that the judicial system would be the weakest of the three branches, but now it pretty much controls everything.

Under ObamaCare, people are forced to buy a product. For the first time in American history, you can be forced to buy a product. If you didn't, you would be fined, punished, taxed. The Court said, on one hand, it wasn't a tax. Therefore, the Court had jurisdiction. Forty- some pages later, it said it is a tax, so it is constitutional.

In any event, people have been forced to buy a product and they have paid for as cheap a policy as they could get away with, but the deductibles were so high. I have heard this over and over hundreds of times in my own district. They were buying insurance they will never be able to use. The deductibles are so high, they don't have that kind of money.

So what the repeal of the individual mandate is going to mean is that people can still buy the insurance if they want to. They are not going to be penalized if they don't buy it.

But in order for ObamaCare to work, it is stealing from Peter to pay Paul. In other words, young people, for example, were having to buy insurance they would never use because they would have the deductible. But they did the calculation: Do I pay more if I pay for the insurance or do I pay more if I pay the extra income tax? Then they make that decision.

What the repeal of the individual mandate means is that we will help the Supreme Court in their ridiculous ruling and the mental gymnastics that went into not calling it a tax at page 13 or so, and then 40 pages later calling it a tax.

It is really pretty absurd, but it was a political decision. John Roberts was intimidated into believing that, if they struck down this unconstitutional bill, he would be deemed to be Chief Justice over the most political Court. As a result of what he did, he goes down in history as having the most political Court since Dred Scott. It wasn't quite as bad as the Dred Scott decision. That has got to be the worst.

We know from history that sometimes they just get it wrong. We will do the right thing by the American people, and we will repeal the individual mandate. Unfortunately, it is not going to start for a year.

I also heard my friend mention--and I have heard others say--that this bill will end up putting most of the income in the hands of the top 1 percent.

One of the great things about being in Congress is you get to learn so much if you are paying attention.

My friends can go back and look at YouTube and find President Obama, after being in office for a number of years, admitting that, for the first time in American history, 95 percent of the Nation's income went to the top 1 percent income earners. It never happened before.

But under the policies that do as President Obama said he was going to do before he got elected--and that is spread the wealth around-- every time somebody tries to spread the wealth around--it is a socialist idea, a communist. But when you try to spread the wealth around, it never seems to fail that the richest, most powerful get richer and more powerful.

You can go to the Soviet Union. There were a handful of people making a lot of money, even over there now, under Putin. Of course, Putin gets richer. But there were a handful of people who get rich and most of the people don't. Most of the people bring in about the same amount of income, but they don't have access to the same benefits.

Anyway, we are going to move in a direction away from what President Obama's policies established, and that was, as a fact, 95 percent of the Nation's income is going to the top 1 percent. We want to get away from that.

Reforming the Tax Code and getting away from the punishing days of President Obama's policies will allow the working class to do better for the first time in years. They have been flat-lined or less when adjusted for inflation. It is time they did better.

The tax bill we should take up tomorrow will end up doing that. It will get money into the hands of the working poor, the middle class. We saw the middle class shrink under President Obama; the poor got poorer, the ultrarich got ultraricher, and the middle class shrunk.

More people--over 50 million, as I recall--signed up for food stamps. That has already dropped significantly under the policies of the current President. We are hoping that the policies that we will push through together with the President will continue to have that effect. People will do better. There will be more jobs.

With all of the ridicule of lowering the corporate tax, if people will just be realistic and honest about it, corporations don't pay corporate taxes. They have to pass that on as a cost of doing business to their customers, their clients, those who purchase their goods or services. They pass that 35 percent tax on.

I know that before the President got elected, the current President, he had talked about maybe putting a tariff on Chinese goods. The fact is we have been putting on a 35 percent tariff, the highest tariff anybody puts on its own goods and services of all the industrialized nations. It is the biggest.

If we knock that 35 percent down, then it means our goods will be more competitive around the world. It means more jobs. It is going to be a great thing for America. It really is. As much as some people despise the President, like it or not, it is going to help make America great again.

Lower the corporate tax. I wish we could have kept it at 15 percent. Apparently, the powers of the leaders of the House and Senate, by a margin of two-to-one against the President wanting it at 15 percent, but at least we are getting it lowered. That is going to mean more goods can be competitive abroad. It means more jobs here. It means more manufacturing back here.

For those who have got their nose in the air and think we shouldn't have manufacturing in America, you go around the world and see manufacturing in other places and you see it here. It is about as clean a manufacturing company as you can have. This is the best place for those jobs because we do have to breathe the air that China and India pollutes, which we are cleaning up, but not near fast enough because they are polluting it so much.

Fortunately, the President withdrew from the so-called climate accord. The reason all these other countries wanted the United States in is because we were the ones that were going to send checks to all the other countries. We were going to pay guilt money. We have no guilt to pay for.

In fact, this is the country that is helping clean up the air and water, unlike other large nations in the world. They owe us a check, if somebody is going to be owing checks for the amount of pollution. It should mean a better economy.

There is one other thing that severely hurt our country under the past administration.

I am not normally a big fan of Politico's articles, but this is a fascinating one that calls itself: ``The Secret Backstory of How Obama Let Hezbollah Off the Hook.''

Hezbollah is recognized as a terrorist organization. This is entitled: ``The Secret Backstory of How Obama Let Hezbollah Off the Hook.''

Part one starts with a ``Global Threat Emerges. How Hezbollah turned to trafficking cocaine and laundering money through used cars to finance its expansion.

``In its determination to secure a nuclear deal with Iran, the Obama administration derailed an ambitious law enforcement campaign targeting drug trafficking by the Iranian-backed terrorist group Hezbollah, even as it was funneling cocaine into the United States, according to a Politico investigation.

``The campaign, dubbed Project Cassandra, was launched in 2008 after the Drug Enforcement Administration amassed evidence that Hezbollah had transformed itself from a Middle East-focused military and political organization into an international crime syndicate that some investigators believed was collecting $1 billion a year from drug and weapons trafficking, money laundering, and other criminal activities.''

So, that was 2008, during the Bush administration, with Robert Mueller as head of the FBI.

This points out: ``Over the next 8 years''--that would be as we went into the Obama administration, 2009--agents working out of a top-secret DEA facility in Chantilly, Virginia, used wiretaps, undercover operations, and informants to map Hezbollah's illicit networks, with the help of 30 U.S. and foreign security agencies.

``They followed cocaine shipments, some from Latin America to West Africa and on to Europe and the Middle East, and others through Venezuela and Mexico to the United States. They tracked the river of dirty cash as it was laundered by, among other tactics, buying American used cars and shipping them to Africa. And with the help of some key cooperating witnesses, the agents traced the conspiracy, they believed, to the innermost circle of Hezbollah and its state sponsors in Iran.''

It is rather ironic. I got in the car a moment ago and heard my good friend, Mark Levin. Apparently, he had read part of this story on the air and had a call from a person they didn't fully identify who was one of these agents who was helping track what Hezbollah was doing.

The article says: ``But as Project Cassandra reached higher into the hierarchy of conspiracy, Obama administration officials threw an increasingly insurmountable series of roadblocks in its way.''

Parenthetically here, so the Obama administration had found that Hezbollah was massively producing and getting into the United States drugs that were addicting American young people--well, of all ages, but especially our young, our future--making a billion dollars or so, and they were dying as they got hooked on worse and worse drugs. The answer of the Obama administration, according to this article, was throwing an increasingly unsurmountable series of roadblocks in the way of those investigating Hezbollah and the evil infliction of harm they were doing to America.

The article goes on:

`` . . . according to interviews with dozens of participants, who, in many cases, spoke for the first time about events shrouded in secrecy, and a review of government documents and court records. When Project Cassandra leaders sought approval for some significant investigations, prosecutions, arrests, and financial sanctions, officials at the Justice and Treasury Departments delayed, hindered, or rejected their requests.''

That would be Bob Mueller at the FBI. He had already purged the FBI training materials so that FBI agents, as they came in, would not know what questions to ask. So when they went out to interview Tsarnaev, after we got a heads up that he was a terrorist--he had been radicalized--those FBI agents didn't know what to ask.

Why?

Because Bob Mueller purged the training material. So they didn't know what to ask. They didn't know what to look for in a radical Islamist. They went and asked his mother, and she said: No, he is a good boy. He is not a terrorist.

There were people who died because of Bob Mueller purging the FBI training materials; so they didn't even know what they were looking for.

And when I was cross-examining him before our committee, I said: ``You didn't even go out to the mosque where they attended to investigate them.'' He indicated that they did go out to the mosque in their outreach program, where they sit down and play ``Pat-a-Cake,'' share a meal, and the last thing they do would be to inquire about one of the mosque attendees being radicalized. They didn't bother to do that. They were too busy making merry in their outreach program.

He also testified on one occasion that the Islamic community is like every other religious community in America; and they had this wonderful outreach program with them, and it is working so well.

So I asked a question: ``Well, you said the Islamic community is like every other community in America, and you have this wonderful outreach program with them, so let me ask you: How is your outreach program going with the Buddhists, and the Jewish, and the Baptists, and all of these other communities?''

Well, they don't have an outreach program to any except the Islamic community. So that told me then: this isn't just like every other community. They don't have outreach communities through every other religious community in America because they are not worried about them blowing up innocent people, to the extent they apparently were before Mueller came along.

In any event, back to this article:

``The Justice Department declined requests by Project Cassandra and other authorities to file criminal charges against major players such as Hezbollah's high-profile envoy to Iran, a Lebanese bank that allegedly laundered billions in alleged drug profits, and a central player in a U.S.-based cell of the Iranian paramilitary Quds Force. And the State Department rejected requests to lure high-value targets to countries where they could be arrested.''

So the Justice Department--during that period, of course--would have been Eric Holder. I believe I saw him in the news recently. He had forgotten how he was in contempt of Congress, how he covered up-- obfuscated--crimes that appeared to be occurring under his watch. And now we find out, just days after his high-profile blasting of what was going on here, trying to get to the truth, it turns out he was obfuscating, just like we found he was doing, hindering and obstructing justice.

We really needed a special counsel to investigate him. But, of course, he was not going to have a special counsel investigate himself, nor was Loretta Lynch going to allow a special counsel to investigate Eric Holder and Loretta Lynch. We still need one to investigate both of them. And the more we find out, the more it points to this desperate need.

It has this in the article from December 15, 2011:

``Hezbollah is linked to a $483,142,568 laundering scheme. The money, allegedly laundered through the Lebanese Canadian Bank and two exchange houses, involved approximately 30 U.S. car buyers.''

Then it goes on and shows in the article, from the Southern District of New York, U.S. Attorney's Office:

``Manhattan U.S. Attorney Files Civil Money Laundering and Forfeiture Suit Seeking More Than $480 Million From Entities Including Lebanese Financial Institutions That Facilitated a Hezbollah-Related Money Laundering Scheme''

`` `This was a policy decision, it was a systematic decision,' said David Asher, who helped establish and oversee Project Cassandra as a Defense Department illicit finance analyst. `They serially ripped apart this entire effort that was very well supported and resourced, and it was done from the top down.' ''

That would be from President Obama, it would be from Eric Holder, and it would be from Bob Mueller.

Bob Mueller should have been honest and sincere enough when he was asked to be special counsel, and should have said: I am probably going to be investigated myself. I am not in a position to be the investigator.

Because he certainly should be investigated. And this is one more story.

``The untold story of Project Cassandra illustrates the immense difficulty in mapping and countering illicit networks in an age where global terrorism, drug trafficking, and organized crime have merged, but also the extent to which competing agendas among government agencies--and shifting priorities at the highest levels--can set back years of progress.''

And that is exactly what happened under Bob Mueller and President Obama's administration.

And this 56-page article appears very well documented, and it actually appears well done. It has John Brennan in here creating problems for the investigation into the drugging and laundering of money to help finance terrorist operations.

And one part of this is they killed this investigation. They were afraid it would prevent the Iran agreement from going forward. Well, it didn't go forward. It was never constitutionally ratified. The Corker bill was just that: it was a bill. It could not turn the Constitution upside down, as it attempted to do.

The Constitution makes clear that it takes two-thirds of the Senate to ratify a treaty. It doesn't matter what the bill says; it will only take one-third to ratify a treaty. It doesn't work that way. If you want that to be the law, it takes a constitutional amendment to do that. We didn't have one. Therefore, it took two-thirds to ratify, and the Iranian agreement is still not ratified.

But, nonetheless, though it wasn't ratified, it didn't keep the President from sending $100 billion or so in dollars over to Iran. We know Iran is the largest producer of IEDs in Iraq.

As I sat at the funeral of this precious, young 20-year-old gentleman, who went to my daughter's high school, Alex Missildine, killed by an IED, I just sat there going: I wonder if the money President Obama sent paid for the production of the IED that killed our precious Alex?

It has been paid. It is paying for something. We know that Iran is using it--Certainly part of their military operations are continuing to kill Americans in other places.

Yet you had Project Cassandra that was closing in on Hezbollah, closing in on the drug production, drug sales, the laundering of money through the used car, shipping used cars around. And then, lo and behold, a reminder of what has happened right here on Capitol Hill that Luke Rosiak has been pursuing.

Here is an article from February 20, 2017, from the Daily Caller, entitled: ``House Dem IT Guys In Security Probe Secretly Took $100,000 in Iraqi Money,'' from a Hezbollah tie.

The article says:

``Rogue congressional staffers took $100,000 from an Iraqi politician while they had administrator-level access to the House of Representatives' computer network, according to court documents examined by The Daily Caller News Foundation's Investigative Group.

``The money was a loan from Dr. Ali al-Attar, an Iraqi political figure, and was funneled through a company with `impossible'-to- decipher financial transactions that the congressional information technology, IT, staffers controlled.

``Imran Awan, ringleader of the group that includes his brothers Abid and Jamal, has provided IT services since 2005 for Florida Democrat Representative Debbie Wasserman Schultz, the former Democratic National Committee, DNC, chairwoman. The brothers are from Pakistan.

``The trio also worked for dozens of other House Democrats, including members of the Intelligence, Foreign Affairs, and Homeland Security Committees. Those positions likely gave them access to congressional emails and other sensitive documents.

``The brothers, whose access to House IT networks has been terminated, are under criminal investigation by the U.S. Capitol Police.''

``Investigators found that congressional information was being copied to an off-site server and they suspect the brothers of improperly accessing information and stealing congressional property. Chiefs of staff for the employing Democrats were notified February 2.

``Soon after Imran began working for Members of Congress, Imran's and Abid's wives--Hina Alvi and Natalia Sova--also began receiving congressional paychecks, the DCNF found. Imran's employers included two members of the Intelligence Committee. . . .

``By 2009, the family was simultaneously managing a full-time car dealership in Virginia, with Abid running day-to-day operations after contributing $250,000 in startup cash. It was called Cars International A, LLC, referred to as ``CIA'' in court documents.''

Cars International A, referred to as CIA. Isn't it clever.

``Imran boasted unusual clout among House Democrats, and was even pictured conversing with former President Bill Clinton. After Rao Abbas, who was owed money by the dealership, threatened to sue amid allegations of deception and theft, Abbas appeared on the congressional payroll and received $250,000 in taxpayer payments.''

Incredible. You owe somebody for an illicit car dealership, and you can't pay. Just put them on the House employee system; and they will be on the congressional payroll, and you can pay off $250,000. That must have been a heck of a percentage, though. They borrowed $100,000 from this guy with Hezbollah contact, and they have to pay him back $250,000. Of course, in their case, they were very fortunate, because they did it with the House payroll. There is no evidence that Mr. Abbas ever lifted a finger to do any work, and for good reason. We wouldn't want him involved in all of the inner workings of our computer systems on the Hill. Who knows. Maybe he did. Maybe that was part of the payoff as well.

``Abid had `100 percent' of the dealership, a one-time business partner said in court documents, in addition to his $165,000-a-year job working full-time for multiple representatives. . . .''

Mr. Speaker, this story Politico has run seems to have a lot of parallels to what was going on right here in the House that needs further investigation.

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

Mr. Speaker, I heard my colleagues across the aisle discussing the issue of Special Counsel Mueller. Since there are one or two possibilities about some of the things they said regarding Republicans, especially on a committee, either Mr. Cohen's memory is terrible or he is falsely, intentionally misrepresenting things.

I am not saying that is the case. I am saying it is one or the other, and I will get to that momentarily.

The hearing we had this week in the Judiciary Committee with Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein was deeply troubling to those who want the Department of Justice to be about justice; those who want to see the FBI be that great arbiter, that great entity that will ensure that justice is done. We need an entity like that.

The ATF, their reputation was sorely soiled back during the attack by the ATF on Waco at the facility where some folks had been sucked into basically a cult. It didn't have to happen. And as we found out, local law enforcement said that they knew that David Koresh went to Sam's Club right there on Belle Meade--I think they said Tuesday. And if the ATF had told us they wanted to arrest him, we could have helped them arrange to pick him up as he walked out of Sam's Club with grocery sacks in his arms. There would have been no incident. No lives would have been lost, no children burned up in a fire, no people killed. It was so unnecessary, but the ATF apparently wanted to make a point and wanted to have a big show. Actually, there were constitutional issues there.

I read in the paper that a gentleman who served with me at Fort Benning in Georgia, during my time in the Army, had advised the post commander out at Fort Bliss that he should not allow the U.S. Army tanks or equipment to be used, in violation of the posse comitatus, unless he had a direct order from the President himself.

As we found out after the fact, the President made clear that: Oh, that was Reno's deal. You have to talk to her about that.

So, clearly, he did not order the U.S. military to use equipment and allow their equipment to be used against civilian American citizens. So there were all kinds of terrible things that came out and it really made the ATF look bad.

I was a fan of the ATF, the Federal ATF. I knew them to have done some great things, and I had some very dear friends, and still do have some very dear and very great friends, who are in the ATF.

But the point is that such horrendous judgment in the ATF set up what they knew or should have known would probably result in losses of lives, including severe injuries to ATF themselves. I don't think they lost anybody, but they certainly were severely wounded and treated there in Waco. But that kind of outrageous judgment that puts political and news interests ahead of just doing the job and seeing justice done ends up being such a terrible blot on the reputation of any entity that it is hard to work back from that.

I still hear people who refer to that incident nearly 25 years ago, and still it is such a blot on the ATF that it is hard for people to consider the ATF without thinking how terribly, just inappropriate, the ATF acted at times and caused people to wonder: Is that the general rule, or was that an exception? People, after some other episodes, began to think it is the rule with the ATF. Some claim: Let's get rid of it.

What has gone on now and is currently going on now with the Deputy Attorney General taking all three positions that he sees no evil, he hears no evil--he doesn't know of any evil going on. He thinks everything is like the poet said: ``God's in His Heaven, all's right with the world.'' I believe the author had a little girl saying that.

But it is not right with the world. It is terribly wrong. America and the world sit in a position of Western civilization where potentially the most incredible and amazing strides in healthcare, in energy, and all kinds of areas of life on this Earth have been made better exponentially, and the United States of America is at the very heart of those great developments.

A majority in the United States throughout our history would always say: We call those blessings from God.

Now, maybe it is and maybe it isn't a majority, but we are ever getting closer to a position where this grand experiment in self- judgment is potentially on the verge of being lost. History is not being taught as zealously as it once was. Places like Hillsdale College or Liberty or Regent, there are some places where it is being taught. I had fantastic history teachers, which is what I majored in at Texas A&M because I knew I was going to do 4 years in the Army, at least, and if we were at war when my 4 years were up, I would have continued to serve.

But our students don't know history anymore. Why? Because President Carter decided that the Federal Government intervention into education, even though it is not an enumerated power under the Constitution, and it is, therefore, a power that is reserved to the States and the people and not the Federal Government, we have been acting extra- constitutionally, that means outside the Constitution, for quite some time going back to the late seventies under President Carter.

Our students have suffered as a result. They don't know history. Someone had advised me that even though history is not an important part of the federally mandated test, there are things that in different subjects are mandated by the Federal Government. Here is an element that students should know about the subject. I was advised that the one area that the federally mandated test, the only area historically that students were required to know, is that when the United States dropped two atomic bombs, one on Hiroshima and one on Nagasaki, it raised serious questions about the United States' morality, which is absolutely fictitious unless the ignorance of the authors requiring such a thing did not allow them to know the truth.

The truth is that Truman was advised that because the Emperor of Japan had ordered the Japanese people to fight for their homes to the death, then the Allied Forces would have to land in Japan. They would have had to move across the country, and it was considered a very fair and possibly quite conservative estimate that there could be 10 million people losing their lives if Allied Forces had to land and were fighting the Japanese people home to home to home.

So the morality of the issue is: Would we morally be better off in this absolute war that the Japanese started

against the United States, would we be better off losing the horrible tragedy of 300,000 or so lives, or would we be better off having 5 or so million Japanese people killed and 5 or so million Allied Forces being lost?

The morally correct decision was that a Democrat, a man who apparently really wrestled with the issue from a moral standpoint, decided to put the American bombers at risk, those flying the planes and taking the atomic bombs, and to put 200,000 or 300,000 or so people at risk in an effort to avoid losing 5 million or so Japanese and an equal number or more of the Allied Forces. I think he made the correct moral decision.

So that doesn't raise moral issues about the United States. It raises ignorance issues about the federally mandated test. We would be so much better off if we got back to allowing local school boards to decide and States to decide--as they had been for many decades--deciding what their students should learn. That was the beauty of a federalist situation where States would have so much power.

But as is often the case when the Federal Government takes over an area like education, then it gets worse. I was on the board of directors of the Texas A&M Association of Former Students, and I can recall the president advising us that the official SAT had to change the scoring system for the SAT because students across the board were doing so much worse than they did when classes around my era, in the 1970s, had done, that we had done, overall, so much better than the students who came through after the Federal Government took over education.

So I don't know if it was accurate, but I had educators back at that time say that there is a formula; so it is hard to say. But if you scored, say, 1,400 out of 1,600 on the SAT in the seventies, then under the new scoring system it would probably be scored closer to 1,600, 1,500 to 1,600, maybe a couple hundred points that they had to add to the system, because after we had a Federal Department of Education, then students started doing worse. So to keep it from looking like the Department of Education here in Washington made education as poor as it helped to do, we had to raise the SAT scores basically on an arbitrary basis.

We know that the students coming through in the eighties, nineties, and then this new millennium have the potential to do better than we ever did, but because the Federal Government got involved, I don't think it is just a great irony when the Federal Government took over education under President Carter that, wow, ironically, isn't it amazing, at the same time students were doing worse and worse. So that is what often happens when the Federal Government gets involved.

We saw that with Waco. If they had gotten the help of the local law enforcement, there would have been no loss of life, in all reality, but the ATF was going to bust in and make a big show out of it, and it cost an awful lot of lives.

You would like to think that, when the FBI comes in, you don't have to worry, they are going to do the right thing. I know so many incredible, outstanding FBI agents. But for Mr. Cohen to continue to say, even after he has been advised and reminded that I have been raising Cain about Robert Mueller for over a decade, I guess, he came in, sworn in in January of `07, as I understand it. Initially, when I questioned Robert Mueller as FBI Director when I first got to Congress, I was carrying that image of the great FBI, the image that so many of the agents still carry, thousands of them still carry, but with more and more difficulty because of the cesspools that have developed here in Washington and the way in which it has been used, as we saw with the IRS, during the Obama administration, weaponized and used as a political instrument.

Now, how do we know that? We didn't know near as much as we continue to find out, but Robert Mueller ran off thousands of years of experience, and I contend it was because he wanted nothing but yes people. He didn't want the experienced people around the country who might try to point out to the director when he made one of his many mistakes as FBI Director or chose software programs, chose law enforcement programs that created problems because they had more experience than he did, he did not really want people around the country to have more experience than he did because they might question something that he ordered inappropriately, and he just wanted people to salute him, salute the flag, figuratively speaking, and drive forward.

That means when Mueller wanted somebody to bust down the door in the middle of the night, even though there was no threat of the individual fleeing, no threat of the individual hiding evidence, it was done, as we are now seeing the Mueller special counsel group, team, SWAT unit, unofficial SWAT, of course, but we are seeing them use these types of tactics.

Now, I don't really know Paul Manafort. He doesn't seem like a fellow that I would enjoy getting along with. Nonetheless, it certainly appeared that he was very materially mistreated because Mueller wanted to make sure he got his point, and he knocked down the door, or at least went in in the middle of the night, however they got in. We have heard this before, this heavy-handed Federal Government, and there was no reason for that other than bullying, mean, Federal agents at the top wanting to bully people around.

We saw that kind of conduct with Mike Flynn as he was set up. He had been, as part of the transition team, talking to people at the FBI about different issues, and now we know Strzok was part of that, this man that absolutely loathed President-elect Trump, he loathed everything about Trump and those he was going to be bringing into office. We didn't know how badly they despised or loathed the President and Republicans supporting him until we got more information.

But these kind of things are things that Robert Mueller should have known. He should have known the Department of Justice's reputation and hope for being considered righteous was all riding on him and what he did. Yet he rode in with his black hat--figuratively, for those in the mainstream media who don't understand those type of references--and he began to overreach.

We heard yesterday from the guy that appointed Mueller, Rod Rosenstein, that, to have a special counsel, you have to believe that a crime was committed. So it would seem to reason that Mueller was appointed to investigate something that they had reason to believe that possibly a crime had been committed.

Yet because of whether it is incompetence or zeal in wanting Mueller to go on a witch hunt, to just keep searching until you find something, even if it is a poor guy like Scooter Libby who devoted his life to helping his country, we need somebody's scalp. It doesn't look like Donald J. Trump was colluding with the Russians, so we have got to have somebody's scalp. Let's intimidate some people. Let's bully our way into homes in the middle of the night. Let's do whatever we have got to do and maybe we will scare somebody into admitting something.

Like many are saying, Michael Flynn didn't lie. To be a lie, you have to have intent to deceive. But whether they are right or wrong about that, the word is he was bankrupted by an overzealous bully.

All my friends on the left are talking about bullying. I was small for my age. In my class, I was bullied. I had a black eye, a bloody nose. A fifth grade teacher, after a big bully took my football and I tried to get it back and ended up with a bloody nose and a black eye-- our teacher loved the bully back then--pulled me in front of class while I was trying to get my nose to stop bleeding and told the class: This is what happens when little boys try to play with big boys.

I know something about being bullied and I recognize it in a government group when I see it. The Mueller team has been bullies, but that is what Mueller wanted. Why do you think he went and hired Weissmann, who destroyed thousands and thousands of employees' lives who worked for Arthur Andersen in a joust at windmills that cost these people their livelihoods, caused more pain and suffering than imaginable, for what the Supreme Court said, 9-0: You are a fool. This was not a crime. You made this up?

That is who Mueller wanted on his team. This is the same Robert Mueller, as I have been pointing out for years,

who has been grossly unfair in running off the thousands of years of experience that he did so he could have great people, wonderful people.

Not only were they new and young, but he was eliminating the older folks who had the experience that could bring them along, because Mueller wanted them created in his image and to get rid of all the wisdom of the ages that could be found throughout the FBI before he took over.

I am sure there are a bunch of people that needed to go, but you don't destroy an entire entity like the Federal Bureau of Investigation just because you want a bunch of yes men. That is what Bob Mueller did. That man shouldn't have been close to being a special counsel. He couldn't stand Trump.

As the Washingtonian magazine was glorifying James Comey--I believe it was in a 2013 issue where they said, basically, in essence, if the world were burning down, James Comey knew that the one person who would be standing with him would be Bob Mueller--Comey is the very guy who admitted leaking information out in order to try to get a special counsel appointed.

As I covered with Mr. Rosenstein yesterday, this is part of an FBI typical employment agreement. Everybody is supposed to sign this thing and swear to it: ``All information acquired by me in connection with my official duties with the FBI and all official material to which I have access remain the property of the United States of America. I will surrender upon demand by the FBI, or upon my separation from the FBI, all materials containing FBI information in my possession.''

If a man like Comey goes to a meeting in his official capacity of FBI Director with the President of the United States and he comes out of this and types up a memo, even though it appears it was a pretty less than unbiased memo trying to make President Trump look bad, so he commemorates it with a memo, that memo, as I discussed with Mr. Rosenstein yesterday, is probably government property. That is government information, government property. And the question is: Did he commit a crime when he leaked that information?

There is a decent chance it is, yes.

So where is the FBI in its investigation of James Comey's potential crime?

When you look at the record and you go back, now we know from that one incident this is the person to whom he leaked, and then that got to The New York Times. Well, here is another meeting where he was the principal character there, the most likely person to have leaked.

Well, lo and behold, his same conduit for leaking information that he has admitted to ends up being in place in this story. There may be at least six other places where he has leaked information, and some of them will be crimes, but because the special counsel was all about trying to strip the winner of a Presidential election, we are not going after Comey. We are not going after any of these other people. They are trying to find something.

As we know from the text messages of FBI Agent Strzok, they wanted an insurance policy so that, in case Trump won, they could still get rid of him. Poor Strzok believed that no one in this country should vote-- not a single person, not even Donald Trump's family--should vote for him. It ought to be 100 million to zero.

But, Mr. Speaker, it is so clear, in my days of trying cases in Federal court and State court, where you are asking questions of a jury panel to see who would be fair enough to sit on a jury, we can see that these people who were working and have been--and some still are--for the FBI, for the Department of Justice, have no business getting close to this investigation unless they are a target of investigation.

Andrew Weissmann should never have been a part of the special counsel team.

Peter Strzok, this is only some of the text message he sent, but he says:

He asked me who I'd would vote for, guessed Kasich.

It goes on:

God Trump is a loathsome human.

Yet he may win.

Good for Hillary.

It is.

Would he be a worse President than Cruz?

Trump? Yes, I think so.

This, of course, is an exchange between Peter Strzok, or PS, and his mistress, Lisa Page, who is also working for the FBI. These people had done irreparable damage to the FBI. But worse than that, they have made a mockery of justice in the United States.

What really gets me is I know how upset I was in the Bush administration when I saw somebody doing wrong. I didn't care if he was appointed by a Republican or a Democrat. I didn't care that President Bush had appointed a man or a woman to a position. What I cared about was them being righteous and doing the right thing.

Now, where is my Democratic friend who will stand up and say this isn't right?

We know Alan Dershowitz, a great Democrat, brilliant intellect, has done it. But where are people across the aisle who would do what I did during the Bush Presidency, pick up the phone and say: This is an outrage. What has happened under this Attorney General should never have happened. He has got to go?

Where is the Democrat who has a sense of moral outrage when the justice system is just shaken to its core by people who want to take out a President because they didn't support him, they didn't want him to be there, they didn't think any American should vote for him, and they are destroying the sense of justice and our justice system?

It is time for Americans to wake up. It is time to clean house, get rid of Mueller, and get some fair people in there to investigate.

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 2 o'clock and 41 minutes p.m.), under its previous order, the House adjourned until tomorrow, Friday, December 15, 2017, at 5:30 p.m.

Mr. Speaker, I do appreciate the concerns of my friends here in Congress because this is just incredible.

You know, many of us have read, understood what happened during Watergate, and we thought surely there have been enough things put in as checks to prevent an administration from totally co-oping the Department of Justice. No one President should be able to have an administration that is powerful enough that it could be a self- sustaining party where all of the powers, whether it is the IRS that has people in key places that prevent people from guilt giving, for example, proper tax status to opponents of an administration so that they stand a better chance of being defeated in running for a second election.

It happened in the Obama administration. And to the great embarrassment or what should be embarrassment of the Obama administration, of the IRS, and of the United States Congress, nothing was done. It appears crimes were committed. Nothing was done.

We are just aghast.

How could this happen?

Surely the DOJ would jump into the IRS and correct this and stop this so that the IRS could not be weaponized as a political tool. I mean, Nixon may have dreamed of that at some point, but we are not aware of it.

I mean, it is just hard to believe that anybody would anticipate using the powers of government in such a flagrant form as we are finding out almost every day now. New allegations, not just--not allegations; new facts show that corruption and political animus and anything but justice was being conducted for a number of years in the Department of Justice.

You know, as an assistant district attorney in east Texas, as a judge getting to know and hearing so many different Federal agents testify, most people felt like, gosh, if the FBI comes in, these are the guys in the white hats. But much of America has seen what can only be styled as real corruption that has turned those white hats into a stinking brown for some of the top people.

We heard Christopher Wray, the FBI Director, saying: You know, I think of the FBI and I think about these thousands of great Federal agents across the country who care about their country and protecting people's lives and protecting the law.

Well, yeah, I think about that, too, until my mind comes back here to Washington, and not just a swamp, but areas that have become a cesspool. It is unbelievable to think--I mean, I saw ``All the President's Men'' the other night about Watergate and Deep Throat. And as I watched, oh, my gosh, you mean somebody in the White House may have had contact with somebody that may have had funds that could be used?

I mean, you look at what is coming out in the news every day and it makes that look like Keystone Cops--nothing compared to the extent that this administration used the Justice Department.

And going back to the IRS, what did Rosenstein or all these other great Justice Department officials do for us in cleaning up the mess at the IRS?

Nothing, nothing, nothing.

What did Eric Holder and Loretta Lynch do to clean things up?

Well, they just kept dumping more and more dirt in that washing machine.

Just when you thought it couldn't get any worse, then you find that a reporter sees the husband of someone being investigated in a clandestine meeting, in an area they thought nobody would notice.

And what do they want to do at the Justice Department?

We find out they want to go after that reporter. They want to go after that reporter because this reporter actually was reporting some things that might help get some things cleaned up.

They say: We don't want things cleaned up. We want to keep our little cesspool tight and friendly, where we know all the players and all the swamp rats.

We have got to have a massive clean out of what has been happening, but it is not happening.

Then we find out, gee, there was this investigation regarding Russia trying to violate the law, pay bribes, pay payoffs, anything they could do to corner the market on uranium and get United States uranium in their own control. And, gee, who ends up having their fingerprints on that? A guy named Rosenstein.

In fact, then you see one of the people involved in the investigation of corruption and uranium and payoffs, well, there is Rod Rosenstein's name. Now, he has an assistant sign for him asking the judge to seal the records so we can't know exactly what all was done by the FBI.

It is kind of like we find out there is someone, the undercover agent that the FBI was using, that the Justice Department was using, and they get an agreement, a nondisclosure agreement. I mean, the only reason I can think of they would want a nondisclosure agreement at the FBI is so that the informant wouldn't turn around and talk about how dirty they have been. I mean, why would they get a nondisclosure agreement?

I might expect the guy who was the informant demanding a nondisclosure agreement from the FBI and from the Justice Department: You can't talk about what all I did; you can't talk about the things I did because the people I was working undercover for you on, they might try to kill me, so I demand a nondisclosure agreement from the Justice Department, from the FBI, so you won't disclose things that will get me killed.

But, no, that is not what happened. Under the Obama administration, Loretta Lynch ``Injustice Department,'' we have a nondisclosure agreement that the person who risked his life couldn't disclose what was going on. Sounds like somebody, to me, at the FBI and the Justice Department had a pretty dirty conscience and they didn't want to be outed. And at every turn: Oh, well, that was sealed. Oh, well, that is a nondisclosure agreement. Oh, you can't have access to that.

The FBI and the Justice Department and people that we have been questioning have really kind of gotten themselves in a position where they are above the law. They are above Congress. And in this country, the branch that the Founders thought would have the least control ever--that was the judiciary; they are small; they don't really have any power--they are legislating and running the executive branch from under their robes.

At the same time, you have got the executive branch and the Department of Justice that has become a new playground for people who want to write like Kafka, ginning up charges, knocking down doors in the wee hours of the morning: Oh, were they a threat?

Well, no, not really, but we just need to intimidate them. It is what we do in the Justice Department nowadays. We are the Department of intimidation.

I am telling you, Mr. Speaker, there has got to be a material change. There has got to be. There are too many people currently in the Justice Department and the top of the FBI--not these fine young agents across the country who have given everything they had, even though Mueller removed their ability to have wise counsel because he got rid of the long-toothed people that had the experience and the wisdom to know how to bring these agents along. He purged the training materials so FBI agents could not know how to discern if somebody had been radicalized.

There is just so much, that almost needs to start from scratch; and we are having to deal with the players like Rosenstein who have been in that system as they were part of the process while it was corroding and, really, infecting.

I thank my friends for caring enough about what is going on to stand up and raise Cain. But, like I said, you know, just when you think, well, that has got to be the final shoe dropping, then we have this story that the wife of the demoted DOJ official actually worked for the firm that put together, was behind, the anti-Trump dossier that we believe may very likely have been used in order to surveil the Trump campaign, in order to use the DOJ, working in collusion with not only Russia, but also the Hillary Clinton campaign, in order to elect a candidate who had no chance otherwise.

Well, a funny thing happened on the way to using the DOJ and Fusion GPS and the Russians in order to get Hillary Clinton elected--she didn't get elected. But that certainly doesn't owe anything to Nellie Ohr or Bruce Ohr or these people who have been occupying the Department of Justice as it tainted and turned from, what Christopher Wray says, an F that stood for ``fidelity'' to, now, an I that stands for ``infidelity.''

Let's get back to fidelity in the Justice Department. Let's get back to an incorruptible Justice Department. I am hoping and praying we are heading that direction, but I am just not seeing it yet.

Mr. Speaker, there are a lot of big things going on. More things will be coming out. We have had an interesting day of it today.

Hopefully, the House and Senate--I think we are going to get a tax cut bill done. I think it is unfair to just call it a tax reform because it doesn't explain. We did tax cuts for everybody. We didn't change the percentage on the wealthiest Americans.

And I understand the thinking. Look, if we, as Republicans, change, we lower all the tax rates, then the Democrats will say: See, you're doing a big tax cut for the wealthy.

So I get it. But as the old saying in Washington goes: No matter how cynical you get, it's never enough to catch up; not in Washington.

Okay, so we didn't change the top percentage rate of tax on the wealthiest Americans. That is the only one we didn't change. And so what has happened?

Our friends across the aisle have said: See, this is a tax cut to help the rich. That is the one tax rate we didn't change, so it wouldn't have mattered.

I would love to have just seen--all right, we are getting rid of all of these tax rates. We are going to have one tax rate, and I would love it to be the tax rate that the Bible suggests in the synagogue or church; and that is 10 percent of your firstfruits. And why not 10 percent to the government after 10 percent of the firstfruits to the church or synagogue, if those are your religious beliefs?

Let's see. I forget which candidate, one of the candidates used to say: Hey, if 10 percent is good enough for God, why shouldn't it be good enough for the government?

But anyway, it was a nice thought. But we are still doing a little bit of social engineering by trying, apparently, in the tax bill, to give a lot of help to the folks who need it. There are some things that I hope will return.

I have heard from folks in my district, some accountants who have clients that, they do pay enough in medical expenses. If they don't get to deduct that, they are going to be bankrupt so, hopefully, that will be something that comes back and gets put in our version.

The last people we need to harm are the people who have got no other place to go. They are on Social Security, they are heading toward the end of life on this planet, and then the government stabs them in the back. I mean, that is what Bill Clinton did back in 1993. Not only did he put a tax on their Social Security in 1993, he made it retroactive. So it wasn't just taxing Social Security for the future, it made it retroactive, and that was terribly tragic.

I wish we were making our tax cuts retroactive so that the working poor would get the help much quicker. But everybody in America is going to get some help with reduction, massive reduction of the largest tariff that any industrialized nation puts on its own goods when they are produced. It is called the corporate tax.

They make you think, oh, these greedy corporations, they are paying that tax. They don't pay that tax.

Just like Warren Barnett--Warren Buffett. Warren Barnett was a great trial lawyer. I don't know if he is still alive or not. I have heard him; he is an amazing guy, Democrat, amazing lawyer, really amazing trial lawyer.

But Warren Buffett, although he keeps saying publicly he wouldn't mind paying more taxes, his actions seem to indicate that they are paying massive amounts of money to lawyers to keep his company from paying the billions of dollars that I am told is owed. But anyway, we will see what happens there.

I am very hopeful that we are going to get a tax deal done, and we are going to bring it to the floor of this House, and we are going to pass it, and we will sing God bless Kevin Brady and the Ways and Means Committee, at least those who made it possible, made it happen. Paul Ryan has been very helpful in moving that direction on the tax bill, so that will be a great thing if we can get it done.

I am also grateful to the chairman of the Judiciary Committee today for the hearing that he required that we have. We had the FBI Director, Director Wray, come over and testify in front of us, and I am optimistic, with Director Wray. Of course, I was optimistic with Director Comey when I first got to question him because I saw Comey, oh, this is great. Finally, we have gotten rid of Mueller and all the damage he has done to the FBI.

As I pointed out to Director Wray today, he took over a very weakened FBI from the one that he took over as FBI Director under Bush, because when Director Mueller took over as FBI Director--I have tried to figure out why he would do this, and the only thing I can figure is he wanted a bunch of young, ``yes people'' working for him; because it goes pretty common sense that people with the most experience are going to be in a position to tell you, as the new FBI Director, when you are choosing to go down a road that is going to create problems; because FBI agents who have been there for 25 years, like so many of ours were, had been, they are an oddity now, but that was because Mueller wanted young, fresh, saluting ``yes men'' who would salute the flag, salute him, and not be in a position to say: Well, Director, could I make a suggestion, sir? You know, we did exactly what you were suggesting back in 1996, or 1993, or 1988, or 1986. We did that back then, and here is what happened. So if you would allow me, sir, I would recommend that we look at this, that, or the other.

Apparently, Director Mueller didn't want those kind of people in the FBI, so he started a 5-year, up-or-out program. So our thousands of FBI agents across the country, in the hundreds of offices that are apparently around--the 5-year, up-or-out program is basically this: if you are in a supervisory position anywhere in the world for 5 years, at the end of the 5 years, you either must get out of the FBI, or, the way it was interpreted by so many FBI agents, you are going to have to come ride a cubicle up here in Washington.

People all over the country and world who were working for the FBI said: I'm not taking my family to Washington, D.C., and, with all my training and experience, going to ride a cubicle somewhere. I need to be out protecting people, helping people.

As The Wall Street Journal pointed out in an article that wasn't-- didn't seem like it was all that far into his 10 years--actually, it turned into 12, I believe, Director Mueller had, in devastating the