Floor Statements

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

The motion was agreed to; accordingly (at 7 o'clock and 8 minutes p.m.), under its previous order, the House adjourned until tomorrow, Thursday, November 20, 2014, at 9 a.m.

Mr. Speaker, this is an important day for a number of reasons.

It is an important day in that we passed the Cassidy bill here in the House that will open the door to the Keystone XL pipeline being built. Since this administration has dallied so, the Chinese have entered the picture and are desirous of having a pipeline going to the west coast of Canada so that, apparently, when this administration does, finally, get around to deciding what is best for Americans instead of what is best for his political situation, then we will have to compete with the Chinese, who will be seeking the oil to go in their pipeline as opposed to the United States' getting it to come through our pipeline.

We understand that our friend Ms. Landrieu, Senator Landrieu, will have a bill in her name come to the Senate floor for a vote. I am really proud Bill Cassidy is a friend. I am proud that we had a chance to vote on the Bill Cassidy bill, and I am proud that it passed. I think it is such a shame that Mary Landrieu will not be able to likely get her colleagues to vote for the Keystone pipeline and pass it as Bill Cassidy has been able to do here in the House.

Make no mistake. Since I live in east Texas and the pipeline will come through part of my district and come across private land, nobody who has private land wants a pipeline coming across their land. Anybody who has ever had one knows it is no fun. You don't like having an easement across for a pipeline like that. So it will require great diligence to make sure that it is properly maintained and that damage is avoided, and if damage occurs, then I will certainly want to fight for our landowners to make sure they are properly addressed and taken care of and compensated.

That is one thing today, but it really pales in comparison, Mr. Speaker, to what happened 100 years ago today.

The New Ottoman Empire

In recent years, after this administration blindly supported what it called--and others in North Africa and the Middle East called--an Arab Spring, we have come to find out what many of us suspected even at the time and said was likely to be even more of a devastating winter than an Arab Spring. It has seen the fall of the government in Libya. It has seen the chaos arise in many parts of Libya. It has seen terrorists take control of parts of Libya. It has seen the fall of the governments in Algeria, Tunisia, and the takeover of radical Islam.

I was amazed at the ignorance of many in the mainstream media when I said back at the time that what radical Islamists--what the Muslim Brotherhood--were seeking to re-create was the beginning of the Ottoman Empire and that, in its ignorance, our executive branch--this administration here in the U.S.--actually helped jump-start what the Muslim Brothers are hoping will be the new Ottoman Empire. I was surprised how many reporters asked what did I mean by ``Ottoman Empire.'' They had not had the kind of education that I was fortunate to have had in public schools in east Texas and in public school by way of Texas A&M University and then law school at Baylor. So they didn't know what the Ottoman Empire was. Hopefully, they did some research.

Many of us did not realize that the date 9/11--when the worst attack on America occurred--also marked the anniversary of the worst defeat that the Islamic caliphate ever suffered in history. That was the devastating defeat to the caliphate. The radical Islamist caliphate had made it all the way to Vienna. It laid siege upon Vienna, and on 9/11 of 1683, the radical Islamic caliphate suffered its worst defeat in history. Amazingly, that was the date that Osama bin Laden and the mastermind, Khalid Sheikh Mohammed--currently in Guantanamo, who hopefully will stay there until his death--chose to inflict the worst attack in American history.

To many people, dates mean things. My anniversary means a lot. I have never forgotten one. Our birthdays mean a lot to most Westerners. Some of us begin to try to forget them, but major dates in caliphate history mean a great deal to radical Islamists.

There was an article today written by Dr. Sebastian Gorka, and I would like to read this in for the Record. He does a good job of incapsulating this issue today.

Dr. Gorka says:

One hundred years ago today, the last caliph, or emperor of

Islam, declared the last jihad against the infidel, and today

is the first time ever that the National Cathedral in the

Nation's Capital will host Muslim prayers.

Most Americans will have no idea that, as part of World War

I, the then-caliph of the Ottoman Empire declared a holy war

against infidels as was his right within shari'a law and

Islamic theology. You can read the full fatwa.

In that fatwa, there actually was a typo in the original. It was provided on this day in 1914, but they had a typo saying it was 1915.

The article says:

That statement by the last sitting head of what was the

theocratic empire of Islam was the catalyst which led to the

religiously fueled genocide against Christian Armenians and

Assyrians.

That is what is pictured. It actually represents a photograph that was taken of young Armenian Christian girls who were kidnapped, stripped naked, raped, and then crucified on crosses as far as the eye could see.

This article points out:

The Episcopal church leaders who agreed to host Muslim

prayers inside the Washington cathedral probably have no idea

what happened a century ago in Asia Minor or that there even

was a caliph in office at the beginning of the 20th century.

However, we can rest assured that the co-organizers do, for

they include the Council on American-Islamic Relations

(CAIR), The Islamic Society of North America (ISNA), the

Muslim Public Affairs Council (MPAC), and the All Dulles Area

Muslims Society (ADAMS) Center.

Both CAIR and ISNA will be fully aware of the significance

of November 14th, seeing as both organizations were declared

by a Federal court to be unindicted coconspirators of Hamas,

the Muslim Brotherhood terror group, in the largest terrorist

financing trial in U.S. history.

Those Muslims who have a supremacist understanding of their

religion, such as members of al Qaeda and the Muslim

Brotherhood, which was recently declared an illegal terrorist

organization in the country of its founding, Egypt, have a

special regard for historic dates and anniversaries.

It is, of course, no accident that the 9/11 attacks--the

worst terror attacks in world history--occurred exactly to

the day in 1683 when the Islamic Ottoman forces were defeated

outside the city walls of Vienna, the deepest the Islamic

caliphate's forces made it into the heart of the Christian

West.

There is nothing inherently wrong about interfaith

initiatives as long as they start from the same place: a

mutual respect for the belief system of the other and their

inherent dignity as humans created by God. When one party

acts in bad faith based upon its ideological commitment to

see other faiths destroyed or subjected, then the event runs

the risk of becoming a propaganda coup for the extremists and

their followers.

The fact that this event is occurring just as ancient

Christian communities are being destroyed in the Middle East

and ``nonbelievers'' are being actually crucified by ISIS

jihadists makes it all the more egregious.

We know that the Episcopal church is in trouble with more

conservative believers leaving in great numbers and the

remaining adherents not exactly outdoing their Catholic

cousins in terms of reproducing the next generation of

believers.

The author goes on to say:

But I doubt they also understand the finer points of

jihadist doctrine, one of which is that if a place of worship

is used by Muslims for their prayers that territory

subsequently becomes part of Dar al Islam, sacred Muslim

land, forever.

That author was Sebastian Gorka, Ph.D., and he is the Major General Matthew C. Horner Distinguished Chair of Military Theory at the Marine Corps University and is the national security and foreign affairs editor at Breitbart.com.

Mr. Speaker, it is an important day. The prosecution referred to in this article was actually the Holy Land Foundation criminal trial in the United

States Federal District Court in Dallas, Texas. I have done a great deal of reading and looking into the issues involved in that case, and am aware of the massive number of counts of conviction, and also have read some of the pleadings in this case in which the Islamic Society of North America and the Council on American-Islamic Relations--CAIR and ISNA--were named as coconspirators in that prosecution, in which they were contributors and part of funding terrorism.

They were not named as indicted coconspirators, but they were named as coconspirators. And CAIR and ISNA were among parties that filed pleadings in Federal District Court, demanding that their names be eliminated from the pleadings.

Yet after the Federal judge in Dallas reviewed all of the information, the evidence before him, he declared that actually there was plenty of evidence to support the fact that CAIR and ISNA--which have such cozy relations with this administration now--that there is plenty of evidence to support that those two entities are coconspirators in supplying and financing terrorism.

Well, those convictions occurred in late 2008. And from some who have been involved in that effort, their understanding was that if the Bush administration Justice Department, after years of investigation and effort of prosecution, if they got convictions, then the intention was to come back--and especially since the courts had said that there is plenty of evidence to support that these named coconspirators were coconspirators, then they would come back and actually indict them, prosecute them. And those parties were not satisfied, though, with the judgment of the Dallas Federal court.

So they appealed the ruling that there was plenty of evidence to support CAIR and ISNA being coconspirators, and Imam Majid, who is their part of the prayer effort at National Cathedral today--they wanted their names eliminated. The Federal judge in Dallas would not do that. So they appealed to the Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals.

And after the Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals reviewed the record, all the information, then they stated even more plainly and more directly than the Federal District Court did that, yes, there really was plenty of evidence to support that they were coconspirators and that the names should not be struck. They should not be kept private.

And the thinking was that, you know, gee, any administration, of course, will understand that once a Federal District Court and a Court of Appeals find there is plenty of evidence to support that CAIR and ISNA are coconspirators in helping terrorism around the world that surely they would not end up being cozy with any American administration. That would be the common sense, you would think.

There is plenty of common sense back where I come from. But you get to Washington, and it is not common sense. It is just sense.

And it is rather a shame that organizations who were said by a Federal court system to have plenty of evidence to show that they are coconspirators and had radical Islamic efforts at terrorism, that they would have such an open ear at the White House.

In recent years, there was a 2-day seminar that was going to take place out at Langley. And I know one of the instructors very well. He has made a career out of studying radical Islam. He used to provide briefings, do research, provide advice to the Joint Chiefs of Staff of our military about radical Islam. Well, he was one of them. Well, that rather upset what the Federal courts have said the evidence indicates were front groups for the Muslim Brotherhood, were suppliers, helpers in terrorism. They got upset that he was going to be out there and be a part of the teaching of the seminar. So they burned up the phone line to the White House. The White House canceled the seminar.

And it was CAIR that had an ongoing partnership that they developed with the United States Federal Bureau of Investigation. And I was surprised that it took so long after the FBI had spent a couple of decades investigating what, ultimately, we understood was the Muslim Brotherhood. It was surprising, with Federal courts saying that there is plenty of evidence to show that they are complicit in supplying terrorism funding, helping with terrorism. I was surprised that the FBI decided, with all that evidence they furnished the prosecutors, that they ended up turning around and making CAIR their partner.

So I was surprised that the letter took so long from the FBI eventually to the leaders of CAIR, saying that, in view of evidence in essence there in the Holy Land Foundation trial, we need to suspend our partnership in the outreach program that the FBI had to them.

When I was questioning the immediate previous director of the FBI, Director Mueller, about the Tsarnaevs and the lack of investigation into their backgrounds, even after the Russians warned this administration twice--after the first time, apparently the Russians were surprised that we didn't do anything with the knowledge they had provided, that Tsarnaev had been radicalized and would likely kill people here. They warned a second time and had to be totally shocked-- and, to the best I understand, basically the investigation included talking to Tsarnaev, himself, and to his mom. There may have been some other peripheral things.

But as I questioned the director of the FBI, saying, you guys didn't even go out to their mosque to ask questions to help you determine whether Tsarnaev had been radicalized. And, in essence, he ended up saying, we did go to the mosque. When he gave the answer, I didn't hear the little add-on he gave until my staff replayed it with the little add-on he gave after: We did go out to those mosques, but he added, ``in our outreach program.''

So just as I suspected, the FBI didn't go out and investigate. Michele Bachmann, Lynn Westmoreland reviewed some materials. Trent Franks looked at some of the materials. But we were concerned because CAIR, this named coconspirator in supplying and helping terrorism, as a front group for the Muslim Brotherhood, we were surprised that CAIR had such powerful inroads into the FBI, enough to the point that they could demand to have the training materials for the FBI reviewed and had them purged of things that they, as apparently a front group for the Muslim Brotherhood, found offensive. As named coconspirators in funding terrorism, they were offended.

So a massive number of pages that radical Islamists might find offensive, that people who wanted to kill Americans might be offended by, were purged from our training materials. The State Department apparently purged materials. The intelligence community purged materials. And, as one intelligence officer told me, we have blinded ourselves of the ability to see our enemy.

So, Mr. Speaker, it breaks my heart, grieves me deeply when innocent Muslims are maltreated, killed, tortured. It is a grievous violation of human rights. But in the same way, the things that have been done and are growing and spreading in numbers never before seen in human history, of Christians being persecuted around the world, as America basically remains silent.

But today, being the 100th anniversary of the caliph's public fatwa, demanding the murder, killing of Christians in 1914 by the last Islamic caliph, also is the first day in our history when the National Cathedral, run by the Presbyterian church, conceded to the named coconspirators in funding terrorism, their demands to have prayers today on this 100th anniversary of the fatwa that caused the deaths of countless Christians, especially Armenian Christians, as depicted in this blown-up photograph from the newspaper, as depicted in this drawing that we have blurred, depicting what was actually seen along the road as massive numbers of young Christian girls were raped and crucified.

We don't want a holy war. No Christian should ever go to some kind of holy war. But for heaven's sake, when there is an international group about which moderate Muslim leaders in the Middle East have said to me: The Muslim Brotherhood is your enemy; they have been behind every attack that has occurred onto America and Americans; they have been behind the killing of Americans all over the Middle East and the world--why do you keep helping the Muslim Brotherhood?

When the largest uprising in the history of the world occurred over a year ago in Egypt, when moderate Muslims, Christians, even the Coptic Christian Pope, secularists, over 30 million came to the streets of Egypt and said, we don't want radical Islam controlling our country, it was a day of historic proportions. Never before had there been a crowd of that size gathered. Even when 20 million came out or when the estimated 33 million came out, they demanded the same thing. It was not a military coup, as CNN and this administration tried to paint. It was the largest uprising in the history of the world, in Egypt.

And the Egyptians, instead of being called stupid, foolish by this administration and some media, they should have been congratulated. We should have rushed to their assistance. And, instead, this administration said, Unless you put Muslim Brother Morsi back in power, then we are not going to help you. The Apache helicopters that were coming, that you use to keep the Suez Canal open, that you use to fight terrorism in the Sinai, that help Israel, we are not going to send them. You are not going to be able to keep the Suez Canal and the Sinai terrorism down until you put the Muslim Brothers back in charge.

Many in the media made a big deal about the Christian churches being burned and about Jews and Christians being persecuted, tortured, and killed, and, for some unbelievable reason, tried to blame it on those who ousted the Muslim Brothers. And anybody that will do any modicum of research in Egypt will understand, it was the Muslim Brothers that burned the churches, that killed Christians and Jews there. It was not the government. It was not the military. The military, under General el-Sisi, was doing everything it could to stop it.

I talked to a former CIA operative in the Middle East last year who said that he had talked to a guy who said, Morsi, President Morsi, had tried to contract through him to have General el-Sisi murdered.

I asked our Embassy personnel if they had heard of anything like that. They said they had not.

In our meeting with General el-Sisi, I asked him directly, ``Did you have evidence when you arrested President Morsi that he was trying to hire someone to kill you?'' He beat around the bush twice and ultimately answered, ``Yes, we did.''

Yet we even had even Republicans go to Cairo and say, ``Put back the Muslim Brothers.'' And I met the brilliant gentleman--Muslim, seemed to be a very fine man--that was put in charge of the committee to draft a new constitution because the constitution the United States helped and this administration helped Egypt to get that led to the Muslim Brotherhood control of the country had no provision for impeachment.

So as Muslim Brother President Morsi began to usurp power, kind of in the same vein, and Noriega and other dictators who get elected and then start grabbing power, he was doing it in Egypt. There was no provision for impeachment.

There was nothing they could do except what they did, go to the street in the tens of millions, demand his removal and, in the largest uprising, cause the removal of an unconstitutionally acting President, and he was removed, thank goodness.

I was thrilled earlier this year when I think it was over 90 percent of the Egyptian voters voted to ratify the new constitution for Egypt. I really wished that all of the American media could have grasped the significance of what happened.

That constitution actually included provisions that required the Egyptian Government under the constitution to rebuild and replace the churches or synagogues that had been damaged or destroyed by the Muslim Brotherhood. They felt so badly for what the Muslim Brotherhood had done to the Christians and Jews that they put it in their constitution that they had to be repaired and replaced. That should have been a big day for freedom, and most of the American media missed it entirely.

Well, they are also missing today. As the left often wants to do-- maybe they want to vilify me. You can try to rewrite history, but you can't change what has happened in the past, and what happened 100 years ago today, the first day, November 14, that the National Cathedral, run by the Presbyterian Church, has allowed Muslim prayers by named coconspirators in the terrorist funding trial to come lead prayers in this Christian cathedral.

I thank God that the massive majority of Muslims, including some of my Muslim friends in the Northern Alliance in Afghanistan, they don't want radical Islamists controlling anything. They don't want to be at war with Americans. They don't want to kill Americans. Thank God for that.

But it is sheer lunacy not to recognize how important anniversaries are to radical Islamists, to the Muslim Brotherhood, to those who would kill and persecute and wipe out Jews and, as they say, wipe the Great Satan America off the map and the Little Satan Israel off the map. It is lunacy not to recognize the way these radical Islamists feel. We can live at peace with moderate Muslims.

When I visited Nigeria not long ago to mourn with the Africans--23 mothers who had had their daughters kidnapped, brutalized every day still in Boko Haram, radical Islamist controlled, it was a beautiful thing. Nigeria, until the radicals got involved, had Muslims and Christians living peacefully together.

Meeting a government official, a devout Christian, who had in his wedding party one of his best friends in the world who was a Muslim, it is a thing of beauty to see people with different backgrounds and beliefs living at peace together.

But until the American media, until a majority of Americans realize there really are radical Islamists that think that the fatwa that was declared by the last Islamic caliph of the Ottoman Empire 100 years ago today was a great thing, then this country remains at great risk.

It is bad enough that we have enemies publicly saying they want to wipe us off the map, destroy our freedom of worship, free speech, the freedoms we hold dear and love, but to be blind that they want to destroy us is negligence, reckless indifference that can cost a country's freedom.

Mr. Speaker, today is a big day. I hope Americans will wake up and understand the Muslim Brotherhood is not our friend. They want us all to be living, if we live at all, as Muslims or to pay the fine that acknowledges that we are subjugating ourselves to radical Islam. People have got to wake up. This country is at risk.

Mr. Speaker, with prayerful regard to the masses of young Christians who were kidnapped, raped, crucified as a result of that fatwa issued 100 years ago today, I hope that we will not be so blind that we could allow this movement to continue to grow as it has grown and grown.

Some say a good way to avoid destructive forces overtaking civilized society is to watch Israel--that Israel could be looked at as the world's miner's canary, as miners used to take canaries into mine shafts. They knew canaries were more sensitive to poison gas, so if they saw a canary getting in trouble, falling, then they knew they better get out of the mine because it was very, very dangerous.

When we see Israel being attacked, our best friend in the Middle East being attacked, when we see anti-Semitism, hatred for Jews, hatred for Israelis growing in Europe, of all places--I never thought that would happen again after Hitler--but it is growing again around Europe. It is growing on American campuses.

These young, wonderful, brilliant students who have been miseducated to think that they need to get involved in anti-Semitism on their campuses in America will hopefully wake up and realize they have been played by people that are not about freedom.

It is time for America to wake up. Because today, as an anniversary of what happened 100 years ago, is a really big deal for those who want to destroy our way of life and our lives if we are Christians.

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

Mr. Speaker, I just wanted to also express my love and appreciation for Howard Coble. There is not a more honorable, noble, humble, able man in all of Congress, and it has been a great opportunity and a great blessing to me in my life to be a friend of Howard Coble and to pray with

him, to worship with him, to study with him, to discuss with him. And I will always be grateful to the most eligible bachelor in all of Congress. I don't know who will fill that role when Howard Coble is gone.

But thank you. You will be missed.

It is amazing, a man who has given so much of his life, as Howard Coble has, to this institution, to working to make the country better, safer, efforts to make it more free, to help free up the economy so that it can achieve the high plateaus that it could reach if the government would release the boot from off the neck of the economy.

Whether you agreed with Howard Coble or not, his honesty stands in stark contrast to what we have learned about recently with respect to the man Jonathan Gruber, who was not elected but was selected by the United States President. President Obama had gotten him basically to be what they call the architect of the ObamaCare bill.

The name on the bill was the Affordable Care Act. Actually, the real name of the bill involved being a one-time tax deduction for first-time home buyers who were veterans and for other purposes. But the Senate took that bill, they stripped out every single word of the bill that would have helped veterans, and, instead, after deleting every word of the bill to help veterans, substituted therein about 2,500 pages of something that people now call ObamaCare.

And we find out, most of us having seen the video of the ObamaCare architect, Jonathan Gruber, saying:

This bill was written in a tortured way to make sure CBO

did not score the mandate as taxes. If CBO scored the mandate

as taxes, the bill dies. Okay, so it's written to do that. In

terms of risk-rated subsidies, if you had a law which said

that healthy people are going to pay in, you made explicit

healthy people pay in and sick people get money, it would not

have passed. Lack of transparency is a huge political

advantage. And basically, call it the stupidity of the

American voter or whatever, but basically, that was really,

really critical for the thing to pass. Look, I wish Mark was

right, that we could make it all transparent, but I'd rather

have this law than not.

Staggering. The man who designed ObamaCare admitting that if the American public, or even the Democrats in Congress, had known what was in ObamaCare, the Democrats alone would never have passed it.

It was not transparent, as the President had promised. It was a travesty forced upon the American people without a single Republican vote, not one single Republican vote.

And I still hear people say, Well, you know, nobody read it. I read it. And I knew how bad it was going to be. It should never have passed. And if the Obama administration and our Democrat friends have been honest, then it would not have passed.

I will now yield to a very dear friend from Texas, Lamar Smith. I think the world of his opinion.

I thank my friend from San Antonio.

You know, it is ironic. There are so many people here. And a lot of new people have gotten elected. Three were sworn in here tonight. And the ones I have come to know, they appreciate honesty.

And I know I was in the national media not long ago with Dennis Kucinich, and people were surprised. Well, even though you and Dennis Kucinich disagreed, you seemed very friendly, like you were friends. Dennis Kucinich and I are friends. And the big reason is--even though I think he is wrong on a lot of issues--the man has never lied to me. He has always been honest.

Honesty in this body is such an important commodity. And certainly Howard Coble is one of the most honorable, honest men that have ever served. And that stands just in such stark contrast with the statements that have been discovered by the ObamaCare architect, Jonathan Gruber.

There is another story from foxnews.com. And they found this. Of course he had been commenting, Oh, well, that was just off the cuff and, you know, just kind of kidding around.

And then another videotape was found of him talking:

Referring to the so-called ``Cadillac tax'' on high-end

health plans, he said: ``They proposed it, and that passed

because the American people are too stupid to understand the

difference.''

The article says:

He suggested that taxing individuals would have been

politically unpalatable, but taxing the companies worked

because Americans didn't understand the difference.

Gruber said the ``lack of transparency'' in the way the law

was crafted was critical. ``Basically, call it the stupidity

of the American voter or whatever, but basically that was

really, really critical for the thing to pass.''

Then Gruber went on MSNBC to express regret:

On Tuesday, he said, ``I was speaking off the cuff, and I

basically spoke inappropriately, and I regret having made

those comments.''

Well, it is interesting. He never says that he regrets having those opinions.

After that video, a second video came to light, where the designer, the architect of ObamaCare, called the American people stupid, too stupid to realize how bad ObamaCare was. His apology is not that he is sorry that he thought the American people were stupid or that he didn't really think they were stupid or that he is sorry there wasn't more transparency or that he is sorry that the Democrats in Congress were the only ones that voted for the bill in the House or Senate or that the American people were snookered. He makes no apologies for deceiving the American people, deceiving the Democrats in the House and the Senate into voting for a bill through their dishonest shenanigans. No regrets for that. He only regrets that he said these things so they were caught on video.

If the man were cut out of the same cloth as a Howard Coble, a man of honest candor, then he would come before the American people, and he would say, yes, I was the architect of this bill, ObamaCare. It wasn't right to trick the American people and to trick the Democrats into voting for a bill they hadn't read when some of us knew how bad it was going to be. That was wrong, and I apologize for tricking the American people, for lying to the American people, and for not having transparency.

I think real nobility would require someone who helped with ObamaCare--even the President--to say, do you know what? Back in 2008, when I was Senator Obama, I was running for President, and I promised the American people, if you give me the Presidency, we will have a debate on C-SPAN. We will do it all transparently. We will have it out there for everyone to see and everyone to hear who is taking what sides, because that is the way the health care debate should be, completely transparent.

After he became President, he puts Jonathan Gruber in charge, and we get a bill that Gruber has admitted tricked the American people and was nontransparent.

I just want to mention back again what he brought up, the Cadillac tax, when he said that the American people are too stupid to understand the difference. Actually, that Cadillac tax, it is not really going to be a Cadillac tax, but in the original bill, they were clever enough to put that 40 percent tax into place after the 2016 election, so that Democrats can run for President in 2016 and say, no, no, it is all right, it is going to be okay, when they know good and well that under the massive 40 percent tax--as if the middle class and the poor haven't been slammed enough with this terrible economy, with the lower wages, and with the part-time work, if they are fortunate

enough to find an employer who gets them any kind of decent health care plan, any amount the health care plan costs over $10,200--even if they pay for it--it is going to be 40 percent tax on all above $10,200 for an individual health insurance policy.

So if say, for example, the policy costs $15,200, $5,000 over the amount for an individual policy, then that poor, middle class, hardworking union member--because the union members will have policies that are worth more than $10,200--so that poor union member that is just already soaked to the gills with taxes, charges, and fees will pay another 40 percent tax on the $5,000 extra that is spent by his employer for that policy.

In other words, a guy that is just getting a barely decent health insurance policy is going to add another $2,000 that that middle class individual is going to have to pay to have insurance that may give him a massive, several thousand, 5,000 deductible.

I have heard from so many people. Only a few that we have heard from are paying less. Most everybody my office has heard from is paying massive amounts more for their health insurance, and some report our deductible went from $500 that we could barely afford to cover, that $500 deductible went up to 5,000, and our premiums went up.

What is affordable about ObamaCare? We can't afford it. We can't afford to pay $5,000 in health care before the insurance even kicks in, and then we still have a copay and all kinds of other requirements.

I heard one female couple that was in their sixties saying, gee, the last thing they ought to have to pay for is maternity care. Well, they are right, but under ObamaCare, it doesn't matter if you are 80 years old, you are still going to pay for maternity care if you buy insurance.

So the best we could do is return individual Americans control of their own health care back into their hands, and there are many of us, Republicans, that have had proposals for health care bills. I had a bill, and I could never get CBO to score it, and to just remind, Mr. Speaker, our Members that may be listening, it was CBO, the Congressional Budget Office, that does official scoring.

And they actually scored ObamaCare as costing over $1 trillion--$1.1 trillion, I believe--and the President was upset because he promised the American people it would actually be lower than $1 trillion. So the head of the Congressional Budget Office, Mr. Doug Elmendorf, got called over to the Oval Office, and magically, after a meeting with the President, they came back and redid their numbers and said it was actually only $800 billion. The President said, whoopee, see, I told you it was going to be less than 1 trillion.

Then after it passed, CBO came back and said, do you know what? Actually, it is going to be over 1 trillion, and then later came back and said, oh, it may be more like 1.7 or 1.8 trillion. And then we have other entities saying, no, it looks like it could be even $4 trillion it is going to cost.

As I said before and will continue to say, if the scoring entity's margin of error is plus or minus 400 percent, it is time for a new scoring entity, and I think we could do that.

I talked with Arthur Laffer about it a number of times, Reagan's chief architect of his economic proposals, and unlike Mr. Gruber, Arthur Laffer is a very honorable, honest--great sense of humor--but a brilliant man.

Despite his Ivy League education and his background, he is a brilliant guy. There are proposals that we have that would not even cost $1 trillion that would return the control back to the patient.

But Mr. Gruber has finally been caught, he said it over a year ago, but he has finally been caught admitting that the only way they got ObamaCare passed was the American people were too stupid.

What he was talking about on the Cadillac tax is he was saying that if we let the American people know that they were ultimately going to pay that 40 percent tax on everything over $10,200 for an individual policy, they would never have gone along with it.

But instead of saying that the individual is going to pay for it, we said, oh, the corporation is going to pay for it, and therefore, it won't cost the individual anything.

Well, that is about as dishonest and insane as people in the administration telling our senior citizens, oh, don't worry about the fact that ObamaCare cut Medicare by $716 billion. Don't worry about that because that only goes to the doctors, the hospitals, and the people that provide the knees and the things like that, but it won't affect you at all.

Well, I think we saw, in this election, the seniors are a lot smarter than Mr. Gruber gave them credit for. Yes, many of them were fooled when they were lied to by the administration, but now, they figured out, wait a minute, you said that $716 billion in cuts to Medicare that ObamaCare did wouldn't affect me, and now, I can't get my knee surgery, I can't get my back surgery, I can't get my pacemaker, I can't get the things I need.

Apparently, that was a lie as well. It did affect seniors. It is affecting seniors, and it will affect seniors until the day it is finally repealed.

I know there are people out there, Mr. Speaker, that have said, well, there were a couple things that were good. We ought to just leave the good things in it.

Generally, they point to two things, number one, a young person who is living at home and is under 26 years of age can share their family insurance with their parents, and that neglects to recognize the fact that when the Democrats controlled the House, they controlled the Senate, and they controlled the White House with President Obama, we offered repeatedly, look, guys, let us have a little say in this bill. In fact, why don't we just pass a freestanding bill?

And I know the Democrats said they wanted to cut off at 26 years of age, but there were a lot of us that said, look, if the economy is bad and a young person is living at home, they are 26, 27, I don't really care, if you are living at home with your parents and they have got health insurance, and you are willing to pay the little extra the insurance company charges to add another family member, then let them be on their family's insurance.

We were okay with passing that. Republicans were. We welcomed that. We were never, ever given the chance. We were told, we have the votes to pass it, we don't need your help, we don't need your input.

As a former chief justice, judge, and civil trial attorney in prior lives, I have seen a lot of insurance litigation, and I have seen cases where insurance companies acted very unfairly in canceling people's policies when it was wrong and it was unfair because they said, oh, well, you had a preexisting condition they already knew about.

Republicans offered to work with our Democratic friends that were in the majority to fashion a bill that would deal with the issue of unfairness and, at times, even fraud by an insurance company, dealing with insureds unfairly and using the gimmick of a preexisting condition claim to deny coverage. We were willing to work with them on a bill like that.

Fortunately, most insurance companies don't act like that; and, fortunately, in most situations, even those that do occasionally don't all the time and, in fact, don't most of the time.

But we were okay with the bill that would address those issues, but it should have only applied to policies that went across State lines because, otherwise, it is a State issue.

And I know in Texas we have a State insurance commissioner, commission, there are people that are watching over these issues, and it is a whole lot easier to file a complaint in your State capital, even if you are a State as big as Texas or Alaska, than it is to have to file a complaint and deal with the morass right here in Washington,

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

The motion was agreed to; accordingly (at 8 o'clock and 49 minutes p.m.), under its previous order, the House adjourned until tomorrow, Thursday, November 13, 2014, at 10 a.m. for morning-hour debate.

Mr. Speaker, my late mother used to say maybe I should be a college professor because I really do enjoy educating people, and nothing gives me more thrill than to help educate people here on the floor.

My friend says that Republicans deny what is happening to millions of people. No. Actually, there are 11 million people who are not working today who were working when President Obama took office and who are not retired. They just gave up looking for jobs. We care deeply about those people.

When it comes to climate change, my friend says the Republicans continue to deny its existence. Climate change is real. It is a fact. Where I live it happens four times a year. It is real. We acknowledge that. It is a real thing.

Now, under this bill, my friend says that coal would be completely unregulated. He is right if he is talking about China, but here in the United States, where we are talking about real jobs, cheaper energy, and helping families who are struggling to make ends meet, we are talking about helping Americans, not the Chinese to whom we lose so many jobs.

My friend says bills don't have support in the Senate. He is right if he is talking about Harry Reid, but if Harry Reid will bring these bills to the floor, my friend is going to see Democrats either vote for them or lose their seats. They know they have to support them, because it helps real Americans.

Now, what our President and others on the other side of the aisle don't acknowledge is the fact that the policies they have supported help Big Oil. They help their friends in the crony capitalist Big Business. They help the Solyndras and those kinds of folks, but the fact is, even when President Obama proposed what he called a ``jobs bill,'' it gutted independent oil companies and gas companies in America. Big oil companies only operate about 5 percent of the oil and gas wells in America, and 95 percent are drilled and operated by independent oil companies. They are regulated. If we really want to help America, we need to pass this bill and force Harry Reid to either deal with it or lose his position as majority leader.

My friend had previously talked about wilderness areas. National parks are suffering. Why? Because this administration and my friends across the aisle and Harry Reid want to blow money on solar companies that won't work, yet, actually, if this administration were not reducing the number of permits by 40 to 60 percent from what they were under President Clinton, then we would have all the money we would need to have the most wonderful wilderness areas and national parks that you can imagine.

We are pro-people. They are pro-government, pro- regulation. Let's get back to helping the people, like the 80-year-old lady who lives outside of Carthage who told me she was born with only a wooden stove in her home. She may die with it if we don't stop gutting the energy that we can produce.

Mr. Speaker, an article today by Andrew McCarthy that I want to read in part:

Meanwhile, back in Afghanistan . . . Bill Roggio reports

that jihadists have killed four American soldiers. Three were

killed in a suicide bombing in Kabul and the Taliban have

claimed responsibility. A fourth was killed in a so-called

``green-on-blue'' assassination. He was an American there to

train ``moderate Islamist allies'' at a military base in

western Afghanistan, and one of these Afghans shot him dead

and wounded two others before finally being killed.

It was the fourth green-on-blue attack this year. The last

one, in August, claimed the life of Major General Harold

Greene, the highest ranking American officer since the

Vietnam war to be killed in combat--being murdered by a

jihadist in an Afghan military base while training moderate

Islamists . . . Roggio observes the Taliban ``have devoted

significant efforts to stepping up attempts to kill'' U.S.

and allied forces.

Mr. Speaker, this is outrageous. We don't need to be helping the so- called moderate jihadists.

And with that, I will insert the full article into the Record.

[From the National Review Online, Sept. 18, 2014]

Training `Moderate Islamists'--Four More Americans Killed in

Afghanistan

(By Andrew C. McCarthy)

Meanwhile back in Afghanistan . . . the Long War Journal's

Bill Roggio reports that jihadists have killed four American

soldiers. Three were killed in a suicide bombing in Kabul for

which the Taliban have claimed responsibility. A fourth was

killed in a so-called ``green-on-blue'' assassination--i.e.,

he was an American there to train our ``moderate Islamist

allies'' at a military base (in Western Afghanistan), and one

of these Afghans shot him dead and wounded two others before

finally being killed.

It was the fourth green-on-blue attack this year. I wrote

here about the last one, in August, which claimed the life of

Major General Harold Greene, the highest ranking American

officer since the Vietnam War to be killed in combat--being

murdered by a jihadist in an Afghan military base while

training moderate Islamists is quite appropriately considered

combat (although being murdered at an American base while

preparing to deploy for combat against jihadists is

considered ``workplace violence''). As Bill explains, green-

on-blue attacks are down, from a high of 44 in 2012, mostly

because of the U.S. draw-down and reduced ``partnering'' with

the ``moderate'' Afghan forces (because doing so has proven

perilous).

Nevertheless, Bill observes that the Taliban ``have devoted

significant efforts to stepping up attempts to kill'' U.S.

and allied forces. Mullah Omar has bragged that the Taliban

``cleverly infiltrated the ranks of the enemy'' in accordance

with a plan hatched in 2011. As I've noted before, the

Taliban knows our forces are leaving and wants to make it

appear that they are chasing us out of the country.

Although the Taliban has never stopped conducting jihadist

terror attacks against our forces, President Obama released

five Taliban commanders from Guantanamo Bay in May, enabling

their return to the anti-American jihad. And now, as American

forces retreat from Afghanistan, our soldiers will be

assigned to train more ``moderate Islamists'' in Syria--which

apparently will not be a combat mission . . . unless the

trainees go green-on-blue.

Mr. Speaker, I do appreciate all the time and energy that our House Republican leaders have put into this issue, trying to work with the President, but the truth is that, if you look back under this President as Commander in Chief, we trained people in Libya. We provided weapons to Libya that were then used against us in Benghazi.

There are Americans dead because this administration felt compelled to go in and take out Qadhafi. Sure, it was under the guise of NATO, but we did it. This administration saw to the bombing of Qadhafi. It refused to allow him to leave peacefully, and it has cost us.

Because Libya fell, so did Algeria and Tunisia, and it jump-started, as I have said before, the new Ottoman Empire, the new caliphate that the Muslim brothers and so many of the radicals are saying they are going for.

One of the big problems, too, when we go in and train, as this President wants to do for the Syrians, they learn our tradecraft. They use it against us, as they did at Benghazi.

Al Qaeda today has indicated that all jihadists must combine together. That pressure is going to get greater and

greater. Also, today, the Muslim Brotherhood cleric who had been kicked out of Qatar--I believe he is now in Turkey--is calling for an all-out Muslim Brotherhood opposition to the United States.

Yusuf al-Qaradawi, the head of the Muslim Brotherhood, is likewise begging jihadists to combine together in their fight against the United States.

Where is Qaradawi? He is in Turkey. Yes, that is the Turkey that this President says we are going to count on as one of our allies, and yet Turkey has announced last week that they will not allow the U.S. to conduct air strikes against ISIS from Turkish air bases.

We are in big trouble here. Our action will unify radicals against us. It has already been announced that Colonel Riad al-Asaad, the leader of the Free Syrian Army, has said it would not join the alliance against the Islamic State unless it receives assurances on toppling the Syrian regime. That was reported by Anadolu, the Turkish news agency, just in the last few days.

This is serious stuff. We are uniting the jihadists of the world to come against us. Why? Because there is nothing lower to these jihadists than infidels that help invade what they consider to be a Muslim country.

We are about to ask for more than this administration knows. Why? Because it continues to purge our training material. They are not allowed to understand what it is we are up against.

When you lose The New York Times, as this administration has, you are in big trouble if you are President Obama.

Mr. Speaker, I was in agreement with the President going after IS but not with people we can't trust.

Andy McCarthy has a great article here entitled, ``But They Were Really Moderate Beheadings,'' pointing out that the people the President wants to support actually are guilty of beheadings themselves. But apparently they are moderate beheadings.

It is also important to note that Hezbollah has released a statement saying that President Obama is not determined enough to confront IS. And they said: ``Those who delve deeper into the American stance will notice that Americans accept IS in our region while trying to prevent it from spreading to their country.''

This is not the way to go. These people cannot be trusted. It is time for us to either help the Kurds--since Turkey is not willing to face this crisis by putting boots on the ground and actually fighting IS for us, then arm the Kurds. I know the Turks are afraid of that. But we are more concerned about IS.

Help the Kurds. And let's wipe out IS but not with free Syrians we can't trust.

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

The motion was agreed to; accordingly (at 10 o'clock and 2 minutes p.m.), under its previous order, the House adjourned until tomorrow, Wednesday, September 17, 2014, at 10 a.m. for morning-hour debate.

Mr. Speaker, the President had made a speech last Thursday night, and it is amazing that he is ready to go after ISIS or ISIL and that the Islamic State is not Islamic as they say they are.

It is amazing because, from what I have seen in the beheadings, those who were doing the beheadings always think that they are being religious; so, apparently, the President and his advisers are the only ones that think otherwise because they certainly believe it is a religion.

I wanted to hit some key facts very quickly here. President Obama talks about this great coalition. After all those criticisms of President George W. Bush and the 48 countries or so that actually did participate in the war in Iraq, President Obama's coalition of the unwilling is a better way to talk about his coalition.

NATO ally Turkey announced last week they will not allow the U.S. to conduct air strikes against ISIS from Turkish air bases. So much for their real cooperation.

Germany said it is not going to join U.S. air strikes against ISIS. The United Kingdom has their Foreign Minister announce they will not join air strikes only to be later contradicted by Prime Minister Cameron.

Ten Arab countries signed a communique last week in Jeddah agreeing to qualified cooperation with the U.S. but without any specifics. The State Department claims the Arab nations will conduct air strikes against ISIS but refuses to identify which Arab nations will participate.

Top Islamic cleric Yusuf al-Qaradawi has criticized U.S. attacks on ISIS, and the Syrian Muslim Brotherhood refuses to back any U.S. anti- ISIS efforts because it might circumvent Islamist-dominated structures of the Syrian National Council.

It is also important to note that this administration has admitted they are using back channels to cooperate with Iran. Gee, that would have been like, say, maybe Roosevelt saying we are working with Hitler because Japan attacked us when they all want to kill us.

Vetted moderates are losing U.S. weapons. It is important that people know, September 2013, The Wall Street Journal reported that ISIS raided a Free Syrian Army weapons depot taking small arms ammunition that the CIA provided.

In December 2013, the Free Syrian Army weapon warehouses in Bab al- Hawa--that is near the Syria-Turkey border--was seized by the Islamic Front, prompting the U.S. and the U.K. to stop weapons shipments to the

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

The motion was agreed to; accordingly (at 10 p.m.), under its previous order, the House adjourned until tomorrow, Tuesday, September 16, 2014, at 10 a.m. for morning-hour debate.

Mr. Speaker, at this time I yield to my dear friend from Georgia (Mr. Westmoreland).

Honoring S. Truett Cathy

I thank the gentleman. I do appreciate that tribute to a truly great man.

Mr. Speaker, at this time I would like to yield to the gentleman from Illinois (Mr. Hultgren), my friend, for such time as he may consume.

Mr. Speaker, there is so much at risk right now in this country, and the President gave us a fine address last night, very interesting. I know some people say, you know, in times of trouble, when the United States is threatened, we need to all get together behind our leader.

As someone once said to me about Republicans, he said, I just wish the Republicans would all run the same play together. And I responded, I agree. I wholeheartedly want for the Republicans to all run the same play together at the same time.

But I said, the trouble is, if my leader calls a play running to the wrong end zone, I am not blocking for him. And that is also, I think, applicable with the President of the United States.

I was blasted after statements on FOX News saying that if the President wanted to go to war with ISIS, I would support that. So I was anticipating something last night that would unite us and not divide us.

To relate, one of the problems with the President is, he starts off early in his speech saying, as Commander in Chief, my highest priority is the security of the American people. Well, I have come to know friends, close friends with a number of the family members of Ty Woods, Glen Doherty, Sean Smith, and Ambassador Chris Stevens, and they debate, they don't believe that the highest priority of this President is the security of the American people.

The actions of this President, in saying that he cares so deeply about the security of the American people, don't seem to resonate when you stand by weeping parents who have watched their son's head be cut off by these enemies, and you say it is your highest priority to protect the American people, but they are wondering, that same day that you spend 5 or 6 hours playing golf, do you spend that much time figuring out a way to protect other Foleys?

That is a tough sell.

The President said, now, let's make two things clear. ISIL is not Islamic. No religion condones the killing of innocents.

Well, that has certainly got to be a shock to the radical Islamists who brutally kill, behead, maim innocent people in the name of what they say is their religion.

In fact, the American people don't seem to be sold on what the President said. This story from CNN filed at 8:15 a.m. this morning by Ashley Killough quotes what the President said about ISIL's not Islamic. No religion condones killing of innocents.

Then they have a number of tweets. According to the CNN article, Twitter just lit up with responses to the President saying that. Lots of retweets.

Let's see, from Ron Christie: ``ISIS isn't Islamic? What kindergartner briefs the President on terrorism?''

Another: ``Obama: ISIL is not Islamic? He just countermanded anything he plans to say tonight. Right there is the fatal flaw.''

Another: ``ISIL is not Islamic? Hello? THIS ISIL, `Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant'?''

Another: ``ISIL is not Islamic and Lois Lerner and the IRS is not corrupt. Obama is such a freaking''-- Well, Mr. Speaker, I can't say that word. Joe Wilson said that and it was found not to be appropriate.

Another: ``ISIL is not Islamic? Is he kidding? I suppose those black flags are just for giggles then.''

Another from the CNN article: ``ISIL is not Islamic--POTUS opens a section aimed at motivating Muslims around the world to disown ISIL, aid U.S. fight.''

Another from Mohammed Ansar: ``ISIL is not Islamic, says prime time @BarackObama (and virtually every Muslim and reasonably educated person on the face of our planet).''

Michael Oleaga: Some folks on Twitter didn't understand

Obama's ``ISIL is not Islamic'' statement. Study foreign

affairs, folks, or religion--all religion.

It is interesting because President Obama's statement is apparently similar to the historic reaction that Thomas Jefferson had before he was President when he was negotiating with the radical Islamist Barbary pirates in northern Africa, who had been capturing American ships-- killing, enslaving, holding people for ransom.

Jefferson was rather shocked when he reportedly indicated, ``I don't understand why you keep attacking us. We don't have a navy. We are not a threat to you.''

It was explained to him, ``We believe if we are killed while attacking infidels like you, then we will go instantly to paradise.''

Jefferson is perplexed, and he ends up getting his own copy of the Koran because he couldn't believe that any religion would ever promote going to paradise for being killed while killing innocent people. He read for himself, and history can tell you exactly what his conclusion was.

As President, he ultimately decided that the only way to deal with these radical Islamists was not to keep paying 10 to 20 percent of the American budget for ransom to get people back.

The solution was to send this new group called the United States Marines to the shores of Tripoli to fight the radical Islamists with everything they had until they yelled ``uncle'' or were wiped out, and they ceased to come after Americans.

The President says:

I have insisted that additional U.S. action depended upon

Iraqis forming an inclusive government.

That strikes me as strange because if the Commander in Chief's highest priority, as he said at the start of the speech, is the security of the American people, then it begs the question: Why is he so worried about what the Iraq Government does if he knows he has to do something to protect the American people?

Now, I remember Senator Obama repeatedly went after the Bush administration. It seemed that he thought little or nothing of the coalition that President George H. W. Bush put together with 43 countries to go in and liberate Kuwait and that he thought even less of the 49 countries that put people and money on the line to support the effort in Iraq--49 countries.

President Obama thought that was not a real coalition, yet they put people, and they put money. Now, magically, since he is President, he thinks a coalition of nine countries that he won't name or commit what they are going to put into the coalition is somehow better than the 49 countries' coalition that President Bush put together before going into the Middle East.

President Obama said:

In June, I deployed several hundred American servicemembers

to Iraq.

He goes on to say:

We will send an additional 475 servicemembers to Iraq.

He has made very clear he is not going to put boots on the ground, as he said, in Iraq, so the only conclusion

logically that you can make from the President's saying, on the one hand, we are not going to put boots on the ground in Iraq and that he has already sent several hundred soldiers and is sending 475 more, is that those thousand or so U.S. soldiers will be wearing sneakers.

He said that America will be joined by a broad coalition of partners. It is hard to believe that nine people who are a bit timid about being named and committed to what they will do are really that broad of a coalition.

He said ``mobilize partners wherever possible to address broader challenges.''

Mr. Speaker, as we have heard from General Kelly, testifying before the House and the Senate--he is the commander of SOUTHCOM, the Southern Command--he knows what threats are to our south. As he testified, the penetration of our southern border by the criminal networks and radical Islamists, in his words, is an existential threat to the United States.

You have got the man who is supposed to know the most about the southern border and protecting us, telling Congress that the penetration going on of our southern border is a threat to the very existence of the United States of America.

So I would urge the President, Mr. Speaker, when he says he will ``mobilize partners wherever possible to address broader challenges,'' to change that word in his teleprompter to read ``border'' challenges, so that we can protect ourselves from the criminal networks and the potential for radical Islamists who want to destroy us from coming across our southern border.

I truly hope that the late Tom Clancy was not as clairvoyant in one of his last novels as he was in the early nineties, when he wrote about someone who was irritated with the United States flying a jet into the Capitol to wipe out a joint session of Congress.

I love George W. Bush, but when he said ``who would have ever thought somebody would use a plane for a bomb and crash it into a building,'' I was thinking, well, Tom Clancy several years ago, as that was in one of his novels.

In one of his recent novels, one of his last, he wrote about a coalition beginning to form between radical Islamists and drug cartels in Mexico and ultimately a deal where they brought in--I can't remember--10 or 12 radical Islamists with surface-to-air missiles.

They paid tremendously to the drug cartels to smuggle those into the United States, so they could get themselves in vans and, at the appropriate time in areas all across the country, step out and shoot down American passenger planes.

We know that although the radical Islamists are really insane-- crazy--when it comes to the killing of innocent people, they are not stupid. When we give them an opening to come after us, they will take it. The President lost further credibility last night at a time when he really needed to be getting the world behind him.

Credibility was lost when he said:

It is America that has rallied the world against Russian

aggression and in support of the Ukrainian people's right to

determine their own destiny.

Mr. Speaker, people around the world--as I have traveled in west Africa, north Africa, the Middle East, moderate Muslim countries in the Middle East, Afghanistan, Europe--all understand that this President has done virtually nothing to help Ukraine.

They haven't rallied the peoples of the world, and when the people around the world hear that, they have to think: What? Does he think we are crazy ourselves?

You go back and see what this administration did in response to the invasion of Ukraine by Russia, and the response was a Twitter campaign. They actually did try to put restrictions on, as I recall, 10 or 11 bank accounts that the Russians laughed about.

This President needs to do more to rally the world around us--with us--against radical Islam, against imperialism, like we have seen from Putin, and we can all stand together.

After the President seemed to indicate that he wanted to take out ISIS--or he said ``ISIL''--I really felt that when the President had finished last night, that I would be saying that that is something I have got to support, that I am with him. ISIS has said they are a threat to us. We need to take them seriously. They are cutting off American heads. We have got to take that seriously.

Yet when I hear the President, he wants to give support to the moderate, vetted Free Syrian Army; and we read the article from Patrick Poole, where he quotes one of those vetted, moderate Free Syrian Army brigade commanders, saying that his forces were working with the Islamic State and Jabhat al-Nusra, al Qaeda's official Syrian affiliate--both U.S.-designated terrorist organizations:

We are collaborating with the Islamic State and the Nusra

Front by attacking the Syrian Army's gatherings in . . .

Qalamoun.

Then a quote from another Free Syrian Army commander--vetted, moderate--that this President is going to help:

We have reached a point where we have to collaborate with

anyone against unfairness and injustice.

Let's face it: the Nusra Front is the biggest power present

right now in Qalamoun, and we as FSA would collaborate on any

mission they launch as long as it coincides with our values.

I really expected to be standing today and saying we need to get behind the President's activity, just as I said in the last couple of weeks, immediately after the President's speech, that I agree, and let's go to war with ISIS; but with the President's wanting to continue what he has been doing for over a year--giving weapons to the Free Syrian Army which somehow, magically, keep having them taken away by the Islamic State--or ISIS/ISIL--the President finally suspended giving them more arms in December.

This President kept sending arms to the vetted, moderate Free Syrians, and they ended up in the hands of ISIS every time, so it was suspended in December. Then in April, for some reason--they think they can now trust the Free Syrians--he started sending more weapons to the Free Syrians, and magically, they keep ending up in ISIS/ISIL control.

This President does a speech last night, and now, we are supposed to get with him and send more weapons to the people whose leaders are saying publicly, ``We support ISIS. We support al-Nusra. We support the enemies of the United States.''

I yield to my friend from Georgia (Mr. Westmoreland).

I would like to ask the gentleman a question, if he has time for one, because I am struggling a little bit.

Byron York has a good article out, published last night at 11:46, where he points out that there are some real potential problems. He says ``five things that could go horribly wrong with Obama's action in Iraq.'' One of them, he mentions the lack of a status of forces agreement.

We all know that President Bush had been working on a status of forces agreement. He thought he would leave it to the President to accomplish that great task and have instant international credibility for signing a document immediately like that coming into office, but for whatever reason--we hear a lot of different stories--but it blew up, but the President says that we couldn't leave troops there without a status of forces agreement because you can't have troops in a country where you don't have, for example, an immunity agreement, so that American soldiers, American contractors that are there to help protect Iraq from harm--sometimes, bombs go off in the wrong place. Sometimes, somebody gets killed that wasn't meant to because it becomes a war zone.

As the President pointed out before, we couldn't leave troops there because we have no immunity agreement. Well, I haven't heard that there is any immunity agreement with Iraq, and yet he announced last night that he has already got several hundred American sneakers on the ground over there and is going to add 475 more troops--apparently wearing sneakers because there are not boots on the ground.

So I am needing some help here. Why is it safe to send in American troops now without the promise, the agreement of immunity from Iraq when it was not safe to do so when he took office? I am struggling here.

I think it is worth pointing out what concerns many others in the world, and that is the judgment of this administration.

As we travel around the world, we have allies who talk to us privately, leaders in countries in the Middle East, moderate Muslims, people in Israel, and they keep asking about the judgment of this country, of the national leaders.

Everybody knows that this President agreed to release five Taliban terrorists complicit with murder, and the statement has come out on August 27--this is after the release of five Taliban murderers by this administration. This statement has gone out, and it is in their language. The translation says, in part, ``We consider ISIS and every other Mujahedin group as our brothers.''

That is kind of important to understand when he released the Taliban Five--who don't have a problem with cutting people's heads off or friends cutting people's heads off, they support ISIS--and the President did so in violation of the law.

It required that there not be one dime of American money spent to release somebody from Guantanamo unless the law was complied with, and the law required a notice of 30 days to people in Congress, and that didn't happen.

He broke the law in order to help the lawbreakers. So people around the world see that, and they are puzzled, and I happened to be standing here on the House floor with one of the two other people that went to the FBI disclosure. They classified it, which I thought was ridiculous.

We wanted to see the documents that the FBI and their advisers on Islam had purged from the FBI training materials. Now, these are the materials that train FBI agents--the kind of people that have to go talk to Tsarnaev and his mother and people at the mosque and friends-- who have to know the questions and what to look for that might indicate that this person has been radicalized.

Now, since they classified those materials they purged, we went through them, but we don't get to disclose what is in them. But I can say I was shocked at how ridiculous some of the purging was. Some things were purely from--well, some of them were so clearly important, that people trying to learn about radical Islam, it is important that they know and understand.

So, once you understand that there has been that kind of purging of material, then you begin to understand how this administration could get two--not one, two--heads-up from a country like Russia that Tsarnaev was radicalized, he could kill people, you better watch him, you better check on him, he is dangerous, he is going to hurt people, and they do nothing meaningful about it.

As we found out through a hearing in Judiciary, at first Mueller said, We did go to those mosques. But it turns out he said it was on their outreach program. They never went out there to see whether they were radicalized.

And then, we knew at the time--Mr. Speaker, I hold here the articles from the Commonwealth of Massachusetts, articles of organization for the Islamic Society of Boston, and the Islamic Society of Boston is the one that organized the two mosques. And the organizing official is a man named al-Amoudi, which was familiar to the FBI Director because, on his watch, although he had helped the Clinton administration hire what were thought to be moderate Muslims in the Clinton administration and he had originally had an agreement to be of assistance to the Bush administration, the Bush administration ultimately finds out he is supporting terrorism. They have him arrested out here at Dulles Airport, and he's now doing 23 years in prison for supporting terrorism. He's the one that organized the Islamic Society of Boston that created the two mosques where the Tsarnaevs went. The FBI didn't even know that a guy they helped convict of supporting terrorism started the mosque that has created terrorists out of more than one person.

There are others that we find out that have had relations with that mosque that may be a threat. One other thing I want to mention before I yield to my friend. We have a chart--I have had a blowup of this used before, but it points out how many times, as this points out, terminology is important in defining our goals. The 9/11 Commission identifies Islamist terrorism as the threat. The Muslim Public Affairs Council recommends that the U.S. Government find other terminology.

So, in the 9/11 Commission Report, bipartisan, bicameral people trying to take an objective look, they used the term 322 times in the 9/11 Commission Report. However, the last FBI Counterterrorism Lexicon does not include the word ``Islam.'' The National Intelligence Strategy of 2009 does not include the word ``Islam.'' In the 9/11 Commission Report, it used the word ``Muslim'' 145 times, but since then, under this administration, the FBI Counterterrorism Lexicon doesn't use the word ``Muslim.'' It doesn't use the word ``jihad.'' It doesn't use the word ``enemy.'' Now, it does use the words ``violent extremism'' 29 times. In the 9/11 Commission Report, it uses the word ``religious,'' and it is normally referencing these radical Islamists. It uses that word ``religious'' 65 times; whereas, the FBI Counterterrorism Lexicon only uses it three times.

Then the President, basically the only time he used it last night was to say that people that called themselves Islamists are not religious. The people who have had their heads cut off by these people in the name of Islam are looking at what we are doing, I believe, and wondering: How can you say that was not, in their minds, a religious act to cut off my head?

I think, as a Christian, there are references in the Bible. I think people know what goes on here. We know from Scripture that there is rejoicing in Heaven over one soul being saved. Well, how could they rejoice unless they know what is going on? So I think people that have had their heads cut off would have to be wondering about the President's assessment.

``Al Qaeda'' was used 36 times in the 9/11 Commission Report, but in the FBI Counterterrorism Lexicon, not used at all. In the National Intelligence Strategy of 2009 under this administration, it is used once. ``Caliph,'' that is not used at all by this administration in their FBI Counterterrorism Lexicon; National Intelligence Strategy of 2009, the 9/11 Commission Report used it seven times. And it is a little more understandable, too, when you find out that one of the advisers on the Homeland Security Advisory Council that Janet Napolitano put there and gave a secret clearance is named Mohamed Elibiary.

There is an article from Adam Kredo, and he quotes a tweet sent out by the Homeland Security Advisory Council member, and the tweet says:

The caliphate will return; that is inevitable.

Well, we know now that the Homeland Security Advisory Council member's tweet has been used by ISIS in recruiting, that even this President's close adviser on Homeland Security that he has secret access to our databases given by this administration, that he is out there saying the caliphate is inevitable. So it is being used to recruit people to kill Americans. The Homeland Security Advisory Council has people helping with recruiting for terrorists to kill Americans.

I yield to the gentleman from Georgia (Mr. Westmoreland).

I think it was three Members of Congress, you, me, and Michele, but then there were two FBI agents sitting there, too.

Oh, that's right. Trent came, too.

Mr. Speaker, I have another article that accentuates what my friend from Georgia was saying about our allies not being sure what we are going to do. Unfortunately, our enemies seem to know very well what we

are going to do. It is an article published by Al Bawaba, published today. It says--we've identified Hezbollah as a terrorist organization. Well, the deputy leader of Hezbollah, Sheikh Naim Qassem, has said:

``The flurry of international activity, which is sponsored by the U.S., is not serious in ending the takfiri threat . . . He said Obama spoke of `containing' the threat and not `stopping' it.''

I am quoting from him.

``Comments made by Barack Obama are clear. The word `contain' means to identify risks and disable some of its objectives while maintaining this terrorist organization's role to frighten certain countries in this region and to keep this risk as a scarecrow in appropriate places to make political gains, particularly in Iraq and Syria.''

Our enemies know that this President's speech last night indicated he's not serious. We have got to get serious.

With that, I yield back the balance of my time.

Mr. Speaker, I do appreciate my colleagues across the aisle talking about the economy and pushing for a raise in minimum wage because that is what a party does after their party has totally devastated the economy. It is what you do after your party's President, with help from the majority in the Senate led by Harry Reid, are able to just wreak havoc with an economy that should be doing really well.

This economy is ready to take off. ObamaCare, as we have said for over 4 years, is going to harm the economy. It is going to knock people out of work. It is going to put people from full time to part time. Republicans have been explaining this ever since not one of us voted for that bill. We also explained there were $716 billion in cuts to Medicare.

A lot of seniors that vote Democrat voted for this President, voted for a Democratic majority in the Senate. They have now been shocked this year as they are not getting the health care they once did. Why? Because of ObamaCare--seniors are getting mistreated.

When we want to talk about the economy, the most staggering numbers I can imagine have come out in the last year, and the President has even acknowledged it was true. He complains we are not doing enough for the middle class.

Well, we agree with that. We certainly agree with that. We need to help those that are not making enough money. Then quit knocking them out of their jobs, Mr. President, Harry Reid. We have got over 360 bills down at the Senate. Passage of just 10 of them would help this economy, but they won't bring them up.

So the devastating, most incredible numbers are these: since Barack Obama has been President of the United States, for the first time in our Nation's history--it has never ever happened before in any President's tenure, whether it was 4 years or 8 years or shortened by tragedy, no President before Barack Obama has ever presided over an economy in the United States in which 95 percent of all the income in the United States went to the top 1 percent, never ever.

Only under the leadership of President Barack Obama, of all the Presidents, only this President has brought us to the place where 95 percent of all of the income in America goes to the top 1 percent.

People wonder why there is so much money that flooded into the Obama campaign in 2008. Not as much flooded into his campaign in 2012 because there was some people losing money. The economy wasn't doing as well as expected.

Is there anything more devastating than a President acknowledging the fact that 95 percent of all income has gone to the top 1 percent? Then he gives speeches and talks to people like he can't understand how the Republicans could allow this big growth between the poor and the rich. Well, we need the President to tell us how he has done it, but the trouble is we know how he has done it.

He talks about fat cats and then makes sure that they are the ones that get rewarded. He talks about going after Big Oil and proposes a bill that would do nothing to hurt Big Oil, but would absolutely have devastated independent oil producers who actually drill and produce around 95 percent or so of the United States' oil and gas wells.

Because of this President's ObamaCare, because of his overregulation, because of his top-down demands from the EPA wanting to usurp all authority for people that couldn't find their rears with both hands, they are the ones that are telling industry how to run their industries.

This President has created a mess. He demonizes companies for trying to survive by moving to a country that has a corporate income tax rate that is a fraction of the rate we have.

We now have the largest--the highest corporate tax in the world, and this President thinks the answer is more taxes. He has never been educated by people who know how an economy really works, people like Arthur Laffer that helped Ronald Reagan get the economy going after President Carter nearly killed it.

He has never sat down at the feet of people really who understand economies and what makes them work, what makes them fail. So he doesn't understand that when government uses its heavy, heavy hand, they hurt economies.

When the President pronounces laws out of his mouth that have never passed Congress and makes that the newly-enforced law, then it creates havoc in the economy because capital goes where it feels safest.

When you have a President, like a dictator, that just pronounces new laws because he doesn't like what Congress has passed and prior Presidents have signed, then companies are not going to be able to survive very well in that environment, so they move on and go somewhere where they can survive better.

The answer to getting people better jobs and higher wages is not to mandate further regulation. The answer is to lower the corporate tax, draw more companies back here, so that people can have better jobs, people can have more jobs.

I know at some point--because there is so much intelligence in the African American community, I know at some point a majority are going to figure out that the Democrats have done massive damage to the African American communities and that the answer is not making them more dependent on the Federal Government, but in pushing them to reach their potential, to reach for the sky, not with Federal handouts, but with good-paying jobs.

I was in Marshall, Texas, just in the last few weeks. There was a young African American who has been out of school for a while. He was so excited because he had been able to go through the 5-week truck driving school there, was getting his commercial driver's license, and for the first time in his life, he was going to get a good job paying $40,000 to $42,000. It excited me seeing him so excited. He is just a huggable guy that was so thrilled.

So now that he had a job promise that was coming up in a couple of weeks when he finished and he knew how much he was going to make and that, in 3 years, he had the chance of making $100,000, that he has now gotten engaged--because he wanted to wait until he had a job and he could take care of his wife and they could take care of each other.

He didn't want to be on the Federal dole. He wanted to provide for himself. This man had all kinds of capability, and now, he is going to be able to meet it, not because of this President or the overregulation, but because he took a 5-week training program and was going to get a good job.

That is where you help people, not in the handouts, but in the hand helping to rise up to the potential that God has given them.

Some have claimed Republicans have a war on women, that women only make 70 percent of what the men have. There are so many false statistics that are quoted. We know it is very unfortunate. We are very sorry that the White House penalizes women and rewards men because the men make a lot more in the same top positions than the women do. So apparently, that does happen some places, and we hope the President will address it in his own White House lawn, in his own house and yard.

The fact is if across the country everybody was paying women only 70 percent of what they paid men for the same job--people are smarter than the President realizes--they would be hiring nothing but women because they work for so much cheaper.

That is one of the problems that the African American community has. When huge businesses combined with the Democratic Party to bring in and lure as many illegal aliens into this country as they can and start giving massive numbers of amnesty, then they are not going to have as many job opportunities, and they are not going to make as much money.

People are beginning to see that in the African American community. That is why their unemployment rate is so much higher than that in other ethnic communities and the overall unemployment rate--such damage to such wonderful people.

Just like that young man in Marshall, Texas, another--he was a much older guy, big guy, African American, just thrilled for the man because he is graduating, he has got a job coming up, he has been out of work so long.

You don't help people by saying, ``We are going to pay you for a year not to work.'' You help create an environment where there are jobs where you can reach your potential.

Mr. Speaker, the question that my friends ought to be asking is, ``Why is one job no longer enough for so many Americans?'' If we get to the bottom of it, you will find out. ObamaCare is a problem, overregulation is a problem, stifling America becoming energy independent by propping up forms of energy that do not create a profit unless they are propped up by taxpayer dollars--let this economy run. Let people reach their potential.

One other thing: I know the President is going to be making a speech on Syria. I literally thank God that the President was not able to do a bombing campaign like he wanted to do a year ago, in which he literally would have done so much damage to--not a good man, but the leader in Syria, Assad, that it would have allowed ISIS to be in charge now. People across America have figured out ISIS is a threat to all of us.

I will wait to see what the President has to say, but when you know that the President was wrong about Egypt, about the Muslim Brotherhood taking over in Egypt, was wrong when he was pushing to keep the Muslim Brotherhood and a tyrant like Morsi in charge in Egypt, when over a third of the population in Egypt came to the streets and said, ``We don't want radical Islam; and you, America, under Barack Obama, you helped us with a constitution that doesn't even include impeachment, it is shari'a law''--and they have now passed a constitution that requires the Christian churches and Jewish synagogues be rebuilt with government money, and this administration continues to be heavy-handed against them because they didn't want radical Islamists in charge.

In Libya, as moderate Muslims in the Middle East have told me in visits over there: None of us really liked Qadhafi, but he was helping you and helping us against terrorism and you helped al Qaeda-backed rebels take him out.

But for America's bombing, the radical Islamists would not have control of Libya, Algeria, or Tunisia today. Thank God for the Egyptians rising up and saying, as moderate Muslims, as secularists: We stand with the Jews and the Christians, and we don't want radical Islamists running our country.

I hope this country--our country's leadership, at least, under the President--will wake up. Stop hurting the freedom-loving Egyptians that don't want the radical Islamists you supported in Egypt back in charge of Egypt. Don't help ISIS in Syria. Don't help them in Iraq. And if he had just signed the Status of Forces Agreement that President Bush had all but had ready to sign, getting cute with that so it fell apart, then we wouldn't be having all these problems today in Iraq and Syria that we are.

He is getting horrible advice, and it is time the President took a hard look at who he really gets advice from, because the moderate Muslims in the world don't want radical Islam taking over and they don't, as they have told me privately, like the people that this President has advising him.

The economy is ready to take off, if this President will get out of the way, and people can make money and get back to where one job is enough for a person to make it and do well. And if

we cut down on the massive expenses ObamaCare is causing, we can get rid of that and get back to real health care reform. Because even if you save $100, $200 a month, that would get you a vacation that people have not gotten this year.

There is so much we can do for America if the government of this country, the people at the top of the government, will just finally realize the American people have more answers than we do, and then they will show us.

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

Madam Speaker, the two bills that this rule brings before the House today are critical. I have a resolution here adopted by the County Commissioners' Court and Judge of San Augustine County, and they state the obvious:

Be it resolved that San Augustine County strongly opposes

the proposed new rule to define waters of the United States

in that it increases the need for burdensome and costly

permitting requirements, infringes on private property

rights, and circumvents the legislative process, thus, the

will of the people.

Be it further resolved that Congress, not Federal agencies,

make the laws, and therefore any such change in

jurisdictional power of the Federal Government should only

occur as a result of the passage of Federal legislation.

We have a power grab in this administration. It goes on and on. That is why it is so critical to take up this bill, to rein in the EPA in this effort at an oligarchy, or actually, a monarchy, where we just have rules spoken into law, or breathed into law in bureaucratic back rooms, taking private property rights away.

This needs to be dealt with on the floor, and that is what this House Republican majority is trying to do.

Now, when it comes to the Taliban Five, it was very clear from the GAO conclusion that ``when DOD failed to notify specified congressional committees at least 30 days in advance of its transfer of Guantanamo Bay detainees to Qatar, DOD used appropriated funds in violation of section 8111 of the law.''

The law goes on, in part, and says that none of the funds appropriated or otherwise made available in the act may be used to transfer any individuals detained at the United States Naval Station Guantanamo Bay.

We also find out here, I have seen, today, that the Taliban brothers over in Afghanistan and Pakistan, one with the Taliban Five that have been released, are saying they support and are brothers with the Islamic State that is cutting off the heads of American citizens.

There is no question that the five murdering and complicit murderers that were released back to the Taliban will kill Americans again. They will be complicit in killing Americans again even if their hands don't actually do that.

So the question I have, and I will yield to anybody that wants to answer it: What do you call somebody who breaks the law to let lawbreaking complicit murderers go free? What do you call somebody that breaks the law to release murderers?

I am glad to yield to anybody that has an answer.

Madam Speaker, hearing none, the listener, those who have ears to hear, should take note. This is a serious violation. It is not merely an administrative mistake. This has and will cost American lives in violation of United States law. It is time we reined in the lawbreakers.

Mr. Speaker, it is indeed an honor to recognize the incredible 2013-2014 Angelina College Lady Roadrunner Softball team members who merit congratulations for their success, both on and off the field. This group of extraordinary women attained for their school the coveted title of NJCAA Division I National Softball Champions, an accomplishment which also represents the first national title for Angelina College.

In addition, the Lady Roadrunners became the first team from Texas to win the NJCAA Division I World Series since the tournament's inception in 1977.

From start to finish, this team had to overcome adversity at every turn--including mechanical malfunctions, bad weather and sleep deprivation. But on the field, this team exemplified what determination could accomplish.

The team lost in game one of the championship tournament, but the Lady Roadrunners rallied behind their defeat and triumphed in game two over Central Florida with a score of eight to five. The team finished out their season with forty-two wins, sixty-two homeruns and a national title.

Off the field and in the classroom, this group of women illustrate that determination can translate into success no matter the arena. These young women finished their championship season with a total grade point average for the team of three point three, landing them an appearance on the Academic All-American list.

It is my privilege to honor team members Madalyn Sumrall, Trina Deyo, Katelyn Barker, Kaylon Morvant, Kristin Boulware, Gia Johns, Taylor Harper, Shelby Bruner, Sage Martinez, Kassie James, Sidney Allen, Kayleigh Roy, Meranda Rodriguez, Samantha Moore, Melissa Boland, Ashley Ingle, and Tessa Thomas.

The team undoubtedly thrived under the skillful leadership of Head Coach Mark Mattson, Assistant Coach Barbara Mattson, Student Trainer Bridget Chandler, Athletic Secretary Debbie Mareno, Sports Information Director Gary Stallard, Athletic Director Guy Davis, and Angelina College President Dr. Larry Phillips.

It is with great pride that I join the constituents of the First District of Texas in congratulating the players and athletic staff of the 2014 NJCAA Division I National Champions, the Angelina College Lady Roadrunner Softball Team. Their legacy is now recorded in the Congressional Record, which will endure as long as there is a United States of America.