Floor Statements

Mr. Speaker, at this time I yield to my dear friend, Dr. Virginia Foxx.

I appreciate so much my colleague from North Carolina. Having been a president of a university, she knows all about education.

It is certainly one of the areas where we are failing American youth these days, and you would have thought that, if the Federal Government were the answer to everybody's problems, then when President Carter started the Department of Education, everything would have gotten instantly better; but over 35 years later, it turns out the Federal Government is not the answer to better education.

I have talked with enough high school students who also say the Federal Government is not the answer to their food problems. I have met with cafeteria workers and leaders who say that kids are not eating the food. They are required to choose from lists of foods to put on the plates that they had heretofore not heard of before that students don't want, don't like.

The football players were saying last fall: How in the world can we go to football practice and all we get is this piddly little bit of meat and other stuff we can't eat?

So obviously, education, food has not been helped, certainly not according to my constituents in east Texas, the vast majority; and education itself does not seem to have made all that great or remarkable progress since the Carter administration started the Department of Education and Congress began putting strings on virtually everything they did in the way of educational support.

The 10th Amendment had some real meaning and was really visionary. It was the last of those first 10 Bill of Rights and, in essence, said everything that is not specifically enumerated as a power of the Federal Government is reserved to the States and the people; that is because the genius of our

Founders collectively was the best answers are found locally, not by bureaucrats in Washington, D.C.

I was shocked to go online years ago and see that one of my school districts was bragging that, gee, about half of their employees were actually teachers. I was shocked. I would have thought that, if we really cared about education, the big bulk of employees would be teachers.

So I did further investigation and found out that before the national Department of Education was created under Jimmy Carter, there was between 70 and 80 percent of the Texas educational employees who were teachers.

Naturally, when Washington gets involved, there are more requirements for the State agency--education agency in each State; then with more State education accountability and requirements to Washington, there became more bureaucrats there, which meant there had to be more bureaucrats in the local school districts.

If we want to ever get back to having the best education that we can get for our dollar, we need to get back to observing the 10th Amendment. The best educational accountability comes not from some bureaucrat on his buttocks here in Washington, but from those who are there locally that see what is happening in the school.

We have done enough damage. One of the disagreements I had with former President George W. Bush, who I like and admire--I think it unfortunate that people do not appreciate either his intelligence or his very, very clever wit.

Unlike Mr. Gore, who seemed to have trouble being able to make good enough grades to stay in graduate programs, former President Bush didn't have any problem getting through and getting an MBA from Harvard; though obviously, Harvard is not what it used to be when it would embrace and allow debate from all sectors. Now, it is the liberal sector, or they don't really appreciate you.

So, anyway, No Child Left Behind was a big mistake. When Governor George W. Bush pushed accountability at the State level, he was acting within the bounds of the Constitution.

I had hopes that this administration would actually keep the promise that they would dismantle No Child Left Behind. It has been eased, but not nearly what should have happened.

It turns out that the administration has been so busy with other aspects that, apparently, it has not had the time to devote to dismantling No Child Left Behind, as they might have hoped.

We have this story from today, April 29, 2014, Washington, D.C., from Judicial Watch, ``Benghazi Documents Point to White House on Misleading Talking Points.''

The article says that--as a release from Judicial Watch, that they announced today that, on April 18, 2014, it obtained 41 new Benghazi- related State Department documents.

They include a newly declassified email showing then-White House Deputy Strategic Communications adviser Ben Rhodes and other Obama administration public relation officials attempting to orchestrate a campaign to reinforce President Obama and to portray the Benghazi consulate terrorist attack as being ``rooted in an Internet video and not a failure of policy.''

Other documents show that State Department officials initially described the incident as an attack, a possible kidnap attempt.

The documents were released Friday as a result of a June 21, 2013, Freedom of Information Act lawsuit filed against the Department of State to gain access to documents about the controversial talking points used by then-U.N. Ambassador Susan Rice for a series of appearances on television--Sunday news programs--on September 16, 2012.

Judicial Watch had been seeking these documents since October 18, 2012. The Rhodes email was sent on Friday, September 14, at 8:09 p.m., with the subject line, ``Re: Prep call with Susan: Saturday at 4 p.m.

Madam Speaker, I thank both of my colleagues. I am extremely pleased with the sensitivity that is expressed for the people of Washington, D.C., because that is what we should have here.

This is an amendment to the bill regarding the height of Washington, D.C., buildings that passed in 1910, as changing the height restrictions that were put in place in 1899; and as my colleague from the District of Columbia had pointed out, this really hasn't been discussed in detail in over 100 years.

I recently had someone here in Washington tell me that: Gee, as property gets so valuable here in Washington, you are going to see, at first, exceptions made to the height restrictions, then soon followed by a lifting of those restrictions because the money will be just too much for either party to turn down.

I am so grateful that the height is not being changed, as the chairman said, by one inch; but I am very concerned about beginning to make these exceptions for residence levels, even though ``residence'' is the change, basically, in essence, and I have looked at the change. I have reviewed the prior law.

But, Madam Speaker, I am concerned that this is the camel's nose going under the tent. You are beginning to put residences above the height that was previously allowed. It may dress some up, it may change some in ways that we are not crazy about, but I am just concerned about changing the height restrictions, even with these exceptions, after 114 years of being in existence.

So as a result, I thank the chairman and my friend from the District of Columbia, like I say, for their sensitivity, but I like the height restriction because of the emphasis that continues to be pushed.

I thank the gentleman from California.

Madam Speaker, I am concerned about beginning the exceptions that may move in a direction that we don't wish to have. The chairman mentioned that no one is granting that kind of authority, and nobody is seeking it, yet; and I want us to stop it before we have to get to that ``yet.''

Madam Speaker, on that I demand the yeas and nays.

Mr. Speaker, today Secretary of State Kerry accused the Jewish people of Israel of risking guilt for the crime of apartheid. He said that about Israeli Jews whom the U.N.

unanimously provided a nation after the worst genocide in history. Secretary Kerry is both ignorant of history and of the offense of apartheid. Our Secretary of State has effectively cursed Israel.

It is not Israel who sent suicide bombers against Palestinians, nor denied the right of Palestinians to work in Israel, nor advocated for completely wiping them off the map, nor taught their children in their textbooks to hate others like vermin or rats, nor named landmarks and holidays for murderers with suicide bombs, nor launched rockets every day, hoping to terrorize and kill innocent people. It is Israel that has fought against such racism and hatred.

Secretary Kerry stands for those who support the destruction of Israel. He should not be speaking for this Nation. He needs to stand down before he brings judgment upon us all.

It is amazing some of the efforts made to rewrite history and cast things in a light that doesn't exist. So as some people in the administration step up the continued trashing of conservatives in America--we have already seen the assault on conservative groups by the IRS, that does need a special prosecutor, clearly--the assault on people with whom some in the administration disagree, they can't answer questions, and so they make personal attacks.

Then our Attorney General makes a speech yesterday in which, because he was busy helping, perhaps, terrorists or Marc Rich or things like that he didn't notice, because I am sure he wouldn't be untruthful or tell a lie, but he doesn't even know how bad it gets in Washington if you are a conservative, if you are George W. Bush, if you are John Ashcroft, if you are Alberto Gonzales.

It got pretty brutal here, a lot worse than anything our current Attorney General has seen, and that is even without having to go back and recall the treatment that John Mitchell got. I would say, deservedly so, John Mitchell got the treatment he got. But for any Attorney General to be so ignorant of what has happened in very recent years of the maltreatment and malignment and basically slander of Republicans and a Republican President and Republican Attorneys General is a bit breathtaking.

There is a Web site that is Boycott Liberalism. It has a lot of quotes from people. Senator Harry Reid said:

President Bush is a liar.

I don't recall anyone saying that at our hearings with our current Attorney General.

The Speaker of the U.S. House of Representatives, Nancy Pelosi, said:

Bush is an incompetent leader. In fact, he's not a leader.

I don't recall anyone saying anything of that magnitude of our current Attorney General or President, not in any of our hearings.

Hillary Clinton, former Secretary of State and U.S. Senator, said:

We have a culture of corruption. We have cronyism. We have

incompetence.

This actually raises a question about pots and kettles calling each other names.

Other quotes. John Edwards, a former U.S. Senator and Democratic Vice Presidential nominee:

I would say if you live in the United States of America and

you vote for George Bush, you've lost your mind.

Senator Al Franken said:

I think the President highjacked 9/11 and used it to go to

war with Iraq in a way that was very divisive.

The late Ted Kennedy, as Senator, said:

No President in American history has done more damage to

our country and our security than George W. Bush.

Amazingly, I am not aware of any U.S. President in one party reaching out more to a Senator in the other party than did George W. Bush with Senator Ted Kennedy, and these are the kind of comments he got in response.

Senator Hillary Clinton, former Secretary of State, said:

I predict to you that this administration will go down in

history as one of the worst that has ever governed our

country.

We are just talking about there has never been an Attorney General or

President treated as have been the current ones.

Senator Hillary Clinton, former Secretary of State, said:

There has never been an administration, I don't believe, in

our history more intent on consolidating and abusing power to

further their own agenda.

She also said:

I have been absolutely amazed, even shocked, at the

combination of arrogance and incompetence that marks this

particular administration.

We are just helping those who have short memories or maybe were busy helping terrorists or others get pardons and didn't notice these kind of statements being made.

Former Senator and former Vice President Al Gore said:

While President Bush likes to project an image of strength

and courage, the real truth is that, in the presence of his

large financial contributors, he is a moral coward.

Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi said:

Bush is an incompetent leader. In fact, he is not a leader.

He is a person who has no judgment, no experience, and no

knowledge of the subjects that he has to decide upon.

Quotes go on and on, pages of quotes.

But Democratic Senator from Washington, Patty Murray, said, ``He's''--talking about Osama Bin Laden--``been out in these countries for decades building schools, building roads, building infrastructure, building daycare facilities, building health care facilities, and these people are extremely grateful. We haven't done that.''

Former Speaker of the House, Nancy Pelosi said, ``I believe that the President's leadership and the actions taken in Iraq''--talking about President Bush--``demonstrate an incompetence in terms of knowledge, judgment, and experience in making the decisions that would have been necessary to truly accomplish the mission without the deaths to our troops and the cost to our taxpayers.''

She also made this statement, former Speaker of the House, Nancy Pelosi, talking about President Bush: ``I believe that the President's leadership and the actions taken in Iraq demonstrate an incompetence in terms of knowledge, judgment, experience in making the decisions that would have been necessary to truly accomplish the mission without the deaths to our troops and the cost to our taxpayers,'' basically the same thing again.

But, there are some of us that could care less about someone's party or someone's race or someone's gender, someone's age. We don't care. We care about whether you are helping or hurting our country if you are in a position to do one or the other.

I would also direct my friends who would care to do research and get the truth before they go accusing, ignorantly, someone who has the gall to question refusal to turn over documents that were provided by the Justice Department to terrorists, convicted terrorists.

People who financed terrorism, which made them a part of the terrorist act, convicted of over 100 counts, they were given, their lawyers were given thousands and thousands and thousands of pages of documents. Lawyers were given 9,600 or so transcripts or summaries of transcripts.

And Members of Congress are told, as I was in a letter this year in response to my years of trying to get these documents that the Justice Department provided to terrorists, I get a response, basically, saying, hey, here is a Web site, you can look up some exhibits that were admitted in evidence. And here is a public access Web site.

I have been asking for 3 years, just give us the documents Justice gave to the terrorists. If somebody wants to try to make something of that, that is their problem. But the Constitution provides that Congress has oversight because that is the only way we know what to fund and what not to fund. That is part of article I, section 8 of the Constitution.

So, to be denied documents for 3 years, as I have been, with little coy, useless answers, and then allegations of ulterior motivations, when I want to protect America--and I travel around the world, and I hear moderate Muslim friends, leaders in other countries say, why are you not helping us against radical Islam anymore? You are helping the bad guys.

I want to find out what the documentation was and is that the Justice Department has. And they know how to reduce it to disk and provide it to others. I am told they have done that to others in the Justice Department, so do that for Congress.

At one point I was told, well, there are classification issues. You gave them to terrorists, your Department did, so it shouldn't be a real classification problem to give them to Members of Congress.

So for those who wonder about the treatment of an Attorney General coming for an oversight hearing, we have already seen that the Justice Department repeatedly refused to provide the documentation of what happened in Fast and Furious.

And if someone wants to talk about unprecedented treatment, let's look at the facts, just the little ones we know that haven't been covered up by this administration, that haven't been kept secreted by this administration.

Thank God, one of the gun store owners who was being pressured by the Justice Department to sell to the people he knew he should not sell to, he recorded some of the conversations. If he had not, you can't help but believe they would have turned on him bigger than they did, because once they found out he had tapes of the conversations, they knew they couldn't completely blame him, because he was saying, in essence, I shouldn't be selling to these people. But he was coerced into selling.

People were coerced into selling weapons to people that should not have had them, morally or legally, because the Justice Department wanted to get them to drug cartels in Mexico, where they did, and we know, we have heard that at least a couple of hundred or so Mexicans, each one of them a life worth saving, those lives were taken by guns that this Justice Department forced into the hands of criminals, people that should not have had them. So we would like to know more information about how this all came about.

And it is not good enough to say, hey, the Bush Justice Department had a scheme where they had devices, they had guns that they were going to track, just like in drug sales, where you have a controlled sale so you can try to arrest the bad guys and, because of a problem, they got away from them.

That is a different thing entirely, of intentionally letting guns get away to criminals who killed hundreds of Mexicans, and at least one American, Brian Terry, and perhaps more.

It would be nice if we could get to the bottom of that. Wherever there are big problems in our government, we need to know what they are so we can defund them, or at least bring about accountability, just as my Democratic friends in the Senate repeatedly said, except not so kindly, about the Bush administration and John Ashcroft and Alberto Gonzales.

And there were some things I agreed with Senator Schumer on in the Gonzales Justice Department. It was outrageous that they allowed so many National Security Letters to go out without proper basis. I was outraged about that.

In fact, if someone cares to check the Record, they can see the way I went after the Bush FBI Director, because I believed then and still believe he did some serious damage to the FBI during the Bush administration.

The only difference is, I never heard him run out and give a speech whining about how he was mistreated as he came before me for questioning. He didn't do that. And he actually tried to take actions to correct the problems that I got all over him about.

Another difference is, he was a Republican President's FBI Director. But I didn't care what his party was. I didn't care who he was. I thought he was hurting the FBI, and I sounded off. And I was shocked that I did not have more friends on the Democratic side of the aisle join me in going after the Republican-appointed FBI Director.

And of course, once he held over and became the FBI Director for this administration, the other side of the aisle got even more kind in its questioning. But one of us--I certainly stayed consistent.

But there are many problems in this Justice Department that are very clear. There is an article from 2011, August 26, by Christian Adams, a guy that should know. He was in the Justice Department and had a case ready for

judgment against the New Black Panthers who were intimidating voters at a voting place, until the Holder political appointee stepped in and stopped it.

Yes, they got one judgment, but basically of no effect. They can go intimidate others at other polling places, and there were no legal actions that were really pursued to provide any teeth.

But Christian Adams has an article entitled ``The Politicized Hiring of Eric Holder's Compliance Section.'' He says every single new attorney hired has a history thick with left-wing activism.

And then he goes through and talks about it in a very long article, very well-documented.

My friend across the building, Ted Cruz, Senator Cruz, invoked Watergate in blasting DOJ's probe of the IRS scandal. This was March 20, this year, this article from The Blaze by Fred Lucas.

Senator Cruz said the investigator is a partisan Democrat who has donated over $6,000 to President Obama and Democratic causes. Just as nobody would trust John Mitchell to investigate Richard Nixon, nobody should trust a partisan Obama donor to investigate the IRS' political targeting of President Obama's enemies.

But he makes a good point. John Mitchell deserved the criticism he got, but no Attorney General since John Mitchell has the truthful history in their favor to stand up and say, no Attorney General has ever been treated worse than I have.

You just have to go back to Alberto Gonzales. Again, I think he deserved some of the criticism he got, especially on the National Security Letter issue, and I am right there thinking it was a disaster, and it shouldn't have been allowed to happen, and that people needed to be held accountable, which is why I called the White House after it came to light that a report had been on the Attorney General's desk before he testified before the Senate that there were no known abuses of the National Security Letters.

I told the White House, this is indefensible. This isn't right. We can't defend this.

And I wish colleagues across the aisle, when they found similar abuses, problems, fault, would not let party politics or other divisive issues stand in the way of doing what is right.

There are transcripts of Senators going after Attorney General Gonzales, Attorney General Ashcroft, or even going back to John Mitchell. This Attorney General, compared to them, doesn't have a lot to complain about.

And one thing is interesting. You know, when I was a freshman, the Bush administration was in power. We had a lot of trouble getting documents from the Bush administration. The difference between that one and this one: they would eventually get us the documents.

The difference here is they have been there 5 years and they still will not produce documents that should be of critical concern to every American.

Some would say, look, there is no other issue than and concern for America when, in May of 2013, as this article points out from Breitbart:

On Wednesday, Attorney General Eric Holder testified in

front of the House Judiciary Committee about the recent

scandals plaguing the Obama administration. Unfortunately,

the committee and America did not learn very much because

Holder apparently does not know much about what happens in

Washington, D.C.

The AP claims the Department of Justice violated their

constitutional rights when they obtained 2 months of phone

records of reporters. When asked about the scandal, Holder

claimed ignorance and that he was not part of the

decisionmaking process.

He did defend the effort to subvert the press, saying the

DOJ wanted to find who leaked information to the AP about a

CIA operation in Yemen to stop an airliner bombing plot

around the anniversary of Osama bin Laden's death.

On Tuesday, Holder recused himself from the investigation

into the AP scandal and told the committee it was because he

had the leaked information. He could not give the exact date

he recused himself, and he never put it in writing. It took

quite awhile for him to receive confirmation it was Deputy

Attorney General James Cole who signed the subpoena for the

AP phone records.

There are all kinds of reasons to be concerned about what is going on. There are plenty of stories out there.

Oh, gee, how about the speech that my friend across the, aisle Keith Ellison of Minnesota, gave where, as reported here from the Minneapolis Star Tribune, Mr. Ellison said, talking about comparing September 11:

It's almost like the Reichstag fire, kind of reminds me of

that. After the Reichstag was burned, they blamed the

communists for it, and it put the leader of that country--

Hitler--in a position where he could basically have authority

to do whatever he wanted.

The fact is that I am not saying September 11 was a U.S.

plan or anything like that because, you know, that's how they

put you in the nutball box or dismiss you.

But he went on, basically comparing September 11 to Hitler's Reichstag fire, which was set and then blamed on the communists.

From CNN, a report on this, Keith Oppenheimer had stated:

Well, first of all, Wolf, some of the themes that Keith

Ellison is talking about are themes that he has been sounding

off for a while.

And then Oppenheimer said:

The Minneapolis Star Tribune, quoting Ellison at the forum,

is saying this about the Vice President: ``It is beneath his

dignity in order for him to answer any question from the

citizens of the United States. That is the very definition of

totalitarianism, authoritarianism, and dictatorship.''

In response to a question as to whether Ellison supports a

new investigation of the causes of September 11, Ellison made

a comparison to the Reichstag fire in Berlin that Adolf

Hitler used to consolidate power.

And then he quoted my friend across the aisle, with what I just mentioned.

So anyway, there are all kinds of accusations. I thought both George H.W. Bush and George W. Bush should have done more to defend themselves against the outlandish claims; but one thing George H.W. Bush and George W. Bush never did--no matter what race, creed, color, national religion, gender, age, whenever anybody attacked them--he never resorted to name-calling and, in fact, would often try to point out, actually, they have the right to their opinion.

Nowadays, it is a different matter. If someone is concerned that your department or their department would provide discovery documents to convicted terrorists that they are refusing to provide to Congress, that is not an issue of anything other than just not doing what the law requires in the way of oversight.

There is so much going on in this country that needs our attention, and one of them is the Department of Justice. Is it the Department of Justice? Is it the Department of ``just us''?

There is an article from Red State by Candice Lanier, June 26, 2013, where she entitles the article, ``Sixteen Scandals: The Legacy of Eric Holder,'' and then she goes through and cites 16 reasons we should be very concerned about this Justice Department. One of them quotes Discover the Networks.

She says:

Holder also took a leadership role with the Student Afro-

American Society, which at one point demanded that the

school's abandoned ROTC office be renamed the ``Malcolm X

Lounge''--``in honor of a man who recognized the importance

of territory as a basis for nationhood. In 1970, Holder was a

participant in a 5-day occupation of that office. And,

according to some accounts, the occupiers were armed. In

addition, Holder and SAAS also occupied the office of Henry

Coleman, Dean of Freshmen, until their demands were met.

It would appear the SAAS was an advocate of the Black

Panthers because, in March 1970, the SAAS released a

statement supporting the Black Panthers who were charged with

plotting to blow up a police station, department stores,

railroad tracks, and the New York Botanical Gardens.

It references the discriminatory hiring practices in the Department of Justice. This article points out:

In June 2008, Holder admitted to the American Constitution

Society, an organization started as a liberal counterweight

to the Federalist Society, that the Justice Department was

``going to be looking for people who share our values.''

Then it references Fort Hood and the fact that:

Following the Fort Hood attack on November 5, 2009, not one

of the postattack reports issued by the Department of Justice

mentioned Nidal Hasan's Islamist ideology.

It talks further about that, and then it talks about the AP surveillance, the way it went after the Associated Press and cowed them.

Number four, the Department of Justice secretly targets Fox News reporter James Rosen.

There were issues of credibility in comparing our Attorney General's testimony, saying he didn't know of anyone ever being prosecuted, in essence,

and then his signing off on the pursuit of James Rosen.

Five is the Marc Rich pardon and that Eric Holder played an important role in what was arguably the most infamous of President Clinton's 176 pardons. He was the billionaire financier and fugitive oil broker who illegally bought oil from Iran.

Anyway, President Clinton signed the pardon, later crediting Holden's recommendation as one of the factors that had convinced him to issue the pardon.

Number six was the Weather Underground pardon.

Holder, as Deputy Attorney General, ``was the gatekeeper

for presidential pardons.'' Two of the recipients of Holder's

pardons were former Weather Underground members Susan

Rosenberg and Linda Evans.

Number seven--and I am not reading off all the information about these--but seven was:

Holder's DOJ threatens free speech. The American Muslim

Advisory Council of Tennessee sponsored an event on June 4,

called ``Public Disclosure in a Diverse Society.'' The main

speakers for the event were DOJ official Bill Killian, who is

the U.S. attorney for the Eastern District of Tennessee, and

FBI Special Agent of the Knoxville Division, Kenneth Moore.

What is troubling about the event is that Killian addressed

how social media posts and documents deemed inflammatory

toward Muslims can be considered a violation of civil rights

laws.

He went on and he quoted the law, talking about how anybody critical of Islam could be violating the law. He quotes the law:

If two or more persons conspire to injure, oppress,

threaten, or intimidate any person in any State, territory,

commonwealth, possession, or district in the free exercise or

enjoyment of any right or privilege secured to him by the

Constitution or laws of the United States, they shall be

fined under this title or imprisoned not more than 10 years,

or both.

Talk about a chilling effect.

Number eight, hostility towards conservatives. At an American Constitution Society gathering in 2004, Holder made the following comments--and these are all quotes:

Conservatives have been defenders of the status quo, afraid

of the future, and content to allow to continue to exist all

but the most blatant inequalities.

Conservatives have ``made a mockery of the rule of law.''

Conservatives are ``breathtaking'' in their ``arrogance,''

which manifests itself in such things as ``attacks on

abortion rights,'' ``energy policies that are as shortsighted

as they are ineffective,'' and ``tax cuts that

disproportionately favor those who are well off and

perpetuate many of the inequities in our nation.''

The hallmarks of the ``conservative agenda'' include

``social division, mindless tax cutting, and a defense

posture that does not really make us safer.''

Anyway, he has got quite a few quotes like that.

But number nine, opposition to Second Amendment rights:

In 2008, Eric Holder claimed that the Second Amendment does

not protect an individual's right to keep and bear arms, but

only applied to government militias.

Number 10 was the treatment of terrorists as criminal defendants instead of enemy combatants, as the laws that were passed should have indicated.

Number 11 was the Arizona immigration law, how he went after that and he had not even read it. Filed pleadings--his department filed pleadings, and he made statements about how bad the law was, and he had not even read it.

I thought my friend from Texas, Ted Poe, a former judge, had asked one of the stupidest questions I had ever heard in our Judiciary Committee hearing when he asked: Had you read that law before you filed that suit?

And the answer was no. I couldn't believe that no lawyer would file a suit declaring a law unconstitutional and he hadn't even read it.

Twelve, New Black Panther intimidation.

Thirteen, opposition to voter ID laws--and by the way, we have evidence--you have places where photo IDs have been required, and there was actually an increase in minority voting.

Fourteen, Fast and Furious, that we can't get to the bottom of because they continue to secrete information about the department's involvement and what they did.

Fifteen, purges references to radical Islam, and we know about the purging of FBI training documents so that we don't offend people that want to destroy our way of life and us.

Sixteen, about the Islamic outreach, when I was grilling FBI Director Mueller about not even pursuing adequately the information about Tsarnaev being radicalized, I said: you didn't even go to the Muslim mosque in Boston to ask about their radicalization.

He said: oh, yes, we did go to the mosque--and then muttered ``in the outreach program.'' They never went to talk to anybody that might know whether Tsarnaev had been radicalized.

Then The New York Times has a story blaming the Russians. The Russians and our own intelligence community know anytime you give a heads-up to another country about information that may be helpful to them, you may end up giving away how intelligence is obtained.

So it was wonderful that, twice, Russia gave us a heads-up, and instead, we go to the mosque that Tsarnaev attends, with our outreach program from the FBI, instead of to investigate how radicalized this young man had become and the damage and the death and mayhem he was about to cause.

If someone wants to say there is another motive for being critical, well, they are living in their own little world.

If somebody wants to bring up race, Mr. Speaker, for the record, let me just say, there is one African American I am still furious with. His name is Fred McClure. He was the president of the State of Texas Future Farmers of America. He was the student body president at Texas A&M University, where I attended. He was a good friend.

I went to Baylor Law School before him. People say: wow, you really did well, you know, you won an award for a law review article, won best brief award, won moot court.

Fred came in behind me and set the place on fire, figuratively speaking, with how well he did and the things he accomplished.

But he went to work for President George H. W. Bush, and in 1990, in December, I begged Fred to come back to east Texas where he grew up in San Augustine and that there were a lot of us that loved him and would get him elected to Congress so we could come back up here to Washington and set things right.

And the thing I am still furious at Fred about is, if Fred had taken the encouragement to heart and come back and run for Congress, we could have gotten him elected. And if we had done that, I could have been about a normal life and not had to be here in Congress.

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

Mr. Speaker, pursuant to Senate Concurrent Resolution 35, 113th Congress, I move that the House do now adjourn.

The motion was agreed to; accordingly (at 1 o'clock and 45 minutes p.m.), the House adjourned until Monday, April 28, 2014, at 2 p.m.

I am immensely grateful to my friend Rob Woodall.

Madam Speaker, it was back in the 1990s when I heard what apparently was a loveable, old fuzzball who turned out to be Rush Limbaugh. He was talking about the absurdity of the United States Government doing something that no person, no family, no business, no charity in all of America could do.

With due respect to my friend who just spoke, Mr. Van Hollen says businesses would go out of business. I would challenge anybody in this room to show me a business, to show me a family, to show me an individual, to show me a charity that has an automatic increase in every year's budget, because America can't do that. I was shocked that this was going on. I mean, in the Army, I helped with the budget. In the private sector, I prepared budgets. As a district judge, I prepared a budget. It had to be approved. We never got an automatic increase. You had to justify any change in anything. If you needed an increase, you had to show why that was important.

I got to Congress, never dreaming that that would not have been taken care of when Republicans took the majority, but in my freshman term in 2005 and 2006, the Republican chair of the Budget Committee said we have to do the automatic increases. I said, Why? He said, Because it is the law. I was shocked. We make the law. We can change the law. Then, of course, our friends across the aisle took the majority, and for 4 years, there was no chance of eliminating the automatic increase in every Federal department's budget, but then we got the majority back.

For all of the disagreements I have had with the Speaker, Speaker Boehner agreed that if Paul Ryan passed a zero-baseline budget--ending the automatic increases--out of committee, then he would bring it to the floor. It meant we would have to have the right guy marshaling this bill. Some tweaking was done, and I will be forever grateful to my friend Rob Woodall, who is as brilliant as his predecessor, a dear friend, John Linder. He took this bill, and he marshaled it through. Paul Ryan kept his word, and I will be forever grateful for that. It came to the floor, and we voted it through, and the Senate wouldn't take it up.

For those who want to talk about the children, I am not hearing a lot of that

talk today because, when I talk to college students, high school students, junior high students, they are wondering why they are going to have to pay the debts that we were not responsible enough to pay ourselves. There is not a good answer. It is absolutely immoral and negligent--it is self-indulgent--to say that one generation like ours is so much more important that we have to spend future generations' money. Yes, if there is inflation, let's deal with it that year, but I have heard enough stories from people who are talking about, gee, this department is apparently out there, saying, Spend all your money. Don't leave any because, if you don't, you won't get as much next year. Of course, they get automatic increases every year, so they have got to spend their money. That is no way to run a country. It is not right.

There are some issues I have with the budget, but I know the heart of the man who was behind that, and I know he wants future generations not to be burdened with our negligent handling of our money. So it is time that we end the automatic increases in every Federal budget. When my friend across the aisle was talking about, gee, you could end up with half an aircraft carrier--good grief--we have lost aircraft carriers because of those automatic increases every year for decades now. There are aircraft carriers that won't be there because we couldn't control ourselves as we had to automatically increase everything we spent.

Madam Speaker, it is time we did the responsible thing and ended the automatic increase in every single Federal budget for next year, and I will be continuing in my gratitude to my friend Rob Woodall.

Mr. Speaker, there is a deeply troubling matter that has come before our government here in the United States. Once again, Iran is at the bottom of it. They have shown since 1979, since President Carter basically was pushing for the ouster of the Shah, we turned on an ally who was not a good man necessarily, but we--well, actually, President Carter--hailed the Ayatollah Khomeini as a man of peace.

What has been wrought--to use the words of Samuel F. B. Morse--has been years and years of terrorism in the hands of violent radical Islamic jihadists.

Then we get word that Iran has named one of the people involved in the original hostage-taking incident in Tehran in 1979 as its Ambassador to the U.N.

At this time, I want to recognize my very good friend from Colorado (Mr. Lamborn), who has really taken the lead in an appropriate response from our House.

Mr. Speaker, I thank my dear friend from Colorado.

In fact, when I heard that such an outrage was being suggested, I said to my staff, we have got to do something. I was told, and I should have suspected, my friend Doug Lamborn from Colorado was already out there, he already has a bill, H.R. 4357. I was brought a Dear Colleague letter accompanying that, and I said we have got to help our friend do what is right for America.

I was pleased that Ted Cruz was able to get that pushed through in the Senate. Frankly, it shows there is still hope for the Senate. That is encouraging. You look for hope where you can get it.

But I remember so well 1979-1980. I was in the Army at Fort Benning. This attack occurred and we were outraged. There was nobody I knew in the Army who was dying to go to Iran. But really everybody I knew at Fort Benning and other posts, we expected to go because it was an act of war.

Our embassy was attacked in Tehran, it was an act of war, and nothing really happened for 444 days. There was a failed rescue attempt. I still, Mr. Speaker, have asked from the floor before, and I wish somebody could verify for sure, but I had a friend from Fort Benning who had told me that the original plan for the rescue required that 12 helicopters would go 500 or so miles inland into Iran to a staging area there.

At the time they knew where the hostages were. There was still good intel. They knew where they were. So this was going to be an effort to rescue them. This was the original Delta Force. Our friend General Jerry Boykin, now at the Family Research Council, was one of the original Delta Force. I have talked to him about that time out there in the desert.

They were to rendezvous with some aircraft that would have supplies, things they needed. In order to make the trip, as General Boykin confirms, they knew they had to have six helicopters there make it that far inland.

What I would like to get substantiation on or just prove, that originally the military proposed, the joint military group proposed 12 helicopters to go in. Their reasoning, as a friend from Fort Benning pointed out--this is back when I was in the Army this was being told-- the reasoning was when you go across hundreds of miles of sand, desert, with turbine engines, that you run the risk of having a high loss rate of your helicopters.

So they asked for 12, thinking since six was absolutely essential to have at the staging area inside Iran, that they should allow for 50 percent loss of the helicopters. What I still want to find out, is it true that the 12 helicopters were proposed, but that the White House said: No, 12 would look like an invasion, so let's scale that back to eight. I was told the dialogue went: Well, if we have eight and we have four losses, then we only get there with four and there is no mission; if we don't do it now, we may not know where they move them. We really should go with 12. But I was told the White House said: No, we can't go with 12. We don't want to make it look like an invasion, scale it back to eight.

General Boykin confirmed that there were eight helicopters that made the trip. But when they got to the staging area, when it was clear that only five helicopters were going to make it, he said there was an automatic abort at that point. Unfortunately, as we know from the news of what happened, one of the choppers as it attempted to rise up, the pilot must have had vertigo--it is very easy to happen in the desert sand as the sand swirls around you--but whatever the reasoning, the helicopter slightly turned, the rotors went through the C-130, and we lost American lives out there on the desert floor at the staging area in Iran.

I don't fault anyone who was part of the Delta Force. They were some of the most heroic people America has produced. They were willing to risk it all, and some did give all in the effort to go after our hostages.

But whether the proposal was originally 12 and it was scaled back to eight, or whether the administration, the Commander in Chief, just said go with eight, either way the error was where the buck stops, at the top with the Commander in Chief. Because just like President Kennedy admitted after he withdrew the full air support that he had promised during the Bay of Pigs invasion, as he said afterwards: We should have gone ahead. We would have been better off doing a full-scale invasion instead of having something as embarrassing and humiliating as this--or words to that effect, is what I had read.

If you are going to rescue American lives, you commit whatever it takes. The military is always ready to commit whatever it takes.

Our problem comes in the chain of command usually at the very top. That is why it has been so tragic in Afghanistan that in a period of half the time of President George W. Bush being Commander in Chief, President Obama as Commander in Chief had around twice or so the fatalities and even more of injuries, debilitating serious injuries.

The rules of engagement are critical in a battle like that. Whether it is going to rescue hostages, whether it is going to provide a peacekeeping mission, it is absolutely imperative that our military have the full authority to protect themselves, win whatever battle may be confronted, and come home.

The lesson that all too often is not learned from Vietnam is not that we should never get involved in foreign battles. The lesson is and should be, the one that has not been learned is this: if we are going to commit American men and women to combat, then give them authority to win and bring them home. That should be the lesson of Vietnam.

It should be the lesson of Iraq. It should be the lesson of Afghanistan, and yet, we still have people in Afghanistan who don't really understand why they are there, but don't want to be the last American to die in Afghanistan.

As we see surveys around the world indicating that the United States has lost tremendous respect--and in areas where our President, along with many of the rest of us thought, okay, we have a President who did a lot of growing and learning in an Islamic country as he has indicated.

So surely, he will help our relationships with and in Muslim countries; and yet, as you look at surveys in Muslim countries around the world, we are less respected now than we were under President and Commander in Chief George W. Bush, especially when you are dealing with radical Islamic leaders.

There are so many people in Iran. I have met some of them in surrounding countries, refugees from Iran, who verify that there are so many Iranian people--they love Americans, but clearly, their leadership does not.

It is a slap in the face for the Iranian leadership to think that they could get away--to think that we have such a weak Commander in Chief that they could send over someone who is a participant in an act of war, an international crime against humanity, attacking an embassy and taking hostages and mistreating those hostages; yet they thought they could get away with it.

If you look at what has been happening around the world, perhaps it is not that difficult to understand why Iran thought they could get away with something so heinous as to send a participant of the original international crime, an act of war of attacking our Embassy and holding hostages.

Well, some may say: this guy, we don't know that he was there when the Embassy was actually attacked.

But as I know from my judge days and prosecutor days--the Federal law, State laws I am aware of, and in the international circles--anyone who aids, encourages, and abets is considered a principal of the crime.

So that is what we have here, an arrogant, condescending slap in the face of the United States President, Congress, everyone who has any leadership

in this country, a show of no respect to send someone who is well-known to have participated, despite the efforts to minimize roles he may have had.

So why would they think they could do that? You look, gee, the Russians and the Chinese have taken the measure of our President. They know he is the Commander in Chief. They know how our government functions. Iran has done the same thing. Syria has done the same thing.

Others around the world have looked, and they saw, and I have even had some world leaders say: look, Mubarak--none of us really liked him--but he was your ally, and he gave you a longer period of peace on the Israeli border with Egypt than any other time; so we couldn't believe when you turned on your ally, you have written agreements with Mubarak. We don't understand how you could just toss aside an ally who has helped you so much.

People in other countries have said: we couldn't believe Qadhafi had blood on his hands; and yet, after 2003, he had some kind of conversion experience after he saw the U.S. go into Iraq.

He said: look, I am giving up my nukes, you can take them, you can come in and inspect whatever you want, and I will be your best friend in fighting terrorism.

As some other moderate Muslim leaders in the Middle East have said: he was your friend. As other leaders in the Middle East have said: he provided you more help and more information on terrorists than any other country but Israel.

So what did we do? We came after Qadhafi. We bombed his forces, and it seems pretty clear, without the United States' assistance, Qadhafi would have stayed in power. We would still be getting information on terrorism in the Middle East from Qadhafi and his people.

We would have four people that didn't die in Benghazi, and terrorism wouldn't be so profoundly manifesting itself in north Africa and the Middle East, but this administration turned on someone who had turned into a friend to the United States, an enemy of terrorism.

We have moderate Muslim friends in Afghanistan who actually defeated the Taliban for us. My heart breaks for my friend Masood and others who risked their lives to fight the Taliban, who defeated the Taliban under the leadership of General Dostum, who some now in this administration call a war criminal. He fought the Taliban like the Taliban fights. He defeated them. He did us a great favor.

The Taliban was acknowledged to have been in disarray and completely defeated, and then we decide to nation-build. I know this is not the fault of President Obama, it was done before he came in, but we decided to nation-build.

We sent tens of thousands of troops into Iran, whereas we had only had less than 500 there at the time that the Taliban was routed.

How could we do that? Well, we provided them weapons, we gave them air cover, we gave them intel. We had embedded special ops and intelligence, and we let them do the fighting, and we whipped the Taliban by letting the enemy of our enemy defeat our enemy.

Now, this administration refers to them as war criminals? They were our allies, they were our friends. They defeated the Taliban. So we mistreat our friends who risked their lives fighting our enemy for us-- and for themselves, make no mistake.

Then this administration is constantly reaching out to the Taliban: we want to talk, we want to sit down with you--and offered at one time to buy them luxurious offices, international offices--if you will just sit down, you don't even have to agree to reach an agreement, just to sit down with us and talk; we may let a lot of your people who have murdered Americans go free if you just sit down and talk with us.

Then the Chinese have seen how we have turned on allies and reached out to our enemies. They have had their eyes on certain places near China, South China Sea, other places surrounding China, they have had their eye on places, just like Russia has.

Now, they see the United States turning on allies, embracing enemies. They ask the same questions. They are bound to ask the same questions some of our allies have expressed: Are you still fighting against terror? Because they are still fighting you and we can't tell that you are helping in the fight anymore.

So China starts making moves they never would have made 5 years ago because they wouldn't have wanted to risk a U.S. response; and Russia wouldn't have made the move 5 years ago, but they have counted the cost, they have measured the leader of the United States of America, just like Khrushchev did in the early 1960s. They have figured: we can move on Crimea, and the United States will do nothing.

That is why they laughed when the President announced that he was going to put sanctions on some of the Russian leaders. They were shocked. That is all you are going to do? That is it? Wow. Let's move some more troops to Ukrainian border. Maybe we can grab some more of Ukraine, and the U.S. will continue to do nothing.

Weakness is provocative. It has always been; it will always be. I knew I owed 4 years to the Army, and I would do that before I did anything else, so I majored in what I loved, history. There are so many lessons repeated over and over in history.

That is why, Mr. Speaker, it was shocking to hear an educated Secretary of State that knew that you pronounced Genghis Khan as ``Genghis Khan'' actually make the statement that the Russians were making a 19th century move on Crimea, when history dictates that what the Russians did in moving on Crimea, an area they have had their eyes on and wanted to take is--yes, it is 19th century, it is 20th century, it is 21st century, it will be 22nd century if the Lord tarries. It was 18, 17, 16, 15, 14, 13. It has been in every century.

You go back to the Dark Ages, whether you say that is 500 to a 1000 A.D. or whether you say it is specifically 476 to 800 A.D., whatever you call the Dark Ages, these were the kind of moves that were made then. People made moves--assaultive moves on other people, places, and things because there is evil in this world.

Mr. Speaker, there is the good that our Founders acknowledged, that God put there. It is why they said we are endowed by the Creator with certain inalienable rights because they knew there was a Creator, that they knew there was evil in the world, and they set up as many obstacles to power grabs in this country as they could.

They felt pretty comfortable that Congress would never allow either the Supreme Court or the President to usurp legislative power without reining them in. It is time that we did that.

My dear friend, Doug Lamborn, produced H.R. 4357. It says this:

The purpose is to deny admission to the United States to

any representative to the United Nations who has engaged in

espionage activities against the United States, poses a

threat to the United States, and other purposes.

It goes on to say:

A bill to deny admission to the United States to any

representative to the United Nations who has engaged in

espionage activities against the United States, poses a

threat to United States national security interests, or has

engaged in a terrorist activity against the United States.

Then it goes on in detail, as far as changing section 407(a) of the Foreign Relations Authorization Act, in order to make it possible where we could deny entrance to Iran's proposed U.N. Ambassador. It is time we did that.

There was a story from Fox News, dated March 31, that is entitled, ``One-time hostage of Iranian militants urges denial of visa to new Iran envoy involved in siege.''

This was written by Eric Shawn. It says:

Hostages captured after the 1979 siege on the U.S. Embassy

in Tehran are seen in this undated file photo.

Former American hostage Barry Rosen, held by student

extremists at the U.S. Embassy in Tehran for more than a

year, said Monday it would be an ``outrage'' and ``disgrace''

if Washington gave a visa to one of the militants recently

named by Iran as its new U.N. Ambassador.

``It may be a precedent, but if the President and the

Congress don't condemn this act by the Islamic Republic, then

our captivity and suffering for 444 days at the hands of Iran

was for nothing,'' Rosen said. ``He can never set foot on

American soil.''

This is a quote from Rosen.

He also said:

It's a disgrace if the United States Government accepts

Aboutalebi's visa as Iranian Ambassador to the U.N.

Rosen was the Embassy's press attache who was blindfolded

and held at gunpoint, along with 51 fellow Americans taken

hostage. In a statement to FOX News, Rosen demanded that the

Obama administration deny a visa to Aboutalebi to prevent him

from taking up Tehran's U.N. post.

We need to take action. We hold the purse strings. We need to cut off any funding for any effort that might be undertaken to grant this international terrorist a visa so that he can come on American soil and have diplomatic immunity.

So I am quite proud of my friend from Colorado. Mr. Lamborn and I have traveled to Israel together. I have seen him conduct himself in international settings in ways that should make Colorado proud of him, as well as the United States.

My friend Ted Cruz got a bill through the Senate that passed 100-0. As reported by the AP April 7:

The Senate approved a bill Monday to bar a man with ties to

the 1979 Iranian hostage crisis who's been tapped to be

Iran's Ambassador to the United Nations from entering the

United States.

By voice vote, Republicans and Democrats united behind the

legislation sponsored by Senator Ted Cruz, Republican of

Texas, that reflected congressional animosity toward Tehran

and its selection of Hamid Aboutalebi. Iran's envoy's choice

was a member of a Muslim student group that held 52 American

hostages for 444 days in the 1979 seizure of the Embassy in

Tehran.

The ``nomination is a deliberate and unambiguous insult to

the United States,'' Cruz said in remarks on the Senate floor

in which he describes Iran's anti-Americanism since 1979, and

added, ``This is not the moment for diplomatic niceties.''

I am very proud of my friend Ted Cruz, the Senator from Texas. This is the way we need to respond to Iran's slap in the face of the United States.

Again, if you look at the way this administration has reached out to Iran, they have laughed openly and said yes, they were negotiating, and yes, they reached a preliminary agreement with this White House, but they are not stopping anything in the way of developing nuclear weapons. They made that clear. They are not abandoning their nukes.

So what have we done? We gave them a free space in which to keep developing nukes. We don't know what they have been doing behind the scenes because there have not even been inspections in all the facilities that we know of, and they brag that they are not abandoning anything.

And what else did the administration do? The administration eased up and allowed them billions of dollars in relief from the sanctions which, no doubt, would help them pursue nuclear weapons as they move forward.

It is just tragic why and how this administration is giving the impression to nations like Iran that we will not stand up to them. But, again, look at what we did as a nation. We reelected President Obama, knowing that before the election he had turned to the leader from Russia and basically said: Tell Vladimir Putin that I will have a lot more flexibility after the election.

People elected the President, knowing that he had telegraphed to the Russians that he would show a lot more weakness and would be able to give the Russians a lot more of what they wanted after the election in 2012.

If you look at this administration's activities after the election in 2008, Secretary of State Hillary Clinton was sent over with a goofy- looking button that they thought had, in Russian, ``reset,'' when, actually, I don't know what that says. She thought it said ``reset.'' It didn't say that. And we embarrassed ourselves.

But the message was very clear because the Russians, and Putin in particular, knew that the reason that relationships have been strained was that, toward the end of the Bush administration, the Russians moved on Georgia, and the reaction was swift from President Bush. He didn't do as much as I might have thought should be done, but he was embarrassed. He was bound to have been embarrassed because he said he looked to this man and knew that he was a man of peace, or words to that effect, and it had to feel like a bit of a betrayal to President Bush when he moved on Georgia.

The Russian activities of moving on Georgia, totally abandoning and betraying the outreach by the Bush administration, put a significant chill on U.S.-Russian relations. That is why they were chilled. That is why diplomatic relations were so stiff at the time that this administration took over.

So when you know that it was the Russian invasion and move on Georgia that caused a strain in relations, to the Russians, when this administration says, Hey, we are really sorry for the way we acted in the past; we want a new relationship; we want to hit a reset button or whatever we put in Russian on this thing, we want to start over, the message was clear to Vladimir Putin: we're sorry that we were offended when you broke your word to us and invaded Georgia; we're sorry that you were an aggressor, you attacked and invaded and went into a neighboring country. This administration was apologizing for the Russians being that aggressive, and the message was clear that we are not the country we once were. And the message was sent to go ahead and take what you think you can, and he has.

Countries around the world are looking at us. We know we still have the greatest military. Despite all the cuts, it is still the greatest military in the world. And yet, if you don't have leaders willing to show strength, then people will take advantage. It is not a 19th century historical action; it is a 21st and every century since man has been on this planet.

Some have asked, gee, if these inalienable rights to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness really are inalienable, why do all people around the world not have them? And the answer, I think, is because yes, they were an inheritance bequeathed to us by our Creator; but just as any inheritance, if the heir does not claim that inheritance and have a willingness to protect it and fight for it and maintain it, then you won't keep it.

Thus, when Ben Franklin was purportedly asked, ``What have you given us?'' he replied, ``A republic, if you can keep it.''

Muslim moderates are concerned because they see the United States trying to embrace radicals. Again, I am so proud of the moderate Muslims in Egypt in joining, literally and figuratively, arm in arm, hand in hand with Christians and secularists in Egypt and coming to the street in millions and millions and millions and demanding a leader who would not usurp power that was not his in the constitution, demanding his removal, demanding a constitution that would allow them to impeach a leader like Morsi had become as a Muslim Brother. They made clear: we don't want radical Islamist leaders or people in our government because they have one goal, and that is taking overall power, subjugating everyone else, including moderate Muslims and Christians.

That is why it was so ironic to hear one of the Justices of the Supreme Court, in effect, saying just pay the tax and then you have got your religious beliefs, because that is a shari'a law belief. And I know she is not aware of that. But actually, under shari'a law, if you are a Christian, you can pay a tax and subjugate yourself humbly before the Muslim government and they will allow you to practice your religion so long as you remain subjugated to shari'a and to the Muslim leaders.

But in this Nation, you are not supposed to have to pay a tax or a fine in order to practice your religious beliefs. In Egypt--God bless those people--they didn't want to do that either, so they got rid of the Muslim Brother leaders.

What else did they do, Mr. Speaker? They declared the Muslim Brotherhood as a terrorist organization. And if one reads the opinion from the Dallas Federal court and also from the Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals in the Holy Land Foundation trial, it seems pretty clear the evidence is there that Muslim Brotherhood should be accepted as a terrorist organization.

And groups like CAIR, who have such a powerful influence in this administration, who can call and have an intelligence briefing shut down at Langley, as they have, who can call and complain that the training materials at the FBI offend them and have them purged so those FBI training materials no longer offend a front organization for the Muslim Brotherhood, as found by the Dallas court and the Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals.

Now there is a story from England. The BBC news reports ``David Cameron Orders Review of Muslim Brotherhood'':

Prime Minister David Cameron has commissioned a review of

the Muslim Brotherhood's UK activity, No. 10 says.

The Muslim Brotherhood is an Islamist movement which has

been declared a terrorist group by Egypt's government.

Recent press reports have suggested members have moved to

London to escape a crackdown in Cairo, where the group backs

ousted President Mohammed Morsi.

Well, they had that in common with at least one or two of our U.S. Senators who went over there to back Morsi.

In any event, the article goes on:

Number 10 said the review would examine the group's

philosophy and activities, and the government's policy toward

it.

According to the Times, it was prompted by evidence

received by the government that Muslim Brotherhood leaders

met in London last year to plan their response to events in

Egypt.

The Prime Minister's official spokesman said that the

``main conclusions'' of the review, which is due to be

completed by the summer, would be made public.

Asked what had triggered the review, he said the government

had received a succession of reports from its Embassies in

the region, building up a picture which the Prime Minister

believed should be examined.

But No. 10 does not provide any details on which bodies are

to be involved in the review.

The Muslim Brotherhood was founded in Egypt, but now

operates in many states and has influenced other Islamic

movements around the world with its model of political

activism combined with Islamic charity work.

While the Brotherhood--and it has the Arabic name--says it

supports democratic principles, one of its stated aims is to

create a state ruled by Islamic law or shari'a.

Its most famous slogan, used worldwide, is ``Islam is the

solution.''

The organization's backing installed Mr. Morsi as Egypt's

first civilian president in 2012, but he was ousted--and this

is the same mistake that CNN and this administration makes;

they called it a military coup last year--after widespread

street protests.

As the millions and millions and millions of people in Egypt made clear, millions more than even Morsi claimed voted for him, it was not a military coup. This was an uprising by the people of Egypt demanding the Constitution be followed, and the ouster of a president who was grabbing power at scary speed, and many knew if they didn't move at the time they did, a year later would be too late. He would be like dictators often are, elected, then seize all power, and you can't ever get rid of them.

In any event, this article says:

In December, the new Egyptian government declared the

Muslim Brotherhood a terrorist group after blaming it for an

attack on a police station that killed 16 people.

A Downing Street spokesman said in a statement: ``The Prime

Minister has commissioned an internal government review into

the philosophy and activities of the Muslim Brotherhood and

the government's policy toward the organization.''

So, anyway, it is interesting, Egypt has declared the Muslim Brotherhood to be a terrorist organization, and they should know better than any nation in the world.

I thank God for the Egyptians that rose up. Estimates are a third of the population went to the streets to demand removal. And I didn't know till I was over there last fall, they didn't have any provision in their Constitution for impeachment, so they needed a constitution where they could impeach a president who usurps power that is not his under the Constitution.

Now, England is taking a look to see if they shouldn't declare them terrorist organizations.

The reason we can anticipate that, in the near future, this administration will not declare the Muslim Brotherhood to be a terrorist organization is because they get advice from two front organizations, as the courts have said, of the Muslim Brotherhood. That would be the Council on American-Islamic Relations, CAIR, and I can see them, their building from my window, so they have got a good spot to keep watch over Capitol Hill, and also, ISNA, the Islamic Society of North America. And its leader is Imam Magid, who, as far as I know, is frequently giving advice, continued advice to the State Department, the White House on anything to do with Islam.

We know that the Egyptian paper had reported in December of 2012, when the Muslim Brotherhood was running the government, that six Muslim Brothers were in very key and top positions of power and advice within the Obama administration. They heralded that as a great thing for the Muslim Brothers to have that much influence in Washington.

So there shouldn't be a great deal of wonder at why this administration, with one of those individuals, reported an Egyptian paper, being a top adviser in homeland security, charged with keeping us safe, that we have, according to the Egyptian paper, a Muslim Brother, Mr. Elibiary, who was given a secret clearance by Janet Napolitano, and given access to confidential material or secret material. And we, apparently, get advice from this man, whose business started a foundation, or he started a foundation called the Freedom and Justice Foundation.

Most of us would say freedom and justice? That is great. He believes in freedom and justice. Until you look up the meaning of freedom and justice. Under shari'a law, freedom and justice means freedom to worship Allah only, and justice only under shari'a law. And so it is no big surprise that the Muslim Brotherhood political party in Egypt called itself the Freedom and Justice Party.

But if there are enough leaders here in the United States that know what is good for us, we will see what Egypt has done, what England is doing. And even Russia has noticed that radical Islam is an enemy. They have even tried to warn us, but found we don't take warnings well.

We should declare the Muslim Brotherhood to be a terrorist organization.

Thoughts On The Causation of the Fort Hood Shootings

Now, that brings me to another point about the first Fort Hood shooting that was clearly an act of terrorism by an enemy combatant.

Even though this administration calls it workplace violence, it was an act of war by a warrior for radical Islam. And he was able to kill the 13 people, Nadal Hasan, for more than one reason. One was, political correctness kept superior commissioned officers from calling it like they saw it because they didn't want to be called some racist or Islamaphobe, the term that the OIC, the Islamic council, had put together to try to intimidate people from recognizing the danger that radical Islam was.

They didn't want to be called Islamaphobe, and they knew, going all the way up the chain of command, that they might be looked upon badly if they reported this man for what they saw, not a moderate Muslim, but a man that was a potential problem, a person who was being radicalized.

Another problem was that the people we entrust with rocket-propelled grenades, with tanks, with all kinds of weapons, with helicopters that can fire blistering rounds thousands of meters away and kill hundreds and thousands of people, they have that much authority, that much ability, that much power, we trust them with these tremendous weapons that kill people, and yet, we tell them, but we don't trust you to have a pistol with you on a military installation.

So just as when a killer walked into a cafeteria in Killeen, Texas, that adjoins Fort Hood years ago, he knew no one would have a gun there, and so he killed a lot of people, including a woman's parents. She had put her gun in her glove compartment, and knew she could have saved her parents if she had been able to keep her weapon.

So she fought for and obtained passage, as a new State representative, for a concealed-carry permit. So we now have concealed- carry because of that first shooting incident in Killeen.

But this administration didn't learn anything when they called that shooting workplace violence, didn't learn anything about reporting potential threats, and so more people died at Fort Hood.

I think it is time, Mr. Speaker, that we said, you know what?

Military Members, men and women who are putting your lives at risk for us, with whom we have entrusted weapons of mass destruction, we are going to trust you with a firearm. So if you will get a permit, and they show they are qualified--I know my 4 years in the Army, every year we had to go qualify--make sure they are qualified with the firearm they have, and let them carry firearms.

I started to put it in the bill that I drafted, that they would be concealed, but I think we should leave that to the

commanders. So we, just as I was coming over here, got the draft from legislative counsel and will be filing it this week.

It is a bill to authorize qualified members of the Armed Forces to carry firearms on military bases and installations, and for other purposes. And this act may be cited as the Save Our Soldiers Act, or the SOS Act.

It does apply, would apply to all soldiers, sailors, airmen, Marines, Coast Guard. It applies to all of our uniformed military. And it says, in general, any qualified member of the Armed Forces may carry a firearm on a military base or installation. Then it goes through to set forth how you go about applying for the permit to do that.

If we can trust them with weapons of mass destruction, we ought to be able to trust them with a pistol, with a firearm.

So, Mr. Speaker, I hope that this gets legs and that we will get this passed through the House with widespread bipartisan support. Especially in this election year, people seem to be more acutely attentive to what their constituents think, so that is why I know it would be a bipartisanly-passed bill if we will bring it up this year and then send it to the Senate.

Our friend from Nevada, Senator Reid, may not want to bring it up; but then if he won't bring it up, then the only other alternative would be for voters to turn out members of Mr. Reid's party, so he wouldn't be the Majority Leader.

Then we could get someone who would bring that bill to the floor, so that we don't have another attack at Fort Hood or another Navy Yard or somewhere else and have to go: Gee, what could we have done?

Some of the rest of us would repeat, for the umpteenth time: you should let people who are qualified to carry firearms carry firearms.

We have seen, over and over, killers go to where they know firearms are prohibited, like the Colorado shooter going to a theater farther away than one close because those that were closer allowed firearms to be carried inside.

It would be terrific if we could do that for our military, and I know there are some commanders who take the nod from our Commander in Chief and say: oh, we don't think that is a good idea.

But it is a good idea. It is something we should do, and it is time we moved in that direction.

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

Mr. Speaker, I just want to chime in in agreement with the last thing that my colleague across the aisle said. He said let's do for the next generation what the last generation did for us.

Mr. Speaker, I think that is incredibly important. What a great thing my Democratic friend said, because every generation before ours has tried to live within its means.

This generation that is in power in this Congress is the first generation that continues to spend not only children's money, but grandchildren's and great-grandchildren's money.

We have accumulated such debt that our children are not only not going to rise up and call us blessed, they are going to rise up and swear at our names. Because this is the generation that has felt that it was so incredibly important that we needed to put our children, grandchildren, and great-grandchildren in hock just so we would not have to quit spending money so irresponsibly.

I could not agree more with that last statement. Let's do for the next generation what the last generation did for us. Thank goodness I have a friend on the other side saying that. He pointed out the verse of Scripture:

To whom much is given, much is required.

We have been given much. We have been blessed more than any nation in the history of the world. We have got more freedoms than Solomon's Israel could have ever dreamed of and more individual assets than any nation in history could have dreamed of. We have been given much.

As a result, this generation has become so self-centered, so narcicisstic, so self-indulgent, so obese that we want to engorge ourselves at the expense of future generations.

Let me just say I haven't decided what I am going to do about the Ryan budget. I am still going through it. Paul Ryan and I have had some very severe disagreements during my 9-plus years here, but I know this: he does not want to hurt future generations. He wants to do for the next generation what the last generation did for us.

And we will not--we cannot--do that if we are spending money so irresponsibly that generations to follow us will be paying the debts and the interest on those debts without getting a dime of the benefits that we engorged ourselves with in this generation. So it is time to be responsible.

I disagree with something my colleague said when he said, basically, the Ryan bill destroys Medicare as we know it. I don't know if I like what Paul Ryan has been able to do about Medicare. I would have handled it differently. It is one of the things I am struggling with.

What he is trying to do is what Democrats should have done for 40 years before the Republicans took office. They had the majority before the 1994 election. They put us on a course to destroying Social Security. Since the sixties, after Medicare was passed, we have been on a course to bankrupt Medicare so our children and grandchildren will have nothing for themselves because we spent it all on ourselves.

So I don't know if it was the best way to do it, but I know what Paul Ryan was trying to do. He is trying to make sure that we protect our seniors and we make sure that we can have future generations have some of the same protections. And from what I was reading, he is trying to do that. Some changes would come in Social Security, from what I am reading, but not for anybody 56 or older.

Anyway, I am still making up my mind on the bill, but I know what Paul Ryan was trying to do. He was trying to do an honorable thing for future generations, just like my colleague said he felt we should be doing.

I also want to get to another topic today that has been so much on the minds and hearts of people all over the country this week as Killeen, Fort Hood, Texas, has had another mass shooting.

The first one was in the civilian sector in a cafeteria. That caused Texas to rise up and pass a concealed-carry permit law, which was driven by a woman whose parents were killed there. She had to put her gun in the glove compartment and couldn't take it in. She could have saved her parents had we had a concealed-carry permit law in place at the time of that mass shooting.

I have had people ask, as I know my friend from Georgia has: What have you guys in Congress done since the last shooting at Fort Hood to protect our soldiers? What has the Commander in Chief done to protect the military members under his command?

Under this Commander in Chief, we saw in Afghanistan that in half the time he had twice as many fatalities--even more than that in injuries-- of our military members in Afghanistan. That is half the time of the Bush administration and about twice as many fatalities.

We have seen what happened there. But what about right here?

After the first Fort Hood shooting, it was an outrage--as it should be to every military member and everybody that understands anything about the military--when this Commander in Chief allowed the incident to be called workplace violence when, clearly, Nidal Hasan, according to all the witnesses, stood up, made the universal cry that a radical Islamist terrorist makes, claiming, in essence, that he is going to kill innocent people on behalf of a god who likes people like him to kill innocent people, just as they think there is a god that liked planes being flown into buildings to kill thousands of innocent men, women, and children. That is a god I don't know, and I know that is a god I will never meet.

But I want to talk at this time about what we should be doing for our soldiers.

I have got a bill that legislative counsel is working on right now. We will be filing it early next week. We anticipate calling it the Save Our Soldiers bill, or SOS. They have been crying ``SOS.'' It is just that nobody in their highest chain of command has listened.

Well, Congress is listening and we are going to get something done, if there are enough people down the hall in the Senate who worry about their election next November that they will actually take this bill up and do something to protect our soldiers, other than lip service. Lip service doesn't really protect you against an incoming round.

At this point, I would yield to my dear friend from South Carolina (Mr. Duncan).

The gentleman from South Carolina has just made clear why I am such a big fan of his.

And, yes, I was in the Army. By naming the bill ``Save our Soldiers,'' I am not saying the Army is more important, because it is, generically speaking, inclusive of our soldiers, sailors, marines, Coast Guard, and everybody that is in the uniformed military. That is who it pertains to.

But we wanted a title that people would remember and think of all of our soldiers, sailors, airmen, marines, Coast Guard, people that are protecting us.

The greatest irony still comes back to this: we have military members who are qualified to fire tank weapons. We have got military members--I think the largest thing I fired in the Army was a 105 Howitzer. But we have a massive number of weapons, rocket-propelled grenades of different kinds, SAM missiles. We have got all kinds of things that our military are able to utilize.

We have got airmen who operate airplanes that drop thousands and thousands of pounds of bombs, and yet for too long political correctness has said, even though they may fire 105 Howitzers or some of the most modern weapons we have, tanks, drop thousands of pounds of bombs, we probably can't trust them to carry a little pistol. Yeah, they may be on a ship. They may fire rounds that are bigger than I am, but, gee, we might not better trust them with a pistol.

And what we have seen over and over in the tragedies here in the United States, the norm is for a criminal who wants to shoot and hurt and kill people to go to a gun-free area. That is why the shooter in the theater in Colorado could have gone to much closer theaters, but those theaters did not restrict the right to have weapons in them, so they probably would have had someone who could have pulled a gun very quickly and ended the rampage.

From the reports of what happened this week at Fort Hood, when the hero, female military member pulled her weapon, he took his own life rather than risk ending up in a wheelchair or worse. He wasn't going to take chances on firing at anyone else once someone had a weapon leveled on him.

We have lost enough lives in gun-free zones. It is time to allow the law-abiding, the qualified, to protect themselves, to save our military.

I hope that our leadership will allow the bill to be brought to the floor here because I know good and well, if we bring it to the floor here--I am open to amendments, suggestions--we get a bill like that passed here, then the pressure will be on the Senate.

Yes, I know Senator Reid protects his Democratic Members all he can. If there is a bill that his Members would get defeated for voting against, then he just doesn't bring it to the floor for a vote. Protecting his Members from having to cast a vote for a bill that is a good bill or against a bill that would get them defeated because it was a good bill, he just keeps it from going to the floor. We have seen that in so many of the bills we have passed here from the House that would have an immediate helpful effect on our economy. It would have had an immediate helpful effect on our government.

For heaven's sake, I know the mainstream media will never get this right. Even our own Speaker didn't understand what happened that day, apparently. But last fall, our House of Representatives--a majority, at least--believed that ObamaCare was very detrimental to this Nation, to its economy, to people's health. So what did we do? We did what we believed, and we voted to completely defund ObamaCare. That is what we believed. That was the vote we did first.

But understanding that in Washington you have to have two Houses pass a bill, we passed a compromise measure that simply said, look, obviously ObamaCare is not ready for prime time. You have had going on 4 years to get ready, and it is not ready

for prime time, so we are offering you a gift, Democrats in the Senate and Democrats in the House. We are offering a gift. Our compromise is this: we passed the bill. It said let's suspend ObamaCare for a year. Clearly, it is not ready. Many people will be hurt.

That was an incredible gift of a compromise to the Senate Democrats and the House Democrats and even to the President himself. But our Democratic friends down the hall had bought in to the mainstream conventional wisdom that if the Democrats could cause a shutdown, the mainstream media would protect them by blaming Republicans, and then that would help them win the majority in the House in the next election. So Harry Reid refused to even bring that gift that Republicans in the House offered to the Senate Democrats, the President, and House Democrats. He wouldn't accept it.

I bet there are times that their Democrats in the House and Senate really wish they had accepted our offer of compromise and said: Okay. All right. We don't want to do it; but, okay, we will suspend ObamaCare for a year.

There were some in our party that felt like, gosh, if we suspend it for a year, who knows what will happen in a year from now. Maybe we are better off letting America find out how bad it is so then we can get it repealed outright. But we knew the suffering that would ensue once that bill fully kicked in, and how could we want people to suffer like we knew they would once ObamaCare kicked in?

But Harry Reid wouldn't bring that to the floor. I didn't think it was wise when they rejected a clear offer of compromise down the hall by refusing to even bring it to the floor for a vote. We funded everything Harry Reid wanted. We just had a 1-year suspension on ObamaCare.

So then we came back and said, okay, the President has unconstitutionally signed an executive order that put off the business mandate for a year, so we will offer what was an incredible compromise. We will agree to postpone the individual mandate in a legal manner--not unconstitutional, but a legal manner--and we will go ahead and put in writing that the business mandate would be suspended for a year, and that would protect the President's order.

Harry Reid wouldn't bring it to the floor for a vote. He knew good and well if he brought either one of our compromise bills to the floor that there would be Democrats that would either have to vote for the bill or, for sure, lose their Senate seat come November--Democrats in the Senate, that is. So he protected them and didn't allow that to come to the floor. And his Members seemed quite happy to just sit back and let Harry Reid try to protect them by not allowing them to vote.

Then, at 1:10 a.m. on October 1, when it was clear to us here in the House that Harry Reid was not going to even accept a gift of a 1-year suspension or the following compromise offered gift of a year suspension of the individual mandate and a year suspension of the business mandate, then we did what was almost unthinkable--bid against ourselves for the third time. We voted to approve conferees from the House. These are people who would have reached an agreement if the Senate had bothered to even appoint conferees or negotiators.

It was understood here, if Harry Reid will go ahead and appoint Senate conferees, they can start immediately, and before even anybody is required to be at work at 8 a.m., we could probably have a deal worked out, get it passed, and people would have never known there was a shutdown for 8 hours. But Harry Reid was so determined to follow through on what was the mainstream conventional wisdom: Harry, if you can just cause a shutdown, the Republicans will be blamed--they didn't even know the Speaker would accept the blame because he didn't know what we did that day--but they will be assessed the blame by the mainstream media, and then you can get the majority back.

So he forced a shutdown. Actually, he tried to do that a few years ago, and our leadership and the Republican side capitulated at 10:30 the night that the shutdown was going to begin at 12 midnight. Probably, if the truth be known, the Democratic Leader, Harry Reid, may have hoped that he would have a shutdown at midnight that night because he consistently said: It is my way or nothing, my way or nothing, no compromise whatsoever. Of course, our leadership came back and said: Well, we actually cut $26 billion. And it turned out we did no such thing. But, anyway, we came so close to a shutdown that night.

But some of us still have enough faith in the American people that we believe a majority will ferret out the truth, come to the truth, regardless of what the mainstream media says, regardless of what anybody on television who gets a thrill up their leg when they see certain Democrats, no matter what they say, eventually the majority of the American people will eventually come to the truth and that will save our Nation.

So, clearly, there are areas in which we agree, as my Democrat friend indicated when he said let's do for the next generation what the last generation did for us. That is all I want to try to do. Let's give our children and grandchildren a nation where they have the freedoms that we have enjoyed, where they have the privacy that we used to enjoy, where they don't have $20 trillion of debt from the prior generation because the prior generation was so selfish, so self-centered that they didn't even care to clean up the waste, fraud, and abuse in the government.

I read an article that talked in terms of the massive amount of fraud just at the State Department. Here is an article, April 4, today, from The Fiscal Times, Brianna Ehley:

The State Department has no idea what happened to $6

billion used to pay its contractors. In a special

``management alert'' made public Thursday, the State

Department's inspector general, Steve Linick, warned

``significant financial risk and a lack of internal control

at the Department has led to billions,'' that is with a b,

``billions of unaccounted dollars over the last six years.''

Mr. Speaker, by the way, that is while this President was in office.

The unaccountability is dramatic. Future generations will have to pay for the waste, fraud, and abuse that not only will we not clean up, but we borrowed money in our children and grandchildren's name to lavish on massive, wasteful, fraudulent government, abusive government, because we couldn't control ourselves.

There is going to be a price to pay for the irresponsibility of this government in the decades ahead. If we do not get this country turned around and back on a responsible track, then there will be books written about the rise and fall of the United States of America. And our generation will be blamed, and the line of my Democratic friend will be at the forefront in that book, that this generation refused to do for the next generation what was done for us.

Mr. Speaker, I had hoped--that is why I am still here. That is why I have run again. I have hoped that we are going to get back on track, that we will be able to rein in the government, that at some point, Harry Reid will be willing to bring bills to the floor that we have sent down there passed by a majority here in the House that do things like get the economy going, that allow businesses to start hiring again without worry about just irresponsibility and overregulation.

We need to be providing privacy for Americans that began deteriorating in prior administrations before this but that this administration has taken to an all-time high with regard to individual privacy information taken away and held onto by the government.

People want to know, gee, well just what does the government have that would be invasive of our privacy? Well, for one thing, we now know the NSA has logs of every call that every American makes. That is outrageous. It is unnecessary. And we can't go into classified briefings. But, Mr. Speaker, I stand here to tell you that even though there are some in our intelligence that have said, gee, if we had not gathered every log of every phone call ever made, we may not have stopped a subway bombing, like we did. And from the evidence that we know from the public arena, it was clear--it sure seemed to me, as a former prosecutor and judge and chief justice--that there was plenty of evidence for an officer of the law--Federal, State, or local--to go before a judge and swear this information and get a warrant from the judge

and go after an individual that was about to try to set off a bomb. It looked like, to me, from just what is available in the public, that there was plenty of information that would have allowed a judge to sign a warrant. So not only are they getting every log of every phone call made, but we are not quite sure, even now, whether some are right to say, well, actually, they could pull the actual discussions of the conversation, or whether they couldn't.

But we also know that under ObamaCare, the Federal Government gets every record of everyone's most personal and private health insurance. And for so long in this body, I have heard my friends on this side of the aisle complain about, we don't want government in the bedroom. And then without a single Republican vote, they passed the ObamaCare bill that not only put the government in your bedroom, but it is in your bathroom, your kitchen, your living room, your garage. It is with your Realtor. It is just everywhere you can imagine. The government is there. That is with the health care law and the other bills that the Democrats have passed while they were in the majority.

So if it is not enough that the Federal Government--and, of course, we have to give credit to General Electric, because I understand they have got the contract to gather this information. So it is not just the government. It is cronies of this administration in private business that also have this information.

Anyway, the government has got your most private secrets, health care-wise. They know everybody you are calling. There is information in the public press that says they can comb through every email you send.

And then we find out that one of the bills that the Democrat majority in the House and Senate passed was involving the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau. That group has apparently decided that in order to protect us, they need to gather everybody's credit card, debit card information just so they can protect us.

So there we go. The Federal Government has got all of your medical information. They have got all of your credit card and debit card information, purchases, loans, all of those kinds of things. You have got regulators, Federal regulators going into banks, checking on your loans and things like that. I mean, is there anything left in the way of privacy that this Federal Government has not already co-opted and gotten access to without a warrant?

I mean, I was very serious, and the judges I knew were very serious about making sure there was probable cause because that is the constitutional requirement. You have to have probable cause before you get a warrant. And there were times when law officers would come to me in my judge's chambers or on the bench during a recess or at my home at 2 or 3 a.m., and I would read the affidavit and the officer would swear to the information. But if it wasn't adequate, I, along with other judges I know would say, I am sorry. Probable cause is not here. There are not enough facts provided to justify going after somebody's private property or private information. I can't sign the warrant. And there were times where officers would say, give us another chance, a little more time. We see your point. We will be back. And they would come back later, and then you go, okay, well, yes, this is probable cause. Certainly this raises probable cause. Sometimes they wouldn't be able to get it. But that was the constitutional standard by which law officers and courts are supposed to live.

And now, in the name of a little security, we have to stand there--I can't even count the number of times I have had to stand there with my arms open and be groped by Federal agents. Sometimes you can tell they have got a little bit of a grudge. And we giving that away because we want security.

Okay. We want health care, so let's let the government know every one of our most intimate private secrets in our health care records. And, you know, we want to make sure that some bank doesn't take advantage of us. Heaven forbid the investment banks take any more advantage of us. Man, the investments banks brought us to the brink of ruin.

And by the way, for those who don't know, Mr. Speaker, Wall Street executives and their spouses donate four-to-one for Democrats over Republicans. I know people think it is the Republicans that have all the rich people on their side. People are beginning to find out, it is middle class. And actually, poor people in America are coming to the conclusion, wait a minute. We have one party that keeps us dependent upon the government for the little crumbs it throws out. We have got another party over here that wants us to be president of the company, president of the country. They want us to have the best education possible. And they want us to be able to speak the language of this country that gets you to be president of the country, of the corporation, of the business, English. And gee, they want us to have a job. They don't want us to be beholden and having to beg the government all the time. They want us to be able to have independence and have our own money and make our own decisions. Gee, maybe, as a poor person, I would be better off supporting the Republican Party.

As I taught a combined sociology class at Texas College not that long ago--Texas College started as an African American college and is still prominently African American. But I am telling you, the African Americans in that class had some good ideas about how we straighten up welfare, how we get people more independent, how we get our government on track. Those are folks that had some good ideas. And some of the things that they proposed, like a work requirement, well, that was put on when Republicans took the majority back in January of '95. And then this President stripped that out--I would say unconstitutionally. He did it with an executive order. He changed a law that was duly passed and signed into law by Bill Clinton. And it ended up being one of his most proud accomplishments because what we saw after the requirement for work for welfare was, for the first time in 30 years, single moms' incomes, when adjusted for inflation, started going up. It had been flatlined for about 30 years, since aid to dependent children had started, since welfare had started, single moms' incomes, adjusted for inflation, had been flatlined for about 30 years.

And once the Gingrich-led Republican revolution took hold and a work requirement was put on for the first time in 30 years, single moms had more take-home money. They had more freedom. They had more autonomy away from the government, where they didn't have to be dependent on the government. They could make their own decisions without some law being passed by Congress to send them another crumb. It gave them money, more than they had ever had, and it gave them independence.

That is what the people I know want for women, for African Americans, for everyone in America, for Hispanic Americans, for anyone, Asian Americans. It is what we want for Americans.

One of the things that meant so much to me on 9/12/2001, as we stood out there, hundreds--maybe thousands of people in our town of Tyler-- and I know it was going on in Longview. And actually, all over east Texas it was going on. People came out to the town square, and they prayed together. And no court would have had the nerve to tell America on 9/12, you have no right to pray in public. They wouldn't have had the right to say that on 9/12/2001. So we were praying together as citizens out there.

We sang hymns. We sang ``Amazing Grace'' and ``God Bless America.'' What is ``God Bless America''? It is a prayer asking for God's blessing to continue on this country. We held hands as we sang ``God Bless America.'' People by the millions did this all over America on 9/12/ 2001.

And as I looked around among all of those people, my American friends, there was not a hyphenated American in the group. We had all national religions, races, genders. I mean, we had all kinds of groups represented, but we were Americans. There were no Euro Americans, African Americans, Asian Americans, Irish Americans, Hispanic Americans. There were Americans. And we stood together. We prayed together. We sang together. And there was no mess out there. We were together, one people.

As that great speech given by Senator Barack Obama pointed out, there shouldn't be a red America and a blue America; a white America and a black

America. There ought to be one America. But we have gotten into the politics of division. That is why the Senate refused to take up our repeated efforts at compromise to avoid shutting down the government.

The politics of division, that is why the World War II memorial was barricaded and massive man- and woman-hours were utilized to try to keep veterans out of the Iwo Jima Memorial for Marines, the World War II Memorial. I couldn't believe they had the nerve to put up a barrier to the Martin Luther King, Jr., Memorial.

And I, along with my friend from Mississippi, opened up the streets, opened up the barriers there at the World War II Memorial. I clipped the yellow ribbon, the crime scene tape. I moved one barricade. He moved the other. The World War II vets came in.

Steve King, a few others, and I went out to the marine memorial, and we opened up that memorial. We checked out their other days and made sure that that was accessible. One day, it turned out there was a bus of World War II veterans that had come out there. There was a big, plastic barricade shaped like the concrete barricades. This was plastic, and it was filled with water, a wooden barricade there. And that bus of World War II veterans--many of them that had fought in the Philippines, that had been to the top of the mountain and seen that flag be planted up there--their bus ran over that barricade.

I was so proud of them. I ran up there, and I got up there, they were already out there enjoying the memorial. These people that saw that flag that was planted there now were enjoying the memorial to them.

When we came back by, we were going to stop at the Reverend Martin Luther King, Jr. Memorial. They had barricades up all up there. And I was so proud that there were a slew of Americans. Most were African Americans. I was so proud of them. They didn't let the barricades stop them. They climbed right over and went in to that wonderful memorial. And I didn't even have to stop to open that up. They had already taken care it.

That is the politics of division: try to make people suffer and blame it on the other party. We need to be back to being Americans, not hyphenated, not Republican Americans, Democrat Americans, Tea Party Americans. For Heaven's sake, the Tea Party, all it means and all it is is a group who have been Taxed Enough Already. They are tired of the waste, fraud, and abuse in government. They want a responsible government so that we can do, as my Democratic friend said just a while ago that he wanted for us to do, for the next generation what the last generation did for us. That is all the Tea Party wants. They are not racist. They got all races in the meetings I go to. They just want us to be responsible and do for the next generation what the last one did for us.

So, Mr. Speaker, I hope that we will be able to bring Save Our Soldiers to the floor. I know back 3 years ago, when I was concerned that our military was going to be used as a pawn to try to get people to vote for a bad continuing resolution under the threat that, gee, if you don't vote for this bad continuing resolution, our military members won't be paid, so shame on you. Well, I was furious that our military members had to even have it cross their minds that they might not get paid. So I filed a bill that would ensure that if there were a government shutdown that our military members' pay would be treated like Social Security is. I know there is a lot of fear mongering about that. But if there is a shutdown, the law is and continues to be and was 3 years ago, that it is basically on automatic pilot. If there is a shutdown, then the Social Security checks continue to go out. If someone is entitled to more Social Security during the shutdown, they don't get the increase until after the shutdown is over, and then they would get it. But that is what the bill would do for the military.

I am grateful--even though our Speaker did not let that bill come to the floor, I was grateful that so many millions of Americans came on to some Web site set up for that purpose to say put our military pay on automatic pilot just like Social Security is so if there is a shutdown, people that have their lives in harm's way don't have to worry about their loved ones getting paid.

Even last fall, we saw military members whose families--when they were dying in harm's way for us, this administration wasn't even going to let them get paid. It was really outrageous. We even passed a bill last fall to make sure that finally the military wouldn't have to worry about it, and the Defense Department and this administration interpreted it in such a way to inflict as much harm on survivors of our military heroes as this administration could. It was wrong. But they did it. It is the politics of division.

It is going to be important, Mr. Speaker, that we let people know who the real heroes are for this country. Heroes would include those who are willing to lay down their lives for others.

John 15:13:

Greater love knows no man than this, that a man lays down

his life for his friends.

That includes generically men and women, anyone willing to lay down their lives, not to kill innocent people, but to save lives. That is what we have always attributed as a hero here in America. And yet we find out--I didn't know until I read an article by my friend, Andy McCarthy, about this on the President's Web site, but whitehouse.gov regularly profiles young, left-wing radicals that it calls ``Champions of Change.''

I am quoting from the article of Andrew McCarthy. It is dated today:

Now, in a space of just a few days, two of the President's

champions have made news.

One is Linda Sarsour, described by the White House as a

``community activist'' who specializes in ``community

organizing'' and ``immigrants' rights advocacy,'' and who

``conducts training nationally on the importance of civic

engagement in the Arab and Muslim American community.''

Evidently, civic engagement need not be civil engagement. Ms.

Sarsour has joined her voice to that of CAIR.

CAIR is the Council on American-Islamic Relations that two Federal courts have declared is a front organization for the Muslim Brotherhood, which has appropriately been declared as a terrorist organization by Egypt, and others are looking at doing the same, including even Great Britain. But not here. No. We take our lead from whatever CAIR says in this administration.

But this so-called Champion of Change, according to the White House Web site, has reacted to the widely viewed acclaimed film ``Honor Diaries,'' a film about the brutalization and systematic inequality faced by women in Muslim majority society. And this is what Ms. Sarsour had said:

How many times do we have to tell white women that we do

not need to be saved by them? Is there code language I need

to use to get through?

As Mr. McCarthy notes, he said:

I would note that the executive producer of ``Honor

Diaries'' is the heroic Somali human rights activist Ayaan

Hirsi Ali. It features several courageous Muslim women,

including Pakistani-born Qanta Ahmed, a medical doctor who

has an important column about the film and the campaign to

suppress it at NRO today.

He also points to Bonnie Youn as a Champion of Change as so named by the White House. And Matt Boyle with Breitbart has a column that says:

An amnesty advocate that President Obama's White House

publicly promoted as part of its Champion of Change series

has been indicted in Federal Court on charges of fraud.

And it goes on down. Part of it reads:

The second indictment count alleges that Youn violated a

Federal immigration law that prohibits bringing illegal

aliens into the United States and harboring them, alleging

she did so ``for the purpose of commercial advantage and

private financial gain.''

So, apparently, a Champion of Change is someone who there is probable cause to believe is engaged in human trafficking.

Mr. Speaker, this country has to reawaken. If we are going to do for the next generation what the last generation did for us, we have got to stop the indebtedness that is growing every second of every day. And we keep adding to the debt and the interest that mounts on top of that. We have got to get more responsible in protecting privacy and not allowing this administration to further go into people's bedrooms, bathrooms, credit card records, phone calls, and emails. We have got to stop the insanity, or not only will the

next generation rise up and not call us blessed, they will curse our names.

I am here because I have hope. We are going to turn things around. We have just got to keep fighting. With that, Mr. Speaker, I yield back the balance of my time.

Madam Speaker, I so much appreciate my friends, the Honorable Mr. Yoho, Mr. Perry, and Mr. King, discussing the issue that is very dear to my heart. And I appreciate my very dear friend, Mr. King, quoting me accurately, because you don't have to pay people to hate you. They will do it for free.

We have spent billions and billions of dollars over the years paying people that have contempt for us. They don't like us. And from anybody that has ever tried to pay a bully their lunch money, they find they don't buy respect. They buy more contempt and more evil actions coming your way.

So it just makes no sense, especially when money is fungible, and we continue to send money to the Palestinians. We continue to see outrageous examples in the Palestinian textbooks of just raw, unbridled hatred and demeaning of the Jewish people.

And why should the textbooks among the Palestinians for their children be any different than what the adults are doing, when you find that Palestinian leaders are naming streets and holidays for people who have walked in and murdered groups of people with a bomb, children, innocent women, men, out with their families. They come in and kill them when they have done no harm, no wrong.

We still hear people talking about Samaria and Judea, written in the Bible hundreds, maybe 1,600 years before the birth of Mohammed, about the areas that were the promised land for the children of Israel.

So it becomes difficult for a people that didn't exist in 1000 B.C. to claim that someone who lived in that land, cultivated that land, had the prior claim to that land, somehow have a lesser right than people that came along hundreds and hundreds of years later.

But America has a financial problem, and we shouldn't be just squandering money, paying people that hate us to educate their children to hate us, to educate the population to hate us, to teach songs that glorify hatred against Israel.

As our dear friend Prime Minister Netanyahu has pointed out, Iran itself is developing intercontinental ballistic missiles, and they certainly don't need those to deliver a nuclear weapon to Israel. Those are coming for the Great Satan. That would be us.

So people wonder, well, what are we doing to protect ourselves?

Back after the fall of the Soviet Union, the United States of America's leaders pressured Ukraine to deliver nuclear weapons in their possession to Russia. Now, the Ukrainians have never really trusted the Russians. And, yes, the Russians have put people out of their homes in some areas, filled them with Russian people. There are areas that today feel like they are loyal to Russia because they are Russians. They sent them there. They displaced the Ukrainians.

But the Ukrainians went ahead and turned over possession of nuclear weapons to Russians whom they distrusted because they trusted America. And the United States' leaders made sure they understood: we have got you covered. We will protect you. You don't have to worry. Go ahead and give nuclear weapons to Russia.

Now the trust that the Ukrainian people put in the United States' leaders is coming back, potentially, to haunt them. That should never be the case. If we want to be taken seriously in the world, we can't be breaking promises to countries who rely on our integrity. We can't be doing that.

So as people ask when we travel around the world in the past 6 months or so, they ask: What are you doing to prevent more terrorism when you won't even acknowledge the source of the terrorism? As one of the Egyptian leaders asked: Why are you not helping us in the war on terror? Now you are helping the people that supported the terror.

They don't understand, and neither do I.

I was asked today, Madam Speaker: What has the military done to avoid another Fort Hood incident since 2009? Madam Speaker, it appears the answer is quite embarrassing.

What have we done to protect the country when this President has made our military so much smaller?

What are we doing to protect the country when this President canceled agreements that had been made, promised, relied upon to other countries' detriment, missile defense? What are we doing to protect our country?

This policy that this administration has had internationally to think that evil, hateful people will love us and want to be very good friends if we just downsize our military, we tie our own hands, we don't let our military really protect themselves adequately, that surely they will come to appreciate and like us and they won't consider us divisive, derisive, dismissive, well, that is not what they are thinking. This Nation has lost respect around the world, and it is heartbreaking.

So they wonder, what are we doing to protect ourselves, because if we can't protect ourselves, how can we help stop evil people around the world?

Some say, and I think there are people in this administration that think we need to follow the European example where we don't have to have much of a military at all and we just show, look, we want to get along and go along. The trouble with that idea is the Europeans have had the benefit of downsizing their military and having smaller militaries because they knew the United States existed and that we would not let an evil power take over Europe, Britain, that we would stop it because we would not want another Hitler to get as far as he did last time.

We want to stop them before that happens because, assuredly, if Europe falls, England falls, they are coming for the United States. And now we know, because of radical Islam, they are more concerned about destroying America than they are even taking on Europe and England.

So these are serious issues. So what have we done to protect the men and women in our military who are protecting us?

It is heartbreaking. This administration, after 2009's horrendous accident--not accident--incident where a radical Islamist Muslim killed 13 fellow military members. They were not allowed to have weapons on post. And we start digging and we find out, well, gee, when the Democrats controlled the House and the Senate, apparently, back in 1992, there was a bill passed back around that time that prevented military members from carrying weapons on military installations.

I yield to the gentleman from Pennsylvania.

During the time that my friend was in the military, what weapons were you required to qualify using?

And that really is amazing about the military in a military installation because, like the gentleman said, when I was at Fort Benning, we had to qualify every year. And here at Fort Hood, one of the largest military installations anywhere, it adjoins Killeen, Texas. And many people--most people, I think, in Texas recall that there was a terrible shooting incident in a cafeteria in Killeen that adjoins Fort Hood where a man went in and started killing people in the cafeteria.

And there was a woman there who had to put her gun in the glove compartment because we didn't have laws that allowed you to carry weapons around Texas. And she realized that she could have saved her parents from being murdered if she had been able to carry her concealed weapon. So she got elected to the State legislature. She is a hero. She got the concealed-carry bill through and signed into law. And that had been used in other States to get concealed-carry bills passed.

So when people say, well, how horrible, there had been a prior mass shooting before. Actually, there had been two right there, just right so close together. Killeen, though, civilians, who are not required to qualify with weapons every year, like you and I have been in the military.

Yet if, as someone trained with weapons, qualifying every year, you step one foot off that military installation, now you can start carrying a concealed weapon if you just got the permit. But if you step back on the military installation, where everyone is required to be qualified to use weapons, you can't have one.

We are working on a bill which will not just create the power, but it will

require that military installations allow people there to go through and apply for and get a permit to carry a concealed weapon, just as they could in Fort Hood if they put one foot off post into Killeen. And they ought to be able to step back on the installation.

And actually, that was back around the time I became a district judge in Texas. And I didn't learn until I was here in Congress just recently that they had ever passed such a law. There was a Democratic majority in the House, a Democratic majority in the Senate.

I can't imagine why they were thinking they had to protect our military members from themselves when we give them far more lethal weapons--I mean, you give somebody an RPG.

The gentleman makes so many good points. I would like to yield to the gentleman to answer a question.

Having been a commander, we have talked about how military were qualified, were required to qualify to use weapons. But as a commander, do you know of any one civilian in the civilian world who has more training about not misplacing your weapon or setting your weapon down or leaving your weapon than somebody in the military? The gentleman knows what I talk about.

I was talking with one of our Capitol Police yesterday after this shooting at Fort Hood, again. One of our great Capitol Police. We are so blessed with such great qualified protectors of the Capitol area. And he was in the military for 13 years and left the military and became a Capitol policeman. Well, I trust that gentleman now to have a weapon at all times. I am delighted if he will carry a weapon at all times.

But Washington, D.C., has these really well-intentioned laws. Let's eliminate weapons in Washington, D.C. They have been struck down by the Supreme Court because they are unconstitutional. But I want somebody like that, that I could trust, whether he was still in the military, as he was, or as a Capitol policeman. I am very comfortable with him carrying a weapon and feel better knowing that there were people like him around carrying weapons.

So when that question was asked, what has the military done since 2009's Fort Hood mass shooting to prevent this kind of thing from happening, I know that the military cannot do any more than the Commander in Chief orders them to do. I don't know of anything that the Commander in Chief has done, as the commander, where the buck stops, to provide more protection from an incident like as now happened again.

If the gentleman knows of anything that has been done.

Well, I would think, though, that at this point in time, with so many Senators of the Democrat persuasion being concerned about elections and the disaster ObamaCare has been, if we pass a bill that provides for military installations to allow permits to be applied for and obtained for a concealed-carry on a military installation, that the Senate will be in a difficult position if they don't take it up. And the President would hurt his party dramatically if it passed out of the Senate as well and he refused to sign it.

There will be other incidents like Fort Hood again. It appears that we have not been adequately addressing post-traumatic stress disorder. And you never know if someone is going to go off, like we see with Washington, D.C., having such a high murder rate. Just like the old bumper stickers have said in the past, When guns are outlawed, only outlaws have guns. That is exactly what has happened at Fort Hood both times. It is what happened in Killeen with the mass shooting in the cafeteria. And the problem is not honest, honorable, law-abiding Americans having a gun under their Second Amendment rights; it is the outlaws having guns.

There were thousands of cases that came through my court as a district judge, felonies--all of them felonies. And I couldn't remember any cases involving guns where the guns were lawfully acquired. The criminals get guns, and they don't care. The name ``criminal'' comes from the fact that they commit crimes, and they don't care what the law is. They break the law. So the people that are disarmed are those law- abiding citizens.

I really think we cannot stand another 5 years of calling such a terrible disaster just ``workplace violence'' when it is a tragedy that can be prevented, can be stopped. And since the

Commander in Chief has not taken action that would impede it or stop it, we need to do that.

And we need to reverse the law that was passed by the Democratic House and Democratic-controlled Senate back in the early nineties and get a bill to the President's desk. And if the Democrats--at least some of them in the Senate--are not willing to pass such a law or Harry Reid is not willing to bring that to the floor, the answer is very simple: We vote in Republican Senators so that they will bring it to the floor. And next January, then we can present it to the President.

And then if he does not and is not willing to sign it at that point, then we will either have enough to override the veto or we will have a President from a different party come November of 2016 who will allow the military to protect themselves instead of condemning them to helplessly watch while they and their friends are gunned down by an outlaw.

I yield to my friend.

In the 1 minute we have got left, I just want to thank my friend from Pennsylvania for all of his service to our country in the military and here in Congress. I hope that we are able to get a bill passed through the House, through the Senate, and to the President's desk.

Let me just finish by saying there was an atrocity here on Capitol Hill yesterday with the testimony of the former Acting Director of the CIA. Our military has become an international--it is tragic, but a laughing--

If they are not defending themselves, then how can we count on them to defend us? And after the testimony under penalty of perjury yesterday by a former acting director of the CIA, it has told the world that the only place there has been worse intelligence than we have had, particularly during Benghazi, would have been back at Little Big Horn by General Custer.

We have got to turn this place around so that Americans can protect Americans and Americans serving our military can protect themselves and our intelligence does start living up to the name instead of making it such a tragedy.

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

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

The motion was agreed to; accordingly (at 6 o'clock and 33 minutes p.m.), the House adjourned until tomorrow, Friday, April 4, 2014, at 9 a.m.

I want to thank my friends, Mr. Speaker, who are both from Pennsylvania, for their superb comments. They are so right on everything they have said.

In following up on those comments, there was an article today from The Washington Free Beacon: ``Employers Say ObamaCare Will Cost Them $5,000 More Per Employee.'' How much more can businesses absorb?

Actually, in the last month, we have been finding out about more groups that are getting money from a health care program informally called ``ObamaCare,'' because it is so hard to call it ``affordable'' when it is not. They are groups that are getting money from the Federal Government that, it sounds like, are using it more as an opportunity to register voters as Democrats when that money could be used to get a pacemaker or to get a mammogram or to replace a knee for some 85-year- old widow who could really use a new knee or a new hip. Yet millions and millions of dollars are being paid to groups to go out and find people and to do all they can to get them signed up so they can say they had 7 million people sign up. They sign them up all over the country, using millions and millions of dollars that should have been for health care, yet they are using it to try to recruit votes for the Democratic Party. Millions and millions and millions of dollars are being spent on hiring big names that young people will recognize to go on television, to go on radio to try and talk people into signing up for health care to pay for the health care of others--because they hope they are in good health and won't need it--and that will fund all of the millions and millions of dollars that they are paying to celebrities to convince them to buy ObamaCare.

We know that insurance companies cannot run like the Federal Government and, certainly, not like the executive branch. They can't just announce 7 million people have bought a product if they have not bought it. I haven't seen any insurance companies come out and say, Do you know what? We have had 1.5 million of these or we have had 3 million of these 7 million. Insurance companies have to know who has paid for their services, who has paid for their products. They can't just go along and announce to the IRS, We had 7 million people who bought our products. We don't know who paid for them. We will probably not know for a year or so. We don't know, but 7.1 million have bought our products, but you are going to have to give us a pass for a year or two until we find out who actually paid for it, and then we will eventually get around to telling you how much we owe you in income tax from all of the people who bought or who didn't buy our insurance. They can't work like that, because the IRS will not let them work like that. The insurance companies have to know how much money has come through their doors. They have to account for it. They can't get into this magical math that the executive branch gets into that 7.1 million have paid for ObamaCare and count that as some kind of glorious thing.

We were told there were over 30 million people who didn't have health care and that that was the whole reason health care, itself, had to be turned upside down. Cancer patients had to be turned away from their cancer treatment providers. Of the people who had the doctors they wanted, who were doing great things for their health--keeping them alive--oh, they had to lose them because we had over 30 million who didn't have health insurance. Then we were told, of the 7.1 million or so who may have acquired health insurance under ObamaCare, there is only a small fraction of them who were people who didn't have insurance, part of the 30 or so million who didn't have insurance.

If you are going to cut off people's cancer treatments and if you are going to cut off their ability to get the health care they need--cut off their ability to go to the cancer hospitals they have been going to for treatment--if you are going to basically bring people's lives to an early end because we have got to help those 30 million or so who don't have insurance, then wouldn't you want to get the 30 million signed up? Why are you happy that it is only, maybe, 1 million or 2 million or many fewer who didn't have insurance who have signed up? If it is a fraction of the 7 million who have actually paid, and if it is an even smaller part of the fraction who paid who didn't have health insurance before and who were part of the 30-plus million, then how is that a good thing?

Why did every Democrat in the House and in the Senate who thought it was such a good idea without a single Republican's input--we didn't get to have any input in ObamaCare. They shoved it through this body and down the throats of the American people. They shoved it through the Senate, and they had to do it quickly before Scott Brown ended up in office, in having that seat. Tragically, they shoved it through without any bipartisan assistance, so nearly half of Americans were not represented in the creation of that bill.

It wasn't done on C-SPAN, as the candidate for President, Senator Obama, had promised. It was done in back rooms at the White House, here. Who knows where. We don't even know who was present.

We know there were some union leaders that met with the President about it, without anybody there to record what was said. We know that they ended up wanting every health care worker eventually to be a union member because their numbers have declined everywhere except in the area of government workers, where Franklin Roosevelt said we should never even have government unions.

So if the 30-plus million who purportedly didn't have health insurance were the real important reason we had to turn health care upside down, that we had to cut $716 billion from Medicare, so seniors are not going to be able to get care they would have before ObamaCare was passed, if we had to turn away seniors from health care they need just for those 30-plus million that don't have insurance, then why should we be happy that maybe only one-thirtieth or so of that has signed up for insurance?

In the 4 years since ObamaCare passed, the best they could do is sign up 1 million of the 30 or so million that didn't have insurance. That is a good thing?

Most Americans are ready to have some real reform, like having competition. If you need an MRI, you shouldn't have to do like one of the people in my office who was in Boston and under RomneyCare at the time.

The President said they modeled ObamaCare after RomneyCare. She was in a car wreck and couldn't get an MRI for a month or so after the wreck, so she had to fly back to Texas and get an MRI to find out she had broken bones.

This is the kind of care we are heading to. You get put on a list. This is what happens in England and Canada, and that is coming to a health care provider near you. You will get on the list. Why? Because we are told 30 million people didn't have health insurance.

Well, real reform would have made sure not that everybody had insurance, but that they had health care that was affordable and that they could get all the health care they needed and that it was affordable.

In some cases, it would have been a whole lot cheaper than having insurance. Also, having catastrophic insurance for the things you can't afford. Those were some reforms that we wanted to make.

Most of us were okay with fixing a problem called preexisting conditions, which had allowed some insurance companies to really screw over people unfairly. We offered to address that in a bipartisan manner, but the Democrats didn't want our input.

They said they didn't need it. They had the votes without it. They didn't care what we wanted. They didn't care what our constituents thought was a good idea. So we got ObamaCare, and it is wreaking havoc across the country. It is time to repeal it.

So we are told that, under this administration and under those two glorious years when the Democrats had the White House, the House, and the Senate, full control of all the powers here in Washington--and what did they put in motion in 2009 with control of the House, the Senate, and the White House?

Well, now, we find out--the President admitted this last September. It didn't get much press at all, if any, from the mainstream because, of course, they got the President elected, and so they have got to cover for him. We understand that.

But this is staggering. It has never ever happened before in American history. When the President, the Democratic House, and the Democratic Senate put these things in motion, 95 percent of all of the income made in America went to the top 1 percent of Americans. The top 1 percent of income earners in America got 95 percent of the income. Wow.

We talk about how we have really got to help the poor and we have really got to help the middle class, and then we find out the actions of this Democratic-controlled House, Democratic-controlled Senate, and Democratic-controlled White House put in motion the mechanics to ensure that 95 percent of all the income for those years--2009 until it was admitted last September--went to the top 1 percent income earners. Staggering.

Why isn't there more in the mainstream about it? They love to go after the wealthy. Well, because these wealthy are about 70 or 80 percent of the people on Wall Street who donate to Democrats over Republicans. People don't get that. It is shocking.

But it is about 4 to 1 that donations from executives and their spouses on Wall Street go to Democratic candidates.

It is shocking, I know, for some people to come to the realization that most of the wealthiest people in America are Democrats, and they are ready to pull up the ladder behind them. They are thrilled to have a President that will talk about the fat cats.

They don't mind being called fat cats, when they are making 95 percent of all the income in America, they have got a President that talks about the poor and the middle class, and the ones he has helped like nobody else are the ultrawealthy in America.

At some point, people are going to figure this out. At some point, the middle class and the poor are going to say: You know what? I have been supporting Democrats all these years, and now, 95 percent of all the income is going to the top 1 percent. How is that a good thing? Why should I keep supporting the party that is sending 95 percent of the income to the top 1 percent and the Wall Street fat cats have gotten richer than they ever have in their lives?

I don't mind people getting wealthy, but not at the expense of the whole country, and you look at the separation of the wealthy and the middle class. It has never been so dramatically far apart as it is now under this President, with what was set in motion with ObamaCare and all these things that this administration has done.

Crony capitalism has been amazing. How? You can pay over $600 billion to your buddies that you have known for years to create a Web site. Oh, they forgot to do security. That is going to cost people billions of dollars to try to save their own identity information that has now been out there on an insecure Web site.

You have a Web site that keeps breaking down. Why? Because crony capitalism kicked in and people that are buddies got the contract.

It is just like British Petroleum should have never been allowed to continue drilling in the Gulf of Mexico, but they were buddies with the administration. At the time the Deepwater Horizon blew out, I read that they had people from BP talking to John Kerry about coming out in support of cap-and-trade, so they didn't want to shut them down.

They had hundreds and hundreds of egregious safety violations, compared to others like Exxon and Shell. I think they had one or two or none.

Well, they should never have been allowed to operate. Why? Because crony capitalism is alive and well in this administration and with Democrats in control. Yes, we will let them keep operating. Never mind they are the unsafe drillers in the Gulf of Mexico. That is okay because they are on our side.

America is sick of cronyism. They are sick of favoritism. We don't begrudge anybody getting wealthy, but what we begrudge is gaming the system so the middle class and the poor have no chance because the ladder has been pulled up behind ultrawealthy Democrats by a Democratic administration, and it continues.

So employers are saying ObamaCare will cost them $5,000 more per employee. This has got to stop. We have got to repeal ObamaCare and have true health care reform. I know some people say: well, you don't have any ideas.

Are you kidding? The last I saw, there were about 80 different bills--ideas for reform; and what I really want to see us do is, once we get ObamaCare repealed, let's have the full debate. Let's have it on

Mr. Speaker, a surprising twist today: Who says there is nothing surprising in Washington? We were told there was potential for a bill to come to the floor today to deal with the issue of the SGR, sustainable growth rate, or the doc fix, as it is sometimes called.

There has been some disagreement in our party what would be the best way to handle it. We had a bill. It was a 1-year extension, 1 year that included some other things that some of the people that are providing the care that haven't been properly treated in reimbursement areas we are not happy about.

So it appeared we didn't have--or our leaders may not have had the votes, and so it is quite a surprise that was voice-voted. No one asked for a recorded vote because normally, see, we trust our leaders that, if there is an important bill, that part of the leadership understand, someone here, part of the bill will request a recorded vote, and we will get a recorded vote, and we will all be able to either vote for or vote against.

Otherwise, we have to keep people here all the time, and it did bring back to mind the time that was not so fond back in 2007, 2008, sometimes 2009 and 2010, when on the first day back in Washington, whether it was a Monday or a Tuesday, the first day, there is suspension bills.

Those are bills that are expected to pass and have two-thirds of the body vote for them, naming courthouses, naming Federal buildings, recognizing some important person or deed, those type of things.

They are generally agreed to, and despite all the negativity in Washington, those are things that we agreed to constantly; and both sides of the aisle worked together getting it accomplished.

We saw very quickly, after Republicans lost the majority in November of 2006, sometimes Republican leadership would agree to allow some suspensions to go when it was extremely important. It should never have been brought to the floor on suspension, which means it doesn't go through subcommittee, it doesn't go through committee.

It just comes to the floor, without having gone through Rules Committee,

and that is why it takes two-thirds of a vote, because it bypassed the normal procedure.

There were a handful of us who decided back in 2007, since Republican leadership at that time were agreeing to things that we knew our other friends in the Republican side, some friends on the Democratic side would never vote for, if it was a recorded vote, where everyone had a chance to vote--I started flying back early. I know Tom Price did at times; Lynn Westmoreland did at times.

I got to where I was flying back, even if I thought somebody else was covering the floor. The reason was to make sure that, since we couldn't trust that our leadership would not agree to some bill that we thought was hurtful to the country, was hurtful to the Constitution or to our constituents, we had to be here to ask for a recorded vote.

It went unnoticed except by leadership staff on both sides, and it got to where, when I came to the floor and would sit here for 3 or 4 hours, I would have staff come up, usually Democratic staff, since they were in the majority, and say: Well, obviously, you are concerned about some issue.

Sometimes, I was just here to observe, to make sure nothing was brought to the floor without any notice. Sometimes, there was a particular suspension that I felt should have a recorded vote, so I would show up, and I would, after the voice vote, request a recorded vote.

That is why staff started coming up and saying: Look, which one are you going to demand a recorded vote on or are you going to object to?

Sometimes, I would get up and speak against the bill. It got to where if I had an objection, they knew--because I'd done it between the time of the call for a recorded vote--I would go back to my office; I would type up a notice on why a bill was not a good bill.

I would be standing at the door, get a few other people to stand at other doors to hand out little fliers to Members of Congress as they came to the floor explaining why it wasn't a good bill.

Sometimes, I won; sometimes, I lost, but all you had to get was one more then one-third of the votes to bring down a suspension. So we were able to deal with that issue and make sure that, you know, people knew if you are going to try to pull that stuff, we are going to have people sit here, so that you can't just pass something on a voice vote without it being called for a recorded vote.

I was very surprised today with us in the majority, our own leadership in charge, with something as important as the doctor fix would be brought to the floor on a voice vote.

I would have come over earlier, except it was in recess, back in session, recess, back in session. I didn't know how long the recesses were going to be, but now, I know that I need to get with some other Members and make sure we have people on the floor, since we won't be sure what our own leadership is going to do.

That is very unfortunate. It is unfortunate. You need to be able to trust your own leadership.

Mr. Speaker, I think it's, on another matter, very important that we note that this year's Margaret Sanger Award would go to former Speaker Nancy Pelosi.

I have an article here from American Thinker, dated yesterday. Jeannie DeAngelis wrote the article. I won't read the whole article, but it points out that any woman willing to call late term abortion ``sacred ground'' and make false accusations that the opposing political party voting for the Protect Life Act would leave pregnant women ``dying on the floor'' deserves an award named after eugenicist Margaret Sanger.

Nancy Pelosi will be given the Margaret Sanger Award, which Planned Parenthood considers its ``highest honor.''

Further down, it says:

A committed socialist, Margaret Sanger once said, ``My own

personal feelings drew me toward the individualist anarchist

philosophy, but it seemed necessary to approach the idea by

way the socialism,'' Sanger said.

She also said this:

This is the great day of social planning. We have come to

believe in planning the production and distribution of goods.

We plan methods of governing cities, States, and the Nation.

We plan jobs and leisure time activities and vacations. We

plan almost everything, big and little, except families.

Sanger goes on to say:

It can scarcely do any harm--and it may do a vast amount of

good--to engage in the thoughtful planning of our population,

a population with a still larger percentage of happy

families.

An active worker for the Socialist Party, Sanger believed:

The more radical the ideas, the more conservative you must

be in your dress.

Saul Alinsky said:

Dresses his crusades in vestments of morality.

The article says:

For Margaret Sanger, eugenics was an avenue to improve the

human race by discouraging people with genetic defects or

undesirable traits--Blacks, immigrants, and poor people--whom

she called ``human weeds, reckless breeders, spawning human

beings who never should have been born.''

Further down, it points out another irony, which is that Italian American Nancy Patricia D'Alesandro Pelosi had grandparents named Maria and Tommaso, who immigrated to America from Italy. If Margaret Sanger had had her eugenic way with Maria Foppiani-Petronilla, Ms. Pelosi wouldn't be here, let alone be receiving an award.

In February of 1919, in the Birth Control Review, Sanger published an article entitled, ``Birth Control and Racial Betterment.''

In 1934, Sanger wrote an article entitled, ``America Needs a Code for Babies: Plea for Equal Distribution of Births.'' Ms. Sanger's baby code said that people with bad genes, or dysgenic groups, should be given a choice between sterilization and segregation. Those who willingly chose sterilization should be rewarded by contributing to a superior race.

In article 6, Sanger suggested issuing parenthood permits that would be valid for no more than one birth.

Despite being lionized by socialist liberals, Margaret

``every child a wanted child'' Sanger's legacy is one of

murder, racism, revulsion for the handicapped, intrinsic

disgust for the male gender, and a form of twisted radicalism

that viewed God-ordained marriage and the miracle of life

with contempt.

Margaret Sanger's life was committed to curing what she

viewed as the ``urgent problem'' of how to ``limit and

discourage the overfertility of the mentally and physically

defective.''

It should be noted that, in the past, our former Secretary of State, Secretary Clinton, received the same Margaret Sanger Award, who believed in eugenics, who believed it was a good thing to limit the births of races who, perhaps, were too poor, who she thought were dysgenic.

This article from, actually, March 31, 2009, Catholic Online, points out:

A day before receiving the Planned Parenthood Federation of

America's highest honor, the Margaret Sanger Award, U.S.

Secretary of State Hillary Clinton paid a visit to the

basilica of Our Lady of Guadalupe in Mexico City, leaving a

bouquet of white flowers ``on behalf of the American

people.''

When leaving the basilica a half an hour later, Secretary

Clinton told some of the Mexicans who were gathered outside

to greet her, ``You have a marvelous virgin.''

The following day, Friday, March 27, Clinton was in Houston to receive the Margaret Sanger Award, named for the organization's founder, a noted eugenicist. Secretary Clinton, according to a State Department transcript of Secretary Clinton's remarks, said this:

I admire Margaret Sanger enormously--her courage, her

tenacity, her vision. When I think about what she did all

those years ago in Brooklyn, taking on archetypes, taking on

attitudes and accusations flowing from all directions, I am

really in awe of her.

Another article points out, from The Weekly Standard, April 15, 2009, that Secretary Clinton stands by her praise of eugenicist Margaret Sanger.

Secretary Clinton points out:

Now, I have to tell you that it was a great privilege when

I was told I would receive this award. I admire Margaret

Sanger enormously--her courage, her tenacity, her vision.

It is probably worth looking at exactly what Margaret Sanger stood for since she is so admired by our former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, who could end up being President, and our former Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi. Let's look at exactly what Margaret Sanger said. Here are some quotes from Margaret Sanger.

The most merciful thing that the large family does to one

of its infant members is to kill it.

That is Margaret Sanger. That is Margaret Sanger, whose name adorns

an award that was so revered by Secretary Clinton and now by our former Speaker Pelosi. It is unbelievable that anybody would be held in high esteem who would make that statement:

The most merciful thing that the large family does to one

of its infant members is to kill it.

For heaven's sake. That is not all. She had plenty more to say.

We should apply a stern and rigid policy of sterilization

and segregation to that grade of population whose progeny is

tainted or whose inheritance is such that objectionable

traits may be transmitted to offspring.

That was from ``A Plan for Peace,'' from the Birth Control Review in April of 1932. The first quote I read was ``Woman and the New Race'' from chapter 6, ``The Wickedness of Creating Large Families.''

Then from ``America Needs a Code for Babies,'' in March of 1934, article 1:

The purpose of the American baby code shall be to provide

for a better distribution of babies and to protect society

against the propagation and increase of the unfit.

You see, it is important to note here that what this kind of code does is say that we need a governing body that will decide who they think is fit and who they think is unfit. Gee, how about that? In ObamaCare, we have a panel that will decide. You get a pacemaker. You don't get a pacemaker. We know your hip is giving you a lot of pain, but you are just not worth a new hip. Do you need a new knee? Ah, we have looked at your life, and we have looked at your age. You don't get a new knee. You just suffer and die.

I mean, it is unbelievable that a bill would pass that sets up a board that will decide who can get a pacemaker to allow him to live and who will not, who will get the lifesaving medication and who will not. I don't want an insurance company making that decision, and I don't want the government making that decision. I had a bill that would have avoided that kind of thing, but of course, it didn't come to the floor when Democrats were in the majority. They brought, instead, ObamaCare, setting up that board.

Let's go back to quotes from Margaret Sanger.

Article 4, from her ``America Needs a Code for Babies,'' says:

No woman shall have the legal right to bear a child--and no

man shall have the right to become a father--without a

permit.

Hey, there is good news. All you have to do is be politically ingratiated enough with the government under Margaret Sanger's code and they will give you a permit to have a baby, because they will consider you fit. Chances are, if you are of an opposing political view of those who are handing out the permits, you won't get a permit because you may have a child that disagrees with the people handing out the permits.

It quotes article 6:

No permit for parenthood shall be valid for more than one

birth.

This was Margaret Sanger.

She also said, in 1932, in the April Birth Control Review:

Give dysgenic groups--that's people with bad genes--in our

population their choice of segregation or compulsory

sterilization.

In 1922, she said:

Birth control must lead, ultimately, to a cleaner race.

Gee, the Nazis were pretty good about pushing a cleaner race, but thank God they were completely wrong about the White superhuman race. I always loved that about Jesse Owens. He went there, to the heart of the Nazis, and showed them they were wrong about their superhuman race, and yet here we have a woman, Margaret Sanger, being held in such great, high esteem, who thinks we need a cleaner race, according to her whims.

Here is another quote from the esteemed Margaret Sanger. This is from ``The Need for Birth Control in America.'' It is quoted by Angela Franks:

Such parents swell the pathetic ranks of the unemployed.

Feeblemindedness perpetuates itself from the ranks of those

who are blandly indifferent to their racial responsibilities,

and it is largely this type of humanity we are now drawing

upon to populate our world for the generations to come. In

this orgy of multiplying and replenishing the Earth, this

type is pari passu multiplying and perpetuating those direct

evils in which we must, if civilization is to survive,

extirpate by the very roots.

Here is another quote. This is from ``Family Limitation,'' Margaret Sanger's eighth edition, in 1918:

Women of the working class, especially wage workers, should

not have more than two children at most. The average working

man can support no more, and the average working woman can

take care of no more in decent fashion.

So that is Margaret Sanger. She is there to tell the world repeatedly that we need a government that will restrict the feebleminded or maybe, according to her, these disgusting women who work for wages. Ah, we can't let them have many children. Yet some have the nerve to say that Republicans have a war on women when you look at the heroine of the left, and she was for eugenics. She was a racist. She was a classist--a divider--who wanted and thought the best thing a large family could do was to kill a baby. We consider her a hero?

Forbid it, Almighty God.

I know my friends on the other side of the aisle don't have a single person on this side of the aisle who want children to go hungry or who want children to have a worse life than we have. I know that, but it is all about the way of getting there.

So there are those of us who think the best thing a person could have for their own self-respect and their own freedom and their own ability to remove themselves from the ties and chains, the strings that come with money from the government, is to get them a job. Grow the economy so they can have a job and the self-respect and the freedom that comes from that.

I know they have the best of intentions on the other side of the aisle, but I don't think that you help individuals by paying them not to work. Let's get the economy going so they can work and be free from all the strings and entanglements that come from handouts from the government.

I would never call somebody on the other side of the aisle a racist or a hater of the poor. So it gets a little disgusting when I hear that about people on my side of the aisle. We don't want anybody to suffer.

We have seen the likes of Margaret Sanger who think they know better. Get the government in charge, and then we will order people to be sterilized. And we will give you money if you will be sterilized. That is what government does.

Strings come with the money. They always do. We need the government to give out less money because people need less money because they are able to earn it for themselves with all the freedom that means. That is what we want for America. That is what the Founders wanted. And that makes for a much more free America.

In that regard, when it comes to freedom, I know the people that voted for ObamaCare thought it was going to be a great idea, even though most of them had never read it like I did. Because I could see it was a threat to all kinds of freedoms, and I could see before the vote there were provisions in there that allowed for clinics to get Federal money to provide abortion and to have insurance policies that would end up providing abortion.

So I was shocked this week at the Supreme Court. I wasn't in the courtroom. I was listening in a side room for members of the Supreme Court Bar. I was shocked to hear somebody on the Supreme Court actually take the position, Well, just pay the tax and then you can have your religious views.

The power to tax is the power to destroy. Our Founders knew that. Taxation helped cause a revolution. And in fairness to the people of the District of Columbia, they are the only group who, under the Constitution, are not allowed to have a full voting Member of Congress, and who are required nonetheless to pay Federal income tax. Puerto Rico, Samoa, Mariana Islands, all of those that are territories, under the Constitution they are not entitled to a full voting Representative and do not pay Federal income tax.

Franklin made clear during the Revolution that if we do not get to elect one member of the parliament, then that parliament has no right to put taxes on us. I agree. So when Democrats were in charge, I had a bill. They wouldn't bring my bill to the floor. Now the Republicans are in the majority. They haven't so far--or our leaders haven't. I think it is only fair. They don't get to vote for a full voting Member of the House. So in fairness, the way to fix that legislatively is just to do for the District of Columbia what

we do for Puerto Rico, Guam, Samoa, and the Mariana Islands. You don't pay Federal income tax. That would be fair.

There are all kinds of things that aren't fair. But when it comes to intrusions by the government onto religious beliefs, the line cannot be drawn so that it excludes religious beliefs and the ability to practice them.

For anyone, especially a Supreme Court Justice, and even someone who worked for President Obama as Solicitor General, who said--and I am paraphrasing because she didn't say these words--I never did my job when it came to ObamaCare. I didn't talk to the administration about it. I didn't talk to them about what would help them when it came before the Supreme Court. So I didn't do my job as Solicitor General, and that is why I am qualified to be on the Supreme Court.

Unfortunately, the Senate bought that. That is the implied position. They bought that. She is on the Supreme Court. She lights into the Hobby Lobby attorney immediately. But to come around and say, Just pay the tax, then you can have your religious beliefs, you can practice your religious beliefs, it is not that expensive--what's next?

As a judge who has signed death penalty orders, I have struggled with that issue. I believe in some cases it is appropriate. I thought it was totally appropriate in Jasper, Texas, after three people were convicted of dragging an African American behind their truck. Once they had a fair trial, fair appeal, properly convicted, I wouldn't have had a problem with a law that said the victim's family gets to choose the truck and the terrain over which they drag the defendants to their deaths.

When we give the power to decide who gets to practice firmly held religious beliefs to a Supreme Court or to a 218-vote majority in the House, this Republic and the freedoms it has provided more than any Nation in history can't be much longer for the world--not those freedoms--not when Congress will stand by and allow those to be taken.

I think everybody that was here for that vote on ObamaCare knows good and well that if the intention of this government had been made clear that they were going to force people to go against firmly held Catholic beliefs, Christian beliefs, that bill would have never passed. And now they seek to enforce what would never have passed if their intentions had been made clear--it is before the Supreme Court. And who knows what they will do.

Mr. Speaker, my hopes and prayers are still for ongoing religious freedom promised under the First Amendment, and that they will not be taken away on our watch. But that kind of depends on the American people and the people they put in office and the people they allow to serve on the Supreme Court.

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

Mr. Speaker, yesterday, I went over and heard the audio as the argument before the Supreme Court was taking place. It was shocking to hear a Supreme Court Justice ask Paul Clement why his client didn't just pay the tax and then they could have their religious ideas and religious beliefs. Of course, he called it a penalty, as the statute called it.

She said: Well, the legislation called it a tax. She didn't even know that the majority opinion said on page 15 that it is a penalty because Congress called it a penalty. Forty pages later, the majority called it a tax so they could uphold it.

Outrageous. Pay your religion tax, and then you can have your religious beliefs in America. Where is it going to stop if we don't stop it now?

Mr. Speaker, this is an important day right across the street at the U.S. Supreme Court Building. It has been interesting. In the past, most of the time that I am aware of, when there was a matter coming before the Supreme Court, they observed what is called reciprocity, just as if a U.S. Senator wants to come down here and observe--they can't speak on the floor--but they can come to the House floor. In the same way, we have reciprocity with the Senate. We can go down to the Senate and stand in the Chamber and be there in person, as I have done when Rand Paul was doing what amounted to a filibuster and when Ted Cruz was doing what amounted to a filibuster.

With the Supreme Court, normally, if there are Members of Congress that are going to be coming, they will reserve a bench. There have been a couple of times that the bench was full and other Members of Congress filled those spaces before I got there; but it has been an observation that, since this body is charged with funding the Supreme Court and providing what they need and determining what they don't really need, it is part of reciprocity that they provide those places to observe what is happening.

I have been rather ambivalent. I can see both sides of the issues of cameras in the courtroom, because as a judge, murder trials, other things of interest, networks would want to come film. I had one case that went for 10 weeks. We have very strict rules. We only allow one camera in the courtroom. It could never be worked on during anything that was going on, and it could never be a distraction at all. But I saw how cameras could work in the courtroom without being any problem at all.

Here in Congress, I have fairly much taken the position that if a camera is going to be in the courtroom, leave it up to the courts. But with the United States Supreme Court, as I have seen this week, there would be no harm in having a camera somewhere in the courtroom where people didn't notice so that Americans could see--since we moved the Supreme Court toward being an oligarchy--we could see what they are doing, whether they are sleeping, whether they are participating, or whether they are asking stupid questions.

I went over, and since I am sworn in as a member of the Supreme Court Bar, I was allowed to be in the overflow room and hear what was going on; so it was kind of difficult to really tell who was addressing what during the case that the Supreme Court was hearing this morning that I heard oral arguments on. This is an extremely critical case, and I couldn't tell which judge asked the questions, but when the Supreme Court is, in effect, expressing concern through their questions that a corporation, a for-profit corporation, could not possibly have firmly held religious beliefs, then it occurred to me, for Heaven's sake, this Justice Department doesn't seem to have a problem indicting corporations. So, if the Justice Department can indict a corporation and say they have an intent to violate the law, well, if that corporation can have intent with regard to violations of the law, it certainly ought to be able to form the intent to have firmly held religious beliefs.

It was shocking as I listened to questions from some of the Supreme Court Justices today, when that is compared with the history of the United States of America and Roger Williams, for example, whose statue has been moved last week, but how he formed Rhode Island because of his firmly held religious beliefs and his beliefs that there should be freedom of religion in America where the government does not interfere in any way.

You compare the beliefs of the Pilgrims who came from Holland to England and then here--they wanted religious freedom so they could serve the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob;

they could follow their Christian beliefs without being persecuted or without having a government say that you don't have any right to practice those beliefs--compared with the Supreme Court Justices, in effect, saying, gee, they could just pay the fine and it would be a lot cheaper than $475 million in penalties they will have to pay. Actually, one Justice had the nerve to say: I believe that was called a tax and not a penalty.

Paul Clement was doing a great job. My immediate thought was, well, no, the Supreme Court at page 15 of the majority opinion said that clearly the mandate was a penalty. Congress called it a penalty. It clearly was a penalty. It is only assessed if you don't do what the bill requires people to do, so clearly it is a penalty. And since it is a penalty, they said at page 15, then we do have jurisdiction to go forward because, the Supreme Court pointed out, if that mandate were a tax, then under the anti-injunction statute, the Supreme Court would not have jurisdiction to have proceeded when they did and the plaintiffs that brought the case would not have had standing to bring the case. But they said, since this is clearly a penalty and not a tax, then we can go forward, because if it is a tax, then the Anti- Injunction Act kicks in, and we don't have jurisdiction at this time.

But on page 15, the Supreme Court called it a penalty. And they, in that opinion, apparently to the ignorance of at least one of our Supreme Court Justices, the Supreme Court called it a penalty at page 15, because they quoted the Congress calling it a penalty in ObamaCare, and they said, clearly, it is a penalty. We have got jurisdiction, and we will go ahead and determine the rest of the case.

Then you go over about 40 pages, and then they determine, okay, now that we are hearing this because it is a penalty and not a tax, we determine it is a tax and therefore it is constitutional.

We know under the rules of this House that Supreme Court judges would not do anything inappropriate, but, Mr. Speaker, I can tell you that opinion was indecent. It was a travesty. It was hypocritical, that decision was. How you can call it a penalty at page 15 and then, with a straight face, 40 pages later, say now it is a tax so it is a constitutional, and then sit as they were today and have a Justice say, kind of snidely: Well, we didn't call it a penalty. I mean it was called a tax. It depends on where you look in the majority opinion as to whether it is a penalty or a tax, but Congress clearly called it a penalty.

I am very concerned. We had someone who was in a position with the executive branch when ObamaCare was put together and pushed here in Congress, and in her position with the executive branch, at that time, she had to either be incompetent and failed to give the executive branch any advice on its most important bill that they took up or there was a lie told that no advice was ever given about this bill. Either way, that Justice should not have been allowed to hear this case as a member of the Supreme Court because, clearly--and I think the questions that were apparently asked by her today show--she was an advocate, is an advocate now and most likely was an advocate then in this administration.

So this country is in trouble.

I yield to my dear friend from Minnesota (Mrs. Bachmann) for any comments she might have.

I would say to the gentlelady, I was not aware of the line that was scratched out by James Madison, but obviously if he scratched out ``tolerate'' and added in ``free exercise,'' it was intended to be more than just tolerant. This was a bedrock principle. I know the gentlelady, I doubt there is anybody else in all of Congress or even the Senate that has a master's in tax law, as the gentlelady from Minnesota does, but I know we have both heard during our professional lives that the power to tax is the power to destroy.

I don't have the exact words, and I haven't seen the transcript or heard any replay since I was at the Supreme Court building this morning, but to hear a Supreme Court Justice of this country say to the litigants' attorney, in essence:

Why don't you just pay the tax, the penalty, and then you

can have your religious beliefs?

Staggering.

I yield to the gentlelady. I doubt you were aware that in essence that question was asked:

Why don't you just pay that tax?

And apparently it is phenomenal insurance. The employees love it.

I would like to ask the gentlelady a question, knowing our American history as well as you do: Can you imagine if King George had sent a decree that said pay a $2,000 penalty or tax and then you can observe your religious beliefs, what would the gentlelady think would be the response of Patrick Henry, John Adams, James Madison, Thomas Payne, and all of those people? Thomas Payne was not a very religious man, but he was big on rights.

If it came down to this, the Federal Government, of course using the IRS under ObamaCare to enforce the law, the Federal Government comes and says, the gentlelady from Minnesota must either pay a $2,000 fine, penalty, tax, whatever they may wish to call it today, or you cannot observe your religious beliefs, what would the gentlelady's reaction be?

Well, it is going to be interesting, and this is a bit of a tangent, but because of what the gentlelady has pointed out, this President has indicated he is going to turn over control of the Internet away from where it is now to an international confab that has been champing at the bit to have a chance to control the Internet. They have been hoping desperately that some day they would have something that everybody wanted to use so they could begin taxing it, charging fees to use the Internet. And once they could do that, then the international entity, like the U.N., wouldn't have to go begging to the different countries that make up its membership. They could require taxes and penalties to be paid in order to publish on the Internet, in order to send an email on the Internet. You could rack up taxes, and then they will be a permanent entity from now on once we give control of the Internet over to an international group that will have authority to tax those who want to publish online.

So we are talking about the disaster that ObamaCare is, but that is where it is going.

I just can't avoid thinking in these terms the conclusion when, ultimately, you follow the logic of at least one of the Supreme Court justices.

In essence, what is being implied by the question is if you want to avoid paying to kill a child in the womb, then just pay the tax, and we will allow you to observe your conscience, your firmly held religious beliefs.

It is staggering that anybody, any justice on the United States Supreme Court, would have rationalized to the point that--could ever even dream of saying: just pay the fine penalty tax, and then you don't have to pay for killing children in utero.

It is protection.

From the government.

The gentlelady brought up something that I don't recall being mentioned during the entire argument. Hobby Lobby, because of their Christian beliefs, not only wants to provide compensation, they want to provide an excellent health care policy.

What I don't believe was brought up in the entire oral argument was that the employees can buy supplemental insurance to cover those four drugs that will kill children in utero, and nothing is denying them that opportunity.

Certainly.

One of the justices--and, again, since we don't have cameras in the courtroom yet, I will be fighting for that in the future, I could only listen to the audio--but one of the justices, again, tried to belittle Paul Clement's comment that they have a choice.

The gentlelady has pointed out accurately that you can pay $2,000 or $36,500; but he was indicating that, when you add up, with all the employees they have, the total cost, they either pay $475 million, or they can drop the insurance, leave the employees in a real dilemma to have to go buy ObamaCare insurance that, other than those four contraceptives that bring about abortion, they provide them far better insurance than what ObamaCare requires.

So when he said it is either $475 million or $26 million, she was insisting that you could just pay the $2,000 fine and was virtually in unbelief that it actually amounted to $26 million when

you add up all the people they would have to pay for.

So that was his position before the Supreme Court: to follow our religious beliefs, we either pay $475 million or we pay $26 million.

That is who we have been. The question now before the Supreme Court is: Is that who we will continue to be?

We know that at least one justice of the Supreme Court seems to think that it is okay for the government to tax you $2,000. Just pay the tax, and then you can observe your religious beliefs, even though it keeps you from providing the great health care that you have been providing.

I will tell you that this is a seminal point in our history. ObamaCare, that decision broke my heart because I thought so much of Chief Justice John Roberts. Then when you read the decision, the decision is so poorly written, so pitifully reasoned, so hypocritical within the decision itself.

Yes, it is a penalty, so we have got jurisdiction, and now that we have got jurisdiction, it is a tax, so it is constitutional. I mean, it is totally at odds with itself.

Now, we are to this place. Is a majority of the Supreme Court going to say: Pilgrims, Roger Williams, all of you that brought us to the place where the freest, most successful country in the history of the world, those freedoms that you saw, that you prayed for, they are going away because now, since the government has the power to tax, it will have the power to destroy your religions?

As the gentlelady points out, why stop with $2,000? Once the Supreme Court says this government has the power to tax you to observe your religious beliefs, why not $10,000, why not $20,000, why not $50,000?

Well, chains can be figuratively applied--figuratively applied when someone taxes because a tax hung around the neck is a burden. It is a chain. It is an albatross. It can be devastating, as some people have found out.

Going back to this morning, as I mentioned, I am a member admitted to practice before the Supreme Court. It is a great honor, back when I was a real lawyer. There is seating in front of the bar for the members of the Supreme Court Bar, so those were full. So there is an overflow room where we listened to the audio but obviously don't get to see what is going on.

I was just listening to the argument, the oral argument audibly, without the benefit of being able to see which Justice asked which question. I don't know that I will be able to forget the premise of an educated Supreme Court Justice, almost rhetorically, asking: Why don't you just pay the $2,000? She didn't say this, but pay the $2,000 so you can practice your firmly held religious beliefs. That is what her question amounted to.

She pointed out the $2,000.

The gentlewoman makes a great point. But unfortunately or fortunately, depending on your point of view, the Founders created so much in the way of checks and balances to prevent the government from abusing the power, as the gentlewoman points out.

If the Congress will not protect its own powers, as we have not, the Senate has been very protective of the President's executive orders that usurped our power. They have gladly handed over power.

I was shocked to hear in this very room, as the President spoke from this podium, a standing ovation from most of the people on this side of the aisle when the President, in effect, said: If you don't change the law, I will. And they stand and applaud a President who says, in effect: I am going to usurp even more of the legislative power given to Congress under article 1 than I have already taken.

It is staggering to hear that applauded. It is also staggering to me to

see the Senate has a body, in effect, protecting the President's usurpation of our power. That is one check, one balance.

Well, I was shocked that one of the Justices asked the question, basically: How can or does a corporation exercise religious freedom?

You know, this Justice knows that the Justice Department has indicted corporations charging criminal intent, intent to violate the law, and yet she cannot figure out how a corporation could have intent to violate the law but could not have intent to have religiously held beliefs. That was a bit staggering to me to hear that question: How can a corporation exercise religious beliefs?

Well, it is remarkable. Again, the Justice, if I heard her correctly, just advocated, well, just drop the insurance. Drop the insurance. This company is providing great insurance, as the gentlewoman pointed out, and her point was not made because time is so limited. I know Paul Clement knows, but that is such a huge benefit to the employee.

There was discussion by the Supreme Court about benefits to the employee. Well, gee, you can raise their salaries and make up the difference, when actually you may have to raise that salary an extra third in order to cover the cost that is pretax to the employee. So the employee is getting hammered when they just, as this Justice appeared to callously advocate, just drop the insurance, pay the $2,000 tax penalty. Congress said ``penalty''; they said ``penalty'' and ``tax,'' take your pick. Either way, they were advocating harming the employee.

Harming 16,000 employees as a way to deal with an unconstitutional act.

That is my recollection. And some of us were pushing for and asking our leadership why don't we do an amendment that will make sure the Supreme Court has to be under ObamaCare. I really think that would have been the more appropriate thing to do. In fact, I still think it is the appropriate thing to do.

It is hard to know, since Congress was not given a chance to see what the Supreme Court was doing and who was asking what questions, but it sure seems like since they feel so strongly about ObamaCare, that they really should have the chance to experience it firsthand and just find out how wonderful it is.

One of the Justices appeared to point out, apparently, that an agency is the one that established so many of these things. So the question arises, since an agency can say your insurance policy must provide this medicine, this medicine, not this medicine, this medicine, have we given unelected bureaucrats the power to determine what your religious beliefs firmly held include? Because under ObamaCare, an agency says: Your religious rights must yield to our unelected bureaucratic decision that this medication must be included; therefore, your First Amendment rights yield to our unelected bureaucratic agency rights to decide what your religious rights have to include and what they don't.

Well, God bless Justices Antonin Scalia, Clarence Thomas. I didn't hear Justice Thomas ask questions. He normally doesn't. It is extraordinary to spend time with Justice Thomas. You find out rather quickly just how really brilliant he is.

He didn't need affirmative action to get him into Yale Law School--or Harvard, as he was accepted to, but at the time thought was too conservative.

Justice Scalia took on the Government's position. The Government's attorney stood up and basically said if a corporation is for profit, no matter how religiously convicted the holders of that are, they have no right to religious beliefs. Scalia took him on and said there has never been a case.

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

Mr. Speaker, at this time I would like to yield to my friend from Pennsylvania (Mr. Rothfus).

I thank my friend from Pennsylvania very much. They are very, very good points.

Also along the lines my friend was talking about, some of us were here when our fine President stood at that podium and spoke to all of us here and he said in his speech that in his bill there would be no funding of abortion. We all heard that. In fact, there was such an involuntary response of Joe Wilson to categorize that statement. From the bill, we had seen from the Democrats it was clear there was going to be money forced out of taxpayers' hands and forced to fund abortion, and we now know that is true.

Most of the time, the decent thing to do, if you find out that something you said was simply not true, the decent thing to do is to step up and say, You know what? Joe Wilson, you were right, but it was unintentional. I didn't mean to misrepresent anything. So I want to set this straight.

Instead, it is like this administration has doubled down and said not only is the government funding it, but you are going to have to fund abortion for your employees, and it doesn't matter that you have firmly held religious convictions against it.

I just wanted to mention to my colleagues that before I came to the floor

to hear the wonderful work that our friend Mrs. Hartzler has been doing--is she from the ``Show Me'' State or what--I walked by where Roger Williams' statue has always been since I have been here. Apparently, they have moved statues, because he is not there. It has been in the last week I know they have moved Roger Williams.

Roger Williams was born in England between 1603 and 1606. He grew up a member of a privileged class. He received a liberal arts education from Sir Edward Coke.

This is from the Capitol Web site.

He abandoned the study of law to become a priest in the Church of England. He was interested in the Puritan movement and the newly established Massachusetts Bay Colony. He was warmly welcomed to the New World by Massachusetts Governor John Winthrop. He arrived in Boston.

Williams was an adamant separatist. He accepted a post as an assistant pastor in Salem, reputedly a friendly place. However, his teachings were deemed radical, and he was banished from Massachusetts Bay Colony in 1635. He founded the colony of Rhode Island in 1636.

I know each State gets to choose which two statues you want to have. I look forward to him coming back. I am sure that they would never have permanently removed the statue of the founder of Rhode Island. There is nobody I can think of more appropriate.

I just thought it probably is appropriate that a man that staked his entire life on religious freedom would not have his statue here to figuratively witness what has gone on and what has passed in this Capitol.

To talk about this issue further, I want to yield to my friend from Georgia, Doug Collins.

I thank my friend from Georgia so very much. I need to come to where he preaches some time and get some more of that good preaching. That was outstanding; and I know, as a servant to the country in Congress and our military, as he is, as well as a servant of Christ, what a powerful message.

By the way, Mr. Speaker, you may not be aware--I wasn't until today-- in past times, when there was oral arguments in which Members of Congress were interested, we could call over to the Clerk of the Supreme Court, and they normally just make one bench--sometimes more-- but at least one pew there available for Members of Congress, either as the Speaker would allocate or first come.

But anyway, the Marshal of the Supreme Court, Pamela Talkin, has decided that, though it has always been reciprocity in the past, we invite the Supreme Court to come and watch speeches they may care to, reciprocity between the House and Senate, the Marshal, Pamela Talkin, perhaps she got guidance from one of the Justices or the Chief Justice, but Members of Congress are not going to have a reserved spot, which is interesting. We are supposed to oversee that Court, just as they oversee the Congress.

So as of today, I am going to be the most outspoken supporter of getting cameras in the Supreme Court. I think it is time. If they are going to do something untoward, we need to have people be able to see it.

As Members of Congress, if we are funding them, we need to be able to see what they are doing in there with our own eyes, so we need to get cameras in there, and we can thank Pamela Talkin for that.

At this time, I yield to my dear friend from Colorado (Mr. Lamborn).

I thank my friend from Colorado so very much. We have done much together in our time here, and I am grateful for his service.

Mr. Speaker, I yield to my good friend from Florida (Mr. Yoho), for such time as he may use.

I thank my friend from Florida for those strong words.

We had strong words from the Vatican Chief Justice, as reported by CBS today. They quoted him, the Vatican Chief Justice, as saying:

It is true that the policies of the President of the United

States have become progressively more hostile toward

Christian civilization. He appears to be a totally

secularized man who aggressively promotes anti-life,

antifamily policies.

I know he professed Christianity, so I don't necessarily agree with all of those statements; but how profound when the Vatican Chief Justice feels compelled to make that kind of statement.

Mr. Speaker, for the remainder of our time, I yield to my dear friend from Louisiana (Mr. Scalise).

Thank you so much.

Mr. Speaker, I am so grateful to the gentlelady from Missouri for calling so many Members and leading this in this time.

Mr. Speaker, just closing with one line from Benjamin Franklin:

Without God's concurring aid, we will succeed in our

political building no better than the builders of Babel

confounded by our local partial interests and becoming a

byword down through the ages.

Mr. Speaker, we pray for his wisdom for the Supreme Court. I yield back the balance of my time.