Floor Statements

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

The motion was agreed to; accordingly (at 7 o'clock and 50 minutes p.m.), under its previous order, the House adjourned until tomorrow, Thursday, January 9, 2014, at 10 a.m. for morning-hour debate.

Mr. Speaker, a great deal of news has come out. So many things have happened since we recessed in December. Some things did not get the attention they should have.

This is an article from the Daily Caller, December 18, entitled: ``Senate Democrats Block Amendment to Restore Veteran Benefits by Closing Illegal Immigrant Welfare Loophole.''

Mr. Speaker, it would seem by anyone's standard of morality that when someone promises something in order to encourage or get someone else to expose themselves to death, to brutal treatment, and that person does so--they join the military, go through rigorous training, spend a career 20 years or more defending the United States of America, following orders--that it would be morally reprehensible for anyone, or in this case any government, to pull back on the promises that were made to those who served relying on those promises.

In courts, that doctrine would be called ``promissory estoppel.'' Promises are made to induce someone else to act, the other does act in reliance on those promises to the actor's detriment, then in a court system a civilian would be required under the doctrine of promissory estoppel to provide what was promised.

But the United States Government is not subject to such claims in court so it must rely upon Congress to have the moral compass and the conscience to keep our promises to those who have served enough years, long enough to retire. When I push for such benefits and the keeping of our word to our veterans, it is not something that enures to my benefit. I served in the Army, but only for 4 years. I did not reach the 20-year mark or more that would have entitled me to the promises that were made.

But I know so many who had the chance to go back and make more money in the civilian sector and not give up their right of freedom of assembly and had to assemble at 5 in the morning, as we often did, or doing forced marches, as we did, or doing so many things that were not fun or pleasant, but doing so because it was proper training to be in the United States military. We owe those who have served to keep our promises.

When George Washington resigned as commander of the revolutionary military, it was an incredible act that constantly comes up both here and abroad when people both here and around the world look for an example of true selfless service to one's country. And how George Washington could serve as commander of the revolutionary military, the revolution is won, and he did what no one in the history of the world has ever done: won the revolution as commander of the military and then resign and in effect that I have done all you asked and now I am going home.

That was brought up to me in the Maldive Islands some time back that I was told was a relatively new democracy who were always worried about a military coup because we never had a proper example like George Washington, we never had a George Washington to set the proper example, and has had a military coup since, I was told. Not only did George Washington resign, but at the end of his resignation--and this was something that was said to all 13 Governors--he had a prayer for the country. Part of that prayer was that we would never fail to remember, basically honoring those who have served.

Then apparently on December 18, the United States Senate voted against restoring the benefits that were taken away from veterans because they didn't want to close a loophole in the law that allows for people who come here illegally to get welfare. Because if that loophole had been closed, then people who come illegally would not be able to get welfare, and the money saved by closing that loophole would be enough to fund our promises that have been broken to our veterans under the brand-new budget.

I hope very soon that we will have a chance to fix that in the House. It is the right thing to do. How else will we have the moral authority in Congress to do anything else? We can't keep our promises in answer to the prayer that George Washington had that we would never forget those, that we would help those who have served in the field, our military. That is a travesty.

On December 19, the next day, there was an article in the Washington Times: ``Homeland Security Helps Smuggle Illegal Immigrant Children into the United States.'' It goes on to discuss a 10-page order by Judge Andrew S. Hanen. And Judge Hanen, it says, said the case was the fourth such case he had seen over the last month. And in each instance, Customs and Border Protection agents have helped to locate and deliver the children to their illegal immigrant parents.

Now, Republicans believe in the sanctity of marriage and the sanctity and importance of families in America. When someone chooses to violate United States law and enter the United States illegally without proper documentation, no matter how noble the cause is believed to be to help family--obviously that is a noble cause--but if it is done illegally, without documentation, it is an incredible disservice and affects so unfairly those who have stood in line, paid money after money, done everything the right way to gain entrance into the United States legally.

There is one person to whom I spoke last Thursday that he was married to a woman that he tried for so long to get legally into the United States and finally got her into the country legally. It is so grossly unfair to the millions of people who have come into this country as immigrants legally. We are a Nation of immigrants. As my friend Steve King says, there is really not a nation in the world, perhaps, that is not a nation of immigrants. But the United States certainly is.

One of the big reasons we have been able to become the most free-- until ObamaCare perhaps--but the most free Nation in the world with the least government dictation and intervention in our private lives, and been the most blessed country, I believe, even more so than Solomon's Israel, is because we were a Nation of laws, as the Founders described it, a Nation where no one was perceived to be above the law.

I even paid a parking ticket because people perceived that I had violated a law and a National Park policeman who did not know the law, was ignorant of the law, decided to give it. It was easier to pay the $25 than it was to help teach the National Park policeman the law on parking in Washington, D.C. Nobody is above the law. Nobody is supposed to be above the law.

There are verses throughout the Old Testament and New Testament. So many of the first hundred years of this Nation's existence had scriptures quoted from the Old Testament and New Testament as a basis, or reason, that particular legislation should be passed.

Well, one thing is clear in the Old Testament and New Testament: that showing partiality, showing favoritism, to anyone--as Leviticus talks about--whether it is to the very poor or the very wealthy, either way it is not right; it is wrong.

If we are going to ever attain again moral authority as a Congress, we have to make sure the law is applied fairly across the board. When someone chooses to violate our laws by coming into the country, then we have a President who took an oath to see that the laws of the United States are carried out and properly executed. That means everyone who answers to the President of the United States, including the Department of Homeland Security, including Customs and Border enforcement, all of DHS, should be following

the law and pushing others to follow the law and seeing that the law is followed.

But yet we see apparently case after case, shockingly, that Homeland Security is getting involved in the human trafficking business carrying children around the country, seeking them out.

How about we get the parent together with the child in a country where they are lawfully allowed to be?

How about being a good neighbor to Mexico? Instead of providing weapons to drug cartels, which have killed hundreds of our neighbors in Mexico, how about standing up against the drug cartels--not supplying them weapons, not seeing that drug deals are done, which may help one cartel over another, but actually being a good neighbor so that Mexico becomes the country where people want to stay and work?

I have talked to so many Mexicans who really want to live in Mexico, but they have trouble finding jobs. There is so much corruption in a country where a police chief or a law enforcement officer or someone trying to do the right thing or trying to stand up against the drug cartel can end up with his head on a pike. That is our neighbor. Why are we not helping our neighbor stop the killing in massive numbers of our neighbor Mexicans? Instead, we have the Department of Homeland Security, as found by the Federal courts, to continually be helping people violate our own laws.

I want families together, but the law needs to be followed. That is why you have judges, like I was, who have their hearts broken when they have to enforce laws that they don't always believe in, but it is because the laws are duly passed and signed into law by the executive branch, because we took an oath to enforce the law and to follow the law.

Then it was shocking to read this story in TheBlaze from December 27. The headline: ``ATF Agent Sends Shock Waves Across Internet with Explosive Allegations About `Fast and Furious' and Brian Terry's Death.''

On down in the article, it says:

After the Terry slaying--in talking about Brian Terry, the

Federal agent who was killed--and an attempted cover-up

within the Justice Department, Dodson--in talking about this

ATF agent--provided evidence and testimony to Congress. His

revelations, later verified by an Office of the Inspector

General's report, ignited a national scandal over Fast and

Furious that resulted in a congressional contempt citation

against Attorney General Eric Holder and the replacement of

top ATF and Justice Department officials.

In his book, Dodson uses cautious language to characterize

his account of circumstances surrounding Terry's death,

saying the information is based on firsthand knowledge,

personal opinion and press reports. He asserts that the DEA

had information about and may have orchestrated a large drug

shipment through Peck Canyon that December night.

He was talking about the night Brian Terry was killed.

He alleges that DEA agents shared that intelligence with

FBI counterparts, who advised criminal informants from

another cartel that the load would be ``theirs for the

taking.''

Dodson laid out a strategy in which Federal law enforcement

agencies, like the FBI, allow criminal activity in order to

increase the clout of FBI informants embedded within cartel

organizations. ``If they can get these guys (informants) in a

position so they're closer to the tier 1 or tier 2 guy (in

the cartel), they'll do it . . . ''

Further down, the article says:

``Essentially, the United States Government is involved in

cartel-building,'' Dodson said.

The claims sound eerily familiar to allegations brought

forward by high-ranking Sinaloa Cartel operative Jesus

Vicente Zambada-Niebla, who is currently facing trial in

Chicago on Federal drug charges.

Further down, it says:

``(They) were given carte blanche to continue to smuggle

tons of illicit drugs into Chicago and the rest of the United

States, and were also protected by the United States

Government from arrest and prosecution in return for

providing information against rival cartels which helped

Mexican and United States authorities capture or kill

thousands of rival cartel members,'' the defense motion in

the case reads.

It is incredible what is going on, and it is only appropriate that, if Congress is to continue funding these agencies and these departments, we should have--and do have--the right to know what they are doing with our money. That should also mean getting to the bottom of Fast and Furious. There should be a select committee to get to the bottom of what happened in Fast and Furious. Eventually, there should be mainstream media components that actually do their job for a change, which is so important to keeping a free nation, by actually going after the administration they have put in place and demanding answers to the questions of what happened with Fast and Furious.

We owe our friends to the south, our Mexican neighbors, answers to what happened. It is outrageous for a government to treat a neighbor like this. There is no reason that the country of Mexico should not be one of the top 10 economies in the world. Mexico should be one of the top 10 economies in the world. They have the natural resources. They have got people willing to work and who are doing phenomenal work as we have seen even in this country. They have a beautiful country, but they need to be rid of the drug cartels. They need to be a nation of laws.

This eerily brings us back to the demand that some who come into this country illegally make now: we want you to quit being a nation of laws, ignore the law and say that we are legally here, though we came illegally. Ironically, if we do that, we are no longer a nation of laws, which would make us like the nation of Mexico, where graft and corruption in so many places is the rule of the day, where cronyism is the rule in so many places, where they don't have the freedom that we have here from the fear of drug cartels.

I have mentioned a Washington Times story. Unfortunately, there was one in the Washington Times today, entitled: ``Is Islam a religion of peace or a religion of war?'' written by Rahat Husain. In this, Mr. Husain shows that he is either one of the laziest reporters in the world or that he is one of the biggest liars.

I quote from the article:

Of course, those who seek to vilify more than 1.6 billion

Muslims in the world do so with a serious disregard for logic

or morality. In 2010, Congresswoman Debbie Riddle and

Congressman Louie Gohmert put a theory into the public

discourse, that there was such a thing as a ``terror baby.''

I have never used that term to describe anybody. So, from Mr. Husain, Mr. Speaker, that is an outrageous, abominable lie.

Now, it is quite possible he could have gotten that from so many of the media sources that do what they do so well. I go back to a sign that used to be above a blacksmith's shop. It was a re-creation of an old blacksmith's shop just south of Fort Benning in a quaint, old village. The sign above the blacksmith's door said: ``All types of bending and twisting done here.'' So what happens is that some in the mainstream, so-called, take a point that I make, twist it into something I didn't say, create this straw dog that they can beat up over and over and over and run that use up so much on the Internet that, if you click on my name, you will see this term, though I have never used it, and the point I made was a valid point.

This article says:

Despite the moral depravity of referring to infants as

terrorists--

which I never did. Mr. Husain is a liar--

Congressman Gohmert defended the notion and got into a

shouting match with CNN's Anderson Cooper, insisting on the

validity of his idea.

Mr. Husain's writing does not deserve to be considered as serious literature if he is either that lazy or that significant of a liar. All he would have to do is research. Hopefully, he did that research, which would mean he is clearly one of the largest liars around. Now, if either Anderson Cooper or Mr. Husain or others would do a little homework--it doesn't take that much--they would find that something called ``birthright tourism'' is big around the world. It is significant.

As I pointed out to Anderson Cooper, there had been an article shortly before that about a Chinese tourist agency that, for a certain amount of money, would get you a tourist visa into the United States when you were pregnant. They would help you get your baby born and then get you an American passport before you left. Then I saw, right after that, an article where there was a Muslim-owned hotel in New York that was hurt because they said they

were the first ones to come up with this idea of having, in their case, basically, Muslim pregnant women come to the United States, have a baby, and then they would help you get the American passport when you returned to your country.

The point that I was making--and it is still a legitimate point--is that there are people who hate the United States, who come into this country, who have a child. Children are a gift from God. They are--that is why abortion is so wrong--and the responsibility that comes with having a child: to train them up in a wholesome environment as best you can, not to hate people. Yet we have children who leave this country with an American passport and go back to the country where their parents are citizens, and they are then raised to hate America.

Some may remember that, in 2011, a man named Anwar al-Awlaki, an American citizen, was killed by a drone in Yemen. Anwar al-Awlaki had been here on Capitol Hill numerous times. He had friends at the White House. He had friends in this administration. He had been on Capitol Hill, leading Muslim staff members in Muslim prayer. Why? How could he do it? Because he was an American citizen. How was Anwar al-Awlaki an American citizen? His parents came here on a visa to go to college.

He was born, returned to Yemen, was raised to hate America, raised to hate our Western democracy, and as an adult became a terrorist who incited others to terrorism against the United States.

Perhaps some have heard of a guy named Al-Amoudi. Actually, I had the paperwork, held it up for the Director of the FBI, Director Mueller, and he was not aware at all that the Boston mosque that the Boston bombers attended, were started--we had the paper on the Boston society that did that. Al-Amoudi was the founder.

Al-Amoudi was a friend and an adviser in the Clinton administration, but during the Bush administration, he was arrested at Dulles Airport and later pled guilty and was sentenced to 23 years in prison for supporting terrorism.

It might be worth noting for someone in Homeland Security or the State Department that Al-Amoudi, convicted and now imprisoned for supporting terrorism, while his wife was here on a visa, they had a child, who is an American citizen.

A man named Morsi was President of Egypt until he began to disregard the constitution of Egypt, to the extent that people rose up in Egypt in numbers greater than anywhere in the history of the world and demanded his ouster. As the Coptic Christian Pope has said, this wasn't a coup; this was the Egyptian people rising up as never before, reportedly, over twice the numbers that President Morsi claims voted for him to make him President.

It appeared he was doing as Chavez had done. It appeared he was doing, as one Egyptian told me, as the President who was elected in the Gaza Strip had done. Once he had an election, he pulled all the power to himself, and they didn't need elections after that. There would never be anybody defeat him, like Chavez did in Venezuela. They could see it happening. As one Egyptian told me in Egypt within the last few weeks, if the Egyptian people had waited another year to try to remove Morsi from office, they would have been unable, because he would have pulled that much power unto himself.

So I think accolades should go out to the Egyptian people for rising up and demanding democracy, demanding the fruition of a true Arab Spring, and for people who are ignorant or promoting lies, like Mr. Husain, if you would do some checking, you would find that I have moderate Muslim friends around the world. Anyone--Muslim, secularist, any persuasion, race, creed, color, or religion, if they believe in freedom, they are brothers in liberty. Something I think it would do well for this administration to learn at some point before it is too late is, we should be able to work with the enemy of our enemy.

Moderate Muslims in Afghanistan do not want radical Islamists leading and in charge of Afghanistan again. There is a simple answer to the problem of us leaving Afghanistan, which will soon become Taliban-run again, and this administration is bungling--even though the bungling began in the last administration, in fairness it did--but the final bungling will be by this administration if we don't take action to prevent those who fought for this country from believing their loved ones died in vain. I don't believe they did. They fought for liberty. But I have heard from too many family members who have lost loved ones in Afghanistan who have said, Don't let our loved ones have died in vain.

The Taliban were defeated in a matter of months in Afghanistan, and we did it with less than 500 embedded special ops and intelligence. We gave air support and provided some weapons, and they defeated the Taliban.

The former vice president under Karzai in the first administration, former Vice President Masood, a friend of mine--a Muslim--rushed out of his home to embrace me when I got there not too long ago, because he knew I was his friend. I don't want him to live under radical Islam. He doesn't want to live under radical Islam.

This friend said, Look, if you could just help us get an amendment to our constitution. I said, What are you talking about? He said, Under our constitution that you apparently rubberstamped, in essence, a strong centralized government was created in a country that has been and is and will be for the foreseeable future very tribal, very regional. We tried to make it into a strong centralized government when what the people wanted was a federalist system where the states, where the regions had some self autonomy like we are supposed to have in this country.

He said, If we could elect our own governors. It is a shock to so many that the constitution that we thought was okay under the Bush administration allows the President of Afghanistan to appoint the regional governors, to appoint the mayors, to appoint the chiefs of police. He appoints the top-level teachers. He appoints a slate of the legislators for a part of the legislature. He has powerful abilities to manipulate the purse strings.

What we created in Afghanistan--or helped them create--was a formula for disaster and corruption. How could you give one man that much authority to appoint and not expect corruption, when you get to appoint all the governors. As my friend, former Vice President Masood told me there at his home, if we could have an amendment that allowed us to elect our governors, allowed us to elect our mayors, allowed us to elect--or select, at least--our own chiefs of police, then our regions would be strong enough to prevent the Taliban from taking back over the whole country, and we could rally together, as we did before, to overrun them and run them out of the country.

I said, What makes you think that the United States could help push an amendment through your own constitution? That needs to happen here in Afghanistan, I said. He pointed out, Do you have any idea how much our federal government budget is? I had to admit I didn't know. He said, around $12.5 billion of your dollars. He said, Do you know how much Afghanistan provides of our $12.5 billion or so budget? I didn't know. About $1.5 billion.

Other moderate Muslims there were all in agreement, You need to help us with this. He said that most of the rest of that $11 billion comes from the United States. You have the leverage to help us get an amendment to our constitution.

Instead of trying to work out some messed up Status of Forces Agreement, as we have seen this administration try to do in Iraq, to no avail, instead of doing that, why don't we start pushing Karzai and say, you help get an amendment in there so you don't get to appoint everybody who is anybody in this country. We will let each state or each region elect their own governor. Let's get that amendment in there. Otherwise, we are going to cut every dime of support off. That might have some sway.

We have the ability, we have the leverage, and we have, for a little bit longer, before we totally lose it, some moral authority to seek that on behalf of our moderate Muslim friends in Afghanistan who don't want to be killed because they fought with us and for us in defeating the Taliban before we became occupiers, before we gave them a centralized government that the

Taliban can easily take over when we leave.

We owe them that, and we owe ourselves that, because if we can empower the enemy of the Taliban to continue to keep the Taliban at bay in Afghanistan, we have done a great thing. We have helped our country, and we have helped our moderate Muslim friends in Afghanistan who do not want to live under Taliban tyranny again, and they don't want to die and be killed because they helped us and then we abandoned them. We owe them that.

I hope Mr. Husain that is writing this garbage for The Washington Times will do a little research. He will also find out, if he did so, that President Morsi, the Muslim brother who was elected President, reportedly--some say it was a fraudulent election, or election results--but anyway, he was made President and then began to abuse the constitutional powers and tighten the reins around him.

I was told by friends who love Israel that this is really exciting because Morsi is really our friend. He is really cleaning up the Sinai. After Morsi was removed, we found out the Sinai has been incredibly militarized by Morsi. What would you expect of a man who had said that Jews are descendants of apes and pigs? That is not a friend of Israel.

Yet you have the Egyptian Government now taking action to demilitarize, to fight the radical Islamists in the Sinai that pose a threat to the Suez Canal, that pose a threat to our friend, Israel, and they are actually trying to take action. What did this administration do? They had promised 10 Apache helicopters to the Morsi presidency, to that regime.

When the people of Egypt rose up in true democratic form and demanded and got the ouster of a man trying to become a tyrant, this administration wanted Morsi put back in place, and even sent a couple of Republican senators over there to ask for Morsi to be released from prison. They didn't even know, as General el-Sisi finally admitted to me in the presence of our Ambassador, that, yes, they had evidence that Morsi was trying to have a contract to have General el-Sisi killed. Murdered. Trying to higher a contract killer. That was just one of the many problems that Morsi created.

President Morsi said he backed off his membership, his participation in the Muslim Brotherhood. Right. There is video of him having orders dictated, delivered to him, on what he should do by the supreme leader there.

What happened when Morsi was removed? The Muslim Brotherhood went berserk.

They began burning churches by the dozens, killing Christians, persecuting Jews and Christians like never before, persecuting moderate Muslims.

I am so proud of the people of Egypt. They want a democracy. A man named Amr Moussa was appointed as chairman of the Constitutional Convention. Incredibly diverse groups there, incredibly diverse interests; yet they all agreed on this to start out, under Moussa's leadership, that unless 75 percent of all of those delegates to the Constitutional Convention agreed on a provision, it wouldn't be there.

As Chairman Moussa pointed out to me personally, he said, you know, we learned from your Constitution. Basically, he said, you know, our prior constitution, under Morsi, had no provision for impeachment. There was no way to lawfully remove him under that constitution, which was the way Morsi wanted it.

In their new constitution, they have provisions for impeachment. And this Constitutional Convention was led by moderate Muslim friends like Amr Moussa. And it was endorsed by the Sheikh of al-Azhar, a very well- respected Muslim leader, and has been endorsed by so many Muslim leaders.

They don't want radical Islam in charge. Moderate Muslims can be and are our friends.

And instead, this administration canceled the order for the 10 Apaches, or at least suspended it. And what is Egypt doing with the Apaches they already have?

They are fighting radical Islamists in the Sinai, and they are making sure ships get through the Suez Canal. Well, that should be a worthy endeavor, worthy of this administration not condemning a true democracy-in-the-making in Egypt, but trying to help them keep the Suez Canal open, trying to help them demilitarize the radical Islamists controlling the Sinai, as a threat to the Suez, to Egypt and to our friends, Israel and Jordan, and others.

If that Constitutional Convention is approved, which will be voted on in Egypt January 14 and 15, article 64 is a provision for freedom, stating that freedom of belief is absolute. You have an absolute freedom to believe in whatever religious beliefs you care to believe in without the government's harm.

What we are seeing here is really, if it works out, the people approve it, is the beginning of what we saw in Turkey with Ataturk so many decades ago, when he overran radical Islam and Turkey bloomed and became a great nation under his leadership and under those who followed what he set forth.

Article 93 of the new Egyptian Constitution commits that Egypt is obligated to observe all human rights that Egypt has ever endorsed and in all treaties to which it has agreed.

Article 235 was shocking to me. In their new constitution, the moderate Muslims of Egypt, who want a democracy, they felt so badly about the radical Islamists that make up the Muslim Brotherhood burning so many churches, persecuting, killing so many Christians, that article 235 requires that the first parliament pass a law to deal with the churches that were burned to ensure that Egypt rebuilds those churches for them.

What a statement to the world about the freedom they want to see take place. That is why it was so moving to people that told me about being there firsthand during those, the revolutionary masses, as they came forward by the millions, holding hands, figuratively and literally, Christians, moderate Muslims, secularists, Jews, saying we don't want radical Islam.

It is high time this administration began helping the enemy of our enemy, instead of trying to help our enemy.

As General al-Sisi asked me, are you and the United States still with us in the war against terror?

He and others commented to the effect that United States leaders do not seem to believe we are still having to fight terrorists anymore. They are fighting them in this new government.

Now, to be sure, they have got a long, tough road ahead because they are already where this nation is heading, with a massive welfare state, where so many of the citizens are getting giveaways from the government, where they have tried this idea of redistribution of the wealth and it has led to many more and more richer people, and much, much poor people, just as we have seen in this Nation in the last 5 years, and it needs to stop.

Another thing that needs to stop was reported in Breitbart, written by Frances Martel: ``State Department Whistleblower Has E-Mail Hacked.'' The story talks about the whistleblower who helped expose misconduct by Hillary Clinton's security detail had his Gmail account hacked and key evidence against State Department officials deleted, according to an exclusive New York Post report.

Diplomatic Security Service Criminal Investigator Richard Higbie had exposed earlier this year that the State Department allegedly covered up reports alleging improprieties by Secretary of State Hillary Clinton's security detail in which they had engaged with prostitutes abroad. Those reports would have also exposed the Belgian Ambassador's alleged attempts to solicit. And it goes on.

But the article says the Gmail hack deleted 4 years' worth of messages, according to Schulman, including significant damning evidence against high-ranking officials in the State Department. It also included messages with evidence sent to Members of Congress and their offices investigating the story. Higbie has called for the FBI to investigate the hacking, and continues to have unanswered questions about other strange occurrences since he began to expose the covered-up investigation.

The article goes on, and that goes hand-in-hand with another story that was reported in the past 6 months or so of a whistleblower having her and her husband's home burglarized, and they ended up taking all of that reporter's files that she had used to expose

wrongdoing, misconduct, within the very department that raided her home and took her records and won't give them back.

At the same time, this administration continues to send people to the nation of Israel, the Jewish State, the home where people could come by the millions after 6 million were killed in the Holocaust of World War

Madam Speaker, tonight, one of the things we did was to take up the National Defense Authorization Act. It was to extend the power of the President.

There were some good things in it. I applaud the inclusion of the conscience exception that would allow members of the military to do as members of the military have done throughout our history--be able to have, for example, a Bible on a desk, which are things that now have begun to result in persecution--and, actually, knocks against the military--things that our greatest Commander in the history of our country, George Washington, felt were noble things. Under this administration's watch, these things have now begun to result in persecution.

When you go back to the bill, the Authorization for Use of Military Force, that was passed on September 18, 2001, when the United States did not even know who had attacked us, it is incredible. I don't fault the legislature at the time, the Congress--the House and the Senate. Americans were scared. Churches and synagogues were packed all over America. I have never seen anything like it in my lifetime the way people especially flocked to churches and were praying fervently. Then after there was not another attack within 90 days, it was as if Americans began to say, Never mind, God. We don't have to worry about that because we haven't been attacked again.

The NDAA is basically added to the Authorization for Use of Military Force against September 11 terrorists. That is the name of it.

It says in section 2(a):

The President is authorized to use all necessary and

appropriate force against those nations, organizations or

persons he determines planned, authorized, committed or aided

the terrorist attacks that occurred on September 11, 2001, or

harbored such organizations or persons in order to prevent

any future acts of international terrorism against the United

States by such nations, organizations or persons.

Then it sets out War Powers Resolution requirements consistent with section 8(a):

(1) Of the War Powers Resolution, Congress declares this

section as intended to constitute specific statutory

authorization within the meaning of section 5(b) of the War

Powers Resolution, 50 U.S.C. 1544(b).

It goes on and it is more extensive, and as I say, the NDAA actually modifies and extends things.

When that was passed, we didn't even know who had attacked us. I, obviously, was not here in Congress at the time, but we were afraid and concerned. We didn't know what was going to hit next, but it, perhaps, in retrospect, was a granting of more powers than should have been granted by the Congress because it is subject to being abused.

Fortunately, I don't consider it to have been abused by President Bush. Some blame him for Iraq. I wasn't here at the time, but I can't help but wonder when people supported the numerous successful efforts by President Bush at the United Nations in building a big coalition of countries to support our efforts to curtail Iraq's military efforts of not allowing U.N. inspectors to check on them. I don't blame the Democrats who voted for the authorization to go into Iraq, and I don't blame the Republicans, because Saddam Hussein gave every indication to the people who were in Congress at the time and to the President that he was up to no good. That was a long time ago.

Now we find that the President is using authorities that were granted, and this administration is using authority that was granted to do things like help rebels who we knew at the time in Libya had al Qaeda infused within them. We just didn't know how extensive, and many of us pointed that out. Now, this fall, we see that this administration has sent hundreds of tons of weapons to the Syrian rebels, and we find out that the Syrian rebels who are fighting a cruel dictator named Assad are engaging in more brutality, particularly against Christians, in the original roots where Christianity was born.

These are areas in which Apostle Paul established churches. It is the only city in the world that still speaks the original Aramaic that Jesus was believed to have spoken. This is an amazing place. This isn't just some trivial area in which a few Christians happen to be. This is right to the very founding of the Christian church. So many people came to America to have the freedom to worship without persecution. They fled Europe and fled other places so they could worship without persecution in a Christian church, and now this administration is using incredible powers that were bestowed on the President by Congress to help the wrong people.

I go back to a visit to the Middle East earlier this fall when allies basically were saying, We do not understand what you are doing. The Muslim Brotherhood is that which supports radical Islam, and it was the radical Islamists--the Muslim Brotherhood--that supported the 9/11 attacks. It was the Muslim Brotherhood that basically supported the training and all of the efforts the Taliban was doing. It is the Muslim Brotherhood that was engaged in trying to take down Qadhafi, which, without American help, they may not have done. It was the Muslim Brotherhood that took control in Egypt and was persecuting Christians as the Coptic Christian Pope, the Egyptian Pope, verified himself in meetings with him this fall. Now, in Syria, you are backing the people who are at war with you? We don't understand.

So it appears that we have gone from being at war, as President Bush talked about, with anyone who has supported the terrorists--you are either with us or you are with them--to now, not only not being at war with those who are at war with us, but to helping them.

As a Christian, to know that votes we have taken in Congress have helped enable this administration to provide weapons, weapons of war, to people who are brutalizing, raping, killing, seeing reports of the beheadings of Christians in Syria.

Though I greatly appreciate some of the things that were included in the NDAA, and in the past I have even helped work on bipartisan agreements, bicameral, with the Senate and the House, worked on an effort to rein in the President's authority to just indefinitely detain American citizens--and I think we had a great solution we worked together to get inserted, so I don't believe the President can do that any longer with the language now being used--I still can't continue to support what we are doing. I hope that we will have a bipartisan effort in the new year to actually end the authorization for use of military force against September 11 terrorists now that we seem to be helping those who are associated with the radical Islamist terrorists instead of being at war with them.

Horizon Industries

Mr. Speaker, it is an honor to stand here and congratulate the National Industries for the Blind, that is the NIB, on their 75th anniversary and the great work they do for Texas' First Congressional District.

NIB's mission is to ``enhance opportunities for economic and personal independence of persons who are blind, primarily through creating, sustaining, and improving employment.''

Unfortunately, 70 percent of working-age Americans who are blind are unemployed. However, the NIB is trying to reverse those upsetting trends by providing more employment opportunities for people who are blind through their more than 250 locations across the United States.

Horizon Industries, which is a division of the East Texas Lighthouse for the Blind, is located in Tyler, Texas, and currently employs 70 blind and visually impaired individuals. When I visit Horizon Industries, East Texas Lighthouse for the Blind, I am overwhelmed with amazement and appreciation for the dedication, the ability, the desire, and the outright help that

these visually impaired American wonders are working with.

Horizon, one of their jobs, they convert paper products into industrial cleaning cloths for the General Services Administration and its customers. These incredible employees have also manufactured 35,661 miles of parachute cord for the Department of Defense, much of which was shipped directly to our troops who are deployed in Iraq and Afghanistan. Horizon Industries has empowered blind Americans through employment since 1976.

These marvelous friends, whose visual impairment has heightened their other senses to an amazing extent, are dedicated, they love this country, they want to help this country, are a blessing and an asset to their community, to east Texas, to Texas, and this country. May God continue to bless these wonderful, lovable, dedicated Americans as they continue to bless America.

The Affordable Care Act

To address the Affordable Care Act, as it was improperly and inaccurately labeled, is an article from Ben Shapiro in Breitbart today that said:

On Friday, PolitiFact bowed to the inevitable and named

President Obama's ``If you like your health care plan, you

can keep it'' statement its Lie of the Year. That came after

PolitiFact labeled that statement ``half-true'' in June of

2012 and then defended its ``half-true'' rating in October

2013.

PolitiFact said:

It was a catchy political pitch and a chance to calm nerves

about his dramatic and complicated plan to bring historic

change to America's health insurance system, but the promise

was impossible to keep.

Of course, there's more to the story than that: the promise

was a lie when it was made, given that Obama knew at the time

that insurance plans would be canceled. But PolitiFact, even

in naming the statement the Lie of the Year, soft-pedaled it:

Obama fought back against inaccurate attacks with his own

oversimplifications, which he repeated even as it became

clear his promise was too sweeping.

So even PolitiFact, doing all they could to defend something that ended up absolutely not being true, they finally had to come around and actually admit when the whole country basically--most of the country-- could see the truth, even PolitiFact had to finally get around to being factual.

Here is another story from John Nolte, the Breitbart, 12 December, today. He said:

During Thursday's White House press briefing, the press

corps erupted in protest over the Obama administration's lack

of transparency and media access. The press corps seemed to

be in complete agreement that the Obama White House has been

less transparent than the Bush White House. Quite a

condemnation for the self-described ``most transparent

administration in history.''

I have also noted in the news today statements from some of our leaders in our Republican Party here in the House that immigration will be a top priority for 2014. I would not have a problem with immigration being a top priority in 2014 if the administration would first enforce the laws that enter in effect regarding this Nation's security and its immigration laws.

We had a hearing today in Judiciary and heard testimony about the administration from Immigration and Customs Enforcement, ICE, that actually they are not complying with the law. The law says if somebody claims asylum, then they are detained until such time that they have the matter ultimately adjudicated. We learned that actually about 75 percent of those claiming asylum, which has grown multiple times from where they were in 2008 when President Bush left, a dramatic, dramatic increase in numbers of people coming across our southern border and claiming asylum, and apparently this administration is releasing about 75 percent of them.

And I was quite sad to hear testimony that even though they are making policy, that these individuals, deputy directors, could not give us the exact numbers of how many people they were releasing, how many people reported back for their hearings; and so that was quite a bit discouraging.

So when you know that there have been so many misstatements by this administration that turned out to be far less than accurate or true, then I do not know why Republicans and Democrats would want to take up immigration. Just the discussion about legal status, amnesty, anything of the sort, creates a massive magnet drawing people across our borders illegally, as we have heard testimony repeatedly, statements repeatedly, from our ICE agents, our Immigration and Customs Enforcement people. They say it increases dramatically every time we start talking about legal status and amnesty. We see huge numbers of people, numbers that we get about the people dying coming across deserts, not having adequate water and food to get across. Why would we do something to create a magnet until we have a secure border?

There are a lot of things that need to be reformed. But for those who continue to say, oh, yeah, but we will have real security in the next bill, look, there is money that this administration has, there is manpower this administration has, there is the ability this administration has to secure our border. What it does not have is the will.

If it turned out the administration were really and truly serious about securing our border, they could be confirmed by the border States. Then you would see me, along with most of the people I know, willing to sit down and immediately work out an immigration reform package. But to debate it in committee and on the floor, to talk about it, to make speeches before the border is secure, I am afraid makes us complicit in drawing people across deserts that will not make it and will die in the desert because we started talking about promises, dangling shiny objects to draw people to us, when we had not put proper protection in place to make sure that innocent people did not die trying to get here.

For those who say we need to vastly broaden the number of visas, there are some areas that I am in favor of increasing visas. There are a lot of things we can talk about, but it does not serve those who we will draw across deserts who won't make it, it doesn't serve them any good purpose until the administration secures the border. So with all the wonderful talk about triggers and, oh, but we are going to finally secure the border, well, President Reagan got fooled on that and regretted it.

I just think it will be a terrible mistake to do anything other than take up a resolution. I filed one basically saying that until the administration secures our borders, as confirmed by the border States, not Homeland Security, which we have trouble getting straight answers out of, but as confirmed by the border States, who are important, critical stakeholders in the immigration and secure border issue, when they confirm the borders are secure, then we immediately move in to dealing with immigration reform. To do otherwise is a mistake that will do great damage to people that we draw in, unfortunately, to their great damage and possible demise; and it will do great damage to this country.

Let's get the immigration, set it on hold, not take anything up until the President is committed and does actually secure the border. Then we get something worked out, and it won't be a difficult issue at all. But for those that say, oh, I think we can trust Homeland Security or we can trust groups in Washington or we can trust Homeland Security, sure, we can trust this administration. They say that once we give them everything they want in an immigration bill, then they really and truly will start securing the border to the extent that the law requires.

I am sure I look stupid to some, but I say that is a massive mistake. Follow the law. If you won't enforce and follow and execute the law faithfully now in accordance with the oath that was taken at the beginning of office, then why should we think things will change after you have gotten everything you want and there is no more incentive to follow the law.

Well, we get back to the promises made about the so-called Affordable Care Act. Here is an article from The Wall Street Journal today that says ObamaCare raised the cost of your kids' braces. And again, those of us who have used the term ``ObamaCare,'' we don't mean anything any more derogatory than the President when he called Massachusetts health care ``RomneyCare.'' It was just a way to identify Massachusetts health care. The President didn't mean anything

derogatory when he says ``RomneyCare.'' People who use ``ObamaCare,'' including the President, don't mean anything derogatory, but it certainly identifies for people more than the Affordable Care Act does, as we have seen man-on-the-street interviews on television that people don't know the Affordable Care Act and ObamaCare are actually the same thing.

This article points out:

Here is something your orthodontist is not smiling about, a

new tax rule raised the cost of braces this year thanks to a

change from the Affordable Care Act that places an annual

$2,500 contribution cap on flexible spending accounts which

let workers set aside pretax dollars to cover medical

expenses. Some consumers may be spending more on braces,

expensive eyewear, or other medical supplies they would

typically buy with the accounts. Before the new rule, there

was no official cap on how much taxpayers could stash into

the account, although many companies typically set their own

limits of $5,000. For a person in the 25 percent tax bracket,

it cuts the maximum tax break in half to $625 from $1,250.

And then it goes on to explain how these increase the cost of braces and orthodontic care.

Another issue here, this article from The Wall Street Journal as well, dated December 11, says, ``Juking the ObamaCare Stats.'' It says:

Most of Washington seems to have bought the White House

claim that the 36 Federal exchanges are finally working, and

glory, glory, hallelujah. But if that is really true, then

what explains the ongoing secrecy and evasion?

We have had so much trouble getting specific, direct answers about people who have actually purchased insurance through the exchange.

Now, Health and Human Services, HHS, if they don't have these numbers, if they can't even tell us the number of people that have actually purchased insurance, then how in heaven's name will they ever be able to tell people whether or not they are actually covered and how extensively they are covered and whether or not they are going to take care of expenses. I mean, the fact that they can't come in here and give us specific information on who signed up, how many have signed up for this, that or the other, is a terrible harbinger for just how bad and disastrous this health care bill is.

As we have continued to have a number of hearings where we get nothing but obfuscation when specific facts are requested from the administration, we know that somebody has this information in this administration and it brought to mind the legal doctrine called spoliation. Now in our American courts in every State, in Federal court, we have very strict laws about the admittance of hearsay into evidence before a jury because our rules are there to protect the finder of fact, the jury, from hearing evidence which does not have really enough credibility to it, and hearsay has to be a specific exception or it is not allowed. It must be direct evidence; otherwise, it is not allowed, with very tight exceptions.

One exception that most jurisdictions, as we have in Texas, it is called spoliation. The doctrine is this, in essence. If one party in court has control of evidence that would be admissible toward proving or disproving a fact and that party does not, will not, or say they cannot produce that evidence to prove or disprove a fact, in that case the judge, as I used to be, could turn to the jury and instruct the jury that even though this is not direct evidence because of our justice system and the effort to achieve justice in America better than any court system in history, we can direct the jury under the doctrine of spoliation that this party had evidence in their possession that they have either refused to produce, cannot produce, or will not produce. Since this party has possession or had possession of that evidence, then, ladies and gentlemen of the jury, you may consider the fact that they are not producing that evidence as evidence itself that if produced that evidence would disprove what they are claiming. That is called, in essence, the doctrine of spoliation.

So that is the evidentiary doctrine that came to my mind as we continue to have hearings and the Obama administration fails to produce specific information about sign-ups to ObamaCare. So if we were in a court of law, it certainly appears that that instruction might be appropriate. Ladies and gentlemen of America, the administration has evidence in its possession that it either cannot, will not, or refuses to produce. Therefore, Americans, ladies and gentlemen of America, you may consider as evidence the fact that they will not produce that information as evidence that it does not support what they claim.

Basically, that is what we have here. They are refusing to produce evidence, information about ObamaCare. So I think the American people would be justified. I think a jury in my court would be justified in presuming, a legal presumption, that their failure to produce this evidence is evidence that their claims are not supported by the evidence they refuse to produce.

Here is an article from The Weekly Standard, December 11, entitled, ``Sexiest man alive brought in to boost ObamaCare enrollment.'' I don't really know who Adam Levine is; probably my daughters do. Apparently, he was designated as such by People magazine. Apparently he has been enlisted, according to Bloomberg, as having been hired by this administration to give credibility to ObamaCare.

To me, again, that seems like if you have to hire some sexy guy to come in and promote and tell people, promote ObamaCare as being so wonderful and great, it is a pretty clear indication that as people look into ObamaCare personally that they don't like what they see, and that is what we are hearing from most constituents. Thankfully, there are a few people who have benefited from ObamaCare; but the people we are hearing from, the vast majority, have been hurt, not helped.

Here again, another article from the Washington Examiner, Brian Hughes from today, actually 5:08 p.m. today. It says, ``HHS extends more ObamaCare deadlines.'' It goes on to talk about that the Obama administration announced today that they would take steps to push back an already delayed deadline, help those struggling to obtain health coverage on January 1, and extend a Federal insurance program for those with preexisting conditions.

They keep extending deadlines. If Harry Reid and Senate Democrats had not been so dead set on shutting down the government on October 1 as they did, if they had been at least willing to forgo their desire to shut down the government and hope Republicans got blamed, which they knew that the mainstream would do because the mainstream media would not actually look at the facts that the House was compromising repeatedly and the Senate was saying ``our way or the highway,'' basically, by their actions, making clear they wanted a shutdown. Well, they got the shutdown, and now, in retrospect, there have got to be Democrats in the Senate saying, You know what? Since we have to keep extending these deadlines, the American people are going to figure out we could have avoided that whole shutdown if Democrats had been even remotely reasonable in the Senate and said, Okay, let's go ahead and postpone this for a year because it is not going well.

Well, they wanted a shutdown and they got a shutdown, as the Senate Democrats wanted, and now there has got to be some buyer's remorse. They created the shutdown when they should have taken one of our various compromise offers and at least extended, suspended the individual mandate the way the President illegally did for businesses.

I want to touch on another thing quickly here. Iran is, as Israel has said repeatedly, an existential threat to the very existence of Israel. If they get nuclear weapons, they want to attack Israel first as the little Satan and they want to attack America next. And we have had Wendy Sherman, who is the lead negotiator for the Obama administration, come up and brief Members of Congress. I wasn't there because I had read about her policy leadership in working out the deal with North Korea under the Clinton administration which provided them nuclear power plants, fuel, got them up and going, and also agreed not to inspect their nuclear facilities, which gave North Korea time to develop nuclear weapons.

In order to get us to give them nuclear power plants and all they needed to make nuclear weapons, basically most of what they needed, all they had to do was promise they wouldn't pursue nuclear weapons. They have got to be thinking these Americans are the most stupid people in the world.

Sure, you want us to tell you we won't pursue nuclear weapons, we won't pursue them. Now give us what we need to make nuclear weapons and we will make nuclear weapons.

Here we have some of the same people involved with the Obama administration who want to do the same type of thing with Iran. The trouble is this time it really is a threat to the United States. It is a threat to Israel, and we have betrayed our ally, unfortunately, in Israel.

But anyway, here are the people in whom the Clinton administration and numerous people now in the Obama administration have such faith in. This article today, 5:07 p.m., ``North Korea State Media Says Uncle of Kim Jong Un Executed.'' Oh, these are great people. These are people that we shouldn't have trusted, but the Clinton administration did and Wendy Sherman did back in the 1990s. She continued to persist. Oh, we can trust these guys, even in her op-ed in 2001.

You couldn't trust them, and people who knew these people knew you couldn't trust the leadership. You can trust the North Koreans, but you can't trust their leadership. You can trust the Iranians, but you can't trust their leadership.

Here is another article in the National Review online entitled ``Nuclear Gangbangers.''

An observant Iran appreciates three laws of current nuclear

gangbanging:

1. Nuclear weapons earn a reputation.

2. The more loco a nuclear nation sounds, the more likely

it is that civilized states will fear that it is not subject

to nuclear deterrence, and so the more likely that they will

pay bribes for it to behave. Gangbangers always claim they

have nothing to lose; their more responsible intended targets

have everything to lose.

3. As of yet, there are no 100 percent effective nuclear-

defense systems that can guarantee non-nuclear powers

absolute safety from a sudden attack. The nuclear gangbanger,

not the global police, currently has the upper hand.

And this administration is turning a blind eye to the deceit and the lies and the nuclear development in Iran to our detriment and the detriment of our dear friend.

Madam Speaker, in the remaining time, since this is the last Republican Special Order time before we recess in the House for the Christmas holidays, the new year, I want to say that although it apparently irritates some liberals to no end and they miss the point of why it is important to read these historic statements, some people say, Gee, we are getting lots of calls from irate people saying that the things that are being read on the House floor by Congressman Gohmert are an affront and should never be allowed to be a part of the United States Government. They miss the entire point that the reason that I am reading them is because these poor people have not had a proper education. They do not know what a historic basis it is in going back to George Washington who created an order that you couldn't take God's name in vain, creating in his resignation a prayer for the Nation, talking about the divine author of our blessed religion and that without a humble limitation in these things that we can never hope to be a happy Nation.

There were the proclamations thanking God, directing people to have days of prayer. There were all of these things throughout our history. So, Madam Speaker, I hope Americans appreciate the profound things that have been done by America's leaders in the past.

This is from Franklin D. Roosevelt, December 24, 1933, in a Christmas greeting to the Nation. Again, it was okay in the 1930s, just as it was throughout our history, to thank God. No one ever had a problem with Democrats or Republicans paying tribute to God in the House Chamber, in the Senate Chamber, in the White House, anywhere. These are Franklin Roosevelt's comments. He said:

This year marks a greater national understanding of the

significance in our modern lives of the teaching of Him whose

birth we celebrate. To more and more of us the words ``thou

shalt love thy neighbor as thyself'' have taken on a meaning

that is showing itself and proving itself in our purposes and

daily lives. May the practice of that high ideal grow in us

all in the year to come. I give you and send you one and all,

old and young, a merry Christmas and a truly happy new year.

So for now and for always, ``God bless us every one.''

The following year on Christmas Eve, Franklin D. Roosevelt gave us these words from the White House, a government property. It was entirely proper. He said:

Let us make the spirit of Christmas of 1934 that of courage

and unity. That is, I believe, an important part of what the

Maker of Christmas would have it mean. In this sense, the

Scriptures admonish us to be strong and of good courage, to

fear not, to dwell together in unity.

That was just some of his comments.

Franklin D. Roosevelt, January 25, 1941, in the prologue of the New Testament published by the Gideons and distributed to soldiers during World War II--and I have one that my aunt provided me that she said my uncle had received. It says:

To the Armed Forces: As Commander in Chief, I take pleasure

in commending the reading of the Bible to all who serve in

the Armed Forces of the United States. Throughout the

centuries, men of many faiths and diverse origins have found

in the Sacred Book words of wisdom, counsel, and inspiration.

It is a fountain of strength and now, as always, an aid in

attaining the highest aspirations of the human soul. Very

sincerely yours, Franklin D. Roosevelt.

On December 21, 1941, two weeks after America was attacked, a day which will live in infamy, as President Roosevelt said, Franklin Roosevelt delivered this message:

Sincere and faithful men and women . . . are asking

themselves this Christmas how can we light our trees? How can

we give our gifts? How can we meet and worship with love and

with uplifted spirit and heart in a world at war, a war of

fighting and suffering and death? How can we pause even for a

day, even for Christmas day in our urgent labor of arming a

decent humanity against the enemies which beset it? How can

we put the world aside, as men and women put the world aside

in peaceful years, to rejoice in the birth of Christ?

President Roosevelt goes on. He says:

Looking into the days to come, I have set aside a day of

prayer, and in that proclamation I have said: ``The year 1941

has brought upon our Nation a war of aggression by powers

dominated by arrogant rulers whose selfish purpose is to

destroy free institutions. They would thereby take from the

freedom-loving peoples of the Earth the hard-won liberties

gained over many centuries. The new year of 1942 calls for

courage . . . Our strength, as the strength of all men

everywhere, is of greater avail as God upholds us.

Therefore, I . . . do hereby appoint the first day of the

year of 1942 as a day of prayer, of asking forgiveness for

our shortcomings of the past, of consecration to the tasks of

the present, of asking God's help in days to come. We need

his guidance that this people may be humble in spirit but

strong in conviction of the right; steadfast to endure

sacrifice, and brave to achieve a victory of liberty and

peace.

Our strongest weapon in this war is that conviction of the

dignity and brotherhood of man which Christmas day signifies.

President Roosevelt goes on:

Against enemies that preach the principles of hate and

practice them, we set our faith in human love and in God's

care for us and all men everywhere.

On January 6, 1942, President Roosevelt said:

Our enemies are guided by brutal cynicism, by unholy

contempt for the human race. We are inspired by faith which

goes back through all the years to the first chapter of the

Book of Genesis. ``God created man in his own image.'' We on

our side are striving to be true to that Divine heritage. We

are fighting, as our fathers have fought, to uphold the

doctrine that all men are equal in the sight of God. Those on

the other side are striving to destroy this deep belief and

to create a world in their own image, a world of tyranny and

cruelty and serfdom.

That was Franklin Roosevelt, 1942. He knew at the time that there were the axis powers, the evil powers that included Hitler in Germany, Mussolini in Italy, radical Islamists in North Africa joining forces together, and he talked about our heritage. Here he is a year later, Franklin Roosevelt. These are official statements, Madam Speaker. This is President Roosevelt's official government message:

To you who serve in uniform I also send a message of cheer

that you are in the thoughts of your families and friends at

home, and that Christmas prayers follow you wherever you may

be. To all Americans I say that loving our neighbor as we

love ourselves is not enough, that we as a Nation and as

individuals will please God best by showing regard for the

laws of God. There is no better way of fostering good will

toward man than by first fostering good will toward God.

Then President Roosevelt quotes John 14:15. President Roosevelt says:

If we love Him, we will keep His commandments. In sending

Christmas greetings to the Armed Forces and merchant sailors

of the United Nations we include therein our pride

in their bravery on the fighting fronts and all the seas.

It is significant that tomorrow, Christmas day, our plants

and factories will be stilled. That is not true of the other

holidays we have long been accustomed to celebrate. On all

other holidays work goes on gladly for the winning of the

war. So Christmas becomes the only holiday in all the year. I

like to think that this is so because Christmas is a holy

day. May all it stands for live and grow throughout the

years.

That was Franklin D. Roosevelt.

In 1944, December 24, the official government statement by Franklin Roosevelt as President was:

It is not easy to say ``merry Christmas'' to you, my fellow

Americans in this time of destructive war, nor can I say

``merry Christmas'' lightly tonight to our Armed Forces at

their battle stations all over the word, or to our allies who

fight by their side. Here, at home, we celebrate Christmas

Day in our traditional American way because of its deep

spiritual meaning to us; because the teachings of Christ are

fundamental in our lives; and because we want our youngest

generation to grow up knowing the significance of this

tradition and the story of the coming of the immortal Prince

of Peace and good will.

He goes on:

But in perhaps every home in the United States sad and

anxious thoughts will be continually with the millions of our

loved ones who are suffering hardships and misery and who are

risking their very lives to preserve for us and for all

mankind the fruits of his teachings and the foundations of

civilization itself.

The Christmas spirit lives tonight in the bitter cold of

the front lines in Europe and in the heat of the jungles and

swamps of Burma and the Pacific Islands. Even the roar of our

bombers and fighters in the air and the guns of our ships at

sea will not drown out the message of Christmas which comes

to the heart of our fighting men.

President Roosevelt goes on:

The tide of battle has turned, but slowly, but inexorably

against those who sought to destroy civilization. We pray

that this day may come soon. We pray, until then, God will

protect our gallant American and women in the uniforms of the

United Nations, that He will receive into His infinite grace

those who make their supreme sacrifice in the cause of

righteousness and the cause of love of Him and His teachings.

President Roosevelt finishes by saying:

We pray that with victory will come a new day of peace on

Earth, in which all the nations of Earth will join together

for all time, that in the spirit of Christmas, the Holy Day,

may that spirit live and grow throughout the world in all the

years to come.

And then finally, close with this, Madam Speaker. This is Franklin Roosevelt, January 20, 1945. This is part of his last inaugural address. And as I finish with this, may I say, Madam Speaker, that I know all of us here in the House and the Senate, no matter what our persuasions, have these same very best wishes as Franklin Roosevelt had for our American troops, our men and women in uniform today, just as those wishes were made 68 years ago.

This was 1945. Roosevelt said:

As I stand here today, having taken the solemn oath of

office in the presence of my fellow countrymen, in the

presence of God, I know that it is America's purpose that we

shall not fail. The Almighty God has blessed our land in many

ways. He has given our people stout hearts, strong arms with

which to strike mighty blows for freedom and truth. He has

given to our country a faith which has become the hope of all

people in an anguished world.

President Franklin Roosevelt finishes by saying:

So we pray to Him now for the vision to see our way

clearly, to see the way that leads to a better life for

ourselves and for all our fellow men, to the achievement of

His will, to peace on Earth.

Roosevelt finishes by saying:

In the presence of God, I know that it is America's purpose

that we shall not fail.

Madam Speaker, if we keep that same faith of Franklin Roosevelt, in his official capacity as President of the United States, he is right. God will not let us fail.

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

Mr. Speaker, I was grateful to hear from my dear friend--and I do mean dear friend. I think greatly of Ms. Kaptur. I was glad to hear somebody has gotten a good report on the so-called Affordable Care Act.

We are continuing to hear sad story after sad story of people continuing to be laid off, people continuing to be cut from full-time to part-time and people being forced onto food stamps because they just can't make it with the loss of income going from full-time to part- time, the loss of their insurance.

And as people have now realized across the country, though we were told there were 30 million without insurance, it looks like by next fall, November of next year, there will probably be many more than that that lost their insurance even though they liked it and wanted to keep it. Because, as we know, if you like your insurance, there is a good chance you won't be able to keep it.

There is a story from December 11, ``Four in Ten Would Rather Pay Fine Than Buy Insurance.''

I am sure there are people like me. You take a look at how much the insurance is going to cost, how much it has skyrocketed several times more than what I have been paying if I were going to keep insurance with the deductible now skyrocketing and dramatically increasing under the potential policies, higher than what I have now, and when I look at the costs several times higher than what I have now, and since I am not accepting the subsidy and I am not paying into the attending physician for that care, I will be going without insurance.

It has been amazing to me how many in the liberal media--and I say ``media'' loosely, because they are really in the business of trying to protect this administration and twist stories any way they can to make anyone who objects to something this administration has done look bad, so I will loosely

refer to them as ``media''--how they have been aghast that anyone would even consider going without insurance. And it really is a lesson in how far this country has moved, in so many ways.

I know, in the early sixties, there was no such thing as Aid to Dependent Children, that program born out of the best of intentions because deadbeat dads were not a small minority of Americans. Different races, different backgrounds--some even well-off--were just not assisting financially the children they had fathered, and so the government wanted to help.

So, in the mid-sixties, here came the Great Society. We want to help these people--these poor moms--who had to deal with deadbeat dads who wouldn't help. They said, We will help. We will give them a check for every child they can have out of wedlock. As people who study governments and government assistance, it is well documented: when you pay for an activity, you get more of that activity. We went from 6 to 7 percent of children in America being born without a father in the home to now over 40 percent, and it still seems to be heading upwards toward 50 percent. The United States Government in the 1960s, not by what it said but by where it put its money, decided we would be a lot better off with more fatherless homes. Nobody was saying that, and I don't believe anybody intended that result, but it is what they got. In the act of paying people for an activity, you get more of that activity. So we had more children growing up in fatherless homes.

Also, back in those days, health care was so much cheaper. It wasn't at the extraordinary level that it is now. It wasn't nearly as expensive. Even though I was a small child, I didn't know people who had health insurance because, for so long, nobody had health insurance. If you had a problem, you went to the doctor, and they assessed you a charge after your visit, after they saw what the doctor did. He would write something down on your chart. We went to a few different doctors there in my small hometown of Mount Pleasant--a great town. I still love it. There are still great doctors there--but back in those days, people in my hometown in east Texas knew what doctors were charging what for what. I mean, you could actually compare apples and apples when it came to health care. If you found out some doctor said he was going up on his prices and another doctor had not gone up on his prices, then you went to the doctor who was cheaper unless you felt like he wasn't as good, but we had a number of really excellent doctors, and they cared about their patients.

Then, eventually, you heard of somebody having health insurance, and it was true insurance. A small premium was paid either monthly, quarterly, semiannually or annually, but it was a small premium to insure against a catastrophe--a dramatic illness, a car wreck-- something that you could not foresee. You paid a small premium to insure against this unforeseen event just in case it happened down the road because, during those days, Americans were very independent. Americans did not want to go on welfare. Most Americans did not want to receive government handouts--they felt like it was a matter of pride-- and they certainly did not want an insurance company telling them what doctor they could go to, what hospitals they could go to or which hospitals they couldn't go to, which doctors they couldn't go to, which medicines they could not get if the doctor prescribed them. They didn't want an insurance company telling them, if they needed to go to this doctor because he was an expert on this type of treatment, that you couldn't go there because it wasn't in your plan. What plan? I am the only one who is planning for my life. No insurance company is going to tell me where I can or can't go. I mean, that was the type of independent thought that there was in America.

There were a lot of problems in those days, and I thank God for Martin Luther King, Jr., because, through his actions and his life and his efforts, through peaceful protest--some around him got upset and didn't always abide by peace, but the man proclaimed everything needed to be done in peace because he was an ordained Christian minister, and he knew those were the teachings of Jesus. Because he did what he did, some people say that what he did for America was he allowed African Americans to be treated as equals. I would submit to you, since I was very young, what he did was allow me to grow up and mature in an America in which as a young, white Christian I could treat brothers and sisters like they were brothers and sisters. It didn't have to matter what color anybody's skin was. They could be judged by the content of their character and not by the color of their skin. That was a great thing for America.

As we progressed toward making America a greater place with more liberties, more equality, more freedom, at the same time--really unrelated--there was this effort of let's start giving money from the government to individuals or to individual programs that, though unintended, would make them more dependent upon the government for their lives and their livelihoods. People quit thinking as independently. Oh, well. The government is giving me money, so maybe they would do good to tell me what I can or can't do with a few things. Then, eventually, more and more employers had employees saying, Hey, I know this other company. Their employer is buying health insurance for their employees. That would be helpful because then I wouldn't have to ever worry about having a terrible accident or some cancer or some terrible disease that would bankrupt my family. So more employers started adding health insurance to their benefits. Unfortunately, it created a system in which the employer owned the insurance policy instead of the employee. The employer was paying for it, so the employer owned it.

One of the reforms that many of us were proposing, instead of the catastrophe known as the so-called Affordable Care Act, was that we wanted employees to own their insurance policies. Fine and dandy if an employer wanted to pay for insurance, but the employees should own them so that, if the employees go somewhere else, they are still their policies. They are portable, and they go with them. They still pay the same rates, and they aren't jacked up through a COBRA plan or something like that. Somehow, along the way, we grew more and more dependent on insurance companies to manage our own health care, and at the same time, as things like Medicare were created to help those seniors who needed help, more and more dependence grew upon the government, itself. The problem with an insurance company or with a government managing someone's health care is that they get to say what you get and what you don't get in the way of treatment.

So it has been quite an evolution to the point at which we are now where your religious beliefs, under the United States Constitution, have been so weakened and so nullified that now the United States Government can pass a law like the so-called Affordable Care Act--it is hard for me to just call it the ``Affordable Care Act'' because it is so disastrously expensive and unaffordable for so many people, including for me now.

The government could say, You may believe with all of your heart because of your religious conviction that abortion is the murder of a life and being, but we, the government, now control your health care, and you don't have that religious choice anymore. Oh, it may be a matter of conscience. It may be that, without regard for religion, you believe that killing a life and being that could live on its own outside the womb would be murder, but we, the government, now say you have to help pay for that type of murder. Even 20 years ago, nobody would have believed that we would get to the point where the government could order an American to pay for the killing of another, albeit an unborn child.

I guess it really comes home to me because of our first child being born 8 to 10 weeks prematurely and holding her in two hands. I could have held her in one hand, and I kind of did from time to time, but usually, in those early days, I used two just because she was so fragile, and I just did not want to risk someone I loved so much being harmed. The doctor there at the hospital in Shreveport, where our child was taken--she was very fragile--said, Look, talk to your child. She knows your voice. Her eyes don't work very well, but she knows your voice because

she could hear your voice when she was in the womb. It is very comforting, and it really gives her a feeling of security to hear your voice. If you just caress her little arm or her little forehead while you talk to her, it is such a comfort. She knows you. She can't see you, and she doesn't know what you look like, but this child has known you from long before she was born, so talk to her and touch her.

I put my finger down by her hand. So many people have had this happen, but when it happens to you, it is so special. This tiny, little hand would wrap around the end of my finger and just hang on and not let go. She wanted to live. She knew me, as the doctor said, before she was ever born. The doctor pointed out later as he came by--as we noticed on the monitors--her breathing was still extremely shallow as her lungs were not quite developed, and her heart rate was still escalated, but they stabilized as long as she was holding on. He said, She draws security. She draws life. She draws your love. So, in my heart, in my mind, in my soul, I know that child knew me before she was born, and I was a comfort to her. My wife had to stay in the hospital in Tyler for a few days. It was really emotionally difficult, as well as physically, what she had been through.

But now the government would say, Though it may absolutely devastate you and break your heart to know of some young girl who wants an abortion, you are going to have to help pay for it--pay for the abortion.

Even 20 years ago, that would have seemed inconceivable that anybody in the United States, any governmental entity--whether it is executive, legislative or judicial--would say even though they support abortion they are going to make somebody who had religious beliefs fervently against it pay for it. But under ObamaCare, under the so-called Affordable Care Act, that has happened.

Some of us told the President we have solutions; we have sent word to the White House many times we have solutions. We have been told--and we heard the President say it again here recently in the last few days-- that they don't have any solutions. I remember him saying those same things back 4 years ago when, obviously, it was spoken out of ignorance. I know he didn't intend to deceive anybody. He apparently did not know that there were people who had great alternatives.

For my part, the bill I proposed, the solution I proposed, would return control of people's health care to themselves. If you like Medicare and you are a senior, great, stay on Medicare; but if you would like a Cadillac policy, not a bronze but a gold-plated, platinum- plated policy, then we will pay for that. Say $5,000 now might be an appropriate--of course, some of the policies I was looking at, a $5,000-$6,000 deductible, policies like that makes them a lot cheaper for seniors--and then give the seniors the cash for the whole deductible so they wouldn't be out a dime.

I proposed that to representatives of the AARP. They were so gracious, came to my office, I explained it: this would be so awesome for seniors because it means they will never have to buy another supplemental policy; they will never have to buy another wrap-around insurance policy. And seniors' money is so tight on Social Security. It is really tight. I know a family that struggled, but they bought the supplemental policy.

Now, won't that be great? I know AARP cares so much about seniors. This would be great. Well, we will have to look at it, look at it closely, give us some more information and we will look at it. Stupid me, I was just too naive. I didn't know AARP made many more times off selling supplemental insurance than they did off membership dues or anything like that, that it was just a cash cow for AARP to sell supplemental insurance.

So, of course, they couldn't afford to say that a policy that just really was a wonderful thing for seniors--no more out-of-pocket for deductible, co-pay, this just took care of them, and they made their own choices, and they had a debit card to pay for their health care all the way through their deductible amount. How could I expect AARP when they are making hundreds of millions of dollars clear profit off of supplemental policies say, oh, let's forego the supplemental policies for the good of seniors. So, obviously, they didn't.

But we can and do have alternatives for health care reforms that are true reforms that get competition back in health care. How can you have a free market system working in health care if nobody knows what any procedure, anything really costs? If it is medicine, they know their co-pay.

We have got to get back to the point where people know what things cost and they have more direct control. If we get to a place where we are truly helping those who cannot help themselves and we make it advantageous for those to put in a health savings account money so that they can take care of their own deductible if they are under 65, they are not on Medicare and bill to that point, and then it becomes very clear that most people when they start at an early age will have so much money in their health savings account built up that they hadn't spent over the years that they not only will not want the government telling them what kind of health care they can have, they won't need it.

And then for those who are young and chronically ill that will never build up an HSA, those who are actually unable to help themselves, we help them. There is a very small percentage that would be; but under the Affordable Care Act, as it is called, unjustly, the government gets control. As I have said, it is all about the GRE, the government running everything. They get to run your lives because when they can control health care, they can control everything.

They control not only what is in your bedroom--I have heard so many folks on the other side of the aisle say, we don't want the government in the bedroom. Well, I don't either; but now by the bill they passed, ObamaCare basically puts the government in every room in your house. They tell you--well, it is just so invasive.

But if we can get back to the day where insurance companies and the government did not tell people what they could or couldn't have for their well-being, if we restored the independence to Americans by helping the economy just bring about a new economic renaissance--I have talked to so many people. They are in business and they are so afraid. They are afraid to hire anybody because of ObamaCare. They are afraid because of the EPA or the intrusiveness of the Justice Department, OSHA, all of these governmental agencies that come out of nowhere when you are trying to stay in business and keep your employees paid.

If they didn't have to worry so much about a government that is so invasive, this economy would take off. People would be making so many times more than what they are in so many places. We would end up being energy independent. What we thought we never could be 9 years ago when I first got here, we can be that. We use natural gas that we have got hundreds of years of. Just what we know, for goodness sake. Then we could be not only energy independent; that would mean we were not funding any country's terrorism where some of their energy money goes for terrorism. We would see an economic renaissance; we would see the economy explode, and people would have enough money.

With all the money they would be getting paid, they would be able to say, look, Doctor, I want to know how much you are charging and how much you are charging because you are both very good doctors. But if one of you is charging $6,000 for an MRI and one of you is charging $400 for an MRI--and I have been challenged on that and actually I am familiar with what some insurance companies have paid for MRIs over the years, because as an attorney when you help somebody who has been in a car wreck or been injured by the negligence of another, if you have a settlement or you win a court case, then you are required under Texas law to put that money in an escrow account and you cannot distribute it until such time as the medical has been paid. So you had to make sure everybody had been paid.

When they were paid in full, then you checked if there was a health insurance company. Okay, everybody says they have been paid in full; I have got documentation from all the health care providers you have paid them in full under

their agreement with you. So now all I need to know is how much you paid for these charges, and then I reimburse you, and then I can disburse what is in escrow.

There were companies that had paid less than $400 for an MRI, much less. So anyway, our CAT scans, it is amazing how little--and I have seen bills recently $6,000 being charged for an MRI. Well, they are not getting paid $6,000. But then, on the other hand, if you come in and say, I need an MRI, but I don't have insurance, then normally they will cut you a deal. Okay, you are paying cash, we may cut you a deal. Say they had a 50 percent off sale: we will only charge you $3,000. Well, for heaven's sake, why couldn't you just pay what Blue Cross paid? Why couldn't you pay what Aetna paid?

That is the kind of thing a real reform would get us back to. You don't get a bill for $6,000 or nobody goes to them anymore. You have to know what is being charged, and we have got to get control back to the individual.

Anyway, when you are looking at how much things cost, I can identify with people in America. We have three daughters; they finished their college. We had set money aside years ago when I was in private practice making more money--actually, in municipal bonds, and when they got in college it was going to more than take care of each year. But after I had a huge cut in pay to go become a State district judge--I felt like it was something of a calling, something to help my community, a way to give back, even though you really put a lid on what you can make financially--we ended up going through that money.

I was determined that my three girls would not have to pay college loans that they wouldn't have had to pay if their father had not gone into public service. This was my contribution to the community, to Texas, to the country. I shouldn't force a contribution onto my children when their college should have been taken care of. So my wife and I are paying the college loans for our children.

So when you start adding up the expenses and you see the amount of the loans and what has to be paid and then you see you have health insurance here that is now skyrocketing, deductible going dramatically up, wow. I know some have written, gee, what if you are in the hospital for a few days and run up $180,000 or so in health care costs? Well, the answer is easy. If I or my wife ran up $180,000 in health care costs and I don't have insurance, then I would go to the health care providers--as I have done back in the days when I was an attorney--what kind of deal can we cut here, because I pretty well know what the insurance companies are paying you and I expect to get the same kind of deal or we will go to another hospital that will do this kind of cash deal for us? Maybe you take out a note for $18,000 and pay everybody off.

I have been surprised, even conservatives in the media have not really been aware of how little health care actually costs. They see a bill, like one in the media that said, hey, my father had heart surgery, he could never have paid that $150,000 in expenses, but Medicare took care of it. And as I told him, if you think that costs $150,000, you are not near as smart as I used to think you were. But you negotiate and you work it out and you take out a note and you pay that off.

I know that there are people running around the country saying, oh, no, oh, no, what if you don't have insurance? Well, nobody in America had insurance at all not that long ago. I don't want to go back to those days. We have made so much progress. But why not build to the point where those who can build a health savings account do that?

I am encouraging our leadership: let's don't wait until ObamaCare comes crashing down and the world gets so angry that they demand a repeal and it does get repealed. Let's go ahead and start having hearings now on how good real reform would be, where we have competition, where people get to make their decisions, where people are encouraged to, and do, build a health savings account where they get to decide who they see, that there is no doctor that is out of the plan.

We need to restore liberty to Americans while giving them a safety net, not a trap net from which you can never arise. It ought to be a safety net where you can come out of; but it is more like we are capturing Americans with a net thrown over them and the government now has that net over you and you can never get out from under. We control everything about you.

And now we have added 18,000, or we are in the process of adding 18,000 IRS agents. If you think a proctologist looks closely into your situation, wait until the IRS agents get hold of you.

I mean it should not be that way. We have got to restore freedom in America. This article says, ``4 in 10, we would rather pay the fine than buy insurance.'' People in the media are freaking out, how stupid, how crazy. Well, actually, it doesn't help the survival of ObamaCare or the Affordable Care Act, as it is improperly named.

My staff has given me this. We just had someone else report that here is another constituent whose policy expires July 2014, but they stand to lose $40,000 if they try to keep it. They can't get definitive information, but they had to make a decision by December 7, and they don't know what to do. And they are sure not getting that help from the Web site.

Here is an article, ``Oregon signs up just 44 people for ObamaCare despite spending $300 million.'' Well, there was a great investment. Well, probably as good as investing it in Solyndra and all the other solar companies. ``Paper Application Missing From Healthcare .gov,'' another great article, Jeryl Bier from the Weekly Standard. ``ObamaCare sign-ups rise, but 800,000 short of their goal.'' All of these are really harbingers of the complete failure of ObamaCare.

I don't mean anything derogatory by using the term ``ObamaCare.'' I am sure that President Obama didn't mean anything derogatory by calling health care in Massachusetts ``RomneyCare.'' So just as I am absolutely certain the President never meant--and Democrats never meant--anything offensive by using the term ``RomneyCare,'' we don't mean anything offensive or derogatory by using the term ``ObamaCare.'' The President embraced it one time.

Anyway, it requires looking at more closely the reforms that need to be made. I would rather have insurance. I wasn't crazy about my insurance, but I liked it okay. We had health savings accounts. We have got to work out what do we do with the money we built up in our health savings account. Hopefully, Aetna is not going to screw us over and not let us have the money we built up.

There were certainly some reforms that needed to be made to the health savings account law so that we do have more flexibility. You could put unlimited amounts in there, but once it is in there, it has to be used for health care. You can't pay a penalty and fine and take some out. So that you build some up, you could give some of your HSA out to, say, a Salvation Army HSA.

I know there is not one out there right now, but those kind of things. You could gift some of your HSA to your children without tax implications. You have money in your HSA when you pass away, then you could leave it to your heirs or to a charity HSA. I mean, there are all kinds of great things that we could do if we passed proper laws to make this work better.

But the goal would ultimately be to have health care affordable. The President and so many keep saying, you know, interchangeably, health care and health insurance. They are not the same thing. You can get health care without having any health insurance. I know that because I have waited hours behind people in the emergency room with children or with family, seniors. I have known that people ahead of us, that didn't have any money, didn't have any insurance, they got health care just like I did, at the emergency room. That was when I had insurance and my in-laws had insurance, Medicare, but everybody was getting the same kind of care.

So health insurance and health care for my liberal friends in the media, Mr. Speaker, they are not the same thing. They are not the same thing at all.

Syria

Mr. Speaker, I also want to comment before we're done here today about what is going on in Syria, because there is so much false information going on. There are many really fine people, including friends in

the Senate who are smart people but are just actually ignorant of the facts on the ground there.

This administration had decided that we should support the Syrian rebels. There are indications that this administration, because Congress has not specifically appropriated in so long, the administration figuratively has got sacks of money and so they decided, Oh, we will support the rebels in Syria.

Now, 2 to 3 years ago, it might well have been Syrians who were not radical Islamists, who wanted freedom, but this government didn't step in until the rebels were infused with and really governed by more radical Islamists.

The stories that are going on in Syria, just like others in the Middle East, the horrors of what the Muslim Brotherhood, the radical Islamists were doing in Egypt, especially after Morsi got arrested-- this administration blamed the military when actually, as the Egyptian pope told me, this was not a coup. This was the Egyptian people rising up, wanting to be free of radical Islamists leading.

These were moderate Muslims, secularists, Christians, hand in hand, arm in arm, protesting, demanding Morsi be forced out by the military. It was an uprising of greater numbers than participated in the American Revolution. The Egyptians rose up in greater numbers than they ever have in the world. They were seeking both moderate Muslims, Christians, Jews, secularists, other religions. They were just wanting not to be ruled by radical Islam.

Instead, this administration and some Senators, including from my party, felt like we ought to be helping the rebels that were just really infused and overtaken by radical Islamists.

As moderate Muslims told a few of us in Congress back in September: What do you guys not understand? I mean, it was the Muslim Brotherhood that really was behind the attack on 9/11/2001. It was technically the Taliban, but basically it is Muslim Brotherhood you were at war with in Afghanistan. It is Muslim Brotherhood that you have now helped in Libya, helped in Egypt, now helping in Syria. What do you not understand? These are the guys that have been at war with you. We are moderate Muslims. We don't want them taking over things.

For some reason, it sure seems to be because of the advice this administration is getting from people that Egyptian media had indicated were Muslim brothers at the highest levels of advice that this administration gets. But as a result, this administration thinks we need to keep helping these radical Islamist-infused rebels that are absolute terrorists. They are doing the most unthinkable, unimaginable acts to Christians, especially Christians. And as a report in Britain has indicated recently, Christians are the most persecuted group in the world right now. This administration is choosing to help the people over and over, help the people, help the groups that are most radically brutalizing Christians.

Here is an article from The New York Times, ``Brutality of Syrian Rebels, Posing Dilemma in West.'' It talks about just the horror and the disgusting nature of the killings that were going on against unarmed civilians, and yet we are supporting the rebels?

Here is one, ``Media urge Syrian rebels to stop kidnappings.'' Hmm, well, fortunately that was written a long time ago.

Here is one, ``2 Bishops, Priest, 12 Nuns Still Missing After Being Kidnapped By Syrian Rebels,'' by Lee Keath of the AP. It talks about the horrible nature of those kidnappings.

I had the honor of having a visit today by Mother Agnes.

Some in the left-wing media who were so overwhelmed with trying to protect this administration, they don't want to look facts in the face. They want to try to destroy the reputation of anyone with whom they disagree. They have taken Voltaire's attributed line, ``I disagree with what you say, but will defend to the death your right to say that,'' and kind of disintegrated it into ``I disagree with what you say, and I want to destroy you for doing so.''

I have read a number of terrible things about Mother Agnes in the last couple of days, but I met with her. Some had written that she is just the basic primary defender of the Assad regime. She told me she is not defending Assad; he is a bad man. But, as she said with a little twinkle in her eye, the media is getting out in the open everything that seems to be done wrong by the Assad regime. Anything brutal, anything inappropriate the media is getting that out there. I am just trying to get the full story out.

Yes, Assad is not a good man, but the people that are trying to take over now are worse. She knew these nuns who had been kidnapped. She knew these people who had been persecuted and brutalized. She knew of people personally of having unthinkable acts done to them by these Syrian rebels that this administration has been choosing to help.

Well, we get finally to a story that says that the administration was going to cut off--I thought I had it here--but a story about the administration would suspend assistance to the rebels because of the horrors and the brutality of what they were doing. That is nice, but these stories have been coming out for years, for at least a couple of years. Stories even here from The New York Times, ``Brutality of Syrian Rebels Posing Dilemma in West,'' that story was September 5. And around those same times there were stories about this administration sending hundreds of tons of weapons to these people who were brutalizing Christians.

How long does it take? I realize there are all kinds of things that demand people's time when you are a leader of a great Nation like the United States. You have to stop and do a selfie from time to time. There are all kinds of things that disrupt your time. But at some point, somebody should have gotten information and said, Look, you know, you want to help the radicalist Islamist rebels in Syria. Really, some of the brutality on Christians has really gotten kind of rough even for us. Maybe we ought to suspend that. That should have gone on months ago. And yet this administration was determined to help.

``Syrian Rebels Attack Christian Village, Behead Priest,'' Katie Pavlich. Whew, man.

Rebels have attacked a Christian village in the war-torn

country of Syria, beheading priests, brutally killing others.

Not surprisingly, the rebels have ties to al Qaeda.

This is from townhall.com:

The rebels launched the assault on the ancient Christian

village of Maaloula--which is on a UNESCO list of tentative

World Heritage sites. The village, about 40 miles, 60

kilometers, northeast of Damascus, is home to about 2,000

residents, some of whom still speak a version of Aramaic, the

ancient language of biblical times believed to have been

spoken by Jesus.

Heavy clashes between President Bashar Assad's troops and

Nusra Front fighters persisted in surrounding mountains

Thursday, according to the Observatory, which collects

information from a network of anti-regime activists.

Speaking by phone from a convent in the village, a nun told

The Associated Press that the rebels left a mountaintop hotel

Thursday after capturing it a day earlier. The nun said the

frightened residents expect the Islamic militants to return

to the Safir hotel and resume shelling of the community.

``It's their home now,'' the nun said.

Al Qaeda-led rebel force groups have also reportedly vowed

to continue their attacks on Christians as soon as the United

States ``liberates'' the country from its President Bashir

al-Assad.

Yesterday, Republican Senator John McCain inserted an

amendment into a resolution approving military force in Syria

with a goal of shifting the power on the battlefield from the

Assad regime and to rebel forces.

On September 4, 2013, John McCain said:

My amendment calling for changing momentum on the

battlefield in Syria passed SFRC by voice vote, a significant

measure.

Meanwhile in Egypt, Coptic Christians continue to be

slaughtered and nearly 100 churches have been burned to the

ground.

President Obama and Secretary of State John Kerry haven't

commented on the brutality against Christians in Syria and

have done very little to protect Christians living in Egypt

from violence being waged by the Muslim Brotherhood.

An objective look at what happened in Egypt is very clear. After the masses, the millions of Egyptians rose up and said, Enough. President Morsi has been usurping powers that don't belong to him under our Constitution. And under the Egyptian Constitution, there is no power of impeachment. So we demand that the military remove this unconstitutionally acting leader so that we can set up new elections.

I am urging the people in Egypt to go ahead and get those elections done so you get back to having a more democratic process, having a more republican form of government. I don't mean republican like the Republican Party. I am talking about Republic as Ben Franklin when the lady asked what have you given us, and he said, ``A Republic, Madam, if you can keep it.''

It was clear that Morsi was not going to allow the Egyptian people to keep their republic. The people rose up and demanded that they be able to keep their republic by having the military remove Morsi. They did remove him. I still can't find anyone in the media that is reporting what General al-Sisi said to me in the presence of our acting U.S. Ambassador to Egypt, in the presence of Democrat and Republican Members of Congress that, yes, they had evidence that Morsi was trying to contract to have General al-Sisi murdered before he was arrested.

Yet this administration, not only was very supportive of Muslim Brother Morsi, but when he was removed, they threatened to cut off aid if they didn't get him back. And after they refused to get him back, then this President cuts off all aid to Egypt. It is amazing because, as this article points out, it was not until Morsi was arrested that the Muslim Brotherhood started staging these violent acts--burning churches, killing Christians. They were persecuting anyone who disagreed with them. The military did a very good thing. They cracked down on the Muslim Brotherhood, they stopped the burning of churches, they stopped the killing of Christians. As the Egyptian Pope has told me:

They did a good thing. We are not threatened like we were

before they stopped it all. Please, tell your government that

the military has stopped the burning of churches and killing

of people. It is a good thing.

How did this administration respond to the Egyptian people ensuring that the burning of churches and the killing of Christians stopped? It rewarded those noble efforts by cutting off aid.

As we keep hearing from allies in the Middle East, Muslim, other religious beliefs, you guys keep helping the wrong people. How can you not understand you are helping the people that hate you. Now they are cutting a deal with Iran, led by Wendy Sherman, who was the policy director for North Korea when President Clinton and Madeleine Albright made that atrocious deal to give them nuclear power plants, nuclear help, and in return all they had to do was promise not to develop nuclear weapons, which they readily did. In return, the Clinton administration agreed not to inspect their nuclear facilities for what amounted to about 5 years. It gave them plenty of time to develop nukes.

If someone is evil enough to behead, to brutalize, to persecute innocent people, to somehow think it is a noble thing to terrorize and kill innocent people, how do you not understand that they are also capable of lying, as well? You want to trust people that want to kill you and have said so many times? I think it is time we wake up. The world is less safe because of some of the actions that we have taken. We need to be wise about what we do because just as Jesus said, To whom much is given, of him much will be required.

We have been given much. We have been blessed more than any nation in the world. We have more freedoms. We have more assets. We have been blessed more than any nation in history. Much is required, and part of that requirement is that we use wisdom and discernment in choosing those whom we wish to help; and we should not be helping people who choose to kill or brutalize, persecute people because of their religious beliefs, because of their tribe, because of their skin color, because of their national origin. That is un-American, and it is time we stopped helping people who are acting in ways contrary to what we hold dear.

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

Mr. Speaker, as a follow-up to my dear friend, Frank Wolf from Virginia and the discussions he was having, this needs further emphasis.

Here is an article from the Dallas Morning News dated 10 November 2013, ``The Triple Tragedy of Christian Persecution in the Middle East.'' It explains that Christians in the broader Middle East, it seems, are in the crosshairs.

In September, two Taliban suicide bombers rushed All Saints Church in Peshawar, Pakistan, as worshippers exited. One exploded his bomb outside, one inside. Eighty-two people were slaughtered. Eighty-two people trying to peacefully attend a Christian church in Pakistan, where we are sending so much money, were slaughtered, with no consequences coming from the Pakistani Government that we keep engorging with our money.

Back to the article.

In March, it says, two churches and about 100 Christian homes were ransacked in Lahore. Today, millions of Christians and other religious minorities are facing vile persecution. Many Christians are struggling to escape from the countries where their ancestors have lived for two millennia. The human tragedy unfolding in these countries is profoundly disturbing, but the tragedy extends beyond the suffering of individuals and families.

Next month, in Rome, Georgetown University, in partnership with Baylor University, where I went to law school, will showcase the findings of a 2-year study on Christianity and freedom. Three dozen scholars will assemble to discuss what Christians have contributed to freedom and prosperity in their own country and, implicitly, what will be lost if those countries are emptied of their Christian populations.

Might be worthy of parenthetically inserting that, in Afghanistan, where thousands of Americans have shed their blood for Afghan freedom, where billions and billions of dollars have been spent, we help them with a constitution that makes shari'a law the law of the land, that makes the President, basically, almost a dictator.

As some of the regional leaders have told me, Dana Rohrabacher, Steve King, and others, look, if you would just help us with an amendment to the Afghanistan constitution, we would have a shot at staying alive after you pull out.

The Northern Alliance that actually defeated the Taliban completely within a few months after we started providing them aerial support, embedded special ops, and intelligence, less than 500, they defeated the Taliban, provided some weapons. They defeated the Taliban.

People have forgotten, but for years, in Iraq, people referred to Afghanistan--even Senator Obama. That is where the real fight is. That was where it was done well. And it was done well.

The Taliban was defeated. It was routed by some of the most incredible and fearless fighting, led by General Dostum. We have got people in this administration now calling him and others war criminals because they fought for themselves, their own freedom, to rid themselves of tyrannical radical Islamists. They are Muslims. They are my Muslim friends. They defeated our enemy. They are the enemy of our enemy. And yet this administration is releasing Taliban.

One of the Taliban leaders that has been on national Afghan television was released from Guantanamo by this administration for humanitarian purposes. And the humanitarian purposes are, now he is back leading the Taliban and making it clear that the Taliban will control all of Afghanistan once the United States pulls out. He likes to talk in terms of how the U.S. has been greatly defeated, and that is why we are begging the Taliban, offering to buy them things, give them things if they will just let us exit gracefully.

We are embarrassed around the world. We do no longer have the world's respect. There are a lot of countries that have never admired us. Tyrannical leaders have not admired the United States because we are the only nation, that I am aware of, in the history of the world that shed our blood and our treasure for other people to have freedom. That is why they still speak Japanese in Japan. That is why they still speak German in Germany. We have never been about building some great empire. We have been about freedom, liberty. No other country has done that. No other country has died for the cause of liberty for people they didn't know.

And now it seems that this administration keeps committing us to support countries that are persecuting Christians, persecuting secularists, persecuting those who do not have the strict radical Islamist beliefs that the radical Islamic believers have, the leaders, as radical Islamist believers have.

This article in the Dallas News goes on and says:

The countries include Egypt, where the holy family fled

when Jesus was a baby. Many Christians now are exiting Egypt

in the wake of the badly misnamed ``Arab Spring.'' In August

alone, scores of churches were torched, some of them dating

to the fifth century.

They include Syria, Paul's destination when he was called

by Jesus. Today, many Syrian Christians have fled, fearing

the prospects of an Islamist regime. One village,

Maaloula, is one of the last places on Earth where Aramaic,

the language of Jesus, is still spoken. In September, it was

overrun by Islamist terrorists.

Those, by the way, are the Islamist rebels that this administration is supporting.

It has been publicly reported, this administration--without Congress making a move to stop them--has sent tons and tons of weapons to the radical Islamist rebels in Syria who are killing, raping, and torturing Christians in Syria.

If there is a God, as I know with all my heart there is, if the God that had his protective hand on Israel--until Israel stopped honoring the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob--if that God exists, as I know in my heart he does, then how long will he continue to have a hand of protection on a nation that has, in the last 2 years, repeatedly betrayed and stabbed Israel in the back, taken whatever actions it could to prevent Israel from defending itself, and in this last act of ignorance, in trying to negotiate with Iranian terrorist leaders who want the little Satan, Israel, wiped off the map--they made that very clear--who want the great Satan, the United States, wiped out the map.

Of course they will talk to the United States. Of course. They are working as allies with North Korea. And North Korea can explain to them, as we have talked about here on the floor, how in 1994 they convinced Bill Clinton, Madeline Albright, and Wendy Sherman, who was the policy director for North Korea for the Clinton administration, to do a deal where the United States would give them nuclear reactors, help them, get them running, fuel, whatever they needed, and in return, we were basically asking them to renounce nuclear weapons and promise they wouldn't develop nuclear weapons. And we additionally agreed to not be inspecting their nuclear facilities, which actually allowed them to develop the nuclear bombs and the ballistic missiles by which they are assisting Iran.

Wendy Sherman actually briefed this Congress this week. She is the lead negotiator for the Obama administration. I mean, that makes as much sense as an administration hiring a company to do an absolutely essential critical Web site for people's health and well-being as someone who has no track record of being terribly successful. I mean, surely an administration wouldn't do that. Oh, yes, they did do that with ObamaCare. Oh, yes, they are doing it in negotiating with terrorist thugs who want us wiped off the map.

I mean, this is the same kind of inane thinking that would have an American President in the 1970s proclaiming the Ayatollah Khomeini as a man of peace when he was a terrorist and took over a nation and its military, for the first time in generations that a terrorist Islamic leader had been the leader of a country with a powerful military.

Here is another article, from Townhall.com, December 5, 2013, by Conn Carroll:

Violence against Christians is rising across the Middle

East. Open Doors USA's CEO David Curry investigates for the

December issue of Townhall magazine.

Christians in the Middle East and around the world are

being persecuted, imprisoned, and martyred for their faith.

There is widespread, systematic violence, and no one in the

mainstream media and government seems to have noticed. We may

see the elimination and extinction of Christianity in its

very birthplace, without a whimper of protest from the West.

I have got to say, if the God who protected Israel in its inception through many generations until they stopped honoring the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob--which, by the way, no country has ever fallen while it was truly honoring the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob. So if you were completely a-religious, completely atheistic, but you wanted to have a free country and you wanted to have it safe and protected, then it would sound like, from historical purposes, that it might be a good thing to encourage those who believe in God to keep doing so, because when a nation's leaders honor that God, that nation is protected. It is only when it turns away that it falls.

The article goes on:

Middle Eastern Christians are not persecuted because they

are criminals, anarchists, or for participating in uncivil

behavior. They are persecuted because of what they believe.

They are not promoting any particular political party or

agenda. They simply want the freedom of faith and religion

that Americans experience every day.

It is puzzling why most of our media and political leaders

remain silent, despite overwhelming evidence of a major

humanitarian crisis. When the scope of the persecution is

seen, it's hard to understand how this could have slipped

under the radar of nearly all our leaders in Washington. One

is left wondering if the oversight is intentional or

merely a giant blind spot the size of the entire Middle

Eastern region.

Consider what occurred during a 4-week period during August

and September: Syrian rebels attacked the historic Christian

enclave of Maaloula, damaging some iconic churches while

driving out most of the Christians as well as other

residents.

Jihadi terrorists blew up a church in Peshawar, Pakistan,

taking more than 85 lives and injuring many more. After the

attack, Pakistani Christians protested in the streets, to no

avail, demanding protection of their churches and schools,

which are under daily threat of harassment and destruction.

Muslim Brotherhood forces in Egypt attacked and burned 73

churches, hundreds of Christian-owned businesses, properties,

and schools.

These are but a handful of attacks that make news. Each

day, Christians in the Middle East are suffering all manner

of indignities for their faith. Those include destruction of

property, harassment, targeted rape of Christian women, and a

legal system that ignores the rights due to their faith. Many

governments fail to pursue, capture, and prosecute jihadist

radicals who perpetrate these crimes against Christ's

followers.

Then it goes on to talk about a broader pattern. Leadership in a vacuum.

An article from Crossmap.com says:

One Christian Killed Every 11 Minutes: U.K. Parliament is

Told Christianity is ``Most Persecuted Religion.''

The plight of Christians around the world was discussed in

a 3-hour debate at the Houses of Parliament in London

yesterday. Members of the House of Commons were told that the

persecution of Christians is increasing, that one Christian

is killed around every 11 minutes around the world, and that

Christianity is the ``most persecuted religion globally.''

A long list of countries in which life as a Christian is

most difficult was discussed, including Syria, North Korea,

Eritrea, Nigeria, Iraq, and Egypt.

M.P. Jim Shannon said the persecution of Christians is,

``the biggest story in the world that has never been told.''

He said that although the right to freedom of thought,

conscience, and religion is enshrined in the Universal

Declaration of Human Rights, there are many countries in

which these rights are not given.

Shannon alleged that 200 million Christians will be

persecuted for their faith this year, while he said that 500

million live in ``dangerous neighborhoods.''

He added that in Syria Christians are ``caught between

opposing sides in the conflict,'' and mentioned the

``specific targeting'' of Christian-dominated locations, such

as Sadad and Maaloula.

M.P. Sammy Wilson said that in Syria, ``50,000 Christians

have been cleared from the city of Homs,'' while in Sudan, 2

million Christians were killed by the regime over a 30-year

period.

He added:

Within the last month, hundreds of people, from Nigeria to

Eritrea to Kazakhstan to China, have been arrested and put in

prison simply because of their faith, and when they go into

prison, they are denied due process. They are denied access

to lawyers. They are sometimes even denied knowledge of the

charges facing them. They can languish in prison for a long

time and in horrible conditions.

This is not only happening in Muslim countries. From

Morocco to Pakistan, Christians in Muslim countries are under

threat, but it happens elsewhere, too.

There is an article from Religious Freedom Coalition from October 18 of this year. It says:

On Wednesday evening, Senator John McCain was on NBC

Nightly News and was asked what he thought about Congressman

Louie Gohmert suggesting that he was supporting al Qaeda-

linked groups in Syria.

To this, McCain responded that he considered Representative

Gohmert to be a ``person of no intelligence''--clearly

suggesting that Gohmert was dimwitted and not worthy of

dealing with.

In responding to McCain's attack on his intelligence,

Gohmert issued the following statement to the media.

``Obviously, Senator McCain would be better off with `no

intelligence' since he doesn't know the Syrian opposition he

met with is infested with al Qaeda and terrorist kidnappers.

His `intelligence' even caused him to support the Muslim

Brotherhood in Egypt that burned churches and killed

Christians, as the Senator stood against the will of the

massive majority of Egyptians, including moderate Muslims,

Christians, and secularists who demanded the Muslim

Brotherhood extremist persecutions must end.''

I want to add here that this administration has supported the Muslim Brotherhood leadership of President Morsi in Egypt while Christians were being persecuted and as the largest

arising, gathering of people in protest of the history of the world rose up in Egypt and demanded an end to the radical Islamic rule of President Morsi after he had vastly exceeded, repeatedly, the constitutional powers.

And as they told me in my last trip to Egypt, unfortunately, the constitution that we should have helped them do a better job with did not include any provision for impeachment. I can't understand why the Obama administration would not have encouraged a country developing a new constitution to put in a provision for impeachment. I don't know why this administration would not have encouraged that, but it wasn't there.

So when President Morsi vastly exceeded the authority of the constitution and began moving toward being a monarch, millions of people--reportedly 20, 30, 33 million Egyptians rose up--90 million people in the whole country--they rose up and demanded that the President be removed.

The Christian Pope in Egypt told me personally that this was the will of the people. Please tell the administration and people in America this was not a coup. This was the people of Egypt rising up, as he talked about arm-in-arm the moderate Muslims, secularists, Christians joined hands, joined arms, and protested and demanded that the military remove President Morsi. And they did.

As these articles have talked about, the violence in August, the violence in the summer against Christian churches--73 or so burned down, Christians killed and tortured--that was by the Muslim Brotherhood. And because the people of Egypt and the military could see the persecution of Christians, and they wanted to stop it, they basically disbanded the Muslim Brotherhood as a party, as an organization in Egypt; and the burning of churches stopped and the persecution of Christians stopped.

And to such a great and noble thing that the Egyptians have done in bringing an end to this radical Islamist Muslim Brotherhood control of Egypt, bringing an end to the burning of churches, bringing an end to the killing and torturing of Christians in Egypt, how has this administration reacted to reward Egypt for doing such a noble thing?

The aid that this administration was providing to Egypt when it was controlled by the Muslim Brotherhood has now been cut off because the Egyptian people had the temerity to demand an end to radical Islamic reign and the killing and persecution of Christians.

It is unbelievable that I live in a country that rewards groups that persecute Christians and withdraws assistance to those who stop the persecution of Christians.

This article says:

Of course, McCain is doing exactly what someone who has

been busted usually does: he smears his accuser. Why else

would McCain defend the likes of Reid, Schumer, and Durbin

while accusing Gohmert of having ``no intelligence''? The

answer is that Gohmert is doing what no one at his level or

higher is doing; he's calling McCain out for siding with

America's enemies.

Those were comments of former PLO terrorist Walid Shoebat.

He has seen the light, ended his time as a terrorist, and is

trying to educate people on the dangers of radical Islam.

The article points out that our friend, Senator McCain, had hired a Syrian Islamist propagandist, Elizabeth O'Bagy, to become one of his legislative assistants after she was exposed for lying about her Ph.D. and being paid shill for Islamists seeking to overthrow President Assad of Syria.

As former terrorist, Walid Shoebat explains:

Congressman Louie Gohmert should be getting reinforcements

from the more conservative elements in the Republican Party.

But will he? Frankly, we doubt it.

Congressman Gohmert deserves our praise, our vocal support,

and our prayers for having the courage to hold another

Republican responsible for promoting national security

policies that endanger the lives and freedoms of millions of

Syrians and Egyptians who do not wish to live under an

Islamic dictator.

I appreciate their commendation. I know that there is not a Senator in the U.S. Senate that wants to do harm to this country or to Christians around the world. But that is why it is so important to take a look at what this country's, this administration's policies are doing to the cause of persecution of Christians around the world.

An article from Christian Today, dated Wednesday, December 4:

Seventy Christians killed at the hands of Boko Haram in

Nigeria.

Further attacks against Christians in Nigeria have been

reported, bringing the total number killed in the past year

to an estimated 900. According to Release International, 34

Christians were murdered in Borno State in the northeast last

month, and raiders killed an additional 37 in the central

Plateau State on 26 November.

Church leaders believe the attacks in the north were

carried out directly by Islamist terrorist group Boko Haram,

while those in central Nigeria were carried out under their

direction.

What is going on around the world right now with the persecution of Christianity is tragic. Or as the UK Parliament was told, Christians are the most persecuted people in the whole world. In fact, even in the United States right now, Christians are about the only group in America against whom it is okay to discriminate. It is okay to hate them and ascribe hatred to the believers and the man of love and peace, Jesus Christ. It is rather tragic.

And as the world sees, this administration continues. As leaders in the Middle East told a handful of us back in September, What do you not understand? It was the Muslim Brotherhood behind the attack on 9/11 of 2001. It was the Taliban, but basically the Muslim Brotherhood in Afghanistan you went to war against. It was the Muslim Brotherhood that was killing Christians in Egypt. It was the Muslim Brotherhood--al Qaeda--that attacked you in Libya, that helped in Libya, and now you are helping them in Syria.

We don't understand what you don't understand. The people you declared war on that hate you and want to destroy you, you are supporting in Syria and you supported in Egypt. We don't understand.

And for moderate Muslims around the world, our friends in Afghanistan, our friends in the Middle East, they don't understand how we keep rewarding those who hate Christians and hate the United States, and we persecute leadership like in Egypt right now that stopped the persecution of Christians. We ought to be sending people rushing over to Egypt saying thank you for stopping persecution of especially Christians, but also moderate Muslims and secularists in Egypt. You have done a good thing. We ought to be helping them set up their next elections, which they want to do.

As I am sure people are aware, CNN has got a story here about, ``China claim of air rights over disputed islands creates risk of incident.''

China has wanted to claim this part of the ocean for decades, but they were always afraid of making a move to physically exert claim over this area of the blue water. And yet they have obviously come to believe that the United States is so weakly led right now that they could make claim to this part of the sea that they were scared to claim in the past and overtly take control over it. It hurts our friend Japan; it hurts other allies for us not to take a stand.

And yet we get reports that this administration was telling our allies, Well, just do what China requests for now. Just do what they request--instead of showing strong leadership to stand up against a move of aggression.

We see Russia moving more radically than we have seen in decades. People just thought Russia had gone away. The Soviet Union did go away, but Russia now has perceived a vacuum in world leadership since the United States seems to be taking a leave of absence; and now we have Putin being considered more powerful than our U.S. President.

Well, I can see how some would see the aggressive leadership he has taken and believe that he is more powerful. It is not right. Our President has all the power he needs if he would use it.

But it is time to take a stand, even for those who like to belittle Christianity, even those who have far different beliefs. This Nation has had an invisible protective hand that has guided it, led us away from slavery, led us to proper civil rights.

Then it seemed we were at about the peak of enforcing our Constitution so that it didn't discriminate, so that the words of the Declaration of Independence were fully embraced:

We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are

created equal, that they are

endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable rights,

that among these are life, liberty and the pursuit of

happiness.

Yet, as churches have been behind the movement to establish the Constitution, the movement to eliminate slavery, the movement to recognize civil rights so people are not judged by the color of their skin but by the content of their character--as was the dream of Dr. Martin Luther King, Junior, an ordained Christian minister--now we have turned full circle, and now we are starting to persecute and reward those who abroad persecute the very churches that made America the freest country--the only country from which people have fought and died for the liberty of others--the most generous and giving Nation in the history of the world, where more freedoms, liberties, and assets have been attained by individuals than in any country in the history of the world.

It is exceptional, but we are losing our exceptionalism because we are refusing to stand up for the beliefs of Christians here and around the world.

If we want to extend this little experiment in democracy, as one of the Founders said--if we want to acknowledge Ben Franklin's comment ``it is a Republic if you can keep it,'' and we want to keep it--it is time to rise up, not through violence. Just stop rewarding those who persecute Christianity. Those who burn churches, those who kill Christians, quit rewarding them--quit providing them arms--because, if we don't, we will slip down the slide of history into the dustbin of history, and people will only be able to look back and say, ``What an amazing country that once was.''

I am here in Congress because I believe we have the chance to salvage this great country and get back our international leadership we once had and stand for freedom of religion in the world and in America, but God help us if we don't.

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

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

The motion was agreed to; accordingly (at 2 o'clock and 49 minutes p.m.), under its previous order, the House adjourned until Monday, December 9, 2013, at noon for morning-hour debate.

Mr. Speaker, well, we got a notice: All House Member briefing: Iran, Wednesday, December 4, 9 a.m. The briefing team, right at the top of the list, Ambassador Wendy Sherman, Under Secretary of Political Affairs.

So that was thrilling. I recognize that name, Wendy Sherman, who is going to give the House a briefing in the morning at 9 a.m. on how good things have gone in the dealings with Iran.

As The Wall Street Journal article from November 20 points out, the Clinton administration's policy coordinator for North America, Wendy Sherman, is now the Obama administration's lead negotiator for the Iran nuclear talks.

In a 2001 New York Times op-ed, Ms. Sherman urged President Bush to cut a deal, writing that Kim Jong Il ``appears ready to make landmark commitments because to ensure the survival of his regime, he has to improve the country's disastrous economy by reducing the burden of a vast missile program and opening the doors to trade.''

Well, Ms. Sherman was wrong about that in her op-ed she wrote in 2001. Kim Jong Il needed to help his economy, she was right about that, but she thought it meant that he was ready to get rid of his ballistic missile program and open the doors more to trade. Well, certainly they were willing to open the doors to trade. But just as she had been wrong in 1994 when she helped the Clinton administration work out an amazing deal with North Korea, and to recap the highlights of that deal with North Korea, Korea was believed to be pursuing nuclear weapons so Ms. Sherman was the policy coordinator for North Korea involved in this process. She, Madeleine Albright and President Clinton thought, what a great thing, we will give you nuclear reactors, nuclear power plants, give you some fuel, and in return, you have to renounce nuclear weapons and you have to promise not to pursue nuclear weapons.

Wow. Oh, there was one other thing. The Clinton administration, Wendy Sherman, Madeleine Albright agreed to a provision which would have prevented them and did prevent them from inspecting the North Korean nuclear facilities for at least 5 or so years, which ended up being enough time for them to pursue their nuclear weapons. I mean for President Clinton, Madeleine Albright and Wendy Sherman kind of remind me of the repossession guy that Jeff Foxworthy talked about coming to his house when he was poor telling him he hadn't made his payment in months and so he had to take his car, and Foxworthy begging him not to take the car, and he has to have it to make a living. He said the guy said I have to leave with the car or cash or a check, to which Foxworthy said he replied, ``You'll take a check. Well, why didn't you say you will take a check. Sure, I can write you a check.''

Well, that is what the North Koreans did. Oh, you mean in return for new, sophisticated nuclear power plants and fuel, you will take just a promise from us that we won't pursue nuclear weapons? Well, why didn't you say that. Sure, we will promise anything you want in return for nuclear weapon fuel and nuclear power plants that we can use for our own benefit. Sure, we will make those promises. Any other promises you want?

I mean, how gullible does an administration have to be to believe that a promise from a rogue regime is worth basing the future safety of your citizens upon? Well, we don't have an answer to how gullible you have to be because this administration is now doing the same thing. It wasn't enough that Wendy Sherman was wrong in 1994 and wrong in 2001 in her op-ed; now she is the lead negotiator with Iran, and she is going to brief Members of the House here tomorrow.

How gullible are we? There is no requirement that we have to be as gullible as this administration. I mean, sure maybe you believe an administration when they say if you like your insurance, you can keep it. Maybe you believe that administration when they say if you like your doctor, you can keep your doctor, period. Maybe the House is gullible enough, or maybe the majority at one time was gullible enough to believe that, and did. In fact, people in this room actually repeated those promises, making them themselves. But how many times do you have to be shown that people making the promises are wrong before you get skeptical?

Now on top of all of the broken promises about ObamaCare, we have an administration promising us that we can trust Iran, that we have made a great deal. They have made us some promises, just like North Korea did, and we know we can trust them because the only thing at stake is the existence of the nation of Israel and the existence of the United States without nuclear weapons going off in it. That is all that is at stake. Or perhaps an EMP caused by a nuclear weapon that is shot off from an intercontinental ballistic missile. It doesn't even have to be that accurate. If it goes off near the middle of the United States, certain range of elevation, then it will fry most every computer chip, and we are going to be in trouble. Grocery stores cannot operate appropriately without their computer systems. Wal-Mart. There are all kinds of places that won't be able to

operate appropriately. Most everybody's cars now rely on computer chips. Our military is very reliant on computer chips. Yet this administration says now Iran is somebody we can trust.

I keep coming back to what some allied leaders said back in September in the Middle East: Do you guys not realize that you are now helping the people that attacked you, the organizations that attacked you on 9/ 11? That make up the Taliban, Muslim Brotherhood background; al Qaeda, Muslim Brotherhood background. I mean, what do you not realize that allows you to now help the people you are at war with or supposed to be at war with? I say the word ``war,'' and of course this administration has made clear, we are not at war with anybody. According to this administration, we are trying to counter violent extremism, but we don't talk about terrorism. We don't talk about radical Islam. We have stripped that from our training manuals because it may offend and does offend radical Islamists that want to destroy us and kill us. So we don't want to do anything that might offend the people who want to kill us. You know, there was a time in this country when if another group declared war on us, then we fought them. We weren't going to let them win that war against us.

This administration thinks you can make a great deal with Iran just like the Clinton administration did with North Korea and stop their nuclear proliferation right in its tracks. I would humbly submit, Mr. Speaker, it will be just as effective, less so, than the deal with North Korea was.

Iran has been crippled by sanctions, but sanctions were not going to stop Iran from developing nuclear weapons. They have consulted with, they have learned from North Korea how you game the system. All you have to do is enter into talks with a Democratic administration like the Clinton administration or the Obama administration, and they will cut you a deal. They will even help you get nuclear material. All you have to do is write them a check, and on that check say we promise not to pursue nuclear weapons. Heck, the United States under the Clinton administration, they have shown they will even agree not to inspect your nuclear facility, which will allow you to finish your nuclear weapons.

Well, Israel understands what a tremendous mistake this is because they are too close. Their existence rides on not making a mistake of the calamitous nature that this will be, and this is.

So it is amazing, though. You know, people stood up and made America all kinds of promises about ObamaCare, and it turns out, at the time promises were made about ObamaCare, they had already had the discussion and knew that people wouldn't be able to keep their insurance if they wanted it, and knew they wouldn't be able to keep their doctor if they wanted it. So what did they do? They said, we have a Presidential election coming up and it won't sound good to use words like ``if you like your doctor, there is a chance you might can keep your doctor.'' That won't sell good in the election. ``If you like your insurance, there is a chance you might can keep your insurance,'' that won't sell, so we have to go out and tell what is not true so we can win the next election.

How about that Benghazi? Let's keep that under wraps. We know it was an attack by an al Qaeda-affiliated group. Of course, there might have been some concerns that they used the very weapons that this administration supplied to the al Qaeda-infused rebels that may have been turned on our State Department personnel, our Ambassador, and they didn't send anybody to help them. They did not send anybody to help them.

We had planes, we had personnel that could have gotten to Benghazi and at least saved the last two of the four, could have saved Dave Ubben's leg, could have saved a lot of damage, could have saved a lot of the classified material being out there for a month or so for anybody who wanted to get it. It could have saved all of that, but no one was sent.

People want to believe promises that are made by their own government, especially when it pertains to something as important as their own health, their own health care, or the defense of their Nation when it is at risk. Well, it is at risk. There are people who are at war with us. They have been at war with us since 1979. We didn't really fully appreciate it until 2001 on 9/11.

And now we have an administration that has completely failed to realize that the people who declared war on us in 1979, who want shari'a law to govern the world, who want a worldwide caliphate over which the 12th imam will rule the world--some of them believe Jesus will come and fight at his side--this administration does not understand they have never given up on their goals.

Thank God that most Muslims do not believe the radical Islamist approach to Islam. I am grateful. But it is crazy not to realize that there are radical Islamists that want to destroy our way of life.

As the Obama administration was bragging over their great deal with Iran, we got word yesterday that Iran announces--this is an article from the Washington Free Beacon--a second nuclear reactor. And the leader, Rouhani, says, ``Our enrichment will never stop.'' So much for this administration's misplaced belief in Iran honesty.

These leaders are at war with us. They want to destroy us. They want to destroy Israel. How can we get someone in this administration to take notice?

Mr. Speaker, I have the answer. It is when people in the United States Senate and enough people here in the House say, Mr. President, you can't do this kind of damage. We know it is innocent. We know you think this is the way to go. But we know you can't trust Iran, you can't trust the Ayatollah Khamenei, you could not trust the Ayatollah Khomeini, you could not trust Ahmadinejad. Just because they have got a different President, they have still got the different leader.

By the way, we didn't used to call the Ayatollah Khomeini the ``supreme leader,'' just like U.S. leaders didn't used to call Hitler ``mein fuhrer.'' He was not entitled to that title. He was an evil man. I personally don't think it is appropriate for any United States leader to call someone who hates Israel and hates America and wants them wiped off the map and thinks that the 12th imam is coming and will one day rule over the area in which Israel is, the area in which the United States is, that we should not be calling that man ``supreme leader.'' It is the same thing as calling him ``mein fuhrer.'' You don't do it. This administration has not learned that lesson.

So Iran announced that they are still not going to comply with what the Obama administration says they have agreed to do, yet this administration is still sending the former Clinton North Korean policy director, a former Democrat who was advising President Bush in an op-ed to cut a deal with Kim Jong Il, that he really wants to make a deal, kind of like North Korea did in 1994. She was wrong in 1994. She was wrong in 2001. She is wrong now about Iran.

We are told that those who refuse to learn from history are destined to repeat it. When there is enough arrogance that anyone, any leader thinks that they are smarter, wiser, and better than anyone who has gone before, therefore, they can make a better deal with corrupt and evil people like no one else has made, then their name goes down in history just as Neville Chamberlain's has. He waived his peace agreement, which he agreed to give away part of Europe to his fuhrer thinking it meant peace in his time. What it meant was his ignorance and naivete was going to cost millions of people their lives.

History is there for people who are willing to study and learn from it. I shutter for the people in Israel. I shutter for people in the United States that think we are invulnerable. The only way the United States could possibly stay invulnerable for a while longer is if its leaders realized we are vulnerable and we have to stay prepared, we have to stay vigilant, and we have to stay on the lookout for people that want to destroy our country. Yet they would rather make a deal with the lying cutthroats who lead Iran than they would sit down and work out an agreement with Republicans in the House of Representatives.

We were willing the night of the shutdown. We were willing the day before the shutdown. We compromised

three different times, and Harry Reid refused to even allow negotiators to be appointed. We appointed ours. People say Republicans shut down the House, shut down the government. We didn't do that. Harry Reid did that. He refused to even negotiate. It was his way completely.

He asked a question when the press was there. Not many of them reported on how ridiculous the question was. But he asked the question of, basically, what right do they, the House of Representatives, have to say what government programs get funded and which do not?

Well, I asked that exact question to four constitutional experts that testified before our Judiciary Committee today. One clearly was a defender of the Obama administration, yet all four of the witnesses-- brilliant, constitutional scholars, even though we have our disagreements. These were brilliant people, and every one of them had the same answer for Harry Reid's question. The answer is the United States Constitution, article I, section 8. It gave Congress control of the purse strings, and it gave the House a little more control than the Senate. The Senate has got to go along with whatever legislation is going to become law.

But he asked the question, and I put this question to our experts: Suppose you were in a town hall meeting with constituents back in a congressional district and an elementary schoolchild asked the question, What right does the House of Representatives have to decide which government programs get funded and which do not? They unhesitatingly said the answer is our Constitution, article I, section 8. They all agreed. They all knew immediately.

So I have asked that the chairman of the Judiciary Committee make that testimony available to our dear friend, the Senate majority leader down the hall, so he won't have to ask that question to reporters who are not familiar with the answer. We can get it to him straight from some of the greatest constitutional minds on both sides of any aisle, and he will understand it is the Constitution that gives us the right to have a say.

For Harry Reid to shut down the government by saying you are either going to give us every dime that we demand or the government will be shut down is really outrageous. They shut the government down. We even gave them an out.

There is a wise Chinese saying that says, it is good to give your adversary a graceful way to exit. We gave the Senate majority Democrats a graceful way to exit by saying, Look, you don't want to completely defund ObamaCare; we get it. We think that is the best idea for America. Here is a compromise. Let's just suspend the whole bill for a year.

Harry Reid could have taken that and said, We don't want to do this, but the Republicans in the House are making us hold off on all of ObamaCare for a year. Gosh, golly gee, we didn't want to, but they are making us.

That was a graceful way that they could have exited. But they were so determined to shut the government down that, when we came back with another compromise passed out of this body, we said, How about if we do this? The President acted unconstitutionally. That became very clear in our hearing. For the President to say he wasn't going to enforce the business mandate in ObamaCare is unconstitutional. Not only is it unconstitutional, the President is directly violating his oath of office. He is required to faithfully defend the laws, see that the laws are carried out, and he announced he wasn't going to do it for a year. He doesn't have that kind of luxury.

Even in a spirit of extreme compromise, I didn't vote for it. I thought we shouldn't be compromising against ourselves. But a majority in here voted to send the bill, and we sent it down to Harry Reid and the Senate that said the President has decided to suspend the business mandate for a year. If businesses deserve a mandate for a year, let's do it for every individual in the country for a year. That gave Harry Reid another out. He was so determined to shut down the government, he wouldn't even bring that to a vote.

Then our final ultimate compromise in compromising against ourselves, without any Senate offer of compromise whatsoever, was to say here are our negotiators we are appointing. We voted for it. We sent the list of negotiators; you appoint yours. We will probably have a deal by 8 a.m., and we will not even have to have a real shutdown. But Harry Reid was determined to have a shutdown, and so he got a shutdown. Now there is no graceful escape because we have got to repeal ObamaCare. That is very clear, and I hope that we do that.

I see my friend from California. Actually, he is a very dear friend. We have been in some interesting situations worldwide as we stand up for our country and for the people of the United States of America, for truth, justice, and the American way. As my time is about to expire, let me say that I didn't vote for the patent bill in the Judiciary Committee. I have some real concerns about it, as I did the last one that I voted against.

I still believe in my heart we should not have changed 200 years of patent law from the first to invent being right, changing it to the first to file being right. I think the law was appropriate the way it was. We needed to make some reforms, but I think we made a glaring error.

Many people came to this floor and said we have got to pass that bill to deal with the issue of patent trolls, and now we have another bill that we are told will likely come to the floor tomorrow that this time it will really deal with patent trolls. There are some things in there that I like, and I am glad we are trying to deal with them, to help people that need to be helped.

You know, where a bank is utilizing a procedure that they paid for, they are not infringing on anybody's patents intentionally, and so to hold up people, you know, a small community bank that doesn't have a million bucks to spend on patent litigation, when they are innocent stakeholders, it just seems grossly unfair.

There are things we ought to do. But I am very concerned that we ought to be spending more time, let America help us get this bill right, and I am still hoping that we will wait, get more input so that we don't mess up the patent system any more than we already have.

My time is expired, or is about to, so I yield back the balance of my time.

Mr. Speaker, first of all, it is my honor to yield to a good friend whom I have tremendous respect for, from the State of Florida, my friend, Ron DeSantis.

I thank the gentleman from Florida. What a profound novel idea: if you take the oath, you should keep it. And that doesn't even mean if you like it. It is just, if you take the oath, you should keep it.

As my friend, Mr. DeSantis was pointing out, there are so many problems with the ObamaCare bill. And I know the President referred to the bill as ``ObamaCare'' many times and said he was proud to do so, and so I certainly don't mean any disrespect or anything like that. On the other hand, it is extremely difficult to call it the ``Affordable Care Act'' when you know it is not affordable.

And a great indication of just how affordable it is came from a lady named Jessica Sanford. I heard the President at a press conference read the letter from Jessica Sanford from Washington State. And when I heard it, I thought, well, good. At least somebody has been able to find something good from ObamaCare, because in my office we have heard from so many people who have already been adversely affected. So I thought, well, great. Three hundred-plus million people in the United States, he found one person that had a letter he could read from Jessica Sanford. Then it turns out, this article from the Daily Caller on November 19:

Jessica Sanford received a major shout-out last month when

President Barack Obama mentioned her fan letter lauding her

cheap, new ObamaCare coverage. But the Washington State

business owner has now been informed that she can't even

afford the cheapest ObamaCare exchange plan in her State.

``I'm really terribly embarrassed,'' Sanford told the

Washington State Wire. ``It has completely turned around on

me. I mean, completely.''

The Washington State exchange Web site Washington

Healthplanfinder originally gave Sanford a quote for coverage

that would insure both her and her son for $169 per month.

But after a series of corrections--and she was one of the few people who was able to get through on the Web site--she gets a quote, and it turns out that it was entirely wrong. It makes you wonder how many people got the wrong quote and won't find out and won't realize they did and will end up January 1 without insurance thinking they signed up, thinking they bought a policy they can afford only to find out they couldn't afford it.

In this case, it says the ObamaCare exchange Web site originally calculated Sanford would be eligible for a Federal ObamaCare tax credit that would lower her monthly premium total by $452 per month, prompting the effusive letter that Obama read out loud during a White House speech.

I am a single mom, no child support, self-employed, and I

haven't had health insurance for 15 years because it is too

expensive. I was crying the other day when I signed up, so

much stress lifted.

So the President was quick to share Ms. Sanford's gratitude and said:

Sanford's experience is what the Affordable Care Act is all

about.

He went on:

The essence of the law, the health insurance that is

available to people, is working just fine. In some cases, it

actually is exceeding expectations. The prices are lower than

we expected; the choice is greater than we expected.

But this article points out that Sanford was one of 8,000 people to be affected by 4,600 policies sold on the Washington exchange that had been quoted premium rates that were too low.

Ms. Sanford said:

I was dumbfounded. I thought this was a total mistake;

they're going to correct this. This isn't true.

Now she says she can't even afford the cheapest Bronze ObamaCare plan. ``I was like, forget that. I'm not going to pay.'' So she is going uninsured. Sanford now says of ObamaCare:

You are stuck on this big treadmill of bureaucracy. And,

you know, it feels very out of control.

This article from today--this afternoon, actually--from Steven Ertelt, entitled, ``ObamaCare Denies Hospital Choice for Blind Child With Rare Bone Disease,'' says:

As The Washington Post reports, a number of the Nation's

top hospitals--including the Mayo Clinic in Minnesota,

Cedars-Sinai in Los Angeles, and children's hospitals in

Seattle, Houston, and St. Louis--are cut out of most plans

sold on the exchange. In most cases, the decision was about

the cost of care.

Here is how ObamaCare is hurting one family:

In Seattle, the region's predominant insurer, Premera Blue

Cross, decided not to include the children's hospital as an

in-network provider except in cases where the service sought

cannot be obtained anywhere else. ``Children's nonunique

services were too expensive given the goal of providing

affordable coverage for consumers,'' spokesman Eric Earling

said in an email.

That brings up the point, the President wanted to provide everybody health insurance; and some of us, like me, were more concerned about getting them quality health care that was affordable. All this talk about insurance, insurance, insurance, the bigger, more important question should have been can we get them health care they can afford.

One of the biggest promises was it will lower most everybody's cost, and it turns out that was not true at all either. There are some in States, in a State like New York, where it was overpriced previously where it has come down some. But overall, when you add 18,000 new IRS agents that will not ever even apply a Band-Aid, they may cause a bunch of ulcers, but they will never provide any health care. And they are not from the U.S. Government to help you. They are there to go through all of your most important and most personal decisions with you--the IRS. Go figure.

This institution, the IRS, this agency that we find out got weaponized by the Obama administration to go after people they disagreed with. Richard Nixon had an enemy's list, but he never could do much with it. This administration has an enemy's list, and they have really gone after people and made them suffer for having a different political opinion than this administration.

This article points out:

For example, a pediatric appendectomy at Children's costs

about $23,000. At another community hospital, the cost is

closer to $14,000. Melzer said his hospital often bills more

than community hospitals for comparable procedures because

the children it treats are often gravely ill, so even a

routine tonsillectomy may be more complicated.

But as a result, families like Jeffrey Blank's, which has

relied on Seattle Children's since his daughter, Zoe,

received a rare diagnosis of a rare bone disorder, face

difficult decisions. Under some of the new law's health

plans, the family would no longer be able to take Zoe to

Children's for her routine checkups, or it could count as an

``out-of-network'' visit, saddling the family with huge

bills.

As the pro-life movement warned during its adoption in

Congress, health care will be rationed and health care access

will be limited when the government gets involved. These

lessons have been seen for decades in nations like Canada and

England, and the United States is now following suit.

It makes such a great point, because when you add 18,000 IRS agents to be even more intrusive and get into your most private decisions about health care and your own health, they not only may cause you ulcers or create problems, they don't help at all. And I have no idea what the average IRS salary will be. I would imagine the IRS' average salary will be a lot higher than $56,000. But if you just take $56,000 as the average for the 18,000 IRS agents, it means that a billion dollars next year will go for IRS agents to harass you, that will come out of money that should be going to health care, and it is not going to help you a bit.

In fact, they are playing for the other team. They are out after you, not out to help you. And then when you add in all of these millions of navigators and you add in all the tens of thousands, maybe some make over $100,000, and I am sure some of them will that are involved in this whole navigator process, not the lowest level but some surely will, and you think about all the billions of dollars over the next years that will be spent for navigators that, as we heard here in testimony from Kathleen Sebelius herself, yes, they can be convicted of a felony and we won't catch it because we are not checking on that kind of thing.

As a former judge who sentenced people to prison--for example, I never sent a woman to prison for felony welfare fraud when her crime was getting a job to try to get out of the hole the government lured her into by promising checks for every child she could have out of wedlock. I do believe in holding people accountable. I would sentence them, give them probation, and then do things like either max them out or come close to maxing out 800 hours of community service, but then make very clear as an incentive that if you get your GED or high school diploma, then I'll knock out 750 hours, to urge them to go forward and help themselves, which ultimately helps society. That is the kind of thing government is supposed to do.

Instead, this government, for too long, going back to the Great Society days, has incentivized things that lured people away from their God-given potential. It hasn't helped them; it has lured them away from their potential. Here we are now with ObamaCare not just luring people away from their health care, it has put a wall up between them and their health care.

I knew when I would hear our friends across the aisle here in the House and in the Senate talk about how health insurance is a right,-- well, it is not in the Constitution as a right. I was more concerned about ``health care'' than ``health insurance.'' There are ways to make it affordable.

When we see disparities of $23,000 to $14,000 for the same tonsillectomy, it should be very clear that we need competition, and when you have the government running everything, there is no competition. The government screws that up royally. It prevents the thing that made America so great: entrepreneurialism, competitive advantages that people have that work hard. It destroys those kinds of incentives, and now we are seeing it destroy lives.

Here is an article from November 19. ``HHS Secretary Sebelius Visits South Florida to Meet With Health Care Navigators.'' Gee, wouldn't it be nice if we weren't paying billions of dollars for government workers that will make your health care decisions more miserable instead of giving you more freedom?

Here is an article from yesterday on foxnews.com: Second Wave of Health Plan Cancelations Looms. It says:

A new and independent analysis of ObamaCare warns of a ticking timebomb, predicting a second wave of 50 million to 100 million insurance policy cancelations next fall--right before the mid-term elections. The next round of cancelations and premium hikes is expected to hit employees, particularly of small businesses.

It goes on to say:

As reported by AEI's Scott Gottlieb, some businesses got

around this by renewing their policies before the end of

2013. But the relief is temporary, and they are expected to

have to offer in-compliance plans for 2015. According to

Gottlieb, that means beginning in October 2014 the

cancelation notices will start to go out.

So the millions of cancelations that have gone out now--people make the mistake of saying 5 million people. That is 5 million policies. That is the information I have got. There are million policies approximately so far. That is a lot more than 5 million people. That could be 15 million, 20 million people.

This article is exactly right. AEI is exactly right that come next year, a lot of people--we have heard this, Mr. Speaker, that a lot of people have been renewing their policies now before the end of the year so that they don't completely lose it until next year around this time. Next fall, there will be millions and millions and millions more who will get those notices of cancelations.

As a result, this article from Marguerite Bowling points out, Obama's legacy will be more Americans than ever reject government enrolled health care. It then points out the way it has gone from 64 percent and even up to 69 percent wanting government to be responsible for their health care to now dropping to 42 percent of Americans because people have begun to see what so many of us have been talking about for a number of years: the best solution is not more government. The best solution is not having navigators and IRS agents taking away money that could be spent on health care.

I have this article from David Martosko that points out that our President had claimed that more than 100 million Americans have enrolled. Obviously, that was just a mistake in the teleprompter. It is not his fault. Here is an article from the Heritage Foundation's Morning Bell:

The American people rose up to repeal a health care law

once before. They can do it again.

It goes back and points out about the bill that had been passed under a man that I greatly revere, a great President, Ronald Reagan, and he thought he was providing America with a great gift of catastrophic care for seniors, but it didn't take but a couple of years for people to see this is a disaster, this isn't a good thing. So in 1989, they stepped up and got it repealed.

An interesting CBS poll from yesterday points out that 84 percent of Democrats want ObamaCare changed or repealed. I had not seen that before, that article.

So it is important to understand just what is at stake with ObamaCare. These things are kind of worn. I have been through them so much, and I had gone through and read the bill so I would know what was in it before I voted, which is why I voted against it. There are things in here--and I will just hit a few since people are now waking up as this thing has become a reality. People are starting to wake up and realize that, wait a minute, this was not such a good idea.

When there were some who were concerned here in this room about the President representing that abortions would not be paid for under ObamaCare, some of us had read the bill--I think at that point it was the 1,000-page bill, and then the one that came out of the committee, and then somehow it magically became around 2,000 pages, and then we end up with my copy, which is just under 2,500.

At page 119, this was a comfort to some people when they read:

The services described in this clause are abortions for

which the expenditure of Federal funds appropriated for the

Department of Health and Human Services is not permitted

based on the laws in effect at the date that is 6 months

before the beginning of the plan year.

But then it does have a provision that abortions with public funding are allowed.

Then the next section:

Prohibition on Federal Funds for Abortion. Services in

Community Health Insurance Option.

That is the last I can find of abortion specifically being mentioned.

What gets really clever, since we now are of the Information Age where you can go online and see bills and you can do an electronic word search, if you go online and do an electronic word search for the word ``abortion''--I didn't see it. What you have to be aware of is these are really clever people. They were clever enough as they wrote this to make sure that the Speaker's office and certain staffs would be exempted. It was really intriguing how clever some of these things were.

To avoid a word search picking this stuff up, like over here at page 122, it says, ``Assured availability of varied coverage through exchanges,'' and it says:

``The Secretary''--talking about Secretary Sebelius right now-- ``shall assure that with respect to qualified health plans offered in any exchange established pursuant to this title--(I) there is at least one such plan that provides coverage of services described in clauses (i) and (ii) of subparagraph B.''

Well, that surely couldn't be abortion, unless you flip back and see what (i) and (ii) of B is. Guess what? That is the abortion referenced over on page 119. That is the way you get around

people picking up those things; of course she is going to have provisions in here about that, and of course people shouldn't forget that the provision at page 429--it was a special adjustment to FMAP, determination for certain States recovering from a major disaster. This was put in there to buy the votes from Louisiana. That is why some have called it the ``Louisiana Purchase.'' So we have got special consideration in there for that.

There are all kinds of things I used to go through. Of course, AARP got special dispensation.

Also, this administration saw that Medicare Advantage was really helping some people out. Their costs were lower. There were a lot of people that were telling me they liked Medicare Advantage. So as ObamaCare would do it, it would try to destroy anything that people liked and was helpful and mandate that you couldn't have those provisions in your policy. They knew all along by putting this kind of thing in this bill, like at page 904, that people that liked their Medicare Advantage were not going to get to keep it. They sure weren't going to like it after this bill got through with them. At 904, it goes after Medicare Advantage and says: ``Nothing in this section shall be construed as requiring the Secretary to accept any or every bid submitted by an MA organization under this subsection.''

Then the next capital C, subparagraph (ii):

Authority to deny bids that propose significant increases

in cost-sharing or decreases in benefits.

Because as the government keeps mandating more and more things, like maternity care for men that are single and may be beyond their childbearing years--well, a single man that is 70 years old may think, gee, I am beyond childbearing years. I probably won't get pregnant any time soon. Maybe I don't need maternity care. Well, maybe Secretary Sebelius thinks you do. So you are going to pay for it anyway. That is the way people end up paying more than what they really need.

That was in the second volume.

I never could understand it. I keep asking questions, and nobody will give an explanation as to why, at page 1,312 in the health care bill, to make sure that everybody got the health care they needed that we had to create the Commissioned Corps and Ready Reserve Corps for service in time of national emergency over on page 1,314. It talks about national emergencies and public health crises. It gets ``health'' in there for part of it, but not under national emergencies.

Above that, it is talking about the purpose to ``meet both routine public health and''--that is conjunctive, not disjunctive--``emergency response missions.''

Well, I wish they would put ``health'' in here, and we would be more assured that this isn't creating some kind of Presidential brownshirts or something, but we can't get an answer on who these people are, what they are being trained with, what they are being trained on. Are they being trained with weapons? Are they being trained with medical equipment? What are they being trained on?

One thing that I have learned, as both a judge and a chief justice, and now in Congress, is that if words are not specific, somebody is going to figure out to just use their plain meaning. So when something says ``national emergencies,'' like this bill, there will be times it will be called in for national emergencies rather than just health emergencies.

And the next section talks about public health emergencies, both foreign and domestic, but we have already learned that they didn't put the word ``health'' in the national emergency. And so it is strange.

These are commissioned officers of the Ready Reserve Corps. They will be appointed by the President. Commissioned officers of the regular Corps shall be appointed by the President, and it is subject to advice and consent of the Senate; but that is for the actual appointment.

But it makes clear over here that they are subject--it says that the Corps will be available and ready for involuntary calls to Active Duty during national emergencies and public health crises. And then below the health crisis, foreign and domestic. So that is some more.

I have insurance that has a health savings account attached to it. I think Aetna could have done better, and I was looking forward to improving my policy, except that ObamaCare came in and made sure that anybody that had a policy with a high deductible and a health savings account they liked were probably not going to be able to keep it because they took shots and terrifically restricted what you could use a health savings account for.

The goal is to get rid of them because if people get that much control over their own health savings account or, as the bill I filed back before ObamaCare ever passed, nearly a year before it passed, I say give seniors a choice. Let them choose Medicare. Let people choose Medicaid.

Or it would be cheaper for us if we just say, look, we will buy you a Cadillac, not a bronze, we will buy you the best coverage, great coverage, and it will have a high deductible now, maybe $5,000, something like that for a deductible, and we will give you the cash in a health savings account.

You get control back of your health care. You can handle it yourself. Your debit card will be coded where you can only use it for health care, but then let you make the decisions.

But this won't even let you go get your own medicine or drug unless it is prescribed. This kind of stuff is running up the costs and trying to get rid of HSAs. It is very clear.

Oh, and I love--they have got a provision in here for States, this, back 2,300 or so, they have got a provision in here that, gee, we have given out grants, but if your State has bothered to do malpractice reform, like the Federal Government hasn't done, then if you put caps on pain and suffering, for example, then you are not going to be getting the grants that other States are.

Well, there are a lot of problems with ObamaCare; and I hope that, by the end, before the election next year, people will realize that what some of us have been saying for years is true. It is in America's best interest to have health care reform, but that is not it. It is not it.

There is another issue--there are two other things I want to address very quickly. One is about Guantanamo Bay.

I had the television on when I was working at my desk in the wee hours of the morning this morning, I can't remember, maybe, 1, 2, 3 a.m., something like that, but a show where some psychologist had been, basically, corrupted by being used at Guantanamo Bay for psychological warfare. Totally false story.

I mean, there are still a lot of people walking around that don't know that no one has ever been waterboarded at Guantanamo Bay.

Having been there two or three times, you get the picture. Amnesty International comes regularly. These groups come regularly; and when you find out what is really going on there, it is really the guards that are put through all kinds of Hades. They have excrement and urine thrown on them, and they are not allowed to even get angry back.

Last time I was there, they said there had been one soldier who had responded angrily, and he was punished for it. Their instructions are when you have urine or feces thrown on you by one of the detainees at Guantanamo Bay, you just don't react. And then you get the day off so you can go clean up, change clothes.

So the inmates are constantly coming up with innovative ways to get feces and urine on our guards. That was last time. Hopefully, they have dealt with it better.

The punishment, when I was there before, they would take away some of the movie-watching time that the detainees got to have; and if it was really egregious enough, they might cut into their outdoor time a little bit.

But I was told that Amnesty International gets real upset about that, so they don't like to cut out their outdoor time, so they are more restrictive on the movie-watching time that our detainees at Guantanamo may get.

And this--what a juxtaposition. What an amazing thing.

The New York Times used to bill itself--and it is arguable that it really was accurate as the newspaper of record, but they have so corrupted their standards that they could say about an overt lie, someone misspoke.

This is not a newspaper of record. It is really just a sad day for America regarding the New York Times. But every now and then they get a story right.

But, unfortunately, now we have to sometimes go to England or other countries whose media is not overwhelmed with bias for or against a particular administration so we can get proper reporting.

But this story is from Russia Today. I mean, I was in the Soviet Union in 1973. I could read a little bit of Russian, speak a little Russian back then. I haven't had any reason to for over 30 years, so I don't remember much of anything but how to get to the bathroom.

But from Russia Today they report, and this was the first I saw, and then started looking for more information: U.S. Senate is seemingly deadlocked when dealing with the Guantanamo Bay detention facility, voting down dueling measures which would have either loosened or tightened restrictions on transferring detainees.

And then we found one, 2014, NDAA, now in the Senate, could finally mean the end of Guantanamo. More than half of Guantanamo Bay's 164 detainees have been cleared to transfer to other nations, MSNBC reports, but have remained at the prison due to congressional measures complicating the transfer protocol.

Yes, some of us are concerned that since we keep transferring people out, releasing them, and they keep killing Americans, so many of them, after they are released, I would say one is too many, but one is not near as many as have been reported going back and continuing to kill Americans.

This talks about even a good Republican who is reportedly aiding the Guantanamo Bay win for President Obama, but White House, top Senate Democrats successfully defended provisions in the National Defense Authorization Act that would loosen restrictions on transferring detainees out of Guantanamo Bay, advancing President Obama's goal of closing the facility by a margin of 55-43.

Yeah, they can vote like that because they have got enough people that aren't up for re-election next year. So they can take a vote like that.

So that caused me to go look at the law being discussed and voted on, and find this provision in there, section 1032, the authority to temporarily transfer individuals detained at United States Naval Station Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, to the United States for emergency or critical medical treatment.

So, okay, they say, yeah, see, we have got to get them out of there sometimes for medical treatment. They have got incredibly good medical treatment at Guantanamo Bay.

This says, status while in the United States, an individual who is temporarily transferred under the authority in subsection (a) while in the United States shall be considered to be paroled into the United States temporarily pursuant to a provision of the Immigration and Nationality Act.

But then it goes on, under section 1033, to say that transfer for detention and trial, the Secretary of Defense may transfer a detainee described in subsection (a) to the United States for detention and trial if the Secretary determines that the transfer is in the national security interest of the United States.

And it does provide that Congress should be notified not later than 30 days before the date of proposed transfer. But if the President, with a wave of his hand, can wave off mandatory language in a bill that was passed without a single Republican vote, if they can wave off provisions of the immigration bill and just flat out change the law, unilaterally, as the Chief Executive, then it sure wouldn't be very hard to say, oh, whoops, we didn't give Congress notice; those people are in the United States because once they are in the United States, things take a big turn.

I remember my friend from across the aisle, Anthony Weiner, was so upset. He actually said he wanted these detainees brought to New York City and put on trial and executed there in New York City.

Well, having been a prosecutor, judge and chief justice, I knew he would be exhibit A for why, if they brought the detainees to New York City, they shouldn't get a trial there. They would have to transfer them somewhere else because you had people like Anthony Weiner who were not particularly capital punishment supporters, but wanted them to be executed. So that would have been exhibit A in why you couldn't get a fair trial if they were brought to New York.

Some of our friends get very confused and demand, we want these people at Guantanamo Bay to have the same rights under the Constitution that everybody else does.

Well, everybody doesn't have the same rights under the Constitution. When I was in the Army for 4 years, I didn't have the rights everybody else did. I wasn't free to assemble where I wanted. I wasn't free to say what I wanted to about the President.

I wasn't happy with Jimmy Carter. We saw Fort Benning going down and down and down. We saw our Nation attacked by an act of war in Tehran, and there was no response.

That is still being used today to recruit people to al Qaeda, to terrorism, because of how weak our response was then, how weak the response was when we were attacked in 1983 at Beirut and, certainly, the ongoing weak responses after the World Trade Center bombing in 1993, the USS Cole, the embassy attacks.

And I know there are people that would say to such embassy attacks in the 1990s, well, what difference does it make at this point?

Well, perhaps if it had made a difference to the Clinton administration, we would have been better prepared and people wouldn't have died in Benghazi.

But this is a disaster. Under the Constitution, nobody is promised a trial in a U.S. District Court. And people need to understand that, because in the Constitution there is no U.S. District Court.

As my old constitutional law professor at Baylor used to say, there is only one Court created in the Constitution. Every other court in America, Federal court, that is, owes its existence and continued existence and jurisdiction to the United States Congress. That is it.

So if are you an immigrant, our Constitution says you get due process at an immigration court. If you are in the military, the Constitution ensures you will get due process in a military court. And I can tell you, that is kind of tough.

When a soldier stands in front of a military jury, all wearing uniform, all appointed by the commanding officer to whom they account after that trial is over, it is a little different than a jury that you would get just picked at random from your peers.

They are not picked at random. The commanding officers, from platoon on up through company and all the way up to the installation, they send recommendations, and they eventually funnel their way up to the commanding general for a general court-martial. And then they are handpicked by the general. These are the people who will be on the jury.

Well, that is constitutional. It has been upheld many times. So I have a little trouble, having served in the military, understanding why someone who wants to destroy our country and kill all the Americans they can, why are they entitled to more rights under the Constitution than somebody that is giving their lives in our U.S. military? They are not. They are not given more rights than our U.S. military.

And, in fact, under international law, the way it has existed, going back as far as it has been recorded, when someone was part of a country or group that declared war on another country or group and they were captured, they were held until their group or country said they were no longer at war. Then we let go of the ones that promised not to be at war after the war was over and punished those who were guilty of war crimes.

And I also, Mr. Speaker, want to make sure people understand what we have at Guantanamo. Khalid Sheikh Mohammed was the leader--people call him the mastermind--of 9/11/2001. Very unrepentant. Not only is he unrepentant, he, in 2008, in December, agreed to plead guilty and went through, I believe, at least two hearings where, through in-depth questioning by the

judge, he admitted to his role in killing Americans.

We know he filed this pleading, of which I have a copy here, that was released by Military Judge Colonel Henley, declassified so we could see what Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, the 9/11 mastermind--he, himself, talked about his planning it. And he had some resources where he could translate his language into English so that he could write this whole thing. There are some idioms, perhaps, that may be misused, but anyway, he is a brilliant man. He just hates Americans and loves to kill them.

But in his pleading, he says:

In God's book, he ordered us to fight you everywhere we

find you, even if you were inside the holiest of all holy

cities, the mosque in Mecca, and the holy city of Mecca, and

even during sacred months.

In other words, it would be perfectly fine for him or one of his buddies to kill Americans in the mosque in Mecca, but heaven help the person that causes any damage at all to the same mosque.

He said, ``In God's book''--and this is as if he had legal training. He does this quite well. He states a premise, and he follows it up with a provision from the law of the Koran. I mean, the Koran is a book, basically, of law.

In God's book, verse 9, Al-Tawbah: ``Then fight and slay

the pagans wherever you find them, and seize them, and

besiege them and lie in wait for them in each and every

ambush.''

Further down, he says:

We do not possess your military might, not your nuclear

weapons.

Of course, this President may be presiding over the United States-- unless Israel protects itself, this President may be the one that sees, for the first time, a radical Islamic terrorist regime get a nuclear weapon, and that will change the world forever. We can't afford for that to happen.

But he points out, at the time he wrote this:

We do not possess your nuclear weapons. Nevertheless, we

fight you with the Almighty God. So, if our act of jihad and

our fighting with you caused fear and terror, then many

thanks to God, because it is him that has thrown fear into

your hearts, which resulted in your infidelity, paganism, and

your statement that God had a son and your trinity beliefs.

And then the provision he follows that up with, from the Koran:

Soon shall we cast terror into the hearts of the

unbelievers, for that they joined companies with Allah, for

which he has sent no authority. Their place will be the fire;

and evil is the home of the wrongdoers.

And he misspelled ``their.'' When he said ``their place,''

he used T-H-E-R-E. But, I mean, this is amazing stuff. He is

admitting: we want to destroy you.

And if you think for a moment that Khalid Sheikh Mohammed or Ahmadinejad or Khamenei would not mind using a nuke to destroy what some of them believe were people descended from apes and pigs, as some in the Muslim Brotherhood say, well, you have got another thing coming. These people are not stupid, but they are insanely crazy in their desire to kill innocent people.

He went on at the end of his pleading on page 6, and says:

You will be greatly defeated in Afghanistan and Iraq, and

America will fall, politically, militarily, and economically.

Your end is very near, and your fall will be just as the fall

of the towers on the blessed 9/11 day. We will raise from the

ruins, God willing. We will leave this imprisonment with our

noses raised high in dignity, as the lion emerges from his

den. We shall pass over the blades of the sword into the

gates of heaven.

So we ask from God to accept our contributions to the great

attack, the great attack on America, and to place our 19

martyred brethren among the highest peaks in paradise.

This is a guy that some people want to bring to the United States. They have no idea how desperately wrong that would be. He is being held constitutionally right where he is, and under no circumstances should he be allowed to be brought into the United States itself.

They have the perfect courtroom set up down in Guantanamo for conducting terrorist trials. Enough bulletproof material in the middle of an area where a bombing would not do the damage that it would in Manhattan.

Israel understands the threat. They understand the danger. And it absolutely breaks my heart to find out that Israel is having to seek another ally that understands the threat of radical Islam to them and to the United States.

Now, it was Prime Minister Netanyahu who asked me, after I apologized for America putting them in a position where they have to defend not only themselves but the United States, because some people here do not understand the threat, he said, I just ask that you remind your President, the people in America, that it was your President who said the words, ``Israel must defend itself by itself.''

I didn't remember President Obama saying that. I had to go back and do a word search. It turns out, that was slipped in in a bunch of other glowing comments about what a wonderful ally and we are not going to let Iran get nukes and all this stuff. And then he slides that little sentence in there that is profound. But ``Israel must defend itself by itself.'' That is why I wasn't the only one that didn't pick up on that, because of the way in which he contextualized it.

But here is an article from The Blaze today, from Sharona Schwartz, ``How Bad Are Things Between Israel and the U.S.? Israeli Foreign Minister Says It's Time to Find New Allies.''

Israel's foreign policy for many years went in

one direction toward Washington, but my policy has more

directions.

This is Foreign Minister Avigdor Lieberman who said this. He said:

There are enough countries that we can be a help to, and,

therefore, our foreign policy must be to search for allies.

The Americans have a lot of problems and challenges around

the world that they need to solve and they have problems at

home. We need to understand them and our place in the global

arena.

We need to stop demanding, complaining, moaning and,

instead, seek countries that are not dependent on money from

the Arab or Islamic world and who want to cooperate with us

in the field of innovation.

I mean, Israel has been a leading innovator in intellectual technology. They need to be our friends. They believe in the value of life, as we do. They do not name streets and holidays for people who kill innocent women, children, innocent victims, men who never saw it coming; whereas, even in Palestine, as it is called now--it was never called that before in recent history. But it is time that we realize what a friend we have in Israel and that we could never spend enough money to create the defense system we have in Israel if we will just be supportive.

One other thing I want to address before I conclude today. There are some people that are calling attention to the President's omission of the words ``under God'' from the Gettysburg Address when he did the entire Gettysburg Address on camera. I don't know whose decision it was to leave that out. I don't know if he was just reading it, and whoever gave it to him to read in the teleprompter took it out and he didn't realize. I don't know what happened. But, Mr. Speaker, it is important that people understand, yes, there are five existing copies of the Gettysburg Address. There is only one that Abraham Lincoln signed, the Bliss copy, unless the President has removed it, like he did Winston Churchill's bust from the White House. Unless it has been removed, it is up there in the Lincoln Bedroom. This is the Bliss copy, it is called.

And actually, at the Gettysburg Foundation Web site, they have an explanation of those five copies--the Nicolay copy, the Hay copy. So you had a couple of them there. And you can see what actually was in the copy. But the Everett copy--Senator Everett was the Speaker that went 2 hours or so, and he asked for a copy, so Abraham Lincoln made sure he got a copy.

And I was talking to a brilliant historian, Stephen Mansfield, this week. He was pointing out these things, that it was thought that Lincoln had provided his secretary with his notes. And since he had interlineated, as I see people on both sides of the aisle do all the time here--making notes, scratching stuff, putting stuff in--he had interlineated ``under God.'' So when he gave the speech, ``under God'' was part of it. I don't know about anybody on this floor that wants the Congressional Record to carry a copy of their speech before they made all the changes in it, just as Lincoln did.

But the last three copies, the Everett copy that Lincoln personally gave to Senator Everett, it says ``that this Nation, under God, shall have a new birth of freedom.'' And then the Bancroft

copy, that was one that also was requested by historian George Bancroft, and that has ``that this Nation, under God, shall have a new birth of freedom.''

And then the last copy, the Bliss copy that is most often used, is considered to be the most authoritative copy of what was said at Gettysburg, because this is the only copy that Abraham Lincoln signed. He didn't sign any of the others. He signed this one. And it went to Colonel Bliss, who was going to use it to auction and use the money to help wounded warriors.

This is a Nation under God. It had a new birth of freedom. And I hope and pray that God will give us wisdom to avoid destroying that freedom.

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

Mr. Chairman, I am very grateful to my dear friend, Bill Flores, and to Doc Hastings, chairman of our committee. I appreciate Mr. Cuellar's comments.

The truth is, we have been working on this for a long time, and Mr. Flores has gotten it here. This is fantastic because we need jobs in America. We need more of our own energy in America. This bill helps us do that.

I got into a discussion with one of our colleagues across the aisle who is now in the Senate, and I brought this up to him in previous years. If a State has a regulatory body that is addressing the issue, has cleaner air, cleaner water, is doing the job, then let them do it. Let's not add another layer of bureaucracy that takes away jobs. It slows the economy.

I am very grateful that it looks like we are going to pass a bill that creates jobs instead of these job-ending things that have been happening down the hall and down Pennsylvania Avenue.

So I applaud my colleague and I applaud my friends that support this bill. This is going to help America.

Mr. Speaker, recognition and rousing congratulations are due to the Carlisle High School Varsity Baseball Team in completing an outstanding season which concluded with the team's triumph in the 2013 Class A state baseball tournament.

Through hard work and determination, the Carlisle Indians defeated the Stamford Bulldogs with a final score of 6-1.

Within the first innings of the first state championship game in Carlisle's history, it was abundantly clear that the Indians were dominating the game. At the conclusion of the fifth inning and after twelve hits by the Indians, Carlisle already held a 5-1 lead over the Bulldogs thanks to an exceptional performance by the team's offense and defense.

The Indians maintained their lead through the seventh and final inning--granting the team the prestigious title of Texas State Baseball Champions.

The Carlisle Indians made history for their high school by bringing home Carlisle's first state title. Their success has been attributed to the excellent leadership of their athletic staff, their outstanding veteran pitching lineup, the reliability of their defense, and timely hitting when they had to have it. This season alone, the Indians produced 18 shutouts, and ultimately finished the season with an incredible record of 29-1.

The Carlisle Indians exemplify what it means to work as a team. The players and staff seamlessly united their efforts to produce a sound performance that culminated with their capturing the victory. Their sportsmanship, humility, determination, hard work, and skill are to be commended, admired, and emulated.

The winning team was led to victory by an outstanding coaching and administrative staff including: Head Baseball Coach, Wesley Colley; Athletic Director and Assistant Coach, Rocky Baker; Assistant Coach, Cal Goss; Assistant Coach, Bob Tamplin; Manager, Ty Kennedy; Manager, Colby Draper; Strength and Conditioning Instructor, Clay Baker; Principal, Sarah Baker; and Superintendent, Michael R. Payne.

Great praise goes to the team members who played through and secured the team's first state title: Ty Baker, Kyle Byrd, Clay Allphin, Ben Goss, Caleb Colley, Shadow Sanders, Dylan Sanders, Cooper Grigsby, Jaylan Holland, Zach Brightwell, Michael Savala, Gunner Baker, Collin Gray, Justin McMurtry, Dalton Sanders, and Kolton Heim.

Accolades must also be given to the players' families and the entire community of supporters who reside in Rusk County, who embraced the warrior spirit for which the team was named. Without these devoted fans' support and encouragement, the Indians' road to the championship would have been much more difficult.

It is with great pride that I join the constituents of the First District of Texas in congratulating the players and athletic staff of the 2013 Class A Champion Carlisle High School Varsity Baseball Team. Their legacy is now recorded in the Congressional Record that will endure as long as there is a United States of America.

I thank my dear fellow alumnus of Texas A&M. We do go way back, knowing each other from undergraduate days.

I want to follow up, and I am very grateful for my friend from Texas (Mr. Flores) taking charge of this hour, setting it up to talk about the IRS and the abuses.

And I know we have been talking about the abuses of Tea Party conservative groups, pro-Israel groups; but I wanted to just touch in brief on the extent of the arrogance of the IRS. They feel like they are above the law. Lois Lerner never showed any remorse for what certainly appears not only to have been perjury but also to have been a crime. There is a specific criminal code provision dealing with abuses of the Internal Revenue office.

And you have Kathleen Sebelius. And right now, of course, people all over the country, millions are losing or have lost their health insurance. And there was this article here in October. This was from CNN News:

In an interview with CNN's Dr. Sanjay Gupta Tuesday night,

Health and Human Services Secretary Kathleen Sebelius said

she won't be enrolling in the problem-plagued health

insurance system that she was charged to implement. ``I have

created an account on the site. I have not tried signing up,

because I have insurance.''

Well, she--like the IRS--has Federal employee insurance, and they don't care about everybody else, but we know the head of Health and Human Services says she is not going to bother with it.

And as we look into the arrogance of the Internal Revenue Service-- and I especially appreciate my friend from Texas, Bill Flores, bringing this up because I don't know how many CPAs we have in Congress--but I know the CPA exam was a lot tougher than the bar exam. And I certainly appreciate somebody that knows about dealing with the IRS.

But this article, ``IRS Employees' Union Urges Members to Oppose Obamacare--For Themselves.'' And the article goes on. So NTEU, which is the union for Treasury employees, is strongly urging its members, including the IRS agents tasked with implementing ObamaCare, to oppose Dave Camp's legislation which would compel them to personally participate in the same health care program they will be enforcing. On the NTEU Web site, union members are urged to email their Congressmen and Senators and ask them to oppose H.R. 1780. It provides a sample letter that they should provide, saying:

I am a Federal employee and one of your constituents. I am

very concerned about legislation that has been introduced by

Congressman Dave Camp to push Federal employees out of the

Federal Employees Health Benefits Program and into the

insurance exchanges established under the Affordable Care

Act.

It is just the height of arrogance that the IRS, while they are investigating groups that believe in the propriety and fidelity of the United States Constitution--because somehow they are a threat to the United States Constitution because they believe in it--at the same time, they know they are gearing up to enforce ObamaCare and to delve into the most private information that people have. It is not enough to just look at financial information. They are going to be looking to see about their health care and their health care coverage and can get even more detail than what we have been hearing during this hour.

I can't imagine a worse prescription for abandoning the Constitution than that. And not only that, we have heard that ObamaCare--correctly, apparently--that it will cause the hiring of 17,000, 18,000 new IRS agents. And although I was not a math major, I love math and did very well every time I took it, but if you multiply 56,000 times 18,000 IRS employees, in 1 year you have added over $1 billion to health care costs. And there is not one of those 18,000 IRS agents, as arrogant as they may be and as personal as they are going to get, that are going to do anything but create a need for health care and not provide any whatsoever.

They may cause some ulcers. They are certainly not going to solve or be a solution for someone's ulcers. We still don't have proper accountability for the IRS.

One other thing about the IRS and their handling of this. We keep being told that there are 5 million people that have lost their policies. As I understand it, it is 5 million policies. We are talking about a lot more than 5 million people. And when you think about the people that are going to have to pay for their health care and the extra billion dollars for new IRS agents and the billions of dollars over time that will be paid for the navigators and all those people that won't provide any health care whatsoever, it is staggering.

People across America, from the polls, are figuring out this isn't about their health care. This is about the GRE--the government running everything.

And some people I know wonder, well, what solution is there? Even if you had a fair tax or a flat tax, you still have got to have an IRS.

And I love Arthur Laffer, Reagan's economic adviser. He said, Louie, you don't have to have the IRS. You ought to do away with it.

The problem with the IRS is that, of course, they are going to get arrogant because they pick who they are going to audit, just like we have seen with all these abuses. They pick what all they are going to audit, just as we have been hearing. They get so intrusive, so personal, and then they decide what your punishment is going to be.

There is no other area like it in America, and I don't think the Founders anticipated that the IRS or any entity would ever exist that could be the prosecutor, the judge, the jury, and the executioner all. And that is why Arthur Laffer says you need to get rid of the IRS and have an auditing agency that is a fraction of the size of the IRS.

They don't get to pick whom they audit. That is done completely at random. They never get to pick whom they audit. And they never get to decide what will be done with their auditing. It has to be passed on to Justice or to the collection of the taxes if they have not been paid. They never get to participate in that. And I like the way that sounds, especially the more we hear about the abuses of people that are just freedom-loving Americans.

So I appreciate very much my friend taking this time so we can talk about the IRS. And I realize that he knew when he signed up for this hour that there would be others to come. And it is a brave thing because he is risking an audit as we go in because he knows better than anybody just how abusive the IRS can get.

Madam Speaker, I won't take long.

I got this email from a constituent that, on Tuesday of last week, my 89-year old mother-in-law fell and broke her hip. Her doctor gave her only a 50 percent chance of survival, but survive she did. He, the doctor, stated after the operation that she was lucky that it happened now, because ``in 2 weeks I could not have performed the same procedure because it is not an approved procedure under the new rules. It's too expensive.''

We all wondered what her chances of survival would have been under Dr. Obama. That is from Jay, in my district.

There are all kinds of terrible things that are happening as a result of the passage of ObamaCare. I voted ``yes'' on the bill today. Apparently, the Senate is not going to take it up. It just said if the insurance companies could allow them to continue on their policies without making it illegal, as ObamaCare does, to keep those policies.

We have numerous proposals. Anybody that says Republicans don't have any solutions, we have got numerous solutions. I filed a bill that would have been a better, far better bill to ObamaCare back before ObamaCare passed. CBO wouldn't score it. They helped the Democrats all they could, but especially after the director was woodshedded at the White House.

There are many solutions, and one solution now would be to allow insurance policies that have been approved for this year by State commissioners, let them go on, like those that are on the Federal, State, or local cafeteria plans for Federal, State or local workers.

There are many things we can do to have a bridge to get us through the next year if we can just repeal ObamaCare. It did not look like a possibility a few months ago but, as Americans are finding out more and more about the disaster of this government taking over everyone's health care, they are finding, gee, maybe it wouldn't be such a bad idea, as we had 30-plus Democrats, in a bipartisan vote today, express, gee, maybe we should have allowed people to keep their insurance if they wanted it.

One article today from FOX News, ``Obama's Insurance Plan `Fix' Stirs Confusion, Ridicule At the State Level,'' points out what a disaster it is. The President's even adding to the problems by unilaterally passing a new law, as he has done repeatedly. Normally it is reserved only to monarchs, kings, emperors, those kind of things, to step up and say, I am changing the law.

He has done it with regard to immigration. He has done it with regard to ObamaCare. He ignores parts of laws or laws he doesn't like, and that has also been done at the Department of Justice.

Here is a headline, CNN: ObamaCare Enrollment Numbers ``Complete Disaster.'' And we are finding out that 26,000-or-so signed up and bought insurance when they needed 500,000.

Here is one from McClatchy: ``Roiling Health Care Waters, Obama's Fix Could Make Matters Worse,'' by Anita Kumar and Lesley Clark.

From The Weekly Standard, Daniel Halper: ``Fairy Tale'' Continues As Obama Proposes Extralegal ObamaCare Fix. It is unconstitutional.

And by the way, Madam Speaker, it seems like those who had the President for constitutional law are probably entitled to file a class action, wanting their money back. Because, clearly, the President is not familiar with the fact that the executive branch just can't announce or change laws as they wish without getting Congress' approval.

Here is another, ObamaCare Architect: ``Could Be the Beginning of a Death Spiral'' from Today by Daniel Halper. In fact, it quotes the architect of ObamaCare being interviewed by Megyn Kelly. She asked, ``Is that the beginning of the so-called death spiral?'' And he said ``That could be the beginning of a death spiral,'' as people did not sign up for ObamaCare like they needed to.

And then one from Human Events: There is No ``Fix'' for ObamaCare. And, Madam Speaker, I think that is the bottom line here. We have got to repeal ObamaCare. People are already being dramatically, adversely affected. It has changed the 40-hour workweek. It has changed people's ability to have their own decisions about their own health care.

We need to move, as Ben Carson suggested, toward health savings accounts, encouraging those higher deductibles with cash to take care of the difference. There are all kinds of great solutions. Many of us have them. We just need to repeal ObamaCare for the good of America.

And it is deeply saddening to know that our government is not even warning people about going on ObamaCare, that when they enter their personal information, it is subject to being stolen by identity thieves and may put them in great personal identity quandaries and difficulties legally. So I bring that up because somebody needs to warn people about the problems of registering with the ObamaCare Web site, if they can get through.

My hope and prayer is that we will do the right thing by America. We will get back to acting within the Constitution. And friends like our leader, who spoke moments ago, expressing profound ignorance of what has gone on here on the floor, as he has stated that we had Paul Ryan and many other Republicans voting for the government not to pay its bills.

There is no Republican I know of that has voted that way. Apparently, he has paid more attention to mainstream media that has misrepresented the truth than he has to what has actually gone on here. No Republicans voted for America not to pay its bills. In fact, Republicans are the ones who voted repeatedly to compromise before the shutdown.

But Harry Reid had it in his mind that if there were a shutdown, if he could refuse to compromise on anything, force a shutdown, then Americans would get misrepresentations as to what occurred. They would blame the Republicans, and then they would get the majority back here in the House next year.

But a funny thing happened on the way to that plan. Many people are starting to find out: wait a minute, Republicans compromised repeatedly. Harry Reid is the one that wouldn't bring a compromise to the floor, wouldn't even allow negotiations to occur with a conference committee. And then people are finding out why Republicans were so concerned about ObamaCare, because it is a disaster. It is affecting people's ability to get the health care they need.

It is so grossly unfair. It is putting people at risk. It is time to stop the figurative bleeding of America and repeal ObamaCare.

And with that, 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 2 o'clock and 34 minutes p.m.), under its previous order, the House adjourned until Monday, November 18, 2013, at noon for morning-hour debate.

I thank my friend from Missouri for yielding and for setting up this time that we could share about what is going on.

Just in contrast to my friend from Louisiana's examples of the abuses of military members' First Amendment rights, the government is not supposed to prohibit the free exercise of religion. Of course, we know in the military--I knew--that there are some things you give up when you are in the military. You can't assemble when you want to, and you can't speak when you want to, but Commanders in Chief have always known that when it comes to religious liberty, you should not infringe upon people's religious beliefs, especially when they believe they are fighting for a country in which people could have First Amendment rights to utilize and to worship God.

In fact, of course, in my 4 years in the Army, we didn't have a Commander in Chief who had issued an order--attributed to George Washington--that people should not take the name of the Lord in vain, because how can we ask God's blessing on our military at the same time and in the same mouth as one's taking God's name in vain? That was not the order of the day when I was in the Army; but by the same token, you saw crosses at chapels on military installations. You saw crosses inside of chapels and outside of chapels. Now they have been removed, we have been told, from the insides and outsides of chapels on military installations. It is outrageous.

We hear people call the generation in America that won World War II-- making the world safer for democracy--the Greatest Generation. Yet, if you look at what occurred during World War II, you had a President of the United States who went on national radio on D-day and prayed about the evil forces that our troops were trying to defeat. He prayed God's blessing openly for several minutes on national radio.

I was given by my aunt a New Testament with a metal cover. There are all kinds of stories about these metal covers actually stopping bullets when they were placed in pockets, but on this metal cover, it says, ``May the Lord be with you.''

Under the new rules, I haven't seen anything that this Commander in Chief has signed or said of ``you can't practice your Christian beliefs'' or ``we are not going to afford you conscience exemptions'' like have always been provided throughout our country. I haven't seen that.

But as Harry Truman said, the buck stops with the Commander in Chief. Whether it is actually stopping with Valerie Jarrett, or wherever it is stopping, the Commander in Chief has the power to get the buck, bring it to his desk, and make these decisions.

Well, here is what Franklin D. Roosevelt did. Here in this New Testament, it says, ``May the Lord be with you on the front.'' Inside, at the top, it says, ``The White House, Washington.''

As Commander in Chief, I take pleasure in commending the

reading of the Bible to all who serve in the Armed Forces of

the United States. Throughout the centuries, men of many

faiths and diverse origins have found

in the Sacred Book words of wisdom, counsel, and inspiration.

It is a fountain of strength, and now, as always, an aid in

attaining the highest aspirations of the human soul.

Signed by Franklin D. Roosevelt.

I have been trying to find a Bible in recent days that has an inscription or signature from the current Commander in Chief who has said he takes such great inspiration from Franklin Roosevelt. Instead, not only do we not find Bibles being encouraged and handed out, we see crosses being taken back, people being told they can't even have their own Bible where people might see it. It is an outrage.

I worry for our Nation, just as George Washington did. How can we expect God to bless a nation that is not being allowed to even praise God publicly in our military? It is a sad day. But what is more, if George Washington is right, we are stripping our Nation of the opportunity to have our military blessed because of what was done in prior militaries that brought about blessings.

Even if you don't believe in God whatsoever, why wouldn't you want to at least have an insurance policy that maybe the reason they were blessed was because of things like this done for our military in our military, signed by the President of the United States? Obviously, this is a stamp of the President's signature.

But again, I appreciate my friend from Missouri. #MilitaryFreedom--we encourage people, Mr. Speaker, to utilize that, to get us information, because we want to help our military protect us.

I thank so much Mrs. Hartzler for this effort and for this hour and encourage all of our colleagues, Mr. Speaker, to stand up for what is right for our military--their freedom of religion.

Madam Speaker, one thing becomes very clear from our study of history, and that is that things that nations do have consequences. Things we do individually have consequences, and things we do as a Nation have consequences. That is why some people remember that on May 30, 2010, there were six flotilla ships--and this is from the U.N. release, a report into last year's raid, how events unfolded, dated 2 September 2011.

It points out that on May 30, 2010, six flotilla ships leave Cyprus for Gaza in an attempt to break Israel's naval blockade. The Turkish cruise liner Mavi Marmara is chartered by Islamic charity IHH and carries 581 of the 700

flotilla activists. We know that didn't turn out so well. Israel did have a legitimate right to blockade the Gaza Strip to prevent more rockets, more munitions from being brought into the Gaza Strip that were being used to fire on, kill, and terrorize Israelis. Again, actions have consequences, and many remember the flotilla coming down and challenging the blockade, and there were people who were killed.

If you go back, here is an article. It is dated also May 30, 2010, which was a Sunday. But it points out--and this is an article from The Washington Times entitled, ``Israel assails resolution on nuke weapons as `flawed,' '' and it is talking about an agreement that President Obama was trying to get done, a nonproliferation agreement, and the article points out that on Friday, which was May 28, 2010:

A U.S. delegation in New York voted to endorse a consensus

document ending the 2010 review conference for the Non-

Proliferation Treaty that calls for a conference in 2012 to

discuss a weapons of mass destruction-free zone in the Middle

East.

The final document of the monthlong review conference calls

on Israel to join the treaty, a move that would require

Israel to disclose and then give up its undeclared nuclear

arsenal.

This was viewed and discussed as being the first time in people's memory when the United States, by and through its administration--the Obama administration--had taken action that was very adverse to Israel and the international community, and particularly in the U.N. Normally we did not side with Israel's enemies.

One of the lessons that I was taught by history professors at Texas A&M is that when a nation's enemies see that nation's strongest ally pulling away, it is provocative. It often provokes action by that nation's enemies against it because they think their strongest ally is pulling away. Some saw that before the war in Korea. They thought that the United States might have North Korea beyond its ``sphere of influence.'' Those kinds of things, those words, these actions, these votes can be provocative.

So 2 days after the United States sides with Israel's enemies in demanding that Israel disclose its nuclear weapons, the flotilla launches to challenge the blockade. Isn't that amazing? It just happens to be right after this administration sides with Israel's enemies. Here comes a challenge to Israel's blockade that was just trying to save Israeli lives.

Well, the reason that it is important to point these things out now is, what is happening between the United States and Iran, as we leave Israel out of the equation--even though it is Israel that is considered to be the little Satan and we are considered the great Satan, and Israel is probably to be the first attacked, if there is an attack-- they are certainly the most vulnerable. Yet we leave our former friend Israel out of the equation.

It brings to mind a number of things that have been happening during this administration that have caused the vast majority of people in Israel, of Israeli citizens, to believe that this Obama administration is not concerned about Israel's best interests.

There are many who have been aware of Scripture, and it has often been a guide in our relations with Israel. It is really such an historically appropriate thing in this House of Representatives, especially if we were down the hall in the former House Chamber, now called Statuary Hall, where they used to hold church most Sundays during the 1800s. Up until the late 1800s, the largest church congregation was in the House of Representatives, and it was not considered to be violative of the Constitution because it didn't endorse a particular religion. It was considered nondenominational.

Scripture was read regularly, every week, down the hall. Thomas Jefferson had coined the phrase ``separation of church and State'' as being appropriate. He didn't find it offensive, that notion, and, in fact, at times would bring the Marine band to play hymns.

So it seems appropriate, when we talk about Israel, to talk about Israel's roots because in Genesis 12--and this is the King James version:

Now the Lord had said unto Abram, Get thee out of thy

country, and from thy kindred, and from thy father's house,

unto a land that I will shew thee;

And I will make of thee a great nation, and I will bless

thee, and make thy name great, and thou shalt be a blessing;

And I will bless them that bless thee, and curse him that

curseth thee, and in thee shall all families of the Earth be

blessed.

So Abram went to the land of Canaan, which later became Israel, just as God had promised in these verses. So it was no accident that just minutes after Israel became a Nation, the United States, through its President, Harry Truman, became the first nation in the world to recognize what was prophesied throughout the Old Testament about Israel returning after its absence.

Israel returned and Harry Truman made sure we were the first Nation that recognized them as an independent nation. The U.N. had voted unanimously. Because of the Holocaust and over 6 million Jews being killed, they wanted to ensure that another Holocaust would never happen again. And that brought about Israel being reestablished in part of the land they had possessed 3,000 years before.

This is an article from The Washington Post, David Ignatius:

Is Israel preparing to attack Iran? Because it is

considered a betrayal of an ally to warn an ally's enemies

that that ally may take self-defensive action to prevent

being attacked. And the United States and Iran, including

President Obama, has said repeatedly and has promised an

American-Israeli gathering here at the Convention Center that

he would never allow Iran to have nuclear weapons, that it is

an existential threat to Israel. It certainly is.

So we have been hearing behind the scenes for a number of years that this administration was telling Israeli leaders, Don't you dare attack Iran without our permission. We will take care of this. We won't let them have nuclear weapons; and yet it is not the United States that is first threatened. The great Satan, the United States, in the eyes of leaders in Iran--not the Iranian people, but Iranian leaders--would get around to attacking us. But first Israel is threatened.

So there was concern, obviously, here in Washington in the Obama administration that the reported threats to Israel not to defend themselves without our permission--even though no nation should ever need permission from another to defend itself--and even President Obama said this out here at the Convention Center to an American-Israeli group. Prime Minister Netanyahu reminded me of our President's words, and I went back and looked them up. Sure enough, he said:

Israel must defend itself by itself.

Our President said that. And yet if we are not going to help Israel defend itself, which is actually defending us as well, then shouldn't we avoid jeopardizing Israel's own self-defense?

Yet here is this article dated February 2, 2012. It says:

Defense Secretary Leon Panetta has a lot on his mind these

days, from cutting the defense budget to managing the

drawdown of U.S. forces in Afghanistan. But his biggest worry

is the growing possibility that Israel will attack Iran over

the next few months.

Panetta believes there is a strong likelihood that Israel

will strike Iran in April, May, or June--before Iran enters

what Israeli's described as a ``zone of immunity'' to

commence building a nuclear bomb. Very soon, the Israelis

fear, the Iranians will have stored enough enriched uranium

in deep underground facilities to make a weapon--and only the

United States could then stop them militarily.

That is a betrayal of our ally, Israel. That is a gross betrayal of our ally, Israel. We are supposed to be on the same side; and if Israel defends itself, it is defending us as well, whether we recognize it or not.

That was a betrayal of Israel to leak what this administration believed were their plans to defend itself. If we are not going to defend ourselves, for heaven's sake, at least allow Israel to do it without putting them more in jeopardy.

By leaking that, obviously, it was this administration saying to Israel, Well, you better not go when you were thinking you were going to go because they are going to be ready because we warned your enemy for you.

So we get to May and, obviously, the window that Israel may have been considering attacking had to pass because of the leak by our own administration to Israel's enemies, through The Washington Post. An intentional leak.

This is from March 29, 2012, ``Israelis Suspect Obama Media Leaks to Prevent Strike on Iran,'' by Alexander Marquardt from ABC News:

Two reports today about Iran's nuclear program and the

possibility of an Israeli

military strike have analysts in Israel accusing the Obama

administration of leaking information to pressure Israel not

to bomb Iran and for Iran to reach a compromise in upcoming

nuclear talks.

That is simply outrageous.

This article says, continuing that same article:

The first report in Foreign Policy quotes anonymous

American officials saying that Israel has been given access

to air bases by Iran's northern neighbor Azerbaijan from

which Israel could launch air strikes or at least drones and

search and rescue aircraft.

The article goes on:

It seems like a big campaign to prevent Israel from

attacking, analyst Yoel Guzansky at the Institute for

National Security Studies told ABC News. I think the Obama

administration is really worried Jerusalem will attack--and

attack soon. They're trying hard to prevent it in so many

ways.

The Foreign Policy report by Mark Perry quotes an

intelligence officer saying, We're watching what Iran does

closely. But we're now watching what Israel is doing in

Azerbaijan. And we're not happy about it.

Further down:

In recent weeks the Obama administration shifted from

persuasion efforts vis-a-vis decisionmakers and Israel's

public opinion to a practical, targeted assassination of

potential Israeli operations in Iran, Ben-Yishai writes. The

campaign's aims are fully operational: to make it more

difficult for Israeli decisionmakers to order the Israeli

defense forces to carry out a strike, and what's even graver,

to erode the IDF's capacity to launch a strike with minimal

casualties.

We are putting Israel's own forces at far greater risk for casualties. Is that something an ally does to a friend?

Some of us believe that the Bible is accurate. Certainly, so many prophesies have been fulfilled. And if that is true, this administration, unless they can find a verse that accurately says that those who betray Israel will be blessed, then this country is being dug in a deeper hole by this administration and its betrayals of Israel's trust and Israel's friendship.

This is from November 3, 2013, from TheBlaze, ``Fury, Scandalous: Israel Conveys Bitter Protests to Obama Admin Over Reported White House Security Leak.

This says:

The Israeli government conveyed ``bitter protests'' to the

White House this weekend over the Obama administration's

reported leak of who was behind last week's air raid on a

Syrian base near the port city of Latakia. Words being used

by the media and officials speaking anonymously in Israel to

describe what they perceive as a breach in trust on the part

of the United States include fury, scandalous, baffled,

unthinkable.

This administration continues to betray our friend, our ally, Israel.

Other things that have happened in the past were the comments made by President Obama to President Sarkozy in 2012 at a G-20 summit which were belittling Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, comments in 2011 that Israel should return to its 1967 borders that would have subjected it to relentless attacks and vulnerability. They were not helpful to our friend and ally.

The Obama administration's failure to condemn Palestinians building of illegal settlements, yet constantly criticizing Israeli housing plans for East Jerusalem; the Obama administration's decision to eradicate the missile defense programs that would have helped Israel as well as the United States; leaving Prime Minister Netanyahu in 2010 on for over an hour in the White House meeting room while President Obama dined with his family and refused to take a picture with him was not a friendly gesture.

Also, Secretary of State Hillary Clinton announced the Obama administration planned to send $147 million to the West Bank and Hamas- run Gaza; President Obama stated that all his friends in Chicago were Jewish and says he was sometimes being accused of being a Jewish ``puppet''; the Obama administration leak to The Washington Post of the time window in which Israel would take out Iran's nuclear program; the Obama administration leaked to the media that Israel was going to use the Azerbaijan airspace to take out Iran's nuclear program.

We placed immense pressure on Israel not to defend itself without the United States' permission. The Obama administration has never rejected or condemned the racist, hateful teachings about Jewish people going on in Palestinian schools in the Middle East and in some Muslim schools in the United States.

President Obama traveled to Turkey, Iraq, Saudi Arabia, and Egypt and apologized to them on behalf of the United States. The Obama administration's support for the Muslim Brotherhood's rise to power in Egypt as well as throughout the Middle East, though the Muslim Brotherhood had never backed away from their demand for the nonexistence of Israel, the Obama administration continues to support the Muslim Brotherhood's return to power in Egypt, when Egypt is where the Muslim Brotherhood turned violent on Morsi's arrest because of his violation of the constitution that did not provide for impeachment, after the Egyptian people turned out in the millions to demand his removal.

It was not a coup, as the Christian Pope in Egypt told me. It was not a coup. This was a people rising up and demanding removal, and yet this administration now has cut off support because Egypt does not want the group, the Muslim Brotherhood, that was killing Christians, burning churches, terrorizing the nation, we want them back in charge--this administration does.

It is an outrage.

Though the Syrian leader Assad has been ruthless in killing and abusing his people, has not been helpful to Israel to the extent the Egyptian leader Mubarak was, this administration has not done anything but put Israel in more jeopardy by its actions in Syria.

So we have not been terribly helpful to our friend Israel. And it doesn't sound like we are actually blessing Israel. It sounds like we are cursing Israel, belittling its leaders, marginalizing its efforts to defend itself, which also enures to our benefit.

My oath of office is to this country. When I was in the Army for 4 years, my oath was to this country. My allegiance continues to this country, and I believe that being Israel's friend is helpful to this country; and that is why I so strongly support being a friend to Israel.

And even if you took the Bible completely out, you took out most anything except just looking at the Middle East and who believes in the value of life like we do here in the United States, who believes more in democratic actions like we do in the United States, then Israel should certainly be our friend.

But what this administration is doing with Iran is foolhardy. It is foolhardy. And thank God for France. They didn't wave a white flag of surrender. They said, This is a terrible deal. And thank goodness they slowed it down, because this administration thinks they just knew and everything they try will work perfectly. Hello, ObamaCare.

It doesn't work any better when they try to mess with our friendships and reward our enemies and hurt our friends.

So, in the few minutes that are remaining, Madam Speaker, I would like to reference back to the New York Times article by Barry James, October 21, 1994, during the Clinton administration.

The director of the International Atomic Energy Agency

expressed skepticism Thursday about the U.S.-North Korean

nuclear agreement, saying it could delay inspections by the

agency.

Officials at the agency, some U.S. Republican Senators and

politicians in South Korea criticized the accord, saying they

feared Pyongyang had bought itself a further 5 years of

secrecy, thus concealing whether it has reprocessed enough

plutonium to build one or more nuclear weapons.

The energy agency says it needs to inspect two nuclear

waste dumps to be able to answer the question. North Korea

has never conceded the existence of the dumps. ``It would be

in the interests of all concerned that a prolonged delay be

avoided,'' said the agency director, Hans Blix; but, he

added, ``We are better off'' with the agreement than with

none at all. ``We have to worry about how much they have

squirreled away,'' an agency official said. ``Blix thinks 5

years is a long time to have to wait for our inspectors to

gain access to the facilities we need to see, including the

two facilities the North Koreans have never declared.''

Yet, under the agreement that the Clinton administration

reached, North Korea agreed to place in storage the fuel

removed last spring from a 5-megawatt graphite reactor

containing enough plutonium for four or five nuclear bombs.

U.S. Republican Senators protested in a letter to President

Bill Clinton that this reversed longstanding U.S. policy

because it allowed the North Koreans to hang onto their spent

fuel rods and would delay for several years the inspection of

suspect sites.

The accord ``shows it is always possible to get an

agreement when you give enough away,'' said Senator Bob Dole

of Kansas . . . The deal also has been heavily criticized in

South Korea. Many people there see it as a diplomatic triumph

for Pyongyang, which failed to dispel doubts about its

nuclear intentions.

As part of the pact, which will be signed in Geneva on

Friday, the United States will head an international

consortium to provide North Korea with an interim supply of

fuel to overcome its chronic energy shortage and, eventually,

two 1,000-megawatt light-water reactors. In exchange, North

Korea will abandon its existing nuclear facilities and

renounce any plans to build nuclear weapons.

Gee, doesn't that sound familiar? This administration is repeating the same mistakes of Madeleine Albright and Bill Clinton as President. They are running to Iran, which can not be trusted, which has lied repeatedly just like North Korea did.

And how did the Clinton deal work out? Yes, they took the nuclear facilities we provided them, but they didn't stand good behind their promise not to develop nuclear weapons. They developed them and we helped them.

Now this administration wants to do the same thing with Iran? We are still paying for the mistakes of the Clinton administration with North Korea's helping them get more nuclear power--and now this administration wants to do that with Iran? That is a huge mistake.

We need to help our friend Israel, to stop betraying them, to help our friends, to stop rewarding our enemies, because the consequences to this Nation will be dire if we don't turn this around.

Madam Speaker, it is my prayer--it is my hope--that this administration will turn from its stupid ways. The arrogance that existed before ObamaCare kicked in surely should have come down a notch so that they can realize maybe we are making a mistake in dealing with bloodthirsty people in Iran as well.

This country's future is at stake. That ought to be enough to make this administration slow down and realize they are about to make another huge mistake that we will pay for for generations if they don't stop. Iran will certainly not stop just as North Korea did not. They had gotten help from North Korea. They learned the lesson from North Korea. It is time this administration learned a lesson from our mistake and from the mistake of the Clinton administration and Madeleine Albright.

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