Floor Statements

Thank you. I too want to follow up on something Dr. Fleming was referring to. The Senate bill was considered some great panacea. It's going to solve all the problems. We are finally going to get border security, we are told.

But I can think of at least a couple of times when this President has said, if the Congress doesn't change the law, I will. Basically he said, if they don't act by changing the law, then I'll act.

We've seen him do that. When he didn't like the law on immigration, he changed the law just by his own decree. We've seen with regard to even ObamaCare--his signature bill from his first administration--it's not going well. He wouldn't come ask Congress, uh-oh, it's not going well so let's change the law. So he just gave ``so as I speak so shall it be,'' which is not reminiscent of normal Presidential conduct.

It is important that a President enforce the law, advocate for changes in the law, but under no circumstances is the President supposed to change the law to fit his own desires. I mean, you advocate, but the checks and balances which are the real genius behind the Constitution that do create gridlock, that create tensions between the different branches are what keeps this place from becoming a monarchy.

This President, when he says, If Congress doesn't act to change the law, then I will take care of it, well, we've seen that with gun control. He didn't like the fact that Congress was not changing the law when we were demanding that he enforce the laws that are there. All of these killers that have just been a plague on society, they violated plenty of laws. But this administration may be the worst at enforcing the gun laws. Certainly this administration has really been wanting in the area of enforcing the gun laws; and instead they come around and say, we want new gun laws. Well, that's not the way to do it.

I know that Republicans say, look, look, it's important we get this off the table, let's just get it off the table so let's pass something and that will get it off the table and then we can get on to the other things. I have already mentioned I think the thing to do is say, Resolved: the House is not going to take up an immigration bill until the President, the executive branch, Homeland Security, secures the border. Woodrow Wilson--and I'm not a fan of his historically--but in 1916 when Americans were threatened by rage across the border and Americans killed, that President secured the border, pure and simple. He secured the border, and he didn't go run around demanding that a new immigration bill be passed and we give amnesty to people.

There is a great article that National Review had from Fred Bauer. He said:

Any argument that says the GOP should support such a

measure to remove immigration as a political issue should be

treated with immediate suspicion. Millions would be left as

illegal immigrants under the Senate plan and most other

legalization plans a million more illegal immigrants,

according to the Congressional Budget Office, would arrive

over the next 10 years. Many provisions of the Senate bill,

from the law wait time for citizenship to the status of guest

workers, provide plenty of opportunities for the left to

demagog this issue. Any changes to U.S. immigration law also

change the future composition of the body politic.

Immigration as a national policy question has not been

``off the table'' since 1789. Don't expect the latest link

of congressional sausage to change that.

I think that's well said.

This is not going to be off the table. The way that we should deal with it responsibly is hold the administration accountable. You enforce the law and then we'll get an immigration bill done very quickly after that. I know we will.

All my colleagues here know there are parts of the immigration law that need to be fixed. But until the border is secure, not closed, but secured, we are wasting our time talking about a comprehensive immigration bill, or even good bills like Trey Gowdy or other bills that people have had; we shouldn't even be talking about them. Let the immigration secure the border and then we can work these things out very quickly. It's like a huge flood in your basement. If you run down and start with a mop while the water is still pouring in, you're making a mistake. You first stop the flood, and then you can clean up the problems after that.

Thank you, Mr. Speaker.

At this time, I would like to yield as much time as he may consume to my good friend from Texas (Mr. Flores).

Honoring Lieutenant Colonel Todd Clark

Thank you, Mr. Flores.

Colonel Clark was a great American. He was a great Aggie. He was just a great man. And I appreciate that tribute to him.

Now, my friend from Texas from the Houston area wished to do a 1- minute, so I will yield to my friend from Texas (Ms. Jackson Lee) for such time as she may consume.

Voting Rights Act

Mr. Speaker, I thank my friend from Texas, and I was quite impressed and pleased to work with Ms. Jackson Lee in our effort in helping one of our servicemen.

Some people around the country say, Why can't people get along on both sides of the aisle? When we disagree on issues, we say that. But when we work together, because of our common goal to make the country better and to help those who have been unfairly treated, we work together. It's a pleasure to do so. So I thank my friend from Texas (Ms. Jackson Lee).

I would like to comment today on the good that the Voting Rights Act did. Back in the 1960s there was racial disparity. There were far too many African Americans who percentagewise were not voting when compared with the majority of Euro White Americans, and something needed to be done.

The Supreme Court said, because there has been such impropriety, then we will allow this punitive measure to try to force things into being right to where there's not racial disparity, racial discrimination in preventing people of minority races from getting to the polls and being able to vote. Over 45 years later, it has worked. As the Supreme Court pointed out, of the original six States, five of those States have less racial disparity in voting than the whole rest of the country. That's great progress.

But over those four to five decades of time, things change. The Voting Rights Act, as I pointed out to my friend and fellow Republican, the chairman of the Judiciary Committee at the time, Mr. Sensenbrenner, who had worked so hard to have it extended previously and was working on the reauthorization or the reextension--and to my friend across the aisle that I have great respect for--we have wonderful conversations-- Mr. John Conyers--as I pointed out, you have a problem with equal protection in this extension.

You are punishing States who have cleaned up their act. Now, I don't know of anybody--anybody--in any of those

States who was forced under the 40-plus-year-old formula to be punished who had anybody in their government who was there when racial inequality and discrimination was going on, who's still there. So this act that's done great good refused to acknowledge that good had been done. And even though things had changed and we had gone from Southern States having racial discrimination to now having those Southern States that had less racial disparity, and in fact in numerous cases had more African American turnout than they had white turnout percentage-wise, so things had corrected themselves. I would submit that it won't totally be corrected until we have a much higher percentage of all Americans who are eligible to vote coming out and voting. That's what's supposed to happen.

Anyway, things have changed, and now the most discriminatory State in the Union, ironically, has become Massachusetts. Even Wisconsin has a district with significant racial disparity, indicating a potential for discrimination in that area; and perhaps Massachusetts should be an area that we focus on for trying to eliminate the racial discrimination there. Let's look at the numbers and see where racial disparity exists, determine what the reason is. And if there's racial discrimination, we need to address that because as we've seen, the Voting Rights Act has actually done a great good.

So it's a work in progress. I don't know how many of the two Senators and Representatives from Massachusetts would be willing to join with me to put--to agree to put Massachusetts under the punitive section 5, but I'm certainly willing to go along and do that so that Massachusetts can benefit and get rid of racial discrimination and work toward the day when their racial disparity is back in line with where it should be. It's normally been a forward-thinking State, so it's very sad that it's regressed in that regard. But certainly we can work together on helping improve Massachusetts to the point that, say, Texas is now. I know they would like to be. I know that there are people in Massachusetts that do not want to be the most racially discriminating State, so I'm sure it shouldn't be that difficult a thing to accomplish. So there should be a tribute to the Voting Rights Act.

I happen to represent east Texas. Nacogdoches paper, after the vote on the Voting Rights Act, had unfairly said I was a throwback to Democrats in the fifties because they had not bothered to read my floor speeches to see my own Gohmert amendment that would have required a formula that would apply across the country so the act would apply to everywhere in the country. That was the fair thing to do. I would have voted for the amendment if we had been able to get the Gohmert amendment in, but it was not accepted. So I knew the act would have to go down.

Anyway, the great thing about being in east Texas, most people there are quite fair. And when it was pointed out to the Nacogdoches paper back then, my speech and my amendment, then they did a retraction and corrected themselves. That's the great thing about America.

Now, I'm not expecting the AP to do a correction and the misrepresentation of things I said this week. In fact, I'm quite tickled that after the AP experienced the full force of the executive branch coming after them, grabbing their records, grabbing phone records from up here in the area in which the reporters work and make calls to Congressmen and other things, what a violation, what an atrocious violation of the AP's rights. And I'm glad the AP doesn't feel like they owe me any obligation in being more accurate in their reporting of me. This is America. The AP is totally free to mess up stories as they wish, totally free to slant stories as they want to. That's their prerogative. That's the great thing about America. But I hope that they'll start being a little more vigilant about the abuses by this administration since now they've been the victim of such abuses. We'll see. But, hopefully, they won't continue to be so defensive for the administration and be a little more objective in their reporting.

I did want to address the Windsor decision regarding the Defense of Marriage Act because as a former prosecutor, a former judge--I've been a litigator and a former chief justice--I read these opinions with interest and look for the reasoning, look for the consistency in the citation of the facts, the recitation to prior law, prior precedent, and the reasoning of the Court. And as I read through this Windsor decision regarding Defense of Marriage Act, I was very concerned as I read through, they go through here in the majority opinion, Justice Kennedy wrote, and they've got about 12 pages here where they're talking about, most of the discussion is about standing, because under this case, the administration refused to do their job. They refused to have the Department of Justice defend the law, and it shouldn't be any surprise.

We have the President goes out, including here recently, and says: I don't like the law that Congress passed and prior Presidents have signed, so here's the new law. As recently as the last few days, he didn't like the law as it stands on carbon issues. So as any good monarch would do, he just came up with a new law and espoused that. Unfortunately, it's not appropriate and the Constitution has the wherewithal to stop this kind of overreach and unconstitutional activity by a President that just refuses to enforce laws in being, creates new laws out of whole cloth while ignoring the laws that are in place. That's a problem.

The Founders recognize that it's possible some day, some President, some administration could do that; and if they do, then the Congress has the powers of the purse, and they can step up and say you're abusing the Constitution, you're abusing people's rights. And, therefore, we as a House and Senate refuse to fund any department that is acting extra-constitutionally. We have the power to do that.

I have people here in my party, the majority party in the House say: You know, we've no leverage. Are you kidding? There is nobody in this entire government in the whole executive branch that can get paid, that can have any money to do their job unless we vote to allow them to have money from the Treasury.

They can't get it. We have that authority. And if we wanted to take a hard line when the Justice Department is refusing to investigate matters properly, they're covering up matters, they come to Congress and misrepresent things, we have the power to stop them from continuing such abuses.

When they, potentially, commit a fraud on the Court and say somebody is a criminal, like James Rosen, and they swear to that before a judge, and swear that he's a flight risk, when apparently they knew all along he wasn't, and now they say, no, no, no, they were never going to prosecute, we have the power to stop that kind of stuff.

We have the power to stop the abuses of going after the AP or Rosen, or any reporters inappropriately abusing and breaching the freedom of the press.

I saw my friend, Mr. Nadler, walk across the back. We have disagreed on so many things, but I have come to appreciate very much his position on the need to hold every administration accountable, and I'm hoping that we're going to be able to work out some legislation that reins in the abuses.

Yes, I know that an administration needs to monitor some things, but I'm quite concerned about the extent to which this administration has moved even farther than the prior administration in monitoring people. I mean, basically, in such an incredibly Orwellian fashion, it's a little scary to those of us that have watched this happen. So I'm hoping we'll be able to work together.

But when you look at this opinion and you see, well, gee, the administration is refusing to defend a law that was duly passed, signed into law by President Clinton, it's a problem. Somebody has to defend the law.

And I was grateful that the Supreme Court, after they analyzed this and got over around page 12 or so, and say, that similarly, with respect to the legislative power--this is on page 12 of the majority opinion--when Congress has passed a statute and a President has signed it, it poses grave challenges to the separation of powers for the executive, at a particular moment, to be able to nullify Congress' enactment, solely on its own initiative, and without any determination from a court.

Of course, then they go through and say, on page 13, they refer to the bilateral legislative group that decided to

defend the Defense of Marriage Act when the administration refused to do the job that was required constitutionally, they refused to defend it, as they have other laws that have been duly passed and signed.

But the Court says, in part--which is one of immediate importance to the Federal Government and to hundreds of thousands of persons--well, they have no basis in fact to make that reference; but, as we've seen, particularly in recent years, the Court has strayed off into areas where they do not have facts to justify their opinions, and they make bad decisions, as they did in the horrendous Dred Scott case.

It happens, when the Court becomes the fact-finder, the, basically, judge, jury and executioner. I mean, they just seem to want to do it all and make references to facts that are not before the Court. And, in fact, they say these circumstances support the Court's decision to proceed on the merits.

So the Court's saying, okay, the administration refuses to do their constitutional job to defend duly passed and signed legislation, so the Members of Congress that passed this law, that pushed it through and voted for it, in essence, they will have standing to defend it.

So it took them a long time to get here, clear over to 13, but they eventually say, okay, we will recognize that, since these people passed the law, they pushed it through, it's their group that got it passed and made it into a law. We'll recognize that they have a legitimate standing to come before this Court and defend the law.

And now, basically, the Court says, now that we've found that the people that passed this law have a right to defend it, significant enough that they have standing, that gives us jurisdiction, as a Supreme Court; and so now we will proceed on the merits.

So then they go through and they analyze, and I had some trouble with some of their representations. You know, King Solomon, many, including me, believe, was the wisest man who ever lived. Of course, then he had too many wives, and that always messes up anybody's wisdom, but he was wise at the time he said there is nothing new under the Sun.

Well, the Supreme Court, apparently, at least the new holy quintet, believes they're wiser than Solomon, even though they show some ignorance. They say here, page 13, for marriage between a man and a woman, no doubt had been thought of by most people as essential to the very definition of that term and to its role and function throughout the history of civilization.

Now, parenthetically, I'd like to insert that shows some wisdom that they would make that comment. And throughout the history of mankind, though many won't acknowledge it, marriage between a man and a woman coming together, or as the Bible says, a man will leave his mother and a woman leave her home and the two will come together and be one person, one flesh, that's been recognized as a good, healthy building block for a society. And that's been recognized throughout the history of the United States as a good, healthy building block.

And what some seem to not recognize, even though they acknowledge they believe in evolution and how a species evolves by having better and more adaptable offspring, and the strongest produce more and better offspring that evolve the species to a higher level, interestingly, throughout the history of mankind, it, apparently, was not the joinder of a man and a man or a woman and a woman that was able to produce a better and more evolved species.

From best we can tell, you still need a sperm from a man, an egg from a woman. Even if you say, well, yeah, we can clone, if you don't have something that was created by the joinder of something from a man and something from a woman, then you have nothing to clone. So as smart as we think we are, it still comes back to what the Bible says as the two people becoming one person, one flesh.

Anyway, the Court says, and I quote:

That belief for many who long have held it, became even

more urgent, more cherished when challenged. For others,

however, came the beginnings of a new perspective, a new

insight.

There is nothing new under the Sun. This kind of assertion has been made, and it's often found toward the end of great civilizations. It doesn't bring about the end of the civilization; but it's often found at the end of a great civilization as, basically, a mile marker that a civilization passes on the way to the dustbin of history.

No nation lasts forever. None does. This country won't. But it's my hope and prayer that we can at least double the length of the short time that this country has existed, since 1775, when the war started, the Declaration of Independence in 1776, the Treaty of Paris in 1783.

So, anyway, the Supreme Court says, talks about this new perspective and new insight. And then they say this:

The limitation of lawful marriage to heterosexual couples

which, for centuries, had been deemed both necessary and

fundamental, came to be seen in New York and certain other

States as an unjust exclusion.

And they go on and they mention, you know, there are 11 States that had adopted this. There are not 11 States that have had the entire State vote to recognize marriage between two men or two women.

But once you move marriage beyond the scope of a man and a woman, you really don't end up with a good place to put a limit, because now that the Court has pushed this boundary out there and eliminated it, then--I think polygamy is wrong, bigamy is wrong. And it's a crime in many places. But how will that be justifiable, even though I believe it's wrong, how will that be justifiable, now that the Court has removed this?

There's some that believe polygamy is the way to go. I do not think it's healthy, overall, for a society, and I certainly don't think it helped Solomon. I think it helped him lose his wisdom.

But the Court goes on and says this at page 16. And its operation is directed to a class of persons that the laws of New York and 11 other States have sought to protect. Again, that's not 11 or 12 States that have had the entire State vote on what marriage is. Most of those have been legislatures. And in some States where legislatures have said one thing, the people have come from the whole State and said, You're not representing out interests, and we're a government of the people, by the people, and for the people, and therefore we're correcting you and fixing the law.

The Court said, at page 17:

The definition of marriage is the foundation of the States'

broader authority to regulate the subject of domestic

relations with respect to the protection of offspring,

property interests, and the enforcement of marital

responsibilities. The States, at the time of the adoption of

the Constitution, possessed full power over the subject of

marriage and divorce, and the Constitution delegated no

authority to the Government of the United States on the

subject of marriage and divorce.

So if you've read plenty of opinions and you read that at page 17, you realize this Court is about to do what, for many of us, is unthinkable--become a holy quintet, the five Justices--and basically try to rewrite the laws of nature and nature's God, as most of the Founders believed.

But as I read that--and I had not read the Proposition 8 case from the Supreme Court regarding California's law--I thought, well, I don't like where this is going, but based on this reasoning, I know the Supreme Court will have to be intellectually honest and consistent enough that since they've said Members of Congress that passed a law have standing to defend that law, when the Attorney General and the executive branch doesn't, they'll have to uphold the standing of the group in California who pushed through and voted for and passed--just as Congress does the laws here--through referendum, the law in California, saying that marriage was between a man and a woman.

And when I read this, I said, Oh, this doesn't sound good for the Defense of Marriage Act by the Federal Congress because they're saying it's only the States that can decide what marriage is. And these 11, 12 States have decided for themselves what it is, and so the Federal Government doesn't have any power to say what it is. I still contend the Federal Government does have a nexus and power to say what it is for purposes of certain Federal benefits, but the Court, as the new holy quintet, saw otherwise.

They go on to say in this opinion that which shows that the holy quintet

was either totally dishonest or totally inconsistent--totally ignorant, actually--when they make this statement. This is page 22. ``The principal purpose''--talking about the Defense of Marriage Act--``is to impose inequality, not for other reasons like governmental efficiency.''

And that's a lie. And anybody who will be intellectually honest will have to understand that is a lie by the new holy quintet at the Supreme Court.

The principal purpose was to protect the greatest foundational building block of any society since the dawn of mankind: the home, where a mother and father are there; a home, where the species has offspring and they're nurtured by a mother and father.

Now, certainly, I saw it in the Soviet Union back in the seventies when I was there as an exchange student. I was shocked. I was actually mortified, because at these day care centers they were saying, yes, the children are the government's. They're the state's. Seems like I saw that on MSNBC recently. They're the state's. And the parents are only the brief caregivers, so long as the state allows them to take care of the state's children. But if they ever say anything inappropriate that the state finds out about, they'll yank the children out and put them with somebody more deserving.

I was mortified because, even in the seventies, I realized as a young person that, wow, the family is so important. Some of our greatest people have come from single-parent homes, and that will also continue. Thank God, since we've now passed over 40 percent, heading towards 50 percent, of individuals being born today to a single-parent home. But that's not, statistically, the most secure and the best home, generally speaking, for a child to grow up in. Obviously, there are exceptions. You have abusive parents. You have parents that I sent to prison who were an aberration. That can happen in anybody's home. So I sent them to prison for committing crimes. Well, obviously, a two-parent home, where one of them is committing crimes, is not healthy to a child.

But overall, for the history of this country, the States, Members of Congress, the original Founders, they would never have dreamed we would get to a point where the judiciary, the unelected branch--the only unelected branch--would say, We're going to rewrite the laws of nature and nature's God. But that's, in essence, what they say.

At page 25, the Court says that:

The Federal statute is invalid, for no legitimate purpose

overcomes the purpose and effect to disparage and injure

those whom the State, by its marriage laws, sought to protect

in personhood and dignity.

That's a tragic decision, and it's heartbreaking that it will help to generate society as we move forward with fewer and fewer people paying income tax, as this society becomes more and more narcissistic, more focused on ourselves. How else can you explain one generation saying this generation is so valuable that we are going to force future generations, some who have not even been born, to pay for our narcissism and to be engorging ourselves on the money of future generations?

We're the first in American history that's ever been so self- absorbed, and it's heartbreaking. We've got to change this. All the generations before had a majority of that generation that would sacrifice whatever we have to so that our children will have a better Nation than we have. I've been the beneficiary of that, and I will work until I take my dying breath to try to change the direction we're headed, toward national bankruptcy, both financially and morally. But this is a disingenuous opinion, and either the Court realizes it, which makes it dishonest, or they don't realize it, and it makes them very ignorant.

So, nonetheless, when I finished reading that majority opinion, I knew that surely, as bad as that opinion is, incorporating things that simply aren't true, disingenuous, when they take up the Proposition 8 case from California, number one, they'll have to say that the people that pushed through the law and passed it have standing to defend the law that they pushed through and passed and voted for themselves by referendum, just as the Members of Congress were allowed to have standing to defend the bill.

In California's case, the executive branch, their attorney general, refused to defend the law that was passed by a majority of the Californians. And so I thought, okay, that will be an easy one for the Supreme Court. They can just reference the Windsor case, as these people have the right, they have standing; therefore, we have jurisdiction to take up the merits of the case.

They could cite Windsor, the DOMA case, for the proposition, as they say in the DOMA case, that the States have a right to determine what marriage will be in their State.

Here's the amazing part: for people, many of whom have educations from Ivy League institutions--I'm not sure, they may all come from Ivy League institutions--sounds like we need some diversity on the Court, though, if that's the case. They hold that the people that passed the law in California, voted for the law in California do not have standing to defend the law, so we're not even going to take up the issue that we said clearly, in the case we just decided on DOMA, that only the States have a right to decide what marriage is within their States. So they kick it back to a lower court to dismiss.

It is tragic when people who are supposed to be our best educated have such false reasoning based on a fiction that the law saying marriage is a man and a woman has no other purpose--the primary purpose at least being to create inequality. That is tragic. It does not bode well for this Nation when the only unelected branch decides that they will rewrite the laws of nature and nature's God.

And why do I mention that is because those are terms that the Founders used. When my pastor, David Dykes, was up here with his wife, Cindy, it was the first time I had gone over to the State Department. I mean, I majored in history; I loved history. I owed the Army 4 years for my scholarship at A&M, and I enjoyed history so I majored in it.

I knew all about the Revolution, the Treaty of Paris, but I never actually looked at the Treaty of Paris or a copy of it. Under glass in the State Department building they have an incredible copy of the original Treaty of Paris of 1783. And I was shocked by the big bold letters that start the Treaty of Paris. I had to think about why would they start with those words.

Then you put yourself back in the place of the Founders, those who were negotiating with the British Government in Paris to force them to recognize that the United States of America was a free and independent country, totally free of Great Britain, and totally independent to do what it wished as its own sovereign Nation. So they had to get representatives from Great Britain to sign that. Well, what would keep them from just breaking their oath? I mean, we see it here among politicians. They'll swear one thing and then they'll go do something else. What would keep the representatives of Great Britain from doing the same thing?

And the Founders wanted something so profound under which they would make the Great Britain diplomats sign that they would be afraid to ever break that oath. So I thought about it. Well, what in the world would I put in the document to make them sign under? I don't think having a notary is going to quite do the trick, especially if it's an American notary. They'd say, well, it wasn't a British notary.

So what would you do? What would you put in the document to make them swear under? That's where they came up with the first words of the Treaty of Paris that for the first time truly recognized the independence of the United States by Great Britain. France had already recognized us, but this was the one we had been in revolts with and war with. So the first words, the biggest, boldest words in all the Treaty of Paris were these:

In the Name of the Most Holy and Undivided Trinity.

Now, they knew, both the British and the Americans, that the Trinity represented the Father, Son and the Holy Ghost. They put that as the biggest words in there:

In the Name of the most Holy and undivided Trinity.

They figured if the British will sign this document with those in big bold letters, they will not want to face their

Judge some day if they break that oath.

It's the very reason that John Quincy Adams--a great advocate for abolition, the only man in American history who had been elected President, 1824, defeated in 1828, he decides God's calling him to bring an end to slavery, like William Wilberforce was trying to do in England. So he did the unthinkable. After he was President, he ran to be a Representative in the House of Representatives of the U.S. Congress and was elected. And he indicated to someone that he was prouder being elected to Congress after being President than he was being elected President, which seems a little strange. But if you think about it, it means after he was elected President, his neighbors still liked him. So that was a big deal.

But over and over he preached sermons on the evils of slavery just down the Hall here. But in the Amistad case that came before the Supreme Court, down in what we call the Old Supreme Court Chamber downstairs, he argued before the Supreme Court--and you can find his whole argument online. Fortunately, they didn't put two-plus days of oral argument in the movie Amistad--Anthony Hopkins, a good Longview; Texas guy named Matthew McConaughey, he argued the case. And you find at the end of his argument--and I don't have it committed verbatim, but basically he goes through asking, Where is Justice so-and-so and Chief Justice John Marshall? Where is the solicitor who last argued the case against me when I was here before? Even the judge that started this case, he had died one night during the days of oral arguments. He ends up concluding, basically, they've gone to meet their Judge. And the most important question that they were asked is will they hear: Well done, good and faithful servant?

Now, if I had had a lawyer argue that before me in the court of appeals or the district bench, I mean, I had gotten the message, you got a lawyer there saying if you don't decide for me, you're going to have to face God Almighty some day, and he's going to judge you and he's going to come down on you if you don't do the right thing in this case. I might not have appreciated it, but the Court found appropriately for John Quincy Adams' side of the case. And those free Africans were allowed to leave as free Africans, as they should have been.

So back then, the lead abolitionist, he knew, he believed with all his heart some day people are going to meet their maker, He's going to be their Judge. I might have enjoyed if John Quincy Adams were able to come back as Lazarus did, when Jesus raised him, and go before the Supreme Court and say, let me tell you, I've been there. You are going to go before your Judge some day. And you better not pretend to be God himself because you're going to meet God himself some day. But this Supreme Court did not have that benefit, so the holy quintet decided to rewrite the law.

Now, I want to touch on briefly a law that was just passed down in the Senate. I really appreciated my good friend Senator Ted Cruz's statement down the Hall. I'm quoting from his statement:

Unfortunately, all of the concerns that have been

repeatedly raised about this bill remain; it repeats the

mistakes of the 1986 immigration bill; it grants amnesty

first; it won't secure the border; and it doesn't fix our

broken legal immigration system.

This bill doesn't solve the problems because the process it

went through was fatally flawed--it was written behind closed

doors with special interests; in the Judiciary Committee, the

Gang of Eight Democrats blocked all substantive amendments

because of a previously cooked deal; and on the Senate floor,

the majority blocked any attempts to fix the bill.

Further, in conjunction with ObamaCare, the Gang of Eight bill creates a tax penalty on employers--effectively, up to $5,000--for hiring U.S. citizens or legal immigrants. But that penalty does not apply to those with RPI--which is registered provisional immigrant-- status, giving a powerful incentive for job creators to hire illegal immigrants instead of U.S. citizens or legal immigrants. That is indefensible.

Ted says:

I filed an amendment to fix this defect but was blocked by

Senate Democrats from receiving a vote on that solution.

Sadly, this bill won't fix the problem with our immigration

system and will only encourage more illegal immigration and

human suffering.

Quite tragic. Quite tragic.

Senator Cruz explains it well.

Dr. Tom Coburn, a good friend--hopefully, he would acknowledge that-- from Oklahoma, Senator Tom Coburn said this--I won't read the whole statement, there's not adequate time, but a wonderful statement he summarizes very well. He said:

It is a $48 billion border stimulus package that grants

amnesty to politicians who want to say they are securing the

border when, in fact, they are not.

Further he quotes Reagan. He said Reagan said:

It was a tall, proud city built on rocks stronger than

oceans, windswept, God-blessed, and teeming with people of

all kinds living in harmony and peace; a city with free ports

that hummed with commerce and creativity. And if there had to

be city walls, the walls had doors and the doors were open to

anyone with the will and the heart to get here.

``Walls with doors'' is an immigration policy that can

unite our Nation. But today, Democrats sound like they want

only doors; Republicans want only walls. The truth is we have

neither. We have chaos.

Well said.

But the Republicans I know want doors. We want immigration. We want the fresh water flowing into this incredible lake. It's a healthy good thing.

I love the fact that, generally speaking, most Hispanics I know have a faith in God, a devotion to their family, and a hard work ethic. That's what I think made America great. It's a great thing. We need more of that. That's a good thing.

But it has to be done legally, and it is heartbreaking that this got pushed through the Senate to what many of us believe will be the detriment of this country.

In The Weekly Standard, John McCormack wrote an article that five Senators who support the immigration bill don't know the answer to a key question about it. A great article there in The Weekly Standard.

There are plenty of good articles if our friends down the hall had bothered to read them. Eagle Forum has a great article, a great newsletter, on the Gang of Eight and what they've done to America.

What my friend Ted Cruz was pointing out, under ObamaCare, there is a penalty that could be $3,000 per employee. For those over 50 you deduct 30. It's a formula. But basically, in most cases it's a $2,000 penalty for any employer that has over 50 employees that does not provide the level of health care that is required under ObamaCare. So Ted Cruz makes a point I haven't heard anybody else make--it's an excellent point: that under ObamaCare, if you're an employer and you've got 1,000 people working for you, certainly you're under ObamaCare, so you're going to pay a tax of $2,000 per person on your employees if you don't give them the highest level required of health insurance, so they will end up being under ObamaCare.

Well, businesses compete to stay in business. If someone else has a lower overhead, then they have to try to get down to that level of overhead.

Under the Senate bill, they create these registered provisional immigrants. By that law, the registered provisional immigrants are not under ObamaCare. So if an employer that has, say, 1,000 employees wants to save $200,000 or so, that employer can fire all of the American citizens and all the legal immigrants that he has working in that manufacturing plant and hire the RPIs, the registered provisional immigrants. Then that employer doesn't have to provide them health care, and he doesn't have to pay the $2,000 fine per employee and save a couple hundred thousand. If you have 10,000 employees, then you would save a couple million dollars.

It is really profound the detrimental effect it will have on legal immigrants and American citizens.

I see that my dear friend from Minnesota (Mrs. Bachmann) is here.

Mr. Speaker, how much time do I have remaining?

Mr. Speaker, I yield the balance of my time to the gentlewoman from Minnesota (Mrs. Bachmann).

Mr. Speaker, pursuant to Senate Concurrent Resolution 19, 113th Congress, I move that the House do now adjourn.

The motion was agreed to; accordingly (at 12 o'clock and 39 minutes p.m.) the House adjourned until Monday, July 8, 2013, at 2 p.m.

Mr. Speaker, my friends across the aisle obviously are concerned about section 4 of the Voting Rights Act being struck down.

We debated the extension of the Voting Rights Act in the Judiciary Committee, and I have great respect for then-Chairman John Conyers. And as I mentioned to him privately, as well, there's no way it's going to avoid being violative of equal protection when you have, as was determined in 2009, five of the six original States that now have less racial disparity than the rest of the country and the worst racial disparity is in Massachusetts. You can't just cram a punishment down on States just because you have a majority when great work has been done by the Voting Rights Act. It has done a good thing, and it was time for a new formula so we could capture the States that showed such racial disparity.

I look forward to working with my friends across the aisle to subjecting Massachusetts and any other violators--I know there aren't any others that bad--to section 5, and I'm sure we can get that done.

Mr. Speaker, today we did vote on the farm bill, as it's been referred to, the Federal Agriculture Reform and Risk Management Act. But as some of us have pointed out--and I attempted to establish through an amendment--this was not a farm bill. Eighty percent was about food stamps.

It was a very brilliant move by Members of Congress back when the Democrats controlled the majority--the seventies, the eighties--in fact, after Vietnam, the post-Watergate era, the most liberal Congress until Speaker Pelosi took the gavel. They did a brilliant thing. They were able to take so much in the form of welfare, public assistance of all kinds, and put it into so many different budgets under the jurisdiction of different committees so that if at any one time someone went after one area that was multiplicitous, it was simply a duplication of other agencies' funds, then they could be marginalized and demeaned and have it said, you don't care about women or veterans or children or the poor, or whatever. It's worked well, in fact, to the point that we now obviously have about $17 trillion in debt more than we've had revenue coming in. Basically, we would be, perhaps, Greece or Cyprus, other countries that are basically on the verge of bankruptcy except that we produce our own money. And the dollar is the international currency, so it's allowed all this reckless overspending.

So I think it's time--and I know there are many others that agree-- that we reform Congress to the point where all public assistance comes in one single committee, one area where all public assistance can be located. It will be easy to see all the duplications, all the waste, so much easier to see areas where fraud is running rampant when you put all of those public assistance measures in the same bill.

I actually proposed an amendment that would strike title IV--which was the food stamp program, although it's been cleverly renamed the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program, SNAP--has a real snap to it. But the goal was not to do away with that program. In fact, my friend across the aisle, Mr. McGovern, asked me: Are you wanting to do away entirely with the food stamp or the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program? And I replied before the Rules Committee, on the record, before a television camera, into a microphone, no, I didn't want to do away with that program. But I did feel it needed to have its own time, its own discussion, and not be 80 percent of a farm bill.

But what is really heartbreaking is not that children are not going to have food in America--because whether we bring a farm bill back that separates out the food stamp program so we can deal with that separately--not do away with it, but deal with it separately--or whether it comes back and we're into the rut of continuing to extend and extend, children will not be allowed to go hungry.

But I think back about the Presidential campaign last year and about how much the politics around here has degenerated, such that when a Republican like Mitt Romney--or John McCain, back in 2008--says I disagree with my friend, my opponent, but I know he's a good man and he has a good heart. He wants to do good things for the country, we just disagree with how to get there. And yet what we have coming back, as Mitt Romney saw, was Mitt Romney, after saying he's a good man, a good family man, but I think he's wrong on these issues, what came back from the drones--the human drones that were speaking on behalf of the President--was, gee, he wants to push people off a cliff; he wants people to die of cancer; he wants them to get cancer. He's obviously painted as a very evil man.

That came back to mind today during some of the discussions. I heard our friend from Maryland, minority whip here, talking about the farm bill, blaming Republicans for not being bipartisan when three-fourths of the Republicans had voted for the farm bill. Yet our friends across the aisle did make it a very partisan measure, and not only made it partisan in the rhetoric condemning Republicans for not reaching out, things were said in the subsequent discussions when my friend from Texas had been here on the House floor, but comments from friends across the aisle like children were crying out here for food and Republicans, in essence, not only voted down their help but wanted to slap them down.

I would never say that about a friend across the aisle. I think they're wrong in the way they want to spend so much more money than we have coming in it's bankrupting the country. I would never think for a moment that one of my friends from across the aisle wanted to slap down children. I just wouldn't bring myself to say that because I know it's not true. I think they're very wrongheaded on so many issues. But comments like taking not

only food, but their utensils or table and just leave them with the floor, how could we do such a thing?

Yet, when we look at the food stamp bill that had 20 percent farm in it that did not pass today, it certainly wasn't for a lack of work by the chairman of the Agriculture Committee, Frank Lucas. Chairman Lucas and I don't always agree on things, but I know that man and he is a good man, and I did appreciate hearing Mr. Hoyer commenting as much. Frank Lucas worked very, very hard on this bill and he actually got reforms in here.

There were actually amendments passed that some didn't like, but it was a bipartisan bill. There were some Democrats that voted for this bill. That makes it bipartisan. Not like ObamaCare that was rammed down the throats of Americans and the Republicans, without having input, without having any opportunity for amendment really, just forced upon Republicans in the country.

In fact, there's never been a Congress that has been as closed to amendment, as closed to input from the other side, as we witnessed when the Democrats took the majority in January of 2007 until they lost the majority in November of 2010. Those years saw more closed rules, no amendments possible. It was unbelievable the way our friends across the aisle were so abusive with the process and preventing almost half of the country from having any voice in anything that went on.

When I hear our friends across the aisle talk about a lack of bipartisanship, it's a little difficult. What really is a bit heartbreaking is to hear people across the aisle speak so eloquently as I sat here listening today, hearing people speak with such incredibly persuasive words and expressions and with such venom and passion that, if I did not know the truth, I actually would be believing how horrible and evil and nasty and child hating Republicans really are.

However, I know people on this side of the aisle as well. There is not anybody that has been elected to Congress--there's no other way to get to the House. There is nobody that's been elected on either side of the aisle that wants to see a child suffer because of anything we do. It is very offensive to have people on one side of the aisle attribute those kinds of feelings that we wanted to hurt children. Really? It sounds so real and so true.

How can we ever have legitimate debate in this House of Representatives when anybody can stand and attribute such evil motivation on the side of the other and make it sound so real? Do we have any chance of saving this country when people can come to the floor and make such ridiculous allegations sound so persuasive and true? You can't have debate like that.

On the other hand, I have looked in the eyes of constituents of mine. As I go all over my district, down to a wonderful little community, it brought us recently for a town hall. I go all over the district. One of the things that really makes me proud is to be introduced as having been to some community more than any other Member of Congress. They thought, Oh, well, he is from Tyler. He wouldn't care about us here. I care about the whole district. I know all of the people that are elected, they do care about their district.

But when I look into the eyes of constituents who want to provide for their children, they want them to have the best that they can provide for them, and they talk about standing in line--I've heard this story so many times from people who are brokenhearted about it and sometimes get angry just thinking about what they've seen and what they've heard.

But standing in line at a grocery store behind people with a food stamp card, and they look in their basket--as one individual said, I love crab legs, you know, the big king crab legs. I love those. But we haven't been able to have them in our house since who knows when. But I'm standing behind a guy who has those in his basket and I'm looking longingly, like, When can I ever make enough again where our family can have something like that, and then sees the food stamp card pulled out and provided. He looks at the king crab legs and looks at his ground meat and realizes, because he does pay income tax, he doesn't get more back than he pays in, he is actually helping pay for the king crab legs when he can't pay for them for himself.

People across the aisle want to condemn anyone who is working and scraping and can't save any money and is trying to decide how in the world do we ever get ahead, can we ever get ahead. They're cutting back my hours at work. We're doing the best we can, and yet I stand in line and see multiple people paying with food stamp cards for things I cannot afford.

How can you begrudge somebody who feels that way? How can you begrudge anyone who steps up on behalf of constituents who feel that way? We don't want anyone to go hungry. And from the amount of obesity in this country by people we are told do not have enough to eat, it does seem like we could have a debate about this issue without allegations about wanting to slap down or starve children.

Because when I think of children, I think about those also who are growing up right now. They have no say in the amount of money we're spending in this Chamber right here, billions and billions and billions, with so much waste, fraud, and abuse.

Yet those very little children who have no voice in what we're doing are going to have to pay for our extravagance and our waste and our fraud and abuse. What kind of parent would want that? I don't know of anybody on either side of the aisle who would want that, but it is what we are producing.

I didn't vote for the farm bill--because it's not a farm bill. I believe we need to have a debate where we bring all the public assistance into one place so we see what's there and so we can cut out as much waste, fraud and abuse as possible, where we can make those cuts, because when we're spending the billions and billions and billions we are for food supplement, whatever you want to call it, and when there is story after story of people who are caught selling interest in their food stamp cards or what they buy with their food stamp cards, can we really not come and have a discussion about how we can quit putting a heavier and heavier burden on children who have no voice in this Congress?

Can we not have a debate and a discussion without demonizing people who say, Look, I care about the children who are growing up and who are going to be born and who shouldn't have to pay for the extravagance and the narcissism within this generation? Can't we have that discussion without demonizing one another? I would hope that we could get to that point.

One comment about Tea Party extremism killing the farm bill. When a small reform is made to the food stamp program and when this additional requirement is added that, for those who are able to work, they will need to work, is that evil and mean and just so totally in disregard of those who are ``getting'' from everyone else?

We heard this when Congress wasn't a blip on my radar. We heard this over and over as Newt Gingrich and the new Republican majority after 40 years or so came into this body as the majority, and they said, We are going to reform welfare--and they did. President Clinton didn't want it. He fought it tooth and nail. Just like the balanced budgets, he fought it, he fought it--and he used his veto more than once--but finally, it's signed into law. When it's clear to President Clinton that there are votes here in a bipartisan way to override his veto, he might as well sign it. Now, today, how wonderful it is when he extols the virtues of his two terms as President--the virtues of what the Republican majority did when they finally reined things in.

Now, I was told as a freshman and as a very staunch conservative, don't even bother to go to the Harvard orientation for new Members of Congress because it's just so liberal. They vilify those of us who think like we do in that we need to be more conservative in our spending, but I went anyway as I enjoy a good debate, and we had several. I was struck, even at the liberal Harvard Law School, where they've totally forgotten the reason for their founding and of what was required of students in those early days as they prepared them to live a life in total submission to their savior Jesus Christ. It's amazing when you go back and read the things that the students were taught and what they had to take an oath to believe, but they're at Harvard.

We had a dean come in with charts, who explained, ever since the Great Society legislation in the sixties--I know some think maybe it was born out of less than noble ideas, but I believe it was born out of the best of intentions. They saw people needing help, so let's give them money, let's give them help. Gee, there were deadbeat dads around the country, so let's give the single moms a check for every child they have out of wedlock. Back then, when there was between 6 and 7 percent single moms who were struggling to get by, over the years, we have paid for more and more children out of wedlock. As philosophers have said, if you pay for some activity, you're going to get more of that activity. Now in this country we are getting what we've paid for.

We are past 40 percent single moms and are on our way to 50 percent, in large part, I think, because this Congress decided--well- intentioned--to try to help single moms instead of trying to help them reach their God-given potential. Maybe help them with daycare. Get back in high school. Finish high school. You can earn so much more if you finish high school than if you never do. Get a little college, and you'll make more. That's what the statistics tell us. If we care about the people, why wouldn't we want to push them?

These charts from this dean at Harvard showed that, since the Great Society legislation, a single mom's income when adjusted for inflation for about 30 years was a flat line. Single moms on average did not ever improve their situations.

Then along came what was portrayed as being these evil Republican Congressmen and Senators who said, We're going to reform welfare. We're going to require people to work who can. They pushed people out of being on the dole of the Federal Government, and they pushed them into starting to pursue their God-given potential and what they could do for themselves and to feel good about themselves because they're providing for themselves.

He pulled out a chart to show a single mother's income when adjusted for inflation and after welfare reform--when people were forced to work, they could--and wow. For the first time in about 30 years, a single mom's income went up when adjusted for inflation.

So who cared more--those who said, You Republicans are evil for trying to make people work who are getting child support from the government or are getting welfare? How evil you are. Are they in the more virtuous position? Or those who say, I know this will work. I know every human being has potential that God put there, and we want them to move toward that. We do not want to pay them to be a couch potato and to pay them to keep having children out of wedlock and to pay them for not pursuing what they're capable of pursuing for themselves and that wonderful feeling when you accomplish something for yourself? Who is more virtuous in that situation?

I can tell you, from the rhetoric, that my friends on the Democratic side were the virtuous ones and that the Republicans were the evil, mean-spirited, self-involved people because they wanted single moms to reach their potential and make more money--and it happened just like that. So then President Obama comes in, and what does he do? Right off the bat, he wants to eliminate the work requirement. I think he was motivated out of good intentions, but we're back to where we were.

We want for the people who have been getting food stamps, if they can work, to work. Let's push people toward reaching their potential. That's not evil. That's a good thing. People are also free to worship whoever, whatever or no one if they wish in America, but there are those who say, Well, gee, you're a Christian. The Christian thing is to give people money if they need it.

In Romans 13, it talks about the government is supposed to be an encourager of good conduct. An encourager, it would seem, to reach your potential, not to kill your potential. To encourage people to reach for the stars, not kill a NASA program and force people to teach to a test.

If we want to keep having a country that is worthy of so many places around the world trying any way they can to get into this country, then we must protect this country. That's what our oath involves: protect the country so it's not overwhelmed. Prevent this country from becoming one massive welfare state, but encourage the greatness in people.

We're not going to help that when we see a leader of a country like Syria, an Assad, who has killed so many people, who we would not want to support to stay in that position, but he's being challenged by people who we know are involved with al Qaeda and al Qaeda-type groups and who want to subjugate other Muslims and Christians or kill Coptic Christians, as we've seen in some places, kill others, Jews, Christians, with whom they disagree. Do we really want to help either one of those?

Back before they had to teach to the test, people learned a little bit about history, and they had to learn before World War I. You don't find enough people that can talk intelligently about World War I any more.

In fact, we see the polls that say there are more people that can name the Three Stooges than can name the three branches of government because the tests they've been teaching to have the same requirements for everyone. We were doing better when they were local requirements. The local people knew best. But back when people were learning history, they found out and we were tested on and taught that World War I came about because of what we were told were entangling alliances.

What do we see around Syria? Well, Iran is propping up Assad. Russia says we are going to send in the best anti-aircraft defense if you start a no-fly zone there. Yet this President, without the support of Congress, just like he did not have when he went into Libya--and we know how that's turned out. At least four people are dead that wouldn't be otherwise. But giving money to Syria, really? A billion dollars is what I was reading today. How about taking that billion dollars that's going to cause all kinds of death and that will probably in some way, some day end up causing the deaths of Americans and Israelis, allies of ours, Coptic children, Jewish friends, they're going to kill people that were never intended because it's not well enough thought out of this administration rushing into Syria.

Well, we didn't rush in. That's for sure. Perhaps if the President had decided early on to go in, then it wouldn't have been so massive an al Qaeda movement within the rebels. But we know they're there.

This is not the thing to do, to get involved in a country where the United States national interests will not be served if Assad stays in power, and they will not be served if the al Qaeda rebels take over. So why are we spending a billion dollars? Why are we sending help to either side in that scenario?

Let's help people at home. Let's use that money to secure our borders. Because when it comes to immigration, if we really want to care, it's time to secure the borders so legal people coming in do so legally and then we'll get an immigration bill passed in no time flat.

With that, 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 5 o'clock and 5 minutes p.m.), under its previous order, the House adjourned until Monday, June 24, 2013, at 11 a.m.

Mr. Speaker, I realize that there are many in schools that are not taught as much history as they should now because they're teaching to this ridiculous test, but it is important we learn from history.

Right now in Syria, we have rebels that are backed by al Qaeda. And this administration, and even some in this building, want to rush to the aid of the al Qaeda-backed rebels, while there are others that say, well, maybe we'd be better off if Assad stayed in power. It's a lose- lose situation for the United States, and when that's the case, it's time to stay out.

Maybe early on, before al Qaeda got so powerful, it would have been time to do something; but when it is a national security risk, when we get involved in

an entangling situation like that, it's time to look back.

What caused World War I? Entangling alliances.

Does entangling alliances involving Russia and so many other countries in Syria ring bells?

It's time the bells rang and we stayed out.

Thank you, Mr. Speaker.

We are living in interesting times--it's purported to be a Chinese curse to live in interesting times--but when you see what is confronting this country, what is taking our liberties, what is threatening our way of life, it's clear we are on the front lines of either winning back or losing for all times the greatest freedoms ever given and secured for one group of people.

This is an extraordinary country, and it is because, just as our Founders pointed out repeatedly, they recognized that our rights are provided by our Creator; but just as any inheritance can be taken by those who are evil, greedy, power hungry, it must be defended or you lose it.

We have people who make no bones about the fact that they want to destroy our way of life, that they think the freedom afforded the American people leads to debauchery, leads to ways of life that are evil and wrong, and therefore they must destroy the freedoms which have provided people the chance to make wrong choices. Our Founders would prefer the freedoms and so would the people here.

Unfortunately, there are good people who believe that they are so much smarter and know better than everyone else, that, gee, since we're in Congress, we should tell people what they can do, how they can live, how they can make a living, whether they can make a living, or that we may just pay you to do nothing and to never reach your God-given potential.

Then, as we heard today, we had an amendment made by our friend on the Democratic side, Mr. Polis, that would have required a new addition to the chaplain corps of every branch of the military. It would be a new addition to the chaplain corps for those who are nontheistic--or atheistic--for those who believe there is no God. I had no idea that people who do not believe that there is a God needed help and encouragement and support for their unbelief. Astounding.

If people truly are atheistic, why would they need help in remaining so?

Could it possibly be that, the more people look around, the more they see things like Ben Franklin did--80 years old--and, yes, he enjoyed what some people would call ``pleasures'' of different types when he represented us in France and represented us in England. He was a brilliant man, and the massive painting outside these halls shows him sitting front and center at the Constitutional Convention.

It was there at that Convention when he finally got recognized after they'd been there nearly 5 weeks. Some across the country are still mis-educating children, unfortunately, by telling them he was a deist, someone who believes there is something--some force, some thing, some deity--that created nature, that created all of mankind and all of the things in the universe, and if such deity or thing still exists, it, he, she never interferes with the ways of men. Obviously, you see Ben Franklin's own words, and you know that's not what he believed. When he was 80 years old--2 years or so away from meeting his Maker--he finally got recognized after all the yelling back and forth that was done there at the Convention, and someone noted that Washington looked relieved when Mr. Franklin sought attention or, as some at the Convention called him, ``Dr. Franklin.''

He pointed out during his remarks--and we know exactly what he pointed out because he wrote it in his own handwriting. People wanted a copy of what he said. Madison made notes, but Franklin wrote it out.

Among other things, he said:

I have lived, sir, a long time, and the longer I live, the

more convincing proofs I see of this truth--that God governs

in the affairs of men. And if a sparrow cannot fall to the

ground without His notice, is it probable that an empire can

rise without His aid? We have been assured, sir, in the

sacred writings--

He called it ``sacred'' by the way--

that except the Lord build the house, they labor in vain that

build it.

He encouraged those at the Convention that he also believed, in his words, that without His concurring aid--he was talking about the same God, the same Lord he had just referenced--we shall succeed in our political building no better than the builders of Babel. We will be confounded by our local partial interests, and we, ourselves, shall become a byword down through the ages.

That was in 1787 that Franklin said those words, late June. Now here we are, all these years later since 1787, and we have a motion to create chaplains in the military to help people not believe in what Ben Franklin said was the God who governs in the affairs of men, generically speaking. But it is important that people have the freedom to choose what they believe. As the Founders believed that God gave us freedom of choice, that He--our Creator--gave us those rights, they also believed that people should have the chance to choose right or wrong as well.

As an exchange student in the Soviet Union back in the seventies, I saw people and became very good friends with some college students who didn't have our rights, who envied our rights, who would love to have shared the rights that we have. Ultimately, we saw that play out a couple of decades later when many across the former Soviet Union demanded those rights. Of the 15 states that made up this socialist republic, some have gone back to those ways. I was intrigued that some are scared when they're given that much freedom to choose where they work.

Do you mean I've got to find a job? But I've never had to look for a job. It's a little scary. As so many Americans, particularly over the last 5 years, have found it can be very difficult to find a job. So the idea that the government may just tell you what your job is, tell you whether you get a chance to go to college or not, that sounds good. I don't have to think about those decisions. Let the government do it for us.

It's shocking, but there have grown to be many in America who like the idea of the government telling them what they can do, when they can do it, and how they can do it. It takes away the need to really wrestle with those things or, as so many of the signers of the Declaration believed, to have to pray about it and to struggle with the decision and try to find out, as many of them did, what is God's will for our lives.

We have a statue of Peter Muehlenberg from Pennsylvania that was just down the hall. But when the visitor center opened, he was moved. He is the Christian pastor who is depicted in the statue of taking off his ministerial robe as he preached from Ecclesiastes, There is a time for every purpose under Heaven. He also told his congregation, There is a time for peace and there is a time for war and now is the time for war. And he led men from his congregation to join the military and to fight for freedom.

His brother, Frederick, who also has a statue here, was the first Speaker of the House under our new Constitution. He had not actually immediately been in favor of the Revolution, but after his church was burned down by the British, he kind of thought maybe it was a decent idea for ministers to be involved in a revolution and for ministers to be involved in government where there was self-government of a people. So that brings us to today, from the Revolutionary years, to the Constitution after the Articles of Confederation fell apart.

Now, there was debate on Ben Franklin's proposal, because under the Continental Congress, they had had prayer every day to start their sessions. But the only way they could do that with the diverse Christian denominations, including the Quakers, was to agree on a minister that they believed would not offend the others and pay him to be the chaplain. But as they pointed out during the debate over Franklin's proposal, We don't have money. We're not getting paid. We're here for a constitutional convention, but we don't have money like we did in the Continental Congress. We can't hire a chaplain. But

once the Constitution was passed and ratified, from the time of the first Congress, that first day--actually, when George Washington was sworn in at the Federal building in New York, made his way down to the chapel that is still there--the only building that was unaffected at Ground Zero as the towers fell--they had a prayer session for the Nation. Then each Congress ever since, House and Senate, began each day with prayer before they ever begin their session. It's still true today. But, again today, we have the feeling that those who believe there's no God are insecure enough that they need somebody to encourage them in their unbelief.

One of the dangers, though, we have come to face and come to realize is that many in our Nation are choosing political correctness over safety. Yes, we all in this body, all of the Armed Forces when I was in the Army 4 years and we took that oath, we were supposed to support and protect the Constitution. Everybody I knew was prepared to die for it and to die for their country if necessary. Those people are still serving.

We found out, though, that if you get too involved in political correctness--and it's politically correct to look the other way when people are talking about hatred for America and wanting America to have the Constitution subordinated to shari'a law--that, gee, it's just politically correct not to face the facts that those people exist and that some of them are in the military. So they pass a man up the system so that he is there to counsel Christians, atheists, and others who need counseling.

With the people I've talked to in the military, especially in Afghanistan and when we were in Iraq, when you have a Commander in Chief who on his watch does not allow you to fire at people who may be firing at you, unless you can be sure you won't hit a civilian--at least that fear is put into those individuals. And I have asked for an official response from the Department of Defense, to put in writing exactly what our rules of engagement are that our soldiers are fighting under. We were told, That's classified and it can't be provided in answer to your question.

Well, somebody has passed it on to the military in harm's way, just like in August of 2011 when we had SEAL team members where a target was put on their backs by this administration when, first of all, the Vice President of the country violates the classified information laws and sets out in his speech who the commander was who brought down Osama bin Laden and about his great SEAL team.

Yes, he was paying them compliments, but he put a target on their back. I know our Vice President did not intend to do that. He was just so excited, just as he was when he revealed where the undisclosed location was. He didn't mean to breach national security. He was just happy and whatever he was to reveal those kind of things. But he put peoples's lives in danger.

One SEAL team member's father told me that right after the Vice President's speech, his daughter-in-law looked out the window. She had a marine guard out front. Karen and Billy Vaughn, they talk about how Aaron called them part of SEAL Team Six after they were outed. And it's been printed in the media that Leon Panetta, as a Cabinet member, was meeting with people who could receive the classified information.

But this administration wanted all the kudos they could get before the election, of course, and so they had producers of what I thought was a pretty good movie, ``Zero Dark Thirty,'' and gave them classified information and told them who took out Osama bin Laden. But in August of 2011, our SEAL team members paid the ultimate price of this administration's carelessness. They paid with their lives.

It would be nice to have it out where we could talk about it as a Nation, just exactly what the rules of engagement are that our military are dying under. Because there was a C-130 gun ship there--and this was not from some classified source. I got it because it was information that was given to the family members, although the military may not have known what they gave. There's testimony from the C-130 gun ship, a pilot and others, that they saw this group moving like a military group. They were not allowed to take them out. They even saw them shoot down our Chinook and kill our Americans, but there was a chance they might have hit civilians if they had killed the people that took down our SEAL Team Six members. So they couldn't even kill them after they killed our people.

We need to know what the rules of engagement are. We need to address the political correctness that is blinding our agencies and blinding our military of its ability to see who the enemy is, because it's getting people killed in harm's way.

When you refuse to acknowledge that the Afghans you're training may be willing to turn the guns you've trained them on and kill you, just as an Aggie friend had happen here recently in Afghanistan, what they call a ``green on blue killing,'' until we recognize that and recognize who our enemy is, and that our enemy may be among us and that our enemy can be in uniforms that we're supposed to be friendly with, then more Americans are going to be killed needlessly.

And when the political correctness of the FBI and the Justice Department and the State Department, intelligence department, for that matter, is that you've got to leave mosques alone where people are being radicalized, and even though there were sting operations that identified people who were radicalizing Americans before this administration changed the policy and they had to get friendly and reach out and partner, as the FBI said it originally did with CAIR, the Council on American-Islamic Relations, even though they've said they're not partnering with them, anytime CAIR says this offends us, then the FBI says, oh, gee, we better change it.

When you've had the Fifth Circuit of the United States Court of Appeals confirm that, yes, the evidence shows that CAIR and Islamic Society of North America, those are front organizations for the Muslim Brotherhood. They want shari'a law to be the law of the land, not our Constitution. And that is what we did not take an oath to allow to happen. We took an oath to the Constitution, and that means no law shall be above our Constitution.

And so that brings me also to the conversation, the question and answer with the FBI Director this week. I have a great deal of respect for him. He has been a patriot. He fought in Vietnam. He's a warrior. He cares about the country, but he has done great damage to the FBI. He instituted an administrative policy that has caused thousands and thousands of years of experience to leave the FBI and say, Under the new policy, I have to leave.

So you have very willing, able young FBI people who are in charge, but they have not benefited from the years of experience that others who had to leave had. I think that contributes to some of the problems that we see with our rights being protected, that we see with poor investigations. They just have not been the beneficiary of enough years of experience, and they've been taught by a lexicon, a language that does not allow them to talk about or see our enemy.

I've been making the point for months that the Boston massacre had clear potential to be completely avoided. And then we find out Russia gave our administration information to say the older Tsarnaev brother has been radicalized and he's going to kill people; you better look into it. Then all we've heard since the Russian bombing from this administration is the Russians should have given us more information.

Now, I grew to know a little bit about the way they think, and I don't entirely appreciate some of it, but I appreciate this: if they give information that says this person is going to kill Americans, understand we really don't care whether they kill Americans, but we would like for you to recognize that these are the kinds of people that will take out your government and will take out our government, and we'd like you to look into it. There's a mutual concern.

And when they put our government on notice and the reaction of our government is, well, we did some interviews. We looked into it. We didn't find anything.

The Russians: Are you kidding us? We hand you somebody who is going to kill Americans, and you can't find anything? What's wrong with you?

There's a great article, and I used it in questioning our FBI Director. It is entitled, ``Obama's Snooping Excludes Mosques, Missed Boston Bombers.''

It says:

Since October 2011, mosques have been off-limits to FBI

agents. No more surveillance or undercover sting operations

without high-level approval from a special oversight body at

the Justice Department dubbed the Sensitive Operations Review

Committee.

Who makes up this body, and how do they decide requests?

Nobody knows; the names of chairman, members and staff are

kept secret.

The FBI Director did not want to provide those as well.

So the FBI Director, as I pointed out to him here before I asked the question, I pointed out that according to this article, the Bureau did not even contact mosque leaders for help in identifying the Boston bombers' images after those images were captured on closed-circuit TV cameras and cell phones. The FBI Director attempted to correct me. He said, You said facts that aren't true. In fact, he said, Your facts are not all together--and I understood him to say not true, and so I demanded that he point out specifically what facts were wrong.

And he said, We went to the mosque prior to Boston. We said we went to the mosque prior to the Boston happening. We were in that mosque talking to imams several months beforehand. I couldn't during the questioning hear what he said at the end. What he said at the end, It was part of our outreach efforts.

If I'd heard that, I would have known and could have followed up and said, Wait a minute, that was part of your outreach effort to a Muslim mosque? It was not to follow up on the Tsarnaevs. And then, knowing that he had not properly followed up, knowing the FBI did not properly follow up with the mosque, I then asked about the mosque that was started, there are a couple of them, started by the Islamic Society of Boston, and were you aware that a founder was al Amoudi, because our Director knows who al Amoudi is. The FBI arrested him in 2003 or 2004 at Dulles Airport, as they could have done with al-Awlaki, who was killed by a drone bomb, as ordered by our President, that caused a lot of folks on both sides of the aisle to say, wait a minute, is that a good idea to kill American citizens without a trial?

And why is he an American citizen? Well, he's an American citizen because we have a policy, and a misinterpretation I would submit of the 14th Amendment, that if someone comes here on a visa and has a baby, then they're American citizens. So al-Awlaki's family was free to come in on a visa for college and then take him back to Yemen and radicalize him so that he hated America, and then he could come back here, and as he did, lead prayers here on Capitol Hill with congressional Muslim staffers and also have contact with people in the administration.

But I guess we won't ever know who all he had contact with because they blew him up while he was in Yemen. But he was free to come and go and radicalize people in America because he was an American citizen because his father and mother got a visa to come in here where he was born.

Al Amoudi was free to come and go here in the United States; that was until he was arrested at Dulles Airport and was tried and convicted and is doing over 20 years in Federal prison for supporting terrorism. And our FBI Director said at the hearing, he kind of had his head down and said it quietly, but he said it, no, he was not even aware that al Amoudi in prison for supporting terrorism was one of the founders. In fact, he is the one listed on the articles of organization for Massachusetts for the Islamic Society of Boston that started this. He didn't even know that.

Until we get past this political correctness so that we can see our enemies, see those who want to destroy our way of life and subjugate our Constitution to their ideas, then we are not protected, and we've got to get over that.

How about that? When Director Mueller testified before, he said, Oh, yeah, we have these great outreach programs to the Muslims. So apparently this is a part of it. I asked how is the outreach program going for groups like Christians and Catholics, Jewish, Buddhists, I forget who all I named.

But anyway, it was interesting, there's no such outreach group specifically for them, but there is a specific outreach group that didn't want to offend people who are radicalizing and being radicalized.

So it is pretty clear, we need to protect our borders from people who want to come in to destroy us, all avenues of entry. We need to deport those who overstay their visas. We need to reform our immigration service and our immigration process so that it is more effective, more efficient, and gives people proper answers more quickly.

We must stop allowing members of terrorist groups to consult with this President or his administration. We must stop discarding our allies who have fought with us and for us and throwing them under figurative buses.

We've got to stop rewarding our enemies so that when they say they want to destroy us, that we're our enemy, we don't send them $1.3 billion and tanks and jet planes.

And then, also, we have got to educate our Federal protection agencies on whom the enemy truly is.

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

Thank you, Mr. Speaker.

Today is a very important day, the day of the anniversary of the invasion on D-day during World War II. There is also another important aspect about today, because we learned about the administration's collecting of massive information, private information, about every Verizon customer's phone numbers, all the calls they made, outside the country and within the country. Staggering. It makes one think,

well, gee, if this administration was gathering information and got a court order, a secret court order, to get all this information from Verizon, then most likely they did from the other carriers as well. And as a Verizon representative has pointed out, look, when we get a court order demanding that we turn over information, then we have to turn it over. And that is what we do in a country where we believe in the rule of law, we are supposed to follow the law.

But what is staggering for those of us who have debated over the FISA courts, where you have a real, legitimate, nominated and confirmed Federal judge, presides over information that is considered so secret that the disclosure of even the request for information would create dangers to national security. We've debated that in the Judiciary Committee. That included my friend, Ms. Jackson Lee. We've had these debates over these issues.

I was talking with my friend with whom I often disagree in Judiciary, a Congressman from New York, Jerry Nadler, and actually I recall him indicating during debates that if we didn't rein in the power of the Federal Government, these were the types of things that could happen. And I have to admit today that for any predictions or concern on the part of Jerry Nadler that if we gave the power under article 215 or section 215--basically, the PATRIOT Act, the FISA courts--that it could and would be abused, Mr. Nadler was right. We are now seeing affirmation of that.

But I do think it is important that we understand what we're talking about with regard to these phone records, and as a preface I think it's important to look at the order from the United States Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court, Washington, D.C. It's entitled, Mr. Speaker, In Re Application of the Federal Bureau of Investigation for an Order Requiring the Production of Tangible Things from Verizon Business Network Services, Inc. on behalf of MCI Communication Services, Inc. d/b/a Verizon Business Services. It cites for its authority in this the law at volume 50 of the United States Code, section 1861.

In this order that is granting the request of this Justice Department under this Attorney General, who is under fire for other issues, it says, ``The court having found that the application of the Federal Bureau of Investigation''--which is under the auspices of the Attorney General, the Justice Department--``for an order requiring the production of tangible things from Verizon Business,'' et cetera, the court finds that it satisfies the requirements of 50 U.S.C., section 1861.

It goes on to say that accordingly, these things are ordered, and it orders, and I'm quoting now:

An electronic copy of the following tangible things: all

call detail records or ``telephony metadata'' created by

Verizon for communications (i) between the United States and

abroad; or (ii) wholly within the United States, including

local telephone calls.

Further down, it says:

Telephony metadata includes comprehensive communications

routing information, including but not limited to session

identifying information (e.g., originating and terminating

telephone number, International Mobile Subscriber Identity

(IMSI) number, International Mobile station Equipment

Identity (IMEI) number), trunk identifier, telephone calling

card numbers, and time and duration of call. Telephony

metadata does not include the substantive content of any

communication, as defined by 18 U.S.C., section 2510(8), or

the name, address, or financial information of a subscriber

or customer.

Now, this comes on the heels of information about just how invasive this administration had gotten when they went after the records of the Associated Press, the phone information of many, many phone numbers, and some of them coming from right up here in the area where the reporters use. This is in the United States Capitol. Many times these phones up here are used by reporters to call Members of Congress, who have another constitutional privilege under the Constitution that provides privilege for the information that is provided for or to a Member of Congress. It's not unlimited. But that's on top of the freedom of the press that's also granted in the Second Amendment.

It is amazing when our Attorney General said, gee, in essence, this was like the most egregious or one of the most egregious national security leaks I had ever heard about. It was so serious, we had to go after this material, and then we find out there were only a handful of people in the entire administration who knew the information that got leaked. And instead of just going without a warrant--they don't need a warrant to get their own administration phone call data. They didn't even need a court for that. It's their data. They could have gone to the handful of individuals that knew the information that got leaked and checked their phone logs to see who they called. But instead of doing that, they decide to go on a fishing expedition for all of this telephone information about the Associated Press.

They apparently wanted to know who the AP talks to, what they do, what they know, who they know. Let's get all of this information.

They didn't need that for their pursuit of the leaker. They didn't need it at all. They could have gone straight to their own sources and got what they needed from there; and then once they have a subject within the AP, if anyone, then they could go for that information.

And as a former judge, if somebody came and said we have found the source of the leak, here's one of the five-or-so people that knew the information, he called this reporter at this number, and so we have probable cause to believe that the leak was made to this reporter, and put other information in there that raises it to the level of probable cause to allow the judge to let them take a look at that one reporter's single phone logs.

But, no, they didn't do that. They went on an incredibly vast and very chilling fishing expedition.

And then we have the Attorney General testify before our Judiciary Committee, and I know my friends mentioned this before I got up, my friends on the other side of the aisle. They were talking about how he is such a great Attorney General, in essence, and certainly never perjured himself.

But I heard what he said. I've heard it replayed over and over; and when he says he wasn't aware of, he had not heard of, he never participated in--he didn't think it was a good idea was the basics of what he said--of ever prosecuting a reporter.

And then within a week or so we find out, actually, he approved of an affidavit that went before a judge with the request for a warrant from the court against James Rosen with Fox News.

Now, I've had people wake me up at all hours of the day and night. I've had people call when I was awakened at 2 or 3 in the morning and say, Judge, we need to come by your house. This is really serious. And they'd come by; and if they had enough data in their affidavits that established probable cause, then I would grant a limited warrant.

But there were times I would get upset with a law officer that bothered me with an affidavit and a request that clearly didn't have probable cause. We aren't going to grant that. If you're not sure if you have probable cause, talk to the DA's office, run it by them before you bring something in that clearly does not establish probable cause.

Fortunately, the law officers were so good that we normally dealt with that normally that was not a problem, but sometimes it was. And any responsible judge takes that very seriously.

And sometimes you would get a request for a warrant for information; and you go, okay, you've established probable cause in your affidavit, but your request is so global and broad, or so ambiguous, I can't sign the order you've prepared. Sometimes I would interlineate in the order and make it more specific. Sometimes they would know that I was going to be restrictive, and they would leave blanks for that.

But then to find out that the court granted this administration's demand, with an affidavit supporting it, under oath, that they needed all the records that Verizon had on phone calls inside the United States and to places outside the United States, and the judge just grants it.

And now, following on the heels of learning that the IRS targeted political enemies, political opponents, people in Tea Parties, people that were very pro-Israel, other groups, a group that was very pro- marriage between a

man and a woman, like has been the tradition in this country for the entire history of the country, until now, when it's come into question, and some think that nature totally failed when it created, biologically, a mating between a man and a woman, that it screwed up, it should have been a man and a man.

Well, that's a difference of opinion. But under this administration, they felt like it was worth going after and preventing a group like National Organization for Marriage from stepping up and standing on the traditional marriage and being able to deliver that message.

Now, it didn't prevent them from quickly granting legal status to groups that felt otherwise, or if somebody was related to somebody in the administration. We've seen those examples.

But, gee, they also knew within the IRS that if they granted or denied a request, well, a denial could be immediately appealed. And so in order to prevent justice from being done, prevent people from having the opportunity to politically express themselves as a group, they just sat on them, 1, 2, 3 years, to prevent them from being able to go public as a group.

I was shocked that a reporter asked the question, well, you groups, you were coming begging to the IRS. You're the ones that asked for legal status. And I'm sure this is a very fine reporter, but it just showed the ignorance--and there's nothing wrong. We're all ignorant of different areas--but showed the ignorance of where we have gotten to in this country where the Internal Revenue Code is so oppressive, if you, as an individual go out and say look, I don't have much money, I'm a working man, I'm just barely getting by. You're a working woman, you're just barely getting by, but if we pool our money, we might be able to express ourselves politically, maybe buy a commercial, or maybe send out flyers, or maybe buy a billboard, but something. If we pool together, maybe we can have an impact in politics on an issue like marriage.

And if you pool your money like that, and you don't have permission from the IRS, then they're going to come after you because you've got to have a legal status to do things like that now in America.

And it is further indication as to why this infernal Internal Revenue Code and the incredibly huge number of regulations that were never passed by any elected representative, they're just generated day after day after day by some bureaucrat somewhere, I used to say in a cubicle, but apparently we find out they've got some pretty luxurious offices and they spend millions on their conferences they go to.

Apparently they haven't spent enough on learning to line dance because I wasn't very impressed with their line dancing, but that's not part of their job, so maybe they need to get into a different area or a different profession.

But they have to obtain legal status if they're going to do anything politically, or the IRS can come after them for not doing so. So we have forced groups into getting government approval before they can ever express themselves politically. It's astounding.

And when you find out this administration has used so many aspects of its power to chill or prevent political opposition to their positions, to their re-election, then it really gets scary when you find out they're just out there wanting everybody's information on everybody they called in the country and out of the country.

And we had some pretty significant debates in Judiciary under FISA and under the PATRIOT Act; and we were assured, no, the law makes very clear you can only get information from an American citizen if they're in a foreign country and the foreign law allows that and they call a known or suspected terrorist.

But under these laws, we can't just go get information about an American citizen's personal records. We can't do that without probable cause they've committed a crime.

But under these incredible powers of the PATRIOT Act and the ability to go to the FISA court, as they did here, and get a secret order, we were told and we debated and some felt like even if an American citizen is in a foreign country, we don't think you ought to be able to get that American citizen's phone data, even if you just pull it out of the air. We don't think you should be able to get that.

So there was debate about those things. Well, what if they're calling a known terrorist, and we've got American intelligence agencies gathering in a foreign country and we can get that without a warrant? It's out there floating around in the air. We can get that. And this was debated--Yeah, but they're an American citizen. You ought to leave them alone. And some of us felt if they're an American citizen in a foreign country and our intelligence agencies can get intelligence data without violating the foreign law, then you need to know as an American citizen when you go into a foreign country, you may have our own intelligence agencies getting information about your telephone calls as long as they're not violating the law of the country they're in. And that's the way I felt.

But we were always assured that unless there was probable cause to believe an American citizen was calling a known or suspected terrorist or a hostile foreign government, that kind of thing, then no, we don't go after American citizens' information. And especially not if there's a call from an American citizen to another American citizen. That's none of our business, unless there's probable cause to believe a crime is being committed. Then we find out they have actually found a judge that signed off on this thing, and they got all this information.

Now I know there's some--even Republicans--who would say, Gee, I don't care if the government has my phone number. They've gotten it so they can go after terrorists. Well, unless you're a terrorist, the American government has no business monitoring what all you're doing and who you're calling, especially this administration, with all the abuses we've already seen. It's wrong. It should not be occurring. But they've done so.

There was a tweet today by Ace of Spades. The tweet was: We've all got an Obama phone now. Well, apparently we do. Because this administration is following every call being made by every phone in America--at least the ones on Verizon. So that leads you to believe they've probably gotten it from other information, too.

And I do appreciate my colleagues' on the other side concern that enough good things about ObamaCare are not coming out because some of us are concerned about the Attorney General's perjury. And I would submit, humbly, that a major reason not enough good things are coming out about ObamaCare is because there are not a bunch of good things coming out. People are losing their insurance. They're getting in trouble. And that is a big problem.

Mr. Speaker, how much time do I have remaining?

Thank you.

This is the anniversary of D-Day. So many Americans died on the beaches at Normandy. So many free countries gave the last full measure of devotion there on those beaches. It wasn't Normandy but rather another beach where one of my constituents, who has since passed away, said that when they were landing at Anzio, they were doing it so early in the morning, there was no sunlight. But the Axis powers had such powerful lights that you could read a book in their landing craft. And they'd been taught that when the landing ramp went down when they got to shore, they were to all run out at the same time. And as they got closer, they heard the machine gun bullets going back and forth across the front of the ramp. He said, We were all so scared. We know when that ramp went down, we were all going to die.

And one of the guys--Paul Stanley recalled his name, I do not--but he exemplified the spirit of America. He finally looked around and said, Guys, we all know if we run out of this landing craft the way we've been trained, we're all dead. So here's what we're going to do. I'm going to go first. Everybody is going to put your weapon in your right hand and grab the belt of the man in front of you and we're going to run out single file. Some of us won't make it. But that way some of you have a chance.

Paul Stanley said he was third. The two in front of him were killed and everybody else made it. That's the spirit

of America that landed on the beaches of Normandy to take on the Axis powers who sought to take freedom from free people.

It was on this day in 1944 that Franklin Roosevelt said this prayer on national radio. Today, he would probably be excoriated because of some of the terminology.

He said:

My fellow Americans, last night, when I spoke with you

about the fall of Rome, I knew at that moment that troops of

the United States and our allies were crossing the Channel in

another and greater operation. It has come to pass with

success thus far. And so, in this poignant hour, I ask you to

join with me in prayer.

Almighty God, our sons, pride of our Nation, this day have

set upon a mighty endeavor, a struggle to preserve our

Republic, our religion, and our civilization, and to set free

a suffering humanity. Lead them straight and true; give

strength to their arms, stoutness to their hearts,

steadfastness in their faith.

They will need Thy blessings. Their road will be long and

hard. For the enemy is strong. He may hurl back our forces.

Success may not come with rushing speed, but we shall return

again and again, and we know that by Thy grace, and by the

righteousness of our cause, our sons will triumph. They will

be sore tried, by night and day, without rest until the

victory is won. The darkness will be rent by noise and flame.

Men's souls will be shaken even with the violences of war.

For these men are lately drawn from the ways of peace. They

fight not just for the lust of conquest. They fight to end

conquest. They fight to liberate. They fight to let justice

arise, and tolerance and good will among all Thy people. They

yearn but for the end of battle, for their return to the

haven of home. Some will never return. Embrace these, Father,

and receive them, Thy heroic servants, into Thy kingdom.

And for us at home--fathers, mothers, children, wives,

sisters, and brothers of brave men overseas--whose thoughts

and prayers are ever with them, help us, almighty God, to

rededicate ourselves in renewed faith in Thee in this great

hour of great sacrifice.

Many people have urged that I call the Nation into a single

day of special prayer. But because the road is long and the

desire is great, I ask that our people devote themselves in a

continuance of prayer. As we rise to each new day, and again

when each day is spent, let words of prayer be on our lips,

invoking Thy help in our efforts. Give us strength, too--

strength in our daily tasks, to redouble the contributions we

make in the physical and the material support of our Armed

Forces. And let our hearts be stout, to wait out the long

travail; to bear sorrows that may come, to impart our courage

unto our sons wheresoever they may be.

And, O Lord, give us faith. Give us faith in Thee, faith in

our sons, faith in each other, faith in our united crusade.

Let not the keenness of our spirit ever be dulled. Let not

the impacts of temporary events, of temporal matters of but

fleeting moment, let not these deter us in our unconquerable

purpose.

With Thy blessing, we shall prevail over the unholy forces

of our enemy. Help us to conquer the apostles of greed and

racial arrogances. Lead us to the saving of our country, and

with our sister nations into a world unity that will spell a

sure peace, a peace invulnerable to schemings of unworthy

men. And a peace that will let all men live in freedom,

reaping the just rewards of their honest toil.

Thy will be done, Almighty God. Amen.

Franklin Roosevelt, on this day in 1944.

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

Thank you, Mr. Speaker.

It has been an interesting week here in Washington, especially here on Capitol Hill. We found out a great deal we didn't know before. We're getting more details. It's intriguing that we have the IRS official, Ms. Lerner, who knew--found out about--the outrageous practice of targeting what were perceived to be the President's enemies--people who wanted the Constitution followed, people who felt they had been taxed enough already, the Tea Parties, constitutional groups, pro-Israel groups, conservative groups, people who could have made a difference in the last election.

One reporter had asked before, Why would people even be bothering to get legal status? Why would they even apply to the IRS to get 501(c)(3) or 501(c)(4) status?

The answer is: because that's the way the government has taken over people's political abilities, because you can't call people to Washington or call people to come state their opinions without normally raising money, and if you don't have a legally recognized group by the IRS, then the IRS will go after the individuals who engage in pooling money and in helping pay people's way to get them here. They'll go after the individual.

We have forced people who want to make their voices heard collectively into begging the IRS for legal status, and the threats are there if you don't get their legal status recognized. Then when we see what the IRS has done as just an arm, basically, of the Democratic Party to help defeat or help prevent people from having legal status, it is absolutely incredible, especially when you find out they wouldn't even give them an answer ``yes'' or ``no''; because these people at the IRS, the higher ranking officials, they knew if they denied a request, gee, that could be appealed and they might get an answer before the election, and they weren't going to let that happen in time, at least, to make a difference in the election. So it's what most people who care about the Constitution have been afraid of for so long.

I've heard some people, some friends, some Republican friends say they think Richard Nixon was a great President, but I've read transcripts of conversations. Anybody who will say one thing to one person and turn right around immediately thereafter and say exactly the opposite to another person and play them against each other, I just can't consider that to be a great President.

We know that under the Nixon administration the IRS was used to target an enemies list, but now we find that under this administration it's been used and abused as a process, as a political arm in ways that Richard Nixon would never have dreamed possible. He never would have dreamed that anybody would get away with this kind of activity before an election, especially after Watergate. And so it has been.

So we want to take this time to make sure, Mr. Speaker, that people are aware and the Record contains the stories of different Tea Party groups and the difficulties they've had. In that regard, I am quite proud to yield to my friend from New Mexico, Mr. Steve Pearce. Hopefully, it won't hurt his reputation for me to call him a dear friend. That's the way I figure him.

I think that it's worthy to note that apparently, when there was a Fox News reporter named Rosen that wanted to look into this Fast and Furious information and hopefully get the scoop, get to the bottom line of what really happened, instead of this Justice Department doing as it told the American people, as the Attorney General and all these other people said as part of this administration, ``We're going to get the people responsible for this,'' instead of being diligent and relentless in getting to the bottom of what happened--who approved these 2,000 or so guns being sold to criminals that would be in criminal hands and ultimately used to kill hundreds of Mexicans?

Mexico should be outraged at what this administration has done. Instead of doing that, they go after a reporter that wants to find out what happened. They end up going after his phone records. They go after his email, from what we've learned, apparently. Possibly other family members. And they still, all these years later, haven't given us real information on who was responsible, who authorized that, who forced the sale of those guns. All we know is that this administration has tried to use Fast and Furious to demand more gun control legislation.

And we have a President that goes down to Mexico in the last 2 or 3 weeks and tells them about how outrageous it is that America has been selling guns to criminals that are using them in Mexico. He should have donned his hat and said, Thank you very much, my administration did that to you, and I'm very sorry. But, oh, no, he blames America without actually saying, Please, I beg your forgiveness. This was my administration's doing.

They haven't even gotten to the bottom and, instead, go after the reporter that tried to find out what happened. That's even more outrageous, and it goes to just what the gentleman was saying about people wondering how can we trust this administration when they've said that they're going to get the people responsible and they've done no such thing.

Thank you, and I would like to yield to the gentleman for a question.

It's my understanding that the Albuquerque Tea Party was one that filed for 501(c)(4) status 3 years ago. I don't know if the gentleman is familiar with the Albuquerque Tea Party.

Well, apparently, after 2 years of waiting, they got a multipage letter from the IRS asking for really extensive, intrusive information that it sounds like the IRS should never have had to inquire about. But here again, it sounds like another case where the IRS knew if they ruled on whether or not they would have 501(c)(4) status, they could have appealed and probably had a good case based on what the IRS has been doing. They wouldn't give them an answer.

Reclaiming the time momentarily, it's interesting, you know, we find out, as people have been digging deeper over the last few days, that the President of the United States met with the anti-Tea Party IRS union chief the day before the agency targeted the Tea Party.

National Treasury Employees Union President Colleen Kelley commented on the relationship between the anti-Tea Party IRS union and the Obama White House, and made this statement: For me, it's about collaboration.

So it is also important to note, and I didn't know if my dear friend was familiar with Executive Order 13522, I wasn't until just the last couple of days, but redstate.com had done a job of finding this.

This was an executive order that the President ordered, beginning in 2009, requiring that government agencies collaborate, consult in pre- decisional discussions with union bosses that would have to be off the record, unrecorded, and private, beyond the reach of anyone seeking to get information about the conversations.

And, in fact, this administration said pre-decisional discussions, by their nature, should be conducted confidentially among the parties to the discussions. This confidentiality is an essential ingredient in building the environment of mutual trust and respect necessary for the honest exchange of views and collaboration.

Well, this is the President that was going to have the most transparent administration in American history; yet, I didn't know, in 2009, he ordered these agencies that ought to be completely transparent, ordered them, his employees, to have meetings before they make important decisions with union bosses.

So that tells us something too about the atmosphere that was being created, when a union boss gets to have secret conversations with government officials that cannot be retrieved by any of us wanting the administration to be transparent. And we know that those unions were anti-Tea Party. They wanted them eliminated, and they get to go talk to the IRS officials that are making decisions about targeting the Tea Parties. Something seems awry.

I yield to my friend for a comment.

Thank you very much. It is an important issue.

We have a report here indicating the currently countless numbers, trying to get a count of groups that were targeted. We've seen reports that groups, Jewish and Christian groups, that were very supportive of Israel got heightened scrutiny by the IRS. They were deemed, apparently, not to be supportive of the President, as the IRS, apparently, at least their leaders, wanted them to be. And, obviously, that was after consulting with the union boss, the IRS employees.

Let me just say I know many IRS employees, and there are those who are afraid to comment because of concern over their repercussions; but they're outraged because they came into the IRS and they were taught and they were trained you cannot have any conflict of interest. You cannot make any decisions based on political bias. You cannot have ever owed the IRS any money if you're going to work for us.

In fact, there was outrage among some that were afraid to speak up because they were not allowed. They were told that you cannot underpay through withholding what you will ultimately owe on your income tax. Or if you file an amended return where you failed to initially include income, you may be fired from the IRS.

So the first thing that this President does is go out and hire a guy who swore, I believe it was three or four years in a row, he swore to his employer that he would pay the taxes that were due and owing. If they would just give him all the money, he would see that the taxes on that money was paid.

And lo and behold, those taxes were not paid, as he swore he would. And not only was he not barred from working for the IRS; he was made the boss over the IRS, the boss over the entire Treasury Department.

But the Greater Phoenix Tea Party in Arizona filed for a 501(c)(4) in October of 2010 and, after waiting 2 years, received a letter demanding an inordinate amount of information. And so far, even now, this Internal Revenue Service has refused to give them an answer on their 501(c)(4), effectively keeping them out of the political process for the 2012 election cycle, and now working, apparently, even now, to keep them out of the 2014 election cycle.

Amazing how effective the IRS can be when one administration can use them to further their goals.

The Mississippi Tea Party filed for a 501(c)4 status in 2009. On September 28, 2010, the group received a letter from the IRS wanting additional information, including what their relationship was with the Tea Party Patriots. But their analysis got rather abusive.

The Portage County Tea Party in Ohio applied for tax exempt status and they received incredibly onerous questions, harassing questions, and they answered them, gave them information that no one should have to provide. Four years later, they're still waiting on an answer.

The Mississippi Tea Party. They're still waiting. The Portage County Tea Party. They're still waiting. Anyway, it's just incredible.

The Alabama Tea Party we already mentioned. Really abusive requests were made by the IRS, harassing them. The Texas Patriots Tea Party filed for a 501(c)(4) status in June of 2012. They received numerous followup questions

and have not heard back from the IRS about their status. So they were effectively kept out of the 2012 political process.

Again, apparently there are reporters that are so far removed from how the political process has been forced to work. You've got to have IRS approval or they will come after you individually when you try to engage in any type of group effort. It used to be there was a freedom of assembly. You could gather people, assemble people as you want. You could pay for their bus fare. Unions do it all the time. But they have a very special status, obviously, with this administration.

One of the great scenes in video history was my old friend, Andrew Breitbart, coming out of the Coliseum and seeing all these protesters. He starts asking them about their signs, what they mean, can they give specific examples about when Glenn Beck lied or things they had on their signs. They couldn't. And it was amazing. I didn't see it in the beginning of the video but Andrew saw it immediately. These people were plants. They were handed these signs by their union. They were told to stand there and talk about people lying, and just demean individuals and organizations, as instructed by their union leaders.

When he got to the bottom of it, there was a note somewhere that it was produced by the union. So he got to the bottom of it. He had a camera that followed him as he would ask questions very pointedly. It became very clear they didn't know what they were there about, they couldn't give individual examples. They were told to go out there and be a protester. And the unions took care of it. And when the cameras were making them look bad, they were ordered to get back on the union bus and leave the area by the union bosses. Andrew had that gift. He could see right through all the baloney. It's a shame he's no longer with us. But what he has left is an organization that's doing even more amazing things.

You had the Ottawa County Patriots from Michigan file for 501(c)(3) status August 22, 2011. They're still waiting for a ``specialist'' to approve their application, despite numerous attempts to get clarification from the IRS. So they were totally kept out of the 2012 political process because of the partisan IRS leadership that would not even give a ruling on these things. It wasn't a problem for organizations that were supportive of the administration, apparently.

There were groups like the Louisa, Virginia, Tea Party in Virginia that decided not to apply after they heard from other Tea Party groups just how abusive the IRS was being. And their leaders didn't want to go through individually what other Tea Party leaders were having to go through. So the Louisa VA Tea Party never got their lawful status from the IRS. All of those people were effectively kept out of the 2012 political cycle by this partisan IRS work and effort.

The DeLAND 912 organization from Florida also heard about the horror stories of how abusive the IRS became if you applied for legal status as a Tea Party, so they didn't apply. Once again, the IRS was successful in their political endeavors in silencing another group of people from Florida during that political cycle.

Goose Creek 912 Project from South Carolina, they were preparing to file for a 501(c)(3) status or 501(c)(4) but after they heard about all of the harassment of other Tea Party groups, they voted unanimously not to file. The IRS partisan efforts worked. Another group of Americans were silenced because of the partisan political work of the IRS.

The McLean Tea Party in Illinois, another case where they decided not to apply after they got word of all the horror stories about the IRS abuses of individual Tea Party leaders and the individual Tea Party constituents themselves of the intrusive, abusive questions and information that was being demanded by the IRS.

The Lanier Tea Party Patriots from Georgia also heard about the widespread, massive abuse of Tea Parties that applied for legal status. So yet another group of people was silenced by the partisan, abusive Internal Revenue Service.

As I said, I know numerous employees of the IRS that would never think of being abusive like this. It is completely an anomaly to their way of thinking. It is counterintuitive to everything they have been taught and trained. But somehow this administration comes in and all of a sudden they see the IRS as the greatest political gift any partisan group could ever have and they use and abuse it after consulting, as ordered, by the President of the United States. They are ordered to have secret meetings with union bosses before they make decisions, which we now know occurred before they made decisions to go after the Tea Parties.

So the President of the United States signs Executive Order 13522 and orders an agency that is supposed to be completely nonpartisan, nonpolitical, to meet with an extremely political, extremely partisan boss before they make decisions. It is staggering.

So we know there's some that ask, Did the President know, did he not know? When you see that the President of the United States ordered meetings with partisan union bosses before decisions could be made by administrative heads at the IRS, it doesn't seem to me to matter much whether the President knew that they specifically targeted the Tea Parties. He ordered them to meet and to take in consideration what the union bosses said. If he ordered that those be completely confidential and beyond the scope of Freedom of Information Act requests, then there has to be some responsibility taken where the buck ultimately stops.

The Rowan County Tea Party in Tennessee--hopefully I'm saying that correctly--the good folks there filed for 501(c)(4) status in February of 2010. They received demands for excessive amounts of information, some of which is not required by law whatsoever.

Just 2 weeks ago, after over 3 years, and being kept out of the 2012 election cycle, having any input--not just on the President's race, but on issues--they didn't care about political candidates; they cared about issues. They knew if they could form these political Tea Parties, they could have an effect. Whether it was a Democrat, Republican, a Libertarian or an Independent that came forward, they knew that if they were a group as a Tea Party, they could get powerful enough and have their voices heard loudly, as they spoke loudly enough as a group, that somebody--Republican, Democrat, Libertarian, Independent--somebody would step forward and say I support what you believe, and I'm with you on the issues.

They were not about a party. They spent a lot of time being mad at the Republican Party, like I do. They weren't about a party; they were about the process. They wanted a constitutional country and a government that acted within the confines of the Constitution. And the IRS was determined to subjugate them, to punish them, to abuse them, and abuse the process of the IRS to make them pay for having the audacity to speak up or try to speak up, as did our Founders.

I can't help but note, I was tickled, some left-wing drone organization--drone basically being unmanned; they're not using their brains; they're just doing as they're directed--came after me for saying here on the floor, gee, the IRS might have shot the original Tea Party participants. Well, obviously that's hyperbole. But I found in Washington if you use sarcasm, you speak metaphorically, allegorically, use hyperbole, that it's often lost here.

We were having a discussion, for example, about endangered species. And I mentioned, gee, I understood--wasn't sure if it was true--but I understood there had been a pair of spotted owls that we were told for years couldn't mate anywhere but virgin woods, untouched by human hands, that may have been seen mating in a Kmart sign. In sheer sarcasm, in irony, I said, you know, a lot of Kmarts have been out of business. Maybe we need to see if that's really true and, if so, maybe get Kmart signs and see if they ought to be declared endangered and maybe have a Kmart sign forest where these little owls could mate like crazy out there in the Kmart sign.

And I look over at people and reporters, folks sitting there, and you could see people looking at each other: Do you think he's serious? Anyway, it's an interesting place to--not live, but work here in Washington, D.C.

You have the Rochester Tea Party Patriots in Minnesota. They filed for 501(c)(3) status in August 2010. The group finally received their 501(c)(4)

status 2 years later in 2012, but not soon enough to have the kind of effect that they could have to make nominees, potential nominees, accountable for abiding by the rule of law and following the Constitution, as they wanted to do.

The Chattanooga Tea Party in Tennessee, they filed for 501(c)(4) status in November of 2009. The group received a letter from the Cincinnati IRS office in July 2010 with extensive, intrusive, abusive questions and demands. After 4 years, they received notification that they were approved. Apparently, as this scandal was about to break, the IRS realized, gee, well, we got what we wanted; we kept them out of the 12 election cycle so they could not have any influence whatsoever there. And we're about to get in trouble, so why don't we start giving approval to some of these folks. And we're seeing that happen.

The San Angelo Tea Party--the town that my parents lived in briefly right after they got married, San Angelo Tea Party back in Texas--they filed for tax-exempt status. But after receiving the intrusive, abusive, mean-spirited demand for information that the IRS had no business inquiring after, they withdrew their application. Once again, the IRS didn't have a chilling effect; they had a freezing effect. Froze them out and kept them from being able to participate as a group in the 2012 election cycle.

The San Fernando Valley Patriots in California filed for 501(c)(4) status in the fall of 2010. The group heard nothing from the IRS until February of 2012, when they received a packet from the IRS in the mail giving the group a 20-day time period to respond. After the abuse, the demands, the intrusiveness, the outrageous activity of the IRS, the San Fernando Valley Patriots in California finally, in August of 2012, felt like they had no choice but to crater under the abusive weight and power of a partisan, mean-spirited IRS leadership; and they pulled their application in order to protect their members from this kind of abuse.

So you've got to say, the executive order in 2009 by the President of the United States--current President--ordering the extremely partisan union bosses to be consulted on decisions by the IRS, find out that the union boss met with the President right before the decision was made as well. I guess when you're the President, you don't have to sign an executive order requiring that you have secret, confidential meetings with union bosses before you make decisions. You just do it, appears to be the case.

Then we find out, gee--and this is a brand-new story, this one by David French dated May 22, yesterday afternoon--that it wasn't just Tea Parties; it wasn't just constitutional groups; it wasn't just pro- Israel groups. The article title is ``IRS Morality: Defend Planned Parenthood, Deluge Adoptive Families With Audits.'' In the article, skimming on down, it says:

During the 2012 filing season, 90 percent of the returns

that claimed a refundable adoption credit were subject to

additional review to determine if an examination was

necessary.

The most common reasons were income and a lack of

documentation.

It notes that:

Sixty-nine percent of all adoption credit claims during the

2012 filing season were selected for audit.

Of the completed adoption tax credit audits, over 55

percent ended with no change in the tax owed or refund due in

fiscal year 2012. The median refund amount involved in these

audits was over $15,000 and the median adjusted gross income

of the taxpayers involved is about $64,000.

These would be considered middle class Americans.

The average adoption credit correspondence audit currently

takes 126 days, causing a lengthy delay for taxpayers waiting

for refunds.

It's interesting because we get word--as the article said--that the IRS has harassed a number of pro-life groups, including at least one alleged demand that a pro-life group not picket Planned Parenthood in order to have or keep their tax exempt status.

It points out this statistic:

In 2012, the IRS requested additional information from 90

percent of returns claiming the adoption tax credit and went

on to actually audit 69 percent.

And that more details can be obtained from the Taxpayer Advocate Service.

It's really outrageous. And it's pretty clear to anybody familiar with the political process here in Washington that most people that are very supportive of adoption are not in favor of abortion. So if you want to go against--as the IRS, if you want to go after the opponents of Planned Parenthood, you want to go after the opponents of killing babies in utero, then if you go after parents that adopt children--a very, very costly process--you can have a very chilling or freezing effect on those parents who just want to adopt a child, adopt children, give them a loving home.

And this IRS' morality--as the article points out, because of the current leadership that is now under scrutiny--go after these middle- income folks that are not supportive of abortion and want to adopt, we'll teach them a lesson. It's very clear, it just screams from the statistics and information that we get from the IRS.

It's also worth noting--as prior articles have--that people have claimed, not the adoptive tax credit, but the child tax credit has been claimed--as has been shown many times--by people who did not legally come into the country. And there have been articles about that. Of course, I guess, everybody knows they'll never get a Pulitzer Prize for incredible investigative reporting on the billions of dollars that may be obtained by people who come into the country illegally and then have learned you can claim a tax credit and get more money back than you put in. Oh, no, even if you don't have a Social Security number--as the law currently requires--to get that child tax credit, the IRS thought: Hey, we've got a good idea, we don't care that Congress said you've got to have a Social Security number, hey, we want to get all the tax income in we can, and we hear from some of the folks in Congress that there are people somewhere out there in the shadows, so we'll just give them a taxpayer number, even if they don't have a Social Security number, and let them get that child tax credit from there. So there are plenty of people that have come out of the so-called shadows to claim a child tax credit.

That's why Robert Rector, in talking with him this week, he says the projection probably that if people who are here undocumented, illegally, whatever you want to call it, are given legal status, then it will likely cost the country around $10 billion that these individuals will be able to get back in child tax credit once they're legally here and that many are getting even now. An estimated $1 billion--one estimate I read was $4 billion--that we're currently paying out from the Treasury to people that are getting more back than they paid in who are not legally here, don't have a Social Security number.

So they're not going after those folks. Not auditing, not going in and demanding to know where are all these children you claim to get all this money back--$20,000, $30,000 you're getting back from the government for a child tax credit--where are all the children? Oh, no, they're not going after them. No. They much prefer to go after what some of these partisan political leaders in the IRS see as their political enemies.

When you have people like that heading up the IRS, you don't have to have an enemies list, like Richard Nixon had. You've got your friends at the IRS that are doing it for you.

So when we hear claims of outrage and we see that these people have suffered absolutely no consequences from this President--the boss--as a result of their outrageous, illegal, unconstitutional activity, then it seems that maybe the outrage is not as loud as we were being told that it originally has been.

And then when you find out that the AP--certainly hasn't helped me any, but that doesn't matter, we're supposed to have a free press--if they want to go after a guy that's conservative that has a southern accent, that's their prerogative. But we find out that the White House--the Justice Department at least--the Justice Department went after the AP, just like they did Rosen at Fox News, they go after the AP and get hundreds of phone numbers because they say they're after this egregious leak. The Attorney General told our committee last week, Gee, it's one of the most egregious leaks--not the most egregious, one of the most egregious

leaks--he had ever seen. Turns out all of the leaks that allow him to go after a conservative group or to intimidate a group like the AP, to them they're egregious. When we find out, Mr. Speaker, he could have just looked at the records of a handful of people in the administration--he chose not to do that, it might have embarrassed the administration--he abuses the freedom of the press.

It's time that people who are responsible are made accountable.

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

Thank you, Mr. Speaker.

It may surprise some of my colleagues, I agree with so much of what was being said with regard to the cost of education and how we need to be very sensitive to that.

I was concerned about the vote we were going to cast tomorrow that would prevent the interest rates from going up to 6.8 percent as they're going to do if this body does nothing. I was very concerned about it going up to 6.8 percent, and then I understood the proposed Republican bill that we are going to take up tomorrow will not let it go up to 6.8, but I was wondering why we didn't just leave it where it is. Let's just extend it.

The Democrats set in motion, when they were in the majority, this situation where it was going to raise. And, actually, it was going to raise last year, and we voted a year ago to just extend the current rate for a year. As I've had members of my own leadership and whip team pushing me on the issue of wanting me to vote for the bill tomorrow, I've been trying to find out more and more about why is this provision in there. Why are we doing this? And it's very clear. Interest rates for student loans are going to go up to 6.8 percent if we do nothing because that's the law that was put in place.

Well, I said, why can't we leave it where it is? And the explanation was given because the Democrats, in what they put together to pay for ObamaCare, actually were counting on, and they got CBO to count on, using the difference between the current rate and it going up to 6.8 percent as the Democrats were counting on it having done.

So, on the one hand, my friends express the same concern that I have about the interest rates jumping up that high, going dramatically to 6.8 percent, and then, on the other hand, they were not explaining that the reason that it was going to jump up so high if we do nothing is because Democrats were counting on that as a way to help pay the massive billions of dollars that are going to be required for ObamaCare even though people are going to get less insurance, less care, and have less say about their care, it's still going to cost billions and billions more.

And, in fact, CBO has indicated, you know, gee, they originally scored it, let's see, over $1 trillion; and then the President called Doug Elmendorf over from CBO and explained, apparently, said something to him in the Oval Office because then when he went back, magically they were able to lower it under a trillion, as the President said it was going to cost.

And then after it passed, CBO comes back, oh, you know what? We were right the first time. It's going to be more than a trillion, and then it was going to be 1.6 trillion. Others are saying it may be 2 trillion. Who knows how much.

But it's going to cost massive amounts more. There are going to be massive taxes, according to what the Supreme Court calls it. We didn't call it taxes, but that's what the Supreme Court said that the Democrats did when they passed ObamaCare without a single Republican vote. And they were counting on the increase, tremendous increase, the billions of dollars coming from increased interest on student loans rising.

Now, if you go back just a little bit, well, why in the world is the government even involved in the student loan business anyway?

We didn't used to be, as the Federal Government, a bank that just loaned people money on a regular basis. Well, when the Democrats were in the majority, they pushed through a bill that forced all lending institutions out of the student loan business, and the government took over the student loan business.

Well, if this is going to totally cease to be a government that is of the people, by the people and for the people, and not moving toward tyrannical despotism, then we have to allow people to have private property, we have to allow the free market to reign, we have to allow individuals and banking institutions to make the loans.

But oh, no, our friends across the aisle decided we're going to shove the free market out of the student loan business, and we're going to take over student loans. And we're going to set it at a low rate, but we're going to--it's going to go up, and we'll use the billions that come from that magical increase down the road to pay for ObamaCare. And that's how part of it, supposedly, was paid for.

Well, one of the things I learned the hard way while our friends, the Democrats, were in the majority for 4 years, was that actually the first Congress they were in the majority, they passed a pay-as-you-go bill, or PAYGO they called it. I voted for it, and I got criticized by Republican leadership. Don't you know that they don't mean what they say? This doesn't mean--they're not really going to pay for anything. It's just a game.

And I said, how would I not be for paying as we go? That's what their bill said.

And then I learned the hard way on that because then I saw they really weren't serious about it because bill after bill came to the floor, and we said, but you put a rule in place it has to be paid for.

Oh, but we're waiving the pay-as-you-go requirement on this bill.

What about this other one? Well, we're waiving the pay-as-you-go.

And so I was shocked to find out, apparently, our leadership, the folks that had been here for a longer period of time had already learned, and I learned a lesson the hard way.

So the next Congress, when they came up with a pay-as-you-go bill, I said, are you kidding? You fooled me last time. I thought you were serious about it. I'm not going to vote for a bill that you have no interest in actually following through and doing what the bill says. I'm not going to vote for a bill like that. I'm not going to help participate in the charade.

But when it comes to ObamaCare, they say, oh, it's paid for. And this is one of the magical ways that billions of dollars were projected by CBO to be produced. Well, they're going to do it on the backs of students.

Well, we had control, the Republicans did, of the Congress in the previous 2 years; and a year ago we said, well, let's just keep it at the current rate and move it forward a year, and we'll do something a year from now.

So, my Republican friends, when trying to persuade me to vote for this bill tomorrow said, look, the student loan rates will stay where they are for now, but, yeah, eventually they will go up some. But the good news is they won't go all the way up to 6.8.

And I said, why do they go up at all?

They said because we promised we're going to pay as we go and we meant it. But we're not going to go all the way to 6.8. So we'll actually have a shortfall we're going to have to come up with because the Democrats were counting on these billions of dollars coming off the backs of students to pay for ObamaCare.

So, as all of this has become clearer and clearer to me tonight, well, earlier this, late this afternoon, this evening, I've been communicating back and forth with my staff. So we have a bill that my Democratic friends ought to be thrilled to death about, and we're going to file it first thing in the morning; and it ought to excite my friends across the aisle.

And I know my own leadership has been wanting me to vote for this bill. But they say the reason the rates have to go up at all is because, under the budget previously done for ObamaCare, to pay for ObamaCare, the Democrats counted on this revenue. And so since we don't want to increase the deficit spending, we're going to have to let the rates go up a little bit, but we're not going to let them go up to 6.8 as was originally put in place by our Democratic friends.

So, anyway, what my bill will do that we'll file first thing in the morning is say, you know what, we're going to keep the current rates right where they are. And I hope folks will join me in encouraging my leadership to bring this bill to the floor, my bill to the floor, instead of the one we're going to vote on tomorrow. If we have to wait 72 hours, fine. Let's do it 2 weeks from now. We've got the time.

And my bill will leave the rates right where they are for a 2-year period. And since we don't want--number 1, we don't want the rates to go up for college students. We're sorry that the Democrats ever figured that in as part of the process of paying for ObamaCare.

And since we don't want it to have to go up on the students, those who are having to borrow money to pay for college, then the way we keep from increasing the deficit spending in the bill I'll file first thing in the morning, we eliminate the ObamaCare slush fund, and the billions that are eliminated for the slush fund for ObamaCare will no longer have to come from the backs of young people who cannot afford to go to college without loans.

That's the solution, and I hope my Democratic friends will hear and get word about this great bill, because I believe what they were saying. They're serious. Even though their party passed a bill that we refer to as ObamaCare, it's certainly not affordable care, but they passed that bill, by themselves, without any Republican votes because we knew how bad it was.

We knew how much it was going to cost. We knew you wouldn't get to keep your insurance if you wanted it. We knew you weren't going to get to keep your doctor if you wanted. We saw all those terrible things that are now coming to pass.

And it will prevent the ObamaCare slush fund, the money that's set aside in the ObamaCare bill. It'll just eliminate the slush fund, and say to the Democrats, you never should have had that slush fund, and you're not going to pay for it on the backs of those who can't afford to go to college without getting loans.

Now, I did have to double-check with regard to this bill. I had to make sure that I wasn't going to be voting on something that affected loans that my wife and I are paying, our children's student loans, because before I ever ran for office as a judge, my wife and I had set aside enough money that was going to take care of our kids' college.

But by virtue of running for office and taking a huge cut in pay, we ended up having to utilize that money for our family and for our girls and for expenses. And so my wife and I are paying our kids' student loans because I didn't want them to have to suffer with a bunch of student debt because their father felt a calling to go into public service.

But it would not be appropriate for me to vote on a bill that affected the rates of loans that we're paying, and it is now quite clear that that's not the

case. The student loan bill that we're going to vote on, whether it's the one tomorrow or whether it's the one that I will file tomorrow that I would prefer that we do, either way, it will not affect one iota, not at all loans that are already in place, student loans. So I'll be able to vote.

And, anyway, I've been whipping with my own team, undecided, and then later today was leaning no. And the more I found out, the more it's convinced me, we really should not allow the Democrats pushing through ObamaCare and the massive trillions of dollars that's ultimately going to cost to have any part of it forcibly borne by students, by young people that just want to better themselves by getting a higher education and having to get a loan to do it.

So I have taken the things my friends said to heart and I am counting on them to admit what they said, Mr. Speaker. I'm hoping they'll agree in the morning to cosponsor my bill so that they can be consistent with the things they promised. Now it does defund the ObamaCare slush fund; but since that was originally going to be borne on the backs of college students, I'm sure they don't mind that going away.

With regard to taxes, let's face it, if the money costs the Federal Government an amount down here and they have an interest rate that's higher than the cost of the money that the Federal Government gets to loan to students, then the Federal Government is making money on that. And that's what the Democrats knew and that's why they counted on the higher interest rates to pay for ObamaCare.

Anyway, hopefully, we can work together and get that accomplished. Let's face it, that kind of expense should not have to be borne because, really, it becomes a tax. It's new revenue for the Federal Government. And then I'm hoping before the end of the 2 years, if we would do my bill, we can do what should have been done in the first place, and that is get it back to the private sector where we become referees, again, as a Federal Government to make sure that neither lender nor borrower is cheating. That's what we're supposed to be. We're supposed to be a referee. Over the years, through both Republican and Democratic majorities, the government has continued to move from the realm of being a referee to being also a player and also the coach as well as the referee. And it's hard for anybody to ever compete against a player who's coached and refereed by the opponent. The government shouldn't be in that business of being adversaries, opponents, or competitors with the private sector. It shouldn't be.

So I hope that we will get to a bill that puts all the lending back in the private sector where the Federal Government is no longer the lender. I hope we can do that with different kinds of insurance. Get it out of the Federal Government. Because, invariably, when the government controls everything, it's just what we've seen with the IRS scandals. You're going to have some abuses with people that would control all of your health care records, people that will make the decisions on what health care you get, people that can actually come in and take your home--the only people that can come in and take your home--the only people that can come in and seize assets without proper due process of the law: the IRS.

It needs to be dismantled, and I hope we can do that. I hope we can get to a place where we're no longer the bureaucracy that becomes so autocratic that it could care less about people's personal feelings. Yes, people come here on the floor of the Congress and talk about people's personal feelings. But when you see the big, monolithic government that's just gotten so big, it doesn't care about people's feelings. It's hurting people right and left.

Sure, the President has private sector leaders stand up and talk about how great ObamaCare was going to be. And now they have been finding out it's not going to be so great. You're not keeping your insurance; you're not keeping you're doctor. You're going to get less health care, you're going to get less insurance, it's going to cost a lot more.

And with regard to the IRS scandal, we had Ms. Lerner come before our committee. I was in Judiciary. We were doing our own hearings on other matters. And I heard some of her statement about how she didn't do anything wrong and she's not guilty of anything. Well, as a judge and a chief justice who is very familiar with the Fifth Amendment, I've had to advise defendants, Now you understand if you say anything at all on your own behalf, you have waived your Fifth Amendment right and you will have to answer questions, and you will not be able to claim the Fifth Amendment.

So what did Ms. Learner do today? She came in and said she didn't do anything wrong. She followed the law in all ways. Oh, she was just a paragon of virtue. Well, then she's waived her right to claim the Fifth Amendment before Congress, and she needs to be brought back up here and have that explained properly. You waived your right when you started telling us how virtuous you were. So now you're going to answer questions, because you can't have it both ways. You can't come in here and say to this Congress, I did absolutely nothing wrong. I violated no laws. I'm in no danger of having violated any laws. And then turn right around and honestly say, I'm not going to speak because what I say is going to tend to incriminate me. Well, it can't incriminate you if you didn't do anything wrong, so go ahead and testify. You started out, so go ahead and finish up.

Sure, you can go out on the street and say, I didn't do anything wrong; but when you come before a court or Congress and say to that Congress, I didn't do anything wrong, or to a court, I didn't do anything wrong, you just waived your right. Now you're going to tell us what it was that you didn't do wrong so we can decide that for ourselves. So I hope she'll be brought back.

We also had Mr. Douglas Shulman come in and testify. And what I was hearing as far as part of his testimony was, yeah, he knew about the illegality of what was going on, and he was trying to put a stop to it. And he knew that conservatives were being targeted. Well, let's face it, that means that this administration was using the IRS to help them win another election. Well, it worked. How far up into the administration is what we need to know. But I don't believe we're going to find out from people like Mr. Shulman, who went to the White House, he said, over a hundred times. And even though he's working for the President and even though he started out under the Bush administration--that's fine, we had people under the Bush administration that screwed up plenty of times, too--but he's working for President Obama, comes to the White House over a hundred times, knows there's wrongful conduct that's gone on at the IRS and never says a word.

What did you go over a hundred times for? Well, I remember going for an egg roll. Well, guess what? If you went for an egg roll, the President was out there. He normally is for the Easter Egg Roll. You wouldn't even say something? That man should have been fired. We shouldn't have clowns that will work at the IRS know illegal activity is going on, go talk to their boss, go to the White House over a hundred times, and not even breathe a word of it so their bosses know. I wouldn't want somebody like that working for me. If there's illegal activity going on and you come see me over a hundred times, I would hope that during one of those times you would tell me this was going on. Because if you didn't, and I found out, you would be fired as soon as I found out. Ms. Lerner would have been fired as soon as we found out. But instead, what happens? Well, they plant a question so it comes out that way. So maybe the President will learn after we plant a question.

Something is awry. Something is very, very wrong.

Having had thousands of criminal cases come before my court, come through my court, you smell when things don't pass the smell test, and this stinks to high heaven.

So in the morning, I hope I'll have a whole list of Democratic colleagues that are ready to sign on to my bill so that we will keep the interest rates for the student loans where they are so that we don't push paying for the ObamaCare slush fund onto the backs of students. And we then get time to

put the student loan business back in the private sector so the Federal Government can be the referee and monitor the lending institutions and the borrowers, and be the referee. That's what we're supposed to be.

As far as the IRS scandal, Mr. Speaker, I hope and pray some consciences are being bothered and hounded in the IRS and over Benghazi and over the AP scandal--the abuse of process there, the abuse of process in going after conservative reporters--that consciences will begin to be bothered and they won't be cleared until they come forward and say: I'm a whistleblower; I have got to get the truth off my chest. Let the chips fall where they may. That's what I hope and pray for.

With that, 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 9 o'clock and 11 minutes p.m.), under its previous order, the House adjourned until tomorrow, Thursday, May 23, 2013, at 9 a.m.

Thank you, Mr. Speaker.

I certainly appreciate and agree with the gentleman's concerns about the failure of the administration to secure the border. We are quite aware that the border did not get as secure as we would have hoped under the prior administration, but there is no excuse for not getting it done now, and especially when the claim is made that we'll secure the border when you basically give amnesty to people that were already here. That's like putting the cart in front of the horse as the cart is going off the cliff. It's a problem.

There are other problems, Mr. Speaker, as you've surely noted with regard to this administration. An article that came out today, May 17, from The Daily Caller points out that the homeland security guidelines advised deference to pro-sharia Muslim supremacists.

Of course, Mr. Speaker, we are familiar with the fact that Homeland Security has had reports warning their employees about the dangers of people that may be involved in such heinous activity as being classified as evangelical Christians, or as being concerned about the Constitution and that people should be following the Constitution, and concerned about people who may have Tea Party in their name.

Thank goodness the IRS was not around to help the Founders when they founded the country or otherwise they probably would have shot the Boston Tea Party participants. They would have killed off over half of the signers of the Declaration of Independence, and this country would have never gotten started, if this Homeland Security would have been around to be helpful, so called, to our Founders.

But in looking at the guidelines, this article says:

The Department of Homeland Security, which under Janet

Napolitano has shown a keen interest in monitoring and

warning about outspoken conservatives, takes a very different

approach in monitoring political Islamists, according to a

2011 memo on protecting the free speech rights of pro-sharia

Muslim supremacists. In a checklist obtained by The Daily

Caller titled, ``Countering Violent Extremism, Dos and

Don'ts,'' the DHS Office of Civil Rights and Civil Liberties

notifies local and national law enforcement officials that it

is Obama administration policy to consider specifically

Islamic criticism of the American system of government

legitimate.

I must insert parenthetically, it is so interesting that people who believe the Constitution means exactly what it says are deemed by our Secretary Napolitano and her Homeland Security as being threats to the country because they believe what the Founders did. How dare they.

And someone who believes the teachings of Jesus Christ is somehow to be feared--wow--because they may go into all the world baptizing them, making disciples. They may end up being like Mother Teresa and helping the poor and needy. They may actually do things without the government telling them they can do that, like Mother Teresa, just going in and helping.

Well, you've got to watch those evangelical Christians, if they are true Christians, if you're part of this Janet Napolitano Homeland Security Office.

The article points out this policy stands in stark contrast to the DHS Office of Intelligence and Analysis 2009 memo: ``Right wing extremism, current economic and political climate fueling resurgence in radicalization and recruitment,'' which warned of the dangers posed by pro-life advocates, critics of same-sex marriage, and groups concerned with abiding by the U.S. Constitution, among others.

The advice of the do's and don'ts list is far more conciliatory. Don't use training that equates radical thought, religious expression, freedom to protest, or other constitutionally protected activity, including disliking the U.S. Government without being violent, the manual's authors write in a section on training being sensitive to constitutional values.

The manual, which was produced by an interagency working group from DHS and the National Counterterrorism Center advises:

Trainers who equate the desire for shari'a law with

criminal activity violate basic tenets of the First

Amendment.

And that is interesting. And it goes back to my point about how problematic it must have been for an FBI who've had their lexicon purged, where they can't really talk effectively about jihad because that might offend someone, even though it is critically important to know what someone believes about jihad.

Does an individual believe, as an Islamist, that jihad is just the internal changing of one's self into being more Islamic?

Or is jihad actually a violent jihad that, as the 9/11 bombers and killer believed, you kill as many innocent people, especially Americans, especially Jews, as you possibly can.

But this administration is concerned that to ask about jihad may certainly offend someone. And it was intriguing to inquire of our Attorney General, the highest law enforcement officer in the country, about just what the FBI did ask of Tamerlan Tsarnaev.

What did they find out that he believed about jihad?

What did they find out that he supported in the way of jihad?

What favorite authors did he have about jihad?

And the Attorney General didn't seem to know, but by the end of his testimony, he says, I don't--obviously I've said something untrue because, all of a sudden, now, even though he testified he didn't know what they really asked, all of a sudden, apparently he felt like he did know.

But here's the interesting chart to which the article was referring, very interesting. It's from the U.S. Department of Homeland Security Office for Civil Rights and Civil Liberties. And it is important to know, we call it countering violent extremism, just as Ms. Napolitano calls not countering terrorism, she had this set up as the Countering Violent Extremism Working Group, even though she couldn't previously answer my question as to how many members of the Muslim Brotherhood were part of her Homeland Security Countering Violent Extremism Working Group, or even her Homeland Security Advisory Group.

And I found it interesting that a publication in Egypt knows more about the Muslim Brotherhood members of this administration than our own Homeland Security Secretary knows. She didn't even know, when I asked her at a prior hearing, that there was a known member of a known terrorist group that had been allowed to go in the White House. But she did find out before she went before the Senate so she could say, oh, we vetted him three times. Well, yeah, probably about the way the FBI vetted Tamerlan and said, oh, there's nothing to see. We'll just move on here, which left him able to plot and plan to kill people, innocent people, men, women and children in Boston.

But it's interesting. When you look here, it says talking about the things you should not do, don't use training with a political agenda. This is not the time to try to persuade audiences, for example, on views about the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, reformation within Islam, or the proper role of Islam in majority Muslim nations.

Don't use trainers who answer primarily to interest groups. For example, trainers who are self-professed Muslim reformers may further an interest group agenda instead of delivering generally accepted, unbiased information.

Very interesting, you know, because if you can't inquire about what people truly believe about jihad, about radical Islam, about killing infidels, if you really can't get into the weeds on this thing, then how in the world do our officers know which Muslims will be good to have training and which ones won't be good to have training our own officers?

We do know from a couple of years ago when the administration stopped a seminar that was about to take place over at the CIA because there were some people who had spent their lives studying radical Islam and were classified as experts around the country, unless perhaps you were part of the Organization of Islamic Council, who actually came up with the term

``Islamaphobe'' and pays money to major universities to have seminars and courses on Islamaphobia and characterize people that way so that they can try to scare people away from talking about radical Islam.

But it's interesting though, I mean, this is our own Homeland Security. This is the kind of stuff that led one of our intelligence agents to tell me, Congressman, we are blinding our own ability to see the enemy that wants to kill and destroy us. We're blinding ourselves from our ability to see the people that want to destroy us.

And if we'd be more realistic, there would be people alive in Boston that are not.

When the Russian Government gives us a heads-up and says, this guy has become radicalized, that can't be normal. Man, this is a big deal. You'd better look thoroughly into it.

This is an outreach from the Russians. Hey, I'm not sure you realize just how radical this guy's become. It wasn't enough clues that he and his family got asylum from a country that they were comfortable going back to.

Wait a minute, if they got asylum, how in the world would any of their family be comfortable going back there? Perhaps they didn't need asylum.

Well, if they didn't need asylum, why don't we send them back?

Well, no, we wouldn't want to do that. Gosh, we might offend somebody that wants to kill us. Heaven help us if we were to offend somebody that wants to kill us.

Don't use training that equates radical thought, religious expression, freedom to protest, or other constitutionally protected activity with criminal activity. One can have radical thoughts, ideas, including disliking the U.S. Government, without being violent. For example, trainers who equate the desire for shari'a law with criminal activity violate basic tenets of the First Amendment.

Well, I would submit to whoever put together this chart, those who want to do away with our Constitution and, instead, impose shari'a law on all Americans, are acting with treasonous intent because you can't want to replace our Constitution with shari'a law and still be wanting the America where everyone has freedom to worship as they wish.

What you are wanting is the kind of situation that you now find in Afghanistan, where the last public Christian church had to close, or in Egypt as the Muslim Brotherhood has taken over and Coptic Christians have been persecuted mercilessly, or in Iraq where you have radical Islamists in charge who find it is a crime to believe that Jesus is a savior, a crime worthy of going to prison. They believe sharia law is the law of the land in those countries. So anybody that wants to replace our Constitution with sharia law should be looked at by our Homeland Security as being a threat, and any plots or plans to replace our Constitution with sharia law should be looked on very carefully and not be given a pat on the back or invited in to give advice to the White House on speeches or to give advice on how to train our intelligence agents or to give advice on how to train FBI and Homeland Security agents. But this is exactly what this administration is doing.

And when you blind our intelligence agencies and you blind our protectors who are willing to lay down their lives for us to be free, when you blind them to their ability to see the enemy, then people get killed, and people that wanted to prevent it are left with guilty consciences because they wonder what could we have done more--and it's not their fault. It comes from the top of Homeland Security and the top of the Justice Department. And when it comes from the White House, as it did, to stop the seminar at the CIA, it comes from the very top. And the message is clear: We don't want to offend anyone who may be a radical Islamist because, gee, that might be bad. It's okay to offend evangelical Christians. Sure, they're the only group in America it's politically correct to persecute now.

It's okay to persecute anyone who believes what most of humanity has for most of mankind and particularly the Founders, the signers of the Declaration of Independence, those who represented each of the States at the Constitutional Convention. They believed marriage was between a man and a woman. However, today, according to this administration, anyone who believes in that same type of traditional marriage is to be hated, vilified, despised, persecuted and to be watched out for by our Homeland Security because they're a threat, because they want the freedom to believe in traditional marriage that was taught in the Bible, the kind of marriage that Jesus himself attended and performed, his first recorded miracle. Yet those of us who believe in that are to be vilified.

It's also amazing to me--I'm not pushing my beliefs on anyone else, but it's part of who I am as a Christian--there are people whose lifestyles I believe hurt them, hurt our society and degenerate our society. But I would give my life for them. As a Christian, I love them. I have no problem embracing them. I find it interesting that people who have come to hate me, and Christians like me, they can't understand how you can disagree with a lifestyle or disagree so profoundly with a political belief and yet love them through and through as an individual. I hope and pray some day they'll understand.

But in the meantime, it is important if we're going to allow the people in our Federal Government who have sworn their lives to protecting all Americans, if we're going to allow them to do their job, they must be able to have a full, total and complete discussion on radical Islam that incorporates political belief from or into their religion and vice versa. And there are radical Islamists who want to destroy us; therefore, you have 9/11 of 2001, you have 9/11 of last year, you have 9/11 of the year before.

We've got to wake up. There's still time, but people have been killed needlessly. And this kind of stuff, this kind of political correctness that ends up making it okay through some of the other documents we've seen to go after evangelical Christians and to fear them and potentially persecute them, and as we've seen from the IRS, it's good to persecute Tea Parties. People at the low levels didn't make that up. They were encouraged, allowed to do the kind of things they were, otherwise it could not have gone as long and as widely as it did. But these days are very, very telling. Very telling.

Now, this is a helpful comment, note, too, that not all Arabs are Muslims and not all Muslims are Arabs. Yes, for example, there are Christian Arabs who are being persecuted in Egypt, in Iran, in Iraq, in Afghanistan and in places like Libya, where we helped radicals take over and people who just want to worship God are being persecuted. It is tragic what has happened and the blindness that has occurred.

It's embarrassing. It's particularly embarrassing when I embrace family members who have lost loved ones in Benghazi or 9/11 of 2001. One family member told me that Secretary Clinton advised them--what we now know is what at that time she knew very clearly, Benghazi was not about a video. She advised them, hey, we're going to get the guy that made that video, as if that was going to give them some comfort. They weren't out to kill someone. They weren't out to get somebody. But they do want justice. And it turned out, the Secretary knew at the time she said that that it wasn't about a video. It was part of confusing or attempting to confuse the issues and the mistakes that were made by this administration.

So it was worth noting, though, when we look at the IRS and the problems there, this article today by Labor Union Report Diary, May 16, yesterday, and it says:

Meet the partisan union behind the partisan Internal

Revenue Service.

Where do the anti-sequester, Federal Government workers-

turned-protesters work? They work at the Internal Revenue

Service--and they are unionized.

And the article points out that:

As the scandal involving the IRS' targeting of

conservatives and Tea Party groups consumes the news cycle

for the moment and Barack Obama, who, so far, has claimed

ignorance of the targeting, has thrown a sacrificial lamb out

to appease journalists, that IRS agents targeted certain

small-government, anti-tax groups should really not come as a

surprise.

Beginning in 2009, Democrats and unions, including

government unions, have spent the

last several years demonizing Tea Party groups as well as

other small government groups.

On Thursday, despite the escalating scandal, Barack Obama

told reporters he did not see the need for a special

prosecutor, saying ``probes by Congress and the Justice

Department should be able to figure out who was responsible

for improperly targeting Tea Party groups when they applied

for tax-exempt status.''

While that may appease reporters from CNN and the

mainstream media for the moment, one must wonder why there

shouldn't be a special prosecutor to look into the

wrongdoings of an agency with such vast powers over the

American populace. Unless, of course, there is a smoking gun

that people within the administration don't want discovered.

In December 2009, during the first term of his Presidency,

in an effort to make the Federal Government more ``union

friendly,'' President Obama issued Executive Order 13522.

In short, as noted in 2011, Executive Order 13522

establishes ``labor-management forums'' between union bosses

(who may or may not be Federal employees) and Federal agency

management.

As part of the directives under Executive Order 13522,

agency heads are to engage union bosses in ``pre-decisional

discussions'' before decisions are made--and those

discussions are to be secret and outside the purview of the

Freedom of Information Act.

Pre-decisional discussions, by their nature, should be

conducted confidentially among the parties to the

discussions. This confidentiality is an essential ingredient

in building the environment of mutual trust and respect

necessary for the honest exchange of views and collaboration.

That was the position of the administration.

Coincidentally, among the agencies covered by Executive

Order 13522 is the Internal Revenue Service, which is part of

the Department of the Treasury, and whose agency employees

are represented by the National Treasury Employees Union.

The fact that, under Executive Order 13522, Federal

agencies are being co-managed by union bosses and it appears

that the perpetrators of the IRS scandal are likely to be

members of the IRS union makes one wonder how coordinated the

attacks were--especially as four of the alleged perpetrators

are claiming their bosses made them do it.

More importantly, if their bosses made them engage in

potentially illegal activities, why didn't they go to their

union to file a grievance?

Well, apparently, under the President's Executive Order 13522, the union bosses and the agency heads are complicit in making these decisions, and making them secretly and privately while part of the most transparent administration in history--we were told it was going to be. The union bosses and the agency heads making decisions secretly beyond anything that anybody in America can get with a Freedom of Information Act request is just outrageous.

We need the transparency. And especially now that we know the most powerful, the most feared agency in America--the IRS--is being co- managed by union bosses, it's time to clean house. It's time to get back to smaller government, less intrusive government, and government that is truly of, by, and for the people.

With that, Mr. Speaker, I yield to the gentleman from Florida (Mr. Yoho).

Immigration Reform

Mr. Speaker, there's an article I missed that came out March 15, 2013, from Healthcare IT News--rather interesting. It talks about a lawsuit against the IRS because the IRS, it says, stole health records of some 10 million Americans, including the medical records of all California State judges. Knowing California, I bet most of them are Democrats. They took their medical records.

So, the allegation, the lawsuit, is over that. Ten million Americans' records. It doesn't matter what party they are. It doesn't matter what their political beliefs are. They have a right to have their own records kept private until ObamaCare fully kicks in.

I don't know why the IRS would take those medical records so prematurely, because when ObamaCare kicks in, the Federal Government has everybody's records already.

It's time to repeal it.

Mr. Speaker, it's always an honor to come to the floor of the House of Representatives, especially when there's so much of great importance occurring in our Nation at this time.

We do need health care reform, and I appreciate my friends across the aisle talking about the importance of good health care.

I've continued to hear people find that they are going to lose their health insurance. I was talking to numerous employers this past week who say, I want to compete and have been notified insurance is going up higher next year. I heard from a small business employer, I'm not going to be able to carry insurance. I love my employees. I provide them good insurance. But come January, too many of my competitors have said they can't afford to keep the insurance for their employees, and so they're going to drop it and pay the $2,000 fine because $2,000 is so much cheaper than the cost of health insurance.

The reason we were told for pushing through the ObamaCare bill in a very partisan way was because there were 30 million or so who did not have insurance; and as some have indicated, there may be that many who lose their insurance as a result of ObamaCare. So I'm very concerned.

I, like my friends across the aisle, want to make sure not that people have insurance necessarily, but that they have affordable health care. And I'm hearing from health care providers that they're hearing from people who are no longer going to carry insurance for their employees, that it's going to be more and more expensive to provide health care since they made money off those who had insurance; and without people having the insurance they had in the past, as the President promised and has been made very clear was not true, there will be more pressure on those who are paying for their health care to pay substantially more, which means there are more people who will not be able to afford it, and it will break the system. Of course, with health insurance companies complaining that because of the things they're forced to cover, their insurance is going to necessarily have to go up.

There will likely be insurance companies that will have to give up the health insurance business, and then the administration can complain that, Well, we thought we were going to be able to work with the greedy health insurance companies; but as it turns out, they've gone out of business and doctors have abandoned their practices and retired early. So it looks like the government is going to have to take over the health care business.

Under ObamaCare, the Federal Government is already going to have everybody's health records. Their most private and personal secrets between them and their health care provider will then be available to the Federal Government and, as I understand it, to General Electric, who this administration, because of their great support of General Electric in this administration and their cozy working relationship, they'll have the contract to take care of everybody's health care records. So that will be just delightful.

The tragic thing, just as the one lady asked during the town hall that the President had at the White House when she asked about her elderly mother getting a pacemaker, though she was of late years--I believe 95--and that she's had the pacemaker for 10 or 11 years, would the panel that decided who would get what treatment, would they consider the quality of life of an individual in determining whether or not

they get a pacemaker or such things, and the answer the President ultimately gave is, Well, let's face it. Maybe we're better off telling your mother that instead of a pacemaker you get a pain pill.

So it's very clear that as we approach the day when ObamaCare kicks in fully, there will be more and more seniors, whatever age this panel--it's not really a death panel--but it will decide who gets pacemakers and who is perhaps too old or maybe has lived a good life but now is beyond being worthy of, in this administration's opinion, getting a new knee or a new hip or back surgery, those kinds of things. You'll have bureaucrats that are deciding those issues all in the name of helping people with their health care. Because as anyone who seriously looks deeply into socialized medicine finds out, the only way for socialized medicine to stay afloat is if you have people dying while they're waiting on a list to get their particular procedures.

I mentioned on the floor, I believe last year, about a report from England that they're hoping to reduce the length of time that patients have to wait for their procedures, whether therapeutic or diagnostic, surgery, therapy, whatever it is, reduce that wait from the time it's prescribed until the time it's obtained down to 10 months.

Well, there are a lot of people that we know find out they have cancer, they have some problem, perhaps need a bypass, and if they don't get it immediately, then they don't make it for 10 months. So that's where we are headed and eventually people will see that, and I just hope and pray it's not too late so enough people will put pressure on their Members of Congress, and especially the Senate, to repeal ObamaCare and get us true health care reform so that people can have the health care that they want to have, they deserve to have. And for those who are truly--and only those who are truly--chronically ill or chronically poor and are not able to work or obtain affordable health care, then those people, as a caring society, we would take care of.

But since ObamaCare cut $700 billion from Medicare, it's now appearing to more and more seniors that this administration effectively took money for treatment that they would get and provided that to young, healthier people who probably could, or possibly have their employer provide it if the employers were not being penalized for doing so, but whose employers will likely give up that insurance, and we'll see that as time goes on.

But nonetheless, seniors, although they were told by this administration and told by some people across the aisle that they wouldn't lose their doctor, well, many have already lost their doctor. People were told, if you like your insurance, you can keep it; and we've already found that's not true. So my heart breaks for people who are going to need health care in the next few years and are simply not going to be allowed to have it because the government will stand between them and the health care they need.

I do recall seeing the President on video saying some years back that he wanted single payer health care, the government taking over all health care, but we couldn't get there in one step. As you examine ObamaCare and you see it is ultimately going to bankrupt health insurance companies, it is going to drive doctors out of the profession, it is going to ultimately bring down the standard of care, we see that it has now set up the whole system to fail so that down the road the government will say, just as then Senator Obama said, we will get to government-run health care because, gee, the greedy insurance companies went bankrupt trying to be greedy and doctors got out of the business, and now it looks like the government is going to have to take it over, just like we hoped.

If there was ever any aspect of life that would ensure that the Federal Government could dictate people's lives to them, it would be health care. When the government controls all health care, the government will control all people in this country because they will make the decision basically who gets what treatment, when we get to that point, and I'm hoping and praying we will repeal ObamaCare before that happens. It's going to require a new Senate, obviously.

Well, another area that has had a lot of government intrusion has been in the area of the First Amendment. So many people simply do not understand and do not appreciate that the First Amendment does say, ``Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof.''

So we've had so many areas in which the government has moved forward to establish a nonreligion, has forced, like in the case of the major who shot and killed 13 of our servicemembers at Fort Hood, he and his Islamic faith were forced upon people who needed counseling about having to go, Christians who had to go to the Middle East, to Iraq, to Afghanistan, to serve their country. They had to get counseling from someone who made very clear that his faith was everything, and his faith in Islam so overwhelmed him that not only must it have affected the advice he gave to Christians who were forced to see him, but it also caused him to shoot and kill even those he had not wounded with his words.

But there does seem to be a war on Christianity in this country. Certainly, as the Founders anticipated, there should not be an establishment of religion, but most important was that they not prohibit the free exercise of religion.

When I was in the Army for 4 years, I had so many Christian friends. I had friends that were not. But I had so many Christian friends, and it seemed that especially around east Texas, where I grew up, so many Christians, those that came from Christian backgrounds, also had instilled not only a faith in God but also a love of country because of just how blessed this country has been, and because they understood that since most of the Founders had this Christian faith and over half, about two-thirds were even ordained Christian ministers, the signers of the Declaration of Independence, they wanted freedom of religion. So you could be an atheist. You could be a Muslim. You could be a Buddhist, whatever. You could believe in the power of crystals and nothing else, whatever it was, because it was the Christian faith. If it is truly Christian, then it provides everyone with the freedom of choice, as God has given us.

There are other religions that do not give freedom of choice. And we know, as the Islamic countries, where we're not allowed, even as Members of Congress, to carry in a Bible or to talk about our faith at all, they clearly prohibit the free exercise of religion. Even since this country and so many thousands of Americans laid down their lives to bring freedom to Afghanistan, this country gave Afghanistan a constitution in which shari'a law was the law of the land, and the last report I saw indicated that the last Jewish person had left Afghanistan and the last Christian, public Christian church had closed. So there's no freedom of religion there. There's no freedom of religion even in allied nations like Saudi Arabia or even in Egypt, not complete freedom of worship, even when Egypt was more of an ally than a country that elected a Muslim Brotherhood member who wanted to see the great state of America destroyed.

This has been a country where anyone, any religious beliefs, would have freedom of religion. But when we get away from the Judeo-Christian faith, whose notions founded this country, then there is no protection for all religions.

So it was interesting to see, especially, having been in the Army, having had friends that made careers out of the military--so many that started with me stayed in for a career--to see, last week, that and, as this headline says, ``Pentagon Confirms May Court Martial Soldiers Who Share Christian Faith.''

This May 1st article by Ken Klukowski said:

The Pentagon has released a statement saying that soldiers

could be prosecuted for promoting their faith: ``Religious

proselytization is not permitted within the Department of

Defense. Court martials and nonjudicial punishments are

decided on a case-by-case basis.''

The statement, released to Fox News, follows a Breitbart

News report on Obama administration Pentagon appointees

meeting with anti-Christian extremist Mikey

Weinstein to develop court martial procedures to punish

Christians in the military who express or share their faith.

(From our earlier report: Weinstein is the head of the

Military Religious Freedom Foundation, and says Christians--

including chaplains--sharing the gospel of Jesus Christ in

the military are guilty of ``treason'' and of committing an

act of ``spiritual rape'' as serious a crime as ``sexual

assault.'' He also asserted that Christians sharing their

faith in the military are ``enemies of the Constitution.'')

Being convicted in a court martial means that a soldier has

committed a crime under Federal military law. Punishment for

a court martial can include imprisonment and being

dishonorably discharged from the military.

So President Barack Obama's civilian appointees who lead

the Pentagon are confirming that the military will make it a

crime--possibly resulting in imprisonment--for those in

uniform to share their faith. This would include chaplains--

military officers who are ordained clergymen of their faith

(mostly Christian pastors or priests or Jewish rabbis)--whose

duty, since the founding of the U.S. military under George

Washington, is to teach their faith and minister to the

spiritual needs of troops who come to them for counsel,

instruction or comfort.

This regulation would severely limit expressions of faith

in the military, even on a one-to-one basis between close

friends. It could also effectively abolish the position of

chaplain in the military, as it would not allow chaplains, or

any servicemembers, for that matter, to say anything about

their faith that others say led them to think they were being

encouraged to make faith part of their life. It's difficult

to imagine how a member of the clergy could give spiritual

counseling without saying anything that might be perceived in

that fashion.

World magazine has an article entitled ``Religious Battle Lines,'' posted May 2, 2013. And in that article by Edward Lee Pitts, it says:

In a provocative piece at The Huffington Post written

before his Pentagon visit, Weinstein, who served in the U.S.

Air Force said, ``We face incredibly well-funded gangs of

fundamentalist Christian monsters who terrorize their fellow

Americans by forcing their weaponized and twisted version of

Christianity upon their helpless subordinates in our Nation's

Armed Forces.''

After the meeting, a column appeared in The Washington

Post, largely sourced by Weinstein, which portrayed him as

heroically taking on and lecturing the Pentagon brass. That

piece in the newspaper's On Faith section opened by

suggesting that, while Defense Secretary Chuck Hagel has

Pentagon budget concerns, ``there are much more serious

issues he must deal with. Religious proselytization and

sexual assault are at the top of the list.''

Well, if Secretary Hagel were talking about the type of proselytization that has gone on among our military members that has caused anyone to yell ``Allahu Akbar'' and then go about killing fellow members of the service, then I would certainly understand why Secretary Hagel would be concerned about that kind of proselytizing.

But for anyone to talk about sedition and treason and Christians basically acting in an unconstitutional way by expressing or utilizing their freedom of religion, for him to promote the prohibition of the free exercise of religion, would be actually encouraging treason, and it would be so very unconstitutional.

So it's quite interesting, when you find people who are educated beyond their ability such that they could read the Constitution and not understand the second clause that does not allow prohibition of the free exercise of religion.

We got an explanation from DOD and the Air Force on what they really meant after people started objecting to this. And the Air Force statement said this:

When on duty, or in an official capacity, Air Force members

are free to express their personal religious beliefs as long

as it does not make others uncomfortable. Proselytizing

(inducing someone to convert to one's faith) goes over that

line. Leaders must avoid the actual or apparent use of their

position to promote their personal religious beliefs to their

subordinates or to extend preferential treatment for any

religion.

As this matter from Fox News says:

Lieutenant Colonel Tingley's last sentence is troubling. An

Air Force officer was told he could no longer keep a Bible on

his desk because it ``may'' appear that he was condoning a

particular religion. Air Force officers must be allowed to

live out their faith in a way that is consistent with their

faith. If the Bible is important, then an Air Force officer

should be able to have one on his desk. Air Force officers

should be allowed to attend chapel, lead prayers, even speak

in chapel or lead Bible studies if it is consistent with

their faith. This statement does not help. What does ``as

long as it does not make others uncomfortable'' mean? Who

decides? How much of this policy did Mikey Weinstein

influence?

These are all good questions, because if the standard is that you may be allowed to express your religious beliefs unless it makes someone uncomfortable, then that is basically a prohibition of anybody's freedom of religion, if they are a Christian.

Mr. Weinstein doesn't seem to be bothered. I haven't seen an expression of concern about anybody yelling ``Allahu Akbar'' and killing 13 other servicemembers as an expression of religion. He doesn't seem to have found that treasonous or problematic. But some of the rest of us do.

So I hope that common sense and reason will win out, especially considering the historic nature of our Constitution. And those who parrot the words ``separation of church and state'' as if they are in the Constitution I find don't often know that those are not in the Constitution and are not aware that Thomas Jefferson coined that phrase in a letter to the Danbury Baptists where he also coined the phrase, ``wall of separation.'' And this is a President who, it has been confirmed by secular and even the Congressional Research folks, that Jefferson most Sundays when he was here in Washington would normally ride a horse down Pennsylvania Avenue and attend a nondenominational Christian worship service here in the Capitol just down the Hall in what we now call Statuary Hall but where they, back then, for most of the 1800s, had a Christian worship service.

The first woman to address a group in the Capitol did so, a female evangelist, a Christian evangelist spoke down the hall. The first Catholic to address a group in the Capitol did so just down the Hall. The first African American to address a group in the Capitol did so down the hall. It is a very historic place just down the hall where Church was held for most of the 1800s, a Christian, nondenominational worship service. So it is rather historic. And it was a Christian chapel to which George Washington went with all the other leaders after he was sworn in in 1789 and went down the road there in New York from the Federal building where he was sworn in to the chapel that was the only building at ground zero that was completely unaffected by the horrible fall of the World Trade Centers after they were attacked by people filled with hatred, an evil people, radical Islamists, who thought that in their religion, radical Islam, that they would find virgins in paradise by killing thousands of innocent people. So, hopefully, the military will take another look at this. I hope and pray they will.

For most of this country's history, Members of Congress, even still we have Members of Congress from both sides of the aisle who quote Scripture from the Bible as a resource or a confirmation for a particular bill or position that they are taking. Going back to our very inception as a country, that was considered a wise thing and not a treasonous thing as Mr. Weinstein, so unfamiliar with our history, would attempt to have people believe.

It was the incredible Martin Luther King, Jr., an ordained Christian minister, that sought to apply the teachings of Jesus and the philosophy of Jesus through nonviolence to force the Constitution to be interpreted to mean exactly what it said, and that is the kind of basis from which there is legitimacy to treat all people equally. As Jefferson made clear, if people do not realize that their liberty comes from God, then they will not long keep that liberty. I think he said he trembled at such a thought.

This Wednesday, we are going to have a hearing in the Oversight Committee regarding what happened at Benghazi on 9/11 of last year. I will be honored, humbled and honored, to escort the widow of Ty Woods, one of the two former Navy SEALs who was killed when help did not come, for whatever reason, whoever ordered help not to come in a timely fashion, and this hearing will hopefully shed a little more light on that.

An article from Breitbart came out 5 May, 2013, by John Sexton. He says:

In an appearance on ``Face the Nation'' this morning,

Representative Darrell Issa revealed several new pieces of

information about the Obama administration's controversial

description of the 2012 terrorist attack in Benghazi, Libya,

casting doubt that

the White House mischaracterized its cause by mere accident.

``The talking points were right and then the talking points

were wrong,'' Issa explained in response to a question about

reporting at the Weekly Standard. The CIA and Greg Hicks, who

took over as Charge d'Affaires in Libya after the death of

Ambassador Chris Stevens, both knew immediately that it was

an attack, not a protest.

Hicks, who did not appear on the show but whose reactions

were featured based on transcripts of interviews with Issa's

committee, said he was stunned by what U.N. Ambassador Susan

Rice claimed on five different news shows on September 16.

When she appeared on ``Face the Nation,'' she followed an

interview with the President of Libya who claimed he had ``no

doubt'' it was a terror attack. Moments later, Ambassador

Rice contradicted him and claimed a spontaneous protest was

more likely.

Acting Ambassador Hicks watched the Sunday shows and said

he found this contradiction shocking. ``The net impact of

what has transpired is the spokesperson of the most powerful

country in the world has basically said that the President of

Libya is either a liar or doesn't know what he is talking

about,'' he accused. Hicks added, ``My jaw hit the floor as I

watched this. I have never been as embarrassed in my life, in

my career as on that day.''

Hicks believes the stunning failure of diplomacy on the

Sunday news shows explains why it took the FBI 3 weeks to

gain access to the Benghazi site. The U.S. had effectively

humiliated the Libyan President on national TV. That

decision, he believed, probably compromised our ability to

investigate and track down those responsible.

According to Hicks, no one from the State Department

contacted him about what Ambassador Rice would be saying in

advance. The next morning he called Beth Jones, Acting

Assistant Secretary for Near East Affairs, and asked her why

Ambassador Rice had made the statements she had. Jones

responded, ``I don't know.''

A report published Friday by the Weekly Standard suggests

that State Department spokesperson Victoria Nuland took issue

with the initial talking points and, with backing from the

White House, removed any evidence of al Qaeda involvement and

of prior attacks on Western targets in the region. According

to emails reviewed by the Weekly Standard, Nuland said her

superiors were concerned about criticism from Congress.

You don't have to be trained in the Diplomatic Corps to understand that if the President of Libya, where our consulate was attacked, said this was not a protest, it was an attack by extremists, that since this administration needed his administration's assistance in investigating the matter, that they may have just alienated the President of Libya and negated efforts to bring the people responsible to justice.

Of course there's no real explanation as to why it would take 8 months just to put up three pictures, as has been done, to try to identify the perpetrators of what happened in Libya. Heck, when that was done regarding the perpetrators in Boston, it wasn't months that it took to identify those individuals; they precipitated bringing things to a head rather quickly. Isn't it interesting that it's only after tremendous congressional pressure to get to the bottom of what actually happened at Benghazi so that we can try to avoid it for the future that all of a sudden there is interest in actually trying to capture the people responsible.

CBS News, May 6, by Sharyl Attkisson, has a headline of an article: Diplomat: U.S. Special Forces told ``you can't go'' to Benghazi during attacks:

The deputy of slain U.S. Ambassador Christopher Stevens has

told congressional investigators that a team of Special

Forces prepared to fly from Tripoli to Benghazi during the

September 11, 2012, attacks was forbidden from doing so by

U.S. Special Operations Command South Africa.

This is just shocking to think that we had people armed, equipped, able, as we know now if this is true, they should have been able to save the lives of those two heroes--Ty Woods and Glen Doherty--and also the State Department individual that had most of his right leg blown off up there with them. They could have saved all of them if they had been allowed to go protect the people who were sent there to serve by this administration.

Another article, the Washington Times has a headline: ``U.S. could have halted Benghazi attack with a flyover.'' This is according to a diplomat. This article by Shaun Waterman, dated Monday, May 6, 2013, says:

U.S. air power could have headed off at least part of last

year's terror attack on the diplomatic post in Benghazi, but

American officials never asked for overflight permission

because there were no airborne tankers available to refuel,

according to the House Oversight Committee's investigation.

Gregory N. Hicks, who became the chief of the U.S. mission

when Ambassador J. Christopher Stevens was killed in the

attack, told House investigators Libya would have given the

U.S. permission to do the fly-over.

Democrats have accused the Republicans of running a ``one-

sided investigation.''

Mr. Hicks will testify on Capitol Hill this week along with

several others who will detail the conflicting stories the

Obama administration told in the days after the attack, which

left Stevens and three other Americans dead.

Mr. Hicks was deputy chief of mission at the embassy in

Tripoli when the U.S. post in Benghazi was attacked by

heavily armed extremists on September 11.

In interviews last month, Mr. Hicks told investigators with

the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee that an

overflight by a U.S. F15 or F16 might have prevented the

second phase of the attack.

After the diplomatic post was over-run and set ablaze that

night killing Stevens and Foreign Service Officer Sean Smith,

the survivors took refuge in a nearby CIA building called the

annex. That building was in turn attacked at dawn on

September 12, when a mortar barrage killed former SEALs Glen

Doherty and Tyrone Woods.

``If we had gotten clearance from the Libyan military for

an American plane to fly over Libyan air space . . . if we

had been able to scramble a fighter or aircraft or two over

Benghazi as quickly as possible after the attack commenced, I

believe there would not have been a mortar attack on the

annex in the morning because I believe the Libyans would have

split,'' Hicks told House investigators.

Another article from Fox News, also dated May 6, 2013, is titled: Clinton Sought End-Run Around Counterterrorism Bureau on Night of Benghazi Attack, Witness Will Say at Hearing.

On the night of September 11, as the Obama administration

scrambled to respond to the Benghazi terror attacks, then-

Secretary of State Hillary Clinton and a key aid effectively

tried to cut the Department's own Counterterrorism Bureau out

of the chain of reporting and decision-making, according to a

``whistle-blower'' witness from that bureau who will soon

testify to the charge before Congress, Fox News has learned.

That witness is Mark I. Thompson, a former marine and now the

deputy coordinator for operations in the agency's

Counterterrorism Bureau.

It goes on down, it says:

Fox News has also learned that another official from the

Counterterrorism Bureau--independently of Thompson--voiced

the same complaint about Clinton and Under Secretary for

Management Patrick Kennedy to trusted national security

colleagues back in October.

Extremists linked to al Qaeda stormed the U.S. Consulate

and a nearby annex on September 11 in a heavily armed and

well-coordinated 8-hour assault that killed the U.S.

ambassador to Libya, Chris Stevens, and three other

Americans.

Thompson considers himself a whistle-blower whose account

was suppressed by the official investigative panel that

Clinton convened to review the episode, the Accountability

Review Board. Thompson's lawyer, Joseph diGenova, a former

U.S. attorney, has further alleged that his client has been

subjected to threats and intimidation by as-yet-unnamed

superiors at State, in advance of cooperation with Congress.

Down further it says:

``You should have seen what (Clinton) tried to do to us

that night,'' the second official in State's Counterterrorism

Bureau told colleagues back in October. Those comments would

appear to be corroborated by Thompson's forthcoming

testimony.

State Department spokeswoman Jen Psaki called the

counterterrorism officials' allegations ``100 percent

false.'' A spokesman for Clinton said tersely that the charge

is not true.

It says:

Daniel Benjamin, who ran the Department's Counterterrorism

Bureau at the time, also put out a statement Monday morning

strongly denying the charges.

``I ran the bureau then, and I can say now with certainty,

as the former Coordinator for Counterterrorism, that this

charge is simply untrue,'' he said. ``Though I was out of the

country on official travel at the time of the attack . . . ''

And it goes on. But that seems to be the way, when this administration wants somebody to say, as he did, a charge is simply untrue and to strongly deny charges, they seem to have to call on somebody who had no firsthand information, which is why so many people were questioning why Ambassador Susan Rice was called upon to make the Sunday morning show round and constantly tell people that apparently it was the result of a protest and was not al Qaeda related, when in fact as people knew that night at the time of the attack, this was a coordinated effort. There was no sign of protest.

So the way the administration appears to have operated is to have people come forward who had no firsthand

information, give them their talking points, as Susan Rice was given-- an intelligent person. She's told by people apparently she trusts, here's what you need to point out, here's what you need to know. And then those people have plausible deniability of what the real facts are because they've just been handed talking points.

So it is a very serious matter when we're trying to get to the truth because it does matter. It makes the difference between whether or not we learn from mistakes that were made and correct them for the future, or whether we refuse to learn from history, refuse to learn from the mistakes that were made so that we become, as the old saying says, destined to repeat them.

So it does matter, and it matters very much to Ty Woods' widow, who will be here for the hearing. She does have interest because it does matter to her.

What difference does it make? It will matter to the loved ones of those who will die in the future if we don't get down to what actually occurred, what mistakes were made so we can avoid them being made in the future. It makes a lot of difference to those who don't want their loved ones to die in the service of this country.

Now, there are also reports out there that, as I read already, that there was a group of Special Forces who were ordered to stand down and not go forward and help those at Benghazi. As the article from CBS News points out, there may have been a Special Forces team that was ready to go and then they were told you can't go. It is just incredible to think that someone may have given such an order and not allowed the military to go forward.

There are rumors afloat that people in the military, people in the State Department, have been told not to talk to Members of Congress about what happened at Benghazi. If there is anything to those accounts, one thing that is often helpful is to go to the law itself. 18 USC, section 1505 is entitled, ``Obstruction of Proceedings Before Departments, Agencies, and Committees,'' and, in part, says: ``Whoever corruptly''--and I'm just reading what might be applicable if this were ever to arise and someone ever were to instruct members of the military or members of the State Department or any agency of the Federal Government not to communicate with Members of Congress, this bears noting.

Whoever corruptly, or by threats or force, or by any

threatening letter or communication influences, obstructs, or

impedes or endeavors to influence, obstruct, or impede the

due and proper administration of the law under which any

pending proceeding is being had before any department or

agency of the United States, or the due and proper exercise

of the power of inquiry under which any inquiry or

investigation is being had by either House, or any committee

of either House or any joint committee of the Congress.

It goes on to say they'll be punished.

That's a rather serious matter, so hopefully nobody is out there giving such instruction or has not been out there giving such instructions, because when members of the military or the State Department or intelligence departments or Justice Departments have information and they have been asked to provide such information and anyone instructs them in any way that may impede Congress' recovery of such information, then they need to look at 18 USC.

Also, 18 USC, 371:

If two or more persons conspire either to commit any

offense against the United States, or to defraud the United

States, or any agency thereof in any manner or for any

purpose, and one or more of such persons do any act to effect

the object of the conspiracy, each shall be--

And then it talks about their fine and imprisonment.

And then, of course, this under 18 USC, section 2:

Whoever commits an offense against the United States or

aids, abets, counsels, commands, induces, or procures its

commission is punishable as a principal. Whoever willfully

causes an act to be done which if directly performed by him

or another would be an offense against the United States, is

punishable as a principal.

So, basically if somebody is encouraged not to be forthcoming or honest with the Congress, you run into some issues there as well.

I hope people will take note of our laws, and hopefully there's no truth to the rumors afloat that such instructions had been given because, just as I was so greatly offended when the national security letter system was abused and we had an inspector general report about that, I didn't care that it was a Republican administration that was abusing people's freedom and I spoke out.

And I hope that friends across the aisle, as this information continues to be forthcoming about misrepresentations that were made publicly by this administration, intentionally and knowingly, that others, friends across the aisle, will stand up, as I did, about the Bush administration, their Justice Department, and demand justice. I demanded a resignation from the FBI Director back then. We have an obligation, and it goes beyond party loyalty.

When people were killed who were sent to Libya to serve this country--and we had two former SEALs who went and gave their lives to try to save, and who did save, American lives--the least people stateside can do, the least those who were reportedly told you can't go help these people, the least they can do since they were not allowed, according to the story, not allowed to go give Ty and Glen backup then, I hope and pray they'll have the courage to give them backup now so there will be no more Tys and Glens that will have to give their lives in the future because inadequate security was provided and a State Department was stumbling through relations in a tough situation and then sent people forward with statements that those who sent that person forward knew were not true, I hope that we'll have people, not just those that are now coming before the committee on Wednesday, but others, for the sake of Ty and Glen, Mr. Speaker, I hope people who are in the service or former servicemembers that may have personal information will give them the backup now that they're gone that they would have wanted if that was them who gave their lives.

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