Floor Statements

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

The motion was agreed to; accordingly (at 8 o'clock and 34 minutes p.m.), the House adjourned until tomorrow, Friday, February 17, 2012, at 9 a.m.

Mr. Speaker, it is such an honor to serve with such an honorable man as Colonel Allen West. I've known him for a few years, going back to his previous efforts at election to the House of Representatives. I'm just delighted that he is here. I'm delighted to call him a friend. He has been a fantastic addition here to the House of Representatives.

I would like to address something a Democratic colleague had referenced, and that was with regard to Medicare. My friend was taking issue with what my Republican doctors were addressing here on the floor with regard to Medicare. And it was interesting to hear a Democrat say that actually ObamaCare strengthened Medicare. It's interesting. I guess the definition of ``is'' means something to some folks. In this case, I guess the definition of ``strengthen'' would have to be what was at issue here.

The Democrats strengthened Medicare, cut $500 billion--with a B--out of Medicare, and are proud to report to the American people that they strengthened Medicare. Well, in a bill I didn't agree with, the debt ceiling bill, it's cutting hundreds of billions of dollars from our national security, for our national defense. I guess the same reasoning would say we're cutting hundreds of billions of dollars from our national defense. And under the Democratic strategy and definition, I guess, of ``strengthen,'' could say, under that

logic and that thinking, will strengthen our military and our national defense.

I don't happen to agree with that definition. I don't believe that's what it does; $500 billion in cuts to Medicare that ObamaCare rammed down America's throat, to my way of thinking, does not strengthen Medicare. It guts it.

Now, an explanation has been that the hundreds of billions of dollars that the Democrats in the House and Senate, when they were in the majority, took from Medicare, we're told, well, that wasn't cuts to the American people. That was only cuts to the health care providers. Well, lest I become too sarcastic, let me just say, when you cut the payments by $500 billion to those who are going to provide seniors with health care, you didn't cut the money going to seniors, you cut it to the people that the seniors need to provide them care.

If people haven't gotten out from around this town and gone out and talked to doctors across the country, including doctors in what some would deem ``flyover country,'' you find out the doctors say, if and when those cuts occur, we cannot stay in business; we'll have to close our doors.

I've had a number of doctors tell me, Once ObamaCare is fully law, I can't live on that. There's so many pieces of equipment that cost so much. There's so much medication that costs more and more. The government would require me to provide services and not reimburse me enough to pay the people I have to hire, to pay for the equipment I have to purchase and lease, and the medications I have to have in our facilities. Can't stay in business. I've had doctors tell me repeatedly, I had hoped to have more in savings before I retired, but I'm just going to have to do with what I've got there because I can't stay in the practice of medicine once those $500 billion in cuts are made.

So I guess someone can make the argument that the $500 billion in cuts to health care providers somehow strengthens Medicare for seniors since it only guts the payments to the health care providers, the doctors, the hospitals.

But I don't think it takes a whole lot of reasoning to understand seniors will find themselves in the position that the lady at the White House did during the President's town hall, when she pointed out, My mother was 95. Her personal doctor said she needs a pacemaker. The cardiologist said, she's too old, but he had never met her. Once he met her, he realized this is a woman that's going to live a lot longer. She does need a pacemaker. So he installed it, and 8 to 10 years later she's still going strong.

And the woman's question to the President was, in deciding who gets treatment and who doesn't, who gets surgery and who doesn't, will the people making the decisions under your bill consider the quality of a person's life in deciding whether they'll get the surgery, whether they'll get the health care they need, whether my mother would get the pacemaker she needed?

The President, after beating around the bush--it can be found online, both the video and transcript--the President ultimately said, you know, we have to come to the conclusion that maybe we're better off telling your mother she should just take a pain pill. In other words, the woman's mother would be dead, but she would have gotten a pain pill under the President's idea of good health care, under his ObamaCare program.

So that's what happens when you cut $500 billion to Medicare, as the Democrats did, in ObamaCare. And I know my colleague across the aisle pointed out that the AMA, the AHA, and others, I would add, many leaders of the Catholic Church, encouraged the passage of ObamaCare. And now, so many are finding egg on their faces.

Heck, the big pharmaceutical groups, they supported it. Every one of those groups that signed on was bought off. That's just the way it is. They thought that they were signing on to something that would help them out because they were given some little bit that they wanted in the bill.

Some from those groups told me, gee, we wanted to have a seat at the table. I tried to warn them, you don't want a seat at the table when you're on the menu. When they signed on to agree to ObamaCare, they signed their own group's death warrants because $500 billion in cuts to health care providers, when you don't even eliminate the fraud and waste and abuse, is going to gut the very people financially that are supposed to provide the care.

So who suffers? Well, the doctors, the health care providers, they retire. They go on and do something else. Who suffers? The seniors do. That's what the $500 billion in cuts to Medicare under ObamaCare do for Americans.

I had a health care bill. In the CBO's effort to help the President get ObamaCare passed, of course they had scored it originally as being over $1 trillion; but since the President promised it would cost much less than that, there was a meeting with the Director of CBO at the White House. We don't know what was said, but we understood the President was saying before and after the meeting that it had to be scored to where it was under $1 trillion. And lo and behold, CBO went back and scored it at $800 billion, approximately.

ObamaCare passes, and then after it becomes law, CBO re-scores. And guess what? It's over $1 trillion. So we now know that anything we get from CBO in the way of a scoring has to be considered plus or minus 25 percent accurate. I think we ought to change legislation, get rid of CBO, and find entities competitively who are most accurate at scoring bills who can come closer than a plus or minus 25 percent accuracy.

But my bill would give seniors a choice and say, if you like your Medicare, and especially now, with all the cuts that are coming to health care, if you like it, great, keep it. But if you would like the best health insurance that money can buy, with a high deductible, $3,000, $4,000, $5,000, whatever we found to be most accommodating, then we would buy that for the seniors, their choice, Medicare or the best private insurance with a high deductible.

Say, for example, if we made it, in my bill it was 3,500, say, 4,000, 5,000 now. That deductible amount would then be provided to the senior's household in a health savings account that they would control with their own debit card so that, for the first time since Medicare came into existence, seniors would get to control their own health care. They wouldn't have to go begging to an insurance company, because insurance companies, health insurance companies have gotten out of the business of health insurance. They're in health management. I don't want them in health management. I want them in health insurance.

Insurance is when you pay a small premium to insure against an insurable event down the road. You don't know what's coming; but in case there's a catastrophic accident or disease, then you're covered.

In the meantime, each year we'd provide that cash in the health savings account that can only be used for health matters. Now, that would put patients back in control because the most effective government, we have found--and yet we have to keep relearning this lesson--comes not when government is the referee and the coach, and a player. It doesn't work well. We have to keep learning that lesson.

People in this body say, oh, well, it'll work out better if government competes with the private sector. No, it doesn't. It works better if we're a referee.

So whether it's the stock market, there are referees. There are officials that watch out for people like Madoff. Instead of being so engaged in details of day-to-day transactions, they're engaged in health insurance as a referee to make sure people are playing fairly with their consumers, with their patients, so that they're not getting jerked around, so that the government can go after those who are defrauding or being unfair in their treatment. That's the government's role. Be a referee.

But when the government becomes a player and a coach and the referee, then everybody suffers. There is no reason we should have to keep relearning that lesson.

Now, I wouldn't mind so much guest-worker permits. We hear from some of the farmers in California and what-not that, gee, we have to have guest workers come in and harvest our crops. But we shouldn't have to have the rest of

the country pay for their health care because they don't have it.

So we ought to have a new requirement for visas. Yeah, we'll give you a visa to come into the country, but you have to show that you're going to have health insurance the entire time you're here.

You want to bring guest workers in to harvest your crops, well, then provide an umbrella health insurance policy for them so that the rest of America doesn't pay for that farmer's, that rancher's employees' health care.

Those are just little things. But one other thing that we need to do to really get health care on track is get competition back in health care.

When a hospital, when a doctor, when a clinic cannot tell you exactly what the cost is unless they know which insurance company you have or if it's Medicare or if it's Medicaid or what, whether it's cash-- because if it's cash, the way the system is now, you're going to pay more than the insurance companies pay--well, that's no way to have a competitive system.

When I grew up in my hometown, Mount Pleasant, Texas, my parents sometimes switched doctors. If one doctor went up, well, we knew there were a number of good doctors in town. We went to one that was cheaper because we knew they were good, too.

We don't do that anymore because nobody knows what things cost. Well, that ought to be posted. You ought to be able to find it, published, post it, so people know this one is cheaper. If you have your own debit card with money in that account or a health savings account, then you would be concerned about that. But the government gets so involved that it becomes the problem.

Visas

I want to address one other area in which the government ought to be the referee, but it's so busy trying to be the coach and the player that the job is not getting done. That is in the area of visas.

Apparently, we have this EB 5 program that, in essence, says if you're a non-American, but if you want to come into the United States and you have a million dollars and you're willing to invest it in the U.S., hey, we'll give you a visa, one of these EB 5 visas. Then you can come into this country, and you can be a legal resident. So you buy your way in.

Well, everybody acknowledges times are tough. Things have not gotten any better than they were when President Obama took office. We're worse off than we were when he took office, debt through the roof. But I can understand. It makes sense. Let's encourage outside investment in America.

Well, it just so happens that the month of February has been quite revealing in this program in that in my hometown of Tyler, Texas, we had a very weary local law enforcement. I know from my days as a district judge handling felonies, we have some very capable, competent local law enforcement. We have extremely capable State law enforcement in Texas.

A car was pulled over. It had no front license plates. That's required in Texas. Then the officer found that there were some questionable things going on and asked him for permission to search. Permission was granted. $67,000 in cash was in the car; children in the car; two individuals in the car with another adult driver; shotgun in the car. Strange situation. When they were taken in for their violations, the name was run, the shotgun was run, lo and behold, they hear from the Federal Government. ICE says, We're in charge. These folks are ours. So they take them from Tyler, Texas, detention to Dallas to the detention there.

We just happen to have the mug shots of these folks. These individuals were Hector Hernandez Javier Villarreal. He's the former secretary executive of Tax Administration Service of Coahuila, Mexico, along with his wife, Marie Teresita Botello. Then they also had a driver with them, Oswaldo Coronado. These were their mug shots.

Well, ICE takes over. They take these folks to detention in Dallas. Homeland Security gets alerted. We don't know whether it was the shotgun being run or the people's names being run, but they get involved reporting to the Smith County Sheriff's Office wanting to interrogate these individuals. They were told, well, you'll have to get in line behind ICE. They've just taken them to Dallas about 100 miles up the interstate.

Well, once they were in Dallas, and there was computer material, different things that were obtained after they were arrested in Tyler, obtained by warrant, and they begin to find out a little bit more about them.

This is in the Tyler Morning Telegraph, my hometown paper. They do a good job of reporting local news. So they report, as did FOX and the San Antonio Express-News:

Villarreal and at least six other men face charges linked

to more than $3 billion in debt racked up by the Coahuila

government during the administration by the former governor,

Humberto Moreira.

Villarreal is accused of falsifying documents involving

$325 million in bank loans to the state shortly before

Moreira resigned to become national president of the

opposition Institutional Revolutionary Party, or PRI.

State police arrested Villarreal and another former

Coahuila official October 28 charging them in connection with

suspicious loans. Villarreal was released on bail within

hours after being detained.

I was told that bond was around $1 million. The article continues with a quote from our sheriff there, J.B. Smith:

``All we did was make a traffic stop. We did not realize we

had stopped a major person of interest for Mexico and the

United States.''

Villarreal was charged with money laundering and turned

over to Immigration and Customs Enforcement. He was released

on February 6 on $20,000 bail, according to jail records.

Carl Rusnok, an ICE spokesman in Dallas, would not comment on

the situation.

Three days later, Federal investigators in Mexico issued a

warrant for Villarreal's arrest. Members of Mexico's ruling

National Action Party, or PAN, are asking the same questions:

Why was Villarreal able to enter the U.S. and why was he

released?

We're giving visas to people because they promised to come in here and invest $500,000 or $1 million in the U.S. What, do we need to change the inscription on the Statute of Liberty? Give us your tired, your fugitives, your embezzlers? Give us your criminals longing to stay free?

Some of us have been pretty critical of the Mexican Government not being tougher on corruption. Here we have a case where it appears the Mexican Government is trying to crack down on corruption.

I know from my days as a judge, when somebody is released on bond, they're not allowed to leave the country. Why wouldn't our government-- because I was assured today in a hearing of the Immigration Committee by the Customs and Immigration Service Director that, gee, they do a very thorough background study on people before they will give them this EB 5 visa. They're very thorough, I was told. I'm looking forward to the report from the Director that he promised me today in the hearing as to exactly what happened here, why they didn't pick up that these people were being charged in Mexico with embezzlement of hundreds of millions, maybe even billions of dollars.

I mean, is the economy so in need of help that we welcome people charged with criminal activity to come in as long as they'll invest their dirty money in our country? We need to have better standards than that. We need to be the country that was, as it once was, a rule-of-law Nation, where the law mattered.

But once they were in Dallas, the State Department, I was told by the law enforcement officials I'd talked to, they were told--Homeland Security, ICE--you've got to let these folks go. We gave them a valid visa. They told the local officials that, now, we did revoke that visa, but since they came into the U.S. before we revoked the visa, we have to let them stay, so you've got to let them go. They were ordered to let these three individuals go.

Now, I was told that upon pulling these folks out of detention and being told that the State Department had ordered their release and that they were free to go wherever they wanted in the United States that Villarreal's wife said, But you told us we were going to be deported back to Mexico, where the charges were waiting for them.

He said, No, we're told we have to release you here in this country.

When she started to say that didn't make sense, Mr. Villarreal responded very assertively in Spanish, and she didn't say anything after that. It's not hard to figure out what he must have said:

Look, if these people are so stupid they're going to let us go when we're wanted in Mexico, when we're wanted here and they're going to let us go, just shut up, and let these stupid people let us go.

So they were let go.

It was only a day or two later that the State Department said, You know what? These people are wanted fugitives, and we need to hang onto them.

They're gone and they haven't been found, and they told local law enforcement that they had access to private jets so they could come in and out of the United States when they were ready to.

Well, I hope they find them. As a former prosecutor, as a former judge and chief justice, the law needs to be addressed.

In the meantime, here in Congress, we did have a hearing today with immigration officials, including the inspector general of the immigration service, CIS. I was told during the hearing that if the chairman of our immigration committee will request an investigation, the IG will do that investigation, and I'm hopeful that will be forthcoming.

We've got to clean up this administration's mess. It's bad enough the damage that's being done to Medicare and our seniors. It's bad enough that a payroll tax rate of insurance is being reduced so that there is not enough money to pay Social Security from the Social Security tax coming in again this year and that it may go from an approximately 5 percent shortfall last year to a maybe 14 percent or so shortfall this year. It's bad enough we're doing that to the seniors. It's bad enough what ObamaCare will be doing to the seniors in making it difficult for them to find the care they need in the years to come unless we repeal ObamaCare--but now we have to deal with fugitives coming in from Mexico because they were willing to invest money that the Mexican authorities allege was stolen, embezzled money.

At some point, it is time to stop hurting American citizens who have contributed and who have been law-abiding for their lives. It's time the government became a proper referee and quit trying to divide America, quit trying to be the player, the coach and the referee and got back into the business of making sure Americans are treated fairly, that Americans are protected from outside evil forces--those who want to harm us and destroy our way of life. It's time to get the United States Government back into the business of providing for the common defense, of making sure there is a level playing field, of encouraging competition, not rewarding cronies who have some wild-eyed scheme of something that they call ``green energy'' while the rest of America can't even fill up their gas tanks.

It is time to do the job that is given to Congress, that is given to the President in the Constitution; and once we get back to that and concentrate on doing that well, America could make another 200 years.

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

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

The motion was agreed to; accordingly (at 9 o'clock and 30 minutes p.m.), under its previous order, the House adjourned until tomorrow, Thursday, February 16, 2012, at 10 a.m. for morning-hour debate.

Mr. Speaker, happy Valentine's Day to you. Thank you for this time.

There is so much going on. We have had in recent days the testimony of the director of CBO, Congressional Budget Office, making projections. We've had the White House dictating what religious beliefs people could observe and practice and which they could not, and then what was said to be a compromise so that individuals--actually institutions--could practice religious beliefs, the insurance companies that they utilize will have to provide the coverage that the President dictates even though it is against the religious beliefs, and then naturally the way things work, the insurance companies will spread out the costs, and they will pay for them anyway, which will be, once again, in breach of their religious beliefs.

It's quite interesting. I've been trying to take this all in, Mr. Speaker, as we have seen ObamaCare basically rammed down the throats of Americans with the vast majority not wanting that bill passed, with the vast majority in Congress not having read the bill, and with Speaker Pelosi at the time saying, we'll have to pass it so we can find out what's in it. Well, as people are finding out what's in it, they're not terribly happy.

And when you realize, as some of us did before it passed, as some of us were arguing here on the House floor before it passed, that if the President's health care bill passed, it would be such an intrusion into the rights of Americans that as I said here on the floor, it would be about the GRE, the government running everything, that means every aspect of people's lives. That includes setting aside people's religious beliefs when that came into conflict with the President's health care bill. We knew that it would run up tremendous debt. We knew that it would cut Medicare by $500 billion--something our friends across the aisle don't like to talk about a whole lot.

Before the supercommittee fiasco ever occurred, the Democratic majority in the House and the Senate passed a bill a majority of Americans didn't want passed that would wrest control away from Americans in so many different areas and would take control and give it to the Federal Government in a way that was never anticipated in the Constitution.

So as we have seen this White House dictate to the Catholic Church, to Catholic hospitals, what they would be allowed to practice in the way of their religious beliefs, it's been quite interesting. We've heard many Catholic leaders who have said, you know, gee, we supported President Obama when he was Senator running for President. We thought he would do all these wonderful things. From conversations, as President Jenkins at Notre Dame had with President Obama, he just never anticipated that there would be this type of usurpation of religious practices and the ability to practice one's religious beliefs.

This isn't about contraception. Anybody in America that wants contraception can get it. That's not an issue. In fact, it's been interesting to hear people say people have a right to have contraception provided. When I look at the Second Amendment of the Constitution, there is a right to bear arms, but I don't remember anybody who was pushing for the government to basically provide whatever people want in the way of health care, paid for by somebody else. I don't remember them saying, well, the Constitution mentions the right to bear arms, so the Federal Government must provide everybody guns. There's all kinds of things that are ensured under the Constitution and under the Bill of Rights, but it doesn't mean the government's supposed to buy them for everybody.

But in view of the White House's position, President Obama's position on what religious practices he would allow the Catholic Church to observe, Mr. Speaker, I figure we really need to make an addition to the Constitution. Since the President has already taken these actions, then I think maybe we need to just observe some language that we insert into the shadow of a penumbra. So where it says in amendment one to the Constitution of the United States, ``Congress shall make no laws respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof,'' I think in order to make the President's actions and the White House actions consistent, as those reflected by Secretary Sebelius, we need to insert there a line that comes up and says, But only if you are a religious institution and your beliefs agree with the President of the United States. Because if your religious beliefs come into conflict with Secretary Sebelius or the White House, unless the White House is willing to make some insurance company deal with your practice, then you're just going to have to set aside your religious beliefs.

So apparently the parenthetical has been inserted into the Constitution. I'm hopeful that on this issue the Supreme Court will strike down ObamaCare, say there are so many aspects of this bill that are unconstitutional--the mandate to buy a product for the first time in American history is only one of them. But that mandate, of course, is central to the bill itself.

But then the way it supercedes the religious institution's beliefs, why we would say ``religious institutions'' is because the President and Secretary Sebelius in their so-called ``compromise'' had not been willing to recognize an individual's beliefs, which I've always understood the Constitution was talking about.

No, they say it is confined to the religious beliefs and practices of a religious institution. Because under this White House's interpretation of the Constitution, if you're an individual and you are Baptist, Catholic, Jewish, Muslim, whatever it is--although the FBI has apparently been meeting with named coconspirators for funding terrorism and trying to eliminate any kind of language that might in any way offend people that have supported terrorism, we don't want to offend those who want to kill us, of course.

But other than that, this White House sees it that if you're an individual and not a religious institution, then you have no right under the First Amendment to practice your religious beliefs if they're in conflict with what President Obama or Kathleen Sebelius want to do. You'll have to set them aside. It's only under their interpretation of the Constitution--and of course we know the President was an instructor--not a professor, but an instructor--at a law school at one time, so I'm

sure he understands the Constitution--but under their beliefs, you've just got to set them aside. If you're not a religious institution, you have no right to demand to put your practices into use. So apparently the First Amendment, according to them, only applies to religious institutions.

I never learned that in law school, because we were taught that if you read the Declaration of Independence and how that ended up by the end of the Revolution opening the door--of course first for the Articles of Confederation, then 4 years later for the Constitution-- that all this worked together. There was a belief at that time in the rights of an individual--not of a religious institution--the rights of an individual. That's why one of the statues here in the Capitol, one of the two from Pennsylvania, is for a Reverend named Muhlenberg. The statue is of him taking off his ministerial robe because he believed, as the Declaration of Independence said, that we were endowed by our Creator with certain inalienable rights, and there comes a time when people have to stand up for those rights.

So Reverend Muhlenberg was preaching from Ecclesiastes and he was talking--I believe it's chapter 3--that there is a time for every purpose under heaven. When he got to the verse--I believe it's verse 8--``there is a time for war and a time for peace,'' he took off his ministerial robe, and there he was in an officer's uniform and in essence said, ladies and gentlemen, now is the time for war. He recruited people from his church to join him in the fight in the Revolution, they recruited people from the town, and by the end of the war, Muhlenberg was a general.

His brother was also a reverend. There's a story told that his brother did not agree with him recruiting from the pulpit; but after his church was burned down, he got active and ended up being quite a participant in the Revolution and actually ended up being the first Speaker of the House of Representatives. Those who know where the term ``separation of church and state'' came from know that it came--not in the Constitution, it's nowhere in here, not at all. Nowhere before the end of the Constitution do you find the words ``separation of church and state,'' nor do you find the words ``wall of separation.'' Those are both contained in a letter that Jefferson wrote to the Danbury Baptists.

So in the Constitution, you don't see any prohibition against them dating the Constitution itself with these words: ``Done in convention by the unanimous consent of the states present the seventeenth day of September in the year of our Lord one thousand seven hundred and eighty-seven.''

They apparently did not think it offended the Constitution to date it as being done in the year 1787, that being in the year of our Lord, 1787. So imagine the Founders' surprise to learn that the Bill of Rights that they put together, when it said the government would never prohibit the free exercise of religion, would somehow base beliefs on something unwritten in the Constitution as giving the President of the United States and his appointed representative, Kathleen Sebelius at Health and Human Services, the power to order people to disregard the religious beliefs, set them aside and do what the President ordered. For people, as Dennis Miller said, that were willing to go to war over a tax on their breakfast drink, they would probably have been even more riled up if King George had taken this kind of action.

So, we're told that everyone in America must pay their fair share; yet we're told by the President he does not mean to divide America. And yet I would hope that by the end of this year, before the election, he would put the law where his mouth is and say, You know what? I've been saying for so long now that everybody should pay their fair share. I am finally going to go along with the Republicans who say we ought to have a flat tax. It doesn't matter who you are, Warren Buffett or whomever, we're going to have a flat tax.

Steve Forbes said it could be done with a 17 percent flat tax, even allowing for a mortgage interest deduction, even allowing for charitable deduction. And that way, if you've got a flat tax, then Warren Buffett would not have to sue, or his company would not have to sue, as it is now, to avoid paying the millions or billions in taxes that are alleged to be owed. He wouldn't have to fight the IRS so hard at the same time he's saying he doesn't mind paying more. There wouldn't be any question.

It's a flat tax. Just take your income, multiply it by the flat tax-- no matter who you are, how much you make--and that will be your tax. Because with 53 percent of Americans being the only ones that are paying more in income tax than they get back, we'd better act in a hurry; because once we cross that line where people who are voting get more from the government than they pay in, we're not coming back, absent a miracle of God.

So I'm hopeful that the President's going to realize that all the speeches he's been giving about paying fair share really lead you to one, unavoidable conclusion. It's time to quit saying some don't have to pay any tax. It's time to say, look, everybody pay their fair share. Everybody has a percent of their income.

Now, of course, Steve Forbes proposed, under his flat tax, that in order to shield the poor, and of course we could debate on what poor is, but in the United States, his proposal was that if you're a family of four, I believe it was $46,000 and less, you wouldn't pay any tax. How could anybody argue with that? A flat tax could do that.

In the meantime, we have a proposal from the President for a budget for this year, and it's quite interesting. There's a Wall Street Journal article, and I'll quote from this. It's entitled, ``The Amazing Obama Budget,'' and it's dated today, Valentine's Day 2012. It says:

Federal budgets are by definition political documents, but

even by that standard, yesterday's White House proposal for

fiscal year 2013 is a brilliant bit of misdirection. With the

abracadabra of a tax increase on the wealthy and defense

spending cuts that will never materialize, the White House

asserts that in President Obama's second term, revenues will

soar, outlays will fall, and $1.3 trillion in annual deficits

will be cut in half like the lady in the box on stage.

All voters need to do is suspend disbelief for another 9

months. And ignore this first 3 years.

It says ``4,'' but it's the first 3 years of his administration.

The real news in Mr. Obama's budget proposal is the story

of those years. What a tale they'll tell.

It says down further:

All of this has added an astonishing $5 trillion in debt in

a single Presidential term. National debt held by the public,

the kind you have to pay back, will hit 74.2 percent this

year and keep rising to 77.4 percent next year.

Economists believe that when debt to GDP reaches 90 percent

or so, the economic damage begins to rise, and this doesn't

include the debt that future taxpayers owe current and future

retirees through the IOUs and the Social Security ``trust

fund.''

Anyway, it goes on to say:

Mr. Obama's chief economic adviser, Gene Sperling, reported

that the President wants a new ``global minimum tax.''

Talking about a new tax that's a global minimum tax. Wouldn't it be easier just to say, You know what? We're just going to have a flat tax. Everybody needs to pay their fair share.

I don't have this in a blowup, but the debt boom, according to the Office of Management and Budget of this White House shows that for 2012 and 2013 we go from a Federal debt held by the public as a share of GDP, around 35 percent, just spiking up, as The Wall Street Journal points out, to between 75 and 80 percent. Pretty dramatic.

There's an article from Jeffrey Anderson today that said:

According to the White House's own figures, the actual or

projected deficit tallies for the 4 years in which Obama has

submitted budgets are as follows: $1.293 trillion in 2010,

$1.3 trillion in 2011, $1.327 trillion in 2012, and $900

billion in 2013.

That's because that's the year that hadn't happened yet.

Further down it says:

To help put that colossal sum of money into perspective, if

you take our deficit spending under Obama and divide it

evenly among the roughly 300 million American citizens, that

works out to just over $17,000 per person--or about $70,000

for a family of four.

That's just the debt that has accrued with President Obama at the helm.

I think it's also important to note that, under the bill that I was against but it got passed anyway, the debt ceiling extension back last summer to give

the President all the debt ceiling authority he would want, that should carry him clear through the election, it's already appearing that that wasn't near enough.

And of course we had the supercommittee that was going to protect us and take care of us and make the cuts that were necessary. And now that those haven't happened, we're gutting our own defense, gutting our own defense.

Anybody that studies history knows you never put your national security on the table for negotiation, and we've done that.

Now, this chart is pretty telling, and it's based on the testimony of the CBO Director before the Senate Budget Committee. It makes it pretty basic. The Director of CBO in the projections for this year has projected the U.S. tax revenue will be $2.523 trillion.

The head of CBO in his February 2, 2012, testimony projects the Federal budget this year will be $3.61 trillion, approximately. That is a deficit for 1 year of $1.079 trillion. Our national debt currently appears to be $15.348 trillion. According to the director of CBO, our budget cuts from 2010, when coupled with the ones projected for 2011, actually amounted to around $41 billion.

So that's kind of hard for some of us to understand when you're talking about numbers with so many zeroes. So it may be far more effective--and my staff has done a great job of putting this together for me--by removing eight zeroes from all of those trillion dollar numbers. It makes it more easily discernible if you say, All right, let's look at it as a family budget.

A family budget. They're bringing in $25,230 for 1 year, but they're going to spend $36,010 in that same year. That's going to increase their debt that they're going to owe by $10,780. So $10,780 on the new credit card.

Well, we already have a credit card balance of $153,480. That should put it in perspective.

As a country, it's basically like being a family making $25,000, spending $36,000, not once, but 4 years in a row under this President. And we already had $153,000 in debt, and we're only bringing in $25,000. This is like credit card debt. It's not secured by a home-- except for America.

We have put our future, America's future, our children, grandchildren's future all in hock for this much, and we can proudly say--those that don't understand, I get sarcastic from time to time--we can proudly say that since 2010, 2011, if you take away the eight zeroes, we have cut $410 of our spending.

We've got a lot of work to do. We owe the American public better than we've done. It's time to take a stand.

We've been told, of course, whether you're a Republican or Democrat, that when you're elected as a freshman, your odds of being defeated in the first election you stand for as an incumbent, are 10 to 20 percent. That means there were some fantastic freshman Republicans that were elected in this last election. Ten to 20 percent of them may get defeated in the next election. What will they have to show unless we stand up and say enough is enough?

Mr. President, Senator Reid, we're standing on our principles so that we can leave the next generation as good or better a country than we inherited. But we're going to have start moving and we're going to have to start standing on principle very quickly. Easy to do.

Some say, Oh, it will be so hard making all of these cuts. No, it won't. We can go back to the 2008 budget that the most liberal Congress in history had passed. Didn't hear a lot of complaints about not enough spending that year. Go to that budget. That knocks out a trillion right there.

Enough of the games. It's time to stand up for America, stand up for a responsible budget, cut the wasteful spending, stop the crony capitalism for groups like Solyndra, and let's get this economy going back again--strong, stronger, strongest ever.

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

Mr. Speaker, I come tonight deeply troubled about the situation in the Middle East, as so many people are, and also about the response of this country to our dear friend, Israel. It has been quite interesting to see as Iran comes ever closer to having nuclear weapons, just how much of a friend this administration has, at least from its viewpoint in Israel.

In recent days, we've seen the story, a number of news services provided one story, a reporter from The Washington Post, David Ignatius, traveling with Defense Secretary Leon Panetta, and this article from Fox News says:

Traveling with the Defense Secretary in Brussels to cover

his meeting with NATO defense ministers, Ignatius writes,

``Panetta believes there is a strong likelihood that Israel

will strike Iran in April, May, or June.''

That's awfully specific. There are some in Iran who have believed that we're a paper tiger and so is Israel, and we will prevent Israel from ever striking at all. And that if there were to be some kind of a strike, it would be much later in the year.

There's an article from last October about Defense Secretary Panetta. This one is from the AP, October 2 of last year:

Defense Secretary Leon Panetta warned Sunday that Israel is

becoming increasingly isolated in the Middle East, and said

Israeli leaders must restart negotiations with the

Palestinians and work to restore relations with Egypt and

Turkey.

It's really interesting because it was my impression that it was not Israel that had withdrawn from close relations, that it was Turkey that had actually allowed the flotilla to go challenge a legal and appropriate blockade of the Gaza Strip from which Israel was being bombarded on a constant basis. So they had a legal and legitimate interest in ensuring that more rockets did not flow into the Gaza Strip that would continue to be shot in an effort to kill Israelis.

The reason that the rockets were flying from the Gaza Strip was because the Israelis had had really a rather amazing group of towns there. People were making a living. There were beautiful homes and greenhouses, providing a way in which people could provide for themselves and to grow their own food. These were just well-run communities.

But the thought that the Israeli leaders had, apparently, was that if we will show this unilateral offer of goodwill to people who, in the last 40 years, have come to be called Palestinians--they obviously weren't for most of the history of mankind--but if they would do this amazingly gracious unilateral act, that it would be rewarded. And what Israel has found is that it has been rewarded with rockets flying into Israel in an effort to try to terrorize and kill Israelis.

Previously, years before that, Israel had made an offer and did provide land from which it had been attacked, which it had acquired in southern Lebanon. Lo and behold, they were rewarded by being attacked from southern Lebanon and having soldiers kidnapped from southern Lebanon. So it's interesting to hear this administration and people from this administration in the top positions talk about how Israel needs to restart negotiations, that Israel is becoming increasingly isolated, how Israel must reach out more, when it seems that each time Israel reaches out its hand, its hand gets shot at and efforts are made to chop it off.

This article from the AP from back in October quotes Secretary Panetta as saying:

``It's pretty clear that at this dramatic time in the

Middle East, when there have been so many changes, that it is

not a good situation for Israel to become increasingly

isolated. And that's what's happening,'' he said.

Panetta said the most important thing now is for Israel and

its neighbors ``to try to develop better relationships so in

the very least they can communicate with each other rather

than taking these issues to the streets.''

The Palestinians, meanwhile, have said they won't return to talks unless Israel freezes settlement building and accepts the pre-1967 war frontier as a baseline for talks.

This is somewhat akin to saying, well, if Mexico were to be launching rockets or doing things to terrorize American citizens, that if we'll just go back to where we were before the U.S.-Mexican War, then everything will be just fine. The United States went to war because of the same kind of unfairnesses that were seen by the Founders of this land. Dennis Miller put it this way: the Founders were willing to go to war when the British simply put a tax on their breakfast drink. So in all likelihood, they would be standing up firmly for a taking of liberties more so than we do sometimes today.

In fact, if we stood firmly on the liberties of the United States citizens and efforts by others in the world to destroy us, efforts by others in the world who have said they will destroy our way of life and they want to destroy our country, then perhaps we would be a little safer today.

I have a resolution that was filed--I've got lots of cosponsors--it was filed in May of last year, and I'm still in hopes that we can bring this to the

floor because this is the response we should have to nations around the world trying to isolate Israel. We should let them know how we stand with them. We stand with people who are democratically elected, we stand with people who have the freedom of worship, we stand with people who will not terrorize Christians, terrorize Jews, or terrorize Muslims, where all will be allowed to practice their religion--any religion--and those ought to be our best friends.

Yet, to the contrary, this Nation seems to run to the aid of those-- like in Afghanistan right now, we were advised last year that the last Christian church has now been closed, driven out of Afghanistan. This is the Afghanistan that American treasure and American lives were sacrificed to secure what we thought would be a democratic nation where they would choose peace. And, in fact, there has not been peace. The Taliban have actually increased in number dramatically since the days when we had them on the run, had basically defeated them in early 2002.

We come back to this resolution, H. Res. 271, and it says:

Expressing support for the State of Israel's right to

defend Israeli sovereignty, to protect the lives and safety

of the Israeli people, and to use all means necessary to

confront and eliminate nuclear threats posed by the Islamic

Republic of Iran, including the use of military force if no

other peaceful solution can be found within a reasonable time

to protect against such an immediate and existential threat

to the State of Israel.

This is the solution when a dear ally of the United States is being isolated by people who want to destroy it. And I know that--I believe Secretary Panetta did a very good job at intelligence, and I hope he will do as well at defense. But we would encourage people in this administration, Mr. Speaker, to go look at what has really been said and who has actually done harm to whom.

And what you find out is that Israel has not moved away from being a friend. In fact, Israel had a treaty with Egypt, and a leader named Mubarak, with whom this Nation had agreements, was doing all he could, apparently, it appeared, to keep that treaty, to keep Egypt's word with Israel. This administration, on the other hand, saw fit to encourage Mubarak to step down and to make way for what seems to be the military and the Muslim Brotherhood, who seemed to have made clear they're not going to honor the treaty with Israel. They're not going to honor what was brokered here in the United States.

So, once again, we have a United States administration who seems to have been left with egg on their faces, as President Carter's administration was. I don't know if they ever realized it, but when President Carter thought the Ayatollah Khomeini was a man of peace and was coming back to Iran and that it was a good thing, we soon found otherwise.

By 1979, they were at war with America, it's just that we didn't recognize that there were radical Islamists at war with us until after the attack on 9/11. Not even the attack on the World Trade Center in 1993 was enough to convince us, not an attack on the USS Cole, not an attack on our embassy, not an attack on different U.S. properties around the world; it took 9/11 before we realized there are radical Islamists that are at war with us.

Even though this administration has seen to the changing of the FBI lexicon, where, in training FBI agents and others who are in charge with defending our Nation, it's no longer appropriate to use words in the FBI lexicon--they're not there--of al Qaeda, radical Islamist. We use ``radical extremism'' instead. And as some experts on radical extremism--in other words, radical Islamists--have said, unless you understand what your enemy believes, how in the world can you prepare against an attack from that enemy?

And as someone else had told me, this administration has been in the process of blinding those who are charged with trying to protect us; can't use the terms that were repeatedly used in the 9/11 bipartisan commission report at a time when they didn't know it was politically incorrect to accurately classify people who wanted to destroy your way of life.

So, in this resolution regarding Israel's right to defend itself, it seemed that there was no better thing to do than to go to quotes and to the actual history in the region that points out that:

Whereas archeological evidence exists confirming Israel's

existence as a nation over 3,000 years ago in the area in

which it currently exists, despite assertions of its

opponents.

It's been amazing, having been over in Israel in November and seeing the results of excavations under what they now know is the City of David, in existence about 1,600 years before Muhammad was born. It's just amazing now all of the evidence that's being found archeologically that substantiates exactly what Israelis have been saying for years.

The resolution says:

Whereas with the dawn of modern Zionism, the national

liberation movement of the Jewish people, some 150 years ago,

the Jewish people determined to return to their homeland in

the Land of Israel from the lands of their dispersion;

Whereas in 1922, the League of Nations mandated that the

Jewish people were the legal sovereigns over the Land of

Israel and that legal mandate has never been superseded;

Whereas in the aftermath of the Nazi-led Holocaust from

1933 to 1945, in which the Germans and their collaborators

murdered 6,000,000 Jewish people in a premeditated act of

genocide, the international community recognized that the

Jewish state, built by Jewish pioneers must gain its

independence from Great Britain;

Whereas the United States was the first nation to recognize

Israel's independence in 1948, and the State of Israel has

since proven herself to be a faithful ally of the United

States in the Middle East;

Whereas the United States and Israel have a special

friendship based on shared values, and together share the

common goal of peace and security in the Middle East;

Whereas, on October 20, 2009, President Barack Obama

rightly noted that the United States-Israel relationship is a

``bond that is much more than a strategic alliance'';

Whereas the national security of the United States, Israel,

and allies in the Middle East face a clear and present danger

from the Government of the Islamic Republic of Iran seeking

nuclear weapons and the ballistic missile capability to

deliver them;

Whereas Israel would face an existential threat from a

nuclear weapons-armed Iran;

Whereas President Barack Obama has been firm and clear in

declaring United States opposition to a nuclear-armed Iran,

stating on November 7, 2008, ``Let me state--repeat what I

stated during the course of the campaign. Iran's development

of a nuclear weapon I believe is unacceptable'';

Whereas, on October 26, 2005, at a conference in Tehran

called ``World Without Zionism,'' Iranian President Mahmoud

Ahmadinejad stated, ``God willing, with the force of God

behind it, we shall soon experience a world without the

United States and Zionism'';

Whereas The New York Times reported that during his October

26, 2005, speech, President Ahmadinejad called for ``this

occupying regime [Israel] to be wiped off the map'';

Whereas, on April 14, 2006, Iranian President Ahmadinejad

said, ``Like it or not, the Zionist regime [Israel] is

heading toward annihilation'';

Whereas, on June 2, 2008, Iranian President Ahmadinejad

said, ``I must announce that the Zionist regime [Israel],

with a 60-year record of genocide, plunder, invasion, and

betrayal is about to die and will soon be erased from the

geographical scene'';

Whereas, on June 2, 2008, Iranian President Ahmadinejad

said, ``Today, the time for the fall of the satanic power of

the United States has come, and the countdown to the

annihilation of the emperor of power and wealth has

started'';

Whereas, on May 20, 2009, Iran successfully tested a

surface-to-surface long range missile with an approximate

range of 1,200 miles.

And, parenthetically, they now say they hope to have a missile that would be able to deliver a nuclear weapon from Iran to the United States.

The resolution says:

Whereas Iran continues its pursuit of nuclear weapons;

Whereas Iran has been caught building three secret nuclear

facilities since 2002;

Whereas Iran continues its support of international

terrorism, has ordered its proxy Hezbollah to carry out

catastrophic acts of international terrorism such as the

bombing of the Jewish AMIA Center in Buenos Aires, Argentina,

in 1994, and could give a nuclear weapon to a terrorist

organization in the future;

Whereas Iran has refused to provide the International

Atomic Energy Agency with full transparency and access to its

nuclear program;

Whereas United Nations Security Council Resolution 1803

states that according to the International Atomic Energy

Agency, ``Iran has not established full and sustained

suspension of all enrichment related and reprocessing

activities and heavy-water-related projects as set out in

resolution 1696 (2006), 1737 (2006) and 1747 (2007) nor

resumed its cooperation with the IAEA under the Additional

Protocol, nor taken the other steps required by the IAEA

Board of Governors, nor

complied with the provisions of Security Council resolution

1696 (2006), 1737 (2006) and 1747 (2007) . . .'';

Whereas at July 2009's G-8 Summit in Italy, Iran was given

a September 2009 deadline to start negotiations over its

nuclear programs and Iran offered a five-page document

lamenting the ``ungodly ways of thinking prevailing in global

relations'' and included various subjects, but left out any

mention of Iran's own nuclear program which was the true

issue in question;

Whereas the United States has been fully committed to

finding a peaceful resolution to the Iranian nuclear threat,

and has made boundless efforts seeking such a resolution and

to determine if such a resolution is even possible;

Whereas the United States does not want or seek war with

Iran, but it will continue to keep all options open to

prevent Iran from obtaining nuclear weapons; and

Whereas Israeli Prime Minister Netanyahu said in January

2011 that a change of course in Iran will not be possible

``without a credible military option that is put before them

by the international community led by the United States.''

The resolution ultimately says that, in addition to condemning the government of the Islamic Republic of Iran for its threats of annihilation, it supports using all means of persuading the government of Iran to stop building and acquiring nuclear weapons, reaffirms the United States bond with Israel.

But ultimately, No. 4 says that, in this resolution, we express our support for Israel's right to use all means necessary to confront and eliminate nuclear threats posed by Iran, defend Israeli sovereignty, and protect the lives and safety of the Israeli people, including the use of military force, if no other peaceful solution can be found within a reasonable time.

Now, we know that in May of last year, President Barack Obama addressed the American-Israeli PAC here in Washington, D.C. And one of the statements that has not been lost on Israel, and should not be lost on the people who elected President Obama, and it certainly hasn't been lost on Iran, the President made this statement: ``Israel must be able to defend itself by itself.''

This was made May 19, 2011. ``Israel must be able to defend itself by itself.''

Ever since the President made those statements, it certainly seems that Israel has taken the President's words to heart. And yet, instead of the United States doing, as had been promised on many occasions, standing by Israel, our great ally, instead, our Defense Secretary, knowing that he's talking to a Washington Post reporter, knowing that it's not on background, knows that it will likely be reported, basically uses the opportunity to alert the nation whose leaders say they want to wipe Israel off the map, annihilate Israel, annihilate the United States, basically, tells Iran, hey, heads up. Israel may be coming in the next few months. Look out. Israel may be coming in the next few months.

It's still a mystery why our Defense Secretary, and he's a very smart man, why he would make such a statement without authority, because he's not subject to the slips like outing SEAL Team Six as the ones who took out Osama Bin Laden, or outing the undisclosed location, as the Vice President has done. He's a man not subject normally to those kind of gaffes.

This Defense Secretary warns Iran, as if the pressure behind the scenes this administration's been putting on our dear friend Israel was not enough, so now we've got to alert Israel's enemy, Iran. I hope that the administration will come out and give a good and legitimate answer to how such a warning to Iran helps Israel.

And I would commend to anyone, Mr. Speaker, interested in going online and reading in The Jerusalem Post an article dated February 7, 2012, by my friend, Caroline Glick, titled, ``Our World: Obama's rhetorical storm.'' I would commend that to everyone.

The truth is, we should stand by Israel. Iran, with nuclear weapons, is a threat to us, not merely to Israel. And this Nation should not leave it to Israel, without our best bunker busters, without our AWACs, without our satellites, without our stealth technology. We should not put them in the position of having to defend us with lesser weapons capability.

And I hope and pray that this administration will look more carefully at who the real enemy is, look more carefully at which nation was willing to come back to the peace table, willing to freeze the development of new housing areas, and which one was not, and which one of the nations, which one of the groups of people, in this case, the people of the West Bank, the Palestinians, their complete refusal to even recognize Israel's right to exist, their continuing teaching of children in the Palestinian areas that the Israelis are occupiers of Palestinian land. It's throughout the teaching of the children in the Palestinian areas, and they're doing that with our money. We're sending them money to teach children to hate Israel so that there can't be peace. It's time to look more carefully at where we're spending our money.

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 7 o'clock and 56 minutes p.m.), under its previous order, the House adjourned until tomorrow, Thursday, February 9, 2012, at 9 a.m.

Thank you.

I appreciate my friend, Mr. Nunnelee's, effort in recognizing the role that America has had in fostering the greatest building block any society has ever known--marriage, plain and simple. I was blessed to have had two parents that loved each other, loved each other enough to fuss at each other when they didn't feel like the other was doing the right thing. But, as Mr. Lankford from Oklahoma pointed out, it's not all about love. It's also about commitment. And as anybody who has studied sociology and really wants to be honest about the history of the world knows, the greatest societies in the history of the world have had as their building block the marriage between a man and a woman.

Now, my wife was blessed to have been born and raised by a couple who loved her as her natural parents and loved each other, and the commitment was always there. Her dad passed away a few years ago, and her mother is still alive and blesses us. My dad remarried a year after my mother died in 1991, and they've been a blessing to both of us and to our children.

It was certainly a great blessing to me when I met Kathy, when I was in law school and she was an undergrad at Baylor. And somebody again this weekend said, Your wife is so cute; I had no idea. And I have to explain to people that's because she met me and married me while I had hair. I realize I couldn't get somebody cute nowadays if Kathy and I weren't together. But back then, I had hair, and I know it's hard to believe, but I actually looked okay when I had hair. But, anyway, she's stuck with me for 33\1/2\ years now, and we have been truly enriched to have three wonderful daughters.

I've learned so much about the nature of God by being a father. I learned a little more by being a judge, but marriage just has been truly the enhancement, beyond my faith in Christ, the number two thing in my life as far as the blessings that I have received.

When we look at the laws regarding marriage, we know there's a great deal going on. The court, as I understand it, today struck down a law that said marriage is between a man and a woman. It's interesting that there are some courts in America where the judges have become so wise in their own eyes that they know better than nature or nature's God.

It was interesting seeing what happened in Iowa a year and a half ago, after an Iowa Supreme Court unanimously--well, they held en banc. Having been a chief justice of a court of appeals, sometimes that means that nobody wanted to be out there signing the decision by themselves so that perhaps behind the scenes they may have said, Hey, look I helped you on that by making that a full decision en banc and so help me out here by all agreeing to this. Well, three of them came up for an up-or-down vote, and for the first time in Iowa's history, the voters in Iowa voted to terminate the time as judge of three of the nine judges--or seven. Three of them were up, and they were terminated.

One of the things that I found interesting as I went on a bus trip across Iowa--I loved the Iowa folks. All I had to do was pull out the decision written by the Iowa court and read in that decision how those judges in Iowa had become so wise in their own eyes that they said that even though the State of Iowa raised as one of their issues that there was biological evidence that supported a marriage being between a man and a woman, that they, the Supreme Court, so wise beyond nature, so wise beyond nature's God, they could not find any evidence whatsoever to support the notion of marriage being between a man and a woman. Iowa voters would often start laughing, and some would just gasp in shock that people that had so many years of education, at least 18, 19, 20 years of education, had studied and looked at the evidence and could not find any indication that nature or biology supported marriage between a man and a woman. Well, nature seemed to like the idea of an egg and a sperm coming together because of procreation. Apparently, they thought the sperm had far better use some other way biologically combining it with something else. But the voters of Iowa came back and said, Do you know what? If you're not smart enough to figure out actual plumbing, as my friend Steve King explained it, then perhaps we need new judges, and that's what they did.

Now, it is the Bible, the biblical statement that the two shall become one flesh, and the two become one. It's amazing. In fact, I wrote a song for my wedding in which I pointed out that we would use 10 senses from henceforth instead of five. And you do. You learn from the senses of your mate. You grow together.

A good example of this growth is there was a prosecutor who prosecuted in my court when I was a judge, and he had had a couple, both the man and the woman, the man and wife were on the same jury panel from which the jury of 12 was to be drawn; and he was asking the husband, sir, the laws of Texas require that you cannot be on a jury unless you can independently vote your own conscience. So I have to ask you, sir, you're under oath, will you be able, if you were on a jury with your wife, to vote your own conscience? And the man said, Yes, of course, I can vote my own conscience. I'll ask my wife what's my conscience and then I'll vote it. It won't be a problem.

We two usually grow to become one, as the Bible points out.

It broke my heart to hear testimony on sentencing of a gang leader in Tyler who had been convicted of murder who was being harassed about his gang membership. He had heard all the testimony about his gang, and he pointed out, Look, you keep saying all these bad things about gangs, but let me tell you, my mother was never around. I never knew my father. The gang--my gang is the only family I've ever known. They're my family. You're trash-mouthing my family. They cared about me. They supported me. We cared about each other. And it led to murder. It led to all kinds of crimes.

There's a reason that the most important building block of a stable society is a marriage between a man and a woman.

I was in the Soviet Union as an exchange student in 1973 visiting a day care before anybody even heard of day care really in the United States. In Mount Pleasant, Texas, we had Momma Stark. And if my mother had to go somewhere when we were little bitty--when we were old enough to go to school, then mother went back to teaching; but before then, she'd drop us off at Momma Stark's. She'd take care of us. We didn't know it was called day care at the time.

At the time I went to the Soviet Union as an exchange student, I was appalled. It was actually shocking to the conscience to see a place where the government had dictated what every child should know about relationships, about the lack of religion--because they preached atheism. They taught the children what the government believed they should know about everything.

We were told that it was so important that each child be taught only what was permissible to the government that if it were ever learned that a parent was teaching or telling a child anything at home that was not in accordance with the teachings and dictates of the government, that the child was then removed from the home and the parents were not allowed to have any contact with what was deemed to be an asset of the government and nothing to do with the home. That was because in that society--before it failed, as it always would--they believed marriage was not that important. It was the government that was the be-all, end- all. It was the government that would teach and would raise the children, and they were only loaning them to parents until such time as they did something the government didn't like and then they took them away. It was not normally any type of sexual abuse. The worst offense, it seemed to be from what I heard from people I talked to there, was if you taught something that was not in keeping with what the government taught.

I thanked God that I lived in a country where my parents could teach me things that were true and things that were right, and not some government that would be wishy-washy and changed depending on who was in charge of the government, not some government that would perhaps take away the rights that were an endowment from our Creator. It was the parents that would train and teach out of love.

Then you find out, as I have over the years, our government, ever since I got back from the Soviet Union, year after year has moved as if it's an adversary of marriage. Yet as my colleagues before me who've pointed out, the studies Mr. Nunnelee has pointed out, of course we have some of our greatest citizens come from single-parent homes. But if you want to play the odds, the odds are that a child is more appropriately adjusted if they come from a two-parent home, a loving mother and father playing two different roles.

And yet we find out, gee, for decades now there has been instituted what's called a marriage penalty, so that if a wife and a husband are married and they are both working, then they are going to pay extra in taxes. The message being, subconsciously, our government thinks you're better off not married, just live together.

As Mr. Lankford pointed out, with Social Security, we do the same thing. You talk to elderly people who would love to be married because they believe in marriage from a religious standpoint and a doctrinal standpoint, and yet if they get married, they lose government benefits, indication that the government thinks it's better to live together rather than be married.

Not only that, but we have seen it over and over since the mid- sixties, a Congress who simply wanted to help. When a deadbeat father wouldn't help with the financial raising of his children, Congress said, You know what? Let's help these single moms that are trying to make it. Let's give them a check any time they have a child out of wedlock. After over four decades, we've gotten what we paid for, where between 40 and 50 percent of all children born are being born to a single mom, despite the evidence that more children are better adjusted if they have a mother and father in a well-adjusted home.

So, I get to Congress as a result of my wife, Kathy, being a full partner. She taught for awhile. She has her master's in business administration, in accounting. She taught for awhile while I was running, but we saw, if this is really what we believed was appropriate for our marriage, for our lives, to try to get this country back on track, it was going to take a partnership. So she left teaching and came on board and was a full-time campaigner with me as my partner. We could hit two places at the same time. And I was never shocked to hear that people loved Kathy more than they loved me and they would just as soon have her over me. So that went on.

We cashed out every asset we had except our home. I practiced a little law when I could and made a few bucks, but at the same time we cashed out every asset, paying higher penalties, so we could live on that. I didn't see it was a big risk because I knew if I didn't get elected, I could go back and make more money than I ever would in Congress. I've done it before; I could do it again. But at the same time, this is what we believed we were supposed to do.

We were allowed to continue that partnership after I got elected because you can't avoid having a campaign office because you've got to keep raising money. It's part of getting reelected. You've got to keep campaigning basically for the whole 2-year period between each election. So we kept my wife on for the same thing she had been making at teaching.

After 2 years of a true partnership--I mean, we were true partners. I was fighting the battles here in Washington and she was taking care of things in our district, going to all events that I couldn't attend, as my partner. And then when Speaker Pelosi took the gavel, our friends across the aisle determined that we wouldn't allow things like that because there were some people who, in a corrupt manner, had overpaid family members to do nothing.

So, the message went back clearly that my wife could no longer be my partner and take care of the campaign issues. I could no longer pay her the same thing she got as a teacher, that she had to go back. And since we had cashed in all our assets, and since I did not want my children to be coming out of college completely encumbered with massive debt from loans, and since the money that we had tried to save for college had been expended, we still needed her to work. We've still got college loans to be paid even now. But she's no longer my partner as far as this enterprise because this Congress said, under Speaker Pelosi, we don't want wives working as the campaign partner of a Member of Congress. So it seems like, over and over, the message keeps coming back that Congress wants to be an enemy of marriage.

Then we get the President's Jobs Act last fall. And although the President said he was going after millionaires and billionaires, if you looked at the pages that concerned the increased taxes, the President revealed his true heart, and that was that he considered you to be a millionaire or a billionaire--and obviously you're not--if you make $125,000 a year, because under the President's Jobs Act, if you make $125,000 a year, you're going to get popped not merely with an alternative minimum tax, you're going to get popped with an extra tax on top of that.

And that didn't matter if you were married, filing singly, or married filing jointly. Either way, a married person could only claim $125,000 as income before he got popped with President Obama's extra tax. Not exactly a millionaire or billionaire; but, apparently, the President felt if you are going to have the inappropriate conduct such that you would get married, then you'd have to get taxed more than others.

How do you know that? Because in the President's same section, if you're not married and you are filing, you could claim either a $200,000 exemption, or a $250,000 exemption. Therefore, if you were single and lived together, then you could claim either a $400,000 or $500,000 exemption under the President's Jobs Act.

And I was always wondering, and I hope some day the President will make clear, why he had such animus toward marriage between a man and a woman. He seems to be happily married. He seems to have a wonderful wife. Why would he want to penalize others in the country simply because they are married?

I didn't understand it. I still don't understand it. And I'm hoping before this year is up that enough people across America will make their voices heard that, you know what, we've gotten away from it, but the studies keep making it impossible to avoid admitting marriage between a man and a woman is a good thing. It is the building block of a stable society.

And as those who took an oath to uphold our Constitution, in essence, do all we could for this country, we owe it to the country to do what we can for marriage. I do appreciate my friend, Mr. Nunnelee, so much for taking the whole hour and for giving some of the rest of us a chance to come speak with him with one voice.

Mr. Speaker, well, this has been a good day legislatively in the United States House of Representatives, and there are a lot of good things to be said about what's happened today.

Yesterday, there was a wonderful event; it's called the President's Prayer Breakfast here in Washington, and the President was gracious enough--and I'm not being sarcastic. He was gracious enough to once again extend his presence with the First Lady, who is also extremely gracious and represents us well as the Nation's First Lady. It was a marvelous breakfast held north of the Capitol.

There were so many moving, touching things that were said and done, from having an 11-year-old girl that sings like an angel, bless us, and also having an amazing speaker, the author of a book ``Amazing Grace,'' the William Wilberforce story, as well as ``Bonhoeffer'' from Germany. He was funny, he was inspirational, he was touching.

One of the things that's been such a blessing over the 7 years I've been in Congress has been on Thursday mornings, 8 o'clock to 9 o'clock, Members of Congress from both sides of the aisle come together for an hour of sharing breakfast, sharing our Christian faith, listening to prayer requests, praying, singing hymns of faith, and hearing on an alternating basis from Republican and Democrat.

I know people hear what goes on on the floor and assume that Members on one side of the aisle must absolutely hate Members of the other side of the aisle. Actually, there are many of us that get along quite well other than talking about politics. And that's why we protect that hour. We don't talk about politics during that time because those that gather together have something in common, our Christian faith, as well as a heart, wanting to do what's best for this country to ensure that we pass on a better country than we received as stewards.

For the first time in American history, surveys now indicate perhaps 70 percent or more of the American adults believe that we will pass on to our children a country with less opportunity, and our children will have it less well than we have it right now. I'm determined to do everything I can to try to keep that from happening.

But politics doesn't really get into the Thursday morning prayer breakfast where we have our little gathering. It doesn't get into our prayer time where voluntarily Members of Congress come together the first night votes are back. Republicans, Democrats, express personal needs for prayer, and we join hearts and minds together in prayer for

those things of need, as well as those things that we prayed for that result in a rejoicing.

So those kinds of things go on, and I'm very sincere in being grateful to the President for continuing the tradition of appearing at the Presidential prayer breakfast. It is quite meaningful. There are people from over a hundred different countries, and I've talked to so many from so many different countries. I've developed good friends in other countries that they have started prayer breakfasts among their legislators and leaders, and it's wonderful to see that kind of thing going on.

Unfortunately, yesterday, one thing got entered into the prayer breakfast that we, I think, would be better off avoiding, and that is in such a breakfast having someone stand up and basically make it sound as though the programs I'm for are based on Christianity, the inference being, if you oppose me on this, apparently you're not a good Christian.

There's an article that Breeanne Howe posted, yesterday, Thursday, and she starts off with a quote from C.S. Lewis, one of my favorite authors, and the President started with a quote from one of my favorite authors, and the quote is: Christianity has not and does not profess to have a detailed political program. It's meant for all men at all times, and the particular program which suited one place or time would not suit another.

Her article says: This morning, in the middle of his National Prayer Breakfast speech, President Obama delighted those of us who love irony by quoting C.S. Lewis. It was an interesting moment in a speech that put forth the notion that taxing the wealthy is right along in line with the teachings of Jesus.

She says, I mean, Jesus did hang out with tax collectors, right? The idea that government welfare is somehow the fulfillment of Jesus' teaching on charity is a common misconception that many people make, Christians included; and it's the main reason that liberals believe conservatives are Christian hypocrites. Perhaps if the President visited church more often than only during campaign seasons, he might not be so confused.

See, not only do we spend time praising God in church; we also gain insight from pastors who've surely spent more time in the word of God than we have.

And let me insert parenthetically here, I don't hold the failure to attend church against any President because when you look at it, when a President comes to church, if they go to a graduation, they change the whole complexion. They force everyone else there to go through metal detectors and all of this just so one man can come and worship.

So at times it may even be admirable not to go to church and force people to do that. So I don't have a problem with that, although the article goes on and points out other difficulties.

It says: While Obama may have been correct in saying that government mandated shared responsibility, it is equal to the Islamic belief that those of us who've been blessed have an obligation to use those blessings to help others. She says he's incorrect to group in Jesus' teachings ``for unto whom much is given, much shall be required;'' that is, aside from the fact that Jesus was discussing requirements from God, not the government, he was actually teaching his disciples that they were stewards of God's gift of revelation.

The requirement was to spread the good news of Jesus Christ. It's the crux of Christianity that Obama seems to miss. Jesus came because we were imperfect. We could never fulfill all the requirements that the pharisees loved to lord over the people. Jesus' coming ended the rule of law and began the acceptance that our only way to God was through him. Yes, Jesus very much emphasized the importance of giving to the poor but as a reaction and joy to what we'd been given, not because of a law. Giving out of obligation, she points out, is not truly giving; it's merely following the rules. Just ask anyone who's ever written a check to pay their taxes. I doubt you'll find them excited.

Ms. Howe goes on and says the Bible also teaches that everything we have, including money, belongs to God. We're called to be good stewards with his money. The government is the epitome of mismanaging money. If you truly want to help the poor, you should probably seek out charities, but that would require a bit of work on the part of a giver, and a great many find it easier to just let the government run every aspect of their lives.

So it is that welfare money ends up spitting out of strip club ATMs, and those same people who paid their charity to the government wonder why government hasn't solved this issue. Perhaps they should ask the 27 Democrats who voted against stopping welfare checks from being used at strip clubs, casinos, and liquor stores.

Another highlight in Obama's speech, Ms. Howe points out, was his proud proclamation that his administration has partnered with Catholic charities to help those in poverty. She says: I wonder if these charities are among the ones begging the Obama administration, to no avail, to change the recent Obama edict requiring them to cover both birth control costs in their health care even though it's against their religious beliefs to do so. Really, slapping them across the face would take less time and probably hurt less.

So I again applaud the President for appearing yesterday, and hope that in the future Presidents can avoid references that their agenda is based on Christ's teachings, which would clearly indicate belief that those of us who oppose some aspect of governmental taking and governmental running everything in our lives, that we're the ones who are being non-Christian or being hypocrites, because the fact is, you know, though Jesus did say render unto Caesar what is Caesar's, he also indicated, as his relationship with Zacchaeus would show, that you're supposed to be responsible as members of the government.

Zacchaeus was so excited about having Jesus come that apparently it showed in his life and his exuberance. And not only did his life completely change from having met Jesus, he actually, after Jesus came into his life, decided the appropriate thing for him as a governmental tax collector would be to cut taxes. Not only did he cut taxes, he actually gave a 4 to 1 rebate to those from whom he'd taken too much. So if our government is looking for an example to follow, perhaps doing what Zacchaeus did after he met Jesus would be a good way to go.

Government is supposed to be responsible. Those of us in government do have an obligation as stewards of this country to provide for the common defense and make sure that their own internal financial policies do not bring this Nation down, that we're stewards of this great country so that young people, some of them here, will have a country even better, with more freedoms and more opportunities. And every generation up until now has done that and provided the next generation with more opportunities than they had.

We have a lot of work to do. The reason that I feel so good about today is after 7 years of pushing a bill, a concept, that seems a surprise to Americans when they hear that we haven't dealt with this before, but it is stopping the automatic increases in every Federal department's budget every year. It began in 1974.

Now, I was going about my life. I served in the military for 4 years, practiced law for a number of years, was a judge for a number of years. And I was listening to Rush Limbaugh one day at lunch, and he was talking about the zero baseline budget. And as I listened, I was a person who was shocked. What? Our Federal Government can't balance its budget, and yet it has automatic increases every year in its budgets? That's a no-brainer--just stop the automatic increases. At that time, the Republicans were in the majority. Even though there was a Democratic President, Newt Gingrich and others here showed that if you are persistent and you send the President a balanced budget, he may veto it once, he may veto it twice, but you keep sending him back a balanced budget, eventually you may even get Bill Clinton to sign it because he sees the will of the American people is behind the Congress, not behind a President who's going to keep vetoing a balanced budget. So they finally got a balanced budget signed into law. And they balanced the budget. But they never eliminated the automatic increases.

One of the things that got me to thinking about--probably the main

thing that first started me to thinking about running for Congress was the need to change legislation through which this country since the sixties has provided incentives financially to prevent people from reaching their full potential. So that if a young girl gets bored with high school and she drops out of school and has a baby, instead of having financial incentives--because we know, having the gift of history behind us, we know that if she finishes high school, she will make more during her lifetime than those who don't finish high school. The statistics are so clear. So why wouldn't we want to give her incentives? Despite the hardship of trying to finish school with a child, give her incentives, help her get through high school so she can start reaching her God-given potential. Don't give her incentives to stay out of school and keep having child after child.

I had one woman who had had 15 children, didn't even know where they were, but she had been getting 15 checks. Our government gave her incentives to do that.

Now, it's one thing when people choose a way of life that keeps them from reaching their potential, but it's quite another when we as a Federal Government put in place incentives to keep them from reaching the potential that they have.

And one of the things that hurts so much during a downturn economy for any individual is when they have lost their job and they're used to working because there is fulfillment in working.

Even those of us who believe the Bible's account that there was an Adam and Eve know that before there was a fall from grace when things were perfect, they had a job, and it was to tend the garden. Each individual has the same responsibility. Maybe you're renting. Maybe you're living on somebody else's property. But wherever we are, we have a responsibility to tend that garden. And there's some fulfillment that's innate in mankind that if you have a job and you accomplish things, you have fulfillment, you have self-worth. From that you begin to notice, wow, as C.S. Lewis did, the man the President quoted.

C.S. Lewis noted in his book, ``The Case For Christianity,'' incorporated in the book ``Mere Christianity,'' he talks about how he enjoyed as a professor at Oxford goading Christians. How can there be a good God or a just God when there's so much injustice in the world? Eventually, he got around to realizing that if there were not some standard, unwavering, unequivocal standard of absolute right and wrong in the universe, then how would he know that there was injustice in the world?

In the same manner in which a person who is blind from birth sees nothing but blackness, how could they ever know that there was light and color and beauty with their own eyes? They can't see it.

Lewis explains that he began to realize there has to be something out there, there has to be some entity that has set up justice so I would know right from wrong, I would know injustice from justice.

Yet here we are in the United States Government as Members of Congress, and too often we begin to think not only should we provide for the common defense, not only should we ensure that this government doesn't go broke in providing for the common defense, but we have those who think we should tell everybody how they have to live as a judge in Texas did.

A student may voluntarily want to get up; she is given the right to stand up and give a valedictory address. It may be from her heart, and she wants to thank God; but if she mentions the word ``God,'' ``invocation,'' ``benediction,'' ``join in prayer,'' ``bow our heads''--he had a whole list of things--then he will send her to jail because he is going to tell people what they can and cannot say.

During the revolution, one of the most quoted comments that is usually attributed to Voltaire is: ``I disagree with what you say, but I will defend to the death your right to say it.''

It is one of the reasons I was willing to take a scholarship from the United States Army at Texas A&M. It is because I looked forward to 4 years of service and being a part of our Nation's defense, to defend those rights that people are supposed to have--to practice religion, to believe as their heart leads them.

Coming to Congress was quite eye opening. In January of 2005, when I was sworn in, I was surprised with this issue of automatic increases in our Federal appropriation for every Department in the Federal Government automatically increasing. If anyone said let's slow down this rate of increase, then they were portrayed as wanting to hurt people or make draconian cuts when all they were doing was slowing the rate of automatic increase. There were no cuts.

As we have been going through these last 3 years, 4 years of recession, unlike any other recession in our Nation's history because the things that should have gone on have not gone on--I know most of us on this side of the aisle agree it is because the President has hijacked the economy with trillions of dollars in giveaway programs, including to groups like Solyndra. We keep hearing about those more and more. There are more and more hundreds of millions, billions of dollars given to folks because they are pursuing some project that will never make money, but it is something the President wants to promote.

It makes no sense not to stop the automatic increases. I brought it up back in my first Congress as a freshman: Why haven't we stopped the automatic increases in every Department's budget? Make them come in and show us that it is justified to increase their budget. Don't give them an automatic increase and then only require them to come forward if they want an increase in the increase. Make them come in and justify the increase.

We are going to give our Nation's youth a bankrupted country, for Heaven's sake. Let's at least give them the chance to take over a country where they have freedom from government intrusion into their personal lives and where they have a government that is not bankrupt. We are already saddling them with 10, 20, 30, 40, $50,000 of debt before they ever arrive in this world. For Heaven's sake, we should be more responsible than that.

What could have been an easier piece of low-hanging fruit to get us on the right track towards being responsible than to say every Federal Department, You come in and justify an increase in your budget, because otherwise you're not getting one; we're just starting where you were last year?

This should have been a no-brainer. It should have been an easy thing to do. I have been here for 7 years and it has not been done. Two of those years we were in the majority, 2005 and 2006. For a year now, we have been back in the majority.

I think most people who follow what happens in Congress know that I have not always been a big supporter of some of the things that our leadership has done. Since I believe in calling things as they are when our leadership has not stood firm and stood for what is right and stood for what we got elected to do, I owe an obligation to Speaker Boehner to say thank you. 2005 and 2006 when we were in the majority, neither the budget chairman nor the Speaker were interested in eliminating the automatic increases in every Federal Department's budget.

Speaker John Boehner assured me last summer that we would get this done. But he said since he is not the Budget Committee chairman, that will be up to Chairman Paul Ryan to get that done. Well, lucky me, because Paul Ryan, it turns out, back before I ever got to Congress, had, with our good friend Jeb Hensarling, been pushing an end to the automatic increases in every Federal Department's budget.

Yet even in a Republican majority, before I got to Congress, that bill did not get passed. The automatic increases continued even as people in the United States were struggling. Nobody else has an automatic increase in their family budget every year.

I have discussed this with Chairman Paul Ryan. He has struggled with this over the years while he was not chairman of the Budget Committee. We should do more oversight over Federal Departments. How are you spending your money? But because we are required to have a budget every year, then the whole year seems to be taken up with getting that budget done and dealing with those budget issues.

He has a solution for that, and that is another bill that I understand will be

forthcoming from the Budget Committee to go to a biennial, a 2-year budget. We will do a budget that will cover 2 years, and that will allow Congress to have hearings and do better oversight.

Before, when Departments wanted an increase in the increase, they had to come up and lobby people on the Hill, say, We need this; we need more money than the automatic increase, and there really wouldn't be time to do proper investigation to see exactly how they were spending their money. A 2-year budget that Chairman Ryan has indicated he would like to see, that would allow them to do the proper oversight.

There are some in the motion to recommit by the Democrats, some of those budgets that I can promise you will be part of some of those programs that virtually every Republican will want to increase. The better way to move forward is to have a budget, no automatic increases, and then have oversight.

Then those Departments, where there will be some part of the Department where we'll want to see an increase, let's look at the areas that need decreasing. Well, when there's an automatic increase every year, then you don't have the opportunity to really go back and visit that; you're worried about doing the budget for the next year.

So I applaud the House for passing the zero-baseline budget bill; and I am very grateful to our leadership, to Paul Ryan, and the freshman class that has come through that wanted to see this happen.

I filed this bill in each of the four Congresses I've been in. It really takes someone in a committee of jurisdiction shepherding that through. So my language was incorporated into a bill that our freshman Representative Woodall put together. As a member of the Budget Committee, he did an excellent job of marshaling that through, handling things here on the floor, and even dealing with the debates.

I think it's important to note we've had friends across the aisle stand up and argue against passage of a zero-baseline budget yesterday and today. One of the more articulate people in the House is Chris Van Hollen, and when we disagree, I still admire his ability to put words together in such an adept fashion. I have his exact words in his argument against passage of a bill that ends the automatic increases every year. My friend across the aisle, Mr. Van Hollen, said: ``This bill, when you pass it, doesn't save one penny.'' He goes on to talk about how we can cut them if we really want to cut them, but he goes on and he says: ``So, again, this bill doesn't save a penny.'' He finishes his comments in saying: ``But this bill doesn't mandate any kind of cutting of that nature.''

So I was interested when our colleague across the aisle, Representative DeLauro, came to the floor because she stated, in arguing against the zero-baseline budget, she said: ``At its heart, this bill is a back-door attempt to enact the same radical cuts the majority attempted last year and to further reduce the spending caps agreed to in the last August Budget Control Act.''

She said: ``By eliminating inflation from our official budget considerations, this bill represents a freeze on all discretionary programs that over time would become a devastating cut to critical programs.'' She said: ``Within 10 years, all discretionary programs would see their funding slashed by as much as 20 percent,'' and she references this dangerous cut.

So we have one of our very able colleagues across the aisle saying this doesn't save one penny, and another colleague across the aisle standing up and saying this represents radical cuts. Well, what it should do and what it does do is eliminate the automatic increases that no family in America, no business in America has. All of the surveys indicate Federal employees are being paid better than the private sector. Why shouldn't we take a better, closer look in each Congress as to which Department needs increase and which needs decrease, and what parts of each Department should be lowered and which should be raised. That is the responsible thing to do.

I think Chairman Ryan's proposal to a 2-year budget, though I had never thought about it before talking with him--2-year budgets are what we have in Texas so that you have some planning and you have something to count on. I think it also indicates for this country what we see over and over, the private sector says if you could give us some continuity where we know the same laws will be utilized for at least some period of time, then we've got something to count on and we'll invest our capital.

Whether they're Democrat or Republican business folks, or like on Wall Street where they're four-to-one Democrat over Republican, they still get it; and they will see, gee, we've got some continuity here so that we shouldn't be afraid to invest capital and get the economy going. But as the old saying goes, capital is a coward; it goes to areas where it feels safest and it never feels safe when things are constantly in flux. This way there will be more continuity, and we'll know more of what to expect.

Last year, CBO--and that's the Congressional Budget Office. It has rather interesting rules. I think when you look at the history of CBO's projections of the costs of things and how revenue would go, it makes it pretty clear. If we were in the private sector, we would have gotten rid of CBO a long time ago and gotten somebody that is far more accurate at projections.

I know that CBO previously, when Nancy Pelosi was Speaker, Harry Reid is head of the Senate, they were pushing the ObamaCare bill. It was scored, and CBO scored it over $1 trillion. Then the Director got called over to the White House for a little woodshedding, although Director Elmendorf has told me he wasn't woodshedded, that he just had a nice conversation with the President. But after whatever you want to call it, his visit to the White House, he went back and cut off a quarter of a trillion dollars from their estimate basically and said, well, it's more like around $800 billion is the projected cost.

Well, some of us weren't terribly surprised after it passed that CBO then came back and said, even though the President said it would cost less than $1 trillion and we had projected it would cost more than $1 trillion, and then the President asked us to lower it and we took a new look and we lowered it to around $800 billion, now that it has passed-- after the President promised everybody it would cost less than $1 trillion--now it's passed and we look at it and you know what, it's really over $1 trillion that it will cost us.

So if we want to keep faith in CBO and really figure out how much we can trust them, then maybe that is a good indication, that any projection from CBO should be looked at with a factor of plus or minus 25 percent. They give us a projection, but they may be off by 25 percent too low, they may be off 25 percent too high. So really you have about a 50 percent chance of the CBO just really missing their mark.

If we were in the private sector trying to balance budgets, unless you get government bailouts, you wouldn't allow anything to get money, your hard-earned money, that doesn't come closer than a plus or minus 25 percent rate of failure. A plus or minus 25 percent margin of error for any government entity should require us to get rid of it and figure out new rules for scoring bills and develop an entity, even if it's in the private sector where they do a far better job--certain people, some are terrible and that's why they go broke, but some are quite good and a whole lot better than a 25 percent plus or minus margin of error.

Now, some have said, well, this is going nowhere in the Senate. We've cut out the automatic increase in the House; but as everybody knows, it's got to pass the Senate, and then you've got to get the President to sign it. Well, this is an election year. It's amazing sometimes what people will do in an election year, because they know the people expect it, that they might not do in a non-election year. We're told there may be 20 or so Senate seats that could possibly go either way.

So I would hope that as my friends at FreedomWorks, Heritage Action, other places, as they start putting the heat on the Senate to be responsible--no more automatic increases in every Department's budget, by golly. You need to take a look at those budgets before you increase it one penny, see if it needs to be cut, see if it needs to be increased.

That pressure starts being brought to bear on the Senate. I would hope that the Republican leader would make clear in writing to the majority leader, Harry Reid, that we have at least 47 people ready to vote on this bill; and then the pressure goes on the Democrats who are in tough election cycles. Well, are you going to be supporting these automatic increases? And are you going to stand with Harry Reid and prevent this from coming to the floor of the Senate to make us more responsible as a government and force us to look at each Department and determine whether they needed an increase or not? Or are you just going to go along with the same old automatic extra spending every year, like no other American can do?

I have that hope that springs eternal in the human breast, and I hope I keep it until the day I die. But I believe we have a real opportunity to get it through the Senate, to have at least 60 Senators do the responsible thing in a bipartisan way, follow the lead of the House, which couldn't have been done without all these wonderful fresh faces, like Representative Woodall. Follow the lead of the freshmen who have now, for the first time in all these years, said, you know what, no more automatic increases.

I think it's a harbinger of good things to come. I'm greatly encouraged as we start--at least early in this year--with such a great bill. And I don't know how long the wonderful people of east Texas, who I love with all my heart, and I want to live around all of my life--I don't know how long they'll allow me the honor of representing them here. But I think there is also a message here. It may take 7 years to keep pounding on an issue. But when it's the right thing to do, when people are struggling across America to pay their bills and they've had no automatic increases--in fact, I've talked to people and they indicate--they're Democrats--and they say, Please help us. We're having such a tough time. We've just been cut in our pay. So could you cut us a little slack from Washington?

We owe it to those people to quit spending so much so they can have even a little more of their budget. And I would think, as the President has talked about, people paying their fair share, we should take him at his word and ram through a flat tax that says, if you're rich, you pay more because you're making more. And a flat tax does that. And if you are poor, you're not making as much as others, you pay less.

And in the discussion with Steve Forbes, who ran for President on the idea of a flat tax, talking to Steve last week, I was asking him about some of the nuances of his plan. But he said under his flat tax proposal, if you were a family of four, he provided a $46,000 exemption. So if you make less than that as a family of four, you don't pay any tax. So it's kind of hard to say that you're going after the poor in American society.

A flat tax would eliminate the games. It would allow everyone to pay according to what they receive. That way, to whom much is given, more would be required, as the President quoted yesterday. And for those who are given less, less is required. That would be the way to go.

Let's cut the automatic expenditures. Let's be more responsible as a Congress in supervising those things. As the Oversight Committee, oversight hearings progress, move forward, we'll show responsibility in doing that; and the American people will be the beneficiary. And I hope and pray that within the next few years, the polls and surveys will turn around that will show the American public we can get this thing back under control so that it can go on for another 200 years. We can do that. And then we'll see the surveys turn around so they don't say 70 percent of American adults don't think we're going to leave our children as good a country as we got it.

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

Mr. Speaker, the Brook Hill School is a vibrant non- denominational Christian school which opened its doors in the fall of 1997. A three-fold mission permeates every aspect of Brook Hill's existence: (1) to provide excellence in college preparatory education, (2) to affirm the gifts and challenge the potential of each student, and (3) to encourage students to honor God through Christ-like character.

It is with enormous pride that I recognize and congratulate the Brook Hill School in Bullard, Texas, on its incredible athletic achievements during recent school years in which they achieved several state championship titles. This past fall of 2011, the Brook Hill Guard reached the pinnacle of success by winning the Division III State Football Championship, after being state finalists two years in a row in 2009 and 2010.

The Brook Hill Guard also captured the state championship title in Baseball during 2010-2011, as well as the state championship title in Boys' Golf that school year. As if that were not impressive enough, Kirby Vinson won the individual State Champion title in the Girls Track & Field discus. Also, Austin Langemeier won the individual State Champion title in both the Boys Track & Field 800 Meter Run and the 1600 Meter Run.

The superb 2010-2011 school year was preceded in 2009-2010 by the Brook Hill Boys achieving the incredible feat of advancing to the State final championship game in baseball, basketball, soccer, and football. That was topped off with the Girls' Golf team winning the State Championship outright that same year. It also must be noted that Courtney Thomas shown brightly by winning the State Champion title in the Shot Put event of Boys' Track & Field.

These achievements could not have been possible without the tireless preparation of each individual team member, and the commitment of the coaches to proper preparation themselves followed by the intense training, inspiring, and directing of the very talented players under their supervision. Such vast excellence in athletics in all of those sports at all levels requires the kind of community and school-wide support that Brook Hill students, parents, and community backers provided.

A key lesson that has obviously been instilled in the Brook Hill students is that uncompromising dedication and hard work ultimately yield great success.

Again, congratulations go out to the Brook Hill School students, coaching staff, faculty, and the entire community of support in and around Bullard, Texas, as their legacy is now recorded in the Congressional Record that will endure as long as there is a United States of America. Their excellence in so many areas and pursuits make it my great honor to be their servant in the United States House of Representatives.

Mr. Speaker, I understand the concerns of my friend across the aisle, but I'm telling you, this is a great day for Congress, for America. Going back to 1974, the most liberal Congress in America until the time when Speaker Pelosi took the gavel, in 1974, rules for CBO were put in place making it difficult to ever make actual tax cuts to help the economy grow, as John F. Kennedy made clear and showed by his actions. But that was also a time when Congress thought it would be a good idea to create automatic increases of every discretionary department's budget in the Federal budget, automatic increases.

I mean, there are times when increases would be appropriate, and there

are times when it would not be. But why should the government not have to deal with financial issues, like any responsible American, like any responsible family? There will be times when you should have to make cuts. There will be times when you should have to make increases. But what we saw through the 1990s, back during my days when I was a judge, I heard a guy named Rush Limbaugh bring up why do we have this automatic increase, because then when conservatives try to slightly decrease the amount of increase, they're said to be making draconian cuts. Well, I made a mental note.

When I got to Congress in January of '05, I couldn't believe it, to find out that we still had those automatic increases every year. And then to be going through a troubled time like we are now when families across America are having to learn to do with less and make cuts across the board, Congress was still dealing with decreasing the amount of increase because we had these automatic increases.

We had a supercommittee that was formed last fall, and try as they might, they didn't even deal with the issue of the automatic increases. The committee's projections have had to be used because CBO, because of the same 1974 rules, ended up saying, well, gee, the formula can slightly change each year so there's no way to know exactly what it will be over 10 years. Well, one thing's pretty clear, it would have been enough to clear the $1.2 trillion threshold in cuts, and all it would have been doing is decreasing the amount of increase.

This is a great day for America when Congress, after all of these years, 37-38 years now, Congress is dealing with a financial issue that should have been dealt with long ago.

I brought this up back in 2005 and 2006 when Republicans were in the majority, and I was told back then by the chairman of the Budget Committee that, well, the law is that we've got to do the automatic increases, so we're just going to do it.

It is really thrilling to me to have a chairman of the Budget Committee who saw this as a real problem. This should have been low- hanging fruit, as people like to say. This should have been an easy no- brainer. Cut out the automatic increases. We have a chairman of the Budget right now who saw it as a problem. And it was also exciting to me to have a freshman like Rob Woodall come in and see it as a problem and collaborate, discuss the matter. Because, really, to get a bill like this through, you need to have somebody that will shepherd it all the way through--subcommittee, committee--to get it to this point. So I'm very grateful to Chairman Ryan, and I'm very grateful to Mr. Woodall. Amazing, as a freshman, he's done an outstanding job.

And now here we are, about to do what could be the most responsible financial thing this Congress has done, this House has done in the whole last year. It could be $1.4 trillion in cuts over the next 10 years, and all we're doing is just stopping the automatic increase.

There's a lot to be said for finally coming around to responsibility. There's a lot to be said, if you need an increase, come justify it, don't get it automatically. And we now have responsible action being taken, and I urge adoption.

Mr. Speaker, it's wonderful to hear so many of not just colleagues but friends here on the floor discussing what is so important to this Nation--responsibility. And if you want to talk fiscal responsibility, it would certainly seem that the first place to start is with the repeal of ObamaCare. If you want to talk about freedom individually, once again, the best place to start is with repeal of ObamaCare.

There are so many ways the Federal Government has been encroaching into individual liberties and individual freedoms. It begins to get quite scary that we are encroaching on the very things that our original Founders were willing to fight and die for to ensure that we had the freedoms to do, that we would have the freedoms to avoid doing damage to our conscience.

It's so ironic that so many came to this Nation in its earliest days, and then through its history, seeking relief from persecution as Christians. So many groups came here believing that this could be a place, a promised land of sorts, where freedom could be experienced greater than anywhere else in the world. And that dream has been realized.

For far too long in our Nation's history, it was not extended to all men and women. Race and gender were problems. There were problems for some because there was racial and gender bias. But no one in those days ever anticipated we would get to the point in America where we are today, where people of faith who believe with all their heart that certain practices are just wrong in God's eyes would be forced by their government to commit those acts of wrong.

We know that the President of Notre Dame University, back in 2009, endured a great deal of heat when he brought a man who had fought so hard in Illinois to allow late-term abortions, a man who had fought to prevent people of conscience from being allowed to be counseled on exactly what they would be doing. There were all kinds of efforts in Illinois to deal with the issue of abortion. And he's now President. So there were some that believed that bringing that individual to a Catholic university like Notre Dame and giving an honorary degree and bestowing this honor upon him was not a good idea. Yet the President took a great deal of chance.

Sarah Palin points this out in an op-ed, little piece that she wrote Tuesday, when she said:

Consider Catholicism's most prominent academic leader, the

Reverend John Jenkins, president of Notre Dame. Jenkins took

a serious risk in sponsoring Obama's 2009 honorary degree and

commencement address--which promised a ``sensible'' approach

to the conscience clause. Jenkins now complains, ``This is

not the kind of `sensible' approach the President had in mind

when he spoke here.''

As Sarah Palin notes, ``Obama has made Jenkins--and other progressive Catholic allies--look easily duped,'' because this administration appears to want to wage war on Catholic Christian belief.

It's amazing that someone would take those kinds of positions that the administration currently is, basically a war on religious freedom for Christians.

There is an editorial posted by Mike Brownfield today, entitled, ``Morning Bell: ObamaCare's Latest Victim is Religious Freedom.'' It says:

It has not even been 2 years since ObamaCare was enacted,

and already the President's health care law has taken another

victim--the religious freedoms Americans hold dear, as

reflected by the First Amendment.

The Obama administration recently reaffirmed a rule under

ObamaCare that requires many religious employers to provide

health care coverage for all FDA-approved contraceptive

methods, sterilization procedures, and related education and

counseling. On the grounds that certain FDA-approved

contraceptive methods can sometimes ``cause the demise of

embryos both after and before uterine implantation,'' many

groups also believe that the rule forces them to cover

abortion.

As the article points out, it's not just Catholics affected by the rule. Leaders from other faith traditions have expressed their concern. This is deeply troubling.

Another article here from The Washington Post, entitled, ``Obama Plays His Catholic Allies for Fools,'' by Michael Gerson, published January 30. He says:

In politics, the timing is often the message. On January

20--3 days before the annual March for Life--the Obama

administration announced its final decision that Catholic

universities, hospitals, and charities will

be compelled to pay for health insurance that covers

sterilization, contraceptives, and abortifacients.

It was bad enough that ObamaCare was going to take away individual freedoms regarding health care. We can take care of those who cannot take care of themselves. But we should not do, as a government, what has been done for far too long--provide incentives for people not to reach their potential, provide incentives for people, in effect, to take the life of an unborn, to make it easier to do that.

As so many have pointed out, if a government can order any individual, all individuals in the country, to purchase a particular product, including health care insurance, there really isn't anything the Federal Government cannot order them to do or to purchase.

And we're seeing that play out now, not merely in the area of just health insurance, but going deeper than that, more problematic, even theological, that the Federal Government can order you not to follow your religious beliefs.

So it's really quite shocking how far we've come. Now, those of us that study the teachings of Jesus know that He told Christians you will suffer for My sake. I didn't deserve to be born in America. I go to places like Afghanistan and Iraq and places where there's so much heartache, places around the world where you see people--in Africa, the places that I've seen so much heartache, so much suffering. We didn't deserve to be born here, but by the grace of God we were. And though we were told by Jesus you will suffer for My sake, for whatever reason we were allowed to grow up free, free from suffering on account of Christian beliefs.

This bubble in time and space that was allowed for generation after generation to be able to follow religious beliefs as Christians without persecution, that time has changed. Now it would seem that as people yell ``haters'' at Christians, throw things at Christians, fuss on the nightly news how Christians are haters and want everybody to go to hell if they don't believe just like them--what a terrible misinterpretation of Christian faith and beliefs.

An article from The Wall Street Journal talking about the contraception rule, talking about the discussions about it among the political candidates.

People need to understand the Christian faith is under assault, and this administration has stepped up the ante in that assault. And if people, whether they're Christians, Jews, Muslims, whatever faith-- Hindu, Buddhists, Atheists--once you see a Federal Government telling Christians you cannot practice what you believe with your whole heart spiritually, you could be next. This ought to stir up not merely Christians. It ought to stir up people of all kinds of faith. Because, again, a Federal Government that can tell you to buy one product can tell you to buy any others if it has that much power. A Federal Government that tells Christians they cannot actually practice their religious beliefs can tell other religions the same thing.

We've just about come 360. This gift we've been given, we've been blessed with more freedoms in this country than any country in the history of the world. It doesn't take all that much study of world history to see that. It doesn't take all that much traveling around the world to see that. As I've traveled the world, going back to my days as an exchange student in 1973 to the Soviet Union, you develop a love for people all over the world. It's ironic when people call you a xenophobe and have no idea how many people you love with all your heart--Africa, Asia, Europe, around the world, different places.

And as one West African told me when I was visiting there, You have to understand, we were so excited when you elected a black President, but now we've seen America growing weak. And you must let the people in Washington know that unless America stays strong, we will suffer. You're our protectors. Without you staying strong, we don't have hope of having the freedoms we have right now. America's strength and America's standing for freedom and liberty don't just affect the people in America.

I jotted some notes inspired by a pastor's comments decades ago. It says: Start thinking about what we have seen in this country. First they said you can't have prayer in school, but most people didn't speak out because they would just pray somewhere else. Then they said you couldn't publicly post the Ten Commandments because people might be tempted to read them; and if they read them, they might be tempted to follow them and live moral lives. But most people didn't speak out because they knew where to find the Ten Commandments if they decided they wanted to have that kind of moral code.

They said you couldn't use a cross for a headstone, even for soldiers who died in the Christian faith in Jesus Christ, believing what Jesus said that ``greater love hath no one than this, that a man lay down his life for his friends.'' But not enough people have spoken out, because the soldiers are gone and they can't respond, so maybe it doesn't really matter.

I had a judge tell students, recent history, they could not have the freedom of speech to say what was in their hearts if it included horrible verboten words like prayer, invocation, benediction, but worst of all, God, prayer, amen, bow our heads, join in prayer. And most people didn't speak out because that was somewhere else, a judge somewhere else, not ours. Some judges said you couldn't say God in the pledge in a public place. It seems more judges have said that in more recent history. Fortunately, it was struck down, but they're still saying it. And not enough people are speaking out because it's some other judge. Maybe an appellate court will strike it down. I hope so.

Now we're being told by some if you want to hire someone, unless you're hiring a minister, you can't hire someone with the same religious spiritual faith that you have. Not enough people speaking out because they think surely that won't apply to me, at least not for a while. We're being told if you know in your heart that killing the most innocent among us, the infant unborn, if you believe that's killing, it's murder, it's wrong, well, we're the Federal Government and you have to forget your religious beliefs. We're going to tell you what you can or can't believe and tell you what you can or can't do. You have to go ahead and pay, in tax money or in health insurance money, for someone else to kill an unborn child.

And we have hospitals, doctors, nurses, health care providers being told, you may know in your Christian heart that it's wrong personally to participate in the taking of an innocent life, like an infant unborn, but if you want to stay in the health care business you're probably going to have do it anyway. We're the Federal Government, and we'll dictate not only what you may believe or not believe, but what you may put into practice and not put into practice.

And there are some in our government telling military chaplains, even priests, preachers, you may believe in your spirit, in your heart, in your soul that marriage is between a man and a woman, that Nature's God intended the perfect biological fit to produce a combination of a sperm and an egg. And some want to tell them you've got to set aside your religious beliefs and do what we, the Federal Government tell you, and marry whoever we tell you to marry.

You believe Romans 1? Forget it. Tear it out of your Bible because we're the Federal Government. We have a right to tell you what you can or can't believe.

Some say it's okay to force Catholics to violate their Christian consciences and their religious beliefs because our Federal Government has the power to tell them what to do. Not enough people are crying out. I guess they figure, well, I'm not really Catholic, or maybe I'm Catholic but surely they wouldn't try to tell me what to do in violation of my Christian spiritual beliefs.

But if the government can order, with the full power of Federal law enforcement, anyone to violate their Christian beliefs, we have come full circle. And the prayers of generations, the work of churches throughout our history--first, to even have a revolution based on freedom, based on the liberty that they knew God gave us, where over a third of the signers of the Declaration of Independence weren't

just Christians, they were ordained Christian ministers. But they believed in freedom so strongly that they were willing to fight and die for the spiritual freedom of all people in this country.

And a Constitution was put together and followed by a Bill of Rights, and it said what it meant, but it took a long time for it to be applied across racial bounds. It should have been clear. It's not a living, breathing document, but it says what it means, and it means that all people should have those rights under the Bill of Rights, that we were all created equal in God's eyes. The Founders believed that.

The churches were the heart and soul of the abolitionist movement to do away with that horrible evil called slavery. People like John Quincy Adams, 16, 17 years down the hall, Statuary Hall, after he was defeated for a second term as President, beseeching, preaching against the evils of slavery, inspired by what he knew from William Wilberforce as a Christian in the United Kingdom doing the same thing before him.

Abraham Lincoln, inspired by that overlapping time with John Quincy Adams, down the hall, because of his Christian beliefs and faith. If anybody doubts his belief, what motivated that man, go read the second inaugural address on the inside of the north wall of the Lincoln Memorial, as he tried to make sense, as a Christian, spiritually, about all the injustice and wrongs and death and suffering in America.

The movement for women's equality involved women of great faith. The civil rights movement, the greatest saint of the movement was a man who was an ordained Christian minister, who knew in his heart what Jesus had done for him, and he wanted all people to have liberty equally together, and be judged by the content of their character, not the color of their skin.

And now, it appears, war is being waged like never before on people of biblical Christian beliefs. You wonder what some of the Founders had to say. Samuel Adams was one of the strongest Christians alive during the Revolution. He was inspirational.

``How strangely will the tools of a tyrant pervert the plain meaning of words!'' Samuel Adams, that devout, strong Christian said, his wonderful quote inspired by his faith.

And he said:

If you love wealth better than liberty, the tranquility of

servitude than the animating contest of freedom, go from us

in peace. We seek not your counsel nor your arms. Crouch down

and lick the hands that feed you. May your chains sit lightly

upon you, and may posterity forget that you were our

countrymen.

These are people of faith who believed in liberty that started this place. And to have courts saying you can't say the word ``God'' in invocation, benediction--we start every day with a prayer in this Chamber, and have for centuries.

But we go back and finish with this. The speech of Benjamin Franklin that we have from his own handwriting. So what he said, 1787, late June, 1787, when nearly 5 weeks had gone by and they'd accomplished virtually nothing, and he pointed out that they had accomplished virtually nothing, that they had more ``nos'' than ``ayes'' on virtually every vote.

And he went on to say:

In this situation of this Assembly, groping as it were in

the dark to find political truth, and scarce able to

distinguish it when presented to us, how has it happened,

Sir, that we have not hitherto once thought of humbly

applying to the Father of Lights to illuminate our

understandings? In the beginning of the contest with Great

Britain, when we were sensible of danger, we had daily prayer

in this room.

That was Independence Hall. This great, brilliant man, who most of us were taught was a Deist, went on to say:

Our prayers, Sir, were heard, and they were graciously

answered.

That's not a Deist.

All of us who were engaged in the struggle must have

observed frequent instances of a superintending providence in

our favor.

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.

Now, the judges in this country, there are those who would say, he shouldn't be able to give that speech. He just mentioned the ``G'' word. Yet, it was what inspired people, these kind of speeches.

He said:

And if a sparrow cannot fall to the ground without His

notice, is it possible an empire could rise without His aid?

We have been assured, Sir, in the sacred writings, that

``except the Lord build the House, they labour in vain that

build it.'' I also firmly believe, without His concurring

aid, we shall succeed in our political building no better

than the Builders of Babel: We shall be confounded by our

local partial interests and we ourselves shall become a

byword down through the ages.

He went on to say he believed they should start every day with prayer.

He was followed by Randolph from Virginia, who basically pointed out that here we are at the end of June, we are about to celebrate our anniversary, let's all go to church together, hear a sermon together, which they did, the reformed Calvinist Lutheran Church. They all went to church and heard a sermon together. They came back in a new spirit, and gave us the Constitution, and gave us the Bill of Rights after that.

How in the world can a Federal Government that came from those roots begin to declare war on Christians, and Catholic Christians now? Beware, beware. The Federal Government that can declare war on Catholic Christian faith may be after your faith next.

With that, 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 8 o'clock and 40 minutes p.m.), the House adjourned until tomorrow, Friday, February 3, 2012, at 9 a.m.

Mr. Speaker, it's an honor to be here before you tonight. There's so much going on in this country, so many threats to our national security, and energy is one of them.

I am so proud to be a Member of Congress with the freshmen that I have heard here tonight. They make the rest of us look good, and I'm so grateful for their discussion about energy.

It doesn't make any sense to have more energy overall than any country in the world and then to pay billions, and hundreds of billions of dollars, to people, many who don't like us. They want to bring down this Nation, and yet we're enriching them, actually engorging them on our money.

And then we have a solution. One little part of this solution is the Keystone pipeline, more oil coming from our friends in Canada, who actually are friends. They don't want to see this country taken down. They don't want to see this country attacked again like it was on 9/11. Then we had a hearing today on energy in our Natural Resources Committee, and we're trying, we were trying to pass legislation out of committee that would allow us to provide more of our own energy.

But the wrong-headed approach of this administration and some people on the other side of the aisle that is forcing us to pay billions of dollars to companies that have no good plan for producing energy, but a great plan for bilking, sucking the money out of this administration, ready to throw it on any whim that they can say somehow is a green job. Well, it seems to be more brown in color from where I come from.

But anyway we voted today in Natural Resources to once again allow drilling in this tiny area out of the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge in Alaska. I know that there are some people, even from this body, who have been taken up by so-called environmental groups and taken to areas of ANWR that are beautiful and are certainly worth keeping pristine, not taken within 100 miles of the little area that we passed today to allow drilling in.

It's a tiny part of the area that Jimmy Carter as President set aside back in the 1970s to allow drilling because there's nothing there. There's not a tree, a bush, anything that's living in that area in the way of wildlife. They can't stay because there's nothing to sustain them. They have to go out of there and go to the pristine areas. That's why Jimmy Carter set it aside as someplace we could drill.

Yet the wrong-headed approach of this administration is to continue to put off limits our own natural resources. But that's only one aspect of things that are going wrong in this country with this administration.

Lieutenant General William G. Boykin

So tonight I want to pay tribute to a great American hero who has been demeaned, a man who has spent most of his life as an American hero fighting for Americans to have freedom of speech, and yet being condemned and disallowed the opportunity to have the freedom of speech he repeatedly, over and over, laid down his life or was willing to lay down his life to provide for the rest of us, that is Lieutenant General William G. Boykin, retired.

He's a former commander of the United States Army, Special Forces. He was a founding member of the Delta Force. He's also known for his devotion to the Christian faith, which at one time in this country, in fact, for 99.9 percent of this country's history, it was considered a good thing to be a person of faith and devoted particularly to a Christian faith.

Jerry Boykin, Lieutenant General Boykin, graduated from Virginia Tech in 1971 and received his Army commission. By 1980, he was the Delta Force operations officer on the April 24-25 Iranian hostage rescue attempt.

Now, I talked to General Boykin about that before and consider him to be a friend. Something that I had heard back during my days in the service was something that General Boykin said was above his grade back then, 1979-1980. It would be interesting to hear someone from the Carter administration actually provide documentation of the actual decision to reduce the number of helicopters that would be utilized to go into Iran to a staging area hundreds of miles inside Iran, meet up with C-130s--other equipment, rather, that was there in the staging area, and then from there stage the rescue effort that would go into Tehran and get our hostages.

The story I would love to see documentation on, the thing that I heard as a member of the U.S. Army years ago, was that the original plan had at least 12 helicopters that were going to be utilized to go into the staging area, but the Carter administration believed that it might look too much like an invasion. So the word was back then that we heard, the Carter administration ordered the 12 helicopters reduced to eight so it wouldn't look like an invasion, and that there were those who were engaged in the planning who said, you know what, we need 12 because the mission must have six helicopters to go forward from the staging area. These turbine engines will cross hundreds of miles of sand, and we have to count on perhaps a 50 percent loss of helicopters coming to the staging area. Since we know we need six, we want to start out with 12 so we have a better chance of getting six to the staging area.

We knew where the hostages were, and yet people in the administration, ultimate responsibility resting with the President, decided let's take more of a chance with the people we are putting at risk, sending in as the Delta Force. Let's put them even more at risk making them go in with fewer helicopters.

And as though Delta Force at the time knew, all they knew apparently was they get to the staging area, if they don't have six helicopters, then the mission will be aborted, and they'll have to turn around and go back. And since they were ordered to come in with eight instead of 12 or more, they got to the staging area with five. These American heroes who were not given adequate resources to go in and rescue our hostages in Iran by an administration you would have thought understood and appreciated the military, but apparently did not adequately. Even though President Carter had been in the military, you would have thought he understood. They get to the staging area, there are five helicopters, and the mission is aborted.

One explanation was when one helicopter pilot was trying to lift off, once they knew it was aborted, everyone was anxious to get out. A helicopter started up. Obviously, the sand swirls and it's easy to get vertigo and lose sense of direction, and the helicopter went sideways, cut into a C-130, and we left heroic Americans on the desert floor in Iran, a terrible embarrassment. And to this former soldier, I didn't think it was an embarrassment to the Delta Force that was sent in. They were ready to fight and die, but their orders were to go in. They were sent in without adequate helicopters; and when the mission did not go forward, people lost their lives.

But as we know from the old poem:

Theirs was not to reason why

Theirs was but to do and die.

Some of them did.

I would have hoped over the years the lesson learned from Vietnam would have been not that that was not a winnable war, as our colleague here, Sam Johnson, could tell. After 2 weeks of carpet bombing after North Vietnam had left the negotiation table, 2 weeks of carpet bombing, they came back. And as the Hanoi Hilton prisoners were taken away, Sam said the meanest, one of the meanest officers, at the Hanoi Hilton was laughing and said: You stupid Americans. If you'd bombed us for one more week, we would have had to surrender unconditionally.

Instead of being done in the seventies, that could have been done early in the sixties. The lesson of Vietnam should have been we don't send our military, men and women, anywhere in the world on our behalf unless we give them the equipment to do the job, unless we give them the order to go win whatever it costs. Win and come home. That should have been the lesson, but it wasn't learned in Vietnam.

And it apparently wasn't learned during the failed rescue attempt under the Carter administration. But these were

American heroes who put their lives at risk for an administration that didn't fully appreciate what was involved.

General Boykin, in February 2003, had two stars as an Army general. He was commander of the John F. Kennedy Special Warfare Center at Fort Bragg and was about to interview with Secretary Rumsfeld for his third star nomination.

He had received two Purple Hearts: one for Grenada in 1983, the other for Mogadishu, Somalia, in 1993. He was involved as a commander in the Black Hawk Down scenario.

From 1978 to 1993, General Boykin was assigned in various capacities to Delta Force. With Delta Force, he oversaw the rescue of CIA operative Kurt Muse from a Panamanian prison and the capture also of Manuel Noriega, the brutal dictator who put Kurt Muse in that prison.

In Colombia, our hero, Jerry Boykin, helped hunt down the drug lord Pablo Escobar. He also hunted war criminals in Bosnia. He helped rescue hostage missionaries in Sudan. He tracked kidnappers in El Salvador. He spent 13 years with Delta Force. And as I mentioned before, he was not only a founding member of Delta Force but also was later its commanding officer.

In October of 1983, Major Boykin worked as an operations officer during Operation Urgent Fury in Grenada. During a dawn assault to free some Grenada government officials held by the Marxist People's Revolutionary Army, Boykin was shot in the arm with a .50 caliber round, splitting the bone completely in two. He was told he would never use it again, but almost miraculously his arm healed, which Boykin again believed was a God thing.

In October 1993, Colonel Boykin was in command of the Delta Force tracking down militia leader Mohamed Farrah Aidid in Somalia, during which time the infamous battle of Mogadishu took place. Some might recognize that as the Black Hawk Down scenario. That was the event.

But April 1998 to February of 2000, Jerry Boykin served as the commanding general of the U.S. Army Special Forces Command Airborne at Fort Bragg, North Carolina.

From March 2000 to 2003, he was the commanding general, United States Army John F. Kennedy Special Warfare Center, Fort Bragg, North Carolina.

In June of 2003, General Boykin was appointed deputy Under Secretary of Defense for Intelligence under Dr. Stephen Cambone, Under Secretary of Defense for Intelligence.

Lieutenant Boykin retired on August 1, 2007 and currently teaches at Hampden-Sydney College. General Boykin is the author of ``Never Surrender: A Soldier's Journey to the Crossroads of Faith and Freedom'' and also ``Danger Close: A Novel'' as well as ``Kiloton Threat,'' a novel.

General Boykin attended the United States Armed Forces Staff College, Army War College, Shippensburg University where he received a master's degree. His badges include the Master Parachutist Badge, Military Freefall Badge, Ranger Tab, Special Forces Tabs. Medals include the Distinguished Service Medal, the Defense Superior Service Medal with three oak leaf clusters, and the Legion of Merit with an oak leaf cluster. This is a real hero. He also received the Bronze Star, Air Medal, Purple Heart with an oak leaf cluster.

This is an American hero, ready repeatedly to lay down his life for our right to free speech, to the freedoms we know and love; and yet he was not so well treated. People thought it was inappropriate that a general would say, basically, the same things that Franklin Roosevelt did, things like Franklin Roosevelt said in his prayer on D-Day as he prayed on the radio, national radio broadcast.

And during that radio broadcast, Franklin Roosevelt prayed for our troops against those forces of evil. I believe he used the word ``crusade'' in there. And yet Franklin Roosevelt was never excoriated or crucified for the language he used in the prayer because people knew he cared about our troops. People knew that he cared about Americans having freedom. So they never went after Franklin Roosevelt the way they have come after Jerry Boykin.

General Boykin was invited to speak at West Point this year. My understanding is he was going to be speaking to West Point cadets at our U.S. military academy, cadets who were Christians, about how a Christian in the service of the United States reconciles his faith, his commitment to God, and his commitment to country. I would imagine most of us who are Christians who served in the United States military had those inner questions. Some of us found answers in Scripture, found answers in wise counsel, and found a peace afforded through prayer.

Wise counsel is what I get anytime I talk to General Boykin. This incredible man, this American hero, who should be an American icon, was told he really should withdraw his acceptance of the invitation to come and speak because West Point, our U.S. military academy--not the military--but the people that this administration put in place, were too embarrassed to have this American hero come speak to Christian cadets at the United States military academy where we also have a politically correct czar who monitors such things and makes sure we don't offend the people who want to kill us and destroy our way of life.

So pressure was put, gee, the military academy, those in power allowed to be there by this administration, with the political correctness in full display, didn't want to withdraw the invitation. They thought it would be better if he backed out of coming. This American hero will do anything his Nation needs him to do, and he did something that I'm not sure I would have done. He said, sure, you don't want me to come, I withdraw my acceptance, I won't come. He canceled.

This American hero who has repeatedly put himself between America and harm is not afforded freedom of speech. United States military academy cadets, because of this administration's approach, surely must feel that, gee, it's not a good thing to be a Christian in America if you're going to really live your faith. It's not appropriate to wrestle with religious issues unless, of course, you're a Muslim like Major Hasan, because if you want to speak freely, in Major Hasan's case, of course, and the private who was ready to kill people in the service with him as Major Hasan did, this military with this administration's overblown political correctness would not even deal with the private who did the same kind of interview as Major Hasan, that's made the same kind of statement that Major Hasan did.

He was on the Internet basically saying if they make me deploy, I'll have to kill troops to avoid having to go face Muslims and possibly kill Muslims for one of the reasons that we're not allowed to kill other Muslims. I'll have to kill Americans.

What's wrong with this picture? It certainly wasn't a problem for the greatest American general, the greatest American leader in the history of the world, a general named George Washington. He believed so fervently in the same things that Jerry Boykin believed in. At one point, he issued an order that you couldn't take God's name in vain. His approach was, how can we ask God for blessings and protection with the same mouth that is taking His name in vain? I can assure you when I was in the Army, that was not a standing order.

George Washington is the only person in the history of the world-- just down the Hall he is depicted in a painting resigning. He did the unthinkable. King George couldn't believe it. He led a military in a revolution, won the revolution as head of the military, tendered his resignation, gave back all the power and went home.

Recently, I stopped for refueling in the Maldives Islands. One of the leaders during a luncheon, we were talking, said, we have to constantly worry about the possibility of a military coup. This man on the other side of the world said, see, because we never had a George Washington who set the proper pattern here.

George Washington was a man of faith. Anyone who doubts that can read Peter Lillback's book ``George Washington's Sacred Fire.'' Well, there's an article yesterday, from Todd Starnes:

The U.S. Military Academy pressured a retired U.S.

lieutenant general to withdraw from speaking at a West Point

prayer breakfast after Muslims and atheists complained, Fox

News has learned. Retired Lieutenant General William Boykin

was scheduled to deliver a speech at West Point on February

8,

but late Monday the military academy released a statement

saying he had decided to withdraw from speaking and would be

replaced by another speaker. However, a source close to the

controversy told Fox News & Commentary that Boykin was

pressured to withdraw. ``It was very clear they wanted

General Boykin to withdraw,'' said the source who asked not

to be identified.

And after you see what they've done to an American icon like General Boykin, you certainly understand why.

``He asked them to rescind the invitation, but they were

reluctant to do that. So he said he would take them off the

hook.

Theresa Brinkerhoff, a spokesperson for West Point, told

Fox News & Commentary that the U.S. Military Academy ``did

not decide this for him.''

Nothing is worse than political correctness and mistreatment of military heroes than dishonesty in doing so.

``After a conversation with our chaplain, Lieutenant

General Boykin decided to withdraw,'' Brinkerhoff wrote in an

email.

Boykin, a former senior military intelligence officer, had

been criticized for speeches he made at evangelical Christian

churches where he said that America's enemy is Satan, that

God had put President Bush in the White House, and that a

Muslim Somali warlord was an idol worshiper.

That was enough to decide to try to destroy an American hero.

Army Times has an article, ``Retired 3-Star's West Point Invite Draws Protest,'' all about the controversy. New York Times, ``General Withdraws from West Point Talk.''

The message is coming loud and clear to our military: If you're a Christian, if you're a person of faith, as demonstrated through George Washington's life and times, you better keep your mouth shut or this administration and those who are in charge of political correctness will see to it that you regret being so.

There's another article by Rebecca Leung, ``The Holy Warrior,'' it's entitled, another interesting article. This goes right along with this administration's zeal to avoid recognizing the enemy against us.

I, along with Dana Rohrabacher, Steve King, Loretta Sanchez, we met with Northern Alliance leaders, including General Dostum, the hero in fighting the Taliban. Now, these are Muslims. Some try to paint us as xenophobes, Islamophobes.

Isn't it interesting, that term came as a strategy to try to scare off, embarrass, humiliate people who stood up for what was right against Muslim terrorists who want to destroy us, trying to intimidate us into not using the word ``Muslim.'' For heaven's sake, we know. They're our Muslim friends. The Northern Alliance, they're our allies. They're Muslims. We talked about it. We met with some Baluks from southern Pakistan, their leaders there. They're Muslim. They're our friends. They don't want to destroy us. They want to support us, and some of us want to support them.

And yet this administration has such a wrongheaded approach to those who want to destroy our way of life. It can best be illustrated in this chart illustrating political correctness run amok.

The 9/11 Commission report was prepared in a bipartisan fashion before people knew that the Organization of Islamic States, the Islamic Society of North America, CAIR would make such attacks on those who dare to point out that even though it's not the mass Muslim population who are our enemy, there are those small groups within the Muslim community who want to destroy our way of life. How can you understand and anticipate your enemy's actions, the enemy that has sworn to destroy you, unless you study what they believe and you understand what their approach is and you understand that people like Ahmadinejad--I'm running out of time.

Well, let me conclude by just pointing to this chart. In the commission report, 322 times Islam is mentioned; jihad is mentioned 126 times. And now it is inappropriate, under this administration, to mention jihad. It's inappropriate for our Justice, Intelligence, State to talk about jihad. It doesn't mention al Qaeda. It doesn't mention Hezbollah, Hamas, sharia.

This administration has run aground, and they have brought their ship right on top of real American heroes.

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 44 minutes p.m.), under its previous order, the House adjourned until tomorrow, Thursday, February 2, 2012, at 10 a.m. for morning-hour debate.

Mr. Speaker, it is with enormous pride that I recognize and congratulate the Tenaha Tigers on an amazing 2011 football season in which they captured the Texas State Class 1A Division II Football Championship. These ferocious Tenaha Tigers have reached the pinnacle of success in Texas football for the second time in the last 15 years, having achieved that great title back in 1998.

A series of victories in which the Tigers crushed their opponents led them into the playoffs, where they demonstrated just how powerful they were as a team, playing as one well-tuned machine. The final game saw the Tenaha Tigers ultimately defeat the Munday Moguls 52-28. Although both Munday and Tenaha showed why they were in the finals during the first half, the Tigers pulled ahead in the second half scoring 21 points with little response from the Moguls.

The Tigers strong offensive and defensive lines dominated other teams exhibiting the result of grueling strength and endurance programs that showed how driven the Tigers were individually to excel. Clearly a team does not get to such a level of excellence without a coaching staff that knows its players, what they can accomplish and just how far they can be pushed.

The proof of their preparation and drive to be the best can be found in a number of statistics including the fact that the Tigers consistently maintained a 37.6 point lead over their opponents. Additionally, the defensive line often refused to allow its opposition to score a single touchdown.

There is no doubt that each of the individual players, coaches, and supporting personnel involved with the success of the Tigers will benefit from having witnessed the level of success that is achieved when each individual gives all they have while working together with such dedication and passion.

This tribute goes out to all of the athletic staff including Athletic Director/Head Football Coach Terry Ward and his Assistant Coaches Ian White, Mike Barber, Kevin Cates, Scott Tyner, Todd Bodden and Antonio Holmes.

The team members achieving this memorable accomplishment included T.J. Thomas, Reginald Davis, Demon Horton, Vincent Walton, Edgar Flores, Jacoby Ivy, Shaquille Mitchell, J.R. Hill, Octavius Griffith, Chavis Gregory, Keontas Davis, Damarcus Perry, Jaquarius Williams, Cobe Carraway, Seth Wyatt, Brady Tovar, Assuntay Cleaver, Jose Campos, Marqevius Reed, Alex Horton, JaKelvin Cooper, Izikel Flores, Damiem Reese, DeAaron Roland, Derek Jones, LaDarren Cooks, Edgar Pineda, Cody Richardson, Aaron Harris, Leon Aguilar, Donald Smith, Dustin Davis, and Tim Hafford.

No football team ever becomes a champion without unwavering support, and that is exactly what the Tigers had from the Tenaha Independent School District staff and the entire community. That is why congratulations go to all who contributed in any way to the success of the Tigers in for the 2011 season. May God continue to bless all of their efforts both in school and as they one day finish high school and use that same drive and determination to make this country even stronger. Congratulations go to the State Champion Tenaha Tigers, as their legacy is now recorded in the Congressional Record that will endure as long as there is a United States of America.