Floor Statements

Mr. Speaker, I certainly do appreciate the recommendations of my friend from Iowa. And I certainly agree, we should be passing a bill that would require no leeway for the Treasury's Secretary, that he should pay our debts as they come due and also make sure the military is paid on time. We know that Social Security is already going to be mandatory spending in the event of a shutdown. And that way we are allowed to pursue the issues that are most critical and that is, really, in the interest of children. That term is used so often. It is really true now. We have got to cut the ridiculous, irresponsible spending to preserve this Union.

But there are two problems out there that are seeking to destroy this country. One is passively to destroy this

country, and that is our gross, irresponsible overspending: $2.1 trillion coming in and $3.75 trillion going out. We won't last much longer as a country if that continues.

The other is not passive. It is very active. And our great military and intelligence communities did a fantastic job apparently in taking out the most wanted man last weekend in the world, the man responsible for possibly more murders than anyone currently in existence on the planet, but certainly he had killed more Americans than anyone else alive on the planet today. And that was, of course, Osama bin Laden.

But there has been a great rewriting of history. And since we know-- it has been made very clear that there are radical Islamist jihadists that want to destroy our country--it is ridiculous not to defend ourselves. We took an oath to defend the Constitution.

We are supposed to provide for the common defense. It is the most important responsibility that we as a Federal Government have, because if we do not provide for a common defense, then it matters not what we try to do in the way of Medicare and Medicaid. All kinds of problems occur in the U.S.

If we don't defend ourselves, there are plenty of evil groups who would love to destroy our way of life. In the case of the radical Islamic jihadists, they believe that as much freedom as we have in America leads to decadence and debauchery and that we need one leader, one religious leader, an ahmadi, to preside over one giant, worldwide caliphate.

So for those of us who realize on both sides of the aisle we make a lot of mistakes, people across the country make a lot of mistakes. No one at the current time on Earth is perfect. We realize still that freedom to make our own choices is what the Founders intended, and that is because they believed that the Creator--as they referenced in the Declaration, God referenced in other places, Providence in other places, they believed that that was God's choice for our life, that we have choice.

And even though God knew that we would make bad choices, when people can freely love of their own volition, their own choice, as a father I know that means so much more than if you demand that a child or someone in your care act like they love you.

So thank God. He desires our love and our praise. As a result, we were given freedom of choice. You don't have to look too deeply into founding documents and diaries and journals to realize just how much the Founders, the Continental Congress members, believed that.

So it gets interesting when people try to rewrite history and especially in the process of failing to properly provide for the common defense.

We had the Attorney General of the United States before the Judiciary Committee this week, and of concern to me and many others has been the refusal of this Justice Department to prosecute the unindicted coconspirators in the Holy Land Foundation trial.

The evidence used in that case had been adduced from back in 1991, 1993. There was a treasure trove of material found, I believe, in 2004 here, just across in Virginia. There was a sub-basement that had tremendous amounts of documents reflecting the plans and intentions and strategy for the effort to bring down the government as we know it, our way of life as we know it, and that was by radical Muslims.

I am also thankful that there are a majority of Muslims who are moderates. They don't believe jihad means to go about destroying those who oppose what you are doing. They believe that jihad means an internal change of life. And when someone has a moderate Muslim for a friend, he has a friend for life. It kind of reminds me of southern hospitality.

But, nonetheless, we do our moderate Muslim friends no favors in failing to oppose the radical Islamic jihadists, because make no mistake, if we do not defend this Nation against the radical Islamic jihadists, then some of the people that would lose their lives, at a minimum lose their freedoms, would be moderate Muslims, because being a moderate is not abided in the world of a radical Muslim. If you don't believe just as they do, then it is okay to take your life.

So that's why I say we are no friend to our moderate Muslim friends if we do not defend this Nation against the radicals, because our moderate Muslim friends will be targeted if we do not do our job in defending the Nation, which brings me back again to the Holy Land Foundation trial.

The Bush administration, acting on information that was obtained through the 1990s through the Clinton administration Justice Department, FBI, and especially since 1993, the efforts made by the FBI, the incredibly professional work that was done, it was amazing how well they put a case together. Unfortunately, when the case was tried the first time, it led to a hung jury. In the pleadings--and I have many of the documents here. Not all of them. There are boxes and boxes of documents, and I understand even now, under Attorney General Holder, the Justice Department has boxes and boxes of evidence, documents, wiretaps that have not even been translated. You would think that would be fairly important before a decision was made on whether or not to pursue the unindicted coconspirators.

Now, it is not always the case, but in this case the unindicted coconspirators were actually listed. If one goes through the list of unindicted coconspirators, you find groups like the Islamic Society of North America, aka ISNA; you find the North American Islamic Trust, aka NAIT. It is amazing. You find Founders of CAIR, C-A-I-R.

So it was intriguing, after having five convictions on all 108 allegations in the Holy Land Foundation trial that went on in Dallas, that this Justice Department would ultimately decide we are not going to pursue any of those other coconspirators or joint venturers, who the evidence shows clearly provided financing for a known terrorist group, Hamas. The documentation is substantial.

And this is only a tiny thimbleful of the evidence that was in the case.

But when I look here at the Islamic Society of North America, at some of the evidence that came out, we have journal voucher after journal voucher showing the money that was taken out and used to ultimately assist in terrorism or to fund a terrorist group. You see all these journal entries. There are deposit slips in here making clear all kinds of things in the way of money. All kinds of amounts were transferred to assist in the funding of terrorism.

In fact, at the conclusion of the first part of the case with the five defendants, some of the unindicted coconspirators filed a motion to require the Federal District Judge in Dallas to strike or eliminate all of the names of the unindicted coconspirators, or at least their own, and an assistant U.S. Attorney in Dallas named James Jacks did a very good job in rebutting that and laying out in his brief before the Federal District Court how there were significant amounts, tremendous amounts of evidence that showed that the unindicted coconspirators' names should not be stricken from the record. And the judge in his memo order on the case came back and said basically there is a prima facie case.

In fact, the judge said here--this is in his memo decision, and this is Judge Solis, a Federal judge in Dallas--``The government has produced ample evidence to establish the associations of CAIR, C-A-I-R, ISNA, Islamic Society of North America, and NAIT, the North American Islamic''--I have it here, what the T stands for--``with HLF, the Islamic Association for Palestine and with Hamas. While the court recognizes that evidence produced by the government largely predates the HLF designation date, its evidence is nonetheless sufficient to show the association of these entities with HLF, IAP and Hamas,'' and being conjunctive together and not disjunctive. The judge goes on to say, ``Thus maintaining the names of the entity on the list is appropriate in light of the evidence proffered by the government.''

He goes further in his opinion and says, ``The explanatory memorandum includes a section entitled `Understanding the Role of the Muslim Brotherhood in North America,' which states that the work of the Ikhwan in the United States is a kind of grand jihad in eliminating and destroying the Western civilization from within and sabotaging its miserable house by their hands and the hands of the believers so that it is eliminated and God's religion

is made victorious over all other religions.''

Also contained in that document is a list of the Muslim Brotherhood's ``organizations and the organizations of our friends,'' which includes ISNA, NAIT, the Occupied Land Fund, which was HLF's former name, and the United Association for Studies and Research. During the early years of the OLF and HLF operation, OLF raised money and supported Hamas through a bank account that it held with ISNA and NAIT.

Indeed, OLF operated from within ISNA in Plainfield, Indiana, where defendant Baker was employed. The Muslim Brotherhood supervised the creation of a ``Palestine Committee,'' which was put in charge of other organizations such as HLF, IAP, UASR, and ISNA. The July 30, 1994, meeting agenda for the Palestine Committee lists IAP, HLF, UASR, and CAIR as working organizations for the Palestine Committee.

The order is pretty extraordinary in following the pleadings as filed by a quite capable assistant U.S. Attorney at that time, now interim U.S. Attorney in Dallas, and stating basically there is a prima facie case here. In fact, this has come to the attention of a number of us, not insignificantly, what to do with Patrick Poole and his research, Andrew McCarthy and his research, and other individuals who have been prosecutors, people who are familiar with the system, how the system works.

Pete King, himself, has a very pointed letter that was sent to the Attorney General, asking for answers, and yet he really didn't get much of an answer. In fact, his letter reads this way. It was dated April 15.

``Dear Attorney General Holder, I write to inquire about your decision not to prosecute the 246 individuals and organizations named as unindicted coconspirators in a Hamas terror finance case.''

Actually, it is the largest terror finance case in American history. If you don't cut off the money, the terrorism will continue, and if the terrorists have tremendous amounts of money, it is a lot tougher to defeat them as our enemy, our sworn enemy, sworn to destroy our way of life. If you cut off their funding, it is a lot easier to be at war with someone in a tent, riding a camel, than it is someone who has jets, RPGs and the most sophisticated weaponry and the ability to build million dollar compounds to hide in.

Of course, money also opens the possibility for bribes, which makes it a whole lot easier to hide in plain sight, because people are willing to look the other way. We don't know if that was occurring in Pakistan. There is a lot still to be learned in that situation.

But Chairman King, Pete King, goes on and says, ``I have been reliably informed that the decision not to seek indictments of the Council on American Islamic Relations and its cofounder, Omar Ahmad, the Islamic Society of North America and the North American Islamic Trust was usurped by high-ranking decisions at the Department of Justice headquarters over the vehement and stated objections of special agents and supervisors of the FBI, as well as the prosecutors at the U.S. Attorney's Office in Dallas, who had investigated and successfully prosecuted the Holy Land Foundation case. Their opposition to this decision raises serious doubt that the decision not to prosecute was a valid exercise of prosecutorial discretion.''

Chairman King goes on and says, ``I request you provide answers to the following questions:

``What are the reasons for the Department's decision not to prosecute CAIR, ISNA, NAIT, and Mr. Ahmad, who is a CAIR cofounder and former head of the Palestine Committee of the Muslim Brotherhood in the United States?

``Who made the final decision not to prosecute?

``Who, if anyone, from the Executive Office of the President consulted with, advised or otherwise communicated with the Department of Justice in electronic, oral or written form regarding the Department's decision to not seek indictments of CAIR, ISNA, NAIT, and Mr. Ahmad?

``How does and will the Department and the Federal Bureau of Investigation address the potential for CAIR, ISNA, NAIT to engage in terrorism financing?

``What policies with regard to those organizations have you implemented to address that threat?

``The answers to these questions should provide some explanation for declining a prosecution that is strongly supported by the record from the Holy Land Foundation trial.''

Then the chairman goes through and cites some of the information from that case, and he goes on and says, ``Hamas has been designated as a terrorist organization by the Department of State since October 9, 1997, and its status was reconfirmed by the most recent annual report of the National Counterterrorism Center, issued April 30, 2010.

``Hamas shamefully conducts cowardly suicide bombings against civilian targets inside Israel.'' He goes on and sets out some further information there.

It also should be noted that Chairman Lamar Smith, when it was brought to the attention by some of us on the committee, also sent a letter to the Attorney General, requesting information about these very same things. In fact, there was a memo that was involved, and Chairman Smith on behalf of the Judiciary Committee requested a copy of the March 31, 2010, memo entitled: ``Declination of Prosecution of Omar Ahmad'' from Assistant Attorney General David Kris to Acting Deputy Attorney General Gary Grindler.

As I understand it, Chairman King got a response; very unsatisfactory. Basically, they're not telling him anything. If they follow that tradition, Chairman Smith is not likely to get much of an answer. But it causes great concern because we have the Attorney General, who has testified before the committee this week that no one in his Department was involved in advising or consulting over that. Yet we have information about a memo which may contradict the Attorney General directly. If that's the case, he would have given false information before a committee not once but a number of times during his testimony before the House Judiciary Committee. I hope and pray that's not true, but there's one way to find out.

Instead of providing the memo that was requested, he referred Mr. Trent Franks, when he asked, to a Dallas Morning News article that quotes Mr. Jacks as saying there were no political factors involved in that decision. Well, I have a copy of that article as well. I also have a copy of Mr. Jacks' pleadings where he did a very nice job of setting out that there was a strong case--in essence, a prima facie case-- against these people wanting to have their names eliminated as coconspirators in the pleading. He also filed a pleading with the Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals.

Now, I know as a former judge and chief justice that lawyers are not supposed to file pleadings and try to persuade based on facts that they believe or know not to be true. It's called fraud upon the court, and there's punitive action that lies in that case. But the information that U.S. Attorney Jacks provided to the district court and to the Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals appears to be very authentic and very well done. Obviously, a very capable lawyer. There are no punitive actions that can be taken for misleading a newspaper. On the other hand, perhaps he doesn't know what was in the memo that was requested from March of last year.

But we're now getting into some very serious grounds when the Attorney General of the United States will not be forthcoming, changes his answers a number of times about who consulted or didn't consult; who's in his department, who's not in his department; who participated. So we've got a lot of explaining to get to. I hope there are legitimate explanations. But one thing is very clear, Mr. Speaker, and that is when the Attorney General is holding evidence that will answer the questions that were asked and prove if anyone is lying and who is lying and when they lied, it is not at all comforting to say, We're not giving you evidence that might contradict something that's been said by the Justice Department, but we will refer you to a newspaper article that an interim U.S. Attorney gave, who serves at the will of the United States President. So then, again, as a former judge, you're not

looking for evidence which may support or not.

Could there be politics at play in this kind of decision? Well, about this Islamic Society of North America, ISNA, it's interesting. I got a transcript of the speech, because I got it off of the White House Web site today, made by the Deputy National Security Adviser to the President of the United States, Barack Obama, his being Denis McDonough. This was actually, it says, for immediate release March 6, 2011. This is printed, like I say, from the Web site. These are the remarks of the Deputy National Security Adviser to the President, Barack Hussein Obama, in which he starts his remarks like this:

Thank you, Imam Majid, for your very kind introduction and welcome.

By the way, these are remarks to the All Dulles Area Muslim Society, ADAMS, ironically.

Thank you, Imam Majid, for your very kind introduction, and welcome. I know that President Obama was very grateful that you led the prayer at last summer's iftar dinner at the White House, which, as the President noted, is a tradition stretching back more than two centuries to when Thomas Jefferson hosted the first iftar dinner at the White House.

Well, ``iftar'' refers to the evening meal when Muslims break their fast during the Islamic month of Ramadan. Iftar is one of the religious observances of Ramadan, and is often done as a community with people gathering to break their fast together. Iftar is done right after sunset time. Traditionally, a date is the first thing to be consumed when the fast is broken.

But if you look at the true history of the country, Thomas Jefferson did invite a leader from Tunis to break bread with him at the White House, and it was at the conclusion of Ramadan, but there's no evidence to indicate whatsoever that this was a traditional iftar dinner.

You get back to the facts. In the second paragraph, he says--and this is Denis McDonough, Deputy National Security Adviser--Our Founders understood the best way to honor the place of faith in the lives of people was to protect their freedom to practice religion. In the Virginia Act, establishing religious freedom, Thomas Jefferson wrote that all men shall be free to profess and by argument to maintain their opinions in matters of religion.

He goes on in his remarks, and he says, Thank you also for being one of our Nation's leading voices for the values that make America so strong, especially religious freedom and tolerance.

Parenthetically, I'm not sure if tolerance includes funding terrorist activities against Israel and the United States, but that's a parenthetical question on my part.

Back to Mr. McDonough, Whether it's here at the ADAMS Center or as president of the Islamic Society of North America, you've spoken with passion and eloquence not only about your own Islamic faith but for the need to build bridges of understanding and trust between faiths.

This is incredible. The Deputy National Security Adviser is thanking the president of a coconspirator--named, at least, as a coconspirator, joint venturer in the Holy Land Foundation trial. He was not merely introducing him at this proceeding, but was also thanking him for being a confidant who led the White House in prayer in their iftar proceeding in the White House. The president of a coconspirator to fund terrorist activities is leading Muslim prayers in the White House.

I realize my time has expired. I just know we need to work hard so that this country's time will not expire.

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

The motion was agreed to; accordingly (at 3 o'clock and 41 minutes p.m.), under its previous order, the House adjourned until tomorrow, Friday, May 6, 2011, at noon.

Madam Speaker, my first daughter was born very prematurely. They rushed her over to Shreveport to the highest level intensive care. The neonatologist encouraged me, because my wife couldn't come, to caress her, talk to her, that it meant so much, even though she couldn't see me. She grabbed my finger and held it for hours. She wanted to cling to life.

For those of us who think it's wrong to kill children in utero, it is even more wrong to pry money from our hands at the point of an IRS gun so that others can use our tax dollars to pay to kill those children.

Please, let's stop it.

Mr. Speaker, we had a hearing yesterday in the Judiciary Committee. The Attorney General of the United States came before us, and one of the things we discussed was the fact that in 2008, toward the end of the year, there was the biggest, most important terrorist funding case that was ever tried, conviction of all five defendants on 108 counts, and now this administration has dismissed and is not going to pursue the evidence that the trial judge said was there to make a prima facie case against the coconspirators.

Instead, you can go to the White House Web site and find that their deputy national security adviser is thanking the president of the Islamic Society of North America, which was one of the unindicted coconspirators, for his wonderful help in the White House and his great prayer he gave the year before.

It's time to get foxes out of the henhouse. Let's hold people responsible who want to destroy our way of life.

Mr. Speaker, on rollcall 268, passage of H.R. 1473, I was detained. I got here right at the close of

the vote. I missed voting ``no'' because I believed the vote did not live up to our promise.

Mr. Speaker, we are here because the last Congress did not do its job and for the first time since 1974 didn't have a budget. So we're having to do last year's work in addition to this year's work. And in the meantime, we look around at who is actually being hurt. And there were many of us that were inquiring over the last month, all right, if there is a shutdown, is the military going to be paid?

Well, we find out the military is essential, the military will be working in

the event there is a shutdown. But then as recent as last week, we find out they definitely will not be paid until after a shutdown is over. They will get paid for sure, but it will be after a shutdown. But they will be working.

In talking to many people on active duty, I find that things haven't changed a great deal since 30 years ago when I was in the Army. There are lots of people in our military that are having to live paycheck to paycheck. They don't get paid all that much. But they are standing between us and harm to this Nation, even its very existence.

There are those who want to take this out. At the end of last week, Congressman Jack Kingston, John Carter, Steve King, Michele Bachmann, a number of people involved, we wanted to ensure that if the Democrats say we don't care--for example, gee, providing Federal tax dollars to fund abortion in the District of Columbia is more important than anything else. We wanted a vehicle to make sure our military gets paid on time so while they are out in harm's way, they don't have to worry about it.

We filed a bill the end of last week, and it's H.R. 1297. I contacted Senator Kay Bailey Hutchison's office and Jim Inhofe's office, and they had it filed the first of the week. Down there it's Senate bill 724. Now we are told, well, gee, there is a procedural problem, because even though in the first two paragraphs each one starts with, ``to appropriate, to appropriate,'' later in the bill, very short, three pages, it says, ``make available funding.'' That can easily be remedied by a manager's amendment to change to ``shall appropriate.'' Easily handled.

A rule was passed this week that this could be brought to the floor within 24 hours. That part is waived. There is no reason that the military cannot be paid on time. That can be wiped away from their concerns. But our leadership was good enough last week to say we are taking care of it. We are going to make sure it's taken care of.

The best solution is what was done yesterday. The military is fully paid through the end of the year. That's the best way to go. It makes sure there is no glitches at all. But if our Democratic friends down the Hall are going to stand in the way of having the military funded for the rest of the year, then we need to bring this bill, H.R. 1297, to the floor today and make sure our military does not have to worry: your pay, your allowances will be taken care of on time.

Our military that are out in harm's way, as we heard about Marcus Luttrell and other heroes, they're taken care of. Your families back home get your paycheck. They're cared for. That's the responsible thing to do. Secretary Bob Gates said, ``As a historian, it occurred to me that the smart thing to do for a government was always to pay the guys with the guns first.'' That is a smart thing to do. Let's take care of the people that are taking care of this country's protection.

Thank you.

Your comments also point to another aspect, not only your caring about America, caring about those that are fighting for us and your desire to fight for those here in Washington who are fighting for us, but it also shows a great deal about your humility, because you and I both know you have been working on this issue just every bit as long and as hard as I have, and yet you are giving Jack and me great credit and I appreciate that.

But the truth is you have done every bit as much work, perhaps more, as Jack and I have and the cosponsors we have here.

But, you know, things here in Washington obviously don't get done in a vacuum, and it means so much when we have people like Kristi, Rob, Nan, folks that are out here. We got over 100, I am not sure how many over 100 now, cosponsors on the bill. These are people that want to make sure that the military is not used as pawns in this game.

A lot of us haven't been thrilled about the short-term CRs, but it does point out one thing, that the leadership of the Republicans in the House are committed and have paid the price of being criticized by people like me for doing short-term CRs. They are so committed to trying to do everything they can, especially Speaker Boehner. He has really gone as far as humanly possible to do all that he could to avoid a shutdown, making it clear he doesn't want that.

Some folks have been critical that he needed to stand up and be ready to do so. He has made it clear he doesn't want one; he doesn't believe it's good for America.

And so I know my friend from Round Rock, Texas, sitting in Georgetown as a judge for so many years, often looked at things like I do, as another former district judge. You look at evidence to bear things out.

Who is at fault? The American people are going to be looking around. Who is at fault?

Well, you look at what's happened, and the evidence is quite clear. You have a group here, a majority in the House that has done absolutely everything possible to try to placate the Senate.

We passed lots of bills, trying to get the funding done. And why was that? Well, the evidence is clear. The Democratic majority last year refused to do what was required and pass a budget. No budget passed, no appropriation to fund things.

Why? You can only speculate about that. It was an election year. Perhaps there was concern that if people really saw the total amount that they were going to be appropriating in all these areas that it might have even been worse in the election in November.

The people saw through, and the majority switched here in the House. So here we are with these bills that have been filed, pushing another bill this week here in the House. In response, there has been nothing passed in the Senate.

People that know the rules know that the Senators, any one of them-- and of course it would have to be a Democrat that would have any chance

of getting something passed, because the Democrats under Harry Reid are in the majority, so a Democrat, any Democrat down there, could take the bill, the bills that we have done, the CRs that we have done. They could take those and do as they did in ObamaCare.

You know, that was, boy, here again, it's the military.

The ObamaCare bill was a bill to assist with a tax credit for first- time homebuyers who were veterans. And what did the Senate do with that bill? Since it had to originate in the House under the Constitution, they took it, and in their bill they said they are taking the first- time homebuyer bill for veterans, stripping out every word and substituting, therefore, about 2,700 or 2,800 pages of their ObamaCare bill.

Well now, if they don't agree with what we have done, they could have taken any one of these CRs that we passed and said we don't like it; it's dead on arrival. They could have taken those, stripped out every word just like they did for the veterans, to count every word that helped the veterans and substituted, therefor, their disastrous bill in ObamaCare.

They could have done that with their own CR, what they were going to fund, what they wanted to see happen. Not one person down there in the majority of the Senate has taken the leadership to do that.

Some have said, well, why isn't the White House involved in what's going on in the Senate? Why aren't they showing some leadership down there?

I heard someone say, well, that's the White House. It's a separate branch.

The Vice President of the country is and has been the President of the Senate. He has not only a vested interest; he is the presiding officer of the Senate.

We have heard over and over from this President that Joe Biden is going to make sure things are done right. And yet what did he do when the going got tough? Maybe he is tough because he got going to Russia, and he disappeared.

When the going got tough for the President, he went to Brazil and played golf and then issued an order from down in South America sending troops into battle. And we had a former President Bush who quit playing golf. He said it just didn't feel right to know our troops were in harm's way and I would be out on some golf course.

This President not only doesn't have a problem playing golf with people in harm's way, he takes time out of his golf round to send more people into Libya into harm's way. And to be assured today that, hey, we really are going to get around to turning everything over to NATO, and it won't be us--my friends, 65 percent of NATO is American military. It's not a lot of comfort to me. But the least we could do is to make sure that our military, and that includes Reserves, and so that the military knows it includes all pay, all allowances, you're not going to miss anything if the Senate will just do right by them. We have a standalone bill that could be passed in the next day or two. It is House bill 1297. It could be done.

But as my friend from Round Rock has pointed out, our leadership, Speaker Boehner, has brought a CR for 1 week. He didn't want to do that. We know he didn't. But he was concerned about the military. And it funds all aspects of the military through the end of the year. Then we have this fallback bill that if the Senate is doing as they're indicating--oh, it's dead on arrival. We're not even going to pick it up and put our ideas and pass it through the Senate--then obviously the evidence is clear, Judge. It seems to me the evidence is all in, and it's very clear: They want a shutdown. They think they win politically by forcing a shutdown and then blaming the Republicans in the House. It's not only not the Republicans in the House's fault. It's also clearly them playing games with our military, with the vital function in this country, and it isn't right.

I thank you for yielding. I do thank you so much. I know we've got several of our critical key sponsors here on the House floor. And I am so grateful for the leadership. We're talking freshmen. We're talking people that haven't been here all that long, and yet they have grabbed this issue and have shown such leadership. I appreciate you so much. Thank you, Judge.

Judge, would you yield for a question?

Since we know it would do no good for a Republican in the Senate to take a CR and bring it to the floor of the Senate, or file it, but we also know that any Democrat in the majority down there could do that and at least try to get over some Democrats, Judge Carter, what does it tell you that not a single person in the majority has bothered to usher forth and file a CR of any kind to respond or to take ours? modify it? What does it tell you?

We're here because the Democratic majority last year did not do their job, did not give us a budget, did not due proper appropriations, and now the Senate has had the same problem. So I applaud anybody's efforts in trying to move the ball down the road so that we can appropriate. I just wish the Senate would do their job now and take care of it. But for a bill to say provisions that pass the House are hereby enacted into law violates my conscience and the Constitution. I cannot vote for it.

I appreciate my good friend for yielding.

You know, we hear so often from this administration they're concerned about the little guy, but we know that Wall Street executives gave contributions four times more for the present President than they did for his Republican opponent; and so it kind of tells you where you see where the contributions come from for a particular candidate, who they really care about.

We're told that they really care about the working poor; and yet the very thing we're talking about under the ObamaCare bill is almost inconceivable except that it was pushed through by this President and two Democratic majorities, that there's a provision that if you are just above the poverty line and you can't afford the health insurance that this administration dictates--as I understand, we will be including pregnancy, say you're a young single person, no plans of getting pregnant, no ability to get pregnant, other things that will not affect you at all but have been mandated by the administration-- instead of being able to buy a cheaper insurance policy you can afford, this administration will have made it so expensive that people just above the poverty line won't be able to afford it.

And how the bill deals with those working poor just above the poverty line, it requires a 2 percent additional income tax if you cannot afford the insurance that they mandate.

I understood where my friend was going, and I had not heard about that opinion, and I'm so glad the smart gentleman had brought that to our attention because that is

just incredible except that it is exactly what the Democratic proponents of ObamaCare and the President himself had said before they wanted to get to.

The goal was to use this to get to a complete government-run health care, a single-payer system, where everybody is required to be under it, and so this decision speeds that process up dramatically; but it is ultimately where they said they wanted to get anyway.

Now, having seen socialized medicine firsthand in the Soviet Union as an exchange student back in 1973, and having seen another form of socialized medicine for 4 years in the United States Army, I don't want to go there. I don't want the government in charge of my health care. I saw that in the Army. We have some incredible medics. We have some folks that shouldn't be practicing medicine that were working there; and, in fact, I'm hopeful that I was helpful in getting rid of some of those.

But that's not where we need to be going. People deserve better. But the fact is that in the bill itself there is retribution for the working poor who can't even afford to do what the administration has dictated.

So between a judge saying if you've got Social Security, you're going to be crammed into this policy, and this administration and former Speaker Pelosi and Harry Reid saying that we're going to penalize you because you're working poor and can't afford the luxuries of the policy we're mandating, the working guy just doesn't have much of a chance unless we are able to turn some of those things around.

And the working poor is what I often saw at Ft. Benning when people were not getting paid what they should have under President Carter; but now the military is paid better, and yet I wanted to bring up the situation that exists. There is an attempt to use the military as pawns even while they're out there fighting to protect us in foreign areas, combat theaters. The last thing those people should have to worry about is whether or not their money arrives in their account so their family can be taken care of. Yet we're hearing from military people, they understand if there's a shutdown, sure, they will get their pay eventually when the shutdown is over and maybe they will be lucky and Harry Reid and the Democrats in the Senate won't force a shutdown for very long.

We know they want to force it because they keep saying they do. And of course we heard from Senator Schumer himself that this is a political game to them. They are going to force a shutdown and basically blame the tea party. The military are the ones who are going to get hurt there. This from the Democratic Party that says all they care about is those working to protect us; and yet when you see what they are really doing behind the scenes, it is no such thing.

We have a report from CRS here that says: ``Even though uniformed personnel have been excepted from furloughs during a lapse in funding, no special provision allows the Defense Department to provide pay when appropriated funds are not available to do so. In this regard, uniformed personnel are treated no differently than excepted civilian Federal employees who are similarly expected to continue working during a shutdown but whose pay will be delayed until appropriations are enacted.''

Well, I know my friend from Indiana feels, as I do--and we've got, I don't know, around 50 other people just in a matter of an hour or so that have signed on to this bill, H.R. 1297, that says--and I will get over right to the meat of this thing--it says, During a funding gap impacting the Armed Forces, the Secretary of the Treasury shall make available to the Secretary of Defense and the Secretary of Homeland Security, in the case of the Coast Guard, out of any amounts in the general fund of the Treasury not otherwise appropriated, such amounts as the Secretary of Defense and the Secretary of Homeland Security, in the case of the Coast Guard, determines to be necessary to continue to provide pay and allowances without interruption to members of the Army, Navy, Air Force, Marine Corps, and Coast Guard, including Reserve components thereof who perform active service during the funding gap.''

So we hope that the majority leader in the Senate, Harry Reid, and Senator Schumer and those who have been saying privately, which got exposed--like the Bible says, What's done in the dark will be exposed, and it has been. They are out to shut down the government, try to blame the tea party.

And they have expected that one of the things they will, I'm sure, be able to do is have the ``lamestream media'' that run out and try to do anything they can to support that party go try to find spouses of military in harm's way who are scared to death because now the government has been shut down and there is no check coming for the next pay period. This will address that, and we can take our military off the table as pawns and let them be about concentrating on protecting us and saving their own lives.

One of the things that is being said is, But what about the children? I welcome that question, because those of us who are standing so firmly in trying to cut this runaway spending are the ones who are standing for the children and the children's grandchildren because what has been done--and in truth, I remember getting beat up in '05, '06 for $160 billion in deficit spending. It was wrong. We shouldn't have been there. But now for the last 3 years, 2\1/2\, to be over a trillion dollars each year is just reprehensible. It is wrapping such a heavy weight and chains around the necks of the children--some not even born yet--that it is unthinkable that somebody would invoke for the children to keep the self-aggrandizing spending going when it is going to come out of the children and their grandchildren's pockets.

We've got some that say, It's all going to work out. Don't worry about it. Look, just let the spending go. Don't rock the boat.

I saw this prayer from Peter Marshall back when he was Chaplain of the Senate. And just for historical purposes, in one of his prayers in the Senate, he said, ``Our Father, give us the faith to believe that it is possible for us to live victoriously even in the midst of dangerous opportunity that we call crisis. Help us to see that there is something better than patient endurance or keeping a stiff upper lip, and that whistling in the dark is not really bravery.''

Mr. Speaker, always an honor to come to this floor in these hallowed Halls and address the issues of the day.

My colleague from across the aisle was discussing jobs. That is so important to most Americans, and there is one way we could do a great deal toward immediately putting Americans back to work, and that would be if we started utilizing more of our own energy resources, which is what this Nation has been so blessed with. When you consider all of the natural resources that are natural energy sources--coal, natural gas, oil, we do have wind, places where solar works--but all of the carbon- based energy resources that are so valuable around the world, the ones for which we keep paying trillions of dollars to other nations that could be utilized here in the United States and could be utilized to create jobs right here at home, it does not make sense to keep sending hundreds of billions and trillions of dollars to countries that don't like us. We're doing that through the purchase of energy.

I've listened to all the explanations about why we've gone into Libya that have been made in the press. Those press conferences, all kinds of releases by this administration, and you still come back to trying to figure out why Libya was so much more important than Tunisia or so many of the others, Iran.

I mean, the people of Iran have attempted rebellions against madman Ahmadinejad, and this administration didn't seem to lend a helping hand, and that's a nation whose leader has sworn to see that the United States, Ahmadinejad said, will soon no longer be a Nation. As Ahmadinejad had said, we'll soon be able to experience a world without the United States and Zionism. So he says he's going to eliminate the United States; we're going to eliminate Israel. That ought to cause concern.

Have we lifted anything other than trying to prevent people from buying goods from Iran? Not really. Oh, yes, and those sanctions are going to work, and probably in another 15, 20 years they've got a real chance of working. The trouble is, in 15 or 20 years--and, actually, the possibility exists in a whole lot less than 5--if we continue to persist in sanctions and nothing more with Iran, they will get nuclear weapons, and then they will give us a choice: either remove the sanctions or count on a nuclear blast coming in your country. That's why we have to prevent them from getting nuclear weapons. But we use them, and they will certainly threaten to use them so that they can get what they want. In fact, they may get more by threatening the use once they have them than they would to actually use them.

But Ahmadinejad has made clear in a number of settings he expects the 12th Imam, the Mahdi, to be coming, and he believes he can hasten the return of the Mahdi, have a global caliphate where all of us fall on our knees supposedly or die. Well, we could prevent that, could have stopped it long before now, but we haven't.

So what makes Libya so special? It's really interesting, and it's hard to put our finger on it. Libya does produce oil. China, I understand, may be the biggest purchaser of Libyan oil but not the United States. So why should we go rushing to spend hundreds of millions or billions of dollars in Libya? Europe, England are big customers of Libyan oil. So why would we be running to help Europe and England with their Libyan oil? Well, the President's made clear, it's because they asked us to. You know, we've got a number--and Secretary Clinton has also said, she's made the rounds of the news programs, the Arab States asked us to, the U.N. asked us to, Europe and England's asked us to, so why would we ever need to come to Congress.

It's been made very clear, you know. The public has heard those comments. You don't have to come to Congress when the U.N. has said that's something that needs to be done.

It's interesting, though, I don't recall any of the Cabinet members or the President raising their right hand and taking an oath to defend the United Nations. I was thinking their oath had to do with our Constitution and our country.

And it's also been made clear that Libya was not a threat to our national security, not a threat to our vital interests; yet we're willing to put our treasure and our American lives on the line for something that's not in our vital interests. That does not make sense.

But then again, as you continue to piece together the Obama doctrine--we get it, that apparently intervening, risking American lives, and spending American treasure that this administration didn't earn but they are taking away from taxpayers and then borrowing from others, that's okay if it kind of feels like it ought to be something we do, you know?

If it feels like we ought to go to Libya and risk American lives and spend all that American treasure, then let's go because, after all, people asked us to do that. Why would we not go when people around the world ask us to do that? Could it possibly be that a reason for not doing it is because an oath was taken to this country--not to the U.N., not to the Chinese or the European constitutions or the European Union, but to this country? This is where the oath was taken. These are the people in America for whom and to whom the oath was made.

But then we look at energy again and we look at spending treasure; and as more people are finding out, in the last couple of years this administration has said, You know what, we're shutting down drilling on the gulf coast. We're not just going to stop the one company that had around 800 safety violations while others had one or two during the same period because, see, that's British Petroleum.

And British Petroleum, as we found out, was poised to come public and be the administration and the Democratic Party's one big energy company that rode in on a white horse and said, we support the cap-and-trade bill. We're going to make money like crazy for BP on the side trading in carbon. These stupid Americans. They don't get it. It's a transfer of wealth like nothing anybody has ever seen before. The American people lose. Companies like BP and General Electric, they'll all win big. But the American people lose.

They wouldn't go after BP. It took so long to go after them. And when you know that BP was going to be their big energy company to embrace and endorse the cap-and-trade bill, then it makes a lot more sense as to why it took the administration so long to respond. Then of course we will recall the President sat down with the BP exec and said, Okay, let's tell the American public that you are going to put up $20 billion. They did. Well, that saved some feelings, but there was never $20 billion put up.

So isn't it amazing. We don't know what all was discussed. We don't know what all quid pro quo was promised for BP coming in and offering large sums of money. Obviously, there were a lot of people on the coast that were devastated and continue to be devastated who were not compensated by any money from BP. But nonetheless, it took the heat off of BP for a while.

So perhaps the administration thought that after having the moratorium and putting tens of thousands of

families out of work, putting tens of thousands of families onto unemployment insurance, devastating tens of thousands of families, perhaps the administration thought that nobody would notice that the first permit that was extended after this moratorium, to hurt the Southern States--it actually hurt the whole country--but the first permit, I believe, went to Noble Energy Company.

But the major investor was a company called British Petroleum. Now, was that a quid pro quo? Okay, BP, we are not going to be able to take you out into the Rose Garden, have you announce that you support the cap-and-trade bill because, you know, you are just not well thought of right now. It wouldn't work right now. But there will be pie in the sky by and by if you will just play along with us for a while. Who knows what conversation occurred there.

But isn't it interesting that BP was the largest investor in the company that got the first permit after the drilling moratorium.

Now, understand, there haven't just been a glut of permits come rushing forward. There are still tens of thousands of families that were made destitute by this administration because they chose to punish the entire South and even the country, rather than allowing energy jobs to go forward in the gulf coast area.

So imagine the surprise of some of those destitute folks that have just been traumatized by this administration when they find out that our President has just been down in South America, telling the Brazilians that we think so much of their drilling that we're going to loan them $2 billion to drill off their coast and that, when they strike this oil off their coast, the President tells them, We're going to be your best customer.

Why couldn't we be our own best customer? Why couldn't we be drilling off our own coast? Why couldn't we be drilling in ANWR? Why couldn't we be drilling in the North Slope area where there's no drilling allowed yet? We would be our own best customer. We would create millions of jobs not just in the oil industry but all kinds of jobs if the President were not wanting to punish this area.

I mean, it's as if we're wanting to punish free enterprise. Actually, we've had a very cold winter where I live. Yet the EPA, under this administration, doesn't care, and they don't care that the new regulations they are coming out with would not have maybe one-billionth of 1 percent effect on the CO2 level in the atmosphere.

Yet as a result of this administration and their war against jobs-- the war on jobs--you've got the EPA out there trying to put people out of business, keeping people from hiring, when the truth is, when those jobs leave here, they go to South America. They go to China, India, different places. Then they pollute a minimum of four times more than the pollution in this country from the same industry because we do a good job of policing industries.

When the economy is going well, that is when you have the best chance of really cleaning the environment because when an economy is struggling--and China knows about a struggling economy, trying to employ people, keep them from getting upset and revolting. When an economy is struggling, people don't care so much about the environment. They are more interested in just feeding themselves, having a roof over their heads, and surviving. So if you want to help the environment, if that is the true purpose, then what you do is allow the economy to thrive.

This President has had a war on jobs, and that continues--oh, I'm sorry. I should qualify that--a war on jobs in America. Because obviously we're helping create jobs in Brazil. We're helping the Democratic largest contributor, Mr. Soros, with his single largest investment for drilling down in South America or Brazil. So the Democrats' largest investor is going to make a tremendous amount of money because we're loaning $2 billion to pay him for his investment down there to do the drilling that we won't allow in this country.

Why is it that our global President is more interested in creating jobs in Brazil than in the United States? I guess, whenever we find out that reason, it may help us understand why we expend American treasure and risk American lives in a country that is of no vital interest to this country.

It is interesting. When you look at the history of Muammar Qadhafi, this is not a nice man. This is not a man that should have avoided prison and perhaps even capital punishment, depending on the charges, the evidence, and proving the charges.

Yet you have to look at what will replace Qadhafi when he's gone.

Now, first we hear from the administration, no, there's no al Qaeda there rebelling, and then we find out, yes, there is. They're involved. The Muslim Brotherhood is involved in the rebellion in Egypt.

Now, Mubarak was a dictator. We're not big fans of dictatorship in this country. But when you have to look at the national vital interest here and you have a man who is in charge in Egypt who is not a threat to the United States and was living as best one could with the status quo next to Israel and yet there is an effort to throw Mubarak out of office and any kind of decent intel would indicate you've got the Muslim Brotherhood that in all likelihood will replace Mubarak, then why did we call for Mubarak to leave and allow himself to be replaced by a group that wants us all to bow the knee in one giant global caliphate to religion when some of us believe in our own, my case, Christian beliefs, heart and soul, which I had hoped to get through this life without having to die for?

But there are people who are trying to take over Egypt who we've given great encouragement to. There are people in Libya that are wanting to take over that country and its powerful military who would like us to either convert from Christianity or to lose our heads. Why would we be helping them? That's a difficult question. So if it weren't so serious, it would be an amusing game to try to figure out what this administration is attempting to do.

What is the Obama doctrine? When it comes to the budget, the President gave a wonderful speech. He read it impeccably well, about how we have got to cut spending. He gave that speech right before he released his budget. And that budget was projecting around a $3.75 trillion expenditure when we were only going to take in around $2.1 trillion. So he gave a speech about cutting spending, and he's been doing that the last 2 years, and it turns out the first year we had a $1 trillion deficit. The next year we had more than that. And this year the President's proposed a budget and spending that will be a $1.65 trillion deficit. That makes no sense. Why would you give speeches saying you're going to cut spending, and yet every year it goes up and up dramatically? That doesn't make sense.

Yet we know the results of the election in November indicated very clearly the American people want the spending cut. We can't continue to live in a country that is running up trillion dollar deficits. People will quit buying our bonds. We're dangerously close to having our bonds downgraded, our rating lowered, and if that happens, interest rates go up. And if the interest rates go up like that, that will give fodder to those who are demanding that something besides the dollar be used to buy oil. I mean, it could put this country in a terrible financial spiral downward from which it might be impossible to pull out.

I was in a plane once when I was told the baffles were taken out. It was aerobatically qualified, and I was being allowed to sit in the copilot's seat. It was a crop dusting plane, and it was kind of fun flying the plane with the joystick.

I said through the radio system in the plane to the pilot, This thing is aerobatic qualified, isn't it? You know, we could do loops and go in and out of spins. And he said, It would be, but we removed the baffles from inside the wings where the gasoline for the fuel is stored; so if we go into a spin, then the fuel all runs to one end of one wing and we go into a spin we can't get out of, and we'll crash and both of us die.

Well, that's kind of where we're heading with this thing. If we don't get the spending under control, one thing leads to another and we're in big trouble. And it's got to stop.

At the same time, we're supposed to be helping Americans with better

health care. If you liked your insurance, you were going to keep it. Yet we found out that absolutely was not true. If you liked your doctor, you can keep him. We found out that absolutely was not true. It's a bad bill.

Then when you find out that the prior Congress not only passed that 2,800-page bill with all kinds of things in it, including a new President's commissioned officer corps and noncommissioned officer corps, do we really need that, I wondered, when I had read that in the bill.

But then when you find out we're being sent to Libya and going to use our treasure and our American lives there, maybe there's intention to so deplete the military that we're going to need that Presidential reserve officers commissioned corps and noncommissioned corps that the President can call up on a moment's notice involuntarily, according to the ObamaCare bill.

But the trouble is there's already been $105 billion appropriated. It's like writing postdated checks that are due to be cashed each year into the future. Well, you're really not supposed to do that. That's not appropriate.

This isn't like Social Security where it is controlled by formulas and it's in automatic motion. This was just an appropriation. It's not mandatory. It could be repealed; but, to do so, it actually has to be rescinded.

My friend Steve King has got a bill that would prohibit any money that's currently been appropriated through the present from being utilized for the purposes; in other words, it ties the hands of the administration from using any of the money already appropriated for the purposes of implementing this ObamaCare program.

Denny Rehberg has an amendment that was voted in that also has some effect in that regard.

Jack Kingston is an appropriator and has come up with an idea that a couple of us have joined forces with him, and I think we've got around 22 cosponsors, and that's growing constantly. But it is an approach that I would hope would attract Democrats in both the Senate and the House because it is an important principle. And I would certainly hope that it would attract Democrats in the House because it, in effect, says we're not going to do postdated checks for something besides Social Security, those type of things that were controlled by formulas. We're going to cancel the postdated checks.

Now, it should be attractive to my friends in the minority now because, someday, they may be back in the majority. If and when that happens, they surely would not want the Republican majority to have passed a decade worth of spending bills, not for Social Security, not for mandatory spending, but a decade worth of spending with postdated checks, say you can't ever stop this.

So the principle that the Kingston bill would stand on is that these type of things must be taken up annually. So we're going to cancel all the postdated checks that were going to be cashed in the future. And if the Democratic Representatives get back in the majority, some will say it's not a good idea, because if they get back in the majority, they can just appropriate that money. Well, of course they can.

They can pass a whole different health care bill if they get back in the majority. That's the way it works. When you are in the majority, you can pass things.

So it would not be unfair to just say we are canceling all those postdated checks, we are canceling $105 billion worth of spending; and, if you get back in the majority, it is up to you what you appropriate. But as long as we are in the majority, we are not spending that money.

That allows us to keep our promise. It allows people on both sides of the aisle to say we are standing on principle and on procedure that the majority should rule in the legislature, and not a minority that years ago was a majority. That's a better way to do it.

So there have been those questions. Some have said, why make it so complicated? In the new bill that we have proposed today and filed today, it would effectively end the $105.5 billion in the funding that was in Obamacare by turning them into an authorization without the appropriation. That means not this or any future administration would be able to spend the money without first coming to Congress and getting a majority here in both the House and the Senate to approve it.

Now, there are those that say, well, you know, there are a few good things in that Obamacare bill. Well, my gosh, when you have a 2,800- page bill, there surely ought to be something in there that is decent. And there were a few good things. But why not make those a 25-page bill instead of a 2,800 page bill? Why create all these hundreds of new agencies, the hundreds of thousands of pages of regulations, all those things that come from this massive government overload? Why not just do away with all of those things?

That is what we should do, and then start, as Senator Obama had said we should do when he said repeatedly we ought to have negotiations on a health care bill. We ought to have hearings, we ought to have negotiations that are public. Have them on C-SPAN if C-SPAN will carry it. Let everyone see who is in it for themselves and who is in it for the American people. I think the American people, even without seeing the negotiations on Obamacare, got the message who was for the American people, and that is why the House changed hands.

So we hope that in the next few days there will be more and more people get on board, because this is an important principle: A minority, even though they once were a majority, should not be able to bind future Congresses on things that are not mandatory through formulas like Social Security.

Now, with regard to Libya, there were some interesting quotes from the President's speech. He had pointed out that Qadhafi had denied his people freedom, exploited their wealth, murdered opponents at home and abroad, and terrorized innocent people. This had been going on for years. It certainly had been going on all the time that President Obama has been in office. It was going on when he was a Senator, and he had never called on these kind of things before.

But he goes on. Just two paragraphs down, he says, ``Joining with other Nations at the United Nations Security Council, we broadened our sanctions, imposed an arms embargo, and enabled Qadhafi and those around him to be held accountable for their crimes.''

Now, I'm familiar with holding people accountable for their crimes. As a former judge and as a former prosecutor, I have done that, held people accountable for their crimes. I don't see what this administration has done to make Qadhafi accountable for his crimes. In fact, there was discussion in the news today that this administration is floating the idea of some type of amnesty if Qadhafi will just leave. So that statement in his speech may be like the one, if you like your health insurance, you will be able to keep it. It sounds good, but it has no basis in fact.

The President said, ``Military jets and helicopter gunships were unleashed upon people who had no means to defend themselves against assault from the air.'' My understanding is that has happened in Burma, Pakistan, possibly in Syria. There are a lot of other countries it has happened in where we haven't gone against the administration in that country. So that was a little puzzling.

The President said, ``So 9 days ago, after consulting the bipartisan leadership in Congress, I authorized military action to stop the killing and enforce U.N. Security Council Resolution 1973.'' But the fact is, we have been told repeatedly that this administration had the support of the U.N., to whom the President did not take an oath to defend and did not have the consent of the governed in this country-- not the governed and not the governed's legally elected representatives.

Now, the President said in his speech, ``We hit Qadhafi's troops.'' Well, I would think, with the President's broad education, he would understand if an infidel, or an infidel country like we are considered, kills Muslims, then we are worthy of death under what they consider the law. So if the President is right and we haven't just shot rockets and taken out certain type of military hardware, we have actually killed Muslims in Libya, then we have not made ourselves a bunch of friends. In fact, that may be one of the reasons we see the President's image being

stomped on and burned and destroyed in effigy in Libya and foreign countries.

The President said, ``I said that America's role would be limited. We would not put ground troops into Libya; that we would focus our unique capabilities on the front end of the operation, and we would transfer responsibility to our allies and partners.'' In other words, we are turning over command, but our U.S. military is doing the lion's share of the fighting. And so we keep hearing that in the news. This administration is turning over the lion's share of the effort when actually they are turning over the leadership.

My office made an official request yesterday of the administration to know what percentage of the military of NATO is U.S. military, and we were given the figure 65 percent. So it doesn't come as a great comfort to many of us that we are turning over this great responsibility that we have led as helpers in Libya to NATO when we are 65 percent of NATO. That is one of those things that sounds good. Kind of like, if you like your insurance, you can keep it. But it really doesn't have much basis in fact for comfort.

The President said in his speech, ``NATO has taken command of the enforcement of the arms embargo and no-fly zone.'' Yet, it is confusing, because those speaking for the administration here in Washington seem to indicate that we have not yet turned over command.

He says, ``Going forward, the lead in enforcing the no-fly zone and protecting civilians on the ground will transition to our allies and our partners.'' I guess that means NATO, which we are 65 percent of.

I know I look stupid sometimes, but, I mean, I can get that. If we are turning it over to a group that is 65 percent us, we really haven't turned it over. Unless we want to say, ``Yeah, but we are not leading anymore. We are putting our military under the command of foreigners who have never taken an oath to support and defend the Constitution of this country.''

How do you feel good about that? Well, it is hard for some of us to feel good about it.

The President says Libya will remain dangerous. The question is, dangerous to whom? We saw that after the invasion of Iraq, that Qadhafi threw up his hands and said, Hey, we will give up nukes, we will give up pursuing anything. We don't want you to invade our country, so we want to work with you. We saw a similar attitude after President Reagan dropped a bomb down his chimney.

So we know that, as long as Qadhafi knows we have a strong President who will go after him if he does anything to us, then we have nothing to fear. But we also know from his history that if he is not controlled, if we do not have a strong President who is willing to go after and punish those who are attempting to destroy us, then maybe he is dangerous. Maybe that is what the President was talking about in his speech.

Anyway, the President said we also have the ability to stop Qadhafi's forces in their tracks without putting American troops on the ground. But, here again, it didn't have the support of the American people; it didn't have the support of Congress.

It brings back to mind, when George W. Bush was President, he enjoyed playing golf. He still does apparently. I never played with him, but I understand he is a good athlete. But once troops were committed to harm's way, President George W. Bush said it didn't feel right for him to be out on a golf course while troops he committed to harm's way were in danger, so he gave up playing golf for the rest of his administration.

Yet the current administration has a President at the top who not only doesn't feel any qualms about playing golf while we have troops committed that he committed to harm's way, he will also play golf and pause long enough to commit more troops to harm's way.

The President said the democratic impulses that are dawning across the region would be eclipsed by the darkest form of dictatorship. That is, unfortunately, what the majority of Americans are concerned about happening here in America if we get away from the legislative process and forcing bills through that are not supported by the American public and forcing American commitments in places that America does not support and spending beyond anything a drunken sailor would have ever spent. We are afraid of what is happening in this country. We are afraid of what is happening to our economy.

The President said it is also what the Libyan opposition asked us to do. Well, then we find out the Libyan opposition is composed of, at least numerous members are part of al Qaeda and the Muslim Brotherhood; and apparently al Qaeda and Muslim Brotherhood representatives had not asked us to intervene militarily in Egypt or Tunisia or Syria. Maybe that is the difference, I don't know. But it is disconcerting.

The fact is, when you look at the oath we took, our allegiance is to this country. It is not to the United Nations; it is not to other countries. It is to this Nation. So a serious look at Libya and the problems there might deserve some intervention. But first we have to ask the question, is whoever will replace Qadhafi more of a danger to this country than Qadhafi? If the answer is possibly yes, then we should not be sending American treasure and American lives to help intervene on behalf of people who would like to see this Nation destroyed. That ought to be pretty commonsense.

One other factor is Israel. We have a true friend in Israel in the Middle East. But, unfortunately, our friends have seen the way we have treated our best friend in the Middle East, Israel. We vote against them at times, like we did last May. We snub them in public ways people hear about. Israel's enemies hear about how we snubbed Israel. And Israel's enemies know when there is a crack and especially, whether it is there or not, a perceived distance between Israel and their greatest ally that used to be us. Then it is time to move. That is when the flotilla came last May, is after we voted against Israel. That is when a lot of these actions began taking place. People who want to see Israel gone seem to be in the middle of revolting in a number of countries around the Middle East and Africa.

We have got to come back to what is best for the United States, and it should be very clear. With the common interests and beliefs that the people of Israel have in the value of life and the value of equality of people and the equality of women, those ought to be our friends. Those ought to be people who, when under attack, tell us we are next.

In this case, it is not a hard deduction to get to, because the people have said we want to eliminate Israel, the little Satan, and then the United States, the big Satan. So Israel is a great investment as a defense partner, because if they go, if they go down, we are certainly next, and also I happen to believe that, in blessing Israel, we can be blessed.

Before I conclude my time here tonight, it is so important to take a look historically at things that have been said in the past history of this Nation, that have been said in this building in official settings, that have been said by those who have led the way, carried a torch to light our way down the years. One such man was the Chaplain of the Senate, Peter Marshall.

I was given this book in the last couple of weeks, two or three weeks, ``Sermons and Prayers of Peter Marshall,'' while he was Chaplain of the United States Senate. I would just like to read a prayer that Peter Marshall gave in the Senate for the historical value and insight of this brilliant man, a dedicated Christian.

He said: Our father, we are beginning to understand at last that the things that are wrong with our world are the sum total of all the things that are wrong with us as individuals. Thou has made us after Thine image, and our hearts can find no rest until they rest in Thee.

We are too Christian, really, to enjoy sinning and too fond of sinning to really enjoy Christianity. Most of us know perfectly well what we ought to do. Our trouble is that we do not want to do it. Thy help is our only help. Make us want to do what is right, and give us the ability to do it.

In the name of Christ, our Lord. Amen.

A prayer by Peter Marshall.

I appreciate the gentleman yielding. We're going to talk some about the CR. We're going to talk about government spending and what we ought to be doing.

Mr. Speaker, I am grateful to my dear friend Dan Burton. He is a patriotic American. He stands for what he believes in. And if we had a lot more Dan Burtons in Washington, the country would be that much better off. So we're grateful to him and his service.

It is an honor to serve in this body. It's been rather frustrating lately, and one of the things I wanted to mention was that another good friend, former fellow judge as I was, a district judge--I lost credibility as far as some of the district judges believed when I became chief justice of the Court of Appeals--but my friend Ted Poe from Houston is pushing a bill that I'm sure glad to cosponsor with him. I'm glad he's doing it. It goes a bit hand-in-hand with a bill that I've been pushing ever since I've been here.

But Congressman Poe's bill would allow an up-or-down vote on all the different countries that we provide foreign assistance. It's a good idea. I mean, for all of the years that I've been here in each Congress, three times we have filed a U.N. voting accountability bill, and my friend Ted Poe has been on that bill cosponsoring with us, and I'm glad to support his bill.

My bill simply says any country that votes against us more than half the time gets no foreign assistance the following year. We know there's sometimes when there are emergencies, there are things we need to do, and so there's an exception for that in the event of an international emergency, but otherwise, we're not going to tell foreign countries how they vote in the U.N., but you can tell a lot about who is your friend and who isn't by who stands with you during difficult times and on difficult issues, and you're able to discern who has the same moral beliefs as you do.

For example, there are countries where sharia law is the rule of the land, and life does not have the value that we in America believe that God gave life to have. So it's okay. In fact, you can find your way to paradise, some believe, and not all Muslims believe this, but there are those who believe that you can find your way to paradise and differing number of virgins waiting for you if you die while you're killing infidels, people that don't believe in the same things you do. Well, that's fine, but if you believe in torturing, killing, taking a life, taking innocent lives for nothing, or just because of someone's religious beliefs, then we should not be financing that.

It's deeply troubling to see that in Egypt, one account said that President--or king, whatever you want to call him--Mubarak had $70 billion in the bank. Another account said he had $7 billion in the account. Either way, can't help but wonder if that couldn't be a whole lot of U.S. taxpayer dollars back when we weren't having to borrow to give away money like we are now. We were giving $2 billion or so a year, and it wouldn't be surprising if most of that money were United States dollars that had been given to Egypt.

On the other hand, we know that there are despots, there are dictators, there are corrupt leaders of countries around the world who believe that it's fine to even force women to have abortions. As my friend and I both believe, abortion is wrong. It is wrong. It is taking innocent life. Yet, we are just handing money out around the world hand over fist, and people taking innocent lives, the unborn of others.

We know that there was about to be a hanging of a man who converted from Islam to Christianity over in Afghanistan, and we're still just pouring money into Karzai's regime. There are issues about him and his brother, whether or not there is corruption there, and we're just pouring money in there that we don't have. And we're having to pay, 40, 42 cents in interest of every $1 on loans because we don't have the money to do that.

In any event, my friend Chris Smith is here, and I would be happy to yield to him.

I certainly thank my friend from New Jersey. Chris Smith, you are a leader. You are a man of conviction who cares deeply about those who have suffered for no good reason and standing for freedom. You are a true patriot, and it's an honor to serve with you as a friend here.

I don't know if you were aware; but in the discussion about all the foreign aid to countries who do not have the same abiding love and desire for freedom for all people and the same value of human life, I didn't know if my friend was aware of the fact that in 2008--I don't have the 2009 and 2010 numbers in front of me--but for 2008, this country, the United States, provided $45,330,000 in aid to Cuba. And you can't help but wonder over the years, like with Dr. Biscet, how much American money might have ever been used to help restrain heroes of this whole Earth that should have been praised and appreciated. Yet we're giving money to brutal dictators who treat the best that humanity has to offer in this manner. Does the gentleman has some thoughts?

Well, thank you.

And what an anomaly to have a country that believes in freedom and liberty and human life and human value, and yet at the same time we demean it--whether it's giving money to entities that take unborn lives or whether it's giving money to brutal dictators who certainly don't believe in freedom of religion but are willing to take the lives of people because of their religion or who repressively say, We told you you could have one child, so we're going to kill your other children.

It is just a mind-boggling thing, as Bo Pilgrim used to say. I'm sure he still does. But it's mind-boggling. How do we think that we're helping the world when we give massive amounts of money to people that are the very antithesis of the things that Americans have given their last full measure of devotion to preserve and protect?

I yield to my friend.

I appreciate the gentleman's insights. But, unfortunately, based on our modern history in this country, the indications are if you were being tortured and held in prison, it doesn't appear that this government would do anything different than what we've been doing.

And the point that you make is so important. We've heard it from those who suffer and have suffered in gulags, who have been later released, and when we hear whether it was those held in Poland or in the Russian gulags or Chinese or Cuban, for example, when Ronald Reagan said this is an evil empire, what we've heard in the more recent years is that gave us hope. Somebody was willing to stand up and call it what it was. And at the time, that kept them going.

And our colleague here in the House, Sam Johnson, when he was a POW for 7 years in North Vietnam, being tortured daily, one of the most difficult things to endure was the information that our country did not care.

Now, it's heartbreaking to think about our friends who were suffering in horrible prison conditions, and we gave--not only gave the impression we didn't care, we had people running around blaming those very people for their own troubles when all they were trying to do was keep horrible, repressive regimes from taking over and killing millions, as they did when we left.

And so one of the great attributes of Reagan was he called things like he saw them, and it gave hope to the world.

And I don't know if my friend from New Jersey has heard me mention this, but last year, around Easter, I was in West Africa and met with some of the West Africans who were Christians. And the oldest said he wanted to make sure that I knew that they were so excited when we elected an African American president, that that was thrilling to them, until they began to see that his policies were weakening America. And this elderly, wonderful, wise gentleman, with others younger, all in agreement, said, You have got to make sure people in Washington understand. If you keep becoming weaker, we lose hope in this life. We know where our hope is in the next life. But as far as our hope for having a peaceful life in this world, it will be gone when you become too weak. Please tell your friends in Washington, do not let America grow any weaker.

And here we overspend. We give monies to countries who hate us, who hate the things we stand for, who hate the fact that we believe in freedom, because they believe freedom leads to debauchery, and so they believe you should have some dictator, caliphate, somebody that tells you everything you can do and what you can't do because freedom, they believe, corrupts; whereas, we know in our hearts, it's in our Constitution, it's in our Declaration of Independence, God gave us freedom to make choices.

And it is one of the greatest things that America has done that I think has helped cause this Nation to be blessed. We have stood for those freedoms. Not just for America. There is no country in the history of the world that has

ever given treasure and life of that country's people to get freedom for other countries and other people of whom we ask nothing in return. That is unheard of in the history of the world, and yet this Nation has done it over and over. We have done it to help protect Muslims and give them freedom of choice, Christians, Buddhists. It did not matter. It was all about human rights, human dignity, and human freedom. And we see that slipping away every time we prop up some brutal dictator, every time we look the other way and pat cruel, evil people on the back and say, ``Oh, we're so proud of you; we're glad to be your friend,'' when those like who have been repressed by Cuba say, ``Please, do not give more credibility to the oppressors.''

I yield to my friend for any final thoughts.

It is certainly an honor to serve with you. And I don't know if you are aware, our friend Ted Poe, our colleague, has a bill that is trying to force all foreign aid to come to a vote country by country. That would give us the chance to discuss these very things on each country, on whether or not we should give them assistance. Isn't that wonderful? So I look forward to that in the time to come.

Mr. Speaker, we appreciate the time to discuss this very important issue, and especially now that money is so critically needed and that we should not be wasting it to help those who repress others.

Mr. Speaker, I do echo the comments of my friend from Ohio (Ms. Kaptur). Our hearts do go out, our prayers do go out for the people in Japan, difficult time there.

At the same time, there are so many people struggling in this country. There are so many people out of work; and although in the last week gas prices have come down some, sadly in the wake of the Japan tragedy, there is no doubt speculation will eventually go back up unless this administration stops, ceases, desists in putting our natural resources off limits for our use to help our economy to create jobs for our citizens. You know, certainly other countries welcome the pigheadedness of those in charge of this administration who are determined to keep us from using our own resources.

We had a hearing today in the Natural Resources Committee, and the chairman of the Railroad Commission, the regulating body in Texas, Ms. Elizabeth Jones, had indicated--and I was not aware of what exactly she had said--but, apparently, this administration is making a big deal of reopening and granting a permit that actually was not a new permit. This is something that had been pending that was a re-release and was not a new permit.

And how ironic, the ultimate irony, that this administration's first supposed new permit would be to a drilling project in which British Petroleum, BP, would be the major investor. How about that? This administration simply cannot get away from trying to help their buddies at BP.

It was interesting to hear our friend across the aisle from Massachusetts in our hearing today indicate that in the European waters, off their coasts, they have the same driller, the same international companies; and yet, the safety records over there are much better than they are in the Gulf of Mexico. Quite interesting because the only difference is, in this country, the administration is run by those who help out President Obama, and they have sadly looked the other way while BP racked up safety violation after safety violation, after dozens of safety violations.

In the meantime, the other major drillers had one, two violations over the same period. BP racked up dozens of violations and then hundreds of violations until they had reached around 800 safety violations. But did this administration rein them in? No.

And then we later read that actually when this administration could not bring itself to really come down on BP after the disastrous blowout of the Deepwater Horizon, that BP executives were negotiating and working out the day, the time, the place that they would come out in support of President Obama's and our Democratic colleagues' great pride and joy called the cap-and-trade bill. I don't want to offend people by calling it the crap-and-trade bill, so we will call it the cap-and- trade bill instead of what I really think it is.

But they were negotiating to come out and be the administration's one big international energy company that embraced this whole cap-and-trade bill. Why? Because they had special perks they were getting out of it with regard to carbon sales, and so they were coming onboard.

Well, of course this administration did not want to come down on BP when they were going to be the big energy company that came out saying, Yes, we're for this cap-and-trade bill. Yes, we think it's good. Why? Because we're going to get rich off of it even though Americans are going to be paying out the nose for energy once this thing kicks in. Americans will be losing their jobs right and left; but, boy, we will make a lot of money because we're cronies with the administration. So they were going to come out in support.

The administration didn't want to shut them down. They were hoping that what BP was telling them about it not really being that big of a deal would be true. So of course the President didn't fly down there immediately, like he had said about President Bush that he should have after Katrina. This President waited and waited, really didn't want to come down on BP because these were his buddies that were going to help him get across the finish line the cap-and-trade bill. They were the guys that had safety violation after safety violation. So it gets a little difficult to hear friends across the aisle talk about cronyism when we know that when you really examine the facts where the cronyism lies.

We have heard people talk about how offensive it was that there were offshore leases that had language removed from the pricing from which royalties were paid that cost the United States Treasury billions of dollars in royalties that rightfully would have been the U.S. Treasury's, except that our hearings indicated that there was actually at least one or two people in the Clinton administration who had it pointed out, Hey, we need this language in here that allows us to get the amount of royalties we should. But they were instructed, We are leaving it out here.

When we had a hearing with a friend of the Clinton administration, a former appointee of the Clinton administration who had done his research, I asked him why he had not questioned those people who had ordered that that language be kept out. He said, Well, they left the administration, so we really can't question them. They are in the private sector now.

Well, you do a little further research, and you find out that the private sector, these people that cost the United States Government billions of dollars and made billions of dollars for the cronies of the Democrats in the Big Oil, they actually had gone to work for British Petroleum. How about that. So to have heard the former Clinton appointee who did the investigations say, Well, I couldn't possibly question these people because they left, and they were in the private sector, I was surprised because if someone intentionally and knowingly defrauds the government, it's a crime. And the FBI doesn't have any trouble normally going after folks, subpoenaing records. They know how to do it. They do it quite well. But they didn't go after these individuals because--well, they had left government service, and this one in particular had gone to work for British Petroleum. How about that.

So imagine our surprise in 2009 when we find out that the person who was most knowledgeable about the language being taken out that cost us billions of dollars and had gone to work for British Petroleum had now been brought on to the Obama administration to supervise these offshore leases. How about that. Or to quote our friends from Saturday Night Live: ``What's up with that?'' It cost the country billions of dollars, went to work for British Petroleum, and then you bring them back on and put them in charge of the offshore leases?

Then we find out that those who worked for the Interior Department,

the offshore rig inspectors who stand between this country and disastrous problems off the coast that are man-made, were the ones within the Bureau of Land Management that were allowed to unionize.

Well, that sounds kind of strange because, you know, union negotiations--normally, if you go back to the inception of unions, it was to overcome issues of corporate greed. It didn't seem to fit here because here were people that were supposed to stand between our Nation and man-made disasters off our coast. And they were allowed to unionize because we know unions, they'll negotiate--oops, these folks can't work too many hours, can't work too many hours in succession. You have got to do this. You can't go--you know, there are all kinds of things negotiated. It would be like negotiating a union contract on behalf of the military soldiers. You can't overwork them. You can't expect them to work too late into the evening, travel too much.

When people are standing between us and disaster, it just is not appropriate to have contracts negotiated in a union manner, because they stand between us and disaster. It's not appropriate for people in the military, and it's not appropriate for our offshore rig inspectors. If they have to work extra hours, if they have to travel extra, if they have to do some task to ensure that our country does not get devastated because of man-made negligence, a disaster off our coast, they will have to do that job; and if you don't like it, go to work for the private sector.

That is the way it was supposed to be, not to have unions organize people who stand between us and disaster. Because if you go back to the founding, the Founders anticipated--and some of them wrote in their letters, in their diaries that we had within our grasp, they indicated, the chance to do what philosophers had only dreamed about, to govern ourselves.

We can understand the need for union collective bargaining, to overcome corporate greed in cases where it's occurred; but to need unions to extort things from the government that is supposed to be ``We, the people,'' in a democratic Republic? Offshore inspectors standing between us and disaster, and they get to have a bargaining session where, Gee, we don't want them to work too many hours even if it meant saving America, saving thousands of jobs.

Well, in the hearing where we heard from the director of the Bureau of Land Management who was over that whole system, when I asked, What are the checks and balances? Since you have these offshore inspectors unionized, what are the checks and balances that protect us from disaster? It should be these offshore inspectors. So how do you ensure that the allegations that we read and have been hearing that some of the administration's offshore inspectors had been bribed, have been given perks to look the other way with safety violations, and they had done so--we've read allegations of that kind of thing. So what is it that protects us and ensures there are checks and balances to make sure offshore inspectors are not bribed, are not given things to make them look the other way?

And the director indicated they do have a solid system of checks and balances for such offshore inspectors. They send them out in teams of two people at a time. That way, we can rest assured that if one inspector were subjected to some type of bribe or perk, something to look the other way, the other inspector would report them, would refuse to accept the bribe or the perk to look the other way, so that we could rest assured that we were protected.

Apparently, she was not aware that I was aware that the last two- person team of inspectors that went out, sent by this administration out to the Deepwater Horizon before the disastrous blowout, was a father and son unionized inspection team. That's who was sent to stand between us and disaster.

Now, there are some disasters, like earthquakes, like tsunamis, that insurance companies call acts of God. I still do, too. I don't believe that God causes those things to happen to punish people. I think He has the power to do so.

But we do have the power to build and to inspect and to prepare for disasters so that we can mitigate and minimize damages after such things occur. But you can't very well mitigate and minimize when you're allowing the kind of abuses that have gone on from this administration with the cronies in Big Oil like British Petroleum.

And it's interesting to have heard, today, friends across the aisle trying to wrap British Petroleum around Republicans' necks as an albatross when, actually, the group that has protected British Petroleum over and over has allowed them to continue to drill, and when this administration finally got around to granting a new permit that really wasn't new after all, it happens to be to their cronies, their buddies--good old crony capitalism--where BP is the major investor. How about that? Another ``and what's up with that?''

BP gets the latest right to drill in the gulf when others have lost thousands of jobs, families have been left destitute. And that means not just that the workers who work on those oil rigs have been hurt, their families have been hurt, and then all the places where they did business have been hurt. The restaurants, clothing stores, everybody who did business with those have been suffering because this administration did not punish the company responsible for nearly 800 safety violations. It punished all those who were not their cronies.

And how ironic that the biggest financial supporter of this administration and Democratic politics, in George Soros, had as his biggest individual investment in Brazilian drilling, oil and gas.

How ironic that when this administration granted a $2 billion loan from the United States of money--we don't have over 40 cents of every dollar of that $2 billion that we have to borrow and pay interest on-- we loaned it to Brazil to do offshore drilling that we won't allow here.

Oh, but by the way, that helps the Democrats' biggest supporter financially, George Soros, with his biggest individual investment; so, therefore, it's okay to drill off the coast of Brazil with money borrowed from America at low interest rates that we have to borrow from other countries at a different interest rate. That's just astounding.

And then we have calls to eliminate the method that has produced over 100 years, perhaps 200 years, of natural gas reserves. We've been provided information that indicates that if all of the 18-wheelers in America started utilizing natural gas instead of gasoline or diesel, then we would cut our dependency on those who hate us by 50 percent. But no, we're not going to do that.

In fact, there are measures being pushed by this administration and the EPA to eliminate our ability to utilize over 100, 200 years of natural gas that could provide our electricity, even cutting the need for more nuclear power plants. It could be of tremendous assistance in cutting our reliance on foreign oil. And this administration wants to eliminate that ability. It makes no sense.

Our hearts still go out to Japan for the decimation that's occurred, for the loss of life and the livelihoods, and this administration has expressed that so eloquently. But not so for this administration's actual activities to help the lives and livelihoods in the gulf coast area of those who this administration didn't save their job. They cost them their job. They cost them their livelihood. They caused gasoline prices to go up because we will not help ourselves.

We were told when gasoline reached $4 a gallon that probably 25 percent or more of that was speculation. Well, when speculators see that we're doing nothing to help ourselves with our own energy needs and, in fact, we're making it more and more difficult to produce our own oil, gas, natural resources to take care of ourselves and instead are going deeper and deeper in debt to countries that don't like us-- thank goodness we're friends with Canada, and they're helpful in our energy needs. But we're funding some of the very terrorism we're concerned about in the Middle East because we refuse to use our own natural resources.

I was told by a Chinese gentleman that he thought he had figured out what our energy policy was, because often the Chinese, they look farsighted. They look down the road. They try to examine issues and policies in a farsighted manner generations down the road, when we here in America sometimes have a hard time looking at what

we're going to do tonight. Certainly, tomorrow is a stretch.

But, anyway, this Chinese gentleman had said, I think we figured out what you are doing. You continue constantly to put your own natural resources off limits, and that forces the rest of the world to use all of their natural resources. And then eventually everyone will have used their natural resources but you, and then you'll be the only one with natural resources. You'll still be the superpower, and you'll still be the superdominant country in the world because everyone else lost their resources. They're used up, and you still have yours.

And I told him, I wish I could take credit and say you caught us; that's our plan. Everybody else used up their natural resources. But we haven't been that strategic in our thinking. No, we're just having people say it may devastate the economy. Obviously, it is. It does when you put your natural resources off limits.

But they claim that will save the environment, not understanding that when you devastate an economy and people are losing their jobs and they can't pay their bills, they're not concerned about the environment. They're concerned about getting by and just living. And it's only when you have a vibrant economy, like we did have, that you have a country where we're concerned about pollution of air and water, and we rein it in.

Instead, policies of this administration are sending more and more jobs overseas where they pollute four to ten times more than we do doing the same job, and yet that pollution goes into the same atmosphere and often floats over into our country. Mercury, toxic materials come floating up because we ran those manufacturers off in thinking we were doing some good for the economy and for the environment, and we were hurting both.

That's not the way it works when you have natural resources, when you have been so richly blessed, as we have been in this country, with so many resources. You're expected to be good stewards, to use those resources wisely, but don't be an idiot and not use them. We've been blessed with them. Use them.

Help the environment, help the economy, and you help the world.

As I mentioned here before--but I've not forgotten--a West African told me last year when I was over in West Africa that they were all excited when we elected an African American as President; but they have seen this President's policies weakening America, and he asked me to make sure people here understood that, when we weaken or allow America to grow weaker, we hurt the peace-loving people around the world, particularly Christians, who want to live in peace.

He said, When you allow the United States to get weaker, we don't have hope of anyone coming to our rescue when people come after us. You're our hope in this world. Please tell your friends in Congress and in the administration, Don't keep weakening your country. You're hurting those who hope and want peace around the world.

We owe it to ourselves. We owe it to all of those who want peace around the world and who count on us to act responsibly.

I know the Obama administration and those in the Interior Department have said, Gee, we're not going to be allowing these risky ventures out in the Gulf of Mexico. Yet they turn around and let the most unconscionable violator of safety regulations be the major investor in the permit they just released.

And what about these major oil companies that keep being demonized? A moratorium in the gulf has caused many of them to move rigs to other countries. They won't be back for a number of years, if at all. We're costing ourselves thousands of jobs, and we're forcing ourselves to send more money to countries that hate our guts.

And what about those who are unable to just move because they're international, big companies--the independent oil companies--of which we have numerous in Texas and in Louisiana and in other Gulf States? Well, they can't just take off and go to Brazil or go to other countries. They go out of business. They've got nowhere else to go because this administration is putting them and those they hire and those they buy from out of business.

It makes no sense to keep shooting ourselves in the foot and hurting those who rely on us.

Now, we've had a temporary cessation in the explosion in gas prices. There is a chance here that the administration will take advantage of it and will quit running off more jobs with more regulations and continuing an actual moratorium, in fact, on offshore drilling. There is a chance that the administration will take advantage of this time- out to say, You know what? We've seen the light. We've heard the human cry from across America about expensive gas prices. We've heard the human cry about 100-plus years of natural gas, so we're going to encourage cars or 18-wheelers to start utilizing natural gas for their fuel. It does not produce carbon monoxide, which truly is poisonous and dangerous to human life.

So it's a good idea. My friend across the aisle, Dan Boren, has a great bill. I'm hoping that the House will move it, that the Senate will take it up and that the President will sign it, and we can help ourselves get off such an incredible reliance on foreign oil.

It's time to start helping ourselves. It's time for people to stop helping those simply because they've helped them get elected. It's time for people here in Washington to follow our oath, to protect our country, and that includes helping to create a strong economy. That means, like doctors who have taken the oath to do no harm, we should take the same oath:

First, do no harm. Quit trying to force people out of business because you don't like them.

Once we do that, we'll be on the road to a greater economy than this Nation has ever experienced.

Now I want to finish up. I was given a book of an historical nature. It's called, ``Mr. Jones, Meet the Master.'' It has sermons and prayers of Peter Marshall during his time as Chaplain of the United States Senate during the 1940s. It has got some wonderful material in here, and I would just like to finish my time by reading a prayer by the Chaplain of the U.S. Senate as he prayed it in the U.S. Senate. Senate Chaplain Peter Marshall prayed these words in the U.S. Senate:

``Our Father in Heaven, give us the long view of our work and our world.

``Help us to see that it is better to fail in a cause that will ultimately succeed than to succeed in a cause that will ultimately fail.

``May Thy will be done here, and may Thy program be carried out, above party and personality, beyond time and circumstance, for the good of America and the peace of the world. Through Jesus Christ Our Lord, amen.''

That was the prayer of Chaplain Peter Marshall during his time as Chaplain of the United States Senate.

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

Tomorrow, we're going to take up another short-term continuing resolution. In the meantime, today, tomorrow, the next day, we will be borrowing $4 billion a day

that we don't have to pay the deficit that this administration is running. We're going to debate tomorrow about $6 billion here. Well, that's a day and a half of deficit. We're going to bring in around $2.1 trillion for this year, and we're going to spend $3.6 trillion. It is irresponsible. It is reprehensible.

For years, we've heard: For the good of the children. It is for the good of the children that this body man up across the aisles and quit spending money that our children don't even have. Let's vote ``no'' until we can do some real saving.

Mr. Speaker, these are trying times. Charles Dickens said ``the best of times and the worst of times.'' More freedoms than any nation has ever enjoyed in the history of the world are right here in this country. We have been blessed so richly. And

lest we begin to think we've been blessed because of something that we did to deserve to be born in America, for all those wonderful people who have immigrated to America, we didn't deserve to be born here or immigrate here. So why did we end up being in the country with the greatest freedoms in the history of the world, since it wasn't because of something we did to deserve to be here?

The answer is very clear. We've been blessed as a nation because of the actions of those who went before us. For those who believe in the Bible, it's full of one incident after another, historically, where it was shown that generations ended up being blessed because of the faithfulness of one generation.

One of the things that was difficult for me to come to grips with as a judge is how often children pay for the sins of the parents. And that's bringing me to where we are today. We are a nation that has done the unthinkable, a nation that has brought in around $2.1 trillion for the last couple of years and yet has spent 3.6, 3.5, $3.6 trillion. How irresponsible could that be? And the problem is future generations will have to pay and pay and pay for the self-indulgence, the arrogance and the self-centeredness of this generation. And it's heartbreaking when you step back and take a good look at what's going on.

Polls indicate that 70 percent or more of American adults believe that this will be the first generation--my generation will be the first in American history that does not leave the country to our children better than we found it. It's why I'm here. We can do better than that, but we'd better hurry. Because if we have 2, 3, 4 more years of what the President proposed, $1.65 trillion in deficit spending, there's not going to be a country. I don't care how much smarter we think we are in this country, how much more intellectual some of the liberals may be here, you can't outrun history.

There are lessons that are established. And if you commit this act, then in the laws of nature and history, you're going to get this result. If you spend too much money you don't have for long enough, you're going to lose your country. It's happened over and over. It doesn't matter how smart you are. It doesn't matter how many letters you have after your name. It doesn't matter if you commit certain acts; you're going to get certain results, just as sure as if it's a scientific experiment that's been proven over and over.

Well, it has been proven. If you spend too much, you're going to lose the country. Now the Germans, after World War I, thought perhaps they could print the money fast enough so that they could pay the massive indebtedness they had after World War I and that could get them on solid footing. Some remember the cartoons from history books. There are people alive today that remember, themselves, wheelbarrows with cash being carried to buy bread. That was a cartoon I saw in my history book.

And, ultimately, as the country's economy collapsed, they became so desperate that they were willing to elect a little guy with a mustache who began to blame those of Jewish origin, leading to the worst holocaust in the history of mankind. Nothing we can be proud of. What led to it? What opened the door for this barbarian to take over such a proud country and lead them into this unthinkable, horrible crime against humanity, over 6 million Jewish people were killed, exterminated? Economic problems, spending too much, owing too much and trying to print money to make it up didn't work. So they got desperate.

Look at the Soviet Union. Most historians give credit to President Reagan because he was unflinching even when some described a defense shield as Star Wars as some fictional, ridiculous thing that we might try to do. On the other hand, President Reagan could see clearly that the truth was that to have a doctrine called ``mutual assured destruction,'' properly called MAD, then that was truly mad. You're going to have two countries racing to make nuclear weapons. The only defense is that you both agreed you'll never put up a defense. So if one country launches its nukes at the other, then the other will certainly launch theirs, and both will be mutually assured that they will both be destroyed. And that's the defense? President Reagan saw that as no defense. It was not a proper defense.

And some called him a nitwit and ignorant. I can identify. I'm accused of those things on blogs every day. Maybe I am. But I know history. And the history and the truth is that by his moving forward with a way to actually defend the people of the United States with a defense shield that would stop incoming nuclear weapons, then the Russians had no choice. They had to try to keep up. They couldn't keep up financially, and they went broke.

I learned a great deal during the summer I spent in the Soviet Union as an exchange student in college. That was when it was truly the Soviet Union. I saw socialized health care up close and personal. I saw it. I went through a medical school, I went through hospitals, I went through clinics and I needed some help at one point. But I knew one thing: I sure didn't want to ever go to socialized medicine. That was for sure. Because the doctors, I was surprised to find out, really weren't respected over there unless it was some national doctor nationally known, otherwise these doctors were like poorly paid plumbers. Plumbers got a lot more respect.

It was a 9-to-5 type job. They'd show up. They didn't care if they hadn't seen you before. They'd see you; it didn't matter whether you got that well or not. That was largely the case. You'd run into somebody that tried to do a good job every now and then, from what the Russian students would tell me; but, basically, you might as well try to heal yourself and be your own physician.

Because when you go to socialized medicine, just as Dr. Berwick has indicated before President Obama put him in charge of our health care, when you go to socialized medicine and you put the government in charge, whether you want it or not, whether you will admit it or not, historically, if you go to socialized medicine, if you go to government-controlled medicine, then you're going to have rationing. Dr. Berwick made that clear. It's not a matter of if. It's a matter of when and how much.

So unless ObamaCare is repealed, we will get rationed care. Our President told people on that side of the aisle the day they were going to vote on and pass ObamaCare that he had some good news: if they would just vote for it, then things would be different. Whereas in the past-- and these are his words--in the past you go to the doctor and get five tests; now you'll go to the doctor and get one test.

Well, for those of us that have experience, I know that if my mother had been given one test, they would never have found her brain tumor. It took 6 days. It prolonged her life for 15 years; and she made invaluable contributions to mankind, to east Texas, Texas and the country during that period and was an invaluable teacher of students, of children in the eighth grade.

One test, she would have been dead. Six days of tests, they found it. Well, Mother would have been dead.

I have a lady in my district who contacted me when this whole debate started and said: You need to know my experience. I immigrated from England. My mother got cancer over there and died. The sole reason my mother died of breast cancer was because she was in England. And in England, you have to be put on a list. You're on a list to get a mammography. You're on a list to be treated. You're on a list to get radiation or any other kind of chemotherapy. You're on a list, and that is the way you deal with government-controlled health care, because ultimately government-controlled health care does not break the bank because you ultimately, unless the nation just completely goes broke. They say, You know what? We have this much money. And, therefore, we can only give out this many tests. We can only do this many transfusions, this many transplants. We only have this much chemo, radiation. And let's see, sir or ma'am, we don't think you're productive enough, and so you're not getting it. We, as your government, overseeing your health care, have to make a call. Somebody has got to.

That's where government-controlled health care goes. It's where it has to go or it bankrupts the country.

But the good news is, for those who worry about health care bankrupting

the country, we may not have to get that far unless we take responsible steps that any right-thinking group of leaders should take, then we could finish out with a whimper. Every country meets its demise at some point. No nation lasts forever, and anyone who thinks so has never studied history appropriately. And this Nation will be no exception.

The only question is are we going to be a generation that takes such responsible steps and follows the rules of history, many of which Jesus laid out. You want to be a generation that is blessed and have your children blessed, here are the rules. Well, we need to follow the rules if our children and our grandchildren are going to be blessed, because the track we are on right now, and all those left-wing blogs that like to take shots at us who are conservatives, they will one day be looked at as such blatant fools because that's the way it goes. A country, toward the end of its demise, the liberals who say there can be no end to this wonderful, hedonistic society, they are the most popular because they are playing to people's hopes. There will be no end to this society. Sure, there will be no end. It will go on. Forget these naysayers.

Well, I'm not a naysayer; I'm a yeasayer. And I would like this generation to say yea to blessing at least the next couple of generations. But it's in our hands. But once the naysayers who are truly the naysayers who say nay, nay, you people who want to be responsible, spend within your means, who want to provide for the common defense, you guys, you're crazy. You're nuts.

I've been called nuts for pointing out the fact that we have actually had people, men, associated with known terrorist groups send over their wives to have children in this country. Then the wife comes back with a baby with an American passport and an American citizenship. You can go online. China provides birthright citizenship. You pay a fee and we will get you an American visa. Come into the United States.

There is a Muslim-owned hotel in New York City, and they were upset online, it seemed like, because people were not giving them credit for being the first group to come up with birthright citizenship. You pay a big fee to this hotel in upper New York, and they would put you up for a month. If you are pregnant, they get you a doctor to help deliver your baby, one of the best in New York, and they had the mechanism in place to help you get that American passport.

And then the most precious gift that anybody could be given, a child, a blessing, not a terror, a gift of a child is born with an American passport, and it is taken back. And in some cases, I hope and pray it is not many, but I know it is happening, they are taken back, and until they are adult, they are trained to hate Americans. And that the greatest thing they could ever do for eternity is help destroy the American way of life.

They look at our way of life and they see rape and crimes occurring in America and they say: See, that is what happens when you don't have a totalitarian, religious sharia law existing where we tell everybody what they can and can't do. We don't allow that kind of freedom because it leads to debauchery. I happen to think that God gave us that much freedom and the freedom to choose; and, unfortunately, some choose wrong. Eventually, every country has too many who choose wrong, and that's when they lose their country.

So it made sense, if you're interested in providing for the common defense, that we would take a look at those who are trying to destroy us. And, by the way, the State Department is not going to take a look at that. I made an official inquiry of the State Department, my office did, and asked: Tell us how many times women have come into this country and had babies when their husband was known to be on the terrorist watch list or associated with a terrorist group. The State Department came back and told us: We can't tell you because we don't check. The husband's name is on any woman's application for a visa, but we don't inquire if there is going to be hospitalization. You wouldn't want it to be specific as to one gender, but you could inquire. And to help keep immigrants from bankrupting our country, it would seem like the State Department would inquire: Are you anticipating hospitalization when you come into this country?

And of course I have a bill on health care that says any immigrant, in order to get a visa, is going to have to show that they have already purchased health insurance for any health care they will need in the United States. We are willing to let people in. We let in more people on visas than any nation in the world. We are willing to let you in, but you've got to pay for your health care while you're here. Well, we don't do that.

One lady had said, The great thing about my daughter coming in and having a baby--and yes, her husband was a member of a terrorist group in the Middle East, on our terrorist watch list--but the good news is she doesn't even have to pay for anything. She can leave with an American passport, and she doesn't have to pay for anything. The Americans pay for it.

We have to stop that. It's nuts. The State Department doesn't inquire if you anticipate hospitalization. And even though the spouse's name is on the visa application, they say, as a rule, we don't bother to check to see if the spouse is a terrorist.

You have groups out here who are condemning Justices on the Supreme Court because their spouse may be politically active. They show themselves to be blatantly extremely partisan, like Common Cause, because they have never raised that issue with a former leader of the ACLU whose husband, late husband, apparently a fine man, but he did have political interests and they were affected by decisions of the Court, and those groups never complained about that. But they only come after conservatives on the Court, like Justice Scalia, Justice Thomas, who believe that the words on the page of the Constitution, the pages, mean what they say. They don't change over time; otherwise, you can have no consistency as a nation.

So it would only make sense that somebody up here in Congress who has taken an oath to provide for the common defense would say: You know, we've noticed that every one of these terrorists in the last--well, since 1991 who have really wanted to do anything to destroy our way of life as a whole, that they seem to have a connection that they are not Muslim; they are radical Muslims. They are radical Islamic jihadists.

So wouldn't it make sense to take a look?

We know the largest percentage of Muslims in America are peace- loving. They don't believe that ``jihad'' means you go kill your neighbor. They believe it's an internal jihad, where you change your life and leave the old behind; but there are disagreements over what percentage of Muslims are these radical Islamic jihadists who want to destroy our way of life. Wouldn't it make sense that we'd make inquiry into that? It sure seems to me that we should. Yet Pete King, the chairman of the appropriate committee, wanted to do just that, and he has been under death threats ever since it first came up.

Now, for some of us, we say, Gee, in order to keep my commitment to my oath to provide a defense for this country, I think we need to look at this issue of radical Islam when you have a Major Hasan at Fort Hood who kills American soldiers in their place of refuge while yelling ``Allah Akbar.'' Perhaps we should look at that issue. This is despite the fact that the Defense Department didn't even want to mention the word ``jihad'' or the word ``terrorist,'' did not want to point out the fact that they had made him the imam for Fort Hood or the fact that he had apparently told many people, If I get orders to deploy to the Middle East, I cannot risk spiritually having to kill a Muslim for one of the reasons besides the three for which I'm allowed to kill another Muslim, one being converting to Christianity. I can't risk that spiritually, so I'll have to go on a rampage and kill people here if I get orders to deploy.

Amazingly, he got orders to deploy, and he killed American soldiers-- but none of that was brought up in the record. It's extraordinary that it's not even mentioned in the report. How blind do we have to be?

So we have one responsible committee chairman who says--well, there

are plenty of responsible people here. He is the committee chair with jurisdiction. He is going to have a hearing, and he gets blasted in death threats.

So, to my way of thinking, when someone announces ``you know what? I'm going to have a hearing, and we're going to look into whether radical Islam is violent'' and if the radical Islamists respond by saying ``we're going to kill you and kill your family,'' I think they kind of help make Pete King's case. If he says he just wants to have a peaceful hearing and you say ``we're going to kill you for it,'' well, that seems to me they're making his case.

The peace-loving Muslims are not the problem, but there is an element of radical Islam in this country and in this world that wants to destroy our way of life. There will be books that will ultimately, someday, belittle those people who are accusing Pete King of all kinds of impropriety--racism, bigotry, xenophobia--all those things a lot of us are accused of because they don't know us and because they don't know our hearts. Someday, books will point out: Look how silly these people were. They had people saying, We're going to kill you; and they said, Uh-oh, we'd better not make them mad and try to defend ourselves and figure out how to do that. Let's just try to placate them.

History shows, when you try to placate radical Islamists, particularly since 700-800 AD, you're going to not only not placate them; you're going to grow more contempt because, not only do they see you as an infidel, but they see you as a stupid infidel who is trying to pay off the people who want to kill them.

So we know that, in the hearing, our friend across the aisle, Mr. Ellison, testified. He brought up the case of Mohammed Salman Hamdani-- and my apologies if I mispronounce that--who was a Pakistani-born Muslim American. As Mr. Ellison pointed out, Hamdani rushed to Lower Manhattan on the morning of September 11, 2001, to assist in rescue efforts, and died in the collapse at the World Trade Center.

Mr. Ellison was thinking--and I'm sure, absolutely, there was no intent to mislead and that he actually believed what he was saying. But he said, after the tragedy, some people tried to smear his character solely because of his Islamic faith. They spread false rumors and speculated he was in league with the attackers, all because he was Muslim.

So I'm proud to be able to point this out, and I hope that it's a comfort to my friend Mr. Ellison; but in fact, as Matthew Shaffer pointed out in this National Review article last night, he said that, in fact, 6 weeks after the September 11 attacks, before Hamdani's remains were identified, Congress did sign the Patriot Act into law with this line included--and this is in the Patriot Act:

`` `Many Arab Americans and Muslim Americans have acted heroically during the attacks on the United States, including Mohammed Salman Hamdani, a 23-year-old New Yorker of Pakistani descent, who is believed to have gone to the World Trade Center to offer rescue assistance and is now missing.' ''

The article goes on. It reads:

``That is, Hamdani was actually singled out for particular high honors among the thousands of victims of the September 11 attacks. There is little evidence,'' if any, ``of the `rumors' that he did otherwise. You can go to Google and search for Mohammed Salman Hamdani's name, using various time frames from before today's hearings.'' That was yesterday. ``You'll discover two discordant sets of returns, none for sites and news reports accusing Hamdani of being a terrorist and many thousands of pages honoring him as a hero while claiming that he was `widely accused' of being a terrorist.''

They can't find the allegation of his being a terrorist, only those saying he was widely accused and what a hero he was.

``Web pages that do source that claim that Hamdani was `widely accused' of being a terrorist typically trace back to a single report from the New York Post, dated October 12, 2001, and titled `Missing--or Hiding? Mystery of NYPD Cadet from Pakistan.' The piece has been taken offline, but its content is preserved elsewhere.

``His family distributed missing person flyers in the fear that the 23-year-old, who is trained as an EMT, went instead to the World Trade Center to help and was killed. But investigators for the FBI and NYPD have since questioned the family about which Internet chat rooms he visited and if he was political.

``Hamdani, a graduate of Queens College, with a biochemistry degree, had been in the NYPD cadet program for 3 years. He became `inactive' because he needed to work full time, his mother said. Police sources said he hadn't been to work at the NYPD since April, but he still carried official identification.

``One source told the Post: `That tells me they're not looking for this guy at the bottom of the rubble. The thing that bothers me is, if he is up to some tricks, he can walk past anybody using the I.D. card.'

``Hamdani's mother, who has been in the United States for two decades, denied her son was political or a religious fundamentalist. Cops at the Midtown Tunnel reported spotting someone who looked like Hamdani yesterday morning.

``So the Post reported (1) that Hamdani's family believed he died in the World Trade Center attacks; (2) that the FBI asked Hamdani's mother a few background questions after a mistaken sighting; and (3) that an unnamed source felt such questioning implied guilt. No doubt, that was hard on the grieving mother; but frankly, this--a mistaken sighting and very preliminary investigations of many people, most of whom turn out to be innocent--is the kind of thing that inevitably happens after a major terrorist attack.''

So the article points out that Mr. Hamdani has been singled out by this Congress and by people in New York for being the hero that he apparently was. There is no allegation by this Congress, of which I'm aware, of blanket smearing, saying that all Muslims are evil. They're not. The disagreement is over what percentage. Is it 1 percent or 10 percent that is being radicalized and wants to destroy our way of life? It's a question worth looking into.

Because there were actual witnesses at the hearing that pointed out that their young children had been taken--I say young, a teenager to me is young these days--and had been turned against the United States through a mosque, taken to a foreign country and radicalized to finish the process. Why wouldn't we want to look into that? It only makes sense. Because if you bury your head in the sand, even though you don't see any danger your rear end is hanging out there to some pretty significant danger, and we shouldn't be in that posture as a country.

Now we also know that the Muslim Brotherhood has been active in foreign countries. We've seen what happened in Tunisia, Egypt, Libya, other countries around the Middle East. But I would humbly submit that the thing that ought to scare Americans the most about our stature in the world, about the way our allies and friends look at this Nation and about how they perceive whether or not we will be able to--and will-- help in a crisis, came when we saw that King Abdullah, King of Jordan, had made an appointment to apparently work out some kind of deal with a madman named Ahmadinejad. Abdullah, I've met him before, he's a brilliant man, we've visited a couple of times, he's a brilliant man, he has a different world view, but this country in the past has appreciated his ability to keep order and keep peace in his country.

When an ally like King Abdullah makes an appointment with a madman-- possibly to cut his own deal for protection--it ought to send off alarms all over this Nation that we're in trouble. The world perceives us as weak. Our friends have seen we don't stand with our friends. We'll snub Israel. We'll leave them hanging until the last second on whether or not we'll even veto a resolution Lebanon brings to the U.N.--which is what this administration did. We'll snub their prime minister when he comes early on, as this administration did. Oh, sure, the administration tried to warm up to him right before the election and tried to jockey for political help back in the fall of 2010, but our allies and our enemies are not as stupid as some in this town think. They see the way we treat our friends, our allies, those who have

stood with this country through thick and thin, and they've seen the way we've turned on them.

They see what we've done with enemies of ours, as Qadhafi has been in the past, as Ahmadinejad has been, as Kim Jong Il in North Korea has been, and they say, gee, if we go strongly against this country, the Obama administration will come rush to see what they can give us to try to make us friends--obviously they won't make us friends, but we'll take whatever they've got to give. In fact, in the case of North Korea and the Clinton administration running over there and saying, look, we'll build you a nuclear power plant if you will just quit trying to make a nuclear weapon. You'll give us a nuclear power plant? Doesn't that have nuclear fuel? Yes, it does. We might be able to take that fuel and make a nuclear weapon? Sure, yeah, I mean, it's possible. But if you'll just promise us you won't do that, we'll give you the nuclear material, the facility, we'll show you how to do it. Well, sure. Okay. Yeah, we'll give you that promise. And of course we provided them what they needed to go nuclear and build nuclear weapons. It makes no sense. We ought to be smarter than that.

But we didn't learn our lesson with North Korea that you can't placate a terrorist leader, so this administration has talked about sanctions. And we've had some sanctions against Iran, and I really think that they're going to work by 2015 or 2020, but unfortunately by then, Iran will have nuclear weapons, and they will have the ability to say you either withdraw your sanctions or we're going to use the nukes that we've now sent on yachts and are outside major places you care about to blow your major cities up. It's a crazy way to defend the country, to placate your enemies.

I've had this bill--I've filed it three Congresses and I'm hoping now that we're in the majority we'll get it passed; it seems like I pick up more supporters every time--called the U.N. Voting Accountability Act. It simply says that any nation--you know, they're sovereign nations, they can do what they want as long as they don't come after us, don't commit crimes against humanity, but they're sovereign nations, so basically what it says is any nation that votes against a U.S. position more than half the time in the U.N. will receive no financial assistance of any kind from the United States in the subsequent year. As I've said before, you don't have to pay people to hate you, they'll do it for free. We can save the money, we need to save the money.

We heard that President Mubarak--really a king, but called President Mubarak--one report said he had $70 billion in a bank, now there's only $7 billion. Where do you think he got that money? We've been giving him somewhere around $2 billion a year for years. We have propped up so many evil people in countries where they devastate their own people, we shouldn't be giving them money for that. Let charitable groups go in and give aid directly to the people. They do a great job of that, better than the government because we as a government usually have to give it to the government, and then the government uses it to go in their bank accounts and to do what they will with their people. It doesn't make sense.

I was also a little surprised to find out how much we help Lebanon because they were short on some of their weaponry, and the U.S. was of some assistance to help them rearm last year. And I was trying to remember, oh, yes, why was Lebanon a little short on weaponry? That's right. They were killing Israelis--our friends and allies--back 5 years ago. That's why they were short on weaponry. But not to worry, U.S. to the aid; we'll provide military weapons to our enemies, to the enemies of those who are dear, devoted friends like Israel. Yeah, we'll equip your enemies. We'll sell jets to countries that won't recognize Israel. Three billion dollars for a friend in kind of an oasis in the middle of a lot of hostility is a small price to pay, but unfortunately when you pay billions to Israel's enemies $3 billion is not enough.

So why, instead of running up the tab, why don't we as a nation quit funding Israel's enemies, quit helping their enemies, quit helping to put in place--as President Carter did by pulling the rug out from under the shah--apparently not a nice man what he did to his people--but by President Carter pulling the rug out from him, he fell. And of course President Carter welcomed Khomeini as a man of peace, and then we shortly found he created a terrorist state like none before in history. Good job.

We've got to stop doing those kind of good jobs. We've got to get back to the basics of providing for the common defense, quit condemning those who are not xenophobes--they're not phobes of any kind--but they see the world through a clear window, the window of history, and see that if you help your enemies, they will destroy you. You help your friends, they remain your friends, and they remain vital and helpful to you in the world picture.

One other thing we did to Israel last year--I believe it was in May I read that this administration for the first time voted with all of Israel's enemies to require them to disclose any and all nuclear weaponry. Because people in leadership in the appropriate places here in America apparently have not read the Old Testament. They have not read history. You can go back and find where Hezekiah was the king. And I know there are some journalists who think that Jews came from Poland, but actually there's archaeological evidence to show that they were actually in Israel 3,000 years ago and that King David was King of Israel around 1000 or so B.C.

And of course we know Mohammed lived 600 or so A.D. So 1,600 to 1,700 years before there was a Mohammed, there was a King David ruling over Jews in Israel. They have a history in the land. We voted with Israel's enemies. And the lesson from Hezekiah was, as you can read from the Old Testament, Isaiah was sent to Hezekiah. He knew what he had done. Pardon the Texas paraphrase, but he said, in essence, What have you done? He said, Oh, these great Babylonian leaders came over, and so I showed them all our treasure, and I showed them our defenses.

And Isaiah, in essence, said, You fool. Because you've done this, you'll lose the country.

You don't placate your enemies and think they're going to be your friend if you give them things, you show them all your great defenses, because they'll figure a way around them and you will lose your country.

Every country meets its demise and heads to the dustbin of history at some point. We've got to rein in the ridiculous deficit spending. We've got to quit hurting our friends abroad and quit helping our enemies and be about the oath that we all took in this body. And if we will do that, if we will follow the precepts that history--and even FDR said, Follow the teachings in the Bible. People have found it a help for ages--if we do those things, future generations will be blessed because of us, and not condemned.