Floor Statements

Mr. Speaker, interesting news came out Friday about jobs. There was a good Wall Street Journal article June 4. It talked about this wonderful news that we heard from Washington that last month the job total increased by 431,000. That is fantastic news, just wonderful. But there's a little problem in it. The U.S. Department of Labor released statistics saying, yes, there were 431,000 jobs created last month and that's fantastic and all, but unfortunately, 411,000 of them were temporary census worker jobs. Well, it's just hard to feel really good about the economy when out of 431,000 new jobs, according to the U.S. Department of Labor last month, 411,000 of them were government jobs. Not just government, temporary government jobs.

I've talked to some census workers. We had a job fair in my district in Marshall, Texas, at the East Texas Baptist University. They're very cooperative and helpful. We had one previously at Laterno University. Texas Workforce Commission does such a great job. We've partnered together with them and Laterno and Longview and many other partners to have a job fair previously. We've had one in Lufkin, partnered with Angelina College and the Texas Workforce Commission, and this one was in Marshall.

On one hand, anytime you throw a party and a lot of people show up, you're thrilled; this worked out great. But on a very human basis, you know that every one of the people that come seeking jobs have broken hearts. Most of them have families who need them to get jobs. So many of them, you know, long-time employees somewhere, and we have not done them any favors by the work that's been done here in Congress going back to failing to reform Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac which really put us to the brink of economic collapse. Complete failure to do that, to reform them.

Then in September, October of 2008, as a potential meltdown began, many people don't know but there were more homes sold in September of 2008 than in any month in the last 5 years before that. But of course, once the Secretary of Treasury went out and said unless Congress gives me $700 billion, there's going to be a total meltdown, but give me $700 billion in a slush fund and I'll pay off my buddies on Wall Street and I'll get everything going good, and you know, basically inferring that--and I think he legitimately believed, if all the people that he had worked with and knew so well on Wall Street maintained their wealth, continued to get rich or richer, didn't go bankrupt, then it surely would be good for the rest of America.

Little did he know that that was not the case. We bailed out folks, and you know, it's interesting. It also said something about the morality in America because there was a time in America if you got greedy, a little hasty, and drove your cart off in a ditch and your neighbors helped you get your cart out of that ditch, then you felt a little guilty. It was a moral thing. You had a conscience and you felt guilty because your neighbors helped you get your cart out of the ditch, and they did not contribute at all in you getting it there. It was your own negligence, your own greed.

And so nowadays we've gotten to the point where AIG, Goldman Sachs, Wall Street, some of them at least--they let Lehman Brothers go because they were a competitor of Goldman Sachs--but anyway, they got greedy, extremely greedy, careless, and ran their cart into a ditch, and there was no way they were going to get out. They should have been forced to go into bankruptcy and reorganize like every other entity but they didn't.

America, most of us didn't like the idea. We didn't support it. We were totally against it, but nonetheless we were forced to get Goldman Sachs' cart out of the ditch. And what has happened since? Well, they've gotten in their cart, motorized it, and run over the rest of us.

So that didn't work out so well, and in January of 2009, when we heard that Timothy Geithner was going to be appointed to be Secretary of the Treasury, well, what we heard from folks down the other end of the hall was, well, we need to confirm him as Treasury Secretary because he worked with Paulson on the plan. To my way of thinking, this meant this guy should not get near the Treasury Department, but that's not what happened.

So we've continued to have the Federal Government continue to take over more and more authority, usurp more of individuals' moneys, their credit, the potential capital out there to create private jobs, just sucked it up in Washington, and in the meantime, the Federal Reserve apparently is printing lots of money. And so we're just doing all kinds of good things, and it is continuing to drive us toward a cliff.

And for anybody to stand up and try to make it sound like great news, 431,000 new jobs last month, that's the most in a number of years, it's fantastic, it's great, and not realize or not be forthcoming enough to point out that nearly all those jobs, the vast majority of them, were temporary census jobs is just not right, and it's not doing right by America.

So in this article, The Wall Street Journal points out some of the problems. This says, because the temporary workforce is more productive, the bureau is closing some offices earlier than planned. So it goes on to talk about the Census Bureau. Really tragic. That's the best we've got. That's the best we can offer to America.

I yield to my friend from Utah.

I really appreciate that point. Of course, it's the problem we have right now. When the Federal Government is moving toward a 1.3 to $1.6 trillion deficit in 1 year, they are sucking the capital from every corner of the world, printing some, and there is not money for the private sector. We have had meetings with the Federal Reserve people, including Chairman Bernanke. We have had meetings with people in the OCC, Office of the Comptroller of the Currency, and from the

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

The motion was agreed to; accordingly (at 8 o'clock and 50 minutes p.m.), the House adjourned until tomorrow, Wednesday, June 9, 2010, at 10 a.m.

Mr. Speaker, it has been quite a week. We've heard friends across the aisle get up and talk about how we've ``expanded civil rights in the military.'' And I appreciate the fact that friends believe they did a wonderfully noble thing for the military, just as they would probably think they did a wonderfully noble thing to expand civil rights in courts martial that occur in the military. But the fact is, under our United States Constitution, that so many people want to keep referring to when it's convenient, it anticipates that there will be different rights afforded in different areas, one of which is in our United States military.

The purpose of the military is not to be some socially engineered experiment. It is to do one thing, and that is to protect our homeland, protect our way of life. For that reason, the Constitution anticipated that Congress, under its authority to create courts, could set up military commissions, could set up and pass the Uniform Code of Military Justice, which gave the military an entirely different type of structure when it comes to processing their rights and adjudicating different aspects of military life. Because to do otherwise, to give everyone in the military, as I was for 4 years, the same rights that are afforded in a civilian court means that you can destroy the function of the military because so often the military doesn't have time to do all of the same things a civilian court does. That's why the UCMJ was created, that's why it's constitutional, and that's why we needed some forum like that for our military.

It is always an honor to get to speak in this hallowed Hall, but hopefully we can cast some light on what it means to be in the military because, for example, if you are suspected and there is probable cause to believe that a military member has committed a crime, then it can be pursued as an article 15, nonjudicial punishment. And as we saw with the outrageous pursuit of an article 15 against three valiant servicemembers, they had the right to choose not to accept the nonjudicial punishment that could have forced them into restriction, extra duty, taken away pay, dropped them in rank. Instead of having that forced on them, they were afforded their right, under the UCMJ, to say I'm not going to accept this; I want to go to trial in a court martial. That's what occurred, and all three were acquitted-- fortunately and appropriately. But that's one of the ways.

Another way is the commander, at different levels of command, can order a court martial be convened. A court will be convened, and a military judge is appointed. And if it is the commanding general of a facility, he can order a general court martial, the highest level court martial under the UCMJ. And at that general court martial, you can have a dishonorable discharge--and it depends on the crime as to how serious the punishment could be--but it could be as serious as a dishonorable discharge and even life in prison. So it's a very serious matter.

But whereas during the days when I was a prosecutor, an attorney, a judge, a chief justice, when there was a jury selection in a civil court, you randomly sent out notices and randomly brought people in, and then you went through a jury qualification with all of those and called out those who did not meet the requirements of the law to be a juror in a particular case. And then once the jury panel was qualified, they were brought before the parties of a particular case and they went through what we in Texas call voir dire, but most of the country calls voir dire--it's just the way we talk in Texas. But during voir dire, the attorneys have the opportunity to ask questions of the jury panel so that they can determine whether or not there are people who can be struck for cause, and to also allow them to exercise what are called peremptory strikes so they can go through--and in Texas, you can have as many as 10 strikes in the right cases--to strike them for any reason as long as it was not prohibited by the Constitution, strike people for no reason.

In the military, if a commanding general convenes a court martial, it means he has signed off ordering that that servicemember be prosecuted. So he's the convening authority for the court martial. He has ordered that this person be prosecuted, so he is satisfied in his mind, he thinks this guy ought to be prosecuted, brought to justice. And then that same authority gets to pick the people who will be on the jury. And the attorney for the defendant in the military will have no rights to peremptory challenges as you would in the civilian court. They would have no right to try to determine who he would like to strike for peremptory reasons.

It's a very difficult process for a defendant or defense attorney. There are cases in which someone can get life in prison in the military and may only have five members handpicked by the commanding general to be on the jury. Now, why would that be allowed? That probably just really infuriates some who are so concerned about civil rights and they will say, well, that's not fair. But what they don't understand is, in the military, you can't go through all the processes that we have so luxuriously been bestowed with in the civilian sector and still be able to fight wars and protect us against all these enemies, foreign and domestic. There has to be a difference in the rights that are afforded those in the military and those in the civilian sector, or the military cannot function. If they are out on the battlefield, they don't have time to go through a full civil trial and afford all the civil rights because, if they did, they would lose every battle. You can't do that to them and expect them to defend us.

So there are different rights for those in the military than those in American society, and it has to be so to have the strongest military that mankind and the world and history has ever known and ever seen, and that is exactly what we have today.

But our military was made promises earlier this year from the White House through the leadership here in Congress. They were promised that we're looking at changing the policy of Don't Ask, Don't Tell, which will allow those who practice homosexuality to do so openly and overtly. For most of the history of our Nation, the military has made sodomy a crime for which you could go to prison. So we've made a dramatic turn in more recent years so that people could feel comfortable that they are afforded all the civil rights.

We're moving to giving our military all the civil rights that we all have in the civilian sector, not realizing a military can't function like that, not realizing that the military has to have different rights, to some extent, in order

to function properly. Because those in the military and most who have served in the military--obviously not all--out of the millions and millions and millions--our colleagues across the aisle keep talking about 13,000--but of the millions and millions and millions who have served in our military, most understand that when you are in harm's way and you have people firing at you and you're hunkered down in a bunker or you're in a foxhole, you're in an untenable position and lives are at risk, that one of the strongest tendencies in the human body, the sexual urge, needs to be one that is not an issue. So whether it is those who cannot control their urges of heterosexuality or homosexuality, it absolutely should not be an issue when it comes to combat.

And because those in the military have been scared to death of what kind of transformative change the repeal of Don't Ask, Don't Tell would have, what it would mean, what it would do to their functioning, their ability to function as a military and protecting us, they ask, At least let us submit our opinions, let us give you our input. We're the ones out here willing to lay down our lives for you in Congress, for you in America, for you in the ACLU. We're the ones out here willing to lay down our lives for you, let us have some input, let us tell you how it is in the military because we're not sure you understand it has to be different in the military for the military to function.

And our White House and our majority leaders in Congress said, We hear you and we'll listen to you. We're going to do a study, and it's due December 1 of this year. And we will get your input because you're out there willing to lay down your lives for us, so we'll get your input and we'll have a study on exactly what kind of transformation this will make in the military. Will there have to be separate quarters for heterosexual males and homosexual males and heterosexual females and homosexual females? I mean, what is this going to look like in the military? What are we going to need to do in the way of facilities to accommodate the different types of sexual attraction?

It's going to be an interesting question, and I think it's very important to get that study. We need to know what it's going to do. How much is it going to cost our military in the way of time and transformation at the very time they're losing their lives in Afghanistan? We still lose some in Iraq. And what many people don't know and what broke my heart in peacetime was to attend funerals of military friends during peacetime, because people die even in peacetime in the military. What is it going to do to the military trying to adapt to another potential war?

What if Iran gets their nuclear weapons because all we're doing is playing footsie talking about sanctions at a time that Iran's centrifuges continue to spin, they're spinning, they're continuing to enrich uranium, they're getting closer every day to not having the small amount they've got, but moving toward full enrichment and the full bomb that could take out Israel. And if you read the quotes from Ahmadinejad, he makes it very clear--even though reporters in America have been scared to ask him anything other than ridiculous questions and not get to his claims that he is going to destroy the ``Great Satan'' America--he has made clear that our way of life needs to be wiped off the planet, as does that in Israel. He has made it very clear. And in furtherance of that goal, he has made clear they're continuing to move toward nuclear weapons, and we are not going to stop them.

And we talk about sanctions. Now, China, to their credit, has been honest. They say, we don't want to go along with sanctions. I've been very concerned that China will come along and say, you know what? We'll agree to sanctions, just like Germany, France and Russia did against Iraq during the Oil-for-Food sanctions. And then we found out later after we went into Iraq that Germany, France and Russia had been cheating and had made billions and billions of dollars. They loved having the sanctions because it meant they had no competition because everyone else was observing the sanctions.

So, it is to China's credit that they have at least been honest enough to say they don't think the idea of sanctions is a good idea because, if they did and if China said, Okay. Okay. We'll do sanctions, and then they started cheating, not only have we not done anything with sanctions, but we've enriched people who wouldn't mind seeing us leave this Earth as the greatest Nation in history. So we need our military to be able to function as well as it is now.

We have heard testimonials from those who have said, I had a friend who couldn't stand to keep his homosexual feelings private. He had to go overt. He had to go public. He wanted everybody in the military to know. Yet, even though the vast majority of the military says that creates a real problem for us, our majority voted yesterday: Not only are we going to force you to have a different system than you've ever had before, but we don't care what you think.

Now, we've heard today that--let's see. I believe the term ``political grandstanding'' was used. The fact is I've been heartbroken for my friends in the military. People I know so well are heartbroken over what we've done. We've betrayed our promise to the military. When I say ``we,'' I mean this body. We are part of it. We have betrayed our promise to the military that we would hear them out.

Why would we rush in and pass the elimination of Don't Ask, Don't Tell right now? We told them we'd wait for the study, and people yesterday were saying, Well, we're going to wait for the study. We're just going to pass it now that we're going to eliminate it, regardless of what they say, and then we'll get the study at the end of the year and use that.

Well, the headlines already hit the paper--last night and this morning. The military reads the news. Although, they can't complain about things that their Commander in Chief orders because that would be punishable by court-martial. They read the news. They know when they are about to be adversely affected, and they know when they've been made promises that haven't been kept by the very people sending them out to potentially lay down their lives, and they know the headlines in the papers all read that the House voted yesterday to repeal Don't Ask, Don't Tell.

Is it so much to ask in the military that you keep your sexual desires private so that we all concentrate on our military missions? Wouldn't that be a good idea?

You know, I've known people to be kicked out of the military for having affairs because it has adversely affected the morale and the well-being of the military. You can't put up with that. When it hurts its well-being and the morale of the military, it needs to be dealt with or you'll lose your military. We've had a policy since 1993 that President Clinton put in place, which said, Look. Just keep your sexual attractions private, and we welcome you to serve in the military; but our number one function in the military is to provide for the common defense, and anything that distracts from that is not appropriate.

We heard the civil libertarians, who were so proud last night, clapping and cheering over the fact that we've betrayed our promise to the military, clapping and rejoicing that the huge, vast majority of the military was begging them not to do this, but they wouldn't wait for the official report.

I still am heartbroken.

For the charge of political grandstanding on our side of the aisle, I come back to the question again:

Why was it so important to betray our promise to the military that we would wait and get their input on what was going to have such a profound effect on the way they protect us and on the way they live every day? Because it isn't like living in the civilian sector. I can assure you that.

Could it have been that the political left was getting upset that the majority had not done enough for them and their view and that, if they didn't rush and do something big to show them they really cared about the far left, they would not be there for them in the fall for November's election? Could it be that the majority wanted to stay in the majority and that they didn't want to lose such an important part of their base, albeit the far left end? Could that have been the reason that we had to

rush in here and pass this law yesterday and betray our promise to this Nation's military?

I am at a loss, particularly as we recess to go home for Memorial Day to pay tribute to those who have made the ultimate sacrifice for this Nation.

As John 15:13 said, ``Greater love has no one than this, that he lay down his life for his friends.'' We are to pay tribute to them at the same time we've betrayed the promise we made to them, dramatically altering their future.

One other point. Then I have a friend from Minnesota here, and I want to yield to her.

On the very day after we betrayed our promise to the military and basically said, We don't care what you think. We're going to change your way of life, and we're going to change the way everything works in the military, particularly while we're in two battlefields, we took up today an amendment to H.R. 5116.

In that amendment, all it was asking was that our disabled veterans be given the same special consideration that minorities are given under this bill, those who are trying to get an education in a college or in a university. Most of us over here on this side did not think that was such an untenable position.

Our disabled vets, those who have lost part of their lives and their ability to function physically, we can't even give them the same consideration that a minority gets who attends a college or a university?

I figured it would be virtually unanimous. Yet the amendment failed. The majority brought down the amendment and said, You know what? Disabled veterans, on the day after we betrayed our promise to the military, we're not even going to give you the same status as a minority in America to help you further your education. We don't want you to have that special consideration.

So, if you listen to the beautiful prose that is spoken here on the floor, you would believe that every single Member of this House wants to do absolutely everything they can for our veterans, but if you look at what was done, we've betrayed our military, the promise we made to them. Then, the next day, we said, We don't consider you, disabled veterans, to be as important as minorities in America.

Why wouldn't they be? I am at a loss.

I yield to my friend from Minnesota.

Reclaiming my time, the White House has stonewalled, as the gentlelady has pointed out. But it has been also intriguing to me that you have a former admiral in the United States Navy who brought this up, and he has refused to give full details and make sure that the full truth about all of this was known himself.

I am deeply intrigued by that, because I understand that our colleague was a graduate in 1974 of the Naval Academy of the United States, and the academies have an honor code. And when I was in school at Texas A&M, we had an honor code as well. Aggies do not lie, cheat, or steal, or tolerate those who do.

The Naval Academy's honor code that is supposed to be kept by Naval Academy students and graduates says, ``They stand for that which is right, they tell the truth, and ensure that the full truth is known.'' That is part of the honor code for midshipmen for the Naval Academy.

So I am looking forward to both the White House and our colleague stepping up and giving the full truth, so we can get this behind us and move on, for heaven's sake. It shouldn't have gone on this long without having a complete answer. There is no purpose to that.

We also heard this week from our colleagues how proud they were that they successfully passed within the last couple or three hours what is called the ``doc fix,'' because doctors were going to be cut 20 percent in their reimbursement under Medicare.

I have seen documentation that makes clear that for some doctors, some treatment, when you cut them any more than they are already, they lose substantial amounts of money. So why would they even undergo to help someone with a physical problem on Medicare, particularly Medicaid that pays even less, when they are receiving less compensation than it costs them just to conduct the activity with the patient?

What has not been talked about here on the floor by those who are so proud that they passed the ``doc fix'' and did not cut the doctors 20 percent more this year was that, originally, there was supposed to be a fix in the reimbursement to physicians that would last at least 3\1/2\ years, and then at the end it would begin being cut 20 percent again.

Well, what was inserted and actually came to the floor was a fix for not 3\1/2\ years, but 19 months, and at the end of the 19 months, instead of going back to a 20 percent cut again, it moved and advanced to a 33 percent cut.

Even though we had colleagues across the aisle so proud that they helped our doctors continue to be able to see patients, it turns out that not just the AMA--I don't really trust their endorsements after seeing what they did on the health care fiasco that would cut care to seniors by $500 billion and would dramatically change their professions forever--but looking further, every physician organization that weighed in said this is a disaster. Don't pass this.

Yet it was passed anyway, and the majority stands up after it passes it and basically says, ``You're welcome.'' You're welcome? They haven't really said thank you, because they were begging them not to pass it.

That is kind of what we have seen with the military as well. When we get into this area of special rights, as we have heard people clamor around the country for special rights in the military and special constitutional rights for those who are trying to kill and destroy us, if you go back, and I know everybody hasn't been fortunate enough to have a legal education. I am very blessed with a legal education at Baylor University. Serving in the Army for 4 years, you learn probably more than you ever wanted to.

But, anyway, terrorists, people who are part of a group who have said they are at war with this Nation, they are not entitled to the same rights under the Constitution that we are. Just like people in the military are not entitled to the same rights as people in the civilian sector, people at war with this country, going back to the Quirin case in 1942, they were called enemy combatants. If they abided by the Geneva Convention, if they wore a uniform, if they abided by the rules of law, then they were entitled to be treated as prisoners of war under the Geneva Convention.

We treat the enemy combatants who are not entitled to anything under the Geneva Convention better than the Geneva Convention affords them. And throughout the history of mankind, for people who have studied war, and if you are an officer in the military you have been required to study military history, you know that if a nation was a civilized nation and they captured people who were at war with them,

part of a group or a country who said they were at war, then you held them until their friends or country said, we are no longer at war.

At that point, and it may be 10 or 20 years down the line, but at that point, when the friends finally admitted we are no longer at war, then you would release those enemy combatants and let them return home on the promise not to be at war anymore.

And if they were suspected or there was probable cause to believe they had committed a war crime, then you didn't even release them to go back home, even if they served 20 years in a POW camp. You tried them before a military commission for war crimes. And, again, the Constitution of the United States anticipated that in those situations, when they were tried, it would be before a military commission, and the Constitution specifically gives the Congress the power to set up military commissions to do that.

But because people don't realize our way of life is at risk, and the Constitution, drafted by our Founders, who realized you have to have a different set of rights for those at war against you, they have pushed and said no, no, no; let's give these extra rights and treat these enemy combatants as extra special. That is why in the Military Commissions Act of 2006, which has been upheld by the U.S. Supreme Court, they were referred to as enemy combatants, going back to the Quirin case of 1942.

Well, once our friends across the aisle took the majority, they could not live with this horrible language of calling these people that want to kill us, destroy our way of life, destroy our families, our children, everything we hold dear, they didn't like them being called enemy combatants. It sounded offensive. So an amendment to the Military Commissions Act of 2006 was passed calling it the Military Commissions Act of 2009 in which we struck the language ``enemy combatant.''

It is no longer appropriate under the law of this Congress to call someone an enemy combatant who wants to kill us and destroy our way of life. Now we call them, and the term is quoted, ``unprivileged alien enemy belligerent,'' hoping that will be less offensive to those who want to kill us, destroy us, wipe out our families and take all we have.

I'm concerned, my friend keeps using the term ``terrorist,'' and I'm worried that she may not realize that that might offend somebody that wants to kill her.

Well, as long as you don't say that somebody lied, then we're okay.

But I know that there are people who are concerned that if we are just nice enough to those folks who want to kill us and destroy our way of life, that they'll come around and see how wonderful and nice they are. Unfortunately, they don't realize, to those who want to destroy our way of life and kill us, it appears to be weakness; and a weakness to them means we are worthy to be destroyed because we have no business being on the planet. But I know there are still those that say let's help those, do everything we can for them. And I come back to this article. There's a former CIA operative, Wayne Simmons, terrorist analyst, who was amazed at the medical treatment that was provided to those who want to kill and destroy us.

Having been to Guantanamo a couple of times myself, seeing the extraordinary court set-up that was ready to start trying terrorists back over a year ago when the President, the Commander-in-Chief, put the stop on it, they were about to go to trial and the first five to go to trial had already said they were going to plead guilty. But once they were told they were coming to New York and were going to get a civilian trial, well, obviously they made clear, well, we're going to be proud of what we did but we're not going to plead guilty. We're looking forward to that wonderful format in New York.

Again, for those who are worried that, you know, if we would just treat these folks nicely, they'll love us instead of wanting to destroy our way of life, well, I would give them humbly the example of Abdullah Massoud. Abdullah Massoud, a/k/a Said Mohammed Ali Shah, was released from Guantanamo. But because, during his attempts to destroy American lives, he had lost his leg below his knee, well, we fitted him with a prosthesis that cost between 50 and $75,000. So those who were worried about if we just are nicer to these folks, well, we were nice to Mr. Massoud, gave him a prosthesis to help him, even though he lost his leg in trying to kill us. Well, we tried to help him and did and gave him that wonderful prosthesis, American ingenuity at its best, creating a prosthesis like that that would help him walk, help him be a participant in society.

So knowing that he would surely have to love us after we had helped restore his leg that he lost trying to be violent against us, he was released. And he, according to Pakistani officials, directed a homicide attack that killed 31 people in Pakistan, and then 2 months later, when he was about to be captured by Pakistani forces, he blew himself up, including the $75,000 prosthesis. Apparently, it didn't mean a whole lot, how nice we were to him in Guantanamo.

On my first trip to Guantanamo, it was interesting. At one point there were a couple of us that were in one of the detention areas. We had been warned, now, when we go through this door, do not talk because you won't be able to hear their interaction between each other if they know a voice that

they're not familiar with is somewhere around here.

And so we listened. There was laughing. I didn't understand what they were saying, kidding around, a lot of banter back and forth between the different units where they were being held. And as we stood at the end of the hallway, someone with us said something that was heard by those on that hallway, and immediately, the banter, the cheerfulness turned into, ``Help, I'm being tortured. Help.'' And we were treated to cries for help. They didn't realize that we had been hearing them kidding around, laughing and joking with each other until they heard that a new voice was on the floor. And we were told, that's because they know that there are different groups that come, Amnesty International, different ones that come to check on them, and so that's why as soon as they hear a voice that they don't hear every day, they want to make sure that they get lots of sympathy. It's what they're trained to do. It was just amazing to observe that firsthand. It was really interesting and amazing.

But also, we know that no one who is a guard is allowed to assault or even speak in a negative way toward anyone being held at Guantanamo. The only assaults now for some years that have gone on at Guantanamo occur when the inmates there figure out new and exciting ways to throw urine or feces on our guards. There's been only one guard that reacted hostily by yelling an insult, a verbal insult at the one who threw feces on him. And he was punished for that, what was deemed to be, by our military, overreaction. Though he did not strike, he spoke angrily and insultingly and, therefore, he was punished.

You might wonder, Mr. Speaker, what happens to those that keep throwing urine and feces? Well, in a normal prison, and I've been through many of those, if you will not quit assaulting the guards, then ultimately you're put in an isolation cell where you can't possibly do it anymore. But because of all the complaints about what a horrible place Guantanamo is, though the people there are treated better than most any maximum security prison I've ever seen or heard about, we don't put them in isolation because Amnesty International, some of these groups, would just go nuts. And so they say it's easier just to punish them by taking away a couple of their hours that they're allowed to watch movies each day. And if it's bad enough, they may take some of their time away of the hours that they're allowed to be outdoors. That's their punishment--losing some movie time. In view of some of the movies out now, they're not missing that much. But that's how they're punished for throwing urine or feces on our guards.

I realize that some in this body, some around the country, want to help the terrorists and they believe if we'll just be nice to them, everything will work out fine. That's not the case. It is absolutely not the case.

It is religious zealotry. And I thank God that it is only a very small percentage of Islamic believers who believe in this type of violent jihad. The vast majority of Islamic believers don't believe jihad means the violent physical event that these jihadist extremists that we've come to know and see kill people do. So, thank goodness for that.

But for those jihadist extremists who believe, as Ahmadinejad said, that he can usher in the coming of the Mahdi, the Grand Mahdi that will rule over the caliphate, that he can usher that in by using nuclear weapons to blow us up, Israel up, this is serious. He believes it to his core, even though some of the American interviewers were either scared to ask, Why do you want to blow us up and destroy us? And do you really believe that you'll bring about the return of the Mahdi to rule the world if you use nuclear weapons? Nobody had the nerve to ask those.

That's what he has said repeatedly. And as the lesson should have been learned from Hitler, when you have a nut that's claiming he's going to kill people and destroy countries and destroy societies and commit genocide, and he achieves the weaponry to do that, you'd better take him seriously. But we haven't done that.

It's been a very interesting week. Earlier I was mentioning the bill, H.R. 5116, the COMPETES Act, it's called. This would have amended section 702, persons with disabilities, to include veterans with disabilities in achieving the same type of special consideration. That's all it says, special consideration that other groups designated as minorities under this do. How unfortunate, the same week we betray our promise to our military.

Well, as we anticipate heading home this weekend, which I do each weekend, and we think about Memorial Day and those who have laid down their lives for us, having attended the funeral of Sergeant Kenneth B. May, Jr., 26 years old, of Kilgore, Texas, in the last 10 days, our hearts and our tributes go out to those who served this Nation. May they forgive us for what we've done to them this week.

Mr. Speaker, pursuant to House Concurrent Resolution 282, 111th Congress, I move that the House do now adjourn.

The motion was agreed to; accordingly (at 5 o'clock and 59 minutes p.m.), the House adjourned until Tuesday, June 8, 2010, at 2 p.m.

Mr. Speaker, as we've had hearings regarding the oil spill out in the gulf, there have been some staggering things come forward, and the media is not grabbing it like they should and letting everyone know.

Who knew that the inspectors inspecting the offshore rigs were unionized? So they had union limits on how many hours and travel and this kind of thing. These guys are like the military. They're out there to protect the environment, and we're going to put limits on them? They've got to be out there protecting us.

And then yesterday, Director Birnbaum, when asked what kind of checks and balances did you have, she

said, We sent them out in pairs of two. And then I asked, Well, then was it a good idea that the last inspection team of two was a unionized father-and-son team that went out there to carefully watch each other to make sure each other did the right thing? This is outrageous.

And then we had the investigation going on as to what gifts may have been given to the people doing the inspections.

This thing stinks, and it needs to be cleaned up.

Mr. Speaker, there was an agreement with the military to do a study on what to do about the Don't Ask, Don't Tell policy. That was the agreement, and the study is due at the end of the year.

What this rule says, by bringing this amendment to the floor, is, while we send men and women out in harm's way to lay down their lives for us, we don't care what you think. We don't care what word you were given by your leaders that we do care what you think and will incorporate that and will work with that. We're saying we're shoving this down your throat. We don't care.

And think about the policy. Now, look, I have represented people in the Army who practiced homosexuality, and heterosexuality, and sexual assault victims. I understand this issue perhaps more than many of those on the floor here.

And I'm telling you, the military is not a social experiment. We are sending them out there with a mission to protect this country. And if someone has to be overt about their sexuality, whether it's in a bunker where they're confined under fire, then it's a problem. And that's what repeal of Don't Ask, Don't Tell does. It says, I have to be overt. I don't care. I want this to be a social experiment.

Our men and women in the military deserve better. Let's hear from them at the end of the year with a complete study, and then the leaders keep their word when we send our military out to die for this country.

We owe them better than this. This shouldn't have been part of the rule. It shouldn't be part of the vote. Let's keep our word for a change.

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

The motion was agreed to; accordingly (at 11 o'clock and 53 minutes p.m.), the House adjourned until tomorrow, Friday, May 28, 2010, at 9 a.m.

Mr. Chairman, we heard our colleague across the aisle talking about the Don't Ask, Don't Tell. Obviously, this is supposed to be about a block of amendments, and I don't have objection to those, so I would like to use this time to address that issue.

This body, leaders in this body, the White House, from the President to the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs and the Secretary of Defense, have promised our men and women who wear the uniform that their opinion will be considered.

A survey and study are being done.

Now, we've heard about individual cases where this person ended up getting out. As we heard, he couldn't keep his sexual urges private, and so he had to make them overt and therefore he was out-processed.

The policy has been, as long as the sexuality is a private matter, then it doesn't damage the mission of the military. But when it becomes overt, whether it's an officer having a heterosexual affair, or whether it's overt homosexuality, through the history of the military, it has been a problem to the ongoing morale of the military and accomplishment of the mission. Anything that detracts from the mission should be eliminated.

So the message here is, the hundreds of people that have urged me, please fight for us and what we believe in, because I've heard from so many, if you push this through, we're out. We're done.

We hear some isolated cases, but please, let's don't do damage to the military and break our promise to them, let's wait till the study is completed.

I was shocked to hear the majority leader bring up the Americans with Disability Act. It was a wonderful thing that this Congress did in making all areas accessible to those with disability. But to bring it up in this debate next brings the question, will this majority not stop meddling with the military, and next we expect an extension of the ADA so that the military will next be required to put those who are disabled on the front lines to defend the Nation?

It's time to stop meddling. Let the military do the job for which they were assigned and for which they volunteered. Put the military in charge.

Thank you, Mr. Speaker.

There are certain requirements of this body that the Constitution sets forth. This is the body that controls the purse strings of the country. This body has an obligation to make sure that we act cautiously and carefully in spending the money that we legally steal from those who produce it. It would be theft except we are authorized to pass laws to make it legal theft when we take it from people who produce that money in this country, but it should come home to folks around this body that we have an obligation to those people to be conscientious in the things we do; and, accordingly, it is the obligation of this body to prepare a budget in order to have control over our appropriations.

The people who I serve with, who have been here for years, say this is the first year they recall ever not voting on a budget in the House of Representatives. There is no budget. When politics is more important than actually protecting the country that we are sworn to protect, then from a political viewpoint, it's easy to see why someone might want to do this for the first time in so many years and avoid putting forth a budget. Because if a budget were brought forth in this election year with so many people already upset--with tea parties so angry at the vast overspending--they would be able to see exactly how off the charts this body's spending has been and is projected to be with that money that we legally steal from people who produce it in the country.

So we haven't had time or the political fortitude to step up in this body and to prepare a budget as is required. We have an obligation to protect private property; but as we have seen with the gulf coast, that hasn't happened.

We heard this week from the Minerals Management Service and from those with the Department of the Interior that they have been on guard since day one, since this bill happened. Well, why wouldn't they have been on guard since day one when drilling commenced?

We know from the records and from the hearings we've had that, when the Deepwater Horizon platform was put in place back in 2001, for the first 40 months it was in place, every month, as is supposed to occur, there were offshore inspections done. From there, it gets very fuzzy. We find out that MMS can't tell us exactly how many inspections there have been since then of the Deepwater Horizon platform and of their drilling operations.

We did hear in our hearing and during the question-and-answer time-- it was part of the public record yesterday in Natural Resources--that they're not really sure how many times the inspections occurred, but what some of us, through some digging, had found out is that there is one entity, and one alone, in the Minerals Management Service that is allowed to be unionized, and that is the offshore inspectors.

Now, that struck some of us as strange because the offshore inspectors

seem a bit like our Armed Forces. You know, they stand between our homeland and bad things that could destroy or harm our homeland. So who would have thought that something, some entity, with obligations similar to our uniformed services, which are to stand between our homeland and harm, would have union contracts?

Well, we couldn't find out from DOI, the Department of the Interior, or from the MMS yesterday in our hearing exactly what is in those union contracts. Normally, union contracts would have limits on travel, limits on the number of hours that could be worked, limits on all kinds of things. You put limits on how much those standing between us and harm can serve and can travel to get between us and harm?

Yet we've done nothing about that. No.

In fact, what has happened is we've now learned that the Department of the Interior, Secretary Salazar, has decided and this administration has decided that MMS has not been functioning very well, so we're going to divide it into three separate entities.

I don't care that it's not a new problem and that it goes back a number of administrations. The fact is it's a problem now, and unionizing people who stand between us and harm allows there to be limits on just what kind of service we can expect from those standing between us and vast amounts of harm. It should never happen. That shouldn't be allowed to take place. What we heard yesterday was, actually, that we are going to possibly let unions take hold in all three of these entities. We don't really know right now. We may let everybody in all three of these things unionize.

But what kept coming to mind for me, having grown up in east Texas, is that I've been around stagnant ponds that stunk to high heaven, that became so stagnant, nonmoving, with no water coming in. They just stunk so bad you could hardly stay around them. It seems that MMS has been a bit that way.

The things that have gone on in MMS stink to high heaven. They are repugnant to anybody with any type of moral fiber: the investigations going on, the bribes that have occurred, nobody's knowing when or if they actually did the inspections they were supposed to, whether they observed or not testing that was supposedly done. We found out literally there may have been inspectors who were in bed with people they were supposed to be inspecting, that there were favors, perks, gifts potentially given, bribes to look the other way.

We don't know what all happened on Deepwater Horizon. The investigation, we're told, is ongoing; but we really haven't done a lot about that yet. Here we have this stagnant cesspool where so much has not been done that was supposed to have been and where so much may have been done that was illegal. Rather than deal with the issues, it sounds like this body is just going to go along and divide it up into three.

Well, now I know, having seen stagnant, stinking cesspools, that if you divide them up, they still stink; they're still repugnant. If you just completely clean them out and put fresh water in, then you've got something to start from, but we're not doing that. We're dividing it up into three groups, and we're going to add to the stagnant cesspool, but we're not going to clean them out. Not only that, we're going to allow the situation to even grow bigger with the potential unionization of people so they can have their travel and hours and things limited so you can't expect as much from them as you would from somebody who is standing between us and great harm.

So we are not doing our job in so many of these areas.

You look further at the kind of money that has been appropriated and you find out that we are appropriating billions of dollars to countries that don't like us. We provided, I believe, $100 million to Somalia. We know just in the last couple of days there is a potential threat that is arising from Somalia, we have been told. We have given them $100 million.

We have given Yemen $100 million, $200 million, I am not sure exactly of the number. There has been a big deal made here that $3 billion was given to Israel, but when you look at all the money added up we have given to the enemies of Israel, it is appears that it is more than that.

So I have a bill that we call the U.N. Voting Accountability Act. I am sure it will not see the light of day in this Congress. But it simply says countries that vote against the United States more than half the time do not receive any financial assistance the following year.

The report comes out each March 31st. We have got the report from last year that came out March 31st of this year, and we see that the vast majority, most of the countries in the U.N. that we give money to, billions of dollars total, they voted against us the vast majority of the time. Some of them voted against us 90-95 percent of the time, and we are just lavishing money upon them.

What occurs to me repeatedly is, you don't have to pay countries to hate you. They will hate you for free. And yet this body just keeps throwing money at that.

We have thrown money at Wall Street. I had begged people on this floor, in private conference, around this Hill, read the bill, read the bill. I begged people. I have implored people. Because if they read the TARP bill, they would have seen that Wall Street was going to have a slush fund, and that has been continued by the current Secretary of the Treasury, a slush fund, bail out your buddies.

Goldman Sachs had the biggest year they have had in history. We can't find out how much of their billions of dollars they made last year came from the United States Government, the U.S. taxpayers, or money we borrowed from China that our great-grandchildren will eventually pay so that people could engorge themselves right now on Wall Street.

We are not really taking care of that issue. We are looking the other way, because we find out, gee, Wall Street is donating four-to-one to the Democrats, so why should we really clean up? We will call them fat cats, we will talk about how rotten they are, but when push comes to shove, we have a financial so-called reform bill that is more of a financial deform bill that is going to empower the very people that are being objected to in ways some of us can't imagine.

We are going to have people in the government pick winners and losers. We are going to say, you are a systemic risk as a bank or a company, which means we won't let you fail. You can run your competition out of business, but we are not going to let you fail. So we are picking winners and losers, and that is in that financial deform bill.

We are not doing our job around here. But we can come in here today and we can go meddling with the greatest military that mankind has ever seen. The men and women of our uniformed services are unrivaled up to now.

No, we haven't had time this year to do a budget, and we apparently are not going to do one. No, we haven't really done much of anything to protect private property. No, we haven't done anything, absolutely zero, to bring down the price of energy. In fact, we are going to skyrocket that.

But one thing we are all so proud of is when it comes to health care and the seniors that were counting on Medicare, we are cutting $500 billion out of Medicare. And as the President himself said, and this is a basic quote, whereas in the past when you went to the doctor and got five tests, now you will go to the doctor and get one test.

Well, it took several tests, many tests, to find my mother's brain tumor, and by virtue of their finding it we had 15 extra years with my mother, and I cherished them all.

But no, we are not going to do that for the future, because, you see, some seniors, they just cost too much. So we are going to cut $500 billion, and we are going to call it waste, fraud and abuse. But we are not really doing anything in the bill to clean up the waste, fraud and abuse. That is going to be ongoing. But we are going to cut that money.

Then we have got our willing lackeys over in CBO. They will score anything that this administration and this majority sends over. I was told last summer, the CBO will not score anything that is not in final bill form. Then we find out, well, that is if it comes from a Republican. Because if somebody in the Democratic Party just sends over a few notes, oh, they will score it, and they will give them the score they

need. And if it doesn't work out, well, we will have a meeting at the White House or here at the Capitol, and then before you know it, if the majority leadership says it is going to be under $1 trillion, they will ignore this amount of money, $250 billion here, they will ignore $150 billion here and wait and suddenly find that 30 days after the bill passes. Their willing lackeys will help them.

We have to do away with the CBO. They are not fair. I am sure, talking to Director Elmendorf, I really believe he means well. I believe he is trying to do the right thing. But the fact is they are funded by the majority in Congress, and they know that. You are not going to ever get an appropriate score, and that is the reason you have over 600 bills from the majority scored by CBO and just barely over 100 scored that were Republican. Over 600 scored, and only about 100 were Republican.

A former speaker told me when I described my health care alternative plan, he said, you got to get that scored. That could absolutely transform the debate over health care because it would save money and give control to patients. Medicare patients would have control over their own health care, yet it would be financed by the taxpayers. They have the best of both worlds. And yet it would be cheaper than what we are spending now. I could not for a year now, nearly a year now, have not been able to get CBO to score it. It is a travesty.

But, oh, yes, we come back again to the military. We don't have time to do the jobs that the Constitution requires this body to do, but, boy, we sure are going to meddle with the greatest military mankind has ever seen or heard of. It is phenomenal.

When I compare the state of the military right now to the way it was when I was in the Army after Vietnam, there is no comparison. This military today is phenomenal. They are incredible. And yet we found something that wasn't broken, and we decided to mess with it and see what we could do, not intentionally, of course, but this majority decided they were going to fix something that wasn't broken.

``Don't Ask, Don't Tell'' it was called. And what it meant when President Clinton instituted that program was that whatever you are drawn to sexually, you keep it private, you don't let it get out and become open with regard to your military service, and we want you in the military. That is what it comes down to.

But that hasn't been good enough. We have too many people in here that did not have good history teachers. They don't know the lessons from history, and so we are destined to repeat them. And that is what we are doing now, we are repeating the lessons of history.

Historians would have a hard time going back and finding any great nation, even to the earliest city states, that achieved greatness, and then toward the end of their existence they forced homosexuality to be accepted in areas like the military. Why have we not learned this? Why couldn't we let the military do their jobs?

Frankly, with as much respect as I have for our majority leader, I was shocked in the debate over Don't Ask, Don't Tell to hear the Americans with Disabilities Act brought up, because I think most everybody on this floor agrees that the Americans with Disabilities Act that made this Nation accessible to so many wonderful people who just happened to have disabilities was a good thing. It really was a wonderful thing. It makes you feel good to know the accessibility that there is, and there continues to be, and there will be until the Nation is gone.

So, why would we want to hasten the demise of this great Nation? Why would we want to mess with the entity that stands between those who want to destroy us and our homes?

Well, we haven't had time to do a budget. We haven't had time to protect our homeland adequately by doing adequate oversight over the Minerals Management Service, or the Immigration Service, or Homeland Security or the Federal Reserve. No, no, no. We just let them run themselves basically.

But, boy, we have found time to work on social engineering to please a political left in an election year, just so some people have their base happy when they come to November.

We're following the footsteps of nations that have walked to the dust heap of history.

Now, I know people think this is such a grand and glorious job in Congress. They have no idea. But it is an honor and it is a privilege to get to serve in these hallowed Halls, and we owe our predecessors so much better than what we've done.

We've had time to make sure that we continue to allow the unborn to be killed. We've had time to make sure that Federal tax dollars can be taken from taxpayers who believe that it's murder to kill a helpless, unborn child and put that into a health care bill and call it health care.

We've had time to cut $500 billion from the health care for seniors.

But we've learned nothing, apparently, about preserving liberty. As Chuck Colson said a little over a year ago in a Bible study: you have morality, you've got economic stability, and you've got liberty. And when you lose morality, you lose economic stability and you get economic chaos.

Well, folks, we've lost economic stability because we've accepted the loss of morality. We've looked the other way when you had the Madoffs engorging themselves. We've looked the other way when the Paulsens and Geithners were seeing that their friends on Wall Street were enriched and engorged. We've looked the other way.

We've looked the other way when the bankruptcy laws were just completely disregarded that required secured creditors to be protected and unsecured creditors to be on the short end of the stick, flipped the laws upside down because the unsecured creditors included the unions. So we give the unions ownership interest in the auto companies. We take a big ownership interest, and we violate some of the very principles on which this Nation was founded.

And it doesn't matter whether it's a Democrat or a Republican President that says we're going to make money for the taxpayers. It's not their job; it's not the job of this Congress. It's the job of taxpayers to make money with their money, not this body and not the White House.

And it was a shame on the Supreme Court when they allowed that auto task force, illegal, unconstitutional order to go through. Ruth Bader Ginsburg, to her credit, stayed it for 24 hours, and then the Court looked the other way and allowed that illegal, unconstitutional bill to go through, because, apparently, the White House convinced them that if they didn't let this illegal, unconstitutional bill go through, people in the auto industry would all lose their jobs. Hogwash. They would have been forced into reorganization. The union contracts would have had to have been renegotiated. It would have all gone through a reorganization process. It would have come out leaner, meaner, more efficient. But we couldn't allow that because there were political paybacks to those that helped the majority and the President get elected.

There are some who've said maybe it's a good thing for us Republicans that the health care bill got passed because it was so harmful and detrimental to America that, gee, it'll help us get back in the majority.

As I've said on this floor before, I'd rather stay in the minority than see a bill that devastating to America, to the principles of private property and of sanctity of life just be frittered away. I'd rather stay in the minority than have my party helped by such a devastating bill.

Didn't have time to do the right thing and all that. Didn't have time to read the stimulus bill--$787 billion. Didn't have time to read that. The ``crap and trade'' bill, didn't have time to really read that. We had 300 pages of amendments that were added in the wee hours of the morning when we were to vote on it; and even when we voted on it, as I pointed out, the Clerk hadn't even got the whole 300 pages enmeshed and included with the bill so you could read it and know what it really meant.

But we had to pass it. We didn't have time to wait. We didn't have time for any of these important bills that will devastate America.

But, boy, we have time to meddle with the United States military.

We heard some isolated cases of someone who ended up having to leave

the military because they couldn't control their sexual hormones to the point that they could keep their sexual orientation private.

But what about the thousands and hundreds of thousands of people in the military who have now been betrayed?

They were promised we're going to have a study, and we're going to make sure that we don't do anything to harm the military. But a little problem came up in this body keeping its promise to the military. That problem is the November election's coming up. And the problem is that some of the solid base, left wing of the majority were not happy. They didn't feel like enough had been done to suit them, and so we had to break our word to the military, rush this bill in here and eliminate Don't Ask, Don't Tell.

But, oh, no, we heard from people that, gee, we're going to roll back Don't Ask, Don't Tell. Sure, of course we are. But we're going to wait until we find out what the study says about how devastating it'll be to the military.

Yes, the Secretary of Defense and Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff both said they would follow the order of their superior officer, the Commander in Chief. But those who were not politically appointed by the Commander in Chief sure didn't go along with it. They didn't agree to it. You'd find a commander every now and then that would. But we have hundreds of thousands and millions of people who have served, who hope to serve, who are serving now that we have betrayed. And it breaks my heart. I'm so sorry that this body broke its word for political gain.

Now, under the scenario this majority and this administration have pursued, we're in trouble.

The one thing you find historically after Nations on their way to the dust heap of history take after passing things like we just did today, you see a great deal of cockiness arise to belittle those who have studied history and know where this all goes. And we seek to destroy them.

When this Nation was founded, one of the most popular slogans, some quote Cicero, some quote Voltaire, but the same slogan, ``I disagree with what you say, but I will defend to the death your right to say it.'' We have obliterated that as a hallmark of this Nation's founding and its existence today so that now the slogan is more truthfully, I disagree with what you say, and I am going to destroy you. I am going to get you fired. I am hoping I can get you put in jail.

We have passed laws in this body that will help do that and have already allowed arrests of some, even though, as was pointed out, well, they dropped the charges. Putting people in jail because we disagree with what they say. So we don't defend to the death any longer their right to say it. We want to destroy them. And the people in power will make sure that happens. You disagree politically with the party in power, you have a right to be concerned.

We didn't have time to do a budget; we didn't have time to read these big bills that we have run through and voted on, but we have had time to take over the student loan business. That's right. If you need student loans for your children, Mr. Speaker, those in America to get their kids through college, as my wife and I have because we gave up the private sector and went into public service, we needed student loans and we took them. Thank God I got our kids through college, was at graduation of my youngest Saturday with my wife, a proud moment. Thank goodness we got her graduated before the only source for a student loan was to come begging to the government to let me have a loan for my child to go to college.

You think politics could ever come into play in who gets a student loan and who doesn't? Gee, it sure came into play in who got to keep their car dealership. Gee, it sure came to play as to which States get more government facilities taken away and which have more facilities added. It's certainly come into play in all kinds of things. So why wouldn't it come into play eventually in who gets a student loan?

Now we have taken over Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac. You would think if it were somebody serious in leadership about reforming the financial sector that we would first reform the two entities that brought this Nation to the brink of ruin, Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac. But instead, we are not going to reform them. Goodness no. We are going to make matters worse because we are going to give the government even more power and more control over everyone's financial situation.

Certainly part of the health care bill. Yes, sir, we get to now tell you what private products you buy and can't buy. This is a time of tragedy. I realize that we have been less than moral as a Nation and we are paying a price. I realize that when you begin to kill 10 million, 20 million, 30 million, 40 million, 50 million sweet little innocent babies--I know our first was prematurely born, and she held onto my finger for hours as the doctor said, ``She's drawing life, she's drawing support from you.'' Those sweet little innocent children. We have supported their being killed.

And as I was at the Lincoln Memorial a couple of weeks ago again--I try to go regularly. I find it inspirational. Reading those words on the inside north wall of the Lincoln Memorial and think about the unborn being killed, the sweet, innocent children doing anything they could to cling to life. My baby could not see, as the doctor said, but she knew enough to hang on. She wanted to live. She struggled to live. And I love her dearly, and I am proud she is my daughter.

And as I read those words on the north wall, I thought about all the shed blood through the death of innocent children. And the words of Abraham Lincoln were these as he tried to make sense of the destruction and the almost complete destruction of this grand experiment in democracy, and how families could fight families and kill family members, how a Nation could turn against itself. But they had been allowing the unthinkable. They had been allowing slavery. They had been allowing brothers and sisters to treat others by putting them in chains and bondage and outrageous treatment.

And as Lincoln sought to make theological sense of it and he thought about the North and South and the destruction of each other, he said, you know, ``Both read the same Bible, both pray to the same God, and each invokes his aid against the other. It may seem strange that any men should dare to ask a just God's assistance in wringing their bread from the sweat of other men's faces, but let us judge not that we be not judged. The prayers of both could not be answered--that of neither has been fully answered. The Almighty has his own purposes.''

Lincoln adds as a quote from Scripture, quote, ``Woe unto the world because of offenses; for it must needs be that offenses come, but woe to that man by whom the offense cometh.'' Lincoln went on, ``If we shall suppose that American slavery,'' or nowadays American abortion, ``is one of those offenses which, in the providence of God, must needs come, but which, having continued through His appointed time, He now wills to remove, and that He gives to both North and South this terrible war as the woe due to those by whom the offense came, shall we discern therein any departure from those divine attributes which the believers in a living God always ascribe to him? Fondly do we hope, fervently do we pray, that this mighty scourge of war,'' and I would pray abortion, ``may speedily pass away. Yet, if God wills that it continue until all the wealth piled by the bondsman's 250 years of unrequited toil shall be sunk, and every drop of blood drawn with the lash shall be paid by another drawn with the sword, as was said 3,000 years ago, so still it must be said `the judgments of the Lord are true and righteous altogether.'

``With malice toward none; with charity for all; with firmness in the right, as God gives us to see the right, let us strive on to finish the work we are in; to bind up the Nation's wounds; to care for him who shall have borne the battle, and for his widow, and his orphan--to do all which may achieve and cherish a just and lasting peace among ourselves, and with all Nations.''

Lincoln knew about sacrifice. He lost a son. He believed it was punishment for not ending slavery more quickly. I don't know what the future holds, but I know what has happened to Nations when they have pursued the exact

course that we have in the last 20 years in this Nation.

We need to get on track because, as Coulson said, When you lose morality, you get economic chaos. And when you get economic chaos, you get those who are always willing to sacrifice liberty to get economic stability. No greater example than Germany in the 1920s and 1930s. They had a little guy with a mustache who was evil who promised economic stability. And he delivered it at the price of their liberty.

It is time to stop the madness. It's time to stop passing bills that have not been read. It's time to stop meddling with the greatest military that the world has ever known and trying to disrupt it by our own social engineering. I couldn't believe I heard the majority leader bring up the Americans With Disabilities Act in the context of talking about open homosexuality in the military.

So immediately I am thinking, what does that mean? We did a wonderful thing when Congress passed the Americans With Disabilities Act, but does that mean next this body is going to force the military to accept the disabled on the front lines? We're going to have to make--as a former prisoner of war said, What, are we going to make our ejection seats wheelchairs so that they roll when they hit?

The military has one purpose, and we need able-bodied people to do it. And we need nothing that detracts from their military mission. It's not a place for social engineering. It's a place for people with single-mindedness, single focus, to be on the military mission, to prevent those who would destroy this country and our freedoms from being successful. And if someone can't control their sexual hormones, then that's a distraction to the military no matter what gender, what sexual orientation. It's a problem.

Don't destroy the military that has been the greatest its ever been.

This still has to pass the Senate, but we haven't seen a great deal of courage on this issue down the hall, and there may be those down there who believe that it will help with the next election. I'm telling you again I'd rather stay in the minority than have things like this that hurt our country and hurt the chances of its survival.

Let's do the right thing. We didn't do it today. And it breaks my heart to hear the applause over the fact that we broke our word to the military who trusted us.

So it is with a very deep, broken heart, Mr. Speaker, I yield back the balance of my time.

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

The motion was agreed to; accordingly (at 11 o'clock and 53 minutes p.m.), the House adjourned until tomorrow, Friday, May 28, 2010, at 9 a.m.

Thank you for yielding.

Actually, I was going to bring a bit of John Adams' wisdom because, to follow up on my colleague's wonderful quotes and references to history, John Adams, toward the end of his life, said: The longer I've lived, the more I've come to understand that one worthless man is a shame, two is a law firm, and three is a Congress.

I yield back.

Well, I appreciate you yielding, and I appreciate the gentlelady mentioning the Minerals Management Service. I know she was present for hearings today that the Director of the MMS was testifying. We had the Secretary of the Interior for a while testifying and his Deputy Secretary testifying. We had a Coast Guard admiral testifying. But I'll tell you what, after hearing the testimony about MMS, I'm very concerned that adding more jobs there is just creating more problems. There is so much mismanagement, so much impropriety, it sounds like, that that would be a disastrous mistake to add to the MMS.

But let me point out, as the Director of the MMS testified, they have decided that the MMS would be better nonexistent, so now they're dividing it into three different groups. And you talk about Texas, back home, if you have a pond that has become stagnant and it has begun to stink and become rancid, it doesn't matter how many ways you divide that pond, it still stinks. And they're not going to address the management problems. They're not going to address the fact that--and get this, the only entity within the Minerals Management Service that is unionized--and if we were out somewhere else I might expect a drumroll--but it is the offshore inspectors, the only entity within MMS that's unionized.

And we come to find out that as critical as those offshore inspectors were to protecting our country, to protecting our environment, to protecting all of those thousands and thousands and thousands of livings that were gained off of the coast area, the protection was an appropriate offshore inspector. And yet when I asked the Director of MMS was there a good way to have a check or balance so that somebody ensured the offshore inspector was adequately doing their job and making sure that when they finally bothered to go out and watch a blowout preventer be tested that somebody made sure they were really doing their job because, as I'm sure you all know, there's an investigation currently going on about some of the gifts and perks and things that were provided by peopl being inspected to those doing the inspection.

Well, how do you guard against improprieties?

The director said, Well, we had a system that fixed that. We had two offshore inspectors who would go out at the same time to an offshore rig. That way, they could kind of watch over each other's shoulders and make sure they were doing the right thing.

So my question was then, Would it have been a good idea that the last inspectors that you sent out--a union team that went out to the Deepwater Horizon rig, who were ordered to watch each other and to carefully make sure that they did their jobs--were a father and son union team?

She was not able to comment because that was under investigation.

Folks, we've unionized people, which means there are going to be restrictions on how much travel they can do and on how many hours they can spend, and that's normally part of the union contract. There are some areas in the country where we need unions to make sure that things are done fairly; but we're talking about the government, our United States Government that is supposed to protect us. I mean, these guys out there are protecting our lands, our livelihoods. It's almost like the military. They're on a mission.

Can you imagine if the military were unionized and if they said, We'll only work so many hours a day, and we're going to restrict the amount of travel we're going to be able to do. What kind of union contract would you get for the military? The offshore inspectors and the MMS are supposed to be protecting us and our country.

I yield back.

Actually, I'm not just skeptical of the MMS. I'm telling you it's a disaster. It was a disaster with MMS, and it was a disaster that their performance was allowed to happen.

We're going to find out there is somebody responsible--maybe one, maybe many--at British Petroleum, but we know for sure--and it came up in the hearing today as well--that the President had previously mentioned that he wanted to end the coziness between inspectors, or people with the government, who were supposed to manage the oil companies and make sure they were doing the right things, the Big Oil companies.

So that inspired some double-checking. We had hearings before about the 2 years, 1998 and 1999, during which the Clinton administration had employees who pulled the price control adjustment language out of the offshore leases. Originally, I was thinking it cost millions. It cost hundreds of millions, and now there are billions of dollars that have gone to Big Oil that should have gone into the Federal Treasury.

When we had a hearing a couple of years ago about that, I asked the Inspector General--and this was a Clinton----

Appointee. Originally, he was the Inspector General. He is now in another capacity.

I asked him, Did you not interview these two people who had the most knowledge about why that language was pulled out?

He said, Well, they left the government. They're not with the government, so I can't do anything about it.

He could call them. He could see if they wanted to talk. He didn't even bother to do that.

So, after the President's comment about the coziness, I had to go back and check. Whatever happened to those two people the Inspector General couldn't talk to?

Well, one of them, when she left the Clinton administration, went to work for a company called British Petroleum. Perhaps you've heard of them. She had three major officer/director positions with British Petroleum, but as of June of last year, Secretary Salazar and this administration hired her to come to work for the Minerals Management folks, so she is now----

It's very cozy.

Who had been working for 9 years for British Petroleum-- that's correct--in high capacities. So it's interesting to hear about that cozy relationship.

Her name is Sylvia Baca, B-A-C-A.

It was interesting, though, to learn--and I didn't really realize this--but nobody with the Minerals Management Service goes through a confirmation process in the Senate. This is completely an extension of the White House. Whatever the administration is, the Minerals Management Service is part of the administration. The Congress has no authority to confirm, to say ``yes'' or ``no'' to somebody who is appointed. This is an extension of the President's own hand, his running the Minerals Management Service; and we have absolutely got to clean house. The trouble is it's not our house. It's the President's house and that of the Minerals Management Service.

I understand he has been there, but as some of our friends from Louisiana have pointed out--and Governor Jindal has been fighting the President through the MMS and through his responders--they gave full authority to British Petroleum to make all the calls. So the Louisiana folks, the people along the gulf, who are wanting to mitigate and who are trying to get protection and protect themselves, had to get permission from British Petroleum, which was not giving it.

We heard in the hearing today that there were people in Louisiana, along the gulf, who wanted to build barriers to this oil coming in. Yet all we heard from the administration's representatives was, Well, we're still discussing those to see--we're worried that could end up creating more problems than it solves because when they build the little barriers to the oil coming into those marshes, it might actually pull more oil in.

They're discussing it. The oil is in the marshes. It's killing animals and killing wildlife right now, and we heard today in the hearing that they're just discussing it, and they're trying to figure out if they may do more good than harm or if they may do more harm than good. It's outrageous what's going on.

The President does need to take charge. It is a disaster of massive proportion. British Petroleum is at the helm, but the White House should not have given them the authority to just make all the calls. It's unbelievable the disaster that occurred and now the disaster that is being created by the failure to respond.

I asked the admiral in charge of the Coast Guard, you know, How many ships have you moved into the area in the last 37 days? They've moved four major boats into the area. That's it. That's it. We could have moved the Navy. We could have had all kinds of response. The President has all kinds of resources, and he is just basically letting all this happen.

Now, British Petroleum needs to be made to pay, and it shouldn't be limited to $75 million--absolutely not--but we've got to have a better response. People are losing their livelihoods. They've already lost their lives. It has got to come to an end.

I yield to my friend.

Well, I do appreciate so much the comments of my friend from Iowa, and we do appreciate the comments of our colleagues in the hour previous to this, about the wonderful Jewish heritage in this country.

It is Jewish Heritage Month, and it does mean so much to this Nation when you look at the contributions of the Jewish immigrants into this country. This country has benefited so immeasurably from immigration, but it has to be legal, and there are a number of different aspects.

First of all, we've got, basically, a Third World immigration service. It needs to be cleaned out from top to bottom and from side to side. It needs to be streamlined and made more efficient, more effective. That has got to be done. It wasn't done effectively in the previous administration. It has got to be done. It is not being done now by this administration, and it has got to be done. It has grieved me much, in my 5\1/2\ years here, to hear people come down to the floor who talk about laws, who are spouting off things as facts, which are wrong, because they haven't read the bills.

My friend knows that, in our Republican Conferences, nobody had been more loud and emphatic than I in begging my colleagues, when we were going through the TARP bailout, to read the bill.

If you'll just read the bill, you'll see we don't do this in America. We don't give one person $700 billion.

We didn't have enough people read the bill. They didn't realize how much we were giving away the farm when the TARP bailout passed.

Likewise, we have people, including down Pennsylvania Avenue here, who have talked about this Arizona bill. I've got it here. It's 19 pages. That's with the amendments. It includes the amendments that were passed to make clear their position. I've gone through and, you know, I've highlighted different parts. It's what I do. I am not technically challenged. I love doing things on the Internet, finding things and doing good research on the Internet, but there is something about having a hard copy which I can go through and highlight, and that's what I've done here. This is not rocket science.

If you have read the law as it has come down from the Supreme Court and as passed by this Congress, you'll find out that this Arizona law is actually not as tough, as stringent as existing Federal law. You'll find out what this Arizona bill talks about in terms of what a law officer will do because it reads: For any lawful contact stop, detention or arrest made by a law enforcement official--well, a ``lawful contact stop'' means a law officer cannot stop you unless it is authorized under State or Federal law. In fact, if he were to violate someone's civil rights by unlawfully stopping someone, he has got a lawsuit. We've got a Federal law that allows you to go sue Arizona or the local law enforcement if they were to abuse their power. That's why the civil rights laws are there.

Any lawful contact.

There is a type of arrest that has been known since 1966 as a Terry Stop, and there is probably not a certified law officer in Iowa, in Texas, or in the country who has not had a class on what a lawful stop, a Terry Stop, is because under Terry vs. Ohio 1966, the Supreme Court discussed this. They said that you've got to have a reasonable suspicion that there has been some crime committed in order to have a detention stop. You can't just, you know, willy-nilly stop people.

Also, it could be a lawful stop if you see that somebody is violating the traffic laws. Sometimes officers will have a lawful stop, and they'll give you a warning. They could have given you a full ticket because they saw that you had violated a law or that maybe you had a taillight out or something, but it's a lawful stop. They stop you and wonder, perhaps, you know, are you carrying illegal drugs or something. Well, they're authorized to stop you for violating the traffic laws, and they're not bound to put on blinders when they do in order to see if you've violated something else while you're there, but not unreasonably.

If they've lawfully stopped a person for some purpose other than immigration and if they have a reasonable suspicion that the person is an alien, that a person is not lawfully present in the country, then this law allows them to make, as it says here, a reasonable attempt, when practicable, to determine the immigration status of the person.

Now, what Terry vs. Ohio made clear is a ``reasonable suspicion'' means you can't just say, Well, I suspected something. That's not good enough. In law school, when we studied Terry vs. Ohio, there was some terminology I had to practice saying before I got to class so that I could say it without, you know, stumbling and looking more ignorant than I might otherwise already look. The word was ``articulable.'' It rolls off pretty easily nowadays, but you can't just suspect. Well, I just had this suspicion. That's not good enough. It has to be a reasonable suspicion based upon articulable facts. If you cannot articulate facts that justify your suspicion, it's not reasonable. It's an unlawful stop, and it's probably a civil rights violation that's going to get the community or the State of Arizona sued successfully.

The Federal law allows even further stopping just to check to see if somebody may be legally present in the country. Federal law officers have the ability to do that if they think it appropriate. Arizona is just trying to deal with the fact that they have so many criminals in Arizona.

My friend mentioned a kidnapping. It is intolerable that one of our 50 States of these United States would have a beautiful, wonderful city like Phoenix and that that United States' city, here in the continental United States, would be the second most prolific kidnapping capital in the world. This isn't a Third World country where we have coups d'etat constantly and governments constantly changing hands so that you don't know who is going to enforce the law. This is the United States of America. Arizona is not some Wild West territory. To have Phoenix have the second most kidnappings in the world is intolerable, and it is an embarrassment for which this Federal Government owes an apology to border States like Arizona for allowing this kind of thing to go unstopped, unchecked.

This law is very reasonable. You know, basically, there is just one page--if people would bother to go check. On page 5, it talks about lawfully stopping someone who is operating a vehicle if he has a reasonable suspicion to believe the person is in violation of any civil traffic law. I mean, this is not an unreasonable law, but it does say repeatedly that a law enforcement official or agency of this State, county, city, town or other political subdivision may not consider race, color, or national origin in the

enforcement of this section except to the extent permitted by the United States or Arizona Constitution. Well, the Arizona Constitution cannot allow it if it is forbidden by the United States Constitution. So this is not some horrific bill as the President and others, including our President, have made it sound.

That's why it is a little bit irritating to have the President of Mexico come into this body as an invited guest, as a guest in this House, and say: I strongly disagree with the recently adopted law in Arizona. It is a law that not only ignores a reality, that cannot be erased by decree but that also introduces a terrible idea, using racial profiling as a basis for law enforcement.

That is why I agree with President Obama, who said the new law ``carries a great amount of risk when core values that we all care about are breached.''

He comes in here as an invited guest and completely misrepresents the facts, and tells the world here in this body to our faces that the Arizona law ignores a reality that cannot be erased by decree, and introduces a terrible idea that racial profiling is a basis for law enforcement?

I am sure that he does not lie, but that statement is a lie; that is not true. He just needed to read the bill, and apparently no one, I don't know if the Attorney General has read it yet, he hadn't read it when he came before our Judiciary Committee. Secretary Napolitano, she owed the State of Arizona better than she gave it, and she had not read the bill, and she is out there condemning it. And then to have our invited guest come in here and condemn a law that he clearly had not read--I would be glad to give him a copy. It is not hard to get. But to come in here, that is just so outrageous.

But then he comes in and says, ``Because of your global leadership, we will need your support,'' this is President Calderon, ``to make the meeting in Cancun next November a success.'' And that is because he has come in and touted global warming.

For those that can't understand the politicalese that is used in here, what that statement means, and what all these 100 and some countries around the world have said, when they said we have got to have the United States' global leadership come into this global warming conference, what they mean is, if the United States doesn't come in as the patsy who is willing to pay all these other countries out of some guilt complex, then nobody else in the world is going to come in and start redistributing the wealth from America into all those other countries.

I appreciate President Calderon saying that, but the trouble is we are distributing plenty of wealth to Mexico. He mentioned it himself. The Merida Initiative, as I recall. This body passed a bill to give them $500 million, as I recall, to use to buy law enforcement equipment to help enforce their laws. We are pouring plenty of money into Mexico, so he doesn't need to try to go to some global warming meeting and try to construct some method of extorting more money out of the United States. We are giving them plenty.

If the gentleman would yield, yes, it does say any lawful contact, stop, detention or arrest.

This is supposed to be the updated law as amended.

The gentleman needs to understand that ``lawful contact stop'' means you can't stop them unless you have a reasonable suspicion.

Thank you. And the point is quite salient. And it brings to a point something I think my friend from Iowa and I can agree with part of the quote from our President that was quoted by President Calderon. And to give you the exact quote again, President Calderon, in talking about the Arizona law said that ``it introduces a terrible idea using racial profiling as a basis for law enforcement.'' Now, that is just blatantly not true, absolutely not true. Using racial profiling as a basis for law enforcement. That is, it flies in the face of the facts and the facts of this bill.

But then he goes on, and here's the part where I believe my friend would agree with me in congratulating the President, not on the first part of the quote, because he's applying this to the Arizona law, but he says the new law ``carries a great amount of risk when core values that we all care about are breached.'' But the part that is in there is so important to us in the United States, and that is that there is ``a great amount of risk when core values that we all care about are breached.''

Now, I grew up with my mother and dad telling me if I ever have an emergency, if I'm ever in trouble, look for someone in uniform because I can trust them. That's the way I grew up in Mount Pleasant, Texas, and that's the way I have taught our three girls growing up their whole lives, growing up in Tyler, Texas, that if there's a problem, even if you're worried you might have done something wrong, you go to somebody in uniform. You can trust them. And I've taught them the same thing.

You know, if somebody were ever kidnapped, no matter what the note said or whatever, you call the FBI. You can trust them. And I know so many FBI agents, and I do trust them. They're some wonderful agents. And I know they would lay down their lives in a second.

But what about when we come to the point when the Federal law enforcement is told by their commander in the White House that enforcing the law is a bad idea? That's problematic. And then that spills over until you have somebody who is charged and his whole job is enforcing the immigration laws, and he says, if Arizona sends somebody that they have detained because they're illegally in the country, he may not even enforce the law. See, that flies in the face, just like the President's quote says. There's a great amount of risk when the core values that we've taught our children, that we all care about, are breached.

And I'm telling you, when you have someone in the Federal Government charged with enforcing the law and they're being taught, and it's coming top down, ignore the law, don't enforce it, they're violating all the core values that we've tried to instill in our children and the things that we grew up believing, and this country is not the country we hoped for, that we dreamed for. It becomes like the country that so many immigrants flee illegally, because they're not based, their country does not have the rule of law that's in force. Too much graft and corruption.

You come to this country, don't ask us to ignore the rule of law. Some of us, like 4 years I had in the Army, time as a prosecutor, as a judge, as a chief justice, 5\1/2\ years in Congress, taking that oath that was given by the Speaker to the new Congressman Djou from Hawaii, I mean, we took an oath to follow the law and we're supposed to support and defend the Constitution. This flies in the face of all those oaths when you say ignore the law, it means nothing; we'll get around to enforcing it some day down the road. It means I've spent most of my adult life for nothing because the rule of law means nothing.

So I would implore people, do not come to this country and ask me to say that my adult life has been for nothing, because the rule of law means something. It means nothing to them. It does mean something. It's meant something to me, and it always will, because I know, and I know my friend from Iowa knows, I know the Speaker knows, if we don't have the rule of law that's applied across the board, and I think better in this country than in any country in the history of the world, then we devolve into the ashes

from which we rose, and we are just a historic memory and nothing more.

I yield back to my friend from Iowa.

Thank you. Some say, well, if you are a caring Nation then you ought to just welcome anybody that wants to come. The problem is because this Nation has been so richly blessed, and because we have been a Nation that believed in the rule of law and enforced it more fairly across the board than any nation in the history of the world, then opportunities have abounded here. And so it has been a draw.

And I know my friend from Iowa was chairman of the Immigration Subcommittee on which I was privileged to serve, and so I know he is aware of these statistics, but it's estimated that between out of the over 6 billion people in the world that 1 billion to 1.5 billion people in the world would like to come to America. And as most folks know, we have over 300 million in this country now.

But if we were to just say there are no borders, you want to come, come on, we are just giving up on our obligation to protect the economy and the people and the way of life in this country, so come on. One billion to 1.5 billion people would overwhelm this Nation. It could no longer be the greatest Nation in the world because you couldn't have an organized, sustained society with a government that functioned. It would be overwhelmed.

So in order to continue to be that light on the hill, that beacon that Reagan talked about, we have to make sure that we have managed immigration, that we continue to be a beacon so people want to come here, but that we control the immigration so it doesn't overwhelm the economy so that this becomes a matter of regret for those who have come here.

Now, I know, as my friend from Iowa has done, and I guess most of us, assist people who have immigration problems. And so we have some wonderful dear Hispanic friends, constituents whom we are helping to try to legally get in family because they want to abide by the law. They want to do the right thing because they know the law is important.

And some people that I love very dearly are Hispanic immigrants. And, you know, having been invited to come

to family functions and back when I was a judge, one of the great honors of my time as a judge was to marry a couple. And her parents were immigrants. And it was just so moving. It brought tears to my eyes. But I look around at this Hispanic group of family, and what comes to my mind when I am with them, when I see them is they believe in the things that made America great.

This family, these dear friends, they believe in God, they have a love of family that's unrivaled, and they have a hard-work ethic like virtually nobody else can even aspire to. It's a beautiful thing. And I have great hopes that those three things that you find generally so often in Hispanic communities are what's going to reinvigorate this country and get us back on track and get us back to the very things George Washington prayed for this country when he resigned as commander in chief of the Revolutionary military. Those are good things.

But we owe it to all of the people, those who have immigrated legally, those who have been here, grandchildren, great grandchildren of immigrants, people that are Native Americans, we owe it to all of them to keep this country strong so it continues to be a land of opportunity.

I come back to that prayer that George Washington had when he wrote, himself, that was at the end of his resignation, and of course, it was the only time in human history where someone led a revolutionary military, won the revolution, and then resigned and went home. Never happened before, never happened since.

At the end, Washington's words were these, I now make it my earnest prayer that God would have you in the state over which you preside in his holy protection.

I know my friend had people, as an employer, providing paychecks, you probably had people resign. You may not have had people put prayers like this on the end of their resignation, but Washington goes on that he, God, would incline the hearts of the citizens to cultivate a spirit of subordination and, get this, and obedience to government. To entertain a brotherly affection and love for one another, for their fellow citizens of the United States, and particularly for the brethren who have served in the field, and, finally, that he would most graciously be pleased to dispose us all to do justice.

That's part of the prayer. How can you do justice? You follow the law. You are just. To the rich and the poor you are just to everyone. Race, creed, color, nationality, religion, prayer, that was part of Washington's prayer.

Then he goes on to love mercy, you can't have mercy unless you have justice in the first place.

Washington goes on: And to demean ourselves with a charity, humility, and pacific timbre of mind which were the characteristics of the divine author of our blessed religion, and without an humble limitation of whose example in these things, we can never hope to be a happy Nation.

He signed it, I have the honor to be, with great respect and esteem, your Excellency's most obedient and very humble servant, George Washington.

Now, that's a resignation, that's a prayer.

This resignation he did not, but, of course, we know that most things were signed in the year of our Lord, including our Constitution. So I find it remarkable when some people around here have said, well, it would be unconstitutional to sign things around here in the year of our Lord. I pointed out how can it be unconstitutional to sign things in the year of our Lord, whatever the year number is, when that is exactly how the Constitution itself is signed and dated.

I just want to say, the President said he would fundamentally transform America. And when the executive branch charged with enforcing the laws of the country won't read them, won't follow them, and won't enforce them, that's a fundamental transformation.

Our friend, Cynthia Lummis from Wyoming, prepared this chart. One final note on fundamental transformation: This chart, when you have the blue line, the private job sector hiring, shooting down like this and the red line, the public government hiring, shooting up like that, you have fundamentally transformed America.

With that, I yield.

Well, we were told that Don't Ask, Don't Tell was something we would take up once we had a study done because that's the only thing that would be fair to our men and women in the service. Now we're told the study will be finished at the end of the year; we're going to take up the bill now.

We were told by the Supreme Court it was okay to have a cross in the Mojave Desert, but thieves went out there, took it out after they lost, and now the Park Service is working with the thieves, perhaps unwittingly, to keep it from happening.

The Auto Task Force met behind closed doors, turned bankruptcy law upside down, made secured creditors unsecured, owned the place, took property without due process, turned the Constitution upside down. The Congress and the courts did nothing. No wonder employment is going down and unemployment is going up; businesses can't trust this government. It is time to get back to a body that deals honestly, with integrity and with a consistency the country and businesses and jobs can count on.

Well, I appreciate my friend for yielding, but I want to follow up on that very point.

We're told that there is going to be a financial ``reform'' bill that sounds more like a financial ``deform'' bill. All these reforms end up being deformities. But this in particular, financial reform? To get us out of the mess that had been building through the nineties and through this past decade, for the last 20 years?

And nonetheless, as I understand, in this bill we're going to take up, it still has the Systemic Risk Council that is going to pick the winners and losers in America. That is so grossly un-American; it has no place in our law coming out of this body. That's the kind of thing that the Revolution was started over, that some King was going to get to tell them who would be the business that would stand and who would fall, because the Americans here wanted to be able to let the market decide that.

Now, one thing we've seen, and it has been accentuated, is you do need a government that will ensure that people play fairly and play right. We saw that down on the coast as President Obama expressed that we have gotten a relationship too cozy between his administration and the Big Oil companies. Now we've heard people say on television that Republicans took contributions, Democrats take contributions; but it was the Department of the Interior in 1998 and 1999, some of the Clinton administration people, that pulled the language from the offshore leases that would allow the oil companies, ultimately, to make millions and millions and millions at the expense of the government and the taxpayer getting full value for the leases for those offshore oil and gas developments.

When we had the Inspector General in front of us in the Natural Resources hearing a couple years ago, I asked why he had not talked to the couple of people that the Inspector General said were apparently responsible for that language being pulled out of the leases that hurt the revenue of the government and helped the massive oil companies at the time. He said, Well, they've left government service; we can't talk to them. Well, certainly you can at least try to talk to them, but the Inspector General indicated that they left government service.

Well, after I'd heard the President announce that we had to end this cozy relationship between people in his administration and the big oil company, I wondered: Whatever happened to those two people?

Well, it turns out one of the people with whom, apparently, the inspector general did not talk but felt probably had the best information on why that language was left out--when she was not working for the government, she went and worked for a company called British Petroleum. Perhaps my friend has heard of British Petroleum. In fact, after the inspector general said he couldn't talk to her about why that language was pulled--the language that helped the oil companies so much during 1998 and 1999--and why she would pull language that hurt our government, it turns out she has now returned to government service. In fact, she did last summer. This administration hired her to be the Deputy Assistant Secretary of MMS, the Minerals Management Service, which is the agency of this administration that is supposed to ensure that blowout preventers work properly.

Well, we've got people here in the House who had asked for the results of the tests that were done by MMS within 2 weeks of the blowout preventer's failing. Apparently, the information has come back from this administration's MMS: We are not providing that information to you, maybe to a Democratic chairman of the committee but not to you guys.

You would think that this would be public information, that MMS would want to be as transparent as they're demanding the CIA be, but apparently, they're not willing to be as transparent as they want the CIA to be. They're more in the nature of obscurity like the Federal Reserve continues to try to be and is. So they won't release the information of how badly bungled the tests were. You have to figure they didn't go well or they would have released that information to show that they were exonerated, that they did proper tests.

In fact, as a trial judge back in my days in the courtroom, oftentimes, one side would produce evidence to show that the fact that there is no evidence indicates a fact. I think here the fact that they won't produce those test results indicates that the MMS of this administration is too cozy with British Petroleum because of the interactive business that has gone on here. It must not have gone well.

Certainly, I'll yield to my friend.

If they had even done the testing, actually, yes.

They won't release the records.

Well, yes, it would certainly appear that that's exactly right. If the MMS of this administration will not produce the records to show exactly what testing was done and exactly what the results were, which should be public record for heaven's sake--they're public waters controlled by our government--then you've got to pretty well figure it would not make this administration look very good.

I yield.

Well, that also brings us back to this problem with the Federal Reserve and with the Secretary of the Treasury. Yes, we had some people saying we've got to confirm Timothy Geithner as the Secretary of the Treasury because he worked with Paulson in the early days of TARP. He knows the plan. Well, that tells me he should never have been confirmed if he'd worked with Paulson on the original plan, because it was a disaster, and it should never have been allowed to have happened as it did; but now we've got these guys--the head of the Federal Reserve and the head of the Treasury--who are going to pick the winners and losers in the country.

I yield.

Well, that's an interesting issue.

You know, obviously, Secretary Geithner had great problems complying with his certification 4 years in a row. He swore that he would pay the tax that was shown on the form, and he certified, if they would just pay him that money, he would pay it. Then he didn't pay it.

In answer to the question, I guess an analogy comes to mind, which is the FBI. For example, there was a movie about a gentleman who was so good at forging and acting as someone else, and he could create a forged document out of anything. Well, the FBI ended up hiring him because he was so good at forging checks and making fraudulent checks. The FBI hired him because he knew more about ways to cheat other people and to cheat the government. They felt like he could be an immense help, and apparently he was. As I understand, he has helped prepare more secure documents and more secure institutions because he was so good at cheating those very institutions and the government.

So perhaps that was the thinking, that this is somebody who would be an expert in not paying taxes. Maybe that's who we want in charge of the tax entity, the IRS. It's an interesting point.

It still cuts to my core to think that the land of the free and the home of the brave is being converted into a land of the unfree where liberties are taken away because people have decided that the Secretary of the Treasury and the Federal Reserve Chairman get to pick and choose what entities or what banks get to stand when the smoke clears.

I mean, what happened to competition? Why not let people play and play fairly and just enforce fair rules?

That's what is needed here. We don't need the Federal Government saying what companies they're going to support and will never let fail, because as soon as the Federal Government says they're not going to ever let this bank or this company fail, then that's going to be the last one standing, because it knows it can operate in the red and that its competition cannot do that. At the end of the day, that government- supported entity or bank will end up being the one left.

That is outrageous. It is un-American. Anybody who would stand for that proposition that we're not going to let these companies compete fairly, that we're going to come in and pick the winners and losers, needs to start wearing a name tag that reads, ``King George III wannabe.''

I want to pick the winners and losers. I want to tell you who prevails and who doesn't. I will tell you who ends up getting to be the dominant force in America instead of letting people live in freedom and in liberty and letting them pursue happiness and pursue opportunity. The Constitution never guaranteed equality of outcome. It guaranteed equality of opportunity, and that's what ought to be done.

Anybody who says they support a systemic risk council that gets to pick the winners and losers--these are too big to fail, and we can't let them fail--are enemies of this country as it was founded.

I was just asking if the gentleman would yield for a question, if he would.

With regard to the financial deform package that apparently is going to be coming to the House, is the gentleman aware of whether or not these two entities, Fannie and Freddie, that kicked us into the spiral downward in the fall of '08, whether they are included in this reform package? Is there any reform of these two entities that nearly brought our economic house of cards down?

Well, if we go back to the day that the Wall Street bailout passed, that first week in October of 2008, I made the statement that when the Federal Government buys private assets and holds them in order to try to make money, or the Federal Government decides it's going to start trying to make money for the taxpayer, it's called socialism. And I was belittled by colleagues that serve here in this body for saying that it was socialist. One person even said, well, I only know three Socialists in America, and they're all against the Wall Street bailout.

Well, I was pretty depressed and devastated when the Wall Street bailout passed. The next morning, Saturday morning, I was watching Neil Cavuto, and he had the Presidential nominee of the Socialist Party, and the Socialist candidate for President being interviewed by Neil Cavuto was asked, basically, what's the deal? I thought you guys were against the TARP bailout, the Wall Street bailout? And now this morning you're saying it was a good thing. And in essence, the Presidential nominee of the Socialist Party said, well, yes, they were against the TARP, Wall Street bailout.

In essence, they didn't feel like the government should pay anything to take over the assets they were taking over. But once it passed and was signed into law, they realized this is probably the greatest day for socialists in American history because the Federal Government has begun the takeover, in a substantial way, of private assets.

And of course he went on to say now that they've made this wonderful great step of taking over, socializing, nationalizing private assets from the financial sector, the government just needs to go ahead and finish taking over the rest of the financial sector because, he said, because we know then the government takeover of all of that area would not be done out of greed, and so they would do a much better job of spreading the wealth around the country, and that under the present system, greed rules the day, and that just that great, wonderful step of the TARP bailout, socializing America, as he saw it, just needed to be followed by the final step of completing the takeover of the financial sector.

So the gentleman from Iowa is exactly right: according to the Presidential candidate of the Socialist Party in 2008, this is a socialist move to nationalize more and more of the assets, just as the Presidential nominee of the Socialists had hoped would happen.

I yield back.

Mr. Speaker, I appreciate my friend from Florida, his discussion about energy. It's certainly a timely topic.

I think we're all pretty upset with what BP has done. We heard the President point out that we're not going to have any finger-pointing. But that was yesterday. That was yesterday's news. Then I understand today the White House announces that it's going to have a commission that's going to do the finger-pointing. So one day no finger-pointing, the next day we're going to have a commission to do the finger- pointing.

So I guess we know that nobody that comes in here would ever do anything but tell the truth, but whoever is sending out those messages sure is being inconsistent.

I heard the President say last week that he was tired of all the cozy relationships between Big Oil and government. Well, as long as Big Oil is being properly supervised, then we are okay. But the trouble is in the last year-and-a-half apparently things have not been going so well in the area of supervision. There is an article that the AP put out: Federal inspections on the rigs not as claimed. This was actually from Sunday, May 16.

This article indicates the Federal agency responsible for ensuring the Deepwater Horizon was operating safely before it exploded last month fell well short of its own policy that the rig be inspected at least once per month. The agency's inspection frequency on Deepwater Horizon fell dramatically over the past 5 years, and apparently in the last year-and-a-half that has dropped significantly.

According to the article, let's see, this indicates officials said 83 inspections had been performed since the rig arrived in the gulf 104 months ago, which was September of 2001. And then being questioned about the once per month claim, officials subsequently revised that total up to 88 inspections. And the number of more recent inspections changed from 26 to 48 since January of 2005. No explanation was given for the upward revisions.

But what's amazing to some of us is the fact that you could have a level 5 hurricane as existed in the gulf with Hurricane Katrina before it hit the coast of Louisiana--once it hit the coast it was a level 3, but out there at the rigs it was still a 5--and some of those platforms were completely destroyed, completely destroyed, but the blowout preventers worked. There was no oil leaked. So you wonder, What's the deal?

And relying on the old adage here in Washington that no matter how cynical you get it's never enough to catch up, begin thinking about the President deploring this cozy relationship between Big Oil and the government. Because if he is blowing smoke, then maybe there's fire there.

So we got to looking, as, after all, it is MMS, the Minerals Management Service of the Department of the Interior that's supposed to be monitoring British Petroleum and making sure that our environment's kept safe because we need the energy. My friend from Florida was talking about all the alternative energies. Well, that's going

to cost a ton of money to develop. So on the one hand you can shut down this economy and prevent everybody from driving cars, prevent the trains from carrying all the freight that they do, prevent ships from traveling using the fuel they do, stop all these things, stop commerce completely and somehow come up with money to develop alternative energies, or you can develop what we have and make sure that the government is doing a good enough job as a watchdog to make sure that there are not these kind of violations. That's what could be done.

And some of us have proposed repeatedly that all you have to do is use the resources we have got, take the government's royalty and use that to develop alternative energy sources so that as we deplete our energy resources, more than any nation in the world when you consider all the different resources we have, use the government's share of the royalty to fund alternative energy research so that we keep moving smoothly, transitioning into the day when we don't need any type of carbon-based fuel. But it's not in the next few years.

We saw efforts in the last 2\1/2\ years since Republicans properly lost the majority because they were spending too much. Little did we know those that convinced the public to elect them to stop the deficit spending would do 10 times the spending, or create 10 times the deficit in 1 year that we dealt with in 1 year right after I got here. But be that as it may, we have the resources to drive this economy like none in the world. We have the resources that will allow us to take those royalties and to develop resources so we don't need the carbon-based fuel that we are using today.

We could be moving toward nuclear energy, making sure it's a cookie- cutter-type facility and that parts can be utilized in different facilities. You train somebody to work in one, they can work in others. Those things can be done, but we are not moving in that direction. We are still moving, under this majority, toward greater and greater reliance on foreign oil and foreign energy.

So wanting to see, though, what could the President be talking about regarding this cozy relationship? Being on the Natural Resources Committee, I have some institutional recollection of things that have gone on since I have been here the last 5\1/2\ years, and one of the things that we have taken up was the fact that during the last 2 or 3 years of the Clinton administration the Department of the Interior had at least a couple of people who intentionally left language regarding price controls out of the Federal leases with major oil for offshore drilling. And it has cost this Nation millions and millions of dollars because it was knowingly done.

We had hearings, brought the Inspector General in. And I was one who inquired, Why hasn't there been a more thorough investigation about why these individuals intentionally, knowingly left the price control language out of the leases? It was always put there under former President Bush, under George W. Bush. His Department of the Interior always put it in. But for some reason, the last 2 or 3 years of the Clinton administration it was left out. And the Inspector General indicated that, well, he couldn't talk to those two particular individuals in question because they left government service.

Found it a little bit hard myself to understand why you can't investigate gross negligence, and if not gross negligence maybe even intentional misconduct. But we won't know until the proper investigation is done, why wouldn't he, as the Inspector General who was charged with doing the inspection while the Bush administration was in the White House, why he wouldn't do this.

Now, this is a man who had worked in the Clinton administration, and now he is Inspector General. Of course, his idea was to blame Bush, a theme that's followed up today even, even though it wasn't President Bush that negotiated the leases. It was the Clinton administration Department of the Interior. But one of the two individuals that he said, Well, we just can't question her because she is no longer a part of the government. She has gone back in the private sector. There is nothing we can do about it.

And so I certainly wondered myself why you wouldn't pursue that, perhaps turn it over to the FBI, to the Justice Department, let them do some investigation, because nobody is beyond their investigation of potential Federal wrongdoing, certainly mismanagement in costing the country millions and millions of dollars. But it's not just that it cost the country millions and millions of dollars. It made that money for the big oil companies with which the Clinton administration cut these deals.

But anyway, that individual who had worked with the Department of the Interior and had assisted in seeing that the leases did not contain the price control language cost the government taxpayers millions and made those millions, transferred to the big oil companies, whatever happened to her?

Well, a little checking because we know the President said there's a cozy relationship he was concerned about. It turns out that this administration has put her back in the Interior Department as the deputy assistant secretary for Minerals Management Service. The people, MMS, the very people who were supposed to inspect these offshore rigs, the very people who are supposed to make sure that the blowout preventers worked properly so that if there's a catastrophe like Hurricane Katrina, the blowout preventers work and no oil is leaked from those wells. Well, it didn't work out here, as the AP article talks about. The inspections weren't done with the regularity that they were supposed to.

Now, I agree with the President that we need to be working on issues and not finger-pointing, except that if we--the problem is there are other rigs under operation right now under the supervision of these same folks that let this happen. We can't afford more disasters like this in the gulf or anywhere else.

I've been a strong advocate for offshore drilling, but I anticipated that we would have a government that would not spend days and weeks deciding what to do, that they would get out there and do something. Not do a flyover and a wave-by, but an actual on-the-job, on-the- ground, you're-going-to-get-this-done.

Now, we've heard that maybe the boot was on the neck of these folks. It feels like maybe it's more on the toe or something because we don't seem to be moving in the right direction. You hear stories--you know, having so many friends that know something about oil and gas. You hear different versions about potential ways to close this well up. God help BP if it turns out they could have closed this with some explosives very quickly but have not acted quickly enough in order to hopefully some day rework the same well, letting this disaster hit the coast in this manner.

So what is the administration doing? I anticipated that with offshore drilling we would make sure that these blowout preventers were regularly tested--which wasn't happening here under this administration--and that if there were an accident, we would see what happened with Katrina; they would shut themselves down.

And we can't see that there's really any strong movement toward inspecting the rest of the rigs that this Minerals Management Service may have neglected just like this BP rig. They ought to be out there on every rig checking and making sure that they're not allowing this to happen somewhere else.

I'm not for shutting down the energy resources. But when you see a major company having more than one problem and other major oil companies not having the same problems, it does make you wonder if they are, number one, not being properly inspected. And if they're not being properly inspected, do they have a cozy relationship?

Well, let's see. This new deputy assistant secretary for Minerals Management Service, what job did she come from? Well, here it is. She was the general manager for social investment programs in strategic partnerships at British Petroleum America in Houston. Previously, other work experience, she had been director of Global Health, Safety, Environment and Emergency Response. That would be people regarding safety and environment and emergencies. They probably dealt with the company she was with on blowout preventers, things that would prevent emergencies, since she was the director of safety and environmental emergency

responses. Oh, yes, that was for British Petroleum of London.

Well, what other experience did she have? Well, previously she had also been a vice president for Health, Safety and Environment. Environment like preventing oil spills? What company would she have gotten her training? Oh, yes. That was British Petroleum of North America in Los Angeles.

But 1995 to 2001 when the Bush administration came in and let her go, she served as the assistant secretary for Land and Minerals Management at the Department of the Interior, where she was the principal policy adviser to the Secretary of the Interior for environmentally responsible stewardship. Isn't that special?

So, once you hear the chief executive of the land talking about chief executives of big oil companies being too cozy with his administration, well, it bears looking into. And you don't have to go very far to see there is a very serious problem here. And the person that worked for British Petroleum that may have worked with MMS officials from the British Petroleum side is now the deputy secretary or assistant secretary with MMS, working with these same people, of which she used to be one. Interesting.

Now, we know that the jobs have not come as was promised. We were told a year and a half ago that if we would move in a socialist direction, give $787 billion more on top of the ridiculous Wall Street bailout from months before, that if we add another $787 billion in a so-called stimulus package, that that would prevent the unemployment rate from ever going above 8. We were told if we didn't pass that $787 billion of a stimulus package, the President said unemployment might reach as high as 8\1/2\ percent. Well, doesn't that sound good now?

Wouldn't it have been nice not to have passed that $787 billion porkulus bill and have unemployment not go beyond 8.5 percent? Because what happens is the government is sucking all the air out of the capital in the country. I keep hearing my friends across the aisle talk about banks not making loans. Well, there are a couple of problems.

Number one, the Federal Government is using up all the capital to build new buildings, hire new people, 60,000. The biggest sector of hiring in the last month was from Census workers. Well, that's not long-term help for the economy. It is a job that needs to be done. I am glad it is not ACORN. Of course, these may be ACORN employees that are now working for the Census Bureau. But that's not good news. How in the world can anybody go out, as the Speaker and the President have, saying: Great news, the unemployment rate went from 9.7 to 9.9. Isn't that great news?

If you talk to the people that are out of work, it is not good news, which is one of the reasons we have set up a couple of job fairs again to try to marry up people who have jobs open with people that are looking for jobs. We plan on doing one on June 2 in Marshall and then another down in Lufkin July 8. That will be in Nacogdoches, Stephen F. Austin University; and the one in Marshall will be the East Texas Baptist University, and we are going to be trying to marry up people that have some job openings with people that are looking for jobs. The two we have done in the past ended up with hundreds of people having employment that didn't before; but, sadly, not nearly enough people found the employment they needed.

So what is going on? I mean, obviously this government is spending tons of money. We know that Goldman Sachs had the best year they have ever had last year. But then, when you get to scratching, we know the Federal Reserve is refusing to open its books, refusing to be audited. The same people that are demanding that the Intelligence Agency, the FBI, all these other folks, the Department of Defense need to have complete transparency, not demanding the same thing of the Federal Reserve. We have got to keep that secret for some reason, when the truth is we need to know how much trouble the Federal Reserve continues to get us into.

But we were able to pull one contract between the Federal Reserve and New York with someone called Goldman Sachs SF Management, and they got a sweetheart deal here. But it does allow them to basically act on behalf of the Federal Reserve, just do whatever the Federal Reserve could do on their behalf, including hiring people to manage their assets. But in order to be hired to manage assets of the Federal Reserve, the manager, Goldman Sachs, acting on behalf of the Federal Reserve, is restricted to only hiring those outside entities that are listed in Exhibit C of their contract.

So you know that at least restricted them. They couldn't line their own pockets. Except that Goldman Sachs Asset Management LP is the manager acting on behalf of the Federal Reserve; and, lo and behold, Goldman Sachs & Company is an authorized counterparty with whom Goldman Sachs Asset Management can cut a deal as Goldman Sachs Asset Management LP sees fit on behalf of the Federal Reserve Bank of New York. Well, isn't that special. Isn't that convenient.

Those are the kinds of things we are talking about, I guess, when someone here on the floor or the President talks about these cozy relationships between his administration and others that are not good for America, because that sure doesn't sound good for America.

But you know, there was a time in America when people had a conscience. There was something in this country called morality. And when morality was such an important thing in this country, if someone was greedy and they through greed, avarice, neglect, ran their car off in a ditch, and even though it was their own fault, their own greed, that got them in trouble. If their neighbors came out and helped them get their car out of a ditch, well, there was this conscience, this still small voice that spoke within the greedy person to say, Gee, I am so sorry. I am so sorry. I will never be able to thank you enough for helping me get my car out of the ditch. I owe you. What can I do for you?

Now we are in a day when greed of an entity like Goldman Sachs, I think they gave 4-1 to help the President get elected over McCain, they ran their car into a ditch during the end of the Bush administration. And since the former chairman was the Secretary of the Treasury and he could see his friends were in big trouble, he decided to scare America, tell them the financial sky was falling, to convince the President that the financial sky was falling, and that the only remedy was to give him, Hank Paulson, $700 billion to play with so that maybe he could keep things from getting too bad.

Well, he kept things from getting bad for Goldman Sachs. That's why it was necessary to bail out AIG. Most of AIG's departments were doing great. It was the credit default swaps that got them in trouble. But, unfortunately, credit default swaps were deals that were done with Goldman Sachs, an awful lot of them. So they had to bail AIG so that of the billions that were paid to AIG to bail them out, most of that would go to Goldman Sachs. So the American taxpayers were on the hook to pull Goldman Sachs' car that their greed drove into the ditch; and once they had it out of the ditch, they run over the rest of America, their neighbors.

There used to be morality. There used to be a conscience. And morality ensured that we could have economic stability. And when you lose morality, you lose economic stability.

There are so many brilliant theologians and philosophers that have talked about this. Chuck Colson was talking about it in a Bible study a little over a year ago, and what he said was true: if you have got morality, you can have economic stability. When you lose economic stability, then throughout history people have always been willing to give up liberty to get economic stability.

But to preserve liberty, wouldn't it have been better just to refine this Nation's morals, our moral foundation? Then we don't lose liberty to get economic stability. You get it by having a moral Nation.

You know, the Miss USA pageant got some notoriety before the pageant this week because the contestants were required to take pictures scantily clad. What was that about? It is about greed. Greed. Figuring, if people saw how thinly clad the contestants were, more people would tune in, which means

more money for the pageant. It is about greed. It is about greed. It keeps coming back to that. So if you get back to morality, you can get economic stability.

One of the things that George Washington warned about, he tried to warn us in his farewell address. Washington said:

Of all the dispositions and habits which lead to political prosperity, religion and morality are indispensable supports. In vain would that man claim the tribute of patriotism who should labor to subvert these great pillars of human happiness. Let us with caution indulge the supposition that morality can be maintained without religion. Whatever may be conceded to the influence of refined education on minds of peculiar structure, reason and experience both forbid us to expect that national morality can prevail in exclusion of religious principle.

So, to be moral, Washington said we need to be a religious people. The Nation once was. In fact, when Washington resigned from the leadership as commanding general of the Revolutionary military, he at the end of his resignation had these words, and this is not the whole thing but I'm shortening it here:

I now make it my earnest prayer, that God would have you, and the State over which you preside, in His holy protection; and, that He would most graciously be pleased to dispose us all, to do Justice, to love mercy, and to demean ourselves with that Charity, humility and pacific temper of mind, which were the Characteristicks of the Divine Author of our blessed Religion, and without an humble imitation of whose example in these things, we can never hope to be a happy Nation.

Of course, he was talking about the divine author of our blessed religion is how he referred to Jesus.

But to be moral under Judeo-Christian beliefs, we would need to be tolerant and allow the expression of opinions, even those opinions that we happen to disagree with, even when those opinions disagree with our lifestyle. And, Mr. Speaker, when people become so intolerant that they do not allow people to speak their mind even when it is to say, I believe your lifestyle is immoral, then we've lost the liberty that so many have fought for and so many have died for and that the Founders pledged their lives, their liberty, their sacred honor.

You see, there was a time during the revolution and for about 150 years after that where people were taught in school--I was taught in school in my early days that this quote from Voltaire--some say Voltaire, some say Cicero, hundreds of years earlier, but that ``I disagree with what you say, but I will defend to the death your right to say it.'' Now it's become, I'm so angry at you because you have said that you disagree with my lifestyle; therefore, I'm going to get you fired. Not only am I not going to fight to the death for your right to say it, I'm going to get you fired. I'm going to see that you lose all your assets. I'm going to see that property is taken, hopefully, and the government comes after you and hopefully puts you in jail and that you die alone and miserable. What happened to the principles that people fought and died for, ``I disagree with what you say, but I will defend to the death your right to say it''?

There are friends from across the other side of the aisle who I disagree with profoundly on many issues that are extremely important to me, but I know them and I know their heart, and I know they really, honestly believe that what they're saying is right. And I would fight to the death. I was in the Army 4 years, active duty, took an oath, willing to fight and die for their right to say what they say even though I disagree.

Now we've come full circle. Those same things that the Pilgrims depicted in the scene in the big mural down in the Rotunda, having a big prayer meeting, praying to God for his protection and guidance, and lo and behold, they ended up in Massachusetts, not where they had intended. But they came to this land to get away from discrimination because of their Christian beliefs, and now we've come full circle to where Christian beliefs are the only ones that it's okay to discriminate against. It's a sad time in America.

You know, we had a recent survey that indicated 70 percent of American adults believe their children will not have it as good as they have had it, will not have the opportunities, the liberties that we have had. And the fact is, if we got back to a national morality--and I'm sure not pointing the finger across the aisle because there's plenty of finger-pointing to go around, but we need to do it. It's wrong no matter which side of the aisle, and we need to not be afraid to stand up and say it and say the immorality needs to be addressed, and we need to protect this country, its liberties, its prosperity, its opportunities, and that can only be done if we do as George Washington suggested.

Now, there is another country around the world, halfway around the world, called Israel that is under threat. Iran has made clear through its leader, Ahmadinejad, that it needs to be wiped off the map. That leader has also made clear that the great Satan--America, in his mind-- also needs to be completely destroyed. How do we ignore that? You ignore those kinds of threats by people who are pursuing the means to carry them out at your own peril, and they seem to be getting ignored.

I was at an APAC dinner recently where I heard a great orator, Senator Schumer from New York, and he was pointing out all the things that I agreed with about how Iran was running amok, trying to develop nuclear weapons, and it could not be allowed. It must not be allowed. It must be stopped. I was thrilled that he was taking that strong position. And he got to the end, and he basically said, So we need sanctions. Sanctions?

We've been trying to have sanctions for years. And while sanction talk continues to go around this administration and Russia and China and others in the U.N. who despise Israel and would also like to see it wiped off the map, the centrifuges in Iran continue to spin. They continue to enrich uranium. Oh, and now we hear that they may be cutting a deal with Turkey to trade some enriched uranium. I mean, there's plenty of bad news to go around, but that has to be stopped. When you have an enemy who has sworn to wipe you off the map, as Iran's leaders have us and Israel together, and he is working as fast as he can to develop the weaponry to do that, then you sit idly by twiddling your thumbs, talking about sanctions at your own peril.

Now, it is true that before the end of last year we began working on a resolution that basically would run through just a small fraction of some of the comments that Ahmadinejad has made. Apparently he has indicated that he believes the Mahdi is coming, will rule over the world, but that he can speed his return if he simply utilizes nuclear weapons. Then the end and the Mahdi's rule comes that much quicker. And yet we've had so-called journalists who have interviewed him, and the man has talked about wiping out this country, including the journalist asking him questions, and yet they don't have the nerve or the sense to ask him, What about your comments about wiping us off the map? What about your comments about bringing about the end of the world as we know it? What about those things? The journalists have become lapdogs. How sad is that? Not all of them. There's some excellent journalists, and apparently they're the ones that this administration is pursuing vendettas against, the way it sounds.

But somebody needs to do the work because we're at risk, as is our dear friend Israel on the other side of the world. And not just Israel, not just the United States, but our Muslim friends who are moderate Muslims that don't believe that jihad means to destroy all your enemies, that they believe that the jihad is within. Well, those are the very people that will also, with us, be wiped out if Ahmadinejad has his way, gets his nuclear weaponry, because he has no use for moderate Muslims. He'll kill them with the rest of us that he considers infidels. How can we allow those centrifuges to continue to spin?

I have been reluctant to come to the floor and talk about this because I wanted to make it a very bipartisan thing--it's gone on for over 6 months--hoping that we would quietly be able to have Democrats take the lead, because I didn't care who took the lead. Take the lead, whoever wants to. But it is

time to step up and stop Iran from developing and acquiring nuclear weapons that pose a threat to Israel, to moderate Muslims, and to the existence of this country. It's time to step up, and sanctions are not doing it.

We know from the Iraq sanctions when Saddam Hussein was in charge that we had dear friends--France, Germany, Russia--cheating on the sanctions. France's friend Joseph Wilson--not Congressman Wilson, but Joseph Wilson started throwing around allegations about the Bush administration. As his wife said, he has dear friends in France.

Well, France was about to come under fire for cheating on the Oil- for-Food Programme, but Mr. Wilson was able to turn the discussion and focus away from France and their cheating on those sanctions to the Bush administration successfully, and the willing allies in the mainstream media went right with him. But it didn't change the fact that cheating went on and that there will be people who are willing to cheat with Iran as long as they're willing to pay money to get what they want.

I think it is actually to China and Russia's credit that they haven't said, Okay, sure, we will agree to sanctions, knowing that they are going to cheat and sell things to Iran and not have competition because sanctions are in place. I think it is to their credit that they have been honest enough to say we don't think sanctions are a good idea. And all of the while the centrifuges continue to spin, and uranium continues to be enriched, and they move toward a bigger and bigger and bigger bomb that poses such a threat to Israel, to our way of life, to our liberties, because even though our liberties have allowed what the jihadists, the radical Islamists see as nothing but corruption, that our liberties have allowed us to move into complete immorality from their way of seeing it, and therefore need to be destroyed. The fact is our liberties allow us to move forward and progress and become what has shown the world the greatest Nation in the history of mankind right here in the United States of America. The greatest ever in the history of the world.

We continue to move forward and advance because of the liberties and encouragement of entrepreneurism. But what are we doing now? Now we are moving more and more of the entrepreneurship into the Federal Government and say the Federal Government is going to take over and take care of things. But the truth is if we allow someone like a modern day Hitler named Ahmadinejad to develop a nuclear weapon--and apparently he may have enough fuel now to make a small bomb, if we allow him to get a bomb, Israel is at risk, we are at risk, and it would take a miracle of God to protect us because we have pulled down our own defenses.

I never seek to push my religious belief on others, but it is my belief, and since people have fought and died so I can express my opinion, it is my belief that God does allow us to have freedom of choice. And when we turn from God in our freedom of choice, and we walk away from his direction, teachings, and become the immoral Nation we have moved into where greed and avarice take over, eventually God turns his back, and you go to the dust heap of history. It has happened over and over. And now we seem to be moving ever so quickly in that direction.

Well, the great news is that this incredible experiment in human liberty and democracy does not have to go away, but it is going to have to take a recommitment to the morals, and of course George Washington, as I read, he said you cannot have morality that will sustain this Nation in exclusion of religious principle.

We know that Benjamin Franklin, I have said it so many times, but because there are still people out there saying Ben Franklin was a deist who believed that a deity created the universe and never involves himself in the things of man, it is important for people to know his own words, because he himself said, in 1787 at the Constitutional Convention, I have lived, sir, a long time. And the longer I live, the more convincing proofs I see of this truth: That God governs in the affairs of men. And if a sparrow cannot fall to the ground without his notice, is it possible an empire could rise without his aid?

Franklin said, We are assured in the sacred writing, sir, that except the Lord build a house, they labor in vain that build it. He went on and said, I also firmly believe that without His, the Lord's concurring aid, we shall succeed in this political building no better than the builders of Babel. We shall be confounded by our local partial interests, and we ourselves will become a byword down to future ages.

And that is what scares me now in America.

We, as Franklin said, have forgotten our powerful friend. That is the question that he asked the Constitutional Convention: Have we now forgotten our powerful friend?

If he were here in this body today asking that question, we would have to answer him ``yes.'' There is a judge in Wisconsin who said you couldn't call upon your powerful friend as a Nation on a National Day of Prayer. We have had a Supreme Court say previously that despite the fact that the Constitution came about after Franklin moved that we begin to have daily prayer in Congress, we had a Supreme Court that was so miseducated that they felt like it was improper to have prayer in public places. How did we get so far off base? Well, we have had people that were miseducated.

There was a lady in Mount Pleasant where I grew up, Ms. Milum, she got into her 90s and she could still cook. And she would call my mother and say, Tell Louie I have some rolls. Her daughter was my mother's best friend, Emma Lou. And one day Emma Lou was talking about a man there in Mount Pleasant. And Ms. Milum said, He's a fool. Emma Lou said, Mother, he has his Ph.D.

And she said, I don't care, he is still a P-H-U-L. Well, I think we have a lot of Ph.D.s and other degrees who are still P-H-U-Ls. They are fools still because they have been educated beyond their means. Or they have become, as scripture refers to them, wise in their own eyes.

As a result, we have people in this country who think that while a madman is spinning centrifuges, developing uranium, and saying that he is going to use it to destroy Israel and America, and of course that will also include destroying moderate Muslims, we are just talking over here about sanctions and can't even agree on them.

We took an oath in this body to support and defend the Constitution. We are supposed to provide for the common defense against all enemies, foreign and domestic, and we have a self-announced enemy to this country that wants to wipe us off the map and he stands there taunting us, developing nuclear weapons, and we are not living up to our oath to provide for the common defense.

I was in West Africa with Mercy Ships, a wonderful charitable institution that helps the lame to walk, the blind to see, provides surgeries for those who do not have health care in Africa. In the country of Togo with around 6 million people, two hospitals, this Mercy Ship is truly a ship of mercy.

But West Africans on the ship wanted to meet with me the last night I was there. I don't know how well educated those folks were. They had hearts of gold, and they were people of prayer. They were Christian brothers and sisters. The oldest gentleman there, Ebenezer said, in essence, it is so important that you understand what America means to the rest of the world.

And to Christians around the world, and those who want to be free, who have freedom, those who want to be free, if you let your country fall, there is no one else in this world, other than God, to help us. You must keep your country strong in order for the rest of us to have hope of protection.

There were so many words of wisdom from that group, one from a young man who said, yes, but we must not only pray for their leaders--in fact, they said, we're excited that you have a Black President. We're concerned about some of his policies. We're concerned some of them will weaken America. And if you become weak, we have no protection from the forces of evil. Our protection of this country means so much to so many.

As this young man said, we need to also pray for the people around their

leaders in America because they all have people whispering and giving them advice and giving them information. We need to pray for them too. I was struck by the wisdom of that young man because he understands.

And in this country, whether it's at the White House, here in the Halls of Congress, we all have people whom we rely on for information and to help us work through and summarize and get information in a nutshell so it can be absorbed and utilized. And if the wrong information is provided, then our leaders have no hope of doing the right thing.

That's what happened with the TARP bailout. We had a good leader in President George W. Bush. He's smarter than people give him credit for. He's witty, one of the wittiest guys to talk with, just a delight to visit with. But the man who was his Secretary of the Treasury was acting in the best interest of Goldman Sachs and his friends on Wall Street, and not for the people across America. And I'll give him the benefit of the doubt and say, okay, through his Wall Street lens he thought, if my friends get rich again and they don't go bankrupt, then everybody in America will do well. Well, we saw that's not the case.

But that's what we've got going on now. Apparently our President, our great President, is getting some very bad advice, just like President Bush did on the TARP bailout. He's got a Secretary of the Treasury that we were told worked with Paulsen in the plan so he'll keep the same things going. I thought that was a good reason not to confirm him, but he was confirmed, and there he is giving the President advice.

And the jobs still are not being created. And as we move toward the end of the year, we see the tax rates are going to go up in every way, capital gains are going to go up, estate tax is coming back with a vengeance. Some people are beginning to make their moves financially. And as Art Laffer said, it's going to make this, the rest of the year, look like we may be moving into a recovery, but it's a false recovery. It's people preparing for the end of the year when the taxes skyrocket in every area. And that's when the bottom will fall out.

So it's not surprising that there are some economic indicators that are going up. It makes sense.

But we've got people giving the President bad advice. We have people in this Congress, the leaders here who are getting bad advice, and we're hurting the country.

And those wonderful West Africans that I met with, who warned me, don't let your country fall; don't let your country get hurt. You're the hope we have in this world because of the way God's used America in the past.

We owe it to so many. Who will come rushing in to the Haitis, to the international disasters once we're too broke?

You know, the Democrats took the majority in November of 2006 I think largely on the promise that we're going to correct, as Democrats, what the Republicans have done in running up the deficit. And unfortunately, Republicans had done that. When Republicans got the White House, had both Houses of Congress, they got giddy and they could run up a couple of hundred billion in deficit. My first 2 years we were still in the majority, and I couldn't believe some of the things that we were doing. That was not Republican. That's not what we were supposed to do.

But the new majority, over the last--well, since January of '07, have run up deficits. This administration has run up deficits like never before in history. And I was embarrassed when Bush was talking about $160 billion deficit in one year. And we're talking about a $1.6 trillion deficit in one year, 10 times what the Bush administration was pushing. And yet no outrage from the same people that were so upset about 160 billion. What happened to that?

Our country is in trouble morally, and because morally, then economically, and because we're economically in trouble, people are allowing their liberties to be taken.

And now we find out that 53 percent of Americans are going to carry all of the income tax burden for the whole country?

Now, there are some in this country who want to work, and they're not able to work. There are others in this country who are able to work and they're not. There are those who could do more, but we're moving up to 47 percent that are not going to pay any income tax. And we know historically that when one more than 50 percent of the voters in a country get more benefits from the Federal Government, than they put in, you are very close to the end of your Nation's history. You are very close to the end of your Nation as you knew it. And we are moving far too quickly in that direction. It's got to stop.

We need morality in the Department of the Interior, in the MMS, so they don't just wink and nod on the blow-out preventers, that they will step up and do what is morally correct to protect the environment.

We need people who will step up and say, we are not going to destroy this economy. We're going to use the energy we've got, but we will make sure that it's being used environmentally responsibly.

Apparently my time has expired, so I must yield back with a prayer for America that we will regain our morality, our economic stability and keep our liberties.