Floor Statements

I appreciate my friend's point. I have been listening, and I have been very moved by the words from my friend from California.

When you think about, as my friend from California pointed out, the Constitution and the words ``We the people of the United States, in order to form a more perfect union,'' then it says ``and to secure the blessings of liberty to ourselves and our posterity,'' and you look at the 1,990 pages in that health care bill, and you realize, as my friend pointed out, you're going to require people to purchase a policy just to live, and do it under the guise of helping them. When you read the bill, you find out if you're just above the poverty level in that bill, but you don't make enough money to buy the Cadillac policy required in that law, then we're going to add an extra 2\1/2\ percent income tax to you just to live in this country.

And as my friend pointed out, so often we've heard the President talk about, Well, you have to buy car insurance. I would challenge anyone to find a State in this country that requires any individual--because there isn't one--requires any individual to purchase insurance to protect his or her own car for damages to his or her own car. No.

Every State requires you to buy insurance against hurting another individual or property. It does not require you to buy insurance even to have the privilege to drive. As my friend pointed out, it is a privilege, but just to have that privilege they don't make you buy insurance to protect your own car. No. They make you buy it to protect somebody else in order to enjoy that privilege.

And then we've heard so many people here say, We're worried about the jobs, and that's why we've got to pass climate change. And we have people come

one after another to the floor and say this will not cost jobs. This is going to help people. It's going to provide green jobs. And what that said to everyone who has read the bill, when they heard someone say ``this bill will not cost jobs,'' what it said is they didn't read the bill, because if you read over past 900, between 900 and 1,000, there is something created called the--I believe it's the Climate Change Adjustment Fund, and it says very clearly in there it is designed for those who lose their jobs as a result of the climate change bill.

And so, they obviously didn't read that.

Yes. Certainly I'll yield.

That's right. And it's going to have to raise taxes and raise costs for everything else in order to create the fund to pay the people that lose the jobs as a result of the bill.

And there's other good news in there for Members of Congress, though, that voted for the bill--and it seemed a little self-serving to be in there--and obviously the people who said it wouldn't cost jobs just hadn't read the bill, but whoever's staff member or special interest group wrote that bill, they knew people would lose their jobs.

But then also the fund is created to provide relocation allowances for those who lose their jobs to try to help them move to where their jobs are going. Unfortunately, it will not provide money for you to go to China, India, Argentina--the places where the jobs will really be sent if this bill becomes law.

But that bill provides a self-serving aspect because I know in my heart, having read that bill, that when people across America get those huge energy bills that result from the cap-and-trade bill, when they start getting those bills, they're going to be so mad. They're going to vote Members out who voted for that bill, but the good news to the Members is when they lose their job as a result of this bill, they may be entitled to a relocation allowance and subsidies for losing their jobs as a result of the bill.

Yes, I will.

The gentleman is so right. And it goes back to the beginning of the Constitution. That would go so much farther to secure the blessings of liberty. For, as they said, to ourselves and our posterity--posterity of the future generations.

But you go back to this atrocious health care bill that was passed, there's even what's come to be called the wheelchair tax in that.

How is that going to secure liberty for anybody?

That would be the tax.

If the gentleman would yield, we have no better example

of just what the gentleman is talking about than the pilgrims. There's a marvelous, huge mural down the hall in the Rotunda of the pilgrims having a prayer meeting with the Bible open to the beginning of the New Testament. And I know the gentleman from California's heart, and I know his Christian faith, and I know there are many of Christian faith here, and we don't try to push our religious beliefs on others, but you have to recognize what a part of our heritage they are.

Now, the pilgrims, being Christians, signed a compact, an agreement among themselves, because they thought we want liberty for everybody, but we're going to give that up, put that in a common pot, we're going to all own the land together, we're going to all bring into the common storehouse, and then we're going to divide equally.

It didn't work out so well. The first winter, nearly half of them starved to death. And as the gentleman from California points out, they came up with this incredible ability of the people in America to come up and innovate. They came up with this great idea. They said, okay, we nearly starved half the people out. What we're going to do from now on is we're going to divide the property up and give everybody their own private property, and then everybody works their own property; you're responsible for your own upkeep, and if you have some left over, it's up to you. You can give it away, you can sell it, you can trade it or whatever. Remarkably, that's where the liberties we derive came from. And when Jefferson said the natural course or progress of things is for liberty to yield and government gain ground, he knew what he was talking about. He knew our history.

That's it.

I thank my friend from Iowa so very much.

The gentleman from Iowa makes such a great point; we think we're the be all and end all in this Congress. And as I said in here last week over the debate about the death tax, we have the power to pry money from someone's wallet when they're lying cold and dead. We have the power to do that; we do not have the moral authority to do that.

But we even hear people, as they did last week and have in previous debates, who play on some of our Christian faith and say, well, it sounds like the Christian thing to do would be for our government to help everybody, take care of everybody. But you could go throughout the New Testament and you will never find one place where Jesus ever said, Go ye, therefore, take from other people and give to someone else. He said, You do it. With your own money, what you've earned, what you've made, you take and you give from your own self. Don't go take somebody else's money just because you've got the power. You don't have the moral authority to do that. Do it yourself. And there is a great deal of blessing derived from individuals doing that and helping others, but it is tyranny when you use the power and abuse the moral authority and take from other people to do what you, yourself, want to do.

When you look at the bills we've been passing, including the bill passed today, ``financial reform'' so-called, it's not financial reform. It's like the health care bill wasn't a health care bill. It is a government takeover. I hear friends and very scholarly people say, well, this is a takeover by the government of one-sixth of the economy, of the health care. But the truth is, it's not even that. It's more than that. Because if you go to the trouble to try to get through the massive bill that's been brought here, it's about taking over and legislating and regulating restaurants. That's not health care. It's legislating vending machines. It goes into all kinds of things.

I read a provision where it is required that the Secretary of Health and Human Services shall do a study of businesses. Study of businesses? It goes on to tell them what you've got to study for. You've got to make sure that certain businesses are making good decisions that will allow them to stay solvent. Do you want Washington bureaucrats coming to your business in Iowa--I know they don't in east Texas--and sitting down with you that has never balanced a budget, never made any money on their own, have been living on government welfare, and then they're going to tell you you think you have too much inventory? What do you know about inventory? You've never been in this business.

It is kind of like the car czar and all these people that were appointed by the President, unaccountable to anybody. They made laws. They subverted the bankruptcy code. They just ignored the Constitution, the laws, and this Congress did nothing about it, let it go. The Supreme Court did nothing about it, let it go. They just supplanted all of those things and dictated things from behind.

I appreciate that so much.

The fact is, even on the health care bill, when the President had his town hall lady named Pam Stern--and I went and watched the video and typed this up myself--but she had pointed out she had a mother that was approaching 100 years old and she needed a pacemaker in order to have the other things she needed. And apparently the arrhythmia specialist-- he had not met her--decided nobody at age 99 should need a pacemaker, but then her own doctor recommended he meet her. So he met Pam Stern's mother and said, Wow, this lady is alive and going strong. She deserves a pacemaker. So he put it in, and she is 105 right now and going strong.

And Pam Stern put this question, she said, Outside the medical criteria for

prolonging life for somebody who is elderly, is there any consideration that could be given for a certain spirit, a certain joy of living, quality of life, or is it just a medical cutoff at a certain age? And the President went round and round, Well, we're not going to solve every difficult problem in terms of end-of-life care, and he goes on and beats around the bush. And he finishes his answer by saying, Well, at least we can let doctors know and your mom know that, you know what, maybe this isn't going to help. Maybe you're better off not having the surgery but taking a painkiller. This is the government saying, you know, despite the Constitution talking about securing the blessings of liberty to ourselves and our posterity, this is the government saying not only are we not going to give you liberty, we're not going to give you what you need to have life. That is a government that, unless you committed a heinous crime, the government has no right to tell you that you can't get what you need to live of your own volition. And that is such a mistake.

And we think we can do it on our own. The gentleman before, our friend from California (Mr. Lungren) and our friend from Iowa is so articulate about these things. But when you go back to our founding, you see that the Founders knew very well they could not do it within themselves. They hired George Washington to fight the revolution for them, and it went until 1783.

Everybody knows about July 4, 1776, when the Declaration of Independence was made public. But he fought on as Commander, and he did something nobody in the history of mankind has ever done. He won a revolution, had the military under his control, could have been king, Caesar, emperor, generalissimo, czar--could have been ``the'' czar of America, but he did something, as depicted in a mural down the hall.

He came into the Continental Congress with his outstretched hand, depicted in that mural, with his resignation. He said, Here is all the power back, because they passed a bill December 27, 1776, giving him basically all the power. They had to make contracts to enter whatever agreements, pay whatever they needed to pay, but there he was, 1783, tendering it all back. And in his own words--called the founder of our country--and actually, the whole resignation was so profound it was printed up.

They got the resignation, printed it, and distributed it throughout the country because this was such an incredible document. This is what he thought; not the arrogance of people that say we know all. We do all. People in America are too stupid to do for themselves. They have to trust us in government because they're not smart enough. This is what Washington said--and this is not the whole thing because it would take too much time perhaps--but he said, ``I now make it my earnest prayer''--he thought it was okay to pray like that in public--``that God would have you in the state over which you preside in His holy protection.''

He goes on and he says, to entertain brotherly affection and love for one another, for their fellow citizens of the United States, particularly for their brethren who served in the field, and finally, ``that He would most graciously be pleased to dispose us all to do justice, to love mercy, to demean ourselves with charity, humility, and pacific temper of mind which were the characteristics of the Divine Author of our blessed religion''--he thought there was a blessed religion here and a divine author that he knew--``and without an humble imitation of whose example in these things, we can never hope to have a happy nation.'' He signed it, ``I have the honor to be, with great respect and esteem, Your Excellency's most obedient humble servant, George Washington.''

And then, of course, for 4 years the Articles of Confederation were created after Washington left. That was too loose of a web. The country was falling apart. The military tries to get Washington to come back and preside as a ruler, a king, and he refused to have any part of it. In 1787, they finally talk him into coming back because they convinced him truthfully that the 13 colonies will not come back unless George Washington agrees to come back. He comes back for nearly 5 weeks in Philadelphia, windows covered, meeting there privately, trying to come up with a constitution that would hold, something that would work, something that they could be proud of. They had met nearly 5 weeks and accomplished basically nothing.

And this is just the last point I wanted to share. I head back every weekend to my beloved east Texas, and will shortly, but after nearly 5 weeks, Benjamin Franklin stands up, recognized by President Washington, President of the Constitutional Convention--and most people that know history know that Benjamin Franklin did sow some wild oats, he did, and he did in France and England and somewhat here. But by this point he's 80 years old. He's about 2\1/2\ years away from meeting his maker, meeting the ultimate judge. He is just as brilliant, just as witty, charming, a real genius, but he has more thoughts toward the eternal.

And so after Washington recognizes him, he stands up--and we have the whole thing because James Madison, as Secretary, recorded it all--and he went through and said, you know, we've been meeting for nearly 5 weeks. We have more noes than ayes on most of these issues. We've accomplished nothing. And these are his words, as recorded by James Madison. ``In this situation of this assembly, groping as it were in the dark to find political truth and scarce able to distinguish it when presented to us, how has it happened, sir, that we have not hitherto once thought of humbly applying to the Father of Lights to illuminate understanding? In the beginning contest with Great Britain, when we were sensible of danger, we had daily prayer in this room for the Divine protection.''

Benjamin Franklin goes on and says, ``Our prayers, sir, were heard and they were graciously answered. All of us who are engaged in this struggle must have observed frequent instances of a superintending Providence in our favor. To that kind of Providence we owe this happy opportunity of consulting in peace on the means of establishing our future national felicity. And have we now forgotten that powerful friend, or do we imagine that we no longer need his assistance?''

Franklin goes on and he says, ``I have lived, sir, a long time. And the longer I live, the more convincing proofs I see of this truth: God governs in the affairs of men, and if a sparrow cannot fall to the ground without his notice, is it probable that an empire can rise without his aid? We have been assured, sir, in the sacred writing, that except the Lord build the house, they labor in vain that build it.''

Franklin said, ``I firmly believe this; and I also believe that, without His concurring aid, we shall succeed in this political building no better than the builders of Babel. We shall be divided by our little, partial local interests, our projects will be confounded, and we ourselves shall become a reproach and a byword down to future ages.''

He went on and said, ``I therefore beg leave to move that henceforth prayers of heaven imploring the assistance of heaven and its blessings on our deliberations be held in this assembly every morning.''

He knew who governed in the affairs of men. They began unanimously having prayer. They had it every day as he moved, and it resulted in the Constitution that we still utilize today for those who still utilize it.

I would recommend, as I know my friend has so many times, for those who have not read the Constitution or who have not read it recently, read it. I love the way it ends: ``Done in convention, by the unanimous consent of the States present, the 17th day of September, in the year of Our Lord, One Thousand Seven Hundred Eighty-Seven.''

A great way to end a great document.

I thank you and I yield back to my friend from Iowa.

Mr. Speaker, I do agree with my friend from Colorado: we all should be paying our fair share. However, this Congress has said in the past maybe 39 percent should not pay their fair share. They won't pay any income tax. And this administration apparently has indicated he wants to take that at least to 44 percent of Americans not paying their fair share.

But what the death tax does is go after people who have paid at the highest levels of income tax throughout their lives and yet have still been frugal enough to build a business, build a farm, and then when they're dead, come in and take it away from them. They've paid their fair share.

Even though the argument is made that this won't affect that many people, that not that many people pay the estate tax. When something is not right, you need to draw the line. That is what the Founders did. They said principle is worth fighting for, and we will not give in to these confiscatory practices of the monarch in Great Britain. So we had a revolution.

Now, after someone dies, and someone comes in and steals from them, we consider that, in most societies, reprehensible. That is just despicable. I have sentenced people personally to prison for doing that. But when the government comes in, because we have the power to pass laws and legalize theft that otherwise would be considered reprehensible, it's okay. It is not okay. It is not okay.

I have a personal family situation. A great aunt and her husband, who predeceased her, built through generations a family farm. They were land rich, but money poor. They had employees. They had things going on. They had a very active ranch. But when she died, the estate tax was 55 percent. And within the year, while the estate was being settled, the FDIC dumped land. The $5 million estate fell in value. Land that was valued at $2,000 at her death became valued at $700 an acre. The IRS came in and sold every acre of my great aunt's land, her wonderful home where she had a will, she promised things to her direct descendants, we all had to gather at an auction the IRS forced to buy things from my great aunt. This is morally wrong.

And Jesus never advocated to the government, Go steal. He said, You do it, do it with your own money. Don't go steal it from somebody else. And that's why this should not pass.

I do appreciate this so much, and I appreciated the informative information that was provided by my friends and colleagues here. A lot of very helpful information. I do find it interesting.

We were promised back in the first of the year by the administration that if we did not pass that $800 billion stimulus bill, then we could see 8.5 percent unemployment. We had to pass that stimulus bill. We could not wait, because people were losing their jobs by the thousands every day. It could not wait.

People did not have time, we were told, to read the bill. It was too important to just pass it, because otherwise the unemployment rate, we were told, could get as high as 8\1/2\ percent if we did not pass it. Well, 8\1/2\ percent by not passing the stimulus bill sounds very good at this point. From last month, unemployment, 10.2 percent. We're hearing that there will be additional jobs that will have been lost come Friday when a potential announcement will be made.

It is so frustrating to have had people on this floor come into this Chamber where there has been so much powerful legislation, lifesaving, life-enhancing legislation, and then be told, as we were earlier this year, there's no time to read the bills, you just have to pass them, because thousands and thousands of people are losing their jobs every day, and it could go to 8\1/2\ percent unemployment unless we pass it right now.

And so we passed it and the President took 4 days to get the right photo op in Colorado to sign the bill. We could have used those 4 days to actually debate and amend the bill and make it actually into a jobs bill instead of a reward to people who had been faithful to the Democratic Party, because that sure appears to have been what it became, what it was, because it certainly wasn't a jobs bill.

And if you go back to that stimulus bill at the first of the year and you look for people who saw it clearly for what it was, this was not a jobs bill, this was not a stimulus bill. Over half of it would not be spent for 2 years. It was around 7 percent was all that was going to be spent on infrastructure. It was sold to a lot of people in this body on the basis that we were going to enhance transportation and infrastructure. We had to build all these things, anyway, so why not do that to create jobs. And then 7 percent went to that.

Less than 1 percent went to small business, SBA loans, programs. Less than 1 percent went for that. Yet we know that 70 percent of the new jobs are created by small business. It was clear that was not a jobs bill.

So you would think that as we approach the end of this year, more and more people begin to see that really wasn't a jobs bill. Now who was it that was right about that bill? Who was it that read as much as they could in the limited time they had and was able to discern what kind of bill that was and how much damage would be done, that it wasn't going to help the economy, it was going to hurt it. That was clear to so many of us.

You would think at this point as people start to talk about, okay, well, that sure failed, what we tried earlier this year, although we did put a lot of extra debt on future generations, because if you think about it, between the $800 billion stimulus, so-called, package and the $400 billion land omnibus bill that was passed right on its heels, you have about $1.2 trillion. That also happens to be, when you divide the number of households in America, it's about $10,000 per household that we just laid on in debt to every household on average in America.

I mean, who in America can afford another $10,000 being added to their debt that at some point is going to have to be collected as debt, as taxes, or we will go the way of the Soviet Union and have to someday announce, you know what, we didn't listen to China when they laughed at us because we said we were controlling our deficit and we did not; we didn't listen to some of the European nations because they had never been very good at controlling their spending, and when they told us we should control ours, we didn't listen. We laughed at them when they laughed at us.

But now it turns out they're not buying any more of our debt. Fortunately, they still are so we haven't had to do what the Soviet Union did yet and announce that we're bankrupt and we can't print enough money fast enough like Germany did in the 1920s that brought about that horrible dictator with the mustache that killed so many millions of people, innocent people.

We haven't been listening as a nation, as a nation's leaders. But America is getting it. They're seeing. And that's being reflected by what's going on around this country. It is immoral what we are doing to future generations. What we did in here this very day, passing this extra death tax. There's going to be no death tax in 2010, that was going to be the case; and now this bill that passed the House, if it passes the Senate and gets signed into law, well, it will go to 45 percent.

But we're told, well, gee, even though those people paid income tax at the highest rate in the country and even though there may be 40 to 44 percent, the way we're moving, who will pay no income tax, we're going to take away about half of what they've been able to accumulate in their lives, their family farms, their business.

And those that are in small business know what I'm talking about, Mr. Speaker, because so many of them have known what it is to have the person that started the business, got them involved, pass away, and then there's a 55 percent tax for so many years.

We were able to pass a bill, and it's a shame on the Republicans that we didn't permanently end the death tax. But we didn't have 60 votes in the Senate. It was passed out of the House to permanently end the death tax, and it didn't get but 56 votes in the Senate, so it didn't pass. Shame on the Republicans for not getting that done. But now shame on Democrats who are in charge and are going to go with a 45 percent tax.

Mr. Speaker, I know you heard people during debate today in response to my pointing out that, as a judge, I have sentenced people who stole from deceased persons. We consider that reprehensible, despicable, for someone to steal from a dead person. And yet in this body we have the power to just pass a law and say, well, it may be immoral, but we have the power to take people's money when they die, so we're going to do it, anyway.

We have the power, we passed a bill today, despite the objections of so many of us, but we do not have the moral authority to be taking other people's money that they accumulated after paying maximum amounts of income tax and redistribute what they earned with the sweat of their brow and their ingenuity and their risk.

That's not right. That's not the way America became the greatest country in the history of the world. It's really immoral to be doing that kind of thing. And if we were not the Congress, we would be sentenced to go to jail for stealing from dead people the proceeds from a life's work. It isn't right.

When you look at the response, it is to push a health care bill. We're going to add this additional tax and, by the way, that goes to those who generate the jobs, the small businesses. People like Warren Buffett, I don't know his personal situation, but the people that I have been aware of who are megawealthy had good estate planners and the ones I was aware of were able to put together estate plans that created life insurance situations that were paid for where they were going to be fine, their families were going to be fine when they passed on and left their inheritance because they had figured out innovative ways to address the death tax.

The megawealthy, they're not the ones who will be hurt. The ones who have been hurt are those whose family built a business, and then the one who built it passes away, leaves it to the heirs and they don't have a lot of money. They own machines. They own property. They own the business. And now they've got to come up with a 55 percent tax--under the bill we passed today if it becomes law, big whoopie, it will be a 45 percent tax--on money that they paid personal income tax on, corporate income tax on if they were a corporation, individually if it was through a subchapter S.

They paid lots of taxes, and then to take 45 percent now, 55 in the past, of their business meant that lots of families had to go borrow money against the business or sell part of the business to some outsider because they had to get the money in order to pay the tax.

I mentioned my great aunt's situation. Some have wondered, but it was a very real situation. In 1986 when my great aunt died, her husband had predeceased her. It was July of 1986 she passed away, back in Texas. Over more than a hundred years, generations had accumulated around 2,500 acres, farm, ranch, raising corn, raising cattle. They had a good small business and employed people to help them run things.

My aunt, my great aunt, Lilly, was a very good businesswoman. She was very astute, very careful, and she lived a very minimalist life. She was not extravagant. She didn't have a lot of cash. She would acquire nice things. She had some nice crystal glasses, some nice china, silverware. There were things that she had made clear she was leaving to certain family members.

When she passed away, there were comparable sales in the area of around $2,000 an acre; but before the estate could be finalized and settled, there was a lot of FDIC or RTC land that was dumped and prices of the land fell to around $600, $700 an acre. Now the IRS was nice, they gave them a couple of years' extensions, hoping the land value would come back; but after a couple of years the IRS said, That's it, no more extensions, it's all got to be sold. It was a nearly $5 million evaluated estate, and when the land values fell to $700, I believe they got nearly to $800, if I recall correctly, that paid the tax. It didn't even quite do that.

That's why the IRS ordered the land sold and then had an auction of all her personal assets. All of us in the extended family were encouraged to come out to the auction and try to keep as many of the family heirlooms in the family as we could. We didn't keep them all. There were some from the community, some who came from other places who decided they wanted some of my great aunt's property and they were able to bid higher, so we didn't protect all of the family heirlooms, family treasures. Not so much huge value, like over $500, but of great sentimental value. And we couldn't keep it because this nearly $5 million estate, valued when she died, was all taken.

The family begged and pleaded with the IRS to at least, instead of taking the entire estate, how about just taking 55 percent of everything that existed? Take 55 percent of the land. That would seem fair. Oh, no, because, the IRS said, Congress had made clear that, oh, no, we take 55 percent of everything at the time of death, and if it's mainly land and it's not worth as much when it sells, we're taking it all.

All the land was sold. It was a tragic situation.

But I've heard people come down here and try to say all this talk about hurting family farms and small business, there's really nobody that's ever been hurt in a family farm or small business from the death tax. It's simply not true. People are hurt and have been hurt so often in small business and family farms because of the death tax.

One of the things I did purchase at the auction was we got some of Aunt Lilly's crystal, and we wanted to let the closer family members who were told you will get this and this when I'm gone, we wanted to let them get the bid and get the things that were theirs; so there was reluctance to bid on things that were designated for someone else. But it was just a long, sad day. And I bought a little music box, a church, and you could wind it up, and the cross on top of the church turned as it played ``Amazing Grace.''

Well, God's grace is amazing, but that's certainly not true of the United States Government. There is no grace when it comes to the United States Government, which brings me back to the issue of health care.

Mr. Speaker, I've got a box here. It's got the bill that we passed here in the House, and there's some great stuff in here. We had people come to the floor and say, for example, we didn't need to pass the Bart Stupak amendment, no, because there's no money in here for abortions. But if you open the bill to page 110, something apparently people who said there was no money for abortions had not done, but at page 110, subparagraph B, entitled ``Abortions for Which Public Funding is Allowed,'' it says ``The services described in this subparagraph are abortions for which the expenditure of Federal funds appropriated for the Department of Health and Human Services is permitted.''

Well, how about that? We were told there wasn't any money in there for abortions from Federal tax dollars.

So how about the thought of someone not only taking someone's proceeds and property, money that they accumulated over the course of their life, paid the highest income tax rate on throughout their lives, and then they die, and throughout their lives they knew in their heart, they believed with all their being, that life begins when it's created, and that is not just when a baby is born but in utero, and this person who has passed away knew in their heart it's really murder when you kill this innocent helpless child who cannot defend themselves. They try. You see the hands and their trying to get away from having their brain sucked out, whatever method of abortion is being utilized. You see them fighting against it. But they're helpless. They can't fight against those trying to kill.

Yet the Federal Government not only does the reprehensible thing of taking this deceased person's money that they accumulated from their own work, their own effort, paid tax on, and then uses those tax dollars, puts it in the general fund and uses some of the general fund to go out and pay to kill those innocent babies.

We were told right here in this House, right here in this body, in a joint session, that basically if you like your insurance, you could keep it. We heard that said over and over. But if you look at page 91, that's section 202, ``Protecting the Choice to Keep Current Coverage,'' subsection (a) right under that, all capital letters, ``GRANDFATHERED HEALTH INSURANCE COVERAGE DEFINED,'' and this is where it defines whether you get to keep it or not. So it says ``the term `grandfathered health insurance coverage' means individual health insurance coverage that is offered and in force and effect before the first day of Y1 if the following conditions are met:

``Condition No. 1, `the individual health insurance issuer offering such coverage does not enroll any individual in such coverage.' ''

I had a person back in East Texas that I represent when I was talking about health care say, You know what? I know a lot of people are really concerned about it. I don't want to seem callous, but I'm not worried about it, because I retired. And I said what company, one of the bigger companies in the country. And he said, We have a

great union that negotiated us great health insurance, and I've got great insurance. The President said if I like it, I can keep it. I'm not worried about everybody else. I'm in good shape.

And I said, Well, is there any chance that anybody else will ever retire from your big company and be added to the insurance health insurance coverage that you have?

He said, Oh, yes. People are retiring all the time.

I said, Oh, bad news, because under subsection (a)(1)(A) if the individual health issuer offering such coverage enrolls any individual in the coverage after the date this bill goes into effect, you lose your insurance. Everybody that has it loses it, and you get kicked over into the Federal exchange program.

But at No. 2, here at the bottom of page 91, it says, ``the issuer does not change any of its terms or conditions, including benefits and cost-sharing, from those in effect as of the day before the first day of Y1.''

So, very clearly, if the insurance terms and conditions change at all, if the benefits change at all, copayments change, any of the cost- sharing, premiums, whatever, if they change, tragic. You lose your insurance. You do not get to keep it. The government gets to tell you about your health care under the Federal exchange.

And, yes, we've heard a lot about the panel that said, gee, if you're under 50, you don't really need a mammogram. If you're over I think 75, 78, something like that, then you don't really need a mammogram. That's the government telling you. I don't care what others say. You go read this bill, and it seems pretty clear that those panels are the ones that will determine under the plans what services are provided. So here at page 167, it says, ``The Commissioner shall specify the benefits to be made available under Exchange-participating health benefits plans.'' So the Commissioner will decide all of the conditions of the health insurance policies that are offered. Everybody has to offer the same insurance in each service area.

And you go down to the middle of the page, ``Required Offering of Basic Plan,'' the entity offers one, and only one, basic plan for such service area. Then the next provision says, ``If and only if the entity offers a basic plan for such service area, the entity may offer one enhanced plan for such area.'' If you offer the enhanced plan, you may offer one premium plan. And then also if you do all that, you could offer a premium-plus plan. You have to get to the premium-plus plan before the panels dictate whether or not you can get a mammogram before you're age 50, or whatever panel the panel happens to indicate. Maybe if there's enough outcry, the panel withdraws and says, okay, we were just kidding; so we'll change that. But our experience is once the government is comfortable in its role of regulating, it gets to where it really doesn't care what the outcry is. It doesn't matter because they run things.

Just as with the flood insurance when the Federal Government, if it sounds familiar, said, You know what? We think private insurance companies are charging too much for flood insurance. Well, it might have something to do with people who keep rebuilding homes on the coast where they get wiped out. Well, the Federal Government apparently decided we need to provide cheaper insurance than what can be provided in the private sector. So the Federal Government got involved. They didn't charge enough in premiums to stay in the black, so they went into the red.

Well, private companies cannot compete with the government because they can't exist in the red unless the government takes them over, which I guess you could talk to GM about or some of the banks or some of Wall Street. But anyway, they ran the private insurance companies out of the flood insurance business, so nobody sells flood insurance anymore because they could not compete with the Federal Government, and that's going to be true of this as well. This will be a disaster.

It's one thing to experiment with a novel--what really is a socialist idea here, the Federal Government's socializing medicine. It's not total socialism; it's just a socialist program because the government takes over a private-sector business, a massive amount of the economy, and controls it. But it doesn't stop there because if the Federal Government is paying for all your health care, shouldn't they have a right to tell you how to live?

Oh, yes, of course, in this bill the Federal Government becomes the repository for everybody's medical records. Isn't that special? So the Federal Government will have records of your most private, personal, secret physical situation. The government will have those records.

Now, you can be assured that if the Federal Government has them, the wrong people will never be able to get them, especially people in the government who may want to manipulate you.

Oh, yes, there was that problem in the 1990s when 1,000 FBI files were found in the White House, which was a crime for which Chuck Colson went to prison for just having one. There were around 1,000, as I recall, in the White House, people's most personal, private information in FBI files. But the White House had it. They didn't have any incentive to try to use any of that information even though there were some Members of Congress whose files were there. Gee, wasn't that interesting? Maybe if they needed a vote?

I know before this administration under the prior administration when the TARP bailout was about to be passed, I got an email from the White House liaison saying, Is there anything that can be added to the existing package that will get your vote? Well, apparently some people answered otherwise than I did. I was livid, furious with the question. My first response to the email was, There's nothing that can be added. Removing the biggest socialization of private assets in Western Hemisphere history would be a good start to get my vote. But apparently there were others who answered otherwise, so there was another $100 billion added to that bill.

But think about it. If the Federal Government has all of your personal medical records. And you know the Internal Revenue Service is the enforcement arm. They'll collect the fees. They'll make sure you're doing right. They'll make sure the Federal programs are paid for. So, gee, they know what your cholesterol count is. Well, you think maybe they would need to know if you're buying bacon or things high in cholesterol if your cholesterol count is too high? Maybe they need to adjust your insurance rate up and tell you what you can and can't eat. Well, that seems almost ridiculous, doesn't it?

It can happen. That is where we are headed.

If you go over to page 1510--and you wonder why would you need 1,990 pages, another 40 or so of the manager's amendment. If you go to page 1510, section 2572, Nutritional labeling of standard menu items at chain restaurants and of articles of food sold from vending machines. And as you go through and read these pages, it is really interesting reading because a restaurant or similar retail food establishment shall place adjacent to each food offered a sign that lists calories for displayed food item or per serving.

It talks about in vending machines, if you cannot read the food labeling information, then they have to post that on the machine. It will cost millions and millions of dollars, and if people know how the vending business works, there are a lot of people who own vending machines. They make their living doing that. They go around and keep them supplied. They make money from filling the machines. I had friends in college whose parents put them through college doing just that. They don't have the money to get these machines reconfigured and do all of this work on them so they meet these new requirements. Somebody is going to go out of work, be relieved of their ability to make money. And if there were plenty of jobs out there, that wouldn't be so bad, but that means they will go into the job pool with all of the other people who are out of work right now.

And then we passed the crap-and-trade bill in here the last week of July, as I recall. And we had people come down here to the well of the House, some people stood back here at these microphones, and people said people aren't going to lose their jobs because

of this bill. They are going to have jobs created. Good, wonderful, green jobs will be created.

Well, they hadn't read that bill either, apparently. On page 900- something, if you actually read the bill, as I was trying to do on a very short time because we got the 300 pages that was added around 3:08, 3:09 a.m. and we didn't even have a complete copy of the bill assimilated with the amendments that were added in the wee hours. I was trying to read as much as I could as quick as I could, but page 900 or so, I believe it was, there was a fund. I believe it was called the climate change fund that was created to pay people, it said in the bill, who lost their job as a result of that bill. So whoever's staffer or special interest group wrote that bill, they knew people were going to lose their jobs and that is why they put that in the bill. There was even money in there to create a fund to pay people a relocation allowance in case they could be paid to go where the job was moving. But unfortunately, that didn't provide money to send them to China, Argentina, or India, the places where those jobs were really going to go, where there is four to 10 times more pollution put into the atmosphere for creating the same products. No, they wouldn't get money for that.

But I still think the good news there is if that bill becomes law-- and I know when Americans find out what all is in that horrible bill, they are going to fire a lot of Members of Congress that pushed that through without knowing what was in it and knowing what was going to be done to Americans and put more people out of work. But the good news is the people fired here in Congress who lose their job as a result of the crap-and-trade bill, they might be entitled to some relocation allowance under the bill because they lost their job as a result of the bill. And they will be with so many other Americans who lose their job for the same reason.

This is micromanaging in this health care bill to an unbelievable degree.

On the other hand, I have a health care bill here that really is about health care. It is not about control, and control and micromanaging American lives like this huge, 2,000-page bill is. It is pretty basic. And it is interesting, I did have a nice conversation with Doug Elmendorf. The Congressional Budget Office has been sitting on this bill since the request was made August 19 to get it scored. And the reason we didn't get the request in until then was because we were told back in June, Congressional Budget Office, we don't score things that aren't bills. You have to have it in bill form. We had to push and push. We eventually got it through legislative counsel and got the bill drafted and filed so it could be scored.

The bill was submitted to the Congressional Budget Office. We said officially, please give us a score because this should work. This should save money and not only not cost a trillion to $2 trillion like the bill on the table that passed the House, but this should actually save the U.S. Government money while, at the same time, for the first time since we have had Medicare and Medicaid, actually give seniors complete coverage and complete control of their own health care.

Now, I am sure most people deal with someone in the health insurance business, and you know there is a lot of good people in the health insurance business, but they are not really in the health insurance business. They are in the health care management business, and that's what business the government is in with Medicare, Medicaid, and SCHIP.

I don't want the government in the business of managing my health care. I don't want the insurance companies in the business of managing and making my personal health care decisions. I want to make those after consulting with my doctors. That is the way it should be. That is the way it used to be, and my bill would allow people to do that.

It would provide the incentives to push people, young people, everyone actually, toward a health savings account with no limits on how much you can put in pretax. The employer pays in, and it is certainly a business deduction for him. It is a straight offset. And the health insurance policy under my bill would be owned by the individual employee. Since it would be owned by the individual employee, that means wherever they go, it is their policy. You don't need COBRA. I dealt with that when I left the bench to run for Congress. It was too expensive for a guy who was running for Congress who had cashed out all of his assets except his home and cars to run for Congress full time because I knew that we needed to make changes here.

So even though it has been reported that out of, I think, 32 Members of Congress from Texas, I had the least assets of any Member from Texas, I think I am the richest guy in the world because of the friends and the people I get to represent and the people with whom I deal in east Texas. But it is not going to be so good. We are in hard times, but it is going to be worse. It is not even going to be this good if this massive drain on the economy, a government takeover of this much of the economy kicks in at the worst possible time.

On the other hand, coming back to my bill, for seniors, we are getting scored what it would cost if all seniors elected and went to having the government put cash money in a health savings account that they control and then buying the catastrophic care policy above that. It is their policy. They control it. If they don't spend all of the HSA money, then it rolls over and they get to keep 10 percent of the money to encourage them to save. For many seniors, that won't be possible. They will go through the $3,500. That will be controlled with a debit card that they control. It will be coded so it will only pay for health care items. Then they will have catastrophic coverage to cover above that. They have control, and they have coverage.

We know that the younger Americans in their twenties and thirties, if they start doing this, the vast majority of them should have so much in their health savings account by the time they hit retirement age, not only will they not want the government then stepping in and controlling their health care, they will not need it, because they will have enough money in their HSAs to make their own decisions even then and continue to buy their insurance and control the catastrophic care from there. And, under the bill, anything that is left in the health savings account can be left to the kids. If you want to gift some of your HSA out to someone else, whether you are related or not, as long as it stays health savings account money, it can go from one to another.

Another problem we have in this country that we are not dealing with, nobody seems to be talking about a whole lot, is that we authorize people to come into this country, and even though it is intentional, come into this country, get free health care and not charge them as they leave. Well, that doesn't happen under my bill, because in order to get a visa, whether a travel visa, a migrant worker visa, any kind of visa we may create in the future, in order to get a visa to come to this country, you will have to establish that you have health care coverage, the insurance, the HSA, you have coverage so it won't cost the U.S. Government taxpayers any money. That will be the price of coming into America.

So if you are going to live with somebody in the country, you can be under their health insurance. If you are going to be a migrant worker, your employer can buy the catastrophic care and provide a health savings account for the whole group. Those kinds of things can be done because we have to get off this course of bankrupting this country. It is not unlimited when you go spending money, spending money, spending money. The Soviet Union tried that. Apparently they were trying to get a $100 billion loan from the United States and from others back at the time when the Soviet Union was in so much financial trouble. There have been articles written, information provided that seems to indicate that the U.S. may have told the Soviet Union, you know, we know in the past when these insurrections have occurred, uprisings have occurred in Poland, Czechoslovakia, Latvia, Estonia, when they have occurred before, you roll in the tanks and you crush them. But if you do that, we are probably not going to be able to loan you that $100 billion to keep you afloat.

That is what happens when foreign countries are owed massive amounts of money by another country, they get to dictate to you whether or not you will

preserve and protect your union. Everyone in this body took an oath to do that, to follow the Constitution. We are supposed to protect this country from all enemies, foreign and domestic, and yet we are going out and begging the Chinese to keep buying our debt. There are indications that the Federal Reserve, although they have said they are not monetizing the debt, they have some third party buying debt that we put up for auction, and then the Federal Reserve buying that debt from the third party intermediary. So it is the same thing. We are monetizing the debt. That is the way it sure looks. That eventually causes inflation.

But in the meantime, for countries around the world, they can begin to tell us what we can do in our country and what we can't because they determine whether we have to declare, as the Soviet Union did, we are bankrupt. We can't borrow enough money any more to take care of our obligations and we can't print it fast enough to pay for them, so we are out of business. The states are on their own. That is basically what the Soviet Union did. So the 15 states that comprised the Soviet Union became independent countries.

You think about all of the blood that has been shed over the course of this country to get the opportunity to create a Constitution, to get the opportunity to govern ourselves.

You go back to the letter that John Adams wrote to his wife, Abigail, after the Declaration of Independence was made public on July 4. He wrote that marvelous letter, and I don't have it down verbatim, but basically saying we have within our grasp the chance to do what great philosophers and thinkers have only dreamed of, to govern ourselves and not have this big, massive government that controls all of the areas of our lives. We will be free to make our own decisions about our lives. This is a day that should be celebrated with parades and picnics.

Of course, he advocated the firing of guns. We do that with fireworks now instead of bullets, which I think is a better practice. But he recognized how incredible a gift God, our Creator, nature's God, all those references that were made in our founding documents. We were being blessed with something like never before in the history of mankind.

I was a little surprised to see after I came to Congress over at the State Department the original copy of the treaty of 1783, the Treaty of Paris. Of course, hopefully, people know, Mr. Speaker, that it was the surrender at Yorktown which ended the hostilities, but not until the Treaty of Paris of 1783 did England actually sign on agreeing to recognize the United States as a separate, independent country. This was an incredibly important document.

And I did not know, history major that I was, I didn't know until I saw in big, bold letters how the Treaty of Paris started. It starts out, the big, bold letters say this: ``In the name of the most holy and undivided Trinity.'' That struck me strange. Why would they start the Treaty of Paris with ``In the name of the most holy and undivided Trinity?'' It is an interesting way to start the document where the enemy during the war was going to recognize our independence.

But then you think about it. They needed to start that treaty with something so important to both sides that neither would dare break their oath. So they started with ``In the name of the holy and undivided Trinity.'' That is how the Treaty of Paris of 1783 started.

We have come a long way. Now you can't even pray in public schools. Chuck Colson said it well, When you have the morals of Woodstock, you will have to expect some Columbines. If you think about that, when the morality of the country is basically ``if it feels good, do it,'' you're going to have some irresponsible people, some anti-social personalities just decide, I wonder how it feels to steal other people's money, I wonder how it feels to go shoot some people in my school. When that's the morality of the day, we have got so far from our morality.

As we said, I personally think it is immoral for a government to go in and do what anyone else doing would be a crime, and that is, to pry cash from the cold, dead hands of a deceased on which he has paid taxes his whole life, and we take that money away through the death tax.

One of the things that maybe was the most important in driving me from the bench to run for Congress was along these lines of morality of the Federal Government. Because I noticed it seemed like I was seeing more and more women coming before me to be sentenced for committing felonies back in Texas. The stories they would tell there in court were so often the same.

The story I heard most often was, well, I was bored with high school. Sometimes it was a friend, sometimes, tragically, a family member, sometimes even more tragically, a mother said, well, heck, if you're bored with school, just drop out, and have a baby. The government will send you a check. You don't have to work. Just have a baby, and they will send you money.

So they drop out of high school, have a baby, the government would send them money. But it was not enough to really provide for a decent way of living for the mother and child. So the story I would hear, it was repeated often, was, gee, maybe if I have another baby, get another check, I can live easier on that. And it didn't work. And another baby. One lady I had sentenced had 15 kids, didn't even know where they all were.

How would that come about? Why would the Federal Government get into the business of providing incentives to lure young women into ruts from which they were given no hope of getting out? Well, it came about because of a well-intended Congress back in the 1960s. They saw a problem with single women who had deadbeat dads who were not helping financially to take care of the kids that they had helped procreate. And so out of a feeling of compassion and wanting to help, they said, you know what, let's just give them a check. Let's be sympathetic. You mean-spirited people who don't want to just give these poor women a check, how dare you. So Congress voted to give them a check for every child they could have out of wedlock. And over 40 years later we have gotten what we paid for. You pay people to have babies out of wedlock, you're going to have a lot of babies.

And this is something that cuts across party lines. Both parties are guilty of participating in being accessories to what has happened and the incentives to do the wrong thing for the well-being of this country. We shouldn't have provided incentives to lure young women into a rut from which they could not pull themselves out and from which they would never reach their God-given potential.

Since the government knew if they finished high school they had a much better chance of making more money, the statistics were clear, they were able to go to college, they would make even more money, on average overall, so why not provide incentives to finish high school? Help them do that? Don't just give a check for every baby you can have out of wedlock. Why not incentives to finish school? That would have been more appropriate.

This week we took up and passed a bill out of committee. I did not vote for it. The intention, once again, is very good. I know the hearts of the people that are pushing it. They are good people. They mean so well. They want to help. They said, let's throw a billion dollars at trying to keep kids from committing crimes. It is so well intended. I know their hearts. They mean well. But it is another program that won't deal with the bottom line issue that when this government got in the business of breaking up homes and providing incentives for people to have single-parent homes instead of having a married couple in a home, we started doing terrible damage to the moral fabric of this country and this society. And it's ongoing. And we want to have studies done. Well, gee, why do you think these kids commit crimes?

I kept my own separate survey for a number of months there; and I picked, I guess arbitrarily, 5 years of age, and it was well over 80 percent of the people I sentenced for felonies had no relationship with the father after age 5. I'm not sure what it was. Most of them had had no relationship, really, with the father. And that seemed to be the greatest common denominator in the people that I sentenced.

So why was there a deadbeat father in so many situations? Well, the government had been paying people to create deadbeat dads that didn't help out.

This Congress did that, well intentioned, but, oh, the havoc that has been wreaked and reaped here, because that is what has been sowed.

Now, we come around here also, well intentioned, having met the President a couple of times, I believe he wants to do what he believes is good for the country, just like those people in the 1960s did, just like people this week in our Judiciary Committee did. They mean well.

Look at history. It is very clear. When you pay people to do an activity, you're going to get more of it. If you penalize people, as we have for years, with a marriage penalty, you're going to get less of it. If you penalize an activity, you're going to get less of it. That is the normal course of things. And both parties are also guilty of saying, oh, we are going to fix the marriage penalty. Both have done this. I got sick of listening to it over the years. Before I got to Congress, I hadn't really talked about it much. Some of us keep bringing it up. Nothing is happening.

Hopefully sometime it will, because it's a real easy fix. If you want to take care of the real marriage penalty in income tax, you say, do you know what? If you're married, it's your choice. You can file married filing jointly if that's better for you, or you can file as an individual so that there is no penalty for being married. Because when you combine two spouses' incomes, so often it kicks them up into a higher percentage category and they pay a lot of extra money just because they're married.

I've seen it with a lot of teachers. The teacher's income combined with a spouse's income is enough to kick them up, and they have to pay more for the privilege of being married. That's not the way it should be. That's not what studies indicate it should be.

I know the President and the Attorney General think they are doing a good thing for this country. If we are going to show the world how hospitable we are by bringing terrorists to our own soil because we are good and we want the whole world to see how good and noble we are, we will take people that have admitted killing innocent people, over 3,000, and we will give them more rights than they have ever been given in history. That is destructive. It puts our soldiers in harm's way. It is going to cause them to have to start becoming forensic experts while they are being shot at, in some situations they will also be expected to gather fingerprints, DNA evidence, this kind of thing. This was not well thought through.

Down in Guantanamo, I cannot imagine issuing an order to close that without even visiting that, but that is what has happened. And I visited the courtroom proceeding where the trial was going on for some terrorists. And they were interrupted by the Attorney General and the President. They just called a halt in the middle of the trial. That facility there, that courtroom, the facilities around it had so much. There is not another place like that anywhere in the continental, anywhere in the United States. That is an ideal place to try the terrorists.

And all those people who I know they were so torn up about what happened on 9/11. They really are very sincere when they say, I want to look them in the eye, I want to be the juror that says, You're sentenced to death. Well, I have done that. It doesn't bring the pleasure you might think.

But what it will bring when people say that's what I want to do, it will bring about a change of venue if the defendants, which they probably will, request it, because that will delay it further. It will give them further platforms to spread their poison that is so toxic. I know these things were intended well, but they can bring about the demise of a country. They have before. They have brought about the demise of civilization.

And you would have thought that when the stimulus package didn't do everything that it was supposed to have done--it didn't create any jobs. It created some hundreds of thousands, well, we have lost millions and millions--you would think that the people that had enough insight to see it wasn't going to do what was said that it would do, that the people that pushed that would come back and say, you were right. But that hasn't happened. I hope and pray it will.

Mr. Speaker, you brought down the gavel indicating my time has expired, so I recognize that and appreciate your indulgence.

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

The motion was agreed to; accordingly (at 6 o'clock and 15 minutes p.m.), under its previous order, the House adjourned until Monday, December 7, 2009, at 10:30 a.m., for morning-hour debate.

I need to dispel some of the misinformation that's been put out about the health care bill that we passed in this House. For one thing, some have said, Well, States require you to have insurance on your car, so of course we can mandate that people buy health insurance. The bill we passed is not going to provide health insurance. It's going to mandate--it does mandate--that you buy it, and if you don't, if you're above the poverty line, it won't be provided. In fact, you have an extra income tax if you don't buy the Cadillac insurance the government mandates.

If you want to know about the comparison, first of all, to States requiring car insurance, not one single State in the country requires that a car--your own car--be insured. They require that you buy insurance to ensure against hurting another car or damaging another car. This is a whole different thing. We're mandating that you buy insurance on your own car, your own vehicle, your own body. And that's not constitutional.

Mr. Speaker, I was at Fort Benning when, in 1979, the President ordered a rescue mission. But he micromanaged. He dictated. They didn't need 12 helicopters; just go in with 8. They knew if they didn't get there with six, they'd have to abort. Well, they got there with five, and the aborted mission cost us lives. Back in the 1960s, President Johnson tried to micromanage Vietnam from Washington. What a terrible mistake. And now, it appears that the President will need to fire General McChrystal, because it is imperative that the President have generals he can trust.

General McChrystal says, ``The impact of time on our effort in Afghanistan has been underappreciated, and we require a new way of thinking about it.'' He said, ``I believe the short-term fight will be decisive. Failure to gain the initiative and reverse insurgent momentum in the near-term (next 12 months)--while Afghan security capacity matures--risks an outcome where defeating the insurgency is no longer possible.''

Fire him if you don't trust him. Should have been acted on 3 months ago.

Mr. Speaker, you know, we are still hearing blame for Bush and blame for the Republican-controlled House from the Democrats. The Speaker of the House has been a Democrat for right at 3 years now. It is time to take responsibility. We keep hearing that word ``responsibility.'' This is a good time to take it.

Now, we heard about the PAYGO rules that were passed, and now it is going to be PAYGO. And I tell you what, it didn't apply. It wasn't used like it should have been. And then in July, some of my Democratic colleagues convinced me that, you know what, we are really, really, really serious this time about PAYGO. Just vote with us. We'll show you how serious we are. I was one of 24 Republicans that voted for the PAYGO bill. But then we find out, no, no, no, this time we are really, really, really, really serious about PAYGO if you'll just pass it again this time. Come on now.

The docs do need a fix, but we don't need lectures on this side about the seniors not needing cuts when the bill that is before the House, that passed the House, is going to cut Medicare $400 billion or so.

Let's fix the problem for the doctors permanently. They deserve that. Let's not stockpile more debt on our grandchildren irresponsibly. We can do it, but this is not a permanent fix as some have said; otherwise, it wouldn't have a year limitation on it. Let's do the right thing by seniors, by doctors and our grandchildren and vote this one down and really, really, really get serious about PAYGO.

Mr. Speaker, we've had people saying yes, we want to bring terrorists to New York. We want to bring them to Illinois. We had Senator Durbin say, This is a lifeline. This is an opportunity for these people to finally have a chance to save their communities, and this project will give them that chance. Talking about bringing jobs to Illinois, Governor Pat Quinn said the prison that will be proposed in Thompson, Illinois, would provide economic opportunity.

We're talking about terrorists. And the moment these terrorists put their feet in New York after we've spent millions and millions of dollars, they will then file a motion to transfer venue. My friends across the aisle who have said, we want to look them in the eye and sentence them to death will have their statements as exhibits in the motion to transfer venue as to why they could not get a fair trial in New York.

This is a huge mistake. A terrorist whose own pleading earlier this year says that ``your end is very near and your fall will be just as the fall of the towers on the blessed 9/11 day'' does not need to be brought to the most densely populated area in the country.

Don't do it, Mr. President.

And I appreciate my friend for yielding, and the great points

that he's been making as a physician, someone who is used to healing people and taking care of people, and it's great to have your insights as a physician. But the points you've made are so right on target. As our friend knows, they added on what they call the PAYGO provision to the end of this bill, saying, all right, from now on we're going to start paying for things and having offsets so we don't add to the American deficit.

After we don't pay. And that's the thing. They put the PAYGO provision in the rules when they took the majority and have repeatedly ignored it over and over. Well, this past summer there was a bill that they called the PAYGO bill, and it was, they said, now, we realize we put this in the rules, that we would have to provide, if we're going to add money to the deficit, well, we're going to have to come up with some way to pay for it so that doesn't add to the deficit.

And so this past summer, there were 24 Republicans who were persuaded--you know, even though they haven't meant it for the last 2\1/2\ years, they've repeatedly violated their PAYGO provision, this time they really, really, really mean they're serious about PAYGO. And I knew they hadn't, when they were really serious, and when they were really, really serious they were going to abide by the PAYGO rules. But this time I thought, you know, they're going to put this in a stand- alone bill, so certainly they would not want the flak of coming back. And I voted with my friends across the aisle, the Democrats, that they couldn't just bring up a bill unless there was money provided in the bill that would make it deficit-neutral. And so I voted for that.

Well, they fooled me. Here they come right back with a bill costing hundreds of billions of dollars, and they said, you know, what, that PAYGO stuff we passed in July? We still mean it, and we really, really, really, really mean it this time, but we're going to add it on and start applying it after this bill.

Well, that is just so incredible. I mean, the American people, as we're seeing, are not stupid. They realize what's being done.

It certainly will be. You figure that's what they'll do so that maybe people may not notice that they've yet again increased the deficit. And that was one of the things they ran on and took the majority for in 2006. There was too much spending. And now, they have just come in and taken that, as somebody said earlier today, I mean, it's deficit spending on steroids.

But even more than that, coming back to health care, I don't want the government between me and my doctor. I don't want insurance companies between me and my doctor. And for a long time now, we have had not health insurance, but health insurance companies managing health care. And I appreciate insurance. I think it is extremely important to help us ensure against unforeseeable events. But some of us have talked about and have pushed, on our side of the aisle, the health savings account. Everything that--all of the bills that have been proposed from the other side make detrimental cuts and damage to the health savings account. That is the one area where people in their twenties and thirties now are given incentives, and their employers, and they start paying into health savings accounts now.

Most of them, the statisticians tell us, by the time they're ready to retire, they will have so much money in their health savings account they could continue to pay out of that to buy a catastrophic care policy. But they won't need the government between them and their doctor. They won't need an insurance company telling them, well, that medicine is not covered, that treatment's not covered. They've got their own money. And in the meantime, we could even have health savings accounts. It would be cheaper than what we're doing just to let seniors have health savings accounts and buy them catastrophic care, provide the health savings accounts and the insurance, and then, for the first time in the history since we've had Medicare, seniors would have nobody in the government standing between them and their doctor, them and their treatment.

That's the kind of thing I know, talking to friends on this side of the aisle, we want. We don't want an intermediary between patients and their doctors, not the government, not the insurance companies. And we've got plans, we've got bills, we've got suggestions, and everybody on our side of the aisle has been shut out. And this bill today, a ``Doc Fix,'' was a ``Doc Tricks.'' And I'm hoping and praying my doctor friends understand that this was not going to address their needs. It looked like a fix. This wasn't going to pass the Senate. This was an effort to drive a wedge between physicians and the people that believe politically in the Constitution the way they do.

Thank you.

I just had a quick question back to my physician friend, Dr. Gingrey from Georgia.

If my friend were in his doctor's office in Georgia and somebody from Washington came and said, ``Look. I want to get this message out to all of your doctor friends. Here's what we're going to do. We're going to cut $500 billion in reimbursements to you and your friends, but you need to be ecstatic because we've got a bill that's not going to pass, it won't ever get through the Senate, but it will get you back $250 billion of that $500 billion we're going to cut. Aren't you happy?''

Would you really trust that person from Washington that came with that kind of news?

That is the kind of trust that is being asked.

And when you do verify, you see this is not a fix for the doctors, and it's going to have to be addressed next year. It's called a 10-year fix, but it's not really a fix that is going to fix anything for very long. It's just a game being played here in Washington, and we want something better.

When I think about our seniors, the relatives of mine that are seniors, and think about somebody cutting the care to their doctors; and then I hear from doctors who say, ``Look, I'm younger than I anticipated retiring, but with the games you guys are playing, I'm about ready to hang it up.'' I know if they do, because of the areas of service they provide to our seniors, to those who need care, there's not going to be anybody there to fill those needs, and they're going to be in lines if we keep doing this stuff to our doctors.

We can't be playing games like this with our doctors. It's unfair to the seniors. It's unfair to those who need health care. It's time to do a real fix of the health care system--not the games played with this ridiculous 2,000-page bill--but a real bill that will get people in the government and from insurance out from between patients and their doctors; give patients coverage, give them control, and let health care finally be healed of this government disease that has afflicted it for too long.

Madam Speaker, pursuant to the Republican Leadership standards on earmarks, I am submitting the following information regarding funding received in my district as part of H.R. 2996, the Interior, Environment, and Related Agencies Appropriations Act, 2010.

City of Lufkin Water Project. STAG Water and Wastewater Infrastructure Project, the City

of Lufkin, P.O. Drawer 190, Lufkin, Texas 75902, $400,000 to help the city purchase the water production and transmission facilities owned by a local, but long-idle and deteriorating paper mill in danger of becoming an environmental hazard with long-term national implications. The funding will be used to develop infrastructure for the storage and treatment of 17 million gallons of water per day from the Angelina River and Kurth Lake, helping meet the increasing residential, commercial and industrial demands for potable water in a growing region of the state, which is relied on repeatedly by evacuating hurricane victims.

Madam Speaker, pursuant to the Republican Leadership standards on earmarks, I am submitting the following information regarding funding received in my district as part of H.R. 2996, the Interior, Environment, and Related Agencies Appropriations Act, 2010.

Lanana Creek Water Initiative. STAG Water and Wastewater Infrastructure Project, the City of Nacogdoches, P.O. Box 635030, Nacogdoches, Texas 75963, $500,000 for regional detention ponds to complete a storm water mitigation initiative at Lanana Creek, Nacogdoches, Texas, which will prevent submergence of a number of bridges by keeping Lanana Creek at a low water level. This will allow for full access of emergency personnel to areas south of the North Loop 224 bridge at all times, and dealing with untenable wetland issues.

Mr. Speaker, our Attorney General intends to bring self- confessed terrorists to the most densely populated area in America. I know we have friends from New York that think this is a grand idea. They don't realize they're being used. We even have friends from New York who say, Bring these terrorists to New York; we want to try them so we can look them in the eye and sentence them to death.

Well, coming from a judge, a former judge, who has looked people in the eye and sentenced them to death, I know something about it. They're being used.

Once those terrorists set foot on New York--probably not before--the change of venue motion will be filed and people's comments like that-- ``we want to try them, then put them to death''--those will be used in support of the motion to change venue. They are not likely to be tried there with or without the terrorist activity and the threats and all that will follow. It is a bad idea. I hope cooler minds will prevail so they get the punishment they deserve.

Mr. Speaker, it's a pleasure to be here on the House floor, especially when you know the history of this floor and all that's been done to keep Americans safe, the reactions on this floor by great American leaders after tragedies such as we had after Pearl Harbor, when the President of the United States spoke from that lectern right there after Pearl Harbor. Before 9/11 that was the worst attack on American soil. But 9/11 changed things substantially. For one thing, I never thought during my 4 years in the Army, going back to the 1970s, that we'd ever see patriotism at a level that it is today, where people actually appreciate people being in the service. The Vietnam Vets knew what it was like to come home and to be spit at and ridiculed. I know when I went through basic at Fort Riley, there was an order not to wear our uniforms off post because there was supposedly violence that was done. There were people beat up who were in the service.

But somehow, for a while there, 9/11 brought this Nation together, where people began to take notice and care about first responders, and they began to care about each other. And on September 12, there on our courthouse square in Smith County, Texas, we had people of all walks of life join together, a huge group came, and it culminated in everyone holding hands and singing God Bless America. And as I looked around, there was not one single hyphenated American. We were all just Americans, all kinds of races, genders, creed, colors, national origins. But we were just Americans.

Well, after 9/11 we realized that for the first time in our history the oceans did not provide the protection that they once did. As an old history major at Texas A&M, and continuing to be a student of history since, I don't know of another Nation in the history of the world that has been so blessed and protected as we were with the Atlantic and the Pacific oceans. Even Australia, which was surrounded by water, always had to fear invasions. But after the War of 1812, for the most part, we didn't have to worry about external threats so much as we were able to think about Manifest Destiny, moving and settling the continent, the Industrial Revolution, having the effort to make the Constitution mean the same for all people, no matter what race, creed, color, gender.

But 9/11 sent a message that the oceans no longer protected us, that we were going to have to take more measures to protect ourselves. I recall back in the 1980s it being said that one of the great things about the Atlantic and Pacific, if somebody intended to be a suicide bomber, they would lose their nerve crossing the ocean. And certainly, anybody that moved here and lived among the American people would begin to see how much freedom we had here, and they would come to love America as we do, and they would not want to blow up their friends and neighbors. Again, 9/11 changed all that.

So if someone doesn't know the lessons from history, then they are destined to repeat it, as the old saying goes. Well, the Constitution, and I have a pocket Constitution here, article one, section 8, says that Congress shall have power to--and one of the things that we have the power to do in Congress is constitute tribunals inferior to the Supreme Court. And you get over to article three, section one, the judicial power of the United States shall be vested in one Supreme Court, and in such inferior courts as the Congress may from time to time ordain and establish.

Even the Supreme Court, over in section two, where it's talked about, it says in all of the other cases before mentioned the Supreme Court shall have appellate jurisdiction, but it's the law in fact, with such exceptions and under such regulations as the Congress shall make. So the Supreme Court owes its existence to the Constitution. Every single other court in America, Federal court that is, owes its existence to the Congress. We create the courts. We establish their jurisdictions. We have the right to establish their venues. And when we dealt with this issue back in 2005 and 2006, of having to deal with terrorists who are captured on the foreign battlefield, what do you do with them? You certainly don't want to bring them onto American soil, because if you did that, there'd be some court that would say, well, they have all the rights and privileges of an American citizen, which shouldn't be true, but until some court says it's true, and at that time, since we believe in following the law, even though some courts do not, they create it instead of follow it, we follow even the renegade courts when it's the law of the land.

So, we had to deal with this issue. Following all of the precedents, and I believe Justice Scalia does a phenomenal job of discussing precedents, as does Chief Justice Roberts in the Bimidian case. But we had to deal with people like Khalid Sheikh Mohammed. Khalid Sheikh Mohammed was captured in Pakistan on March 1, 2003, by the Pakistani ISI. It may have been a joint action with agents of the American Diplomatic Security Service, but he's been in U.S. custody ever since that time. In September of 2006 the U.S. government announced it had moved Mohammed from a secret prison to the facility at Guantanamo Bay detention camp.

Now, some came to believe that Guantanamo is such a horrible place. That is where we waterboard people and things like that. The waterboarding that apparently occurred, never occurred at Guantanamo. That was elsewhere. Guantanamo Bay is a place I've been a couple of times. And, having been a judge, I've had the opportunity to explore and tour many different types of prisons.

Attending a tour of the Guantanamo Bay facility was not unusual except that it is unusual to get there. You don't take a commercial flight to Guantanamo Bay, which is one of the reasons it's such an ideal spot for people who are a threat to our way of life.

We have also Ramzi bin Al-Shib who was captured by Pakistani forces in Pakistan around September of 2002. He was transferred to Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, on or about September 26 where he also has remained.

You have other people being detained there that we know have been self-confessed terrorists and under the pleading that was filed by Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, as he said, ``We're terrorists to the bone, and if we terrorize you, kill you,'' basically, ``thanks be to God.''

These are people who do not believe we should have the freedoms that we do in America because they think freedom ultimately leads to degradation of the individual and the country. Therefore, people should not be allowed freedom, they should be told what they can or can't do; and they believe that they get a special place in Paradise if they are able to go out in this life having destroyed and killed what we consider innocents and what they consider infidels.

So we come to the announcement by the U.S. Attorney General when he announced that the Department of Justice will pursue prosecution in Federal

court of five individuals accused of conspiring to commit 9/11 attacks. He said further, ``I've decided to refer back to the Department of Defense five defendants to face military commission trials, including the detainee who was previously charged in the USS Cole bombing. The 9/ 11 cases that will be pursued in Federal court have been jointly assigned to prosecutors from the Southern District of New York and the Eastern District of Virginia and will be brought in Manhattan in the Southern District of New York.''

He goes on and ends up saying, ``In each case, my decision as to whether to proceed in Federal court or military commissions was based on a protocol that the Department of Justice and Defense developed, and it was announced in July. Because many cases could be prosecuted in either Federal courts or military commissions, that protocol sets forth a number of factors, including the nature of the offense, the location in which the offense occurred, the identity of the victims, and the manner in which the case was investigated that must be considered. In consultation with the Secretary of Defense, I have looked at all of the relevant factors and made case-by-case decisions for each detainee.''

Well, it wouldn't seem that he has considered the safety and the best interests of the people that survived the attack on 9/11 in New York City, the most densely populated area in our country.

In 2005, 2006, this Congress considered these issues--and I would submit gave it better consideration than our current Attorney General-- and when the Bush administration had formulated a military tribunal system without the input from Congress, it was struck down, and rightfully so. So Congress got involved. Now we have the Military Commissions Act that was passed in 2006.

The Obama administration did not like the term applied to the enemy combatants that were captured on the battlefield around the world who had made efforts and participated in the murder and destruction of American lives and American property. So, the way that bill was amended, it now reads ``any alien unprivileged enemy belligerent is subject to trial by military commission as set forth in this chapter.''

You have to look back.

Alien. The term ``alien'' means an individual who is not a citizen of the United States. You look at unprivileged enemy belligerent. The term ``unprivileged enemy belligerent'' means an individual other than a privileged belligerent who, A, has engaged in hostilities against the United States or its coalition partners; B, has purposefully and materially supported hostilities against the United States or its coalition partners; or C, was a part of al Qaeda at the time of the alleged offense under this chapter.

The term ``hostilities'' means any conflicts subject to the laws of war.

As it says in 948(h), Military commissions under this chapter may be convened by the Secretary of Defense or by any officer or official of the United States designated by the Secretary for that purpose. Unfortunately, the Attorney General has elected to bring self-confessed terrorists to New York City.

I did want to walk people through what it takes to prepare a case for trial from a judge's standpoint, from a logistical standpoint. All evidence has to be transported by different individuals, whoever may have it, to the courthouse so it can be used as evidence there-- sometimes it's held in different places--but eventually to the courthouse. Normally you have to keep a very careful chain of custody on any evidence, but unfortunately, this is from a battlefield where in order to get the official chain of custody started, our soldiers in harm's way would have to walk out in the middle of hostilities--perhaps there are bullets flying--and say, ``Time out. I want to gather evidence that we may need to use some day in a civilian court because we have a President or Attorney General who wants me to go out in harm's way and gather fingerprint, the forensic evidence that may be used in establishing the chain of custody, never mind that it may get me killed trying to gather such evidence forensically on a battlefield,'' which we have never done before. It's never been necessary because people who were leaders in this country knew enough about the history of the country to avoid putting our men and women at additional risk in order to try people who wanted to kill us and destroy our way of life into a civil court, a civilian court. It just hasn't been done. It was not appropriate.

Now this is an unusual war, of course, because although the individuals who have planned, participated in killing American citizens through the 9/11 terrorist attacks, they declared war on us but we didn't officially declare war on them because they're not actually a country, which makes it more difficult. But make no mistake, war has been declared on the United States, and either we respond by fighting back in this war or the war with terror goes on from the terrorists until they win. It becomes a very one-sided war until eventually we either lose the country out of fear or terror or the American citizens decide, Gee, the risk is so great, let's just make our President king and go to a dictatorship because so often in history, people prefer a dictatorship or a king or a Caesar if they can assure that they're going to be better protected.

That is why I decided since it didn't appear that the best of judgment had been used in wanting to bring terrorists who said they participated and planned the 9/11 attacks--they just hoped to kill a lot more than 3,000 people and perhaps had hoped to kill tens of thousands of people if the buildings had collapsed sooner--it seems to me we needed to fix this.

So we are working on the language--hope to file it tomorrow, no later than Thursday--that will make this mandatory: that any alien unprivileged enemy belligerent shall be exclusively subject to trial by military commission as set forth in this chapter, words along that line, so that it is not an option for people who do not understand the risk to which they put American citizens.

Once you gather the evidence, once you have the terrorists in New York City, I would expect that is probably strategically when the defense attorneys would file a motion to change venue. Of course, the terrorists may want to keep it in New York City even though they might allege they couldn't get a fair trial because perhaps every single person in New York City eligible for jury duty might have heard about 9/11 and may have drawn opinions about what happened that day, it is a better place for terrorists to remain and be held and drag out a very long, sustained trial. Because as you find if you have been around the judicial system, if a defendant has access to tremendous amounts of money, then you can expect them to call expert after expert after expert. And yes, Federal judges can rein in the number of experts, but if they're creative enough, they may be able to come up with enough experts to drag this thing out.

And, of course, we have the rules in Federal court as State courts as well that the judge has to be the gatekeeper of what experts will be allowed to testify. They have to be found to be competent in the area to which they are going to testify. And so the judge may have weeks and weeks and weeks of hearings on whether an expert will be allowed to testify. There may be weeks and weeks and weeks of hearings regarding change of venue evidence and whether the case should be transferred, and if so, where it could be transferred where a fair trial could be had.

Amazing, but some of these things I do not believe got adequate consideration before action was taken.

So we have terrorists who are going to be brought to New York, perhaps some to Illinois. As they're awaiting trial, the thing gets dragged out, perhaps the friends of the terrorists--because we know people can get into this country illegally. We know people have come in legally, overstayed their visas, and we are not enforcing visa terminations adequately. So they could have friends here illegally. They could have people here legally. But you can bet they are going to be testing out the adequacy of the court system in which their terrorist buddies are being tried. And having read the pleading by Khalid Sheikh Mohammed that they intend to terrorize us, they intend to defeat us, to destroy us, then their friends will be looking for such a way to do that.

What better way than in the most densely populated area in this country to have some terrorist threats go on? And what you normally have when the

terrorist threats go on is evacuations, and that's when it is extremely helpful to have a community organizer in the White House because you will need lots of community organization in order to adequately evacuate massive areas of the most densely populated area in America, as the threats will likely be coming.

I have seen them happen in my own courthouse when I was a judge. I normally didn't evacuate. I had that luxury since I could order the deputies to leave me alone. But you will have those types of things.

Can we be sure that there will not be a truck, a vehicle, loaded with explosives to perhaps commit some act of terrorism in one of the tunnels? Or a vehicle. You could have a number of vehicles coming through the tunnel, coming across the bridges, loaded with explosives. Things to instill fear in the minds of American citizens.

Apparently these terrorists enjoy seeing Americans flee in fear. We have had an evacuation here a couple of times since I have been in Congress. My brother called after the first time since I have been here and said, I didn't see you running out of the Capitol on video. I said, Perhaps that is because I was the last one out. I would rather be killed by a terrorist than to have them see legislators running in fear because there is some terrorist threat to the Capitol. Just take me out. I know where I am going when this life is over, so I am not terribly worried about what happens in the interim.

Back to the trial. Those kinds of acts, those kinds of threats could normally be expected during the course of a trial. And as the trial goes on, you think about the jailers who are maintaining a watch on the terrorists in New York City. Think about their families. Maybe their immediate family, their wife, their children, or if it is a female, their husband and their children. Think about perhaps even their mother or father, siblings. Who will be safe, because you know as much research as went in so carefully to the planning and the destruction of the World Trade Centers, that planning will likely go into the next terrorist attack, and what better time than when terrorists are on trial in New York, because to their warped, distorted way of thinking, what a great time to be blown up with all of these infidels surrounding them in New York City--infidels to them, innocents who deserve protection to the rest of us.

So as you get through the trial, you have not only the jailers, you have bailiffs, you have jailers who transport them. You have people working on the vehicles that will transport them. You have people working on perhaps air cover and working on the aircraft that will provide air cover, if any. You will have people who will be in those vehicles and aircraft. You have people all along the way, and every single person is a potential link that may be exploited by terrorists, either of their families or of those individuals, because these individuals intend to scare us and to show that we can do them no harm, but they can sure scare us. So what better opportunity.

During the course of the trial, of course, it is a daily thing to transport prisoners back and forth from the courtroom. You have people all over the courthouse. It may be more restricted during the trial, but it is really difficult to restrict the ongoing business in New York City. And especially since, as I read, the Attorney General says they intend to have them brought in Manhattan in the Southern District of New York, to Manhattan itself. Unbelievable. Unbelievable.

So there are a lot of people who are at risk, including the people in New York City. And in case someone, Mr. Speaker, is tempted to think, ``Well, this is 2009; that occurred September of 2001. I am sure those people have gotten over the panic, the fear, the trauma, the tragedy of that horrible day on 9/11,'' well, you don't have to go very far back and recall the insensitivity of this administration in having Air Force One fly over New York, accompanied by a fighter jet, which caused a sheer panic, as some may have seen on You Tube, among citizens in New York because they thought it is happening again and a fighter may have to shoot down Air Force One. It was unbelievable insensitivity, and as some may recall, at least one person lost their job over it.

It won't take much to start the panic all over again. The insensitivity is just amazing, just amazing.

So we are told, in addition, not only should we bring these terrorists to New York City, the most densely populated area in the country, but we should keep in mind that we are one of the largest Muslim Nations in the world, that we are not a Christian Nation.

I can't help but in this hallowed Hall, this incredible historic building, go back to the painting of George Washington down the hall as he extended his resignation, and the end of it, the resignation, after he had won the revolution, as he resigned, which was something which had never before or since been done in the history of mankind, lead a revolution and military, win, and then just go home after you did your job. Washington was an extraordinary man.

At the end of his resignation, he says, ``I now make it my earnest prayer''--that's right, prayer--``that God would have you and the State over which you preside, in his holy protection, that he would incline the hearts of the citizens to cultivate a spirit of subordination and obedience to Government, to entertain a brotherly affection and love for one another, for their fellow citizens of the United States at large, and particularly for their brethren who have served in the field,'' which is what we just did on Veterans Day. These are Washington's own words that he wrote in his resignation at the end. ``And finally, that he would most graciously be pleased to dispose us all, to do justice, to love mercy, and to demean ourselves with charity, humility and pacific temper of mind, which were the characteristics 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.''

And he signed, ``I have the honor to be with great respect and esteem Your Excellency's most obedient and very humble servant, George Washington.''

That was our first President, our first Commander in Chief. Those were his words. That is what he thought. He thought we had a divine author of our blessed religion. He didn't know what our current President knows, apparently.

Out here we have a painting right outside, a massive painting of the Constitutional Convention. After nearly 5 weeks of accomplishing virtually nothing, Benjamin Franklin, 80 years old, about 2 and a half years away from meeting his maker, brilliant, witty, charming, quite the man, stood up and he was recognized.

He said we have been going for nearly 5 weeks. We have more noes than ayes know. He said, ``In this situation of this assembly,'' and we know these were his words taken by James Madison, ``groping as it were in the dark to find political truth, and scarce able to distinguish it when presented to us, how does it happen, sir, that we have not hitherto once thought of humbly applying to the Father of Lights to illuminate understanding? In the beginning contest with Great Britain, when we were sensible of danger, we had daily prayer in this room for the divine protection. Our prayers, sir, were heard and they were graciously usually answered.

``All of us who were engaged in the struggle must have observed frequent instances of a superintending providence in our favor. To that kind of providence we owe this happy opportunity of consulting in peace on the means of establishing our future national felicity. And have we now forgotten that powerful friend? Or do we imagine we no longer need his assistance?''

See, this was during the founding, the creation of the Constitution. The Founders felt like it was okay to pray to God for divine protection and they were not worried if that insulted someone because it is what they believed.

Franklin stated, ``All of us who were engaged in the struggle must have observed frequent instances of a superintending providence in our favor.'' He believed God was answering our prayers.

Anyway he goes on and says, ``I have lived, sir, a long time, and the longer I live, the more convincing proofs I see of this truth--that God governs in the affairs of men. And if a sparrow cannot

fall to the ground without his notice, is it probable that an empire can rise without his aid? We have been assured, sir, in the sacred writing, that `except the Lord build the house, they labor in vain that build it.'

``Firmly believe this,'' Benjamin Franklin said. He went on and said, ``I also believe that without his concurring aid we shall succeed in this political building no better than the Builders of Babel. We shall be divided by our little partial local interest; our projects will be confounded, and we ourselves shall become a reproach and bye word down to future ages. I therefore beg leave to move that henceforth prayers imploring the assistance of Heaven, and its blessings on our deliberations, be held in the assembly every morning.''

It was seconded and unanimously adopted. From that day to this, we do not begin in this Chamber, or prior when the Congress met in other chambers, we don't meet without starting with prayer, without apologies.

You go on to Abraham Lincoln, one of the greatest theological discussions, and this came from a man who basically was self-educated, well read, self-taught, voracious reader, but he loved reading the Bible. He believed in God as indicated throughout his writings. And as he tried to reconcile the horrible, bloody Civil War that had gone on, profound words he wrote. As he wrestled--you can feel the inner conflict in himself when he tries to reconcile the North and South fighting, brother against brother, family member against family member--he said these words that are inscribed on the north side of the Lincoln Memorial, ``Both read the same Bible and prayer 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 answered fully. The Almighty has His own purpose. `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.'

``If we shall suppose,'' Lincoln said ``that American slavery 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 may speedily pass away.''

Lincoln continued: ``Yet, if God wills that it continue, until all the wealth piled by the bondman's two hundred and fifty years of unrequited toil shall be sunk, and until every drop of blood drawn with the lash shall be paid by another drawn with the sword, as was said three thousand 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.''

``To bind up the Nation's wounds''? Does anyone think that we do that by bringing terrorists back to instill more terror in an area where the wounds have not yet been bound up and have not yet healed? It's a terrible mistake being made. A terrible mistake being made. And it may gain some knowing nods and smiles at some international cocktail party where members of this administration may go and say, see, we brought terrorists back to New York City, back to the most densely populated area. We inflicted upon ourselves even more terror. Aren't we wonderful? Self-flagellation, aren't we great? We beat ourselves up. Don't you love us?

We've seen there is no appreciation in the world when the United States hurts itself either by spending too much money or by opening its doors to terrorists who want to destroy our way of life and we do nothing about it until it's too late.

We're dealing with the PATRIOT Act. And I've had severe concerns about the national security letters when we found out that they were being abused under Director Mueller's watchful eye. But it needs to be reauthorized. There needs to be greater oversight than there was. There have been corrections made, but there are some protections in that act that have afforded us the ability to stay without a major terrorist attack for 8 years. This is no time to open ourselves up to additional terror by bringing terrorists on our soil, potentially allowing them to go free on our soil, potentially allowing them to go free anywhere.

They declared war. The tradition and the history of mankind is when you are from a group that declares war on another people, another country, and you're captured, you remain captured. You remain a prisoner until such time as your friends cease the war. And there is no intent to cease the war on behalf of the terrorists, as we have seen.

There are those who think that this administration is trying to create a situation where there is more damage and destruction financially, perhaps, through terrorists so they have to declare martial law and take over. I don't believe that for a moment. I just think there is a terrible lapse in judgment that may allow those things to happen.

But you go back to Thomas Jefferson. He said, ``The natural progress of things is for liberty to yield and government to gain ground.'' You had John Adams, who said, ``Property must be secured or liberty cannot exist.''

We helped secure property when we kept the terrorists who want to destroy our way of life off of American soil over in the Middle East and then in the last 2 or 3 years at Guantanamo Bay.

Of course, Washington said, ``Government is not reason. It is not eloquence. It is force. Like fire, it is a dangerous servant and a fearful master.''

Of course, Abraham Lincoln went on to say, ``We have been the recipients of the choicest bounties of heaven.'' Lincoln went on and he said, ``We have grown in numbers, wealth, and power as no other nation.'' Lincoln finished his comment by saying, ``But we have forgotten God.''

We are creating self-inflicted wounds and it's time to stop. And hopefully we will have enough people on both sides of the aisle who will sign on to this bipartisan bill. I'm hoping it will be very bipartisan because Congress, as I have already read, has the obligation to set up all the courts inferior to the Supreme Court to set out their jurisdiction, set out their venue in the collective wisdom of this place.

And if we have a Chief Executive who's not aware of the coming damage and destruction that may occur by bringing people to the most densely populated area in the country in which to try them and have their friends try to destroy the trial itself, then it is the duty of this body to step up and say, you know, hey, under the Constitution this is our job. We're supposed to create the courts so you know where to try them. And we're going to eliminate the choice that you now have so that you put them in the right place. That's what should be done. That's what we need to pass. That's what the Congress was supposed to do according to the Constitution.

But we have already seen this year when Congress punted and when the Supreme Court punted. And so unelected, unconfirmed people meeting in secret as part of the White House decided what businesses would fall in the auto business, what would gain. They destroyed all the years of bankruptcy law, all the incredible wisdom that came together in the bankruptcy law, and turned it upside down.

Secured creditors were treated like dirt. Unsecured creditors were catapulted, because it involved unions, to the top. Turned the law upside down.

Well, that shouldn't have been allowed to stand. The Founders wanted us to step up and utilize the power that they gave this body. So you had dealerships, and in some places they had borrowed millions of dollars to buy the dealership, and all of a sudden some people that didn't even own cars were saying, you know what, close their dealership, maybe even give it to somebody down the road. And those people

were left owing their banks the money they borrowed because some unelected, unconfirmed bureaucrat said this is the way we're going to do it. Oh, yes, well, of course, they did have to run into a lazy bankruptcy court's judge. Maybe he's not lazy; maybe he's just ambitious, who would sign off on that and give it the color of law.

But some may not know bankruptcy judges have to stand for reappointment, and many bankruptcy judges hope that they will invoke the favor of a President who will elevate them to a Federal district bench for life rather than on the bankruptcy court. And that has happened before many, many times.

But Congress stood mute and let the Constitution be turned upside down, let the laws that this body passed be turned upside down. So then the last hope of all the checks and balances put in place by our Founders was the Supreme Court. And Justice Ruth Bader Ginsberg, to her credit, put a 24-hour hold on that fiasco, that abomination under the laws of the United States and the Constitution. But she withdrew it, or it died at the end of the 24 hours, and all checks and balances on power were avoided, and we did exactly what the Founders hoped would never happen: we ignored the power of all the different branches so that one unelected, unappointed group could just run things as they wanted.

We can't let that type of action happen again here. We created the military commissions in this Congress under our authority of the Constitution. It is our obligation as a Congress to step in and protect the people of New York from the terrorism that will in all likelihood flow. And if you don't believe it, then go read the unclassified pleading filed by Khalid Sheikh Mohammed. If you don't believe that they mean harm, then you can check out the accounts of what goes on at Guantanamo.

What we have seen, found out in trips to Guantanamo Bay, shows that these guys are being treated better than prisoners I've ever seen in State or Federal prison in Texas and in other Federal prisons in the country, maximum security prisons, that is. They're fed well. They get several hours a day outside. They are given movie hours to watch movies.

In fact, one of the biggest problems at Guantanamo is not for the prisoners but comes from the prisoners. They are so brilliant and innovative, they figure out ways to throw urine and feces on our guards. But the standing order at Guantanamo, as told by the commander to me, the standing order is whoever has urine or feces thrown on them from one of the inmates may go and shower and change and take the rest of the day off. But to my knowledge, nobody has taken the rest of the day off. They go shower, clean up, and then they come back to duty.

I was told that there was one servicemember who, from having feces thrown on him, actually lost his temper and yelled at the inmate, and for that he received an article 15 punishment for losing his temper after he had body excrement thrown on him.

When I have tried to find out if there wasn't some way to punish the prisoners who commit those types of assaults on our guards, I'm told that because there are so many international visitors, including Red Cross or whatever groups, come, Amnesty International, the groups that come, they come often enough that the people at Guantanamo did not want for these groups to come and find they put somebody in solitary confinement, despite the physical assaults. So there is no real punishment that is inflicted upon inmates that commit assaults on guards.

But, in fact, they may take a couple of their 4 hours of movie watching away; and if it's a bad enough assault on one of our guards, they may take away some of their time outside, which the inmates enjoy, of course, very much, and they get more of than most any prison that I've been to, maximum security prison.

A maximum security prison, that is what we are dealing with in Guantanamo. People are well taken care of. But they are dangerous, and they want to destroy our way of life. And until their buddies declare that the war is over, we ought to continue to maintain them and keep them locked up away from American soil. And if the administration is absolutely intent on trying them before their buddies cease this war upon America, then it ought to be before a military commission, as Congress created in 2006 and has been amended even this year at the request of this administration.

So that's why I'm going to be filing a bill and asking, Mr. Speaker, colleagues on both sides of the aisle to please join in. Let's protect the families of victims of 9/11 in New York from having to endure this insufferable blow of having smirking, happy terrorists come to New York and gloat over this destruction and death they caused there. They do not deserve to gloat over the deaths and destruction they brought to New York City. They do not deserve to gloat over the destruction and death in Washington, D.C.

They deserve to be kept confined for the rest of their natural lives, but at least until their buddies say they are no longer at war, and they all give up, and then we can pound our swords into plowshares. Until that time, this body owes a duty to American citizens to protect it, to see that the administration doesn't subject it to unnecessary harm.

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

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

The motion was agreed to; accordingly (at 8 o'clock and 32 minutes p.m.), the House adjourned until tomorrow, Wednesday, November 18, 2009, at 10 a.m.