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“DEFENDING AMERICAN LIBERTIES” mentioning the U.S. Dept. of Energy was published in the House of Representatives section on pages H5078-H5081 on July 25, 2013.
The publication is reproduced in full below:
DEFENDING AMERICAN LIBERTIES
The SPEAKER pro tempore. Under the Speaker's announced policy of January 3, 2013, the gentleman from Texas (Mr. Gohmert) is recognized for 60 minutes as the designee of the majority leader.
Mr. GOHMERT. Mr. Speaker, it is an honor and a privilege to be here to speak.
At this time, I yield to my friend from Kentucky (Mr. Whitfield).
Mr. WHITFIELD. I want to thank the gentleman very much.
Yesterday, the President made a speech at Knox College in Illinois. And in that speech, he categorized Republican Members of Congress in three groups. He said there was a group of Republicans who agreed with him on his policy but were afraid to vote for it and did not have the courage to vote with him. He also said that another category of Republicans are those who, because it was his idea, are opposed to it. And then the third group of Republicans, he said, were those who have a view of the world that inequality and injustice is inevitable.
I was a little bit offended by that categorization, and I wanted to take a few moments today to explain to the American people specifically why many in our Conference oppose the President on some of his economic and energy policies, particularly.
I want to preface my remarks by saying, when the President was elected, the first thing that he focused on was transforming America's electricity policy. His number one goal was to produce more green energy through solar panels and wind energy. He spent billions of dollars on that through the stimulus package, much of the money going to venture capital friends of his, wealthy supporters of his, like Mr. Kaiser of Oklahoma, on the Solyndra project. And, in addition to that, the 1603 Treasury program that gives grants to certain green energy projects, the 1703 and 1705 programs at the Department of Energy.
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Now, that was the focus of the President. That was the part of his stimulus package that was going to get the economy back on track. Well, I would like to remind people that in June--just this past June--we lost, in America, 240,000 full-time jobs. The last quarter of 2012 and the first quarter of 2013, our growth in gross domestic product was not even 2 percent; it was below 2 percent. And for the last 15 quarters, our gross domestic product has increased only a little over 2 percent--
the weakest growth since World War II in America.
Now, for this year, 2013, we've created 750,000 new jobs, but 557,000 of those were part-time jobs. Now, why is that happening and why are we losing full-time jobs? Well, under the President's Affordable Care Act--or as some people call it, ``ObamaCare''--any employer that has 50 or more employees and they work more than 30 hours a week, he is going to have to provide health coverage for them. If they do not do so, they will be penalized with a monetary penalty. So the reality is what's happening is that small business men and women in America are laying off their employees and making sure that they only work part-time. So the President, focusing on green energy, encouraging small business men and women to lay off workers, that's precisely why we have a sluggish economy today.
Now, the President says that he is for an all-of-the-above energy policy. And I would say to you that everyone on our side of the aisle supports an all-of-the-above energy policy. But after spending billions of dollars for renewables, the President has only been successful to a very limited degree. As a matter of fact, today, renewables in America are creating only 500 million kilowatts a day; coal is producing 4.5 billion a day; gas, 3 billion a day; nuclear, 2 billion a day. So the President has jeopardized and created obstacles to economic growth because of his sole commitment to renewable energy.
Now, like I said, we need renewable energy; but this President says one thing and does another. He says he is for an all-of-the-above energy policy; and yet because of his actions and his administration's regulations, America is the only country in the world where you cannot build a new coal power plant. As a result of that, we're losing jobs in that industry as well.
So I would just say to the President his priorities are wrong. He is so focused on fulfilling his political goals of changing the way electricity is produced in America and creating obstacles for economic growth that he is self-defeating our abilities to stimulate the economy.
And I would just emphasize once again, we do need an all-of-the-above energy policy. We need wind, we need solar, we need natural gas, nuclear and coal; and yet we cannot build a new coal power plant in America.
If we're going to get this economy growing, we have to have electricity at a rate that we can afford in order to compete in the global marketplace, in order to get people to build plants in America, create jobs in America, and move this country forward.
So I would just say to the President instead of focusing on categorizing Republicans and who they are and what they are, he needs to get his priorities right and start focusing on economic growth and stop using stimulus funds to reward his friends in the joint venture capital business and his wealthy supporters and start helping us build an energy policy that will work for America.
I want to thank the gentleman from Texas for giving me a few minutes to talk about that issue.
Mr. GOHMERT. I thank my friend from Kentucky. I just had seen an article that's really an exclamation point, really, of what the gentleman was saying. The headline is:
Two Americans Added to Food Stamp Rolls for Every Job the Administration Says It Created.
I mean, how tragic. What an exclamation point on those facts that were laid out by my friend, Mr. Whitfield. Thank you.
There's news being reported today that Attorney General Eric Holder has announced the opening of a new front in the battle for voting rights--at least so he says, his brand--which is rather ironic because this administration, and particularly the Attorney General, the Department of Justice, had talked about, in essence, how the Supreme Court had eviscerated the Voting Rights Act and just rendered it basically nothing by its terrible decision. Yet if you look at the words of the Supreme Court in that decision, the Supreme Court points out that the factual data does not bear out the attacks by this administration continuing on the States that had done wrong, if you will, sinned back 50 years ago.
There was racial discrimination in this country at the time of the Voting Rights Act, and there is racial discrimination today; but it has moved. The Voting Rights Act has accomplished a great deal in our efforts to move toward equality of opportunity around the country. And so it has accomplished something that is very good and very important to the country.
But, amazingly, when the Voting Rights Act was extended--with support from people on both sides of the aisle--they decided that, gee, since some of us have districts where there is now racial discrimination, even though at least six of the States that were originally gone after in the South by the Department of Justice, they had better racial equality in voting than the average for the entire country.
Yet this administration decided our goal is to punish those States that did not vote for this President--we're going after these States; we're going to continue to punish them; we're going to continue to be punitive to them. We're going to ignore areas like Massachusetts, where there's now more racial disparity than in at least six of the States--
maybe all of them--in the South. But as I understood it, Massachusetts, unfortunately, has moved into the arena of being a State that has significant--most significant racial disparity. And yet the Voting Rights Act did nothing to address those areas of the country where over the last 50 years discrimination has grown, it's raised its ugly head.
Yet this administration said, no, we're too busy punishing States who corrected their problems and are doing so much better than the rest of the country. Why? Because we can. Actually, that is the reason the Voting Rights Act was extended without the Gohmert amendment that would have made sure that the Voting Rights Act applied across the country in any area where there was racial discrimination. But in a bipartisan manner, a majority forced the extension for 25 more years, which would mean--now, I don't even recall who all was in office back then. I was a little kid. I didn't know who was discriminating and who wasn't. I had no part in it. And people who had no part of the discrimination that was going on back then--the discrimination that needed to be addressed, the discrimination that needed to be corrected--for some reason, have people in a majority of places that voted to extend it, keep punishing areas that are no longer committing wrongs, no longer sinning.
We want to keep punishing them because if we open it up and apply these same punitive things across the country and come up with a new formula, gee, we're not going to be able to keep punishing these areas for their sins of 50, 60 years ago. We may have to punish our own States because racial disparity has grown there.
So the Supreme Court did the proper thing--legally, fairly. Now we see this administration saying, oh, it turns out we can use the Voting Rights Act to continue to punish Texas. Why? Because we can; because we want to. So they're coming after Texas, as announced today, again.
At some point, I hope we get to the place that the President spoke of when he spoke at the Democratic Convention so eloquently, talking about there's not a red America and a blue America, we're just Americans. I loved that speech. I thought it was fantastic. It caused me to rise up and take notice, wow, this guy is saying the things I believe in. He's so right. And yet his policies have been diametrically opposed. They have racially divided us; continuing to go after political enemies; continuing to have this administration's Internal Revenue Service weaponized in a way that Richard Nixon and Lyndon Johnson could never have even dreamed they could have done.
So, hopefully, the court to which the administration has gone in Texas will do the right thing and say, you know, Mr. Attorney General, we remember your comments about how you don't have the power really to do this anymore since the Supreme Court struck section 4 down. And so either we believe what you're saying now, or we believe what you said out there after the Supreme Court decision. And that becomes a real problem when you have an Attorney General that says different things to different people, because the highest law enforcement officer in the country needs to be trusted. He needs to have respect and adherence for and to the law.
We have an Attorney General that's been held in contempt. He's been in contempt of Congress; he's been in contempt of the law; he's been in contempt of the actual facts--repeatedly. We need a different Attorney General.
I asked President Bush to appoint a new Attorney General when there was a scandal over national security letters. I thought it was the appropriate thing to do. When someone's credibility is hurt, even if they didn't even know what was going on, it's time to have new leadership and change what's going on. And we got a new Attorney General.
Yet I'm amazed at how my friends on the other side of the aisle keep clinging, as does the President, to an Attorney General who is in contempt of Congress, contempt of the law, and in contempt of facts; an Attorney General who would have the nerve to testify that he's never even heard of anyone attempting to prosecute a reporter, when he knew as he said it he had okayed and given his blessing to the persecution of James Rosen with Fox News. So he either lied to the Congress in his testimony, or he was a part of a fraud upon the court.
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Because the allegations in the affidavit and the application for a warrant before the court going after James Rosen claimed he had violated the law, set out the law he had violated, that he was a flight risk, that he was a risk to destroy evidence; so either he believed the things that he approved, which means he lied to Congress, or he spoke truthfully to Congress and committed a fraud upon the court. Either way, we need the highest law enforcement officer in the land to have more credibility than that, and yet here he is doing the same thing, saying one thing one place, claiming another in another place.
It is so critical that we be able to trust our government, which brings us back to the issue of NSA spying.
Now, I was a freshman in 2005-2006 in the 109th Congress. I was on the Judiciary Committee, and we had some very rancorous debate between our own party behind closed doors, out in the committee room, here on the floor, over the PATRIOT Act, over the extension of power over the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Courts. I was very concerned, even though we had a Republican administration and a President that I liked and respected, George W. Bush, smarter and wittier than people gave him credit for, a good, decent man.
But we have to consider the possibilities and we have to be specific in our laws. When we debated these changes before the Judiciary Committee back in the 109th Congress when I was a freshman, there were people, my Democratic friends across the other side of the aisle, that were very concerned about an abuse of power that might be occasioned if we don't tighten up the PATRIOT Act.
I am just anal enough, I read the bill as it existed. I read the law as it existed. I was pushing for some things to be changed, and it did cause me some concern that the title of what basically is section 215 of the PATRIOT Act as it was at that time before amended:
Access to records and other items under the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act.
As amended, it would read:
Access to certain business records for foreign intelligence and international terrorism investigations.
So I knew those were the titles, so it really applied to foreign intelligence and international terrorism investigations.
My Democratic friends across the aisle that we would often consider way left had serious concerns. I understood their concerns, but I thought they were being way too fearful of government because the law, we could make it specific enough that it would not be abused by a Republican or Democratic administration.
As I read through, having been a judge and a chief justice and had to consider from a legal standpoint what do these words mean? what does this word mean? can this be considered vague, ambiguous? is this considered arbitrary and capricious? is there room for misunderstanding? I actually had some concerns behind closed doors. I was asking people from the Bush administration, Justice Department, I'm a little uncomfortable about this; what does this mean?
One of the things I asked about was, in the reference to the proposal for the amendment, it says, ``the Director of the Federal Bureau of Investigation or a designee of the Director (whose rank shall be no lower than Assistant Special Agent in Charge) may make an application for an order requiring the production of any tangible things (including books, records, papers, documents, and other items) for an investigation to obtain foreign intelligence information not concerning a United States person''--well, I was comfortable with that language. That seemed to protect U.S. citizens pretty well.
And then there's this disjunctive preposition ``or,'' this disjunctive ``or.'' Okay. Well, it can be that or it can be this.
The other aspect was ``to protect against international terrorism.'' Well, I felt like at the time I was okay if we are really seriously to protect ourselves from international terrorism. Again, that doesn't involve an American citizen unless you can establish with probable cause that an American citizen is involved in international terrorism.
And then we get a second disjunctive ``or''--``or clandestine intelligence activities.''
And I raised the issues behind closed doors in our Republican meetings and when we met with justice officials: I'm uncomfortable with this because it doesn't say ``international'' in that part. You have the disjunctive ``or,'' but you left out ``international'' there. I would really be more comfortable if it said, ``to protect against international terrorism or clandestine international intelligence activities.''
I was told: Congressman, we know you're a judge and you get caught up in words sometimes, but look at the title of the article. The article says, ``Access to certain business records for foreign intelligence and international terrorism investigations.'' So you shouldn't have to be concerned. This is only about intelligence. It's only about foreign contacts.
And we were assured repeatedly behind closed doors and in debate that this amendment to the PATRIOT Act would make it more difficult for an administration to abuse it--Republican or Democrat. I was still a little uneasy, and I know that when there is a disparity between language within a law and the title of the law, the language within the law itself takes priority over the title, I know that, but it was somewhat comforting.
If you read on down--this was as we were trying to amend it and as the Justice Department under President Bush was pushing--it says, ``An investigation conducted under this section shall,'' and then it has,
``(A) be conducted under guidelines . . . (B) not''--and there's an
``and,'' so this is important; you can't go without (B)--``and (B) not be conducted of a United States person solely upon the basis of activities protected by the First Amendment to the Constitution of the United States.''
There were some concerns during this debate over amending section 215 of the PATRIOT Act back in the 109th Congress that we don't want the administration gathering intel about someone if it is all having to do with their activity that is protected by the First Amendment to the Constitution of the United States.
So, for example, if someone were burning a United States flag or burning a Holy Bible, the Supreme Court tells us those are protected activities protected by the First Amendment, and therefore you could not use those to go gather intelligence data about an American who was doing those things.
Now, of course, we have the U.N. and former Secretary Clinton and President Obama and others saying, We like what the U.N. is saying.
Basically, if we adopted what the U.N. said, it would still be true, our Supreme Court would allow you to burn a Bible and a flag, but you could never, ever do anything like that to a Koran, which then would allow our radical Islamist friends who want an international caliphate to check the box that they created and was discovered during a raid some years back, that one of their 10-year goals was to subjugate the United States Constitution to shari'a law; and as soon as we adopt a law that says you can destroy a Bible and a flag but not a Koran, they can check that box. But under the proposed amendment in 2005 to the PATRIOT Act, or the official title under title 50, War and National Defense, chapter 36, ``Foreign Intelligence Surveillance''; chapter IV, section 1861, so paragraph (3) after (2), that says, ``An investigation conducted under this section shall . . . (B) not be conducted of a United States person solely upon the basis of activities protected by the First Amendment''--we get to paragraph (3). And this was an issue that was very contentious. There were groups boycotting and demonstrating and saying, Hey, this is all about library books, we don't want the Bush administration being able to go in and get a list of books we've read.
Well, I contended then and still contend now that to do such a thing of an American citizen you should have to have probable cause that an American citizen has violated the law and get a warrant to do that. But this didn't require a warrant. This is allowed under the PATRIOT Act if it was for foreign intelligence purposes and for international terrorism investigations, according to the title. But unfortunately, in the law itself, it said, ``or to protect against international terrorism or clandestine terrorism activities.''
And I told people at the time: I'm a little uncomfortable with that, because ``clandestine intelligence activities,'' what is that? What if it's just somebody going somewhere asking questions, not doing it in public but going privately to individuals and saying, ``I'm really concerned about what the administration is doing on this or that; what do you know about what this administration is doing? What have they done to you?'' Would that be considered as somebody doing clandestine or private intelligence activities?
I was told: You're being paranoid here, Gohmert. Look at the title again. It's ``international terrorism.'' It's ``foreign intelligence.'' This is not about American citizens. Look at the overall context.
But those words hanging out there after a disjunctive ``or,'' it was a little uneasing. But I had enough people in the Justice Department, on my committee, with the administration at that time that said: No, gosh, no. You're looking for things where there aren't any. This is not an issue.
But this paragraph (3), ``In the case of an application for an order requiring the production of library circulation records, library patron lists, book sales records, book customer lists, firearms sales records, tax return records, educational records, or medical records containing information that would identify a person''--wow, that's kind of scary when you consider that entire list of things that the Justice Department might be going after.
But it says, ``the Director of the Federal Bureau of Investigation may delegate the authority to make such application to either the Deputy Director of the Federal Bureau of Investigation or the Executive Assistant Director for National Security. The Deputy Director or the Executive Assistant Director may not further delegate such authority.''
So they wanted to assure us that only people that were looking at foreign intelligence and foreign terrorism who had the big picture, not some low-level rogue agent, would be pursuing anything like this, and we were told repeatedly: But it's all tied to foreign terrorism.
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