The Congressional Record is a unique source of public documentation. It started in 1873, documenting nearly all the major and minor policies being discussed and debated.
“TAKING US IN THE WRONG DIRECTION” mentioning the U.S. Dept. of Justice was published in the House of Representatives section on pages H3520-H3524 on March 17, 2009.
The publication is reproduced in full below:
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TAKING US IN THE WRONG DIRECTION
The SPEAKER pro tempore (Mr. Foster). Under the Speaker's announced policy of January 6, 2009, the gentlewoman from North Carolina (Ms. Foxx) is recognized for the remaining time until midnight.
Ms. FOXX. Mr. Speaker, I want to congratulate my colleagues on the great job that they have done this evening in presenting information about the budget, the deficit, the challenges that we are facing in this country, and I particularly want to agree with Congressman Carter from Texas for the statement he made about the fact that we live in a wonderful country.
In fact, I tell my friends all the time, the first thing I do in the morning when I wake up is say thank you, Lord, for letting me live in this country. And the last thing I say, before I go to sleep at night, is thank you, Lord, for letting me live in this country.
We are the most blessed people in the world, I believe that God has given us tremendous opportunities and responsibilities. And for those of us who have been here tonight and other nights and other days talking about what's happening in our country, we are really motivated by the fact that we know we live in the greatest country in the world, and we want it to remain that way.
And what we see happening in this country is people taking us in the wrong direction in order to maintain the greatness and the opportunities that this country has always had and always presented.
One of the things nobody said tonight is the fact that we, as Republicans, we, as conservatives, I would say--not all Republicans are conservatives, but those of us who are conservatives and who have been here talking about these issues are not alone. There are many Democrats who share our concerns too.
I want to just share some quotes from some of our colleagues who have expressed their own concern and their own apprehension about the proposals that have been made by this Congress and by this President.
Senator Evan Bayh, Democrat of Indiana. ``I do think that before we raise revenue we first should look to see if there are ways we can cut back on spending.'' As for the tax increases on high-income earners called for in Obama's plan, Bayh said, I do think that before we raise revenue, we first should look to see if there are ways we can cut back on spending. This was in Politico March 3, 2009, ``Moderates Uneasy With Obama Plan.''
Again, Republican conservatives are not the only ones that are worried about the direction that we are going. Senator Ben Nelson, Democrat of Nebraska, ``I have major concerns about trying to raise taxes in the midst of a downturn of the economy.''
Then he says, ``On the one hand, you're trying to stimulate the economy. On the other hand, you're trying to keep money from going into taxpayers' pockets. It's very difficult to make that logic work.'' Again, Politico, March 3, 2009.
Representative Shelley Berkley, Democrat, Nevada.
``Representative Shelley Berkley, (D-Nev) called the proposal `a nonstarter,' telling Geithner, `I'd like to think that people give out of the goodness of their hearts, but that tax deduction helps to loosen up their heartstrings.' Outside the hearing, Berkeley said the proposed tax increase was `the number one issue on the minds of her constituents over the weekend. Reminded that the provision is intended to raise hundreds of billions of dollars to finance an expansion of health insurance coverage, Obama's top domestic priority, she said, `We can find another way.' ''
We know that going in this direction, and these Democrats know, that this is not the way that we should be going. We should not be taking more money from the American people. Cutting back spending would be the appropriate way to go.
I have a couple of other articles that I want to share, actually three articles that I want to share pieces of, because, again, they show, I think, the direction or the concern that people are having about these proposals that have been made in the last 50 days.
This article is from Stewart Taylor, Jr., it's in the National Journal, March 7, 2009. Stewart Taylor is known as a very strong liberal. He has been described in other terms even stronger than that, in terms of his liberalism, but I am just going to call him that tonight.
The title of this article is ``Obama's Left Turn.'' It reads,
``Having praised President Obama's job performance in two recent columns, it is with regret that I now worry that he may be deepening what looks more and more like a depression and may engineer so much spending, debt, and government control of the economy as to leave most Americans permanently less prosperous and less free.
``Other Obama-admiring centrists have expressed similar concerns. Like them, I would like to be proved wrong. After all, if this President fails, who will revive our economy? And when? And what kind of America will our children inherit?
``But with the Nation already plunging deep into probably necessary debt to rescue the crippled financial system and stimulate the economy, Obama's proposals for many hundreds of billions in additional spending on universal health care, universal postsecondary education, a massive overhaul of the energy economy, and other liberal programs seem grandiose and unaffordable.
``With little in the way of offsetting savings likely to materialize, the Obama agenda would probably generate trillion-dollar deficits with no end in sight or send middle-class taxes soaring to record levels or both.
``All this from a man who told the Nation last week that he doesn't
`believe in bigger government,' and who promised tax cuts for 95 percent of Americans.
``The President's suggestions that all the necessary tax increases can be squeezed out of the richest 2 percent are deceptive and likely to stir class resentment. And his apparent cave-ins to liberal interest groups may change the country for the worse.''
Then he goes on to say, ``Such concerns may help explain why the Dow Jones Industrial Average plunged 17 percent from the morning of Inauguration Day (8,280) to its close on March 4 (6,876). The markets have also been deeply shaken by Obama's alarming failure to come up with a clear plan for fixing the crippled financial system--which has loomed since his election 4 months ago as by far his most urgent challenge--or for working with foreign leaders to arrest the meltdown of the world economy.
``The house is burning down. It's no time to be watering the grass.
``This is not to deny that the liberal wish list in Obama is staggering $3.6 trillion budget would be wonderful if we had limitless resources. But in the real world, it could put vast areas of the economy under permanent government mismanagement, kill millions of jobs, drive investors and employers overseas, and bankrupt the Nation.''
Let me say again, these words are not being written or spoken by a conservative, they are being spoken by a person who calls himself a moderate but is described by most people as quite a liberal.
He goes on to say, ``Meanwhile, liberal Democrats in Congress are racing to gratify their interest groups in a slew of ways likely to do much more harm than good: Pushing a union-backed `card check' bill that would bypass secret-ballot elections on unionization and facilitate intimidation of reluctant workers; slipping into the stimulus package a formula to reimburse States that increase welfare dependency among single mothers and reduce their incentives to work; defunding a program that now pays for the parents of some 1,700 poor kids to choose private schools over crumbling D.C. public schools; fencing out would-be immigrants with much-needed skills.
``Not to mention the $7.7 billion in an omnibus spending bill to pay for 9,000 earmarks of the kind that Obama campaigned against: $1.7 million for research on pig odors in Iowa; $1.7 million for a honey bee factory in Texas; $819,000 for research on catfish genetics in Alabama;
$2 million to promote astronomy in Hawaii, $650,000 to manage beavers in North Carolina and Mississippi; and many more.''
The article goes on and on as I said, but I want to share, not all of it, but a couple of more pieces of it, because I don't want to spend all the time reading from this article.
I want to skip over to where he says, ``Small wonder that liberal commentators who complained about Obama's initial stabs at bipartisanship are ecstatic about his budget. And small wonder that some centrists, who have had high hopes for Obama--including New York Times columnist, David Brooks, my colleague, Clive Crook, David Gergen and Christopher Buckley--are sounding alarms.
``In a March 3 column headed `A Moderate Manifesto,' Brooks wrote,
`Those of us who consider ourselves moderates--moderate conservative, in my case--are forced to confront the reality that Barack Obama is not who we thought he was. His words are responsible; his character is inspiring. But his actions betray a transformational liberalism that should put every centrist on notice. The only thing more scary than Obama's experiment is the thought that it might fail.''
Then I will share the end of the column, ``I still hold out hope that Obama is not irrevocably `casting his lot with collectivists and status,' as asserted by Peter Wehner, a former Bush aid and a leading conservative intellectual now with the Ethics and Public Policy Center.''
``And I hope that the President ponders well Margaret Thatcher's wise warnings against some collectivist conceits, in a 1980s speech quoted by Wehner: `The illusion that government can be a universal provider and yet society still stay free and prosperous. The illusion that every loss can be covered by a subsidy. The illusion that we can break the link between reward and effort, and still get the reward.' ''
Again, my point in sharing this is that it isn't just conservatives who are concerned with the direction in which we are going in this society.
There is another article on an Internet Web site called GOPUSA that many people who use the Internet and use e-mail will be familiar with. The title of it is ``George Orwell Would Be Impressed With Barack Obama,'' and it's written by Doug Patton and it's dated March 2, 2009.
``There he was, standing before a joint session of Congress, promising America the Moon 1 minute and sounding like a deficit hawk the next. President Barack Obama and his Democrat cohorts had just rammed through the biggest pile of pork in the history of the republic, and yet there he stood, before the whole Nation, telling us he was going to go through the budget `line by line' finding ways to cut waste. In fact, he intended to `slash the deficit' he `inherited' by almost exactly the amount he and his Democrat Congress had just spent. What a coincidence.''
The article goes on to say, ``Obama is a combination of Ronald Reagan and Big Brother--by which I mean that he uses his considerable communications skills to sell the agenda of the huge, intrusive government, and that he does it in a ``Newspeak'' that would impress George Orwell.
``Those who have read Orwell's prophetic little tomorrow, `1984,' will recall that `Newspeak' was a language in which the line between contrary concepts was so blurred that words either had no meaning at all or could be used to create concepts that were contrary. When words no longer had meaning, the concept of truth was not far behind.''
I want to say to those who are watching this tonight, if you have never read ``1984,'' or if it's been a long time since you have read it, I will urge you to reread it now, because I think you will be startled by it and by the analogies that are being made by this author here tonight.
So what will Obama's America look like if he gets all that he wants? It won't happen overnight, but if he has his way, eventually it will be a very dreary place, much like the old Soviet Union. Having followed the old Marxist axiom of making everyone equal, Obama will have brought about the same kind of quality instituted by the old Soviet Politburo. Gone will be the quality of opportunity we have enjoyed for more than 200 years, the right to experience life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness. In Obama's America, as in the failed Soviet State, a quality of outcome will be the preferred result. The idea is to make everyone equally prosperous.
This sounds good in theory until one considers that the only way governments have ever accomplished this is by making men and women equal in their poverty, misery and squalor.
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And how does the President pay for it all? It doesn't seem to matter to most Americans. He talks about taxing the rich in order to pay for his schemes. Yet, if our government confiscated 100 percent of the income of everyone in this country making more than $75,000 a year, he would barely have enough to cover this year's budget. And we don't even have universal health care yet.
Human beings are endowed with our rights by our Creator. Our Founders recognized that principle. This President and the majority in Congress believe our rights come from them. No one, until now, has been able to sell that idea to the American people. Barack Obama is doing his best to sell it to us now, and George Orwell would be very impressed.
The last article I want to share is an article from the Saturday-
Sunday March 7-8, 2009, Wall Street Journal. I think another thing that hasn't been clear to the American people is that there are many things said by the President, by the leadership in this Congress, that if you look behind the curtain, as we do in the Wizard of Oz, you will see that what is being said and what is actually being done are not exactly the same thing.
More and more people are beginning to talk about this, but few have brought out really good examples of it as well as this article in the Wall Street Journal does.
The title of it, and it's an editorial, the title of it is: Obama Channels Cheney. ``The Obama administration this week released its predecessors post-9/11 legal memoranda in the name of transparency, producing another round of feel-good Bush criticism.
``Anyone initiated in President Obama's actual executive power policies, however, should look at his position on warrantless wiretapping. Dick Cheney must be smiling.
``In a Federal suit, the Obama legal team is arguing that judges lack the authority to enforce their own rulings in classified matters of national security. The standoff concerns the Oregon chapter of the al-
Haramain Islamic Foundation, a Saudi Arabian charity that was shut down in 2004 on evidence that it was financing al Qaeda. Al-Haramain sued the Bush administration in 2004, claiming it had been illegally wiretapped.
``At the heart of the al-Haramain case is a classified document that it says proves that the alleged eavesdropping was not authorized under the Foreign Intelligence Service Act, or FISA.
That record was inadvertently disclosed after al-Haramain was designated as a terrorist organization; the Bush administration declared such documents state secrets after their existence became known.
``In July, the ninth circuit court of appeals upheld the President's right to do so, which should have ended the matter. But the San Francisco panel also returned the case to the presiding district court judge, Vaughn Walker, ordering him to decide if FISA preempts the state secrets privilege. If he does, al-Haramain would be allowed to use the document to establish the standing to litigate.
``The Obama Justice Department has adopted a legal stance identical to, if not more aggressive, than the Bush version. It argues that the court-forced disclosure of the surveillance programs would cause exceptional harm to national security by exposing intelligence sources and methods. Last Friday, the ninth circuit denied the latest emergency motion to dismiss, again kicking matters back to Judge Walker.
``In court documents filed hours later, Justice argues that the decision to release classified information is committed to the discretion of the executive branch. And is not subject to judicial review. Moreover, the court does not have independent power to order the government to grant counsel access to classified information when the executive branch has denied them such access.
``The brief continues that Federal judges are ill-equipped to second-
guess the executive branch. That is about as pure an assertion of Presidential powers as they come, and we are beginning to wonder if the White House has put David Addington, Mr. Cheney's chief legal aid, on retainer.
``The practical effect is to prevent the courts from reviewing the legality of the warrantless wiretapping program that Mr. Obama repeatedly claimed to find so heinous, at least before taking office.
``Justice, by the way, is making the same state secrets argument in a separate lawsuit involving rendition and a Boeing subsidiary.
``Hide the children, but we agree with Mr. Obama that the President has inherent Article II constitutional powers that neither the judiciary nor statutes like FISA can impinge upon. The FISA appeals court said as much in a decision released in January, as did Attorney General Eric Holder during his confirmation hearings.
``It's reassuring to know the administration is refusing to compromise core executive branch prerogatives, especially on war powers. Then, again, we are relearning that the ``Imperial Presidency'' is only imperial when the President is a Republican. Democrats who spent years denouncing George Bush for spying on Americans and illegal wiretaps are now conspicuously silent. Yet, these same liberals are going ballistic about the Bush-era legal memos issue this week.
``Cognitive dissonance is the polite explanation, and we wouldn't be surprised if Mr. Holder released them precisely to distract liberal attention from the al-Haramain case.
``By the way, those Bush documents are Office of Legal Counsel memos, not political directives. They were written in the immediate aftermath of a major terrorist attack, when war seemed possible, and it would have been irresponsible not to explore the outer limits of war powers in a worst case scenario. Based on what we are learning so far about Mr. Obama's policies, his administration would do the same.''
``I think, again, it's important that even late at night, when maybe not too many people are paying attention, we reveal some of the cognitive dissonance that exists in this administration and in this Congress in ways that it discussed the previous administration, actions of the previous administration, and the things that it is doing now.
``We have to hope that once he became President, President Obama did learn that there are some things that the President must do that he may have railed against as a candidate, and hope that there's a maturity there that will service us all well.''
I want to end my comments tonight on a totally different subject. Today, we passed a resolution celebrating Women's History Month. I was not able to be here during that time. But I often point out the situation with women in the Congress and with the role that they have played in our country over the years, and celebrate that role, as I think it is important to our country.
Most people know very little about the history of women in our country; about the history of women and their voting rights. So I am going to share just a little bit with you on that issue. And I have learned some of these things since coming to Congress.
Some people may not know that in 1790, the New Jersey colony granted voting rights to all free inhabitants. But then, in 1807, they took back from New Jersey women the right to vote.
In 1869, the Wyoming territory gave women full suffrage; 1870, Utah. And it goes on and on with other States, other territories giving women the right to vote. In fact, the first woman who was elected to Congress was elected in 1916 before women in this country had the right to vote. She was from Montana--Jeannette Rankin.
She was elected there, and women got the right to vote in the West because women were valued much more in the West in the early days of our country, and that was one of the ways to attract women to come out West.
Let me give you a little history of the women in the Congress. Thirty-seven women have served in the United States Senate. Only 37. I don't have the total number of the men who have served, but I have been told that approximately 12,000 men have served in the Congress. Only 37 women in the Senate. Seventeen are currently serving.
Two hundred twenty-nine women have served in the U.S. House of Representatives. Seventy-four of them are currently serving. That totals 266 women that have ever served in the United States Congress; 91 currently serving. So 12,000 men, 266 women.
I am the fourth woman from the State of North Carolina. The first woman was elected in a special election in 1946. She served 1946 and 1947 and didn't run in the general election for re-election. Eva Clayton from the first district was the first woman to serve. She was elected in a special election. Sue Myrick, who's currently serving, was the second woman to be elected. North Carolina has had two women Senators; Elizabeth Dole, who served from 2003 to 2008, and Kay Hagan, who is currently serving.
I think most of us wish we would have more women serving in the Congress on both sides of the aisle because we believe that it adds to the Congress in terms of the perspectives that we bring, is as it adds to the Congress that we have men serving who have been in many, many different professions and had many, many different experiences.
I see that my colleague from Texas has joined me. Before I yield back my time, I would like to see if he has some comments that he would like to make. This is Mr. Gohmert from the great State of Texas. I would remind him that he and I are the only two things standing in the way of adjournment tonight.
Mr. GOHMERT. I do thank my dear friend, Ms. Foxx, for the things that she's pointed out tonight, Mr. Speaker, and also for the good that she's done. I hadn't realized. I guess we don't notice gender around this body, but apparently one of the few women. I didn't realize there had been that few. But what a powerful contribution, Mr. Speaker, that Ms. Foxx has made, and is making. It makes me very proud to be serving with her, as we came in together.
But there is something that we have discussed and have in common, and that is a concern about the morality of this Nation. Chuck Coulson talked about in a recent Bible study group we had, quoted Michael Novak, using the metaphor of the three-legged stool on which a government and a country like ours is seated.
Now many have used the metaphor of the three-legged stool, but he was pointing out that really the three legs are composed of morality, economic freedom, and political freedom, and that you need all three legs.
What we have seen in this country is a breakdown of the morality leg. As we look at the struggles in our economy, it seems that there has been a real problem with this nagging issue of greed and jealousy and envy, covetousness. People see what others want and they want that and they want more.
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And as we have seen greed take over good sense, then it affects the economic freedom. And as that has impacted the economy and the economy has gotten in trouble, what we see throughout history is that when people have a choice between order and freedom, they will give up freedom just to have order, and that it puts our entire political freedom at risk when we have had a breakdown in morality affecting the economy, and then the third leg goes, our political freedom.
I have been visiting with a group tonight, and I know the rules of the House are that we don't call attention to anyone in the gallery so I will not do that. But I have been visiting tonight with friends from Lufkin, Texas, Mayor Gordon and his wife, and Paul Parker and his wife and their grandson, Josh. They understand this issue of morality. They understand that a country cannot be perpetuated where you lose that leg of the three-legged stool.
We even see it in Washington, where people get envious: Well, somebody got something in their district, I want something in mine. And if they put what they want or their district's wants over the needs of the Nation, then we come in here and we pass bills that have 9,000 earmarks in them that don't help with the stimulus, they don't help the country go in the right direction. And it is really kind of a moral leg that is affected there as well, which affects the economy because it doesn't stimulate the economy, which can throw the economy into chaos, at which time people are willing to give up political freedom in order to have the security of some order in this Nation.
I have been inspired by some of the words of our President, President Obama. But as we have found, leadership is not found in the lines on a teleprompter; leadership is something you have got to do, how you live. And George Washington, we know, struggling as we was to win freedom, he knew that his life had to be transparent, that he had to be humble, and he had to be a man of complete honesty; otherwise, it wouldn't survive. And his quote was: Men unused to restraint must be led; they will not be driven. And that is what we need more of, not just pretty words that are read from a teleprompter. We need leadership. We need people not to say we are not going to allow greed to get $165 million worth of bonuses after driving a country into the dirt. Not at all. No, we need leadership that doesn't just say these things. They follow through, and make sure he appoints honorable men, honorable people. And by that I mean generically men and women, because of the contribution.
We were just down to Statuary Hall, and I was pointing out the first woman to address a group in Congress was a Christian evangelist, I think it was before 1820, that delivered the Sunday nondenominational Christian sermon down in Statuary Hall back when it was the House of Representatives. But men and women have inspired this place, but they don't inspire anyone unless their life is transparent enough so that people know that they mean what they say.
So as we continue to have these issues arise of the lack of morality; Ms. Coleson once said: You can't have the morality of Woodstock and not have tragedies in this country. If you have the morality of, ``If it feels good, do it,'' then you are going to have some catastrophes, because some people will want to see how it feels to do different catastrophic, greedy, terrible things. So we have got to get back to our moral underpinnings and moral anchoring so that we can move forward. But we need leadership from the White House to the Senate to this House to be in order so that they can lead by example, and not put earmarks in that may help some people but not help the economy and not help the Nation move forward and not help the generations to come.
Ms. Foxx has heard me say, Mr. Speaker, before. As a judge, I know if a parent were to have come before me and that parent had been to the bank and said, I can't control my spending, I just can't stop spending, so please make me a loan; and my children and my grandchildren, maybe my great grandchildren who aren't even born, will pay it all back some day because I can't and I can't control my spending. Well, that parent wouldn't get to keep the kids much longer, and especially if the kids had kids. That raises issues.
But in any event, we have got to get back to morality of good leaders here. We don't spend our children's money, we don't spend our grandchildren's money and our great grandchildren's money. That is irresponsible. And if we are going to do the business of this Nation with which we have been trusted, we have got to just reestablish the moral leg, the humility, the strength of character that Washington displayed, and that I have seen in my friend, Ms. Foxx. I appreciate your yielding and I appreciate the chance to speak here.
I have seen that same moral strength in a group that is here at the Capitol tonight from Murray State University, a group of Christians that are here.
So thank you for yielding and allowing me to speak tonight. And thank you for taking this time.
Ms. FOXX. I want to thank my colleague from Texas for coming in tonight and sharing this time with me and ending the evening on the appropriate note.
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