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.
“TAX BILL FOR AMERICA” mentioning the U.S. Dept. of Justice was published in the House of Representatives section on pages H9614-H9618 on Dec. 4, 2017.
The Department is one of the oldest in the US, focused primarily on law enforcement and the federal prison system. Downsizing the Federal Government, a project aimed at lowering taxes and boosting federal efficiency, detailed wasteful expenses such as $16 muffins at conferences and board meetings.
The publication is reproduced in full below:
TAX BILL FOR AMERICA
The SPEAKER pro tempore (Mr. Bacon). Under the Speaker's announced policy of January 3, 2017, the gentleman from Texas (Mr. Gohmert) is recognized until 10 p.m. as the designee of the majority leader.
Mr. GOHMERT. Mr. Speaker, I appreciate my colleague pointing out that we have done something good here.
When people talk about the tax bill that was passed, it is not everything everybody wanted, that is for sure. It is not everything Republicans wanted, but it is going to do good for most every American.
I would love to have seen just an across-the-board tax cut. I would like to have seen a tax cut that brought everybody to pay the same exact percentage. You make more, you pay more; you make less, you pay less.
For those who believe in a tithe, that kind of always worked well for the Lord. Everybody pays the same percentage, whether it is a widow's mite or hundreds of billions of dollars or the billions that Warren Buffett refuses to have his company pay even though he says he would love to pay for taxes. He ought to tell his lawyers that.
In any event, there are people who were paying 10 percent who are now not going to pay any taxes. I don't see how anybody across the aisle could keep saying it is going to be worse for the poor, because those who were paying 10 percent tax are not going to pay any tax. It is good for them. It is great for them.
I would love to see everybody have something that they pay in--
something--so that they have some investment in the income tax system. It seems to help focus people's attention on government when they see how much they are paying into the Federal Government when it is a real percentage. The bill cuts completely any income tax for those who were paying 10 percent.
For those who were paying 25 percent, they are being cut to 12 percent. It is a tremendous tax advantage for them. In fact, you see that all the way through the tax bill, the creation of which was led by Kevin Brady, chairman of the Ways and Means Committee. He did an incredible job bringing all the different interests together to get a great bill.
At the upper end, the 39.6 percent tax was not changed. I guess the reason the committee decided they wanted to leave the 39.6 for the wealthiest Americans in place is because that way the Democrats could not come in--I know this was the thinking: If the only tax rate we don't lower is for the wealthiest Americans, we leave that where it is, then they can't come in and say we are cutting taxes for the wealthiest Americans and putting it on the backs of the poorest Americans.
Well, they have come in and said it anyway. We might as well have given everybody a fair tax break instead of leaving the wealthiest taxes right where they were, 39.6 percent, because they still came in and said it. Schumer is still saying it in the Senate.
The truth is, when you look at the tax rates that people will pay and the exemptions being doubled, it is going to be much better for most people.
There were some things in the Senate bill I liked. I didn't realize, but I heard from people back home, we do have some seniors who do pay so much in medical expense that takes such a tremendous amount of the small income they have that they do have enough to take deductions for their medical expenses. If they are not allowed to take those medical expenses as deductions, accountants tell me many of their clients will end up being bankrupt.
The Senate left that provision in, and I am hopeful that that will be in the final bill. We don't need to be hurting our seniors who are paying so much in medical expenses even though they were assured ObamaCare would cure all ills when it came to healthcare.
If you like your insurance, you can keep it. Well, that turned out to be a lie.
If you like your doctor, you could keep your doctor. That turned out to be a lie.
If you liked the medicine you were taking, you could keep taking that medicine. It turned out to be a lie.
In fact, there were actual incentives in ObamaCare for the insurance companies not to bring in the best cancer treaters, the best heart facilities, because that means people with cancer and heart problems would sign up for those policies, and they might have to pay too much.
So it was really deviously inventive by the architect of ObamaCare to create a system that is going to be so bad it is going to fail at some point. The hope was that, when that day came, people would throw up their hands say: This is awful. I never thought I would say this, but maybe we are better off just letting the government take over every bit of healthcare.
Well, the government was already close to taking over all healthcare under ObamaCare, but as Senator Obama told people on video, it is basically government running all phases of healthcare. They give it a deceptive name: single-payer. But we can't get there in one step. It will take a couple of steps.
{time} 2115
Well, ObamaCare was step one, and a complete government takeover of people's healthcare was step two.
Fortunately, if we can add to the House bill what was added into the Senate bill, a complete repeal of the individual mandate, then we will be on our way to bringing down premiums, to having people choose the health insurance policies they want.
Ultimately, we have got to encourage people to put their own money not in the pocket of the government, not in the pocket of the insurance company, but into their own health savings accounts and build that up. That is the hope for the future for young people: to have enough money in their account down the road that, by the time they become senior citizens, not only will they not want government intrusion, they won't need it.
Those that are chronically ill, chronically poor, and cannot work, we have got to reform welfare and return the requirements that were put in place that caused single moms for the first time in 30 years to start making much more than they had, when their income had been flat for 30 years when adjusted for inflation. I was surprised to see that on a chart--on a graph at Harvard, at a seminar up there; but sure enough, the facts spoke for themselves.
There are things we can do to help people return to work, to take care of themselves, make their own decisions, and I think this tax bill will help do that, especially if we put in the repeal of the individual mandate, as surprised as I am to keep hearing about how this tax bill is going to hurt the poor in America.
When the people who are paying 10 percent tax don't pay any tax, the people who were paying 25 percent start paying 12 percent tax, it is just really hard to accept someone saying that they are going to be paying more tax to help the rich when the rich did not get a tax reduction from the 39.6 percent.
I do want to take up a critically important decision by the Supreme Court of the United States. There is an article from Ian Mason today:
``President Donald Trump's travel ban is once again to largely go back into effect after the Supreme Court of the United States stayed two lower courts' injunctions Monday.
``The orders come in response to filings by the Department of Justice Friday, asking the Supreme Court to stay the preliminary injunctions in the two main travel ban cases, Hawaii v. Trump in the Ninth Circuit and International Refugee Assistance Project v. Trump in the Fourth Circuit. These cases have been proceeding up and down the Federal court system for months.''
I do think, in the Judiciary Committee, it is time that we start bringing in some of these renegade judges who were not content to wear black robes and be judges, but took on the role of being legislators and being elected executives. They took all three branches into themselves, because basically what power the President didn't have to fully invoke the travel ban, Congress had given him any extra that he needed. He had full authority to do what he did.
Anybody can see that people could come in from countries where radical Islam was destroying the countries, and there were messages from the leaders of those radical Islamic groups who said: We are getting our soldiers into these groups of refugees that are going into Western civilization so that we can destroy them.
I mean, they weren't even hiding what they were doing, although they didn't tell us which individuals were their soldiers.
We had heard previously about vetting of individuals. We heard testimony in our committee that at least people coming from Iraq, when they applied to be refugees, they had some background we could compare and contrast what they were saying about their reasons to come in. We even had fingerprints on IDs. We had their criminal records from Iraq. We had their government records from Iraq. But as they came from Syria, some other countries, when Yemen was in chaos, we did not have the government records. We didn't have fingerprints. We didn't have anything.
We were told by those charged with the obligation of vetting these individuals: We will vet them, but we have got absolutely nothing to vet them with, so they will end up coming in, because we have got nothing to say that what they are saying is not true, even when they are radical Islamists who want to kill Americans and destroy our way of life.
What President Trump did was exceedingly reasonable, yet we had a Deputy Attorney General, Sally Yates, step forward and say: I am going to take on the role of President and justice and legislator and tell you I am not going to defend this law because I have judged it not to be up to my standards.
Well, she was wrong. She was wrong then and she is wrong today as she talks about issues even after her judgment is shown to be so flawed, as the Supreme Court has.
I know the travel ban was changed somewhat, but still, from what the Supreme Court has indicated, the President had the power to do what he did to protect Americans, despite what ``Justice'' Sally Yates said, without her black robe on, when she defied orders and defied the Constitution and refused to carry out her duties.
So that is a bit of good news.
Sarah Carter has another great story today that she got out. It can be found on hannity.com: ``FBI Supervisor Booted From Mueller Probe Interviewed Mike Flynn.''
The article says: ``A supervisory special agent who is now under scrutiny after being removed from Robert Mueller's special counsel's office for alleged bias against President Trump also oversaw the Bureau's interviews of embattled former National Security Advisor Michael Flynn, this reporter has learned. Flynn recently pled guilty to one count of lying to the FBI last week.
``FBI agent Peter Strzok was one of two FBI agents who interviewed Flynn, which took place on January 24 at the White House, said several sources. The other FBI special agent who interviewed Flynn is described by sources as a field supervisor in the `Russian Squad, at the FBI's Washington field office,' according to a former intelligence official with knowledge of the interview.
``Strzok was removed from his role in the special counsel's office after it was discovered he had made disparaging comments about President Trump in text messages between him and his alleged lover, FBI attorney Lisa Page, according to The New York Times and Washington Post, which first reported the stories. Strzok is also under investigation by the Department of Justice Inspector General for his role in Hillary Clinton's email server and the ongoing investigation into Russia's election meddling. On Saturday, the House Intelligence Committee's chairman, Devin Nunes, chided the Justice Department and the FBI for not disclosing why Strzok had been removed from the special counsel 3 months ago, according to a statement given by the chairman.
``The former U.S. intelligence official told this reporter, `with the recent revelation that Strzok was removed from the special counsel investigation for making anti-Trump text messages, it seems likely that the accuracy and veracity of the 302 of Flynn's interview as a whole should be reviewed and called into question.' ''
Now, the 302 is the section 302 report summary by the FBI agent of what was said by the witness.
So we have a biased witness at the FBI who is not recording what Mike Flynn said word for word. He is writing down in his notes his biased, skewed opinion of what Mike Flynn said. We know it is biased, it is skewed.
Since Mike Flynn worked faithfully for so many years under--and survived--the purges over and over of Commander in Chief Obama and very, very briefly worked for Donald Trump, it would appear that Mike Flynn should have had more credibility than this Strzok character who hated Donald Trump so much.
I have heard talk that Mike Flynn could have fought this, but he basically had been bankrupted by the Department of Justice. He could not afford the attorney's fees anymore and, as sometimes happens, they threatened to go after his son. So he agreed to plea on this one count, since apparently the biased, prejudiced, partisan FBI agent Strzok had something different in his notes, his summary of what Mike Flynn said than what Mike Flynn said he said. So he pled out from under the terrible legal fees and this task force that seems to have unlimited authority, that doesn't seem to be reined in by Mr. Rosenstein that appointed Mueller.
Then we found out, well, heck no, of course not, because Rosenstein and Mueller were involved in getting files sealed; the facts of which, from what we understand, should have prevented the sale of American uranium from ever going forward.
So it only makes sense, gee, to convince Jeff Sessions to recuse himself. He says he talked to the career guys, like Rosenstein. He considered Rosenstein a career guy. Then he appoints his buddy who helped him in the Russian investigation over a number of years, which established that Russia was trying to corner the market, that they were bribing and they were committing crimes trying to get American uranium. For heaven's sake, if all of that came out, then Hillary Clinton wouldn't have been able to get her buddies to approve that sale so that Russia could end up with so much of our uranium.
{time} 2130
Of course, if Russia didn't end up with so much of our uranium, do you really think $145 million from Uranium One--from the stockholders who ended up with the uranium and all the money that flowed with it, do you really think they would have given that to the Clinton Foundation? Because let's face it, they haven't given a dime since.
If they were all that charged up with all the good the Clinton Foundation was doing, doesn't it make sense they would have kept giving after Hillary Clinton was no longer the Secretary of State and when there was still hope of her being President? Even though that is gone, gee, wouldn't they have still contributed if it was all about the good the Clinton Foundation was doing?
Instead of a quid pro quo, if you get us this uranium, we will make you rich. You will hit the Russian lottery, the megamillions lottery for the Clintons. And hit the Russian lottery they did.
``A former FBI agent said the investigation into Strzok and the reported text messages between him and Page shows a `bias that cannot be ignored particularly if he had anything to do with Flynn's interview and his role in it.'
``The former U.S. intelligence official questioned, `how logical is it that Flynn is being charged for lying to an agent whose character and neutrality was called into question by the special counsel.'
``According to an anonymous source in The Washington Post, Strzok and Page had exchanged a number of texts that `expressed anti-Trump sentiments and other comments that appeared to favor Clinton.'''
That was apparently between Strzok and his lover. So it is not because he is a man full of hate; apparently, he is a man full of love.
``McCabe told Flynn: `Some agents were heading over to the White House, but Flynn thought it was part of the routine work the FBI had been doing and said they would be cleared at the gate,' the source said.
``'It wasn't until after they were already in Flynn's office that he realized he was being formally interviewed. He didn't have an attorney with him,' they added.''
``According to another source with direct knowledge of the January 24 interview, McCabe had contacted Flynn by phone directly at the White House. White House officials had spent the `earlier part of the week with the FBI overseeing training and security measures associated with their roles so it was no surprise to Flynn that McCabe had called.'''
Snuck up on him. Apparently that is supposed to be a lesson: the FBI calls, you never know if it is somebody who hates you and hates the people you work for.
An article by Daniel Flynn of Breitbart: ``The former Assistant Director of the FBI wonders who investigates the investigators in the wake of former Trump administration National Security Advisor Michael Flynn pleading guilty to lying to the FBI and agreeing to cooperate with special counsel Robert Mueller's probe.
``'Bob Mueller should have never been offered nor accepted the job as special counsel as he has a huge conflict of interest,' Jim Kallstrom tells Breitbart News. `He should have recused himself.'''
It sounds like what I have been saying for many months now.
``Not only do observers describe Mueller and the man he recommended to replace him as FBI Director, James Comey, as close or even best friends, but the special counsel pursues an investigation heavily involving the Bureau he once led. How one maintains detachment in leading a team that includes numerous anti-Trump partisans in a probe involving one's close friend and the former Bureau for which Mueller served as Director goes unexplained.
``Other problems Kallstrom sees include the means by which investigators obtained information and what constituted probable cause to obtain it.
``'The Obama administration apparently had the advantage of using electronic surveillance, collecting information on the Trump campaign,' Kallstrom explains. `That collection, in my view, may be found to be unlawful.'
``At the very least, one administration conducting surveillance on the opposition party looking to replace it strikes as unusual if not unprecedented. In 1972, for instance, President Richard Nixon's political team relied on former agents of the FBI and CIA to gather intelligence on the Democratic Party.
``If the surveillance and investigatory methods prove unlawful, Kallstrom notes that this puts Mueller in an awkward position of looking into its close friend and perhaps the Bureau that both men once led.
``'If they used the phony dossier as the predicate for the FISA order they obtained, that could be a huge problem,' Kallstrom tells Breitbart News.
`If they knew the information was phony, that is a felony. If they did not know it was phony, they were incompetent.'
``The `dossier,' which Americans belatedly discovered as an opposition research investigation funded by Hillary Clinton's campaign and other partisan sources, served as a justification in the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act court to obtain a wiretap to Trump campaign adviser Carter Page. Christopher Steele, the former British intelligence officer who compiled the opposition research dubbed an intelligence dossier in the media, admits that he neither traveled to Russia nor spoke to many of the sources for the anti-Trump document that the Clinton campaign funded and the FBI used in its investigation.
``'This whole matter with the dossier and the investigations that ensued, including FISA surveillance and the unmasking of hundreds of names, in my view, will prove to be violations of the rules set down by the Congress for unmasking, or worse, will be found to be violations of Federal law,' Kallstrom concludes. `The Justice Department should find out if the FBI paid for this phony dossier and should inspect the affidavit that was given to FISA court to determine the accuracy of their probable cause.'''
Hopefully, that is what is being done at this time, but, as I understand it, the pro-Hillary Clinton people still at the Justice Department have not been forthcoming with the information. That remains to be seen.
Other articles are talking about the anti-Trump text messages showing a pattern of bias on Mueller's team, by Chuck Ross today in the Daily Caller.
Jonathan Easley with The Hill: ``FreedomWatch Sues to Remove Mueller.''
Thank goodness for FreedomWatch doing so.
The article says: ``A conservative group filed suit on Monday seeking to remove special counsel Robert Mueller from the Justice Department's investigation into Russian meddling.
``Conservative lawyer Larry Klayman, the founder of the watchdog group FreedomWatch, filed a complaint in U.S. District Court that seeks to force the Justice Department to investigate leaks from the special counsel, as well as `the obvious conflicts of interest among staff.'
``The complaint against Attorney General Jeff Sessions and FBI Director Christopher Wray states that `it is a criminal offense to leak grand jury information' and seeks Mueller's removal.
``'Robert Mueller is not a ``man of integrity'' as the Washington, D.C., Democrat and Republican political establishment like to spin,' Klayman said in a statement. `He is just another pol who is representing his establishment benefactors in both political parties who want to see the Presidency of Donald Trump destroyed.'
``There is deep anger at Mueller on the right and growing calls for him to recuse himself from the special counsel investigation into whether Trump campaign officials had improper contacts with Moscow during the 2016 election.
``Klayman is hanging his legal effort on the notion that Mueller is too close to former FBI Director James Comey and allegations that his team has leaked damaging stories about those he's investigating to the press. The complaint also argues that Mueller has politicized the probe by hiring Democrats for his investigative team.
``Conservatives have also argued that Mueller's probe has extended beyond his mandate of investigating Russian meddling.
``More recently, conservative media and others on the right have drawn attention to Mueller's time as FBI Director, questioning why he didn't alert regulators that a subsidiary of a foreign uranium mining company was under investigation before a controversial deal for the sale of the company to a Russia-owned firm was approved.
``'He must be held accountable to the law and should not be able to do as he pleases to further his and his friends', like former FBI Director James Comey's, political agenda,' Klayman said. `We are hopeful that the court will order Justice to do its job and conduct an expeditious and impartial investigation and then order Mueller to step down as special counsel. There are others, perhaps who practice outside of the Washington, D.C., swamp, who could step in and do an honest and conflict-free investigation of so-called Russian collusion.'''
Quite interesting, but this article today from Samantha Schmidt, Washington Post, is quite ironic. ``James Comey, Sally Yates and Eric Holder Defend FBI After Trump's Twitter Attack.''
Now, this is the same Eric Holder who lied to us repeatedly in our Judiciary Committee hearings. He obfuscated, concealed evidence, refused to disclose evidence, was found in contempt, but he still has the unmitigated gall to step forward as if he is a paragon of virtue and can stand up for Mueller's character, I guess.
Comey also has taken to tweeting out Bible verses. I think that is wonderful. I applaud him reading the Bible. I wish he had been relying on the Bible a little more when he was FBI Director before he started preparing the statement that would indicate there was nothing to prosecute Hillary Clinton over before she was actually investigated and before he gave immunity to people, before he let her lawyer, who was a witness, sit in on conversations before he was part of exonerating her, even though the evidence that he recited made clear an offense had been committed.
There were stories that the only reason he came out before the election and said he was reopening the investigation was so that he could keep FBI agents who had found all these tens of thousands of emails on Anthony Weiner's computer, Huma Abedin's--they said that this surely justifies because here are emails that she said didn't exist.
So he goes public and says they reopened. If that is true, they kept those FBI agents from coming forward, resigning, or saying that he was doing what it appears now, with more evidence, that he was apparently doing, exonerating Hillary Clinton, though evidence was there to go further.
I remember telling some media back then, well, we will know whether this is a serious reopening of the investigation, words like that. If he comes back in a week and says, ``Oh, no,'' before the election,
``nothing here,'' then clearly he would not have had enough time to go through all the emails. And they hadn't, but he came forward and exonerated her anyway.
The New York Post had an article yesterday, the editorial board:
``Another Anti-Trump `Smoking Gun' Turns Out to Be Nothing.''
``Once again, a supposed big break in the drive to destroy President Trump over `collusion' with the Russians during the 2016 campaign stands exposed as nothing more than bad reporting. Plus, the professionalism of the FBI looks compromised by anti-Trump bias.''
As it does by the comments by people like Yates, Holder, and Comey.
It says: ``The media went berserk Friday on news that former Trump confidante Mike Flynn had copped a plea deal with special counsel Bob Mueller. All the usual suspects launched an orgy of speculation on what beans Flynn `must' have spilled.
``It all went into overdrive as ABC's Brian Ross reported that Flynn had been instructed to reach out to Moscow during the campaign: This seemed to be the long-awaited proof of collusion with Vladimir Putin against Hillary Clinton.
``Except that Ross retracted the claim hours later: The reach-out was only after election day, when any President-elect is expected to start connecting with other world leaders, U.S.-friendly or not.''
{time} 2145
That is the whole sad thing about Mike Flynn. It was not a crime for him to reach out to the Russians after the election. The claim was that there was some big collusion to bring down Hillary Clinton, when it appears we really don't know who hacked into the DNC server. It certainly could have been an inside job involving the Awan brothers, or at least Imran Awan. Pretty sad days.
The Hill reports dismissed FBI agent changed Comey's language on Clinton emails to ``extremely careless.'' Olivia Beavers, today, reported:
``The former FBI official, who was recently fired from special counsel Robert Mueller's Russia team over messages critical of President Trump, reportedly edited a key phrase that removed possible legal implications in former FBI Director James Comey's statement about his decision on the Hillary Clinton email investigation.
``Peter Strzok, who served as a counterintelligence expert at the Bureau, changed the description of Clinton's actions in Comey's statement, CNN reported Monday, citing U.S. officials familiar with the matter.
``One source told the news outlet that electronic records reveal that Strzok changed the language from `grossly negligent' to `extremely careless,' scrubbing a key word that could have had legal ramifications for Clinton. An individual who mishandled classified material could be prosecuted under Federal law for `gross negligence.' ''
Pretty tragic.
The article goes on to say:
``Strzok, who served as the No. 2 official leading the probe into the Clinton email server, has been thrust into the center of controversy after news of his dismissal from Comey's team.
``A group of people were part of the drafting process, using a red pen on Comey's statement before he publicly came forward, another U.S. official familiar with the matter told CNN.
``Senate Judiciary Chairman Chuck Grassley questioned the revised language change after receiving FBI records last month before CNN reported Strzok's edits.
``Mueller and his team are broadly investigating Russian interference in the 2016 election, including whether Trump campaign aides colluded with the Russians.''
And, boy, ``broadly investigating'' is an understatement.
``In July 2016, Comey said that Clinton's use of a private email server while Secretary of State was `extremely careless,' but he added that `no reasonable prosecutor' would charge her.''
Mr. Speaker--I want to finish on this note--Salem, Oregon; FOX News; Jonathan Easley reporting:
``A Mexican man, who was deported from the United States more than a dozen times was sentenced Friday in Oregon to 35 years in prison after pleading guilty to sodomy, kidnapping, sex abuse, and other charges in separate attacks on two women.
``Sergio Jose Martinez told victims' relatives he would see them in hell after sentence was pronounced Friday in a Portland courtroom.''
And I would interject, there is a decent chance they may not be at the same place he is in the next life.
``Just a day earlier, another man who had also been deported multiple times for being in America illegally, Jose Ines Garcia Zarate, was found not guilty by a jury in San Francisco in the shooting death of a woman. That case that touched off a national immigration debate.''
I just want to finish by saying that there is a lot of talk about amnesty, DACA, all these different things, but, Mr. Speaker, the truth is: until the border is secured, we should not even be talking about amnesty, about any kind of legality for people who are here illegally, because it creates another swarm across our border. And if we are going to do this, we are going to have to keep doing it every few years because the people are going to keep coming.
We must build a wall where it is needed, and we must secure the border. When that is done, we can work these other things out. But until the border is secured, we should not even be talking about it.
People, like these criminals, these rapists, shouldn't even have been in this country. People are dead who should be alive. People have had their lives murderously tortured through horrendous sexual assaults. So many lives have been harmed or ended.
Let's secure the border, let's do what it takes, and then we can work the other things out.
Mr. Speaker, I yield back the balance of my time.
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